How Will Automates His Parents' Pool from 2,000 Miles Away and a Period UK Home

Will joins Phil and Rohan to share how he tamed a period UK home and a remote Canary Islands vacation property with Home Assistant, ESPHome, and Zigbee. We dive into DIY pool chemistry control, fridge monitoring with a ‘strawtenna’, tactile dashboards, AI‑assisted heating, and why Shelly is everywhere

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Show notes for this episode are available at https://homeassistant.fm/HA222

Special Thanks to Today's Guest

Will Osborne-Kennedy

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Chapters

00:00:00 Welcome

00:03:30 Will’s origin story and tinkering

00:08:30 Finding Home Assistant and ESPHome

00:12:00 Hot tub and pool control projects

00:17:00 Remote Canary Islands setup

00:22:00 Zigbee vs Wi‑Fi in old homes

00:27:00 Antennas and fridge sensor hacks

00:32:00 Dashboards and tactile panels

00:37:00 AI and heating optimizations

00:42:00 Remote access: fiber and TailScale

00:46:00 Multi‑site management and ideas

00:50:00 Favorite automations and LLM Vision

00:56:00 Home lab, IPTV, and Channels DVR

01:00:00 2026 goals: energy, irrigation, WLED

01:05:00 Shelly scripts and local‑first

01:07:00 Community vendors

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Products Discussed

Shelly Bluetooth button/tile: https://amzn.to/4bJcvvy

Orbit B‑Hyve irrigation controller: https://amzn.to/4bJcvvy

HDHomeRun TV tuner: https://amzn.to/4klnoFU

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Hosts

Phil Hawthorne

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Bluesky: @philhawthorne.com

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Rohan Karamandi

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Twitter: @rohank9

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