Michael H. Thiesen replaced the controllers inside two Elgato Key Lights with ESP32-C3 boards after the stock Realtek chips kept locking up and requiring power cycles. The original hardware paired a Realtek controller to a PCA9635 LED driver. Swapping in the ESP32-C3 was direct: desolder one chip, wire in the other.
The ESP32-C3 runs Rust firmware and speaks Matter natively. That got both lights into Apple Home without Homebridge, removing a middleware dependency that was itself a potential failure point. The new setup exposes power, brightness, and color temperature controls directly in the Apple Home app.
The design files are public on GitHub under the repo 'key-right'. The full write-up is worth reading for the board-level detail: Thiesen documents exactly how the PCA9635 is wired and how he mapped those controls into the Matter light device type, which is the useful part if you are attempting anything similar.
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