Owners of the AC Infinity AirTap T4/T6 with a Gen2 vent can replace the factory control board with our ESP32 module to add local smart home control through ESPHome and Home Assistant. The Gen2 housing keeps the original button bracket in place. The kit includes a small display cover bracket made for the Gen2 layout. This guide walks through what is in the kit, how that cover bracket fits, and the exact steps to install the PCB. [Read More]

The SiloCityLabs ESP32 Module for the AC Infinity AirTap T4/T6 already gives Home Assistant users a clean way to upgrade an AirTap vent into a connected smart-home device. The current ESPHome firmware path supports the important hardware pieces: PWM fan control, onboard temperature sensing, OLED display output, physical buttons, panel lockout, and newer IR receiver support on supported builds.

But there is another smart-home audience that could benefit from this hardware: Apple Home users.

If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, using HomePod, Siri on iPhone, Apple TV, scenes, automations, and the Apple Home app, the natural question is: Could the AirTap ESP32 upgrade kit run native Apple Home firmware instead of ESPHome?

Yes it can! HomeSpan provides developers with libraries to create an ESP32 firmware that pairs the AirTap directly with Apple Home over Wi-Fi. That’s native Apple support without Home Assistant, without a Home Assistant HomeKit Bridge, and without a separate server translating ESPHome entities into HomeKit accessories.

This post is not a finished firmware release. It is a technical roadmap for developers, makers, and advanced AirTap owners who want to understand what it would take to build one. It’s enough architecture to start the project, enough code structure to see the direction, and enough caution to avoid the obvious traps.

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Remember when you could open your computer or browser and not immediately get “suggested content”? Most apps nowadays open to a “home” or “feed” page. I miss bookmarks, so I’m bringing them back. I’m bypassing the slop conveyor that is YouTube’s home page. I’m jumping straight to the subscriptions - the content I actually asked to see.

This was easy to automate in Tasker using Android intents.

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I was experiencing a frustrating issue on Ubuntu 24.04 related to Bluetooth profile switching.

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What started as a simple local development tool for DigitalOcean Functions quietly turned into something much more serious: a production-grade failover system that now runs across home TrueNAS servers owned by the operators of FilaMeter. Internally, we call it DOrunner. The original goal was mundane—test Go-based serverless functions locally without burning through API calls or waiting on cloud deploys. But as usage grew and traffic patterns became less predictable, that local runner evolved into a core part of our production architecture. [Read More]

Somehow, OpenSCAD has become my main 3D modeling program. It’s incredibly powerful for parametric models but it’s also brain-intensive. I speed up development with the BOSL2 library. Many BOSL2 objects have built-in rounding features so I don’t need to invoke minkowski().

A trick with BOSL2 is negative rounding. Instead of cutting a corner, it makes the corner stick out. This is very useful for smoothing sharp edges, tapering pin holes, and generally filleting odd shapes. Make an object with negative rounding/chamfer, then use it to cut another object with subtract().

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Owners of the AC Infinity AirTap T4/T6 may be looking for a way to retrofit their older Gen2 ESP32 module so it can operate inside the newer Gen3 AirTap vent. The Gen3 design uses a different mounting layout and sensor position, which means the original Gen2 hardware does not fit or function without modification. To solve this, we created a simple upgrade path that lets you reuse your Gen2 module with full Gen3 compatibility. [Read More]

I’m using PouchDB lately, a JavaScript database that works in the browser. PouchDB for Javascript requires callbacks and I found myself stacking quite a bit of JS-specific syntax together. I haven’t written JS in quite a while so this was daunting. Lets go through all the pieces that add up to easy async database calls.

Synchronous PHP example

Here is a PHP sample of accessing a database.

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Working alongside One Buffalo Labs, we’re excited to formalize a partnership that ensures SiloCityLabs’ projects have a clean, fast, and accessible home online.

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If you’ve ever struggled to keep track of your 3D filament spools, wondering how much filament is left or dealing with a failed print due to an empty spool, FilaMeter is the filament tracking solution you’ve been looking for. Managing your 3D printing filament inventory no longer has to involve guesswork.

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