| In the October issue of CE Pro, we have a story about a patent from Convergent Living for a self-contained, interactive, home automation interface. Convergent CEO Craig Slawson says the patent only covers automation systems with a distributed architecture, i.e., one where the CPU resides in the touchscreen itself, rather than a centralized location. Slawson says his company is not claiming infringement against anyone at this time, and in any case, most of the popular control systems on the market today rely on a central processor, which wouldn’t infringe. “We do not intend to hinder the proliferation and progress of this emerging space leveraging technologies we created,” he says. He invites interested parties to contact him for information about licensing the patented technology. AMX, Crestron, Control4, HAI, Elan, Vantage and the other old-timers use a centralized architecture, but I’m seeing some newer companies that bypass a central controller and put all the smarts in the touchscreen. For more information, check out Convergent’s patent (#7,047,092) here.
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