HomePlug Plans Home Control
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 3/27/2006
San Ramon, Calif. — The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, developer of powerline-network standards, is branching out to develop a powerline-based home-control standard, which will enable whole-house control of lighting, appliances, climate control, security and other devices from centralized control centers within the home.
Home systems could also be controlled by cellphones from outside the home.
The planned standard, dubbed HomePlug Command and Control, is a low-speed complement to the high-speed HomePlug 1.0 standard for transferring data and content over powerlines and to the even higher speed HomePlug AV standard, whose 200Mbps capability enables HDTV streaming over powerlines.
All three HomePlug technologies will coexist on a home's powerlines without interfering with one another. That makes it possible for suppliers to develop a controller that controls all HomePlug products incorporating any one of the three standards, the association said.
For Command and Control, the association chose a baseline technology developed by Yitran Communications of Israel. The association will now form a specification working group to complete the spec, expected to be developed and ratified in the third quarter.
