Z-wave is better than X-10

I have replaced many of my older powerline-based lighting control devices with Z-wave RF (radio) technology. The reasons: Instant responsiveness, better control reliability, and a wider range of device types to handle more applications.

Here’s why

For the past 25 years I have used variations of X-10 powerline carrier technology to control lights and appliances in my home. For many years it was the only consumer technology available that didn’t require rewiring your house—something I did not want to do. Initially branded “BSR X-10” and sold mainly through Sears and Radio Shack, X-10 was essentially the only consumer installed remote control game in town.

X-10 branded products worked well enough but the company did little to advance their technology, at least for their low cost consumer-class devices. Eventually the X-10 patents expired and several companies developed compatible technologies. All were better at noise immunity and rejection, generally improving powerline carrier performance to an acceptable, if not totally reliable, level. Some RF products were developed that used the same signaling format as X-10, making very simple wireless controls possible.

With proper preparation X-10 can be made to be fairly reliable. So, why change to something else?

The main reason is that powerline-carrier technology still requires too much periodic attention. A home automation technology needs to be invisible to the owner. It may be Ok if the initial installation takes some reasonable amount of tweaking and re-tweaking to make everything work. Careful design and up-front planning is pretty much essential to make any automation technology effective and reliable. Once installed it needs to ‘ just work’.

X-10 makes ‘reliable’ difficult to achieve because there are too many external events that can kill operation without user awareness. That’s a direct path to dissatisfaction.

My real-world example is typical. I installed all of the helpful active and passive devices that boost, repeat, bridge, filter, and in any other way “condition” the AC power system to make powerline-carrier signals reliable. Eventually some unexpected, seemingly random noise on the powerline at least temporarily impairs or kills signals.

That noise can be introduced by simply plugging in some new device. Modular power supplies that come with just about every kind of electronic gadget are excellent sources of electrical hash; purchase a new laptop and suddenly half of your X-10 stuff stops working reliably.

There are X-10 noise filters and they do work well…if you know you need one, and if you use them. I purchased a new Dell laptop. Its power brick killed about one fourth of my X-10 devices whenever it was plugged in, whether or not it is actually powering the laptop. A plug-in X-10 AC filter corrected the problem, but I have to remember to take it AND the brick power module everywhere te laptop goes in the house. Sometimes the filter gets left behind.

Perhaps more significantly, there are other technologies that can compete for powerline bandwidth. Ethernet-over-powerline products can cause problems, some wireless baby monitors and a few of the latest generation of power-management and reporting devices can kill X-10. I’ve had cold, rainy days kill X-10 and have no idea why. Even the number of X-10 devices added to your network can help kill X-10 reliability; each one shunts some impedance across the powerline, lowering the overall signal level. Active repeaters can overcome this…but again, you would have to know you need them, they would need to be purchased, strategically placed, etc. More work, more consideration.

The average consumer isn’t going to like that, Yogi.

There are alternatives to powerline-carrier technologies that overcome these limitations. Smarthome’s Insteon is one of them; I used it for awhile very successfully until its manufacturer made continued use of it too much of a problem for me. That story could be another post all its own. Suffice it to say I still use a number of Insteon devices in X-10 compatibility mode, and they work very well. But I will not be purchasing any more Insteon products, ever.

Practical wireless RF alternatives to X-10 (like Z-wave and Zigbee) communicate to the controlled devices via tiny low-power radio transceivers within each device. Some use “mesh network” technology, meaning that the devices can talk to each other as well—they can relay control and status messages to devices that are not in direct range of the central controller. Done well this can be extremely effective and reliable. And, if the technology is an open standard (or at least the licensing options are reasonable), both cost and availability can be reasonable. You might even see a good variety of compatible devices from different manufacturers, along with a little competition to keep pricing even more reasonable. Z-wave has proven to be reliable in my Texas home and peacefully co-exists with me, my family, and all household technology.

let the conversion continue!
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