Leax Ltd, a London-based lighting controls firm is one of the first companies to adopt Echelon’s Neuron chip (CI No 1,570) and Alex Hill of Leax says the chip is set to boost his industry. The Neuron chip enables diverse equipment, from industrial machinery to consumer electronic goods, to be linked over any network medium using a common communications protocol as the system conforms to the Open Systems Interconnection seven layer model. Hill says the importance of the chip is its openess and its cheapness – the initial price is around $10, but it’s estimated that eventually this could drop as low as $1. For Leax, which makes lighting control systems for large buildings, this not only means it can get rid of the more expensive RS485 which it uses at the moment, but it also no longer has to spend time and money developing its own communication protocols Echelon has done it all. According to Hill, the system is also very simple, enabling any manufacturer to incorporate it into its equipment and for smaller networks, specialist installers would probably not be required. The low cost and easy to use features of the system are essential to its take up, which must reach a critical mass for the technology to become a widely used de facto standard that all manufacturers will implement. Up to 32,000 nodes can be connected on to a local operating network, all containing a Neuron chip, and for industrial applications this too is important – the distribution of power means that overall the network is very powerful. Hill says this is useful for booting up a large network and the large size means that the concept of Intelligent Buildings, requiring many nodes, becomes more viable. Leax says that eventuallly, either through gateways or directly, it could add security systems which incorporate the chip to lighting and heating systems, which are already linked. The systems integration opportunites have already been spotted by the US integrator Avalon, which along with Leax and 14 other companies took a LonWorks development kit at launch. If enough companies take up the idea and the Local Operating Network technology gets off the ground, it could pose a serious challenge to the D2B chip being developed by Philips and Matsushita for tying together and controlling a very wide variety of audio-visual consumer goods. – Sonya McGilchrist