Last summer (2011) Radio Shack ditched Schlage-Link locks, cameras, bridge and Trane thermostats from their inventory. I had no qualm with this since the monthly fee for an under-performing controller product was simply too outrageous.
Then in late summer-fall, Home Depot apparently stopped carrying Zwave products including the GE/Jasco line lighting controls - switches, dimmers, appliance controls, remotes, etc and the ZWave thermostats. They never carried the ZWave Schlage locks.
They don’t carry the Leviton/Vizia RF ZWave products either. It seemed at the time that ZWave was too complicated of a product for them to get their head around for some reason.
Right around Thanksgiving our Lowe’s stores did a “reset” of their shelf space. It seems that the ZWave section has been thinned-down a little. For example, they don’t carry the ZWave outlets or the Home theater remote anymore. The remote without the LCD is been on sale, but not on clearance.
Before Christmas, the local FRY’s re-arranged their store. They had some X-10 and Insteon products and ZWave - Hawkings, Wayne Dalton, GE/Jasco and Intermatic. I’m hoping to see the home automation section again. Their home theater guys know nothing about ZWave.
Best Buy - nothing. Nothing for their home theater section.
Is all of this going to become Internet only? In this day and age of electric bills going through the roof, you would figure that taking control would make sense. What’s your take?
It isn’t X10 or even similar as it is a radio based solution like Z-wave. But as X10 is now dead (the parent company folded) this seems to be a replacement in that it is cheap and appears to have been created in the UK much like X10 was (X10 was created in Scotland).
Component costs are around half the price of ZWave kit and there’s actually some 3 pin mains sockets which nobody has made for the UK yet for ZWave.
Siemens appear to have licenced it and it’s this kit that you see in B&Q in the UK (A DIY store in many towns). They even have dimmable energy saving bulbs where the dimming is done within the bulb and not the switch. It means it actually works
Given my time again, I might have gone down this route. Not because it’s better than ZWave but the cost is better and it seems less complicated than ZWave which I think is too geeky and involved for the average punter.
I have never really seen a large showing of Zwave devices in retail. Even back to the Intermatic stuff, you’d see some things, somewhere for several months at full retail prices and they wouldn’t promote it or advertise it, and of course then it wouldn’t sell. With shelf space being so important in retail, some new product that nobody knows about and that isn’t selling, is the first thing to go.
Kudos to those that have reaped the goodies from the periodic liquidations. As along as we keep buying it, there is a market. Through all of this, Zwave isn’t going anywhere and is here to stay for now, but I guess it is a product family better suited for online retailers and specialists. I bet Best Buy would do pretty well dedicating a corner of each store to home automaton and have experts on hand, unfortunately they did, it’s called Magnolia and will cost you an arm and a leg.
Shady,
I did find the Magnolia store here in North Seattle near Greenlake. It looks mostly like toys for the 1%. They have never heard of ZWave there. Their home integration products are all Wi-Fi based. And you were not kidding about the arm and a leg - $150 for an appliance switch or dimmer. $250 for a Wi-Fi thermostat. And, get this, $5000 gets you a touch-screen panel. There’s really nothing impressive about their offering.
I will continue to buy ZWave goodies from Lowe’s. I’ve had some great conversations with their electrician. He’s happy to have learned about Micasaverde Vera. ;D
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