General

Why not IoT for home automation?

Why would you want your home automation to run someplace outside of your home? Google, Amazon, various Chinese companies, and many other parties absolutely want you do to this. The data they collect about you - your location, your habits, etc, and using it to target advertising (or worse) directly at you or selling your data to others that use it in different ways.

They're not controlling your devices via their cloud servers this to help you - they're helping themselves. Keep home automation at home.

Am I Paranoid? About internet security? Yes! About allowing strange devices uncontrolled access to my internal networks? Absolutely! Follow the link to read more.

Why Android? Android is an open, stable, full function and fully supported OS, making it an ideal platform for custom applications. Follow the link to read more.

Why Android Servers? A modest system adding some basic security and monitoring can serve as a proxy for basic devices lacking these capabilities. Follow the link to read more.

Why are Android phones excellent servers?

Phones and tablets come with a touch screen, a built in extensible OS (Android), file system and WIFI. They come with a power supply and battery backup. They have cameras that can be put to use for video monitoring. Phones can connect to the internet over the data network independent of your own internet connection, plus send and receive text (SMS) messages, all for relatively low cost. They can run a myriad of apps already available (including Tasker and Automagic), and once rooted can run many Linux applications. In short they are far superior to cards like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino while available at a comparable cost often with superior computing power.

What if I'm not a phandriod?

I understand perfectly... Still, check out the low end ZTE phones at Walmart - $20!!! See: Running MPP Servers.

These low end devices run the android versions of the MPP suite just fine, and will also run Tasker or Automagic for advanced scripting. Use them as a server and you keep your regular phone.

The android version of AutomationManager integrates with Google Drive to provide a web page you can access from your iPhone, iPOS, PC or most anything else. It also has an HTTP/REST server for remote scripting from other systems.

What's wrong with IFTTT and other similar services

Do you really want to rely on an external, cloud (a fancy word for web server) based service to control your home/business automation? What if your internet connection is lost? What if their service crashes or undergoes maintenance. What if their databases are hacked? What if they hire the wrong employee?

Your internal information (passwords, PINs, etc) could end up on the open (black) market or published on the web. Even worse is that an intercepted information feed could tell them when you're not home, and that information that could be made available to local (to you) unsavory characters.

If instead you use an android device as a proxy and an automation server, and only you call into that proxy, you eliminate this risk entirely.

What's the risk with unknown devices on my internal LAN?

Unknown devices often "phone home" back to the manufacturer, typically to register or look for firmware updates, etc. But any device that calls out of your network can be a bridge (like a trojan horse) back into your network by someone on the other end, allowing them unfettered access. It's usually best to block those devices from reaching the internet using your router's access control features. There's more detail here: Am I Paranoid?