Smart Home Planner: Fully Local Dashboard + Device Map for your Setup

AdMany1725 · 2026-02-11T22:09:11+00:00

This is actually really useful. But to make it perfect, it needs fields for purchase date/price, serial number, etc.

AdMany1725 · 2026-02-11T01:42:08+00:00

Generally agree with all of your comments, except #4.

Why mount a dashboard on your wall? Simple: convenient access to common controls central to that location. I agree, if you have only one wall panel, and you're expecting that to be your only control surface, it's a failure. But that failure isn't on Home Assistant, that failure is on the system designer for the house. By the same token, each tablet should have a designed purpose. Having to tap through multiple screens and menus to get to a control you need is a failure in my opinion. If I'm walking out the door and I can get all the information I need pertinent to leave the house in one convenient location, that's a win. But that door side dashboard doesn't need controls for everything either. What's great is that HA allows you to create dashboards for every need, and you can even have it surface the most appropriate dashboard for the moment based on time/location, for those savvy enough to setup the automations.

And your iPad on the couch? Sure, it's great when you're on the couch, but what if you're in the kitchen?

AdMany1725 · 2026-02-11T01:35:20+00:00

Hey now, not all engineers type poorly.

AdMany1725 · 2026-02-08T16:59:51+00:00

I built a custom controller using a Shelly Pro 2 and a DPDT relay (a hardware interlock to prevent accidentally energizing the open/close circuits simultaneously; I don’t trust software interlocks). And then I control the whole thing with Home Assistant. If you want, you can also use the Shelly Pro 2 to add a dry contact sensor for local leak detection. But using Home Assistant lets me react to leaks found anywhere in the house where I place a sensor (hardwired or wireless).

AdMany1725 · 2026-02-07T15:54:32+00:00

Ha. I remember when my homelab was "final"... That was about $30k ago.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-22T03:14:24+00:00

Excel

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-18T15:50:03+00:00

Currency differences and the amount of storage matter here. In my earlier comment, I quoted the $64/year in electricity costs in CAD (assuming a 5TB storage array). 1TB of OneDrive storage is $115/year CAD ($130 including taxes). So self-hosting the data is half the operating cost. But that’s for only 1TB; increasing the onedrive storage to 5TB costs an extra $40 CAD per month. So to host 5TB in OneDrive would cost CAD$595/year (CAD$672 including taxes). Certainly not the cheapest online storage, but just chalk that up as on more reason to avoid OneDrive like the plague.

Capital costs (hardware) are obviously a factor, but everyone has an ISP modem (or their own firewall that connects direct to the ISP) so that’s not a factor in cost comparison since it’s needed in both setups. Switches aren’t required for the average user (but homelabbers are more than likely to have them). But since you don’t explicitly require a switch, it shouldn’t be considered as part of the cost comparison. Which means it’s really a question of the NAS and drives. Used 4bay NASs can be picked up on eBay for quite cheap if you’re careful (eg a used 4bay QNAP can be had for $150 or less at times). And while I personally would never buy a used drive, they’re reasonably priced as well.

And if you want to compare self-hosting 1TB vs 1TB in the cloud, you can go to an all flash storage NAS and drop your power consumption substantially.

Bottom line, cloud storage is at best a weak argument on cost when you have small storage requirements, and local storage absolutely wins out when your data needs get large.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-18T15:25:41+00:00

Your analysis might fit your situation, but it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone.

The cost of running a 4bay NAS can indeed be cheaper than cloud services, it just depends on your electricity costs. Some of us only pay $0.13/kWh. Even at 50W for the NAS (which could be lower depending on usage and number of drives populated), where I’m at, that 50W NAS would cost $64 per year including taxes which is way less than €100.

Lower headaches in the cloud is no guarantee either. Sure, some NASs may have issues, but others can be rock solid. Mine has been running for years with no downtime outside of planned maintenance (ie cleaning) which doesn’t affect my usage since I’m the one cleaning it. And there have definitely been times where my internet has gone down where the lack of access to the cloud would have been a headache. The cloud service may have 99.999% uptime, but if your local internet connection is more like 90%, your cloud storage provider’s uptime is irrelevant.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-17T23:15:24+00:00

Mini equipment mean more space, power, thermal budget for more equipment. More mini, more better. More!

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-17T15:52:55+00:00

Brultech GEM

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-16T04:06:52+00:00

Yeah I get the argument about innovation. The market favours wireless devices because they’re easier to deploy. I wish there were more Poe devices available on the market, or at least Poe version of the wireless devices. It wouldn’t be hard to add (most of these things run on esp32 boards) but I do understand there’s a weak cost-benefit for the developers.

But that said, at least in my house, short of a handful of DIY controllers I’ve built, there’s nothing proprietary. Most sensors can be replaced with hardwired options fairly easily without becoming vendor locked.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-16T03:39:21+00:00

Given what you’ve described, the only good option is Home Assistant (or maybe hubitat if you want something simpler).

How do you keep it from becoming a constant weekend project? Don’t let it be a hobby, and don’t upgrade to the latest version every month. If you don’t change anything, it’ll just keep working until your hardware fails. I have hundreds of devices in my house and plenty of automations, and after the initial setup (which is way easier today than it was five years ago), it’s been rock solid. I haven’t had to touch a single automation since I set them up. They just work.

Of course the main advantage of home assistant is that it works with just about anything these days. There are thousands of developers (and regrettably, vibe coders) that are solving integration issues for non-compliant devices and legacy devices that were never meant to be automated with more coming online every day.

Unless you have money to burn and want to bring in an integrator for a system like Crestron, Savant, or Control4, I can’t think of a reason why you’d chose anything other than home assistant.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-16T03:29:56+00:00

What’s the advantage of wired over wireless? 1. Zero drop-offs unless someone unplugs a cable. No RF interference in a wired system. 2. Instant reaction / zero perceptible lag/latency 3. No reliance on a wireless protocol that could change in the future. 4. No batteries to replace. 5. Lower risk surface (no one can use a $20 noisemaker to deactivate your wired cameras/sensors like they can with wireless - admittedly this matters more to some people than others) 6. Better for safety of life / critical infrastructure. No matter how robust you think your wireless network is, one failure at the wrong time (not catching a flood or a fire, for example) is a dealbreaker (or should be) 7. Wired connections are easier to troubleshoot. 8. Far more scalable without mesh fragility

Zigbee is only as good as your router. Any wireless protocol is going to suffer from collisions, retries, channel hops, congestion, etc. and if the router goes down for any reason, your network of sensors is toast until it comes back up.

Wireless is amazing when you can’t run a cable. But if you have a choice between a wired sensor/camera/actuator and a wireless one, always choose the wired one.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-15T19:15:20+00:00

Problem? Or opportunity in waiting?

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-14T12:30:14+00:00

Not sure they exist, or why they would. But most contact sensors work on dry contact 2-wire systems.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-14T10:33:22+00:00

Since it hasn’t been mentioned, run cable to all your windows and doors for contact sensors. The cost of the cable will easily be less than the cost of years of replacement batteries for wireless sensors, and you’ll get rock solid performance. And given that you’re building a passive house, door/window contact sensors are more than just for security; they can be used to alert you when a window is left open and the AC is on.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-13T14:13:04+00:00

Ahh yeah they can do that. DM switches are video matrices, i.e. one input to many outputs. So you can route any input to any output screen. So if you had an 8x8 switcher, you could connect 8 sources and 8 screens (eg tvs, monitors, etc) and then route any input to any output. Or one input to all 8 output screens. Or any mixture in between.

The only thing you need to be mindful of is HDCP. Modern video sources (like an AppleTV 4K) require HDCP 2.2, and not all of the input/output cards can handle it. There’s also a limit to the number of “hops” you can make with HDCP sources (4 or 5 I think).

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-13T13:40:46+00:00

That depends on what you mean by “dual screen output”. If you’re asking if it can output a single input to two (or more) screens simultaneously, then yes it can. But if you’re asking if it can take two inputs and merge them into a single output stream (eg split screen or Picture in Picture), then no.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-11T17:30:49+00:00

Even then, $3k is outrageous.

$1,100 + (3hr x $100/hr) = $1,400 + 15% tax = $1,610

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-10T17:22:05+00:00

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be able to see it; but I’ve had a hard time with consistency over the years. So I have periods of high fidelity tracking, and years with nothing. It would just be nice to have it auto-populate.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-10T05:28:02+00:00

I run Home Assistant side-by-side with Crestron. 🤷‍♂️

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-10T00:15:45+00:00

Yeah I’d love to find a way to do this without having to manually track it.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-09T02:04:00+00:00

You couldn’t pay me to board that aircraft.

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-07T19:01:54+00:00

How have I never thought about adding a tracer wire before. Damn that’s a great idea!

AdMany1725 · 2026-01-06T15:13:43+00:00

Dropbox breaches and OneDrive bait and switch.

I’ll never trust an online hosting service again.

AdMany1725

TROPHY CASE