This is pretty underwhelming without Zigbee or any "exotic" smart-home-specific hardware which would've been the main selling point of a HA-specific device. As

This is pretty underwhelming without Zigbee or any "exotic" smart-home-specific hardware which would've been the main selling point of a HA-specific device. As it stands, this seems no better (nor cheaper!) than selling Raspberry Pis with preloaded SD cards (or any Wi-Fi/Bluetooth-enabled general purpose computer for that matter), and is actually worse because RPis have much better ecosystem support (outside of Hass) and are easier to source if a replacement is needed. I'm looking forwards to a turnkey Home Assistant hub that magically works with most consumer-grade smart home protocols (Zigbee, and upcoming Thread/Matter), but this is not it. "Buy this extra dongle to actually control your Hue/Ikea lights" is not going to compete with proprietary hubs that manage to do everything all-in-one and that most people already have in their house. Big fan of Home Assistant in general, but this is a disappointment for me.