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From: Fischer.pa@XEROX.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:Integrating a home pc with appliances
Message-ID: <1913@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 00:13:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1913
Posted: Sat Oct  5 00:13:05 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 04:42:06 EDT
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 22

To do that you'd need an accepted standard for appliance control (like
MIDI for music) and a transmit medium.  I would suggest carrier current
AM on the house wires.  Anything you plugged into your home would (by
default) be accesable to your home computer control system, also plugged
into the wall.  Such a thing could be a slow dumb ether for the toys in
your house to talk on.

[Far better than the voice recognition scare of a year ago: Toaster to
coffee maker: "EYE YAM DUN PLEE-YUZ STAHRT THU CAW-FEE."  After a pause
the coffee maker recognizes that its being  spoken to and a command was
given... Coffee maker to Toaster: "SAH-REE BUD EYE HAHV NO WAH-TER."  T
to C: "EYE DEED NAUGHT UN-DER-STAND PLEE-YUZ REEPEET."  C to T: same...
ad nauseum.]

Issues of isolation, security etc. could be solved with some checks in
the appliances (to keep them from allowing really dumb/unsafe
operations) and a "home code" that could be some large number of bits
long to avoid hackage  by friends outside with inductor transmitters
wrapped around your power lines to "hack your home"... but is this
latter really an issue or just paranoia?

(ron)