From Alexa to Assist: NetworkChuck’s Smart Home with Frigate, UniFi, and AI
Home Assistant Podcast
Toilet-paper automation story
Chuck recounts a playful automation to stop his child flushing toilet paper using sensors, lights, Plex and internet cutoff.
YouTuber NetworkChuck joins Phil and Rohan to break down his real-world Home Assistant setup: migrating off Alexa, building a Home Assistant voice assistant (with a Terry Crews voice clone!), wiring Frigate to Reolink cameras, and using UniFi + AI to debug Wi‑Fi chaos. We also compare Node‑RED vs n8n, talk Plex vs Jellyfin and NAS headaches, inventory with Grocy, mmWave presence, ESP32 room presence, and how local AI stacks up against GPT/Claude for home automations.
Show notes for this episode are available at https://homeassistant.fm/HA214
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Chapters
00:00:00 - Welcome
00:02:30 - Network Chuck’s background
00:06:30 - Discovering Home Assistant
00:10:30 - Toilet paper saga automation
00:14:30 - From Alexa to Home Assistant Voice
00:20:30 - Frigate cameras and Reolink lessons
00:27:30 - Face and plate recognition ideas
00:32:00 - Local AI models vs cloud
00:39:00 - Family adoption and analog rebounds
00:43:30 - Presence, phones, mmWave, ESP32
00:48:30 - Halloween thunderstorm and Plex fun
00:52:30 - Node-RED vs n8n in automations
00:58:00 - Plex vs Jellyfin and NAS woes
01:05:30 - Grocy, inventory, and shopping hacks
01:12:00 - Air quality, energy, and next steps
01:18:00 - Enterprise talk and wrap-up
This episode was made possible thanks to our sponsors
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs (dual GPU local AI rig): https://amzn.to/4a5Lf9w
Smart locks: Nuki Smart Lock: https://amzn.to/47VH6nj
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Hosts
Phil Hawthorne
Twitter: @philhawthorne
Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com
Rohan Karamandi
Twitter: @rohank9
This episode 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.
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