You can automate much of your home and devices with a Raspberry Pi and open-source Home Assistant

This article is a worthy reminder that are already many things in your home which you can automate from garage door openers, to your home router, to a solar system, to lights, to speakers, and so much more.

Home Assistant has hundreds of ready to use integrations that just hook up with these devices, either directly or via their cloud services. This can provide a nice dashboard of what is on or off, what has warnings, to keep an eye on your Ring video doorbell or Reolink CCTV system, etc.

I've even found a way to use this to show some statuses on my Stream Deck and have a quick button to reboot my router.

It gets even more powerful when you set some basic automation rules like for sunsets or sunrises, when it starts to rain, when a battery level drops too low. I have various of these set up to announce over the home speakers.

All it costs you is to use a spare Raspberry Pi or to buy one.