New user planning a full smart home renovation with Home Assistant, seeking advice and a shopping list for a comprehensive, non-coding friendly setup

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Hi everyone,

I’m completely new to this community, and I’m really excited to be here! In the past, my smart home “journey” has been pretty basic – I’ve dabbled with Alexa and Google Home for simple voice commands and have a few smart bulbs. Honestly, I’ve found those systems quite limited in what they can really do, and I’m ready for something much more comprehensive.

I’m about to embark on a full home renovation in my new place, and my goal is for it to be a truly fully smart and integrated home. I want every single aspect to be smart, working seamlessly together.

Here’s a snapshot of what I’m hoping to achieve:

  • Core Automation: All the basics, like voice commands to open curtains, turn lights off (and on!), and control other common functions.
  • Existing Gear Integration: I have a Ring doorbell and 2 ring cameras that I’d love to bring into the new system, but I am open to getting something new if its better.
  • Integrated Home Alarm: I’m keen to build a robust home alarm system directly into the smart home setup.
  • Control Points: I’d like one or two “control screens” mounted in key areas for quick, visual interaction.
  • Discreet Voice Control & Music: I want smart speakers for voice commands and playing music, but ideally, they’d be integrated or hidden so they don’t visually clutter the space.
  • House Zoning: I would love to able to set up zones in my house.
  • Advanced AI Functionality: This is a big one for me. I’ve found AIs like Gemini incredibly useful for asking random questions and getting quick information, and I’d love to integrate that kind of functionality into my home assistant.
  • Personalised Voice Assistant: I’m really hoping to customise the wake word to something of my own choosing, and also to select a specific voice I like, or even upload one.
  • Seamless Integration: My ultimate vision is for every smart device, from lighting to security, to talk to each other and operate as one cohesive system.

After doing a fair bit of research, I’ve concluded that Home Assistant (HA) is by far the best platform to meet these ambitious needs, especially when compared to the likes of Google, Apple, or Amazon’s offerings. The local control, privacy, and sheer customisation potential of HA seem unmatched.

I’m comfortable with technology, but I’m definitely not a coder or someone who can do anything overly fancy. My ideal scenario is to be able to set it up once, and for it to be largely “set and forget” with minimal fiddling.

I’m currently thinking of getting the Home Assistant Green as my central hub, as it seems like a great plug-and-play option for a beginner like me. However, I’m completely open to suggestions!

Also, I am in the UK so not everything is available here or is not compatible. and I am an Android user and have a Windows 11 PC is that is relevent.

So, to the amazing Home Automation community: Can anyone help me brainstorm ideas and put together a comprehensive shopping list of everything I’m going to need to achieve this “fully smart home” dream? Any advice or recommendations for reliable, non-coding friendly devices and integrations, would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can offer!

Dan

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Welcome! :slight_smile:

You’re asking a very difficult question. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a shopping list for a smart home. It’s much to individual i regard to you, and to the house you’re using it in.

  • Core Automation: All integrated in HA
  • Existing Gear Integration: Depending on what device you have, you might have a 99% HA has an integration for it. If not as default, someone will have developed something. Ring you’ll find here.
  • Integrated Home Alarm: Alarmo
  • Control Points: Look for cheap Android tablets, even Amazon Fire tablets work, but aren’t really good anymore. The HA companion app is your friend after getting one or two. But you can as well use old laptops or RaspberryPis.
  • Discreet Voice Control & Music: Music Assistant
  • House Zoning: HA has areas for that. :slight_smile:
  • Advanced AI Functionality: I’m using ChatGPT to answer all questions, that HA can’t answer. This is an extensive field, you might want to get that for your version 2.x in your smart home. But just to say, yes that’s possible, but not a beginners thing on the second day.
  • Personalised Voice Assistant: All possible, more or less complicated, but doable.
  • Seamless Integration: That is HA exactly. I would rephrase it, to “all my devices shall talk not to each other, but to their boss”: HA! :wink:

I would really advice, to give yourself and your home time to grow together. You’ll never know in the beginning, what you really want. In many cases with the consequence, that you buy things, that won’t fit your needs. Everyone has this more or less expensive box with unused smart home thingies.

If you renovate, I’d look for physical things to take care of, the rest comes later on. For example, don’t use the small power outlet boxes inside the wall. Go for enough room behind every power outlet, every wall switch, every cover. If you have the possibility, think of a number of outlets you want to get into a wall - double it! Use ductwork whereever possible. And from practical experience: the more breaker switches you have, the better.

What manufacturer or devices you want to use, depends largely on availability and price. As you use HA, in many cases there are a lot of choices, just because can talk to practically every smart device. What I regularly do, if I want to buy a device, I’ll ask google for “Home Assistant device-name”. In 99% of these cases you’ll find something useful. :wink:

Don’t get me wrong, there are some recommendations for specific things, but what you really want and need comes with you living there. That’s the deal with smart home vs. automated home. Your home needs to know you, and you need to know your house. In one location switches in the wall are the best thing to control a lamp. In others it’s an additional Bluetooth button lying in your kitchen. As I said, let it grow on you.

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Thanks so much for the reply and the honest perspective on there being no “one-size-fits-all” shopping list, and the advice about letting the system grow with the house. That makes a lot of sense.
I love the idea of Home Assistant being the “boss” – that’s exactly the kind of central control I’m looking for. It looks like I have some more research to do otherwise I will as you said, end up with a box of stuff I don’t use.
I’m definitely looking to learn as I go. Thanks again for the welcome and the incredibly helpful insights.

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Ditto everything above. And in addition, spend some quality time searching this forum. It’s a gold mine of information (and opinion). Your question has been asked before… find some of the previous answers to help guide you. Enjoy the ride!

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One recommendation that I always like to give, take a look at Shelly. They offer a wide range of relais, that come in handy in many places. Work like a charme and are produced in Bulgaria. Shipping to the UK should be affordable. :slight_smile:

If you want to, describe the new house and we’ll see, what comes to mind. :slight_smile:

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+1 for Shelly. Easy to integrate to HA.

A few ideas to consider.

1, Data is critical for Home Automation. So consider what you may wish to capture data from. Your electrical distribution board is key for data on power circuits, so plan and consider options like do you have enough space for current clamps etc.
2. Your WiFi network is a critical component for both your own devices but also your Hone Automation devices. It’s always best to not use mesh WiFi networks, so wired cabling to all access points is good to consider.
3. Study thread and matter. Using devices that are matter compatible is a good option to consider. You know that can operate locally without cloud servers etc. If not matter then perhaps consider devices that use Tuya as they can generally be controlled locally as well.
4. You will need to work around quirks. E.g. an energy input going to zero for an instant meaning you may get zany data like your house consumed 1MWh in a day. The workaround being a template helper to sort this out.
5. User interface wise, stay within the box initially and put your efforts into getting data and automation right first. UI finesse can come later.
6. For automatons, think always of a state machine, that is, simple automations that set a state or action, maybe state of a helper, and another automation that triggers on that state. For someone new to automations, the concept of trigger IDs are hidden, but are a great way of having an automation with multiple triggers and then a choose action based on the trigger ID.
7. You WILL need to learn both basic YAML and Home Assistant jinja templates. Think of YAML like a structured configuration language. Think of jinja templates akin to knowing formulas in Excel or Google Sheets.

Generally Home Assistant is a great tool. When building from the ground up, if you are at a point of thinking “if this and that then action” then it’s best to think of having a state (helper) for “if this and that”. If makes it much easier to review, debit etc.

Hope this helps.

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Just to set expectations and avoid disappointment, that statement above is generally incompatible with running HA.

There’s a new release every first Wednesday of the month, each with positive and negative changes. You are highly encouraged to read through each release announcement to review at least the breaking (“backwards-incompatible”) changes to see whether you are impacted.
Skipping a release or two shouldn’t cause you too much trouble, but any more than that just makes it cumbersome to keep track of what changed in the past x months and a nightmare to troubleshoot.

If you’re just starting out, I would suggest that you upgrade at the end of each month, when any bugs from the latest release would have been patched out.

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voice control is fine for the occasional interaction but I don’t think you should rely on it as a main control surface for your house. I think it would get annoying pretty quickly to have to walk around your house yelling at your voice assistant to do stuff.

the same for this. Having them for the one off control or status indicator is OK but you shouldn’t rely on them for everything. Unless everything is on one page then navigating to different screens just turn on & off lights would be a non-starter for my family. old school (but smart) light switches are way more convenient.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is that having a smart home in which you have to interact with it to do anything via either voice control or control panels isn’t really smart. It’s just high tech.

A truly smart home is a home which does stuff for you without you needing to tell it what to do.

and you don’t need AI to do any of that.

So your goal of not having to code anything is in total opposition to the idea of a smart home.

if you forego all coding and opt for voice/screen control I think you’ll probably be really disappointed in your smart home

that’s because they aren’t a truly smart home system. they are pretty much (minus a limited “routine” functionality) simply an interface for otherwise smart devices.

The bottom line of what I’m trying to tell you is that you need to embrace the automation capabilities of HA and you should also start to learn manual automation coding in order to get the full benefit of a smart home.

Also another bit of advice is don’t buy smart bulbs. Lighting is such an organic thing that smart bulbs don’t really lend themselves to easily automating. Use smart switches (with dimmers if desired) to control dumb bulbs in most situations.

I do have a few smart bulbs but I only use them either where I can’t install a smart switch in front of it (like my stove hood light) or where the light is almost exclusively controlled on a pretty regular schedule (like my outside lighting that gets turned on at dusk and then off at other predetermined times). Generally tho you will want smart switches so if someone walks into a room then it’s easy to turn on a light when or if they want the light on. But you also have the availability to automate the light as needed.

as an example of that is my livingroom light. sometimes we want the light on, sometimes not. by using a smart switch my family has full control over the light depending on the activity or desired mood (without the need to yell at a voice assistant or navigate thru a wall mounted control panel). But I can also automatically turn the light off if we all go to bed or leave the house and we forget to turn off the light. Or I can turn on all the lights in the house in the event of a smoke alarm or the security alarm going off.

you don’t need all your devices to talk to each other. you just need them to talk to your home automation hub. Which will be HA. Then HA will be the brain and will coordinate the seamless integration of your devices.

And don’t limit yourself on the protocol that your smart devices use. I use a mix of wifi, zwave and zigbee (stay far away from IR or RF stuff). that way I can find anything I might need in at least some kind of protocol I have available and at the best price.

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One thing I would suggest is buy a Home Assistant Green now and start integrating what you already have. It is a steep learning curve with HA to get the polished look you see in many dashboards.

As many have said it will evolve with you. Pick a project to integrate into HA i.e. your cameras, then make a dashboard to display them how you want.

You will need a decent Wifi and Zigbee backbone. Consider where you may want POE devices like Access Points, Zigbee Repeaters, Displays and Media Players. For POE you will require ethernet. I can highly recommend Unifi for ethernet network and the access points will handle multiple hundreds of devices connected, unlike a lot of consumer grade or ISP provided routers. A Unifi UDR is all you may need.

Wire all your switch plates to have a neutral wire, to increase compatibility with smart switches available.

Example below of Unifi deployment.

Example below of dashboard hardware.

The bible is the Home Assistant Cookbook.

Read my HA journey in my profile blurb. You will get it to a point where it is largely set and forget but will be forever tweaking, fixing things that break and finding new things to install.