[Waragainstsleep]

I've been thinking that someone needs to build a new platform to sit on top of iOS for a little while now but of course no-one can really do this besides Apple themselves. Anyway a couple of minutes ago it hit me.

Apple Home Automation Store.

Apple builds a framework that manifests as a single app, accessible from the shortcut screen on iOS 7 even when the phone is locked.
Apple specifies the UI but maybe 3rd parties can sell re-skins or alternate colour schemes for it.
They can also sell software modules and hardware devices.

The point being, if I want to control my Apple TV, my light switches, my rotating water bed with disco lights or my pool table that rises majestically out of the floor thanks to a fully customer setup, the last thing I want is to have to use a separate app for each of them. I want as many controls as possible in the one place. I guess Siri can help with this to some extent but I don't see people reading out pantone colour codes when trying to set up their Philips Hue lighting plans.
I have too many apps on my phone to the point where I actually use the search feature to find them in their folders. I don't want to have to do that in order to dim my lights. No-one does.

Something like this needs to happen, all the kit flooding the market at the moment is too diverse to have a mess of individual apps. Done right it would be a compelling feature for iOS.

[subego]

First, only I get to make Apple troll threads.

Second, I see this analogous to the home theatre "issue". If you can design and work a home theatre, home automation is for you. If you can't, home automation is going to be just as frustrating.

The only real bridge I've ever found to the home theatre issue and people who aren't nerds is having a human who knows what they're doing think about and program a URC remote (Logitech sucks my ass).

That's a tall order, even for Apple.

[Waragainstsleep]

I can see why they might shy away from selling the hardware to be honest, as it will need fitting a lot of the time, but I don't see why they can't provide a few APIs and a single 'launch point' remote app on the phone that lets you control as many parts of your house as you like.

It would also give them a potential opportunity to build some extra commands into Siri maybe without having to release the APIs for that to everyone.

[subego]

Two words.

Thunder. Bolt.

Ironically, Apple is great at getting people to adopt other people's protocols, but they suck mightily at getting others to adopt their home-grown ones. They could hijack an existing protocol, but none of them (802.11 included) are good enough.

As an aside, do y'all use Z-Wave?

[Spheric Harlot]

Why on earth would Thunderbolt be relevant to home automation?

Not media server — automation.

All you're sending is control data. Even Bluetooth would be more than enough bandwidth for a couple of hardware IDs, parameter numbers and values. MIDI does just that (though only really adequately since the 90s, and it was developed thirty years ago! And this automation data would not even be time-critical.

I don't think Apple is interested in doing this, nor do I see this as their job to tackle, at all (classic third-party niche, if you ask me), but the technology infrastructure is more than adequate for today, and has been for years.

[subego]

C'mon... you have to at least try.

How the **** are you going to send MIDI to your lightbulb? This needs to be a wireless protocol.

Bluetooth is too short range and has massive security problems.
802.11 isn't cheap, resistant to interference, or easy to setup on a device without a keyboard.

Why Thunderbolt is relevant is just what I said. Apple can't get traction with its own protocols. Example: Thunderbolt. Another example: FireWire. Third example: Ping.

Okay... that last one was a cheap shot. I admit it.

[Spheric Harlot]

You're in video, and in audio, and you're seriously trying to argue your point by claiming that Firewire never caught on?

What?

Much of both of those industries is BUILT around that protocol.

I have no doubt that Thunderbolt will play a similarly vital role five or ten years from now.

As for how to send controller data to a lightbulb: Phillips doesn't appear to be having too much trouble not using anything futuristic.

I mentioned Bluetooth in relation to bandwidth, not range. I'm aware that the range isn't good enough to handle a large apartment.

Also, wireless MIDI transmitters have existed for years. My iPad actually controls Logic via basic wireless MIDI. This is all perfectly possible using existing technology.

My point wasn't that all these protocols should or could be used for an integrated home automation solution, just that this stuff is in no way future music or anything that wouldn't be perfectly well possible today.

[Waragainstsleep]

But how does a 3rd party niche avoid the problem of ending up with 15 different remote control apps on your iPhone?

The only way to avoid it that I can see is to make automation into a subsection of iOS.

[Spheric Harlot]

A third party niche avoids the fifteen-apps problem by offering a comprehensive solution that runs off a single app.

If a single manufacturer can't do this, it needs to team up with other members of the industry to create a common protocol.

If that isn't possible, there probably isn't enough interest in this to make it worthwhile to create a comprehensive solution for home automation for the masses in the first place.

Which, in fact, I believe to be the basic situation at the moment.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

My point wasn't that all these protocols should or could be used for an integrated home automation solution, just that this stuff is in no way future music or anything that wouldn't be perfectly well possible today.

I know it's possible. I've had a home automation system for almost 10 years.

That means I have a different point from the one you think I'm trying to make, non?

[subego]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

But how does a 3rd party niche avoid the problem of ending up with 15 different remote control apps on your iPhone?

The only way to avoid it that I can see is to make automation into a subsection of iOS.

I think middle ground exists here.

I'm most familiar with Insteon. Any Insteon device can interface with an iPhone through the same app. This won't cover controlling your TV, but you can control dimmers, switches, thermostats, sensors, etc.

[subego]

WRT FireWire, I feel praising it's penetration to the pro market is ignoring the 800 pound USB gorilla giving you a curb-stomp.

You're the first person I've ever heard say FireWire wasn't a disaster. The best option quite simply lost. Most pros I've talked to (myself included) are pissed off about how that went down, not all "good job losing to the inferior choice".

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

WRT FireWire, I feel praising it's penetration to the pro market is ignoring the 800 pound USB gorilla giving you a curb-stomp.

You're the first person I've ever heard say FireWire wasn't a disaster. The best option quite simply lost. Most pros I've talked to (myself included) are pissed off about how that went down, not all "good job losing to the inferior choice".

Really?

That would imply that USB was actually an alternative, which — at best — only USB 3.0 ever has been (does USB 3.0 finally have error reporting in synchronous mode? Because that was one of the things that made all previous versions ridiculous — "guaranteed" bandwidth, but no way of knowing when an error occurs is simply a joke).

There's a reason why there's virtually no pro multichannel audio interfaces that run via USB (there's a handful that are stereo, or like six channels, and the Antelope Orion, which achieves 32 channels by running its own completely custom driver directly on the USB connection, but nothing like the big RME or Metric Halo interfaces, which can be cascaded for serious tracking — those are all FireWire or PCI).

I'd be extremely surprised to hear that the pro video side of things looks any different, but then, that's not my end of the business.

But USB's displacement of FireWire/DV in the consumer market doesn't mean shit to ANY of the audio pros I've ever worked with.

[subego]

You're flipping what I'm saying. USB wasn't an alternative for the pro market, FireWire was an alternative for the consumer market. The most fantastical consumer device ever used FireWire.

What I, and other pros are pissed about is we should have had the economy of scale USB did. We would have had that if Apple could sell their protocol.

Oh wait, let's get Sony to help us, consumers love adopting Sony formats.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

You're flipping what I'm saying. USB wasn't an alternative for the pro market, FireWire was an alternative for the consumer market. The most fantastical consumer device ever used FireWire.

What I, and other pros are pissed about is we should have had the economy of scale USB did. We would have had that if Apple could sell their protocol.

Oh wait, let's get Sony to help us, consumers love adopting Sony formats.

Ah, now I get it.

I've just never encountered a pro who complained about economies of scale. The ones I work with tend to pony up what's necessary for usable tools, and that's that. The cost of Firewire is rather negligible compared to the SCSI cards and Magma chassis that were necessary to do laptop-based location recording before the widespread adoption of FireWire in the audio industry.
Pricing that isn't substantially reduced by economies of scale doesn't really matter if the alternative is a pain in the ass. And Firewire basically meant $50 extra investment per device, which is what? A production dinner? Pffft.

FireWire made DV possible for the masses, but I can't imagine that the long-term roadmap involving FW800 and up to FW3200 was ever aimed at the consumer market, any more than Thunderbolt is (and it clearly is not, except for the Displayport component).

Or am I misreading you again?

Also, when I did a brief stint working for TV in the late 90s, EVERYTHING was based on Sony digi beta. Who cared what consumers were using? Why should any pro? If that were relevant, we'd be recording our basic tracks in 320 Kbps mp3.

[iMOTOR]

To suggest that FW was a disaster, is a little like suggesting that 3200 psi power washers were a failure because of the ubiquity of garden hoses. USB was ideal for cheap crap like mice, keyboards, webcams, etc. No self respecting video editor used a USB 2.0 raid as a scratch disk for FCP.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Ah, now I get it.

I've just never encountered a pro who complained about economies of scale. The ones I work with tend to pony up what's necessary for usable tools, and that's that. The cost of Firewire is rather negligible compared to the SCSI cards and Magma chassis that were necessary to do laptop-based location recording before the widespread adoption of FireWire in the audio industry.
Pricing that isn't substantially reduced by economies of scale doesn't really matter if the alternative is a pain in the ass. And Firewire basically meant $50 extra investment per device, which is what? A production dinner? Pffft.

FireWire made DV possible for the masses, but I can't imagine that the long-term roadmap involving FW800 and up to FW3200 was ever aimed at the consumer market, any more than Thunderbolt is (and it clearly is not, except for the Displayport component).

Or am I misreading you again?

Also, when I did a brief stint working for TV in the late 90s, EVERYTHING was based on Sony digi beta. Who cared what consumers were using? Why should any pro? If that were relevant, we'd be recording our basic tracks in 320 Kbps mp3.

Economy of scale isn't useful to a pro because they need the savings, it's useful because if you're using a protocol, it's better for you the more other people use it. The more it's used, the easier peripherals are to get, the more types there are, the more likely I can plug-and-play with a client, etc.

I fully agree pros usually don't care about consumer formats. The only time I recall that happening is when Apple and Sony got together, said "we can do both at once", created FireWire, and then sold it as such. If they hadn't positioned it as a direct competitor to USB, I'd have nothing to complain about.

[subego]

Oh. I forgot the Sony thing.

It was Betacam in my day, so I must have been in earlier, but I wasn't talking about Sony's track record with pro formats.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

Economy of scale isn't useful to a pro because they need the savings, it's useful because if you're using a protocol, it's better for you the more other people use it. The more it's used, the easier peripherals are to get, the more types there are, the more likely I can plug-and-play with a client, etc.

I fully agree pros usually don't care about consumer formats. The only time I recall that happening is when Apple and Sony got together, said "we can do both at once", created FireWire, and then sold it as such. If they hadn't positioned it as a direct competitor to USB, I'd have nothing to complain about.

When Firewire was demoed in 1998 (and even when it hit the market in 2000 IIRC), it wasn't a competitor to USB. USB wasn't even remotely useful for what FireWire was intended to do. Hot-plugging video streams wasn't something that Firewire competed with USB in, anymore than formula racing is something that Mercedes competes with Trek bicycles in.

USB 2 was positioned to compete with Firewire, not the other way round.

[subego]

You're flipping it again.

Almost every peripheral excepting the most low bandwidth (keyboards, mice) could have benefitted from a FireWire implementation, and would have smoked the USB2 version, which couldn't even exist yet. FireWire wasn't a competitor to USB2, FireWire destroyed USB2 before it left the gate. That's how it was positioned.

Except, that didn't happen. It stayed niche.

[subego]

Something similar is happening again right now, BTW.

DisplayPort does 2160p at 60 Hz and has been around for how long? Next gen HDMI doesn't exist yet, and when it does, it'll only do 30 Hz.

Admittedly, there's DRM issues, but Apple is insane (IMO) not to be pimping DisplayPort more and lowering the barrier to entry on ThunderBolt. It's not like DisplayPort can't have DRM.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

You're flipping it again.

Almost every peripheral excepting the most low bandwidth (keyboards, mice) could have benefitted from a FireWire implementation, and would have smoked the USB2 version, which couldn't even exist yet. FireWire wasn't a competitor to USB2, FireWire destroyed USB2 before it left the gate. That's how it was positioned.

Except, that didn't happen. It stayed niche.

How was this not obvious, though? Who controls USB? Apple and Intel didn't team up until 2006, and by then, USB 2 was already ubiquitous, cheap, backwards-compatible, and came for free with any basic motherboard.
The same will be the case with USB 3 vs. Thunderbolt.

And how was this in any way a problem for anyone? I completely fail to see how it matters, at all. The industries built around the usage scenarios Firewire was designed for (sustained, synchronous delivery of media streams) didn't give a damn. We've been happy as clams using Firewire exclusively for the past decade! It's been great for our uses, it's been pretty much universally plug-and-play, it's been portable, and it's been reasonably cheap. What are you on about?

The same thing will happen with Thunderbolt, albeit with a higher threshold. USB is not a reliable replacement at the high end.

Why are you so intent on painting a protocol that every single studio, audio or video, has been in some way built around in the past decade, as a "failure"? Just to somehow turn Firewire's total entrenchment and indispensability, but its absence from the consumer market, into something relevant to this thread (which it isn't, in the slightest, IMO)?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

Something similar is happening again right now, BTW.

DisplayPort does 2160p at 60 Hz and has been around for how long? Next gen HDMI doesn't exist yet, and when it does, it'll only do 30 Hz.

Admittedly, there's DRM issues, but Apple is insane (IMO) not to be pimping DisplayPort more and lowering the barrier to entry on ThunderBolt. It's not like DisplayPort can't have DRM.

DisplayPort isn't Apple's tech.


The following companies have participated in preparing the drafts of DisplayPort, eDP, iDP, or DDM standards:

Agilent
Altera
AMD Graphics Product Group
Analogix[48]
Apple
Astrodesign
Broadcom Corporation
Chi Mei Optoelectronics
Chrontel[49]
Dell
Display Labs
Foxconn Electronics
Genesis Microchip[50]
Hewlett-Packard
Hosiden
Hirose Electric Group
Intel
I-PEX
Integrated Device Technology
JAE Electronics
Kawasaki Microelectronics (K-Micro)
Lenovo
LG Display
Luxtera
Molex
NEC
NVIDIA
NXP Semiconductors
Xi3 Corporation
Parade Technologies
Realtek Semiconductor
Samsung [51]
SMK
STMicroelectronics
SyntheSys Research Inc.
Tektronix
Texas Instruments
TLi
Tyco Electronics
ViewSonic
VTM


The following companies have additionally announced their intention to implement DisplayPort, eDP or iDP:

Acer
ASRock[52]
Biostar
Chroma
Circuit Assembly
DataPro
Eizo
Fujitsu
Gigabyte Technology
Hall Research Technologies
ITE Tech.
Matrox Graphics
Micro-Star International[53]
MStar Semiconductor
Novatek Microelectronics Corp.
Palit Microsystems Ltd.
Pioneer Corporation
S3 Graphics
Toshiba
Philips
Quantum Data
Sparkle Computer
Unigraf

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

A third party niche avoids the fifteen-apps problem by offering a comprehensive solution that runs off a single app.

If a single manufacturer can't do this, it needs to team up with other members of the industry to create a common protocol.

If that isn't possible, there probably isn't enough interest in this to make it worthwhile to create a comprehensive solution for home automation for the masses in the first place.

Which, in fact, I believe to be the basic situation at the moment.

To me the market looks like its ready to start exploding. I think the software control is whats holding it back.
Its not necessarily the control protocols for the hardware that are at issue. There are plenty that seem to work fine and have done for years.

Companies are testing the water with a few products at a time. Philips have light bulbs, Belkin have power switches and now light switch sockets, there is all manner of X10 and Insteon kit but at the moment if I want to deck my house out entirely, I have to unlock my phone with the passcode, navigate to the right app (remember which is the right app for the device I want to control), log into the correct light bulb(s) and then I can alter settings. This is preposterous if I just want to turn the lights down.

Maybe Siri is the only way this is going to work.

[Spheric Harlot]

I'm skeptical.

[Waragainstsleep]

You think 10+ (virtual) button presses is acceptable to turn a light on or off?

[Spheric Harlot]

Vs. a simple switch? No.

You think a multi-thousand dollar home automation system running off a several-hundred dollar electronic handheld is preferable to flipping a switch when you enter a room?

More power to you.

I remain skeptical.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

How was this not obvious, though? Who controls USB? Apple and Intel didn't team up until 2006, and by then, USB 2 was already ubiquitous, cheap, backwards-compatible, and came for free with any basic motherboard.
The same will be the case with USB 3 vs. Thunderbolt.

And how was this in any way a problem for anyone? I completely fail to see how it matters, at all. The industries built around the usage scenarios Firewire was designed for (sustained, synchronous delivery of media streams) didn't give a damn. We've been happy as clams using Firewire exclusively for the past decade! It's been great for our uses, it's been pretty much universally plug-and-play, it's been portable, and it's been reasonably cheap. What are you on about?

The same thing will happen with Thunderbolt, albeit with a higher threshold. USB is not a reliable replacement at the high end.

Why are you so intent on painting a protocol that every single studio, audio or video, has been in some way built around in the past decade, as a "failure"? Just to somehow turn Firewire's total entrenchment and indispensability, but its absence from the consumer market, into something relevant to this thread (which it isn't, in the slightest, IMO)?

Working backwards...

1) This is a thread about home automation. Home automation is a consumer market.

2) Home automation is going to be dependent on a protocol.

3) As someone who has a home automation system, I have used many home automation protocols, including 802.11.

4) Those protocols have problems when applied to home automation.

5) Reiteration of #4... current protocols, including wifi, suck for home automation.

6) Apple quality home automation thus requires a new protocol.

7) If Apple needs to develop a new protocol, their track record with new protocols comes into question.

8) What protocol did apple develop? FireWire.

9) Why was it a failure? Because it promised to be A, B, C, and P, and only turned out to be P. Great success in P does not erase total failure in A, B, and C.

What are A, B, and C? Consumer devices. What is this thread about? Consumer devices.

Does that help explain things?

[subego]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

To me the market looks like its ready to start exploding. I think the software control is whats holding it back.
Its not necessarily the control protocols for the hardware that are at issue. There are plenty that seem to work fine and have done for years.

Companies are testing the water with a few products at a time. Philips have light bulbs, Belkin have power switches and now light switch sockets, there is all manner of X10 and Insteon kit but at the moment if I want to deck my house out entirely, I have to unlock my phone with the passcode, navigate to the right app (remember which is the right app for the device I want to control), log into the correct light bulb(s) and then I can alter settings. This is preposterous if I just want to turn the lights down.

Maybe Siri is the only way this is going to work.

This is where you get into the "need to think about it" zone. Once you hit the app, you don't want to diddle with individual lights. You need to preprogram all the macro "scenes" you'll ever need, and have them available on the front page of the app. That's my setup.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

DisplayPort isn't Apple's tech...

Apple isn't in the list of people who developed it? They didn't base their whole new protocol (ThunderBolt) on it and make it backwards compatible?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

Working backwards...

1) This is a thread about home automation. Home automation is a consumer market.

So why mention pro protocols like Firewire and Thunderbolt as examples?

Originally Posted by subego 

4) Those protocols have problems when applied to home automation.

5) Reiteration of #4... current protocols, including wifi, suck for home automation.

6) Apple quality home automation thus requires a new protocol.

NOW you're making a point.

How do these standards suck for home automation? Because, Shirley, bandwidth cannot be the issue? What is the problem with current wireless implementations?

Originally Posted by subego 

8) What protocol did apple develop? FireWire.

9) Why was it a failure? Because it promised to be A, B, C, and P, and only turned out to be P. Great success in P does not erase total failure in A, B, and C.

As I recall, it was a huge success in home video and enabled an entire market, until on-the-fly video compression within consumer cameras became viable, and USB 2.0 made transferring it possible.

It actually turned out to be what was promised for the entire professional media creation market.

This is the introduction:
Apple Firewire Intro - YouTube

SCSI replacement for external drives.
Hot-pluggable streaming media.

Quote at 8:00:
"It's gonna be the high-end serial connection standard throughout the industry, and it's hot."

Firewire was NOT a failure.

DisplayPort, I don't know. How is adoption going? I really don't know.
Seeing as desktop computers are dying out, the vast majority of video connections people need are probably between consumer playback devices such as projectors and TVs. It makes sense that manufacturers are adding HDMI to their laptops, as that's the most probable connection standard required. Isn't it replacing VGA in most cases? So it's probably performing low-end duties, if it's used at all...

[Spheric Harlot]

nm.

[subego]

The fundamental thing to understand about home automation from a philosophical standpoint is it's an order of magnitude more mission critical than the other computing you do in your home. If you don't have a 24/7, on-call nerd, it needs to be bulletproof.

If you use 802.11, you're giving each device a full Internet connection. You don't need 99.99% of that capability, but are still vulnerable to all the failures attendant with maintaining that complex a system. Routers, access points, even switches sometimes just take a shit and need a reboot. To paraphrase Steve, if you need to reboot your house, they blew it.

On top of that, you have overcrowded spectrum issues, unless you use N, and then you have more cost per unit and less range.

Insteon is much simpler, so the individual units are rock solid on their own, but it's actually too simple. No collision detection.




Enough on-topic blather. At least you've added something beyond "FireWire was a success in the pro market", which I've never denied, and addressed my argument: FireWire was positioned to be both a consumer and a pro interface.

Your example was a little shaky though, seeing as the first words out of Steve's mouth were think of it as USB.

That's why Apple put FireWire on the iPod. So it'd be popular with ****ing video professionals.

That's why Apple stopped supporting it on the iPod, because it was succeding so goddamn well.

FireWire WAS a failure.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by subego 

Your example was a little shaky though, seeing as the first words out of Steve's mouth were think of it as USB.

That's why Apple put FireWire on the iPod. So it'd be popular with ****ing video professionals.

That's why Apple stopped supporting it on the iPod, because it was succeding so goddamn well.

Ya don't think that the reason they put it on the iPod was that the damn thing simply would have SUCKED if they hadn't, and because every single computer they were shipping happened to have Firewire anyway?

And ya don't think that the reason they dropped it OFF the iPod was that there was an actual consumer standard that had achieved acceptable performance (and that they'd finally begun including it in their own machines)?

Not that it matters; we've both made our points clear, I think.



FWIW, Firewire was MUCH cooler for iPods. Until the 2007 releases, you could take a good 90% of supposedly "dead" iPods and just hook them up via a Firewire power supply (or just a FW cable to a computer) for a few seconds or minutes, and it would live to see another morning, no questions asked.

Most cases were "deep discharge", where the device hadn't enough power to request power via USB. Hook it up to Firewire, which just supplies the voltage, and blammo! — it would wake up, and after a few minutes, the battery would be good to go, and the iPod would be just back to normal.

We were sad — and annoyed — to see it go.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Not that it matters; we've both made our points clear, I think.

Not quite. I want to reiterate my point one more time.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

FWIW, Firewire was MUCH cooler for iPods...

We were sad — and annoyed — to see it go.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I shall add you to the list of pros I've talked to who were pissed off about it.

[abbaZaba]

are we trying to get home automation to be able to be setup by ANYone?

I still think wifi would be a good protocol. I would assume there would still be switches; if those wifi lights needed a reboot, flip the switch. But please, take pot shots at my ideas. This is how good discussions start. I have never messed around with insteon or X10 but it has been on my project list for a loooong time, just never got around to it but being able to individually access each device.

[Waragainstsleep]

I'm not sure self-setup is necessary, especially when you have items such as Belkin's new light switches, I just think you need to be able to control everything from one app and be able to custom build a front screen for that app with your own choice of most commonly adjusted devices.

The more I think it through, the more it seems Siri is the best way to do it without requiring a training course and still needing too many button presses just to pre-heat the oven before you get home. If Apple remains reluctant to open Siri up to all devs for now, perhaps they could just allow a home automation exception. Submit your automation app for consideration under Siri.
It would allow them a certain amount of control of the commands being used and the way devices are labelled.

[iMOTOR]

Originally Posted by subego 

3) As someone who has a home automation system, I have used many home automation protocols, including 802.11.

Have you ever used anything from AMX?

[subego]

Originally Posted by abbaZaba 

are we trying to get home automation to be able to be setup by ANYone?

I still think wifi would be a good protocol. I would assume there would still be switches; if those wifi lights needed a reboot, flip the switch. But please, take pot shots at my ideas. This is how good discussions start. I have never messed around with insteon or X10 but it has been on my project list for a loooong time, just never got around to it but being able to individually access each device.

You can't (or shouldn't be able to) just flip the switch. If someone flips off the light at the switch, you still want to be able to turn it on with your automation system. At the least, you need some separate reboot procedure.

This is one of the problems with the Hue. You flip the switch, and your remote is now useless.

[subego]

Originally Posted by iMOTOR 

Have you ever used anything from AMX?

Nope. Just X10, Insteon, and 802.11.

[subego]

I think the irony here is if the Rabbi was Catholic, he could have baptized the pig and then chowed down on the tastiest "chicken" he ever had.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Apple would TOTALLY win the home automation market if they had an app that could turn rabbis catholic and back. Especially if it was automated.

[subego]

Dammit!!!

That was a good one, too.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Apple would TOTALLY win the home automation market if they had an app that could turn rabbis catholic and back. Especially if it was automated.

Black Catholic Rabbis?

Sounds like something people would pay to see.