Seth Gordon wrote: > Is Z-Wave a worthy contender for Linux geeks looking to upgrade from X10? > > (From some googling around, it seems that ZigBee doesn’t have as many > hardware vendors signing on, and Linux support for Insteon is not very > good.)
The answer isn't straight forward. Z-Wave, as far as being a home automation protocol, is leaps and bounds ahead of X10. The same may be true with Insteon. When I looked at the home automation market a few years ago, I chose Z-Wave because it had multi-vendor support. (Insteon was predominantly supported by one vendor; I don't think that has changed.) Z-Wave also makes a clean break from power-line communications, instead using an RF mesh network. While Insteon still uses X-10 style (though improved) communications in most of its modules (some also use RF; they pitch Insteon as if every devices handles both RF and power-line, but most don't). ZigBee is a cool protocol, and more open than the others (being an IEEE standard), but there is a lack of commercial products available. Several vendors sell ZigBee modules for embedded systems, so if you are building your own gadget, you'll likely find it easier to get a ZigBee module to integrate into it. (You can get a Z-Wave development kit, but it'll cost you many hundreds to thousands.) My goal was to eventually have a system that was controlled by Linux, but despite the existence of commercial solutions, like MiCasaVerde, which open sourced bits of their code, but not the Z-Wave driver, there wasn't good support in Linux due to Z-Wave's owner keeping tight reins on the protocol. I haven't been following Linux support for Insteon, but as of a few ears ago I think it was actually better than Z-Wave, because Insteon's owner was more open with its specifications. LinuxMCE was the first sizable open source project to provide Z-Wave support, and there were a bunch of smaller hack projects, which where fairly dependent on a particular Z-Wave computer interface. The LinuxMCE code used LinuxMCE's driver architecture, which made it harder to reuse in other projects. That was followed by open-zwave[1], which was the first attempt to build a full featured interface library. I haven't checked in to see where they are at these days, but a year ago they had working beta code. 1. http://code.google.com/p/open-zwave/ In theory, you don't need to put all your eggs in one basket. It should be possible to control both Insteon and Z-Wave devices from a common Linux-based controller. Helping this are technologies like xAP/xPL[2] that provide a standard interface between home automation control software and computer interfaces. 2. http://misterhouse.wikispaces.com/xAP+and+xPL+-+Getting+started A couple of years since I bought my first Z-Wave devices, I still don't have them under Linux control. (I need to take another look at the available projects to see where they stand now.) I'm generally happy with the quality and reliability of the hardware. It still feels like Z-Wave adoption by hardware vendors is progressing slowly. There is a vastly greater variety of devices available for X-10, though I don't see that as a meaningful comparison, as in my experience X10 had such poor reliability as to be useless. -Tom -- Tom Metro Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA "Enterprise solutions through open source." Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
