John and I were talking about hybrid control architectures (local and
centralized for same system) and got to talking about Zigbee. John
thought the time is near - maybe 2-3 years - before the Japanese
implement zigbee widely. I'm not so sure - and even if they do, I'm
not sure it'll matter. To implement an open control system, one needs
some transmission interchange between devices, a semanatics to the
messages and a translation layer. As far as I know, there are no
interoperable zigbee products - at an application layer - sold by two
different companies (CardAccess + Control4 doesn't count.)
But John is a smart guy, so I want to give him the benefit of the
doubt...maybe things are developing under my nose. I check out the
zigbee alliance website. Eureka! They have now published "ZIGBEE
HOME AUTOMATION PUBLIC APPLICATION PROFILE". I go off an download it.
Not very interesting - basically a lighting protocol for residential.
Still leaves lots and lots of wiggle room (i.e. I can't imagine
actually making two dimmers from two companies work together using
this protocol.) It's at version 25 - that's a good sign. I don't
know the comittee members so I google them.....a whopping two out of
seventeen are from the control world (Control4 and Vantage.) There is
no one at all from the Japanese manufacturers or any CE manufaturer
(the Phillips folks seem to be from the lighting.)
Meanwhile, there has been lots of action on the thermostat and power
control fronts...lots + lots of licensee's. But none interoperable.
Granted that AV system control isn't rocket science but how hard is
HVAC control? The zigbee world has put forth 6 or 7 different
residential thermostats - none of which appear to be interoperable
(not their Smart Energy Series - they actually have semantic level
standards.)
So, what are we to make about the state of affairs? Doesn't the
existence of the lighting + hvac control efforts presage the extension
to broad-based automation control? I think not. The energy guys
really like standards. Lonworks/BacNet actually have some adoption.
Meanwhile, the AV world is moving towards a meta-data rich, real-time
interface world that Zigbee can't support. What AV manufacturer is
going to go whole-hog into a protocol that doesn't support cover art?
I know that AMX has their Zigbee remote and Crestron will release
theirs soon. And there will be more - I bet we see something from
Universal Remote and Elan at CEDIA next month too. But none of them
will talk to each other - it's just a better, longer range version of
lower frequency RF from a customer point of view.
-Aaron