The wife and I are building a new custom home in about 6 months. I’m hoping to plan out my (initial) integration of HA during the build so I can run wires for as much as possible. If you were building a new home, what is on your list of things you would do to integrate HA and what would you pass on?
It has to have a high WAF, since the wife is not into this stuff (unless it makes her life easier, then she doesn’t seem to mind)
Nothing can be dependent on HA. If I poweroff HA I want the home to work as normal.
I’d prefer to avoid “the cloud” as much as possible. I’d like devices to be local.
What I’m planning so far
I want to use HA as the alarm system (I know this kind of breaks rule 2 above, but hear me out). I’d like to hard-wire magnetic sensors in every door and window (even interior doors) as well as hard-wire motion sensors and sirens. That way we could still use those sensors with a “standard” alarm if we wanted to ditch HA.
I want 4-6 wall panel locations hard-wired with cat6 to handle the tablet charging (locations: front door, mud room (garage entry), upstairs hall by bedroom, basement)
I’m going to put in a bunch of exterior IP cameras, but run them separately with Blue Iris. I’d like Blue Iris and HA to talk, though
Every light switch will be a smart switch, but I’d like a switch that looks normal
I plan to use Ubiquiti Unifi for my WiFi network
Cat6 will be ran from a central location in my basement control room to several locations (office, bedrooms, TVs, etc)
I plan to centralize all my stereo receivers, Blu-Ray player, etc in this control room (we will using a streaming TV service, so no cable boxes)
Whole-home audio using a combination of Google Home devices and installed ceiling speakers. I’ll use Google Chromecast devices plugged into a whole-home audio amplifier in my control room to send audio to the ceiling speakers.
Our living room will have 20ft ceilings with windows up to the top. I’d like to control blinds on these windows (and other windows) with HA. What’s the best way to do that?
I’d like to tie my HVAC into HA, but not have it depend on HA. I assume the best way to do that is with smart thermostats, correct? Any recommendations?
Some questions:
What smart TVs play well with HA?
Do any whole-home audio amps work with HA?
What would you recommend I use to send the magnetic door/window signals to HA? (Konnected, Wemos D1 Mini, etc)
Is there anything else I should consider? Or anything I listed that you would recommend that I ditch?
I’d suggest running cat 6 everywhere, and more than you think you’ll need. Doing it at this stage means far less disruption than later. Wifi is good, but not perfect.
I assume you’re thinking of POE powered tablets with no batteries?
Your cameras will be POE as well? (and, I’d assume, on their own VLANs to protect you from intrusion. multiple VLANs is also a good idea here. )
You cannot have too many power sockets.
Wired beats wireless. This includes with things like a wemos for your mag sensors. Wired means you don’t have to be concerned about wifi dead zones.
Switches: If you go with smart switches, you can’t have smart lights. This may be acceptable.
I have a set of hue bulbs in my entrance which come on via a motion sensor. But I found that other house members would turn off the dumb light switch rendering all the bulbs unreachable.
So I put a wemo light switch in there as well. Now the automation detects it being turned off and it waits for a few minutes, turns the wemo light switch on, and a few seconds later turns the hue bulbs off. The linked motion sensor to the lights will then resume control.
(I could have put a lock on the switch I suppose!)
I agree. I’m planning on running about 8,000 feet of cat6 to start. 4 runs to each TV, 4 runs to each room (2 runs at 2 locations), 8 runs to my office, plus an extra dozen runs to the attic for future-proofing. I also plan to run a smurf tube from my basement control room to each attic cavity. I considered dropping a single Cat6 down every other stud cavity, but I figured that may be overkill. Maybe I’ll do that on my main floor and basement walls (building a 2-story with walkout basement) since my top story can be accessed later via the attic
Kind of, I’ll use the tablet batteries but use HA to turn on the chargers when the batteries get low. I’ll run Cat6 from each tablet to my control room and use a smart plug or sonoff to turn on/off the charger.
Yep, I’m planning on PoE cameras on their own VLAN. Blue Iris would be exposed to the internet. If Blue Iris and HA are on separate VLANS can they still talk to each other?
My plan is to run all the mag sensor wires back to my control room so they terminate at a central point. I can then have the Wemos/Konnected/etc in that control room where I would have a strong signal. Or, is there something I can in place of the wemos that would be wired via Cat6?
For home security I would recommend to go with standard company like DSC or Honeywell hard wired system and get it integrated with HA using Envisalink module that way you can operate it independently or using HA
I have DSC powerseries with RFK keypad, I have doors, windows, motion detectors and even smoke and CO integrated (using Kidde relay modules) with security system
If not already planned, make sure the wiring for switches etc. can also transport bus-signals like KNX. Even if you don’t use it yet, you might want to in the future.
Assuming you allow the routing of traffic between vlans, they can talk to each other. You just want to restrict what can pass between them.Or you make sure that the services exist on both networks.
I recently did something like this to a smaller scale (no tablets or mag sensors)
Definitely wire as much as possible. For lighting, I like z-wave. Leviton makes good switches that perform well as smart devices but also look good and work well as regular devices too.
Make sure you talk to your electrician about this. Box fill becomes a problem when you install smart in-wall switches, because these tend to use more space inside the electrical boxes than normal switches.
Should you decide to use z-wave or some other wireless technology, drop a cat6 line where you think the hub might live. I dont like having these things exposed in the open, so I have a designated closet turned into a server room that houses all of this stuff. If you dont mind having the hub say near your TV or A/V equipment, just make sure you drop data lines there.
Almost twenty years ago, I wired my house with one Cat-5e jack in most rooms of the house. What I wished I’d done instead was pull two wires to all the walls in every single room.
This is one thing I was concerned about. I know z-wave has a limited range, but I didn’t know about hubs. Does the hub act like a repeater? Or does the hub collect the Z-Wave signal and send it to HA via LAN?
I’m thinking about running a few extra Cat6 wires horizontally through all the walls 6 inches higher than the electrical boxes. Then I could cut a hole, put in a remodel box, and pull the wires through anywhere along the wall.
Zwave’s range extends and gets stronger with ever mains powered device you install to the network. Zwave uses a mesh network so there’s always a path back to the controler/hub.
If you have enough Ubiquiti APs then you have a WiFi network with built-in redundancy. The problem with Z-wave is that if the hub glitches then it stops working until you resolve it (see angry wife). So I’m considering only using WiFi and getting rid of Z-wave.
As for the comment above using smart switches and light bulbs. Yes it is possible, but why would you want to invest in doubled smart devices if you can have smart switch, and a dumb light (which costs way less and is easier if ever need to be replaced).
As for your wifi controller. I would want to ask you to look at TP-Link Deco m9 (plus). This does not only mesh the WiFi Access Points but also acts as Zigbee and bluetooth range booster.
Correct, if you use a regular switch, then you would need smart light bulbs. But when you already got a smart switch connected via WiFi/Zigbee or Z-Wave, you don’t need an additional Smart Light bulb. A dumb bulb will be enough.
I run HomeAssistant on a raspberrypi which also serves as the z-wave hub (via a USB stick). This is a tiny device that sits behind a TV for me. If you put this in a central general location, you should be OK. As mentioned in other posts, with z-wave, each node extends the range until you reach the max ( about 100 meters ).
I have a node about 80ft from the hub, and about 25ft from the nearest node going through a couple of brick walls. Never had an issue.
Sounds like your project is a larger home though, so you may need to read up on z-wave or whichever wireless technology you plan on using and look for range limitations.
