Got Hardwired Home Automation Solution? Don't Rip Out Your Wiring — We Have a Better Solution

By Eiferer & DSR

If you're reading this, chances are you've got a proprietary home automation system in your house — C-Bus, Elan, Control4, or something similar. Someone ran Cat5 or Cat6 cable to every light switch, every output, every room. It was a serious investment, and the installation wasn't a small job either.

Now you're stuck. The system is expensive to maintain, replacement parts carry premium prices, the local installer who set it up has moved on or closed shop, and every service call feels like a second bond payment. Or maybe the brand you originally went with has simply gone out of business — it happens more often than people realise in the home automation world.

So you call an electrician or a competing automation company, and they give you the same advice: rip out all the Cat5/6 cabling, replace it with standard electrical wiring, and start from scratch with a new system.

That advice is wrong. And it will cost you a fortune.

Your Cat5/6 Wiring Is Not the Problem — It's the Solution

Here's what most people don't understand: the most expensive and disruptive part of any home automation installation isn't the technology — it's the cabling. Running structured Cat5 or Cat6 cable to every switch plate, every light fitting, every output point in a house is a massive undertaking. It means chasing walls, lifting floors, running cable through roof spaces, and weeks of mess followed by repainting and repairs.

That work has already been done in your home. That infrastructure is your single greatest asset. The cable itself is not proprietary, even if the system that was connected to it was. It runs to every room, every switch point, every output — and that's exactly what we need to deploy a modern smart home solution without touching your walls.

At Eiferer and DSR, we've developed a method to deploy our smart home solution using your existing Cat5/6 cable infrastructure. No ripping out cables. No rewiring with electrical cable. No chasing walls. No repainting. We work with what's already there.

A Wireless Solution Built on a Solid Foundation

Our smart home solution runs on Wi-Fi — but not in the way you might think. We're not asking you to scatter wireless gadgets around the house and hope for the best. We deploy our devices using your existing Cat5/6 cable infrastructure, which means every device is exactly where it needs to be, in every room, at every switch point — just like your old system.

The difference is that we pair this with Ubiquiti UniFi networking to ensure a rock-solid wireless backbone. Ubiquiti is enterprise-grade networking hardware — the same equipment used in hotels, offices, and commercial buildings where hundreds of devices need to stay connected without a hiccup. It's one of the best platforms available for handling large numbers of IoT devices, and it's a core part of what makes our solution reliable.

Why does this matter? Because a smart home with 30, 50, or 80+ devices will destroy a consumer-grade router. The one your ISP gave you wasn't designed for this. Devices start dropping off, response times lag, and the whole experience feels unreliable — which is exactly what gives Wi-Fi smart home solutions a bad name.

We don't let that happen. Our Ubiquiti infrastructure gives you proper device management, network segmentation to keep your IoT traffic separate from your personal devices, seamless coverage throughout the house, and the capacity to handle every device without breaking a sweat. When the Wi-Fi foundation is right, the smart home on top of it is rock-solid.

The Solution: Sonoff, Home Assistant, and Open Standards

Our retrofit stack is built on products and platforms that are affordable, proven, and — critically — not controlled by any single company.

Sonoff Relays: The Workhorses

At the distribution board or central wiring point in your home, your old C-Bus, Elan, or Control4 system had proprietary relay modules or controller boards. These are the expensive components that lock you into a single vendor — and the ones that cost a fortune to replace when they fail.

We swap them out with Sonoff relay modules. These compact, reliable devices handle the on/off switching for your lights, plugs, and appliances. They're proven, they're affordable, and they do exactly the same job as the proprietary modules they replace.

A real installation: 15 Sonoff MINI relay modules neatly mounted alongside the existing power supply unit. Each one replaces a proprietary relay module at a fraction of the cost.


A real installation: 15 Sonoff MINI relay modules neatly mounted alongside the existing power supply unit. Each one replaces a proprietary relay module at a fraction of the cost.

Sonoff NSPanel: A Real Interface on the Wall

One of the most common complaints we hear is: "I don't want to control everything from my phone." Fair enough. A proper home automation system should have physical controls on the wall — not just an app.

The Sonoff NSPanel is a sleek touchscreen panel that mounts in a standard wall box. You can control lights, scenes, temperatures, and more directly from the screen. It gives you the same wall-mounted control experience you had with your C-Bus or Control4 touchscreens — without the proprietary price tag. And because your home already has Cat5/6 cable running to every switch point, we can deploy these panels throughout the house without any new wiring.

Sonoff MINI-DIM: The Missing Piece

Until recently, dimming was the one area where our retrofit couldn't fully match a high-end proprietary system. If you wanted smooth, reliable dimming of your LED downlights or feature lighting, you were often still looking at expensive branded dimmers.

The Sonoff MINI-DIM changes that. This compact dimmer module provides smooth, flicker-free dimming control and integrates directly with Home Assistant. Full dimming curves, scene support, and automation — at a price that makes proprietary dimmers look absurd.

With the MINI-DIM, we can now deliver a complete solution: switching, dimming, and touchscreen control. No compromises.

Home Assistant: The Brain That Sets You Free

Everything connects back to Home Assistant — an open-source home automation platform that runs locally in your home. Nabucasa Cloud subscription Anual fee of $65 for remote access

Home Assistant ties all the Sonoff devices together and integrates with over a thousand different brands and protocols. Want to add a smart lock from one manufacturer, a camera from another, and voice control through Google or Alexa? Home Assistant handles all of it in one interface.

Most importantly, Home Assistant means you're never locked in again. If Sonoff were to disappear tomorrow, you swap their devices for alternatives without changing your platform. That's the opposite of what happens when a proprietary vendor goes under and takes your entire system with them.

What a Real Retrofit Looks Like

Talk is cheap — here's what the finished product actually looks like.

A larger residential retrofit: a full cabinet of Sonoff 4CH Pro modules replaces what was previously a proprietary controller system. Every blue LED represents a circuit now under Home Assistant control.



The full picture: a complete home conversion. Sonoff 4CH Pro modules handle the main circuits on the upper shelves, while MINI modules manage individual outputs at the bottom. All deployed through the existing Cat5/6 cable runs in the house.

The Cost Conversation

Let's be direct, because it's the question everyone asks first.

The exact cost depends on the size of your home, the number of circuits and outputs, and the complexity of what you want to achieve. Every house is different, and we quote on a case-by-case basis after assessing your existing installation.

What we can tell you is this: across the projects we've completed, the total cost — including Sonoff hardware, Home Assistant setup, NSPanel touchscreens, MINI-DIM dimmers, and a Ubiquiti Wi-Fi infrastructure upgrade where needed — consistently comes in at around 20% of what it would cost to replace your system with a new proprietary installation. And that comparison doesn't even include the cost of ripping out your Cat5/6 and rewiring with electrical cable, which some companies would have you do on top of the new system cost.

That's not a rough estimate. That's what our clients are actually paying, and they're getting a system that's more flexible, more future-proof, and easier to maintain than what they had before.

What About Reliability?

This is usually the first concern, and it's a fair one. You've experienced a premium system — C-Bus touchscreens, Control4 interfaces — and now we're talking about Sonoff modules that cost a fraction of the price. Can they really be as reliable?

The short answer is yes, and here's why.

The Sonoff devices themselves are running in thousands of homes worldwide. When managed through Home Assistant, they're remarkably stable. And because they're affordable, keeping spares on hand is trivial — something you could never say about a proprietary relay module that costs ten times as much.

But more importantly, reliability in a Wi-Fi smart home isn't just about the devices — it's about the network they run on. This is where most DIY and budget smart home setups fall apart, and it's where we're fundamentally different. We deploy Ubiquiti UniFi infrastructure as a standard part of our solution. Enterprise-grade access points, proper network segmentation, dedicated IoT networks, and the capacity to handle every device in your home without congestion or dropouts. The devices are affordable; the network they sit on is bulletproof.

The system also runs locally. Your home automation doesn't stop working if your internet goes down. Lights still switch, dimmers still dim, schedules still run. The cloud is optional, not required.

What If This Brand Disappears Too?

It's a fair question, and it's probably the most important one. You've been burnt before — or you've heard the horror stories from someone who has.

Here's why our solution is fundamentally different.

We run ESPHome on our NSPanel touchscreens — that's open-source firmware that replaces the factory software entirely. The panels don't depend on Sonoff's cloud, Sonoff's app, or Sonoff's servers. If Sonoff disappeared tomorrow, every single panel in your home would carry on working exactly as it does today. Nothing changes. Nothing stops.

But let's take it a step further. What if the NSPanels themselves were discontinued and you couldn't source them anymore? We'd move you to Nextion display panels running the same ESPHome software. Same interface, same functionality, different hardware. Your system keeps running.

That's the power of building on open-source software and open standards. Home Assistant doesn't depend on any single manufacturer. ESPHome doesn't depend on any single device. If one piece of hardware becomes unavailable, we swap it for an alternative and your smart home doesn't skip a beat. Your Cat5/6 wiring — the infrastructure that's already in place throughout your home — stays exactly where it is, ready for whatever comes next.

Compare that to a proprietary system where the hardware, the software, the controller, and the interface all come from one company. When that company goes, everything goes. With our approach, we will always be able to keep you running.

Ready to Talk?

If you've got a home with C-Bus, Elan, Control4, or any other proprietary home automation system — whether it's failing, unsupported, too expensive to maintain, or you've simply been told you need to rip everything out and start over — we'd love to have a look.

Don't let anyone tell you to rip out your Cat5/6 wiring and replace it with electrical cable. That cabling is your biggest asset, and we know exactly how to use it.

We'll assess your existing infrastructure, understand what you need, and give you an honest picture of what a retrofit would involve and cost. No pressure, no hard sell. Just a practical conversation about giving your home a second life — at a price that actually makes sense.

Get in touch with Eiferer & DSR today.

Eiferer and DSR specialise in smart home retrofit solutions using open-source technology and enterprise-grade Ubiquiti networking. Based in South Africa, we help homeowners escape proprietary lock-in and breathe new life into their existing home automation infrastructure — without ripping out a single cable.