Project Nest - building a smart home inexpensively and by yourself

I'm building a house right now, I'm at the stage when the electrical installation can be laid right away. My dream was to mess around with something towards a smart home. At this stage I can still do everything with the installation. I don't want to use expensive ready-made and closed systems, I'm more interested in cheap good and open systems.

The very general plan is simple: in the boiler room next to the switchgear I put a server to which everything "smart" would be connected and with its help I can control all connected devices / controllers (connection over the line). I can rather handle the server software, I would like to help myself with node-red. Unfortunately, while I am familiar with programming, I am not familiar with electronics. I don't even know which way to look in order to make the right choice. I was wondering about the protocol, CAN seems quite reasonable in that way I came across HAPCAN. Unfortunately this project seems to be dying out at the moment and I don't know if this is the best idea. I would be very grateful for some guidance in this direction.

Maybe I'll further specify what I'd like to have in this smart socket of mine: control of roller shutters (switches and remote), several lighting zones (controlled remotely and with switches), light movement sensors, ip cameras, several sockets under control, information from the furnace, control of heating circuits, videophone, outdoor lights, entrance gate, garage door and probably that's it.
Of course I could hire a good company to do this for me, who will design and implement everything exactly for me, unfortunately I can't afford it (kids, loans etc). I can afford (and that's not quite true) a local certified electrician who has been doing the installation for 30 years and will do a traditional installation for me - he is unlikely to be a support for the smart home. I'm sure some will reply that if I can't afford it, don't do it and yes that is one way out, but maybe I'm poor albeit not completely stupid so I could at least try to grasp part of the subject myself.

And please don't misunderstand me, I'm not looking for a ready-made solution, I'm rather hoping for signposts - which protocol, which controllers, how to combine the traditional installer experience with a smart installation, how to make it inexpensive but good.

Ok I analysed the topic a bit for myself yesterday. The heart will most likely be a rasppery pi with node red on board or domoticz (I started to hesitate a bit). Further from the heart will be an arduino in various versions and maybe an esp8266 somewhere, plus relays (ssr) and devices. Everything seems fairly cheap, easy rather should go without a problem. Although I'm a little worried about the connection itself, whether I'll mess things up, as befits an amateur. I still have a problem with working out the correct routing of the cables. By the way, is it always best to run a twisted pair cable to e.g. the light switches or roller shutter control in this configuration? Or is it better to use other cables?

chomik-00 wrote:

I'm building a house right now, I'm at the stage when the electrical system can be laid right away.

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Also think about the LAN and TV network.
Lay the wires in what you call a star and at least 2 RJ45 wires and 2 coaxial wires to each point where you will want to use something.
Remember about wifi too!
Think about wiring to hook up an AP somewhere.

I think you are heading in the right direction. I just based my system on Domoticz, Node-red and MQTT precisely. As the house had already been built a bit earlier and I didn't want to riffle it all over, the system components are based on wifi and ESP8266 and ESP32. In addition to this, integration with the Integra control panel opens up many other possibilities. That is, for example, the use of alarm sensors for various functions as well as the ability to control Integra outputs. I would suggest thinking about this, as it really offers a lot of possibilities.

It's slowly starting to come together in my mind. I'm thinking about two things now:

1. roller shutter control. I don't know why, but most of the affordable solutions are wireless. I can't dig around the Internet and find a module which would allow control of the roller shutters, but at the same time would be accessible e.g. via ethernet for the server (domoticz) and allow control, and at the same time it would be possible e.g. to group the roller shutters and manage them. Do you know of an affordable solution? There are plenty of wireless ones such as supla, blebox, shelly, sonoff. I know that you can connect two relays to an arduino, switches to that and that to a raspberry with domoticz, but there is a lot of discussion even on this forum and yelling about how unsecure, dangerous etc it is. That's why I've started looking for some good ready made solutions, but doesn't want wireless. Anyone know of any?

2. multisensors, i.e. all sorts of sensors connected to one module, I mainly care about temperature, humidity, light. And here I have a problem similar to the one above. Most of the solutions are esp based modules i.e. wireless. I don't know why this is the case and such modules need to be supplied with power, why it is not possible to find something e.g. on a twisted pair which sends data over the wire. After all, it could be powered by poe, one cable and no problem. But do you know of such a solution? It doesn't necessarily have to be transmission over a cable, but it would be possible to use a cable and thus connect such a module to e.g. an Arduino (the distance could be up to 20-30m). I would be grateful for guidance.
I've come up with the idea of sinking some temperature sensors into the screed (there will be an underfloor) but that's not the only reason I want something wired. I generally prefer cable and something wireless will come when there are no other options.