Smart home wiring 101: A beginner's guide

The beauty of today’s smart home is that it’s mostly wire-free. Wireless protocols such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE have done away with the need to install complex and expensive whole-home electrical systems just to control your smart lights remotely.. In the modern smart home, all you need is a smartphone and a Wi-Fi router to unlock the power of connected devices.

Now that you've learned how to wire a smart home, you can design your system to match your personal specifications. The main parts that you'll need are a control room to house your systems and many, many wires that you pull to the various rooms of your house. Hardwiring your devices ensures clear communication from your network to the components.

Edit for 2016: Check out our new Smart Home Wiring Guide by clicking the image below: There are those that would advise to put in CAT6 or Fiber but for the best bang for your buck you can’t beat CAT5E as it’s less expensive to buy and terminate and easy to work with.

You see many houses being advertised as “smart” or “smart-wired” (smart-wiring) these days.Being “smart” does not mean that the house can think for itself or turn the lights on and off as you enter or leave a room (see a definition of smart home)… Smart in this case refers to the fact that it has been “hard-wired” with TV Aerial (coaxial), Foxtel (coaxial), Telephone and ...

Wiring for Data. Data cabling will include more than the cat. 5 or cat. 5e you'll use to use for your Ethernet network. This section provides the information you'll need to install your A/V, telephone, HVAC, and security systems. The first stage in planning is to select the location of a central wiring hub location.

When turning your old, dumb house into a smart home, one of the best places to start is with lighting.For starters, you can test the waters with a single smart bulb or set of lights — letting ...

If done properly, correct wiring can save money, time as well as frustration. The kind of wiring needed for a home automation system is called Structured wiring. Structured wiring is a standard term which pertains to a whole-house network of audio, video, data, telephone, home automation elements or security signals.

Wiring a Smart Home is simple, but it's important that your low voltage wiring uses the correct wires for the correct applications. Home Automation wiring needs to adequately future proof the home ...

From Smart Homes For Dummies, 3rd Edition. By Danny Briere, Pat Hurley . Turn your house into a smart home and live in a cutting-edge, fully connected home. Your smart home will have the latest trends in home networking, entertainment, automation, and control that will make your life more enjoyable and comfortable — and it doesn’t have to break your bank account.