HomeTech.fm - Episode 299 - Wandering Eyes

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

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, April 17th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good. How are you holding up, Jason? Week four of the lockdown. Yeah. I'm doing all right. i think like everyone i have my my good days and my bad days you know it's uh generally speaking i i i don't have really anything to uh complain about everyone i know is still healthy uh knock on wood um work is busy as ever so that's great but uh yeah, it's, it's tough time.

Glenn Keegan shared, I thought an interesting, you know, in the hub this week, I made a note of this because he shared a screenshot. It looks like it was taken off of Facebook or something. And, uh, I think this was a friend of his that used to be a probation officer. And, uh, she was a home detention specialist. So she managed people who were staying in their homes up to a year. And she just talks about this pattern that she saw over and over again. So first two weeks, bit of a novelty, settling in, doing lots of odd jobs around the house, getting used to the restrictions, blah, blah, blah. And by week three, she says, this is

the key. It happened pretty much like clockwork, a real malaise hit, acute confinement depression. This was a week I really had to watch as people would all cope with it differently, real despair, and feeling like a loss of their entire world defeat would set in. Now, I'm certainly not that far on the spectrum, thankfully, but yeah, I just thought it was interesting. I can totally feel that sort of cycle, right? The first couple of weeks were kind of like a novelty. Did you see week four? Week four, adapting. Penny would drop about all the new opportunities that presented themselves, Creative minds start mapping out a more productive future. Self-improvement.

Uh, yeah, totally. I thought that was, I thought that was interesting. Like that, that could be, that could be pretty cool.

Like, I think we're going to see a lot of, uh, a lot of, I think we talked about this a little bit before, like the events we're going to see a lot of like Infocom today announced that they were going to do a virtual Infocom. Like, okay. That we're going to see a lot of like Infocom today announced that they were going to do a virtual Infocom. Like, OK, that we're going to see the world change quite a bit.

Last night we were doing our homeowners meeting and one of the people asked, you think, you know, when they open this back up, is everybody going to rush out and go to a restaurant? Like, no, probably not. Probably probably going to just stay at home and keep getting to go or curbside because that seems to I don't know. It's my worry is that like not that I'm going to get sick, but I'm going to get someone in my family sick or someone that we have here that is nearest. Like my my Eric, Erica's grandmother is still alive. She's like in her 90s and had has like pneumonia every year. So it's like highest risk ever. And there's no way I would want to get it and then somehow it transmits to her as well.

Yeah, it's crazy. Someone I know, remain nameless, grandmother had it, 85, got COVID and came through it. Nice, yeah. At least so far. So they thought she was going to be okay. And that's like, there's just such a spectrum with this virus.

Like some people get it and are totally asymptomatic and then others it's obviously fatal. And that just is so, it's mind boggling. Right. But I agree. I mean, I think that, like I said, I've had some good days and some bad days. I think generally on balance, we've had mostly good days. And for me, as we've talked about on the show,

I think for both of us, really, we've worked from home full time. So there wasn't a huge adjustment there. It's just more of the broader picture that's kind of nagging, uh, in the back of my mind, but I totally feel the other side of that. Like, like you said, that week four there of like, there are going to be, uh, opportunities that come out of this is really going to shake things up. And, um, you know, silver linings, connecting more with friends, uh, doing more FaceTime calls with people I haven't talked to in years. Um, that's great. So, so there are certainly some good things, but, but lots to worry about right now. And, um, just trying to keep that all, keep that all in perspective. So silver linings that, um, been taking note of here and there.

I mean, uh, have you seen the, like the pollution graphs? They're like super low now. Like people are like, Oh, we can see this guy in LA. It's like, um, um, just like people are like oh we can see the sky in la it's like um um just like there are small silver lightings that that that are out there for this so oh they definitely are it's gonna have to keep your eye on those and then kind of i don't know the worst part that that i this is kind of it's kind of like i don't know if this is like conceited or whatever but like um like i need a haircut jason like i haven't realized like i forgot like i had just need a haircut, Jason. Like, I hadn't realized. Like, I forgot. Like, I had just gotten a haircut before, like, the lockdown went into place. And we were talking about what we're going to do for spring break and, like, where we're going to travel to.

And maybe we go Orlando. Maybe you go down to Naples. Maybe take a cruise because those seem to be cheap. And it's like, no, wait. Like, literally the day after that,, like everything started to hit the fan. Like it was just kind of dominoes up to like, um, that week of spring break. And now looking back at that conversation and how absurd it was for,

for us to be having it at that point. And then like, I, I, I looked on my calendar the other day, it was like haircut day. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder if they're, and I called them up and they would, they just weren't even open. They were like, we're closed until further notice. Right. And, uh, yeah. So it's like haircut day and i'm like oh i wonder if they're and i called them up and they would they just weren't even open they were like we're closed until further notice right and uh right yeah so it's like oh yeah that's that's gonna be like i'm gonna have to get the old flow be out or something what i have to do to cut my hair i don't know i i saw an article and i'm i'm i'll see if i can find it here but yeah it was like barbers were literally doing like video calls to walk you through how to cut your own hair or something.

And I was like, I just don't know how that's going to work. Now, it's easy if you're like me and you're basically bald. Yeah, there's a little bit less to worry about. So talk about silver linings, right? Yeah, there you go. There you go. See, there's always a silver lining. You just break the clippers out every week or so, and I'm good.

I get it, though, man. My son is in desperate need of a haircut. I think get the old bowl out of the cupboard and take the clippers and just go around, and there you go. Oh, yeah. Well, that would have been done weeks ago if it were up to me. That one didn't quite get by the committee. No, no. I can imagine.

Yeah. that one didn't quite get by the committee no no i can imagine yeah my my daughter has a full set of hair and she goes every time we talk about my wife and i were talking about me getting a haircut and and my daughter's like can i get a haircut it's like no you're not getting a haircut anytime soon right well uh did you get your stimulus check i uh i so yeah yeah i'm i'm uh ready to retire now and uh i think I'm just going to sell the house here and Catalina wine mixer, go to the Catalina wine mixer. It's helicopter money. Well, you know, I, I frequent this new site that we talked about. Custom AV news has got all the best, the fake news site, the best news. No, it's fake? What do you mean? Yeah, yeah.

Here's the latest headline. Dealer blows family's entire stimulus check on B-Stock gear for his home that he'll never install. Oh, man. I don't think there's anything fake about that. Because there is a dealer out there who will do that. Yeah, it's kind of, yeah. Are they following me around or something? I have a full NetStream system in my closet. Right.

Yeah, just like old gear that is sitting in my house is ridiculous. I have a bunch of stuff. I opened a box today and I found one of the version one control for remote, like the one with the black buttons that weren't even black backlit like it was literally the worst remote system one remote they ever made and i'm like why do i have this i'm like oh i could probably put this in the museum but like why why i have a bunch of other stuff it's kind of in that same vein like why do i have boxes and boxes of this stuff? It just needs to go. Right.

60-inch Pioneer Elite Plasma. Yeah, just hang on to that one, buddy. Just looking at that. It only goes up in value. Yes. This is Greg Williamson, Alpha Home Theater. They never made a better picture than they did on those sets. Everyone who installs TVs knows that.

It's true. It's true. It's true. Wise use of stimulus dollars there. There is a theme amongst installers where they have this nostalgia over like old, this old equipment, the Pioneer Elites, the Fujitsu Aviamos. It's just, they were, they were nice sets at the time, but I think like even the most basic OLED or led tv probably does a better job than those were i think it's just the nostalgia right of having one of those and having the name behind it um at the time i know the pioneers were nice looking sets they were

they're very nice what was the curo was that the pioneer or is that yeah yeah k-u-r-o yeah yeah that sounds familiar yeah they had that piano black good old days yeah it was it was nice the big giant bezel five inch bezel that's right yeah 500 pounds hoisting it up over the fireplace we we used to make jokes back when we uh we sold those uh you know the sony trinitron tvs it's like well yeah they they actually take the tv and they put about 300 pounds of uh lead in the bottom there. Those things were heavy. It's a feature.

Yeah. They want you to know. That's right. So, Jason, I got something to ask you about. Over in the hub, you made an appearance earlier this week. And you made a shocking revelation here. And I got a question about this. You said that you were using Notion.io and you were thinking that it was going to upset Trello. What's going on with that?

I know. And the jury's still out on that, Seth, I just want to say. And I had a hard time even writing that message because you know me and Trello. We're tight. Yeah, I didn't know what was going on i this is week three you never know this is week three i i thought that might um that that might land like a bomb in the hub but i just had to say like i you know and i'm still very much using trello but i started using

this notion.so software.so i thought it was it was IO, but no, it's SO. IO is actually a home automation product. It was just on the website. I'm like, this is it. Yeah. Notion.so is the domain name. And I think, I'm sure there's a lot of people in the audience who have heard of this. I may be kind of a late comer here, but a really neat piece of software. It's a little bit hard to describe. There's a couple of pieces of software out there that I think are kind of similar. Coda.io is another one that I sense. I haven't used Coda, but I sense a similar concept where it's... So Notion.so is a very... They call it an all-in-one workspace. And the idea is, of course, they've got a web interface or they've got like an OS 10 app that I have installed. And you get kind of on the left-hand side, you get just a nav bar where you can stack and nest.

And they're basically all just pages. And it's like a blank canvas almost where you can just create pages and you can nest them like infinitely within other pages. But each page that you create can be like a bunch of different things. So tables, they've got Kanban boards, lists, calendars, galleries, you know, all sorts of different templates. And so it really just becomes a very flexible way to sort of organize information. And I think in this day and age, many of us are very much knowledge workers at this point, and there's just so much information to organize. And I've found it so far a very useful way to do that and highly flexible. So I think it's one of those things that if you're looking for a place to just put stuff, right, that's very flexible and you can kind of make your own, make something that works for you in terms of how to organize information, go give this a look.

It's a really neat tool. Yeah, I've used Coda before. Um, one of the things I don't like about Coda is that, uh, actually I am a heavy user of air table, believe it or not. So I use that quite a bit, but one thing I don't like about it is pretty much always all, most of what you can do is in the browser. Like you don't have the ability ability to go and have custom views on the the ios apps like it's just basically a giant table and you have to run filters on it um but this this looks like a this looks like more like in line with coda but i think it has a couple of features that uh that coda doesn't or maybe does i don't know but this looks really nice and clean i really like what they've

done here can you do formulas in here can you do like reference formulas and reference yeah you have to yeah i i think you i'm i'm 99 sure you can do uh some of that so like database and queries and things um that's more advanced than i've gotten certainly so far um honestly one of the main uses that I started with is, um, I I've always been a big note taker and a lot of times, like, I don't even go back and necessarily look at all of my notes, but I find that if I just take notes during meetings, um, and jot stuff down as it pops into my head, like I retain the information a lot better. And so I've set up just a very simple kind of nested structure of like little notepads that are associated with various projects that I'm working on. And it's just really useful for me because in, you know, in the position that I work in, like many of us, I'm just getting lots of little pieces of information thrown at me, like constantly. An idea here, or sort of a bug report there, or like a to-do here and there. And, and just having like, that that's always been a struggle for me. It's like, okay,

information flying at me. I'm, I have two minutes between meetings. Where do I put this? And, and Notion gives me a really flexible way to, um, just manage knowledge and information. And that's been the biggest thing for me. I haven't done a ton of, you know, like if you go to their website, you'll see like to-do lists and things like that that are very more tactical in nature. And I'm really using it more right now as kind of a personal knowledge management tool.

Yeah. It's flexible enough. You could use it for literally everything uh like you could use this as like a complete project management uh system if you wanted to between like an entire team it looks like so um yeah pretty cool and it's free to start with it looks like and then when you do a lot it costs you four bucks a month a person for a person and then uh yeah super. We've got a paid plan at work. Um, we've had several folks at work using it for quite a while and they were

trying to get me to, to come around to it. And, um, you're not dragging me away from Trello. I finally caved. And so I, I don't know, I'm, I'm in between, uh, software right now. I think they'll probably both end up with a role, um, role um in sort of my own personal system because i still use trello as a very visual way um to organize stuff but i don't know like notion has kanban boards built right into it so i may eventually migrate everything over there and um i just never thought i'd hear myself say this, Seth. It feels like a breakup. Well, Trello is a very good basic. I wouldn't even say basic. You can do a lot of advanced things with it, but it's a very good open-ended, structured way to organize things, right?

It's very basic in what it can do, and at the same time, since it be very, since it's so basic, it's so flexible and powerful. You could use it for anything. We use it actually for the back end of our show. So you and I can kind of like edit show notes and that kind of thing. But like I ran an entire company off of Trello board

for like two years. And the whole company was on it. We would all have little logins. We'd go in there, make comments on the job cards and like move them to the stage of the, the job they needed to be on. You could look at the history of the card and see who moved it and when they moved it and what they said about the job at the time and post checklists and all sorts of, I mean,

there was, there's a ton of stuff that you could do with that. And the fact that it's in like every technician's hands in the company and in the owners and like the project managers and the sales like everybody at a glance could just open up their app on their phone and look at the status of a job without having to pick up the phone and stop somebody from working uh to find out what's going on like you could say oh well they're halfway done with this job because like six of the things are checked off you know so like yeah it was uh it was a great piece of software for that it we did run it up against its limits i think and it was to the point where i was like man i wish this integrated with this this and this and i would you know have i wrote a couple of custom scripts between like uh some service tracking

things that we we decided worked better um for deploying service calls and that kind of thing. But, um, other than, other than that, like, uh, I guess what it didn't have was like a CRM attached to it. Like it doesn't have that. Um, but other than, other than like, if we had just kept it, you know, as a job board, I think it would have been perfect. Like everybody loved using it. It was simple to teach and deploy across different platforms. Like every, you know, it was bring your own device for phones at our, at our office. So I had iPhone, the technician, one of the technicians had an Android when the owners had an Android. So it's like, it didn't really matter, uh, what device you had. It, it, you just showed up and were able to

load the Trello app and go. Right. You know, and I think it's interesting because Trello and Notion both have this in common where they're very much like blank canvases. And I personally love that because I'm a total geek for sort of productivity and software and stuff like this. And so I really enjoy getting in and just constantly being able to tinker with how I have things set up and constantly looking for little ways to optimize. And as the type of work that I'm engaged in changes organically over time, you know, week to week, month to month, I love systems that allow me to just continually optimize. I've seen a flip side of that coin where certain people that I've tried to proselytize about Trello to, I've seen them sort of get stuck on that, right? Because they crave more of like, just tell me how to

organize this and where to put stuff. So I think that that's a double-edged sword with any tool like this. Notion has a ton of templates and stuff you can pick from. I don't tend to use a lot of those templates because again, I'm like, I just really enjoy tweaking stuff. So every now and then I'll use a template just to spark an idea or maybe get started. But you know, you gotta come in, I think, to these pieces of software with that mindset of like, I'm going to continually tinker and optimize. And in Notion, you kind of have to be that way. Right. So like, right. It's so open ended and such a large like, yeah, start with a template because but Trello, you don't have to start with that.

You can you can start with a three column board, you know, like or two. I could say to do and done, you know, and as you finish the card, you just move it over and track it that way. And I think we started honestly, we started off like that, like we started to do doing done, you know, that kind of thing. And it expanded into this like screen wide presentation mode. You know, you'd put it up on the big screen at the office on Monday for our stand up meetings, and just kind of like walk down each job. What's the status, what's the status, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we'd be, we'd be done. And, and, and it was just such an easy, like in and out type operation. Those minutes, those meetings, which could have lasted an hour. If we, you know, we were going by paper and folders and that kind of

thing for like 15 minutes, we were just like in and out. And at the beginning of the week, everybody kind of had marching orders for, you know, a couple of couple of first couple of days, uh, and, and knew what at least they would be doing for the rest of the week, which it was, I think that was great because once you get, I think once you get your guys like in the mindset of like, they don't, they're not just coming in for, um, for today, like they're going to come in today, five o'clock rolls around their home. Like if they're thinking like, oh yeah, on Friday, I've got to go to that job that needs those speakers. They're at least going to be thinking about that all week. And sometimes I'm not saying every time,

but sometimes something clicks in their head and they're like, I need, I need to do something extra. And then like, that's one less thing that you have to worry about. You know, making sure it ends up on the truck, those speakers, the speakers need to be on the truck on Friday and it's something you don't have to load up, but they'll actually be able to take some agency and take care of themselves. Yeah. Yeah. There's a whole conversation we could have there about that, that idea of agency and how, you know, these sorts of tools properly set up can really facilitate additional ownership and, um, lots of, of direct experience with that in terms of my years, project managing and stuff. So, you know, it's, it's interesting. I think that, um,

again, go, go take a look at notion. Uh, it's, it's a pretty cool piece of software. If you're a nerd for this stuff, like me, it's definitely worth, uh, trying out the free version and, and, uh, kicking the tires on it. I just posted a video from Thomas Frank. They kind of run like a video production. Well, I mean, every YouTuber these days is running a video production company. So that's right. He basically is showing off his Notion board for tracking the projects. And then within each project, like what shots they're going to take, the B-roll files, that kind of thing, uh, all within notion. So I thought it's like a super powerful example of what you could do with notion, uh, you

know, kind of on the extreme and then like what you're saying, just like using it for capture, you know, I captured this note at this time, um, and, and getting something down and that's, that's the other extreme. Like it just can be a place that you trust to, to put data into and it stays there for you to come back in and take care of later. Well, that's just been the gateway drug for me. Right. Like I, as soon as I started doing that was when I realized like, oh, okay.

I started to understand what notion was all about. And it was kind of like that light bulb moment of like, ah, okay. I see super flexible. Uh, you can get in here and do a ton with it. So yeah, it's cool. I'm a fan. I don't know. Sorry, Trello. I'm eyeing other software. This is my confession. Jason's eyes are wondering. I have wondering eyes. That's right. Never thought this day would come. It's kind of wild because i i mean what we're we're on we're close to episode we're rolling around to episode 300 and i think i i i know i was using trello before you because

i know i said hey have you seen this and then i yeah i think you yeah you were the one who turned me on to it i got i'm the uh the the the the drug pusher and uh because i think i was already kind of using it to track my jobs and i was like hey we could just use trello and uh and we we got into it and we started using it and now it's like uh i think it's embedded into both of our brains where like we almost can't do a show without having little trello cards in front of us that's right that's right all right cool well uh that's fun man i could talk about that stuff all day long but what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it last week hbo announced that it

would pull its hbo now and hbo go apps from older apple tv devices on april 30th now it's reversing that decision at least for the time being an hbo spokesperson told in gadget that hbo will sorry that hbo now will remain on the second and third gen Apple TVs until May 15th, and that HBO Go will be available for a few additional months. Nothing like not being able to rip that Band-Aid off. Well, they said, the spokesperson goes on to say, the spokesperson said that the decision to pull the popular streaming apps from the second and third gen apple tvs was quote business as usual device deprecation that had been planned for several months which of course i believe i'm sure this was was in the

making for a while but you know some bad optics here uh given the timing and everybody staying at home and um so i i mean i i don't think this would have been a big deal we talked about this last week go buy like a 30 chromecast or something um or whatever you know roku has some dirt cheap devices that can do hbo uh but ultimately i i think this was a good move well and they're both going to be going away soon anyway. They're not going to be a compelling program after May when HBO Max launches. Yeah, I was just looking up. HBO is expected to launch their Max service in May

for $15 a month. So that's got a ton more. It's got not only the HBO stuff that you're going to get on now and go, but it also has like all the warner media catalog built into it right so like it's a massive amount of programming for 15 a month i think it's i mean for five dollars more like it's it's a no-brainer to pick this up right so i think they're going to make uh slowly be making the go and now services less and less

attractive and you know know, phasing them out over time. And this is one way to do that. It's like on these super old devices, um, to, to, to, to phase them out. Unfortunately, uh, the, the way the world is sitting right now, uh, it's, it probably isn't the best time to put your customers through that if they need to go out and get a new, new device, uh, to replace their older 10-year-old Apple TVs that they've been using.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Smart ring maker Aura has teamed up with West Virginia University's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute to try to predict the spread of COVID-19 in healthcare providers by combining wearables with AI prediction model. The researchers can currently predict symptoms like fever, cough, and fatigue 24 hours before onset.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, this one was interesting. I threw this one in here because while it's not home tech proper, I'm just interested in use cases for wearables that go beyond sort of novelty. And this one jumped out at me. Like I, and I, I, frankly, I, I didn't, I mean, I'm not shocked by this, but I didn't necessarily realize that wearable rings had advanced to the point where, you know, you could actually use them for something like this to, to detect fever and cough, uh, 24 hours before their onset. I don't know how that works, but it's interesting.

It says the University of California, San Francisco, has been carrying out a similar study, which also uses Oura rings and an algorithm to track the vitals of 2,000 emergency medical workers. So these sorts of studies are going on in multiple places, and I just think that's pretty cool. Cool stuff to know about as far as the state of wearables right now.

These things are, uh, these aura rings. I was just on their website looking at them and they're sold as a, like a sleep tracking, uh, health appliance, you know, like everybody likes to track their sleep because no one sleeps properly and no one sleeps enough. I know I sure don't these days, like two or three hours a night.'m down too so um yeah really yeah well yeah it's getting rough it's getting rough that's that's what i'm missing out on like i i'm uh i'm playing parent all day and then it's like go to work and some days some nights last couple days two three two three hours i don't know how you're still standing i don't either so yeah So yeah, it's like, I feel like I'm in college now and I'm not in college.

I went like three nights in a row last week where I only got like maybe a little less than six hours. Yeah. And by the fourth night I was like, oh my God, kids go to bed and I'm going like straight to sleep. I'm so tired. And I slept for like 10 hours. It's not healthy. I can tell you that. I can you it's definitely not healthy. I break down. Well, there are a couple of times during the day that I can like lay down like when Rose is supposed to go take her nap or whatever. I can I can go lay down and and close my eyes for a couple of seconds here and there.

So and then like after after the podcast here, I could lay down and take a take a nap and then like after after the podcast here i could lay down and take a take a nap and then wake back up and uh do some work up until like a few we or early hours in the morning when it's quiet and then you know back up and the problem is like i've been saying like she wakes up at 7 30 every morning like clockwork so oh yeah yeah she's she's got it figured out so um these things are 299 dollars uh that's wow that's pricey yeah so did you see their um apple and google both teamed up to do something similar uh that they were they're gonna do it's kind of been in the news but anonymous contact tracing so if your your phone's gonna have like a uh anonymous this this kind of goes back to the beacon technology that we we kind of

talked about a long time ago um your phone will have these Bluetooth beacons on it and they will have a serial number associated with them. That is like on a rotating basis, every 20 minutes that your serial number changes. Um, and what happens is, is like, if there is an out, if somebody has, uh, uh, once they have all this in place, uh, if somebody does catch COVID, the, the, the coronavirus or whatever, I can't remember what's what now, they will be able to trace who you've been close to or where you've been hanging out with people based on your phone. So your phone's near somebody for a couple minutes or 20 minutes or whatever. Your phone will record all those serial numbers and say, you know, back at this point in time, I was near this phone that had this serial number. Well, Apple knows those serial numbers and say, you know, back at this point in time, I was near this phone that

had this serial number. Well, Apple knows those serial numbers and Google will know those serial numbers, but you know, your phone won't know from anybody and they can go back and see the history of how things spread. This, this isn't for like now, this is for like phase two of the COVID-19 outbreak. So basically further down the road. And I think they're just starting to do like tests on this right now in, in the UK. So it'll be interesting to see what I, what I've noticed about this whole COVID thing is like,

this has got to be the most like scrutinized data, rich environment to have this type of outbreak. Like never in the history of the world have we had so much data and so much available to us information, whether it be good or bad, available to us at any given time. And I like, I think it's going to take decades for researchers to go through and look at things like this aura ring data and put it all together and say, well, with this, we had 30% more. Somebody was posting the other day, there's Apple Maps usage in France or in Sweden or something like that. They had all the search

queries, just when the country shuts down, the like the search query is just like bomb like to the bottom of basically zero uh right in sweden there's a really cool graphs to see like all this data that's out there that of things that you just wouldn't i mean you should you i guess you put two and two together you probably think about it but like i wouldn't think like people are doing less map searching but yeah that makes sense because everybody's home on lockdown yeah yeah you don't necessarily connect those dots, uh, right away, but it makes sense. I, I like it. I think that I heard, um, can't remember where I heard about this, but in, in China, apparently like this, and this is like, you know, it's a different world over there.

Um, and don't quote me on any of this, it was something like um everyone had like this some qr code or something like you're assigned like this code that's basically like your digital identifier and and when like covid came and your people were like having to check in like everywhere they went and you know it's creepy like 1984 uh stuff, but what it allowed them to do is very quickly, like as soon as somebody had it, they could immediately sort of notify everybody who had been in the same vicinity as that person was the idea. And I think if there are ways to do that, that are more, that are respectful of personal privacy, that's really cool. Like it's a great idea. And I think it has to be part

of the mix, especially, you know, there seems to be a general consensus that, that this may be a two wave, you know, second wave of this in the fall. And so hopefully we can be, we can be more, more prepared that second time around to more quickly contain and take that approach where I forget the term for it, but you know, instead of having to do massive lockdowns, it's, it's more of a more targeted approach, but it's all predicated on, on data. Good data. Right. Right. You need to know where the outbreaks are. You need to know. I mean, that's,

that's kind of like where we're stuck here in the, in the States is we don't really have testing in place to figure out who is sick and who's not on time. And, and, and without that, it's kind of like, well, we don't know who's sick.

Everybody stay home. That's just where it is. Definitely. Well, back, back to the home tech news. Yeah. Medical stuff.

I know. Yeah. Quite, quite a transition here. You can't. Ikea blinds. Yeah. But we'll make it, we'll make it work. You can't visit an Ikea store right

now due to the pandemic, but you won't. Look, they made the transition easier due to the pandemic, but you won't be missing out on the company's connected devices as a result. Shoppers on Reddit and 9to5Mac have noticed that Ikea has started selling its Fjortur smart blinds, don't know how I did on the pronunciation there, Seth, online in the U.S. several months after they were initially limited to in-person customers. So if you've been waiting for these to be available online, now's your time. I'm going to have to, I have not been waiting on these, but they're, they're such a, like 179 for a 23 by 76, three quarter inch blind. I mean, the, the pricing on these is incredible. And I, I just,

I haven't been waiting on him, but I have like this, uh, this window in my garage that would be nice to have like a, uh, some, you know, push a button and raise up something and then, you know, push a button and put it down. So it kind of blocks out the light. Cause I'm, I'm out here a lot and it's kind of dark in the garage and lonely. And unless I'm able to open the garage door, which I'm not these days, because Jason, believe it or not, it is like 85 here feels like 98. I heard, I was talking to a partner in Florida today. He said it was in the 90s, and I just cringed. It's ridiculous.

So, like, I can't open the garage door. We had a couple weeks of good weather where it's like, yeah, you guys are freezing. Ha, ha, ha. And now it's back to the good old muggy bog weather. Yeah. Man, I got to tell you, I'll take freezing over that eight days a week. It's 750 here, and I just checked it 83 degrees out feels like 92 so it's it's and in seth's garage feels like 105 it it can feel pretty hot out here but uh within this like i do have a little

small air conditioner but and i have a fan that runs um but i don't know i i may end up back inside like last summer i was like i can't take this um i'm gonna go i ended up back inside working inside so i depending on how the you know covid thing goes i i i don't know i may be setting up somewhere inside i i just want i i just want everybody to uh take a minute to appreciate that seth is often doing these shows in like a hundred degree garage on like two hours of sleep yeah yeah that's that's dedication right there that's dedication we appreciate it seth no no. Well, speaking of new products, Ecobee has launched a new smart camera, obviously calling it the smart camera

because that's what else would you call it? It's an indoor security camera called the smart camera, $179. The device actually is just one piece of a new home security initiative the company is calling Haven. In addition to the smart camera, Ecobee is also introducing a smart sensor, which they call smart sensor for doors and windows and accommodation,

entrance and motion sensor. That's not unlike Google's nest attack. The smart sensors, because what else would you call those would be sold in packs of two for $79. And both are available for purchase starting today. Pretty cool little device. I thought the camera looked pretty nice

for an indoor camera. And this is Ecobee's first swing at this. So they still do a pretty good job on the design of their product. Yeah. The Haven Security Service. Let's see. It includes monitoring, automatic arming and disarming and 14 days of cloud storage for one camera starts at $5 a month. It's not like a simply safe thing or self-monitoring.

Yeah, it's self-monitoring. It's not going to call the authorities or fire department if something goes off in your house. But I guess you will get a notification that somebody is walking through the door. One thing on this, the smart camera actually doubles as an Alexa endpoint. I think it was kind of what we would call them, which allows you to yell at the camera and do things on Amazon, which is kind of cool. Um, and it's also HomeKit compatible and they say smart things in Google assistant support are coming in the near future. So, um, 179, uh, for a HomeKit compatible camera that I don't know, it seems like a pretty good deal yeah no it's not bad there was the um there's this other home kit camera eufy i think is how you pronounce it oh yeah ufy uh better resolution 2k resolution i can't remember what the price was on that one but

yeah 179 uh oh this is like eufy indoor cam 2k msrp 40 so and if you want to pan tilt zoom or pan tilt it's 49.99 so may you know i i don't know anything about these cameras but there are some cheaper options but ecobee's you know got a i think kind of a good name behind them as far as a brand and um can probably justify a little bit of a premium. And, you know, these things are always kind of, I feel like you get what you pay for types of deals. So I don't know. This is kind of cool. I didn't necessarily see Ecobee making this move into security, but it seems to make sense.

It seems like they're coming out of the gate with a pretty comprehensive offering here. One other thing I noticed from Ecobee, and I don't have this in my notes here, but I do remember that they sent out this email like within the last week or two. And I think they're calling it Ecobee filters. And what they'll do is basically, yeah, it could be filters. If you search for that on Google, you could be air filters. And what they'll do is you can sign up for like they have a couple of sizes of filters. And basically there's there is tracking on your thermostat where you can put in when you're supposed to change your filters. But they will actually send you new filters when you're supposed to change them out, starting from thirteen dollars. So you don't have to run out to the store and, uh, and buy one or do what I do and forget that they're there. But

unfortunately they don't have my, they didn't have my size when I looked at them last. So I mean, I may have to check it again. Got it. Yeah. They, they don't seem to be super, uh, kitschy in the marketing department over there at ecobee very straightforward names at least you know what they're selling you yeah ecobee air filters no interpretation required i like it no no i think it's a smart idea i i i can't think of another uh home automation thermostat company smart thermostat company that has come out with this like idea to also sell uh you know consumables it's like there's a razor model with this right like right um but like filters are one thing for your air conditioning i come from an air conditioning

background my dad has been in air conditioning as long as i've been alive um like filters is one thing that you can do for your air conditioning system to like keep it healthy. And if your filter is dirty, it actually decreases the performance of it and kind of like put stress on the unit. Like you're supposed to change them out and I forget all the time. Yeah, this is such a great idea.

Like I don't know why other thermostat companies haven't thought of doing something like this because it seems like Ecobee probably just teamed up with some random filter manufacturer, got a bunch of these in stock and all they have to do is basically sign you up, get your credit card number and ship these things out every couple of months. Right. Cool stuff. All right. Well, we'll see how this, uh, we'll see how this develops. All the links and topics that we've discussed on our episode this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash you ready for this seth 299. Oh, yeah. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis and other

occasional updates and show reminders here from the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 299. And don't forget, you can join us live Wednesday in our chat room starting sometime between 7, 7, 30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. We got a good pick of the week this week, Seth. This one came to me from one of our partners over at One Vision. And this is the classic scenario. We're a family-friendly show, so we're going to have to sort of self-censor here. Oh, you know what happened last time you said that? Like, I bleeped you,

actually bleeped you, and it totally sounds like you said the word. So I don't know. Maybe it's better if I just say it i'm not sure but anyways it's got a three gang uh light box here with the classic you know labels on the light switches that we've all seen a hundred times before the middle one straightforward office chandelier the one on the right and the one on the left no clue what's funny is and i don't know how this i like i want to know the backstory because i think um when when i'm programming control for lighting system and i have no idea that's pretty much what i write down for the load value so like maybe the installer was just really tired well and and those notes from control four from the composer you can actually export those notes to

go straight to a po to be purchased for the engravings so that's a good way to check see if anyone's you know yeah yeah is this fully automated i mean we'll find out it evidently was um yeah i i don't know what's going on here this is a it's a very interesting picture because it shows red lights on top too, which means that all three of those have gone into fault and aren't working. But I don't know. I'd like to really know the backstory on this one because it's either a joke or it was a technician typing those in to be ordered that way, which is great.

That's right. I'm just going to pretend that it was uh somebody actually mindlessly put this up at a client's house because it's funnier that way yeah yeah that's that's great i i but but so true like sometimes you walk up to the lights which is you're flipping them and you're like what is this could this even possibly go to and you're taking out like the little checker thing and plugging it into the wall. Nope, doesn't do that. These electricians, they'll put a three-ganging box in and three switches and only one of them will ever be hooked up to anything. It's wild.

So there you go. We can all relate to this one. Yeah. No, I totally see how this could have happened at any install. For sure. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, obscene pics of the week that we have to censor on the show, ideas for a show topic or guest, give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash 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 through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. If you want to help out without, these days, you know, times are tough. So we totally understand that if you do want to help us out, support the show, but can't financially do that, we'd appreciate a five star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. Absolutely. Seth, I think that know about you, but they're, they're kind of flying by for me now. Like I'll look up it's, it's already Wednesday. I know it'll be Friday pretty quickly. I don't know. Things are, things are, things are moving too fast for me right now. Like it, it was slow maybe the first week or two, but, but now I, you know, I am tired of the 30

second weekends. I want the weekends to be longer. No doubt. Everything else is just flying by. It feels like time is sort of distorting. The days feel really long, but then I'm like, wow, it's been over a month. I was going back and I was looking at...

I have a daily journaling habit and I was looking back at my journal from late February, early March, and it's like, man, that was like a different world. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're still talking about at that time, like a wedding that we were going to go to in May and all these things that now just seem so, so far removed. So it's kind of crazy. It does some weird things to your perception of time i feel like right right yeah and my my daughter's been taking swim lessons and she was tiny and like like they emailed us like hey you guys want to come back we're doing like no yeah i mean i feel bad i feel bad for small local

businesses like it's so tough it's got to be i mean it's got to be extremely tough on this, the entire, I mean, we're nothing but of a service economy, right? Like there, there is really not much manufacturing left in this, in this country. We traded those for, for shopping malls back in the eighties. So like we, we have, we have nothing but like service oriented businesses that are all basically, you know, shut down. Integrators can luckily kind of maybe place some of their positions as being essential or whatever,

but I don't know. The people I talk to are like, yeah, we own a pizza business and we're basically serving the hospital pizza 24-7 and taking donations from the community to do that. And, um, that's, that's really all that, um, they can do right now. Cause there's just, uh, I, we are frequenting our like local hotspots to get, you know, good tacos and that kind of thing, but there's only so much you can do. Um, you know, when you're not going in and supporting

the wait staff that's there. So, man, I don't know. It's, it's going to be a strange rollback into society. Uh, when, when we get, when this thing supposedly gets over or when people decide to kind of like, okay, it's, it's time to go back and start doing things. I think it's going to be a, uh, just a very different world that we're going to live in. Yeah. Every Netflix movie is like a trigger for me now. I'm watching a movie, I'm like, why are they touching? Why are they in this crowd?

Yeah, it's like instinctual now. It's funny how quickly we evolve. I've got a guy coming tomorrow to look at something that's going wrong with my irrigation system. And I was literally on the phone with him today. And I'm like, you know, this was just so awkward. I'm like, we're really trying to respect the social distancing thing. So, like, I can just pay you over the phone, right? Like, I'm basically saying, like, I don't have to actually see you or talk to you when you come phone, right? Like I'm basically saying like, I don't have to actually, I don't want to see you or talk to you when you come here. Right. Um, and just those things like that are like, I mean, imagine saying that like two months ago, imagine saying that to, you know,

imagine like us two years ago, or I guess a little bit further back, maybe like six years ago, uh, having a client say that to us, right. Right. Um, we would go back to the office and be like, you, this guy, he wants me to like go into his house and wear booties and a mask and he's not going to be there. He's going to lock himself in the bedroom and then come out. I know he comes out and sprays everything down with Lysol after we, like, that's, that's essentially where we are now. And like where, where, where we were kind of like, these are whack. This is a wackadoo type thing. I did have one client that, um, uh, that, that I, I, I swear he, he, um, I, I'd worked for him for three, four, probably at least five years and never saw his wife.

He always talked about her. I never saw her once because like, I think she had some kind of immune thing and either she wasn't there or, and he scheduled us to come in around her or, um, she was locked in a room somewhere. It was just like, for a while we were like, it's, it's, does he really, I mean, does he really have a wife? Like he always talks about her, but I've never i've never seen her like is this like one of the situations where you're like you're gonna open a refrigerator in the in the garage or freeze in the garage and there's a body in there like so but now i like i totally get it totally understand it like it's it's a super real

concern for a lot of people it has been for a lot of people in the past. And now I think we're all kind of getting a taste of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Uh, Anthony says I have a zone in my yard that won't turn off if the water is on. And that's essentially exactly what the guy's coming to look at tomorrow. It's funny. You guys are working in your sprinkler system. I have been, so my week one of doing odds and ends around the house was actually, was actually redoing most of my, about 50% of my sprinkler system. And I thought I'd gotten it all, but after six years of neglect, turns out there may be some pipes that go somewhere that I don't know where they go that may be busted. And I'm still getting like mud in them. So more digging ahead. I'll put a picture of that.

Yeah. I haven't had to do any serious digging here. Although I will make one confession and then we'll wrap up. I, we here in Colorado had a very early season, like a very early deep freeze in October, like way sooner than we would have expected. And I was out of town and thankfully I didn't, I didn't have a pipe freeze and burst, but my backflow preventer, uh, I think it's called like the poppet bonnet. It's the piece on top, um, did freeze and break. So I had to have that repaired and thankfully cheap repair. Um, but I had fired up my sprinklers a few weeks ago

and guess what? We had another freeze, uh, here in Colorado and like a dummy, I forgot to drain, uh, my backflow preventer. So I'll be having my poppet bonnet replaced for the second time in about six months. Well, there you go. Good times. I posted my little project there over in our Home Tech Live. Yeah, I had been doing some digging and this took place over the course of like a week. And my wife was like, what is taking you so long? I'm like, I don't work on sprinklers. I don't know what I'm doing. And have you seen the hole in our yard?

Yeah, exactly. But this is one of many holes because I dug up all of the little heads that were there and replaced all of those, at least the ones I could find. But yeah, this has been my project for the past. It's still ongoing. I still have a couple of things i want to do uh but i think the next thing we're going to do is is rip out all the grass and reseed and start watering fun yep the sprinklers are one i just don't know there there are lots of things i'll do myself i don't know if that's one of them. My hat's off to you, Seth. The parts are cheap. That's the whole thing.

It's all labor. And if you have a little bit of time, with digging this hole, it was basically my daughter and I out there, and I put a beach umbrella up, and we just went to town. And she had a little shovel, and she put more dirt back in the hole than she took out.

But that was it. Sounds about right. All right, man. Well, I will let you go. Have a good weekend. Stay well. And we'll talk to you next week. Thanks everyone for listening.

You too. Have a good weekend. All right. Take care.