Stupid home non-automation product

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

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Reply to
B Fuhrmann
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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.

pendant receiver that you can carry around your house or via text messages with a cell phone.

kicks out of being an "early adopter" of anything, no matter if it has a use.

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.

to be alerted of the arrival of Home Heartbeat by Eaton. The wireless home awareness system is now available at special introductory prices on

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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

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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)?

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... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Glad you mentioned the ELK-M1G which provides analog as well as binary (on/off) inputs. Any or all of the ELK's inputs can be set up as analog. What it lacks (along with most other controllers on the market) is the ability to archive and compare current state to past conditions.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

While what you say about archiving data is true for the Ocelot, one can do complex decision making. For example, I run our garage exhaust fan in the early morning hours when the previous day was hot, and only while there is a significant delta T between the garage temperature and outside air. This simple approach keeps the garage almost 10 degrees cooler in the summer. Temperature sensors are cheap thermistors read through a SECU16. Some simple code linearizes the readings over the working temperature range so it can be displayed in degrees F.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Volp

Sure. This is a relatively simple rule of the form:

WHILE [Time period} IF [computed value] > [constant] THEN [Boolean result]

One has been able to point-and-click through this sort of computed rule-making using windows-based CyberHouse for a decade.

But there is very little "historical data" and no "statistics" involved.

And the rule might not be smart enough to avoid violating the "do no harm' maxim. For example, if the positive delta T is because there is a fire in the garage, will the system know not to literally fan the flames?

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

A little more complex than that because it does use the max temperature from the prior day. Just about every summer day here is a carbon copy of the day before, so that works well to anticipate high for the day. No sense burning electricity if it isn't going to be at least in the 90's.

The fan will switch on one hour before sunrise only if the prior day was hot, and the outside temperature is at least 8 degrees cooler than the garage at that point. The fan shuts off if the delta T drops below 4 degrees or the garage starts to warm up. Again, no sense burning electricity if it isn't helping. While not intended to deal with a fire, I think that condition is pretty much covered. I suppose adding a high-temperature lockout for redundancy wouldn't hurt.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Volp

This is a neat application that works well because you provide the intelligence, analysis and the solution algorithm and is a good example of "intelligent computing in home automation"

But it also illustrates my question of: " Artificial Intelligence (AI) : Where art thou 50 years after you were given a name (1956) and [the gift of] language (LISP in 1958)?" because the approach you use could have could have been implemented in 1957 with mechanical devices such as timers, relays and thermostats (hence my use of the word "stagnation").

Yours is a 'hand-coded' solution to the problem which uses analog input, conditional statements and computed binary thresholds (TempYesterday >

TempHot AND TempOutside => TempGarage + 8 ) combined with measured feedback (TempOutside - TempGarage

Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

After writing programs since FORTRAN and hand-assembled machine code (including counting in both directions in hexadecimal), I did find C-max somewhat challenging at first because of its structure. However, simple time-based functions are easy in C-Max. The documentation provides good examples, and the ADI users group is extremely helpful for people who run into problems.

I agree with you totally that the Ocelot is not for the average Joe, but it can be a good choice for a technically oriented individual. The last time I checked, alternatives with similar capabilities were considerably more expensive. The popular CM15A doesn't really provide any real-world analog measurement capability.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Volp

Our experiences are partly similar. I fortuitously elected to spent January

1972 entirely immersed in the learning of FORTRAN. It was my first computer language but having first learned 4-1/2 spoken and written languages helped (I think). In a month I went from zero to a completed useful program that calculated theoretical mineral assemblages from actual chemical analyses. I subsequently did other substantial applied work in that language. I dabbled inconsequentially in Z80 and 8080 machine code, Pascal, FORTH, C etc in the 80's.

The Ocelot is getting a bit long in the tooth compared to (eg) Elk M1G. If coding and a bit of construction are not obstacles, Basic Stamp clones have long done more and better for less money but harder to make work and error-free. But all of these controllers are pretty far out on the statistical tail of the capabilities of homeowners.

Ocelot still has lowest cost 'smart' IR functionality sans PC, but for moderate sized systems it and the ELK Magic Module MM443 MM443s series have been superceded IMO. Importantly, HA panels (Omni, Elk, HAI etc) enjoy installer support (at a price) so the homeowner can get some benefit of their capabilities without programming it themselves. As I understand it, there is now a point-n-click interface for Ocelot C-Max which presumably helps folks like BobbyG who have an Ocelot but can't use it fully because of programming difficulties.

Cm15a: The CM11a replaced my brown ca. 1982(?) TW-523 but found that it didn't perform reliably as a controller. Its failure modes were still being discovered when I gave up on it for anything but an interface. So I haven't kept up with X-10 and X10 offerings other than buying an XTB. One of the advantages of the greater bandwidth of INSTEON compared to X-10 is that communicating measured analog values over the powerline is more practical.

Right now I working on a different end of the HA arena using ATMEL AVR

8-bit RISC chips. What a blast! $2 a pop for 20 MIPS and 10-bit analog inputs. Cheap enough to solder up dead-spider fashion with ancillary devices and pot in epoxy -- no pcb, no connectors, jist a gumball-sized blob on the end of a piece of CAT5 that does stuff. Or leave on a solderless breadboard which have also gotten to be very inexpensive. Or work up a PCB -- also now easy to do with free/inexpensive SW and shops. Coding AVRs is simple with BASCOM (a QB work-alike) once you get past the setup and if you avoid bugs other than those intended ;-)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Despite the excellent help available from ADI users, I found it hard to implement something I never felt I was in "intellectual control" of. I am glad to read that someone with as much programming experience as you felt C-Max was a challenge. I know it works very well and reliably for those willing to master it, but I'm hoping the IR232 is going to make learning C-Max academic for me.

There were a couple of technical blips as well as C-Max, the most limiting being the IR recognition issues I ran into. I solved them, with help from the ADI group by using 1 second long button presses, but that turned out to increase the time lag from recognition to action a little too long to really be acceptable.

On a completely unrelated note, the XTB's seem to have solved the endless dim problems I've had with my TM-751's. At least I haven't experienced a lockup from the endless dim syndrome since connecting the units to the XTB's. That's significant because I've been doing a lot more dimming than I ever have before.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

C-Max is unlike any other programming language I had ever used, and it took some time for me convert to the "ladder logic" mentality.

That's great! Thanks for the report.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Volp

Ladder logic is a wide spread approach to industrial controllers. Easy to do, no Comp Sci degree required, stuff programs more or less in English. Classic process control/manufacturing kind of thing. Very different than the classic computer languages and mystifying to the structured programming crowd or those who think MS Visual products are the standard.

Reply to
Steve

And it predates the BASIC language, which Kemeny and Kurtz developed in

1963. I learned ladder logic before learning Fortran and Basic. Ladder logic was developed to be easy to learn and does not require a detailed technical education or electronics background. Diagrams and approach can be very similar for electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic or combination controls. I suspect Ocelot programming is not all that difficult for non-geeks. ADI has sold several thousand of them.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

Many of which showed on eBay new and unused when eBay first became a popular place to unload unneeded geek stuff ;-)

3000 Ocelots/100,000,000 US households with Internet access = 0.0003 0celots/household. Compare this to the ~20 % of US households with a home security system and the minuscule penetration of Ocelot should be apparent.

That it is still 'suspected' that "Ocelot programming is not all that difficult for non-geeks" despite direct contradiction of that assertion in this very thread should come as no surprise to those that have followed this long-running topic in comp.home.automation. It pertains directly to the quality of the advice given.

Folks that are interested in using conventional industrial Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) using ladder logic might look at the book "Home Automation Basics , Practical Applications Using Visual Basic 6 " by Thomas E. Leonik, P.E. 281 pages with CD; ISBN 0-7906-1214-3

The book is based on using PLC hardware and ladder logic and the Allen-Bradley protocol in particular. (FWIW, I have a copy that will be up for sale in my upcoming porch sale.)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

I 'suspect' (in local parlance) that some of the recommendations for the Ocelot and CPU-XA came from folks that never actually programmed them, using them (if at all) as dumb I/O to a PC by querying and controlling port status via RS-232.

Last I knew, for example, the Homeseer plug-in does not program the Ocelot. HomeSeer has to relinquish the RS-232 port so that in can be programmed with C-Max.

This is in contrast to the far more powerful approach taken by Elk and Savoy in which the same CyberHouse HA program running on the PC that was used to create all the other rules also wrote PIC machine code from the user's point-and-click rule-making that was then downloaded to the Elk Magic MM443s modules, stored and executed. Once the code is loaded, the MM443 can run either standalone or communicating (as with the Ocelot).

It will be interesting to see whether software available for the Elk M1G and presumed successor the M2 has/will catch up with the ~1999 capabilities of Elk CyberHouse (I dunno).

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

Totally true. Ladder is very easy to use once one lets go of structured programming concepts, subroutines, interrupts...

BTW, I am NOT a fan of the Visual products. I like clean efficient code without all the BS that the current high level languages include.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Volp

I don't know how much ladder logic is out there anymore but I did quite a bit of coding in it for a while.

It really does require a shift in the thought process from working in other languages.

For those of you who have not had the chance to work with it, ladder logic was designed to have a similar feel to the ladder diagrams of hardwired relay logic. In it's simpler implementations, you just have inputs, outputs, relays, and timers. A snapshot is taken at the beginning of a cycle, the entire program is executed, and all the outputs are updated to finish the cycle.

Reply to
B Fuhrmann

Watching Comp Sci people struggle with it was always amusing when I was teaching it. At one point I was compared to Yoda in a room full of budding Jedi attempting to convince them that it really was that simple.

Reply to
Steve

It was used in pinball machines which might have made a good teaching aid.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

LOL Kinda like the 'magic' of National Instruments' Labview: Drag a wire between the clock and the eyeglasses in the Deterministic Block and wire the crayon to the FFT Node in the Timed Loop Block and the Gizmo on the Virtual Instrument will provide the right real time answer ;-)

For a single person to code a complex Labview project by push- pop- mov- incr-ing would require the life span of an immortal ...

Even duplicating a Labview project in the high level combination of NI Measurement Studio + MS .Net takes longer (although you have the impression, if not the reality, of having to 'trust' a bit less).

(FWIW, I'll have some National Instruments data acquisition (DAQ) hardware in my upcoming porch sale.)

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

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