Automation at home.

This site shows how it is possible to automate your home using a variety of technologies, illustrating how bringing these technologies together improves their effectiveness. It uses a real example - my home - where I have implemented a number of different products, none of which are significantly expensive, complicated or cannot be integrated with another product.

What is home automation?

In the past a variety of technologies have been used to provide a small number of luxury 'services' to home owners, who themselves have either been enthusiasts or have moved into a new house which had such services pre-installed.

It is now common-place to see new houses (particularly larger properties) built with simple video distribution using a 'loftbox' distribution device to allow television viewing in many rooms, an intruder alarm system, or even a computer network. But what else is possible, and why would you want more?

Devices such as wireless video senders, personal video recorders (PVRs) such as Sky+, wireless intruder alarms or lighting control systems can all be retro-fitted to either provide or improve basic services. However, these systems usually don't interoperate - they don't work together.

As the consumer electronics market becomes flooded with the next generation of home technology products (such as media centres, 3rd generation gaming consoles such as the XBox 360, improved broadband speeds, LCD televisions and High Definition video) users continue to invest in larger, thinner, smaller or faster devices. But they still don't fully interoperate. Home Automation (HA) is the key.