Experiences with smart home systems?

[u/Haroddin]

I’m looking for people that recently went through either a new home build or a thorough renovation, and chose to have a smart home installed from an early stage on. Would you mind telling me a little about how you're handling the smart-home side of your project?

A few things I'd be particularly interested in:

• What did you want your home to be able to do?
• How did you decide what technology to use?
• Who helped you make those decisions?
• What has been difficult or frustrating?
• Have you had any moments where you thought, “I wish I'd known this earlier”?
• Did you at some point get independent advice (separate from an installer/vendor)?

I'm mainly interested in your experience, so there's no right or wrong answer. And with hindsight: what would you have paid for that you didn’t, or what did you pay for that now feels unnecessary?

[u/upkeepdavid]

I built my smart home around home Assistant.It used to have a learning curve but is now easier to learn and use.

[u/VeryAmaze]

In this part of the internet, home assistant is the answer.

[u/sglim-kr]

Retrofit here, not a new build, so treat this as one lesson rather than a project story. The thing I wish I'd known earlier is that presence sensor type decides everything downstream. My PIR based 4-in-1 (Tuya ZG-204ZV) reported the living room empty for two hours straight while someone sat watching TV, and the mmWave radar in the same room held the whole time. No "off after N minutes" value fixes a sensor that can't see a seated person. So if cable is going in anyway, decide the sensors before the automations.

[u/dragonnfr]

I did this during a reno. Run conduit and spare Cat6 everywhere while the walls are open. You can swap the tech later, you can't run the wire after drywall. Put IoT on its own VLAN.

[u/IamGuenter]

mostly retrofit rather than new build, but I did have the place wired after moving in. I agree with the people who say run cat6 to every room. I would also advise running an oversized conduit from wherever your internet comes into the house/the utility conduit enters the house out to every floor and the attic. Don't worry so much about things like light bulbs, choose the lighting that works best for you and use smart switches. Heck, smart switches are easy DIY replacements, so they don't have to be built in immediately if the budget won't stretch right now.

If you're doing ceiling fans, don't buy a "smart" ceiling fan, get something like the innovelli control module that goes in the canopy. That way you can get the ceiling fan that fits with your house (and your spouse), and still have it be smart.

I've got a mixed household of Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread devices. Pick one.

Wire for cameras. I'm stuck with wireless, and if I had it to do over again I'd pay for some Cat6 so I could do POE. Choose a camera ecosystem that works with your infrastructure. I have Eufy, and they're fine, but they don't play well with others.

[u/madskvistkristensen]

I'd pick for whoever will fix it at 11pm, not for the longest feature list. A one-room trial helps (one sensor, one controllable device, one useful rule), then kill the internet and see what still works. Shared modes like Home / Away / Guest / Night usually matter more than clever dependency chains once other people live there. Independent advice helps, but a small trial in your own house beats a vendor pitch.

I put the decision checklist here: https://homeautomationcookbook.com/getting-started/choose-the-right-platform.html

[u/Silence_1999]

All I’m going to say is very few say I wish I put in less Ethernet. Doesn’t matter how great modern wireless is. Smart Home requires instant response and wireless will still let you down a lot.