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Moonbase: our own home terminal

The problem. My partner and I have a bunch of mismatched smart-home devices. The apps are fine, but we wanted one hub for all of it. I had the old Raspberry Pi and its touchscreen, and the Pi couldn't run any of the modern home hubs. So, again, I built my own.

What I built. A touchscreen home terminal in Python and pygame, with a hand-rolled interface in the style of a starship console. That part was fun. Every screen is built from a display contract, so the same widgets draw into two different frame layouts without knowing which one they're in.

The colors carry meaning, and that's the clever bit. Each theme is a closed set of colors from one era of that console look; nothing outside the set ever appears on screen. Each system gets its color by a fixed rank on a living-to-machine axis: people first, then lights, climate, hubs, calendar, robotics, cameras, network and system. Switch themes and every color changes, but the lights are always "the lights color" and the cameras are always "the cameras color". Status colors come from the theme's own set too. On top of that: contextual menus, and a red button on the case that turns the backlight on and off or shuts the Pi down cleanly.

Where it stands. A work in progress; some services aren't connected yet. But I can touch my lights and stop the Roomba faster, and more pleasantly, than ever.

What I learned. When nothing off the shelf fits the hardware you have, build the hub you actually want, and make it a pleasure to touch.