Paulus Schoutsen, founder of the Open Home Foundation (OHF), and ecosystem lead Marcel van der Veldt recently made their first trip to China, holding an offline meetup in Shenzhen and visiting several companies. Few&Far (Shaoshu Pai) conducted an exclusive interview with them. Paulus revealed that OHF is researching compliant paths for local operations, potentially requiring a local legal entity to legally distribute the software in China, with plans to return to China no later than 18 months from now; the team also hopes to promote an independent “Works with Home Assistant” certification to help Chinese hardware manufacturers — currently hindered by language and certification barriers — reach international markets. By number of contributors, Home Assistant is now the world’s largest open-source project, surpassing VS Code in activity, with millions of users globally; domestic users previously had to rely on special network tools to complete basic installation and updates, accumulating a considerable community size under “hell mode” difficulty — the Shenzhen meetup was fully booked all day, with enthusiasts flying in from all over the country.
On the technical front, OHF spent a year developing, with input from a mathematics professor on algorithm R&D, a fully open-source, decentralized multi-room audio protocol called Sendspin, aiming to compete with Apple AirPlay and Google Cast. Developers will be able to build a multi-room audio system using inexpensive ESP development boards in the future. In response to the industry practice where a large number of Matter devices, under the guise of “Matter certification,” still force users to register for a cloud account in order to obtain the pairing QR code, OHF explicitly refuses to certify any device that relies on cloud-based setup and is actively promoting an open-source Bluetooth proxy solution based on the ESP32, allowing domestic users without Google Play services to access Matter devices without barriers. Paulus views OpenClaw as an “AI agent layer” that can be stacked on top of HA — each has its own role, together forming a localized, fully open-source smart home solution.