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I used both Firefox, but after foxfire had some shit with selling info I went back to using brave. Brave has the best youtube ad blocker ever.

And yes, I am aware that brave has its own info stealing shit.

Edit: I remember the 20th century. Yes I am also aware that ads now are worse than back then. Back then you had an ad or two per show and it was good for them.

I need to state that I grew up in Dubai. TV in Dubai had a strange way of putting ads in stuff if you were a European or north American who came down there. On most TV shows you had spots that were made very specifically to insert ad breaks without creating any jarring break in the show. Mini cliffhangers, mildly awkward moments, or even in some cartoons they would have a 'we'll be right back after these messages' announcement.

The TV operators in the UAE either ignored them, weren't aware of them, or just didn't care. They would put ads right in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes even when characters were speaking and the ad break would start, cutting them off midsentence.

The absolute worst one for me was actually in 2001. They aired Digimon in Dubai and during a particularly riveting transformation sequence with a whole song and stuff they cut off the thing in the middle for a dumb ad. The better time would be just BEFORE the sequence started.

Your point is?

Maybe, if it were up to me the entire control system would be centered in my electrical panel. But doing that after the fact is quite difficult.

Because then the lights wouldn't change brightness or color temperature with the angle of the sun, my motion sensors wouldn't work, and the light wouldn't turn on together with my morning alarm.

I find it funny how people who are not working with any kind of electronics are the ones who have smart homes, smart bulbs, smart keys, smart tv's. People who work in it have nothing connected to the internet, except their own server with a hammer next to it.

Oh I can control my stuff remotely. After connecting to my VPN that is.

I use it to slowly turn the lights on 20 minutes before my alarm goes off. It's great fun

I've got a Sever running Homeassistant with the ESPHome Addon. The Lights got a custom PCB in them using a ESP32 and a 4 channel warm/cold white led strip driver. But you can also build them using of-the-shelf parts. They are mains powered without a switch, instead i wired the switches to a sensor input. This allows me to control the light either via the switch, or Homeassistant. They even got some buttons directly on them to force them on/off if my server is down. I also got a radar in there for presence detection. Basically the same as an infrared motion sensor, but it doesn't turn the light off while im on the toilet. Thanks to using Homeassistant, I can change the color temperature and brightness of the lights depending on the time of day. It's really nice to have some dim and warm lights in the evening before going to bed.

But ESPHome isn't limited to some custom build stuff. Anything that uses an ESP32* chip can be flashed to run ESPHome instead of whatever it came with. I got some sonoff relays that control my shutters and an Emporia Vue 2 to measure my power usage. Depending on the device you might be able to flash it either via Wifi or you have to disassemble it to get to the programming pins. The nice thing about the ESP32 is that a vendor cannot lock the firmware. You can always flash something custom.

ESPHome isn't limited to Homeassistant however. You can also have each device run a web-server to control it, or connect it to MQTT.

Also i should mention some alternatives:

• Tasmota: similar to ESPHome, but while ESPHome as the configuration compiled into the firmware Tasmota can be reconfigured on the fly. Not like the update process of ESPHome is slow however.
• WLED: if you only want to control some addressable RGB led strips. It does that one job way better than ESPHome.

Wow, just like my cheap LED bulbs. I even implemented some smart switches. When you press on the one side they turn of and when you press the other side they turn off. It's like magic. I can even do it hands-free with my feet!