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It's interesting to me to see all these new fangled home automation devices come to market, especially when really inexpensive technology has been around for de

• savrajsingh 13y ago
  Is there a low-cost Bluetooth integration w/x10?
  • alanctgardner2 13y ago
    There's a library for a PC to control the wall warts; I've done some fun stuff automating power cycling with it. You could plug the USB-enabled controller into a server, and then write an app for whatever you like: web server, bluetooth, etc.
• jbuzbee 13y ago
  I've used x10 on and off since the early 80's. And... it sucks. When it works, it's cool, fun and cheap. But reliable it's not. For starts, all the inexpensive units I've used only support one-way commanding and the commands are susceptible to collision. Send a command to turn a light off and just hope that it goes off. Want to dim a light? All the commands are incremental so you'll have to do stuff like send 8 dim commands to get to a known minimum state then send 4 brighten commands to brighten to the desired level. And since it's one-way with no acknowledgments, you just hope that your commands were received and that the light was on to start with. Fun to play with, but I'd never trust it for anything but toy usage.
  • frob 13y ago
    I've been using Insteon for a few years now (insteon.com). It's like x10 done right. There are acknowledgments, grouping, security, 256 brightness levels, extended commands, wifi+power-line communications, and a 6-byte namespace (for no collisions).