“All hands on deck, Scotty?”

Anyone familiar with openHAB knows that the learning curve is steep, but the possibilities are incredibly vast. You quickly realize that rigid schedules don’t make a house truly smart. A real smart home needs to know who is on board to intelligently manage life support systems (heating, lighting, security).

As a long-time Trekkie, the design for my dashboard was a no-brainer: the classic TOS (The Original Series) crew would represent our family of five. When a crew member is on board, their avatar lights up in full color on the UI widget. If they leave the ship, the display switches to grayscale, signaling their “Away Mission” status.