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It takes a former IBMer to design his
own home systems like an IBM mainframe. But, although the concept may initially
seem 22nd century, once you give it a bit of thought, designing a home system
the way you’d design Big Iron might not so far fetched. I realized this
when I visited John Patrick, who retired from running IBM's Internet business
several years ago. He gave me a tour of his suburban home earlier this month.
It opened my eyes as to the challenges and opportunities that home systems VARs
will face in the coming years as more people demand these sorts of
technologies. Not to mention the challenges that all of us face when we try to
implement advanced technologies in our homes.
VARs face three big hurdles in
delivering well-executed home systems. First, people don't know what they want,
and what they do want isn't something that most VARs know how to provide.
Second, the skill sets that most VARs face are enormous, and finding the right
mix of people to deliver a solid solution isn't easy. Third, the problems
aren't technology, but all about usability and execution. Let's look at each of
these.
What I have seen is that most of us
don't really know what we want when it comes to high tech homes. As an example,
people have only a vague notion of what a 'smart home' truly is. Some people
want their computers located in strategic places, sharing an Internet
connection. But then we that is implemented, they realize that they don't want
to be running around their homes trying to find a document on a particular PC
or being able to share printers too. So the home network becomes more than just
sharing broad-bandwidth. Some people want a house that they can control via a
Web browser. But then they want to be notified when something goes wrong, and
have some insight into what is happening in their house when they are
geographically distant. And many of us want more sophisticated entertainment delivery
or ways to interact with our TVs to save favorite programs, which is why Tivo
is so popular. But then you realize when you have Tivo that you need to be able
to program the unit remotely, when you aren't home, for example.
Part of this is just human nature: You
get better at defining your needs when you see what the high-tech toys really
do. But some of it is because the high tech doesn't really work out of the box.
The issue in deploying this stuff is
that the skill sets are enormous, especially as you demand increasingly smarter
homes that bridge multiple needs. I learned from my tour of chez Patrick that
you have to segregate your services into the separate components. But before
you can segregate them, you have to identify them. This gets back to my first
point, and more importantly, this identification process isn't something that
most VARs can deliver.
Let me give you an example. At first
blush, electric power seems like a simple system: There is a circuit breaker
box in your basement, and each breaker is attached to a series of outlets or
switches in a room or a collection of rooms that it controls. But that isn't
enough for a truly smart home. You have power to particular systems that you
want to run 24/7, such as your refrigerator and heating systems, and power to
other places that isn't that critical or isn't even 110 volts, such as portable
phones, security sensors and touch panels that can run at lower voltages.
What Patrick did was to segregate his
systems into many different discreet categories. Let's take audio services as
another example. The speakers that deliver music are placed in the walls of
various rooms. Those speakers are connected to a music delivery system that can
play multiple channels, and from multiple sources, including a Linux-based MP3
server that is located in his basement. But you may not want to go to the
basement to find the right track to play with dinner: so you have a touch panel
in the dining room that you can scroll through your tunes and pick out just the
right song to match your mood. But to do this properly, you need to write some
code so that your touch panel can access the music library and understand the
ID tags of the files stored therein. All of a sudden, you need to have someone
who understands:
--how to rip and encode your entire
music library;
--how to display the ID tags of the
songs on various displays, including your PCs and touch panels around the house;
--how this information gets updated
when you add new music to your library;
--how to access the programming
interfaces of your touch panels, music delivery system, and music servers,
which all might be running different operating systems and code basis (and may
not have programming interfaces either)
And that is just music. The harder ones
are security, heating and cooling, propane delivery, computer networks, video,
and signaling for various house operations.
Here is where the mainframer came out
of the closet, so to speak. Actually, several different closets. The common
practice of home systems design is to stick everything that has a wire into a
single closet, so that you can access everything from a central place. The
problem with that is that you need distributed locations around your home that
have some control function. As an example, if you have all your music services
in a single closet, you may not want to go to that closet when you want to play
a CD or a DVD.
When you hark back to the old
Systems/360 days, this is exactly what IBM did with its Systems Network
Architecture: distribute some control function, but keep some central
processing. For Patrick's home, he set up separate areas in his basement that
would handle each service: his propane gas pipes, for example, all terminate in
one area, so he can shut off service to the outdoor barbeque from the same
place that he can shut the valve for his stove or water heater. Sure, you spend
a bit more for all the pipes to get "home runs" of propane delivery,
but it makes for a cleaner and more manageable installation.
This brings us to our final issue,
namely that most problems are all about usability and execution, not
technology. What Patrick did to improve usability was to define a set of
scenarios about how he lives in his home, and what systems "events"
need to happen as part of his daily routines. For example, watching a movie in
the living room means dimming the lights, bringing down the screen, bringing up
the projector and turning on the sound system. What was genius was the way he
designed for overrides and controls (you want to shut off everything at night
when you go to bed, for example) but still making everything somewhat
consistent and logical so you can change stuff on the fly (say if Letterman is
actually interested and worth staying up later).
Patrick was most proud of the solutions
that he cobbled together himself out of common parts that are available from
Radio Shack. While his home integrator was quite experienced, there were some
things that he wanted to do differently and the integrator couldn't quite
handle. The various technologies had to be easy enough to operate and debug,
and present uniform interfaces so they could be operated from various
interfaces, including the omni-present touch panels on the walls, a Web
browser, and the video screens that are located around the house.
Even the best designed mainframe needs a little
customization. And maybe others will pick up on Patrick's architectural
innovations when they design other smart homes in the future.
Entire
contents copyright 2004 by David Strom, Inc.
David
Strom, dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
Port
Washington NY 11050
Web
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