A collective in Zurich that repairs, builds and documents openly. For now we are two. You could be the third.

A classic rotary dimmer on the wall and a smart home app know nothing about each other: turn the knob and the app shows the wrong state, switch from the app and the knob is wrong. SynDimm resolves the conflict with an ESP32-C6 behind the encoder: every turn is reported at once to Shelly, Philips Wiz or Home Assistant, and every change from there is mirrored on the device.

Three modes on the same knob

• Dimmer. 0 to 100 %, smooth transitions, preset start brightness, RGB colour, scenes and groups. State synced instantly in both directions.
• Shutter. Percentage position for blinds, calibration, limits, favourite position.
• Safe. The encoder becomes a lock: five turn sequences as passwords, each triggering its own HTTP call (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, with bearer or basic auth, custom headers and JSON body). Open a gate, start a scene or notify a server without any app.

Build

Two firmware layers: HW (ESP-IDF, drivers, web server, OTA with rollback protection) and GUI (web interface, multilingual, updated separately over OTA). The board is drawn in KiCad. A build script keeps all artefacts outside the source folder.

Open

Safe profiles, MQTT broker and a device card exist in hardware but not yet in the interface. Roadmap: concept, dual power and multi-mode reached; next stable Shelly and Wiz integration, then the announcement.

A dead man's switch for everyday life. You set a deadline and press the button regularly. If the press does not come, the device warns you first, then sends prepared messages and files to trusted people: by mail, Telegram, webhook or through a relay. For people living alone, care situations and anything someone must know if something happens to you.

Flow

1. Set the deadline, write messages and recipient groups.
2. Before it runs out the device sends you as many pre-warnings as you configured.
3. If you still do not press, the chain runs: mails with attachments, Telegram, webhook, relay.
4. An external reset is possible: GET /api/reset?key=… from another system.

Two code bases

ALTE is the running hardware and web GUI line with OTA for firmware and interface. Neue is a rebuild on the shared SmartKraft library (sk_core: CLI, BLE, Wi-Fi, auth with ECDH and HMAC), modular in timer, relay, SMTP, mail groups and reset API; phase 1 is complete, the line is parked until sk_core stabilises.

Board

LebensSpur 26-5, KiCad, Gerber files ready.

A countdown cube for focused work. Each face stands for a duration: turn the cube, face up, the timer runs. An accelerometer reads the orientation, a display shows the remaining time, a vibration motor marks the end. No screen, no app in the way, just an object on the desk that says: do not disturb now.

What is inside

The firmware is split into components: face detection from sensor data, timer engine, display, vibration, battery, secure store. Below sits sk_core, the shared base of all SmartKraft devices: command line over USB, BLE pairing, Wi-Fi, mDNS, authentication, OTA.

Through sk_api the cube can fire a webhook or IFTTT at the start or end of a session, for example dim the light or mute notifications.

Status

Firmware 0.3.5, enclosure printed, board drawn. Open: fine-tuning face detection on slow turns, and runtime in sleep mode.

A board the size of a card, three songs in the chip, no button. Touch pad B and the next note plays; touch C and the song changes, the card beeping as many times as the song number. An ATtiny412 sleeps almost without current between touches and wakes through two Darlington transistors that sense skin contact.

Why these pins

On the ATtiny412 only PA2 and PA6 can wake the chip from the deepest sleep, because only those two lines detect edges asynchronously. The electrodes therefore sit exactly there. A third switch on PA3 would be dead during sleep and was dropped.

Flasher without a computer

The card comes with a second small project: an ESP32-C6 that carries the compiled program in its own flash, waits on the UPDI line, sets fuses, writes the ATtiny and reads it back. An LED reports success or failure. Cards can be programmed in series without a laptop on the table.

Status

Firmware in two variants (standard, Turkish march), board in KiCad, Gerber exported, bill of materials documented as its own page.

A board that scrolls one row down every turn. You move with chess moves, capture a piece and become it: from knight to rook, but also from queen to pawn. The goal is the opposing king. In the mirror mode King's Escape you are the king and last as long as you can. Every day everyone plays the same board.

One turn

1. You move. If you capture, you become the captured piece.
2. The board scrolls one row down, a new one arrives on top.
3. The opponent moves one piece.

Waiting is allowed but costs a row. Check forces the opponent to defend, as in the real game. When the king falls, the board is rebuilt.

Fairness instead of rescue

The game does not save you when you are stuck. Two calculations do run in your favour: danger is measured on the board after your move, and ambushes that exist only because of the scroll are removed. A death you could not see is not the player’s fault.

Behind the game

Stats and leaderboard run on a Cloudflare Worker with D1, on the same origin as the game so sendBeacon is not lost on iOS. No ad networks, no behavioural data.

A personal fork of the open-source mLauncher. Text lists instead of icon grids, categories in the app drawer, freely scalable widgets, own themes. Built as a signed APK for own use; whatever is generally useful goes back to the main project as a proposal.

What is different

The home screen shows apps as a text list. The drawer groups by category. Widgets scale in grid steps. No ad feed, no outbound search.

Relation to the main project

This is not a distribution. It is a personal modification built as an APK for own use only. Anyone may fork and build it; issues and pull requests are not tracked in this fork.