One thing to note about locks and other devices that are securely included is that your controller will have a Network Security Key, and this must stay the same when you move the controller to a new device. If not, your securely included devices will fail since they don’t know the new key. I don’t know how HA implements secure inclusion, or if it’s possible to reuse a key that HA generates in OH.
Most discussion about Broadlink remotes is in this thread, and the releases are here on GitHub.
There’s been no work done on it in a long time, but I see that someone recently spoke to the developer about trying to merge it on their behalf.
I fully agree with Rich on this. I don’t recommend OH, HA, or any other complex software/hardware to anyone who doesn’t want to get deep into the weeds. Setting up and maintaining something like this is more of a hobby than a solution, and anyone who doesn’t see it that way will find it to be a huge hassle and not fun at all.
Note that this isn’t about technical expertise or capability. My dad could easily figure out openHAB, but he has no interest in doing so. He just uses simple WiFi switches that he controls through Google Assistant and HomeKit, and that’s good enough for him.
(This is why I’m optimistic about Matter/Thread. If it really does become easy for average consumers to add/remove/change devices on their Matter networks, then they’ll be able to give more thought to complex automation.)
I think the best Plan B is be able to control things manually in the event that the system fails. That’s valuable even if you’re the system administrator, because sometimes things break and you can’t fix them immediately.