Awesome thank you all guys for chipping in. So much to unpack here for an electronic guy who has no experience in networking and home automation.

I just spun up HA yesterday to get my feet wet and I can see how easily I can get tempted to rump it up with a bunch of smart stuff. Ideally, I want to use less internet connected ones (although I said IOT initially, but really mean smart devices which i can control via HA and don’t ping home unnecessarily)

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Conduit is a great choice, my mind struggles to assimilate how to leave the unpatched end of the cables/conduit at various sides of each room without building too many recess points. Or even how high to leave them from the floor.

Regarding conduits, perhaps I can run one to the corner of the windows for blinders, motion sensors and automatic windows (if I can find those)

Won’t running a conduit to every power socket (3 per room at least?) might be a bit overkill? Apart then the computer corner power/ethernet and TV sockets would I need a conduit near bedside tables power points?

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I see the point why switches in every room are a maintenance issue. However, these smart devices, would they saturate the network so much that I need direct cable from each of them to the server closet?

I am not planning to run a streaming device at the end of each. High Bandwidth TV/PC, camera cables should go directly to the server closet, but the rest hopefully will be