Nice project idea. Concerning question 5.): FWIW, I associated this project description immediately with POE and one of its application examples: How POE Saved BayCon TV, Helped Godzilla Destroy Tokyo, and Let Me Sleep (see PDF whitepaper). The asynchronous event handling required here and POEs capabilites to integrate with existing GUI event-loops, makes it a good choice. So, I would confirm your approach.

Unfortunately, I am not qualified to answer your questions (5.), but you might ask/consult rcaputo who is the expert here.