I'm doing basically all the things you've just listed using a Dell Precision Tower 3620 you don't necessarily need new hardware for it and could save quite a lot if there are used workstations in your area.

For software I'm using esxi with truenas core virtualized and photonos as my docker host with everything managed through portainer. I would not suggest using esxi unless you want to learn about it, I wish I'd gone with Proxmox at the start.

Best bet is to keep your eye on RPI locator: https://rpilocator.com/

Jesus Christ that hit hard, also nearly gave me a cry!

Absolutely adored Orphan Black!!

This instance seemed like the most populated one when I went looking so this is where I'm subbed

I've done this for vertical blinds using this: https://github.com/kp-bit/xblinds but for my big roller blind I used a commercial solution, the motor on the DIY version wasn't strong enough even with a planetary gear box added.

Then for the automation I'm using home assistant

Oh good shout! Thank you!

Spending the day with friends setting up their place to play D&D and consume copious amounts of barbeque tomorrow!

passes the garlic bread

Silly things like r/nononoyes or r/musicaljenga

I'm running a Cyberpunk flavoured 5e oneshot which has so far turned into a three shot (yes I know I'm sorry I should have used cyberpunk to play cyberpunk but my group already knows 5e and we needed a game quick while our normal DM took a break)

I'm also running Wild Beyond the Witchlight and playing Curse of Strahd and 2 5e campaigns in homebrew worlds.

It sounds like a lot but we don't get to play any of those very frequently! Usually one or two games every couple of months.

I've only played and run D&D 5e. I did get the Pathfinder 2e humble bundle so might play that at some point. My party also owns two copies of the Call of Cthulu starter set which I would love to get around to one Halloween.

For small stuff we've played Honey Heist which was a huge amount of fun!

Yeah, there'd be nothing stopping other places having a Pi community but it makes more sense for a dedicated technology instance to run the main Pi community rather than having a dozen little ones.

You could go even more niche and have a raspberry pi instance and then have Pi3, Pi4, Zero, software, hats communities within that.

Definitely think that content specific instances with more niche communities within them is the way forward. There's no reason for lemmy.ml to have a raspberry pi community if computers.social has a raspberry pi community.

I've got an old office PC running esxi with truenas core virtualized. Runs solidly but I wish I'd used Proxmox for my hypervisor.

I really love what framework are doing, if I was in the market for a £1000+ laptop I'm not sure I would look anywhere else. Hackability, upgradeability and repairability are going to be so important going forward.