HomeTech.fm - Episode 217 - Projects Project with Joe Albian

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

On this week's episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Joe Albian, a supporter of the show who shares his handy work on the latest installment of the "Projects Project". Joe hired professional help for portions of the home including wiring and landscape audio but has also done a great deal of professional-caliber work on his own. The results are a clean and robust installation with a few custom touches you won't want to miss (including one of the nicest AV head ends we've seen on the show)!That plus...WiFi's tougher WPA3 encryption is now availableHDR10+ could provide stiff competition for Dolby VisionStrong evidence of a pending Sonos-HomeKit partnership... a HomeTech exclusive :) and more...Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 29th, 2018. I'm Seth Johnson from Sarasota, Florida. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. I sound better than you, I think, though. Yeah, yep. I have to admit, I've been struck by the crud once again. And I can't blame this one on the kids. Usually they get it first, and then it comes to me.

And I'm the first one in the house to come down with this one. So not sure where I got it from, but, yeah, feeling pretty under the weather this week. Thought I would muscle through, though, and get a show out. We had a gentleman named Joe Albion for an installment of the Projects Project teed up for this week. Thought I would muscle through though and get a show out. We had a gentleman named Joe Albion for a installment of the Projects Project teed up for this week. And I was excited for that conversation and wanted to power through and sit down and put out another show with you here this week, Seth. Yep. Yeah, it was a good interview. So I was excited to present that later on in the show here. But you picked a good day to be sick because Slack was down for most of the day.

Like, yeah, you don't have to go to work if you don't have Slack. That's it. Yeah. You and I both probably pretty heavily reliant on Slack, I would imagine. We're both work from home, remote employees, and that definitely put a wrench in things when I did go to check in this morning, trying to keep my ear to the ground on a couple of things, even though I was taking it easy. And man, you don't realize how reliant you are on systems like that

until they go down, and then it's like, wow, I'm kind of out here on an island having to go back to using email like a savage. Like an animal, yeah. I was like, why can't the email go down too? I forgot how to use it. I'm like typing, and okay, now what do I do? I send it? Yeah, then.

Mess. Yeah, all back up and running now, okay, now what do I do? I send it? Nah. Yeah. Mess. Yeah. All back up and running now, though, thankfully. Yeah. Well, yeah. Thanks a lot, Slack. Could have given us a holiday. Right.

All right. What do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Wi-Fi security is finally getting an upgrade. After 14 years, the Wi-Fi Alliance has officially launched WPA3, the next generation standard, which promises to tackle many of the vulnerabilities that have persisted in wireless networking. Most notably, it brings individualized data encryption, which should protect your data against eavesdropping from within the Wi-Fi network.

And you also get tougher password-based sign-ins through something called Simultaneous Authentication of Equals, a key establishment protocol that reduces the chances of someone guessing your password, even if you use a lousy one. Better security is always a good thing. The WPA2 is what you should be using. Hopefully no one's using WEP or web

because that's been hacked years ago and it's awful uh but wpa2 there's there's no known security issues we've seen some like implementation issues come out of it uh recently but other than that like it's it's still a pretty solid thing but this sounds like it's better it sounds like it's better. It sounds like it, you know, protects those lousy passwords. So you can have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. Yeah, I know most people do as your password. But yeah, don't do that one either. That's that's a horrible password. Please, please don't. Yeah. But yeah, better security and Wi-Fi is always a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to HDR video, you generally have just two options these days, Dolby Vision and HDR10. Dolby Vision currently seems to be the king,

but if companies want to use it, they need to pay licensing to Dolby. HDR10 is the open standard, but doesn't support many of the key features of Dolby Vision. Then there is HDR10+, an open standard that rivals Dol support many of the key features of Dolby Vision. Then there is HDR10+, an open standard that rivals Dolby Vision and its features, but it's only available in select Samsung and Panasonic TVs. It's kind of like proprietary thing they've been working on, at least until now. This week, HDR10+, Technologies, a joint venture founded by 20th Century Fox, Panasonic, and Samsung, introduced a program that would declare manufacturers' products as HDR10 plus certified, provided they meet certain standards. All good news, if you ask me.

Yeah. Yeah, great. A lot of acronyms in the world of HDR and different standards, and there's actually a couple other ones that aren't quite as popular. But yeah, to date, it's really been Dolby vision is, is kind of the, the gold standard, I would say. And, and HDR 10 is, as sort of the, the more, I guess, broadly adopted because of that licensing limitation, uh, with Dolby vision, but this HDR 10 sounds like it could be a great, a great thing now that it's open for other manufacturers to adopt it. And a lot of it will really come down to that adoption and how many of them get on board with that. And then, of course, there's always the question of content and the studios adopting that as well.

So we'll certainly be keeping an eye on that. But like you said, Seth, anything that opens these standards up and brings them to more products and hence more consumers is always a good thing yeah it's i mean w vision is the one it has like frame by frame metadata built into it where it can describe what it needs to happen and acr 10 like w vision just has more granular fine grain fine-tuned uh hdr and that's why people like it better um and then but but again you have to pay that licensing fee uh so i mean i'm wondering since they've made this like consortium of uh technology you know hdr 10 plus technologies it kind of it's kind of like you're gonna have to go through the certification so what you know to get it so isn't that kind of

the same thing as a license fee like if you have to pay for it to be certified somewhere by you know somebody that can deem you as passing all the specs like isn't that the same thing as a license fee that's a really good question yeah i don't know how the economics there work and maybe there are some similarities but i would imagine there's also some some differences at least in the way this story is is described but i don't know. That's a very good question. Yeah. Well, interesting thing. We'll have to keep an eye on it. It's good to have these options, though, for sure. HDR is awesome. So if you get a 4K TV, make sure you have that HDR on it. Yeah. Well, so the last headline that we want to touch on today, and this is a home tech exclusive here brought to you courtesy by a friend of the show, Chris Gamble, who posted an interesting image in our private Slack channel, The Hub, today.

And this is of one of the new Sonos Beam soundbars. And what he's got here is a picture of the back where you can see the HDMI port and the network port and a couple other, you know, the little button there or whatever. And on the bottom, you can see just barely a what looks to be a HomeKit. I don't know what they're called, the codes or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that you scan with your phone to add a device to a HomeKit, I guess, network or HomeKit ecosystem. And so it's really interesting there. You know, I went and double checked and I couldn't find any specific mentions of HomeKit looking very quickly when I went back and checked like the Sonos Beam when it came out and there was all the press around it. And so there wasn't

specific talk about that, but this seems to be a pretty clear indication that there are plans in the works, at least for some sort of HomeKit partnership yeah i this this is odd so we we what we have to do now is is fuel some rampant speculation yeah i was gonna say cue cue the rumor mill yeah let's let's let's do this and uh we can always blame chris for posting this picture but um right man this this seems pretty interesting. What could be the reason for them including this ID on the bottom of their device? It's almost like a HomeKit. That's definitely the code that you would use for a HomeKit.

You would take a picture of that little ID or type it in, and it should do something. It should install a driver. It doesn't really have anything to do with AirPlay 2 that's that's kind of like a separate protocol so my my my wonder is like what if this is kind of like that remote program that we've been hearing about like Apple is working they put on the on the big screen control for Crestron and uh what was it the other one Savant uh on the big screen and said 4, Crestron, and what was it, the other one, Savant, on the big screen and said, we're going to open up a remote API for HomeKit. Like, what if this is part of it? I don't

know. This is very strange. If that's the case, then can a Sonos Beam become like a soundbar Apple HomePod? Is that possible? Like, could you yell, you know, the infamous, hey, Siri, at it and have it respond to you with Siri's voice? Like, this could be kind of interesting if that is the case. I don't know. Yeah, no, there's definitely some intriguing possibilities there, and we'll have to keep an eye on it. And and like you said cue the uh cue the rampant speculation you know yeah time will tell if you have any if you have any ideas let us know home tech.fm slash feedback i'm jen if you if you know what this thing's for let us know because i'm genuinely curious like i i i did what you did i've been online like searching like sonos beam and today

was like the must have been the embargo lift on all the home Sonos Beam things. So all the reviews are out, but not one of them mentioned that I could search for. Not one of them really mentioned that there was this HomeKit ID on the bottom. So I'm really curious as to if anybody... Yeah. What the heck is that thing about? Let us know. HomeTech.fm feedback.

All right. Well, that will do it for our headlines. All the links to these topics we've discussed can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 217. And while you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you some weekly show reminders and some further industry analysis on other stories that we may or may not talk about on the show. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 217. All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Joe Albion. It's another Projects Projects interview. Joe has a very interesting install that he's been working on for quite some time here. And man, Jason, he has like the sweetest rack room. I have rack room envy by seeing these pictures. Yeah.

Yeah. This thing is amazing. Yeah. It was really, really cool what he did there and throughout the project. And we'll definitely, you know, stay tuned to the end of the interview to hear what we're talking about there. And we'll come back after the interview here and wrap it up with a few thoughts of our own. Well, without further ado, let's get started. Hey, Joe, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you. Really doing great, Jason. Thanks for you and Seth for having me tonight. Yeah, yeah, we appreciate it. We're excited to have you on. I know you put in your submittal

a while back and we're slowly working through some of the backlog there and your project definitely jumped out as one that's pretty comprehensive. So we're excited to jump in and talk about it and explore it a little bit. But before we jump into that and start talking about the tech, why don't you give our listeners just a quick personal introduction, maybe talk about where you live and what is your interest in the smart home? Yeah, so Joe Albion, I live just outside of Chicago in the suburbs, northern suburbs of Chicago, been in the Chicago area my entire life.

So as we were chatting before, a lot of travel, but I've found myself in this market for quite a long time. And in terms of the kind of the smart home, I would certainly call myself an enthusiast, perhaps more than just a casual hobbyist. I think my wife would call me overly enthusiastic, perhaps. But, you know, as you guys know, this kind of becomes a bit of a fever, right? So I kind of got into this by a number of buddies way, way back in the day in college who were, I would say, in the programming space, a couple of game programmers, a couple of other tech programmers. And it sort of got me interested in the space. And I had another buddy who kind of got into, quote, home automation, I think way before it was time, and this was probably early 2000s. But he kind of taught me some tricks on building PCs

and that sort of got me scratching the itch around putting HD PCs together, getting my CD collections out, photos and the like. So that was really kind of where I got my start and how I got into, quote, the idea of a broader smart home. Cool. Very cool. So let's talk really quickly about your home. The project that you have has a lot of components to it, but of course they all live within the context of a home. And so give us a little bit of the context for your house, you know, the rough size and did you do a new build or did you buy an existing home that you had to remodel or anything like that? Yeah, so I've been actually in the same lot since 2001. But we, we tore our

house down in 2010. And built the house that we're in now the house we were in before, kind of where I did maybe some of the first types of home automation just was not big enough for the family. And frankly, it was a very old 1950s house with, quote, 1950s tech, if you will, a lot of infrastructure problems. It didn't allow us really to add on. It was on a slab. So you can imagine trying to pull either cables through the attic or through the non-existent chaseway was really impossible. So I built a new house. It's probably about 4,500, 5,000 square feet. It does have a full basement as well and a backyard area.

And, you know, at the time, 2010 was still pretty early. I think that may have been the first year, like year the Nest came out, if I'm not mistaken. But I worked with a recommended guy from our builder, and I'll go into that a little bit here. But we said, hey, let's at least wire this thing up. I don't know what's going to come down the path, but at least let's get some cabling into the house. So we did virtually, I would say for every room, we did a pair of Cat 5Es and a pair of RG6s along with the zones of audio that we have in about, I think, 14 different rooms, 12 inside rooms. So we kind of wired it up knowing that I was going to kind of get more into it. So we at least had the bones and the infrastructure put in at that point. Okay, very cool. So let's talk then about what you've got going on today. It sounds like you, you know, you said you, you basically you built brand new, and you got the

infrastructure put in place during that phase, which is always a great thing, of course, to plan for that and get some of that wiring in the walls and have the foundation to build on. But you know, speaking of foundation, everything really rests on the network. And I thought we'd start there with your system and talk about what you're doing for network and some of your experiences there. Sure. So, you know, kind of going back when we were building it and kind of thinking back on the tech, and it's interesting. I mean, you guys are in this every day. I kind of look at this periodically, and I started going back and saying, well, what was actually available at that time?

So it's amazing to me how much has changed in these past eight years, seven, eight years. But if I look back at what we had at the time, you know, I thought I was kind of doing really, really great with, you know, a Netgear router and a couple of those Nest thermostats that we put in. But I found fairly quickly that, you know, just A, it wasn't really covering the house and, you know, kids were complaining about dead spots and the like. So kind of built off of that, the Netgear platform I built, not built, but I repurposed, I guess, a few other routers that I had over the years into access points, right? So

then I had a main NETGEAR router. I can't remember which model it was, but a few additional ones that kind of got me tinkering with the internal workings of the network structure itself, just to be able to build the access points in. And I'll tell you, it worked for probably about two or three years, worked actually really well. I mean, the first couple of times, even just trying to reset the things to access points versus routers took me quite a bit of time to learn. But once I got that down, it kind of worked pretty well. But it was at a point where I believe it was really more when I was getting kind of irritated with the video distribution that we didn't have. I guess you could call it that because we were really using Comcast boxes in each of the TV viewing areas.

And frankly, I was getting a little tired of having these, but why do you have to have that big Comcast box sitting up on a mantel or in a room next to the TV? And so I kind of started at that point saying, well, there's got to be some better ways to address this. And I think even coming from your guys' program and saying, and Seth, I know you talked about this a lot. Hey, it's going to go distributed at some point. Let's start thinking about how would you change this. Well, this was obviously years before that. And I said, well, let me at least understand what's available in the market. I started reading up on HD-based tea options, so matrices.

And I kind of dipped my toe in that water and actually bought an 8x8 HD-based T-matrix. And this one, you guys will probably laugh at me, but I actually sourced it from China. I actually went and found a couple of exact models that were on some of the popular websites that are out there that you could buy retail. And I found one of the manufacturers and used Alibaba, believe not wow that's not uncommon i mean that's not uncommon believe it or not but before before we for me it was for me totally uncommon but yeah go ahead i was gonna say before we uh we get to uh to the video stuff let's let's talk a little bit more about the networking that you have i mean you mentioned you mentioned that uh you know there's been changes in the past

six or seven or eight years. The time that Jason and I have been doing this show, the changes have just blown us away. We went from having no third-party ecosystems like Google or Apple to having HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings. It was an amazing explosion around, of, of, of, of around the industry, you know, around two years ago. And it, and it's, it's been progressing since then. So, I mean, obviously you aren't using the net gear stuff anymore because that's one of those things that you have to upgrade, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah,

that's a good point. And one of the reasons I was talking about the video distribution really prompted me then to say, well, look, the network infrastructure that I have just isn't going to support kind of sending video signals across the way I had it set up. And frankly, I wanted to have a more managed network. And so to your point, Seth, I mean, that's when I kind of started looking at different either managed Netgear routers or that's when I kind of got hooked on Unify, the Ubiquiti capability. So that's kind of went all in. You know, I kind of ripped out all the Netgear material and product that I had. And the first thing I got was a security gateway, you know,

which was really the Unify router itself. And I bought a switch, actually got a managed 24 port poe switch you know because obviously some of these were going to have power over ethernet capability so I I said let me at least make the about face and the pivot and kind of went all in you know I know you're probably I think you mentioned you're having some issues with your unify at least on the next side not not the unify yeah or amplify amplify excuse, Amplify, excuse me, yeah. The Unify stuff that I have, I've actually been really, really happy with. And, you know, the one thing I forgot to do at the top of the call here was to do a shout

out, not only to you guys and your hub, but all your participants that are on the hub, you know, frankly, learned a ton. But what I've also found is, you know, a lot of these products, you either love them or hate them. And I think there's probably camps of people that either love Unify or they maybe don't. You'll find that in the custom integrator world. Like that, it's like tribalistic. Like we would have sticks at each other at some point.

Like there's absolutely no reason to have the views that we have on equipment. But we do. And we go after each other with, you you know clubs and shovels at some point because well you got that right and i liken that to chicago with a cubs and socks so it's it's everywhere we find something right but yeah you know i find myself in the unified camp and you know that's when we're you know then i said well wait a minute why am i still using some of the wi-fi stuff that's there? These guys have some pretty interesting Wi-Fi devices. In fact, then I kind of went all in there and got a couple of UAPAC Pros, the old UFO style Wi-Fi products. And then I also got one of their little AC in walls that I think does really well. So now I have coverage, frankly, across the entire house.

And frankly, it's never let me down. So I've been pretty happy with that. And then the last thing we've got, you know, I haven't put fully in yet, is to cover our backyard. I got one of those, the AC mesh products that they have as well. So that one I still have to work on. Got it. One last thing on your network that I did want to touch on really quickly, and then we'll get into some of the more glamorous stuff, so to speak here. You mentioned a PRTG that you're using, and I think it's pronounced maybe Passier or Passier.

Talk about what that is. It's a term that I've heard before, and I'm vaguely familiar with what those solutions are, but they're not terribly common in the home. And so talk about what it is, how it works on the network, and what your experience with it has been like. Sure, happy to do that, Jason. So the company, as I understand it, I think it's a German-based company, but the genesis of why I even thought to put it in was kind of going back to my ISP through Xfinity or through Comcast. About a year ago, I was having just terrible uptime issues. The thing was going down all the time, would have hours and days where the thing would really kind of fluctuate on and off,

and kind of went back to Comcast a number of different times. They're like, well, it's working fine now. So what are you complaining about kind of a thing? And I said, there's got to be a better way for me to monitor the network itself. And, you know, I thought of, well, maybe I'll go out and write a program and just do a paint, right. And, you know, maintain that and understand where, where the downtime was. I'm like, well, why am I going to sit here and try and write a program? There's got to be something that does that. And they were one of the few pieces of software that I found that had a freeware option

in a system that was really more based for an enterprise, which I kind of liked. So it wasn't just the ping capability, but they, you can monitor anything on your network. I mean, so somebody who's a pro obviously can really use all the capabilities. I tend to monitor, you know, the ping issue, which I still do ongoing, as well as it monitors my, you know, my server health, you know, so the CPU. And in fact, I've had an issue lately, I'm sure perhaps you guys have seen this before, where Windows kind of goes into 100% CPU use mode, and this system will give you an alert when that kind of happens, so you can kind of manage it. So there's a whole variety of things that it does.

I mean, you can go to their website and check them out. But again, for me, I was then able to take a lot of the logs back to Comcast and basically say, look, here's how it's going down. I'm only at 97% uptime. You're telling me it should be well over that. And here are the days when it's going down. And frankly, it always happened on the times you need it, right? So kind of proving that out was an important thing. And I also have the Xfinity TriplePlay, right? So when the internet goes down, your phone goes down. So it becomes an issue if I'm doing business out of the house that it was a fairly significant issue. So this company and the PRTG software, not only can you view it on your server, it's got a nice little iOS app, which I can view kind of anywhere in the house to monitor things.

So I can't speak highly enough about it, and frankly, it's free. Those things like monitoring your CPU or doing a ping routine, those are called sensors, and you can have up to 100 before they charge you. I think I use like 9 or 10. So I'm certainly not going to use the, quote quote enterprise level, which can get pretty pricey. But again, for a home network, I think it's quite more than robust for what I would. Yeah.

Looks like it. Yeah. It looks like that's actually a, I was just looking at a little more as you were talking about it. It's an L in the name, not an I. So it's Pat Passler. I think is how you router traffic router traffic grapher. So that's what PRG stands for, if anyone is curious.

And definitely we'll include a link to that in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 217 if you're interested in learning any more about that. Let's shift gears here and jump into some of the more glamorous stuff, like I said, and maybe jump over here to video. You were talking about that a minute ago. And at one point, you went down the HD-based T path. It sounds from our conversations leading up to the show that you're sort of perhaps moving away from that video distribution and talk about that and what some of your reasons are there. Yeah. So the matrix that I bought, I think

served me quite well. I would say it probably, I think I bought it in 2012 and really just decommissioned it maybe last year, I guess, year, year and a half ago. So for the amount of money I spent for it, which was not, wasn't hugely expensive, it wasn't cheap either, but you know, it certainly did what I needed to do to distribute the video. So I was able to take all those boxes. I had an Apple TV and Roku at that point as well and distribute that around. So I had an 8x8 matrix, and I think we used maybe six zones routinely, and I had six or so sources going into it. So it worked well, and it did what it was supposed to do is distributed the, you know,

1080p high def signal around. But, you know, as the world moved on, as you mentioned, you know, you want things to be a little sexier. You want to have stuff on your phone or you want to have stuff on a tablet. And this was not an IP controllable device. It was an RS-232 controllable device. And frankly, you had to have IR blasters as well. And that just got really kludgy and a little bulky for my taste. So I had a couple of the receivers that went down, although I had a few extras as, you know, as you can imagine, I had at least two extra. But I'm like, well, I think it's starting to go. So I may as well start thinking about what I should do next.

And you guys, so I owe a lot of it, frankly, to you guys, right? So, you know, the discussion around, hey, we're moving away from a lot of that stuff. And Seth, I think you talked a lot about this relative to kind of, you know, instead of having it in a central location, start thinking about it in a distributed way. So that's why I'm like, yeah, it would be a heck of a lot cheaper to buy Rokus and Apple TVs for every TV, frankly. And we're pretty close to that. I think given the, I still have Xfinity, so I'm

more of a Roku guy right now, just because they have an app where Apple does not have an Xfinity app yet. So until that happens, I'll probably stay on the Roku side, although I do still have an Apple TV that we use in the media room. But it's kind of moved me to that point where it's streamlined, it's cleaner, it's certainly more standard these days. And you can use it in terms of wife acceptance factor, kid acceptance factor. It's really, really great. So I haven't looked back. I mean, you know, the product I had before, I thought it was a cool little sidebar for four or five years. But it's time to kind of move on with the world.

So it's been good. Right. I'm kind of almost in the same boat. Like I don't have an 8x8 system. I have a larger, a 6x three system, if that makes any sense. And I have one source that we watch, which is the Apple TV. So it's becoming pretty clear to me that replacing that system, or not really replacing it, but if I ever have any issues, which I haven't yet, I would probably just grab another $150, $200 Apple TV and pop it in.

I didn't know that about the Xfinity app only being on Roku, but I suspect they may come to, what's it called, Apple TV as well one day. Yeah. But I'm not. Yeah, that one I couldn't wait for. And frankly, the, yeah, but I'm not that one. Yeah. That one I couldn't wait for. And frankly, the Roku, I got two of the ultras and two, I think two or three of the streamers. I mean, they're, I mean, the streamers are 50, 40 bucks, 30 bucks or something like that. I mean, they're really, really inexpensive compared to speak. Right. It's,

it's yeah. Compared, compared to an Apple TV. Absolutely. Um yeah, I can see that coming. And I can see that. One thing that I had a question about, when you talk video distribution, typically you need some kind of control. Like you were talking about IR and RS-232. Typically you need some type of control system to sit on top of that because it's it's not an easy system to use standalone so what were you using for that or what are you using yeah so well that was also one of the reasons i think i ditched it because there was not a controller for it it really was little remotes right so you'd use the remote to change the source uh or the destination, which, again, just got a little kludgy for me. But what I'm using now, at least to control, I've kind of gone everything I have virtually 100% now is IP control. And I use a product called Simple Control. And I think you've had Will Price, the CEO, on a previous episode, if I'm not mistaken.

I think you've interviewed him. I can't remember that exactly. But, you know, this is a company that was called Rumi Remote before, actually bought them, I think, as they were moving from Rumi to Simple Control. And there's another one that I think you have a huge love-hate relationship for certainly when you look at their reviews on the apple store um they just recently went through a major um i wouldn't call it an upgrade i mean it's a complete system revamp and i think that's caught a lot of their legacy users off guard yeah no no one likes change even if it's for that change well particularly i mean know, this is where it got me a little frustrated too. I mean, I kind of like to go in and tinker,

but if you've tinkered and you've got everything set up and then, oh, wait a minute, we're going to change everything from out from under you, that can be tough. And I think that does prevent a lot of people from kind of getting not even a toe in the water. So, I mean, it can be exasperating when you think you've got everything set up properly.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know Simple Control and formerly Roomie Remote. I don't, I don't believe we've had them on. I know we've talked about them numerous times before. They've been around for a while. Maybe that was it. Yeah. Just discussing. I know I've heard you guys talk. Seth and I sometimes joke that we're surprised that we've done enough shows now to where sometimes it is actually hard to remember. So I had to go back and check. I don't think we have. But anyways, let's shift gears again here and talk a little bit about audio. I know you mentioned earlier in the conversation that when you built the house, you had it wired for audio. So that leads me to believe you're actually using architectural,

like in-ceiling speakers. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, that was one. So my dad was a professional musician. I actually played all the way through college. So music was a huge deal for me. Um, so we, um, as I mentioned earlier, we did 14 zones. I mean, there's 12 rooms inside, uh, and there's two outside zones. And I think I, with the equipment I have, I can expand it up to 18, although I don't know that I'll do that anytime soon. But in virtually all the bedrooms, all the main living areas, the kitchen, all that kind of stuff, piped in music. So I have all the wiring that dead ends into the AV closet, and I have Sonance in-ceiling. I can't remember the exact model, but Sonance in ceiling speakers in all the rooms, uh, and then out in the patio area, uh, their Sonance Sonoray that I can talk about later on.

But yeah, I mean, the audio piece for me was just such a big deal that I kind of, that was one of the first areas I, I kind of stuck my toe into. Got it. So you're using in ceiling speakers and, and obviously you've got to have some amplifiers to drive that as well as some sort of server to get you your content. Talk about the rest of the architecture. What do you have driving the system? Yeah, so kind of when I was really starting out on the DIY craze, that was one of the things I sort of investigated as well, because I wanted to have something, you know, since I ripped all my own music onto my own server, I wanted to see if there was a way for me to serve that up using that server. And I found a company actually, Jason, I think out in your neck of the woods, I think they're out in Fort Collins, Colorado, if I'm not mistaken, a company called Casa Tunes. They're a

small company. They've been around for quite a long while now, and they started out making PC cards, and that's when I really kind of got involved with them. So I got a card, and that card fed two matrices. So basically, very much like the video matrix we were talking about, it's an audio matrix that's controlled by a really cool little Apple iOS app. I think they've also got, you know, the Android side, but I'm not an Android user. But, you know, so I built the server, obviously had all the music on it, put the card in, and then they also had the, some really nice integrated amps as well. I mean, they're not, you know, they're not going to blow your house down, but there are probably 12 zones each. They have 50 watts a zone, so it's great for ambient music and whole house audio stuff.

So I built that, and again, the company itself has been great. There's a guy out there named Wade Rewards who's this great customer service guy. So I've just kept going back with them. And I think I, in my letter to you guys, I mentioned, you know, it was really before Sonos kind of came out with such a, you know, a huge sort of vengeance to the marketplace. So I kind of got into this before that happened. And I, you know, since I had sunk a fair amount into it, both time and resources, I said, well, I'm just going to kind of stick with it. So I've been extraordinarily happy with it. You know, it really, it's powerful enough for me and with all the zones to be able to have a variety of different sources playing with the kids that I have, you know, they have their own source and their own player and, you know, they

want to play it in their room. They can do that. And I can be listening to something on the patio or whatever. So it's been, it's been really good. I certainly like it quite a bit. That's great. And Kosta Tunes,atoons, are they actively continuing to upgrade and update their product? Yeah. Over the years, as I understand it, they moved away from the card-based systems and kind of built their own servers. And I think they have some little, you know, competitors to the Sonos boxes. I'm not that up on that side of it. But, you know, they're still around,

they're still getting awards so many, but again, a relatively small company. Yeah. Yeah. I know they're, they're kind of a niche company and I've, I think I've met Wade once or twice at, at trade shows and stuff. And I know they're, they're a passionate group and they're, they're really, they, they enjoy what they do and you can tell that about them. I, I haven't met a lot of people who use the product, but that's great to hear that you've had a good experience. So the last thing I want to touch on for sure in the audio side is the Sonaray system, which you mentioned. And talk about that. I think there's, of the professionals in our audience, probably all familiar with what that system is. But for anyone who's not familiar with a Sonaray outdoor system, And there's probably half a dozen different companies that make competitors to it.

They were really the original. But talk about it and tell me what you think of it. I love those systems personally. I don't own one, but I've always been impressed with them. I'll tell you. I mean, I'll start off by saying I think it's been great. I mean, so we've had it in now. This is our second season.

And that one was professionally installed. They helped with some of the wiring to the closet. But, you know, when we were doing some of the outside lighting, that's something you don't want to screw around with. So getting the right cable, bearing everything properly. So it's a system that incorporates a subwoofer and eight satellite speakers. And you've got to put them all. They're like on a little Christmas tree situation where if one goes down, the whole thing goes down. So it's kind of a system package, and you got to put them all on a little Christmas tree situation where if one

goes down, the whole thing goes down. So it's kind of a system package, if you will. But it's tight. It sounds great. You know, I've actually had my brother-in-law over for a little outdoor party, and he decided to crank it up, and I got some complaints from the neighbors. So it's definitely not a mild system. It certainly pumps it out and it disappears. I mean, I think I sent you a couple of pictures of them. The satellites, you know, they're just like little outdoor lights. I mean, that's what they look like. They sort of get buried inside the hedges or whatever. And the mushroom cap subwoofer, you know, it's brown. It sort of, you know, fades off. We have it sort of tucked

in the background. So it's a great system. You know, it's, the sound is great. The installation guys, when they put it in, it certainly didn't tear up the place too badly and can't speak highly enough for that one either. I get to how disappointed i am to hear that um i uh i want to do one of these systems in my house and and if you if you say when you crank it i was thinking that if you crank it like because they are a pretty tight system and they're pretty well balanced like you don't need to crank it to hear the system because it's like a level audio all the way through um i'm just if you get complaints i'm worried about, uh, I'm not worried about me cranking it, but, um, there's other people in the family who, you know, may

worry about us waking up the neighbors or something like that. So I, uh, the one thing, the one thing I did after that, and you know, to your point, I put a limiter inside the controller, so you can't do that anymore. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Well, one of the great, yeah. One of the other great things about those systems that I always used to talk about for clients who were considering it is that a lot of times people do outdoor audio and they may have a single pair or maybe a couple pair of speakers cut, trying to cover a very large area. And so if you're having a party or a barbecue, you, you end up having to really turn the volume up in order for everybody to really hear it. And the beautiful thing about these Sonaray systems and the other ones out there

like it is that you can plan it out and really have the audio very, the speakers be very evenly distributed around the area that you're trying to cover so that you don't have to crank it up and everybody gets that nice level, easy listening listening experience and so i've always been a big fan of those systems yeah totally agree and and as i said before they just kind of disappear visually as well i've actually had people kind of pushing shrubs back to try and find out where the things are so um the sound's great and the visual is good too it's like being at disney you know yeah you're the speaker you hear the dinosaur roaring in the thing over there. It's funny you should say that because my wife calls me Mickey Mouse, too.

With all the technology, right? You're a, what do they call it, engineer? Imagineer. There you go. Imagineer. Well, that wraps up the audio stuff, but you've got a couple notes here about your lighting, too. Do you have any lighting control going throughout that? Yeah, so I've used a combination of Insteon and ISY pretty much since the beginning. And another one that's really just rock solid if you're not trying to do too many things with it,

I do have quite a lot of devices, both, you know, switches, dimmer switches and outlets and the like. And, you know, I've set up virtually, you know, Seth, you, I think we're talking on the episode with the CEO from Josh AI, right, about, you know, scenes and that type of stuff. You know, to me, you called it, I think, magical or you were, I can't remember the exact term you used, but you were delighted by kind of putting scenes together, and that's frankly the thing that kind of got me into it as well, you know, kind of walking around the house after the kids went to bed, and they didn't turn off the lights, you know, so for me, not having to do that same thing day in and day out, you know, find five or ten minutes, and walk around the house, and turn things off. Having a scene that just kind of turned things on, turn things off, did it at dusk,

ramp things up, ramp things down. That's where the delight for me was. And, you know, a little ISY box, I'm sure you guys know that one. It's a tiny little box that sits inside the structured media closet that I have. And, you know, it just works. I mean, the thing's kind of like a little robot. Don't have to do a ton after you've programmed it. And I'm sure I could do a lot more complicated scenes, but, you know, the ones that I've put together are perfectly fine for me. The issue for me is I'm a little worried about instant, right? In terms of what's happening within the long term and um right now everything seems to be fine and and it's working for me but you know again it's always how do you future proof any of these things yes right right and insteon is uh i mean that's a really cool company when i

when i was building or or remodeling i guess uh it seemed like it turned into a build but when i was remodeling my place uh we we had discussions here on on the show about like what lighting control system i was going to go for and like i had already had a number of control four you know pieces in my hands at the time and so it was it was like at some point i was just like i'm just doing the control four stuff um but the insteon i think did just about everything if you know not more and my wife actually liked how it looked better. So it would have been a win-win for me to go if I had a few extra thousand dollars to throw at it.

But it's a really good system. And that ISY piece, I mean, a robot's probably a good name for it. It's not the most, what do you call it, feature, not feature-friendly, but friendly device. Like it's a very, uh, commercial almost, uh, controller. And, uh, it's not approachable, I guess is the word I'm looking for. So, um, but, but it is very, very powerful, uh, what you can do with that plus the Insteon system. Yeah, it's very, it's very powerful. The UI, I think, as you mentioned, it's a little old

school. Um, but kind of once you get through that, you're right. It's, it's a little old school. But kind of once you get through that, you're right. It's a little unapproachable. Once you get through it, then you're kind of going more through rote combinations. So it becomes a little bit easier. But I think you're right. It does have less of a wow factor, sexy wow factor. Right, right. Yeah, it's definitely not a sexy device at all.

Yeah, and going back to what you were talking about the uh the lighting programming that i call that lifestyle programming i don't know if that's an industry term or anything but like that's the programming i would never get being a dealer coming on the site uh getting the system up and going and you know i'm going to try and program a lighting scene for you to use before you go to bed at night, but I have no idea what you're actually going to use. So that if that's what I was talking about, if the Josh AI system learns that programming and does it automatically, that that's going to definitely cause some delight for people. Have you have you looked into like the HomeKit Insteon integration stuff that's out there? Yeah, sadly I have. And, you know, again, with the new owners of Insteon, you know, that's one thing I'm a little concerned about. I mean,

even if you go on their site right now, their HomeKit hub is not available anymore. So, you know, I think one would think then that either they're taking a pause on it or they're trying to do something else. But, you know, I bought the HomeKit hub and it never worked. I mean, they never really put a new firmware patch out for it. And I mean, the reviews on that side were scathing. I mean, I've never seen reviews that were that blisteringly hot. So I kind of, I gave up on it, frankly. So I'm really not using HomeKit, although I would like to. I know there's the HomeBridge piece and that for me, I think is just a little bit too much more than I want to kind of personally go into. I'd like more of a

kind of a commercial approach to it. But, you know, so I'm unfortunately I'm not using that side of it anymore. And I got to say, I am pretty impressed. I mean, not that I wasn't already impressed about HomeKit in general, but it definitely makes it for an easier system for everybody to use in the house really quickly. Because you always have your phone or your watch with you. It's so there and in your face that it's kind of hard to avoid. So maybe there will be some kind of, I don't know. I found a really easy way to do it, and I don't know if there's an easy way with Insteon to integrate with HomeKit or HomeBridge, I guess, where you don't have to worry about.

It would be great if you could integrate with your ISY directly into HomeKit. That would be great. You have a note here about a Ring Elite doorbell. That's the newest piece, the flush mount, like really good-looking, high-quality POE doorbell. What's your experience been with that guy? So I like it in general, and I think, again, it has a big family acceptance factor, obviously, with the app. But I'll tell you, it's an IP-based, it has an if it's not near another Wi-Fi point. But I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that it was going to be lightning fast. Well, it still has to go up to the cloud. So there is a delay. And I kind of laugh a little bit now anytime I see an advertisement

for it where somebody is answering the doorbell instantaneously and having a conversation with somebody on the other end. The latency just does not work. So it's great for monitoring who's come by and who's running the doorbell, but I think we're still way away from really being able to use it instantaneously, if you will. But for the options that are out there, This one certainly at least suited my needs. It fit within the kind of the architecture we have. I had to build a little faceplate for it to cover up where the older doorbell was.

But, you know, it looks great. It works. And obviously I did the, I shouldn't say obviously, but I did the plan to kind of store the video content up on their servers. And that works perfectly. Again, albeit a little bit slow. But in my note to you guys I mentioned,

their server went completely down last October for Halloween. So I found that quite kind of humorous. At the time it wasn't terribly funny because you need kind of a doorbell to pass the trick-or-treaters out their treats. So I was kind of selling the praises of it or singing the praises to my wife. She's like, oh, yeah, Mr. Technology, what happened now? So that was a bit of a bummer. That one got me too because we have that integration with Ring.

We have that with Control 4 and uh with urc now and the uh you know it goes down and i'm you know i instantly think well it must be something it must be my end that's bad so i go start going through my system nope nope so i'm not getting any events from our our servers so i go check i'm like checking our servers to make sure they're not on fire and then like what is going on and then i finally checked Ring. And of course, they're down. So yeah, luckily, that got me like right before the Trigger Jeter's came down the street. And then it all came back up. And the first button press worked. So I was happy.

Yeah, you're lucky. You're lucky. Yeah. All right, cool, Joe. Well, we're running up against our time a little bit here. I did want to make sure that we preserve a minute or two for you to talk about the AV network closet where this all lives, because even though that doesn't sound like a particularly exciting topic, you did something, I think, really neat. And we'll include probably a photo of this in the show notes. But talk about

that project very quickly and what you did to kind of give that room its own, its own touch. So, um, and I think you guys had some pictures of this on a previous, uh, maybe one of your guests, which picture this was, but, you know, kind of the before and after closet remodel. Well, mine was definitely the before, you know, there was wires coming out everywhere in the, the installer, I mean, did his job, but it wasn't the neatest. And I said, as I'm going to kind of rebuild this thing, I may as well go all the way back to the studs. So, you know, I took everything out, rebuilt the structured media closets that were in there. And when I had the drywall virtually all the way down, I found that there was an I-beam, a steel I-beam up at the ceiling. And I'm like, well, how can I creatively address this? So I cut the drywall probably about three feet up. So the remainder from the three feet mark all the way up to the ceiling was exposed. And I built a little

light diffuser. So I used that little channel, if you can imagine, in the I-beam as the area that I put the LEDs, and then I put a little diffuser panel over the top of that, and then I built some cloth doors, basically one-by-twos effectively or three-quarter-by-two wood, and then covered them with acoustical fabric and just sort of made a nice, clean kind of custom look to hide all the other components that weren't in the rack. So it was one of these things where, hey, you got to make lemonade out of lemons, I guess,

and tried to do as best I could and learned how to glue fabric onto wood and put the hinges in and paint and put the diffusers in. It's kind of a nice way to at least customize it a little bit. Yeah. No, I love it. I think it's awesome. And the rack room can be a tough one to deal with, right? way to at least customize it a little bit. Yeah, no, I love it. I think it's, it's awesome. And, and those, the rack room can be a tough one to deal with, right? You, you go, you go to a lot of lengths in your home in general, people do to make things look good. And then you get down to the, to the, uh, to the network closet. And oftentimes it just, you know, looks like, uh, like could look like a bomb went off in there. So, um, yeah, hats off. I really enjoyed the pictures you sent over that. And like I said, we'll, we'll try to share one or two of those in the show notes. Once again,

hometech.fm slash 217. If you're interested in taking a look at any of those, Joe, this has been a great conversation. I know I've really enjoyed it. If anybody is listening to the episode right now and perhaps want to do a connect with you for any reason, maybe ask a follow-up question, what would be the best way for them to do that? Absolutely. I'd love to hear. The email they can send it to is yidiy at comcast.net. So it'd be w-h-y, letter i, letter d-i-y at comcast.net. Very cool. Love the email address. There you go. All right, Joe. Well, thanks again. Love the email address. There you go. All right, Joe. Well, thanks again.

We really appreciate it. And keep us posted on your future upgrades. Will do. Appreciate it, guys. All right. Take care. Thank you, Joe. All right.

Well, that does it for our interview with Joe Albion. And Seth, I really enjoyed it. I thought there were some interesting aspects of this in the sense that what Joe has is really, I would almost describe as a mix between right's hired professional help for certain components of the system. But a lot of it he's also done himself. And you can tell he's really dug in and done his research. And it's something he's clearly passionate about and done his homework on and continues to learn and adapt and evolve his system. And I thought to me, that was the biggest takeaway of the conversation with Joe is, you's, there's that place for getting professional help, but still wanting to be involved and roll your sleeves up and have fun and enjoy working with the smart home. And a lot of times we tend to think of those things as sort of binary, right?

Like you either hire a pro or you go the DIY route. And I really found Joe's approach to his system to be really cool. It sounds like he's having, having a great time with it and having a lot of success. Yep. A really good looking system too. Like, yeah, we'll put some pictures in the show notes that, that, that rack system is, uh, one of the most impressive ones I've seen. Like I I'm not taking a picture of my, my rack area. Like I've cleaned it up and then I install stuff on top of it. And then it's like, I'm not cleaning this up again. Like it's a mess. It's hard. Yeah. Especially when you're continuing to change and the system's evolving, you know, it's, it's very easy to, I shouldn't say very, it's relatively easy to set up a rack that looks super clean and the wiring is nice and tight and everything's labeled to do that once is

relatively easy. It's as the system continues to grow and evolve over time, how do you keep it clean? And, and he's set up with that, with that, um, custom thing he did there with the cloth panels that hide some of the other components that don't go in the rack. He's given himself a very flexible way to manage that wiring and manage those sorts of devices that can tend to get out of hand a little bit and do it in a very clean way. So I thought that was really cool. One thing that Joe mentioned to us, Seth,

after we stopped recording and he wanted us to give a quick shout out on air, he is in the Chicago area and looking for a good integrator to work with. It sounds like the main thing he's really looking to do now, at this point in time, is to move forward with some security cameras.

And I think he mentioned even some security as well. So if you are listening and you are in the Chicago area, or you know of a good integrator in the Chicago area that Joe may want to work with, feel free to reach out to him. He left his email in the interview there. Or you can, of course, send us a note anytime, feedback at hometech.fm. Again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Yep. All the links and topics we discussed tonight will be found in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 217. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room

live Wednesday starting at 7, 730, somewhere around there, Eastern. You can find out more going to hometech.fm slash live. And that will only work if I flip the switch to make it live. That usually helps. You got to turn it on. Yep. Turn it on, Seth. Hey, Jason, we've got a really good pick of the week this week.

Pick of the week. Pick of the week. And I have not looked at this one yet. And we'll see how I do here. I've got a bit of a cough, as I mentioned. And sometimes when I laugh, it triggers it. And it sounds like we got a good one here, Seth. I think you're going to be triggered, Jason. All right. This comes in two parts. There is a caption that goes along with the tweet that I saw, and then there's the picture. When you click on it, you need to expand the picture to see what's going on.

But I'll read the caption while you load that up. All right. Here we go. And the caption reads, just doing some router maintenance. Be right back. And, Jason, this is another rack that's really impressive to see. All right. Let's see.

It's expanding out the... Oh, that's hilarious. That's great. They've got a little beer fridge stashed in the back of the rack there. Is that what I'm... No, it looks like to me they cut off the front parts of rack mount equipment and mounted it to the front of the rack there is that what i'm no it it looks like to me they cut off the front parts of equipment rack mount equipment and mounted it to the front of a mini fridge uh and they've got a little beer stash in there so it looks like a rack it's like camoed yeah

it's a camouflage beer a beer fridge yeah that is great beautiful i love it you know and if you're looking for a good place to stash beer where like certain people aren't going to look ever behind a rack of scary looking network and av components is probably a good place yeah yeah exactly i mean they could they could take this a little further and have little blinky lights on it i mean because you know we used to do that in our showroom we'd have old equipment shoved in our rack just so it have blinking lights on it um and that's right i think they could go a little further, because this definitely looks like it's just the network ports and that kind of thing. At first glance, you might not notice what's going on,

but it doesn't look active and operating, other than having the random cables plugged into it that just probably go nowhere. That's great. Pretty good camo. Love it. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one.

Nice work as always, Seth, on the pick of the week. And let's see. We've got nothing in the mailbag this week. We do want to encourage anybody who is listening to reach out. We love hearing from supporters and listeners to the show. Feedback at hometech.fm is the email address. Again, feedback at hometech.fm is the email address. Again, feedback at hometech.fm. Or if it's easier, you can head over to our website at hometech.fm slash feedback. And there's a form

there that you can fill out if you've got any general feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for show topics, any and all of the above. We would love to hear from you. Absolutely. We also want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show each month, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shout out here on air, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack channel, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every single day

and discuss inside baseball conversation. You know, The Hub came up in the interview tonight. It's a good resource. You can kind of see what's going on and get some pretty good opinions from them. There are strong opinions in The Hub. Oh, yes, there are. And you get to participate in some spirited conversations every now and again i was gonna say that absolutely it's a lot of fun so i'll echo what you said there

seth and just send a big thank you to everybody who supports the show we we really appreciate it that'll do it for this week's episode had a great time sitting down with you seth now i am gonna go i think make a hot cup of tea and and back in bed. All right. Sounds good. Well, thanks everybody for listening. And Jason, I will talk to you next week. All right. Sounds good. Take care, Seth.