Published Oct 27, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT

Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar.

My Home Assistant setup is the backbone of my smart home. However, it's not a setup that I've built overnight. It's taken me years to settle on what I have today. From a Raspberry Pi to my current NAS-based setup, I did a lot of trial and error getting the right hardware in place and everything set up. Enough that I wished that there was a more appliance-like approach to the problem.…