this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Home Automation
79 readers
2 users here now
Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.
It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.
Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.
Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.
Rules
- No abusive behaviour. This is a forum for friendly discussion; personal attacks will not be tolerated and you will be banned without warning.
- Referral/affiliate links are NOT ALLOWED!
- NO POLITICS! There are plenty of other communities to discuss them; this is not one.
- When posting project details must be included. Posting a video or image without detail will result in a removed post and may result in a ban.
- Crowdfunding links are not allowed.
- Reposts, low-effort content and karma farming may be removed at the discretion of the mods. Posters may be banned without warning.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Don't run cat wire, run conduit in the walls. In 20 years you might want to fish something completely different. Put conduit to every room and every thing you think might need it and you can EASILY put whatever low voltage you want through.
For your electrical, just do all 4 conductor instead of 3. Someday you might want it and it's a modest increase in cost. Run 10g where you require 12, run 12g where you require 14. You waste less electricity in the walls losing less to heat.
No, you shouldn't run 1 wire to a room and a little pocket switch for each room. That's an IT nightmare. Have a closet with homeruns. Have all your POE on ONE switch and you can have a battery backup on it, you can MANAGE your devices there. Pocket switches are last resort in any deployment as an afterthought, not a forethought.
You're gonna eventually "saturate your house with wireless" Just plan now around a few good accesspoints.
It's all going to move to matter and thread in the next few years if they can get the spec together but you should design around flexibility.
OP, please listen to this. IT closet, conduits.
You keep mentioning IoT/5V/12V. Very few items in day-to-day use will be powered like this.
I started with Z-Wave, but ended up moving away from that due to too many devices and single-point-of-failure (the hub). Due to how messages are relayed, one bad or failing device can create a broadcast storm and take down everything. Zigbee competes with the same part of the radio spectrum as WiFi and also has a single-point-of-failure (the hub). I now exclusively use wifi for things. TPlink Kasa for switches and outlets, plug-in switched outlets, Shelly for motion sensors, relays (garage door)
Networking - Router: Use something like pfsense or opnsense. This will control DHCP, DNS, inter-VLAN routing. A separate VLAN and associated firewall rule will allow you to block your "IoT" items from getting out of the network.
Networking - Switching: for ease of use, use UniFi switches. These will control port PoE, VLAN port assignment.
Networking - Wireless: again, for ease of use, use UniFi WAPs. These are easy manage and for a second or third SSID, tagged to a "IoT" VLAN that you block from internet access. Strategically place WAPs for best coverage. At any given time, I have ~75 things on the wireless network amongst 4 WAPs
Home alarm system: 2-wire all door and window reed sensors to the IT closet. Use Konnected or something like that.
Cameras: All good cameras nowadays are PoE. Use a non-consumer grade of ONVIF/RTSP camera, think Axis, or possibly even UniFi Protect. Condiut and ethernet to external (or internal) camera location. Mind your field-of-view angles to insure coverage.
Voice control: Google Home/Alexa/Apple speaker pucks. This is where you will want to find creative places to stick power outlets. Most of these things have their own power brick.
Home audio: For both whole home or TV/theater - Sonos is the 800lb gorilla here. They need mains and ethernet. They can make their own mesh via wifi, but I prefer hard-wiring everything, especially if you can plan it out.
Someone mentioned window shade control. This is where you may need some 12V or proprietary plug; that recessed box would be good for this.
Also, don't forget a low-voltage conduit from the house's telecom/data service entrance. You may have copper or coax provider handoff now, but they could give you a fiber handoff one day.
Run one more empty conduit to an area near your mains panel. If you get solar, the combiner panel needs network.
I could go on and on...
Awesome thank you all guys for chipping in. So much to unpack here for an electronic guy who has no experience in networking and home automation.
I just spun up HA yesterday to get my feet wet and I can see how easily I can get tempted to rump it up with a bunch of smart stuff. Ideally, I want to use less internet connected ones (although I said IOT initially, but really mean smart devices which i can control via HA and don't ping home unnecessarily)
Conduit is a great choice, my mind struggles to assimilate how to leave the unpatched end of the cables/conduit at various sides of each room without building too many recess points. Or even how high to leave them from the floor.
Regarding conduits, perhaps I can run one to the corner of the windows for blinders, motion sensors and automatic windows (if I can find those)
Won't running a conduit to every power socket (3 per room at least?) might be a bit overkill? Apart then the computer corner power/ethernet and TV sockets would I need a conduit near bedside tables power points?
I see the point why switches in every room are a maintenance issue. However, these smart devices, would they saturate the network so much that I need direct cable from each of them to the server closet?
I am not planning to run a streaming device at the end of each. High Bandwidth TV/PC, camera cables should go directly to the server closet, but the rest hopefully will be
Who's to say in a few years you even WANT to connect these devices to your network? What if they aren't ethernet at all but can still run over twisted pair cabling? Or maybe you end up wishing you had some fiber, or something else?
Independent runs isn't about saturation, these aren't gig traffic devices. It's about management and flexibility. There are just things you can't do with a bunch of cheap pocket switches.