A Walkthrough of My Private Smart Home (device management powered by a WebThings Gateway by Mozilla)

Virtually Maker Faire 2020

May 22nd-23rd

I don't want big tech titans to peer inside my home and see what smart home devices I use and what I'm doing with them. Fortunately, using the WebThings Gateway by Mozilla, running on a Raspberry Pi, I have control and visibility of all my smart home devices in one web interface. My smart home data stay in the privacy of my home. All my devices are interoperable at a web application layer, via a "web of things" schema, so that I can manage things through any web browser (securely, over https).

As the number of new COVID-19 cases slows, businesses want to re-open. But in order to safely bring employees back into the office, these businesses may want more visibility of office conditions. They may want to know people's temperature (through IR cameras), how often common areas are cleaned, knowledge of the status of HVAC fans for proper ventilation, and how often the soap dispensers are triggered. I predict that businesses, like me, would rather keep their IoT data to themselves, rather than have it stored and processed by big tech.

I will provide a live demonstration walk through of my smart home, with a variety of commercial smart home products, and show the interoperability of them all at a web layer. The whole house is privately managed using a Raspberry Pi running the WebThings Gateway application software. I will provide a detailed on-line tutorial for everyone else to follow, so they can build their own private smart home.