I’m planning to build several WiFi connected devices for home automation: an AC remote control and air quality sensors. These devices would send data and be controlled through a local server. I’m considering two approaches: running custom software on a server PC (hardware to be determined) or integrating with Home Assistant’s protocols and purchasing their hardware. Would using Home Assistant be excessive for this use case?


That’s a good point. This can help me with things like adding a DNS server (I’m assuming pi-hole can be run standalone on a mini PC)
I bought a used mini PC and then set up Proxmox. This little thing is a lot more capable than the Raspberry I used before and it runs my complete home lab, excluding my NAS.
If you’re going to run Home Assistant OS you’d be able to run anything that can run in docker. Some things are available to install directly inside the Home Assistant apps system, otherwise you can install portainer and run any docker capable software.