The two areas that I see a lot of interest in controlling are security and lighting. With the introduction of the Amazon Echo and its ilk, people want to turn their lights on and off with their voice assistant. It is often the gateway drug into more insanity.

One can start with just screwing in an alternative light bulb.

The other one, the more elusive for me, is security. I’ve never had a traditional security system with monitoring. But I’m increasingly interested in building my own. But it is hard to figure out what that is.

Paying for monitoring is not something I am prepared to do. You are paying a company to notify the police. I can do that. Notifying the police isn’t something I want to be automatic, because over 90 percent of alarm calls by police are false and there are actually fines for false alarms in New York City, where I live, and many other places.

We have one of the best security monitoring devices on us most of the time…the cell phone. If I can be notified by my phone and review the information, then I can make decisions based on that action. I’m going to talk about various notification options as well.

Recently, a family friend had to drive back home because their alarm was tripped. It was a false alarm, but the second that week.

Some of this, I am learning about as I go. So, I welcome anyone correcting me or giving me advice.