pete_c
Guru
Wow; this is a great discussion!
Deane here too still have an Ocelot from many years ago.
I see a "catch up" of bridging automation technology using whatever it takes to bring it to mainstream.
There is the connection between using cellular technology, Wintel OS, Apple OS and Linux OS.
None of it is going away anytime soon that I can tell.
I have over the years played much with computers ....starting mostly in the 1980's with a variety of OS's back then; a race of sorts for most common use and popularity. In the 1970's played Star Trek on a terminal and a variety of teletype machines in water closets in school while taking physics (with was up to some 6 hours long of a class; so a "star trek" break was welcome back then). It was neato though to utilize X10 in the late 70's in one home thousands of miles away from the midwest and remote control it via an expensive phone call. I would get PO'd though cuz I wanted to have a lived in look in the home and would be gone sometimes for up to 6 months when the electric got shut off (really for no apparent reason as the electric bills were paid even not present in the home).
Commercially got involved in much R&D relating to software and hardware for the largest private networks in the world that connected just about any major city anywhere at anytime globally way before the common use of the internet. The private network grew so fast that protection of it within it and around it was written of and spoke of in meetings in the 1990's knowing that it would become a bit attached to today's internet. Geez I had a public IP on my personal desktop at work that I could access from any part of the world in the 1990's; and played with groups of a variety of large public assigned internet addressing trying to make sense out of the addressing and mapping of these addresses to geographical locations such that I could figure out where I was in the world when looking at these addresses (it did get a bit confusing sometimes).
Above mentioned too is the entries of tiny single board ARM computers that can run a bit faster and do a bit more these days than yesteryear.
The Leviton / Elk combination security and automation panels will do basic automation (well what we see today) just fine and many folks say that is all that they need or even want relating to automation.
Just relating to automation (not security); software (using a variety of OS's) can push that automation envelope today mostly because the speeds of the newest CPUs, abundance of memory relating to basic kernels and play space for the OS's (well that and sloppy fat programming).
Over the last few years many computer users have narrowed the focus of their preferences to whatever OS they feel most comfortable with; same with Cellular technology. That said it goes along with the long term automation users having always utilized or having the preferences of one OS or another.
The "console" has evolved and some folks prefer it and consider it over the main pieces of their automation "hub" and do not really care about that piece whether its at home or in the cloud.
Years ago there were a couple of popular services which used mostly telephone lines; IE: Compuserve, Plink, AOL et al. These services used mostly text communications with fancy graphical interfaces that did provide fancy eye candy for very simple communications. It worked well and did make these services popular.
Personally folks do pick whatever automation that they want based on their own knowledge base; especially if over the years they have used only one type of OS or one type of cellular phone; it makes total sense to do this.
Here too I have played with Elve; liked it. Did what I wanted it to do in Wintel. Wintel though today is a bit bloated for me. I know I can can slim down most current Windows Server to just running what is needed for Elve as I have done this many times.
I write that but also have a tiny Samsung "portable" touchscreen computer with a customized multiOS boot that runs Windows 8.1, Current MacOS, Current Android OS and Linux. The OS's can be made to run just fine with all of the fat removed.
Ideally the invention of one box that talks a multitude of automation protocols which can be spoken to (programmed) with any OS today and can connect to any console today would be the ideal "automation" box....but that is my wishful thinking....
@Deane,
Tell us what OS you are most comfortable with and why?
What type of automation console you are most familiar with and why? (IE: propietary interface to an OS, Web GUI, console GUI et al).
Personally this is a great discussion and this is a neato forum where we do see folks from all different avenue's of IT, personal and commercial along with security stuff; et al.
Let us please continue with this discussion.
Deane here too still have an Ocelot from many years ago.
I see a "catch up" of bridging automation technology using whatever it takes to bring it to mainstream.
There is the connection between using cellular technology, Wintel OS, Apple OS and Linux OS.
None of it is going away anytime soon that I can tell.
I have over the years played much with computers ....starting mostly in the 1980's with a variety of OS's back then; a race of sorts for most common use and popularity. In the 1970's played Star Trek on a terminal and a variety of teletype machines in water closets in school while taking physics (with was up to some 6 hours long of a class; so a "star trek" break was welcome back then). It was neato though to utilize X10 in the late 70's in one home thousands of miles away from the midwest and remote control it via an expensive phone call. I would get PO'd though cuz I wanted to have a lived in look in the home and would be gone sometimes for up to 6 months when the electric got shut off (really for no apparent reason as the electric bills were paid even not present in the home).
Commercially got involved in much R&D relating to software and hardware for the largest private networks in the world that connected just about any major city anywhere at anytime globally way before the common use of the internet. The private network grew so fast that protection of it within it and around it was written of and spoke of in meetings in the 1990's knowing that it would become a bit attached to today's internet. Geez I had a public IP on my personal desktop at work that I could access from any part of the world in the 1990's; and played with groups of a variety of large public assigned internet addressing trying to make sense out of the addressing and mapping of these addresses to geographical locations such that I could figure out where I was in the world when looking at these addresses (it did get a bit confusing sometimes).
Above mentioned too is the entries of tiny single board ARM computers that can run a bit faster and do a bit more these days than yesteryear.
The Leviton / Elk combination security and automation panels will do basic automation (well what we see today) just fine and many folks say that is all that they need or even want relating to automation.
Just relating to automation (not security); software (using a variety of OS's) can push that automation envelope today mostly because the speeds of the newest CPUs, abundance of memory relating to basic kernels and play space for the OS's (well that and sloppy fat programming).
Over the last few years many computer users have narrowed the focus of their preferences to whatever OS they feel most comfortable with; same with Cellular technology. That said it goes along with the long term automation users having always utilized or having the preferences of one OS or another.
The "console" has evolved and some folks prefer it and consider it over the main pieces of their automation "hub" and do not really care about that piece whether its at home or in the cloud.
Years ago there were a couple of popular services which used mostly telephone lines; IE: Compuserve, Plink, AOL et al. These services used mostly text communications with fancy graphical interfaces that did provide fancy eye candy for very simple communications. It worked well and did make these services popular.
Personally folks do pick whatever automation that they want based on their own knowledge base; especially if over the years they have used only one type of OS or one type of cellular phone; it makes total sense to do this.
Here too I have played with Elve; liked it. Did what I wanted it to do in Wintel. Wintel though today is a bit bloated for me. I know I can can slim down most current Windows Server to just running what is needed for Elve as I have done this many times.
I write that but also have a tiny Samsung "portable" touchscreen computer with a customized multiOS boot that runs Windows 8.1, Current MacOS, Current Android OS and Linux. The OS's can be made to run just fine with all of the fat removed.
Ideally the invention of one box that talks a multitude of automation protocols which can be spoken to (programmed) with any OS today and can connect to any console today would be the ideal "automation" box....but that is my wishful thinking....
@Deane,
Tell us what OS you are most comfortable with and why?
What type of automation console you are most familiar with and why? (IE: propietary interface to an OS, Web GUI, console GUI et al).
Personally this is a great discussion and this is a neato forum where we do see folks from all different avenue's of IT, personal and commercial along with security stuff; et al.
Let us please continue with this discussion.