X-410 Industrial Web-Enabled Controller, 4 Relays, 4 Digital Inputs, and Temperature/Humidity Monitor (Industrial Line Power 9-28 VDC)

This company has been around for a long time. I have purchased many of these over the years. They dont fail and some have been turned on for > 5 years without rebooting.

I use a lot of these on projects. They are a wonderful IP control. I currently have a Google script running to check calendar appointments to turn on relays based upon a business need!

Solid product so far. Currently using this in an emergency pull station in a factory, to control lights and audio alarms. Configuring the logic was pretty easy, and I was able to do everything that I needed to do. I think I had everything set up in less than an hour, which more than beats most PLC systems that I’ve used. I’ll definitly be looking to use more of these to replace a lot of older industrial systems and PLCs. If I had to choose to change anything, it would be a little more simple setup for remote access or email notifications, but I guess that’s the price you pay to not have it go through a cloud, which I think is cool feature. I might use these to monitor some freezers for another client. Overall great product.

Great device for simple automation projects. Reasonable cost, good support. We have purchased 3 CBW X series devices so far. 5 stars!

We have used several of this company's products to control and/or to turn equipment 'on' and 'off' over the internet. In this case, we needed to remotely control an antenna rotator and needed a channel to turn the rotator 'on/off', a channel to select which direction (Clockwise or Counter Clockwise) to rotate and a channel to actually 'engage' the rotator function. A nice feature of this device is the ability to program any of its 4 channels for either a straight 'on/off' function or for a 'pulse' function of programmable duration. As we had two channels available, we programmed these channels for 2 and 10 second pulses, respectively, giving us the ability to remotely command 2 second, 10 second 'rotations' or, alternatively, to simply enable the 'rotate' function until we again disabled it. The unit is comparatively easy to program, doesn't require a steep learning curve and provides reasonable security against hackers.

Having a way to monitor power, generator operation, and temperature and get email alerts when status changes is just what this device is good for. Customer help desk very knowledgeable of their product, and very helpful. I have in the past used the X310, and this was the first X410 I have used. It sets up a bit different and is the reason I called support.

Excellent Excellent and meets my needs Fast response, and synchronizes the clock with many sites, easy to use, and can be accessed through the internal network

I’ve used ControlByWeb devices since 2013 to automate my small hotel so I am quite familiar with their products. It’s great to see them available on Amazon now (at least the X-410), including Prime and International shipping. At my hotel I use these devices in various automation roles: a) To control the temperature of swimming pools via actuated 24V valves b) To control the temperature of radiant floor heating via actuated 24V valves c) To turn water pumps on/off by signaling to their variable frequency drives d) To monitor fire alarm signals generated by Kidde smoke detectors via their 9V output e) As burglar alarms by monitoring reed switches embedded in our sliding doors The great news: The CBW devices do a great job at all these tasks. They are well designed, solidly built electronic hardware and the DIN-rail form factor is super handy to work with. Their power requirements are very flexible (9 to 28V); I feed them using the 24V passive PoE from my Mikrotik RB260GSP switches (RJ45 leads 4/5 for positive and 7/8 for negative.) The devices have enough smarts built into each unit as to operate standalone, so when the LAN or the Internet is down they keep doing their core automation task unperturbed. Most typical types of automation logic can be defined just using the devices' event/rule system; if that’s not enough they have a limited BASIC interpreter built which can execute simple programs (or a more powerful Lua interpreter in the case of the X-600 device). The mobile application (available for IOS and Android) is quite handy and capable of integrating controls from several devices on the same control page. The devices can send you email alarms if something is off. The X-400 line can even send a periodic log to an FTP site, a great feature. Areas for growth: - One missing small feature in the devices’ web UI is the ability to reboot the device remotely. That combined with the fact that if you change the device’s IP address it doesn’t actually change until the next reboot means you may have a long drive to the site to change a device’s IP address. - In my 8 years as a customer CBW has never put out a firmware upgrade for any of the devices that I own. While this is a testament to the quality of CBWs coding, humans being humans there are bound to be glitches in their code and I would feel warmer and fuzzier if there was an active firmware upgrade pipeline for the devices after they leave the factory. This could even include the now commonplace “auto-update” option where the device automatically keeps itself updated via the Internet. - The range of affordable sensors offered by CBW could be broader. Their most compelling sensors in terms of price, smarts and port economy are the 1-wire sensors, but they are only available for temperature and humidity. Beyond that CBW offers analog sensors which require a dedicated analog port on a unit like the X-420, and Modbus sensors which require a X-404 Modbus master unit. It would be very desirable for CBW to offer inexpensive 1-wire sensors for water pressure, atmospheric pressure, liquid level, distance etc. (the necessary support for this in the CBW devices could be delivered via a firmware upgrade.) - While the device built-in software is quite complete and reliable, as you move out from the device the universe of complementary software/services offered by CBW is relatively thin. Notably, in the CBW product lineup the PC has no role beyond that of another dumb web page browsing device. There isn’t even a PC-based device discovery/inventory utility. A very natural and powerful complement for the CBW devices would be a PC-resident server program, a sort of “orchestra director” that could a) monitor and control all units in a site or even across sites, b) present all their controls arranged on a single dashboard, and c) run more sophisticated control programs beyond the BASIC in each unit. (In the CBW product stable this could perhaps be thought of as a richer version of the X-600 device’s software, which today is limited by the computing power of that small device.) CBW currently offers no such PC product. On the other hand the great news is CBW recently introduced a cloud-based service for its devices, surely a promising strategic direction. As of today the service is underwhelming though. Priced at a yearly $12 per device it provides very limited functionality, mainly a) letting you access each individual device’s control and setup pages from afar (i.e. basically saving you the hassle of getting a static IP address from your ISP, opening router ports etc.) and b) keeping a log of the device for a woefully short 30 days. The cloud service could offer so much more, e.g. a) hosting the said “orchestra director” capable of spanning all devices across different sites of your company, b) enabling bulk provisioning of devices including rolling firmware upgrades, c) handling the replication of a mobile CBW app configuration across all cell phones of the company’s users, etc. - While the CBW products are outstanding automation devices they are completely missing out on the massive consumer automation wave spearheaded by Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple Homekit. For example, it would be relatively simple engineering work to let you tie the CBW cloud to the Alexa cloud as done by the many Alexa-compatible smart lightbulbs, so you could tell Alexa something like “set the jacuzzi temperature to 90F” or have Alexa warn you “there is a fire alarm in the shed”. Such integration would help justify the cost CBW charges for the cloud service. And as a bonus it would give CBW products the massive exposure of showing up on all “Alexa device” searches on Amazon. (No such luck as of today.) BOTTOM LINE: It’s a great start for CBW to get their toe in the Amazon water offering the X-410. I hope other devices will follow, their entire line is of outstanding quality and deserves exposure beyond specialized industrial channels. I also hope they keep enriching their products functionality and complementary offerings to broaden their appeal.