LightwaveRF Home Automation?

[Roger Mills]

Just had an email from Screwfix, extolling the virtues of LightwaveRF Home Automation - including remote control over the internet.

got any experience of this? Is it any good?

I can't quite work out how it works. You can buy a WiFi Link, which appears to connect to your (existing) router using an ethernet cable, and which then appears to talk wirelessly to all your lights, and appliances, etc. And yet they wet on about needing a WIRELESS router, and maybe needing a better one if it doesn't work properly with the existing one. WHY?

[Theo Markettos]

I think the box that you buy is a webserver with their proprietary RF hardware in it. You plug it into your wifi router, and then devices on your network can go to http://myhouse/ or whatever to control things (or worse via some cloud server). No doubt there's a swish iphone app that does the same thing.

The switches/etc then speak their RF back to the box. It's unclear what this protocol is - if you're lucky it's ZigBee, if not it's something proprietary. The trouble with a proprietary vendor is that you're stuffed if they decide to stop supporting it (and it's unlikely to have a 20 year lifespan that you might expect for a serious renovation job). So only worth spending pocket money on.

Ah, this thread rather confirms my fears:

reminds me, how's ZigBee doing these days for home automation?

Theo