The Booth That Wasn't Selling Anything
Walk through IFA Berlin and almost every booth is trying to sell you something. That is what a trade show is for.
The Open Home Foundation booth was not selling anything. No checkout, no order forms, no lead capture. The whole point of being there was to tell people about Home Assistant, ESPHome, and Music Assistant, and to answer questions from anyone who wandered over.
In a hall that size, that is an unusual thing to do. It is also the clearest explanation of what the foundation actually is.
Why we came back
We had our own booth at IFA last year. The response from the community was the reason we knew we had to come back. People stopped to talk about setups they had been running for years, problems they were stuck on, and things they wished existed. We left with a notebook full of ideas and a much better sense of who we are building for.
This year the foundation let us hang out at their booth instead, and we are grateful they did. Getting to spend the week next to the people who build the software our entire business runs on is not something we take lightly.
What we brought
Three things, all of which are easier to understand when you are holding them.
The ESPHome Starter Kit got the most hands on it. Watching someone snap a module off the panel, connect one ribbon cable, and immediately understand the whole idea is a good reminder that hardware explains itself faster than copy does.
The M-1 LED Matrix did what it always does, which is stop people mid-walk. It is hard to ignore 4,096 pixels running an animation.
The R PRO-1 brought out the people who wanted to talk about mounting, PoE runs, and gang boxes. Those conversations tend to be the most technical of the week, and we enjoy them.
Meeting the EU community in person
A lot of our community is in Europe. We talk to them constantly on Discord and the forum, but that is not the same as standing across from someone while they describe the automation they built.
You learn different things in person. People tell you what is annoying about your product when they can point at it. They mention the thing they almost bought but did not, and why. They show you photos of installs you would never have imagined. Several conversations this week will change what we build next.
If you came by and talked to us, thank you. That is the entire reason we make the trip.
The people who make it work
The foundation put its team in front of the public all week, which meant anyone could walk up and talk to the people who actually run these projects.
- Paulus, President of the Open Home Foundation
- Frenck, Lead of Home Assistant
- Joost, Developer Relations
- Melissa, Lead of Community
- Missy, Community Manager
- Marcel, Lead of Ecosystem
- Ingo, Matter Lead Developer
- Niels, Product Manager
- And the community volunteers who gave up their week to help
That list is worth sitting with. These are the people who own and maintain the software that a huge part of the smart home world runs on, and for five days anyone could walk up and ask them anything. Very few projects of this size are that reachable.
Thank you to all of them, and to everyone at the foundation who organized it.
Nabu Casa
It was good to have Nabu Casa at the booth as well, the other commercial partner of the foundation, with their Home Assistant devices.
Trevor also got to speak alongside Carl, Nabu Casa's VP of Commercial, on the Monday. There are only two commercial partners, so getting to stand next to them and talk about building hardware around open source software was a genuinely useful conversation, and a fun one.
Why showing up matters
It would be cheaper to skip this. Flights, freight, a booth, and a week away from the workshop add up, and a trade show is not where we sell most of our hardware.
We go anyway, because being reachable is part of the deal. If we ask people to trust us with hardware in their homes, they should be able to find us, look us in the eye, and tell us what they think. Both of Apollo's founders were there this week for exactly that reason.
The same goes for the foundation. Standing in a commercial hall with a booth that sells nothing, purely to explain what open source smart home software can do, takes real commitment. We think that is worth supporting, which is why the majority of the profit from every ESPHome Starter Kit goes back to them.
Thank you
To the Open Home Foundation for having us. To everyone who stopped by the booth, asked a hard question, showed us a photo of their setup, or told us what we should fix. To Nabu Casa for the good company.
And to anyone reading this who is curious about any of it, we are easy to find. Discord, the forum, and the wiki are all open, and we are in there most days.
See you at the next one.
Apollo Automation designs, engineers, and manufactures privacy-first, locally-controlled smart home sensors in Versailles, Kentucky. Every product features 100% local control with no cloud dependencies or subscriptions required. Apollo is a Works With Home Assistant partner, Made For ESPHome certified, Works With Homey certified, a BBB Accredited Business, and the second official commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation. Learn more at apolloautomation.com.
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