XTB - the Future of X10 has arrived!

You might be able to find used BX-24 AHT's by asking around. I did. Jeff may have some circuit boards left for you to roll your own. I'll bet people might part with boards - a number of them were sold on Ebay a few months back and then you'd have to find a "contract solderer" to build it. I believe all the parts are still quite available.

(If there's anyone out there who would like to build one for a fee, please speak up now!)

Finally, there's (I believe) an FCC UN-approved device that does something similar. It's the WGL-800. I don't know much about the details but you could search Google.

-- Bobby G.

What, now you're price sensitive? (-: Yesterday you were trying to spend $2000 on an upgrade for me for features I don't need and today you're trying to save me $10.

The point I was making was that X-10 already had a solution to what you were calling a problem. I was also pointing out that the two way X-10 modules are reasonably priced but not as dirt cheap as a vanilla lamp module.

Get what? That you think mongrelization to save $10 is a good thing? I would NEVER recommend an Insteon Icon switch in place of a slightly more expensive two-way X-10 switch for a newbie X-10 user for two reasons:

One is the lack of codewheels. I like to be able to see what a module is set at without a lot of hoopla. I've seen how new users like my wife react to devices with codewheels compared to Hawkeye "morse code" address entry.

I like modules and switches to retain their settings. Especially if they are buried behind wall plates, in drop ceilings and behind furniture. Especially if I am going to be asked by that end user for help with their system. I am not convinced Insteon switches can retain their settings in all environments.

The second reason is homogeneity. I would not introduce a second protocol into a system if I really didn't have to. That's just introducing another possible failure vector for no gain whatsoever. I've been bitten by mixing manufacturers in X-10. Lots of little "gotchas" there is absolutely no reason to inflict on a newbie.

The Insteon circuitry might be nice if I were planning to go to Insteon, but I'm not headed that way so it's foolish to have it there. The more components and circuits, the more chances for failure.

If you recall, the discussion leading to this current message was about what I would recommend to newbies and why. I would NOT recommend "a bit from here, a bit from there" approach unless it was absolutely necessary.

Why? Well it's just too easy for tech support at X-10 to hear "Insteon" and blame them and for Smarthome to hear "X-10" and do the same. I've had it happen to me more times than I can recall in the PC world so I would have to ask myself: Why mix?

I also think that Smarthome might be pricing their equipment very agressively to edge out the competition. I don't see their prices staying so low. Remember X-10's voucher giveaways. From what I read they put over $2M of free product into the pipeline as long a people actually bought something else. I believe they are not quite so generous anymore. I'll feel more comfortable when Insteon appears in gear not made by Smartlabs.

Now, if dimming from 0 level up at every lamp was incredibly important to an end user, I might change my recommendation and go with the Insteon switches. But I'd have to believe that the end user was techie enough to deal with Insteon's way of setting up switch addresses. I know a lot of people can't program their EagleEyes correctly which I why I like codewheels for newbies just like I prefer training wheels for children's bikes. It helps them gain their balance, learn what that basics are and enables them to take bigger steps in the future.

I recall reading the manuals for some switches by Smartlabs and one of the programming sequences was absolutely arcane. It also, I believe, assumed you owned a Maxi-controller. I recall a number of people over the yearas asking in CHA how they could get around that requirement.

No, I would not recommend Insteon to newbies for a number of reasons. Get it? (-:

Or should we say "touched?" :-)

OK - those are *definitely* not the words of an "rah rah" Insteon partisan. You've just elucidated another reason why the XTB makes such great sense for me at this moment in time. I can now afford to wait until the bugs are shaken out of the "next big thing." The powerline clutter issues were beginning to make X-10 unviable for me and I was feeling forced to make a switch. Now that pressure is gone.

Eventually, I will have enough haunted house stories to write a book. But that's part of the fun of home automation. I suspect every protocol has its horror stories. Just the other night we heard a crackling noise coming from the guest bedroom at 3AM. Very strange, almost like a big bug chewing on a stick.

Turned out it was an appliance module hooked to a window fan with dial thermostat that had worn its way into X-10 chattering module heaven. The more complexity, the more modes for failure. Yet I am not ready to go the Thoreau route and own only a single chair that I hang up on a hook at day's end.

I said, precisely: "They'll (mini-ITX's) make better controllers for far less $ than many of the hardwired panels out there."

That's straight up and simple. In my case, and that of many other HA enthusiasts, we already have the PC HW and SW smarts so we can assume the cost of support is negligible. I would NEVER give HS $2700 for a $200 mini-ITX ($100 used from Ebay) that I could (and did) assemble myself. Nor would I use HomeSeer until I got the sense that their plug-in problems have been solved. I've seen far too many complaints that plug-ins don't work as advertised and getting plug-in support is way too difficult.

However, I do agree with their choice of a Mini-ITX as perhaps the perfect home automation controller, which supports my contention that PC based HA, specifically in the mini-ITX format, will eventually outperform hardwired panels. Even Homeseer agrees. Get it? :-)

Let's get back on track with what I actually said first. The mini-ITX *I* am talking about costs about $200 for the most elemental version. You can mount it, just like an automation controller in a big box, if you like, or in a case. You can connect any number of I/O ports, ethernet devices, USB devices, to that motherboard very nicely with breakout cables and serial and USB I/O adapters.

In fact, you can build a far more easily maintainable system with a much higher degree of "swappability" using COTS parts like the ITX than you ever can with a proprietary panel. And, in my case, a spare ITX machine can be used as a regular PC until it's needed. An Omni motherboard can't do anything else except be an Omni motherboard.

You can keep a TWO spare ITX's MB's (at $100 each) on hand for a fraction of what a spare Omni or Elk spare motherboard would cost. Remember, the ITX memory and CPU are socketed and easily repaired and upgraded in the field. Not so with your hardwired panels. The ITX machines have many more users testing the system to the limits and have been revised far more often than any proprietary boards to fix small annoyances.

There are innumerable adapters to connect PC's to relays and real world devices. It's just not the problem you're making it out to be. If it were, why would HomeSeer choose the mini-ITX as the platform of their choice?

If you're concerned about it not being in the appropriate enclosure, then you've got 1,000's to choose from. It's the size of laptop PC. How hard is it going to be to enclose? Really.

What, exactly, is so wrong about the Ocelot/ADI method of HA? I've seen top-notch Ocelot installations (at least photos of them) and they seem no way inferior to the Elk way of doing things. In fact, their internetworking capabilities make them superior for the kind of HA work I want to do. You just have to love C-Max and ladder logic and to able to forget everything you know about structured programming. Well, that's hyperbole again, but by now the whole world know's I am very hyperbolic.

If I were to give bad marks to the Ocelot/ADI entry, it wouldn't be something I could easily correct at "enclosures'R'Us.com" it would be the nastiness of programming the bugger. I'm not sure what a pure, hardware independent HA programming language should look like, but C-Max is not it. I'll know it when I see it. HomeSeer and CharmedQuark each come close on a number of fronts, but from different directions.

A marvel of technology. I often just sit and stare at the VIA because I know how many man centuries of work have gone into refining every single component of a modern mini PC. They are engineering marvels. And they are reliable. We've both noticed the tendency of HA and alarm hardwired panels to grow more and more tendrils into the PC world. Ethernet adapters, USB adapters, all sorts of PC stuff. That's a sign that eventually, the board itself will get sucked into the PC. My fixation with having spares around for all critical system parts is very much a factor in switching away from hardwired panels. Too expensive to keep spares. HAI went offline for a few months this year due to Katrina. Bad things can happen to large areas of the country. I want on-site spares. Using a mini-ITX as a home automation controller makes that very practical.

How's the mean time between involuntary reboots been?

Who's talking panacea? I'm talking about the future, which I am convinced will be PC-centric. Elk and HAI just can't give you the bang for the buck that a mass-produced motherboard like the VIA ITXs can. More importantly, with voluminous disk space, a PC-centric system is far better suited to dealing with logging requirements than any hardwired panel I've seen. Want to add another ethernet connection? $5 for a lowrise PCI ethernet card. Tell me what it costs to add ethernet to Elk or HAI. I'll bet you $5 that it's more than $5.

ITX is the way of the future, both for PC's and for HA. At least that's the direction I'm headed in. If POE kills a few wall warts along the way, I'm all for it!

-- Bobby G.

"Jim Baber" and Bobby G. wrote

The issue will be making the lights cosmetically acceptable to Mom. I don't want them to look geeky or get caught by a cane or in the vacuum.

I see - you just let the leakage current power the string at partial current. Amazing that it would work that well. I've seen neon lights glow from X-10 "sensing" current but not a whole string of lights. Did you consider making the "diode snip" that cuts the leak current off?

(-: I had a cat that liked to sleep on the very top stop of the basement stairs. I think he had it in for me. Blending right in with the shadows. Taught me to be very careful where I step.

Yes, all the new forms of lamps are not making X-10 any easier or friendlier to use, I'm afraid. I just bought another 6 pack of plug in filters to help fight the war against signal sucking CFLs, among other things. Even with the XTB, some appliances are just black holes. If they show up as noisy on the meter, they get a filter.

I'll be looking more closely at airline and theater "runway" lights to see if I can come up with a good way to conceal the lamps down near the floor level. Floor molding that appeared to match the color of the walls by day but glowed softly at night would be nice. I thought of running a strip of Lucite along the top edge of the molding and injecting light at one end of the strip.

-- Bobby G.

-- Bobby G.

compatibility

The US House of Representative today has one less of those '"rah rah" partisans -- which is a good thing in my opinion. Last vrais partisans I fully approved of may have been the WWII French underground based minor family involvement.

Of _course_ the XTB makes good sense at this time. Mine arrived yesterday (thanks!).

Your phrases "for me at this moment", "unviable for me", are duly noted.

Marc Marc_F_Hult

internetworking

Bobby,

Let me try it again: "The physical installation is critical -- not jist the smarts".

Elk makes nifty white, optionally paintable boxes that are the approximate size and shape of smoke detectors into which they put things like MM443 HA controllers, Caddx security panels, annunciators, speakers etc.

So if you need one to four analog inputs or outputs/relays somewhere, you can pop a hole through the wall board (say, on the ceiling) run CAT5 to a MM443 (RS-485 + 12vdc + four 'spare' conductors) and wire up the sensors if they are external. You are done.

Nothing shows except a smoke-detector-like box on the ceiling. The wires are hidden by the box and the box is very unobtrusive. Good example is drape control where a MM443 can be taught to locally sense drape position, relays control motots, sense local control switch/potentiometer, light levels, clock calendar, local and remote temperature and can run autonomously (or communicating with other MM443s or HA PC's on the 485 bus) forever.

Now imagine that you want a few outputs and you are using an Ocelot. Fer starters you have two boxes with an interconnecting cable (ocelot + ADI relay gizmo) And you have cables entering each ADICON box from the outside (not underneath and hidden). And the Ocelot case is anything but unobtrusive. You can't just screw it to the living room ceiling near the drapes. You need an enclosure. A fairly big enclosure to hold the two boxes and external wiring. A 12x12 junction box is a good size. But now you have to cut a hole in the drywall and flush mount it because a j-box sticking out from the ceiling is typically not OK. And neither is a j-box cover. So you need to locate or build an unobtrusive cover.

If you are a professional installer competing on price, or a busy homeowner that would rather be out playing golf, the physical installation differences difference may be the deciding factor. If you are a DIY type, the time, $, effort, plaster mess (and resulting flak from SO) may be worth it.

My point is _not_ to make any particular recommendation here, but to lay out differences and options -- especially experiences based on my actual experience, rather than jist hippopotamusly.

My experiences and need have been much messier and complicated than just cutting through wallboard. The exterior and most interior walls in my house are solid brick (in US) or stone and mortar (in Spain) with plaster skim-coat. Even the shortest wire run can mean lotsa hammer and chisel masonry work. Different strokes fer different folks.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

internetworking

Only a minuscule fraction of the world has ever heard of you. Many of those that have have done so through this newsgroup. Since you are concerned about tone and record (refer to your own your recent post), do consider that the vast majority of folks may actually think that you mean what you write.

+++++++++++++++++++

The "nastiness of programming the [Ocelot] bugger" in CMax is shared by the difficulty of programming the Elk MM443 in SIMPLE (another proprietary PIC compiler). Difference was/is that:

1) There were one or more partisans in c.h.a that would recommend the Ocelot to folks without any idea of whether or not they would *ever* be able to do *anything* with it. Without programming, the Ocelot does nothing.

2) The SIMPLE language for the MM443 (CMAX equivalent) could be elegantly avoided by using CyberHouse which allowed/s for development of rules in three ways (wizard, point and click and ASCII text editor ) within the CyberHouse user environment that were the same as the way that rules were easily written in CyberHouse for PC control of stuff except that when you were done, CyberHouse would compile the rules to PIC machine code and automagically download to the PIC in the MM443S.

This is all well-plowed ground in c.h.a. But IMO it illustrates how 'partisanship" can be a disservice to participants, particularly folks new to HA and the newsgroup.

Tedious topic (for me) ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Not in the Either-OR way that you, as "rah rah" advocate fer sumthin or 'nother, imply.

HomeSeer (and Charmed Quark, and others) _also_ support Elk M1G (and Omni and others). So no. So Homeseer does not 'agree' with you.

I write this as someone who owns Homeseer and Charmed Quark and Elk M1G. Do you use any of these, or is this another pet hippopotamus of yours?

Hippopotomus check: What MS-based, 12vdc-supply, mini-ITX costs $200 including OS and power supply? I am fairly knowledgeable and do not know of any.

There are at this moment 100 (one hundred) Elk M1G's with enclosures and DC power supply and built-in battery charger for the backup battery available on Buy-it-Now from an Elk dealer on eBay for $389.99 each.

That's roughly the price of HomeSeer + XP (sans hardware.)

I bought one last year. Arrived lickety-split jist as promised (may not have been this same vendor).

In equivalent/comparable terms for a PC, that's CPU, I/O, enclosure, power supply, UPS (less battery) *Operating system*, and *complete application* (most everything less kybd, mouse and monitor).

I disagree quite completely based on experience with pc's in general and Elk and three mini-ITX's in particular. To use a joke from the Profumo scandal days "one screw out of place and the whole cabinet falls apart". PC configurations are fragile.

Which is absolutely all it ever needs to be.

Do you have a spare engine for your car too? ( I _used_ to ;-)

upgraded in the field.

Hippo Alert: The mini ITX was invented by VIA and ABIK, no VIA Mini-ITX has ever had a replaceable CPU. Current units by other manufacturers that I know of that do have replaceable cpu's are not nearly so low-powered and so not nearly so useful.

Not so with VIA mini-ITX. What do you mean by "_my_ hardwired panels'? I have never used an Omni.

Have you ever seen the insides of an Elk M1G ? (FWIW, the 'cpu and memory' in an Elk MM443 _are_ socketed and that of the M1G are not although the voice processor is.)

But there are so many more "small annoyances" to fix! And many, many, many more (infinite?) configurations to test. And I dunno what you mean by "revised far more often". They typically are not revised at all except for BIOS. They are typically replaced by a _different_ model that ain't necessarily plug-n-play replaceable with predecessors --and typically isn't.

And we woulda been jist fine if weda stuck with the 8055 PIO that the 8088 PC bus inherited from the Z80 in my opinion based on 22 years of adding relays and real world devices to PC's. Complexity doesn't help here.

What problem ? Please read what I wrote. Neat devices but not panacea. Been there; Stayed there; Doing that. Not as inexpensive as you make out. Still need enclosure etc. Experience vs hippopotamuses. MS OS not free. Applications not free.

What *are* you talking about? They chose a particular Mini-ITX (I presume without having looked inside) because it met their design criteria.

Optimizing budget, space, (width, depth, height and volume) and functionality is not always straight forward. I made/adapted a 1U rack mount enclosure for a VIA Mini-ITX (with National Instruments PCMCIA 24-bit AD converter, video input (which uses only the PCI slot available in a 1U Mini-ITX) that includes DC-DC converter for the board and peripherals, batteries for back up, router/switch/wireless with external cabled antenna, built-in ElkMM443 for PC and Inet watch dog, CAT5-to-fiber converter, BX24 homebrew workhorse I/O and more. Idea is to have a self-contained unit that optically isolated except for power, which is galvanically isolated through an external transformer. !%&# thing is too deep to fit the way I wanted on the rack ...

Marc Marc_F_Hult

If you'd like a cogent, non-'partisan', fact-based discussion, please restate whatever it is you are trying to say here after reading what I wrote in the context in which it was written. Note I am not trying to influence _your_ actions, but rather, provide some balance to the record of your hyperbolic enthusiasm as it regards what might be (mis?)construed as sweeping recommendations to others. (We are moving, once again beyond the OP's question.)

TIA ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Redundancy does _not_ mean duplication. PC + panel (and/or Security panel). Belt and suspenders. Wearing two belts is way tacky and not nearly so practical.

I have mini-ITX but my the HA controller currently is a 1.2 mhz that has both PCI and an ISA slot -- no longer available. The smaller of my "junk boxes" is about 15x20x8 feet. Its chock _full_ of obsolete spares. Not recommended. If you visit, drive a pickup.

To the best of my knowledge, the server has never rebooted by its lonesome

-- lightning events that also took out phones and other hardware excepted. Scheduled reboots for periodic MS patches is all that it has needed. Biggest headache by far is Internet connection (cable + dsl+ dual wan router+ hardware firewall). But the HA PC runs XP SP2 (was SP1, was XP, was W2k Sp1 was w2K, was w98SE , was W98, was w95b, was w95 -- preceded by progs on WFW, W31, W30 Dos 6.2 back to Compaq DOS 1.1 (no hard drive))

I disagree because experience leads me to place value and cost on the OS, application, programming the application, maintaining the OS and the application and the programming, etc, etc etc . I believe that most folks that have experience with both will agree with the assertion that hardware based panels have fewer reliability issues/problems and require les care and feeding in general.

I have been running a federated PC based home automation system since 1999 (Napco, Slinke, Elks, Enerzone thermostats, IVIE mixers, etc ) so I find the notion that PC's are the future to be very quaint.

They are here and have been here fer a long spell. And they coexist and complement (belt and suspenders) with panels very well including security-only panels (NAPCO, CADDX, etc) general purpose panels (Omni, Stargate, ELK M1G) controllers (Adicon, Elk MM442) and other purpose-built hardware.

Oh dear. What has this got to do with the price of tea in China? Some panel systems (Elk MM443, Elk MM433 are ones that I have used) have decent annunciator modes, but are you suggesting that folks would somehow decide to toss out the ipod and the media center pc and usb video cams and and and and and -- because they got a panel? What might you be talking about?

Marc Marc_F_hult

One reason for of the price comparison is remind folks that the implicit notion in most of these discussions that reliable X-10 is less expensive than the alternatives is demonstrably not so.

With respect to the ID issues: Code wheels should go the way of DIP switches and jumper pins and BCD SCSI drive selectors in my (and many others') opinion. Yours may be different.

INSTEON _does_ have to get this part right. Interestingly, in some folks experiences, the too-hard part has been to get devices to _forget_ (return to factory settings). If you can learn to live with a headless PC (no keyboard, mouse or screen attached to pPC) you can learn to live with a 'headless" wall switch (assuming that the remote access actually works well enough).

With respect to the interference issue, by analogy, you would never allow more than two (even human) speakers in a room at the same time lest there be "mongrelization".

Do you have a microwave? If so, presumably you don't also use a [long list of RF devices here].

I also do think that it is useful to both save $10 _and_ begin to accrue the benefits of a new technology rather than putting time and effort in known-defective one. Jist my opinion and what I am doing (although the X-10 remains as a residual in my case). So far no problem, but I'm keeping my eye out for stray hippopotamuses.

When folks start shouting NEVER about things, it is time for me to bow out.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

If the powerlink interface is electrically similar to a TW523 / PSC05, then it should work fine with the XTB. Strong return signals are clamped below the threshold that turns on the power stage. Weak return signals are boosted slightly.

Perhaps one of the people who have an XTB will report on this combination.

Jeff

You didn't get either "it" did you? :-(

How you read my words "eventually outperform" and interpret them as "either/or rah, rah my way only" advocacy is a mystery to me, Marc.

If HomeSeer agreed with the "hardwired panel-centric" view of the universe, they would have chosen a proprietary hardwired CPU panel when they recently began selling their own HA controller hardware.

They didn't.

They know the future of HA does not lie in the Elks, the Omnis and the Ocelots of this world. They recently chose the mini-ITX as the *only* hardware platform that they sell. How you can construe that action by HomeSeer as not agreeing with my view of the mini-ITX as the controller of the future for HA is a total mystery to me. Really.

Yes, HomeSeer does support legacy panels but when it came time for them to sell their OWN home automation hardware, they chose the mini-ITX. Yet from this action of theirs, you get "So, HomeSeer does not 'agree' with you"? ???????????

If they believed proprietary panels were the way to go, they would have built their own. They've supported enough other hardwired panels to know all their strengths and weaknesses. They could have built a bang-up uber panel *if* they chose to. They didn't. They chose what I chose, the mini-TX PC as my basic HA controller.

-- Bobby G.

Jeff,

John Galv>If the powerlink interface is electrically similar to a TW523 / PSC05, then

Because I also read your other words. MS-PC based HA platforms have long outperformed specialized panels in functions in which the specialized panels don't specialize. So "eventually" arrived years ago. Help us find meaning in your verbiage.

Who are you quoting with the "hardwired panel-centric" term. I googled on "panel-centric" and as far as I can tell, you are the first to use it in Googleland with this meaning. So you are in your own little semantic universe as far as I can tell. I have clearly explained that the actual system that I own has multiple panels, and multiple PC's ,and have used the term 'federated system' to describe this approach over the years in c.h.a. Not either/or. Belt and suspenders. Cooperative. Federation. "The computer is the network". IP-based devices.

HomeSeer is an MS OS HA application. CyberHouse was an MS-OS application and Savoy sold beginning ca 1999 a dedicated PC-based server with ATX motherboard at a premium price. Last I knew they still sold a PC-based server for video surveillance, but certainly not using a mini-ITX (poor choice for a HA PC that needs multiple cards). Charmed Quark is an MS OS HA application. CQ sells a PC-based server with (apparently) a 7-slot motherboard. If you want all the I/O capabilities of the PC (which you extol elsewhere) more slots are better than few slots. Mini-ITX only has one slot (expandable to two in some cases) and is a *poor* choice of MB if you want many slots. very useful in many cases, but poor choice in others.

My current HomeSeer and HA controller runs on an all-in-one VIA micro-ATX (24x24 cm) motherboard. It has three PCI and one ISA slot which is useful to me. ABIK, no mini-ITX has ever ISA. I also have three VIA mini-itx PC's (17x17cm). VIA is shipping a Nano-ITX motherboard (12x12cm). Nano-ITX have mini-PCI slot but no PCI or ISA. To claim that one or other of these particular sizes and slot configurations is the future of HA -- as you do repeatedly -- is hyperbolic hypothetical (hippopotumus-speak) IMO.

Do you know of a single security panels or application amongst the dozens of manufacturers in the US alone that is pc-based? Wait. Lets check for hippopotamuses: Do you _have_ a security system?

This is an inane discussion.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Overheard at the Constitution Convention of 1787: "Hey! I have a new idea. Let's throw a tea party in Boston".

Here is the beginning of a synopsis of the discussion and the history of PCs in Home Automation that would be useful for a wiki/FAQ entry.

I'd be pleased to host a 'protected' but publicly readable wiki using (eg)

if others commit to participating.

The site would ad-free, non-commercial, not-for-profit. Manufacturers and developers would be encouraged to provide accurate entries about their products which would be reviewed objectively. From time to time, entries might be migrated/spawned to a/the 'public' wiki.

I could provide installed application and space on a server and appropriate admin rights (ACLs) to editors, participants and visitors. A backup/mirror would be maintained elsewhere by one or more editors in case I stroke or fink out.

There would need to be at least one person other than me from comp.home.automation that would be willing to act as the principal editors/maintainers/moderator.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PC's in Home Automation Part I

Personal computers (PC's) have been a center of attention in the evolution of Home Automation (HA) since the days of the Altair and Apple II. The Apple II bus made analog and digital In-Out (I/O) connected to computing and data storage capabilities available at affordable cost to academics building one-off scientific instrumentation and home Do-It-Yourself (DIY) folks among others.

After Apple abandoned its hardware expansion bus, the IBM-PC, which was introduced in 1981, and its successors (PC-XT and PC-AT) became the moderate-cost hardware platform of choice for digital and analog I/O.

Plug-in cards using IBM's 8-bit open-specification, Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) expansion bus proliferated. The initial selection by IBM of a variant of the 8086 family (internally 16-bit) with an 8-bit external bus (8088 Central Processor) over a 16-bit external architecture was made in part because of the maturity of integrated circuits (IC's) for the 8-bit Zilog Z-80 processor on which PCs using the then-standard CPM operating system (OS) were based.

The 8-bit ISA bus (mapped by IBM in an "I/O" address space separate from memory addresses) was a feature of nearly all IBM-compatible computers from the original IBM-PC in 1981 through those based on the Intel Pentium III and Celeron and AMD CPUs two decades later. A notable exception was the IBM Personal System/2 (IBM-PS/2) released in 1987 which failed to thrive commercially in part because it used a proprietary expansion bus rather than the ISA bus. With the introduction of IBM-AT in 198x, IBM introduced a

16-bit, memory mapped ISA bus that was backward compatible with the 16-bit I/O and memory-mapped ISA bus.

Thanks Dave,

That Powerlink has a transformer-coupled input. While not the same as the one in the TW523, it looks like it should work fine with the XTB.

Jeff

I doubt HS' choice of a mini-ITX system had anything to do with whether a panel is better than a PC. They have a PC based product. So using a panel would have A) required them to build a panel, something that would cost them a lot of money, and B) probably make major changes to their software. So, like us, it's a choice we made implicitly a long time ago by creating the type of product we did. Even if we thought a proprietary panel was superior, there's not much we could do about it short of creating a completely new product and hiring someone to do design a panel and then to have it manufacturered.

Both platforms have their strengths. There are things that PC based systems can do that a panel will never do. OTOH, a panel is a hugely simpler product, and simpler (as a rule) means less likely to break. This is not to say that PC based systems cannot be made very stable, because they can. But it can only be done emperically by finding a set of components that fails to fail, because we can't look inside the box. And this is not to say that panels don't have their problems either. They do have software in them and it can be wrong sometimes, and the market forces them over time to get more and more complex.

We chose a PC based platform for a number of reasons. One, I had ten years of general purpose PC based software architecture to build on. Two, there were already plenty of panels, so what would have been the point to get into that market. Three, I really do think that PCs are the future of automation, though in a more 'robustified' form. Four, the PC market is an enormous R&D machine that dwarfs the automation market, spending more every year on R&D than Crestron and AMX's total worth I'm sure. No proprietary hardware will be able to remotely keep up with that. Five, given the above, software becomes what is important, not hardware, and that's what we are good at. Six, the home is headed towards a network backbone, and those who can provide an automation system that leverages that network can get in for a lower cost because the home owner has alreayd bought much of the infrastructure that doesn't get 'charged' against the automation system. Seven, there is a tremendous range of hardware out there from tiny systems to multi-CPU mondo-servers, on which a software product like ours can run without change, which provides us with the abilty to scale up and down pretty far with a single product (which greatly reduces complexity of product development.)

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

I have one so I'll give it a try. I'm hoping the package arrived today.