newbee Q: X10 experience ?

X10 can be realiable but may take some work to get it this way. Noise on the powerline can cause alot of problems. If you go with X10 buy quaility products, a coupler/repeater, a few filters, and a signal tester can be a great asset. Some have great luck with X10 others just get frustrated. It can take some time trouble shooting issues. For me this was too much to get a system working so I installed Zwave, a RF solution.

Thanks, are there more reliable alternatives ? Flxy

There are the professional, hardwired solutions. Very reliable, but quite expensive, especially if you want to start small and do it yourself. Some new RF technologies are starting to come up, but the product line are still very limited.

Markus

Just a few

Zwave (RF) UPB (Powerline but better technology) Zigbee(Soon) RF SMarthome is about to introduce a RF & powerline mix (Insteon) Several hardwire options they are the best if you have acess to running the wires Lightolier (has plc and hardwire options) Very realiable Lutron Several others but just wanted to throw a few out.

To me, reliable means 'as reliable as my plain old wired system'. I do not want to be frustrated by switches that don't work or light that goes on/off beyond my control. I do not like to run into the famous 'blue screen effects' like with PC's.

flxy

"Dweeb" schreef >

I learned that A10 (Xanura; i.e. Holec Eaton) is more reliable than X10 because it checkes what's being transmitted and retransmits in case of collission, etc.

Any experience with that ?

flxy P.s. indeed I live in Europe (the Netherlands). Home automation is not yet well known overhere. In fact only office buildings and expensive houses have some. Common people do not use stuuf like this. How about the US ?

If it's the same A10 that's made by ACT here, I have no personal experience. It is rather pricey so its market seems to be mostly in commercial buildings such as hotels.

There are no reliable statistics but home automation has seen wider use here because the market has been bigger. Until relatively recently European contries had disparate electrical systems so the market was fragmented.

Here, X-10 is inexpensive and is the most widely used. Hard-wire systems also tend to be used only in expensive homes here. They are difficult to retrofit.

RF systems are more widespread in Europe because CE allows much higher transmission levels (which translates into greater range) than does the FCC.

Correct I didn't realize he was in Europe when posting.