Re: Stupid home non-automation product

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 05:50:58 -0600, "B Fuhrmann"
<b-fuhrmann-usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<12ut9p4a9et0r71@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>I just received an e-mail from Eaton Electronics about their new "home
awareness" equipment.  The term "home awareness" caught my eye.  It appears
that someone feels that automation is not needed, just being able to check
on sensors by remote control.
>
>The system are a few types of sensors (entry, power use, water leak) via a
pendant receiver that you can carry around your house or via text messages
with a cell phone.
>
>The only people I can see this being useful for is someone who gets their
kicks out of being an "early adopter" of anything, no matter if it has a
use.
>
>The equipment is using ZigBee for internal communications but it uses a
phone line to send the alerts to a central office for output as text
messages to your cell phone and you have to pay for the service.
>
>Sounds like a way to spend money on uselessness.
>
>"As an early adopter of home awareness technology, you're among the first
to be alerted of the arrival of Home Heartbeat by Eaton. The wireless home
awareness system is now available at special introductory prices on
www.HomeHeartbeat.com "

Seems, to me, to be yet another example of the stagnation of intelligent
computing in home automation.  Most activity in typical HA systems is based
on events and triggers (binary Yes/No data) to which (mostly) Boolean logic
is applied to arrive at binary outcomes (ON/OFF, Alarm/NoAlarm)

Typically, the messiness of the real, analog world is rearranged and
cleaned up to simple Yes/No OK/NotOK 0/1 conditions before or shortly after
the data gets to (eg) a home automation controller. This leaves the
controller with only the simple task of comparing states with rules to
create actions.

For example, what HA controller or HA PC application actually logs analog
input data and uses past conditions in a rich way to determine future
actions?  (I can't think of any off hand). Until recently (and specifically
the advent of the Elk M1G), dedicated HA panels such as OMNI Pro didn't
have _any_ analog inputs; all input was converted to binary outcomes before
arriving presentation to the controller.

Some HA controllers (ADI ocelot, Elk MM443) can/could read analog input and
perform mathematical operations on the numerical values, but are/were still
appallingly stupid with respect to archiving the data or performing
anything but the simplest statistical analysis.

The www.HomeHeartbeat.com Home Hearbeat system Bill cites doesn't even try
to act on the data, relying instead on the home owners' intelligence to act
on the data (hardly "useless", but not very advanced).

Artificial Intelligence  (AI) :  Where art thou 50 years after you were
given a name (1956) and a language (LISP in 1958)?


www.neuralhome.org
www.neuralhome.com
www.neuralhome.net
www.neuralhome.info

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.EControl.org