The book I read to research this post was Home Automation: A Complete Guide by Lisa Montgomery which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is only around 90 pages and is intended as a primer on this topic. It doesn’t cover some of the more recent advances like Raspberry Pi and Arduino which believe me is revolutionizing this industry or the open source standard for components. It just gives a general overview of what can be achieved especially at the high end expensive end of the market where you probably have a professional installation. I think anybody considering an expensive installation like this definitely should read this book because it does give them a good grounding in the basics and lists quite a few installers and manufacturers in the back of the book with a bit of basic information on each. Certain information in the book like having components that are z-wave and zigbee compatible is probably a bit dated as know most people use open source or open standard components which mean you can buy stuff from one manufacturer and you know it will work with lots of other manufacturers stuff. A lot of home automation know is going over to being able to be controlled by smartphones and tablets mostly iOS and Android ones which is in the book. Some homes have docking stations for these so even guests can control certain functions as long as they have their digital device. A lot of it now is also going over to being controlled by broadband or smartphone partly because in the past you would have a separate connection to control your network remotely which doesn’t make sense when you already have broadband and cellular connections in place which will do the same job. Of course one of the most important considerations is it can be upgraded in the future and a lot of homes in maybe 5 or 10 years are going to have home automation as standard and you don’t want to have to have to rip everything out and start all over again. If a so called expert tells you something can’t be done in a home automation network he is probably either lying or not an expert because the variety of components on the market is huge and your only limitations are your budget and your imagination. I did really enjoy this book and would recommend it. It is also around 80 pages so is a fair length.
