Yeah, we know. Home automation is the most overpromised, under-delivered technology of modern times, out-hyped only by cold fusion and the perpetual motion machine. But that situation is changing rapidly as two new home-control standards fight for dominance: the IEEE 802.15.4 standard popularly known as ZigBee and the proprietary Z-Wave standard developed and widely licensed by Zensys. Combine these with a PC, some software, a wired or wireless network, a few other gadgets, and a little elbow grease, and you can transform your home into a digital domicile Buck Rogers would be proud to inhabit.

Imagine a video-surveillance system that lets you view your house from anywhere you have Internet access or a home-monitoring system that alerts you to the presence of an intruder by sending a picture to your smartphone. Or the ability to program your garage door to turn on your interior lights when it opens—and turn them off when it closes. How about lights that dim when you press play on your DVD player?

We’ll show you how to pull off these tricks and a lot more. We’ll walk you through the steps of planning your own home-automation makeover, tell you what equipment you’ll need to buy and how to install and program it, and share the lessons we’ve learned from first-hand experience. You’ll find even more details at MaximumPC.com.

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Powerline Networking, logitech, home automation, z-wave, digital domicile, wilife, zigbee

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