rickb@bucket.UUCP (Rick Bensene) (01/14/88)
I've noted a bit of discussion here and there regarding the X-10 system for remote control of lights and appliances, discussion of various infrared remote control boxes, as well as occasional mention of other home automation subjects. I have a keen interest in such topics, and am wondering if there are many others out there with an interest in this topic? The volume discussed thus far doesn't really seem to justify a newsgroup, however, maybe if such a place existed people would get into discussions and get the thing off the ground. I do not know the proper procedure to propose a new newsgroup, so maybe people could just begin discussing it in comp.misc or sci.electronics (<<<PLEASE>>> If you followup to this article - post your message to one or the other of the newsgroups, not BOTH!), and if it really got rolling, we could campaign to get a new newsgroup created. Another possibility would be a mailing list, which I'd be GLAD to head up, if someone would take the time to explain to me how to set up a such a list. It seems to me that it is simply a matter of time before home automation becomes fairly commonplace - the price of the technology to implement an intelligent home has come down drastically, and it is expected to continue this trend. So far, the home automation industry is in its fledgeling state - with a few larger leaders, and a lot of smaller companies all in the fray. The big problem is that everyon has their own idea of how the system(s) should work, and thus different systems are incompatible. Also, no one seems to have effectively INTEGRATED many of the systems together, combining security, environmental, communications, lighting, appliance control, signal distribution, and communications into a complete system. There's work underway by some association of home builders to come up with a 'home bus', serving as a bus over which audio, video, and data can flow throughout a home - using wiring not much more complex than wiring in today's houses. This seems to me to be a pretty exciting idea, however progress has been slow because of the many differing opinions on how it should be done. However, even though there are yet no 'standards', many hardware/software tinkerers have implemented their own systems at home. From simple X-10 only systems, to more sophisticated systems using dedicated computers, lots of wire strung in the walls, and really fancy software. I've got a lot of ideas regarding home automation, and have implemented that which I can afford (and my wife will tolerate) in my own home, and have learned a lot, and had a lot of fun in the process. I'd like to hear from others out there as to their experiences, viewpoints, and general ideas with regards to home automation. Regards, Rick Bensene -- Rick Bensene Tektronix, Inc. PO Box 500 39-124 Beaverton, OR 97077 ..tektronix!tekig4!rickb (work) Voice: (503) 627-3559 (10A-5P Pacific) ..tektronix!teksce!bucket!rickb (home) BBS: (503) 254-0458 300/1200
max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) (01/15/88)
Please forgive me for cross-posting, which I have done deliberately, as I think this is germane to both groups. In article <676@bucket.UUCP> rickb@bucket.UUCP (Rick Bensene) writes: >I've noted a bit of discussion here and there regarding the >X-10 system for remote control of lights and appliances, ... as >well as occasional mention of other home automation subjects. >I have a keen interest in such topics, and am wondering if >there are many others out there with an interest in this topic? >The volume discussed thus far doesn't really seem to justify a newsgroup, >however, maybe if such a place existed ... I agree that this is an interesting and expanding topic. However I not only resist but must actively protest the sensibility, increasingly widespread on the net, that finds it perfectly reasonable to propose a new group simply because a new and interesting topic arises. Neither is this an established sufficient justification for a new group, nor is it necessary to sustain a lively discussion on the topic. In particular, sci.electronics is a lightly-trafficked group and could certainly sustain the discussion for the indefinite future, during which incidentally we would find out whether or not the topic actually, as well as potentially, thrives. Moreover I imagine that many peripherally interested readers could be exposed to the topic automatically, while it remains in broader-interest groups. I am convinced that Rick has the best possible intentions here and I hope he understands that I appreciate them and mean him no ill will. Unfortunately the incidence of proposing new groups, many incidentally by relatively new readers, is reaching a frenzy, and most of it is inappropriate. Even were sci.electronics crowded and people there protesting the postings about remote control (which is hardly the case!), this would still not be sufficient justification per se for starting a new group. >... I do not know >the proper procedure to propose a new newsgroup, so maybe >people could just begin discussing it in comp.misc or >sci.electronics ... Proper procedure includes discussing whether a new group is really necessary, before "we" enthusiasts of the new topic simply take for granted that it would be a good idea. Amid Rick's enthusiasm for a newsgroup or mailing list, by virtue of the topic's merit and timeliness, I still can find none of the other necessary justification: why the existing groups are NOT adequate. Now on to the purely technical discussion: >... There's work underway by some association of home builders to >come up with a 'home bus', serving as a bus over which audio, video, and >data can flow throughout a home - using wiring not much more complex >than wiring in today's houses. This seems to me to be a pretty exciting >idea, however progress has been slow because of the many differing opinions >on how it should be done. However, even though there are yet no 'standards', >many hardware/software tinkerers have implemented their own ... I wonder about the NV Philips "DDB" (Domestic Data Bus), a standard that has existed for years; and even the Integrated Services Digital Network (which seems to fill half the professional telecom magazines these days). I am not familiar with these big-time domestic communications standards but it seems to me they could be relevant. Anyone knowledgeable care to comment? Max Hauser / max@eros.berkeley.edu / ...{!decvax}!ucbvax!eros!max UC Berkeley EECS Department
gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells) (01/17/88)
In article 1818 of comp.misc Max Hauser writes: >I wonder about the NV Philips "DDB" (Domestic Data Bus), a standard that >has existed for years; and even the Integrated Services Digital Network >(which seems to fill half the professional telecom magazines these >days). I am not familiar with these big-time domestic communications >standards but it seems to me they could be relevant. Anyone >knowledgeable care to comment? I've never even heard of the DDB, but I do know a little about ISDN. It is obvious from the above comment that Mr. Hauser knows nothing about ISDN (no offense, most people don't yet). ISDN will be a way to cram 2 voice & 1 9600baud data channels down a standard twisted pair of copper wire (which is what most of us have feed our telephones). In the implementation I'm familiar with, the data channel uses a packet scheme. A lot of the band width is devoted to telephone to switch communication. This makes the phone _very_ smart (identifies the calling number to you, can forward calls based on incoming #, etc, etc). The voice lines act line plain vanilla POTS. You can even hook your trusty modem up to them. All in all, a great idea, but one which has little bearing on automating your residence. I can't see how the ISDN protocals could be used to advantage in the internal home wiring, and auto-dialing modems can be used now (or with ISDN) to status or control the home via the DDD net. I've seen several ads recently for security systems based on RF links between the sensors (even had a guy demo them in my house, works as good as he said, too!). Heath (of course!) has a similar system. This looks like a good idea for some of the more sensitive (those with wives know what I mean) areas. Comments on DDB, anyone? -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Still working on _natural_ intelligence. gary@percival
mdf@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark D. Freeman) (01/17/88)
In <676@bucket.UUCP> rickb@bucket.UUCP (Rick Bensene) writes: >I've noted a bit of discussion here and there regarding the >X-10 system for remote control of lights and appliances, >discussion of various infrared remote control boxes, as >well as occasional mention of other home automation subjects. >I have a keen interest in such topics, and am wondering if >there are many others out there with an interest in this topic? This sounds great. If you set up a mailing list, please put me on it. I vote YES for a newsgroup. -- Mark D. Freeman (614) 262-1418 mdf@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu 2440 Medary Avenue ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mdf Columbus, OH 43202-3014 Guest account at The Ohio State University
max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) (01/17/88)
Now I am really confused. In article <1056@percival.UUCP> gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells) writes: > > In article 1818 of comp.misc Max Hauser writes: > > > [Wondering about applicability of Philips DDB and the ISDN > > to home automation] > > I've never even heard of the DDB, but I do know a little about ISDN. It is > obvious from the above comment that Mr. Hauser knows nothing about ISDN > (no offense, most people don't yet). This may be obvious to Gary but it's still not obvious to me. I could have mentioned all of the information that Gary did, basic purpose of ISDN over copper pairs, the 2B+D residential service, and so forth, since I've been reading about ISDN for several years and in 1986 I designed an oversampling A/D converter chip for it. However, this didn't seem germane to my question. Perhaps, as Joel Cairo said in The Maltese Falcon, I expressed myself badly. I will reiterate that I don't consider myself "familiar" with ISDN, and that I wondered whether "even ISDN" could be relevant to home automation. My reasoning, which clearly I'd better make explicit this time, is that ISDN of course puts large bit rates, closer to theoretical channel capacity, on copper wires that connect to the home. Can the availability of these high-bit-rate paths -- both within the residence and to the central office -- facilitate home automation? If not, could the standards and low-cost technology developed for ISDN perhaps still serve communication within the home, through another electrical path besides the telephone wiring? The telephone wiring in many cases already permeates the residence, and would seem (in my offhand speculation) a natural vehicle for control signals, as power lines are in carrier-current systems. These might employ some of the data rate that the ISDN modems were designed to convey between residence and CO. Moreover, whether or not any local communication within the home exploits the ISDN equipment or principles, might not the automated home want to talk to a distant site through a high-bit-rate channel? In particular, communications visionaries have been speaking for years about alternative uses for the gross ISDN bit rate, such as realizing only one 64 kb/s channel for actual voice, and using the remainder for high-data-rate services. Anyone wanting to take this notion further, or to consider exploiting ISDN for intraresidence communication, would have to be well conversant -- in my earlier terminology, familiar -- with the original ISDN in some detail. Since Gary doesn't see likely relevance of ISDN to home control, does anyone else? (BTW if anyone wants references to the ISDN basics and standards, I have IEEE materials and can perhaps cite them). (BTW Gary -- "In article 1818 of comp.misc", as above, is poor form -- tell your system administrator about it.) Max W. Hauser, engineer enthusiastic and curmudgeon bombastic UUCP: ...{!decvax}!ucbvax!eros!max Internet: max@eros.berkeley.edu Some numbers (numbers are big on the net, in signature lines): (415) 642-6666; 6926323; 25653; P1-12-20075; 4,435,655
dunn@ihlpf.ATT.COM (01/19/88)
Gary Wells writes: > >I've never even heard of the DDB, but I do know a little about ISDN. It is >obvious from the above comment that Mr. Hauser knows nothing about ISDN >(no offense, most people don't yet). > Its amazing how people who are not fully informed will make comments about how much others know (i.e. - a _little_ knowledge is a dangerous thing). Now, off the soapbox. ISDN will be (is) a totally digital telephone system, which means that your phone will actually be a A/D converter and a D/A converter. All the signals leaving and arriving at your phone will be digital. Here in the U.S. ISDN lines will have 2 B channels ("bearer" channels, capable of 64K bits/sec, enough for good voice quality, not to mention great data transmission) and 1 D channel ("data", 9.6K bits/sec, which will be used for control information and generally slower data transmissions). What you have to realize is that these three channels will all be transmitted over the same two copper wires that you now have in your home. In other words, the whole shebang is a packet switched network, with some of the packets (the "B" channels) getting more priority (airtime) than the othere channel (the "D" channel). Since we have all these packets floating around, the CPE (customer premise equipment) must be smart enough to identify when a packet is destined for it so that it can grab the information and decode it (for a telephone this means grab the digital information and turn it into analog for us to hear). CPE should ignore any packets that are not for them. As far as I remember, there are 256 possible addresses per ISDN (2B+D) line. At least three of these addresses are used for telephone communications ( one per B channel, so you can have two phone conversations to different people with two different phones on the same two copper wires, and one for the D channel phone control information), but this leaves ~200 addresses that are unused. *********> POINT OF THE WHOLE POSTING <********* Maybe some smart company will come up with control modules which plug into the telephone wires going through your home. Each module would check the D channel for data packets with its address on it. These packets could be sent from inside the house, or from the next state. Each packet would contain control information for the modules. The modules would ignore packets that do not contain their address in the header. This way you could control up to ~200 devices in your home. Even better, future home appliances might have ISDN interfaces built right in. To borrow a sentance from a instructor I had " you could plug in your ISDN toaster right next to your ISDN coffee maker and control them all from your ISDN alarm clock radio". When ISDN becomes widely available (don't hold your breath, the hardware is expensive for phone companies and individuals to buy, and at first only corporate America will be able to purchase) then you will see all these gadgets ( along with _real_ picture phones). Hope this clears some stuff up. Bill Dunn here on my last day at Bell Labs... (going to AT&T IS ) Disclaimer: I'm sure my employer does not endorse any ramblings I might have, even though they might agree. Bill Dunn ihnp4!ihlpf!dunn
ee_tw@ux63.bath.ac.uk (Whitlock) (01/19/88)
Over the past few weeks there have been a number of comments about Philips Digital Data Bus system. For those who want to know more about it is detailed in the Microcontroller Handbook that Philips Publish. In the UK its is being used as part of a Home Automation Demonstration being developed by Mullards. This includes ddb along optical fibres, the control of Door cameras tv washing machine lights etc. Last I heard it was being upgraded to use the new DDB chipsets that Philips plan to market. Previously it used development samples and 8048 simulations to drive the bus and protocol. If people are interested I may be able to find out more. Tim Mr T.L. Whitlock Phone: +44 225 826058 School of Electrical Eng. +44 225 826060 University of Bath JANET: ee_tw@UK.AC.BATH.UX63 Bath BA2 7AY UUCP: seismo!mcvax!ukc!bath63!ee_tw (bath63.UUCP) England ARPA: ee_tw%ux63.bath.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa
max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) (01/19/88)
A tip of my hat to Bill Dunn for providing the kind of details I was hoping for when I asked about ISDN. I thought I'd pass on something else related to the part of the network that I have worked close to, purely for novelty value. In article <3417@ihlpf.ATT.COM> dunn@ihlpf.ATT.COM writes: > >ISDN will be (is) a totally digital telephone system, which means that your >phone will actually be a A/D converter and a D/A converter. All the signals >leaving and arriving at your phone will be digital. ... This is certainly true from a high-level perspective and it captures the essence of ISDN. What is all the more remarkable, at least to me, is that on a closer examination, the digital communication between telephone and central office, along that typical 0.5 to 3 km of copper pair, is accomplished by analog means, in the form of a high-speed modem (144 or 160 kb/s). In order to move this high-speed bit load down the wires robustly, it is transmitted as an analog waveform that is tailored to the characteristics of the medium (as with most other digital communication over channels not designed originally for same) and is subject to optimal-digital-communication refinements such as echo cancellation (compensating for line reflections, largely at junctions in the wire) before finally being converted back to bit-stream form. This has created a new market for analog telecom circuits for the peculiar requirements of ISDN (12-bit, 160 ks/s A/D converters; switched-capacitor echo cancelers; etc.) and the IC firms I talk to are excitedly developing parts for this market. The bottom line here is that not only is the telephone an A/D and D/A pair for 3 kHz voice; but it then takes the resulting 64 kb/s digital representation of the voice, interleaves it with the other digital signals in the service, and converts it back to high-speed analog waveform (!) of a different kind, for transmission over the wires. Certainly a civilized thing to do, from a technical standpoint. Max Hauser / max@eros.berkeley.edu / ...{!decvax}!ucbvax!eros!max
phil@osiris.UUCP (Philip Kos) (01/20/88)
I vote that no group be created for home automation. I feel that there
is enough available bandwidth in both the sci.electronics and comp.misc
groups (the most likely places for such postings) to handle the traffic.
Also, don't forget comp.risks! As home automation becomes more popular,
expect to see lots of articles describing (possible) mistakes and draw-
backs.
Phil Kos
...!decvax!decuac!\ Information Systems
...!uunet!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!phil The Johns Hopkins Hospital
...!allegra!/ Baltimore, MD