Hi, I’m Franck Nijhof, better known online as Frenck. I’m the Home Assistant Lead, a GitHub Star 🌟, and a full-time open sourcerer.
I build, maintain, write, review, test, break things, fix them again, and try to make the connected home a little better than it was yesterday. Most of that happens in public, in open source, where the code is free, the discussions are visible, and the expectations are very real.
If my work has helped you, your home, your project, or your company, this page explains how you can support it.
Why support matters
Open source looks free from the outside because the download button does not ask for a credit card. That is the beautiful part. It is also the trap.
Maintaining software still takes time. Reviewing pull requests takes time. Answering questions takes time. Writing documentation, testing releases, chasing weird edge cases, improving automations, and explaining why something behaves the way it does all take time.
Support helps turn some of that time into sustainable work instead of “I will do it late tonight after everything else”. Which, as a long-term plan, is about as solid as a cloud-only smart plug during an internet outage.
What your support helps with
- Maintaining open-source projects and Home Assistant related work
- Writing useful articles, guides, and field notes on this site
- Testing smart-home hardware, integrations, and real-world setups
- Experimenting with practical AI workflows that help maintainers and creators
- Keeping public work sustainable without turning everything into an ad funnel
It does not buy influence. It does not buy priority support. It does not buy a “yes” to a feature request. It supports the work, not a queue-jump button.
Monthly support
If you can afford it and want to support my work on an ongoing basis, monthly sponsorship is the most useful option. Small recurring support adds up and makes planning less hand-wavy.
If you are an individual: thank you. Seriously. It means a lot.
If you are a company using my projects, documentation, examples, add-ons, or ideas as part of your work, please consider sponsoring too. Open source is not magically maintained by “the community”. The community is people, and people have calendars, families, bills, and only so many hours in a day.
Other ways to help
Money helps, but it is not the only useful thing.
- Share posts that helped you
- Report bugs clearly, with details and reproduction steps
- Contribute documentation improvements
- Be kind to maintainers, even when something is broken
- Give useful feedback instead of “doesn’t work” and a screenshot of sadness
Those things matter. They make projects easier to maintain and communities nicer to be in.
Questions or company sponsorship?
If you have a sponsorship idea, partnership question, or something that does not fit GitHub Sponsors or Patreon, feel free to contact me.
Just one boundary: this is not a paid Home Assistant support channel. I cannot trade donations for private troubleshooting. That would be unfair, unsustainable, and honestly, a very efficient way to remove sleep from my life.
Thank you for reading, using, sharing, contributing, sponsoring, or just being part of the open-source mess with me ❤️
../Frenck