Hello everyone. I have an apartment that I’m gonna fully renovate and I want to make it a smart one.
I have zero experience with smart devices and such but I have been reading and searching a lot.
What are your suggestions about how to make all the plugs and switches of the apartment smart?
Thanks in advance!
Not a specific product recommendation, but I highly suggest only using products that allow local control. This should be listed via tag in the integrations list.
I am not searching for suggestions on products. I want to know how can this be done from a connectivity point of view.
For connectivity, the most popular options are WiFi, Zwave, or zigbee.
Personally, I like WiFi devices, but you need to make sure you have a very strong signal with coverage in all parts of house. In-wall WiFi switches might have difficulty receiving a weaker signal.
Zwave is nice due to it self-assembling a mesh network, but you’ll need an adapter on your host to connect to the Zwave network.
Do some research on which system will fit best for your environment, then stick with it for all devices.
If you are going a complete renovation, i would advise against using wireless technologies. You have the change now to do it right.
It all depends on your budget though.
What do you mean do it right? What are you suggesting?
If you redo electric wiring: If you do not want to invest huge amounts of money (i.e. less than maybe 20.000$/€ for a professional installer to make everything new and smart):
As a minimum take care to get neutral leads to each and every lightswitch. Don’t know about your local situation (these things vary by country), but where I live this is a huge problem if you want to put in actors afterwards.
Run ethernet into every room (or as many as you can afford), not only for smart home purposes, but also for WiFi accesspoints, phones or stuff that can get power by PoE. Ethernet cables are probably the most usefull thing to have “everywhere”, because it can be used for practically everything except for live 110/230V power. Rooms in the extreme corners are even more valuable for this, because these are nice for access points that cover these hard to reach areas. You want complete and good WiFi coverage anyway. Run ethernet to all TVs. Video takes lots of bandwitdht. While Audio over WiFi is just fine, several people watching HD or 4K can and will fill up WiFi rather quickly, especially with resolutions going up and up. If you wall mount the TV it is best to have ehternet behind, so that it is hidden (power too, of course).
If you redo in-wall switches or plugs, just make sure there is enough space in the plastic receptacles to put reasonably sized actors/sensors/whatevers behind the switch into the “can”.
Run some extra, unused power cables everywhere. You never know. Cables are cheap, opening up walls afterwards is expensive and sometimes impossible.
Run empty tubing (or whatever) between rooms and floors, so you can pull cables later. This might not work each and everytime afterwards, but it is very cheap beforehand, and very expensive afterwards.
Make all your switches, lights etc come back to your electricity board instead of the switches going directly to the lights. This way you can later on go any direction: replace with z-wave in your elecrity closet, go for wired solutions etc.
Cables don’t cost much when renovating, and it gives you a lot of flexibility afterwards.
Renovating your place into a smart apartment sounds exciting! For smart plugs and switches, there are plenty of options out there.