No more X10 at Radio Shack?

I've got a big plastic bag in the basement filled with the manual switches I yanked to install the X-10 ones. I figure it will take a few hours to pull the X-10 and replace it with the original stuff when we move. The only problems I anticipate are broken pigtails if I futz with the wires too much.

electrician

Two points here. Number one is that X-10 users have lots of quality level choices when it comes to switches. That's good. I checked RadioRA pricing again last night and it seems that they are in the $100 to $300 "price per load" if you factor in the cost of their controllers and bridges. To be fair, and to modify my original statement somewhat, it sounds like a homeowner *could* take RA with them with they moved as easily as I can take X-10, so it's not really a factor in choosing between the two.

I wouldn't feel that I'd be leaving much $ behind using either X-10 or Lutron or even Insteon. The problem is that I would want my next HA system to be hardwired, based on Ethernet-type cabling and that's an investment that won't transport easily to the next home. Part of the beauty of X-10 (and other HA protocols) is that you can do so much without rewiring. If you want to control clusters of lights, have multiple control points, etc. you can do it without having to pull wires or rewire outlets or light switches unless you need a neutral where none exists. But RF and PLC are both vulnerable to interference while "fly by wire" is inherently "battle hardened."

The second point is that it's been absolutely YEARS since I've had to replace an X-10 wall switch. I got a closeout of Stanley-branded wallswitch modules with pushbuttons and have had no failures since (that was in mid

90's or so, IIRC). One reason might be that the Stanley instructions were quite clear that the blue and black wires were NOT interchangeable. One went to the hot side, the other to the neutral. Was that secret that's kept them all working all this time? Dunno. All I know is that in MY house, X-10 wall switches have been very reliable, although I will agree that at one time I was replacing them far too frequently. Everyone can have a bad product run or can mislabel their installation instructions. As you point out, if X-10 switches had NOT been reliable, I would still have had my choices of alternatives in a range of prices from $20 to $100.

Kurt, I agree wholeheartedly. I've already planned for and budgeted for the swap. I've got the original switches labeled by outlet number and ready to be swapped before we even show the place. Having X-10, and to a lesser extent *any* HA system, is going to hurt rather than help any home sale, IMHO, unless, of course, you're selling to a fellow HA enthusiast.

P.S. - Maybe my spell checker's biased but it wants to replace "Lutron" with "latrine!" (-:

-- Bobby G.

This is a not an apt comparison in my opinion. A person does not need an electrician to program a VCR, but in most jurisdictions in the US, a person must either have the knowledge, manual skills, tools *and* authorization to do electrical AC work themselves, or hire a licensed electrician who may also need to be bonded and(or) show proof of paying fees/taxes in the local jurisdiction.

What proportion of folks are competent enough to accurately construct a schematic diagram of their home's AC wiring and then reconfigure the main entrance panel to put all X-10 on one phase safely and in accordance with codes?

In many/most US jurisdictions, the home owner (not a renter, not brother-in-law) is the only individual other than licensed electricians that can do this work. And it is part and parcel of what makes your system -- built during _new_ construction -- successful.

Folks should be made aware that your approach, applied during new construction, was a different situation than a retrofit to existing housing which is the predominant use of X-10 as far as I know.

So it is much more than simply "care[ing] to put in some effort" in most cases.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

This was my experience in the last house I rebuilt and sold eight years ago. Poor tactile feel of X-10 switches and ambiguity of position compared to 79 cent toggle switches was by itself sufficient reason to remove.

The local electrician hired by the new owner also cut off the CAT5 jacks and daisy-chained the wire together jist like he was taught in the 1960's. He thought he was doing me a favor by sending me the gruesomely chopped jacks with wire still attached like heads on a platter. (I would rather not have known ...)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

That was exactly my point. The folks who can't do that are the ones most likely to walk into the local Radio Shack and pick up that gee wiz automation kit consisting of a controller and a few plug-in modules. Then they plug it in as shown on the box, and it doesn't work. So they either take it back to the store or rant here and elsewhere that X10 is junk. Those that buy from the more respected automaton channels like Worthington or SmartHome probably have some clue as to what they are doing.

Jeff

I sold my primary residence in the last couple of months. X10 wall switches were installed in many rooms. The new owner can remove them if he wishes. The wall switches have no visible external X10 identification. It's doubtful the new owner realizes they are X10 switches.

I left a Socket Rocket on the front porch light and a Motion Sensor above the front door sending P1 code to the single transceiver left in the house. No electrician is needed to stop using and to remove these items.

In the thirty-three years we owned the house we experienced more wearout failures with conventional switches and receptacles than X10 devices.

Some homeowners know how to replace wall switches and receptacles, and some don't.

Do you have some evidence that X10 devices will reduce the value of the home, or is that simple speculation? Our house sold at the listing price during the first "open house". The home inspectors never mentioned the X10 devices in their reports. We paid for one inspection and the buyer paid for one. How do you know what "most" home inspectors will flag as a liability?

Actually, the only things we had the contractor do in preparation for X10 installation were to bring neutral into all boxes, and use metal boxes where I planned to install dimmer switches. That special electronic circuit was originally planned to be powered by a huge UPS in case of rolling blackouts. The same result for X10 can be achieved with a few 5A plug-in filters scattered around the house.

I re-wired the panel and did all X10 installation after we moved in, so it really was a retrofit. I even installed that big X10 blocking filter over the neutral myself after checking that it was OK with the inspector.

Jeff

The RF world's already pretty crowded in the average high-tech home and it's only going to get worse as there's less policing and more polluting of the airwaves. The choices aren't pretty if you become saturated in RF from an unknown source. (Radio direction finders, FCC complaints and copper-clad walls come to mind.)

If your RF devices are labelled, as many are, "must accept harmful interference" then your options are limited again. Is it likely RadioRA will get knocked out by some unknown EMI? Well, it may end up in 30 years that the airwaves become as troublesome to RadioRA as the powerlines have become to X-10.

It's hard to design techology that survives 30 years in any enviroment and in that respect, X-10 has certainly succeeded. Yes, it took the XTB to bring it into the 21st century for me, but the bottom line is that it DID do it. It's unreasonable to assume any engineering design can deal with severe environmental or paradigm shifts unless it's as simple as a stone pyramid - which is not really simple, but simpler than dual-core CPU!

In the case of X-10 overcoming increasingly noisier power lines, it took some retrofitting, but it was by and large transparent - except to the bank account! Would they have done X-10 differently with 30 years' hindsight? Maybe. But let's remember how radical an idea the PIC was when X-10 was born. I think they did a damn good job for the price point they were trying to reach!

-- Bobby G.

Jeff,

I'm confident that we are in complete agreement with the basic facts including the reality that some X-10 components *are* unreliable/junk compared to their non-automated generic counterparts (the SR-227 comes to mind).

My broader point (as usual) is that when we post here, the effect is to make a recommendation and that it is helpful to simultaneously provide the boundaries/limitations/circumstances/parameters over which the recommendations pertain in a non-hyperbolic way. This is part of why I suggest that a first step in making an X-10 system dependable is to develop a circuit diagram for the home's AC wiring. This provides a higher-than-usual threshold for the decision to install X-10 and presumably w/should result in a higher proportion of 'successful' installations.

Keep up the nifty work!

Thanks ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Easy there, guys. The truth obviously lies somewhere between.

Not worth it to you, but worth it to me as it frees dollars for other pursuits. You have a lower tolerance for misbehavior, mechanical or otherwise, than most people. Just ask the Vendettistas from ASA. (-: That's neither bad nor good, it's just personal preference.

Of course I'd like it if the world hadn't changed and made powerlines so unfriendly to X-10 but Jeff Volp's XTB solved the number one issue that I readily agree absolutely plagues X-10 -- poor signal propagation. Stock X-10 doesn't cut it anymore - but XTB enhanced X-10 does. In my situation, I just love the fact that I can buy RF load controllers for just a few dollars and then break them apart and use them in custom applications like wireless monitors that tell me when the dogs have moved out through the pet door into the yard. Loads of hobbyist mods that even my fact fingers can accomplish, too. X-10 serves more than just to turn lights on and off. I actually like to experiment with it and modify it as needed.

-- Bobby G.

Other people have different ways of calculating their personal time. It's only a guess, but I'll bet there was at least a *little* positive learning experience with X-10. After all, you're able to now discriminate between ultra-reliable HA gear and less reliable stuff.

Having dealt with mission critical planning, I'll just say that if someone's life or marriage were depending on it, I'd go for ultra reliable. Right now it's more important for me to not overspend on HA since it's not anything the wife's really interested in. With the bump in heating and car costs this year, there will be some questions as to what is a luxury item and what's not at year's end.

You'll be happy to know that the next project is to design a CCTV and alarm system that will help prevent my wife's rescued dogs from digging out under the chain link fence and earning us a $75 ticket. This has very high SAF and simple Ratshack remote thermometers have already won a lot of approval in terms of making sure the dogs are always comfortable.

Although X-10 makes plenty of wireless camera gear, switchers, etc. the quality of their video stuff was SO abysmal the last times I checked compared to the slightly more expensive but vastly superior KTC and ProVideo gear that it's a no brainer.

For me, the interference from microwave ovens, the poor resolution, the poorer light sensitivity, poor color saturation and poor, often plastic, optics make them worthless. I don't even think I would use them for anything except a rapid deployment situation until I could get wired cameras in. While I can tolerate an occasional switch misfire (and that's really about the worse thing X-10 does) I *cannot* stand poor video quality. That's my Waterloo. You have yours and everyone else here has theirs.

That's not true, Bill. Having that many codes and my new Control-linc Maxis all housecode consoles (AHC) I can use the extra codes as macro addresses to queue specific actions, etc. We only have two motion controlled lights and they work quite well. That many codes allows me to set up enumeration schemas that make sense and are easily mnemonicized. B for basement, C for Christmas lights, D for dog kennels, A for attic, G for garage, O for outside lights, F for fans, H for heaters. The combo of an XTB and the Smarthome AHC Maxi-linc have given me incredible flexibility, especially with built in macros that can span multiple housecodes. I can now have commands that turn off whole sections of the house for easy evening close-downs.

Definitely not as easy to do and certainly lots more expensive. The best part of the XTB/Control Linc Maxi combo is that it's autonomous. No PC, no CM11As. I can program ten macros of sophisticated nature, issuing "ALL OFF" commands across multiple housecodes and lots, lots more. No other protocol has anywhere NEAR the options and variations of controllers and modules than X-10 and that's very important to me.

As I said, it's probably not likely, but who's to say the RF world won't have changed out from under the RA designers the way the powerline changed out from under the X-10 designers? Only time will tell.

I live in the same sort of house not too far away and agree - it take special care to get RF *into* the house. (-:

And that's where Jeff's XTB shines. It compensates for the very real limitation that you have identified. Without it I would be quite willing, as you are, to declare X-10 basically unworkable in the modern age.

The RF protocol allows me to put $5 credit card controllers in a lot of different places so I never have to get up to turn on a nearby light, etc. Actually, with the XTB, at least in my Faraday cage from WWII, RF has become the dicier of the dual protocols.

Dude, we must live within a dozen miles of each other. Box it up and I'll come by can get it and sign a release than I know the horror I am inflicting on myself. If you've got stuff I really need, I'll even write you or your favorite charity a check for it.

switch-feel,

We clearly have very different lifestyles and spouses. My house is almost completely lit by antique floor and table lamps. My wife has gotten very used to the "jiggle the switch" local control - but even more importantly has learned to control the lamps just via X-10 so that they are always in a remotely responsive state. Despite her protestations that HA is for me only, my logs show me that when I am away, the "ALL LIGHTS ON" command gets triggered at least once, and often many more times so I know she uses it.

To that end I mount either Stickaswitches or credit card controllers near the lamp and velcroed out of sight so she can sit at the desk and turn on the light. That arrangement tends to negate complaints about the wall switches. We hardly ever use the overheads to which most wall switches connect. We use all push button switches now, which she likes better than the older-style paddle.

Again, it depends on lifestyles and a lot of other things. I've had no real need for status requests. Nice to have but not required. My ears are my status request monitors- I can hear the relays clicking throughout the house. (-:

It's going to be an interesting few years, for sure, and my hunch is that someone's already investing in HA technology that will be as orphaned as thoroughly as the PC Jr and the microchannel bus users of a decade or so ago. The question is, which "superior" HA technology of today will become tomorrow's Betamax?

-- Bobby G.

I think the failure mode was even more insidious than that. People got an Activehome kit with a couple of modules. Maybe they bought a few more appliance and lamp modules at the same time. Or maybe one of those X10.com nearly free starter kits. Everything probably ran fine for a while since the fewer X-10 transmitters, the less overall signal sucking. Also, in the beginning, people are likely to keep all the stuff close together as they deploy it. Now the original stuff's out of warranty and they want to add more.

They buy a floodlight module, or try to control a CF on the porch or something else happens that makes them realize the more units they own, the worse the overall performance of the system. Of course, now it's too late to return the original kit so they write letters to Sears, IBM, Ratshack and whomever else sold these kits to complain and eventually, the big players drop out. X-10 simply does not "scale up" well, partly because each new device added tends to degrade the system performance. End users have no way of knowing that when they "buy into" the system but they are always unhappy about it when they hear they have to get an electrician to install a bridge and or a repeater.

-- Bobby G.

And how much extra are these devices? The point is the underlying technology, not to mention it's shitty implementation, is so worthless that it can't even handle queueing or collisions reliably. You have to cobble on other devices to make up for it.

X10 was s**te when it was first shipped. Powerline noise has plagued it from the BEGINNING. This is not some new 21st century phenomenon.

Yeah, damnedest thing isn't it? Don't need to head to a fallout shelter!

My point is, and as a warning to newbies, that without cobbling up such workarounds there's no way to use X10 reliably.

Yes, the X10 RF is susceptible to noise. My X10 RF receivers can't be near the equipment rack. My RadioRA repeater, however, is right in the middle of it. So much for that argument.

Heh. There ought to be a Metro-area HA get together.

Mine's gotten quite used to the table dimmers for RadioRA and really likes them. Hated the spotty behavior of the stick-a-switches and palmpads.

Likewise, other than using the scenes on some switches most HA goes unused by anyone other than me. But given the new Harmony remote I've picked up that might change. Being able to integrate HA stuff into it's "activities" might change things "some".

Oy, the push-buttons are worse than the paddles. But I'll agree they suck less than than the X10 paddles.

Well, in the three decades of consumer grade HA that holy grail's been promised many times. I'm not holding my breath on that happening anytime soon. But with the push Control4 is making to big box stores it might get more interesting.

-Bill Kearney

I agree. The RadioRA switches have proven quite reliable (from my arguably small sample though). And their operation is indistinguishable from regular switches. I'd consider removing them, of course, but probably wouldn't have to bother.

Yes, by all means!

Again, I call bullshit, and now FUD. I've got my RadioRA repeater smack in the middle of an equipment room that's rife with RF noise. It's been completely reliable. This is a room that even an X10 mouseremote and a RadioShack RF-IR repeater (not a powermid) won't work reliably. I have to put them 12' away and run wire to them. So much for sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt...

The point is these days junk like X10 has no place. Cobbling up band-aids on it and dealing with utterly horrible inconsistencies in manufacturing quality makes it far too aggravating to put up with any longer.

Ah no, just someone who's learned the power of not wasting money on a fool's errand. This of course, after having wasted said money on the X10 fool's errand. I've been a developer for quite a while so I'm more than familiar with how X10 works. How it's supposed to work and the nightmares of how it's crappy components don't.

So please, when you ASSuME...

Having to play games with being careful about CF bulbs, PC power supplies, UPSes and the like is not my idea of useful ways to spend my time. Or watching out for any new devices possibly conflicting. Or dealing with filters. Or rewiring a breaker panel. None of which have been necessary with RadioRA gear.

It's been out for, what, a decade? Continues to work great. I've got plenty of other RF remote devices (x10 rf, zwave, IR repeaters, microwaves, wifi, cordless phones) and NONE of them interfere with the rock-solid reliable operation I'm getting out of the RadioRA devices. Given FCC regulations of airwaves I'm a lot more confident that'll continue.

I'm no saying RadioRA is the end-all, be-all solution. I'm simply saying X10 is junk and Radio Shaft dropping it is a good sign for helping clean up the ongoing stain it's put on the residential automation market. Here's hoping MORE sales channels make likewise intelligent decisions to abandon X10.

-Bill Kearney

Then you'll know this is the age-old legacy system debate aka the "grumpy old man" syndrome. "We *like* it like that!" Somewhere in the bowels of some naval station, for, airbase or national guard HQ is an application still running on one of the million Zenith 8088 DOS PC's the government bought back in the 80's. I've seen it happen. As everyone else phases in new machines, it creates a vast supply of spare parts for ancient PC's and there's always someone, somewhere, for some reason, be it an oddball ISA board or some other unique peripheral, that's keeping an old PC on life support.

I have a friend who's got an old ATT two line Compuphone hooked up to a Gateway 286 running WIN31 AND having to remap dates since the software crapped out WAY before the millenium, datewise. But he loves that phone because it logs all his calls, in and out and has lots of nice features for speed dialing (and reprogramming sets of keys from the PC, not the phone keyboard) and has a sound quality unmatched by most modern phones for both handset and speakerphone.

I find it interesting because although brand new technologies have arrived in HA, none have succeeded as well as something like the CD did in completely revising the baseline of the industry. Here in HA, it's the simple, cheap yet powerful, nearly invisible, almost universal protocol that will probably win. (-: I always expected it to be Zigbee, and never expected it to be X-10. I'm just surprised and happy that X-10's lasted this long.

-- Bobby G.

There aren't many collisions in a two-person household. It's basically a non-issue for us, although I'd be quite willing to agree it wouldn't be acceptable for others. I like the option of having 256 possible addresses for real devices, virtual ones and things that might come along in the future. It's pretty strange that Lutron limited itself to 32 loads without addition equipment. After all, 30 years ago X-10 had decided that 16 was enough - and provided for 256 total codes just in case. While X-10 only recently begun to address all-housecode devices (long after guys like Dave and Dan did the pioneering work) they still provide pretty easy, off-the-shelf control of all 256 addresses. That's important to me and puts a big plus on the side of X-10.

Powerline noise really wasn't any sort of issue for me until the advent of switching power supplies, PC equipment and surge protectors. That occurred from around 1985 on. I had a problem was with an APC UPS that was my first "black hole." Up until then, I had remarkable success using X-10 and their wireless, eight button belt clip controller, the precursors to the RR-501's from RatShack and Maxicontrollers that are still in use today.

That's reasonable. But it should also be pretty easy to understand why lots of folks like me who have dealt with X-10's admitted many foibles resist the characterization of "total shiite" since it does work for them. I might still recommend it to newbies just to get their feet wet in HA at very low cost or if their need was very limited (turning on a porch light from the bedroom, for example). I'd be reluctant to recommend any current protocol because I think that there will be soon big losers in that arena, and perhaps sooner than later.

Dude, I've admitted the probabilities are quite small but the physics are this: if someone fires up a powerful enough transmitter on the same frequency as RadioRA near enough to your house, it's hasta la vista baby. I won't bother looking up the articles about the people whose radio-based garage door openers got wiped out by a new Air Force radio system - I've posted it twice before.

While I have no doubt that RA uses far more sophisticated signalling technology than X-10 and is likely to be much more resistant to EMI, (it should be at 100 times the cost!) my understanding is that the low-powered RF used by HA devices can be made non-functional if the RF interference on the band in use is strong enough. I've lived close to a 50KW AM station. You can hear the radio in your teeth if you're unlucky - I had it coming out of every speaker, phonelines and intercom whether powered or not.

Strong RF is like shouting in a hurricane. There's too much noise to be heard.

But again, I agree it's highly unlikely. Lutron's probably designed it to resist most interference generated in today's environment, just like X-10 was designed to cope with most of the issues that were present on the powerline in 1980's.

The future? Well, that's always in doubt.

importantly

We use a lot of Maxi and Minicontrollers - the buttons on those are not nearly as bad as they are on the RF gear.

"activities"

Changing remotes is about the lowest SAF thing I can do around here, other than blowing my nose in the curtains. I hope it works better for you than it did for me. I suppose I should mosey over to Ebay and put my OFA remote up for sale. The rating was: Too big, too heavy, too poorly balanced, too complicated. I liked it, though!

The paddles seemed to confuse too many people - although they always seemed to get the light on because default human behavior *is* to jiggle the switch if it doesn't come on right away. The big issue with them is that when the paddle's down, they won't respond to remote commands.

I fully expect to move to something else in the future when the protocol wars have shaken out. As I've said elsewhere, what will drive that decision will be appliances that come from the manufacturer with some sort of

*standard* control ability built into them (not just RS-232 or some proprietary BS). Until then, I'm very happy that Jeff''s made it possible to wait out the protocol wars to see if a clear winner emerges.

-- Bobby G.

There is an interesting thread over in CocoonTech reporting noise problems with UPB. That was supposed to be one of the successors to X10.

It seems that no matter what one develops, there will be someone else out there developing something to screw it up.

Jeff