Well, here we go again! As “simple” dashboard projects were not enough, I’ve decided to (re)embark on a new HA related mission: Project Tako!
What is Project Tako, you ask? It’s my renewed quest on the never-ending journey for custom control of HA. Having apps on your phone or dashboards on your wall is nice, but what about when you are not in front on any of those 
Since the early days of Logitech Harmony, the idea of one remote to rule it all has always been fascinating to me. So now that I have a decently complex smart home setup, could the same concept work? A remote for the house?
In fairness, it’s not such a groundbreaking concept. On Aliexpress you can find a multitude of smart remotes, but they are all tied into specific ecosystems of smart devices, which is the opposite what we try to do with our own HA instances.
I was also partially inspired by this video, where a user showcased his own super custom home remote (minute 2:22 for the remote bit).
So, a few months ago I started messing around with some components I had laying around, to get to this mess!
This post is absolutely not a showcase, it’s just a starting point. I want to use this blog and continuous sharing on Reddit as a way to remain accountable and make sure I actually continue to make progresses to eventually reach an end state.
As per my previous dashboard post, there are some goals I want to reach with this:
- As close as possible to full home control, including TV control (I may pick the most used devices to start)
- Battery powered with USB-C recharge
- Fully enclosed in a decently compact and nice looking 3D printed case
- Custom buttons covers for easy to understand navigation
- Could the result score high wife approval? This may be a stretch goal, but let’s try!
So, what’s the initial update on Project Tako?
As I mentioned before, this wasn’t done completely from scratch today. I started tinkering with the idea some months ago, then life got in the way. Now, re-energised by the awesome internet community, I’m determined to bring it back to life.
The POC was left at this super barebone state – which I guess also serves as update #0:
- The project uses an ESP32 (affiliate link) development board as its brain
- A 1.77″ TFT display to show the UI (definitely not sure about this. May go e-ink as a further power saving excercise)
- A bunch of standard buttons
- Software wise it’s running on ESP Home
The current state of the software is fairly limited, but it can do the following:
- Use the arrows to navigate up/down a list of predefined HA entities
- Use the “enter” button to toggle each entity on/off
- Use the yellow button to switch display to the “Apple TV” mode, in which ideally all buttons are re-mapped to control playback and navigation on the TV (this doesn’t work quite yet!)
Now that I’ve made the project somewhat “official”, I’ll be determined to continue posting updates here and on Reddit, to share ideas and opinions with the amazing HA community at large.
Looking forward to the next update.
Happy tinkering!