Although rare I must also admit that I'm bascially happy with AHP bought my first unit about a year ago it was defective putting out a tremendous amount of RF interference so much so that it completely blocked my DS7000 x10 security system, well the second unit I received has issues x10 support has determined it has a hardware problem and must also be replaced my timers are all being executed 2 to 3 minutes late, so I'm in the process of packing up this unit for a replacement took a week to receive an RMA for this order I was starting to think x10 didn't want to honor their own warranty. All in all even with all the problems I think this hardware/software really has promise although I'm really glad I waited a year I had a two year warranty to actually hook it up just couldn't have gone through all the frustrations the initial buyer had to put up with, timers not working ect. I don't know who was responsible for the early release of this hardware/software but they should be fired! the initial release was just junk. Give em another 6 months to a year and hopefully they might get it right. x10 wants to do everything on the cheap including their programing guess they haven't learned you get what you pay for. The only drawback of the Smarthome stuff is that as far as I know you can't integrate your cameras into the interface and there's no internet support that's why I guess I'll have to stick with the x10 stuff for now. Here's a few comments from other users from the PC Magazine article.
Cj
My regret is that I can't give this thing 0 stars! It was released way too soon. It is still not ready for production. They update the software every couple of weeks. They might fix one or two bugs, but introduce five new ones. I always thought PC Magazine was better then this, they apparently did not actually try this out, only looked at the press release from X-10. I sent mine back. Anybody with any sense would do the same, or better yet, not buy it at all!
The X10 folks should be ashamed of themselves for selling this as production software. The good news is that they are rapidly fixing identifiable bugs. I will applaud them for that. They should soon have a good piece of software, at the expense of their customers. It took several customer support excursions to get my video capture system working. I then discovered that a driver recommended by the 'Windows Automatic Update' service would blow my video capture device off of the air. I have recovered again with the help of x10 customer support. I now discover that the 'preset dim' commands used by several other manufactures are considered obsolete by x10. I have a TempLinc (SmartHome) temperature sender that is accurate and works well in controlling heating and cooling. X10 decided that this sender was obsolete when they did away with 'preset dim' codes. Today I decided to scrap my CM15A and Active Home Pro software for the more friendly SmartHome 1132CU USB interface. I will need to buy still more software. For me X10 ActiveHomePro is now obsolete.
Yes AH Pro has had its problems, but it seems like some people have had it worse off than others. For me it works quite well. I can't say there haven't been any problems but it meets my needs. There are more expensive systems that are better, but for the price, it really is quite good. There are still a few features that I would like which they don't support yet and the hardware design is a little weak but overall I would say it is a good product for someone who wants to try home automation on a limited budget.
