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  • 2 min read

Joining the Home Assistant Podcast to Talk About PokyPow

Hey nerds 🤓

I reached out to the Home Assistant Podcast a couple of months ago. They were open to recording an episode with me, which is super cool!

We recorded this in May 2025 and discussed my Smart Home journey, as well as PokyPow, of course.

You would not believe how nervous I was. I am not entirely sure why, but I was. Maybe because English is my second language, maybe because potentially a lot of people will see this, and I mess up. But after a couple of minutes with Phil and Rohan, it got a bit better.

I haven't watched or listened to my episode yet, as I feel weird about watching myself 😅. I might need to do it, though, to improve for the next episode. Phil and Rohan were awesome and are open to having me on the show for another time, when there is more progress with PokyPow.

Go ahead and have a listen or watch:

Andrej’s smart home journey and designing PokyPow Rohan and Phil chat with Andrej, a passionate Home Assistant user with some truly creative automations—from a relationship point system to a cat doorbell! He’s also developing PokyPow, an ESP-based device that lets you control your PC with Home Assistant.

Andrej’s smart home journey and designing PokyPow

Thanks to the podcast, we also got a few more people on the waitlist on CrowdSupply. Around 40 people signed up after the podcast aired.

We are now above 500 people! I am starting to wonder how many would actually buy the device later on. 🤔

Signups over time

If you have friends or coworkers who want to control their PC with Home Assistant or have a Child Lock on their kids' PC (or your own), then forward this mail and tell them to subscribe on CrowdSupply!

PokyPow - Remotely power and monitor your computer with Home Assistant

Crowd Supply

That is it, and I wish you a great day!

  • 1 min read

PokyPow - Child Lock for Computer

Hey nerds 👋

At the Home Assistant Community Day in Cologne, I had pretty interesting conversations regarding PokyPow.

One of the attendees asked me:

What is the difference to PiKVM and alike? First, the PokyPow integrates with Home Assistant easily, allowing you to not only power on and off your PC but also check if it is actually running. Second, I will build a child lock in the upcoming version.

Then he got interested! His kid was only allowed to game from Friday to Sunday, for an hour a day. The PokyPow would be the perfect use case.

With this, he could prohibit turning on the PC from Monday to Thursday while also tracking gaming time. When gaming time is over or soon to be over, you can send a notification and or clean shutdown the PC. No discussion needed 😉.

The Child Lock

I have made a new contract with a company to produce the next and hopefully last version of PokyPow. (Still have hope!)

My current version does not allow the child lock feature because of the electrical design. But instead of waiting, I got myself an ESP32-C3, wired a button and LED up, and want you to see what it will look like: