Z-Wave vs Insteon

[rolanday]

Somebody help me understand why Z-Wave vs Insteon is even open for debate. I've had a simple Insteon system at home for a little over 5 years now -- I was an early adopter. I never took a deep plunge because, frankly, reliability was never there for me and, as a result, I largely wrote it off as gimmicky toy stuff. For the most part I've been running my own software to control the system but I recently gave HouseLinc and mControl a try, in addition to adding noise filters between my main computer system and power line. The result was no improvement in reliability, possibly even worse. Then, of course, there are the quality problems that plague Insteon hardware (I had the SwitchLinc stuff). My personality is such that when I start a project I go in deep and heavy until it’s finished. After that, I may not touch it again for years even if something breaks as has been the case for 3 different Insteon switches I had. So, I've been w/o certain lights in key areas of my home for a while now. Just a couple weeks ago, another switch failed making it number 4. And with that I threw in the towel just as I was in the process of expanding my Insteon system in the hopes that some of the kinks had been worked out since my last foray into the world of home automation. (Also, because there's been some house break-ins in my area lately thereby motivating me to turn my attention to my automation and security system again).

So, after some research, I finally decided to give Z-Wave a try in conjunction with HomeSeer. Initially I dipped my toe in being skeptical, but my initial impression was so positive I've already converted over a good portion of my house. So far I haven't had a single failed event! The system has been a breeze to setup and I'm really excited about the hardware options. I just purchased a Schlage deadbolt (w/o the Schlage link system because it's not required by HomeSeer) and I'm getting events from the lock with no problems. My wife loved it when I showed her the hallway lights automatically turning on in response to the door being unlocked. I'm also very impressed by the quality of the Cooper switches. They haven't stood the test of time yet (for me anyway) but there's that old saying "I know quality when I see it" and that's how I feel about these Cooper switches. They're pricey but if I don't have to change one out on the next year then they'll have be worth it. I'm also very happy w/ the HomeSeer software. I went that route because it supports plug-in development so that way I can enable any advanced scenarios I choose to enable w/o having to built a system from scratch. However, I've found the software to be quite flexible and capable, so I'm not going to need to be writing a lot of code

Given my experiences with Insteon and Z-Wave, it's a wonder to my why there's any debate between the two. What am I missing?

-Roland.

 

[twilo123]

no debate here. just a comment on the cooper light switches. i was disappointed that they are button press instead of rocker. and even the button press is not uniform throughout the switch. if you try to hit the top corner it won't work many times. other than that i think cooper has the best physical design of zwave switches.

 

[kd5crs]

Given my experiences with Insteon and Z-Wave, it's a wonder to my why there's any debate between the two. What am I missing?

-Roland.

Well, I've been running a medium size (~50 devices) Insteon setup in two separate homes, and I've never had a problem. No failed devices, not even any DOA devices that I had to send back. Nothing wrong with Z-wave, but then I'd only have half the setup or much less money. Insteon may be the budget solution, but it works pretty good anyway.

Issues pertaining to Smarthome as a company aside, I don't think there is much wrong with Insteon. But you gotta go with what works, and I'm glad Z-wave is working out for you!

Brian

 

[pete_c]

I still have X-10 in the home and too early converted over to Insteon following a kind of X-10 roadmap. Its been a few years now and I have no issues with reliability or coverage but then again I was OK with X-10. Just the idea of powerline controlling my lighting starting in the 1970's was great. Today both Insteon and X-10 coexists in my home. I am entertaining the idea of starting to "play" with Z-wave and concurrently UPB. I had rocker switch problems with my Icon switches and didn't really notice the issue until I manually checked out some switches as I got used to the automation never touching the switches. I sent them back to Smarthome and they replaced them with updated Switchlincs and Icons. My "dated" PLC (serial) went dead this past year and I had to replace it with a new PLM. Smarthome did not cover the replacement. Most recently I am watching the percentages of communications responses with my Insteon devices and have noticed a higher average with the Icons than the Switchlincs. It is still faster and easier to turn a dial pad on a device to set its address than to spend XX amount of time programming your switch that being said replacing one or two Insteon switches.

As stated above its what you feel confortable with and what you budget for your powerline switches. Powerline technology is changing much faster these days than 5, 10 or 15 years ago.

Personally I feel like my home is starting to turn into a large microwave oven with the unseen multitude of various frequencies of radio waves bouncing around. Personally would like to see a pursuit of "pure" powerline versus the use of meshing with radio but you can't really do that practically all of the time anyways.

 

[WayneW]

Given my experiences with Insteon and Z-Wave, it's a wonder to my why there's any debate between the two. What am I missing?

I think the early Z-wave adopters felt almost as much pain as early Insteon adapters. Some companies selling Z-wave have dropped the line. Z-wave has gone through multiple "growing pains" issues also. Z-wave vendors were way late on some products. I am glad Z-wave works for you, but comparing early Insteon to mature Z-wave isn't really fair. It also clouds the water when you are equating companies with the underlying technology and when you change your master lighting controller.

IMHO, UPB has had the least growing pains, but even that has a great deal of confusion over Gen I vs Gen II, and UPB has the smallest range of device types supported.

 

[upstatemike]

I have been trying to convince myself to like Z-Wave for some time time now but still struggle with the following:

1- Most of my control situations have lighting devices as the trigger of events, and not so much included in the actions performed as a result of a trigger. Z-Wave has always been confusing as to which devices report state changes upon manual operation.

2- The whole idea of a mesh network does not work unless your house is very small or you go with a bunch of switches from day 1. There is no way a Z-Wave controller at one end of my house could control a single device at the other end (or even half that distance). It would require a bunch of intervening hops which feels like a fragile and tenuous signal path until you build up the mesh enough.

3- The pricing and styling of Z-Wave devices have also never been that appealing to me.

 

[DavidL]

There certainly were hardware issues with early Insteon. Since replacing all of the originals due to the premature failure of the switch contacts, no problem since.

 

[rolanday]

, but comparing early Insteon to mature Z-wave isn't really fair.

Just to be clear, I recently updated my Insteon USB interface, access points, and added new switches -- all new stuff -- in hopes that after 5 years the kinks would be worked out. I completely agree it would be unfair to compare current Z-Wave implementations to my 5 year old Insteon hardware but that's not the case.

Anyway, I've seen plenty of reports of people claiming now issues w/ Insteon, etc., but that has not been my case after multiple attempts and lots of money spent. I'm not suggesting Insteon is bad or anything like that, but I've been tickled with z-wave by comparison. It's been a cinch configure and it hasn't skipped a beat since the system has been up and running (about 2 weeks now). With my Insteon system, it was anybody's guess if my lights would be on when I got home each night (or if they turned off in the morning). Trust me, I wanted to like Insteon because I have lots of money wrapped up in it but I decided to cut my losses. I guess as petec mentioned, for anyone w/ an X10 infrastructure Insteon has an advantage but i don't fall into that camp.

 

[MikeB]

With my Insteon system, it was anybody's guess if my lights would be on when I got home each night (or if they turned off in the morning).

Sounds like you had issues with powerline communications in your home, so it makes sense that Z-Wave would be working better for you. It's an extremely rare occurance that an INSTEON device doesn't respond as expected in my home.

 

[pete_c]

Mike,

Off the subject a bit but can an ISY be connected via the ISY RS-232 port say to an HAI Omni-Pro II and recieve the Omni Pro X-10 poweline commands and send out powerline Insteon? Has this ever been considered?

-PeteC

 

[Digger]

Just this past weekend I ripped out an Insteon setup in a friends house (I ripped mine out over a year ago and gave him some of my leftovers and he bought the rest) because it was just to unreliable in functionality and hardware for his family to endure. SH still has not gotten their act together in my opinion and my friends (he held on longer waiting to see how well my UPB setup worked). We put in a UPB setup and it works but its only been a few days so no claim that its perfect yet (if they push a button the light turns on etc which is a drastic improvement over the INsteon he had)

I have UPB hardware from all 3 manufacturers in my house with absolutely no device hardware failures in over a year (only added HAI recently and in fact more this weekend). That can rarely be said for Insteon devices unless you only have 5 or 6 lamplincs etc.

UPB signal strength is much more robust than Insteon (INsteon is 5 Vpp and UPB is 40 vpp). SH has just recently addressed this shortcoming by phasing in dual communications to legacy products (lamplincs, appliancelincs, plm's etc) to finally meet the original claims of dual mesh. That should fix a lot of peoples communication problems but only time will tell for sure if they got it right this time or not (in all fairness they probably did and is why it was supposed to be dual mesh all along). It will require a lot of people to replace their existing hardware though to get the reliability (something that Zwave and UPB users have not had to do repeatedly like Insteon users have).

I dont think Insteon is dead yet and I even think it may have hit bottom months ago if not late last year but it still is no comparision to UPB quality in my experience and apparently zwave in other peoples experience. Insteon has not yet grown up but maybe its starting to mature.

If you only have enough money to do it once UPB or Zwave etc. is probably your best bet.

Just opinions and everyone is entitled to theirs.

 

[kd5crs]

Keep ripping it out, I'll keep buying them. :+D

I always find this fascinating. When I hear about devices that die early, or are DOA from the factory, or have the paddle switch go out, I understand. That sucks, and "budget solution" or not, companies should replace devices that are poorly made. But having working devices just not work in a house is not at all in my experience.

Insteon needs more diagnostic tools. I guess X10 had some signal strength meters you could buy to help with finding problem spots? If Insteon (and all powerline technologies, really) had a meter that could give you a good/warning/no good reading for each location it would really take the mystery out of things.

Brian

 

[macromark]

There is no way a Z-Wave controller at one end of my house could control a single device at the other end (or even half that distance). It would require a bunch of intervening hops which feels like a fragile and tenuous signal path until you build up the mesh enough.

Mike - In HSPRO, we implemented support for multiple Z-Wave interfaces to address the 'large house' scenerio. In a nutshell, you install additional interfaces (like our Z-Troller) strategically throughout the house and replicate the network to each of these. Then, you can manually assign individual nodes to each interface to reduce or even eliminate routing. Each interface can then be 'promoted' to function as a primary, which allows you to optimize the nodes by interface. This configuration also works nicely for houses with detatched structures (garages, workshops, barns, etc).

 

[MikeB]

Off the subject a bit but can an ISY be connected via the ISY RS-232 port say to an HAI Omni-Pro II and recieve the Omni Pro X-10 poweline commands and send out powerline Insteon? Has this ever been considered?

Hi Peter -

Not at the moment. We do interface with the Elk over TCP/IP. I believe some users are using X10 commands to/from HAI over powerline to control things to/from the ISY, but that's kind of a hack in my opinion.

We do offer the ability to send serial commands over TCP/IP using the Global Cache GC-100, Elk IP-232, etc. - which would allow you to control the HAI from the ISY I assume. However, we don't yet offer the ability to receive and react to commands and responses sent back over serial.

You can control the ISY using its built-in REST interface, however, if HAI supports that.

 

[pete_c]

Interesting info.

Thank you Michael.