Okay, so years ago, I bought the original Western Digital MyCloud EX2 (model number: WDBVKW0080JCH-EESN) and have been happy with it, it does what I need it to do, which is store my music and films. I didn't need it to do more than that so hard never needed to upgrade or invest again.

However a couple years ago, Western Digital yanked support, stripped some features and left me to fend for myself. No issue it does what I need.

I also happened to have a Hive Home setup for my lights and heating. Again the first generation. They too recently yanked support and stripped features. Only they emailed and said if I want to be able to use my lights or heating, I had to upgrade. Fool me once!

So reading around on Lemmy. I read a conversation one day where someone was looking for a setup that didn't need to depend on proprietary services and Zigbee was recommended.

After much delay, given that it's now getting darker earlier, I took the plunge on some Zigbee bulbs and they've arrived.

However the beautiful fantasy I constructed in my head isn't that of reality and it turns out I need a third party management hub of sorts, basically HomeAssistant or OpenHAB.

This time I did some reading, everyone seems to prefer HA in the end and apparently there's some other cool stuff I can do with it too regarding my watch notifications.

But... There's always a but. Given that there's no support for my MyCloud and given that I'm an idiot in regards to these things, I have no idea how to get set up.

Would anyone be so kind as to help me please?