NEC Smarthome show

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,



Not long got back home from Birmingham, so thought I'd add my thoughts
about
the weekend to those already posted.



I definitely feel it was worth the visit, - it's always interesting to see
(and occasionally touch) all the nice shiny things!



The Smarthome part of the show was absolutely dwarfed by the selfbuilding
&
renovation part of it, although I do think it was a good idea to join the
two together in this way. - Both because they are a good fit for each
other,
but also because I think the Smarthome show on its own might have actually
been disappointingly small. I went round the entire Smarthome show area
about 3 times, and I think that it probably only took me about an hour to
do
that.



The Selfbuild part though, I could only manage to go round once, - I
couldn't walk any more after that! - I think it probably was more like
two-to-three hours to get round it once.



The exhibitors within the Smarthome show seemed to fall pretty broadly into
just two camps: - about 50% of the entire exhibition was AV equipment, -
Home Cinema, Plasmas, speakers & Amps etc. albeit with a bias towards
the
multi-zone type of installation, so plenty of zone control keypads were in
evidence. Another 40% was all "fancy lightswitches" - very
definitely
concentrating on the high "wow factor" and obviously attempting
to appeal to
a mass market audience's "show-off gene"!



The remaining 10% was (IMHO) the main area of interest, - including our
very
own favourites like Comfort & Simply Automate, and a few niche/new
products
like the Web-brick and so on.



It was quite noticeable that most of the suppliers in that first 90% are
particularly uninterested in the kinds of integration difficulties that we
wrestle with constantly, and aren't attuned to the idea that we might want
to mix & match different products/systems etc. Most are interested
mainly in
selling a complete, closed system.



I didn't attend any of the seminars, but heard feedback from various people
that suggested that these were quite biased, and the presenters were mostly
affiliated to one of the vendors exhibiting at the show. Others will no
doubt chip in here and voice their opinions.



A comment I made to Mr McCall earlier was that I truly believe that the
exhibition space we had last year at UKHA2004 in Hatfield was in most
respects *better* than the Smarthome show.. For instance, Clipsal CBUS is
arguably one of the more (most?) popular lighting system choices amongst
list  members, and yet they were not represented at all at the Smarthome
show, apart from a limited number of 3rd party vendors/resellers with a
very
limited quantity of kit on show. Compare that to UKHA2004 where Clipsal
themselves took part, they had a huge display with just about every CBUS
module available to see and touch, and had knowledgeable people there to
man
it, including the Southern Sales Manager!



As ever, the most enjoyable, (and in actual fact the most productive)
element was getting to meet up face-to-face with fellow UKHA-ers, - I think
it's true to say I learned more about CBUS by chatting to Kwong Li over
breakfast in the hotel and with Rob Mouser in the bar, than from any of the
exhibitors at the show.



Would I go again next year... well, yes. of course! I can't resist all
those
nice shiny toys!



Would I go to it in preference to a UKHA2006?? - Absolutely not!



Paul G.









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