Namecheap API works just fine with Certbot DNS challenges for me, FWIW.

I have a DS418play which is several generations behind and it runs a dozen Docker containers, including all of my media automation, just fine. I even host a Minecraft server for my nephews!

And fully supported by Synology, too! They are pretty good at embracing the community while still keeping security as a priority.

I should just start over and try again, probably did something silly that screwed things up.

Do you have personal experience with Nextcloud or Owncloud? I have tried the former and it’s been a general nightmare. I’m using Docker and have a dozen or more other containers that all work just fine, but even once I got Nextcloud installed and working it had all kinds of permission problems or just wouldn’t install things from its own built-in app store. Never did get any kind of document collaboration working.

The top of Immich’s home page says “Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!” Is that hyperbole or a realistic warning?

Nice start and solid choices so far!

Definitely recommend looking into Docker, it’ll make cross-platform conflicts and migrations near effortless. Repurposing unused hardware is great, but can also be inefficient or bulky, so a hardware upgrade might be in your future eventually. ;)

If you are interested in automating any media retrieval and/or organization, which I gather you might given you have Plex, look into the *arr ecosystem: Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, plus others for books and music and pretty much anything else you can imagine!

My setup is based on Docker and a Synology NAS as the hardware. I recently set up a Minecraft server so my nieces and nephews have somewhere to play together, but may need to move that to my PC as the NAS is not very RAM or CPU heavy.

In my experience, almost all stability problems I’ve had with Home Assistant are either due to the devices (not HA or the hardware I’m running it on, individual lights and switches, etc) or dead batteries in same.

What protocols are you using for your devices? Zigbee, Zwave, Wifi, something else?

I don’t use it, but my impression is that people who prefer MQTT either have a lot of other devices already working that way, or use additional programs like Node Red to handle some of what HA can also do which require MQTT.

The first part is very understandable, as that’s pretty much why all of us likely end up with a favorite protocol! I didn’t really plan to be mostly using Zigbee and Hue devices, but now that it’s the case I am going to keep going in that direction even more.

If you already have a Hue hub, you can integrate with that from HA without new hardware or a direct connection. That is what I do for some of my Hue bulbs, but I do also have a Zigbee radio plugged into my Home Assistant Blue hardware as I have non-Hue Zigbee devices, too.

My experience is that Hue devices are the most reliable of everything I have in terms of both response time and connection. Zigbee devices vary a lot in quality, but my biggest issue are some switches that occasionally (but repeatedly) have to be re-paired, but generally as long as HA recognizes the device the reaction time and reliability of Zigbee is pretty solid.