HomeTech.fm - Episode 278 - WiFi -3

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Researchers have found a way to extend WiFi (sort of) up to 200 ft. SpaceX plans to launch satellite-based low latency broadband service in 2020. Google Home update bricks some units. Homebuilders are ditching Nest. Voice assistants introduce a new kind of phishing attack. Best Buy takes on Amazon with free next-day deliveries for the holidays. Ikea’s long-awaited smart blinds are finally available in parts of the U.S. An interesting debate over Google’s decision to leave WiFi6 out of Google Nest WiFi. And 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, October 25th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, we're back in the saddle. We are. We are. This is our last show before Halloween. I'm double-checking myself there. I think we're going to record one more before Halloween, but it won't air before Halloween. So what are your plans this year, Seth? Let's see.

This year I'm kind of doing the same thing I did last year for the decorations outside. I don't think we're doing anything additional except maybe a smoke machine outside. Maybe we'll get're doing anything additional except maybe maybe a smoke machine outside maybe we'll get that put out because we got nice got a pretty good smoke machine well you're making me feel kind of like a bum we've got we got some of those spider webs that you put on the bushes this year yep yeah and uh we got a couple jack-o'-lanterns outside oh that's all i got no well that that wouldn't pass muster around these parts and now no we've got we've got the um last year i did the projector thing with the singing heads from the

disney haunted mansion thing i don't know if you've seen that but like that's right i think you told me about that yep i got that ready to go this year i kind of built a box for the projector to live in a little bit better than the cardboard box the black spray painted cardboard box i had last year so i i spent today and kind of put together a little wooden box, which honestly, my carpentry skills doesn't look any better than the cardboard box that I had last year, but at least it's size more appropriate. Well, it's not a beauty contest. No, it's going to be spray painted black and, you know, not really, you know, you can't see it at night. It's just going to have a projector that lives inside of it. So hopefully that'll be... i used to work uh i used to work with an installer who whenever we

would do you know something that didn't turn out great he would say well it looks good from my house so seth your projector box looks great from my house there you go well that's all i got that's all i gotta worry about so yeah it sounds that's a pretty good uh that's a pretty good striving for excellence exactly exactly all right well what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it according to a press release published on tuesday october 22nd researchers at brigham young university have recently developed a new protocol that can boost Wi-Fi signal range for IoT devices to more than 60 meters. It's nearly 200 feet away from the access point without, this is kind of cool, without the addition of new hardware. Normally, Wi-Fi requires at least one megabit per second to maintain signal,

but this newly developed protocol known as On-off noise power communication, or ONPC, is apparently able to maintain signal with just one bit per second. Not very useful, but, and it turns out to be that one bit per second is just enough to allow many Wi-Fi enabled devices that simply need to send an on-off message to function. The press release mentioned a few examples such as garage door sensors, sprinkler systems or air quality monitors uh yeah that's that that's very true like you know things that need to send like um some like like a water water detection thing like something uh is detecting water or it's not detecting water there's there's no analog difference in between like 50 chance i am

detecting water no no it is detecting water it's not the house is flooding or it's not that's right uh yeah that that would be a perfect little device to to get this new protocol put in place and and maybe be used with existing equipment kind of cool yeah yeah the the title is a little misleading researchers found a way to extend wi-fi range well yes and no uh you're not you're not going to be watching YouTube over this signal. But, you know, like it says, it does work for certain things. It works, it's kind of interesting, it works by letting Wi-Fi enabled devices transmit wireless noise along with data. Quote, they programmed into the Wi-Fi sensor a series of ones and zeros, essentially turning the signal

on and off in a specific pattern. The router is then able to distinguish this pattern from surrounding wireless noise, therefore knowing that the sensor is still transmitting something, even if data wasn't being received. It's kind of an interesting approach. And again, like we alluded to there, it could be handy for sensors or things like that that don't require a be handy for sensors or things like that that don't require a whole lot of bandwidth, but where that extra range might be really helpful. So kind of an interesting technology. Yeah, it reminds me of how analog balanced audio works, right?

An XLR cable where one has one phase reversed, one phase the other way, and if it picks up noise along the way, it kind of gets canceled out by the little analog circuitry at the end interesting little technology and maybe maybe we'll see it coming out i think they missed the mark here calling it onpc i mean wi-fi these days it's gonna have to have a number it's gonna have to be called something like wi-fi negative three and i think is probably negative negative that's right all right well moving on here spacex is confident it can start offering broadband service in the United States via its Starlink Constellation in mid-2020. Coming right up. This according to the company's president and to eight batches of satellites and also finish the design and engineering of the user terminals, which is not a minor challenge. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a Starlink terminal at his house, and he used it to send a tweet early on October 22nd,

quote, sending this tweet through space via Starlink satellite. He tweeted to his 29 million followers, whoa, it worked. So SpaceX making some progress here. A few other bullet points I think we wanted to hit on this one, but interesting story and definitely always fun to watch what Elon Musk is up to. Yeah, that crazy Elon Musk, I don't know what to think about him, but like this, this is a cool, this is a cool product. I mean, uh, this will bring real low latency broadband out to people in rural areas in, in ways that we just have not seen, um, in, in the past. Like this is, this is, I don't't know jason you've probably had you you've worked mostly i think in the la markets and then and then up in denver maybe in denver you probably

ran across these satellite uh internet yep yeah so like they were just horrible and when we say low latency that's not what we're talking about like you would you would send a request out like you would type in a web address like google and you just kind of have to wait for that to like go up, go through Google, come back. And like this would be just as fast as what you have, if not faster, than what you have as a local like cable service or fiber to the home service going up to these low orbit satellites. So this could be game changing for rural areas, uh, who, and, and quite frankly, it would be another competitor that, you know, I I'm locked to Comcast here.

I can't have, you know, fiber, uh, fiber to the house, like the fiber to the house service here. I'm old. There's only one person that offers high speed internet at my house. Um, and I can't go through anybody else. So this would be an option for me too, but I think it's going to be a real game changer for those people in areas that have no service, other than maybe like DSL or something, something ancient technology. Yeah. Yeah. It said the price point is being studied. Shotwell said millions of people in the US pay $80 per month to get, quote, crappy service, end quote. Can't argue with that. She didn't say whether Starlink will cost more or less than $80 per month, but suggested that it would be a segment of the public the company would target,

as well as rural areas, Seth, like you mentioned, that currently have no connectivity. Yeah, yeah. I got an update on my crappy service. For some reason, and I don't want to brag about this too much, but they've been giving me credits in the orders of hundreds of dollars every month. And I'm too scared to call them and ask them what it's about. So I haven't paid like a cable bill in like a couple months now. And I'm really, I'm really, oh man, the secret's out. I think what's going to happen is they're going to realize their error and be like, Hey, Hey, you owe five months

where the cable service and, or internet service and, and all these owe five months worth of internet service and all these late fees on top of it because you never paid your bill. Right. Do you take your chances? I don't know. That's the question. 50-50. 50-50. Just like that sensor. It's 50-50. I don't know. That's right. Crappy service, but I can't complain.

It's not really working great either. Crappy service, but they're paying you. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I can't complain. can't be paid to complain so that's funny all right well moving on google has confirmed that it's fixing a problem in the firmware updates that have bricked home and home mini speakers numerous owners have reported that their devices are completely unusable and if you're affected you'll see the speakers four lights stay lit up. Not mine. Mine's working. It's not clear when there might be a fix. However, it's a serious problem for those unfortunate owners affected by the glitch. The good news is Google is replacing effective devices

regardless of whether they're in and out, in or out of warranty until the fix is issued. Not a good deal. Yeah. If you release a firmware update that literally is breaking devices. So at least Google is replacing these. I noticed in the original story they had issued an update. In the original story, there wasn't clarity about whether they would be replacing devices that were out of warranty. It turns out, thankfully, they are. The story also goes on to note that some people have had success by temporarily unplugging the power cable or performing a factory reset, but others have not been so lucky.

It also mentions that this does not appear to affect the Home Max displays like the Home Hub or Nest-branded speakers. So if you got any of those, I think you're in the clear for now, at least. Yeah. Yeah. We, um, a couple of months ago we introduced an, uh, a driver update feature. Uh, it's taken me about, I don't know, it's taken me about a year to put together correctly and, and trust myself and my code enough to actually release. And this is my, my greatest nightmare that I, I pushed something out that bricks a bunch of controllers or bricks, a bunch of like drivers or something like that. Like I just, uh, I've, I've done everything I can and, uh, in a, that I know of, but man, everybody, people are human. They're going to make mistakes. And, uh, this is totally understandable. I, this is, this is the fear I have. So the fear every,

every time I press the update button, this is the fear I have. You can imagine pretty much every developer who's ever pushed a remote update, remote update to any piece of hardware probably shares that concern with you. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, speaking of Google, Google's Nest smart home division has seen major upheaval this year. And according to a report from Bloomberg, the changes aren't sitting well with residential builders who formerly integrated Nest products into their construction projects. Bloomberg's report says that the residential builders who, quote, collectively purchased tens of thousands

of Nest devices each year, end quote, have started avoiding Nest products due to Google's changes. Another house electronics installer, David Berman, told Bloomberg, we were more or less forced into the switch. When people buy a connected device, they expect it to connect. That's not something that happens with Nest anymore. So Google's changes... That's a little bit much, David. I mean... Yeah, I was going to say, Google's change is not being greeted warmly here, but I don't know that this is really giving a fair shake to Google. I'm not sure. Seems a bit hyperbolic, that last statement there like because it still

does connect you just have to have one of the nest partners they've gone out of their way to kind of like uh say that hey we have these new apis um it's harder for smaller companies and smaller projects uh to get involved with it from what i understand but it's not like this stuff doesn't work anymore and it's not like it's like you bought a connected thermostat with the Nest branding on it and it doesn't work tomorrow, right? Like it still works. You just have to use a different app. Right. Right. So a little hyperbolic is a good, a good word for it. But, you know, I think all the same, there's, there's a takeaway here. Certainly I, I can especially empathize with, uh, with builders who aren't necessarily following this stuff as closely and they wanted to partner and have a line of products that were just going to work a certain

way. And I guess buyer beware because we all who work and live in this industry, uh, are a little bit more expecting of this sort of thing. And I guess builders perhaps maybe got a little bit spooked by it, which I can certainly understand. So an interesting angle to the story and interesting to see Bloomberg reporting on it. Empathizing with builders. That's a new one. I'm not going that direction. You're going to stay out of that one? Yep. Yep. Yep. Fair enough.

White Hat hackers at Germany's security research labs have developed eight apps for Alexa skills and for Google Home actions that all passed Amazon or Google security vetting process. These skills or actions posed as simple apps for checking horoscopes, et cetera. Behind the scenes, these smart spies, as the research called them, eavesdropped on users and phished for their passwords. Interesting. Very interesting. So these guys made, guys and gals, who knows, made four Alexa skills and four Google Home actions to basically steal, and they passed all the Amazon and Google security vetting things. And now they're in the store and people can download these and lose their passwords.

That's wild. Yeah. It wasn't totally clear to me if these are still in the store or what, but these are white hat hackers. So presumably, Amazon and Google were made aware of this after the fact. And I would assume that the apps were pulled and were never really doing any real harm. But it's an interesting story because it does point out yet one more area where we simply need to be conscious. Network security, data privacy, these are big topics that are front of mind for a lot of people. And I think, you know, we've, we've discussed a lot about just, um, voice assistance in general and the privacy concerns that are, are inherent with that technology. But this story takes it kind of to another level. And I don't know, I've never had a, uh, a skill on my Echo ask me for a password. Um, so I don't know how normal that is. That to me would seem really strange if

that ever happened and my flags would immediately go up. But assuming that is somewhat normal behavior, again, I've never seen that before myself, then this would be something to be really aware of. But it does mention that the apps would also do things like respond with a fake error message or complete a command. But instead of stopping the recording, they would just stay open and be able to record audio without you knowing it, things of that nature. So again, buyer beware. So they were just kind of doing some sneaky things there with the apps to prove what's possible. And again, thankfully, these were white hat hackers

so hopefully this will help raise awareness and improve security standards at the companies i think when you had the mics on on both google and both uh both amazon the little lights should be on top like lighting up like i know the amazon when it would like point at you or try and find you wherever you are in the room uh the little led on top would try and find you um you are in the room. Uh, the little led on top would try and find you. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's not a good thing. Something like, cause I mean, what about a false positive where you actually set that command off and then it's, uh, it thinks that you tried to do something and you're like, Oh, that's silly thing. And it's still over there recording you and you're, you're not paying attention to it. Um, very interesting though. That's right. Yeah. So I think this is, we're still pretty early in this technology in the grand scheme of things,

but something definitely to be aware of. Moving on here, Best Buy is offering free next day deliveries over the holidays. The expedited shipping will be available to almost everyone. Story says 99% of customers and will include almost everything except for heavier items like big screen TVs and refrigerators. If customers are outside of the next day zone, they'll still get free standard shipping. This offer could make Best Buy more of a threat to Amazon, especially because Best Buy shipping is free and Amazon customers still have to sign up for Prime to get the free delivery perk. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. You have to have

the Prime. It's free delivery, but not free, what, next day delivery. Well, there's some things that are free day, next day. A lot of them are like two or three day that you get from Amazon. But this is interesting. I don't think this is a very sustainable type of thing that we have going on here with all of these random delivery vans and vehicles showing up at the house all day long. Like, I'll have Amazon stop by the house like three or four times and in somebody's random car it could be a random uh amazon truck like uh it could be a white van that has a bunch of like i don't

know if you looked inside them but they have a bunch of like bags full of boxes inside of these and i guess they just get their bags and have to go out and deliver them but it doesn't seem like it's a very sustainable thing now best buy is going to try and do it man this is this is crazy walmart walmart has experimented with it as well um the other day i i got up from my desk and just went took a walk around the block to get some fresh air uh you know this nice weather is uh we're running out of time here as winter approaches and i was just kind of enjoying a walk around the block and it just so happened that uh one of those amazon vans you were talking about was in front of me stopped at a house and as i sort of walked around the block he was almost right in front of me like the whole time because

he was stopping at so many houses uh that it was literally like it was almost like i was walking next to this van and i remember just thinking like man this is going on in like every neighborhood across the country yeah yeah this guy's stopping at like almost every fourth or fifth house he had like a package i mean the volume uh at which this is going on is it's hard to wrap your brain around. Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't look sustainable to me at all. Like, I just, I don't, I don't know if it's going to like, it's got, something's got to break here, right? Like we're just going to run out of room on the streets. Basically. Everybody's just going to have a delivery van

parked in front of their house. Yeah. It's just going to all be like autonomous drones soon. Right. Right. They'll, they'll, they'll zoom over your house and just drop a package with a parachute and it'll land in your backyard somewhere that'd be nice only half joking well uh speaking of speaking of retail here smart home enthusiasts in the u.s have been waiting impatiently impatiently for ikea to release its affordable smart blinds. Guess what? We need to wait no longer. Despite a series of delays, the blinds are now available to purchase in the U.S., but only in selected stores.

Womp womp. The blinds were set to arrive in the U.S. in April, but their launch has been delayed for a bunch of unspecified reasons. We heard it was going to be in April, then it got pushed back to October. We heard it was in April, it got pushed Then it got pushed back to October. Sorry, we heard it was in April. It got pushed back until, quote, later in the year.

And then we heard October. I think the U.S. is kind of like last on the list here to get them. They've been available overseas for a while. We've been kind of just like watching YouTube unboxing videos in Swedish, right? That's right. I want these blinds. Why can't I have them? And they're just not here.

But now they are. So go to IKEA and get a $150 blind and see how cool blackout roller shades are. Yeah. It says the blinds have appeared on IKEA's US website, but they cannot be ordered online. According to this story, you'll have to head to one of the selected physical stores.

At the time of this writing, those stores include California, Colorado, here in Colorado, Utah, Indiana, and Oregon. So we'll see. I'm looking at the sizes here, and I don't know if I have any windows that match those sizes. I definitely don't. Yeah, there's no chance of getting these yeah they've got it looks like currently they're listed um 154 for a 32 inch by 76 and three quarter or 149 for uh 30 inch by 76 and three quarter so it's only a couple of sizes listed there i'll have to take a look at this i am in the market for some blinds, and it would be cool to get some motorized ones.

So we'll see if these are a viable option. Yeah, it's all going to come down to the sizes. Man, this has got to be so tricky to determine what sizes they're going to offer. Oh, yeah, totally. I'm not sure how they would do that. No, no, me either, me either. It says both sizes are blackout roller-style blinds, which are controlled wirelessly by the remote control.

They're powered by a lithium-ion battery, so you don't have to get power to them, which is nice. And it's removable and rechargeable. So that's really nice to have. And I'm hoping to maybe, maybe Florida will get added to that list one of these days, and I'll make it over there to the IKEA store and get one,

pick one up for, I don't know, guest room or something like that. May have a window that's that size. I don't know. Got some weird windows here. Go grab the shade and some meatballs. Hot dog and what are those cinnamon bun things you can get? The six pack of cinnamon buns? That's right. Yeah. That's right. All right here. Well, last story for this week that we want to spend a couple of minutes talking about. A story from Digital Trends here. Google Nest's Wi-Fi won't support Wi-Fi 6. Here's why that's short-sighted. that technology out, which I think you can probably make reasonable minds could disagree on that. But I thought it was a good story just to get a sense for what manufacturers are now already having to start thinking about with regards to Wi-Fi 6 and as consumers, and especially for the professionals in the audience. I think there's some insights here about this technology that

are useful to uncover. So first talking about Google, the story talks about the, quote, glaring absence of Wi-Fi 6 and how it makes the router less future-proof than it should be. Google has, of course, defended this decision, citing the cost and lack of available compatible devices in the home. The story asks the question, is this a cop-out? Most people, the story goes on to say, upgrade their phones every few years, upgrade their PCs even more infrequently, but routers and modems are even further down the list. Most people don't pay attention to these devices unless there's a big malfunction. And I wanted to stop on that point. I think that's generally true, been true in the past at least. But I do wonder with

all the advances in Wi-Fi and the inexpensive mesh systems that have now come out, will that remain true? Or will, you know, will mesh Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi in the home in general become something that people start to upgrade more often? And there's, of course, a whole separate conversation about the environmental sustainability and everything of, of that, if we're all going out and replacing our routers every year or two. Uh, but you know, I, I did think that was an interesting point. I was thinking about my experience and it's true. I mean, I've only upgraded my wifi, uh, a handful of times, maybe over the last 10 years at most.

So I think they make a good point there. Yeah, I was wondering, like you have the Eero, right? I do. But before that, I had Airport. And I had that for, I don't even know how long. I mean, it was many, many years. Right, right. And you haven't, I mean, I don't know if you have a new phone or not, but like if you did have a new phone, would you like,

because it does say here in the article that Wi-Fi 6 ecosystem is starting to grow. The iPhone 11 series and Samsung Galaxy 10, S10 and the Note 10, whatever that all this Android stuff means. There are some phones coming out now that have Wi-Fi 6 built into them. Would you find it compelling enough that your phone didn't get like faster speeds i don't know like why why would you compelling enough to go upgrade my router no yeah i wouldn't spend like 300 more dollars just upgrade to a new wireless system i i i gotta say that that hero is probably going to be in your house for a long time

right that's that's what i would think and i would think that for most people that's right yeah and that and that's what the story says and that you know that that's basically the point they're making which is you know google looking at releasing this new product without wi-fi 6 certainly had to consider that how often do consumers upgrade their wi-fi so people are going to be buying these devices and most likely these devices are going to stay in their home for for many years and as more and more wi-fi 6 devices come to market owners of these routers won't won't be able to leverage that right so that of course segues into the big question of like well how big of a deal is that the story story talks about Wi-Fi 6 as being described

by proponents as, quote, the biggest thing to happen to Wi-Fi in a decade. End quote. Wi-Fi 6 promises to ease congestion, reduce interference, and provide a more stable connection. It relies on a new orthogonal frequency division multiple access, or OFDMA, OFDMA architecture, which allows more devices to simultaneously connect to the same access point. So there are some compelling things about Wi-Fi 6. I don't profess to fully have those internalized, meaning, okay, I've seen them on paper, but I haven't really given the thought to like what that would mean to my user experience um so i don't know i mean i think you asked the million dollar question how big of a deal is this like if you end up with an iphone 11 that can do wi-fi 6 and a google nest wi-fi that can't how big of a deal is that yeah i i don't

have i'm trying to pull up the specs in front of me is the google nest doing wi-fi that can't how big of a deal is that yeah i i don't have i'm trying to pull up the specs in front of me is the google nest doing wi-fi 5 because wi-fi 5 seems like a pretty good pretty good deal to do wi-fi 6 like they're talking 9.6 gigabits per second for wi-fi which i don't know about you but my internet speed is nowhere near that like so if this is like what is what is the point of having wi-fi 6 maybe in a consumer product like this the $100 $100 consumer product like this like I guess this I'm trying to like draw on the whiteboard behind me, right? Like what, why do I need to have this wifi six feature if wifi five, which has the theoretical speed of 3.5 gigabits per second, which is still like massively, massively, massively more than most people have. Like, I think you can get one gigabit per second or yeah one gigabit per second uh speeds now uh in in a lot of areas and maybe more but like still you're talking about your phone right

like you're not maybe maybe a laptop or something that's going to be like what are you streaming outside of the house in that you're going to need to have on a portable device that's going to have to need five gigabits per second? Like I can't think of anything. I literally can't think of anything. And if you're transferring stuff around the house and you need it to be at, you know,

five gigabits per second, just hardwire the thing, man. Cause that's going to give you a better, better deal. It's true. Yeah. So I don't know, like this seems like a super specialized thing and just towire the thing, man, because that's going to give you a better deal. It's true. Yeah. So I don't know. Like, this seems like a super specialized thing. And just to have the coolest, latest, highest number, like, who cares? Like, seriously, this is, these specs are so

beyond what anybody has. I just, I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Greg makes a comment in the uh in the live chat here the point of having wi-fi 6 is the same as having an 8k tv which is pretty funny uh but also also true i mean i think he actually makes a great point there in the sense that like a 4k tv for the foreseeable future is going to be a pretty awesome tv right and um that's going to be that way for a while. And so Wi-Fi 6 is probably a similar thing. Nice to have, well, none of this is technically a need to have really, although I guess Wi-Fi nowadays kind of is, but point being, yeah, Wi-Fi 5 is probably, what the Google Nest Wi-Fi is going to ship with is likely going to be perfectly fine for 99.9% of users for the life of that device.

Right. I think is, I think is, is my take on it. So, you know, it's an interesting article. Like I said, it is worth reading at least to have awareness of what's going on out there and what are some of the things to start thinking about as you upgrade your own Wi-Fi or certainly as you're doing it as part of a business, you know, if you're a professional out there. Definitely good to be aware of Wi-Fi 6 and start getting educated about what it is so you can at least make an informed decision. Yeah, I'll also include a an

article in from the verge over in the show notes that also has a couple of other small points and i would say very minor small points um it has i guess better moon moon mimo can we talk about that the moon mimo you can have uh so they've upgraded that and i guess um it allows devices to kind of plan out their communications with the router which reduces the amount of time that they need to have their antennas up and powered which means better battery life for your phone so there's some kind of like negotiation that can happen back there and also i think the biggest uh the biggest spec bump is for better security uh it has wpa3 as like a mandatory requirement for Wi-Fi 6 certified devices.

But note, devices that may support Wi-Fi 6 do not have to do the WPA3. But better security always, especially for Wi-Fi, is always a better thing. So again, this is not that I don't think, I bet you could do WPA3 over Wi-Fi 5 and Google could turn that on as the software update, right? So, like, I'm not really seeing too much of a compelling offer other than, like, okay, Wi-Fi 6 is bleeding edge, but I think Google could probably wait a year, maybe two, and then introduce a device at $99 that also has Wi-Fi 6 in this whole, you know, Wi-Fi 7 or 8, maybe by that point, but who cares? Like Wi-Fi 6, there'll be plenty of Wi-Fi 6 cell phones

around at that point that'll be able to take advantage of getting streaming 9.6 gigabit per second stuff off the internet. I have no idea where you'd get that from. So like how, that's insane. Like absolutely insane speeds just to think to think about we were just talking about wi-fi negative three earlier in the show doing bit by bit operations this is kind of like

the complete opposite of that yeah that's right all right cool we'll include uh links to that story as well as all of the other ones that we've talked about on this week's episode. Add our show notes at hometech.fm slash 278. Once again, that's hometech.fm slash 278. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you weekly show reminders as well as other occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Yeah, and don't forget you can also join us in the chat room live Wednesdays, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 PM Eastern. You can find out more how to keep an eye out for

that over at hometech.fm slash live. Absolutely. And we are back live this week. We had a couple of weeks where we weren't live. One week we were off and last week, as listeners know, I was nursing a back injury. So we got through the show, but we didn't do a live one. But we are back live this week. We've got Greg hanging out tonight, several other folks joining us on a pretty regular basis. So we'd love to have you, again, hometech.fm slash live if you're interested in that. Moving on, Seth, pick of the week. And this one's a little throwback that I loved. A clever door sensor that plays the bass riff from seinfeld

you'll have to cut that in in post uh when somebody enters the room so you got a little video of this from laughing squid.com first i'd heard of that site but you know maybe i'm behind on that no i don't think you are it's the first time uh this looks like very much like a little diy uh product got a little sensor wired in and you can see the uh the audio cables coming out the back of this box out to his stereo system and you know exactly as advertised it it's sensing by motion i guess when the door opens and and queuing that famous riff that we all all of us Seinfeld fans know and love. This is made for you, Jason. This is the only reason I put this on there.

It's because I knew you would pick this right off the board, right off the top of the stack, there's. That's right. This is a pretty cool device. It is completely DIY, but it's all enclosed, all built in together. There's a little video of it. It's made with an Arduino, which is a little like you have to like get down on the metal level. Well, not really on the metal, but like you have to do some hardcore programming to make it work. An infrared sensor and an Adafruit Music Maker Shield, which is basically a board that clips on top of the Arduino and, um, and, uh, gives it music ability. So God must've been a really fun project for them to put together. And I thought it was cute. And

also it played Seinfeld. So, Hey, that's pretty cool. Just got to get one of these for my house and just put a little smile on my face. Every time I walk, uh, up and down from my basement office, sure. My wife would love that. Yep. Yep. Yep. yep. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for a show topic or guest, please do give us a shout. We would love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm

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Five stars. Home Tech is also a proud member of the technology.fm collective of podcasts. You can find us and other great shows over there, like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS. It's over at technology.fm. Go check it out. All right, Seth. Well, that'll do it for this week. I hope you have a great and safe Halloween.

Oh, yeah. And I will look forward to reconnecting with you again next week. Send us some pictures of the home setup if you can. I guess those are kind of hard to get at night, but you can find a way. I'd love to see you can shame me in my lowly setting here. I've been meaning to get it together. Yeah, yeah. Well, I do have a PSA for anybody that's still listening.

Don't set off the smoke machine in the house without first disabling the smoke alarms. It will, in fact, set them off. Good advice. As they're designed to do. And the fire department may or may not come to your house as well. So just throwing that out there. as they're designed to do. And the fire department may or may not come to your house as well. So just throwing that out there. Just going to leave that there.

All right, Seth. Well, I will look forward to speaking with you again soon. Have a great weekend. All right, you too. Have a good one. All right, take care.