Thanks askpete, I think the NinjaBlocks folks are missing the point here... Interop is key in an automation / security / energy platform. Saving energy, as y

Thanks askpete, I think the NinjaBlocks folks are missing the point here... Interop is key in an automation / security / energy platform. Saving energy, as you state, is fully baked into the MiCasaVerde platform (and others I'm sure) today - see ERGY (http://www.ergyenergy.com/ http://www.ergyenergy.com/). So, please don't make that assumption that it's not there in others. I still don't get your target market. It seems to me it's the people who don't really mind a half-baked solution, or is it geared towards people that will go the remaining 80% (there are a lot of things missing the more I look at this platform for a serious contender in full HA). Your cost estimates are way off base here - I've never paid $70 for a PIR with Z-Wave - try more along the lines of $35 and the cost of these controllers is coming down. And, again, you can't take 433MHz seriously. You do realize that your entire system is proximal to the RF of your 1 controller, right? Whereas in my Z-Wave system I can fully extend out into a huge building and take full advantage of a self-healing, self-routing mesh network. As I stated before - 433MHz stuff is junk, and if you're even paying $10 for a similar PIR controller, you're getting what you pay for - something that doesn't work well. This is why I'm not a fan of WiFi only devices such as SPARK. Think very large home or business - unless you have great WiFi coverage everywhere (since these little devices generally have crappy radios / antenna) . This is something people who don't actually use home automation won't think about - because they don't actually use it. But in my mind 433MHz in an HA system is akin to Internet banking without encryption - sure, you can do it, but it's going to break quick once you really want to take it seriously. So with the system I have implemented today: * Control Insteon * Control Z-Wave * Control IP devices * Local API access The things that are missing are: * Control Zigbee (this is the biggest miss and I applaud SmartThings for picking this up) * Better UAC This isn't a dig, but instead of making a lot of the assumptions you've put forth in your response, you should potentially team up with people who are seriously using it today and look at how they're extending it in their homes. You'd learn a lot I feel, and actually put out a product that addresses the same pitfalls everyone who's trying to play in this space is making. I know a lot of people who are using this stuff today - and we all have the same sentiment for all the new "players" - but at the end of the day the products are all still not serious contenders and I'm baffled by how SmartThings pulled $1M+ from Kickstarter by reinventing a prettier wheel. Good luck on your attempt here - and you may want to look at what's out there in the mean time.