How do I start building my dream home automation? (Part 1)

Since when I was young using technology, loving robots, and watching The Jetsons I had a dream to create much automation as possible in my life and my work. In 2017 I create my 1º Alexa skill after participating in a meetup in New York, the next weekend I created this fun integration here getting AWS, Alexa, and one of the solutions from the company that I work automated, you can see the project here: https://github.com/fernandostc/Alexa-DS-and-AWS

Since then I start playing more and more with some automation with Alexa, Google Home, Philips Hue, and couples other things. As a common geek person, I fell in love more with those gadgets 😅.

But I was living in an apartment with very little automation, but it was when I bought the house with my fiance that my mind started going crazy with all the things that I could create without any problems, that blow my mind 🤯 and I didn't know where to start. It was a great feeling BTW.

It was when the home automation testing labs star! 💻🤖🏠

First Automation at the Home

My first automation was using some of the devices that I had already bought in my apartment before like the Alexa, Google Home, Philips Hue, and some smart plugs to automate a couple of lights and devices. The second one was going to remove the old alarm system to Konnected with SmartThings, this one was a little bit more work since I never have done this before, but it was pretty fun. End up that my house was just 5 zones alarm before now I added a second Konnected (https://konnected.io/)panel to support up to 12 zones total.

Since after one year of living at home I created a lot of automation and started using many devices, I will go into detail about the brands and solutions that I end up buying and if I believe it was worth it or not. Let start the fun ride since so many people that know me have asked…