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Just for the /.-ers that don't know much about this stuff, LON-anything is patent-encumbered. BACnet is far less so, since it was designed by ASHRAE instead of a corporation. BACnet was designed to be a standard from the get-go, while LON-whatever was developed by Eschelon and met whatever needs they had to sell their gear. That said, it may be one of those US vs. The World things, as Europe picked up LON as their de facto standard, and ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers.

As far as Modbus goes, it was a low-cost also-ran that had been mostly left behind by all of the big players in the building automation industry. BACnet vs. LON has been the real turf war for over a decade now.

I used to work for an Automated Logic dealer in the early 2000's, and had to deal with this stuff daily. Making a LON bridge play nice with a BACnet network is not fun. Looking through their product catalog, I see they still have the SE Line controllers. Those were single-program, but had 6 digital outputs, 10 inputs, and 4 analog outputs. They'd be quite nice for some home applications. But the list price on those was right around $1000. And then you needed software, which ran another $8000-ish. And then you needed a network bridge (Ethernet-to-Arcnet), which was another $3000 or so. Then you had to wire up and program the thing, which would be far easier to do than to part with $12,000. Totally not worth it for home use unless you're a millionaire.

Here are some existing over-the-power-line transmission systems usable for home control:

• X10 Pro signals over the power line since 1978, and still works, despite having annoyed millions with their ads in the 1990s.
• LonWorks - originally intended for home automation, but was too expensive in its early days. So it became a standard for commercial building automation. So robust electrically that it's used on subway trains to control auxiliary equipment (signs, lights, HVAC, etc.)
• HomePlug - also known as IEEE 1901. Mostly used to pipe Ethernet packets around house-sized buildings. More bandwidth than needed for lighting and such, but there are HomePlug thermostats.

We don't need another one. Especially since the original article's link to the protocol definition is a dead link. And because making home automation run a web server with "node.js" is terrible from a security perspective. And because it's WiFi based, which means it won't go through some walls it needs to go through, and will go through some walls it shouldn't. With the power line systems you can put a low-pass filter after your meter and keep out external signals.

X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10!

"Home control" has been around since the 1990s. It was once promoted with some really annoying blinking pop-up ads for the X10 wireless control system. Around 2001, X10 was the fourth most popular property on the web. You can still buy X10 gear. It works fine. Nobody cares.

Then there was Echelon LonWorks. This was a technically better system than X10 (which was mostly one-way), and it's widely used in commercial buildings. It has really good noise immunity, which has resulted in it being used to control auxiliary systems (lights, HVAC, destination signs, etc.) in subway trains. As a home control system, which was the original plan, it went nowhere.

There's no problem doing this, and plenty of products are available. Remote off/on control of home lights and appliances just isn't that useful.

Imagine if these technologies have ALREADY been developed and are ALREADY in fairly widespread use? Holy Cow Batman! I have a great idea about using a circular object to move heavy items!!!!

Yes, let's give Walmart taxpayer money to help the poooooorrr Walmart who is suffering from high energy costs while forcing US companies out of business with their purchasing policies / behavior.

This has been around since the 90's through LonWorks/LonTalk developed by http://www.echelon.com/
Supports communication over twisted pair and power line netowkorks.

This technology is more of a niche offering still at this point though.

Google is your friend.

http://www.echelon.com/solutions/unique/appstories /WhiteRab.htm

First, this stuff has been around for years. Decades, in some cases. And it's been "real soon now" since the days of X10.

Here's a classic example, the Echelon LonWorks demo room. This has been online for many years. You can turn the lights on and off, run the window blinds up and down, read the room temperature, and do similar amusing stuff. It's all done via power line networking.

As it turns out, LonWorks was modestly successful in building automation. But it's become the standard for control of auxiliary equipment in passenger trains and transit vehicles. LonWorks is often used for destination signs, HVAC, and related functions.

LonWorks gateways to the IP world are available. Read the manual for one. The default security is terrible. (The default password is in the manual.) There are good security features available, but, sadly, the gateway comes with security turned off, and setting up a system in a secure mode is a key-distribution headache, because you have to tell every device on the network what the key is.

And, yes, people have connected these things to the Internet, embedded web server and all. Dumb.

First, this stuff has been around for years. Decades, in some cases. And it's been "real soon now" since the days of X10.

Here's a classic example, the Echelon LonWorks demo room. This has been online for many years. You can turn the lights on and off, run the window blinds up and down, read the room temperature, and do similar amusing stuff. It's all done via power line networking.

As it turns out, LonWorks was modestly successful in building automation. But it's become the standard for control of auxiliary equipment in passenger trains and transit vehicles. LonWorks is often used for destination signs, HVAC, and related functions.

LonWorks gateways to the IP world are available. Read the manual for one. The default security is terrible. (The default password is in the manual.) There are good security features available, but, sadly, the gateway comes with security turned off, and setting up a system in a secure mode is a key-distribution headache, because you have to tell every device on the network what the key is.

And, yes, people have connected these things to the Internet, embedded web server and all. Dumb.

This may be closer to real than you think.

Among other silly concepts at this site, we have the internet microwave oven
or
Another internet-controlled microwave and health monitoring toilet.
or
The "other" Echelon, who are into "Internet Control of Restaurant Management"

At $33 each in quantity, I don't think we are going to see them in toasters anytime soon.

As far as embedded systems goes, this is an order of magnitude or so too expensive. Manufacturers pinch pennies on even larger items like TV's, as each dollar increase in cost translates into something like $5 to the consumer, and potentially millions to the bottom line.

Frankly, this technology isn't even appropriate anyway. For something more in line with the applications you are thinking about, look here where the technology is already imbedded in millions of consumer devices.

LonWorks was supposed to be the mainstream system for home control, with backing from some big companies. It never made it. It's become popular in some niche markets, like controlling lights, HVAC, and signs in railroad passenger cars, subways, and such. (The noise immunity is quite good, so it will work in subways.) It's used in industrial control. But it's gone nowhere in home automation.

Escient uses Lutron stuff. Only problem is that it's a closed architecture / proprietary thing. Why of why these guys refuse to work with open standards is beyond me. It limits you to only technology supported by Lutron.

An alternative is open technology supported by companies like Leviton, Samsung, Siemens, Philips, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Trane, Cisco, and Many others world wide. See Echelon who developed the technology, and the Lonmark site which has info on integrators, manufacturers, etc.

Use Lonworks compatible hardware. It's an open standard. They have been around for over 10 years and the technology is being embedded into just about everything.

The price never made it down to $1, but it's still around, used for building automation and such. The Echelon crowd keeps trying to promote for home automation (see Home Appliance Control Using J2ME? Technology with access from a Wireless PDA ) but nobody is buying.

The price never made it down to $1, but it's still around, used for building automation and such. The Echelon crowd keeps trying to promote for home automation (see Home Appliance Control Using J2ME? Technology with access from a Wireless PDA ) but nobody is buying.

Something that can tell when you're asleep would be marginally useful, for controlling lights, sound, video, and such. But "home control" has been a market fiasco so far; X10, Echelon, and Jini never took off. There's probably room for self-contained products in this space, but not total integration.

See http://www.echelon.com whose open LonWorks protocol / spec works VERY well, and works with all worldwide power specs.

X-10 is the stone-wheel of powerline communications technology.

Right on. An actual article about this subject is available for free here at echelon.com.

Interesting little teaser, but hardly worth a /. posting, let alone hundreds of comments. Echelon.com has a MUCH more informative and SPAM-free blurb about it.

Discover Mag is certainly a class act nowadays -- a credit card popup, a mini-webcam popup, and a phony message box saying "Click here to claim your prize!" Really inspires me to fling my dollars there way, by gosh.

Interesting little teaser, but hardly worth a /. posting, let alone hundreds of comments. Echelon.com has a MUCH more informative and SPAM-free blurb about it.

Discover Mag is certainly a class act nowadays -- a credit card popup, a mini-webcam popup, and a phony message box saying "Click here to claim your prize!" Really inspires me to fling my dollars there way, by gosh.

Bluetooth reminds me of Echelon, the previous "home networking technology". Echelon was supposed to "control everything in your house". Nobody uses it for that. It's used a little for HVAC control in big buildings. It's become the standard for controlling destination signs and such in rail transit systems, because it has good noise immunity. But Echelon home products have gone nowhere, despite widespread industry support in the early phases. It, too, was supposed to cost about $1 per node.

Ok. This is the product used to monitor it, the i.LON. It's a router capable of serving HTTP that routes data from our networks (LonWorks) to IP. Also serves data from LonWorks networks via http. Not an enterprise-class web-server, obviously, but good for this sort of thing.

The house is in Capitola, CA. It's address is: www.cybermanor.com/capitola. Hit the link for Remote Control. Go to just www.cybermanor.com for more information on the entire system.

I also came across this press release from last week (had a major trade show, with LOTS of releases). How a school in florida is using it to stop prankster students from screwing with the thermostats in the rooms.

Ok. This is the product used to monitor it, the i.LON. It's a router capable of serving HTTP that routes data from our networks (LonWorks) to IP. Also serves data from LonWorks networks via http. Not an enterprise-class web-server, obviously, but good for this sort of thing.

The house is in Capitola, CA. It's address is: www.cybermanor.com/capitola. Hit the link for Remote Control. Go to just www.cybermanor.com for more information on the entire system.

I also came across this press release from last week (had a major trade show, with LOTS of releases). How a school in florida is using it to stop prankster students from screwing with the thermostats in the rooms.

As it turns out, while that technology never went anywhere for home control, its noise immunity was so good that it became the standard for rail transit systems, where it's used to manage destination signs, HVAC, lighting, and related support systems.

www.echelon.com,..

Still trying to figure out if this is real or not.

My microwave zaps my 2.4Ghz Phone, only thing that does it. But because it's DSS, then it only pops in and out a little, when it's frequency hopping happens to land on the one of the noisy freqs of the mircowave.

Now, in theory, a large number of DSS devices can share the same range of freqs because they spread out and "randomly" hop from carrier to carrier, supposedly fast enough not to cause an issue. It's a bit more complex than that, as the bits are encoded, then a DSP does some mangling to broadcast some info on one carrier, and other info on another carrier...

However, if you've got an analog 2.4Ghz phone, your screwed, or even a digital, if it's narrow-band and not DSS. Narrow-band will work if it can select a "channel".

Company I work for does interesting stuff with power-line communications using both DSS, and dual-channel Narrow-band communications. Both types of communication beat the hell out of anything else I've seen for reliability, but they have different strengths.

If you're interested: http://www. echelon.com/products/Transceivers/powerlinePresent ations.htm contains presentations about this kind of stuff. The technology update presentation contains information about the different strengths of DSS and narrow-band info. It covers power-line communications, but the same applies to air-waves, just that there is much, much less distortion... Which is why DSS works so well over the air.

My microwave zaps my 2.4Ghz Phone, only thing that does it. But because it's DSS, then it only pops in and out a little, when it's frequency hopping happens to land on the one of the noisy freqs of the mircowave.

Now, in theory, a large number of DSS devices can share the same range of freqs because they spread out and "randomly" hop from carrier to carrier, supposedly fast enough not to cause an issue. It's a bit more complex than that, as the bits are encoded, then a DSP does some mangling to broadcast some info on one carrier, and other info on another carrier...

However, if you've got an analog 2.4Ghz phone, your screwed, or even a digital, if it's narrow-band and not DSS. Narrow-band will work if it can select a "channel".

Company I work for does interesting stuff with power-line communications using both DSS, and dual-channel Narrow-band communications. Both types of communication beat the hell out of anything else I've seen for reliability, but they have different strengths.

If you're interested: http://www. echelon.com/products/Transceivers/powerlinePresent ations.htm contains presentations about this kind of stuff. The technology update presentation contains information about the different strengths of DSS and narrow-band info. It covers power-line communications, but the same applies to air-waves, just that there is much, much less distortion... Which is why DSS works so well over the air.

My microwave zaps my 2.4Ghz Phone, only thing that does it. But because it's DSS, then it only pops in and out a little, when it's frequency hopping happens to land on the one of the noisy freqs of the mircowave.

Now, in theory, a large number of DSS devices can share the same range of freqs because they spread out and "randomly" hop from carrier to carrier, supposedly fast enough not to cause an issue. It's a bit more complex than that, as the bits are encoded, then a DSP does some mangling to broadcast some info on one carrier, and other info on another carrier...

However, if you've got an analog 2.4Ghz phone, your screwed, or even a digital, if it's narrow-band and not DSS. Narrow-band will work if it can select a "channel".

Company I work for does interesting stuff with power-line communications using both DSS, and dual-channel Narrow-band communications. Both types of communication beat the hell out of anything else I've seen for reliability, but they have different strengths.

If you're interested: http://www. echelon.com/products/Transceivers/powerlinePresent ations.htm contains presentations about this kind of stuff. The technology update presentation contains information about the different strengths of DSS and narrow-band info. It covers power-line communications, but the same applies to air-waves, just that there is much, much less distortion... Which is why DSS works so well over the air.

Now here are some gadgets that were/are awesome for their time! (and in no particular order)

1) Cyberscope
2) Trebuchet
3) Picavet Suspension
4) Cameras
5) Cordless stuff
6) Standard based home automation
7) Scale combat
8) Webcams
9) Thermos
10) Slashdot