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?
I use a Raspberry Pi as a Home Assistant server. Some lights are controlled, but mostly it monitors temp, humidity, solar panel output, electrical load and our UPS. Not wishing to have a panic should the pi fail, I retained traditional thermostats to ensure a basic level of heat energy goes into the underfloor wet heating. If the weather forecast predicts lower temps, the Pi can add extra time to the day's heating cycle. The Sonoff and Solis integrations work well and are the only items requiring internet access. Otherwise, everything else is local. I use a ZigBee hub to keep most of the smart devices off of our Wi-Fi. I have a ZigBee/IR blaster on order to see if we can dump surplus solar power into an air-conditioner.