Personal builds · 2016
Alastair
A private, cloud-less home automation platform for IoT devices and sensors.
archived
Why it existed
Most smart home systems depended on third-party cloud services. I wanted to see how much could be done locally instead.
The friction it answered
I wanted to control lights, plugs, cooling, presence detection, occupancy detection, and camera streaming without relying on an external provider.
What was built
A full-stack system across Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 plugs, Yeelight bulbs, IR control, temperature and light sensors, PIR motion sensing, Python watchdog scripts, OpenWRT scripts, LIRC, EventGhost, ARP scans, Bluetooth detection, and a web interface.
What it left behind
Completed in March 2016 and archived. It remains one of my clearest early examples of wanting to understand the full system myself: hardware, scripts, sensors, and control logic.