No idea. What might be true though, is that over here, more completely new houses get built, so it's easier to implement the ideal wiring for it. Maybe where you live, people renovate existing houses? In that case, I can see why a system like Z-Wave is popular where you live, and hardly known over here.



This is very true. You need to take this into account the moment you're building the house. Doing it afterwards is next to impossible.


Haha! Lol! That's just SO true!


Yes, I've read that! Smart! The same way Sonos does it really, and also the reason why their wireless works so good.


Yes, that was exactly what I meant. It indeed sure is an achilles heel. Maybe there isn't bandwidth enough to be able to send continuous audio over it, let alone video. These systems normally only send a few bytes per command ("light on/light off", dim to X %) - sending video is a whole different beast. I'm guessing the reason has to be sought in that area somewhere, otherwise I see no reason why they wouldn't have implemented this years ago.


Yes, that was what I meant. It's not terribly hard to do, but very handy to have to make sure no lights are on when you leave the house eg. (especially with little kids in the house). Another thing I didn't mention up to now: not to use buttons all that much anymore, but make more use of motion detectors. This is also a way of making sure the light will go off when nobody is in the room.
With Panic button, I meant a button, usually placed somewhere near the bed, and when you press it, all the lights go on, inside and outside the house. That's usually enough to scare off burglars.


Exactly!!! That's very nice to have, and not at all difficult to install with house automation. If you take it to the next level, you can all put it onto a web site, like this guy did. That's really over the top, I know, but it's cool to see it's possible nonetheless.


I'm sure they are constantly trying to make the wireless signal more reliable and less lag-free, because frankly, that's the hit or miss of their product. If that isn't any good, the product fails entirely. I wouldn't at all be surprised if they updated this technology every now and then. I just hope they do it in a way that's compatible with the former technology...



Very easy. There are two basic ways and one special way.
1) Either I connect the lamps, halogen spotlights, TL lights or LED lights (doesn't matter) to one of the relays of the miniserver or Extension, and then I'm able to turn that light on or off with the use of a button, a motion sensor, a timer, and event happening, a logical function, using a portable device,... you name it. I can light them up one by one, in groups, or all at once... anything I desire really. I'm only limited by the fact that it's only on or off, no dimming.
2) I connect the lamp, LED's etc... to a dimmer module, and then I can basically do the same AND have dimming functions. That's mostly where scenes come in as well, and then I can program "a tv viewing scene", "reading scene", etc...
3) One special function: controlling LED's via DMX. Using DMX, I can control LED strips in thousands of colours, which is extremely cool and enormously handy when it comes to setting up light scenes.

Here is a Youtube clip which shows you how lights get programmed into the software. You can see how easy it is.
Also, this is an online seminar on how to do lighting control with the software. VERY informative! (and about 40 minutes long )
This is a page with a lot of info on how all the modules work and should be programmed. The first section is on wiring, so that might interest you as well.