Insteon vs Zwave vs Zigbee vs UPB Comparison 2011

[Digger]

The problem with Insteon is that they need to do what they say. They are finally after about 5 years truly having dual mesh devices that were originally in the advertising hype and white paper. Had they done that from day one I think they would have had a LOT less problems.

Of course SH will skew their advertising to say Insteon is the best as will Zwave and UPB. The real measure is customer satisfaction and reliability of the products. While I am not able to back my opinion with facts at the moment I would say that more people probably abandoned Insteon with its quaility issues etc then UPB or Zwave combined. That has probably improved a lot the past year or so but personally I would like to see the track record in 5 years or so for Insteon.

SH seems to have finally realized that they needed to implement the dual mesh to get the reliability that they have claimed since 2006 but only now seem to be acheiving (from what some people are saying it is more reliable now and I will take their word on that). I have said many times that the 5 v signal is not enough to overcome powerline noise etc and apparently SH is now admitting that. For the early adopters to have to replace all of their devices with the I2 and now the dual mesh (and whatever is next) is a huge financial hit.

Are some of the Insteon devices better looking? Yeah I agree. Are the keypads really nice (when they work)? Yeah I agree. Is Insteon cheap? Yeah I agree. But you get what you pay for as they say.

 

[mikejrc]

my buddy the engineer said that its not about the voltage but the timing, also the pulse modulation compared to the other method insteon uses. you are correct digger its how they implemented their technology what killed them in the past

 

[myhome247]

Being a home automation equipment provider in the Australian / New Zealand market we have been assessing which way to head in future. We see X10 as a legacy only product, UPB is unknown here, Insteon whilst being a good solution technically has very small range of devices available which leaves only Z-Wave and ZigBee in our consideration.

As both are low power, mesh wireless based system the major deciding factors for us are:

1. Ease of sourcing equipment with the required frequencies (Z-Wave here uses 921.42MHz - our government in its wisdom decided we could ignore what the rest of the world was doing and use this frequency) and voltages (240V 50Hz) - ZigBee wins here as we can source almost all devices in the licence free 2.4GHz ISM band
2. Availability of Controller (Z-Wave) or Coordinator (ZigBee) devices. Both have a few available now with more coming.
3. User applications, Interfaces for PC, Mac and smartphones - both have some with Z-Wave slightly ahead but neither ready for 'prime time' and really still a geek tool with the exception of Control4 at a premium price and not really user installable.
4. Range and availability of devices suitable for our markets. Most manufacturers are now making devices with either Z-Wave or ZigBee versions.

Both systems have a similar capability but ZigBee has a slight edge in being able to use Routers in a similar fashion as secondary controllers in Z-Wave which we feel are fairly limited in their capabilities. The greater range of 'profiles' for ZigBee (Home Automation, Security, Energy, etc) was seen as a positive as long as they maintain interoperability and the current push to have ZigBee chips incorporated into multimedia devices, if successful, will also greatly benefit ZigBee's usability. The outcome of all of this is we have firmly decided to 'sit on the fence' and see what transpires over the next 6 - 12 months whilst further investigating how both Z-Wave and ZigBee can be used although we have a 60 - 40 bias ZigBee to Z-Wave currently.

 

[Slates]

Interesting that you view Insteon as having a small range of devices. It seems like they have a relatively large product offering. Of course I have little experience with some of them, so can't comment on their effectiveness or quality.

Relays
Dimmers
ToggleLinc
RemoteLinc
Controllers (ISY, SmartLinc)
I/O Linc
LampLinc
ApplianceLinc
MotionLinc

And they seem to continually expand on their product line. Of course, having only one manufacturer isn't ideal and I could see problems there.

 

[Digger]

Interesting that you view Insteon as having a small range of devices. It seems like they have a relatively large product offering. Of course I have little experience with some of them, so can't comment on their effectiveness or quality.

Relays
Dimmers
ToggleLinc
RemoteLinc
Controllers (ISY, SmartLinc)
I/O Linc
LampLinc
ApplianceLinc
MotionLinc

And they seem to continually expand on their product line. Of course, having only one manufacturer isn't ideal and I could see problems there.

I beleive he meant that they do not offer those devices for use in his country.

 

[BLH]

There are no 230/240 volt 50Hz Insteon devices at all.
Let alone the different power plugs.

Smartlabs at present doesn't seem to have any interest in most of the world or is keeping it real quiet.

 

[Digger]

There are no 230/240 volt 50Hz Insteon devices at all.
Let alone the different power plugs.

Smartlabs at present doesn't seem to have any interest in most of the world or is keeping it real quiet.

Maybe they are concentrating on getting the 120 V versions to work first

 

[BLH]

Things are actually changing.
I have seen a Smartlabs Engineer on the UDI forums. Commenting on a possible problem with the thermostat adapter.
I have also seen Steve Lee in our SDK Forums.

 

[Slates]

My bad, didn't consider the voltage differences.

For what its worth, my Insteon setup has been fairly reliable (although it is also a small install). I have only returned one device to Smarthome, because it stopped responding to group commands reliably. The ISY has been a godsend of course, and should be a required purchase for any Insteon implementation!

 

[jhdale]

The usual discussion about Insteon aside, I think the most interesting result in the poll is Zwave. Compare it to the previous poll at http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12814 It's jumped to most used and it's perceived as most popular. I know the sample size for these polls is low, but still an interesting trends. Does that reflect adoption by more manufacturers, or some other factor?

 

[JonW]

The usual discussion about Insteon aside, I think the most interesting result in the poll is Zwave. Compare it to the previous poll at http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12814 It's jumped to most used and it's perceived as most popular. I know the sample size for these polls is low, but still an interesting trends. Does that reflect adoption by more manufacturers, or some other factor?

I think it reflects the (better) price point it was at when released and people decided to get on board. If you look at the results of the first question "If you had to choose one...", UPB has the lead. That tells me there are people with other solutions that are not happy with their choice and now feel that UPB would have been a better option for them. Go back to the link you posted for the poll 2 years ago and it was also true there. That earlier poll showed that ZWave was used more, but in the selection "if you had to do it all over again" UPB beat ZWave almost 2 to 1.

 

[johnnybwis]

I think it reflects the (better) price point it was at when released and people decided to get on board. If you look at the results of the first question "If you had to choose one...", UPB has the lead. That tells me there are people with other solutions that are not happy with their choice and now feel that UPB would have been a better option for them. Go back to the link you posted for the poll 2 years ago and it was also true there. That earlier poll showed that ZWave was used more, but in the selection "if you had to do it all over again" UPB beat ZWave almost 2 to 1.

Yes, a little surprising. At the time of this post 21 people have Z-wave but only 11 would choose it.

 

[etc6849]

Interesting, I wonder why those with zwave wouldn't choose it again? Is it the complex setup process? I've found zwave to be nearly 100% reliable.

That said, the only issue I've had is if a dimmer loses power (because an incandescent lamp burns out and the dimmer relies on the lamp for return to neutral) the network can slow (despite being "self healing"). The only fix I could come up with was to have my system alert me when a lamp burns out by counting failures.

The Vizia RF (Leviton's zwave product line) protocol also offers things such as transmission and receipt confirmation in addition to status updates.

 

[Quixote_1]

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.

 

[jhdale]

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.