Help with starting out

[pequeajim]

Well, I will be taking the plunge and am thinking of starting off with the following setup:

Ocelot
TW-523 (or PSC-05), not sure which is better?
Some wall switches (scene enabled, whichs ones)
Some outlet switches
and maybe the SECU16 if I want to do some IO.

Most of what I will be doing is scene lighting to start, but I want to do some programming to make things intelligent. For instance

if Sw1 on
and time > 10:00pm
then Turn on light 2 at 50%

Any advice on options, hw, sw?

Also, what is the difference between the TW-523 and the PSC-05? Any advantage of one over the other when paring X10 with the Ocelot?

 

[DavidL]

I would move on over past X10 and onto UPB, Insteon or ZWave. If you already have X10 (doesn't sound it), then use Insteon as it is backwards compatible. If you are getting a killer deal on X10, it is possible to get working pretty reliably, but with the better options available, why bother? There is JackPod on Homeseer's forum that is selling a bunch of Insteon for $450 that would be a great start.

 

[pequeajim]

David:

Is Insteon the same protocol as X10, or something different? What would I control it with, Ocelot?

 

[Rupp]

David:

Is Insteon the same protocol as X10, or something different? What would I control it with, Ocelot?

No Insteon is a different protocol than X10. The Insteon switched have the ability to run in an X10 mode though. I do not believe that the Ocelot can talk to Insteon devices.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Insteon is still quite new and is having lots of growing pains. It seems to be working well between switches (when manually linking them) but the firmware in the computer interfaces is still being worked on and has a way to go.

The Ocelot doesn't have built-in support for Insteon but I do have an easy to build project you can make that allows it to send Insteon commands using an IR output. Read about the project here:

http://www.appdigusers.com/forum/showflat....ge/0#Post187772

 

[bfisher]

Since you are just getting started (and I saw your previous post about wanting sophisticated programming capabilities) - I would encourage you to consider Homevision Pro (or Stargate, but I don't own a SG to speak specifically about it). HVPro has tremendous programming capabilities and supports the new powerline standards (such as UPB which I use). I wouldn't even consider X10 if I was just getting started.