So now Lennar is going to put "Alexa" in all their new homes.
That's ridiculous folks.
Look, I have ready-to-go, right now, the software interface necessary (including an app to control it all which is working, but still a bit rough in appearance) that gives you full control and monitoring of your home but does not give anything away to the cloud.
It's your damned house folks, not Amazon's, not Google's, and not Apple's.
HomeDaemon-MCP requires no outside connection at all, other than for you to control it. It runs over SSL and talks to only you. It's a master-slave system, so if you want a second controller in the garage or a rainproof box out near the pool or sprinkler gear (or both), that's fine -- they all work together.
It speaks standard Z-wave for thermostats, switches, motion detectors, energy management, locks and more. It does passive security as you define it (e.g. "arm yourself 1 hour after the garage is closed if no movement is seen inside during that time), or pretty much anything else you want.
The homeowner can modify the event list in a nearly-indefinite fashion to what they want.
You can see and control it all from any web browser or an Android app (which I am about 90% done with functionality wise, and ~60-70% done appearance wise.)
It supports any number of users each with a separate set of defined permissions that allows for control over what a given user can see, change or both.
The builder or third-party installer who wants this can buy it wholesale from me, own it, and have a unique and entirely private advantage. While you could probably teach Alexa how to do this (I'm sure I could write a "skill" to do so easily) you'd be nuts to do it because then authentication information has to be in he cloud somewhere and if' it's in there some jackass can steal it.
Don't buy a house with a "cloud" implementation of something like this and don't, for God's sake, install it either in an existing house. You are literally giving away when you're home and the keys to your castle to an unknown set of people and that assumes nobody ever breaks into Amazon's, or whoever else's "cloud" gear.
That will happen, and when it does you're going to get robbed at best and home-invaded at worst since it becomes trivial for a bad guy to know everything they want to about when you're home and when you're not along with where you are in the house and if you're sleeping, for example.
No, No and NO!
Yes, this technology is cool, it saves energy and it's damned convenient.
It both saves money and adds tremendous convenience but you must never, ever link that to any sort of "cloud" or third-party environment. Ever, if you give a damn about privacy and security in your house.
Instead if you're one of these firms in that space get ahold of me today (look to the right) and let's have a conversation. You can own the real deal with only the homeowner having the data and access right here, right now, today.
No kidding, and if you buy it lock, stock and barrel you own it and your competitors do not.