I'm not sure what kind of money you want to spend? The M2 Hat is ~$14 USD and a 2242 NVME SSD can be had for ~$30-$40 USD since you don't care as much about performance.

The USB to SATA adapter is going to run ~$10 USD and the SATA SSD drives are going to start ~$20 USD are go up from there depending on size, performance, etc.

If size of storage is an issue, the SATA SSD is probably the better route. I believe the NVME would be better performance since it utilizes the bus on the Pi more fully.

I would guess that for the money, most M2 drives and SATA SSD drives are going to be similar lifespans

Which Raspberry Pi do you have? There are some very reasonably priced M2 hats out there that you can boot from on the Pi 5, including the Raspberry Pi branded one.

What I wish existed was a self-hosted version of OurGroceries.

If you want self hosted, I'd second all the Grocy comments. I don't use it because it isn't simple enough for my family, but I did like it.

I once heard a consultant refer to it as "The Fog" because it's like a cloud that you're inside of. 🤮

I'm honestly not sure. I'm doing the same kind of research myself for a new home I'm building right now and happened to stumble across this guy's youtube channel. He does a lot of great smart home stuff. I haven't actually purchased one of them myself yet.

It's a year old video, but it still is pretty relevant I think.

Local Control Video Doorbells - Reolink, UniFi, Amcrest, Hikvision, Dahua. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XCu6L0xn4Y&t=904s

If you'd rather read than watch the video, he has a nice companion blog. https://www.thesmarthomehookup.com/local-control-video-doorbells-reolink-unifi-amcrest-hikvision-dahua/

And it's really not as good at being a space heater as an actual space heater. 🤣

It works great with my self-hosted NextCloud!

My oldest kid is a senior in highschool and is starting to show some interest in Linux and this kind of stuff. I'm hopeful that I can change my tune soon and maybe have one of the kids to share a hobby with!

I've told my wife and family that if something happens to me, they need to start migrating all their stuff off my self-hosted services to cloud services because its a matter of time before something fails and nobody's around who knows or cares to fix it.

I used to have this problem. I started pulling a version number (like 27) instead of "latest" so that I could just pull minor releases when I did updates, and then I manually step up the version in the docker-config file for major versions when I'm ready for them. (I don't like to pull a major release version until there's been 1 or 2 maintenance releases since my nextcloud is fairly critical for my family)

Depending on your budget and location, a whole house backup generator can be relatively inexpensive. My family lives in a very rural area in the central US, so we have a backup whole house generator that runs on propane. I chose propane because those motors seem to have less maintenance, plus we have propane for the grill, etc, already on site.

Supposedly 220V is a little more efficient to step down than 110V? I've read a lot of articles about data mining where they run the mining rigs off of 220V in the USA instead of 110V and they gain something like 5% efficiency. They're doing it with entire shipping containers full of PCs though. On my single PC, I'm not sure I can tell the difference at all. But I'm an Electrical Engineer by trade, so it makes me feel better that I'm more power efficient and have my panel balanced. I was running the 220V for my server rack anyway, so it wasn't a lot of effort to pull one more circuit for my Desktop PC.

I've seen some things about maybe stick to a 6000 series for now until AMD gets their 7000 series drivers worked out? Do you have any experience with a 6000 series card?

I don't actually play any eSports. I should probably just try going without a Window partition. I rarely boot over to my windows 10 drive as is now. I think I almost like the idea of making the VM work more than the idea of actually using it.

I always tend to over size my power supplies. I ran my own wiring in my house, so I actually have access to 220V power there! I bought a LR-30 to C13 power cord a while back (https://www.amazon.com/NEMA-L6-30P-C13-Power-Cord/dp/B004WODG6A/) so I could run my PC on 220V. I'm not sure it actually saves me anything, but I like the idea of having my electrical panel balanced a little better.

My existing PC is old enough, it only has the SSD. I'm really looking forward to the NVMe drive after all the comments!

I am lucky enough to have wired my own house for data, so I have ethernet right at my PC Desk! (I also went a little overboard and wired for 220V power there) I've always preferred wired Keyboard/Mouse also, so hopefully those won't be an issue. I have wireless headphones from my existing PC, which I'm hoping to reuse. They already work well with my existing Linux PC.

I love the idea of upscaling graphics on an emulator! Maybe I can go play through FF6/FF3 again!

I have a Nextcloud server that I setup (before Immich was a thing. I'm also running it now, but not using it for photo backup). I have accounts for my immediate family and all of our phones are setup to use the Instant Upload feature to back up photos.

Thanks for the tip on the GPU! I live in an area where power is relatively cheap, so I'll probably go for the 3060. I really wish some of these would work better with AMD since their drivers seem to be more Linux-Friendly these days.

If I get something going, I'll share for sure!