--------------------------------------------------------------------- I was also going to take exception about the equal cost statement. If you know where to look, you can get appliance and lamp modules and plug in filters for as low as $5. I use a lot of "doubled up" modules (piggybacked so that it takes two A1 ON commands to turn on a light so equipped) and that doubles the cost per control point. With X-10 it's still reasonable. With X-10, not so much.
Doubling up serves two purposes. I put a single fixture in a room on a single module, so that one press of A1 turns on enough light to move through the room. I put the rest of the fixtures on doubled up modules, so if I want more light in the room, I just press A1 on a second time and the piggyback modules all activate. It's a great way to save house/unit address "slots." Better still, the lights that are piggybacked rarely come up by themselves when the power blips. I probably wouldn't be able to do that with other protocols because the price per control point is so much higher.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, it takes some tweaking and learning to get it to work seamlessly. The key pieces to my X-10 puzzle were Jeff's XTB and Wayne's WGL transceiver for X-10 RF. No amount of filters could compensate for the issues switch mode power supplies caused my system. With plaster and lath, I couldn't get X-10 RF to go from room to room with reliability. The XTB makes it all work.
The WGL unit is nice, but its output needs boosting to reach all corners of the house. I connected 4 antennas, a splitter combiner and an antenna amp to my WGL unit and I can turn on the house lights from nearly 250' when I am in the car, approaching home. I once tried installing multiple TM751's (X-10's stock RF unit) all over the house before I got the WGL. That's when I learned what X-10 collisions are and how low X-10's SAF could be! (0:
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I am tempted as well, especially because some new and interesting devices are starting to appear for Insteon systems (still nowhere near the variety of X-10 gear available). X-10 is cheap and robust. I still have a number of 20+ year old brown BSR and Sears modules that I bought in the early
80's - and a GE Homeminder control that you operated via your TV. Still working.-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I am sure you know what it means to say (about the XTB): "When you push the button, the light just goes on. Every time." For years, I would push the button and a) nothing would happen or worse, b) the wrong device would activate. For that, I bought I Monterey Protocol Analyzer for $300 because I was having so much trouble. (Jeff makes a much cheaper one, the XTBM, that surpasses the Monterey in a number of categories
The range of potential issues, particularly using stock X-10 gear, is the reason I warned DerbyDad to stick with a dedicated motion detector flood fixture. His application touched on some of the weakest links in the X-10 chain. However, the "thrill" of remote controlling things in the house is intoxicating. If he decides to stick with it, he's certainly smart enough to be able to make it work reliably. It does take some effort, and the prices for the XTB and WGL units are steep compared to other X-10 gear, but that's the trade off you get with it being so relatively inexpensive compared to other HA protocols. Jeff's units are all handbuilt and meticulously tested, so there's a very valid reason for the price.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah, yes. The sole source conundrum. Smarthome rushed their new line to market and had some serious issues with terrible light flicker. Apparently they had adopted the MicroSoft strategy of getting people to buy the beta version of their products and do field testing for them. Well, when Smarthome had to recall a whole bunch of gear (and they got sued, as well), the "let the customer pay to beta test" strategy turned out to be less than optimal.
A frequent contributor in Comp.Home.Automation, Bruce Robin, builds high-end houses in Hawaii and elsewhere. He installed Insteon in one of his new homes just before the XTB came out and he said that he would not have made the switch had he known how much the XTB improves X-10 reliability.
Unfortunately, so many people have had so many different startup problems with X-10 stock equipment that it's got the "toy" rap. With the right gear, it can do some incredibly powerful things. One thing that keeps it from going obsolete is the highly regulated and standardized 110VAC wiring in most homes. There will be X-10 gear humming away somewhere 30 years from now.
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It's hard not to get going about X-10. (-: Anyone with even a medium sized installation has had a love-hate relationship with it for years. I was just about to rip it all out (or get divorced) when the XTB came out. Saved me the cost of conversion and maybe even my marriage. Now *those* are some serious features.
-- Bobby G.