Latest no wire options for lighting control?

[jwilson56]

Well its been awhile since I looked into this so I was wondering what are the choices for lighting control for houses that do not have neutral wires in them? I would prefer to have at least polling capabilities. I know about the Zwave HA06C but is their anything else (UPD, X-10) ?

John

 

[rocco]

Right now you have ZWave. Later you may have Insteon (RF) or ZigBee. But I don't think you will ever see UPB, Insteon-PLC or two-way-X10 in any two-wire switches.

The reason is simple: The output for all the PLC technologies are very low impedance. The loads all have too high an impedance to be able to transmit an Insteon, UPB or X10 message through. They need to transmit over the neutral and hot wires.

As an example, a 100 watt light bulb is around 130 ohms. An Insteon devices output drive closer to 5 ohms.

 

[kwilcox]

Whoever came up with the switch-loop wiring concept should roast IMO.... Is there any way you can pull 14/3 into your loop wired switch boxes? That's what I did and it wasn't too difficult. Fortunately, I only had a few that were wired that way.