Home Automation Business

Hello Guys, I have searched the forum and was not able to find too much that could answer a question(s) I have. How much do people hear know of the Home Automation industry, my brother, wife and I are looking start a business in Home Automation. I have been working on finishing the business plan which has been of great help with determining the industry. It seems that there is no saturation of competitors within a 60 km radius of where I live. My brother is currently finishing his electrician apprentice and has about two (2) more years to go. We are looking to start part time and hope that we will generate enough buzz to receive some work to begin part time. I would like to know from home developers/contractors whether there is a possibility to work on home as they are being constructed such as a new survey to working part time i.e. after work hours such as 5:00 pm and weekends. Any feed back with this particular industry (Home Automation) would be great or any thoughts at all on this subject and how we should go about this part time would also be very helpful.

 

Try posting in the business & investments section for valuable feedback or Other Off-topic if you don't want to spend the $10 to get subscribed. You posted this in the wrong section, Ferrari Discussion = Ferrari Discussion.

 

Sorry about that, had not noticed until you mentioned it MVP. Just wondering if I move this to the business section or if the moderator(s) does this?

 

Home automation is going nowhere due to its complexity, cost, and dependence upon unreliable technology.

Many factors intervene to kill its proper functionality, and unless you want to be a full time hobyist and repairman, find another line of work.

In addition, it is somewhat dependent upon upon new home construction and in case you have not heard, real estate is going no where now and new home construction is way down.

Many have tried but few have succeeded.

I have been associated with this industry for more than 25 years. I speak from first hand experience.

My advice is not to give up your day job!

 

Moderators do this, on the bottom right hand corner of the page:

Brian C. Stradale, ghost, wax, MarkPDX, Mike C, Auraraptor

PM one of them, although I'm sure one will see this thread sooner or later.

 

We've found the same with our business and had to diversify it. Luckily we also do electrical contracting for the commercial/industrial sector, as well as AV equipment and sound system supply.

If you're doing structured cabling for multi-room audio and data, please consider that a lot people prefer to use wireless networks or Ipods these days instead for the average to above average home.

Please be aware that home automation can be the first thing that is deleted from a project if it goes over budget. Your quote/design may not only compete with other home automation suppliers, it might compete with a larger garage, fancier kitchen, swimming pool, new car or something else.

The WAF (wife acceptance factor) is important too when quoting systems, so if you go ahead with the business, don't just pitch to the male home owner. A lot of females want simplicity and ease of use.

With the larger homes, a long time might pass between designing the system and completing the property. So the project life-cycle could easily take well over a year between when it starts and you receiving your final payment.

 

Precisely and an exact case in point. Structured wiring is substantially decreasing in popularity for WiFi.

And, many of our projects go on for 12-16 months!

Figure that into your cash flow.

Honestly, find better work.

 

I thank you for the replies, I do want to clairfy that we will be installing prodomintley wireless systems in the average house and then move into a more structured wiring when doing larger homes. We then want to go full time and hope to move into commercial work. The main selling point for us is the energy efficency feature along with the security. We are going to sell more points of examples such as electronic dampers so that you may control how much heat and air goes into occupied rooms and not into non-occupied. We also want to stress the lighting automation benifits which can be obvious factors. My brother is currently also putting in these types of systems in the schooling district with heating, air and lighting automation. This industry seems to have gone mainstream within Canada due to the fact that the systems are not what the average person or middle class person thinks they may cost. There are systems such as the X10 and Creston that are affordable and yes do run into certain problems sometimes, but that only means repeat customers.

 

Should move this to B&I section.

Problem with HA systems is they've never made the transition from geeky to mainstream. Most of the folks I know who are into them are the gadget-man type. Those people aren't probably the folks likely to drop $$$ o an install, and the ones who are want simplicity, ease of use, and reliability which is hard in HA systems. As others said, wireless is supplanting this big time.

Probably have to get into a niche. I have a friend who makes killer money doing this stuff but he also does sound systems for clubs and theatres and high end stuff for homes. He makes way more doing the AV than the HA.

 

tweeter will start selling Control4 line soon. Big name + they everywhere = big competitor for you.

I am running Control4 at home - quite happy with it.

 

Point and fact with the install is that people(s) are not aware that it does not take a fortune to set up. This is all based on what the customer would like. There are also a number of products that are of a mainstream type (affordable). Repeat business also evolves with the set up, the customer may call down the road when it is more affordable to set up a more advanced system or add onto it. In reference to "tweeter", I can not say that I have heard of them. Are they a manufacturer or an installer and if an installer do they target the area I am in which is Ontario Canada? Thanks for the replies and suggestions though guys, very helpful. I repeat though that we are going to venturing more so into Wireless, but there are times where it is smarter to use a non-wireless set-up such as in a larger home with more toys i.e. HDTV

 

X-10 = crapolla.
If you want to persist in Automation you need to link with Upper end builders ( along with your other competors). Try a Home Builders association. Contact manufacturers for training.
A guy I know does power shades as well . $1k+ a pop. Home theatre is big in Dallas. All the big homes have one.
Now stop being a tight wad and subscribe. Welcome to the big time.

 

We had to sort out someone else's X-10 system after a couple of components failed within three years of the system being installed. The electrical company that installed it went bust. I personally would not install this product as I would not want an unhappy customer in 2-3 years time.

Control 4 works on Zigbee wireless and apparently doesn't take as long to set up compared to the Crestron system - only a couple of hours in some cases. The home owner can apparently take the system with them when they leave their home because it runs on normal power cabling.

Creston is a lot more programming intensive and more costly, but can also used in commercial situations like boardrooms, hotels etc.

Vantage is somewhere between these two systems for equipment costs and installation. It has apparently been used for one of Donald Trumps hotels in Las Vegas and has a five year warranty.

 

let me toss an apparently non-conventional opinion into this mix.

i'm NOT in the HA business, but know quite a bit about it.

i think it's a GREAT time to ramp a new HA business. the market is going to change radically in the next few years. the move to wireless has only just started, and it will transform the HA industry. the HA system of the future will be a regular old computer with off-the-shelf wifi and bluetooth hardware controllers, and small boxes with ethernet that can control anything.

there'll be a huge wave of "re-dos" from all the high end crestron and amx/panja systems from people who hate the costs associated with changing ANYTHING in their homes. then you'll see a big wave of retrofits - which will now be feasible because the wiring requirements will largely disappear.

but the economics will be very different. no more silly $5K crestron panels and thousands of hours of programming.

this won't be a $25K to $100K expense anymore, it'll be a $5K to $10K expense (and fall from there).

the value-add on the installer side will be:
(a) knowledge of how wireless connectivity works and works best to make sure the systems can communicate. in a big house, or in a concrete house (or so on and so forth), this is not entirely trivial.
(b) intimate understanding of the tech available. it will all start to interoperate (unlike today) so you'll have to keep up on it and know it cold.
(c) capable programmers who can bang out visual basic or HTML or whatever code quickly and efficiently
(d) a smartly structured archive of prior code to pull from for new customers (keep time and costs down).

my two pennies.

the days of running miles of cable and selling obscenely-overpriced hardware that's ridiculously difficult to program are coming to an end.

doody.

 

Tweeter is US chain of high end stores.