Yoshiko Miwa
There have been attempts to connect consumer electronics products and AV equipments to network for some time. One of them is ECHONET. ECHONET, a non-IP protocol, has been developed since 1997 by ECHONET Consortium, which was established by several major consumer electronics manufacturers in Japan and others. It offers a stanard specification for controlling home appliances using powerline or wireless communications, with wide range of usage targets. And iReady was began at the end of 2003 as an attempt to turn ECHONET-enabled white goods (refrigerators, electric ovens, etc) into business.
ECHONET and iReady
Vendors talk about various advantages of connecting white goods. They say you can switch on your air conditioner at home from outside with cellular phone on a cold day, to go back to a warm room, for example. Altough network connection may be easy technically, the cost for network support increases cost, and cost is reflected in the product price. Vendors may be able to persuade people of the merits of network connectivity, but the products won't sell if the price increase is larger than the added advantages.
One of the attempts to solve this challenge is iReady, announced on December 2003 by Sanyo Electric, Sharp, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi Electric on joint development. The name iReady came from "IT Ready", "Internet Ready" and "I am Ready", meaning home appliances ready for network connection.
What iReady aims for
iReady tries to provide a framework for easing network connection of white goods by electronics vendors.
It separated data communication components from the products themselves, so that the components can be sold separately as "network adapter". The framework also standardized on the connector shape and signals eachanged through the connector.
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An air conditioner with separate communication adapter
By separating network communication functionality from the products, electronics vendors will not have to develop, market and sell existing white goods and net-enabled ones separately. They just have to add a connector to the network adapter in existing products. Users who want to buy network connectivity would also buy the network adapter and connect the two, to turn this into net-enabled home appliance immediately. By standardizing on network adapter and make the same adapter applicable to various products from different vendors, iReady can produce a market for network adapter itself, making network adapter more affordable than proprietary adapters by each home appliance vendor.
iReady also attempts to come up with common interface for remote control of products, so that products from different vendors can be manipulated in a similar way.
It is not difficult to get white goods net-enabled technically. But cost is not something easily coped with by technology alone. White goods business counts on the success of iReady.
iReady as a common implementation guideline
iReady uses ECHONET as communication protocol for remote monitoring and control of electronics products by users. Based on ECHONET, iReady adds specification for the connector shape and signals exchanged to connect electronics products to network. iReady relies on ECHONET for physical layer connectivity. Home network environment can be built by wireless LAN or Bluetooth. Therefore, consumers can choose products without restriction by communication technology, to suit the networking technology used at their home. They don't get locked in by a specific vendor.
With iReady, they are yet to standardize on GUI for products from different vendors. Supporting products should to be manupulated by a single controller device, but they haven't decided on how differenciated features can be treated in GUI for control.
One of the advantage of net-enabling white goods is that it enables integration of many remote controllers currently provided for each product. This is another important challenge in the diffusion of net-enabled home appliances.
Current challenges of iReady
One of the major reasons for iReady is price competetiveness. It was because the manufacurers needed to lower net-connection cost for home appliances that they started coping with specific issues of standardized network component and common parts, driving iReady effort. But at this point, the attempt has not produced gthe vision for large eough size of net-appliance market. Standardized iReady component can be produced by third party vendors, but that also depends on expected shipping volume.
iReady doesn't define lower layer communication technology, which offers advangtage and disadvantage at the same time. Network adapter market hasn't taken off. And existence of different physical communication technologies separates this yet small market. iReady network adapter supporting both Wireless LAN and Bluetooth is technically possible, but not feasible in cost-conscious white goods market.
There also remains GUI uniformity issue. It takes some more time before we see iReady products on the market.
There are some challenges with iReady. But vendors say they will ship iReady products in 2005. Consumer will actually see home appliance networking in commercial market next year. It would be desirable for Japanese market to embrace iReady products as one of the largest markets for home appliances.
iReady Press Release by Sanyo Electric
http://www.global-sanyo.com/news/0312/1217-e.html
ECHONET Consortium
http://www.echonet.gr.jp/english/index.htm
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