[frisco]

For the prosumer smart home, I highly recommend going with the low end industrial automation (ie https://automationdirect.com, https://findernet.com, etc) rather than “IoT” brands. Way more powerful, everything is interoperable, and the business model is much simpler. No phoning home.

[connicpu]

If I wanted something that was more akin to putting legos together that's definitely the way, but I found it quite enjoyable to go down to the low level of electrical design, and any application that can be accomplished by flipping a switch can be made wifi-compatible with an ESP32 module and a relay or TRIAC circuit (TRIACs are nice because they don't have a lifetime rated in switching cycles). I don't have to worry about my microcontroller phoning home if I wrote the firmware it's flashed with!