Since i have a passion for programming, automation and electronics it stands to reason that my home incorporates many of these technologies. After looking through a number of different technologies I settled on Homeseer's HS PRO, I initially started on HS2 Pro and in 2015 upgraded to the HS3 PRO offering.

The benefit to me of Homeseer is that it provides for a framework to input sensors, and control actuators (e.g. Lights), and the functionality can be expanded by writing programs or plugins that interface with the package, my system does the very standard stuff like turn lights on and off, control irrigation, run security and so on but also does a few other handy little things like:

• Let us know if we leave the house and leave windows open
• Let us know if a window is open when it starts raining
• Shut the house down if no one is home (based on geolocation).
• If the house does get shut down, turn off the PC's, Air conditioning and lights
• If the house gets shut down, then start the Samsung robot vacuum.

Because i also volunteer with the CFA, the home automation system is linked to the paging system through an off air decoder, and a plugin I created. This allows the house to react to emergency fire call messages, for example if I am at home and an emergency pager message comes through it will turn on the lights I need to the wardrobe, the hallway and the garage and read me the message, if I am driving it will push the message to my phone and read it out aloud so I know what the message is.

As i said, the biggest benefit is plugins, and I use quite a few on my system including:

• Many of Jon00's plugins
• RFXCOM RF plugin
• BLRadar
• Pushover