Re: EIB versus CBUS

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

when we looked at this, I found EIB impressive / robust, on every
level, with several really top-quality suppliers (so it'll likely be
around a while & continue to grow, plus go deep - you can already get
a full suite of white goods that intelligently interface with it, and
the list of modules is enormous), but it's but expensive, needs
better German than we have, for us to get on top of it (focus so far
has really been on the German & allied markets, including Eastern
Europe, etc), and no-one on this forum had much experience of it
(it's really aimed at professional install - not necessarily a
downer, because we've met at least two professionals who are clearly
ace, really understand it, and can really make it sing - if we were
rich, and could afford having them support it post-install, for
updates, mainly, we'd have jumped at them) ... ... C-Bus, OTOH, I
found similarly expensive, but seemingly less robust, and far less
comprehensive (though also growing), but with everything in English
(well, Australian), lots of people on the forum had at least some
experience of it, and the marketing strategy was aimed not only at
professionals, but also the likes of us ... ... we also looked at
Comfort (much more limited, and less robust, but still seeming pretty
good), which could interface with both EIB & C-Bus ... and X-10,
which was difficult to take seriously (not at all robust) ... ... and
then David persuaded me to look also at Idratek, and after a while I
realised it probably had the best approach (initial impressions from
the web-site did not convince, probably because of my pre-
conceptions, but David & his blog, & then Karam, after a while,
did,
it being built on industrial experience, but only after having
stepped-back & really thinking it through, before diving-in), for a
really good HA system (in the sense of component failure strategies,
settings accessibility, system flexibility, growability & future
adaptability, context sensitivity, ability to do complex things like
true presence sensing, ability to integrate with other systems, like
mobile devices, programming efficiency, speed of response, quality of
support, affordability, and just plain do-ability) ... ... in other
words, I was a late convert !

'must be said, though, our approach is to put function first, then
aesthetics (there's usually a way to sort appearance out, in our
experience, 'though it probably helps that our colour-schemes work
mainly with whites, of various hues) ... and we've yet to get it
installed (this winter, hopefully, barring any more crises, because
the outside, we think, needs just a few more weeks) ... which is a
big caveat, of course, 'though I've done my homework & I'm pretty
confident - plus, it's not just David now, but also Paul & Jon, and
some others, who've got into it & are pretty pleased ...  !!

anyway, that's how we saw / see it !

HTH

Chris


On 4 Oct 2007, at 22:37, Rob Heyes wrote:

> Any reason why you've not considered Idratek? Or have you
> considered it and rejected it?
>
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> shieldsauk wrote:
>> I'm building an extension and am trying to decide between EIB and
>> CBUS and also possibly
>> upgrading the LD11's in the rest of the house.
>>
>> I feel that I have a pretty good idea of the capabilities and
>> requirements of CBUS having
>> spent numerous hours reading the installation and configuration
>> documentation, however
>> I don't know much about EIB.
>>
>> Does anybody have any experience of this and ideally CBUS as a
>> comparison?
>>
>> A few specific questions I have regarding EIB are:
>>
>> 1) The bus cable appears quite expensive compared to CBUS cable so
>> I'm guessing this
>> means it's not cat 5, Is this the case?  I had cat 5 run to each
>> light switch when we rewired
>> some years ago and l'd like to be able to use it!
>>
>> 2) Is programming of devices covered by the EIB standard or unique
>> to each manufacturer?
>> It's all very well having kit from several sources interoperate
>> but not so good if I have to
>> keep buying programming tools. Ideally I'd like to be able to
>> purchase an ethernet gateway
>> and do all the programming via that from my PC.
>>
>> 3) The CBUS literature makes a lot of noise about soft start on
>> dimmers, I would have
>> thought that this would be pretty much standard these days - after
>> all LD11's have it at
>> less then 30 quid a throw. Or do I need to check for each device.
>>
>> 4)  I'm currently looking at the Hager TEBIS TX range. Anyone know
>> if these are any good
>> or can recommend somebody else that does multi channel dimmers?
>>
>> TIA
>> Alan Shields
>>
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