Erin Lawrence returns to HGG692 with IFA Berlin robotics, DJI cameras, ECOVACS robot vacuums, AI TVs, Mazda CX-70, GM Super Cruise, smart lighting and the question of whether smarter gadgets are becoming too complicated.

Phil Hawthorne joins me to talk Home Assistant AI automation, the upcoming 2026.10 release, Tesla Full Self-Driving, smarter energy monitoring, climate zones and a 3D-printed presence-sensor planter. We also discover why my Home Assistant Container installation had fallen several releases behind.

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. Chapters / Timestamps Guest Context Mike Wieger returns to Home Gadget Geeks with three practical

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.