Home automation means building a residential area, a house or a building, controlled by a centralized mechanism. Home automation can also be phrased as Smart Home, because while building a home with a centralized mechanism, we make the appliances communicate with the central hub or each other and present their current status.

In modern houses, there are many mechanical and electronic devices that need to be controlled by users. For example, if a resident needs light in their place, they will have to switch on/switch off a light bulb with the help of a switch. Another example is that you need to find out the current temperature of your house using a thermometer in order to decide whether to turn off the heater or increase the temperature. Building a system to switch it on/off remotely from a centralized control panel or switching with a condition will be the first aim of home automation.

Home automation is not limited to automating households; it is also about building a security system for your house. It is about getting alarm notifications from devices such as the door alarm if someone breaks into your home through the door, or a smoke sensor if there is a fire at your home.

Controlling appliances, such as light switches, as well as securing and surveilling your home from a controller, PC, or a similar central hub creates an automated house. We can also call it a Smart Home.

Controlling a device at home can be categorized as home automation, but the real development of home automation emerged after specific technological research and advancements. One of the first technologies was X10. It has been available to consumers since 1978. X10 is a protocol for communication between electronic devices. It primarily uses power line wiring for signaling and control, where the signals involve brief radio frequency bursts representing digital information.

More protocols have evolved after X10, mostly wireless protocols. Bluetooth low energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon, universal powerline bus (UPB), KNX, and EnOcean are some of the most popular home automation protocols.

Nowadays, there are more devices that use these protocols on the market; recent technological advancements have also made these devices cheaper and allowed people to automate their homes with various of devices. Large manufacturers such as Philips, GE, Honeywell, and Schneider Electric are embracing home automation with thousands of new devices.

Together with new cool devices, the rise of cloud and mobile connection technologies (3G, LTE), and mobile devices also created user-friendly interfaces to connect and control home appliances from anywhere with an Internet connection. It is getting more and more tempting to have these cool home automation devices in your home and work with them.