Home Automation Market

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After many years in the Home Automation business it clear to me that nothing is clear !
The expectation in the residential market place is driven by the app. Every manufacturer has an app and its free.
In reality the future is about seamless inter-connectivity and we are a way of this becoming mainstream.
Rather than a clear way forward with home automation all I see is hugely fragmented market place being saturated by companies new to the market that feel that they have to have an app to control their products.
When it comes to one item talking to another ( one manufacturers product talking to another or one protocol talking to another) things start to get complicated and the cost of implementation begins to reflect the very bespoke nature of this business.  
So why bring this up in the Comfort forum ?
Well comfort has been around for decades now YES well over 10 years, its a product that had (has) vision - the basis of a 20 year old product is still relevant today. So why then has it never really \'taken off\' and what can be done to bring Comfort into the 21st century?

[Swiss-Toni]

I get what your saying, as an installer I have wondered why Comfort isnt bigger, The only system I install is comfort as one of the main reasons is the ability to merge with other systems and the ability to use custom made equipment that intergrates quite easily (Ie it is not product specific).
I am in the process of getting someone to build a website for me and all references will be for Comfort!
However we must take into consideration the costs of advertising (Horrendous)Esp at a global level..........

[slychiu]

Thanks to both for the comments 
We try our best to remain relevant in a fragmented market, and we constantly try to find the best way forward.

The remark about apps seemed incomplete, do you mean something like Openhab should be supported?

[srooks]

Like many markets, HA will remain fragmented, especially as you have all the big Consumer Electronic companies now competing in this space each with a proprietary solution.

Are there any plans for enhancing ETH03? I notice there\'re some disabled buttons for uploading web pages.

I think Comfort fits in the IoT space so how about supporting MQTT which would then allow it to subscribe and publish events into the fragmented world of HA.

Supporting Apple Homelink would also  be interesting, although beyond Siri control I\'m not sure what it gives.

[TheMax74]

As a final customer, i have trashed many \"relevant\" products and i wasted my time many times to find a way to have a functional and trouble-free solution.
Then, i\'ve found Cytech and my search ended. The system just works. Yes, it\'s not plug and play, but i never had a problem since 2005. You ask it to open the door, secure your home, turn on a light? It does.
I linked my KNX installation to Comfort and it works like a charm.
My personal point of view, is that Comfort is a professional solution that hasn\'t all the bells and whistles comparing to other newer \"plug and pray\" products, but if you remains out of your house because of a bad \"over the air update\" of your latest HA gadget (or worst, because of a hacked one) you surely will prefer a more professional product.
For secure application, use a reliable product, like Comfort. For all non critical situation (turn on a colourfull light) , feel free to use any of the newer an very cool products.
This is my own and very personal opinion.

[slychiu]

Thank you all for your comments again
We are in fact looking at options for ETH03; MQTT, REST, Openhab, but there seems to be new things coming out so often that we want to see which is practical and supported
We have also been working on the webserver in ETH03 - the user interface is more the challenge rather than the functionality
As a taste of what is going to be available, we plan to have a \"UCM\" which is also a controller. Imagine Comfort without the inputs, outputs, telephone recording which looks like a UCM which can plug in the ETH, USB interface for comunication. This can be used as a low cost logic controller where you can connect KNX, Cbus, IRIO and other modules.

[TheMax74]

Hi Chiu,
please do not try to follow the latest fashion. You will lose yourself. See what is happened with, for example, Angular JS or many other JS frameworks. Stay as standard as you can. An EHT interface that can accept/send simple ascii commands would be a great deal.
This is my integration with Comfort and a Smartvisu JS framework, connected all together using a c# self developed bridge. It tooks me a lot of time in developing, but having a simple ETH UCM able to receive/send simple ascii string to control/monitor the Comfort panel, would be a great saving of time.


http://knxtoday.com/2014/03/3592/technol...h-knx.html

[Swiss-Toni]

As \"TheMax74\" said do not try to follow the latest fashion, But i do think the most forward steps will be developing the app side of things even further, and as mentioned in a previous post \"A Widget\" for tablets..............

[slychiu]

having a simple ETH UCM able to receive/send simple ascii string to control/monitor the Comfort panel, would be a great saving of time.

Actually UCM/ETH03 does accept simple ASCII commands as documented in the Comfort Protocol[font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]download from [/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]https://www.cytech.biz/serial_interface_protocol.html[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font]eg I?02 means Query Input 2[font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]The reply I?0201 means Input 2 is on[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]You can control and monitor comforts state quite well[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]
[/font][font=\"Verdana, sans-serif\"]Comfigurator and the Comfort apps all use the same protocol[/font]

[TheMax74]

That is good. I totally overlooked it!