How Mike is making heating smarter with Home Assistant

0:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to the Homestead Podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: My name's Phil, join me as usual. [SPEAKER_01]: I've got Rihum hating that. [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, good, how are you? [SPEAKER_01]: good thank you and today we've got Mike joining us, hey Mike, hi guys, how you doing? [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by Home Assistant Cloud by Nebuchadse.

0:23 [SPEAKER_01]: For a small monthly fee, you'll unlock powerful features, like secure, effortless access to your system from anywhere, which works of voice assistance, off-site backups, and more. [SPEAKER_01]: It's all configurable in the Y and there's no YAML needed. [SPEAKER_01]: It also supports development of home assistant, ESP home and other open home foundation projects.

0:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Click the link in the description to learn more. [SPEAKER_01]: This episode is also sponsored by Apollo Automation, makers of open source smart home sensors built for the home assistant ecosystem. [SPEAKER_01]: They're an official open home foundation commercial partner, and their devices are built with local control, privacy and reliability in mind.

1:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Almost everything they offer is works with home assistant and made for ESB home certified, giving you full control and flexibility right out of the box. [SPEAKER_01]: And the best part, they build in the open, working directly with the community to create sensors that people actually need.

1:20 [SPEAKER_01]: If you're deep into home assistant or just getting started, definitely check them out at Apollo Automation. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. [SPEAKER_01]: Whereabouts in the world you're joining us from? [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm in northeast of Scotland, just a sort of place called Aberdeen, so pretty far north, pretty cold, pretty windy, not much rain, but yeah, during winter lots of darkness and during summer lots of daylight.

1:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Wow, yeah, that's, and right now it's getting to be summer. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're just coming into what we would call spring here, but you can tell with the weather here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's very effective. [SPEAKER_01]: So, what has led you down to the Home Innovation Path if you got an IoT background or?

2:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so I went to university and did IT and kind of did the desktop background route, but 2004, I got roped into supporting specific applications. [SPEAKER_00]: So, I moved into a space where we look after real-time data, time series data, [SPEAKER_00]: SCADA systems and PLCs and things like that, but it's more the software side of things that we look after stuff on.

2:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been doing that since 2004. [SPEAKER_00]: Did it in a big company for a long time as a kind of employee looking after the software in the house. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I joined the vendor 10 years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: As essentially a consultant, so I help customers with using our software to look at times to use data.

2:59 [SPEAKER_00]: lots of data, lots of sensors type stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: That's pretty interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: So you've been around this, let's call it IOT World for quite a while then, probably more than... Yeah, longer than IOT's been a word probably. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: We've been doing that type of stuff for such a long time.

3:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's all kind of... [SPEAKER_00]: Collecting temperatures, humidity, valve states, pressure, is all that kind of stuff, and histurizing it, and then using that data to build reports and dashboards and automations and all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so it's really analogous to home assistant.

3:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I originally tried OpenHab, which is something I don't hear mentioned very often on the podcast here, but I give that a try and really got nowhere with it. [SPEAKER_00]: So kind of stood back from that for a while, [SPEAKER_00]: really wanted to put nest into my house and use the the thermostat features so that was around 2017 I used nest and then smart things in queue quickly came after and then my switch across the home assistant was when if this then this monetized themselves.

4:09 [SPEAKER_00]: and that was the kind of the straw that broke the camels back and I jumped on to the the homosystem treatment. [SPEAKER_01]: That is an interesting leap then. [SPEAKER_01]: So you've gone from if, which is very much cloud-based. [SPEAKER_01]: were, and smart things, which was, I guess, lots could have been, or ran, you've got more experience with smart things, it's half local half, I imagine it's half local half cloud.

4:37 [SPEAKER_01]: When you moved over to home, it says, were you trying to cut out the cloud completely and go local, or was it just a pure replacement for if did any cost? [SPEAKER_00]: It was big cause that the nest was tightens as more things right via ifed and without that that kind of broke that link.

4:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not so die hard against the cloud as a lot of people are. [SPEAKER_00]: In my day to day job we use a lot of cloud stuff there so it's for me it's more picking the right tool for the job cloud has got its place and local has got its place as well so [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if you need to run it through the cloud, then local is better.

5:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But there are situations where cloud might be more useful. [SPEAKER_00]: An example of that is my smart lock is just an acara lock. [SPEAKER_00]: And everything's local. [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously it connects to the cloud through the acara. [SPEAKER_00]: So if everything breaks at home, I can still use the acara up on my phone to open that lock, which is a kind of a safety feature there for me.

5:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a fallback on the cloud there. [SPEAKER_00]: happy with cloud stuff, but the one they did, noise was when you turn on a light with home assistant, it's like that, it's instantaneous rather than smart things, it'd be like a two-second delay, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're walking into a room, when you're trying to stumble over things, it can make a little difference.

5:59 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and then that's because it's going back up to the cloud, coming back down, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah [SPEAKER_01]: What was the spark sort of inspired you to move to I've been had first?

6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I think I just like playing with things and it was just Google smart home and open happens one of things because I don't know if it made a difference being in Europe. [SPEAKER_00]: I know home assistant space here as well, but I mean this was a long, long time ago. [SPEAKER_00]: I just spun up a virtual machine.

6:32 [SPEAKER_00]: run some form of Linux and there like use or something like that might be back in the day before Ubuntu and how to go it to open up and try to connect it to some bits and pieces that had lying around but it wasn't very friendly. [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't seem to kind of provide much in the way of automations around like that at the time so it seemed more like a serious endeavor to get going.

6:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas smart things was plug and play and then by the time I jumped on home assistant it was it was almost home plug and play I very rarely touch Yamal files and didn't have to go through that pain So using the the UI mix it really easy and straightforward for me. [SPEAKER_00]: So it was an easy thing to jump across the home assistant from smart things whereas open hop was [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't want to do this.

7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: After a day of doing all this in work, come home and do the same thing again. [SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to be a bit easier to do things, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you've clearly, like when you started using a home assistant was past that whole pure YAML phase, and yeah, it was 2020, I think, if to say to pull out Beton switch, and I think by that point, [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember any difficulty setting up.

7:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just like flushed. [SPEAKER_00]: I went for a H-A-O-S to start with flushed an SD card stuck in a poly-4 and it picked up stuff on my network and And even linked to smart things at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: So I could gradually move stuff across. [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I did was put this smart things integration in there paid for an Albucaza to make it easy and And just gradually move stuff off of smart things and it still sits by me now on the shelf behind me [SPEAKER_00]: Simply there for the smart things washing machine.

8:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I have that's just it's an easy integration there So through the the integration back into home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: It works as a bridge really Oh, interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so now washing machine won't I I guess I could talk to homelessness and directly But it just could do yeah, but because I already had that smart things like there as soon as I installed it was it was there Available and it does what I needed to do I can Rick and remote start to I can see it was running or not.

8:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That's all Yeah, Mark's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not critical. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter if the clock goes down. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if my washing machine is running or not, you know. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: But is there do you have a plan to eventually bring it into homelessness and just fully become that harbour, not yet?

9:01 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think it's fine the way it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, name broke. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'd have to have a look around if they if they brought an official kind of integration for it. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're Maybe dig around on hacks to see what what this code, but it does what I needed to do today.

9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: You'll be saying do if it ain't broke don't fix it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, I think that literally is the only thing smart things does nowadays it did. [SPEAKER_00]: It did do my smart lock before I moved to their car one.

9:26 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, with their car one, it's, uh, three and another half, it's three and a car half, but that's my third border return. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's, that's a different thing altogether. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do want to touch on that. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think in the inaltuous, you said you've got 80 or Zigbee devices, like, really that is your bread and butter there.

9:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And you've recently started moving to thread. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, has your experience with thread bane? [SPEAKER_01]: So if I have you had any issues like that? [SPEAKER_00]: It's been touching, Google. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, iffy, yeah, I think I've got. [SPEAKER_00]: My lock is, it's been rock solid.

10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The car lock that's connected to the car hub, never had a problem with it once it was finally kind of calibrated and set up, which was a trial and a self, but the thread link has been absolutely fine. [SPEAKER_00]: I bought some nano leaf lights that were thread, just to try testing it, it's like going shopping for lights, second-by-sick be lights, second-by-way for lights, [SPEAKER_00]: They've been a bit more likely to drop off the network and the same with some smart plugs that I bought as well as some thread smart plugs to see them.

10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Typically the thread smart plug that's the worst is the one that's behind the dishwasher so to get to it to reset after pull the trigger and reset so I actually have some Zigbee plugs on standby to replace some of those that are a bit more awkward to access [SPEAKER_00]: without any problems for me, just absolutely rock-solid, but yeah, I would say the matter has improved since I went to the JavaScript Matter server with Home Assistant.

11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems to be a lot better if there was a bug a couple of sub-releases that not take my luck, but other than that, moving to the JavaScript versions made a little bit more stable in the Matter side of things, but [SPEAKER_01]: So imagine your then run it so you're running the meta J7 now.

11:33 [SPEAKER_01]: What's your home assistant set up look like? [SPEAKER_01]: What hardware are you running on? [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm pretty spread out. [SPEAKER_00]: I have an N100 that runs home assistant in Docker now. [SPEAKER_00]: So actually I used Docker to deploy everything after I moved away from home assistant.

11:58 [SPEAKER_00]: detail collection is stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Docker became more of an interesting thing there. [SPEAKER_00]: So I decided to say specialize in the edge side of things. [SPEAKER_00]: So home assistant became an educational tool as much as a thing for helping me out at home. [SPEAKER_00]: So I moved to Docker and I've actually become Docker certified since then.

12:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So I went from knowing nothing, deploying in home assistant on Docker and deploying bits and pieces on Docker to then. [SPEAKER_00]: in an exam to be able to talk or certify it from my work as well so it really helps in that so things. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have that and I have no bread on the same box and then I've got the mattress over on that box.

12:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got a home bridge on that box so all the kind of server stuff goes on that box and then my Zigbee I used Zigbee to MQTT but it's on a Raspberry Pi just because [SPEAKER_00]: better, so it's kind of in my office here, which is upstairs. [SPEAKER_00]: So the aerial can spread across the whole house, rather than having it where the server is which is buying a TV downstairs, where it's the worst place for her perception.

13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I have some other devices, lots of Raspberry Pi's lying around doing different jobs, collecting aircraft data for my son who's mad about planes using flight radar, so that feeds me to home assistant gives him no [SPEAKER_00]: really kind of like sprawling all over the place, and I still have used things like the hue hub to run the hue lights just because it's easy to just leave them on there, and everything runs without any problems.

13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, pretty diverse, I've got hopes of laying over the place and hard growing all over the place, but it's all hopefully pretty discrete in the house and it's pretty stable because of that. [SPEAKER_02]: So the philosophy is more, let the specialized hub in this case do what it's best at and bring it all back in.

13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's exactly it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it gives you lots of redundancy there, so something falls down. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I say, the critical one is that the door, if I can't unlock my doors, it's the families not happy. [SPEAKER_00]: So the fact it's on their car, how does well means that [SPEAKER_00]: We used almost a system at 9.9% of the time, but that 0.01% of the time, then the car up, there's a fillback.

14:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So the family they you mentioned, so they have the a car app to if they can't get into a home assistant whatever reason. [SPEAKER_00]: No, they'll find me. [SPEAKER_01]: Yep, that's fair. [SPEAKER_00]: That's they have any apps installed. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I've said. [SPEAKER_00]: They've got their home assistant companion app just for phone tracking because my kind of ethos is that everything's kind of like done for them.

14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like if I'm having to go to a dashboard to push a button to do something something's failed somewhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so they run the apps literally just so A we can detect if they're at home or not if I can detect like if my wife said the the grocery store then we can trigger work with the shopping list that type of thing.

15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's used for my like [SPEAKER_00]: in put to my morning routines to know like if people are going to bed or if they're up we kind of use things like our phones on charges one of the indicators is to if somebody if people are sleep or not so but as far as they're concerned then every now and again I'll just come and say what kind of log into the home system up on your phone because it's dropped off and it's not reporting home again and that's as much interaction as they have with it.

15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got two [SPEAKER_00]: two boys and my wife my elder boys just turning 17 and he's just start playing around with the colors and his room so he's maybe playing with the app every night again just to change the colors and the lights in his room but other than that they they don't want to earn here.

15:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I was going to ask are they did they have an interest in it and are they like hey let me see what I can [SPEAKER_00]: not so much my wife just kind of rules her eyes yeah yeah yeah it's it's my hobby so it's it's just kind of it's a it's a thorn on her side that she tolerates just because it's something that keeps me interesting interested in what I'm doing um but the the kids um it's just if something breaks still come and speak to me but um [SPEAKER_00]: Things like lighting, my younger son was kind of like, oh, can we change my light in my bedroom?

16:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I go to sleep, it does this instead, and that's being about the most of it. [SPEAKER_02]: It's mostly mother-of-dell. [SPEAKER_02]: You got feature in it? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: It's mostly me sporting things that we're doing regularly, and then programming into the system and telling him, you don't need to do that anymore.

16:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So typical typical kid plays the Xbox, [SPEAKER_00]: never goes back to it so the Xbox will power itself off or if he turns the TV on or the Xbox on without getting the TV on the TV you'll know to turn itself on and put the right channel and things like that so they've got the quality of life things they probably don't realize and I'm beavering away in the background doing all these things for them but they just they just walk her in the house and lights turn on and doors unlock and the heating takes care of itself and everything like that that's that's all these sauces that they shouldn't know [SPEAKER_01]: So you mentioned there, walking around the house, lights turning on, what are you using for presence around the house using blueprints or motion sensors?

17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So I did try the Bluetooth stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: I tried it because I've got ESP 32's around. [SPEAKER_00]: I bought a whole bunch of them with the idea of doing that tracking, but I don't know if it's just me, but multi-level house. [SPEAKER_00]: It just doesn't work. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like if you're above a beacon, it can't tell you that you're on the floor above.

17:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're in the room above, [SPEAKER_00]: I guess if you had enough beacons, maybe it would triangulate properly, but the ones I tried it was like, now if you're in the room below, the lights are going in the room above because it thinks you're there. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've actually got the car API R sensors in, in most of the rooms that need it, and I kind of kind of like a 20 minute delay, basically, to see if there's any motion wait for 20 minutes, if it doesn't trigger again, then nobody's there.

18:08 [SPEAKER_00]: but I use other things as well to kind of reinforce. [SPEAKER_00]: So in the living rooms, the TV's on, then yeah, you're not going to move, but if the TV's on, I can track that with the power and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I use those additional things to capture if somebody's in a room or not.

18:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I did try the Akara MM wave sensor. [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I thought it was just me, maybe, but the rooms in our houses here in Scotland are not particularly big, and I thought it wasn't working very well in the small spaces like my office here, there's two desks in here, and you can't fit anything else, if we both roll our chairs back, we're going to hit into each other, let's put the size of the rooms that we get here.

18:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't get that to work, but when I pinged the email to you guys about coming on the podcast off, it's still got that in the shed, I'll dig out and try again one more time and I'm much to get working in the living room dining space. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's brilliant because it just knows that you're sat there.

19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the one space where somebody may sit with the TV off and not move in the lights will go to and they'll be annoying. [SPEAKER_00]: So mostly it's PR or sensors [SPEAKER_00]: other environmental things around you that will keep it on yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: That's my favorite thing about like the millimeter wave sensors right it's not that it can turn things on it's how fast it can turn things off when given we've got it for a room or that you don't need to rely on the TV being on as a trigger like not now the TV can turn off if no one's watching it.

19:42 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's PIR or maybe you find like every 20 minutes depending on like the situation like so for example, you're on the couch, right, watching TV, whatever, are you, do you have to do the whole like with your hands and like, play a little bit more of that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually working around it, so the only rooms where I don't have additional sensors are the kind of, as I call them, thoroughfares, like the downstairs hall, the upstairs hall landing.

20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm literally walking through, you're moving in there anyway, if you're in there, you're not sitting reading a book in the hallway, so the PR centers on the runer are absolutely fine for that. [SPEAKER_00]: The other rooms where I have it are the living room dining room, where 90% of the time somebody's watching TV, if they're not moving.

20:25 [SPEAKER_00]: same in our what we call the sun room and so I can other living space where my son please Xbox all day long if the Xbox is on Then then that room's occupied so Usually There's other sensors that I can use so in my home office here. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got power Monitoring on the the desks so Just about tuning [SPEAKER_00]: what does the desk look like when standby what does it look like when it's powered up and literally come into the room lights turn on because the PR sensor you sit down and log in the power who's up on the desk and then it knows not to turn the lights out until you go away in the power of the desk drops down again so usually there's additional sensors in there to to complement the PR sensors yeah whereas the

21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: the them and wave sensors brilliant because now we can sit at the dining table and eat dinner and not have a TV on and off the lights dip out turn like that so we can do that too. [SPEAKER_02]: From an automation perspective, what is it that you're [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what are you using from, to actually build out your automations, right?

21:30 [SPEAKER_02]: Because I know, I know you said you liked more GUI style, managing of things, playing with Node Red, or you playing with the built-in automation system, what are you doing there? [SPEAKER_00]: So I think I've got two automations in the built-in automations, and they're probably just one that says, I'm alive.

21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: make sure that the system is up and running and I can't remember what the other one thing is a start-up push into new grid to see if the system is started and then I use new grid for absolutely everything. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've [SPEAKER_00]: I came from smart things, and even in smart things, I started using a piece of work called Dringerfly, I don't know if you're ever aware of that.

22:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was bought by Comcast in the US, but it was very much like Node Red and it plugged into smart things and led you to do the kind of the flow-based programming. [SPEAKER_00]: So I used Node Red in [SPEAKER_00]: smart things and then I started using it when I moved across to home assistant mainly because it's just really nice and intuitive especially compared to how they've made a lot progress with the UI for the all missions in home assistant natively but it's just really kind of for me it's how I think about doing my automations is [SPEAKER_00]: having the different nodes with the different states of things you're looking for and having like them spurn off into other things, but mine's very modular as well so I'm quite a lazy person by nature if I can write a piece of code once and reuse it I'll do that so the the lights for example in Node Red I've built a flow that you just basically feed the name of the entity and it knows how to

23:23 [SPEAKER_00]: scenes in that area based on using things like the adaptive lighting plug-ins, all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So if I want to turn a light on in nude red, I just say far the name of it through that that flow that I've built and it takes care of brightness and color temperature and and turning on lights that are adjacent to it and all that kind of stuff.

23:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I have a cube, one of these aquark cubes. [SPEAKER_00]: This I've painted the sides different colors so if you turn it to a different side [SPEAKER_00]: So again, it'll just go through that node and say, right, what does the cube say the cube says today we're purple so any accent, I think we've purple in the house Christmas we have like blue and white lights on our Christmas dreamingly so just trying to keep the blue during Christmas and all the kind of accent lights will go blue and if we add a new light to the the the ecosystem then as long as I give it the right naming convention and I don't need to change anything I just need to [SPEAKER_00]: add it to a group or add it to a room wherever and it all takes care of it and new thread so again it's just kind of like let the system work for you in the same way that does is an end user who walks around and things happen if I want to add stuff to my system I want it to already kind of take care of it so I find that's easy to do a new thread I'm not sure

24:41 [SPEAKER_00]: if it's even possible in the built-in automations. [SPEAKER_01]: You could do things like scripts. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I have like a, I used to have an adaptive lighting script. [SPEAKER_01]: Now I have some scripts to do. [SPEAKER_01]: My downlights turning on. [SPEAKER_01]: So all my downlights are Z-wave.

25:01 [SPEAKER_01]: But if for every reason, my Z-wave network is down. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I'm doing an update. [SPEAKER_01]: All the Z-wave dress containers gone down. [SPEAKER_01]: I have a, I've run on my lights through the scripts and I also pass in the Zigbee lights that are in the room adjacent to those down lights.

25:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So when the script detects, so by chasing down, you can turn on the accent lights instead. [SPEAKER_01]: As a fallback. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, there are ways around. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not as intuitive if you look not a program like, you know, there are certain ways you can get around it.

25:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I started doing a lot more complex things as well, of late, so I started getting into doing more of the JavaScript in the nodes as well, so building my own function, nodes that do much more complex things as well, so it's a bit more flexible for me to do why I need to do in there, and actually again, translate across my work where customers are dealing with the use [SPEAKER_00]: and I can teach them like this is how you collect data that you do it interact with our software via Node Red which is something that I now know really kind of well through playing around with at home doing this kind of stuff so again it's the educational side of things I kind of imagine many of my customers will be using home automations and in home assisted two things like controlling PLCs and stuff like that but yeah it's a nice crossover for me there and learning opportunity yeah it's definitely getting there

26:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Have you tried to use AI to build any of your automations into the network? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know anything of that's possible, I haven't used the network in quite some time, but have you gone down that route? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, leasingness, vibe coding, all that kind of stuff.

26:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So usually now my starter template for building a function is good to something like Cloud AI and see. [SPEAKER_00]: Build me a new dread function that does this and I'll do kind of 90% of it. [SPEAKER_00]: knowing off code to go in and tweak what doesn't work and why I need to change in it.

26:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So I tend to use, I think, Claude has been the best for that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Gemini's a bit hidden miss and chatGPT's kind of somewhere in the middle I would say. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, for doing that kind of stuff, Claude seems to be the best for the programming side of things.

27:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And the same for a gradually building, [SPEAKER_00]: Flose themselves in Node Red. [SPEAKER_00]: You can ask them to build the flunk of the JSON that you just basically copy and paste into Node Red and I'll build the Flose for you. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the one thing I do struggle with is it often refers to old home assistant API calls or things are not quite up to date yet so it's obviously remembering things are looking at it at old Reddit posts and learning from things that are maybe a couple of years back and [SPEAKER_00]: as you've seen in the last couple of, even the last year, things have changed so much in home assistance so quickly that things go out a bit quite quickly.

27:54 [SPEAKER_02]: I wonder, what if you give it the, like, hey, here's the API documentation, or here's the no-dred documentation for the home assistant, I figure what they call a plug-in, or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's generally an AI thing is that, even if you ask a question, the first full question is, are you sure a question mark?

28:13 [SPEAKER_00]: refer to this code here or refer to this documentation. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we just had initiative at work we launched AI internally and we got training on that kind of prompt engineering as they're calling it nowadays. [SPEAKER_00]: So I just ran through that prompt engineering course recently so that's maybe going to change how I can interact with the AI's new a little bit more about how they respond to queries and things like that.

28:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think, yeah, Fendi's got time going and look up a YouTube video or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Just some prompt engineering if you're playing with the ALIs, it does kind of help you optimize what you're doing there. [SPEAKER_00]: It would be my recommendation. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, even at work now, we're looking at, like I say, the software ideal with it collects data.

28:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And we build dashboards and automations and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: We're looking at using AI to, [SPEAKER_00]: help build dashboards, automatically, and things like that for a customer, so again, it's that kind of crossover between my work and my home world start to go, I wonder if I can do that home more or play around with it just to have that experience, it makes a big difference if you're instead of following our course, if you're trying to figure out how to do something at home, even if it's not industrial, it's usually got some sort of an analogy in a workplace.

29:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Is there something that you've been able to bring from work into home that's so that you've been made? [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, yeah, that's actually quite useful. [SPEAKER_00]: I think generally the dashboarding ethos and notifications, so, like I say, this is software I work with is about optimizing processes in industrial spaces by looking at dashboards by begging notifications and by automating things.

29:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's almost one to one with what we're doing at home here. [SPEAKER_00]: like I think for dashboards, I'm always on Reddit and I'm always looking for ideas on Reddit and you see beautiful dashboards that have got beautiful backgrounds and they've got real nice transparency and they look beautiful but I always wonder how practical they are because the whole point of a dashboard is to convey information and if it's like a transparent text on a back drop, how easy can you make out what the dashboards trying to tell you.

30:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at my dashboards, you probably call them quite sparse, but that's because they're their dynamic, they've kind of borne out of why I've learned through years of working with these types of things. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had a customer who was quite influential, let me [SPEAKER_00]: job was understanding how to build a dashboard that would convey information as quickly as possible especially in like safety critical situations and things like that.

30:58 [SPEAKER_00]: So he did this great PowerPoint presentation where he had a slide that was just filled with gauges. [SPEAKER_00]: There's like which ones are over this pressure and you're sitting there and you see all the people in the room trying to count gauges and yeah exactly like what oh [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you need to get like 15, 16, 17 that can answer and then he flipped to the next page where he done his own kind of take on it where everything was more on a crew and accept the one that was over the limit and it was plashing out like orange or something like that and he taken all the numbers off the screen just literally had like here's the limits and here's where that pressure is compared to the limit.

31:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and he did the same thing again, and every you can see every just sitting back in the room and just say, yeah, 17. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just he can count them instantly. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I've taken that into my own dashboards. [SPEAKER_00]: My dashboards are, I've got, um, a screen above my, my twin screens of my work.

31:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got a screen above there that's got my home assistant dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and it's responsive as to, isn't the weekend or not, so if it's the weekend, as long as showing me anything to do with work. [SPEAKER_00]: If it's five days. [SPEAKER_00]: Monday to Friday, then I'm going to have things like time zooms for the different times that work and it's going to have to work calendar up there that I don't need to see on this audience Monday.

32:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Things like I have automations that identify problems with my mismerms if a light's disappeared off the network or a battery needs replaced or like the heating filled in some way the lock hasn't locked when it should have done. [SPEAKER_00]: that'll appear on the dashboard, but if they haven't, then there's nothing on the dashboard.

32:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like it's a traffic light. [SPEAKER_00]: It's literally just something appears if there's a problem. [SPEAKER_00]: If there's no problem, then it's blank. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was always taught that [SPEAKER_00]: The best screen is a blank screen because there's no problem going on as soon as you've got a problem you put something on that screen and that'll get your attention.

32:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So, and it's the same thing colors as well. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like mine's very muted. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very kind of like if it's a piece of information just when I glance at it's maybe something like a purple or a gray. [SPEAKER_00]: if it's something that needs attention, then I'll be yellow or orange or something like that.

33:03 [SPEAKER_00]: There really stands out on the screen and gets her attention. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all going to learn through doing stuff at work and bringing that back into the house. [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, if I put my screens up and read it, no deep. [SPEAKER_00]: nobody double, they don't do the cart them, but they do the job they need to do, and then officially.

33:22 [SPEAKER_01]: You wouldn't get all the karma, so there's no point putting it on. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want you to get points. [SPEAKER_01]: So what are you, you got an extra monitor on imagining then in your office for that dashboard? [SPEAKER_01]: It's at a dashboard that you have to interact with on a regular basis.

33:41 [SPEAKER_00]: No, so it's just a Raspberry Pi under my desk running full OS and it just runs the dashboard I can't interact with it unless I switch my KVM switch and switch the keyboard and most of that Raspberry Pi, but generally speaking it just sits there, the only thing I need to do with it is maybe [SPEAKER_00]: update it in home assistant now and again to have something remove something or Every now and again, oh crash, not just need to go and recycle the way pages.

34:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It's there 24-7, but other than that, it's It's just can maybe four columns, but most days it's three because the fourth column is maintain it is is Early performing, not throw up the the information or what me internal is doing Other than that, it's got the camera for the doorbell that's there all the time [SPEAKER_00]: I say temperature and then my calendar and then some like I say it'll throw up alerts if there's any alerts or anything like that.

34:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So most of the data sits there and doesn't really do much of them spying if somebody comes to the front door while I'm working or like I say coming in the morning my toothbrush I actually found an oral bee use case my toothbrush batteries flow then I know it's going to charge the toothbrush because I don't charge it all the time because [SPEAKER_00]: I find a use case for that and that basically just pings up on my display and says you're battery in there, toothbrush needs charging so I'm going to charge that and they'll drop off the display once that's done.

35:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah it's all kind of automated that way. [SPEAKER_02]: So the display's more on notification system than entering. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, like I say, Holy thoughts on my house is that I shouldn't have to go to the dashboard and touch anything to do anything even on my phone. [SPEAKER_00]: If I'm going in there to do something on my phone it's probably because some things not worked or the very rare cases where I need to do stuff manually like if we have like a movie mode in our sunroom where we watch TV and things like that so I've got on a car, push button, you push that and it'll kind of dim the lights when the movie's playing if you press pause the lights come up again.

35:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can ask the Alexa and the room and it will do the same thing, or you can, you can go into their phone and do it on your phone. [SPEAKER_00]: So often, it's just as easy to go into on the crouches is to stand up and walk the six feet to the button or try to interact with she who must not be named and get her to actually respond properly.

36:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so yeah, if I'm, if I'm touching a dashboard, something's going wrong is the [SPEAKER_02]: That's fair, that's fair. [SPEAKER_02]: So do you have any, I mean, I'd say one, you talk to a sort of screening in your office. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't have any tablets around the house here, and it's like, No, no, nice, no, yeah.

36:17 [SPEAKER_00]: No need for that, yeah, we've got, we've got the huge switches for the light bulb, so I don't have any of the light switches on really, certainly, like everything is Zigbee light bulbs, because we want the color control every room in the house, has got, [SPEAKER_00]: at least a color temperature bulbs.

36:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have that during the day it's bright blue light night it gets darker and more orangey. [SPEAKER_00]: So because of that I've gone for light bulb route but we do have for like my boys bed rooms they don't like the lights coming on and off automatically. [SPEAKER_00]: So if they're at home that's suppressed the the lights don't go on automatically they have to push the button on the the hue remote but when they're away from home then it goes back into [SPEAKER_00]: clear stuff off the floor which I'm doing every day or opening curtains or making beds then the lights come on automatically for me.

37:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Our bedside lights for me in my wife. [SPEAKER_00]: They're just the cheap rotary buttons so you can dim the lights. [SPEAKER_00]: You can brighten the lights automatically and just tap the moment off. [SPEAKER_00]: But again, mine's all submitted. [SPEAKER_00]: I can put my phone down to charge it.

37:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It turns [SPEAKER_00]: my wife she didn't want that she wants the manual buttons so it doesn't mind me for her but for me it's all automated everything else is just yeah in the background don't push buttons don't go to tablets don't do it [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that's nice. [SPEAKER_02]: So you talked about your eels for using bulbs everywhere instead of smart switches, because you can adjust the colors and the color temperature and so on.

37:53 [SPEAKER_02]: Are you doing any like notifications and stuff? [SPEAKER_02]: With that, I know you talked about your cube where like the a car cube, where you can like flip it for different themes, but are you doing any like, [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, you know there's better like a water leak like turn over the lights yellow or something like that.

38:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I do it for like if somebody's at the front door is the biggest one. [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean my office, which is upstairs, I'm off to go my headphones on which I mean I can't really hear what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: I've even got an automation, I can turn the doorbell off if I'm in an important session where I don't want the doorbell to entering out.

38:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I have lights behind all the monitors so that I've got the back light to help with my eyes not kind of contrast between the dark background and the bright monitor so that's the same for the TVs and everything like that but if somebody rings the doorbell then it'll blink the lights behind my monitor just to not distract it and miss somebody at the door.

38:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Other than that we don't really use colors. [SPEAKER_00]: I did have one that was [SPEAKER_00]: It was a monitoring the hot water in our hot water tank, so if somebody wants to go for a shower, I used to have a light that would blink red if the water was hot and blue if the water was cold, just so people would know, but I find I was the only person using that, so we repurpose that light elsewhere for other reasons, but for notifications I prefer to use the notifications through the [SPEAKER_00]: There's a binary sensor type problem, so it automatically does this for me if I create a new binary sensor that is a problem binary sensor, it gets added to automatically notify if that ever turns on.

39:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll ping my phone and see this problem is currently on so like say batteries going flat or somebody's flipped a switch and the Zigbee lights going off you just go flip the switch back on again or I've got problems with my heating system it'll tell me yeah the the water is supposed to be hot but it isn't so you've got a problem with the heating system those things they'll come up on the dashboard [SPEAKER_00]: But the only notifications that I got my phone that way are where I'm expected to do something.

40:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So a battery's flat. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm expected to replace a battery. [SPEAKER_00]: A light's going to I'm expected to go and flip the switch or repair the Zigbee bulb. [SPEAKER_00]: If it's gone that far or the heating system's going, going diagonally is what's wrong with the heating system.

40:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It's never kind of like, oh this room slightly too warm or this room slightly too cold. [SPEAKER_00]: It's never informational notifications always [SPEAKER_00]: So it's got an action behind it that I'm expecting somebody to take, take, take some action and do something. [SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting.

40:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise it becomes noise and people just ignore it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: You see. [SPEAKER_00]: I do it my work. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I say, we've got a notification system as far as our software. [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen a thousand times where.

40:52 [SPEAKER_00]: people have said or have built this notification that tells me the temperature of this thing every morning. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, again, how often do you just stick that into trash? [SPEAKER_00]: It's like you intentionally read it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, well, just tell you when it gets too hot or when it gets too cold, then you'll actually pay attention to it.

41:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is the same at home. [SPEAKER_00]: If I got an notification, I don't want it just to be something I dismiss. [SPEAKER_00]: It needs to be something I go to go and do something about. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's some really good. [SPEAKER_01]: I know I have a whole bunch of data points that just get sent to me, like I've created a daily briefing with what's on my calendar.

41:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't read that. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: I think I may as well just turn that off. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I just need to know the stuff that's critical at that time, that I can actually know. [SPEAKER_00]: The one I realized that really sells it is the, I've got a Synology, let and as.

41:40 [SPEAKER_00]: and you can tell it to send your report and it'll do a monthly report of like how much this space you've used to think I don't care just tell me when I'm at like 10% left or something like that or even better [SPEAKER_00]: figure out how long before that disk is full based on how much you've been using it.

41:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me how I've got to go and do something about it rather than just a straight alert. [SPEAKER_00]: So this kind of predictive things are much more useful than just the disk is full or in the worst case. [SPEAKER_00]: If you used an extra 5% this month, I don't care until it becomes a problem.

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43:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So, make in terms of video and cameras and all of those kind of things, so you're doing anything on that front. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got a couple of real links, the real link doorbell at the front mouse, so it kind of monitors the front there and then I've got a camera in what we call our sunroom just one of these kind of easy one zoom internal cameras and I've used them with AI recently, so I think everybody gets on the AI train in the last couple of months.

43:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So I start using [SPEAKER_00]: The biggest one was that my cat, so we have a cat as a family as well, and she won't wear a collar. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't like that. [SPEAKER_00]: They have a cat's brain collar because she's seem to many get caught in fences and stuff like that, and it's not nice for them.

44:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So she doesn't wear a collar. [SPEAKER_00]: I did try and go down the kind of RFID because she's tagged, but the cat close enough to that tag for it to read is pretty. [SPEAKER_00]: hard to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't have cat flaps either. [SPEAKER_00]: So somebody has to physically let her in or out through a door.

44:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So I can't with sightier like shooting her's cat, which was essentially a trap that said if a door is open then the cats in shooting her unknown state you don't know if it's in or out. [SPEAKER_00]: When the door closes you've then got the video if the video in sight sees the cat then [SPEAKER_00]: So as using the camera, just the built-in pet detection to do that, which is fine for like the door's closed, it sees a cat 99,000 million times out of wherever, it's going to be our cat this insight is not going to be another cat.

45:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe in the summer I'll leave the cat, the door open to other cats will come in so it'll detect another cat. [SPEAKER_00]: So I thought I wonder if I feed AI a picture of my cat. [SPEAKER_00]: and compare it to the cat that's on the video and then it can alert if there's a different cat that's seen.

45:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So during the summer I'll get alert on the screen or in my phone if another cat tries to come in the door where the camera is which is the one we tend to leave open. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I've started feeding it the doorbell feed as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So if the cat's in the unknown state where doors being open and closed you don't have a cat's going in and out.

45:49 [SPEAKER_00]: If it sees a cat outside, it'll feed that to the algorithm and say, is that my cat, and if it is my cat, let's say, yeah, cats outside. [SPEAKER_00]: So now we know roughly if the cat's inside or outside, and then we try to get even smarter with it and say, [SPEAKER_00]: on the camera that's inside if the door is opened and it sees a cat, which directions the cat traveling.

46:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So are you looking at its head going towards the door, or are you looking at his head going away from the door? [SPEAKER_00]: To then presume if the door is open based on the direction it's facing, which whether it's coming in or out to the side, then if the cat's in or out. [SPEAKER_00]: So that is just born out of the cat's got plenty of hiding places in the house and you don't know if it's in or out.

46:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And you maybe want to go away from the house for a good period of time you need the cat to be in. [SPEAKER_00]: So just knowing if the cat's in a row, it's useful to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: So that works, it works better on, I moved to LM vision based on one of you guys mentioning it. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was using some of the old prompts that were working.

46:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the updated the nodes and node red and the home assistant with it. [SPEAKER_00]: It talks to the chatbot. [SPEAKER_00]: I find it efficient worked really well for me and I'm also I think you get 20 free credits with Gemini so for the first 20 calls it will send it to Gemini and once it's kind of the sent 20 calls to Gemini I'll then route it to my paid for credits instead and so and again it's like I can see the differences like Gemini will be like [SPEAKER_00]: I've told it to say yes, no, or unknown, if it can identify as the cat, and a lot of time, Gemini, I'll come back and see an unknown, whereas some like chatGPT's a bit more successful at that type of thing.

47:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So I use that, and then my other one is my garbage routine, so trash garbage, however you want to to call it. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got a calendar entry, which will automatically [SPEAKER_00]: council which color of bin is supposed to go so we have like three collections one for blue is paper oranges which recently in black is normal waste so based on the council we know on any given day what the the bin then he's be put out is and if it gets to like eight clock in the morning and that bin hasn't gone out the camera will have said it'll start doing anytime somebody open their closest door it'll check the feet to see if there's a bin there [SPEAKER_00]: So if it's a wrong color or if it's missing it, it'll alert us and then once it's figured the bin bins there will stop checking so it'll stop sending messages to the AI until it detects vehicles going past and then as soon as it sees the bin truck, garbage truck, trash truck, where you want to call it then it will say okay they've been collected you need to pull them back in there so then it'll again open alert up.

48:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually there is a problem even that's not problem just a problem that says yeah Bins need to be brought back inside so we know to go and pull them back inside when they're done So that's the kind of two video AI things I've been doing I was trying to mess around with a llama, but I just don't have the capability at home to run or llama and do anything useful with it So that's one for the future and I can find to get hold of some hardware to run that one but [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's been wild that you have a use case to detect, is this my cat entering my house?

49:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you need to identify, it's your cat coming into your house. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's because the other cats and neighbors cats come in to feed her food. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like obviously during the summer, they just learn if that door is open, I can get in and they might sometimes look on the stairs and you find a cat looking at you as if to see why you're interrupting me feeding.

49:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Have you thought about using AI to detect another person's cat coming into your house to like, show it out somehow? [SPEAKER_00]: So, I did think about that, but I'm just not confident enough that I would not be showing my own cat out. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the problem with it.

49:46 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to have that certainty level pretty high there, but yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can see people who are, I'm a cat person, but I know there's plenty of light cats, but using the thing to put the sprinklers on if there's cats in the yard type thing. [SPEAKER_00]: The real link cameras are good enough for that because they take pets full stop, so you can probably do that type of things, but yeah, it's, it's, it looks like a progress from just being a straightforward like, is a cat there.

50:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Assume it's the right cat to kill us through to AI and make sure it's the right cat in the circumstance when we need to. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, you've got a, uh, pretty interesting, um, heating present system. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I think you mentioned in your email, like, you do some pre-heating based on, um, school or work finishing, can you walk us through, um, your, your heating system?

50:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So I said at the start that Nest was my kind of first proper for me and to to to home motivations and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not as Nest was very underwhelming. [SPEAKER_00]: The detection wasn't very good. [SPEAKER_00]: The pre-heating wasn't very good. [SPEAKER_00]: So I did some more things but it never got as complex.

51:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially what I do is I [SPEAKER_00]: I've turned everything that is smart on Nest off, so it's literally just a controller. [SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't do any predictive heating, it doesn't do any kind of home presence or anything that. [SPEAKER_00]: I use the companion app to decide if people are home or away.

51:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So if every is away, then the temperature, the target temperature gets dropped, so that the house doesn't heat when we need to do it by cooling here in Scotland. [SPEAKER_00]: We just do heating. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the straightforward one. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the one that kind of everybody kind of can do.

51:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But I'd say to go then we're complex in that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I use my works software and fed essentially all the heating events into my works software. [SPEAKER_00]: So every time the heating is on and then off I can detect like what was the starting temperature and what was the end temperature and how long did it take [SPEAKER_00]: So I know it roughly works at around one degree per hour essentially.

52:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So I know if I want to heat the house by two degrees it's going to take two hours. [SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of average that out over the last 30 heating events so it stays up to date. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a byproduct I get the efficiency of the heating system as well so I can see in that degree.

52:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's then used as an input into what I call my preheating schedule. [SPEAKER_00]: These kids start with the way from home, so if you're away from home and you want the heating to come on, then it will do it automatically when the kids leave school, so it knows like at 3-30 or whatever, they finish school in the afternoon.

52:56 [SPEAKER_00]: If they exit a zone, I've put around the school, then that's them left school to come home. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just assuming they're coming home and not going anywhere else, which is like 90% of [SPEAKER_00]: At that point it'll look at the temperature in the house and if it's cold it'll start the heating automatically.

53:14 [SPEAKER_00]: My wife is the same so when she leaves her work because she works in an office whereas I work from home all the time so if she leaves the office it does the same trick it's like if it's roughly end of day if the heat is not on turn the heating on for her coming home. [SPEAKER_00]: But we'd also do things like we'd maybe said my earlier my son's really into like aircraft [SPEAKER_00]: So there's an air base that's about an hour and a half away from here that we'll go to.

53:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can do photography there and photograph the jets coming in and all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: What we'll do when we're there is, when we're thinking about going homeless, we'll just push a button on the dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the one use case where I have to push a button on the dashboard because I can't figure out what to automate this, but we'll get there eventually.

53:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And it'll work out based on our travel time through ways. [SPEAKER_00]: how long it is before we get home and it'll look for that intercept between how much it's going to take to heat the house and how far away from home we are. [SPEAKER_00]: So if it's too hours from home and it only has to drop the house up by a degree, it'll wait until we're now away from home and then it'll turn heating on so we're not heating the house when it doesn't need to be heated up.

54:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the kind of the inbound automation as I call it. [SPEAKER_00]: I've tried to extend it to things like calendar events, so if a calendar event ends and it's got a location as a way from home, it assumes you're coming home. [SPEAKER_00]: Which is a bit hit missed depending on what you've got in the calendar or not, but it's, I find it really hard.

54:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't find any kind of way to successfully knew for sure if somebody's heading home other than somebody pushing a button. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just not something you can predict. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you're heading in the gend direction of home, you might drive past and keep going. [SPEAKER_00]: So, that's why we've done the manual way.

55:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the other one is the heating in the morning. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is more likely to work. [SPEAKER_00]: So in mourning, again, it uses that same number to predict how long to heat up. [SPEAKER_00]: It looks at the alarm on my calming watch and it looks on all the Alexa alarms to see what the earliest alarm is and that's to seem to be the time that we're going to go up and then it'll go back from there.

55:28 [SPEAKER_00]: How was the latest they need to turn heating on to get the house at temperature for when the first alarm goes off in the morning and that was I looked actually this morning to see how accurate it was my alarm was set for 7 a.m. the heating went off at 7 at 6.50 so it was within 10 minutes of being accurate to get those to temperature.

55:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I have other traps around it as well, just for energy saving. [SPEAKER_00]: So you're both going to laugh at this, but when the day is predicted to be too warm, so when the weather forecast is pumped into this algorithm, if it hits a certain limit, then the house will actually not need the heating to come on to get out of the temperature.

56:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And I worked this out by basically looking at lots of historical data and looking at the temperature compared to the house and all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: So I find the magic number is 14 degrees Celsius, so that's warm for us. [SPEAKER_00]: If I get 15 degrees Celsius during the day, then the house will actually manage to get up to 18 degrees, which is our insight temperature just by the radiant heat coming from outside.

56:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, in the morning, when it's looking to see, do I need to turn the heating on? [SPEAKER_00]: It says, what's the forecast? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's going to be four degrees degrees today. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll just suppress the whole thing completely and it won't turn the heating on. [SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, I think I start my heating at 17 outside.

56:51 [SPEAKER_01]: I think is my current thinking. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so yeah, North East Scotland we're not we're kind of just really kind of as I call it me the weather and there it gets hot and there it gets cold. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: the we've never had 30 degrees in the entire history of of of being like a recorded temperature and the like the record called is like minus 13 minus 15 something like that it and that's the record so most of the time it's like [SPEAKER_00]: A hot day in the summer is 16 degrees and a cold day in the winter is like 4 degrees zero, something like that.

57:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like neither hot for us or cold for us. [SPEAKER_00]: So that that 14 degrees seems quite kind of low, but it's enough just to have sun on the house or enough heat outside to bring the temperature up inside because the insulation, like kind of stuff that we need being a colder climate rather than a warmer climate.

57:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and the last thing I do is just the diesel one, like if somebody leaves a door open for five minutes, it It suppresses the heating until the door is closed for ten minutes just to save trying to heat the outside Right, this this straightforward one, but yeah, I'm quite happy with that forecast one.

58:08 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems to again [SPEAKER_00]: going back and checking and seeing, it seems to be pretty successful in that, yeah, it might be a little bit chilly when you got up in the morning, but we're saving putting heat on for a day. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to help the bill, help the climate, everything like that.

58:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: That seems very intricate, though, right? [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of things in there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's where no dread comes in. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, where I can do this in no dread by taking all these [SPEAKER_00]: inputs.

58:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm working out what path do I take? [SPEAKER_00]: Do I go to my way? [SPEAKER_00]: We have three kind of target temperatures. [SPEAKER_00]: One is nighttime. [SPEAKER_00]: So the house is set to be cooler at nighttime just because it's easier to sleep if there's a bit cooler. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we have the kind of regular daytime temperature and then we have the away temperature which is cooler than nighttime still.

59:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Just so we're not heating the house when nobody but the cat is in it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not turn it off completely because we don't want to freeze the cat But it stays stay pretty low And it's just an algorithm that looks for all those different flags to say right the forecast is 14 degrees then stick it on eco mode and don't turn heating on if it's [SPEAKER_00]: doors are open, stick on, he can move, don't turn the heating on if it's prekey is on but we're not quite there as far as timed and just leave it as is until we hit that timer and just check every five minutes to see if we're there yet.

59:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Like see, I'm not sure I could do that in the the the automations that are in home assistant maybe I could maybe I can I don't know but it's something that it built up over time to start off with just the like if we're away [SPEAKER_00]: If the temperature forecast is high, then high, high in my world, then suppress the heating those types of things.

1:00:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It just builds up over time and again, like I say, with no dread, I feel like you can just insert notes into the logic and not break everything. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I'm looking for if I can come with a good way of predicting if you're on your [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you're right, like I use proximity sensor, so if we're traveling towards home, then it can trigger some actions.

1:00:30 [SPEAKER_01]: I turn on the AC if it's cold and if it's hot inside, but you're right, like you could always drive past the house or you know, stop being at a friend's house, it's you know, or a neighbor's house. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I don't particularly know, like how do you [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get down to like, you're in the straight like now, but then it's too late, right?

1:00:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It's too late by that point. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it does, like, say, the calendar thing was my best thing was, I even ended up one point saying, right, I'll just put into the calendar. [SPEAKER_00]: For, like, especially for, like, everybody's got a schedule to do to some point where it's like, my kids got football practice on this day.

1:01:09 [SPEAKER_00]: So we knew that we're going to be away from home until this time, and then we're going to come home at this time. [SPEAKER_00]: I always stand up in my calendar, if I put in this event in my calendar, then it'll automatically assume we're coming home at that point, even if we go to the grocery store for half an hour afterwards, it's not going to make a big difference, but yeah.

1:01:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the time, I guess, with a lot of this stuff, some of it's going to be fairly pointless at the end of the day. [SPEAKER_00]: Probably don't save enough money for all the effort you put in, or for all the hardware and running. [SPEAKER_00]: But again, it's educational as much as anything as well for me.

1:01:42 [SPEAKER_00]: learning about these things and how do I predict things and how do I use data to make decisions rather than having somebody push a button or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, back to my occupation, it's like how do you use data to make better decisions? [SPEAKER_00]: But it's also, it's also understanding your own [SPEAKER_01]: He's my scenario for here, or he's my automation that I run.

1:02:13 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to see how this would gel with your philosophies around notifications and your heating system. [SPEAKER_01]: So I mentioned just before that, I have a proximity sensor setup. [SPEAKER_01]: So both in winter or summer, when we're driving towards the house and no one's home, we will come and ram it the radius, but certain what's the process threshold.

1:02:36 [SPEAKER_01]: The house will then check is the hot or cold inside. [SPEAKER_01]: turn the AC on or the heater on required. [SPEAKER_01]: At that time, I will also be sent a telegram message saying, with my location saying, hey, I think you're traveling home, and because it's either hot or cold inside, I've turned the central heater on for you.

1:02:59 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a button or an action I can do on that application to turn that off. [SPEAKER_01]: How does that go with like, when I do have a island of the vacation if I can action it immediately? [SPEAKER_01]: Does that work enough for us for you? [SPEAKER_01]: Or how would you finesse that?

1:03:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's you're taking an action there you need to make a decision and you're the input to the decision trees as the person I have a similar one for. [SPEAKER_00]: So if nobody's home then the house will kind of assume at a limited clock at night that it's [SPEAKER_00]: and it'll shut down the little dim all the lights, it'll turn the heating down, it'll lock the front door all those kind of things.

1:03:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's a bit of a pain for if somebody's on the night out and they're going to be home a bit later. [SPEAKER_00]: So I could be at home and house is shut down for night time for me, it's locked the front door, it's made all the night, the lights really dim, so when I'm walking around the house at night they're red and they're they're kind of really [SPEAKER_00]: But then hop us to live in my wife or I'm guessing in a year or so my son comes through the door having been on a night out First of all They have to unlock the door because it's locked the door or And then they go into the house and they want to do stuff.

1:04:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They want to grow a bite to eat or drink and the lights are all too low So I didn't know a notification like that for [SPEAKER_00]: If it detects that you're away at 10 o'clock at night, they'll say, do you want to keep the house a week? [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll ping near message just saying, do you want to keep the house a week?

1:04:35 [SPEAKER_00]: You say yes. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it stops that 11 o'clock routine of dimming the lights and walking the door and always kind of things until they get home. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it goes back to its normal routine again. [SPEAKER_00]: So again, it fits entirely with my ethos of you've sent a notification you're expecting somebody to respond to that notification.

1:04:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Notification that says, I'm going to keep the house and that's it or I'm going to cool the house in your case. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so yeah, it's perfectly within what I would what I would do. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, you mentioned that while you're at work, sometimes during in your lunch breaks, you're like to show off your smart home to some of your clients.

1:05:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Have some of the reactions do you get front like the people like impressed that they sort of look like? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my brother, like, well, I've heard the whole range. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've converted a lot of people. [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of people know, well, are looking at all the assistant then.

1:05:37 [SPEAKER_00]: in work or not. [SPEAKER_00]: So essentially the story is that I do this consultancy work where I go and speak to customers, we look at their data, I help them build dashboards and analytics and notifications, they help them solve their problems, so they tell me their problems, they tell me their data, I just help them implement it in our software.

1:05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, being able to get that lunchtime break and every kind of sitting there looking for something to talk about, so I'll just basically VPN to home and and throw up my home assistant because it's tied into have our software installed at home and that's how I do those calculations for heating and things like that.

1:06:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I basically just show them that. [SPEAKER_00]: this is like in our software, this is all the data coming from my home, like my temperature in my rooms and all that kind of stuff, here's the door states and all that kind of stuff and I can build dashboards and things are in that.

1:06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And I felt people that are really interested in want to to do that from themselves and it's like, well, how do I get started with home assistant and [SPEAKER_00]: how easy is it and all that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: I've had a little bit creepy on you. [SPEAKER_00]: Does your wife know you're doing this type of questions?

1:06:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so at one point I was talking about the figuring out the, have you going to bed routine? [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I solved that with if there's no motion downstairs, there's no motion in the common thoroughfare upstairs, the landing, the whole [SPEAKER_00]: and people put their phones on to charge, then I'm 19% sure that every is like put their head down going to bed.

1:07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But before I came across that I was like looking at these things like pressure sensors underneath the mattress to see if the beds are occupied and that's where people are a bit like are you sure that's what you want to be doing according whether you've got the movement in bed and things like that.

1:07:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So it got that kind of reaction but for the most part people are quite [SPEAKER_00]: I'm quite interested in it and quite interested in how do I get that for myself. [SPEAKER_00]: I've done presentations inside the company a couple of times now to my peers. [SPEAKER_00]: I've certainly started a couple of them off on the journey as well.

1:07:51 [SPEAKER_00]: here's my old Zigbee controller have this take that way and go make yourself here your smart home things like that and we even started a team's group within the company as well where people can talk about these things so [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's kind of evangelical about it when I'm out of the boat, but with the customers, it's a great way of kind of breaking the ice that kind of low, but still talk something relevant to what we're doing and almost do the sales pitch at the same time.

1:08:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's good. [SPEAKER_00]: It's good fun. [SPEAKER_02]: It keeps it interesting, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and my customers are super diverse. [SPEAKER_00]: I work for a software company, it's I think we're the biggest industrial software company in the world but you probably never heard of them.

1:08:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But we touch almost every industry and every customer like top 10 on the gas, top 10 pharmaceuticals, top 10 mining, top 10, whatever you name our software is probably there but nobody's ever heard of it unless you actually work with it day to day. [SPEAKER_00]: and the amount of times that just something that they've said or we need to work at her to do this.

1:09:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And having data in my own system at home that's this true data, not just simulated data, so having temperatures and things like that, it's be able to go play around with that data and test like linear regression things like that or different things against the data or wherever or I can throw up a demo for the customer and see it right if this was your temperature sensor, it's my temperature sensor for my own home office, but if it was for your [SPEAKER_00]: furnace of ever, we can use this to track that so it becomes a test bed as well so it's kind of it's very integral to why I do in work and why I do it at home outside of work and what's the thing if you if you take your hobby and make it your job you'll never work a daily life, it sits very much like that for me.

1:09:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I love what I do and love it in both home and in work. [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Mike, thank you so much for coming on today, sharing your stories today. [SPEAKER_01]: We really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're welcome. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been promising, like in these meetings at lunchtime, everything, yeah, I'm going to put my name in the hat to go on the podcast at some point.

1:10:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So we finally got rent to it. [SPEAKER_00]: We did it. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll go up on the team's channel that work. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, mate. [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much.

1:10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're welcome.