You no longer need to spend money on expensive smart devices. If you take your data’s privacy seriously and want your smart home to operate locally, it’s high time to pick up a couple of ESP32 boards.

I'm a big fan of the ESP32, and I have a few different boards that I play around with. I have two of the "classic" ESP32 microcontrollers, an ESP32-C6 with Zigbee and Thread support, and an ESP32-S3.