The car charges on sun and cheap power
It charges on spare solar or cheap prices, up to its limit, and pauses in a price spike.
Tesla, via TessiePowerPilot
Its dashboards
The whole house on one wall.
[Wall-tablet dashboards: home, climate, energy, circuits, garden, car, batteries · captured read-only from the house, names blurred · pending]
Energy and money
It runs on sunshine and dodges spikes.
The aircon is kept in check
It sets back when power is expensive and uses spare solar for comfort when someone's home. Room temperatures come from wireless sensors.
Daikin ductedSonoff temp sensorsSonoff motion sensorPowerPilot
The sauna stands down in a crisis
If a spike hits while the battery is flat, the sauna is switched off. It is never switched on automatically.
Sauna Wi-Fi kit, local controlPowerPilot
The spa heats on free sunshine
It heats on spare solar, coasts through the 4–9 pm peak, and only tops up from the grid if the sun fell short. It keeps its own heating and jets stats.
SpaNET controllerPowerPilot
The ice bath chills on spare solar
It cools when the sun is paying, stops before it would run on expensive grid power, and waits out spikes.
Wi-Fi heat pump, local controlPowerPilot
Spike defence, out loud
When the price spikes, the big loads switch off once, and the Sonos speakers say so at the start and at the all-clear.
Amber pricesSonosPowerPilot
Battery power, tracked all day
Battery charge, solar, home use and the grid are on the wall all day, with the day's solar forecast. SmartShift still runs the battery itself.
Tesla PowerwallSolarEdge solarSolar forecast
Every circuit shows its running cost
About 16 circuits are metered in the switchboard. Each shows dollars per hour and dollars today at live prices; the spa also shows this month and this year.
Emporia Vue, 16 clamps (electrician-fitted)Amber prices
A morning brief on your phone
At sunrise: battery level, today's price band, the solar forecast, the aircon, and whether the garage and front door are shut.
Home Assistant phone app
Water and garden
Watering that checks the sky first.
Rain-aware garden watering
The garden zones water each morning. Each is skipped if the forecast says rain, or if the rain sensor was properly wet in the last day (a splash doesn't count).
Sonoff dual tap valveZigbee rain sensorWeather forecast
Know which plants need water
Soil sensors in the pots send a message when a plant has been dry for six hours.
Zigbee soil sensors
A valve can't be left running
Any valve open longer than 12 minutes is closed, and you get a message. "Water now" buttons run a zone for 10 or 5 minutes.
Sonoff dual tap valve
A leak alarm on every channel
A leak under the laundry sink sends a phone alert, a Telegram message and a high-priority push, and every speaker in the house says where it is.
Sonoff leak sensorSonos
An easy add · not in this home yet
Litres and cost per watering
This home's garden valve has no flow meter. Sonoff's single tap valve tracks water use, so Home Assistant can show the litres each zone used, and multiply by your water price.
Sonoff tap valve with water tracking · $59
Security and access
It locks up and keeps watch.
Goodnight, without a button
Once everyone's in bed after 10 pm, the front door locks and the last lights go off. A bedside double-click does it early.
Bed sensorsAugust smart lockSonoff USB switch
The garage door, from your phone
A relay works the opener and a door sensor knows if it's really open. Left open five minutes? Your phone hears about it.
Shelly relay (Sonoff makes one too)Sonoff door sensor
Away mode in one switch
Lights, non-essentials and the aircon go off, the door locks, and you get a summary. Turn it off and the house comes back with a welcome.
Sonoff relaysTP-Link KasaDaikinAugust lock
A lived-in look while you're away
Every half hour on an evening away, a random light comes on, and they all go off at 10:45 pm.
Sonoff dimmerSmart bulbs
It knows the sitter from a stranger
While you're away, the sitter's keypad code gets a friendly "sitter visit" message; a door opened with no known code gets a loud one. The door re-locks itself after 10 minutes.
August lock + keypadSonoff door sensor
It notices when gear goes quiet
If the lock, a door or leak sensor, a valve or the garage controller stops reporting, you hear about it, and again when it's back.
Home Assistant
Lights, voice and music
Lights follow the sun. The house talks back.
An evening scene at dusk
Half an hour before sunset, about nine lighting circuits come on, from the bedside lamps to the backyard festoons. At sunrise the outside lights go off and the desk light comes on.
Sonoff relays and dimmersRotary dimmersSmart plugs and bulbs
Bedside buttons
Click for the lamps, double-click for the room lights or to run Goodnight now.
Sonoff wireless button
Two AI voice assistants
One small speaker, two wake words, two personalities. They set the aircon, run scenes ("golden hour" brings on the evening lights) and answer in their own voices.
Home Assistant VoiceClaudeElevenLabs voices
Music in any room, by voice
"Play my liked songs in the lounge" starts the playlist on that room's speakers.
SonosSpotifyMusic Assistant
A welcome home
Pull into the driveway during the day and the house greets you out loud, with party lights for a couple of minutes.
Car and phone locationSonoff relaySonos
One tap for the spa jets
All four spa pumps start from one button, and the aircon mode can be set by voice.
SpaNETDaikin
It looks after itself
It handles the hiccups.
Back on its feet after a restart
If a slow cloud service doesn't reconnect after a restart, Home Assistant reloads it by itself.
Real errors reach you; noise doesn't
Genuine errors go to Telegram, with chatty devices filtered out. Every minute it checks the router, wall tablet, speakers and battery gateway, so a flaky cable shows up in the data.
KasaKeeper looks after the rest
Maintenance schedules, warranties and quotes from trades for every system in the house, on the same box.
The Sonoff parts in this home
Most of it costs about $19 a piece.
Sonoff's Zigbee range runs locally on the Home Assistant box, with no cloud account. Prices are SmartHome's for each part's listing.
Prices from SmartHome's Sonoff range, seen 21 Oct 2026. None of those listings states Australian approval (RCM), so the consult checks every part before it goes in. Anything in the walls or switchboard is fitted by a licensed electrician. Not Sonoff in this home: the garage relay (Shelly), the lock (August), rotary dimmers, bulbs and some plugs (TP-Link Kasa), the sauna and ice bath controls, the spa (SpaNET), aircon (Daikin), battery and car (Tesla). Home Assistant runs them all together.
Start with PowerPilot. Add the rest when you like.
We can set up any of this with your install, or later at our support rate. The consult tells you what your house can do and what each part costs.