Things I built for my own house and laptop.

Small tools for the lights, the fan, the TV and the radios, plus notes on what broke along the way. Each post covers what I tried and where it stands now.

Build log

Oct 18, 2026Opening the blinds from a laptopIn progressThe blinds answer only their own 433 MHz remote. An ESP32 and a $9 radio module should pair as one more remote.
Oct 9, 2026Logging every packet a LoRa radio hearsA Meshtastic radio on my laptop, and a service that writes down every packet it receives.
Oct 6, 2026Logging every song so I never have to hit likeA small service writes down every track that starts playing. It also feeds the now-playing box on this site.
Sep 30, 2026Movie night from a laptopGetting a file from my laptop onto a living room TV, with no screen to look at while I set it up.
Sep 27, 2026Hunting a USB audio dropoutMusic kept chopping for a split second. I cleared the laptop with bit-exact recordings and USB captures, then moved the suspect to an analog cable.
Sep 19, 2026Running my lights after the company foldedThe smart-light company is gone. Its hub still answers on the local network, so I wrote my own client.
Sep 14, 2026A ceiling fan I run from the terminalMy fan speaks JSON on the home network. Now it answers to one short command.