My House Runs .NET - Smart Home Automation with .NET Core and Azure

By Cam Soper

Elevator Pitch

.NET Core isn’t just for web pages! Using live demos with commercially available home automation hardware, I want to show you how to use the advanced features of .NET Core to drive home automation logic at home or in the cloud.

Description

You’ve got a voice assistant device, like Amazon Echo or Google Home, and you use it with a smart bulb or two. “Alexa, turn on the lights.” “OK Google, turn off the lamp.” That’s useful and neat, but where are the smart, automated homes that Back to the Future promised us by 2015? A house that greets you by name, notifies you when the mail arrives, locks the door when the kids forget, and knows when you’re not at home?

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads… just .NET Core and Azure! In this session, we will show how to drive a smart home hub with the style of a DeLorean and the power of a flux capacitor.

You’ll learn:

  • How to use .NET Core to drive popular smart home hubs, such as SmartThings and Hubitat.
  • How to write smart automation logic in C# code to respond to events, such as a door opening or a temperature threshold being reached.
  • How to use Azure to enable secure remote control of your home and enable unlimited integration with services like IFTTT and Microsoft Flow.

Notes

I’m a .NET docs author at Microsoft. I’ve built an open-source automation engine in .NET Core that sits on top of a popular home automation platform. I’m passionate about HA and IoT, and I have some fun demos that anybody should be able to pick up and implement at home.