Sam builds things
that shouldn't quite work — but do.
Electronics, home automation, and a homelab that has grown well past what any sensible person would run at home. This is a running log of the workbench.
About
I'm based in Dublin, and most of my free time goes into pulling things apart, wiring up microcontrollers, and keeping a small server rack alive in the corner of a room. I like the point where software meets a soldering iron — where a Home Assistant automation has to talk to a relay, a servo, or a camera that was never meant to be smart.
Nothing here started as a "product." Most of it started as a problem — a hot tub with no smart controls, a toilet that needed a gentler flush, a drive that wouldn't mount — and turned into a build.
The workbench
Hot tub IR bridge
Captured the OEM remote's raw NEC codes, then removed it entirely — an ESP32 now drives the control panel's IR pad directly and reads its power state off the line.
ESP32 · direct GPIO drive on the panel's IR pad · debugging inverted signal polarity and carrier timing
Cat feeder monitor
A camera watches the shared bowl and tells the household's cats apart, tracking who eats fast, who grazes, and how often each one shows up.
Vision-only, no load cell · moved off an ESP32-CAM to an old phone streaming RTSP into Frigate
Auto-flush controller
An SG90 servo and ESPHome stand in for a bathroom's worst button — half and full flush, each with its own hold delay, wired into Home Assistant.
SG90 on GPIO18 · independent hold delays per button · exposed as HA entities
Gate QR access
A small web app issues time-windowed QR codes; a camera at the gate scans them and an MQTT verdict decides whether the gate opens.
Web app issues codes · gate camera scans · MQTT verdict switch into Home Assistant
Shed FINDER
An inventory app for a shed that had quietly become unmanageable — GitHub-backed JSON storage under an industrial, workshop-style interface.
Private repo · GitHub-backed JSON as the database · industrial/workshop visual style
The Open Paw Registry
A household cat registry, complete with printable parchment-style certificates and a custom stamp — bureaucracy, but for cats.
Built in React · printable parchment-style certificates · custom TOPR stamp logo
Infrastructure
- Host
- Ubuntu mini PC running Docker Engine natively, managed through Portainer CE.
- Storage
- A pair of 3TB external drives on a USB dock for bulk storage, plus a Synology NAS on the network.
- Services
- Immich for photos, Frigate for NVR and object detection, FreePBX for VoIP, and OpenClaw for AI agent experiments.
- Network
- A private Tailscale mesh ties the homelab together across devices.
- Cameras
- Multiple IP cameras feeding Frigate and Home Assistant, doing everything from security to keeping tabs on the cat bowl.
Off the bench
Not everything here has a microcontroller in it. Sailing takes up a good chunk of the rest — out on a Laser Pico dinghy, usually with an Insta360 X3 mounted somewhere to catch the footage afterward.
It's a decent counterweight to the workbench: fewer components, more wind, and nothing to reflash if it goes wrong.
That's the board, end to end.