Smart Homes

Dateline: 12/01/99

Wouldn't it be great to see domestic robot vacuuming your Jetsons-style home some of these days? Domestic robots are arriving: see my previous two-part article for more info on that. As for the smart (or automated, or intelligent, or you name it...) homes, the need for specialized hardware, miles of wire and skilled installers made it hard to install and even harder to use. The centralized controller could become overloaded and slow when a lot of activity is involved - not to mention what happens when it finally goes down. Modern distributed systems, commonly used in home automation, use several processors with sophisticated sharing and scheduling algorithms. AI-related technologies are used in most of these systems, including voice recognition and generation, pattern recognition, intelligent user assistance and human-computer interaction. The energy and hence environmental saving such systems will generate are significant, especially when provided by every household in the country. An estimated 4 billion dollars is being spent on "smart home" gadgets in the USA alone. Seems that the long-awaited home-automation boom is on its start...

Future? New interfaces will be friendly and reliable, and smart home appliances will talk with people in their own language, without the need for machine language or keyboards. However, let's get back to reality: the biggest problem here is a lack of standardization agreement. Key players in home automation industry developed their own standards, like LonWorks, X-10, CEBus and similar.

X-10

X-10 was the first to be developed, originally created in modules to control lights and appliances through power lines. It is a communications "language" that allows compatible products to talk to each other via the existing 110V (or 220V in Europe) electrical wiring in the home, without the need for a costly rewiring. Simply plug or wire an X10 compatible device into your AC supply and it can communicate with any other X10 device in your house. Up to 256 different "addresses" are available, and more than one device can respond to the same signal. X10 has been around since the 1970�s so it is a tried and tested technology. However, there are much more powerful devices on the market right now, and X-10 is starting to fall behind.

LonWorks

The LonWorks standard was proposed by the Echelon Corporation. It is now a widely supported industry standard, and probably the best choice for automating commercial lighting and heating, ventilation, air-conditioning systems, and similar. Its distributed architecture allows the ultimate flexibility, so you can connect LonWorks nodes (built around "Neuron" ICs) via a variety of media: twisted pairs, power-lines, RF, optical lines, etc.

For Windows applications or any other environment that supports ActiveX controls, LonWorks Network Services (LNS) allows you to bind ActiveX controls to LonWorks objects. Similar interface is available for Java and non-Windows operating systems. IP stack is also added to the LNS, allowing for a simple bridge between control and data network. Interoperability with the new technologies,including Home API, Universal Plug and Play, and Jini, is a definitive plus. The general impression is excellent, especially for the professional user; however, network configuration can be beyond the capabilities of the typical home user, and the price is high, especially for development tools.

CEBus

Consumer Electronics Bus is an open communications standard for in home networks developed by the Electronics Industry Association (EIA) and the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association. It was in development for over a decade and approved in 1992. The standard covers communication via the 110V AC powerline (PLC), twisted pair (TP) cable, coax cable, RF and Infrared. CEBus devices communicate using the Common Application Language (CAL), an object-oriented command language. A spread-spectrum carrier and an error-recovery protocol ensure reliable CEBus power-line communications. On the other side, Home Plug and Play compatibility reduces the network-interoperability problems. General impression: it is a mature and polished home-automation network protocol, but with relatively few products currently available.

There are other standards for home automation besides X-10, LonWorks and CEBus. Let's take a brief look on several such standards, research projects, and, of course, some of the best links related to this topic.

Next page Other standards, research and links >Page 1, 2