I’ll just re-share mine from last time.
I tend to use the Horizontal Stack. On a mobile device, I just get one stack per line.
And on bigger screens, I get multiple stacks to make use of space.

General “Going out” page:

Internet speedtest page:

I’ll write a quick gist for anyone coming along:

One gas boiler in the house, each room has a smart TRV.
PIR sensor to set room presence, each window has an opening mag sensor. HASS has a general presence sensor set.

Each room’s temperature is targeted based on presence and window status:
For each room, if person is home at all, and has been in the room for 5 mins, and the window is closed, TRV to 19, boiler on if <19.
If the room presence is negative and the window is closed, drop TRV target to 16.
If the window is open, drop the TRV target to 7.

There is a little more detail that that in the article, but that’s the basics.

z-wave may be easier than expected, as I think the devices stay linked to the hardware dongle used. (This is just from memory, mind!). But if you need to change the dongle, perhaps less fun.

imo, it will be a bit of pain to get everything inside HA, but once it’s done, you’ll be inside a platform that is pretty open, and commonly used, with lots of other people (hopefully) posting up solutions to problems before you encounter them!
And because it’s software that will run on pretty much anything, you have the reassurance that even if something crazy happened, you could just reinstall an old version.

If it were me, I’d clear an entire weekend day, power off the old kit, and work away at getting HA controlling everything.

Nice to see NC becoming involved with the board.

I don’t run that much z-wave due to cost, but I’m all for improvements and tighter integration.
Especially since when I do want to spend money, ZW works very well.

Or maybe something like this:

https://www.securemeters.com/uk/product/room-thermostats/hrt4-zw-asr/

The unit with the buttons on is a simple relay, which hass can control to turn things on and off, and use a heating control with a temperature sensor.
But if you hit the button on the front, it also gives 30 minutes of on, which can be handy if the system had issues.

Or you could have a hass controlled relay, but also leave the old controller wired in on a manual switch.
So if there was a failure, you could go back to the old control by manually flipping it over.

For most squishy remotes, you can disable the buttons by taking the remote apart, and putting tape on the underside of the rubber button.

A low-wiring way to do it would be to replace the bulbs with hue/similar bulbs, then just put a battery powered button in the location you want to have the controls. £10-ish for each button, plus however much the bulbs are.

Then just have the button set to toggle the lights on/off (you can also call different presets like dim etc by pressing and holding).
Then hass just directly sends the on/off commands to the bulbs.

My first integration is going to be putting my standard “going out” dashboard by the front door.
Being able to glance and see UV index, temperature, rain probability is dead useful.

It’s pulled from my main router using it’s metric for it. It only updates once a minute or so, but it’s a nice metric.
Once I switch over to more powerful gear, I’ll probably have to start using SNMP, which I don’t look forward to!

I’m currently using the PoE doorbell from Reolink, and regularly use it for intercom, because I don’t like wasting delivery drivers time while I run to the door. I can definitely recommend it. It’s worth the effort running the cable to have something that just works.

The default Reolink integration can raise events on:

• Button press
• Person detection (adjustable sensitivity)
• Motion detection (same)

Recording can be on-device with a micro SD, on network (recording the incoming stream), or by FTP.
Recording can be set like a dashcam too (only save when needed, and overwrite after a certain time)

By default it lights up around the button when it detects movement, I do not like this, so I turned it off.

If the area outside your house isn’t busy, you can do cool things like getting the person detection to alert you as someone approaches, rather than waiting for them to press the bell. Can make the postman jump the first few times.

There are also some features like doing TTS replies if you don’t acknowledge the doorbell inside a certain time.
I haven’t gone through the effort of setting up return audio from Homeassistant, and just use the RL app.

One of my key buying points for hardware is “will this run without any internet, and could I set it all up again without internet?”.

This is why I’m so happy to finally have Hue on my zigbee controller. And it’s why I’m always on the lookout for a second hand Valetudo compatible robovac.

You could also set up a local NTP server, and block them entirely.
Currently, I have mine set with an invalid gateway, and blocked from the internet to be sure.

I’m a bit late, but if it helps, I’ve had good results with the Sonoff and Tuya zigbee sensors. I prefer the Tuyas, just because they use AA instead of CR2032 batteries.
$50 will easily get you everything you need to start.

You might also want to think about getting a 433MHz radio for the system.
If you live in a built up area, you’d be surprised how many people have equipment transmitting on 433MHz already (free data!).
And a lot of generic wireless temperature sensor kits use it as a standard, making it a good value way to get weatherproof gear.
I got a generic fridge/freezer kit for about £10 that works perfectly with this. Again, $50 or so for a DVB-T2 receiver. Just be aware that it’s a little more technically involved than pairing zigbee devices.

Bother me with DMs if you like, I’ve been fiddling with just about every protocol I can get my hands on for under £100!

Someone else already raised the mains wired safety/budget issue, but I may have a side suggestion for you: Bulbs as repeaters.

I’ve added hue bulbs directly to my zigbee network, where they also act as repeaters.

The problem then was people switching off at the switch. This has been resolved by adding a little zigbee button by the switch (as people can achieve the function without the mains switch).
Which gives the bonus of being able to do different taps.

(So for example, I have one click as toggle on/off, two clicks is daytime+bright, press+hold is evening+dim)

This is the reason I haven’t gone down the smart light switches path yet.
Anything that I’d trust enough on 240v is out of budget!

It definitely threw me the first time I was out of the house.
I decided the best solution was just to limit alerts to non-sensitive things.
While I’m generally very big on privacy, I really don’t give a monkeys if Apple/Google is relaying a message that says “Cat in garden!”

This is a really nice guide, and covers everything from source source to sea, so to speak.
Ideal for someone installing for the first time, thanks for sharing!

Security wise, while I love automating everything, I personally would just give them a physical key to the front door. (Or an RFID keyfob system).
What you’d be achieving is the equivalent of keyless car entry, with the additional downside that your son can’t choose not to open the door if something sketchy happens.
And instead of entrusting them with a traditional key that they can treat responsibly, you’re just putting something in their backpack that they don’t have to think about.

If you really want to do it, basically anything in homeassistant that has wireless capability and a state would probably work.
A zigbee radio, and pretty much any device doing anything would do it.
When device_name becomes available, activate door opening.

That’s a pretty neat bit of kit. If they did it in metric sizes, I’d be tempted.

Your meter may have some kind of magnetic flux that occurs as the dial spins, which you might be able to sense and interpret.