Home automation revolves around the user as well
as the technology in terms of usability and features. The aim
of this paper is to provide an holistic and practical view on the
design of a real home automation system. This overview is based
on a practical experience gained by creating a real wireless home
automation system. Our discussion is focused on two main issues:
the actual communicating devices and the user interface. The
first part of the paper provides a brief analysis on main issues
in existing home automation systems. To this aim, we propose
a solution based on XBee and show how XBee modules can be
exploited to build up a scalable and fully customizable home
automation system. The second part of the paper discusses how
the user interface in home automation has been addressed in
existing approaches with a focus on mobile devices. We show
how we leveraged on multi-platform programming frameworks
to create a modern user interface