Planning, budget, and deciding whether you want to rely on a commercial solution or have full control and customize the system yourself

By law, you can't avoid an electrical project for building permits.

Project for the Building Authority

At this point, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a classic or automated electrical installation. The designer will likely want a list of planned appliances (especially their power ratings), the house design (floor plans), and you can send them additional documents—heating projects, heat recovery, PV systems, etc.

Execution Project

In case of home automation, an execution project is essential for your peace of mind. Here, you need to account for automation and modify the high-voltage part of the installation accordingly. You have two options:

A: Contact a designer who specializes in a specific home automation system (you’ll likely stay with that commercial brand) and have them prepare a complete project—high-voltage, low-voltage + sensors, switches, etc.

B: Contact a standard designer and provide input so they plan for the control of specified lights, sockets, blinds, etc., via high-voltage relays and adapt the high-voltage layout accordingly. Provide information on how you’ll control these relays and a low-voltage module diagram to show the connections and required space. You can have separate low-voltage and high-voltage panels or one large combined panel. Button layout, types, and sensor counts are up to you. In home automation, you don’t deal with classic stair switches; everything is controlled via standard 1-, 2-, or 4-button high-voltage switches. For the Pi-Home solution, check the floor plan of our model house for inspiration.

Implementation

According to the execution project, the high-voltage system is installed—primarily lights and sockets. Then the distribution board is installed, and the electrician completes the high-voltage part ending at relay control terminals. According to the selected home automation method, wiring (mostly UTP) is prepared for buttons, sensors, data sockets, and cameras. If you're partially self-building, you can install and commission the low-voltage part like Pi-Home yourself. If you're not confident wiring modules (poor with cables, no tools, can't crimp LAN cables), you can order a pre-wired low-voltage panel and arrange in advance with your electrician to help connect it to the high-voltage board.

As-built Documentation

The final phase after successful commissioning and tuning is updating the execution project to reflect the real setup—especially useful for you as the homeowner and for anyone else installing future systems (e.g., PV panels).

Inspection

For Pi-Home Pro, we’ll provide documents necessary for inspection. If you’re doing the wiring yourself, individual modules we use are available at https://navrh-rozvadece.cz/, where you can draw the diagram and generate documentation for a fee.

There are many systems on the market today, and for a standard house, the cost can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of CZK. It depends on how much you want to control, which system you choose, and whether you can do part of it yourself.

In our open-source project Pi-Home, the budget for a model house might look like this:

You don't need to be a programmer, developer, or Linux expert. If you want to get the most from your smart home, you should be at least a tech enthusiast, know how to use a smartphone, or perhaps connect a light fixture. Everything else is easy to learn, and the skills you gain will reward you with independence and can be applied elsewhere (e.g., solar systems).

Excluding the router and switch (which are common in all homes today), the Pi-Home model house has the following power consumption:

For comparison, 300 kWh/year equals the consumption of a dishwasher or dryer (A+ class) over one year.