Sowel, open source home automation engine
A home automation engine where you apply recipes to rooms instead of writing scripts. I develop its core, plugins, and the LoRa radio nodes that automate Domaine Solio.
- Client
- Open source project
- Period
- 2026 - present
- Role
- Core developer, plugin author, electronics and firmware for the radio nodes
The need
Traditional home automation asks you to write a script or a configuration file for every automation. Sowel replaces that programming with parameterised recipes applied to an area of the house. The engine runs locally, with no cloud, and grows through plugins installed from a built-in store without a restart.
Sowel is released under the AGPL licence. A small team of contributors maintains the project, and every plugin or recipe I write for Domaine Solio becomes available to every user of the engine.
The solution
- 01
Engine core: UPS equipment type, low battery alerts, nested energy meters, analysis charts, support for several Zigbee coordinators, and interface pages contributed by a plugin.
- 02
Plugins: UPS monitoring through Network UPS Tools, shared access with codes and time slots for guests and tradespeople, improvements to the Zigbee2MQTT plugin.
- 03
Automation recipes: ventilation driven by indoor and outdoor humidity, water heater running on solar surplus, radiator capping, gate closing at nightfall.
- 04
868 MHz LoRa radio nodes on RP2040 and RFM95W: wiring diagram, C++ firmware, radio protocol signed with HMAC and protected against replay, enclosures modelled and 3D printed.
- 05
Deployment at Domaine Solio: around forty Zigbee devices for ventilation, heating and energy, LoRa nodes for the gate and the henhouse, and an on-site radio coverage survey.
The outcome
Plugins and recipes published under a free licence and installable from the Sowel store. Domaine Solio runs on Sowel, and the LoRa nodes for the gate and the henhouse are being commissioned.
In pictures
