On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 14:32:00 GMT, "Frank Dresser"
wrote:
wrote in message
roups.com...
Don't worry about the BPLosaurus. It's on the verge of extinction.
Too many other kick ass emerging technologies. 60Hz power lines are
just that.
regards,
N9NEO
I don't know what to make of this one. I wasn't really concerned about BPL,
which I figured was doomed right out of the box. But this isn't quite the
BPL itself it probably not doomed at not least for the utilities. They
see it as a way to not only do automated meter reading, but load
leveling/demand control as well. Of course those things can be
handled nicely by the low frequency stuff they use now, but remote
visual monitoring will require much more bandwidth. Many see it as a
way of getting the consumer to pay for the costs of more advanced
monitoring.
same thing. There's no wild claims of reliable widespread community
internet access through miles of radiating power lines. This promises local
networking, within the home. Not just computer networking, but all sorts of
electronic doo-dads might be networked. While I doubt networking adds much
This is old stuff. The only thing new is the chip. It's the home plug
system and what the BPL crowd hope to use and are using at the home
end of their feeds. OTOH there are many home plug systems in current
use that have nothing to do with BPL.
However the article is a bit generous when it talks about the
technology probably being used in Europe and the US due to the more
strict regulations in Japan. What he should have said is BPL is under
more strict regulations, it is *BANNED* in Japan.
value to a refrigiderator, I can imagine people would love to move their
They are talking about smart appliances where, in this case the
refrigerator would run diagnostics and if any thing such as pressure
is out of spec it'd call home reporting it needed service before
actually failing.
computers, printers, TV sets, stereo speakers, DVD players and whatever,
wherever they want without having to worry about RCA connectors, F
connectors, parallel port connectors, S video connectors, binding posts, USB
ports or any of the other confusing nonsense. Just plug it in to the
outlet, and it works -- at least, that's the promise.
It does take a modem for the computer that plugs into the socket, but
yes, you could put the thing any where in the house.
Like a dial up moden that can plug into any phone outlett, this modem
could plug into any electrical outlett.
Will it work? I don't know, but it doesn't have the overambitions of BPL.
Yes, the home plug system has been in use for some time.
The potential market for this one is much larger than BPL's potential
market. And it sure looks like it will cause SW interference on a local
level, even if not on BPL's regional level.
The interference, so far, has been confined to next door neighbors.
According to the reports on some forums you had best hope your
neighbor doesn't purchase one of those Ionic Breeze air filters.
I do wonder about ingress though. As with BPL a 5 watt signal from
100 feet will block almost any system completely (with the exception
of the Motorola which uses hard filtering)
I do some DXing which means I run the legal limit on all bands with
directive antennas. Based on the 5 watts at 100 feet I should take
out any BPL up to a bit over a mile on 20, 15, 10, and 6 meters while
40 and 75 would be about a quarter to half mile and 160 would be maybe
a city block. The 75 meter half wave slopers to the NE (Europe) ends
within 50 feet of the local power line. The one to the sough ends
within a 150 feet of the power line. The one to the NW is pretty much
in the clear. The 40 meter antennas run pretty much in the same
directions but I hope to have a 40 - 10 yagi up soon. As I'm also
setting up for digital including RTTY and WSJT, I don't think it'd
take much of a transmission to shut down quite an area. With the
power levels and antenna gain the ERP might even keep the neighborhood
RF quiet.
Frank Dresser
BTW, the only reason I ended up on this thread Frank was your post. I
make it a policy to never click on links in a post that do not come
with a complete description such as the original post. I typically
kill file the thread as those are the ones that usually send you off
to some malicious site.
Even if it looks like it might be interesting, I let some one else be
the guinea pig. :-))
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com