Silly me! I'd been hoodwinked by another crowdsourced piece of technology that was (unfortunately, through no fault of their own) ruined by the pandemic and the supply chain issues.

In this case, I'd paid for the Home Assistant Yellow on Crowd Supply back in January 29, 2022. The Home Assistant Yellow was to be delivered with a Raspberry Pi CM4 as the brains of the unit. I am a huge fan of the Raspberry Pi, and was sold on this feature alone! In this case, I paid $208.44 after taxes and shipping, and it was expected to ship on July 31, 2022. At first, all the updates on the product seem good, and it was progressing.

Well, wouldn't you know, an update near the proposed shipping date detailed that they'd be delaying shipment. What a shocker; They now claim that my version will not ship before October 2022. Having been down the crowd funding road before, I was not in the least bit surprised.

As if on schedule, October 23, I get this email:

Thank you for your Home Assistant Yellow order. Unfortunately, we need to cancel and refund the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) you ordered because there is simply no reliable way to stock these at the moment and we don't foresee that changing anytime soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please reply to this email if you'd like to instead cancel your entire order, or if the bank account attached to the credit card you originally used to place the order is no longer active. (It's fine if the card is expired as long as the account it was attached to is still active.) If we don't hear from you by Wednesday, October 26, 2022 at 5 PM Pacific time, we will cancel only the CM4 line item(s) on your order and refund the difference to the credit card we have on file for the order.

As for when the remainder of your will ship, we are currently working on updating all Home Assistant Yellow delivery dates. Generally speaking, if you ordered a Yellow Kit with a US power supply, your order should ship this year, probably shortly after the CM4 is canceled from your order. If you ordered any other variant, your order is expected to ship in January 2023. Thank you for your patience!

Regards,
Crowd Supply Support

Clearly a victim of supply-chain issues in the midst of the pandemic, I was disappointed at this result. If they can't get Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, neither can I!. I cancelled my order, as I didn't want to face getting a half-baked solution. Thankfully, the Crowd Supply folk worked quickly, and my money was returned within the week.

Imagine My Surprise!

Still intrigued by the opportunity of at-home automation (and more importantly, offline) using a dedicated Home Assistant, I came across Seeed Studio's Home Assistant Green; a slightly cheaper all-in-one Home Assistant unit. It didn't require any additional parts, and should just work right out the box. After dropping a mere $118.05, it was shipped direct from China.

Sure enough, on Sept 25, 2023, my new Home Assistant Green arrived. Thus begins my unboxing, seen in the column to the left.