For years, home automation has been the domain of home installers outfitting wealthy consumers with $10,000 to $100,000 setups to control lights, home theater, security, air conditioning and home audio. Now, more than ever mainstream home automation appears to be growing out of that rich niche as evidenced by all the DIY products on the market. Brands like Nest, Hue, Kwikset, Sonos, Korus, Dropcam, Honeywell, Yale, Iris, Insteon and Belkin individually control your A/C, lights, locks, cameras, home audio, garage door, window shades, and anything with a plug. These new devices are great, but in aggregate when used at the same time actually create a new set of consumer problems.

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It seems like you can’t go a week without seeing a new announcement on a DIY home automation product.  CES and CEDIA are the trade show kings of this market and have buildings dedicated to the category.  Even Amazon has jumped onto the bandwagon, opening up a home automation store within a store. There are two distinct sets of people who are buying these devices; technology mavens and home automation enthusiasts. The mavens buy home automation because they want to be the first with cool, new technology. The enthusiasts have been experimenting for years and the new products are just their next generation.

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The challenge with all these products comes in when consumers start buying a lot of them.  What if the consumer bought a Nest thermostat, Kwikset door lock, Phillips Hue lighting, Lutron light switch, a Sonos audio system and a bunch of Belkin wireless plugs?  First, the consumer would have six different apps to set up, learn and use. Additionally, there aren’t easy ways to make the devices work as one system if you wanted to trigger an event after an event.  What if I wanted my outdoor lights to turn on after the garage door unlocks?  That’s not going to happen because it requires two separate apps.

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There are other issues, too. For many of these products, you will need to have separate wireless adapters plugged into the wall. You see, many of these devices works on a different kind of wireless network. It’s not just WiFi, among home automation solutions, there is Zigbee, Zwave, Insteon, Itron, RadioRA2 and more. Because devices are speaking a different wireless “language”, they need a different wireless adapter.  Now imagine having five or six wireless adapters plus your WiFi router in the house… ridiculous.

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There are two ways to get around this. The first is to go to a service and device aggregator like AT&T with their Digital Life service where they provide one app and a consolidated wireless adapter box. The consumer makes a multi-year service agreement similar to a phone which decreases the initial cash outlay. Bundles start at $55 per month with two year commit and a $450 equipment charge to $65 per month with an $800 outlay. Like AT&T in cable services, the consumer is unlikely to get best in breed in hardware, software, or services.

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The other approach is where a company enables consumers to buy the best in breed endpoint products, but integrates the hardware and software. This means creating one app from the disparate apps and consolidating all of the wireless adapters. One company, called Revolv, is intent on doing this exact thing. Revolv is pulling all the disparate wireless boxes into one box and pulling the disparate apps into one app. At launch in Q4, Revolv says they will support the following devices with one wireless hub and one app.

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Wireless home automation has been attempted for decades with minimal success. The technology has now improved to the point where it’s cost effective, and mobile platforms added to the ease of use and added a large ecosystem of app developers.  Home automation’s newfound success could hinder it given the multiple apps and multiple wireless protocols supported by different devices.  Companies like Revolv are taking different approaches to AT&T to help solve this very complex problem.

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Aside from usability issues, problems with Smart Home Security are complicated. Without even darkening the doorway, someone has burglarized your home. And there were no broken windows, no crowbars, no ski masks or vinyl gloves –  just a hacker with a digital key to, say, your fancy new thermostat, toaster, or TV.

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So-called smart technology might be making individual home appliances more connected, but it’s also making the homes themselves more porous, with integrated networks vulnerable to a range of attacks from virtual intruders. Chances are, if you were the first one on the block to snag this tech, you’ve got something worth protecting in that bungalow (or mansion) of yours. And if so, it’s best not to think of that phone in your pocket (the one that grants access to your doors, heating system, garage, etc.) as a simple remote control as much as the brain of your entire home – something subject to mind control if ever a good hacker-hypnotist comes a-knocking.

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The past few years have offered home-automators a ruck of horror stories and lessons in the form of system hacks. For instance, Logan Lamb, a light-side hacker and scholar, wrote a paper in 2014 on “home insecurity” in which he presented findings from infiltrating (with ease) three prominent home security systems: ADT, Honeywell, and Vivint. And earlier this year Rapid7 researcher Philip Bosco was able to bypass Comcast’s Xfinity’s security system simply by jamming a radio frequency. In the case of smart home vulnerability, there seems to be new proof piling up every month.

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When it comes to theft though, there is, as some of the old Greeks would say, a unity of opposites. And this new variant of home burglary has quickly given birth to a new form of security, with companies suddenly advertising data-encryption safety measures as part of their packages. For instance, after noting that hackers could acquire access to users’ camera data, ADT began employing encrypted data in its “Pulse” monitoring systems. The question is whether or not the tactics of defense can keep up with the weaponry. Right now smart home security companies are stuck in a trench war – bombarded both by well-meaning researchers and thieving hackers. One company is doing something about this Meet Canary. The all-in-one home security system you control from your phone.

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At a time when data encryption is the hot button topic of the day, there is a bevy of business opportunities for those who want to help consumers confront the threat of home hacking. As smart home technology becomes more available to the average homeowner, expect to see cybersecurity become a literal household issue. Just imagine a future in which the wrought-iron bars on the windows of an at-risk home aren’t as crucial as a good antivirus package installed in an app for a washer-dryer combo.

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All in all, the smart home technologies we’ve come to love seem dumber and dumber by the day. Spending thousands in an effort to make life easier with a bevy of products has seemingly done exactly the opposite.