I've tried using HA a couple years ago and gave up. It was too complicated to run it in a Pi4 - I'm an experienced software engineer, familiar with containers and Linux.

I was trying to get some of the IoT I have at home like pool equipment, lights, HVAC, blinds, etc. Some of the setup were an uphill battle looking for more information in forums and trying to figure out what was broken.

Recently I decided over the weekend to use Claude and write a small app that controls my pool equipment and then deployed it using Cloudflare Zero Trust (kind of a reverse VPN). What a joy! Not only I had lots of fun reverse engineering my pool equipment API (I didn't want to depend on existing libraries - which I know exist) but I managed to create a fun and custom UI with React that my kids and wife love using. For example, whenever the pool heater is on, it adds an animated flame to the UI and change the background to a red-ish color. Plus it has a bar chart that shows the pool temp progression (takes hours to heat it up) with an animated volcano colors. The theme of the app is beach/pool vibe.

I don't think anyone here would be that excited if we were using the lower-denominator that HA turns out to be. I know it's a very cool automation tool, but just not very exciting and pretty obscure to configure every equipment I have at home.

I've been thinking about writing a blog post with the details of my fun project, let me know if anyone is interested in this. So far I've done the blinds and pool equipment. Next will be HVAC and lights. Took me 1-2 weeks total for each using Claude in my spare time.