Hardware Behind the Home
What I bought, what I reused and the ordinary hardware that still runs a surprisingly large part of the house.
All I wanted was…
to reuse the hardware I already had.
Then it escalated quickly.
What I bought, what I reused, and why
This is not a list of things to buy. It is the hardware already doing useful work here: some bought cheaply, some bought second-hand, and some kept because perfectly good hardware does not become bad hardware just because a newer model exists.
These are what I paid at the time, not current buying recommendations.
The £103 box that runs the house
The interesting part is not the spec sheet. It is how much work this £102.99 box now does.
| Hardware | Key spec | What I paid | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| GMKtec G10 barebones mini-PC | Ryzen 5 3500U, 4 cores / 8 threads | £102.99 | Runs the Proxmox host for Home Assistant, AdGuard Home, energy and climate services, speed testing, backup-WAN support and the other small services that make the house work. |
| Samsung PM991 NVMe | 256 GB | £24.89 | The second-hand storage in that host. |
| RAM | Reused from existing hardware | — | Still doing the job, so there was no reason to buy more. |
The mini-PC was bought without RAM or storage. Reusing the memory and adding a second-hand SSD turned a small barebones machine into the always-on host for the whole setup. It has two network interfaces; one carries the normal house network and the other is available for the work around backup connectivity.
Read more about why I run the home on a small Proxmox box.
The old NAS with a useful job
The WD My Cloud 3 TB NAS is old, but it still has a perfectly useful job to do. It is the secondary backup destination for the host and the services running on it.
I did not replace it just because it was no longer fashionable. A storage device that is working, monitored and used for a clear job is still useful. That does not mean every restore path has been proved; backups need testing as well as storage.
Read more about the backup and recovery design.
Router first, then better software
The main router is a TP-Link Archer AX23 v1. The hardware was still perfectly good. Changing the software made it useful again.
OpenWrt lets that one router handle the ordinary jobs that matter here: the gateway, Wi-Fi, DHCP, local DNS hand-off and the rules around a backup connection. The point was not to build a network lab. It was to get more useful life from a router that was already capable enough.
Read more about OpenWrt and local DNS.
Backup internet from things I already had
I already had a Vodafone SIM and a ZTE mobile-broadband device, so rather than buy another service I tried to turn them into backup internet for the house. A small OpenWrt VM sits between that mobile connection and the main router; an inexpensive USB Ethernet adapter completes the path.
The backup-WAN machine is running and the router is configured to prefer fibre and fall back to mobile IPv4. A fresh end-to-end failover rehearsal is still on the list, so I treat it as useful backup rather than a promise that every failure scenario has been covered.
Read more about backup WAN and resilience.
Small sensors, useful rooms
Measuring the temperature in a bedroom does not require a £40 designer sensor.
| Hardware | What I paid | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 3 × TH03 Zigbee temperature-and-humidity sensors | £12.60 total / about £4.20 each | Temperature and humidity readings for Living, Bedroom 1, Bedroom 2 and Office views. |
| SONOFF SNZB-02P | £9.70 | Another deployed temperature-and-humidity sensor. |
| MOES Zigbee gateway | £29.99 | The deployed Zigbee bridge. |
The precise sensor-to-room map is not important to this page. The useful part is that inexpensive sensors make the room data in Climate History and Home Assistant practical.
Lighting: keep the good switches
The lighting project did not start with a plan to replace everything. It started with the sensible rule that a working switch should stay useful.
| Hardware | What I paid | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| SONOFF Zigbee dimmer switch | £22.68 | Deployed as part of the lighting setup. |
V-PRO Smart Master Wi-Fi dimmers (VLJYSM101VMB and VLJYSM102VMB) |
£91.45 combined | The Kitchen and Living Room ceiling lights. |
| Tuya pendant light | Already in place | The Kitchen pendant, exposed in Home Assistant with brightness control. |
Three existing dimmers started out on the SUPLA/vendor-cloud route, then moved to the home's own local control path. The lights still do the same job, but normal control no longer needs the original vendor account or subscription in the middle. Local when it makes sense, cloud when it adds value, and a subscription only when it earns its keep.
Read more about keeping the switches people already use.
Under £12 of electronics, rather more work than planned
Two Smiths VE2500 fan convectors were the reason for a small controller project that grew into a careful integration exercise.
| Hardware | What I paid | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ESP32-WROOM-32E development board | £8.01 | The controller in the persistent Smiths control path. |
| CC1101 module | £2.07 | The radio module used with that controller. |
| Dupont leads | £1.53 | The wiring that made the early tests possible. |
For under £12 in basic electronics I had enough hardware to start understanding and testing the Smiths controls. The RF receiver used in the earlier investigation was an RTL2832U device with an R820T tuner; no reliable purchase price was retained for it.
The controller, Home Assistant heater controls and Nest-to-Smiths automation are all part of the live heating setup. Both fan convectors can be controlled from Home Assistant through the ESP32/CC1101 path. Earlier physical ON/OFF testing was how I got to that deployment. The radio implementation stays out of the public write-up.
Read the Smiths integration journey and the live Nest-to-Smiths integration.
Older kit that still does what I need
The Sonos setup is a Sonos Beam with two Play:1 speakers. It is around six to seven years old and still does exactly what I need, so there is no reason to replace it. It remains part of the wider home and media setup; this page does not invent extra automations or voice features around it.
The older Echo Show is still useful as an Alexa voice interface. I did not need a new display to talk to the house. Home Assistant remains the integration layer; Alexa is simply another way to interact with it. I do not have its exact generation or purchase date, so I will not guess.
The existing Ring doorbell, floodlight and Chime also stay because they still do useful jobs. Ring remains a vendor-cloud service; there is no need to pretend otherwise. I have not kept the generation or age of each device, so I leave that out.
The Nest thermostat was already doing the heating job well. The sensible option was to integrate it rather than replace a working thermostat just to make the smart-home stack look tidier. It remains in Home Assistant as the downstairs heating control. I have not kept its exact generation or age.
The rule
Spend money where it makes a difference. Reuse what already works. Buy inexpensive hardware when inexpensive hardware is enough.
Good hardware does not become bad hardware just because a newer model exists.