Guest Interviews

The Home Assistant Smart Home That Reminds, Nudges, and almost Pours Tea

Published 4 months ago
Recorded June 28, 2026
Duration 1:07:47
Watch Later Cinema Mode
FacebookX
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.
Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:06 Jason’s smart home journey
00:05:19 Voice, automations, and helpers
00:12:00 Car, tea, and problem solving
00:18:45 Presence detection and room dashboards
00:26:50 Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Matter choices
00:34:35 Todoist and calendar automation
00:44:30 Doorbells, garages, and briefings
00:52:40 Driveway security and Gemini
00:58:03 Sports dashboards and future plans
01:05:07 Getting started with smarter automations

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

Website

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.

Clean My Mac

Get Tidy Today! Get 7 days free and use our code ASSISTANT for 20% off

Website

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

Jason Collie

A Home Assistant tragic who is constantly tinkering and constantly promising his family it will make everything better. Promise.

Spotlight

 

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