Episode: 4248
Title: HPR4248: Millie Perkins
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4248/hpr4248.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:01:25

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4248 for Wednesday the 13th of November 2024.
Today's show is entitled Mealy Perkins.
It is part of the series interviews.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Ken talks with Mealy Perkins about her home automation talk at OutCamp.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today I managed to trap down another of my victims from OutCamp, who I missed,
and that is, do you want to introduce yourself, Mealy, am I correct?
My name is Mealy Perkins.
Hi, nice to meet you.
Thank you very much for taking the time to come on and have a chat with us.
So tell us, you were at OutCamp.
What did you think of it?
Yes, it was great. It was my first time.
So yeah, I really enjoyed it.
It was really great to get to meet some fellow like my did nerds, I thought.
Right, yeah.
Was that what, how did you end up being there?
How did you hear about it on the podcast or if I was your avenue for offering?
Yeah, I actually listened to the late Nightlinux podcasts and it was mentioned on the,
obviously Gary was one of the organizers.
So yeah, I heard about it on there.
Sort of early last, early this year, I think, and then basically put it in my diary and
was checking for tickets and checking for updates.
Let me regularly.
Do you go to, have you gone to other events similar to that or was this just the first one?
No, it's the first one really.
So I've obviously been to like conferences through work and things like that.
That's obviously closed software, not open source, related things.
So it was really good to go to that sort of thing.
So what's your background?
I work as a managing consultant in a cybersecurity firm that's focused on
identity access management and privileged access management.
So we implement those types of tools in large organizations.
So that's what I've been doing for nearly 10 years now.
Okay, cool.
And you ended up listening to the lads on the late Nightlinux podcast.
Very good.
Yeah.
Have you been to any of them before or was this just...
No, no, I didn't even know what they looked like.
Like, really?
So...
I did like, boy, I recognized that voice from somewhere.
Yeah, exactly.
It's really surreal to see the one actual in real life.
There's tangible humans.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a fantastic experience.
So you turned off randomly at this event.
Hello, I'm here and then decided to give a presentation.
Had you were you on the main track or was it just a side track?
Have you already heard that?
It was, and yeah, one of the sidetracks.
So, when I first heard that it was an on-conference style and you could submit your own talk,
I sort of thought about doing it at that point.
But then I noticed that somebody else was on the talk list on the main track
for doing a home automation talk.
So that's Charlie's talk, which I went to was really good.
So on the first day, I was a bit like, oh, I'm not sure if I,
if people want to listen to another talk about home automation.
Yes, I have to go into.
Yes, well, an interesting topic that a lot of people like.
So after going to her talk, I realised that mine will be quite different.
So I thought, and with some encouragement as well from some of the volunteers,
I thought, why not give it a go?
Super, what was your talk?
What talk did you give in the long?
Did you give it for?
Yeah, it was all around some of my home assistant journey.
So I think I called it a beginner's parade down the rabbit hole.
And it was basically an overview of my smart home and my home assistant journey.
It's been about a year now since I started with home assistant.
So it's quite timely, I guess.
And I really just wanted to explain what I've done and how it can be set up
by someone who's not specifically got a technology background, I guess,
or got a technical background, like I'm not a developer and I'm not a coder.
I can hack bits together, but that's about it.
So it's really a testimony to how much time people in the open source community put into that
project and how much help you can get and how much documentation is out there.
The listeners of HVR are sitting there going, how long is it going to be before Ken
asked her to do submit shows for our ongoing series on home automation?
So I've been doing a series on home automation just basically reading the home assistant
Wiki and I'm building the three different types.
And then the idea is that you can come into the home assistant thing and go,
if you want to know how to install it, go back to this episode.
So we have the we have the basis is done.
So do you have the presentation available online somewhere?
It's not available online at the moment, but I can make it available,
but it's not really learning the presentation for HVR.
Yeah, I could do definitely.
Almost a many people at the show at the event.
Yeah, it was used in one of those side rooms.
Yeah, the room was almost full.
Yeah, so there's a lot of interest in it.
I was surprised that there would be so much interest in it.
You know, it was Sunday morning, late morning.
Yeah, very good.
And it's always tough, you know, if you're going up against somebody else,
as well like some rock star somewhere on the other people are divided,
do I go to the home automation or not?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I did want to crush anything that I would want to attend.
So I think there was something really technical that was on at the same time.
So I guess the people that didn't want to attend that were drawn in by home automation.
And you have much feedback afterwards or what was the obviously we at the HVR table were like,
oh, the good talks.
Yeah, you're on.
And then there was another one this morning about home automation.
And yeah, so that's why I tracked you guys down.
So that's that's good.
Yeah, I have quite a lot of good feedback.
People seem to really enjoy it.
Because I also include some interesting use cases in my presentation just around weird things
that I've found that people have done with home automation because there's lots of strange
edge cases out there.
Because, you know, as you know, you can do a lot with home-resistant practically anything.
So there's lots of really weird things that people have done.
Do you want to give people an idea of what you want to give or do you want to save that for your show?
Yeah, and yeah, of course.
So I guess one of the funny ones that I liked was that a person had set up an NFC tag on a
lamp post.
So it was on their usual dog walking route and around two minutes from where they got through
the house. They would scum this NFC code on their phone and it would turn their coffee machine on
at home. Really with an issue's case, but I guess really improves their day-to-day life.
Well, when I heard it was like the dog post who was taking the dog for a walk, I was thinking
something else turns on the sprinkler or something. But yeah, there's loads of strange ones out there.
Yeah, personally, myself, the issue I have is so much that you can do and so much that I want to do.
I have a whole box of kit that I want to use. It's right there, but getting the time and getting over
the barrier of actually, I'm struggling now with what's the best computer to put it on, do it
put it on a Raspberry Pi or do I do the whole duck or container thing or do I have a standalone
computer for it? Yeah. And then I don't really want that traffic on my own private network,
so do I build another Wi-Fi network? Yeah, it can work on my monster, I think. Somebody asked a question
that's somewhat relevant, I guess, where they said, oh, I've tried with home assistant previously,
but it just felt too difficult for those two to do. And I think that is definitely in a barrier
to entry, but what I would say is you've really got to tackle it as an iterative process where
you're sort of accumulating the automation and improving. Yeah, and improving your implementation,
because home assistant, I started out on the Raspberry Pi, but their backup system is so good
that moving it over to say proffinance, which is what I'm using now, is really easy.
And it does not take much, it's not difficult, so I think it's worth starting out in perfect way.
If you can, I know that everyone likes to work like that, just to get something going,
and you can always just continuously improve it, you know, I would never say that my home
is complete on my home assistant journey is finished, it's just always evolving.
Yeah, do you have a non-technical person in your house who demands that the home assistant
not be leading? Well, yeah, this is part, I guess, something I was joking about in my presentation,
because I live on my own, that my partner, Adam, who was also at the conference,
whilst he is technical, he does joke about not wanting him to have to use these sorts of things.
And I joke that I just made him his own simple dashboard, and it just has big buttons on it,
because, yeah, I just want things to work, because I did a live demo as well,
my home assistant, so. That was very brave, how does it go?
It went fine, yeah, so just showing people my dashboards, which I seem to appreciate,
have made them all pink, sorry. Yeah, my daughter would 100% agree with you. Yeah, exactly,
you've got to add some personality. Yeah, fantastic. And so, you went, you did the
Archamp experience, and what do you think that was, would you do it again? Yeah, definitely,
I really enjoyed it, I really liked different talks, and as well the variety of talks as well,
and so, like the open source embroidery one, I went to, that was really good. Yeah,
and we're one with the badges, the LED badges, I think it would have been good if there was more
sort of weird and wonderful things there as well, like a pigeon, a ballroom pigeon,
isn't that weird and wonderful enough for you? Yeah, well, that's my, that's my partner's pigeon.
All right, yeah, fantastic. Yeah, so, sort of have a semi-custody of the pigeon,
so yeah, it would have been good to see more LED things and things like that,
that I, and I would have brought some, I think, because I'd like to do that sort of thing as well,
that I guess I didn't realise that was something that people would be interested in.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, very much. Personally, I'm interested in, my youngest is very interested in
LEDs and clothes and fabric and stuff that would be nice, I mean, not now, because some issues,
they're having some issues, but yeah, yeah, I really like wearable things, I made an LED coat
for a festival earlier this year, so. Did you now? Yeah, it's not the best, it could be improved,
but it's all right, but yeah, that's my favourite niche of LEDs, I guess. Yeah, LED,
but even when it goes dark, you know, all sins are forgiven when you've got a LED coat on.
Yeah, exactly, and it also, it's quite warm.
So it's two in one as long as you're a catch-fire, but
right, I've, I've actually come up with about 15 different episodes that you should do for
HPE, if you're into that sort of thing, it's quite easy. Yeah, if anything I go.
So you definitely go back again? Yeah, definitely, I think I'm going to like to attend more events
like that. But there was like a lifetime supply of LEDs, and you go, I was going to challenge
incentives, whatever. Yeah, did you see the prize, it was not a lifetime? No, it was like barely
an evening, if I have the polarity incorrect, and my power supply. Yeah, they were missulling those,
I think. Yeah, yeah, I have to complain to the to her Majesty's, whatever office,
or his Majesty's, sort of, his Majesty's office. So cool stuff. Was there anything else that you
wanted to mention or chat about, or? I don't think so, really. I'm just talking about my passion
for home assistant and automation. I really enjoyed my talk, and I'm glad that people also seem
to enjoy it. So maybe I'll come back next year and do a longer talk. Yeah, that would be nice.
It's nice, hopefully by then my home assistant thing will actually be up and running and actually
working. My wife will be gone, okay, why have you bought all this stuff? How's it going to do?
Right, okay. There's so much I want to talk about, but this is really only supposed to be a short
catch-up, but I really do want to thank you for taking the time to turn up after the event,
and just working around my schedule to get a call going in. Yeah, of course, it was a pleasure.
No bother. So everybody, tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker.
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