Extend Z-Wave & Insteon over IP Network

[simplextech]

1 hour ago, BelWave said:

Could this idea/technology be expanded to regurgitate IN/OUT Z-Wave/Insteon information for more than just a Z-Wave smoke detector?

https://www.smarthome.com/insteon-2982-222-smoke-bridge.html

The Smoke detector is not Z-Wave.  It uses the OneLink RF protocol and communicates with the Smoke Bridge device.  This is yet another RF protocol that was worked out between vendors.  The smoke bridge is then just a bridge to send an insteon signal to the controller.  

In the same idea... could a z-wave -> 'whatever' bridge be created?  Sure... a few million dollars of development and years of certification and another few million in license fees and manufacturing prototypes and FCC approvals etc...

[mwester]

Protocol translation sounds easy -- and in some cases, it is.  In others, well, the best way to think about it might be to consider a protocol translator for text messages to Morse code -- that's easy, since for every character in the SMS text message, there's a corresponding set of dashes in Morse code.  On the other hand, expand that simple idea to include translation of Arabic text messages to Morse code -- and suddenly you have a huge problem since when Morse invented his code, he only ever considered the Roman alphabet!  That's very much like the protocol bridges out there -- some of the messages translate nicely and easily, but the cost and challenge is in how to handle the messages that don't match at all, and the real messy awful horrible ones to deal with are when the messages are similar but just different enough that you can't translate them without losing information somewhere...

The Hub-level is almost certainly the correct level to do this sort of thing at, for all the afore-mentioned reasons.

[BelWave]

Great analogy mwester.  I think the light just came on (pardon the pun) and I have a better understanding now!

Brad