I am kind of taken aback by the growing wireless frequency clutter and was wondering if there are any smart plugs or other home automation devices that are controllable by just using the energy lines - like powerline. I mean you already have a rather reliable cable connection - why not just use it?
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X10 lol.
Sounds like someone misses X10 smart home devices. You can still install it today but the protocol from the 1970s is rather dated.
There are limitations with signals over power lines including some problems communication across circuits in a breaker panel, or signal leaking out to neighbors through the main power grid. These can be remedied but there are probably reasons why X10 isn’t in high demand these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)
Insteon and x10 both did this. There just aren’t enough benefits.
I have like 70 Lutron Caseta devices in my home (in a congested city with a UniFi WiFi system (4 APs) and a zigbee and a zwave network) and they’ve literally never once dropped a single command signal. Ever.
I think wireless congestion can be an issue for sure, but clearly there are ways to engineer around it that don’t involve powerline. Powerline brings too many of its own issues (latency, and poor signal reliability come to mind).
X-10 and the problem is it’s one way no confirmation or query of state. Lots of issues with this protocol signaling over powerline is not that easy it’s a pretty dirty place with all sorts of noise.
Use a better mesh. Z-wave 900mhz is pretty clear, casetta 400mhz as well it’s just zigbee and thread that picked 2.4ghz mostly as it means same radio worldwide while it’s slightly different frequencies so a AU zwave can not talk to US one.
Insteon.
When combined with a Universal Devices hub it’s great. Been running my house on it since 2012 without issues other than the short insteon shutdown scare.
Trivial to get it all working with home assistant as well with the benefit of the scenes being programmed into the devices and thus they work instantly.
What exactly are you taken aback by? The only issue you’d possibly run into is on the 2.4ghz band, but even that is rare.
mostly that the zigbee as an open standard is on such an unfortunate range and the reports of it interfering quite too often with wifi
Zwave is in the 900MHz band clear of everything else you care about.