The things in your home should be yours.

We wrote this page before STRAT had a price, so that we could not back out. It says what we do not like about today's “smart” objects and what we promised ourselves to do differently.

A bulb that will not turn on without the internet is a helpless bulb.

“Smart” things have become dependent.

Almost everything sold today as “smart” leaves your home in order to come back: you tap on the phone, the command goes up to the company's cloud, comes back down into your room and only then does something happen. If the internet goes down, if the company changes the app or if the server is shut off because the product did not sell enough, the object in your house becomes an ordinary object. Or a subscription.

We have seen thermostats, locks, speakers and lamps that were working fine on the day someone, somewhere, decided they were no longer worth keeping alive. We do not want to sell anything that depends on our goodwill five years from now.

Every connected object is a door into your home.

Security is a duty to whoever lets us into their home.

A motion sensor in a bedroom knows when you sleep and when you are not home. A camera knows what your child looks like. That data usually goes to servers you never see, through apps with default passwords, firmware not updated in years and terms nobody has read. Most of the time it is haste rather than malice, but you are the one who carries the consequences.

Ovidiu comes from security, where the basic rule says the safest information is the one that goes nowhere. That is why STRAT has no account and sends nothing outside your network. The sensor sees the bedroom floor, and what it sees stays in the lamp.

An object you cannot open just lives at your place.

Closed means someone else's.

Shells glued where they could be screwed. Batteries that cannot be removed. Encrypted firmware, with features that disappear with an update. Everything is designed so that you do not get in and you buy another one when the first breaks.

We do the opposite. STRAT runs on ESPHome, an open firmware you can read, modify and install yourself. Every layer is a separate part, held magnetically, that you take off by hand.

A new gadget every season is consumption, however often it gets called progress.

Objects made to be thrown away.

This industry lives off replacement: the colour of the year, the model of the year, the feature of the year. Products are designed for the photo in the shop, and the fifth year on the nightstand is nobody's job. Stock is made before anyone wants it, then come the discounts, then the waste.

We prefer an object that lasts ten years to one that sells well for a season. That is why we print only what someone has ordered and keep no stock. If in two years you want more light from STRAT, you add another slice.

What we commit to.

To order.: We print after you have ordered, in small batches. We keep no stock.
Said plainly.: Renders are called renders, and the prototype a prototype. STRAT has no price yet and we do not make one up.
A person answers.: There are two of us. When you write to the workshop, one of us answers.
Local.: Everything STRAT does happens in your network, with no account and no subscription. It works even if we disappear tomorrow.
Open.: STRAT runs on ESPHome, with MQTT and a native Home Assistant API. You can read the code and you can change it.
Repairable by hand.: The lamp's layers attach magnetically and nothing is glued for good. We replace the part, not the product.

Have a question or a project?

Write to us at [email protected]. There are two of us, so one of us will answer.

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