One thing that I decided today is that I'm done with Insteon. It has served me mostly well, but the reliability of my garage door controllers in particular has been lacking, mostly due to the distance to cover between the PLM and the I/O Lincs. I'm not interested in seeing if I'll get better coverage in the new construction. So I've put up my backup PLMs, I/O Lincs, and switches for sale. The ones that are still in use here at the current place will be decommissioned as I have time.
- Light switches: For the new home, I've pretty much settled on Z-Wave switches. I had thought about going Lutron Caséta, but I just don't like the look of their switches. Plus I have my eyes on some smart recessed lights that I want to go with, and need a switch that won't kill power. That's why Inovelli Red is my current front runner. However, they are out of stock for the time being, so my plan of ordering one to try out is put on hold. I do have some Homeseer Z-Wave switches here and they are reliable, but I need that "phantom power" feature.
- Outdoor security lights: I'm going with a number of Homeseer HS-FLS100+ units. I have two of these here and they are rock solid.
- Garage doors: I've been using Insteon I/O Linc modules, but as I stated above, I'm not happy with their reliability. Since we'll be getting new garage door controllers for the new construction, I've looked at myQ and other solutions. myQ relies on the "cloud" from what I can see, and that is a deal killer for me. There are Z-Wave controllers, but I'm leaning toward an ESP-32 and HomeSpan with some custom programming to create a Wi-Fi based solution for triggering the garage door and determining the open/close state.
- Ceiling fans: Pretty much every ceiling fan we picked has a built in remote, and a few are "Bond ready" so I picked up a Bond Bridge I've been playing with it a bit with the fans here at the current place, and I really like it. I think I'm going to stick with Bond and not even put a power switch in the wall for the fans.
- Smart blinds/curtains: I'm still researching this, but I do not want battery powered solutions. What hardwired blind/curtain solutions are there, and what wire should I tell my electrician to run at the windows?
- Landscape irrigation: Like the garage doors, I plan on rolling my own solution with ESP-32.
- Doors: I have an ESP-32 with some custom code that will connect to contact switches in the door jambs for select doors, and expose those via MQTT to Indigo. The testbed is working great at the moment.
- Windows: I plan on having glass break sensors in each room where there are windows, and have some GoControl Z-Wave units on order.
- Motion sensors: I want go fully wired here too – no batteries.
- Smoke sensors: The current thinking is to roll my own. Get some cheap sensors, wire them together, then use a relay to feed the state into Indigo.
Well, that's the start of my notes. The next 9 months or so ought to be interesting. I'll post here as I take this journey.