Braden’s Reliable, Low-Cost Home Automation System With Zero YAML Powered by Home Assistant

0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to Homestas and Podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Rohan and as usual, I'm here with my friend Phil. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey Phil. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey Mike, how are you doing? [SPEAKER_00]: Good. [SPEAKER_00]: And today we're joining with Braden. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey Braden. [SPEAKER_00]: Hi.

0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And as usual, this podcast is sponsored by Homestas Cloud by Navocasa. [SPEAKER_00]: For a small monthly fee, you'll unlock powerful features like Secura for a less access to your system, from anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Your choice of voice assistants, off-site backups, and more. [SPEAKER_00]: All configured with the UI with no YAM will need it.

0:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It also supports the development of home assistant, ESP home, and a bunch of other open-home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_00]: Click on a link in the description to learn more. [SPEAKER_03]: This episode is sponsored by Apollo Automation, makers of open-source smart home sensors built for the home assistant ecosystem.

0:49 [SPEAKER_03]: They're an official open-home foundation commercial partner and the devices are built with local control, privacy and reliability in mind. [SPEAKER_03]: Almost everything they offer is works with home assistant and made for ESP home certified, giving you full control and flexibility right out of the box.

1:07 [SPEAKER_03]: In the best part, they build in the open working directly with the community to create sensors that people actually need. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're deep into home assisted or just getting started, definitely check them out at ApolloAutomation.com. [SPEAKER_03]: Right in, welcome to the show, thank you for joining us.

1:25 [SPEAKER_03]: Whereabouts are you coming from today? [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, guys, good to be here. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm from Northern Indiana, the United States, so we're going through a bit of a wind storm right now, so if I disappear. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and the end of power that's how it goes I heard it's I heard it's pretty wild out there right.

1:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: We had some of the effects today Where I mean, I'm sure it's not as bad as you guys have it, but it was still Like quite windy like my my car as we were driving. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah Shaking and all that so [SPEAKER_02]: We were sitting in a parking lot today like, um, waiting for my wife to get done doing something, and the baby usually likes to like, hoff all sleep in the car if it's moving, but we didn't have to drive anywhere, because the wind was just shaking.

2:10 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's hard the whole time. [SPEAKER_02]: I feel a little gas going. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially DJs. [SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty handy. [SPEAKER_00]: That's funny. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, hopefully, uh, you're all safe out there. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so let's jump into it.

2:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, tell us a little bit about yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, obviously you said you're from Indiana and, uh, how'd you get into this? [SPEAKER_00]: How'd you get to information? [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Ah, so I'd say, kind of, came by naturally. [SPEAKER_02]: I guess, so I'm the, the, the, the product of a mechanical engineer and a public school teacher.

2:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so I graduated doubly from college and became a controls guy right out of the gate. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and it's kind of funny. [SPEAKER_02]: You have the split in controls guys. [SPEAKER_02]: go like to the nines in home automation and then you have the people that are just like I deal with this every day at work.

3:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Why would I want to troubleshoot my house? [SPEAKER_02]: I'm in the the other camp. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just fun stuff to fill your time with. [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of a funny hobby ordering light switches and light bulbs and home appliances, but... [SPEAKER_02]: It's true, and you put it out there, you don't have to do that.

3:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a hobby, and a part of that involves buying, like, like, bulbs, and you're, yep, that's weird. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the time being, I have to do this whole thing now that you got that six-month-old. [SPEAKER_02]: Different. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, where projects are shorter, you go for, like, smaller nap windows, and they're all, like, software-related.

3:36 [SPEAKER_02]: And you were not, we're not building too much in the garage this time of year. [SPEAKER_02]: But he's definitely sparked a lot of projects. [SPEAKER_03]: That's for sure. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I want to get into those. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, so tell us about your journey like how did you or I guess you got my tape background Um, like it down into home assistant.

3:54 [SPEAKER_03]: What are you running home assistant home? [SPEAKER_02]: I am still on an OG Pi 4. [SPEAKER_02]: I believe I haven't touched I would touch that guy in four years now runs like a rock like I never really yeah [SPEAKER_02]: That's correct, I bought some the small form factor Dell 3040s. [SPEAKER_02]: I picked some of my off market place and I was tossing around the idea of just consolidating because I want those like 6U racks to try to make stuff look nice as like yeah it works.

4:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to touch it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like we'll just let it live on the pie until something happens. [SPEAKER_02]: Right, for right now we're cooking. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can still put it in your rack, but those Raspberry Pi rackets. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

4:40 [SPEAKER_03]: Are you still operating like on a regular cadence to? [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: We're current as of Wednesday, March 15th. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm still waiting for the newest round. [SPEAKER_02]: This month's release. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, hit me. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but we're current.

4:57 [SPEAKER_03]: Runs by. [SPEAKER_03]: So, so you're on 2026. [SPEAKER_03]: So we're recording in March. [SPEAKER_03]: So 2026 is the rate. [SPEAKER_03]: two, three. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So for me, I always run, because we do the podcast. [SPEAKER_03]: We have to talk about the latest features.

5:12 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm always on the beta. [SPEAKER_03]: I know barely upgrade from a beta. [SPEAKER_03]: But then there's people like yourself that will be like a note. [SPEAKER_03]: I only got to run like the previous months and get all the little mine hot fixes out. [SPEAKER_03]: Or I'm not going to run the dot zero.

5:26 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to wait for a dot one at least. [SPEAKER_03]: As we say, we rug yet. [SPEAKER_03]: That's yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_03]: So tell us about your smart home philosophy. [SPEAKER_03]: Have you, when you go when you start at the smart home journey like what do you make everything or did you have a certain focus on what you wanted to achieve in your smart home?

5:53 [SPEAKER_02]: I guess because it's gone through different stages, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So I think I started the whole [SPEAKER_02]: smart home thing back in, I guess high school, when it's really similar story to a lot of the guess you've had on everybody starts with he light bulbs. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it just seems to be like the in-road.

6:09 [SPEAKER_02]: So back in high school, what it was on was launching their first Marspeakers, right? [SPEAKER_02]: My parents were like, we want to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: That seems cool. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, don't have to twist my arm. [SPEAKER_02]: We'll give it a shot. [SPEAKER_02]: So we got the he bulbs and I was like, okay, there's something here.

6:23 [SPEAKER_02]: We can play with this. [SPEAKER_02]: So, and then [SPEAKER_02]: you get kind of, you get the limits of what you can do inside of the Amazon ecosystem, especially back then. [SPEAKER_02]: So then we kind of branched into IFTTT, if it's in there. [SPEAKER_02]: We started there for a little while, and then you kind of reach the limits of what that could do back then.

6:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I think out of the gate in college, we started home assistant, because I wanted to get into, [SPEAKER_02]: There was an aquaponics project for growin' stuff, like, which is pumps and whatnot. [SPEAKER_02]: And it was gonna, home assistant was what they leveraged as the controller for it.

7:02 [SPEAKER_02]: And all the plants died. [SPEAKER_02]: That was a complete failure. [SPEAKER_02]: But we ended up with home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: So, and then, it's not really like a goal in mind. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, it's a really handy resource for when a problem comes up. [SPEAKER_02]: I think of it more of like a backbone than like, solving individual problems I guess.

7:22 [SPEAKER_02]: great. [SPEAKER_00]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, was it the hydrophonics, so you just to touch on that a little bit, you talked about that, like you said, all the plants out of phase blow, was it a fault of the actual hydrophonics part, or was it the actual plants in the care and feeding kind of thing?

7:42 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it was just a hot Indiana summer, and it was water was in a black bucket, black bucket, because I was trying to [SPEAKER_02]: do it to my parents yard and they pretty much boil the life it was it was it wasn't a technology's fault is user air completely that's funny okay but would you ever do that again would you go yeah I'm about to I was telling Phil a second ago we just finished a greenhouse build here at the in adult life and the adult house we just finished a greenhouse build that's been going for some years so it's on we got some plans for that one [SPEAKER_02]: Now that we've got a little bit better at this automation thing.

8:18 [SPEAKER_03]: What do you plan? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I know you've been talking before you've got this to get into the fun stage. [SPEAKER_03]: What does fun say? [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Look like, you know. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because we just finished carpenter. [SPEAKER_02]: I am not. [SPEAKER_02]: There's not a squared joist in angle to the thing.

8:30 [SPEAKER_02]: But it stands up, especially like the hurricane that we're having now. [SPEAKER_02]: It's still there. [SPEAKER_02]: So county. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, we're going to do rainwater capture. [SPEAKER_02]: And then, so part of that. [SPEAKER_02]: because Indiana gets real cold during the winter still.

8:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So part of that rainwater capture, I'm also going to then use this thermal master in the winter. [SPEAKER_02]: So I need to make sure that doesn't freeze, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So this temperature regulation, I want to do solar, when I get some AI stuff involved for plant health, it's just a lab.

9:01 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not really got a goal, it's just something to have fun with. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be one of those like you're going to get alerts being like, I give your lettuce some milk and this one of the main things we're going to be going for. [SPEAKER_00]: So what happens? [SPEAKER_00]: 3% brown.

9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, right, here we go. [SPEAKER_03]: I like this. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, good. [SPEAKER_03]: Parapay. [SPEAKER_03]: You've got water management. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you could easily get like a camera on this show. [SPEAKER_03]: We have to add an envision. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm pretty sure there is a hacks community interactions for the off-to-plant.

9:30 [SPEAKER_03]: So already like indoors. [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, like you could have a. [SPEAKER_03]: a completely automated garden powered by AI and home assistant. [SPEAKER_03]: I see what growers, I see what doesn't grow. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I really take it this what was supposed to be like in my analog hobby, right?

9:46 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like this is what I do for work, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It is like, I then I took my analog hobby and I made it what I do for work. [SPEAKER_02]: But you know, it's what I enjoy. [SPEAKER_02]: It makes it fun. [SPEAKER_02]: Fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, fine. [SPEAKER_00]: That's funny. [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, [SPEAKER_02]: again now it's you've got the greenhouse going on there what else what I'll see you doing around the house um like we were talking beforehand um current new season life we have a six month old um not rather than around the house yet but just in the house than what that came a lot of changes and it was interesting that problems I anticipated to have to solve that I didn't

10:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Because I got the advice early on from a boss of mine and he was like, you want voice control in the nursery. [SPEAKER_02]: And like, as a rule, that's my least favorite way of interacting with anything. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, don't make me use a voice assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to.

10:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's just the house should react to me, you know, that kind of a thing. [SPEAKER_02]: We're not there yet because I got to put some money down on present sensors, but we can get there. [SPEAKER_02]: But no, I bought a, you can pick up a, where I am around the Fort Wayne area. [SPEAKER_02]: You can pick up one of those Google home minis for like 10 bucks dirt cheap.

11:01 [SPEAKER_02]: So, wait, I got one of those in the, not the safest thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I hope to replace it eventually, but game changer. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you walk in, you got, get in the arms, can't hit a light switch. [SPEAKER_02]: So, wait a go. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, somebody actually made boards out there to replace those Google home many, really.

11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: To make it work with home assistant, like with the voice page and voice. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I would love the form factor like the nice little device, but yeah, I did not have a great speaker. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So so you basically retain all of those things and you rip out the main board and then you put this main board in and and it is now a essentially a voice, uh, Holmes's voice end point.

11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's, I can't remember what it's caused. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I think it's [SPEAKER_00]: But I, again, I don't know if it's still an active project or was happening, just pulling it up on GitHub here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess not last update was two years ago, so that's too bad. [SPEAKER_00]: But there are, there are, I don't know, maybe somebody's resurrected it and done something like that.

12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll leave a link in the show notes for your folks. [SPEAKER_00]: But that, that is the last I'd heard of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if, uh, [SPEAKER_03]: Because I know, like, the Amazon X, something old, Amazon X shows that they've never been hacked. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, wouldn't it be cool to see, like, them running since been, and then the Google Home mini running since been.

12:36 [SPEAKER_03]: And then you've got, like, multi-room audio across both and Amazon device and Google device. [SPEAKER_02]: Because they had some cool form factors back in the day. [SPEAKER_02]: They had, like, the really cult, like, the tower one, like the original one, Amazon did. [SPEAKER_02]: And the little cube thing there and the TVs.

12:53 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that's sort of those, the fire TV cube. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's something like that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't think that being Joe working yet though. [SPEAKER_03]: In time. [SPEAKER_03]: In time. [SPEAKER_02]: Some of those things I really root for other people to do, knowing that like I will never have the type to do it, like I can't expect other people to do it if I don't really like it for like please community.

13:14 [SPEAKER_02]: Come on. [SPEAKER_01]: You got it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's I definitely don't have the expertise to do it, but I definitely appreciate when other people do. [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those kind of things. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, totally agree. [SPEAKER_03]: How far have you tried to automate your newborn?

13:28 [SPEAKER_03]: Like, did you have lot routine scenes set up? [SPEAKER_03]: Any tracking around the baby? [SPEAKER_02]: Not so much tracking because I went down the thought experiment. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, [SPEAKER_02]: I love data for this, I could data, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's the engineer, and me, but I'm like, okay, there's a point where like I've just got to drive myself crazy with all of this metric stuff.

13:49 [SPEAKER_02]: So we need to pump the brakes a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of left it at lights. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I got to love the smart home journey, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You've changed a diaper with their phone flashlight, at least three or four times, because you messed up the lights trying to fix something, right?

14:10 [SPEAKER_02]: My big, like, as things tend to do, right, one project spawns a whole bunch of other ones. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had one traditional Midwestern house. [SPEAKER_02]: We have the center ceiling light. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the flood light for the room, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's just controlled by the old wall switch.

14:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And the death of all smart lights, right, is the physical wall switch that cuts power. [SPEAKER_02]: So I knew I wanted to play with the GoVe, [SPEAKER_02]: H621, it's one of the circular seal in light, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I like constant power required, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Or just constantly is falling off the network.

14:47 [SPEAKER_02]: So then I found in a carous which that works decoupled. [SPEAKER_02]: So you just weld the weight relay shut effectively. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the buttons just work as inputs. [SPEAKER_02]: So I did that as like cool, fixed it. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I was using the ZHA just basic ZIGB [SPEAKER_02]: add on at the time.

15:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And it didn't expose the entity to do the decoupling for the switch. [SPEAKER_02]: So then I'm like, okay, now we got to do Zigbee, the MQTT. [SPEAKER_02]: And that was a whole other thing. [SPEAKER_02]: So down the rabbit hole later, here we are. [SPEAKER_02]: What I walk in, the lights come on, and then they adjust their color temperature based on the time of day.

15:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And we're happy. [SPEAKER_02]: You got to love how much you did just to turn on the light though, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's one of those things. [SPEAKER_02]: You got to look back at the end of the day. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, [SPEAKER_02]: I have replaced the light switch with a much more complicated light switch.

15:40 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, yes, but I'd rather love a more moving path. [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, more moving paths and one of them is going to break and that switch went working more. [SPEAKER_03]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Did you look at a custom Quirk before moving over to? [SPEAKER_03]: Is it B2MQTT?

15:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_02]: Anyways, there's another one of those things like for the love of the game, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay, fair challenge. [SPEAKER_02]: Let's migrate everything. [SPEAKER_02]: We're not. [SPEAKER_02]: like it's like it because um so MQTT is very much an industrial protocol right I'm pretty sure that's round where it got it started if I'm right so it's it's [SPEAKER_02]: I try to do a little bit of home labbing and practicing for work, so I'm a systems integrator and systems engineer with a company here in Indiana, and we do a lot of skated implementations, which is essentially like home assistant before a factory, right?

16:31 [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's, so I'm like, okay, we're going to play with some MQTT messaging, so I'm prepared when we hit it at work and comes up pretty often. [SPEAKER_03]: Have you been able to then transfer some of the stuff that you do professionally into the [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, so it's kind of some best practices, right?

16:49 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a standard called the, we looked it up right before we got off like the ISA 95. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a standard for how you organize entities within a facility. [SPEAKER_02]: So you go to high level, it's enterprise site area, work center, work unit. [SPEAKER_02]: get all the way down to the device level, right?

17:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And you kind of see that mirrored in homelessness, I'm doing a lot of talking with my hands on a podcast that I apologize. [SPEAKER_02]: But we're out there too. [SPEAKER_02]: So what you see at mirrored in home assistant, especially with the rollout of organizing into home floor rooms devices, right?

17:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So I took the same principles and I moved it over. [SPEAKER_02]: So all of my devices, they all have, I got a label maker, forgetting [SPEAKER_02]: They're making a little nerd heart happy, like do it. [SPEAKER_02]: So every entity gets a unique name, so like light bulbs are eyeballed, underscore, whatever number am I on.

17:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So that way they can just move throughout the house wherever I need them. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not like renaming things and it's like screwing up all the other automations. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just moving it throughout the layers of the hierarchy instead of just re addressing every single time.

18:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Learn that lesson the hard way, a couple of times. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, oh, work comes in handy here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: How do you deal with, how do you deal with like when you need to know like let's say you're redoing a dashboard or you're redoing something that like Do you add labels do you do you like rename the actual like maybe the entity name is like like you said eyeball dash whatever whatever But do you rename that to like Braden's office like [SPEAKER_02]: Nope, I do put like notes and descriptions if I move something, just like a quick readable, just for my sake, if I remember to do it, if I'm not like trying to do something fast, like to set up for tonight, I have light bulbs, I took out of the kids' room and like something from somewhere else.

18:50 [SPEAKER_02]: There's no pretty dashboard for that one. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, wait, it's that color temperature. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting. [SPEAKER_03]: I like the idea of the label maker. [SPEAKER_03]: I've recently started using something called Homebox, which is an inventory management system for the house.

19:07 [SPEAKER_03]: Right? [SPEAKER_03]: And so it gives you, it's basically asset tracking. [SPEAKER_03]: So I can track things like all the smart home stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Because I can't remember where I've put sensors or what rooms got, what flavor of sensor. [SPEAKER_03]: who knows what's in there, right?

19:28 [SPEAKER_03]: After so many years and old stuff, I'm like, okay, what's this model number? [SPEAKER_03]: When do I get Xenewon or RT still? [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, where's the need to go, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, one of the things that it can give you there is like an ID for all the restaurants, right?

19:42 [SPEAKER_03]: So then you can go, okay, I know I've got this Echo Dot that's four years old, and I've put it in this box, which is also got an asset number, and that box lives in the garage. [SPEAKER_03]: So like a label, like an attribute. [SPEAKER_03]: And then an inventory isn't behind it, [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

19:58 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a QR code I'm not leaving. [SPEAKER_02]: Everything. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Off to the races. [SPEAKER_02]: There was a project. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like GLPI. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I set up recently at a church time involved in. [SPEAKER_02]: We used that for asset tracking.

20:10 [SPEAKER_02]: That was open source project. [SPEAKER_02]: Super handy. [SPEAKER_02]: So you're looking for. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to have to look at that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm books. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: On your, on your, I mean, going back to your automations and stuff like that, even around around your kid.

20:24 [SPEAKER_00]: What? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean. [SPEAKER_00]: Phil and I both have kids, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, we always love to hear and understand what other people are doing from an automation perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: So that hopefully, I, I don't know, I can speak for myself, hopefully I can steal some of these to make my parenting life better.

20:41 [SPEAKER_00]: What's, what's, what are like hopefully or like, kid automations that you have or in the kids room or something like that? [SPEAKER_02]: So for the, because he's still not hyper mobile yet, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So we're still, we're slow, we're a little. [SPEAKER_02]: So we did, I did motion lights the other night.

20:56 [SPEAKER_02]: So that was a fun set of conditions because like, you don't want to be, there were times like, when you walk into the room, so say you're like trying to put them down for an app or something, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You don't want the lights to come on. [SPEAKER_02]: But where the wall plate is for the light switch is you can hit that without triggering the motion sensor just because of where furniture is in the room so it is a latch on one of the buttons on the light switch to where I'm like okay when I hit this button and it's dark and it's night and all those kind of things don't turn on in the lights just turn on [SPEAKER_02]: So I have one of those that looks out into the room.

21:41 [SPEAKER_02]: I turn it like a nice purple just to like, so I know what state it's in. [SPEAKER_02]: As I remember, what the latch is. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the disabled's the automation that does the lights and then you walk in and don't like them to the baby that you're trying to put to sleep, right?

21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And then inversely, it does the different if it's like the day hit the button again and it latches the lights on. [SPEAKER_02]: So you're not just like sitting there folding laundry and the lights turn off on you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.

22:08 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I guess kind of along the same vein, I've been thinking about, like, okay, I have this smart home backbone going in the house, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what does his interactions, as he grows up, his interactions with the house, start to look like, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, my inner, like, imagine here wanna be, oh my, okay, so what are we gonna have them do?

22:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So I've been playing with, I got desk littered with SB32s. [SPEAKER_02]: play in with the idea that if I print some like I love a good like chunky tactile interface right so if I 3D print up some RFID cards and RFID card readers I'm like okay when we get to colors I can have big blocks to have the colors on all of any set the color on the reader and changes the lights in the in the room and then when we get there if he wants to watch something [SPEAKER_02]: on the TV and in TV time right have like a card for like bluey and you put it on the reader by the TV and it launches Delhi Finn launches like kicks off the chain of events right and then it's kind of gated access to where it's like if it's past bedtime or past a lot of TV time sorry you're at a look a little one-plump noise

23:15 [SPEAKER_03]: There was, there was someone in the community that used to make, I think that might still do. [SPEAKER_03]: This is a cell, and I've just got one of my desk here. [SPEAKER_03]: Please hurry up down to it. [SPEAKER_03]: RFID tag readers, and I've done the exact same thing that you've done.

23:29 [SPEAKER_03]: I think I'll speak about it on the podcast before, but yeah, I've got the car printed for Blu-E. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got all the different cars. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got now, I've got a joke one, so that my daughter can tap a card and AI will generate a joke at age-appropriate level. [SPEAKER_03]: ones for the blind so she can open and close their blinds.

23:47 [SPEAKER_03]: That seemed to work for about a month and then they just got over. [SPEAKER_03]: I also found with the things like the movies and stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: That's all fine and good. [SPEAKER_03]: But these things, I think this one's actually broken because it was under my TV in the living room.

24:04 [SPEAKER_03]: But then you get, you know, the 18 month old that comes out and yanks it, you know, from under the TV and then throws it around and you can hear it rattling, like there's loose bits outside or they go tap it, they'll tap to watch bluey and it's not instantaneous, right? [SPEAKER_03]: You know, the TV's going to turn into the writing.

24:24 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's going to turn on place. [SPEAKER_03]: Places. [SPEAKER_03]: slow, and then plex-fliny hits to the chance where it can play, and I'm starting to start playing, but at the time they've lost interest, they're already pre-chaping pre-chaping pre-chaping. [SPEAKER_03]: And no matter how many cool downs you can add, it just, yeah, it doesn't work.

24:40 [SPEAKER_03]: So, good luck, I don't really think that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: We might give it a little bit, you know, yeah, that's been like I mean, it's broken because it's got mad in fashion. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not toys like him or if it's close enough, you know. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.

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26:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: going back to your home and what kind of devices are you using? [SPEAKER_00]: Like in terms of protocols and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I know you talked a little bit about it, but and what do you prefer? [SPEAKER_00]: Like so this is a big B matter Z wave thread.

26:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, matter over, I'd be over thread. [SPEAKER_00]: Bluetooth. [SPEAKER_00]: What are your preferences? [SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know, and the reason I'm in, I just wanted to give a lot of context here is because you do this professionally, as well, I wanted, I'd love to know what and why you're looking at those kind of protocols.

26:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And I know you should know professional world is usually all wired in and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd love to know if you have some of those too. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to have some of those, but they're just prohibitively expensive. [SPEAKER_02]: That's to open the [SPEAKER_02]: So Bradley's of the world don't come at the same price of as a car licensors is the dad of the dream.

27:02 [SPEAKER_02]: I guess I did but I love the car products they've done great by me. [SPEAKER_02]: So early on in the smart home journey I buy anything and everything I could get my hands on right. [SPEAKER_02]: Like any like I think I found a wemo. [SPEAKER_02]: before they went under I think I found a weemo switch and like a good will like thrift bin because somebody thought it was just a light switch they got it for like $2 and I think it's finally decommissioned it like [SPEAKER_02]: a couple months ago, because I think it was installed in the house for like a year after the company had gone under, and I think they wanted their servers went offline, and I was like, this is just the light switch that just has this indicator light, that's just mad all the time.

27:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So I was playing, I was trying to do anything and everything I could give my hands on, and then of course your router gets filled up, your airspace gets way crowded, then I'm like, okay, someone's got to give. [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to say it was due to like super due diligent research, but then I was like, there's one day when I looked up, I was like best sensors that work with home assistant, right?

28:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And it was talking about Zigbee stuff and I jumped on the Zigbee bandwagon and I've not looked back. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like we do this professionally, so I'm so used to like chasing down IPs and then the little dial switch switches on all of the, um, all of the devices and have to set up an instance, a whole other.

28:24 [SPEAKER_02]: I love the ease of connection of Zigbee devices. [SPEAKER_02]: Like hold down the little button, wait till it blinks, golden. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's been my the current slow roll of we're getting away of from all of the Wi-Fi devices and we're moving to Zigbee.

28:39 [SPEAKER_02]: But they got a break first. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's kind of the problem. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, hold now. [SPEAKER_00]: And don't worry, they will. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, it didn't take that message out you want, but they will break. [SPEAKER_02]: But no, I love the little Akara things.

28:55 [SPEAKER_02]: I have two on our cat litter boxes. [SPEAKER_02]: We buy on Facebook Marketplace. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a great place for all home automation projects to start. [SPEAKER_02]: We buy some cheap little robot knockoffs, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So it's this big drum that's been to clean the litter and stuff.

29:11 [SPEAKER_02]: And when you're going through the documentation, they're like, [SPEAKER_02]: To install the app that works with the Litterbox side load this app from that you download from online and then install this like third party app storm like [SPEAKER_02]: or not, you're just going to live at the quarter and the kind of a lead box and you're not going to touch anything.

29:31 [SPEAKER_02]: So I took the Cara vibration sensors and every time the drum rotates, I have a cool down on it so I can count drum rotations. [SPEAKER_02]: So I know approximately when they get full, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And that's good enough for a calculator box, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's not got to be super precise.

29:48 [SPEAKER_02]: I was really happy with that one when we got it going. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, hey guys, look at my graph of how many times the cats used the other box today and nobody was super excited about it, but I thought it was a killer app. [SPEAKER_03]: What other features of the app like you missing out on like you've got like what what what what what what what we the purpose of installing that app is going to all that effort to slide load an app.

30:10 [SPEAKER_03]: What what are you getting out of it? [SPEAKER_02]: nothing, but I think you could like manually cycle the thing. [SPEAKER_02]: I think that was about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: That was like it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Not missing much. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of risk just to clean some cap.

30:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's a great tip. [SPEAKER_00]: Risk versus reward. [SPEAKER_00]: Not nothing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely not. [SPEAKER_02]: Although I'm about just because the sensors in the things themselves are just about shot. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you get what you pay for kind of a thing.

30:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm about I looked up, um, [SPEAKER_02]: ESP home has a has a support for a stepper driver and probably next winter when I'm stuck in the house and bored we're going to we're probably going to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, rip it open and change it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because we were talking before recording in, you know, one of the things you've got is you just don't like letting things die rather than you grow.

31:01 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh no, go in it attempt to fix it, which I think our home business like that aligns perfectly with the the ethos, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like sustainable and and reliability of that, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Can you tell me about your ice maker? [SPEAKER_03]: What? [SPEAKER_02]: So that was the saga.

31:16 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: So our ice maker would we moved into the house. [SPEAKER_02]: Our re-liter was like, now the ice maker on the fridge doesn't work. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you sure you still want to house as like first of all? [SPEAKER_02]: Why is that a maker-break criteria for purchasing?

31:28 [SPEAKER_02]: That's a great, that's. [SPEAKER_02]: It's at least where I grew up with ice trays, like, this is fun. [SPEAKER_02]: So it turns out there's a manufacturing defect in the whirlpool refrigerator that we have that the thermal couple after a while just, um, it's acceptable temperature range for what it closes just goes way out of spec after a while.

31:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And I only found this out after replacing it with three different units. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, so rather fed up with it at that point. [SPEAKER_02]: So what I did was I, [SPEAKER_02]: Zigbee and ESP home, those are my, those are my go-tos, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So I took a cheap SB32, I put an old mechanical relay on it and a thermal couple.

32:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And literally, if you look on top of my refrigerator because I keep telling myself I'm going to print a box to put it in, and that's been three years now. [SPEAKER_02]: There's an SB32 with four wires that run into my freezer. [SPEAKER_02]: and that's what I just wait for it to trip the threshold and then there was contacts in the ice maker that were exposed if you shove the end of a liar in and hot glued it so it may contact and then you could jump the mechanism and it would start the cycle.

32:40 [SPEAKER_02]: I am engineer, hear me roar like I was not going to be beat by the ice maker. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we got ice three years later. [SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because at the end of the start of this, you started with, you know, I grew up with ice cube tracer, yeah, and it's like a lot of pursuit of I wasn't going to let it be me by a thunder like this is my house.

33:02 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's fascinating that also the fridge comes with the house like is it built in, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, isn't not a thing for you. [SPEAKER_03]: Now you buy your infringe in the house and you get the cat. [SPEAKER_02]: It can go either way like if the owners want to take it with them they can but most of the time they could into the price.

33:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I think norm the norm is you get the appliances that come with the house. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Cool. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, no, you bring your infringe. [SPEAKER_03]: Bring your microwave too. [SPEAKER_03]: Like you guys get microwaves like with the house too. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

33:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Steals. [SPEAKER_02]: Microwaves fridge too. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're close to about the same amount of work to move on as it is the other. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you get, it's well, she's part of the house. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, but yeah, I mean, we're going on a super long hit, but you get, you get, you get the fridges and dishwashers and stuff that can have the cabinet face glued on right if I figure out what it's called, but yeah, so it's like, so it's all flushed.

34:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, super good, everything. [SPEAKER_03]: It's built in that way fair enough, but if it's just a knock like it's just an area in the kitchen for a fridge to go into, you don't. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I think, again, it's like Britain said it, you don't have to sell the house with it.

34:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's assumed that you're doing, you kind of say when you're not. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you get a couple thousand off a list in price if they take it with them. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, this is like how much water is in North American toilets, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's just one of those things on like really like that's a weird thing.

34:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, sorry, we digress to see what I'm going to do. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious about the water thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I know this. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, is this a North American toilet? [SPEAKER_00]: It's used a lot of water. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you have a bunch of water sitting in the bottom of the point.

34:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: All the time. [SPEAKER_00]: What is that? [SPEAKER_00]: What is that? [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I think it's a point sewer gases, but yeah, it's not much, but yes, yes, yeah, I think it's one of the design standards. [SPEAKER_02]: We just haven't changed yet.

35:06 [SPEAKER_02]: I think California is really trying, but here in the Midwest, it's not hit us yet. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so, you know, what we're getting the back to our assistant, I don't remember where we were talking about. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about the ice maker. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we got it, we got a licked, but it was a hard fought battle.

35:28 [SPEAKER_02]: That's all right. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I think that was my first, sorry for him. [SPEAKER_02]: That was my first four-ray into ESB home. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of like kicked off a love affair with how easy that is to integrate. [SPEAKER_02]: We had an issue, we were heading out of town.

35:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And to go see my family, it's quite a drive south, right? [SPEAKER_02]: We got halfway through with the four-hour trip, and I got a message that said, our power went out. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, the power wasn't out. [SPEAKER_02]: It was the circuit in the garage it tripped. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, our deep freeze out.

36:02 [SPEAKER_02]: That's like, that's an issue, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And then, um, [SPEAKER_02]: We were going to have some friends over, and what was going to have to happen is that I was going to have to send their 12-year-old through a window in the garage that I thought probably wasn't locked, so they could get in, open their garage door, so their dad could reset the breaker.

36:20 [SPEAKER_02]: So when we got back from the trip, I was like, okay, this situation can happen again. [SPEAKER_02]: And to make my like, nerd child proud, I turned around like proof of concept and like devices still out there in like two hours. [SPEAKER_02]: because I had an SP home mechanical relay and the thing that took the longest was three printing the housing because I learned from ice maker excavated if you don't do it when you make it, you're not going to do it.

36:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, SP32, garage door opener, existed within two hours or again, back from the trip and I was like, we've arrived, we've made it. [SPEAKER_02]: This is, this is just like, short, the relay today. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just, um, [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_02]: The button that's on the wall, I think it has some encoding to it, but essentially all it does is just dry contact closes the relay.

37:09 [SPEAKER_02]: So I jumped it with two wires and after the races. [SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's still in product. [SPEAKER_03]: And so is that going to name its house with your house? [SPEAKER_00]: My house. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: What else? [SPEAKER_00]: I want to know what I'll see you're doing with because it sounds like you're doing a bunch of stuff with the SP home.

37:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you doing more like customer, do you have any plan that you want to, that you want to? [SPEAKER_02]: The NFC readers that we're talking about for the baby's room, that's all ESP home driven. [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to do the, all of the greenhouse monitoring, eventually when we get there, is going to be all ESP home driven because I've looked at like more like the industrial side of things to try to bring it home a little bit, but you still can't.

37:50 [SPEAKER_02]: You still can't get close to a good PLC with just like enough IO to matter for like under $300. [SPEAKER_02]: And like, I think I picked up a packet of three of these guys for like 20, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, the barrier to entries is so much different. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you just get one of those expansion breakout boards.

38:10 [SPEAKER_03]: Why would you go ASP for the greenhouse? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I thought we'll talk about before we would get off as much Wi-Fi as possible. [SPEAKER_03]: Would you pivot to something like Zippy battery senses? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, there can be wireless out there. [SPEAKER_02]: Just for the sake of sometimes you like to make it like intentionally a little harder on yourself.

38:32 [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm okay with the one that Wi-Fi connection go in out. [SPEAKER_02]: How fast you can turn stuff around. [SPEAKER_02]: I like I have just occupational hazard. [SPEAKER_02]: I have a cabinet for full of just analog sensors and there's so easy to plug and play on an SB32 if you get your voltages right out of the gate.

38:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So just a fast rapid prototyping. [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of the only way that that's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it makes totally sense would you have like a single like Mass of breakout that goes to all of your stuff or would you do like individual USBs kind of break up those domains of like failure [SPEAKER_02]: I would like to have separate ones, but in reality, it's probably going to end up being one single one that's going to kind of grow into like something that doesn't look too pretty at the end of the box.

39:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: North. [SPEAKER_00]: This is South. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: We'll refactor it a couple of years and we'll kind of cut it apart to the different ones. [SPEAKER_02]: But that's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Trying to think. [SPEAKER_02]: And then for the Zigbee stuff, I found some didn't mounted.

39:37 [SPEAKER_02]: Breakers essentially. [SPEAKER_02]: They're they're relays, but they fit the form factor of a standard single pole breaker So those are run in the pool and it's high enough Ambridge that they handle the pump line I love those little guys as far as devices go So I try to stick to like Zigbee and ESP home those are my two main ones now that I've started phasing off I'll there's a lot more space on the Wi-Fi now since I've face to fair [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and in, sorry, for ESP home stuff, there was a, when we got married, I put on the registry, one of those in poor view power monitors.

40:16 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the single box to like 16 channels of just those current readers that go across your mains. [SPEAKER_02]: And there was just, it worked well enough. [SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't happy with the resolution of the data and then after a while, I think it fell behind updates [SPEAKER_02]: And then I found online that somebody had rewritten the firmware, so it would work with ESP home.

40:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, buddy, here we go, is that we got that loaded on there. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I used that to drive all of the power statistics for the house. [SPEAKER_02]: So like how much does it cost to run the pool? [SPEAKER_02]: How much does it cost to run the heaters in the dock house?

40:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So they're green house and that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't need to show a picture of what it looks like because it's just like this mess of wires hanging out of my [SPEAKER_02]: No, no current enforcement here. [SPEAKER_02]: It's okay. [SPEAKER_00]: That's that's funny, but I mean, that's cool.

41:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you doing anything with that data and then or plan to where? [SPEAKER_00]: I look at it and feel bad about it every so often. [SPEAKER_02]: There's, there's, um, not it. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, we should try to use this. [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of where it goes. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah.

41:29 [SPEAKER_02]: As now it's handy for like, um, so I was, so this week right. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I set up a heater in the greenhouse just to try to like see what my thermal mass is like to see how, because our temperatures dipped back down into freezing here. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, what is it cost me to try to heat this thing at a reasonable degree?

41:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And I was getting up into like four or five dollars a night and I was like, nope, we got to rethink this. [SPEAKER_02]: This is going to work. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was all turned off right now and I was like, [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, again, at least it's nice that it's, you can make decisions based on that.

42:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, that's. [SPEAKER_02]: And it helps find, I guess a lot of like, the vampire, vampires and powers, like stuff that like we've left on by accident or stuff like that. [SPEAKER_02]: Or like, I've tried to do the, the dryer done notification because there's a giant spike when that heating coil pulls in, right?

42:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, that. [SPEAKER_02]: We have a higher efficiency dryer, so it kind of kicks off the heating element long before it's done spinning, so you'd get the done notification well before it was actually done running. [SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of gave up on that one. [SPEAKER_02]: But no, it's handy for stuff like that, like especially for power outages or breaker trips.

42:37 [SPEAKER_02]: That's the one I used it for mostly, so if the deep freeze, the culprit of most of them. [SPEAKER_02]: Because if we plug in, we have a plug-in hybrid, little Ford Fusion. [SPEAKER_02]: and they can't be on the same circuit at the same time but sometimes we forget and plug it in and then when that charger kicks in it just kills the breaker so then I get in the alert this says hey all your food's gonna go bad go check the breaker yeah all right that's that's actually crazy money right like saving all you yeah yeah i wonder is there a way you could automate like preventing that from happening like i've kicked it around a couple times because if you could do like [SPEAKER_02]: the problem is I don't get state of charge back from the car so I really just have like I'd have to set like a queuing system of like okay I can have two cars plugged in and the deep freeze the deep freeze has to stay on but I can only support like

43:34 [SPEAKER_02]: one car and maybe like my drill batteries when they get plugged in. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'd have to have sockets everywhere and just be like, okay, this finished its charge cycle due to according to its power drill. [SPEAKER_02]: Move on to the next one, move on to the next one and everything.

43:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Or you can't even do like a, okay, charge cars like you added 25% stop a charge then run the freezer for a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: because as well as what it's like there's a couple of elevations that I've scared to do like get the office room I'm in right now we have a gas fire place and like it would be so cool.

44:14 [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a snap of fingers fire place comes on like the party trick of it all right yeah like professionally I've seen gas valves get stuck too often to to trust that one quite yet without any kind of feedback to it because it's just the light switch is what [SPEAKER_00]: It's a low voltage, right?

44:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, you're going to wire, I was actually looking at mine like yesterday or day before and the same thing right where I'm like, ah, I want to do that and I was going to use like I just a Shelley relay to do that and just tap into where the the wires go and where the. [SPEAKER_00]: wherever the switch wire goes in.

44:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And, but it's that same thing, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Where it's like, ah, I'll see if it's this. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like, I don't have anything that feeds back to say, like, confirmed ignition. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, this could get dicey. [SPEAKER_02]: So we'll, we'll leave this one on.

45:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I think other. [SPEAKER_03]: So, other? [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, what's the plan for the rest of the future plans? [SPEAKER_03]: If you've got any ticking plans, you look, okay, my son's turned this age or I'll get this done before Christmas.

45:24 [SPEAKER_03]: What's next up on the list? [SPEAKER_02]: We're in a big home-ladening phase. [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of the current state of the house. [SPEAKER_02]: We're like the automation and home assistant era stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of it's set. [SPEAKER_02]: We went. [SPEAKER_02]: Back to the start of the year, I think we went, I started actually paying the subscription to Navoo for the off-site access, haven't looked back, wonderful, highly recommend.

45:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Do it, it's worth it. [SPEAKER_02]: Because when I was doing the port forwarding on your router, super insecure, I worked with enough cyber guys and they're like, go do that. [SPEAKER_02]: But it's so handy, it's kind of that, I know it's bad. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, the home's kind of reached a good equilibrium for a mate.

46:07 [SPEAKER_02]: So we got to beef up our hardware. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're making the jump to trying to roll out a lot of unify equipment just because it's fun to play with and we're using it at a couple other sites I'm involved with. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's nice to be able to practice at home. [SPEAKER_02]: And then so we're going to [SPEAKER_02]: with that will roll in the camera feeds which I'm really excited to get a lot you guys have talked a lot about AI and image processing recently and like all that sounds really cool I want to get there we're just so we got to get the infrastructure in place first yeah yeah I mean it's again it's you grow it we're one thing at a time and then you break it a hundred times and then you keep living and that's that's the whole love experience right that's

46:50 [SPEAKER_02]: So I recently cut over to the ZBT2, the new Big antenna. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: The never released love ethic. [SPEAKER_02]: It's been great. [SPEAKER_02]: On boarding process. [SPEAKER_02]: Super easy. [SPEAKER_02]: And everything is going to take right off. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, wow, that's no story here, very often.

47:09 [SPEAKER_03]: I have been very impressed with it, like, I've had a lot of, uh, I still do, like, randomly get ZB issues, like my, uh, a Clare F1 sense of just go, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like often at work for whatever reason, they'll be gone for a week or so. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but I don't think that's a ZBT to issue, I think that's just, [SPEAKER_03]: a Zigbee issue, right?

47:28 [SPEAKER_03]: But before upgrading, I did have a lot of devices, just randomly needing to be repaired for whatever it is. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, they'd be on the network, they would report their status back to home pieces, like, have blinds that would, like, are on Zigbee. [SPEAKER_03]: I could control them with the RF remote, like, and close them, and they would report back to home pieces, and close.

47:48 [SPEAKER_03]: I try to control them with home system, nothing. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like, they just didn't exist. [SPEAKER_03]: with the ZBT too? [SPEAKER_03]: No issues. [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, it is a fantastically unit. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, because I ran into an issue of I bought one of those nice little like six you [SPEAKER_02]: Um, expansion racks that they have you can want again, Facebook workplace great place for home Aviation products picked up one of those and then I was using one of those little con b USB dot USB Dungles into my Raspberry Pi that I then stuck inside of a metal cage and I was like where all my Zigbee devices going all the time So it's like oh no [SPEAKER_00]: Got to upgrade one of these new fancy antennas, so I just have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have

48:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I got my ZWA to right here right behind where I just said to be right one. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to notice it. [SPEAKER_00]: The ZWA one. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got it right behind me and again, the same thing it works well. [SPEAKER_00]: It works really. [SPEAKER_00]: And now you can actually do because it's the SP32 base.

49:10 [SPEAKER_00]: You can actually leverage that as a Bluetooth proxy. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's something I've been wanting to get into. [SPEAKER_02]: a lot, and just haven't had the killer app to justify it yet, but there might be one of the projects that gets bumped up to this because it sounds like it sounds fun.

49:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It's good, it's pretty, it works really well. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it powers my three blinds here now because I just hated having more stuff on my desk and I was like, it's there anyways, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So it's nice and easy, but the Zigbee one's awesome too. [SPEAKER_00]: Totally great.

49:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So simply, it sits on top of my rack instead of in it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: And it up like, it's in problem. [SPEAKER_02]: as a USB extension cord like half way across the room on the ceiling. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, far enough away, we find it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

50:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're onward and upward, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: I was playing with local AI and I have like the bare minimum hardware to run any type of local model, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But like send in, there was probably like four months, five months ago when I was on paternity leave. [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's like, oh, you're not going to have like any time and you're going to be taking care of the baby 24 seven baby sleep the first like three weeks of their lives like it's always doing and you don't so it's great.

50:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've been super lucky. [SPEAKER_02]: He slept through the night like our rock like. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow [SPEAKER_02]: But no, so I was, that was my fraternity leave project as I were going to set up some local AI and see what we can do.

50:46 [SPEAKER_02]: And at the time, it was very much a solution looking for a problem. [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay, I can make us say some funny voice things, but we don't really need that right now. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, when I want the lights to turn on, I just want them to turn on. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want them to tell me about them turning on, right?

51:00 [SPEAKER_02]: But now we're really getting into, especially once they get more cameras involved, they're really looking towards the image processing and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_02]: That it's going to be [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think you're going to need a bit of hard work to do image processing that I know.

51:15 [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: And also the convenience factor of just giving a key, and then it's handled. [SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to worry about, you know, like is a container running, or is that model good enough, right, like the key just hands it? [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, right now it's my desktop that has to have its Docker containers online and running, and it's like, [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, this obnoxious like RGB glowing thing though like is illuminating the room at night because I can't turn it on now because it's hosting the Docker container.

51:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but It's not that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not working, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't eventually eventually you'll move it off for finding certain things or something. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, Mac many prices have gone through the roof as of when we're talking about it.

52:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, and a nice couple that with a couple that with everybody doing, uh, open claw, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's, it's, that's a match made in heaven for raising prices. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was listening to your guys' episode about, um, a daydreams. [SPEAKER_02]: two days ago, I think.

52:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, yeah, I was like, oh, I want to do this so bad. [SPEAKER_02]: So did you actually land on like the killer app for it? [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think you were talking about, um, was it Mealy? [SPEAKER_02]: Or no, it wasn't mealy. [SPEAKER_02]: You were using an agent as a meal planner.

52:39 [SPEAKER_02]: How's that? [SPEAKER_03]: How's that? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I haven't, I still haven't spoken to him. [SPEAKER_03]: Curtis is still there. [SPEAKER_03]: And I haven't, I've been 12 together. [SPEAKER_03]: But I do have Jarvis on there, but once again, it's too slow, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, but I'm like, I said, you know, just turn off the office down lights, you know?

52:56 [SPEAKER_03]: It has to go out and go, okay, the human wants me to turn off the office down. [SPEAKER_03]: So I need to go and check what lights are on system to find. [SPEAKER_03]: Whereas I could just open up my app on the companion app on my phone and turn the downloads off faster, as it was supposed to write a message on telegram to Java and to turn them off.

53:17 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, isn't that the one I have all this though? [SPEAKER_02]: How complicated can we make a light switch? [SPEAKER_02]: Is it that the the the ethos over? [SPEAKER_03]: I'm okay to complicated, but I wanted to be snappy, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I was complaining before about my kids taking too long with the RFID cards.

53:33 [SPEAKER_03]: Like, that's how I am with this, uh, like, this assistance, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I don't care, like, I don't have time for you to work out what I've just told you to do. [SPEAKER_03]: Just give me the answer then and there. [SPEAKER_03]: And in some ways, I feel as though we've taken a back step, you know, like you could just google a problem and Google will have the first one or two results there would be the answer right now we get is really for both AI generated answers of our questions in either Google or chatchip it to your Claude, you know, it's like tell me yes or no if that's always essentially want to get to the crux so don't get into the fluff.

54:07 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I'm still using OpenClaw daily for other parts of my life. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm trying to segregate things into agents where I can, but yeah, for the most part, it's, yeah, I still get frustrated. [SPEAKER_03]: It's still like randomly will lose its memory, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like I will.

54:25 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, have it access into a system and I'll come back to it next day. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll ask a question and he'll be like, well, if you want me to answer that for you, you're going to need to give you a API access. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, you idiot, you've already got a API access. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking at environment variables.

54:37 [SPEAKER_03]: It's there. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: But I'll need to credit a new script to access that. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, how did you do it yesterday? [SPEAKER_03]: Like seriously. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, well, I could just open up the app and look to the answer myself.

54:49 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: What's your guys' philosophy when it comes to dashboards and things? [SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, I like the house to react to me. [SPEAKER_02]: I try to use the dashboards as like just for just like information metrics, right? [SPEAKER_02]: I try to leave control, like as environmental as I can.

55:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Do you guys like go real hard on your dashboards or do you kind of leave minor pretty? [SPEAKER_02]: For as long as I've been running home assistant now, they're pretty lame. [SPEAKER_02]: Not gonna lie. [SPEAKER_02]: They're big chunky buttons. [SPEAKER_02]: They're not, they're not doing much.

55:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Mine's not. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd say mine's pretty, but that's just, it's just a default like, uh, layout, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, I, I, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I use the mushroom cards for it, just because I, I like the way it displays and you can have like a bunch of information within one tile.

55:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't that, no, it's like, I've got, I've said of my phone, or like, our phones, my phone, my phone, we've got one tablet in the kitchen and really, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not, and that tablet only shows kind of, because to me, it's like, just from a security perspective, I'm just like, it's, [SPEAKER_00]: It's open devices in open space.

56:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It's that dashboards only got a couple of things in it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like a few things. [SPEAKER_00]: It's got a like grocery list. [SPEAKER_00]: It's got our like calendar, it's like a family calendar. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's got like a couple of lights that are like the kitchen the living room and like the breakfast Macaria, which is where that is, right?

56:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And really that's, that's the crux of it. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's got our doorbell camera in case somebody's there, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And then we have the ability to lock the door. [SPEAKER_00]: So, but keep it simple. [SPEAKER_03]: For me, I try to avoid, like I'm the only one that's looking at the dashboard to be honest, like, I've trying to automate the house as much that you don't need to overwrite the house.

56:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Because if you're walking to a room, the lights turn on, and you're in the room, the lights generally don't turn off, right? [SPEAKER_03]: We're using the little wave or the traffic areas where the PILs are okay. [SPEAKER_03]: With that said, my wife does prefer things like she might need, but at night time, I like the lights lower, so it's not as bright, but there'd be like times where she needs more light, so then she'll yell out to a voice assistant, you know, turn up the bright light.

57:10 [SPEAKER_03]: Then that's where it becomes, I think you need a bit of smarts around how you trigger your automations. [SPEAKER_03]: So for example, if you've just overwritten the house turned the lights down to a certain level, [SPEAKER_03]: You don't want someone to override that with a voice command and then the house to just put them back down again.

57:26 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, like by, you know, like a time trick, like you don't want to trigger every five minutes, you don't want. [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they've just left the room, come back and you need to hit the habit a little bit of smarts around and I haven't necessarily solved that. [SPEAKER_03]: There is a whole different, you know, a whole bunch of triggers that I could optimize for that.

57:43 [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, generally it's the house should just be working in the background. [SPEAKER_03]: You walk into a room, the lights turn on, you walk out of room, they turn off. [SPEAKER_03]: Heading and cooling, I have liked to think I've automated once again, it comes down to personal preferences.

57:56 [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's the only other thing my wife is going into the app for is to turn on the heater or turn off the AC. [SPEAKER_03]: Which, you know, she's got also got the app for the AC that she can go directly to. [SPEAKER_03]: I just need to go to home to do it. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think my wife's only interaction with the homelessness to app in and of itself is the, um, to reset the lower boxes.

58:26 [SPEAKER_02]: It always comes back to that for some reason. [SPEAKER_02]: I can't get away from them. [SPEAKER_02]: And then with the garage door, since we were able to use SB home to drive it, I do a when we pull in to our driveway, because both of the cars have Android Auto, and we'd 98% of the time have a phone plugged into it, so it's running.

58:47 [SPEAKER_02]: So when we pull into the driveway, we get a Haiti when open the garage door. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's that's worked like a charm. [SPEAKER_00]: That's been one of the good ones. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and is that just using yes or is it using like camera license plate recognition? [SPEAKER_02]: How do you actually do the just the map entity that comes built in?

59:04 [SPEAKER_02]: It's There's there's there's probably like When we're pulling in there's like a 30 seconds of like will it trigger like before we get into the driveway or will it? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like when we're stopping from the door, but there's not been longer than like a [SPEAKER_02]: five second annoyance of like okay the car is stopped and I'm waiting for to be able to open my garage door.

59:25 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not been enough of a problem to be worth fixing yet. [SPEAKER_02]: But we might get that roll of the. [SPEAKER_02]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_03]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Braden, thank you so much for coming on today. [SPEAKER_03]: We really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_03]: We've got a few links that we'll leave in the show tonight as well from the stuff we've talked about today.

59:39 [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: That's what happened to me. [SPEAKER_03]: It's been a blast. [SPEAKER_02]: Cheers.