December 1/2000 -- So you're tired of hearing about the home of the future being "just around the corner" for the past decade or two. You may also be wondering how to automate your own house - or should you even bother. These and other mysteries about home automation will be addressed in the home automation mentor section. I will discuss different aspects of home automation such as power line communication essentials, integration options and device interoperability in the future and I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.


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Reza Raji
Director of Business Development
Echelon Corporation

Home Control Network
Resources
Articles
Alphabet Soup
Largest HA Project
 Automation & You
 The Lonworks Solution
IEEE Spectrum article

Press Releases
Sun and Echelon Collaborate
 Free Developer's Kit
 ANSI Powerline Standard
Enel and Echelon Finalize Agreement 

References
LonWorks HA
Lonworks Live Demo
Sun's Dot-Com page
Smart Houses
RuleBreaker?

 Home Automation Alphabet Soup
So how do we stay afloat in this sea of acronyms?  We all gather, organize and analyze information in our own unique way.  But there are a few common techniques you can use to help separate fact from fiction, meat from gristle, hype from news…well, you get the idea.  Here’s my version of the RAAT (Redundant Acronym Analysis Tool), a series of questions you can ask yourself to help you qualify a new acronym.  Read more in my current article entitled "Home Automation Alphabet Soup"

About Control Networks
Control devices have a unique set of characteristics that are different than those for data networks. Compared to data networking devices (PCs, printers, laptops, etc.), there are more control devices that can be found in a typical home. Other attributes of control and automation networks are the relatively low network bandwidth (e.g. bit rate) requirements as well as the need to support multiple media (twisted pair, power line, RF, etc.). 

Reza Raji ( reza@echelon.com ) is the Director of Business Development at Echelon Corporation, a leader in providing solutions to extend the power and benefits of networking to everyday devices. He joined Echelon in early 1991 and has held various positions in technical and marketing roles within the company. In his current role he is responsible for fostering technical and business synergies between Echelon's LONWORKS® device networking platform and the latest technologies and product offerings in the industry, with specific focus on home networking and the Internet. He also serves on the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) Steering Committee, an industry initiative designed to enable easy and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors.

Prior to joining Echelon, Reza worked at IBM Corporation where he worked on the design and development of the company's first super-computer project. He also was member of an IBM Fellow group working on bringing large-scale computing platform compatibility to the PC.

Reza holds two patents on computer cache design and embedded devices. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.