Planning a large new home

Hello all,

I have bounce around this community for a few years but final have to give in and directly ask for help.

I am building a 4500 square foot, 5 BR/4.5B with indoor/outdoor living and an outdoor kitchen. I have always enjoyed home automation and have been following it and trying it out for basically all of my adult life. I have used Insteon for the backbone of my lighting and switches for the most part and I feel like that may be part of my problem. The problem is I have yet to build a “fully functional” system. With this new house coming up I would at least like to give myself a fighting chance at getting it right.

Right now I am planning for lighting/fans, HVAC, security cameras, door locks, garage doors, security system, and voice assistant.

I also run a plex server for media and would like to do whole home audio. Having some integration with the tvs in the home could be nice assuming it’s actually useful like viewing security cameras. I also would like to possibly add blinds in a couple of areas if I could find some quality ones. I would also be open to other ideas I have not considered yet.

I will have a media closet to house all of my networking and home automation hardware. I will be setting up a ubiquity network that will likely also handle the security cameras; along with possibly door locks, garage doors, and voip phones.

I plan on using Home Assistant to run the show but I am open to other ideas if you guys think there is a better option.

Any ideas, suggestions, or warnings for any part of this project would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome, and sounds like a fun project! What country are you building your new home in? The recommendations will vary based on where you are.

I am in Louisiana, USA.

Consider Multiple switches and network closets. Its simply easier at some point and makes adding cable runs later easier. It also provides some flexibility to do things like …put a 2nd NVR in non obvious location like the big rack with the computer stuff just in case your paranoid and think a burglar might take the evidence

Wifi home automation stuff is still annoying since most is not Local. I prefer zwave…maybe matter in the future but for now zwave…AC powered…with a few repeaters

Amcrest or dahua cameras

A few APs for network