Chris joins Phil and Rohan to share a brutally honest smart home journey: starting with Philips Hue, hitting limits with multiple bridges, battling MyQ and RatGDO, and landing real energy savings with Home Assistant.
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Chapters
00:00 Welcome
01:03 Meet Chris: the ‘reluctant Home Assistant guy’ (NZ/Canada background)
03:00 Hue as the gateway: GU10s, COVID mood lights, buying a house
04:39 Discovering Home Assistant; cost shocks and smart switch vs smart bulb decisions
06:30 Legal wiring quirks in NZ and scoring bulk Hue downlights
08:00 Hue motion/presence, bridge device limits, and Pro Bridge API exposure
09:50 Upgrade cadence, iOS/MacOS betas, and why Shelly bodies didn’t fit
12:00 Daily frustrations: a random red light, Roomba fails, Alexa vs Siri
14:36 Garage/gate saga: MyQ, RatGDO struggles, Grandstream Wi‑Fi, Meross HomeKit fix
20:00 Adaptive Lighting: Hue app vs HA integration; mixed CCT bulbs going ‘red’
26:00 Three points of failure; behavior change, the cleaners’ switch, and one non‑motion room
31:40 Protocol choices: Wi‑Fi vs Zigbee vs Z‑Wave; Matter/Thread pain in practice
36:40 Energy saving wins: free ‘hour of power’, Bosch Home Connect, Hue Tap + TTS
47:06 Simple scenes that matter: spa lighting that won’t trigger floods
51:00 Biggest surprises, time sink, and the idea of HA consultants
53:40 Advice for newcomers: hobby vs lifestyle; draw the line
56:00 Dashboards: new layouts, family tabs, activity timelines, and to‑dos
This episode was made possible thanks to our sponsors
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Hosts
Phil Hawthorne
Website
Smart Home Products
Twitter: @philhawthorne
Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com
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Rohan Karamandi
Website
Smart Home Products
Twitter: @rohank9
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