HomeTech.fm - Episode 386 - The New LG 55-inch TV

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

This week on HomeTech: New kit from both Wyze and Aqara "wow" the DIY market, Leviton launches retrofit-friendly lighting control, Amazon adds new features to both FireTV and Alex but is also spying on you, Gavin wants a New LG 55-inch TV, and a slick pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 6th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Cal, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And this is the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation, all that good stuff. I've got a couple of new products this week, which is nice to see, but I had a travel week last week. And guys, I can tell you, I am not good at traveling anymore. I suck at it. I've completely forgotten what to do. So is this your first time traveling since, you know, the whole COVID thing kicked in or, you know, what was it like traveling again?

Wasn't the first time traveling. It was more of a first time, maybe the first time on a plane. Maybe not. I think I've taken a plane before, but I don't know. I just I seem to be so rusty at it uh like what I like to have is a little pack pack that I can like grab and and and take with me and I had all that like settled for like business travel and then I think what happened over like COVID was like I kind of like pulled pulled stuff out of it and of course the phones all changed different chargers came out uh different

laptops came out so chargers cables all kind of, different laptops came out. So chargers, cables all kind of changed up. So everything was up to date. And then, um, I kind of like swapped stuff in for personal travel. So like, you know, we would go to some of the theme parks we'd see in a hotel over there. Um, doesn't quite work out. So like I got to where I was going, I'm like, I don't have this, this, this, this, no good's no good. Why can't we have just everything in one spot? I like to have everything in one thing, and you just pick it and go, and you don't have to think about it. Yeah, I can't wait to travel again.

I haven't gone anywhere in many months now, and I am looking forward this summer going somewhere that's not my house or work. I'm jealous of that at least, that's not my house or work. So I am, I'm jealous of that at least, but I guess you were at work, so probably not that much to be jealous of. Yeah, not,

not really turned into all meetings all week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Meetings. It turns out meetings are just the same in person as they are on zoom. So I don't know why we have offices anymore speaking of offices cj you's got an office yeah we uh we rented out a office at the local chamber

of commerce um so we just got the keys to that today um and actually i say keys i had to go get the keys made for it uh they didn't have any keys for the actual lock. So but yeah, I just got that started up today. Got a bunch of the stuff moved from the house to the office. So a lot more, a lot more free space at the house now, now that I got all the boxes of wire and boxes of people's products out of my house. Congratulations. It sounds like it feels like I'm witnessing the growth of a multi-b company you know the next we work you know so i don't say that that yeah yeah i was gonna say everybody keeps saying that but i feel like that's like a crash and burn story i don't feel like that's a good story at all well in the end and i'll just you know spoiler alert they

walked away with billions of millions and billions of dollars anyway, so I'd rather be the next WeWork than poor. I guess that's true. That's more than I have. That's more than I have. I do remember the two crazies at the top, or the crazies at the top walking away with a lot of money. Haven't watched the rest of that show. Kind of started watching it and got, I don't know.

It's one of those, like, I don't really care to watch. If I don of those, like, I don't, I don't really care to watch. If I don't care like about the characters and I don't care about those two characters at all. Yeah. Um, then I have a hard time of like connecting to the show and watching it. So, uh, but I've switched over to, to, to the star, the star Trek, which I guess Gavin you're, you've, you've been watching too. So, or you said it was great. I hadn't actually seen it. The Discovery one, the new one?

The Discovery. I love Discovery. Picard was for me. And the new one, New World, is starting up this week, I believe. So, you know, I love what I'm liking about these new shows with the Star Treks, especially, is they feel like so much money is thrown into them. They feel like one long movie or like it's not like the camera was shaking you know whenever they got shot you know like they make it look like real professional like a real good movie so i'm really enjoying them storylines are great um you know so if you're looking for something to watch check out these

star trek shows yeah if it's up your alley float your boat float your starship whatever yeah check them out it's i don't know i haven't watched star trek in a long time uh but these these actually i was like well what i'm gonna watch and i saw that i saw the picard thing i'm like well i haven't seen the discovery thing i don't know if i need to see one than the other no no but discovery is better than picard's though okay i found all right well i i honestly don't think i've ever even seen an episode of star trek oh to each their own like it's not like it's not the best thing in the world i used to watch tng like all the time when i was growing up because it was i think it was always on like i think there was back then on cable i think they were just required to carry a Star Trek channel or something.

I don't know how it worked. I haven't watched them in years, and I figured, eh, why not give it a shot? See what the new thing's all about. See what the kids are all excited about these days. I don't think it's kids watching that show. It's worth a watch, though. Yeah, it's not bad. It's not bad.

All right, guys, what do you say we jump into some Home Tech Headlines? Let's do it. All right, a couple of new products hit the shelves this week from Wyze and Aquara. I guess first, we had a rumor about this last week. We punted just to kind of wait to see what it came out looking like. And it's a $40 Wyze. Um, that is pretty neat. Like it, it, the idea behind this is that it's a camera and a sticker, a QR code that you stick on your garage door. And when the camera sees that QR code, it knows your garage door is shut. And that's,

that's technology guys. It's amazing for $40.40, what do you expect? And then I guess there's some software that tie basically a relay into the camera. I was looking at the product shots online. It looks like there's a little small dongle almost that hangs off just what you would expect for a $25 wise camera uh that has the extra relay built into it and in their app you can open and close your garage door and you can see if the garage door is open or closed and the sensor state instead of using a relay or a contact sensor like normal they use a qr code not a bad hack um gavin what do you think i think it's a good idea um i know others have done things with a laser and a reflective thing on the door but this is using technology they already have and I think it's great um I'm pretty sure they took into account all the things like if it's dark in there etc etc or even if you know you have a big vehicle you have to angle the camera in a certain

way just to make sure it can see it but it can also do things like it will know if your door is opening or closing you know because you can sense the movement of the qr code so i i think it was pretty smart how they did it i like it and i like what how wise is just coming out with product after product that makes sense yeah it's great you get the the garage door controller and the camera for the 4040. Um, and it looks like it's only compatible with the ones that, you know, just work based off a regular relay. Um, but I feel like a lot of people are still using those types of garage doors. So this should be able to be used in a lot of places. Um, and it looks super easy to install. If you ever installed any other garage door opener, um, it's literally just two wires and you just push them into the little plug things and that's it. Um, so for 40 bucks, this seems like a no brainer, um, ties into their

existing ecosystem and I don't see any problem with it. Yeah. It doesn't work with the yellow button. You know, that's basically the, my cue garage door openers, but we talked about that last week or the week before with the garage at stuff if you if you have one of those you'll have to get the little adapter get the garage it piece like that's 25 i think so it's it's roughly half the cost of this thing or a little bit more than half the cost of this thing uh and and there you go you've got a little camera uh that that does what it's supposed to do open and close your garage door. Can't beat it. Second thing is inside the house. They've got a Wyze $25 sensor.

It only works with their Wyze thermostat. It picks up temperature, humidity, and motion detection, basically occupancy sensor in a room. And it works to eliminate hot and cold spots and prioritize comfort in rooms that someone's in, I guess. It has a three-year battery life with AAA batteries, and it has an always-on display, which I think looks like one of those Kindle, like a Kindle display. What is that? E-ink, E-ink display. That's what it looks like. Not bad for $25. Looks okay. Looks decent. Can't complain. TJ, what do you think about this thing?

Yeah, I mean, this totally makes sense as a little room sensor that you would have if you had a thermostat. You know, oftentimes a lot of people complain about the different temperatures that each room has. I don't think that's going to solve or this isn't going to solve that problem necessarily. You would need something like the smart vents that I think that you have, Seth. But, you know, if you're looking to find out the temperature and humidity in your room, it's a good option for it. It's got that little motion sensor built into it. So I'm assuming you can do something else with it as well. Looks like a pretty standard device to me, though. And yeah, like keep in mind, these aren't meant to change the temperature of a specific room, right?

They're meant to for the thermostat to, you know, know how much to heat up the house. So basically, I do this with my Ecobee. I should say this is the same thing as Ecobee, right? Exactly. Exactly. So at night, all I care about is the temperature in my bedroom. So Ecobee will only use the sensor in the bedroom and only heat it up to make sure that's comfortable. It won't care about the rest of the house.

And during the day, it will do other rooms and stuff like that. And this is just the next step to make a thermostat, you know, more catch up with the others and more functional. I think it's a great thing. And the one thing about Wyze I'm finding is they pretty much come out with every product that there's every base product at this point. You know, like I'm starting to think, what are they going to do next? They have all those useless products. I find like this gun safe and, you know, the handheld vacuum maybe. But they have a lot of they have all the basic products from the sensors to the switches to the doorbell.

Like they've grown pretty fast. And I hope they continue this momentum and keep everything up to date. Well, and if you act now, you can pick up COVID tests for about $4 off. Still have those, yeah. I actually ordered those. I got a bunch of those in. It worked pretty well, actually. Oh, yeah, look at that.

Greg says he wants it to be hot in the bedroom. There you go. Keep it spicy. I have my bedroom lights at one color and the thermostat at another temperature you know like oh yeah interesting interesting company interesting product line um that they have over there it is kind of different compared to all the other smart stuff that's in in the world but um they keep they keep turning out product left and right. I mean, and what looks to be decent product, that $25 sensor, right, is you can get, I guess that's half the price of a

Ecobee sensor, because those are $99 for a two-pack. So these are $25 for one, but you also get like a little display on it as well. I don't know. It seems like it's a pretty good deal, especially if it's half off. I don't know how well their thermostat works, but if you wanted to kind of replicate what you can do with the Ecobee, with Wyze, probably without an API, right? I'm not sure if the Wyze thermostat has an API. Gavin, you'd probably know better than me.

Nothing open. It's been reverse engineered, me nothing open like it's been reverse engineered like so but nothing open like that they publish yeah yeah gotta keep you in the ecosystem somehow exactly i was trying to figure out i i guess i could just search for thermostat on their website oh their thermostat looks god awful okay so it's 70 71 dollars and 70 dollars and 99 cents and it looks just like the sensors. It's kind of like this little oval-shaped bug-looking thing with a dial on it and a screen. It is a fraction of the price of the good-looking ones, though, so keep that in mind.

Yeah, I mean, you definitely get what you pay for here. It's definitely ugly, and I don't really need the thermostat to look pretty. You know, like I said on the show last week, I think Gavin, you and I were talking, mine's hidden away. Like I, I never look at my thermostat. If I was to walk into my house, it's, it's over there. So I, I, I don't ever have to worry about it or look at it or talk to it or trying to listen to music out of it or whatever. I don't need have to worry about it or look at it or talk to it or trying to listen to music out of it or whatever. I don't need all those smart home features, those particular smart home features.

What I do need to do is turn on and off the air and be reliable enough for some integration. The Ecobee has been okay for that, especially since I use it for HomeKit mostly, so it's all local. I don't have to rely on their servers being online, so that's kind of nice um kind of moving on here uh akara they released a p1 occupancy sensor and a p1 motion sensor i got i got these two mixed up because they both have the p1 designated part number on them

um anyway a lot a lot of people raving about this uh p1 occupancy sensor gavin what do you think about this thing the aquarius stuff is popular because of the low price point but you gotta remember with the low price point you get you know sometimes questionable products but so first off their motion sensors is just the next generation of their existing motion sensor it looks like they doubled up the battery in it and it adds a few extra features. It all runs on Zigbee 3.0. But a word to the wise, like I've seen rumblings that it has some compatibility issues with Zigbee 2.0 hubs or controllers. So, you know, like you get what you pay for.

It works perfectly with their own hubs and you can go from their hub and integrate it into other systems if you want. So if that's what you want to do, go that way. But the cool one that everyone's talking about is the occupancy sensor. So the occupancy sensor is using Miller Wave to detect if someone's in a room. It's not just looking at motion. It's not just looking at motion. It's actually will know if someone's in a room, if someone left the room, et cetera, et etc etc it's getting really good reviews people are loving it that too also is zigbee 3.0 the only problem is it's very hard to find it's only available in china right now and they don't even know if it will be brought to other markets at this point i guess they're testing the market with this but people are loving this yeah that mill wave looks pretty cool there have been a couple of smart home

devices that have tried to do that in the pro space in the past um i'm thinking more of in the security realm where like you're trying to secure a warehouse and you would use that particular technology rather than motion detectors which is that's just infrared light, right? So it has, the way a motion detector works, it has an infrared emitter and it basically shoots channels or paths straight ahead. And the way the motion detector goes off is if you break one of those channels or paths. And a lot of motion detectors can, if you walk directly at them, it takes them a little while to figure out that you're actually doing that. They don't work very well. And don't ever walk directly at them, it takes them a little while to figure out that you're actually doing that. They don't work very well.

And don't ever aim one at a like a hot door or a slider here in Florida because it just won't work because all it picks up is the heat coming from the sun. And that's it. Doesn't doesn't work. I see TJ. You're shaking your head. You must have run into a couple of these, too. Yeah, I always have problems with motion sensors. I don't know if it's just the ones we use from 2gig or something but it's your cat well could be the

pet friendly one now the ones i'm using they have like a like a three minute timeout on them and i don't know if this is consistent with all the other motion sensors out there uh but it'll actually trigger and then it won't trigger again for another three minutes yeah so that's my downside with it especially when you're trying to test this system and you're like man i can't trigger this thing all the time why can't i and the the nice thing about the occupancy sensor um it's feature heavy so you can adjust the timeouts to be down to one second if you want um it also is able to sense if somebody's walking towards it away from it left to right etc like there are a lot of features that this thing does um i think it's all once you add it to their own

hub though you get access to configure all those settings though yeah that's pretty cool it looks interesting yeah yeah maybe we'll see some stuff like that come to come to the states and maybe it just it the way it works is just irradiate irradiates people and you know radiation we can't can't bring that over here so who knows somebody somebody sent an email to wise they'll bring it out exactly exactly all right all right well let's move on here um a good a good diy uh showing uh this week on on some really interesting products the garage door opener is kind of the most funky one for me, just because the way they're using an existing camera that they have to,

to view, to check a garage door, if it's open or closed. And instead of doing something like with advanced analytics and all this crazy stuff, we see companies like ring brag about that. They're going to do no, no,

we just put a sticker. You put a sticker on the wall and that that's how we're going to do no no we just put a sticker you put a sticker on the wall and that that's how we're gonna tell i don't i don't even understand the qr code i wonder if it like if it needs a qr code or if that's just like its thing it's because i don't know a qr code just seems weird to me it's just a simple it's like a qr code's not going to exist anywhere in nature right it's not going to exist in your in your decor and home like so like it's just a computer readable image is all it is so if the computer can read it and detect it then that means it's there so the libraries exist they work they're fairly robust

they're just reusing reusing free stuff genius yeah genius Yeah. Genius, thrifty. It's pretty good. I do like that one. That one's kind of the most innovative one. Innovative thing I've seen in a while, I guess, is the way I'll say that. Now we just have to find out if they all use the same QR code. Ooh, that would be fun, right? Like, what if they do?

Or can you use your own QR code? Like, if you don't like how it looks yeah there you go it's just looking for a qr code it doesn't matter any qr code yeah we'll have to figure it out it's a mystery we've got a couple of those on the show tonight we're going to get to the one in a minute uh but first up let's talk about um actually i'm gonna swap the two stories here and we'll talk about another mystery that we have here. Levitan is out today with five, not just one, not just two, not just three, not just four, but five new smart home products under its Decor line. So headlining the release are the HomeKit-enabled smart lighting.

They're designed to be retrofitted into older homes that might not have the right wiring for modern lighting control systems. So the five devices include a no-neutral switch, a no-neutral dimmer. And to work those, you have to have a required Wi-Fi bridge that they have. And there's a new smart Wi-Fi second-generation motion-sensing dimmer and a Decora smart Wi-Fi second generation tamper resistant outlet. So a lot of words in those. But if you squint a little like this, like you can see that there are five products there. There's the no neutral dimmer, the no neutral switch,

and the Wi-Fi hub, and then the outlet and the motion sensing dimmer. So that's our five. Interesting products for the for the smart wi-fi stuff that that's kind of new uh and and uses no neutral um that stuff looks kind of nice looks like regular rocker switches and uh kind of designed and looks to be designed around like more smaller installs so um the wi-Fi bridge only supports up to 25 Decora smart, no neutral devices. And I think going through the instructions,

you can only have like 99 devices total in this ecosystem on your app, so to speak. That's all that'll be integrated with. But the pricing isn't bad. So the Switch with the Bridge is about $65. The dimmer of the Bridge is $70. And there's a bunch of other bundles. If you need more bridges, if you have more than 25 devices, you can get another Bridge for $20. The Switch individually sells for $ dollars and the dimmer goes for a whole fifty dollars. So really not bad on the pricing there. Probably really good for retrofit and DIY use

case, especially with that no dimmer and no neutral installation. I've run I have a couple of locations in my house here where it's just a switch like running. You know, it's just that's it. That's all you get. You get two wires that come down, there's no neutral and everything switched up at the light bulb. So it's nice to see a company coming out with a smart device that, that does that. And, uh, it looks like just a regular switch, which I appreciate quite a bit. Um, Gavin, what do you think about these things? Um, I'm a little confused like i i know i had a leviton home kit switch before so uh they are adding a hub into the mix somehow they they have everything they have z wave switches zigbee switches home kit switches blue wave switches you know uh bluetooth

switches i i i i just see them adding a hub into this mix i'm trying to figure out what's the point is it preparing them for matter later on are we looking at that or is it to add support in for all the various ecosystems such as you know amazon google and stuff like that too um i guess that's the mystery yeah yeah that's a mystery that's that's what we couldn't figure out before the show we spent way too long looking into this. And we'll probably spend more time talking about it because it is a mystery. And the Home Tech crew evidently loves a good mystery. So call Scooby-Doo out on this one because we couldn't figure out what the communication protocol was between the bridge and the devices. A friend of the show, Robert Spivak, was saying

on Twitter that it's probably Bluetooth, although can't really find any evidence of that. There is nothing on their website that tells you exactly what the communication between the bridge and the devices are. And TJ, I think you were saying you looked on their website. They already have Wi-Fi stuff. They have second gen Wi-Fi switches out so that it's not Wi-Fi and you wouldn't have a bridge for Wi-Fi to go to Wi-Fi. That just didn't make any sense. You just get one right on Wi-Fi. TJ, you were saying they even had Z-Wave and Zigbee on the site under the same brand as well. I think that's true. Isn't that, Gavin? that gavin yeah so yeah if you look on their site you'll see wi-fi you'll see zigbee you see zed wave you see um bluetooth um like as independent

switches so now they have this as a new category of a bunch of switches with a hub that adds it to home kit but they already had home kit switches because i had one before i believe and it was it was a good switch. But now you can have other switches for other stuff. I I'm getting annoyed with all the different wifi bridges that keep coming out, right? Like we've been installing a lot of smart locks recently and they all have, you know, their own little plugin module for the lock, which I think is great because then you buy one lock and you just change it out for Z wave or Zigbee orbee or whatever you want. I'm fine with that. But all of them have this little plug-in Wi-Fi bridge that you have to plug in somewhere near

there and then connect to your Wi-Fi. And it's just like at that point, just give me like a regular Z-Wave switch or something and just cut out or a Z-Wave door lock and cut out the Wi-Fi bridge altogether. But you still need the Wi-fi bridge in order to open up certain integrations if you're not going full in with z-wave so it's just i i don't know why they keep doing this i assume they need to for some reason but i'm just not a fan of the separate wi-fi bridges for everything a couple of reasons like strategically and um like, I guess I'll say to like, so if you have all of these like independent Wi-Fi devices that are hooked up and online and talking to a server somewhere that those are so you have 10 of them, those 10 devices are talking up to that server and

communicating state back and forth. Those are 10 connections that you're paying for times how many ever homes that you have sold them into. And, you know, just, it goes on and on and on. It's not much money, but it is money. And those, those connections do cost money to keep open and alive. Now, if you do a little intermediate like bridge in between, you can use that to communicate back down and out to the other devices. So like that bridge is, is a smart thing to do. It lowers the cost of your product. Clearly here, you know, they can put in a little $20 Wi-Fi bridge that does some other communication out to their devices, whether it's Bluetooth or Zigbee or Z-Way, who knows. But they're able to turn around and use those to communicate back to that bridge. And that bridge can just maintain a single connection back out to the servers.

So when you go to your app and you press lights on, that command goes down to the bridge and then it gets executed out rather than it having to verify communication with all these five or six devices and send the commands out that way. So I think it's a better topology, I guess. And I'm a big fan of it, clearly. It's where I've lived in with Control 4 systems, Crestron systems, URC, RTI, Elan. Every one of the Pro systems has been set up that way for a long time. Apple HomeKit is kind of set up that way.

To get remote access, they require that you have an Apple TV or a, like a, like a HomePod or something set up in the house so that there is that one device to kind of talk back to, um, for that remote connection. So like, it's not unfounded, um, that those, those types of devices like require some kind of bridge, especially if you're going for like low-cost product to have like a not full like a full you know wi-fi stack built into them you know and wi-fi certified light switch or whatever um you know i i bet if we go compare those 50 dimmers to like whatever their wi-fi dimmer was i i bet you all we have a link in the show notes is going to be for the one for the regular one. But Leviton has a bunch of these things in there.

I bet you it would be more than $50 for their Wi-Fi switch just because it's more overhead, more programming, more installation time, more support to get all those to work with you know someone's random isp provided wi-fi modem and i guess adding that hub makes it easier for uh i guess those people that don't have like a smart things or a habitat you know in their their home like they still want these switches and they just want these switches and their app and they can easily add this into their house without having to set up a whole new ecosystem so i i can see the need for it i see what you're saying yeah it it just makes sense from a like a like a business standpoint rather than having like all these little devices talking back every everything's a hub like hubitat you know they have a hub just just because it makes sense doesn't mean I like it. Come on.

Yeah. So the mystery we'll have to figure out and solve before next week's show is what the heck is the communication standard between the little $20 hub? If they're doing 2,500 square feet, I would think it'd have to be Zigbee at that point, right? You can't do Bluetooth with that much. It shouldn't have a range issue, you know? Well, I guess it probably doesn't.

It shouldn't have a range issue. Bluetooth is like 20 feet, so. But they have Bluetooth mesh as well, too, right? So it depends on if it's using a mesh system. I guess. It could be, yeah. The Bluetooth stuff never really, it's always, it's always, it's like year of the Linux PC, right?

Like it's the year of Bluetooth mesh home or whatever they've come up with five years too late. Like Bluetooth never is really taken off. So it could be Bluetooth. I guess, well, okay. So in the description, it does say coverage, one Wi-Fi bridge provides up to 2,500 square feet of coverage in the home

multiple bridges may be used for larger homes place wi-fi bridge within 50 feet of decora's smart home so not really an answer either way no yeah i mean z wave and zigbee you want to keep within 50 feet of the first hop you know like i don't know i don't know it's kind of weird maybe it could be their own proprietary thing too um a mystery we'll have to dig down and try and solve we tried to to look uh before the show and and dig up the fcc filings to see what they claimed was inside there but can't figure it out and they don't they don't claim anywhere like bluetooth usually there's like logos smacked all over these things like one of those windows pcs that you buy uh but there's nothing on these things no bluetooth logo no zigbee no thread nothing so i don't know

they do have a little janky like works with my leviton logo which i thought was kind of hilarious so we'll probably put a link to that picture in the show notes because that's it was just really ridiculous i've never never seen that or heard of it before yeah it looks like something you would find on like a cheap amazon product or something we should make it work with home tech oh yeah all the patrons you get a works with home tech sticker put that together we'll have to throw one on our Ava remote before it gets banned. Ooh, there we go. There we go.

See, Home Tech will never ban the Ava remote, ever. We're not taking our app off the Ava remote. We have an app on the Ava remote? I mean, maybe. We weren't going to tell you. Seth and I were getting royalties off it. We're going to leave you out of it. Exactly.

All right, well, let's move on here. Got an interesting little feature added, product added. I like when you get software updates and they add features in via software. So Amazon seems to be doing a little bit of that this week. And they have announced that the Amazon Fire Cube is the first streaming device that will do audio streaming for hearing aids, or ASHA. People with hearing loss can use the Fire TV Cube. And they'll be able to connect compatible Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids to stream the device, stream whatever's playing on the device, whether it's a TV show or music or anything like that, um, to help improve TV sound quality and, and, you know, pump that music and everything right into your ears, right, right into your hearing aids. It's, I guess it was the top

requested feature among hearing aid users. Amazon aims to expand audio streaming, uh, for hearing aids or Asha, Asha, Asha, I guess support to more of its devices in the future. Seems like a win-win to me. Like this, this is great. I wish more products started supporting stuff like this. This sounds pretty cool. Yeah, I don't understand why this is a bigger thing already. I could see, you know, in certain situations,

us switching to Fire TV just because of this feature. And I think right now it's just on the Fire Cube, but they're talking about bringing it to the other products as well. So, I mean, that's a huge selling point. We hook up a lot of, you know, receivers or transmitters for Bluetooth hearing aids. So if you don't need the little transmitter, this would be great for that. Yeah, I can remember installing like those Sennheiser headphones and that kind of stuff. And it requires this bulky extra thing that you add in. And this seems like it's a great idea where you're already wearing the hearing aids. They just pair right with your Fire TV Cube or whatever. And maybe other players in the future, you know, will adopt this and bring their products over this this seems like it's a win-win

for everybody involved yeah and i think a lot of hearing aids at this point use bluetooth already so it wouldn't be hard to imagine a jump uh to you know enabling support for all those yeah i don't keep up to date with my hearing aid technology but like i only recently discovered that they increment implemented so many features into hearing aids when a friend of mine was using hers to answer her phone and stuff like i found that like amazing i didn't know that they came that far you know um i know there's a i've been looking at headphones for watching my tv and i know there's a rumored sonos headphones you know might come out i was thinking that but by the time that comes out who knows if i'll need a hearing aid. So I'll keep an eye out for these.

By that time, you might have Sonos hearing aids. Hearing aids, there you go. Or Wise hearing aids before then. Ooh, there you go. Wise, more like it. Yeah, definitely Wise ones. Yeah, the $1,500 Sonos, or you get the $2,999 Y. Good stuff, good stuff.

Well, Amazon also announced that person detection announcements are rolling out to all Ring video doorbells and cameras, and will soon make its way over to the Google Nest Cam Outdoor, the Nest Cam Indoor, the Nest Cam Floodlight, the Nest Doorway Battery camera, I guess, the Abode Iota, and the Abode Outdoor Camera. So that's kind of a neat little software update. You get person detection announcements coming in. You can also set up an Alexa routine based on the new detection features, such as like turning on a porch light when somebody walks up, controlling a smart lock, or activating sprinklers on a potential intruder. That seems kind of mean, but okay.

There's also package detection, which will be available on the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 and the Ring Video Doorbell 2020. I think we're calling that the 4, but okay. And it's coming to Abode's IOTA and outdoor cameras, but not to the Google Nest cameras. Even though the Nest doorbells do have package detection on their own. So this particular Alexa feature is not making its way over there. It's just going to kind of stay on device and not

be brought out. The partnerships are part of a new object detection sensor API that Amazon has released that allows camera manufacturers to add this new functionality to their devices. So Ring users will need to actually have Ring Protect plan. It starts around $3 a month. And Abode users, of course, will need an Abode plan that runs around $7 a month. And Google does not charge for this person detection, presumably because they probably don't have to pay Amazon for it. I'm guessing how this works. Like Amazon's the one that runs the little servers and they probably charge a little bit more for that API to transfer video around and process it and all that good stuff. Gavin, what do you think about this? New features coming to your Ring Doorbell. I always like new features. New features is great.

It just means that the products, they haven't given up on the product. I know you laughed at the whole turn on the sprinkler system, but there's actually valid reasons for doing that. I didn't laugh. I said it was me. Well, I actually had that set up in my backyard

because the raccoons and stuff, when they came in the backyard, it would trip the sensor and it'd scare them off. They were digging up the lawn, looking for grubs and stuff like that. I have foxes running back there. I had to turn it off, though, because it also kicked in whenever I let my dog out. So it kind of backfired i'll be but no it's this the key thing is is they're letting their ring cameras um the sensors be used in uh in the a lady uh routines and it just opens up a lot of things you can do with those routines once you get the sensors in there right right yeah well i mean

integration brings you know all this stuff for you, right? Like these closed ecosystems like cough ring, you know, like they, they don't really have much integration with, um, you know, outside parties or, you know, they, they're not, they haven't really released, you know, they really haven't released very much integration. We, we do have a, like a integration with ring and that, that, that I work on not daily, but enough, um, that, you know, just basically brings in the events from cameras and doorbell pushes down into the system. And there's some various others, like smaller things that we could have done with it.

But like what really would have been awesome is like if we got events for, you know, the alarm system or something, you know, that's built into Ring. That's a really killer system. And, you know, getting data into some kind of home automation system really opens up what you can do with the product. Unfortunately, I don't know why, but I suspect it's kind of a business decision to keep everything siloed. If you want Ring events to be triggered off your ring alarm system, you're going to use the ring app, you know? Like, that's probably what they've decided to do.

And, you know, fair enough. They don't charge too much for that product. So, you know, I guess that's one thing. But it would be nice for, like, it would be nice to be able to integrate it in with other things and trigger, know as you know say i had a home system or home lighting system or something i want to trigger some lights based off in the alarm state like it would be nice to at least integrate that back into um a previously existing lighting control system it'd be great to have that kind of thing i so i really like it when the the a little bit you know maybe not much but a little bit of the wall garden kind of gets chipped away uh and you get a little bit more integration yeah it'd not much, but a little bit of the wall garden kind of gets chipped away. Uh, and you get a little bit more integration. Yeah. It'd be nice to see this brought

to the unify lineup as well at some point. Um, especially with the unified doorbell G4 pro that I'll never get. Um, but that would be perfect for it. Yeah. There's some, well, there's a, there's some hack hack drivers, reverse engineer drivers out there. There's one for the HomeBridge, but there's also one for Control 4 that I use quite often. And you get the events on person detection, motion detection off that as well. So for the G4 products that you're talking about. And it's nice. But I wish that, at the very least that Unify had some kind of publicly supported API and somebody didn't have to go through and hack things.

And when they update something, it doesn't, you know, break all the installs out there just because they felt like updating to whatever technology they want to update to. Would be nice. Would be nice. All right. Kind of moving on here. Um, it's speaking of, uh, speaking of Alexa here, a report released last week contends that Amazon uses voice data from its echo devices to serve targeted ads on its platforms. I know guys, I know this is shocking. Just hold on, hold your comments. TJ looks aghast right now. It's pretty much what everybody thought. I don't know what you expected. It's a $30 thing we've been shoving down our throats for free every Thanksgiving.

Anyway, according to this report produced by researchers affiliated with the University of Washington, UC Davis, UC Irvine, Northeastern University. They all said that the ways AMA does this is inconsistent with their own privacy policies. Not very good. The research document titled, Your Echoes Are Heard, Tracking, Profiling, and Ad Targeting in the Amazon Smart Speaker Ecosystem. The report concludes that Amazon and third parties, including advertising and tracking services, collect data from your interactions with Alexa

through the Echo smart speakers and share it with as many as 41 advertising partners. Yay! The data is then used to infer user interests and serve targeted ads on platform devices like the Echo, as well as off-platform devices such as websites and that kind of thing. It also concludes that this type of data is very hot demand, leading to a 30 times higher ad bids from advertisers. Amazon confirmed over to The Verge that it does use this voice data from Alexa Interactions to inform relevant

ads shown on Amazon and other sites where Amazon places ads. It says, quote, similar to what you'd expect if you'd made a purchase on Amazon.com or requested a song through Amazon Music, the record of that purchase or song play may inform relevant ads shown on Amazon or other sites where Amazon places ads, the Amazon spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. So kind of wild, kind of crazy, but not unexpected. You know, if you don't pay for something, that means you are the product, right? So if you pay $30 for this miracle smart speaker and, you know, use it, I guess what's funny is like for me, it would just be serving me kitchen timer ads all the time because there's really not much that I ever use the thing for other than that.

I never really used it for smart home products. I never used it for playing music or anything. So kitchen smart timers, I guess there's gold out there in the kitchen smart timer advertising field. If you guys ever looking for a career change, just just so you know. Yeah, this is this is a no brainer to me. It just I was under the impression that was the whole reason that like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant came out. Right. Was to basically better serve you ads. If they could, you know, figure out what you're talking about in your house or around you, then they can target anything towards you ads. Um, if they could, you know, figure out what you're talking about in your house or

around you, then they can target anything towards you then. Um, and I don't think Alexa really launched with the smart home in mind anyway, you know, it was basically like a searching product. Um, so yeah, this is, like I said, no brainer to me. Um, and you know, ever since really, especially in the United States, ever since the Patriot Act passed, I just assumed everything's being monitored. It doesn't matter what it is. So, Gavin, are you enjoying your targeted ads up there in Canada? I'm loving them. And you know what?

This is something we already knew. I don't think it was just Amazon, Google, Siri, I think. Oh, for sure. For sure. And I honestly, I'm under the belief that even though they deny it, I believe they're listening anyway, right? Because, you know, whenever I'm talking about something that I've never Googled, such as a new LG TV, and I could be talking about the new LG TV on the podcast or, you know, just talking about the new LG TV with my neighbor, it would pick it up, you know, and I didn't even Google it. And then I'd start seeing advertisements in my feeds for the new LG TV, you know, so I just want to make sure like I I'm cool with this because

the ads are more relevant to me, you know, like the devices cheap um and i'm expecting to see new lgtv ads in my feed probably today or tomorrow and i'm cool with that the key thing is that for it to be seen shown in my wife's feed though you know that's why i really want those ads to show up in her feed so that she gets you know the idea subliminal messaging at that point yeah for a new lgt i have a feeling if your wife starts getting targeted ads for the new lgtv uh i have a feeling she's gonna know what's up she's probably figured it out and did you already buy a new exactly no i'm looking for one i'm trying to convince her that we need a new lgtv 55 inch well if you uh if you pick up a

nintendo switch and then you pick up the new wii sports game uh you can break your tv then get a new one wow that sounds very specific tj i would not know at this point though i'm trying not to mess up my uh my ads that show up in my feed by mentioning other things. So I'm keeping it to just LG TV. Just the new LG TV. Right for now. New LG TV 55-inch for now. Your wife brings home like an old Sony TV.

You're like, no. Did not work. Yeah. So the report notes that only process transcripts are shared not the raw audio so they don't actually hear you saying the new lg tv just that you said it many many times um compared to prior research on smart tvs and vr headsets there is less data activity tracking on these smart speakers amazon told the verge that it believes that the research is flawed saying that much of the research is biased and based on speculation. Of course. Yeah, exactly.

I would like to know this. This is all wrong. You really don't realize how well we're tracking you through this. This is what they should say because they're doing such a good job at it. The authors conclude that there is need for greater transparency into the smart speaker data collection sharing and use. They note that these devices are currently, currently quote black box devices without open interfaces that allow independent researchers to expose what data is collected or how they're they are shared and used so yeah more transparency um wouldn't be a bad thing like more integrations more transparency i think if they ever actually

opened up the truth about what it's really capturing and what they're really doing with it, it would probably scare everybody, you know, like really bad. I really think they're doing a lot more than we really even understand. that, you know, you may talk about the new LG TV to your Echo there, but these 41 services have already kind of like taken your habits and who you're hanging around and how long you were lingering in the store staring at the new 41 LG 55-inch TV. Like they knew exactly where you were thanks to, you know, all the Bluetooth beacons and that kind of stuff that they installed in the store. So like you carry your phone, they know where you are. to you know all the bluetooth beacons and and that kind of stuff that they installed in the store so like you carry your phone they know where you are you you've talked to people you've talked to the salesman they they saw his phone they're talking to you they knew he's a sales guy for lgtbs yeah so like they've already figured all this out um

without having to listening to you and and this is just kind of extra data, you know, the sugar on top, the icing on the cake, so to speak, you know, people, people are already, you know, say that, oh, these things are listening to me. And, and I swear, you know, I'm talking to no one about this, that I'm talking to this about this very specific thing. And the next day I get ads, it's like, well, that's how good the targeting is. That's, they know what you're thinking without you having to input anything into the computer. And that's the scary part. Like it's there, but you're not seeing like all the cause to that effect, right? You're, you're only witness to like, oh, well I talked about it yesterday with John, but no one else, how would they have known? Never mind John left that conversation

in search for the new LG TV. That's like, oh, well, maybe they were talking with Gavin about the new LG TV. We are really going to sell a lot of TVs on this podcast. That's all I'm saying. I think they really need to perfect, though, that once I get the new 55-inch LG TV, that they can stop serving me that ad.

I've got it. Let's move on to something else at that point because I hate getting ads for things I already have. You don't want another 55-inch OLED TV? New LG TV, yeah. Oh, well, they should know I'll need a 45-inch for the other room. You might need two or three. Yeah, but they should know the sizes I need at that point, right?

So let's just focus on one thing like the new lg tv 55 inch for now tell you what in our in our show notes over at hometech.fm slash uh three three what 386 we'll just put all the sizes you need to find us lg and send them on over you know if we we have those new lg tvs uh we've said enough on this show more than i think anybody has ever advertised on a podcast if tomorrow comes and i've seen these in my feed like this is a great experiment i'm loving it all right well all the links and topics and tv sizes that we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 386 all right pretty cool pick of the week this week. Gavin, you came up with this a couple of weeks ago.

It is it's actually we're hanging out on the Alexa conversation tonight. I mean, this is this is pretty much it. Right. This is a in wall. I've seen these before, but this is kind of a cleaner version. This is in wall voice assistant. What do you think about this? I'm actually surprised there aren't more of these things, you know, like, cause this is like an in-wall voice assistant with Amazon built in. It's got a clean look to it. It's, it's not an Amazon device. It's a third party device. I'm surprised we don't see more of this so that you can add your devices to your rooms in a clean way. Right. I don't know the price of this or where it's even offered, but I just thought it was a really cool device that we should see more of.

Yeah. So it has that European look to it, right? It's like square with, I don't know, like microphone mute button on it. Not that that's going to work, you know, because they're going to listen to you when you're talking about your new LG 45 inch TV. 55 inch. Yeah, 55 inch.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. You messed up my feed now. But it looks like they have a couple of different mounting options available too. And that, oh, there's a 3D view here. The 3D view doesn't really help me determine how deep that thing is. Yeah.

But it does look like a nice clean product. It's got voice assistant built in. And based on an Italian standard three post rectangular wall mount box with 83.5 millimeter fixing holes. Don't think we're going to see this here in the states anytime soon just because of kind of like where this is is made to live in the world but still a nice clean like um a nice a nice clean product i guess i'll say so it looks pretty good the only thing i don't like about devices that have uh the amazon built in is they they give you a stripped down version

of it so they strip out certain features like you can't do like i don't think you could do calls or drop-ins over it um and i don't like that because it's like i'd love to just have a full featured amazon product like that's built into another product that's not so obvious in the room right right they did that with like the ecobee right? So it was like the Ecobee thermostat. It would be really cool to have that as an intercom. So if you had two in your house, one on each floor, or one in the master suite, one over on the other side of the house for the kitchen area or whatever, you could yell into that and intercom over.

But they strip all the features out for these devices, and it kind of leaves it wanting for a little bit more yeah i really wish they would stop doing that so i could just use my sono speakers in all the rooms but right now we have sono speakers and google assistant speakers and we just have to live with it that sucks they want you to buy their little their little pods because then they can get all that data when you're talking about that new LG 55-inch TV that you want. Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for the show, give us a shout. Or if you have a leftover, I don't know, LG TV, new LG TV, that'd be great. Give us a shout. Our feedback address, email address is feedback at home tech.fm,

or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, well guys, that wraps up another week in news here. Any big plans for the weekend? Nothing really like the weather's getting warmer now. So because of that, you know, you got to do your outside chores. Now I can't play around with tech as much. So I got, you know, there's going to be pool openings. I got to go because of that you know you gotta do your outside chores now i can't play around with tech as much so i gotta you know there's gonna be pool openings i gotta go golfing you know if you're into sports you know nba playoffs nhl playoffs have started so i've been watching a lot of that you know it's my favorite time of the year um but you know just the regular

smart home stuff i have a whole bunch of products around the projects around the house that I have to get done and clean up. Yep. I, I, I, when I went traveling, I took my car to the airport.

Right. And so like, I took all my, like my tools and junk out of my car and I cleaned up my, I say in pool time. Yep. It's definitely pool time. Uh,

I, I pulled all this stuff out of the car and, and like tossed it in the garage where it's actually supposed to go. And I cleaned up the garage and had like this big area back here, you know, behind me where things could fit. And I'm like, I got in my car today. I'm like, wow, this car is really nice without all this junk inside. Yeah. It's actually a real car, right?

So, TJ, what about you? Are you moving into the new office? Is that what your big plans are? Yep. We're just, just getting the new office ready. It's just one office, a little, one little desk and some storage. So nothing, nothing crazy, but, uh, getting that ready and getting all the stuff moved from the house over to there. So I, uh, if you could see the shelving unit next to me, it was full of stuff before and now it is almost empty minus the server stuff. So a lot a lot more space for activities, they say. Right. Right. So are you are you moving?

You're just moving like stock and supply and that kind of thing out. Are you going to use it for a meeting location or. I'm pretty much going to use it just to work out of. I don't think I'll have a meeting, any meetings or anything there. It's mainly, you know, is getting to the point where i was i'm going to need like a storage unit or something um and i've worked for companies before that basically worked out of a storage unit and that was just god awful yeah so i would just rather just rent a small office space for a little bit more money and and have somewhere physically to go and that's kind of

you know climate controlled and i have wi-fi and power and stuff too so a little bit a little bit nicer for that i could have meetings there if i want to but i usually don't meet people so yeah meet meet them in their own place or whatever yeah that makes sense yeah nothing exciting no all right i got some good tv i'm watching oh yeah you mentioned that at the top when we were talking about Star Treks. I got my eyes glazed over a little bit. What are you watching? It's like when we're talking about sport ball. There was nothing on TV.

That's why I ended up with Star Trek. So we subscribed to Discovery Plus. And we've been watching these Game Warden shows. It's kind of like live TV or or something but with game wardens and it's actually good i'm not hating on it we're watching this one right now called a lone star law it's based in texas and i'm just amazed you know and it's funny too because a lot of people don't realize i guess that like park rangers and wildlife officers are like real cops and stuff so uh they'll be like out checking people's like

like life jackets and stuff and they'll be like you're not a real cop you can't do anything and they're like all right well you're getting arrested now congratulations i'm sorry i asked it's good stuff what was that that one that was famous live pd did you ever have you ever seen that one yeah i wasn't i'm not a fan of that because like the the the cop shows always like make me feel bad it's always like terrible situations you know it's like domestic abuse and stuff like that but like the animal ones are usually like all right it's like you know you shot a deer you shouldn't have shot the deer everybody kind of learned a lesson here's a 25 fine but it's not like like whenever they show

up nobody was like nobody's ever like upset or like super angry with them like whenever a cop shows up everybody's like right right right yeah that makes sense yeah we we we frequently someone in my work let's just say that is is very fond of of the old live pd i think they shut down that show for for whatever reason i thought they shut it down and then they brought it back for some reason yeah i don't i'm not sure it ever came back like for real for real but like it definitely got shut down pretty hard during the the george floyd protests and everything because it wasn't exactly uh uh it wasn't actually showing the best light on some situations i guess um so they they kind of moved away from that but i i did read somewhere or did

thought i remember seeing that they were going to bring something like that back but i don't haven't haven't seen anything since then so well if you like the action but you want to feel a little better about yourself lone Lone Star Law. I'll have to keep that in mind. Maybe after I get done watching all of these Star Trek episodes. Oh, there you go. All right. Well, we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page.

If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout out on the show. Every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat at the Hub, where you and everyone else can talk about the new LG

55-inch TV. So, yeah. Keep an eye on that one. So there we go. Uh, if you want to help out, but, can't support the show financially, totally understand.

Just appreciate a, uh, five-star review, uh, or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That wraps up another week on the, the home tech. FM show brought to you by the LG

40-55 inch TV. I don't know, somewhere in there. From everyone here and everyone at LG, have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Take care. Sayonara.