Problem:     Our customer provided home automation systems that allowed the home owner to electronically control his lighting and other energy consumption. The only problem was that their system used a proprietary communications technology that required new wiring to be pulled within the home so that it might be installed. This severely limited the target market to only new build homes. Further, the system was difficult to maintain and costly.

Solution:     Group Alpha developed a new system based on LonWorks power line communications. The resulting system consisted of a set of switch and actuator modules, a central memory store that allowed various power/lighting schemes to be preprogrammed and stored, and an input/output bridge that allowed non-LonWorks devices to be interfaced to the system.

All of these modules communicated to each other across the power lines within the home eliminating the need for additional wiring. The system provided a communications port that allowed either a local PC or a remote PC attached via modem to be attached and program the system. It also allowed for a remote service rep to be able to connect and diagnose and reconfigure the system. This feature allows the support cost and customer service response time to be substantially reduced.

This particular system was one of the first systems introduced that used the Echelon LNS software architecture for network management.