Just create a black hole network at your house and connect all ‘smart’ appliances to that. Block all traffic at the router level. This prevents them trying to connect to open mesh networks and also provides the benefit of cataloging all the traffic

I’m not sure myself, there seems to be better software out there for each individual part of what nextcloud does, but not the whole thing. I’ve been reading up on open cloud, which is a fork of a rewrite of owncloud, which is what nextcloud is forked from. https://opencloud.eu/en/opencloud-community

I haven’t tried it out yet though.

I wouldn’t say categorically that it sucks.

1. It is inefficient and requires far too many server resources for what it does. Won’t really run on less than 2gb/RAM minimum, with 1-2 users.

2. Add ONS seem to be all over the place with lots of incompatibilities, some default add ons that just plain don’t work.

3. In my short testing it seems to be a bit unstable.

In my opinion, it suffers from many of the same problems as other projects that started out and we’re developed largely by hobbyists like zoneminder, and even home assistant to some extent. Sprawling growth, no strict architecture, little concern for refactoring.

It can go either way, some people like the method, others hâte it because it’s not gamified. Pro tip, get pimsleur courses from your library if you want to try them for a real trial rather than what they give you