For homes
One Screen for Your House: What a Custom Home Dashboard Costs in 2026
Your house already runs on smart systems: the lighting has an app, the solar has an app, the water meter has an app, the pool has an app. What you want is one screen that shows all of it and controls all of it. There are exactly three ways to get that, and they cost wildly different amounts in money, weekends, and future freedom. Here is the honest arithmetic for all three.
Quick credibility note: we sell one of these three options, and this page says so plainly when it gets there. The other two are described the way we would describe them to a friend, because two of them are genuinely right for a lot of people.
Option 1: Do it yourself with Home Assistant
Cash cost: roughly $100 to $250 up front, and $0 to $6.50 a month. Home Assistant is free, open-source software with a huge community and integrations for almost everything. You run it on a small computer (a Raspberry Pi or mini PC, roughly $100 to $250), and the optional cloud service for easy remote access, Nabu Casa, is $6.50 a month or $65 a year (their published price, checked July 2026).
The real cost is your weekends, and it does not stop after the first one. Home Assistant rewards people who genuinely enjoy tinkering: YAML files, integration quirks, breaking changes on updates, forum searches at 11 pm. If that sounds fun, stop reading and go do it; it is the best value on this page and you will own every bit of it. If that sounds like a second job, be honest with yourself now, because a half-finished DIY dashboard is the most common smart-home outcome we see. Estimate 20 to 60 hours to get a full house genuinely dialed in, plus a few hours a month forever.
Option 2: A dealer-installed system (Control4, Savant, Crestron)
Cash cost: quote-only, commonly several thousand dollars for modest scopes to tens of thousands for large homes. There is no published price list; these platforms are sold and programmed exclusively through certified dealers, and every project is quoted individually. You get real value for that: one company designs it, installs it, and owns every problem.
The real cost arrives after the install. Changes require the dealer: adding a keypad, renaming a scene, adjusting an automation is typically a billed service call. And because only a certified dealer can reprogram the system, you are tied to that company for the life of the system. We wrote a whole honest guide to what dealer lock-in actually costs; the one-line version is that the quote is the beginning of the price, not the end of it.
Option 3: A flat-fee console built for you, owned by you
Cash cost: a flat build price quoted before work starts. Ours start at $2,500, with an optional care plan at $99 a month. This is the option we sell, so weigh our words accordingly. A builder connects everything your house already runs, whatever the brand, into one screen: lighting, solar and batteries, water, pool, cameras. It runs on your own hardware and it is yours in the contract, which means three specific things: no dealer can hold your scenes hostage, no subscription is required for the thing to keep working, and if you and your builder part ways, the console stays and works.
The real cost is choosing a builder you trust, because this option is only as good as the person who builds it. Ours is the same test we would give you for anyone: ask what you can change yourself after they are done and paid (the answer here: everything), ask what happens if you stop paying (here: nothing stops working), and ask to click around a real installation before you commit. You can click around ours right now, no login: it is the console running a real Marin home.
The table
| DIY (Home Assistant) | Dealer system | Owned flat build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up front | ~$100-250 hardware | Quote-only; thousands to tens of thousands | Flat, from $2,500, quoted first |
| Ongoing | $0-6.50/mo + your hours | Service calls at dealer rates | $0 required; care plan optional $99/mo |
| Your weekends | 20-60 hrs, then a few/month | None | None |
| Who can change it | You (if you learned how) | The dealer | You, or your builder |
| If the relationship ends | n/a, it's all you | Find another certified dealer | Everything keeps working |
How to choose in one paragraph
If tinkering is your hobby, DIY with Home Assistant and enjoy every minute. If you want one throat to choke, money is not a constraint, and you accept paying for every future change, a good dealer will treat you well. If you want the outcome without the weekends, and you care that the thing is yours when it is done, that is the owned build, and it is the gap between the other two options that we built this company to fill.
Where we fit (briefly)
Headlands builds home consoles you own: one interface to monitor, control, and automate whatever your house runs, on your hardware, any brand, no dealer lock-in. Flat build from $2,500, quoted before we start. Optional care plan at $99 a month, cancel anytime, and the console keeps running because it is yours. We are building our own showcase home on the platform in Marin right now.
Everything you run. One screen.
Nabu Casa pricing verified against their published pricing page, July 2026. Dealer-system figures are general market ranges because those platforms publish no price list; get a written quote. Our prices are published at headlandsconsole.com/start. This article is educational.