Free at last of the wonky Wink! After reading the reviews and such, I decided to plunk down my dosh and get an HE. To say the hyperbole was an understatement would be unfair. I find the HE everything the hype promised it to be. Yeah, I was fairly lost for a couple of days, but the fantastic support of this community got me up and running a lot faster than I thought.
I've been playing with home automation since the early X10 days. It worked but it was none too stable and pretty confined. As advertised, Hubitate is only limited by your imagination.
How early? I have a bushel-basket of the early model when they were sold by Leviton. There's a couple of table-top alarm clock style controllers and one wall-mounted (6 devices, IIRC) later version.
Mid-to-late 80s. I got rid of all of it as more sophisticated stuff started to make its way into the market. I tried selling it, but NOBODY wanted it. I wound up giving it to a thrift shop.
I miss the X10 days! Could get a 6-pack of light modules for $30-$40. I had about 30 links saved for all the sales they would have. Once X10 had a sale, the link worked for years, lol. At the peek, I probably had around 75 X10 devices.
That's one technology that really required a bag of tricks to keep working. But when it did it was like magic. Troubleshooting it kept me on my toes, keeping track of signal suckers, dead zones requiring repeaters and couplers. And just when you got it working, a new type of light bulb would make it all go to hell. Still fond of the stick-a-switch (the Lutron Pico of its day); I always wondered why they haven't updated the Z-Wave GE 45631 to fill that void.
