Medium-size UPB Installation Experience

[rocco]

2- If Zigbee is doing so well in the industrial arena what is the holdup in producing consumer products?

Actually, it is only getting started in the industrial arena, as well. The main holdup right now is the certification process. There are devices out there that are designed as ZigBee, but they can't use the ZigBee name until they get certification. I believe the Control4 devices (based on Ember) are among them.

3- There are lots of technologies for transmitting high bandwidth signals over power lines. Adapters to send ethernet, video, and telephone signals over home power wiring are common and cheap. Why are none of these technologies being adapted to make high bandwidth switches?

Cheap is a relative term. The new ZWave chip costs about $3 in large quantities. Some think that is too high. Zensys hopes to have the price under $1 at some point. And the requirement of devices to run from batteries forces the bandwidth down, as well.

 

[Dean Roddey]

sorry that that wasn't as short as I would have liked.

No, that was quite useful information. Thanks. So what is the Zigbee version of the Z-Wave USB controller? I've not been keeping up with the Zigbee side of it since I'm so busy I have to kind of keep to the immediate event horizon. Is there such a thing out there yet? Are Zigbee taking a more open approach to computer-based control than ZenSys originally did?

 

[ChrisWalker]

2- If Zigbee is doing so well in the industrial arena what is the holdup in producing consumer products?

This is an even more complicated issue. ZigBee is a marketing term which basically means "extensions built on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol." The industrial applications may be very different from the home control applications, and may not be ZigBee at all, but the ZigBee marketing camps tend to blur the lines.

Additionally, there are several revs of the 802.15.4 protocol in the works, among other issues--so "ZigBee" in one device may or may not play well with "ZigBee" in another device.

I can see a lot of really cool uses for ZigBee in the industrial arena for sure. If they can even get the chip price down and prove that it works, other arenas will start to open up as well.

Chris

 

[ChrisWalker]

No, that was quite useful information. Thanks. So what is the Zigbee version of the Z-Wave USB controller? I've not been keeping up with the Zigbee side of it since I'm so busy I have to kind of keep to the immediate event horizon. Is there such a thing out there yet? Are Zigbee taking a more open approach to computer-based control than ZenSys originally did?

Dean,

The ZigBee world is much more expensive to get into than the Z-Wave world. The chips are more expensive. The SDKs are more expensive. Certification is likely to be more expensive.

And the one USB dongle that I've seen is a few hundred dollars--and I don't know that there's even a common API for USB dongles. They may all have their own proprietary interfaces; we'll have to see how it all sorts out.

Chris

 

[rocco]

So what is the Zigbee version of the Z-Wave USB controller? . . . Is there such a thing out there yet?

I have hardware, but I have not yet found an implementation of the ZigBee stack that runs on a PC. One more sign that ZigBee is not ready for prime-time.

Are Zigbee taking a more open approach to computer-based control than ZenSys originally did?

It is somewhat like an open standard. The lower layers (PHY and MAC) are an open IEEE standard. The upper layers (NET through APP) are under the control of the ZigBee Alliance (little-big-brother), but everything is published. Here is the specification. You have to join the alliance and have your product certified if you want to put the ZigBee logo on it.

 

[rocco]

I guess I should apologize to ChrisWalker, for I have seriously hijacked his thread.

Sorry, Chris.

 

[kwilcox]

Actually, Insteon's innovative carrier based scheme makes it the fastest powerline protocol. It can do 20 bits per zero crossing or 2400 bps. With an 80 bit command frame, that means it can send 20-30 commands per second. That's about 5 times faster than UPB. Still, since the carrier bursts are designed to fit just before an X10 signal on the powerline, attenuation and signal absorbtion issues can still occur. Thus the reason for the meshed wireless component of the protocol. Unfortunately this might limit Insteon's potential market since High-end housing owners may not go for the requirement of placing Insteon boosterlincs throughout the house....

I myself wouldn't want my network to go down unexpectedly because my 1 year-old unplugged a repeater somewhere....

What smarthome needs to do is come up with a wire-in boosterlinc that looks and works like a 2 plug receptacle.

 

[electron]

This makes me long for IP based switches even more

 

[kwilcox]

Anyway, I also vote that we return this thread OT. I'm still very interested in the UPB situation that ChrisWalker is having. Maybe somebody from SAI is lurking and would care to post some findings???

I did find one HCA bug regarding UPB btw. It appears that UPB status based triggers get lost whenever you run UPStart. They are aware of this and have a fix which will be included in the next release. I've contacted them for the current beta since there was an issue with my daughter's bedroom light that cropped up as I was testing to try and reproduce some of ChrisWalker's problems yesterday. My daughter wasn't pleased that her light wouldn't stay off after we put her to bed (pressing off on her lightswitch is supposed to disable the motion sensor). Jeez.... talk about clutch debugging while the wife was looking over my shoulder!

 

[brothers]

Unfortunately this might limit Insteon's potential market since High-end housing owners may not go for the requirement of placing Insteon boosterlincs throughout the house....

I myself wouldn't want my network to go down unexpectedly because my 1 year-old unplugged a repeater somewhere....

What smarthome needs to do is come up with a wire-in boosterlinc that looks and works like a 2 plug receptacle.

Every Insteon device is a repeater for the powerline side of the signal - no need for BoosterLincs. This is one of the reasons for Insteon's significantly improved reliability over X10.

- Dennis

 

[ChrisWalker]

Here's an interesting question:

We won't be back in the UPB test home for a week or three (and from what I understand, two representatives from Simply Automated will be there on site)--but in the meantime, we ran into one more question:

One of the switches (which is controlling standard 110V lighting) works fine sometimes, but sometimes it boots itself into some kind of troubleshooting or diagnostic pattern. We have to reset it (with the circuit breaker, or by pulling the airgap out and then pushing it back in after a few seconds) to get it to come back online--and then it invariably boots itself back into the mode again after a while.

Here's the pattern it shows on its LED:
GREEN PULSE
BLUE PULSE
BLUE PULSE
BLUE PULSE
[repeat continuously]

Does anyone know what this is? At first glance, the technical gentleman I e-mailed at Simply Automated is not sure--but they're looking forward to figuring it out. If we could figure this out, though, maybe it will lead to finding out what the issue at hand is.

BTW, I also learned (again, a bit of technical wisdom from SA) another important thing: it's good to run separate ground wires to audio equipment instead of using the shared ground in the house. I'm assuming this goes for neutrals too, although you normally get that with separate circuits in the first place.

Chris

 

[kwilcox]

@brothers:

your statement is true, but that doesn't negate the need for the wireless component in the protocol. As an X10 user with boosterlincs I can tell you that it is needed. The problem with boosterlincs is that they must see some level of signal on the circuit before they can repeat it. If a signal sucker exists between the boosterlinc and that switchbox where the circuit terminates then the boosterlinc won't see signal and the rest of the circuit consequently won't work.

If this doesn't convince you, here's a thought experiment that might: If the wireless component of Insteon wasn't needed, why would it be there, and why would Smarthome recommend at least two in an insteon environment?

@ChrisWalker

I have no idea what that switch is doing. I also can't see why an isolated ground or, for that matter, an isolated neutral might solve anything unless there is some other underlying electrical problem. Does this house have any sub-panels? If it does, is the ground isolated from the neutral on those panels?

It's amazing to me to hear the number of issues you're experiencing. I can't help but think that there's something fundamentally wrong with the switches themselves. The only thing that negates this hypothesis is the number of UPStart crashes you're experiencing. Damn.... I've never seen or heard of a UPStart crash prior to reading this thread. I've got some connections at Advanced Quonset and I'll run your issues by one of their developers to see if I can help somehow.

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

It's amazing to me to hear the number of issues you're experiencing. I can't help but think that there's something fundamentally wrong with the switches themselves. The only thing that negates this hypothesis is the number of UPStart crashes you're experiencing. Damn.... I've never seen or heard of a UPStart crash prior to reading this thread.

I agree with you. I have never heard of this either and we have installers doing houses well over 10,000 square feet with UPB.....

 

[ChrisWalker]

kwilcox: Thank you. This may all even be due to the new (significantly nicer) design of the SA Universal Switches. Or it may be due to the way the neutral wiring is set up in that home. Or a myriad of other things. I'm not sure. The home is a beachfront condo, and it has its own panel--but that may actually be a [very large] sub-panel to another one. And I don't know if the ground is isolated from the neutral on those--although I could ask the electricians if they know next time we're all there.

We experienced a bunch of issues with switches (and the cooresponding protocols) from various manufacturers in testing other systems as well, so sometimes I have to think that we are just really good testers :blink: But we've never run into powerline issues like this before. Even with X10, it was generally just a signal weakness issue.

About the only switches we tested and didn't find any major issues with are the newer (i.e. Intermatic) Z-Wave devices. Those seem to perform flawlessly. It's like a safe haven :blink:

Chris

 

[ChrisWalker]

I agree with you. I have never heard of this either and we have installers doing houses well over 10,000 square feet with UPB.....

I'll second that. I would have a hard time believing it if I hadn't been there trying to help fix it. I'm hoping that it's something simple which can either be fixed design-wise in the switches or, in the worst case, can be warned about in product documentation.

For some reason, it seems like it might be an issue with the newly-designed SA Wire-in Phase Coupler and/or how the phases are set up in the home, since it seems to make a lot of noise even when there's no traffic on the network. But that's only a theory--the problem will likely be something completely different.

We'll see what Simply Automated says when their techs come out in early October. It's costing both us and the installer a small fortune to deal with all of this, so it will be nice to get an official diagnosis and hopefully see the installation finished. Now I remember one of the reasons why we are manufacturers and not installers :blink:

Martin--you have a lot of UPB installation out there from what it sounds like, and you're probably very much in the loop on all of this. Have you heard of any related issues which might shed some light on all of this?

Chris