Looking for honest feedback on reliability

Hi guys - been lurking a while, but have a question I haven't been able to find a clear answer to.
We recently purchased a new house & I'm planning an automation system. The house is just over 3800 sq. ft., & I'll eventually want to control all the lighting, door locks, & t-stat. I have a pretty good understanding of what is required to make it all happen, but what I don't know is how reliable the current retrofittable technologies are. I worked for an integrator for a couple of years & have some experience with UPB, but that was 6 years ago & I'd imagine it's changed a bit. I'd really like to hear from UPB, Insteon, and Z-wave users about your experiences. How reliable are they, both from a hardware and communication/software standpoint? How many misfires have you had on average?
I don't have the option of running new wires to many of the switch locations, but from what I've seen I do have a neutral at the switch locations.
High reliability is a must for WAF. She'll let the (very) occasional misfire go, but if it's a common occurrence or if I have to replace a switch every few months, my playtime will be over...
Thanks.

You can read the article in my signature about UPB; there've been some developments, but they've been pretty quiet and haven't affected it terribly. I have been running some switches close to 6 years now - never had a failure, never had a misfire that I'm aware of, and I don't think I've even had to replace a light bulb thanks to the soft start/stop! I use close to 70 Simply Automated devices now, and I run 3 PIM's - one for programming and the RUC, one for the Elk, and one for Elve. I had to do a tiny bit of diagnostics once because in one particular leg of the house (where my PIM's happen to live) I was missing 4 switches... turned out it was a DirecTV transformer plugged into the same outlet. I also run two SA inverting phase couplers. WAF is very high. I also use a W800RF32 to bridge in a couple X10RF devices just for convenience.

Thanks Work2Play. I liked the ease of setup and flexibility of UPB when I was working with it, but wasn't around it long enough to get a feel for its reliability. I did do an install on a couple of 10,000+ sq. ft. houses & was impressed with how well it worked on long runs & through sub panels.

Any input from Insteon or Z-wave users?

Welcome to CocoonTech, hedg. I have a similar-sized home and have a mixture of technologies. For 24 loads, I have Centralite's LiteJet, now called Elegance. It's hardwired, so pretty tough on a retrofit. I also have some Centralite JetStream switches. Both of these are very reliable. I've never had a problem with the JetStream switches. I've had a problem with the LiteJet twice (been in 5 years) after some good electrical storms. Switches still worked for on/off, but wouldn't dim and the lights had a slight pulsing. It was easily fixed by rebooting the LiteJet panel by throwing the breakers. Both switches follow automation commands without fail. One possible downside is the switches are keypads and operate by pushing them, rather that the normal Decora rocker people are accustomed to using.

I also have many Z-Wave switches, outlets, and modules throughout the house. As a normal switch, they work just fine. The problems come from automation. I use Homeseer and they don't always obey the automation commands; not often, but it does occur.

Good luck,
Kevin

I have a house full of INSTEON devices that have been in place 5+ years. I had a few at first that failed but they were replaced under warranty and I haven't had any failures since. I don't know what your idea of a "misfire" is, but I almost never have any linked device failures - for instance a 3-way configuration where the switch doesn't actually turn on the linked load. I think the last time that happened was a year or so back.

Of course, with any power line technology you have the possibility that signal noise will be a problem. Many INSTEON devices are now dual-band which, along with retries and acknowledgements, seems to make it even more reliable.

2 years ago I started outfitting my house with Simply Automated UPB switches. I now have over 20 switches in my 1280 sq ft house. For the most part they work just fine, however there are a few nuisances. The biggest is that if you hit two switches at the same time, one of them will not work. You have to "stagger" your action to hit one then the other. Also there is not a proper controller for UPB switches. I use the Elve software and it works fine for the most part. I do run into some situations where when issuing multiple commands, or commands during the polling window will result in either lost or delayed (5+ seconds) commands. You also have to worry about phase couplers, noise, filters, etc.

My initial reason for choosing Simply Automated UPB switches was price; a normal dimmer switch costs $55 vs. all other Z-wave (and UPB) options were $120+. Now that there is a Z-wave brand Evolve which brings pricing inline with Simply Automated, and the presence of a proper controller for Z-wave (Mi Casa Verde), if I had to do it all over again I would probably pick Z-wave (however the warranty / support options for Simply Automated are top notch!). That said, I do not have any experience with Z-wave so maybe it would have its issues too. Really the best advice is to get a few switches from both camps and try them out for your situation.

I just read of another person with nothing but nightmares over Z-wave - but again, no first hand experience.

You're very correct about UPB not handling multiple transmissions at the same time - if you have two lights side by side and press them both, and they're both controlling their own load, they tend to work - but if they're transmitting links, one or both will absolutely fail. I got around this and actually increased convenience by adding in double-tap actions and scene switches. For example, in my office I have 2 switches - one for the ceiling light and one for my desk lamp - instead of hitting both on/off like I previously would've, I double-tap either one and it'll kill both (and turn off the bathroom lights too). Leaving the bedroom, I have an "exit" button that turns off everything in the room that I'd otherwise have to walk all over the room to get. And as one last safety, arming the house turns off everything in the house.

Long story short, they're a different type of switch - they're not mechanical, they're "computerized" and as such take minor adjustment - but WAF has been fine, and all our regular friends have learned to deal with them just fine. And probably the single biggest helper has been using motion sensors in the guest bathroom downstairs - that's the room people would normally walk into and screw with switches - but here they don't have to. The rest of the house, your guests are going to leave the lights alone for the most part.

I have Z-Wave with 1 Leviton Vizia RF+ dimmer and some GE plug in dimmers (discontinued Radio Shack) as well as the same thing in GE Appliance modules. Not enough to really get a feel for reliability. The Leviton Vizia+ has been operating for about 2 years now. The Appliance modules mostly turn on home theater peripheral equipment and is amazingly fast.

I am controlling my Z-Wave with a ThinkStick and Elve home automation software. It seems to work OK. The only screwups I have noted are when I do something stupid like take a dimmer out of the network improperly. I suspect that issue would be common to any of the technologies. I also belive that if you rapidly send a bunch of different commands that you can possibly have collisions. I've had good luck with that, being amazed at how fast my Appliance modules can be fired one after another with my computer, but I am suspicious that once or twice I've sent commands almost on top of each other and caused a failure.

I frankly don't think at this point it's possible to say that any of the 3 (Z-Wave, UPB or Insteon) is better than the other, just different. I'm cool on Insteon myself due to the number of Smarthome switch products that I've sent to the landfill and the negatve comments I've read on the forums. Of the 2 remaining (Z-Wave & UPB), I believe the most development these days is with Z-Wave. There seems to be more Z-wave products coming on the market than there are UPB. Just my sense from surfing the forums.

Franlky, I started with UPB and discovered when installing the first one that not all of my boxes had nuetrals in them so I had to switch to Z-Wave, which doesn't require nuetral with the dimmers. Be careaful about looking into the j-box, seeing a white wire and assuming it's a nuetral. I did that and discovered when they did a switch loop down from the fixture they used the white and black wires, the white sending the hot side down, the black sending it back up the the fixture. That should be against code, IMO.

I haven't installed more Vizia RF+ dimmers as I have a bunch of PCS X-10 dimmers that are working flawlessly. Never a misfire, so I haven't spent the money to expand the Z-Wave. It could only improve it if I did, since the network would be more complete.

I really like the feel of the Vizia RF+ dimmer with it's push on/push off at the bottom feature. Takes getting used to, but now that I have it, I hate the rockers.

Here's a link to my home theater site with a schematic of my control setup.

http://www.deanejohn...sonhometheater/

Click on "Control System" to view the schmatic.

Deane

I've had Insteon at two different homes with little issues. I originally got into Insteon because I had a mix of x10 and I liked the dual compatibility. My x10 days are long over as the WAF was just too low. I have had no issues with my Insteon in my new home (18 months) and will continue to buy more as I can make the case why we need them in a certain area of the house Hands down, no qualms you HAVE to buy a controller like isy99 - it makes life so much easier. I'm just starting to integrate some z-wave since I've moved into z-wave thermostats, so I upgraded to the isy994i with the promise of the zwave module coming soon.

For me it came down to cost. At the time I started purchasing insteon it was less than 1/2 sometimes 1/4 the price of other technologies. Other technologies are dropping in cost, but (I believe) insteon is still the lowest.

Thanks for the responses, guys.
I think I'll stick to either UPB or Z-wave. I like the experiences I had with UPB & the simplicity of controlling it through rs-232. On the other hand I like the simplicity of Z-wave door lock integration, and the Vera looks to be a pretty capable controller that can be easily controlled through http calls. I may buy a few of each & give them a try.

At some point I want to try my hand at coding custom controller software for my automation system (I have a fair amount of VB/C++/Python experience) but until then I think I'll play with Premise. Should be fun!