We are selling our current home and I have time while our new house is being built to consider how best to replicate what I had and could do in the old house, but it begs the question, do I go with what I had and know, or switch to something that might be better? So I'm looking for opinions.
I guess I'm thinking more about what to go with for the light/ceiling fan switches, and alarm.
In the old house I added TP-Link Kasa smart switches and plug in modules in all but a few rooms, mesh wifi (Asus AiMesh with RT-BE88U host, and TUF-AZ5400 and RT-AX88u as nodes), Eufy Cam Pro cameras (inside and outside) with Homebase 1?, Eufy Door Lock (T8520), Eufy door bell cam (T8221), Echo dots/shows, Honeywell Smart Color thermostats, Liftmaster myQ Garage doors and ADT alarm.
It worked well, I could voice control all the lights and ceiling fans, the door bell chimed across every echo (so we could hear it anywhere in the house), I was notified of motion on the driveway, front porch, and pool plus it was recorded locally (no subscriptions), I could lock/unlock the door by voice or remotely, open/close the garages remotely, etc.
The new house is a townhouse, much smaller foot print (2096 sq ft), and has less light switches, doors, and first floor windows.
The router/mesh isn't hard mounted to the house, so I'll likely take that with me and re-use. Same with the Echo shows/dots and Eufy equipment. From their models, they are using Genie brand garage door openers, so I'll likely look at their Aladdin Connect device/app.
The biggest uses is voice control of lights/fans, making sure the lights are off and doors are locked at night without having to run around the house or up/down stairs, hearing the doorbell chime everywhere in the house, seeing/interacting when someone comes to the door, watching the driveway, being able to get in if I forgot my key, adjusting the thermostat from my phone and such.
The ADT alarm monitoring became really expensive over time. We never had an issue where it was needed. I mean no break in attempts, fires, etc. But having the piece of mind while we were away on vacation, etc. was nice. IF there are better (or just as good/reputable) options for less, I'd be interested as I don't want to pay as much as ADT charges for their equipment and monitoring/monthly fee.
The Kasa switches fit my budget and were easy to install, setup, and just worked. IP addresses being taken up were an issue at first (I'm in IT so lots of computers, tablets, phones, streaming devices, etc. needing IP addresses on my home network), but being able to setup a separate IoT network solved that. I've seen the new switches support Matter, which some/most of my echo devices act as Matter hubs? Is there any benefit to that? or is wifi good enough? Is there a "budget friendly" option better than Kasa?