HomeTech.fm - Episode 239 - Projects Project with Cody Crossland

Episode Date: January 4, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Seth and guest co-host Cody Crossland chat about the week’s sparse headlines and chat about the technology in Cody’s new home. Cody also needs help figuring out where to install a TV in his Family Room. Submit your ideas through our feedback form or by emailing feedback at hometech.fm. There’s a picture at the bottom of the show notes.

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, January 4th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. And from Dallas, Texas, I'm Cody Crossland. Hey, hey, Cody, what's going on? Nothing much, Seth. Thanks for having me on. No problem. Jason is out this week. I can only assume we record here. This is the second, so I can only assume it's just a massive hangover that he had. Again.

From the first. So, Happy New Year, Jason. Happy New Year, Jason. Cheers. Yeah, so I have Cody on, who's only, you know, the only reason he's walking is because he's been what? What is that called where you bite the hair of the dog where you have to keep drinking to stay not drunk? It's actually from Archer. And the key to not having a hangover is to just keep drinking because if you stop, the cumulative hangover will literally kill you. So it's good. Good.

We're still drinking. You, my friend, have some tequila, which I don't. Every time I've met you and met up with you, you're drinking tequila, which is fascinating. It's a Texas thing. I suppose. I suppose. Most people I know that have drank tequila usually, you know, the nights do not end for them so well. This particular episode is brought to you by codigo well and i i decided to partake

in my my my beverage of choice which is a nice cold glass of gin that we have here so uh this this happens to be kirkland's brand signature brand which is which is costco yes but but it's still a uh it's still a good it's it's on level of like beef eater or something like that it's it's, and I know I'm saying this and you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Listerine, I can taste it. But, you know, it's no Bombay. It's no Bombay. We'll just, it's no Sapphire. We'll leave it at that. The secret is the value because I think at Costco you can get it in a five-gallon jug.

Well, and that's what I've done. Yeah, I mean, for $20 you get the five-gallon jug and you're done. And it's halfway decent tasting done. Yeah, I mean, for $20, you get the five-gallon jug, and you're done. And it's halfway decent tasting gin. So thanks to Costco. Thanks to Mexico for the agave plant and the tequila. So what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Yeah, let's do it. Smart speakers maker Sonos seems to be readying a satellite speaker to bring true surround sound as well as voice control

to its Playbar soundbar if an FCC filing is any indication. The heavily redacted filing, which was published this Monday, describes a new Sonos device with the model number S18 that has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. A list of equipment used in the testing of the device includes a mention of the company's existing play bar as a, quote, master device and describes the S18 as a, quote, wireless smart speaker, leading some to believe the Sos One, which includes the symbol of the built-in microphone on there too. So I'm not so sure. The S18 sounds like it could just be like any other Sonos speaker you can include in a surround sound system. This is pretty interesting. I wonder how they'll price this in comparison to the Play One, because previously with the Play Bar, and I've done this in the past, is you can use a Play 1 as surround speakers in a surround sound setup. So I'm kind of curious

if there will be any price advantage to using the S18 if it's a dedicated surround speaker. Yeah, I mean, I think you can use just about any. You can use the Play 3, you can use the Play 5 as surround sound speakers as well like it's it's been every it's been part of every sonos setup that i've ever ever known you can even use the amps like the old old and new amps you just have to oh that's right you have to run a hard wire between the play bar itself or the the the sound bar itself and the amp and then there's some special menu option you have to go change but uh if that's the case, I don't really know that it's a big deal. But like you said, the pricing is very interesting.

The Play 1 is $199 these days. Is this like a low-cost Bluetooth speaker that you can just kind of quickly add in? The Bluetooth thing actually stood out to me because that's what Sonos gets dinged on. I don't think theyos gets dinged on. I don't think it's any – they should get dinged on it because, like, the Wi-Fi network that they set up and manage is very – it's better than the Bluetooth using a Bluetooth speaker. But if this can get, like, Bluetooth audio into the Sonos system and be, like, a little dedicated speaker you may be able to bring out by the pool or something like that and just sit out there while you're chilling on the deck for, what, $99? Half the price? $149? I think that's a home run. The model number is not, though. S18.

I have to agree. Yeah, that's horrible. Both August and Ring look poised to release new products this year. After August previously filed for a trademark rights to the word view last year, so the August view, Dave Zatz actually discovered an image for the upcoming smart doorbell today. As far as Amazon's Ring smart home products,

it looks like we'll see a dedicated lineup of security lights arriving soon. Again, all this was reported by Dave Zatz through The Verge, and details about the ring beams, which are the ring spotlights, have been leaked through an FCC filing. So Dave Zatz is kind of like the guy for this week. No news has happened other than what Dave has been able to dig up and discover. Crazy, crazy.

This guy, I don't know how he does it. He's been busy. Yeah, yeah. It just comes to him, I think. guy i don't know how he does it he's been busy yeah yeah it just comes to him i think but i i don't know he he's so he's so quiet for a while and then like the last couple days ces is right around the corner so i i assume i hope we'll see something with these at like the the august doorbell the august view i guess it's a doorbell with a camera and and and the ring beams uh maybe maybe at ces maybe further out who knows uh

but i hope that we see some something with these at ces this year yeah the ring beams is kind of interesting because it's a separation of what they've done previously which has mostly been cameras with lights and the ring beams is actually just lights that you can do on its own right from what i'm reading and then if you have an existing like a wired spotlight just lights that you can do on its own right from what i'm reading and then if you have an existing like a wired spotlight cam or something that you want some additional light coverage on you can actually pair the devices together to get like a super light with your camera yeah and i will say the the august doorbell um looks pretty good looks pretty good like you don't you don't see that very often with doorbells that sit at people's homes like i think they did a pretty good job putting this

one together it looks very close to the ring pro i think um yeah as far as size yeah size and looks really i mean it it kind of has that same rectangular shape to it um the ring beams uh also not a not a not a model number name that I'm a fan of. I could have gone with something else. And model numbers are hard. Yeah, yeah. If anything of this episode, that's what we learned. Model numbers are very hard.

So switching gears here and talking a little bit about streaming. Early in the morning, Friday, December 28th, the week of the Christmas there, Netflix slipped its viewers a late christmas present an episode of charlie brooker's technological dystopia anthology series black mirror in the form of an interactive movie called bandersnatch in bandersnatch the protagonist stefan is trying to create his own interactive video game which happens to also be called Bandersnatch. And as you navigate through the time plot, your decisions shape how he responds to family trauma, his own mental image, mental illness, and mental image, I suppose,

potential conspiracies, and the gaming design process that quickly goes off the rails. Will Stefan do assets. Will he murder his father with an ashtray? Will he listen to now? That's what I call music compilation, or will he pick a Thompson twins? Cause that it's up to you.

Cool idea. It's like a choose your own adventure book in a movie form. I don't know. I don't, I don't, I have not seen this. Have you, have you seen this?

I have not seen it either, but it is on my queue now that I've just finished up the final season of House of Cards. So I'm looking for something new, and it looks like I'll be putting this on the top of the queue just to kind of check it out. I don't know. I was a fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid. Though, you know, being in a book, you could always, like, pick one and then flip to that page and if you didn't like it go back and choose the other page you'd have like your fingers in the book like exactly pages yeah so you wanted to make sure that you ended up not dying at the end um but i don't know if i'll if i'll bother doing that or i don't know what do you think do you think you'll watch it straight through or do you think you'll pick your own adventure? So I think I'm lazy and I know myself. I'm lazy and I

don't like I mean, I may do one choice as like just just like play with it or something. But I don't know. I would rather the writers think for me, I guess, rather than me have to think about because you're not a writer, right? You're just assuming they're better at their job than you are at their job. Yeah, they know how this should go. I don't know. It seems kind of fun. And I'm kind of with you on the like choose your own adventure cheat. There's a story that The Verge has that has like a link to Reddit.

Reddit has gone in and basically started this huge thread, which has like a flow chart, basically, of every decision that you can make and what those decisions lead to in the, in the matrix and that decision tree. So, um, yeah, I, I may pull that up to kind of like take that look and see where the plot line could go off the rails if I don't do anything, but I probably, I'll probably watch it through and not do anything. And if it's a good movie, then I might watch it again and play around with those interactive features. But one thing that people noticed when this came out is that it doesn't work on the Apple TV. So there was a lot of complaints about that, that you could use a Roku or you could use some other app, I guess, on Netflix.

But you couldn't use a Chromecast and you couldn't use an apple tv and we'll put a actually i saw a life hacker story so we'll put a link to that in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 239 uh how to watch black mirror bandersnatch on an apple tv or chromecast and uh that way you can get the um i don't know why the netflix released this and didn't update have their apps updated and ready to go. But man, it seems like a big mess if you're missing out on Apple TV and Chromecast. For me, this eliminates any potential of watching it on the big screen then because Apple TV happens to be my streaming box at the moment. So basically this just means that it's going to be something that I watch while dealing with insomnia in bed on the iPad. Because I'm presuming it's like the skip intro button, which is like the best thing that they've introduced in a long time.

So you'll actually be able to just touch whatever your choice is. Well, there's two little buttons that pop up at the bottom of the screen. It's like take the pills or don't take the pills kind of thing. You have those two choices and big giant buttons at the bottom. So hopefully Netflix will have that updated. I was trying to see. There's a nice little, you know, unfortunately we didn't get this. It's only compatible with newer smart TVs, most streaming media players,

game consoles, and web browsers. iOS and Android devices running the latest Netflix app. So sorry, Apple TV is launching a new Apple TV service next year, and we just didn't get to update that particular device for the new cool thing that we're doing. I wonder if this has anything to do with that whole process where they're ending the in-app subscriptions. Did you hear about that?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot going on with Netflix these days. And with Apple bringing, you know, Apple's bringing media on board. Disney's bringing a new media streaming thing on board. Next year is going to be crazy. And I think Netflix is just kind of like, okay, time to put some walls and start playing just as nice as we have to. Not as nice as we need to, but just as nice as we have to with these guys. we need to but just as nice as we have to um with these guys and um you know is it smart i don't know netflix seems to be the big dog

and uh they're the ones to kind of take down so um we'll have to see what what apple can do it it's good for netflix though like they get to keep their money they get to keep 30 they don't have to pay a competitor 30 well i think i think they were paying netflix less right netflix was getting like 15 or something but yeah it's uh it's pretty wild i mean streaming does have the convenience factor but at the end of the day you know if it's a holiday and you're trying to watch die hard because it's christmas and you can't find it available on the streaming service that you happen to be subscribed to at the end of the day being able to walk over and pick up a disc that wins right right yep no that's that's that's it i i well i ripped die hard so i'm good i'm a good deal

sorry fbi guy well i mean no it's it's uh it's my disc i do what i want with it he can he can come over and watch it if he wants but hey i was just explaining i was explaining that um plex to some family members yesterday, actually. And it's like, no, no, it's, it's, it's my disc. Like I, we have all the discs there. You can see the box right over there in my garage here. It's like, um, I'm, I'm not gonna, we're, we're just, we're out of room, right? They'll call us, they'll call that a lease.

You're actually leasing the IP on disk. You don't actually own it. I can say, like, when I was younger, it was a lot easier for me to go to a website or spend all the arduous amount of time that it takes to go to a website and find, you know, off the back of the bus or off the back of the truck type, you know, oh, this is just kind of fell. Let me pick this up and walk away. It was a lot easier for me to do that when I had no money and questionable morals, I guess, at that point. All the time. It was easier for me to hit the button there, download. And I felt no pain about that. But now it's like, okay, I want to support these creators. I like their movies. I'll pay for the movie if I like it.

And I've actually always paid for movies because I would rack up more fines at Blockbuster than the movie was actually worth most of the time. It's because you forgot to rewind. I forgot to return it and rewind, whatever. It didn't matter. I'd turn over a pillow in my room and find movies that were due

last month and be like, this is going to be a painful visit to Blockbuster. Thank God for the Dropbox up front because you didn't have to have that humiliation when you went in. They had the night drop. You just dropped it right in there. Yeah. Swing by Wendy's, get some junk food and stuff your face on the way home and somehow maintain a weight below 175. I don't know how I did it. I really don't know how I did it. But here we are. Here

we're old. And the reason I had you on the show is that we have houses and we're old now and we own homes. And you, you just recently purchased a house. I did for the second time. So this is number two. This is house number two. Now, the reason I know this is because, you know, I guess we could do a disclosure here. Like, you and I work together. We're part of the team at Blackwire. That's true.

And you're on the sales side. I'm on the programming side. And we chat, what, daily, hourly, something like that? Minutely, if you ask my wife. Minutely, yeah. You're right. Yeah. So we know what's going on. And there was a point in time in your life where we were just getting pictures.

Like the communication almost stopped. We were just getting pictures. We're like, oh, man. Oh, man. Look at this guy has so much work to do. So you were sending pictures of homes you were looking at. And then all of a sudden you found this house that you guys liked and you purchased it and like it was you know the whole process so um that was that was a that was a project in and of itself but we want to talk about what you plan on doing in in the house now that you have it and what uh

what what you'd like to do because i know you haven't finished like i i'm looking at the screen right now and i can see the ladder and the drop cloth and the, and the shot back, the shot back players. Yeah. So, um, you and the paint, the paint, the paint looks great by the way. Thank you. The paint looks awesome. Um, I know you want to do things in this house, uh, like speakers, sound, audio TVs. Um, once an AV guy, always an av guy yeah yeah but i know this from my my second home here like um the priorities of of getting a house uh like up and going av is kind of kind of even for us is kind of low but it really is we know that we're gonna have we want to have it so we're always like contemplating and planning and And I just want to kind of pick your

brain. It's like what that planning process looks like for you right now and what you hope to do. And then maybe, maybe in like 10 years, we can have you back on and you can tell us, you know, what you ended up doing. Maybe I'll be halfway finished with my project by then. Right. Maybe, maybe the rooms will have an extra, you know, a couple of coats of coats of paint. I'm definitely going to have the trim painted by then. Right, right. So where do we start? I mean, just kind of give us an overview of kind of like what you found in the home, what was there existing, and where your mind was like what you wanted when you were looking for the house. Because I know you had a couple of requirements of rooms and that kind of thing that you were looking for. Yeah.

So this is actually a pretty nice upgrade from our other home that we were living in. I guess you could say it was our starter home, so to speak. We'd lived there for about 13 years and, uh, it was pretty good. Uh, you know, there's just the three of us most of the time. Um, but we didn't really have any room to host any holidays or anything like that. And as our son got older, and you know, started having friends over and things like that, we realized that we needed a little bit more room. So we decided to upgrade from 1400 square feet to about 3400 square feet. And in the process, I got very lucky to find something that was relatively affordable in this crazy hot DFW real estate. And it allowed a couple of

new things that I didn't have previously that were pretty good on my list, not necessarily my wife's list. She had her own list of things that you know she wanted but for me it was an actual home office no offense Seth none taken none taken yours is a nice 20 by 20 I think is that what you've got I've got all the space in the world and if I pull the car out yeah you're always gonna say you're sharing it with what what is either a really nice Miata or a BMW. That's a Z3. So, yeah, 96 Z3. And, yeah, it was our little play car that we bought before our daughter. And now it was supposed to just sit in the garage here and do nothing.

But now it's kind of turned into like the quick errand car if you don't have the car. You know, you don't need the car seat. That's right. We have that. Try and pretend about life before you had a kid. yeah you know it's here we can come out look at it and sigh you can't fit a car seat or a kid in it so what are you gonna do so right no we ended up uh we ended up actually getting a media room space for a media room upstairs which i was really excited about because i've never actually had space for that and um i love doing a projection

setup, you know, for my customers over the years and things like that. Uh, you know, being able to bring that movie experience home is, is really cool. And as kids, my wife and I both, um, enjoyed spending movie night, like once a week, like you said, going to blockbuster on Friday night, rummaging through, you know, seeing what new releases were available and then going home and popping some popcorn and watching a movie. So, um, we're looking forward to those, that particular aspect of it, but the house that we bought being built in 2004 was kind of, you know, before this big smart home kind of convergence thing happened. I mean, my home is actually about the same age as control four is as a company, so to speak. So, um, the house itself didn't have any, uh, pre-wiring for speakers. It didn't have any pre-wiring for touchscreens or really anything beyond like a phone jack in the, in the kitchen.

But did you have structured wiring did you at least have that oh oh god oh no nothing at all so um there were a couple cable outlets you know like i guess they had like a cable or satellite box in in every room so at least there's that um but yeah there's really nothing as far as structured wiring so really kind of a blank canvas from that standpoint but it was kind of interesting because we were able to um we had to sell our house first um and that's just kind of how the timing played out we sold our house and then moved in with our in-laws and um that's fun when we when we close yeah it was fun for the for the time that we were there it was great it could have been worse it was pretty great. And so we're living with them and we're closing on this house and we're thinking, OK, so we don't have anything immediately that we need to, you know, do some flooring, do some things like that. And I'm thinking, yeah, I'll, I'll get in and I'll start doing some retrofit of, you know, TV locations and speakers and wifi access points and things like that. You know,

like I, I do on all the other projects historically. And, you know, you start doing some of those things, but, you know, we also had some other things that we wanted to do, like kitchen and bath, you know, paint and remodel and things like that. So immediately I put in the ring doorbell, which is like the first thing. So you can kind of keep an eye on deliveries and, you know, any subcontractors kind of coming in and out of the house if you're not there. And, you know, so I did that and the internet was installed. And then you get, you find that you get busy with all these other things that are going on and like painting replacing flooring making decisions for kitchen yeah you end up

doing none of the other stuff that you thought that you would be able to do and uh it's just kind of interesting because let's see we closed at the end end of August and here it is in January. And I just now got around to installing the ceiling speakers that I've had new in box for months, some true audios in the ceiling of my office. And so I was so excited about that, you know, that I'm finally getting around to do that. And I saw I was in the middle of painting. I stopped painting, you know, went over and hooked them up to the amp and, you know, just so I could get some music going. And so out of all this time and all this remodeling and everything, that's really been the only thing I've been able to hook up. But you know how the adage is, right? You're, as an integrator or as anybody in the industry, you know, you're, you're selling, you're designing, you're supporting other projects. And then by the time you get home, it seems like that's

the last thing that you want to do is some more work on your own stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. The cobbler's sons have no shoes and that kind of, that kind of situation. So, but I do have some plans, you know, I have, um, you know, I want to do distributed audio and I've been trying to think of, um, some cool ways to, you know, obviously I want to try and retrofit some speakers in the kitchen because the kitchen is a big hangout area when you've got friends and family over, you know, for just getting together because you threw some steaks on the grill or for the holidays. And so, you know, we've been looking at, you know, how we want to do different speakers and the media room is going to be a whole other project. You know, I'm going to spend the most time and anxiety on that, I think, because I've never had one before and I want to do it right. But then, you know, I think you're kind of paralyzed by choice because there's so many different like is my screen too big? Is it too small? Am I too close? Am I too far? Do I spend the money for the 4K or do I go with the 1080p and just wait for the 4K prices to fall?

So there's a bunch of choices that it's easy, I think, to present those as a former integrator to your clients. And the clients make the decision. You're like, okay, well, based on your budget or based on your needs, this is what you chose. But now I'm making both the recommendation and the decision on what to pick. And it's kind of like I need somebody else to pick it for me. You need to get hooked up with those guys over at Rava, right? R-A-Y-V-A. I do.

Yeah. Yeah. We need to get Theo Kalomarekis in here and get him to like tell you just, Cody, get this, this, and this. That's what you're going to need. And you'll be good to go. I think. Yeah.

It'll be a lot easier. It might be a little bit more painful on the budget, but it, this, and this. That's what you're going to need. And you'll be good to go. I think that's how you do it. Yeah, it'll be a lot easier. It might be a little bit more painful on the budget, but it'll be a lot easier. It'll be a lot more painful on the budget. But you're going to get the performance you're looking for without the anxiety. That's true. I think that's – it's a tradeoff, right? That's true. It's that triangle.

Fast – what is it? Fast, cheap, and done right or something like that. Yeah, fast, cheap, and done right or something like that? Yeah, fast, cheap, and good. Yeah, yeah. So the project manager triangle also relates to sales in the CI world. And it's kind of interesting, too. There was a bit of a debate internally for me for a while as far as whether or not I was going to put an actual control system in the house. You know, I've been a control floor dealer for 10 years and I knew the product in and out and installed it many, many times. And it was something that my wife was familiar with and it was kind of a known

quantity. But, you know, I was thinking to myself that, you know, at the end of the day, is this something that, you know, I want to do again in my own home? And, you know, or do I want to do something else? And so, you know, evaluated some of those options. And really kind of the only DIY thing for me that kind of stood out is something that would work comparable to our needs was the Logitech Harmony Pro, you know, or the Harmony Elite, I guess is what you call it, because you do get some nice integrations and it's pretty straightforward and you don't have to be, you know, an authorized integrator, you know, to do that. But at the end of the day, when we sat down and looked at the long-term plan of what we wanted to do with the lighting control, with the distributed music, you know uh tvs and more than one room

uh security integration and things like that you know when you look at the whole overall picture um it became clear that we needed something uh that a system like the logitech harmony which i think is is great for one room systems or for a system like at my dad's house um you know because he, cause he's not, he's not doing all that. He just wants to be able to easily turn the TV on, you know, where me, you know, I'm, I've got, you know, the ring, I've got the Roggio, I've got the ecobee thermostats, I've got, um, you know, distributed audio and, you know, some lighting control and things like that. So it really becomes, um, more out of the wheelhouse of something like a uh logitech

harmony could do and they've made big strides but i don't think that they're quite at the level of something like a control four has and simultaneously you're seeing players like control four and crestron with the ping uh you know kind of come down market in a way you know where they're somewhat yeah somewhat you know with ping and with control for with the ca1 you know, kind of come down market in a way, you know, where they're somewhat, you know, with paying and with control for with the CA one, you know, you're seeing some of the prices kind of come down and they're like, oh, we can do the single room scenario type things too. So it's been kind of an interesting convergence in that kind of middle market, I guess you could say. But yeah, I think for me, I think long term, you know, it's going to be some some kind of a professional system to that regard versus some of the DIY systems. But, you know, there are a lot of features that the DIY system have, you know, that that the serious professional install systems will not need to take a look at, you know? Right. These are some of the same issues I was going through four years ago. Is it four? God, four years ago, maybe, maybe longer when,

when we bought our second house and it was like, what do we want to install for the lighting control? And I had like three really good options in my, my preferences were like, okay, one, it has to look halfway decent and i have to be able to buy it uh two it has to integrate you know uh um three it has to handle like keypad a keep i have to have a combo keypad dimmer like the dimmer has to be able to be a keypad and dimmer at the same time and uh and in four that really alleviates my three-way issue so i took all the three ways out of my house um and and then

and then four and most importantly is that you know my wife had to sign off on the way it looked and what she wanted to go into the house uh because you know it's when i when i i basically lined up like insteon lutron and control four and she had some some various opinions on it and uh i think insteon would have won but i mean she she ended up liking the control for a little bit better um just for the looks and i and and for for me it was just like well i also have like a couple of control for dimmers and yeah and already have like the control for processor and the remote that's what helped swing some of my decision making process as well you know it was like okay i took all the stuff from my other house, and I had control for there too. I said, I've got a perfectly good EA5.

I've got some lighting because the people that were buying our other house were not going to be interested in that stuff to the value that I was. So I took it all with me. So I was like, well, you know, I can reinvest in something totally different or, you know, I can kind of go with what I've got for now and just kind of keep an eye on these other things. Cause like you, you know, lighting was a thing that was important for me too, for a number of different features, you know, so I was looking at, you know, uh, the Lutron, both the Cassetta and the, like, RAW 2 Select, as well as the Vantage Controls lighting system. Wait, are they still around?

Yeah, Vantage is still around. Oh. And they're owned by Legrand, so they're still kind of doing some big stuff. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah. I did. Well, I'm thinking one that's not Vantage that went away like overnight, probably

a decade ago. Are you talking about the one that Savant bought? Yes. That's the one I'm thinking of, actually. So, yeah. Yeah. OK. So I think it was Light Touch, maybe.

Light Touch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one I'm thinking of. And then said, OK, well, we don't need this anymore. Right. Right.

That was a very I mean that was a uh i still come across those those those types of systems here and in some of the bigger homes and it's like that's a time bomb and and when it goes like it's going to be a uh full lutron upgrade for a lucky lutron qqs dealer in town because they're gonna have a good time just retrofitting this out and putting new stuff in um that that's that's painful and yeah i i i totally get you on that so um looking so you talked a little bit early about the the speakers that you had and from what i remember you have like a two-story house right so it's so it's not easy to retrofit speaker wiring in a two i mean at least what i know and how we build homes here. I don't know how you guys do it in Texas, but definitely not easy, especially if the joists are not run in your favor.

So I started with the easiest room that I could get to, which was my office, because even though it's on the first floor, there's attic space above it that you can actually get to. So that was real straightforward. Uh, the thing that I'm not looking forward to is retrofitting speakers in the kitchen, which you said is the most important room of the house. I know. And so, uh, therein lies my, my great challenge. So, um, we actually had a good friend of mine who was a, uh, electrician come in and, uh, retrofit some lights or at least not some lights, but the, uh, the Romex for adding upper and under cabinet lights. So what they had to do was just cut the sheet rock, you know, and then I have a really great, um, sheet rock guy who comes back and can do the patch and the paint and the texture and

everything, make it look like nothing happened. So I think that that's going to be the scenario for the kitchen is that, you know, I'll have to, you know, just figure out the kind of least invasive path, so to speak, through the kitchen and to some place that has accessible attic space. And, you know, just, you know, cut the sheetrock accessible attic space and you know just you know cut the sheetrock in a strip you know you see those guys who do it and for whatever reason they'll just they'll cut like 49 holes yeah so here's the here's the trick guys if you're listening and you don't know the trick and your installers on their trick tell them this drywallers get paid by the hole so so just cut the hole that you need and the sheetrock costs

nothing it's the labor to patch all those tiny little holes so yeah that that's the that's the secret that no one wants you to know for some reason i learned that the hard way because i thought oh well i'll only cut a little hole here and a little hole here and a little hole here and then he told me he was like no don't do that it's just easier just to cut a little hole here and a little hole here. And then he told me, he was like, no, don't do that. It's just easier just to cut a big hole and I can cut one piece of sheet rock out and screw it in place and then texture that and blend it and everything. And, you know, it's just way easier. So I'm just thinking I'm going to cut, you know, like a two foot by 10 foot hole in my kitchen ceiling. You know, I'll just have to wait until my wife is out of town or something like that because she'll probably freak.

Holidays were not a good time for this. Yeah. So, yeah, right. Christmas Eve, right before everybody shows up the next day. Right. You're over there with a jab saw on your ceiling. Hey, don't worry. Everything's going to be fine.

So, yeah, just cut a big section you know drill what you need to drill fish your wires through you know put it back in place and then uh see how well you can you can bribe the guy to come over and do the patch paint and texture and get all that taken care of in a timely fashion and then um the secret is to make sure that you have the exact same paint color. Because we tried to match the existing color in the kitchen to cover up some really poor accent color choices. And we're a few shades off. So as long as you don't look at the ceiling, it's not a huge problem. But if you actually look at the ceiling, there's something quite not right about a few places in the ceiling.

You're like, oh, you've just been drinking. So, yeah, you're going to be painting a ceiling is what you're telling me. Exactly. When all is said and done, you're going to be painting a ceiling. That's what you'll have to do. So, okay. So I've got one here is one of our project questions. What were some of your greatest challenges?

That definitely sounds like one of your greatest challenges. I know of another great challenge that you have, and we're going to have to do some outsourcing to the home tech community here. Put it out to the hive mind. Whatever they, whatever they tell you to do, you're going to have to do. All right. So Cody is in the situation where he has a,

this important room in his house. It's a kitchen. And you've got the kitchen, and it's got a bar kind of area that looks out into the family room, right? The room that you would want to watch a TV in. Yeah, it's not really an open concept, so to speak, because there is kind of a wall, but we'll post pictures of it.

And you can, from the kitchen, see into the living room. Right. And the question is, where do you put the TV? Now, ideally, you'd put it over in this corner. You have this wall that's like a, what? Is it a 45-degree angle that has this wall on? So from the kitchen sink where you can see into the living room,

the TV wall is on a 90-degree to where you're at in the kitchen. So you can't actually see the TV from the kitchen if you were to do that. Like you'd be standing in the kitchen and you'd look out and you wouldn't be able to see the TV. I mean, depending on the size, right? So, I mean, if you went big enough, you could probably stand at a certain angle and see it. Right, right. The best location was at that corner that you have there. But unfortunately, there's a fireplace in that corner, right? Oh, which brings me back to one of my pet peeves. I personally, and I know that we'll probably get a lot of hate mail either way on this. No, you won't.

Not on this show, you won't. You won't get any hate mail for this. I personally do not like it when TVs are mounted, you know, at six foot in the air to the bottom of the TV above a fireplace. Right. Because then you're sitting on the couch and, you know, you're injuring your neck trying to take a look at it. And I know that there are some really great companies out there like Metal Mount, for example, who has the mount that you can pull down when you want to watch the TV and not get a neck injury, which is pretty cool. And I think they even have a really nice motorized version of that now. Um, so, you know, that's, that's kind of an option, but, um, I don't know, I have like a built in area and what we were thinking about doing, if we put the TV there,

which is what they thought that you were going to do with your CRT TV back in the day when the house was built. Um um we were thinking about putting a tv there and then doing some uh built-ins around you had the big cove thing where the big giant like uh direct uh the projection tv would slide into right that's right yeah yeah the big mitsubishi uh rp yeah exactly yeah um which was because it's an exterior wall and it's full of windows and the ceilings 22 feet high uh their infinite wisdom for pre-wiring was a coax cable oh yeah that's perfect that's all you need that's all you need yeah it's copper yeah you could do anything you want with that wire so okay so you you have some design challenges here.

And what we'll do is we'll put a picture up online. And I'll tell you what, we'll collect all these and just get them back over to you. But if you have an idea of what Cody could do in this room, mark it up in MS Paint. Yeah, we only accept entries that have been marked up in MS Paint. Right, right. Or, you know, whatever. And just, you know, whatever. And just, you know, I think you can do it on iPhone now, which it looks just about the same.

You know, put where you think the TV should go and let us know. Because there's great, I mean, one thing that's going to get disqualified is if you put it over the fireplace. Like, that'll disqualify. I've told Cody, like, we would disown him if that. So, and this is only my second time on the show, so we can't, we can't do that. Right, right. Yeah. You were on the show a long time ago, a long time ago. You were in the other house, the smaller house in the closet talking to us. And, uh, and now you have a real office. I take my podcasting very seriously. I will. It sounded great. I'm like, man, this guy's got like a booth or something. And then he says, man, I'm really hot.

I've been sitting in this closet for an hour and a half while you guys talk to me. And I turned off the air conditioning because I didn't want any extra noise. Yeah, that's not smart. That's not smart. I'm just a nice guy like that. Yeah. You know, it's internet. It's the internet audio.

And we'll do the best we can with it. But now you have this big office, and an entire house to do this, you know, whatever you want in it. So sounds like, sounds like you got, you have a number of things you'd like to do. I have my work cut out. Yeah. It's, it does sound like you have your work cut out for you. What's next on, on the roadmap as far as AV is concerned? I know you're, it looks like you got a ladder there, so you got to finish painting the office, but what, what's, what's the next room that, that gets finished off kitchen or office or theater? Well, AV wise, um, the master bedroom. So I am very fond of our, uh, 2008 vintage Panasonic plasma TV. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I, I had an extra 50 inch just led TV and that ended up in the living room for the time being. And my, uh, plasma, because it was wall

mounted before and I didn't have the stand for it is currently leaning up against the wall on the floor in my master bedroom. Did you, did you break the wall? Cause those are kind of heavy and I, I don't know if the walk and hold that TV. Uh that tv uh you know um we have it kind of blocked off so that the dogs don't get too close to it because there could be like an insurance claim i think something were to happen it would severely injure a small woodland creature yeah i could i could see that if it fell over yeah the good news is i'm not worried about my kid anymore. He's 10 and he knows better. So it's not like he's going to try and do a chin-up on the TV. But I do need to get him out for that and mount that in the master bedroom. That has been a special request from the wife.

So we'll get that done. Oh, then it's top priority. That's right. And it's funny. Those old Panasonics, I don't know if you're familiar with it, they have a very, I guess, unique, is the word to use here, instead of frustrating, bolt pattern. Is this the one with the bolts like stick off of it? No, it's just the spacing off the manual and then you go to a website, like for example, snap AV,

they sell a ton of mounts and they're all, you know, universal to a certain degree up to so many inches and up to so many pounds, but they have the visa patterns that it'll support. None of their mounts will actually work on my Panasonic. So I think I actually found, uh, Sanus,

Sanus, Sanus, Sanus mounts. I never pronounced that right, Sanus, Sanus, Sanus, Sanus mounts. I never pronounced that right. Sanus. Sure. And they actually have a mount that they have confirmed will fit that particular bolt pattern. So, uh, they're getting my money for that at least.

Uh, so that way I can put it on the articulating. I like to do articulating because it does stick off the wall a little bit more, but if you ever need to service anything behind it, you have the flexibility to pull it off and get back there. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, without having to actually take the TV down and unplug everything. You're trying to hold it on your shoulder while you're hooking an HDMI in, and then crap, it's backwards.

Yeah, I kind of have that. I'm kind of regretting my decision of just mounting the TVs up as quickly as I could with a flat mount. And now I'm like, you know, I could really use the ability to get behind there. That's a great idea. You know, take that as a pro tip off the podcast here.

Pro tip. And they're not like as big as they used to be. Used to, like, they'd stick off the wall like five inches. You can get some really razor-thin ones. I'm still going to have some sexy off-wall hangage, but that's also because my plasma is, I don't know, like a foot deep or something ridiculous. The other thing I have to make sure is that there's not any combustibles,

I think, within a certain radius of the TV because that thing generates a lot of heat. Yeah, I hope you installed a dedicated air conditioner for the master bedroom because... Yeah, we actually had one of those Panasonic, like the 50-inch, and it came off like an old client that upgraded their TV, and they're like, you can have this for 50 bucks. I'm like, done, because it's a nice TV, and it had great speakers on it and everything. It just, as a standalone TV, worked great. 720p all the way and like the only reason i got rid of it is because it did not support like for whatever and maybe i just don't know what i'm doing but i have it just that power system and

for whatever reason when i was using that i think everything was stuck on like 720p or it was stuck on 40p and i wasn't i don't think i set it up right and uh you know eventually got rid of it because it was this giant tv and and we bought like an lg for 500 bucks and and it was like 4k so done okay that's smart um but this this thing had like the mount the mount that this came with probably weighed as much as the tv uh it was one of those chief mounts ridiculous it's like the flat panel you put on the wall like and you can bolt this this thing was like a flat panel of maybe like 14-gauge steel with two little eyelets in it. And then on the TV, you actually screwed in the eyelets on the TV into the holes that the visa pattern was on.

And the idea was that you would use two people, not one idiot, to hang this TV. And I never really had that at any point in time. So it was just me, like, wriggling underneath this thing, trying to get it up on the wall and slide it into, like, these two little eyelets and get it to drop down like a picture frame. And, man, that is, chief, no. You guys should have been shot for that. That was the worst mount ever.

And it still stuck off the wall like 20 inches because it was a plasma TV. But it's still a great TV. They probably assumed more than one person was going to hang the TV. I probably said it right on the manual. But you know what? I didn't have the manual. And I had this 80-pound TV I had to lift over my head. There's some good pros and cons from that.

Pro, your TV is mounted on the wall. Con, you now have a double hernia. Right. And yeah, there's some good pros and cons from that pro. Your TV is mounted on the wall. Con, you now have a double hernia. Yeah, right. And it's, you know, once it's up, you're confident it's never going to fall because I mean, that mount, if you can hang the mount on the wall, that mount, that mount would never come off. Right. Because it's got like it's got all these holes in it. And you're like, if I hang this mount on the wall with like drywall toggles or something, the mountain is going to fall off.

So it's so heavy. Yeah. You had to make sure you hit at least two, two or three studs with that thing. Like, and, and I, I understand why we used to do that.

You know, the, the deadwood, like the builders come through and like, Oh, I put all this deadwood up and like, great. I got a retrofit wires now.

Um, thanks. Thanks sir. And they walked away all happy that his, he, he told his guys to put in that deadwood um but yeah now now i i see why they did all that because um man tvs tvs are great these days they're like 20 pounds and 80 inches like it's it's ridiculous how great tvs are these days

it's come a long way yeah yeah definitely so man um i think i think that's going to wrap us up for our discussion on on the projects project that you have going out there. You know, if people want to reach out to you. Well, actually, people are going to reach out to us. We're going to put the stuff online. And we're going to feed you all of these. And we'll have everybody vote on them. And the one that comes in to tell you, like, where the TV is going to go in your room, that's the one you're going to have to do.

You're going to have to do that. You're going to bring it to your wife and say, hey, this is what the internet, this is what the internet collective says we should do. And I think she'll be all right with it. That's what we'll have to do. All right. I think you'll be all right with it too. We'll have to, we'll have to post the results of the poll.

Like how long are we going to give them to turn this in? I don't know. It's a podcast. We'll give them a month, right? I mean, you have plenty of things to do before you get to that room, right? Yeah, trust me. I'm not in any hurry. So, you know, we give them a month or two.

And, you know, we'll revisit this maybe in next quarter. Yeah, or the next presidential term. Who knows? I know. Who knows? This is how it is. You know, you're going to be busy. This year is going to be busy for us.

We're going to try to go to Cedia with the Blackwire. I don't know. We'll see. It's not our money. We don't have to worry about spending anything. We can just say we're going to Cedia. Come see us. Come hang out with us. We may have something. We may, if food permits and everything go as well as what we want them to do, we may have something very

special. And if not, then we're still going to be eating anyway and drinking, so you should still come find us. You should still come by. It's just going to be a very unique booth. We're going to make sure that happens. It's not going to be untasteful. You can bring the kids and the family and that kind of thing.

So we'll have a great time. It's the new Las Vegas. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Exactly. There may be slot machines. Who knows? Who knows? All right.

Well, Cody, thanks for joining us here on the show. What we're going to do now is we're going to jump out of this, jump back into kind of like our regular format and have like, you're going to join me on the rest of the show because you're kind of like the guest co-host this week. I love it. So we're going to drop out of this. We have no mailhost this week um so we're gonna drop out of this we have no mailbag uh this week no no one wrote us a letter over the holidays um which is cool that's fine everybody's hanging out with uh family and friends and and doing their thing uh but what we want to do what we do want to talk about is a pick of the week that came up and i have this titled

conveniently afternoon spray uh this this is a reference to a show that I shared with Cody and demanded that he, he go take a look at. And that show is, is Patriot. And I'm so glad that he, he decided it's not the one with Mel Gibson. Just so you're clear. Yeah,

no Patriot. We've talked about it a number of times on the show. If you haven't seen it, please go to Amazon and watch the show, and hopefully they'll pick up a third season, because the first and second seasons are just great. We are not paid by Amazon to say that it's a good show, but it's a good show. And even if we were, we wouldn't take their money.

Yes, we would, but it's a great show. But this thing, man, my wife found this, and she's like, hey, you have to put this on your podcast and talk about it because this is one really cool piece of home tech. And I looked at it, and I agree. So what this thing is, it is an electric fireplace that has like a mister built into it, right? Okay. So you can take this thing, you plug it in, and you turn it on. I guess you fill it with water or hook it up to, I don't know.

I really looked at the instructions out here. But you basically add water to it, and what it does is it makes the fire come out. And when the fire comes out of it, it's like this mist, like this very fine mist spray. And it actually looks really close to fire. Like, it looks pretty good. But one of the cool things that you can do yeah i'm checking it out on their website and uh it actually says under the features no moisture condensation or harmful gases so uh it actually says that it uses ultrasonic technology

to create a very subtle mist that produces the illusion of realistic flames. Interesting. So yeah, 8 to 14 hours before the water tank needs a refill. So there is definitely a water tank. But this looks, I mean, it looks good. Like I showed you the pictures of it and you're like, oh, it's a fire thing. But then I said, no, it's water. And you use water for this. And you can...

It's pretty convincing. Yeah. What you can do with it is you can also change the color of the flame. So if you're a big Harry Potter fan and you want to get that triwizard cup or whatever you can you can put the green flames on there and and and and pretend you're a you're a wizard harry um so that that'll be i i but the unfortunate part of this is like the pricing the price is insane like the retail price of this thing is 2200 um200. Um, so I don't, I don't think it's going to show up in, in, in my house anytime soon. If it does, uh, now that I talked about it

on the podcast, it's a tax write-off, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm hoping for. I'm actually in the market for a fireplace. It's actually one of the things that didn't work in our house when we bought it. And, uh, you know, we're missing a few parts. It's a gas log fireplace. So I'm actually in the market as it were. So I was kind of glad that you brought this to my attention. But I don't know, I'm the old school fireplace guy. I spent many, many nights camp outs and my grandparents, they have a real wood fireplace. And for me, it's the smell, the fireplace smell, you know, when somebody is actually burning, you know, real wood fireplace. And for me, it's the smell, the fireplace smell, you know, when somebody's

actually burning, you know, real wood in the fireplace, you know, you can't really replicate that with a candle and a gas log fireplace for me. So I don't know. I think it's carbon monoxide is what they, they call it. Open up the flue and let that stuff out, man. Turn on a fan, right? Yeah. Open up the windows. You're actually being gassed. That's not a good thing. But yeah, no, I get you. I understand. Burning some nice log on there and getting that feel from the heat and everything,

probably not going to happen from this mister as pretty as it is. But I do definitely like that there's different places you can install this and get it put into a house. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, where you wouldn't be able to put in a fireplace at all. Like, say, you could put this in your master bedroom, like right below your plasma TV. You turn on the TV, you turn on the fireplace, and you pretty much have the same thing.

Like, you have the heat from the TV, and you have the feel from the fire, or the look from the fire. So I think this is probably what you need in the the same thing. Like you have the heat from the TV and you have the feel from the fire. So I, I, the look from the fire. So I, I think this is probably what you need in the master bedroom somewhere. You could turn this on and then turn on that YouTube video, which is 45 minutes of Nick Offerman drinking whiskey by the fireplace.

Oh, that's, that's yeah. We, we did that one year. So, um, yeah,

for Christmas this year though, we, we did the, uh, there's a, uh, uh, maybe like a two hour loop of, Pesci in Home Alone getting his hair blowtorched off. And it's just a loop of them like sitting there looking like a crazy man.

And of course, my daughter thought it was great and she loved it. She pointed to him and said, how every time she looked up at the TV, but it just sits there in loops with a blowtorch flaming on his head. I'll put, I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but that's what we had when people came over this year. There you go. All right, man. Well, uh, that, I think that wraps up the show, uh, for this week. So Cody, thanks so much for coming on the show, uh, and, and being the, uh, the guest host this week. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Appreciate, I guess, Jason being hungover. So thanks to him. And if you guys want to do it again sometime, let me know. Excellent.

Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week, or great ideas for the show, give us a shout-out. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. That's where also you can send over ideas for Cody. Put Cody's name in the subject line. It's like Cody's living room. Hashtag Cody's living room or something. Yeah, hashtag. Just let us know.

Get them to us somehow. We'll find them. And let us know where you think he should mount a TV. It is an odd setup. I'll give you that, man. So hopefully we can get that squared away for you. I do want to say before we get off the show, and I want to say we want to give a big thank you to everyone who does support the show

including Cody. He's a patron. Long time patron. I am a patron. Yeah, thanks Cody. Especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page.

If you don't know about the Patreon page head on over to hometech.fm slash 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 on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our Slack channel, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about home technology. And with that, I think we're going to wrap it up. I think Jason may be back next week, and we'll probably be sitting down talking a lot about CES.

But I do want to thank you again, Cody. Thanks so much, and we'll talk to you later. Thanks to thank you again, Cody. Thanks so much. And we'll talk to you later. Thanks Seth. Cool, man. Thanks so much.