New construction...wired in or wireless... and occupancy sensors

I'm building a new house, I'm going to automate it, been looking through tons of forums and websites. Few questions on hardware? I'm planning on using Open Source Automation software.

1) I'm looking for a good occupancy sensor, would love to have temperature light and motion sensor all in one. I want to put one in every room, so that i can control hvac, lighting and other devices depending on occupancy. Does anyone know of a good one?

2) With new construction, should I go wireless or wired in?? I was originally looking Insteon but kind of up in the air on brand now after hearing reliability issues.

My thought was to wire relays at my main controller for the main areas (kitchen dining great room) to eliminate switches and using android tablets mounted in wall to control.

With new construction, I'd go wired for every device that I possibly could.
 
Regarding the relays and eliminating switches... try to take the future into account as much as you can. Will you be in this house forever? Will the technology change? How will that impact the switches, or lack of wiring/switches later? What if you sell the home? Will other potential buyers want to use this type of system?
 
Personally, I'd use with standard electrical wiring and choose a lighting technology that works with that wiring. YMMV.

This house will be one we stick to for a while. But I was thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to have set of switches or keypad hard wired for the lights.

As for hard wired devices, most can be wired using cat5e? Or should I use different LV wiring?

What kind of wired devices would you guys recommend?

Initially in current home I did start wiring the LV with Cat5e. 
 
It did get a bit clutted in the security / automation can and went to just standard 2/4 alarm cable for the PIRs / occupancy sensors. 
 
Here over the years went from X10 to Insteon to UPB (and Z-Wave).   The house has metal gang boxes and metal conduit.
 
The majority / all of the inwall gang box light switches are UPB today.  (I'm content with the UPB functionality and performance these days).
 
Most recently in an attempt to reduce the in wall multigang box switch footprint I have upgrade a few switches to multitoggle/multipaddle/dual (2, 4 & 6 paddles) load switches last summer.  Not wanting to redo the double gang cover plates to single gang mudplates and drywall work I went to oversized wall plates.  Not sure if I like this though and may eventually go back to the single gang mudplate and regular wall switch covers.
 
I went "back" to using X10 for the Holiday lighting as its quick and easy for me these days.  I set one house code and number for all of the holiday lighting indoors and outdoors and they all go on at once just fine.  I am using "old" Black and Decker firewire outdoor appliance switches and older x10/BSR appliance switches indoors. 
 
There is still some insteon gen I around. 
 
I am playing with Z-Wave mostly outside to see the RF footprint outdoors and looking to test some wireless stuff.
 
I am also going to be looking at Zigbee some more in the future.

Thanks for the Input, the guide helps a lot.


Does anyone know of sensors cable of temperature light and motion? I would love to combine some devices if I can. Want to keep the install as clean and translucent as possible

My Optex combo PIR/CCTV cameras have standard style connections for PIR (light, PIR, case) which is more than 2 pairs of wires. 
 
For environmental stuff I utilize HAI temperature/humidity sensors which are using 4 wires (thinking) and 1-wire stuff. 
 
The 1-wire stuff can utilize two wires and today its recommended that you do a sort of hub and spoke tap into a cat5X cable such that you can run one cable and have multiple sensors.   You can too utilize a DIY using 1-wire making a combo PIR, Light and temperature/humidity sensor.  This would utilize two pairs of wires; one for the 1-wire network and one pair for the voltage required.  For security; this could be more dependable than wireless; but less dependable than a multifunction PIR. 
 
I ran a separate set of CatXX cables for each of the 1-wire sensors.  I do have more than just temperature and humidity sensors.  I have 1-wire counters, barometer, light sensor, so forth and so on.  It is a totally separate set up.  It is not wireless nor does it require batteries.  I probably have over 50 sensors which would really be a pita to have to maintain if they were wireless (with batteries).
 
You can too just run power (2-wires) to the wireless sensors if you want.

I like the 1wire devices, I'll be looking into those more.

Who still makes hard wired switches? I'm not completely opposed to setting up central lighting source with relays but I'd like the option to have conventional switches controlling the lights and have them wired to a controller. I've been searching and haven't been able to find much. Tried searching ALC without a lot of luck.

Relating to 1-wire I have sensors almost in every room of the house.  That said there are also wireless solutions.  For me it would be cost prohibitive to go with separate environmental wireless devices.
 
Search on the forum for hard wired switches.  They do exist and there are CT members using them.  Basically your switch will have LV and HV wires going to it.  LV I think is CatXX.  This is a switch though in the light switch box.
 
I believe in the EU they do that regular switch thing to a centrally located controller (multi combo automated breakers type thing).  Thinking the automation is for whole circuits but its all in the fuse panel.  Not really totally sure.
 
Not sure if there are CT users using this methodology of switch automation.

The breaker thing you are talking about would be a central lighting control with relays.

What are you using to control your 1 wire devices?

I have not been able to find many DIY hardwired systems, most are proprietary and require pro install. Lutron and leviton are two that I like. Does anyone know what kind of LV control signal there switches use?

Centralite Elegance is a somewhat DIY friendly hard-wired system, it comes with a very easy integration protocol and a free software. All loads need to be home-run to the central relay panel and switches use cat5 home-run to the same location. You'll have to find a competent electrician to install the high voltage parts, but LV components you could wire yourself.

What are you using to control your 1 wire devices?
 

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I have multiple 1-wire networks.  These are connect to Midon serial 1-wire devices.  I have three Temp0X devices set up.
 
http://midondesign.com/TEMP08/TEMP08.html
 
Additionally more networks set up with Maxim 1-wire RS-232 and USB devices:
 
http://www.maximintegrated.com/products/1-wire/
 
and more 1-wire networks set up with a combo based on maxim stuff which uses USB and RS-232; tiny stuff.
 
The little USB dongle I am playing with has two 1-wire interfaces on it.

Just to throw this out there - those hardwired lighting technologies you mention tend to cost even more than the retrofit options.  Can you swallow ~$120/switch plus possibly a controller?  Personally for lighting, I'd either go UPB/Z-Wave/Insteon because 1) the wiring is 100% traditional allowing for easy upgrades as technology changes; 2) they're affordable and DIY-able; and 3) they tend to have the most active add-on development (higher end systems are built into Crestron/AMX/Control4 which are also pro-geared systems) 4) can be completely undone should a new owner just not want it.
 
The market will always trend towards the larger DIY market; the market for people who can do this during construction or major renovation just isn't nearly as high, so they cost more and don't have the same community-driven support.
 
That said, security - 100% wired if you can; occupancy and security motions are two different things as well;  for temp/humidity, you may look at putting a 1-gang box up high in each room with a Cat5 cable run to it - you can mount sensors on or through the faceplate, and it's a fairly flexibile wire that can be used for cameras or sensors; I've also been considering the z-wave temperature/motion/light sensor for my house in each room to sense occupancy and track the temperature balance in each room - it may be an option.

Work2Play said:

Just to throw this out there - those hardwired lighting technologies you mention tend to cost even more than the retrofit options.  Can you swallow ~$120/switch plus possibly a controller?  Personally for lighting, I'd either go UPB/Z-Wave/Insteon because 1) the wiring is 100% traditional allowing for easy upgrades as technology changes; 2) they're affordable and DIY-able; and 3) they tend to have the most active add-on development (higher end systems are built into Crestron/AMX/Control4 which are also pro-geared systems) 4) can be completely undone should a new owner just not want it.

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This is a popular belief, but it is not accurate. The hard wired lighting systems can be less expensive if you can semi-DIY  the install (just like any other system). But this requires knowledge of how to do it right, and that can be intimidating. We had installed a hard-wired system in our house after throwing out thousands of dollars worth of "retrofit" DIY equipment, previously we had 3 full installs based on X10, z-wave and Insteon and just got fed up with all the problems and constant device failures. So when we had a chance to do it all in the new construction, we took the risk of the unknown and designed the system ourselves, and never looked back. The system has been operational for over 5 years now, it is extremely flexible and reliable, no comparison to the days of wireless systems when constant troubleshooting was required. We still have a small z-wave network to support locks and a few other devices, and that system has problems regularly. It would also cost me twice to replicate the system with UPB and 4+ times with Lutron devices (the 2 retrofit systems that at least can be close in reliability comparison), and many features I would not be able to replicate at all. It will cost less per device in a larger install, for small installs of less than 48 devices the hard-wired system is not the cheapest alternative. Also, the labor of running high voltage wire is less expensive due to the home run, you can design the system to minimize the run length by installing the panels in separate location. We have 2 locations that are roughly a half of the house length apart, they are connected together by a LV wire. The HV wiring is mostly a straight line in the attic between the fixture and the panel, no romex wire in the walls for switches, as those are cat5 based, and we run them ourselves as part of the rest of LV wiring. Most house outlets are wired in traditional way, but we also have a few dedicated controlled ones. So it can be done, and done without breaking the bank, but most likely by those who already had home automation experience and were wishing to move up the quality ladder, just like we did. But for a newcomer to home automation, the retrofit technologies would be a safer bet, because they can fall back on standard switches in case things do not work out.

Picta

What kind of devices did you use??

I'm thinking about doing the same thing with the LV switches cat5 to the centralized location. I want to hardwire because I want it to work all the time! Wireless interference is worse then most people think and the last thing I want to do is constantly trouble shoot. I will be installing most myself, electrician will run hv to where I want and I will do everything from there.

The toughest problem I am running into is finding products.

Do you run any motion sensors? What kind? I want to run them throughout the house for lighting and HVAC.

I watch cost, but it's not number one driver, I want to do it right and forget about it.

Any help on devices/brands would be great!