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THE SOTH JOURNAL

ESP & ESPHome

Ideas, know-how, and a little inspiration for your connected home.

WORTH A CLOSER LOOK

ESP & ESPHome

Espressif lays out how brands can run their own Matter fabric on ESP RainMaker, including OTA upgrades for devices already in the field

Espressif published a detailed overview of Matter Fabric support in ESP RainMaker, its IoT cloud platform, on its developer portal on 30 October 2026. It is not a new product. RainMaker has supported Matter fabrics since 2023, and the post pulls together what the support covers today. It is aimed at device makers who want their products to work wit
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read

Seeed puts its XIAO boards in one hub, with a board selector and a browser flasher for the ESP32 models

On 30 October 2026 Seeed Studio launched the XIAO Development Hub, a single site for its thumb-sized XIAO boards. It gathers a board selector, a pinout viewer, a web flasher for the ESP32 models, hardware files and a list of software tools. No new hardware comes with it, but for anyone who keeps a drawer of XIAO ESP32-C3, C6 or S3 boards the flashe
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read

CVE-2026-59177: the ESPHome add-on once exposed its dashboard to the whole LAN without a password, and ESPHome 2026.6.1 or newer is safe

The National Vulnerability Database published CVE-2026-59177 on October 28, 2026. It covers a flaw in ESPHome Device Builder, the dashboard behind the ESPHome add-on for Home Assistant, which let any device on the local network open the dashboard with no credentials. The bug is not new. ESPHome fixed it in June and published the advisory (GHSA-vv4j
Oct 29, 2026
3
min read

AiDot's ESP32-based Linkind and OREiN Matter plugs and bulbs can be hijacked from the local network through SSDP and UPnP parsing bugs

Two CVEs published on October 22 and 27, 2026 describe buffer overflows in the firmware of AiDot smart home devices, sold under the Linkind and OREiN brands. CVE-2026-78846 lets any device on the local network corrupt a plug's or bulb's memory with one crafted discovery reply. CVE-2026-78845 gives remote code execution to an attacker who controls o
Oct 29, 2026
3
min read

Cirkit Designer runs unmodified ESP32 and ESP32-S3 firmware in the browser with its own Rust emulator

Cirkit Designer, a browser-based tool for drawing circuits, writing firmware and simulating them, now emulates the original ESP32 and the ESP32-S3 at the instruction level. Its founder, Austin Small, described how it works in a post on Espressif's developer portal on 26 October 2026. The point for ESP32 tinkerers: you can test a sketch with a displ
Oct 28, 2026
3
min read

SCINTIX P4 puts an ESP32-P4 and ESP32-C6 on a Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5-sized module, so existing carrier boards can host an MCU

RELOC, a company from Parma, Italy, has built SCINTIX P4, a compute module that runs an ESP32-P4 microcontroller but fits the Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5 footprint. Espressif's developer portal published a write-up by RELOC engineer Leonardo Pedretti on 28 October 2026. The idea is simple: plug the module into a carrier board you already have, such as the
Oct 28, 2026
3
min read

ESPHome's VNC client gains touchscreen control and password support, so a wall panel can operate the dashboard it shows

When ESPHome merged its vnc component on 22 October, the first version had two clear gaps: it was view-only, and it could only connect to VNC servers with no password. Both are now closed in the development branch. Petar Petrov's pull request adding input actions and touchscreen forwarding was merged on 26 October 2026 (23:48 Polish time), and his
Oct 28, 2026
3
min read

ESPHome can now update a finished device over the network with just a firmware file and an IP address

A pull request merged into ESPHome's development branch on 28 October 2026 (01:48 Polish time) lets esphome upload send a prebuilt firmware image to a device without a YAML configuration. The change is by Nate Clark and was reviewed by J. Nick Koston (bdraco). It targets a group ESPHome rarely served well from the command line: owners of finished p
Oct 28, 2026
3
min read