Hmm, I never heard about a class action. The place I’m thinking of is also in NC. Just replacing simple undersink connectors even in 2018/2019 was a “maybe it won’t leak if I tug on it exactly THIS much” touch and go affair.
On the automation control question, I can’t believe I missed Home Assistant! It seems perfect for the kind of vendor independent, locally controlled off-cloud IoT standard I was hoping would exist. Seems that Nest, Blink, Yi, and many, many others are already on board, but not Eufy or Wyze. 