What to do for lighting - Z-Wave or Insteon or ?

[jimn9879]

Hey guys,

I've been following LMCE for years and finally got the time to dive in.  I got my core up and one MD for about a month and am ready to dive into lighting.  I've read various threads about Insteon, but am still not sure.

I'm building a new house and had figured that I'd use insteon because I used to use X10 and like Insteon's KeyPadLincs.  Now that I've got my LMCE setup working, I was getting ready to buy some Insteon components to try it out.  The more I read here about Insteon, I'm wondering if it plays well with LMCE - it looks a little out of date.  I did some searching and it looks like many are using zwave.  Maybe Zwave is more expensive up front, but maybe cheaper in the long run?  My house will be 5 bedrooms with 18 (garage, bsmt, halls) rooms total, so that's a lot of components.  I'll start with rooms with media first.

Is there someone who had or considered Insteon who went with Zwave who could advise me about their choice?

Is there someone who uses Insteon and loves it?

Thanks!

edit: clarification

[jgalak]

I'm in a very similar boat (less the years of following LinuxMCE - didn't discover it till just recently).  It seems that the protocol of choice varied over time.  Searching the forums, it seems Insteon was hot circa 2008, Z-Wave was the top choice around 2010.  What's king of the hill these days?   If you were doing a clean-page design, which system would you go with? 

I'm mostly looking at lighting, maybe eventually door locks and window shades.  Heating will be handled in a different manner, but AC integration would be nice (room a/c at first, maybe ductless central air later on).

[tkmedia]

For new construction looks like knx is best.
Zwave is supported well in linuxmce, and we will be seeing an influx of z-wave devices in the near future.




HTH

Tim

[pointman87]

If you building your house you should wire it for KNX as wired is always more reliable than wireless. Personally I'm using NEXA with tellstick as z-wave is very expensive here in sweden. But if i would build a new house i would definitely go for KNX. In sweden KNX ups the building price about 15-20% compared to regular "dump" wiring.

BR Daniel

[pointman87]

haha tkmedia beat me to it 

[jgalak]

Is KNX available in the US?  Everything a quick google search found was in Europe.

What's the wiring for KNX?   Cat-5?  Or something else?

Is there a good guide on setting up a KNX system that anyone knows?

Thanks,
Juliean.

[Marie.O]

There are US specific KNX devices available. There are two short wiki articles: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/EIB/KNX_Basics and http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/EIB/KNX_Devices