From Pi to Blue, we’re revisiting Courtenay Watson

[Phil]: Hello and welcome to the home Mrs. and Paul Cast, my name's Phil, joining us usual, I've got run, hailing mate. [Phil]: Hey, good hair here. [Phil]: Very good, thank you, and today we have Courtney with us. [Phil]: Hey, Courtney, how you going? [Phil]: Not too bad, how are you? [Phil]: Thank you. [Phil]: As usual, this podcast is sponsored by Homison Cloud by Nabukasa.

[Phil]: 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 YAML needed. [Phil]: It also supports the development of the Homisoned ASB home and other open home foundation projects.

[Phil]: Click the link in the description to learn [Phil]: We'd also like to give a shout out to our Patreon members, including our Executive Producers, Benny and Rob. [Phil]: You can help support the show and get early access to episodes all in an ad-free feed. [Phil]: To support the show, check out homemissessent.fm and click Patreon in the menu. [Phil]: Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Phil]: We've actually had you on the podcast before, I was looking, I was really into it episode yesterday, it was episode 45, which was back in 2019, March 2019, I'm going to say, so pre-pandemic.

[Phil]: Um, this is something that I've started with been twin with Rohan all year about. [Phil]: I wanted to get kicked off. [Phil]: I want to go back and, you know, speak to some of our previous guests, you know, we've been doing this podcast for a quick minute now. [Phil]: And I want to hear about, you know, people's journeys with home assistant, you know, what do they change, like home assistant has involved, how is your smart home evolved?

[Phil]: And so you're the, the very first guinea pig for this type of episode. [Courtenay]: So thank you for, well, I didn't, I didn't know I got to be first. [Phil]: I know, yeah, that's right. [Phil]: The way the cookie crumbled, yeah, surprise. [Phil]: So yeah, I'll quick catch up. [Phil]: So last time we spoke to you, I believe you were on a Raspberry Pi 2B. [Phil]: You had using a lot of Google home around the house.

[Phil]: You're using Hasselio, which because it was called Hasselio back then not as OS as it is now. [Phil]: And you were like, well, you've had some roommates and you live with a boyfriend and you're using the Sony PlayStation as your main media entertainment unit and you're driving a lot of automations using using a lot of automations for the PlayStation. [Courtenay]: That was the key feature was the PlayStation version. [Phil]: Exactly right.

[Phil]: So fast forward a pandemic and what is it like what's on maths like for six years now I mean homey since come a long way like are you I mean first question is are you still you're using homey If you still got a smart home or did you give up on it? [Courtenay]: Yeah, still still using home assistant play stations put out a new version to for that matter Now on the ps5, which certainly changed integration a bunch.

[Courtenay]: I Upgraded from the Raspberry Pi when home assistant blue [Courtenay]: Yes, not. [Courtenay]: It's immediately when it was available, but shortly thereafter. [Courtenay]: So I'm on the, I think, the end to plus, oh, droid, something. [Courtenay]: Not exactly sure. [Courtenay]: Like, mine doesn't have the fancy little box or anything. [Courtenay]: It's just the, yeah, Peter board.

[Courtenay]: And, and that is just, like, it's an incredible step up from, I think I went to a [Courtenay]: It's a much more powerful little machine. [Courtenay]: I have no issues with it.

[Phil]: So, the home assistant Lou was never cast as first, like dedicated home assistant hardware for home assistant. [Phil]: It's now been just continued. [Phil]: They've just at the time of recording, they're just announced. [Phil]: They're just continuing the home's yellow, which was the beef dot version of the blue. [Phil]: Have you found the, [Phil]: Now that I'm just blue isn't no longer being sold. [Phil]: What have you found any issues with support for that hardware?

[Courtenay]: No, not at all. [Courtenay]: And I don't anticipate like from what I've read anyway. [Courtenay]: I don't anticipate they're being any because the underlying, like the, I don't know the right words. [Courtenay]: The chipsets or whatever are the same as what sort of currently being used. [Courtenay]: And so yeah, no issues at all.

[Phil]: Yeah, and I mean, that's what how never comes to advertise or I like they're still supporting the blue right and they're still going to support the L.O. [Phil]: I just wanted to see from a real world case if that. [Courtenay]: Yeah, yeah, I think the only thing is like if I, like I say if I had had the fancy little case, I'm not sure I could get a replacement one if it broke or something, but I think the 3D printer files are probably still out there.

[Courtenay]: So. [Rohan]: I'm sure you can just pretty print it or something like that, right? [Courtenay]: I do have a little like stand for it, like a little, pretty printed, just like a backing plate to sort of hold it. [Courtenay]: And I was going to get machine screws to like properly mount it to it, but it just sits there through gravity. [Courtenay]: It's been fine for several years now, so. [Rohan]: This is good enough.

[Courtenay]: Yeah. [Phil]: I think the blue had a limited edition metal case, as well did you get a metal case? [Courtenay]: No, I got mine through. [Courtenay]: I don't know if it was through hard kernel, but like because I'm in Canada, it was a whole thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: It definitely seems like Europe is the place to be if you want to get sort of the real branded home assistant stuff correctly, definitely ordering it here was a [Rohan]: It has gotten better.

[Rohan]: I'll say that like what the yellow and the green and all that stuff you can actually get it from proper stores now and and or even Amazon The Navic house is door on Amazon. [Courtenay]: Oh nice. [Rohan]: I think this so. [Courtenay]: It exists. [Courtenay]: Yeah, and probably better in Canada than in the States right now. [Courtenay]: I imagine. [Rohan]: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. [Rohan]: Again, a lot of that stuff.

[Rohan]: I think some of it's coming from China, so it should be shouldn't be subject to tariffs and all that stuff too. [Courtenay]: Yeah, changes, but day to day a little. [Rohan]: Yeah. [Rohan]: Yeah, exactly. [Phil]: So you've got started using home kit to track energy monitoring and electricity usage.

[Phil]: This was before the home system energy dashboard home system has a whole bunch of things now. [Phil]: Have you evolved your electricity monitoring with home system's electricity management? [Phil]: Have you now doing everything through home system or not managing electricity as much anymore?

[Courtenay]: Yeah, so I don't remember what it was like in 2019, but now I have a little $50 thing I bought from my power company that uses some proprietary wireless something to talk to my power meter and then [Courtenay]: because it all it does is just publish MQTT packets. [Courtenay]: Home assistant can just listen for those and picks them up and brings them in as energy and yeah, with the energy dashboard. [Courtenay]: Now, like it's just a no-brainer.

[Courtenay]: I just can see in real time exactly how much power I'm using very easily and NC trends and stuff over time. [Courtenay]: It's all very straightforward. [Courtenay]: I don't even like the, [Courtenay]: Um, when I first got the little box from the power company, like they have an app and the app is not very good, um, but I was still using it quite a bit because that was the way I could access that information and I don't like I don't even think I have the app on my phone anymore.

[Courtenay]: Um, it, home assistant is just completely replaced that it's very, very useful for like it's right down to the second, basically like maybe even smaller than a second night. [Courtenay]: I haven't do that deep, but I can tell like, you know, when my boyfriend's turned the kettle on to make his coffee, I can see the spike right over for that and that kind of thing. [Rohan]: It's cool that your power company is doing that.

[Rohan]: I mean, again, obviously we're in different provinces and Canada, but mine is nowhere near there. [Rohan]: I feel like I should give them a call and be like, hey, what are you guys doing?

[Courtenay]: the pushback that BC got when we went to smart meters was significant and so like that was a whole thing and I don't think they like they certainly don't know what I'm doing right like like I don't think they'd have a problem with it but like they're not advanced enough to like understand what they've produced.

[Courtenay]: They've just paid some third party company to make a little box that someone can plug into the wall and if it doesn't work like they have no ability to help [Rohan]: I mean, mine still, when I log into their portal, looks like it was written in 1992, right? [Rohan]: And it's still primitive as an understatement, I think, so that's, yeah, it's, I feel like BC Hydro might be a little, little beyond there. [Courtenay]: Yeah, little bit, little bit.

[Courtenay]: The other thing that, and I don't know, like it feels like it just came out on home assistant,

[Courtenay]: A sign, like you can see what you have assigned as usage, so like if you have if I have a few devices that have energy monitoring, but not very many, but one of the things that I have intended to do and still haven't yet done, again, it feels like this feature just came out last week, but I'm thinking about it and it's definitely been a couple years, is to like basically like shut down the whole house and

[Courtenay]: get a sense of like because I can use the real time energy monitoring to get a sense of like how much power draw is you know the PlayStation on idle and and things like that to just get a sense of sort of our base power load and how that breaks out. [Phil]: Yeah, and what was your resting power usage? [Phil]: What's all that, you know, phantom energy that's being sucked out? [Courtenay]: Exactly. [Courtenay]: And where's it going, right?

[Courtenay]: Like where I can see what it is, but what's it going to? [Courtenay]: I don't know. [Courtenay]: How much of that's the freezer? [Courtenay]: How much of that? [Courtenay]: Like the air conditioner is very easy to identify, right? [Courtenay]: Because it's so dramatic, but for all those little things, it's, uh, it's not as obvious.

[Courtenay]: And so I think the UI in Home Assistant just makes it really easy to [Courtenay]: like basically to, you know, the only reason I haven't done it is because I do live with a couple of other people and to do that, like I really do need to shut the whole house off, which can be an inconvenience to something. [Rohan]: Yeah. [Rohan]: Yeah, it's, I feel like, you know, trying to go through that cycle is that's an interesting [Rohan]: We're gonna do it too.

[Rohan]: And it's like, okay, let's just see you, okay. [Rohan]: This is my base. [Rohan]: Now I turn on my, I don't know my fridge, right? [Rohan]: And then my washing machine and whatever. [Rohan]: And it's like, try to see what that is. [Rohan]: Do you, do you write now? [Rohan]: Do you break out per breaker? [Rohan]: Like, do you have one of those monitors on your break up panel? [Courtenay]: No, I have, is the thing that that talks to the meter. [Courtenay]: So it's the, like, full load.

[Courtenay]: It's just a whole meter. [Courtenay]: Break it out. [Rohan]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Courtenay]: And then, like I say, I have a couple of plugs that are, I think, the sink ones that have like energy monitoring, but they're not the primary one, like they're just sort of extras for Christmas lights or whatever we decide to put on them. [Phil]: Yeah, that's like I think of the same thing when I can see the whole house and then individual devices.

[Phil]: But then I want to do like when the air comes on, I can just see like from the unaccounted energy like the big spike, right? [Phil]: Like it's a big gray thing like, oh, I know that's the air. [Phil]: So I'd love to get, you know, going to the breakering, I think Shelley do some, um,

[Phil]: monitoring claps that you can put on at the circuit level and then you can go all right this is the aircon circuit this is the kitchen circuit and then from the kitchen you can break it down okay this kitchen is using this amount of energy but it's actually you know 50% was to the fridge or whatever so yeah I think that's like 20-26 mission that also assumes that like again my my house is wired so randomly like I'm in this

[Courtenay]: Right, like, I was on its own breaker to be fair as it's my stove right leg, but yeah, everything like I went through when we were doing some work on the basement and we I did go through at one point and mapped out which outlets and lights are on which breakers.

[Courtenay]: And traced it all down and put little stickers on all my outlets with the numbers of the breakers on them. [Courtenay]: And then I reworked the breakers and system of that data is not valid anymore. [Courtenay]: But yeah, it's not as simple as like this is the breaker for these two walls on the living room. [Courtenay]: It's like this breaker goes to two outlets that are like on the same wall and different rooms.

[Courtenay]: And then like, you know, one all the way across the house is for fun, like, who even knows. [Rohan]: Like my when I went to go change my smoke alarm. [Rohan]: It's like I have obviously with smoke alarm upstairs downstairs, whatever. [Rohan]: So fine. [Rohan]: I understand that that's on a circuit on the same circuit. [Rohan]: And so on fine. [Rohan]: Some of my lights and my basement are out.

[Rohan]: Some of my lights and my bedroom are out and I'm like, okay, there's [Rohan]: This is way too random. [Rohan]: It's like, it's, uh, yeah, I hate it. [Rohan]: So it's hard to predict even with that, right? [Rohan]: I can say per breaker, but what is a breaker really represent outside of tier point EV charger or washing machine or like stuff with a dedicated circuit AC those kind of things, right?

[Courtenay]: Well, in the dream, we'll be to have, to be able to bring, like, I'm sure that I have the granularity of data and home assistant for things like

[Courtenay]: Like, with enough days of trends, this light, every time this light comes on, the power usage goes up this amount, and every time it goes off it goes down this amount, like, looking at that data retroactively to, like, figure out how much energy that particular light is using, certainly, like, from a data science perspective, it's possible, right?

[Courtenay]: And so that's kind of the dream is that you then don't need to have [Courtenay]: plants anywhere if you can tell the system when stuff's on and off, right? [Phil]: So one day I think there's an energy monitor that actually does that like well that's that the supposed to use AI everything uses AI now.

[Phil]: Yeah, but yeah the highlight area is that they will learn over time and they can determine based on your usage, you know, is the washing machine on or is the dishwasher on or have you got the oven on and then I'm getting a report. [Courtenay]: doable now like again if you have the if you have this mark devices right like it's it's doable it's just a matter of putting it all together. [Rohan]: Yeah I think the sense does that I'm not mistaken or it's like hey.

[Rohan]: We'll assume that this type of power, I don't know, signature is whatever type of device, right? [Rohan]: And it's like, again, it's just, I don't know, I feel like that's, it's a lot harder to get something good in, in a home manager.

[Phil]: I'd go on to your point, you can, if you were to put energy monitors on each breaker and then have them into home, you could define the parent energy source, so you could actually do like this is breaker one and then that would fan off into, you know, this is the kitchen light living room light on the one circuit and be able to have a breaker where everything's going. [Rohan]: Yeah, assuming I know where I'm going to go. [Rohan]: Yeah, that's right.

[Phil]: You're saying that's also correct. [Rohan]: There's a bunch of labels on my thing. [Rohan]: Am I on my breaker box?

[Rohan]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, [Rohan]: I mean, what else really has evolved in your, across the last few years, I guess, let's call it, right?

[Rohan]: And in terms of how you, has there been a fundamental shift in how you operate your smart home? [Courtenay]: I mean, I think there's been about 12 little shifts that may be all that up to one fundamental one. [Courtenay]: So, the new dashboard, not even the, I don't know which iteration of dashboarding, but anyway, I think when we spoke last, I was using like a house map, so we had done like a floor plan and had the lights for the different rooms and stuff on the floor plan.

[Courtenay]: And that was really helpful, I think, for getting started, like for trying to sort of cognitively

[Courtenay]: where things are in the house to what they're called, and that kind of thing. [Courtenay]: But at some point, in some nice new tiles thing, we switched to the... [Courtenay]: I think it's actually like... [Courtenay]: one of the generated dashboards, like it's just by room. [Courtenay]: I just set which rooms I want to show and then have like set a bunch of entities to be not visible by default or whatever. [Courtenay]: Like there's some setting there that's really nice.

[Courtenay]: It's quite granular. [Courtenay]: And so now we just have the nice sort of toggle switches and that's really just more, you know, finger friendly, right, then if we have, you know, two lights that are close to each other physically, they don't have to be close to each other on the iPad for for hitting them and it's easy to show, you know, I have my garbage pick up schedule.

[Courtenay]: In there, we have alternating garbage and recycling weeks, and so it's easy for anyone to just look at the look at the thing and see whether it's recycling or garbage this week. [Courtenay]: And I think yeah, we did get a smart thermostat so we can both see and control heat and cool.

[Courtenay]: through a home assistant and the progress that like right around the time I got this smart thermostat is when they were reworking the thermostat controls and so that's really nice the way it works now. [Courtenay]: There was definitely a very brief beta period where it was a little bit tricky but we got through that without too much issue.

[Courtenay]: Did you get one of those learning thermostats and then using their proprietary learning or just go like using I don't even think that can learn like I don't know I got it because it was available with a rebate and it would integrate with home assistant and kind of get care what else like it's just from its perspective it's set on like always manual right like it's just locked and then home assistant

[Courtenay]: I have it set for, and then, so that's, yeah, it's really nice to be able to, to just not have to think about what the software, the company that focuses on making thermostats is trying to do for me. [Courtenay]: Because they're not always the favorite. [Phil]: Exactly, and as long as it doesn't have a cloud dependency, it's got local control, you should be fine. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: And actually, I don't know, um, I do know that it works fine.

[Courtenay]: Um, and that's kind of as far as I went with. [Courtenay]: It was cheap. [Courtenay]: It works fine. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: This is far as I went with it. [Rohan]: Um, well, what you can do is like with the Ecobeat that I have, I actually bring it in through home kit, right? [Rohan]: And I actually found that it was way more reliable for me, just in general, um, to get a stable [Courtenay]: Yeah, well, there's lots of alternatives now, too.

[Courtenay]: I'm still not doing anything Zigbee or Z-Wave yet. [Courtenay]: It's, I'm definitely curious. [Courtenay]: Like, I've been thinking about it. [Courtenay]: I have a third-party security system through my telecom provider that I had integrated with homelessness in for a time, but never very well. [Courtenay]: It, I don't know, fell off at some point through some update or something and I never fought to get it back and like, I'm probably just need to cancel it.

[Courtenay]: Like, it's, it's not really serving me very well. [Courtenay]: Certainly what I'm paying for it isn't worth the reassurance that they'll, you know, send the fire department, my house is on fire. [Courtenay]: There's other ways to accomplish that. [Courtenay]: But, but, and I think it runs on, like, I don't even know if it's see-wavours, it'd be like it [Courtenay]: thing. [Courtenay]: But all my main stuff is mostly to a stuff.

[Courtenay]: And that actually has come a really long way, right? [Courtenay]: Like the relationship with to a home assistant has been great. [Courtenay]: And it's so easy now. [Courtenay]: Like I say, I was setting up my roommate asked if he could get a [Courtenay]: light for his room that he could dim so that it wasn't so bright all the time. [Courtenay]: And I went, yeah, I've got a closet full of those and set him up with a smart bulb.

[Courtenay]: And like the setup, I don't, I actually don't know if I could have done the setup process through home assistant. [Courtenay]: I didn't even try. [Courtenay]: I just did it through the smart life app, like I've always done it, but within, you know, I then popped in a home assistant and told the integration to refresh and it was right there and [Courtenay]: You know, he already has the homelessness nap on his phone. [Courtenay]: I'm like, you know, here's your light.

[Courtenay]: I can move it to a different like we can rename the room or whatever. [Courtenay]: So it'll auto sort to a different spot if you want, but it's right at the bottom, which is probably nice for him because he can just swipe down right all the way down. [Courtenay]: Um, so yeah. [Courtenay]: are you using the local to your integration or so you know, just the cloud one, but it's all like kind of official, right?

[Courtenay]: Like they they support it officially and and it's all on the up and up, which I feel really good about and it's super easy. [Courtenay]: Um, downside is that it's dependent on my ISP, but um, I was going to see my ISP's really reliable except that about 10 minutes before this call.

[Courtenay]: I lost internet for three minutes for kind of no reason. [Courtenay]: Um, and my router didn't like nothing went down just my internet went down, which I'm like, oh no, someone's like, [Courtenay]: Doug through a cable or something. [Phil]: Yeah, but yeah, it's got to be back.

[Courtenay]: So it can't be that that's someone Doug through a cable But anyway aside from five minutes today generally I'm on five by my ISP is pretty reliable Yeah If our internet's down we have complaints aside from the fact that the lights won't turn on so [Phil]: Well, yeah, I guess, like, so if you don't heavily rely on two, you're like, if the idea is down, how broken is your smartphone then? [Courtenay]: So, like, all of the lights still work on their switches.

[Courtenay]: Like, if you've, like, so if the, yeah, if the internet goes down and you need to turn a light on, you just have to turn it off before you can turn it on, right? [Courtenay]: Like, it's just, you toggle the switch in extra time and it's no problem at all. [Courtenay]: And like we have a couple of those like plugs that you can plug lamps and stuff into and they are buttons right on them that you can hit.

[Courtenay]: So anything that isn't like it's just the light bulbs the trick is just to turn them off and then on to get them to come on if you need them to come on it manually. [Courtenay]: The downside, right, of the light bulbs is that if the switch happens to be off, you can't use them as smart bulbs anymore.

[Courtenay]: But we've all pretty much completely broken habits of using switches that like, it never happens anymore, really, that a switch is switched, even with visitors and stuff, hard they at all. [UNKNOWN]: Interesting. [Rohan]: Do you find that now compared to when you, I mean, when we first had you on on the show, do you find that it was, it's like you have a lot more into it, like it, or sorry, I gotta say.

[Rohan]: From when you first came on the show to now, do you find that now you're currently, you're doing more things that are more intuitive to anybody rather than just how you use it, or has that always been a main kind of design principle of like, should be ease of use for any guests that come in [Courtenay]: No, it never has. [Courtenay]: I think it's just come through homocystic, like it kind of never mattered, like as long as my boyfriend was willing.

[Courtenay]: You say it kind of never mattered, and it's just that it's gotten easier and easier, right?

[Courtenay]: It's to the point now where, like, if, you know, we, I don't know, I've stopped installing the beta as at the point zero, and either the point one, because we now have a couple of people in those, and it's a little more annoying when we can't get to the furnace specifically, but but we had to beta a couple of beta as it go where, [Courtenay]: Um, I think it was to, yeah, anyway, some thing we use all the time was just like chronically broken and it was really easy to fix.

[Courtenay]: You just had to go in and like tell the integration manually to re-sync and it would re-authenticate. [Courtenay]: It was fine. [Courtenay]: Um, and definitely like five years ago, I could not have shown Charlie how to like,

[Courtenay]: Shownu how to do that and had him feel like he was empowered to just fix it when it broke like that's just not a thing that could have happened and now like the device is page like it's just he can write on the screen right he can just tap on it and go to device info and it's right there for him to get to the integration to refresh it like it's so easy and it really isn't something that I

[Courtenay]: even still really, you know, have as a high priority, um, it's just that homelessness has gotten so much better that it's just not an issue anymore. [Courtenay]: It's really nice. [Courtenay]: It's done all that work for me. [Phil]: One of the attributions for that will be moving away from YAML into their storage and their config. [Phil]: I noticed last time you were posting your config to GitHub, it doesn't look like it's been updated in a few years.

[Phil]: Not throwing in shade, I don't even have my one upload up there. [Phil]: As the transition away from YAML and the introduction of the automation UI, moved you off YAML yourself or you're still using YAML to write your automations. [Courtenay]: large for automations at all. [Courtenay]: There's one thing that I like, there's something. [Courtenay]: Oh, maybe it's binary sensors.

[Courtenay]: Anyway, there's some sensor that you still have to tweak in [Courtenay]: What's the fancy one, Bayesian, the Bayesian ways you still can't do in the UI or couldn't when I was last tweaking one of those, and then I have like the, for my hydro, my power consumption, like the config for parsing the MQTT, I probably could do that in,

[Courtenay]: the UI now, but I copied it like someone shared it on a foreign post and I just copied pasted it and never thought about it again, and it just works and it's doing like timestamp conversions and stuff, but really like I I hardly ever am touching yamble at all anymore and if I am it's like [Courtenay]: a little bit with you and like because you can use it with you in the automations and stuff now, right?

[Courtenay]: And so it's like the actual like gamma files almost never to the point that I think I think my file browser on home assistant was broken for like a year before I even noticed because I just don't ever open the file like the config files directly anymore at all.

[Rohan]: Yeah, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm trying to think as you're talking with, I'm trying to think when the last time I did was and I, I honestly couldn't tell you when the last time I looked at the actual raw Yamwell files and changed something in there, because most of not all things are in the UI now, which, which I'm a big fan of, I get that there's people, you know, that are on both sides of that fence, right, I, I, I,

[Rohan]: love, I would rather do things to the UI, or even, I don't know, if I'm somewhere remote, I can pop out my cell phone and build an automation there, like whatever that is, rather than having to do that through through YAM, which obviously is a little harder, but for those that want to use it, great. [Rohan]: You can still, you can still kind of do that, right? [Rohan]: But I love not having to do that.

[Courtenay]: Yeah, when I think as LLMs have come out the last couple of years, like the fact that Homeless isn't already has a text-based way of interacting with it, just like it just means no one had to build that for it to work, right? [Courtenay]: Like no one was like, how are you going to make Homeless is to work so the ChadGPT can build things out for me. [Courtenay]: It's like, it was built that way from the beginning.

[Courtenay]: That's already there, and so I think there's some real advantages [Courtenay]: to having that sort of be what it like that it was originally designed to be human readable for the context and stuff under the hood for sure. [Rohan]: Yeah, and what's nice is you can even like, like, let's say, whatever LLM flavor the day you go in, hey, build me an automation to do blah, blah, blah, blah, here's my entity name. [Rohan]: So, and so forth.

[Rohan]: And you can just copy that that, yeah, well, that it's spit out and just literally control V or command V into your browser.

[Rohan]: And it'll just be like, bam, here it is, right? [Rohan]: You don't even need to go into the editor to do that. [Rohan]: You can do it in the UI. [Rohan]: It's slick. [Rohan]: Yeah, I love that. [Courtenay]: And you mentioned GitHub, and yeah, no, I haven't pushed changes there for a while, but like I say, I, you know, looking at my config file, like it's not interesting.

[Courtenay]: There's nothing good in there and we have backups now and yeah, and so like I'm not worried of like how will I see. [Courtenay]: you know, what changed to make sure that I haven't broken something. [Courtenay]: I've got like nine gigs of backups at the moment, apparently, which is maybe a little more than I need, but, you know, it all runs automatically. [Courtenay]: And so I just don't worry about it. [Courtenay]: I did my first restore from backup a few months ago.

[Courtenay]: Again, a beta updated, broke some critical infrastructure. [Courtenay]: And, and that was super [Courtenay]: It's just very easy. [Courtenay]: That's cool. [Rohan]: I've never actually had to do a recovery knock on what I'm hoping never have to. [Rohan]: But how was that process? [Rohan]: I mean, just for my own curiosity. [Courtenay]: Yeah, so I wasn't like I hadn't done it before.

[Courtenay]: Like I kind of knew that we had these new backups and that it wouldn't make sense for us to have this beautiful new backup UI without a way to restore because why else would you have a backup? [Courtenay]: Um, and I think I was probably in the beta discord when I realized that like, [Courtenay]: this was a beta bug and that it was not okay, like that it was just not going to work until it was fixed. [Courtenay]: I think it was the one that broke the iPad.

[Courtenay]: Like it just, I don't, I never looked at what actually happened.

[Courtenay]: I meant to, but we depend on the iPad as sort of the main [Courtenay]: like we'll have it on our phones but it's just much nicer to have to have your phone in your hand when you're walking through the house or whatever right in the entryway and it wouldn't load on the iPad at all, wouldn't load no browser, it wouldn't load in the app, the test like there's like a demo home assistant that you can load up and that loaded fine but but once it was on the

[Courtenay]: Once I realized that it was a known issue, like that they knew about it and were working on a fix, I had to roll back and I think someone in the discord said, like you just click on it and it'll say restore and you click restore. [Courtenay]: Like it really was so easy that it wasn't even a process. [Courtenay]: The only thing was that between when I'd updated to the beta and when I rolled back, my boyfriend had got a new phone.

[Courtenay]: And I have a dashboard that has a bunch of the properties of his phone, mostly suited to the quick glance. [Courtenay]: I can tell if he's awake in the morning before I do something noisy. [Courtenay]: And I had to go on in and already moved all those, like, switched them to his new mobile device in that dashboard. [Courtenay]: And then restored from back up. [Courtenay]: And of course, those changes revered. [Courtenay]: You know what? [Rohan]: That's fine. [Rohan]: That's cool.

[Courtenay]: What should have happened to me though all of everything right like it was no and or like the thing was was it was a critical issue It needed like I needed to fix it in an hour not in a day right and so right the fact that I could just and that now I know that I can just click restore and know that in an hour it'll be back to where it was is just [Courtenay]: And I mean, it didn't to be clear. [Courtenay]: It did not take an hour.

[Courtenay]: It took probably three minutes, but to just have the confidence that I can very quickly restore is really powerful. [Courtenay]: And yeah, it was so easy that there's not even like, there's not even a process, like you just literally click on the version you want. [Courtenay]: And it's like, do you wanna restore from this version? [Courtenay]: And you click yes. [Courtenay]: And like, that's the end of it.

[Rohan]: Where are you back up to if you don't want me to ask is it a nas or is it some other like Oh, I think it's through through your favorite sponsors. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Rohan]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: Oh, nice home assisting cloud.

[Courtenay]: Yeah, I think it also is local Because I think it will eventually yell at me when the hard drives are too good full But oh, yeah stored in two locations, so it's stored like on the local drive and locally and But not off like not off the device just right on the little [Courtenay]: the little assistant blue guy. [Rohan]: That's cool. [Rohan]: I might try and with my extra box that I have. [Rohan]: I try and like, I don't need to break it.

[Rohan]: I might just try and do a restore of it to see if it, to see how that works and not that fair. [Rohan]: So I'm just so I know again, it's funny. [Rohan]: We talk about homelessness in every day. [Rohan]: We know we can do it. [Rohan]: I've never actually seen it or done it myself. [Rohan]: So it's a, [Courtenay]: Yeah, and I was prepared for it to kind of be a whole thing, right? [Courtenay]: Like, I've been WordPress restores, and like, that's not a fun day.

[Courtenay]: My uncle needed one of those the other day, and I just had him. [Courtenay]: I said, pick an ISP that offers this as a service. [Courtenay]: It's included with your year. [Courtenay]: I won't have to think about it, but yeah, it was totally smooth. [Courtenay]: Very obvious, right? [Courtenay]: This checkboxes of which pieces you want to overwrite. [Courtenay]: there wasn't one for like specifically these tiny dashboard conflict changes you made yesterday.

[Courtenay]: Although for all Idaho maybe there was and I didn't look but yeah, it was great. [Courtenay]: It did exactly what it said on the tin super easily. [Courtenay]: It runs like the backups like I say, they run automatically and then whenever you update or whatever it asks if you want to take another snapshot. [Courtenay]: So yeah, it's great. [Rohan]: That's perfect.

[Phil]: Well, you mentioned the monsters before, and so if you want to upgrade your smart home, you can't go past our sponsor, Zeus. [Phil]: Zeus have just released their brand new Z-wave long-range Siren in China, that ZSC-50800LR. [Phil]: You can trigger audio and visual LED alarms based on smart sensors or other conditions, and the audio speaker plays your own files for personalized automation, or there's a selection in a pre-loaded library.

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[Phil]: Their new Zen 78 high power relay allows you to control and monitor higher load appliances up to 40 amps, which is perfect for pool pumps, air compressors, and other high power outlets. [Phil]: for the best prices on all zoos products head over to the smartesthouse.com. [Phil]: That's the smartesthouse.com. [Courtenay]: I'm glad they're uh you are always uh easy to understand. [Phil]: Yeah, right, it's like good.

[Courtenay]: I definitely typed in so you spelled the other way uh before finding it, but uh but that high power option I need to remember to look into that. [Courtenay]: I have a friend I was [Courtenay]: she has like a pump on a well for her lifestyle. [Courtenay]: And the chronic problem is that, especially in the winter, if it gets left on, not only does it drain the well, but like the whole system freezes up and then until it does out, she can't use it at all.

[Courtenay]: And so I was like, well, this is an easy problem to solve, right? [Courtenay]: Like, we'll just put a smart switch on it, and then you can just, if it's been on for more than whatever, shut it off, end of story. [Courtenay]: that like we could have built something custom, but there is no smart switch at that time that would run a 30-amp circuit safely, and so that's really exciting that they're bringing out those harder higher power systems.

[Courtenay]: Yeah, well, it's going to be a whole industrial set. [Courtenay]: Like really, she just needed a smart switch, but she needed one that isn't going to catch fire. [Courtenay]: If she runs more than 50 amps, it would. [Rohan]: Yeah, and the nice thing is to fill the earlier point, too, with because you said, it's like a property with live stock and stuff. [Rohan]: If it's a little further out, said, we have LR is a really cool option for that to red.

[Rohan]: I was actually, I know we're completely off to ask here, but I was talking to just another person as a community and they were talking about how [Rohan]: They used to have an older controller, whatever. [Rohan]: And they had a lot of spotting as a lot of issues, things like that. [Rohan]: And they actually switched to a ZWA2 and just with LR. [Rohan]: And that's pretty much like changed their world already.

[Rohan]: And even there, it's now, again, my ZWA2 set up behind me here, even though my setup is in the basement, right? [Rohan]: So because it can be remote, whatever. [Rohan]: So you can move a closer to the source in Wi-Fi range and do that. [Rohan]: So there you go. [Courtenay]: Do you know anyone using Laura the low power long range stuff?

[Rohan]: I mean, so right there is actually a, for those of you watching on YouTube, that is actually a mesh tastic. [Rohan]: I know what I've got another one here somewhere right there. [Rohan]: So I do know a bunch of people that are using mesh tastic in, like, in that community. [Rohan]: And a few people that have devices attached to that and, and, you know, sending whatever overlora.

[Rohan]: In my professional life, I do know a few organizations that leverage it, especially in different spaces, right? [Rohan]: And it's used for different things. [Rohan]: If you need a lot of bandwidth, it's not good. [Rohan]: But if it's just like a, hey, that device is on or the device is off. [Rohan]: Like, I'm going to stuff it's perfect for that.

[Courtenay]: Yeah, I think I was listening to someone like in a totally different podcast space, like some tech podcast space talking about using it for I can't even remember now when he was using it for his temperature or water, maybe it was water presence, like it was a fairly binary, you know, low, but that, you know, you could like close it into spreads and still get the signal, that kind of thing and just the flexibility of the

[Rohan]: Yeah, I think for the most part day, I think these ones are 915 megahertz, which is, again, different spectrum of Wi-Fi or whatever, right? [Rohan]: So, and range-wise, it's a little better. [Rohan]: Again, the only problem is it's not, it's not great for high band with application, at least not today. [Rohan]: And Laura itself is just a standard rather than it's, you have different applications on it.

[Rohan]: Yeah, realistically, you'll probably need some kind of a hub for for that, right? [Courtenay]: Based on whatever application they're using, so yeah, and I'm still out here living the hubless lifestyles, so I'm sure I'll get there at some point, but we're just you know, it's it's it's so hard to avoid.

[Rohan]: I I despise hubs, but then there's certain ecosystems that like again, Lutron, for example, that I that I use quite a bit, all of my [Rohan]: I genuinely do like them, and that needs a help. [Rohan]: That's the only thing I hate about it, right? [Rohan]: And it's, but it's probably so great because it is running their whatever they run on there.

[Phil]: But the home system green is a matter server, like, [Phil]: That's the only thing that's really like I could probably run a matter container. [Phil]: I just haven't been bought like I'm still growing does it right but I was like I don't need this growing on at the moment because it's not doing anything I took it down and all of a sudden all my matter devices but like unreachable I'm like oh that's right I've got the a matter server I don't want to go on that thing

[Courtenay]: Yeah, yeah, I think that's what I decided my aspiration is is to just let matter solve my problems for me and it seems to be like I don't have anything Yeah, it looks like I think that I have matter built into animal things.

[Courtenay]: I don't think anything's actively using matter in my house right now. [Courtenay]: I say with very little confidence, but [Courtenay]: But I, like, when it was first coming out, people were sure not very certain that it would get wider adoption.

[Courtenay]: And I think the, I think the Homocyism Project has been a huge part of it getting wider adoption and that it, like it takes time for new generations of devices to be rolled out, but that most of them seem to be just including it in a way that just maybe in 10 years will forget that we ever had these,

[Courtenay]: compatibility problems with all of these. [Rohan]: I'm willing to bet against that. [Rohan]: It's a, it's a, most protocols, most problems, right? [Rohan]: It is. [Rohan]: It is. [Rohan]: Again, I, I, I, I'm starting to have better hopes for matter, but, I don't, I'm not there yet. [Rohan]: It's a matter of matter over thread right now for me is just terrible. [Courtenay]: Oh, it's not working well. [Rohan]: Yeah, like I, it's not working period, right?

[Rohan]: Like I can't even, on my iPhone, I can't get it. [Rohan]: I can't get my iPhone even to properly register itself as a, whatever, in home assistant where it needs to change keys and all that. [Rohan]: Yeah, interesting. [Rohan]: I've been trying for like two weeks. [Rohan]: Yeah, no, no luck. [Courtenay]: I don't have an iPhone anymore. [Courtenay]: I quit my corporate job and had to send it back. [Phil]: That's the way you're going to just try and get real hard on board.

[Rohan]: I just want me stuff to work. [Rohan]: I don't really care. [Phil]: Yeah, it's fair. [Phil]: Connie, last time you were here, you were doing a lot of stuff with Google home as your main voice driver. [Phil]: Since then, home assistant has done the year of the voice and has now got their own voice hardware. [Phil]: I used to do using the Google home as your main voice driver. [Courtenay]: Yeah, we aren't, we don't use it as much as we did for sure.

[Courtenay]: It's still occasionally answers you when you don't actually mean for it, too.

[Courtenay]: kits or tools or whatever and there was some work going on and then I haven't checked in on it in a while but I know there were a couple of people who were sort of working on adapting this speakers to use the existing hardware with the the year of the voice stuff on the home assistant side but we haven't like I sort of looked at that and my oh good people are making [Phil]: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that, you know, like, you could go use the voices or to fade it away.

[Phil]: I would say that is here to be right with I've got an echo show on my desk here, but it's muted. [Phil]: And I don't think I really ask any questions, right? [Phil]: The only thing we really do so now for us time is in the kitchen. [Courtenay]: Like, yeah, we do use it. [Courtenay]: You know, your hands are full, shut off this light, turn on that light, like, you know, those kinds of things, but certainly not as enthusiastic as we were.

[Courtenay]: Several years ago, like, because I had, like, even, like, I don't know, call them automations.

[Courtenay]: I don't remember what Google calls them, but like, [Courtenay]: different like voice commands that did like bulk actions and stuff set up in Google and we don't use any of that stuff anymore I think some of that is just that home assistant is like it's just so easy to set things up in there and with the mobile app [Courtenay]: being so good with sensors, we're all Android and so I know iPhone. [Courtenay]: Although iPhone, I think it's good to try.

[Courtenay]: I do remember it was quite good when, like I said, it sent my back buddy your ago, but it was pretty good too. [Courtenay]: And so like, [Courtenay]: for presence, like, I mean, you guys used to ask all the time, like, what are you using for presence detection? [Courtenay]: It was like a whole conversation, and the answer is now, like you just like Nick moves in, and I just go, I need you to install his app, and there's his presence detection, right?

[Courtenay]: Like, here's your credentials, and he's done. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: and so like it's just an honest you now and you know and the the sensors the they're mostly like real time and so it's it just makes it easy to automate things we don't have any room detection specifically set up but kind of just don't need it like it's it's just not [Courtenay]: But yeah, the just the visibility and the ability to, you know, if people are at home, do a thing.

[Courtenay]: It's pretty easy. [Phil]: So you're not using like room presence at all, so no motion sensors in the rooms. [Courtenay]: No, I think the security system has a motion sensor connected to it. [Courtenay]: I think the battery is dead and it is not integrated with home assistant hasn't been for several years. [Courtenay]: But I think that's the only motion sensor. [Courtenay]: device that we really have. [Courtenay]: I mean, there's one out. [Courtenay]: We have that Facebook portal.

[Courtenay]: I got a couple of them real cheap a few years ago. [Courtenay]: We just use it to show us pictures and the time. [Rohan]: Oh, yeah, those things. [Courtenay]: And then every once in a while someone phones me on Facebook messenger and the whole kitchen starts ringing and it's very confusing. [Courtenay]: And it has it must have a motion sensor in it because it turns on and shows you a picture when you walk it to the roof.

[Courtenay]: But that's certainly not integrated with anything and I have kind of like I don't know I just assume that met us spying on me all the time anyway Yeah, it's fine But that's one more thing. [Phil]: Yeah So does that mean that so you all your lights are to what most you like to do your base Does that mean that someone wants to turn a light on?

[Phil]: They have to pull out their phone because I think we're mentioning before we don't turn the lights off And I'll get to pal them from a wall switch [Courtenay]: I mean, no, I think I use my phone mostly, because I just work a little bit differently, like I tend to think about what I'm going to do and then go do it.

[Courtenay]: So like while I'm sitting there thinking about what I'm going to do, I'll like turn on the light and the basement or whatever. [Courtenay]: Um, the high traffic light. [Courtenay]: that we use the most are either dumb lights or smart switches, and so that helps.

[Courtenay]: So like the hallway light is definitely like the highest traffic light in the it's the one that you kind of want to be able to just turn on when you walk in the room, and it's also happens to be the light switch that has a ground wire in it. [Courtenay]: And so it's a smart light switch [Courtenay]: The bathroom light is a dumb light because it's quite like it's four bulbs, it's quite bright, and again, no neutral.

[Courtenay]: So the main other switches that we use are the kitchen, which is right, like the iPad is right there. [Courtenay]: Again, the wall switch and the iPad are sort of backed back right on the same wall. [Courtenay]: And so mostly we use the iPad just as a light switch for those lights.

[Courtenay]: it'll be interesting actually like I showed Nick because I think my understanding my experience is that once he gets the like if he wants the light if all he wanted was a dimmer bulb which I'm not sure what is use cases exactly but if all he wanted was a dimmer bulb that he could just set it to the brightness that he wants and then I think he can just use the wall switch and the light will just come back on at the brightness that he had set.

[Courtenay]: already until he maybe leaves it off for too long or something like I don't know how that works but it'll be interesting to check in with him in a week or so and see how he's using it whether he's talking to a speaker or using his phone or using the iPad in the hall or whatever

[Courtenay]: But yeah, like I think I think I probably use my phone I know Charlie will as often use the speaker as the button on the plug for the lamp like the one that we turn on and off in here all the time. [Courtenay]: And the kitchen ones I think we mostly use the iPad for I use the voice actually quite a bit still for the basement because it's.

[Courtenay]: We've been doing renos down there and so I changed all the smart live bulbs set up because I needed a really bright light and so it has to be on the light switch anyway. [Courtenay]: It's a whole thing. [Courtenay]: But often I find myself like halfway down the stairs realizing that my hands are full and that I want the light on and just shouting at the room and it just catches it and works. [Phil]: Yeah, what's probably the most important.

[Courtenay]: No, the one downstairs, I don't know, all the ones up here, maybe they're too close together or whatever, but the base ones almost always work. [Courtenay]: And my phone, if I have my phone, like if I have my headphones in or whatever, like it does a good job of understanding what I want, actually doing it where the speakers are just a little bit stupider than that.

[Rohan]: Yeah, it's getting so bad like no matter no matter where I say, you know, whatever turn to song turn something off, whatever my no matter where in the house I am my dining room always picks it up. [Rohan]: Most random thing, that one picks it up. [Rohan]: I could be literally telling it to a smart speaker in front of me directly like a foot foot and a half in front of me and maybe like turn to song and even if I whisper, he'll be like the dining room when preparing video like

[Courtenay]: whispering into one speaker trying to make sure no one else hears you and yeah it's I think it's gotten worse to like that feels like it's worse than it was five years ago Oh my god so much worse so much worse Definitely should think about buying some ear of the voice hardware I suppose Yeah Look at that [Phil]: So what so now you've been doing you know homes in for at least six years now.

[Phil]: What are some of like if someone was starting home assistant today and you've obviously had a six year journey what would be some advice you'd give to someone. [Phil]: Starting home assistant today to watch out for to do the right way. [Courtenay]: I guess the primary thing.

[Courtenay]: Like, my assumption is that when someone's getting into home assistant, is that they already have something, smart bulbs, smart lights, like that they have something that they want to control, that they're not starting, I'm going to use home assistant and then buying the things for it, which I actually did have a friend to do, you guys should have him on, here's a good microphone. [Courtenay]: But I think typically it's the other way, right?

[Courtenay]: And so my first question would just be Like do a quick and it's so easy now like the forums come up Google is bad at everything But it's still good for this right like type in the [Courtenay]: platform that your device runs on, home assistant, and like read the top three forum posts of the top three results. [Courtenay]: And just get a sense of like, is this fine or not? [Courtenay]: Because something still aren't, right?

[Courtenay]: Like there's just some things that either can't or haven't been built in as sort of plug and play integrations. [Courtenay]: And [Courtenay]: I think that's where the real friction still lies is for someone who has an existing device and wants an integration and doesn't have the technical background and the patience and the whatever else to fight their way through it for something there, but that if, like I say for my friend Ben, like he kind of

[Courtenay]: he bought his house right like they they purchased their house and he was like I want to get some sperm home stuff now that this is going like what should I do and a friend of mine and I both use home assistant sort of we're helping him out and and so he actually did the reverse right he started and I'm going to use home assistant and then went to okay which bulbs should I get which lock should I

[Courtenay]: Page, I can't remember what it's called, but there's like that homelessness in like usage stats page that shows you which things are used and that is the best resource if you're doing it that way because you can just very quickly see that you know 60,000 or 400,000 people or whatever are using this thing and have a good sense that it's going to just work and so that's that's a really useful way way to go.

[Courtenay]: But yeah, no, I think it's really just easy, like it's, it's just easy now. [Phil]: Yeah, it's just easy. [Rohan]: It's cool because if you think about it, that's actually a really good way to start, right? [Rohan]: You start with the platform and build around it because again, you care about support. [Rohan]: You care about all the stuff.

[Rohan]: And [Rohan]: Again, with homelessness and being free, it's a pretty low barrier to entry. [Rohan]: You might need a little bit of, I mean, for it to be truly free. [Rohan]: You might need a little bit of expertise just to say, hey, how can I get it installed on the Raspberry Pi or whatever, right? [Rohan]: But, [Courtenay]: Yeah, but I mean, most people know how an SD card works, right? [Courtenay]: Like installing it in a Raspberry Pi's.

[Courtenay]: And like the hurdle that I've had, you know, I do have a friend who doesn't pay for the Nebuchasa service. [Courtenay]: And so we've set up like Dr. DNS and whatever, so that she can get into it from work. [Courtenay]: And like then, you know, her IP changes, like her ISP changes her IP address and breaks. [Courtenay]: And like, and that's clumsy and kind of bad. [Courtenay]: You know, it's just where she's at financially, it makes sense for her to phone me when a consistent break.

[Courtenay]: Yes, and we were through it and it's okay. [Courtenay]: But yeah, like if you can just throw the, I don't know what it is a month now. [Courtenay]: I haven't looked at my or seen a long time, but if you can just throw money at Nabikasa, I mean, I feel good about that. [Courtenay]: It feels like it goes to a good cause and it just takes care of all of like all of my problems [Courtenay]: I don't have to think about any of it.

[Courtenay]: I don't think you're like, where are your backups stored? [Courtenay]: I'm like, I don't know. [Courtenay]: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. [Courtenay]: I have no idea. [Courtenay]: It just works. [Rohan]: Well, even connecting into your Amazon Echo or Google Home, whatever, all that stuff. [Rohan]: I think it's a little easier with Google Home, but Amazon Echo, it's kind of a pain to manually do it, right? [Courtenay]: So... Yeah, I never did.

[Courtenay]: I went to Nabukasa before, like, I never, [Courtenay]: connected my Google home or like any of that stuff until after I had set up my nabakasa subscription. [Courtenay]: So, uh, because I just as soon as anyone says the word DNS, I just go, who can I give money to to not have to understand this problem? [Rohan]: That's awesome.

[Rohan]: It's funny because I had just gotten it all set up and stuff and then at the time, like, this is the before and now because I became a thing, Paul has reached out to Phil and I and he was like, hey, here's the thing we're working on. [Rohan]: You know, we'd like to give you early access, whatever. [Rohan]: And like, at the time, it was just, it wasn't like a navelu.casa, like you don't mean it was like some random, like AWS service. [Courtenay]: Yeah, Azure Website, start app on it.

[Rohan]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right and and so we're like okay cool. [Rohan]: Let's play with it whatever and I was like Well, I had I had just like literally like two weeks prior to that.

[Rohan]: I think I just got an all-night I go to set up and I was like well, that was the waste Even thinking about like [Courtenay]: the last time we talked in the time that I had put in like even getting that PS4 integration like get just getting everything set up and like maybe I should have just waited a couple years so it would have just been very easy but but no it's been really cool to sort of watch the platform change and grow and [Courtenay]: And do you have Charlie?

[Courtenay]: Like I did a session with the, I can't remember their name, the UX researcher was doing sessions with users about dashboards and stuff a while ago. [Courtenay]: And I did one of those. [Courtenay]: And as part of that, I checked in with Charlie and was like, you know, how you feel like this has gone? [Courtenay]: Because like, I know how I feel about it. [Courtenay]: But I'm kind of in software all day. [Courtenay]: And he's, you know, usually under a truck somewhere.

[Courtenay]: So, um, as a different perspective. [Courtenay]: And [Courtenay]: And it's nice to have his perspective on things, and it's just, like I say, it's just so clear that it's, like, I don't think he has the motivation, like I think I don't know what the like killer product would be for him. [Courtenay]: In fact, no, I do. [Courtenay]: I think if he. [Courtenay]: new and had like the money in time to put into like Christmas decoration automation, like I think that would be the way in.

[Courtenay]: They'll like get him really excited about it. [Courtenay]: But aside from the fact that I think he just doesn't like I don't know that he take the initiative to do it, it certainly is like I say when even when troubleshooting stuff and whatever it all [Courtenay]: It's never got anything to do with YAML and it's all very drag and drop and it's just easy.

[Phil]: The last time we spoke you were doing some data points, I think you were using Amazon, AWS Aurora, or audience, my skill database in the cloud. [Phil]: You've just had to do it in your free credits. [Courtenay]: Yeah, I think I was probably still paying for that up until a couple of years ago when I finally found that account. [Courtenay]: Cancel it. [Phil]: Yeah, so you're okay. [Phil]: You don't use that anymore like it. [Phil]: So are you doing any long-term stats or are you anywhere?

[Courtenay]: It's nice at good question because I think so, but I'm not very sure and I'm certainly not doing them in the cloud. [Courtenay]: Um, so I think that when I got this little [Courtenay]: fancy and two thing that it is set up to do that on its own hard drive because it's not nesty card and so we're not as worried about like read rights and whatever.

[Courtenay]: But to be honest, I don't actually know [Courtenay]: The way the database worked changed, I don't know, a couple of years ago now and at the time I had other priorities and didn't quite keep up with what was going on and just haven't gone back to revisit it. [Courtenay]: Purge keep days in recorder. [Courtenay]: Yes, because the default to that was just kind of way too short or what I wanted. [Courtenay]: And so I changed that. [Courtenay]: I think it's at the 60 now.

[Courtenay]: Um, and I remember when I was doing that, like, kind of reading some things and being like, now I'm no longer sure what I am and I'm not keeping, um, but I have, like, gigabytes of historical home assistant data that I just need to get over deleting. [Courtenay]: And so it's maybe just better if I'm not saving it, um, [Courtenay]: So, yeah, if anyone has a good use case for my data and was to pay me for it, they're welcome too. [SPEAKER_01]: There you go.

[Courtenay]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: But otherwise, I just, like I certainly have more than enough data to do the things I need to do, which I think is how it should be, right? [Courtenay]: Like the energy dashboard, right? [Courtenay]: Like it's not like I go back and it's like, oh, there's no data here. [Courtenay]: Where is that data being saved? [Courtenay]: I kind of have no idea, but it doesn't really matter because it just works. [Phil]: Just works. [Phil]: That's cool.

[Courtenay]: like this just works thing. [Phil]: Yeah, it's so much better when it just works, aren't? [Courtenay]: Well, I need to be honest, like, just with, you know, between the pandemic and kind of everything else. [Courtenay]: Like, if the level of effort to keep home assistant running was what it was six years ago, I wouldn't be telling you I'm still using it. [Courtenay]: Right. [Courtenay]: Like that's just I would have just found a different solution.

[Courtenay]: I, you know, I'm in a different financial situation and I would just throw money at the problem. [Courtenay]: The reason that I'm still using it is because it is the best and easiest thing to use and so it just makes sense to keep using it. [Phil]: Yeah, that's good. [Phil]: And I think that's a good note to leave it on. [Phil]: I'm Courtney, thank you so much. [Phil]: Do you have any plans next six years?

[Phil]: Have you got any grand plans you want to try and achieve next six years? [Phil]: What's your six year road map? [Phil]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Courtenay]: Well, I imagine that we're going to get a new PlayStation in this house at some point. [Courtenay]: And I'm going to have to figure out who's building the integration for that, because that seems to get harder with each generation.

[Courtenay]: I do think that like door and motion sensor stuff is sort of the next big piece to be able to bring like I say I need to cancel the alarm system I've got and kind of set up something there.

[Courtenay]: So I'd like to think that when we talk in another six years that I'll have some sensors, [Courtenay]: I think it's getting better over threat or it'll be working by then right and I think the the thing that I'm really excited about with like not home assistant specifically but home automation stuff more generally is like.

[Courtenay]: We're finally maybe getting to a point where things like smart lawn mowers are almost functional, like the vacuums are pretty good now, like that we can get these sort of smart home things that actually complete tasks in a way that means we don't have to think about. [Courtenay]: Like the way I put my clothes in the washing machine and I just kind of know that I'll open the door and the clothes will be clean. [Courtenay]: It just works, I think is starting to come for some of those.

[Courtenay]: other tasks. [Courtenay]: I'm not sure that the like $20,000 train it with your VR goggles robot is the way we're going to get there. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: But that these sort of smaller tools, right? [Courtenay]: Like the idea of having something like, yeah, maintains your yard. [Courtenay]: Maybe you know, moves your store around for you. [Courtenay]: Like those sort of individual tasks. [Courtenay]: Like I say, I think vacuuming.

[Courtenay]: I think is pretty [Courtenay]: vacuum and wash his floors and he's very happy with that and so that's the place where I'm excited to sort of see like I need a little dusting drone or something, you know, and yes, that's the only truth right like the toilets the bathrooms and the dusting [Courtenay]: One Amazon tried to make a drone, but then people didn't like it looking at them and I don't think it did anything except look at you.

[Courtenay]: Yeah. [Phil]: It was like, I think it was not like, if you're a way, you could send this drone around the house. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Courtenay]: It was kind of weird. [Courtenay]: Yeah. [Rohan]: Yeah. [Rohan]: Yep. [Rohan]: Yes. [Rohan]: It's, I don't know how much I trust Amazon for doing that. [Courtenay]: Yeah, I can see the challenge is there, but yeah, I think that's the dream is religious to spend less time with the stuff that still needs doing.

[Phil]: Yeah. [Phil]: Well, Courtney, thank you so much. [Phil]: Yeah, I wish you luck on the next six years and we'll catch up with you tonight. [Courtenay]: Yeah, thanks. [Phil]: That's great. [Rohan]: Cheers, thank you. [Phil]: This isn't journey or come on as a guest. [Phil]: Reach out to us at feedback at haspodcast.io. [Phil]: That's HASSpodcast.io. [Rohan]: The home assistant podcast is hosted by Phil Hawthorne and myself, Rohan Keremandi.

[Rohan]: For links to topics we discussed today, check out our show notes on haspodcast.io.