Best place to start would be to look at the thermostat hardware you've currently got, and start searching online if anyone has integrated it into Home Assistant.
I've lived at a few houses now with Home Assistant. In all of them I was able to integrate my HVAC and automate it, but some brands and hardware are definitely easier than others.
I think the most extreme of them required a custom esphome device connected to its PCB to talk to Home Assistant, and another required me to write my own custom component.
Hardware and brands make a huge difference, but sometimes you're stuck with what you've got.
So what's going on here? Is this related to the new US administration? Or Microsoft and Meta exchanging money to silence the competition? Genuinely confused, but it seems fairly important whatever the motivations.
I think it positions the US to lower its corporate tax rate below 15%, enticing tech companies to move their official HQs back to the US from Ireland. Of course this would likely result in a race to the bottom on corporate tax rates globally, which the agreement was meant to protect against so companies had to pay their fair share of wealth back to society.
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!
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.
For couch gaming, the discontinued Steam Link hardware is still king IMHO. I tried switching to the Android app on my smart TV and have had nothing but trouble with connection quality (even over a gigabit wired connection) and maintaining 4 controllers connected to the TV at once. It seems extremely sensitive to host hardware and software issues, which often change underneath you with TV updates. The Android hardware and software it runs on is just too variable to ensure a consistent reliable experience, and Bluetooth controller support is often hit or miss.
The Steam Link hardware was amazing as it did exactly what it needed to do, and most importantly was tested more thoroughly than the thousands of Android devices that all have their own quirks and specs. I hope they bring it back.
Also, who's at reading distance from a USB port half the time? Sometimes they're on the front of a device, but they're just as often hidden behind something or in a hard-to-reach place. Monitors and PCs come to mind.
Completely agree, I don't know specifics of his case. But Japan's justice system really does sound horrific - if you're a defendant, there's no presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and there's a cultural expectation that you'll bow to the state and accept guilt regardless of circumstances... seems like a very antiquated system to say the least. I had no idea.
I'm no expert but just helping you kick the tires a little bit - for the audio outs, are you thinking of just running speaker wire from an amp in the server closet to the ceiling of all of the audio out locations?
For what it's worth, I've dabbled with wifi/Bluetooth speakers and while they generally work well, there always seems to be some software update or connectivity dropouts enough that I'd much prefer a wired system to eliminate over-the-air issues for a long-term robust solution.
Best place to start would be to look at the thermostat hardware you've currently got, and start searching online if anyone has integrated it into Home Assistant.
I've lived at a few houses now with Home Assistant. In all of them I was able to integrate my HVAC and automate it, but some brands and hardware are definitely easier than others.
I think the most extreme of them required a custom esphome device connected to its PCB to talk to Home Assistant, and another required me to write my own custom component.
Hardware and brands make a huge difference, but sometimes you're stuck with what you've got.