Re: Controllerless distributed automation

["David Paterson (Pixi)" <david.paterson@xxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:53:26 -0000, you wrote:

>Each device sends a broadcast to every other devices whenever it
changes
>state (either because it decides to because it wants to, or because it
is
>manually triggered.)
>
>Each device "listens" to every broadcast, and then tries to
work out wheth=
er
>it needs to change state.

That's sort of similar to what I've been thinking of.  For some types of
event you would want messages broadcast, but for others they just need
to be sent to one, or sometimes several, other known devices.

>Rather than making this determination based on a set of preconfigured
rule=
s,
>it instead builds up a "historical usage profile" using
KnowledgeBase
>techniques.
>
>The downside is that you spend the first few weeks having to change
>everything manually. The upside is that you don't have to think about
it.

Again, I've had similar ideas, and this is sort of how they'll figure
out who to talk to for the non-broadcast message cases.

>I gather that some of the high-end CEDIA stuff now works this way.

I'll have to find out about that.  it's a system I'm not familiar with,
but maybe there's an off-the-shelf solution that'll save me a lot of
work?  Probably very pricey though, if it's "high-end".

>It does somewhat rely on having _all_ the inputs avaialble: eg IR, RF
from
>legacy controllers, thermostats, all light switches _broadcasting_
state
>changes, occupancy detectors, volume detectors...

Long term I'd be hoping to have a complete set of devices (pretty much
like the full X10 range) but I'll probably spend a lot of time bodging
"interface modules" to hook into existing units for a good long
time.

The more I think about it the more interesting challenges I see to
solve, but at the same time it looks more and more like a really smart
and powerful way to do things.

DP

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