A google forms alternative would be convenient. You could make an easy to fill out page that inouts to a spreadsheet. Put warranty reminders in your calander for a month before it expires.

No, but the drives are constantly being written to, so I’d rather have two in case one fails.

Ah I see with Frigate that makes sense. I’ll just have to backup the config since I don’t want to backup TB’s of footage.

Just have my phone set to syncthimg between a second drive on my pc and the home folder on the pc rsync to the same drive. I need an external provider to back that up.

In the past people used tasker to charge at a certain threshold. Check with homeassistant people to see what they do.

Anything made in the past 10-15 years still works great, I have a couple of really old thin clients that I bought for around $20 and dumped my pis when the prices were way up. One runs octoprint and the other one runs Lubuntu out in the garage so I can look up vehicle specs and other things while I’m out there. I have a fifth Gen Intel laptop that still works great. I have a desktop with a Ryzen 3000 series that works just fine both bought used for under $100. Raspberry pi is good for certain tasks, but using it for a desktop makes little sense. Even now I’m working this message on an Android phone that was around $100 with no issues.

CPU power hasn’t changed much, they’ve added more features over the years, but power hasn’t changed a lot, only Windows has gotten more bloated so you need more ram to run it.

You can also just buy a used laptop or business computer which is infinitely better and cheaper.