Many years ago one of my hobbies became converting our regular home into a Smart Home. There's been a few wrong turns and dark alleys along the path, mostly with early technology not being as scaleable as I'd hoped. In recent years it appears every man and his dog is offering some 'smart' device and there will be plenty of people making the same mistakes now as I had back then. Local control and integration are the two keys. Our main control centre is the market leading HomeSeer which has been providing SmartHome solutions now for over 20 years and integrates with pretty much every 3rd party solution out there !

Today there are over 800 connected and integrated devices in our home. Blinds, lights, heating, cooling, power, water, gas, doors, windows - plus many more things including the hot tub and the garden irrigation. Anyone of them can be independently controlled by any device, or simply left to the house controller to decide when things need turning on, off, up or down based on rules, or other inputs such as weather forecasts or another device state.

Combined with a 4kW solar array on a South facing roof the entire system now is carbon negative throughout the year. Our utility bills are zero and the surplus goes towards other household costs.