The domotics industry has dozens of active and plenty of legacy standards. This is a list of the most interesting ones from the perspective of the OpenRemote project. OpenRemote will support these media standards through a plug-in architecture. The goal is to provide a programming abstraction layer on top of the physical medias. Not all medias are equivalent, as not all provide session and status.
Infrared
IR has got to be the largest installed base. Every AV device has one IR input. Most remotes you have at home will work with the IR commands
- One-way protocol. Fire and Forget semantics. Therefore no answer or status associated with IR protocols
- Large installed base of legacy codes available see LIRC
- Automation is provided by Beehive. We want to provide automated Code-collection and provisioning at the moment. Packaging of data according to new OR schema is under development. Discuss these in our forums
Serial/RS
Serial communication is supported by many devices, specifically in the AV field.
- Session oriented communication.
- Large collection of codes available.
- Supported in Beehive.
AC Powerline
AC Powerline provides a good way to relay commands to devices via hardwire. It's main advantage is that every home comes with electrical wiring and AC protocols make for good retrofit solutions. It's drawbacks have historically been low-reliability (70% of commands received) due to noise on traditional X10 networks. Modern versions over AC like Insteon and UPB are all packet oriented digital protocols that achieve better than 99% reliability.
- X10. X10 is a hardware layer protocol that works over any house powerlines (AC). It is a great default choice for retrofit. X10 is a consortium.
- Insteon. An equivalent, modern day proprietary version of X10 over powerlines (AC), we maintain information on this page.
- UPB is a (AC) powerline protocol like Insteon and X10. It too overcomes the reliability issues of X10.
Low-Voltage
Low Voltage is the media of choice for proprietary vendors. It is found in high-end construction of newer installations. Low-voltage protocols require a dedicated electrical wiring making it expensive but extremely reliable. This makes low-voltage a default standard media for home-automation as well as a poor solution for retrofit or low-end construction.
Radio Frequency
With the emergence of commodity hardware and software, radio frenquency solutions are present in low end and high end offers.
- Zig-Bee
- Z-Wave
- Wifi
- Proprietary. Lutron RadioRa, HomeWorks. Vantage RadioLink. Insteon RF.
