Smart villa, Soumeh Sara

The brief

A house that stands empty for part of the year, whose owner wanted to check on it remotely and bring the heating on before arriving. Their condition was that the system keep working without internet, and that nobody in the family need open an app to turn on a lamp.

How it was done

1. 01 Wireless chosen so an occupied, finished house did not need breaking out
2. 02 A local controller installed in the house rather than reliance on a cloud service
3. 03 Every wall switch kept live in parallel with the automation
4. 04 An away scene: everything off, heating at a floor, and an alert if the power drops
5. 05 A separate network segment with its own credentials for the control kit
6. 06 A one-page plain guide handed to the family instead of a technical manual

The outcome

The house can be checked remotely, and when the internet drops every local control and wall switch carries on unchanged. The away scene turned out to be the one they use most.