The Woy Woy Peninsula — Woy Woy, Umina, Ettalong, Booker Bay — sits twelve minutes south of our Erina workshop. Two customer types dominate every Woy Woy enquiry: the long-term resident in a low-lying street with a documented flood history, and the retiree (most often Umina or Ettalong) who wants ageing-in-place support without it feeling like a hospital. We build differently for each.
Flood-Aware Automation Anchored to the Brisbane Water Gauge
Streets around the Woy Woy railway precinct and the lower end of Blackwall Road have a documented inundation history during heavy-rain east-coast lows. The single most useful design choice we make on a Woy Woy flood-exposed property is to set the trigger off real-time water-level data, not a generic rain forecast.
What that looks like in practice: a Brisbane Water tidal-channel gauge feed (BOM publishes channel and tide data for the Brisbane Water inlets) pulled into Home Assistant via a scheduled API call every 15 minutes. We set the trigger at the gauge level that historically precedes inundation in your street — worked out from your street's flood history during the site assessment, not a number we invented. A $35 leak sensor at the lowest internal point of the property is the second tripwire.
When the threshold trips, three things happen: a phone alert (not a recorded voice, an actual notification you can act on), an automated sump pump activates if one is installed, and any automated gates set to a release-on-flood configuration open to prevent water-pressure damage. We document the response automation as a run-book that lives in your custom Home Assistant flood dashboard so your insurer has it on file too.
The difference is whether you find out at 2am via phone alert or 8am via wet carpet.
Retiree-Friendly: Specific Hardware, Specific Voice Scripts
Most of our Umina and Ettalong customers are 65+ and they don't want a tech project. They want the lights to work when they say so, the doors to lock when they go to bed, and a single dashboard that doesn't bury anything in three menus.
We mount a 10-inch Android tablet on a Vogel's wall mount in the kitchen running the Home Assistant Companion app in kiosk mode — three or four oversized buttons per screen, high contrast, no nested menus. A second smaller tablet on the bedside locker handles night-time scenes.
The voice layer is whichever ecosystem the customer already uses, usually Google Nest Hub or Amazon Echo Show. We script standard commands so the same phrase works the same way every time: "Hey Google, goodnight" runs the bedtime scene (lights off, doors locked, alarm armed, kitchen split off); "Hey Google, kettle" turns on the kettle plug (a Shelly 1PM Mini behind the kitchen GPO); "Hey Google, who's at the door" pops the front-door Reolink doorbell feed on the Nest Hub. We test every script with the customer on commissioning day. If a command doesn't work first time, we rewrite it before we leave. Adult children or carers can have a view-only Home Assistant login showing whether the home is operating normally without giving them control.
Umina & Ettalong Fall Detection & Ageing-In-Place
Heat-related ambulance callouts in NSW run thousands above the long-term average in heatwave seasons, and a disproportionate share of those are older Australians in coastal retirement suburbs like Umina and Ettalong. Smart-home automation isn't a medical device, but it can do specific, narrow things that genuinely help.
Three Aqara FP2 mmWave sensors (roughly $150 each) in the main living areas — kitchen, lounge, bathroom — detect actual presence and movement, not just motion. If the FP2 in the kitchen reports zero presence between 6am and 11am on a weekday when it normally sees you making breakfast, Home Assistant pings a nominated phone (yours, an adult child's, a neighbour's). False alarms are rare because the FP2 is reliable; we calibrate the routine for two days before going live.
Bathroom-fall detection uses the FP2's fallen-state detection (one of the few consumer-grade sensors that does this reliably), with a 30-second confirmation delay before alerting to avoid false fires. Heat-related safety: a temperature sensor in the master bedroom triggers the bedroom split-system to pre-cool on extreme heat days using BOM forecast data, well before the room becomes unsafe. All of this integrates via our Home Assistant automation and commissioning service.
Brisbane Water Jetty & Boat Storage Security
Many Woy Woy and Booker Bay properties have jetty access or a boat trailer in the side carport. The security exposure is the jetty itself overnight and the trailer when the family's away. We run a Reolink Duo dual-lens camera at the jetty corner (PoE if power's runnable, solar-powered if not), with AI person and boat detection so a kayak drifting past doesn't trigger an alert but someone stepping onto the jetty after 9pm does. Detail at our advanced security camera and AI detection service.
For trailered boats and jet skis, a $20 Zigbee2MQTT contact sensor inside the hitch lock reports an alert if the hitch is opened. Smart lighting on the side path activates on motion — deterrent and courtesy at once.
Indicative Woy Woy Project Brackets
$5k-$10k — Retiree-focus pack: kitchen kiosk tablet, voice integration, smart lighting on main living level, doorbell camera, basic flood-leak sensor pack. Two days on site.
$10k-$20k — Established home with flood exposure: above plus circuit-level energy monitoring with Shelly EM3, four-camera Reolink perimeter, FP2 presence sensors in living/kitchen/bathroom, gauge-feed flood automation, alarm panel integration. Three to four days.
$20k-$35k — Brisbane Water waterfront with jetty: above plus PoE camera at the jetty, motorised gate integration, integrated dashboard with flood and tide overlays, ageing-in-place automation pack. Five to six days.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far is Woy Woy from your workshop?
Twelve minutes — our Erina workshop is just over Rip Bridge from Woy Woy via Empire Bay Drive. We treat the whole peninsula (Woy Woy, Umina, Ettalong, Booker Bay) as local with same-week site visits and no travel loading.
Can you set up the system so my parents can actually use it?
Yes. We design for older users specifically: oversized wall-tablet dashboards, three or four buttons per screen, scripted voice commands tested on commissioning day, and a view-only login for adult children or carers. The whole point is that the customer isn't managing a tech system, they're pressing one button or saying one phrase.
Will the flood automation actually do anything if I'm not home?
Yes. The phone alert fires regardless of where you are. Where a sump pump is installed, the automation activates it without you needing to act. Where motorised gates are present and you've opted in, they can release on a flood threshold to prevent water-pressure damage. The alert is the headline feature though — early warning beats discovery.
What's your response time for a Woy Woy fault call?
Same-day for remote diagnosis, and we can usually be on-site within 24 hours for anything that needs hands on the system. The twelve-minute drive is what makes Woy Woy a local-tier suburb for us, same as Erina and Terrigal.