Do It Yourself home-automation gadgets that are affordable had a huge presence once again at this year's CES represented by a much larger number of companies promoting their options.While these low-cost, easy to setup gadgets can be really interesting, deciding on the wrong automation platform can become a big pain down the road.Major players such as Samsung and LG are already integrating smart home features into most of the appliances they're creating.If you are considering any type of DIY home automation, something you should look for are the more open standards that will support the various protocols and devices that are on the market.One of our favorites is still the SmartThings platform, now owned by Samsung, because they use an open standard that will work with over a thousand different automation gadgets including Phillips Hue lightbulbs and the Wemo line from Belkin.What makes the platform even more powerful is that users can generate new uses for the platform and share those i
