Insteon vs Zwave vs Zigbee vs UPB Comparison 2011

[Shurafa]

Maybe next time the questions should be something like

My experience with _____:
* I'm currently using it and am pleased with it.
* I'm currently using it and it is ok.
* I'm currently using it but wish I had picked a different system instead.
* I've tried it in the past and liked it, but did not adopt it.
* I've tried it in the past and did not like it.
* I researched it, but it didn't seem to meet my needs, so I never tried it.
* I researched it, but it seemed too expensive, so I never tried it.
* I don't really know anything about it. Just show me how everyone else voted.

And then repeat the question for Insteon, UPB, and Z-wave.

I would prefer this not become a discussion on probability and the merits of the poll. Howver since we are on the topic lets discuss a few points.

1. We do not have enough votes yet to reach a statistically signifiant confidence level yet. Therefore the is a large possability for variance from the results. Lets refrain from speculation until the number of votes is much larger. (over 100 for the first poll).
2. Also we must take into account that the poll was conducted on this site as opposed to Smarthome or Homeseers sites. This has a great affect on the result. (Once again speculation should be tabled until we have a much larger sample size).

Instead if we could focus our collective attention on the following points it would be much appreciated.

1. Discussion of the merits of the various technologies based on your actual experience with them. (Insteon, Zwave, UPB ect).
2. What type of system you are currently using along with what you have learned from it and what you would do if doing it again.

 

[Quixote_1]

1. We do not have enough votes yet to reach a statistically signifiant confidence level yet. Therefore the is a large possability for variance from the results. Lets refrain from speculation until the number of votes is much larger. (over 100 for the first poll).
2. Also we must take into account that the poll was conducted on this site as opposed to Smarthome or Homeseers sites. This has a great affect on the result. (Once again speculation should be tabled until we have a much larger sample size).

Sorry, I don't mean to distract people from the topic of the thread and I find its contents very informative. I was merely pointing out that no matter what size the sample, we will never be able to come to any solid conclusions. I think JDale's format is a step in the right direction.
As per your second point, I would think that a poll here would actually keep the results quite objective. There is quite a diverse crowd here with a lot of varying HA hardware experience. A poll on the Smarthome forum would surely be skewed in Insteon's favor due to the large number of Insteon users that frequent it.

 

[Shurafa]

My current configuration includes motly Zwave products (locks, light switches,themostat ect). I do have a few Insteon Modules that I am testing as well. I am using Homeseer as my primary controller for the system. I choose this controller since it seems to be one of the very few that support products using differnt protocols. If anyone knows of any other good options I would love to hear about it.

I choose Zwave because after much research it seems to be the "standard" that has the widest amount of industry support, the greatest manufacturer diversity, and hopefully along with that the most momentum. My hope is that it will become the standard HA protocol or at least popular enough that it is supported and/or made compatible with future HA protocols (ala x10 and Insteon).

I almost went with Insteon because of its legacy compatability with X10 which I figured would give it a major leg up. The reason I ultimately choose not to go the Insteon route are two fold. 1. I do not want to be locked into one manufactuere for my products. I think this limits diversity and if anything happens to this one company then I have little recourse. 2. I am renovating a very old home slowly over time. Since I do not have a neutral wire this limits a large number of Insteon products as they are often powerline based (this seems to be changing especially recently and hopefully this trend will continue).

I also considered Zigbee. Coming from an IT standpoint I love that it with with existing IP technology. Control4 also seems to have a pretty slick interface. The fact that it does not have any real DIY support along with a very limited hardware list have discouraged me from this choice however.

UPB I did not even consider as it never came up in any research I have done. The first time I heard about it was on this forum. In the limited research I have done since then it seems to be the most mature of the more modern HA standards it does have its limitations and is stritcly powerline. I cant imagine a non wireless standard becoming the dominant choice in the HA market even if currently it is one of the best implemented.

My biggest conern currently is the lack of documentation. There seems to be very little public documentation for a wide array of products. I hope as prices come down and more people get into HA at the DIY level this will change.

This far Cocoontech and the Homeseer forums have been the greatest sources of information. If you know any other good sites list them here and I will add them to the OP.

 

[Quixote_1]

I've been looking into Z-Wave lately as well. One product that caught my eye in particular is Vera 2 by Micasaverde. It's a stand-alone internet gateway that can support X10, UPnP, serial devices and bridging Z-wave and Insteon networks over IP. Also, I think it only consumes 5W.

 

[Shurafa]

I've been looking into Z-Wave lately as well. One product that caught my eye in particular is Vera 2 by Micasaverde. It's a stand-alone internet gateway that can support X10, UPnP, serial devices and bridging Z-wave and Insteon networks over IP. Also, I think it only consumes 5W.

I looked at that as well. It seems for an out of the box solution it is the best Zwave option. Homeseer has a much higher learning curve however it has support for more options. This is merely conjecture as I have not used to two extensively.

 

[Digger]

I'm not sure how much relevance can be placed on these results. Although interesting, most of it seems to be guessing and unfounded opinions. No one can be expected to be intimately familiar with each technology listed, nor would it be likely that we all have a profound knowledge of their comparative success in the HA market.

I think the one thing we can conclude by looking at the numbers is that all of the people who voted that own UPB systems are satisfied and believe it to be the best, while only half of the owners of the other top two contenders are completely happy with their systems. In fact, the UPB group is so happy that they have actually convinced others that do not own it that it is the best option as well. Then there's the X10 crowd, sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see who the victor is. They're probably also still clutching their (Betamax?) VCRs in apprehension, though. LOL jk

If we add up the top three contenders, we can see that 39 people voted for either Insteon, UPB or Z-wave as the best option. Looking at how many own those systems, we see that 55 people voted. What does that difference of 16 mean? Either there is no satisfactory option available for some, or they are not satisfied with what they own and do not know which is the best. The thing is, a total of only 50 people voted for the first question of what is the best (including the option of "I don't know", yet 76 voted on what they own. I think we might need to restructure the questions and give this another stab some time in the future to see if we can weed out the discrepancies.

I agree that the UPB users ( I am one) are probably very happy with the product and others would want to go to it if they change from what they are using based on the kudo's UPB gets from its users.

While I use UPB and so far find it flawless (and easy to set up) I voted that Zwave is more popular. While I will not switch from UPB (in part because I am dabbling with Zwave for work and its a royal PIA to setup compared to UPB in my opinion) I think in the end it will probably be more widely used then UPB.

The poll eludes that Insteon users are not happy and would use something else if they could change. Personally I fully believe that to be a fact having used Insteon. I would bet 5 years from now there would be more users of Zwave then UPB and Insteon may not even be around if SH does not get it right this time around with their latest designs. What might save them is if they let other mfg's make the products as well the way Zwave and UPB currently are.

 

[pbeaulieu]

I voted for zwave and I am mostly happy with my decision. I went with zwave because there is lighting hardware (switches, dimmers, plugs) from both Cooper and Leviton. I wanted to go with a major manufacturer that will be around for a while. I ended up going with Levition. The setup is a little tedious but if you follow the wizard it is straight forward. Levitons new Vizia RF+ installer software is pretty good but needs more documentation and features. The software is only version 1.0.4 I am also pleased with the way it interfaced with my OmniProII.

 

[jhdale]

Ok, to get back on topic. As I said, I am using Insteon, it's working well for me. There are a few more devices I would like them to release (fan control, dual-band switchlinc relay, chime module) but the array of products overall is good and covers 95% of what I wanted. And some of the new components are things I wouldn't have thought to ask for, but still very cool (e.g. the USB stick PLM). I would also like them to release more low-level info for programming, but there's certainly enough available to work with.

A lot of people cite X10 legacy support as an advantage of Insteon. I'm sure that was a big deal early on, not sure how relevant it is now. X10 was never that widespread, and the conversion rate from X10 to other systems has got to have slowed to a trickle by now.

One thing I don't know about other standards, even having read this board, is how much detailed low-level info is available for them. If I wanted to write applications from scratch for Zwave or UPB, is the information available to do so? I know that's not what people are usually talking about when they say DIY...

 

[JonW]

One thing I don't know about other standards, even having read this board, is how much detailed low-level info is available for them. If I wanted to write applications from scratch for Zwave or UPB, is the information available to do so? I know that's not what people are usually talking about when they say DIY...

I had to reverse engineer some zwave stuff and it was a pain in the ass. There is some info floating around sites on the internet, but as a rule, zwave is not a published specification (unless you BUY their SDK). UPB on the other hand fully documents their control protocol and encourages third parties to write software. The UPB protocol is much simpler to implement as well. Depending on what you mean by writing from scratch, UPB in my mind would be much easier. If you are looking to actually program your switches with your own software, then UPB does not publish the programming protocol, only the control protocol. I've never heard anyone looking to write their own UPB programming software though as that is what Upstart is for.

 

[jaymartin]

One thing I don't know about other standards, even having read this board, is how much detailed low-level info is available for them. If I wanted to write applications from scratch for Zwave or UPB, is the information available to do so? I know that's not what people are usually talking about when they say DIY...

The Z-Wave serial protocol is proprietary and must be purchased as part of the Z-Wave SDK (which is primarily for hardware developers). I think Sigma Designs, being primarily a hardware vendor, is pretty clueless about how to react to the software HA vendors. However, there is an open-source project, open-zwave, creating a C++ library for controlling Z-Wave devices which seems to be making some good progress and has actually gotten some cooperation from Sigma. I think Sigma might have even provided the serial protocol docs to the project leaders.

I believe that Leviton and/or ControlThink may have their own API for communicating with their Z-Wave sticks as well (but I've not actually seen those API docs).

 

[jhdale]

Ok, thanks. Insteon is also supposed to be proprietary and there is an SDK which can be purchased ($200 I think). But most of the information has gotten out by now so there are few things you can't do without the SDK. Not perfect but not too bad. Sounds like functionally it is somewhere between Zwave and UPB in this respect.

 

[pkshiu]

One problem in this space is that the hardware manufacturers are clueless when it come to software. How often do you hear someone says "can I use this with an iPad?" The HW guys are used to making money from licensing their tech or their chipset. So they want to license their software spec which is ridiculous. HA is beyond hardware switches controller smart dimmers now. The HW manufacturer has to unlock the software interface and let all the software guys go at it DIY style to develop web interfaces, iPad apps, and so forth.

Can you imagine if zwave has available a free SDK for all platforms with full documentation and sample programs?

P.K.

 

[Shurafa]

One problem in this space is that the hardware manufacturers are clueless when it come to software. How often do you hear someone says "can I use this with an iPad?" The HW guys are used to making money from licensing their tech or their chipset. So they want to license their software spec which is ridiculous. HA is beyond hardware switches controller smart dimmers now. The HW manufacturer has to unlock the software interface and let all the software guys go at it DIY style to develop web interfaces, iPad apps, and so forth.

Can you imagine if zwave has available a free SDK for all platforms with full documentation and sample programs?

P.K.

Zwave does not have this? I thought it was an open standard? What do they have? How about Insteon, Zigbee, UPB what do they have in comparison? Thanks for the input!

 

[pkshiu]

Zwave does not have this? I thought it was an open standard? What do they have? How about Insteon, Zigbee, UPB what do they have in comparison? Thanks for the input!

Controlthink, a great bunch of people, did have an SDK that works with .NET -- it was a good start but has bugs. Leviton bought them and now the SDK is no longer offered. Openzwave is the only thing out there, but it is not really supported or helped by the manufacturers -- anyone jump in here if I am wrong on that.

 

[capsterx]

I have my switches and lighting all insteon. I have not had any failures on the switches and never lose commands. The only trouble I've had is one of my older relay switches had trouble getting commands, it was a firmware thing they sent me a new one that works flawlessly. I use isy to setup all the links, I could not stand dealing with the scene management without it (I did when I first did my install). I use one compose PLC in x10 mode, which is their fan controller (insteon needs a fan dimmer!). It generally works but when enough of the florescent lights are on, it won't get/send signals all the time (I guess I could add filters, but it's not enough trouble to deal with it). I don't have any of the true dual-mesh switches, but I don't know why people make a big deal out of it. I have a few of their access points which handle all the communication issues.

I only wish more of the technology supported upgrading the firmware!