Re: Dedicated Z-wave sites?

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I think that the thing limiting Z-Wave is their choice for a very low speed
>network. It's going to be hard to achieve ubiquity when your system cannot
>ever be used to even transmit media metadata, much less media data. No
>powerline technology really could even be used for either of those things
>either I don't think. Zigbee seems to be the only one that could really have
>a chance at being a fairly ubiquitious wireless control technology that
>could move up out of the trivial amounts of data involved in turning some
>lights on and off.  It could not transmit media data, but it could transmit
>metadata and some other small stuff.
>
>But, in the end, media is going to be the single biggest driver of
>acceptance of home automation technologies. Actually, it may already be.
>Therefore the system will have to use a backbone that supports media data,
>which pretty much means the ethernet network in any practical sense at this
>point. There are some other technical possibilities, but no one seems to be
>really in a position to push them (such as Firewire.)
>
>If you've already got an ethernet based automation/media backbone, it seems
>to me that anyone who can build on that backbone, providing just the small
>amount of extra stuff required, would have the best chance. For instance,
>something like Zigbee but very localized, so that you can hang several
>transmitter/receiver devices off of the ethernet network around the home to
>get very good coverage and good speed. So you can provide retrofit friendly
>support for lighting and a few other things that would benefit from being
>wirelessly controlled, but not have the data speed downside and coverage
>problems and limits on modules that come with existing wireless/powerline
>technologies.
>
>Wireless IP would be optimum in that scenario, but it doesn't seem like
>anyone has managed to get close to providing the small, cheap wireless IP
>package that would be required.
>
>The downside of course is that IP networks for the home have to get a lot
>smarter and self managing. As the vendor of a networked automation product,
>we have a fair amount of problems that are not related to our product but to
>the network itself. It's too easy to get two machines on the same address,
>or to mess up network settings or DHCP settings, or firewall settings and so
>forth.

And, if you noted the limits on Z-Wave bandwidth in Europe, in the Wikipedia
article I cited, it's even worse there.

Media is not of much importance to me - I don't even watch much TV. Since
it's not important to me, I really have no opinion on the price point needed
to penetrate this market.

However, I think you're wrong about powerline technology. 200Mbps Homeplug
AV hardware is already shipping - it does HD streaming media over the
powerlines. I've seen a post on another forum from a user who indicates it
works well.

You can find a multitude of links by googling "Homeplug AV".

http://davehouston.net
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