Home Assistant Podcast

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

4 snips
Feb 17, 2026
Guest
Will Osborne-Kennedy
Will Osborne-Kennedy, a DIY home automation tinkerer and blogger, explains taming a period UK house and a remote Canary Islands property with Home Assistant, ESPHome, Zigbee, and Shelly. He covers remote pool and hot-tub control, a cheeky straw-antenna fridge sensor, tactile dashboards, AI-assisted heating tricks, and multi-site remote access strategies.
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ADVICE

Choose ESPHome For Rapid Local Devices

  • Use ESPHome for quick, local-first device builds because it integrates cleanly with Home Assistant and simplifies firmware tasks.
  • Avoid heavyweight developer-only toolchains when you want fast results and maintainability.
ANECDOTE

Straw Antenna To Reach The Fridge

  • On a Canary Islands deployment Will improvised a 2.4GHz antenna using a paper drinking straw to extend Zigbee range to a fridge sensor.
  • The sensor ran on battery inside the fridge and reported temperature thresholds back to Home Assistant for remote alerts.
ADVICE

Control Remote Power With Local-Safe Hardware

  • Use locally controllable MCB/MCU devices like Shelly for critical remote power control but ensure the hardware supports the required amperage and safety features.
  • Keep a cloud or vendor backdoor when necessary so somebody can reset power if Home Assistant is unavailable.
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