Justify Upgrade from X-10 to Z-Wave?

Tom · 2008-06-26T03:08:14+00:00

There is no doubt in my mind that z-wave is superior to x-10 but x-10's advantage is cost. Even with the extended x-10's protocol, it still falls short for complex applications. In my situation, I have a few x-10 recievers controlling a few lamps around the home. I basically use it to turn on/off lights in the room I'm in. I don't have a need for pre-set lighting moods (complete with the hide-away bar that appears with Burt Bacharach music that starts to play.) I really don't see a need for lighting computer interface for how I currently use the system. My house is basically square with one floor at about 1800 sf. My real motivation is to perpetuate my couch-potato lifestyle by not needing to budge from the chair to operate room lighting or to turn-off lights in another room. I'm now getting ready to hardwire wall switches to control ceiling fans and lights along with some lights for the pool area.What I'm asking of you folks here is a justification for one or the other based on how I use wireless techology. I'm not interested in entertaining other technologies and would strongly prefer to hear about just the two.

Jun 26, 2008 22 Replies

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Robert Green 18 years ago

I hooked up the Monterey PLSA behind an AF120 15A filter and got some interesting readings. The WGL received an RF command and put it through a TW523 onto the house wiring. The Monterey showed normal commands being received (at .15 volts, even behind the filter!) with one exception: The display showed them all in lower case, which means it only saw the second, repeated half of the command. That makes perfect sense. The II is stronger than the original XTB and the XTB/TW523 combo was on another circuit. Only the repeated signal could punch through the filter, as would be expected.

The next test is to see whether the WGL's TW-523 alone gives the same readings. If it's higher without the XTB, then there's cancellation going on. If it's higher *with* the XTB then the two signals are combining. IIRC, the IIR alone can't punch through the AF120. The fact that is does so when it's amplifying an already boosted signal from the XTB seems to indicate that the end voltage of an XTB that's repeated by the XTB-IIR is considerably higher than either unit alone.

I tried doing some "signal dissect" runs where the Monterey looks at each of the 22 cycles and records 0's and 1's and their voltage during each cycle and that gave me information that seems to imply cancellation is occurring.

Cycle

01 1 .42 1 .43 02 1 .39 0 03m 03 0 02m 1 .42 04 1 .38 0 03m 05 1 .38 0 02m 06 0 02m 1 .41 07 0 02m 1 .41 08 0 02m 1 .41 09 1 .37 0 03m 10 1 .37 0 03m 11 1 .38 0 02m 12 1 .25 1 .24 13 1 .22 0 03m 14 0 03m 1 .22 15 1 .21 0 03m 16 1 .20 0 03m 17 0 03m 1 .20 18 0 02m 1 .19 19 0 02m 1 .19 20 1 .18 0 03m 21 1 .18 0 02m 22 1 .17 0 03m

Now that I've transcribed that lengthy list two things seem to jump out. First, the noise level is very low, probably the result of the Monterey sitting behind the AF120 filter. The second is that the repeated frame is seems to be actually weaker than the first copy of the X-10 command.

Obviously I need to run more tests with both the XTB and the XTB-IIR but it looks like we're seeing some fade in the voltage as the command progresses. Looks fairly linear, too.

I didn't expect there to be any trouble. I've been operating a number of ControlLinc Maxi's, MiniTimers and TW523's through XTB's and then through the XTB-IIR that's installed at the circuit breaker panel without any noticeable problems. The very faint X-10 signal noise I can hear if a chime module's plugged in too close to the XTB isn't really a problem - it makes me wonder if the human brain could distinguish the different commands if they were a little louder.

Anyway, I'll take some more measurements when I get a chance. The next thing I want to see is whether the XTB-IIR can punch a signal through the AF120 when it's not boosting an XTB signal.

-- Bobby G.

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Jeff Volp 18 years ago

Since the XTB-IIR power supply is not regulated, it will droop as the transmitter is pulling current from the 4700uF energy storage capacitor. (The TW523 has 470uF.)

Measurements here show about 5% droop over a single transmission. (You can see that in the Hometoys workbench photo.) The droop does depend on how nasty a load is being driven. More current will be pulled from the supply when driving a heavy load, which will cause more droop. Sustained transmission into a 4.8 ohm resistive load will result in about 30% droop (and a very hot load resistor.) The version 1.2 board supports a full-wave bridge power supply, which has slightly better regulation. The total energy delivered is about the same, but there is less change in burst amplitude over the transmission. That was first incorporated into the 3-phase unit, but it will be ported over to 2-phase unit when the new transformers arrive.

While I?m not quite sure how the measurements were made, I suspect that you had a XTB driving the same phase that the Monterey was monitoring. I would expect that to be a stronger signal than when the XTB-IIR is driving both phases, especially if the opposite phase contains more ?signal suckers?. In any case, that is a pretty respectable signal being punched through that filter.

Jeff

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