The Smart Home Project

As part of my Smart Home build, I need a proper network with segregated sub-networks for our computers, IoT & media devices, management and, of course, guests. The full network design and decision process will be the subject of another post, but I obviously need wi-fi - at least 3 different wi-fi networks in fact.  All the forum posts and information I can find say that the R9000 doesn't support VLANs in dd-wrt. I need VLAN support so that I don't have to have 3 or more different APs (one for each network SSID). Looking at the hardware spec (and the fact that the stock firmware supports limited VLANs), I figured that it should support VLANs, so I trawled the forums, looked at the code and learned about the toolsets included in dd-wrt and I made it work!  This post covers how I set up VLANs on my Netgear R9000 Nighthawk X10 in dd-wrt. I'm sure you will want a different setup (in fact this isn't my final setup either, but it shows the principle).  Pre-requisites I am ...

After many years of DIY on our properties, we decided to buy a run down house, gut it, extend it and make it our ideal home. In previous properties we had put in data cabling, a network and some smart technologies. However, this time we wanted to create a truly smart home with integrated systems and as much automation as we could - after all a truly smart home should anticipate our needs and do things for us! There were 2 key decisions to be made up front though: Core versus edge? In other words, do we build the technologies into the core of the building with proprietary cabling and fixtures or just install standard cabling throughout and put the intelligence and features at the edge? For example, in the core we could put in an integrated lighting system with proprietary cabling and controllers, or we could build in media systems with racks in cupboards and speakers in the ceilings, etc. Alternatively, on the edge we can go for things like smart bulbs/plugs and wi-fi connected speakers...