Adrian’s High Availability Home Assistant

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[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to video home business and podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Phil and as usual I've got Rourke with me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey guys mate.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, good, how are you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And today another fellow Aussie we've got Adrian in the house.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, don't Adrian.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Good day Phil.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Good day Ryan.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Before we get started, here's a quick word from our sponsor.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a link in the description.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This episode is also sponsored by our friends at Apollo Automation, makers of open-source smart home sensors, built for the home assistant ecosystem.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The official ESB home starter kit is now available, and it is in the easiest entry into making your own sensors.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It is designed and built by the open-home foundation and Apollo Automation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Profits help fund the open-home foundation, which owns and maintains home assistant,
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[SPEAKER_02]: While you're there, be sure to check out Apollo Automation's Cast One, which is built for music assistant, and to make anything with a line-in input, a smart speaker.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you're deep into home assistant or just getting started, definitely check them out at ApolloWautamotion.com.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'll set a fellow Aussie whereabouts in Australia.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you joining us?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so you got to be an Australian much like surely, but it's going to say at some point, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm hanging out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it, I get out for it,
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[SPEAKER_02]: I could be wrong, but that was just a random article, go on my Instagram feed, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's my tip bit of Western story for you for a little bit of this week.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Adrian tells a bit about yourself, like, what got you into home automation?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, I've always been a big computer guy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got into Linux pretty early on because I wanted to be a hacker and I read that to be a hacky-enated, a Unix system and originally started looking at
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[SPEAKER_01]: you know, go and the old school and then stumble across Linux and fell in love with that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then a few years ago we moved into this house and a couple of months after we moved in, we had a trip for a wedding overseas.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and decided we wanted to be able to monitor the alarm system remotely, so I found ESP devices online and sort of knocked out some code for that, to monitor the so it's an old school 80s alarm with individual zones and the little panel that shows you the LEDs for which zones lit up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so through an ESP onto that to monitor the state of the LED and then, um, needed something to then do with that information and found home assistant and
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[SPEAKER_01]: sort of just fell down the rabbit hole from there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned before that you wanted to be a hack of, and you needed to be on a UNIX system.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It reminds me of that scene in Jurassic Park where the girl needs to open up the gates of the doors.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she's using the mouse to open buttons.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's a UNIX system.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's how it works, yep.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So you've started with Home Assistant now.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How many devices are you up to, do you think?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I think I've got 50 supplement Wi-Fi clients from memory.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The bulk of my stuff is via Wi-Fi with a few Bluetooth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: sensors and I haven't delved into Zigbee or anything like that yet but it's pretty extensive all but the bathroom lights are and a couple of the outside lights control by home system their air conditioners or you know a HVAC is controlled
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[SPEAKER_01]: I have a 12 volt, big 12 volt system down here in the corner that runs my server and my networks, and that's the power supply for that is controlled by home assistant.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's where on split rate, metering for the power.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it turns off the battery charge is for the peak of the day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: run solely on battery and that saw determined from home systems as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 12 volt did you say?
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[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so the server has a you can get ATX power supplies.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think the design for like car computers.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So it takes 12 volts off the of the batteries.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's 400 amp hours of led acid batteries.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and yeah, and then the the network switch that particular model of switch if you whip the cover off it has a separate power supply and you can disconnect that and just feed 12 volts straight onto the motherboard and works fine so.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I have yeah the the modem, you know, VDS on modem.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And access point, the switch in the server are all off that power supply.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if we lose mains, it still keeps running.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's it's it's the important stuff.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Do you then charge that during the day and then push it back to the battery?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Correct.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So charges, um, when we drop down to, I think, eight cents a kilo watt hour during the days that smashes in, um, a day's worth of charge and then it switches off at night to, um,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did the maths, it'll probably pay for itself in 10 years, but that's the fun of the exercise rather than the economics of it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've always imagined using or wanting to have like backup lighting, you know, just like 12 or backup lighting system, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because power goes out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You have to find the tortures, the candles.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Or would it be cool to just have like a 12 or battery somewhere, and very low power requirement, like LED lights to light up the house.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But you have taken it to the next level in your powering.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I get it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What you serve again, infrastructure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I could see in the near future 12-volt lighting or at least low voltage lighting being a more mainstream thing in general, just because
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[SPEAKER_01]: the barrier to entry is a lot lower.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably a bit different in Australia where we're so restrictive on who can do electrical work.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna say, for you guys, if it's 12V, you can probably just do whatever you want yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't need to get an electrician in there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's very good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, everything up to, I think it's 110 volt DC is extra live voltage, you need to donate a license for.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, but if you're running a cable in the wall, I'd do think he had a license or could be wrong there, but I'm pretty sure that And he cable that goes in the wall need to a license essentially.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've got an open cable's license, so Well see cleverly screwed around that one.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There you go
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I need to get there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I have to worry about this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We were talking about before the Chevrolet Island, both Adrian and Mike Darfard, there's where electricians and we're like, oh, the electrical license is hereditary, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, as soon as you're in the sun of electricians, you should be fine, all right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it works that way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got your, your life's server on that 12-volt system.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What are you using for presence in the home?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you doing things like walking to a room and having lights turn on?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So for presence in terms of who's home and who isn't, we use just the home assistant app on our phones and then for my two boys who up until recently didn't have phones, I just had a manual switch in the kitchen that you could flick whether they're home or not, that's mainly
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[SPEAKER_01]: the heaters in their bedrooms come on or not if they're home or not and then around the house I've made to use the alarm system so it has PIR sensors around the place.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that triggers the lights.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that works pretty well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's been replaced.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was originally in old 80s, you know old school, um, system, and it's now, uh, I think connected.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's behind.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that works pretty well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and yeah, you can walk around most of the house and the lights will turn off.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I have a, a Nate trick.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, for that, where.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can manually turn on lights as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to spend time in a room and you need the lights to not turn off automatically.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The lights store their state based on the brightness.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So if it's automatically turned on by the PIR sensor, it only sets the brightness to 99%.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you turn it on with the switch, it'll set the brightness to 100%.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can't perceive the difference between 99 or 100, but home assistant can look at that and go, this switch has been turned on manually, lay it on or this switch has been triggered, turn it off after five minutes.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's cool.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, for my, I've got, I'm set by dinners.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately for me, when I hit a switch, the resume to their previous state.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I think now that you mentioned, I think there might be a setting where I can have you, you know, it's toggle by a switch, always set it to 100% brightness, and maybe that is a way I could trigger that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's so simple, but yeah, easy to automate against.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And saves you having to have sort of separate variables or, you know, input boolean set up to track that state.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You just track the state in the device itself.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because otherwise, then you have to go down the whole.
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[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Is this button being pressed when was the last time it was pressed?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Was it the automation that triggered it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Was it this?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you can get complicated.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I recently modified the rules for the, we've got bedside lights in the bedroom and I hooked up the iPhones via HomeKit to Home Assistant, but setting the right, so before that,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, it would work on a timer or based on time of day how brightness the how bright the lights would turn on, so night it would only go to 15 or 20% or something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I've now got it with an automation that watches for when the light turns on and if it's between that time period.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The light will turn on to full brightness because it ramps up that brightness anyway.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The home assistant catches it and pulls it back down to 20%.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, do you end up having any effect where it's up and then it's down?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see the peak and drop?
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[SPEAKER_01]: On, so the LIFX lights elsewhere in the house.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did notice it would do that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These ones, I don't remember what brand they are, but they, I think they're running ASP home and they have a gradual ramp up anyway.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and so you don't notice it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They just, they, it, the lights are slow enough and home assistant is quick enough that they just go to 20% and you don't notice any different.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it saves having to try and work in that logic of, um, yeah, it enters up and you expose to home kit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You just expose the light to home kit and let home assistant worry about what brightness it should be.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How do you go with so many devices on Wi-Fi?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Have you run into issues where you've had to upgrade the Wi-Fi network?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I did upgrade a few years ago.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I threw some TP link.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're more commercial aimed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're the HD 620s or something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A couple of those either end of the house and then expanded out with the little wall mounted.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Access points that have also got a switch built in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They work really well at the media center and at my boys study because I can hang the computers or the TV off the switch as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that made a huge difference.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Having decent Wi-Fi made things much more reliable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I did have an issue probably about a month ago where the back end of the house was really unreliable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: just general nonsense like that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I played around with the Wi-Fi for a bit, setting power levels and checking, you know, making sure that they're on separate channels.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I ended up borrowing a spectrum analyzer from work and wondering around the house with the speck out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So speck out shows you the frequency across the bottom and the signal strength as the vertical.
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[SPEAKER_01]: down that end of the house there were two really strong signals right in the middle of the 2.4 Wi-Fi band and it turned out to be a couple of Shelley, um, I think there are Shelley tools that I were using for roller shutter control and they died, um, they had died a while ago but
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[SPEAKER_01]: apparently had died in a way where they were just spitting out noise in the middle of 2.4 gig.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as I pulled them out, everything went, you know, it came good and has been rocks all that ever since.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So my hot tip for running a live number of devices on Wi-Fi is have access to a spec and from work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and know how to use it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, and understand it, exactly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I run all the home assistance stuff on a separate SSID, separate VLAN, they are firewalled from the internet, unless I find I have to turn internet access on for those devices when I'm provisioning.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But otherwise, yet, they're segregated off.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and works pretty well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you find, I know you mentioned that you not using any sick B or Z waver or anything like that or you're doing anything with matter, even like matter over Wi-Fi or not or not?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have started playing around with that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've found it quite reliable.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I know the new LIFX globes have met a support and even comparing so in the dining room, there's a light fitting with four globes in it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: one of them died recently and got replaced by a current model LIFX.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And even though they're triggered all at once in home assistant, the matte glow comes on much faster than the three other globes that are just native LIFX.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is really good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit of a dance to get them
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[SPEAKER_01]: onto the network because it's on a separate SSID and VLAN, but once they're on, yeah, it seems to be really reliable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's good to know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you then controlling if you've got all the lights both controlled by a switch at the wall and also smart globes as well, where is the only accent lighting that using those life expulsor?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So they're all smart globes with the original light switches still in place, but I've put a cheap 433 megahertz remote buttons.
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[SPEAKER_01]: garage door remote saw something similar like that, battery powered.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So they're double-sided tape to the wall next to the light switch and the family has just got used to using those rather than the traditional light switch, they're good because they're, you know, combined off eBay, cheaply, the batteries last easily a year or
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[SPEAKER_01]: Probably the only real downside is the only hand or one event at a time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I know, for example, there's a PIR sensor in the near the front door that sort of faces the bedroom door.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and that's on 433 megahertz and then there's the light switch for the bedroom as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you hit the light switch having just gone past the PIR sensor,
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[SPEAKER_01]: they'll both transmit at the same time and the lights don't, and it doesn't trigger so you got to hit it a second time and it works.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that, again, has been a quite reliable system.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It covers the whole house without any problem.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've got an ESP home device that just receives the
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[SPEAKER_01]: the codes off the 43 megahertz, shops it into home assistant and home assistant can then trigger off those events like it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a it's a particular event a tight and you get the device code and so.
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[SPEAKER_01]: can trigger individual automations off that code.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have to, when you bought those off, EBA or LA Express, did you have to customise what it transmits?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you've got two exact same remotes, did they come from the factory, having a neat code, did they transmit, or were you able to customise them?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they are.
19:37.644 --> 19:41.785
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all, I've not had any that sharp as a, as the same code.
19:42.452 --> 19:43.032
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.
19:43.772 --> 19:45.233
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, which I would make sense.
19:45.273 --> 19:50.474
[SPEAKER_02]: I imagine that if they are supposed to be remote control, so garage doors, they would need to be unique, right?
19:50.834 --> 19:54.295
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's that's interesting.
19:54.475 --> 20:02.717
[SPEAKER_02]: I was I'm surprised that yeah, if you walk past the motion sensor and push the button that get they would, I mean, it makes sense right there to write this setting a radio wave.
20:02.757 --> 20:05.878
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like trying to talk at the same time and walkie talkie.
20:06.298 --> 20:09.279
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think the PIR must send a series.
20:10.377 --> 20:14.278
[SPEAKER_01]: rather than just a one-off, you know, I've triggered send one code.
20:14.958 --> 20:18.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've triggered and it'll send it over a period of number of times.
20:19.699 --> 20:22.020
[SPEAKER_02]: Does the PIR also do like light levels as well?
20:22.060 --> 20:26.101
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm wondering if it's trying to send a whole bunch of data at the same time.
20:26.441 --> 20:27.261
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so.
20:27.361 --> 20:30.822
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a cheat PIR.
20:30.902 --> 20:37.224
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I got it from JKAR as part of their design to go with a wireless alarm system.
20:39.749 --> 20:42.791
[SPEAKER_01]: They might have even been on special at the time.
20:43.552 --> 20:45.994
[SPEAKER_01]: Board it to just try it out.
20:46.034 --> 20:47.636
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been quite effective again.
20:47.656 --> 20:48.577
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got three of those.
20:48.597 --> 20:53.281
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, sort of at the front door in the boys office and in the kitchen.
20:53.962 --> 20:59.607
[SPEAKER_01]: And they work equally as well as the main alarm PIRs.
21:00.265 --> 21:04.388
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, J.K.R is the regular Shack equivalent.
21:04.588 --> 21:05.709
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to ask it.
21:05.729 --> 21:08.251
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to ask it.
21:08.291 --> 21:08.711
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that.
21:08.751 --> 21:12.074
[SPEAKER_00]: That might follow up, question.
21:12.094 --> 21:15.096
[SPEAKER_02]: The 433 make sense is then that you got from J.K.R.
21:15.136 --> 21:25.284
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you able to then link them up with your connected panel and have them as an additional security sensor, all the only link up with anything that's hard-wired into the existing panel.
21:25.635 --> 21:43.511
[SPEAKER_01]: So I couldn't, I haven't done that, but it would be possible either with home assistant as the middle man, you know, receive the alarm, shove it through to the connected and have the connected decide whether to alarm or not.
21:45.068 --> 21:50.672
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also because they're both running ESP home, it should be possible to have them go direct.
21:51.533 --> 21:58.919
[SPEAKER_01]: So have the 433 receiver send those particular codes directly to
21:59.800 --> 22:07.827
[SPEAKER_01]: the alarm panel as well, and that would get around any issues of homestistent being offline when the alarm needs to trigger.
22:08.327 --> 22:10.029
[SPEAKER_01]: That's such a good point, yeah.
22:10.069 --> 22:18.796
[SPEAKER_02]: I was about to suggest alarm orbit, yeah, then you have the issue of home assistant may be that man in the middle right and home assistant is offline.
22:18.816 --> 22:20.178
[SPEAKER_02]: Still having a dependency.
22:20.198 --> 22:20.658
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's stuck.
22:21.499 --> 22:21.719
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
22:22.575 --> 22:30.718
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of hacks components like Alambo, are you using any custom components in your install that you can't live with that?
22:30.978 --> 22:34.759
[SPEAKER_01]: I tend to avoid using hacks too extensively.
22:37.280 --> 22:45.282
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there's probably the one that I'm relied upon but albeit reluctantly would be the
22:51.720 --> 22:54.861
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, yeah.
22:54.881 --> 23:00.421
[SPEAKER_01]: So the local toyer, that's the, um, have a bit of a love hate relationship with that.
23:00.762 --> 23:01.842
[SPEAKER_01]: It's clunky.
23:01.942 --> 23:03.302
[SPEAKER_01]: It's difficult to set up.
23:03.742 --> 23:10.023
[SPEAKER_01]: It works well when it is set up, but, um, yeah, it's a necessary evil.
23:10.443 --> 23:11.343
[SPEAKER_01]: It certainly works better
23:21.607 --> 23:30.629
[SPEAKER_01]: We've recently got a new washing machine, which has the semen's, oh yeah, home, home connect, I think.
23:32.950 --> 23:43.612
[SPEAKER_01]: I've, I haven't installed the integration, but haven't used it extensively yet to sort of track or trigger the dishwasher at all.
23:44.572 --> 23:48.413
[SPEAKER_02]: So it has full control over the, like you can start the dishwasher, just stop the dishwasher on the imagining.
23:49.120 --> 23:49.761
[SPEAKER_01]: You can.
23:50.722 --> 23:52.965
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not as straightforward as it could be.
23:54.387 --> 24:00.735
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess because of the nature of, you know, you don't really want to dishwasher to start.
24:03.365 --> 24:03.945
[SPEAKER_01]: unattended.
24:04.426 --> 24:08.268
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you want to make sure you've put the detergent in and it's ready to go what sort of thing.
24:09.709 --> 24:16.874
[SPEAKER_01]: And it has a built-in function where you can set the power periods.
24:17.074 --> 24:17.935
[SPEAKER_01]: So when's the peak?
24:17.955 --> 24:19.656
[SPEAKER_01]: When's the off-peak power?
24:20.116 --> 24:25.220
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will know how long the cycle will take.
24:25.700 --> 24:32.325
[SPEAKER_01]: And when, you know, the off-peak period is going to end and it will adjust its start time accordingly.
24:33.065 --> 24:50.433
[SPEAKER_01]: and so that works pretty well sort of outside of home assistant you can set the machine click the start and walk away and know that it will start you know sometime the time it will pay us cheap and yeah and then you get a notification back to say that it's finished so
24:51.313 --> 24:52.834
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't integrated that.
24:53.174 --> 25:00.697
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a dumb monitoring or not a dumb, but a fairly basic monitoring on the washing machine.
25:00.937 --> 25:04.798
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just a smart plug.
25:06.999 --> 25:12.481
[SPEAKER_01]: And then a red switch sensor on the door of the
25:20.093 --> 25:22.794
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that will monitor when the cycle is finished.
25:23.035 --> 25:33.700
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives a bit of a buffer because, depending on what cycle you've said it to, sometimes the power draw will drop to zero for a while while it's in cycle.
25:34.780 --> 25:40.803
[SPEAKER_01]: So it waits a few minutes and then announces on the Google speakers and via the app.
25:42.145 --> 25:44.046
[SPEAKER_01]: that, you know, the washing's done.
25:45.027 --> 25:51.972
[SPEAKER_01]: If you open the door while that's timer is still, while that buffer is still running, then it won't do the announcement.
25:52.412 --> 25:59.977
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, proactive and get the washing out early, then you don't get hassled by the Google speakers later on.
26:00.737 --> 26:01.898
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it works pretty well.
26:01.918 --> 26:02.959
[SPEAKER_01]: There's good reminder.
26:04.228 --> 26:06.189
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I had the exact same automation.
26:06.589 --> 26:13.353
[SPEAKER_02]: I also have what I had the door sensor on the washing machine as well until little kids came along.
26:13.573 --> 26:15.474
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is the first thing they want to rip off.
26:15.494 --> 26:15.675
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
26:15.995 --> 26:19.357
[SPEAKER_02]: Every time they walk into the laundry, they see, oh, what's that sticking on the washing machine?
26:19.397 --> 26:19.937
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll have that.
26:20.577 --> 26:24.640
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, button cell batteries and kids do not mix well together so that had to quickly go.
26:25.400 --> 26:31.445
[SPEAKER_02]: I replaced the and stop perfect unfortunately, but I replaced the the door sensor with just the presence in the laundry.
26:31.485 --> 26:39.671
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you walk into the laundry and the state is clean I assume you're there to empty the washing machine out, so then I'll reset the state.
26:39.811 --> 26:41.732
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, it's not always accurate.
26:41.752 --> 26:49.258
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, until the kids grow up or I can find another solution or maybe I'm just getting your washing machine or trying to empty the washing machine.
26:50.553 --> 27:09.682
[SPEAKER_02]: look, we're trying, my oldest is trying to sometimes empty the dishwasher and it, my heart is in my throat every time because I'm just waiting for a really heavy plate to fall down and smash, all right, and it's bound to happen.
27:10.621 --> 27:13.167
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it'll be a learning experience.
27:13.848 --> 27:15.131
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the growing journey.
27:15.532 --> 27:15.953
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
27:15.973 --> 27:17.817
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
27:17.897 --> 27:18.839
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only properly.
27:19.821 --> 27:20.683
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
27:20.703 --> 27:21.565
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true.
27:22.417 --> 27:26.159
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if you're looking to upgrade your smart home, you really can't go past the zoos.
27:26.699 --> 27:34.884
[SPEAKER_02]: Their new 800 series is that way of long range motion dimmer, the XN12 800 LR combines three smart home devices into a single wall switch.
27:35.624 --> 27:39.947
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a full featured Z-wave dimmer with a built-in motion sensor and ambient light sensor.
27:40.527 --> 27:45.770
[SPEAKER_02]: So your lights can automatically respond when someone enters the room, and while taking the current light level into account.
27:46.470 --> 27:52.514
[SPEAKER_02]: That means you can create smart lighting automations without installing separate motion and luck sensors around the room.
27:53.494 --> 28:03.381
[SPEAKER_02]: The XN12 also supports Scene Control using Multitaps, Holds, and Release Actions, giving you plenty of ways to control lights and scenes directly from the switch.
28:04.181 --> 28:10.168
[SPEAKER_02]: and with smart bulb mode, it can also work with smart bulbs, like Philips Hue, without cutting power to them at the wall.
28:10.388 --> 28:22.601
[SPEAKER_02]: Zeus are an official at works with home assistant partner, and they've also helped never cast our test the home assistant connect ZWA2 by providing long-range devices so you know their products are designed with home assistant users in mind.
28:23.402 --> 28:34.104
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you need more control over your plug-in devices, the Zeus also has the Zen 2800LR Z8 Long Range Power Strip, which turns a single outlet into multiple, individually controllable smart sockets.
28:34.784 --> 28:44.846
[SPEAKER_02]: It's perfect under a desk behind your TV or in a server rack for controlling and monitoring networkier, charges, lamps, game consoles, and other always on devices.
28:45.666 --> 28:52.848
[SPEAKER_02]: Zeus products are backed by USB's technical support and an extended 5-year warranty when you register your device within 30 days of purchase.
28:53.709 --> 29:02.438
[SPEAKER_02]: For the best prices on the XN12 Motion Dimmer, the XN20 Power Strip and the full range of ZOOS smart home products head over to the smartesthouse.com.
29:03.039 --> 29:04.741
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the smartesthouse.com.
29:05.509 --> 29:20.459
[SPEAKER_00]: So Adrian, you originally wrote to us, too, when you were talking about an issue, Phil had around, having a redundancy and building some of that into his system.
29:21.840 --> 29:27.885
[SPEAKER_00]: And before we started recording you, you talked about how you were almost yelling at the,
29:28.864 --> 29:33.107
[SPEAKER_00]: at the screen or at the stereo listening to Phil talk about it.
29:33.247 --> 29:36.670
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was afraid of late on him.
29:36.830 --> 29:37.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Late on him.
29:38.031 --> 29:40.292
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you even know what you're going to say, but I agree with you already.
29:40.332 --> 29:41.833
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think those shows later.
29:41.853 --> 29:43.715
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
29:44.895 --> 29:51.039
[SPEAKER_01]: In the industry, I work in higher availability is, you know, a pretty important aspect.
29:51.600 --> 29:55.402
[SPEAKER_01]: And I sort of took that and applied it to my home network as well.
29:57.183 --> 30:04.348
[SPEAKER_01]: Home assistant has elements that make it easy to make it higher availability.
30:05.749 --> 30:10.593
[SPEAKER_01]: The biggest issue being any device and I'm not sure how ZB plays with this,
30:14.395 --> 30:18.696
[SPEAKER_01]: or only going to be controlled by one HAA instance.
30:19.837 --> 30:33.881
[SPEAKER_01]: All of my stuff or the majority of my stuff doesn't care, so the LAFX lights and here's behind you can point multiple homicitants at them and they will happily respond to both.
30:35.261 --> 30:50.872
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem then becomes how do you get only one homo-system instance to run an automation and seamlessly file that over between your active and you stand by instance.
30:52.052 --> 30:58.777
[SPEAKER_01]: The simple solution is for things that don't care, just run the automation twice.
30:58.997 --> 30:59.678
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you've got
31:01.801 --> 31:14.410
[SPEAKER_01]: And event that happens, say, open the blinds at a particular time during the day, or you turn a thermostat at a particular time, just run that automation on both instances of home assistant.
31:15.151 --> 31:18.013
[SPEAKER_01]: And the device will be triggered twice, but it won't care.
31:18.273 --> 31:23.657
[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll know that if one or either of your HA systems are offline, it's still going to happen.
31:30.435 --> 31:35.857
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know, like it's not a straight on command you're sending.
31:35.877 --> 31:37.218
[SPEAKER_01]: You want it to change state.
31:37.478 --> 31:42.780
[SPEAKER_01]: If you do that from two different HAs, it's going to end up back at the original state.
31:44.520 --> 31:51.283
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a way of passing active and standby between home assistant using a web socket.
31:52.063 --> 31:57.045
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can set up a, in fact, I have notes here,
32:00.596 --> 32:13.502
[SPEAKER_01]: webhook in home assistant and have the other instance poll that webhook and that acts as your heartbeat.
32:13.922 --> 32:27.149
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, you can't really act of one every 60 seconds, it'll hit that webhook on the receiving instance when that webhook fires, it starts in automation that waits 65 seconds
32:29.750 --> 32:35.093
[SPEAKER_01]: and at the end of that automation, it sets, it's state to be active.
32:35.593 --> 32:36.713
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sorry, go back a step.
32:37.174 --> 32:45.418
[SPEAKER_01]: You have an input Boolean, a global input Boolean in your instance, that all the automations that you care about treat as a condition.
32:46.298 --> 32:49.200
[SPEAKER_01]: So for them, for the automation to fire, that Boolean has to be true.
32:51.101 --> 32:53.762
[SPEAKER_01]: The standby unit, that Boolean is false,
32:55.394 --> 33:01.720
[SPEAKER_01]: So the web hook automation fires, weight 65 seconds sets that bullying to true.
33:02.740 --> 33:11.288
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's weighting 65 seconds, and your active system is every 60 seconds, polling it, that automation is continually restarting.
33:12.028 --> 33:15.872
[SPEAKER_01]: So it never gets through to the turn on the bullying.
33:17.560 --> 33:26.766
[SPEAKER_01]: If, for whatever reason, your active system dies, 65 seconds later, that bullion goes high, and you've transferred control now.
33:26.846 --> 33:28.087
[SPEAKER_00]: All your animations are enabled.
33:28.767 --> 33:29.828
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.
33:30.448 --> 33:35.111
[SPEAKER_02]: What happens in the event that the main system then comes back online and it thinks it's the boss.
33:35.131 --> 33:37.032
[SPEAKER_02]: Does it go out and check the other system to see it?
33:37.173 --> 33:38.814
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, which one is the boss?
33:38.994 --> 33:40.795
[SPEAKER_02]: Which one is not the boss at the moment?
33:41.219 --> 33:46.643
[SPEAKER_01]: So the automations and the web hook are replicated on both systems.
33:46.663 --> 33:50.666
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you transfer to the active, it will start polling back the other way.
33:51.527 --> 34:08.960
[SPEAKER_01]: And when the original system comes back online, it will receive that web hook and it'll be suppressed until so you could make it preemptive, or you could make it also on startup, hit the web hook on the other system and that'll take control.
34:11.029 --> 34:17.332
[SPEAKER_01]: But on mine it's just whoever's the most recently active stays active until it's swapped over.
34:17.392 --> 34:17.813
[SPEAKER_02]: This is cool.
34:17.893 --> 34:18.113
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
34:18.173 --> 34:18.853
[SPEAKER_02]: I have some thoughts.
34:19.674 --> 34:21.635
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, I love this.
34:22.475 --> 34:35.663
[SPEAKER_02]: Second, the, you're right about Zigbee and said, wait, like this is something that I have struggled with in my time is, you know, what about those devices that do require a physical USB stick?
34:37.083 --> 34:45.728
[SPEAKER_02]: Shout out here to my assistant, the ZW-2 and the Zepti-1, the Zigbee and Zigwave radios from Navicasa.
34:46.649 --> 34:50.891
[SPEAKER_02]: They actually now support proxies, so they've got an SB32 board in them.
34:51.632 --> 34:57.155
[SPEAKER_02]: So in theory, if I wanted to, I could unplug the USB and have them communicate wildly over Wi-Fi.
34:57.815 --> 35:11.486
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm imagining if I wanted to do this, I could then have two home businesses and instance, thinking that radio on a specific IP address, which would then, in theory, solve that.
35:11.646 --> 35:12.947
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you do that on the ZBT now?
35:13.287 --> 35:14.168
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew you could do it on the ZWA.
35:16.064 --> 35:25.328
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought from my understanding, when we got the ZWA, we had to do some hacking things in the deadboard, because it was a pre-release kit.
35:25.649 --> 35:29.550
[SPEAKER_02]: But the official version is at WA, and now supports it like you can do it.
35:29.790 --> 35:31.611
[SPEAKER_02]: ZWA does, but I don't know, but it's at BT2.
35:32.411 --> 35:33.092
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe it does.
35:33.412 --> 35:35.273
[SPEAKER_02]: I could be wrong in each part of my policies.
35:35.873 --> 35:39.675
[SPEAKER_02]: But I thought that was a whole point of it also being able to support potentially threat as well.
35:40.475 --> 35:52.099
[SPEAKER_01]: because I know that the Bluetooth proxy in ASP home will only talk to one instance of Oh, really, because this is my next bit I was getting to it was like, but now I'm thinking out this out loud.
35:53.160 --> 35:59.382
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've got on the Zigbee side, you've got a whole bunch of like the Zigbee database entries that live on home is not on the radio.
35:59.942 --> 36:04.604
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're doing the Zigbee to MKTT or something, technically you can just look at that MKTT.
36:05.724 --> 36:25.621
[SPEAKER_01]: MQTT does, so I originally started on MQTT, you know, all my ESP devices are running Tasmoder, and they're publishing to MQTT, and then MQTT, you can cluster quite well, so you can have, yeah, each instance publish to its partner.
36:27.342 --> 36:47.570
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, if you want to go the whole nine yards, you can put a floating IP address between your two boxes and so all your client vices will always just hit that floating IP and whichever the adaptive MQTT server will publish to the partner and everybody stays informed.
36:48.711 --> 36:50.151
[SPEAKER_01]: So that would be one way around it.
36:51.192 --> 36:52.952
[SPEAKER_01]: You could just double up devices as well.
36:52.972 --> 36:53.373
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if
36:55.683 --> 36:59.886
[SPEAKER_01]: Zigbee would let you have to... You still have the single points of failure, though.
36:59.946 --> 37:03.608
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think, you know, Z-WaveJS had a Z-WaveJS to MQTT.
37:03.648 --> 37:05.229
[SPEAKER_02]: There's Zigbee to MQTT.
37:05.489 --> 37:16.176
[SPEAKER_02]: But those would still have that single point, like if Zigbee to MQTT goes down, guess you've got multiple MQTT servers, but you still only got the one Zigbee instance, if that makes sense.
37:17.917 --> 37:26.864
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, I guess that it's shifting the point of failure to something that's a bit more reliable like the the scope for
37:28.415 --> 37:43.246
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, your server and your home assistance instance and everything else to file is much greater than an embedded you know, it's behind or whatever base device to file and also the recovery is a bit easier.
37:43.306 --> 37:45.007
[SPEAKER_01]: I pay our cycle and hopefully it comes back.
37:45.328 --> 37:54.835
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and one, I was going to say this is where something like matter actually does a good job, because you can have multi, especially if you're looking at matter with red, you can have multi
37:58.340 --> 38:03.385
[SPEAKER_00]: multiple homelessness instances or homelessness and then Apple HomeKit and whatever, right?
38:03.465 --> 38:09.210
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, have a bunch of them join together and, you know, everything's still going, right?
38:09.591 --> 38:15.697
[SPEAKER_02]: My other thought on your automation state was that global, uh, billion value, which it works, right?
38:15.717 --> 38:17.218
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we've always done that.
38:18.097 --> 38:23.101
[SPEAKER_02]: now I'm wondering if you could make it a little bit easier with labels.
38:23.641 --> 38:29.306
[SPEAKER_02]: So now you could label an automation as, you know, failover or not failover off, right?
38:30.106 --> 38:41.155
[SPEAKER_02]: And instead of having to have that input blend and remember to put in all your automations, you can have just one automation that goes like, okay, I'm now the main instance, any automation that is labeled with this label, turn it on and go opposite.
38:41.715 --> 38:45.078
[SPEAKER_01]: It would let you retrospectively, um,
38:46.448 --> 38:47.448
[SPEAKER_01]: apply this, for sure.
38:48.289 --> 38:58.793
[SPEAKER_01]: Without having to add it all your automations, you can go through give them a tag and then have a watchdog automation that enables, yeah, good approach.
38:58.813 --> 39:00.854
[SPEAKER_02]: Just another way to skin the cat, right?
39:00.874 --> 39:02.614
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the fun thing about home assistant.
39:02.634 --> 39:08.017
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many ways to accomplish the same goal and, you know, not every way, like,
39:11.740 --> 39:12.300
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:12.620 --> 39:23.984
[SPEAKER_01]: The other little trick I'll add around the or the multi-instance thing is you can use the secret stock Yamil file as sort of a pseudo variable.
39:25.185 --> 39:34.048
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can use the you can have all your configs consistent between your two instances and where they need to differ.
39:34.848 --> 39:38.169
[SPEAKER_01]: You put that in a secret instead and then it's just that secret
39:41.292 --> 39:42.859
[SPEAKER_01]: And that, I'll fair that to it quite well.
39:43.333 --> 39:51.697
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of secrets and yam all and you know how you need to keep track of differences, are you using like version control for your automations?
39:52.097 --> 39:52.537
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
39:52.577 --> 39:56.258
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it all goes into a local Git repository.
39:58.079 --> 39:58.980
[SPEAKER_01]: I make the changes.
40:00.320 --> 40:06.923
[SPEAKER_01]: In general, I edit the changes locally and I laptop commit them and then pull them down on the server.
40:07.083 --> 40:08.904
[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm lazy or if I want to do something
40:11.785 --> 40:14.666
[SPEAKER_01]: web interface, then that's fine.
40:14.686 --> 40:22.269
[SPEAKER_01]: I just have to go into the server, commit the local changes and pull them back in to then, you know, commit onto the other machine.
40:23.169 --> 40:28.391
[SPEAKER_01]: But I try and do most of it in separate automation files.
40:29.732 --> 40:30.752
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet it's all stored and get.
40:32.278 --> 40:44.204
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything is still YAMOL and everything is still, like you're not, again, that's, you can do it in the UI, but it's a lot harder to manage.
40:45.145 --> 40:51.828
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the UI still produces, still stored in YAMOL, but still a single YAMOL instead of separate.
40:53.912 --> 40:54.412
[SPEAKER_01]: correct.
40:55.013 --> 41:06.957
[SPEAKER_01]: What I will often do is develop an automation in the UI and once I'm happy with it, move it out of the automations.eml into a dedicated file and that sort of locks it in place.
41:09.418 --> 41:10.419
[SPEAKER_01]: And also keeps that.
41:10.479 --> 41:17.902
[SPEAKER_01]: Automations.eml file to a manageable link as well because that sure, you've got everything in one file that's can get pretty big.
41:18.640 --> 41:18.820
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
41:19.340 --> 41:22.122
[SPEAKER_02]: But you mentioned there that you've got, you're trying to get them into separate automations.
41:22.142 --> 41:29.466
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean you have an automation, like to turn on the living room lights for the main instance and the standby instance.
41:29.486 --> 41:32.868
[SPEAKER_02]: They're two different automations, or they essentially the same automation.
41:33.228 --> 41:33.988
[SPEAKER_01]: Same automation.
41:34.149 --> 41:37.470
[SPEAKER_01]: The all of the automations across the two instances are consistent.
41:37.490 --> 41:40.672
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they, they both pull from the same get repository.
41:46.191 --> 41:53.014
[SPEAKER_01]: The files, based on the room, so, you know, kitchen.ml has all the automations for the kitchen.
41:53.754 --> 41:58.236
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's just to, you know, make it easy to find what you're looking for.
41:58.736 --> 42:01.978
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't have any functional effect on the system.
42:02.138 --> 42:05.799
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, they're both instances run the same suite of automations.
42:06.420 --> 42:14.203
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean when you need to provision a new device, you've essentially got two instances of home misses that you need to go out and provision onto double the workload?
42:14.621 --> 42:21.543
[SPEAKER_01]: it depends so the the matter and the liFX and that sort of thing yep you've got to do it twice is p-home.
42:23.823 --> 42:28.845
[SPEAKER_01]: It detects the new devices and readily and that's makes it easy.
42:29.765 --> 42:35.046
[SPEAKER_01]: I have also found because I've rebuilt the standby system a few times.
42:35.826 --> 42:38.007
[SPEAKER_01]: You can just take a backup of the active system
42:38.907 --> 42:48.544
[SPEAKER_01]: restore that backup into a new install, change the host identifier, and then it'll take across a lot of the provisioning as well.
42:48.885 --> 42:52.210
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a quick and easy way of getting that backup system running again.
42:52.938 --> 42:58.342
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wonder if device ID is make that more simple for you now.
42:58.362 --> 43:15.154
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of relying on entity ID is needing to be the exact same, assuming that the device ID remains consistent between the two instances you could, instead of, yeah, could target the device by ID, instead of having to, it's entity, and then not have to worry about naming conventions as well.
43:15.794 --> 43:19.317
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I haven't had too much drama.
43:19.337 --> 43:20.838
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been pretty, um,
43:24.319 --> 43:38.651
[SPEAKER_01]: strict with how I name devices and in general if I was going to go again I would change my schema a little bit but it's the device type dash the room dash and individual identifier.
43:40.660 --> 43:55.926
[SPEAKER_01]: I think labeling would make that better because you do run into trouble when you move a device to a different room, for example, that can be a bit of a dance to get that straightened out again, whereas changing a label would be
43:57.390 --> 44:24.930
[SPEAKER_01]: much more straightforward but yeah a consistent approach to labeling and also I keep a reasonably tight control on the IP addressing as well so early on came up with an IP plan you know all the lights are going to be in this range of IPs all the smart switches and so that keeps it pretty
44:26.472 --> 44:30.236
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I started that, and then I can't remember what I've decided, and now it's all a mess.
44:30.636 --> 44:40.728
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially with IPs, I'm at the point where, you know, DHCP do your thing, and I don't, uh, get an automatic address, and I don't care past there.
44:42.510 --> 44:43.051
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.
44:43.331 --> 44:47.335
[SPEAKER_01]: I run again on the two home assistant servers.
44:47.815 --> 44:50.678
[SPEAKER_01]: I run, I think it's micro DHCP.
44:51.800 --> 44:57.806
[SPEAKER_01]: That services just the home assistant network and that's one config file.
44:57.846 --> 45:03.572
[SPEAKER_01]: You just, you know, keep it synchronized between the two boxes because they're all static IP addresses.
45:04.292 --> 45:05.193
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter which
45:06.074 --> 45:08.615
[SPEAKER_01]: server hands out the dcp lease.
45:10.216 --> 45:26.522
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, just remember when you provision a new device to go in you know, find it, find it's MAC address, give it a, you know, the production IP address and yeah, yeah, an extra chance a bit of a hassle, but keeps it tidy.
45:27.182 --> 45:27.662
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
45:27.942 --> 45:28.603
[SPEAKER_00]: I know sometimes
45:35.113 --> 45:48.232
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right, and so those those I found to be reliable in homuses and I again this is circa 2016 Right, so it's for it to reliably work in homuses and every time
45:49.288 --> 46:08.447
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to set a DHCP reservation because you can't set a static AP so you just had to set a reservation on those and so it gets to say my piece of homelessness and knows where to look every time right and it's yeah Eli affects us the same they worked much more reliably when they had a fee address and yeah
46:09.868 --> 46:37.903
[SPEAKER_01]: setting them up in home assistant you can use the web and you know discover it or it might even discover it before you tell you you've got a new device and provision but if you chuck that straight into the config.ml as you know here's all your LFIX devices and the IP addresses for them home assistant doesn't have to go hunting it can reference that device directly and it's much more responsive and reliable.
46:38.182 --> 46:40.824
[SPEAKER_02]: What are your future plans to automate?
46:41.184 --> 46:44.306
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the next on the horizon that you're ready to get into?
46:45.907 --> 46:48.369
[SPEAKER_01]: I've probably got a lot of stuff I need to fix up first.
46:48.629 --> 47:01.577
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had a few devices fail, so the smart switch that controls the charging of my wife's car, that failed recently and didn't charge for a few days.
47:02.658 --> 47:03.318
[SPEAKER_02]: Hang on, just on there.
47:03.338 --> 47:07.041
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're using a smart switch to control the flow of energy to the car.
47:07.686 --> 47:16.156
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's only, it's just a standard 10-amp GPO, so it's not a rapid charge charger.
47:17.097 --> 47:19.640
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a plug-in hybrid, so it's only got a small battery anyway.
47:21.442 --> 47:23.844
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was just one of the 15-amp shellies.
47:26.205 --> 47:29.488
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I just got an EV as well.
47:29.808 --> 47:35.974
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm still a bit conscious of putting a smart switch in front of the EV, right?
47:36.034 --> 47:37.295
[SPEAKER_02]: Even on a 10 app as well.
47:38.136 --> 47:39.717
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
47:40.137 --> 47:46.163
[SPEAKER_02]: I just feel as if anything's going to draw around a lot of power through a smart switch.
47:46.183 --> 47:47.364
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be the card charging.
47:47.724 --> 47:50.987
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm last thing I want to do is blow up a smart switch in the garage.
47:51.552 --> 47:55.656
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this one pulls eight apps.
47:55.816 --> 47:57.657
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not horrendously bad.
47:58.658 --> 48:03.983
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, it was one of the breaker form factor Shelley Smart switches.
48:04.463 --> 48:06.004
[SPEAKER_01]: So okay, they're rated to 15.
48:06.785 --> 48:07.626
[SPEAKER_01]: It should have been fine.
48:07.666 --> 48:09.467
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't gone into Diagnos.
48:09.768 --> 48:10.769
[SPEAKER_01]: Why it died?
48:13.090 --> 48:30.047
[SPEAKER_01]: when we put the outlet in, I had a bypass which put in alongside the Shelley because I had a notion that I might use that 15 app outlet for welding as well and I certainly didn't want to put a welder through a smart switch.
48:31.688 --> 48:37.033
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when it died I just hit the bypass and we manually turn it on and off now but I do need to go in and
48:38.142 --> 48:46.186
[SPEAKER_01]: and fix that because otherwise it will cost me money because it will be left on during the peak and that will cost me a squealing dollars.
48:48.488 --> 48:57.532
[SPEAKER_01]: Also coming into summer I need to fix up the roller shutters as well again that the shelly controllers that are wearing the wall.
48:57.872 --> 48:58.793
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're going to be hot.
48:59.093 --> 49:00.274
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not there fault they were.
49:01.034 --> 49:05.817
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in a small enclosure, in a brick wall, yeah, just cook the capacitors.
49:06.317 --> 49:08.498
[SPEAKER_02]: So these are the external roller shutters outside?
49:08.698 --> 49:09.819
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:10.199 --> 49:16.102
[SPEAKER_02]: So, did you when you got those installed, did you go like any particular brand that you wanted to be able to automate?
49:16.122 --> 49:21.905
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you just found, like Catgo's certain company, like get by now you're going to work with my
49:24.104 --> 49:27.126
[SPEAKER_01]: No, so we went with just the straight mains powered.
49:27.226 --> 49:34.951
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they come with a dumb switch and then I retrofitted a smart controller behind the switch.
49:35.171 --> 49:42.255
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's part of the problem is that it's had to fit into the cavity in the wall and so they just got hot.
49:43.136 --> 49:49.540
[SPEAKER_01]: So they need to be not dangerously hot, just hot enough to dry out the capacitors and have them fail.
49:50.593 --> 49:56.377
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I think when I reinstate them, I'll stand to switch off the wall a bit and give it a bit more.
49:57.338 --> 49:58.279
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, flow space.
49:58.619 --> 49:58.899
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:59.460 --> 50:02.942
[SPEAKER_00]: You could even do like a while while it's extender and maybe put a couple of holes in there.
50:02.962 --> 50:03.863
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the idea.
50:03.963 --> 50:05.104
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:05.164 --> 50:05.304
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:06.005 --> 50:18.454
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so yeah, just I haven't got anything you or want to automate for the time being, but I do have a lot of sort of home automation maintenance to do to fix up stuff that was working and now has died.
50:20.988 --> 50:27.511
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that's what you find with running those multiple instances, though, that the maintenance is double the work then.
50:29.631 --> 50:36.094
[SPEAKER_01]: Not really, although the standby one does tend to not get as much love.
50:36.834 --> 50:41.656
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it might take me a while to get new devices provisioned in the secondary system.
50:44.117 --> 50:47.198
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's offline at the moment because I moved the the computer.
50:49.417 --> 50:52.379
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's good for upgrades.
50:52.399 --> 50:54.921
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've tracked the latest release pretty closely.
50:55.922 --> 51:12.155
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can upgrade the standby system first, make sure it's going to work, catch any automations that don't, or folks that get raised before I can then do the main system.
51:12.495 --> 51:16.018
[SPEAKER_01]: So that improves the overall reliability, the system quite a lot, I think.
51:19.577 --> 51:30.264
[SPEAKER_01]: it reduces the instances of 3am madly trying to get on your assistant back up so that, you know, the lights are going to work for the rest of the family when they wake up.
51:30.784 --> 51:36.708
[SPEAKER_01]: If the upgrade breaks, all right, I'm going to bed, you know, it's still going to work in the morning.
51:39.135 --> 51:52.444
[SPEAKER_01]: I also run home assistant at my parents' place and at my sister's place as well, although much less extensively, that's my only just temperature tracking and yeah.
51:52.644 --> 51:55.446
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like a lot of IT help.
51:56.387 --> 51:59.609
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it got easier when I set up a VPN between it.
51:59.689 --> 52:01.190
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:03.370 --> 52:13.897
[SPEAKER_02]: So are you the master of those instances as well, or are your parents accessing home assistance, your sister accessing home assistant?
52:14.457 --> 52:15.018
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah.
52:15.038 --> 52:21.382
[SPEAKER_01]: So they've all got full admin on, you know, they can make automations and whatever else.
52:21.922 --> 52:25.244
[SPEAKER_01]: First, first they don't.
52:25.264 --> 52:29.687
[SPEAKER_01]: They, they tend not to get to involved in them.
52:33.616 --> 52:40.029
[SPEAKER_01]: have an ongoing frustration with my sisters where, you know, she'll buy a smart device without
52:41.707 --> 52:44.169
[SPEAKER_01]: inquiring whether it's home assistant or not.
52:45.150 --> 52:55.318
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's happy just to get Google home to manage or to have five different apps to control her stuff.
52:55.578 --> 52:57.820
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a little part of you die every time that happens.
52:58.040 --> 52:59.321
[SPEAKER_02]: It does, yes.
53:00.342 --> 53:04.245
[SPEAKER_01]: Really frustrating, but yeah, it's her house, she can do what she wants with it.
53:04.265 --> 53:04.886
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just trying to help.
53:07.643 --> 53:09.151
[SPEAKER_01]: the alarm for the folks.
53:09.211 --> 53:10.899
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a connected alarm as well.
53:12.635 --> 53:35.973
[SPEAKER_01]: that's quite good and again gives them a bit more peace of mind because it's going to alert remotely to their phones and I do plan to hook up an SMS service tool as well so that it can alert my sister and my brother who art on home assistant or art using the app on my
53:39.965 --> 53:46.632
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you go to hook that up, you do that from home assistant, we're going to do that from the connected support, like moving in it.
53:46.672 --> 53:52.597
[SPEAKER_01]: No, there is an integration for home assistant to do SMS notifications.
53:52.637 --> 53:53.558
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a paid service.
53:53.658 --> 53:55.840
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not terribly expensive.
53:56.421 --> 54:01.085
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, twenty or thirty dollars a year for the minimum number of messages.
54:02.367 --> 54:03.428
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the most straightforward.
54:04.455 --> 54:10.897
[SPEAKER_02]: There's one called Browler, I think, to it, which is like a system that can fan out notifications right?
54:10.917 --> 54:25.981
[SPEAKER_02]: So you could have it send an notification to you and then it would know, okay, for you, I can use Push Bullet or WhatsApp and then for your brother, it would know, I need to give him an SMS, so that could be an option to just to wrap traffic the right way, right, or reduce cost somehow.
54:26.721 --> 54:30.542
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess SMS at six cents, you know, seven cents, who really?
54:31.124 --> 54:35.688
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's a, yeah, everyone's got SMS and I would, it's, it's true.
54:35.788 --> 54:38.750
[SPEAKER_00]: It's guaranteed to reach a cell phone, right?
54:38.770 --> 54:39.551
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, oh, yeah.
54:39.791 --> 54:41.072
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I mean, there's an engine, whatever.
54:42.239 --> 54:57.588
[SPEAKER_01]: I have started playing with AI a little bit, not with home assistant, but I will probably at some point look at pointing, um, I've got a local, local machine, uh, point dad at home assistant and see what I can do there.
54:58.108 --> 55:04.351
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a bit mindful about making it reliant on something that can pull, you know, 600 watts
55:06.773 --> 55:10.038
[SPEAKER_01]: as being an integral part of my home automation system.
55:10.799 --> 55:13.163
[SPEAKER_01]: That's probably not sustainable, but...
55:14.348 --> 55:22.151
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, getting it to review automations and configs, I think we'll be in interesting use for it.
55:22.531 --> 55:38.497
[SPEAKER_02]: I've had, like, even just before we jumped on this call, I had an automation that I was buggy, and I just asked, you know, like, hey, I'm looking at these lights that on, wait, they turn off, and it would go straight in, find the package automation, be like, yep, in this line, it wasn't,
55:39.157 --> 55:42.498
[SPEAKER_02]: accounting for the TV being an unavailable state when you're looking for an off state.
55:42.558 --> 55:47.559
[SPEAKER_02]: I've updated that, made it back up, rebooted it, and now the automations fixed, right?
55:47.579 --> 55:57.382
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just, it's amazing how intricate they can get into the deep into the weeds of your automations and and find the exact bug that it needs to.
55:57.802 --> 55:59.463
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that using Claude or,
56:00.363 --> 56:11.294
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm using Hermes with which is backed by OpenAI's GPT 5-6 sluner, yep, so yeah.
56:11.394 --> 56:24.647
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't gotten too deep into the agents, you know, so OpenClaw or Hermes or anything like that, I'm still rocking OpenWebUI and I Lama and trying to
56:26.157 --> 56:29.039
[SPEAKER_01]: build an agent type arrangement with that.
56:29.179 --> 56:35.762
[SPEAKER_01]: Because mainly because the overall integration with open UI is quite nice.
56:35.862 --> 56:39.724
[SPEAKER_01]: It plugs into my authentic single sign-on system.
56:40.064 --> 56:49.789
[SPEAKER_01]: It's multi-user all that sort of thing makes it really nice and I have a plan to roll that out at work as well in a similar type of thing.
56:50.550 --> 56:52.891
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got issues with data sovereignty at work.
56:52.951 --> 56:53.752
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't be throwing
56:54.855 --> 56:58.596
[SPEAKER_01]: customer configs or whatever into an online model.
56:58.636 --> 57:02.217
[SPEAKER_01]: But if we've got something in the office, then crack on.
57:02.397 --> 57:16.400
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of my dev work at home, bleed through into my hands, work, haven't got home assistant at the office yet, but you know, the meeting rooms are prime for he were there, yes, yeah, a bit of automation.
57:17.953 --> 57:23.195
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a speaking of kind of having multi-user LLM that kind of thing.
57:23.875 --> 57:36.499
[SPEAKER_00]: Network Chuck actually is a really good video on how he kind of did that at, I mean, for him at home, where his kids have access to certain things where he has instructions for like, hey, help them with their homework, but don't do it for them.
57:36.519 --> 57:38.360
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, that kind of stuff.
57:38.660 --> 57:45.963
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're looking for tips on that front too, to get a little more intricate into that, he's got a great video around that.
57:48.288 --> 57:52.893
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's a huge area for expansion.
57:53.033 --> 58:06.527
[SPEAKER_01]: I've recently just, yeah, I do geo-lingo to try and learn Spanish and it's good, but I, on a whim asked my assistant if it spoke Spanish, which obviously does, and we had a half-hour conversation.
58:06.788 --> 58:07.769
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was, that's awesome.
58:08.632 --> 58:27.762
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was interactive enough to keep you engaged with, but also able to adjust its, its responses to my level, you know, I'm not particularly fluent or good and it didn't feel like it was too.
58:30.324 --> 58:34.305
[SPEAKER_01]: you know how you're lingo's reading from a script or something like that.
58:34.405 --> 58:39.607
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels I can't think of the word but um, or rather natural, right?
58:39.627 --> 58:48.050
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this was a much more, yeah, we were talking about red dead redemption and, you know, stuff, stuff you were talking about.
58:48.070 --> 58:54.312
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, more natural, even though it's still a machine, but it was an engaging conversation, not an artificial conversation.
58:55.285 --> 59:04.305
[SPEAKER_01]: And so using that, not just for learning a language, but for all sorts of things, I think is a huge area that's gonna take off.
59:04.686 --> 59:05.227
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
59:06.779 --> 59:09.420
[SPEAKER_02]: Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today.
59:10.441 --> 59:12.982
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll leave links to some of the products I connected.
59:13.282 --> 59:14.543
[SPEAKER_02]: In the show knows if you want to check them out.
59:15.143 --> 59:15.983
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but thank you.
59:16.284 --> 59:17.284
[SPEAKER_02]: And apologies again.
59:17.544 --> 59:23.407
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember you signed like you was sort of a submission in ages ago and we just missed you on the wedding list.
59:23.427 --> 59:25.188
[SPEAKER_02]: So we finally got you here.
59:25.228 --> 59:26.289
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for being us again.
59:26.629 --> 59:27.109
[SPEAKER_01]: No problem of