Home Tech – The Average Guy Network

Gavin Campbell is back, and this one turns into a tour of what happens when Home Assistant stops being a dashboard and starts becoming the operating system for the house. We talk through Gavin’s first Tesla, garage-door automation, water and leak monitoring, ESPHome projects, lawn and soil sensors, emergency power, camera systems and the growing role AI can play in making sense of all that home data.

Do kids need a full smartphone just to stay in touch? Mike Wieger joins me for HGG689 with a different answer: push-to-talk-over-cellular radios built around simple family communication. We also dig into practical off-site backups with Unraid, TrueNAS, ZFS and Tailscale, Apollo and Moonlight for using one gaming PC from almost anywhere, and Frigate 0.18 for a much easier local-camera and NVR setup. For a broader setup walkthrough, see the complete guide to Frigate and Home Assistant. Chapters / Timestamps Guest Context Mike Wieger returns to Home Gadget Geeks with three practical technology topics aimed at parents, gamers and homelab

Jay Franze joins HGG688 to discuss concert photography gear, Nikon cameras, RAW workflows, redundant backups, AI photo editing, mastering and spatial audio.

Seth Johnson from HomeTech.fm joins Jim Collison to talk about programmable pixel lights, holiday displays and the hardware behind thousands of individually addressable LEDs. They cover HolidayCoro, QuinLED, WLED, Xlights, Home Assistant and why electrical calculations still need more than a confident AI answer.

Phil Hawthorne joins Jim to explore Home Assistant Blueprints, area-based automations, ESPHome Bluetooth proxies, e-ink dashboards, AI integration and the Open Home Foundation.

Erin Lawrence joins HGG682 to compare Ring 4K cameras, robot mowers, coffee gear, travel cameras, smart lighting and review workflows.

Mike Wieger joins me for HGG681 — AI at work in a regulated M&A environment, OpenClaw and Hermes at home, new fiber internet, mountain e-bikes, and a real update on MeshCore and Meshtastic in the Omaha/Lincoln mesh community.

Jim Collison and Gavin Campbell compare OpenClaw, Hermes, Home Assistant agents, local LLMs, Docker isolation, and safe approval workflows for home-lab automation.

What happens when technology troubleshooting meets backyard cooking, meal planning, and a growing obsession with grills? This week, Mark Robson returns to Home Gadget Geeks for a relaxed conversation that blends home tech, networking stories, pellet grills, Blackstone cooking, pizza ovens, and the routines that make outdoor cooking such an addictive hobby. From fixing a broken cable that disrupted a mesh network to experimenting with dry brining, reverse searing, and maple syrup in savory dishes, this episode covers the overlap between gadgets, workflow, and food culture. If you enjoy cooking, grilling, home labs, or simply building better systems around hobbies,

What happens when AI stops being just a chatbot and starts to reason, plan, and actually do useful work? This week, Dewain Robinson joins me for a conversation on Copilot Studio, AI agents, reasoning models, vibe coding, and the future of software development. We go beyond the usual AI hype and into the practical side, how these tools are already changing workflows, helping with real tasks, and forcing all of us to rethink what productive work looks like. From Microsoft’s internal shift after ChatGPT to real-world examples like managing email, building demo data, handling calendars, and guiding software creation, this