What Will Make Home Automation Mainstream?

Mass-market home automation is a lot like the weather: lots of people talk about it, but no one's ever come up with a working plan for doing anything about it.

So, are we ever going to see automation really trickle down to a mainstream consumer level?

After all, just because it hasn't doesn't mean it won't, right? Academic business school types who buy into the efficient market hypothesis argue that if something can be brought to market, it will be.

If it hasn't been, then there remain barriers, whether technological or economic, that first needs to be solved.

Price Sensitivity

The first, and most blindingly obvious issue, is that automation remains pricey. And it's not just the hardware; the expertise required to install and program it successfully doesn't come cheap.

Behind every little black box, whether relay, switch or controller in a system, lies the costs of engineering, research and development. On the installation side, there's the time and training involved in ensuring that the design and install puts all those boxes together correctly.

That doesn't even count the time and labor involved in writing the control programming that makes it all work.

Learning Curve Disadvantages

Whatever the talk about "turnkey" automation systems, it just isn't happening. Idiosyncrasies on specific jobsites mean that a "one size fits all" automation system remains impractical.

In order to avoid hours of wasted effort, jobsite testing requires expertise that only comes from extensive training and experience. Those two things stand between a homeowner and his ability pick up a system at Home Depot and finish installing it over the weekend.

Sustainable Competitive Advantages

Intimately related to the first two points is the requirement for vendors and installers to be able to offer automation systems on a large scale and do it profitably.

Part of the puzzle is to take the "custom" out of "custom installation" and standardize system design as much as possible. Some integration dealers do this on a small or medium scale, working with a builder to automate MDU buildings or detached homes.

It's not inconceivable that a process-centric integrator could take automation to the tract home level, if the price was right.

Scaling Needed to Go Mainstream

I don't want to be remembered as the guy who said that mass-market automation would never happen.

Remember the episode of The Simpsons that flashed back to Marge's computer science degree in the 1970's, and her Professor Frink who predicted that, "In 20 years, computers will be twice as big, five times faster, and be so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe would own one"?

Exactly.

But before we can expect automation to be something that most, rather than some, homeowners have installed, sizable investments in scaling cost and ease of use need to be made.

What do you think it will take to make home automation mainstream?

Lee Distad is a freelance CEDIA Certified Professional Designer who offers design and process consultation to firms in the Custom Installation industry, as well as copy writing and other professional writing services. Lee’s business and industry blog can be read at http://www.leedistad.com