HTINews Show Reviews

Home Automation Show - Orlando

Dennis Ford, President and CEO, Savoy Automation (www.savoysoft.com)

Savoy Automation's perspective on the show is from that of a Home Automation software vendor who incorporates and supports third party products that were being showcased at the conference. Because of the nature of our CyberHouse product we always have a great time at these shows. It's good for us because partners like X10 Pro, RCS, Worthington, Napco, Enerzone, JDS etc. are there and we get to showcase our technology working with their products. This particular show was "HOT" we could literally feel the heat, meaning that the interest being shown for our products was strong. Savoy introduced our book "The HouseHold Web" and our Video "The CyberHouse". We ran out of books and videos the first day of the show!

Last year we were pretty much alone in our software world and this year we saw a host of similar software with solid implementations. We counted five competitive products and next year you can bet there will be ten and a hundred the year after that. So, the good news is there is competition and that helps us create a solid market. We were happy to be next to Napco who was demoing the Gemini security panel and voting with their participation that Home Automation is a viable market for a leading security vendor. There are some folks who belive that security will be one of the foundation stones of HA and we share that view. As a matter of fact the Napco Gemini panel was the only panel we could find that would allow PC's to recieve the state of devices attached to the panel through its RS232 computer interface.

Speaking of software its becoming obvious to me that home control software running on your PC has to be able to support more that rudimentary X10. IBM has done alot for the industry just by entering the market but it needs to work hard at bringing robust remote capabilities and fast integration of other third party products to there thin software suite. HAL 2000 made a big splash by front ending X10 with a voice system that generated some keen interest.

In summary we had a good show and we were happy to see that the show is growing and under new management. The amount of vendors playing in this arena will continue to proliferate and this is good news for the folks who have been waiting for the momentum to build. Savoy came away from the show feeling good and optimistic about the future of HA.

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