Is Insteon Better than X10 for Home Automation? 284
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?"
Did you bother to (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like a lot of info there.
I don't know about Insteon... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
X is better then X10 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.smarthome.com/prodindex.asp?catid=50 [smarthome.com]
There's another one called ZigBee that looks even better.
It's a brand new technology. They use radio communications, and a pretty neat broadcast algorithm that means your signals will get to their destination. Plus, you can get a response back.
Re:Advertising... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't know about Insteon... (Score:3, Informative)
Some more background... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Advertising... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:X10 (Score:4, Informative)
Both. And yes, X10 the company is the one that does the annoying pop-up ads. I don't have any experience with X10's (the company) stuff but I have used X10Pro (which seems to be an offshoot of X10 (the company)). I bought what was supposed to be a something load dimmer, but it made the fans hum anyways. Most of my light switches are Smarthome's SwitchLinc [smarthome.com] X10-based switches (now replaced with this Insteon stuff). The smarthome switches are very nice and high quality
X10 (the protocol) [wikipedia.org] is used by many manufacturers, including X10, X10Pro, Leviton, Smarthome, ACT,.. the list goes on. The biggest problem with X10 is it's quite slow (it can take several seconds to transmit multiple commands), and because it uses signalling on the power line as the 120/240V alternating current sine wave crosses 0, it basically looks like 'noise'.. due to the simplicity, actualy noise is often misinterpreted as X10 commands. This has become more of a problem in the past few years as modern electronics are plugged in, but there are filters to block it (at additional $$).
I considerd Smarthome and ACT products, and ultimately chose smarthome because of the extensive amount of stuff they had. I wish Insteon had been announced slightly earlier.. I bought all my stuff just over a year before the Insteon products were released. On the plus side, they seem to at least be somewhat compatible. The products for other protocols (zigbee, some of the other wired ones that use Cat5, etc) were just more expensive or time-consuming to install.
Insteon works and it IS better than X-10 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Yes, it works as it says it does. (Score:5, Informative)
* 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.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Promixis Announces the immediate availability of Insteon Support for Girder 4.0
Minneapolis, MN - February 22th, 2006: Promixis LLC today released the first public beta of the Insteon plugin for Girder. The plugin allows full control over your SmartLabs' INSTEON devices through the powerfull Girder automation software.
Some features
* Device control
* Device change events
* Group change events
* Device enumeration and detection
* Automatic level polling
* Device manager for naming and configuration
* Full integration into the Girder UI
* PLC link management (not completely implemented)
* Coming features include sophisticated group and link management.
Re:Insteon still sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
Insteon sells itself as a hybrid protocol, both RF and powerline but the switches are powerline only.. the only RF in the system is in the signal bridges AFAIK.
1. Whenever Insteon signals are traversing the power line the backlight on the KeypadLinc blinks. The labels on the keypad link look like backlite paper becuase of the white LED illumination. Uniform plastic labels, or different color backlight would help improve the look a lot. Construction and feel of the device is excellent.
2. Insteon programming seems simple, but you have to do weird things. Like when you program a button on the Keypadlinc if you want the light behind the button to track the state the fixture when the fixture is controlled from something other than the keypad lic you have to reverse program it.. and the system tends to get confused as to which unit will be the controller and which is the controlee. Once again, if you have noise in your environment.. forget it.
3. Acknowledged transmission.... Insteon devices will repeat transmissions until they get an ACK from the controlled device... but only for about 1 sec. Not enough time to bypass a noisy environment. Also the ACK does not appear to contain the device ID, so when two commands go out in rapid series the transmmitters both assume the first ACK is meant for them.
4. The getting started docs are too simple.. the full use docs are way too complicated.
5. Insteon has an X10 compatibility mode that works ok, but interoperation with X10 automation controllers is still a little dicey.
Mark
OK here's my answer... (Score:3, Informative)
- Does not rely on sending signals thru the electrical system and all
the problems that go along with that.
- Each unit has a hard-coded address so you don't have to mess with
house and unit codes.
Reasons X10 is better:
- Mature technology, all that gotchas and quirks are well-known.
- Once you understand how house and unit codes work it's very easy to
set up room control just by ganging multiple devices onto the same
code. Using different house codes to "zone off" your house is
convenient and slick.
- The Insteon Powerlinc USB contoller sends signals thru the power
lines to the nearest repeater, so your wiring is still a potential
point of failure.
- Insteon software support still sucks. For the Insteon Powerlinc
serial controller there is no software support at all.
- The internal IDE and API for the Insteon controller is hideously
complex and poorly documented since it's a moving target. You have to
master this thing called a "Salad IDE" and it just seems like massive
overkill if all you want to do is simple home hobbyist stuff,
especially if you want to do it from Linux.
- More hardware available for X10. Try finding hardware for Insteon other
than lighting control (you want to control your thermostat or your garage
door or add a motion sensor to your lighting system). So what you end
up with is a hybrid Insteon and X10 environment no matter what you do.
So then you have to wrestle with Insteon, X10 and the Insteon-X10
integration issues. So now you have 3 problems where with X10 you
only had one.
Overall I think Insteon has a lot of promise, but I'd wait another
year or two for it to be more stable and for the variety of switches
and the software support to improve. If you think Insteon will "just
work" and you won't have to mess with it like you do with X10 you may
be disappointed.
Re:Advertising... (Score:3, Informative)
I was really looking forward to Lonworks, where each device has a 64 bit address. The protocol is uber reliable over powerlines, and is soooooo much more capable. Unfortunately, the consumer market just has not taken off like the commercial market has. This may change as utilities like ENEL in Italy are deploying it across their entire grid into each residence.
Re:I don't know about Insteon... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Smarthome is free-software hostile with Insteon (Score:3, Informative)
It is possible to get X-10 to work reliably, it just takes some work, a little tinkering, and quality components. My house is now almost exclusively based on X-10, largely on Smarthome Keypadlincs. Whoever wired this place initially was a moron, and pulling new romex was way more trouble than it was worth. Light switches that don't control the lights, places where you have to wander into dark rooms to find the lightswitches, etc. Enter powerline carrier gear. I've found that as long as I stay away from the cheapo X-10 crap (the stuff largely marketed by x10.com) and stick with either Smarthome or Leviton-manufactured bits, things work fairly well. Oh, and a whole-house filter and active phase-to-phase repeater. I have one TV that soaks up signal and thus must be filtered at the outlet, but otherwise everything has "just worked" for about 18 months now.
Insteon looks like a quantum leap forward, but I haven't embraced it because it's a single-source system. Once 3-4 vendors make products, I might consider upgrading. The protocol is much, much, much more solid (acknowledgements, checksums, more data bytes), and I definitely wouldn't complain about better response times. Open source support is a deal-breaker, however. Like Spidey pointed out, Neil Cherry seems to not think this will be an issue based on his conversations, but I'm taking a very wait-and-see attitude. Even if SHM never officially supports it, if at least someone gets it working and they don't get sued, I'll consider it workable. Their closed attitude does rather concern me, however - exactly who do they think they're selling to if it's not the tinkerer market?
I'll point out that Smarthome was never really helpful about documenting the original X-10 USB Powerlinc protocol, either. I messed with it for a while by sniffing with the Windows driver, and then decided it was easier to stick with good ol' RS232. Eventually I just started using WiSH, and the open source community eventually worked out the details on the USB PLv1. (I continue to use serial, however)
X10 was great - Moto is launching the right thing (Score:2, Informative)
Motorola allows its phone to be a controlling interface along with a web-PC interface as well which is a great way to connect to what you want to, when you want, where you want. They could use adding home phones to the system and tapping into a more open system (maybe an x10 converter box?), but frankly, having to mess with lighting remotes, other remotes AND a wireless phone just doesn't make much sense.
PC Mag posted this a while back: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1659672,00.a
Re:X is better then X10 (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the ZigBee Aliance faq [zigbee.org].
Another Resounding "Yes" (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Pathetic... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.accessha.com/forums/ [accessha.com]
The one thing I have noticed in the various info above is that there are a lot of people sending out a lot of info that just wrong. I hope this message doesn't get lost in the noise. BTW, I'm still working with Smarthome on an Open Source license it's just I'm working on a book and it's keeping me busy. When the book is done it's back to Insteon and an Open Source project for it (see links below for what I've done so far).
Re:Wherefore home automation? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think there's any convincing you, but here goes. One of the greatest benefits of HA switches like these are that they allow you to create virtual wiring, to retrofit connections that don't exist for various reasons. Say you bought an existing house with a garage in the back, and you would like to be able to turn the outside garage lights on and off from the front door. Those lights were only wired at the garage itself, and you'd have to run a new circuit through your backyard to the house and somehow run the wires into the wall with the switch. This can all be done by any electrician for the right amount, and by tearing out some sheetrock etc. Or, you could replace the switch in the garage and the one at the front door with HA switches and gang them together to achieve exactly the same effect, for less money and without touching any walls in the house or garage.
Another nice benefit--particularly with the Insteon system--are status feedback switches. One of the switches has up to eight illuminated buttons on it that can control eight other switches throughout the house. Each button's light indicates whether the remote switch is on or off. This comes in very handy with lights that are not visible from the central switching location. For example, our house has four outside lighting locations around the house--at the front door, the side door, the back door, and the garage. They were not all wired to one central location, but with HA I can control them all from the switch at the front door, or any other location I desire. At night I can turn them all on without having to walk throughout the house to each light's inside switch.
Both of these uses have nothing to do with geeky over-engineering and gratuitous automation. They are addressing real needs because of design oversights or pre-existing conditions in older homes. Of course, if you see no benefit in this sort of flexibility, then HA is certainly not for you. Move along, nothing to see.
X10 can be made to work reliably (Score:3, Informative)
I have 3 dwellings on my land - a large house, a small ranch on a seperate meter, and a detached garage/office served via a 60AMP 220V branch from the main panel in the large house.
For various reasons, my main X10 injection points are currently in the small ranch (RF receiver and HA controller TW-523) This means X10 signals to devices in the garage have to go from the ranch panel, through the meter, into the splices underground, back to the main house, and out to the garage via a 150 foot underground feed. My X10 devices work very well and false triggers simply don't happen. The garage units work just fine.
My setup is not super complex, but I did take some precautions. The small ranch and the main house each have a Leviton bridge/repeater units [homecontrols.com] in their panels. The two panels also have the LV6289 RF filters [homecontrols.com] which eliminate noise outside the narrow band X10 uses. They are wired in the panel between each hot leg and neutral. I have probably 6 UPS units in the house, but only have the 2200W server UPS on a 15A X10 block. I've never needed them with these filters in place.
X10 is cheap and it is not very tolerant of noise. However if you take the time to prep your home for X10, it can work very well. Plus you get what you pay for. X10 units use custom ICs design in the 70s. If you want quality X10 devices, go with Leviton. You'll pay more, but Leviton units use small microcontrollers to process the PLC signals and have much better signal conditioning than the X10 devices.
X10 may wane over time, but it has been around for decades and continues to survive because it's cheap and usually works. If you don't feel up to the added cost of the next generation stuff, some simple upgrades to your eletrical infrastructure can make your X10 much more reliable. I'm perfectly happy with my X10 infrastructure and don't have problems like I used to before I added the whole house repeaters and filters. IN my experience, anyway, the filters were the key to finally having a stable X10 network. THe repeaters simply help the signals reach the far away places like the garage.
Yeah, screw X10, let's hear about CAN (Score:3, Informative)
"Hi I'm automating my house using a CAN based network and I'm wondering what kind of devices people are using in their systems."
For those who don't know, CAN is what most modern automobiles use as a network. The advantage over something like TCP/IP is that it allows you to resolve conflicts between devices at the network level. To use the car analogy, it would help to prevent a prolem with the stereo from screwing up the ignition timing despite having both of them tied to a common network. It's also used in all sorts of industrial machines, robots and the like.
This seems like a decent first step for serious home automation. Anybody gone this route? Care to provide details like what brand controllers you used so such things?
Re:How about compared to UPB? (Score:4, Informative)
For example,
The powerline technology they use works very well (like Insteon, it is MUCH better than X-10). The downside is that they are a bit more expensive than Insteon.
Smarthome has a history of good ideas but manufacturing/firmware glitches. There are already reports of early adopters having problems [cocoontech.com] with their Insteon switches. Of course, any technology like this is going to have downsides. I just wish there were alternate manufacturers for Insteon devices.
Re:Advertising... (Score:2, Informative)