HomeTech.fm - Episode 376 - Nice Nicely Nixes Nortek

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

On this episode of HomeTech: Nice leaves Nortek branding behind, the FCC does something right for a change, Nvidia doesn't do something right, listener suggestions from the mailbag, and a dust free pick of the week!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 18th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation. This week we've got a couple of Home Tech headlines. A couple of letters landed in the mailbag for the first time in a long time. So glad to see that.

We've got a couple of things to talk about there. And of course, the pick of the week. But first, guys, were you one of the 112 million people that tuned in for the Superb Owl XVI? Whatever this thing. LVI? LVI? did you guys watch it did you see anything did you see football i watched it it's a good game i enjoyed the game um you know we ordered wings we ordered pizza we had a good time watching it you know but being in canada we get the canadian feed so i missed out on all the american commercials you know i was kind of upset

at my friend because he didn't find a way to get them. So I'm going to have to go look them up online and see them because that's, you know, that's the fun part right there. The American commercials. Yeah. Six million for 30 seconds or something this year. It wasn't wasn't cheap. TJ, did you get a chance to tune into the game?

No, no, we did not tune into the Super Bowl at all. Not a big seller at the house here um i used it as an excuse to buy chicken wings and that was about it so um i'm always a big fan of the commercials and i watch them on youtube after the game every year well not not not all of us may have been part of the 110 12 million or whatever that had that watched the game but i guess it's weird that we have 100% of us had chicken wings on that night. So go figure. I wonder how many chicken wings got eaten that night. Destroyed. Yeah, I'm sure. Well, yeah, the commercials are great. The

halftime show was really good. Probably one of the best productions I've seen, like live productions I've, I've seen in a very long time. Like it was extremely well done from a production standpoint. Art, the artists were of course amazing. I mean, it was like the top tier of who's who in, in the hip hop and R&B world. So it's like, okay, um, we'll go ahead and get them lined up to see what they, oh, of course they, they nailed every

every mark every camera movement boom they were there and like watching some of the behind the scenes stuff how they set up the set um how they got into positions before uh anybody realized who that was is that 50 cent yeah he just he's hanging upside down how did he get upside down yeah he he just he just walked walked right up there jumped upside down? How did he get upside down? Yeah, he just walked right up there, jumped upside down, climbed up onto the ceiling somehow. I don't know how he did it. I'm sure they had things for him to grab onto,

but it was wild. It was wild to watch, and man, it was a really good show. Overall, just really entertaining and a good show, and the live feed was actually good. The music that came off of it was actually good. That very rarely happens, that we get a good live mix, and the live feed was actually good. Like the music that came off of it was actually good. Like that very rarely happens that we get a good live mix

and we got it this time. So yay, good job. If anybody who is on the production staff of the Super Bowl listens to Home Tech, good job, we really appreciate it. I actually, I really love the show. I was expecting at one point like a Tupac hologram to pop up

and just complete it all. You know, that would have just made it like that would just topped it off. Yeah, it's not like that hasn't been done before, right? It's not out of the realm of possibilities. But yeah, that's true. They did play California Love, which was great. It was great to see. Like, I mean, they had a good time.

It was a really good show, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I did find it funny that we kind of talked to parents in the crowd, and they were like, yeah, I turned it off or turned it down. It was too loud. And I thought it was funny, and I saw a post that somebody said, oh, yeah, first time. Thank God the Super Bowl is not booking the Rolling Stones or these these these artists for old people. And then, you know, pause for effect. You know, it's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's us now. Yes. Whoops. All right. Well, moving on, guys, what do you say we jump into this week's home tech headlines let's do it all right well the writing seemed to be on the wall uh a couple of months back nice the company nice which is uh i guess i think it was an italian or european brand something like that purchased nortec control outside of nortec uh and they said nothing was going to change. But fast forward a couple months, and now it seems that Nice is going to phase out the Nortec Control brand starting this year, 2022. 2Gig, Elan, SpeakerCraft, and other Nortec brands

will go to market as brands of Nice. The North American leadership includes Luca Longhin as deputy CEO. Paul Williams, interesting there. He was just over at GE, Seabyte GE, uh, and Savant. So he's kind of got some new, new digs there. Uh, Paul Williams is going to be chief product officer and Lisa Potok as CFO. So a little bit of a change up, but what it, what it sounds like is they're not really like getting rid of anything. They're just going to wipe the Nortec brand off of everything and call it nice, which is probably probably nice. It's fewer

characters. It's definitely less money they'd have to spend on signage. TJ, you you're you're a big two gig fan. What would you think about this when you saw it? Well, this is a definitely a nice transition from Nortec here. I'm glad to see them not retiring the individual names though, uh, because they are so well-known, you know, a lot of people advertise with two gig or a lawn, um, speaker crafts, another huge one. So I'm glad to see them continue on with those brand names. Um, you know, the transition totally makes sense and definitely the writing on the wall for that one. Um, this article is fascinating though, because it's, it's linking the only, uh, known change is that they were at the international builder show. Um, so I don't, is it even listed anywhere else yet? Um, not really that exciting. So

no, no, I mean, I guess it's kind of the only show that's, that's really in the industry show that's kind of happened. ISE would be happening sometime soon, I think, if it's going to happen at all. And then after that, there's a long, long wait through the doldrums of summer before we head into like CDS season. So and we sometimes we get some nice little things out of Google and Apple and everything in between here and there. Amazon as well. Gavin, I want you to hold up your hands like this, like hold up, hold up a hand. And I'm going to start reading through these brand names. And I want you to like, put a finger up if you, if you've heard of, uh, of one of these brands,

uh, outside of, uh, outside of, uh, ofCraft, Proficient, Furman, Panamax. Oh, wow. No. Okay. Geffen. No. No. All right.

Numera. Intellivision. Abode. Ah, there we go. And High Security, which I'm not even going to put a finger up for that one. I don't even know who that is. So I heard about maybe four of them. And the only reason I know about them is because you guys talk about them, whether the hub or during our tech tops, you mentioned them.

But ask me what they do. I have no clue. Yeah, I think the only two on that list that would be kind of customer facing would be abode uh which was purchased by nice a couple years ago as well um and then linear linear makes a lot of products so maybe consumers would be aware of them but everybody else on that list is not really well known but linear makes definitely makes um products that would face a customer but i don't think they ever noticed noticed the name. Like gate controls, garage door openers, uh, maybe access control is kind of lame. So they changed their logo. It's I went to their website now and it's not, they have this weird outline of a name now. It's not the, the one that's definitely looks like it was from like the

sixties, uh, anymore. So I didn't actually recognize the brand when I went to the website. Yeah, there you go. Branding. Yay. All right, let's move on. I thought it first is set at Lona, but no, it's Altona Homes. So big news up in a small town called Pickering, Ontario. Some of you may know where that is. Altona Homes announces the construction of Canada's first pre-planned residential smart microgrid community. That's a mouthful. So funded through the Ontario Ministry of Energy's Smart Grid Fund and Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator Grid Innovation Fund.

Okay, I take back from anything I said about being a mouthful in the first sentence. All right. The 27-unit community celebrated the completion of one of Canada's first pre-brand nested microgrid residential communities. The community encompasses rooftop solar, lithium-ion battery, energy storage, electric vehicle charging station, smart metering, and an integrated distribution energy service platform to control and coordinate the components of a 25-kilowatt rooftop microgrid. And that microgrid should provide about 10% of the power needed to run the community. So Gavin, this is evidently within walking distance of you, it sounds like. Yeah, actually, I didn't even know this was happening around the corner. I had to see it in the news to know what's going on in my own

neighborhood. But yeah, I was happy to see this, actually. Things going on. I keep seeing Tesla charging stations pop up everywhere in our neighborhood now. So there's a big push and pickering for all this clean energy coming up. And we do live close to a nuclear station, too, right? Like five minutes away. So, you know, there's a lot of energy out here. Clean air. Clean air is what I hear. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Great to fish around there. The water of energy out here. Clean air. Clean air is what I hear from you. Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. Great to fish around there. The water is always warm. Warm, yeah. TJ, have you seen anything like this in Ohio there? Are they planning microgrid communities or anything like this? Do you see solar and what those Tesla batteries going into homes? You know, I haven't seen a lot of this integrated with the home as it's being built.

We've seen a lot of retrofits of people adding Tesla chargers and whatnot to their garages when they buy a house. But I don't know of anything around here that has that kind of integration with rooftop solar and batteries and some other things. And this totally makes sense to me. I don't see why people wouldn't jump on this to just have yourself some extra power just build up, especially with the batteries. Yeah, I would love to have a battery backup for my house or at least certain aspects of my house for the and then add that with solar. So hurricane season comes around

and we get taken off the energy grid. Like it'd be nice to be able to power something or anything inside your house for the couple of days before they get out there and fix the electricity in the middle of summer. So, yeah, it would be great. My one concern is like when you start getting into stuff like this, it starts to get expensive too, right? Like you start putting solar panels on your house. If you got to ever replace the shingles on your roof, you have to have somebody come and disconnect them, take off the solar powers. Then you do the shingles, which is already an expensive process as it is. So that's one of the reasons why I don't think a lot of people jump on this yet. It's just really expensive. They really need to find a way to lower costs.

No, it's always made way more sense in my eyes for the commercial space. Here we have a lot of flat roofed commercial warehouses and everything. It would make a lot of sense just to put solar panels on top of those. Residential, I think, is a harder sell because of those issues that you just mentioned and not even talking about the high upfront cost initially for everything. Yeah, I just investigated that here at my house. And I want to say, well, there's actually no out-of-pocket cost here in Florida, which, oh, God, if I see another YouTube video advertisement sent to me over this, I'm just going to, I don't know. Anyway, I did look into it.

And they will basically loan you, the way it works, they'll make you a loan for the purchase of the equipment. And it's like a 30-year loan. So basically what they're trying to do is get you, even with what the electrical use that you have is now, they want to pay for 99% of the electricity that you use through solar. So they're going to put a bunch of solar panels on your roof. You take that money, you get a loan and the loan comes out to be what your electrical bill is today. So like if you have a $200 electric bill, that's what your loan is going to be every month. So you pay that for 30 years essentially. So it doesn't go up, which is kind of nice. But yeah, I don't know. We weren't sold on it completely because again,

of many of the reasons that Kevin kind of went over, like, well, what if this is going to happen? And this and the other day they had answers for all that stuff. But I don't know. It seems it's different tech. And I do want to do it one of these days, but maybe not. Maybe not today. So we'll see. Yeah. And I don't see this really becoming popular either unless you're able to resell that solar or, you know, that energy that you build up back to the electrical grid. I don't know how it works in Florida and Canada there. Um, but in Ohio, you can't sell past, I think like 10 or 25% of the energy that you store up. Um, so you can't even sell that much back to the grid. Um, so if you do accumulate a bunch, you're, you're pretty much just holding onto it unless you have, you know, a ton of battery storage.

Now, we do have the net metering here, which means that when it's working, you're actually able to sell it back. And that's how they kind of have the same program set up for kind of like subsidizing your bill over a year. Like it'll level off. It's kind of nice because usually here in the winter, we don't use that much electricity because there's no reason to you just open up your windows and you have a great time and then like during the summer you're like you're inside and everything is you want everything nice and cool and everything outside is just a hot hellscape so yeah that's when you really pay for your electrical and what they they have is that net medium program where it'll it'll even it out for the entire year just kind of based on an average of what you use um and, and, and, and that's the way it's kind of the

same idea for solar is, is kind of evens out your, your, um, your bill for the whole year. And then you're basically paying back into the system, uh, what you produce. Yeah. But that had to be done at a state level. And you definitely like, if it doesn't, if Ohio doesn't have that, it doesn't make sense to to put it in. All right. Moving on here. The FCC has opened up some broadband to competition for a number of Americans living in apartments. So if you do live in an apartment complex, you may only have one choice of Internet provider. And there's very few things that you can do to actually switch companies. But thanks to a unanimous four to zero vote on Tuesday,

the FCC banned broadband providers like AT&T and Verizon from entering into certain revenue sharing agreements with landlords that keep competing companies from serving a building's tenants. The rules also force broadband providers to disclose any exclusive marketing arrangements they have with landlords in their buildings. So any sale and lease back agreements

where a provider sells the wiring to a landlord and exclusively leases it back, those are also banned. That happens quite a bit in MDUs and condos here. The rules also underline any past agreements landlords entered into with those providers. So like I said, kind of big news, especially for people who live in apartments or here in Florida live in condos and that kind of thing. This happened all the time where I would go bid a condo condo job out. And, uh, I, I'd hear back, Oh, from the builder or developer. Oh no, we're just going to have Comcast come in here. They said they're going to wire it like, well, I know what else they said and what else they said, but they're, they're not going to wire

all the structured wiring in the house, right? They're not going to terminate everything. It's going to be kind of a, a junk job. And of course, that's what it ended up being. Just it was only for Comcast to get in there and put in their networks. TJ, what do you think about this? Does it sound good for consumers or it sounds like it's good? What do you think? This is a big deal to me because I live in an apartment right now and I've lived in apartments, you know, for the past 10 years now, and a lot of them do restrict the ISPs that you can have in there. So it's not uncommon for an apartment around here to only have a deal with AT&T. And if you have terrible AT&T service, or you just don't want to use AT&T, you have no other option. Now that 5G home internet is becoming a thing that's kind of

starting to go away a little bit. But I'm very happy to see this being fought in a court of law just because it does restrict consumers access to the Internet. So this is a win win to me. Hopefully it works out for everybody. But I think this is great. Not a law, but just a ruling from the FCC. And the FCC is politically appointed. So the winds can change and this could be back. But at least it kind of sets a precedent. Like 4-0, it's a partisan thing. I think there's like two Republicans and two Democrats on it.

So it's not like they're going to get anything done. But for it to be 4-0, I think kind of sends a message. Gavin, do you guys have anything like this up in Canada? Yeah, we do. When I lived in a condo probably like five, six years ago, I only had one choice of who I could pull into that condo. And whether it was good or bad or anything, it was the only choice I had. And when I was moving out, they were actually just switching over to another provider. So it kind of hurt. You didn't have any say, you know, you, you, you, the only good thing about it is that I found the prices, you got a discount,

right? Like the prices were actually pretty good, you know, because that provider struck whatever deal, um, some condos gave you free internet, um, some condos, you know, you had it for a really good price. So I couldn't really complain too much about that. But choice is always good. And when there's competition, you know, things work out better. That is a good point that I forgot about too. When we had, you know, like AT&T, for example, we lived in an apartment that was only AT&T. And we were able to get free internet up to, I think, 25 megabits per second as part of our lease. And we were able to get gigabit for, I think, $50 a month, which is over half price compared to normal rates. So that is a very good point that a lot of times you got a discount on your internet service because of that or a free cable box or something

like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, and kind of like taking a step back, what that does is keeps the competition out longer because who's going to pay extra for Comcast to come in and drop their gigabit in for, you know, $150 a month when you can have gotten it for 50. So yeah, that's, this is a win-win for consumers and hopefully it makes these companies kind of fight it out, you know, deathmatch style for those condo jobs. Let's kind of keep on our streaming theme here. Speaking of streaming, NVIDIA Shield TV got a few software fixes with a new software rollout called the Shield Experience Upgrade 9.0.1.

There was a much-needed patch last month's Buggy 9.0 release based on Android 11, and NVIDIA posted release notes on its forum today that detail some more fixes. And in another post, they posted some known issues that still lurk within this update. So they're not out of the weeds yet. I did, this crossed my, my radar, uh, cause I saw a lot of people complaining about this 9.0

release maybe a couple of weeks back and TJ said you, it messed you up too. What happened with this thing? Yeah. So the Plex server for me, I was using the built-in Plex media server on the Nvidia shield. Um, and I just started experiencing a lot of crashes and just poor performance with it. I, you know, I eventually moved on to the Unraid server for the full Plex server experience. But my NVIDIA Shield has been pretty buggy since it updated to 9.0. I don't think I've updated it to this newest version. So I'll have to check that out and see if it makes it any better. But I've definitely had a lot of the same problems. Kevin, what about you? Do you use a shield? Or have you just seen this in passing like me?

I don't I don't use a shield. But in the forums with the various apps I use, I saw a lot of people complaining about things not working. And it was always, you know, blamed on the shield, you know, once they mentioned they got the shield update, it a big thing uh for example channels which is a popular apple app on the shield um they were running around like as soon as that update came out trying to figure out what was going on um because it kind of i guess it caught them by surprise you know on the shield is the update optional or does it just get forced onto you? Optional as far as I'm aware. It's not automatic for me. So a lot of people, you know, they went, they saw the update, they applied it and it broke things.

And, you know, I think they just need to work better with the developers or the developers need to, you know, keep close eye on updates such as this. And the issue with this one, too, as far as I'm aware, they actually jumped from Android nine to Android 11. So they actually skipped a whole Android version. And I could be wrong on this. But that was part of the issue, too, is that they made such a big jump with Android updates. So, yeah, not not a good combination of things. I don't envy them. Being a platform owner like that and having to worry about all these edge cases and, and, and I want to say random apps, but all these random apps that are running on your device and yeah, I don't envy pushing that button at Nvidia and like finding out, Oh no, what have we done? But I did see a lot of people saying,

okay, I'm, I'm done with the Nvidia. I'm moving back over to Apple TV or over to Roku or something else until they get everything squared away. But I've known for a long time. I mean, I've heard nothing but great things about the NVIDIA Shield for years. And it's weird. This must be the first time that I've heard a mass amount of, enough where it kind of bubbles up to me, a mass amount of people that have said, yeah, I'm done. I don't want to deal with this anymore. And good luck. I still love mine. Mine is not going anywhere anytime soon. Um, I like the, the, the compatibility with everything. So, yeah, I will say when, when you, when you get back into the, the, the, the times like here in Florida, when you can go traveling can go traveling. I have this little pack that I called

a tech pack, so to speak. And I needed something small for that. And I usually use the Apple TV. And those are pretty brick. They're like a brick. They're really heavy. And I've been using this Apple TV. And when you go to a hotel room, you can set up a travel Wi-Fi router and everything and hook up the Apple TV and watch your Plex and watch Disney and all that stuff using the hotel TV. All good to go. And I got to a hotel a couple weeks back and I'm like, this hotel, I can't plug the Apple TV into it. There's no power.

It was nice. It had the TV mounted on the wall, but there's no power. I can't plug it. So I had to run down to a grocery store and buy like a 10, 15-foot extension cord and run that across the floor like, like an animal. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, you know what, you know what I really need? I really need to put a Roku in the box here. Cause it's, it's compatible with everything. You know, it's got all the apps that I use. It's got app. It even has the Apple video stuff on it now. So, um, I

tossed that in the bag, pulled out the Apple TV and, um, it's a whole lot lighter now. Oh my gosh. The Apple TV is like a brick compared to like one of the little Roku mini things. Like it's, and it all, it is the remotes bigger than that thing. Um, and it, it will power over USB, like the five volt USB thing that's already on the TV anyway. So I should be good to go hopefully next time. But I know that the shield is not that the shield is a little bit bigger, right? Well, they make two versions. They make the Nvidia shield pro, and then, um, they make a smaller version. That's basically like a little tube. Um, so you got two different options there.

Oh, well, if I, I don't, I'm not a big fan of the Roku, but, uh, I might, might take a look at that if, if it doesn't need to be plugged into power, it might be an option for me. If it can work off five volts from a USB jack or something. All right. All the links and topics we've discussed on the show tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 376. Once again, that is hometech.fm slash 376. All right, guys. Like I teased at the top of the show, got a couple ofech.fm slash 376. All right, guys. Like I teased at the top of the show,

got a couple of things in the mailbag this week. Wanted to read a couple of these. First up, it's kind of talks about a conversation we had about Sonos and Whole House Audio and Sonos and mostly Sonos. Honestly, I listened back to them like, wow, we talked for like 45 minutes on Sonos. But no talking about Sonos. Honestly, I listen back to them like, wow, we've talked for like 45 minutes on Sonos. But no talking about Sonos this time because Brandon sent us a message here.

So just heard the call out for feedback on Bluesound, which I think TJ, you brought up. It's my go-to. My primary control system is Elan and Sonos doesn't have a great interface through Elan. So Bluesound has everything I need, a full feature driver, as well as Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, AirPlay 2. It doesn't integrate directly with Apple Music

or Spotify, which could be nice. He says, I've shown a few of my customers just how much better Tidal works, and they've switched over for that integration. Hope that's helpful. Thanks, Brandon. Appreciate it. TJ, I think you were looking into Bluesound and one other company. What was it? Yeah, I was looking into Bluesound and Aurelic. And actually, since the show last week, I ordered an Aurelic A30, I think it is, a little wireless streamer amp. I think it was 150 cost. So I'm excited to get that in. But yeah, thanks for sending that message in, Brandon, talking about Bluesound. I'm definitely going to check them out next and see how their integration is with everything we do. I've seen these guys at Cedia probably. I know I've seen them. I've seen,

I know I recognize the acrylic brand. Uh, no, no, no. Blue sound for sure. Yeah. I've seen them at like Cedia. Um, but I, I have not seen them in the wild. So, and I guess that goes to say that I haven't been in too many homes that like maybe a lawn homes that would have the need for this kind of integration or anything like that. But it looks like a nice little compact player. It's kind of nice looking. The only people I've really heard talk about blue sound are people that I would consider like audiophiles, the ones that like a little higher quality audio.

They seem to kind of gravitate towards blue sound. So that might be worth checking out. And that's actually what Brandon brings up too, along with the title integration. So definitely worth checking out if you're looking for something a little better, higher quality than a Sonos. Neat stuff. Well, uh, another, uh, message came in from, from James over in the UK says, hi, I am no pro DIYer. Thanks for the great podcast. If you're still looking for an easy way to get an alert when the dryer finishes, try this. And he sent a link over to an article that kind of is a step-by-step directions on how to have Alexa listen for beeping appliances and running water and that kind of thing. I guess Alexa can, they've had this skill for a long time where it can be set up to listen for, you know, I've,

I've always thought it was like a, like a glass break detection or something, but I guess can do more. Um, Gavin, have you, you're, you're, you're the big sound, uh, Alexa user echo user on the panel here. Uh, what do you think about this, this with figuring out with the dryer and figuring out if the dryer stopped? This is a great it's a great tip, first of all, because, yeah, Alexa added this option later last year. I think it was it will listen for things like alarms, glass breaking if you have arms, stuff like that. And you can actually create actions based on that, right? Use them as triggers. So if you're in the Alexa ecosystem, it's a good, you already have the devices to set it up. It's a good way of doing it. I don't use my Alexa like that because my hub, I have a hub, Hubitat and,

you know, everything goes through that hub. So I look more for devices like that, but no, this is a great tip. And some of the, I also saw another one, I think it was Fibaro has a light sensor. So it's a little like little sensor. You just put it over the light on the dryer. And if it goes on or off, it will signal, you know, you can send the command back to your hub that the device is on or off, right? But my dryer is older. I didn't even have a light at all either so um using alexa that's a good use of the alexa though yeah it's it's pretty inventive i mean it it's thinking outside the box as i was thinking of some hardware thing that i would physically attach like you did physically attached to the dryer or a light sensor to figure out if the light's on or off

yeah that's that's it's listening for the sound and then just kind of pushes that out through the alexa ecosystem onto your echoes. And maybe it can alert you some way, however you set it up to do whatever you want to. And I've seen similar things that do listen for your fire alarms, for example. It will like you sit next to your alarm and it's a Z-wave thing and it just listens for that alarm and then it will trigger your hub as well. So you can have like your AC turned off or something like that so it's that kind of concept and you know it's great to see these little devices that make things easy yep i think ring has a couple of like those z wave things on their website um because i was looking for how to integrate the z wave alarms

that i i don't know i don't think there's a wave i guess they're whatever two gig uses so it's not z wave but um i was looking how to integrate those with the Ring alarm that I'm using now. They work just fine standalone, not hooked up to anything, but they don't call anybody. And so I guess Ring has the little microphone things that you can stick up there next to the alarms. And when they go off, it calls the fire department, which is done too much at my house. Inadvertently, it turns out so. so anyway um moving on here we've got a pretty cool pick of the week uh i kind of threw this uh on i ran across a reddit post i should probably dig up where that is but um somebody had posted a pick of uh you know one of these uh i think it

was under like our cable porn or home lab or something like that and uh they had posted a pick of a rack that they had just finished. And in the rack, they had these switches and the switches in the blanks, they had like little dust covers on the ethernet ports. I'm like, oh, that's great. That's a great idea. Little silicone dust covers. I have never really seen those, I guess. Maybe I have and just didn't put two thoughts to them. but I went on 125 of them. I think it was like 10 bucks on Amazon. I got it like the next day. And I just, I have a switch here that, um, I was kind of worried about that cause it, I kind of put the picture in the show

notes. You can see it's kind of mounted flush with my desk and I've got like a little two RU rack thing kind of hanging off the back of my desk now that switch faces up and i was going to plug cables into it but of course if it's facing up anything could just fall into one of those open ethernet ports and short something out dust covers man it's way to go you guys need any dust covers i have a 20 24 port switch here and or 12 port switch actually and um 125 of them so what is that i can spare i thought this you know when i first saw this i i laughed but then i remember when i was putting a switch in my garage i was actually thinking about this i was wondering you know like i was worried

that the dust in my garage would get into the switch and you know dust and electronics they don't play nice together you know i was even thinking little spiders looking for warmth or something would crawl in there you know and this would have been perfect for that right instead i just took one of my ethernet cables and plugged them in and made sure all ports had something in it right and laid it there temporarily till it's used but no this it's actually it's useful yeah it's not expensive either like Like it's 10 bucks. You get 100 of them. You could do at least, you know, maybe one or two switches if they're in a dusty environment or something like that.

But it also makes it look pretty nice. And I think like if you are like TJ, if you did this on a job site, maybe it would discourage that Comcast technician from coming in and like plugging something in. I doubt that. Actually, you know, I take that back. Comcast, they're going to come in and they're going to be like, here's the cat five mash, mash, mash. Why won't it fit in here? Mash, mash, mash, and just run the entire switch. So, or they'll just say that they can't do it. They'll be like, I've never seen that ethernet switch before. There's no ports on it. Can't do it. And then they'll leave. Yeah. You're all full up. I don't, I don't understand this. So maybe that is a good idea. I don't know. It could go either way. This is definitely a cheaper option than a lot of times what we used to do is just put

a empty RJ 45 plugs inside the ports. Um, so this is definitely a lot cheaper than that option. That's way. Yeah. It's like, it's like leaving, like taking off your, like hubcaps off a car or something and like leaving them somewhere. I don't know. I don't, that doesn't work for me at all. No, no, no. This, this is the way to go. Less expensive. Like I said, 10 bucks on Amazon. You can probably find them, like, I'm sure you can find them in bulk from like a IT distributor or whatever for cheaper. But I actually, actually after I got these, I was like, well, this switch also has a console port on it with USB-C. I wonder if they make them for you.

Sure enough, they make them for USB-C because it's on every cell phone. And it has a couple of USB ports and SFP ports. So I went ahead and ordered those. Yeah. So I'm going to be flush in dust covers now. Like this is the way to go. And if you have a 3D printer, I found a link on Thingiverse where you can actually print your

own. So you can make them whatever color and whatever filament you want. I'm going to buy a $300 3D printer to print up $10 worth of... Yeah. Thanks for helping me spend money this week. Yeah, exactly.

The old joke behind the 3d printer is you buy the 3d printer you print a new 3d printer and then you return the 3d printer and you're good to go like no cost what what really happens though is you buy a 3d printer and then you buy another one and then you buy another one so and that's how i have three right now oh well hey look gavin uh he can send you some he's probably running all three at the same time because it takes cut his week-long prints down to two days it gets very hot in this room he's gonna bring that he's gonna bring those covers up with their uh with your landscape seekers oh there you go. Yeah, there you go. All right. There'll be 3D printed landscape speakers, but yeah.

Ooh, I can make the spikes for you. All right. 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 the website at hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the form. Well, guys, that wraps up another week in Home Tech. It's still kind of slow. And it's amazing to me as to like, I figured there would be like this huge rush

coming into February, getting closer to ISE, where we'd start seeing announcements from companies, especially in the CI space. But usually we'd see a bunch of product show up. And it's been like tumbleweeds everybody's either keeping secrets or you don't can't ship anything so i also think the chip shortages are still affecting us too right like some companies are still having problems getting stock while others seem to have lots of stock for some reason yeah it's really it's really changed i i can tell you uh we we get those we get like stock updates on what we can buy from larger companies, like large companies. And it's like, you really don't have any of the

most popular thing in stock. Like, yeah, I can't order them at all. That's, that's amazing. Like, okay. So I don't know. We're, we're probably, we're a small fish in a very, very large part for them, but it's, it's kind of amazing that you can't get some of the, some of the like things like products you think that would be their flagship products that they would have in stock. Nope. They're just, they're just not there. Um, same thing with networking, um, you know, wifi six access points. We're playing this fun game now, uh, where we get a wifi six access points in, and we installed this thing where it'll email out people if they you know want to if they sign up say notify me in case it comes back into stock and then they will sell out like i don't know whatever we get in stock will sell out within 30 minutes it'll be gone and

and then people will be like hey i got this email but I don't see anything on your site. I'm like, yeah, that was yesterday, sir. That was 45 minutes ago. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't want to really tell them that. That was 45 minutes ago. They're gone. Like, you really have to be – it's kind of how the Unify website was working for me too. Like, you kind of had to pay attention.

And if something came up that you needed, buy it because who knows when it's going to come back in stock. Well, I find with the Unify uh don't even follow the website like sign up to forums where people announce that it's in stock you'll get faster response because by the time you get the notify notification from unify about something in stock it's gone right it's slow yeah yeah i've noticed that that um i needed some of those flex switches and like the outdoor version. And they were they weren't they were in stock when I looked at it. I'm like, OK, you know, called the person back. I was like, yeah, we can we can do this thing, this little project.

We're going to try to put a camera up at somebody's gate. But we needed the flex switch to go up there. And yeah, I went back to the website, like, I don't know, the next day to buy it. And I'm like, uh, it's not there anymore. And it says two weeks and it was much, it was like two months, like before they showed back up on the website. So, uh, yeah, not, not a, not an ideal situation when you, when you need product. Um, TJ, are you able to find stuff for your clients these days? Yeah. I've had to resort to just checking websites daily, you know, sometimes several times a day.

It's like a full-time job. Yeah, it pretty much is, especially with Ubiquity stuff. Just like Gavin was saying, you know, the email alerts are not reliable at all. So whenever we have a, you know, Ubiquity system that we've sold, I literally check the website day and night to try to buy those products. Maybe they just, it's not, maybe it's not a feature they offer, like the email things,

they just don't work. And, and then that's how they get you. Like, they're just like, well, just put in the stock and Gavin's over there watching the forums. If he needs anything,

he'll buy from the guy who's posting the forums. I'll give you another pro tip. There's scripts you can run that will monitor it and let you know much faster. I've done that too for certain things so i've heard the ubiquity discord channel i think is very active and they also have stock updates that are pretty up to date so i mean again though it's like you have that has to be your job like you can't be on a job hanging tv or something and like oh i can buy those six access points i need for the job next week. Nope,

nope, you can't. They're gone, sir. They're all gone. Actually, I'm looking at the website now. They have the Wi-Fi 6 Lite, the Wi-Fi 6 Long Range, and the Wi-Fi 6 Pro, as well as a couple of the other Wi-Fi 6 products and some of the Flex hd products which i really like so yeah starting this year they have done a really good job of keeping stock in compared to the past you know six months of 2021 yeah i think their switches were really killing everybody and i just clicked the switches to see what they have and everything looks to be inside except for the stupid switch flex which i honestly i could use another one because I stupidly bought the Switch Flex Mini, which is not at all like the Switch Flex. But

I could use another one of these and I can't get it now. So, oh, well, next time, next time. But it looks like all their switches are in stock, which is a good thing. Just have to wait for the access 0.6 wifi enterprise that I definitely don't need. That's on early access. You can't talk about it. I think it is early access, but anybody, anybody can sign up for early access though. But if you go like it's all the specs have been published on forums and everything. So I'm not really, yeah.

Don't come after me ubiquity. Yeah. It looks like a good product, but I did notice one of the things that somebody was saying about it is that they don't sell any, it has what, a 2.5 gigabit connection on the back and they don't have a 2.5 gigabit PoE, anything to power it with other than maybe some switches. So you're going to get that access point for what,

a few hundred bucks, but you're going to need to power the thing, uh, with some kind of other switch or some other fancy POE power supply that they don't have. Well, to get the most, I think the cheapest switch to take advantage of the 2.5 gigahertz is a $500 network switch. And I'm trying to find it right now. But that's ultimately why I'm not jumping on it is because I need a $500 network switch. And I'm trying to find it right now. But that's ultimately why I'm not jumping on it is because I need a $500 network switch to really take advantage of my $250 access point. And you need a Wi-Fi 6E device,

which you don't have either. So there's that. Just crushing the dreams. Crushing the dreams. I don't want to remind you, but Wi-Fi 7 is literally around the corner. So before you get the Wi-Fi 6E, think about your Wi-Fi 7 infrastructure that you want to put in but we're talking ubiquity's time frame so

i mean it'll be out next week with ubiquity i don't know no one else has wi-fi 6 out and they're dropping 99 wi-fi 6 access points when the rest of the market is sitting at like if you look at like what netgear is doing i mean those the i, the, I think the Orbi line, I mean, I think you got to buy like two or three of them, but there's still like. 1,300 bucks or something. 13 to $1,800 somewhere there. Like, it's like, what's Ubiquiti doing different to have a $99 access point? I don't know. It's really weird. No customer service.

But, but they could sell them for $500 and clean, they could print money with this stuff. There was a theory a long time ago that Ubiquity was like a place where somebody was washing cash, laundering money. And I was not on board with that. I mean, as I read it, I'm like, that's absurd. They make actually some pretty good product. But now, seeing what they're doing, I'm like, maybe they are laundering money over there and just washing drug money or something. I don't know.

This is wild. How could they sell it for $99? I don't understand. I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining. Seth and TJ may be complaining. I am not complaining. I am not complaining.

I don't know what Seth is talking about right now. But it also lets you market up a lot more. I own Ubiquiti stock. You can market up for $300 to your clients if you want. Feel free. Yeah. And I know a lot of people who do, right? Because it's not, you only have to, it's not just putting in like an access point and plugging the wire in. And, you know, you actually have to maintain these.

And Ubiquiti is pretty notorious for like, hey hey we pushed out an update and how everything's broken like or as gavin you found out when you put yours in um like the changes the the ui changes from what you see in the forums for support are completely different from the settings that you see in front of yourself because they are very progressive in how they update the ui and change the names of settings and move them around and you can't even get to some settings in their settings panel you have to go to a classic panel to access some things that's the part that drives me nuts is you have to enable the classic panel to be able to get to certain settings and then once you're done you got to re-enable the news i don't know why they it's like half baked at this point, but you know what? It works.

At this point, it's been like a year and a half of this. Very slow moving. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they got most of the big things out of the way, but for a while there, I mean, even to like disable certain features that you have to disable for it to be reliable in a home network, you'd have to switch to the classic panel and turn them off and then flip back over. And I don't know. I left the new interface off for a long time, but it's kind of grown on me. It's a bit it's better now. So, well, we found this great explanation the other day on Reddit about the new user interface. We'll have to link that in the show notes as well. It does a really good job of going over everything. You have to send that to me, too, because I don't remember seeing that when I've seen a couple of posts about. Oh, no, that's the one that like basically walks you through the entire interface and what every single setting they do a way better job than yeah you can't get

that support on their website like is that guy needs to be paid by ubiquity to write their documentation he basically went through the advanced wi-fi settings. I read that post from beginning to end. It was well written, well thought out, and it made me look at some of my settings closely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it had great information. And then what it not only had that, it had like, if you enable this, here's the pros, here's the cons.

Like whoever wrote it actually knows what they're talking about, which is rare on the internet and really nice to see. And I'm really glad that they were able to share that information. There was an article that I floated by the other day saying, you know, Google search is dead or something like that. Because everything, and I found myself laughing because it said, everything you find, people are basically

now they're typing in, you know, Unify settings, site Reddit. They're actually just using Google to search Reddit because the results that you get from a forum or, and I'm going to say Reddit is an example, but Reddit is one of them that's up there. The results you get from a specified forum of experts is actually the results from Google are actually better than what you would get from the scammy things and all the advertisements that are pushing on you from the main side. So it's really, it's really interesting to see what's happening to Google search, like to use it properly. You're, you're, you're not actually staying on Google. You're

going off to these other forums and things and reading these blog posts to figure out how to do something, which is pretty much how I do everything. It's how I set up, you know, with your help, Gavin and TJ set up this rate, this unread server, but, but also like how to find a, a part or piece that fits into this HP server. Like, I don't know anything about this stuff. Um, most of it was on Reddit and the unreads are like, I couldn't find anything by Google, forget it, but everything was on Reddit and the unread, are like, I couldn't find anything by Google, forget it, but everything was on Reddit and the unreads forum. So there we go. That's like the hub. And speaking of the hub, we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our

Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to humtech.fm slash support to learn how you can support HumTech 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 single 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 we talked about i i had this theory today and please if you're listening to this and you know a definitive answer, and I think we have one now, but if you know a definitive answer, HDBaseT, an HDBaseT ballon, or just a ballon in general, any kind of ballon, an ARC. If I have a TV hanging on the wall with an Apple TV or whatever plugged into it and a Sonos device or a receiver in the other room, can I use a ballon to go from the TV over to the AV device, right? And TJ, you said, yes, it has to be ARC compatible. We had someone else chip in and say, yes, it has to be ARC compatible.

There's still people saying, no, it's not quite right. But I think mostly the answer is yes, it can be done with a Balan type device, like something that converts from HDMI to cat five and comes back. But we're definitely, we're definitely looking for that, that answer. And that's kind of the discussions you'll find in the show. But if you want to help out, but can't support the show, totally understand. We'd appreciate a five star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That wraps up another week in Home Tech. News here from everyone here, please have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. See you next week.