I already had the translucent controller for the PC, managed to get this Series X from CeX in the UK for £535, traded in the Series S for £227.
I know it's a little steep to buy used but Cex gives you a five year warranty which I'm pretty happy with.
I'm in the UK, with a house that has various smart plugs of different brands, and they're becoming a headache very quickly to keep on top of with third party logins and other apps etc.
We have two Samsung phones but not entirely 'locked' into any particular ecosystem, other than Alexa but I understand we can move from this.
I have an Alexa speaker in every room.
I have a raspberry pi 4 gathering dust in a drawer.
I have a Dell Optiplex i5-7600 with a 256gb SSD just sitting, again gathering dust.
I have a Reolink indoor camera, with no SD card inside it to even record the dog getting up to mischief.
What I'd like to do is get some Micro SD cards for recording the living room, preferably some sort of doorbell that has a camera and a two way conversation ability and the option to view the cameras at any time. Might look for a back garden camera too.
I'd also like to have some cohesiveness with my smart plugs, I want to do some basic energy monitoring in the house and maybe show it on some sort of dashboard, very similar to homeassistant.
I have knowledge of PC's in general and I can understand to make this work it's going to take a lot of thinking, but my knowledge is scattered with smart home equipment and id ideally like to move away from any subscription services to really localize everything, but also having the ability to view my cameras as any time on my phone out and about.
Any ideas or recommendations would be much appreciated folks!
I browse Reddit and it's largely my home page of Steam Games, shooter games, recently Forza, CasualUK, and a weird niche of subreddits here and there, but the one I keep catching my eye on is this selfimprovement subreddit, and I wonder if there are any subreddits that do the same for you, but in a way that feels like a valuable use of your time.
Any suggestions for wholesome happy engaging content?