Building one house to be fully smart.
This is the running log of a house I'm building and wiring myself. Home Assistant is the brain, Google Home is what the rest of the household actually talks to, and Somfy moves every blind and shade. Every guide here comes out of a decision I had to make on site.
Written from a building site, not a spec sheet
Most smart home content online is written by people who have never pulled a cable or plugged in the device they're rating. This site is the opposite. It follows one house from empty walls to finished rooms, and the stack was picked before the plasterboard went up: Home Assistant runs the logic locally, Google Home handles voice and the everyday routines my family uses, Somfy motors drive the blinds and the external shades. Everything else has to prove it plays nicely with those three.
So the guides here answer the questions a build actually throws at you. Where do you run the Ethernet? How many neutrals do you need behind a switch box? What breaks when the internet drops at 8pm on a Sunday? Devices I test spend at least two weeks in daily use before I'll give a verdict, and every claimed integration gets checked on its own. The catalogue here is bigger than one house, so where a review is built from specifications and owner reports instead, the page says so. No manufacturer pays for a score, and none previews my copy.
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