same here

Kill it with fire

Yay for DBML! I’m so excited to stop using dbdiagram haha

I have a cheap homekit thermostat that I use with home assistant. Being able to turn it off for movies or during peak energy hours is nice. What was most helpful, however, was putting temperature and humidity sensors in every room, so that I could move around heat generating stuff to balance the temps throughout my apartment. I moved my server and gaming pc tower out of my home office. The temperature spread went from 8 deg F to 2 deg F.

it looks like you already have a node 804 case and the ability to build a computer, so I would avoid it unless you are looking for used enterprise gear and are okay with the tradeoffs that come with it.

My experience with UGreen

years ago, I got a USB switching device from them to switch keyboard and mouse between two computers. That device was not built to USB spec and fried the PCB on my fancy mechanical keyboard.

last year, I bought their fancy 300W desktop USB-C charger to make a laptop charging station at home. Within 8 months, the device gave off an awful smell and 2 of the ports died. UGreen would not replace the charger. These are apparently a common problem with them:

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1577642-ugreen-nexode-300w-not-working-at-140w-and-refusing-replacement-under-warranty/#comment-16476501

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1581672-ugreen-defective-ugreen-nexode-power-bank-25000mah-200w-will-not-warranty/#comment-16511183

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1577968-ugreen-300w-port-c3-dead/#comment-16479321

My experience with Synology

Years ago, I had a Synology NAS, and used their recommended proprietary software RAID. The power supply eventually died and took the motherboard with it. Replacement parts were not available, and there was no warranty coverage. This was before I knew about good backup practices, so my options were to buy another overpriced, non-repairable Synology NAS appliance, or forfeit my data. I considered the data a loss, built a TrueNAS machine, and never looked back.

Your experience with a proprietary NAS appliance may not be exactly the same, and they may be better these days, but having proprietary software inherently means that you cannot be sure that the software choices they make are best practice and for your benefit, or if they are designed to lock you in or increase profits in some other way.

As others have said, OpenMediaVault is a decent software alternative to TrueNAS.

No matter what you decide to go with, make sure you are following proper 3-2-1 backup protocols for any data you care about. restic to backblaze b2 seems to be the best offsite backup system currently.