The Smart Home Manual: How to Automate Your Home to Keep Your Family Entertained, Comfortable, and Safe (Home Technology Manuals)

Great book. It's much better written than any short book I've read online. Proper grammar, doesn't use terms that he assumes you know. Good use of examples and tables. It was a pleasure to read. I can't wait to read his other books

The Smart Home Manual: How to Automate Your Home to Keep Your Family Entertained, Comfortable, and Safe by Marlon Buchanan has inspired me to go beyond the basics of smart home technology that are currently in place in our home. I really appreciate how well-organized this book is. It is like a roadmap that allows you to determine your home’s current position on the smart home technology continuum and then plan how to get to where you want be. I loved the “Key Takeaways” that summarized each section. Another part that I enjoyed was the “A Day in the Life” pieces at the end of each section that illustrate how a smart home can perform. The examples, checklists, and additional resources in the appendices will be very useful for anyone interested in smart home technology. Whether you are starting from scratch or adding to the basics your home already has, this book offers a clearly laid-out path and great inspiration.

Definitely not for anyone with no experience regarding routers, how Wi-Fi works or technological terms. But, if you’ve been dabbling with making your home set up more efficient or higher tech, this is the boom for you.

I believe I am a technically capable person and understand many modern technologies. However, the evolution of smart technologies over the last years is so fast that when I see that these bulbs or vacuum cleaner can be programmed to work during certain hours, I start to see many problems regarding how to connect everything, whether it really saves my time and nerves. So I am very conservative in using smart equipment in an automated way.Marlon shed light on this area and provided valuable details. I was surprised that the cost of a full smart home build was much lower than I expected, plus with a great potential of saving money and increasing the house price.Marlon included what and why he did in his house in a section “What I Do” in every chapter. With much practical advice, this is a great resource when deciding on my own solutions. The shared experience, pros and cons of different types of equipment and brands make this book stand out.The appendixes offer a long list of equipment per each category, a 1-year plan of to-do steps, and web resources for additional information.Read this book before buying your first smart bulb that alone costs multiple times more.

Long ago, the idea of a smart home was a far-fetched pipe dream reminiscent of "The Jetsons" but unattainable all at the same time. Today, both computer software and hardware are more than equipped to support a fully connected home system that can save you time, and honestly, just looks cool.If you've been playing with the idea of upgrading your home amenities, this book is a great guide to check out. It covers a lot of what kind of hardware is necessary to get started (this includes your internet connection).Although it all may seem overwhelming at first, this book does a great job at simplifying the process for you. You may have to do some deeper delves, but otherwise, this is a good one to check out.

I found this resource to provide good insights into why you would want a smart home and how much it costs to set things up. I benefitted the most from Part 2 of the book that dealt with planning one’s smart phone. The author does a good job of systematically walking you through all of the steps. What I enjoyed about this book was it there was not much fluff, making it a quick read.

Dislike: a general discussion of a technical subject is NOT helpful, does not have a single diagram or schematic. This book was not useful.

This book is easy to understand. We're not familiar with all of the gadgets in our house. This book has helped us understand how to use and coordinate gadgets. We even invested in a few of the extras to make things run more smoothly. The directions in this book are better than the ones that came with the item! A must have for 21st-century technology.

Una lectura muy entretenida y facil de comprender a cualquier nivel, excelentes apuntes para las personas que nos gustan las tecnologías en el hogar

This book does a good job of explaining the basic principles behind SMART homes but did not answer some of the more detailed questions about devices and how to set them up, that I was hoping for. Any book on technology is likely to become out of date very quickly and I think that is the case here.