Networking the home: a new threat ?

[VK2ZRH]

Consumers' existing home wiring - whether one or any combination of coaxial, phone line and power line - will underpin the future convergence of consumer electronics - from TVs, audio systems and home theatre, to PCs, video systems, telephone and home security.

So say four of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers: Infineon Technologies, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments.

To further this common belief, and to develop technologies to enable consumers to enjoy multimedia anywhere in the home, they got together in April 2008 to form the HomeGrid Forum with the key aim of developing a single, worldwide standard for networking over home wiring.

And the Forum's been busy over the past 12 months. Chief among their activities is generating support for the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) proposed G.hn Standard for home networking and getting consumer electronics distributors and suppliers on-side.

It remains to be seen if HomeGrid and the G.hn Standard address the issue of interference arising from RF egress and ingres with home networking systems running on power and phone (twisted pair) lines.

You can check out the HomeGrid Forum's aims and objectives here: http://www.homegridforum.org

To see how busy they've been, trawl the newsroom at: http://www.homegridforum.org/news_events/pr

On 16 March 2009, the Forum announced a webinar - "G.hn Technology Overview", which you can download here:
http://www.homegridforum.org/resource_library (signup required).

Worth maintaining a detached eye on it.

Posted in the interests of staying informed.

73, Roger Harrison VK2ZRH

To keep abreast of BPL developments, discuss the issues and share views, you can subscribe to the Spectrum Issues Group Australia (SIGA) email list at: https://mail.une.edu.au/lists/cgi-bin/listinfo/spectrum

[VK2SWL2]

Hi Roger

Recently we looked at the Motorola BPL HomeGrid system for a job. The limitations were that it won't work (of course) on different phases and also won't work across circuit breakers. As the building we needed to hook up had about 40 rooms and lots of breakers it wasn't feasible.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to bring the product home and see what effect it had on SW and other noise levels, though I had been hoping to.

Cheers

Richard Jary (yes from CB Action all those years ago).

[vk3six]

FWIW:

The electronic world is closing in around us, if its not a LAN, its a WAN, or some other switching networked s**t box, or a a router.
My own Sharp TV puts a carrier on 50.1104, the electric fence from the bandicoot enclosure up the road clicks all the way from 10 to 400 megs, and all those neat 49 MHZ non approved baby minders will capture a receiver at 500M away all the way up to 50.5.

The reality is that many many radio emitting devices surround us over which we have no control.
And how's the cable debate these days, do the wires around the cities radiate noise into our ham bands or what?
Its the real world and all the legislation in the world is not going to lower the noise floor and allow us the luxury of working DX.
Maybe we can control the issues maybe not.



2 cents.