Not sure what you mean?

Definitely just lights at first. Then if that goes well maybe thermostat and garage door?

I think it’s premature in the market to try and do more than one or two things. Most things you’re looking at automating have a pretty long lifespan, outside of light bulbs. But the automation market is not well standardized. And they’re obsoleting products at a ridiculous rate.

Once you buy a product, you’re stuck with the tech of the time of the design. So consider wifi standards. These are upgrading significantly about every two years and they recommend you turn off your older antenna standards to improve performance. I should turn off my B/G support in my router for example. Not a problem as I don’t have any B items. I have a lot of things that still run G but most of those also support N right now. But that’s over a period of 5 years from when those were new.

None of those products have an upgrade path to modern standards. How will you support what quickly become legacy devices? Will the manufacturer offer modular swaps to upgrade your thermostat, your door lock, your central hub to the current tech level?

Wifi isn’t secure at any appreciable level. Everything that connects via wifi in your home is quite hackable.

Who are your devices sharing data with? Do you really know?

My door locks are over 25 years old. My thermostat over 10. They have decades of useful life left in them. There is no tech standard ready for the long haul in home automation. There is no long term support path in any of these products either. The market needs to mature. The market needs to design for long term support. And they’re just not doing it.

Cnet recently bought a home and has been running the various smart home products in it as a test bed. They’ve run into problems with conflicting standards and multiple users among many other things.

I agree ^^^. Remember central vacuum?

I would start by placing electrical outlets in strategic places, maybe run some Cat6 and co-ax to every room, but wireless, even for set top boxed is about to be standard. This way, when the newest gadget comes out, you will be ready to mount it/wire it. If your house is big enough, you may need a WI fi extender, or a separate router on the other side of the house/basement.

Besides the cool LED lights and the thermostats and cameras, I don’t know of many other things you could install. But all of these require a good Internet connection.

I sell Savant/Install Automation and it was called Rosie when it first came out,guess why?

There is no real standard in the industry and especially at the entry level you are pretty much just on your own to guess/predict what might or might not stick as the manufacturers scramble oblivious to each other to establish their system as “The ONE” if they even care which many seem not to.

The pricier complete systems are really Boardroom systems scaled to work in homes in the DNA of the system.
They work well and are pretty reliable and full featured but are not DIY systems at all either.

Every major system now uses a combination of hard wired and wireless to offer options for every conceivable issue and WiFi and iPhone interface is the standard but most also offer some level of Android function to an interface as well.

Savant showed a fresher new approach to a DIY system that is due to debut in a few months but right now everyone in the business is waiting to see what it ends up being in contrast to what they showed us and want us to pre-order.

None of this means to imply that you can’t have fun going it on your own and trying to match things together to get a system going,its only money right!

One big challenge is that some devices use WiFi and other IR for control. Some also use an IP based addressing system while others use device MAC address to talk to components so any system that really can tie it all together needs to be able to talk to every possible protocol for control out there to be able to be considered truly universal.

Create jobs. Hire servants.

Never mind, that’ll just devolve into a discussion about what implants to use. Just go with X10… 😀

The prospect of home automation is one I find very interesting. I look forward to it becoming a reality, but I still think we are a few years away from it all clicking together like it needs to. I would hate to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars on a system that works right now to have it lose out to another standard inside of a year or two. I am considering a Nest thermostat when I purchase my first home in the next year or two, and I do have a few of the Wemo switches at this point that I mess around with. I did manage to figure out a way to use a Wemo switch paired with IFTTT to automatically open and close my garage door when I pulled into or out of my driveway. Worked wonderfully for a few months until it started dropping connection with my router. I’m currently in a rented apartment so I don’t have the option of running extra wires where I’d want to in order to make the setup more effective. In any case, when I’m ready to purchase a house in the near future, I am very much interested in trying to automate a bunch of things. Not sure I trust bluetooth deadbolts, yet, though.