DIY Smart Home from Scratch

[UKMedia]

• in the event we want to sell the house, the lighting can be reverted to a fairly viable non-Smart set up

We decided that in the grand scheme of things, leaving a Phillips Hue hub behind when selling the house was an acceptable cost.

Our requirements for lighting was that they should be able to be controlled by:

• Voice control;
• Automation;
• A manual switch for visitors

Our Always On circuits therefore have an isolation switch but no other switch hardwired into the circuit. All bulbs are Hue and switches are Hue Dimmer Switches. This greatly reduced the installation cost and with Hue supports all three requirements above.

With regard to Zones, these can be created within the Phillips Hue App and imported into HE. The advantage here being that the zones are software controlled rather hard wired.

[UKMedia]

@sean.t.gibson

For the moment I'm assuming the Hue mesh will have plenty of repeating from the lightbulbs unless I use alot of Sengled bulbs (I've yet to settle on which bulbs to use but probably not Hue given the price), but it'd be good to know if you use repeaters for the lighting mesh as well as the bulbs.

The only time Hue has needed a repeater is for my external Hue lighting.

[sean.t.gibson]

@UKMedia

We decided that in the grand scheme of things, leaving a Phillips Hue hub behind when selling the house was an acceptable cost.

We are doing this as our daughter's childhood home and expecting to be living here for at least the next 10 years. Accordingly, the cost of leaving behind tech is not the a concern for us either - it'll be a very different world of HA in that sort of timeframe. My concern is more that not everyone is willing to deal with even the limited complexities of automating Hue lighting. In the price bracket the finished property will occupy we will potentially be falling between two stools - standard non-smart lighting that requires no understanding and maintenance of 'smart tech' and a pro-system that can be supported/managed by a professional service. Prospective buyers could very well be put off by this.

For other areas, I have sought to put in place self contained controls that can be integrated with Hubitat for automation, but that can also work reasonably as a standalone setup without any hub integration. This is good from both a resilience point of view and for a prospective non-HA savvy buyer.

The lighting approach is the one area I'm still not fully comfortable I've got the balance right. One thing I've not fully considered is the whole TouchLink aspect and how that could provide hub redundancy. More thought is needed but I'm running out of time

[sean.t.gibson]

@UKMedia

I find that even at only 3M distance zigbee is defeated by damp grass!

Interesting! Going to take this empirically then and solve any issues as they arise. Definitely want the WiFi to extend into the garden anyway so WiFi devices should be an easy switch if the Zigbee connectivity doesn't fly.