Home AI Panel
Wall-mounted touchscreen for climate, the pool, radio, sprinklers, the calendar, cameras, lights, the garage, and Ask AI.
Case study · Home
One hub. The keys stay home.
A single home server is the center of the house. Every screen and every voice device is a simple client. Home control stays on that machine, speech is processed there, and the panel and puck never hold the keys. The assistant may use a hosted model when a question needs one.
How it fits together
Clients in every room. Intelligence in one place.
The hub is the only system allowed to hold secrets. Screens send taps. The puck sends speech. The chat sends a message. None of them reach the assistant, or the house, on their own.
Nova Puck
A small round voice device. Hands-free questions, spoken answers, curated radio.
Telegram
The family texts the same assistant when they are away from the room.
iMessage
The same conversation, on the thread the family already uses.
The only place with the keys
One home server
- Home Assistant
- Whisper · local speech to text
- Piper · local text to speech
- Hermes · family agent
- Secure gateway · mutual TLS
What the hub is allowed to touch
3 Nest thermostats
Pentair pool & spa
B-hyve · 10 zones, 6 programs
Internet radio
Google Calendar
01 / The server
One machine, containerized.
Home Assistant, local speech-to-text, local speech, the AI backend, and a secure gateway run together on a single home server. Each job sits in its own container, so the house can be updated without turning the whole system into one tangled process.
From that machine the home is already connected: three Nest thermostats, a Pentair ScreenLogic pool and spa, B-hyve sprinklers across ten zones and six programs, internet radio, and the family Google Calendar. The clients never log into those systems. They ask the hub, and the hub already knows how.
02 / The assistant
One assistant for the whole family.
A dedicated Hermes profile is the family’s assistant. The wall panel and the Nova Puck share that assistant and the same route, so a question spoken in the kitchen is answered by the same assistant as a question tapped on the wall.
The family can also text the assistant on Telegram. iMessage is the next door in. The conversation can move from room to phone without a second brain, and without handing the keys to the device in someone’s pocket.
03 / Home AI Panel
The whole house, at arm’s length.
A wall-mounted touchscreen all-in-one runs a custom kiosk app. Light and dark themes follow the room. Releases are versioned, and a one-click installer puts a new build on the panel. The same screen also covers the garage, cameras, lighting, and app shortcuts you can add or remove. Smart Home AI is the offer for bringing a version of this to another house.
Home
The daily view holds the family calendar, up to three climate zones, the pool and spa, the radio, and Ask AI. Sample calendar titles in these views are obscured.
Climate
A Nest-style dial for each zone. Set heat, cool, auto, or off, then review the change before it goes to the hub.
Radio
A CarPlay-style set of presets. Search the directory or paste a station’s own stream, hear a test, and save it to a slot. Streams the panel cannot play are marked before anyone tries.
Sprinklers
A B-hyve-style page for ten zones and six programs. See what already ran, then enable or disable a program without leaving the wall.
04 / Nova Puck
Hands-free, with speech in the house.
Nova Puck is a small round touchscreen built on an ESP32-S3 and ESPHome — a quiet stand-in for the countertop assistant. You speak. The hub transcribes the words locally, the agent answers, and the hub speaks the reply. It also plays a short list of radio stations chosen for the house.
The puck stays simple on purpose. It does not keep the model, the calendar, or the keys.
Placeholder
Photo coming
A photograph of the physical Nova Puck will go here. This frame is reserved for that picture.
05 / HomeAutomation
An assistant that builds the house.
HomeAutomation is the AI assistant that assembles this system and looks after it. It ships panel releases, configures Home Assistant, and troubleshoots when something drifts.
Security stays tight on purpose. The gateway uses mutual TLS, and each device has its own key, so a screen has to prove who it is before the hub will talk. A new puck does not inherit the trust of the panel.
In practice
The ordinary things, handled.
Set a temperature.
Turn a zone up or down from the dial. The change is reviewed, then the hub tells the thermostat.
Heat the spa.
The pool card shows the spa as it is and where it is headed. Open it when someone is actually getting in.
Run the sprinklers.
Start a program or look back at what already ran — zone, minutes, and whether it finished.
Start the radio.
Play a preset from the panel, or ask the puck. The station list is curated, not endless.
Ask out loud.
Speech is transcribed on the hub. The assistant answers. The hub speaks the reply.
Text from anywhere.
The family writes the assistant on Telegram. The hub still runs the house from home.
Check the garage.
Status and control from the wall. Opening it asks for a confirmation first.
Look at the cameras.
A camera view on the same panel as climate, the pool, and the calendar.
Control the lights.
Lighting lives on the wall, next to shortcuts for the apps the house actually uses.
Bring it home
We can build one for yours.
If you want a house where the screens stay simple and the family shares one assistant, tell us about the rooms and the devices you already have. The offer — panel, pucks, and a private Home Assistant server, in about two hours on site — is on Smart Home AI.