Smart devices have slowly crept into our households over the last decade — lights, thermostats, blinds, solar systems, cameras, sensors, and appliances. Every brand wants to be part of the modern connected home.
And yet, despite being one of the people who actually build these devices, you would barely find anything “smart” in my own household.
That contradiction reveals something important.
Most people see convenience.
Most companies see revenue.
I see the fragmentation.
The Hidden Trend: Every Company Wants a Walled Garden
After years of observing the ecosystem, a pattern is obvious:
Nearly every company is building its own closed platform.
- Their own app
- Their own cloud
- Their own hubs
- Their own protocols
- Their own micro-ecosystem
From the company’s perspective, the logic is sound. Lock-in means:
- predictable revenue,
- higher lifetime value,
- better control over user behavior,
- a larger share of the customer’s home.
This is how shareholders think.
This is how most boards think.
This is how the industry operates.
But every coin has three sides.
The third one is the user experience.
The User Pays the Price
What benefits the company often harms the user.
A typical modern household may require 10–12 different apps to control:
- heating,
- blinds,
- lights,
- air quality sensors,
- solar production,
- garden irrigation,
- robotic vacuum,
- security cameras,
- door locks,
- and more.
Every system is isolated.
Every platform is incomplete.
Every update breaks something.
This is the cost of fragmentation.
And users have quietly accepted it.
A Different Path: What We Tried to Build in Lutemi
In our startup Lutemi, we wanted to challenge this trend.
We were building a smart henhouse — but not a toy project. We built:
- industrial-grade hardware,
- local decision-making,
- robust IoT firmware,
- and most importantly… Home Assistant integration out of the box.
We planned to release:
- our own mobile app for regular users, and
- an open-source core for the community.
A hybrid model:
Convenience for non-technical people.
Freedom for makers and integrators.
It felt right.
It aligned with my values.
It solved the real problem.
Then came the strategic meeting.
The Strategic Pivot: Lock-In vs Openness
Our marketing advisor argued the classic logic:
“Money is in data. You need your own cloud. Your own app. Your own captive ecosystem. That’s the only viable long-term model.”
We voted.
The new direction passed.
I was reluctant — deeply.
But I understood the business reasoning.
Startups are a game of survival, not purity.
If the company were mine alone, we would have written a different story.
But in a startup, direction is a negotiation.
And sometimes compromise is the only realistic option.
Still, I kept thinking:
Is there no middle ground?
The Real Compromise: A Closed Platform with Open Doors
After years in IoT, my conclusion is simple:
The best model is a closed platform with an open API.
Why?
Because:
- 95% of users will stay inside your ecosystem for convenience.
- 5% of power users, engineers, integrators, and tinkerers will build extraordinary things — but only if you let them.
Give people:
- local control,
- API access,
- integration points (especially Home Assistant),
- and the option to expand the system on their terms.
This hybrid model respects both:
- business profitability, and
- user sovereignty.
It is how I will design all my future systems.
A Glimpse Into Integration Done Right
Below is an early video from our Lutemi–Home Assistant integration prototype.
This is how an open ecosystem can look when hardware is designed to cooperate, not dominate:
Early smart-henhouse prototype using a Raspberry Pi 4 and Controllino MAXI, before we transitioned to fully custom hardware.
Everything was live, local, and extensible.
Everything worked through open standards.
Everything could be automated from a single dashboard.
This is the future users deserve.
My Philosophy: Integration Above All
Whether I build:
- IoT devices,
- cloud systems,
- developer tools,
- or personal transformation frameworks…
…I always return to the same foundation:
Integration over fragmentation.
Systems should work together.
People should work together.
Technologies should work together.
We don’t need more walled gardens.
We need bridges.
It’s time more companies joined that direction.
If you’re building IoT, embedded systems, or connected products and want a perspective grounded in both engineering and system philosophy — I’m open to conversations.
