Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Sure, I was just pointing out that it's not some kind of 'trademarky' special technology that's required. It just falls out of the design of automation systems and any of them can do it. Any sort of scheme is ultimately an illusion that they are really talking to each other.
Actually allowing devices to do so in an unsupervised way (unsupervised by the automation controller) is not really even desirable, IMO. You want the automation controller to be the one that (under user controlled circumstances) mediates between them. I.e. the form of such inter-device communications should be in the form of a user configuring the automation system to react to X happening in device A and causing Y to happen in device B, not one device directly (well, indirectly) sending commands to another device. That has all of the 'spread out setup' downsides of a non-centralized controller scenario, while still requiring the centralized controller. Keeping it in the automation controller in the form I describe above means that the specific devices involved don't matter since they are not involved in control, they are only controlled (and notify the automation system of changes in their states.)
Actually allowing devices to do so in an unsupervised way (unsupervised by the automation controller) is not really even desirable, IMO. You want the automation controller to be the one that (under user controlled circumstances) mediates between them. I.e. the form of such inter-device communications should be in the form of a user configuring the automation system to react to X happening in device A and causing Y to happen in device B, not one device directly (well, indirectly) sending commands to another device. That has all of the 'spread out setup' downsides of a non-centralized controller scenario, while still requiring the centralized controller. Keeping it in the automation controller in the form I describe above means that the specific devices involved don't matter since they are not involved in control, they are only controlled (and notify the automation system of changes in their states.)