Home Assistant Podcast

How Will Automates His Parents' Pool from 2,000 Miles Away and a Period UK Home

Home Assistant Podcast

Show Notes

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

Watch this episode on YouTube Show notes for this episode are available at https://homeassistant.fm/HA222

Special Thanks to Today's Guest Will Osborne-Kennedy Website

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Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome 00:03:30 Will’s origin story and tinkering 00:08:30 Finding Home Assistant and ESPHome 00:12:00 Hot tub and pool control projects 00:17:00 Remote Canary Islands setup 00:22:00 Zigbee vs Wi‑Fi in old homes 00:27:00 Antennas and fridge sensor hacks 00:32:00 Dashboards and tactile panels 00:37:00 AI and heating optimizations 00:42:00 Remote access: fiber and TailScale 00:46:00 Multi‑site management and ideas 00:50:00 Favorite automations and LLM Vision 00:56:00 Home lab, IPTV, and Channels DVR 01:00:00 2026 goals: energy, irrigation, WLED 01:05:00 Shelly scripts and local‑first 01:07:00 Community vendors

This episode was made possible thanks to our sponsors Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa Easily connect to Google and Amazon voice assistants for a small monthly fee that also supports the Home Assistant project. Configuration is via the User Interface so no fiddling with router settings, dynamic DNS, or YAML.

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Products Discussed Shelly Bluetooth button/tile: https://amzn.to/4bJcvvy Orbit B‑Hyve irrigation controller: https://amzn.to/4bJcvvy HDHomeRun TV tuner: https://amzn.to/4klnoFU Philips Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor: https://amzn.to/4cf3r1p

Hosts Phil Hawthorne Website Smart Home Products Twitter: @philhawthorne Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com Buy Phil a Coffee

Rohan Karamandi Website Smart Home Products Twitter: @rohank9 Buy Rohan a Coffee

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