I am building a house and trying to avoid power bricks and cables hanging on the wall for motion sensors, blind shutters, “add next smart house blinky here”.
This is just an aexample photo:
So I was thinking each IOT needs to have internet connection anyway. What about if I run a single CAT cable to each room, and position a switch in each room to split to couple CATs in each room (power socket, tv socket, window, ceiling fan). Main CAT from each room to go to the server room router. That way I can have one cable per room coming out from the router. And with some inexpensive POE switches in each room I can split to extra IOTs.
That way I wont be saturating the home wireless and needing expensive APs. And in the same time can deliver POE. Alternatively I can modify the CATs to run only 4 wires for 100MB network and remaining 4 for 12V if POE injection is complicated or routers cant deliver required IOT current.
I must say most IOTs will be DIY ESP/Arduino/MCUs
Is it possible you guys think?
My dream home would have drop ceilings and raised floors. Imagine the convenience of “I want a device there” and one swing of the drill later, there it is. Fucked up? Just throw in a new tile idgaf.
None of my IoT has an internet connection. I suppose that makes it a NoT.
I use the spoke and star topology in my home. Hardwired CAT5/6 to each main room and switches there. Most have a PC + TV with ethernet ports.
The bedroom CAT5 is provided by the Office netdoor. This was cheaper than running both (or all) rooms to the hallway.
If you are going DIY eco-system don’t ruin the flexibility by focusing yourself on a single platform like HA. HA is no longer generic, it’s pretty opinionated and bespoke these days. It can afford that as many people produce compatible firmware for HA.
Start with something lower level like MQTT as your core data architecture. HA will consume that fine, but it will give you more options.
Another suggestion. Power monitoring smart plugs (Tasmota or ESPHome) these will allow you to monitor and manage your “device clusters” such as shutting down all the standby power in the living room from a switch beside the light switch.
I don’t use IoT, I use zwave so power budgets are small. Wireless sensors get a cr123 battery that lasts a year or more.
PoE is an option for things like shades/blinds. Alternately you can get those AV-style recessed wall boxes that have 110 outlets that you put a cover over, though you need to plan for a large enough valence to conceal it or some architectural detail.
If you are building a house from scratch, do it right.
Put a room in the basement and call that the IT room. Run Cat6 from everywhere to that room. Every room, everywhere you might have a phone, TV, computer, etc. All of it gets at least one cat6 run. Many runs get more than one cable- anywhere you might have a computer put 2x cat6, anywhere you might have a TV put one Cat6 and one Cat7 (for HDbaseT (HDMI over CatX)). Run a Cat6 to anywhere you’ll want a smart device, including things like window blinds.
Have your builder terminate these in patch panels, ideally in fairly deep wall mount racks, spaced with 24 per 1.75" ‘rack unit’ and one open unit between each two patch panels.
Thus, if you buy 48 port switches you can easily run PoE ethernet to every port in the house and it’ll look really slick like this.
Consider a hardwired alarm to do hardwired alarm things. A Honeywell/Resideo Vista 20 alarm and an Envisalink will get you tons of sensors, and hardwired contact sensors in doors/windows are always better. Find a LOCAL INDEPENDENT alarm company, tell them you want an alarm installed but you are an automation nerd and need the installer codes after installation. Not all will want to work with you in this regard. Find one who will. Or say you’ll hire them for the physical install but just want to buy hardware and installation and have no need for monitored alarm service.
That all said- all of this is way more expensive than a couple of $180 Ubiquiti 6 Pro access points and the 3-4 cat6 runs to feed them.
I’d add to this to make sure to include Shielded Cat6 for any of those runs where you might think you’ll use HDbaseT or POE.
Everything in my prewire guide. 👀
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.
Conduits. I just did a remodel and am already regretting not finding a better way to incorporate some conduits.
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…
I find Shelly wifi fine for mains powered wall switches but motion sensors and contact sensors and anything else with a battery need ZigBee IMO because the battery life and latency with wifi is absolutely intolerable.
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
Have a look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBzanvRn2Hc
Skip the ~7:00-13:30 section as it is not relevant.
In the last segment, he goes over a conduit run from the service entrance. However, I would be running strapped-down rigid conduit since, when pulling cable, there is potential for it to flex (it will absorb the pull force, rather than the force acting on the cable only). His endpoint in the attic area is fine for single-floor homes, but for multiple floors, you will want to run those all the way to the destination.
I would also run conduit for all the wall jacks instead of bare cable.
recess points
One thing you can consider: Those new LED puck recessed lighting can double as ceiling access panels. You can end some conduit near those areas. A lot less work to fish wires if you already have 75% of it done
Here is another good reddit discussion “Deciphering what “run conduit everywhere” means for a home remodel”
saturate the network so much
If you use a single, low-cost wifi router, or your ISP’s CPE device, it may, yes. This is why most people are talking about adding WAPs (wireless access points), which are not routers by the way, they plug into the router (ethernet cable, PoE-powered usually) to “extend” the reach of your wireless and add capacity.
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?
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.
For more budget friendly recommendations, the unifi switches are great but expensive while used Aruba 2920 POE’s are $130 on eBay. Unifi UAP pro can handle 50 devices on 1 AP, most houses can be covered by 2 maybe 3.
Axis cameras are big money bad value and good for commercial use if you’re going Exaqvision over Blueiris, Dahua are great value and can do color night vision now for much less. There are some solid Amcrest offerings around too. Avoid wireless cameras over wired.
I wouldn’t recommend buying wifi devices without matter support at this point. Thread solves congestion issues. Zigbee might be 915 or 2.4ghz but your demanding devices will run on the 5ghz anyways.
Good point on the home theater! You can run all your speaker wires now. Don’t forget power for smart door locks!
OP, please listen to this. IT closet, conduits.
centralizing everything and having conduit here and there is great.
but jesus christ some of that is just bizarre, completely needless and would be a nightmare to work with.
up sizing all of the 12/2 cabling to 10/3? i’m pretty sure that might cause more than a few electricians to jump off a bridge or any electrical bid to be 5x higher than what it would normally cost even when excluding the cost of material difference.
OP, please listen to this. IT closet, conduits.
all relatively good and common advise but the cable up sizing to 10/3 is absolute bizarre and a waste of money.
Home alarm system: 2-wire all door and window reed sensors to the IT closet. Use Konnected or something like that.
may as well just pay the $20-30 a month for a monitored system
but 4 cables to a door – 2 for a contact sensor, 2 for a shock sensor. assuming OP buys a proper door that can’t be kicked in. may as well have a notification.
4-6 for windows. 2 for a shock sensor if the glass is laminated – glass break sensors don’t work well, 2 for the contact sensor, 2 for shades.
I’m also building a new home soon and plan to run so much ethernet (Cat6A) I’m going to need more patch panels than you can buy in a bundle.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hPYCpzZD_SbznEdpzGgHPffenE-BOR1PEJNOphP3o-c/edit?usp=sharing
Over 100 runs on that list for a 3/2/Office house. The overall themes are:
- 4 runs to the TV nook
- double runs to at least two jacks in every room
- double runs to every corner of the home exterior (poe cameras)
- runs to walls in the garage
- runs to every door and window opening (either remote ESP devices with POE power, or to just use the cable as a dumb carrier for contact sensors)
- runs to every room for “sensing” (presence, ir, mmwave, temp, lux, etc) device
- several runs around the house for WiFi mesh coverage
- runs to the home entrance doors for “doorbell cameras” (or the equivalent) – again, potentially just as dry contact wires too
- runs to various monitoring points (water heater, HVAC, electrical panels, and water meter even!)
And, as other’s have mentioned, conduit/smurftube galore. In a new build, when you have the chance, it’s an absolute no-brainer to run all of this while the walls are off and insulation is not interfering. I’m trying to have as few things wireless as possible because wires are simply faster, more reliable, and easier to troubleshoot.
I, personally, will not go the “switch in wall” route as that adds a bandwidth bottlenecks and creates extra stuff to manage all over the house. Plus devices that will eventually fail you’ve got to pull out of the wall now.
I adore your shot mate
If you can - run conduit in the walls, as then it’s super easy to pull different cables whenever you need them.
I would personally avoid doing a switch per room and instead do multiple CAT5/6/7 drops per room that all route back to a central rack / router somewhere. It’s much easier to manage centrally and gives you a lot more flexibility as and when higher bandwidth stuff comes along.
If your budget can stretch to it, really recommend the Ubiquiti range of networking gear, the POE switches are super reasonable and will massively reduce the number of power bricks you have to have around - you can find POE versions of most HA stuff these days !!
This seems to be an unpopular opinion because there’s always people jumping in talking about running wire all over the house…but…wireless is the future.
I have around 100 smart devices in my house and they are all wireless. Mostly ZigBee and Zwave with a few wifi devices mixed in. I struggle to see many reasons to need a wired data connection outside of your network closet.
I would actually consider skipping the light switches entirely.
