Project Vapor
A custom smart home platform built around Home Assistant, ESP32 nodes, intelligent lighting, occupancy sensing, voice control, and custom hardware interfaces.
Overview
A Custom Smart Space Platform
Project Vapor is an evolving home automation ecosystem that combines embedded systems, software, industrial design, and practical everyday usefulness. The goal is to build a home environment that feels more responsive, more personal, and more intuitive.
The system uses Home Assistant as the central automation hub, with custom ESP32-based nodes handling lighting, presence sensing, voice interaction, displays, and physical controls.
Current Hardware
Architecture
- Raspberry Pi 5 running Home Assistant OS
- ESP32 and ESP32-C3 automation nodes
- WLED-based RGBW studio lighting
- LD2410C mmWave presence sensors
- M5Stack Atom Echo voice satellite
- Custom OLED scene controllers
- Planned Raspberry Pi audio node with Snapcast
Current Status
The Home Assistant core is online, studio lighting is operational, and presence-based lighting automation is working. The next major milestone is refining the physical scene controller and expanding the system into a more complete room-level control platform.
Design Goals
Engineering Priorities
- Local-first automation where possible
- Clean, reusable ESP32 node patterns
- Responsive occupancy-based lighting
- Tactile physical controls, not just phone apps
- Custom enclosures and polished hardware interfaces
- Future voice assistant and personality-driven feedback
- Integration with Rover-001b as a future mobile Vapor node
Subsystems
What It Includes
Smart Lighting
WLED and Home Assistant scenes for Terminal Work, Guitar Mode, Chill Mode, and All Off behavior.
Presence Sensing
mmWave sensors detect when the room is occupied and trigger automatic lighting behavior.
Physical Controls
Custom encoder-based controllers provide fast, tactile control over scenes and devices.
Voice + Personality
Voice satellites and animated display concepts give the system a more expressive, assistant-like feel.
Roadmap
Next Milestones
- Refine Vapor Light Controller v1
- Build Vapor Scene Controller v1 with larger physical controls
- Expand presence sensing across the upstairs rooms
- Develop follow-me lighting between rooms
- Add network audio output node
- Experiment with robot eyes and visual assistant feedback
- Integrate Rover-001b as a mobile Project Vapor node
Why It Matters
A Home That Feels Alive
Project Vapor is more than a smart home dashboard. It is a practical engineering sandbox for embedded systems, automation, interface design, and human-centered computing. Each node is a small building block toward a home that reacts naturally to presence, context, and intent.