HomeTech.fm - Episode 381 - Where All the Chips Went

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

On this week's show, Gavin made an amazing video tiler, SwitchBot launches an outlet switch, iRobot updates make your vacuum smarter, Matter is delayed, eero brings 6E to the market at a decent price, and a retro pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 25th, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm C.J. 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. This week we've got a couple of new products that through in the, the home tech headlines we'll get into. But first Gavin has the new product of the week as far as I'm concerned. New product. This thing is so cool. Yeah. So, so last week, so we still have our, it wasn't last week, it was the week before.

So the week before we were talking about video trailers in our, our, our home tech talk. It's a little side conversation chat thing we try and do every week. Sometimes the schedules don't line up for everybody. And I forget who was showing off video tilers. I think Rashid was showing off a savant video tiler and how that worked. And so, so if anybody doesn't know, cause I don't think Gavin knew when he, when he looked at it, but a video Tyler is a device that takes in, I don't know,

three, four, 10, 12 video sources, combines them and then gives them tiles on the screen. And you can, it's like a fancy picture in picture. If you picture that, like you have a picture in picture, that's a video Tyler. But also if you did like like, a quad view, that would be video Tyler. Or if you had nine TV sources and put nine of them, that's video Tyler as well. But Gavin saw this going on, and he said, I can do that. By the time we were supposed to have the Home Tech Talk this last week, you had one up and going. Yeah. You had your own, like, DIY version.

Yeah. How'd you do this, man? You know what? The one thing I like about the home tech talks is that I get to see what you guys do in the pro space that we don't see over here. And it's amazing the stuff you guys get to play with. But the cost of that stuff is just out of my range. When you're looking at $15,000 for, you know, some of these things, that's out of my range. So I'm always thinking, you know, I could do something like that with my current setup.

So I took a few notes, put together a proof of concept in my head. And within a few days, I had something that was working. And then it just took off from there. So what I'm doing right now is my whole home is all streaming based stuff, right? So it's all IPTV based stuff. And what I did is I basically created a Docker and put it on my Unraid server. And that Docker

has an API I created for it that will take commands from my Kodi front end, go and grab all the streams and tile it however I want and then spit out another stream to the code. So I'm watching the exact same thing you guys see in whatever configuration tiled however I want. I got it done in time for March Madness. That was the key there. So I was watching four or five games at the same time on the same screen and it changed my viewing.

Like amazing how much it changed my viewing habits of TV right now. And I've just been growing it from there. So I saw, I think Rashid was showing control of it. Their version was all done through an iPad, right? So my one requirement was I wanted this to all be like integrated in my Kodi front end, but also be controllable from just my regular Harmony remote control. I was able to accomplish that by integrating the four, I use the four color buttons on the Harmony controls, if you're familiar with them, right? And I integrated it with the TV guide in there. So basically if I'm on a channel, I press one of the buttons and I can assign it to a tile on the layout, right? From there, I press another button. I can choose what layout I the buttons and I can assign it to a tile on the layout. Right. That is so awesome.

From there, I press another button. I can choose what layout I want. So I can go like a picture and picture side by side. I can stack it. It's all customizable. It's all just, you know, templates in my code. Right. And then another button, I could select what audio source I want to pull it from.

Right. And then the fourth button, I just, it starts it all up and, you know, it instructs the server to go get everything, put it all together, lay it out nicely and present it back to the TV. And I'm in love, like I'm still tweaking things here and there. And I must admit it's a do it yourself. It will never be as smooth as what you guys have out there in the pro space, because it's still like got to, you know, dependent on some hardware here, you know, there there's, you know, buffering, you got to worry about certain things like that. Right. But it works to the point where I am happy and I love it.

My next step is now like I only thought of this today, but my next step to add to this is hardware, adding some hardware inputs into it. So I was looking at video capture cards or USB video capture devices. I'm going to throw them in my server, pass them through the Docker, and then work to get FFmpeg to add that as a source now. So on my front end, I can choose my Apple TV in the basement and view that and control that and do whatever. That's the next step. One thing at a time. But that was about a week's worth. It took me to get to that point. Jeez, man. It's amazing. It was a personal challenge. I took it as a challenge. And sometimes when I get a challenge like that, you know, it's it's still cold up here. So I don't have anywhere to go out,

you know. So I'm like, let me just get it done while it's cold. And the way you describe it, it just sounds like it was much easier than some of the professional solutions I've seen out there, which is hilarious to me, right? Is that like I ran into a lot of these projects where like a professional will spec in something like this and it may take them weeks or months to like get it working really correctly after many service calls and stuff like that. So I think it's pretty hilarious. You got this working in like a week and you don't do this type of work normally.

Oh, the best part was the wife's reaction to the whole thing. After it was all said and done, she came home from work. I said, check this out. This is really cool. And I started up a couple, you know, I put the news on one and I put golf channel on the other and, you know, set it all up. And she just looked at me. she said, why, why, you know, like I, I did know how to react. And I was like, but it's so cool. Like the stuff in the backend. And she's like, she, she, she, you know, she took the time and she let me sit there and explain it to her, you know, and I appreciated that a lot because, you know, I had to get it out of my system and talk to somebody and tell them what the back end was doing in the whole thing. And she didn't understand the thing I said, but she nodded and she said, cool, that's so nice.

And I appreciate that. Well, if you can get this working with a Nintendo Switch and another streaming device, my wife would probably love that. She's been talking about watching TV while playing games. So that sounds like a perfect use case for it. device my wife would probably love that she's been talking about watching tv while playing games so that sounds like a perfect use case for it all right i'll let you know how the hardware input goes because i'm gonna i was looking it up i'm gonna order it and i'll probably maybe by next week depends on how fast it comes in yeah the problem with all those with the latency on things could be kind of high by the time you go in and out when you're doing streaming it doesn't matter that much but um yeah gaming

video game gaming is like you you want to be super precise on when you're when you're when you're fishing there and in animal crossing like you gotta pull the fish just at the right time how did you know what what game would be played i just kind of took a guess there it's the same one we have here all right all right well guys that's pretty cool um got a one little item of follow-up today gavin also uh hubitat three two three sorry two three one i don't know why it couldn't be three two one but how's that hubitat three two one update going amazing so i've been i'm part of the beta crew i've been playing with the hubitat betas for a number of weeks now.

And the only reason I'm really pushing this one is because, again, I mentioned last week the Z-Wave update is a game changer. It makes the hub run so much better with Z-Wave devices. If you're a Hubitat user, do the upgrade, update your Z-Wave, give it some time to, you know you know um just you know settle down and you'll you'll be happy very cool yeah it looks like there's a couple of new drivers and new compatible devices and and some they do that with all their updates there's always new drivers there's no features new this but the key thing was the z-wave update to me so this is what you were talking about was in beta now it's gonna be this is rolling out to everybody right yes and with habitat it's all optional so you don't have to update um and the nice thing with habitat you can take backups you can roll back if you don't like an update you can

roll back to the previous version you just can't roll back the z-wave firmware so you know keep that in mind but you won't want to after that. Right, right. Yeah, it's a good thing you pointed this out. I actually updated my hub right before we jumped on the call here. And it may lead me to actually set up my Hubitat hub. It has not been properly set up yet, but this might be the push I need. Cool, cool. Well, with that, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right, SwitchBot, the company that revolutionized remote flushing toilets, has launched a new powered outlet this week. It's called the SwitchBot Mini.

Sorry, the SwitchBot Plug Mini. It's actually a small, small plug. The SwitchBot Plug Mini allows control through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and features energy monitoring. Smart features also include integration with Google Home, Siri shortcuts, IFTTTTT, and Line Clova.

I've never even heard of that one. And SmartThings. Wow. Okay. And it has the most epic release video for a mini smart switch plug thing that you've ever seen in your life. So we're going to put a link to that in the show notes for sure. Gavin, you put this on. Yep. What do you think? What you think about that you're just trying to get me to watch the video this epic video the video got me like you know

i was on twitter i saw the short version of the video i was captivated you know it was like a trailer to their ad you know and then i saw the full video and i was like wow they put a lot of time into this to announce a smart plug. I mean, there's nothing exciting about it. It's just another smart plug works in their ecosystem. But they really put a lot of time into it. The key with the smart plug I saw, too, it supports stuff like they really tell the power reporting feature. Right. But, you know, this is going to be working with matter later on and matter doesn't

support power reporting so that's one feature that makes me wonder you know we're still going to be in this system of having multiple apps am i going to have to have my apps for this one and then my apps for matter as well anyway you know things like that just you know drive me nuts but it's a great video go check that out if anything yeah super dramatic it's like showing old devices turning into new and all kinds like a wasteland i'm not even sure how that what has what that has to do with a smart plug but it got me excited this is why yeah the video is something else i um i do know of a number of devices that have um the it's just like smart outlets like this that have the energy reporting stuff built

into them but none of it is price point so a one a single one is uh 11.99 two pack is 18.99 and a four pack is all of 30 so kind of a you know a crazy really crazy um price point i guess that kind of falls in line with the rest of their products, though. It's crazy they were able to put three different chips into it during the chip shortage. Right. Well, now you know where all the chips have gone. They're all in these little SwitchBot mini plugs. So we saw what people did with the SwitchBot, the original device. Now, you know, they're flushing toilets with it.

I wonder what they're going to end up doing with this one. So we'll have to keep an eye on this device and see where it goes. All right, well, speaking of seeing where devices go, following releasing some smart mapping technology for the mid-range Roomba i3, iRobot is launching Siri support for its various robot vacuums as part of its 4.0 Genius Home Intelligence app update. Other new features include room-specific cleaning preferences like multiple passes over tough-to-clean areas, child and pet lock, and the ability to set do-not-disturb timeframes when you don't want your robot vacuum to run. Additionally, iRobots recently released J7 vacuum is now able to identify and avoid clothing and towels that are on the floor.

Siri integration is tied to Apple shortcuts, so it allows you to set up custom phrases to get your supported Roomba cleaning using Siri. Unlike Alexa and Google Assistant integrations, voice commands to clean individual rooms are just not supported just yet. They may be in the future, but not yet. And they've also lowered the price on the i3 Evo to $499 and $699 for the iRoomba i3 Evo Plus. So that genius 4.0 update is rolling out globally

until the end of June 2022. TJ, I like this feature here for the J7 where it can avoid clothing and towels. That means I don't have to actually clean up my house before the robot tries to clean it. Yeah, robot vacuums kind of look more appealing to me every year. I've never actually owned one, but I've read a lot about them and they've always seemed like a good idea, but I've never been ready to jump on them. And they keep adding features like this,

like the scheduling that do not disturb and and some other options to it that make it really appealing to me. I think once they bring down the pricing of the auto dock and auto empty ones, I'll probably jump into that. I think last I looked, they were like $800 to $1,000 for one of the auto empty end ones. But robot vacuums, they're super popular, and they're only going to get better. I jumped into the robot vacuum thing. Actually, my Roomba's birthday is next week I gotta happy birthday Roomba you know buying a gift it's gonna be sitting there in the corner you know just like Walt saying it's my birthday nobody will know or care that's an after party reference for you know

those that watched it but anyways I I jumped on the the robot vacuum thing last year and I started off with a cheap one. It was on sale, got $200. EchoVac was the one, you know, and it was just frustrating, right? It didn't have mapping. It didn't have any of those fancy features and it would just get stuck in a room going in circles and circles till the battery died. It never found the dock and I just, you know, got rid of it. So then I finally said, no, there's got to be more to this so i bought the uh i roomba i7 plus at the time i got it online like half the price you know i couldn't afford the bigger more expensive one um it was a game it's actually

a game changer um it really is worth you know like we don't vacuum as much as we have to you every now and then we stuff to go around with the vacuum and get these little corners and little things that it can't get to but the whole mapping thing is a key feature right there if it maps out your room and you could tell it to avoid like i'll have a carpet in the middle of the room i say avoid that carpet because it's too shaggy for you i don't want to get stuck on it's amazing how well it works i can drop it in another room and say go home and it will find its way back home it knows where it is um it maps two floors so once a week i'll just take it upstairs i put it in wherever i want it to end i press go and it does the whole upstairs and then finishes right at that same spot and then lets me know and then i take it back down to its base.

Right? Like, it's like another child. It's come down to that. But in terms of integration, you know, it took the wife a while to get used to it because I named it Dusty. But, you know, the A-Lady doesn't respect the name. So you still have to say tell Roomba to do whatever. But she uses it a lot. When she drops something in the kitchen or something,'ll just you know I hear her and every time I hear her do this I'm like yes you know it's like a little success you know you just feel it right there um but she uses

it and she'll just say go clean the laundry room it goes cleans the laundry room goes back to its base and emcees itself out it's actually actually, they're really impressive. And the features I'm seeing some of them come out with now are even more impressive on what they could do mopping and vacuuming and how they detect things. I'm now at the point where if you're going to invest in a robot vacuum, now's the time.

Don't cheap out, just get the good one because it'll just reduce the frustration. Yeah, I bought the cheap one it was one of those back when that what was that company that was around uh woot i think years ago you could buy like the cheap robot vacuums for like a few hundred bucks and i did that and then i went and found this company rue wi-fi i don't know if you've ever seen that but they had a little chip that you could attach the diagnostic port on the top of your certain certain ones and it worked for mine but the vacuum still didn't work it was like okay now it's wi-fi

enabled but it didn't work any better so i can control it from my phone but it still doesn't clean very well but i i the the the mapping stuff looks really cool i'd really like to get one of those the mapping is key because that's how it knows it spins around. It will know what room it's in and then it will go from there. Right. And that is the most important feature I find on the whole thing, because it will know where to clean, how to clean, and will find its way out of the room and go to the next room. It's kind of cool to watch. Yeah, I was looking at robot vacuums or robot lawnmowers recently sorry um and one of the complaints there was that it doesn't actually map it just basically runs until it runs into something and then starts over again and i was like that just sounds awful so glad i'm glad they have that on robot vacuums at

least it's a little more so it could be a potentially a little more difficult to to to map out a property with a robot well and one of the other big complaints was that i get stuck in ruts so i feel like you have a lot of problems with that and they have the robot snowblowers those are the other thing coming out now robot slow blowers um it doesn't have to be big it doesn't have to be powerful because you just program it to go out more often and frequently and just keep doing your driveway. I just think in my neighborhood, the first time someone sees that, it will be gone. It won't last. The car will stop.

It will get thrown in the trunk and they'll take off with it. They'll be, you know. Add an air tag to it. You'll be all right. There you go. I'll 3D print you a holder for it. Yeah. There we go.

We got it all figured out but yeah yeah the robot um lawnmowers are the same way where they they go out and mow your lawn more often than you normally would but i'm on a grade here and i don't think i think i'd have to get a pretty like hefty duty one and i really don't want to i i just don't want to deal with it so yeah tired of mowing the lawn I mowed the lawn like twice this week it's ridiculous oh I wish I could mow my lawn right now but still minus actually it's 10 degrees celsius I think today uh I never I never minded mowing the lawn as much though because uh it's nice quiet time you get to listen to some music and everybody just kind of leaves you alone.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I just don't like my lawnmower. It's old and cranky. Can I get one of those self-propelled ones? Yeah. I mean, it's a rider one, but it's just cranky. What I need to do is automate it, right? And then I could just let it drive around and do its thing.

It'd probably just cut the whole lawn up though. It's harder than it sounds. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move it on here. Big news this week. It's kind of after we stopped recording the show last week, Matter, the new smart home standard being developed by Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and pretty much everyone else has, you guessed it, been delayed again. So initially, we expected to see Matter come out this summer sometime.

June, July is what we were thinking, what everybody was saying, but the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which oversees Matter, now says the launch has been delayed and rescheduled for fall of 2022. The delay is needed to finalize the software development kit that device manufacturers will need to incorporate their products into Matter ecosystem. And according to a CSA spokesperson, because of the larger than expected number of platforms that will be adopting Matter, the code for the SDK needs to work more work to ensure everything will operate together smoothly. So, I mean, a good excuse again. But I don't know, like how many, how many more delays are we going to see? I don't think they can delay it anymore. I think all these companies that have been making this stuff for the last

two or three years are like, okay, it's holiday season. We were all going to do a big marketing push. We all talked about this. And I think, I think there's going to be like a revolt. If they delay it one more time,

you'll just see, well, our matter stuff's done and people just throw it out and be like there you go i don't know this is kind of frustrating because we were like we were like talking about it like yeah it's gonna come out it's gonna come out it's gonna come out it's not gonna come out i guess it's getting delayed again i and when i heard this news i wasn't surprised i don't really have my hopes up for it I'm not one of those guys waiting for it to come. I have to give a shout out though to Stacey Higginbotham. I probably just destroyed her name, but I'm sorry. But she wrote an excellent article outlining this delay and what matter,

what not to expect from matter. One of the key things i found very interesting is how she pointed out that the industry is already moving on to another level where matter won't even be part of anyway so it's not gonna matter yeah it's really amazing some of the stuff she said in that article and it's well worth the read if you can go find the article um i'm not i don't have my hopes up for matter i'm not like looking out for it or anything like that it's just gonna be another protocol to me kind of like how zigbee z wave on my hub is already i'll just add another one with more compatible devices but it's not going to get rid of the issue of too many apps you know and that's what i think a lot of people are

expecting one app to rule them all and control every device. It's not going to solve that, but we'll see you in fall. I think they were just waiting for the two-year anniversary. It looked like it was planned release of 2020. So two years, that'll be a nice timeline. Hopefully everybody has everything ready by then. Yeah. I think this is just, I feel like this has just been hyped up too much by people in the industry and i think we're just going to be all in for a letdown on this one this really feels like it's going to be like a big nothing burger when it gets released it's just going to be one of those things it's like okay that's great it's good for you apple good for you, Apple. Good for you, Amazon. But the consumer is still going to be just left with the same situation, the same smart home. The smart home is not getting any smarter because of the standard that they're coming out with. We'll see what happens.

But I'm very much less excited now. Like if they had come out with this earlier this year like they had hoped to or if they had come out with it, you know, in the summer. But all these delays and everything. I know there's a bunch of smart people working on this, but, but come on, like they're not even supporting the energy monitoring thing we talked about earlier. Like they're not, they're not, not going to support that. They're not supporting appliances. You know, this is not supporting AV stuff, right? Like this is just going to be home.

This is sensors and switches and thermostats. How many times do you need to reinvent this rat trap? I just, I don't understand. I don't understand honestly what's taking them so long to do this. And I don't know, maybe it's just, it's going to be more of a headache for manufacturers to do and get involved with this thing. But I don't know.

I'm going to have to read it. I missed this article from Stacey. I'm going to put it in the show notes, but I'm going to go back and read that and see and get her. She always has a great perspective on this stuff. It's an awesome article. So sometimes I look at articles and I'm thinking there's too much to read here. But I actually sat there and read that whole thing because she has some really good points

in that article. And I was impressed. Yeah, she has some really good points in that article and i was impressed yeah she's she's good she's good especially when it comes to embedded devices and chips and everything she has some really great perspectives and outside of the box thinking on a lot of this stuff so it's good to get her perspective uh brought in so okay well on on to things that matter. Moving on here. New product from Eero as well. This week announced the US launch of the Eero Pro 6e and the Eero 6 Plus. Wow, okay, not going to make it.

I'm going to make it, I swear, come on. All right, the Eero Pro 6e. Let's start with that one. Supports network speeds up to 2.3 gigabits per second when using both wired and up to, let's see, up to a gigabit. Let's see. And wireless up to 1.3 gigabits on client devices. Coverage for 100 plus devices and offers access to the newly authorized six gigahertz band. That's the special E you see there on the 6E devices, all of which helps you get a little bit faster gigabit speeds across your home network. The single Pro 6E covers up to 2,000 square feet

for starting at $299. A two-pack, 4,000 square feet for $499, and a three-pack for 6,000 square feet for $699. And the 6 Plus we talked about, it's a little bit more affordable. It doesn't have that E on there, but it gets you Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6 is actually pretty good and pretty fast. So you'll get access to the 160 megahertz radio channels for 75 devices that can be simultaneously connected.

Single E-Row 6 Plus covers 1,500 square feet for $139. Two-pack, 3,000 square feet for $239. A three-pack for 4,500 square feet for $299. And if you still want an even more affordable Wi-Fi 6 performance, the ERO 6 is now available starting at $89. I think that's the old one, right? That's been out out for a while nobody wants to talk about the wife that euro 6 get out of here gavin uh i know you just replaced all your stuff with uh ubiquity you excited about the 6e you're gonna go out and grab a one or two uh no but that being said i wouldn't discourage

somebody from getting it it looks really cool um you know, I look at this announcement. I'm like, yeah, faster, you know, more coverage, etc, etc. The usual things. But the stuff that stood out to me where they have a Zigbee hub built into it now. Right. So now this will allow you to add all your Zigbee devices to it and it exposes those to the Amazon devices. You know, you no longer need, I'm guessing you no longer need the more expensive Amazon devices with the Zigbee built in because you're going through all your, your, um, Eros at this point. And I wonder if it's going to have more than one. It will probably just have, you can only have one, I think anyway. So it will be really cool for the smart home, strengthening the smart home, bringing things together. It's also got support to be, what do they call it, a thread gateway? Border router, yeah. Border router, that's what it is.

A thread border router. So they're preparing for matter. They're future-proofed. If you're looking to upgrade your network, you want to go Eero, it's worth just spending the money, getting this stuff, because you'll be future-proofed for a lot of years to come. And Eero has always been a great like drop in you know you just set it up easy setup and it just works yeah so tj um six six plus or pro the pro 6e which one are you doing you know the 6e really isn't that bad price if you're looking for you know a wi-fi not if you compare to like other brands i mean it's actually yeah exactly i was just looking at the orbi 60 and the

that one's gets faster speeds um but it's like 1500 or something for a three pack um so this is a very good price i think a lot of our clients would probably just do it just because they're already spending you know three four five hundred dollars on wi-fi anyway uh why not upgrade it for a little bit more money and get something that's going to last you a little bit longer um so i'm pretty happy about the price i was kind of expecting this thing to be a near a thousand dollars um so we're close to that point but we're not that crazy i mean even the six plus that they have in here for two 99 for the three pack, still a really good deal for decent router, decent wifi. I'm kind of like talking around, like there's not many client devices that have six E built into it. Maybe like the latest Samsung phone might have it, but you know, Apple iPhone's just got wifi-Fi 6, maybe this version of the version before.

And yeah, that makes your, like, it makes your internet a little bit faster on your phone, but not noticeably faster, you know? And at a certain point, I'm topping out what I can do on my phone. Kind of like right now, I'm matching what I can do on Wi-Fi 6 with what my ISP is actually providing me with download speed. So I don't know that going any faster for 6E is going to be worth it for me. Maybe there's something coming out in the future, but even if there is, and it's only a $699 upgrade, or by the time I have a phone that rolls around, you know, the Pro 6E might be the $89 version and, you know, they may be on Wi-Fi 8 or whatever, you know, by then. And the other nice thing about this is it comes with a 2.5 gigabit port on it, right? So a number of service ISPs up here have been offering 2 gigabit service down, but we didn't have any sort of router or device

that can handle it. They were all one gigabit devices. So having this actually is a positive as well because now it can handle that. Right, and that's only on the Pro 6E. That's not on, the 6 Plus has two gigabit ethernet ports, but not the 2.5. So yeah, that one you definitely want to have

if you have the faster speeds. But again, like you still need a phone that can do that kind of thing. At least it's a router that can accept that kind of speed and get into it. Man, I'm jealous. You can mix and match them too. So if you just want one pro

and you want to get the cheaper ones for your satellites, that's fine. You can have the pro as your gateway and then go from there. Yeah, and like you said, all of these devices have that Zigbee thing built into it, so all the six devices. Good deal. This is actually pretty good. I would probably go with the 6 Plus if it was me,

but even the 6 at $89 is, is a pretty good deal. If you're just looking for an ERA router, a decent router and a decent access point for $89 can't go wrong. Yeah. And it's a great solution for, you know, either even just like small condos, or if you have like a larger place, um, I've put them in, you know, houses up to like 12,000 square feet. Um, and you know, obviously you'd 12 000 square feet um and you know obviously you'd you would prefer the more professional option like ubiquity or ruckus or something like that um but when you can't run wires to a location and you really need wi-fi everywhere these mesh uh systems from euro really are pretty good for that right right do do you know if you can do like i think on the orbi you can um but can on the euro can you use the

like the the hardwires like a backhaul instead of the wi-fi mesh yeah yeah that's how i used to have mine set up is it was all hardwired and it would skip the mesh it would just yeah it was the best way of doing it yeah a lot of a lot that, you know, the, the mesh systems simply because the price point, um, you know, even if you go out and buy like a really good Asus or net gear router, you know, one that's got the 20,000 antennas on it, it looks like a crazy spider. Uh, they're like three or $400 sometimes, you know, I had a client that bought one of the super fancy net gears and it was like $600 by itself. Um, so the fact that you can get like a three pack of these and they're super fast for $700 is a no brainer when you need a whole house solution. Right. Pretty good deal. So, well, we'll have to keep an eye on that one. I it's,

that's really not a bad deal for those. And, and like you said, it's, you would, we would kind of lean towards the ubiquity. And you can mesh those two as well, but I wouldn't recommend it. These would probably be a better fit for that kind of install. All right. Well, all the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 381. All right. We've got a pretty good pick of the week this week.

TJ, I think you dug this up probably on Reddit, I think. Yeah, somebody in the home automation subreddit actually posted it. It is actually in their house, and they were looking for ways to upgrade or add stuff to it. We'll have to link the original thread there as well. What this is, you posted this in the hub earlier this week. Uh, and this is the unity. Let's go back to the name of it. The, the UDD home manager. And this, this is crazy. Uh, this is home technology from the eighties that's still working today. Uh, it looks like a touch

screen on the wall. Now, a touchscreen in the 80s, remember, we didn't have flat panels. So it's a CRT that's like one of those green monitors that you'd have sitting on your computer. Probably, this thing doesn't look very big. This looks probably, what, 10 inches at the most? 9, 10 inches? It's very small. Looks to me. I mean, it could be 23 inches. I don't know. Like, knows, but I'm guessing this is one of these smaller computer monitors. It has infrared built into it. So you can, you know, touch, touch the screen, touch these big buttons that are on here. And yeah, they've got temperature settings, command security, lighting and appliances, communications, all sorts of things that you can kind of go in and, and do maintenance on a house.

This is it. This is what you use, I guess, back if you were rich, I guess, back in the, uh, the eighties and nineties, cause they didn't have matter devices out then they didn't have any of this home kit stuff. This is, this is what you had. Yeah. This thing is crazy. Um, I really liked the floor layout of that um it actually shows where like the family room and the dining room and everything is um and you still don't even see like modern home automation systems with that um i always liked when i walked into a house that's how you knew it was a custom home automation system is when they had that floor plan. Put their floor plan on there. Yeah. I, I'm, I, I, I'm not a big fan of floor plan home automation. I, I, when I see that, I'm all right, I'm, I'm

going to get off that soapbox. We're going to talk about this home manager. This is actually really cool. I have opinions and yeah. So some history on this thing. The home manager was developed by Unity Systems in Redwood City, California. Company was formed in 1983 and lasted up until about 1999 when Unity Systems closed the doors and ceased to operate as a company. So 14 year production run there for them. And they had about 80 dealers or 90 dealers in the United States. And only one of the original dealers continues to support them. This is the HomeWorks Group, or it's now Braavis Company. Looked like they were out west in California.

Here goes the main applications of the HomeManager are security, temperature control, lighting, and appliance control. Although the lighting control capability is quite powerful, the capabilities within the lighting and appliance section can and have been expanded to provide efficient control of a variety of additional equipment, such as pool equipment, drapes, hot water heaters, heated floors, sprinklers, garage doors, gates, exhaust fans, audio, and home theater equipment. All of this is extremely customized and, I mean, basically bespoke to the individual client that sits up. It kind of reminds me of early Crestron systems, like not Control 4, definitely not, you know, Crestron Home, not Savant. Like this is a straight up custom this is this is what gavin will have in his house

he will figure out a way to do this by next week it'll give him a week to do it but he'll probably come back with crt tvs controlling things in his house you know what probably not a crt tv but i like this interface for some reason it's a nostalgic interface i really like how cool it looks you know it looks better than some of the interfaces we get today with automation systems. I'm not going to throw any names out there, but I'm just saying it's simple. And looking at all the things they have added to this, it looks like this is what people today are trying to get to. And this is what they did back then. I'd love to see the server room that this is tied to. Yeah, I would then. I'd love to see the server room that this is tied to.

Yeah, I would too. I would love to see the equipment that backs all this up. I mean, it's all fairly basic stuff too at the same time. But it's also, let's see, this one here has a copyright date of 1992. So this thing was installed in 1992 and is still working here in March of 2022. That's incredible. That's an amazing like there's not there's not a single control for system that I installed. You know, at the beginning of my career, what, 10 years ago, 20 to 12 years ago, like that is still up and going like without having to been updated or replaced and that kind of thing like i'm sure the all the old media controllers or home theater controllers uh have

all been replaced at this point with updated equipment and that kind of thing this thing is still chugging along if that screen even dies though you know like will they be able to find another one or you know that screen must have burning by now. When they turn it off, you must still see the whole interface. Oh, you're right. It's actually just three separate displays next to each other. That is, yeah, it's got to have some kind of screensaver on here. You're right. Because that would, that could burn in over time.

But wow. And I was reading the questions or the troubleshooting thing. And it looks like the little black thing actually wrapped around there is responsible for the IR sensor. Because they say if your touchscreen stops working, you got to clean that off.

Pretty cool. Pretty cool piece of old technology. It's crazy that this still works. And like I go into houses where something got installed four years ago and it's and it doesn't work anymore so yeah yeah i remember i had a customer who had a touchscreen on his wall and it like just melted like whatever liquid crystal portion of the liquid crystal display just decided i've got a i've done with life i want to end everything and And he's kind of like

dripped down the wall. I was like, that's not normal. You shouldn't see that happening. It's like an old touchscreen. Uh, so finally he was kind of forced to upgrade it, but man, uh, yeah, the CRT TVs, these would survive. These are going to survive with roaches and Twinkies. I mean, that's, that's, that's what they do, but I am on their website and they have a Series 2 Home Manager that looks like it's been updated for a more modern color touchscreen type thing. But I don't know. I think if they came to me,

my installer came to me and said, we're going to upgrade you and here's the new version. I would say, no, I want it to be green and black, two colors, make it like the old one. I got to have that. Yeah, I wonder how much a service call for this costs because supposedly they still service them.

I dare somebody to email the company and ask them if they're going to add MatterSupport. Copy a sign in the email. People who have hacked in home automation this long will probably say, yeah, we've already done it. people who have hacked in home automation this long have, will probably say, yeah, we're, we've already done it. Like these, these are, these, this is, this is pretty wild. And even looking through some of the, like the screenshots, you can tell these are very large homes that this would be incorporated into

and, and have kind of like integrations with, yeah, this, this very interesting. It's interesting to see like this, I want to say this is a one-off solution, but it's very customized and bespoke for like just a few people. Uh, and I, I mean, I swear I have seen one of these. There was a, not a hotel, a condo I went into in Chicago and it had something very similar to what you saw in the first one. But I swear it was like an AMX controller that was running the whole thing.

But I could be wrong. But it looked, the interface looked extremely similar to that little green menu that you see. And I guess, I mean, thinking about it, like what options do you have? Like you have green menu that you see. And I guess, I mean, thinking about it, like what options do you have? Like you have green boxes and green text. I was going to say everything looks like that. Yeah, yeah.

But it's just very cool to see still working and at least for this guy and had the right date on it. I mean, Y2K, not even a problem. It just keeps chugging along. Yeah, this picture was taken as of the 22nd of march yesterday that's wow that's impressive there we go there we go if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the weeks or great ideas for the show give us a shout email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form.

All right, that wraps up another week, guys. I haven't started on any of my, actually I did, I kind of have a little project, like a breadboard finally sitting in front of me, and this Arduino thing. So I'm slowly starting to see what I can do to get my fan thing integrated in the kitchen. But I've got to time it right. My wife can't be around. That's the key part. They got to leave the house. You reminded me. I got to thank you because I would have been in there,

like just screws and stuff just on the floor. And she would have walked in and seen that and then be like what are you doing and i'd be like oh well i'm gonna make this smart and and and then i would have been reminded of all like the other million things i need to get done uh before i before i take on a new project so it makes you add time in there to get rid of some of the evidence so like to vacuum up the dust and you know hide the tools you add time in there to get rid of some of the evidence. So like to vacuum up the dust and, you know, hide the tools. You need an extra hour to get rid of. So when she walks in, she sees nothing different.

Right, right. And then you just show her one day. Yeah, you don't have to tell her for like six months. So you just like activate it with your voice. And she's like, wait a minute. What? Yeah. Just make sure you don't break it.

Yeah, you never let it down. Yeah. Well, that. Yeah, that could be a. Well, we'll see what happens that could be a problem i don't know um i i i do know like mostly what i want to do with it and you know like control the lights and turn the lights on and off would be one thing but also just putting like a generic timer on the fan because i think like you leave it on for too long. It's like, it's just really annoying. So I'd rather just turn it off or, you know, whatever when it needs to turn off.

So hopefully those two things and then maybe one other thing, if I can throw it in, I'll get that in there. But this is a little Arduino. I think I can pull it off with this. Seems capable. And I've got a couple other projects I'd like to do. So we'll see, we'll see we'll see but uh

you guys have anything going on uh projects for the week upcoming week you got planned definitely nothing as cool as gavin has going on with us tyler right but we uh we just bought a bigger van so i am currently in the process of getting that lettered up and working on putting a radio in there with a backup camera and shelving and all the other money that goes into buying a new van. So I will be spending my next couple of weeks with that. Unfortunately, just make sure you have a budget for gas. That's the most important thing right there. If anybody is filling up a service vehicle right now, I feel sorry for you. I filled up the empty tank that the dealer left me in my brand new vehicle. That's the most important thing right there. If anybody is filling up a service vehicle right now, I feel sorry for you.

I filled up the empty tank that the dealer left me in my brand new vehicle. And it was $102 to fill it up. I think it was like 26 gallons or something. So I definitely felt that immediately. It's a good inaugural gas fill up there. You won't forget that one. It hurts so bad. Yeah. I think, unfortunately,

gas prices are going to be up for quite a long time now, next two or three years before they start coming back down because it's just what they like to do to us. It's not, they go up instantly, right? Like, go up like that.

But it's just like, they're just going to hang out, float around the top until they come back down. Well, and James in the chat supposedly did the math the other day. And if I bought the same gas in the UK, it would have been $212. So glad I'm not over there right now. Yeah, it seems to me, I mean, it is more expensive. If anybody in America fills up a service vehicle or a van or an SUV and it costs them over $200, I think there would be riots in the streets because that's just the way we are.

Canada, we're getting close to that. Getting close, yeah. I think we're at the $200 mark for a service van right now. So, yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, there's a flipping point i mean the only thing we can do literally the only thing we can do and it's proven it's just not by gas like that's that's a that's our one ace card like we saw that work that actually worked it crashed oil um but then yeah they got us back all right anyway anyway um yeah what gas gas prices man what a All right. Anyway, anyway.

Yeah. Well, gas, gas prices, man. What a mess. What a mess. But what isn't a mess? What is a mess? We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support our show through our patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head on over to HomeTech.comm support to learn how you can support HomeTech for as little as a dollar a month.

And any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and look over van wraps with TJ. And there's so many van wraps in there today. Like great ideas going back and forth. I can't wait to see what you come up with. All kinds of random conversations today. And that's the beauty of the hub is you get like input from guys that have done it before and they have valuable input.

And that's, you know, that's why you want to be in the hub. Yeah, exactly. And Richard was asking about like cabinet lighting, which reminded me that's another project I should probably do before I go down this road. Anyway. Uh, yeah, I need to get the cabinets lit up because we have no pantry lighting. Yeah. Uh, anyway, uh, if you want to help out, but can't support financially, uh, totally understand the way gas prices are these days. We just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating, uh, in your podcast app of choice there.

That wraps up another week of Home Tech. For everyone here, have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. Have a good one.