[Hai-users] Smarthome Insteon vs. HAI UPB

[Dan Wright]

Smarthome Insteon vs. HAI UPBI'm in the same boat.  We are moving.  My
current HAI gear is staying with this house.  We are going to miss the
automation until I get something else installed.  The new home currently has
a DSC 832 prewired.  We are also looking at Zwave in addition to UPB and
Insteon.  I would really prefer ALC, but rewiring the house is not
practical.  Have about 6 months before I have to start buying things.
  -----Original Message-----
  From: hai-users-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:hai-users-bounces at tssi.com]On
Behalf Of Justin Matlock
  Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 3:50 PM
  To: hai-users at tssi.com
  Subject: [Hai-users] Smarthome Insteon vs. HAI UPB


  Okay... So there seem to be a lot of new technologies out there these days
that are replacing X10.

  HAI just started shipping their UPB dimmers, and SmartHome just started
shipping their Insteon SwitchLinc dimmers.

  Other than the obvious “HAI supports their own switches in firmware” issue
(I suspect they’ll be adding Insteon support), does anyone have any opinions
on either switch type?  I’ve got such a mix right now — ACT, Compose,
SwitchLinc — and I need to start consolidating to a single brand/type
because of the weird mismatches between brands (as far as scenes/etc goes).

  I’ve played with Insteon — I just ordered (but have yet to install) two
dimmer switches.  I’ve been playing with the actual lamp modules for quite
some time now, and have been very impressed with the reliability (they turn
on *every* time I hit the button) and the scenes.  Also, the X10
compatibility makes them work with my existing HAI OP2 without adding any
extra modules.  In fact, they act just like regular SwitchLinc 2-way
switches when you program an X10 address into them.

  What would be the benefit to going with HAI-UPB products?  It’s not price,
since UPB is more expensive than Insteon switches (even via Worthington);
they’re about equals on that.  Insteon has better looking switches (IMHO),
and the ability to change the LED color pipes is a really nifty (but
useless) feature that I like.

  Rather than use straightforward scenes, it looks like HAI has adopted the
weird Compose ‘rooms’ concept, which I still haven’t found terribly useful.
It seems much easier to just assign individual addresses to each scene like
SwitchLinc and Insteon do...  On the flipside, perhaps I’m not understanding
exactly how to implement the HAI-UPB scene/room/master functions...

  Of course, I have no idea how Insteon will integrate with the OP2 (or if
it will) since it doesn’t have visible addressing (there’s no “a1”, “a2”,
etc). But SmartHome says the home controller will be able to “download” the
scene information from the existing switches in the house once an interface
is installed (no idea how they plan on doing that one)...

  Comments?  Thoughts?

  Justin
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