Event

<p>There are thousands of different IoT devices on the market. To control them, you currently have a few options:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Use the vendor’s cloud service. This approach has many problems: there is no interoperability between different vendors, so you end up installing 10 different cloud apps for 10 different devices; there are privacy concerns; and anything beyond the basics usually requires paid features.</p> </li> <li> <p>Use an open-source platform such as Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Domoticz, FHEM, PiDome, or Majordomo. These platforms are powerful but often too complex, time-consuming to learn, and relatively expensive to run—typically EUR 100+ and tens or even hundreds of hours of study.</p> </li> </ol> <p>Currently, there is no simple, easy-to-use, and low-cost solution on the market.</p> <p>We accepted this challenge and are now designing an open-source hardware solution running Free/Libre Open Source Software. Our goal is a device that costs around EUR 20 for the end user, offers more functionality than typical vendor cloud services, and remains fully open for modification and customization by anyone interested.</p> <p>After six months of work, we already have a functioning hardware prototype and software that supports basic features.</p> <p>In this presentation, I will discuss the challenges we encountered, demonstrate our current progress, and highlight the major obstacles we are facing. If others share a similar interest, your help and collaboration are very welcome.</p>