Need help for Engineering Management project

Having played many musical instruments in my life I'm well aware of the difference between COMPOSERS and someone constructing an instrument. Sure, there's all manner of exceptions to every rule, but the rough analogy was all I was after. The comparison being that someone not practicing nor even equipped TO practice a given skill makes it unlikely the results of their labors would appeal to someone that did. Witness the general lack of usability in a great many software products, often the result of the programmers or layers of manglement being entirely detached and not actually engaging in the tasks the software attempts to aid.

Now, would that make it any more or less likely for a college student to craft an acceptable solution? Perhaps, given the recent nature of their participation in a family household (a reasonable assumption) one might expect them to have a good feel for what would help. But then again given their participation wasn't as a head of household they might not have the 'bigger picture' of actual household processess and requirements. They might THINK they do (weren't we all that smart?) but they've had little or no practice actually running one. Dorms, apartments and shared living quarters really don't quite cut it.

But by the time you've got enough experience running said household you know better than to f*ck it up with a computer.

That said, it'd sure be handy to have a digital concierge of one's own. One not beholden to various advertising or other service industries bent on pimping something. But then you've got the maintenance issues of who's "responsible" for this gadget. It's definitely a catch-22, by the time you make something broad enough in scope it becomes an irresistable target for a "revenue stream". Or it's complicated enough that it can't be left in the hands of the homeowner without a fair bit of maintenance. So selling something to them outright, or that runs on their own gear is a headache and presents unacceptable support costs. But no one in their right mind would trust some 3rd party to effectively run such a service without abuse risks. That and the per-month fees most households shoulder now make it unlikely they'd put up with yet another one.

So it's not that it's a bad idea. Just one difficult to actually implement with anything remotely resembling profitability, let alone broad usability.

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
Bill Kearney
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"Bill Kearney" wrote

BK>>>That's like asking deaf people to make musical instruments.

DH>> Or worse yet, asking a deaf person to compose some of the world's greatest DH>> symphonies for orchestras with numerous musical instruments. ;)

BK> Having played many musical instruments in my life I'm well aware of the BK> difference between COMPOSERS and someone constructing an instrument.

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"With his skill in design and woodworking and his love for the violin, it was inevitable that he would turn to a career in violin making. He apprenticed five years with Master Violin maker Benjamin F. Harrison of Berkley, Michigan who had won numerous awards at the Violin Makers Association of Arizona, International.

The unique feature in this apprenticeship was that Mr. Harrison was totally deaf having lost his hearing in World War II. Prior to that he was an excellent musician. DeLuca was taught to "tune" the various parts of the violin using a tuning fork on the wood and feeling the vibrations through his fingertips. His instruments have proven themselves by the numerous awards he has won at the VMAAI as well as the satisfaction of his clients. "

Another cite:

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"Interestingly, two-thirds of Kamaka's craftsmen are handicapped - some are deaf or have muscular dystrophy. Sam Kamaka began hiring the handicapped back in the 50s, through the encouragement of his wife, Gerry, who is an occupational therapist. It turns out that deaf people are very good at making musical instruments, as they have a fine sense of touch and can gauge the correct thickness of the sound boxes by drumming their fingers on the wood and feeling the vibrations."

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Which goes to prove that in Usenet one can never use an analogy without creating a lengthy meta-thread, as though the analogy was the original premise.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Bill's gonna get real tired of me; BUT, just to drop a few names:

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozinack, Bill Gates, and so on....

Oh, dear all college dropouts... You can't dream.

How dare you build a computer? What's it good for? 100 lines of code?

There are more.

Human creativity, esp. in the young, they ARE worthy.

So, Bill, WTF are they? IBM laughed while Rome burned. So did Wang, Digital, CDC, ATT, NEC, etc.,etc., etc.

A narrow mind vs. a new order.

Reply to
Slammer

Yes, quite often contributed by folks lacking talents in either realm.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

Going to get? You wore out your welcome with your first post.

Or potshots from a nitwit with no actual experience in the field in question.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

Since I've no musical talent whatsoever, I guess that includes me. :^)

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Wellll, I had a quite lengthy response to all of the discussion that I believe I had posted yesterday, but it didn't go through or I didn't hit send or something... Is there a moderator for this newsgroup who might have screened me? Guess I'm just an idiot for not drafting a long post on word or something.

Oh well, I'll try agiain tomorrow or something.

Clay

Reply to
clay.maffett

YES

Reply to
GROUP MODERATOR

Absolutely not. Anyone can post. No one has any authority or responsibility save that of using common sense.

Do you have a "Sent Items" or "Drafts" folder in your newsreader?

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Welcome back, Clay! On-line editors like the ones the Google and Yahoo use are notorious for losing messages just the way you describe. I found that all I had to do to lose everything that I had typed into Yahoo's message editor was to hit the escape key once. Everything vanished!

No. This Usenet group is unmoderated, as are many, if not most. Google

*appears* to "own" Usenet, but that's an illusion. They merely provided a front end to access Usenet without software called a "newsreader" as well as providing search access to an incredible amount of Usenet posts spanning over a decade.

I'm a charter member of the group of people who once trusted on-line editors until the frustration factor got to me. Now I compose in Word (partly because of the automatic timed backup feature, partly because of the custom spelling checker). You're not an idiot, you're just gaining experience!

There's a great line from the book "The Mythical Man Month" whose central premise is that no matter HOW many people you assign to a project like a pregnancy, it still takes nine months to make a baby. Anyway, the quote that applies here is "Build one to throw away because you will end up doing that anyway!" In writing out your first reply you've created a your prototype. Now you get to refine it. I believe that the act of typing out the reply, although lost, has set "thought loops" in motion in your head and that your second try at a response will both be more cogent as a result of having time to reflect and will be more likely to make it through to this newsgroup because you'll have a copy saved in Word.

As for the somewhat uncivil tone you might be seeing in other threads, I leave you with this thought: Posters unwilling or unable to sheath the sword of their uncivil behavior often end up impaling nothing but their own credibility upon it.

There was a very interesting article about Apple in today's NY Times:

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(reg. free but req'd)

Apple Cult Becoming a Religion

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

First of all, thank you to everyone who has posted thus far on this topic. I have learned a lot by following the discussion my first little post ignited, and I guess I'll use an outline-style response to summarize everything I'd like to say:

1) This has indeed all been for "homework," but in a completely legitimate way. As I stated on my first post, this Eng Management class is cumulative, and each week we have a "Technology Strategy Assessment" of about 6-8 questions that we must complete and append to the previous weeks' responses. Initially, in order to satisfy two or three of the said questions, my group was supposed to contact or set up interviews with people involved with different companies that we believe have know-how in the technologies the iBode would utilize. As a last-minute-of-class shot in the dark, I was - perhaps by fate - drawn to the third link on my Firefox/Google homepage: Groups. I searched for "home automation," clicked on the first link it produced, and created a new post. That first post was a hastily modified version of the email we had been sending out to different people, and I didn't really expect to have much luck. I was wrong.

2) Sorry about the whole Google Group / Usenet mixup. As I said before, I had never investigated Google's Group function, as I assumed it was no more than a place for people with varying interests to establish a "Group" so that other people with similar interests could join in, and everyone is happy. As is often the case, I underestimated Google and did not realize that Groups was actually a well-conceived and -executed online archive and news reader for Usenet. Usenet was born before I was; I know what it is and just didn't realize what Google Groups actually did. Sorry, Bill.

3) We have modified our initial plan according to much of the advice you have all given. a) Apple is still our company, and iBode is still the product. We have abandoned the notion of using a currently available protocol but are still entertaining the idea of buying out or hiring software and/ or electrical engineers with experience in home automation from other companies because Apple obviously doesn't have them. Apple could develop their own communications protocol within OSX to operate the system (and take note from Zigbee/Z-wave). We are assuming it would be a combination of both wireless and wired data transmission. b) Although Apple hates partnering up, they have recently developed partnerships with Intel and Cingular (not too shabby) and it is absolutely feasible for them to buddy up with Home Depot and GE and Brinks to create peripherals (from lights to faucets to alarms, etc) for the iBode system. Where there is money, there is motivation. Go to
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if you haven't yet and check out who is running the show. c) All of the regulatory issues you have noted have already been considered by my group. If anything, energy management will be improved by home automation. What if you could set energy quotas for your family's expenditures? And then pay the bills online rather than through the mail? Construction codes and the like would be met because the iBode is a system that is installed when the house in being built, not after. As I'm sure everyone in this newsgroup knows, it's hard to teach an old house new tricks. If iBode is integrated into society to the degree that we would like, regulatory codes would have to be rewritten to compensate. If you make a product that people want, they will have it. Whatever bridges that must be crossed will be crossed. 4) iBode is not impossible, impractical, or any of the other adjectives some of you nay-sayers have been throwing out. If anything, my naivety is exactly what the home automation needs a larger dose of. Some of you guys are so jaded by watching the HA market flounder year after year among a community of talented engineers and do-it-yourselfers. Like some of you have said, home automation is the opposite of a frontier technology. It has been around FOR THIRTY YEARS. The only problem is that no one has done it right yet. Apple invented a PDA years before the palm, but they didn't go about it in the right way and it never caught on. Home automation has three decades of trial-and-error data that can be analyzed, learned from, and incorporated into a final product. For HA to really fall into the mainstream, a BIG company, like Apple or whatever company you think has the money and know-how, needs to build a system from the ground up that is simply too practical and desirable to pass up. Are my kids really going to own houses with metal keys, dozens of light switches, multiple remote controls, separated TV/Computer/Home Entertainment system, etc etc etc etc etc. There are so many facets of our household lives that can, and will, change as soon as someone comes along who is able to do it, do it well, and do it for a decent price. Maybe Apple won't be that company, but someone will. Fifteen or twenty years ago, what would all of you have said about On- Demand television? There are myriad logistical issues to tackle there, but Comcast and DirecTV and whoever else was involved spend years of R&D and pulled it off. And they're doing quite well now as a result. Nothing at all is impossible, but some things are really really hard to do and even more difficult to do right. So my imaginary product, iBode, is my dream of doing something that already has been done, but this time doing it right. Maybe when I finish this project and draft the 40+ page business proposal, I could send a copy to any of you who are interested. It might spark that little bit of optimism that all of you had the first day you read a post on comp.home.automation. I would gladly let you see the finished product, and send it to you right after I stamp the envelope addressed to 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino. Cheers.

Clay

Reply to
clay.maffett

While some pedants and purists prefer that people use newsreaders to access the net and persecute those that don't, I'm not sure that's a pressing requirement anymore. A while back old-timers used to scoff at those with an AOL email addresses as clueless newbies. That dubious torch has passed the Google Groups. (-: Google doesn't make the distinction very clear between the groups they sponsor and the Usenet groups they index. Your mistake is one that thousands of others have made because Google likes it that way! It makes it seems as if they own Usenet.

Good. I'm glad that folks here could be helpful. And you even got your skin thickened, free of charge. People that hang around long enough eventually turn into a single, crusty callus.

I like that. Raiding the best in the business has often propelled startups way up the ladder. That's why so many people in those positions have to sign non-disclosure and non-compete agreements. Their current employers know how much they would hate to see those sharp employees working for the competition.

That's an interesting observation. Apple's success with the Ipod will make them look very attractive to someone like Brinks or Slomin who want to increase their market share. Cross-marketing can really expand the customer bases of both entities.

Where's the Vanderbilt page? (-: I found this section very interesting:

Interestingly enough, Apple has their on television with AppleTV. There should be a lot of interesting information for you to analyze by tracking that roll out.

Dr. Ed Cheung, I believe, already has such a system, as do a number of other people here using sensors that can read the home's power meter. I recall one gentlemen who told his kids they could share in the money they saved each month compared to the same month in the previous year. IIRC, lights didn't stay on a second longer than they had to once the kids understood that they could profit directly from conservation. As you've guessed, these are things that people *want* to do. If I were designing Ibode I'd research how they did what they did and how it worked out. Folks like Dr. Cheung meticulously documents his ideas, designs and fixes at his website here:

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Teaching a dumb old house new tricks is a lot easier than teaching a dumb old dog. My wife's workmate has left her 10 year old Samoyed with us for a few days. A sweet dog without a mean bone in her body. Or a brain! She's never learned to sit or lie down or anything on command, and probably never will. But I digress. The key to HA's general acceptance may be exactly what you've postulated. If the technology is installed in enough new homes, it will eventually become a standard. It's the same technique MS used to make Windows popular. Instead of bundling HA HW with a new home, they bundled OS SW with new computers. The effect is likely to be the same.

I want a tactical nuclear missile to keep my rowdy neighbors honest. All the want in the world isn't going to make one appear. (just kidding) I've never thought that HA was heavily hindered by building codes. Certainly, some HA gear raises eyebrows of inspectors across the country, but most of the equipment is slowly becoming UL certified, which really helps inspectors "pass" an installation without quibbling. IIRC, there have been a number of popular HA devices that caused some people grief because of the absence of a UL listing.

I suppose that it really is still frontier technology if it's been around so long without really "catching on" in a big way. If there's only 1.5 dimmers per household in the US, as I believe someone stated here recently, there's not much penetration of the general consumer market by HA.

I think that particular failure mode was far more complex, and akin to DaVinci trying to design a flying machine or Turing a practical digital computer when the material and engineering technology of the time was not quite up to the task. Doing it right often means doing it at the right time, when the technology and the demand coincide.

There may be a lesson to be learned from how nature created "smart beings." I find it fascinating that many of the protein and enzyme synthesis processes of very diverse beings are quite similar at a basic level. Nature had perfected the smaller components and reused them over and over again in new and better models of creature. Apple's working on some of the basic components of HA and home theater HT. The AppleTV, the Ipod, the Iphone, the Mac are all items that people tend to automate in their own homes. I'm sure that Apple is building these devices with an eye towards future interoperability.

It's good that you're price sensitive. While you've landed in HA at a time of great flux, there are people who believe that X-10 filled that bill, at least for the first wave. There are some that still believe that is one of the few realistic price points in the HA arena. That argument is one of the great ongoing debates here. Now that it's time for the next wave of HA gear, the question is which technology will replace it? I'm afraid that the company with the biggest treasure chest and the best position to prevail in the HA market is Microsoft. Ugh!

Comcast is doing so well because they are as close to an unregulated monopoly as you will find in America. The CATV service they provide me and the internet service they provide for my friends is pretty abysmal.

How about time travel? (-: Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I didn't think we (I?) came across as so negative about the future of HA. It may that the current state of affairs, with so many different protocols vying for supremacy, has jaded some of us. As we discussed offline, I think it's incredibly important to encourage new members to participate here in CHA just to maintain its vitality. You've made it clear that we need a little extra optimism, too. It may also be that real progress in HA improvements can't be made until the various patent battles are sorted out in the courts.

Please send me one. Just not in PDF format! (-:

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Speaking from years of experience in the electronic security field, I hope not. Those are two of the worst companies a homeowner could hire to "protect" anything.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

Yet they're the most successful. Strange, isn't it?

Some would say that hiring a firm run by an ex-con to "protect" you is worse than that, but who are we to judge? I often find it amusing how people "in the trade" run each other down based on the "experience" they have. I know of several homeowners that are quite happy with their Brinks system. Where things start to go a little "sideways" is when they try and push their technology into an application it's not designed for. Apartments with single point entrances are ideal apps for the basic Brinks system. And some people feel quite comfortable with signing a multi-year contract.

Reply to
Frank Olson

You are forgetting top posting and the use of Outlook Express. However, clearly the most reviled and mocked users come not from AOL or Google, but WebTV.

Reply to
Steve

Thank you for summarizing. It greatly increases the usefulness of usenet. A long series of posts without a summary is much harder to use than even a well organized report without an abstract or executive summary. In case it is not clear, one reason for helping you is to also provide answers for other folks. Hence the common refrain with respect to Frequently Asked Questions in newsgroups that "Google is your friend".

The

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the company that developed the CyberHouse HA software that I used for years, engaged in extensive real-world trials of residential and commercial energy management during ~1999-2001.

Partners Cutler-Hammer (now Eaton), a 150-store retail chain in California and a the power utility serving a large suburban residential development in Texas IIRC. Parts of the work were funded by federal research dollars.

See for example:

" SAVOY AUTOMATION AND CUTLER-HAMMER POISED TO REVOLUTIONIZE ENERGY MANAGEMENT. Savoy and Cutler-Hammer Team Up to Provide Innovative Intelligent Load Center ..."

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Hardware was provided by Cutler-Hammer Advanced Power Center.

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It was/is a subpanel that met UL requirements and could accurately measure and control 120 and 240 VAC loads and communicate with home automation software over a variety of protocols including, depending on configuration, INCOM, Cebus, RS-232 and X-10.

However, it never turned the corner and was a complete bust commercially ABIK.

I have a hardly used (it was a demo) Advanced Power Center panel with sensors, controllable breakers and controller with INCOM and Cebus interface and RS-232-->INCOM converter that I will be putting up for sale in my upcoming (when Marc ? When! ;-) personal Photo-HA-Electronics Porch Sale. it has other Cebus stuff including keypad/controller, thermostats switches and so on in a large aluminum travel case.

.. Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

torch has passed the Google Groups. (-: Google doesn't make the

We may be _trying_ to forget WebTV ;-)

The usefulness of usenet is that information is usefully organized. Trying to use usenet even correctly with the interface aol provided was like trying to organize filing cabinets without knowing the alphabet.

Some folks aren't organized and no software will ever solve that problem for them.

Although not absolutely necessary, threaded newsreaders make it much easier to maintain the structural organization that was the innovation and remains a key feature of usenet .

You can drive a screw with a hammer, but it isn't pretty. Just like many/most bad cabinet makers probably don't know or care how bad their product is, folks that scramble up usenet with disorganized thoughts and posts probably don't understand/care either.

Sometimes their messes get cleaned up, sometimes not. Usenet is replete with destroyed and(or) failed newsgroups.

.. Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

I don't know how I could have skipped over the WebTV invasion!

Talk about folks who were dumped into Usenet with zero (and IMHO, actually very negative) preparation. Sociologically speaking, it was a great reminder that there are lots of different people in America. Some of them deserve a lot of credit for figuring out what was what - eventually. I have no right to criticize, though. As an incorrigible top poster and Outlooker, I've been repeatedly lectured on the error of my ways. What's the old ZZ Top song? "I'm baaaaadddd, I'm nationwide."

The way people seem to interact with each other electronically leads me to wonder what will happen when smart homes get so smart they become sentient. At some point computers will easily pass the Turing test and have IQ's at least indistinguishable from any other Usenet poster. Will empty summer homes cruise the future Homenet in the wintertime, looking for love?

I have to admit, when I fired up my first IBM PC and listened to it play its repertoire of Basica speaker tone songs, I never expected its descendants to allow me to communicate daily with people all over the world, order just about anything I might need and even work from home. I really can't imagine life *without* the internet, now. Chatting with someone who wasn't even alive when Usenet was born really indicates how much things in a single generation now.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

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The admittedly out of date lists the top residential security providers and their # of users:

ADT 4M Brink's 800K Monitronics 377K Slomin's 187K

ADT is sitting pretty with a combined base larger than their three largest competitors. I didn't do the math but it seems like the have more customers than ALL their competitors combined! All of those wannabees would like to move up, and a partnering deal with Apple, who has even *more* customers would be a hell of good way to do it.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

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