Insteon Questions

I was looking at the Insteon technical info and was surprised that most SmartHome Insteon modules will still use power line transmission only for commands, etc. Will we still have the same problems that X10 has in areas of line noise, excessive signal attenuation, external commands coming in from other homes, etc? It's not clear how Insteon will be a better solution than X10.

[matt (support)]

Hi Ken,

There are several reasons INSTEON is more reliable and better:

  - It uses BPSK modulation, which is more noise resistant
  - It is a mesh network -- all modules are digital repeaters (the more you have the better, which is the opposite of X10 modules). Note the modules are repeaters and not just signal boosters (the latter amplifies noise as well as valid data).
  - All commands are ACK-d and retried if they fail
  - The bit rate is *much* higher

External commands coming from other houses shouldn't be a problem since they will be ignored by your devices (they won't be linked in). Additionally, all INSTEON devices have unique addresses. You don't have to try to guess an unused house code.

Matt