Newsletter #4: Turned out... I have the enterprise smart home syndrome after all
I wrote the blog post warning people not to overcomplicate their smart home. Then I moved house and became the case study.
Other / 07-10-2026
Franck Nijhof
Netherlands
Franck Nijhof, better known as Frenck, is one of the maintainers and the Lead of the Home Assistant project. Over two million households use this home automation platform, which is the most active open-source project on GitHub. A passionate advocate for community-driven and sustainable development, Franck focuses on empowering contributors to bring their ideas to life and successfully ship their creations. In 2024, his team supported over 21,000 individuals in contributing code, making Home Assistant a top project for first-time contributors. Beyond code, Franck enjoys speaking at events, schools, and appearing on podcasts. He finds inspiration in mentoring newcomers and exchanging ideas with fellow developers. At home, he’s a proud father who balances work and family while staying true to his personal motto: "Make a positive difference every single day: Be the change ❤️"
Community Contributions
Newsletter #3: I’m melting ☀️ 🫠
My first summer in a new house during a record European heatwave, and what it actually takes to keep the place livable: 40 solar panels, four air conditioners, shading over Matter and Somfy, a robot mower that panics at stepping stones, and inherited Hydrawise irrigation wired into Home Assistant. The through-line is that comfort is infrastructure, and the unglamorous systems are the ones that carry you when the weather gets weird. Plus why Samsung charging for SmartThings API access is the whole case for local control.
Other / 06-26-2026
More power, less complexity
Making software easier usually has a lazy version and a hard version. The lazy version removes options. The hard version keeps the power, but moves complexity out of your way. That is the direction we are taking with Home Assistant automations. There is also an open-source story here that I think is worth calling out. Home Assistant has proven over the last few years that an open-source project can grow from a technical product into a user-friendly product that is accessible to almost anyone, while keeping the power that made it special in the first place.
Blogpost / 06-23-2026
Open source won. That is why LGTM stopped being enough
Open source became critical infrastructure. That success changed what pull request review means, especially for projects like Home Assistant that millions of households now depend on.
Blogpost / 06-18-2026
Automation modes in Home Assistant: Why the default isn't your friend
Home Assistant automation modes decide what happens when an automation is triggered again while it is still running. Here is when to use single, restart, queued, or parallel.
Blogpost / 06-14-2026
Newsletter #2: The glorious past called
My second newsletters shipped: RSS, newsletters, YAML, Thread plumbing, and 294 smart-home devices waiting for me to actually automate something.
Other / 06-12-2026
YAMLRocks
YAMLRocks is the rock-solid YAML library for Python: a Rust-backed extension that parses and emits YAML fast, follows the YAML 1.2 specification (with a YAML 1.1 compatibility mode), and, unlike PyYAML, round-trips documents while preserving comments, anchors, and formatting. Correct, secure by default, and fast, with Rust at the core (the R in Rock).
Open source project / 06-11-2026
A smart home will not save the planet
I wrote about why a smart home will not save the planet by itself, and why that is exactly the point. The useful part is not magic sustainability dust, but measurement, local control, and practical automations that reduce waste without making a home annoying to live in. It also touches on privacy and e-waste: energy data says a lot about how people live, and working hardware should not become trash because a cloud service disappears.
Blogpost / 06-05-2026
