Nexop

The problem

Smart-home hardware works. Living with forty connected devices is a different matter.

That house has forty apps, three ecosystems that half-talk to each other, and a rules engine built on the assumption that the owner will sit down and write automations by hand. Almost nobody does. The devices settle into life as expensive light switches, and the house never gets round to adapting to anyone.

Connectivity was never the shortfall. What is missing is a system that holds any model of the household and can propose something without being asked.

What Nexop does

Nexop sits on the local network and watches device and sensor events over time. When a pattern repeats often enough (the study lights come on at dusk on weekdays but not weekends; the aircon goes off when the last person leaves), it writes the automation out in plain language. You approve it, edit it in conversation, or ignore it.

You can also just ask it something. Questions are answered against the home’s own state, and any proposed automation can be refined in conversation and previewed before it is allowed to run.

Why local, and why KNX

Two decisions shape the rest of the product.

The first is that it runs in the house. Device control does not depend on a vendor’s cloud being up or a subscription being current. Privacy is part of that, though the stronger argument is reliability: a light switch that needs an internet connection is a worse light switch.

The second is native KNX support rather than Home Assistant alone. KNX is the backbone of professionally installed European homes, and consumer smart-home AI has largely ignored it. Speaking it directly opens a route to installers and high-end homes that app-first competitors cannot reach.

The hardware

Nexop ships as an appliance rather than software you install, so the enclosure was part of the build. It is a custom case around a Jetson Orin Nano, modelled and revised several times, with the Zigbee radio placement and the thermal path designed in from the start.

The hardware side of my background is the only reason that part of the product exists, which is why Nexop is the project I point at when someone asks what I do.