Backups and a fast restore story

We’re revisiting Courtenay, who was last spoke to on Episode 45 six years ago. She’s here to share six years of Home Assistant progress: moving from Raspberry Pi to Home Assistant Blue, mastering the Energy Dashboard with MQTT, surviving cloud outages on Tuya, and restoring from backups in minutes.

Watch this episode on YouTube

https://homeassistant.fm/ha212

Support the Podcast

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

https://homeassistant.fm/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

00:01:04 2019 setup recap

00:03:31 Hardware: Blue and N2+

00:06:00 Real‑time energy tracking

00:12:00 Breaker chaos, disaggregation

00:16:30 Dashboards and thermostat

00:22:00 Tuya cloud lighting

00:27:30 Offline behavior, habits

00:29:30 Less YAML, more UI

00:33:30 Backups and restore

00:38:30 Z‑Wave LR range talk

00:41:30 LoRa and Meshtastic

00:42:00 Hubs, Matter/Thread woes

00:48:00 Voice assistants: then vs now

00:51:00 Everyday control patterns

00:55:00 Advice for new users

00:59:30 Recorder and data

01:03:07 Six‑year roadmap and robots

01:06:14 Wrap‑up and contact info

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 https://thesmartesthouse.com

Products Discussed

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: https://amzn.to/43Dppq4

Ecobee Thermostat: https://amzn.to/3XtOTCR

Shelly energy monitoring clamps: https://amzn.to/488TjDX

Sense Home Energy Monitor: https://amzn.to/4re7oss

Home Assistant Connect ZWA2 (Z‑Wave radio): https://amzn.to/3MfPzsP

Meshtastic LoRa nodes: https://amzn.to/4ihcSyy

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

This video contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click on one of them and make a purchase, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.