There was some Dataterm discussions about 10 years ago on the group,
most
seem pretty happy, but unsure on savings costs.

Ten years later, any one have any clue if it does save money on the
bills ?
Any other products out there that touch it or do better?

In article ,
niavasha writes:
There was some Dataterm discussions about 10 years ago on the group,
most
seem pretty happy, but unsure on savings costs.

Ten years later, any one have any clue if it does save money on the
bills ?
Any other products out there that touch it or do better?

About 10 years ago, I started building my own home automation
system, which includes intelligent heating controls. Back then,
I would have guessed such things would be standard fit by now,
but they actually haven't moved on very much at all in that
period -- possibily a few more products, but still near to zero
market penetration for the lot.

To be honest, I don't think IHC alone makes a lot of sense.
You really need home automation, of which IHC is just one part,
but fully integrated with the rest of the home automation.

The public doesn't seem to want it. If you add home automation
or other perceived complex controls to a house at the moment,
you reduce the value of the house, and that's on top of the
high price you have to pay for such schemes in the first place.
This hasn't stopped me, but it does mean I have done it with a
view of ripping it all out if I needed to sell the house, and
going back to your basic timeswitch and bimetallic thermostat.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel coughed up some electrons that declared:


The public doesn't seem to want it. If you add home automation
or other perceived complex controls to a house at the moment,
you reduce the value of the house, and that's on top of the
high price you have to pay for such schemes in the first place.
This hasn't stopped me, but it does mean I have done it with a
view of ripping it all out if I needed to sell the house, and
going back to your basic timeswitch and bimetallic thermostat.


I think having some standards would help. X10 was good in that it was a
standard and didn't need wires. But despite that, the lack of good heating
controls was a problem (well, I never found what I would rate as a decent
time/roomstat).

What you need are small inexpensive one-function devices that are easy to
program and flexible.

eg for heating, you might have one roomstat+timer per room, or zone - but
you'd want to be able to program one receiver to operate on its demand
signal to open a radiator valve, *and* you'd want to be able to bind lots
of them to one relay receiver to create a boiler demand signal - and so on.

Then you might want to be able to interrogate them all with a device that
either logs stuff, makes it remotely available and allows master control -
eg TXT home to turn the heating on whilst sitting on the train.

And the protocol should be open and standard so that lots of company and
opensource hackers will make widgets.

So you could start with a few widgets to achieve something meaningful, then
add more widgets later - and if someone didn't make a widget, you'd have
the option of homebrewing that one device without having to make
everything - or even better, another company would see a market and make it
for you. A real mix n match lego system.

The bit rate and addressing capabilities of X10 were limited, but radio
modules are cheap these days, so something running on one of the free radio
bands with a standardised carrier, modulation and basic extensible protocol
would be cool.

Problem at the moment is that many existing systems are prorietry, and tend
to target "building control" which means hellishly expensive.

Cheers

Tim

Tim S wrote:
The bit rate and addressing capabilities of X10 were limited, but radio
modules are cheap these days, so something running on one of the free radio
bands with a standardised carrier, modulation and basic extensible protocol
would be cool.

There's been a lot of talk about making something like that based upon
the Zigbee or Wibree or Z-Wave standards. As you have outlined, it can't
really take off until a standard emerges which is truly open and useful:
because the killer feature is compatibility between different brands.

It's an interesting technology, though: in theory you could get the cost
and power usage of the transmitters down to the point where you could
have switches run off a single AAA cell that would last years. So you
could get rid of the insanity and expense of running high voltage wires
down walls to lightswitches for low-bandwidth signalling.

And it would enable all sorts of cleverness in terms of control of
lighting and heating at a lower budget, much like has happened with
CAN-BUS and microcontrollers in car systems.

Jim coughed up some electrons that declared:

Tim S wrote:
The bit rate and addressing capabilities of X10 were limited, but radio
modules are cheap these days, so something running on one of the free
radio bands with a standardised carrier, modulation and basic extensible
protocol would be cool.

There's been a lot of talk about making something like that based upon
the Zigbee or Wibree or Z-Wave standards. As you have outlined, it can't
really take off until a standard emerges which is truly open and useful:
because the killer feature is compatibility between different brands.

Zigbee seemed over complicated at first sight, with it's ability to mesh and
do fancy stuff. But, assuming that all happens in the module and the
external interface is straightforward, if the devices become ubiquitous,
then it won't matter as they'll be as cheap as chips eventually.

It's an interesting technology, though: in theory you could get the cost
and power usage of the transmitters down to the point where you could
have switches run off a single AAA cell that would last years. So you
could get rid of the insanity and expense of running high voltage wires
down walls to lightswitches for low-bandwidth signalling.

http://www.rfsolutions.co.uk/acatalo...ee_Module.html

25 quid isn't a bad start - imagine if they were a fiver. A quid or two for
a microcontroller and you really could have the lightswitches at a sensible
price - especially as one common PCB could handle several switches, so 1-4
gang switches and push button dimmers would only need one identical PCB
across the range. I'm thinking grid system, with one clever grid module
which could take several cheap slave buttons wired in the side allowing a
mix n match plate to be put together by anyone.

And it would enable all sorts of cleverness in terms of control of
lighting and heating at a lower budget, much like has happened with
CAN-BUS and microcontrollers in car systems.

Indeed.

Better build some basic security in to the protocol though - otherwise the
drive by hackers will have lots of fun turning off your lights (think
wireless doorbells)

Tim

On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 01:58:31 -0800 (PST), niavasha
wrote:

There was some Dataterm discussions about 10 years ago on the group,
most seem pretty happy, but unsure on savings costs.

Ten years later, any one have any clue if it does save money on the
bills ?

We had one for 12 years and on an under floor heating system it worked
well. It ran the heating effectively so there would have been some
saving because of that.

Any other products out there that touch it or do better?

Two years ago the Dataterm started to misbehave and their repair costs
were quite high.

I replaced it with a Honeywell CM907 and a separate hot water
controller. This combination is equally as effective as the Dataterm
and was considerably cheaper.

Jim wrote:
Tim S wrote:
The bit rate and addressing capabilities of X10 were limited, but radio
modules are cheap these days, so something running on one of the free radio
bands with a standardised carrier, modulation and basic extensible protocol
would be cool.

There's been a lot of talk about making something like that based upon
the Zigbee or Wibree or Z-Wave standards. As you have outlined, it can't
really take off until a standard emerges which is truly open and useful:
because the killer feature is compatibility between different brands.


Why reinvent the wheel? SNMP and http ovver whatever piece of wet
string...you have.

Probably the easiest is to use the whole mains as ethernet, and hav
individually addressable modules with web screens to 'set them up' and
use snmp to switch them..

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
Jim wrote:
Tim S wrote:
The bit rate and addressing capabilities of X10 were limited, but radio
modules are cheap these days, so something running on one of the free radio
bands with a standardised carrier, modulation and basic extensible protocol
would be cool.

There's been a lot of talk about making something like that based upon
the Zigbee or Wibree or Z-Wave standards. As you have outlined, it can't
really take off until a standard emerges which is truly open and useful:
because the killer feature is compatibility between different brands.

X10, being out of patent and being by far the cheapest technology
of the family is probably still the only chance. Being a good
technological solution isn't required, just being good enough.

Why reinvent the wheel? SNMP and http ovver whatever piece of wet
string...you have.

Probably the easiest is to use the whole mains as ethernet, and hav
individually addressable modules with web screens to 'set them up' and
use snmp to switch them..

You're looking at it as a network engineer. There are no network
engineers in the building trade. Very few electricians are capable
of installing home automation, or even quite simple home alarms.
Those people need to be able to install whatever you come up with.

Now design something an unskilled builder can install and needs no
setup/configuration at all (because there won't be anyone around
with any skills to do that, especially not the home owner). You
probably have a price ceiling of £100 max per item (e.g. a sensor
or remote switch, plus the actual switching element, being less
than £100 added cost over fitting the existing existing equivalents
including labour and configuration charges). Again, X10 is probably
the only thing that comes close.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel coughed up some electrons that declared:


Now design something an unskilled builder can install...

So no requiring that the user recompiles the firmware from source (after
patching in 500 bugfixes) and TFTPs it in to their thermostat then?

That would be the Gentoo way

On Mar 3, 2:11*pm, Peter Parry wrote:
I replaced it with a Honeywell CM907 and a separate hot water
controller. *This combination is equally as effective as theDataterm
and was considerably cheaper.

Thanks for that, looks like a worthy challenger.

At the moment I've got a Horstmann CentaurPlus C27 which controls
two zones and hot water.
I presume I'd have to use two CM907 one for each zone and then a
seperate hot water controller?

Any thoughts any one?

Thanks

On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 00:36:03 -0800 (PST), wrote:

At the moment I've got a Horstmann CentaurPlus C27 which controls
two zones and hot water.
I presume I'd have to use two CM907 one for each zone and then a
seperate hot water controller?

Any thoughts any one?

You would need one for each zone positioned appropriately as they
obviously include the thermostat. The Centaur could be retained to
control the hot water.

On Mar 5, 10:18*am, Peter Parry wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 00:36:03 -0800 (PST), wrote:
At the moment I've got a Horstmann CentaurPlus C27 which controls
two zones and hot water.
I presume I'd have to use two CM907 one for each zone and then a
seperate hot water controller?

Any thoughts any one?

You would need one for each zone positioned appropriately as they
obviously include the thermostat. *The Centaur could be retained to
control the hot water.

Thanks much. I might replace the current remote stats with the remote
room sensors that can feed into the CM907, the F42010972.