CFP URL: https://raeymeister.github.io/FOSDEM_2027_SmartHomes_Devroom_cfp/
Modern smart homes are built from much more than a single automation platform. They combine devices and embedded software, communication protocols, message brokers, orchestration, data storage, observability, local and edge computing, energy management and self-hosted infrastructure.
The Smart Homes Devroom will connect these layers and demonstrate how open, interoperable and vendor-independent smart homes can be built, in practice including local-first, privacy, resiliency can be under user’s control.
Talks about open standards, protocols and hardware are also in scope when they focus on open implementations, tooling, interoperability, reverse engineering or other work that contributes to an open smart-home ecosystem.
Submissions must have a clear connection to smart home technologies. General talks about infrastructure, AI, security, energy, embedded systems, and self-hosting are only relevant when applied directly to smart homes.
Suggested topics
We welcome submissions covering topics including, but not limited to:
- Platforms and automation: home automation platforms, architectures, orchestration, workflow tools, integrations
- Devices: open hardware, sensors, actuators, embedded systems, firmware, local voice assistants, edge AI, presence detection, ...
- Interoperability and messaging: Matter, Thread, Zigbee, Z-Wave, MQTT, protocol bridges and gateways
- Infrastructure and self-hosting: homelabs, message brokers, storage, networking, monitoring, observability and data visualisation
- Real-world implementations: integrations across different layers, migrations, failures, trade-offs and lessons learned
What we are looking for
We particularly encourage talks that address a clearly defined technical or practical problem, demonstrate integrations between open technologies, discuss standards and real-world interoperability, explain architectural decisions and trade-offs, share operational experience and lessons learned, or provide knowledge that others can reuse.
Project introductions are welcome, especially where they help attendees understand an important part of the wider ecosystem. Proposals should go beyond a feature overview and explain the problem being solved, where the project fits in the smart-home stack, how it complements or integrates with other technologies and what attendees can learn from it.
We welcome submissions from maintainers, contributors, developers, researchers and experienced practitioners who can share first-hand knowledge of a project, standard, integration, architecture or real-world implementation. Both professional and hobbyist perspectives are valuable.
The audience will include people from different parts of the open-source ecosystem, with varying levels of familiarity with smart-home technologies. Talks should therefore provide enough context to be understandable beyond a project’s own community while still offering meaningful technical depth. Please make the intended audience, assumed knowledge and key takeaways clear in your proposal.
The Smart Homes Devroom is strictly non-promotional. Speakers may be affiliated with commercial organisations, but submissions must focus on Free and Open Source Software, open technologies and technical substance. Product pitches, sales presentations and marketing-led talks are out of scope.
Proposals will be evaluated on their technical substance, openness, relevance, originality and value to the FOSDEM community.
Our goal is to show how open projects fit together across the smart-home stack and where collaboration between their communities can improve interoperability, resilience and user control.
Why does this proposal fit FOSDEM:This proposal fits FOSDEM because it brings together Free and Open Source Software communities around a shared technical challenge: building smart homes that remain interoperable, local-first and under the user’s control. The subject spans several established FOSDEM domains, embedded systems, networking, automation, observability, security, energy and self-hosting.
In the last decade, home automation talks have appeared regurlarly but no FOSDEM room
have been dedicated to them.
The devroom will provide a neutral, strictly non-commercial forum for developers, maintainers and users to exchange practical knowledge, demonstrate integrations and discuss architectural choices, open standards and real-world lessons. By connecting communities that are often presented separately, it can stimulate collaboration across projects while providing FOSDEM attendees open alternatives to fragmented, cloud-dependent and proprietary smart-home solutions..
Prefered slot:Full day (any)
Submitters affinity to the topic:Maarten Raeymaekers and Arjen Moermans are long-standing smart-home enthusiasts who build and maintain their own open-source home-automation and self-hosted environments. Both work in technical solution consulting and regularly prepare and deliver technical sessions, coordinate speakers and stakeholders, and organise technical events. They will apply that experience to programme curation, speaker preparation and on-site organisation.
Joost Lekkerkerker works for the Open Home Foundation and contributes to the Home Assistant ecosystem, bringing a maintainer’s perspective from a major opensource smart-home community.
Olivier Daury is a Principal Cloud Architect at Amadeus, a member of its Open Source Board, which reviews project proposals and guides contributors through IP requirements. He is also part of the hachyderm.io infrastructure team.
Three volunteers join the four organisers, covering room management, speaker coordination,
timekeeping and audience flow for the full-day programme.
Together, the organisers combine an independent, ecosystem-wide view with direct experience from one of its major communities. The devroom will remain neutral and strictly non-commercial, open to all projects on equal terms.