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I have a whole house of this stuff. We are talking 100s of plugs, lights, sensors, etc. I picked them because they have been around forever - like 30+ years (st
by myrandomcomment 4y ago
I have a whole house of this stuff. We are talking 100s of plugs, lights, sensors, etc. I picked them because they have been around forever - like 30+ years (started with the X10 stuff) so I hoped they where a safe bet. One day everything stopped working, the remote control part via the application and automation that depended on their Hub being online. I had the hub. Ugh. Okay I had the USB serial adapter also sitting around. Installed Homebridge with the "Homebridge Platform Insteonlocal" plugin on an old PINE64 board. Used it to delete the links to the old hub and connect everything to the USB serial modem (the "modem" keeps the DB of the things it can talk to). Everything works great again and I can even use Apple HomeKit. I received an email today from Ken saying they are going to do the right thing but they need to move to a subscription model for like ~$40 per year. I am fine with that in the sense they should have done that a long time ago to sort their $$$ issues. At this point I am going to stick with the local solution - remember the HomeKit stuff gives me remote access - that the hub+app gave. The HW itself it really decent and always has been. It would be great if it became available again. I am worried about something failing at this point as the eBay pricing is crazy town right now. The 8 button remote that was $30 is going $200+. The remote links to their wireless protocol and pairs locally with all the devices. You do not need anything online for it to work. To be clear - they have powerline protocol and wireless protocol that allows devices to be paired (or more then a pair) with each other locally and locally programed. It is really cool stuff given it is 20+ years old and just works.
- donatj 4y agoX10, now there’s a name I have not heard in a while. Shortly after college, I had planned on X10-ing up my whole home for really no good reason other than it being neat and I had watched a video series (pre-YouTube, dvd) on controlling it programmatically. Life happened and I never got around to it. I’m glad I didn’t now lol, I’m sure I’d still have that junk around the house.
- ghaff 4y agoI moved into a very old house about 25 years and there was a distinct shortage of light/outlet switches. I got a bunch of X10 gear which I used for a while. Over time most of the electrical was redone so I mostly didn't have a need for it any longer. (I still have one set of lights in the bedroom that don't have a switch but I switched that out to an Alexa-controlled plug a few years ago.
- anonymousiam 4y agoSimilar story here. I started with X10 and upgraded to Insteon because of the X10 reliability & communication problems. I never bought a hub because I did not like being dependent on Internet services to control my house. I do have a few PLMs and a bunch of remote control units that I'm not using, and probably will never use, so I'm going to list them all on eBay! Thanks for the tip! Insteon made great hardware, but I recently discovered Lutron Caseta and now I like them better. Their switches do a much better job with LED lighting. (No flickering.)