ᐅ Which home automation or smart home system is recommended?

Hello everyone,

We recently purchased a single-family house and are currently renovating it extensively. As part of this, the entire home electrical system needs to be replaced, which we plan to do ourselves and then have inspected. When setting up a new system, the idea of networking several parts of the house naturally comes up.

Which system or systems would you recommend based on the following requirements:
At the moment, I’m mainly considering Homematic, but that might be more suitable for retrofitting apartments. Other systems like KNX might be better, especially if the walls are already open 😉

Controlling roller shutters:

• Raise and lower via smartphone remotely. For example, raising four skylight shutters in case of hail.
• Lower all shutters in the house with one click on the phone (eight shutters).
• Automatically lower shutters at sunset and raise them at sunrise.

Controlling lights:

• Turn on the porch light in the evening, for example, even while on vacation.
• Turn bathroom and hallway lights on at half brightness during the night, but with the option to switch to full brightness if needed.
• Detect if a person is present in a room and automatically turn the light on and keep it on while they are there.

• Possibly even a linked mode between lights and shutters as a “shortcut”: Cinema mode — lights off and shutters down simultaneously.

Heating:

• Heat the living room only in the evenings on weekdays. This mode should be overridable on days off.
• Heat bathroom and kitchen only in the mornings and evenings.

Irrigation:

• Automatic, regular watering of vegetable beds in summer.

Alarm system / doorbell:

• Doorbell with automatic video feed to smartphone.
• Door and window sensors.
• Surveillance camera with cloud storage for footage.

Maybe some of these wishes are not practical or are actually quite simple to implement? Or do you have other suggestions for useful integrations that don’t require much effort?

Is it possible to estimate the costs for each item? Of course, the cheaper the better. I know that avoiding these features altogether is the cheapest option 😉 That’s why I’d like to prioritize if possible when estimating prices.

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
maxpd

Hello maxpd,

You will probably have the most flexibility in terms of options and choice of manufacturers with KNX. If you don’t have any experience with it yet, you should at least find someone to help you with the planning. There are providers like myknx (example, no affiliation).

You should create a room book beforehand that documents the desired functions for each room.

It is difficult to estimate costs because, for example, the choice of switches can already make a significant difference.

KNX has the advantage of working in a decentralized way. That means the logic is within the components themselves. If one fails, only that one is affected.

Other systems, such as Loxone, have centralized logic. If the server fails, the functions are no longer available. However, Loxone offers a wide range of interfaces, relatively simple programming, and a nice user interface.

As you can see, today you have plenty of options. Personally, I will use a combination of Loxone (visualization and logic) and KNX (basic functions like lighting, independent of the Loxone miniserver). If I were to build again in the future, I would probably prefer a pure KNX installation. But since I already had experience programming Loxone, I ended up with this setup.

Whichever way you decide, you will need to invest a lot of time in planning and research—regardless of the system.

Good luck ntsa86

I have been undecided for a long time between Homematic and KNX. In my opinion, Homematic is the only alternative for a single-family home. Homematic has significant advantages but also major drawbacks. If money is no object… KNX. For 230 m² (2,475 sq ft), KNX will now cost us about 30,000 euros plus around 15,000 euros for the electrician, totaling approximately 45,000 euros for the complete installation. Homematic (I would have programmed the software myself, which is much easier than KNX) would be about 4,000 euros plus also approximately 15,000 euros for the electrician.

Regards, Steffen

PS: KNX isn’t rocket science either. You just need to have the time for it. And definitely read the book by “Stefan Heinle.” It does include a lot of filler (primordial network technology slime, computer hardware, the first 7 days of the universe’s creation), but it’s very good regarding KNX and related topics.

I can only agree with the previous speakers. KNX is like a Porsche, Homematic the VW. Both get the job done.
At least you can meet all your requirements above with Homematic, though it might not be quite as elegant as with KNX in some cases.
I would recommend checking out both systems on YouTube. There are many good channels where you can get a better idea.

The requirements can be met with practically any system; it’s nothing special...

With KNX, of course, a completely different world opens up compared to manufacturer-specific solutions... and if the walls are already open, for me there would only be one answer... but it cannot be denied, KNX is not cheap... however, it works for decades without issues.