I'm not familiar with UPB, are those all connected to a central hardwired controller? I'm curious what that would look in home assistant. It sounds like the home assistant compatibility with UPB was fairly recent though so maybe there will be some updates to that project could help with control if it's not a hardware limitation?
I think we definitely need some Smart Home, IOTT, home automation threads in here, there is a lot of the hackerspace spirit in those projects!
For power I am going to try to go with just USB connections where the locations permit but my reading suggests that a 9v battery would also be sufficient. I might go with LiFePO4 cells if a longer run time is required. I'm mainly thinking of temperature monitoring right now but I definitely will want to check out other sensors after I get the hang of these. It looks like there a lot of fun options on the ESPhome website and I could definitely see using some other motion detection sensors to control lighting or other automations.
