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What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn't seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I "can" do, is this something that I "should" do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
HA is pretty nice, but has a pretty big learning curve.
As for avoiding turning your internet into a IoT botnet, you need network gear that can segregate clients and prevent internet access, and to pick devices that have a local-only API which is not something everything has.
The real question - and this is coming from someone who spent way more time than I'd like to admit with HA automating things - is what you're expecting. I absolutely wouldn't bother doing a setup again because once the shiny wore off, all I use this for is setting a temperature and turning lights on and off: two things the hardware vendor apps does just fine.
It's great, unless for some reason it doesn't work, and that's kinda an unfortunate state of things for what is still pretty early software. Matter should help simplify things since it'll be less 100 vendors, 100 APIs you have to support which is kinda the state of being right now.
Also don't buy anything from Belkin, screw those guys.