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nexthabitat

New Member
Hello,

I am starting a home automation consulting business and I just went threw the process of choosing a name. I settled on Next Habitat (nexthabitat.com) During the process I acquired 2 extra domain names that I will not be using. If anyone is interested in habitatshift.com or hiteklife.com PM me.

Another available domain that I looked at but did not register are techronment.com (technology + environment)
 
Welcome aboard. I am sure you will find this sight to be a good source of info as well as comoradery.

What state are you in? Is your background HA? What manufacturers are you working with or prefer to install? Just curious.
 
Welcome aboard. I am sure you will find this sight to be a good source of info as well as comoradery.

What state are you in? Is your background HA? What manufacturers are you working with or prefer to install? Just curious.


MN, Minneapolis - I am new to HA - I have been a self employed IT consultant for the past 5 years. I am going after high end residential and commercial environments. I am going at it from more of a consulting angle then an installer angle. My starting prospects are all current customers of mine. I have decided to do it as a separate company because it is quite a bit different from what I am currently doing. I have created a separate LLC for this venture and I also have included a partner for Next Habitat who is not involved with my IT consulting.

Manufactures is still undecided and this choice does not look easy. I am definitely not doing anything that involves sending communication over live power lines. This is a very sloppy and in-efficient idea and it's to bad that so many HA products rely on it. In a perfect world I would have wired ethernet going to every object, and they would all have a tcp/ip address, and their own interface - I would have the choice to communicate with each object individually or by a centralized control point. Really this whole industry needs to move in the direction of each object being "smart" instead of one "smart" control point that controls objects as if they are dumb extensions of the centralized controller.

Until that happens however, I will have to work with whats available. My first prospects are going to be retrofits so I am looking into wireless or hybrid wireless/ethernet solutions. Notice I say ethernet not hardwired, as most hardwired solutions in the HA world are powerline solutions - this is not what I want. I am really not very happy with any of the current products that I have looked at and/or tried out. If anyone has any good recommendations please post, I am looking for quality not price. Are there any complete TCP/IP, hardwired/802.11x ethernet solutions available? Computer networking has evolved nicely with tcp/ip, I don't understand why it's not used for HA.

The problem with the current HA protocols is the addressing protocol seems to be combined with the physical networking medium. What makes TCP/IP so great is that all it does is addressing, you can network tcp/ip devices with whatever means you want, wireless, hardwire of all kinds, satalite, evdo, etc - and combine all of those methods, and still have reliable communication - you can use it local or wide area, put services on specific ports and route them with very specific methods. TCP/IP is by far the most evolved addressing system, I can not understand for the life of me why it's not used in this industry.
 
Interesting perspective. You will find some good support here for powerline vs. wireless. But, everyone has their own belief which doesnt make them right or wrong.

I too come from a more computer back ground than HA, not as technical as yours but have often wondered why its a completely different set up when a proven one works. But, i couldnt answer one way or the other on WHY one is better, LOL.

I assume you have looked at the hardwired alc solution and have ruled it out?

Good luck to you new venture. Its a fun and exciting one.
 
Interesting perspective. You will find some good support here for powerline vs. wireless. But, everyone has their own belief which doesnt make them right or wrong.

I too come from a more computer back ground than HA, not as technical as yours but have often wondered why its a completely different set up when a proven one works. But, i couldnt answer one way or the other on WHY one is better, LOL.

I assume you have looked at the hardwired alc solution and have ruled it out?

Good luck to you new venture. Its a fun and exciting one.

I just don't believe that any type of communication going over a live power line can really be reliable. It seems like a half ass rig setup that people do because they already have power lines run to all the devices and they don't want to go threw the trouble of running a second line for communication. Wireless has issues as well but if done right wireless can be very reliable. I am currently doing a project for Cisco in Home Depot stores and their wifi setup is a great example of how to do reliable wireless. Everything is redundant, every store has 2 linux based servers that control an overlapping network of access points. Either server along with one or multiple access points can go down without killing the network or even creating dead spots. I am replacing switches in the stores and I will have half of the access points offline and the store managers are still able to use the wireless VOIP phones and wireless product scanners from anywhere in the store. It is pretty impressive - A similar approach could be implemented to obtain a very reliable and redundant wireless home network - but I can't imagine how I could possibly create a reliable network over live power lines. The most reliable thing to do would be a separate non-power line hardwire going to each device that is designated for communication only, not power, but this is often not practical in retrofits. Which btw I have yet to find any products that would support a separate communication only hardwire, all the hardwire solutions that I have seen are for power lines. If anyone knows of such a product line please post it.

I came across this article the other day, I think it might even been linked from another post I was reading in these forums, or maybe from somewhere else I don't remember.

http://www.ecmag.com/index.cfm?fa=article&articleID=8028

If someone produces Z/IP products I would be all over that. I am not hung up on trying to use 802.11x, I really don't care about the physical protocol as much as I care about being able to use the TCP/IP addressing protocol. If it were established that I can use TCP/IP for addressing then I would be able to mix and match whatever forms of hardwire and wireless I want, as long as everything is on TCP/IP. So if Z/IP happens, then I could use Z-wave, 802.11x, and ethernet, all on the same network.
 
nexthabitat,

Welcome...

Take a look at the DigiLinX products from Netstreams. It's IP based an might be a good solution for the A/V side of your installs? Their systems integrate with a number of products from other manufacturers (Escient, Lutron Lighting, Panasonic IP Cams, Aprilaire, etc.).

The DigiLinX products reply on a solid Ethernet network for relaible operation, but with your background, you'll be familiar with what it takes to nail this down (VLAN, QOS).

Cheers,
Paul
 
Building an ethernet network in the home is already a given to network the home computers so it only makes sense to use that same network to provide communication for everything else and to get everyone talking on the same protocol. It appears that the Z-Wave alliance is moving in this direction and adopting TCP/IP. I found another article, it also looks like Cisco is an investor in Zensys, the company behind z-wave.

Martin Manniche, senior director, connected home architecture group at Linksys, a Division of Cisco Systems, Inc., stated, "As an investor in Zensys, we are pleased to see the technology move towards an open standard approach. Using TCP/IP will help to accelerate the adoption of applications for multiple uses of Z-Wave around the home, as well as interoperability amongst multiple vendors."

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/3874/z-wave_converges_with

The only question now is are the current z-wave products going to be compatible with TCP/IP or is this just future products? Anyone know anything about this?
 
I just don't believe that any type of communication going over a live power line can really be reliable. It seems like a half ass rig setup that people do because they already have power lines run to all the devices and they don't want to go threw the trouble of running a second line for communication.

I think you have to take into account that manufacturers have to design for retrofit as well as new contruction so it is not just a matter of "don't want to go through the trouble of running a second line". My house is old. it does not have reliably hollow cavities in the walls. There is no sheetrock, no romex, no PVC plumbing, nor any of the other current construction "standards". There is no way I could ever run a low voltage wire to most of my switch locations. It is also very difficult to use RF because of all the chimneys and thick stone walls in the place.

With over a hundred automated switches it would be silly for me to use anything BUT PLC transmission. I know the signal will get there because the power gets there. It is a pain to program because the medium is slow but once set up it is plenty fast enough to do the job and quite reliable as well..

Also, despite the apparent low cost of TCP/IP hardware it is still a magnitude higher than the much simpler chips used for PLC switches. Even a small increase at the component level would translate to a huge increase in the price of the switch.
 
I also believe that PLC if done right can equal if not exceed reliability of a wireless system. Especially if using the new Gen II UPB stuff.
 
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