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Proposal: Home Automation

When I originally proposed the Home Automation site I intended it as a place where people could ask questions and share their expertise on not only installing and configuring commercial home automation solutions, but building their own custom solutions as well.

I wanted the site to be able to support the user who simply wanted to know what components they would need in order to be able to turn their lights on/off from the their phone; all the way up to the user who was building their own automation UI and wanted to know what baud rate to use when interfacing with X controller type.

It has been proposed in the past that the Home Automation site should be merged with Home Improvement. I feel like the signal to noise ratio will deter home automation professionals from using the site if this were to happen, but I am also troubled that we may not get enough commitment for a free standing Home Automation site.

What do you guys think?

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

62 followers in 15 months... I'd say you definitely need to merge, and you know that.

You can hope this merge will work out well, or you can keep this proposal forever at definition phase (which is clearly less useful, I'd say).

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I do know that. I'm thinking this probably comes down to putting general consumer off-the-shelf home automation questions in Home Improvement and the more custom stuff with Electronics. – gwhitake Jan 26 at 14:15
@gwhitake: That seems like an appropriate decision. – Ambo100 Jan 27 at 20:47
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up vote 3 down vote

I've just commited to this site. Based on the numbers I'd say we need to merge as well. However it does have its disadvantages.

This home automation topic can become quite technical. It might 'flood' the Home Improvement site. We are talking:

  • C# development.
  • Custom user interface design
  • Network optimalization and the required tooling.
  • etc.

In the case we are outnumbered we can still 'lose' ourself in the amount of unrelated questions like 'Can I make an existing dog door bigger for my new Dog?'

We are not talking about the do-it-yourself kits purchased at the local store.

A possibility is to use specific tags. That way we can filter on our own automation set of questions. However this way maintaining the community will even be harder than a seperate stack site.

I still think althrough we don't have the required commitment that a seperate site would be the better option and that it should just needs time in beta to prove itself.

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