The Meshtastic project published firmware 2.8.2.4c89b69 on 2 November 2026, a month after 2.8.1. It is marked as an alpha, so it is for people who like to test. Meshtastic is open-source firmware that turns cheap LoRa boards, many of them built on the ESP32 or nRF52840, into an off-grid text messaging mesh.
On 2 November 2026 Google Threat Intelligence said that last week it and its partners dismantled XCPE, a botnet built from more than 1.3 million Android set-top boxes in over 200 countries. The partners were Japan's National Police Agency, Lumen, HUMAN Security, Plume, Synthient and Trend Micro's TrendAI. Google says with high confidence that the b
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
Zigbee2MQTT 2.14.3 came out on 1 November 2026, a month after 2.14.2. Most of it is the usual monthly batch of new devices and fixes. The part that needs action is at the top of the notes: running Zigbee2MQTT on a 32-bit system is now deprecated, and support ends in April 2027.
On 26 October 2026 CERT Polska published 11 vulnerabilities in boneIO products, CVE-2026-77052 to CVE-2026-77062. They affect the boneIO Black controller software and the black_debian_images system image, and boneIO fixed them in version 1.6.0. The flaws were reported by Mateusz Włodarczak (s3ga), and CERT Polska coordinated the disclosure. The adv
Plenty of cheap Wi-Fi plugs, relays and switches are built around an Espressif chip and ship with firmware that talks only to the manufacturer's cloud. Tasmota replaces that firmware with an open one that runs entirely on your network: a web page on the device, a console, timers and rules on the device itself, and MQTT for anything bigger. This gui
Wi-Fi does not reach the bottom of the garden. Zigbee needs a chain of mains-powered routers to get to the shed, and there is no socket at the gate or the rain barrel. This is where LoRaWAN earns its place: a battery sensor that sends a few bytes from hundreds of metres or even kilometres away and runs for years on a pair of cells. It is not a repl
MQTT is the common language of local smart home devices. Zigbee2MQTT, Tasmota, Shelly, ESP boards and many DIY sensors can all publish to a broker on your own network. Node-RED is a visual tool that listens to those messages and reacts to them. Together they make a small, vendor-neutral automation setup that runs on a Raspberry Pi or any Debian or
Zigbee2MQTT is best known as a Home Assistant add-on, but it does not need Home Assistant at all. At its core it is a bridge: it talks Zigbee to your sensors, bulbs and switches through a USB or network adapter, and publishes everything as MQTT messages. Anything that speaks MQTT can then use those devices: Node-RED, openHAB, a Python script, an ES
