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Comment by Frozenlock | Hacker News Reader

Any plan to use industry standard protocols?

I work in HVAC controls and I'm always surprised by how the 'home automation' folks seem to just ignore what's already out there.

My favorite standard is BACnet (standard for ASHRAE, ANSI and ISO), but there's also Modbus, Lontalk...

There's a bunch of people who have already worked very hard to make sure there's some usable protocols for lighting, air conditioning and even security access.

IMO you could leverage a strong position and use existing codes by using them.

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Totally agree in principal @frozenlock. 433 was simply the path of least resistance for us. It gave us very cost effective off the shelf sensors, and critically, remote control power sockets in all regions. Its not super elegant, however, it gives software developers (most of our customers atm) hardware with an API for peanuts compared to the established options.

The Ninja is a meta-platform that offers a normalized API for disparate hardware. See my reply above for the long winded answer. The short version is - we aim to provide OAuth for your all stuff ;)

Hi, Frozenlock. I'm interested in the topic of home automation, but I know very little. Can you recommend any extra reading besides the standards that you mentioned?

Unfortunately, not really.

You see, home automation seems to always do "it's own thing" in regards to industry standards, which is why I manifested myself here.

If you want to know more about building control however, you can just type "hvac control" in google and you should be in the right spot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Automation

What are you using for automation? At my old company, we were using Zigbee thermostats after giving up on BACnet/Modbus (just didn't have that time/ability)

I wouldn't call it automation per se. HVAC control is simply named... well, control.

The last control company I worked for was heavily invested in the Delta controls' products. (All working on top of the BACnet protocol) Last I heard Delta also started to toy with Zigbee.

In my head there aren't mutually exclusive, as the BACnet architecture enables it to be built on top of other protocols. (BACnet/arcnet, BACnet/MSTP, BACnet/Ethernet, BACnet/IP...)

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