The stuff that gets pitched to consumers for self install is pretty terrible.
When I was in high school I used to work as an electrician for a security/fire/cctv/home automation company. I remember doing a brand new summer house for a CEO of some large corp in roughly 1999-2000 time frame. Even then everything in the house was controlled via low volage relay. Outlets, lights, dimmers, curtains, everything. Each room had a iPad like touch panel on the wall that controlled the entire thing.
There are actually some really good systems out there, they just require that you considered it when you built the house to wire for it ahead of time or go through a costly retrofit. Also the 'best' systems were not that simple to setup. They weren't designed for the user to install so the configuration would often involve punching hexadecimal codes into a controller down in the basement to get the initial setup correct.
The stuff that gets pitched to consumers for self install is pretty terrible.
When I was in high school I used to work as an electrician for a security/fire/cctv/home automation company. I remember doing a brand new summer house for a CEO of some large corp in roughly 1999-2000 time frame. Even then everything in the house was controlled via low volage relay. Outlets, lights, dimmers, curtains, everything. Each room had a iPad like touch panel on the wall that controlled the entire thing.
There are actually some really good systems out there, they just require that you considered it when you built the house to wire for it ahead of time or go through a costly retrofit. Also the 'best' systems were not that simple to setup. They weren't designed for the user to install so the configuration would often involve punching hexadecimal codes into a controller down in the basement to get the initial setup correct.