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THE SOTH JOURNAL

Local control

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

WORTH A CLOSER LOOK

Local control

Synology warns that C3RB3R ransomware is encrypting NAS drives running DSM builds without the December 2024 fixes

Synology published a warning on 29 October 2026: attackers are exploiting a vulnerability the company patched in December 2024 to break into NAS drives running outdated versions of DSM, its operating system, then encrypt the data and demand a ransom. On 2 November BleepingComputer linked the attacks to the C3RB3R ransomware. Synology rarely issues
Nov 2, 2026
3
min read

A community Edge driver runs older Roombas from a SmartThings hub over local MQTT, without the iRobot cloud

A SmartThings community developer who goes by Stoeckie published an Edge driver on 30 October 2026 that lets a SmartThings hub control iRobot Roomba vacuums directly on the local network. The hub talks to the robot over the robot's own MQTT broker, with TLS on port 8883. There is no cloud service, no IFTTT and no extra computer in between. The code
Nov 2, 2026
3
min read

OpenThread Border Router v2026.11.0 can serve its REST API on a Unix socket and reports Thread 1.4.1 route diagnostics

The OpenThread project published OpenThread Border Router (ot-br-posix) v2026.11.0 on 1 November 2026. This is the open-source border router that many Thread setups run underneath, including Home Assistant's OpenThread Border Router add-on and plenty of DIY builds on a Raspberry Pi with a radio co-processor. The monthly release has two changes wort
Nov 1, 2026
3
min read

eWeLink CUBE 2.15 adds Sonoff's E-ink sensor and ZBM5 wall switches, and syncs more Wi-Fi and Matter devices into the local hub

eWeLink published CUBE 2.15.0 on 29 October 2026. CUBE is the self-hosted, local version of the eWeLink platform behind Sonoff devices. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, in a virtual machine, on some NAS models, in Docker, and through one-click installers for Windows and Mac. It talks to Zigbee devices through a USB dongle and can expose them to ot
Oct 30, 2026
3
min read

Modbus at home: read an energy meter or inverter over RS-485 or TCP

A lot of energy hardware already has a local data interface that often goes unused: DIN-rail energy meters, solar inverters, heat pumps and ventilation units often speak Modbus. The protocol comes from industrial controllers and needs no cloud or account. Once it works, you can poll voltage, power and energy counters as often as the device allows.
Oct 30, 2026
11
min read