Ask Noah Show · Noah J. Chelliah

Ask Noah Show 485

March 31, 2026·54 min·4 clips

Noah describes porting his phone number to JMP.chat for $5/month so calls and texts arrive via XMPP on every device simultaneously — and ran his Pixel phone for two weeks on WiFi only with no cell service.

1. Ask Noah Show episode 485 focuses primarily on Home Assistant integrations, XMPP-based phone number portability, and self-hosted media management. 2. Host Noah Chalaya and co-host Steve Ovens present; Steve has solar panels, a battery system, and two flashed Emporia energy monitors integrated into Home Assistant. 3. Noah opens by describing the Eyes on Security EVL4 EZR IP interface module, ordered to connect his 20-year-old Honeywell alarm panel to Home Assistant via its four-wire bus, with estimated Amazon delivery between 5:30 and 7:30pm during the show. 4. The EVL4 is expected to expose all alarm zones and sensors to Home Assistant, allowing Noah to add water, radon, smoke, and carbon monoxide detection to a unified dashboard. 5. Noah argues Home Assistant has reached critical mass: a business client recently needed an alarm panel integration that was 'full stop, not possible' without Home Assistant, forcing the platform into commercial deployments. 6. Steve describes connecting a Bluetooth blood pressure monitor and a Bluetooth scale to Home Assistant using the same reverse-engineering skills he applied to freeing his Logitech speakers from their proprietary ecosystem. 7. Listener Soham's email criticizes an earlier episode for not mentioning FreeIPA when discussing LDAP, Kerberos, and PKI — pointing out that FreeIPA stores DNS zones, IP addresses, and SSH keys in LDAP and supports Acme-based certificate issuance. 8. Steve clarifies that the email references episode 376 from January, and that both he and Noah have covered FreeIPA extensively in episodes 382, 342, and others; Steve ran the Red Hat IDM server for years. 9. Noah argues FreeIPA arrived at the right time technically but the wrong time strategically: it became approachable precisely as BYOD trends and small-office Linux deployments removed the use case for centralized identity management. 10. Both Noah and Steve manage their own home lab identity via Ansible playbooks that push SSH keys across machines, since they're the only users who need access. 11. A live caller describes monitoring multiple HVAC circuits and dehumidifiers with an Emporia energy monitor but finding the stock app insufficient for cross-panel visibility and energy pattern analysis. 12. Steve reveals he bought two Emporias and flashed them to custom firmware, feeding raw watt data into Home Assistant via templates that display a ribbon-style energy dashboard showing solar, grid, and battery contributions per circuit. 13. Steve offers to email the caller his exact Home Assistant template configuration, warning about common mistakes like upside-down clamps producing negative watt values. 14. A second caller describes wanting to free himself from iPhone dependency by routing calls and texts through a centralized VOIP service accessible on any device. 15. Noah recommends JMP.chat at $5/month: port the number in, let the carrier issue a new number, then all calls and texts route over XMPP to clients like Gajim or Pidgin on desktop, or any XMPP app on mobile. 16. Noah describes maintaining separate JMP.chat numbers for important clients, church, his morning talk radio show where he interviews senators and governors, and his personal use — all appearing in a single Gajim window. 17. He ran his Pixel phone on WiFi only for nearly two weeks without cell service, confirming that XMPP handles both voice and text over data, and found no temptation to check messages while driving because there was no cellular push. 18. The episode covers listener Gwendolyn's success setting up Booklore (a self-hosted ebook manager) with a Kobo Libra color e-reader via a single config file line change, having read three of her four non-technical book goal for January. 19. The episode is call-in and listener-email driven, covering practical self-hosting problems with specific product names, prices, and configuration details; the tone is informal and solution-focused. 20. Linux home labbers, Home Assistant users, and privacy-focused technologists who want specific product and configuration recommendations will find this episode directly actionable; those seeking conceptual or political Linux content will find it too practical.

As heard by us

A practical conversation about untangling phone-number dependence and making communication more portable.

Ask Noah Show starts with a familiar modern frustration: how tightly daily life can be tied to one phone number and one device. From there, Noah moves into Home Assistant tinkering and then into a listener question about routing calls and texts through a central VoIP-like…

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Why you'd press play

If you want a calmer way to route a shared phone number, this stays practical.

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