I have been testing a couple of products from a company called HomeLogic (based out of MarbleHead, Massuchusetts, www.homelogic.com, now purchased by Elan) over the last several years that elegantly enables the addition of legacy home control devices to a home network across an IP connection. HomeLogic also has an overall home control platform but the products that intrigued me most were their module based control “bricks” for lighting, climate and irrigation control. The product concept for these products is both simple and elegant.
The Simplicity of the “Brick”
The HomeLogic offering is unique because you don’t have to purchase a complete home control software platform (like Premise, AMX, Crestron, and Control4 to name a few such systems) if you only have a few subsystems that you want to control from any browser window on your IP based home network. HomeLogic’s EdgeBrick products allow you to attach RS232 based products to the IP home network (similar products are available from Lantronix, Global Cache and Barrix) but the unique aspect of the solution provided by HomeLogic is their offering of various software control tabs for each of these EdgeBricks. For example, you just want to control your heating and cooling system in your home - you simply connect the RS232 leads of each home thermostat (you can connect several thermostats, each with a unique ID) to the serial port of the EdgeBrick and the IP port of the EdgeBrick attaches with a CAT5 patch cable to the home’s Ethernet switch. (HomeLogic currently supports HAI, RCS or Aprilaire RS232 based thermostats, (see http://www.homelogic.com/support.html) for a full listing of HomeLogic compatible devices.)
The climate control software (written in JAVA) resides on the EdgeBrick itself, not in a separate server box. Pointing your browser URL to the IP address of the climate EdgeBrick will bring up a web page that allows full control of your home’s thermostat (think about an IP camera – like those from Panasonic - that have this same control capability). With this software interface you can easily:
* Interface with the home thermostat from any browser enabled computer in the home, not just ones that have a specialized client based software loaded on a given computer
* Program thermostat schedules for up four periods per day and three different modes (home, vacation, and away) in an easy to use, intuitive, graphical interface. (Unlike fumbling around to program the thermostat itself with a series of difficult to remember button pushes!)
* Show historical view of climate data (indoor, outdoor and set point) temperatures for a 12 month period.
* Monitor and change the setting of your home’s temperature remotely. Using HomeLogic’s remote access service (which can locate the IP address of your ClimateBrick on your home network even if you have a broadband dynamic ISP hosting service) you can change the home’s thermostat settings from anywhere in the world that you have an Internet connection.
The Elegance of the Tab
The most elegant feature of HomeLogic’s software is that you activite a subsystem’s control by simply clicking on its control tab. Just as you would add control bricks, one at a time to build your IP enabled home, you add sub-system software control tabs one at a time. By adding a second brick for irrigation control (for example), you now add the Irrigation software control to the same screen that contains the thermostat control. Similar to a binder tab that helps one quickly access specific content in a binder, these software tabs steer you directly to the device in the home that you want to control. HomeLogic enables this software concept by allowing one EdgeBrick to be the master device and each of the other Edgebricks in the home (with their own unique IP addresses) to be slave devices to this one master.
In our home I have installed HomeLogic’s Irrigation Brick and it has worked very well. I attached my 16 zone Rainbird irrigation system to a third party product called the Rain8Net (http://www.wgldesigns.com/rain8pc.html) which allows me to convert the contact closure commands of each of my 16 valves to RS232 commands. Then I connected the RS232 port of the Rain8Net product to the HomeLogic IrrigationBrick to connect the sprinkler system to my home network.
Now I enjoy the control benefits of our sprinkler system in a browser graphical interface that has the same look and feel as my thermostat control. From any computer in the home I can adjust watering days and timing schedules, manually select certain zones to be watered, and even look at the watering history of our sprinkler system. Similar to the thermostat control system, I can remotely access our home sprinkler system when I am traveling. If it’s raining at home I can turn off the sprinklers from my laptop in my hotel room!
Until every lighting, thermostat, security panel, irrigation system, pool and hot tub control product we purchase has an IP address that can seamlessly install on a home network with a universally accepted home control software platform (like the Microsoft Media Center perhaps?) then, in my opinion, HomeLogic offers one of the most elegant, scalable, and reliable home control software solutions available. Are your ready to start building your IP home, brick by brick?
(reprinted from Residential Systems Magazine)
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