Last century, X10 was synonymous with affordable home control. This century's de facto control standard for the mainstream market has yet to be crowned, but various home-control platforms are vying for bragging rights. Some use power lines, some use the Internet protocol, and others operate over the radio spectrum. In fact, the home of the future may use a combination of pipelines and languages.

As appliances and other household devices become more feature-rich—with the ability to communicate their operating status and coordinate with other devices—the need for simple and reliable control will be as important to tomorrow's home as structured wiring or Internet access.

allied approach

Few companies are in a position to go it alone, and most have realized that the best way to ensure compatibility and longevity with networked products is to join an alliance of established (and related) companies. Even LG Electronics, which has been developing a networking system called LG HomNet in South Korea based on a proprietary communications protocol, has abandoned plans to work independently. While the company continues to hammer away at the upscale appliance market in the United States, it has opened its once-proprietary control protocol to other companies. LG HomNet is currently installed in two controlled communities in South Korea and China. Plans for the U.S. market haven't been announced.

In the United States, Z-Wave and In2 Networks hope to become household names in home control. Both alliances are in the process of amassing rosters of star players looking to ride the next wave of mainstream home automation for control of lighting, HVAC, appliances, security, and other low-bandwidth command-and-control applications.

Leviton, Intermatic, and Honeywell are among the 100-plus companies that have joined the Z-Wave Alliance, which is headed by Z-Wave developer Zensys, based in Upper Saddle River, N.J. Z-Wave is a wireless, radio frequency-based (RF) protocol that operates in the 906 MHz spectrum of the radio band.

Intermatic was the first to market, rolling out a line of do-it-yourself lighting and appliance controls in 31 Fry's Electronics stores earlier this year. The Home-Settings line includes light switches, appliance and lighting modules, a hand-held remote control, and a master controller with LCD screen to guide users through operation of single devices or groups of devices. The master controller can operate up to 192 appliances or switches.

Leviton, a longtime proponent of X10 technology, will have Z-Wave products available by year's end. “Z-Wave offers us an inexpensive and robust way—we can put it in $15 light switches—of doing home command and control without any new wires,” says Mark Walters, director of business development at Leviton.

In a Z-Wave network, each device talks to its neighbor over a low-power RF link. The more devices, the stronger and more fault-tolerant the network becomes. “If device A in the kitchen can talk to device B in the living room, they talk to each other directly,” Walters says. “If there's interference between A and B, A could talk to device C in the upstairs bedroom, forming a reconfigurable mesh network.” Z-Wave is more robust than X10, Walters says, because it's self-healing.

“X10 is good because it's inexpensive, and many manufacturers offer products that use that protocol,” says Walters, but Z-Wave offers many of the benefits of X10 while overcoming some of the drawbacks. For example, “Since Z-Wave doesn't use the power line as the carrier, it's not susceptible to some of the AC interference problems associated with X10,” he says. With X10, on the other hand, “You could bring home a new cell-phone charger, plug it in, and take your whole house out. Z-Wave operates at a much faster communication rate, and it's truly two-way.”

Zensys says Z-Wave technology typically adds 10 percent to 20 percent to the cost of a device, and that a standard home can be outfitted with basic controls for less than $1,000. Z-Wave adherents hope the technology will have the same kind of reach as X10 but offer more reliable performance.