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+date = '2026-05-17T23:57:15-06:00'
+draft = false
+title = "Katchi, a dragon's best friend"
+tags = ['kobold', 'esp32']
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+
+## A smart-home for a Dragon
+
+{{< typeit
+tag=h3
+speed=50
+breakLines=false
+loop=true
+>}}
+"It's the Future..."
+"Dumb homes are so 2010"
+"Is all of this really necessary?" — Concerned Friends
+{{< /typeit >}}
+
+### Smart-homes
+
+The present state of smart-home choices is fairly acceptable. You have your major players, Google, Apple, Amazon and 
+their associated services like Google Home or Alexa. These systems are fairly easy to set up; plug in the new device,
+type in some credentials or type a prompt on your phone, and done. Most of these systems rely on a central hub that
+orchestrates the entire smart home.
+
+But all these systems have one fatal annoyance. They all require access to the internet.
+
+### Internet dependency
+
+In recent years, it is common to run into issues with major providers. Privacy concerns, outages and the forced 
+obsolescence of existing systems put a lot of pressure on me when building my first smart home. Sure the big players
+make it easy to set up and use, but for me the non-monetary cost was just too great. Besides the limitations in software,
+knowing that if I had an internet outage, or god forbid, the provider has an outage, I would be shit out of luck in
+turning off my lights turned me away from major providers.
+
+### So what did I use?
+
+After spending a lot of time frustrated with my options and dealing with the difficulties in automating and doing what 
+I wanted with my smart-home, I went down the rabbit hole of options and found
+[Home Assistant](https://www.home-assistant.io/).
+![Home Assistant](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity-assets.home-assistant.io%2Foriginal%2F4X%2F5%2F0%2Fe%2F50e585faea85010ebb16d3d466f071ef90ec1393.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=73955a250f2bf73ba578833607b6a377d67ea436a1562e35b202fb2273b3d35a)
+
+Unlike the big-name smart-homes, Home Assistant is a self-hosted option that runs on your own hardware and locally 
+connects to supported devices. It supports a wide range of [devices and integrations](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/?brands=featured)
+and is fairly easy to set up.
+
+I wont expound on it much more here, but I will link to the [getting started](https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/), [documentation](https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/)
+and [community](https://community.home-assistant.io/) for more information.
+
+### So what's the problem?
+
+Of all the amazing options that Home Assistant gives us, it has a fairly significant miss; that being Smart Speaker integration.
+
+## Home Assistant Smart Speaker
+
+The options for Home Assistant smart speakers are quite limited, they only offer one official product as of the date of publishing this post.
+
+{{< externalLink url="https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/" >}}
+
+While the Home Assistant Voice PE works decently, it is the only off-the-shelf option for Home Assistant which considering
+all the freedom Home Assistant gives us, feels quite limiting. However, there is a solution.
+
+### The Solution
+
+Thankfully we are not constrained by the limitations of existing hardware thanks to microcontrollers, specifically the ESP family of microcontrollers.
+![ESPHome](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fesphome.io%2Fimages%2Fog.webp&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=fd9bfb5ff1845d2803627ce6224161f86267d81a0f426d077cbae7deaeb75215)
+
+Using [ESPHome](https://esphome.io) you can create a whole myriad of smart devices based on the [ESP32 microcontroller](https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32). It provides a very diverse
+family of options that can fit nearly any use-case. Think of it as an alternative to Arduino, where instead of writing C code
+you can write yaml configuration files that dictate and configure your ESP device.
+
+Knowing this, I set out to make my own Smart Speaker.
+
+## Katchi the Kobold Smart Speaker