New HA powered house plans

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Hi, I’m in progress building my new house, and doing some research on HA features I plan to integrate. I’m already kind of late, because the construction work is already in progress and I don’t have enough time to research all details. I have 3-5 months to decide details before the electric cables and other installations will be built.

In this thread I’m listing the main assumptions - hope for community review and advice. I’ll be opening separate threads to discuss particular features and ask for detailed advice.

Design goals

  1. The house may be as smart as I like it, but it’s only an addition - in case of systems failure, all home functions must be possible to control in a traditional way.
  2. No dependency on cloud services or internet connection for any home automation except optional features like voice control etc.
  3. As many devices as possible connected on wired connections.
  • Cat6 Ethernet available everywhere
  • Special cables to be planned where Cat6 is no good
  1. Wifi devices on the separate smart-home local network or VLAN, separate from the main house network for PC/laptop/phone devices.
  2. Some devices might be connected over Matter/Thread or ZigBee which are not possible to be wired or on Wifi, or added later after the initial design and build phase.

Smart home features I plan

  1. Status display/control tablets - in main hall, main bedroom, garage, to display key info and control some home features
  2. Selected power circuits with smart control - in the outlets controls. I don’t want to make the main electrical panel smart due to fault tolerance and potential repairs being difficult.
  3. All lights under control - at switch level, no smart light bulbs; must be possible to operate manually with few exceptions like stairs light, external garden lights
  4. Power usage and power production (photovoltaics) monitoring - for statistics mostly
  5. Windows blinds controls
  6. Weather monitoring
  7. Garden watering control
  8. Audio system in selected rooms
  • Main space
  • TV room
  • Main bedroom
  1. Sensors:
  • Doors / windows open/closed status
    • External doors (main house entry, terrace entry)
    • Garage gate
    • Fence car gate
    • Fence door
    • Windows
    • Roof windows
  • Temperature and humidity sensors
    • Selected rooms
    • Garage
    • Bathrooms
    • Laundry / drying room
  • Smoke sensors
  1. Security features
  • Surveillance cameras
  • Presence detection
  • Motion sensors
  • Sirens
  • Alarm on/off controls
  1. Air conditioning - optional monitoring / control; house will be equipped with mechanical ventilation and air conditioning, primary choice here is on usability and efficiency, HA controls is optional
  2. Heating - optional monitoring / control; house will be equipped with heat pump, to be optimized for efficiency, HA controls is optional depending on ability to integrate although it would be very much welcome
  3. Door access (fence gate, one more door before the main house entry)

Anything you would add, recommend etc?

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There are some interesting posts if you search. This one ticks a few of your boxes

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Yes, I saw the posts by Brad Phillips already, both the pre and post building. Many of the devices he uses are not available for me, though, as I live in Poland and most of the stuff he used is only available on US market. But lots of good inspiration, agreed.

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Generic suggestions, applicable to any country you might be living in:

  • Neutrals at each switch location and the deepest backboxes you can get. My Aqara smart switches are 33mm deep without even accounting for the cables. Smart modules + dumb switches could potentially be even deeper than that.
  • Ethernet cables everywhere**. Their flexibility means you can use them for ethernet (duh), POE, IR control and AV distribution, and they’ll work for just about anything which needs a non-mains cable in a pinch.
  • Research whether any device you intend to buy is compatible with HomeAssistant before buying anything. Nothing’s more frustrating than spending tons of money only to realise that you need to jump through hoops to get it integrated.
  • As much as possible, try to avoid stuff which can only be controlled via the cloud. Between paywalls, providers suddenly slapping a charge on what used to be free (Ring & IFTTT, anyone?) or simply switching off their servers, you’ll eventually end up a creek if your devices don’t have a local control option. Paul Hibbert’s recent video lists these providers, and it’s not a short list.

** Yes, I know you said you have Cat6 Ethernet available everywhere. You’ll think it’s enough, until it isn’t. Plan at least 4 cables per drop, and add a pull string to each drop and make sure there’s enough room in your conduit for extra cables.

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Hello,

Cam across your post, researching the exact same for a new house i’m building.

I have settled for a full NIKO system, combined with Ubiquiti for surveilance and wi-fi.

The NIKO bus system solves the problem of smart lighting control, without anything wireless. I’m going with this one: Niko Toggle - design light switch

I can see status, and control all wall switches and power outlets in the house from my phone / HA. And the cool thing is, that they use a bus system, so the switches doesn’t have to have a separate control wiring to each one. They run in serial.

I’m wiring all windows and doors with low voltage wiring for contact switches, and curtain/blinds control.

I’m having my window company build magnetic sensors into the door and window frames.

I also found an interesting device for water consumption monitoring:

I struggled alot finding a suitable presence and temp/humidity sensor with PoE - there is this one, but i want something i can flush mount: ultimatesensor.nl

Where are you in the process? I’d love to share ideas.

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Hi,
I’m mostly done with all the plans for my home automation, but my house construction experienced some significant delays, so I’ll be proceeding with installations only about Spring next year.

I gave up on wiring everything, ie. light switches.
My HA will rely heavily on integration with the alarm system, but the alarm system will be operating completely independently from the home automation, meaning it’s the primary system in my house. HA will read Alarm sensors’ status over API that is available for Satel’s Integra device. This way I will have access to presence in almost entire house. In some additional places I also plan adding HA controlled WIFI presence sensors from Athom: https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/human-presence-sensor. The power supply will be delivered from the UPS supported circuit (whole alarm, wifi, and HA will be 100% always on).
All windows and external doors will have built in contact sensors (already installed).
For light controls, I will use combination of matter in wall controllers (Sonoff MiniR4M) and smart switches (didn’t decide yet which one, both Sonof’s M5 (esphome flashed) and Athom’s (factory enabled with esphome) are great candidates.

Smoke sensors, gas sensors and water leakage wired sensors will all be connected to alarm system, not HA, and also accessible for status read over API.

Surveillance will be independent system. I decided to use Hikvision (recorder and cameras). HA will have access over API to display video.

For audio I decided to use Sonos’ speakers, in wall in the living room Era 300 (I have one already) in the Gym room and ceiling mounted if I decide to add more elsewhere.

For panels, you can see my prototype here, but I’m not going to use it. 11" tablets are too uncomfortable, and largest you can get is 15" at high prices.
I will use raspberry PI 4b connected to HDMI touch display of 15"-18". The wall socket will include 230v, eth and 12v power supply. In wall socket with a pocket will hold PI and power adapter from 12v to USB (which is strong enough to fuel both PI and display - PI delivers enough juice from the USB port to keep the display running, that’s amazing).

Re Wifi, network APs etc read more here.

So far I didn’t find good solution for wired temperature and humidity sensors to connect to HA. I’ve put this on hold until my heating system is installed. The heat pump will have temperature control in every room. I hope I’ll be able to integrate reading those sensors into HA, but don’t know yet. They for humidity I’ll search later, as well as with recuperation/mechanical ventilation and air conditioning integrations. All systems will be wifi enabled, but not sure if I’ll be able to integrate them with HA yet.