Lights that know the time of day. A door you can open for the maid without handing over a key. Curtains on a schedule. We design and install it on your existing wiring — and we leave the ordinary wall switches working.
What is the thing about your home that actually annoys you? Getting up to switch off the lights, never knowing who rang the bell, the AC running all night — start there, not with a product list.
Turn it around. Click any pin to find out what that device actually does and what to check before buying it. Then switch the scene and watch what the house does on its own at each time of day.
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A 2 BHK of about 950 sq ft, with nineteen devices in it. This is the list the interactive version is built from — every item below is a real decision we would talk through at a survey.
One camera covering the approach does most of the work. We would rather put one good camera where it matters than six cheap ones around a flat.
One switch module in the wall box controls the whole circuit, however many downlights are on it. The module sits behind the plate you already have, so the switch on the wall still works exactly as it does now.
This is the part people do not expect. The module hides inside the box; the plate on the wall is unchanged. Guests, parents and anyone who has never opened the app carry on pressing the same switch.
A motor on the track, driven by a schedule or a scene. The useful setting is not opening them from your phone — it is having them close by themselves at sunset without anyone thinking about it.
A small infrared bridge learns your existing remote. No new AC, no wiring. It gives the unit you already own a schedule, and lets a rule turn it off when a door is left open.
Pulled into the same scenes as everything else, so "movie" dims the lights, closes the curtains and switches the input in one tap instead of three remotes.
Bright and cool while someone is cooking, and part of the goodnight scene that sweeps the whole flat so nobody has to walk around checking.
A puck on the floor behind the sink or the washing machine. It costs very little, it does nothing for years, and the once it goes off it pays for the entire installation several times over.
Mounted at the right height for the gas you actually have — LPG sinks, so the sensor goes low; piped gas rises, so it goes high. Getting that wrong is the most common installation error we see.
The real value is not unlocking from the office. It is that the cook has a code that works between six and eight, and when the cook changes you delete a code rather than change a lock.
The device that earns its place fastest in an Indian flat, for an unglamorous reason: deliveries. See and speak to whoever is there, from anywhere, and tell them where to leave the parcel.
At night this brings the passage up to about ten per cent rather than full glare. It is consistently the automation people are most pleased with and least likely to have asked for.
The box that holds the schedules, the scenes and the rules. Because they live here rather than in a data centre, an internet outage costs you remote access and nothing else — the house carries on.
A clamp at the distribution board that shows where the units are actually going. Usually the answer is the geyser and the AC, and usually it is more than people guess.
The one that sells the whole idea: turning off every light in the flat without getting out of bed. Two-way control from the bedside and the door, without running new wires for a second switch.
On fifteen minutes before you usually get into bed, so the room is comfortable rather than cold and then warm again. Off automatically if the balcony door is opened.
Opening at seven changes your mornings more than any light does. If you only motorise one room, this is the room.
Light on when someone walks in, and the exhaust fan carries on for ten minutes after they leave — which is exactly what an exhaust fan should do and almost never does.
Often the room to leave until later. If it is a study or a child's room it earns automation; if it is the guest room it can wait, usually indefinitely.
Most homes start with two or three and add the rest once they have lived with it. Here is what each one actually does, including where it is awkward.
Switch, dim and group lights from a phone, a wall switch or a schedule.
Open with a code, a fingerprint or a phone, and see who came and went.
See the gate, the main door and the common areas, live or afterwards.
Control ACs and fans by schedule, by temperature or from your phone.
Motorised tracks that open on a schedule or with everything else in a scene.
Motion, door, water leak and smoke — the parts that make automation automatic.
Speakers in more than one room, and the TV joining the scenes.
See what is actually drawing power, and switch off what should not be.
We are one of these three. It is worth knowing when the other two are the better answer.
Buy retail smart bulbs and plugs, set them up with the maker's app.
GOOD
LESS GOOD
Modules behind existing switches, one system, installed and handed over.
GOOD
LESS GOOD
Proprietary systems specified by an architect or AV consultant.
GOOD
LESS GOOD
A phone call or a form is enough. What matters at this point is the size of the place, whether it is occupied, and what is annoying you.
We look at the switch boxes, check whether there is a neutral wire, see where the router sits and how the signal reaches the far rooms. This is where a realistic plan comes from.
What goes where, which products, what it costs, and what we are deliberately leaving out. You should be able to take this to anyone else for comparison.
We would rather you knew these before spending money, even if you end up doing it yourself.
Many smart switch modules need a neutral wire at the switch box. Plenty of older Indian wiring does not have one. This is the single most common reason a box of devices sits unused.
If someone turns the wall switch off, the bulb is dead — no app, no voice, no schedule. It catches every household out at least once.
Thirty Wi-Fi devices on a home router is how you end up with a network that drops. Zigbee and similar protocols exist for exactly this reason.
Four apps for four kinds of device is how most self-built systems end up, and it is why they stop getting used.
A system that needs the cloud to turn a light on is a system that fails during an outage. Local control should be the default, with the cloud as a bonus.
If only one person in the house can operate it, it will be switched back to manual within a month.
This gives you the scope — how many devices a home your size typically needs. We quote only after a survey, because the wiring decides the price far more than the floor area does.
In most homes, no. Modules go into the existing switch boxes behind the plates you already have. The one thing that decides it is whether there is a neutral wire at the switch box — older wiring often brings only the live wire to the switch. If yours does not have one, there are devices that work without it, or an electrician can bring one; either way we tell you at the survey, before you have spent anything.
Yes, and we treat that as non-negotiable. A house where the lights only respond to a phone is a house that annoys everyone who is not holding the phone. With smart switch modules the plate on the wall keeps working exactly as it does now, and the app, schedules and voice are additions on top of it.
The lights, switches, scenes and schedules keep working, because the hub in your home runs them locally. What you lose is control from outside the house and anything that genuinely depends on a cloud service, such as a camera stream to your phone while you are away. We design it this way deliberately: a system that cannot turn a light on during an outage is not finished.
A flat being retrofitted is usually one to two days, and we work room by room so the house stays livable. A large house, or one where curtain motors and new points are involved, takes longer. The survey gives you a real number rather than a guess, and it goes in the written proposal.
Partly, and it is worth knowing where the line is. Smart bulbs, plugs, a plug-in camera and battery sensors are all removable and leave nothing behind, so they are fine. Switch modules go inside the switch box, which is usually a landlord conversation, though they are removable too and the original switch goes back. A smart lock replaces the existing lock, so that definitely needs the landlord. We can plan a package that is entirely reversible if you expect to move.
That is what happens when a home is assembled device by device from whatever was on offer, and it is the main reason self-built systems stop getting used. We build around one hub and one app so the whole house is in one place, and scenes can combine lights, curtains and the AC in a single tap. Where a device genuinely has to keep its own app — some cameras do — we tell you up front.
The realistic risks are not the dramatic ones. They are weak passwords, a device sitting on the internet because a port was forwarded, and firmware nobody ever updates. We put devices on a separate network where the router allows it, do not expose anything to the internet directly, use the manufacturer two-factor login where it exists, and hand you a short written note on keeping it that way. Local-first control also shrinks the attack surface, because less of your home is reachable from outside it.
Bring them to the survey. Some will fit the plan, some will work but only through their own app, and some will not play with anything else at all. We will tell you honestly which is which rather than quietly pricing in replacements.
You do. The hub is yours, the accounts are in your name, and the documentation we leave includes everything needed for someone else to work on it. We think a company that holds your logins hostage is telling you something about itself.
Ask. Travel and logistics decide it, and for a larger project it is often workable. The honest answer depends on where you are, so tell us and we will say yes or no rather than stringing it out.
The parts that are local — switches, the hub, sensors, scenes — should, and that is one reason we weight a system towards local control. The parts that depend on a manufacturer cloud last as long as that manufacturer chooses to keep it running, which is a real risk with cheap brands and one we factor into what we specify. Nobody can promise you a decade, and anyone who does is guessing.
Genuinely: for a one-bedroom flat and a handful of lights, not much you could not manage over a weekend with a few hours of reading. What we add is the wiring assessment, one coherent system instead of four apps, a network that holds up under thirty devices, and someone accountable when something stops. If your project is small, we will say so.
Tell us what is annoying you about the house as it is. That is usually a better starting point than a product list, and it costs nothing to ask.
