The PERFECT lighting technology

[Steve]

Ok, so it just came to me. I think the perfect lighting technology is alot simpler than we think. In fact, it's right under our noses. And the beauty is the simplicity. Take a UPB switch (I would say PCS, but use your favorite), now take all of the UPB protocol and how it all works, including UpStart and the programability of the switches, etc and simply add LV control wires ala ALC and have the UPB protocol work over hardwire instead of the powerline (and maybe fix the transmit status on link issue) and sell it at a reasonable price and I think you would easily have the top selling lighting system in the market. Well, at least it sounds great to me...

 

[JimInSoCal]

After 10 years of using power line control for almost every light in my house and fooling with filters and repeaters and still having problems I agree with you 100%. I am convinced that a hard wired system is the only way to get the reliability that most people, except for a few of us hobbyists, would demand.

If there was such a system available at a reasonable cost, I would convert to it. I am just not interested in switching to the latest less unreliable PLC system.

 

[icellama21]

I wouldn't rule out wireless mesh technologies. From a radio/bandwidth/frequency/algorithm point of view this can be made to work in almost any environment. In fact, many professional and military applications are designed to work even through nuclear war(one of the worst EM environments out there). The problem is cost. Lutron has done a great job with RadioRA, but that was designed years ago and their reliability is mainly due to the lack of local interference in the AM radio band. Zigbee is a great protocol if you have access to the technical docs. The problem lies in the cost of the radio antenna/components and the hardware to process the signals. It is expensive to put a good system in every device. In the quest to be cheap most home devices cut a lot of corners. With these components constantly declining in cost I'd expect to see a lot of new devices in the next decade. Wired is great, but why bother if wireless can equal it without the added labor. In almost all applications wireless has already equaled or exceeded copper-based wiring, now we just need to wait for the cost of the components to drop a bit.

 

[TCassio]

I think all the "New technologies" got it all wrong. Anyone who is interested in Automating there home is going to need some sort of controller, weather it be a PC, or a deadicated controller. So why build all this functionality into each and every switch. A light switch just needs to be able to be turned on, off, dim, and ramp up and down. Thats it. Everything should be handeled by the controller. Keep the switch as simple as possible, this will allow them to be sold at far less than what they are currently selling for. They will sell alot more because they would be cheap.

I don't care if the technology is RF or PLC, I think both could work if the switches were kept simple. I have had good success with insteon. The protocol seems sound, the problem is there is to much crap in the switches firmware. X10 had the right idea they just had a terrible protocol.

The easiest part of automating a home are the lights. Their a roughly 40 to 50 switches in an average 2000 sq ft house. To have to spend anywhere from $45 to $90 per switch is crazy. The average cost of a standard light switch is about $3. You can see how quickly people would be turned away from the idea of automating there home. At $15 to $20 per switch, it becomes more appealling to a larger group of people.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Done.

 

[electron]

My 'perfect' technology would be a very simple switch (pretty much what TCassio described), with either a wired or wireless Ethernet interface. It would make things so much easier IMO.

 

[hucker]

The easiest part of automating a home are the lights. Their a roughly 40 to 50 switches in an average 2000 sq ft house. To have to spend anywhere from $45 to $90 per switch is crazy. The average cost of a standard light switch is about $3. You can see how quickly people would be turned away from the idea of automating there home. At $15 to $20 per switch, it becomes more appealing to a larger group of people.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Done.

I don't think comparing to a 3$ switch is fair. Most automated switches are dimmers and a nice dimmer costs about 20 bucks, couple that with the fact that regular switches can't do scenes, or have dimmers in multiple locations for the same circuit. I think the flexibility in smart switches has value beyond automatically turning lights on and off at in a Home Automation sense.

 

[TCassio]

Thats what the controller would be used for.

 

[Sacarino]

Thats what the controller would be used for.

I would agree with that. Instead of trying to be all things for all people, let the controller(s) do the intelligent work of associated switches into scenes, handling ramp rates, etc etc.

Business logic doesn't belong in the user interface layer.

 

[Brightan]

I can see this conversation turning ugly
I happen to agree with you but I think you'd find a whole lot of people saying "but I want status LED's with programmable colors" and "How come there is no infrared control" and "How come I can't turn a single light on when the controller is dead" and on and on... and at some point the company throws in a micro to try and make everybody happy.

 

[Steve]

Yea, I never really meant for this to turn into a lets really design the be all end all best system on the planet. Realistically you can never do that for reasons like you said. Somebody will always want a specific feature or something. I really meant it more as merging hardwire control with UPB would yield a very good start. You would have a pretty robust feature set as in UPB but the 100% reliability of wire. I have yet to see a 'typical' center off rocker in a wirless switch. They are all some sort of toggle and I believe even wireless can have its problems. Regardless of the technology and engineering, nothing will ever be as robust as a dedicated wire. Sure, powerline works 100% for some, or even many and the same for wireless. But for thos of us that have spent way too many man weeks troubleshooting 'environmental' influences and disturbances, we long for a simple dedicated wire to sleep better. And it's unfortunate the only choice is ALC. Which gets to the original point of taking the best of ALC (wired control) and UPB (features, software, etc) and I think it would be a product that would appeal to a very large majority of folks. I would IN A HEARTBEAT run the wire I needed as long as it were possible. 1 time investment in the effort and then a lifetime of peace and pleasure.

 

[boyfly]

I'm an Insteon user and have had no problems with it, but when I build a home in the future I will definitely be looking for a product that has a dedicated line. If it were ethernet-ready, even better.

 

[jmark71]

Yea, I never really meant for this to turn into a lets really design the be all end all best system on the planet. Realistically you can never do that for reasons like you said. Somebody will always want a specific feature or something. I really meant it more as merging hardwire control with UPB would yield a very good start. You would have a pretty robust feature set as in UPB but the 100% reliability of wire. I have yet to see a 'typical' center off rocker in a wirless switch. They are all some sort of toggle and I believe even wireless can have its problems. Regardless of the technology and engineering, nothing will ever be as robust as a dedicated wire. Sure, powerline works 100% for some, or even many and the same for wireless. But for thos of us that have spent way too many man weeks troubleshooting 'environmental' influences and disturbances, we long for a simple dedicated wire to sleep better. And it's unfortunate the only choice is ALC. Which gets to the original point of taking the best of ALC (wired control) and UPB (features, software, etc) and I think it would be a product that would appeal to a very large majority of folks. I would IN A HEARTBEAT run the wire I needed as long as it were possible. 1 time investment in the effort and then a lifetime of peace and pleasure.

Not to start a war either... just curious what is "unfortunate" about the only choice being ALC? I'm planning on going that route and just want to make sure I'm not missing something!

 

[hucker]

I just don't think this argument can be made on the basis of cost (the orginal post compared a $50 dollar automated to a $3 wired). Even if you could make the switches for the wired-UPB idea for 20 bucks you would need to run the LV wire to the switch. My guess is that the cost would be about $50 to $75 bucks per drop if you had it done not to mention another bundle of 50+ cat5's running into your service area.

 

[Squintz]

Ok, so it just came to me. I think the perfect lighting technology is alot simpler than we think. In fact, it's right under our noses. And the beauty is the simplicity. Take a UPB switch (I would say PCS, but use your favorite), now take all of the UPB protocol and how it all works, including UpStart and the programability of the switches, etc and simply add LV control wires ala ALC and have the UPB protocol work over hardwire instead of the powerline (and maybe fix the transmit status on link issue) and sell it at a reasonable price and I think you would easily have the top selling lighting system in the market. Well, at least it sounds great to me...

AMEN!

What would kick ass even more is a hybrid. UPB as it is now OR dedicated with the option of doing both at the same time. Some retrofit areas are just too much to fool with. I like the idea of PLC. I also wish I could afford to install a hardwired system. It would be nice if I could hardwire the easy stuff and retrofit the hard stuff all using the same protocol for seamless integration.

 

[ano]

Ok, so it just came to me. I think the perfect lighting technology is alot simpler than we think. In fact, it's right under our noses. And the beauty is the simplicity. Take a UPB switch (I would say PCS, but use your favorite), now take all of the UPB protocol and how it all works, including UpStart and the programability of the switches, etc and simply add LV control wires ala ALC and have the UPB protocol work over hardwire instead of the powerline (and maybe fix the transmit status on link issue) and sell it at a reasonable price and I think you would easily have the top selling lighting system in the market. Well, at least it sounds great to me...

Sounds like you should bring your idea to a VC, they will give you funding for your idea, get the factories running round-the-clock to meet demand, then you can retire in Hawaii. Not to put you down, because I'm still attempting to understand the concept, but don't we have this already. It's called ALC. Who really cares what goes over the wires if it works? Is it the "reasonable price" that sets your idea apart from ALC? We'll the high prices of ALC is the reality that volumes are small, and small volumes translate into high prices. If you owned the company that makes ALC switches, would you sell them for less than your cost to keep the prices "reasonable?" You wouldn't be in business long if you did that. It's those lousy business rules that keep preventing me from being a billionaire.