Today I finally got around to correcting the programming for our outside lights, which I screwed up when we switched from summer time several weeks ago. The programming for the lights and for the outside blinds is performed by complicated sequences of button-pushes on the above controllers. The sequences are so complicated, and the handbooks so poorly written, that we usually manage to screw up the programming for at least one of the units each year. They drive me mad.
So the next time we move, there is one “must”. We are going to have lights and blinds controlled by a home automation (HA) unit which can be programmed using a personal computer using either a USB interface, or better, via a WLAN connection. At least, I hope so.
At the moment, the situation in Europe is pretty dire.
The leading manufacturer of reasonably priced HA seems to be SmartLabs, who have developed a standard called Insteon. However, despite having announced a year ago that they were going to announce products for the non USA markets, they still haven’t done so. As their US products use the same frequency as the GSM mobile phone networks in the rest of the world, and 110V instead of the more common 220/230V in many other parts of the world, you have to be a hardcore hardware hacker to get them working here. Most of the HA devices in Europe seem to use the X10 standard, which seems to be fairly difficult to get working reliably; Insteon is apparently much less susceptible to interference from household devices than X10. There are other standards which are more reliable than X10 – one is Z-Wave.
One interesting vendor in Europe (more precisely, in the UK) seems to be Dianemo, who have developed produces using the Z-Wave standard. However most of their focus at the moment seems to be on remote control of light switches and multi-media installations in the home. Fortunately, we aren’t moving house right now, and we hope that by the time we do, the situation regarding HA in Europe will have improved.
I have another bee in my bonnet about the electrical installations in the home. We have eight 12V or 5V power adaptors in our office (which is where the computers and WLAN equipment are installed). We have additional power adaptors in several other rooms too, and on top of that, whenever we charge our mobile phones or the power packs for our cameras, we need to plug in additional power adaptors while we are doing that.
I offer the following idea to anyone who wishes to manufacture it. I think new houses should have a single heavy-duty 12V/5V transformer mounted in the fusebox. It should feed an electrical track (similar to that used for ceiling-mounted low voltage halogen lamp track systems) mounted above or in the skirting board in every room, which allows power leads to any low voltage device to clicked into the track at any point in it’s route around the house. That would save manufacturers delivering a power unit with each mobile phone, WLAN access point, router, etc., which would also reduce the amount of electrical waste to dispose of when the devices are eventually scrapped. It would keep the overall costs of new devices down, and it would offer the possibility of being able to install devices where ever in every room they are needed.
The same concept of not supplying unnecessary hardware is already implemented today by most printer manufacturers – when did you last buy a printer which included a USB cable? Most people have boxes of them lying around at home and don’t need one if they buy a new printer. If they do, they buy it extra when they buy the printer. Why not apply the same principle to power adaptors too?
