Must haves for smart home?

Also interested. House is nearing completion post Harvey. I am going to self install smart switches. Going to put in ring doorbell, nest thermostat and some nest indoor cameras to spy on my kids when they sneak downstairs. Any advice is welcome.

Really long answers here. If you are still at studs I'd pull cat6 everywhere feesible. Multiple runs per room and everywhere you want an external camera.

As for other components, I'd go with GE zWave switches everywhere. Unless you plan to invest hundreds if not thousands in philips hue.

I'd also look into smart security systems.

I heavily invested in nest and it has been soild, but if you start from scratch PoE can be more cost effective.

I'd go with lutron over ge for lighting. Much better product, similar price.

As for doorbells and alarms, cameras, etc it's turning into a 2 man race between Google and Amazon.

There may be more buzz on other products for now but if you're looking for long term stability you want a company that's going to have your back down the road.

Also hue is the king of color lighting.

I plan on building some PoE DYI cameras when I move into my next house. Looks to be about $50 per camera with the RPi included.

Going to make 3 or 4 of them and hook them up to my servers

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I plan on building some PoE DYI cameras when I move into my next house. Looks to be about $50 per camera with the RPi included.

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I've looked into this a LOT. $50 isn't going to happen with the regular sized Pi. You might be able to keep it that cheap with a Zero, but then you have to solve the issue of the Zero doesn't have the E for PoE.

The new Pis are PoE "ready", but they'll still need more hardware to actually provide the power.

The official Pi camera module is like $25 itself, so just the Pi and camera put you over $50, and you still need the PoE hardware, etc. Then if you want day/night, neither the standard camera nor the noir is going to work.


You need a camera with an IR cut filter. I found some Pi cams with IR cut filter and IR LEDs on Ali for like $13. I also have a $10 PoE splitter, which brings my current total to right around $60 for a day/night PoE camera based on RPi, but I haven't even started building a watertight case yet. I also doubt these LEDs will be bright enough to give much range outdoors, so I will likely have to go bigger on the IR LED array and hope I can keep the power consumption within PoE limits. Oh, and I have to figure out how to power the LEDs from my splitter so the Pi doesn't have to drive them.

I need help.

I'll start out and say you should start off with a strong and reliable mesh router setup.

Amplifi HD or Google WiFi

Nest Cam IQ Indoor/Outdoor
Couple of Google Home devices
LIFX LED bulbs/strips
TP-Link mini smart plugs

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am strongly in the camp that we need an open option for these things

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Doorbird, LTS, Hikvision all have doorbell cameras that you can pull a steam off and don’t have to rely on a cloud.

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Doorbird, LTS, Hikvision all have doorbell cameras that you can pull a steam off and don’t have to rely on a cloud.

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Then what do you do with it? You can set up motion detection to alert you and view a live stream or recordings, but what about 2-way audio? Is that open to integration with arbitrary systems?

Yeah I get that you can view/record the video streams, but can you use 2-way audio without using their proprietary cloud services?

kind of on the same note: anyone owned/purchased a Rachio sprinkler system? (smart sprinkler system; alexa enabled)


my irritrol just doesn't seem to follow my timing settings, no matter how many times i reset and re-program it. so i end up manually running a zone at a time depending on the time of day and who's using what part of the yard. I really want the ability to control it from my phone.