Reformed Reddit User

That’s the way to go. And, local integration, which does not depend on cloud account for HA to control. The only integration I have that needs a cloud account is the integration for my car - it still depends on the cloud server to expose the differenct entities for my car’s status and functions (close/open doors, start engine with climate control, etc.).

Really? I used to play Doom on a MS-DOS PC circa 1994 or '95.

Me, I don’t have “shitty vendor integration”! I deleted all apps to control/access respective vendor devices. I have HA to manage and control the variety of vendor devices in my home.

I used to have an app (and a login account to their cloud server) for my: 1) MyQ Garage Door Opener; 2) TP-Link smart plugs, switches, and bulbs; 3) Reolink AI cameras (I have 6 of them); 4) Insteon plugs and switches; 5) The Weather Channel; etc… Now, I have Home Assistant to manage those devices that I deleted my account from the respective cloud servers and deleted the respective apps from my mobile deives.

When I’m out and about, my iPhone is always connected to my home VPN gateway so I always have local control of my IoT devices at home with Home Assistant companion app on my iPhone. I have been with Home Assistant for 4 years now. I started with a Raspberry Pi 4B with 8Gig memory and HAOS in a mcroSD card. Now I’m on RPi5 with HA on SSD in a USB-3 enclosure.

Long Live Home Assistant.

My advice: buy the SSD now and download the latest HA image for Pi5 and save it to the SSD. Save a full backup of your current HA into an accessible network share or to a large enough capacity USB Drive. Shut down your current HA. Power up the Pi5 with the SSD, configure the fresh instance of HA on the PI5 (name, IP Address, etc. to match your HA instance). Restore the backup.

This is one of my favorite dashboards. It has buttons to enable/disable automations, turn on/off smart switches that control devices in the garage. It has entities that shows status of my Hybrid vehicle. In the “All Info” tab, it has all the entities of my car’s integration showing all status and active buttons to activate some functions in my car.

I have a KIA and the integration in HA is decent but it is through the KIA Connect server. Every so often, it asks to re-authenticate. This is the only integration in my HA that requires cloud account.