Wow, I can't believe I had one short contribution to that thread...as I said I've been into home automation for years now... Then again, looking at the time period for that thread, that was a bad point in my dad's health, so I was a little out of it then.

Oh, and about 75% of that thread became about CFLs That probably turned me off, so to speak.

So yeah, sorry I didn't jump in on that thread, Tony. Like I said, I pretty much have my entire place set up with X10 devices, from lamps to three-way switches. It's not that there's anything too bad about X10 switches, it's just that they're not the best quality and they use the powerlines to send their signals. I like the Zigbee or Z-Wave devices because they use RF to create small wireless mesh networks, which presumably means the communication is far more reliable and less susceptible to noise on the line.


Well I don't know what they were like 25 years ago, but I suspect they've only made minor improvements over the years to their home automation stuff. These days it looks like they put far more effort into marketing their security cameras to men who want to spy on women. Their whole site is incredibly creepy and they make it a chore to simply get information on their home automation stuff.

All in all, I haven't had terrible luck with their reliability, though it certainly is below average. I'd estimate that out of the 80 or so X10-branded products I've purchased and/or used over the past 10 years, about 10 of them have failed on me. I don't claim that a failure rate of over 12% is acceptable, but when it costs me less than $8 to replace most of the things that fail, it doesn't bother me much.


Thanks! It'll take a while to sift through that site though. A tad dense But I'll check it out!