HomeTech.fm - Episode 267 - Can We Stop Talking About Prime Day Now?

Episode Date: July 19, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: SnapAV continues to gobble up distributors, acquiring north west-based Custom Plus. Are rumors of HAI’s demise greatly exaggerated? Prime Day topples records. Amazon Music Unlimited growth rate is outpacing its competitors. Hulu quietly brings back 4k. CEDIA names Mitch Klein its Lifetime Award Winner. Five key questions about the forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. And much more…

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 19th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Happy Prime Day! It's finally over. Happy end of Prime Day! Yes, I can get my blog feeds back now. Well, are there any spoils of war for you for the last 48 hours?

You know, I think you and listeners of the show at this point know that I tend to be kind of a cheap uh curmudgeon when it comes to to my money and so I just don't I don't get super excited about these sorts of things and honestly it barely even registered on my radar as this was going on this week so um there were some great deals out there I know I am not personally in the market with any sort of burning desire anyways for for any of this stuff so i did not how about you i bought a water hose nozzle oh big spender is it a smart water hose nozzle no bluetooth enabled it was just i was tired of the one that i had like breaking every time i tried to use it so i i was on amazon what was the going rate for that on, on prime day? Like 25 cents or something? Man, I don't know. I think it was like, it was under $10. And, uh, you know, from what I understand, somebody soiled themselves to, uh, make sure that I got it in two

days, uh, because of the working conditions in the Amazon. Oh man, that's terrible. I did buy the, um, the Apple TV remote case that you recommended and really love it. Ah. It was definitely a good buy. Perfect. Kind of small backfire on it, though, I need to tell you about. So my kids think the wristband thing is really fun. Like the novelty thankfully wore off quickly, but at first they thought it was a toy.

And so it took, you know, a couple of days of reminding them that it was not a toy. Unfortunately, in that process, they ended up misplacing the remote and it did go missing for a little over 24 hours before my wife finally turned it up, you know, beneath a pile of hats in the playroom. Other toys, yes. Yes. Because it's a toy. So, you know, I was able to use the remote app, tried to get my wife to use that as a backup plan and she ended up uh you know defaulting actually to the um to the roku interface on our tcl oh yeah so she used that for a little while while we were missing the remote um but i'm happy to say it's back and uh the the case was a good buy i think i'm a fan i think apple missed i think either the

case company or apple has missed it because not apple i'm going to the the case was a good buy i'm a fan i think apple missed i think either the case company or apple has missed it because not apple i'm gonna say the case company missed missed a mark where you know those uh tile finding things like they should have built that little tile uh like little square finder things i have all my keys over there so if i lose my keys you can get on there and it's like a bluetooth beacon and it kind of has a two-way feature where if you lose something then you press a button and it'll it it'll beep at you over there. So, or just beeps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that I was wishing that the remote would have had that because we probably would have found it in like, you know, 60 seconds had it, had it had that,

it just, it was sort of hiding in plain sight, so to speak. Well, I, I, I, as part of prime day, as I was looking at the deals on there, I, I, I ran across, um, uh, well I've been, as part of Prime Day, as I was looking at the deals on there, I ran across, well, I've been kind of like on and off the wagon about buying a toolbox. Like I have a little tool bag that I use, right? Like I just throw some tools in it and I don't, you know, if I had to go anywhere anywhere i just throw them in that and walk across the house or bring them out to a friend's house do some work there but it culminates into like like if i do something then i end up having like a cardboard box that i throw everything in and that cardboard box has started to live with me now and my wife is like the cardboard boxes have to go so if you look like a homeless person walking around with these cardboard boxes. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I guess I'll have to buy a toolbox.

So I started looking at these toolbox sets, right? Like these things that all like stack up and everything. And there's two of them that I came across. Well, there's more than two, but two of them really stood out. One is the Milwaukee Packout. And I think most integrators are familiar with this, or most construction people are familiar with this thing. It's like a red Transformers-looking thing that is designed to kind of like snap together.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've seen these. Yeah, yeah. If you've been on any job site, you've probably seen these wandering around. And the other one, in front of the show there, Chris Gamble and The Hub kind of mentioned this company. I had never heard of them before, but it's called Festool.

And they make this thing called a Sistainer, which is a system container kind of word that they made up and pushed together. And now it's called a Sistainer. But they have kind of like the same thing, but it's like much more, I would say, like low-key right like the the milwaukee stuff is like bright red and it looks like you know what you would buy at home depot because it's bright red and then the festival stuff is like made for trim carpenter type operation yeah it's nice like high end yeah yeah it's real nice and it stacks up yeah so i'm just i don't know which one to get i don't i'm just I'm kind of like. Oh man.

Well. Yeah. Of course the Festool stuff is a little more expensive. Like it's, it's like probably for, for what I want to get. Like if I did not apples to apples, but if I get like, if I got the Festool stuff that I want and I pick up the Milwaukee stuff, it's probably within a hundred dollars of each other. Um, with the Festool being a little bit more expensive.

So I don't know. I'm kind of lost on this one well listen listen to her feedback seth seth needs some guidance so if you've got any uh any advice on this hometech.fm feedback yeah let me know now i'd go with the festool i think yeah it looks so nice and they have that little like cart thing that you can i'm not gonna buy the cart because the cart is probably like i don't know i think it like $300 or something crazy for the cart. But they have little roller wheels that you can put on it and roll things around, which is all I'd want. And it's like a nice little modular system, which I like. So I don't know. Grown up toys. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, keep us posted, Seth uh what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it home technology leader snap av continues its acquisition spree picking up

custom plus distributing in its five branch locations in the pacific northwest and california so locations in seattle portland sacramento san jose and Los Angeles. Custom Plus is the fourth distributor SnapAV has acquired since March of 2018 when it grabbed All Net in the Midwest, followed by Volutone in Southern California and MRI in the Northeast. In its quest to cover the U.S. with brick-and-mortar locations, SnapAV is still missing at least three major markets, Texas, South Central, Florida, and the atlantic so we're taking bets now yeah yeah you know as a as a fellow distributor in the custom integrator market i can tell you there's

this contest that we have like it's kind of like you know dealers have with the holy snap thing like as you you go out and you buy as many uh competitors as possible and then you get like a free cruise or an apple computer or something it is insane they uh they're really on quite the spree here including of course the big news about control 4 recently um interesting wrinkle the distributor boasts more than 30 brands in its car electronics line card interesting Interesting, yeah. Security, entertainment, communication, navigation, lighting, and more. Navigation, lighting, and more. So it might probably be incidental.

I don't know that SnapAV is really looking to get into the 12-volt business, but interesting wrinkle to the business. We'll have to see what happens there. When will the money run out? Not anytime soon, evidently. That's right. No time soon, apparently.

Well, Jason, a real home tech mystery that we have here. A couple of email blasts. Cue the mystery music. A couple of email blasts have gone out. And RSS feeds and Google has kind of cached some of these things. But a CE Pro article was posted with the URL title and a little bit of the byline written in that RIP, like rest in peace, HAI Home Automation icon, CEPro wouldn't exist without you. And I think you found a little screenshot that says a little bit more. Yeah, this went out in an email. It says in sort of the

preview there is how Home automation inc hai now discontinued by leviton was responsible for the existence of ce pro plus photos from hai and co-founder jay mckellen in the early days but the interesting mysterious wrinkle seth i'm sure you'll get to here the link no longer works it It's a 404, yeah. It doesn't go anywhere. 404. So a home tech mystery that we have. I don't know if this is like one of those, you know those obituaries that they have written

for current people that are alive? I'm sure there's one for Trump, there's one for Obama, there's one for all the, if you're a famous person, they write an obit for you and they put those in put those in the CMS and like, so they can do the breaking news. Boom. Somebody, somebody passed away. Right. Yeah. Uh, I, I, I wonder if it was that, or if, if HAI really is, is being discontinued by Leviton, like, uh, probably, probably more, more the, uh, the latter than the former, I would think, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's really interesting. Uh, you know, the possibility does exist that it could just be a mistake, like a page got moved

on the website or URL got changed after it published. So there is that possibility in fairness. We don't want to, you know, this is speculation, but it is interesting that that link is now down. Like you said, it was cached by Google. It was sent out in an email. It did come up in my RSS feed. So I had clicked on it to talk about it on the show and got the 404 message. I'm not sure what's going on there, but we'll have to keep a close eye. And if anyone listening has any information, definitely reach out and let us know. All right, moving on here.

Amazon tooted its own horn today by announcing that Prime Day 2019 put up greater sales numbers than what it saw during last year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. It called the two-day period, quote, the largest shopping event in Amazon history. It's becoming something of a tradition at this point, with the company regularly saying that Prime Day is the busiest shopping event of the year, despite being around for significantly less time than other celebrations of rampant consumerism. And I got to say that they did a great job of getting the word, however they did it, like was only half kidding when I said at the beginning that I'm happy to have my blog feeds back. I mean, I typically go through these feeds and, you know, maybe there's in one outlet that I like to follow, you know, there might be about 200 stories a week.

In this story, that count was north of 300. So a big increase in the amount of stories I had to skim through as part of my show prep. And I can tell you that almost all of that increase was Prime Day related. It got a ton of ink. And we joked about the, well, I joked about the working conditions in the Amazon warehouses at the top of the show. But there was a worker strike timed precisely for Prime Day. And all it did was have the added effect of reminding people that it was Prime Day, unfortunately, I think. Because they didn't really get much traction with it.

What are you going to do? Yeah, sort of backfired a little bit. But like you said, what are you going to do? I mean, I didn't follow the strike, but presumably there were good reasons behind it. Hopefully it, hopefully it helps them in some way, but like you said, if anything, it probably just drove more visibility. Yep. Unfortunately, no good note. What is it? No bad. There's no such thing as bad PR and yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's bad working conditions. I guess they they they time you and they make you walk like the length of three football fields and they

really haven't figured out how to make those algorithms where you know people just pick up one thing here and the next thing there and and they make them walk the length of a football field uh to pick up two products and put them in a box so i don't know it seems like a seems like something that could be solved but uh i don't know they get the stuff here in two days i don't know it seems like uh seems like something that could be solved but uh i don't know they get the stuff here in two days i don't know they're somehow yeah somehow it works miracle well speaking of uh amazon amazon music oh geez this is amazon music insert random name here amazon music unlimited is the fastest growing music streaming service ahead of both spotify and apple music according to the new report by Media Research published in the Financial Times.

Amazon Music Unlimited has been booming recently with a massive 70% growth in the last year. That brings its total subscribers up to 32 million. That's still a small time compared to Spotify's dominant 1 million paid subscribers or Apple Music's 60 million paid subscribers. But Amazon Music is catching up as the explosive growth this year shows. Spotify is still growing too, but at a much slower rate of 25% per year. Yep. And a small correction there. You said Spotify 1 million, just a slip of the tongue.

Spotify at 100 million paid subscribers and Apple Music at 60 million. Again, Amazon Music Unlimited at 32. So still really far behind in terms of overall market share, but growing at a really fast clip. The report does go on to say that one of their secret weapons quote is, of course, Alexa integration, which is driving adoption. It also talks about the demographics being a little bit different, which I driving adoption. It also talks about the demographics being a little bit different, which I thought was interesting, that Spotify and Apple Music are tending to attract a younger demographic, while Amazon Music Unlimited tends to attract more of a middle-aged and older demographic, presumably because people have Echoes in their home, and that's really

driving adoption there. So some interesting dynamics to watch out for there. It does appear that Amazon Music Unlimited is on the come up. Yeah. Interesting that, I mean, what is adoption? Is adoption just saying, hey, Amazon, play this song and not realizing where the music comes from? Or I don't know. Well, I mean, I... Because you're not really paying for the service, right?

Yeah. Well, Music Unlimited is a paid service so amazon has their i forget what the free tier is is even called but it's it's basically as a prime it's not free technically it's for prime subscribers oh okay but then unlimited is the tier up from that. And so every now and then I'll ask for a song on my Echo, and it'll come back and say that's not available on Amazon Music or whatever they call it. It is available on Music Unlimited.

Would you like to upgrade now? And I suspect they're getting, who knows, a fair portion of upgrades there. I'm not a huge music listener. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audio books and things of that nature. So music is a little bit less of something that I spend a lot of time investing in, but yeah, interesting dynamic. It's only $8 a month as well. So kind of on par with what I think Spotify and Apple are. But yeah, you may be right. The onboarding is pretty easy. If it asks you, do you want to upgrade to Amazon Music Now? And you just say yes. And then it just charges you

because they have all your info there stored on their website. So yeah, it makes sense. All right. Well, moving on here to a story, Seth, that I know you'll be excited about. Just ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, you'll have another way to tune into NASA TV's live stream. Hulu will carry the feed on its live TV service as of July 19th, and a selection of video on-demand material will arrive on the platform this week. Among the series and events you'll be able to check out on demand are Earth Views, NASA's look at 50 years of Apollo, the Emmy-nominated InSight Mars landing, SpaceX apollo the emmy nominated insight mars landing spacex dragon crew capsule and the tess launch so some interesting content coming there does sound like this is a so it talks about on-demand

content as well as live content i'm not sure if you have to have the hulu live subscription in order to access all of this or how that's going to work but uh cool option for the space geeks out there yeah i, I don't know. I will say that I ran across this really cool. I put the link on our card there. Apollo real time dot org. It's a website. It's always up, I think. But you can actually click on it right now since we are kind of in the midst of the of the mission and it will take you. There it will take you, there's like a T-minus one minute link that will take you to T-minus one minute. And then there is a link that says live.

And it will take you to what is happening live. Like they just launched the other day because they timed it with the 50th anniversary. And it tracks all like the radio recordings. If there is any broadcast TVs, it'll put them up on there. It's actually really well done. I sat and watched it tracks all like the radio recordings if there's any broadcast tvs it'll put them up put them up on there it's actually really well done i sat and watched it for way too long uh but it has all the conversations outlined anything that historically came up like this is you know um new armstrong joking about what he saw on the moon. So yeah, Duke jokes about Buzz holding cue cards.

That's what's happening right now from the launch, 34 hours, 14 minutes, and 28 seconds into the mission. So kind of cool. It gives you audio and everything, the audio of every radio transmission that happened, whether that be between the capsule and or the the vehicle and earth and then also everything like inside all the mission control channels like every everyone in there had all these like little back channel microphones set

up and you can go in there and listen to them talk and when they talk it lights up it's wild cool no it's really neat so there's there's actually some video playing right now. I don't know what they're doing. They're kind of like looking around at each other and they are not in, they're just past halfway to the moon, it looks like. And they will be landing in the moon in a couple of, yeah, 34 more, 30 some odd more hours.

And then on the moon surface, you can watch that whole thing live if you wanted to kind of kind of cool very cool no it's neat well speaking of hulu hulu uh last week quietly brought back 4k streaming video uh albeit in a limited capacity after taking down options for ultra hd uh viewing later last year the company confirmed uh the update on twitter and for now 4k streaming is only available on the apple tv which is uh fifth generation or later and chromecast ultra devices and content is limited to the hulu original programs well it's a good it's a step in the

right direction i i remember hearing that hulu had had retrenched from from the 4K streaming deal a while back. And so it's good to see them moving back in that direction. It definitely one step closer to Amazon Prime and Netflix, of course, both have 4K availability. I think Netflix really is leading the way there in terms of the library size. Netflix does require you, of course, to be on their most expensive plan to get that. But there are plenty of options out there. And in this very competitive streaming space, it's certainly going to be a factor to see Hulu moving in that direction. Some real-time follow-up.

Seinfeld's not in 4K. But I got to say, that yada, yada, yada feature completely has changed my my view on Hulu. Randomly just playing some TVs. Actually, all I guess I wanted. So I just go over there and hit it and it works. That's right. Yeah. Now I've used it a couple of times as well. And it's nice. I think there's really like we talked about it last week. There's just something to be said for for letting fate dictate what you watch. Like in this day and age of streaming, there's just too many damn decisions.

Sometimes I just want TV to make a choice for me. The sponge one just came on. Yeah, there you go. That's a classic. All right. all right well moving on here while wise is uh wise the w-y-z-e wise hyped prime day reveal was a total snooze fest according to that's not funny home depot has got the goods namely the wise wi-fi smart plug as originally disclosed by you know who with the favorable wise pricing we've come to expect a two-pack on these outlets runs a mere twenty dollars once again undercutting

the competition and again reading from that's not funny there ten dollars an outlet that's that's wild i don't know man i just this is closer to your your dream still scratching my head on this one this is closer to your dream of the inexpensive little outlet thing that you can plug in and and it's true yeah yeah it's true the price point's there for sure it's the it's the native integration into those troubleshooting platforms that i think would be an awesome use case right for this sort of hardware right yeah i mean if you add that on it'll probably bring the price to what 80 or something crazy yeah who knows it's how it seems to go for us, right? Yeah, no idea of the economics, but it would be amazing.

Cedia has announced that Mitchell Klein has been chosen as this year's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Klein will be honored at the Cedia Expo opening keynote hosted at the Colorado Convention Center on Wednesday, September 11th, 2019. The CDA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual who has exhibited outstanding creative, innovative, and visionary leadership in the growth and advancement of residential technology industry. Nominations are submitted by the industry professionals and evaluated on a basis of achievement and service within the industry. Pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah, this is awesome. I wanted to include this one and give Mitch a shout out. I've had the opportunity to get to know Mitch a little bit over the last few years, and he's a great guy. Has done a lot of really good things for the channel. We've had him on the show before to talk about Z-Wave, and really enjoyed getting to know him there. I've also, again, got to know him a little bit in person, and he's a really nice guy. You can tell that he's very, very passionate about what he does and has worked really hard to push the industry forward.

So I wanted to take an opportunity on this week's podcast to send a big congratulations to Mitch Klein for the recognition. Very, very well deserved. So is he still at Z-Wave Alliance? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where I recognize the name, I think, from. So very cool. All right. Well, one other story we wanted to talk about really quickly here in our news for the week is HBO Max related story. And I thought this was an interesting piece that we

wanted to spend just a couple of minutes on because I think, you know, if listeners are anything like me, they have a lot of questions about HBO Max. It's this new player coming into the space. We've heard a lot about Disney Plus. We, of course, know a lot about all of the big established players. And this one is another big one coming onto the scene. And so this was an article from Digital Trends titled Five Serious Questions About Warner's New Streaming Service, HBO Max. And it goes on to break down, I think, some of the big questions that are interesting to think about. And so first of all, how much? You know, that's the big obvious one. Talks about how when the unconfirmed report, there was an unconfirmed report of the cost back just last month

that it would come in about $16 to $17. However, subsequent official announcements from AT&T and WarnerMedia have not offered any confirmation of that price point. So we'll be curious to see what price point they come out at, also if they end up with multiple tiers or if it's just one rate for the platform man the article goes sorry go ahead i was gonna say that's that's pricey yeah it's pricey for for all that yeah and again that was an unconfirmed report so take it with a grain of salt um only time will tell there another big question that details have not emerged about is 4K and HDR.

So we just talked about this with Hulu. Of course, it's going to be a factor as well with HBO Max, and we don't currently know. HBO Go and HBO Now have thus far resisted the move from 1080p up to 4K, but the article talks about how HBO Max will likely need to take into consideration 4K and HDR when it attempts to compete with industry leaders. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I mean, you're going to have to offer that at some point. And I can't imagine, I mean, does HBO now do 4K? Yeah, according to the article, it says, according to the article, quoting from the from the article here again in digital trends it says hbo including the premium channel and its streaming counterparts hbo go and hbo now thus far has resisted moving up from 1080p to 4k yeah yeah

i don't know i don't i wonder if that's even like a for most people if that's even like a, for most people, if that's even a selling point, like you have the 4k TV, you have the 4k player, but like, you're just happy enough watching game of Thrones, not in 4k. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I don't think it's a, I don't believe that it's a primary driver. I do think at the margin, there are some people who are going to factor that in, right. But I think you're right. It really It really comes down much more to really the content and not the resolution of said content. And that's really what the next three big questions were about. So what happens to DC Universe, which is a relatively small but, again, quoting from the story, impressive library of movies and television series tied to the DC Entertainment Universe, including several well-received original series.

WarnerMedia has not indicated its plans to change this platform. How much, skipping to the last one here really quickly, what about DC Films? So there's also talk of how Disney Plus has announced that it will be the exclusive source for many of the Marvel Studios and Lucasfilms projects. So it would make sense for HBO Max to do the same with Warner Brothers content like DC Films. And then finally, how much TV will it offer? Given the name, HBO Max seems to suggest HBO programming will be one of the basic elements of the service. However, along with HBO, WarnerMedia also owns Cinemax, TBS, TNT, and TruTV, as well as CNN, HLN, and a long list of other major and minor broadcast cable and premium TV networks. So will there be any more TV-type offerings included in this bundle as well is not clear today either. Man, what a mess.

What a mess we've gotten ourselves into. We were like, we don't want this. I want to pick the channels that i want and then we got that and they're like but now we have 30 different services to to pay for it that all cost 30 a piece like it's almost like the the uh the cable companies had it right but they were so abusive with their power of getting that right. Like now we're all out there. I don't know. Like to me, it seems like somebody is eventually going to come along with something like this. This is close, but not quite there, right?

This is close. It has a ton of, it could have a ton of content in it. And it could be priced at a premium. It could be up in that $20 range, but if you get all of this, if you get live TV from a couple of these channels out of there as well, it might be worth it for some people who find value in these programs

and this kind of thing. And I don't think the tech specs like 4K and HDR are going to be that big of a deal. If you can watch, you know, if it's the only place that you can pick up dc films and dc i mean not that those are great movies or anything but like that they definitely have people who want to see them um so you know if it's the only place that you can stream them or and download them this this may have a decent following yeah because of that

yeah i agree it's become a really difficult landscape to navigate, but ultimately, I think choice is a good thing. It's confusing and it comes with its own drawbacks, but at least you can go out there and pick and choose from a variety of sources. You're not locked into long-term contracts. If you want to just stick with Netflix and Hulu or HBO Max or Disney Plus, you can go out there and do that and still save a bunch of money relative to what you might be spending on a really expensive cable package. So I think the net effect of this has all been really positive, but you're right. I mean, it has come with some pretty clear drawbacks in terms of sort of the paradox of choice and almost having too many choices at this point that it's becoming overwhelming for people, especially, I think, for those who aren't very technologically inclined.

People who don't spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, it's now become completely overwhelming to try and navigate this. And I think a lot of those people are probably just sticking with cable or maybe defaulting to, to like Netflix. Cause that's the big one that everyone knows about. Well, and, and not to mention that, you know, you add in a $12 Netflix subscription and you add in another $10 for Hulu, you add in, you know, you start getting all of these reoccurring fees that come out at different, you know, for different billings. And it's like, it's all pretty much adds up to being after you add in the internet on top,

it adds, it comes out to being what a cable bill would cost to have all access to all this stuff. Granted, some of it's not going to be, you know, video on demand like like Netflix. You can watch just about anything on there when you want to watch it. And there's there's there's definitely on TV the option of where, you know, you have to watch it on the timeline that they present it. So I don't know. I'm seeing like Comcast offers a lot more on video on demand these days than they used to. So it's very interesting to see how this all plays out.

Well, I guess we'll have to wait to see where the HBO Max ends up, both in price and features. All right. Well, all of the links and topics that we've talked about on this week's episode can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes further analysis, weekly show reminders, and other occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm. And don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room for the live show Wednesday starting somewhere between 7 and 7.30 Eastern. You can find out more at hometech.fm. All right, well, let's move to the mailbag this week.

We've got a good one here from Nathaniel Gorey. Message here, the garage Wyze Cam is helpful. Got one of those. You guys forgot one of the best use for Wyze Cams in old homes with basement laundry, laundry monitoring. We have new May tags, but bought them just before their Wi-Fi connected platform launched. I have a Wyze Cam to see how much time the machines think is left on a cycle where auto cycles can vary a lot. The Sense energy monitoring lets us know when they're actually done, but the Wyze camera is essentially being used as a progress bar. I like that. We have been doing a lot more laundry now that we have a new addition to our home.

Our daughter was born in March. Congrats on that, Nathaniel. And her nursery was, of course, the first room in the house to get a new Caseta fan control. Keep up the good work. So a great email. And, you know, it's so funny and it's so true that these cameras are so inexpensive now that you can come up with these silly use cases like that. And it's totally valid, right? He's using it to watch the dial on his laundry machine. It's not, not too much of a

like for, first of all, what's a basement. And then second off, uh, it's not, not a silly use case. Like it's a pretty good one. I'm sitting here like, Oh yeah, I put in laundry like an hour ago. It's still sitting in the washer and I have to, you know, put it in the dryer now. Uh, but yeah, of course it's my daughter's clothes because today was wet and wacky Wednesday at the daycare. So, you know, she comes home with a pile of wet clothes that I get to wash. But yeah, no, I totally get every bit of that email there. And yeah, that's a great use case for that. And when you've got a new addition to the home, like Nathaniel does, anything you can do to shave off a couple of seconds off any routine is very valuable.

Absolutely. Well, Jason, I've got a, I've got a great pick of the week this week, but I, I, I, I need to know, and most people have this on, on your, uh, on, on their phones. It's the, uh, the speed test app. Uh, the Ookla one. Do you have that? I do, so let me open it. Okay, okay. So open it, and I want you to just like, I want you to bring it kind of closer to you in front of your microphone. All right, all right, it's close. And then what I want you to do is follow my directions there.

Hold down the go button. I'm like, I'm getting nervous here. Okay. Hold it down, and you'll know when to let go, okay? So just hold it down, and just keep holding it down. Something happened. My screen went black. It was like a rapid, like heartbeat.

Yep. But now my screen just went black. Well, you should get a little bit more out of it. All right. Let's try this again. Hold on. We're doing this live. Yeah.

There's no rehearsal for this. All right. Here we go. So you start to feel it like a heartbeat on your thumb and then it quickly speeds up. And you'll see it change. And then the circle turns into like a little, yeah, like a ball of, I don't even know what that is. Like a, that's, that's funny. How do we, how would you even describe that?

Did you, did you let it go? I did, but it just went black. Oh, man. All right. So what is it? It's not doing anything. It does like that thing where the circle turns into like it looks like a melting something. Something is happening.

I just doesn't seem to be. All right, here we go. We're going to try this again. It's working. I don't know. The app just closed. Huh? All right. Well, this was a failed experiment i can't believe this it's like 30 times it's clearly doing something but then when it gets

to the end it just the screen just goes black and the app shuts down all right well if you're listening to the show and you have the the uk speed test app, I encourage you to hopefully have better results than Jason and go out there and press the button down. And like I said, you'll know when to let go. Man, now I want to know what happens. I'm kind of disappointed that it's not there anymore. I know. This is like anti-climax here. All right.

Well, there you have it. And that's why this is primarily a recorded show. Try and get it to work over the weekend. If you are listening and have any feedback, comments, questions, suggestions, picks of the week, ideas for a show topic or guest, any and all of the above, definitely give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm once again that's feedback at hometech.fm or if you would prefer you can visit our website at hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form and we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially those who are able to

financially support the show through our patreon page if you don't know about our patron page head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as one dollar a month any pledge over five dollars a month gets you a shout on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our private slack chat the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about all aspects of home technology and toolkits and toolkits because we talk about those there too that's right don't forget the toolkits, because we talk about those there too. That's right. Don't forget the toolkits and Easter eggs in apps that sometimes work. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised. Yeah.

All right. Well, hey, if you want to support the show but can't do so financially, we definitely understand that. Please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes or on your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here at the Home Tech Podcast, please take a minute to support us by leaving a review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. We would appreciate it. Well, Jason, that wraps up this week. Let's see. Man, I got toolkits to buy. I'm going to have to get on Amazon and figure out which one to get.

Oh, man. Do it. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I'm a Milwaukee guy. Like, I've got Milwaukee tools. That's kind of the brand that I've standardized on, and certainly no complaints there. But, yeah, with a case like that, I mean, I can definitely make an argument for something that's not fire engine red. i just don't like i don't like the color of it but you know it's it's it's

utilitarian right i don't really have to care that much about it but i don't know the the festival stuff is kind of nice because they actually do make tools but they're like pretty expensive uh but they're like you know trim finishing finished carpeting carpentry tools like joiners and that kind of thing um one of the things they had was a little vacuum cleaner that is like the same size as some of those cases that we were looking at and uh it's got like a hepa filter on it and it it kind of folds up into the same size so like a bucket is really it looks like a bucket but it's really a vacuum cleaner and you can it's got a hose attachments and everything so yeah nice not that i you know want another vacuum well anything beats a cardboard box.

Yeah. You got to get past the homeless guy. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. It's got to go. So I think the, I don't know. I'm leaning towards Milwaukee because they do have a ton of options there. But I don't know.

I don't know. The Festal stuff. I mean, not that they both don't have uh a ton of options but the milwaukee stuff is kind of like yeah i buy it i don't have to be smart about like organization or anything like i just can buy the box and it comes with all inserts and everything and i don't have to figure out what needs to go in there i just dump stuff in there i don't know i haven't't really thought. Big decision. We will await your decision with bated breath. This is the same problem I have with picking something to

watch on Netflix. I sit there and I look at these stupid things. That's precisely it. Every day I have something different in my cart. You need a shuffle button. I'll just get one of each and try and clip them onto each other with zip ties or something. All right, man. Well, I hope you have a great weekend and we'll talk again soon. All right. Sounds good. All right, man. Well, I hope you have a great weekend and, uh, we'll talk again soon. All right. Sounds good. All right. Take care.