Smart Homes for Dummies 3rd Edition Paperback – July 6, 2007

My husband and I are in the midst of a major remodel/expansion of our 1968 tract home so we have read pretty much every remodeling book we could find. This book offers a lot of information and food for thought on how to bring an outdated home into the technology age. Our budget is not unlimited and this book helped us decide which features were essential to add now and what could be added later (and how to add the foundation work while the walls were stripped to the studs for those future improvements to save us money in the long run). This book does not give reviews on specific products, that is not it's purpose. Technology is changing so fast, that any product reviews would have been obsolete by the time the book hit the shelves. I recommend you use this book to plan out the framework for your smart house and use magazines like THE PERFECT VISION, HOME THEATER, etc. to fill in the blanks. My husband subscribed to both magazines through Amazon (very inexpensively) for 2 years and did a lot of research on the Internet before making his preliminary choices. Since we aren't at the "fun stage" of our remodel yet, where we get to go buy all the equipment, those choices might still change because prices our dropping and items that were out of our price range 2 years ago are now more affordable. The bottom line is this book is the BEST for helping you plan your smart house because it is easy to understand by even those of us who are not tech savy (like me) and it shows you options that you may have never even thought of before. And believe me, in a remodel the time for thought, planning and innovation is before you put the drywall back up!

A little out of date, but I should have known that. Still informative for a newby.

This is the first 'dummies' book I've ever read. You can read the book from "start to finish" (as I did) or jump around the chapters that may interest you. While it did provide some interesting information which certainly helped me, it also provided page after page of pointless repetition. I'm wondering who the publishers think their market might be, it's not so much for 'dummies' but more for the 'utterly stupid' who probably wouldn't be reading the book in the first place.My advice is just Google something like "Cabling for Smart Homes" or "Wiring for Smart homes" and you'll get all the info you need without having to suffer wading through a lot of the tripe found in this publication.

I'd like to give this book more stars but frankly it is out of date in several areas and if you don't know what areas then you could be in trouble. It needs an update. Many of the websites it refers you to don't exist -- companies have been bought or gone out of business -- technologies it says are coming have come... and gone. If there is a better book, I have yet to find it, which is sad since there are technologies that should be incorporated into homes -- few builders seem to understand how to build a smart home -- if the owner doesn't drive the process it won't happen or it won't happen right.

Some readers commented that there is not actually enough information on "how to actually do something" or "home automation". That's true. There could be more of this stuff, but if there were, the book would probably not be for "dummies", any more. Not meaning that stuff is too technical, but it would require a lot more pages, and the Dummies series probably doesn't allow this. There are whole courses on those subjects from CEDIA.Anyhow, I find that the book is a treasure for information on what is available today to ensure you are up to date with the latest technology (at the time of writing). It enabled me to update my home system in ways I did not think possible. I thought I was doing well, until I read the book. One really good thing I like about the book, too, is that it mentions companies and products that are available for the area of discussion. Something as seemingly simple as introducing me to baluns, is a point worth noting. I always thought I'd have to get really long line level cables for long runs. Also, I thought a "zone" was simply somewhere where I've run speaker wire from my receiver, where it would have to play the one source that was playing. I didn't know there were specially built multi-zone/multi-source amps out there and that Russound and Niles Audio were even companies. These are simple examples of how you can learn new stuff by reading the book. Of course, there are so may others. I have done so many upgrades since reading this book. e.g. my Roku Soundbridge (never knew it existed until reading the book), my D-Link DMA (which is now my most used piece of equipment, outside of the tv and receiver), my Russound whole home audio upgrade. That's just to name three.Bottom line, if you want to increase your home electronics/automation knowledge, you cannot go wrong with this book. You will not become a CEDIA ESC after reading, but you'll be on your way!

...but I didn't get much out of this book. Much of what was in it - I already do (for example, I have a home network with a central "server computer"). I was hoping it would cover more about automating lighting and compare different methods/systems...Anyway, it also lacks much of the humor I normally find in "dummies" books - so it was pretty dry reading.Bottom line - not very impressed.

Referred to this book while building my new home. I incorporated a lot of information from this book into my own Smarthouse

Lots of info for x10 systems but not leaning to any particular vendor. Very much like that they wrote from personal experience. I did wish they were a bit more clear in regards to whole house audio, but the section on impedance was adequate.