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Show Report: Home Automation at Light+Building 2010 (6/5/2010)

By Stella Plumbridge, HiddenWires

I've been looking for an international trade exhibition based in Europe that gives me a good insight into the home automation market, as opposed to the home AV market, and I'm happy to report that the 6th Light+Building event was just that.

Light+Building 2010 ran for six days in April at the Frankfurt Messe and was billed as "The world's leading trade fair for architecture and technology," which, given that it attracted over 180,000 visitors, is probably a reasonable claim. Forty-three per cent of visitors were international with the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, France and Great Britain being the five leading visitor nations after Germany, and forty-one percent of visitors were interested in house and building automation.

By any measure it was a huge event with 2,177 exhibitors spread over eighteen halls plus outside areas. Zoning into the three main areas of lighting, electrical engineering, and home and building automation made it more manageable, although if you attended the CEDIA Expo in Atlanta last year and complained about the distances you had to walk, you would have hated this exhibition centre!

Some of the usual suspects such as AMX and Crestron were represented by their German offices, while the large switch manufacturers and building automation companies such as ABB/Busch Jaeger, Schneider Group, Siemens, Albrecht Jung, Gira, Siedle, Eaton etc., were all showing their residential products as part of vast stands that would each take several hours to see properly.

My main impressions included the importance of the KNX standard and trade associations; that energy management is a real market driver; and the superb quality of the design and manufacturing of the products on display.

Associations and standards

It would have been hard to attend Light+Building without seeing the KNX logo somewhere, be it at the central station, on bags and lanyards, at the main stand or half-a-dozen other satellite stands, not to mention an awards event attended by over 1,200 guests from fifty-four countries. It felt that the show could be re-named Light+KNX as many of the control and automation exhibitors were displaying prominent KNX membership signs – according to the KNX Association, eighty-three of its manufacturer members exhibited a total of 225 new KNX applications.

Winners at the KNX Awards 2010

The KNX Association was celebrating its 20th anniversary, and besides the impressive branding exercise, announced a Beta version of its new ETS4 product and manufacturer-independent programming tool now available in 15 languages, as well as eight new members including Cisco, Exor, Control4 and Colorado vNet, taking its total of manufacturer members to 200.

ZWEH, the Central Association of the German Electrical and Information Technology Trades, with a membership of 80,000 companies, was also out in force. Its various exhibits included the E-Haus, a 160-square metre model house built to demonstrate energy efficiency and intelligence using KNX applications from various vendors throughout. The E-Haus comprised kitchen, bathroom, office, utility room, two living rooms, and garage with home charger for a Tesla Roadster electric car.

One of the living rooms in the ZWEH E-Haus showing participating companies

The energy monitoring system in the E-Haus was one of the most comprehensive that I've seen, with consumption level data collected and analysed using smart meters, networked home appliances, photovoltaic systems, and the home car charger equipped with a smart card system that allows you to choose the best tariff. The information available included power usage and cost by room or by appliance, and either live or as a trend over time. It was quite addictive watching how the consumption of the home cinema components in particular, varied as volumes and other settings were changed.

An energy monitoring display in the ZWEH E-Haus

The whole system in the E-Haus was connected using KNXnet IP bus, and there were many controllers connected including touchpanels of various sizes. The controllers and panels were able to control various functions such as lighting, blinds, HVAC and webcams, with the video from the webcams being displayed on the touchpanels. There was also fingerprint door access control.

In the home cinema room there was a Busch-Jaeger (aka ABB) touchpanel for controlling the AV as well as lighting moods including sequences of colour for LEDs behind the flatscreen TV; 1080p films were being streamed from hard disk and Blu-ray to multiple locations; and multiroom audio was also being streamed.

Other trade organisations with a strong presence included the EnOcean Alliance which showed self-powered wireless technology and the new bidirectional Dolphin control platform. The digitalSTROM.org Association previewed powerline control products that will be available for installation by certified electricians in Germany and Switzerland this Autumn. The Z-Wave Alliance featured interoperable wireless devices for home energy management and control, and according to Raoul Wijgergangs, chairman of the Z-Wave Alliance, “The huge number of visitors interested in home control solutions underscores the fact that this market is really on the rise in Europe. The local demand has reached a level similar to that in the USA.”

Simplified programming

Several exhibitors had products designed to simplify and speed up user interface design and system programming, including Promoveo with a demonstration of a Configuration Tool for its integrated home control and energy management system. The process of building the user interface for each home is automated, and the Configuration Tool also includes a KNX interface for importing ETS Group Address data allowing installers to re-use programming of KNX devices. Drag and drop functionality and red and green flags provide a step-by-step user guide to determine current status of the configuration. Promoveo claims that a typical project, such as a four-bedroom house, can be fully configured within hours. The Promoveo platform can be used in new installations or to visualise an existing KNX installation as a retrofit option.

Control devices

There were literally hundreds of in-wall, on-wall and hand-held controllers around the show, using every kind of touchscreen technology available, and offered in every conceivable colour and finish, but I only have space to highlight a couple here.

Visiomatic showed the Visiomatic Home System, a whole-home automation system that provides control via individually customised floor and room plan displays with easy-to-understand icons. The Visiomatic range of control devices included a Full HD 65-inch version of its visiPad touchscreen controller, and adding to its iPhone building control app, Visiomatic also claimed to be the first company in Germany to offer control via the iPad.

Visiomatic's stand showing visiPadTT65 65-inch controller

Teletask showed DoIP (Domotics over IP) systems aimed at luxury houses and apartments, as well as hotels, showrooms and offices. Control options include the AURUS-OLED touch panel featuring a glass front plate, eight programmable, capacitive touch buttons and icon displays. The panels also contain an audible feed-back buzzer, an infrared receiver and a temperature sensor, can be installed into a single-size standard wall box either vertically or horizontally, and are available in gloss black, gloss white, aluminium-grey and champagne-gold colour.

Teletask's AURUS-OLED touch panel in gloss black

I have to admit to knowing very little about several of the larger exhibitors at Light+Building, but the company that gets my prize for the biggest eye-opener is Berker, the German switch manufacturer. Now part of the Hager Group, Berker's new product offerings included a range of modular multimedia sockets, a USB charger socket, flush-mounted radios, a mobile phone version of its IP-Control building automation software for any device running Internet Explorer Mobile 6.5 upwards or Opera mobile, and energy-saving sensors for motion detection, heating control and blind automation. Berker was also showing a prototype smart home control system, the Comfort Center 9", featuring a 9-inch capacitive touchscreen and integrated KNX module, available in a glass or stainless steel surround. Ease of use was a design priority and the screen works in a similar way to the iPhone with the most commonly used functions always appearing on the front page. The unit has concealed USB and SD interfaces which are accessed by sliding the frame sideways. It also supports email, RSS feeds, a data logger, a weather module and a mirror function, and with a camera, microphone and loudspeaker, the unit can act as an interface for door access and intercom systems, and can also be used to record video memos. The prototype has been tested at the Fraunhofer inHaus Centre for Intelligent Room and Building Systems.

Berker's prototype Comfort Center 9" controller

Conclusion

There is very little in the way of market research for the European market, but it is generally thought that the market in continental Europe is not as well developed as in the UK. While this is probably true if you're only concerned with home cinema and AV, my conclusion from talking to exhibitors and attendees at Light+Building is that for Germany at least, the market is considerably more developed in terms of home control systems, automated lighting, energy management, access control etc, and this non-AV centric approach means that most installations are carried out by electrical contractors. It also confirmed for me that there isn't such a divide between commercial building and residential installations in the same way as there is in the UK.

All-in-all, Light+Building was a very enlightening experience (pun intended - sorry) and provided the opportunity to meet many companies from Germany and elsewhere in Europe that we don't see at other events. I'd recommend anyone who is interested in the European market for home automation to consider attending, although you'll have to wait until April 2012, as unfortunately this is a biennial event.

Stella Plumbridge is the publisher of HiddenWires magazine.