I’ve been using daily routines with my smart speaker ever since Amazon rolled them out for its Echo devices. And I don’t trigger chained actions by yelling out some random phrase. Rather, I have my routines fire off at different times during the day — really, just wake-up time and bed time — so I can get a quick snapshot of important information, like the weather and upcoming calendar events.

Google Home Hub is the latest member of Google's popular smart speaker family. At first glance, it looks like a Google Home with an LCD bolted on top - which seems pretty superfluous, given you can use existng Homes to stream video to TVs.

However, it turns out that the main selling point isn't video streaming at all. (The key is in the product's name.) In short, it will act as the central hub for all your smart home devices, allowing you to control them at a glance.

Amazon held a hardware event last night, releasing a pile of new products to drive home automation. The Echo range received a massive boost but a number of other accessories including cameras, smartplugs and even a microwave oven. And while not every product will make it to Australia - we won't be getting the microwave oven for now - there's enough in this announcement for Amazon to be declared the current leader in smart home gear.

Whether you're new to the world of smart home tech, or looking to add to your ever growing connected collection - you should probably get on this.

I've been adding a bunch of smart home devices to my home. It's part of an ongoing experiment to see what I can do to make my life easier, my home safer and to save some money on power bills. But I'm finding that I keep hitting some roadblocks. And while I do hit the odd technical roadblock, I'm finding that the biggest problems stem from the intransigence of vendors.

Home automation is where the Internet of Things runs headlong through your front door. And, there are a bunch of devices around for securing that front door. One is the Schlage Sense Smart Deadbolt. Schlage isn't a particularly well-known brand in Australia but they're a big deal when it comes to door furniture in the US. And the Sense is a nifty door lock that lets you remotely control the deadbolt from a smartphone as well as linking it to other devices so you can automate what happens when you enter or leave your home.

I'm looking at various home automation and smart home solutions at the moment, experimenting with what works and doesn't work so well in my home. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been playing with some weather sensing gadgets; the Netatmo Weather Station and Elgato Eve indoor and outdoor sensors.

I have to be honest - I like the idea of these and can see how the data they produce can be useful. But I'm still some time away from being able use them for automating anything. However, let's look at what these devices can do and how I might be able to use them.

For most of us, the journey down home automation starts with one of the simplest things we can add some tech to - lighting. But, for the most part, lighting is pretty boring, Push the globe in, install an app, connect it to your network and you're done. But the Nanoleaf Aurora is a little different. It's an array of triangular LED panels that you can assemble into different shapes so you can add a little bit of artistry to your illumination.

Over the coming weeks I'm going to be looking at a bunch of different home automation gear. I have several goals in this journey covering making things easier to use, energy saving and home security. But I can already see some challenges along with all those opportunities.

Belkin's WeMo is a pretty decent set of home automation kit that covers light bulbs, switches, cameras, motion sensors and energy monitoring gear. It is possible to get it to play nicely with other equipment if you're prepared to tinker with IFTTT but the company has finally released a new device, the WeMo Bridge, that lets you link various WeMo devices to Apple's HomeKit ecosystem.

I'm about to move house and one of the things I want to do is invest in some serious home automation. Not just remote switching - that's easy. I want real automation where I can press a button or say a command like "Goodnight" and all the lights tun off and curtains close. The trouble is systems like this, while available, have been quite expensive and tricky to install in older properties. And renters are pretty much left out of many home automation options. But the B-One Hub wants to change that. It's a multi-radio device that acts as a universal translator that can deal with thousands of different end-point devices.

The home tech revolution is here and our houses are becoming increasingly connected -- as is everyone in them. Gone are the days of keeping the kid's hands off our expensive adult toys. Many of them know how to use them better than we do.

Fancy an overhaul of your living spaces? It doesn’t have to be a chore, or extravagantly pricey. The trick is the Bluetooth LED Smart Bulb, which brings the entire color spectrum to your living space.

Getting started in the world of home automation may seem daunting, but it’s actually fairly simple. Depending on your goals, it can also be quite affordable, and even save you money over time. A smart home isn’t just some automatic lights either - there are loads of options to make day to day life that little bit easier.

When you're working with connected devices or home automation projects on the Raspberry Pi, it's important to lock down your Raspberry Pi so it's secure. Over on Hackster.io, they show you exactly how to that.

Video: There are all sorts of variations on Raspberry Pi-powered home automation systems, but ARM Tutorials shows off a pretty simple project that uses Twitter as the backbone.

Video: It's really easy to use a Raspberry Pi to create a cheap surveillance system with just one camera, but things get complicated if you want multiple cameras. Over on Pyimagesearch, they figured out a way to get it done.

Recently we heard the story of a programmer who wrote scripts to secretly automate almost everything he did at work. Most of us may not have the coding skills to pull this off but there are tools you can use on your smartphone to automate various tasks in your life. Here's how to take advantage of those tools.

In Back to the Future II, Marty arrived in the future on October 21st, 2015 -- which just happened to be yesterday. It seems we've created an alternate timeline, because we didn't get all of the awesome stuff Marty's future did -- but we did get a lot. Here's the future tech we still have in this timeline.