HomeSeer is a nice app. I happen to like it and I happen to respect the company though I don't happen to carry the line. However, I'd hesitate to say that they *KNOW* the future of the HA market. Like the rest of us, they are making their best guess as to what will sell and what will be supported. They might be right, but no one really knows for sure.
I've no particular leaning either as to your discussion with Marc other than my own personal opinion that dedicated control panels have an advantage over PC-centric systems when security is part of the HA project. From my background in the security industry I tend to prefer something which will run the alarm (especially if there's life safety involved) even if the PC or the rest of the HA system goes on the fritz.
Until someone from HomeSeer clues us in, we'll only be able to guess why they did it. But I'm not sure I'd want to look at the evidence and draw the conclusion that they did not perform an analysis of both types of systems (Let's agree to call it the "panel v. PC" debate) and find one route superior. I believe they did. Too bad they no longer maintain a presence here but I can't really blame them for that. Still, I'd like to hear how their mini-ITX HA new server came into being.
HomeSeer *could* have looked at the Elks and Omnis of the world and created a panel that handled not only security, but lots of routine automation tasks as well. After all, if panels are better suited to security because they are more reliable, then wouldn't that same sort of reliability be good for home automtion too? HS, then, would seem to be taking an unreliable course. But we both know that's not the case.
What's really happening is that the years of proprietary panel protocols, inability to access networks, inability to interface with home automation and AV gear and lots of other issues have put the mark of death on panels. Vendor's panels (let's take Omni because I own their gear) have been steadily "growing" in size and complexity and add-on modules to account for these shortcomings. I claim it's an unsustainable task in the long run because competitors can enter the market using a mini PC as their foundation HW and have both a cheaper and superior product as a result. A more powerful CPU gives you lots of options a panel can't. Lots.
No one building a custom board can possibly compete with the horsepower and flexibility of the modern PC, particularly as embodied in Via's mini-ITX. That means Elk's competition can produce a PC-based alarm and HA system for the cost of designing some interface peripherals and some software. The expensive custom board design and manufacture drops out of the equation.
Custom panels will take a long time to die, but they're dying. Ironically, Homeseer is position itself to directly compete with what it supports. I don't think it will be long before one security vendor or another realizes that and pulls back on cooperating with them. Just as security panels grew PC-like parts, I predict HomeSeer *will* be producing other, specialized hardwire like sensor interfaces that would remove a lot of the incentive to buy an Elk or Omni.
For security, as Bob B. pointed out, hardwired panels still have some advantages. They don't depend on MS for underlying OS, for one thing. PCs have become incredibly robust over the last 20 years because they have been constantly refined. Yet because they have been running MS software, they've taken the rap for being unreliable and needing burping and booting every day.
True, but that just means they resolved the "panel v. PC" debate a long time ago, as you did. ADI chose an intermediate route, interestingly enough, for its home automation design. Much more flexible than any of the alarm panels I'm familiar with because it's essential a micro-PC in a very small box.
HS supports dozens of other "panels" so they're in a unique position to design the biggest, "best-est" badass panel out there. There's a lot of incentive and business advantage to avoid using COTS and forcing your clients into a proprietary design. I believe that they're up to the task of doing whatever they choose to do, it seems. They chose not to emulate the current (alarm) industry standard of custom panels. I believe that it seems like they are locked into PC's and that's why they are pushing the ITX but in reality they made "panel v. PC" decision a long time ago and it's only with the arrival of the highly reliable, fanless and very small ITX that they could finally realize that choice in a HW product.
But you did make the choice - that's all I'm trying to get at. Both you and HS are pioneering new technology. Alarm panels are pretty well mapped out by now. You looked around, saw a platform that you *knew* could do what you want to do and more, and went with it.
But obviously you didn't think that, did you? No. You made a choice that PC's were now powerful enough to support your ideas. When most alarm panels were designed, that wasn't so clear a choice or it was a choice alarm equipment makers didn't want to face.
It's not impossible. Elk and Omni and loads of other do it all the time. With their own, dedicated panel they won't have to be at the mercy of other manufacturers and design changes, incomplete protocol specs. OS changes and all the other issues that plague interoperation between proprietary devices. Panels were born in a time before AV gear was so complex and before very people had even heard of home automation.
Year after year, more and more "modules" are being added to these proprietary panels and they get more complex (and thus inherently less reliable) and more expensive as a result. They are trying to communicate like PCs and be as "smart" as PC's but they can't get there from where they are and never will. PC's are developing too quickly to ever be "caught up with" by a custom panel. The "whole house" PC is coming, and it's going to drive panels into the museums. People want event logs - panels stink at that. People want networking and web-enabling and USB and audio and video and lots of other things that are all there on a PC but quite a bit more expensive in the "panel centric" world.
I think that's an outdated assumption for two reasons. Every time I look, Omni's adding something to its boards, as are the others. They *have* to in order to keep up with the expanding universe of home automation. That means they're moving *away* from reliability. PCs on the other hand are at least at the 20th major design revision, depending on how you count. I contend that MS, having let HW take the black eye that its software deserved, has actually forced some PC makers to seek the most reliable components they can find.
PC MTBF varies so radically between MS and Unix that it becomes readily apparent that a lot of the "unreliability" of PC's lies at the feet of Windows, not the hardware. For that reason at least some believe that HomeSeer made the wrong choice in going with Windows, and not Unix. I tend to agree. MS has not demonstrated that it can create a reliable operating system suitable for "appliances" let alone critical black-box functions.
OK, strike that last paragraph. You're aware of the situation. You have to be, of course, because your product is only as good as the hardware it runs on. Would I be correct in assuming that you contend with far more software/firmware issues than underlying PC hard faults.
That's exactly what I was discussing somewhat earlier. And it's why I am so enamored of the mini-ITX. Via's designed it and they've been building this stuff for years. Lots of people are using them as servers and reporting phenomenally long "up" times. They have, from what my hands *and* my eyes tell me, have come up with a machine that "fails to fail." As a chip maker, they're in a unique position of knowing how to design every inch of a motherboard.
Intel dropped the ball on CPUs for a while. They didn't realize that most people didn't want their laps burned and the tiny fans in their PC's to fill with dust and fail. But that's what Intel delivered, fixated on speed, speed and more speed. Via ate its lunch by delivering what customers really wanted. Reliability, low purchase price and low operating costs. Hold a Via mini-ITX motherboard in your hands and you'll know you are holding a technological miracle.
I've been building PC's since 1984 so I know what's full length-cards have been reduced to postage stamp IC's. They've used every clever trick in the book to reduce board size and power consumption and increased reliability by ditching the tiny fans. There are "heavy hitters" in this world that change the way things are done. Jeff Volp's XTB is one of them. The VIA mini-ITX is another.
I believe that it's this "forced march" to complexity that's going to be their undoing. You build things, Dean. You know that you can only hang X number of additions on a framework that wasn't really designed to support those additions before the whole thing collapses.
I also believe that as these "panels" take on more and more complexity and continue to grow, the PC industry has stabilized and is now very, very mature. The hardware changes that used to occur monthly are now mostly over with. As time passes, and panels become more complex, the PCs are actually getting simpler, smaller and more reliable. I believe that the Via mini-ITX is the perfect example of that trend. Because they are used by millions of people flaws are very likely to be quickly exposed. Just looking at Via's revision list tells you how hard they work to run down problems reported by end users.
Then we really do agree. The fanless, diskless mini-ITX's are more than powerful enough to run a house's alarm and HA functions. Losing the fan meant losing the one moving part that's responsible for at least half the PC repairs I encounter. Lose the disk, and you've eliminated the other half. That, IMHO, is moving to just that "robustified" form.
Unfortunately, I think robustification process almost certainly means a Unix-based platform. People have accepted that Windows crashes because they keep buying it anyway. There's not much incentive for MS to improve the product if people don't care about having to reboot.
Exactly, precisely, indubitably! It's probably the number one reason that panels are doomed. There are so many companies working together to produce the modern PC that there *is* no way any single panel maker can hope to approach the level of R&D. Modern motherboards are so well-designed that you can short the board to ground and it will not burn up the way it might have 10 years ago.
Software IS the most important part now. That's why having a common hardware platform is so valuable. It's also why every Tom, Dick and Harry proprietary panel and their often cryptic programming "languages" are doomed to extinction. Yes, there will be a lot of them around for a long time because there's a huge installed base to contend, both of customers and of trained service personnel. But for the reasons you've very clearly elucidated, the panels are dinosaurs.
Even more reasons that the custom panel's going to die. How many times have I read posts here about people not wanting to install another set of sensors to feed their HA setup but they can't figure out how to make their panel alert their HA system that an alarm has occurred? As you point out, if your device is already on the home network, you're "half-way home" already
Want to upgrade your OmniLT? Buy the $1000 Omni Pro II model and scrap your old panel. That's a bad upgrade path, at least IMHO. In the PC SW based model, you'd buy an upgrade to your software and maybe a few extra I/O modules.
I don't think that's the case. Windows doesn't crash by itself. It crashes because it's mostly used in a way that any system would crash, i.e. where a non-technical person is free to do anything he/she likes with it. Linux wouldn't do any better in that situation. But in the automation scenario, the PC being used as an automation controller is not being used on a daily basis (directly), it's just acting as a back end to a touch panel and is never used for surfing the web or getting e-mail or playing games or downloading illegal crap and so forth. In that kind of situation, where it's set up for a single purpose and left alone, running quality software and drivers on quality hardware, it will run completely stably for years. It happens all the time in the industrial and commercial worlds, where the PCs are used in this very way.
So it's really nothing to do with Microsoft refusing to create a stable OS. They've already done that, if it's used correctly. But if every single person out there worked on their own cars, and put their own performance mods and add ons into it, using a 'performance mods wizard', what do you figure the state of cars would be? There's no way you can create an OS that's as open to as much hardware and software variations as Windows and keep it stable when Joe Blow is the one maintaining it, an surfing the web with no real knowledge of network security and the kids are surfing illegal gaming and media sites and so forth.
------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
Not sure if anyone has already mentioned this... Seems Marrick has decided to exit the X-10 market (as of May'06) and are no longer producing the LynX-10 PLC.
A check with Marrick indicated that they are out of stock of the unit now and sales suggested that one of the retail distributers may have some in stock.
They did indicate that they are moving on to 'new protocols' however.
The should have waited for the XTB to arrive. It's X-10 setups that run from centralized controllers like the LynX that gain the most from the "boost." Where did you hear about this news? I wonder how it will work for them since I'd assume a very large percentage of their customer base is X-10. They're also probably high end X-10 setups, not X-10.com "voucher of the day" users like me. I smell ClassicCoke in the air . . .
Actually the notice is on their web site. The reason quoted in an email to me was simply the cost of manufacturing being too high when competing with off-shore suppliers in the X-10 market.
Agreed. They are a software developer -- not a hardware manufacturer. They realize, as I'm sure you also do, that there is a market for PC-centric, software based automation systems, another market for hardware-only systems and yet another for hybrid, PC + dedicated panel HA solutions.
HomeSeer was born a software program that interfaced with the Napco Gemini P9600 security system. Rich said at the time that his goal was to develop an app that would add features to a panel-based alarm system. He chose the P9600 because it had a reasonably easy to manage (if poorly documented) serial interface which allowed 2-way communication and control.
This isn't a guess on my part. We discussed the issues at length at the time because I provided HS with hardware and tech support on the Napco system. HS has followed their initial business plan all along, developing in-house and 3rd party plug-ins for a number of different panels and ancillary systems -- lighting, HVAC, irrigation, etc. They have offered fully loaded HA servers in the past. I'm sure they'll contimue to test the waters with various PC platforms but I doubt they'll come out with a hardware panel any time soon.
As a genre? If that is what you mean, I disagree. Some panels will certainly fall by the wayside. Some already have. Others will contimue to evolve and prosper.
If the system isn't mission critical, that is true. However, if the job includes physical security (access control), electronic security (burglar alarm) and/or life safety (fire alarm, medical alert, etc.), there will continue to be a growing need for dedicated hardware panels which will function for many hours during power outages, won't hang because the latest upgrade to Acrobat uses up 99.997% of the CPU time (argghhh!), etc.
That is true. HS offers a hybrid solution which allows one to take advantage of the PC's flexibility and power as well as a solid panel's reliability and load handling. IMO that's the best of both worlds. I like HS but from what I've learned so far, CQC might be a better choice for my own next project. Whichever I choose, it'll have to work with the ELK-M1G panel. If Dean would give me the courtesy of a reply the choice would be easier. (hint)
True, but not many PC's can connect, monitor and control over 200 inputs and outputs, run for a couple of days without 110VAC after a storm, and pass muster with the local building inspector as a fire alarm control panel. Your points are well taken but they don't make PC'based systems a complete
*replacement* for panel based systems. There is and IMO will continue to be a strong market for both. At present, panel based systems own the major portion of the market. How much of that they will give up to PC-based systems over the coming years is anybody's guess. My bet is the two will merge somewhat as panel makers start to incorporate PC-like architecture. Only time will tell, eh?
Some developers might, but I don't think Rich has the wherewithall or the inclination to do it. We haven't discussed this in some time so I can't say for certain.
Interesting aside -- While working with Edwards a few years ago on the development of their then-next (does that make sense?) series of fire alarm control panels, I saw the inclusion of some very PC-like functionality in the panel. I'm not able to disclose exactly what but the innards reminded me of an older style computer I've worked with years ago.
Yep and yep again.
Perhaps, but I view it differently. IMO PC-based systems still need to catch up to panels in may ways.
The Napco P9600 does logs quite well.
ELK already does all ove the above except video and that's coming as well.
Most panel based systems offer *optional* add-ons to interface with new hardware. That makes for a more complex shelf at the vendor but doesn't necessarily comlicate the individual installations. For example, ELK currently supports a fair number of lighting protocols but a given installation only uses one or two (perhaps X10 + Z-Wave). One particular site isn't going to be loaded down with apparati for X10, Z-Wave, USB, CentraLite AND whatever else.
No argument here. :^)
HS made a market decision (plus, IIRC Rich is an MSD). There are many fold more potential customers with PC's running MS than Unix. Regardless how flawed it may be, MS owns the vast majority of the market and any developer who wants to sell a SW product to DIYers has to give significant weight to that fact. That is what Rich did and he was right -- not because MS is not problematic but because marketing a Unix-only SW product to a limited audience is financially problematic.
True indeed. What they have demonstrated is the ability to own the marketplace. Their tactics have been questionable at best but they do own it. If you want to make a good living selling a SW based product you have to make some hard decisions about that.
avoid typing the same text again and again (ID, password, phone, homepage link, address, ...) in the messages, documents, web forms stop wasting your time on mouse movements searching for an application in a cascade of menus and folders keep your desktop clean (photo of your dog looks better than 100 icons)
control computer sounds instantly from any app (somebody's calling? mute music!) open favorite web pages with a single hotkey press build a sequence of actions and execute it with a shortcut record keystrokes and play them back with a single hotkey press keep the same hotkeys on different computers with import/export feature
shut down the computer at the specified time (Windows
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP are supported) http://www30.we
avoid typing the same text again and again (ID, password, phone, homepage link, address, ...) in the messages, documents, web forms stop wasting your time on mouse movements searching for an application in a cascade of menus and folders keep your desktop clean (photo of your dog looks better than 100 icons)
control computer sounds instantly from any app (somebody's calling? mute music!) open favorite web pages with a single hotkey press build a sequence of actions and execute it with a shortcut record keystrokes and play them back with a single hotkey press keep the same hotkeys on different computers with import/export feature
shut down the computer at the specified time (Windows
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP are supported) http://www30.we
avoid typing the same text again and again (ID, password, phone, homepage link, address, ...) in the messages, documents, web forms stop wasting your time on mouse movements searching for an application in a cascade of menus and folders keep your desktop clean (photo of your dog looks better than 100 icons)
control computer sounds instantly from any app (somebody's calling? mute music!) open favorite web pages with a single hotkey press build a sequence of actions and execute it with a shortcut record keystrokes and play them back with a single hotkey press keep the same hotkeys on different computers with import/export feature
shut down the computer at the specified time (Windows
95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP are supported) http://www30.we
avoid typing the same text again and again (ID, password, phone, homepage link, address, ...) in the messages, documents, web forms stop wasting your time on mouse movements searching for an application in a cascade of menus and folders keep your desktop clean (photo of your dog looks better than 100 icons)
control computer sounds instantly from any app (somebody's calling? mute music!) open favorite web pages with a single hotkey press build a sequence of actions and execute it with a shortcut record keystrokes and play them back with a single hotkey press keep the same hotkeys on different computers with import/export feature
shut down the computer at the specified time (Windows
I'm sorry, did I not respond to something? I did send you a message a while back, but didn't hear anything back so I assume that was that. We did change servers a couple weeks ago, and I'm sure a few e-mails might have fallen into the black hole or something. Anyway, just let me know what you need.
We definitely work well with the Elk or Omni Pro II now, so whichever you want to use would be a good choice from our standpoint.
------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
I don't know whether I can agree with that. I've watched Windows code bloat over the years. You know about software reliability - there's rivers of stuff written about it - and complexity is the enemy of reliability. Linux doesn't phone home because you changed a NIC in your machine, but Windows XP will. From everything that I have seen, read and personally experienced, an untweaked Windows installation will not stay "up" as long as an untweaked Linux system. Bad configuration management will doom any computer, but Windows makes it easy to get screwed by every script kiddie in the world. Only recently did MS decide it would be a good idea to adjust some of the most horrendous default security settings.
The key words are "single purpose" and I contend that's not the way real people use PC's *unless* they can afford to dedicate one machine per task. Lots of people have ended up running their installations that way, but it's not by choice, it's by necessity. A truly well-designed multi-tasking OS would not allow any single application to crash the machine. Even if dumb users loaded bad programs, if you have a well-written application running along side them there should be really nothing that can stop your well-written code. That's not true of Windows. At least not in my experience.
But this is Computer HOME Automation, and many, many of the users here, for any number of reasons, have to use their workhorse PC as their HA controller. I don't recommend it, but I know it to be true.
That's why I see the Via mini-ITX platform as being so important. It's finally of a small enough size, a consistent enough design and a low enough price to be purchased as an appliance. Since most of what you need is already on the board, you can usually get all your drivers from one place. That tends to imply that there's been cooperation between the various driver writing teams, something you rarely see in the PC peripheral world. To me, that means enhanced stability. It's why I see this particular machine as being so potentially valuable to the HA industry.
With a very standard configuration and knowledgeable SW person somewhere in the loop, I'll agree that Windows can be made to behave. But I don't think it's born that way. I also think it's nearly impossible for the average PC user to get it that way unless they are willing to have one machine for the net, one for word processing, one for home automation, one for games, etc.
Windows, from the very beginning, has considered "gee whiz" goodies like Active-X more important than reliability. You only had to look at their ads for the most recent versions to know that. They basically say "this version works."
I also believe that XP is way too bloated to run reliably now, especially on a CF card. XP installations can choke up to nearly 3GB of disk space. When someone comes out with a HomeSeer-like package for *nix that lets you load a lean *nix OS with the HA application onto a PC like the Via, the HA world could change. I see the Via PC as a tremendous opportunity for *nix to move forward in the world home automation because it's a platform that's being very heavily used by the *nix community, and they're hard at work ironing out the bugs.
I don't think that's the real issue. Windows advertising implies you can load all the apps you want and all the HW you want. We both know that as you add either, you're reducing the chance the Windows is going to stay up and running. Reliability drops drastically as each new component is added. Is it really the same for *nix? When I get a chance, I'll look. Certainly someone's done MTBF analyses on Windows v. *nix running the same sorts of configurations on identical machines.
It doesn't help that Windows makes it nearly impossible to surf safely because of poorly written code, poorly designed Active-X controls and any number of bad default choices that virtually guarantee something bad's going to happen to you when you connect to the web.
My contention is that if you take a normal Windows machine, and you load it up with software - good software, from reputable manufacturers, not just any old freeware - you're going to reach a point where things just don't work anymore. Why? Because the design of Windows still allows problem applications to bring down the entire system. True, it's much better than it used to be, but it's still not right. Those are the reasons why I believe that the star HA PC of the future may very well turn out to be Unix.
One other point. It's interesting to note that HP and others who have instituted a DVD "quick play" feature on their laptops basically boot the machine into a small version of *nix and then load a DVD playing app. Why? Because Windows takes so damn long to boot. That might be another reason why the HA server of the future might just be a *nix box. If the system does go down, you want it to come back up fast, and not to the blue screen of death.
Lean and mean usually win out over bloated and top-heavy.
The question is: which of those three will prevail - or, will they pretty much remain the same. My contention is that the arrival of a small form factor PC made by an experienced chip maker like VIA has really upset the balance that's existed for quite some time.
allowed 2-way communication and control.
The key here was to "add features." At that time the power of the PC was still hard to assess. But the potential for interoperability was there in the 2-way interfaces. IIRC, about the only HA game in town back then was X-10.
Neither do I. In fact, I don't think anyone other than those already making them are going to come out with a new hardware panel for combined HA and security. That path's becoming a dead end because PC's are becoming cheaper, more reliable and more powerful every day. Most alarm panels, for all their smarts, are pretty damn dumb. Ask any police department what their false alarm rate is and that will tell you. Most jurisdictions have had to institute heavy fines for multiple false alarms.
False alarms: stupid users or stupid panels? IMHO, an alarm panel than can't distinguish between a real intrusion and an owner accident is stupid. Adding a PC to the mix could easily provide the intelligence for the system to 'realize' that the owner went outside to take out the garbage without disarming the system. Most alarm setups can't really distinguish between an exit and an entry, just that a sensor had been tripped.
The "next big thing" in alarms and HA has to be the house that's smart enough NOT to call the police until it's sure that there's a problem. Conversely, it has to be equally as smart in summoning the police or fire department when there's *any* chance of harm to life or property. That kind of horsepower will never come from a proprietary panel just because they are so many technological revolutions behind the PC.
I'm afraid that's not what's been happening to every other US industry. Mergers and acquisitions. When was the last new security panel introduced that brought a new player into the market? Been a while, hasn't it? Might be well nigh unto forever before we see that happen again. Even existing proprietary panels are becoming a kludged nightmare of bolt-on accessories that come standard on a PC. Not only standard, but tested daily by thousands, maybe millions of users.
Most security and HA panels are now "wannabe" PC's with their add-on modems, Ethernet, video, etc. modules. At some "tipping point" it no longer becomes viable to go the "build your own CPU alarm board" route if your competitors, using a PC based-foundation, can give away free all the goodies that you have to charge your client extra for? Worse, still, for the panel-centric world is that Via's only going to make mini PC's smaller and cheaper in the future because of the great wave of R&D at work throughout the entire PC world.
There's where what Dean was saying comes into play. If you configure them correctly, even Windows PC's can be remarkably reliable. I've seen them used in 911 call centers and other mission critical applications. As long as the end users are not allowed to load programs or access critical system components, things are pretty much OK. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the end user. I remember a while back some soldiers had managed to load a game onto their tank's computer system.
advantage of the PC's flexibility and power as well as a solid
This is the internet. It runs at least partly on PCs. What makes you think your letter got through? Now, if you had used a panel-based transport mechanism . . .
In terms of processing horsepower, handling 200 inputs for a 1GHz machine is child's play. The panels that once ran the show will be relegated to smart I/O boards connecting to a PC's Ethernet or serial ports. My Via draws 12W from the 110VAC line. I haven't tried to run it from a 60AH scooter AGM battery, but I'll bet it will run for a while. Inspectors may, indeed, be sticking points. I'm sure that historically they've supported legacy devices over innovation so they tend to act as "brakes" on progress. The same is true for all the alarm installers across the nation who are comfortable with the current panel-centric world. But the tech that knows PCs is fungible across some pretty wide technologies and that gives him an advantage. The smart techs are going to be the ones to help the transition from panel to PC-based security and home automation.
A strong market means new competitors entering the field, at least in my mind. We aren't seeing that in the alarm and HA panel world, at least I'm not. We're seeing new protocols, and in a sense those could be conceived of as "panels" in their own right, but as far as a new Elk, or HAI entering the fray, I don't recall seeing any recently. I got the clear sense that almost the opposite was happening with ADI not introducing anything new for several years and Elk and HAI mostly making interfaces to other systems as add-ons.
I agree.
I think that's a reasonable assessment of the future. There isn't going to be any "panel Passover" where all the first-generation HA/Security "combo panels" are all made to disappear and only the PC's anointed with lamb's blood survive. But it's going to become harder and harder to justify custom designs as Via (and others) start shrinking full powered PC's more and more, until they are wall wart sized.
I'm still "routing for Ethernet" (is that pun?) as the solution of choice for HA. It's fast, it's dirt cheap now, at least for hubs and NICs and chips on PCs, and it's well understood, documented and debugged. All HA equipment can really be seen as microcomputers on a large network. A really smart switch should be able to tell who touched it (or spoke to it - or looked at it and blinked twice - or thought the word "ON" while standing near it). That's my interest in discussion here: Where is the future of HA? How do we deal with the unruly assembly of appliances and devices that constitute the average high-tech household?
Just more proof that the two technologies are on a collision course. With the advent of the truly workable small footprint PC like Via's, I think we'll soon see another leap forward towards the PC based products.
I think it's important to keep a watch out for those "next big things" in whatever field you're in. That's where fortunes are made and lost and people find themselves either in high demand or out on the street.
What ways do you think are the primary reasons panels will continue to sell? I can see a "it's worked well so far" factor, a large base of installers and repairmen, an admittedly lower power consumption and the advantage of being familiar to installers and being sanctioned by UL. But I also believe those aren't strong enough factors to overcome price and when Intel and AMD join the small footprint PC world, those prices will plummet again. I just don't know if the advantages of a panel are going to outweigh those of a PC.
After all, a panel is really nothing but a specialized computer, monitoring inputs, making decisions based on rules, taking actions. Hmmm - might be fun to see what some comp sci students can do creating a software emulation of an HAI or Elk panel.
Can it keep an image or video clip of everyone who's come on my property, along with the time, date, weather, etc? Traditional panels do traditional things nicely, but the world's moving on at an accelerated rate. People are demanding more from their home systems - whether audio, video, security or cleaning - than ever before. There's going to be a continuous pressure on panels to offer what PCs do. I believe it's that subtle pressure that's going to force the switch.
There's also another subtle force at work. If you make a mistake in software design, you ship a revision. Make a mistake in hardware design, on something like an alarm panel, and your field upgrade costs eat you alive. I'll admit that very same force causes people to tend to rely on what's worked reliably for them for years.
All add-on modules. People are buying them because they've already invested in Elk and they have sunk $ to protect. The question is whether Joe Newbuyer wants to buy all those stinking modules just to do what a PC can do out of the box, especially if there's a substantial price differential. I think the answer will eventually be "no."
Dealing with even two protocols is a lot, and if one that you've chosen goes bellyup, that's three you'll likely have to support. :-)
I agree that was the right move then, but I'm not so sure it's the wave of the future. Back when Rich started, the assumption, I think, was that people would still use their PCs for other things. When the HA server becomes an appliance, people don't really care about the underlying OS as long as it's fast and reliable. It's the perfect window for some entrepreneur to come up with a turn-key Unix HA system in combination with a Via mini-ITX platform.
Agreed. They're a functional monopoly and as such can't be avoided. But we've seen similar monopolies collapse when the next big thing comes and they're not ready for it. Where are all the mighty railroads?
ADI did not "choose an intermediate route for its home automation design"
-- at least according to ADI. The CPU-XA was designed for industrial control. The HA market was incidental according to ADI reps.. The ladder logic it used was from the world of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) that has dominated industrial control for decades. The architecture is about as far from being a "micro-pc" as dozens of other microcontrollers over the years, which is to say, not very close at all. In the late 1980's I used an Elexor panel for battery-operated field control of scientific instrumentation that cost about the same, had more I/O, higher resolution (12-bit), more flexible programming. What distinguished the CPU-XA (nd Ocelot) was the use of a second micro-controller (IIRC, a PIC) to handle IR.
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More stuff for a wiki:
There have been "highly reliable", fanless, small-form-factor pc-compatible Single Board Computers (SBCs) for *every* DOS/Windows platform/combination since at least 1987 when AMPRO introduced the Little Board. The form factor exists to the current age and has been used in a bajilllion places.
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The Ampro board has/had the footprint of a 5-1/4 drive and so is 1" narrower (smaller) than the mini-ITX. It passed the IBM-compatibility test of the day (Flight Simulator) and was based on NEC's V20 clone of Intel's
8088. and ran from a single unfussy 5vdc supply. Ampro had anticipated that NEC would ship their math cooprocessor (8087 clone) but NEC didn't. So the first boards had a vacant socket that took up valuable real estate. I acquired three of these 'defective' (read cheap) boards ca 1989. The board had onboard serial, parallel, floppy, keyboard and SCSI (which could be used for general purpose DIO) and a socket for non-volatile memory with clock calendar. With a AD-DA-DIO expansion card, one could rule the world. A GWbasic program to read a voltage and control an output based on the result could be written with a couple of lines of code. Once the board booted and loaded a program from disk, it could run forever spindle-free (no drive, no fan).
Single board, ISA backplane cards were even smaller that the Ampro. By
386SX/DX days, there were 5-volt-only, fanless 1/2-length, 3/4" thick PCB's with onboard IDE and video,as well as the standard I/O. Arcnet/connectivity was easily accomplished with a parallel-port network adapter. These were eminently suitable for DOS/Win3x/WFWG. My first 386 was a CPU card that i used in a 12-slot backplane loaded with all manner of I/O including IEEE-488. This was at the beginning of WinTel and end of the "IBM-compatible" era. I recall hooking up an HP mass spectrometer to a 80386 and trying to explain to an HP rep (who was trying to sell me an idiosyncratic HP 386 that he claimed was 100% IBM compatible) that there was no such thing as a "386 IBM compatible" because IBM had not yet released a
386.
[Add discussion about PC-104 form factor here ]
Another genre of "highly reliable, fanless" form factor PC's have been mother boards behind LCD screens. This approach has been most used in lap-tops, but also in industrial designs and ubiquitous Point Of Sale (acronym deleted to avoid confusion ;-) including touch-screens. I ran CyberHouse (a server-client, TCP/IP, WinTel application) on "highly reliable, fanless" IBM 7592 industrial 100mhz Pentium with 800x600 touch screen for years until a virus took it out. This was based on IBM Thinkpad laptop motherboard. Serial, parallel, PS keyboard and mouse, floppy connecting, minuscule expansion chassis with two more OCMCIA slots available (I have 1 or 2). They can run directly off a 13.8 vdc sealed lead battery. They dissipate the heat without any fan through an elegant (to my eyes) black, alloy (magnesium?) aluminum case that is hardly bigger than the 10" diagonal touch screen LCD it supports.
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I have 6 (six) of these IBM 7592's (with PCMCIA ethernet cards that use one of the two available PCMCIA slots, four IBM power supplies, one floppy, expansion adapter with two more PCMCIA etc and other accessories) that I'd be pleased to sell to someone in c.h.a. for $400 + shipping. .
All booted and ran OS and internet browser when put away. The one that got infested was running W95b. The others are loaded with OS2 and Netscape. One has a cracked LCD; one is partially dissembled but all the parts are there. They all show wear and have about 500-1gb(?) 2.5" hard drives.
Drivers and manuals and such here:
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Pictures here:
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( in a while).
Email me if interested. Do a clean re-install of the OS with modern browser and I'll buy two back for what you paid for everything.
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In other words, "highly reliable, fanless" pc's have been here since The Beginning.
In my opinion, the 17cm x17cm mini-ITX is just one handy pause-point in a continuum of sizes even within a single form family. There are other standardized families (CPU backplane, PC-104, disk-sized) as has been explained.
PC-XT AT ATX micro-ATX 24cm x 24cm mini-ITX 17cm x 17cm nano-ITX 12cm x 12cm
And VIA announced last week that it will join the ranks of those delivering a "computer on a chip" (CoC).
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And we already have $99 Linux with 16gb flash in a chewing gum stick sized package.
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Power over Ethernet (POE) now at 15 watts and soon 30+ watts an will allow
1-cable CAT5 connection to any networked device including mini/nano/CoC PC's and Network Attached Storage (which Homeseer's box can't provide because it is spindle free), IP cameras, IP audio, IP security (Elk and others have this) IP thermostat and so on will continue to proliferate making the I/O capability and the PC's form factor even less important.
Conventional RS-xxx serial will stay in the mix and be joined by USB over CAT5, and other wired, wireless, powerline protocols. The latter do _not_ have to be connected to a PC. One can already create an Insteon- or X10-controller-over-IP from commercially available ethernet-to-RS232 + X-10/Insteon/etc controller.
y making the wired I/O separate from the PC motherboard (for example through a COMTROL ethernet to eight RS-232 converters) one can have fail-over capability automagically. If one PC fails, another connects to the ethernet-to-RS-232 and takes over. I have run two instances of CyberHouse Servers (application) for years. And of course multiple clients everywhere.
In my experience, this is vastly better than buying a spare motherboard as Bobby has suggested so that when the next Katrina hits, one can spend one's time on the roof swapping PC parts . *EVERY* PC capable of running the HA software can be a "backup PC" no matter where on earth you or it is.
"(Windows) PC's everywhere?" "The PC is the network". "Pervasive computing"
For whom was "the power of the PC [] hard to assess" ???
IIRC = If I Recall Correctly . It may be that you recall correctly what you knew, and just did know what he "HA game[s] in town" were.
For example (the example I know, there are others) by 1999, Savoy's CyberHouse had reached version 3.0 on a Windows-based multiple-server, multiple-client over TCP/IP or RS-485 home automation application (CyberHouse) that came bundled 'free' with Elk Magic module MM443s and sold for ~$200 + addons in the full version. They also offered their software preinstalled on a rack mount 233mhz PC.
Cyberhouse supported multiple security panels including NAPCO by 1997!
By 1999/2000, CyberHouse supported (at least):
Three different manufacturers of security panels via RS-232 At least three different hardwired lighting systems At least one full-featured panel JDS X-10 via at least 4 different controllers IR via two at least manufacturers Audio voice Video modem email paging pool controllers weather at least two different non-X10 thermostats, breaker panel AC power monitoring and control for price-based energy control
and on and on.
X-10 "the only game in town"? Help us to understand what your words mean.
CyberHouse _was_ in 1999 what HomeSeer became (and Premise systems tried and apparently failed at).
The key to Homeseer's success seems to have been its management of support though third-party plug-ins, a strong user community, and (now) and a distribution base that sells its software pre-installed on a PC (i.e., specialized hardware) for ca $2700. The later is the business model that Savoy adopted exclusively for CyberHouse ca 2000 in an unsuccessful attempt to rein in support costs.
Thanks, Dean. My plan is to install the ELK-M1G. I have a media system and I'll eventually expand it to cover the whole house, inside and out. I might use Media Server or a hardware solution like Russound or Xantech, depending on how much I have left to spend after we finish redoing the pool, spa and lanai.
Sub-systems will include lighting (Z-Wave most likely), HVAC, Pool/Spa (filtration, dual heat sources, pumps, underwater lighting), irrigation (6-zones), entertainment, communications and security. The ELK system will do the security. Everything will function stand-lone in the event of a breakdown but I really want to integrate the whole place. Remote monitoring and control are essential since we spend a lot of time overseas.
I can handle the hardware side of the project but I'm interested in learning what can be accomplished / enhanced using CQC. Any suggestions you might have as to systems that have already been tested / proven in conjunction with CQC would be appreciated.
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