Aidan Maurin-Jones

A custom ESPHome touchscreen control panel and alarm keypad built with LVGL, designed to replace bloated dashboards with a fast, local-first interface that feels more like dedicated hardware than an app.

Local-first smart home control meets real device awareness. This setup combines an ESPHome-powered IR remote for instant, customizable control with an HDMI-CEC listener that provides accurate, real-time TV state–eliminating guesswork and cloud dependencies entirely.

The story behind my new landing page at aidanmaurinjones.com and how I built it with Hugo and Hermit-V2.

Obsidian is an excellent app, but oddly it doesn’t fit my workflow. Here’s why I keep coming back to BBEdit, Marked 2, and my existing stack instead.

I built a Shortcut that takes the same Markdown file I use for my Hugo site’s Newsletter Archive and publishes it directly to Buttondown. One file, two destinations, no extra work.

A playful Shortcut that uses AppleScript, Shortcuts, and LM Studio to automatically draft hilariously rude replies to spam emails.

Using three clever Shortcuts and the Kasa cloud API, you can log in, list devices, and control TP-Link Kasa smart plugs and switches directly from Shortcuts—no Homebridge required.

A simple Shortcut that converts any date—or the current one—into Unix time, perfect for APIs, logging, and automation workflows.

A flexible Shortcut that dynamically calculates the start and end of the current week and fetches only your calendar events within that range.

With a couple of Shortcuts and the SwitchBot Web API, I can fetch my devices and send commands directly—no app required.