The State Of My Smart Home (2025)

Welcome to my annual “State of My Smart Home” update for 2025! In the ever-evolving world of technology, staying ahead of the curve isn’t just smart—it’s essential, especially for those of us who live and breathe this industry. My home is not just where I unwind; it’s my testing ground for the latest innovations and upgrades.

This year, I’ll walk you through the changes and improvements I made throughout 2024, sharing insights on what worked (and what didn’t). Plus, I’ll dive into my plans and ambitions for 2025 as I continue to push my smart home setup to the next level. Let’s get into it!

My smart home background

There is no singular topic I write more often about than smart homes, and a lot of it is about projects I complete in my smart home. Here are some good background articles I’ve previously written that might be helpful to read before the rest of this article.

• My Smart Home Evolution Series — These articles talk about how I got into smart homes and how my smart home developed into what it is today
• 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 smart home update articles — These articles detail the changes I made and my plans for my smart home over the past three years
• Updating My Home Lab — This article details the basis for my current home lab infrastructure

The changes I made to my smart home in 2024

Whenever I start writing these articles, I initially don’t think I changed much then, as I start to think back through the year, I quickly find out I was wrong.

I upgraded my servers and desktop to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

I have used Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS since 2006 (Ubuntu version 6.06 – Dapper Drake). These days I upgrade to a new version with each Long Term Support (LTS) version, which occurs every two years. I upgraded my primary desktop and server virtual machines last summer from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04. I usually dread these upgrades because many things can go wrong, but usually, I can get anything important fixed in less than a day, and that was again the case last time.

Added yet another vacuum robot

So I’ve had and reviewed the Airrobo P20 and the SwitchBot K10+ over the last couple of years. Up until last year, my preferred robot vacuum was the iRobot Roomba i3. However, this year I got my hands on a new and improved SwitchBot K10, the SwitchBot K10+ Pro. This robot vacuum improved on the K10+ in all the right ways. My primary complaint with the original K10+ is that it doesn’t do as good a job of cleaning as my Roomba i3, even though everything else about it was better. Well, K10+ Pro fixed that as it cleans great and maintains all the great features of its predecessor. It is the robot vacuum that is regularly used in my house now.

Starting using some new universal remotes

For a long while, universal remotes were a cornerstone of my home theater setups. I spent countless hours programming them to be easy to use for the entire family. But as I moved on from home theater PCs running MythTV and Kodi to streaming devices, I found I no longer needed the perfect remote control.

This year, however, I got to try out two new remotes: The SwitchBot Universal Remote and the Sofabaton X1S. While the SwitchBot remote has potential, I still think they need to add a lot more out-of-the-box compatibility. However, the Sofabaton was the best value remote that comes close to replicating the capabilities of my old Harmony remote, while still being simple to set up and use. It’s now a staple in our main A/V room.

Replaced a timer switch with a Shelly Gen 3 mini

I get power outages here every year, so I like to be well-prepared for them. One thing that nagged me is that the digital timer for my outdoor porch lights would lose the time with every outage, even though it was not supposed to. This means I couldn’t rely on it to turn my lights on at sunset and on at sunrise after power outages.

Finally after multiple power outages last year I decided to replace the timer. Normally, I like to use digital or mechanical timers instead of smart switches or relays for outdoor lights because I want them to work even if the power cycles, my home network struggles, Home Assistant goes down, or I lose Internet connectivity. One of those will usually stop a smart switch from working.

That’s where the Shelly Mini Gen3 relays come into play. I use Shelly relays for light switches in many places around my home. I had a couple of Gen3 relays lying around and I felt confident using them because even though I integrate them with Home Assistant for control, you can also set up a schedule within Shelly’s firmware as a backup. Now it works, even after a power outage.

The Never-Ending Cycle of Smart Home Maintenance

Keeping a smart home running smoothly involves plenty of routine upkeep. Over the past year, I stayed on top of the not-so-glamorous but essential tasks, like updating firmware for LED controllers, routers, network equipment, and smart devices. On top of that, I regularly updated operating systems, Docker containers, and Home Assistant to ensure everything remained secure and functional.

At times, it felt like managing and troubleshooting updates could qualify as its own part-time job. Automating some of this maintenance has been on my to-do list for a while, and—spoiler alert—it’s still a priority for the year ahead! Here’s hoping I can simplify this endless cycle just a bit.

Inventorying my smart home

My smart home continues to expand year after year, and 2024 was no exception. Here’s a breakdown of some key stats from my setup, along with how they’ve evolved since last year:

• 183 devices on my home network (-2 — got rid of some old devices)
• 167 Home Assistant automations (+8)
• 55 Home Assistant integrations (+19)
• 43 Z-wave devices (-2 — smart plugs, smart switches, door sensors, tilt sensors, etc.)
• 6 Zigbee devices (smart plug, ceiling fan controllers, remote control — the same number of devices as last year)
• 11 Shelly relays (+1)
• 19 Wi-Fi smart plugs (+2 — tested a lot and added automating of a few plugged-in devices)
• 13 security cameras (same as last year)
• 11 smart bulbs (same as last year)
• 4 flood sensors (+1)
• 10 WLED powered LED strips and strings and 1 Shelly RGBW2 powered LED strip (same as last year)
• A mixture of Rokus, Google TV Streamers, and Chromecast with Google TVs with an Android TV and FireTV stick thrown in
• Some miscellaneous smart home devices: Ecobee3 Lite thermostat, SwitchBot K10+, SwitchBot K10+ Pro, iRobot Roomba i3 robot vacuums, irrigation controller, Brilliant Smart Home Control light switches, and a Mii Air Purifier.

My smart home plans for 2025

Each year, I set out with a list of smart home upgrades and improvements. While unexpected challenges sometimes lead to adjustments, having a solid plan is always a good starting point. Here’s what I’m aiming to upgrade in my smart home this year:

Backup Proxmox hypervisor

My trusty 8th-generation Intel NUC has become unreliable. So now I need a new backup Proxmox hypervisor that I can move VMs to when I’m doing maintenance or in case of failure of my primary host. I just need to pick from my own hardware recommendations.

Move Home Assistant to a different installation type

If I had to do it all over again I’d probably go with HassOS instead of Home Assistant core. Less of a headache to maintain, especially when I need to upgrade my Python virtual environment. I’ll consider making the move this year

Clean up my Home Assistant entities and code

Speaking of Home Assistant, I’ve got lots of code to clean up, entities that probably should be deleted, and probably some code refactoring to do. I’ve built up a lot of technical debt in my automations and scripts over the years.

Final thoughts

I hope sharing the evolution of my smart home and my plans for the future was both insightful and inspiring. If this article sparked any ideas or resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts—drop a comment or connect with me on Twitter/X!