The Home Assistant Podcast Meets Technical Difficulties

In this episode of the Technical Difficulties Smart Home podcast, we talk with Rohan and Phil from the Home Assistant Podcast. They discuss the evolution of Home Assistant, the challenges faced with smart home devices, and the importance of community contributions in open-source development. The conversation also touches on personal experiences with home automation, accessibility features, and insights from CES. Additionally, they engage in a light-hearted cultural exchange about the game Duck Duck Gray Duck versus Duck Duck Goose, and reflect on their first smart home devices and their impact on their journeys into home automation.

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website: https://hasspodcast.io/

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Transcript

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automations and stuff in a good place, right? have to change the whole channel name and everything. You'd start a new podcast. that's, now we just do two podcasts. Look at Brandon doubled your business. why did I- to go from losing $10 a month to losing $20 a month. That's exactly it. You are listening to season three, episode nine of the Technical Difficulties Smart Home Podcast. Today we are joined by two special guests, Rohan and Phil from the Home Assistant Podcast. They're gonna do their very best to convince me that Home Assistant is the path to home automation glory. And they're gonna share some of the many things they have learned during their eight years of podcasting together. That is so many years of podcasting. We're also gonna learn a little bit about Australian culture and the history of DuckDuck. Gray Duck, so please let me know in the comments below if you are on Team Gray Duck or Team Goose. You know which one is the proper answer there. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Zeus. Zeus makes innovative Z-Wave smart home products you can depend on. Switches, dimmers, smart plugs, sensors, relays, Zeus has everything you need to smarten up your home. Plus, every Zeus 700 and 800 series device comes with an extended five-year warranty when you register your product. And don't forget to visit thesmarthesthouse.com for their deal of the week. This week they are offering $13 off the ZEWS 800 Series Toggle Dimmer Switch. It's got all the fixings, including Z-Wave Long Range, three and four way capabilities, double tap scene control, and more. And if toggle switches aren't your thing, well check back next week because there's always something new on sale. Remember, for the best deals on ZEWS Z-Wave products, you'll find them at thesmarthesthouse.com. And now, on with the show. we got a special treat here you guys. Vince, introduce yourself to our friends as usual. Hey, this is Vince. I'm happy to be here. Brandon, are you also happy to be here? You know, I'm always happy to be here, Pete. today we got two guests. Can you believe it? Two guests. This is probably the greatest event in podcasting history. We have the hosts of the Homestisit podcast. Please welcome Rohan and Phil. Rohan, Good to have you here. You are in Toronto, is that correct? I am, yeah, just East of Toronto. All right, so are you excited to become our 51st state? man, it's too soon, man, too soon. Listen, Australia's next. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. I know. thought Greenland was next. that's right. You're talking about red, white and blue land. Thank you very much. Yeah, Red, White, Blue, right, my gosh. That is crazy. Phil, think, Phil is in Australia. He thinks he's safe, but we'll get to Australia eventually. Don't worry about it. nothing here that you guys want. Just leave us alone, you know? right? That's what you were used for know, like America's everywhere. There is like a secret spy base out in the middle of the desert. Maybe you can have that back, like take that elsewhere. I don't think it's a secret. I've seen, I've seen like, I've seen like YouTube videos about it. I'm pretty sure it's not secret. no, they won't let you near it. They won't let you film it. If you try and get that, that'll put you on a list. Like if you try and get anywhere within a certain radius of it, probably just us talking about it on this podcast where we're on a list you guys host the Home Assistant podcast, and yet we met you guys in Las Vegas. Again, you're Toronto, you're in Melbourne, right? Did get it right? Thank you. I'm a quick learner. But we met you guys in Australia, and interestingly, how long have you been doing the podcast? In Vegas, you didn't meet us in Australia. I wish- I wish- I've never been to Australia, but- Don't tell my wife I was actually in Australia those three days. It was a great time. I think it's coming up to eight years, seven and a half years, eight years. Yeah. We've been doing the podcast. 17, I believe it was. 17. Yeah. There you go. seven, eight years you've been doing the podcast and Vegas, two months ago, or last month actually, was the first time you guys had ever met in person, is that correct? That is correct. Yeah. and you still decided that this was okay to do the podcast after that, it wasn't like, ooh, mean, you've been in a long distance relationship for so long, you sort of get to know each other's quirks and you just deal with it in person, I mean, they do say don't meet your heroes, but no, Yeah. Did you have any Cheetos in bed by chance? Yeah Jeez. I bet Pete wishes he never would have met me in person. In person, first day was a struggle. Vince, you're a great guy. But yeah, the first day met Vince in person, he ate Cheetos in bed next to me, which is weird and we don't... hilarious. that. I feel like you need to like, preface it with an actual story. Like, you're... Good lord. like, what's the deal here? Well, okay, we went to a trade show and we didn't get enough at CDIA. We went to CDIA together and the rooming situation didn't work out the way we thought it was gonna work out. And we wound up all in a room, three of us in room together with very small, two small beds and twin, it was like. a full size bed, not even queens. And magically Brandon was the one that got a bed by himself. Like what in the hell? literally, had been up for 37 straight hours, I think at this point, right? 37 straight hours. And I go to the room ahead of them and I'm like, I just go to go to bed, go to sleep, cause I've been up for forever. Vince comes in later. Again, we're sharing this tiny bed. And this is the first day I've ever met this dude. And he plops in and opens a bag of Cheetos while I'm trying to sleep and just chopping. Mind you, mind you, me and Brandon were at an event that was going on for Cedia and we're drinking and then came back to the room and Pete's already sleeping. It wasn't even like 11 o'clock at night. And so here I am, a little bit, had too much to drink and so had a little snack and watched some TV to relax. Grandpa's in bed, he probably can't hear you anyway. the TV on. It was kind of funny. is a party pooper, he reminds me of my grandfather, 90-year-old man. 37 straight hours, okay? That's not an exaggeration. It was a bad. some vodka red bowls and get over it. No, just kidding. That's it. That's it. Not only had been up for 37 straight hours, I had to listen to this guy from Alfred talk about a stupid locked to me for like an hour. And it was, it was probably only 10 minutes. I don't know, but it felt like an hour and I was, I was done. I totally dissed him in the video. I guess. I know, I know. I, I, I thought it was hilarious, but, I actually messaged, was texting Pete, earlier today. I'm like a couple of those, a couple of the Alfred guys actually live in like a five minute radius of me. Right. And, yeah, yeah, apparently they do. And I was like, okay, so yeah, we should meet up. I want to, I want to, I mean, I, I'm not expecting a free locker and like, just, I want to know what you guys are up to. I want to know what you guys are doing. I honestly, I, I. now though. I hate smart locks. that's what I think I've come to realize. I have one. I despise them. Phil's heard this rant a couple of times, but my door is just crap. Right. and my, not the smart lock is the issue. Well, yes, that's partial part of the issue. Right. So the problem with smart locks, I found us a lot of smart locks don't actually have the adjustable bore side of the bore or whatever the part that goes in the, in the hole in the door. Right. So I have an older door, I guess, and it's used as the older, smaller bore hole size. So fine. The ones that do, and that's, that's, that's my gripe with a lot of the smart locks with an up gripe in my door is that my window is really close to the hole. So it doesn't, I, a lot of locks I can't put on. So the very first lock I bought was in August, stuck down on the back of my thing. And it's, sitting on top of the window. So on top of the window frame. So it's, it's, it's just not spaced properly or something like that. So I think, I think I need a full start. need to get rid of my door, get a new door, get a proper door lock. And a lot of them, I find that like, again, and you guys are in Minnesota, so you understand winter. Like when it gets really cold and stuff like that ice, your house, your foundation starts to like move a little bit. Right. Cause it's called, I forgot what the word is called, but like when, when basically the earth moves because of the freezing and thawing of the, of the soil. And so because of that now locks, miss a line doors, miss a line, yada, yada, yada. And smart locks I find don't do great in that environment. That's my rant. That, that, that's why I hate all smart locks. I wrote a song about how much I hate smart locks, so, you know. I loved it. I'm pretty excited. think it'll I don't think anyone's gonna care but I enjoyed writing a song about how much I smart locks. too funny. Now, did you write the song or did ChatGBT write the song? Okay, it was a group effort between me and Chad GPT writing the lyrics and after I got the lyrics that was fun I went to Suno AI and just plugged him in there and said I want a hillbilly bluegrass song with the banjo and you know I spit out a few versions I'm like this is great this is fantastic and it was people are talking about like unfolding proteins with, AI and all this stuff. And here's Pete making songs about how much he hates, hates smart locks. It's good use. that's great. enjoyed the song. It was good. I'm not gonna lie. I did too. I'm like, hey, this guy's kinda nice. neat, yeah. than the actual comparison to be real. was 100 % better. That's why I was very excited. I was way more excited about that than the actual 18 minutes of comparison video. The is, you gotta get them to get that far though. 40 % drop off beforehand, they're gonna miss the gold. I teased it at the beginning. said, if you stick around to the end, after my mental breakdown, you get to watch the Smart Home music video premiere. So it's pretty exciting, I think. I think it's getting all the views, but we don't need to talk about me. We've got guests today, my goal today, I guess, is to tell you guys that you, as these Home Assistant podcast people are. Mm. which I appreciate. an innocent bystander over here consider me Switzerland. Brandon. I just, think Pete, you just, you've put home assistant into this like land of it's evil. It can't do any, like it can do no good in your eyes. And I don't think that's the right place to put homes. It's like you just said, you know, it's breaking up families. It's breaking up homes. Well, the $25,000, $50,000 home automation system that's no longer supported is now also breaking up homes because it's, you know, the vendor's gone out of business or it's so financially expensive that, you know, it's caused divorces. Now there's a free thing over here that can. do all that can do and so much better. So I don't know Pete like, I mean. those are creating jobs, right? Those systems go bad, so they have to get a new one. then jobs are creating, the economy's booming, and then we can take over Canada. Well, there is so much that Home Assistant is creating in an economy as well. saying there is so like the whole ecosystem, there's a whole works with Home Assistant program now. Vendors are coming in. SP32, like ESPHome from the like is now owned by Nabucasa. And that is creating so many opportunities. Like how much stuff on AliExpress can you get now that an ESP32 chip enabled? They're probably powered by ESPHome or something that's, you know, powered by this open source project now. And even if it's not, you can probably hack it to be. Right. So. of you guys start with a home assistant? I'm gonna say, yeah, what may be getting put? We asked this question on our podcast, but you would think I would have prepped for this at some point in the last, I don't know, seven years, eight years, whatever that we've done this. I don't know. 2016, I think 2015 or 2016. I moved, I moved into this house in 2015. So probably 2016 YouTube. immediately started and started a podcast right away like, hey, this is it. Start a pod. no, no, no. It's, mean, I started on smart things, decided I hated it. like it was fine for just like basic, like, Hey, your door is open, whatever. But to do any automations at the time, anything advanced, you needed to learn groovy. And I didn't care to learn some random offshoot of JavaScript. Yeah. I totally. Right. And, but So then I was like, OK, I got to get rid of this. How can I use all the sensors and stuff that I bought? then that's where Home Assistant came in for me. I started when I was very young, still with my parents. The first thing I did was I had X10, like some X10 smart modules next to my TV. And I had an IR blaster that would turn the lights on when I turned the TV on with a Harmony smart remote. And I thought that was so cool. Now when I just need to, when I move, whenever I move out, I will be able to, you know, I'm going to do home automation. That's going be my thing. Anyway, fast forward 10 years and I had still moved out of home. Eventually I got into my own place. And I started going down the Phillips Hue route. I got sucked into some random Kickstarter that, you know, didn't really eventuate. So then I was like, I need to take a look at, know, another smart home platform. I did a comparison of them all. think OpenHAB was big at the time. It probably still is big. Is there the open source project? I didn't want to go down the route of getting stuck into a proprietary system like SmartThings. SmartThings wasn't even in Australia at that point. I wanted something open that, you know, wasn't going to charge me monthly subscription fee or anything. And I compared OpenHAB and HomeBusiness and they were the two front runners and OpenHAB was based on Java, which similar to Rohan, I did no interest in learning Java. YAML I could deal with, right? YAML's, you know, I'm a programmer by trade. So YAML wasn't too hard for me. And then, yeah, I started doing some unboxings on YouTube, which, you know, just, thought, let's, I'm buying this random stuff online. Let's just do an Australian version of an unboxing, right? Everything's. North American focused or UK focused. Let's get some Aussie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, we have real electricity here. So, you know, like we need to get like proper things certified. I can't, you know, put things in my own walls or run my own cables, you know, cause I could die. Not just get a little tingle on the fingers. So yeah, there was like a whole, like bit of, you know, I got a little missing out. Right. So I thought I was doing that, but then I found editing videos really hard and just time, right? Like, know, I had a girlfriend, fiance, know, going on holidays and stuff. I originally started blogging. thought, this is going to be easier than videos. So I started blogging and then I was randomly on the Home Assistant Community forums, just hanging out there talking to people about Home Assistant. And Dan, was one of the, founded the podcast, said, hey, I want to do a Home Assistant podcast. been, I've done a few podcasts before. think Homeless would be good with the podcast, but I need some co-hosts. And so I said, yep, I'll come on board. Meanwhile, Rohan's whatever Canadians do. don't know, shoveling snow or whatever, ice skating. And he goes, yeah, cool. I've got nothing to do with it. to a bunch of guys from Minnesota. So they're, they're also probably doing that. it's, but yeah, I mean, there you go. Can I, can I have some more please? It, is the last like three weeks has just been hell. well it's frozen over, but yeah, no, it's, and then same thing, right? It's, it's, we, met on the community there and then it was like 4 AM my time and they're like, Hey, you want to do this? And I was like, okay. And then Phil, me and Dan at the time jumped on and we recorded audio. at the time it was pretty much audio only. We're still pretty much audio first kind of thing, but we're pretty YouTube focused now too. So we do have video and stuff like that. But yeah, so, at the time we didn't do any video or anything like that. So when and why did you murder Dan? Yeah. he was from New Zealand. no, he, he, he was starting some other endeavors and I think he just wanted to focus on that. And, he asked us like, Hey, do you guys want to keep this going or whatever? And we said, yeah. Does he use home assistant? I think so. I don't know. but yeah. was starting his own business and like, I dunno, I give, have a few creators on, right? Like editing and that can take up a whole bunch of time. Right. And this was, you know, many moons ago before chat, GPT and AI tools that could cut down an episode and before Descript where you could, you know, edit in line and all that. you know, editing, remember I've took over the editing and it took me, you know, I think for every hour of a recording would take me, you know, like two, three hours. to edit and publish it and do all the socials and stuff. yeah, you know, when he's trying to start a business, it's just too much time for him. So then I said to Ryan, look, I've never done podcasts. Have you done a podcast? And neither of us had done a podcast before, we're like stuff it. Let's keep it going. And yeah, here we are. almost. Yeah, sorry. Is that, is that not a, is that an Aussie thing? sorry. That's I guess it's like, it. Like, sorry. There we go, now you need to put the explicit sign on the... Yeah, that is the equivalent. Fudge it, that is the version. I feel like when you're doing a Home Assistant podcast, there's probably lots of preconceived notions about Home Assistant. How are you guys overcoming a lot of like Pete who think that Home Assistant is the same way as it was 10 years ago Pete specifically we make fun the rest of us, I think it's one of those things, Home Assistant has come a very, very long way, right? Like when I started, was very... manual, very everything was done through YAML files and stuff like that. Building an automation was like, the logic was kind of like you really had to know what you're doing. Otherwise it didn't work and you tried it over and over and over again until you got it. But that's not the case anymore, right? They've had a massive focus on UI and UX where things come in first. And again, it's a double edged sword, right? So now you start pissing off to people that were very loyal to that way of doing it. So even something like moving, at the time when you wanted to add an integration, you added it through YAML and then that would load the respective libraries that needed to be loaded. What happened is once now, when you need to do that, you do that through the UI saying, Hey, I want to add, I don't know, a Zigbee device, or I want to add whatever that is. When you want to do it that way. Great. You go in, you add click, click, click and done. A lot of people also found that to be an issue because they're like, well, I use Git in the way I do things and very programmatic ways. And so it's just a mindset shift, right? And you can't please everybody at some point. But I think getting it out to the masses, I think what they're doing now is a much better way to do it. And again, it's one of those things where it can't, it's as hard as you want to make it. It doesn't have to be difficult, but I think it can be, right? There are advanced... things you can do in there, but you don't have to. I think you also got to remember that there's new people coming on to Home Assistant all the time, right? Like, I guess if your stats are similar to ours, chances are if you're listening to this podcast or older than 35, you're a male, probably well-educated. That demographic keeps coming up, right? Like there's more 35 year old males coming in every day and they're looking for a new smart home system. And today they're going to find Home Assistant as it is today, right? We even had someone on our show that was 14 using Home Assistant in his like bedroom. that that will slowly. to see and make sure he's allowed to be on. Yeah. so yeah, there was always being like new people coming in. I think for the old timers that are using home assistant, like homes is made it very clear. Like they're going to support YAML that they're not, their intention is not to remove it. I know I'm a stickler for YAML. I'm not moving away to, I'm trying not to use the UI too much, but I do get sucked in. But yeah, I, I think eventually older. crowd will just get drowned out by the newer kids that are using the new stuff anyway. Yeah, I mean, there's still a big commitment to so Frank, who's one of the one of the main devs, he's still he is personally committed to keeping that alive. Right. So he's he's kind of the CTO of nebuchadnezzar, I think is his title. I might be wrong. I'm not sure. But he leads the development effort for for Home Assistant. And he's pretty. I mean, he's told us on the show on record saying that he is. He wants to make sure that those people are also taken care of the people that prefer YAML, the one that want to do it that way. But again with that said there's still a couple of things where you might have to go in through the UI So is it a make or break? Probably not. Is it a little more of an inconvenience if you want to do it that way? Sure Okay, so it sounds like you guys are both on board with the idea of making it easier to use, even though you're personally like the animal. You're on board with the idea of making it easier to use and bringing on new people. Did it take you a while to get there, or have you always been on board with that plan? always been on board. I've always advocated for it. Yeah, it should always be the way. don't, well, if you don't do that, then you're just keeping people out of your ecosystem and out of your product. Well, and forget it from a product perspective, selfishly, the more people that are on the platform, the more features, the more integrations, the more all of that stuff. why would I not want that? Right. It it's only going to benefit me. That's, I totally agree with you on that. Like we, you know, I used to work for Habitat and yes, anytime you made a change, people get upset, but they didn't understand. you want more people using this. You don't want this to be a tiny exclusive club because then there's not the money to develop the things. There's not people to develop the things and you're always going to be stuck with the thing you have versus being able to expand to all sorts of new integrations and all that. So. Yeah, it's it's short-sighted thinking to just be like, like it. I don't change, even though I don't like home assistant. I don't want to change. Just to be fair, Pete has Home Assistant, so do have the green. Yeah. So yeah, let me actually ask you about that. So for a long time, Home Assistant, it was a build your own system, right? You had to go out and find some sort of a board and all the radios you wanted and cobble it together like some sort of mad scientist. But now they offer about the yellow and the green, which are these standalone systems that you can sell. And the green, it's basically ready to go when you buy it like any other hub that you would purchase. I'm assuming you guys still have your own builds. what would you recommend to people who want to get into Home Assistant to go that direction or do you think building your own is still the better way to go? Really depends on who the person is. If the person is technical, I would say build your own. If they are not technical, know, maybe it's someone that just doesn't have time to go ahead and manage homo-sysn for that long. Homo-sysn green and homo-sysn yellow are good options. Yeah, ditto, ditto. how Pete thinks that building it from scratch is this exuberant process of putting it together. like, if you can install, like back in the day when you put it, you know, installed software on your computer, it's kind of like that. Pretty easy. Yeah. No, you gotta put white gloves on and things. It's complicated. There's tiny screws. There's like tiny screws and things, right? If you're gonna build your own computer. or something else? Are you not putting white gloves on to install Home Assistant? Is that where you've gone wrong Pete? Maybe it is. Maybe it is. I just assume. Anytime you deal with electronics, you've got to get all, know, anti-static. That's right. touch an SD card and flash it with H-A-O-S and then put it in a Pi. like again, you're just putting files on a, on an SD card if you use a Raspberry Pi. I was gonna say just go get a raspberry pie. there's no different soldering or anything you have to do to get this all put together. What are you fucking- And if you don't want to use Raspberry Pi, can pick up a mini PC and install it like on it as a compartmental virtual machine. It's literally just as simple as following three or four steps. It's no big deal. Okay, listen, I actually did install it on an, before I got the green, I did install it on an old Mac that I have, and it was more than three or four steps, just so you know. It was not, it's pretty old. It's like, you know, 10 years old at this point, it was old, but I got it, I figured it out. I got it done. It was, it was weird. I didn't like it. I liked something I could plug in and hey, there we go. We're good. Let's party. That's what I want to do. Look, the good thing about having not everything in a single unit is that you can get your upgrade your radio. Like if you decide next month that, this Zigbee radio is not powerful enough to do my 100 devices that I've got, you can go get a better radio, right? And also if the Zigbee chip fails in that device that's locked down, you then have to replace the whole device as opposed to just the Zigbee radio. I think I think what Phil is trying to say is it's a drug. And as you get more into it, you want to like upgrade and you want to like, it's that right? It's almost like building like your gaming PC and stuff like that. You're like, Hey, I got this thing. there's a newer newer graphics card. Okay, I'm gonna rip mine out, put it build a new one. Sorry, install a new one, whatever that looks like. Right. to go to a different analogy for Pete. That one doesn't work. Like, hey, this thing works. I don't have to do anything. Hey, I'm not, I'm not saying you're wrong there, Pete. I'm just, but it's again, it's, that same kind of methodology, right? So having done this for quite a long time, have you been tempted by any of the other hubs that are out there? Probably, I'm guessing no. I'm guessing no, but like the Homie Pro. You know I love the Homie Pro, right? It's ease of use. with the tiles and you move them around and it looks pretty and it's easy and fun. Is that at all appealing to you No, think for me personally, probably the closest is probably just like standard, like home kit or something like that. I don't think I've ever. Caired to move off of it, but, to be fair, I haven't actually given again, homie pro as an example of a full proper look and to try and, know, maybe, maybe if I do, I'll, I'll love it. I don't know. my automations and stuff in a good place, right? have to change the whole channel name and everything. You'd start a new podcast. that's, why I can't listen that that's just now we just do two podcasts. Yeah, see? Look at Brandon doubled your business. why did I- to go from losing $10 a month to losing $20 a month. That's exactly it. you guys are at CES, that's where we met obviously. was both your first time at CES. So did you see anything there that really was worth your time? Was it exciting for you guys to be there? Is this gonna make the greatest content ever for your podcast? What'd you think of CES? I don't think it's gonna make the greatest content like we've been slowly trying to get our CS content out on YouTube So being a podcast it sort of becomes hard to put audio content out when it's a very noisy environment So we've been doing some videos even then like the videos are pretty noisy as well But it was great to actually meet brands in person meet other creators like yourselves in person And also the number cast a team there right like it was first time I got to meet Paulus creative home assistant Frank Miranda and a few other people from NaviCast are all there in person, right? Usually I'm just a screen on the other side of the world at awkward times of the morning for me. So I think that was good and the relationships there were really good to do. In terms of CES in general, I don't know about you guys, I was fascinated to see just the similar technology that was out. I know like the Robo, I think you talked about this with Ryan when he was on about the robot vacuums all have arms now or a few of them have got arms. I also noticed that everyone seemed to have the palm reading lock that seemed to be really big and everyone had that all at the same time and they all seemed to be stroking that. So it was just interesting to see how some of the stuff you see online, like, you know, the big announcements aren't necessarily that big when you're there in person, like, should actually, there was a few people that had the same exact same thing there. Yeah. Yeah, very different. No, literally exactly the same. And I think Phil and I talked about this after too. And I think that's pretty much what we, the conclusion we came to, but it was really cool meeting people. Right. I, and I think, you know, if it's up to me, definitely, I think we, I would love to go back again. but, in the country. He'll be part of our country. He won't even need a passport next year. So Phil, was this your first time in the United States? No, I've been to America a few times now. I love Hawaii, one my favorite places. Second time in Vegas, but yes, very much enjoyed it. and it gets better every time, right? You're like, man, those Americans, they got it going on. That's it. on. So, are you a Simpsons fan, Phil? Not really, no. We do get a lot of it here. I'm the sort of... Yeah, I hear a lot of people saying Simpsons references. I know the episode you're referring to where the Prime Minister's at the backyard. Yeah. No. it very accurate? Have you played Knifey Spoonie? Is that a thing? Certainly not a thing. I'll just put... I was watching the episode where I put another shrimp on the barbie, right? Like, exact same thing. I mean, we need to I feel like Phil and I need to turn the tables a little bit and talk about duck duck gray duck. Like the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. he had to open this can of worms up to Pete. Like, now he's gonna get on his soapbox. I think we went over, did we? the stupidest thing I think any of us had heard that were in that room drinking. we may have to turn, we have to turn this into the Duck Duck Gray Duck podcast, just so, I think it's the second time we brought this up, but yes, Duck Duck Gray Duck is the superior version of Duck Duck Goose, which is lame, it's just lame, right? It's too easy, obviously you go Duck Duck Duck Goose, and the goose you chase around with Duck Duck Gray Duck, you go Duck, Duck, Duck, Gray Duck, you chase around, but you can also go Blue Duck, Red Duck, You don't run for red duck. You don't run for blue duck. You can even go gray duck, right? Green duck. You fool the people into thinking you're saying gray duck and then you say gray duck and you chase around. You can mix it up. can mix it up. Say silly duck, goofy duck. Yeah, but you're still a duck. any adjective you can think of. Yeah, but grey ducks are bad. gray dock right away and then run because the first person never expects to be picked. It's true. Brandon is. got a head start, you're up, you're ready. That's right. Walking up in this goose. since he was three. Brandon, when he played this game, the whole point of playing Duck Duck Reduck though is to be the center of attention for a little while. And Brandon doesn't want that at all. So he just wants to sit right back down. doesn't. Here to win. Screw you children. I am surprised though, I'm surprised that Duck Duck or not Duck Duck Goose, the inferior version has made its way all the way across the ocean to Australia. Like it's not that great of a game that you'd think. And maybe I'm just being America centric here and thinking we started everything. Maybe it started somewhere else and we, but I assume that it came from us. America doesn't even believe in duck, duck, gray duck. It's just Minnesota. We literally researched this. Yeah, I know. We're better, we're better. We are superior. But like, how did it get across? Like, what brought that game across to Australia? Or I don't know if it's in Asia, if it's in Africa. I don't know, I don't know. Maybe it is. I don't have a way to look this up. ship rides. Pete. Geez. People travel they have airplanes and boats too. Maybe, but the game I think predates boats and planes and internet. not a good enough game that like, it's not a good enough game where it's like, if I traveled, if I traveled to Africa and I was meeting some African friends, I'd like, you guys, you gotta play this thing that I've been playing over in the United States for so long. the missionaries and the school teachers, I tell you. If you believe AI, apparently Duck Duck Grey Duck started in Sweden and it's played in Minnesota. We do have a lot of Swedes. we even have vodka named after it. We literally have gray duck vodka. Like literally we're embracing this full, full heartedly. of great grooves, but maybe maybe it's from the game. I don't know. It's better and cheaper than Grey Goose. But that is interesting. It started in Sweden though. But how did it get so did it? Okay, again, I'm assuming Duck Duck Goose started in Minnesota or started in the United States, somehow went across the ocean to Europe, got to Sweden, Sweden converted it and then they brought it back to the United States. That's probably not the way it went. I'm guessing it started in Europe or somewhere over there and they brought it with them. That's a very American statement there. Yeah. I even admitted it is a very American statement, but you know, soon the whole world will be America. Good thing we don't really have a strong international following. I wouldn't say we have a strong any following, Did you see my homo assistant comparison video? I did a comparison, the same exact automation with Hubitat, Home Assistant, and the Homey Pro, right? Just to show here's how you do the exact same thing in all three systems. And the Hubitat, I figured out pretty easy. The Homey Pro, figured out very easy. The Home Assistant, I couldn't figure out how to do it until I finally went into chat GPT and made them write me some YAML code that worked. And then, After that, I went back and I spent another day basically trying to figure out how do it in the UI and I did, but it was very convoluted and so. When did you do this? Well ChatCapt was around so... December, November? Like it was only a few months ago. Okay. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Cause the UI isn't that bad. YAML is terrible to figure out. Assistant is open source and that means documentation is open source. So if you have an idea on how we can improve the documentation, you may open a pull request on GitHub and make it clearer on how to make an automation. Or just complain on the communities and someone else will do it. there we go, that's the way. Yeah, complaining is more my style and. That was fun. specialty actually. I would argue, I know you like the documentation. I'm sure it's fantastic. I would argue that with proper design, documentation is unnecessary. Thoughts? Sure. But I think again, it's catering to the advanced and the, and the basic, right? So it's like, can't, it's hard to get both. When you have, when you make your UI too simple, then at that point you can't do your advanced things easily. Right? So it, he's telling you can't have your cake and eat it too, you know? so good. I like my cake. But that's what Apple's been trying to do for their whole existence, trying to achieve that goal. they've done it. And I know Apple obviously has a much larger budget, I'm guessing larger budget than say Home Assistant does probably. Right, then a free open source. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the free open source part is where they could make a little more. How do they make money, by the way? What keeps them? They have they have an organization. It's called Nabucasa. So basically what it is, is you can you can do it entirely for free if you don't want to, but you can have a basically go in, get some credentials, five bucks a month. Actually, it's a little more now, maybe six bucks, seven fifty a month. And. And basically, it'll give you. remote access to your your home assistant environment, you can do web hooks and stuff like that directly from there and whatever right so it gives you a bunch of those kind of features it's I think it's well worth it. Yeah, yeah, you can. You don't have to use it. No, I think that's US dollars. It's just look up loonies by the way? Did you have to Google that? Okay. It's. But aren't you guys either getting a US dollar coin or you guys had a dollar coin or have always had one or something like that? coins. They've been trying to do that for a long, long time. But we're getting. it was called the Sacajawea dollar. Sacajawea dollar? That's what it is. they tried that. There was a Susan B. Anthony dollar. had like states. I don't know. We've gone through many iterations trying to make this work and people are like, no, I like my paper. I'm not changing. what is that? We're giving up the penny though, we won't have pennies soon. You know what? That is one of the only things I, yeah, good, good for you guys. That is one of only things I'm agreeing with what's happening right now is that the push to get rid of the penny, I'm all in board. So At the store. not pennies and dimes and nickels, just call them like 10 cents, 50 cents, 20 cents, whatever it is. now. are a British thing. It's weird that the Americans kept it You still have the imperial system, I come on. Well, modified imperial US gallon. I mean, it's better than, it's better than us. We don't, we don't, we use both, right. And legally we use metric, but then like, I say I'm six feet. I don't say it in centimeters, right. But on my driver's license, it's in centimeters. I couldn't tell you what that is, My house is measured in square feet, not in square meters, but officially we use the metric system. what was your very first smart home device for each of you? Phil, you can go first. Yeah, would be that X10. So it was a little X10 smart switch, right? and all it did was turn off and on I had two lamps next to the TV and I would hit a harmony routine and They would turn off and on based on the IR blaster that was receiving the signals and I thought it was the coolest thing ever and that was the addiction and then I started researching that was back in the day there was X10 modules that you could get took into like via USB and then you'd need some fancy Windows application running 24x7. But yeah, that was my first little taste of the drug, I guess. 10 for me too. They actually at the time, this is like, I think I was in high school, maybe even in like grade eight or something like that, or grade seven, some of that they, they did this thing where they'd be like, hey, you can order this and we'll just get units for free. I don't know how, but my dad found that somewhere. And so he's like, Hey, this seems kind of cool. Let's, let's try it out. And, and, and we did that just for a couple of like lights or whatever around the house. And then that started a whole like thing where my dad was like, Hey, you know, I'd love to see if we can get, just have like one satellite receiver downstairs and watch it upstairs as well. And then, then, so it's like, you know, we started getting into like, RF based, like RCA, I don't it's called, video, wireless video, essentially. Right. And then with a bass and the receiver. All that kind of stuff. then it's like, think from there, it just kind of fueled on and, eventually it turned into this. And then when I got my own house, it was like, okay, like I can actually do some cool stuff. And at the time for me, it was, I was traveling a ton. And so there was also a safety aspect to it, right? Like lived alone and whatever. So was like, okay, I need to make sure that my house doesn't flood or something like that. Or if it does, I need to, you know, at least I can call somebody and be like, Hey, can you go like run into my house and turn off the water main or whatever that looks like. So we've established that since you're using home assistant, you must have a lot of frustrations. What have been your biggest frustrations other than just using home assistant? I actually have none. No. It's no, I think it's just mostly just the whole like right now my, biggest frustration and this is very fresh is the, Ikea bulbs, the Zigbee bulbs. don't know if you've ever used them, but they have, GU 10 bulbs and my range hood in my kitchen is, The button for the light broke. I'm just like, whatever, I'll just use a, I'll just have it hard on now. And I just use two smart bulbs that are GU-10. But the Ikea ones are crap and they keep, this is my, I think my third set of them that I've had to replace in the last, I don't know, a few years, three, four years, whatever that is. Maybe that's good, but like now it's starting to get to the point where it's like flickering and whatever. And so it's just, it's, it's that kind of crap, right? It's like, I don't know. I feel like there's better. quality stuff and even with like open standards like Zigbee for example, which is again, I know there's a consortium and all that stuff, but a lot of times open standard means open to interpretation. And that can sometimes be frustrating, right? When you're like, Hey, this is a thing and it works this way and you get it and it's not Same thing. Like I've been playing with flick. They, they, gave us like a hub and some buttons and stuff like that. Yeah. So getting it into home assistant there actually doesn't exist. There's a couple of ways around it, but it's like, you can do it on MQTT and stuff like that, which is great. But at the same time, like the twist function. So Pete, you just held up the flick twist. The twist part of the twist doesn't actually exist in the SDK. So there's actually no possible way to use that outside of the system. So it's like it's dumb things like that. So it's a button as a fidget spinner combined. I will say it's very satisfying to turn. I've been playing with it on my desk. I actually just took it to my other room because I was playing with it and I walked with it. yeah. Yeah. But at that point you're doing your automation sometimes in Flick, right? Which I'm like, I kind of want all of them in one place. Regardless of what platform I'm using, if I'm using Homie or if I'm using Home Assistant or whatever, I want to be able to do it all in Homie or Home Assistant or whatever. That's the point of me getting that hub or platform. you think that's a little OCD? You can get the flick inside of Amazon, but as long as you have Amazon hooked up to your Home Assistant, you can use all the functionality the same, right? Or am I wrong? it just work? It might, but I think it's the other way. It's whatever it's flick access to hub. Right. So, and there's no way to move all of that data between back and forth between the two systems. Right. You can send stuff from home assistant to flick. You can't do it the other way. Because again, like I said, that SDK straight up does not exist. So you can't even custom rate something. Huh, okay. It works with my homie. That's all I know. It works with the homie. Yeah. Yeah. It does work with Home Assistant if I expose everything through Matter and send it up that way. But again, I want the button in Home Assistant, not the other way. And I think that's my technical difficulty or the frustration. think with home is having so many protocols that you can have available to it. All of a sudden, you know, you're running said why you're running Zigbee, you're running wifi, you've got matter. As soon as one of those protocols goes down, the whole smart home experience stops working, right? Like I've got Zigbee present sensors. So when I walk into a room, they then can turn on Zedweb downlights, right? Or dimmers. But if either one of those networks is down, then The lights don't work. Right? So then you've got multiple points of failure They're just and matter was supposed to be the whole and we've talked because we've talked about it on your podcast Heaps, right matter was supposed to be the the savior to this problem, right? But it's it's just not there and I I can't see it ever being there at the stage I'll leave it with this is there's an XKCD comic, which talks about standards and how standards proliferate, right? And it's like, Hey, there's 14 computing standards. It's like, Hey, we need to create a universal standard. Great. Now there's 15 standards, right? And that's exactly what matter is. That's exactly what that's the same problem we keep running into too, mean, Home Assistant community is massive, right, as far as people adding, developing apps and things like that. And same with Hubbit Dad had a really big community and there's a decent community for Homey Pro as well. And they're all creating these apps for free, basically, right? They're spending their free time. And most of these people that are doing, they're developing these free integrations and apps. Their day job is also to develop integrations and apps. to me, I would think, If I did that all day long, I wouldn't want to come home and then continue to do that for free. So good for these guys for doing it. If you were like a beekeeper by day, maybe coming home and writing apps would be something for fun. But I did that for work. aren't, right? There's actually a lot of, you'd be surprised at how many community members actually don't do this at all. And they come in and they're like, Hey, I enjoy coding. learned it and I want to practice on my free time, whatever. me, and I have this case, for example, I use the flick example I was using earlier. It lacks this feature. And let's say for whatever reason it's now exposed. Great. Let me try my hand at building it out and doing that. Right now. Sometimes people get discouraged because Home Assistant does have very stringent standards that you have to adhere to for the way you write your code. But they give you feedback and they'll say, hey, this is why we rejected it. Fix it and push it up again and we'll review it again. And hopefully we'll pull it through. So there are, we've talked to people that we had somebody on our podcast, for example, that I believe he was a lawyer and he builds stuff on the side. What have been some of the most interesting things you've learned or explored on your podcast? an interesting one was someone that was, I don't think it implemented it yet, but he'd sort of talked about, so he had cats in his house. And if you have people over using his toilet, he didn't want them to leave the toilet seat up and then the cat get in the toilet and get stuck in the toilet. So I think he was gonna potentially lock the door. So you actually would be trapped in the door, in the bathroom until you put the toilet seat down. the, yeah. It's like an escape room, like, but the fricker out yet to the toilet seat down. yeah, there would be an announcement saying, Hey, please close the lid and I'll let you out of the door or I'll let you out of the bathroom. essentially. so, so that was, that was cool. I don't think he went that far, but I think there was at least the announcement bit saying, Hey, can you please shut the lid on the toilet? So my cat doesn't die essentially. we had, Benjamin on, I think it was June last year. he's actually started using AI and home assistant to like automate his chores around the house. he would just like have like a whole bunch of chores that your maintenance items need to be done, pump them up to like a to-do list through home assistant and then get like chat, GPT, whatever to prioritize what needs to be done. Same with like shopping. yeah, like cool things like that. Right. By the way, know the easiest way to closer toilet lid is just get a Smart Bidet toilet. They open and close automatically just so you know. We haven't had bidetalk for a few episodes. was good. Thanks for bringing that in, Vince. talk. For me, it's definitely the episodes that have to do with like accessibility and stuff like that, right? Because at least for a lot of us, we don't think about like, Hey, I mean, there's cool, like, Hey, I've got this lighting situation or I've got whatever. But then there's a lot of times it's like, Hey, we've had, we've had a few folks on, one was severely visually impaired. like he was just, I think fully blind. I think he said that he basically can see like there's light or no light. If I'm not mistaken, and how home automation kind of helps him, right? And how it kind of changes his life and helps him just basically. I'm not going to say get over the impairment because you're not getting over that. But more or less aid him to say, okay, you know what, like, let's actually make sure like, I don't know if he's having a guest over some of that. Hey, turn on the lights. Okay, great. Because a lot of times you. It's not something you use, right? Or even if you use it, it's maybe out of reach or maybe you don't know where it is or those, those kinds of things. We've had someone who was a quadriplegic on and different things that you don't think about. And Brandon, I know you do a lot of real estate videos and stuff like that. Right. And when you talk about that, it's like, Hey, great light switches are at this level. Well, when you're in a wheelchair all day, every day, they actually need to be a lot lower. And, and it's that kind of thing. Right. So it's like, okay, well, I could pay an electrician to rip out my entire. electrical system in my house to lower everything and to do all that, or I can make it smart and just say, hey, you know, whatever voice assistant, turn it on, turn it off, do those kinds of things. and, or both, right. Maybe it's bring it down and do that because again, you might not have use of your, your arms, for example. so it's that kind of stuff. Right. at the end of the driveway, tell me so then I can go down and get it. Otherwise I don't want to have to lug my wheelchair down the driveway for there to be no mail in the mailbox. Yeah. have a wheelchair, but I would also like that to know before I walk down the driveway to get the mail. Yeah. I mean, right. But, but, but it's a lot of stuff that like, you don't even realize you don't think about, right. And, and a lot of times it's like, okay, let me actually do that. And there was somebody else, we had on who, again, his wife, there's autism, right. And they, you know, for, for her, it's a lot of times it's like sounds or this or that, like that, that trigger her and, and, and kind of set her off. And in that sense, it's like, okay, well, let me work with automation to basically do things to calm her down, right. Or to bring her back down and so that she's not in that state. So it's, it is very, I love those kinds of, those kinds of things. It's, it's not just like a feel good thing, but it's also like a, Hey, I've actually learned something out of this. there's actually a lot of design that's involved in this because that's not something I would ever consider not having that thing. Cause I just don't know. Right. So. Yeah, that's actually very cool. And I'm going to give credit to the owner of Hubitat who we all know I've had my differences with, but he did make it a point with Hubitat to make sure it was always working for the visually impaired because he thought that was really important. And it is. So I think that's a really cool thing that people are doing that. hey, guys, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Do you want to? tell our listeners where they can find you and your stuff. Yeah, we're on YouTube, we're on all the podcast apps, Homelessness Podcast, get our website, homelessness.fm. We're there, we're on all the socials well, we're in the Homelessness Community Discord as well, so if you wanna ask us a question, we're always listening there too. Great, so we'll put that in the description thank you for joining us. Brandon, Vince, thanks as always for being on the show. Thank you to Zeus for sponsoring and thanks for watching or listening or however you're getting this episode. So please give us a like and subscribe and we will see y'all next time, thanks. Cheers.