The problem isn't that there isn't a standard - "The great thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from !" There's x10, zigbee and zwave to

The problem isn't that there isn't a standard - "The great thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from !" There's x10, zigbee and zwave to start from. Oh and let's not forget the announced in Google IO 2011 their standard too !( Did google just do a "microsoft" with this btw?) . x10 is dated, insecure and very slow (and not really bidirectional). zigbee and zwave don't talk to each other. zwave does clever mesh stuff, but sometimes too clever (ie if a device ever fails, then all of its neighbours will forever complain unless you rebuild your mesh from scratch). Here's the thing... YOU WILL SAVE MONEY AFTER 1 YEAR if you do HA on just your lights and heating ... but getting hobbyist stuff to work nicely is sooooo painful. I have a vera system running (in fact I'm the author of "vera alert" on Android) and I am sh1t scared of it going wrong and the kids don't have hot water or the heating switches off the boiler and refuses to talk etc etc. Anyway. not sure where I was going with this tirade. Make sure you buy compatible devices (ie some zwave devices don't like other zwaves!) and GOOD LUCK.