One of the most significant hindrances has been a reliable, well architectured, and economical means to retrofit a home in order to support the communications of the control protocols. We've had X-10 (control signaling over power lines) for decades, but it's reliability never matured. Insteon is a recent and significant improvement for powerline based control signalling, with larger address space, message relay, and acknowledgment, plus backwards compatibility to X10 (with some feature loss). The momentum with virtually all consumer electronics is toward wireless communication, and home automation is no exception. While there are several solid players already in the field (Z-wave, BCP?), they still involve proprietary protocols that are not designed to work products from other vendors.
Enter the Zigbee Alliance. http://www.zigbee.org/ who have developed a virtually complete standard (ratified by over two hundred product manufacturers, including Sony and Phillips) for five separate profiles (similar to, but more suited than bluetooth), one of which is Home Automation. The Zigbee alliance requires thorough testing of member products to ensure they meet the minimum standards for interoperability required by the target profile.
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One of the most significant hindrances has been a reliable, well architectured, and economical means to retrofit a home in order to support the communications of the control protocols. We've had X-10 (control signaling over power lines) for decades, but it's reliability never matured. Insteon is a recent and significant improvement for powerline based control signalling, with larger address space, message relay, and acknowledgment, plus backwards compatibility to X10 (with some feature loss). The momentum with virtually all consumer electronics is toward wireless communication, and home automation is no exception. While there are several solid players already in the field (Z-wave, BCP?), they still involve proprietary protocols that are not designed to work products from other vendors.
Enter the Zigbee Alliance. http://www.zigbee.org/ who have developed a virtually complete standard (ratified by over two hundred product manufacturers, including Sony and Phillips) for five separate profiles (similar to, but more suited than bluetooth), one of which is Home Automation. The Zigbee alliance requires thorough testing of member products to ensure they meet the minimum standards for interoperability required by the target profile.