I've been into the home automation thing since before forever. There have been many periods of excitement over the years. They come and go. As a result I have to admit to a high level of skepticism about the current period.

The companies that generate and are influenced by this excitement tend to make two main errors.

1. They don't understand that without an open standard for controls and sensors they are just fooling themselves. No one is going to permanently install something in their house that is sure to be useless in 10 years.

2. They don't understand that people don't want to control everything ... they instead want to not have to control everything. Being able to control a light from your phone is not really any better than being able to do it from the light switch. People instead want the light to just do the right thing without having to think about it. They don't want a thermostat controllable from a phone. They want a thermostat that makes it so they are comfortable and not paying any extra money they don't have to. As a result, the home automation people actually want is a much harder problem than what everyone always seems to assume.