How Will Automates His Parents' Pool from 2,000 Miles Away and a Period UK Home

0:04 [SPEAKER_03]: Hello and welcome to the home Mrs. and podcast. [SPEAKER_03]: My name is Phil. [SPEAKER_03]: Join me as usual. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got Raham. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, doing that. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, good, how are you? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, very good. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: And today we're joined by Will.

0:14 [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Will, are you going? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really good. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me because. [SPEAKER_00]: I was much appreciated. [SPEAKER_03]: You're welcome. [SPEAKER_03]: This podcast is sponsored by Homemisses and Cloud by Nebuchasa. [SPEAKER_03]: For a more monthly fee, you'll unlock powerful features, like secure effortless access to your system from anywhere.

0:28 [SPEAKER_03]: Your choice of voice assistance, off-site backups, and more, all configurable in the UI with no YAML needed. [SPEAKER_03]: It also supports the development of home assistant, ESP home, and other open home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_03]: Click the link in the description [SPEAKER_03]: We'd also like to give a shout out to our Patreon members, including our executive producers, Benny, Jason and Rob.

0:52 [SPEAKER_03]: You can help support the show and get early access to episodes, all in and out free feed. [SPEAKER_03]: To support the show, check out homevisisent.fm, and click Patreon in the menu. [SPEAKER_03]: And of course if you can't do that, we'd appreciate a like, comment, subscribe or rating wherever you're listening or watching us today.

1:06 [SPEAKER_03]: It really helps us out. [SPEAKER_03]: We'll thank you so much for joining us today. [SPEAKER_03]: We're in the world, each one is from Malaysia. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm from the UK. [SPEAKER_00]: I live on the South Coast of the UK. [SPEAKER_00]: See, there's about 400 meters away. [SPEAKER_00]: So, in any other country that would be epic, really, but because it's the UK, it'll be a bit grey and... Meh, but...

1:28 [SPEAKER_03]: I've got to say, there's a lot of like spoons on the beach. [SPEAKER_03]: You could really call it a big thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are stones. [SPEAKER_00]: The stones are actually put there weirdly. [SPEAKER_00]: It was sandy once and then the one is a coastal erosion and somebody decided to dump a load of stones on there to make it a little bit more long lasting, I guess, but okay.

1:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay, it's uh, yeah, it's something nice to go and look at the water. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right now. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: So what got you into, I want to mention, if you've always been, uh, I think maybe we've been into home to motion for a while.

2:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess the home automation thing probably follows quite a well-trodden path. [SPEAKER_00]: Like most people, I've got an [SPEAKER_00]: I got a Google Nest and I got a few other, I got a couple of Phillips U bulbs and a dimmer switch and that was kind of the start of the journey. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I've always.

2:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I've always tinkered. [SPEAKER_00]: I come from kind of a family of engineers and tinkerers and I think kind of my childhood toys were more like old plugs and locks and screwdrivers or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, there's some kind of legend that I took my grandparents window catches off-a-haste about like 18 months, two years with a screwdrivers.

2:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, kind of flash forward a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm heading towards 50. [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, [SPEAKER_00]: computers were rubbish, and I started in the eight-bit age. [SPEAKER_00]: My sadly long departed dad and I built a sink-lairs at X81, and the early eighties, and then I used to fix Commodore 64s, and Atari's, and stuff for the local computer shop in here.

3:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and Atari's, and Amiga's, and stuff in the early 90s. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I kind of... [SPEAKER_00]: I fell into a career in IT, I was doing sort of very early internet, dial up and bulletin boards and stuff in 1995, 1996, and then, yeah, it started working with mainframes and novell and co-ax networking and all kinds of hideous stuff that is fortunately long in the past.

3:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I ran around a many services IT business for about 15 years, so kind of [SPEAKER_00]: background of electronics and kind of getting involved in the slightly edge year or, you know, weird stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: Wi-Fi with Pringles, Yagi antennas, and yeah, dodgy old analog satellite dishes in Trunner.

4:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So, and a bit of an early love of audio gear as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So, very loud cast areas, and Wi-Fi, and all of that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, all of that kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, all of that kind of stuff, like wearing the car, rode you up yourself, and all of that.

4:20 [SPEAKER_00]: All of that, all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I used to make the... [SPEAKER_00]: Max Green flex in an old sub and things, you know, just Syria was worth way more than the vehicle, but it was great fun, great fun. [SPEAKER_00]: And then they kind of lost it for a bit. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think weirdly, I just kind of the electronics thing, I'd use it if I needed to fix something, I had to sold it in iron and I'd do some bits with it, but I guess work and kids and other [SPEAKER_00]: So you know, I work for a kind of a high-tech manufacturing business.

4:55 [SPEAKER_00]: We make embedded PCs for the like pay-to-play, CNO industry and also displays either the units behind me and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And someone needed to look after a line of a slot machine so we had, because someone had left and I'm going, yeah, I could get involved in that. [SPEAKER_00]: Been mechanical engineering and stuff.

5:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And then my coffee machine broke and it's one of the been to cut ones. [SPEAKER_00]: There's like 600 pounds. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, no, I'm not having that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take the lid off and we're going to make it work. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah.

5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, I've done it. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's like, actually, I'm still pretty good at this other than the hands of somewhat shaky. [SPEAKER_00]: And they were 20 years ago, but yeah, no, we're standing there. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just kind of that combined with, as I was saying, to fill in our little preamble, you know, kind of, I found home assistant by by chance.

5:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I think a lot of people do just kind of go, oh, I've got all these apps and all these things that I need to control and, um, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that kind of thing can go so like, oh, yes, be home, and it has motor and all of the kind of, you know, system on chip type technologies, and yeah, that just, [SPEAKER_00]: created a whole new rabbit hole to go down for quite some time and yeah as you guys probably know of a blog that's one of the other things that's kind of kept me into this is just sort of exploring stuff and hopefully you guys can link that through in the show notes later and we can for sure drive some people to a crazy English bloat ranting about all sorts of stuff but yeah

6:39 [SPEAKER_00]: pretty bonkers projects, so you know, hadn't flatable hot tub that we just kind of sat in storage. [SPEAKER_00]: Just this being the UK, the weather is not always hot tub compliant. [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, it's like, but I don't want to go outside to turn it on and heat it. [SPEAKER_00]: So why don't I try and build a build a controller and, uh, and I did.

7:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and the hot tub then decided to get about 18 different holes in it, and then I had to patch everything else. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that was kind of the first real project was being able to turn that on and off. [SPEAKER_00]: And from there, yes, they did swimming pool controllers.

7:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And my parents have a holiday home out in the Canary Islands. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, [SPEAKER_00]: That's been a really interesting project, just to see how far I can take home assistant in another attended environment, you know, I see a lot of stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Because if you obviously not physically there, right, sadly, yeah, manage that.

7:42 [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, right. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they don't, they don't rent it out anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just kind of relying on people that they know to drop in as a, we've had CCTV and things for a while. [SPEAKER_00]: And, but. [SPEAKER_00]: The swimming pool was the biggie, and the swimming pool was like, we were paying somebody to go in and, you know, not just clean it, which still needs to happen periodically, but to literally check that the time has gone on and off to turn it to throw chlorine in there or, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody very kindly built a Tasmotor port of a controller for this, like a Haywood bread and Paul controller and I'll built that.

8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: did some fairly late nights, classic family holiday, family went to bed and there I am on the dining table with like a bunched up soldering iron, but I think the stand for the soldering iron was to find something metal with my bottom of a frying pan, I turned upside down or something [SPEAKER_00]: As time goes on, we're kind of evolving that solution.

9:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I took a blog recently about building a set of scales to solve a problem about the... [SPEAKER_00]: So you need to adjust the acidity of the pool and the acid comes in barrels, and gets pumped into to keep the pH regular. [SPEAKER_00]: And how do we know when it's run out? [SPEAKER_00]: turn it off job done.

9:28 [SPEAKER_00]: However, I made the fateful mistake of putting some questions like that into chatGPT and got a bit of ban to go. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want the real elegant geeks solution, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, then there was a whole other project of, yeah, get some strain gauges and I'll build, I'm effectively built set of scales that is about 10 grams, which I was pretty impressed with.

9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, over 200 kilos though. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, actually really, really good, just using a yeah, literally SP module and SP home. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was a bit of a try. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still got to actually [SPEAKER_03]: Would you say SP home is your go-to system then?

10:18 [SPEAKER_03]: Like if you're going to build something like, just put on a SP home in a way again? [SPEAKER_00]: I think so, just because, well, obviously the integration's there. [SPEAKER_00]: I started with Tasmo, and that's pretty cool as well, but you need MQTT, and you need a lot more kind of pre-configured.

10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And as you guys will discover through this circle, [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a developer, I'm a wires guy, I come from an infrastructure background, so that may I can do, but you know, any of these hideous languages that use about 47 different types of parenthesis and then, you know, are very fiddly about how many double spaces and things, just like the devil's board.

10:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I like yes behind because it's easy, someone's probably [SPEAKER_00]: I have learned to grapple with Yable up to a point that I couldn't go and just amend something else and this is where AI has been transformational for me because you know. [SPEAKER_00]: kind of vibe coding stuff means that I can build stuff that is way beyond my pay grade and I can see you feel free to go, oh, I'm not a proper developer, how dare you, but yeah, you know, it just, it makes it so, so accessible.

11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so that's kind of what I've been been doing is a combination of, [SPEAKER_00]: borrowing other people's code blocks, or having it co-wrote with AI, and then just refine the process. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, definitely ESP home has been... [SPEAKER_00]: really, really interesting.

11:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Would you say then that ESB home is what you're using Yammer with ESB home? [SPEAKER_03]: Did you, when did you start using home? [SPEAKER_03]: This isn't how do you ever have to use a lot of Yammer with home? [SPEAKER_00]: No, so I'm probably haven't only about 18 months, two years into my journey, so there's always been a reasonably solid going for me.

12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, I've obviously in the context of what I've done elsewhere, I've had to deal with kind of JSON and other structured files, but it's definitely been the challenge and the more, I guess that's what sex home assistant to part isn't it, you can go and you can buy home or you know, one of the many other sort of [SPEAKER_00]: pre-canned but far less extensible products out there.

12:43 [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to just have something and set and forget, but for me, I guess this is my hobby and part of the joy is actually the time spent tinkering and getting it just right and just right. [SPEAKER_02]: It's very feeding and all that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: You're getting to the stage that I can get everything just visually beautiful and, you know, I think I sent you a few of my dashboards.

13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I just love spending a bit of time, you know, I'll spend however long just, you know, cost a button card, just adjusting the couple of pixels in and stuff, just to make it so that it is. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how I want it to be. [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's cheaper than going out drinking with the boys, or, you know, lots of other expensive sporting hobbies, it's cheaper than planes and boats and cars and stuff.

13:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So, for sure. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's certainly cheaper than some hobbies, but I've been saying, so it's the cheapest hobby of course. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I guess you kind of have to cut your coat, don't you? [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit with that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm still, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: prefer the door of use to be open, but I still understand the shape of the use quite a lot of fairs that are two-year stuff in local two-year or just a direct, big B-action, because actually it works and I can, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: an alley express delivery years to like Christmas for me because you're doubtless going to have about 185 items turn up in one parcel and who you never quite know what's going to come.

14:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I've had some good success by building custom, they say they chase quirks and stuff just to kind of tweak the functionality. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not really, really heavily invested in the same degree [SPEAKER_00]: Presence is one of those that probably is a pretty kind of current issue and I know you know a lot of people Talk about the quaro or sort of a polo sensors and that kind of stuff [SPEAKER_00]: and I haven't got to that point yet, you know, be really cool to get the millimetre wave stuff working properly.

14:53 [SPEAKER_03]: But that's interesting that you sort of, to me, that's not what's like presence is to at first, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And then all the fun stuff comes after that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, taking the opposite direction. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, and I guess for me, I started with my pain points and I [SPEAKER_00]: I've got two girls, the 13 and 10 now, but they have, you know, kind of a...

15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: massive aversion to turning anything off, light TVs, all of that kind of stuff, so and I just had this kind of voice in the back of my head starting to sound like my parents and I was like, well, that'd be a little bit night off, and so yeah, I for clarity my mum does not sound like that, but hey, it's I was fixing those problems and actually from most of what we do [SPEAKER_00]: PIR's been okay.

15:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Because [SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's this scenario, spicy. [SPEAKER_00]: Just in the family. [SPEAKER_00]: So getting all four members of the family to sit still for more than about five minutes is unlikely anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of, it's kind of served as purpose up till now.

16:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But one of the kind of successes I've had actually is I've got these little by all two-year-census look like a white pill, right? [SPEAKER_00]: They're all created, like on a little white pill. [SPEAKER_00]: But this one has, it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: foreign ones, you get temperature humidity, light level, and supposedly millimetre wave presence, but what is actually PIR, but it has the beauty that you can then, it's got two separate states being reported in the Zigbee sensors.

16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So I managed to get one of those to kind of lock. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like you have the PIR off of the movement, and then [SPEAKER_00]: I lock the state of that for say 5 or 10 minutes after it's detected the last motion, which is normally enough just to say, you know, there is presence for a period of time.

16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll get there. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the joys of kind of having a period house is that. [SPEAKER_00]: or my spare money pretty much goes into that. [SPEAKER_00]: And if the stuff I blog about, there's not home automation is me hacking a single glazed timber windows and stuff to try and keep it warm dry and working.

17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But it does mean you've got to be sympathetic as well to what you've got. [SPEAKER_00]: And so [SPEAKER_00]: actually the little vanilla white pills you can kind of paint know you can do whatever with them to make them fairly unobtrusive and I'm about to hopefully launch into the world of 3D printing suit and then that's another rabbit hole for printing cases and things for sensors and stuff.

17:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Do you find having like much issues having such a period home in terms of [SPEAKER_00]: up and down is not too bad, so this has got a like, love and plaster, so as they've plastered board, you've got a little wood and wops, kind of threaded through with lime plaster over the top. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not too bad other than fixing stuff to it, but the walls are, obviously, all made of brick rather than anything else.

18:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, I've got, I've got, I've got, I've got, [SPEAKER_00]: three sickby repeaters sort of strategically placed to keep my mesh working and then [SPEAKER_00]: five, six access points. [SPEAKER_00]: I got three up in the loft and then a couple kind of dotted around. [SPEAKER_00]: I have, I love Unified, but I haven't quite made the jump to that in my, that's yeah, so it's kind of a sonic wall, which is a fire walls I used to sell, it's a managed access points coming off there, so it is basically waived to and it does the job, but yeah, it's taken [SPEAKER_00]: quite a while to get, you know, a solid, stable signal.

19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And the only saving graces that there are, we had to have new heating put in when we moved in. [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's actually, like, boxed in conduits from the attic all the way down to the ground floor. [SPEAKER_00]: I've managed to throw some of the nets in those and create a reasonably solid [SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.

19:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It can measure. [SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like so much fun. [SPEAKER_02]: So it sounds like you're primarily on Zigbee then, in terms of protocols, stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So I haven't found a need for ZigWave yet, but I think for me, I kind of look at it ago.

19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really want too much Wi-Fi stuff, I know you guys got a fairly similar kind of sort of opinion on this. [SPEAKER_00]: from a security point of view, particularly if I'm buying somewhat more questionable sensors, I'd rather, they have a lot of Beijing or whatever, and yeah, having the Zigbee ones at least I know what they're doing and what their capabilities are.

20:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got a few Wi-Fi devices because [SPEAKER_00]: you know some stuff just comes like that but yeah mostly mostly Zigbee with ZHA I still haven't kind of been brave because I think it feels like you know the MQTT solution is probably the more extensible way to do it but it's worked for me up till now I've got maybe [SPEAKER_00]: 60, 50, 60 devices in total.

20:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I should think when you got door switches and temperature and all that kind of good stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's been a journey, but it's been a really enjoyable journey so far. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was going to say because [SPEAKER_02]: Is everybody use a different frequency, right?

21:08 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not on two-four. [SPEAKER_02]: It's on 900 something. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're every one-wall. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 433 or 86, I think I'm the, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, and I guess, um, obviously, which will be different if it's going through your walls. [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So there might be some interesting things there too. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, well, I've got a couple of bits down that they, so we've got a [SPEAKER_00]: reasonably big guards and by UK standards, nothing by probably either of you guys can consider to be large, but you know, we've got about 3rd half from Naker, so the end of the guard is probably 30 meters away, something like that.

21:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's that's presented a couple of challenges with and actually I've ended up with a power line extended down to there for [SPEAKER_00]: has a couple of Wi-Fi devices on there for outside temperature and a few other sort of and CCTV down there. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's a use case for Z-wave that would work quite nicely.

22:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, in my parents' place and in the canary sea, weirdly, that's horrific. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what, I think it's made out of primarily the SFO canic island and a lot of blocks and like [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, getting a, I'm going to hue bridge out there and even just getting that to work.

22:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe two rooms away was a, was a, was a massive challenge. [SPEAKER_00]: So in that sort of scenario, the, the, the, the, the, they've pushed off would be really, really pretty useful. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, and if you read my block, I did this, did this thing called the, called straw tenor, which was a, yeah, I, I put a, yeah, I kind of, um, [SPEAKER_00]: Sacrifice to another two-year sense, my one-and-way evenings while I was there.

22:57 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that would be really cool to know is, you know, it has the power got off. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit of rigidity out there, so sometimes it goes off and I haven't managed to convince my parents to get solar there yet, but, you know, has the fridge warmed up to the point that the food you left behind is spoiled.

23:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got to took a load of sensors out with me. [SPEAKER_00]: put one in the fridge to the right and out there I've got an RPI and it's about with a simple USB Zigbee in the front and it's in like a little rack with a few other nights in the living with a few other bits for the internet and [SPEAKER_00]: I just couldn't get it to reach, so yeah, there was a situation browsing the negative, exactly how many millimeters of wire do I need to get like a quarter or eighth wave of a 2.4 gigahertz antenna to do it.

23:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It worked and it was very elegant involving the use of a paper drinking straw to hold the exposed bit of conductor outside of the thing, too little, why I was poking up like that. [SPEAKER_00]: I did my parents [SPEAKER_00]: kind of made it fridge color would silver, silver duct tape, but I think it's been vetoed by the domestic administration department, so I think I might have to come up with something better, but it was really, yeah, that was an interesting kind of case for how far can you get Zigbee to go with the right antenna and a bit of ingenuity.

24:40 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so was that powered on batteries? [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, it was. [SPEAKER_00]: So the battery's the little like pill shape thing actually in the fridge and then yeah, it's like I wanted to do the freezer because that's probably the more relevant one, but I think at minus 18, the two you think might have have other ideas once it's frozen over, but you know, kind of six degrees it was, yeah, it was [SPEAKER_00]: better than the other effort that I did with the one that in my drive way I was trying to trigger the LLM vision I was having an experiment with that and the motion detection on my camera [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'm usually for the UK.

25:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got palm trees like 30, 40 foot tall palm trees in my front garden and so they literally The wind has to blow like that and to the motion detection goes off even kind of setting zones and things so I thought I'll You know outside motion sensors seems to be a contentious issue and if you just not the Philips you, which I wasn't going to spend like 60, 70 pounds on the sensor But don't seem to be too many other choices.

25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's no choir one that might be okay, but [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I, again, sacrificing bits of bits of two-year and I got an antenna off an old access point, kind of soldered it onto the board and screwed the little antenna on. [SPEAKER_00]: It looked like a cold wall listening device, because I'd kind of, in case of the whole thing in heat shrink and kind of [SPEAKER_00]: It worked from the point of view of kind of, it triggered, but it didn't last that long during year, during field testing.

26:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Should we say I don't think the, the witness of the, the British weather did it did it too well. [SPEAKER_03]: And for your fruits and so like how are you measuring when the temperature got too high was it like a temperature sensor? [SPEAKER_00]: It was a temperature sensor, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

26:51 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, so in the home, you would have like a threshold, like I can't reach this threshold. [SPEAKER_00]: Correct, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's, again, I think I sent you some of the dashboards for that. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so there's an automation in home assistant that then says, you know, send it to my phone.

27:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In the event that it's gone above tape, 10 degrees or inside the refrigerator. [SPEAKER_00]: But also we have a little device that kind of does it like a dying gas sort of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's an SMS, it's got a SIM card in it and if the AC power trips out, it's got a small battery in.

27:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's called a power text and then it sends a GSM old school SMS to your phone just a. [SPEAKER_00]: The power has tripped out and then that's normally I'm trying to get to the point where we can reset the break as the stuff remotely. [SPEAKER_00]: this summer's project but nowadays it's just throwing the guy down the road, getting him to go and turn the breaker back on or is he actually a powercutter or has something just just trip the circuit breaker so yeah challenges but I'd be interested to know like how what what's your plan there to do the breakers like 80 thinking shall we?

28:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I've got something like [SPEAKER_00]: I have got quite invested in the Shelley ecosystem with other stuff, but this is actually the main incoming break. [SPEAKER_00]: So, Shelley don't yet have a product for that that is actually like an RCD type solution. [SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple of European ones, I think Schneider Electric, make one that has a [SPEAKER_00]: There are a couple of Chinese branded ones that, I mean, they're CE and they're built to like the ISO standard.

28:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess there is good as anything else. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to get one out there and try. [SPEAKER_00]: I put a couple of the, like, the MCB units into the, into the, into the Paul control, because that's got a separate distribution board outside so I didn't really care if it caught fire.

29:08 [SPEAKER_00]: they've been pretty reliable and they get them set up in smart life and put them into local two year and yeah I've left them in smart life as well actually because they're if the home assistant goes down I've still got a way a backdoor way of getting in just to flick the switch and that turns my Tasmo to control on and often it turns the heat pump off [SPEAKER_00]: pretty well, but the main incoming one is a little bit more industrial in size, so it's finding like a sort of 60 amp.

29:49 [SPEAKER_00]: breaker that, you know, or RCD that you can reset remotely is it's been a challenge especially trying to do it in Spanish to find something that's locally approved. [SPEAKER_02]: Have you looked at any of those, like there's a lot of those, a whole home kind of battery manufacturers, right?

30:07 [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them actually make smart panels to go with it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's an interesting thought. [SPEAKER_00]: No, hadn't. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that they're very cheap. [SPEAKER_02]: No, probably not. [SPEAKER_00]: Probably even to start with.

30:19 [SPEAKER_00]: No, that's a fair idea. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to do so, though. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's because I've got an EV. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that's been one of my other projects. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of been, you know, how much is it costing to charge the EV and things. [SPEAKER_00]: Versus.

30:38 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, other stuff going on, got quite a good tariff, but it would be lovely to kind of go. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my motoring's almost free. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, but yeah, you know, 10, 12,000 pounds worth of stuff, I haven't got. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to do it by halves, right?

30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the guys that was on a few shows go, saying, 20, 30, 40 panels. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, wow, that's, you know, three batteries. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you kind of 30 kilowatts of stored energy. [SPEAKER_00]: I think if I could get 15 kilowatts like the Tesla power wall or Actually sick energy do a really cool one now, which does DC Grid to vehicle vehicle to grid type staff that integrates with the home assistant.

31:23 [SPEAKER_00]: That would be really cool I'd love to do something like that [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's, there's, and a lot of vendors, at least, like few that we spoke to at CES, starting to open it up to, and that's cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we now partner with like Shelley, we partner with like, nice, that kind of stuff, right?

31:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I was sad not to make it to CES, I was hoping to kind of come and see you guys in person, but maybe maybe next year, if you ever have make it out of that before? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That was that. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you find anything really interesting? [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a thing really cool or am I going to spoil or ring for a future episode?

31:57 [SPEAKER_02]: A little bit, but um, I don't know, it's just, there's cool stuff and there's like, like, everybody has like a robot that doesn't really do a whole lot. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you bandwagon jumping on. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and that was basically a theme of CES, right?

32:17 [SPEAKER_02]: It is. [SPEAKER_02]: It's actually exactly what you said well, which has been widening. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think there's people jumping on and whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, so, you know, kind of going back to, you know, your smart home and stuff like that, you talked about the controller behind you.

32:35 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: What's that and what are you doing with it? [SPEAKER_00]: So, this would've gone sweet now, isn't it? [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, complex life. [SPEAKER_00]: There we go. [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, can we see this? [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's just like a little push button control panel.

32:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I could push the button to your probably kind of see it work. [SPEAKER_00]: So, it should go to lighting and, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe if I do this, you'll see the light level go up and down a little bit, by me and the winter. [SPEAKER_00]: 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, 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

33:17 [SPEAKER_00]: That and I kind of got it doing media play a stuff with the music assistant so I've got the different kind of rums and stuff teed up in there and yeah you saw the the camera views here so I can kind of hopefully switch between the different different views and see what's going on outside and yes I have still got my Christmas lights up because it's [SPEAKER_00]: seven meters off the ground and I need a scaffold to get them down so they're staying till next year.

33:49 [SPEAKER_00]: There's something really cool I've been doing is so with the heating I've logged about this about my nest and I have a [SPEAKER_00]: competitive relationship, shall we say, and that it decides what it wants me to do with my heating, and I'm not really cool with that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've nicknamed it general nest, because basically, you know, whatever you do, it just doesn't follow any orders, it does exactly what it wants to do.

34:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And whatever the question, the answer is nine degrees Celsius, whether that's five, first, you know, winter's morning or the summer, the answer is nine degrees. [SPEAKER_00]: I've [SPEAKER_00]: cleared all the sensors out. [SPEAKER_00]: I've blown it away. [SPEAKER_00]: I've actually reset it.

34:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I've moved it from the next out to Google home. [SPEAKER_00]: It still doesn't seem to be so. [SPEAKER_00]: I have bought in the Black Friday sale abort, one of the chilly, like the double-size control panels and a couple of the high current relay so I can do the my immersion heater and stuff like that.

34:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Just ran out of time over the festive [SPEAKER_00]: really the interesting part and going back round to the vibe coding thing is I've been doing a lot with the unofficial MCP in home assistant and it's been really quite interesting seeing what it can do and what given the data what can it do to to to kind of help you customize something like heating so I go [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also in the throws of trying to work out for my job, what products are best suited to what types of tasks, and so this will come as no surprise, but Claude Coe knocks the Gemini, and they are into a cocktail when it comes to doing this sort of stuff, but [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the bones were built by Oya, chat GPT, and then Claude has finished it, but it's also, see if I can show you that, but it's also built me kind of some other,

36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: boards, which I gave it in terms of, you know, tell me how long it takes to heat up in particular rooms, which is the fastest room to heat up, which is the slowest room to heat up, you know, how much does that cost me in terms of energy? [SPEAKER_00]: So, and what should I do? [SPEAKER_00]: Should I leave it running in the fashion that I've got it?

36:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Or should I let it change the way? [SPEAKER_00]: And it came up with a reasonably well-conceived sort of panel for, um, um, [SPEAKER_00]: analyzing the heating and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's now one of the beautiful things. [SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna show you, but one of the beautiful things that MCPs kind of also go a little bit beyond their remit, which is a very particularly Google, has, I've always started getting really cheeky with it now, and going, have you, have you deleted my helper entities again?

36:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Cause everything's gone unavailable all of a sudden. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it comes back all apologetic and goes, [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes, I appear to have, and I've literally got the toy I've got a foresight of marked out now for you've deleted all my, help us get going recreate them from this and pump them back in.

37:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's been, it's been an interesting kind of kind of journey, but, um, yeah, um, so I think, and this is all just home-assistant running on that UI. [SPEAKER_00]: I like that's just, yeah, that's pure, um, that's home-assistant, um, running in Firefox, um, in a browser, and in fact, if I, yeah, hold it up so we don't have to re-share, but if I just do do that, you'll see it's just a browser with the, you know, and there it is.

37:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But with the beauty of tactile buttons, so you know, just having [SPEAKER_00]: physical coca surfaces. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I want to put some more panels in around the house, but this is quite nice to sit on my desk and you can see the one behind me this, this is actually a two-year with a rotary jog dial on the end and so I don't know what purpose that would serve in the home construct but I'm going to geek out with it anyway and see where we see where we get to again it's a [SPEAKER_00]: designed for primarily for the broadcast market for kind of, you know, as I broadcast or control rooms and that sort of thing for mixing video and audio sources.

38:20 [SPEAKER_00]: But again, it's, you know, an IPS touch panel with physical buttons. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of the intellectual property that my employer has is this sort of tactile objects that you put over the top of touch screen. [SPEAKER_00]: rotaries, buttons, all of that kind of stuff and they're not actually, they're not actually a physical contact is so it's actuating the touch panel behind it, so yeah it's kind of cool.

38:51 [SPEAKER_00]: hoping that we're going to do some wall panel stuff actually, like, you know, a cost ESP based ones has got meat and cream with ESP home written all over it, you know, in little kind of small reform factors for things. [SPEAKER_00]: So they'll be pretty cold and get those with some shellys behind the [SPEAKER_03]: Now, if you're looking to upgrade with my home, you can't go past the Zeus.

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39:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Zusa also an official works with home business partner, hoping that we cast up by providing long-range devices for testing the home business connect ZWA to radio, so you know you're in friendly hands. [SPEAKER_03]: Zusa offers a range of affordable and interview devices including water leak sensors, water valve controllers, smart plugs and scene controllers.

40:06 [SPEAKER_03]: There's N78 High Power really allows you to control and monitor higher load appliances up to 40 amps, which is perfect for pool pumps, air compressors, and other high power outlets. [SPEAKER_03]: So for the press prices on all these products, head over to the smartesthouse.com. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the smartesthouse.com.

40:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I want to pivot a little bit to go back to talking about your parents' place there. [SPEAKER_02]: So, with having such a remote area, how are you connecting in? [SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing? [SPEAKER_02]: How are you building that? [SPEAKER_02]: I know you mentioned you had an extra SIM card there.

40:42 [SPEAKER_02]: You're doing a couple of those things, but what's the primary method of connecting from? [SPEAKER_00]: which, you know, this is one of the hilarities of things like the EU and stuff, full symmetric fiber to the premises broadband. [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's a little island in the middle of the Atlantic, but got like, got 500 Mexican metric fiber broadband from Telefonico, which [SPEAKER_00]: much works.

41:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Like a lot of these places, the constraints is typically the aggregate bandwidth going off the island rather than the bandwidth to the device. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I've worked out there, gone out on a holiday with family and extended and spent a bit of time working out. [SPEAKER_00]: So either that bit surprisingly is all right.

41:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, as I said, it's going to [SPEAKER_00]: got Raspberry Pi and I run tail scale into that as actually as an add-on into to home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's got a I used the cloud flare kind of dynamic DNS script on the router to basically give me a public way into it from when the when the IP changes.

42:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, um, it's been pretty, uh, pretty solid in, in that regard, the, um, I do have the capability from, uh, that is on unify weirdly enough, because my parents have got more money from me than, um, the stuff like that than I have. [SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, they were one of the only people that had a really solid outdoor, um, you know, AP that I could put in the, yeah, but by the, uh, put by the pool, because clearly, that's why you need Wi-Fi most, right?

42:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and that's all that will be pretty solid. [SPEAKER_00]: Just connect into the pie and it's not got a massive number of sensors. [SPEAKER_00]: There's probably 30, 40 devices including some light hiccups and CCTV and stuff that's aggregated in.

42:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So actually the new [SPEAKER_00]: I see that this, the NVR's got proper integration in the 2021-26.1. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll have a little play with that because I'm quite shortly. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that was, say, [SPEAKER_00]: It was a fun project. [SPEAKER_00]: It made what was actually a really rubbish family holiday where, no, my wife or when my daughter's got ill. And while we were away, the valet parking, like crashed by Tesla and caused a load of damage to it.

43:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And there was just like a comedy of errors. [SPEAKER_00]: But the thing that can go in through it was, I've done some more to make sure work. [SPEAKER_00]: And it has been really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've enjoyed it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've done soldering. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think from the [SPEAKER_00]: it also has kind of extreme, it's not wife approval factor, it's mother approval factor.

43:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So you've got kind of two things. [SPEAKER_00]: One is, as it were, but also you're kind of dealing with sectogenarians trying to, trying to use it. [SPEAKER_00]: There was an initial support period, should we say, where I had built the automation for the pool, where she's finding out good.

44:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the pH is a bit high. [SPEAKER_00]: Can you do this? [SPEAKER_00]: Can you do that? [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's just kind of settled down a little bit now. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'll add a few extra bits this summer just to make it a little bit easier. [SPEAKER_03]: Have you thought about using, I think, like, there's a, um, tax component called, uh, was it the remote home assistant, uh, component where you can then link up to home instance.

44:25 [SPEAKER_03]: So you could have, like, the sensors from your parent's house. [SPEAKER_03]: That was native sensors in Europe. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's interesting local automation. [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I'm not across that. [SPEAKER_00]: That's really cool because, uh, the moment where, [SPEAKER_00]: There are cloud-based products, so the two you want, for example, actually, they're all registered to the same email address, so I get them presented here and I just ignore them and I get the ones from here, presented there and just ignore them, but that could be cool, and then I kind of, so it's it, like almost as a as a slave effectively, or yeah, yeah, exactly, so back in the day when there's, there's things you wouldn't be able to do, but yeah, okay, okay.

45:06 [SPEAKER_03]: I was trying to, when I was trying to optimize my home is sitting in the early days, I find early home is being really slow. [SPEAKER_03]: I was running three instances of home is this, and I thought, I'll be smart. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll put all my cloud dependent stuff on one instance, so that if I ever need to reboot that, then it would all come from that one instance and be slow.

45:27 [SPEAKER_03]: This is now much faster and much more multi-threaded, so you don't have to do that anymore. [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, essentially, you can have all your parents' senses on one month call. [SPEAKER_03]: On their instance, food into yours. [SPEAKER_03]: And then if the pH level does, you know, whatever reason, rise, instead of the notification having time from there, so you could actually put on your dashboard or to make it from your side.

45:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know, at the moment, the notifications are pretty trivial. [SPEAKER_00]: And I just do the three fingers swipe on the mobile app to switch between the two, the two that I'm running. [SPEAKER_00]: That works okay, but I think yeah, certainly that's something to consider and I guess [SPEAKER_00]: you know, if you've got rental properties and stuff, that's pretty cool, isn't it?

46:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I guess one of the things I'm trying to do at the moment with the blog and everything else is, I don't know what my long term career will be, but at some point I'm going to want to stop doing all the corporate stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So if I build a bit of credibility in this managed home assistant to something that actually, you know, I don't know how much money there is.

46:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I know a few people have talked about it on here and on things like home tech, podcast and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, I think it's kind of got mileage in having a home assistant call with kind of a pre curated set of sensors that you know work and the know will do the job and being able to kind of offer that to people who don't have the technical skills to put it in because it's so much better than, you know, home or any of the other [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's open-source and, oh, wow, you can literally plug anything into it, you literally can interface it to your fridge and yeah, that, that, that, that's the appeal for the Tinkerers, but maybe less so for people who have to just use it.

47:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, again, it's a double-edged sword with, with it, right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, how complicated do you want to get? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: This is it, and I guess I kind of have to sit in the middle of that, because I said, okay, I have the mother-approved factor, but my wife has begrudgingly come around to some of it, and I think, you know, kind of the, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: One of the guys called it the lady in the tube or one of your other shows and that's kind of stuck with us The lady in the tube because there's one of my desk and she'll do god knows what if I say every day Turn the lights on and the lights off and that bitch kind of stuck but some of the other stuff is like

48:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It's spooky, you're stalking me, you know, when I'm home, you know, when I'm not home, you had a lamb vision piping up and like saying, you know, Mrs. Osborne Kennedy is in the garden, carrying a green gardening bucket and whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's kind of, um, [SPEAKER_00]: There is a degree of push back on a domestic level where she just kind of goes, if only there was this thing called a switch on the wall and you could turn the light on and off and off and off and off and like, yeah, but you have to be there, you can't do it remotely.

48:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm not in the room, so why do I care? [SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of have this slightly more traditional approach to things which in some ways are keeps me grounded because it's a rabbit hole, there's no home assistant, you could go far down the rabbit hole as you want [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, well, stay very high level if you don't want to get too technical.

48:57 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that is an awesome deal. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's it. [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I think it keeps me grounded in the, not going down for some of the, some of the craziest stuff that I could do, although I'm, [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, recently one of the more fun ones is, uh, so on my keys, I got to, one of the little, uh, Shelley tile things and so we'll see whether it works and if I want to get my kids out of bed, I double click it and hopefully, is it going to do it?

49:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if I'm not going to do it now, is it now? [SPEAKER_00]: I've got somebody on the, uh, on here. [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not going to do it now, but yeah, I've got an automation that should fire the lady in the tube to start playing a, it's probably playing out there, like a horn sound to a wake them up, which Yeah, that hasn't gone down resoundingly well.

49:48 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a fairly grumpy 10-year-old at six o'clock in the morning. [SPEAKER_03]: You've got to use your power wisely, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Why can you use it responsibly? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: What would be one of your favourite automations that you've got happening? [SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's a good question.

50:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I think I did actually write it down, because I've done some crazy stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, really practical one is just, um, you know, I've got a tilt, we've got a parcel box in the Porsche, got a tilt sensor, um, that, um, alerts on my phone and just then the lady of the truth is, a parcel has been dropped in the box.

50:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I tried to take it to stick further with, [SPEAKER_00]: LLM vision to say, you know, and that mess and parcel has been dropped in the box or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't quite get there because I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I know, you've done a bit of work with LLM vision and it smokes cracks.

50:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to time, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we had one of them was like, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Domino, the cat is in the front garden. [SPEAKER_00]: It appears he has unplugged the charging cable to the Tesla. [SPEAKER_00]: okay then yeah so yeah we we we gave up on the give up on that but the memories could work well I think that that could be pretty cool um well sign up [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty impressed with my acid pump scales.

51:17 [SPEAKER_00]: That's definitely going to be one of the automations. [SPEAKER_00]: That will cut out the periodic pump when the runs out. [SPEAKER_00]: I have, I did one well, we were away because our cats are quite young and quite new, so and one of the other legendary parts of this holiday is that one of the cats went missing twice and had to be retreat by parents, neighbors, friends, and whatever.

51:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So I had a [SPEAKER_00]: I've used a psychology now so I had one of their, I think it's called DS Cam which is like their little DS Live Cam you can use an old mobile phone which I kind of parked above the cat flap put a magnetic sensor on the cat flap and then [SPEAKER_00]: Um, did two things, uh, before an elevation, I, while I was on holiday, I was furiously trying to build a couple of VMs in Azure to use like, uh, Python and Flask to ingest an image and determine whether one of the cats has gone out, but it, [SPEAKER_00]: It also made it light up like, you know, Brooklyn Bridge at night and every, every afternoon, by light turned on and kind of, yeah, it was like, kind of prison breaks for the cast.

52:37 [SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to run, see if they could get the, get the cat flap to go without it lighting up. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was, that was kind of fun. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll say though, like the [SPEAKER_00]: the buttons to just do silly stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Christmas is always a fun one for me.

52:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting all the lights out there and then, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: All my friends go, I must cost you a fortune. [SPEAKER_00]: And this year, I've got over to the Shelley side. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got, I had everything plugged in. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I'm only drawing 21.7.

53:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What's thanks to the wonders of LEDs right now. [SPEAKER_00]: So that'll cost me nothing today. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And be very smuggable about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I know there's so much more that I could do and you know I'd love to explore [SPEAKER_00]: a lot more, I don't know if you're a bit quite into grossy on you.

53:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of my wife likes an inventory, so I'm kind of thinking that might be quite a cool way to go, but that's a very big rabbit hole and life is. [SPEAKER_03]: And I would love grossy to be as automated as possible. [SPEAKER_03]: I know it's got like scale support. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

53:45 [SPEAKER_03]: It's got a very good API. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got some scale to work. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, you sound like you're pretty handy with the scales and getting that working, but yeah, if it was better automatable, I can't keep track of inventory enough, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I've got her missing automating what I can, but it's just a random consumer pulls, I just can't track.

54:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I kind of almost want to be able to have like a little barcode scanner outside the large. [SPEAKER_00]: I just go in in in Even then like that's just it's too much Too much hassle right to me. [SPEAKER_03]: That's it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, um, yeah Realistically in my family.

54:22 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm the other one that's going to do that. [SPEAKER_03]: So therefore it's going to be out of sync all the time Yeah, I'm going to be spending you know time just keeping the inventory up to date. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, see that that of like photographing receipt So we're getting your online shopping receipt and dragging that into it, but uh [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know you guys are one of the things with work, it's looking at kind of automation, an ATA and in parallel to make those feel like so the use case is for that kind of stuff that you build a little add on for it so it can ingest your shopping receipts and then add it to the inventory then it's just the [SPEAKER_00]: Got to have something on the bin that identifies the stuff as you throw away, right?

54:58 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, let's see it, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I know paper lists, which is like a lot of self-hosted things. [SPEAKER_03]: That's pretty good. [SPEAKER_03]: Like reading PDFs. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Guys, it's garner and stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I can be helpful, but once again, right?

55:11 [SPEAKER_03]: Like then you've got to plug that into something and add any stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Perfect for that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Then what you do? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I had a home lab to end all home labs a few years ago and then I kind of I don't need all this and now everything's in the cloud I don't need it and I've you know, I had a couple of nice little microservice and I sold all the money bay and then [SPEAKER_00]: got into home automation and now I'm kind of slowly trying to build some of that infrastructure back up again.

55:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So one of the other, one of the other things you've been kind of seen. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't really see in there, but in there is kind of the hub of it all, and the other product that my, my work makes are these industrial PCs that are meant for slot machines, but the [SPEAKER_00]: mega reliable.

56:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So I have one of those running my home assistant and another one that's a a docker host. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I recently did a load of stuff to do satellite to IP TV streaming through the house, which has been another interesting project. [SPEAKER_00]: You guys familiar with channels, the DVR.

56:24 [SPEAKER_00]: It's got a, it's got a home and a system integration. [SPEAKER_00]: OK, it's quite big, you know, I think they do a product called an HD home run in the US and Canada, actually you can travel in the US, you know, so yeah, if that, I've got that running on a, on a docker container and then starting to build the controls and for home assistant on that so that I can, yeah, stream to all the different IP devices in the house and stuff that's been, that's been kind of fun.

56:50 [SPEAKER_00]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Load the things going on, none of them finished, we'll get there one day. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever finish? [SPEAKER_00]: No. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have the only one ever finishes with home assistant today. [SPEAKER_02]: There's not, there's not end state.

57:05 [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like coming renovation. [SPEAKER_00]: By the time you've got to the last room, you're back painting the first one again. [SPEAKER_00]: You're back first. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: 2026 is just started for us as we're recording this. [SPEAKER_03]: What is something that you're hoping to other start or finish this year?

57:20 [SPEAKER_03]: Like if there's one person looking forward to, you know, comes December. [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to be, yeah, I achieve that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a really good question. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: what would I like to do? [SPEAKER_00]: I would really like to get the hot tub actually in and working.

57:34 [SPEAKER_00]: That would be a lovely one too to do. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the heating and the energy consumption for me is going to be a big kind of theme. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to. [SPEAKER_00]: be able to kind of reduce my environmental impact because having a big old kind of house with lots of lots of gaps in windows and things means that I use a lot more energy than your average consumer so it would be nice to kind of bring the confluence of those two bits of my life together and you know actually be able to demonstrate that you can [SPEAKER_00]: be the steward of a beautiful old building, but you can still put really cool stuff in there that makes a difference.

58:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'd love to be able to kind of 3D prints and sense the caseings that are in keeping with my house and maybe you know, get a couple of build some enclosures for tablets and things that are, you know, again, in the style of and have those mounted and have them working so that you can control things, but [SPEAKER_00]: they looked like them meant to be there.

58:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Those sorts of things would be really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the other one would be water usage so we've got irrigation and I didn't know how popular these are in the US or in Australia but can we call orbit irrigation which [SPEAKER_00]: they make this thing called a beehive, which is a multi-port kind of irrigation controller.

59:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So got that going on and it would be really nice to understand. [SPEAKER_00]: I bought a few like soil moisture sensors to so to be able to automate that much more from this is actually needed rather than it's just on a schedule because it says it's on a schedule. [SPEAKER_00]: So my wife likes to grow vegetables [SPEAKER_00]: smart green house and sort of moving into agri-tech type stuff a little bit out of being going to be quite a cool way to go.

59:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's my 2026. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm building my ambi-light which is my kind of electronics project so yeah using WLED and building an ambi-light for the behind my TV that means WLED. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and yeah do the USB frame grabber into a Raspberry Pi and then piping that into WLED without having to spend [SPEAKER_00]: 150 pounds on the Philips one, so yeah, just for a bit of fun, and I think Shelley everywhere.

1:00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Shelley everywhere is the review list. [SPEAKER_00]: Ding Shelley guys, I will happily do more reviews. [SPEAKER_00]: Attack them in my blog all the time, one of the things with the period houses, by hiding away, and that's the [SPEAKER_00]: Shelley's been a bit a little bit of an interesting one in the UK because the, you know, the frames and the, the units are designed for mainland European kind of electrical fitting, so having to come up with some slightly more innovative solutions.

1:00:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I actually found you can get some [SPEAKER_00]: RJ45 face plates and just cut them a little bit and then the Shelley switches and things fit nicely behind them so yeah so you can then put the Shelley like the BLE or the the physical switches in a UK box without breaking the bank or having to have 3D print one on stuff so yeah that's the ongoing kind of Shelleyisation of my house to really do the local first thing [SPEAKER_00]: given where this crazy geopolitical climate's going, having nobody else in charge of my house starts to feel really quite relevant.

1:01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And hence the energy independence as well, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's geopolitical stuff aside. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's just good in general too, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And just, you know, you don't need to rely on the power company, you don't need to do rely on whatever.

1:01:38 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just stuff happens, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's whether it's in their hands or out of their hands. [SPEAKER_02]: But are you are you doing anything with the shellys where you're running any of the local scripts on the shellys because those can do that right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I've been I've been fitting out what we called the the playroom which was either dumping ground in our house that's the trunk kind of our second living space now And so Yeah, I had had some scripts running on there because I wanted it to kind of [SPEAKER_00]: controlled some of the IKEA trad-free stuff that I had in there before, and so actually it was really laggy sending it off to Home Assistant, so I had it kind of intercept the BLE and send a web hook directly in rather than using MQTT and stuff.

1:02:31 [SPEAKER_00]: That was quite cool and one of the [SPEAKER_00]: doing some remote power monitoring and temperature monitoring. [SPEAKER_00]: So kind of building scripts to make virtual sensors in Shelley to do the, um, because you can, you know, effectively use fairly cheap, uh, NTC services to send system to monitor lots of different temperatures and, and voltages.

1:03:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So that was, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, I'm not amazed at JavaScript, so somebody else helped me with that whose name might start with Chatting it in with Jay, but hey, how you know means to it in real love the Shelley stuff of that love that it's yeah, I get it fits into that ethos, I kind of you know local first open source and you know, I've actually kind of been saying to the guys that were that I love their model of [SPEAKER_00]: Basically, you get the community to do your marketing for you, release it and you engage with them and you create an influencer community that goes and evangelizes about your product for you.

1:03:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an amazing way of marketing things. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: If there were more companies like that in the world, it would be a good thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I agree. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I remember listening today the air purifier guy from Thailand that you had on, um, that was a pretty interesting story.

1:04:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That was a pretty interesting story as well. [SPEAKER_00]: This sort of community interest things. [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess, again, back to how Open Home Foundation and stuff all sits and works. [SPEAKER_00]: In the crazy world that we're in, that stuff, that stuff's gold dust, right?

1:04:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And finding companies and other people that believe in the same thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's where a lot of these, the more successful companies I would say in home automation are the ones that we keep hearing about at least on the podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, see Apollo's as a zoos.

1:04:37 [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's shelly. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like just it's exactly what you said because they're very community involved. [SPEAKER_02]: So the community obviously likes that. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, [SPEAKER_00]: as the, the tick career in me comes out like, you know, finding cool uses for products.

1:04:56 [SPEAKER_00]: and they're not going to, they're not going to burn you for it, you know, I mean, following with great interest this thing about Chamberlain garage door openers in the US and how they've been pulling, like this perpetual game of cat and mouse, as to the ranch ETOs and stuff, whether they can, yeah, turn them on, turn them off, like that is a model of how not to do business in the home automation space, right?

1:05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It's been an interesting journey and I've learned so much in the last 18 months and I've learned an awful lot from you guys just listening in and you know, and to your guests it's amazing just kind of picking up ideas on how to do things from other listeners as part of what I love. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's more than one way to scan a cat, right?

1:05:49 [SPEAKER_00]: That's it. [SPEAKER_02]: Not that we should be scanning cats. [SPEAKER_00]: No, my cats might be a bit unimpressed about that, but, you know, yeah, I think someone was talking about, I'm gonna read my water meter using a module with a little camera in it. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the things I want to try and do, and I've been in Spain.

1:06:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They use the light pulses to convey electricity reading, so I'm going to try and build a little ESP module to read the pulses from that to get the smart movie train, because [SPEAKER_00]: I've tried grappling with their API and in Spanish and that didn't go too well for me. [SPEAKER_00]: But again, in Europe, they have dynamic energy pricing, I think last week's guest was talking about that and so I'd love to be able to go.

1:06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I've got 18 hours in front of me will turn the pool pump on between 4 and 5 in the morning and 8 and 10 at night or whatever to take advantage of the pricing for that so yeah some interesting stuff to do with that as well that is all derived from [SPEAKER_00]: listening to you guys and yeah kind of understanding what the art of the possible really because you only know what you know right and then and just hearing some of the idea might spark you know someone else oh I could do it this way yeah well back in for listening to our podcast where can people find your blog okay so my blog is at blog dot schwock.com which is SHW okay [SPEAKER_00]: ramblings about home automation and period house restoration, parenting fails, politics.

1:07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever happens to take my, take my fancy that week. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it'd be great to get some, get some of the listeners to come along and have a look at what a, you know, a gen X middle aged dad does in his spare time. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we'll leave links to that on homies.fm.

1:08:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you so much for joining us today really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you guys. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been a blast and yeah, thanks for all you do for the community. [SPEAKER_00]: No, thanks for listening to it. [SPEAKER_00]: Cheers. [SPEAKER_03]: If you want to share your home season journey or come on as a guest, reach out to us at feedback at haspodcast.io.

1:08:19 [SPEAKER_03]: That's H-A-S-S podcast.io. [SPEAKER_02]: a system podcast is hosted by Phil Hawthorne and myself, Rohan Caramandi. [SPEAKER_02]: For links to topics we discussed today, check out our show notes on haspodcast.io.