Designing the ultimate (mostly) HomeKit Smart Home

As mentioned earlier, I want to build an awesome smart home without overwhelming anyone with technology. As an Apple user, I'm already using Homekit, though my current setup is small due to living in an apartment for the last 8 years. From what I can tell, I can accomplish essentially everything I want to do without having to pivot a new platform.

Criteria

Before choosing devices, I thought about what we actually want to accomplish. My running list of automations could easily be it's own post, so I won't go into that here. Once I figured out what we want to do, I looked at what equipment was needed. Knowing what type of gear we needed allowed me to really look at what solutions would work best. I chose this equipment based on the set of criteria outlined below.

1. Devices should be easy to use - This means really looking at the usability of the devices, whether that means devices with really great software, or hardware. For physical devices that people touch (light switches, thermostats, locks, etc.), they should always have an analog or manual way of being used. Unless you're single with no friends or family, there's a fair-to-significant chance that someone other than you will have to turn on a light, unlock a door, turn on a ceiling fan, etc. Why would you make something so simple so complicated?
2. Devices should blend in with their surroundings - Personally, I like to hide my tech as much as possible, so I'd rather not come home only for it to look like a Best Buy exploded in our house. 
3. Devices should be compatible with multiple automation platforms - HomeKit works well for us now and I don't foresee that changing particularly soon. If it does, or when Apple drops it like a bad habit, I don't want to have to go buy a bunch of new kit when I need to make the switch to a different platform. 

Thinking about the goals and constraints, I've picked the following gear.

Switches/Dimmers/Fan-Controllers

Lutron Caseta is my pick. They come highly recommended and everyone says they are rock solid. I don't mind having to home their Smart Bridge somewhere. Additionally, their design, while unique, is also not so wild that it becomes unintuitive. Aesthetically, in my opinion, they look classy and I really appreciate that they (switches, dimmers, Pico remotes & fan controllers) match.

Motorized Shades

We both really like the Lutron Serena blinds, but the price is approaching Used-Car territory and we needed blinds when we moved in. We ended up getting some Levelor cordless 2.5" faux-wood blinds. They're nice, but I HATE opening them every morning and closing them every evening. Screw that. For retrofit kits for blinds (not shades), I've found the MySmartBlinds retrofit kit (MySmartBlinds has changed their name to Tilt Smart Home) and the Soma Tilt. The MSB kit houses both the motor and the battery in the headrail of the blind, with an optional solar charger that hangs off the back of the headrail facing the window. The Soma Tilt is a battery + motor device that mounts to the wall near your blind and replaces the wand you use to twist the blind open/close. It also has a solar panel you can mount to the window to keep the motor charged. The MSB kit is not HomeKit-compatible, but there is a Homebridge plugin for the the MSB bridge. The Soma Tilt is HomeKit-compatible, but only when paired to their Soma Connect bridge, which is a Raspberry Pi running some custom code. Both devices are BLE and need a bridge to integrate with any Home Automation platform. I'm hoping to test both and find out which one is better, but the MSB kit has been out of stock for a while, so I'm afraid it may have been discontinued. I don't know that for sure yet. 

Motion Sensors

I'm not sure exactly which route I'll go with this one. What I want to achieve is automatically turning on or off lights based on motion with lux as a condition. Motion detected in a room with enough natural light to see? Lights don't need to be on. Motion detected in a room that's dark or when natural light is below a specific threshold? Let there be LIGHT. No hands.

In terms of functionality, this isn't super hard to achieve. You just need a sensor that does both motion and light. However, with my goal of keeping the tech hidden, that means getting creative with the mounting/location of sensors. This limits my options. For native Homekit compatibility, I like the Philips Hue indoor motion sensors, but their limited mounting options concern me, as well as the limitations on the Hue bridges of only 12 "accessories", meaning that I would need about 2 of these bridges around the house (not a huge deal, but still worth considering). The other option, I'm looking heavily at are the Trisensor and Multisensor-6 from Aeotec. These are Z-wave sensors, so I would need a Z-stick hooked up to Homebridge to expose them to Homekit. Aeotec makes an in-ceiling mount for these units that is exactly what I'm looking for, aesthetically. Z-wave is also a very common home automation protocol, so there's a bunch of platform options if we ever moved. I intend to test both the Hue and Aeotec options before going wild with them all over the house.

Thermostats

Our home has a dual-zone configuration, so we've got 2 thermostats to replace. I'm choosing the Ecobee 5th-gen SmartThermostat. I really, really, really love the use of the remote sensors, so the HVAC decisions aren't being made based on what temperature my hallways are. I want the room with people to be the temperature the thermostat says it is, or at least as close to that as can be reasonably had. Aesthetically, the thermostats will "stick out". There are very few smart thermostats on the market that look like the standard programmable units we're all used to seeing. However, smart thermostats are becoming more and more common, thanks to the popularity of units like the Nest Learning Thermostat.

Alarm System

I'm actually looking at the Ring Alarm. I know that Ring ecosystem doesn't play well with others, but their app also has huge points for ease-of-use IMO. Ring is the only DIY smart security system that I've found to have a wireless bridge for utilizing wired security sensors. The other systems that could utilize wired sensors were Envisalink and Konnected, but both look more like electrical projects than a retail product. Closer competition to the Ring Alarm that I've looked at heavily is Abode. Abode does have a native Homekit integration, but their cameras suck, they recently made some plan changes that raised prices, and they offer no way to use wired sensors that don't involve soldering and voiding warranties. Regarding the interoperability of a Ring setup with the larger smart home system, I can utilize HomeBridge to get these in Homekit, or it could be used in Home Assistant via an MQTT broker.

Smart Locks

I'm actually looking at 2 different locks for 2 different doors. For the front-door, I'm looking at the Z-wave variety of the Kwikset Obsidian. Integrated with the Ring alarm system, friends, family or neighbors can disarm the alarm and unlock the door with the entering of their code, which we like much better than giving out keys if we're out of town. For the garage entry door (which I refer to as the lil garage door), I like the new August wifi lock, which is has native HomeKit support. Since, we'll likely be the only ones using the lil garage door for coming and going, I can have Homebridge/HomeKit automatically arm when leaving or disarm when arriving, locking or unlocking the August lock, respectively.

NOTE: I'm not against doing a simpler Z-wave lock on the lil garage door, but it will depend on the Ring Alarm's behavior of different locks (IE, different people arriving unlocks one lock, but not the other), and how it all works being triggered by a HomeKit scene via Homebridge.

Garage Door Opener

Initially, I had looked at something with native HomeKit support like the Insignia unit, which is HomeKit-only. Then, found the iSmartGate Lite, which supports Homekit too, but also works with Alexa and Google Home. What I'm planning on trying is the Aladdin Connect by Genie, purely because the opener that came with our house is a Genie opener. It doesn't support HomeKit, but there is a Homebridge plugin for it. If necessary, I can switch to the iSmartGate lite controller later, or I can pick up one of the MyQ-enabled openers from Lift-master or Chamberlain and upgrade to a belt-drive at the same time. 

Contact Sensors

I'm talking about sensors for bedroom or closet doors, not entry doors or windows with security sensors built in. This device-type actually took some real thinking on. On one hand, picking up a handful of HomeKit-compatible BLE contact sensors seems like a no-brainer, but there are 2 problems. First, is the price. Those BLE sensors from Eve or Fibaro are often $40+. Multiply that by several doors and it's not going to be especially cheap. Second, if I did switch to a different automation platform in the future, those BLE sensors are HomeKit-only, so they won't work with Home Assistant, Hubitat, Savant, SmartThings, etc. For these reasons, I decided to with Aqara. Their sensors are inexpensive and communicate via the platform-agnostic Zigbee. Aesthetically, these sensors are small too, so they'll be easy to place largely out of sight.

Irrigation Controller

I like the Rachio 3 for this. Even though it has official HomeKit support, that's actually not why I chose it. I chose the Rachio for it's set-it-and-forget-it watering, being able to tell it which days I can/can't water, letting it take in local weather data and predicting soil moisture based on locale and the vegetation planted, etc. Being able to tie something into scenes and automations is great and all, but if I can put something on auto-pilot, that's the main selling point in my book.

Smart Plugs

One of the lowest-hanging fruit of modern IoT-based smart homes are smart plugs. I currently use one to automate a small lamp in my living room and it was my first smart-home purchase. It's the iDevices Switch and it works great. On functionality alone, I'd buy more if I could but they appear to be discontinued. Honestly, these devices are mostly the same, so I'm not swearing to one brand or another. I'll stay away from units that lack any HomeKit integration at all (TP-link Kasa), or any with well-documented connection issues (Belkin Wemo), but I'm not sold on any particular make/model at this very moment. They're mostly all Wifi, so they should be mostly platform agnostic, unlike BLE-only contact sensors. If I get some now that work with HomeKit, but don't work for Hubitat or Home Assistant or some future platform I build on, replacing smart plugs isn't a huge hurdle.

Water shut-off valve

I've actually already written a post about this, but I really like the Flo by Moen. Rather than using ultrasonic sensors outside of the pipe or wireless flood sensors to tell you that a either there might be a leak somewhere in your house or that there's some unknown amount of water in a specific area, respectively, all while only alerting you (not doing anything about it), the Flo can detect a leak as small as 1-drop/sec, turn off the water and tell you about it. It won't tell you there's a leak in a specific area, but it can measure line-pressure, which if high enough, can be a precursor to leaks.

With respect to the technology, I can only use it with IFTTT (it also supports Alexa, Google Home, and Control4, if you're leveraging any of those). Normally, this would be a device much like the Rachio where it's simply a set-it-and-forget-it type of operation, but this devices features 2 different modes, which change it's notification settings for a leak event. In Home mode, when it thinks there's a leak,  it will ask you if you're using the water and if you do not respond, wait a few minutes before shutting it off. In Away mode, if it thinks there's a leak, it will shut the water off and THEN tell you about it. Without any sort of integration into an automation platform, you would have to open the app and flip it to whichever mode you want it to be. My plan is to either 1) use the Ecobee Home/Away modes to trigger IFTTT applets that will set the Flo unit to the corresponding mode. So, IFTTT will keep the Flo modes in Sync with Ecobee, which is set by geofencing-triggered scenes in HomeKit. Or, 2) flip between Flo modes using a Homebridge plugin for IFTTT and incorporating that into coming and going scenes in HomeKit.

UPDATE: Moen stopped supporting IFTTT for the Flo. Upon learning this, I began the search for a similar product and came across the Phyn Plus. Not only is it a smart-shut off valve similar to the Flo, but it has a similar water stats using Machine Learning, but without having to pay a monthly fee for like the Flo. However, looking at the Phyn, while it too has an Away mode, it seems like it's not something you flip in and out of regularly. It seems like it's more like a you're-on-vacation-for-a-while-and-aren't-expecting-any-water usage sort of setting. This has me wondering if I'm misunderstanding the modes on the Flo. If that is the case, then the shut-off valve (IMO) doesn't need any integration into home automation platform. It can be an island and simply do it's own thing, independent of everything else. I need to do a bit more digging on this. 

Smoke/CO Detectors

The First Alert ZCOMBO Z-wave detectors are my pick for this. They work well with the Ring Alarm and the only automation I can see using them in is if the smoke detector goes off, unlock the doors and turn on the sprinkler zones (to help keep a house fire from spreading to other houses).

Robot Vacuum

Currently, I have an old Neato XV-21 robot vacuum, which I love (minus the Ni-Cad batteries). While I was initially just going to get the nicest Neato I can afford, it seems that the Roborock S4 is the best bang-for-the-buck at the moment. My bro-in-law and sis-in-law have one and they love it. However, without any native HomeKit compatibility, I'll have to use a Homebridge plugin for Roborock vacuums.

Future Items

There are certain smart home items that I think would add value to our lives, but due to their cost or installation requirements, these aren't items I plan to add especially soon.

Smart Shower Controller

The U by Moen is my pick for this, unless Kohler starts pushing their Kohler Konnect platform much harder. The U shower controller utilizes a 2- or 4-outlet electronic shower valve with a digital controller, allowing 2 users to set their perfect water temperature, outlet settings (head or body-jets, hand-sprayer, rain-head, etc.), and timer controls. Using it's native HomeKit compatibility, you could add this to a good morning scene that starts your shower with YOUR settings, turns on other accessories, starts music, etc. However, this sort of thing requires having electrical access near your shower, drilling into tile to mount the digital controller, etc. It's not nearly the same installation as wiring up a thermostat or some smart switches. Minus any installation costs, the 2-outlet valve and controller run about $800, at the time of this writing. That price is for one shower. Where I would do this is a double shower. Ugh.

Smart Register Vents

I really like Flair smart vents. I'll admit that smart vents sounds either incredibly boring, a solution looking for a problem, or both. However, the efficiency of a zoned system is fantastic. The way I've heard it explained is that if you turn on the faucet in your kitchen, do you want the bathroom faucets and the shower to turn on too? That's kind of what happens when with a traditional HVAC system. Why not send your hot/cold air where to the rooms that need it the most?  Retrofitting the electronically controlled dampers to achieve this can be super expensive and most homes aren't built with them from the start. Flair's vents integrate with the Ecobee thermostats to help direct conditioned air to where it should be. At around $100/vent, doing a whole house could be somewhat cost-prohibitive without planning and saving for it. My plan is to live with the Ecobee thermostats and see if we do have any rooms that are hotter or colder than others. I believe that having a dual-zone system like ours should be fine, but smart register vents could be a big help, if needed. 

As far as equipment goes, that about wraps it up. I'm not buying everything at once, but I intend to talk about each piece in greater depth as I work with them.