Goals

Vision

Home Hub transforms a Dell Inspiron 14 5420 laptop into a living room entertainment center and smart home controller. It combines media playback (YouTube, Netflix, web browsing) with Home Assistant orchestration and a custom ESP32 WiFi smart speaker for voice control and multi-room audio routing.

Active

• Reliable audio playback for media and entertainment use #high
• Home Assistant running stably alongside desktop applications #high
• Voice-controlled audio routing between laptop speakers and ESP32 smart speaker #high
• ESP32 smart speaker with wake word detection and voice assistant #medium
• Seamless media control via voice commands #medium

Future

• Multi-room audio with additional ESP32 speakers #low
• Whole-home automation routines via voice #low
• Remote access and monitoring of Home Assistant #low

Non-Goals

• Replacing dedicated smart speakers - The ESP32 speaker is DIY and experimental, not a polished consumer product
• Server workloads - This is an entertainment/control hub, not a compute server
• Always-on server workloads - No 24/7 services beyond Home Assistant (this is a living room device, not a rack server)