If I had it to do over, I would put 2 Ethernet drops on every wall of living space but the bathrooms. And pull strings in every drop. (Conduit to hard ones) You will want a “computer room” for the network stuff, but also NAS, DVR, smart home hub, and more as the needs grow. Dedicated circuit an a place to mound a business class rack mount UPS. (2200 or better) And speaking of power, you should add more than you need. And leave room for monitoring it in the box. If your panel is in the garage, a shelf for another switch may be handy. I have a switch in my house, my detached garage, and my shed…

A retrofit is the cheap way to do it. A smart blind is not cheap…

And me. I am actively looking, but the price is nuts. Especially if you have blinds wider than Ikea supports.

Matter, Zigbee and Zwave are all local control. And on Home Assistant, you can have a dongle for all three. That will open your options quite a bit.

You do know this is selfhosted, right? People tell us that what we do is “not a good idea” all the time.

Depends on your tolerance for tinkering. If you love to tinker, Homesassistant is by far the most versatile. And can be totally local. On the other hand, if you do not want to tinker, Apple Homekit can also be (Mostly) local, and is much easier to set up. Google is not something I would trust. They have a history of shady behavior. Amazon less so, but when the internet is down, so is your house!

This… It is ease vs control. If you have needs inside the box Proxmox has planned for, it is very easy. But if you want to step outside that box, you are in for a world of surprise. I install Proxmox for clients that do not have solid Linux chops. I run KVM/libvirt on my own stuff. And if you need a web front end, oVirt exists…

I wouldn’t recommend it to my friends, maybe techie friends, but it is so hard to configure.

I hear ya, but some of the new stuff is worse! It will get better, but then there is the next hurdle; stability. Zoneminder can run for months with no baby sitting… Other stuff, not so much. But I keep watching, and hoping!

I am running Zoneminder. I have played with Frigate and it is not really production ready. And Zoneminder, while not fancy, works every time and has some of the best still pictures of anything out there. I will keep looking at the next new thing, but I am not shutting off Zoneminder until something is solidly batter.

Thanks. I want a fallback for problematic mail servers (Microsoft) only, and do not want to pay the tool to the people causing the problem. :)

I think the problem with Clear OS is that it has a very narrow market. People comfortable with Linux and containers have their own preferred method. And band new users don’t know it exists.

As for your OPNsense issue, I have never seen anything like that before and can not understand it. Hardware conflict perhaps? You can also try OpenWRT or there is a free Sophos firewall. Also Firewalla, but it is a bit old…

I was looking at their policies, and I am worried about the “Forbidden Services” where they forbid “Forward-only service for massive numbers of domains on one account.” I have 5 domains… Any idea what “massive numbers” means?

Also, can you send to an sms gateway a single email?

With these tools and others, that game is just about over. So many consumers are just done with all the BS, and I think a larger shift is coming.

I know. That is why I said there was a lot of good stuff there.

Zoho has been solid for me as well.

There is a lot of good stuff on noted.lol

Another vote for this. Has the most open platform, so future stuff is most likely to work with it. Also allows for full local control, (If your smart devices allow this) so you don’t have to worry about a rug pull later.

I guess that depends on your definition of “hacked.” If someone sneaks in and takes your personal information and sells it to nefarious people, it is a hack. But if there is a “click to agree” it is business as usual.

What about mounting to the back of the stair on the side? Yes there is some risk of kicking, but minimal if it is at the edge. And for lights, an led strip under the tread pointing down.

You want to look for a “dry contact relay” that works with what you have. I got one for Zigbee because I have home assistant with zigbee. This will work in your existing system or in an app or whatever.