Paul Hibbert has done a series of videos on doing smart homes. Below Paul Hibbert does a video about doing a smart home (a one bedroom apartment) on a very tight budget (100 UK Pounds (UKP) or roughly $190 CDN (exact amount varies from day to day), How is that pulled off? Well there is a bit of cheating... Mr. Hibbert assumes you have an Amazon Echo (hahaha, but easy to do, as noted in the video you just sacrifice a goat to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos (because he doesn't yet have enough yachts)) or get out an old PC / Raspberry Pi that can run the "Home Assistant" ( https://www.home-assistant.io/ ) program which is fully free / fully local, runs under Linux, plus those other OSs (Paul Hibbert has videos on the install / set-up of Home Assistant). In other words, the "brain" of the system is not included in the 100 UKP price as it is assumed to be (effectively) free. In my case, yes, I have an older Raspberry Pi gathering that (just) meets the requirements for Home Assistant, so the (effectively) free bit is true for me, but not everyone. Another cheat on cost is on power. His shopping list includes some remote controls and motion sensors, the costs of which are included in the 100 Pound price. What isn't included is the cost of batteries (AAA size) to power those remote controls / motion sensors (fine, I'll just buy a Costco size package of AAA batteries and be done with it). Likewise he includes a presence sensor in the price, but not the USB power supply (I have an old spare Raspberry PI power supply that should do here, free for me, but this will vary for others). For those easily triggered, let me note that besides mocking Jeff Bezos, Paul Hibbert takes potshots at Star Trek, Star Wars, Tim (Tony is next week), and the IKEA smart home hub (he likes a lot of IKEA home automation products, just not their hub). The above are my criticisms of the video. The strengths include the fact that MOST of the products he mentions are from IKEA, and more-or-less all are available in Canada in versions (as required) compatible with the 120 / 60Hz AC power found here. The prices that he lists (when you take the exchange rate into account) are roughly about the same here as in the UK. Obviously this is all a starting point to a low cost, reasonably flexible, and reasonably expandable, home automation system, it will have to be tweaked for each household (ie: the example given is for a one bedroom apartment, I live in a two bedroom apartment, so a few extra bits and I'll be good). Any event, I have a presence sensor on order from AliExpress, I've done some shopping at IKEA and I am looking forward to pulling this all together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq6-v6hIyYE Colin McGregor