I have to agree with everyone here. This is one of the easier automation systems to set up. I mostly attribute it to the developer building it from the ground up to do what he wants and trying to add our requests when he has time. Also, the focus on using the Pro Mini and ESP8266 simplifies things because you aren't catering to every weird board under the sun.
That said, I have challenged myself with building stand-alone hardware to consume as little power as possible and it's a lot harder than just following the tutorials to use the pro mini.
Once I get the FTDI off the slow boat, I should be in business and with the new tutorial, looks like I'm going to dive into the ESP8266 world next.
