Cedar Avenue
A 3-storey semi-detached home for a family of six, rebuilt and improved continuously since 2022.
A household of six, and a wall switch that kept winning
This project was completed for a family of six: a husband and wife in their early 40s, two children, an elderly mother and a domestic helper. The home was originally automated in 2022 using Yeelight Pro smart lighting, and Marshall has supported and maintained the property ever since, improving the system as the family's needs changed.
The homeowner's biggest frustration was structural. Yeelight Pro relied entirely on smart lighting with no smart wall switches, so family members would routinely switch the lights off at the traditional wall switch and cut power to the smart lights completely. Once power was removed, the lights became unreachable from both the Yeelight app and Apple Home - which defeats the point of having a smart home at all.
A house with six people in it does not get to have a rule about which switches you are allowed to touch. The fix had to be in the hardware, not in the habits.
One of the first Yeelight Pro integrations
Back in 2022, Yeelight Pro had virtually no third-party support. The lighting system only spoke to Apple HomeKit, and no official Home Assistant integration existed.
Using Home Assistant's HomeKit Device integration, Marshall brought the entire Yeelight Pro ecosystem into Home Assistant, letting the lighting participate in automations alongside every other device in the home. At the time this was one of the earliest successful Yeelight Pro integrations in the Home Assistant community.
Decoupled Mode ended the switch-versus-bulb fight
In 2022 Aqara was one of very few manufacturers offering Decoupled Mode on its wall switches, so CtrlSpace recommended replacing the conventional switches with Aqara D1 smart wall switches.
Rather than physically cutting power to the light, Decoupled Mode turns the wall switch into a scene controller. Pressing it sends a command to Home Assistant, which instructs the smart light to turn on or off while power stays permanently supplied. The conflict between smart switches and smart lights disappears.
Whoever pressed the wall switch, the smart lights stayed online - still controllable from Apple Home, Home Assistant and every automation.
Decoupled Mode is common across smart switch manufacturers today. At the time it was a significant advantage, and it is what made the rest of this system possible.
Rebuilding the Zigbee network
The original installation was built entirely around no-neutral Zigbee switches. Several of those circuits controlled high-powered LED strip installations, placing loads beyond what no-neutral switches were designed to handle, and as more lighting was added over the years switch failures became increasingly common. By late 2023 the original installer had stopped responding to the homeowner's requests for help, and he came back to Marshall to redesign the electrical architecture.
Instead of replacing every switch, CtrlSpace proposed a hybrid Zigbee system:
- Neutral-powered switches on the higher-wattage lighting circuits, where they deliver the most reliability.
- For the staircase, the existing two-way wiring between Levels 1, 2 and 3 was repurposed into a neutral conductor - so neutral-powered switches went in without extensive rewiring.
- No-neutral switches retained everywhere the load was well within their design envelope.
The result is a significantly stronger and more reliable Zigbee mesh that has run smoothly ever since.
One button instead of three remotes
The family has a dedicated home theatre built around a Denon AVR, an Epson laser projector and an NVIDIA Shield. The system delivered an excellent experience and required three separate remote controls to use it: every device powered on individually, then the correct HDMI input selected, just to start a film.
Manageable for the homeowner. Genuinely difficult for the children and his elderly mother.
CtrlSpace integrated every entertainment device into Home Assistant using their official integrations, then built a single automation that performs the whole sequence. Starting a movie is now one scene switch: the projector powers on, the AVR starts, the correct HDMI input is selected and the NVIDIA Shield launches automatically.
A gate that is already open
The homeowner asked for a fully automated entrance gate. Because the property sits on a one-way street, Home Assistant's location tracking had an unusually clean problem to solve: there is only one direction he can approach from.
Custom entry, exit and trigger zones were drawn around the property. As he approaches, Home Assistant opens the front gate before the vehicle reaches the driveway, so by the time he arrives it is already fully open and he drives straight in - no remote, no waiting for the gate to finish travelling. On the way out, the gate closes automatically once the vehicle has cleared it.
Air conditioning that answers back
Before Home Assistant, the homeowner controlled his Daikin air-conditioning through Aqara cameras with built-in infrared blasters. It worked, but infrared is one-way: commands were occasionally missed, and nothing could confirm whether a unit had actually changed state.
The Daikin units support an official Home Assistant integration, so CtrlSpace migrated the entire system to direct Wi-Fi control. That gives two-way communication and accurate status reporting - the system knows what the air conditioner is actually doing, rather than assuming the command landed.
Apple Home, and an intercom the family actually uses
The homeowner preferred to control the house through Apple Home, so the entire Home Assistant installation was bridged into HomeKit. Every compatible device is manageable from the Apple Home app, with Siri providing voice control throughout the property.
Four HomePod minis were installed around the house. The family's favourite feature turned out to be the simplest one: HomePod Intercom, which lets the parents broadcast a message - calling the children down for dinner, for instance - without walking through three storeys to do it.
The aquarium joined the smart home
Fishkeeping is one of the homeowner's biggest hobbies, so bringing the aquarium into the system mattered to him. CtrlSpace integrated Apex Fusion into Home Assistant using a custom integration.
Water temperature, pH and other tank parameters are now monitored directly in Home Assistant, and feeding routines are controlled alongside the rest of the house.
A system that kept getting better
This project has evolved alongside the family for years: pioneering one of the earliest Yeelight Pro integrations with Home Assistant, redesigning the Zigbee network, collapsing the home theatre down to one button, automating the front gate and integrating the aquarium.
The home demonstrates how a smart home should work - continuing to improve over time rather than remaining static.
Today the property runs as one ecosystem, with lighting, entertainment, security, climate control and even aquarium management working together through a single intelligent platform.