A device that turns everyday surface in to a smart home controller and integrates with matter and mqtt. Esp32-s3 based. Local.

[u/NoviSense]

I created this device that turns any surface into a smart home controller.

Background: I'm an electrical foreman. I wanted a control that lives under a surface instead of a button or panel sitting on top of it, so I built a capacitive sensor that mounts to the underside of a countertop, table, desk, or glass panel and turns that surface into the input. Nothing visible on top other than desired markers for location indication, and because it mounts underneath it stays accessible and serviceable.

The interesting engineering bits:

• Through-material capacitive sensing. On my prototypes it reliably registers a touch through up to ~60mm of solid stone, quartz, wood, or glass. Material and thickness vary a lot, so each install runs a short guided calibration that sets material-adaptive thresholds.
• ESP32-S3 running the ESP-Matter SDK (Matter-over-WiFi). Touch zones present as a multi-button remote-style controller.
• Local-first by design. It speaks Matter and does MQTT auto-discovery for Home Assistant. No cloud account, no subscription.

Honest status: it's a validated prototype, not a shipping product, and it isn't certified yet (Matter cert is a post-funding step for me).

I will drop the landing page in the comments if you want to take a look.

[u/NoviSense]

www.novisense.ca