About This Site

Hello, I'm Tomáš

I live in a panel flat in Prague's Žižkov district — the kind of place that was never designed with smart home technology in mind. No smart wiring, radiators that were installed in 1987, and walls that are not exactly friendly to drilling. If smart home automation can work here, it can work almost anywhere in the Czech Republic.

I started this site in 2021 after spending too much money on devices that looked great in YouTube reviews but turned out to be useless in practice. The Zigbee hub that dropped connections every few days. The smart lock that was incompatible with Czech door standards. The thermostat that worked perfectly until the heating company's system changed and it stopped communicating.

What This Site Is About

Syskavatum covers smart home automation from a Czech perspective. That means paying attention to things that international reviews often skip: whether a device works with Czech electrical standards, whether the app has a Czech or at least German language option, whether the manufacturer has any support presence in Central Europe, and whether the product is actually available from local retailers or requires importing.

The guides here are based on devices I have actually used, usually for several months before writing about them. I try to be specific about what worked, what did not, and what I would do differently if I were starting over.

Topics Covered

The main areas I write about are smart lighting (particularly Philips Hue and the cheaper Zigbee alternatives), home security (smart locks, cameras, motion sensors), energy management (thermostats, smart plugs, monitoring), and the underlying platforms like Home Assistant that tie everything together.

I am not a professional electrician or IT specialist. I approach this as someone who wants a home that works better without turning it into a full-time project. If you are looking for deep technical documentation, the Home Assistant documentation and the Zigbee2MQTT project are better resources.

A Note on Objectivity

I do not accept products for review, do not run affiliate links, and do not take advertising. The site costs very little to run and I prefer to keep it that way. When I recommend something, it is because I think it is genuinely worth the money, not because someone sent me a free unit.

If you have questions or want to share your own experience with a device I have written about, the contact page is the best way to reach me. I read everything, though I cannot always respond quickly.