Home automation

Has anyone else here done much home automation stuff?

For over a decade now, I've been a huge fan of it. Since my freshman dorm when I put the string lights on an X10 controller, I've been hooked, but have always gone the cheap route and just lived with the results.

X10 has always been the brand I've gone with, despite their stint in the early days as the worst advertiser on the internet, and their web site which remains one of the worst sites ever designed. The whole reason? Cost. I can get X10 products off of an ebay store for ridiculously cheap prices.

But this has meant that the results aren't always great. There are quirks in the system all over the place, whether it's lights that take a few seconds to get the signal, or lights that sometimes turn on but sometimes don't. At the moment some remotes are working but others aren't, and I have lights downstairs that turn on and then immediately, but slowly, dim to their dimmest levels.

So I'm looking at alternatives. The problem is that everything I'm seeing is going to cost me a freaking fortune. I haven't come across a single system in which I'm going to have to spend at least $50 for a single piece. I currently have upwards of 35 pieces in my X10 system, between light switches, lamp modules, remotes, and receivers. Those actually didn't cost that much. The aforementioned ebay store sells a lamp module for about $6, for example. I know I'm not going to be able to find something that cheap, but I'm willing to spend more, even if it means I have to pare down my system.

I'm done with the powerline X10 system, so it and Insteon stuff are out. I'm looking at stuff like Z-Wave, but as I said before, it's just too expensive. Any suggestions?

An older thread on this topic, with some good suggestions. I never got started on my quest, as I ran into plumbing problems before I could get started, and these days there are other spending priorities. But, I'm interested to hear if the state of the technology has changed much since then, or if the higher-end stuff has come down in cost at all.

I've not used any X10 stuff for maybe 25 years. I gave up on them for having to constantly replace the modules.

These guys are constantly running home automation articles and are typically on the cutting edge...

http://www.circuitcellar.com/

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!

If you come upon a remote outlet (or lamp adapter that plugs into an outlet) that can deal with low wattage loads properly (LED lighting strips for instance), let me know. I haven't found anything suitable yet in X10 or Insteon.

And I'd love to know if you've found a decent LED light strip! I've looked into those for under my cabinets, but haven't found anything decent that wasn't horribly bulky!

Have you tried eBay? There's loads of LED strips there, both RGB and different colors.

Just to follow up:

After much research, my conclusion is that I will: stick with X10.

Yeah, their products are cheaply made, and the powerline communication is easily interfered, but so far every other solution is a massive leap in price. Seriously, it's little ridiculous. I can get an X10 wall switch for $9, whereas with every other solution I've seen I'd have to spring for at least $59. That's just too much when we're talking about 9 switches in my two-bedroom apartment (I have more than nine switches - those are the X10 ones).

In case anyone is interested in getting into X10, it's actually surprisingly cheap to do so. I go through an ebay store that has strangely low prices and free shipping on all products. Most of the stuff there goes for 1/3 of X10's list price.

I outfitted my entire home (okay, about 4/5ths of my home) for around $250. That includes the nine switches (that includes 3-way switches), about 12 lamp modules, six remote pads, four wall remotes, a regular receiver/transmitter, and a computer-programmable receiver/transmitter. I might be forgetting a few other things, but that's pretty much everything I use. To outfit myself with this stuff using any other types of products it appears it would cost me upwards of $2000!