Since I had a spare ESP32 lying around, I tried building a smart dashboard that pulls metrics from the other smart devices in my home lab and outputs them to a screen. Now that Iv ...

But since those front panel controls still work, that meant [Anton] needed a way for the ESP32 to detect the device’s status and report that to Home Assistant so everything stayed in sync.

But while the holiday gadget might have been mildly entertaining in its stock configuration, he quickly realized that what it really needed was an ESP32 ... to control devices via Home Assistant.

The leaders of Home Assistant declared 2023 the “Year of the Voice.” The goal was to let users of the DIY home automation platform “control Home ... to fit on tiny ESP32-based gadgets ...