Home assistant has been on a push to be more user friendly. It’s gotten quite good, over the last few years. It’s not quite to mass deployment levels yet, but it’s managed to wrap all the evil parts in easy to use interfaces.

The best bet, to play with it, would be a raspberry pi. There are premade images of home assistant available to install. Stick one on as SD card, and follow the prompts. You’ll be amazed at what it can just find on your home network.