#smart-home
57 episodes
#3058: How to Get 15 Hours of Light From Your UPS
Turn your UPS into an emergency light source with the right LED bulb, NUT, and Home Assistant automation.
#2821: The Trench Coat Is on Fire: Making Smart Home Parts Interrupt Each Other
Three engineering problems in a trench coat. Make Zigbee sirens, Snapcast speakers, and push-to-talk audio actually work together.
#2815: Free Cloudflare WAF: Is It Enough for Self-Hosting?
Skip Cloudflare Access and lock down Home Assistant with just the free WAF rules. Here's how.
#2762: Thread vs Zigbee: Multi-Floor Smart Home Networking
Can you mix Thread border routers from different brands across floors? Yes—here's how it actually works.
#2759: Why Your Smart Home Can't Mimic a Hotel
Can Zigbee and Matter handle a two-story house with outdoor devices? We break down mesh hops, latency, and real-world limits.
#2646: When Your Door Won't Open: The Failure-Mode Philosophy of Smart Locks
Z-Wave vs Zigbee vs Wi-Fi for smart locks. What's reliable enough to trust with your front door?
#2626: The Trust Problem in Bedroom Automation
Smart glass vs smart curtains for circadian health — what works in a rental bedroom without owning the walls?
#2608: Can You Wire Your House Like a Hotel?
Can you wire your house like a hotel? Here's what KNX costs, how it works, and how to connect it to Home Assistant.
#2600: Circadian Lighting Gradients in Home Assistant
How to build a smooth, override-friendly circadian lighting system using Adaptive Lighting in Home Assistant.
#2597: Voice Control for Renters: $25 Per Room, No Wall Damage
Distributed voice control on a budget with wake words, centralized processing, and zero wall damage — perfect for rentals.
#2573: What's Actually Inside a Hotel Smart Room System
Hotels don't use Alexa or smart bulbs. Here's the industrial-grade tech running behind those sleek wall panels.
#2566: Why Your RGBW Bulbs Get Dim in Color Mode
Cheap bulbs aren't the whole story — physics limits how bright color LEDs can get. Here's what to buy instead.
#2365: Building a Custom Home Alarm Panel with ESP32
Discover how to build a tactile, local-control alarm panel for Home Assistant using ESP32, Omron buttons, and Zigbee sensors.
#2326: Voice Control Simplified: Home Assistant’s Local Stack
Discover how to build a reliable, vendor-agnostic voice control system for Home Assistant without relying on Amazon or Google.
#2274: Weekend Projects Gone Wild: Evaluating AI Startup Pitches
From fridge tax agents to guilt-scheduled cron jobs, we evaluate ten AI-driven startup ideas that could exist—but probably shouldn’t.
#2232: One Remote, Three Streams: Building a Sane Media Setup
A renter juggling six remotes and brittle integrations finds a simpler path: fewer devices, cleaner software, and accepting that Netflix won't play...
#2220: When Home Assistant Breaks Your Audio
Daniel's multi-room audio setup keeps breaking. We explore whether Snapcast, Volumio, and Mopidy can deliver reliable podcast playback across Raspb...
#2126: Why Auto Wi-Fi Settings Fail You
Stop screaming at your phone: how UniFi transmit power settings actually cause dead zones.
#2100: The Hidden Job of Managing Your Own Pharmacy
Stop making multiple pharmacy trips. Learn how to sync your meds, track inventory, and ditch the amateur pharmacist role for good.
#2091: Solving Problems That Don't Exist
From a $400 juicer that can't run without Wi-Fi to a toaster with more computing power than Apollo 11, we explore absurd gadgets.
#2038: UI-First vs Architecture-First: Choosing Your AI Agent
LobeHub vs. Dify vs. n8n: We break down the chaotic landscape of local AI agents to find the right "brain" for your workflow.
#2002: Brainstorming a Stable-by-Design Smart Home
We explore why Home Assistant is so fragile and brainstorm a stable-by-design future for the platform.
#1941: Why You Can't Zigbee-Wi-Fi Your House
The "mesh" promise fails when you hit the coordinator bottleneck. Here's why multiple hubs don't work like Wi-Fi.
#1934: Why Pro Routers Still Won't Touch Your Light Bulbs
Your Wi-Fi 7 router handles everything except smart home radios. Here’s why the “one box” dream is still stuck in 2026.
#1851: AI Toasters and Poetic Gym Coaches: Why We’re Drowning in Useless AI
From smart toasters that need Wi-Fi to email rewriters that sound like corporate robots, here are the most baffling AI features we’ve seen.
#1770: The Smart Home Tax Is Bankrupting Enthusiasts
Home Assistant's flexibility has become a liability. We explore the usability crisis and the fragile architecture of modern enthusiast smart homes.
#1654: Home Lab Security: Locking Down Your Smart Home
Learn how to prevent a single compromised container from taking over your entire home network and smart devices.
#1243: How to Hack a Smart Home for the Sabbath
How do you navigate a smart home when you can't flip a switch? Explore the engineering behind making modern technology Shabbat-compliant.
#1073: Beyond YAML: Building the Agentic Smart Home
Stop wrestling with YAML. Discover how MCP and local AI agents are transforming Home Assistant into a truly intelligent, aware partner.
#1071: Beyond the Kill Switch: Advanced Router VPN Routing
Stop breaking your smart home. Learn how to use domain-based split routing and WireGuard to gain surgical control over your network.
#960: Why Your $2,000 Smart TV Lags Like a Budget Phone
Why does a $2,000 TV struggle with basic menus? Discover the hidden "Smart TV Tax" and why your display's brain is often stuck in the past.
#934: Open Source Meets Closed Garden: Linux on a Samsung TV
Connect Ubuntu to a Samsung TV wirelessly and learn pro tips for baby-proofing your cable setup in any living room.
#802: Bluetooth Reimagined: Audio and Tracking in Home Assistant
Is Bluetooth the secret weapon for your smart home? Discover how to master persistent audio and low-cost asset tracking with Home Assistant.
#784: The Hidden Cost of Labeling Fever
Stop feeding your power-hungry tools a diet of alkalines. Learn how to switch your whole home to sustainable, high-performance rechargeables.
#762: The Decoupled Smart Home Trade-Off
Tired of your smart home crashing? Discover why moving your home's "brain" to the cloud might be the ultimate reliability hack for your setup.
#759: Why Your Labels Fail: The Physics of Adhesion
Tired of peeling labels? Discover why consumer tapes fail and how industrial-grade solutions can bulletproof your home inventory system.
#758: When Your Camera Stops Being Dumb
Turn passive cameras into active observers. Learn how Frigate and YOLO models use AI to revolutionize home security and object detection.
#731: The EQ Lasagna Problem: A Signal Processing Hierarchy
Stop layering filters on top of filters. Learn the technically correct way to sync your home audio without creating a muddy "EQ lasagna."
#725: Finding a Speaker That Loves Voices
Stop listening to podcasts through tinny speakers. Learn how to choose hardware optimized for the human voice and clear, room-filling audio.
#723: Domesticating Your Home Security: How to Kill the Cloud
Learn how to "domesticate" consumer security cameras by severing their cloud ties while keeping the high-quality hardware you love.
#656: When Open Hobbyists Meet Industry Standards
Herman and Corn dive into the shifting landscape of smart home protocols and why Ethernet coordinators are the future of home automation.
#649: The Ultimate Dashboard: DIY Information Radiators
Tired of expensive subscriptions and messy DIY screens? Discover the middle ground for the perfect home office information radiator.
#644: From USB to Bare Metal: Why GPIO Changes Everything
Discover how to use GPIO pins and breadboards to bridge the gap between software and the physical world in your smart home projects.
#594: Digital Dust: Can NFC Tags Survive for Decades?
Explore the science of NFC longevity, from EEPROM bitrot to physical durability, and learn how to future-proof your home inventory system.
#577: The Shadow City: Why Sewers Are Civilization's Last Frontier
Explore the hidden world of urban infrastructure, from Victorian brickwork to AI-powered robots and the battle against the "fatberg."
#461: DIY vs. Pro: Is Your Smart Home Actually Secure?
Explore whether DIY smart home setups can truly replace professional security systems in this deep dive into hardware, reliability, and redundancy.
#455: When Your Neighbor's Fire Is Your Fire
From smart sensors to the "tipping" trick for extinguishers, Herman and Corn break down how to survive a fire in a modern apartment building.
#454: When 1950s Wiring Meets 2026 Life
Tired of the power tripping when you make toast? Herman and Corn explain the "16-amp ceiling" and how to modernize Israeli apartment wiring.
#449: Why Your Tape Fails: The Physics of Structural Bonding
Discover how the industrial-grade science behind the Burj Khalifa can help you mount heavy gear without losing your security deposit.
#442: Running Your Home Like a Startup: The Weekly Sync
Learn how to apply startup-style syncs and retrospectives to your household to reduce anxiety and stop things from slipping through the cracks.
#389: Minimizing the Blast Radius: Why Your Smart Home Needs Distributed Hardware
When a single home server fails, the whole house goes dark. Learn how to shrink your "blast radius" by moving to a distributed hardware grid.
#374: The Walls Have Eyes: The Reality of Hidden Travel Cameras
From power plugs to smoke detectors, hidden cameras are easier to hide than ever. Learn how to protect your privacy while traveling.
#156: Build vs. Buy: The ESP32's Smart Home Reign
Discover why the ESP32 is the ultimate brain for DIY smart homes and how AI tools are revolutionizing hardware hacking for everyone.
#137: The Ghost in the Machine: Why Gadgets Wake Up After Blackouts
Why does a power flicker turn on your lights but not your TV? Herman and Corn explain the engineering behind post-outage device behavior.
#112: Why Your Smart Bulbs Fail and Airports Don't
Why do airports stay lit while your smart home fails? Herman and Corn dive into industrial-grade tech and the physics of beaming internet.
#80: Why Your Smart Home Isn't an Airport: Industrial Reliability
Why can't you run the Louvre on a Raspberry Pi? Herman and Corn dive into the rugged, wired world of industrial building automation.
#78: The Local Control Trade-Off
Is Zigbee a "reliable old truck" or a dead end? Herman and Corn debate the future of local control in the age of Matter and Thread.