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new z-wave gateway

Proprietary protocols are high on the list of causes for both problems. What we're seeing now is an unprecedented balkanization of home automation protocols. With X-10 you can source from lots of different suppliers. X-10 users are pretty much insured against being orphaned. Virtually no other player can make that claim, and it's an important one. With all of these new players, and a recession that's not a recession, someone's going to get hung out to dry when one of the players goes bankrupt.

That's certainly not true. Jeff's XTB is new and extends X-10's capabilities enormously:

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WGL's new 32 bit super-sensitive V572RF32

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covers the waterfront in terms of making all the stock X-10 RF transmitters behave remarkably better in terms of range. It's brand-spanking new.

and HACS's switching gear

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although a little bit older, shows the tremendous flexibility of the X-10 universe with video matrix switchers, remote X-10 speaker selectors and lots more. These devices all interoperate quite nicely and they're priced way below competing equipment because the patent's in the public domain now. Nothing in any of the new protocols even remotely matches the control options X-10 provides. Where are the Stargates, HomeVisions and Ocelots of the Insteon, UPB and Z-wave world? How prone to error will they be when they arrive due to a small user base and lack of uptime experience?

No disagreement, here, but that approach needs to be an "open standard." That means, for the time being, nearly all the new players aren't really players because they are all proprietary - except X-10. The expired patent is going to give X-10 an incredible leg up on the others, even with all its problems.

Your experience is with stock X-10 and I heartily agree that it is no longer good enough to race with the other, newer protocols. But when X-10 is enhanced by the XTB for PLC and by the WGL line of transceivers for the RF portion of X-10, it's once again comparable to the offerings of the other automation vendors. Both are easy enough for armchair techies to deploy and both offer incredible advantages over stock X-10 and, remarkably enough, similar "enhanced" products from outfits like Leviton and Smarthome.

There are still plenty of people quite happy with X-10. My guess is that there isn't a single X-10 installation out there that wouldn't work a lot better with an XTB-II/V572 combo. Once you solve the signal strength problems (both RF and PLC), X-10 works well and offers more controller options than all its competitors combined. Part of home control is having a wide breadth of control options to choose from. Most of the new protocols suffer from serious deficiencies in the types of controls they offer beyond the basic wall switch.

I'm still betting this big downturn in the economy is going to knock out at least one of the also-rans. Investors don't like to wait too long for a return on their investment and the housing slowdown has really hurt every aspect of homebuilding, including automation. I'll bet no one is meeting their sales projections with investors and that along with the credit freeze could make the next big pot of operating capital very hard to come by. Throw in a loss to Lutron on a patent suit here and there, and a borderline company could easily become a bankrupt one.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green
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Which is exactly what X-10 was for quite a while.

Please, give it a rest. X-10's tremendously bad track record for reliability does not make it a viable solution any longer.

One product does not solve a legion of ills. It's a fine product, from a small supplier, but it's a band-aid, at best.

X-10 RF != X-10 powerline. You conflate to entirely different technologies.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

But it's not now, and that makes it available to a wide range of manufacturers, allowing users to second-source products. That means they won't be stuck with a house filled with products of a bankrupt manufacturer. IMHO, that's quite a comfort. Free and open competition inspires better design, and an open standard only enhances that competition.

As I've said, your experience appears to be with the old, unboosted X-10. I've readily acknowledged that, and I've specifically avoided slamming you for writing about products that you appear to have little or no current experience with, namely the XTB and the V572 "enhancers." But there comes a point where not having any direct experience with what you are making claims about comes to work against you and your overall credibility. To that end, I think it might be you who needs to "give it a rest" before you end up goring your own ox. (-:

Boosting the X-10 PLC signal and RF sensitivity redefines the X-10 standard. You don't have to believe me Bill, because I am clearly not the only one saying it. The XTB and the V572 have created quite a renaissance within the X-10 community because with them, centralized controller signals can now propagate reliably throughout the entire house via both RF and PLC.

No, it's most definitely not a band-aid, it's a cure. Boosting the X-10 signal turns out to solve most of that alleged "legion" of ills since most of the X-10 problems we see reported here concern signal strength issues. X-10 was fine for when it was designed, and now that there's a powerful repeater/amplifier like the XTB, it's fine for the current home electrical environment, even with all its CFLs and switch mode power supply warts.

technologies.

What??!!!! X-10 clearly operates via both PLC and RF with an incredible range of control options that dwarfs what all other "new" protocols offer, probably combined. IIRC, the RF controllers for X-10 first appeared over 20 years ago. You're reaching for straws here by complaining that the two quite different methods of control X-10 offers its end users is some sort of

*bad* thing. It's a good thing, and it gives the end user tremendous flexibility in tailoring a home automation solution. Adding the V572 to my system *vastly* improved the RF reception range and the system's usefulness and reliability. I like to be able to control the porchlights from a keyfob. How many new protocols even OFFER an RF keyfob?

I prefer the tremendous selection of "here and now" gear that the X-10 protocol offers. I'm especially fond of X-10's breadth of offerings when its compared to the "we'll have one of those any day" promises from the makers of UPB, Insteon and the like. The problem I see is that "any day" for some of these manufacturers is likely to be synonymous with "hopefully before we go bankrupt."

Ten years from now, UPB, Insteon and all the other new protocols may have vanished but I guarantee you that X-10 will still be performing quite nicely in 1,000's, and maybe even 10's or 100's of thousand homes. By that time, some smart manufacturer will have bought out Jeff's design so that it can be mass-produced at 1/4 the current price.

Sometimes, having the largest installed user base is all it takes to bury the competition. It's all about critical mass. That's a really important element in the current business environment where 5 or 6 new home automation protocols are trying to get a foothold in one of the worst housing markets we've seen since the 1980's when interest rates topped 18%. Someone's not going to make it, but I am sure that X-10 will. I suspect UPB will be the first to go, but only time will tell.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Ford sells both cars and trucks, yet they're quite different. Likewise X-10's RF solution, weak as it is, shares little in common with it's powerline garbage, besides the company name.

The only thing that carries X-10 along is that it's cheap. It certainly doesn't work reliably. Good, fast, cheap, shit X-10 can't even muster two of those points. It's no good and it's slow as hell. That it's cheap doesn't do much to redeem it.

It's you that's reaching for straws trying to prop up your misbegotten investment in X-10 trash. Please, spare us the delusions.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

Bill, As a user of the XTB-II and XTB products in two homes, I can tell you that these products totally redifine the reliability issue with X10 PLC products. With an XTB-II or XTB installed (depending on application) you can achieve virtually flawless operation equivalent to UPB (which I tried but found it wasn't as robust as it claimed) or Insteon (which I also have and it works quite well). In fact, had the XTB-II been available before I bought into Insteon I would not have bothered with it. X10 is MUCH easier to manage than the newer protocols and there is a wide array of product choices available. I have no axe to grind here, I'm just reporting my experiences. I have every hope that new Insteon products - particularly controllers and software - will soon be available to give me the same capabilities I have with X10 but, until that time, X10 still rules.

Reply to
BruceR

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