After my first attempt at home automation on the 433mhz standard that I experienced very varying results with, it’s has taken quite a while before I thought of attempting something similar again. But after a meeting with a good friend of mine that is currently working as an electrician who showed me a automated solution that he had installed, complete with controll from a Iphone app, I started wondering about checking out this subject again.
He had put together the solution with products from Møeller / Eaton (Xcomfort), and a control unit from Sensio. The solution as a total worked nicely and both the devices and the user interface appeared to be both professional and solid.
But after days looking in to both Xcomfort and Sensio’s products I found some really annoying things about this solution, I will try to list them all here:
First I could not buy the products directly from Eaton. I was forced to buy through a electrical dealer and there is no open marked and no actual competition on prices. The only price difference is what the electrical companies will charge for the actual job of installing the solution.
Anyone who has been doing some electrical work for them selfs has previously seen this type of monopoly before with such companies as Elko, which for many years have been forcing the customers to follow their demands and prices. But after companies like Nexa among several others released a bunch of products on marekedet a few years ago Elko probably started to see that they got a little competition. Maybe as a result of this, one can now buy some parts of Elko’s products in the normal electrical stores as a private person with competitive prices.
There is a law in Norway that says you can not install electrical appliances on your own, but there is no law against selling electrical appliances to the private market, so the only reason for doing such a thing is to get total control over the market and to make as much money as possible, not sure if they realize that by gaining a larger market they might sell more..
For a single Xcomfort wall switch, you must pay well over 1000 NOK, I can see truly no obvious reasons for why I have to pay this type of money when you have products such as Duewi(with a zwave module) at almost half the price and with the same certifications on the it as Elko has on their products. (at least on most of the european products I have checked by now)
I’ve heard that the controll module Sensio sells has a starting price of around 6000 NOK for the simplest module and went up an over 18 000 NOK for a control module with a few simple but necessary additional functions, and this being the only supported control device for xcomfort you will have no choice but to buy it to get remote controll from outside your home.
If you wanted to enable the remote control from outside of the house it was not possible to simply enable the control device to work against the internet from your local network, but you have to connect the device to the server sensio. To access this, you are again forced to pay Sensio a monthly fee
I took a phone call to Sensio to check if there were any opportunities to run this on a server I already had at home, they had opportunities for this but the solution was no longer something they sold because it was a difficult solution to get up and running. And NO, it was of course not possible to run this on a server I already had at home, I had to buy an entire 1U server of them (delivered unsupported from sensio).
After I calculated a bit on this, I came to the conclusion that the solution I was looking for would have cost me well over 40 000 NOK and it is only for the parts not including the installation and not including the monthly fees. After having sighed over Eaton / sensio’s retarded marketing plan and business ideas, I started looking for alternatives
Here is my comparison of the different products I have been looking on:
Reliability of the communication:
Let’s say you close a window with an engine you have attached to the window before it starts raining or turning off the heat in the apartment on your way to the airport for holidays. It’s a bit important to know that the device actually performs the task. Using 2-way communication between the devices you will get a simple answer whether it has completed or failed the task.
Security of communication:
it’s a good point that no one but you can access your power management solution either intentionally or by accident. Solutions with encryption and temporary certificates on the network traffic addressed this
Simple usage:
Home automation shall make the life of the user easier and not more complicated.
Low price:
A price that can be consistent with the product you receive
Future investments:
It is important that the products will continue to be produced even decades ahead
Interoperability:
Functions such as heating, lighting or window control are implemented with products of different vendors with expertise in their respective area. It is not acceptable to be forced to stick with one vendor and buy heating technology from a vendor with competence in lighting just to enable interoperability.
Zwave met all of my criterias and I decided to go ahead with their standard