is x10.com dead?

...

that article totally missed the primary reason for microsoft adapting hd-dvd: the playstation/x-box war. There is no way in hell microsoft would adapt a sony standard that differentiated the PS/XB if there was any choice at all.

They touched on it at the end: "There are other industry analysts who contend that Microsoft is simply propping up Toshiba to further its own aims, like countering the PlayStation and combating the spread of Sun's Java software."

That's not relevant to my point in quoting the article, namely that loyalties come and go in the "standards" business. My personal belief is that companies often join for a little while just to keep an eye on the competition.

-- Bobby G.

Fair question. The answer is, it hasn't required any tolerating. It's worked.

The minute I have a problem, I'll replace it.

Your point about X10 being slow used to be a sticking point for me -- macros to set a scene, one module at a time, drove me batty. When scene presets came along, that was no longer a problem for me.

Twenty (20) INSTEON ICON dimmers, modules and(or) switches + bridge + USB/RS-232 controller + table-top controller cost about $530 at retail, shipping included.

This is about 2/3 of what a fully Leviton X-10 system would cost and is much, much more robust, and much faster (yes, fast is much better than slow once you've experienced it).

The incremental cost over non-automated dimmers is less than about $400.

There is no additional installation cost for INSTEON compared to manual dimmers In fact, a house can be wired for INSTEON less expensively than for conventional n-way switches because only a hot and a neutral are required for any location to accommodate a remote switch for any load handled by any INSTEON switch anywhere in the facility. This could entirely cover the $400 incremental cost of INSTEON over manual dimmers in a house with many n-way switches.

So a 20-location INSTEON control system (less software) can be had for 0.0 to 0.3% of the price of a new home (US national median about $200,000).

Now that the ELK MG1 Gold supports INSTEON, one can automate a house (20 lights, thermostat, security, voice, limited video) for less than $1500 (not including low-voltage wiring). And no 24x7 computer needed.

In other words, 0.75% of the price of the median new US house.

And the stuff *works* and, unlike X-10, will not decrease the re-sale value of a home in my opinion.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

That is a new switch that was certainly not available when we selected Leviton several years ago. Looking at the other products in the Insteon line, many are missing. Where is the switched outlet? Where is the irrigation controller? Where are the floodlights? And the 1000 watt switch we used for the high wattage circuits isn't so cheap. Neither is the relay switch we used for all the fluorescent circuits.

Nah, it ain't there yet.

With 99.99% reliability, I'd still choose high quality X10 compatible devices today.

Jeff

Switched outlet: The X10/Leviton SR227 switched outlet (ABIK the only available X-10 switched outlet) is an example of the contempt those companies hold for their customers. The X10 and Leviton models are identical, and both are known pieces of excrement that have the same small plastic part that breaks. All but one of the ones I've had broke. It is an example of why X-10 could not migrate (despite the best efforts of IBM, Sears, Tandy, Stanley and others) beyond the hometoy class. Had I needed to call an electrician to replace the switched outlets, the cost would have been several hundred dollars. Hardly economical. Had I depended on the switch to do something important, I would have incurred even more losses. FWIW, a switched outlet can be functionally replaced with an appliance module.

Irrigation controller using X-10? ROTFL -- Rube would be proud.

Floodlights: I have used X-10 Stanley floodlights for years, but not as X-10. They are trivially hooked up to a wall switch (INSTEON, DMX, manual, whatever) and the X-10 disabled. I bought them cheap when they were being dumped on the market when yet another company tried to cut its losses incurred by dealing with X-10.

Relay switch: The ICON relay wall switch exists and costs $19.95. I have several. Same gold-plated quality . The enclosed relay is rated at 16amps at

125 or 250VAC.

High wattage switch: If you can pay for 1000 watts of lighting why can't you afford $10 bucks more for a dimmer that still costs same/less than the comparable Leviton ? Also, the INSTEON equipment has better heat sinking than the X10 and Leviton stuff I've seen. Larger and no heat sink tabs that have to be cut off when switches are placed side-by-side and so derated.

Still asking your dentist for silver amalgam fillings and backing up on floppies? They were fine in their day too...

Jeff: I'm not trying to criticize you, or the decisions that you made before the availability of better choices than X10.

What I would prefer not to witness in this newsgroup is others being sucked into the abyss that is X-10 when there are less expensive, more reliable, more expandable, faster, easier to install and easier to maintain alternatives that unlike X-10, are not just throw-away hometoys (my opinion)..

Marc Marc_F_Hult

Marc, it is clear that people are very polarized in this discussion. Some people have had problems with X10, and to them it is junk. Others dealt with the proliferation of other electronic equipment, and have a very reliable system.

Your point on that plastic piece in the outlet is well taken. They should have fixed that years ago. We had one fail that way ourselves, reported here in the past. The others are still klunking away fine.

What is wrong with an irrigation controller run by X10? The Ocellot tunes the cycles to temperature and seasons. A Leviton 16400 indicates which zones are scheduled for watering that day. And if things look a little dry in the 110+ heat of summer, a simple press on that 16400 indicator will trigger an extra cycle for that zone. The only "failure" we've had was one of the valves stuck last year. I think some grit got in the line when they tied in a new house down the street.

Some of us have had X10 systems that have served us well for decades. We have a significant investment in knowledge and equipment. To us the choice is obvious. For others just starting out, the decision isn't so easy. The big question that nobody can answer is which ones will be around 30 years from now...

Jeff

Yup

Here's where we may disagree. In my opinion there is a clear and better choice "for people just starting out".

Why is this a big question? And why does it have to be answered?

Some of what appears to us now as permanent is not.

We rebuild kitchens and bathrooms in homes every few decades -- so too lighting infrastructure.

My own house has lived through candles and oil lamps only, then + kerosene lamps, then + in-wall gas lighting, then knob-and-tube electrical which co-existed with the in-wall gas lighting, then electrical in conduit, then Romex, then X-10, then hard-wired lighting, and now also INSTEON.

Indubitably the future will bring more changes -- which is as it must and should be.

Thanks for the cogent discussion ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

indicator will trigger an extra cycle for that zone. The only "failure"

Another button pushed ;-) I have a Leviton 6400. Would you like it free? The design was defective. It _never_ worked. It was very expensive at the time ($80??) Leviton replaced it in the catalog with the 16400 but left the purchasers of the 6400 like me in the lurch.

If you have an Ocelot, that in turn has the ability to control low-voltage relays connected by a single low-voltage RS-485 twisted pair to control the low-voltage that the irrigation valves require, why do you have a "X-10 irrigation controller"? What you describe is not an X-10 irrigation controller as I understand it. It is (effectively) a momentary SPST input to the Ocelot carried over the AC line. Quite a different matter.

( I also have a deeply ingrained suspicion of the combination of amateurs, lethal voltages, and water -- think farmer-electricians, well pits and big electrical pumps. One of those combinations almost sent me to my maker in 1971 while doing hydrologic field work ...so I am not entirely rational on the topic. )

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

A technically superior and economical system isn't the wisest choice if the availability of that equipment disappears after a few years. Those who bought Beta VCRs know what I mean.

Jeff

The 6400 has been available cheap on eBay for good reason. I did my homework before buying, and got the 16400s from Worthington. They work like a charm, and there have been no failures in 3 years.

We use a Rain8 irrigation controller, which is commanded via X10. It's a great little box with built-in timeouts, and two different program cycles. X10 can trigger a whole cycle, which is what we normally use. But, the valves can be individually controlled by X10 when additional irrigation is necessary.

We live up on a ridge where lightning is a significant danger. We had a close lightning strike at our last house, and part of the alarm system was taken out. Since the Ocelot is the core of our HA system, I didn't want a direct electrical path from it to the valves outside (RS485 link & switched

24VAC). With X10, we have the house wiring and whole house surge protector to provide some measure of isolation. But, anything can be fried if we get a direct hit.

Jeff

Back to specifics, are we ?

The obsolescence argument you are trying to make is specious with respect to INSTEON vis-a-vis X-10.

A Beta VCR will not play VHS tapes but INSTEON will play with X-10 in its compatibility mode (and is less expensive, more reliable, better built, better ergonomics, also RF, more flexible, faster, etc.)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

I bought my Leviton 6400 from Worthington ca. 1998 before the 16400 replacement came out. This was about 15 years after my first x-10 purchase (brown TW-523 with a 5-1/4 disk with C code from a Canadian company whose name I forget .)

Also about 1999 I bought the $160 (??) Leviton coupler/repeater (also from Worthington) that failed while in service taking out control of every X-10 device in the house.

You've apparently been lucky. How much have you spent on X-10 equipment and specialized AC wiring for it? Sounds to me that you could have gone with a hard-wired system.

If you are keeping the house for a while longer, your needs and perceptions and experiences are all that really matter.

But when it comes to selling the house, it may not matter how well it works in practice -- perceptions being what they are. (I had to pay to have an electrician rip out all the HA wiring in the last house I owned in order to close the deal ...:-(

Marc Marc_F_hult

How on earth (pun intended) does being coupled to power lines that stretch from your house to the power plant afford you with "some measure of protection" ?

It is precisely because RS-485 is readily isolated using optical couplers that RS-485 is an excellent and common choice for what you want to do.

You do need to have a DC source on each side of the opto-couplers but it can help you avoid the electrical path through the power line and X-10.

We've had several episodes of lightning-induced damage through the power lines taking out GFI's, security system, phones, ethernet/computers, etc despite whole-house "surge" protection at the meter installed by the electrical utility. (FWIW, we live in the city near a river.)

I've opted for fiber optic ethernet connections and improved earth grounding rods among other things.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

The ADI modules do not include opto-isolation. I had considered using opto-isolated SSRs at the output of the SECU16, but the Rain8 was a simpler solution. Opto-isolators are only good for a couple KV, and I'm concerned about high induced voltage in a relatively high impedance circuit. That's what took out part of our alarm system at the other house. The bolt itself hit a tree across the driveway from the house and blasted a hole in the ground near the trunk. The powerlines were underground, and nothing at that house was ever effected by transients on the AC line. A similar condition exists here.

If a close strike does induce high voltage in the switched 24V line, that could take out the irrigation controller. But the powerline and whole house surge protector should dissipate the induced energy better than that 485 link back to the Ocelot.

Like I said earlier, all bets are off if there is a direct strike.

Jeff

Interesting -- a whole 'nuther topic. Our problems have been a differential between the power line and ground. Whether that was exacerbated by a code-compliant but inadequate grounding rod remains an open question. These problems are all different in detail and yours does seem different than mine.

Your point about conventional optoisolators providing only several KV of protection is well taken and important. A while back I researched high-isolation opto-couplers for DMX512 ( which uses RS-485) and purchased some IC's for constructing an improved isolation system. They are still in the parts bin so they aren't actually helping yet.

That's also part of why my PC 's are now connected by fiber which provides nominally 'infinite' isolation rather than by CAT5. Twice I had the ethernet ports blown out. The audio system is 'protected' by an air-gap relay in series with an SSR

The HA and web servers are on an isolated chassis with a separate supply for DC-DC converters. Seems to have "kept the wild pink elephants away" for a while .... I do feel better for having done _something_.

Marc Marc_F_Hult

Marc,

You'd just love the "modern" Brazilian answer to water heaters. Older heaters are gas-fired boxes on the wall in each condo. There's a pilot light but almost never a thermal shut-off to stop the gas when the pilot goes out.

The new, "improved" models are different. Instead of heating water for the whole house only the shower water is heated. This is accomplished via a 220 Volt, ungrounded heater which is mounted directly to the shower head. Almost none of these units are sealed so there's almost invariably leakage. Touch the shower head while your foot is on the drain and you're in for a nasty surprise. :^)

Our handyman installed new shower heaters in the bathrooms, through-the-wall air conditioners in the bedrooms, ceiling fans and overhead lights everywhere, etc. He needed to add a 220V outlet in my office. Since we're on the fifth floor of a nine story, cement building, he had to rout the wall to install the wires. I watched in amazement as he chiseled out a 1" wide by 1" deep channel, into which he planned to install a flexible, plastic tube to pull the new conductors -- both of them!

It was at that point that I explained that I wanted everything grounded and that the conduit had to be at least 3" into the wall. The gentleman was astounded. He'd never heard of anyone grounding a water heater, much less an outlet.

We managed to get it done right but it took some prodding. Next year we hope to buy a newer place with more room for guests and a better office for me. From what I've seen so far, I'll probably have to supervise the construction pretty closely. The attitude seems to be that anything that won't be seen doesn't matter. :(