What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn’t seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I “can” do, is this something that I “should” do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
Not all of them! I really like my athom smart home gear, everything they sell runs on FOSS firmware and they even have github repos to host any device-specific modifications! As long as WLED and EspHome continue supporting the ESP8266 my devices should keep getting updates!