I live in an old stone house that was originally built in 1732 as a stable. It was converted to residential in 1978 and actually won awards, although I’m not entirely sure how having learned about stone house conservation over the past few years. When we first looked at buying this house, we were acutely aware that we wanted a good survey because of our lack of knowledge of old houses; I work in IT security and, whilst I might be able to teach you how to generate a threat model, I certainly didn’t know a lot about building and conservation (and am still absolutely no expert).

My home is relatively smart in that I run a Home Assistant server with quite a few integrations with lighting, motion sensors, door/window sensors, CCTV, temp/humidity, energy and heating so I figured I’d list out my tech choices and any good/bad points that I’ve found while in use. My tech choices are now pretty stable after a few iterations over a few different types which means I have time to write a blog about it rather than play with Home Assistant all the time!