ATC_MiThermometer VS Home Assistant

I use ESPHome to enhance existing appliances (add smart functionality to an existing aircon for example) so generally the ESP board ends up within the appliance itself with nothing visible on the outside.

For things that need to be stand-alone I'd first check if there's an existing off-the-shelf option first which generally would be more cost-effective to buy and look better than anything I could make myself.

For temp sensors specifically I generally just go with whatever off-the-shelf stuff is supported by this firmware: https://github.com/pvvx/ATC_MiThermometer

Home Assistant, with a bunch of Xiaomi BLE LYWSD03MMC sensors, running custom firmware: https://github.com/pvvx/ATC_MiThermometer

I have a handful of Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC thermometers running pvxx's firmware, and a SCD4x CO2 Sensor.

Personally, I flashed them with this firmware so I could customize the broadcast interval and use them with Home Assistant without needing a proprietary hub.

If BLE is an option for you, consider a Xiaomi Mijia Hygrometer flashed (wirelessly via Chrome) with this firmware: https://github.com/pvvx/ATC_MiThermometer

Xaomi Mija Hygrometers, wirelessly flashed with this firmware, and Home Assistant to expose them in HomeKit. Local LCD display, roughly 2yr battery life, and available from $3-5.

I've been using a Raspberry Pi as a home server, and it's been holding up amazingly well, given everything I've thrown at it:

- The excellent Home Assistant, for unifying across Homekit and Google Home and tracking historical temperatures and a couple of automations. The RPi has Bluetooth built in, so I can capture the data from a few Bluetooth thermometer/hygrometers running custom firmware (https://github.com/pvvx/ATC_MiThermometer) without a 802.15.4 bridge or similar.

- An AirPlay to Google Cast bridge, mainly for listening to Overcast or the occasional YouTube video on Google speakers

- A SMB server, for file storage and potential Time Machine backups (but I don't currently have enough storage, and locally attached SSDs are just hard to beat in terms of performance)

- A DLNA server, for watching photos and videos on my TV

- Tailscale, for the occasional use of my home connection as a VPN when traveling (really glad to be having symmetric fiber for this!)

- Caddy, as a frontend for everything web facing, to benefit from its excellent Let's Encrypt integration for automatic certificate requests and renewals

Most of this is running in Docker containers and configured via Ansible, so that if the micrSD card burns out, I can just flash a new one with an empty image and recover from there.

Apparently the same issue has been reported with Philips TV [1] and Fritz!Box [2] as well.

[1] https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/73643#issuecom...

[2] https://forum.openwrt.org/t/minidlna-creates-new-media-serve...

The plug would transmit power readings to my Home Assistant setup.

Home Assistant can cast dashboard/media/etc to your display and has shopping lists. https://www.home-assistant.io/

If you provided MQTT support like plenty of IoT companies do, then any open source home automation tool can integrate! Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/) have a grading system, so a local-first implementation would give you their highest score since they also really care about privacy. https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...

It's hard not to raise a little smile at Google's automation scripts, which bare a not-entirely-passing resemblance to those of a certain other, more comprehensive home automation system...

You might consider looking into "Home Assistant".