Relentless in a Gentle Way

**Marco Arment** (0:00)
I had a terrible thought a few hours ago, and maybe it's been kind of recurring recently.

**Casey Liss** (0:07)
Is, wait, may I guess?

**Marco Arment** (0:09)
It's not a boat.

**Casey Liss** (0:10)
No, that's a very, very good guess. Is the terrible thought, hey, maybe I should drag Casey to a fish concert sometime?

**Marco Arment** (0:18)
Oh no, that's not even in question. There's no question I definitely should do that. No, the even more terrible thought is, I think I have a problem that could be solved by Home Bridge, or Home Assistant, rather. Which one's the one with the box?

**Casey Liss** (0:32)
Oh yes, oh my time has come.

**John Siracusa** (0:35)
This is Casey's episode for sure.

**Casey Liss** (0:37)
Yeah, everything's coming up Millhouse tonight. This is great.

**Marco Arment** (0:40)
It's Assistant, right? That's like the more, the even more complicated one?

**Casey Liss** (0:42)
Yeah, so all kidding aside, so Home Bridge is basically, let's be as thin a layer as we can. That's simply a facade to get things that aren't natively HomeKit into HomeKit. Whereas Home Assistant is more of a, let's boil the ocean, take over the world sort of scenario.

**Marco Arment** (0:59)
I hate to do, like I know this is a rabbit hole I should not fall into.

**Casey Liss** (1:03)
Oh, but it's great.

**Marco Arment** (1:04)
Everyone says that.

**Casey Liss** (1:07)
Well, so here's the thing, right? Like all, you know, again, all kidding aside, like Home Assistant was one of those things that you have to be able to see through the matrix and it is brutal to get to the point that you can see through the matrix. Like it is a learn, and it's gotten way better since I started using it, I don't know, like two years ago, but it's bad.
Like getting your head wrapped around the way Home Assistant thinks of the world is not fun. Now, that being said, you have plenty of tutors all around you that would be more than happy to help you, hello, and I'm not the only one for the record, but it is not fun to start down the path and start getting things squared away, but if you can stick with it and give it a chance, then suddenly the world has opened up to you and almost anything you can conceive can be done. It's really astonishing. What are you looking to accomplish?

**Marco Arment** (1:58)
I have... So I finally got the beach heating and air conditioning finally all fixed. It's all...

**Casey Liss** (2:04)
Tell me more.

**Marco Arment** (2:05)
All new systems put in. It's a Daikin, Daikin.
Everything by them. It's just like a whole brand new everything. Everything had to be replaced, but it works, which is great. That was a very long, very expensive process that has finally ended.

**Casey Liss** (2:21)
Now, did you go with something that is like comparatively dumber? Because if I recall correctly, didn't you have a very, very, very fancy system and that was potentially part of the problem?

**Marco Arment** (2:29)
Yeah.
It was originally this Mitsubishi system that it was very high-end, like high-efficiency heat pump, everything. It had all these advanced functionality things that we would probably never use.
And it was like what the builder had spec'd for the house years ago. And it was very complicated to the point where nobody out here on Fire Island knew how the heck to even service it. So they did a very bad job of servicing it and eventually broke it. To a point that even once I did finally get people out of here who knew what they were doing with these systems, they were like, yeah, we can't save this. It's like too much damage has been done. It would cost way more than it's worth to try to disassemble every part of everything and clean all sorts of ridiculous things. So anyway, I replaced it with a Daikin system because they are what everyone out here uses, which means that all the people out here know how to install and service them correctly.
I don't really honestly care if it's better or worse.
It is more practical to own here. Frankly, it was way cheaper than a species system would have been to replace. So that helps because out here nothing lasts. So when it does die, it'll be cheaper to replace. So anyway, it works pretty well. The only downside is that it, of course, has its own proprietary thermostats and of course, as we know from the service guys, you definitely do not want to have an HVAC guy see you using a Nest or an EchoB because they hate them and they blame them for every possible problem under the sun. Like, I don't know what smart thermostats did to HVAC people, but they so irrationally hate them, it's kind of comical. So anyway, I'm using their stupid thermostats. It's fine. And they have like Wi-Fi connectivity with their app. And their app is, as you would expect, total trash. And of course, as you would expect, it integrates with nothing. There is no support for any of the home platform integrations. Of course. So anyway, that's that's where where I started looking at. Hmm. Maybe HomeBridge or Home Assistant might be a tool to use here because every time I want to either turn off the air conditioning, turn on the air conditioning or just change the temperature of the house, there's four different thermostats for all the different split zones. And so I have to go to the app and change four different zones. And oh, by the way, the app requires face ID. Great. Thank you for keeping me secure. It's just kind of it's a very cumbersome process and the app is not good. And so, you know, when I do change the temperature rate, sometimes it doesn't stick. Sometimes it like changes and then it pops back to where it was. I guess something refreshed and it clobbered itself in a race condition or something. So it's not a good app is what I'm saying. So anyway, I would love just something that I could automate like, you know, go yell at some voice assistant somewhere, set the house to 74 and it just does it.