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You don't NEED home assistant no, but likely if you have many different smart products form many different vedors and want to be able to see what is set to what and set up automations etc it would be nicer than sniffing packets to figure out what you need to say

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Agreed. I use Home Assistant to standardize across the various devices I have. I have a collection of misc. Hue bulbs, Tasmota-compatible plugs and other random devices.

HA acts as a HomeKit bridge, meaning that as long as I get a thing working with HA, I can control it from my Apple ecosystem.

Do I need it? No. But it's extremely helpful and still meets my goals around data ownership and no dependency on an Internet connection to turn off the lights before bed.

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