Really, How much better is z wave over x10

dcjohnston · #1 November 20th, 2009, 09:35 PM

Keep in mind I have a house that is 1800 square feet and the cost of zwave compared to x10 is almost triple.

However, I am intrigued.

Rupp · #2 November 20th, 2009, 09:41 PM

Once you get Z-Wave installed and working it's far superior to X10 but it can be hard to get all the devices communicating cleanly. In the Z-Wave world the more devices the better the communications.

donstephens · #3 November 20th, 2009, 10:02 PM

Way, way better. Way, way more expensive also, as you noted.

Jerry Coleman · #4 November 20th, 2009, 10:03 PM

I agree with Rupp...

jasv · #5 November 20th, 2009, 10:44 PM

X10 was never stable for me and if it hadn't been for zwave and UPB I would have given up on automating lights.

zimmer62 · #6 November 21st, 2009, 01:48 AM

It took me years to get X10 stable, but it's been rock solid for years after finding the source of my problems.

That said, if you don't own any hardware yet, buy something other than X10... it's just not robust enough, and never evolved to support a more intelligent design.

Wadenut · #7 November 21st, 2009, 07:25 AM

X10 works fine for me. That said, Z-Wave operation here can be summarized in one word: FAST!

Pete · #8 November 21st, 2009, 08:21 AM

Personally most likely will try Z-Wave and UPB with my current X10/Insteon setup because I can and I guess thats just part of being an HA addicted person. I would still like to see a "perfect" and "flawless" powerline technology that doesn't need to use RF to work right and costs less than $50 a switch. I have a POE WLAN AP which is the size of an Insteon wall switch which works and it has a built in web browser, etc. My cousins in Europe are currently using powerline technology for their BB internet connectivity. I wonder if we'll ever see a powerline light switch with standard built in addressable NIC along with a mini web server, meshing, ......

lhfarm · #9 November 21st, 2009, 08:28 AM

X-10 has been rock solid for me and I've used it to control devices in an underground pump house located 200' from the house. Not sure how I'm going to do that with Z-Wave (without placing a device inbeween). But as others have said X-10 hasn't evolved in 30 years and HST sure seems to believe Z-wave is one of the better technologies.

For the past couple of years, I had been struggling with what to do as X-10 switches failed. We were planning a small remodeling job in the basement and decided that would be the time to test a different technology. That is, of course, the beauty of HS. You don't have to replace all your X-10. So far, I'm very pleased.

Barry

buvens · #10 November 21st, 2009, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wadenut

X10 works fine for me. That said, Z-Wave operation here can be summarized in one word: FAST!

I agree...

thymer · #11 November 21st, 2009, 10:44 AM

I've been running x10 since 2000 and it took a lot of time to get it stable. My entire house is automated so all lights, fans, exhaust fans, water heater, etc. Even then if someone plugged a laptop into the power outlet a light somewhere would stop working. I'm about 80% Zwave now and it is AWESOME!! Superfast and I don't have to worry about phase coupling and noise filters anymore. Very stable.

zimmer62 · #12 November 21st, 2009, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by buvens

I agree...

I'm not in agreement with that.

I have some switches that are faster than x10, but some that are really slow. I've added to my network to try and get a clearer signal to the slower nodes, and that helped some, but there are some days it's just not good.

In addition to that communications issue that I've been unable to solve, My biggest complaint, and I've asked here before, is I need a dimmer that the ramp rate can be controlled on the fly, and or set to no ramp rate (instant).

The problem I have right now, is I press the button to turn on my office light, and it will go to the previous dim setting (not useful for me)... and do it slowly. What I want, is for that light to turn on fully, instantly. And then turn off fully instantly when I press the toggle button (big red button) I have as a light switch....

In addition to that, when I walk into the room and it's dark, and it's between certain hours etc, I want a motion sensor to turn on the light fairly quickly (just a tad slower than instantly) from 0% to 10%.... and then slowly (30 seconds or a minute) ramp up from 10% to 50%.

I was able to do this just fine with smarthome switchlincs and scenes. But can't find a zwave device that will work.

Michael McSharry · #13 November 21st, 2009, 02:10 PM

Technology evolves so what is available today has advantages over what was available 20 years ago. There are a variety of alternatives that can provide better features, noise immunity and speed over X10. X10 still does have a good niche for low cost non-critical uses.

Zwave is not a favorite of mine because it is a new proprietary technology and has complexity without corresponding support infrastructure. Cleary HST has chosen it as its preferred technology and this will tend to funnel the user base in this direction.

Just as X10 has been surpassed so will Zwave. Care should be exercised to not bind oneself to solutions that do not have a reasonable technology migration path. With too tight a relationship with Zwave HS is also subject to such obsolescence.

stevea · #14 November 21st, 2009, 02:53 PM

I used X10 for a long time (since some time in the 80's), and have now been using mostly Z-wave for the past 4 years or so. Here's my observations.

Things that I like about X-10:

X10 is very simple, since you just plug in or wire up a unit / switch and start using it. There's much more procedure to using Z-wave.
It is cheap, as in it costs less.
X10 is much handier for temporary applications. Every year I plug in 5-6 Appliance modules (all set to the same HC/DC) and use them to turn my Christmas lights ON and OFF. After the new year, I just unplug the appliance modules and throw them back in the drawer. You can't do that with Z-wave nearly as simply, since you mess up the whole network.
I use X10 keypadlincs in a couple of places because they are so handy. The little indicator lights on all units and the switches are controlled by and control HS events. This is so simple, and yet as far as I can tell I can't do the same thing with Z-wave (although it may be possible with some zone controllers / scene controllers).
Dealing with noise and signal issues is not trivial, but not difficult either.

Things I don't like about X10:

It is cheap, as in most of them don't look very appealing.
Susceptible to all kinds of noise and degraded signals due to other things you have plugged in and crossing between phases.
Even aside from the noise issues, there can be some real reliabilty problems. The X10 protocol is a "fire and forget" and doesn't require or even allow for an acknowledgment, so some percentage of the time a unit doesn't respond to HS, and HS doesn't know.
Slow. It can't be avoided, as the signal itself simply takes time to transmit and receive.

Things I like about Z-wave:

As has been said here, it is WAY faster (not arguing with you zimmer, but my guess is you have something else going on; The physics and protocol are such that Z-wave MUST be much faster. If it isn't, you've got something else going on). I have lots of Z-wave switches that are triggered by an X10 Motion Sensor, and in almost all cases the light comes on in less than a second. That is virtually not possible with X10.
GENERALLY, it is more reliable. It isn't very often that I ever see a unit simply not trigger as directed by HS.
Smarter. Most switches you can configure for different behavior, set up scenes,

Things I don't like about Z-wave:

Expensive, but justifiably so given the limited market, the complexity, and the Zensis license monopoly.
Too much PFM. Really. When things go wacky, us normal humans simply have no way to know why. Under HS2.3, my whole network would periodically just go bonkers. 20-25 switches would "go pink" on Z-seer, even though 24 hours later they were all solid green.
Related to the PFM: There are scene controllers and zone controllers, and I've seen people try to explain the differences between them in very long posts, but I'm convinced almost no one really knows the difference.
Apparently these controllers don't allow you to do something simple like I've done for years with my KeyPadLincs, letting HS control the indicator lights and using the buttons ONLY to fire off events in HS. Way expensive controllers for much less usefulness.
For the most part, the look-and-feel of the switches is just stupid ugly. I mean butt ugly. Only the ACT switches have a standard Decora look and a "press top to turn on, press bottom to turn off" action. I must be strange, because I can't see why the manufactures of these things think it is better to have switches that don't look or work like the 99% of non-automated switches in the world.
Since the ACT switches are the only ones that look like they should, I have had to mostly go all-in with ACT. Unfortunately, they also have a horrible failure rate, or at least they used to (the newer ones seems to be working longer for me). So besides spending $70 on every new switch, I have also had to replace about 10. I only have a couple of Leviton switches, and they are very reliable, but I don't want them anywhere where people use them manually much. I can't speak to the reliability of the Cooper stuff at all as I have none (too ugly).
Although there may be a "standard", the fact that it appears that HS Tech is having to spend such an inordinate amount of time and betas trying to work out all the kinks for the various devices tells me it ain't much of a standard yet. Perhaps worse, it doesn't appear that they have gotten there yet for all the current devices, and my guess is the "standard" is still moving at break-neck speed.

Having said all that, it may look like I would not prefer Z-wave. However, on balance it is way better than X10 because of the signal reliability issue of X10. I spent some number of hours almost every week tracking down X10 problems. With Z-wave I can go several weeks and not do anything (but then again, after a couple of months I might have to re-setup my entire network).

Steve

zimmer62 · #15 November 21st, 2009, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevea

[*]As has been said here, it is WAY faster (not arguing with you zimmer, but my guess is you have something else going on; The physics and protocol are such that Z-wave MUST be much faster. If it isn't, you've got something else going on).

Agreed, I probably do have something else going on. It is annoying to say the least, and since I can measure the RF fields in the air near my problem areas, I just don't have a way to figure out when and why it's going to be an issue. Homeseer will at least show me that it failed to turn on the light because the protocol is robust.

The slowness of the ramp rate of my current switch will always annoy me, it makes for a good effect, but not when you need light right now. I've resorted to turning the light on to 10% and then changing the brightness to 100% because that is faster than turning it on to 100% (weird, but whatever)

I'd agree with everything else you've said too.... X10 has it's place, and it's not for people in the future. I suspect they'll have bluetooth, wifi, or some standard tech thats plug and play before the mass market starts buying anything to make it cheap enough for everyday products, but with people being concerned about energy use maybe someday every outlet in every house will be able to report realtime data back to a central location.

skybolt · #16 November 22nd, 2009, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zimmer62

It took me years to get X10 stable, but it's been rock solid for years after finding the source of my problems.

That said, if you don't own any hardware yet, buy something other than X10... it's just not robust enough, and never evolved to support a more intelligent design.

I could not agree more, X10 rock solid now and has been for a few years, but it took alot to get there.

If I were starting over I would choose UPB. JMHO.

Rupp · #17 November 22nd, 2009, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael McSharry

Technology evolves so what is available today has advantages over what was available 20 years ago. There are a variety of alternatives that can provide better features, noise immunity and speed over X10. X10 still does have a good niche for low cost non-critical uses.

Zwave is not a favorite of mine because it is a new proprietary technology and has complexity without corresponding support infrastructure. Cleary HST has chosen it as its preferred technology and this will tend to funnel the user base in this direction.

Just as X10 has been surpassed so will Zwave. Care should be exercised to not bind oneself to solutions that do not have a reasonable technology migration path. With too tight a relationship with Zwave HS is also subject to such obsolescence.

Hey don't worry Mike, UPB was added with a bit of effort and the next best thing can be added as well. Thanks the beauty of HomeSeer, it works with all the technologies at the same time.

zimmer62 · #18 November 22nd, 2009, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rupp

Hey don't worry Mike, UPB was added with a bit of effort and the next best thing can be added as well. Thanks the beauty of HomeSeer, it works with all the technologies at the same time.

Sorry, off topic.
Can I use two different IR plugins at the same time, I never tried it?

nightwalker · #19 November 22nd, 2009, 03:16 PM

Unless I'm way off I don't think you can. I seem to recall reading in here somewhere that HS only supports one IR plugin at a time.

Michael McSharry · #20 November 22nd, 2009, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Sorry, off topic.
Can I use two different IR plugins at the same time, I never tried it?

HS provides for only a single IR interface. You would need to use something like mcsXap to achieve multliple IR (or multiple X10) interfaces. HS does support multiple IO interfaces as that is the conduit used for most plugins.

Quote:

Hey don't worry Mike, UPB was added with a bit of effort and the next best thing can be added as well. Thanks the beauty of HomeSeer, it works with all the technologies at the same time.

My point about the Zwave/HS relationship is that HS internal architecture decisions will tend to be driven by Zwave. HS started based upon X10 technology and as HS evolved design decision tried to pigeon-hole solutions into an X10 view of the world. UPB did not fit nicely into the X10 world so only partial/work-around solutions to UPB could be achieved. Going forward the frame of reference is changing from X10 to Zwave, but the coupling and design bias will still continue. This can be a good practical decision. I was just trying to provide awareness.