Great stuff! Glad to see this kind of stuff created. And a noble cause. You may want to talk to a patent attorney (I know this is not helping much). Perhaps you can give a call to the Office of Technology Commercialization at the Univ. of Minnesota and ask questions. As a Land-grant institution, they are supposed to be helping the public. Alternatively, to see if there is any money to be made there, you can talk to a "venture capital" firm, ask them to partner with you under an NDA, and see if they are interested in doing the market research on your behalf. Patent application fees can exceed $5k, if I recall correctly. It will also take some time, and there are no guarantees that you will receive a patent. A more interesting and daring path would be to approach SmartThings and see if they are interested. You may have to swap some pieces out for using their technology, or they can straight-up buy it. Just a thought.