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.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:26 QuickBars overview
00:03:07 Broken smart home origin
00:05:58 Rebuilding with Home Assistant
00:10:04 Running two Home Assistant homes
00:14:51 House automations and cameras
00:18:57 Building QuickBars
00:28:29 App development lessons
00:31:34 Community response and use cases
00:35:04 Notification and camera features
00:38:40 Open source and AI coding
00:42:13 Apartment automations and alerts
00:48:39 Wrapping up QuickBars

Sponsored By

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.

Website

Zooz

Check out The Smartest House for Zooz devices at the best prices

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Apollo Automation

Apollo Automation are the makers of open source smart home sensors built for the Home Assistant ecosystem. They're an official Open Home Foundation commercial partner and their devices are built with local control, privacy, and reliability in mind, giving you full control and flexibility right out of the box.


Hosted By

Phil Hawthorne

Phil is a Melbourne based web developer who lives and breathes technology. When he's not at his day job, he’s in his home office attempting to simplify his life through complicated tech.

Website Smart Home Products Buy a Coffee

Rohan Karamandi

Rohan from Toronto, Canada works in the Technology sector as an architect designing network and datacenter solutions for his customers. His passion for technology stems from there and extends to IoT and home automation

Website Smart Home Products Buy a Coffee


Special Appearances By

Omri Peretz

Omri Peretz is a Computer Science student and the solo creator of "QuickBars for Home Assistant", a native Android TV application for Home Assistant. What started as a personal project to solve a real-world accessibility problem for his dad has grown into a top-rated app with over 5,000 downloads and 450+ paying customers. He is passionate about building user-first products and bridging the gap between the smart home community and seamless, intuitive control.

Website

Spotlight

 

Special episodes focused on various aspects of Home Assistant and Home Automation.