Ok, this one is comparing apples and oranges. Scale and coverage: Home automation typically involves a few dozen devices, covering a relatively small area (a house or apartment). Industrial uses can involve hundreds, or thousands, of elements spread over vast areas. They can also have moving parts (sensors embedded in fleet vehicles or consignments) and 24/7 global uptime requirements.
Reliability and Redundancy: Home Automation uses lightweight protocols (like Zigbee or Z-Wave) with some redundancy, but isn’t critical if a node temporarily drops out. Industrial use requires high fault tolerance, redundant paths, and self-healing capabilities to ensure uninterrupted ops, implemented using WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, or LoRaWAN.
Power and Maintenance: Home Automation is usually a simple battery powered unit with months to years of battery life. Data packets are small (…like switching a light on or off). Industrial devices may need grid power and uninterrupted supply.
Consider multiple sensor arrays drawing data from many endpoints. Complexity requires power. More data from more places means more energy in the system. Some applications demand real-time data processing for continuous streams of data. Those applications often need sensors (temperature, vibration, location) with low latency requirements.
Security: Home automation uses basic encryption like AES-128, which is sufficient for consumer use. Industrial Use demands multi-layer security, including end-to-end encryption, device authentication, and protection against man-in-the-middle attacks. A key difference is that industrial environments can face targeted cyberattacks, so security is significantly more robust across user groups and over the communication network.
