Home Assistant Podcast
Join hosts Phil Hawthorne and Rohan Karamandi as they explore the newest Home Assistant releases and the latest Home Automation news. Featuring guests who use or contribute to Home Assistant, the podcast aims to inspire new ways to make your smart home even smarter.
Adrian’s High Availability Home Assistant
How do you make Home Assistant resilient when an update fails or your primary server goes offline? Phil and Rohan talk with Adrian from Western Australia about his dual Home Assistant setup, webhook heartbeat failover, Git-based YAML configuration, and a 12V battery-backed home network.
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Rob went from 15 Apps to One Smart Home With Home Assistant
Rob joins Phil and Rohan from New Zealand to share how he replaced 15 smart-home apps with Home Assistant. Discover his AI-assisted workflow using VS Code, Claude Code, Codex, Git, YAML documentation, solar optimisation, camera-powered number plate recognition, and a resilient smart-home network.
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Home Assistant 2026.9 improves Modbus integrations, and a better activity history
Home Assistant 2026.9 is here. Maps suffer an unexpected turn of events and easier Modbus integrations arrive. Activity history gets some love. Nabu Casa subscribers can start testing a new and improved speech to text provider via Labs.
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Living With Home Assistant: The Other Side of the Smart Home
Sofia lives in a Home Assistant smart home, but she didn’t install it. We’re breaking down what its like on the other side of the fence and how open communication and involvement make for a happier smart home.
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Rohan is Packing Up his Smart Home and Starting Over
Rohan is moving house! Phil and Rohan dive into the realities of selling a Home Assistant-powered home and moving into a new property. They discuss what smart home gear is worth leaving behind, how to keep a house buyer-friendly, and why removable devices are often the safest choice. Plus, Rohan shares his plan to rebuild his smart home from scratch in a new house with a pool, septic, a generator, and plenty of new automation opportunities.
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Home Assistant 2026.8 says goodbye to 8123, while SmartThings goes behind a paywall
Home Assistant 2026.8 is here, we unpack the biggest changes. From port 8123 to port 80 for new Home Assistant OS installs, customizable entity ID formats, moon and vibration automation triggers, and the device-registry separation that may affect merged devices.
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How Eugene Built a .NET Home Assistant Brain for his Smart Home
Phil and Rohan chat with Eugene about how he built a deeply automated smart home using Home Assistant, Raspberry Pi, Zigbee, Shelly devices, Aqara sensors, and even C#/.NET with NetDaemon. They explore practical automations for alarms, presence, notifications, kid management, and more.
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Khaled - The dentist with a Kubernetes Cluster and Home Assistant
Phil and Rohan chat with Khaled, a periodontist who turned Home Assistant into the central brain of his home. From Roomba integrations and Soma shades to barcode-driven dog treat tracking, e-ink dashboards, and local AI workflows, this conversation is packed with practical smart home ideas.
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The Home Assistant Smart Home That Reminds, Nudges, and almost Pours Tea
Phil and Rohan chat with Jason from the UK about building a truly proactive smart home with Home Assistant. From room-aware dashboards and presence detection to Alexa routines, Google Calendar, Todoist, Zigbee, ESP32s, and AI-powered driveway monitoring, Jason shares how he turned automations into a daily life assistant.
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Omri Peretz the creator of QuickBars for Android TV
In this episode Phil and Rohan chat with Omri, the creator of QuickBars, an Android TV and Google TV app for controlling Home Assistant from the couch. They dig into his smart home journey, how he replaced a slow proprietary Zigbee setup, and how Home Assistant became the central brain for his parents' house and his own apartment.
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Home Assistant 2026.7 Brings The Biggest Automation Upgrade Yet
Phil and Rohan unpack the massive 2026.7 release, including purpose-specific triggers and conditions graduating from Labs, the move to Matter.js, faster templates, improved dashboards, and better debugging tools. They also discuss mailbag comments and Rohan’s progress on his e-ink display.
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Neil takes us through how he is using AI to build his ultimate smart home with Home Assistant
Neil walks us through how he has managed to leverage AI tools to create his dream smart home with Home Assistant. From automating blinds to automating a winter cottage
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From an Orange Bulb to a Smart Home: Claudia’s Home Assistant Journey
Claudia joins Phil and Rohan to share how an orange Philips Hue bulb sparked a full-blown smart home powered by Home Assistant.
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From Tuya to Home Assistant: A Kiwi’s Smart Home Journey
Steve from New Zealand (Kiwi Smart Tech) shares his journey from Tuya bulbs to a powerful Home Assistant setup. We dig into garage door woes and wins, cross‑protocol sensors, mmWave presence, and why Apple Home is his go‑to interface
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Home Assistant 2026.6, E‑Ink Unboxing, Yoto, and Smarter Automations
Rohan and Phil are breaking down the 2026.6 release, which features updates for Infrared, Purpose specific triggers and conditions. Plus we talk KVM’s, eInk displays and starting from scratch in 2026.
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MiciMike will turn your Google Home Mini into a Home Assistant Voice Satellite
Imre is a Home Assistant user, who was frustrated with his Google Home mini, so he created a PCB that can turn your Google Home Mini into a Home Assistant Voice Satellite
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Giovanni’s Self-Hosted Home
Giovanni joins Rohan and Phil to dive into a fully local, privacy-first smart home. We cover Home Assistant on an Intel N100, Shelly devices, Zigbee vs Wi‑Fi, ESP32 Bluetooth proxies, Frigate with a Coral TPU, Reolink cams, and smart lighting with pets.
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Mark's Home Assistant Setup: The Good, The Bad, The Exploded Server
Mark went from a rocky SmartThings world to a rock-solid Home Assistant install. He shares his tails of disaster and recovery, as well as his journey from Tasmota to ESPHome.
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Home Assistant 2026.5 introduces RF and RS-232 Control
We’re diving into Home Assistant 2026.5 and re-capping the highlights from State of the Open Home 2026. There’s new RS-232 serial control, dashboard strategies, and more purpose-specific triggers.
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How FireAvert wants to prevent house fires with a smart home twist
We’re sitting down with Nick and Larsen from FireAvert to talk about how FireAvert aims to stop house fires, and how they can tie into smart home systems like Home Assistant
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How Mike is making heating smarter with Home Assistant
Industrial data pro Mike joins Phil and Rohan to unpack his Home Assistant setup. We dive deep into Node‑RED flows, mmWave presence, actionable dashboards, and AI‑assisted automations—including recognizing his own cat and verifying the right bin is curbside.
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Braden’s Reliable, Low-Cost Home Automation System With Zero YAML Powered by Home Assistant
Electrical engineer Braden joins Phil and Rohan to share practical Home Assistant wins. From migrating to Zigbee2MQTT, taming a Whirlpool ice maker with ESPHome, building a garage door opener, and planning a sensor-packed greenhouse lab.
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Infrared is cool again with Home Assistant 2026.4
Home Assistant 2026.4 is here! We break down Infrared as a first‑class feature with IR proxies, expanded purpose‑specific triggers, dashboard background colors, favorites for lights/covers, Matter lock credential management, and more. We also cover a critical HA OS/Supervisor security patch you should apply now.
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Home Assistant On Wheels: We’re going Inside the SmartyVan
Director-turned-vanlifer Mike from the YouTube channel SmartyVan shows how he turned a bare Mercedes Sprinter into a fully automated, off‑grid smart RV powered by Home Assistant and ESPHome. We cover DC power realities, alternator charging vs solar, Starlink on the move, Bluetooth presence, wired vs Zigbee sensors and PoE cameras with Frigate. Perfect for vanlife, RV, and tiny home builders.
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Kaden‘s Cat-Tracking Smart Home with Home Assistant and Frigate
We’re diving into Kaden’s cat-first smart home: Reolink + Frigate for pet detection, PetLibro feeders, and a Litter-Robot 4 all tied together with Home Assistant and LLM-generated dashboards.
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Home Assistant AI Deep Dive: LLM Vision, Copilot, OpenClaw & More
Phil and Rohan go deep on practical AI for Home Assistant. We cover LLM Vision for doorbell and perimeter alerts, HACS add‑ons like AI Agent and AI Suggester, and using GitHub Copilot to generate YAML automations. Rohan shares his Ollama + LiteLLM routing setup and why private cloud models might beat pay‑per‑token APIs. Phil battles OpenClaw (aka MoltBot/Claude Bot) to control lights via MCP
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Home Assistant 2026.3: Vacuuming rooms, and the sky is dark again
Breaking down Home Assistant 2026.3: map vacuum rooms to Areas for voice control, set HA as your default Android assistant with wake word support, SendSpin multi-room updates, Python 3.14 performance gains, and new integrations for Ghost, Proxmox, SwitchBot AI Art Frame, Trane HVAC, and NYC MTA.
Mailbag: NFC dash buttons, Aqara FP300 presence tips, bed sensors, and listener automations for pets and babies.
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How Andrew Rebuilt His Solo Smart Home When a Roommate Moved In
Andrew joins Phil and Rohan to share how he outgrew Apple HomeKit and built a powerful multi-user smart home in Home Assistant. We cover presence detection with ESP32s and sensors, ditching MyQ for a Meross garage opener, Yale smart locks, bathroom humidity fan automations, and fun ESPN sports goal alerts.
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How Will Automates His Parents' Pool from 2,000 Miles Away and a Period UK Home
Will joins Phil and Rohan to share how he tamed a period UK home and a remote Canary Islands vacation property with Home Assistant, ESPHome, and Zigbee. We dive into DIY pool chemistry control, fridge monitoring with a ‘strawtenna’, tactile dashboards, AI‑assisted heating, and why Shelly is everywhere
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Will Osborne-Kennedy
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Hiding Smart Tech in a 1950s Home: Mike’s Home Assistant Journey
Mike joins Phil and Rohan to share how he hides smart tech in a 1953 mid‑century home so it looks analog but works like magic. Plus: Roborock tricks, leak sensors that turn rooms blue, HomePod TTS vs Sonos ducking, Samsung Frame art‑mode headaches, and running full HA OS in a VMware Fusion VM on a Mac mini.
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Home Assistant 2026.2: New Home Dashboard, Apps & our CES2026 wrap
We break down Home Assistant 2026.2: the Home Dashboard is now default, the new Command‑K command palette, a dedicated Matter dashboard, and add‑ons renamed to Apps. Plus: CES 2026 highlights, the Open Home Foundation device database and a Google Home outage.
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Inside the Works With Home Assistant program with Miranda Bishop
Miranda from the Open Home Foundation takes us inside the Works With Home Assistant program: how devices are tested, why the badge matters, and how vendors—from startups to big brands—can get certified. We cover Zigbee vs Z‑Wave vs Matter, badge misuse, regional device coverage, and Miranda’s own fun automations.
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From SimpliSafe to Matter: We’re re-visiting Aaron
Aaron returns to share how his Home Assistant setup evolved from endless tinkering to a rock‑solid system that runs his family life. We cover Z‑Wave provisioning, ESPHome vs off‑the‑shelf reliability, RATGDO for garage doors, HA Green/Yellow, voice‑first routines, and the rise of AI‑powered helpers.
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Artem’s Energy‑Smart Automations Without the Chaos
By day Artem works for JetBrains, developing coding IDEs for software professionals. But today we want to learn about his smart home, and how he is using Home Assistant to make it more energy efficient
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Home Assistant 2026.1: SendSpin, new Home Dashboard improvements and presence using labels
Rohan and Phil are here to break down the 2026.1 release. We’re talking Home Dashboard improvements, a new multi-room audio protocol from Music Assistant, and of course some Zigbee quirks thrown into the mix
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187 Automations, 300 Devices: Josh’s Smart Home Assistant Journey
Josh from Josh’s Smart Home joins Phil and Rohan to unpack a 300-device Home Assistant setup running on Home Assistant Green. We dive into the move from SmartThings, building a reliable Zigbee mesh, energy automations with Tesla Powerwall and a smart pool pump and theatre room presence.
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From Alexa to Assist: NetworkChuck’s Smart Home with Frigate, UniFi, and AI
YouTuber NetworkChuck joins Phil and Rohan to break down his real-world Home Assistant setup: migrating off Alexa, building a Home Assistant voice assistant (with a Terry Crews voice clone!), wiring Frigate to Reolink cameras, and using UniFi + AI to debug Wi‑Fi chaos. We also compare Node‑RED vs n8n, talk Plex vs Jellyfin and NAS headaches, inventory with Grocy, mmWave presence, ESP32 room presence, and how local AI stacks up against GPT/Claude for home automations.
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Home Assistant 2025.12: Labs, Smarter Automations, Real‑Time Energy and Frenck
We’re closing out the final Home Assistant release for 2025 with Frenck and a massive Home Assistant 2025.12. Home Assistant Labs, purpose‑specific triggers and conditions, a smarter automation UI, real‑time power flows in Energy, Android Auto/Widgets improvements, tons of new integrations, and more. Plus hardware talk: ZBT2, Zigbee 4, and Matter.js joining the Open Home Foundation.
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From Pi to Blue, we’re revisiting Courtenay Watson
We’re revisiting Courtenay, who was last spoke to on Episode 45 six years ago. She’s here to share six years of Home Assistant progress: moving from Raspberry Pi to Home Assistant Blue, mastering the Energy Dashboard with MQTT, surviving cloud outages on Tuya, and restoring from backups in minutes.
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Inside the Open Home: Darren Griffin
Go inside the Open Home Foundation with Darren, the web developer behind Home Assistant’s sites. From keeping the various Open Home Project websites online to automating his own home, we cover a lot in this one.
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