Home automation technology includes home computers and computer networks, home security, home control, streaming audio and video, interactive TV, email, web access, connected home offices, web enabled appliances, lighting control and generally anything that involves home computers, home internet use and connected computer technology in the home. It is a huge field and parts of it are growing quickly. This article will consider whether home automation technology will converge with building automation technology within your working life.

First, to put you in the mood, a historical perspective on how much change can occur in one working lifetime. The next section is a current look at the big picture, including residences as well as commercial buildings. Finally, we have a glimpse of some future technologies that could have a major impact on the building automation industry and your future.

1.1 Perspective
[an error occurred while processing this directive]Let's think in terms of a generation. The average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring is roughly 25 years. Many of us can relate to the amount of time B.C. (that's Before Children). For others, it's the amount of time it takes to grow up. For those of you who have still not grown up, it's probably the length of your mortgage. Finally, the average life span is about three generations, a century is four and most importantly to this article, your working life is almost two generations.

Now, with this time perspective firmly in mind, let's look at a technology timeline to see what has happened over a couple of generations. 1976 was one generation ago, twenty-five years precisely. The year before, in 1975, the Altair 8800, one of the earliest commercially available personal computers was first sold. (http://www.computer-museum.org/collections/mits8800.html)  It wasn't until six years later in 1981 that IBM launched their PC. Personal computers have been around less than one generation.

Two generations ago, in 1951, colour TV was first introduced. The LP record, was invented three years prior and the laser that eventually replaced it was invented just 9 years later. Incidentally, since that time world population has increased from 2.3 billion to 6 billion.

A person retiring this year, was in the work force when the microchip was made in 1959, the structure of the DNA molecule was determined in 1961, Greenpeace was founded in 1971, AIDS was identified in 1981, email became popular in 1998 and the DNA sequencing of the human genome was completed last year.

You may be wondering at this point why I am taking so much time on this background and why I am I referring to timeline events completely outside our industry. I think we can tend to be a little myopic when we look at the future of what we do at work. Maybe, it's because our pride in our capabilities and accomplishments blinds us to external factors that can affect us. The buggy whip manufacturers, the swiss movement watch makers and the beaver pelt trappers were all blindsided by factors outside their industry that they didn't see coming. After the fact, with a historical perspective, it is easy to see what happened. The trick is to see what's coming. To see the big changes . . . maybe we need to look at the big picture. 

1.1.1 The Big Picture 
Allied Business Intelligence Inc is an Oyster Bay, NY-based technology research think tank specializing in communications and emerging technology markets. ABI has recently forecast that worldwide residential gateway hardware revenues will rise from $267 million in 2000 to $7.1 billion by 2006. The majority of this will be accounted for by DSL and cable residential gateways.

Are individual homeowners ready to spend this kind of money to control the heating ventilation and air conditioning in their homes? Not likely! Most homeowners have better HVAC control in their cars than in their houses. So why am I referring to a $7.1 billion market in residential gateway hardware? These residential gateways are not the controls you are used to in the commercial DDC industry. That's where the myopia comes in. A building owner is primarily interested in comfort, energy efficiency and cost. (Not necessarily in that order.) Whereas a homeowner would consider spending serious money for a gateway to entertainment equipment, email and web access, security and other applications. HVAC applications for the home are a low importance consideration. The Cisco web site (http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/consumer/internet_home/internet_home.html) has eight areas where the Internet will impact the home. Home Control is just one of the eight areas and HVAC is only one of the items mentioned within home control. The IT Consulting Web site (http://itconsulting.about.com/industry/itconsulting/library/weekly/aa020901a.htm) says "According to analysts, the total market investment on broadband will sum up to over a trillion dollars-from fast online access deployments to completion of next-generation wireless networks." You can bet that if there is going to be a thousand billion dollars spent on fast connections; that there is going to be a lot of people, a lot of homes and a lot of $ worth of "stuff" at the end of that broadband pipe. That's big.

1.1.2 What's driving the adoption of home technology?
Well, it certainly isn't HVAC applications. I mean, HVAC is one of the factors, but way down the list behind the fun stuff like music, games and movies, the communications applications and security. Microsoft's take on the home is at (http://www.microsoft.com/homenet/). A great home oriented web site is (http://www.hometoys.com/). It bills itself as "The Complete Guide to Home Automation and Networking." CABA says it is "North America's key source for information, education, and networking relating to home and building automation". (http://www.caba.org/). You can visit these sites and guess what the killer apps in the home will be. My point is simply that it will not be the ones that we in the HVAC industry are used to.

So what? If the home technology market place isn't concerned with HVAC, why should our industry be interested in home technology?

It's mainly because of the protocols. Many of us in the industry are familiar with the BACnet and LON protocols, but are you aware of how many others there are out there that could affect our industry? Do you know what that effect might be? If you do, please let me know, because I don't. I do know there are more than two. The CABA web site alone lists 16 links to standards and protocols including some heavy hitters such as Microsoft with Universal Plug n Play. The Hometoys web site has a number of articles on X10, CEBus, HomeRF and other protocols. I'm not prepared to stick my neck out here and predict the protocol future. However, our commercial building controls industry is small compared to the sum total of all the communications and manufacturing companies that will be involved in home computing, residential information technology and internet ready home appliances. Maybe, we can just stick to doing our thing in our own markets and we won't be affected. Maybe not. The mouse sleeping beside an elephant analogy comes to mind here. 

1.1.3 What's the future hold?
I can not predict with any certainty what the effect of the home automation industry will be on the building automation industry within your working life, but I will touch on a few items that could be pertinent.

The Internet - Cisco believes that the Internet is the next essential home utility, like gas, water, and electricity. Ken Sinclair in his November 1999 article "Are Automated Buildings Converging or Colliding with the Internet" www.automatedbuildings.com/news/nov99/articles/sinclair/sinclair.htm predicted "We will see the separation of the vendors' involvement in the graphics and data presentation. Either Internet or Intranet type HTML multi platforms available anywhere presentation, will become the standard." Once the graphics and data presentation are Internet resident, why not have a building automation system operate as a relatively simple standalone system and have higher levels of intelligence resident on the Internet. A building automation independent service provider specializing in forecasting utility rates or monitoring alarm conditions and dispatching service personnel could provide an expert system. Utilities could offer expert services for free as a way of selling power or smoothing loads. Environmentally aware organizations or governments may offer green (environmentally friendly) power via the Internet.

Residential gateways - Parks Associates predicts more than half of the 40 million US residential gateways around by 2005 will be set top boxes. To quote from a recent article "These devices feature embedded broadband modems, dynamic routing functionality, security features, as well as (directly or indirectly) support for numerous home-networking technologies." Will this type of gateway or something similar be used for Building Automation as well?

Wireless connectivity and networking - Bluetooth is a wireless technology with the ability to enable cell phones and portable digital assistants (PDAs) to communicate and transfer data. The nine-company promoter group for Bluetooth includes 3Com, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Lucent Technologies, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Toshiba. The August HomeToys edition will be on wireless networking. Could the predicted wireless growth have an effect on the cost and acceptability of wireless components for building automation?

Voice recognition interface - Communicating with your computer has always been a problem. You have to carry around a keyboard and/or a mouse to be able to get the computer to do anything. Touch screens have had some success, but look for voice recognition to be the breakthrough human to computer interface technology. Cell phones are already using rudimentary voice recognition.

Artificial intelligence. Think this is a bit far out? Maybe, but wouldn't it be nice if the computer could figure out what you mean without having to go through some arcane user interface that rquires prper spelling. Just a minute, my spell check already does that automatically. Artificial intelligence can be defined as "the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behaviour". In fact, when I think about it, my email program has recently been figuring out which Smith I want when I type Smith in the To: field. It has figured out which Smith I want of all those in my directory because that is the one I usually email. Artificial intelligence can also be defined as "a thing that knows nothing but it can learn". The computer has learned which Smith I usually email. OpenTV's new operating system, due out this fall, will let marketers deliver targeted advertisements to consumers based on the shows they watch while maintaining consumers' privacy. The technology will also have a built-in mechanism that determines who's in front of the television based on how they use the remote control. Artificial intelligence includes expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic, natural language understanding, computer games, agents and robotics. (More information at http://ai.about.com/compute/ai/library/weekly/aa051899.htm).

1.2 So what has this got to do with me?
I guess it depends on what you do for a living, but here are a few scenarios.

A Bluetooth capable piece of HVAC equipment would recognize a service technician with a Bluetooth capable cell phone when he is nearby. The DDC system could advise an expert Internet service to call the technician to tell him it needs an adjustment while he is in the area.

The computerized ticket sales system for a theatre uploads the rate of sales of tickets for a particular event as the time for the event approaches to an expert system. The expert system uses a fuzzy logic time series analysis to predict how many people will be in the theatre. The expert system advises the building automation system and it adjusts the HVAC control accordingly.

The local electric utility is buying spot power internationally. A heat wave on the other side of the country drives up prices. At 11 am the utility lets the building control system know that it can give a credit if the building can reduce power consumption at noon. The building control system decides it might make sense to do that. It calls the building manager for authorization. The building manager is in a meeting. The building manager's PDA/Cell phone has automatically set itself to Do Not Disturb when he entered the meeting. The intelligent messaging system checks and finds the meeting will last all afternoon. It uses natural language recognition to convert the voicemail to email text to be displayed on the manager's PDA/Cell phone, sets the phone to vibrate instead of ring and sends him the message. The manager takes one look and because he trusts his smart building, gives his authorization. At 11:01 am the building control system starts taking the steps to reduce power consumption.

Next article, I will write up a fictional panel discussion by industry members of what this all means to the manufacturers, distributors, contractors and end users in our industry. The September AutomatedBuildings.com theme is "Industry Restructuring, Is it happening?" Seems to fit right in.

If you have an opinion or statement about this article or some insights that you would like to share on the future of our industry and industry restructuring, please feel free to email me. I will see if I can work them into the fictional panel discussion so that it becomes a fictional/virtual panel discussion.

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