Re: Dedicated Z-wave sites?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:45802078.733983562@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Steve" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >Looking to see if there are any dedicated Z-Wave forums.
> >http://www.zwaveworld.com/ and the Z-wave alliance sites are all I have
> >found.
>
> Interesting site. Z-Wave has been around for about 3 years and the link
> cited says it's just getting started in 2006. It repeats the same steamy
> pie-in-sky claims that have been around for about 3 years about all the
> companies that are _planning_ Z-Wave products. 3 years seems a long time
to
> be in the planning stage. I wonder where all the many millions of dollars
in
> venture capital raised by Zensys in multiple rounds of financing has gone
if
> they're just getting started with the planning in 2006?

Maybe they're like Cybergenie, the PC/Phone system folks.  They raised 20M
of venture capital and burned up close to half of it on just two trade
shows.  About two years later they imploded and vanished from the earth.
It's easy to generate press releases.  It's somewhat harder to translate
those into a widely accepted, well-functioning product.

There's some interesting reading here:

http://resmagonline.com/articles/publish/article_1319.shtml

By Alan R. Frank
Aug 23, 2006, 11:02

(some excerpts)

"The knock against Z-Wave is that it is proprietary, rather than
standards-based, and that there?s only one source (Zensys) for the
technology."

(I'm not sure that those who fault Insteon as being proprietary realize that
Z-Wave is equally so!)

"Up to 232 devices can be members of a Z-Wave network, which is a far cry
from ZigBee?s 65,535-device-per-network limit."

(Darn, that's not even as many devices as 25-year-old X-10!)

"Michael Einstein, vice president of corporate innovation for Intermatic,
placed some worries to rest. ?First of all, most people don?t even want to
change a wall switch. Less than 25 percent of America will change a wall
switch. Secondly, if you really want to do an integrated system?home
theater, home control?people aren?t really going to do that themselves.? In
other words, the need for the ?secret sauce? (integration and configuration
of relatively complex systems) doesn?t go away simply because the wires do.?

(Less than 25% of Americans are willing to change out a switch - that's
probably a high estimate, IMHO)

"Z-Wave is certainly building in the marketplace, but winners are yet to be
determined in the wireless control sweepstakes. West Technology Research
Solutions has recently updated its estimates for Z-Wave and IEEE-802.15.4
and notes that Zensys will ship somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Z-Wave
chips this year, and roughly twice those numbers in 2007."

(I remember reading about lots of companies claims of "units shipped" that
turned out to mean "shipped from one company warehouse to another."  The
accounting scams that accompany such internal shell games are well-known.
What really matters is how many of those chips actually end up in saleable
products.)

" Zensys is privately held and as shipment data is proprietary. But Shakib
implied that the right number is in the millions rather than hundreds of
thousands, and said Zensys is shipping more than 100,000 units per quarter
to each of their top customers"

("Implied" indeed.  I love how companies won't release the actual figures
but are happy to assure people the numbers are *very* good.  If they were so
damn good, they'd be happy to show proof, when they can't, they're happy to
imply otherwise.)

"Lucero does anticipate one wireless home control technology to vanquish the
others in the next five years, noting that the youthful market has room for
everyone. However, the next couple of years should give indicators of which
technologies are gaining traction. With Zigbee?s focus on the commercial
sector, its success will not be determined by the home market, but Lucero
predicted that ?for Z-Wave and Insteon, success in the home is pretty much a
make-or-break proposition.?


************************************

I still strongly believe the winner will be the protocol that appliance and
AV manufacturers are willing to embed in their products at the factory.  If
not, all the new protocols are still faced with the same old problems.  How
do I tell if I turned the TV on or off remotely if the remote's power switch
is just a toggle button?  Unless the device maker embeds some intelligence
in their product, you're still back to Rube Goldberg-ish current sensors
wrapped around the line cord and some method of relaying that information
back to a centralized controller.

The above report confirms my belief that a number of HA end-users are going
to climb into a proprietary boat that will float for a while, but will sink
and leave them stranded in another few years.  Lots of people have sought
the "golden fleece" of HA success.  Many of them have been eaten by the
Cyclops of business reality.  More are sure to end up on the Cyclopean
dinner plate, probably sooner than later.

I'm also *very* familiar (from the PC world) of the perils of basing your
product line on a sole source.  What if Zensys, after getting a little
success, decides to raise prices without limit as Intel tried to do with its
CPUs?  Will a plug-compatible, non-infringing chip appear as did the AMD
processors to quash the monopoly?  Not likely.  The PC market was immense -
that made the risk and cost of developing a non-infringing product
worthwhile.  The HA market is far too small to justify that sort of
Herculean effort.  I think when manufacturers realize that they've put all
their eggs in a proprietary basket that they don't own, they might gravitate
away from Zensys.  Just because manufacturers commit to something today
doesn't mean they won't ditch the product line as soon as the numbers turn
bad or the support costs rise beyond expectations.

--
Bobby G.