Introduction to home automation

Most people begin their journey into home automation through the google or amazon ecosystems.  While a nice introduction, if you want to go beyond the absolute basics, you will quickly reach the limitations of these systems.

All home automation platforms can naturally be broken into three logical parts: Hardware integration, a front end which serves as a means to control the hardware, and some method of actually automating.  Let's break these down one by one.

Hardware integration refers to the platforms ability to interact with and control that shiny new toy you just purchased be it a sensor, smart light, outlet or any other of the plethora of home automation gadgets on the market.  Smart home hardware is controlled by one a microprocessor which has software installed on it to remotely control the device itself.  This is where the difficulty lies.  The majority of manufacturers of smart home products have their own ecosystems (ie software associated with their products), This software typically controls the functionality of their product.  As your smart home grows, this tends to become burdensome, as you'll be pulling out   your phone trying to find the app which controls that particular gizmo, it also makes it impossible to have other products from a different manufacturer interact with it.  What is needed is a central location which can control all of these divergent products.  amazon and google ecosystems tend to be good at handling these integrations, however they bring their own limitations to the table.

The next piece in the puzzle to home automation is a front end, which is the users method of controlling the various devices.  This tends to be one of the weakest points for Amazon and google.  While offering some ability to interact with your devices, they tend to be very limiting, and typically is the main reason most people begin looking to escape these ecosystems.

Lastly is the automation piece itself, this is the platforms ability to have something happen based on a set of criteria the user defines.  This could be turning on a light at a certain time, or when a sensor detects motion, or frankly whatever your imagination can come up with. 

At some point n your smart home journey, you will become tired of the limitations of your current setup, and look to move to a more flexible solution.  Most people at this point discover home assistant, and once you have taken the leap you will quickly get sucked down the rabbit hole, as home assistant (ha) offers by far the most flexibility and integration possibilities of any home automation system out there.