OceanDad

Gotta love that Tuya driver @alanchow

I love this driver. Allows a pseudo-2 way control over basic one way blinds, using timers that are built in to the driver.

Just wait until the next dealer tells him that all his equipment is end of life, and he really needs to upgrade his controllers, door station etc. I lived in the Czech Republic for several years. We had a word for this. Czechnology.

Yes - you won't be able to get OSD out of it (navigator display on TV) but that doesn't matter for your needs. The project can run 3.2.3 with an HC800 in it.

Adding an old HC-800 into the project will give you another 4 zones. That's probably the cheapest way.

Understood - just offering an option. I agree with you and others on Unifi GUI. It's comprehensive and very solid. On the other hand, Unleashed is an easy firmware upgrade (most of the gray market equipment is ZoneFlex, but some people don't realize how easy the switch of firmware is) and it does most of what you will ever need from within the app. You would have to pry my Ruckus 710's from my cold dead hands, but the new Unifi gear is good too. Just watch out for beta releases etc.

Ruckus cost is as long as a piece of string. There's plenty of gray market or lightly used commercial Ruckus equipment out there for fairly close to the official Unifi cost. Certainly not 5x the cost. If it's your own project, that's where I'd be purchasing. Different story if it's a customer install and you definitely want to have warranty etc. Personally, I've not had a Ruckus WAP go bad (now jinxed). I'm not sure that I've ever even had to do a reboot. Not saying that Unifi is a bad choice - far from it. But if you want new Ruckus AP's you don't have to pay $700.

Room Control is a 'free' driver, but you need a dealer to add it to your project. Quick and simple to do, and I'd suggest getting him to add a copy to every room that you might want to do any degree of useful programming to in the future. It opens up some programming events that come in very handy as referenced above.

TP-Link work just fine. Just be aware that while on/off/dim will be instantaneous, feedback on state will lag behind. That's because the driver will be polling for state only every 10 seconds +. In other words, the touchscreen will show the light as off for a few seconds, even after you turn it on. Not really an issue for your use case. The driver for TP/Kasa is from Chowmain and is easy to set up and robust, assuming that you have solid wi-fi. The switches use a 2.4 network, not 5 GHz.

Alan’s Hikvision driver is my favorite new driver this year. Works so well, and having true IP control of the NVR as an HDMI source is really useful.

Well if we are going to blow the budget, what about these ? https://luxurylaunches.com/gadgets/hart_audio_offering_47_million_solid_gold_speakers.php

You forgot Elan 🤣

For some twisted reason, this made me laugh this morning. There's always something waiting to trip you up...

I don't have a problem with metadata using Plex. Certainly not with regular movies. You can choose from a range of agents that contribute metadata. Very occasionally I have some made-for-TV documentary that shows up as a movie without metadata, but that tends to be something obscure and brand new.

These are my favorites : https://www.amazon.com/SECO-LARM-SM-4201-LQ-TRACK-MOUNT-OVERHEAD/dp/B011OXPZ7Y/ref=asc_df_B011OXPZ7Y/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475746716396&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13434317323208947126&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031013&hvtargid=pla-1155727946110&psc=1