Just to play devil’s advocate, why do you want to automate your lighting? I’d consider myself an advanced HA user (been using it since 2019 and have coded several custom integrations and built custom hardware) and never bothered with automating my home lighting. I’m always walking past the light switch as I enter or exit a room anyway, so it’s not a big inconvenience.
The real wins I’ve gotten from HA are smarter home security (door locks/sensors/cameras etc), climate control, energy management, garden irrigation, and remote control of “dumb” devices like my garage door and motorised front gate.
Edit: thanks for the insights all! Seems having kids and older houses are common reasons for automating lighting.
True, but what you should really be afraid of these days are spam filters and hackers. As much as I’d love to selfhost my own mail server, IMHO it’s just not worth the risk of important emails getting flagged as spam (both outgoing and incoming), or losing control of accounts due to a zero day attack or other means. The latter might sound far-fetched but I just saw it happen firsthand to a friend. The modern internet is a battleground!