There is still the topic of power usage, data usage, time spent doing maintenance, and accounting for failing hardware and hardware upgrades.

The fuck? You know self-hosting is classed as a hobby, right?

Never, EVER get into a hobby expecting some sort of monetary return. The only real “return” of any hobby is all the aspects of enjoying said hobby.

If you’re not enjoying it, why are you even doing it?

I found it a real struggle with the TV to find a non smart one, especially as the smart ones are cheaper.

They’re cheaper because the cost is subsidized by the extensive data collection.

Still gotta configure ports for the reverse proxy to access.

I don’t run a service unless it has reasonably good documentation. I’ll go through it first and make sure I understand how it’s supposed to run, what port(s) are used, and if I have an actual, practical use case for it.

You’re absolutely correct in that sometimes the documentation glosses over or completely omits important details. One such service is Radicale. The documentation for running a Docker container is severely lacking.

I’m not confusing anything.

This is what OP was asking:

Are there any TVs and soundbars out there that can integrate with Home Assistant, and don’t need a cloud connection at all?

I answered accordingly. There really isn’t a reason for a soundbar or surround sound system to be connected to any sort of network. Streaming music is the only reason I can think of, but that can be handled by bluetooth (which many sound systems have), or even an AUX IN with a dock or bluetooth adapter.

How’d you manage to snag one of those displays? LG won’t give me an actual price.

Surround sound receiver that works via optical or HDMI. That’s what I would recommend over a soundbar that will ultimately end up unusable after a few years. No need to overcomplicate it with HA.

Or… An older Bose soundbar. Bose recently open-sourced some of their older stuff that is no longer supported.

As someone who grew up with older surround sound equipment in the house, I’m just having a hard time imagining a scenario where any network connection at all would need to be involved.

Short answer: Don’t.

Long answer: Your SO can use a personal laptop if they absolutely must have access to it. For slow work days, I bring a personal laptop and pair it with my personal phone hotspot to get it online. Work doesn’t see it, nor do they care so long as I don’t circumvent any IT security policies.

TV with analog audio out and a “dumb” sound system with analog in.

Seriously, my ISP (XMission - local and fucking awesome) charges $27/mo minimum for a VPS

Oh, damn.

Edit: Seems the new dev and the gplay maintainer have resolved their differences and are working together.

The maintainer for the Play Store version recently started maintaining a non-Play Store version as well.

Same here. I still have a Monica instance running, but I don’t think I’ve touched it in at least a year…

Oh that will be handy.

I’ve tried rolling Monica multiple times, but I absolutely hate manually logging things, especially when the mobile implementation is ehhh at best.

Used office PCs are some of the best value home servers you’ll come across. The Lenovo ThinkCentre, HP Elitedesk, and Dell Optiplex are fantastic machines with oodles of official documentation available straight from the OEM, and many come with built-in OOB management in the form of Intel AMT.

I have variants of all three. Love them.

Fair points. My entire homelab setup of five PCs pulls a total of 90-120W at any given time.

I’m gonna go check that 6th gen now that I’m home…

Intriguing, but not within the scope of this post. I’m not asking for KVM solutions.

I’m already very familiar with the AMT portion of vPro, all three of my Proxmox nodes have it enabled and locked down. Really handy to get in there when needed. The KVM route is rather expensive as I would need one that supports at least 5 systems.

vPro’s out-of-band management is the entire reason I use it, because my little lab is tucked in a utility room all the way in the basement, where I would have to cross the treacherous lands of scattered children’s toys.

I’ve already built the “new” NAS. Just trying to figure out the CPU situation before I take the plunge and swap the data drives over.

As for documentation, it really depends on the vendor, but the general process is the same overall. Here’s a PDF guide from MeshCentral that goes into more detail.

I use the CPU lists on Wikichip (Kaby Lake linked) to figure out what CPUs are compatible with vPro. Something to keep in mind is both the CPU and motherboard require vPro support for it to work properly.