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Hi all, I am planning to start automating the family home. I have taken a look at a few different options but it all a little overwhelming as to which will be best for an existing home. Each vendor sells up their own product and says that theirs is the best. Wifi based options seem to be the only real option when working on an already built house but not sure which solution is going to be a good one. The plan is to have an iPad that wirelessly connects to a central brain-unit to control everything (Home Theatre, Security, lighting, etc...). Also, most seem to be a tightly closed technology that requires one of their own technicians to come out (at $200-$300 a pop) to patch in any new hardware. I don’t like that but if that’s how it has to be then so be it! Any suggestions or tips of experience in this field would be greatly appreciated. PS, I personally think there should be a high level "Home Automation" category/forum on this site. From what I have seen and been told, there is a big push for this stuff in not-so-distant-future and these companies pushing it are doing some awesome work in this field (on the assumption that it actually works as they say it does). Apologies if this topic has already been covered. I’m a new-comer to this site and couldn’t find any info around this on the site. Cheers and thanks in advance, Vincent.

Hi all, Relative novice to home automation here so apologies in advance for some newbie type questions. I've recently purchased a warehouse conversion property with settlement in a few weeks. I will be looking to do a fitout upon settlement and am wanting to incorporate a home automation setup as a part of it. Have been madly reading about different platforms etc from the more professional control 4 type platforms to Google, Alexa, home assistant etc. My primary concern at present is determining where I need to lay network cable in the fitout as am wanting to utilise calling where possible to gpo's, lights, Windows (motorised window control options), security etc. For example I'm unsure whether I would need to have cabling to lights themselves or light switches or both in terms of infrastructure required for future proofing cabling infrastructure for light automation for whichever platform I end up going with in the end. Any advice or web resources to research further would be greatly appreciated. Kind Regards Anghel

Hi guys, I've been doing home automation for the past several years, and have been reasonable active on the OpenHAB and Host Assistant forums. Professionally, I've been working in cyber security through my own company. After having written a couple of posts about security a while back and listening to all the feedback, we recently decided to take a crack at doing home automation installations, with an emphasis on network and IoT cyber security. Basically, in our opinion, the traditional home network no longer offers a reasonable amount of protection when dealing with the IoT. The routers we are all using at home support only very basic functionality and have been geared to define only one or maybe two DHCP reservations. In my home I have nearly 65 internet connected devices, and it's literally impossible to stay on top of the security when they're all lumped into one virtual space. You can check this out if you're interested here: https://l.echoit.co.nz/secure-iot-home-automation-wellington Or our main website here:https://echoit.co.nz/ I'm also more than happy to help with any home automation problems or security concerns you have. Cheers!

Hello, I'm wanting to move my noisy NAS drive out of the listening room and into a cupboard in another room but still connect it to the stereo. Can anyone step me through the connections that I need to make? The cupboard in question has a power point, but not an ethernet or phone connection in it. At the moment the phone line goes from behind the stereo to the router/modem - which is our only Wifi point in the house and it drops out and doesn't currently reach all rooms effectively. An ethernet cable goes from the NAS into the modem/router and from there into the back of the pre-amplifier/streamer. I was wandering if I put one of those wifi over power line (e.g. http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/d-link-dhp-701av-powerline-av2-2000-gigabit-network-kit-dldav22000) into the power point in the cupboard and transmitted the signal back to the modem/router through the electric power cables? Would this work and preserve the quality of the sound coming from the NAS at the same level as if it were direct wired via ethernet (i.e. as good or worse than the current situation). I could get someone in to put in an ethernet connection into the cupboard, but would like to save the expense if possible. I also want to be able to extend the wifi range. Any advice would be gratefully accepted.