Has this ever happened to you? I bet there are more than a few of you out there that can sympathize.

The other night, my wife and I were out late at a Christmas party. We have a two year old, and anyone with young children knows that sometimes that car ride home is the best thing to get your child to sleep. When you get home you struggle to get the child out of the car seat, inside the house and into bed without waking them.

This got me thinking.

We have a keypad at our front door, with the u… Continue

Today I’d like to discuss my recommendations for a beginner and how they should get started with home automation. For the purposes of this blog post, I will assume that Insteon will be the standard of choice.

The first thing I would do is get ready to have some fun! Setting up your home automation network is an exciting and fun experience. It is addicting when you get a few lights set up, you want to do more and more!

I recommend you start out by purchasing one of the Insteon starter kits from… Continue

In this post I hope to help the person completely new to home automation, learn how to get started. I believe home automation is truly about to take off as an industry. More and more people are becoming more comfortable with additional devices, and electronics around the home. People can see how electronics can help our daily lives, and the next step is controlling the home itself. Lets take a look at the first steps, in simple terms.

1- The first thing you need to do is chose what you want to… Continue

In this day and age of tough economic times and everyone concerned about “being green”, home automation can help you both be green and save green. There are many ways home automation can be used to save money and be green. Let’s go over some of them now.

The primary way to be green with home automation is to save energy. This can be accomplished in many ways, but the simplest is with the proper use of lighting. It’s very common for lights to be left on throughout the house when people are not u… Continue

Like most things, there are several degrees of home automation. Today let’s talk about the differences.

1. Simple lighting control-
For most people starting out in home automation, the initial goal is to be able to control a few lights remotely. This can be from a wall switch, a keypad or remote control. This is very simple and easy to do and can be done inexpensively. There are several home automation standards that are capable of this.

2. Computer management-
The next level of home automatio… Continue