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Is Insteon Better than X10 for Home Automation?

Posted by Cliff on from the next-generation-of-home-automation dept.

Paul Carver writes "Smarthome has been advertising Insteon for a while now, but I haven't bought any of it, yet. I've accumulated a fair amount of X10 products over the years, including Smarthome branded signal boosters, signal couplers, noise blockers, and troubleshooting tools. Even so, I'm pretty much fed up with X10. Nothing I've bought has succeeded in making my X10 system more than 'just barely acceptable' and 'better than nothing but not by much'. A Google search for Insteon doesn't turn up much other than their own advertisements and a couple of vaguely positive but not detailed reviews. Is this new technology going to take off? What's the community's consensus on home automation?"

4 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Advertising... by Jetson · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The question *I* would ask is "will Insteon advertise using pop-up or pop-under ads the way X-10 did?"

    I was actually thinking of going with X-10 once, but the advertising became so annoying that when I finally saw the stuff for sale in a local store I changed my mind and decided to boycott the product instead.

  2. Look at ZWave by msoftsucks · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Forget about X10. It's always been a mess. Take a good look at ZWave Technologies. I've had very good success with it. It has alot of potential, so much so, that it seems that Cisco is buying the company in order to roll it out in its Linksys prodcuts.

    --
    Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
    Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
  3. Re:Pathetic... by CompressedAir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since I've already posted and, thus, cannot moderate...

    This is actually a pretty good "Ask Slashdot." When I made the jump to Insteon, the only information out there was on the Insteon and Smarthome websites. Since both of these places were trying to sell me something, it made sense to take what they said with a grain of salt.

    Having made the purchase, however, I can honestly say that Insteon is what we have always wanted from X10: Reliable, fast, reliable, inexpensive compared to other protocols, and reliable.

    You can call this whatever kind of turf you want if it makes you feel better. I am glad to add to the amount of knowledge on the Internet for anyone investigating the wonderful world of home automation.

  4. Re:Smarthome is free-software hostile with Insteon by spidey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Everything that has been posted to the developer forum about open source software. Has been agreed to be posted as far I a know.

    Example:
    http://www.linuxha.com/athome/common/iplcd/index.h tml

    And I know for a fact that Neil Cherry (the developer of the above software) got permission from Smarthome to release the software.

    --
    Spidey