HomeTech.fm - Episode 383 - LIVE from a Remote!

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

This week on HomeTech: A massive Home Assistant update, Eufy's new "all wireless" 4G camera, Plex going after input zero, a quick review of the new AVA Remote from TJ including the WORLD'S FIRST podcast from a remote, and of course, a pick of the week.

This is a Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 8th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about all aspects of all home technology and home automation in particular. But this week we're going to dive into a couple of home tech headlines that we came up with. But guys, last week we published a show on April 1st.

And me being me, I usually am there for April 1st. But this year I was debugging stuff and I didn't get to participate in all these shenanigans that happened so i i completely missed it but somebody put here a couple of fun fun little technology april fool's jokes that a couple companies came up with yeah big fan of the uh the qualsis iq teleport uh it was only available on april 1st so if you weren't able to buy it then i guess you're out of luck now now but it is a teleportation device that allows you to teleport from your house to your job uh it's pretty funny they show in the video you know some guy sitting in traffic and then getting gas and wasting all

kinds of time and then you know halfway through the video he just stands on this saucer that really just looks like a reconfigured led light like i think it's led in a bathroom just pulled it out of the bathroom real quick in the office and they're like yeah this is a genius idea but uh i think the video is very funny and um yeah i wish this was a real thing yeah i uh from from my traffic days traveling days like when i commuted i and and still like i wish that um i had one of these that you know could could take you other places in the way you don't have to go to an airport or anything like that it'd be great to have something like this too bad too bad the other one was the josh ai and they usually come up with some kind of funny thing every year no this one uh i almost

felt like this one was making fun of like the amazon because didn't amazon announce a robot too similar to this that would walk you know zoom, zoom around your house, keep an eye on things? So even though this was a joke from Josh AI, I almost thought it was a poke at the Amazon stuff. They definitely poke at them, including one of the features, which was a big brother button. It says basically that you can have all of your credit cards, social security numbers and passwords all in one place out in the open for everyone to enjoy. A lot of fun things here. There was a, one of the things I thought was, it was plug and play because it's powered by a wall outlet. So it has a cord that it drags around behind it. But this thing, they did a little mock-up of it. It looks like a, I don't know, Amazon device, but fatter with a little screen on top with a face.

It's got the quadcopter built into it so you can hover around and get around your house and some wheels. And of course, it's got a cable coming out of the back of it. Two of my favorite things about this is one of the bullet points is impressively large. Tech should be your home centerpiece. Exactly. And then my second favorite part though, is their second photo they have on Instagram where it's the, the Sentinel floating next to somebody that's like out in a desert. It looks like with an extension cord plugged in.

So I, hilarious. It's good stuff. Well, like I said, it's always fun to have a little bit of fun, you know, because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy or whatever. Definitely made me a dull boy because, man, on Friday I was trying to figure out

why I was getting errors on a server, and I'm still working on that. Actually, I finished it today. Yay! I have a little graph that shows errors going up and then dropping off into zero. So I fixed them all. Yay. We got a new, what is this, Home Assistant release that came out a big one i think uh gavin do you put this one on yeah i threw this on you know i don't i don't use home assistant but i am um a fan i keep an eye on it and

this looks like it's a pretty big release um they they uh added a lot of new features, things like device groups, updates, which include firmware updates is pretty cool. A lot of performance tweaks. The big thing that caught my eye though, is they had a section on the post about breaking changes and that was pretty long, you know? So there's a lot of things that this is going to break. If you're going to upgrade, be wary of that. One of the key things we've mentioned this before is they're getting rid of old z-wave they're getting rid of the open z-wave all for the new z-wave js and you know i've heard mixed reviews with it a lot of bad reviews about that new so just keep that in mind when you're doing the upgrade but it looks great home assistance just one of those things where i'm always watching

it and i always have every now and then i get this feeling to go give it a try. But then when people start talking about YAML and how much time it takes. Your eyes just glare over. Yeah, yeah. Paul Hibbert on YouTube there did a good thing. He switched over recently everything to Home Assistant. And it was a running joke in that episode where he just said he was so caught up in all the yaml that his wife was starting to get mad. It's so true.

That's funny. One day I'll give it a shot. Yeah. I saw on Twitter that Paulus was complaining about, I guess, whatever they're using to distribute the package through. I guess it's a Python package. They were kind of hitting up against their limit and they needed to go to the next limit. So it had to get approved through the Python package manager

so it could get released and pushed out. But this is a ton of stuff that's in here that they've done. And like you said, that breaking changes. Holy cow, you weren't kidding. That's just like keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. There's all sorts of stuff that's been removed um as well as things that like gpio integrations that i guess were deprecated before but now they're just completely removed so if you're using like a beagle bone black gpio device it's not going to be available to you in the home assistant anymore and that's okay some

of that stuff looks pretty old um but you don't have to update either you can stay on the old version i guess and not get all these new tweaks but man um looks like they're just plugging away and and and moving on this there's a lot of good stuff in here yeah something the integrators might like too is that they have a integration with kaleidoscape now so you can throw that in there and it looks like it has some pretty good controls on it. Yeah, typically it is a visually nice system to integrate with because you get all the cover art and everything, all that nice stuff. But yeah, it can't can't can't be bad. What other new integrations they have?

Let's see. Airzone, Backup, GlideScape, as you mentioned. Pico outage count. So I guess you can count how many outage your utility company left you out in the dark on. Switch SX, I have no idea what that is. UANet Plus, again, kind of don't know what that is either. And then something called update, which seems like it should be pretty straightforward, but I'm not sure what that is. Maybe updates.

Update is the actual, it's a new feature where it will update firmwares. It will let you know there's an update to your Z-Wave device or something like that. And you can kick off updates. That's actually a cool feature, it looks like. Because right now, one of the things in the smart home is like updating firmwares on Z-Wave devices. You know, we don't even get the updates. But every now and then we do.

And it's just a hassle to get it done. Oh, well, that's extra nice. That's great. Yeah, I see there there in the configuration it's got like firmware and stuff that a developer could put into the yeah that's great awesome awesome well keep an eye on home assistant seems to be up and coming still and i'll say that they're there once they get rid of the yaml stuff and they're getting close it seems yeah here soon i mean they've got they've even released their own box as far as i'm aware. I think it was the Canary or something like that. So they're getting pretty close to, I would say, consumer adoption. They've been trying to strip away some of the more codey parts of it.

Yeah, you still got to be kind of techie and nerdy to really dive deep on this thing. But yeah, they're trying. And they're making pretty good progress at it. It seems like every time I look up each month, yeah, 2022.4, this is the fourth release I've seen. But they're just plugging away. There's a big release every month. And, man, they're coming along. So good for them. We'll have to keep an eye on them and see where they are.

Maybe we can get Paulus back on the show one of these days and chat with him about what's going on over there at Home Assistant. With that said, what do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, no Wi-Fi, no problem. Eufy's latest smart security camera, the 4G Starlight camera, is designed to go where Wi-Fi isn't or can't go. The new 4G Starlight can be left unattended in remote locations

while still providing access to any video it captures. The camera uses the 4G LTE cellular network through AT&T to communicate with the Eufy app on your phone or tablet. It also has a built-in GPS location tool to help recover it if it's lost or stolen. Some pretty cool specs on this. 2K resolution, 2.5x digital zoom. It's got the color night vision, which is basically the starlight camera that's, I'm starting to see that pop up everywhere now. A five megapixel lens, three months of battery power, they say. An onboard AI, which they also say is five times faster than their cloud-based AI. That's kind of cool. And if the starlight sensor isn't enough, there's a little spotlight that you can turn on and get a little bit of extra light in there if you need it. The

camera costs about $249. It will be released on April 15th. And it also has the option of a $20 solar panel to keep it charged. And the ATT SIM card is sold separately. And the monthly service fee is about $30 a month. Not bad guys, but repeat it with me. It's all going wireless anyway. And these guys are trying to prove it, right? Yeah, this is a good option if you need like, you know, just the camera in a remote location where it doesn't make sense to either do like a whole system or, you know, you just, like I said, you just need a single camera. I have a ton of clients that, you know, maybe have like a vacation house or they have, you know, a piece of property or something that they want to

keep an eye on. Um, but it doesn't make sense to invest into a ton of cameras. Um, usually in that, you know, in that scenario, we would just do a trail cam. Um, but then obviously you have to manually go check the camera. So it's not really an ideal solution. Right. Um, for $249 and $30 a month, I don't think that's a bad deal at all and especially with the starlight sensor built into it if if somebody's listening they haven't seen the starlight sensor and what it can do to an image definitely look up like a youtube video or some before and after photos because it is crazy how far along you know camera technology has come just in the past couple years and I think the

starlight thing is really a game changer. And just like you said, Seth, it's showing up in everything now. Yeah, it's been around for a couple of, I mean, it's like probably, um, six or seven years now when Sony, uh, started pushing that into like the commercial side of things, but now it's starting to pop up in Yuffie cameras. And I think we'll talk about a little bit here uh wise camera the new wise camera outdoor is adding that in as well but it does it does look good it gives you a little bit of color and with what would traditionally be you know your black and white infrared view camera um gavin what do you think about this thing um looks good i can see where they're going with this but um i always think of security of with these things they're now throwing the cameras directly on the internet right like just connecting it to 4g you know what happens down

the road if you know there's security vulnerability and they don't want to update it or retire it you know it's going to be sitting out there vulnerable um yeah but it's on a 4g who cares it's not in your house like what are they going to do are they going to at&t's problem i guess so i guess so if it's it's not in your house that's fine i mean they'll just look at the video that you're looking at i guess wherever you have it pointed right but you know like then it'll become part of a botnet and we're just going to add more to that botnet you know like who cares it's part of someone else's problem exactly exactly yeah no but I can see more and more devices going this way. I think they're setting a trend with this one.

Yeah. It's definitely getting cheaper to do. I mean, 249, I can remember looking into trying to do something like this maybe 15 years ago with LTE modems and IP cameras, like high definition IP cameras, where we would stick something like this out, uh, and upload, it wasn't an option of getting streaming video. We were, I was just trying to upload an image every 10 minutes or so to an FTP server. So that, that should tell you, um, how long ago this was. Uh, and yeah yeah that was trying to figure out how to get that to work and in place and and it was extremely difficult now it's just kind of all prepackaged ready to go and you get streaming video like you're this is this is awesome so and you gotta think of all the the

bad cases that people use this for too you know like you could stick this up pretty much anywhere you know um i hope they have a little red light that says, hey, I'm here, I'm recording, you know, so. It looks like it might be a device that kind of dies a little early too, because it says it has an eight gigabyte enhanced multimedia card built into the system and you can't remove it or change it. And it's 4G. I mean, isn't that like going to be phased out here in a couple of years, you know, at this rate when we come out with 6G and everything else? Right. It probably does have an expiration date on it.

They don't expect it to last so many years. But at the price point, I don't know. Like I said, it's hard to argue with that. I think if I'm remembering correctly, like just the camera, the LTE modem and like solar panels and everything that I was trying to figure out how to do this 15 years ago. It was probably 10 times that. So maybe $3,000 just just just for that, not including the install, the pole. I've got to strap it to all that good stuff. Yeah, it's it was a lot of money.

Well, yeah, especially especially the hardware, all the hardware that it would take to do that. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a crazy amount. So pretty, pretty cool option if you've got something way out in the woods that has cell phone reception or something that doesn't have nearby Wi-Fi that you can access easily. Pop this on and there's a little security camera out there. Might have to buy one of these and put it in the back of the van. It'll just be a permanent watchdog.

Just plug it into the lighter power. We used to call them cigarette lighters, but it's not that anymore. It's called a power port, according to the manufacturers. It's kind of weird. Yeah, I've always heard just a cigarette port or 12-volt adapter. That was it.

12-volt, yeah yeah it's funny uh the times we live in well according to dave's ads the unannounced wise cam outdoor version 2 also has a starlight sensor allows this camera to see his night uh kind of color in night as well um it's the same sensor that already exists on the wise camera version 3 but this is the outdoor version so it's weatherized and it's going to keep the magnetic mount that it has before. Not too many details on this. I saw a picture of the packaging on the outside.

I guess Home Depot has been stocking their shelves with stuff that Wyze hasn't announced yet. And that's typically how Dave Zatz gets to see things early is he'll just go down to Home Depot and buy it because they don't seem to care about when product gets released. It's like, it's here, We're going to put it on the shelf and sell it. Yeah. It's funny. At the end of the article, he notes, although Wise is currently in the penalty

box for some having betrayed our trust with a sluggish security response and associated poor communication. And that is important to remember as you're buying Wise cameras right now. It's an understatement. It's an understatement. I don't know. Three years. Two and a half, three years for an update for a major security vulnerability that just it's not not. Nope. Nope. Sorry.

WISE is definitely on the bad list right now. Anyway, if you have a version one, don't forget to throw that away at the end of the show. All right. Well, new products here from Plex. Plex has announced a new feature that helps you discover trending and popular content from across all of your media, whether it's already on your Plex server, can be found on a streaming service, or is available to rent or buy. With this new feature, you can browse to an item and see where it's available to watch, including

from these places. Let's see, any Plex server that's available to your Plex account, Plex's own free movies and shows streaming service, and then other streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, basically, and starting with the ones that you use all the time. If the content you want to watch is selected, it'll start playing directly if it's available to Plex, or it'll jump over to the app where the content is available. And in some cases directly to the content that you selected. It's kind of nice when that happens. This feature is in beta right now, but I suspect we're probably going to see this rolled out everywhere pretty soon. This is the dream dashboard that every media person loves to say that they have. That, you know, Apple's tried to do it. Roku's tried to do it roku's tried to do it no one's gotten it right

i this is plex is up at bat now gavin i see you shaking your head what do you got to say about it why are you already laughing no it's a great idea um i'm gonna see how it comes out when they execute it though because uh you know once once you're in the position where it's launching an external app you are now at the mercy of that external app so well you know, once you're in the position where it's launching an external app, you are now at the mercy of that external app. So, well, you know, hopefully it jumps right to the show, but not all apps play nicely. You know, not all apps even respect the remote control, you know, depending on the platform you're using it on. You know, so we'll see how it goes when they execute it. The one annoying thing I found that brought me flashbacks to some old times was they're going to show you content on services that you're not even subscribed to.

Right. And I don't know how it was down in the States, but back up in here in Canada, our old cable boxes used to show us channels that we didn't have subscriptions for either. So they used to be grayed out. So, you know, we had a lot of I was looking for either the they used to be grayed out so you know we had a lot of uh i was looking for either the basketball game or the hockey game and it was always on one of those great channels you know right out here they're they're they're they're prime they're they're up front but when you select it says oh you don't subscribe to this do you want to subscribe to this yeah their number

yeah and that's what's going to take us back to now is like, oh, the TV show is over here, but you're not subscribed to it. Do you want to subscribe to it? You know, as much as we constantly are trying to get away from cable, it seems like we're getting back into those bad habits. Time is a flat circle, as they say. TJ, what do you think about this? I've been playing with it a little bit so far. I'm not thoroughly impressed with it, but I do like the idea of one interface for my Plex media and everything. One of my big complaints, and we were talking about this the other day in the hub, a lot of places won't even index Plex.

So if I'm looking, you know, if I have an Android TV right now and I search a show or movie or something, it won't show up as that. I have it with Plex. Um, and I'm wondering if that's kind of the reason as they're working on their own interface for everything, they want to be, you know, input zero. Um, and it totally makes sense. I'm not against it or anything, but like I said, I'll have to wait to see how they fully implement it. Two naysayers, man. I'm loving this. I can't wait for this. I always have that little app open when we think of something to watch.

It's called Just Watch, and you can search across. You can filter it. You can say, I only have HBO and Hulu and certain apps, and you can search in there, and it'll tell you where it's available to either buy or watch or whatever. But also, like, if you want to, you can scroll down a little bit further. I think it tells you, like, if it's on a service that you don't subscribe to. So I'm all for this. I always, like, if we're trying to find to watch a movie or something like that and we don't have it or we can't get access to it, I like, you know, sometimes I appreciate if it's on.

That information is available to me, I guess. So at least I can get over to it, I appreciate if it's on, uh, that information is available to me, I guess. So at least I can get over to it and figure out where you're streaming from. So I'm all, this is nice. It's nice. Don't get me wrong. I'm, I'm pretty excited about this. And so far, like I just pulled up, you know, like five different shows or movies or something

on there. And we currently subscribe to like HBO max, Netflix, um, and YouTube premium. Um, and everything I've clicked on so far, I've had a subscription for. Um, so I don't know if they're, if they're taking that into account or not, or if they're just literally just showing you whatever's popular. So TJ, do you still have cable? Uh, I haven't had cable in like 15 years, but all those services are pretty much like a cable bill now, though.

It's starting to add up. You know, honestly, cable, I feel like cable was easier a lot of times, though. Obviously, you don't have such a wide variety of content that you do with streaming on cable. But I feel like cable is a lot easier to watch because you can channel flip and you have an option to a guide. The guide, I think, is really important for streaming to kind of like take off and become a full cable replacement for me simply because I don't like going to pick content. Right. I like to go to like one interface and see what's available or see what the new stuff is or see what's trending because then it brings new stuff to my attention. The whole jumping from one app to the other and searching for content is very exhausting. And that's like the worst part about streaming at the moment.

Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's what they're these companies. I'll lump flex into it as well. Like these companies are trying to solve for because I'm kind of on the other end of that. I want the guide to die. Like, I don't ever want to see a guide in my life. The guide is only there for, uh, linear TV. Like I have to wait around for eight o'clock to come around for me to get to watch this particular show. No, no, thank you. Like, I want to watch it now. That's what, that's the world we live in. Um, so I, I really, I don't think that format is relative or relatively useful for watching TV in a modern world. But like you said, TJ, it is kind of exhausting to be presented with the entire worlds of of of of video content and

trying to figure out like what to watch out of that. It, it, some nights I'll just be sitting there and my TV will be consisting of just like flipping through and reading cover arts and watching previews and that'll be it. And just adding things to the watch later. Uh, Oh, this looks interesting. I'll,

I'll, I'll add this on, but yeah. Um, I don't know, like the guide, I, I,

the guide is just for live TV and linear TV. Uh, I, I wouldn't care if I ever saw that again. Yeah. I guess the guide is probably a terrible word for it. When I'm talking about guide and streaming terms, it's probably like input zero, I guess is probably what everybody else was calling it at this point.

That one interface that kind of shows you all the newest content or whatever's available. So yeah, no, I, I completely agree on that. And this is in beta. So I think you have to update. I'm updating Plex right now as we speak to turn that beta feature on and check it out myself. I'm excited about this one. So hopefully it's as good as they want it to be, because I do enjoy using Plex over other apps that don't work very well. Yeah. And make sure you update your server unit, whatever you have.

And then you're also your end clients. It did not take effect until I updated my Nvidia shield. So did they mention how they're getting the content from those services in? Like, I'm just curious if they're like licensed to do this by these services or if they're going aroundabout way that could break in the future they did mention how um and they have some faqs and they're they're quick to point out in there that they don't want to know what you have on in your library for you know to keep your video select your awful movie selection a private uh but uh yeah i i don't i don't know where exactly they're pulling that data or metadata from.

Um, I do know that, that it's out there already and I don't know, but I don't know who they've teamed up with for those, those third party, third party data sources to pull that in. That's a good question. All right. Well, moving on here, last story of the night, we've got, uh, speaking of third party data services, your Vizio TV, it's now showing banner ads all over your screen. So you don't have enough advertisements in your life?

Why not get a Vizio TV? A Vizio TV you bought with your hard-earned cash now has a new feature called Jump Ads. Vizio will first identify what's on your screen and then place the interactive banner ads all over your TV programs. Yay. This new feature is based around some in-house technology that Vizio uses to automatically identify what exactly is on your TV screen at any given moment at any given frame, no matter the source. We talked about this in the past. It's one of the craziest pieces of software I've ever heard of, but they basically look at all the pixels that you have on your screen. And if you're watching some VHS copy of Jurassic Park from 19, what, 93, they know what it is because they know where the pixels are

supposed to be and it lines up and gets matched in their database and they can tell you exactly where they are. And now they can serve you a nice little ad for the new Jurassic Park, what, TV show or ride or I don't know, whatever they have for Jurassic Park these days. Fox is going to be the first partnering to test the system out. They're placing ads about a new comedy series called Welcome to Flatch. Okay. If you use your remote and click on the ad, you'll be taking directly over to the Fox now app. And it's up to the ad provider to decide how and when ads appear on the screen as well as how often. The company said that this is working with additional content providers who I'm sure are ready to put their ads all over the screen as well.

Vizio Jump Ads Initiative is currently launching in beta right now. What could possibly go wrong? Gavin. I don't even know where to start with this one. This has all sorts of wrong on it right all sorts of wrong if you wanted to know why your vizio tvs cost what they cost this is why it's called subsidized yes they are paying for themselves this way not with the the money that you're paying them the first thing that kills me is they can identify anything you're watching right so that's a huge amount of data gathering that they're paying them. The first thing that kills me is they can identify anything you're watching.

Right. So that's a huge amount of data gathering that they're going to be logging. It's going to be centralized that they're going to be utilizing to sell. You know, it's crazy that, you know, anybody will agree to that. It's just a matter of time before even the authorities start to, you know, bug them to get, you know, tell me everybody that's watching this pirated copy of you know the mandalorian you know like who knows where this will go or what the limits are it's just all sorts of wrong um if they gave me a free tv well maybe i'd let them you know do it i don't care at that point because you know it's free you know what you expect right hey yeah exactly but you know we're still paying

for this tv right there's gonna be people figuring out ways to block this whether you block urls um honestly just unplug the tv from the the network altogether and just cut it all off because today it's gonna be like youtube today it starts with one three second ad that you can skip tomorrow it's gonna be two 30 second ads that you can't skip you know they're going to take advantage it's just going to get worse you know money they'll need some more money they'll add another ad you know i just there's so much wrong to this i for one will not buy a vizio tv um i don't care i just don't want this type of attic in my house the sad thing is though is that, I don't know for sure any other manufacturers doing the specific thing, but other companies we've seen in the past, like Samsung and LG

and others all already put ads into your TV interface. So, you know, it's just as simple as at this point, just not using the smart TV functions. And like you said, Gavin, not even connecting the TV to the internet. Um, you know, we always recommend a separate streaming device anyway, usually just because they're better. Um, and you get one interface. If you have multiple TVs, you buy one streaming device and they all kind of work the same. So, you know, unfortunately TVs are kind of going like this. It doesn't help that TVs are, you know, basically dirt cheap at this point. Um, so I'm assuming, you know, TVs are kind of going like this. It doesn't help that TVs are, you know, basically dirt cheap at this point. So I'm assuming, you know, companies are going to have to start doing this to make money again.

I don't know how much money Vizio makes from selling a TV, but I'm assuming it's not that much. Yeah, they're making their money on the back end here with these kind of deals and telling people who's watching what and spying on you, basically. That's how they make their money. And I mean, we're picking on the video here. Like you said, they're definitely not the only ones doing this. I mean, Roku got in an argument with, who was it, Google or something like that, about who was getting to report what data which way with YouTube. I mean, it was kind of like, okay, well, you're both kind of gross. It's just, who do you want to be the grossest? I think Amazon injects ads. I know Roku has ads. Amazon injects ads onto their Fire TV players for Amazon services and that kind of thing. Apple is not doing ads right now, but there may be ads that

pop up within apps that you're using. I don't know. I haven't really seen anything on any apps that I'm using other than what you would expect from like Hulu or something like that where you expect to have an ad. But yeah, it's gross. Yuck. Wish they'd get the advertisement. Like, why does everything center around advertising and marketing? Like, why?

It doesn't work. I mean, I guess it does. Somebody, somebody has to click on like all of those, like, uh, you know, advertisement or spam emails. Like how, how many poorly spelled and formatted spam emails do we get, you know, for, you know, Vagra pills or whatever, like who clicks on that stuff and why, like, why does that work? It doesn't make make any sense to me we've known about this stuff from the beginning of time it seems like and yet it's still being done and it's still getting worse i i don't get it i don't get it either like why am i still getting the viagra ads when i've already bought it like like stop spanning me with the stuff i already have you know and oh man i maybe forget where i was going with that there was

oh and on that note you know i don't mind ads you know if a tv were to you know subsidize the tv and give me ads that's fine one, but don't record what I'm watching. Right. If the TV has a camera, if the TV has a mic, I'm not buying that TV because I do not want that right there. That's too dangerous. Um, and some of the stuff I watch, you know, they're, they're going to regret even knowing it. I was watching. So I've just, there's so much wrong with this god whenever i see something whenever i see something like this it's like i wonder when tv cameras are going to come back right because there was like that period of like two or three years where like tvs randomly came with cameras

because everybody wanted to skype on their tv i guess um maybe they'll introduce the camera again so that way they can watch you. There's definitely patents out there that are basically just for that. They watch and see how interactive your eyes are with the TV. Like I said, why is everything revolving around how good of an advertising can we serve somebody? It just doesn't make any sense. There's so much money there. It doesn't make any sense there's there's so much money there it doesn't make any sense anyway moving on here we've got a big discussion tonight new product has finally hit hit the post box I guess TJ we were waiting around for this last week but right after the show you got the Ava remote what What do you think, man?

Yeah, so honestly, it's a very good smart home remote. It should be emphasized that this is not a TV remote or a remote to control your TV system, whatever you have. That being said, it is a Google certified device. So it comes with full Android on there. It comes with the Play Store. You can also sideload applications on there. So you can literally control. Hold on. Hold on.

TJ, can you install Zoom? Oh, absolutely, Seth. Would you like to hear a Zoom call? Can we just do the review all by this would be the only the very the world's first podcast recorded from a from a remote if we did this live from the remote it's tj for the first time a home tech podcast coming from the remote, it's TJ. For the first time, a home tech podcast coming from a remote. This is amazing. All right.

Well, you actually don't sound too bad there. Like it's because it's Android. And I mean, iOS is the same, but Android and the hardware and everything, they all have these really good voice algorithms to basically clean up a phone call. It kind of sounds like you were on a phone on a Zoom call. Yeah, and you can turn it sideways, use it in full landscape. Let's switch my audio back here. But honestly, it's a very, very good remote if you're looking for a device that you can kind of share around the house or you can use as a central point of control that is not like a touch screen that's mounted on the wall or like a giant tablet.

I think it's a good option. It's, you know, it's very important to note that this is not to control TVs. It's meant to control smart home devices. So, you know, setting up like Unify Protect on it was no issue. Setting up, you know, various home automation platforms like Hubitat, Control4, Crestron, RTI, whatever you have, you can easily put on the remote. And it functions very nicely. It's got some nice hardware to it. It's got some nice heft to it as well. It just feels like a very quality device. It's interesting you keep coming back to to qualifying it and saying that you know it's it's it's a remote but it's it's not a remote like it does

it does all the remote things it just doesn't control your tv so it's kind of hard for me to go like it's a remote yeah i don't know and we were kind of talking about this before you know we started recording and stuff the remote thing i think is kind of weird just because it's not meant to be a remote. You know, it's basically just like I said, like a skinny tablet. Um, it's a, you know, it's a small device you can use for house control and all that good stuff. Um, but yeah, it's literally not a remote. They post, they have, you know, a, a question section and there's two different sections on there that basically says this is not a TV remote. And I'm kind of wondering if that's because the whole, you know, Neo and Control 4 thing.

Maybe they're not allowed to do that for a certain amount of time or something. I don't know. Because it does have everything a remote has in it. It has IR built into it. It has Bluetooth 5, you know, Wi-Fi AC, NFC, an accelerometer, rear fingerprint sensor, GPS, microphone, and a speaker. Can you install a remote app on your Android not remote and use it to control a TV? Yeah, absolutely. So in the Android world, there's a ton of different uh ir control apps um so you could easily control a tv or whatever else with it i will say though that a lot of them have advertisements unless

you buy the premium version it matches my video tv it's perfect there's there's literally nothing worse than an advertisement showing up on your 13001,300 remote. So that part, like the software wise, it's, it's not all the way there yet. It is meant to, you know, like I said, control smart home devices like Lutron or Crestron, that kind of thing. And their Ava speakers, it's got a built in application for their speakers that you can, you can change the sources and group different speakers and that kind of thing. So good option, i said depending on what you're looking for but it is not the remote to end all remotes unfortunately gavin you're looking at me now you're looking at me now well it makes so much more sense now this device i have to admit now that we know that it's

not meant to be a remote for tv or your entertainment system, but it's a smart home remote, it makes a lot more sense. The price to me doesn't make sense, but what it is makes a lot more sense. And, you know, now I'm thinking about it. I could utilize this remote. If I were an app developer, I could create an app that would work with my smart home hub that then can control something like a broad link IR blaster to control my home entertainment system. And then at that point, I, you know, I could do so much control with it. I could do whatever I want and set it up. However, I want like the power there is actually, there's a lot of power there of what you can do with it. Right. Um, seeing ads on your remote though. I mean, as long as it's not tracking what I'm doing on my remote

to serve me the right ad, you know, then I'm cool with that. I think it's expensive for me, right? But I'm not the target market for it. But I now see the vision. I now see what this remote's for. And I see possibilities of what you could do with it in the future. It's just going to take some time to get there. I know a guy that could have a really nice video Tyler app that he could use to control his nice video Tyler setup.

Ooh, that's good. Maybe we can help. I think I need a demo app to work on the API for that. That would be pretty cool. We'll have to ship this up to Canada. I mean, just like, and obviously the viewers can't look at look at what i'm showing you but just look how skinny the chat is for like slack right now like you're running slack on your remote it is hilarious and i was uploading pictures we'll have to post some pictures in the uh in the podcast as well but it's just you know it's such a neat looking device. Um, I'm interested to keep playing with it. What does the base do? Uh, the base is just charging for it. It's got a wireless charging pad, uh, a little four little contacts underneath it. Um, but it is interesting.

I took it apart a little bit. Don't tell anyone. Um, and the cover underneath actually has a USB-C port. Um, and it does work. So you can actually hardwire this if you wanted to. Um, I was hooking up to my computer and trying to do things with it. So, I mean, it's a full Android device. That makes sense that it has a USB-C port on the bottom as well. Cause you could, like you said, how do you hook it up to like do development and and that kind of thing you'd need some kind of port uh to get in and plug things in with that you could actually uh what you need to do is like figure out how to wall mount that thing and get one of those companies to make you a flush mount wall mount you know device to put on the wall well i have a couple 3d pruners behind me i was actually going to make a couple different mounts uh make like one for the

car uh make one for the fridge you know i can just put it around different parts of the house it's a remote so you can bring it with you and this is not particularly tied to one tv like you can just take it down man have a good time and that's honestly kind of the nice thing is that it's not like a room sensor device you know you can literally carry it around the house and control everything so you know depending on the layout and everything you might only need one remote or two remotes, you know, have one on each floor or something that way you don't have to, you know, go too far for it. But it's not just for like the family room, you know, it's for the family room, the living room and the kitchen

or whatever else you have. So that is kind of the nice, the flexibility part about it. So other than the IR ir port does this set itself apart from any regular i guess android phone or tablet that we can it sounds like we could pretty much do this all on yeah the only thing that would make this you know remote compared to like a tablet or a phone that you have is the built-in ir um you can get external IR devices, kind of like what you said with like the Broadlink, or they even make like plug-in IR modules. I've honestly haven't had much luck with those products. I've used the Broadlink, the little trash can looking one a couple of times. I always had problems with it, like factor reset in itself and doing weird things.

And I've also not had the best of luck with like USB-C or lightning IR adapters. So that's kind of the one thing that's nice about this is that that part is built in. But if you don't need IR control, there's probably not a big reason to get this device. I know it's only been a couple of days, but what's the battery life like? Battery life. So they estimate six days on a charge depending on usage um i'm probably getting in the two to three days time range um it's not terrible and we only use our remote i would say for like three or four hours every night so not the best battery life but uh for a remote that's doing all this stuff i don't think it's that bad interesting well see we we keep calling it a remote though so that's that's it's in the name using it's in the name.

So when you're saying remote, yeah, we're thinking of a TV remote. And, you know, I'm thinking, you know, I'm comparing it to my Harmony, which I still think is the king of the remotes right now, you know, for the do it yourself or at least. Right. But I just think like the I don't know if we could call this a remote. It should be called something else. It's a unique device. Well, and one of the questions on the forums is like, you know, um, it's, it's not a remote because it doesn't have physical buttons and it's got three physical buttons. It's got a power button and then it's got a volume rocker on, on the right side.

Um, and I don't think the lack of physical buttons makes it not a remote while I enjoy physical buttons, because obviously you can just kind of grab the remote and use it. I don't think you need physical remotes for, or physical buttons for a remote. Um, but you do need like a comprehensive interface where you go to control everything. Um, jumping from, you know, one app to the other app, you know, to control everything in the house, you know, kind of like the streaming conversation earlier, it just gets exhausting, you know, to like turn on my TV, for example, I have to go to the IR app, turn the TV on, and then go back to the Nvidia Shield app and then use that to control everything. And then to adjust my volume, I have to go to the Sonos app in order to turn it up and down. So it's just like that part of

it's clunky, but like I said, it's not meant to control your TV. So of course that part is clunky. Interesting. Who, who is, I guess, who's the remote for what's the ideal customer look like for this? To me, the ideal customer is one that is using the Ava speakers because like I said, it ties in with the Ava speakers, um, or somebody that just wants a nicer control unit that they can share around the house to control, you know, all the smart home devices. Um, I don't know if there's a huge market there though, unless it does the TV thing. Um, but you know, I'm showing it around to people and seeing what people's reactions are, and they're positive so far.

It's interesting. We'll have to keep an eye on Ava. It's a good, I mean, it sounds like it could be worse, like as a first-run product. So let's mention, was it Sofa Potato that I always call it? What is the thing? Sofa Baton. Yes.

There you go. Hey, that thing's only like two hundred dollars though but it's getting trashed like left and right yes the reviews are horrible on it like it doesn't do it doesn't do like macros and everything you have to do you have to do it 10 times or something the app's awful yeah the the reviews of on that sofa baton x1 um you know i was expecting a lot from that but also there were a lot of red flags when they were having their uh kickstarter or whatever it was you know like if the company email is an outlook.com email to me that's a red flag right there you know something's up um

they're they're getting trashed though um but again at least it's something that can be fixed via software. I just don't know if they have the resources or if they're going to focus on the software. True TV remotes like this, I think are really difficult. And the fact that we saw Logitech like exit the market with this year ago or two years ago after trying to sell the division, I think, you know, TVs are just super TV remotes are just super hard. And there's probably just not a lot of money in it. Well, it's a it's a an ever dwindling like people like Gavin and myself who have particular systems that that require remote control of devices need a remote. But most people, and I say the vast majority of people,

are just happy or just getting a TV these days that has all of these apps that spy on you and watch what you're watching. But they have the TV. It's all input zero right on the TV. And they can use the TV remote to do just about everything they want to do. And I mean, like if you set up a Samsung these days and you plug in a cable box, it almost harasses you to get the CEC set up with it to where you can control the cable box. And so everything is done from the Samsung remote that you would normally have done from the cable box remote. And it's all kind of designed for that customer. So like if your market used to be every home that had had more than, you know, one device connected to a TV to, well, just Gavin and Seth, like that's a small market. And, uh, it's, it's hard for me to say that, that, that Logitech was wrong in, in, in bailing

on that space, because I think if we look through their financials too, like the tech support that they were doing was like tenfold any of their other department. I mean, what are their other departments? Cell mice, computer mice and keyboards and video cameras. But the tech support on Harmony remotes and setting up macros and pairing devices to talk to each other and Alexa integration, all that stuff, that's massive, massive, massive tech support

that you have to gear up and staff for um very hard to do very hard to do and for the record i have five of them so you know i'm a big consumer of the harmony remotes hopefully they don't uh try to shut down the service again like they did a couple years ago with the other stuff they promised that they're going to keep going for a couple more years now uh at least for for setting them up and and and in the past harmony had or harmony a logitech has done that um there was a streaming stream box or something squeeze box squeeze box or something like that i think that website is still up and it still looks like it's made from 1999 like it's oh yeah it's and people are still recommending it wow i can't believe people i see people still post about

it there you go interesting well i think they've done a good job on their exit but it doesn't leave any you know room for anybody to come in and um try and do something and then ava's kind of taking their own twist on this like you could use this ava remote like tj's saying to control everything that you want to as long as there's an app for it does ava have any plans or do you know if they have any plans to put their own app on it or maybe that's how they so they they do have their own app that comes with the remote and that's basically just for the audio speakers yeah correct um but there's nothing else on there. Um, I've tried to ask them if they've got a roadmap yet, but I haven't heard anything back yet. Interesting.

Well, I'm sure they'll have more coming. Uh, it seems like a nice product. It seems like you said, nicely built. It has that Neo legacy. Like I have a Neo remote sitting right behind me. They were extremely well put together. Um, I don't know about their sitting right behind me. They were extremely well put together. I don't know about their speaker systems. They look interesting, but I mean, they're competing against giants at this point for that. So it'll be interesting to see how well they do in that marketplace as well. Yeah, and I haven't got a chance to play with the speakers just yet. The remote we wanted to try right away.

And like I said, I can see a place for it in the smart house. I just hope it improves a little bit. Well, we'll definitely have to keep an eye on them. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 383. Not much in the mail back this week, but we do have a pick of the week. And I forget who put this in the hub this morning, but TJ, I think you put it on our notes.

And that is the Crestron VC-4-Room. It's quite an elegant product model number. Gavin's over here scratching his head. He's like, why is this the pick of the week? But this could be the, if you're a Crestron dealer and you're trying to figure out how to buy processors for your job, this could save you.

The Crestron and other smart home companies in the professional side have been slammed with these, you know, supply chain shortages. And one of the big things that has hit them hard is the ability to put out enough product for their controllers and that kind of thing. And Crestron is no exception. So this is a Crestron virtual controller and it's the VC4. It's basically a server-based control platform that you can use in place of hardware-based Crestron control systems. So it doesn't have all the IO on it, but you install the software on a Linux server, it looks like, flip the switch, and now you've

got the ability to get the job up and going. You can pair it with, you know, NVX, DM transmitter receivers, interfaces like I.O., like CEN I.O.s, all sorts of stuff. And it might be a solution if you're a crush on dealer. If you can't get a hold of a processor and you need to get something in the door this this might be something that you're able to do um and get license it looks like it's per room licensing but i don't know this could be a savior for some people out there who are trying to get done with jobs this this is pretty cool i guess uh you know you'll be able to get your own processor now but you still won't be able to get anything else so i guess guess that'll help out a little bit. Well, if you did have everything you need, but I understand the processors are pretty hard to come by these days. Um, you know, and it's, it's, if you look at what people are posting on the forums and whatnot, um, this might be a

solution for you. I don't know. It might help somebody out there if they didn't know about it before. So we'll mention it on the show, just like we mentioned everything else. And I think it's a pretty good pick. now so much, you know, like I guess as a dealer, you're going to have to support that box now. You're going to have to become familiar with Linux and stuff like that too, right? It could be just a stopgap. If you think about it, you want to get paid on the job and then you go back and you can swap it out for the real controller later on, or maybe it works fine and you're able to just kind of proceed with it in there. And, you know, when the day comes and it dies, it's just like, well, they don't make those anymore. We got to put this, you know, Crestron processor in and we'll load the old program up.

It gives you a discount on it or something. So, yeah, I think it could just be a stopgap for the time that we're in right now where you just can't buy the physical product because of the chip shortage. And I see a lot more going this way, too, because of that chip shortage. Like you guys are having a tough time sourcing product, you know? Pretty soon you'll be, like, putting in squeeze boxes as a stopgap until the Sonos stuff comes in for you, too, right? Like, it's getting worse. It seems to be getting worse. I feel your pain.

I think a bunch of integrators just died on the inside when Gavin said that people are going to integrate squeeze box. Yeah, yeah. side when gavin said that people are going to integrate squeeze box yeah yeah i think i think the the ones that he didn't kill off uh with pictures of that fan strapped to the ceiling i guess that could be our secondary picture of the week but man he posted in the hub some picture of a fan strapped to the ceiling with a light on i don't know my eyes were hurting too bad i couldn't look at that that definitely happened in florida for those that you have to see the pic but it's a box fan someone strapped to the ceiling and put a switch next to it and they said that they call it a ceiling fan now not not only a box fan though it had a light installed on top of it as well oh my gosh that's so bad

all right all right all right if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week That's so bad. All right. All right. All right. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week or great ideas for a show, give us a shot.

Our email address is feedback at home tech. Dot. FM, or you can visit home tech. Dot. FM slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. All right.

Well, that wraps up another week. Uh, guys, have you guys, um, have you guys, uh you guys uh seen this severance show on apple tv i've i'm two episodes in two i'm gonna probably give it one more episode

yeah we were looking for something to watch the other night and we we started watching it it's kind of like reminds me of lost like how everything's just a big mystery for so long and we we started watching it and it's got some like how everything's just a big mystery for so long. And we started watching it. And it's got some like cliffhanger episodes a little bit further in. It is maybe a slow, like with all Apple stuff, it's a slow start. But it's kind of a good like drama thing. And there's things happening now and things are kind of opening up. And we're in the phase right now where we're trying to predict what is, what's happening. So the, the premise behind the show Severance, it's, uh,

people basically have a surgery done where they can divide their work and personal lives. So the person that goes to work in the morning and enters the office doesn't know that the other person exists or what they do. They don't even know their name. They give a different name in the office. Really, really weird premise here. Uh, and kind of creepy, but, um, to get that work, work-life balance, they've, they've surgically altered their brains. And now the person that is at home doesn't know what the work stress is. And the person at the office, this is the hellish part of it, just basically walks out the door for the day and then walks back in completely rested. Like the next moment. That's their perception of reality.

And they show how that works a couple of different ways. That's very entertaining in the first couple of episodes. So we've been enjoying it. I would say, Gavin, maybe give it a little bit more time. It is a slow-paced, like, drama-type thing. It's not like a fast-paced anything. But it's got Christopher Walken's in the thing, man. He's funny.

Yeah, I saw a whole bunch of big actors in it. It's just the first couple episodes are slow. But I'm going to give it another one because i've been there before where a show starts off slow and it takes about three episodes before it really gets good so i'll give it another episode or two yeah we'll see let's see it may not be for you but like yeah who knows we could have another hitter i always feel like we're watching like apple tv stuff or at least we're talking about it are you guys watching anything right now that's that's uh that's not on apple tv oh the funny part is is i just binged watched a show

called acapulco oh my gosh oh yes telling the vellos yeah yeah let's keep let's talk it's on it's on apple tv i love that one man it has one of my favorite artists eugenio derbez and um he was also in coda we watched that this weekend too. I just love his acting, his storytelling, and this show was awesome. It's just a feel-good show. That's all it is. Yeah, that one's like Ted Lasso, but with the telenovela spin on it. It's such a formulaic show, but it just makes you like smile every time

something happens because it it usually works out for him i guess you know that the secret though is because he's a rich guy at the end like he's telling the story as a rich guy it all worked out for him so there's a season two coming don't worry yeah i know i i i enjoyed i enjoyed definitely enjoyed watching the first season kind of on and off. It was one of those background shows. TJ, what about you? Are you getting anything done now that you have a remote? Are you watching anything on your remote? That's pretty good.

You know, I haven't watched any like TV shows, but I watched a couple of YouTube shows on the, or YouTube videos on the remote. But we actually just finished. Is it cake? Which is on Netflix. It is hilarious if you haven't seen it yet it is a show where i can't remember the exact number but there's like six uh items that they're all similar you know like six suitcases um and one of them is made out of cake um and

they have you know three three guests uh judges on the show and they have to stand i think like 15 20 feet away and they have to determine which one is cake all together um and it is crazy what people can make out of cake and you know honestly you're looking at it through the camera lens um but some of them look amazing and i just had no idea that you can make cake into like real things. Oh man. The things that they'll put on, they'll put on TV. I guess that's fun. I don't know. Like I would, but yeah, look, I was very skeptical at first and I'm watching it and I'm just, I'm, I'm amazed, you know, I just, I, you know, I don't know. There's definitely, there's something good about it. The artistry of, of, of some of the pastry chefs out there is pretty good. So it's going to be pretty...

I have one big update. This came in right before the show. So like breaking news, I got my little control board for my range hood. It finally came in. So I think I ordered it. Yes. During our home tech talk, I was taking apart the range hood last week and trying to put it back together before my wife got home.

And now I've got the little part here. So I can test with this thing. And then if all goes well, I can swap it out, have a backup in case I fry it. And then, yeah, it looks exactly the same. So I'm hoping that it's exactly the same board. I doubt anything has changed from this version to the one i have installed so i'll swap it out once i get everything figured out and what all the pins do and everything and see if i can make the thing smart should be fun for those

that missed it on last week's tech talk seth pulled apart his range hood live we all watched and then we convinced him to buy a backup part in case he screwed it up and that's what he got today it was a smart move smart move guys i mean for like 50 bucks it it's it's gonna save it's gonna save me in the long run i think yeah i'm pretty jealous i need to i guess i need to automate my range hood everybody else is automating theirs you're gonna figure this out for this particular a brand of uh brone newtone that uses the uh little two button control thing i guess that uh i guess i'll it'll be something for for people who want to automate their brone newtone i don't know all right 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 slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub, where you can look at a horrible picture of a fan,

a ceiling fan. Yeah, don't. Oh, man. And I guess TJ's posting some videos that Ava remote. are you going to post them in the hub or is that private um no we have a a public youtube channel i'll i'll i'll i cannot talk i will end up posting the playlist in the in the hub there so everybody can see them cool cool so we'll keep an eye out we'll put them in the show notes too but if you're you know you'll probably get them first if you're in the hub so So, all right. And if you want to help out but can't support the show financially,

totally understand. We'd appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. I was looking on there. That's not a podcast. The ratings are really old. So if you haven't rated in a long time, hop on over there.

Give us some stars. Let other people know about the show and help them find it easier uh that wraps up this week in home tech news uh from everyone here have a great weekend and we will see you next week see you later take care