Phil Hawthorne on Smarter Home Assistant Automations, ESPHome, E-Ink and AI – HGG686

Posted on by

My Home Assistant setup had already started preparing for the storm before Phil Hawthorne and I began recording.

A severe-weather warning had triggered an automation that started charging my battery systems. That led me to a question I had never seriously considered: could I take that automation, package it and give it to someone else?

What Is Changing in Home Assistant Automations?

Home Assistant is moving away from automations tied to individual entity IDs and toward devices, areas, rooms, labels and purposes. A bulb, sensor or other device can increasingly be replaced without rebuilding every automation connected to it, provided the replacement is assigned to the appropriate area, label or purpose.

That shift is at the heart of what Phil and I talked about — from Home Assistant Blueprints that let you share automation logic, to ESPHome and Bluetooth proxies that extend the platform into new corners of the house, to the ways AI is starting to understand Home Assistant well enough to help build and maintain it.

Audio Only
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsPlayer EmbedShare Leave a ReviewListen in a New WindowDownloadSoundCloudStitcherSubscribe on AndroidSubscribe via RSSSpotifyAudioboomSpreakerOther Options

Episode Chapters

[00:00] – Welcome to Home Gadget Geeks 686

[00:25] – Sharing Home Assistant Automations with Blueprints

[04:03] – Meet Phil Hawthorne

[04:21] – The Home Assistant Podcast

[05:28] – All Things Smart Home

[06:49] – Home Assistant Automations Reimagined

[07:24] – Moving Beyond Individual Entities

[08:50] – Rooms, Areas and Labels

[10:58] – Groups, Devices and Entity Organization

[12:47] – Managing Devices with Many Entities

[13:59] – AI Meets Home Assistant

[15:15] – Documentation for Humans and AI

[18:01] – Commercial Support and Works with Home Assistant

[19:09] – Official and Community Integrations

[21:56] – Why Infrared Is Returning

[24:48] – Home Assistant IR Proxies

[27:13] – ESPHome Opens New Doors

[28:12] – Extending Bluetooth over Wi-Fi

[31:29] – E-Ink Home Assistant Dashboards

[34:28] – E-Ink Power Use and Battery Operation

[38:47] – Regional Smart Home Differences

[41:09] – Australia’s Smart Home Community

[42:18] – Reusing and Modifying ESP Devices

[44:05] – Open Versus Closed Ecosystems

[47:27] – The Open Home Foundation

[49:10] – Works with Home Assistant Branding

[52:55] – Home Assistant Becomes AI-Native

[54:44] – Typed and Voice Commands with Assist

[56:45] – Guardrails for AI Assistants

[58:13] – Giving AI Systems Separate Roles

[59:38] – OAuth and YouTube Authentication Frustrations

[1:02:36] – Multiple Hermes Profiles

[1:05:09] – Command-Line and Telegram Control

[1:06:52] – Turning Voice Messages into Tasks

[1:08:22] – Controlling AI Notifications

[1:12:01] – Making Home Assistant Accessible

[1:14:17] – Simplifying the Home Assistant Interface

[1:16:15] – The Future of the Home Assistant Podcast

About Phil Hawthorne

Phil Hawthorne co-hosts the Home Assistant Podcast with Rohan, who joins from Canada while Phil lives in Australia. The show covers every monthly Home Assistant release, explains what changed, and talks with people across the community about how they actually use the platform — from people who have never written code to users building unusual automations of their own. Phil and the team have also experimented with a broader spinoff show, All Things Smart Home, though producing four Home Assistant episodes a month leaves limited time for a second podcast.

Home Assistant Podcast: Home Assistant Podcast

Phil Hawthorne: Phil Hawthorne

All Things Smart Home: All Things Smart Home

This Week on Home Gadget Geeks

Phil Hawthorne joined me to talk about where Home Assistant is headed, starting with Home Assistant Blueprints, which let an automation’s logic be shared while swapping in a new user’s own entities. From there we got into the bigger structural shift underway in Home Assistant: a move away from automations tied to individual entity IDs and toward devices, areas, rooms, labels and purposes, which should make automations far easier to maintain as hardware changes.

We also spent time on ESPHome and Bluetooth proxies, which can extend Bluetooth and other signals into garages, sheds and distant rooms, and on why infrared control is seeing renewed attention in 2026 even as most devices have moved to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. E-ink dashboards came up as a low-power, flexible alternative to mounting a tablet on the wall.

Phil also talked about how Home Assistant is becoming more AI-friendly — through better documentation, device schemas and Assist — and why that support still needs real guardrails. We closed on the Open Home Foundation’s role in keeping Home Assistant and related projects open, and on how separating AI assistants into distinct roles, the way Phil does with his Hermes profiles, can make automation both safer and easier to manage.

Full Show Notes

Sharing Automations with Blueprints

Phil explained that Home Assistant Blueprints are designed to let an automation travel from one installation to another. A Blueprint removes installation-specific entity IDs and replaces them with configurable inputs. Someone importing the Blueprint can select their own weather entity, battery system, charging switch or other compatible device while preserving the original automation logic.

Blueprints can be shared through GitHub and the Home Assistant Community forums. They can also simplify more ordinary automations, including remote-control button assignments, lighting scenes and motion-based actions. My storm-charging automation was a good example of something that could be packaged this way, even though I haven’t turned it into a published Blueprint myself.

Devices, Areas, Labels and Purpose-Based Automations

Phil described this as a fundamental change in the way Home Assistant automations are built.

Home Assistant was originally entity-first. A light could expose one entity for its on-or-off state, another for brightness and other entities for additional settings, and automations had to reference those entities directly. That worked, but it created maintenance problems. Replacing an IKEA bulb or motion sensor could change an entity ID and break every automation that referenced the old device. Users frequently built groups, helpers and virtual entities just to manage related devices.

Home Assistant is increasingly treating rooms and areas as first-class parts of the system. Instead of telling Home Assistant to turn on six named light entities when three named motion sensors detect movement, an automation can be written around a purpose: when the room is occupied, turn on the appropriate lights. The bulbs and sensors can change. As long as the new hardware is assigned to the proper room, area or label, the automation itself may not need to change.

That makes the system easier to understand and much easier to maintain.

Devices as Containers for Related Entities

The move toward areas also depends on Home Assistant treating devices more intelligently. A device can contain many entities.

My Bluetti and EcoFlow battery systems are good examples. A single battery can expose AC input, DC input, AC output, DC output, state of charge, power consumption, charging modes, temperature readings, lights and other controls. Older Home Assistant installations could present those as a long collection of loosely connected entities.

Home Assistant now treats the device as the central container. The entities remain available, but their relationship to the physical device is clearer. The platform can also hide less useful diagnostic entities by default — a Zigbee device, for example, may report signal strength and other technical information that most people do not need during normal use. Those entities can remain available at the device level without cluttering the main interface.

Home Assistant Becomes More AI-Friendly

AI tools have changed my experience with Home Assistant. The installation itself has become easier over the years, and Home Assistant now discovers many devices automatically. The difficult part has often been getting the full value out of those devices by writing automations, building dashboards and understanding how all the pieces fit together. AI can help bridge that gap.

Phil said the Home Assistant community has generally been positive about AI. The project has invested heavily in documentation, including documentation written in ways that AI systems can interpret correctly. That matters because an AI assistant can only work with the information it receives — incomplete or outdated documentation can cause the AI to generate incorrect automations or configuration instructions.

Home Assistant’s newer device schemas, areas, labels and purpose-specific triggers also give AI systems a more structured view of the home. The platform has introduced AI-assisted features that can suggest names and labels for automations, and it includes Assist, its conversational interface.

Assist can accept text or voice commands. Without an AI provider behind it, users may need to use fairly specific sentence structures. When backed by an AI provider, Assist can interpret more natural language and determine what the person is trying to accomplish. Phil also noted that Home Assistant has support for Model Context Protocol, giving AI tools another structured way to communicate with the platform.

Home Assistant is not simply adding a chatbot. The platform is becoming more understandable to AI systems at the documentation, device and automation levels.

AI Still Needs Guardrails

That does not mean an AI assistant should receive unlimited control of the home. Phil referenced something I have said while building my own AI systems: it is not enough to tell an AI what you want it to do — you also need to tell it what it must not do.

An AI assistant needs a defined responsibility, limited credentials, clear approval requirements, rules for high-risk actions, boundaries between systems, and a record of how the environment is configured.

I have experienced the consequences when those details are missing. My Home Assistant installation runs in Docker, and an AI assistant may understand Home Assistant but still assume the wrong file locations or deployment model. I have repeatedly had to remind tools that my instance is containerized and that its dashboard files are not located where a standard installation might place them. The AI can usually correct the mistake, but only after it has been given the right environmental context. That is why memory, skills, configuration documentation and explicit permission boundaries matter.

Official and Community Integrations

Home Assistant integrations come from both manufacturers and independent developers. My Bluetti and EcoFlow integrations, for example, have relied on community development rather than direct manufacturer support. That does not make them inherently weak — community integrations can be actively maintained and may support devices long before a manufacturer becomes involved.

Phil described how LG now has both a community integration and an official integration. A successful community integration can demonstrate demand and encourage a company to support Home Assistant directly. Nabu Casa gives Home Assistant a commercial organization that can communicate with manufacturers and establish formal partnerships. The Works with Home Assistant program allows manufacturers to certify that their products integrate with the platform and that they intend to support that compatibility.

Phil said Aqara and other companies are beginning to place the Works with Home Assistant logo on product packaging, which could make Home Assistant a more visible consideration when people shop for smart home devices. The opposite can happen as well — companies can restrict API access, add fees or close services that users depended on, which reinforces the value of open integrations and local control.

Device Discovery

Home Assistant has also become much better at discovering devices. I mentioned my Meross garage-door controller. I installed two different community integrations and initially thought neither one worked. When I returned later, Home Assistant had discovered and configured both — I tested them, chose one and disabled the other.

Phil said discovery timing can depend on network scans, device availability and whether Home Assistant has restarted. One practical recommendation is to install Home Assistant, connect it to the network and give it time. Depending on the number of devices in the home, the platform may discover far more than expected over the next several hours. Zigbee and Z-Wave devices still need to be paired, but Wi-Fi and network devices may appear automatically.

Infrared in 2026

One of the more surprising Home Assistant developments is renewed work around infrared. Phil and I had nearly the same initial response: infrared? In 2026?

Many devices have moved to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee or other connected protocols. Infrared is usually one-way, and some devices require the remote to send the complete state every time a button is pressed. But IR has not disappeared. Air conditioners, fans, televisions and other appliances still use it, and some newer products include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IR at the same time.

Home Assistant’s IR work could eventually provide a more consistent way to control these devices. Instead of requiring each proxy or transmitter to maintain its own learned commands, Home Assistant is working toward understanding and supplying the appropriate IR codes. The implementation was still early at the time of our recording — support was limited, and features such as learning a command from a remote were not yet broadly available. The direction is interesting because Home Assistant could become a modern replacement for parts of the old universal-remote model.

ESPHome and Bluetooth Proxies

ESPHome was one of the most useful parts of the conversation for me. My air conditioner has a soft-start module that reports information over very low-power Bluetooth. Even though the module is physically close to my Home Assistant machine, the signal barely reaches through the wall, and I often need to stand near the unit with my phone to connect to it.

An inexpensive ESPHome Bluetooth proxy could solve that. The proxy could be installed near the air conditioner, receive the Bluetooth signal and relay it to Home Assistant over Wi-Fi. The same approach could extend Bluetooth into a garage, detached shed or garden building.

Phil explained that Home Assistant treats the remote proxy much like a Bluetooth receiver connected locally. As long as Home Assistant can communicate with the proxy over the network, the Bluetooth device can be located somewhere else on the property. That could also help with presence detection — multiple Bluetooth proxies could potentially estimate which room contains a phone, watch or other device.

A listener in the live chat described using a Bluetooth proxy in a garage to reach a SwitchBot button from an apartment on another floor. Another listener had old ESP8266-based smart plugs purchased years earlier — he opened them, flashed them with ESPHome, and used unused GPIO pins to add temperature and humidity sensors.

That illustrates the broader value of ESPHome. It can connect Bluetooth devices, Wi-Fi devices, sensors, relays, switches, infrared hardware and custom electronics. ESPHome can communicate directly with Home Assistant, use MQTT or expose other network services. It is open source and is also used by some commercial device makers, giving older or inexpensive hardware a path into a locally controlled smart home.

E-Ink Home Assistant Dashboards

E-ink displays offer another way to present Home Assistant information without mounting a glowing tablet on the wall.

At first, I focused on electricity usage. E-ink uses very little power, but tablets are also relatively inexpensive to operate, so energy savings alone may not justify buying a new display. Phil pointed out the stronger advantage: battery operation.

An e-ink display can be placed on a wall without running electrical wiring. Because the display only consumes meaningful power when it changes, a dashboard that updates a few times per day could run for a long time on a battery. E-ink can also look more like a permanent information panel than another screen.

Possible uses include weather summaries, daily calendars, shopping lists, laundry reminders, dishwasher status, household inventory, energy information, and supplies that need to be replenished. Phil mentioned a Home Assistant Podcast guest who used a household inventory system to show the number of dog treats remaining.

E-ink also avoids some concerns associated with leaving an old tablet plugged in continuously, including battery swelling and the eventual slowdown or abandonment of the tablet’s operating system.

The Open Home Foundation is developing Open Display, which is intended to simplify the process of publishing information and images to e-ink displays. The technology still has limitations — large displays can be expensive, and color e-ink can refresh too slowly for rapidly changing information. Phil and I did not have reliable longevity figures for e-ink panels, so that remains an open question.

Regional Smart Home Differences

Phil also provided an Australian perspective on the smart home market. He said Australia has an enthusiastic technology community, but products and protocols can arrive later than they do in the United States or Europe. Z-Wave Long Range was one example — the technology was available in the United States and moving into Europe, while its future in Australia was less clear. Australian buyers also face voltage differences and limited regional distribution.

Phil described European Home Assistant users as often being more willing to modify existing hardware or build a solution with ESPHome, while U.S. consumers, in his observation, may be more likely to purchase a finished device that works immediately. Those are broad observations rather than fixed rules, but they help explain why different Home Assistant communities emphasize different products and approaches.

Open Versus Closed Smart Home Systems

Closed ecosystems can move quickly. A company can make decisions, coordinate its developers and produce a polished experience without waiting for community consensus. The downside is dependence — the company can change its pricing, restrict an API, shut down a cloud service, discontinue a product, change the experience or remove local access.

Phil used Plex as an example of a platform that can frustrate users by promoting company-provided content alongside personally owned media. Users who want a more open alternative may move to Jellyfin, even if the experience is not identical. Smart home devices create an even more serious version of that problem — a switch, sensor or appliance may stop working as expected when the company behind its cloud service changes direction.

Open-source platforms provide another option. The code can be inspected, extended or forked, community members can continue maintaining integrations, and devices can remain local rather than depending entirely on an outside server. Open development can be slower and messier, but users are not completely dependent on a single commercial owner.

The Open Home Foundation

Phil believes the open smart home ecosystem is healthier than it was five years ago. One major reason is the Open Home Foundation.

Home Assistant and several related projects are owned by the foundation, including Home Assistant itself, ESPHome, Z-Wave JS, Music Assistant and Open Display. Nabu Casa remains the commercial organization associated with Home Assistant, but Phil explained that it is a commercial partner of the foundation rather than its owner. The structure is intended to prevent the underlying projects from being sold to a commercial company.

At the same time, commercial partnerships give manufacturers a formal way to work with the Home Assistant community. The Works with Home Assistant program is one result of that structure — Home Assistant can remain open source while still building relationships with major device companies.

Separate AI Responsibilities and Hermes Profiles

The conversation eventually returned to AI assistants and the way Phil organizes Hermes.

I have been using Hermes primarily as my YouTube content manager, with OpenClaw handling broader management responsibilities, including parts of my Home Assistant environment. Phil suggested that I consider separate Hermes profiles instead of giving one assistant access to everything.

His personal-assistant profile has access to Google Calendar. A separate podcast profile manages podcast production. When the podcast profile needs a calendar event, it can assign that work to the personal-assistant profile — the podcast assistant does not need to hold the calendar credentials itself.

That creates a cleaner permission model. The podcast assistant understands podcast work, the personal assistant understands the calendar, each profile has only the credentials required for its job, and the profiles can communicate through Hermes’ internal task system.

This matches the broader way I have started using AI. ChatGPT, Claude, OpenClaw, Hermes and Perplexity each have different strengths and responsibilities. Treating them as separate workers with defined jobs has been more effective than expecting one system to do everything.

The Bunnings Shopping List

Phil gave a practical example of how his system works. Bunnings is the Australian equivalent of a large home-improvement store, and it’s also the inspiration for Hammerbarn in Bluey.

Phil created a Bunnings shopping list in Home Assistant and a geographic zone around his local store. When he remembers something he needs, he can send a voice message through Telegram. Hermes transcribes the request and adds the item to the Home Assistant list. He might say, “Add silicone to the Bunnings list.” The item is added and the assistant remains quiet.

That last part matters. I originally configured Telegram to send me updates about nearly everything my AI systems were doing, and the volume quickly became overwhelming. Once an assistant reports every small action, the useful messages disappear into noise. A better assistant should quietly complete routine tasks and only interrupt when a decision or action is required.

Typing, Voice and AI Interruptions

Phil and I both use voice with AI systems, but we often prefer typing when precision matters. A spoken prompt can change direction while the person is still thinking, and by the end of the message, the request may be different from where it began. Typing forces the thought to become more deliberate. Voice is still useful for quick capture, such as adding something to a shopping list.

The interaction becomes frustrating when the AI interrupts, adds unnecessary human-like noises or assumes it should begin acting before the instruction is complete. I have started using words such as “confirm” to indicate that I want the assistant to acknowledge or discuss a request before executing it.

AI systems may eventually need clearer conversational modes — statement, question, planning, confirmation and execution — to give users more control over when the AI should listen, respond or act.

Making Home Assistant Easier

Phil said the upcoming Home Assistant 2026.8 release would continue the effort to make the platform easier to access and understand. He believes the long-term goal should be a version of Home Assistant that a parent or grandparent could use, even if the platform never becomes completely simple.

I remain skeptical. Home Assistant is powerful because it provides so many options, and the same options can make the interface confusing.

Phil pointed to several improvements already underway: clearer language, fewer “advanced” labels, device-based organization, area-based automations, Blueprints, prebuilt automation patterns, AI-assisted setup and better voice interaction. Those changes could make ordinary tasks much easier while leaving deeper controls available for technical users. A person should not need to understand YAML, entity IDs or complex dashboards to create a basic automation that turns on the lights when someone enters a room.

Automation Instead of Remote Control

Phil ended with the most important idea of the episode: the best smart home experience is one where the user does not need to interact with the smart home very often.

If I must open an app, navigate to a dashboard and press a button, I may only have a sophisticated remote control. If I must issue a voice command for every action, I am still manually controlling the system.

Real automation responds to context. The lights turn on because someone entered the room. The battery systems begin charging because severe weather is approaching. The shopping list appears when someone arrives at the store. A reminder appears because the dishwasher is finished or the laundry is still outside.

The dashboards, AI assistants, sensors and integrations all support that outcome. The goal is not to create more ways to control the home — the goal is to build a home that needs less control.

Key Takeaways

  • Home Assistant Blueprints let users share automation logic without sharing installation-specific entity IDs.
  • Home Assistant automations are shifting away from individual entity IDs and toward devices, areas, rooms and labels.
  • A replacement device can inherit an existing automation when it’s assigned to the correct area or label.
  • Devices now serve as clearer containers for their related entities, including complex devices like battery systems.
  • Less useful diagnostic entities can stay available without cluttering the main interface.
  • Home Assistant’s improved documentation and device schemas help both people and AI systems understand the platform.
  • Assist can interpret more natural language when backed by an AI provider, not just predefined sentence structures.
  • AI assistants need defined roles, limited credentials and explicit approval requirements, not just instructions on what to do.
  • ESPHome Bluetooth proxies can extend Bluetooth range into garages, sheds and other out-of-range rooms over Wi-Fi.
  • ESPHome can also bridge sensors, switches, infrared hardware and custom electronics into Home Assistant.
  • Infrared support is returning to Home Assistant to bring older, still-common appliances into modern automations.
  • E-ink dashboards win mainly on battery operation and flexible placement, not primarily on energy savings.
  • The Open Home Foundation owns Home Assistant and related projects to keep them from being sold to a single company.
  • Works with Home Assistant gives manufacturers a formal way to certify and support compatibility.
  • Separating AI assistants into distinct roles, like Phil’s Hermes profiles, limits what credentials each one needs to hold.
  • The strongest smart home experience reduces how often a person needs to open an app or issue a command.

Products and Services Discussed

Home Assistant and Open Home Projects

Home Assistant, Home Assistant Podcast, All Things Smart Home, Home Assistant Blueprints, Home Assistant Assist, ESPHome, Open Display, Open Home Foundation, Nabu Casa, Works with Home Assistant

Smart Home Protocols and Hardware

Z-Wave, Z-Wave Long Range, Z-Wave JS, Zigbee, Bluetooth proxies, MQTT, Infrared proxies, E-ink displays, Aqara, LG, Samsung SmartThings, Meross, EcoFlow, Bluetti, Philips Hue, IKEA smart lighting, BroadLink, SwitchBot, Withings

AI and Automation Tools

OpenClaw, Hermes, Telegram, n8n, Uptime Kuma

Media and Infrastructure Tools

Plex, Jellyfin, Unraid, Proxmox, Docker

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Home Assistant Blueprint?

A Home Assistant Blueprint is a reusable automation template. It replaces installation-specific entity IDs with configurable inputs so another user can select their own sensors, switches, lights, weather services or other compatible devices.

What is the difference between a device and an entity?

A device represents a physical or logical product connected to Home Assistant. Entities represent the individual controls, sensors and states belonging to that device. A battery system may be one device with separate entities for state of charge, AC output, DC output, charging mode, temperature and power flow.

Why are areas important in Home Assistant?

Areas associate devices with rooms or locations, which lets automations describe what should happen in a room rather than listing every individual entity in it.

What are labels used for in Home Assistant?

Labels describe a device’s purpose or category. Combined with areas, they let automations target a purpose, such as “occupancy lighting,” instead of a specific list of hardware.

Can an automation continue working after a device is replaced?

Yes, in many cases. If the replacement device is assigned to the same area or label as the original, an automation built around that area or label may not need to be rebuilt.

What is ESPHome?

ESPHome is an open-source platform for connecting microcontrollers, sensors, switches and other hardware to Home Assistant and other systems. It is commonly used for custom sensors, Bluetooth proxies, relays and locally controlled smart home devices.

What is a Bluetooth proxy?

A Bluetooth proxy receives nearby Bluetooth signals and relays them to Home Assistant over the network. It can extend Bluetooth coverage into garages, sheds, distant rooms or other places outside the Bluetooth range of the main Home Assistant machine.

Why use an e-ink Home Assistant dashboard?

E-ink displays consume very little power and can continue showing information without constantly refreshing. They can be battery powered and mounted without running electrical wiring, and they work well for weather, calendars, reminders, lists and other information that changes occasionally.

What is Home Assistant Assist?

Assist is Home Assistant’s conversational interface. It can accept typed or spoken commands, and it can use Home Assistant’s native sentence processing or connect to an AI provider to interpret more natural language.

What is the Open Home Foundation?

The Open Home Foundation is the organization that owns and protects Home Assistant and several related open-source projects. The structure is intended to keep those projects open and prevent them from being sold to a commercial company.

What does Works with Home Assistant mean?

Works with Home Assistant is a program through which manufacturers formally support compatibility between their products and Home Assistant. It gives users greater confidence that the company intends to maintain the integration.

Can AI safely control Home Assistant?

AI can assist with Home Assistant, but access should be constrained. An AI assistant should have a defined role, limited credentials, approval requirements for risky actions, and explicit rules about what it cannot do.

Links and Resources

Listen and Subscribe

Home Gadget Geeks is recorded live most Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. Central and 9:00 p.m. Eastern at https://theaverageguy.tv/live. The show is also available through your podcast app of choice.

Edited YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/tHmPA4JKuO4

Join the Conversation

Have you moved your Home Assistant automations from individual entities to rooms, areas or labels? Are you using ESPHome, Bluetooth proxies, an e-ink dashboard or AI-assisted automations of your own?

Share your setup and questions in the Home Gadget Geeks Discord community: https://theaverageguy.tv/discord