smart waste

This week's ewaste is actually a grab bag of broken and obsolete junk from Smarthome.

Here's an old one: Anything with 'science' in the name isn't. I know few computer scientists who would disagree too strongly. Here are two more: Anything with 'open' in the name isn't. Run from anything with 'smart' in the name.

Smartphones seem to be thriving in spite of their name. Some things do. Not 'smart homes'.

I never really understood why large retailers private label otherwise popular products. I

recall the Sears Video Arcade II. This was a VCS-compatible box with bad controllers.

Casual users would never know that it wasn't a lame knock-off. It was actually a rebadged

Atari 2800. It wasn't cheaper than the VCS. Users were never quite sure that it would actually

play VCS games. Sears never offered a large collection of games for sale in stores anyway.

Sears has been rebranding power equipment for almost as long as they have been selling it. For years, they let shoppers in on the ground floor of home automation by rebadging X10 modules and switches. Sears wasn't alone. Stanley, Radio Shack, IBM, and others all slapped their labels on X10 products at one time or another. Only in the case of Radio Shack could this have been a pick-up for brand image. These products were not good.

X10 wall switches were especially bad. I've included a explanatory illustration. The fact that it required one was not good news. They advertise that it works with your standard switch plate. That was worth a mention. It made it easy to gloss over other details. It looked nothing like a wall switch. It didn't work in a very obvious way. It didn't feel good.

Classic X10 wall switch (explained)
Photo credit: X10.com
Used without permission

The X10 protocol itself may have been dodgy and the X10 wall switches may have been confusing. I never had any actually die. Though they are now more than thirty years old, they are still compatible with X10 controllers. They are still for sale on Sears' site though they are now sold through sears.com by X10 itself.

In 1992, a California company decided to actually wear the 'smart' mantle. It seems to be working. smarthome.com is still in business. Smarthome did and does sell X10 gear through a catalog and over the web. They eventually decided that there was a market for an X10-compatible wall switch that looks and feels like something a human would understand. I owned about a dozen of these. The last came out today.

Smarthome sold these as 'switchlinc' switches. They were available as dimmers for dimmable lights and relay switches for other loads. They improved on X10 gear in form and function. Not only were they operable without training, they had EEPROM instead of plastic code wheels. They were (nominally) bi-directional. Smarthome sold a related product called a 'keypadlinc'. These have six or eight buttons to trigger home automation actions. Some of these modules include a local module and can use some buttons to control a local load.

In my experience, these smarthome X10 modules were much less reliable than their actual X10 predecessors. Of the dozen or more that I owned, all failed in less than eight years. Light switches are not supposed to fail.

I recently installed several new switchlinc modules from Smarthome as replacements. These speak a new protocol 'Insteon' devised by Smarthome. I have been using these newer Insteon switches since about 2008 and have had no failures so far though I am on my third Insteon modem.

Wall (switches) of Shame
Photo credit: Your correspondent

X10 would never have appealed to me without a computer interface. I think I have owned almost every X10 computer interface ever produced. I had the original CP-290. I connected it to a Commodore 64. It was terrible. For a time I regretted only being able to throw it away once. I got another chance when I got a second CP-290 to connect to an IBM PC clone. I had the TW523 two-way interface module. That was reliable but very timing sensitive. I got an X10 CM11a bi-directional computer interface directly from the company and I wrote some bad Linux software for it. That flaky module had several flaky variants. I tried all of them.

X10 actually managed to get an interface right some years later with the CM17A 'firecracker'. This was a cheap and nasty little RF dongle that sat on your serial port. It transmitted commands to one of the old fashioned X10 RF bridges used by remote controls. The device itself was reliable. It absolutely could not hang -- partly because it had no state to speak of. Driver programs had to bit-bang X10 RF packets

to it directly through DTR and RTS.

I threw away modems because they died or they sucked. I have only recently started throwing away modems because they became obsolete and I'm not happy about it.

I ordered a new Insteon appliance module this year to replace a twenty five year old X10 appliance module that controlled my Christmas tree for many years. I plugged it in and tried to pair it with my Insteon modem and 'Indigo' controller software. Failure. I bought an upgrade to Indigo. Failure. Failure with a better message that told me my modem was not new enough to control the firmware on the appliance module.

Huh? The appliance module has been basically sorted out as a concept for thirty four years.

I bought a new modem from Smarthome and life appears OK for THIS MOMENT. Insteon was obviously never fully baked if we're still having a think about how to build an appliance module or a modem capable of talking to one.

I now have a 2413 modem. It appears to be working with Indigo. It uses a reliable FTDI USB to serial bridge. The FTDI drivers for Mac are mature. I just replaced a 2414U modem. I have no idea why it had to go. How this thing couldn't speak to a christmas tree is bafflement incarnate. It weighed 280g! It should speak with gravitas! The 2414U had earlier been replaced by a 2412U modem. I don't know what modem lockup problem that was intended to solve but I don't think it took. The 2414U went back into service when the 2412U died. The modem instability may have been caused by one of the last of the original switchlinc switches on its way out.

I tried the 2412. I tried the 2414. I'm hoping the 2413 is the Goldilocks modem. I'll put my numerological superstition aside and I'll keep you posted.

I'm more concerned about upgrade's evil handmaiden obsolescence. With each modem upgrade, I unplug a box from the wall and throw it away. I haven't yet been told that I need to replace an Insteon wall switch because it is obsolete. This most recent appliance module experience makes me think that day is coming.