Week in Review: Feb 2 - Feb 8, 2026

This was one of those weeks where everything seemed to accelerate at once. ESP32 devices getting wired into Home Assistant, an app update shipping to the Play Store, a pile of blog posts going live, and some real progress on the multi-worker AI workflow that’s becoming central to how I build things. Let me break it down.

WiFi Share Gets Another Polish Pass

WiFi Share (the QR-code-based WiFi sharing app on Google Play) got bumped to v1.2.3 this week. The previous release added haptic feedback, but there were some platform-specific quirks — subtle timing differences between Android versions that made the tactile response feel inconsistent. This update smooths that out and tightens up a few other UI interactions.

I also wrote a post walking through the v1.2.2 update and the thinking behind haptic feedback in utility apps. It’s one of those features that sounds trivial until you realize how much it affects perceived quality. A button that buzzes slightly when you tap it just feels more trustworthy than one that doesn’t. Small details, big impact.

ESP32 Everywhere

This was the week I went deep on ESP32 integration with Home Assistant. I’ve been running a few devices for a while, but this week I got serious about expanding the fleet:

• RATGDO garage controller — Full garage door control and status through HA. Open, close, light toggle, obstruction detection. No cloud dependency.
• Gate alarm sensor — Monitoring the driveway gate with an ESP32 wired into the existing alarm contacts. Instant notifications when the gate opens.
• Electric fence monitor — This one’s fun. An ESP32 reading the fence charger’s pulse to confirm it’s energizing properly. If it stops pulsing, HA fires an alert.
• Vacuum water relay — Automated water fill for the robot vacuum’s mopping tank. The ESP32 controls a relay valve and shuts off based on a float sensor. No more forgetting to fill the tank.

Each of these runs ESPHome, which makes the HA integration almost trivial once the YAML is dialed in. The harder part is always the physical wiring — figuring out voltage levels, relay trigger logic (my relay module is active-low, which tripped me up initially), and making sure the ESP32’s 3.3V GPIO plays nicely with 5V relay coils.

Mesh Networking Research

Beyond the individual device integrations, I started researching ESP32 mesh networking — the idea of having a distributed sensor network where devices relay data through each other instead of each one needing direct WiFi access. This is relevant for outdoor sensors where WiFi coverage is spotty. Still early-stage research, but the ESP-NOW protocol looks promising for low-latency, low-power mesh communication. More on this as it develops.

App Development Ramp-Up

Outside of WiFi Share, I’ve been laying the groundwork for several new Android apps using Expo and React Native. I can’t talk about specifics yet (nothing’s on the Play Store), but I’ve been establishing patterns that I expect to reuse across all of them:

• Offline-first architecture — Every app stores data locally first, syncs later if applicable. No internet required for core functionality. This is a philosophical choice as much as a technical one. Your data should work even when your connection doesn’t.
• Privacy-first development — No analytics SDKs, no tracking, no phoning home. If an app doesn’t need the internet to function, it shouldn’t be making network requests.

Blog Content Explosion

This week saw a burst of technical articles:

• Backup strategies and the 3-2-1-1-0 rule — Why three copies on two media types with one offsite, one offline, and zero unverified restores is the baseline, not the goal.
• Local AI vs. cloud cost comparison — Running models on local hardware (like my dual V100 setup) versus paying per-token for cloud APIs. The math is more nuanced than most people think.
• Unraid Docker best practices — Container management patterns I’ve refined over time. Restart policies, volume mounts, network modes, log rotation.
• Home Assistant presence detection — How I combine multiple presence signals (phone WiFi, Bluetooth, motion sensors) for reliable home/away detection.
• Smart home security — Practical security hardening for HA and IoT devices. VLANs, firewall rules, keeping IoT devices off your main network.

That’s a lot of writing in one week. Having the multi-worker AI setup helps — I can have one worker researching while another is drafting, and a third is reviewing.

Multi-Worker AI Patterns

I’ve been running four Claude Code workers simultaneously for a few weeks now, but this week I really refined the coordination patterns. The key challenges are:

• Project locking — Two workers can’t edit the same project simultaneously without stepping on each other. I built a simple lock file system where each worker claims a project before touching it.
• Task handoffs — When Worker 1 finishes research, Worker 2 needs to pick up the results and start building. This requires a shared file system and clear conventions for where outputs go.
• Status visibility — At any moment I need to know what each worker is doing, what it’s blocked on, and what it finished.

The system isn’t perfect yet, but it’s dramatically increased throughput. Tasks that would have been sequential — research, build, review — now overlap.

Home Assistant Blueprints

On the HA side, I built several reusable automation blueprints this week. Blueprints are HA’s way of creating parameterized automation templates — you define the structure once, then create instances with different inputs. I created blueprints for common patterns like “notify when a door has been open for X minutes” and “turn off lights when no motion for Y minutes.” Much cleaner than copy-pasting automations.

I also did some research into local voice control for Home Assistant. The goal is voice commands processed entirely on-device, no cloud STT/TTS. The Whisper model running on GPU makes this feasible, though latency is still a challenge for a natural conversational feel.

What’s Next

Next week I’m planning to continue the ESP32 expansion — there are a few more sensors I want to wire up, and I want to get the mesh networking prototype running between two devices. On the app side, I’ll keep building out the new projects and hopefully have something testable soon. And I want to get the local voice pipeline for Home Assistant into a usable state, even if it’s rough around the edges.