Recently, I had to upgrade my lighting system after the bankruptcy of the X10 corporation. Least to say, I was not particularly happy about that, selling my old X10 items on eBay has significantly reduced the financial blow to upgrading to this system.
After comparing Z-Wave to Insteon for several weeks, I decided to go with Insteon.
Insteon has Dual-Band devices that communicate over the powerline as well as radio frequency (RF). This is to make sure the command gets there no matter what. Even though I have a smaller home, the house was built in the 50’s and the electricity wiring in the house is not up to a code that would be standard today. Hence the need for Dual-band.
While I was researching, I found “Mobilinc Pro”, this product has a plugin that allows Tasker to communicate with my central controller (SmartLinc 2412N). The support department there has been phenomenal with answering my questions, even providing me with some assistance with the Tasker scene development.
Mobilinc’s Tasker plugin is still in it’s infancy but it has the proper functionality to turn lights on or off, they are working on status, but for the meantime, I used AutoRemote and EventGhost to send information to the phone when the light turns on. I’ll post a video of the whole thing in action after I’ve done my final edits to the Tasker scene.
Mobilinc can be downloaded from the Play Store or the iTunes store, here is the address for the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobileintegratedsolutions.mobilinc.pro .
iTunes doesn’t have Tasker, or anything remotely close to what it can do. Sorry iFolks.
As for Z-Wave, they will probably have a place in my home if I wanted to get deadbolts but I’ll have to wait until there is an update to the ZWave protocol for security reasons.