HomeTech.fm - Episode 329 - Black Friday Special

Episode Date: November 27, 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, Black Friday, November 27th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Good, man. Good. Are you ready for... So we record this on Wednesday. Tomorrow is the big day. Yes. I'm as ready as can be, I suppose. This is my first year.

I'm 39 years old, Seth, and I've never cooked a turkey on Thanksgiving. Oh, that's a treat. I've always been with family. So I've always either been with my parents or with in-laws where, you know, I get to sit on my butt and watch football and not have to worry about all that. And this year we're not traveling. And so I decided that, you know, come hell or high water, like we're going to have a turkey for Thanksgiving. And so I've got it.

I'm doing the dry brine thing. I don't know if you've heard of this, but you just rub it with a salt mixture like the day before. I got that done this afternoon and we'll see how it goes. What about you? What are your plans? So Thanksgiving is our big holiday that we like to have because it involves every food that we like to have. So there you go. In past years, and I would say for the past 10, maybe longer years, maybe 15 years, 10, yeah, maybe longer. We've had a what we call a pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving it's just kind of a warm-up for the thanksgiving which is actually the entire thanksgiving meal done um maybe before thanksgiving like in november so so we get ready so it's like

a trial run it's a trial run you that this is where you can go in you can experiment with new dishes you can like uh try out different that's smart yeah yeah so it's kind of like a pre-go and then pre-game and then you get warmed up for it you see and then yeah so now we're like where your head's at we're seasoned professionals when it comes to um when it comes to thanksgiving meals and yeah turkeys i've done at least one or two so far, but yeah, you're right. When you're, when you're around family, generally parents or grandparents take that kind of thing over and you don't have to worry about it. I've been spoiled. Yeah. Have you seen the fried turkey things? Have you, have you? I definitely have. Yeah. My brother fries a turkey every year. So I always get some pictures and videos from him. And of course, I've seen all of the train wreck videos online of people, you know, lighting things on fire

inadvertently. It sounds delicious. Yeah. We're not quite there yet. We're throwing ours in the oven this year, but it's not a starter turkey to go with. I wouldn't recommend that. Also don't do that in your garage, right right like you don't want to that's where for some reason uh there's so many fires every year and it's like they were frying the turkey in their garage and of course it burst into flames and there's just no stopping it at that point i don't know why people start them in the garage it's painful well we are here uh for our our annual black fr show. We're going to do a little bit of that. We're also going to do something a little bit different this year we haven't done in the

past. We've got some things, Seth, that we're thankful for that we're going to share related to the home tech and the show. It's been a bit of a tough year, so we're looking forward to taking this opportunity to kind of look back and say, hey, hasn't all been bad. There has been some good out of this year, and we'll talk about that a little bit. But before we jump in, Seth, I found, I think, the most compelling Black Friday deal for parents that I've found so far. Are you ready for it? Hit me. Okay. Cheap batteries at Staples. Are they double A's? I need some double A's. They got the double A and the triple A. They got it figured out. Literally, I saw this and I was laughing because I had just been on the phone the day before. I was talking to a FaceTime call with my mom and we've got all of these, I don't know if you've seen these, the Hallmark things,

they're snowmen and you push a button and they sing and move and do songs. Well, we've got a bunch of those because my mom sends us one every year. They're all out of batteries. So my kids are just every five minutes, hey, this one needs batteries, this one needs batteries. And I made a comment to my mom. I'm like, it is the season of batteries here at our house. Yeah.

So I bookmarked this one. Guaranteed 10 years, they say. 10 years. they say. 10 years. Staples, they've got them down from $20 to $14 for like the big pack of AA's. So there you go, pro tip. Yeah, pretty good pro tip too. It's funny, my wife, I went somewhere today

and I came back home, my wife was gone. And I was like, where did they go? And she was out buying batteries for a toy that needed some triple a batteries so yeah it's constant man could have used this i i literally i had one person when we were getting ready to have our first child you get all the unsolicited advice you know about parenting when you're getting ready to have your first and one person, buy lots of batteries. And that was one of the very few pieces of advice that ever stuck.

Yeah, there's some kind of, now I don't know, I feel bad going through as many batteries as I do because as you know, every toy has at least two to three or sometimes some random number of AA batteries in them. And I feel bad, i know there's a technology that you can use that is like remember the rechargeable batteries and they'd work for like three minutes and they would stop oh yeah um there's some new technology that they have out there and it's like way better evidently and i i haven't actually looked into it long enough to like start replacing all of my double a batteries or whatever yeah i'm glad you brought that up i'd

have to look into that i haven't used rechargeables in forever i'm sure that technology has probably come a long ways worth looking into yeah they i know they got a bad rap because they weren't very good right it's kind of horrible but uh there's some there's some new stuff out there i was i was listening to another podcast on they were talking about them and i i meant to go back and look and see what they were talking about and couldn't find it um and of course probably a year or two has passed since then and uh yeah it just it's one of those things that sticks in the back of my mind every time i go to the you time I go over to the shelf. We have these massive packs of batteries from Amazon on.

And yeah, I think about, wow, I should probably be swapping these out with rechargeable versions. I hear you. All right. Well, enough about batteries, Seth. What do you say we get into some Black Friday deals here? Let's do it. It's another good year. We're going to move down through Black Friday deals here. Let's do it. It's another good year. We're going to move down through a few categories here.

We've got, in no particular order, mesh Wi-Fi. We've got some smart speakers and displays, TVs, streaming devices, as well as some home security and a few other odds and ends, Seth, that I know you found some gems here. So we'll jump into that. But starting with the mesh Wi-Fi, continues to be a really popular category.

I noticed that, you know, Eero has a bunch of stuff going on. I noticed one in particular that if you're not, like if you don't feel like you need the latest and greatest, and you're okay with like getting a version that's a generation old, they've got the Wi-Fi 5 bundle,

the bundle of three down from $ to 175 dollars nice that's a pretty good deal again like i know a lot of us are and i'm this way too if i'm gonna buy something i typically always want the uh the latest version but um yeah if you were looking for just like a like a good deal that that feels like a steal to me i feel like the wi wifi six thing is it's, I mean, it's still early days and I'm sure that like, I don't, has it, has it, I barely think it's been made like a standard or it's not a standard yet. It's, it's kind of like that early, early time where they're like, yeah, it's wifi, wifi six and they wink at you,

but nothing's really been like said it's wifi six. And then like it comes out and like, Oh, yeah, it was Wi-Fi 6 the whole time. And it was really kind of like a pre-release thing. I feel like that's kind of the time we're in right now, because there's really not too many devices. The new phones have Wi-Fi 6 in them, but there's not too many devices out there that actually could use it, much less many people that have like the Internet connection

that's going to support it anyway. So I don't know. know yeah it's very true i think if you're gonna throw if you're in in for this bundle here i i think the wi-fi 5 that's a great price 175 get that wait a couple more years and then guess what you can buy the the wi-fi 6 version for 175 that's right that's right you come out and contrasted the wi-fi 6 version right now is 47. That's right. That's right. You come out ahead. And to contrast it, the Wi-Fi 6 version right now is $479 down from $600. So that's a good deal as well. But I mean, $479 compared to $175,

like, it's a good deal. And I know like I have a coworker I was just exchanging some messages with today. He's, you know, his parents are having like some Wi-Fi issues and he was looking around

and at different options. And I was like, you should just take a look at this, because presumably your parents aren't like, they don't need to be on the bleeding edge, right? Exactly. And this is a steal of a deal. So that one's worth looking into, I feel like. Yep, I think so. Nest Wi-Fi, two-pack for $219, usually $299, not a bad deal.

I don't really hear much from the Google nest crowd very much all i hear about is ero these days ero of course we have our in-house brands of like i always hear about ruckus and ubiquity and that kind of thing uh in arachnids that's i really don't hear much of uh from nest or orbi these days yeah yeah i haven't heard as much from Nest either. The Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi 6 2-pack are $380, usually $450. So those are a fairly good deal. But again, significant chunk of change. I know that, I think I spoke about this last year, my parents have a fairly sizable home down in Arizona and they put in the Netgear Orbi system at their house and have really liked it. So that's my only experience with it. What's that? Which one did you end up with? I've got Eero in my house. Yeah.

But my dad researched it, did his own research, and he ended up getting the Netgear Orbi and has good things to say about it. It's a lot bigger. The Orbis are big, have a fairly sizable... Well, the footprint is small, but they're more tall and a little bit like a book like a book if you if you stood it up on its edge like a decent reading book one you would curl up on the couch and read like for months at a time like that size book not not like a uh not like a magazine yeah yeah this is like a textbook yeah imagine yeah a textbook from from from high school yeah imagine a hard a hard covered textbook from high school set it up on

its edge and that's that's that's a net gear yeah it's not it's not like the the 200 page bestseller you pick up at the airport exactly before your before your flight um so yeah some some good deals there moving on to smart speakers and displays Seth, I found a barn burner of a deal on the HomePod. Macy's evidently has the HomePod for $175. I will be there. I will be there. I'm going to send this HomePod mini back and go get another HomePod. Yeah.

That's a great price. You weren't particularly impressed with the HomePod mini. I know we heard a lot. I got a Twitter message, actually. I'll give him a shout out here in just a second. But, you know, saying, hey, I disagree. This is great for what it is. But to each his own, right?

I know the HomePod Mini wasn't really your cup of tea. And now you can get the full-size HomePod there at Macy's for only $75 more. John Denning, I can't agree with your assessment of the HomePod Mini. It is excellent for what it's meant to be. It's not a primary music source. I reserve that for my $3,000 stereo pair for standing speakers. That's a good point. Fair enough.

But as a HomeKit hub and supporting thread and intercom, it's fantastic. Also, it's good for background sound when just sitting by you on an end table or nightstand. I'm not going to disagree with any of that. Right. But I don't think it's a particularly great speaker, I guess. And if that's not what you're aiming for, aiming for, then, um, all expectations should be met. I still think, I still think in general, the Apple home pod in general is still kind of a buggy product from Apple. And I, I, they have a long way to go to make it like

Apple, what we perceive as being Apple quality, but I don't know. It seems like if you find these fringe products, the Apple HomePod, it seems like Apple may put some effort into them, make them nice, and then walk away from it for a while. And I'm hoping that now that the technology is not $300 or $400, that we have a $100 device that most people can afford to put into their house that apple is going to put some more uh what is it wind behind the arrow type thing and focus their attention a little bit more on this product yeah that's a good point robert in the chat room also says the real benefit of the home pod mini is a voice first controller inexpensive and small enough to put in most rooms so kind of along along the lines of your point there but you know on the flip side of this

coin like you just look at the competition that it's up against in terms of form factor. And like, you've got the Echo Dot, for example, on sale for $29, usually only 50. So even at full price, it's only half. And now you can pick one up for 30, which is like nothing. So that, you know, that's a good deal. If you're in the Echo Eco, you're in the Amazon ecosystem ecosystem already and you want to keep things consistent, throw something in the bedroom or the bathroom, $29 for that Echo Dot. That feels like a slam dunk. Yep, yep.

Your Echo Show, the one you use, the new one, right? The one with the little screen on it, 8-inch, $65. Yeah, we picked these up, I don't know, a month ago or so they went on sale early. They're $65. I'm pretty sure that's what we paid for them. I, I made a note here. It feels like a no brainer. If you're looking for a smart display, just basic. I mean, we don't do anything complicated with it, but at $65, like it was a great deal. We love, I love having it. I was telling you before the show, like use cases are fairly limited, but in the morning when I'm having my coffee, I'll, I'll ask for the Reuters news. I get the little five or 10 minute video news that plays while

I'm making my, my French press every morning. Um, and that's kind of become a mainstay and I don't know, it's just kind of nice to have around. I like the little nature pictures that it shows. Um, those are, those are kind of cool. And then you get the little headlines popping up. So I've just found that it's a nice addition to the kitchen, very low price. We haven't used any of the video calling yet, but I'm going to go out on the limb here and hope that none of my family's listening to the show. We did pick up a couple of these for parents and in-laws for Christmas at that that price um and thought that would be fun although even with that i gotta tell you like i'm wondering will will it really be compelling to do video calls on those when we can just use a phone yeah yeah and you can carry it around so i think

the kids will enjoy doing some video calls on those but the novelty will wear off after a couple and then it'll be back to facetime on the phone. Well, you can always get the Facebook portal and be the first and only person I known to ever own one for $130. It's usually $150. So you can save 20 bucks there for the Mark Zuckerberg Facebook portal. I honestly, I still I've put out the call to action a number of times on the podcast and on Twitter retweeted it through. I still I cannot find anybody who's actually owned one of these things or i've never seen one ever i i do not know who has this stuff i i don't either i don't either i put this one on here uh specifically for you seth the mystery continues like if anybody out there has a facebook portal or knows somebody who has a Facebook portal,

we've said this multiple times on the show, we've got lots of listeners and we still haven't heard from one single person. Not one. So I'm convinced that there's like some sort of weird conspiracy going on here where like these things actually don't exist, but they've got us all fooled, except for Seth. Maybe they hand them out. Like if you go to work for Facebook, they hand them out, like, here you go. And you're like, what's this? Is that your portal into work?

And maybe they use them for, for, for their like internal communications. I don't know. Such a weird product. Yeah. Um, from, from a, just a strange company and over, you know, in general. Well, I just, yeah, I go back to when these came out and if memory serves, like when these first came out, it was right around the time when Facebook was getting a ton of press for really bad privacy practices and like talk about just a terrible time to release a camera that goes in people's homes so i'm sure that didn't help help

them out but i'm with you yeah i don't know anyone anyone who has these and we'll put it back out there on the show i i thought of like as we're talking i'm like reddit reddit there has to be a reddit slash our facebook portal and sure enough there is jason do you want to take a swing at how many members this reddit has oh okay so this is a give me the name of the reddit again slash r well it's it's it's facebook portal just facebook portal this is everything facebook portal tips bugs and new features discussion requests etc okay so facebook's like what billions of users now? In the Reddit group, Reddit portal group, I'm going with 17. 409. And 23 people are online right now.

I would have thought a few thousand if this thing, like 409. All right, that was a little low. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm going to have to search and see if there's any more. But I just type. But in my defense, Seth, when you compare my guess to the actual number and then you put it in the context of their user base,

I was off by like a rounding error. You could have been. This gets about a post per day from what I can tell. Yeah, interesting. So I don't really think there's very much going on with the Facebook portal. But I would be interested. If you own it, fess up. I want to know who you are.

All right. And if you don't, they're 130 down from 150. So you can buy one and you can be the first person on planet earth to own it. I think I'm waiting. I don't want to, I don't want to support Facebook in this manner at all. So I'm waiting for them to like stop making it and then I'll buy it on eBay. There you go. Museum.

Yep. All right. Well well let's shift gears here tvs always an interesting one to take a look at this time of year we'll we'll touch on a few of these there's a million of these deals out there and so we're moving high level through through these so we don't uh you know gloss our listeners over with a million different model numbers and whatnot but um interesting you know starting with the higher end stuff because there's budget tvs and there's some interesting sort of trends going on there but the lg lg has an 86 inch for 1450 usually 1900 so even at 1900 for an 86 inch is still pretty cheap but if you're if you're in the market for like a really big tv 86 is massive yeah

fourteen hundred dollars not bad i i'm these prices every year shock me they shouldn't at this point but they still shock me like i was just talking to somebody today about installing nineteen and twenty thousand dollar 65 inch plasmas, you know, like that was, that was, uh, that was where it was at. And you needed like a crane to get them up on the wall. Not light. Well, you needed a crane and you needed about 10 people to make sure it didn't fall or drop one day. I'll, I'll, I'll tell you about the, uh, the, the $20,000 Fujitsu Ambiama that we dropped on the floor, cracked and shattered. It was not fun. Painful.

Yeah, I'm looking right now. The LG 86 is the UN8500 4K LED. So I don't know enough about LG to offer any specific sort of guidance about how high quality of a panel that is but you know lg is a good panel maker and anything on the the highest or in i mean heck a 350 tcl is going to be a great tv these day compared to compared to like the 720p sets and everything else that existed before like i think most people would never even notice a difference between a TCL, maybe $500 or $600 TV TCL and a $1,500 Sony. Most people. Now, if you want to get down to critical eyes and looking and pointing out the differences, yeah, of course, Sony's probably going to have the better picture.

But if you just need to put a panel up on the wall, you have such a wide range of options of actually good looking pictures these days. Yeah. So. Yeah, we won't stay on this much longer. But yeah, it's everything you would expect. So 4K, 120 Hertz.

It's got Dolby vision hdr 10 um so yeah it looks like it looks like a good deal again if you're in the market for like a really big tv for a media room or something snatch this one up yeah i will say greg greg in the chat room i would notice and have noticed yeah i've noticed too when they're like side by side i could tell but if i just walked into any random room and saw like a higher end TCL on the wall, I'm like, okay, that's a good picture. And if I go into any random room with a Sony OLED on the wall,

okay, yeah, that's a really good picture. But I don't think that if you're comparing like apples to apples, it's one thing. But if you're comparing to apples to like bananas, because TCL is like $600, right it's it's not a very expensive tv so it just depends on what your budget is i guess yeah my point is it's a good picture for 600 that's for sure greg sold a sony 77 oled a9 master series that's a nice very nice panel. Nice sale. All right. Uh, what else do we got here? 55 inch Sony A8H. This is an OLED, 55 inch OLED from Sony 1500. So 1498, originally 1698. It's a couple hundred

dollars off there. Um, Sony makes great panels and getting into that OLED technology again, seems like, it seems like a pretty, pretty good deal there. And then Sony also had a 65-inch X900. I know these are good TVs. This one's $999, originally $1,399. So just right around that $1,000 mark. So a couple of pretty compelling deals from Sony if you're looking for a higher quality set this Black Friday.

Yep. Samsung Q60T LED. Right now about $2,200 say 2200 normally 1500 so um a couple these are the higher end tvs these are gonna these are going to have those excellent pictures on them right so uh i think anywhere man i just seen the a8h for like 1500 that's a good price that's a great tv it's only a 55 inch tv but it's a great tv yeah eddie says the x900 is just okay in his opinion greg points out sony doesn't actually make the panels lg does sony adds their own process the processing yeah so i think i did know that so thank you uh keeping me honest there, um, moving on here into the budget category. So really notice like in that 50 inch option. So if you're looking for like that medium size, 50 inch panel, there

was a lot, we're not going to, again, go through a ton of these, but there was quite a few options in the $200 range this year. So heck of a deal. Like again, that 50, 50 inch size range is kind of nice sometimes for, uh, for bedrooms. If you don't want like a, you know, you, it's a little bit on the bigger side, I would say for a lot of like guest bedrooms and things like that. But if you want like a decent size TV in some of those secondary bedrooms, I mean, you can pick, pick up a 50 inch now for under $300. There was some, uh, some good options out there. The TCL 50 inch, $230. I've been very happy with the TCL I got for down here in the office. Um, so yeah, I mean, take, take a look at that. Sony, uh, sorry, Samsung has a 70 inch for $500 and then Vizio

another 70 inch for $650. And we'll include a link in the show notes where we're pulling all these from so you can get model numbers and all of that. But generally speaking, again, just wanted to point out that, yeah, those 50 inch panels have become very, very cheap and you get a decent set now for under $300, which is just insane.

I wish I had a wall for a 70 inch TV. I don't even have a wall in my house. That would be like, yeah, you would come in and be like, that's out of place, sir. It does not look right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then shifting gears into home security here,

a ton of deals. Ring has a whole bunch of them. Ring had a 14-piece alarm set for $200 down from $330. So that's a pretty good deal if you're looking for kind of a starter set. Seth, one that I'm particularly interested in and looking to pull the trigger on here is the Floodlight Cam. We live in a good neighborhood. I don't want to make it sound like we live in a bad area, but we've had a string of probably just some people coming into the area from, uh, from who knows, and just picking off cars. Like there's been, been a string of break-ins. And so my car sits out in the driveway. Uh, we've got a two car

garage, but half of it is full of kids' toys and all that junk. So the car's out in the driveway and I'm thinking about picking up one of these floodlight cams. I got a perfect place for it right over where the car is parked. So pretty good deal. I think I'll pull the trigger on that. Not a bad deal at all. 190, if I didn't say that. Yeah, 190 down from 250. Doorbell 3 Plus is 160 instead of 230.

That's a pretty good price on that one. Oh, August door locks, 299 down 100 bucks from 399. Still pricey on that one but i know a lot of people love august uh as a good product so um i i am actually i have an old i don't know what this is quick set quick set lock uh that has died and like a savage i'm having to unlock my door with a key and i am in the market for a new door humanity so i've got to start i've got to start keeping my eye out for what kind of door technology i want to use i know august is pretty good yeah man there's there's some good options out there now um so it's like like you

said that's a good price still still a chunk of change but um they've uh you know they've they've got a lot of good deals out there so seth i know you've got a link here amcrest yeah this is a little email they send uh for their black black friday specials which aren't actually any more special than at the week the email they send out most every week for the products that they have. Um, I forget which brand of cameras these are OEM from maybe to who or something, but, um, they do a Amcrest actually does a pretty good job with their, um, their software, believe it or not. So, uh, the, the setup is actually pretty good sometimes. And I, I haven't ever had a problem with, um, finding updates or updating the cameras or anything like that. And they're fairly low. They're fairly low priced.

So one of the things that you have on here is a 1080p Wi-Fi doorbell with HD camera for seventy nine dollars and ninety nine cents. I think it's usually about one hundred dollars anyway. So only 20 bucks off. But I figure mention that as something that you can get on Amazon for 80 bucks. Not not a terrible price. I haven't checked this one out. It's got a lot of stuff on it that I wish like the Ring had. Like it's got a local SD card you can put in it for local storage. It's got RTSP for hooking up to like an NVR or something like that.

So you can actually hook it up as a security camera wirelessly. But I have never used one of these and I already have this G4 doorbell clearly still sitting here. Um, that I, that I, I haven't broken out the hammer drill to, to install at the front door yet, but I'll get to it. I promise I'll get to it. Seth, they got a baby monitors here. They do.

They do. But again, I'm not a fan of the wifi baby monitors where you have to use an app on your phone. I have my phone and usually I'm using it and I don't want to be watching a baby on it. So I like the RF, like the old school RF baby monitor. There's a lot of reasons to like those, but I have a lot more that I don't like them. Yeah. Yeah.

I hear you. Yeah. Some good deals on here as well. Yeah not terrible they have oh there you go there's a there you go jason there's a 1080p hd floodlight for 149 so beats out the uh the ring by what 30 40 dollars yeah yeah yeah it it's one of those things like i know there's other options out there i've i'm already kind of in the ring, I know there's other options out there. I'm already kind of in the ring ecosystem, right? And that's how they get you. So I'll be going ring, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, that's becoming the perpetual challenge these days is there's so many good deals out there, but what is it worth to you to stay in the same ecosystem. Right. Yep. Yep. That's, that's kind of where I am. I already

have like, uh, two of the ring spotlight floodlight, these floodlight cams on my house, plus the doorbell and the doorbell is finicky. It's an older, it's like very, the first generation pro doorbell. Um, and it, it doesn't, it doesn't work. Like it'll randomly just shut off and not turn on. And I won't notice for a while because it's a doorbell and who you know i don't go ring my own doorbell um but i'll eventually see like somebody walk up to the door and like oh the doorbell doesn't work they didn't press the doorbell i didn't get a notification um and i'll go i'll have to like take it off the wall power cycle it and plug it back in it's really dumb yeah it's annoying

yep well seth you got another one here twinkly yeah yeah tell us about it so i don't think there's any uh specials on this at least i haven't come across any i i know a couple weeks back twinkly was running some sales and uh you could you could buy uh their products for a couple bucks off for the different types of strands. But these are these are what you call Christmas lights or fairy lights or I'm not sure there's their RGB like pixel lights that this company has made into a product. And you can actually when you string these up in your Christmas tree, they come along with like this companion app and you can aim your phone at

your Christmas tree or whatever you have it shaped in. It could be just wrapped around a tree or whatever. And the app will determine like where on the tree, those pixels are, those, those individual lights are, and you can basically color them any way you want. So if you want your Christmas tree to be candy cane colored, you can put red and white stripes on there. You want it to move, you can make that happen. I think this is a brilliant product.

I know, I think Richard Gunther talked about picking some of those up not too long ago. But I have been eyeballing these and really want them. And now, Jason, now I have found that there's a pro, Twinkly for professionals. Oh, all right. Here we go right here we go here we go decorate like a boss it says so amazing installations without any screwdrivers pixel software i mean so it looks like they have um they've taken down like taken uh taking this to a different level. I know there is, believe it or not, a group of people who are professional Christmas light installers.

And they go around and do these things at commercial installs or fancy homes. Well, I think some landscape companies around here do that. They offer that as a seasonal service. Yep. So this would be marketed, I guess, towards them. And there's a bunch of different things you can do here cloud management it has this has got everything you have that remote management it's got they've got their own version of oversee built into this it looks like yeah this is table stakes now and what's amazing is they have more in on the pro

side they have a lot more product than they have. If you go down to the bottom, there's a spec sheet. And I was scrolling through, like they have dual light strings. And this is all set up with like, these are the LED strings that don't have like the regular plug on them. They have like what you would expect on a commercial. I don't know if you've ever seen the commercial led um christmas strand they have like a different connector to them it's kind of like a low voltage uh like connect together and it screws together

yeah um so they all have that on there and they have curtains they have like c9s they have bulbs uh all sorts of stuff and i can get a 52 foot, or I'm going to go ahead and convert this over to meters for our UK fans over there. 16 meter Christmas tree. There you go. Set this up. So I think I need to get this 52 foot Christmas tree, set it up in my front yard and go from there. This is really cool. I like's um i'm having trouble finding the pricing but i think i think it was kind of on the higher end of of pricing for these uh yeah yeah yeah it was like um for the uh let's see they sell them in different kinds of strands uh like different uh so if i just need string lights um 249 for 600 179 for 400 250 for 99 100 for 50 54 so it is more a lot more pricey than buying your normal uh you know

strand of christmas lights but you can't do all these fun effects with them yeah no this is really cool this is really cool my kids would have a blast with this. So good find. This 52-foot Christmas tree that I'm going to put in my front yard has 54,000 lights on it. Jeez, I really want this now. That's wild.

All right, well, good stuff there. That'll do it for our Black Friday stuff. Again, we will include some links in the show notes. There's a ton of resources out there, obviously, if you're looking for the deals. But we wanted to provide a little bit of a high-level overview here and provide some of our perspectives and things that we're looking at. So with that done, let's shift gears here, Seth. We got four things we want to just run through quickly. Again, it's been kind of a tough year. We've all been experiencing a little bit of angst and difficulty this year, but we've got a few things that we are thankful for here. And speaking of it being a tough year, I wanted to lead out with just at the top of the list here, working in an industry that's really been spared from the

economic impact of COVID. We've talked about this a couple of times on the show before. And of course, never in a million years would any of us wish COVID on the world. It's been an awful, awful thing for so many people. But if anything, on the residential side, at least, a little bit different on the commercial side, of course, but on the residential side, I'd say if anything, it's been a bit of a boon to the industry in some respects. I know supply chain issues have been really difficult and all that, but we've got clients at home more than ever needing their technology to work. And every, I think, to a company, I think every integrator that I've talked to about COVID, again, at least on the residential side, has said that they're probably busier than ever and they're having a better year than ever. And so I know that this one's personal for me.

I've got a twin brother who's a pilot and he thankfully still has a job. He flies for Southwest, but he's been on kind of on the edge of his seat since this whole thing started. And just thankful that we're in this sort of industry here where we've been a little bit insulated from some, some of those, some of the worst economic impacts of, of the, of the outbreak. Yeah, absolutely. And if you, if you are, if you are in the industry, just stop selling receivers now. They're just not, they're not coming back. I'm telling you right now, they're, they won't be back for a long time. Stop putting them in your designs. We, we, we as an industry have to figure out how to, to get around receivers because I, I, I mean, there's the supply chain is, is totally messed up, um, from, from many things. COVID is one of them, but really like there, there's, there's a,

there was a fire for the AKM plant or whatever it is. I don't know. We were talking about this on a resi week this week. This fire lasted for like three days and took out this entire plant. And that's what they use on every, the DACs for every single receiver, high-end receiver out there. So those products aren't coming back for a long time. So I don't know how we're going to limp through next year without being able to sell receivers, but we'll figure it out. That's what we do. We're integrators. Yeah. No kidding. That's crazy.

Item number two here, Seth, episode 300. Yes. We crossed over episode 300 this year. We had a fun episode doing that. We went outside of our normal format and had a good time with that episode. And thankful for that. We've been at this for quite a long time now, over six years. Six years.

Yeah, it would have been six years in February, I believe. We started in February 2014, I think was when episode number one published. So we are over 300 episodes now and thankful for everybody who listens and the partnership, Seth, that we've formed. This is a labor of love and you and I both work hard to get this show out pretty much every week. We've only missed, we've missed very few weeks in, in our time of doing the show. So I'm thankful for that as well. Yeah, absolutely. This has been, it's been one of the funnest things that we've done I've ever done. Like this is, like you said, it's a labor of love and just getting, getting to sit down and just talk tech every week is just, it's, it's a good grounding experience. Like I know, I know, I don't know what's going on with the world. I don't know when we're going to have vaccines, but I know we're going to have home tech.

I'm going to sit down and talk to Jason about some technology. So that's right. Yep. Thankful for that. Absolutely. I'll take this next one here, Seth. Uh, the guests that we've had on the show this year, um, I listed just a few here. I don't know if I got them all. And if you're listening and I missed you, I'm really sorry. I put this together in a bit of a, a bit of a rush last night, but, um, Justin Worley, John Clancy, Aaron, Amy, uh, Kirk Chisholm, Randy Stearns, Kenny Kim, Kent Dixon, Rob Martins, Paulus Shuston, and Mitch Klein. Um, we've probably had a few more again. I'm really sorry for who I missed, but like, I just feel like this year has been, we've

had some of the best guests that we've ever had on the show and, and zero offense to any guests who came in, in other years, but we've, we've, we've sort of shifted a little bit this year and we we've had some fun diving into some more businessy topics, some more leadership type topics, and really kind of diving more into not just the products and services that are part of the channel, but really diving into kind of the people and the processes and the methodologies behind those products and services. And we've had a lot of fun exploring that. So really thankful to everybody who's taken the time to come on as a guest to the show. And I've learned a lot from every one of

these guests. I've had takeaways from these conversations. So thankful for that. Yeah. It's no secret. I think everybody knows you do the booking and man, you've been on fire this year. So good job. Well, yeah. The consistency is tough. That's been the hard, that's always the hard part is keeping it up. But yeah, we've had some really great guests on this year. So super grateful for that. And then number four, thankful for the home tech community, weekly live chats, everybody hanging out in the chat room tonight. We've got Greg, we've got Eddie, we've got Robert. I don't know. Robert's still there. Yep. There he is. Hanging out and chatting with us every

night and also over in the hub there's a lot of great information that pops up over there daily I know they were talking about iPad touch screens and iPad docs today I've got to go back and look at that I was kind of out and about today but I need to get back and see what everybody was talking about in there but lots of great conversations that have come from this community this group of people that just come together and want to talk smack about the industry. I don't know. We talk about everything, good and bad. We talk about it all. And it's good to have a group of a community that you can pop in, lean on, ask a question. I've even had questions. Where do I get this? What do people

use for this? And somebody always comes back with a great answer. So it's just a great community that we've built. It's kind of built itself really over the past six years. And I couldn't be more thankful for that. Yeah, totally. I echo that completely. And the community has been great. I think about, for example, the Cedia wrap-up episode that we did and having a bunch of people show up for that. And several people come up and provide their perspectives on Cedia. And that was a lot of fun. And so I totally agree. I just think it's great to have a community of like-minded people here who look at home technology in a particular way. There's lots of different shows out there that cover this space. Each show, each show has of course their

own unique angle and I really enjoy engaging with the community of supporters around the podcast. So thank you so much to everybody who listens. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 329. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for the weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news that may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 329. Absolutely. And don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room on Wednesday evenings. We typically start around 7, 7.30 PM Eastern. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. Well, Jason, I have the pick of the week, and I think this is the pick of the year. I'm a big automation fan, as you know.

And I came across this thing, and unfortunately, I don't know, is it still running right now? It only runs during the day. I love this. So this is beautiful. Oh, it's running right now, so I'm going to share it with the group. This is a project somebody came up with. And you can send an email to this email address and watch their live stream.

And they have a printer that will print your email. And it goes up a conveyor belt. It will stop in front of a camera so you can read and the world can read what you emailed to them. And then that sheet of paper will continue to go up the conveyor belt into a dumpster that is on fire. That is on fire. It's amazing. This is all automated. Well, here comes somebody.

What's he doing? Oh, it looks like a piece of paper got stuck. It got stuck. They've literally got people manning it. That is hilarious. Yep. So it only runs for, I think, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Central. So not the one true time zone, but I applaud the effort they have put into this.

This is great. Looks like I'm just blown away with what they've done here. Yeah, they really got this figured out. They've got colored lights and this big robotic arm, and you can see the conveyor belt. And this is great. So it says you send an email to dumpsterfireathey.com with whatever you want to torch. Please use plain text or an image. PG-13 rules apply.

And then watch live as your message is created, conveyed, and then dropped into the Rolling Flames Step 3 Experience Catharsis. Have you listened to the music that's's on there there's been music on there oh i have not they got music here let me see i think they do oh yeah so it's usually like a nice peaceful music they got some soothing here's a 2020 sucks and oh it just went away sorry you couldn't get that fast enough. It got stuck too. Oh, well. They're going to have to work on their conveyor belt technology because I've noticed a number of them getting stuck about halfway up. So I think...

Yeah, that one just got stuck. Oh, everything just turned crazy colors on mine. Yeah, so it looks like they're having some technical difficulties here with the conveyor belt. And I'm having a little trouble reading these things, but in any event, this is awesome. I love it. As with all automation projects, can be expected.

There are going to be a few glitches. Says PS, we'll only use your email address to notify you about your burn. That's it. And they're offsetting by 3X. Every bit of CO2 this creates via cool effect. I'm not sure what cool effect is, but I'm loading that now.

Carbon offsets. They're buying trees. So very conscious of them. I have always wanted to make, and anybody who wants to take me up on this, because I think it's, it would have been great to have in 2020, but I think it's pretty evergreen.

You know, those Yule log things, it's pretty evergreen. Um, you know, those Yule log things, it's probably somebody who's probably already done this now, but I've always wanted to have a flaming dumpster Yule log, basically just a dumpster burning on fire with black smoke coming out of it. Um, and I, I couldn't, couldn't quite ever figure out how to get the, you know, the production stuff done on that. So yeah, this is, this is great though. I really like the fact good stuff that it just it's all automated the thing goes up oh there goes there's one catching on fire right now just boom it's done oh yep oh that's really funny we'll go check that out again hey what was the url here it is hey.science hey.science slash dumpster fire we'll put it in the show notes

good stuff good good find here hey.science slash dumpster fire if you've got any feedback questions comments pics of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest please do give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm again that's feedback at hometech.fm and we want to give a big hometech.fm. 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 how to,

about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out 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 to i don't know send emails off to a flaming dumpster to be burned i was gonna say talk about dumpster fires yeah that's a yeah yeah that's a great topic no shortage of those this year if you're looking for other ways to support the show please take a minute to leave us a review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those positive reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you're a fan of what we do here at the podcast, help spread the good word by taking a few minutes to leave us a review. We would really appreciate it. Well, Jason, that wraps up another week, another holiday week in home technology.

You're going to have a great holiday tomorrow. Yeah, indeed. I know people will be listening to this on Friday, so we'll be after Thanksgiving, but we're on Wednesday today. So I'll take the opportunity, Seth, to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving as well as everybody listening to the show. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving, those of you in the chat room as well. And thanks for tuning in and thanks for being a part of the Home Tech community again. We really do appreciate it. With that said, Jason, I couldn't say it better. With that said, have a great weekend, man.

All right. You as well. We'll talk to you next week.