I am building a house and trying to avoid power bricks and cables hanging on the wall for motion sensors, blind shutters, “add next smart house blinky here”.

This is just an aexample photo:

example HA rooms

So I was thinking each IOT needs to have internet connection anyway. What about if I run a single CAT cable to each room, and position a switch in each room to split to couple CATs in each room (power socket, tv socket, window, ceiling fan). Main CAT from each room to go to the server room router. That way I can have one cable per room coming out from the router. And with some inexpensive POE switches in each room I can split to extra IOTs.

That way I wont be saturating the home wireless and needing expensive APs. And in the same time can deliver POE. Alternatively I can modify the CATs to run only 4 wires for 100MB network and remaining 4 for 12V if POE injection is complicated or routers cant deliver required IOT current.

I must say most IOTs will be DIY ESP/Arduino/MCUs

Is it possible you guys think?

  • zixutechOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Awesome thank you all guys for chipping in. So much to unpack here for an electronic guy who has no experience in networking and home automation.

    I just spun up HA yesterday to get my feet wet and I can see how easily I can get tempted to rump it up with a bunch of smart stuff. Ideally, I want to use less internet connected ones (although I said IOT initially, but really mean smart devices which i can control via HA and don’t ping home unnecessarily)

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    Conduit is a great choice, my mind struggles to assimilate how to leave the unpatched end of the cables/conduit at various sides of each room without building too many recess points. Or even how high to leave them from the floor.

    Regarding conduits, perhaps I can run one to the corner of the windows for blinders, motion sensors and automatic windows (if I can find those)

    Won’t running a conduit to every power socket (3 per room at least?) might be a bit overkill? Apart then the computer corner power/ethernet and TV sockets would I need a conduit near bedside tables power points?

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    I see the point why switches in every room are a maintenance issue. However, these smart devices, would they saturate the network so much that I need direct cable from each of them to the server closet?

    I am not planning to run a streaming device at the end of each. High Bandwidth TV/PC, camera cables should go directly to the server closet, but the rest hopefully will be