I'm building a smart home that doesn't suck
Smart homes are stupid. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh—but let’s be real, most so-called "smart" homes don’t make much sense.
If you grew up imagining Tony Stark’s JARVIS or Richie Rich’s insane smart home, the dream was seamless automation. Instead, we got a reality where we’re constantly shouting at Google, Siri, or Alexa just to turn on the lights—or worse, to play "Wonderwall" at a party.
The Problem With Today’s Smart Homes
I still want a smart home, just not in the way that most people think of today. A handful of Hue devices and a couple of voice assistants might help set a timer or find the meaning of onomatopoeia, but they hardly make a home feel intelligent.
In recent years, we’ve seen an influx of “smart” devices—ovens, washers, even fancy meat thermometers. But their intelligence mostly boils down to sending notifications or offering remote on/off control. And let’s not forget that each device comes with its own app, usually designed like it’s still 2003.
And what happens when that app stops working in five years? You’re left with an expensive appliance that still works but has lost all its "smart" features. Handy? Sure. The future of home automation we were promised? Not even close.
Then there’s the issue of security. Dozens of devices constantly pinging servers worldwide is a privacy nightmare. If my smart switch has to "call home" just to turn on a light, that’s a recipe for a slow, frustrating experience.
The Fix: A Smarter Approach to Smart Homes
So, how do we fix this? I want a smart home, but I don’t want it to become a hassle. No juggling 40 apps, no unnecessarily complicated routines. Just practical, thoughtful automation.
The problem isn’t that the tools don’t exist—it’s that very few people take the time to properly plan their smart home or even understand why they want one in the first place. To create a truly smart home, we need to establish some fundamental rules:
Switches should always work as expected. Flip a switch, and the lights should turn on or off. No exceptions.
No one should need their phone to control the house. Any function that requires a phone should be rare and optional.
The house should be intuitive. Guests shouldn’t need a tutorial to turn on a light or adjust the thermostat.
Everything should run locally. No devices calling out to the cloud for basic tasks. This keeps things secure and responsive.
Everything should fail safe. If something breaks, it shouldn’t cause chaos. No stuck fans, no air conditioning blasting indefinitely.
If you’re considering adding smart features to your home, I highly recommend defining your own set of rules first. It’s easy to go overboard and end up with RGB lights in your kitchen or garden lights that trip every time your dog walks by.
Choosing the Right Smart Home Platform
With these guidelines in mind, we needed to choose a platform for our smart home. In my mind, there’s only one real option: Home Assistant.
Home Assistant is an open-source, self-hosted platform that works with most smart devices right out of the box. It has a massive community developing new integrations, and best of all, it keeps everything local—no sending data to random servers. It checks all our boxes.
We’re running Home Assistant on a Home Assistant Yellow in our network rack. While we could run it in a Docker container on our server, a dedicated, low-power device like the Yellow makes more sense. It ensures that critical automations continue even if the main server is down for maintenance, and we don’t need to keep a power-hungry Intel-based server running all the time.
Having used Home Assistant in Docker before, I can also say this setup means less tinkering to get certain integrations or add-ons working.
By ensuring all our smart devices are connected via Home Assistant, our automations are limited only by our imagination. We can automate as much as we want while keeping our data local. And if our home ever decides to go full Skynet, we can just turn it off to assert our dominance.
Jokes aside, keeping everything offline protects us from bad actors and dodgy software updates while making our smart home snappy and responsive.
The Plan: Building a Better Smart Home
Now that’s all well and good, but how are we actually going to build our better smart home? Here’s the roadmap:
Step One: Laying the Foundation
Right now, our home lacks the necessary ‘inputs’—the data points that drive great automation. The first step is installing a robust network of sensors throughout the house.
We’re talking presence detection, temperature monitoring, motion sensing—the whole nine yards. But we’re doing it properly. No cluttered USB-powered gadgets randomly stuck on walls. Our sensors will be permanently installed, discreetly placed, and seamlessly integrated into the home.
(There’s a full video coming on that soon, so stay tuned!)
Step Two: Expanding Control
Once we have solid data coming in, we’ll start enhancing our ‘outputs’—the systems that actually make automation useful.
This means smart lighting, appliance control, and climate automation. I’m especially excited about our custom-built ducted zoning system, where every room gets its own thermostat, and the whole system is optimized for energy efficiency.
Step Three: Fun, Functional Projects
Finally, we’re going beyond the usual smart home basics with some hands-on, DIY projects designed to make daily life easier and more enjoyable. First up:
An automated mini greenhouse for starting seeds
Smart irrigation systems for effortless garden care
Custom garden lighting, all controlled intelligently
I’ll be documenting every step of the journey right here. If you’re tired of off-the-shelf solutions that only add complexity instead of solving real problems, stick around, subscribe, and see how a smart home should actually work.