I’m planning to build several WiFi connected devices for home automation: an AC remote control and air quality sensors. These devices would send data and be controlled through a local server. I’m considering two approaches: running custom software on a server PC (hardware to be determined) or integrating with Home Assistant’s protocols and purchasing their hardware. Would using Home Assistant be excessive for this use case?


I choose to pay for remote access, but it’s for convenience and to support the developers. You are free to configure it yourself in a couple ways (and there is decent documentation) or do without remote access
I don’t know how you set up remote access for OpenHab, but from a quick glance at the web site it looks similar