Hacker News Reader

Comment by armagon | Hacker News Reader

The previous generation of smart home devices was called X10, and it used signals over power lines.

I gather it was:

- slow

- might have required you to make a connection in your circuit breaker

- and was designed in the 1970s, when home electrical systems weren't very noisy (apparently all the switching power adapters we have today make a ton of noise and make it hard for the signal).

I don't see why something newer like this couldn't be done -- we have powerline modems, right? Probably not as fast as wifi, but it does go where it is needed and requires physical access to hack.

Some devices are using Zigbee (a different wireless system), but I understand it was developed without security and isn't hard for third-parties to hack into.

View on HN

> - slow

Yep, that's inherent.

> - might have required you to make a connection in your circuit breaker

That's one way to do it. Another way just requires a bypass and filter at your circuit breaker what is much simpler and doesn't have to connect anywhere else.

> - and was designed in the 1970s, when home electrical systems weren't very noisy

This is where things got worse, and then they got better. Yes, electrical lines are very noisy, but the 200Hz - 100kHz band is only getting cleaner. Electric motors will interfere with it, so you may need a filter on your blender (but even it is much better now), but this is the prime band for electrical wiring.

Also, on chasd00 comment that it requires capacitors bypasses on transformers, that's only true on the higher bands, and only on devices you want connected to the network. So only the smart devices need to adapt.

To expand on the circuit breaker item above: Because most of the outlets in your home are split between two phases of AC, it meant that the X10 transmitter would only be able to talk to half your power outlets (and you didn't know which half ahead of time), unless a phase coupler was wired into your breaker box that would repeat the signal on the outlets connected to the other phase.

I remember X10! The whole "over powerline" thing was a real possibility back in the day but it required all transformers to have a small modification done to them and that killed it IIRC. You could certainly do it in your home though.

Insteon is the closest thing to a successor to X10, and it still supports a lot of the old protocol. You can certainly setup an insteon system for basic stuff (Scenes, etc) without an Internet-connected hub at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com