Planning a Smart Home Build with David Webster

I recently saw someone asking for help in the Automated Home forums in relation to a planned DIY smart home build for a fairly large home they’re renovating.

They had obtained a professional quote for around $140,000 and then put together their own plan at around around $35,000 and as soon as I saw the post on the forum I knew David Webster would have a lot to say about it.

We were originally just going to have a private chat to talk about it because David is happy enough to share his knowledge with me and I’m certainly happy to learn as much as I can, but we decided to turn the camera on and record the conversation just in case someone else might also find it interesting or get value from it.

David had a lot to say about the proposed plan and I wouldn’t do it justice if I tried to cover everything that he said here in this article. I really recommend you either watch the conversation or listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts if this is a topic that interests you.

However, there were a few key learnings that jumped out to me:

Start with what you want first

David mentioned that he sees many people start with a budget for their smart home too early in the process and perhaps they haven’t even taken the time to properly consider what they want every space in the home to do in terms of functionality.

David suggests thinking about what you want every space in your home to do and then start thinking about how many and what sorts of products might be suitable for the task.

Then, having done all of that, the budget will naturally reveal itself when you start to list out everything that you’ll need.

This is a better way than starting with a budget in mind first and then trying to shoehorn products into a budget later.

Consider Reliability Requirements

David mentioned that if you want absolutely everything to work reliably 100% of the time, you might want to consider a professionally installed system rather than a DIY wireless system, much less a hybrid system with a mix of different protocols working together.

However, if you don’t mind and can live with some things sometimes not working or perhaps you need to reset or reconnect some things from time to time, then a DIY setup might be fine for your household.

One of David’s main concerns about this particular proposed smart home build is that it’s such a large home on a single level and wireless DIY devices may not be reliable enough to have much spouse approval factor. However, it sounds like David probably wouldn’t be too concerned if we were talking about a smaller home.

Integration is key

David mentioned that how various devices are going to be able to “talk to each” other is really of vital importance.

There’s not much point in spending a bunch of money on expensive products, even if they’re very good products if they don’t work with your proposed system and the rest of what you have. As David says, it can be “a bitter pill to swallow,” not to mention a huge waste of money.

A few other fun facts

• I learned that Philips Hue recommends no more than 50 bulbs on a mesh, but the actual hard limit is 64 bulbs. Interesting. David said as a workaround you could use multiple Hue bridges and split a larger number of bulbs up into two or more smaller meshes.
• David and I both have some Sonos products and some Amazon speakers in our home, something I didn’t know until this conversation
• David said he thinks that Homey Pro might be worth considering for a smart home build like the one that we were discussing

Honestly, David had a lot more really interesting things to say, so don’t take it from me, give the conversation a listen for yourself.

Learn more about Automated Home here.