Echelon boosts LonWorks interoperability

Electronic News, August 8, 1994 by Reinhardt Krause

PALO ALTO, CALIF.--With the Electronic Industries Association pushing its CEBus home automation standard for a role in the National Information Infrastructure (NII), Echelon Corp. last week boosted its competing local operating network (LON) technology by forming an interoperability group with 46 other companies.

The new LONmark Interoperability Association will issue interoperability guidelines. Although the LonWorks protocol is embedded in silicon--Motorola and Toshiba are Echelon's semiconductor partners--there is one layer to the LonWorks specification where products are adjusted for working environments that sensors or other devices may operate in. "In the seventh layer we have ways to tell time, we have ways to measure barometric pressure, practically anything you would want to measure. It's called standard network variable types," said Keith Raffel, director of customer marketing. "The interoperability guidelines are about making sure everyone is using these the same way."

While the EIA may have more name recognition in Washington as well as ties to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Echelon said its growing customer base--primarily in building control, industrial and transportation applications--is giving it more market penetration than CEBus.

Echelon's route into home automation, meanwhile, is primarily through partnering with utility companies--although earlier this year it also gave a technology demonstration with Oracle Corp.

Still, there are CEBus proponents who claim the EIA-sponsored technology is an open standard while Echelon's is not--a claim that the Palo-Alto, Calif. Mr. Raffel said "CEBus (people) talk about the standard as IS-60. 'I' stands for interim. It's not ANSI-approved either. To a certain extent we're in the same place right now. What CEBus has. In fact, in some ways we're more open because if someone sends us $50 we'll send them our protocol. When we sent them our $200 to get the (CEBus) protocol we got something and were later told it was two years out-of-date.

"We can virtually guarantee interoperability from products from different manufacturers because any standard that is in paper can be changed--and in fact, you'll find that has been happening with CEBus or so I hear. People are saying we don't need that layer or we don't need that service. When people go around and do that with CEBus they can't guarantee interoperability anymore."

However, in a recent "white paper," the EIA said the CEBus standard--originally a consumer electronics specification--could play a role in bridging communications and information technologies and home "appliances." In addition to the physical media and topology of the network, the CEBus standard includes a common command language (CAL) to allow devices to communicate. The CEBus topology handles a wide range of distributed applications without requiring centralized control.

Echelon, though, claims that its LonWorks technology will provide the same functionality, including video, that CEBus provides. ANSI officials recently said that a neutral router or switch might enable both CEBus and other technologies to interoperate (EN, Aug. 1).

Mr. Raffel said: "If customers want a way to move from CEBus to LonWorks or from LonWorks to CEBus it will be done. I would like to say we have not seen CEBus deployed and don't feel any reason to worry about that right now...Is CEBus going to be successful? I don't know. I'm certain that we will be. If they are too there will be a way to communicate between the two."

Since the seven layers to CEBus and LonWorks protocols are different, Mr. Raffel said "You would have to have a program that translated from one to the other. One coming in and the other going out and in the middle there would be a protocol converter."

Still, while the standards setting process takes its course, Echelon is now building up its customer base. While in terms of its 1994 business, home automation accounts for only single digits, the company is cognizant of the large number of potential nodes in appliances, security, lighting and entertainment equipment.

Mr. Raffel said about 50,000 houses are scheduled to have LonWorks-based products installed between now and 1995. While much industry talk has been about "set-top" boxes, the trials with utility companies involve other units inside homes. Referring to set-top box providers, though, Mr. Raffel said: "If there are people to talk to in that area we're talking to them."

Although Intellon recently announced that it would participate in a trial involving Tele-Communications Inc. and Microsoft using CEBus-based technology, Mr. Raffel downplayed the significance. "It's a very limited field trial...with a single digit number of houses," he said.

The interest of utility companies is primarily in easing power usage during peak periods by spreading out loads. With electric vehicles emerging from the research stage, managing EV recharges would be one future application. However, consumer appliance products have thus far been slow to adopt either the CEBus or LonWorks technology--and Mr. Raffel concedes that there is some price sensitivity in the "white goods industry."