In an apartment, especially in a small one, of course, you won't run away much if you make some kind of smart home, but if it's a private house, a large one, it certainly has much more possibilities in terms of automation and the creation of various interesting scenarios for a smart home.

There are a lot of ideas that can be done in the house, if you immediately think about a smart home even at the construction stage, then of course it will be much easier, it will be possible to wire the necessary places to install the devices, if the house has already been repaired, it will be much more difficult to integrate different devices and build a full-fledged smart home management system but of course, there are still a lot of things that can be fixed at this stage, for example, if you do video surveillance, because in such a house it will still be useful, then you can just buy regular webcams and install them in the right places, and of course this will be enough to somehow monitor the territory and the house itself, but in principle such cameras can record to a built-in flash drive, and if you pay for a cloud solution, it can also save to cloud storage, on regular servers, but if you really want to, you can make these cameras record on some kind of built-in local DVR, or do it separately, allocate a mini-PC for a video registration server and record there.

I also did this, but in fact there is a lot of traffic, because these Wi-Fi cameras send a stream over Wi-Fi, but of course if this is a private house, then most likely the Wi-Fi network is not so busy, the neighbors may be far away, and in principle you can even make somesome kind of Wi-Fi system that will provide better Internet access, and then, in principle, there will not be such a heavy load on the network, of course, but still the stream is large enough, on the cameras themselves you can choose which stream to record, usually two streams, one full size, let's say FullHD, and the second one is SD quality, but such a constant stream is also not really needed, for example, recording 20 frames per second or 30 frames per second is not required, for example, I usually limit it to one frame per second, if there is such a possibility, if there is no such possibility, then in principle it is possible. and record it, or somehow in the recorder settings themselves just specify that not everything is recorded, but in principle the recording is either moving or constantly, that is, you can also control this and save space quite well, but in order to view the video of the registers itself, it must still be hosted somewhere, it must have access to the cloud, so in fact it turns out that there is not much difference between watching directly from the camera or watching from this registrar.

Also, at this stage, for example, it is already possible to redo the lighting, in principle it is not so difficult, you can also buy ordinary switches and replace them with smart switches, but if they are not very different in design, for example, that there are no double switches that stand side by side in two boxes, but then it will not be a problem. It will be possible to install a regular smart switch instead of a regular circuit breaker.

If smart heating was not immediately provided, then there are also several options, it can be replaced and installed on radiators, or additionally use underfloor heating control, or additionally install some kind of electric heaters and they can also be controlled through a smart home system, which in principle will increase comfort if suddenly for some reasonfor this reason, the current condition is insufficient, for example, the boiler does not provide the necessary comfort in terms of temperature in the house.

In terms of cooling, of course, they usually install some kind of air conditioner, but it may also not be smart, and buying a separate module for an air conditioner is, in principle, quite expensive, but of course, compared to an ordinary house, it may not be too expensive, but it doesn't matter if there are several air conditioners and they are in different rooms. then it will be necessary for everyone to buy this module accordingly, which is not very convenient, to control such an air conditioner, you can do this, or buy a separate module that allows you to control this air conditioner, this is an outlet with the ability to measure the consumption of this air conditioner, and it can also send commands to this air conditioner via an infrared channel, in fact, it emulates the remote control of this air conditioner, but if you do not buy such a device, there is an option to buy an infrared remote control such as Yandex or Tuya, and they also know how to send signals to the air conditioner related to management.

Also, if you use some kind of ventilation system or a breather, you can also make a setting to either turn it on or off through a smart outlet, or use some kind of relay control option, but there is a dry contact relay on sale, that is, which simply opens the line, and you can control different loads, that is, it is not necessary that-then 220 volts will be supplied to the output, and this can also be, for example, low-voltage control, that is, the signal will break 12 volt or 5 volt, then this can also be provided, but there are not very many such relays, but in principle they are there, you can find them and install them too, even if the device itself did not support this control option immediately.

In order to have more comfort in the house, of course, you can also provide for the control of curtains, because there are usually a lot of windows in the house and windows in different rooms, and of course you can either control the curtains or control the blinds, that is, different ways can also be done after the repair is done, but it is better, of course, to provide food because that all these devices are mainly powered from an outlet, they are unlikely to work on batteries for a long time, there are such solutions too, but it is not very reliable and you will have to constantly monitor the battery charge, but in principle, it is not so difficult to replace the curtain rod, they are certainly not cheap, but in principle, even if it was not provided for at the construction stage, such a curtain control system, then in principle it can be done after.

Of course, in such a large house there is usually something to monitor, that is, in principle, you can measure the temperature in different rooms and, based on this, control both ventilation, heating, and air conditioning, that is, in principle, quite a lot of different scenarios can be developed, well, the temperature itself is not difficult to measure, that is, any buy not very expensive sensors that measure temperature and humidity, these sensors work with batteries, there are also sensors that also have a screen, there are also sensors that can measure illumination, this can also be used in scenarios, and if there is a screen, then you can visually see what temperature and humidity are in this room, but of course such sensors can be placed in any room, in the corridors, that is, in principle, it will be possible to fully understand where what temperature is set, and what temperature has turned out now.

And you can also install different sensors for opening / closing doors and windows, they basically all work using the Zigbee protocol, and of course you will need to buy a gateway, but it is not very expensive, but it gives a lot of opportunities related to monitoring what is happening in the house, there are also infrared motion sensors. they also run on batteries, they can be installed after the repair is done and do not require any wiring.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.