HomeTech.fm - Episode 263 - Projects Project with Matthew G aka VMU_kiss

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Join us for a very special installment of the “Projects Project”! We are pleased to welcome Matthew G, who Reddit users might better recognize as VMU_kiss. Matthew, who is a moderator on the popular r/homeautomation subreddit, shares his creative process for coming up with some of the most unique DIY smart home hacks we’ve ever seen! From an umbrella holder that lights up when it’s going to rain, to a toothbrush holder that automatically triggers a timer, and much, much more, Matthew’s ideas are sure to inspire you to inject a little more creativity into your next DIY project. And the coolest part? Matthew has done it all using inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts (combined with a little elbow grease and a whole lot of ingenuity). Don’t miss this one!

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, June 21st. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. Welcome back, Seth. Hey, Jason. Thanks for holding down the fort last week. Yeah, I did my best. It was slow news week, solo flight, no interview. So, you know, I did my best how to come out. Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. No, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed getting it and listening to it. Some fun editing to do there. I think I did it late on Friday. So I think it went up later in the afternoon. But still making our Friday goals on the shows.

Well, we had to get a show out. We try to be good about that. So where did you go, by the way? We didn't really have a chance to. I went to Orlando, Florida, right in the middle of Infocom for not to go to Infocom. I went to Universal Studios and enjoyed some family time there and rode some roller coasters and had some butter beer, as they say.

Butter beer? Yeah, yeah. So they have the Harry Potter world there, some roller coasters and had some some butter beer as they say butter butter beer yeah yeah so like they have the harry potter world there and you can you can drink uh the fictional drink butter beer which is kind of like a oh okay yeah it shows what i know yeah yeah it's good it's actually like a super sweet drink that they have i don't i can't really describe it it's like a bunch of different flavors all kind of mixed together, but it's pretty good. Um, but they, they actually had a new roller coaster open up, which was kind of cool. Um, and, uh, we got to ride on that, uh, which I've never ridden, like ridden a roller coaster or been part of like a, you know, first trial run roller coaster type thing. Oh man. The maiden voyage. The maiden voyage. Right.

Right. I assume they've been testing this for months, but, uh, who knows? There were, you know what they say about assuming. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's definitely a wild roller coaster. If anybody has a chance, go check it out. Cause this is a, it's about a mile long, um, and had some effects in it and things that the, the coaster did. I did not think that they could actually do. So it was actually, and what was the name of it uh it's like hagrid's motorcycle ride or something like that okay i'm not sure but it's it's uh it's it's their new newest attraction there at the the park and as as we were leaving uh we noticed that jurassic park area was all torn up it looks like they're going to put a pretty big roller coaster in there now too. So, well, Don in the chat room says you were the beta for the roller coaster. So we're happy

you made it back in one piece. Uh, thankfully you made it through the beta test and it sounds like you had a good time. So, uh, welcome back. And we've got a really fun show this week. We've got a, an installment of the projects project and it's Projects Project, and it's a doozy. This one is a gem for sure. We had a listener to the show reach out and say, hey, there's this gentleman on Reddit, on the Home Automation subreddit. It goes by VMU underscore KISS on there. His name's Matt G. And you need to reach out to him. And he's got some really, really cool stuff going on in his home. And so I went and looked him up and sure enough, some really, really unique implementation and use cases that he's come up with very, very creative use of really standard off the shelf technology. He's not doing anything special with regards to the technology and

software that he's using. It's really just a combination of very creative thinking and, of course, the chops to dig in and make it all work together. So be sure to stay tuned for that. Really, really fun interview. Well, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Dish is poised to hit the mainstream smart home marketplace

with the launch of its direct-to-consumer brand OnTech Smart Services. The installation service, which initially rolled out to new home buyers last year home marketplace with the launch of its direct to consumer brand on tech smart services the installation service which initially rolled out to new home buyers last year as part of kb home's smart home system stands to compete with geek squad and amazon smart home services by providing a broader scope of consumer services with professional installation setup and education of a variety of smart home devices. It is launching first in 11 markets really quickly. Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and St. Louis,

with plans to expand into more markets soon. Interesting. So Dish Network trying to get into the smart home. Yeah. The story goes on. I guess not their first attempt. They launched their smart home services back in 2011, which I have to admit was not super familiar with, but it does ring a bell. And I think that's still going. I think we talked about it. Yeah, I think we have. But OnTech Smart Services is really an expansion of that. So working with things like you would expect Google Nest, Ring, Yale, Roku, Polk Audio, Klipsch, these are some of the names mentioned.

So it is an interesting move by Dish and yet another company getting into, you know, throwing their hat into the smart home ring. Really interesting. Most TV viewers take for granted the ability to change the channel from their couches with a remote control. That task may be near impossible for viewers with severe physical challenges. On

Monday, Comcast launches a free web-based remote on tablets and computers that lets X1 customers with spinal cord injuries like ALS and other disabilities change channels on their TVs, set recordings, launch the programming guide, and search for a show using their eyes. This is really cool. This is very cool. Yeah. Really, really interesting. There's a video that we'll include in the show notes, hometech.fm slash 263. You'll have to go check this out. Really neat offering. And it says, this will work with whatever, call it, eye gaze hardware. And so I think that it sounds like that's a sort of a standard term and there's probably different options out there for this eye gaze hardware. Also talks about sip and puff switches. And I

think I've seen these, they're kind of the straw looking things that people can use, but yeah, just this sort of assistive technology is always a cool thing to see whenever technology is being used like this to make people who suffer with real challenges to make their day-to-day lives easier is really neat. And there's a really cool video. Like I said, you'll have to go check that out. All right. Well, moving on here this week, YouTube TV started giving away several months of free showtime to YouTube TV subscribers. If you are eligible when you launch YouTube TV, a message pops up offering you free showtime until September 9th, 2019. It is not clear at this time if everyone is getting this offer or

if it is just for select YouTube subscribers. So some mystery surrounding this one, but yeah, it looks like for certain users, they're just opening it up and being greeted with a message that says, as a longtime friend of YouTube, we're giving you showtime through September 5th. Activate your offer in settings to include it in your plan at no cost. And no, we will not automatically bill you after this offer ends, which is kind of nice. So not sure exactly, not clear what's behind this exactly, but nice little bonus for certain YouTube TV users. Yeah, no, it's, it's, uh, like you said, it's a bonus. And if you're, I'm sure it's probably for their, I don't know, maybe they have figured

out, uh, how to advertise to some people. They think that, uh, I would say in the past that like, this would be one of those things that Showtime and YouTube or cable company Y got together and said, let's turn on the TV, you know, in these markets and see how many people we can keep hooked. And with this, I mean, you know, there's like big data behind this, right? You know, they're like these people have the disposable income for an extra $15 a month. Let's let's let's throw them some Showtime and see if see if they'll get hooked to, you know, what I forget. I don't even know what's on Showtime anymore. Like, what is on? I think Ray Donovan, I think, is like the big one.

That was the image from the story. I believe that's what it's called. But I'm with you. I haven't watched Showtime in quite a while, but I know I'm just looking it up here now. Yeah, Ray Donovan. Never even heard of it. Yeah, he does a dirty work for LA's top power players, kind of like a hitman type of series. It's got, oh gosh, what's that guy's name? It'll come to me.

But anyways, yeah, that's kind of the big one. But I'm with you. I haven't watched Showtime personally in quite a while. Yeah, I don't know. Well, that must be why they're giving it away for free. That's right. If you're using the latest Apple devices and all your software is up to date, then your iPhone will now use Bluetooth to search for nearby Apple TVs,

as well as just searching on the network using Bonjour. At the end result, it's the same, being able to stream over the local Wi-Fi network. But if you have an odd or non-standard Wi-Fi setup, this might help you connect. It's kind of cool, Jason. So they're using AirPlay over Bluetooth. And basically, from what I understand, even you're on like a, even, even if the Apple TV is on a different network, you can still connect to the Apple TV with this Bluetooth connection and airplay to it. So kind of cool. Yeah, that it is interesting. I don't know if like,

if I'm thinking about this correctly, but, but if you had an Apple TV you wanted to travel with and throw it in your hotel room, maybe that would be useful. You wouldn't have to necessarily hook it up to the hotel Wi-Fi. You could stream from your phone. I don't know. I'm trying to think of the use cases for this. Certainly, there are plenty of them out there, but my day-to-day use of apple tv probably not not too applicable yeah the only one i could think of like in my head was maybe like a board a boardroom where you have apple tvs uh in on an on the inside infrastructure network of of the enterprise network so to speak that's

all locked down and everything and you have people coming in that want to do presentations without giving them the Wi-Fi password to get on and talk to that Apple TV, maybe they can go directly to it this way. So that's really the only one I could think of. I'm sure there's some people that like to segregate their IoT and media-type devices off on their own network, and maybe that would help too i i greg greg scott's the one that posted this in the the the hub here uh on i think on friday uh and he said his phone is finding a bunch of apple tvs we just set up that are not even connected to a network so these

don't even have to be hooked up to the internet or network at all. They could just be sitting there attached to a TV and you could airplay over to them from your phone or, or your, your Macintosh computers, uh, laptops and whatnot, uh, without even getting them on the network. That's, that's, that's really cool. All right. Well, there you go, Seth, you lined these up beautifully, uh, to give me the, uh, the give me the pronunciation nightmare on this car, but I'm going to do my best. IKEA has confirmed its delayed smart window blinds will launch in the U.S expected to launch in april will be available for between 129 and 179 dollars though only the here we go future future future will will launch stateside no idea if i said that right the other style the cod reege will also be available internationally with both bringing there's an l

cud i give up i give up will also be available internationally uh both bringing remote control through the trod free app i got that one and voice control via alexa siri and the google assistant and greg is telling me i suck i think you did the best out of out of the i won't repeat what don is saying right now that's what i thought you said uh so yeah i i uh these these shades have been coming for such a long time i feel like we've been talking about these for over a year now. I guess it hasn't been that long. They were only announced back in January. I know there were some rumors and some speculation that went on before then.

But man, it has been a long time coming for these things. And now they're delayed again down into October. I think, isn't that going to line up with when their symphonist speakers, their Sonos speakers are coming out. I think those are coming out later this year too. And they may be doing some kind of big like smart home push around this. I don't know.

Seems like a lot of products are now delayed or being put out towards the end of the year coming from Ikea. Smart home products, that is. Yeah, yeah. It is a fascinating journey that they've been on in terms of getting into this market. And Don, thank you, saying you're a better man than me.

I would not have even tried. You feel vindicated, right? Well, Jason, I don't know if you saw the most dramatic retelling of the Control Force Snap AV deal uh story from over there from over there at strategy yes oh my gosh so if you want the soap soap opera soap product a soap opera version of uh the snap a v control for acquisition merger slash look no further yeah look so further than strategy uh there's uh There's bold fonts. There's italicized fonts. And Jason, there are bold italicized fonts in here as well.

It is a read. It's fun. And good on Ted over there for making it a fun read. And there's definitely some interesting bullet points that he pulled out. Snap AV wasn't the only one that Control 4 was talking to to do the acquisition. They had there were two other companies. And I don't remember when those all kind of like fell into place. But one of them was a potential partner in.

Let's see. Yeah, here it is. Plain, Martin Plin plane met with another potential partner a representative from a company in the residential and commercial automation industry which they refer to as party a party a took place in the showroom trade show in europe wonder which one that was and uh it's a company that they had already had an existing mutual confidentiality agreement with as a result of discussions between two companies back in 2016. So interesting that like this, this one fell through, I guess they, the company A or party A would be unable to begin negotiating terms of an acquisition, uh, before

the third quarter of 2019. And SnapAV kind of came in a little bit ahead of time and, or came back with some other stuff. And they, they went ahead and went with that one. The board went with that one. But I thought that was interesting that there was another big industry player floating around that could purchase Control 4 that is still out there. So they're still out there. They have money, obviously, in the third quarter of 2018. Where is it going to go? Yeah.

Yeah. It is definitely a dramatic recounting of a of a big acquisition and i'm sure i'm sure any acquisition of this size has its has its share of of drama and and twists and turns but uh yeah ted definitely has a way of uh of bringing in the drama it is a fun read i i don't know i i take it a little bit with a grain of salt in terms of you know kind of the the gist of the story seems to be like uh this was a this dramatic thing that came down to this series of crazy twists and turns at the end and i i don't know i think ultimately uh i think this was literally the the most boring series of meetings that anybody could have possibly been in.

And literally three people would have been excited by the end of this to walk out the door and been excited about the process. This is not something that HBO or Showtime is going to make a free movie that you can watch. Yeah, don't hold your breath for that. Exactly. Just, you know, the headings, then in 2018, everything changed. Like, I can just hear the guy who does the movie preview, you know? That's great. In a world where Control 4 needs to be acquired, right?

We should do a patron goal or something to get that guy to read movie voice guy to read this uh yeah that would be great yeah yeah there's a lot of interesting little tidbits that he pulled out of the filings and uh it's it's worth a read uh like you said with that grain of salt um it's a fun read and at least it makes what what would be a boring financial filing uh a little bit you know fun to read and kind of like go all the way to the end with because i don't think if i had read if i had pulled up whatever the sec filing is that you know they have to put put in for this i i would not have read that i would not have gone through it like it so at least he uh he uh went through like

how long this has been going on since that what was it, 2000? It's a well-researched piece. I mean, all jokes aside, Ted does good work on that regard. And there are some interesting tidbits in here, but I would caution anyone just to sort of be able to kind of see through the drama. And it's kind of a sensationalist write-up. But like I said, well-researched, and I agree with you, Seth. Definitely worth a read. All right, well, that will wrap up our headline section here for the show. We're going to jump into our interview here with Matt G very shortly.

Again, a great installment of the Projects Project. Before we do that, we want to remind you that all of the links and topics that we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to take a minute to sign up for our weekly newsletter where we'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. A little bit later tonight because of an interview we had, but you can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. Absolutely. All right, Seth.

Well, without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Matt G. from Reddit. We hope you enjoy. Hey, Matt. Welcome to the show. How are you? Pretty show. How are you? Pretty good. How are you doing? Doing great. You're joining us all the way from the Melbourne area in Australia, I understand. Yep, Dananda.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, we appreciate you making it work with the big time zone difference. Definitely a significant one there and really cool through the power of technology that we're able to connect like this. We look forward to diving in. We had a listener to the show reach out and mention your name over on the home automation subreddit and say, hey, you guys got to reach out to this guy, Matt. He's got some really cool stuff going on with his home automation. And indeed, I looked up what you were doing and saw a couple of the posts and was just amazed and was really excited to reach out and find out that you were a listener to the show and were willing to come on. So we appreciate you taking the time. And before we jump in and talk a little bit about the technology and all the cool stuff you have going on with that, I would love if you could just give a quick sort of a personal introduction to our listeners and talk a little bit about your background.

What is your interest in the smart home? Do you do it professionally? Is it just a hobby, et cetera? Sure. Well, you know, my name is Matthew. I live down in Australia. Mainly just love to tinker in hardware and software. And it's one of those things like I'm sure as most people in the 80s, you watch all these movies and saw homes that would just automate and do certain cool things.

So it's one of those things that has been an interest forever. I live actually working computers and all that stuff, not home automation per se. It's more a personal hobby. But yeah, it's one of those things that's always interested me. And in 2013, I decided to jump right in. Cool. So 2013, so you've been at it for a number of years now. And talk us through just a little bit of the sort of environment that you're working in. Do you

have multiple users in the home? Is it a house that you own or rent? That sort of thing. Just so we kind of have a little bit of a lay of the land. Sure. So in 2013, I purchased my own house. I've actually got a wife. We cohabit as well. So I started working out what was available. Now, in 2013, there wasn't that much when it came to home automation, but also in Australia, we're kind of limited as well. So I came across Z-Wave, which I'm sure we're all familiar with, and about the only home controller we had down here was the Mikasa Vera controller.

So I got the second generation that just came out at that point and started tinkering by, you know, door sensors, switches, that kind of stuff. And I've just slowly been going from there and trying to improve it since. Cool. And are you still using the Mikasa Veraa today is that still the yeah it's still working um that's the main brain so uh it it's a bit old but it's still good um it's funny enough it's still um all local as well so that's the one thing i loved about that when i first started and now everything seems to be all cloud-based but this is still local it does have cloud access as well but i've mainly used that and used a windows pc to kind of offset some of the automations for more advanced things as well. Cool. We're going to jump right in. I'm not going to beat around the bush.

I want to jump into some of the specific use cases you have, and we're really going to use those to drive this conversation. And our listeners will know why shortly, because there are so many unique, just truly unique and creative things that you've been able to do in your home. And so let's dive in to some of those. And by the way, you sent over the outline that you sent over. It was like a 10-page outline that you've put together. Talk about that a little bit. I think you're working on like an infographic. And so before we jump into that, just talk about kind of how you've documented all of this and the overall kind of landscape of the technology in your home. Yeah, so I've been moderate on the subreddit called Home Automation on Reddit. I've posted a few things here or there about my setup, and a lot of people have been quite interested in some of the things that I've

done. So I decided to try to write it all down and make it more generic in the sense that anyone can do that no need specific hardware and um with most of the things I do you can do it with pretty much anything that's C-Wave Zigbee just the standard home automation stuff I try to modify a lot of the devices I use to help get the results I want so when it comes to to that, it's just, um, this huge list is just basically separated by room, what automations I have, what hardware in there as well. And it helps a better idea because how I'm looking to possibly upgrade my system as well, uh, to have a more cohesive, maybe like home, uh, home assistant or open habits, something like that, possibly maybe a habitat as well. That seems quite interesting. Yeah, yeah. I got to tell you, I was preparing for the show this week,

and I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I was reading through this document, and I got through, like, page one, and I was like, okay, you know, cool stuff he's got going on here. And literally, page one had about as much going on and as much information as we typically get for an entire house. And I was laughing because I told my wife was sitting there and I was like, oh my gosh, this is a 10 page docket. Like that was just one room. And so really, really cool stuff. I look forward to seeing,

I know that was going to be the basis for like an infographic. It sounds like that you're working on. I think that'll be really cool. So we'll definitely keep an eye out for that. But again, let's jump into some of these specific use cases. And so starting right at the top, there was one I thought was really interesting, a pill dispenser. Talk about the use case there and how you kind of came up with the idea and how you went and made this happen. Okay. So basically I suffer from migraines. So, you know, you have a bunch of different pills you can take depending on how severe it is, but also you've got the standard stuff for headaches like paracetamol or acetaminophen, I think it's called for you guys in America. So I decided to have a way to basically be able to dispense it,

but also keep an eye on how low I get as well. So I built a little device that uses a Raspberry Pi Zero. All it does is just has a little tube of all the pills, depending on what it is, and little servers that literally flick the pills out of the tube. So it keeps an eye on there. It gives me a list of every time I have to reorder and all that stuff. And just one of the things that would help regulate and have an idea of how much I've taken as well, because when it comes to having migraines or headaches a lot,

you kind of get used to certain drugs. So to be able to swap from say paracetamol to aspirin and all that, to know that, you know, it's a good time to swap over now to that, to help that thought that was good. So I decided to make a little device that would help with it. Yeah.

Really interesting. And so you said it kind of monitors the levels and then lets you know when you're low and you need to reorder. How's the mechanism for you as the user? How do you receive this notification? a lot of the Google apps when I can. So I have like a Google Keep for a lot when it comes to shopping and everything. I've got another device that does the same thing, adds it onto a shopping list basically as well. So if I ever go out before I come home, I just double check and if I need to grab anything I can. So it's just all linked to that and it's just, it's pretty simplistic in the thing, but I like to kind of build it up and make it a bit better as well. All right. Well, very, very cool, Matt. I love that. I, I, uh, suffer from occasional migraines as well. Thankfully I don't get them very often and I know, but I do know how serious they can be.

Um, and so it's really cool that you were able to just kind of come up with this idea and, uh, a neat little implementation there to help you with that. Very, very neat. Let's, uh, let's shift gears here to something a little more entertainment based. Uh, you had one where I saw this on Reddit where you talked about, uh, tapping a DVD on a shelf, uh, to play a movie on the TV. Talk, talk about that. Okay. So, um, obviously, you know, when it comes to online streaming, there's a lot of stuff, but sometimes it's hard to really pick up something you want to watch. I've found that having a small collection of my favourite movies and all that stuff that I kind of come back to again and again actually helps when I'm bored, but I just want to kind of relax.

So I've actually got a small shelf full of DVDs, and what I've done is there's an NFC tag inside each DVD case, and the actual scanner is built inside the shelf so anytime I want to play a movie I literally just grab the case tap it on top of the shelf and then just starts playing on the TV that's very cool that's I was wondering what you when you sent that over I was like how is he doing that is it like an IR matrix where you like pull out a certain disc it determines which one it is no no it's nfc it's even better very cool very cool originally um i actually made a i guess you'd call it a virtual dvd

cover i actually had um two seven inch picture frames pushed into one of those big dvd cases and every time you push the button and changed all the pictures on the front and the back and then that was also hooked up to a computer so you know uh you one buttons to play one buttons to change the thing so you could flip it over and see each dvd cover kind of thing but again got a bit too uh a bit too hard to deal with back in 2013 yeah i can imagine i can imagine i mean it sounds like you have uh a lot of a lot of the discussion that jason and i have on the show kind of revolves around the programming and doing the things that, coming from the integration side,

I could never do in somebody's house because I never knew that they wanted to pull out a DVD and tap it on a shelf to play a movie on their TV. This is all what I would call lifestyle programming. You have a ton of that here. What's another thing that you find pretty cool inside the house that you like to do? I think one of the best things is if you sit on the couch, the TV and all the accessories actually just turn on automatically. Brilliant.

So, you know, just little little animations like that where it's just it's I've been trying to make automation part of my life and just make things a bit easier, but also in general, just to help with certain things in general in my life as well. So, you know, simple things like sitting down on turning on the lights and all that to the bathroom and everything and then turning it off, like just simple things like that that, you know, you may not think about, but it just helps along the way. It's just little things that help over the course of, you know, your life that, you know, makes it just easier in general. That's one of the things I was wondering when you said that. When you sit down on the couch, turns the TV on, like happens when you get up does it does it pause it or does it keep playing like if you have to run to the bathroom what do you do uh it depends um if I'm

watching a movie and I stand up then um it knows that I'm obviously in the couch so it actually pauses and then uh turns the lights back on so I can grab something and as soon as I sit back down again um I'll hit play and then you know that turns the lights off on so I can grab something. And as soon as I sit back down again, I'll hit play. And then, you know, that turns the lights off again. I can just keep watching the show. Awesome. Love it. Talk about how you implemented that. Obviously, a sensor in the couch.

And what's sort of the chain of events? It sits down. It detects that you're sitting down. How does that all come together? So the way I've got it mainly is um i'm just using standard z-wave door sensor i've modified it to use a pressure mat so as soon as you sit down it's just the same thing as the button being pressed so nothing too fancy uh you can actually get some z-wave sensors that have terminals as well inside the case so it makes it easy

instead of having to solder it but as soon as as you sit down, it sends a signal, and then I've got the basically HTTP post commands. They go to Xbox Media Center, or Kodi as it's now called, and that will either play or pause depending on what the state is currently. So if something's playing, it will pause it. If it's not playing, it doesn't do anything else. But in general, all it does is it always sends the standard command of turn the tv and everything else on with a smart plug uh and if it's already on that doesn't matter if it's already on it doesn't do anything else so i just

do that and then when i'm finished i just turn off manually sure yeah really cool love it uh another really funny one that made me laugh a little bit was the toothbrush holder integrated with some door sensors. So again, talk about the genesis of that idea and then how you've gone about making that happen. So basically I'm sure we've seen these smart mirrors or magic mirrors that have slowly popped up over the past year or so, where it just gives you a bit of information on your mirror. So I decided to kind of integrate that with a few more things that i'm doing in general so what it does is i just got two door sensors um and basically as soon as the toothbrush is removed either mine or my wife's uh what it does is it

pops up on the screen to say you know okay it's a brush timer so you can just start brushing your teeth it might play a video that's about the same length as that or it might just be a timer depends on you know how i've got it set up and yeah just it's really just to make sure that you know brushing your teeth in general and all that stuff and it's at least long enough kind of thing it's just little automations like that that can help throughout the whole thing and the magic mirror kind of thing really helps when it comes to information like if i have to get petrol in the morning i've got a gauge to say how much petrol is in the car uh just general time you know how long until i get to work that kind of stuff very cool and that's all built into the mirror the mirror like a uh like a tv inside of a mirror type thing yeah exactly that's very cool that's very cool um one of these notes

that you have here and i i thought that was pretty cool not that like in case when you're when you're practicing good dental hygiene and watching your video there in the magic mirror uh if you don't notice the rain forecast uh your umbrella holder will glow based on the rain forecast so you know to walk out the door holding an umbrella that's brilliant it's a great idea great idea yeah so it's good to see a visual, but I've found that when it comes to certain things like that, it's just good to have a glance based on color. So I have that, but also I've got two little wheelie bins as well

that light up. So when I need to actually take rubbish out, and it's either we've got recycling or rubbish, I know which day is what. So on every Tuesday, one or both will glow up, so I know which bins to take out as well. So simple things like that just helps and, you know, just like to see color. Well, yeah, I mean, because we talk a lot about, I assume you're using like a Philips Hue type thing for that, like a colored LED.

Wi-Fi LED strips. But like RGB color, right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Hue could work perfectly fine. There's a lot of things that we talk about with like the Hues and those kind of things that are kind of like I tend to dismiss as like, oh, those are toys. You know, those are – but you've done some really cool things with them that I'm going to steal. I mean, I'm telling you that right now.

Okay, fine. with them that I'm going to steal. I'm telling you that right now. Some of these ears are going to be stolen, especially taking out the trash or at least reminding me on, I think it's Sunday, Sunday night, I'm going to have to at least get the bins out. Doing something in my house to make sure that I remember to do that. Otherwise, I'm running out

there first thing Monday morning trying to beat the guys picking up the trash and stuff and bins down to the end of the street at like eight in the morning. So it's no fun. So yeah, that one's definitely going to be stolen from me and a couple of these other ones here. But I like the idea of using these extra devices that like the lighting devices, as notification systems. Because you're not getting...

Normally, what I would have thought to myself is just like, oh, I'll set up a push notification on my calendar, and I'll get the little notification, and it'll go away, and it'll come back, and I'll dismiss it or whatever, to remind me to take the trash down. But this actually lights up and lets you see what's going on. That's way better than a push notification to your phone. Well, exactly.

And I think it's one of those things like I think we get inundated with messages and everything when it comes to our phones and if you've got tablets on the wall and all that as well. So I didn't want to be too techie when it came to the looks. I wanted it as more a natural thing. And it's just, you know, little thing low in the corner, you know, you know what that is. But to anyone that else is in the house,

it just doesn't mean much. All right. So I know we talked a little bit about the Wi-Fi lights and the Z-Wave sensors that you're using to set all this up. And you're using the Veri2 to control everything. Let's get down and dirty like how are you how specifically are you setting this up to reach out and you know get weather forecasts and that kind of thing to display on the smart smart service you're doing all of this right or is this something that is this something that you have to

do or is this something that exists within vera from from my experience with vera i don't think this is i think this is all this is all you yeah so it's all me so uh there is uh mainly for anything that's z wave uh and i have a windows pc set up to um interact with that and also get a bit more information so uh i think i'm using with underground it's been a while since i've had to deal with the code but i'm using that to get weather, and that can literally just turn on and off the Wi-Fi RGB LEDs. Also, that can send the information to the smart mirror as well. So I've got three systems. I've got Vero for almost everything when it comes to hardware. Then I've got a Windows PC that actually does my video recording

through Blue Iris, but also that has a few automations as well for the Wi-Fi stuff. And then I've got a small little um hdmi stick an android hdmi stick that's just plugged into the wall and that's for a few bluetooth things as well so they're the main three systems that i use and the windows system has a few extras that uh it connects to the vera hub to grab you know um if it needs to know like if something something's, uh, closed or open or something like that, or emotion has been triggered, then it just connects through that as well. Got it. Very cool. Uh, well let's shift gears to some of these other really unique ones. I just, I love these. There's one, uh, between 5.00 PM to 8.00 AM Monday to Friday,

you have data triggering a, what you call a money light to show progress on savings goals. I thought that sounded really intriguing. My wife and I are doing a lot of work right now on sort of college savings and things like that for our kids. I thought that was a really intriguing idea. Talk to us about that one. So that uses, I think it's using IFTTT with my bank. So what happens is it just every now and then once a day, it just triggers how much money is in the account. And I've basically got, you know, those old charity thermometers with the price set up and up and up the thermometer. So I've kind of got something similar to that with the LED light.

So I've just got LEDs driven. Basically, I'm just controlling every three LEDs to make it to go higher and higher and higher to say it's from this price to this price. And it's just usually a goal like me and my wife want to go to Japan. So it's, you know, we throw a little bit here and there, but it kind of just lets us know that, you know, it's getting there up and high and higher. Yeah. It's simple, but, you know, it's a nice visual to have. Yeah, no, I love but you know, it's, it's a nice visual to, to have. Yeah, no, I love it. Uh, very, very creative. I, I, uh, I'm just really like, I'm intrigued by the thought process. Right. And it's kind of inspiring to be like, for me to think about, like, we talk

a lot on the show about what are the use cases and, you know, it's, it's cool to be able to turn lights on and off with your phone and stuff like that. But, um, you know, it's, it's cool to be able to turn lights on and off with your phone and stuff like that. But, um, you know, how far does that go? And I think that's a, this is a great example of just very creative sort of, sort of thinking of, of how to, how to use this to make real use cases that are, that are useful for you. Uh, love that. There was another one here, uh, that I thought was really interesting. So a water valve hooked up to a sprinkler which will water down your car windows when they're frosted over and talk about kind of the the genesis of that and um and how you implemented it yeah seth's in florida so he he made an

explanation of what frosted windows look like so uh down here um especially in winter it can get um cold not like really cold we don't get snow or anything but it's enough where you'd have to get an ice scraper or some like water to just get rid of the frost that's on the car before you can drive so um i had to do that most mornings and of course you're never prepared so now you've got to go inside get a cup throw it on the car. Hopefully that's enough. So I decided to just have a little sprinkler set up and just a valve. So just put it into the car.

So I just turn that on. It usually gets the back of the car. And then when I slowly back out, it'll get the top and the front. So that usually gets all the sides. And then I just hit a button on my phone to say stop. And it's done. Yeah. I mean, I guess here in Florida we would set that up,

but it would be like more of a car wash. You would need just like wash your car as you back out of the driveway. You just completely go through the whole, you know, like a drive-thru car wash is do that way. That would be great. Watch the bugs off and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. It's handy for that. But also when it's really, really hot, you know, five minutes before I go out, if it just if it hits the car, usually cools it down a tad as well. So it's not as hot. Not a bad idea.

Yeah, not a bad idea. A couple of other a couple of things I see on here that you have just kind of like as a reminder based things like just remind you to take pills. And, you know, reminding you to, we talked about reminding you to take out the bins and reminding you what the weather is. It seems like, it seems like you're using a lot of triggers and stuff to remind, remind you of things around the house rather than, rather than, so you can take action rather than like the things like doing them, not that like a robot could take the pills for you but yeah it would be nice right um but you you've got what what i saw when i looked through

everything is that you had a lot of things triggering for reminders not so much like the automation of things which i think is a pretty cool idea yeah so um it's in general like i with the smart mirror and a few things like that um i thought i'd just try to make life easy in general and automate a lot of it so i've got a lot of automated lights and a few things here and there but when it comes to doing other things it's handy to just have a list of things because you know i really have yeah don't have the best memory so you know i might um i'll leave the house but i forget you know my laptop for work or something like that so uh same thing is like you know when i go to bed so if you hook it up to like say google home you can say you know good night or whatever and uh the cool thing

is it checks to make sure if the door's locked uh and makes sure the rubbish being taken out if it's correct day you know and a few other things here and there to make sure that you've done the same thing when leaving just make sure that you know i haven't forgotten anything for work because i'm always rushing and i'm never on time so it just it helps yeah i think i think you and i are kind of the same one of the same here um obviously um one of the one of the quick questions i had i i noticed on one of the last things you had about a routine about a migraine routine i i i get headaches and i i would classify them as migraines but i i know that some people probably get like these last things you had about a routine, about a migraine routine. I get headaches and I would classify them as migraines, but I know that some people probably get like these, well,

disabling type migraines. And so like, I'm always hesitant to say, oh yeah, I get migraines too, because I don't know, like mine are pretty bad. They'll put me down, but I don't know if they're technically a migraine. But what you had set up for your routine, go ahead and talk about that. Like, it sounds like to me, this is another one of those things I will steal. This will be at my house and implemented to you. Go ahead and tell us what you do for the migraine routine. Sure. So I think when people get migraines or headaches in general,

they can be debilitating or they can just be very painful. So I've got to dispense with the dispensers. The pills for me, obviously, depending on what I want. But the whole – I've got a few things that I can do that helps. Like if I've got like a dark room, then the light kind of makes it worse. So I've got a routine that basically will turn the lights off. It might put on some soft music as well because that seems to help me. I have a shower because that helps numb my head enough

to let the tablets take hold. So I might do that and I'll come straight into the bedroom. But if it's already nice and cool in the bedroom, because I've worked out that if I have heat on my foot or my feet, but everywhere else it's cold, it actually draws the blood away and seems to help the headache. So I have the electric blanket turned on. That turns on to make sure my feet and everything are warm, but I've got the AC on as well with the lights turned off and everything. As soon as I've finished the shower, I can just walk in, just lay in bed and just hopefully get rid of it pretty soon. So I can just trigger it by saying, you know, Hey Google migraine time or something like that.

I mean, I can't really think of a good way to say, so I just say migraine time, but that helps set everything up. So by the time I'm out of shower, it's really cool in the room, but the bed's really warm. So it helps. Interesting. Yeah. That's, that's, those are great ideas. I'm going to have to take a few of those, especially like mine, the, the triggers are generally like a, are more migraine. You have to figure out like what, what the trigger is. Mine's generally like dehydration. I generally start to get headaches when i'm not drinking enough and uh yeah getting into like a dark room and just music i don't think would help me just like the darkest room possible and make it as cool as possible i'm gonna have to figure out how to do that because that's that's definitely would help um out of all of these and and you have quite a few things here

um you sent over one of the longest documents I've seen. You're very well documented. Um, what, what is your favorite routine or, or, or part of your, your automated home? Ooh, it's tough to say. It's like only children, which is the favorite. Exactly. Um, I think there's two main ones that I really like.

One is in the bedroom around 10 o'clock onwards, I have a motion sensor that will turn on the hall lights and the bathroom lights. So, you know, any time between that and like 8 o'clock in the morning, it just turns it on so I can go to the bathroom, wash my hands, do all that kind of stuff, and then turns off afterwards. Now, the issue with motion sensors is obviously any type of movement is going to trigger it.

And you know, it's 10 o'clock, so I'm still going to be up. So what I've found is modifying the hardware really helps. So if you get some masking tape and put it just over the bottom of the sensor, it literally makes sure that the only motion is picked up is when I actually stand up in the room. If I'm in bed, I can wave my hands around around it's not going to actually see that motion because of the the masking tape so if you block off half the sensor it allows you to use it in a way where you're only seeing a small portion of it I've used it for like under dining room tables as well so when you sit down it just triggers the light and everything so little things like that helps and if

you make it a more focused beam it's very good especially when you've got, it just triggers the light and everything. So little things like that helps. And if you make it a more focused beam, it's very good, especially when you've got it on the stairwell. You can trigger it more like a beam than anything. So, you know, you can actually pick up the two people who walk downstairs. So if one person goes back up, it's already counted. There's one person downstairs still, so it doesn't turn the lights off.

But if there's already two people that walk back upstairs, then it will turn the lights off after 20 minutes so small little automations like that helps and if you kind of make the hardware work for you instead of letting it do what it normally does it can help in certain ways to you know achieve what you need to do yeah absolutely really again very creative thinking and definitely love it one um i could steal here at my home with a couple of young kids running around. A smart plug turns on a red LED strip in the doorframe when podcasting software is running. Very cool. So it's just it's picking up the software running on your computer and that's sending a message out and activating that LED strip. Very neat. Well, this is a ton of fun. And like Seth and I both alluded to, there was a very robust document and we tried to pick out some of the highlights here, but there

was a lot more going on and we're running up against our time. So we're not going to be able to get to all of it, but really enjoyed learning more about this and have a few minutes here. I'd love to wrap up by talking about sort of what's next, like what's next on your horizon. You've already got a ton of stuff going on. What are you looking towards in the near future in terms of your next big projects that you take on for your smart home? I think what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to expand my pill dispenser, thinking more to add a few more things to it, especially when it comes to, like, say, diabetes, because, you know, I have to check that every morning. So I've got that working through Bluetooth,

so I'm thinking have that part of that as well. Maybe have some Wi-Fi scales that link up to it. Have a dispense Band-Aids as well and a few other extra things like vitamins and all that. So just make it a bit more robust in what we need. So instead of having to know to take this or that, you already know because it's going to dispense it for you each day so you know, okay, this is here.

If we need stuff for migraines, then we can ask it as well. But if it's all more on a schedule, it really helps as well, especially when it comes to vitamins and any time you get hurt, there's some Band-Aids or anything else. So just more health-related things, I think I'm going to try to expand it and put it into that device. Cool. Very, very good.

And one last question here before we wrap up. What's one thing you'd recommend to somebody who's looking for maybe more creative ways? We often ask this question for the Projects Project, what do you recommend to people trying to get into it? But again, I think you've done an exceptionally good job of coming up with really unique use cases and doing hardware modifications and really not using anything super special from a hardware perspective, right? Like you've just been able to think about the problems a little bit more creatively, I'd say, than the average person.

What would you recommend to somebody who's kind of looking to maybe get a little bit more creative with their home technology? I think what you need to think about is not necessarily the hardware you need to use. Think of more the problems or stuff that happens in your life in general. Is there anything that you can automate to make it better like you know say you want to automate a bit of cooking you can get a survey you can automate that to do it you know whenever you want or you know you want to have certain things happen when you sit down on a chair or something like that and what i've done is very simple like you know with the door sensors it's all it is it's just a pressure pad you can just hook it up with two wires same thing with motion

sensors blocking it off and all that it's really just think of what could really improve your life or it could make an automation better and then just use the standoff shelf hardware you'll be able to modify most of it to be able to do whatever you would need so you shouldn't have to you don't have to do anything special don't have to have special software you can just stick to whatever your home automation hub is and work with the hardware you've got, you should be able to come up with something that will work. Yeah. And when Jason was asking that question, I was thinking you've found the creative things to do, but you also have the means. You also have the ability to pull weather stations.

You also have the ability to write these scripts and programs to do these things for you. Um, which, which doesn't, that part doesn't definitely doesn't come naturally to a lot of people out there. Um, but it is, it has been getting a little easier over the past, you know, five years that we've been covering this. Um, and heck I've been in this industry 15, 20 years now, it's gotten a lot easier than it was when I first started out. So I know that there will be a day coming when somebody could take a motion sensor and stick it up on their wall and very easily commission it, program it to do exactly what they want to do. One of these things you're talking about.

So I think you've done a great job here, though. This is some really cool stuff. But I also have to keep in mind that you definitely have the means to do this, more so than a lot of people even listening to this show do. So if somebody did want to touch base with you about, about one of these automations or, or things, what's a good way that they could connect with you, uh, to learn more? Sure. So, um, I'm a moderator on the subreddit called home automation on Reddit. So, uh, you can always post posts in there. You can send me a direct message if you want. My name is

VMU underscore kiss. Uh, you can send me a sudden directly from that if you want, but, uh, in general, you know, we're always happy to help, you know, if you post a question or, you know, um, ideas or anything up there, you know, people will usually, um, respond and all that. So yeah, just, you can find us on Reddit and, you know, go from there. Cool. Cool. Well, uh, Matt, thanks again for, uh, for making this work all the way from down under. We appreciate your coming on and joining us and sharing your very unique approach to the smart home. So we appreciate it, and we'll definitely look forward to staying in touch and hearing about where you're able to take things from here. Excellent. Well, thank you for having me on.

All right. Take care. That's a great interview. I think Matt has really got some really cool i'm just struck by like how many creative things that he's come up with uh for for his place i i live with this stuff day in and day out and i i guess i'm more of like i'm not the tinker type person like he is i'm more of the like utilitarian like the lights turn on they turn off that's good enough for me type person um but man but man, it just goes to show what a little bit, a little, a little bit of

creativity and in his case, a lot of creativity can do, um, to make these, these devices and these products really just work for you. Yeah, absolutely. I think the, I think that just about anybody who has the time and the, and the will to dig in can learn to do the technical stuff. Certainly, some people are more inclined to it than others, and it's going to come easier to some people than to others. But I think generally speaking, anybody who's really willing and interested can jump in and use off-the-shelf hardware and learn the programming and stuff necessary to do all of this. What I don't think just anyone can do or what, what is truly, I think special about what Matt has done is that creativity and like the ability to sort of ideate and say like, oh man, it would be kind of cool if my umbrella holder lit up on days when it's going to rain.

Like I personally would just never think to do that. And now, and then I hear it and I'm like, it's a great, it's a really cool idea. So anyways, tons of examples of that. And I really enjoyed learning more about that. And hopefully, hopefully you did listening to it as well, took some new ideas and some inspiration away from that conversation. All right. Nothing in the mailbag this week, but, uh, Jason, uh, it looks like you, you gotta, I do, I do have a correction. So, so I'm not going to read, uh, the email, but I did, I have to say, uh, and, and Eddie, I know you're listening. Cause Eddie listens every week. Um, I did get an email from Eddie that I, that I'm not going to read, but Eddie said, Hey, like I listened to the show every

week. And last week, uh, if you listened to the show last week, you'll remember that, uh, Cedia had announced some Cedia award finalists, a bunch of integrators, uh, were nominated for the quality of their work. And I, um, gave a quick shout out to a couple of one vision partners who were nominated on there. And somehow in my sort of rush to get the show, uh, recorded and out there, I actually mentioned only two and didn't realize there was two more One Vision partners who were also nominated for awards this year. And so I wanted to give them a shout out, and that's Smart Touch and Kantara, again, both One Vision partners. So I wanted to selfishly sort of take the opportunity just to give them a quick plug. And Greg, you know what? I'm going to do it.

I'm going to, Greg Scott, longtime supporter of the show in the chat room with us tonight, has some Cedia courses coming up, as do I, and we'll be talking more about those through One Vision. But more to come on those, Greg.

If you want to give Art of the Takeover, that's right. Greg does one called Art of the Takeover, which I think I have not had the opportunity candidly to sit in it, but I think a really interesting topic. And those takeover projects can be really tricky, but I think if you can learn how to do them correctly, there is a lot of opportunity there. So again, that's Greg's course. And my apologies to Kantara and Eddie over at SmartTouch.

Total mistake on my part and wanted to take a quick moment this week to extend a shout out to both of those companies as well. Looks like Greg also has a second class this year. How to do customer service and fail. That's pretty good. Maybe it'd be interesting to sit into that one for sure. I'd recommend coming to my course instead but sure it will be fun he says i'm sure it will be uh that that sounds like a blast i i that so so you're you're you're you're doing one this year too huh we are yeah we're as a as a company we've got a few of them actually doing the service courses again.

We're going to have one on sort of incorporating service into the sales process. We're going to have another one on really effectively transitioning projects out of the project phase and into service. And then a third one on really service execution and systems and processes that you can put in place to do that all as efficiently as possible. So definitely looking forward to that. Yeah, no, see, I get to plan my courses. So there will be no Swedish names or the like in my courses. There will be no mispronunciation. So Greg is over there trolling Jason in the chat room and says, listen to Jason mispronounce things in person, which is great. That was good.

Very good. Well, speaking of good things, Jason, heck of a pick of the week this time around from Glenn there in the hub. And I don't know what to think about this one. It says, we'll discuss the eyebrows later but let's talk about what's around the neck and it's got a picture of someone who is doing one of those you know duck face instagram poses or something like that duck face and they've got like okay so they've got some strange eyebrows colored in that's fine okay people are people and they do makeup but then like for a necklace they have on

like an av cable like it's rca cables yeah it's the it's the red white and yellow rca cables uh tied up in a in a nice necklace there. Not so sure that's going to catch on, but, you know, stranger things have happened. If it does, I'm kind of motherload of cables back over here in a box. Yeah, break out the bin from the garage. Exactly. We've all got it. We've all got that.

So, oh, man, that is a gem. And And yeah, that came over through the hub. And so we appreciate you passing that one along. Not so sure about that look. No, I don't. Well, I mean, if it takes off, like I said, I'm going to be rich because I'll be selling those on Etsy. That's right. That's right. All right.

Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show topic or guest, please give us a shout. Again, our guest this week was a recommendation from a listener to the show, so we really appreciate that. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm or visit the website at hometech.fm feedback. And we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show show 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 on over to home tech dot fm slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as one dollar a month any pledge over five dollars months gets you a big shout out on the show but every pledge gets you invite

an automated invite to our private slack chat Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about all aspects of home technology. Absolutely. And if you want to help the show but can't do so financially, we'd love a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you find value in the Home Tech Podcast, please take a minute to leave us a review. That would be tremendously appreciated. And Seth, before we wrap up here, I dug up the name really quick. And Scott, if you're listening to the show, it was Scott who made the recommendation to get Matt on.

And so I wanted to thank Scott personally for that recommendation. And again, if you have any ideas for guests or show topics or ideas, please reach out. We definitely read all of those emails and take all of them into consideration. CD at 2019, September 12th, it begins. September 12th, that's right around the corner. Coming right up.

It's going to get here fast. Yeah, it definitely is. Getting excited to have it in my hometown this year. That'll be a lot of fun. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. You're going to have to tell us. You've got to go downtown, Jason. You've got to get out of the basement. You've got to go downtown. I'm like such a hermit. You've got to tell us where to have this party. We've got to have a party. People literally are like, I'm coming to Denver. What should I do? And I'm like, I don't know. Ask somebody who has a life. I live in the burbs.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, we've got some scouting to do. So I'll figure it out. There's a lot of great options down there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. Downtown Denver, there was no shortage of things to do when we were there a couple of years back. So, yeah, excited to be back in Denver. I'm going to miss San Diego. Got to admit, I'm going to miss San Diego. Yeah, definitely. No, it's a fun place, but yeah, Denver hosts a great event as well. So definitely looking forward to it and more to come. If you are a supporter of the show or a listener to the show on a regular basis, you'll know that we've done events at the last couple of CDS and we're definitely planning to do something as well this year. So stay tuned for more information on that. But with that, Seth, we'll go ahead and wrap it up and look forward to reconnecting with you again next week. All right. Sounds good,

Jason. Have a great weekend. All right. You as well. Take care.