Brewing With Home Assistant: From Modbus PIDs to ESPHome Fermentation Control with Greg Martin

[SPEAKER_04]: Hello and welcome to the home Mrs. and podcast. [SPEAKER_04]: My name's Phil. [SPEAKER_04]: Join me as usual. [SPEAKER_04]: I've got Rohan. [SPEAKER_04]: How do you doing mate? [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, good, how are you? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, good, thank you. [SPEAKER_04]: And today we've got Greg with us. [SPEAKER_04]: Hey mate, how are you doing? [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, do Greg, good to see you guys. [SPEAKER_04]: As we show this podcast is sponsored by Homestead Cloud by Nabukasa.

[SPEAKER_04]: For a small 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 gamble needed. [SPEAKER_04]: It also supports the development of home assistant, ESP home, and other open home foundation projects. [SPEAKER_04]: Click the link in the description to learn more.

[SPEAKER_04]: We'd also like to give a shout out to our Patreon members, including our executive producers, Benny and Rob. [SPEAKER_04]: You can help support this show and get early access to episodes, all in an ad-free feed. [SPEAKER_04]: To support the show, check out our checkout home assistant.fm and click Patreon in the menu. [SPEAKER_04]: Great, thank you so much for joining us today. [SPEAKER_04]: Tell us whereabouts in the world are you coming from?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I live in a small town called [SPEAKER_00]: Philadelphia and about 80 miles east of New York City. [SPEAKER_04]: Nice. [SPEAKER_04]: Um, and how long have you been using climate system for, but when was your, when did you start using climate? [SPEAKER_00]: Probably started with homocystin around 2019 or early in 2020. [SPEAKER_00]: I went, uh, it was, it's long, long, smart home journey when I was actually when I was a teenager.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wound up with this copy of Texas Instruments had a book of their TTL chips, which were like the original logic chips, they built a lot of these PCs from. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember looking at it, trying to like, how would I design a calendar that I could use to time when I need to get up and turn on the water? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it was this thought, random thought that I had no idea how to do any of it. [SPEAKER_00]: But I remember having that thought like way back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is, like, it's before, like, X 10 days, like, we. [SPEAKER_00]: X 10 was probably around my deal was we were broke. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to have, I could read about whatever I wanted. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I couldn't actually touch anything, right? [SPEAKER_00]: But I took one to high school, high school, for high school and took electronics, the bat.

[SPEAKER_00]: one of the near-force, and through them, went to college, got a degree in computer science, and like many, many, many years later, got to the point where I wanted to start doing some home automation things. [SPEAKER_00]: Nice. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I started with homosystem and a virtual box.

[SPEAKER_00]: or sorry, in virtual box in VM and had some real weird issues with that and about the time that the blue got announced, which I think was like, I thought it was the end of 2020, but it might have been later in the next year. [SPEAKER_00]: But I ordered that right away and I moved over to that, I've been on that ever since.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: what's sitting behind me now is a mini PC that I need to migrate to because I keep crashing the blue when I compile some complicated ESPN binary. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so it's been a long journey to getting there, but you know, it's been, it's been kind of fun. [SPEAKER_03]: I absolutely love it, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it sounds like you have a background in electronics too, which is I guess I've [SPEAKER_03]: You know, enjoying home automation and doing things yourself, right, DIY, kind of deal. [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Why don't we talk about that for a second? [SPEAKER_03]: What, so you're doing some complicated stuff on ESP home? [SPEAKER_03]: What, what kind of stuff are you building? [SPEAKER_03]: What are you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: a couple of years ago, I have a pretty good friend who's a professional brewer, so I've been home brewing beer for, I don't know, ten or twelve years and know him from the local brewery that he opened, and he has since left there, but he came to me, I think it was like the beginning of 21, no, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he brought, um, I don't know if you ever seen these little, um, [SPEAKER_00]: these pid controllers, a lot of breweries use these to control temperature for tanks, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's great, except you got to be standing in front of it in order to do anything, even read it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, hey, can we read these remotely?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're... [SPEAKER_00]: I look at it and it has Mod bus on it, which, you know, it's an old school automation protocol for industrial automation protocol. [SPEAKER_00]: And we, you know, set them away in two weeks later, taxidim and sad I, you know, I learned enough about Mod bus to be able to set the temperature, [SPEAKER_00]: right as the electronics world fell off the cliff. [SPEAKER_00]: You remember that? [SPEAKER_00]: We couldn't buy a thing right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so he was working to install this at somebody's brewery and he couldn't buy control.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like nothing happened. [SPEAKER_00]: So a year later he comes walking in with another one and he says, can you make this one work? [SPEAKER_00]: And the same thing was my most, but it worked differently. [SPEAKER_00]: same thing got to work and we actually deployed that a couple years ago into a brewery nearby and they were our testbed for a year and then he wanted me to do it at the brewery. [SPEAKER_00]: He was working at but he wanted to do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: without those controllers. [SPEAKER_00]: So I built something all with ESP home. [SPEAKER_00]: That uses one wire, temperature probes, and you just control, oh yeah, through a control of 24 volt DC valve that open the clothes of glycoct, coolant. [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, so I learned to do that a couple different ways, but I'd never used the SP on before that. [SPEAKER_00]: So that was a fun time. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was all through through 2024.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had left my prior employment at the end of 2023. [SPEAKER_00]: And since they asked me to leave, there was a lot of severance and gloves. [SPEAKER_00]: So I spent 20, 24, not working and getting paid. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I used it. [SPEAKER_00]: I invested all that time into this. [SPEAKER_00]: And I [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it was, it was very interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we wound up with a product that we use, I mean, there's this manufacturer in China that makes these great, ESP32 devices. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that will hold, that will run 16 tanks. [SPEAKER_00]: And, and so we have installed in, I don't know, I'm with total five breweries now. [SPEAKER_00]: And this has been, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing. [SPEAKER_00]: temperature control now, we're starting to do gravity.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they make these devices that it's show and tell time. [SPEAKER_00]: They make these devices that you put in the tank. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're sensitive enough, the accelerometer sensitive enough to measure changes in liquid density. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we can pick that up and use this blue tooth come down at the top of the tank. [SPEAKER_00]: We picked that up with a blue tooth proxy, reported back the homo system. [SPEAKER_00]: They get that on their dashboard too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we've done a pressure thing as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So we can do, we can help him control pressure and fermentation, which is a whole other thing. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so I spent today trying to get some old, very old proximity sensors working on a project that I'm working for a small home-brewed shop here, and finally got that working today. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's very interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Some refurbishing it for them. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to get these.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're just photoelectric cells that essentially are silenced, they relate. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, it looks pretty interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I do a lot of that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's just my home and the home stuff is just this complicated, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So let's go see, you've made a whole business out of this. [SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like it's a nice, like, like you said. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, hey, I'm not working anyways.

[SPEAKER_03]: Might as well do something productive with that. [SPEAKER_03]: You learn to new skill and you're not a new skill. [SPEAKER_03]: I guess you had the skill, but it's specific application of that skill, because you knew electronics, but you didn't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was in absolute new when I touched this, like I, I know some concepts, but, you know, every step of the way was a question and, you know, you asked going to his be on this court and you just, I always feel stupid if they're not that they're trying is like, I should have read that too, you know, it's just sometimes it's bad, but there's a lot there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's, you know, we do it, we my goal.

[SPEAKER_00]: So these small, I don't know what you know about the US brewing industry. [SPEAKER_00]: But in the 70s, we're like 50 breweries in the United States and as a five years ago, they were like nine thousand, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So this crap, crap beer, just exploded. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're starting to numbers are starting to consolidate a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: But these small brewers have no data about their beer if they don't collect it manually.

[SPEAKER_00]: right so they can get the temperature and that's great. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to give them a chart that showed them the temperature right and if something happens over the weekend they don't happen to be there because it's a small brewery and they might want to be off on the weekend. [SPEAKER_00]: They get alert that says hey something happened and the same thing with a gravity like they go in every day and they test it. [SPEAKER_00]: And like, what if we just recorded it for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Would that be close enough for what you need? [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, just trying to give these brewers data so that they can understand why the quality of their beer is the way that it is, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of them, they just think they got to spend $100,000 to get this data and we're trying to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: an order of magnitude less than that. [SPEAKER_00]: No, two orders of magnitude less than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we really want to make this accessible. [SPEAKER_00]: Now I can only work in Eastern Pennsylvania because that's as far as I'm willing to, you know, no, I love the travel, but I can't support it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, but it's, you know, it's, it's been fun. [SPEAKER_04]: So when you're going ahead and going into that face breweries, are you installing a local assistant instance in the brewery as well, like running in a office somewhere that then connects to all these sensors, or have you got like a master, no, somewhere on your premises that feeds it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the way that I do it is we put in a, you know, a water [SPEAKER_00]: water sent, not sent to the box, I helped me on the whole thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I created box. [SPEAKER_00]: Water resistant box. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And in that box, I'm out this controller and I'm out on a homeless, homeless system, instance, our income assistant. [SPEAKER_00]: I've been using yellow, whatever, whatever works.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever other electronics and power stuff that we need. [SPEAKER_00]: There's usually a smart switch in there so I can restart some things. [SPEAKER_00]: And it gets connected with ethernet. [SPEAKER_00]: I put a little box, usually above the tanks, that has a small ESP device in it, that can do the proxy stuff, but I also connect the tanks up to that because one wire is a little sensitive with very long distances and disparate.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not easy to work with, but [SPEAKER_00]: But it's, it's nice to stay alone then I run POE to that from the box that we've put in. [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's a little bit of like hub and satellite thing, but they get a full standalone instance. [SPEAKER_00]: Their data is on that box. [SPEAKER_00]: Make course it's backed up. [SPEAKER_00]: They have their own cloud, not because of cloud account. [SPEAKER_00]: So it can be accessed remotely.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the only thing that's cloud in this, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We want the data to be there. [SPEAKER_00]: We want everything to be locally. [SPEAKER_00]: And I tell them, if you want to take this over, it's yours. [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't want me around anymore, you can take it and run it. [SPEAKER_00]: All your data is right there. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not locking you in there any minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: So fortunately, you guys aren't available to take that business always, you need to find a good home assistant if you want to do it, but it's absolutely there. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want to play those games. [SPEAKER_00]: I want it to be open to them and accessible and whatever works.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's felt like, and so I know we're recording this, and I think a couple of weeks ago, home is announced the stopping production of the home, Mrs. and Yellow, have you decided or are you thinking about what hardware then you'll replace the yellow with? [SPEAKER_04]: Would you go to something like a green or is that not powerful enough for what?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what I run into is, for some devices, [SPEAKER_00]: the configs complicated enough that it can crash the, if there's not enough RAM. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I was just thinking about this the other day. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's, I'm gonna go to the mini PC route, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Cause these little, I don't have a bealing that I picked up from Amazon. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can put a gigs of RAM and it now will be more than enough for what I need.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think, [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, and that was the beauty of the yellow was I could get a, I could get a PICM, I'd see them for, they came on it and, and I knew I wouldn't have an issue, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, yeah, so, uh, we, and we haven't decided, but I have to decide shortly because I have another install starting next week. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's cool. [SPEAKER_04]: And how does the process look like for an install?

[SPEAKER_04]: Like, are you then go out to a brewery and say, OK, we've got, you'll have to see I'm not a beer drinker, so I don't have the terminology, but you've got, if you tanks here, I can need to put up these controllers here. [SPEAKER_04]: I can go into the office here and it's run POE. [SPEAKER_04]: Like, are you doing a full end to end install or are you looking at what existing infrastructure they've got and then time that into home, Mr. Yeah.

[UNKNOWN]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: That first brewery, we tied into their existing Pid controllers. [SPEAKER_00]: And I could do that and retrofit. [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is that each of those controllers then require some research to make sure I know how to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of effort. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And plus, we try to stay current on homosystem.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the reason I have this one here is because I just took it off with my test then since it's not over here, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Attached to an old pie four. [SPEAKER_00]: So if I do a different device, I'm going to need a copy here. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it gets pretty complicated. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'd rather just install from scratch. [SPEAKER_00]: And so typically the process is I show up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do a walk through a site, I do a site visit and get some sense of distances and work with them to figure out we're going to put the main box, I'll need power there and I'll need an ethernet drop there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll offer to do that if we need to. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not an installer, that's not what I did in my career, but these breweries pretty easy going typically. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, once they do that, I come back for a couple of weeks, do some work, anything set up, probably get 50% of the set up done from, you know, the back inside, and then go on site and start hanging things and, you know, running wires, it could be more efficient, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I was going to a place that, [SPEAKER_00]: was six to your 70 miles away, I'm gonna do a lot more upfront here. [SPEAKER_00]: So when I'm not due to, and making 100 trips over there, they're just gonna cost money that's not gonna get reimbursed, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, so yeah, but I do the whole thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do the whole thing myself, hang the boxes, run the wires, make the connections, and then when they're, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, typically I'll ask for one tank that I can work with. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when they're comfortable, that that's working, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because the thing is, it's their beer and if it gets ruined, it's their money, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's all I'm, yeah, I need their trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, hey, here's the app, here's what it looks like. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to cut this tank over, you know, play with it, maybe use water, whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: And so make sure that it's working, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we can move forward with cutting the other tanks. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not a long process, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Literally, I'm removing temperature probes, swap temperature probes, and then I need to make two connections in the valve up top.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but yeah, I'm absolutely doing it myself, which is, [SPEAKER_00]: going to limit how successful I'll be at that. [SPEAKER_04]: No, but as long as you're passionate about it, I only have as long as it's, you know, I think you say you're retired now, so, you know, you can now, you know, this is literally some beer money for you, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Like you can go around there, you know, put these in tanks and also keep up with, you know, the latest things in ESP home and home assistant. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's fantastic. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we're enjoying it. [SPEAKER_00]: The people in the brewing industry tend to be good people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the best part is you get to know somebody new or they're passionate about, share some, maybe share a recipe with them, you know, talk about what the brewing and why they want to and it's just, you know, it's fun. [SPEAKER_00]: They're good people and you know, fun to be around. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk about your home a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I mean, you're doing all this stuff out for other people. [SPEAKER_03]: What are you doing for yourself? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so probably everything. [SPEAKER_00]: So when I'm probably somewhere around 2015, this is how I really got in the... [SPEAKER_00]: system. [SPEAKER_00]: One of my employees, you know, we were systems engineer. [SPEAKER_00]: So I ran a small day at the center, had a team of engineers working for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the engineers was a big, um, [SPEAKER_00]: just really into this stuff, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There were only a couple of us that were actually geeks and everybody else had a day job, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: But he and I were and so he comes in one day and he shows me his Keevo lock. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you remember these things. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yep. [SPEAKER_00]: It were these Bluetooth locks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you would, you walked up and as long as your phone was nearby, touched it in about seven out of 10 times what I'm locked to door. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, well, this is fabulous. [SPEAKER_00]: I gotta get this. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I did in my, or very early one night, my wife loved it. [SPEAKER_00]: Cause you know, you're always either kids with it, you've got grocery, you've got something you're coming through the door and you're right to share.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's just great. [SPEAKER_00]: And I had to pull out a key. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that really got me passing about that. [SPEAKER_00]: So, as that was doing okay, I at some point invested in the smart things hub and bought a slage lock that was Z-Wave and we got that on the front door and then we could do Geofencing. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was like the really key, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's fairly safe, right, live, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: If people want to come in, they'll come in through the window. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, it's just the brick is the most decaying in all places. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly right. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, so, you know, the Slade's Lock, and now we're using yellow locks, but it's the same thing. [SPEAKER_00]: We get a half a block away.

[SPEAKER_00]: They allowed you to shrink that home zone last year, which was great, because it used to be a block away. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we're literally within like two house with the door locks, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And that's just perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: That's just perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: The door is open and the dog's nowhere home. [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's just one of the winds I've been able to do recently is similar, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Like we have realink cameras and doorbells around the house. [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, with the integration with home assistant, you can actually detect when a person is in the frame of the camera. [SPEAKER_04]: So now when our phone has just been marked as home and as soon as a person gets seen by the camera, then the door is locked. [SPEAKER_04]: as opposed to, you know, like, because that radius thing, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Like if we're just driving past and we're just hitting that radius. [SPEAKER_04]: Sure. [SPEAKER_04]: You double the door to unlock and then lock again, right? [SPEAKER_04]: This way it's with a double surety that someone's at the front of the house in either front door and have just arrived. [SPEAKER_04]: So then open it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like that, like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they've done a lot of that real link.

[SPEAKER_00]: integration I have a I have four five railing cameras around I don't have I don't use a doorbell can we actually don't have a functioning doorbell we have two corgis and there are functioning doorbell. [SPEAKER_00]: That's your doorbell. [SPEAKER_00]: They know before we get close so yeah we turned it off five years ago and it hasn't been back on. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, you say you want to make a global like you don't need. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's right.

[SPEAKER_04]: You just, yes, they don't need to push about. [SPEAKER_03]: They are way more expensive than a regular doorbell though. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, they are way more good. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, just today is a matter of act. [SPEAKER_00]: So, so yes, and the other my other, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: trigger at the beginning. [SPEAKER_00]: So we live in this 120 year old house. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's brick house, it's two stories, it's squares.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's 20 windows in it. [SPEAKER_00]: And literally back in the late 90s, early 2000s, my wife kept single candles and all the windows. [SPEAKER_00]: And she would walk around every evening and turn that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she'd walk around every night of bedtime and turn them off. [SPEAKER_00]: And like the moment she did it, I thought, gosh, it's got to be an easier way. [SPEAKER_00]: And I went through like, well, can we run one circuit through the house? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, search things, literally nothing, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing you can do. [SPEAKER_00]: But then, you know, we have smart things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now I can buy these smart outlets, or I can get a bulb, whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was one of the first things I did was automate those lights. [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't use those anymore, but we still have lots of decoration lights, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: There's, you know, lights on the string lights out in the patio. [SPEAKER_00]: There's some between the two houses with our friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's various candles around the house. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's all automated as well. [SPEAKER_04]: You're saying candles and I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_04]: Are you like, you go, you're watching these candles and then putting them out. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I like your candles. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this candle sticks, they, yeah, let's try. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, how old are you? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not that old.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not that old. [SPEAKER_00]: That's, yeah, I'm sorry about that. [SPEAKER_00]: But yes, in those two things, you know, really got us really got me started, you know, trying to make it, really trying to make her life easier. [SPEAKER_00]: She's not always appreciated, but I'm trying to make her life easier, right? [SPEAKER_00]: She just says, that's not really a problem.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't mind doing that, but yeah, it comes a problem when they're not turned off their right, like, and then you go, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you just want to go to bed because you're tired, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Can I clock every night? [SPEAKER_00]: And all goes out. [SPEAKER_00]: So I love it. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: So I think, good.

[SPEAKER_04]: Have you, um, with the window, you see your 20 or windows, you automatically blinds as well, yet? [SPEAKER_00]: So no, um, that's really expensive. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: You guys know. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're not cheap. [SPEAKER_00]: And, [SPEAKER_00]: And so, we've not even discussed that. [SPEAKER_00]: Most of our blinds don't move, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the blinds and our bedroom move, because we like it dark. [SPEAKER_00]: And so they go down that night.

[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the blinds around the house are 40% down, maybe 50, and they just stay that way, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So we don't do a lot of up and down on blinds. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, there's really been no need to go after that. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, in my heart, I wanna do it, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, from that perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and from that perspective that like the heat and cooling thing, we've got to replace the windows before we do that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So, and the windows are being replaced next month. [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, we're getting there finally. [SPEAKER_00]: But, yeah, so it's just not, it's just not better to think for us. [SPEAKER_00]: The thing, one of the things I remember, I went back, so when I started thinking about homelessness, I started listening to this podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, probably in 2020.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I went back to the very beginning and listened to everything and so I could just be exposed with all. [SPEAKER_00]: And you talked a lot about templates back then. [SPEAKER_00]: You brought up templates all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, so when I finally got into it, so I'm looking at it, it's like, wow, this is like, [SPEAKER_00]: It's far in language, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it really is getting into India, but what I found is the power in the data in that you can get to with templates and some with helpers, but with templates is just amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: So we were talking before the show that I've got one of these smart plugs on my [SPEAKER_00]: around the shell, there's a big hole in the middle of it when it rains the water goes in the hole. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the pump has to be working, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the sum, I actually, I have it set up to tell me how many times it's run today, how many times it's run this week. [SPEAKER_00]: And it just gives me a sense of confidence that it's working. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I, you know, and I do that with, [SPEAKER_00]: the humidifier down there that's like it's all asked the humidifier, but it's just in the basement. [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to know how much energy is it using and how often is running?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, because I mean, not that I know what the weather is, but you can really tell by looking at that, you know, what's going on? [SPEAKER_00]: It's a gasp and really dry that the humidifier's not run in a week, you know, so.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and also like, if you're not seeing those power spikes, that could be, you know, maybe it's failed, maybe you need to replace it, you know, before it becomes an issue, especially in these devices that are generally [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was I was and you know as we're talking I thought I need to look at the power use when they run and alert if it exceeds that right because that's when you know a motor's gone bad. [SPEAKER_00]: And like the sum absolutely should have that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting one recently was so if you heard of AI on the edge. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a open source project that you can install on the SP32 with camera and you mount it over a meter, people use over gas and electric and water.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so our water is not [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it is electronically gathered. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to access and I imagine it's some sort of tunable radio I could do, but I went down this path, and so I've got an old, uh, an old oatmeal container, camera mounted on the end of it, and it's recording the water. [SPEAKER_00]: It's doing really well. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been six months, it's remarkably reliable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once you get like tuning it is a real bear, but once you get it working, it's just pretty reliable. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, a couple weeks ago, my neighbor text me, he says, hey, the water was running on the plant and the backyard. [SPEAKER_00]: I went over and shut off just when you know that, you know, I might have shut off more vows than you want. [SPEAKER_00]: And so my wife's a big gardener in our backyard is absolutely beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she'd been on watering that day and you know, that's the hose partially on watering plant. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been dry, so it really needed it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was on for hours. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that next day, and it didn't happen again, but the next day, I'm sitting on my couch, how about 100 gallons an hour? [SPEAKER_00]: If I exceed 100 gallons an hour, tell me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and it doesn't even have to exceed it, it just has to be on that rate to exceed it. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I could do that because I have the data, [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't take that much, you know, it's a little bit of yamble. [SPEAKER_00]: It's if the rate is over on our gowns an hour, tell me about it because we don't want to need that right. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's actually kind of cool. [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't, I wouldn't have thought to do something like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I've actually been thinking about that too, about monitoring my water and just, you know, pulling that data in and what have you ready to get? [SPEAKER_03]: This is not like a, I need this or like whatever, but just it might be nice to see. [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the, I was, and that's actually why I know of the project is because I know quite a few folks are doing that for water.

[SPEAKER_03]: But, well, it turns out that in my region where we are, we can parent the smart meters, you can read through it, uh, just getting us offered to find radio, whatever, and we had Gavin Campbell on the show. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a little bit like there was some of that, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, and Gavin Gavin lives not too far from him. [SPEAKER_03]: He was like, yeah, I got the new meter. [SPEAKER_03]: It's awesome.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, yeah, I didn't and I don't have it. [SPEAKER_03]: So, but so, and so, but yeah, so we, I've been looking at that, but my meter has like a little like, [SPEAKER_03]: Um, I don't know, triangle or something like that that turns, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It is like the faster that triangle turns to faster. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the more water you use it, but that to me doesn't translate to like, like, how fast it's how is that all it shows you, it's not showing any output.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have the numbers, like it should be the number two, but I never thought to like clock it right like do a death between like I don't know like minute one and minute two and then I don't know like well every kind of they are on the edge every you could set it but say every five minutes it feeds in what what the number is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then it's pretty simple, yamble to say, you know, if, in fact, it might actually report a rate and I just, I don't recall a fan, it might actually report the rate, because it knows how often the health assets are running, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So it may already report that, but it's a, you know, once you have the data and this is really what I've learned, like I want everything in there. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want everything in there because if I want to ask a question or want to solve a problem, I want to know the data's already there. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I want to be able to go, oh, I already have this. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me go find some way to do to make it work, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a very cool project and that's a cool, uh, cool way you're doing it, too. [SPEAKER_03]: I really like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm always astounded by [SPEAKER_00]: and the pollution that people have. [SPEAKER_00]: And are just willing to just put it out there and do it, I just love that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a great, it's a great, there's so many cool little things that are running in the house that are detecting the birds in the backyard from the feed of your camera. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's your RTSP feed. [SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: My wife loves you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, now you see what's in the yard every day, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I know we've just been talking about what of valve controllers, but I do want to inject and say, if you're looking to upgrade a smart home, you can't go past the zoos. [SPEAKER_04]: So it's just released their brand new Z-wave long-range siren and chime. [SPEAKER_04]: There's that a C-50 800 LR, which you might remember Agnes teasing when she was here a few months ago.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can trigger audio and visual LED alarms based on smart sensors or other conditions, and the audio speaker plays your own file for personalized automation, or there's a section in the preloaded library. [SPEAKER_04]: Zeus are an official works with home assistant partner, helping Nubbukasa by providing long-range sensors for testing their new home-sync connect ZWA to radio.

[SPEAKER_04]: Zeus offer a range of innovative and affordable devices, including water leak sensors, water valve controllers, and smart plugs. [SPEAKER_04]: Their new Zen 78 high-power really allows their controls and monitor higher load appliances, up to 40 amps, which is perfect for pool pumps, air compressors, and other high-power outlets. [SPEAKER_04]: For the best prices on all the Zeus products head over to the smartesthouse.com.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's the smartesthouse.com and great just talking like there's a few products that you might be able to leverage to, right? [SPEAKER_04]: I can imagine a high-powered app controller there, like looking at some pump or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I am currently [SPEAKER_00]: So, this controller, I told you, I should have did it for one, this is King Coney, is that manufacturer in China that makes these great devices, but they have one just for power monitoring and it has 30 inputs and so I've got 15 installed and I've got 30 lines. [SPEAKER_00]: I got about 15 about a month and a half ago and got busy and so I'm absolutely gonna monitor every line in that box.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than retrofit the whole thing with yeah, I'd love the retrofet up, but that's just too much money But yeah, they're we're starting to do some of that in the brewery work, too I recently automated a free-phase pump [SPEAKER_00]: For the breweries so that it would operate both automatically based on temperature or manually based on, you know, the

[SPEAKER_00]: uh... operating is on and uh... and so i guess a learn about contacters and you know three phase screw that up right and sort of was off screwed it up went learning i know fill this going to scare the crab out of you but we talked to electric here and uh... and we don't burn stuff down so but uh... yeah but you've got faith in it's a good one that's a good one it's a good one out stuff you know you really are it's

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got two 40 in my house. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, our houses have two 40. [SPEAKER_00]: We just have two 120 volt legs. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all actually. [SPEAKER_00]: No, you can, I mean, I had a 240 volt air conditioner when I moved in here because, you know, I mean, that's during our houses. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it'll do more.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just don't stick your tongue in that outlet. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, that's always a bad idea for that matter. [SPEAKER_03]: General advice. [SPEAKER_03]: Good safety. [SPEAKER_03]: So, [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So it's a great one else. [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of other for you doing around the house, especially with automations and that kind of stuff, so yeah, a couple of fun ones, so we have a fish pond and we feed the fish manually. [SPEAKER_00]: I am at home many days.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife works at the local high school, so she's out during the day. [SPEAKER_00]: But she comes home at lunch and often she feeds the fish. [SPEAKER_00]: And for a couple of months, it was, did you feed the fish today? [SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, no, and she would go out and feed them. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I put a little, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I thought about it while I was like, wow, I got a motion sensor.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I put a little present sensor, you know, just one of the, just one of the PIR things. [SPEAKER_00]: That sits behind the fish food bag. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a little ESP, you know, the M5 stack stuff if you work with that at all. [SPEAKER_00]: Like they made that echo that they used for the first voice.

[SPEAKER_00]: a little at a thing that they make a bunch of different size devices and different and so I just have this plan yeah that's it and it's got that little light in the front yeah so on in the button so I just hung it there when you pick up the bag it turns the light up and after eight o'clock at night it turns the light back up right so so she can just tell by picking up the bag without food's been [SPEAKER_00]: and push them in that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just like a little, like I like the cognitive load thing, I think about that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I just don't want to think about, you know, oh, I'll just do it myself. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, I know, I can just do it myself. [SPEAKER_00]: But what if I don't have to, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The lights in the kitchen, we've never touched them. [SPEAKER_00]: The kitchen was redone three years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't use the light switch unless Z-Wave is a mess, which it is right now. [SPEAKER_00]: I gotta get this thing deployed. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, why, who cares, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't have to think about it. [SPEAKER_00]: It just takes care of itself. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's one. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, and the other was a big safety thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got a square house, stairs down, you know, we were bedroom on the second floor. [SPEAKER_00]: Very dark at night. [SPEAKER_00]: I told you, we're like, keep the lights off. [SPEAKER_00]: I like, you know, and so I never want to turn that light on because that's way too bright. [SPEAKER_00]: I do not want to wake up in the middle of the night.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so just this year we put in a couple of motion sensors upstairs and down because it's it's a 180 degree staircase one of those and when we get up in the middle of the night the second There's a landing in the middle of that light turns on it light [SPEAKER_00]: 2% and it's more than enough so that we can see the steps and stay away from them and you know and it's just like that kind of stuff that's real simple.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so now it's much safer for us and we don't have to think about it. [SPEAKER_04]: Do you have any backups in place with critical things like that? [SPEAKER_04]: So one of the things I'm telling with it at the moment is detecting when Myself Wave Network is down. [SPEAKER_04]: about the, like, Zigbee that wakes up.

[SPEAKER_04]: So my Emotions Center, I was on Zigbee, I could then say, okay, is that way it's down, I can't turn these down, that's on, but I could turn these, Zigbee black bulbs in the room on instead. [SPEAKER_04]: Have you thought about doing any, you know, for this light, like, for your stairs, you know, it's a critical part, right, maybe there's another light I could turn on instead. [SPEAKER_04]: Right, right, right, right, right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really interesting idea, because the Sydney's just saying, I think, oh, yeah, well, that light in the bedroom can get there, and I don't know, it's a way of a guest room, like, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, rarely anybody in there, if that light turned on, you know, it wouldn't be right in your eyes because it's tucked away. [SPEAKER_00]: But no, I've not, I've not gone down there. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's an interesting correlation to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was working on one of my projects, I don't know, a month and a half ago, I fed the config into, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: I use, I tend to use Microsoft products or using co-pilot. [SPEAKER_00]: So I fed the config in the co-pilot and had it validate it for me. [SPEAKER_00]: And stunning, it figured out what it was. [SPEAKER_00]: looked at, it said, you know, some typos in here, which I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it said, you know, it might be a good idea to detect if there's an error on some of these sensors, right? [SPEAKER_00]: That would just never occur to me, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so now I'm putting this in somebody's brewery. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good idea. [SPEAKER_00]: to know if it's not done some of it, I'm not completely ignorant of the idea, but I love that it suggested the backup.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is great, because what I want is an alert that says, I've lost the temperature curve, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because again, that might save 120 gallons of beer or 1,000 gallons of beer, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like these tanks are big. [SPEAKER_03]: So someone would say, it's nice because like for home, it might not be as important because it's like, I don't know whatever, like we're just using the light example, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like fine, you know, Is that what if they let them turn on this a switch there? [SPEAKER_03]: We know how to use the right. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Physically turn it on whatever, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_03]: But if it's overnight at, you know, your business that makes a big difference because, again, like, maybe maybe [SPEAKER_03]: beer brewing is very profitable, but I, I mean, if it's like any other food business is probably not like super profitable, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's so wasting that is not going to help you obviously, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you never want to, you never want to lose revenue.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's just at the end of the day, it's product that you lost, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's money. [SPEAKER_03]: I literally down the drain. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we're there for, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I can't be there. [SPEAKER_00]: to help them make it better and then make it worse. [SPEAKER_00]: That would just be just completely defeats the purpose. [SPEAKER_00]: So I have one other fun one that I want to tell you about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So are you aware of the team integration in? [SPEAKER_00]: It's not teams, the team integration. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's any SP integration. [SPEAKER_00]: I have to look up the exact name of it. [SPEAKER_00]: But essentially, you define which teams you care about. [SPEAKER_00]: And like ESPN report scores on literally everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think I could do our high school team, but I follow the fillies because I live. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm filled up, I follow the Eagles, I follow the flyers and I follow Penn State football. [SPEAKER_00]: And when one of those team scores, [SPEAKER_00]: It detects it. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a strip of LED lights underneath our counter-knife, which you can see in the living room. [SPEAKER_00]: And it flashes red for the fillings, green for the Eagles, blue for Penn State.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just flashes like 10 times. [SPEAKER_00]: And so like, even if you're not watching a game, now you're sitting there and is like, oh, Philly's just gorgeous. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like a fun little thing I did it for. [SPEAKER_00]: I want to say the playoffs two years ago for the Eagles, I think is one of the first did it. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we have friends coming over, and it just makes it fun, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, again, someone took the time to write this thing. [SPEAKER_00]: they keep it updated. [SPEAKER_00]: It works. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you'll you'll recall, uh, Brad, so we have back in the 2000s, the NHL actually used to have a goal light, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You're communicating your garage. [SPEAKER_00]: You tell it with team and it would somehow. [SPEAKER_03]: That's that's exactly what I was thinking of just when you said that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Now, right.

[SPEAKER_03]: That was going to be my next thing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, it's like one of those things. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you can absolutely make one. [SPEAKER_00]: But this is, you know, any, any, any flashable color chaining light bulb you have, you can, you know, I've been thinking about doing one of my office because I spent a lot of time up here. [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it's just, again, it's just fun, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the fun.

[SPEAKER_04]: What's the polling time on that? [SPEAKER_04]: Like is it polling every minute? [SPEAKER_04]: Is it because it's a waste? [SPEAKER_00]: It's polling a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea. [SPEAKER_00]: But I will tell you, I have to put because you, if you stream, [SPEAKER_00]: your games delayed, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm on Hulu, so it's the late. [SPEAKER_00]: And I had to put a delay in there because we just got rid of cable probably a year ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had to put a delay in there, like 30 seconds, give me some time. [SPEAKER_00]: But even then, it doesn't always, we'll get ahead of it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll get, I'll get a flash over here, it's like, tar, which is great if you're, you know, if you want to know, [SPEAKER_00]: hammered. [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if I don't know what's behind it, maybe there's a web hook that they can register for a team. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I never thought to ask, but yeah, I hope they're not hammering ESPN API, but I mean, it's been there a couple of years and you know, ESPN parent doesn't care. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, or do it and whatever day, ESPN is not poor. [SPEAKER_03]: So, no, you figure all of our phones are doing that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you follow it, if you get live updates on your lock screen, so they're already doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: So they got one.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I was going to say. [SPEAKER_03]: The infrastructure is there. [SPEAKER_03]: It's only in, I mean, we're talking about each other. [SPEAKER_03]: It's only in their advantage to be able to provide that data for people, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Because it's, otherwise, you honestly are letting your fanbase down to some extent, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, if I can't follow it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you got to figure there's probably [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like there's 100,000 people installing this little thing in building up. [SPEAKER_03]: Even if there was, but to your point, it's like, you have your phone apps, you have your whatever, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, that all makes a difference, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And if it's just tapping in that same data source, then yeah, it should be negligible, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's really it. [SPEAKER_00]: The, you know, I did we didn't want to mention, we were talking about the data. [SPEAKER_00]: So there were two integrations that I think are really key. [SPEAKER_00]: The history stats integration and the utility integration. [SPEAKER_00]: So the utility one, you give it a data point and you tell it to track it weekly or monthly or quarterly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it will, and you can give it the start date, but like say your water bills starts on the fifth of the month and you get it, we're up, you know, in the US it's every quarter you get a water bill, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so it'll just track it for 90 days and then restart. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you go look and say, well, ask for your quarter, I use eight thousand gallons of water and then you can match it up with your bill.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that utilities, you know, [SPEAKER_04]: And the fact that it's so versatile as well, it can work, you know, you know, if someone's got a monthly billing cycle or a quarterly, or you know, right, like the way it's been written to be dynamic, you know, I think this is very, it was a good foresight from the developers too. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Some art people work on this, that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And then the history stats is a very similar, but you know, you just use it for accumulating. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you want to watch your water used today, your water used this week, your water used this month. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's very similar in that, but you know, these things just sit there and work and what you've configured it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's there forever, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: So those I could automate for those stats too, like you know for example, you know, I've got a sit stand desk I haven't done it yet, but I know that you're just mentioning these history stats. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, oh, I could you know I know when the the sit stand desk is at the bottom. [SPEAKER_04]: I know what I mean, I know this I could then count or how many minutes of I've been in the office while the I'm sitting down [SPEAKER_04]: prompts me to stand up.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: You should definitely pair that with like an integration into whatever video calling software you use because otherwise in the video I'm eating, it'll just be like you're just like getting out of the camera. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't think I would. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I would. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I would. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I would make the desk moving.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: That'd be good of fun. [SPEAKER_04]: Excuse me. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you totally could, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I mean, Phil, you're a tough day at your desk, I think. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like there's [SPEAKER_03]: he's stopping you. [SPEAKER_04]: My mind's flaky, but yeah, I just, I don't like the idea of the desk. [SPEAKER_04]: Like what if I've got something underneath or yeah? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't have an idea there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't understand. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there was a flip in that switch and have it on its own right. [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, it's like two point, like the history stat stuff is pretty powerful, right? [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: There's so many of these, not hidden, there's certainly not hidden, but there's so much depth to the home system product. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that you literally just have to, you know, just take some time.

[SPEAKER_00]: every couple weeks and just read to the documentation, stumbled upon something new, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Or read through the forums or watch discord to it. [SPEAKER_00]: What's happening? [SPEAKER_00]: You'll stumble upon something. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, and I get that point where, oh, wow. [SPEAKER_00]: And it becomes a much important thing I have to do, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go do this. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: And like in your position here, right? [SPEAKER_04]: Like you're making a business out of this, like there are features in-home assistant today that if you explore down the path of, and you could go, hang on.

[SPEAKER_04]: I can use a patience and so I can use a history start sensor to now report this to the brewing companies Right, that can now be a feature that I can sell right and and put that out as another selling point Right, and that's what promises can do today like as you said you ought to keep up to date with my assistant There could be a new feature coming out in 2026 that As a whole new dimension Business as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can do something Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's [SPEAKER_00]: what I find too is when I have an idea and I go ask about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, how would I implement this? [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, it feels like nine times out of 10, someone says, well, have you looked at XYZ and like, no. [SPEAKER_00]: And there it is, right, that someone's already been down this path before, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So, but yeah, it really, it just always gives you something, another, something else to take her with. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, learn, and I'm really big on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I really want to learn something new every day, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so it sucks. [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to know. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's obviously a lot of integrations now with, like, chat to PT, Gemini, et cetera, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_03]: Has there been any thought into feeding a lot of these kind of, like, again, beer stats as an example of, like, sort of gravity or whatever, taking all those sending that there, and I, again, I don't know what you'd get out of it, and maybe what I'm saying is completely moved, but... [SPEAKER_03]: to be like, hey, these stats are all lined up. [SPEAKER_03]: Your beer's perfect. [SPEAKER_03]: Go go, I don't know, pour yourself a pint right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, yeah, please do. [SPEAKER_03]: I have no idea how this works clearly, but yeah, as everybody thought into doing any of those kind of things. [SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's, that's really interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: I have not, I mean, I use, I already mentioned, I use, I do use AI myself. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't use a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a tied individual. [SPEAKER_00]: You see how I haven't gone down into those paths.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a very interesting observation, though. [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned how Copa was able to [SPEAKER_00]: analyze that. [SPEAKER_00]: What's really fascinating, if you're not overdone this, I was just doing it today, I was working on a little config and buy the variable names. [SPEAKER_00]: It says, oh yeah, you could absolutely, you're, you actually built a neat little fermentation monitoring thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I like, yeah, wow, you know, so if you use something that makes sense to you, it makes sense to it. [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and so [SPEAKER_00]: some data, multiple data points like that, you know, different factors. [SPEAKER_00]: So here's temperature and here's, you know, gravity and something else about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Then it would have some, it could have very well have some interesting insights into what's going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Or even watching it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So if that data was getting fed in once an hour and had it decide that there's a problematic [SPEAKER_04]: especially when it comes with a whole bunch more sensitive. [SPEAKER_04]: Like you can know, like the outside, the way the inside, but these points here is the committee, okay, you know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like hey, this is this is if you if you this is your third attempt at this at this flavor Right, you know the first two attempt looks like this third fourth fifth was start to get a little off of maybe stuff not sealed properly move out of whatever that looks like right. [SPEAKER_00]: No, but you know you're exactly right. [SPEAKER_00]: You don't I mean, I don't know what it might be, but it could be those things and you know part of.

[SPEAKER_00]: Part of feeding the data, I feed the data in the home assistant, but I also install influx DB, just so that data lives forever, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And just yesterday, I started thinking about how I might be able to pull the data into a package that we could pull out and share, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because that's kind of the challenge right now, I was like, I'm not visual. [SPEAKER_00]: very visual. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a designer, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, building a report for me is just painful. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, but I want to, you know, so, how can I package this data together that says, [SPEAKER_00]: This is your HZIPA, let's start on this day to finish on this day and here's the gravity and temperature and something else about it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I like the idea of the weather, that would be pretty interesting, not that the vessels aren't sealed, but perhaps the... [SPEAKER_00]: pressure could have some minor effect. [SPEAKER_00]: But I love that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then for them to be able to say, I want to look at the history of, you know, beer acts this year. [SPEAKER_00]: And so what you've grouped for batches, here's the profile, terms of profile and blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And let them, you know, this is data I want to give to the brewer. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you should know this about your beer. [SPEAKER_00]: What do you discern from it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You know what it tastes like. [SPEAKER_00]: How does it taste different from being in the year? [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe that could even grade it. [SPEAKER_04]: Like this is, you know, quality A, B, C, based on this data, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Or the other way around, they could say, this beer was exactly what I wanted this time. [SPEAKER_00]: How does it look different from the other times? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And at least, no, because, you know, you've got ingredients and ingredients can vary. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it could be that, you know, the hops are different batches [SPEAKER_00]: you know, whatever the barley might not have been multid as well, who knows.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's your temperature or your yeast health and so the beer doesn't ferment as fast because it's ain't sour. [SPEAKER_00]: You could tell that, and it would be great to say, our tasting panel gave us five stars. [SPEAKER_00]: Why is it? [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, be able to give this data to them to help in that analysis, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And at least, maybe eliminate it, if not be able to say that was why, they could at least, well, it wasn't this, it wasn't this, it wasn't this, and now we're so far, it was the one. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's my ultimate goal is to be able to give them that data and I just need them. [SPEAKER_04]: for your hour. [SPEAKER_04]: You mentioned before that you're sending a whole bunch of the YAML over to co-pilot.

[SPEAKER_04]: Are you then writing these automations in YAML and pushing them up to the home-missive instance or you write them in the UI and then exporting them out as YAML to give to co-pilot? [SPEAKER_00]: So... [SPEAKER_00]: When I talk about that, the ESP home can fig, of course, is all yam, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's the config that I've been. [SPEAKER_00]: I write automations in the automation editor.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we actually don't do a lot of automations in the environment, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not, it's not so much about that, although there are some things we absolutely want to do. [SPEAKER_00]: We automate around alerts, of course. [SPEAKER_00]: So we don't do a lot, you know, home assistant is really, [SPEAKER_00]: a user interface more than anything in the brewery, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But I do want to be able to do temperature profiles so we could tie gravity to temperature changes. [SPEAKER_00]: So hey, when it sits two points from the end, [SPEAKER_00]: Shoot up the temperature to 70 degrees, leave it there for 48 hours, bring it down, crash it, make it 35. [SPEAKER_00]: And we can absolutely automate all that. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, most brewers are better than we want to do that manually. [SPEAKER_00]: But we can offer that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we should be able to do that. [SPEAKER_04]: And in terms of the notifications, are they going straight to the brewer or do they go to you and then you notify the brewer? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they go to me because I need that because I'm interested in it's in it working. [SPEAKER_00]: But no, I use depending on what what it is. [SPEAKER_00]: I can use critical alert on iOS or Android and we're just a regular alert in the app.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I do like to push it right to their mobile device and give them. [SPEAKER_04]: So does that mean they have to install the home assistant app on their farm and then you can figure out the notifications to them? [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because they said so what I don't sell them is an interface. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't sell them something to put in the wall. [SPEAKER_00]: I can. [SPEAKER_00]: Right, typically what they do is, why have this old iPad?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't let it work perfectly, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I configure it, all mounted, and set it up. [SPEAKER_00]: But most of the breweries don't have that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: The young guys in the breweries, they're phone is what they live on. [SPEAKER_00]: So they don't really care. [SPEAKER_00]: One brewery is interested in putting it on your TV in their network. [SPEAKER_00]: And so they can get the interface up and living colors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because their customers will be interested in it, all right. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the beer geek's come in and drink beer, and they like to see the data too. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, mostly it's right to their phone because that's where they live. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know that, right? [SPEAKER_04]: That's, yeah, that is cool. [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks. [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think there's anything else is there. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I have anything else in my engine.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's fun. [SPEAKER_04]: Great. [SPEAKER_04]: Great. [SPEAKER_04]: Great. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_04]: I wish you the best of luck in your retirement. [SPEAKER_04]: And hopefully you have to sell some very big. [SPEAKER_04]: You can't manage it. [SPEAKER_04]: But it sounds like you're doing some cool stuff with both my misses and his behind me. [SPEAKER_04]: And we really appreciate you coming on today to tell us a little about it. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_04]: I really appreciate you guys doing this for guys. [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to bend now. [SPEAKER_04]: I think we're coming out eight years, I think. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's great. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's been a fun resource. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I do fun resource. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Jason. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks. [SPEAKER_00]: Cheers. [SPEAKER_00]: Cheers.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to share your home assistant journey or come out as a guest, reach out to us at feedback at haspodcast.io. [SPEAKER_04]: That's HASS podcast.io. [SPEAKER_02]: This is some podcast that's hosted by Phil Hawthorne and myself, Rohan Kermandy. [SPEAKER_02]: For links to topics we discussed today, check out our show notes on haspodcast.io.