Home Automation For Dummies®
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014946669
ISBN: 978-1-118-94926-9
ISBN 978-1-118-94926-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-94927-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-94964-1 (ebk)
Flying was a pleasure meant only for birds or for fools jumping off a cliff with homemade wings. The stuff of fancy and fantastical tales. In 1903, a couple of brothers put that kind of talk to rest with the first flights of their Flyer in North Carolina.
Computers in the home was something only seen in science-fiction films until a few kids got together in one of their parents’ garage and created a little thing they called the Apple I. According to Forrest Gump, that little “fruit company” has done quite well since those days.
Staying on that theme, folks used to think that teleportation was only possible in Star Trek, but just yesterday I was beamed from my local transporter to our secret moon base in no time flat! It was really — uh oh! I’m not supposed to talk about that yet . . . just forget you read that last paragraph, please.
Nothing to see here. Moving on.
The point is that when it comes to technology, fiction can often become reality. The fiction of being able to automate our homes became a reality a few decades ago, but it was something only the very (and I do mean very) well-heeled could afford. Since the advent of the smartphone (there’s that “fruit company” again) and the proliferation of cellular networks, we have had greater access to each other and our world than we’ve ever dreamed. As smartphones and apps have grown in popularity, so has the need to use them in ways many of us couldn’t have conceived of before. Today we not only can make calls and send texts, but we also use our smartphones (and tablets) for watching movies, catching up on the news, checking weather forecasts, viewing live sporting events, listening to our favorite music, and many more tasks that Isaac Asimov couldn’t have thought of.
Wi-Fi networks and the Internet have also opened the door (in some cases literally) to a whole new level of home accessibility: using our smart devices and apps with our home’s Wi-Fi network to remotely control and automate tasks in our home. You can use your iOS or Android device to adjust the temperature, set the mood with customized lighting schemes, preheat the oven so you can cook your meal the moment you walk in the door, and even tell your lawn mower to start cutting your grass. That’s just scratching the surface of what you can do with today’s smart home automation technology — and in this book, I happily tackle the subject with you.
This book introduces you to the smart home revolution, which is today’s way of automating and/or remotely controlling common, everyday tasks via your smartphone or tablet (and in some cases, your computer), your home’s Wi-Fi network, and the Internet. My aim throughout the tome is to explain why you want to automate, how you can do so, and just what you can accomplish with it. This book also shows you a multitude of the aforementioned tasks that you can accomplish using automation and/or remote control, and how to go about the process of automating those tasks. I discuss not only tasks and the technologies, but also the companies that are the major players in today’s emerging smart home market.
The For Dummies series of books has been helping folks (like me) make the most of technology and other things that enhance our lives when we are properly taught how to utilize them, and I’ve written this book using those wonderful time-tested methods. The organization of this series is stuff of legend, and I’ve made sure not to deviate from them. Feel free to jump around as you like, or follow along in exact page order — whatever suits your needs. After all, this book is for you to learn about smart home automation, and it’s designed to help folks at various levels learn as they see fit.
Some items in the book, such as sidebars and Technical Stuff, are simply there because I thought they were neat. Don’t get me wrong, they do contain helpful information, but feel free to skip them if you like.
You’ll find this book is absolutely chock-full of URLs (otherwise known as webpage addresses) that you can use to check out the products I discuss. All of them were functional at the time of this writing, but trust me when I say that URLs can — and do — change often.
While reading this book, you may notice that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these webpages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist (this might be hard for some English majors, but give it a try anyway). If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to go directly to the webpage.
Dear reader, you assume a certain amount of knowledge and expertise from me as the author of this book. I, too, have certain expectations of you, my audience, when it comes to your ability to put the information contained herein to good use.
I assume that you are familiar with the Internet, and have at least a cursory knowledge of your home’s Wi-Fi network (which I also naturally assume you have). If you don’t know diddly about either of these things, you’ll definitely want to bone up on the subjects before delving into this tome too deeply. I don’t expect you to know how to create a website, how to run Ethernet cable throughout your home, or how to set up a network that even the federal government couldn’t crack into. However, you should at least know how to surf the web and how to successfully connect to and use your computer and smart devices, like phones and tablets, with your Wi-Fi network.
If at this point you’re wondering what all this talk is about computers and smart devices, my advice to you is to immediately put this book down after completing this paragraph. Next, peruse your local bookstore (I’m safely assuming you’re not reading this book’s introduction on Amazon.com) for other For Dummies titles that will catch you up to the rest of the world in those subjects of interest. When you’re ready, I’ll be here waiting to guide you on into the wonderful world of the smart home.
I do not assume that you have any clue about how to rewire your home’s electrical system or network cabling. For the record, neither is required to perform any of the tasks in this book.
Throughout this book I highlight items that I think deserve your attention just slightly outside of what I discuss in the primary material, or maybe I expand on a topic. I use the following icons to accomplish this:
Give close attention to items beside this icon. They generally will help you achieve results being covered more easily, or may help you avoid pratfalls in the process. Tips also may point you in a different direction entirely.
I know folks who use anything from reminders on their smartphones to writing notes on their hands with Sharpies to make sure they don’t forget important goings-on. The Remember icon is the For Dummies way of doing something along those lines, helping you to remember important things relevant to the topic at hand.
When you see this icon, watch out! There’s something here that I really want to alert you to regarding the current topic of discussion. An example would be if a certain home automation protocol would conflict with other protocols in your current home automation setup, I would certainly make you privy to that knowledge in a Warning icon.
Geeks rejoice! This icon alerts you to items that may be of interest to you in your quest for home automation. Topics featured with this icon may or may not be exactly relevant to the one being discussed in the chapter, or may be something pertaining to topical trivialities. I just couldn’t help myself and thought you might be interested in them, so there.
I’ve put a ton of information between the covers of this book, but there’s even more information that you can access on www.dummies.com, such as
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/homeautomation that lists the following:www.dummies.com/extras/homeautomation that discussI wrote Home Automation For Dummies with the idea in mind that you, dear reader, would be able to tackle the subject either in the order that it’s written or in bits and bites as you desire. In other words, there is no one way in which you must read this book. I will say, however, that if you’re a complete newbie at this whole smart home thing, you’ll be best served to start at Part I; from there you’ll have enough of a frame of reference to understand the subjects in the other four parts.
Congratulations on automating and remotely controlling your home. Ain’t technology great? I guarantee you’ll think so when you’re enjoying a nice evening on the town with a loved one and you receive a text from your robotic lawn mower letting you know the mowing has been finished.
Part I
Visit www.dummies.com
In this part . . .
Chapter 1
In This Chapter
Examining changes in home automation over the years
Benefitting from automating your home
Understanding home automation technology
“How do we make life better?”
“How do we make more time for what really matters?”
“Why can’t television commercials for technology companies incorporate music that doesn’t involve finger snaps, hand claps, xylophones, and ukuleles?”
Those three questions haunt me every day, as I’m sure they do you, gentle reader. However, only the first two issues are ones that I think mankind will actually be able to do anything about in the near future. That said, I concentrate on those in this book.
People have always had to work, and we’ve always tried to find ways to make that work easier, whether by developing better tools and technologies to do the work or by making other folks or things do the work for us. Sick of digging up dirt with your bare hands to plant seeds? Let’s invent the plow and make our cattle do the heavy lifting. No longer want to beat your clothes with a rock in the nearest creek? We’ll invent the washing machine, then. Don’t want to carry ten jugs with you to the river to gather water? By George, I think aqueducts and plumbing might be a good idea. We are always on the lookout for ways to do tasks better or shirk them altogether — and that’s a good thing, if you ask me.
Home automation is yet another step in this struggle for making life better. Some folks may scoff at the idea that automation means life is better, but I’ll bet those same folks don’t mind using a gas or electric mower when it comes time to cut the lawn. I’ll wager a pretty penny that they really appreciate their automatic dishwashers and their refrigerators, too. Time marches on — and so does technology.
Let’s see . . . if I were to give my own definition of what home automation is, I’d first look at the definitions for each of the two words that make up the phrase. For that task, I consult the Merriam-Webster website (www.merriam-webster.com):
Combining the two definitions, I initially conclude that home automation is the act of automatically controlling tasks within the home that are normally performed through an act of human labor. While this sounds neat and orderly, it actually isn't so (but it’s getting there, and quickly). Home automation has been around for a long time, but it’s beginning to really take off for consumers at all price points in this Internet age.
That said, and before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s take a brief look at how home automation has been achieved in the past and how it's getting done these days.
“Is there an old-fashioned way of doing home automation?” you ask. My reply: “Yes, indeed.”
Before I get too far afield, allow me to define what I mean by “old-fashioned” in terms of home automation: spending thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars to implement customized automation solutions within a section of your home (such as the entertainment room seen in Figure 1-1) or throughout the entire space.
Image courtesy of Home Entertainment, Inc.
Figure 1-1: This entertainment room is fantastic, fun, beautiful, and by no means inexpensive.
Home automation has been around for quite a while, but some of its technology tended to be available primarily for folks with fat bank accounts. Why? Glad you asked.
These are just some of the reasons for the super-high cost of past systems, and for the still-high costs of similar comprehensive home automation solutions today. Controlling your entire home’s lighting just wasn’t something that most of the housing market was doing until recently. Also, old-fashioned home automation was something you did within the confines of your home; rarely were you able to handle tasks remotely. Some home automation technologies, such as intercoms and garage door openers, were never as expensive as others to implement, and therefore more prevalent in homes. However, they were the exception rather than the rule.
Before I finish this section, I want to make it understood that I see nothing wrong with whole-home, customized automation, and many companies today excel at it (and bully for you if you have the moola to do it!).
If you are interested in this particular type of home automation, by all means, visit the websites for these wonderful companies that are more than capable of helping you make your home automation dreams come to life:
www.homeentertainmentinc.comwww.crestron.comwww.savant.comwww.control4.com
I don’t know about you, but most people would jump at the chance to automate more things in their lives if doing so were affordable and could be achieved with reasonably minimal effort. Well, you’re in luck. Most of us are able to automate at least certain aspects of home life today because they don’t cost an arm or a leg, and they aren’t difficult to install.
Home Automation For Dummies focuses on how you can simply and relatively inexpensively control many of your daily tasks. Not only that, most of what I cover can be handled remotely, meaning you don’t even have to be at home to do this awesome stuff.
Today, all you need to implement a home automation system is an Internet connection and (in some cases, but not all) a device to control it, such as a smartphone, table, or computer. Of course, you have to purchase a system or appliances, but many of them that utilize your Wi-Fi network (or even your home’s power lines) are inexpensive. Another bonus with today’s home automation technology is that you can start as small as you like and build up to as large as you like. For example, with a kit such as the WeMo Switch + Motion kit from Belkin (see Figure 1-2), you can begin with just a smart wall outlet and a motion detector, but can add more and more WeMo devices to your heart’s content.
Image courtesy of Belkin.
Figure 1-2: Starting with a beginner’s kit, like this one from Belkin, you can start small with home automation and work your way up.
The idea of home automation is really cool and futuristic, but if that’s your only motivation to automate the things in your home, you just might be missing the forest for the trees. Sure, you can impress friends by turning on your fireplace with a tap of your iPhone, but benefits of home automation go way beyond bragging rights.
Convenience is indeed the key; otherwise, what’s truly the point? The words “home” and “automation” fit together perfectly to describe how to get things done easier, better, and faster than ever before, which equates to convenience.
Want a few examples of how today’s home automation is convenient? Okay, here you go:
Here are a few other things you can do conveniently from anywhere with today’s home automation:
Image courtesy of General Electric.
Figure 1-3: Controlling your GE oven’s temperature with the Brillion app.
I’m sure things are starting to click for you when I say that remotely controlled home automation affords a level of convenience that most people have not yet experienced. And that list just scratches the surface!
Fewer things in life are more appreciated than security — in this case, knowing (or at least feeling) that you’re more safe doing things a certain way or using certain devices. Today’s Internet-based home automation technology gives one just that kind of security.
Sure, home security companies have been in existence for decades now, and they are great at what they do. People also have had personal means of protection that usually work as intended, provided they’re used properly. Security cameras have also been providing more home security for some time, although they typically were expensive to install. With today’s tech, however, you can secure your home in myriad ways you never were able to before:
Image courtesy of Alarm.com.
Figure 1-4: Apps and smart locks work together to keep your home safe and secure, and alert you to any problems.
And these are just some of the things that Internet-enabled home automation systems and devices can do to help raise your level of personal and family security.
Sooner or later, I have to delve into the bottom line: money. Now is as good a time as any.
Today’s Internet and network-based home automation technologies are much more wallet-friendly than whole-home options. The savings between the two home automation routes is astronomical: I’m talking low hundreds for the former and well into the thousands for the latter. Of course, the amount you spend on either totally depends on what you want to do, but the gap is still significant no matter how high-powered you go with Internet and network-based solutions. Attaining an equal amount of control with a whole-home solution will run your initial costs sky high due to the labor and technology involved.
Here’s how today’s home automation technology can help you save your precious and hard-earned cash:
Image courtesy of INSTEON.
Figure 1-5: Smart LED bulbs save you lots of coin.
As long as you use your home automation technology in an intelligent way, you will save money compared to operating things status quo. There’s no way around it.
As with everything else in the world of computers and electronic devices, home automation only gets better as it moves forward. Technology in modern computers has jumped light-years over the decades, as has tech used in how people make and listen to music. In the same way, home automation tech has moved from the Stone Age to something most of us are totally at home with: the Internet.
Home automation technology has changed a great deal over the decades. Certain communication protocols (more on those as you continue to read) used for home automation have been around for a long time and, unfortunately, some are getting rather long in the tooth. Others, though, have retained their popularity and are still in widespread use.
The way that home automation worked in whole-home solutions of the past was that a central controller was placed in the home and the user controlled it through wall-mounted keypads and remote control boxes.
These days, whole-home solutions are much improved and incorporate Internet and network-based technologies to connect you to your home. You can also remotely control your home using smartphones and tablets. The operating systems are typically customized for their clients, though, as is everything in a whole-home system.
Modular Internet and network-based solutions that utilize apps and the web are taking the market by storm, due to affordability, convenience, and the capability to be added on to.
Another factor in their growth is that folks are familiar with their modes of usage. Lots and lots of people have smartphones and tablets today, and most of those devices are running on iOS or Android operating systems. The modular home automation solutions allow you to buy products that you interact with through other products (your smart devices and home network) that you’re already familiar with. You know how to tap and swipe touchscreens, right? Most apps work the same, or at least similarly, to other apps, so the learning curve isn’t steep.
A protocol is a set of rules, or standards, that a technology employs to ensure stability. For example, networking utilizes protocols to keep communications consistent across devices, and those protocols are adhered to across the various platforms they are running within. This same concept applies to home networking technologies, too, with the aim of making sure that various types of automation devices can be controlled by a central device.
Many companies today use more than one home automation protocol in their controller systems, ensuring compatibility with a greater number of devices.
Let’s take a look at the most common protocols used in home automation today.
Image courtesy of X10.com.
X10 has been around for as long as I have, since the 1970s, and that can be taken either in a good way or a bad way (much like me, too, I guess). Here’s what you need to know about X10:
Go to www.x10.org to find out more about the protocol and devices that support it.
Because power lines are more complex than they used to be, and since X10 is a much older protocol, its speeds aren’t all that good. As a matter of fact, if you’re new to the home automation game and don’t already have an existing X10 environment, it’s best to skip X10 and move on to one of the newer protocols.
Image courtesy of Powerline Control Systems, Inc.
Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) was created by PCS Powerline Control Systems in 1999. Like X10, UPB is designed to work over your home’s existing power lines, but unlike X10, it does appear to be fairly stable when it comes to transmitting information. UPB is dissimilar in still another way to X10, but this time, it isn't necessarily a good thing: UPB doesn’t support any form of wireless communication. Needless to say, insofar as your search for the right home automation protocol for your needs, UPB shouldn’t be too high on the list. (In fact, I don’t even discuss it any further.)
Image courtesy of Z-Wave Alliance.
Z-Wave is one of the most popular protocols in use today; it was developed in 2007 specifically for home automation devices. Well more than 200 companies around the world use Z-Wave. I’d say it’s a big deal (as far as home automation goes). More about Z-Wave:
A really nice website dedicated to all things Z-Wave is www.z-wave.com. If you’re considering going with Z-Wave products during your home automation investigation, you’ll certainly want to visit the site more than once.
Z-Wave is owned by the Z-Wave Alliance, which has done a great job in getting developers the help they need to create products using the Z-Wave standard. If you’re a developer looking to jump into Z-Wave, check out http://z-wave.sigmadesigns.com/.
Image courtesy of ZigBee Alliance.
Like Z-Wave, ZigBee is another relatively new protocol for home automation, and it is also enjoying a certain amount of popularity right now. A few interesting tidbits about ZigBee:
Intrigued? Visit www.zigbee.org for a smorgasbord of information on the protocol.
ZigBee is quite popular, but you must be careful to purchase all your ZigBee-enabled devices from the same manufacturer. Reliability between ZigBee devices made by different companies is suspect, at best, since companies are not forced to deploy ZigBee in the same manner.
Image courtesy of INSTEON.
The good people at SmartLabs, Inc., came up with INSTEON in 2005, so it is also a relative newcomer to the home automation market. Here are some important things to know about INSTEON:
And so much more, I promise!
INSTEON uses dual-band communication in many of its devices, which means it can communicate over both your home’s existing power lines and via RF (radio frequency), doubling its effectiveness.
Image courtesy of Wi-Fi Alliance.
The newest protocol, at least in terms of its use in home automation, is (are you ready?) Wi-Fi. Obviously, Wi-Fi has been around for quite a while and most of us have used it with laptops and smartphones and tablets for years. However, only fairly recently have manufacturers begun to develop home automation devices that use it. A bit about Wi-Fi as it pertains to home automation (the good and the bad, by the way):
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a worldwide organization of companies that develop and support Wi-Fi. They’re also the folks who came up with the famous Wi-Fi logo you all see whenever you go to Starbucks and your favorite bookstores. To learn more about the Alliance, as well as Wi-Fi itself, check out www.wi-fi.org.
All these aforementioned protocols have their pluses and minuses. By themselves, they don’t play very nicely with one another. Other companies, such as Apple and Revolv, have seen this problem coming and are tackling it head on by creating environments that can control several, if not all, of the home automation protocols, tying all your devices together and eliminating the need for you to stick with just one manufacturer. For more in-depth information, read Chapter 14, which covers what I call “home automation oneness.”
Chapter 2
In This Chapter
Assessing your home network’s capability to work with home automation
Making sure your network is safe from intruders
Understanding which items you’ll need to begin automating your home
Preparation is key to most things we do: There’s no getting around it, unless you’re one of those folks who just “wings it.”
Your girlfriend has just accepted your invitation to marriage. What do you think happens next? Now, there may be that infinitesimally small faction out there who did just “wing it,” finding the local parson and getting hitched right away. But for the most part, the newly minted fiancée (with the help of every other female she’s ever met) immediately sets about the tasks that any bride-to-be should: finding a dress, caterer, reception hall, baker, flowers, invitations, music, and on and on the list goes. By the time she’s ready to walk down the aisle, everything imaginable has been checked, double-checked, triple-checked, and checked once more for good measure. Your fiancée’s hard work may look like nothing more than a big hoopla at the time, but it will be the reason you have beautiful memories of that day 30 years from now.
How about kids and school? More than a little preparation goes into the first day of school, especially if you have more than one child. Your school makes a list, seemingly as long as your arm, and off you go to the store. You dive into the sea of other parents, which resembles a mosh pit of sorts, searching for the items on your list. Of course, your child’s teacher has listed the rarest birds in school supplies, such as the three-subject winged college-ruled hot pink notebook with built-in cup holder. Regardless, once you’re home with your hard-won supplies and get everything for that glorious first day, something just feels good about it — really good. Of course, if you’re smart like my wife, you skip the stores and do your shopping online, but I digress.
If “winging it” is your cup of tea, this chapter might not be, but I still encourage you to read on. You might discover a nugget or two tucked away in here that will spark you to at least be kinda sorta prepared for setting up your home automation system.