HomeTech.fm - Episode 340 - Radar for Ring

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

This week on HomeTech: a new format for the show that "could" be exciting, a quick discussion on advertisments in IoT products, three new products announced (finally) in HomeTech Headlines, and a space nerd Pick of the Week...Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!Show NotesHomeTech HeadlinesRing’s Video Doorbell Pro 2 has built-in radar | EngadgetFormer Pakedge Founders Take Aim at Cloud-based Lighting, UPS with PoEWit - CEPROSpotify Hi-Fi Ups Streaming Quality Ante, But Is It Worth It? - CEPROAlexa, stop spamming me. Hey Google, you too. - Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysisPick of the WeekPerseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 26th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast. A podcast all about home technology and home automation. This week we're going to dive right into our home tech headlines, but I have three big product announcements that came out this week. I want to cover those. I talked about a pretty good article from Stacy Higbottom over there at the Internet of Things podcast. She wrote a pretty

good article about IoT spam, which is near and dear to my heart. And of course, we've got a pick of the week this week. But first, something new to the show this week. Doing live streaming. So I'm going to try and see how this goes uh i've of course got the podcast doing its thing and recording over there uh but i'm also live streaming out to facebook periscope which is some kind of twitter property i'm not sure and youtube so if you want to join the show that's where i'm going to start directing people is over to one of those because you can actually, it's actually easier to do all this. Believe it or not, it's easier than streaming the audio out, which wasn't working for a lot of people. So I'm going to try and keep that audio stuff going,

but it's kind of a pain, honestly. But the video stuff, I can like literally click three check boxes and it goes out to three different places that I don't think we use very much on the show. So I'm going to start using this and seeing how we can do it. I've been practicing a couple of times this week on seeing how I can switch video and the best way to do that. And I think I've landed on a pretty good solution. I'm not sure. So we'll see how it goes.

If there are any issues with it, we'll figure it out and fix it for next week. So best of luck. And with that, let's go ahead and jump into some Home Tech headlines. All right, this week we got a sneak preview last week, courtesy of Dave Zatz coming across a product page published a little too early on Best Buy's website.

But now we got the full details behind the Ring Video Doorbell Pro. The Video Doorbell Pro replaced its immediate predecessor as the flagship of the range, offering new features dubbed 3D motion detection and bird's eye view. Both harness a new radar sensor with a range of up to 30 feet

to better identify and track people approaching your home. The former is designed to make motion detection far more accurate, while the latter uses radar to track a person's movement across your front yard in real time. The Pro 2 also has a new 15 by 36p HD video camera with a fisheye lens, which is a little bit better. Right now it's, it's got a 90 degree lens, uh, on the ring doorbells and a lot of, uh, newer doorbells were coming out with like a fisheye lens. So they've added that to this. Uh, it gives you 150 degrees of, uh, of, of, of a view and in all the direct and both directions. So you can actually see something like your packages sitting down below. So that's kind of nice. It's good to see that they they've updated that. The Pro 2, of course, is priced at $250 and will ship on March 31st. So glad to see that.

Looks pretty interesting to me. It doesn't look any different. I've got a picture of it right there. Doesn't look any different than the than the Pro 1, but except it has this radar feature. And I suspect we're going to see that we're going to see that, uh, we're going to see that do a little bit more with more of their products in the future. Like typically with ring, you see kind of the same features migrate out to other products that they have. Um, so I could imagine that radar feature would be pretty interesting, um, inside of something like maybe their floodlight cams, that kind of thing. Maybe not so much the inside cameras, but the floodlight cameras would

be pretty cool to have radar in there. And then that way you could actually track somebody walking around your property. So I'm very curious to get my hands on one of these things and at least see how it works. If it improves the motion, I don't know. You, you tell me I've had pretty good. Um, I've had pretty good results with my motion detection. Like I've got it kind of squared off and it doesn't pay attention to the road very much. Uh, but I, I can, I guess I can assume that, uh, most people don't have, don't have like the same setup that I do. So like, they probably don't see the, so I've seen some setup that I do. So like, they probably don't see the, so I've seen some people set up where it's like, okay, you've got the house, you got a sidewalk

and you got your road. And of course you're going to get motion events on that all day long. So, um, Robert here in our chat, he asks, uh, is the radar real or marketing BS? That's TBD, right? I'm not too sure. Uh, so I, I'd like to find out. Um, and I, I don't think my house in particular is a good, um, use case for that because I I've already, um, I don't have the ideal setup for what I think they're trying to go with this. Like if the radar is actually some kind of radar and not just analytics coming off of the camera, like, like it was before, um, they might be able, they might be able to determine if somebody is like on the sidewalk or actually on your sidewalk coming up to your house, which I think would be a pretty nice for a lot of people who may face

a busy sidewalk or a busy street and have notifications going off all day and night. I don't think those notifications are very useful for them. So I'm glad to see that they've come up with that. Moving on, PeelWit, interesting new company that we're getting some details on. Former PackEdge founders, Victor Pack, along with partners Dustin Jankov and Steve Latham, Latham, I guess, created a highly successful networking company called PackEdge. They're back in the custom insulation market.

This time, the trio has formed PoEWIT Industries Technologies. Sorry, I'm messing this up all over. PoEWIT, W-I-T. Kind of a hard thing to say. I guess I'm supposed to say PoEWIT. I can't say it. It's a new self-funded venture looking to shape up the market with their cloud-based interior lighting, exterior security lighting, UP uninterruptible power supplies, and wall switches. So back in February 2016,

I think we all remember Control 4 bought PackEdge for $32.7 million. Since then, Victor Pack, Jankov, Lantham have been on the lookout for another opportunity and they seem to run across it with poet p i cannot say this poe wit which is a somewhat witty uh company name referring to its focus on creating power over internet devices with intelligence and that's the wit part so it it makes sense, it's just impossible for someone who fights a Texas accident to say. PoE wit was born with a focus on commercial grade equipment powered by PoE and connected by the cloud.

The products were developed in the spring of 2020, but of course COVID-19 forced them to pause production due to supply chain concerns. I can totally understand that. I've had a product that's been sitting on the shelf. We're just waiting. We're waiting to release it. We ran into Chinese New Year, and of course, that just shuts down the entire country, and I can't ship this thing until we can get orders in, so that's going to be fun. What I do think is cool from these guys is they've got a number of things that are inside

their portfolio. They've got three UPS models. And of course, it makes sense if they're going to be doing POE lighting, that they'd want to have some kind of battery backup. So that's good. So you can throw these battery backups on, of course, network switches. They've got POE network switches. Looks like they've got a couple of different models, 24, 48 port gigabit switches with 4G and 10G uplinks. Outdoor lighting. They've got some, now these are all over their website and they're like LED floodlights that are powered by PoE Plus and they look good, but I don't know. Like it's not, it's not the product I would put up, I suppose, but it looks like it's just like outdoor lighting.

Now their interior lighting looks like your standard can lights, and they've got 18 different models, POE lights in various sizes, and they've got square and round bezels, all that good stuff. So that's pretty interesting. Motion sensors, of course, and wall switches. They've got some capacitive touch glass surface wall switches. So this is a pretty interesting product, uh, that I, I mean, we've seen these types of things already, like starting out, I think there was a company, it was right up at St. Pete. I'm going to mess up the name, maybe LumaStream that was out, uh, that did like DMX controlled LED lighting. And basically they put in, like it could all be low voltage wired. Um, so I wonder like how this is, we're going to start butting heads with electricians fairly quickly

from, from low voltage integrators. And that's not going to go well, uh, when we start taking jobs from electricians to put up lights. So I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Um, especially since this type of product is pretty, I don't know. It's pretty compelling. It looks like you can control each light independently, you know, cause it, they're all independently addressed. They're all, uh, up on the, uh, up on the network somehow. So you can control them all. Yep. Uh, EMS 99. Thanks. Yep. Luma stream. That's what it was. And let's see, there's another one. And Vietra and Black Nova have glass keypads. Yes, those are very expensive too. And they look

very nice. They look very nice. But I don't know. I'm really curious if anyone is going to be putting these in. Integrators are going to be trying to put this in because like I said, we're butting heads with electricians when we start taking over fixtures. Like we can specify and install these because they're low voltage devices, right? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'd love to know what the electrical code says about this, right? There's no difference between us installing this type of device and a speaker. If you think about it, it's a hole in the ceiling. And if it's installed correctly and hooked up correctly, we're good to go.

So I don't know. Oh, EMS 99 is Eddie. So hi, Eddie. Thanks. Thanks for popping in. Moving on here. Let's take a look. See what else we got.

Oh, Spotify. Hi-Fi. This caused some disruption in the office today with people cheering and celebrating. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how this is going to go over. So beginning later this year, premium Spotify subscribers and select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify Hi-Fi and listen to their favorite songs and CD quality audio. So that's a CD quality is 16 bit, 44 kilohertz at roughly 1.4 megabits per second on the bit rate, which is great. It sounds good. Everybody loves CD quality. If you can remember that and Spotify, Spotify is joining like services like Deezer and Tidal that are already offering CD quality streaming. But

Tidal has a master's option, which gets way up there. It goes up to like 24 bit 192, get you up in that 9.2 megabits per second range. So you've got Amazon Music HD, which also offers an 850 kilobits per second for their HD service and as high as 3.7 megabits for their Ultra HD. Apple, oddly enough, only 256 kilobits per second. So kind of all over the place here. My big question is like, does this matter at all? Like, are we, is this something that, I mean, does the people, I guess there are some people who care about better audio and better quality music. But for the most part, if you're getting 256, the MP3 algorithms are really good, whether

we want to admit to it or not. Yeah, it'd be better to go up to something higher, higher bit rate. But like for most people, I don't, I don't think they're going to care. I don't think most people are going to say, well, I've got the Spotify HiFi. Um, maybe it just comes along with the premium service they're already paying for. I don't know, but I don't know. This is, this is one of those things that I've never really cared about too much. I guess you can probably tell that, um, the audio stuff, like if it made noise and sounded good and didn't like rattle around, I was happy with it. Um, certainly I can tell a difference, uh, between,

you know, good audio and bad audio. And I think any, any, I don't think that's like hard to do. I think if you sat somebody in front of, you know, a great pair of speakers, powered correctly with a great source, it's gonna sound great every time. But it's not going to change fundamentally how people listen to their music. And Gavin Campbell jumps in, he makes the point I'm trying to make so eloquently, Hi-Fi will make the music on my Echo devices

sound so much better. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. I don't know. I don't know. Most people are going to listen to Spotify on their headphones, and maybe they have some decent headphones. Maybe they've got some decent speakers they can listen to with a decent amp behind it, but I don't know. I just don't know that this matters to too many people out there. I don't, it didn't matter too much to me. So I'm going to go ahead and move on from that one. So this is a great article that Stacey Higginbotham, I ran across this published the other day. And I did put this over in our, our channel, our, I put this up maybe over in the home tech live. I don't know. Let's see if I can, I can paste it in there again. Oh, wait, I can paste this to everyone who is watching on YouTube

and everything. Uh, let's see. Magic of technology. This, this, uh, article that called Alexa, stop spamming me. Hey, Google, you too, uh, is actually a really, really good article. I'm going to put it up there in, on the show. There we go. So you can see it, I guess. Um, this is something that I've started noticing my devices doing as well. They're getting a little too chatty there. Uh, you, you asked them to do something and they say, Oh yeah, by the way, I can do this too. Did you know, let me, let me explain to you, let me read you the manual on how I can do this. Um, Oh, also, did you know that I have this service and,

you know, Apple's getting kind of bad with it too, because they've moved on from being a product company and they're, they're now doing services. So you get all sorts of little pop-ups that, you know, there's a new Apple TV show out or, uh, Hey, do you want to subscribe to Apple fitness? Um, and you can't, you know, can't get rid of those ads, but I don't know that this is something that's, that's starting to annoy me. And you can kind of see in the show art that it's, it's, it's a cover of, uh, it's a cover of Sonos and the Sonos, uh, the Sonos device has, um, has been frustrating my family for a number, the Sonos app, the S2 app has been frustrating my family since it came out. uh it is a just not very good and i think what we've we've seen over time is that the ad experience has gotten great like you can see it's gotten a

little pop-up with an ad but the device experience the experience that i have with actually going in selecting some music to play and hitting play on it like that experience has actually gone down. So I don't know. I'm not a fan of this new practice. I can understand why companies are trying to add in information about other products and everything that they're offering. But man, I really wish they'd stop it because it's really annoying. And one thing I did learn is that you can actually, and I'll put a link to this in show notes, you can turn them off on Sonos. So I'm sending this link to my wife

tonight to let her know that we can do this. Chris Gamble. Sonos is an easy target? Yes, sir. It is an easy target because I use it every day. And when it, you know, something that you use every day, uh, you go in, you hit play on, I mean, it's a great product for that. Um, so I, I don't know. I just wish that, uh, I just wish the app experience was getting better. Uh, and, and then maybe you can put your ads in, but if the S2 app just really hasn't held up, uh, unfortunately, and it performance wise, uh, it drops devices all the time. Oh, it always goes sideways. So I can see there's a lot of comments in here about, oh, by the way, there's Ron saying, oh, by the way, drives me nuts. There's Gavin in there. Never asked me what the answer was wrong. Yeah, exactly.

So the assistance, and I think actually Stacey had a great line here, the very last line of this. I'm just going to read it here. These are tools. They're not our actual assistants. Alexa may have a voice, but she isn't supposed to converse. How Amazon and Google overcome this will be worth watching. And I agree with that. I agree with. These are tools.

They're not people. And I think that it's going to take some time for these tech companies who just want to push these features and products in front of people, uh, who just want a device there on their kitchen counter to do timer work rather than, you know, advertise intercoms and that kind of stuff to them. Uh, I, I, I think they're going to have to come to grips with that's what they're selling, uh, and, and, and maybe figure out a better way to let people know about new opportunities and services that they may be offering. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 340 while you're there. Don't forget to join us. Don't forget to check out how you can join us live in the chat room starting on Wednesday, sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern.

Going to see how that goes. Now, question I have for everyone, and please provide some feedback over at feedback at Home Tech Podcast, or you can go to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form there. Let me know if 7 o'clock is good for you or not. I'm seeing Chris in the show tonight.

He's an outlier, I think. I don't think anybody stays up that late in the UK. So I'd like to start bringing those guys in. If 7 p.m. Eastern isn't a good time, like if I can move it to like 4 p.m. Eastern and do the same thing, I'd love to do that and see if I can hit a quick 30-minute show starting at 4 p.m. So give me some feedback. Let me know what's a good time for show. If you just listen to the podcast, that's not going to change. The podcast will get edited down and shipped out and you'll be able to listen to it on demand anytime you want to. And of course, I guess that goes to the recordings that are on YouTube and everything. If you want to watch my silly faces on YouTube, then you can head on over

to YouTube, HomeCheck.fm and click the little YouTube logo and that'll get you there. I do have a pick of the week this week. Let's see if we can get this up and going. Now this, as a space nerd, this is my pick of the week. This is the Perseverant Rover Descent and Touchdown on Mars. I'm gonna go ahead and skip to the good parts

where, sorry where I meant a little bit too far, but they've got the parachute. Now the parachute, the parachute was amazing in and of itself. Uh, the parachute had decode encoded on it, uh, a 10 bit message all the way around. It took about six hours for the internet to figure out that there was an encoded message on the parachute. Uh, so that was really cool to see, to see that happen. Uh, you can see here in the video that, you know, it's just dropping away. Um, and man, this, this is, this is kind of, uh, this is one of my, one of my favorite things I've seen in a long time as it gets closer, uh, the rockets start firing on, on this thing. And, uh, and you can, you can see the

dust on Mars. Like this on another planet. The automation, the engineering, everything behind this is so cool. Here we are. Here we are. You see the dust just blowing away right there as the rover gets descended down on a sky crane. They just dropped this rover with a winch. And once it got confirmation that it had touched down, the little rocket ship that was holding it just kind of flies away. Absolutely beautiful. I am such a fan of this.

And man, that was really cool just to watch again. So that is the pick of the week. As far as it being like home automation related or automation related, it's not home automation, but there's definitely a lot of automation involved in that. So check that out. I'll put a link to the NASA video in the show notes. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out that

online form. I want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support their shows through our patron page. If you don't know our patron page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over $5 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 for conversations about home technology. And we did actually have, let's see, Greg Runyard came through with a $5 pledge. Greg, thank you so much. It's awesome. Seeing that come through actually inspired me to just push the button and go live on this thing tonight. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about, uh, what,

where this can take us. I can do all sorts of fun stuff with this little platform here. So can bring in guests, bring in other videos. Uh, Greg, Greg saying, Hey, you need one of the stream deck things, Greg, I already got one of those stream deck things. I can, I can push buttons on here on the stream deck. Uh, unfortunately it doesn't, Unfortunately, it doesn't really integrate very well with the platform. I had to do a bunch of tinkering. I'm actually running a couple of hacks within Chrome to make this happen and also capturing some screen, what do you call it? Screen grabs and all sorts of stuff. There's like three other programs running in the background just to make sure stream deck will actually switch the video back and forth, which is just pretty wild. So, um, with that said,

I guess go ahead and wrap the show up tonight. Thanks everybody for, um, jumping in the, uh, the live chat tonight. Really do appreciate it. Uh, thanks for, thanks for, uh, entertaining me so much, uh, in the YouTube video. And I'm, I'm curious to see how this does. We have a couple of people watching and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. We're all friends here. And I really, really do appreciate you guys jumping in and, and, uh, being easy on me tonight because, uh, this, this was a little nerve-wracking to get started. Yeah, yeah, Greg, the bed sheet, so the background is not my favorite. I started, I've done the green screen thing.

I don't like it. So I went for a green, like, curtain, or not gray curtain, I like gray. So I've got a gray background on order. It's coming in uh but it'll be a little while before it gets here so um yeah if you need this bed sheet I can ship it to you it's very nice it's actually soft it's probably a mean size bed sheet I don't know it's actually for photography or whatever but um it just looks like a great bed sheet for me so I'll have a nice little background

that's stretchy and stuff that I can throw back there. But yeah, that's kind of where that went. But thanks everybody. Thanks for listening. And we will see you next week.