INSTEON: Smarthomes for Everyone

The term “smarthome” means different things to different people, but the core concept is easy to understand: A smarthome is a home where the major systems are computer-controlled to work in concert with one another and which can be adapted to the needs of the occupants. This chapter defines the role of INSTEON technology in the Smart Home. If you are already an INSTEON user, you may want to skip ahead to Chapter 2. There are many different elements in a complete smarthome: • Lighting and Appliance control to manage artificial lighting and appliances. • Environmental control systems to manage natural lighting, ventilation, heating, air-conditioning, and irrigation. • Security and Access Control, to save energy when the house is not occupied, and alert the owner to security, fire, or flooding events, and to enable remote monitoring of the home. • Entertainment Systems to control home theater systems, computers, and ambient music. INSTEON devices are computer controlled power switches: Light switches, appliance switches, and specialty switches like dimmers and timer switches. Like the light switches you already have, INSTEON devices turn a light on when you press on, and off when you press off. They look like just like the light switches you have now. But unlike traditional light switches, INSTEON switches can all talk to one another—they can tell other switches to turn off as well, or dim, or perform any sort of appliance control function such as drawing curtains or turning on a fan. INSTEON devices can do this because every switch has a tiny computer called a microcontroller built in to it that communicates over your powerlines. Some INSTEON devices such as remotes and motion sensors communicate over radio frequency, and these signals are repeated on the powerline by INSTEON Wireless Access Points. INSTEON creates a dual-mesh (radio-frequency and powerline) network of peer microcontrollers that all act as transmitters, receivers, and repeaters of all INSTEON signals. The signals are used to control the delivery of power to appliances. But this definition is like saying that a movie is a series of 1s and 0s on a plastic substrate compatible with the DVD format—it doesn’t tell the story of what the technology can do. INSTEON enables low-cost lighting and environmental control networks. It connects the various controls in your home (such as light switches, irrigation valves, vent fans, and appliances) together so that a person can use a single switch to control numerous devices simultaneously, or create time or event-based triggers to control devices. INSTEON automates the control of home systems such as lighting and environmental controls and connects them to security systems, environment control, irrigation, entertainment, and other home control systems to enable a home to react to the needs of its occupants. By creating a web of links between switches, homeowners are able to easily created complicated “scenes” that can bring up interior lighting automatically when a garage door opens, allow you to turn all the lights in the home off from your nightstand, or automatically turn off every light in the house at 1:00 a.m.