Top 30 Home Automation Companies :
What
is Home Automation?
Home automation is arguably one of the most
misunderstood subjects by the average homeowner. This site was specifically
created to help de-mystify this topic by presenting bite-size jewels of
information which can be digested in story book fashion or in reference book
mode.
By understanding the benefits and applicable
technologies available today you will have a greater appreciation of this topic
and be able to form considered opinions regarding its applicability to you. If
indeed you can grasp and relate to the lifestyle advantages available by
deploying home automation systems in your home, this site will be an ongoing
reference to help you make the product and vendor selections to meet your
automation objectives now and in the future.
The following segments of this overview offer a
definition of home automation to enable you to frame this topic, to know what
it is and is not. From there we move on to identify the benefits available by
installing this technology. And finally, this opening section wraps up with a
discussion of the future direction of home automation to help you determine if
the future of this industry is moving in a direction consistent with your needs
for yourself and your family.
Benefits
of Home Automation
The benefits of home automation lie in the
achievement of your desired lifestyle in the home environment. A desired
lifestyle usually embodies the factors of: simplicity, convenience, comfort,
entertainment, efficiency, connectivity, and safety for the whole family.
Lets examine the achievable lifestyle factors for
each home subsystem:
Entertainment
Automated controls for your entertainment centers
address simplicity and convenience in the delivery of entertainment content.
The universal remote functionality replaces a myriad of individual device
remotes and provides the ability to control the entertainment activity by
emitting multiple commands with the press of a single button. A consistent
operational interface is provided when the same universal remote is deployed in
multiple entertainment centers. These systems are enhanced when the universal
remote provides connectivity to your home computing resources to retrieve media
(e.g. digital photos and music) to play on the entertainment display.
Climate
Controls for your heating and air conditioning
(HVAC) systems, in the form of programmable thermostats, address comfort and
efficiency by maintaining a schedule consistent with your family’s presence in
the home. Convenience is achieved when the automation system can detect motion
and change the temperature set point based on the garage door opening in
combination with the time of day. Or detect open doors or windows and shut down
the HVAC system until they are closed.
Lighting
Lighting controls also provide convenience,
comfort, and efficiency by controlling when interior/exterior lights are turned
on and the brightness level. Lighting scenes are merely the combination on/off
and brightness level settings for multiple lights in the home to achieve a
desired environment for a given situation or occasion. Once a lighting scene is
defined, it can be invoked by time of day, motion or contact sensing, or the
push of a single button at a convenient place in the home.
Security
Security and alarm systems normally address most
of the safety issues in the home environment. However, adequate lighting at
night can prevent unwanted accidents such as falling down the stairs or add to
the burglary deterrent by flashing exterior lights when motion is detected. Convenience
improves when security sensors can also be used to trigger climate and lighting
scenes when the alarm system is disarmed.
Home
Data Network
Increasingly home automation systems are being
designed to utilize the home data network to pass control information or stream
digital media as mentioned above. This infrastructure subsystem will play a
larger role over time allowing the integration of entertainment, computing, and
control devices with appliances into a coordinated home network with the potential
to improve all of the other lifestyle factors previously mentioned.
Note efficiency translates into dollar savings in
energy cost for your home. A simple example is turning on outside lights to 80%
brightness at sunset to save 20% of the electricity usage for this one typical
lighting scene.
With whole-house automation systems, described in
more detail later, you have the greatest opportunity to meet all your lifestyle
factors by coordinating the operation of each of the above subsystems into one
cohesive system.
Future
of Home Automation
Predicting the future of just about anything is
very risky business. Home automation is an industry that largely started with
X10 devices in 1980. Today, we believe the future of home automation will very
much ride the digital age and develop along with the computer and networking
systems in the years to come. Initially it appeared, companies such as
Microsoft and Exceptional Innovation with their Life/ware software were
positioning the Windows Media Center PC as the heart and sole of a complete
solution for home automation relying on web services to seamlessly interface
with lighting controls, climate controls, security panels, and IP surveillance
cameras to compliment the digital media management capabilities of Windows Media
Center. However, Exceptional Innovation stopped selling their systems for
residential installations, and Microsoft Media Center capabilities have
disappeared in the Windows 8 OS.
Today the "Internet of Things" has
emerged as the picture of our connected future depicted in the following
graphic.
The above graphic from Control4 shows access to
your smart home system from anywhere in the world, which thousands of Control4
homeowners have been doing for the last few years.
Advances in home networking technology using both
wired and wireless Ethernet have enabled the addition of more devices to the
network at an affordable incremental cost. Those building new homes today
should consider installing Cat6 wiring throughout the home to support a Gigabit
Ethernet bandwidth which will improve the performance of digital video
streaming among devices in the home. To view our recommended home network
topology for smart homes click here. The IEEE 802.11n standard for home WiFi
networks will likewise provide similar improvements in wireless bandwidth. Even
though the 802.11n specification is still in draft form, pre-n home wireless
routers delivering up to 300 Mbps bandwidth have been available for the last
few years and offer significant advances in signal strength throughout the
home. This improvement in bandwidth bodes well for existing homeowners wanting
to retrofit a home automation solution without knocking down walls or tearing
up drywall.
Coupled with the above advances in Ethernet
technology is the emergence of radio frequency (RF) communications protocols
such as ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4 standard) and Z-Wave developed by Zen Systems. RF
communications has speed advantages over Ethernet for small amounts of
information which is typical of the command sequences required for controlling
lights or thermostats. We chose to highlight the industry leading Control4
product line specifically because the system architecture is built on a
communications infrastructure that utilizes the strength of Ethernet for
digital audio/video streaming and ZigBee for control information between the
system controller and other devices and user interfaces in the system. These
mature RF protocols also enable wireless contact and motion sensors to be
deployed in security systems. An example is the ZigBee-based sensors from Card
Access (www.cardaccess-inc.com), which also improve the attractiveness of
security features for existing homes.
Analogous to the computer and networking
industries, the degree to which smart home functionality will become mainstream
will depend on the systems and software developed to enable a "plug n'
play" environment where a homeowner can purchase lighting devices or
thermostats that can easily be added to a proprietary home automation system
without engaging a custom installer/integrator.
One reason X10 technology enjoyed a 30+ year ride
was the simplicity of adding X10 devices in your home at a cost affordable by
all homeowners, and the larger variety of X10 devices previously available
allowed the homeowner to address some areas of control the new technologies
could not. But now that X10 product manufacturing has been discontinued by
companies such as X10 USA, homeowners will have to transition to one of the
RF-based technologies. This transition is probably best managed by replacing
failed X10 devices with Insteon equivalents from Smarthome which can be
assigned an X10 address and controlled by X10 devices in addition to other
Insteon devices.
More recently we've discussed the potential of
home automation from the cloud which could have the ability to extend smart
home technology to a much larger market if a central server with a thin home
controller client architecture was developed and deployed. While Apple and
others are touting the "cloud" as a repository for all your media,
it's not clear any of the top HA companies are looking at the central
server/remote client approach.
With the proliferation of household appliances
available with an Ethernet connection to add to the audio/video devices also
having this connection, clearly a new level of "automation" would be
possible in the future if the "plug n' play" capability enjoyed on
today's computers is extended to these other home devices. This of course will
require manufacturers to see a compelling reason to include the appropriate
chips and firmware in these appliances to enable recognition by other
controllers on the home network.
With the speed of the digital age this incremental
cost may be insignificant when combined on a chip providing other essential
functions. So check back with us in 2020 to see how the industry has done!
Home
Automation Technology
Our view of home automation technology starts with
the X10 signaling protocol, which hit the retail market circa 1980. Prior to
X10, automation control systems were typically point-to-point hard-wired
systems installed almost exclusively in very high end homes.
The home automation technologies available today
still include X10 and hard-wired systems. But also include enhanced powerline
(i.e. for home electrical circuits), ethernet, and wireless technologies. This
segment explains each of these technologies and how they are typically used
within a home automation system, along with the advantages and disadvantages of
each.
In addition to providing enhanced performance,
reliability, and functionality, the newer technologies bring whole-house
automation into the realm of affordability for any home 2000 sq ft and up.
Realistically, even an apartment dweller can take advantage of these products
for high return solutions in any of the home subsystems discussed on this site.
You might have a project that requires home automation on your desk right now. Or perhaps you’re curious 