I think the safest way to go is to purchase products with open standards, namely Z-Wave and Zigbee. They&#x27;re open protocols that can be used with any number of HA products; SmartThings, Wink, Vera, etc.<p>You can purchase Z-Wave thermostats from Honeywell, switches from Leviton, locks from Schlage and so on. I use OpenHAB in my home, which is an open-source home automation server. It can run on anything from a RPi to a blade with just a few necessary additions (namely a Z-Wave dongle and some sort of network connection.)<p>OpenHAB requires a fair bit of programming knowledge and the learning curve can be steep for some, but overall it&#x27;s very functional. A few things I do in my house:<p>- When the garage door opens and it&#x27;s after sunset, the hallway lights turn on and set themselves to 50% brightness.<p>- When I start watching a show on PleX, the living room lights fade out. If the show is paused, they&#x27;ll come up enough for me to navigate around and refill my drink.<p>- When both my girlfriend and I are gone from the house, the A&#x2F;C shuts off. When it detects we&#x27;re within 1&#x2F;2 mile of the house, it&#x27;ll come back on so it&#x27;s comfortable when we arrive.<p>There&#x27;s a million other things you can do with OpenHAB. It has hundreds of &quot;bindings&quot; to different HA products and supports HTTP endpoints, etc. Proprietary standards are bound to go away eventually, but open standards with open-source software will always be around.