Start-From-Zero HA-based IOT home - basic planning advice sought

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We recently purchased a unit in an older apartment building, are are about to launch an extensive renovation: new wires, plumbing, interior walls, ceilings, everything. Plan to live in this home at least 10-15 years.

I have been prowling through this forum and elsewhere fairly extensively, but I confess, I still feel a bit overwhelmed by the many hardware/software/standards. I notice the forum here is mostly down in the weeds, which is great, but I am still at the basic planning stage. Having decided to commit to HA, I am hoping some of the experts here can advise me a few key decisions which ought to be made now, before new walls, ceilings and floors all go in.

What I have decided thus far:

Network: I will use Unity separates (router, switch, several APs).

Cloud: I will avoid any cloud IOT, keep everything local, add reverse proxy or similar in future if I ever want remote UI access.

Anticipated IOT devices:
– some lights/switches/dimmers, tho probably smart devices only in selected locations, the rest manual
– door lock
– thermostat/humidistat (no heat needed, just Daikin AC + stand-alone whole-house dehumid)
– two large motorized drapes
– 2-3 security cameras, still undecided wired vs wireless
– robot vacuum/mop
– undoubtedly a few smart-ish kitchen appliances
– 2-3 motion sensors

a guess is I’ll not likely exceed 30-40 IOT devices

Whole-house audio: Main listening space will run Eth -> hi-end DAC -> nice amp/loudspeakers, and 2 bedrooms will use rPi’s (probably wifi connected) with DAC hats and small powered speakers. Home server will hold my ~1T FLAC collection and probably will run something like Mopidy or Roon and maybe integrate a commercial streaming service, Spotify or Tidal. This all may run on same server as HA, though at present I don’t anticipate a need to integrate audio into HA automations. Later, who knows.

Server: Probably run HA on same host as music server, Linux on Intel with probably more power than I need (I’ve got 2-3 intel boxes hanging around)

UI Control: 2-3 iPads sprinkled around the place

Biggest questions bothering me just now:

  1. Should I go just straight WiFi, or Zigbee or ZWave.

(Almost afraid to ask this here, as it seems to arouse vegan vs paleo kind of passions. Maybe with the above clarity on planned hardware needs my system choice tradeoffs are a bit more clear.)

  1. is it better to choose devices first then let them decide wireless platform, or the other way around. ?

(I live in Taiwan. Although lots of IOT gear is engineered or manufactured here, (e.g. D-Link, etc) only limited brands seem to be available retail. I don’t mind flashing Tasmoto or managing tricky system configs if that’s required. Xiaomi gear is sold here, but I am slightly paranoid of China phone-home stuff.)

  1. in general any other big-picture decisions better made now?

Thanks for any guidance !

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I only want to highlight one thing… if you can… try to wire as much as possible and avoid wireless.
For the Multiroom Audio, maybe a multichannel receiver with wires to speakers in the walls could be a good alternative.
If your going the Unifi route, your probably going to put ethernet with POE everywhere anyway. You might be able to use some of these also to power some sensors.

What bothers me the most in all of my wireless devices is basically 2 things:

  1. occasional network drops.
  2. you need to replace batteries.

Other than that… In my experience the ZWAVE is much more stable than Zigbee. But ZWave is more expensive.
But I’m sure this also heavily depends on how your setup, house, wall material, neighbor networks are setup.

After all though, with HomeAssistant in my experience its basically possible to just connect virtually everything your throw at it, and then have them work with each other.