New Smart home from scratch

Dr House

Dr House

Dr House

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
13,469
Location
London

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We will get the keys to our new home in cyprus in the next week or 2, so im planning the smart home from scratch. This is the house

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Home Hubs​

  • Apple HomePod Minis – 6 units (one in each room)
    (Using these as Thread border routers + Siri control)

Cleaning​

  • Robot Vacuum: Eufy E28 (picked up on Black Friday)

Lighting​

The house has a lot of built-in garden lighting and custom fixtures, so I can’t go full Hue this time.
I’m leaning towards using smart relays behind the existing switches:

I’m currently leaning towards Aqara. It requires the Aqara M3 hub, which I’m fine with:
https://www.aqara.com/en/product/hub-m3/

Wi-Fi & CCTV​

Sensors​

Planning one in each room, including bathrooms, to automatically trigger extraction fans. It does temp and humidity also.

Audio​

  • Sonos Arc in the living area (already have the setup)
  • HomePods in other rooms

Door Lock​

Blinds​

Heating​

The house uses electric underfloor heating, so I’m considering:

Still Deciding / Researching​

Water system​

  • Need a good RO unit — Cyprus drinking water isn't great.

Cooling​

  • Each room has its own AC unit; looking for a good way to make them smart

Pool & Hot Tub​

  • Need something to monitor water quality and temperature remotely.

Solar PV​

  • Installing a 10 kW system soon — need a monitoring solution compatible with HomeKit or Matter

EV Charger​

  • Still choosing a charger

Water Softener​

  • Need to choose a system suitable for Cyprus water conditions.

Doorbell​

  • Still deciding between Unifi/Eufy/Aqara
Celling Fans
I would like to install one outside and the others in the bedrooms, again I want to make them smart.

Door And window Sensors
I dont know if I should just stick to Aqara or look at Unifi or some others


Anything elase to consider? thoughts in general?
 
A few things to consider based on what I have (and what I found works well!).

Aircon - Sensibo Air are good and I use them on mine.
Cameras - I use the nest camera's (they do the job at the minute), but what I've done, is add a little Google Nest Hub to some of the rooms I'm in, which enable me to see my cameras on those displays if I need to. Couple that with the Google doorbell, it works well. Not sure if your planned Unifi cameras can do the same integration?

I use Starling to integrate any google products I have into Homekit using this: https://www.starlinghome.io/

I've not found a 'smart' EV charger which can then be integrated into Homekit, but to be honest, my PodPoint is essentially dumb as the car does the intelligen stuff these days anyway.

I'm also not familiar with the smart blinds you've references, but these have worked well for me over the past 5years: https://www.somasmarthome.com/

Think that's all I can help with at the minute, good luck, should be awesome!

Might also be worth looking into the full home automation stuff, as I think there's a thread on here for it too.
 
Thanks, The Sensibo Air looks really useful, I did use nest in the past but I found the POE wired system much more stable, the integration with the Unifi is not the best but that is made up for by the fact the system is so good.

Thanks for the links, I will take a look around them now.
 
Is there a negative wire at the light switch?
If not then you can be limited for what relays you can fit, Sonoff do a non-neutral wire on SONOFF ZBMINI Extreme Zigbee Smart Switch ZBMINIL2), looks like Shelly does as well (Shelly 1L Gen3).
Aqara do smart switches, I've installed D1's from AliExpress around my house, can get them in neutral and non-neutral versions.
Both the Sonoff and D1 use Zigbee.

Hopefully you've got deep switch back boxes as both relays or smart switches will need them.

I'd look at using Home Assistant, thread is https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/home-assistant-beginners.18962197/
It helps you intergrate different protocols and suppliers
 
I spent some time several years ago trying various types of smart dimmer modules to go behind regular light switches and finally settled on the Fibaro Dimmer 2. The oldest one I have was bought in 2018, but have since bought more to cover every room of my house in addition to using them in-line with some lamps. They are Z-wave devices which means you'll need either their hub or a Z-wave compatible hub (or Z-wave USB stick for HA etc).

They can work with and without a neutral wire and will happily work on circuits with small loads where perhaps you only have a single LED bulb that consumes less than 50W or so using the Fibaro Bypass module.

I like them because they are very low power consumption and are quite a decent footprint that fits in a 35mm UK sized backbox with a Scolmore Click light switch on top. They also have some features I was looking for; specifically the ability to set the power on brightness without turning the light on. Strangely at the time this was something that was missing from many dimmers I tried. The last non-Fibaro dimmer I tried was the Shelly Dimmer 2 and while overall it was decent, at the time it couldn't set the power on brightness without turning the light on which wasn't ideal (setting brightness via an automation that turns the light on and immediately turns it off is just janky). I use this feature to set "night mode" on things like the bathroom and landing lights so if anyone wakes up in the middle of the night, they can turn the light on as normal and it turns on at 1% brightness which is much easier on the eyes when you're half asleep. Things might be better with other modules now but I haven't had a need to look.

The other really cool feature which isn't Fibaro specific...but more a Z-wave thing though the Fibaro's handle it really well is Z-wave association. I have a double wall switch with a Fibaro module behind it (module 1). S1 is wired up to the ceiling light in my front room and S2 is just wired into the module but nothing else. I have a second Fibaro dimmer that's wired in-line to a table lamp from a mains plug (module 2). I have Z-wave association setup between these two modules so that when S2 of module 1 is pressed, it turns on module 2 so the table lamp is turned on from the wall light switch wirelessly. Z-wave association allows the two modules to communicate directly wirelessly which cuts down on latency so it's almost as fast as it being connected by a wire, and once configured the modules just need power to continue working together. My Home Assistant server can go offline or the Z-wave USB stick can fail but the association will continue to work because the modules communicate directly. This is a big plus for me because my simple rule for my smart lighting was to ensure that regular light switches always worked even if Home Assistant or a smart hub failed (albeit maybe with reduced functionality)
 
Any reason you're not looking at using Home Assistant?

Most of the newer stuff you're looking at is using matter, but I don't think you'll get away from not using Zigbee, and frankly I don't see Zigbee going away for many-many years, so I would definitely look at integrating it.
 
Looking at the Fibaro now thanks,

I had never thought of home assistant but im watching some videos now, looks interesting actually.

Agree while most things have matter I think Zigbee will be around or some time yet.
 
Despite the allure of colour programmable Hue, I'd be investing in hi-cri white lights from philips, giving you natural light in kitchen/living-room.

My wishlist is an automation ecosystem that would enable me to simulate existing physical remotes with all their buttons (tv , streaming boxes, amp) on a phone/tablet , plus a few programmable shortcut buttons.
(I was somewhat spoiled by Humax PVR, running unix, which provided just that as an http server app. )

e: finally thought of a hue application - red/green light at night time for any bathroom visits
 
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I’ve got Fibaro Dimmer 2 switches as well. Work really well. Hue is actually pants. My house is full of it. I don’t think I’d get it again. I don’t use the colours at all either. I’ve got a load of Dimmer 2’s I got from eBay to replace all my Hue just can’t be assed to cut deeper back boxes in, so most of them are still in the cupboard
 
I don't have any Hue but correctly thought I likely wouldn't use any colours after installing so instead I opted for Philips WarmGlow non-smart bulbs instead to use with my Fibaro dimmers. They are nice and bright at 100%, but change colour temperature when dimmed which makes them really easy on the eyes at lower dim levels. It's quite a warm colour when dimmed. I think they're great. Only place I don't have them is in the kitchen because I wanted super clean bright lights in there for cooking, though these are utter crap when dimmed. 1% is still far too bright compared to the Philips
 
In terms of the homepods, has been reported a new version is coming out, with a lot of US stores running out of current stock, and other sites doing deals on them, not sure when new one is due, and doubtful this side of Christmas but might be worth waiting.
 
Dr House said:

Blinds​

Click to expand...
Really recommend against these motors. I used to have them and they were noisey and needed really good tension and will eventually always fail due to the stress the beads cause on the part that gets spun in the motor, and so then they slip and go out of sync for height. Also a heavier thermal blind it really breaks fast.

I just now changed to a full internal motor from amazon. Was £55 on black Friday. Absolutely love it. Much quieter. I don't think it will ever break unless the motor goes. No beads still dangling down.

Only downside I have found is that the app it uses (tuya) doesn't seem to correctly work with Google home how my other blinds (also tuya) used to. In that Google doesn't understand open and close, or set to x percent closed, which means my old "hey Google, it's too bright" command no longer works. I'm sure there's a way around but it's not working at least how the other motor used to.

I do however have the motor set to close to different percentages via the app so it auto does this daily and opens, I just then use the app or the controller to close the blind midday if I'm getting raunchy with my partner and she being a prude doesn't want the neighbours to watch
 
Check that the UGC-Fibre supports enough cameras for your plans. Is the internet connection symmetrical? You may be tickling the limits of the UGC-Fiber, and might want to consider bigger, racked mounted devices.

Also note that your APs have 10GbE uplinks but the UGC-Fibre only has a single 10GbE / SFP port. I have mine uplinked via that to a separate PoE switch
 
Just got the UGC-Fibre myself so looking forward to that, in time I will move protect off it onto the their NVR.

The UGC-Fibre has two 10Gb SFP @GeX while one on the data sheet is assigned as WAN you can move that and free up both SFP for internal use.
 
The UCG-Fiber still only has a 10Gb backplane though from what user tear-downs and testing have revealed, e.g. while it can do an amount of network switching, it's not designed to be a network switch and you could see network bottlenecks.

From what I've understood, the 4x 2.5Gb RJ45 ports are connected to a Realtek hardware layer 2 switch chip which is then connected to the SoC/CPU via a single 10Gb uplink. The 10Gb RJ45 port hangs off the side of the Realtek chip via a 10Gb uplink and is only connected to the SoC via the Realtek chips single 10Gb uplink. The SFP+ ports are connected directly to the SoC/CPU with no layer 2 switching chips in-between. The bottleneck in all of this is the single 10Gb uplink between the SoC and the Realtek switch chip. You've basically got 20Gb of connectivity on both sides of the SoC/CPU with only 10Gb connecting the two sides together! Once you add in SoC overhead with WAN traffic (routing, NAT, IDS/IPS, Firewall etc) or layer 3 traffic and that bottleneck may get bigger.

I'm not saying it's not possible to use the SFP+ ports for internal use, but you need to give some thought to how you can optimise connectivity between devices and the WAN. It's why the general recommendation is to connect the UCG-Fiber to a dedicated network switch such as the 2.5G Lite/PoE. If all of your devices are just 1Gb then it's likely a non-issue :p
 
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