Today’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition showed the Girard family from Voluntown, CT and the incredible hardship and losses they faced. 
As is typical of the show, they received a beautiful, heavily customized house to help turn things around for the family.
One of the things that I thought was really neat about this particular house was the whole-home automation they received, allowing the Girard family to control lights, thermostats and other appliances in the house. It turns out the automation technology used is Insteon, probably the best system available today.
Insteon has been gaining ground on its competitors for years now, partly because of the new devices they keep introducing while competitors like Zwave stagnate, and partly because of the strong enthusiest community there to provide support. 
A great example of this community spirit can be found in the Insteon reviews like this one, where you can really feel the passion the author has for the technology.
I imagine the Girard family will really appreciate the ability to adjust the lighting, fireplace etc in response to things like turning on the TV or getting home after work – I know I do. After years of using X10 and thinking it was better than nothing but not good enough, Insteon does everything we need and didn’t require us to hire an expensive electrician or home automation specialty company.
Best of luck to the Girard family moving forward!
March 10th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I too have been in the X10 world for a long time and home started to migrate to Insteon. Ironically it looks like we’re both in the Calgary area. Have you found a local insteon vendor? I’ve bought from Smarthome and from Aartech, but it would be nice to deal with someone face to face.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
There have been rumors of home depot carrying the cheaper version of Insteon for a while now, but I haven’t seen them on any recent trips there. I usually buy from Smarthome as well.