the recent LTT video where he runs down all the problems with his house feels so vindicating towards my decision to never do smart control of anything in my house.

I did try a bit of it years ago when it was just getting popular but I quickly realised how many constant little frustrations and frictions it brings. these days it's so much worse because every vendor wants to tie you into their ecosystem, so you end up having to enter into adversarial relationships with products if you want to gain local control over them.