Well we've been using z-wave now for over 18 months and we have numerous installations now and in all that time we have not had a single report of any kind of radio interference - it just does not happen in our experience. Zensys have put a lot of money and effort into the radio hardware and firmware and it hass been 100% interference free todate.
That is not to knock Insteon or PLCbus in anyway at all... but dont' rule out z-wave based on concerns over interference ;-)
I didnt' mean to give the impression that I was ruling it out. I was just saying what sort of things I was considering important in my selection of which technology to go for.
The possibilities that I know of currently are:
- CBus
- CBus Wireless
- X10
- Z-Wave
- Insteon
- PLCBus
X10 was never really a contender because it is not a reliable, biderectional protocol. What I mean is that when you press a switch on one X10 device, to turn on a light, it may end up turning the light off instead, because the light was already on and the switch did not know it. In other words, it is not bidirectional. It's also not reliable, because a signal sent from one X10 device to another may never get to it's destination, and the original X10 device will not know about it.
CBus has been discounted, because although it meets all my other criteria, I cannot install it in an existing house without a lot of expensive wall-cutting and restoration.
CBus-Wireless will fill my needs nicely, but before I use it, I need to determine if Insteon or PLCBus will fill my needs better, or if they will fill my needs just as well, but at a lower cost.
The problem I have at the moment is that I don't know enough about them to make a decision. So at present, I'm poring the net and the supplier's websites to get a better understanding of them, and the discussion in this forum is also part of the education process.
Best Regards,
Richard.