Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Insteon

Belkin WeMo Light Switches Arrive This Summer - A Competitor to Insteon?

We're just getting started with an Insteon home automation system. There are a few light switches in our house that I'd like to be able to control remotely (for example, our outdoor lights are accessible only from the garage), and there are others that I'd like to be able to control in tandem - for instance, setting "scenes" in our living room, dimming certain lights and turning others off when we watch a movie.  Just recently, however, Belkin announced some additions to their WeMo system - including light switches - that may make the system a plausible alternative to Insteon. Let's compare and contrast.

Getting Started with Insteon Home Control

Who says we can't multitask? On to Project 3!  We made a return trip to Best Buy, and learned the prices had essentially doubled on most of their SmartHome Insteon products. ( I must have happened across a huge sale last time - and I have before/after photos of the pricing to prove I wasn't imagining things !) Anyway, I'm sure we'll be picking up most of this stuff at BBY, but in the meantime, it's off to eBay, where I picked up a 2414 SmartLinc central controller (retail $99) for $22. This will allow us to control all connected Insteon switches with an iOS device - which was the entire point of this enterprise from the start. The dimmer switches will be a bit more expensive, at $40-50 each, retail - and our home theater room alone is going to require 4. And a couple of LampLincs to make sure our table lamps get with the program. Back to eBay! We're also going to need (want) a KeyPadLinc in order to control "scenes" - i.e., "all...