This paper describes an approach for developing a hybrid smart home automation system through the incorporation of the ESP32 microcontroller along with IoT, Edge Artificial Intelligence (Edge AI), MQTT communication protocol, and Firebase cloud. In essence, this approach has been formulated by focusing on the development of an intelligent, fast and scalable system capable of automating different household appliances through real-time monitoring and control. In this regard, sensors like PIR, DHT11, and MQ2 have been used for motion detection, temperature monitoring, and gas leakage detection respectively. On its part, the ESP32 microcontroller has been used for performing edge-based processing in order to minimize communication delay and enhance system reliability. Meanwhile, the use of MQTT protocol will facilitate lightweight real-time communication between different devices and cloud servers. Similarly, Firebase cloud service will facilitate remote monitoring as well as data synchronization of the system in question using web or mobile interfaces. Experimentation reveals that the proposed system offers fast and reliable performance in addition to scalable multi-device operation. From the experiments, it has been established that the hybrid approach has resulted in efficient and scalable performance compared to other approaches commonly used for home automation.