I know that price is an issue with designing a home automation system but I
would stay away from X-10. I work in this industry and have traveled the
world for various lighting control companies and my clients all have horror
stories about the reliability of X-10.  As mentioned before, it spits its
info out during the zero cross and is very suceptible to noise on the AC
mains.  There are many products available for boosting the signal and
filtering and for those who have managed to get a degree of consistent
reliability, it has been from investing in these add on products.  If you
can live with a system where you will frequently have to push buttons more
than once to get a response, go for it.

Check out the home automation products www.homeautomation.com.  They have an
online catalog with a lot of X-10 products.

Take a look at this new power line chip from Phonex in Utah. It will be
shipping 3rd quarter.  If it actually does what is promised it will be
incredible.

It's called the ReadyWire Power Line Carier ASIC. They're claiming it will
provide up to 15 separate simultaneous near-CD-quality audio channels over
the powerline!

www.phonex.com

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