Home Automation Library [closed]

Question

I'm a C# developer looking to get into home automation as a hobby. I have done a little research, but was wondering if anyone knows of a good .NET library that supports Insteon hardware. I'd rather use Insteon than X10 due to reliability issues.

My ultimate objective at this point is to have a simple home automation server (maybe lights and climate control) with a secure ASP.NET web application interface. I'm more interested in actually building it and learning about it rather than finding an existing solution.

Thanks for any suggestions or comments.

Edit: Thanks for the help, everyone.

Does anyone have experience with Z-wave technology? Seems promising - appears to be higher quality hardware, includes a core library, supports .NET, etc. ControlThink appears to have a pretty good controller and SDK.

Here's an interesting application to consider: Stall Status: Know Before You Go

Answer 1

We found there really wasn't much developer support for Insteon unless you wanted to buy their SDK and agree to their rather heavy-handed license agreement. Rather than go that route, we wrote our own .NET library called FluentDwelling and we open-sourced it. You can find a download link, and some get-you-started code samples if you follow that link.

The source code comes with a full suite of unit tests (requires NUnit, also free), so you can add improvements and make changes if you like.

Answer 2

I would avoid X10 like the plague. Between things like modern TV's and power strips, bridged power junction boxes and just plain strange wiring, X10 signals tend to just "disappear" and never get to their destination.

If you really want to give X10 a shot, I've got a box of X10 stuff in the garage that was worth $250+ new and it's all completely useless in my house, so you can have it. Some of it worked in my old house, but it won't so much as turn a light on 2 outlets away where I live now.

X10 is viewed by most modern electronics as "noise" on the line (which, technically, it is) and something to be filtered out rather than passed along or left alone.