Whenever I read any post about home automation, it might as well be talking about a completely different world from mine. I've automated a lot of my house using

Whenever I read any post about home automation, it might as well be talking about a completely different world from mine. I've automated a lot of my house using pretty much just FOSS solutions. The Sonoff series of switches/devices is fantastic and ESP8266-based, so you can flash it with any firmware you want[1]. I wrote a small ad-hoc server to orchestrate things like "when there's motion in that room and it's dark, turn on that lamp", but you can just use Home Assistant. I have a WiFi network that has no internet access where all these go, with access to a local server running an autoupdater[2] so I can just put the new firmware in a specific directory and all my devices autoupdate. All of my devices are FOSS so I know they aren't talking to a mothership, and even if they tried to, they can't get on the internet. I do have an Alexa, which I should get rid of, since it's pretty much barely only useful for playing music. This way is much more secure, companies can't spy on your house, and you're supporting user freedom. [1]: https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna [2]: https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server