I'm building a new house, how should I implement HA?

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I’m planning to build a computer to install HA on and install in a server rack in my control room. It will be in the basement, but fairly centrally located in the basement. I’ll try to also put a powered hub somewhere centrally located to help the signal. I’m thinking of using wifi devices as much as possible, especially for devices that have mains power to them. But I’m sure I’ll need some z-wave devices.

It’s going to be about 3,500 sq ft. 2-story plus a basement. I would think there wouldn’t be too many areas of the house that would be more than 100 meters from the control room, except maybe the garage.

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Building a server to run homeassistant is way too much unnecessary overkill. Most residential ‘hubs’ sold are some form of SBC, some are straight raspberry pi models wrapped in an enclosure, but it’s your setup.

At that size, I dont think you’ll have a problem at all.

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I’m thinking of using these for a magnetic door switch. Does anyone have any experience with these or recommend anything else?

Any recommendations for water leak sensors? I’d prefer something wired, or at least wifi instead of Z-Wave. I can pre-wire it so I’ll be able to run power to it.

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Does anyone have a recommendation for wired motion detectors? Preferably ceiling mount? I assume I could use a wemos D1 Mini to send the signal to HA, correct?

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I constructed a new home 2 years ago using:
KNX and Zennio as brand
https://www.knx.org/knx-en/for-offices/index.php
https://www.zennio.com/products/touch-panels-room-controllers
Dali system for lightning


Unifi for the network with G3 Camera’s and unifi cloud key

Home assitant is running on Synology docker
https://www.synology.com/nl-nl/dsm/packages/Docker
It’s working pretty good till now.
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I am also building a new home (groundbreaking in a week) and my requirements are extremely similar to yours. WAF is critical, has to have “dumb redundancy,” Ubiquiti, wall tablets, central equipment closet, the works. Let me share a few of my notes that might help you.

Blinds/shades
I have been looking into this a lot, and I think I’m going to go a DIY route and get regular shades and then retrofit some of them to be power operated using motors like this. I’m going this route because (1) I don’t want all of my shades to be powered, and (2) I want to have them all match and I don’t want to be limited by lines of products that also have from-the-factory power options. Those motors like I linked to are controlled via RF, and can be integrated with Home Assistant using a Broadlink RM Pro. I’m running 2-conductor wire for 12-volt power to most window frames.

Whole-home audio/voice assistant integration
We’re an Alexa family, and I’m planning on having Alexa available everywhere. I’m going to install units in the ceiling (disguised as speakers) or used Alexa-enabled Fire Tablets permanently mounted in the walls in key locations, using this PoE/audio over ethernet in that HTD kit to return their audio to the central closet. Their audio will then be piped into the home audio system. HTD has some great looking new amps like this one (single room) or this one (multi-room) that have built-in auto-switching inputs designed for voice assistants, so a set of built-in speakers can be shared between a TV and an Echo device. Watch their video, it’s pretty cool. With Echo devices or ChromeCast Audios, this amp would essentially give you whole-home audio without having to wire any in-wall control pads. This is the route we’re going – I’ve built two other houses with built-in keypads in the walls, and these days we just don’t use them. We want it all to work with voice and the phones.

The only thing I haven’t figured out yet with this setup is how I’m going to integrate Alexa into my living room 5.1 setup, since those amps I linked are designed for stereo only. I’m looking at line-level mixers and having Alexa hijack two of the living room speakers.

Light switches
There’s a lot of switches on the market these days and I haven’t tested them all, but I’ve had good luck with the Leviton Z-wave switches. I like that they have a separate dimmer control…when I had “single paddle” ones like GE and Linear, where the dimming function was holding in the paddle, my guests were constantly confused and frustrated with the lights. The dimming rate is also customizable, and there are status LEDs to show the dimmer level.

HVAC
Yes, smart thermostats that have integrations with HA. I have ecobee in my current house; in the new house I think we’re going with some Honeywell WiFi-enabled thermostats, one for each floor.

Alarm system
Like you I am so far undecided on how I’m going to approach the security system. I would like to:

  1. Have hardwired (and invisible) door contact sensors, that ideally can be shared between a “real” security system and HA. Thus far I can’t figure out what hardwired system is the easiest to DIY and has a decent way of integrating with HA and exposing sensor states. I’m looking into the DSC/Honeywell stuff that @gsksim recommended but I don’t know much about this.
  2. Be able to expand the system with additional wireless sensors in the future if needed.
  3. Be able to control/disarm/deactivate an alarm with automation from HA, so that when we inevitably forget to arm it (or disarm it) I can automate some of that.

TVs
I can’t yet answer your question about which TV would be best from an automation standpoint, but for each TV location I am running 2x cat6, 1x RG6 coax, a 4-conductor wire (for 2x RCA analog audio), and conduit back to the closet. This is the combination I’ve determined will give me the most flexibility for future expansion.

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I can’t believe this has not been said yet:

Get a Neutral wire installed to each light switch location. You never know when you will need it later for powering smart switches etc.

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Pretty sure that’s been required by code basically everywhere for quite awhile now. I haven’t seen a home built in the last couple decades without them.

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It’s not a requirement here in Australia.

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Thanks for the great feedback! That gives me a lot of really good ideas!

Take a look at this. I think it will accomplish what you want. You may need to put an amp between the echo dot and this speaker switch. I plan to use those switches to use the same speakers for whole house audio as well as surround sound on my patio, in my living room, and in my basement.

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I did a retrofit of some roller blinds, roller shutters and lights at my place.

Everything is hard wired back to a central point. It’s a spaghetti, but it’s rock solid and super fast. Have never had one issue and it’s very simple to understand. My light switches are two cables with a momentary switch that the arduino (mega) reads as a button press.

I would definitely go all-wired in a new house build.

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Nice, I think that will do nicely for the 5.1 zone. For the rest of the zones I’m just doing stereo TV audio, so I think I’m going to use that HTD amp.

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Think about adding a server running Unraid to run HA and all the media services you will want.

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I originally thought about a huge media server, but then I realized that pretty much all the media I consume is cloud based (spotify, netflix, etc). I have a few of my own digital media files, some one-of movies, but I can just keep them on my desktop.

I am trying to figure out what I want to run HA on. I’ve always used a Raspberry Pi, but I’d like to do it right in the new house and use the best of the best. I’d also like to rack-mount whatever I use.

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NUC running HassIO on top of Ubuntu. Plenty of threads about this already so not going to side track this one any further.

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For a rack mount, I’d suggest you just get a small rackmount server and stick something like unraid or ESXi on it. (ESXi is my preference, but that’s because I know it)

Like one of the cheaper supermicro ones. a NUC is cheaper though, and you could always just stick it on a shelf in the rack.

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Check htd.com for whole home audio solutions, seems relatively inexpensive compare to russound or other systems. They do have both keypad and without keypad solutions, supports alexa and google.

only missing piece is HA integration, I am pretty sure it is not difficult to do.

Sprinkler system:
If you ever decide to install lawn sprinklers then its best time before sodding to install underground water lines for multizone and run separate water line from your main valve.
you can build your own multizone electronically controlled manifold and controller board (tasmota or esphome - d1mini + 6 channel relay)
if have whole house water softner installed then make sure lawn water supply line is bypassed.

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Take a look at the Monoprice 10761 6-zone controller. It interfaces nicely with Home Assistant using a USB-serial cable (make sure to get the FTDI chip usb-serial). The controls come up nicely in the interface, and there’s plenty of inputs on the back for you to plug into.

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@rogersmj, with this blinds setup, will you be able to tell what position the blinds are in at a given time? Or will you only be able to control the open/close without knowing if they are open or closed?

I emailed HTD about this. They said their systems are controllable via RS-232 commands. They said they are happy to provide the plans to anyone that wants to integrate it. That’s WAY over my head. Any takers? :slight_smile:

I do plan to install lawn irrigation. I’m not sure how often I’ll use it, or if I’ll automate it to run a lot, I just like the idea of never dragging hoses out to the yard again to water the yard. I originally had looked at using OpenSprinkler. I think someone created a way for OpenSprinkler to talk to HA. But, I suppose you are right, I could just use HA to run it. :thinking:

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HA does a great job of controlling it via a NodeMCU and some relays and you can make the interface look ok too. I love being able to control it from my phone whilst in the garden

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