The home automation industry is like the Wild West right now. If you thought that Blu Ray vs HD-DVD was a terrible format war, imagine if there were ten different companies with ten different approaches all vying for your money.
That’s the sort of situation that we find ourselves in here. These home automation hubs represent visions from several different companies who are all hoping that one day their technology will be the default everyone uses. This is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good, because the competition is likely to lead to a better product that we will all eventually use. It’s bad because no one knows which system is going to be the overall winner and being an early adopter is often a painful experience. Just ask anyone with an HD-DVD collection.
Still, we can make do with our mishmash of automation devices that, although they can’t always talk to each other, can live alongside one another.
For those devices that CAN understand each other, albeit with a little help, there are these home automation hubs. I’ve pulled together some of what seem to be the most popular ones and had a look at what they can do to figure out which I would be willing to buy.
I have put my best choices at the top, and the rest of the reviews are below in no particular order.