Talking house

I wanted a house that pays attention without phoning home to anyone else.

Every smart-home product I tried wanted a subscription, an account, and a live connection to some company’s server. I wanted the opposite: a house that reacts instantly, keeps working when the internet is down, and answers to nobody but the people living in it.

So I built my own. A Raspberry Pi runs the brain locally; a swarm of ESP32 boards I flashed and wired myself handle the lights, the radiators, the blinds and a scatter of temperature and presence sensors. Nothing leaves the building. When the WAN drops, the house doesn’t notice.

The rewarding part isn’t the automation — it’s the tuning. Blinds that ease down as the afternoon sun hits the west wall. Heating that reads the room instead of the clock. Lights that already know it’s morning. Months of small adjustments until the house stopped needing to be told things.