On Thu, Aug 05, 1999 at 01:33:44PM +1200, Lance Allen wrote:
> Anybody using the LON these days?
> I gave up attempting to comply with the rules and expenses associated
> being a LON developer, but now am considering applications similar in
> principle to the LON.
> The CAN bus looks attractive, what pitfalls await the hapless
> developer, will I get screwed blind by some accountant, lawyer,
> vampire (previous two occupations rolled into one) wanting their
> royalties and requiring expensive proprietary tools?

EDN just ran a story about "Home Networking" protocols,
which -- since they were being marketed in that direction --
included some protocols that were traditionally used in
industrial applications, such as LONworks.

LON was seen as being a leading contender in the home
market because of its maturity, but despite the price
and the onerous problem of having to shoehorn a Neuron
into every application. The whole article can be found
at:

http://www.ednmag.com/ednmag/reg/1999/070899/14cs1.htm

or in Acrobat at

http://www.ednmag.com/ednmag/reg/1999/070899/pdfs/14cs1.pdf

The pdf is about 188KB.

After reading the article, I had the overwhelming reaction
that this home networking stuff was in dire need of an
"open source" type solution. This appears to be one
of those situations where there is so much money to be
made in the long run, that the IP-mongers (IP meaning
intellectual property in this case) are going to rip
each other to shreads before they let each other grab
the market share. If there was a good, implementable
design out there, that could be used without having to
dump half your profits into your competitor's pocket,
I could see a lot of small manufacturers and independant
contractors using that instead of the high-priced spread.
I know that I shudder just to think about having to use
something like Lon to control my sprinkler system; I'm
much more likely to hack something togther myself.

But then, I'm not normal, and I probably don't understand
the real issues involved in all this home networking
stuff.

--Bob

--
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Bob Drzyzgula                             It's not a problem
bob@drzyzgula.org                until something bad happens
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