Nick Cupo
I build things for the house, cook, train jiu-jitsu, and carry a camera around Central Florida. This is where I write it down: what I built, what worked, and what I got away with.
Projects
All projects- Controlling a Samsung oven from Home AssistantAugust 28, 2026
A maintained Home Assistant integration for SmartThings ovens, with the token bug that broke it every 24 hours fixed.
An ESP32 pulses the gate operator and watches its open and close signals. Most of the work went into knowing when the gate is actually closed.
- A salt level monitor for the water softenerFebruary 6, 2026
An ESP32 in the garage reports how full the brine tank is, and both phones get a nudge before it runs out.
- A thermostat for a heat lamp saunaJanuary 15, 2026
My coach built a heat lamp sauna at the gym. An ESP32 holds it at a setpoint, keeps it from running away, and spares the bulbs from cycling themselves to death.
- Turning a dead 27-inch 5K iMac into a monitorMay 15, 2025
The logic board died. The 5120 by 2880 panel behind the glass was fine. A DisplayPort driver board and a new set of adhesive strips made it a monitor.
Recipes
All recipes- Caramelized onions, with a microwave head startside · September 9, 2026
Ten minutes in the microwave drives off most of the water before the onions ever hit the pan, so they brown in about twenty minutes instead of an hour.