Smart Home, wireless vs hardwired
Pisces House
2 years ago
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Comments (24)Exactly. That's why my phone is 8 years old. It has no bells and whistles, just calling. Since I operate a business from home, I'm not out and about as much as most, and while I'd like to have email and web options on a new phone for when I am away, I can't justify paying the $20-$30 for those options, plus more for a new calling plan. IF I use 150 minutes a months, I'm lucky. And with my current, discontinued $35/month plan, I don't want to pay more per month for the same plan just because I got a new phone. So, I will keep this one until it dies. So far, it's working great and the battery lasts 5-6 days even when the phone is on (but not used), unlike most batteries today which last 2-3 days. I looked into the pre-pay plans and that's not for me even though I don't use many minutes....See Morewired vs wireless?
Comments (16)>It's a dilema easily solved. Put in lot's of conduit.... +1! That's exactly what I did--smurf tubing from a media distribution box to all of the main rooms. If the need should ever arise, I can pull fiber-optic cable to anywhere in the house as easily as Cat-5e/6 or coax. Bigbird: >Everything in the future will be wireless Everything? No offense, but this sounds wildly optimistic, if not short-sighted. Don't get me wrong, I hate the tangle of wires. I've often said that everything should be wireless. But historically, data transmission requirements have increased even faster than Moore's law, and wired has always been at least an order of magnitude faster than wireless. There's no reason to expect these trends not to continue. The physics of radiated energy are vastly more controllable through a conductive corridor versus OTA transmission, plus you have the full bandwidth of the wire at your disposal versus limited wireless spectrum. And fiber blows them both out of the water. At some point in the not-too-distant future, I envision a whole-house high-speed digital communications backbone, supporing multiple simultaneous streams of everything from HD-TV, multi-channel audio, phone, internet, fire/flood/security, home automation, photo/video/file storage and sharing, you name it. Naturally there will be wireless interfaces to this backbone available for low-demand devices that would be too impractical or expensive to run cable for. IMHO, a fully wireless system would struggle mightily to provide this without serious latency and throughput issues. My $.02...See MoreAny "Smart" Things in Your Build?
Comments (48)On the good side.... the insteon switches have been more reliable than I expected. I haven't had a single one go out in 18 months now (I have probably 30); I expected more failure. I have had 3 or 4 times an individual switch has seemed to 'die' for an unclear reason, but each time pulling the little tab in the bottom that disconnects the power and reconnect it has fixed the issue. The basically function as I expect them to. Also on the good side they seem to function well as just regular light switches which is nice (i.e. my wife doesn't harass me about the tech because she can use normally) On the bad side... I haven't found it to be super life changing or anything; hitting a button to shut off all lights when leaving is nice. Telling Amazon Alexa with my voice to set scenes is cool, especially when lazy on the couch. But frankly I haven't used it as much as I would have thought. I guess a lifetime of turning switches on and off gets programmed in. Looking back it is probably a worthwhile upgrade from 25-30$ /ea nice dimmers, probably not worth the upgrade from cheap $1 switches. The only other not so idea thing my wiring was done for old school lighting, and my switch locations hooked up the same. But I put LEDs in everywhere. So I have a lot of spots where a single dimmer controls say 6 cans, but they suck so little power that my Insteon dimmer switch doesn't have very granular control. Basically I get a little dimming on the lowest couple of settings on the switch. If insteon had a switch for LEDs (they might now) or if you have higher loads on your switch circuits I think you would see better results. It hasn't bothered me too much as I don't want to dim much most of my lighting is just having specific sections of light fully on or fully off....See Moresmart home lighting - Lutron Caseta
Comments (8)Just this weekend I just replaced 40 rocker switches with Lutron Maestro and Casseta wireless. I also installed 6 Hue bulbs. I didn't do this in order to automate, but rather just wanted to install dimmers where I didn't have them. I ended up only using a few Casseta and mostly Maestros. Here is why. The Maestro allows you to determine a light level and always return to that light level. The Casseta has two controls, the main wired one and then a Pico remote (or the App). The Pico remote has a little circle that allows you to push it and return to the favorite dim level, similar to just pushing on the Maestro. The main switch (hardwired) at the light switch does not. So everything I walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights in the evening they went to full on, and then you have to stand there and dim them back down. (Due to it being wireless it actually takes longer than using the similar controls on the Maestro). Now I realize I could just adjust the light level using the App or an additional Pico but I wanted to be able to just run in and out of a room using the switch on the wall. Due to this current limitation, this was a deal breaker for me. I ended up only using the Casseta on only the exterior lights of my house so that I could set them up for a schedule based on dusk/dawn. Until Lutron makes the main Casseta switch perform like the Maestro, I am going to wait on the interior lights. I also have tried out the Casseta controls for a table lamp. I compared this with Hue. I ended up getting 6 Hue bulbs and have installed them in several rooms. I have tried the new 3rd gen multi bulb, the white ambience bulb, and the cheaper plain white (old gen) bulb. I ended up keeping a couple of multi and the white ambience (2nd gen) due to the ability to control the color of white, based on time of day. I am not a big fan of LED due to the color, but with the ability to get warm or cool colors with the Hue, I am very happy with it. I also like the Hue app better than the Lutron app. The Lutron app is slow to respond. Both of them also connect with Apple HomeKit but for now I have been using the apps because there is more control. Summary: I love the Hue system for table lamps. I can sit down to watch tv and dim the lamps and then have them set on a time to go off after midnight or leave them on for security. I can group them by room and control them similar to my Sonos. I like the Lutron Casseta for external lights because it allows me to schedule them and also dim them. Due to quirks of diming at the main switch as described above, I am waiting for the next gen on the Casseta for inside overhead lights....See Moreanj_p
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