Gadgetory

iraq has foreseen that here with the Insteon starter kit for $119 it promises to automate your whole house except this is not the instant starter kit this is the instant starter kit the instant starter kit will give you the three items you see here this is the Insteon hub and it's sort of the control center we've seen this with pretty much every home automation network with a few exceptions you get an advice like this that plugs into your router and then talk to your devices to help automate them you'll also get these two which are lamp link dimming modules and what these do is they plug into your wall and then you'll plug the lamp in down here and that lamp will then be automatable you can turn it on and off remotely you can set it to turn on and off automatically at a certain time you can even have it turn on and off at the sunrise or sunset but what you can't do with this entire system is conditional automation and that to me is a huge drawback conditional automation is what we've seen from services like IFFT and networks like the Belkin Wemo and the next a home intelligent system and what conditional automation means is it just two different devices triggering each other so if you walk into a room and the motion detector sees you it'll turn the lights on or something to that effect this system can't do that it can only automate items in an isolated fashion you can tell the lights when it turn on you can tell the motion detector when to alert you but you can't have those items work together to perform complex automations and to me that's a colossal drawback to this entire system as for the app itself it is free for both iOS and Android devices but it does leave a lot to be desired I said before it doesn't do that conditional automation that we're looking for and this has out a lot of little things too it feels more like a beta it's not quite polished the way it should be now all that stuff that I just swept away a second ago those are all upgrades you can get to this system and if you decide to go that route there's some cool stuff that's very very useful there's this leak sensor you put this on the floor in your bathroom and if there's a leak it'll alert you to it that's great the Belkin Wemo can't do that another feature about the Insteon that we like is that it is backwards compatible with a great deal of existing x10 devices another great perk no monthly fees so if you're looking at a system like the next year you're not sold on that $9 a month feed use it take a look at the Insteon because it doesn't have that and it still offers you some pretty decent home automation options so if you have a specific need for the very specific devices that instan offers it might actually be a great fit for you but if you have any wider aspirations towards an elaborate network of automations and systems and rules and items working together in tandem to make your life easier this probably isn't the best system you can look at belkin's Wemo line of home automation products they have the Wemo switch the weevil light switch and the motion detector all of which we thought were very nice and you can get the switch in motion package for $79 that's $40 cheaper than what you get here it gives you if functionality and you can plug more than just a lamp into it you can plug toasters and coffee makers whatever you want so we think that's probably a smarter starter kit for seeing that I'm right Chris