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.

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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

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Products Discussed

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs (dual GPU local AI rig): https://amzn.to/4a5Lf9w

Smart locks: Nuki Smart Lock: https://amzn.to/47VH6nj

Smart locks: Level Lock: https://amzn.to/3XtPdBz

Smart locks: August Smart Lock: https://amzn.to/4id1ovK

Hosts

Phil Hawthorne

Website

Smart Home Products

Twitter: @philhawthorne

Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com

Rohan Karamandi

Twitter: @rohank9

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Bacon, Eggs, and Business w/ Caleb and Brittany Auman