One of the most notable features of the home automation industry is its nodiversity. Indeed, the absence of a universal language that would allow different manufacturers' equipment to communicate is sometimes blamed for keeping prices high and impeding the industry's growth.
X-JO is sometimes seen as a de facto standard by virtue of its huge installed base. It has been endorsed by International Business Machines, which says the technology is "tried and proven".
But industry rivals dismiss X-10 as rudimentary and unreliable. Eiba, a Brussels-based organisation with 78 members across Europe, has developed its own standard based on the European Installation Bus or instabus, a reliable but relatively expensive approach that involves instating a line along which devices communicate.
Another sophisticated alternative to X-10 is LonWorks, a system made by Echelon. Its relatively high cost means that, so for, it is primarily aimed at the commercial market. Yet another standard is CEBus, which was developed by the Electronic Industries Association in the US. It is generally seen as a more robust technology than X-10 and is supported by many of the largest US electronics companies.
Some manufacturers are trying to go a step further. In 1995 Honeywell, Microsoft and Intel began to thrash out issues of inter-operability among the various home automation and control networks. This led to the "Home Plug and Play specification", which is designed to make it much easier to get home electronics products to work together in a network.
Not everyone is sure about the wisdom or necessity of industry standards. "If international standards are completed they will be obsolete", says Echelon. But in the view of the US Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association:
"Greater harmony could create a generation of more affordable equipment".
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