New Build automation

It's a tough one to answer. I'm doing it post build piece by piece because of the costs and because I didn't want to purchase €1000s and find it is crap gear.

There's the general questions and then there's the Loxone specificity. Your issue with Loxone is sourcing the equipment, have you figured that out? They seem to have specific installers that will have access to their gear, so it might be your standard electrician does first fix and these do second fix which will be a nightmare I would think - part and parcel of a self build I suppose. Be the same for most other pieces, plumber etc.

General:

You need to get the electrician on board with installing smart switches. There shouldn't really be an issue, smart switches have the neutral at the switch which is standard regs now. After that it is switch type, naturally adding smart to a switch massively ups the costs. Sonoff WiFi ones are €16 as a guide price, even fancy non smart are a lot cheaper than that. I can't see an electrician having issues installing smart switches despite your distance from Dublin. I doubt they will sort supply though.

You need to decide what else is smart - Gate and garage control should be standard relays with maybe a need for some extenders to get the signal out far away.

You will need to tell the plumber to not order any valves assuming you are also going smart for each rad - so from a €10-€20 valve it's €30-€50. You will also need to discuss the heating requirements, are you just going TRV route which talks to a receiver at the boiler or do you also plan on zones etc. I'd assume you're going underfloor so maybe it will be smart thermostats in rooms to turn on / off the underfloor. Again, if you go down a custom route outside their usual known devices most plumbers / installers will likely not want to supply so that's on you to get. You normally need to coardinate between plumber and electrician for the heating setup: zone valves, Stát placement etc.

Security again when going generic smart you probably don't need anyone to help as it is all wireless nowadays, especially for smart equipment.

There's a balance.

Centrally located at breaker box and your switch and your light likely end up on independent cable runs somewhat pot commiting you to the relays forever. Likely only an option in a full rewire.

Behind the switch works fine and will be more familiar setup to a residential sparks.

They are easy to wire (particularly the plus pm models). Some don't need neutral but I've not used any of those.

Ive smart bulbs everywhere and am gradually adding Shellys behind the wall switches (in detached relay mode) to improve user functionality and backup. The switch gets flicked, HA detects the shelly input change and toggles the smart bulb. If my home assistant setup was ever down for an extended period I'd change the Shelly's to normal mode and control the lights directly.

I agree the central is better but it has caveats. It's out of the normal and the Shellys will be unfamiliar territory for most sparks too so you'll pay a premium for that (unless you get a sparks that takes it as a learning opportunity).

It'll require way more cable as the lights can't be all run from from one loop circuit. Each switch and each light (or group controlled by a single switch) will be on their own run.

The Shelly pros don't seem to have a dimming function either so you'd lose that unless going with smart bulbs and detached relay approach.

The in wallbox modules are fine as long as you've a decent depth backbox and nothing obnoxious on the back of the switch size wise.

The most cost effective solution may be in wall as it just requires neutral at the switch (which should be done now anyway) and you can request deepest backboxes possible (45mm depth I think) to make things easy.

Other things I've learned is to avoid 3 circuit switches on a 1 gang width switch and the same for the 6 or 8 switch faces you can get for the double with backboxes.

Also you could potentially reduce costs (for wiring) by requesting no 2 way wiring as it will simplify module install (L, N and SL definitely all in same backbox) and you could get the same function using the Shellys. eg light switch a bottom of stairs for hall and landing and the switch at the top of stairs for landing - just get the hall wired to the bottom of stairs and landing at the top..... Double switch and a shelly 2pm behind each and you can control both lights with 1 relay set to control the circuit and the other to control the other Shellys relay. I'd do a drawing for that example if I wasn't on my phone!

Wifi evolves, so in 20 years time, what version if wifi are you going to have controlling your lights.

Hardwired is the best way to go. Loxone is an excellent system and uses similar architecture to lots of other systems so hardwiring doesn't mean you are stuck to one vendor (although it can be messy to switch and mix different systems).

I would 100% recommend you install a hard wired system such as loxone or velbus for example which are extremely diy friendly (but using a qualified sparks for the wiring(.

I have a velbus system installed nearly 20 years with cat x cabling to my wall switches!

Hi, I think you're stuck as from what I can see, you can't have a 3 or 4-way switched config without the Shelly blocking. The reason is that the Shelly devices only offer a soft-switch on the input, you don't have a common like you would on a standard relay, hence you can't pass the current through to the outputs on the Shelly when it's either offline or Home Assistant is down (or the wifi fails). An example circuit to demonstrate this is this lower one (4th Aug 2022):

There you can see that the switched live which passes through each of the two-way switches is fed into the SW input via the grey wire. SW isn't a common and will be blocking.

The other thing that I'll mention is that the Shelly devices aren't 100% robust. This thread here is about a Shelly which keeps going offline due to the EMI from a pump, and it's annoying to have to pull the power to the Shelly to fix it from time to time. So just bear that in mind if you go down the Shelly Pro route as I don't know if the reset button will work if the Shelly is in a software lockup.

If it were me, I'd be looking at installing the controllers at the rear of the switch for sure - far less messing around with home-runs back to the consumer unit.

My situation is where I have a Shelly 1 which is being affected by EMI. Maybe it isn't the best example to use, but what I was saying is that you may need to pull the power to the Shelly devices to get them to reset, I have mine either on a plug socket or on a fused spur, so it's easy enough. I'm not sure how that's done with the Pro range though, other than to have to flip the associated breaker? Anyway, don't worry about EMI, I think it's just the pump causing it in my case.

As for the blocking question... all of the Shelly Pro's that I have looked at have just had dry contacts and they don't have a normally-open/normally-closed output and a common that I was referring to. I think that means that you can't do true unblocked switching as the Shelly doesn't pass-through the switched-live.

(sorry if I'm not being clear, head is muggy from a bad head-cold).

Yes exactly.

Yip, simple enough mod at the back of the switch.

P-live should be there at the back of the switch anyway (as long as it's the first switch in the series).

That diagram is conceptual. As far as I remember usually L & N enter into the first back-box and then the L heads off to the series of switches in what's called a pair of "travelers". SB1 would be where you should install the Shelly where it should have access to L & N.

It might be a good question to ask the electrical guys as from memory there is a thread on here somewhere which discussed the three or four different ways of wiring up lights in Ireland, and we're not sure what method you already have.

Just thought I would add in something I did very recently. My smart lighting system was put in over 20 years ago initially. I had it working off motion sensors etc with motion activated lights and timers etc. Very happy with it, but I always had a bit of an issue with timers, in the bathroom particularly, if for example you sat in the throne too long, the lights ould go out.

I recently added a presence detector to the bathroom, and its fantastic , no timers needed, the detection is a lot faster, but detecting when someone has walked in, but also when they have left , and you get an instantaneous reaction for either scenario.

Will be getting a few more, they are USB powered and mount similar to a pair, and work with home assistant.

Something to think about, not necessarily everywhere, but in places like a bathroom, and kitchen, or a living room where you may be sitting for a while without motion detecting .