Guest Interviews

A Baby Who Wouldn’t Sleep Started Maayan’s Home Assistant Journey

Published 2 weeks ago
Recorded October 4, 2026
Duration 1:09:13
Watch Later Cinema Mode
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A temperature sensor, a smart plug and a baby who wouldn’t sleep started Mayan’s Home Assistant journey. Phil and Rohan explore how that first nursery automation grew into Zigbee heating controls, local white noise, custom lighting and a whole-house dashboard.
Chapters
00:00:00 — Welcome
00:02:00 — A sleepless baby starts everything
00:05:17 — Smart plugs and temperature sensors
00:08:25 — Tuya reliability and appliance safety
00:11:15 — Heating controls and nursery white noise
00:14:24 — Sonos, Spotify and local playback
00:17:22 — Choosing Zigbee over Wi-Fi
00:19:00 — ESP builds and fireplace fan safety
00:23:00 — Making custom Home Assistant hardware
00:25:20 — Projector lights and movie controls
00:27:28 — Smart-home controls
00:30:00 — Buttons, voice and kitchen tablets
00:33:55 — Night lights that help kids sleep
00:37:00 — Shared calendars on Home Assistant
00:40:00 — Organizing busy family schedules
00:43:26 — Automating a louvered pergola
00:46:30 — Hacking the pergola remote
00:49:40 — Tracking louver position
00:52:40 — DIY trade-offs and remote reliability
00:55:45 — Holiday mode and home security
00:58:40 — Solar hot water and load shifting
01:01:45 — Heat banking and energy choices
01:04:20 — A Frigate-powered AI cat trainer
01:07:30 — The mini PC running everything

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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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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

Maayan Dermer

I started my IT journey at the age of 14, building small end-to-end IT solutions after school for small businesses. 25y+ of career, performed many roles in the data & IT space - Hardware/firmware engineer, IoT, software engineer, data engineer, business analyst, product owner, data analyst, DataOps, data science and more.

I'm currently leading a CDAO function (Chief Data & Analytics Office).

Website

Spotlight

 

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