HomeTech.fm - Episode 380 - Flushbot

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

On this week’s HomeTech: The crew catches up on some overdue homework, Z-wave lets you open your garage door from 1/4 mile away, IKEA expanding their smart shade offering, Snap One launches new products for dealers, TP-LINK routers are watching you (even if you tell them not to) and a pick of the week!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 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 and home automation. We've got a couple of new products that have come across in the new cycle. It's kind of nice to get some new things coming in, but got a funny pick of the week too. Courtesy of Gavin.

I don't really know what to say about that. But hey, I see here you got a shout out you wanted to give to someone about some support. It's always good to acknowledge good support when you get it. Oh, yeah. You know, like in the last few weeks, I've converted you guys all over to Unraid. I love. some support it's always good to to acknowledge good support when when when you get it oh yeah you know like in the last few weeks i've converted you guys all over to unraid i love i'm a big unraid user we're all big unraid users now um on the weekend i accidentally broke my unraid key emailed support you know you get the standard three days expect a response in three days you know for this time i was down and my whole house runs off of it.

Within the hour, they actually responded on a, on a weekend, responded with a new key, everything. I was back up and running, you know, like when you have good support like that, you have to acknowledge it, you know, and really appreciate it. Nice. Nice. Yeah. You, you've, you've cost TJ and I some money, um, that we probably would not have spent. I've spent so much on my Unraid, but you know what? You appreciate it afterwards. It's not something that you regret. I've never regretted.

I have to buy some new hard drives now that I think about it. Yeah, my server game has really been upped ever since I moved to Unraid. So thanks for making that recommendation. We currently have over 30 terabytes going. Jeez. With Unraid, 30 terabytes going. Jeez. With Unraid over seven hard drives.

Wow. And no problems with any of it. It all works every single time. Some hardware hiccups that I've worked on over the past couple of months and stuff like that. But software has been rock solid. So definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a NAS software or some kind of backup software. Yeah, it's a little different than like, well, it has RAID in the name, right? Because everybody, well, not everybody may be familiar with RAID.

RAID basically allows you to use a bunch of hard drives. It's either one hard drive or one hard drive backing up another hard drive or one hard drive backing up many hard drives. It's just a way of getting a bunch of disk drives in a computer to do something special, I guess. And Unraid makes it particularly easy to get that going, first of all, but then also like add on little programs and apps and that kind of thing. They do a pretty good job of putting that together. So Gavin turned us on to it. And I have slowly started moving stuff that I was running on my computer over to unraid um and kind of doing like my networking shares you know like nas drive and that kind of thing plex

servers can be built on it so yeah why not um i have i don't have i have six terabytes i'm a little bit behind i'm at the 12 terabyte terabyte mark no wait i'm at three terabytes oh we gotta spend some money seth well the problem is i have the server well okay the problem is i have the server here and it it it's only um what it's it only has the six bays but they're the small format drives they're not the big drives that you can get so those i don't think you can even get over a terabyte or maybe if you can they're super expensive and i don't want to go down that road i just found one for you here we go you're gonna spend some money i'll send you the link later you just have to fill it up with solid states at this point that's well that's

that's what i've got i've got three solid state terabyte drives in there so that's that's fine i got four actually but um the i do i do have it a way that in unraid you can actually mount to like a sonology drive like a shared folder So I have a Synology system set up that has 20 terabytes. So I guess technically that is where I'm saving most everything at, at this point. So yay. Yeah. I think at this point I can't upgrade any more hard drives unless I upgrade to like a 16 terabyte or something. My, uh, the largest hard drive I have right now is an eight terabyte. And that's what my parity drive is. So if I add another large drive, I basically have to buy two of them.

So next upgrade will be a big, big investment there. And I'll say it again. You guys need to learn how to delete. That's all I have to say. There's no such thing as deleting. That's that's the problem. I don't I don't know what deleting is. Can't do it.

Sorry. What happens if I want to watch the same thing three years from now and i can't find it anymore yeah then watch something else i i can't i know if i have something saved and it's there i can't lose it but like i've gone through and looked for pictures like there are these pictures that i know i have because i've never deleted, but they were on a camera that came back with my wife and her sister from some trip that they took. And they handed me the camera and said, back this up. And I backed it up and the camera has been lost. The pictures have been lost, but I know that I saved them somewhere, but I can't find them. So one of the powers of Unraid is loading dockers and you can get a docker for photo management. So there's one called Peweagle, you know, and it creates a nice little interface.

It has an app. Your family can access it. You can do searching, stuff like that. So you got to get up your docker game at this point now for hosting things. Yeah. That is way too much effort. Just get Google Photos. Google Photos.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's I mean, so since then, this was probably like 2009, 2006, way back in the day before, you know, pre iPhone. But ever since I've had an iPhone, I mean, everything is recorded at that point. So like I haven't I don't even worry about it. I just I just hear Apple. I'll pay you money and you manage that. And that honestly, that that's ninety nine percent of what I need to worry about is taken care of that way. And anyway, we've got a couple of pieces of follow up here. We're actually did did you guys we've we put the call out and kind of a joke last week to finish up the the after party for our homework. And TJ, I think you finished, right? Yeah, we finished it this weekend. I got to say, I really enjoyed the, all the AV references throughout the show.

I think it really did a good job of demonstrating our field. And I don't think I've ever watched the show and like saw the technical parts of it and didn't think it was awful. Uh, most of the time, whenever somebody does technology stuff in shows or movies, it's like completely off or like, you know, somebody is like trying to like pick a lock and it takes them three seconds to do it. You know? So a lot of the stuff in the show in regards to the, the AV, the home automation, all that good stuff was very accurate. So whoever did that great job. Yeah, you, you, you're right. Um, that it, it wasn't like a CSI level of idiocy there. Like there, there was idiocy, idiocy. Don't get me wrong. Like it was, it was just a silly comedy, but like the characters could be dumb, but the technology was spot on and the interactions that people have are interactions that I've had in my own life. Um, you know, maybe even this week, you know, between, between my wife and,

you know, talking about why is, why is the TV not working? Oh, I guess I forgot to turn the Plex server back on. Whoops. Sorry. So yeah. Um, yeah, that, that kind of stuff is, uh, yeah, that, that, that, that part of it was a lot more accurate than I think most people give it credit for. Didn't, did not get very good reviews in reviews in the hub. There were a couple of reviews saying that people bailed on the second or third episode or something like that, which I get, I understand. It's a slow burn.

Eventually, I think eventually it does pay off, especially that last episode. And I just want to wish Walt a happy birthday. Yes. My man. All right, guys. Also some homework that TJ, I think you gave us last week, was to listen to this Sonos podcast. It was a podcast and an article, I guess.

I guess I could have read it rather than listening to the podcast about how Google and Sonos got into this brawl and then how Sonos in particular decided to sue Google for patent infringement starting back in 2020. They've actually won the first couple of rounds of that patent infringement case. And I think some of the, I mean, it basically puts pressure on Google at this point to come to the table and make a deal with them. I hate to call Sonos the little guy, right. But I mean, in this case, they are like, they're a $2 billion company. I don't think of Sonos as, as a little guy, but it, it, it, when you compare them to a company like Google or Alphabet or whatever you want to call them, they're tiny. There's no comparison to the – I think the CEO there said that there was 1,000 people that worked there

or something like that. He knew down – it was funny. He knew down to the single-digit number of how many people worked at Sonos on the dime. So I don't think Google could ever, the CEO of Google would ever be able to tell you at any given moment how many exactly the how many employees worked at Google. It just doesn't happen. So I guess they are a smaller company in that respect. But it was interesting. Is it Patrick Spence and Eddie? I didn't see his name here, but Eddie is the Lazarus. He's the chief legal officer. So

Patrick Spence, the CEO. Pretty good discussion. It's a bit businessy, TJ, like not not really tech related, but kind of interesting. What would you take away from it? Yeah, there was a couple good things that I thought that I came across. So it looks like they have 1719 employees. And he spouted that right off the bat, which is pretty interesting. I thought that was impressive. I mean, it was. Yeah, it was a good showing.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially for that many people. Another interesting thing is he pointed out how much Google actually spends on lobbying. Um, and in 2021, they only spent $9.6 million, uh, which doesn't seem like a lot to me. Like, obviously that's a ton of money and everything, but you would think somebody of Google size would spend more on that. Um, so I found that kind of low and, and all that. Um, one of the interesting comments that they brought out though, is Neelay Patel, the, the verge editor who's interviewing them. Um, you know, he says, obviously you're suing Google. We talked a little bit about partnerships and how you need them.

How was this litigation affected your relationship with Google? Has it strained it? Has it made it better? Is it, is that siloed and how does that work? Uh, and Patrick Spence says, you know, it's pretty siloed from their side. YouTube music continues to go along. We continue to have Google Assistant. I think they know, obviously, with us testifying in Congress and Congress being very supportive of us, making sure that there's no retaliation for doing that, that they've been doing, that they've been on their best behavior as well. So just some interesting tidbits in there that kind of give you the backstory on how they decided to sue Google and why they decided to. And also, the last thing I want to point out about this is that they actually brought up headphones. Nealey asked if they were

going to bring out headphones. And Patrick Spence said, we are so excited about a roadmap and I can't wait to talk to you about it. Yeah, that was mostly a joke at the end. He just wasn't having any of that. It was hilarious. But he also asked him about like Apple, what was it, Apple Music or something, integration or something like that.

And he said, we're really excited about that. And yeah, same answer. It was really funny. But I will say one of the takeaways I got from this was Patrick Spence, he was the CEO, not CEO, CFO before he was kind of promoted into the CEO role. And he's a bit more of a geek than I would have expected him to be. So I was kind of happy to see that. I thought he was just the numbers guy. And some of the stuff he's done at Sonos has been, to me, purely number based. Like there were a lot of layoffs. There's kind of some trickery played, you know, like some acquisition stuff that's happened. It's like all smart business stuff, but not really tech related. He did mention that they bring out two products. They strive to bring out two new products every year. And I was like, really? I mean, usually Sonos is,

to me, it's a sleep at the wheel on what they're like, what they're doing. But technically, I guess if you consider like their music products that they've brought to the table, that kind of stuff. Yeah. They've, they've made efforts and getting like the Rome has come out and they have the various revisions of kind of the same product. So technically yes, two new products every year. It's pretty pretty good thing to strive for. I think one of the biggest thing I took away from it was when it came to them making the decision to sue Google. And this goes to me, this tells you how big of companies I normally work in. It wasn't really his decision. He kind of knew he was in the right. And Eddie Lazarus kind of was like, yeah, we were in the right. They stole our property. They were using hundreds of our patents in their own products

and marketing it and admitting to it. But it's not like Patrick Spence and Eddie Lazarus can go and just file that lawsuit. No, there's a board involved in this. Like, oh yeah, I forget these companies have these big boards of, you know, people on them that probably are like risk averse to this kind of thing in the first place. And, uh, just kind of him mentioning that. And like, if it was my company, the company I work in now, like we're pretty small. It would just be, you know, go off and sue something. But like this, this is a little bit bigger. Two billion dollar company.

Yeah. The decisions aren't necessarily made by one or two people. It's made by a pretty big collective. So I thought that I just kind of reminded me. I thought that was pretty interesting how that that particular thing works. Gavin, I know you fell asleep to this. No, I paid attention attention i made it to the end i made it to the end um while listening to it i found like the questions were very specific he was very open about a lot of stuff and i was thinking through this interview i'm like this lawyer must be like cringing like that if he says the wrong

thing uh it could cause him so much work. And they actually addressed that at the end, you know, as a joke, how the lawyer, you know, had a tough time with this interview. But it was very good to hear him being so open. And I've seen this before, you know, some companies are so big, you could be suing one part of them and doing business with another part of them. And they don't hold it against you because they're taking the money back in another form and giving it to you. You know, it's just such a big company. That's the way it is.

So it was a good interview. They covered a lot. And I just loved how open they were about it. Yeah, I agree. I agree. For a lawyer, he wasn't that bad. And I don't think they covered like they didn't go into like they avoided the sharp edges, so to speak. And they weren't.

They did not go into very many details as far as, as far as the legal and the lawsuit stuff would have gone. I think that probably was outlined very well for the Verge editor here to go down the road. And he did a good job interviewing, at least for what he could be able to pull out of them with a lawyer present because that's not easy. One other piece of follow-up that we have here um last week we talked a little bit about uh how to pre-wire for some shades and um i kind of rambled on a little bit about how i used to do it either using cat5 or um speaker wire like 16.4 typically. The 16.4 would be for like the low voltage stuff.

So you can get two or four conductor getting there. And then the Cat5 would have been for control depending on the size shade you need. But one of our listeners in the hub, James actually came, James Riley came up and made a pretty good suggestion. You put this in here. So I'm going to let you take over and talk about this wire that he suggested we use. Yeah, this is actually pretty cool. I don't think I've ever seen this Somfy wire, but it's basically a Somfy low voltage power and data cable. It looks like it has a, you know, black and red for power.

And then it's got, you know, three other wires for control and then a drain wire. Um, so this looks like it would cover a large amount of shades, um, no matter the brand you have. Um, I think the only complication, you know, we talked about a little earlier, uh, before the podcast was if you have like a heavier shade, uh, or something that requires more power, you know, you're still going to need an AC outlet. But this would handle, I would think, Lutron shades and obviously Sanfi shades and that kind of thing. I don't know pricing on it and I don't know if, you know, the regular consumer can get access to it. But this is a great product that I'm definitely adding to my tool bag. Yeah, it's your standard bundle cable so to speak like it's it's got uh some looks like what to be like two or three oh here it is uh red and black wire for

power there you go a brown for the rs45 ground uh orange white for the positive side of rs45 and the orange for rs45 and then there's a silver drain wire that you can attach at one end, not both, to make sure that any electrical interference that this thing may come into contact with over the width or the span of it gets drained on one side. So that's kind of a nice piece of equipment. It's not, there's two models numbers, actually, non-Plinum rated and Plinum rated. So looks like, I mean, like some fee is huge in commercial, it's huge overseas. So I can't imagine they wouldn't have a bundled cable like this. And I'm sure there's plenty of other five-conductor cable out there that you could use in lieu of this. But this is actually a decent, looks to be a decent product. So I agree.

Look this up if you're doing shades. Pop this stuff in. It could be a lifesaver. What do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Well, according to The Ambient, only 18 months after Z-Wave long range was announced, we are now getting the first certified device, the Ecolink 700 series garage door controller. It's gone live. Z-Wave LR promises up to four times the wireless range compared to regular z-wave

signals and certification means that people could potentially have z-wave devices up to 400 meters or about a quarter of a mile apart with no need for repeaters in between gavin you taught us up into the board uh what do you think about this what's going on no it's good to see some movement it's good to be talking about z-wave in this way um you know uh this was actually you know on my hub of choice my habitat they actually talked about this in the forums in january of 2021 where they mentioned that you know the latest version of the hub can support it um but they will need a firmware update and they're working on it they didn't give exact dates when they would release it but it's good to see that devices are finally coming out.

It's been a long time. It seems like it was 18 months or something like that since they announced it. The good thing about it is it works on a hub and spoke type of model where it's like everything will just communicate directly with the controller because it has that range. But it's also backward compatible with the existing Z-Wave mesh if it has to be, right? So I'm looking forward to it to see, you know, it will solve some problems. I see it more in the industrial space with larger, you know, deployments. I see it when somebody has a mailbox at the end of their driveway that they want to get, you know, a status from, you know, I could see them using it there. You always hear people asking for solutions for that and their mailbox is usually too far. This would solve that. So I can't wait for this to actually come out. I think a lot of people would enjoy it. Yeah, this is the this is

the perfect device for the long range, you know, application for Z-Wave to a garage door controller, you know, realistically is further away from a lot of other devices. And usually we use Wi-Fi garage door controllers just because Wi-Fi garage door controllers just because Wi-Fi is pretty much everywhere at that point. So it's good to see that a garage door controller is getting a long range Z-Wave chip in it. Yeah, maybe have like dual use, like as a gate controller too.

I don't know. You might be able to, it seems like it's got a sensor and a relay on it, kind of the same thing. It might be able to use it to open and control a gate that's a quarter mile away or whatever. I can't imagine opening my garage door while I was a quarter mile away, but there you go. You can do it now. One thing that's cool about this, too, is I didn't realize that Z-Wave long range actually increases the nodes from 232 to over 4,000.

So that's a huge upgrade for Z-Wave. And hopefully we start to see that rolling out a little faster. We've got 4,000 garage doors. This would be perfect for it. All right, guys. Well, we've got a couple of other new products here to talk about tonight. First up, IKEA. It could be another option on the HomeKit front for blinds.

IKEA's first smart shades released back in 2019 It could be another option on the HomeKit front for blinds. Ikea's first smart shades released back in 2019 featuring roller-based design. It was the future and that CAD... I can't pronounce any Ikea names. I just look at them. Anyway, those were kind of met with mixed reviews during the initial launch. Kind of had a bunch of delays. We kind of like saw them roll out really slowly. There were shortages.

There were missed deadlines on adding that home kit compatibility into their app and everything is kind of a mess but uh since then i i think they've kind of gotten better reviews and people kind of like them now i'm not too sure but ikea is now expanding that lineup uh with two new options. Oh gosh, the Practicing and the Tredizen. All right, anyway, there's one that starts with a P and one that starts with a T. These new smart blinds have not been officially announced, but they show up in international versions of Ikea's website and was spotted, of course, by Dave Zadz over on Twitter. So let's start up with the Treadstone, whatever, blinds. Yeah, these are smart blinds. They're folding blinds designed.

Look pretty good. Got a couple of pictures on their website that we found this on. Come in sizing options of 120 by 195 centimeters and 140 by 195 centimeters and have a darkening style blackout material. Those run around 150 euro or about $163. And there's the, uh, the P1 prac to listing smart blinds. Okay. Um, these are the roller blind designed and they're available in two sizes, one 20 by one 95 centimeters and one 40 by one 95 centimeters. And these, um, look like much higher end, uh, versions of the offerings that Ikea

already has in the roller blinds. And these will start at about $140 or 125 Euro. Uh, interesting stuff here. Um, Gavin, I know you have some, some smart shades. We were just talking about them before the show. Uh, these prices are just crazy when i look at them like to see smart shades and smart blinds at this at this price point yeah i actually have um a set of ikea blinds too and i like them uh they run on zigbee they pair directly with the hub they work great my only gripe was i find their battery kind of i'm charging it maybe two or three times a year um and i don't even use it that much. It's in a bathroom. So, you know, like it, it, it's not like I'm using it many times a day. Um, but they

work great when they're working. Um, and it's good to see them innovating on this. You know, as long as they follow, um, follow the same Zigbee standards and make it work with everything, I'm all for it. This is the stuff I get excited about just because of how inexpensive it is compared to like the professional or the other options that are out there. Looking at the website right now and the most expensive one it looks like they have is $180.

Yep. Which is nothing in Shade's world. So I haven't personally used these yet, but they've been on my my watch list for quite a while now the one thing about them is you you're stuck with the sizes they give you to right so they're very limited you don't you don't have a choice of custom sizes so some people have gotten crafty and actually you know bought them cut them down to what they needed um so it's a possibility if you're willing to do that that's interesting i didn't know you could cut them down to what they needed. So it's a possibility if you're willing to do that.

That's interesting. I didn't know you could cut them down the way they were built and designed. But I guess if you're crafty enough, you can, well, anything can be cut down, I suppose, if you're crafty enough. So that's interesting. The price is definitely right. I mean, I know some shades I've bought that $180 would probably cover the brackets that held them up. So yeah, yeah, that's pretty inexpensive. All right. So one other thing in

the new products that were kind of came out this week in a virtual partner summit, SnapOne reviewed some of the highlights of 2021 and unveiled a bunch of new products across the control audio and remote monitoring categories. yeah i guess remote monitoring oversee remote monitoring and control for this has been announced before they just i mean snap baby really just likes to remind people that oversee exists i mean in case you forgot like they just they really want you to know um but so they kind of reminded everybody that control for now can be kind of like the oversee hub, I guess, like it's a computer. So they, they, they let you run that controller software on the control for controller.

It makes sense. Um, so not, not a new thing, but they just kind of reminded everybody that it was a new thing, I guess that happened within the last 12 months. Uh, but one of the big, big announcements from control for actually a couple of them, uh, they're going to be launching a Control 4 OS 3.3.0. So 3.3.0. They've got a bunch of new features in here, including faster, the ability for the apps to connect faster remotely. And that also includes for dealers. If you're a dealer, you can dial in and fix somebody's system. That's a lot faster now. So that's kind of nice. One of the big features here

is in the UI. And this is something I've been kind of working on for a while. You can do lighting, like color changes with the lighting. In the past with Control 4, what you would have to do is if you had a red, green, blue light, let's just leave that and keep it simple. You would have to have three, well, actually four different sliders inside of your interface. One for red, one for green, one for blue, and then one for the brightness of that fixture. So, or that light bulb, you know,

if it's Philips Hue or whatever. So you would individually adjust those things and there were all sorts of like hacks in different ways that people attempted to use like the camera proxy to display a static image of a color wheel and where you tapped on the color wheel would actually send the PTZ commands down and they would map that specific thing. Yeah, it was just janky. It was really janky. So Control 4 is finally built. I mean, when was Philips Hue introduced? Like 2010, 2012, somewhere there.

Like finally, we have a native interface inside the control 4 app and the touchscreen interfaces where you can go in and kind of relatively quickly adjust uh color uh and temperature of of of products that actually support that so that's kind of nice um i i see tj kind of laughing there it's been a while it's been a while it's it's amazing how long it takes some of these things to get rolled out yeah it's crazy like when you when you look at some of the professional stuff that's out there how it doesn't really come along until you know a consumer-based product comes out and kind of pushes them towards that you know a good example of this is security cameras. Uh, security cameras have been really

awful for like all of my life. Um, and they just started in like the last like year or two, actually adding like motion alerts and other, you know, what I consider basic necessities at this point. Um, things that like ring and nest and everybody else has. Um, so I always find it fascinating how far behind a lot of this professional gear is, uh, especially for something simple, like color changing for lights. You would think that would be just built in. Like it's part of the thing. No, no, you, and that, I just talked about like RGB lights. What if you had RGBW lights or RGBW lights? Like you're talking six sliders just to control one fixture in your house.

And now you've got, you know, maybe 10 fixtures in your house. That's six times 10 different little sliders that are on the interface. Do you have to scroll, scroll, scroll through to find the exact red that you want to control? Oh, what a mess. But I'm glad that they gave us, they've updated this and have given everyone the ability to get in there and move this around faster. Also, dealers can create color presets, and new users can personalize those presets and include them in the lighting scene. So I guess if you had the need for kind of an app or touchscreen as well. So that's built into this as well. Control 4, sometime after the, about the time that SnapAV did purchase them, one of their project managers reached out and was asking us, you know, what we'd like to see in a new, new lighting control proxy, so to speak. And a lot

of these features were definitely something we mentioned. So I'm glad to see it, it finally get implemented and rolled out to dealers so they can improve their product projects. And it's really nice. It's nice to have new things. And this is, I think this is kind of one of the bigger things that they, they announced. They did release some control for core series controllers. They've got, they just boast faster processors. It's kind of like a refresh of the EA lineup. So you have the EA one, three, and five. And, you know, one, three, and five basically go up in like how big the house is and also

price. So these just have, it's kind of like a refreshed, faster processors. It's got 4K output for the interface and everything on there. Yeah, it has a higher quality digital analog converters that can come with that as well. So these are nice. I did notice one thing that these on the spec sheets on their website, I don't know if these are released yet or not, but I'll go ahead and say it. There was like the Zigbee, not Zigbee, the Z-Wave 700 chip is built into these as well. So that's kind of interesting.

I mean, you could always have gotten that as like the extra dongle to support Z-Wave. But I did find it interesting that it was built in now, like directly into the controller. So it's not having, there's not anybody who is integrating with those Z-Wave devices. And I'm not too terribly sure like who it was for. I think it's where like those larger like builder projects where they may have like a lock company that's not a Z, geez, I'm getting mixed up, Z-Wave property. It's, you know, like Slate or something like that that doesn't have any ZigBee type devices.

They could just go over and use Z-Wave, which is like, you know, Gavin says, it's pretty ubiquitous. So kind of nice to see. Anybody want to take anything to that? OK. And one other thing I did notice is that they also revealed this thing called RYFF, R-Y-F-F. It's a high resolution audio platform.

And it's going to provide 24-bit, 192 kilohertz decoding, network-based audio synchronization, and fine tuning controls, like like crossover control delays all that good stuff supports 12 streaming services including spotify and title so that's kind of nice like it probably come along with those uh those new controllers that you'll be able to get that it's always nice to to have better streaming music options in this day and age they stress the quality of the streaming with that, right? So are they pulling it from Tidal and Spotify at higher quality

and giving it to you at that quality? Is that how it's working? Yeah, I mean, that higher quality subscriptions have been kind of, or price differentiating things, those have been pushed over the last couple of years by all these streaming companies so i think it's just kind of control four saying yeah you know we're caught up to that you know we can support the high and quite frankly like i i one of the like the things i can't stand is like the the lower quality stuff that you get

off of like sirius xm like like that, it's really bad. I don't know how anybody can listen to that. I get that it's background music, but man, it's just painful. But when you get to some of the higher bit rates and I mean, even Spotify and the MP3s and even what they're doing now, like it's pretty flawless, but people really like to have those big numbers on there. And it's always good to have bigger numbers because that's what this entire industry seems to be about. Speaking of speakers, the episode is going to launch a 2.1 active soundbar with a wireless subwoofer, and it's going to be bundled together. It's kind of interesting. Let's see, active soundbar include an optical analog HDMI inputs and will come

prepared to this. They'll come prepared to kind of limit the hassle with the installation of them. It's got Bluetooth built in for music integration from mobile devices and an IR remote. The eight inch down firing subwoofer is 80 watts and can be placed anywhere within 30 feet of the soundbar. So, um, not very exciting, but honestly, it's a good problem solver, right? Depending on the price point that that comes in as like you want, you want to have one of these types systems on every TV in your house at a minimum, I would think, because TV speakers are awful. And if it, depending on how much that is, like if it just works standalone, I would, I would just simply just pair it with the TV that that's in there. And if it's, you know, price competitive with

like maybe a Sonos soundbar or something like that, I'd, I'd pop this in instead, you know, especially if it's a guest room or something like that. Not a bad thing. Would you be a buyer at $500, Seth? That's pushing it, right? I don't know. That's the MSRP on it. Oh, well, MSRP and SnapAV is, that's the SnapAV MSRP. But yeah, the installer is not going to make a ton of money on it. But when the, you know, customer, customers are always looking at soundbars and especially like the Samsung package deals or the Sony package deals. Um, so this is a great alternative for the, the installer just to put that in instead. Um, and episodes, a relatively good brand. I wouldn't say they're high end or, or anything amazing. Um, but they're pretty good. They make

a wide range of, you know, audio products that kind of solve the whole house audio for the most part. So I wouldn't say this would be a bad product or anything like that. No, I wouldn't either. I think at 500, it's probably it's probably on the high side. But what I think this solves is I think what this solves is the like the control thing. Episode's not going to put something out that can't be controlled. And if I go to my LG one in the bedroom that I have integrated with my TV, and the TV is an LG and the stupid soundbar is an LG, and I literally, if I push the button, the volume up and down,

it gives me the volume on the TV screen, but it will not turn down the volume on the LG soundbar until I hit pause and play again. No idea why. It should all work together. It's got its own connected protocol that it worked. But so that that's the kind of like silly little things that as an integrator, I would, I would buy an LG TV. I would buy an LG soundbar. I would install them expecting them to work together and then run into some little side case like this. That'll never get fixed because it's LG. But instead of having to deal with all that hassle, we'll just get this episode thing. I know it can be controlled. Call it a day.

You know, Bob's your uncle. You can get onto the next install. So that's where those types of products really fall in and really, really help get jobs done out there. Triad PDX architectural speakers will be available in Q2 and they have this push lock technology allows for you to quickly and easily install them. Uh, so these are the in ceiling type speakers. You've got holes in your ceilings for, uh, and then they have a premium PDX series. It'll include eight in ceiling speakers and three in wall speakers with three different performance levels designed to satisfy the listening needs of any customer.

So yeah, there you go. Episode kind of the, I don't, I, like you said, not really the lower end. They actually do have some decent sounding transducers there, I guess. Uh, but triad is definitely the more like high end brand, no name type thing. Uh, and they are coming out with a new line here. So that's, that's kind of exciting. The only thing that I care about on that is the, the push lock technology. Um, uh, rust sound has something similar that I don't know what the name is. Um, but that makes it super easy to install speakers. Um, and if you've ever worked with somebody that uses an impact driver on speakers, this is like a lifesaver because you can take

their drill away from them and just have them install the speakers. It just makes it super easy to get in and out. So that's a welcome addition. And it's good to see you guys have to deal with stupid products too every now and then. You know, like it's not just me that's banging my head, but even in your space, you know, like you said, if something works, you just want it to put it in and walk away. If something gives you problems, you probably will never want to install it again yep yep exactly like i will never i will never recommend an lg soundbar from my own experience like i it should work it just doesn't work yeah there you go every every integrator has one brand that they would rather die or go out of business than work with again mine and you guys and you guys are going to laugh. Mine is Logitech Harmony.

I love my Harmony. I know, but I, I, I literally started my career installing those things and managing different passwords and all this stuff just to keep, you know, in the, in the, when you started, you had to have like an email and a password for every single one you set up or something like that. Or you had to go and reset it by telling it what model the TV was or something. And it was just a pain. And then I had these slew of them that had like the bad touch, the bad screens on them or the base wouldn't repair, the base wouldn't pair with the remote correctly. And I probably installed 70 of them. And I would say every one of them came back. And that, I mean, that would, that would do it for a lot of people. That that's the end of the line. That was the end of the line for me.

Like every time I had to go deal with Harmony, I was just like, no, can I just install a URC remote or like control four remote? When you, when you have to deal with one and it gives you problems every now and then that's not, if you have to deal with like 80 of them and every one of them gives you a problem. Yeah. I only deal with five. so they don't give me problems though and and the way the installers would install this i mean if you don't remember the stupid base station had a had

a plug like that was a physically attached to the base station with the little ir wires so you would have to install that and you'd have to go into the cabinet and plug it in to get it to work, to put it back where it's supposed to be. Um, and a lot of times the installers would, would put that cable down. And I mean, it was just almost impossible to get stuff out without pulling the whole rack of pulling all the equipment apart just to get to the, it was just, it was a nightmare. I'm, I'm having like PTSD thinking about this. So I'm going to move on. So, all right. Uh, I i could i could go on and on i'm sure i'm sure they're better now eventually they did think like there was a time where they like the power cable you could disconnect that too like you could disconnect the power cable off the base and

then you could take things it took them years to get to that point but eventually they did do that all right tp link routers uh oh man so so for several years, networking equipment company TP-Link has partnered with a company called Avira to help secure products such as their Wi-Fi routers. These are two products Avira offers, HomeCare and HomeShield. They are features that are there to protect users from cyber attacks and other threats. But it seems the company's cooperation involved the transfer of user data over to Avira as well. So a Reddit user noticed in the span of 24 hours, his TP-Link Archer AX3000 router transmitted more than 80,000 requests over to the Avira servers. Now that may not be that bad of a thing. Like you would expect this security thing to be, like, cross-checking

and making sure that what you're doing online is safe, if that's what you're doing. But here's the thing. Like, Avira claims that you can control the devices, what devices and what data gets transferred over to the service, but it turns out the service continues to work. Like, if you don't even have the subscription to this Avira service, it just works. And it even works if you do have the subscription and turn it off. Like, if you don't even have the subscription to the severe service, it just,

it works. And it even works if you do have the description and turn it off. Like if you completely go in and disable it, no, it still transfers all that information. So, um, it's the safe things, things, the safe things, uh, thing that they have is, is a cloud cyber threat thing that evaluates the, your, the traffic you're going to like see it's watching where you go and, and interacts kind of with the home router to help you avoid getting onto a site that may have a virus or something on it like that. For its part, TP-Link says the network activities, all those network activities,

is due to the Avera cloud database, distinguishing whether the network request is a secure or part of a malware network. Firmware update is in process that will turn off this functionality if you want, but there's no ETA or estimated timeline on this at all. So Gavin, you and I were talking about this before the show. This is incredible. This is like, turn off the feature? No, no. We want to know where you're going and watch every, yeah, we still want to know. And the amount of data they gather is just

ridiculous from all the routers, all the requests, everything you do, they're gathering it. And, you know, like as routers put in more AI features, they have to send the data back to analyze, to be able to, you know, figure out what's good, what's bad, or even to tell you what's good or bad, you know, that's just the way it is now. And when you buying a company, you have to trust that that company is doing the right thing with your data, because this is the link from you to the rest of the world. They're getting everything that you're browsing, you know, any dirty little secret out there, they probably see it right so you really have to trust the ero does it a lot of routers do it but the key thing here is even if you turn it off it was still doing it so you're thinking nothing's going out there but it was still doing it and

that's not good and the only reason they're they're you know this is out there is they got caught they're gonna make a a firmware update they got caught you know but i could see it being a class action lawsuit at some point possibly you know who knows where it will go but i hate the fact that you have to wait till they get caught because there's nothing watching these routers they're the last piece in the chain right so this guy found it out because he put it behind another router that was monitoring it um so it's just uh it's a mess i don't know who else is doing something like this we won't know i hope people are investigating it though yeah this isn't this is not a good sign um i've been actually i like tp link for the very simple uh networking devices like network switches

or poe switches that kind of thing um but i've been recently checking out their Omada lineup, uh, which looks like it kind of rivals, you know, ubiquities unify lineup. Um, and they're way, way less expensive compared to unify. Um, and they have a lot of the same functionalities and stuff like that. So I've been checking it out. Um, this is not a good look for, for our company to adopt this new company. Uh, if they're just going to ignore these kinds of safety standards like that. Um, and I guess I shouldn't say anything too far because we're still using unify after the huge data breach last year. Um, but you know, I'm not going to switch this other company who definitely doesn't, uh, care about security. So, uh, hopefully

they get a fixed. Yeah. And that's, that's kind of kind of like, look, all of these products that we talked about tonight, like every one of them could have a security issue with it, right? And that doesn't matter. Like people make these products, right? Like people make mistakes, all right? But it's how the company responds to those mistakes. It's how the company says, those mistakes. It's how the company says, we're going to fix this. We're going to roll out an update, you know, with ubiquity breach.

You know, that was a breach. And it turns out it was like their main security guy that did it. Also, the company didn't have very good security practices at the time, but now I'm sure that they have learned from those mistakes and, you know, it's a better company now. Like it better be like, it's insane that they had their entire hardware encryption keys in a GitHub repository that the entire company had access to that. That makes no sense, but there you go. Ubiquiti great company there. Uh, yeah, hopefully that, that practice has ended and they're able to roll out different hardware encryption keys for new products. Wow. And I'm amazing. Amazing. Anyway. Um, yeah, this thing, if TP link updates this within the next couple of days, that would be good. If they drag their feet on it and let it go a month or two, that, that does,

that's not a good sign because what it means to me is Gavin, you're right. They see everything, everything that you go to. This is how those companies know. People want to know how companies freak out. People are like, oh, my Amazon thing is listening to me all the time because it knows that I was thinking about churros. No, no, no, no, no. It's smart enough to watch everything that you do online. It's smart enough to know who is in your house and what they're doing and aggregate all that data. And this feeds into that aggregation process. This is literally everything that you are doing online is being sold somewhere.

And that's, that's what I see out of it. But, you know, they, they, they could fix this. I could be wrong. They could fix it. You guys are shaking your head. Like I don't trust TV link. Yeah. Well, you know, when people are, have the Tim foil hat and they're like, I don't want any smart speakers. They're listening to me. I'm like, you don't realize everything's listening to you. You know, like, if they don't get you through that, they're getting that through your Google phone. You know, they're getting you through, you know, like, your router now. You know, I would be surprised if ISPs are monitoring some of the data. No, no, no. That's what I was going to do.

They're absolutely monitoring, especially here in the States. Comcast takes every bit of your data and sells it to third-party brokers. Absolutely. Because they make money off that. They don't have to, your internet, you know, they can lower your internet bill. Who cares? They're making more money off of you selling your advertising stuff off to you, to these third-party data brokers in bulk. There's no privacy. No, absolutely not. They see every bit that goes over the line. It's not encrypted. And a couple of carriers here have actually got in trouble for that. And Verizon's pretty infamous about asking you to opt out of things and not actually opting you out of it. So yeah, it's definitely already happening to everybody, I would assume.

Well, I hope that TP-Link does the right thing here and actually reduces a firmware update for what is potentially a pretty big security hole. And definitely, I mean, it's got to be some kind of legal issue with them, you know, throwing out personalized data to some like third party broker that you're not actually, you know, agreeing to or agreeing to service terms on. But who knows? Maybe it's in their, you know, their terms of service when you sign into the router for the first time and set it up saying, you know, I'll agree that you can share all my data with this third party person. Yeah. Who knows? Anyway, not a good look TP link, get

it fixed, get it fixed guys. All the links and topics that we've talked about tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash three eight zero. All right. On to fun things. We've got a huge pick of the week here. We've got Gavin. I really don't even know what to think about this. This is brilliant. This is brilliant. This is automation at its finest. And I'm doing the chef's kiss thing. There we go. You know, sometimes I look at things and I'm like why would you do this but you have to sometimes just admire the fact that they were able to do this and in this week's pick of the week it was a total toilet that somebody modified with a switch bot to flush on command so it could be controlled

with the a lady it could control be google you know this doesn't have to be a total toilet it could be any toilet yeah this is just a switch bot strapped with zip ties there's a few sticks holding it into the into the basin to where it doesn't get wet with a chain going down to the plunger and it just rips it up like that brilliant brilliant it is brilliant and the part that i really enjoyed was how hacked together the solution it's being held by two sticks across the top. You know, it's just a nail through the switch bot that's holding a little wire. And the key, the kicker to me is, I love this about this solution, is the handle on the toilet still works as expected. You know, that's a perfect design right there.

I mean, I don't know if it will last. I see things rusting out over time or, you know, stuff like that. But you have to admire what this guy did with this toilet. And I had to find the video for it to see it in action. Yeah, we'll play the video. We'll play the video sounds behind this discussion that we have. It's exactly what you think it is. Yeah, this is so much fun. And honestly, the comments in the Reddit are just great. It's like, it says, Alexa, flush again, or this is the expletive. I'll leave that to the imagination. And this dude

is flushing his money down the toilet. Uh, this, this is great. This is, this is, this is actually the phrase for activating the home automation. That's, that's really good. Like you can schedule your flushes now. This is, this is so good. Yeah. I don't see why you would want this. You know, I, I think I would probably use it like one time to scare somebody. Like if I had like a guest over or something, I would just flush the toilet for them um but what is the actual use case here i i have no idea i forget for a forgetful person that forgets to flush all the time i guess or you have to do a flush halfway through so you could call it out instead of trying to reach behind you to get to that lever because some of them are you know positioned in bad spots you just you know so you just yell it out and you get that halfway flush

there you go the the flush bot it it it exists it's real there you go yeah i the only improvement i would make to this would i i would actually i was like okay this if this was something that was practical i i would i would put the switch butt on the outside and kind of have like maybe a hole or something at the top of the tank for it to run like a little pulley system and wire through to where you could actually get more leverage on it that way and everything you know what it's amazing that we're sitting here and we're wondering why but we're still thinking about better ways to design we can make it better yeah yeah you know the first thing is why but if we're gonna do it let's do it better you just drill a hole through the top of the toilet lid and that way you can

just set it right on top there you go there you go there's a million ways to build the better flush bot i guess it's coming coming soon to a home depot near you yeah exactly smart toilets that's that's that's the way the the future. Uh, and yeah, this, you don't need to pay for like the total toilets, like the, the, the smart ones. Those, those are pretty expensive, like $2,000 or whatever. I mean, they, they do all sorts of other fancy things for you, but, uh, obviously not flush themselves. They do that too. Yeah. They, they will, they will take care of the whole cycle if you will. Uh, yeah, this is a little bit, uh, how much are these things, these little, uh, flush little bit. How much are these things?

These little flush bot things. How much are these? These cost? Oh, you mean the switch bot? You know, you're starting to call it flush. But I think they're like ninety dollars or something. They're pretty expensive. Oh, pretty cheap.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. See, I would definitely put on the outside for that price. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Maybe not. I see him on Amazon for thirty dollars. So that's not bad.

Oh, no. Put it on the outside to you know to stop it from rusting you know the battery terminals and stuff like that keep the moisture out of there definitely on the outside and you can easily change the batteries when you why are we still designing this we're still deciding easier to service you know like you said and if you're if you if you know you're going to do this when you're pre-wiring your house just make sure you pull in one of these sophfy shade motors down to behind your toilet, one of the wires in, and that way you can just wire up for anything that may be a smart toilet.

This is all good stuff. All good advice, guys. I appreciate it. We should just start installing those in people's houses and then just randomly flush in their toilets. Yeah, you could build this into Oversea. I mean, this ties back into every single thing that we've talked about tonight this is this is a brilliant thing i i think the one thing i would do if i had this in my toilets was wait till the wife's in the shower and flush all the toilets at

once oh yeah you know if a criminal mastermind got a hold of too many logins if they use the tb link router and stole everyone's data and got all their logins. They could flush all the toilets in one town at the same time. And you know what happens then? Oh, boy. The reactors go over. Something happens. I don't remember. It was the thing in high school or middle school that we always said.

Anyway, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, great ideas for a flush bot, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at h. HomeTech.fm. Or you can go into the website at home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. Well, guys, that wraps up another fun week of home technology news. Got any got any big plans? Got any things you guys are? What's next? Gavin, you and I have not done our our automated like the automated things. At least I haven't. I don't know about you and I have not done our automated things. At least I haven't. I don't know about you. I haven't automated my vent hood over my stove yet.

Yeah, I've been afraid of messing with that. I'm still trying. I have the device. It's like, but it's the last thing you want to be in the middle of and your wife walks in on you doing, right? Oh, yeah. Why is the vent hood in a million pieces um don't worry don't worry you know so i kind of have that on pause um lately i've just been working on um my security cameras so i've been working on and this little extra but uh creating my own models for ai um there's a way i could do it, create my own models, make detection of certain things better

in my yard. And that's all integrated into a Blue Iris. So I've been playing with that, gathering a lot of photos over the last little while that I can train. We're going to have to have a Blue Iris 101 one of these days. Talk about it. Because it's a really powerful software that has a bajillion settings that I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. What about you TJ? Anything, anything big for the weekend you're going to try and do? Nothing on the schedule this weekend. Um, but I've been eyeballing, uh, last week we talked about the Ava, uh, remote and the new speakers. Um, and I've been eyeballing actually one of the remotes.

Um, my company became a dealer for Ava actually over the past week. And I have been looking at one of the remotes to purchase because there's just no good remotes anymore. Ever since Logitech kind of went out of business or stopped their remote division, I've pretty much had to resort to using like URC. Um, and if you've used URC in the past, it is just awful. Um, they're not good looking devices. The software is terrible. Um, they, they work great for what they are and the price that they are. Um, but they're just, they're not attractive or, or, or easy to use. Um, so I'm excited to get my hands on that. Maybe I'll have that in the next week or two,

uh, for one of our shows. Nice. Nice. I'd be looking forward to that. I, Gavin, I was laughing at you. You were talking about like taking things apart when your wife walks in, like mine went out of the house today, uh, and, and left me here alone to my own devices. And I, I, I got bored of work. So I decided to take her computer apart and swap it out with a new processor that i had and um that was me earlier just computer parts strewn about like trying to get the new processor put in before she got back you feel the countdown timer you know when you're in the middle of it you're like okay i got three hours she's back yeah yeah yeah the stress they don't understand the stress we go through to do these things before they realize. No, and she won't even care. Like, her computer runs.

It's a beast now. It runs so fast. But she won't notice. It'll just be like my wife's computer. My wife's computer sitting behind me with a 3060 in it. Graphics card. So just sits idle 99% of the time. You need to offload some encoding to that bad boy there.

I'm going to move it to the Unraid server here in a bit. Just use the integrated graphics. And yeah, no one will notice at all. All right, guys. Well, 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 the Patreon 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 five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on this show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private site, Chat the Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather and talk about shade wiring. That was a fun conversation. It's quite quite extensive, but really good ideas. I'm really honestly glad that like we have the brain trust we have in there with people it's like hey if you guys haven't seen this use this and

no i i've done this for years and hadn't seen that wire like that's amazing so there you go anyway uh if you want to help out the show but can't support financially totally understand just appreciate a five-star review on itunes or a positive rating and new podcast app of your choice. It's wraps up another week in home technology from everyone here. Have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. Goodbye.