The Reluctant Home Assistant Guy: From Hue Chaos to Hour‑of‑Power Wins

0:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the home Mrs. and podcast, my name is Phil. [SPEAKER_00]: Joining me is usual about Rohan with me, how are you doing mate? [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, good, how are you? [SPEAKER_00]: Good, thank you, and today we're joined by Chris, thank you for joining us. [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely my pleasure, honored to be here, guys.

0:19 [SPEAKER_02]: You guys do so much work for the community. [SPEAKER_02]: This is just a pretty special day. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate that. [SPEAKER_00]: We also appreciate our sponsors today in Nabukasa. [SPEAKER_00]: For some more monthly fee, you'll unlock powerful features like secure effortless access to your system from anywhere, your choice of voice assistance, off-site backups, and more, or configurable in the UI with no YAML needed.

0:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It also supports the development of home assistant, SP home, and other open home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_00]: Click the link in the description to learn more. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd also like to give a shout out to our Patreon members, including our executive producers, Benny and Rob.

0:53 [SPEAKER_00]: You can help support the show and get early access to episodes all in an ad-free feed. [SPEAKER_00]: Support the show, check out Home Assistant.fm and click Patreon in the menu. [SPEAKER_00]: Chris, thank you so much for coming on today. [SPEAKER_00]: I really loved the initial entry on the form submission.

1:11 [SPEAKER_00]: You sent through, you signed off the reluctant home assistant guy. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I thought, wow, this is going to be interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, where are you from today and sort of what's led you here today? [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm currently sitting in Auckland, New Zealand, so not too far from you, Phil, but my accent gives it away that I wasn't born here, of course that I wrote on, all over in Canada.

1:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I've been around bin in New Zealand often on since 1995, so yeah, well and truly settled here. [SPEAKER_02]: and living here in a relatively small, but fairly smart home. [SPEAKER_00]: I know just as an aside, like New Zealand property prices were very much an issue long before I think even Australia had the property prices and property prices around the world.

2:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you found an issue in the property prices? [SPEAKER_00]: Like you said it's a very small automated houses. [SPEAKER_00]: if you found like property prices over there to be an issue? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, certainly everything is relative. [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, what I consider small, I'm still very privileged to have that I have.

2:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not an apartment. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a bigger than an apartment. [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I definitely know people with much bigger homes. [SPEAKER_02]: But, yes, it is. [SPEAKER_02]: You're right. [SPEAKER_02]: The cost of houses in New Zealand compared to income. [SPEAKER_02]: Definitely a bit of a challenge in some cases.

2:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Which actually sort of speaks to the [SPEAKER_02]: I guess some of my budgeting evolution on the whole home assistant journey having started with I can't even remember where they're bought them or whether I must have bought them. [SPEAKER_02]: I think for those spot, the G10s or whatever, the G10s, yeah, exactly.

2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the 240 volts. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Down line. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they were the very first ones in our kitchen. [SPEAKER_02]: We had one of those strip lights above the kitchen. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it had four of those, put that in there, obviously came with the hub.

3:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that was the start of a tumultuous journey, I would say. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: So like many people, he was your gateway drug to the home automation space. [SPEAKER_00]: So you started off with Philips who what was sort of your journey from there did you go Philips you and then other Zigbee devices or did you go oh this is what can I I can do this with lights what else can I?

3:30 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was definitely a start with Philips Hue and we ended up only living, in fact, I have a great photo right in the very first COVID times in New Zealand, they locked us down quite hard so we ended up like boom. [SPEAKER_02]: So we took a photo in the movie room, which was basically our lounge show.

3:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Sounded very fancy there first in there. [SPEAKER_01]: I love it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and we took a photo, we put all the colors on and like that was sort of our, [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to COVID kind of image. [SPEAKER_02]: But from there we ended up buying the house that we live in now not long after that, so we ended buying it during COVID blah blah blah.

4:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And we moved into here. [SPEAKER_02]: And then that started the, okay, it's an existing home, so I wasn't building from scratch, but I'm going, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: I now have a mortgage that will make your eyes bleed. [SPEAKER_02]: What's another little, you know, it's another $5,000 worth a year or whatever, you know, so I thought, okay, I'll treat myself here a little bit, so call up a few friends and say, okay, well, if I wanted to do more than you, what would I do?

4:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And at that point, they said, well, we want to do blah, and they said this is thing called home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, okay, all right. [SPEAKER_02]: And do I need to know how to make that work? [SPEAKER_02]: And they said, well, support it for you. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, all right, I've never heard from them again, by the way, and just like, yeah, that was, so that was Yemell days, not, well, whatever it was in 2020, actually, I'm not sure exactly where it was definitely some UI to it, love lace was there, yeah.

5:04 [SPEAKER_02]: But that started the, okay, well, I probably will do the light. [SPEAKER_02]: So how do I do the, okay, how much of these downlights? [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, boy, yeah, okay, in a lot of level, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It gets very expensive, very quick. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I know you get the typical, okay, well, I can do smart switches, but then I can't do the, the, um, circadian light or the warm cool thing.

5:31 [SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, if I'm going to do this, I kind of allowed to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to have to find somebody who is selling interesting, this, actually, interesting story, I just remember. [SPEAKER_02]: Someone was building a brand new house and they were big into home and I should know the guy at all But he ended up and he had wired it up.

5:48 [SPEAKER_02]: He tried to wire it up so that there was no actual physical wires going to switch us So he's gonna do the the huge dimmers [SPEAKER_02]: instead of, oh, interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: And what he discovered, I don't think I'm getting this wrong. [SPEAKER_02]: What he discovered is that's not actually legal in New Zealand.

6:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I was just going to ask that seems kind of off that you like, like, just from a safety perspective that you can't kill the power to it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's at a local switch, but that's interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So I got introduced to him. [SPEAKER_02]: And he was full on into various different things, but that was the first thing.

6:21 [SPEAKER_02]: didn't know you couldn't do that. [SPEAKER_02]: But he was starting from a new home point of view. [SPEAKER_02]: But he because he was so into it, had the little of these boxes of stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: Can't remember why, but he had like seven or eight, maybe even 12. [SPEAKER_02]: No, it was at least 12 of the huge downlights that he would never use because he bought a bulk lot of it and knew where's the shirt he was doing.

6:39 [SPEAKER_02]: So that got me two thirds of the way to the downlights of the house and then some of them I had to buy retail. [SPEAKER_02]: So it was a little bit kind of got there in the end. [SPEAKER_02]: So that ended up with all the lights in the house being you. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, most of the lights, the downstairs garage and whatever else is fine.

6:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I know Philips who have just come out with and we've tried a couple of guests on now that we've talked about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Then you Philips who motion sensors like using Zigbee lights to do presence detection in room. [SPEAKER_00]: Have you sort of thought about going down that path too?

7:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we did. [SPEAKER_02]: So as we kept going with this, so I sort of, well, watch, treat me, oh, sorry, that's the New Zealand eBay. [SPEAKER_02]: For the longest time I had like watches on like motion sensors could I refuse to pay several New Motion sensors for a fill-up should be like 75 bucks and I refuse to pay that But I kind of like the idea of having motion sensors so now I've got motion sensors in pretty much every room And you should have kept them second hand But what that means is that all of a sudden you like why is this so slow and why is that not responding?

7:45 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I look it up at apparently there's a maximum number of devices you're supposed to put on a bridge [SPEAKER_02]: who knew and so it comes a second bridge then you realize you can't actually at this point anyway you couldn't like make one bridge talk to the other bridge in the app or something there was some weird thing where you couldn't do that they've since fixed that which is awesome but that was like okay now I got two bridges and what I'm going to do with this two different yeah yeah yeah exactly so then and you're going in that that was like a day of [SPEAKER_02]: put both bridges in, moving across, reset everything up on home assistant.

8:19 [SPEAKER_02]: This is on this bridge, this is on that bridge, which bridge do you use? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that into the house is on end. [SPEAKER_02]: They're into the house of the other bridge. [SPEAKER_02]: So that was just like, [SPEAKER_02]: completely messed up. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I know the new pro bridge, I think, is what you're a friend to feel.

8:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I've heard really cool things, but the last thing I have heard, which as of when this comes out, I'm not sure whether that's been addressed, is that the presence sensing or actually I've heard, it's motion sensing, not presence sensing, although I'm not really sure, but it also hasn't been exposed outside of [SPEAKER_02]: the Hugh App I think of them.

8:51 [SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't be keen to do that until I could actually use it as an entity and you know, I don't know if you could say it otherwise. [SPEAKER_00]: I believe twenty twenty five dot ten exposed that from here. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm right. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you should be good to go down.

9:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm also a usually one month flagger kind of upgraded person. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'll wait till the 20th of month. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that the [SPEAKER_02]: the point like I'm on there's IOS 26 is like I'm not touching that for I know I'm there people love it they'll jump on the bay that's like not me that's just I do not need more hassle with that whatever the macOS thing do not need more hassle with that yeah so yeah so lights light lights throughout and then at some point I even know what oh I think I could figure out lights which is there's a lot of light switches in the house even if it's small house you'd be surprised how many of the lights which is there are.

9:44 [SPEAKER_00]: and some a two-way, three-way switches and you've got to account for that. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: Because I grew up in North America where in general, if you've got a box, you've got a single switch and I think it used to be around maybe it's changed, I don't know.

9:56 [SPEAKER_02]: But you've got like a switch per box. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you want three switches, you've got kind of three wide box. [SPEAKER_02]: in in right you got like three gang whatever yeah yes but that language means something to fill I think that language means something else different down here because I was having this really confusing conversation with another Christian in New Zealand and saying okay I need three gangs you like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and like I could in New Zealand Australia you can but three switches in what Rohan you would call one box or one gang oh it just stay [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there's not much room behind these, uh, but exactly.

10:31 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's where everyone, when I started to look at switches, everyone's saying she'll be the way to go. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Sounds great. [SPEAKER_02]: Great company, you know, super robust. [SPEAKER_02]: They felt like they were the Philips Hue of, of realaise.

10:43 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I realized, I, there's no way I have the room for that. [SPEAKER_02]: I have all these switches with three switches in it. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, I can barely fit by the time you put the little connectors in there. [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, I don't do my own electrical.

10:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, I wouldn't do that. [SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot of dirty media lunch, all right. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, technically you can add a ticket. [SPEAKER_02]: But by the time you just put the wiring in there and you put in like, I'm already like, chairman of the thing in there trying to, trying to, you know, make sure that it fits.

11:10 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I really wish I could have used Shelley. [SPEAKER_02]: So that ended up with, it wasn't until about two weeks ago that I finally got every light switch in the house to be a smart switch. [SPEAKER_00]: And still using the Philips Hue bulbs behind them? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

11:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So that was, you get out, and this is, again, the, I, I make a complex, I get that. [SPEAKER_02]: And we're talking before that I'm a, I'm a walking contradiction because I get so frustrated that it feels like it's just everything is, I can find something to be disappointed about every day.

11:43 [SPEAKER_02]: Like I walked, walked into kitchen the other day and walked up like, why is that like red? [SPEAKER_02]: and we have the lights are not red. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, all right. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure there's some technical explanation for that, but it's like, why is it doing that? [SPEAKER_02]: Or like we've got those Robo vacuums, I robot, I've got two of those around the place.

12:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And at least half the time, I get a message to say, could not start the job. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's no technical issue with that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just that somebody [SPEAKER_02]: So there's element of all of this that I think, you know what, if I didn't have smart vacuums and just like a normally human being vacuumed the floor once a week, I wouldn't be getting all these messages to tell me that my vacuum is like not being able to do it's thing or I wouldn't be getting all these, these various things like I'm starting to wonder whether is this actually worth it.

12:42 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, but then, but then you had to vacuum on to week, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's, well, at this point, I'm not sure that I'm not anyway, because by the time the 50% of the time, it's fair, fair, it's, but yes, you're going to run on to the end, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yes.

12:58 [SPEAKER_02]: And we, and, you know, my lovely wife and I, we sort of joke about it because we lay in bed and we, we think like, oh, people used to have to get up to turn the lights off. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and we'll just yell out, hey, waiting to tube, which is our internal name for the Amazon device.

13:17 [SPEAKER_02]: which is partly because we have a daughter that shares that same device name. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's super convincing. [SPEAKER_00]: Also she's named. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: I see I've always wondered like all those people in the world that are named her. [SPEAKER_00]: How do they feel now that you know these Amazon companies come out and basically like that name or cannot be used moving forward in at least English and they can [SPEAKER_02]: It was same like a grid at the beginning because like hey look on they've created a device just for you Yeah, after the first week you're like nah, that's just not helpful But there's also the other side of it where you're like cussing it out sometimes and it's like oh, not you sweetie.

13:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's It's a robot. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like why are you so stupid? [SPEAKER_02]: It's like oh, no, no, no, it's okay. [SPEAKER_02]: and it's interesting because they're all good for something but not other things like we've tended to find because I've got an iPhone so that means I can talk to Siri and if I want to turn the lights off in the bedroom for instance Siri is absolutely the go to the the Amazon device [SPEAKER_02]: it's somewhere between goes, bling and then nothing happens to bling every light in the house turns off.

14:32 [SPEAKER_02]: But then we've got the garage door, which I was a victim of, Mike, you, the same as, I don't know how many other countless people. [SPEAKER_02]: So, and that was one of, probably started the new frustrations, but that was, so I think, okay, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: Then I get, [SPEAKER_02]: What are we going to do?

14:50 [SPEAKER_02]: What are we going to do? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's save up and get a rat GDO because they seem to be pretty popular. [SPEAKER_02]: And the relative because they're coming across from the US by the time you do shipping and stuff, that's probably a better part of 100 bucks. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I kick.

15:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And I just bought literally, I just converted my garage door to a to a IQ one two months before they did the swap over. [SPEAKER_02]: There's nothing wrong with the previous one, but I thought, yeah, that's automated. [SPEAKER_02]: So I got [SPEAKER_02]: So, Brett, GDO, cannot get it to work for the life of me.

15:24 [SPEAKER_01]: All right, really interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it just loses its, I can see it, you know, with Home Assistant and everything else, which is great. [SPEAKER_02]: But it uses a single wire, I guess, to do, it's just to get the data connection as far as I can tell. [SPEAKER_02]: And it just sort of loses the, the head unit.

15:42 [SPEAKER_02]: It just can't, it's like you have to re-sync it and like, oh, there it is again. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm open and it just doesn't know whether it's open closed, whatever else. [SPEAKER_02]: So, and because I don't have a guy down the road or I can swap it out and say, try this. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm literally like, without exaggeration, I'm a day and a half into trying to make it work and like, I'm just giving up now.

16:01 [SPEAKER_02]: We're just press the button. [SPEAKER_02]: So if anyone in New Zealand or Australia wants a couple of rad GDOs, I've got that because I bought one for the gate as well, but the gate's different, and it doesn't even know what to do with it, so yeah, they're in the box. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like a relay that it needs a short to open and close.

16:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So the opening close, but it actually, like I can force it to do that, but it just doesn't know what, whether it is opened or closed, so it's, and I can, you're absolutely right, [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to complain about there's all kinds of different ways to do it. [SPEAKER_02]: I just thought, okay, we'll go with the Red GTO1 and that will allow us to really communicate and you can ask it.

16:39 [SPEAKER_02]: Is it open? [SPEAKER_02]: Is it half open? [SPEAKER_02]: Is it opening? [SPEAKER_02]: Is the light on? [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever else? [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's what I like, and just, you know, it's not playing ball. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I resulted to just old school, I just, I just closed it manually now and, and whatever, I don't have the, I got it.

16:58 [SPEAKER_01]: It was not Ratchidio is I think it was connected. [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, who has a similar, same same but different, right? [SPEAKER_01]: for whatever reason same kind of deal Chris like it just could not get it to work. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's actually something to do with the actual like wiring of stuff.

17:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So like it consistently things just that made the sensors the laser sensors are blocked. [SPEAKER_01]: So or the trip wire or whatever so is is interrupted so it just doesn't do anything like I can't get it to close or anything like [SPEAKER_01]: I could replace the wiring and try that but I'm honestly it's really high up and I don't care.

17:44 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really appreciate that though and I got a lot of respect for that because I get stuck in the sunk cost fallacy where it's like you come this far and you just go a little bit like I have replaced my entire home network to make that garage door work. [SPEAKER_02]: And it didn't, yeah, we now have grand stream, which is the poor man's ubiquity, but, you know, two, probably $2,000 worth of network.

18:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll get a lot of other benefits as well, but the main thing that I said, okay, well, maybe it's just not connecting, so we did all that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll just keep going down that track. [SPEAKER_02]: Keep going. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're even going down the track, I have one of their cheap IQ brands, like garage tools, and it didn't have like the smart modular or anything, but there was, I could just open up the panel and short one of the ports to then trigger an open and close event.

18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I got off Amazon, there was a Miros Apple Home Kit, garage like Roller Door controller, it's in Home Kit. [SPEAKER_00]: And, yeah, I just kept it up, wired it up to the two ports that it needs to short to trigger an open closed vent and it has its own open and closed sensor, so then I just run it, it's a roll of all, so I run the open closed sensor down the bottom of the door and once it gets to a certain height, it triggers the relay and says, okay, I'm...

19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm now closed and it's been great like rock solid. [SPEAKER_00]: I pull home get so it goes through home keep it's right into home assistant I can't see you know the status you know is it opening closing it just knows it's opened or closed Which is more than enough for me, but it's In fine [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just, I suspect I'll have to go down that track even for the gate because the gate's just a little bit up the driveway.

19:29 [SPEAKER_02]: It's got a good Wi-Fi. [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a repeater and everything else but the gate. [SPEAKER_02]: It has a weird scenario where like the normally open and normally closed situation is backwards. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you try to connect it to a rat, standard rat GTO with the standard programming, it's expecting it to be, [SPEAKER_02]: data itself.

19:50 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: It thinks it's the other way around. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like closing when it's not made a connection, which is completely bananas to what you would think because of the way that the magnets work or something are that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I've learned so I mean, that and that's the great thing about this as much as I'm like, oh, this is so frustrating.

20:07 [SPEAKER_02]: I've learned you learn this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and I've invested a lot of time, and yeah, sometimes it's frustrating, it's also, you know, I remember, you know, when weekend I had a flu or something like that, so basically just took an entire weekend and just trashed all the dashboards, and, you know, finally fixed the dashboards that had been about five different dashboards across other things, and unsurprisingly, my family was not really into at that point.

20:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So now we've got like a dashboard [SPEAKER_00]: How it works and there's a bit more acceptance of that so what would just buy in like from your family like are they Because clearly your frustrated you're the main driver of you know smart home at the moment Why like I'm hearing a lot of you know, it's great, but it frustrates me Have you thought about just giving it away?

21:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely But funnily enough the amount of work to then reverse it back out again [SPEAKER_02]: is just like, I don't know where that line is, but I've definitely, definitely thought about that. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, we've got two kids, both teenagers now. [SPEAKER_02]: They used to each have Amazon device in their room.

21:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Technically, they still do, but it's like, we're unplugging it, fine. [SPEAKER_02]: They just don't see the value in it necessarily. [SPEAKER_02]: They've got a hue light in it, and they've got motion sensors, but they don't actually, [SPEAKER_02]: an evangelist about it. [SPEAKER_02]: Nor am I really.

21:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if I if I was honest, I think I like the simplicity, like I've tended to be an Apple consumer versus Android and this, I'm not an evangelist in the sense of, you know, I don't care to have the latest one or I'm not like Poo, Poo, Poo, Android or whatever else. [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that I kind of like, I think Apple does [SPEAKER_02]: and it's simple and I just get a good outcome.

22:06 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have the ability in Apple HomeKit to make my lights five different colors. [SPEAKER_02]: Somehow in Home Assistant, I've been able to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I think I like that. [SPEAKER_02]: But it depends on what it is as well. [SPEAKER_02]: To answer your other question, feel like certain stuff.

22:23 [SPEAKER_02]: If it's the fact that the coffee, the espresso machine is turned on when my wife wakes up. [SPEAKER_02]: homosystem is awesome, you know, if it's the fact that I can't figure out which how many times I have to press the dimmer switch to get the light, the right color, homosystem is not awesome at that point, which is fair enough.

22:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now I mean, have you thought about splitting out some of those tasks, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So like for stuff like that, where like the lights in your case don't work. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, whatever and you just kind of want it to be, you know, you just want it to work and just make sense and like whatever run those things in from an as an automation in home get.

23:04 [SPEAKER_01]: and then do it, and then whenever home assistant stuff for more complicated things, things like that, not that I encourage having multiple different points of automation and stuff like that, because that can get very complicated very quickly. [SPEAKER_01]: But if you can keep track of them, then maybe that's a good alternative, right?

23:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So you kind of get the best to pull the world to say, hey, you know what I really like how it all does. [SPEAKER_01]: what I really like the light automation like you alluded to there. [SPEAKER_01]: Great, so do that there and then for the more complex things like the coffee machine one.

23:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Great, we'll do that here and then you can just share the logic back and forth between them. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and in fact, I have been doing that up until recently, the lights, as I see we seem to be dispending a lot of time talking about the lights, I guess it's a common thing that a lot of people use up until recently, I was doing exactly that, not in Apple HomeKit, but in the Hue app, because it did a lot of the, relatively straight forward to use that a lot of the, the good, and they had [SPEAKER_02]: I think they call it adaptive flighting could be wrong on that where you've got over the day You've got five different scenes that depending on the time of day.

24:08 [SPEAKER_02]: We'll jump between Sure, and we've been we've been running that for for a probably you were since it came out And it's sort of I used to have this idea of I think I called the three points of failure Which is actually the wrong. [SPEAKER_02]: It's the backwards way of looking at it, but it was to say that in my perfect scenario [SPEAKER_02]: And I know we want to stay away from cloud for obvious reasons, but my perfect scenario was is that I could control it with home assistant, cool.

24:36 [SPEAKER_02]: If home assistant falls over because it could, then I've got the native app. [SPEAKER_02]: the queue app, if it's like, okay, if the native app falls over because the internet's just dead in here, then I can walk over and I can press the button on the wall and it works. [SPEAKER_02]: And the same thing with like gate automations, and if I can, I can physically go up and move the gate, or I can use the native app, or I can use home, home assistant to do it.

25:01 [SPEAKER_02]: And that was, that was working really, really well. [SPEAKER_02]: This is good, these five different colors throughout the day is good, but you know what would be better, adaptive lighting, that would be better. [SPEAKER_02]: why don't we rip everything out of you and do all of our automations now using the integration called adaptive lighting and we'll tidy it up and everything will be through home assistant and that'll be great and in some like the room I'm in right now the office that was my my trial I tried it here for two weeks didn't tell it in the family I was doing it just kind of you know I tried this like yeah okay there's a couple of lights in here it's kind of working and that

25:42 [SPEAKER_02]: worked really well. [SPEAKER_02]: So then we can roll it across the rest of the family. [SPEAKER_02]: We had a family meeting, say, hey, guys, let's now walk here. [SPEAKER_02]: So the dimmer switch works. [SPEAKER_02]: See, press it once. [SPEAKER_02]: Does this? [SPEAKER_02]: Hold it.

25:51 [SPEAKER_02]: It goes back to adaptive lighting. [SPEAKER_02]: We made it pretty simple. [SPEAKER_02]: What I hadn't accounted for is that in my office where it's sort of the test, I've got all the same who bulbs. [SPEAKER_02]: So I've got a spotlight over there. [SPEAKER_02]: Above me, I've got three just standard hue color bulbs.

26:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Sure, their ability to be able to deal with various different color temperatures is exactly the same. [SPEAKER_02]: So when you deal with utilities, lights to go to a particular color temperature in a depth over time, they all do the same thing. [SPEAKER_02]: When you go into the kitchen where I've got the down lights and I've got some overbench spots, they're all huge, but what I didn't account for is that they all deal with their color temperature range is different.

26:34 [SPEAKER_02]: So at some point, the ceiling lights stop changing color and the lights over the bench top, they go red because they have the ability to go right down to the warm color. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's just those little things. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, and I did, I did my best. [SPEAKER_02]: I tested it in the office.

26:54 [SPEAKER_02]: I did it for two weeks. [SPEAKER_02]: We went and tried it in the lounge. [SPEAKER_02]: That was good, because it's all the same lights and the lounge. [SPEAKER_02]: They minute you go to the kitchen where there's different types of bulbs. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll hue and it's like, oh, missed that one.

27:05 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, all right. [SPEAKER_00]: And once you're back in our procedure for that, do you then go, okay, let's quickly pivot back to what it was originally or review too far committed this point and you've got to go, all right, I've already moved on my motivations over to home assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going after.

27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: role with it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I think that when I'm too far committed, so I'm spending a lot of time digging into the battles of the adaptive lighting integration itself and trying to figure out, okay, well, what are they in them looking up on the huge site to figure out, what are the specifications of this specific bulb and then just setting that as in this room, the the lowest color temperature that I'm allowing it to go to is the lowest common denominator of all the lights.

27:45 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's just that level, extra level of complexity and programming that I wasn't expecting to have to do. [SPEAKER_01]: You app doesn't natively account for that, a huge bridge, I guess, whatever it is, wouldn't abstract a lot of that stuff from you and let you do that, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I did think about that.

28:01 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd almost like to have a poll against the bulb to say, tell me what the specifications are and have that come back into home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: I've no idea where that's technically feasible, but to say, to [SPEAKER_02]: ask the bulb, what can you do? [SPEAKER_02]: And then have that come back as a parameter and kind of go cool.

28:19 [SPEAKER_02]: Now I know what I can do. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking a lot more simpler than that. [SPEAKER_01]: Just they know their models. [SPEAKER_01]: They know what it's capable of. [SPEAKER_01]: And so you say it's model 1, 2, 3, then it's, it'll go to this, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And, and, you know, I'm sure somebody that [SPEAKER_01]: knows what the capabilities are.

28:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I just program it into there and say, okay, when this is group with this, then here is your upper limit kind of thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Mind you, I guess I'm sort of bypassing most of you with this anyway, because everything is now being controlled outside of the app. [SPEAKER_02]: So the bridge is still doing whatever the bridge does, but it's not within the app.

28:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but so yeah, the family is probably they probably don't carry much of that if they go kind of like, oh, look at that red lights, whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just like, oh, come on. [SPEAKER_02]: We're so close. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what about just like, you know what, adaptive lighting is just that bridge too far.

29:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just keep it with one color. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but then we get back to the sunk cost problem again because like, I've got the gear, you know, I've got a 90% of the house works except for this one room. [SPEAKER_02]: It just happens to be the central room where everyone spends most of their time.

29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a critical room. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the way it works. [SPEAKER_02]: The other thing, I think it's almost like running a system or a home automation in general feels like it's a behavior modification. [SPEAKER_02]: schedule for our family because of discovered as I roll things out like we talked a little bit before about light switches for the first little while I could only kind of justify the cost of doing the main light switches so there was a light switch in the hallway that was still a physical switch which meant that that I trained my family pretty much to never switch that off because it's a few bulbs but of course you can't train guests to do that you can't we we had we were lucky enough to have some cleaners for a while and I remember the first time I came home

30:14 [SPEAKER_02]: Why are the lights not working? [SPEAKER_02]: And like, what the heck? [SPEAKER_02]: So I went down to the power box and like, no, they're all working. [SPEAKER_02]: Turn on and off. [SPEAKER_02]: No, everything's working. [SPEAKER_02]: Literally took me half a day to remember that there was an extra switch.

30:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And then like, oh, that's right. [SPEAKER_02]: And the cleaners and switch and off. [SPEAKER_02]: You can't blame them. [SPEAKER_02]: They just don't know idea. [SPEAKER_02]: Of course. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It's usability, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's a for accommodation for, [SPEAKER_01]: external participants.

30:43 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you want to call it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And not even external. [SPEAKER_02]: Like we've got motion sensors in most of the rooms of the house. [SPEAKER_02]: But there's one our TV room downstairs, a sort of a TV room home office. [SPEAKER_02]: So motion sensors kind of wouldn't work there because when you're sitting there, your station area for the most of the time.

30:59 [SPEAKER_02]: So you wouldn't do that. [SPEAKER_02]: But because every other room in the house has motion, I've in preparation for the [SPEAKER_02]: In the last 24 hours, I've turned the light off six times, because everyone walks in, turns it on, and just assumes because every other room, after 15 minutes, the light goes off, the rain is just wired.

31:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't even turn lights off when I leave a room because the house does that. [SPEAKER_02]: But it does that in every room except for that one. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, I don't even have no other fixat. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I had the same issues, like I would, you know, when we moved around, you had some weird purchase of the house, I was like, okay, what are the critical paths where I can automate standing, I did the hallway first and then the hallway lights, you know, pretend off, but then other lights didn't turn off, right?

31:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, bathroom lights would be left on and bedroom lights. [SPEAKER_00]: So eventually you just have to do it all. [SPEAKER_00]: I think you, is the, you just have to automate every light switch as possible. [SPEAKER_00]: then becomes an issue when you're out of the house, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, my wife and I are away, we will leave, you know, like the hotel light on or something.

32:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm generally there pretty okay, they can automate the room key level, but yeah, you'll just get your fashion to learn like how much how quickly you adapt to your home environment, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We, you know, just assume that lights will turn off or you will assume that, you know, you walk into a room and something will happen [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

32:20 [SPEAKER_02]: I remember when I went to work for a while, I started a new office and we had just started do some work at home. [SPEAKER_02]: And I went to the office and literally said out loud, hey, device name, close the blinds. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we're like, nope, that's not going to work here.

32:34 [SPEAKER_02]: There are, does the wrong, wrong place. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: But I just gotten so used to the idea that that's how I close the blinds. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's we've done that to even traveling and stuff my wife one time was like same thing, uh, turn off the lights, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, okay, and then so I got to get off and go turn off the lights right now.

32:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So but she legit, like, was like, oh, right, there's no, uh, there's no Amazon echo in here or whatever, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's, uh, the other thing that started to come up and I'd love to get you guys advice or just some some experience on this because now [SPEAKER_02]: I'm starting to get to a stage where devices that I have had, maybe I brought them from the previous home, or when I first purchased them, I went for like the cheap and nastiest smart plug possible, like the $15 to a plug.

33:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And recently, I've had to probably three or four of those in the last year, there's just blown up, there's just a bad quality, whatever else. [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm starting to get to a stage where instead of going, oh, I'm going to introduce automation to this room device, whatever else.

33:42 [SPEAKER_02]: Now it's, okay, I have to replace it. [SPEAKER_02]: And as time moves on, I'm looking at that and going, do I replace it with exactly the same technology? [SPEAKER_02]: You know, because I'm kind of invested in that. [SPEAKER_02]: or actually now I've gone, I've got three plugs I need to replace.

34:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So, is now the time when I need to be looking at Z wave and then when does, you know, what point do I sort of shift that across? [SPEAKER_02]: It's never, it's never a problem I've had before because I've always just like, okay, well, just keep doing the thing that I'm doing. [SPEAKER_02]: But how do you make the decision where it's time to get everything off of Wi-Fi?

34:20 [SPEAKER_02]: That's, whatever the thing is, get everything off of Wi-Fi and go on. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going, you know, whole hog into this other tech, and because that's, there's a cost of it, there's the, there's the time it takes to do it, and there's the potential that, okay, well, and a year and a half time, actually, that's not, that's no longer the right tech.

34:37 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, the new tech is this, this is the right tech, it's like, I have this fear of making that wrong decision, and it's just like, oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of my university professors, again, four years of university, this is what I came out with, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's the best, one of the best things I've heard is it's always a wrong time to buy technology, right?

35:00 [SPEAKER_01]: As in, like, you know, hey, great. [SPEAKER_01]: I got to sting like it's, it's cool. [SPEAKER_01]: It's the latest standard blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know a month later, it's outdated, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, so, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's even as I build out my house or built out whatever my house from a smart home perspective that that's something I kept in mind and I've just been like, okay, you know, I got to draw a line of the sand somewhere because you're always like, oh, what a much as cooler and you were thing and I was like, oh, but that's like 30 bucks more do I want to spend that much and [SPEAKER_01]: and it's always this and then you just get into like analysis paralysis almost right and and so for me it's like hey I'm gonna get this thing and run it to the ground and it's always especially nowadays I'm going more local whatever right unless unless I can

35:47 [SPEAKER_01]: I can't avoid it, fine, so, but to me mostly it's that and then it's like, okay, run it for the ground and if I need to augment anything, then I'll look at it, but then again, I'm still pretty [SPEAKER_01]: playing around with some matter over thread stuff and getting it to work in my environment for whatever reason has just not been easy.

36:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't have any regular like just matter over Wi-Fi or anything like that. [SPEAKER_01]: So this is my first matter device and I've got like little provisioning stickers here, right, and that I've been trying to get working for like three days. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just says, so I completely hear you on that front, right?

36:42 [SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it's less about [SPEAKER_01]: introducing the newest coolest technology unless it actually offers something. [SPEAKER_01]: This, I'm doing more just because I'm like, hey, I needed a couple of bulbs in this case for, for outside my house and then I wanted to play with the technology.

37:00 [SPEAKER_01]: So great. [SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, I would not have, otherwise I would not have done that. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so it's like, you know what, if Zigbee works, Zigbee works. [SPEAKER_01]: Zigbee works, Zigbee works, Zigbee works, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes I might have the need for both.

37:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Then, okay, cool, I need it, I'll kind of do the best. [SPEAKER_01]: Pick the best one for that whatever task I'm trying to achieve and leave it at that and let's home on it. [SPEAKER_01]: And now, let's almost just deal with the rest, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Cause it's up when it's all normalized.

37:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't care if it's the way it would be your matter or anything like that a Wi-Fi Bluetooth whatever it's like. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there is a little bit of a care factor there though, like they are one not like the price point alone between sick beings I'd love.

37:50 [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to factor that in. [SPEAKER_00]: I originally went with, is it a way for critical parts like the downlights? [SPEAKER_00]: because they're critical right, like I don't want to be dealing with a Zigbee device dropping off the network. [SPEAKER_00]: So, and Zigbee, you know, is great, but it's got works, right?

38:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I did want to trust, especially, you know, things in the wall, like if they lose their connection, I potentially have to get an electrician out here in Australia because the regulations took over behind the wall. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with [SPEAKER_00]: Is that the way it was meant to be more robust, right?

38:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But then of course, you got the cost to that. [SPEAKER_00]: My big thing is I don't want to add things to the Wi-Fi. [SPEAKER_00]: I still don't think Wi-Fi and, by extension matter, is the right protocol for IoT at this stage. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're still going to like, if there are device limits, particularly with lower, [SPEAKER_00]: branded Wi-Fi setups.

38:58 [SPEAKER_00]: You're still going to have limits, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like as soon as you add 50, 60 IoT devices to your home network, which is not unreasonable, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like you've got motion sensor, temp humidity sensor, and all these IoT devices that are out of the lightbulbs, each individual lightbulb could potentially be on its network, had you chosen [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't, so that's why I'll then maybe look to the Zigbee and Z-Lave.

39:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know if there is a right, what I would be more thinking of is let's say you've just had a one of your smart relays that you're using for energy monitoring on the washing machine that's just died. [SPEAKER_02]: All right, Jack, if Jack were the thing away, it was the one on the washing machine.

39:41 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, my thing now would be okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Do I ever place the washing machine with something special? [SPEAKER_00]: It's because then I don't have to worry about a Zigbee's that way of protocol. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's going on the Wi-Fi, which isn't ideal. [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to be cloud-based, but I do need a new washing machine.

39:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And I would like a new washing machine. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd like to start and stop the washing machine from my phone. [SPEAKER_00]: and I get the, and you know, from the house notifications, I still maintain that. [SPEAKER_00]: That's where I would be heading. [SPEAKER_00]: It's complete the irrational, and this is probably why you're in the predicament you are now, where Hermes and her promotion feels like a chore more than a hobby, but that's, that's how my brain works.

40:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 100% I know exactly I've already worked out the specification of wash and machine that I need. [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a Bosch machine and they do home connect. [SPEAKER_02]: I think is the is the product color. [SPEAKER_02]: The app. [SPEAKER_02]: We've got that in a dishwasher. [SPEAKER_02]: I absolutely love it.

40:36 [SPEAKER_02]: And if I could convince myself and my wife that now is the time to spend $1500 on that washing machine, then that's exactly the one I would get. [SPEAKER_02]: power supplier here in New Zealand. [SPEAKER_02]: They offer, there's different ones do it differently, but we've got us free hour every day.

40:57 [SPEAKER_02]: So, and that's one of the things that absolutely love about home assistant because, and I think all the different grumblings that we've been having, some of the things that work really well for us is the stuff that's saving me money for power, which is kind of one of the ways that I've been able to hold on to hope that this is still worth while doing.

41:13 [SPEAKER_02]: Because, [SPEAKER_02]: I basically light up the grid for that one hour. [SPEAKER_02]: And we've got a spot pool that I've managed to. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's admitted that it's a cloud-based one, but I've managed to get an integration that works. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a cheesy one, I think.

41:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So I basically, you're not supposed to do this because they like it's more efficient apparently assuming that power wasn't free that you just give it a bit of a bump every once in a while, so four times a day, it comes on and it just keeps it temperature. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't do that. [SPEAKER_02]: I basically crank the temperature off until my free hour of power at 5 a.m. and then it just goes up to 40.

41:48 [SPEAKER_02]: blows through as much as it can during that time. [SPEAKER_02]: And then same thing with the coffee machine that comes on that time. [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm getting back to why the washing machine made me think of this because we've also got the dishwasher, which I don't know how much power the dishwasher actually uses, but it keeps up water, so I'm thinking it does.

42:08 [SPEAKER_02]: So we've then worked out [SPEAKER_02]: How do I set that to go during the hour of power now the usual dishwashers if you've got a not a fully connected one but it's sort of pseudo smart one where you can kind of go like start in five hours time or you know, you can press the head to find that this you can do that programmatically using the home connect but.

42:29 [SPEAKER_02]: What I wanted to be able to do is figure out well, how do I just know when that free hour is I know that a cycle generally takes four and a half hours So work backwards from there, and this is this is one of my triumphs that appears to not be broken, and I'm so excited about it is that I've got a actually I've got one of these sort of that it's a huge tap playing with some of that [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay.

42:52 [SPEAKER_02]: It's the one that doesn't matter unit. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just basically usually uses the, yeah, when you press it, it generates enough electricity. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

42:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if they make any more, but it feels like this is a real innovation. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's because it's got four buttons on it. [SPEAKER_02]: It's relatively nice looking. [SPEAKER_02]: So we've got one of these in the kitchen. [SPEAKER_02]: And in the main disc of that is one button-seek.

43:12 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you can see on the camera, there's three buttons that things that that looks like buttons, but the whole thing is a button as [SPEAKER_02]: button. [SPEAKER_02]: That that goes and it basically looks to figure out when the next hour of power is. [SPEAKER_02]: And it then schedules the dishwasher to be able to finish in enough time that it's doing its drying cycle during that hour of power.

43:37 [SPEAKER_01]: nice. [SPEAKER_01]: I really like that. [SPEAKER_01]: And see, it's stuff like that where, again, I go back to our previous conversation where, you know, fill up my thoughts about, you know, protocols and all of that stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: Who, fill in that we're basically saying the same thing until, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Phil brought in the aspect of like, K, do I replace the whole washing machine, right?

43:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's that kind of thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, you get all that extra functionality with that kind of stuff, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's where I was having a vibration sensor and maybe a power monitor, whatever it is on your on your devices only gets you so far. [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

44:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not allowed to digital. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, right. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll turn it on, set it to this setting and then blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then run it in this very specific way. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to be your dishwasher salesman here.

44:27 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to tell you why you should do this that because. [SPEAKER_02]: We kind of had that automation going and it's fine and we then thought, okay, well, the problem was, if it didn't work for some reason, I didn't know because he just assumed that it worked. [SPEAKER_02]: So we then set up a TTS, whatever it is, they get thought they, yeah, it takes space now.

44:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it takes a speech. [SPEAKER_02]: So now the rating that you in the kitchen says attempting to set the dishwasher, it then checks to whether it can do it and it says dishwasher sets. [SPEAKER_02]: So that was the first one. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's pretty cool. [SPEAKER_02]: But then we realized that sometimes you don't pay attention because you're just not thinking you're good.

45:04 [SPEAKER_02]: So the dishwasher door wasn't quite closed. [SPEAKER_02]: So we wake up one morning. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I'm sure I pressed the button last night. [SPEAKER_02]: I sure I pressed the button. [SPEAKER_02]: And what I wrote is that the dishwasher door wasn't closed, but because I had an account of that in the automation, then it just went like, yeah, not doing it.

45:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So now, because the dishwasher [SPEAKER_02]: knows if the door is closed or not. [SPEAKER_02]: The first thing it does is it goes, checks the dishwasher's door as close. [SPEAKER_02]: If it is, and it says, hey, would you mind closing the dishwasher door? [SPEAKER_02]: Click cool.

45:34 [SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm trying it, and I'm done. [SPEAKER_02]: So it now, just be able to know that the dishwasher and the same thing with the washing machine, [SPEAKER_02]: I've accidentally tried to make the washing machine go before, and it's not closed, just bombs out. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you can get that extra little connectivity into the appliances, that's to me is stuff that makes it cool.

45:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, that's really neat. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're looking to operate a smart home, you can't go past Zeus. [SPEAKER_00]: Zeus have just released their brand new Z-wave long-range siren and chime. [SPEAKER_00]: Does it say 50, 800 LR, which you might remember Agnes [SPEAKER_00]: You can trigger audio and visual LED alarms based on your smart sensors or other conditions and the audio speaker plays your own files for personalized automation, or there's a selection in pre-loaded library.

46:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Zeus are an official works with home assistant partner helping Nubby cast up by providing long-range devices for testing the new home assistant to connect ZWHU Radio. [SPEAKER_00]: Zeus offer a range of affordable and edited devices, including water leak sensors, water valve controllers, smart plugs, and seeing controllers.

46:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Their new Zen 78 high power relay allows you to control and monitor high monitor load appliances, up to 40 amps, which is perfect for pool pumps, air compressors, and other high power outlets. [SPEAKER_00]: For the best prices on all Zeus products, head over to the smartesthouse.com. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the smartesthouse.com [SPEAKER_01]: So Chris, I mean, we've been talking about like smart appliances and stuff like this.

47:02 [SPEAKER_01]: What I know is it, you know, how much stuff do you have that natively has a lot of this capability as opposed to you augmenting it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So like again, smart appliances that we talked about like dishwasher and really you don't have a washing machine or thinking of going down that front, but where like, [SPEAKER_01]: What other cool things do you have that you kind of have into a home assistant so that you can actually control it beyond what it does?

47:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the dishwasher is the one that we purposely made the investment and we said, hey, we need a dishwasher so we went down that route. [SPEAKER_02]: The washing machine and the dryer are both in the queue. [SPEAKER_02]: Waiting, it's just the, they're not. [SPEAKER_02]: Totally broken yet this one the dishwasher was like the dishwasher broken, so we got to do it and then you just do the quick math and you go Okay, well for a dumb one.

47:50 [SPEAKER_02]: It's whatever For a smart one that does what you wanted to it's maybe an extra couple hundred bucks. [SPEAKER_02]: You're going absolutely especially with that to the dishwasher automation I don't know I haven't done the math on it, but I'm pretending that [SPEAKER_02]: the energy savings from being able to do the things as as absolutely paid paid back that now.

48:09 [SPEAKER_02]: I think the other one for me is the small pool aspect of it because those are absolute you might as well just be throwing money in the small pool from a heating point of view. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as soon as not even called, I mean for you, Rod, if you were trying to do it in the winter there where you are trying to keep a small pool going over the winter to be horrible.

48:25 [SPEAKER_02]: So that has some smarts built into it, not nearly as complicated as the dishwasher, but it's got the nice little lights and the inside of the spot pool. [SPEAKER_02]: And this is probably one of my favorite, and it's super simple automation, but it's just from a lifestyle point of view.

48:45 [SPEAKER_02]: This is nice. [SPEAKER_02]: we've got a motion sensor outside where the spot will be. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're walking around the back of the house, which is where the spot is, most of the time you want the motion sensor to pick up the fact that they're there, big spot lights come on and you can walk around the house and it's all safe security and stuff like that.

49:03 [SPEAKER_02]: But if you're sitting in a spa pool, you probably don't want to be blinded by the security lights that come on. [SPEAKER_02]: And the motion sensors, like you can almost touch it from the spa pool. [SPEAKER_02]: And the first time that happened, like, okay, this is just not this is not the lifestyle that I wanted to never assign that for.

49:19 [SPEAKER_02]: And what I worked what I worked out is because I can tell when the lights are on in the spa pool, because the spa pool is connected to home assistant. [SPEAKER_02]: And I can, I know I'm never used the, so I'm assistant turn the lights on and off. [SPEAKER_02]: You just, there's a button you walk in, you press the button you get in the bubble.

49:36 [SPEAKER_02]: But it knows then the light, when the lights are on. [SPEAKER_02]: So then it turns the motion sensor off. [SPEAKER_02]: So at that point, I can be in there in the spot pool, doing whatever, you know, enjoying the ambiance, and I don't get blinded by the security. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's as simple as, because the spot pool is connected to home assistant, it can declare when it's lights are on, it doesn't turn the big security spots on.

50:00 [SPEAKER_01]: That's nice. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, especially something like that, you want, you, again, it's all about the scene. [SPEAKER_01]: It's all about the, um, the ambiance, I guess, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't want it to just come in and like, I don't know, like, it's almost like kicking your waves like, oh, I didn't, I didn't need that right now.

50:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's funny because some, like, those two examples, that kind of, the lights in the spot will were on, so I don't trigger the security lights. [SPEAKER_02]: That is super simple. [SPEAKER_02]: I, I think the automation, [SPEAKER_02]: is like a few lines. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not hard at all.

50:30 [SPEAKER_02]: That dishwasher one, where it knows when the hour of power is and switches the free hour for our press. [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it does all this stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: That's like a huge chunk of yammel. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't actually know which one is more exciting. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, [SPEAKER_00]: have been the biggest surprise as for you, like positive or negative during the time this journey or your home automation journey, like what's really caught you by surprising.

51:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't expecting that. [SPEAKER_02]: I think how much time I can invest in it. [SPEAKER_02]: I think that that has been a real, real surprise. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not a positive or [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to put my big boy pants on and say that it's my choice so you know I'm definitely treating it I could stop at any point and just go like yeah don't install adaptive lighting in the house as great as it would be the lights work don't do it and so yeah I need to put my big boy pants on and say it's my own choice to do that but I think in my perfect world [SPEAKER_02]: within reason.

51:48 [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to pay you fill to say, hey, here's the keys to my home assistant set up and all the rest of the bits and pieces. [SPEAKER_02]: I just need adaptive lighting to work. [SPEAKER_02]: Here's a couple hundred bucks or whatever, you know, obviously it comes to some kind of budget at some point.

52:05 [SPEAKER_02]: Can you just make it work? [SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing, the stage where I am at is a person [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm an electrical engineer for goodness sake. [SPEAKER_02]: I should be passionate about this. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't do that as a job now, but I theoretically know how to do all that stuff.

52:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I just enjoy, I think, or I think a value [SPEAKER_02]: I think of that. [SPEAKER_02]: You my time and such that I'd like to be able to hand it off to someone. [SPEAKER_02]: But interestingly, that's it's an interesting business model as to how you would even do that, because how do you make money on on that?

52:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you, let's say you do, I don't know, you're using example, because you're obviously really smart at this. [SPEAKER_02]: You do a lot. [SPEAKER_02]: You could probably do that work, but, okay, well, how do you, how do you deliver that? [SPEAKER_00]: And then particularly when, like, homelessness is pivoted at the DIY, the, you know, the people that don't want to spend, you know, the 20-50-hundred grand on an automation company, right?

53:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And you're not going to get that the app was not going to be a 20-50 grand hundred grand product, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a homelessness product. [SPEAKER_00]: It's something I've certainly rattled my head around to, like, how would [SPEAKER_00]: there are certainly people out there doing it, right?

53:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, um, we had, uh, I remember that kind of room. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in the UK doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, it's people out there doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, would you have any advice for anyone that's reluctant today about, or sitting on the fence about what made their home, like, on what they could do to not end up like being in a position where they're going [SPEAKER_02]: know what you're getting into and be sober with your decisions.

53:50 [SPEAKER_02]: And I guess just make a decision. [SPEAKER_02]: Is this a hobby? [SPEAKER_02]: And if it is, be cool with it being a hobby, or is this actually you're really gunning for these specific outcomes of lifestyle and you know, you're really trying to get a particular thing. [SPEAKER_02]: And part of my, I think that the, the, to mulch that lives in me is I can't decide whether it's a hobby or whether it's not.

54:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That was going to be my next question. [SPEAKER_00]: Like did this start out few as a hobby or did [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and yes, and actually I don't know because, you know, if I would, I would like to say, oh, you know, I'm just a normal guy who just wants great lights and who wouldn't, you know, and likes to be able to lay in bed and tell his lights, they go off, who wouldn't want that, right?

54:36 [SPEAKER_02]: But then I'm the same guy who goes like, well, maybe if I did this, that would be 10% better. [SPEAKER_02]: And then somehow managed to invest two full days doing that thing. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, where is it? [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's, I think it's as long as you're still not like reluctant to okay, I think, well, so where I'm looking for where you're just like begrudgingly doing things, right?

55:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And then then doesn't become fun anymore. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, uh, [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think the thing that I've started to notice and it may just be me noticing it is the the number of times where I noticed things that I quite write like the the notifications from my smart vacuum to tell me it didn't work or the the lights that I quite write or the gate.

55:25 [SPEAKER_02]: It's got an intercom on it and the person can't quite hear me. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it works great except the career can't quite hear you. [SPEAKER_02]: So you're still end up going up to there. [SPEAKER_02]: Just the little sort of death by a thousand cuts that make me wonder if I could do it again.

55:42 [SPEAKER_02]: This is actually the question, if I could do it again, would I do it? [SPEAKER_02]: And the answer at this point is, I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: It's still not enough information. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's such beautiful things like that's power savings and [SPEAKER_02]: you know I keep going back to laying a bed and being able to not have to get up to that was a we had the rule of last person in bed had to turn the lights off and the number of discussions that that started it's like hmm glad we don't have to do anymore but there's that just those moments of like yeah for six times in one day I'm turning that same lights which off [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's interesting.

56:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I know in your email to us originally, you talked about some dashboards. [SPEAKER_00]: How have you found doing dashboards like I know we talked about before, then having a little there aren't certain dashboards now. [SPEAKER_00]: Have you found the dashboards experience in home isn't to be where you want it to be or if you've got any improvement ideas for it?

56:43 [SPEAKER_02]: The latest dashboard came out so past love lace. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm completely blanking on what the I think that discord dashboards now dashboards, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, and you've got the the tiles. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a tile version where I can resize them and stuff like that.

56:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yes, it's the whole sections layout now section. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly because I played around with mushroom for a while and mushroom cards and various different custom cards and that was kind of okay, but it also was like just couldn't quite get it [SPEAKER_02]: I think if I think about home assistance evolution so much of what the product is doing we can kind of be talking about home automation in general with you know home assistant in there so much of what home assistant is doing is awesome and I think that the evolution of that dashboard for me and my family we went they went from like I'm not even opening the app to like I now know how to find the right thing in the right room part of that is just setting it up probably but aesthetically

57:38 [SPEAKER_02]: level. [SPEAKER_02]: But it's also doing a lot more. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've got in the dashboard. [SPEAKER_02]: I've got a little present sensor. [SPEAKER_02]: So it comes on if this someone's in the room and the temperature is sitting right beside that and below that is another button.

57:50 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're depending on a lot into a little space on these dashboards. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not going to be exactly like the Apple one. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think it's a really, really like where it's going and it's so I haven't gotten into, you see the beautiful people who post pictures and it's like different colors and backgrounds and black and and neon and then so I'm back, I'm like, now I'm not, I can't do that.

58:15 [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to, but it's like that's just a level of trying to maintain that and something's going to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: the one thing and I think I actually may have just come out. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been working the last sort of year and a half around the idea of I guess it was like an activity list or what what was happening, what's happened in the house in the last X hours and I kind of explained it like it's like a log file but the human can read it.

58:43 [SPEAKER_02]: And there's things like in order at 12, 20, the washing finished at 12, 30, someone started the dryer. [SPEAKER_02]: And so when I get home and I realize, oh, well, first thing, the washing's been not in the dryer for the last eight hours, that's going to need redoing again. [SPEAKER_02]: The dishwasher finished and no one unloaded it or whatever, you know, you kind of, you get a sense of what's been going on since I've left.

59:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that I saw on one of the most recent releases, there was something that was speaking to that, do you guys remember that? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. [SPEAKER_00]: trying to think of what it's called. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're on the things of that.

59:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I know LLM Vision has a timeline card for when it does, it's person detection events, which I've said before would be a perfect case for this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like you would have, because in that lovely card, you have the ability to push customer events. [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, when my alarm or alarm panel, so it's alarms, I then push a customer event, and it shows on that timeline card.

59:52 [SPEAKER_00]: on the dashboard. [SPEAKER_00]: I can see, okay, the light panel armed at this time. [SPEAKER_00]: It disarmed at this time. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's nothing stopping me from doing things like the dishwasher was clean at 2pm and then it was put back on at 4pm. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I don't know.

1:00:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember exactly what feature in homes is going to refer to, but I do think there has been a lot of work around, you know, the timeline and fixing it up and making it more user-friendly. [SPEAKER_01]: What you're referring to is more around predictive entities in the dashboard where it's like so homelessness and actually keeps that list of like hey all of this things are typically done at this time and blah blah blah so I don't know like [SPEAKER_01]: dinner time comes around six p.m. comes around and you know, every day you turn on the dining room lights at six p.m. whatever that is right it.

1:00:46 [SPEAKER_01]: So it'll pro act there so you can just tap that and like in in its own little section of, I [SPEAKER_01]: most user, whatever relative to the time and to the date, whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if it's 6pm, you're activating a dinner time scene, then at 6pm on the dashboard, I would be a button to say activate this scene or like 545 or something like that, right?

1:01:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And and see idea, but to that, there is. [SPEAKER_01]: So what happens is homelessness in a once a day goes in the background and says okay, what are what are these things that typically happen at this time during this day like blah blah blah and to basically crunch that and and I think that is what you would really [SPEAKER_01]: care about, and then potentially feed that into like a, I don't know, a Google Gemini or chat GPT or something like that to be like, hey, give me a human readable readout of everything that's happened since between the time, you know, the example you use Chris is when you left and came back home, okay, from when I left and came back home, right, and then you walk in and like the, uh, your your voice assistant can come in and say,

1:01:56 [SPEAKER_01]: right now. [SPEAKER_02]: I actually hadn't even thought of that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's like the next level of which is really interesting. [SPEAKER_02]: It's using the LLM side of it. [SPEAKER_02]: I was just taking it from the perspective of like the real use case. [SPEAKER_02]: My kids have gotten a much better at this, but they had the job of, you know, you had to do one little Andrea Day, another dishwasher, whatever else.

1:02:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And the only way that I could previously do that is I do power monitoring. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'd go to the individual appliance, look for the power spikes and go like, oh, okay, I got power spike at 10 a.m. that [SPEAKER_02]: You know, but instead of trying to come up with that activity sort of human readable logfile, maybe just throw the whole thing at an LLM and say, you tell me in plain English whether the Washington machine ran today, that's a really interesting way of doing it.

1:02:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess you could also do, to do lists in Home Assistant too, I just have every Midnight, it resets everything to undone, and then go watch a machine ran today, dishwasher ran today, garbage bins were moved down this day, like for excuse me, in camera to see where the garbage bins are. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you could just tick them off as those events fire, you know, what power detect on the washing machine, all right, mark that to the water and it's done.

1:03:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And then at the end of the day, maybe have a read it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Saying, hey, Chris, by the way, these tasks weren't done. [SPEAKER_01]: Great. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't necessarily care about what was done. [SPEAKER_01]: It's about what wasn't done. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that'd be really interesting, which I know is not a dashboard.

1:03:21 [SPEAKER_02]: We kind of got away from your mind, but in my mind, it was a dashboard because I was coming and I wanted to present me with the information I needed to know instead of having to go digging. [SPEAKER_02]: Because to me, that's what the dashboard is. [SPEAKER_02]: You can anything you've gone at a dashboard, you can go into the settings and the entity, and you know, and look really, really good down there.

1:03:41 [SPEAKER_02]: But the dashboard just presents what you want at your fingertips, whether it's information or control. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of what I find them helpful for. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think home is just like an onion right there's so many ways to peel it and there's so many layers to it right that you can Just go in and go from different angles right like just what we're talking about here right we started with dashboard We can get AI to do it now.

1:04:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We can use to do this there's a whole bunch of ways. [SPEAKER_00]: I think, um, it's quite like a habitation integration as well that you could probably, you know make a gamer fight if you wanted to Yeah [SPEAKER_02]: If I could somehow connect it to a bank account as well so that every drawer like there's a $1 amount that gets transferred from my account to my kids account or something like that and I'm sure they'd work out a way to scam that but just like yeah I mean it's certainly like there's a lot of American APIs now all right um and depending on your bank you could put what about if they've got an API guaranteed there's something the ones that you could do yeah There's another rabbit hole.

1:04:41 [SPEAKER_02]: I can just imagine going down [SPEAKER_00]: cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Anything that we've missed that you want to talk about, Chris? [SPEAKER_02]: No, I just think I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate what you guys do. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just trying to think about it today. [SPEAKER_02]: How long I've been listening.

1:04:56 [SPEAKER_02]: It's probably. [SPEAKER_02]: you guys had been doing it for a little while, but several years now and the amount of work that you guys put into talking to people and I remember it was just the releases and then obviously you started to talk to some equipment suppliers and then which and then to sort of the average user or whatever it takes an amazing amount of time from you guys and you have lives and [SPEAKER_02]: And do everything as well.

1:05:21 [SPEAKER_02]: So as well as your own home assistant journeys, you then put the effort into doing this and that that's not really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't I don't know if you guys hear that enough [SPEAKER_00]: No, well we appreciate that and like we always say like we wouldn't have a podcast if wasn't forgets like you're coming on and telling us how you're using home.

1:05:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like I think it's seen 2 million homes and we only could describe the surface of those homes, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for coming on. [SPEAKER_00]: I do apologize at home. [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just giving you a lot of frustrations over the years. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's given a lot of people a lot of frustrations, but a lot of good things coming from it too.

1:05:52 [SPEAKER_00]: But I hope you can make peace with it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: It was great power. [SPEAKER_02]: It comes great [SPEAKER_00]: That's it, that's it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well Chris, thank you so much for really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Cheers. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to share your home system journey or come on as a guest, reach out to us at feedback at haspodcast.io.

1:06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That's H-A-S-Spodcast.io. [SPEAKER_01]: The home system podcast is hosted by Phil Hardiron and myself, Rohan Keremandi. [SPEAKER_01]: For links to topics we discussed today, check out our show notes on haspodcast.io.