This post is an introduction to the concept of smart homes and their potential benefits, particularly in terms of saving money. The author shares their personal experience with setting up a smart home and highlights the challenges of managing disparate devices from different vendors. They also discuss the importance of standards and unification in the smart home ecosystem, mentioning the upcoming "Matter" standard as an attempt to simplify things. The post will cover various topics related to smart homes, including personal benefits, business applications, and technical aspects such as data management and programming languages. The author aims to create a comprehensive guide on building and managing a smart home, with a focus on using Couchbase as a data platform for IoT devices.