Setup is where trust is won or lost
Most smart-home setups start by asking you to make an account. We think that's backwards. The gateway is yours; provisioning should be a local, private handshake between your phone and the device in front of you.
A NimBLE GATT server on the gateway
The gateway exposes a small GATT service over BLE. The Android Hub connects directly, reads the device identity, and writes the initial configuration — Wi-Fi credentials (optional), a wall-clock time push, and the admin key.
- No cloud in the setup path.
- The phone becomes the trusted controller via a key exchange, not a login.
- Time is pushed from the phone, so the gateway has an accurate clock without NTP.
Manual admission is a feature
New ESP-NOW nodes don't silently join. They appear in an Add / Ignore dialog on the gateway's touch UI. Admission is a deliberate act — you can see exactly what is being let onto your network, on a screen you can physically touch.
This is slower than auto-join. That's the point.