I have doing doing home automation since the 80's staring with X10 and I also did some playing around with industrial automation (control systems) PLC's. Today I only have a couple of items set up to automatically doing things in or around the house. Why and this is important for anyone who is married and your significant other has no tolerance for things not working all the time and are simply to use (does not require an engineering degree to understand). Because of this when I personally have done home automation the one thing I look at is does it pass the KISS wife test (Keep It Simple Stupid or alternation Keep It Stupid Simple) in either case you are the Stupid in those statements.
As one person said, you really want to have only one system from one company, when you trying to mix and match, things start coming apart. I personally been playing with Insteon, it is pretty good does lots of things and its has home kit compatibility and it has been around a long time so they solved lots of the problems, but it has it KISS issues.
Here are some simple examples I have seen with many of these systems.
- Some times light do not come on or go off, (this really pisses the wife off).
- It is not easy to set them up, control scenes do not work as you like.
- You have to rewire your house.
- You have ugly modules hanging on the wall (wives generally do not like this)
- Smart bulbs are only smart if the wall switch is turned on.
- Learning thermostat have not learn how to deal with multiply people coming and go, I dear you to have your Nest Thermostat geofenced around your phone and have the air-condition turn off when you leave and the wife is still in the house, you will return to living in the dog house.
- You look like an idiot talking to your house.
- Voice commands are not universal, and do not use recognize standard speech (i.e. everyone who comes in your house need to know your command syntax.)
This list goes on and I tell anyone who is considering "automating" your house to keep this in mind. It will be fun for a while until the wife gets pissed off it does not work right today.
I have my outside landscape light go on at sunset, and turn off at midnight, I have programable Thermostat that helps keep conditioning costs down and have a simple override when wife feels it is too hot or cold. My theater room is almost completely automated (controlled) with a hit of one button on the wall it turns on all the right equipment for what you want to do and dims the lighting accordingly. This also has an iPhone app which anyone in the house can easily control from their phone if they like but I have standard Harmony smart remote for people who do not wish to use an iPhone (easy enough for my 90 yr Old father-in-law to turn on the baseball game when he is over to visit.
Beyond this I have nothing else, everything else works off the old fashion wall switches that any person knows how to use.
I do have one IP camera looking at the outside of house, the wife want no cameras of any sort in the house, she does not want to worry that it recorded something she not interested in anyone every seeing. If you ever had to help someone clean out someone's home you do not want others seeing what you may not want them knowing about you. Yeah you may be dead but it may paint a picture in your kids mind you my not want them having.