I use Obsidian with a folder for hardware and a folder for software, then an entry for each device or service. I’ve been pretty good about maintaining cross-links.
I kind of wish I used Docker Compose more, but I haven’t run into a situation where it’s been a problem yet.

But what’s the point of downvoting on Lemmy? It doesn’t seem to affect visibility. Or maybe there’s a setting somewhere I need to adjust?

I have pihole running on an old Raspberry Pi B and it just chugs along. Except for the wonky update they put out a few months ago. That took some cleaning up after.
I check the dashboard a few times a day and it’s a good way to notice network issues and misbehaving programs.
I’m also running it through cloudflared to encrypt the requests, in case my ISP is snooping on them.

Windows with PythonWin (like IDLE) for most stuff, VSCode for vibe coding, even though I haven’t explored it much. I still need to figure out how to get local coding models running so I can compare them to whatever online AI comes with VS.
Plus a Mac with TextMate.

It displays fine by default, but the image only updates every several seconds. I’m talking about a live video feed, which needs some kind of special frame which has to be bolted onto HA somehow.

I haven’t, that’s the problem. It seems like it’s possible, but I’ve given up trying for the moment.

I have a Reolink PoE camera. It works fine. As far as I can tell, it only uses the internet to check for updates and set the time, but I have it blocked off anyway. Home Assistant was actually causing it to check for updates, too, so that got disabled.
I don’t record, so I can’t help you there.
I will say that is a pain to get Home Assistant to display real-time video instead of a slide show.

Bitwarden Authenticator because Bitwarden seems to have a good reputation. I don’t use their password manager, though.
It does seem faintly insecure that it displays all of the codes at once on one page, but I’m having trouble imagining a scenario where it’s actually a problem.

I have a Reolink PoE camera. It’s plugged into Home Assistant, and some setting in the integration had it phoning home constantly looking for updates. I turned that off and now it only connects outside of my network to sync the time.
The camera has survived outside for a few years now, so no complaints.

Home Assistant for viewing

Heads up: by default, HA does not show real-time, full-framerate video - just a snapshot that updates every 10 seconds or whatever. As with all things open source, there is a way to fix it, but you have to faff around. I haven’t bothered yet, but it’s on my list.

Sonarr + Picard

Do you mean Lidarr? Sonarr is the TV one (confusingly).

CPU-heavy process

Sounds to me like a hardware issue: you’re overheating. Find a way to monitor your temps. I’m not sure how to do this on Linux, so I’m open to suggestions too.

I’ve had good luck having it write simple scripts that I could easily handle myself. For example, I needed a script to chop a directory full of log files up into archives, with some constraints. That sort of thing.
I haven’t tried it on anything more substantial.
This was using Copilot because I haven’t found a good coding model that will run locally on 16GB VRAM.

I use GitHub Desktop on Mac and PC. It works fine with local repos, too.

Given pihole’s recent record with updates, I’m not sure I want them firing automatically.

Unfortunately I can’t remember whether I downloaded pihole from some package manager within DietPi, or whether I used the instructions on pihole’s site. It’s not hard either way, it’s really just one package.

I run it for my pi-hole. It’s been great. It tells you when there are package updates when you log in, which I find helpful.

How are you geoblocking?

I know Kodi running the Jellyfin plugin on LibreELEC works great on a Pi. I’m not entirely sure if/how Kodi supports YouTube, but there are so many plugins available it seems like it must.
https://libreelec.tv/