Whatever Logitech is doing, it's going in the wrong direction.
I've used Logitech keyboards and mice for over a decade and the newer the product the higher the failure rate and likelihood of a product defect. How many new - out-of-the-box products can they ship that are all defective? For years I had zero issues with all of my Logitech products however every new Logitech product that I have bought in the last two years has had issues. This is unacceptable and a serious issue that Logitech needs to resolve.
Firing employees to "cook the financial books" is not going to fix the problems at Logitech.
I'll see your anecdote and raise you another anecdote. I have had no problems with Logitech devices failing. I love their products.
My only gripe with the Harmony brand is that the setup interface required an online user account and didn't support multiple remotes. You had to erase one remote and all its settings to set up a second or third remote. I haven't used Harmony in years, so I'm not sure if it's fixed or not. My AVRs, computers, and TVs can all be turned on with an app...
I have friends that used to work at Logitech and they shared their stories of how they struggled to keep quality up when they off-shored their manufacturing (that was years ago though). China is very good at keeping the costs down, but not so good at quality control and consistency. The companies that succeed in transplanting their manufacturing there do so by keeping the QA separate and stringent, contractually paying only for devices that pass that QA. I don't know where they stand now...
Hmm, can't say I've had any QC issues but the only Logitech products I've bought lately are mice and a BT receiver. At least they're famed to have pretty good customer service. This is anecdotal of course but I remember reading a few accounts of customers getting replacements even off warranty.
I share the anecdotal comment from applecrapplehater2 - I've noticed their QC going downhilll the last 2 years, with me replacing my logitech mice every 3 months (I gave up after my third, just bought a razor gaming mouse instead for durability - so far so good). I've recently bought 3 of their nano mice, and consistently they've failed around 8000 clicks or so - giving an average lifespan of 3 months. I use to use their VX and MX mice, which lasted me a good 1-2 years each on average (about 25K/30K clicks). And yes... I click A LOT, but i also use a computer anywhere from 8-10 hours a day... so yeah...
This entire discussion of product reliability related to Logitech keyboards and mice has nothing to do with their existing Harmony product line, their success in integrating entertainment systems, and their move to branch out to home automation systems integration.
Therefore, I can only assume this was started by a competitor.
Love to see more competition in this market, nothing but good news for consumers. That stated, I'm waiting until 802.11ah products come out, likely late 2015. Speculation is that the 802.11ah spec should be essentially complete (good enough to begin silicon design) around November this year after a vote on a third draft spec. Or not: the spec document is currently vastly larger than other recent 802.11 specs.
Err, and 802.11ah has exactly which relation to home automation? Or let me ask the other way around which application would require the range that 802.11ah provides to drive home automation tasks?
More than the range, it is the low power nature of the operation that makes it suitable for devices that are currently using Z-Wave / ZigBee.
Most Wi-Fi home automation devices currently shipping will migrate to 802.11ah from the current 802.11n silicon - lower power, and routers will come with support for ah in addition to a/b/g/n/ac. So, ZigBee / Z-Wave devices will not require a dedicated gateway.
802.11ah is the 'holy grail' for home automation as far as IEEE is concerned :) I am also quite bullish on 802.11ah - just need to see how the market reacts to it.
AH has the same spin as Zigbee, ZWave and many others have had over the years. Only time will tell if they actually have anything to really contribute to the market. Most of the time the new standard to unite them all ends up just adding another standard to the list...
Difference here is that the push behind 802.11ah is being made by current Wi-Fi silicon vendors - It is almost a given that future silicon for wireless routers will have 802.11ah capabilities. That solves one major problem - getting the companies to adopt the standards
> More than the range, it is the low power nature of the operation that makes it suitable for devices that are currently using Z-Wave / ZigBee.
The problem is: ZigBee is there, quite adopted, lower power than 802.11ah, has properly defined protocols such as ZLL to do the communication (rather than the everything must have an IP stack and run a custom REST interface approach), is much more light-weight to implement (important for devices running on MCUs), does mesh, does pair easily and without security stunts. Plus no one really needs long range for home automation which is what 802.11ah is designed for! Also I have yet to see what frequencies they're going to get in Europe; which is also a funny aspect that it'll have different bands on every continent or even country.
The only use I can really see is as a wireless backhaul for smart meters where the utilities really have troubles getting proper and reliable connectivity.
And sorry, but using WiFi for home automation is completely braindead; whoever came up with that stupid idea should be immediately retired.
Let us analyze the devices currently popular in the home automation market - Products that immediately come to mind are the Nest Thermostats, Belkin WeMo product line and multiple smart plugs from different vendors (the main one being D-Link). The common communication protocol that is being used by these: Wi-Fi
Whether you like it or not, the truth is that Wi-Fi is being chosen because consumers already have Wi-Fi at home. No saddling of extra cost with ZigBee hubs or anything of that sort for DIYer.
Why is using Wi-Fi for home automation braindead ? While it might not be technically the best tool for the job, note that market requirements trump those aspects. The market needs something that users can get up and running quickly, and whether you like it not, Wi-Fi is the best bet for that. Looks like the device makers and the market in general unfortunately don't agree with your opinion.
> Let us analyze the devices currently popular in the home automation market - Products that immediately come to mind are the Nest Thermostats, Belkin WeMo product line and multiple smart plugs from different vendors (the main one being D-Link). The common communication protocol that is being used by these: Wi-Fi
lol, you just ignored >>95% percent of the market. As I said before the lighting products from Philips alone (Hue, LivingColors, etc.) are sold more than Nest (and heck, I even throw in a WeMo); you might as well add in the lighting products from Osram/Silvana, Greenwave and GE which are all using ZLL.
So let's sum up just for my *very* simply automated home: Lighting: 3 Living Colors and a 2 Channel RF dimmable LED Setup. Next up: Thermostats, how many Nests do you have? In other parts of the world you typically have at least one thermostat *per room* for radiators (rather then floor heating) you have one *per radiator* so in my case 12 plus window open sensors and switches/buttons to control the heating per room and and globally. Next up: Smoke and heat detectors, again at least one per living/sleeping room and emergency paths, makes 8 here (yeah, I'm being sloppy with the regulations). So counting the automation devices and sensors connected via RF (rounding down) are 30, none of which are Wifi; the only Wifi "automation" device I have is a Netatmo.
And I really do have simple setup because I actually don't believe in automising everything. Friends of mine have eachs households with dozens of sensors and over hundred actors, including shades, thermostats, windows shutters, indivually controllable lighting, wall outlets, power metering, weather stations, RFID and buzzer for door entry -- there's not a single WiFi component involved.
> Why is using Wi-Fi for home automation braindead ?
For starters WiFi is not reliable in densely populated areas and if you do crazy stuff like mentioned above you need to be certain that it is *very* reliable. WiFi is also not very secure when sloppily implemented (which it often is for cost reasons). WiFi is not energy efficient and thus totally unsuitable for devices which need to run for years on a battery. WiFi doesn't scale; ever tried having 20 stations connected to a single AP? Liked it? How about a few devices in the mix using 11g or even 11b? Now scale up...
As I said: WiFi is for gadgets/gimmicks. The rest of world, ambitious users and especially automation pros would not even consider WiFi for anything more than maybe a few Nests and a WeMo.
Home automation via Wi-Fi is gonna get real fun when you start dicking around with router settings and need to reset it a dozen times in an hour, never mind when you switch routers... Tho I just switched routers for the first time in a decade (WRT54G finally gave up the ghost).
Is there a reason that routers will come with 802.11ah? Is it less expensive to add to an 802.11g/n/ac chip than ZigBee (even though it requires an extra frequency)?
I do like the idea of lower frequencies to penetrate walls in homes but it seems problematic if it's not consistent across countries.
I seriously doubt that this strategy will work. Home automation is a completely different beast to controlling entertainment devices via IR. If they seriously want to succeed they'll either have to roll out a full set of compatible devices (and convince people that their system really is extensive enough to be worth the investment) *or* they will have to make damn sure that they can talk to the vast majority of the installed devices: If I read vague statements like "This extender will expand compatibility by allowing the hub to talk to devices that communicate using ZigBee[...]" I have serious doubts about the approach; the very least this needs to read "[...]by allowing the hub to talk to devices that communicate using ZigBee like Hue or Lightify with other systems following suit".
Communicating ZigBee and Z-Wave is nice but not worth a snitch when you're not able to actually be a controller in those networks, no matter whether that's because you cannot get the devices to pair with you or don't know the right encryption.
Z-Wave or ZigBee - the real truth is that the top selling home automation products are those like the Nest thermostat which are used over Wi-Fi. Almost all crowdfunded home automation devices are Wi-Fi based too. Just take a look at our recent piece on Broadcom's WICED platform - Bluetooth is also popular.
It makes sense that Logitech first concentrates on Wi-Fi for home automation. They are able to claim compatibility with more than 6000 devices right now. Z-Wave and ZigBee compatibility will only increase this number further.
> Z-Wave or ZigBee - the real truth is that the top selling home automation products are those like the Nest thermostat which are used over Wi-Fi.
Devices using WiFi are gadgets or gimmicks, not serious product. Home automation includes far more than (central) thermostats and everything else does definitely *NOT* run on WiFi. If you happen live in the USA you definitely live in a development country when it comes to home automation and yet even the US specific Wikipedia article for home automation doesn't even mention WiFi as a popular protocol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation#Compa...
The most popular home lighting solutions are almost all based on ZigBee (and those alone are outselling Nest *BIG* time), you might have heard the product name Hue but there're quite some others: http://www.zigbee.org/Standards/ZigBeeLightLink/Ov...
> Bluetooth is also popular
True, and it's not WiFi as well. I don't quite get it why some are still announcing new products on Bluetooth base but okay if you don't really care about proper integration and want to control the lights exclusively via smart phone...
The who is who in home automation is doing KNX for about everything; KNX is actually a merge of various protocols some of which were used only for commercial building automation and control but is steady and quickly trickling down into the home sector as well (also price wise).
However there're many quite popular other protocols which are widely used for home automation, like Homematic, FS20, ZWave, EnOcean and (off course!) the venerable X10. If you want to get a feeling what really is used in the world you might want to check http://fhem.de/fhem.html which is a project that tries to cover all of it in a single OpenSource solution; I'm not saying that this site or project is any good (rather the opposite) but it contains a hell lot of information.
Till then, device makers such as Nest will continue to use Wi-Fi as the primary communication method, and Belkin will laugh all the way to the bank.
Why do you think home automation has suddenly become a hot topic when ZigBee and Z-Wave have been around for a long time? It is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth leading the revolution. As usual, Wikipedia is dated.
I gives the Hue-ZigBee link - but, I would still like to see numbers from Philips for sales data. Let us be practical here - How many people want to buy a $150 - $200 set of few bulbs? On the other hand, smart plugs from D-Link and Belkin WeMo products priced around $50 fly off the shelves. (I have confidential data to back that up, nothing on the Philips side though).
This sounds to me like the ATM guys congratulating each other on how awesome their spec is, how it's going to take over the world, compared to that amateur TCP/IP stuff.
The ONLY home automation devices I see in serious use are Dropcam and similar (baby monitors and such) which are all based on WiFi. I've never seen a Nest in the wild, but I've at least heard of them. All this other stuff you are mentioning is irrelevant crap that sells in the tens of thousands of units, and it's going to disappear in the deluge when Apple and/or Google and/or MS get serious about the home --- not least because the solution Apple/Google/MS provide will NOT be some crazy "boil the ocean" strategy that relies on you replacing every piece of hardware in your home, and where any attempt to buy a product that just works devolves into some idiotic geek pissing match about the relative merits of three different protocols no normal person has ever heard of.
Here's a hint --- when you think "However there're many quite popular other protocols which are widely used for home automation, like Homematic, FS20, ZWave, EnOcean and (off course!) the venerable X10." is some sort of advantage, you've already lost CONCLUSIVELY! This is like the Linux guys spending all their energy screaming about which is better between Debian, Red Hat and Ubuntu, and then being surprised that 99% of the desktop takes one look at this, says, fsckit, and buys Mac or PC (or, soon enough Crhome/Android).
> All this other stuff you are mentioning is irrelevant crap that sells in the tens of thousands of units,
No, it sells in millions not tens of thousands. Most of these components are standard components which can be easily integrated in households (aka "do I take the regular switches or the fancy ones instead") not some proprietary single gadget that someone put out to revolutionise the world (i.e. Nest).
> and it's going to disappear in the deluge when Apple and/or Google and/or MS get serious about the home
However they're only interested in selling you the single pieces and don't give a dead rats ass about integrating them all into a single solution which is what actually constitutes "Smart Home" and this is exactly what the already existing solutions provide. So I have not lost a thing since I'm talking about todays reality.
The PROJECTED (ie crazy optimistic) TOTAL sales for Zigbee devices in 2016 (made by Zigbee in Q1 2013) --- this is the best data I could find --- are $4.3billion (worldwide, counting all value of the equipment). I'm sorry, but that's fsckall. That's like what Apple used to make on iPods in 2010 or so, and spread over fifty different companies.
Logitech is not doing anything innovative here, just playing catch up as usual. Their remote control competitors URC and RTI took the step into lite Home Automation a couple years ago. The focus may be more DIY than CI channel, but that's always been more or less true for Logitech versus URC/RTI.
Except URC and RTI couldn't care less about the market Harmony products target. As far as I can find RTI offers nothing to the DIYer and URC makes less than a half-assed attempt.
The R40 appears to be their top-end DIY model, it offers nothing other than a slightly better display over my ancient Harmony 880 once set up. Speaking of setup, there's no PC programming so it must all be done from the remote. Have fun with that. Logitech's software is absurd with it's half-web half-not design and a pain in the ass if you want to do anything remotely advanced, but you can go from 0 to 95% in about 10 minutes by just filling in model numbers and clicking next.
I really wish there was a company like URC or RTI that made remotes that could be given detailed programs without having to fight a wizard-based process, but then didn't try to force people to go through a third party "integrator" they don't need. It's a remote control not rocket science, f*ck you if you think I can't handle it myself.
Now URC has segmented their product line to make it hard even for dealers to get the products they want. All URC products used to be available through distribution. Their "Complete Control" series of products are now only available direct from URC, while the "Total Control" line is available at distributors.
I would fully support a company that sold direct to consumers like Harmony but had a more flexible and powerful non-wizard based programming environment like RTI or URC. That said, I wouldn't want to work tech support at that company dealing with consumers who are having difficulty because they're out of their depth.
Was interested until you said the hub has to be always connected to the internet. I think concluding remark 3 (always connected) is the answer to the question in remark 2 (what keeps the cloud servers running). Can you say sell my data. Paying a subscription fee for something that you can do for free is why I ignore the home depot and lowes displays.
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AppleCrappleHater2 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Whatever Logitech is doing, it's going in the wrong direction.
I've used Logitech keyboards and mice for over a decade and the newer the product the higher the failure rate and likelihood of a product defect. How many new - out-of-the-box products can they ship that are all defective? For years I had zero issues with all of my Logitech products however every new Logitech product that I have bought in the last two years has had issues. This is unacceptable and a serious issue that Logitech needs to resolve.
Firing employees to "cook the financial books" is not going to fix the problems at Logitech.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I'll see your anecdote and raise you another anecdote. I have had no problems with Logitech devices failing. I love their products.My only gripe with the Harmony brand is that the setup interface required an online user account and didn't support multiple remotes. You had to erase one remote and all its settings to set up a second or third remote. I haven't used Harmony in years, so I'm not sure if it's fixed or not. My AVRs, computers, and TVs can all be turned on with an app...
frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I have friends that used to work at Logitech and they shared their stories of how they struggled to keep quality up when they off-shored their manufacturing (that was years ago though).China is very good at keeping the costs down, but not so good at quality control and consistency. The companies that succeed in transplanting their manufacturing there do so by keeping the QA separate and stringent, contractually paying only for devices that pass that QA.
I don't know where they stand now...
Impulses - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Hmm, can't say I've had any QC issues but the only Logitech products I've bought lately are mice and a BT receiver. At least they're famed to have pretty good customer service. This is anecdotal of course but I remember reading a few accounts of customers getting replacements even off warranty.Sushisamurai - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
I share the anecdotal comment from applecrapplehater2 - I've noticed their QC going downhilll the last 2 years, with me replacing my logitech mice every 3 months (I gave up after my third, just bought a razor gaming mouse instead for durability - so far so good). I've recently bought 3 of their nano mice, and consistently they've failed around 8000 clicks or so - giving an average lifespan of 3 months. I use to use their VX and MX mice, which lasted me a good 1-2 years each on average (about 25K/30K clicks). And yes... I click A LOT, but i also use a computer anywhere from 8-10 hours a day... so yeah...morrisdl - Sunday, January 4, 2015 - link
This entire discussion of product reliability related to Logitech keyboards and mice has nothing to do with their existing Harmony product line, their success in integrating entertainment systems, and their move to branch out to home automation systems integration.Therefore, I can only assume this was started by a competitor.
isa - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Love to see more competition in this market, nothing but good news for consumers. That stated, I'm waiting until 802.11ah products come out, likely late 2015. Speculation is that the 802.11ah spec should be essentially complete (good enough to begin silicon design) around November this year after a vote on a third draft spec. Or not: the spec document is currently vastly larger than other recent 802.11 specs.Daniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Err, and 802.11ah has exactly which relation to home automation? Or let me ask the other way around which application would require the range that 802.11ah provides to drive home automation tasks?ganeshts - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
More than the range, it is the low power nature of the operation that makes it suitable for devices that are currently using Z-Wave / ZigBee.Most Wi-Fi home automation devices currently shipping will migrate to 802.11ah from the current 802.11n silicon - lower power, and routers will come with support for ah in addition to a/b/g/n/ac. So, ZigBee / Z-Wave devices will not require a dedicated gateway.
802.11ah is the 'holy grail' for home automation as far as IEEE is concerned :) I am also quite bullish on 802.11ah - just need to see how the market reacts to it.
exostrife - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
AH has the same spin as Zigbee, ZWave and many others have had over the years. Only time will tell if they actually have anything to really contribute to the market. Most of the time the new standard to unite them all ends up just adding another standard to the list...ganeshts - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Difference here is that the push behind 802.11ah is being made by current Wi-Fi silicon vendors - It is almost a given that future silicon for wireless routers will have 802.11ah capabilities. That solves one major problem - getting the companies to adopt the standardsDaniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
> More than the range, it is the low power nature of the operation that makes it suitable for devices that are currently using Z-Wave / ZigBee.The problem is: ZigBee is there, quite adopted, lower power than 802.11ah, has properly defined protocols such as ZLL to do the communication (rather than the everything must have an IP stack and run a custom REST interface approach), is much more light-weight to implement (important for devices running on MCUs), does mesh, does pair easily and without security stunts. Plus no one really needs long range for home automation which is what 802.11ah is designed for! Also I have yet to see what frequencies they're going to get in Europe; which is also a funny aspect that it'll have different bands on every continent or even country.
The only use I can really see is as a wireless backhaul for smart meters where the utilities really have troubles getting proper and reliable connectivity.
And sorry, but using WiFi for home automation is completely braindead; whoever came up with that stupid idea should be immediately retired.
ganeshts - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
What is the watermark for 'quite adopted'?Let us analyze the devices currently popular in the home automation market - Products that immediately come to mind are the Nest Thermostats, Belkin WeMo product line and multiple smart plugs from different vendors (the main one being D-Link). The common communication protocol that is being used by these: Wi-Fi
Whether you like it or not, the truth is that Wi-Fi is being chosen because consumers already have Wi-Fi at home. No saddling of extra cost with ZigBee hubs or anything of that sort for DIYer.
Why is using Wi-Fi for home automation braindead ? While it might not be technically the best tool for the job, note that market requirements trump those aspects. The market needs something that users can get up and running quickly, and whether you like it not, Wi-Fi is the best bet for that. Looks like the device makers and the market in general unfortunately don't agree with your opinion.
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
> Let us analyze the devices currently popular in the home automation market - Products that immediately come to mind are the Nest Thermostats, Belkin WeMo product line and multiple smart plugs from different vendors (the main one being D-Link). The common communication protocol that is being used by these: Wi-Filol, you just ignored >>95% percent of the market. As I said before the lighting products from Philips alone (Hue, LivingColors, etc.) are sold more than Nest (and heck, I even throw in a WeMo); you might as well add in the lighting products from Osram/Silvana, Greenwave and GE which are all using ZLL.
So let's sum up just for my *very* simply automated home: Lighting: 3 Living Colors and a 2 Channel RF dimmable LED Setup. Next up: Thermostats, how many Nests do you have? In other parts of the world you typically have at least one thermostat *per room* for radiators (rather then floor heating) you have one *per radiator* so in my case 12 plus window open sensors and switches/buttons to control the heating per room and and globally. Next up: Smoke and heat detectors, again at least one per living/sleeping room and emergency paths, makes 8 here (yeah, I'm being sloppy with the regulations). So counting the automation devices and sensors connected via RF (rounding down) are 30, none of which are Wifi; the only Wifi "automation" device I have is a Netatmo.
And I really do have simple setup because I actually don't believe in automising everything. Friends of mine have eachs households with dozens of sensors and over hundred actors, including shades, thermostats, windows shutters, indivually controllable lighting, wall outlets, power metering, weather stations, RFID and buzzer for door entry -- there's not a single WiFi component involved.
> Why is using Wi-Fi for home automation braindead ?
For starters WiFi is not reliable in densely populated areas and if you do crazy stuff like mentioned above you need to be certain that it is *very* reliable. WiFi is also not very secure when sloppily implemented (which it often is for cost reasons). WiFi is not energy efficient and thus totally unsuitable for devices which need to run for years on a battery. WiFi doesn't scale; ever tried having 20 stations connected to a single AP? Liked it? How about a few devices in the mix using 11g or even 11b? Now scale up...
As I said: WiFi is for gadgets/gimmicks. The rest of world, ambitious users and especially automation pros would not even consider WiFi for anything more than maybe a few Nests and a WeMo.
Impulses - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
Home automation via Wi-Fi is gonna get real fun when you start dicking around with router settings and need to reset it a dozen times in an hour, never mind when you switch routers... Tho I just switched routers for the first time in a decade (WRT54G finally gave up the ghost).CSMR - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Is there a reason that routers will come with 802.11ah? Is it less expensive to add to an 802.11g/n/ac chip than ZigBee (even though it requires an extra frequency)?I do like the idea of lower frequencies to penetrate walls in homes but it seems problematic if it's not consistent across countries.
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I seriously doubt that this strategy will work. Home automation is a completely different beast to controlling entertainment devices via IR. If they seriously want to succeed they'll either have to roll out a full set of compatible devices (and convince people that their system really is extensive enough to be worth the investment) *or* they will have to make damn sure that they can talk to the vast majority of the installed devices: If I read vague statements like "This extender will expand compatibility by allowing the hub to talk to devices that communicate using ZigBee[...]" I have serious doubts about the approach; the very least this needs to read "[...]by allowing the hub to talk to devices that communicate using ZigBee like Hue or Lightify with other systems following suit".Communicating ZigBee and Z-Wave is nice but not worth a snitch when you're not able to actually be a controller in those networks, no matter whether that's because you cannot get the devices to pair with you or don't know the right encryption.
And what about other protocols like KNX?
ganeshts - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Z-Wave or ZigBee - the real truth is that the top selling home automation products are those like the Nest thermostat which are used over Wi-Fi. Almost all crowdfunded home automation devices are Wi-Fi based too. Just take a look at our recent piece on Broadcom's WICED platform - Bluetooth is also popular.It makes sense that Logitech first concentrates on Wi-Fi for home automation. They are able to claim compatibility with more than 6000 devices right now. Z-Wave and ZigBee compatibility will only increase this number further.
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
> Z-Wave or ZigBee - the real truth is that the top selling home automation products are those like the Nest thermostat which are used over Wi-Fi.Devices using WiFi are gadgets or gimmicks, not serious product. Home automation includes far more than (central) thermostats and everything else does definitely *NOT* run on WiFi. If you happen live in the USA you definitely live in a development country when it comes to home automation and yet even the US specific Wikipedia article for home automation doesn't even mention WiFi as a popular protocol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation#Compa...
The most popular home lighting solutions are almost all based on ZigBee (and those alone are outselling Nest *BIG* time), you might have heard the product name Hue but there're quite some others:
http://www.zigbee.org/Standards/ZigBeeLightLink/Ov...
> Bluetooth is also popular
True, and it's not WiFi as well. I don't quite get it why some are still announcing new products on Bluetooth base but okay if you don't really care about proper integration and want to control the lights exclusively via smart phone...
The who is who in home automation is doing KNX for about everything; KNX is actually a merge of various protocols some of which were used only for commercial building automation and control but is steady and quickly trickling down into the home sector as well (also price wise).
However there're many quite popular other protocols which are widely used for home automation, like Homematic, FS20, ZWave, EnOcean and (off course!) the venerable X10. If you want to get a feeling what really is used in the world you might want to check http://fhem.de/fhem.html which is a project that tries to cover all of it in a single OpenSource solution; I'm not saying that this site or project is any good (rather the opposite) but it contains a hell lot of information.
ganeshts - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Give me numbers.Till then, device makers such as Nest will continue to use Wi-Fi as the primary communication method, and Belkin will laugh all the way to the bank.
Why do you think home automation has suddenly become a hot topic when ZigBee and Z-Wave have been around for a long time? It is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth leading the revolution. As usual, Wikipedia is dated.
I gives the Hue-ZigBee link - but, I would still like to see numbers from Philips for sales data. Let us be practical here - How many people want to buy a $150 - $200 set of few bulbs? On the other hand, smart plugs from D-Link and Belkin WeMo products priced around $50 fly off the shelves. (I have confidential data to back that up, nothing on the Philips side though).
name99 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
This sounds to me like the ATM guys congratulating each other on how awesome their spec is, how it's going to take over the world, compared to that amateur TCP/IP stuff.The ONLY home automation devices I see in serious use are Dropcam and similar (baby monitors and such) which are all based on WiFi. I've never seen a Nest in the wild, but I've at least heard of them. All this other stuff you are mentioning is irrelevant crap that sells in the tens of thousands of units, and it's going to disappear in the deluge when Apple and/or Google and/or MS get serious about the home --- not least because the solution Apple/Google/MS provide will NOT be some crazy "boil the ocean" strategy that relies on you replacing every piece of hardware in your home, and where any attempt to buy a product that just works devolves into some idiotic geek pissing match about the relative merits of three different protocols no normal person has ever heard of.
Here's a hint --- when you think "However there're many quite popular other protocols which are widely used for home automation, like Homematic, FS20, ZWave, EnOcean and (off course!) the venerable X10." is some sort of advantage, you've already lost CONCLUSIVELY!
This is like the Linux guys spending all their energy screaming about which is better between Debian, Red Hat and Ubuntu, and then being surprised that 99% of the desktop takes one look at this, says, fsckit, and buys Mac or PC (or, soon enough Crhome/Android).
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
> All this other stuff you are mentioning is irrelevant crap that sells in the tens of thousands of units,No, it sells in millions not tens of thousands. Most of these components are standard components which can be easily integrated in households (aka "do I take the regular switches or the fancy ones instead") not some proprietary single gadget that someone put out to revolutionise the world (i.e. Nest).
> and it's going to disappear in the deluge when Apple and/or Google and/or MS get serious about the home
Apple and Google are already somewhat serious about selling you stuff:
http://store.apple.com/us/accessories/all-accessor...
However they're only interested in selling you the single pieces and don't give a dead rats ass about integrating them all into a single solution which is what actually constitutes "Smart Home" and this is exactly what the already existing solutions provide. So I have not lost a thing since I'm talking about todays reality.
name99 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
The PROJECTED (ie crazy optimistic) TOTAL sales for Zigbee devices in 2016 (made by Zigbee in Q1 2013) --- this is the best data I could find --- are $4.3billion (worldwide, counting all value of the equipment).I'm sorry, but that's fsckall. That's like what Apple used to make on iPods in 2010 or so, and spread over fifty different companies.
exostrife - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Logitech is not doing anything innovative here, just playing catch up as usual. Their remote control competitors URC and RTI took the step into lite Home Automation a couple years ago. The focus may be more DIY than CI channel, but that's always been more or less true for Logitech versus URC/RTI.wolrah - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Except URC and RTI couldn't care less about the market Harmony products target. As far as I can find RTI offers nothing to the DIYer and URC makes less than a half-assed attempt.The R40 appears to be their top-end DIY model, it offers nothing other than a slightly better display over my ancient Harmony 880 once set up. Speaking of setup, there's no PC programming so it must all be done from the remote. Have fun with that. Logitech's software is absurd with it's half-web half-not design and a pain in the ass if you want to do anything remotely advanced, but you can go from 0 to 95% in about 10 minutes by just filling in model numbers and clicking next.
I really wish there was a company like URC or RTI that made remotes that could be given detailed programs without having to fight a wizard-based process, but then didn't try to force people to go through a third party "integrator" they don't need. It's a remote control not rocket science, f*ck you if you think I can't handle it myself.
grazapin - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
Now URC has segmented their product line to make it hard even for dealers to get the products they want. All URC products used to be available through distribution. Their "Complete Control" series of products are now only available direct from URC, while the "Total Control" line is available at distributors.I would fully support a company that sold direct to consumers like Harmony but had a more flexible and powerful non-wizard based programming environment like RTI or URC. That said, I wouldn't want to work tech support at that company dealing with consumers who are having difficulty because they're out of their depth.
ironargonaut - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
Was interested until you said the hub has to be always connected to the internet.I think concluding remark 3 (always connected) is the answer to the question in remark 2 (what keeps the cloud servers running).
Can you say sell my data.
Paying a subscription fee for something that you can do for free is why I ignore the home depot and lowes displays.