Dwight Spivey - Home Automation For Dummies

Home Automation For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014946669

ISBN: 978-1-118-94926-9

ISBN 978-1-118-94926-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-94927-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-94964-1 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Flying was a pleasure meant only for birds or for fools jumping off a cliff with homemade wings. The stuff of fancy and fantastical tales. In 1903, a couple of brothers put that kind of talk to rest with the first flights of their Flyer in North Carolina.

Computers in the home was something only seen in science-fiction films until a few kids got together in one of their parents garage and created a little thing they called the Apple I. According to Forrest Gump, that little fruit company has done quite well since those days.

Staying on that theme, folks used to think that teleportation was only possible in Star Trek, but just yesterday I was beamed from my local transporter to our secret moon base in no time flat! It was really uh oh! Im not supposed to talk about that yet... just forget you read that last paragraph, please.

Nothing to see here. Moving on.

The point is that when it comes to technology, fiction can often become reality. The fiction of being able to automate our homes became a reality a few decades ago, but it was something only the very (and I do mean very) well-heeled could afford. Since the advent of the smartphone (theres that fruit company again) and the proliferation of cellular networks, we have had greater access to each other and our world than weve ever dreamed. As smartphones and apps have grown in popularity, so has the need to use them in ways many of us couldnt have conceived of before. Today we not only can make calls and send texts, but we also use our smartphones (and tablets) for watching movies, catching up on the news, checking weather forecasts, viewing live sporting events, listening to our favorite music, and many more tasks that Isaac Asimov couldnt have thought of.

Wi-Fi networks and the Internet have also opened the door (in some cases literally) to a whole new level of home accessibility: using our smart devices and apps with our homes Wi-Fi network to remotely control and automate tasks in our home. You can use your iOS or Android device to adjust the temperature, set the mood with customized lighting schemes, preheat the oven so you can cook your meal the moment you walk in the door, and even tell your lawn mower to start cutting your grass. Thats just scratching the surface of what you can do with todays smart home automation technology and in this book, I happily tackle the subject with you.

This book introduces you to the smart home revolution, which is todays way of automating and/or remotely controlling common, everyday tasks via your smartphone or tablet (and in some cases, your computer), your homes Wi-Fi network, and the Internet. My aim throughout the tome is to explain why you want to automate, how you can do so, and just what you can accomplish with it. This book also shows you a multitude of the aforementioned tasks that you can accomplish using automation and/or remote control, and how to go about the process of automating those tasks. I discuss not only tasks and the technologies, but also the companies that are the major players in todays emerging smart home market.

The For Dummies series of books has been helping folks (like me) make the most of technology and other things that enhance our lives when we are properly taught how to utilize them, and Ive written this book using those wonderful time-tested methods. The organization of this series is stuff of legend, and Ive made sure not to deviate from them. Feel free to jump around as you like, or follow along in exact page order whatever suits your needs. After all, this book is for you to learn about smart home automation, and its designed to help folks at various levels learn as they see fit.

Some items in the book, such as sidebars and Technical Stuff, are simply there because I thought they were neat. Dont get me wrong, they do contain helpful information, but feel free to skip them if you like.

Youll find this book is absolutely chock-full of URLs (otherwise known as webpage addresses) that you can use to check out the products I discuss. All of them were functional at the time of this writing, but trust me when I say that URLs can and do change often.