Here We Go Yet Again!

Home automation has been just around the corner for a very long time now. Over the past twenty years at least a dozen companies have come up with the vision that their operating system will be the one to make this happen.

At the CES show in Las Vegas this week, which I had to forgo, Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, during the “Next Big Thing in Consumer Electronics” session, told the audience that “the future of technology will be getting all the electronics in our lives to friend each other.” This of course means that Android will be the preferred operating system to make that happen. The idea is that when you arrive home your house will “know” you have arrived. He used the example of the TV coming on to your favorite channel, and then talked about devices that were not part of a network or ecosystem as lonely!

Home automation has been just around the corner for a very long time now. Over the past twenty years at least a dozen companies have come up with the vision that their operating system will be the one to make this happen. It even reached the point a number of years ago where a company (which one escapes me now and I can’t find anything about it on You Tube), ran a commercial where a repairman showed up at a house, rang the doorbell, and told the person answering the door that he was there to fix the refrigerator. “I did not call anyone to fix it,” was the answer and the repairman said, “No ma’am your refrigerator called us to report a problem.”

Over the years a number of software companies have come up with the idea of extending their operating system to office devices such as copiers, phones, and fax machines, and into the home. Your refrigerator, coffee pot, TV, audio, lights, and surveillance cameras would all be controlled by a single operating system, enabling you to use your wireless device and/or an Internet connection to make adjustments regardless of where you are, to be notified if someone has entered your house, and to make sure you turned off the stove or closed the garage door.

Microsoft with its BOB product, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Apple, and others have been here before. Home automation is supposed to be a big deal and make our lives easier. However, all of this costs money—sometimes a lot of money if you are not willing or able to do some of the installation yourself. Even if you are, many of the solutions offered today are not designed with ease of use on mind, but by engineers who expect us to be programming experts.

The adoption of smart home components and devices is very low in the United States. Eric is right that the vision is that our homes will become fully automated and we will be able to talk to our electronics and appliances and they will be able to talk to us no matter where we are. In our Wireless University presentations (the next session is the day prior to the CTIA show in New Orleans), we have had a section on wireless home automation for a number of years but the technology has been slow to develop and even slower on the uptake. In one of my sessions I wrote about the Chumby clock radio that is connected to your home Wi-Fi network to enable it to display lots of useful information such as weather, traffic reports, stock market reports, and other things you might find of interest as you awaken.

I then took the premise of the Chumby to its next logical conclusions. First would be the addition of heater and air-conditioning controls and the ability to control your coffeepot. The idea would be that if you set the alarm for 7 a.m., the Chumby would turn up your heater, say fifteen minutes before that, and start your coffeepot at the same time so when you got out of bed the house would be warm and the coffee freshly made. Next would be the connection of the Chumby to be able to interact with weather and real-time traffic reporting. In this case you would enter your route to work and the Chumby would check on weather conditions and traffic patterns, and then adjust your alarm plus or minus a few minutes depending on conditions, and that would also cause the heater and coffeepot to reset to new times.

Perhaps Google with all of its resources can finally make some progress in the home automation area. There is already a trend to buy HD TVs that include Internet connectivity, Google TV, Roku, Apple TV, and Microsoft TV. Others are providing an option to our cable and satellite services with streaming video over the Internet, enabling all kinds of additional services, AND we are now able to watch TV and movies on our wireless devices regardless of where we are. Eric seems to think that Wi-Fi in the home is what should control everything but there are already a number of other personal-area network technologies and devices on the market that may be better suited to some of the automation control functions.

A year or so ago, one of my clients was working on a device for the home that would include wide-area wireless, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and one of the other short-range wireless technologies used to control devices in the home. I do not have a clue as to the status of this type of device but it makes sense. It is a femtocell, Wi-Fi router rolled into one, it has access via Bluetooth, and it can act as the control hub for all of the lower-powered RF-controlled devices (or even signals over power line). Further, it could bridge between all of the technologies when needed.

BUT—There Is Always a But

Convincing people to embrace all of this technology in the home is the real challenge. As Eric and many others before him have stated, the vision is there. The real issue is how to make it easy to install and use in the average home and how to make it a must-have addition to the home instead of, “Gee that would be nice someday.” Let’s look at what is on the market today and then discuss how it could perhaps be made less expensive, easier to install, and easier to set up and operate.

For this example I am using the products in the Smarthome catalog (Vol. 126, Summer of 2011). Let’s start with the automation of home lighting. The section of the catalog that covers the options starts on page 14 and runs through page 50. Listed are a number of competing technologies that all do essentially the same thing: Enable you to control your indoor and outdoor lights either by selecting a scene with a control box or by programming a computer or other standalone device to automatically change lighting at given times of the day or night.

The oldest of the technologies listed is the X-10 control series. X-10 has been around for years and I have used it since the mid-1990s to control devices in my home and to turn on my outside lights at dusk and later to turn them off. The X-10 system sends signals over your AC power lines to control the various devices. One of the first things you will have to do is to buy a device that will enable the signals to cross over your 220 VAC main service so the signals are available on both legs of your 110 VAC wiring. When I first installed this system I had to use capacitors across the 220 main and install them in the breaker panel—not a job for the feint of heart. Today, for about $70 you can buy a device designed to plug into a 220 VAC box (usually in the laundry room for your dryer) and your dryer plugs into the box. The wall switches cost between $10 and $15 each because the technology is old and being replaced. You can buy a dual outlet, one part of which is X-10 controlled and one that is hot all of the time, and it also runs about $10. A manual controller for the system will run between $10 and $50 depending on the number of devices you want to control, and a computerized system will run about $100. The system requires that you replace each switch you want to control and the wiring is non-standard and takes someone familiar with AC wiring to get it done right.

Zwave

Next up is a fairly new technology known as Zwave. According to the Zwave Alliance, this is an RF technology that uses low-powered radio signals to control things such as lighting, door locks, security and alarms, window shades, thermostats, and more. It is based on a mesh network so that each device can repeat the control signal to other devices, which is a very efficient way to extend the range of the system in larger houses and offices.

Looking at the devices in the catalog, the most basic on-off light switch is $50 and one with a dimmer is about $80. Zwave companies also make wall switches that can control up to eight different sets of lights and these starts at $115. Control devices start at $100 for a table-mounted device up to several hundred for a computer-controlled device that will turn devices on and off based on time or on sunset and sunrise. They also need to be wired in to replace existing switches, and special switches are needed to control florescent lights and appliances.

UPB Systems

UPB stands for Universal Powerline Bus and it is a newer type of control signal over the power lines in your home. One caution here and with some of the other systems as well: At each location you want to put a switch there must be a neutral power lead. In some instances your house will have some switches where they did not run the neutral lead and you won’t be able to automate these switches. The cost of a single on-off light switch is $68 and the prices go up from there. Control devices run the gamut from a simple table-top box ($90) to computer-controlled systems $200 and up. Once again these devices require that you remove your existing switch and replace it with one of these. And you have to be careful about the type of lights you are controlling since each switch is designed to operate a specific type of lighting and special switches are needed for 3-way circuits.

Insteon Products

Insteon is the brand name developed by or for Smarthome. It is a combination system that will control existing -10 controllers as well as Insteon devices that are RF AND signaling over power line controlled in what it calls a dual mesh network. This is the system I have been using to replace my X-10 system. While it works well, it also requires a neutral power lead in each switch box and it is expensive. Each wall switch runs anywhere from $60 to $85 or more depending on the type of lights you want to control.

Insteon makes a host of products, including appliance modules and wall switches that control multiple light sources from the same panel and/or indicate the status of a different type of device. For example, I have the system wired so I can tell when the garage door is open because it lights one of the squares on the multi-switch panel when it is open. You can purchase door locks that can be opened via Insteon, download an app to control the devices from your iPad, iPhone, or other smartphone, or over the Internet, and you can program the system via your computer.

There are a couple of caveats here. One of the computer control systems requires that your computer be connected via a USB connection to the Insteon controller. Another more expensive device lets you program the controller from a computer, an iPad, or whatever, and not have to keep it connected to the machine. This is what I opted for and it is connected to my home LAN via Wi-Fi. I found that I had to give the controller box a static IP address but that is easy enough to do. Setting up the devices to be found on the network is not an easy task. If the device is not recognized automatically, and in my experience that is most of the time, there is a two-step process that requires an action at the wall switch and another action at the controller, not exactly easy for one person to install. The other issue I have with this system is that whoever wrote the interface software needs a lesson in KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!). It is difficult to set up, harder to change once it is set up, and it is not at all clear what steps you need to go through. I am still struggling with some of the nuances of the program.

Home Automation

When we remodeled our house and added a second story in 2003, I thought I was being smart. I ran a bundle of cables to each room, and in some cases to multiple locations in each room. In the bundle were two RG 6 TV cables and two Cat-5 cables. I also ran speaker wire to each room for whole-house audio (with individual volume controls in each room) and redundantly as it turned out, I also wired the house for an intercom system. Today, if you want to distribute HD around the house over wire you need at least two Cat-5 cables to do so, so I am short at least one Cat 5 in every room. I did run empty smirf tubing in some of the house for additional wiring because I knew that no matter how well I planned it, I would not have enough.

My goal now is to experiment with wireless options for all of the wires running around my house and replace everything with wireless devices at some point but the cost is still too high and the range of some of the systems is still not sufficient to accomplish all of that.

The Bottom Line

Eric Schmidt has a great vision. I am not a big fan of Android because I think it is the easiest of all operating systems to attack, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter in this case is that regardless of what operating system resides in any device or set of devices, unless the actual task of adding automation to a home or business is made easier and the cost of the components come down it will remain a niche market.

Perhaps Eric is right on one thing though. Wi-Fi might be the way to distribute audio/video and even control signals. However, if the devices such as wall switches and other controls cost $50 or more each, and need to be installed by a professional or a homeowner with some basic wiring skills, it does not matter in the least which technology or operating system is used. Think about it this way: How many people would pay $50 per switch and several hundred for controls to keep from having to turn on a light switch when they walked into a room? How many people want to be welcomed home by their TV being on?

It would be really neat to have the house preheated and certain lights already on and it would be great if I could use my smartphone to disable my alarm system (you do set yours when you go out, right?). It certainly would be great if I could know if someone had broken in, but frankly I would rather have the police notified and find out after I got home!

There are only a few ways that home automation will really take off. The first is to make it easier all around, to make it more affordable, and to make it a must-have. The second is to build it into new homes as they are constructed. The issue here is whether the builder can charge a premium for the house because of whole-house automation or can the builder even cover the costs of installing this type of automation? So far the answer is no in both cases.

So while it is nice to visualize the future and to predict that Android will someday run everything electronic we touch or that works for us, there are practical impediments to this vision becoming a reality. A box of ten wall switches at home Depot is about $10 while ten wireless switches could cost me $600. Doing the math is easy no matter what operating system is used.

Andrew M. Seybold