Home Automation Business

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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.

 

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.

 

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.