That's the everyday user...and you want her to automate a home?
No. I want to automate mine. Here's a thing - every company tries to jump for the big market of "normal people" immediately. They got used to completely ignoring the tech-savvy with mobile tech over the last decade. So they fail making something compelling for regular users, and refuse to make something for techies.
Actually worked in this space a few years ago. The problem is that there is no money in serving the DIY community. They are too small of a market to support multiple companies doing R&D, especially considering a significant portion of the DIY market would often prefer to hack something out of a RaspberryPi or similar.
Or, at least, that was the perception at the time. The company I worked for thought it meant they had to go after hotel installs. But that meant partnering with the devil himself, as we were just an engineering firm and didn't have any sales in house. It became a race to the bottom and we ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to fix issues with substandard hardware. Literally. There is a standard, and the hardware our sales and distribution partner was demanding we used did not meet it. We were no longer partners. They became our slave drivers.
I was happy the day I got fired. Apparently, we were supposed to be happy with our lack of progress and just show up to work for 80 hours a week and keep doing this forever. Apparently, I was too argumentative.
They're 12 years old now and still call themselves a startup.
Luxury dwellings. So no, there's still no market for just the devices, as such customers want a full-service installation plan, usually coupled with home theater and security, so it's all integrated.
Hotels, recently office buildings, and before that factories. "Home automation" isn't a new things, there are decades-old protocols and technologies, but the old ones are obscure things with expensive licenses, geared towards enterprise customers.
If you want more advanced home automation, RPi are great. I use one to control my auto-sprinkler for tomato plants when i'm away on Vacation, for example.
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No. I want to automate mine. Here's a thing - every company tries to jump for the big market of "normal people" immediately. They got used to completely ignoring the tech-savvy with mobile tech over the last decade. So they fail making something compelling for regular users, and refuse to make something for techies.
Actually worked in this space a few years ago. The problem is that there is no money in serving the DIY community. They are too small of a market to support multiple companies doing R&D, especially considering a significant portion of the DIY market would often prefer to hack something out of a RaspberryPi or similar.
Or, at least, that was the perception at the time. The company I worked for thought it meant they had to go after hotel installs. But that meant partnering with the devil himself, as we were just an engineering firm and didn't have any sales in house. It became a race to the bottom and we ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to fix issues with substandard hardware. Literally. There is a standard, and the hardware our sales and distribution partner was demanding we used did not meet it. We were no longer partners. They became our slave drivers.
I was happy the day I got fired. Apparently, we were supposed to be happy with our lack of progress and just show up to work for 80 hours a week and keep doing this forever. Apparently, I was too argumentative.
They're 12 years old now and still call themselves a startup.
Is there a market outside DIY installs? Isn't home automation a subset of home improvement?
Luxury dwellings. So no, there's still no market for just the devices, as such customers want a full-service installation plan, usually coupled with home theater and security, so it's all integrated.
Hotels, recently office buildings, and before that factories. "Home automation" isn't a new things, there are decades-old protocols and technologies, but the old ones are obscure things with expensive licenses, geared towards enterprise customers.
There are plenty of resources for home automation, I posted this previously, and if you have an Android phone, this works really well for simple tasks: http://www.amazon.com/NFC-tags-Writeable-Programmable-Money-...
If you want more advanced home automation, RPi are great. I use one to control my auto-sprinkler for tomato plants when i'm away on Vacation, for example.