Baffeled buy the direction of HA

[Rupp]

All my ws467 switches ran for about a year, then they all died within a week of each other, I definitely don't call that reliable, I know I am not the only one with that problem.

If they all failed within a week it was probably a power surge that damaged them. I can't imagine they have a time bomb in them. Like I said call me lucky. Consider this though. At $6 how many of these could you continue to replace for the cost of one UPB switch. About 10 years worth. I haven't bought one of these in years so the quality may be event lower now than then but mine keep going and going and going....

 

[jeffx]

Until the end of August, you can buy 2 insteon switchlinc v2's, get one free, with Smarthome's promotion code (check the deals forum), and that brings the price down to $40 a switch. :angry:. That was inexpensive enough for me to buy a bunch.

 

[rocco]

I doubt that. I suspect the production costs for X10 are quite a bit lower, due to the lack of precision manufacturing, ownership of manufacturing facilities, the economies of scale in buying parts, and the age of the technologies they must license.

Tom, you make some good points. Let's take these one at a time:

Lack of precision manufacturing. Absolutely, X10's cheap assembly process help keep their costs low. But hand assembling through-hole boards in China is not any cheaper for X10 than auto-assembling smd boards in China for SmartHome. X10 has no magic bullet here. As far as their plastic enclosures go, I don't find them cheap at all. I think they are as well made as any.

Ownership of manufacturing facilities. Does anyone own their own facilities anymore? Is that still an asset? Does it really hold your costs down today?

The economies of scale in buying parts. My point exactly. It is the economies of scale that give X10 it's edge on price. Economies of scale with parts, labor and distribution. Whatever technology can attain X10's volume can attain X10's economies of scale.

The technologies they must license. This really is a wild card. There is no licensing with X10. UPB has to be licensed from PCS. You pay a license fee to Zensys with each chip you buy, at ~$3 per chip. It will probably be the same with Insteon. You have to join the ZigBee Alliance, at $3500 per year, in order to put the ZigBee logo on your products. That's in addition to $500 per product to have the product certified.

If you look at the newer technologies, you will see that they are more integrated, and therefore use fewer components than X10. As an example, the latest ZWave system is one chip, plus 15 passive components. All together, I believe they add up to about $7, and that includes the royalties to Zensys (of course, you needed to shell out $10,000 to Zensys to become a developer).

So my point is: The newer technologies are NOT a higher cost alternative, but potentially a lower cost alternative. If they could only get the volumes up.

 

[Rupp]

Rocco,
The problem is we went for years with no new technologies and now there are 3 or 4 new ones all competing for the market. It may be years before one of these technologies wins out.

 

[remoteshoppe]

I've used and replaced ws467 switches because of the low price and have watched so many fail that I now regret not having bought better switches from day 1. Constant replacement and my time and efforts add up... If I bought Leviton switches to begin with I'd probably be ahead of the game.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

The problem is we went for years with no new technologies and now there are 3 or 4 new ones all competing for the market. It may be years before one of these technologies wins out.

That's exactly the way I also see a big part of the problem. With 3 or 4 technologies all coming out at once and no clear winner as far as price point vs reliability goes, most people (including controller and software companies) are adopting a wait and see approach, with the result that support for each one is spotty and slow to come. The users also hesitate because they don't want to be stuck with the one that will be orphaned in a couple of years...at $50+ per switch!

 

[MikeOC]

Hello Everyone,
This is Mike From Smarthome. There is some great dialogue here and we as a manufacturer and a distributor of INSTEON as well as having one of the largest selection of UPB, Z-Wave and X-10 devices at Smarthome.com find that this is a healthy debate.

With that being said let me clear up some points:

-Continually driving down costs to make our products more mainstream is one important feature in our plans, and we’re working on it. INSTEON does support a lower “ending†cost than the others. We are still working on launching popular INSTEON products that have been requested. Expect a slew of products launched over the next few months!!

-Reliability is one of INSTEON’s best features. INSTEON is dual band, both powerline and wireless. INSTEON was developed with user feedback gathered over the past 13 years Smarthome has been in business. For example, some that post here told us that they wanted something more reliable and more flexible than other technologies.

-Development. We are selling various developers packages at INSTEON.net for $99 (and a free white paper). The equivalent Z-wave development kit includes an alliance fee for around $2500 and a developers kit for ~approximately 8K (it is best if you confirm this yourself). Zigbee memberships start at $3500 and a hardware developers kit from Zigbee alliance member can run you as much as $10k. Our strategy of $99 has been well received and we feel that we have the most developer friendly program in the market today.

-Simplicity. Customer feedback on INSTEON’s simplicity has been tremendous. The average setup time for the INSTEON starter kit is <10minutes. An INSTEON enabled wall switch can take on average 10-20 minutes to install and setup. We took a great deal of time testing instructional documentation with inexperienced HA users.

-A big feature (and often overlooked) is INSTEON’s backwards compatibility with X10. You don’t need to trash any X10 investment you have made to date. It doesn’t mean INSTEON devices will ‘repeat,’ or enhance X10 signals. It does mean INSTEON devices can be used with other X10 devices and controllers making them extremely flexible. This gives users the best total cost of ownership solution. We have given the user a migration path for the future.

Note these quotes from ‘rocco', which I think are right on!

The economy of scale is the only thing that makes X10 cheaper. All the technologies, including X10, need a microcontroller, and the physical interfaces are all inexpensive. The extra functionality of the newer technologies is in the firmware, which is essentially free to reproduce, once it is developed. I believe the parts cost for Insteon, UPB, ZWave and ZigBee are all less than for X10, but they have yet to recoup their engineering costs or to generate production volumes comparable to X10.

The economies of scale in buying parts. My point exactly. It is the economies of scale that give X10 it's edge on price. Economies of scale with parts, labor and distribution. Whatever technology can attain X10's volume can attain X10's economies of scale.

Supporting an established standard (X10) will ensure this newer technology becomes the next standard. This will lead the economies of scale needed to drive costs down. Smarthome will continue to release products for customers, either INSTEON or UPB or Z-wave products. We are very excited about the growth of the HA space and the future of the industry.

Regards,
Mike B)

 

[kwilcox]

The battle lines appear to be drawn. It would appear from the above post that we can infer whose corner SmartHome sits in.... as if there was any doubt B)

However this just goes to clarify the point, and that is that there is considerable perceived value for a new standard and we the users and installers are faced with difficult decisions as the competition for its ownership rages.

Or.... maybe the world of HA will remain forever fractured as X10 the protocol gets left behind and no one consortium can garner the same overriding market share enjoyed by X10 the company. I personally think that this is how it will end up. The bad news from this prediction is that costs will never come down to the level of X10. Sure, we may see initial "bargan basement" prices but this will only be manufacturers taking an initial loss in the hopes of seeding future volume.

 

[TCassio]

Again, I go back to my orginal post.

All a switch really needs is, reliablity, speed, be able to turn it on, off, dim, preset dim and a ramp rate, thats it,

If you want more functionality put it in a controller. Why put all of your time and energy into developing a do all switch. Right now the basic design of Insteon works. All the time being spent on the firmware is what is killing the manufactures, and driving up R&D costs.

Why do you suppose X10 has been around for so long? Its simple and cheap. Thats why the have such a large market share, even with a flawed technology.

If you put this simple and cheap scheme together with the Insteon protocol, Smarthome would not be able to manufacture them fast enough to keep up with demand.

I guess I am in the minority having this philosphy, but it has worked in the past.

 

[Dean Roddey]

One could make the argument that, longer term, none of these technologies will cut it, because we'll want to converge on a single, open protocol and data conduit, and none of them have the bandwidth to do that. IP (wired and wireless) is probably the only standard out there that has the bandwidth and broad acceptance to be the all seeing, all dancing control, automation, and media distribution mechanism probably.

Of course, that's not in any danger of actually happening right now, since ethernet, despite HUGE economies of scale, seems to remain beyond the tolerance level of most companies to put into their devices, and too expensive for a light switch.

That's unfortunate really, because it could make for a very interesting scenario. A single, well defined, open protocol (of which xAP and UPnP are probably the only extant ones, but neither is probably right for this, xAP is too loose and UPnP too heavy), on a fast, reliable, and ubiquitous transport mechanism, that's already in most houses and if not can implemented cheaply, and which every computer in the home already knows how to interface with, and which supports the kind of bandwidth and connection types required to create a really rich automation system.

 

[kwilcox]

The problem there is that nobody wants to run ethernet to all their junction boxes and switches based on wireless standards such as WiFi will be expensive and possibly shielded by houses having metal junction boxes.

 

[Rupp]

One could make the argument that, longer term, none of these technologies will cut it, because we'll want to converge on a single, open protocol and data conduit...

This is exactly what X10 is a single protocol. The beauty is X10 will still be available for a while and is cheaper so the "starter" technology is still there and then hopefully one of the others will do what X10 has done. Make it work, make it simple, and make it cheap. Without these things the market is simply not there.

 

[Dean Roddey]

This is exactly what X10 is a single protocol. The beauty is X10 will still be available for a while and is cheaper so the "starter" technology is still there and then hopefully one of the others will do what X10 has done. Make it work, make it simple, and make it cheap. Without these things the market is simply not there.

You left out the bandwidth requirement. X-10 is about as close to zero bandwidth as one would ever want to get. Any truly ubiquitous standard has to be able to distribute media as well as turn lights on and off.

The problem there is that nobody wants to run ethernet to all their junction boxes and switches based on wireless standards such as WiFi will be expensive and possibly shielded by houses having metal junction boxes.

That could be remedied with something as simple as a small wire antenna that you snake out up of the box and staple to the stud, or push up through the box on a wire holder for a retro fit. In the long run, if WiFi is ever to really reach it's potential, it will have to get quite inexpensive to implement.

It might end up being a 'fiber to the curb' type scenario, but instead will be an 'ethernet to the room' thing. But then a small box in each room is on the network and does a very simple but robust hard wired connection over to the light switches and outlets for control. For retrofit, the box would use a lost cost, but still pretty quick, RF scheme, low power (since it just has to cover it's local area) but fast enough for high quality two way control, and no need for a big mesh system and all that complexity in every module, since the IP network is the mesh.


Anyway, monkeys could also fly out of my butt, but I can dream B)

 

[smee]

You left out the bandwidth requirement. X-10 is about as close to zero bandwidth as one would ever want to get. Any truly ubiquitous standard has to be able to distribute media as well as turn lights on and off.

I think this is a great argument for having more than one standard. What's wrong with two? A low-bandwidth one that is everywhere for controlling things like lights. A high-bandwidth one where necessary for things like media.

 

[Rupp]

You left out the bandwidth requirement. X-10 is about as close to zero bandwidth as one would ever want to get. Any truly ubiquitous standard has to be able to distribute media as well as turn lights on and off.

Actually X10 does what it was designed to do. Not a lot of bandwidth needed. When you add the requirement of more bandwidth for "other things" you change the entire package. The simplicity is what has contributed to the success of X10.