Ignore the wireless warriors. Wireless is great and my entire house is full of an assortment of esp8266, shelly, sonoff and xiaomi devices and these devices have been a god send for diy’ers, retrofit or rental properties but when it comes to new or large renovations there’s nothing like a central PLC with reliable hardwired relays and sensors.
I share your desire to have a forum thread dedicated to wired smart home options and there is a definite drought of shared knowledge in this area. I’m about to start a new build in NW London and been researching PLC smart home equipment for several months now. For my needs I think I have narrowed it down to either Loxone or Unipi or a combination of the two but that may change as it does several times. It’s an absolute minefield for newbies. I’ve been making things with arduinos and raspberry pi’s for a couple years now and there is such a vast amount of information and tutorials out there that it’s possible to teach yourself but this does not seem to be the case for PLC’s.
Both Loxone and Unipi have forums but it would be helpfull if we had something here on HA because ultimately the ease and strength of HA intergration is crucial for me as any future system will ultimately be automated and controlled by HA.
To summarise why I have shortlisted these two:
Loxone:
Seems simple enough for anyone tech savy to self install although Loxone customer service have been less helpful than I had hoped and keep referring me to their installation partners when I go to them with any technical queries. There is however a decent knowledge base, youtube clips and forums. A lot of it german unfortunately, luckily I speak german so happy to help if you need!
Their “tree” wiring topology seems to cut installation time and cost and their dimmer modules are simple “out of the box” solutions but I don’t like the idea that they only work with “tree” devices so you are limited to using their sensors and lights etc.
Also what if I change my mind down the line or want to change it in years to come, I’ll have to rewire…?
Unipi:
I’m very much going blind down this alley (limited online resources) but on first impression the Mervis software looks straight forward enough (I need to do a lot more research on this) but you have choices and can even use node-red if you want.
The units are cheapish and expansion is very cost effective and you can probably make it work with almost any devices out there, so no restrictions on sensors, switches and lights which is great.
Decent enough forum but no dedicated HA section, yet!
I would have thought it would be similar to modbus to integrate into HA but I’m slightly concerned with reported delays and problems that people on the forums are trying to resolve.
I am very tempted to just buy one of their smaller PLC’s and start wiring it up for testing…