Documenting every decision, dead end,
and breakthrough as it happens.
The gap between embedded hardware and generative AI is where the next decade of physical products gets built. Most teams approach it from one side. This chronicle comes from someone who has spent 20 years on the hardware side — and is now crossing over, deliberately, in public.
Why this chronicle exists
India has 300 million+ ACs, most of them dumb. It has legacy devices in every home that no smart home platform bothers with. It has energy costs rising, grid pressure growing, and buildings that waste 30–40% of the electricity they consume — not because the technology to fix it doesn't exist, but because no one has put together the right stack for the Indian context.
I am building that stack. AlterSteps is an AI-powered home automation and energy management platform — starting with AC optimisation as the beachhead, using IR blasters, circuit-level MCU control, and occupancy sensing to work with devices that were never designed to be smart.
This site is the honest, unfiltered chronicle of that build — the architecture decisions, the market reality checks, the pivots, and the things no one writes about because they only write about what worked in hindsight.
Latest from the chronicle
View all posts →Where to go from here
Weekly sharp takes on IoT architecture, GenAI integration, and what Indian smart home builders keep getting wrong. On LinkedIn.
Follow on LinkedIn →AlterSteps — AI-powered energy management for Indian homes and RWAs. IR blasters + CT sensing + edge intelligence. Building now.
Follow the build →IoT platform architecture, embedded AI layer design, Matter/BLE/Zigbee stack reviews. Architect-level advisory. Not dev-for-hire.
Get in touch →About the builder
Rahul Yadav is a Senior Technical Expert and R&D Site Lead with 20+ years building connected systems — from BLE firmware and Zigbee stacks to IoT platform architecture and large-scale smart home deployments.
M.Tech from BITS Pilani. Deep domain in Matter protocol, ESP32 firmware, edge ML, and GenAI integration into physical product stacks.
Currently: building AlterSteps · consulting on IoT + AI architecture · writing weekly on LinkedIn.