Smart homes appear perfect in video demos, but they can be laborious in real life. While I made the best of Home Assistant to set up my smart home, I struggled to make it work for my family. Not ...

I've been playing around with a couple of ESP32 microcontrollers, and that experimentation has taught me a lot about sensors and what you can build for really, really cheap. For as little as $4, you ...

Update 3/9/25: After receiving concerns about the use of the term 'backdoor' to refer to these undocumented commands, we have updated our title and story. Our original story can be found here. The ...