One Smart Home to Rule Them All

I’ll cover all 20 rings of smart home power: Three rings of Security, Seven Rings of Configuration, Nine Rings of Control, and the One Ring to rule them all.

Introduction

Most people are thinking about a smart home all wrong. They are:

Relying on the Internet to function for their entire smart home to work
Relying on cloud-based services to continue to exist with the original features they were promised
Handing over their data to companies they don’t know if they can trust
Overpaying when they could get something similar — or even better — for less

But, it doesn’t have to be this way. I'll show you how to create the One Smart Home to rule them all, including all 20 rings of smart home power. These include the:

Three rings of Security
Seven Rings of Configuration
Nine Rings of Control
One Ring to rule them all

These will give you the power to control all the devices in your home like a wizard. Best of all, your smart home will be local, private, and open source, ensuring that you remain in control. And if that wasn’t enough, most of this is actually free. But, a warning:

By binding yourself to the 20 rings of smart home power, you just may become dependent on them.

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Main Points

One Ring

Home Assistant

Let’s start with the One Ring, the most powerful of all the rings: Home Assistant. Home Assistant is a free, open source, home automation platform that prioritizes local control and privacy. It’s built and managed by a global community of DIY enthusiasts, and supports thousands of smart home brands and products.

Home Assistant is the center of my smart home. It allows me to control all devices in my home from one place, one app, and to create home automation possibilities that are only limited by my imagination. There is a learning curve to unlock the full power of Home Assistant, but if you are even mildly interested in tinkering, DIY, and smart home, you will be amazed.

Three Rings of Security

But before you become all-consumed by the power of Home Assistant, you’ll want the Three Rings of Security.

VLAN and Firewall

The first Ring of Security is VLAN and Firewall. VLAN stands for Virtual Local Area Network. With VLANs, each connected device is given an ID or a tag, which logically groups a network of devices together. One of the benefits of this is to create a more secure home network.

For example, you can group all of your IoT, or Internet of Things, devices into one VLAN, and separate those IoT devices from the devices on your main LAN, like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. If someone hacked the IoT device’s cloud service, that could be an entry point to the IoT device on your network, and then the hacker could potentially see the computers on your network. By separating devices using VLANs, you can mitigate this risk.

However, VLANs are only useful if you impose traffic and firewall rules. Firewall rules are logical controls that determine which types of traffic are allowed in and out of the network. I can use firewall rules to decide what my IoT devices are allowed to communicate with, and what can communicate with them.

Cloudflare Tunnel

The second Ring of Security is a Cloudflare Tunnel. One of the benefits of a smart home is the ability to access and control smart devices from anywhere. If you are using Home Assistant and want to log-in when you’re away from home, then you’ll need to configure remote access.

There are several options for remote access, with my choice being a Cloudflare Tunnel. This is more secure than port forwarding, does not require connecting to a VPN, works with Amazon and Google’s smart home platforms, and allows me to access my Home Assistant server remotely from anywhere. It’s also completely free. Alternatively, you could consider VPN solutions through Wireguard or Tailscale for secure remote access.

Data Backups

The third Ring of Security is Data Backups. This mitigates the risk of your home automation data and configuration being lost. As a general rule, it’s good to backup your data to an onsite location, and to an external location.

With Home Assistant, you can automate data backups for free using Google Drive Backup. For example, this can create a daily backup of your Home Assistant server, and store it in Google Drive. Additionally, it can also store a copy of your backup on a local drive in your home, such as a NAS, which is exactly what I do.

One does not simply have a life outside of Home Assistant

Seven Rings of Configuration

Now that you have secured your smart home, it’s time to review the Seven Rings of Configuration.

HACS

The first Ring of Configuration is HACS, which stands for Home Assistant Community Store. HACS is a custom integration that provides a user interface to discover, download, and manage custom elements in Home Assistant.

These may include design components for creating a beautiful and powerful smart home dashboard, generative AI chat agents to control your devices, custom integrations for lesser known smart home devices, or other community-built features that bring more functionality to the devices you already own.

Adaptive Lighting

The second Ring of Configuration is Adaptive Lighting. With Adaptive Lighting, all of your home’s lights will intelligently adjust their brightness and color temperature based on the sun’s position in the sky. It’ll just work in the background so you don’t have to do anything.

Adaptive Lightings is free, and supports your body’s natural circadian rhythm. You’ll wake up with soft golden light like a sunrise, work under cool bright lights that give you energy during the day, and relax in the evening under amber lights that help you wind down.

WLED

The third Ring of Configuration is WLED. This is free software that turns LED light strips into powerful lighting devices. It uses ESP32, and lets you choose from a huge library of lighting effects, and gives you the power to create your own.

In fact it’s so powerful, it can make your lights react and dance to the sounds around them, which is precisely how I’m using it in my smart home.

Sensors

The fourth Ring of Configuration is Sensors. When you think of a smart home, you might think of lights turning on and off automatically, or robot vacuums driving around the house the moment you leave. All of this and much more is powered by home automations that rely on sensors. Sensors detect motion, human presence, ambient brightness, temperature, humidity, door and window states, energy consumption, and so much more.

With sensors, you can have your home automations trigger when all of the conditions are just right, allowing you to handle pretty much every edge case. This means lights only turn off when a room is actually empty, you only get a notification to do something when it actually makes sense, and so many other possibilities. I am using over a dozen different types of smart home sensors.

WiFi Access Points

The fifth Ring of Configuration is WiFi Access Points. If you’re going to collect all 20 rings of Smart Home Power, it’s worth taking the time to ensure your home’s network is also powerful.

With WiFi Access Points, you create a hardwired connection to different parts of your home, such as each floor. This way, you get the full strength and speed of your internet no matter where you are, or where one of your smart home devices is located. I have Ubiquiti UniFi WiFi Access Points spread across my home, inside and out, making weak WiFi connection a thing of the past.

Flexible Dashboard

The sixth Ring of Configuration is Flexible Dashboard. A truly smart home is one that saves you time, and adapts to your lifestyle. A dashboard can provide you easy smart home control and quick information at a glance. But you may want to view your smart home dashboard on a mobile phone, tablet, and desktop computer — devices that vary in their size and orientation.

By creating one, flexible dashboard, your smart home content adapts to however you choose to view and control it — no matter the device, and without the need to build and maintain separate dashboards for separate devices. I created one smart home dashboard that my family can seamlessly use on a phone, tablet, control panel on the wall, or computer browser.

Gen AI and LLMs

The seventh Ring of Configuration is Gen AI and Large Language Models, or LLMs. For those brave enough, you can give AI chat agents — like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini — full control of your smart home. This means you can give the AI chat agent natural language prompts, such as:

Turn off the kids bedroom lights, and set the basement lights to movie time.
Close the garage, and lock the front door.
I’m hot. Make it more comfortable in the living room.

These AI chat agents are not perfect, but obtaining the 20 Rings of Smart Home Power doesn’t come without its risks.

Nine Rings of Control

With you smart home secured and configured, you are ready for the Nine Rings of Control.

Zigbee2MQTT

The first Ring of Control is Zigbee2MQTT. This is a free, open source project that utilizes the MQTT messaging protocol to bridge the gap between Zigbee devices and your home automation server. Basically, it allows you to connect Zigbee devices to Home Assistant and control them in home automations without the need for a proprietary Zigbee adapter.

If your’e wondering what Zigbee is, it’s a wireless technology that enables low-power devices to communicate with each other. Some of the Zigbee devices in my smart home include lights, switches, and sensors.

Z-Wave JS

The second Ring of Control is Z-Wave JS. This is another free, open source project, which allows you to connect a Z-Wave controller to Home Assistant, and add Z-Wave devices to your smart home.

Like Zigbee, Z-Wave is a wireless mesh protocol with low power consumption and excellent range for controlling smart home devices. Some of the Z-Wave devices in my smart home include door locks, light switches, plugs, and sensors.

ESPHome

The third Ring of Control is ESPHome. This is yet another free, open source system for controlling smart home devices that use an ESP32 or ESP8266 microcontroller. Basically, these are tiny, low-power computers with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

ESPHome has native compatibility with Home Assistant, which makes it very plug-and-play to connect and use your smart home devices. Some of the ESPHome devices in my smart home includes sensors for presence detection and air quality monitoring, and for controlling my garage door.

Matter-over-Thread

The fourth Ring of Control is Matter-over-Thread. Matter is a relatively new communication standard that allows smart home devices from different brands to work together.

Previously, you might purchase a device that works for Google Home, but not for Apple Home. With Matter, you get to connect your smart home device to any system you’d like, though it’s not perfect.

Thread, on the other hand, is a networking protocol built for IoT devices. It was designed to make smart home devices work faster, use less power, and communicate with each other seamlessly.

Essentially, Matter is a communication or application layer, and Thread creates a connection between devices. Both can run together or independently. Some of the Matter devices in my smart home include window shades, door locks, and robot vacuums.

NFC

The fifth Ring of Control is NFC. NFC stands for Near Field Communication. It’s a little chip that allows communication between two devices in close proximity. If you’ve ever paid for something in a store using Apple Pay, then you’ve experienced the magic of NFC. In the context of home automation, you can place your phone over an NFC tag to trigger an automation.

I’m using NFC tags for things like unlocking the door and disarming the alarm system, telling the robot vacuum to start a cleaning mission when I’m headed out, silencing a reminder to take out the trash, or temporarily disabling an automation that I don’t want to run. While NFC tags are not free, they are quite inexpensive at around 20 cents each.

Mechanical, App, Voice, and Automation Control

The last four Rings of Control are all related, so I will cover them together. When I got started in smart home, I thought the cool thing was to control everything by voice. But voice control isn’t ideal every time you want to do something, and it’s not user-friendly for visitors. That’s why I try to leverage four types of control whenever possible in my smart home: mechanical control, app control, voice control, and automation control. One type often works better than another in a particular situation, or for particular users.

For example, mechanical switches and buttons are intuitive to any visitor or younger person in your home, or for anyone who just likes a physical input.
Apps are great when it would otherwise be inconvenient or impossible to physically control something, such as arming the alarm when you’re already in bed for the night, or adjusting the thermostat when you’re away from home.
Voice can be the fastest and most convenient option when mechanical and app options aren’t nearby or might take longer.
But most of the time, having an automation just run in the background without requiring any intervention from you is the way to go.

Final Thoughts

You now know the 20 Rings of Smart Home Power. If you accept them, you will surely have the One Smart Home to rule them all. But just know that your life will never be the same again.

One Ring