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?
Both! Connecting Iot devices to your LAN is a security risk, since they sometimes carry malware. Many DDOS these days are performed by smart bulbs or the like. May even sniff in your network. Of course you can firewall them, but why bother with wifi at all then? Zigbee is pretty reliable and works even if your router goes down (you probably can’t access Home Assistant Web interface anymore, but zigbee light switches etc will still trigger zigbee bulbs, zigbee thermeters will still report their sensor values etc).
I’m a Zigbee user so I use that in the examples but I’m sure the other options are fine as well.