European Custom Installer

System Integration for the Connected Home

Is the Third Wave of Home Automation in Your Hand?

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Green Peak Remote

If the CEO of Green-Peak is right, the Third Wave of Home Automation...the wave that just might finally make it to the home shore...will wash up like the proverbial message-in-a-bottle....This time the message is inside the humble Remote Control.

CEO Cees Links runs a fabless semiconductor company. They offer low power wireless and battery-free data comm controller chips for consumer electronics and control applications.

And Links (yes, Links is such a great name for a home automation specialist) wakes up each morning thinking about...remote controls.

Sure, there’s a lot of attention on the TV itself, especially with the connected TV. You can even find industry analysts that insist it’s the game console, the PlayStation, the Xbox, the Wii that will finally bring in true home automation. Others think smart meters.

 

 

But Links is convinced of the power of the Remote Control to herald in the age where we all will be motivated to automate our houses and apartments.

He sees the first wave was the invention of wireless phones, and the second, the advent of the wireless internet (wifi).  In the Third Wave, we have to be able to unite all the devices in the home: One Ring to Rule Them All, in Hobbit-speak.

For Green-Peak, the “ring” to rule all of home automation is ultra low power wireless and battery-free data communication controller chips that can make battery life exceed device life.

He often begins his discussion on remote control with a story about the time he met Steve Jobs. Not to brag about his own glance at fame, but because what Links saw, what he learned from Jobs, became core to his business vision.

Now it is a part of history, but in 1999 the Apple iBook became the first mainstream computer ever designed and sold with integrated wireless networking. Some of you may remember: for the iBook's introduction, Apple's VP of Marketing held an iBook and jumping off the stage (as data from the computer in his hands was transferred to another) to demonstrate the lack of wires.

The iBook display bezel contained a wireless antenna attached to an optional internal wireless card. Lucent helped create this wireless capability which then became the industry standard. (Apple released the first AirPort Wireless Base Station at the same time.)

Green Peak

When Apple first knew they wanted to put wireless in its iBook, they called in Lucent. At the time, Links worked for Lucent. Links recalls how the meeting went: “You put up your slide and then Jobs talks about it. When he’s done talking, he asks you to move on to the next one. He controls the meeting.”

Jobs actually wanted to control more than just the meeting, though. You see, the key component that Jobs wanted from Lucent cost Lucent $130 to build, ex-factory.

At that amount, the build-in price would cripple the price-sensitive iBook, whose added innovation already made it cost far more than the average PC notebook. Rather than back down from what he wanted, Jobs jumped into Lucent’s supply chain, using Apple vision and muscle to re-organize, re-configure to get the price Jobs wanted. By the time Jobs was done showing Lucent how to leverage volume commitments for buying power, the price left standing was $50.

That was Lesson 1, a good management lesson and a good story to tell years later, too. But it’s what came after Lesson 1 that makes the next lesson even more valuable.

Once the market saw the result of Jobs’ efforts, once the market had a taste of wireless, it never looked back. The whole industry fell for wireless like an all-boys school at a Lady Gaga concert.

In 1999, the pioneers of a new, higher speed spec (compared to the original 802.11), endorsed the IEEE 802.11b spec to form the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) and branded the new technology “Wi-Fi.” The wireless era of personal computing rolled in, and yes, you could say it rolled in like a wave.

Once the right price point is reached, all objections to the technology collapse and resistance is futile. Lesson 2 showed Links how what we now call “the tipping point” works.  And now he has his eye on the tipping point for home automation. All it takes, he knows by experience, is a single event to tip the balance.

Links argues there have been two main blocking points for home automation: it needs to be both maintenance-free and offer low power. “Imagine,” he asks, “in a home if you have 50 devices from heating control to sound system to light dimmers...and all are battery operated. If one battery dies each week, you’ll be changing batteries once a week for almost the whole year.”

Green-Peak had started with the idea to make devices maintenance-free before they started to see maintenance-free by itself as not enough: it needed to be energy-saving as well. Battery life, as Links sees it, is even more important than data rate.

Then Green-Peak noticed the very large market for remote controls. Almost all wireless devices feature a remote: the set-top box, the Blu-Ray recorder, the TV, the sound system, heating, air conditioning, light dimmers, your garage door opener, and more...Count them all up and you have a market of 600 million remotes, each one a “ring” of its own, each one connecting to an island of a device in an ocean of wireless.

Green Peak chip

In 2009, (ten years after the iBook breakthrough) along comes RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) Consortium who agree to work with ZigBee Alliance to jointly deliver a standard for radio frequency-based remote controls. Suddenly you have a way to wean remote controls off of infrared technology and switch to interactive radio frequency control. Think of the change as comparable to changing analogue TV to digital: now it’s a 2-way street of transmission where you can create interactivity.

Especially when IPv6, the next generation of internet, allows all devices to have their own IP address. Your light switch, for example, will have its own address the way your pc does now. The beginning of the M2M era is a key part of the tipping point of home automation.

Remote controls will be among the first applications to benefit from ultra low power ZigBee RF4CE. As ZigBee RF4CE is based on radio which penetrates walls, furniture, and floors, rather than line of sight optical IR, this new generation of remote control means that users no longer have to stand in front of their TV set or set top box to change channels or program the DVR.

A single ZigBee RF4CE remote can control the entire home's electronic systems-- TV, games, communications, home automation, audio, security, environment, etc. By using RF4CE powered sensors located throughout the house, users will have a single remote dashboard that can monitor the status of homes doors and windows. One remote for all to please all Hobbits.

When Green-Peak saw how ZigBee RF4CE posed an opportunity, they looked at the normal architecture of the remote (microcontroller + transceiver) and then created a radically different paradigm. In the normal design, all the energy spent goes to datacom as it maintains power all the time, just in case data wants to go through.  With Green-Peak, the comms controller tells the microcontroller when data is available. It’s like turning on a light switch only when needed: it saves energy.

Green Peak living

Links believes with the climate change to RF remote controls we have the industry weather that can create a perfect tsunami for the Third Wave. “RF-based remote control, once the right cost point is reached, the change-over will be quick,” says Links.

Back to his story about Apple, if home automation runs parallel to what happened in wi-fi, all it takes in a single event to change the world.  That event for home automation may be the switch to RF-based remotes.

While 2011 will have many product introductions, as remote control OEMs are buying up Green-Peak semiconductors now, the real boom is expected between 2012 and 2014. Links won’t make the prediction of exactly when that tipping point will wash over us...but he will tell you this...

With the shift to RF-based remote controls, the Third Wave in home automation is already in your hand.