Hello Nico,
Very interesting subject! I attended a talk by Kurt Gramlich [2] earlier this year about it.
(I think I saw him posting on this list at some point, but I'll BCC him to this message to catch his attention - hence the full-quote below).
The condensed summary of the talk how I got it was: Kurt built a low-energy house using FS and free hardware developed by an Austrian company he is working with. A representative of that company was also present. The various standards were also mentioned but my memory is quite blurry on that. I hope Kurt can shed some light on that! :)
Greetings,
Guido
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 09:20:27AM +0100, Nico Rikken wrote:
A topic I'm interested in is the field of home automation and home energy management, which are highly related.
I'm curious how you conceive the developments in this field, in your country and for your use-case.
The availability and quality of hardware and software in this field has increased rapidly in the last couple of years and I can only assume adoption is increasing likewise. With smart-home targeted interfaces being included in an increasing number of appliances, and with gateways being offered as a gift, the barrier to home automation is being lowered for the general consumer.
I'm however concerned about the lack of open standards and the related purposeful creation of a lock-in.
In the Netherlands there are about a dozen companies developing gateways and some home automation components, often times with a cloud-based back-end. Some are developing in accordance to standards like Z-Wave, Zigbee and OpenTherm, whilst others have defined their own Application Profiles on top of the Zigbee communication stack (Plugwise) or have developed RF-based communication (FifthPlay).
Not using proper standards is becoming more of an issue now that in NL energy companies are offering gateways as part of the contract, both as a nice-to have device and as a way to help save energy. People are however coming to find that some of these systems sold by their energy company become pretty much useless when they cancel their contract, since a large part of the added value is in the data-services by the energy company. They end up with a stand-alone device which was never intended to be used stand-alone. This practice of lock-in also comes into play with custom communication standards, such that replacing the gateway would require you to ditch the additional devices as well.
Whilst being proper standards, the specifications of Z-Wave and Zigbee (Application Profiles) aren't as open as some other available protocols [1]. Likewise there is a lack of standardisation in gateway interfaces for third-party applications to tie into these systems.
How do you conceive these developments, and is there a FSFE-angle to this story?
Kind regards, Nico
[2] http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2014/en/vortraege/detail/326