Brand Lock‑in and Favoring Open Devices

Podcaster Dave Slusher joins Phil and Rohan to share hard-won smart home lessons: building a reliable mesh, solving a 100m mailbox sensor with Z-Wave Long Range and the ZWA2, and retiring MyQ with RATGDO + ESPHome. We also cover using an e‑ink terminal as a Home Assistant dashboard.

Watch this episode on YouTube

https://hasspodcast.io/ha208

Support the Podcast

Get early-access to episodes and an ad-free feed by supporting our Patreon.

Support Rohan and Phil on Patreon

Share your story

We wouldn't be able to do this podcast without community members and home automation enthusiasts sharing their stories. To register your interest to come share your home automation journey, head over to homeassistant.fm and click share your story.

Chapters

00:00:00 Welcome

00:01:23 Guest intro: Dave Slusher’s podcasting origin story

00:04:59 Discovering Home Assistant 

00:07:20 Hardware journey: Raspberry Pi 3/4, SD crashes, backups, staying on Pi

00:09:40 ZWA2 portable capability

00:11:10 Zigbee mesh realities

00:13:56 The mailbox quest

00:19:16 Power monitoring the lawnmower + adding Z‑Wave plug to the mesh

00:20:31 Beating peak electricity pricing with calendar‑driven automations

00:24:50 Buying for Home Assistant

00:31:26 Audi e‑tron HACS

00:33:00 ‘Terminal’ e‑ink display

00:41:11 Fun APIs: Domino’s throwback and accidental developer‑friendly brands

00:44:25 Update strategy + restoring from backups when an upgrade breaks boot

00:46:26 Entity naming conventions, device vs entity IDs, and maintainability

00:49:18 The router kill‑switch: renaming a plug and unintended automations

00:52:19 Ping watchdog automation for internet recovery (8.8.8.8)

00:54:58 Labels, documentation, and making a smart home family‑friendly

01:00:00 Selling a smart home: what stays, what goes, and account handoffs

01:02:16 First device nostalgia: Sonoff relay, app sprawl, and converging on HA

01:07:52 Next projects: buying with purpose, reliability over novelty

01:10:00 Mac mini (Linux Mint) homelab, Synology vs Docker, consolidating services

01:12:18 Package tracking with 17Track, long strings, and dashboard rendering

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.

Zooz

If you're looking to upgrade your smart home - you can’t go past Zooz! Zooz offers a range of affordable and innovative devices, including water leak sensors, water valve controllers, smart plugs and scene controllers.

For the best prices on all Zooz products, head over to thesmartesthouse.com

Notion

Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works — it’s seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use. With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work.

Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at notion.com/homeassistant

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