Software feature set for automation

I'd be interested to hear what others would want in their ideal software based HA solution. Any thoughts?

That the even excellent software with deep financial backing that had these attributes in abundance has failed in the home automation marketplace. (eg, Savoy's CyberHouse, Premise Systems).

What is needed for Joe and Jane is software that succeeds in the marketplace, and so evolves and doesn't dead-end as un-supported legacy software. This requires that end-users can use the stuff they buy.

Quoting from the article "Home Automation: If you provide it will they come?" in the July 2005 issue of Security Systems News, "I's still a very niche market" attractive to " people how have an interest in gadgets". Making an analogy to homeowners' unprogrammed VCR's, "It's blinking 12. We can program [all-in-one home automation] panels but the consumer can't operate it."

Which implies that the software has to be useable, i.e., the end user has to be able to make it do what they want (with varying degrees of professional support). Broadly successful models other than installer-centric security panels and high-end systems (Crestron , etc) are scarce.

...Marc Marc_F_Hult

"Marc F Hult" wrote"

My interest in Home Automation was purely a hobby, driven by me interest in gadgets, for years. That interest was enough to spark me to buy some cheap X10 switches and a few stick-on remotes.

A week ago, I hurt my back and have just now been able to get off the couch, yesterday. That was the motivation I needed to finally start building my "full" system.

The things I want controlled:

Security: intrusion detection (motion and magnetic), door cams, door intercoms accessible from a number of locations, and an electric door strike or two.

Lighting: Scene lighting in kitchen, master suite, living room, and outside. More basic control in guest room, office, and hallways etc. Lighting must respond to rules: "If it's dark, and the bedroom light is off, when the bathroom light is turned on, ramp it up gently to 20%"

AV: Control projector, 100 disc DVD Changer, MP3s, etc. Provide ability to distribute any media to any media center. System must be able to learn IR codes (roomba, fans, other gadgets).

User Interface: 8" touchscreens in kitchen cabinet, and on each side of master bed. PDA-sized touchscreens in light switch locations in guest rooms, office, living room, etc. Touch screens should be able to display media (TV, MP3s, news feeds, door cams) as well as be able to access lighting control and arm/disarm the security system.

So that's sortof my hardware listing. The software must be able to:

1) Easily structure rules. Outlook-like wizards would be nice, so that anyone can use them. I could use a dead-simple object oriented script, but most users won't. The more creative ways a software developer can think to allow users to easily do complex things, the better. Maybe a drag-n-drop flowchart like the Lego Mindstorms? 2) Ability to create and serve user interfaces. Served via http is fine, everything has web browsers these days. A bit of animation is nice -- a flash driven interface would be cool. But harder to modify by the user, unless the backend between HA and Interface is totally dynamically scripted. At least give advanced users access to programming objects through javascript or soemthing else that will allow them to create their own UI. 3) Ease of creating interfaces between systems. It should be a no-brainer to create a button that sends a specified ASCII command out a specified serial port. It should be equally as easy to write macros that are triggered by an incomming specified command. (I was a little disheartened to read in another thread that security mfgs don't typically provide access to their serial control stuff. That's too bad.) 5) Media Integration. This, in my opinion, is where the current offerings are most lacking. I would LOVE to see a BeyondMedia-like system for one of the automation packages or an automation package that integrated with Windows Media Center Edition. I want TV on my touchscreens. I want lighting on my computers. There should be a single front-end that gives me access to everything from recorded TV programs to security system to lighting. Having to minimize one app and access another isn't going to cut it. Having to change channels to a modulated distro channel and pick up the other remote isn't gonna cut it.

The media center idea is going, in my opinion, to be the entry point for automation into more homes. A tightly integrated, customizable package with a pretty interface and loads of remote client options.

We're getting close.

E. Lee Dickinson Entertainment Design and Technology

mobile: 804.564.1097

I see that HAI has a version for Windows Media Center Edition. Looks very slick.

Only problem with WMCE is you can't buy it.

Not clear what you mean by "you can't buy it. I've purchased two legal licenses from two different internet vendors. Works perfectly but you need to assure hardware compatibility of video card especially. Froogle on "Windows Media Center Edition 2005" and choose from one of the reliable vendors like newegg.com, tigerdirect.com , shentech.com. Newegg in particular has superb service in my experience. About $140 to $190 shipped depending on whether you also want MS's remote.

Take a look at

for media-centric HA automation software. Its AV hardware list is very good and the HA are aspects growing.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Yes! When I was bed-confined for a few weeks I began to realize how much more useful HA could be. Remote door locks, CCTV cameras, intelligent alarms, etc. I don't think we're very far away from robotic companions for the elderly that are capable of monitoring the health of their owner and making decisions based on that information. It's clear from the NYT link I posted the other day that people bond to things that respond to them in human-like ways. When a robot can go into the kitchen and bring back anything you select from the fridge, we will have arrived.

The sorry truth is that whatever we're thinking about doing now is probably not enough. Who would have thought there would be a WWW 20 years ago that could tie in video, alarms, telemetry and so much more from anywhere in the world for a small monthly fee? In 2025 we'll all be encased in Robo-cop like titanium exoskeletons. We'll need housewide microPEX tubing to feed nanobots to all the devices within the home. And there will be Cat 27 MPT and Cat 27E MPT arguments breaking out on the net about real-world nanobot throughput . . .

When I was stuck in bed, especially when I was alone in the house, I became keenly aware of every noise in the neighborhood. I learned to hear the approach of the mailman when the windows were open thanks to a variety of neighborhood dogs.

I agree that guest access areas need to be as simple, and that still seems to be:

1-click up for on 2-down for off 3-if it's round, twist it!

What I've settled for is simple *everywhere* and the Wizard of Oz whizz-bang stuff by radio control NOT near the expected switch. We tried sticka-switches and even the more expensive Leviton controllers and it all really failed the MIL spec test. And that's not MIL for military, either! As bad as the old X-10 paddle wall switches were, even MIL could figure out you had to toggle it up and down to get it to turn on if it had been turned off remotely with the paddle up. It's remarkable, in fact, how many more people can make sense of the paddle than the pushbutton. I guess it's just naturally to flip it again if it didn't catch the first time.

I've begun to wonder about this part of HA. Local actions should be consistent and virtually automatic. I thought that neat Intermatic timer mentioned here recently really drove home the point that simpler may indeed be better.

Compare the house to a biological "housing unit" like a human and it seems the basic functions are hardwired at a primitive level in us and almost all animals. If we had to think much about blinking, we would all be blind.

Anyway, if there was a PIR wallswitch available that ramped at night and didn't during the day, that's probably a better solution than involving the house's higher brain functions and communication channels.

Would it be intolerable if it always ramped? I think a plain old 2-way X-10 lamp module will do this without needing to poll a central controller. I only offer this because anything that operates more slowly than "almost instantaneously" is perceived by the end users as "too slow." When I changed the PIR to operate through the CPU-XA based on rules, it slowed down just enough so that users would hit the wall switch almost at the same moment the motion triggered on command was coming down. I probably could have sped things up had I spent time trying to debug the problem, but I went back to the direct control of an X-10 light through a Hawkeye and it's been quite workable. I only wish it would turn OFF the light when the occupant left the bathroom.

Get the Sony 400 disc player. Modulate the video output to an unused cable channel, get some remote IR gear like powermids and you can relay commands back to the changer from anywhere in the house and see the results displayed on a local TV. Plays MP3's and SA-CD's, too, and you can input title information from a PC keyboard. $400 or less. Since it takes 5 minutes to burn MP3's to a CD, I gave up on using a PC as a media center.

Is there a woman in your life? There might not be if you implement this plan without her *significant* input. :-)

I'll respond to the SW issue separately. Implementation issues await. That's the real problem with HA. It really doesn't work well unless you understand *some* sort of programming logic. Believe it or not, in the US, the Bond film "Licence to Kill" had to be renamed from "Licence Revoked" because a survey showed that more than half the respondents didn't know what the word "revoked" meant. Do you think those folks are going to know a "while loop" from a pile of hoops? Nyet! So, HA's gotta really evolve to a "plug and play" state to become a "crossover" hit.

There are some efforts underway to achieve that. It's much easier to control an iron that's got $1 worth of on-board smarts remotely than it is to control that same iron with $100 worth of aftermarket temperature, status and current sensors. When SW can rope all of these appliances into a house-wide mesh network and generate a "default program" based on simple end-user questionnaire configuration screens, HA will take off.

Fortunately, we see the seeds of such built-in capability sown all around us. The chip prices are falling, the standards are pretty well established and the manufacturers will fall all over themselves to add it once a certain critical mass has been reached.

What I want are nanobotic alarm installers that can swarm over the house, analyze all entry points and then install the appropriate hardware and cabling to protect it. When they finish, they write up a report, I round them up in a can and send them off to their next job.

-- Bobby G.

Hah. You're right! I never even looked. My software vendor I usually use fed me the line, "No, that's only available if you buy a microsoft-certified media pc."

Thanks.

Has the Sony 400 Disc player menu system gotten any better? I dumped it 2 years ago because of the lag time for browsing titles. Once the system starts to grab Pictures for each movie it got unbearably slow. I sold it and bought a Meedio HTPC.

I didn't really use it in that mode, nor do much with the keyboard entry. I had become used to using direct keyboard entry since I maintained a parallel database of titles and details in a PC database. It's still the cheapest way to sling nearly 4 terabytes of music and video around. While it's not as quick as a hard drive, I'll switch when I can pickup a Maxtor 8TB drive for less than $800. I'm happy enough with it that when it fills, I'll consider getting a second one. Not perfect, but good enough.

By that time, the HD-DVD format wars should be in full swing. I record a lot of stuff off the air or cable with a standalone DVD recorder. Then I stuff them into the Sony for later viewing and I only need to remember the current position. My one big gripe is that it doesn't seem to handle CD-Text information properly. Stuff that reads correctly on the 50CD Sony jukebox doesn't display correctly on the 400 disc changer. That's a real piss-off.

-- Bobby G.

The media management software should lookup the info once and store it in a separate database, with a reference to the slot number in the changer, and only go back and redo it if you ask it to.

------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems

Agreed - if you want to have media management software and a PC in the AV loop. I really wanted a simpler solution. I wanted whatever source was playing to "follow me" around the house. It's all very doable for the price of some powermids, some Hawkeyes and learning remotes. Basically all I ever want to do when far away from the main control room is to be able to change source and volume, play, rewind, FF and stop and change the channel on the TV or the disc in the changer.

Would it be nice to say to the remote "show me all Sheryl Crow" and have the local TV screen display all the hits and disk/track numbers? Sure. Is it something I can't live without? No.

That alone may be why HA hasn't achieved critical mass yet. People really do want very different things from the HA so it's hard to accommodate them all and their various skills sets and particular requirements.

-- Bobby G.

On 7 Jul 2005 12:24:12 -0700, "beergut" wrote (with possible editing):

I've been away on vacation....

First of all, it needs to be open source, so when whoever is supporting it goes away, the program won't.

It should support security, fire, as well as all ha functions, so that in particular, the security devices can do double duty.

It should support a full set of programmable logic. Personally, I don't care about a GUI, but there probably should be one.

It should support code comments (HAI, you listening?).

Probably what would work the best is some core thingy with adaptors for different hardware, HAI, Elk, etc., and different modes - web, consoles, etc.

No, there's nothing available like this today.

If I had to guess, I would say that Activehome is the most widely used piece of automation software. That's not a testament to its ease of use or reliability. It's more likely a reflection of X-10's marketing efforts. As I was going through my old module box I saw that I had modules from 1st Alert, BSR, Sears, Radio Shack, Stanley, IBM, Powerhouse, Leviton and Magnavox. I'll bet there are plenty others. That's an awful lot of toes dipped into the pond. My take is that most major players have all decided that the PLC protocol isn't up to the job, at least straight out of the box. So any software that was tied to these systems dead-ended.

Usability is the key, but it's something that applies to both SW and HW. If module X doesn't go off when programmed, I think both parts of the system would get the blame from a naive end-user and go to the dustbin together.

Again, though I hate to admit it, Activehome is still there while many of the others have folded. The problem I have seen with X-10, at least, is that beyond a certain level of use, gremlins arise. Whether it's noise or signal sucking or interference or phantoms, any X-10 installation greater than about 10 modules is likely to enter the "phantom zone." No matter what SW you yoke bad HW to, it's going to fail.

Since Activehome offers no real upgrade path to anything superior, people really cluster at that level. I say this based on the number of unique posters that appear to ask questions related to X-10 signal failures and then fade away. The next step for many of these people is to either call an electrician or move to an Ocelot or Elk. Suzy Homemaker, who can figure out how to use a Mini-timer and lamp modules with a little hand-holding, gets off the HA train right then and there.

I'm not sure I agree. People who've never seen X-10 before they stay at my house really like it. Guests are always happy not to have to get up to turn off the bedroom lights and not to have to even reach for the bathroom light. The problem with HA gaining "critical mass" is that unlike PC's, to really get into HA, you have to twiddle with the home electrical environment in a way that goes well beyond plug and play.

I've been successful in "selling" (getting people to use in their own homes) mini-timers, mini-consoles and appliance and lamp modules to people who were non-technical. However, as soon as I explained that doing what I did with the bathroom lights and the Hawkeye required pulling a wall switch or calling an electrician, the "look" appeared in their eyes. It's been very clear to me at least that "plug and play" is the model of the day and putting in an X-10 wallswitch daunts perhaps 90% of the population. That's where I think HA has failed to generate a critical mass. I don't think ANY SW could overcome the basic HW limitations.

I think had X-10 not been crippled by signal-sucking and noise issues the software you seek would have already appeared. I think it *will* appear now that much more robust transmission protocols have arrived. Black and Decker, Motorola and a number of other big-name vendors are dipping their toes in again. The home of the future's still on the way, but it's getting closer all the time. As soon as one of the startup protocols like Z-wave, Insteon or ZigBee develops a critical mass and appears to be stable (even when scaled up), the revolution will occur. Gear can then be made in numbers that drive the cost down to X-10 levels.

I think this reinforces my notion that the game ends for many when they hear the words "call an electrician." The installer-centric panels and high end systems are usually all done at once by highly skilled people. If something was left out, the owners will call back the original installers. That's a far different model than mailordering modules from Smarthome.

I think that there's also a sort of human "back EMF" at work as a result of all the bailouts from the HA consumer market. All those otherwise early adopters have been burned and now they are twice shy. That's a hump any new SW/HW combo will have to overcome.

-- Bobby G.

I wasn't referring to X-10-only software such as ActiveHome. The software I mentioned can/could accomplish lighting dimming and other X-10 functions with other, more reliable hardware. I do agree (if this is your point) that X-10 has contributed to the failure of HA software to thrive.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

professional

Yes - that's one point. The larger point, I think, is that HA is not yet "plug and play" at the HW and FW level and that excludes most John and Jane Doe's from adopting it.

When PC's went from a command line to a "point and click" interface, a lot of people who had been sitting on the sidelines finally bought a PC. When network HW and SW components became largely self-configuring, people starting to link their machines together. That also happened because the previous price point of several $K for Netware, NICS and hubs dropped to the cost of a Windows license and some cheap HW. I would say that HA is still somewhere in the TRS-80 era of the PC. Enormous potential but diffused by lots of manufacturers running off in different directions.

People who really like to tinker are using HA, but no company with the name recognition and credibility of IBM has entered the field for keeps. IBM's entry is what broke the "ceiling" that existed in the PC field and opened up the entire market. What's worrisome is that the communication protocols for HA seem to be multiplying like crazy, and that will probably only serve to retard progress in the field. I still hope that ZigBee will provide a standardized appliance platform that will allow people far more remote interaction capabilities than are now possible with "dumb" appliances.

-- Bobby G.

STFW for xAP.

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:16:07 -0400, "wkearney99" wrote (with possible editing):

A bit too cryptic for me. STFW means, I assume, "search the f- web", but I don't see any open source project for either the X server or other variant of linux... Have you got a URL? I'd love to be wrong!

Thanks,

Perhaps you are compensating for the exceptionally verbose and uninformative descriptions at eg

;-)

(Super concept though. Hope it thrives. There is even a DMX512 interface already ...)

Marc Marc_F_Hult

I've looked at it now and then over the past few years. So far I think it belies the old adage "where there's smoke there's fire". It's been developed mostly in the UK and seems to support devices that are more in use there like the unbelievably over-priced RedRat.