I think he must be mistaken, or perhaps, it depends on locality. Data over power line has been a thing for a while.
Data over power line has been a thing for a while.
Yes it has. Much longer than most people may know. It was in use long before networking over the power line became a thing. The late 70s and early 80s had home automation products sold by BSR and Radio Shack (and still by X-10) that used a 120 KHz data signal modulated over the power lines of your house to communicate with remote controllers for lights and switched outlets. I sued to have my house wired with these back in the 90s, but I've ripped it out because home automation is a pain in the ass rather than a convenience. You can still buy these controllers and modules today () although WiFi ones are much more common.
X10 was a real pain in the ass during the CFL years, but if you get decent quality LED bulbs, it's no issue. I run an X10 system here, a mix of antique control units and newer models, all controlled by Heyu running on a Pi.
The CFL noise essentially made the X10 data unreadable, and it was worthless. There are some modules you can't use anymore, like the incandescent ones that use triacs (Your LEDs hate them,) but everything else works fine, and Homelink in cars actually says to get an RF X10 controller.
Do your modules go unresponsive for no apparent reason? That was one of the biggest reasons I ditched X10 home automation. My modules would just stop responding randomly and I had to disconnect them or reset a breaker to have them come back to operational state. The controllers would also sometimes need to be reset which made it more of a hassle. I never installed the bridge module to link the two different legs of my 120V power in the house so I had essentially two different networks using wireless receiver modules plugged in on the two legs and set to the same house code so I could control all the modules no matter which AC leg they were on. It was a crappy solution, but it worked well enough for the years I had automation.
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