Morbo said:
and I suppose, Cbus can do the same as the apple stuff?
No, not really. Cbus and Apple Homekit are solving different problems. Clipsal wants to replace traditional home wiring with a network bus. It's similar to what car manufacturers did in the 1980s when they replaced wiring looms with smarter networks such as CAN Bus. Instead of running a wire from the car battery to a switch on your dashboard, and then from the switch to the headlights, they instead wired the switch and the battery and the headlights to a CAN bus controller. Not only did this reduce the weight of the wiring loom, it also allowed new features, e.g. the controller knows when a headlight has blown, or it can control the headlights independently of the switch. A modern car uses CAN bus to integrate dozens of systems including lighting, locks, stereo, heating, seats, mirrors, etc.
Cbus is trying to do the same thing for houses. Clipsal created a network bus to replace traditional home wiring. Clipsal sells some Cbus devices such as switches and motors, and a couple of vendors like Brivis sell Cbus enabled thermostats and the like, but overall Cbus hasn't done well. Unfortunately the Australian market is too small to attract big vendors. I also believe low-power wireless networks such as Zigbee are a better choice for the home. I don't hold much hope for the future of Cbus.
Apple isn't building a new network. Instead they're offering a software "framework" for home devices. Apple's goal is a standard user interface, standard developer interface, and an integrated end-user experience. Apple is initially supporting wireless networks - WiFi, Zigbee and Bluetooth - and obviously bridges into those networks (e.g. Ethernet to WiFi). Apple Homekit is both hardware and network agnostic, which is almost the exact opposite of Clipsal's Cbus.
But Apple Homekit is nascent. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach.
Posted Saturday 14 Jun 2014 @ 3:36:57 am from IP
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