What other home automation sites do you visit?

technerd

technerd

Member
As a newbie I'm blown away by the collective amount of home automation & security information on this website.

What other home automation / security websites do you guys visit that are worthwhile to check out?

This is the first truly dedicated home automation/security website I've come across so it will be nice to find out as much as possible about home automation when I build my next house and have the latest technology in it!
 
technerd said:
What other home automation / security websites do you guys visit that are worthwhile to check out?
Click to expand...
NONE!

Actually I check out the HomeSeer forums often as I'm a user of that software. It's a pretty close second to CocoonTech! :p If I were a CQC user I would visit there also as I hear that's also an excellent forum. B)

Other than that the only other one for Home Theater would be the AVS forums and also the Applied Digital forums if you own hardware such as an Ocelot.

CocoonTech is by far superior as it is the only one that includes home automation, theater, and security and is non-biased. So you are always insured of getting the real truth about most products. :p
 
LOL thanks for the quick reply BSR.

This thing has got me wondering - why is the home automation such a niche area?

With the advent of cellular communication, broadband, web, and wifi nearly a decade ago, we are still in the infantile stages of home automation.

I am simply GIDDY with the fact that I can now remotely arm/dis-arm my alarmy system with my new uControl unit, but that is still the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is possible in terms of being connected with my house. And I consider myself an early adopter in this area.

Most people are still content with ancient technology - alarms controlled by early 20th century technology - the phone.

I am blown away by some of the slick and really cool gadgets some of the users here have - like being able to stream home video onto a smart phone anywhere in the world. That to me is the holy grail of home automation.

Seems like internet porn has become a hugely adopted by the masses while really important stuff like home security / automation is still such a niche area. Shame. :p
 
Electron, CocoonTech's administrator and creator, saw that there was indeed no other website that covered the areas and niches you mention above. This was one of the main reasons he created CocoonTech.com.

Also, our motto (including our excellent forum membership's) is to try to help everyone from beginners to the experts. I don't know if you have noticed, but you will usually never see anyone criticize or belittle anyone for not knowing even the most basic facts in posts here! This forum is different from most in the fact that people here will make the extra effort in helping anyone that needs it.

This is truly an excellent forum and (I do mention this often) I am proud and privileged to be a part of it! :p

If you haven't already, make sure you check out our "How-To" section. It is the flagship of CocoonTech!

We also have an excellent chat feature and, though the crowd is usually on 24/7 (or at least till electron's cable modem resets itself :p ) usually meets on Friday evenings.
 
Well thanks for having a scrub like me as part of this elite website, BSR.

As a newbie I don't know a whole lot which was why I posted here in the first place.

I can see myself spending way too much time in here researching all the cool stuff and drooling over other people's set ups...

My next house is going to rock with the cool stuff I find here. :p
 
Great to have you here! Another thing, while I'm beating our own drum here, is that you will get many vendors’ expert advice on questions about their systems as well. For instance we have Elk's chief engineer as a member here and often will help with questions about their products.

You will always know if a vendor/product rep is answering your questions as they are required to have their company's affiliation listed in their signature and will also usually have the company's logo in their avatar. :p
 
One other thing to look at when considering quality of Home Automation sites is the volume. At this point, although i'm an AVS regular, indeed started there, I ony post my HA questions here & and on the CQC sites. They both have very complementary audiences with different skillsets, and many times one forum won't have the answers but the other will. In addition, the volume is astounding - i haven't kept track here, but CQC is now averaging 100 posts/day (for the past 6 months anyhow), and only 25% of them are actually CQC related. Cocoontech feels to have a similar volume.

I've noticed all the other forums struggle to hit 10-20 posts. Matter of fact, I haven't found a single forum that has even hit 25 posts/day for an average. Not only does that mean that there's a very low exchange of ideas and information, but there's also very little in the ways of knowledge base that exists for folks who want to do searches.

In the end, there's always only one market leader and the others are followers. Seems pretty clear to me who the winners are for both the product-blind and the product-specific.

Of course, if you start talking about Home Theater and details therein, AVS is all over that, but then again with that name one would hope so.
 
some link:
http://www.homeautomationindex.com/
http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/index.php
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jason.starkie...ation_links.htm
http://wiki.xplproject.org.uk/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.xplmonkey.com/
http://www.xpl-home.org/forums/index.php
http://plutohome.com/support/
http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/
http://www.power-home.com/forum/
http://lists.shed.com/pipermail/xtensionlist/2007/date.html
http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/phpBB2/index.php

And for European users:
http://www.domoticaforum.eu/
http://www.touteladomotique.com/forum/index.php
http://www.bwired.nl/
http://domotica.computercity.be/
http://www.btinternet.com/~jon00/
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbulletin/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ukha_d/

and a lot more links:
http://www.domoticalinks.nl/
 
Wow great stuff guys. I should be doing my taxes but I'm such a techie junkie I'll be looking into those links.

Keep them coming! :p
 
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