Hacker News Reader

Here's hoping the "common protocol" they mentioned in the keynote is Z-Wave (strongly suggested base on Tim's use of the word "scenes" and the vendor list they put up) and not some Apple proprietary garbage. I'm still bitter about FaceTime being an 'open standard'.

View on HN

Many are bitter about that, myself included. But it was an intellectual property issue, out of Apple's control.[0]

[0]: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114

A patent (troll, btw) doesn't stop Apple from letting other clients connect to the network. Those clients could decide if they want to deal with the risk of infringement judgments.

And Apple could have chosen to use one of many existing alternative session initiation algorithms.

Is Z-Wave the same thing as a Zigbee mesh network? I know that's what Philips Hue uses.

zwave and zigbee are similar but competing standards. the devices are not interchangeable but some home automation controllers support both.

more info: http://m.electronicdesign.com/communications/what-s-differen...

Yep. SmartThings supports both and has an open API.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com