Re: UPnP in home automation and the technology trend?

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

If you delve deeper you will find Intel and Microsoft are promoting
_DIFFERENT_ UPnP "standards". Intel initially supported the same UPnP
standard as Microsoft and most others but then pulled out and started its
own proprietary version of UPnP. Whatever it's about, it's not about
standardization. I think it should be renamed as nqUPnP (not quite Universal
Plug and Play).

Z-Wave is fundametally flawed and unlikely to succeed. Multiple controllers
don't play well together. The low number of max hops limits the size of a
network. The time required for signals to traverse the network renders ACKs
useless.

ZigBee is only standardized at the lowest level. It's unlikely that ZigBee
devices from different manufacturers will use the same high level protocols
so don't expect interoperability.

Lonworks is too expensive to garner much market share. AFAIK it's also
proprietary.

HomePlug has finalized its command and control protocol and selected the
hardware (Ytran) but it has also fragmented with at least three major groups
supporting different broadband over powerline "standards".

eyqhuang@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>It seems that big companies like Microsoft and Intel are promoting UPnP
>technology(www.upnp.org) to standardize networking of various home
>devices. However, I do not know many products supporting this standard.
>Especially in this forum, I rarely see people discussing it. To me, its
>TCP/UDP/IP based protocol stack looks too heavy for many home devices.
>Is UPnP still a viable technology? In a bigger picture, can someone
>shed some light on the technology trend of home automation area, for
>technologies such as X-10, Z-Wave, ZigBee, Lonworks?
>
>Thanks,
>-EH