People have tried and failed to make the "one arr to rule them all" but the current stack is pretty lightweight, stable and mature so it is better to just install them all in containers then have some kind of frontend and request system in front of them for users and admins.
I use Organizr as a frontend (keeps them all together in one interface and optionally handles SSO across all of them) then I have Overseerr for users to add media without having to give them access to the arrs directly.
Zigbee can have very good range depending on the products, but those outlets have poor range initially due to a bad antenna id guess, then they are plugged into an outlet, low to the ground, up against a wall, probably near lots of wiring and even grounded metal boxes in many cases. So it's a bit of a worst case scenario for signal strength.
In homeassistant you should be able to go into the device page and pull up signal level information to see if you need to add or move devices to fix a deadspot.
I've tried to use lidarr but I think my archive is too weird for it.
Not only do I have a lot of obscure releases, but I also have things like vinyl and cd rips of every version of every album by certain artists. Like I have a huge amount of frank zappa for example, sometimes I will have 10 versions of the same album, sometimes more. I have collections of the different live variants of many tracks, archives of guitar solo variations ets..
Lidarr has no idea how to handle that so I do it all manually.
You rip your cds or buy direct from the artists (he says without suggesting you can easily find everything for free online)
Cry because the metadata is never right.
But really this is usually solved with proper labelling of ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST tags separately.
I find some integrations much easier to implement in nodered then I've the hacs nodered plugin to connect them properly
I personally haven't had any issue with the standard spotify integration when calling it from automations or scripts, so I suspect it can be made to work pretty well when just having a button call up a premade playlist or something. then one button could maybe be left free for a simple play/stop function.
Central Scrutinizer, play Joe's Garage on the living room stereo
"Satan, Play Emperor on the living room stereo"
I don't know what type of disabilities your little one has but I was looking into this for my grandma when she was struggling to use things due to physical and mental decline and ended up with the "Relish Simple Music Player" which is a dead simple desktop radio with limited controls and preconfigurable presets for FM/dab stations or playlists from a memory card, **but it had no smart features or streaming. ** not really kid optimised but it's good to know there are devices out there that are specifically designed for various disabilities.
As for DIY smart HA based solutions, a compatible device like a google home mini or similar (or any active speaker with a compatable receiver plugged in, or a Sonos One SL or something if you are OK with that) and some simple control device like one of those zigbee scene controllers (like these), the standard spotify integration, plus a bit of automation/scripting or a tiny bit of nodered could become a simple and effective little jukebox.
I'm starting to replace some wifi devices with zigbee too, Yes many zigbee devices will act as a repeater or router for other devices to connect through, the only devices that tend not to have this functionality are battery powered devices like pushbuttons or remotes.
Just a word of warning, those S26 Zigbee outlets have quite poor range so you might still run into issues if you only have a couple of them.
As far as I know there is no alternative firmware for the Zigbee and Z-wave devices. nor is there any real need for one as they do tend to "just work" but that also means you are stuck with the features and functions they give you. There are some Zigbee bridges that can run ESPhome to add some customisability, but that is just for the wifi side of the device.
Digging into some deep speculative fiction here rather than pure fantasy.
An Idea I've always I liked that can be extended to include tectonics is deep speculative biology, creating links between plants and animals with ancient evolutionary connections with distant relatives across former continents, within this world extremely slow evolving or slow living creatures could experience time differently to us, to our eyes they might seem completely static like rocks or trees but to them they are a thriving and active community.
From that you can have civilisations that have existed in some form across hundreds of millions, or even billions of years with notable epochs in their long history being related to points in time where different land masses were connected, causing major societal upheaval and rapid evolutionary shifts, but also access to potential new resources and technology.
You could have one group of people on an isolated plate that over hundreds of millions of years contacted other landmasses and either settled them causing new disparate groups to form, or met with existing other groups and shaped their future by passing on some technology or resource.
Imagine an overwhelmingly large planet with uncrossable oceans, how they're uncrossable could be expanded upon, but imagine that travel across this ocean is completely impossible or impracticable in some way, perhaps flight is also impossible to extreme gravity, high technology may be impossible due to resources. plate collisions are rare due to the immense size of the planet and the small size of the landmasses in comparison so the only way these people have ever come into contact with other civilisations or non native species is through the slow movement of their plates, they have remnants of stories from their deep history, they have long melded into mythology, possibly becoming their creation myths.
So a short prompt for a story or role play of some kind could be:
An outcast scientist has created a piece of equipment to peer into the distance and he sees what appears to be land, it seems to be moving towards them, fast. He tries to tell the ruling priests that a landmass is approaching and will make contact with them within a generation, they scoff as the prophecies say it will be a thousand generations before the next "meeting".