[Hai-users] Smarthome Insteon vs. HAI UPB

[Doug Burton]

Justin,

 

I'm in the similar boat as you.  My system is mostly HAI based on the
controller, with a tie into HAL 2000 for voice access.  Just switched all 43
wall switches in my house from x-10 switchlinks to the New Insteons.  I love
the insteons, as you said its seems so far to work 100% of the time! Each
and every time.

 

The backward compatibility with x-10 means my HAI still talks to them.  But
I'm hoping HAI will indeed support the Insteon protocol so we get even more
reliability between HAI controlling the switches via Insteon protocols.

 

Clues as well on how the actual Insteon protocol will work when it comes to
Non X-10 addressing.  But on the x-10 side, these insteons are a snap to
address and link.

 

Doug

 

  _____  

From: hai-users-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:hai-users-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Justin Matlock
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:50 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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