Re: Searching for a easy communication home automation system

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

Search this forum using "Insteon 50Hz". There were several messages from
someone in India who was experimenting with Insteon in a closed laboratory
system. I do not recall the details but think he had problems because of the
50Hz.

Here are some Zigbee links...
http://www.crestron.com/press_room/press_releases/show_release.asp?press_release_id=1225
http://www.control4.com/
http://www.zigbee.org/en/markets/success_stories.asp

The early USB controller for Z-Wave was actually a serial device with an
FTDI USB->Serial converter. You might tap into the communications stream
between the FTDI chip and controller to reverse engineer the protocol and
then dump the converter chip and make a serial connection.

"Florent Clairambault" <Florent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Thank you for your answer
>
>> As I noted in my response to your email, I don't think Insteon is
>> available
>> yet for 230V/50Hz so you will likely need to concentrate on other systems.
>
>We could use it with a 230V to 120V converter. It's a school school project,
>so if we can't use it our home, it's not really a problem. And Insteon is
>supposed to come in Europe, at the end of 2007 / beginning of 2008.
>
>> Unless things have changed, Zensys wants a lot of money for their Z-Wave
>> SDK. I'm not a fan of Z-Wave but there may be others here who can help.
>
>Yes, it's too expansive. But as I said, it's a school project, we won't sell
>it, so we don't really care about copyrights. If we can find a serial
>controller and a way to use it, that would be great.
>
>> There are Zigbee home automation devices but there are also some patent
>> suits filed by Lutron against both Control4 (Zigbee based) and Leviton
>> (Z-Wave based). You probably should avoid both until the lawsuits play
>> out.
>
>I could'nt find any of them. Can you give me a website where to find them ?
>We are not really interested by ZigBee, but our school has a license, some
>chips and lots of projects have already been made on it (but few were really
>working).
>
>> Have you considered C-Bus. It's an RS485 based system with some wireless
>> (RF) subsystems. It is available for 230V/50Hz and 120V/60Hz systems and
>> has
>> a serial interface available. It's more costly than the others.
>
>I have a bad feeling about C-Bus. I think it's too high level protocol. That
>means that it will be more expansive. A very simple protocol might be better
>for this project.
>
>Florent
>
>> "Florent Clairambault" <Florent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>    We are a student team of an ingineering school. We would like to build
>>> a
>>>home automation system controlled by GSM. We know how to use and program
>>>the
>>>GSM chip.
>>>
>>>    We don't want to use X.10 as it really looks crappy (the main problem
>>> is
>>>no error detection and no retransmission). But we are pretty interested by
>>>Insteon and Z-Wave.
>>>
>>>    Do you know any system on which one we could easily use a serial
>>>connection to use it ? We are pretty interested by Insteon and the 2414S
>>>controller ( http://www.smarthome.com/2414s.html ) but we don't know we
>>>would be able to communicate with it. Z-Wave also seems good, but we don't
>>>have any idea on how to communicate with a Z-Wave serial controller.
>>>
>>>    Our school can help us to use ZigBee, but it seems that there isn't
>>> any
>>>ZigBee product for home automation. And it seems to me it's too high level
>>>protocol (compared to the Z-Wave & Insteon protocols which seem really
>>>easy
>>>to implement and low cost chip).
>>>
>>>So if we have any clue, we are really intered.
>>>
>>>Florent Clairambault
>>>
>>>Florent (at) Clairambault <DOT> fr
>>>
>>
>