Bill - in one of your responses, you advised someone to spend the extra few dollars for the PCS scenemaster switch over one of the switchlincs - what are the advantages of the pcs vs. switchlinc. Also, what is the availability of the custom laser etched labels for the SoftTouch keypads?

Thanks for all you help!!
Dave

Dave,

The advantages over switchlinc are price, reliability, superior noise rejection and warranty. The disadvantage is the lack of two-way communications.

As far as I know the Soft Touch keypads are still not available although I don't understand why, the OEM manufacturer has had these available to their dealers for a couple of years.

Bill
www.homeautomationnet.com

What will the two-way communication allow me to do? (Please bear with me, I'm new to this stuff!!)

A 2-way switch can transmit so you can poll it's state (from controllers that support polling) or, with some 2-way devices, you can set it to transmit it's unit code when activated manually.

2-way receivers can work very well when you need the functionality but you shouldn't use there everywhere as each 2-way receiver will cause some attinuation of the X10 signal which will eventually start causing problems. For that reason, Switchlinc makes a non-2-way version of their switches, as well as the 2-way version, so you can put 2-ways where you need them but not everywere else.