"If you have ever wished that you could have the security and convenience of a smart home, I"m here to tell you from experience that you can. . . . and you really don"t have to spend a lot of money if you don"t want to do so. Whether you"re a geek or not, home automation technology is within your grasp. You can discover how you can make your home a safer, easier place to live. It doesn"t matter whether you"re experienced in this sort of thing, because you can learn in less time than you think. Did you know that it"s not unusual for upscale homeowners to pay $30,000 to $50,000 for high end home automation? I can show you how to do it for one-tenth of that. In fact, you don"t even have to spend that much. If you just want to get your feet wet and spend twenty to thirty dollars on your house, you can do so and still accomplish some cool things. If by chance you find that the bug has "bitten", you can later build upon what you"ve done BECAUSE. . . I"ll show you the RIGHT WAY to approach home automation, and sources for lots of useful products. Using a "modular" approach, it becomes easy to achieve your goals. Once you learn the basics of security systems, X10, infrared, and a few other relatively simple things, you"ll be amazed at how easy they are to integrate under a single smart home controller. Integrating the Smart Home & its Owner presents all sorts of great tips on products, techniques, and ECONOMICAL ways of doing home automation with JDS Stargate. Following this is an illustrated step-by-step installation complete with photos and diagrams so you can see how it all fits together in the real world." - The author (Andy Jackson) has founded several home entertainment companies in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and is also a former network engineer holding Microsoft and Cisco certifications.