#Planned DIY Smart Home Infrastructure – Need Feedback

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Hi! I’m building a two-floor house (160m²) and planning a fully DIY smart home. And I'm totally new in that :D. I’d love to get your thoughts on my current plan:

Core Setup:

12V DC Circuits: Run 2–3 separate 12V DC lines to every switch/socket for low-power sensors and ESP32 modules.

100+ ESP32 Nodes: Each switch/socket will have an ESP32 with Zigbee or Matter (still deciding!). Use cases: dimmers, temp/humidity sensors, leak detection, energy monitoring, and security (door/window sensors + noise detectors).

Security Redundancy: Critical nodes (security-related ESP32s) will have PoE (Cat 6A) + 12V DC lines + a backup battery.

Home Assistant Server: Hosted on a Proxmox VM (dedicated server rack). Specs: 16GB RAM + 4-core CPU. Will this handle 100+ entities?

Open Questions:

Zigbee vs Matter: I’m leaning toward Zigbee (mature), but Matter’s multi-vendor support is tempting. Will Matter work for DIY ESP32 sensors?

Zigbee Coordinator: One Sonoff ZBDongle-P (Zigbee 3.0) in the server rack – is one enough for 100 nodes across two floors?

ESP32 Programming: Since ESPHome doesn’t support Zigbee, I’ll need to code in ESP-IDF/Arduino. Any tips for Zigbee role configuration (router/end-device)?

Server Specs: Is 16GB RAM overkill for HA + Node-RED + Zigbee2MQTT?

Next Steps:

Buy 2x ESP32-C6 modules to prototype Zigbee sensors (code now, scale later). Any must-learn libraries?

All feedback is welcome!

Btw. I used AI to make my message more readeable for you hah.

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Let me know if I choosed wrong channel

stray walrus
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This setup comes with a bunch of challenges
Why run separate 12v DC lines to switches instead of poe everywhere. You will need to step down the voltage either way for most tasks as sensors and esps run on much less voltage. That way you get the option to put in different gear more easily which can also share network connectivity over those wires.

100+ wifi devices will require you to buy a bunch of good access points which come in expensive ish. Zigbee wouldn't have that issue as much as router devices mesh traffic. Tho this will fight for the same frequencies as your wifi will which can be of an issue if they share/ have adjacent frequency bands

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The sonoff dongle is probably not the right purchase, rather go with their e model or even better get one of those poe powered ones so you can place it freely

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For the programming I don't have insights into specifics. Anything that's grid powered and tends to be always on is best to be capable of routing

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Node red is probably not needed. All your automations can be done more sanely with the automation tool provided by homeassistant unless you need high frequency preprocessing of a ton of events flying in that do not need to touch homeassistant ever

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Regarding to poe.
I thought about it, but the high cost of esp32 and switch poe put me off a bit. Maybe I'm wrong with that but esp32 with zigbee module costs less than 9e and exp with poe costs at lease 2 times more. And I choosed 12v because of Energy losses and power converters are cheap

I totally don't want to use zigbee because of it I want to build that mainly based on zigbee. I plan to use 5Gz WiFi for daily stuff and leave 2.4 for automation

Hmm Are there possible problems with WiFi even if I choose a different remote channel for zigbee?

Regarding to home assistant I'm afraid of delays so I think to use also dimitcz as a tool for basic tasks and then dimitcz will communicate with HA by mqtt

stray walrus
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Delays aren't really of an issue with homeassistant that would warrant anything to run before. Once events come in they get handled. Most performance issues people see come from poorly working zigbee meshs which take a while to transfer the messages to the coordinator

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Esphome is said to include ZigBee support in the near*** future from what I've heard. At best you know how to program those kinda microcontrollers if those don't align in your preferred timeframe. There likely are packages around you can utilize through platformio and other means

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stray walrus
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It's mostly c/c++ to program then with so you get a lot of tools at hand if you use a regular ide

stray walrus
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near dock
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I think you need to take a step back and look at what you want to achieve.

I would start by thinking about how the power is coming into the house, and consider devices to monitor the energy consumption there. Then map out each room and divide it down to the components (ie. light fittings, switches, sensors). Think about what things you want to automate in each room and what things you want to be notified about to help decide what sensors to place.

I think you will find using custom sensors you will need far fewer. For example you could use a single ESP for monitoring window state using Reed Sensors. You will probably have enough spare pins to use the same ESP for other things such as temperature and humidity.

I would also suggest the POE route. It may cost a bit more but will be way more flexible and provides more reliability than wifi. You can always use a POE splitter to power ESP's which are cheaper than buying the ESPs with POE.

I would also recommend using a POE Zigbee / Matter something like a SLZB-06. Depending on number of devices you could expand by using additional and creating multiple zigbee / matter networks. Although 1 node should be fine handling 100 devices in a full network.

I'm not sure why you are looking at running Zigbee on the ESPs as I would just stick with WiFi or POE. The thing to remember is that Zigbee / Matter are just WiFi anyway with the only benefit being able to route messages through devices.

I'm running HA in a VM with 8Gb assigned and Zigbee2Mqtt in an LXC with 1Gb assigned. I also have containers for Grafana, MariaDB and VictoriaMetrics. So you should be fine with 16Gb RAM.

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# near dock I think you need to take a step back and look at what you want to achieve. I wo...

At the moment I am at the stage of designing a house. And my main goal is to design a possibly universal and flexible infrastructure, so that in the future I do not overload the network or have to use devices on beta. I planned to optimize going ESP32, as you suggest. But it is not a priority now. I just want to plan it so that I can calculate the costs of the infrastructure at home.

Regarding zigbee, do they not relieve the home WIFI in any way? I do not want to invest in many expensive APs. That is why I was thinking about zigbee, because each ESP32 can be a router at the same time

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BTW what do you reccomend as a starter kit?
https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007749694314.html I bought this one. And now I want to buy few things more, like few sensors, and ESPs with zigbee to learn how to build/use this end-to-end and maybe prepare draft configurations/code

stray walrus
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Not using WiFi devices is generally a good idea as the overhead in terms of RF noise, energy consumption and allocated bandwidth on those access points may result in poor performance for other low latency applications

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The diy approach to building your own sensors is a great hobby which lets you build stuff the way you want at the cost of time in both a design and maintenance perspective

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Zigbee solves some of that by having the drives communicate to each other at much lower signal levels which shouldn't influence wifi devices but get influenced by them if frequency ranges overlap

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Going wired without RF through Poe would be the best way as it's stable but as you noted quite some more expensive

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There will always be things that you don't want to or can't diy or that use a protocol or transmission standard that you didn't account for, but that just is the way it is

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There are a lot of decisions to make but at best as you already mentioned you try out stuff at a small scale before committing to it fully

near dock
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I agree that the diy approach is a great hobby, however, you should consider what you are trying to achieve first. You should then see what products are available and go the diy route if off the shelf doesn't exist or is cost prohibitive

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Ah regarnig to PoE, I can just use 24/48 port PoE Injector 😄 instead of big PoE switch. It will be much cheaper. And then I can just buy switch when it will be needed.

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I think I'll use that approach instead of 24v DC line

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near dock
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yes, you don't need to buy the poe switch now. Also, unless you are putting CCTV on the POE switch you might be able to use an older 100Mbps model.

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I just buy smaller switch, because I need that for monitoring. It's still better to have 1x 24 port poe instead of 2x 48 port 😄

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@near dock And going back now my basic goal are -> learn basics which "maybe" I'll need and plan physical infrastructure and now I think PoE etherner are the best opion with this pipes to have possibility to change cables

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near dock
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well, for blinds you also need to consider the weight as most diy use fairly small stepper motors. Its why I opted to go with Zemismart 2N motors - by the time I looked at stepper motors capable of some weight and time to add code etc. it was cheaper

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yes, you should use conduit where possible. I would suggest you also put in a few empty conduits with pull cords for potential future use. I did this for a few locations that I think I might want to run fibre connections to (take care of bend radius if doing this).

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Sure, in the most important traces I want to have sth like that (under the plaster)

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Or maybe everywhere for ethernet, for electricity conduit should be enough

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stray walrus
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im not a big fan of those sets. most things in them are rather useless or low quality in general

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amonst other brands, sensirion has actual decent sensors and also offers evaluation sets if you arent sure yet which is the right one. for simple stuff like reed sensors youd just buy those without the weird addon boards to save a lot of money as a component directly from whichever source youd like