I have a really older Nuc with an i5. Think I paid somewhere around $100 on EBay almost 5 years ago so I think you can guy by with less.

I had Home Assistant previously on my Unraid server and I found it a little bit more cumbersome. I now feel having it installed bare metal on an Intel NUC made it more resilient, which you want for things like essential home operations.

I have automations that turn outside lights on and off based on sunrise and sunset.

I am really excited for this. I have tried many of the options like ESP32-S3 Box, Raspberry Pi Satellites, and the Atom Lite and they all have fallen sort of my Echo Dots. I love local control but know I can’t drop Alexa completely until the hardware is up to snuff for the rest of the family.

How hard was it to switch your network over? And what’s your coordinator?