Complaint Review: X10

I spent many hundreds of dollars due to my impression that everything would work seamlessly. Nothing works well at all or as intended. 

Door and window sensors hardware appears to work, but has some issues with false alarms and trying to occupy the same radio wavelength as another sensor on the X10 system. This has been a reoccurring problem that complete system reinstallation has fixed, but only does so for a limited time. Because sensors sometimes get confused or keep forcing them to install on the same frequency the front door sensor may be recognized as the downstairs window sensor. 

Motion sensors mounted hardware appears to be simple to install, but it is deceiving. You think you have installed it, but it often will take over a frequency already assigned to a window or door sensor. The software interface and rule setting was overly complex and unusable. 

The VGA camera hardware provided weak and unreliable film footage as it suffered from severe radio signal interference. The ability to manage the cameras via the X10 software was extremely difficult and not integrated into ActiveHomePro, but another software. Again, this was a big disappointing product. 

The control box hardware is at the very least partially broken. After months of chiming whenever the front door open the chime stopped working. I believe the speaker that chimes is also the speaker for the siren of the security system.  

X10 is not viable due to the repeating and perplexing problems, bizarre radio signal problems, the extremely difficult software interface, and the constant breaking of the system; this is not recommended as a viable or reliable security system. 

The reliable of this software is in serious doubt and the system is prone to false alarms. I do not feel comfortable with this system.  About 1.5 years ago I had the system partially working and while at my mother's house it rang us up claiming that a door or window sensor had been opened. Upon return to our house we discovered NOTHING amiss and that all the doors were still locked and all windows were secure. This system is prone to false alarms. 3-4 years ago when I was first working on this system that it woke us up 1-2 times in the middle of the night with false alarms as well. This system has a history of false alarms and is guaranteed to disrupt our sleep for no good reason. Also, without a working siren the control box is fairly useless. We cannot be alerted in the middle of the night of an intruder without a working siren.

I have literally spent 100-120+ hours trying to make the X10 security system consistently and reliablly work. Each time I have installed it I have only been able to make it PARTIALLY work and then we ended up turning it off when it started to malfunction and act up. The software triggers on Active Home Pro Never worked as intended. Overall the X10 security products are horrible and do not work as advertised.