Re: X10 still around?

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:432fe0ac.158810435@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> "Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> >> -- Is the technology  proprietary ?
>> >
>> >A serious worry with the plethora of X-10 replacements that have recently
>> >arrived.  As long as it's backed by a lot of manufacturers, it's probably
>> >OK.  I can see a lot of also-rans like Z-wave and Insteon falling by the
>> >wayside if Zigbee really catches on.  The small shop technologies are
>> >usually the first to go when something relatively standard comes along.
>>
>> ZigBee is only standardized at the radio network level.
>
>But that's an *incredible* amount of standardization!
>
>http://www.us.design-reuse.com/articles/article7675.html
>
>written by a design engineer at Motorola, describes how much of the hard
>work in creating a HAN (Home Automation Network) is taken care of by Zigbee.
>It offers every bit of what the X-10 protocol does, but with fantastic
>improvements to standby current use, transmission speed and reliability
>*and* what X-10 could never deliver: devices "born" to interoperate at the
>physical level.  Appliances that can relay their precise status, not just be
>turned on or off.  That's *way* more than we have now.
>
>Sure, maufacturers are going to try to find a way to force people to flock
>to their specific implementation, but that's usually a stupid move in terms
>of market penetration.  Look at Sony and their memory sticks, their BetaMax
>and their pig-headedness when it comes to mucking up industry standards.  It
>hurts them in overall sales in the hope of generating licensing fees.
>Someday they'll learn that other companies will simply outmaneuver them and
>deliver more standarized products like CF cards and VHS.

I agree that its likely to be beneficial but only because it lowers
development costs and reduces entry barriers although each developer will
still need to do FCC and/or CE testing.

End users and, more importantly, HA software writers will still have to deal
with a myriad of communications protocols. It will not be "one size fits
all" at that level.

RS-232 is a standard but there are thousands (millions?) of devices that
have their own protocols that run over RS-232. 802.3 and TCP/IP are
standards but devices still have their own high-level communications
protocols. If I make a mistake and send a command meant for my GC-100 to the
IP address of my laptop, the laptop is not going to output an infrared
command. Do you think that the ZigBee devices announced by Eaton (now
delayed to iron out unspecified problems) will interoperate with those from
Crestron or Control 4?

uPnP may help with this but it requires that devices expose their
capabilities and protocols to some supervisory controller (if the controller
goes down, there goes interoperability) and also has some inherent security
issues.