DIY home automation through Home Assistant and RF protocol reverse engineering

A series of personal accounts detail the technical challenges and processes involved in building a custom home automation ecosystem. One approach utilizes Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi to integrate over 1,800 different devices, allowing for the unification of incompatible products from various manufacturers like Apple, Google, and Amazon into a single system.

Another project focuses on hardware hacking to integrate motorized blinds into a smart home setup. This involved reverse engineering a 433MHz Radio Frequency (RF) protocol used by RAEX motorized blinds to bypass proprietary remotes and buggy third-party apps, with the ultimate goal of achieving compatibility with Apple HomeKit using Arduino-based hardware.