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Digital layer·designed

Open Home Automation

Why it matters

A building autonomous in energy and water but controlled through a vendor's cloud has simply traded one dependency for a subtler one. Its shutters, heating, and sensors work at the pleasure of a company's servers, subscription terms, and product lifecycle. Open automation closes that last loophole. When the building's brain runs locally on open-source software, it works with the internet down, integrates any sensor from any maker, and shows plainly what it does with the data. Anyone can repair and extend it for decades. For a movement built on open methodology, the choice is also philosophical. Open construction knowledge loses half its value if the finished building runs on closed code only the vendor may read.

Role in 001's holistic picture

Open automation is the body through which the digital layer acts. It hosts what Building Instrumentation senses, executes what Energy Management decides, and provides a sovereign platform. A digital twin sits above that platform rather than replacing it. Open automation extends Building Autonomy into the control plane and blackout independence into software. This is Open Methodology compiled and running.

In the world

The reference implementation of this idea is already mature and community-owned. Home Assistant is a local-first platform that runs on hardware inside the building and speaks open protocols to any maker's devices. On its own opt-in tally in 2025 it counts more than two million homes. Since 2024 the platform has been stewarded by the Swiss non-profit Open Home Foundation, which owns the project precisely to protect it from buy-outs. Home Assistant sets this sense's disciplines by example: local execution as the default with cloud as optional garnish, vendor-agnostic device choices, automations that degrade gracefully so a failed integration never means a cold house, and a human override always one obvious action away.

How 001 engages with it

The best argument for this sense is honesty about our own current state. House 001's energy core is maximally simple. The DC-coupled inverter and charger ask no server's permission. But the everyday automation layer is, today, mostly a Tuya ecosystem, with a local Home Assistant instance driving little more than WLED lighting. Tuya is cheap, capable — and cloud-bound. Every scene it runs crosses a data centre on another continent and back. We use it with open eyes, and living inside that limitation is what turned local-first from a preference into a requirement.

Unity Hub is where the requirement becomes architecture, decided early. A full, textbook Home Assistant installation serves as the building's sovereign control layer — local-first, fine-grained down to individual fancoils. It speaks Modbus and other field-level protocols where consumer integrations stop. Partner intelligence — the digital-twin work with Calling Bridge — sits explicitly on top of that platform rather than in place of it. The building must remain fully operable even if every external service disappears. The detailed control design is active work in the current phase. It will be published as it settles, in the same public-decision style as our heating and cooling stories.

Maturity: designed. The sovereign-platform architecture is set for Unity Hub, with detail design underway. At House 001 the principle holds so far only in the energy layer. The Tuya automation above it is a known, accepted trade at household scale. The full open stack is Unity Hub's to prove. The operating story publishes when the system does.

Further reading