New Smart home from scratch

Dr House

Dr House

Dr House

Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
13,428
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.
 
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