This is the real thing, running right now.

Worth doing while you are in there

• Start an activity — Remote → Living Room → Watch Cable Box. Nothing is scripted: the input it picks is read off the wiring.
• Then go look at the Map — the same devices you just switched, drawn with every cable in the house as a line you can follow.
• Re-cable something — drag a patch between two ports and watch the routing change. The demo will refuse to save it, and tell you so.
• Open the console — the live backend log, streaming what the server does as you do it.
• Read the DIY build — parts list, flashing steps, and fab-ready schematics for building the controller yourself.

This is a full HEARTH install on a server I run, seeded with a five-room show house and a small library of open-licensed films. It is a separate instance from the one in my own living room — nothing you do here reaches my house, and nothing here is anyone's private library.

Writes to the house itself — adding a device, re-cabling, changing settings — are refused at the front door, so the wiring you see is the wiring the next visitor sees. Everyday control is simulated instead: powering things on, switching sources, running an activity. That state is yours alone, held in memory against your browser, and it is gone a few hours after you leave.

The signal paths are not staged. Every input the system picks is computed from the real wiring graph by the same code that would drive the real gear — only the last inch, the part that would put an infrared code or an RS-232 string on a wire, is pretend.

The one thing a hosted demo cannot show you is the whole point of the product: on a real install the server sits on your network, next to the gear, and reaches it directly. That is why this is a box you own instead of a service you rent.