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Is Insteon Better than X10 for Home Automation?
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?"
go to google groups?
Looks like a lot of info there.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Insteon is awesome. It takes away all the headaches I have had with X10 devices.
Now, if the question is really, "How does Insteon compare to other, more expensive, home automation devices?" then I don't know. My experience is only with X10 and Insteon, and compared to X10 Insteon is the bee's knee's.
There is not a very large selection of types of Insteon devices right now, but that should change in 2006. For us Mac folks, the current version of Indigo has pretty good Insteon support.
Forget all those fancy light automation kits, all you need is the Star Trek one http://www.smarthome.com/2017.html which gives you the power of voice commands such as "Computer, off"; simultaneously turning off the lights and your female partner.
I have the Insteon "starter kit" installed. It consists of the computer interface, wireless/wired signal bridge units, several lamp modules, 2 wall switches and a table-top controller. It has the ability to be backward compatible with X-10 addressing and the new Insteon protocol is actually a 2-way protocol that uses each node in the net as a repeater to ensure commands are delivered and acknowledged.
Bottom line is that it works. It works in places where old X-10 modules didn't. And it is MUCH faster than X-10 when respondng to Insteon commands from the controllers.
My biggest problem is that the current switch units REQUIRE a neutral wire in the switch box to work. Without it, the units cannot communicate between themselves. As my house is over 100 years old, the presence of neutral wires is problematic. Sometimes an outlet is close enough to a switch that I can snake a neutral wire through the wall, but generally my switches are wired as old-style switch legs with the switch in-line on the hot wire.
Other than that, the system works great and I'd happily change all of my wall switches over to Insteon in a heartbeat if not for the neutral wire problem. Rumor has it that they are coming out with units that install at the fixture, rather than the switch, making the neutral wire problem moot.
Upgrade if you can afford it. It is better technology than X-10 by far.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
Yes, it does actually work. It works because:
* every single device is a repeater!
* they repeat by simulcasting. if 10 of your 50 devices hear the signal, all 10 will retransmit together in unison, generating one seriously strong signal.
* Unlike X10, they are very very fast. X10 has 1/3 to 1/2 second latency. Insteon is practically instant. Certainly fast enough to be percieved as "instant", anyway.
* Unlike X10 which degrades as you add devices, Insteon improves as you add devices.
* You have RF bridges that you can add to bring the signal via RF to weak spots, if you somehow have any. Usually you need an RF bridge to cross phases in the house, but once you get enough devices even that is unnecessary.
I have 50-something of these installed. They are more reliable than UPB here. X10 was an utter disaster in this house... we have UPS's everewhere, loads and loads of noisy fluroescent lights, noisy fish aquarium electronics, etc. Insteon handles it without missing a beat.
HOWEVER.. All is not perfect. It is a young technology. Smarthome have made mistakes and to their credit are fixing them.
My current problem is that their Appliance modules seem to be troubled by electrical noise, eg: EMF spikes from turning fluroescent lights on/off. It seems to crash the microcontroller on them. Older models used to burn out their load sense circuit with those electrical spikes. They're fixing them, but just not fast enough for my liking.
Computer interface software has been very slow, but being fixed on a daily basis. 3rd parties are adding Insteon support to their home automation software on a near weekly basis these days.
Smarthome are providing a cost-cut version under the 'ICON' brand and are in the process of getting them into Home Depot stores. $20 for a decent remote controllable dimmer compares pretty nicely to the dumb electronic dimmers they have.
Yes, you can get developer docs via a SDK (comes with hardware to test with). Yes, it is easy to write unix software for it - I've done it myself. They do have a certification requirement if you're going to use the Insteon brand on your "product" though. But you can give it away as open source if you don't pretend it is certified.
I think Insteon will ultimately win the defacto standard stakes. ie: it will be as ubiquitous as X10 at its height.
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.
I'm not sure what you think astroturfing means, but I'm just a person who has wasted too much money on an unreliable X10 home automation system. I haven't bought any Insteon stuff and I said so. Home automation certainly seems to me like a topic where Slashdot readers will have a fair amount of experience and knowlegeable opinions about what works and what doesn't.
If you've got something specific against Insteon I'd love to hear it so I don't waste my money. If you've got nothing of value to add to the conversation though . . .
So, an underground pirahna tank that drops salesmen in and plays a sound file of your evil laughter as the trapdoor slams shut?
I started using X10 almost as soon as it was commercially available (I still have one of my original Rat-Shack appliance modules that kinda sorta works if the load on it isn't more than a 60-watt lamp). I started writing my own software for it when the original X10 "computer interface" was available (CP-10?) because I didn't like the boxed software (which, of course, was Windows-only). I "graduated" to the ActiveHome setup several years ago - once again writing my own software because the AH stuff sucked - and the on-board memory of the CM11A was junk. Which meant I had to do "work-arounds" to enable even basic "scene" controls.
I got "into" Insteon in November and my wife (non-geek) has been so impressed with it's capabilities, we're junking all of the remaining X10 stuff and going full-blown Insteon. In fact, **SHE** is so hooked, she won't even consider the Icon brands.
Writing the software (because I wanted to and, once again, it's all Windows - except for one rather expensive Mac package) is quite a bit different because of the enhanced communications capabilities, as well as the VERY rich command-set. However, you don't even need to get any software if you want to just stick with the hardware: you can set up some very elaborate scenes in the devices, fresh from the factory.
The caveat is that it is a very new system and protocol, so you don't have all of the various devices available (e.g. wireless) that you do with X10. Yet. With the number of partners SmartHome has in their program, plus the SmartLabs themselves, I have no doubt that there will be quite a few new hardware choice coming in the next few months.