Multiple Home Assistant in an Apartment Building (Building Contractor Project)

Installation
1

Hi all,

Well im working with a building contractor here in my country and they want to make a smart building from scratch, they need a Home assistance instance to monitor all systems of the common areas of the building (doors lights heater etc…) from a central location… That is not my problem and is very easy to achieve.

My problem is they want to make every single apartment a “smart apartment” so every single one will be using the same devices on each apartment and floor (its an 8 story building, roughly 48 apartments), every single one will have the same sensors to buy in bulk (zigbee, z-wave or WiFi) and save some money, so my question is the following…

  1. How on earth can i make first of all a batch installation with minimal intervention to activate each one and set up as much as i can to lower the time it takes for the technician (the idea is to use intel NUC’s).
  2. How do i stop for example home assistant floor 2 to not to talk to sensors in floor 1 and 3 and only the ones from that apartment. (and to discover easy the ones i need on that floor on the network)
    3)Can i make a Master Account for a technician to get to every apartment an access to repair/configure/add more sensors as needed?.

Thanks a lot if i recall something else i’ll write to you.
Have a nice day!

2

That is what security is for. For example, a zigbee sensor will only communicate with the hub it is paired to, although you could conceivably add a neighbour’s device if they were reconfiguring it.

Unfortunately with the demise of yaml configuration, this is hard.

3

May I ask what hardware they / you have looked at?

www.velbus.eu would be perfect for this setup.

Each apartment would be independent without reliance on an internet connection or central processor, leaving HA to act as a gateway / UI / high level logic / link between building control and AV hardware.

I’m happy to have a conversation with you / the developer and help you identify the correct combination of hardware.

Good luck,
Stuart

4

This is very easy when using Velbus hardware, as you can create a single specification for each apartment type and deploy it quickly into each.

You can go as far as cloning mini computer systems and making small adjustments to make them unique.

This is fairly easy, as long as each apartment is a separate subnet.

There is a very easy solution, even if each apartment takes an utterly independent broadband supplier.

I’m happy to help on a commercial level.

5

OK,
First one, and when they are all connected perfectly to each apartment, what about 2.4ghz channels, i have to use a different channel in each floor to avoid interference?, in that case is better to use Z-wave?

Second one, what do you mean with the demise of yaml? i still use it every day.

6

Stuart,

Hi i want to stick to an open source project because it has a lot more room for improvement than a specific company, so thats why HA is the way to go.
Is there a way to elevate a solicitude to make room for building deployments within HA?

Have a nice day

7

Maybe

But on a commercial project, you need something that works, on day one and every day after that.

It’s one thing to have a “hackable” system in your own home, but a totally different thing when you’re selling a solution.

You do what you feel is best, I’ve given my advice.

FYI

My expertise is in the actual hardware control side, what I like about Velbus is that you can use a good selection of software solutions.