This session will describe how the speaker went about building a personal home automation setup that tried to avoid the privacy and security concerns usually seen in these setups. A whirlwind tour will be provided covering building your own IoT hardware, setting up internal systems to remove reliance on a working internet connection and designing to cope with less technical home occupants. Unexpected bonuses will also be discussed, as well as various compromises that have been made in the speaker's setup that could be improved. This talk will touch upon a number of low level details, but due to time constraints not attempt to go into complete depth on each of them. Pointers will be provided for those who wish to read up on the full details in order to implement their own setup.