Smart home stuff can be incredibly fun and handy, but you have to go into it with a tinkering and very IT-centric mindset. If you’ve already got a homelab set up then running a home assistant VM/container is pretty dead simple. Beyond that, keep as local an ecosystem as you can to reduce friction and improve security. Set up proper vlans, etc. and most importantly, only make smart what you can either live without or effortlessly control WITHOUT the “smart features”. My lights automatically turn on when I get home from work if it’s dark- but if my server is down, I can still just hit a light switch. My camera doorbell still rings as long as the power isn’t out, etc. Yeah it’s work, to set up right, but well worth it if you enjoy tinkering.
Smart home stuff can be incredibly fun and handy, but you have to go into it with a tinkering and very IT-centric mindset. If you’ve already got a homelab set up then running a home assistant VM/container is pretty dead simple. Beyond that, keep as local an ecosystem as you can to reduce friction and improve security. Set up proper vlans, etc. and most importantly, only make smart what you can either live without or effortlessly control WITHOUT the “smart features”. My lights automatically turn on when I get home from work if it’s dark- but if my server is down, I can still just hit a light switch. My camera doorbell still rings as long as the power isn’t out, etc. Yeah it’s work, to set up right, but well worth it if you enjoy tinkering.