Home Assistant Ecosystem 🏠
🎄🎁 Advent of Open Source – Day 24/24: From reverse-engineering speakers to repurposing hardware, these projects highlight open source innovation in the smart home.
(See my intro post)
There are not enough days in this advent calendar to highlight all my projects. So today is a collection of IoT/Home Assistant-related packages. Each has its own story.
📖 Origin Stories & Technical Details
My Home Assistant obsession began as described in Day 10. Many projects emerged from this hobby:
- aiokef: To control my KEF speakers, I reverse-engineered network traffic and decoded raw byte sequences, diving deep into proprietary protocols to “speak” the speaker’s language.
- miflora: When @ChristianKuehnel couldn’t maintain this plant sensor library anymore, he transferred it to me. A perfect example of open source collaboration, it continues to help users monitor plant health and demonstrates how projects can thrive through community handovers.
- addon-otmonitor: This HA add-on packages OpenTherm Monitor for the OpenTherm Gateway (OTGW). Using Docker to simplify deployment, it’s become a powerful open-source alternative to Nest or Ecobee, giving full control over heating systems.
- home-assistant-macbook-touch-bar: Remember that useless touch bar on the old MacBook? I transformed it into a mini Home Assistant control panel for lights, temperature, and more - a classic case of hardware hacking giving new life to abandoned technology.
- python-kasa: To modernize the popular
pyHS100library for TP-Link devices, I converted it to useasyncio. With @rytilahti, we created thepython-kasaorganization through community collaboration. While I haven’t contributed much since its inception, it’s now the standard for controlling Kasa devices.
📊 Impact & Lessons
These projects serve thousands of users while teaching valuable lessons:
- Open source empowers us: from KEF speaker integration to plant monitoring
- Reverse engineering unlocks potential: turning proprietary protocols into open solutions
- Community drives success: projects like miflora and python-kasa thrive through collaboration
- Innovation through repurposing: giving new life to hardware like the MacBook Touch Bar
- Modern tech matters: Docker simplifies deployment, async code boosts performance
Want to explore these projects? Check them out on GitHub:
This concludes our Advent of Open Source! I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey through my projects as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing them. Happy holidays and happy coding!
#OpenSource #HomeAssistant #IoT #Python #SmartHome
