Neil takes us through how he is using AI to build his ultimate smart home with Home Assistant

0:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Hoses and Podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: Today, as usual, we're joined with Phil, Hey Phil. [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, run. [SPEAKER_01]: And we've got another Torontoan, which is all I think never happened. [SPEAKER_01]: So, hey, Neil. [SPEAKER_01]: guys. [SPEAKER_01]: As usual, this podcast is sponsored by Homelessism Cloud by Navocasa.

0:21 [SPEAKER_01]: For a small monthly fee, you'll unlock very powerful features like secure effortless access to your system from anywhere, your choice of voice assistance, off-site backups, and a lot more. [SPEAKER_01]: It just before we started, Rahan, um, just was it turatorian? [SPEAKER_02]: You just, is that the right word?

0:38 [SPEAKER_02]: Look, [SPEAKER_02]: As a Tarantonean Tarantonean there I can have never heard that I guess you wouldn't hear it like outside of Tarantone Right, what's my morning and what's my morning and what's my morning and what do you know no burnian? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: No burnian. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

0:52 [SPEAKER_01]: No burnian Well it's like Tarantoney sounds kind of weird right or like you think what are those? [SPEAKER_02]: It's I don't know I'm Sydney there Sydney side is I think you never yeah Sydney sideers. [SPEAKER_02]: I believe it's Sydney side is yeah [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's a new one, I haven't heard that suffix before, that's cool.

1:12 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, but yes, anyway, here we are. [SPEAKER_02]: Neil, thank you so much for joining us. [SPEAKER_02]: Could this be a bit of a patty self? [SPEAKER_02]: How have you gone into home automation? [SPEAKER_00]: Deep Dark History, like, you know, grade 7, 12 years old, 19, and 1979, like, just dated me right there, Commodore Pets, you know, with 20, 2,048 bytes of memory, and all that kind of thing, actual tape drives for, you know, storing your programming in.

1:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That was, like, so as a kid, I did some programming, I made a little [SPEAKER_00]: I was a fun stupid nerdy, geeky time, peaks and pokes, I don't know if any of you guys know what those are even. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I kind of stopped doing software stuff and had a real life. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, hang out in high school and do all the things.

2:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got a career in, there's always been a bit of a, like, [SPEAKER_00]: automation or information management kind of thing in my in my career. [SPEAKER_00]: I had a couple of bookstores and I'm selling those and then now for the last 15 years or 18 years it's been a development business, real estate development.

2:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So we own bunch rentals and other properties and I've done home assistant work there which I'll tell you guys about later. [SPEAKER_00]: But the home assistant journey for me really started or the home automation journey started probably four years ago, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: It was called Google Home.

2:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was called Google Home. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Google Home. [SPEAKER_00]: Hi. [SPEAKER_00]: Please play X on Spotify. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: That was the entire spectrum of what got done for a little while. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there were a couple other tools, like a Yale lock and a thing.

2:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was that growing irritation of multiple formats and different apps on phones and that thing that everybody totally hates. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's completely irritating and obnoxious. [SPEAKER_00]: Then a guy I knew was into it. [SPEAKER_00]: And he had done a bunch of stuff for this house.

3:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't understand what he was talking about. [SPEAKER_00]: He told me some things about windows being open and turning off heat and rooms and doing this and that and some other kind of nerdy stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: I was in our buildings. [SPEAKER_00]: We have to deal with HVAC stuff all the time.

3:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think a lot about that. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I looked into it. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is just a year ago. [SPEAKER_00]: NUC, didn't even know what that meant. [SPEAKER_00]: Get a NUC, I install Home Assistant OS and that system. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I pull in a couple of things I have in the house, I pull in the lock, I have a phone, I have a phone, I had pull a Lutron, sorry.

3:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I put Lutron switch, like when I got this new, I've been this house for three or four years, put Lutron, which is great, you know, Lutron just works, it's kind of nice. [SPEAKER_00]: And the only real automation I had at a Lutron was, when it's midnight, turn off the lights, because I have 14 acres, right?

4:05 [SPEAKER_00]: and they just leave lights on all the time because no one cares and my parents beat me when I was a child so, you know, I knew not to leave lights on. [SPEAKER_00]: But then I'd also, the great lesson was to turn it off at 2 a.m. as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So I would turn it off multiple times in the night because people would just get up and turn lights on again.

4:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So I just kept turning them off. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was the first thing, and then I brought home assistant in and started integrating those components initially, a little more sophisticated, light off and onness, then I got Ali expressing that. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that I don't know how much of this past many different people take, but I got Ali expressing mental and bot like tons of those four-dollar motion sensors with [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and it's put those around and people started walking in a room, and life would just go on and off.

4:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there's a few more presence sensors around. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a combination of both. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I've also learned that plug-in has its benefits or battery. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's become something I've learned in the last year. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but, uh, on the, so that, that was kind of happening.

5:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a house, which has a very complicated heating system in it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's got a ground source heat pump. [SPEAKER_00]: but it's undersized. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's ground source heat pump, plus it has electrical backup in a storage tank. [SPEAKER_00]: This was missed built, like when they installed it originally, they just undersized it and they had a big electrical backup in it.

5:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually putting, I'm going to be putting a gas boiler and to help the system out a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a longer story about heating systems. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I got it, I was totally into the idea of controlling it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no control sets.

5:38 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so it's, it's in for heating for the house plus there's two air handleers plus there's an HRV plus there's a humidifying, a steam humidifier and coordinating all that stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, is a complete nightmare. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's, it, you can't. [SPEAKER_00]: The author shelf control systems give you none of the granularity you want, it's like 10 grand and you still can't do what you want to do, right?

6:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just started figuring this shit out. [SPEAKER_00]: And this was early chat TVT days, it's like a little bit of AI supporting my design concepts and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I got these 24 volts for like four way with the [SPEAKER_00]: And I started and all at all the manifolds we have, where there were these actuators, used to be going towards the centralized system, it was a total mess in the boiler and totally insane.

6:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So I was able to de-localize that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I used the wires that used to go to the manifolds and brought them back to a 24 volt transformer in the mechanical room, ran that to each location and then controlled each of the manifolds switches. [SPEAKER_00]: So now I buy, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, 12 or 15, I think I have 15 zones.

6:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I buy 15 little $4 thermostats, solve them all over the house with batteries, thermostat and humidity things. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I have these, I have five manifolds. [SPEAKER_00]: And they all have like four or five zones in them. [SPEAKER_00]: And I go around and I set that whole thing up but then I start coding it in homocystin and then.

7:09 [SPEAKER_00]: At that point, I'm in charge of E.T. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing the classic early AI. [SPEAKER_00]: Go into charge of E.T. [SPEAKER_00]: Ask a bunch of questions. [SPEAKER_00]: It writes some code for you. [SPEAKER_00]: Copy it over into YAML. [SPEAKER_00]: You want to kill yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a complete nightmare, right?

7:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I've tried to mangle those things together. [SPEAKER_00]: But I get it working. [SPEAKER_00]: I get it working over the summer. [SPEAKER_00]: And I do all kinds of cool shit. [SPEAKER_00]: So, sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: Normally when people have ranchers heat pumps in the summertime, they only cool through air handlers.

7:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They blow air against cooling coils, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's terrified of putting cold water into the floor because of the condensation. [SPEAKER_00]: But I've got all these humidifstats all over the place. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got all this equipment all over the place. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to run it to the dew point, or a couple degrees away from the dew point, and I'm actually going to push cold water into the floor.

8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: and let it cool the house that way. [SPEAKER_00]: And one big advantage of that, which totally worked last year, is I can use 11pm to 7am electricity in Ontario as you know, Rohan, you can get cheap electricity overnight. [SPEAKER_00]: And I run it, I pump cool into the floor, which slowly dissipates over the day.

8:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't really have to end up running my cooling system during the daytime. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was that nearly a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Two things, one is I get to distribute it in the floor, which is kind of nice on your feet and feels good in the summertime. [SPEAKER_00]: But also that I got to save electricity on it.

8:29 [SPEAKER_00]: and just be in there, you know, running somewhere control system that is, you know, what's all all about really. [SPEAKER_00]: So I did that. [SPEAKER_00]: There's the whole thing about trying to run that. [SPEAKER_00]: the heating system again energy efficiently try to run it overnight all the time except the problem I ran to as my system was undersized so it didn't really work and that's where the gas was going to come in but I have a plan for that it's interesting that you've chosen to go gas I know like in Australia at least it's all electrification like get off the gas essentially is what we're trying to do and you're sort of going the opposite and Ontario that's supposed to be the idea like that's what the government is but the problem is

9:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm actually a developer, so I'm doing some little developments, and there's just whole push by the government organizations to get you to use energy efficiency and get off gas and get towards heat pumps. [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is, there's a total disconnect. [SPEAKER_00]: As soon as you want to load up with electricity, you need more amperage.

9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And in Toronto, if you try to go from 200 amps to 400 amps, there's a massive, like a 200 amps of cost you to 10k and 400 amps of [SPEAKER_00]: there's this giant differential because it's not considered part of the standard, you know, product that they put out there to regular households.

9:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They haven't caught up yet. [SPEAKER_00]: So they basically are blocking the use of electricity as a displacement for gas, even though that's what they're saying they want. [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever, takes time for things to work themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I got the afternoon gas and just gets under size.

9:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's really no solution that the in-ground section has been frozen too much over the winter by being run too much. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have to bring in guys. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm doing that. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's that cool. [SPEAKER_00]: So I get into this thing and I'm building these kind of complex stuff.

10:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, again, I'm not really a coder. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I couldn't write YAML and most that I couldn't write YAML because I can't tab or space bar in the indentation requirement. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that is completely beyond me. [SPEAKER_00]: I would just screw it up and kill myself before I would be able to do it.

10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So I get into chat, GBT, doing this work for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm having kind of fun with this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I do this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I decided to go this is my cottage, and I'm going to do it for my work. [SPEAKER_00]: But in the middle of that, I bring in cursor.

10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: You guys know cursor right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because there's another AI tool that you can use to basically record. [SPEAKER_02]: I've just got it. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a fork or a Rosa fork if it's code. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I use VF code now instead, but initially I used cursor.

10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why. [SPEAKER_00]: Just like I heard of it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the pitch for all those listeners out there, a little bit, is I know that everyone's going to have ton of work at home assistant to make the GUI super useful and come up with these new kind of ways of approaching automations.

11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you get something like cursor VS code and you pay for, you know, you're 40 bucks a month or 60 bucks a month subscription to [SPEAKER_00]: it will write your automations for you and you can talk to it and you can discuss how best to do something and you don't have to be a coder. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a different way of getting to that automation.

11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to simplify the automation in your face on one side but on the other side. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, the AI actually, it's not supposed to mix these, I mean, particularly if you want to do anything complicated, like it's way easier to write a complicated automation using AI, then it is doing it for the interface and I don't think that's ever going to be solvable.

11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't think, I don't think they can make the AI the good, the GUI. [SPEAKER_00]: easier than that. [SPEAKER_00]: But you have to set up, you have to set up, you have to give VS code installed, you have to point it your server, you have to do a few things, and I will say again, the AI will help you do those things, you don't actually have to do it, you have to ask questions, learn what SSH is, type in some things, a couple keys, and you're kind of done, and it will take take over the [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like many vibe coders were in your lives, staying up, you know, dot talk to your other families.

12:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, for a year still like, oh, I got to just ran out of tokens. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I guess it's better. [SPEAKER_01]: I got, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to do another thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can do things. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'll, I'll, I'll share, you guys often ask these questions.

12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: My talking too much. [SPEAKER_00]: I keep asking that question now. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I know you're going to tell you about some installs I got. [SPEAKER_00]: So, fun things. [SPEAKER_00]: So, at home, I have a sauna and I have a cold plunge. [SPEAKER_00]: So the sauna, again, I'm trying to be cheap-skate.

12:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to run early in the mornings. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a little butt in my press, which is sauna tomorrow on my, on my, on my, on my iPhone. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it will look at the future temperature outside or what the temperature is actually. [SPEAKER_00]: It will guess on how long, based on historical performance, how long the sauna takes to heat up.

13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And then before 7 a.m., when electricity is cheap, so like in the middle of the winter, it might start at 5.30. [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, as it gets warm outside, it might start at 6.20. [SPEAKER_00]: And it will try and heat this on prior to the 7 a.m. electricity price increase.

13:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I have a, uh, uh, it's called a blind at home. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to blind a curtain because it's big long curtains, but 20 feet long actually in our bedroom, um, and so it closes, you know, nine o'clock at night or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And the morning, it will open at 7 am, but it only opens to the point where the sun, based on where the sun is, you can kettle that data from the system, right?

13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Based on where the sun is, it will open to the point where the sun won't hit our faces in the bed. [SPEAKER_00]: So it just lets lighten the room and then as the sun torques up every 50 minutes it just keeps readjusting where the what brand of blinds are you using for this dive like this of this is a drape so I got a custom drape made on my hooks and I went to Chinese company again starts the Z size smart.

14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice smart, it's nice

14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like the integrator value that happens still from kind of the old world where people couldn't do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, where I couldn't do that before on my own, the integrator value obviously is like a lawyer value in a counten value. [SPEAKER_00]: The things are tanking a little bit with the AI support function.

14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was an example of that where, you know, I'm displacing heating controls. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm displacing an integrator who would come into my house and have done that for me for five grand, you know, ten years ago, but now I'm just doing myself. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting because I always find like I have the blinds automated to with the SME smart I've got roller blinds, but the motors on those are so noisy that they would wake you up like if you're opening them up before you're out of it Every game is going to go like yeah, yeah, that's going to bring me Yeah, for sure.

15:18 [SPEAKER_00]: We want I mean, I don't we only open them when we want like [SPEAKER_00]: We open them when it's okay to be awake like yeah, that's kind of the thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I actually get up like I'm the old guy So I give it five thirty or six whatever my wife doesn't like that She's more of a seven or so doesn't open until it's when the sun comes up or half an after the sun comes up I have some I came in with the with the modalities Yeah [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so how do you how do you wasn't just a manual like you just waited there a couple of days and kind of said okay The sun's about here.

15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's bump it up or are you not only I got my phone. [SPEAKER_00]: I put it against the window faces out to get its bearings We're for where the you have the north south bearings [SPEAKER_00]: north, but mostly east. [SPEAKER_00]: And I put that in. [SPEAKER_00]: I basically talked to Claude and I said, hey, this is the angle, this time of day, it's here, this is, you know, given a bit of information about the height of the window, and a bunch of other things.

16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And it wrote some code and took a data point, because with, you know, one of the meteorological, [SPEAKER_00]: I found those meteorological tools great like we have a thing we'll talk about there are more work for a second that we use for heat trace tape in downspouts and east troughs play about that couple of product that we did but same thing so just it knows where the sun's angle is a camp there's a work for what the angle the sun is and it calculates how far it should open the window.

16:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Nice. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, so you've got the sort of automated and the blinds automated, like, if either crazy sort of missions you've got. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the heating, like the, so the cottage one, I'll go to the cottage one, I think you had a guy actually a couple of weeks ago talk about something like this.

17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So the cottage, we can't really go much over the winter, but we'd like to be able to. [SPEAKER_00]: So we did a bit of work to try and make that possible. [SPEAKER_00]: It's on the island. [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, Rohan, you'll know that this is, and Phil, you won't. [SPEAKER_00]: It's in Georgian Bay, it's on an island called Christian Island.

17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a native reserve here. [SPEAKER_00]: And we all cottage there and it's kind of hard to get through the winter sometimes because the ferry doesn't work or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: But we did winterize it because we love it and we won't go about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you have buildings, you can totally just like drill a water into everything and close down a cottage and have a go-off season.

17:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not great for buildings in general, actually, to be freezing cold the whole time, but if you want to go up and you want water available, I was sort of testing it at this year. [SPEAKER_00]: So I put up, we have like maybe eight rooms up there total, like a few bedrooms and living room, whatever else.

17:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I put thermostats in every room, we have electric resistance heating in every room. [SPEAKER_00]: And I, [SPEAKER_00]: This was with Claude again, I got it to write a self learning system where it would heat the rooms up. [SPEAKER_00]: And when I was trying to do was I was trying to get it so that they never drop lose zero.

18:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So every day. [SPEAKER_00]: And based on it, it had figured out what the heat. [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually kind of a cool aspect. [SPEAKER_00]: It had figured out what the heat loss the room was because it would heat them up and then temperature would drop based on the outside temperature and it could interpolate what that meant.

18:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So how many degrees Celsius do I lose per hour when it's negative 10? [SPEAKER_00]: How many are you losing negative 4? [SPEAKER_00]: And you all have a sudden get a heat loss, a fact for the room. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it was also a heat gain. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a 1,500 kilowatt heater here.

18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: How quickly will that heat this room up? [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the episode, it has these two data points that pulls together. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it tries to run it overnight. [SPEAKER_00]: Just so, for people who don't think I'm mental, which I am a mental, but it's four cents overnight, and it's 24 cents between four and nine PM.

18:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's one six-th of cost to run it overnight. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'll pump it up from 11pm to 7am to like 22 degrees if you're not there and it'll drift and it'll drift and it'll drift and it'll drift but hopefully it skims over the bottom of zero so things don't freeze. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a great learning here beyond the really cool little health and it actually self-lantic every week it keeps learning and like reevaluate its things.

19:16 [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little omitted python that's really cool So when you say it's really learning how is it then taking that daughter is going into the home some API grabbing the historical data and then running like some learning against the python chat [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it's a Python script that I didn't write, right?

19:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the clutter touch is somebody else wrote some hundreds of years of human history jamming to a bunch of neurological electrons wrote this script that, yeah, grabs the last seven day, I can fix seven days or ten days, fix last seven days or ten days of things. [SPEAKER_00]: It looks at when would the things on, when would the heaters on, when were they off, what was the outside temperature, what was the inside temperature, does the interpolation figure set out.

19:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I did learn one great thing, [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes when people in homeless isn't folks talk about cloud free or whatever, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like what's it called? [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting the code and yeah, you see what I said. [SPEAKER_00]: But being in a time, and this is a great example of where I had these extra, the first thermostats I got were Wi-Fi one, two year Wi-Fi ones, cheap from China, and then at home I learned that that was irritating, and I didn't want to deal with it, so I ordered a bunch of Zigbee ones, so that Zigbee ones are home.

20:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I took the two of you ones because they were left over, took one of the cards if you're all using this year and next year may have over play some ZB ones. [SPEAKER_00]: except I wasn't even I mean losing Wi-Fi at the college happens from time to time for sure we have Starlink but still lose it from time to time but the bigger issue is that Wi-Fi sucks juice out of batteries like crazy and particularly it's cold outside so a certain proportion of them just lost their batteries and we couldn't get up there because the ferry was broken so my system by February started failing and like not working how I thought it would and to the [SPEAKER_00]: Local Zigbee is also great from an energy use perspective, right?

21:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Like the Wi-Fi connections that those things need to make are just much more expensive. [SPEAKER_00]: Electrically if you're using battery offered, so that's another thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you guys have ever done this or know anyone who has, but converting little battery offered things into wired things, like trying to, you know, take 120 volts, you get to three volts and hook it in, have you guys ever done that?

21:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't I've got so many like little lights that my kids have like and they take button sell batteries and I'm like then what it what it made it and I'm like ah it would be so cool if I could just put like a really low voltage over the battery thing and have you know like an ESP really control it yeah it doesn't sound hard but no I haven't done it but I would definitely burn my house down if I tried.

21:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So I've been willing to be a bit of a, what do you guys call them Sparkies? [SPEAKER_00]: I've been willing to be a Sparky in my world. [SPEAKER_00]: Like all those things up north are running on these 240 bolts, you know, actually those are actually, I use local two year for those because they only come that way.

22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Very hard to find. [SPEAKER_00]: A, what we have fill here is a split phase 240 bolts. [SPEAKER_00]: So our 240 bolts are actually 2124 bolts, lines out of phase that make the 240 bolts. [SPEAKER_00]: and to get a [SPEAKER_00]: Breaker that will break both the lines at the same time is very hard to find, actually.

22:27 [SPEAKER_00]: They're super expensive in North America. [SPEAKER_00]: And so Chinese ones are one company that makes them and it's a two-year base thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to use two-year local. [SPEAKER_00]: Which has been working totally fine, actually. [SPEAKER_00]: The battery offered things you couldn't do two-year local for, because they don't show up on the IP.

22:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like commonly enough, there's a weird thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I could never connect a Wi-Fi two-year battery operated device with two-year local. [SPEAKER_00]: It was only wired at wired devices I could do. [SPEAKER_02]: So how are you accessing the cottage using high misses and cloud or are you going through a telescope connection?

23:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm using both. [SPEAKER_00]: So I use homelessness and cloud because I want to give Navukasa a few bucks a month because I think the work that they're doing is great for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit like, you know, you know, yeah, like paying for a subway if you're even if you're like when you don't have to.

23:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like it's the right thing to do. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And but. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I connect using VS code and all that other infrastructure, I have tail scale set more machines. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, and from my phone, you know, you can put an external IP in the app.

23:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll put tail scale into it. [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of used tail scale more now to be honest. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why, actually. [SPEAKER_00]: It just could have used to using it for all kinds of other things, so I end up using it. [SPEAKER_00]: It works beautifully. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to do it.

23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I think money, because I'm not paying [SPEAKER_02]: The beautiful thing about Taosielli is that because it's a local address, like you don't have the security concerns of like this URL is publicly accessible. [SPEAKER_02]: I know the Nabikasa one you get is a random idea that you can change at will But it still is publicly accessible.

24:04 [SPEAKER_02]: It needs to be right because you know Google and Amazon needs to connect to it Whereas on Taosielli, you know, it's just your stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: It's connecting to it [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be considered using anything like there is a custom component on hacks, we've mentioned a few times, not for a while though.

24:18 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the remote home assistant component where you can actually link two instances of home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: So entities from the remote assistant look like they're just another entity in your local. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have, and this goes to my work piece actually, you kind of segue to inadvertently into my work piece.

24:41 [SPEAKER_00]: 40 buildings we managed, okay, and maybe 37 of them have boilers and lots of them have hot water tanks and and they have some pumps and all the stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so I want them all, but I want to I want the long one dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: Right, like there's no I don't want 40 installs of homelessness and that's just complete brain damage.

24:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I just want to operate or be able to look at what's going on and always build things. [SPEAKER_00]: I did tons of research into how to approach that. [SPEAKER_00]: So am I going to set up a private network? [SPEAKER_00]: Am I going to do this? [SPEAKER_00]: Am I going to do that? [SPEAKER_00]: How am I going to manage it?

25:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I looked at remote home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: What I came back to in the end was just MQTT. [SPEAKER_00]: So PRMQTT over TLS, I think, or Tasmoda using MQTT, or Shelley devices using MQTT, or a, what does this guy's called? [SPEAKER_00]: Who made the great little ZB coordinators? [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you guys do you just SMLB SML ZV?

25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So I know you, I know you're pumping the, the probably Nabukasa. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know the one you're talking about. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're great actually. [SPEAKER_00]: I go to say they have a device that does like everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Like they're crazy nerds.

25:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They have a device that's like, [SPEAKER_00]: every protocol, you know, provide some local automation support, not a significant like home assistant, but a little bit of tweaking if you need to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, so I use MQTT bridges or direct MQTT to a centralized system that's on a VPS.

26:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So I have a digital [SPEAKER_01]: So everything, all of these properties go kind of hub and spoke, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Everything goes back to the CVPS and then you're whatever main home assistant instance, whatever it is, pulls from that. [SPEAKER_01]: No, home assistant is that. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

26:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's actually, what was this in itself is sitting there? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm running home, it's not, or whatever, like the homeless system without the OS. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what's going on here. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the container. [SPEAKER_00]: The only container.

26:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And so which means I have to do a couple things. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, after, again, this is all supported by an AI telling what to do. [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, you have Docker. [SPEAKER_00]: And you have [SPEAKER_00]: Mosquito in its own little. [SPEAKER_00]: It's got its own Docker roll up.

26:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And like these are things that I just want to be clear anyone is listening like I don't know anything about any of these things. [SPEAKER_00]: Like this is fully coached. [SPEAKER_00]: Once I can get a key like a public key through SSH to VS code with cloud or code X or any of those tools installed.

27:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's I mean, I have to you have to coach it a bit. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a be there to make sure it's not there to complete these things, but [SPEAKER_00]: it's doing all the hard work, it's doing all the hard work, all the ops guy stuff that I can't do, it's doing all those things. [SPEAKER_01]: I'd say the key thing there is, you know, as it tells you to what to do or as it to like learn from it, right?

27:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Because at some point, [SPEAKER_01]: in a break, and I can tell Neil just how you're talking is like, hey, you've actually picked up the bits that matter, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And even if it's AI, whatever, as I'm all I'm doing the thinking, you need to understand what's actually happening.

27:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So you can go in, if and when something breaks, you can describe, hey, this is what's happening. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the setup, this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the lexicon. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, giving it the context. [SPEAKER_00]: is huge that it can finally see your files.

28:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Like the pork, I know this from doing it myself, the guys who start off in Jackie B.T. [SPEAKER_00]: in a one window, working on their home assistant infrastructure on the another window are like, it's just so painful, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like the series of mistakes. [SPEAKER_00]: But when those AIs can see your context, every file that can see your comp, they can see that you're running in container, they can, [SPEAKER_00]: look at the memory usage, like they can do all that stuff, all that nerd stuff that you don't have to do.

28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That's where it really comes together. [SPEAKER_02]: So on MQTT, I have a question, have you considered there's been quite a while since I set up my MQTT broker? [SPEAKER_02]: Have you considered like running multiple instances of MQTT? [SPEAKER_02]: Like because to me that screams it's going to be a single point of failure.

28:45 [SPEAKER_02]: If you've got that one MQTT instance, have you thought about having a backup in place? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think, so there's two things going on here. [SPEAKER_00]: One is points of failure, don't we matter to me? [SPEAKER_00]: So, none of what I'm doing is, I'm going to, I'll mention the one thing we've rolled out and the things we're planning on rolling out, but much of what we're talking about is monitoring.

29:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you have a bunch of boilers, you wanna know when they're failing the early in the process? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: You get the only way you find it from a part in buildings, if a boilers failed, is it three in the morning, early the next day when someone complains, [SPEAKER_00]: And you've had 15 hours, and the temperature of the buildings gone from 72 to, sorry, this Fahrenheit, I don't know who's, let's talk with language from 21 to 15, right?

29:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And now you got an emergency, whereas you could have known because it didn't start, it failed 15, 12 hours before that. [SPEAKER_00]: right just took a while for the building to cool down the hot water around. [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of it is, you know, can we monitor the internet temperature of water?

29:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Some pumps again. [SPEAKER_00]: We have a pump that's kicking on. [SPEAKER_00]: If water is going past the certain level, can we get a signal, send somebody out, fix it, you miss a flood. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's so many of these things that we can do water management. [SPEAKER_00]: Water is huge expansion Toronto, I don't know, I'm sure, actually it's insane and Australia, right?

30:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Like people with only pay for the time for water on Australia? [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I don't think so. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how relative could be like in Los Angeles to do whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to be quite a bit for water if you have a leak like a bunch of toilets of leaking and water running through the middle of the night.

30:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You can put a little sensor on and you can have it. [SPEAKER_00]: So those are the things that we're going to do. [SPEAKER_00]: But that's not mission critical, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like if it's down for 16 hours, it's a little matter. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like it's a nice to have. [SPEAKER_00]: The one thing we did roll it already and this is a bit more of this heat advance thing that I love doing.

30:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I got for whatever reason is [SPEAKER_00]: um, in Toronto, actually you might know this, um, your e-strokes and you're building if if you get a depending on how things melt in the winter time, um, you can get roof damage, you can get giant icicles off the side of your uh, your e-strokes which can pull them off, you can get damage, you can get sued because it falls in someone's car, which actually happened to this once, um, and uh, so we put these heat trace things in it, these wires that you push electrical resistance [SPEAKER_00]: Normally when people do that, they run them all the time.

31:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's super expensive, but they run it whenever the temperature is low. [SPEAKER_00]: They run it when it's low to degrees, they just run. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's [SPEAKER_00]: and refreeze.

31:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So you need enough heat to melt and cause a refreeze. [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, there's no reason to turn on. [SPEAKER_00]: If there's a negative 20 degrees outside, it doesn't have to be hot. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just hot. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything's frozen.

31:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So we did this whole thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of cool. [SPEAKER_00]: So we have insulation values for houses, the buildings, because the roof of a building will get overheated as compared to the rest of the world, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because the building's leaking heat. [SPEAKER_00]: And the sun, beating down on it, will cause another excessive temperature, [SPEAKER_00]: change so it's like plus three degrees for sun plus 10 degrees for the building and I again cloud cover from the From the Mateo whichever one of those And things we're using we had cloud cover from that or UV penetration There's calculation based on the fact that it's snow and it's white so it's reflecting light and the And winds are gonna melt and winds are gonna rephrase and so we turn it on and we think it's a bit hard to completely get the right numbers

32:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So literally six times more expensive to run and you know we've 40 buildings right like it's it's a real number when you when you start rolling it at that level And so that was the first thing that we did with with with the multi building in infrastructure That's really interesting and and you know is this something that I'll help like you know You're talking about some of the water sensors and and you know Monitoring your some pump and and those kind of things [SPEAKER_01]: Is that something they insurance company considers, like, obviously, it's not sold itself down.

32:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, someday maybe, I think, like, those things are very, yeah, the trust, this e-straw thing, is actually the clearest thing that should be supported on an insurance basis. [SPEAKER_00]: If we were to get a scale or a company, you'd go to, you'd try and navigate that with insurance companies and reduce loss for them.

33:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And find out if they have real losses from it, I don't know what they do or not. [SPEAKER_00]: He's charged with giant icicles on the look scary whether they actually cause human damage or anything I don't know but they look terrifying. [SPEAKER_01]: They definitely wreck things sometimes I mean if it's kind of I think a pointy thing falling from the ground or from the from the areas I've watched that off cartoon to know this scary That's right.

33:36 [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly a 70 pound pointy thing like you don't want to be underneath that [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so there's are the lots of things that I've been fussing with with home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the other thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a guy who's online, has an accent. [SPEAKER_00]: I know he's from he does lots of great little home assistant videos and early on I got the plants thing from him with all the little plant sensors.

34:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, like, those little, I know what they're called. [SPEAKER_00]: There's little plant such as Bluetooth plant sensors, um, and then plant monitor, and there's a couple different add-ons, a couple of hacks add-ons, plant monitor, and plant card or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And our plants are just rocking compared to what they were before.

34:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Like not overwatered, which is usually the main mistake, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like people overwater stuff like crazy. [SPEAKER_00]: But like our plants are all completely rocking and growing like crazy. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Phil, you might appreciate this because where you live, [SPEAKER_02]: We have a passion fruit vine inside our house just in a little place and it's in the grow like they're mental right like they grow it insanely That's been kind of cool interesting like how Like so Have you have you noticed a difference like are you automating the watering or is it just that now you're getting the reports that things are dry Should go water it now?

34:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not like it's super nerd what's it called them this for like your [SPEAKER_00]: dashboards. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not like again, I let Chatsy B2 did my dashboards, but I have this collapsible dashboard that tells me of my 22 plants, what their water situation is and if they need fertilizer.

35:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just like in the morning when I go down to make my coffee or like my smoothie or whatever, I just look at it. [SPEAKER_00]: And if it's like these three plants in water, [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny because I had so many of those sensors and I'd go through change all the batteries and I'm like, okay, now I'm going to start monitoring it, I'm going to start and then I never did, even with the alerts I set up alerts and I was like, oh yeah, I should water that plant and then I just never would.

35:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Hence, my plants are in, you know, these are bidsimal states behind me here. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they're little, but if you look at it actually, you're ready to let one of the left look like it's tired. [SPEAKER_00]: But I'll send you my code if you want. [SPEAKER_00]: It said that the the gooey health, I'm a very tight gooey for our day like a little information about the sauna, the cold plunge, when we stay at the Garbage out and my plants.

36:07 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the only stuff I look at and that works. [SPEAKER_00]: I find the Garbage things super helpful [SPEAKER_02]: Um, add on, uh, is that still there? [SPEAKER_02]: Like I had one, um, and when, uh, my assistant got calendar support, it got removed from hacks. [SPEAKER_02]: And I still have it.

36:28 [SPEAKER_02]: I still use it, um, but it's no longer supported in hacks. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe there's a new one. [SPEAKER_02]: I have to upgrade it. [SPEAKER_00]: We've collection schedule. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the new one. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll have to check that one out. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

36:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And that same guy. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what his name is. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a guy here that's the plant. [SPEAKER_00]: He did be, that was the earlier on actually. [SPEAKER_00]: He got me plant and waste. [SPEAKER_00]: That was before I was like, yeah, I was using the AI coding.

36:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I said those two things up. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's SM Light is the name of the company that makes the, yeah, that's the one. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the Ziggy Coordinator. [SPEAKER_00]: And Shelley, I've liked a bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I use real link for camera. [SPEAKER_00]: I find that when people come home to open lock, little slow, I can't quite get the, [SPEAKER_00]: Someone came home, took an image of it, real link, sent it information quickly enough to open the lock.

37:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, sometimes it does it before I get to the lock, but often it doesn't open it before I get there. [SPEAKER_02]: Really, I have that with real link and set wave and just on the, using this real link, AI, no person detection and it's very fast. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, generally, if it's going to do it, it's before we get to the front door and it's at the door.

37:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And you do it, do you look for you using like, I think you just look no, no, so just anybody, but I'd base it on my phone. [SPEAKER_02]: So if my wife or my phone is just [SPEAKER_02]: than it will, as soon as it detects them while they're doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly what I'm doing.

37:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But for some reason, I don't get the click as fast. [SPEAKER_00]: It might be, maybe you come to your camera and you're further away and it sees you. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we get to our camera. [SPEAKER_00]: It might only be, by the time that it sees me, I'm like, five feet away. [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say, it could be just that angle or like not an angle, but distance kind of thing, right?

38:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: As soon as I get out of my car, like it's his detective, I mean, the driveway and triggers it, essentially. [SPEAKER_01]: Sineel, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: We talked a little bit, but you built this device database AI tool to monitor your devices and so on, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us?

38:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about that a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: I just got to say too. [SPEAKER_01]: I love how you are this non-technical programmer, whatever. [SPEAKER_01]: I know you did it years ago, but I don't know that necessarily changes. [SPEAKER_01]: But you're doing all of this, what I would consider, at least personally, very advanced [SPEAKER_01]: Right, without just with the assistance of, you know, all alums of, you know, a variety of types or whatever.

38:54 [SPEAKER_01]: But so yeah, do you want to tell us a little bit about that? [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, you, I mean, like, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this has been solved by some hacks, thing that I'm not aware of. [SPEAKER_00]: There's some stuff, like there's, what's it called, spook, which helps a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yes.

39:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Making sure stuff isn't mocked up. [SPEAKER_00]: But it seems to me that there's some weird gap in, like you can get a battery operating device to go away and never leak signals that it's away. [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't leave no until you're walking to that room and the thing doesn't turn on, right?

39:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know, again, I'm going to tell you what it looks like, I get this, so I have a, I don't know how it works exactly, so it goes through, it looks at all the devices that have ever been there, it has its own separate registry of devices, and then it can, so it doesn't run into the lost pattern in the same way because it's comparing, because [SPEAKER_00]: So this one is like, it's gone, but it was there.

39:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And if Neil didn't remove it from the list, then it still should be there, which probably means a battery step, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And I have this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's critical devices offline, battery health. [SPEAKER_00]: So there are things that are involved in automations that are distinct from things that trigger events, [SPEAKER_00]: and there's two, actually, there's three levels.

40:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Things that trigger events from things that matter. [SPEAKER_00]: So the heating system did it up. [SPEAKER_00]: Then there's things that trigger events that kind of don't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's things that don't trigger events that are just informative. [SPEAKER_00]: And it just gives me a hierarchy.

40:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I only get a notification for the most serious level. [SPEAKER_00]: And the other two, there's just a little dashboard that shows me a little list. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I took two, I'm selling a house, I took two plants for my house that had little sticky things in them, I took them to that house right now, it says they're not here, like it's they're missing, where these battery devices, like yeah, there's someplace else, they're not available.

40:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So I have, you know, I know that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can even see like my phone, my phone battery is low because my phone is a device, right, that is meant to me. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's showing [SPEAKER_02]: So, I think what you've described now is you can sort of do it with a mishmash of different integration.

41:12 [SPEAKER_02]: So you've mentioned Spook, I use Spook, same sort of thing, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Like it will raise a repair if it detects an entity that doesn't exist in a, like if you've got an entity [SPEAKER_02]: and the entity's been renamed or has been removed, it'll raise a repair. [SPEAKER_02]: I use a battery notes plugin, a battery notes plus or something, which tells you what size batteries you need for a device.

41:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you've got like a random motion sensor, it needs a certain button cell. [SPEAKER_02]: It will tell you, okay, this is the type of button cell. [SPEAKER_02]: But as part of that, it also keeps track of when the device reported its battery state or when it was last reported in. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

41:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So it can say, and this is very finicky like not all devices will report their battery state at all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: So I have a whole bunch of notifications saying the WaterLix sensor hasn't reported its battery from more than 24 hours. [SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean it's offline?

42:03 [SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean it's not working? [SPEAKER_02]: No, just hasn't reported its battery. [SPEAKER_02]: But so that's one, it's a give sort of cup of that off to you. [SPEAKER_00]: So mine would pick up any reporting. [SPEAKER_00]: So if it's going to look at it and go, and we expect a battery sensor to report every hour or two hours or whatever.

42:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it's four hours of past and it hasn't already any information, an update of any form that it's considered dead. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and so then the other thing I do similar to you. [SPEAKER_02]: I've got like critical and non-critical devices. [SPEAKER_02]: What I do is I put them into a group.

42:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So critical devices and non-critical files are going to just stand behind this in the group. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I have a template and it loops over all the entities in that group. [SPEAKER_02]: And if any of them marked as unavailable, then it raises, then it becomes a problem. [SPEAKER_02]: And I get it alert, but all that then turns out [SPEAKER_02]: A critical alert level and a non-critical alert level, and my dashboard always says I've got at least two critical alerts and three or five non-critical alerts, and I just never bothered to fix them.

43:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So I would say I'm not speaking out of turn. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's always like these have always been right. [SPEAKER_00]: So I haven't had a situation like I look like literally there's a [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that day before I went down there and I went down and it was dead and like you know that that work so I think and I haven't had a lot of false positives.

43:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The things are actually. [SPEAKER_00]: go on or dead or something's gone wrong each time. [SPEAKER_02]: Does that require you to look at the dashboard or are you getting an alert to say, okay, this device needs to be replaced now. [SPEAKER_00]: I get an alert. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, I never look at the alerts.

43:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I only look at the dashboard and I don't look at it very often. [SPEAKER_00]: It's part of my, it's I have a little bit of a morning or two, like I only have a few dashboards, like I have, I have a [SPEAKER_00]: overview, device health, and I have another one that's a doorbell. [SPEAKER_00]: So like when people bring the doorbell, it pops up with the video.

44:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's the only dashboards I have. [SPEAKER_00]: And so kind of look at them once a day. [SPEAKER_00]: I do get that. [SPEAKER_00]: I also the alert I get is actually not nicely, I may have wrecked it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not nicely formatted. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like this weird like, you know, pile of text that wraps circles and doesn't read well.

44:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I haven't [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't gone into my interface. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing too much other coding to fix that. [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I know, I mean, 2025.5. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just isn't, sorry, 206.5. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, still talking to 25.

44:33 [SPEAKER_02]: They released the maintenance dashboard, and that shows all the battery levels. [SPEAKER_02]: So probably go time. [SPEAKER_02]: This episode is out. [SPEAKER_02]: There will be improvements on that. [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, essentially that is just a maintenance type dashboard, where it's currently showing battery levels around all your devices.

44:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's great addition and obviously seems like a core thing that should be there, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like a totally great addition to the system, yeah, for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Let me ask you this, protocol wise, I mean, I know you talked about preferring something like a Zigbee over Wi-Fi, things like that.

45:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you investigating any other newer matter or any of those things you use any of that today? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little play with matter that drunken mental, it's a cheap feeling, a plug, I guess. [SPEAKER_00]: And the cheapy link plug through the cheapy link app will show me the energy is dropped in the plug.

45:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I've actually learned this thing, which is, and this is not fully implemented in my world, but that technique things are on. [SPEAKER_00]: There's two ways. [SPEAKER_00]: One is, like, when I turn something on with a switch, I want to turn on a switch, but I also want to know if energy is being drawn.

45:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really trust the switch, like in a way, like the switch that it turned it on, but it's not. [SPEAKER_00]: And if electricity is being drawn, well, it's on, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so with matter, these teapyling matter things, little plugs is a little heater and a little mechanic room someplace that I wanted to know was on or not.

45:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But in home assistant, I can't see the heat function, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's three point six point two point five point one or whatever, and it just hasn't released that yet. [SPEAKER_00]: And T-P-Link said they were going to release it, but they only released it for their, I, the other thing is, I hate plug-mounted plugs, like you know, the world of, of home assistant and home automation.

46:18 [SPEAKER_00]: It's all these plugs that you plug into your plug. [SPEAKER_00]: not be wall, but there's way less in wall. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I want them to be in the wall. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's hidden, or it's not like this bumper, but whatever, it doesn't look much more natural. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't get another plug-in because it's too fat, like it's too stupid.

46:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so that was my one-matter experience. [SPEAKER_00]: I have the add-on or whatever in my system, but I haven't been able to use it for anything. [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't used that with. [SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't happen, you know, I guess maybe it probably came out of the cheap alley express experience in life.

46:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can tell you know, in alley, you go to alley express and you get to be into your stuff for like, it's just paying on the dollar compared to the one it's, it's not a battle. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm now using Shelley switches, I'm replacing those, [SPEAKER_00]: I'm spending more money replacing, I'm using shell, for the way, you guys don't talk much about shelly uni, for nerd stuff, the shelly uni plus, is the greatest device in human history.

47:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it can pick up five thermostats and it has all this crazy capacity in this teeny little form factor, I just freaking love them. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's cool. [SPEAKER_01]: There's, you know, it's interesting because Z-Wave is, or Z-Wave is, or Z-Wave, you know, is, [SPEAKER_01]: protocol wise i i actually like really like said way right over singby yeah um and you know and and even with you know that i i don't have a ton of uh like again a lot of mine are singby whatever just from same thing like you said right it was it was cheap and cheerful but i think if i was to start now i think i would probably lean more more uh [SPEAKER_01]: Zaywev and yeah, I don't know, I I feel like it's just a lot more resilient.

48:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like the whole long distance and it's that was very attractive like for sure And I would say I stumbled down to ZB Like I wasn't super decisiony I don't understand the protocol differentiation very much I had a lot I had early trouble was it be for sure like the mesh working properly Things getting lost some of the devices from LXpress are terribly noisy garbage cans Yeah, ZB now we're just throwing garbage all day long.

48:29 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't filter out and you can't block [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's a weaker framework for sure, but the amount of devices is just like it's mental. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's the thing, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So it's one different spectrum, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So you're using 900, whatever megahertz instead of 2.4.

48:50 [SPEAKER_01]: But also, [SPEAKER_01]: I just find that the spec itself is a lot tighter. [SPEAKER_01]: If that makes sense. [SPEAKER_01]: So like compatibility wise, most devices work as they should. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, whereas Zigbee, you'll let to your point, nearly, you'll have some device that just runs off and does its own thing.

49:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And you're just like, what, what just happened here, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And I was talking to Phil before. [SPEAKER_00]: I had to build, so I can remember what the name of the thing is, what's the thing, the add-on, what is the thing that... [SPEAKER_00]: That's for ZHA, ZBMQTT, you have a different name for it, doesn't matter.

49:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a little add-on, it translate, I will call them pins, something what they're called, the translate, the pin registers, and I wasted 20 hours of my life, nerding out of it, some stupid for our thermostat that I shouldn't have bought, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And you're right, if I had a bunch that way, that wouldn't have happened.

49:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's funny, because two years, maybe three years ago, I wouldn't have sent that. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but I feel like now it's like, I don't know, it's like, you see, I've seen the light kind of thing and it's, uh, again, the majority of my devices are still being right or Wi-Fi or I got a couple of mad devices here.

50:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, is it? [SPEAKER_00]: But my devices do MQTT at all, not really. [SPEAKER_00]: They're tuned. [SPEAKER_00]: That's tuned nerdy. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: There is a set by JIS to MQTT. [SPEAKER_00]: like if you're a z-way hub and then you can get it at TMQTT, yeah, I think we should be homeless if there's something else or maybe like this is where that SM light thing they might do z-way, I don't know if they do or not, I don't think they do.

50:24 [SPEAKER_02]: There's a one that does like a sick base at wave in the one sick, but you've got to get the right uh protocol, right, like a little frequency for your uh region, um yes they do. [SPEAKER_00]: So z-way has two different. [SPEAKER_00]: protocols based on where they were able to get. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, because it's just, it's licensing, right, a spectrum licensing.

50:42 [SPEAKER_01]: So Australia uses a different range than, and it's just no different than Wi-Fi as well, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's the same same kind of deal. [SPEAKER_01]: And LT, I think same thing, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like all those things are totally different. [SPEAKER_01]: Totally, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's just, when you're talking, especially an open spectrum or like public spectrum, it's, it, it, it, [SPEAKER_01]: Really varies based on the country right there might be some military users or something that overlaps so they they shift it over a little bit or You know whatever whatever that looks like so I had to do the 116 116 thing in my house.

51:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know I'm talking about? [SPEAKER_00]: No, I mean what if I don't Sorry, sorry, we're in Wi-Fi where you're you get away for to try and stay away from like to rotating we away from Zigbee [SPEAKER_00]: framework. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a problem initially. [SPEAKER_00]: I had lots of headaches as they were early on to be honest.

51:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe I have been doing less recently, too, and taking on less and find better devices. [SPEAKER_00]: As you mature a little bit in it, you can't kill the headaches, because it's not worth [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember like when I first started with ZB, this was when ZB temperature was just brand new project.

51:51 [SPEAKER_02]: I would have to run like two networks because I just wasn't getting the right answer. [SPEAKER_02]: I thought things weren't repeating. [SPEAKER_02]: It depended if you were to share anything over here or an arcade thing over here, if they were to repeat or not. [SPEAKER_02]: But now I think ZIGB, thanks for things like ZIGB temperature and ZHA and particularly the hardware starting from the ZIGB-T1, now the ZIGB-T2, from Nebuchadnezzar.

52:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Zigbee is being rock-solid for me and on everyone you'll just say that you'll potentially go back at a cellular on setwave. [SPEAKER_02]: I would consider moving more to Zigbee. [SPEAKER_02]: I was just like find Zigbee is a faster response time. [SPEAKER_02]: So for example I will walk into a room and my Zigbee sensors will detect presence and report that back to home assistant.

52:40 [SPEAKER_02]: home, this will then tell my, is that way of demos or lights turn on? [SPEAKER_02]: And the delay is there. [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever reason, there is a delay from my, from home, this isn't instructing that way of network to turn lights on. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know, maybe I've got a noisy device somewhere, maybe my dishwasher is reporting power usage all the time.

52:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's flooding the, instead way of network, I need to, oh, [SPEAKER_02]: I arranged that somehow, but yeah, I found that genuinely speaking, I can walk into a room and there will be a delay with the light setting on, because it's slow on the zip website. [SPEAKER_00]: Does that wave use the same like plugged in devices function like routers concept or no?

53:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes. [SPEAKER_02]: So you have a plug-in display right here. [SPEAKER_00]: Similar same thing as everything is every device that's plugged in the router like it is music. [SPEAKER_01]: So there's two modes. [SPEAKER_01]: So one is your standard the Zwave kind of operation, which is your mesh mode, right?

53:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Where it will kind of repeat. [SPEAKER_01]: But with LR, we said, we don't need a range, you know, it's all, it's all hub spokes. [SPEAKER_01]: So everything talks back to your, your radio and then, uh, and it's just got, like, a ton of range, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just all modulation at the end of the covers, but it's, you know, it's got a lot more range.

53:53 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's closer to like a kilometer or something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, stick in. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I, I know there, there's, again, there varies depending on where you are, whenever scenario, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So my little Bluetooth plant sensors, like they can't make it.

54:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Like through a piece of glass they can make it 10 feet. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is crazy. [SPEAKER_02]: All right, so before we wrap up, I do want to ask what are your future plans? [SPEAKER_02]: Like you've got AI agents now running for you. [SPEAKER_02]: What are you going to get them to start tackling for you?

54:25 [SPEAKER_02]: What's on there? [SPEAKER_02]: Worklist? [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's good. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm actually doing some coding in [SPEAKER_00]: the work, so I want to take my brain away a little bit from the automation and monitoring infrastructure. [SPEAKER_00]: But I will return to it when I get over a certain hump.

54:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to be the business related stuff more so than anything. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be getting the sense. [SPEAKER_00]: It's some of the work that I'm doing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's certain about the automation display information stuff, but it's also like [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you want to find out the pressure in a hot water distribution line as at a certain level, you need to go by this little trends do sir and then you connect it to an ESP32 and but I want to program that myself or so I got a shell with the GP I like to say all this like again, yeah asking the AI's had to deal with it, but [SPEAKER_00]: There's like sort of industrial control design, you know, I'm verging on industrial control design, which is as much of the work as the dashboard, again, whatever else.

55:24 [SPEAKER_00]: But it was, you know, yes, it's MQTT distributed, dashboards, [SPEAKER_00]: pre-warnings, some monitoring, using all kinds of exotic, little, you know, whether it's Tasmoda or Shelley, or whatever kind of places they can speak and QTT across the Widering Network. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to cape her, my assistant, as the, like, simple brain for that, or if you thought about moving to more bespoke dedicated tools.

55:58 [SPEAKER_02]: For example, I hate you, Phil. [SPEAKER_02]: So there are a bunch of self-assassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassassass

56:24 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, have you considered doing other projects outside of her insistent to do some of the automation stuff that you may not necessarily need? [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have a font about, you know, particularly if homocystent, for example, is focused on making the GUI the best next GUI for doing automations and I'm like, care, right?

56:47 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, for me, or it brings in a something of a dashboard framework. [SPEAKER_00]: It brings in something of a user management tool, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's, it brings in registration of all kinds of bar devices now, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If I get centralized and I'm like, dude, I'm just doing MQTT, [SPEAKER_00]: Well, why do I have this system that can handle like the great thing about homo system that I use in my home, or in other places, it's bringing together 15 different systems.

57:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm kind of overburdening myself with homo system, certain kind of homo system overhead, limitations. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to plug MariaDB in instead of like, what am I doing? [SPEAKER_00]: We're kind of analysis, can I do? [SPEAKER_00]: I want to actually don't want to build these [SPEAKER_00]: dashboards in this framework.

57:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to get them quoted at a point. [SPEAKER_00]: Yamil has certain limitations, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what I always say, Yamil plus what's other just playing, which makes me mental. [SPEAKER_00]: Yamil plus ginger is like suicide pill, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, like, the odds of those two things working together are like damagingly small.

57:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's just, it's just like you're just banging your head as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, you know, there are those limitations. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just a little used to the scaffolding that I have with home assistant, so I think I'll build it in home assistant, but could I replace home assistant at some point in time.

57:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I can imagine that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think you're doing the right, like I think it's fantastic using home assistant, but yeah, is it the right tool for the job in the future? [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

58:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I would know like I guess I could ask chat to you, but like I, you know, somebody who has lots of experience with industrial, like, you know, industrial production of things. [SPEAKER_00]: I, uh, I don't know what the right answer is. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because there's so many open souls, self-hosted tools that you could go down the path like, he's just gone down, home Mrs. Drive.

58:29 [SPEAKER_00]: There is one thing to say though, homelessness and has scale, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And like that matters for a whole bunch of reasons. [SPEAKER_00]: Has scale because it's gonna have integrity and go forward, right? [SPEAKER_00]: some guy got a project and went dry up, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And secondly, if I decide to retire, which like I've got this some point in time, or like at least not wanting to be responsible for it, even if I'm not retired, I can maybe find a guy who knows that and I'll handle him as a homo system, right?

58:57 [SPEAKER_00]: With a tweak, if you get them to deal with my MTT stuff, because they kind of know the infrastructure, whereas if I have a bespoke piece or like, [SPEAKER_00]: Joe's cool, whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, can I find someone's like, I'm going to upwork or like, you know, trying to find a human being.

59:12 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll deal with it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's [SPEAKER_01]: The more bespoke it is, the harder it's going to be for you to actually get somebody to look at it or you know people are out there absolutely it's not a problem finding somebody it's how much are you going to pay them right as opposed to somebody that actually You know if people with moments to experience or a dime it doesn't that it's you save a lot of money there yeah a parallel example might be [SPEAKER_00]: Oracle ERP solution versus sale force, sales force, right?

59:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So you get to Oracle ERP, you're kind of like you're stuck with like really high and consultant because blocked out in structure and like it's really hard. [SPEAKER_00]: And you're in sales force and there's 200,000 guys who are like neuronetic sales force writing little bits of code for some guy, for his grocery store, and some giant piece of code for another guy, for his like, and just people using it all over the place with you know, accessibility and everything else.

1:00:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what the, I don't know what the industry like there's certain like there's no industrial infrastructure components that are easy to use right now that are broadly understood this has got how many people use homosystem like lots right. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think two million times at least.

1:00:24 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, guys. [SPEAKER_02]: Neil, thank you so much. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: It's been fantastic. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to come on the podcast, you can email us feedback at home.fm or check out home.

1:00:41 [SPEAKER_02]: If you can like or subscribe or comment wherever you're watching today, really helps out anger or the podcast as well. [SPEAKER_02]: Neil, thank you so much. [SPEAKER_02]: Really appreciate it.