HomeTech.fm - Episode 395 - Buying Big Racks

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

On this week's HomeTech: The crew shops for Prime Day goodies, Aqara launches a new curtain driver, URC launches a new AppleTV driver, Home Assistant launches a certification program, and Gavin goes on the hung for a big rack while Seth and TJ try to spend his money. 🤑

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 15th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home automation, home technology, and down internet in Canada. I'm so glad you could join us, Kevin, because it didn't look like that was going to happen earlier this week. I'm so glad to be here. You don't realize what you have until it's gone. And I really appreciate just having internet connectivity these days. Yeah, crazy

to think about such a big portion of the internet going out in a country just disappearing for up to two days that you lost it in different areas no it wasn't that bad okay it was only about 12 15 hours but the sad part was is i had to go somewhere in toronto and i couldn't even look up i always use my ways or something i couldn't even look up where to go i didn't know where to go and i don't have a map in my car like an old school map so i had to go to my neighbor's house get his map you know like we're so dependent on the internet now it's pretty bad yeah it's funny you mentioned that like all the like apple like apple and android auto stuff require you to

kind of have i think you can like pre-download stuff for android but like the apple maps require you to be connected most of the time to display that. It caches parts of it, yeah. Well, in Google Maps on iOS, you can download maps as well, because I do that mainly because I have a ton of storage on my phone, but I download certain sections of it, and at least I'm not without completely. But I never think we're going to have a full-scale outage like that, so I never proactively decided

to download all these maps i didn't even know how to get to this place yeah that would be me i'm not good with directions at all so without google maps i'm pretty much uh i would not be able to work or go anywhere yeah just you stay home that's that's it's like a it's like a like a a national emergency just you don't want to go outside. There may as well be nuclear fallout or something. Just stay indoors. It's like a summer snow day. Yeah, exactly.

Summer snow day. Well, speaking of days, I'm glad you're back online because today is Prime Day. Yay. Yay, everybody. Yay, Prime Day. Happy Prime Day. The holiday, I guess. i don't know like this is the dumbest thing ever but amazon's garage sale day this is what we'll call it um have you guys found any deals on this thing or what any any have you bought anything today i bought some stuff that

i just wanted to buy and it was on sale because it happened to be prime day so like little things like batteries or some soda stream refills, you know, might as well buy it when it's discounted. But, you know, here's a pro tip for shoppers. What I do is I use a service called Camel, Camel, Camel. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but what you can do in Amazon is you can create a wishlist, make it public, link it to Camel, Camel, Camel, set your thresholds. And what happens is when you want something, add it to your wishlist. And when it hits that threshold, it sends you an email saying, hey, whatever it was you were looking for is now at this price. You go buy it

now. It's an all-time low. And it graphs out the history so you know if it's an all-time low or how it relates or last time. throughout the year you notice if you follow things like that i'll buy them at the lowest prices throughout the year so when these sales come along like prime day i don't need anything yeah yeah because you've already a lot of times they do they have found like for prime day they ahead of time everybody knows when it's coming up like months in advance like they will start raising their prices very slowly yeah by a few cents just to you know boil the frog in the water and then you know right before prime day this thing's really expensive but then all of a sudden prime day it's you know 45 off yeah because over the past six months they've been raising the price you know that much

so yeah camel camel camel camel camel is good i know there's like a plug-in or something that you can use in your browser yeah i don't use the plug-in i just have it monitoring it and when it comes up it emails me i had everything like everything from like paper towels to toilet paper so when it hits all-time low i can just easily order it and you know i get i know i got it at a good price yeah that's cool i uh was a lucky person that bought a bunch of these things look at this look at all these hard drives i've got them just everywhere yeah so um notice they're here um that means i didn't buy them today uh and i didn't buy them the day that you posted like these awesome deals

yeah I bought them before that before all these awesome deals for hard drives came out so I kind of wish that I had waited a little bit longer now because I don't think I can return them but I'm going to use them they're 6 terabyte drives I think I got a decent price on them I don't even know what it was

it's not as good as they've been now but everything is always cheaper the day after you buy it and that's that's the that's the the thing i tell myself so oh well i'm not getting the 20 terabyte drives for like 200 bucks or whatever they were oh such a ridiculous price and it was like 16 16 terabytes for like 250 or 300 or something a crazy low price no i was like i thought it was like two or one eight 179 i don't know i had i had a bunch of them in my cart and i'm like oh choices on this like what am i gonna do i think i posted a picture that in in the hub but i i have i have a synology that is getting low and then i have a bunch of four terabyte drives in it so i just picked up two four terabyte drives for that and then i have a Synology that is getting low, and I have a bunch of 4TB drives in it. So I just picked up two 4TB drives for that.

And then I have a Synology that's empty that needs some drives. So I was going to pop these six in it. I'll see what the return policy is over at Newegg. But if I can get these back to them, maybe I'll pick up some of the other ones. 20TB drives are ridiculous. You know what? I always, you know, 20 terabyte drives always look great but the only reason i don't go that big is because when they die it takes forever to rebuild 20 terabytes and that's a nerve-wracking experience when that one drives rebuilding and you

you're praying another one doesn't fail at that point right because then you lose everything. I could have had three or four 20 terabyte drives for like $1,100 or something like that. It wasn't 20 years like 14 or 16 terabytes. But like, that's a that's a lot of that's a lot of storage. It's a lot of storage, like triples what I have right now. I'm at the expensive part with storage now where I have to upgrade my parity my parity drive whenever i upgrade to you know another big drive so not only do i have to buy one three hundred dollar hard drive but i have to buy two of them um so i'm looking at five hundred to a thousand dollars to upgrade my my drives at this point i'm just not looking forward to it just do it just you know i tear off the band-aid do it i've unfortunately i've gone the gavin route and i've started deleting things so you know we got to meet in the middle somewhere so too good too good well um hey besides hard drives i think there's been there's been some like home automation stuff

that's appeared on there the vacuum cleaners have been the little robot vacuum cleaners have been pretty good the euro euro 6e is a really good deal if you're looking for a new wi-fi system um i always recommend the euro but a three pack comes out to like 420 i think so 140 dollars each really good price for those i picked up a pack yeah i i haven't i went on here earlier and poked around and i don't need anything like i put a bunch of stuff in my cart and i'm like it's not even prime day stuff any discounts on it at all so lucky me it's always a sad feeling when they you go to prime day and you're like i don't need anything you're like so ready to buy something you just feel bad that you didn't get anything yeah all the all the echo stuff is on sale right now even like the camera like camera lenses and that stuff i could potentially but it's like i don't need it here's

a deal for you seth uh meta portal 10 inch touchscreen 35 dollars on clearance from 179 dollars is that a buy now sweet i'm buying that right now that's that's it's gonna go straight to uh straight to the museum, I guess. There you go. It's not a bad deal for a museum piece. Cheaper than a Nexus Q. Is it broken? No, it's brand new.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, this ends in one day. Save 80%? Yeah. Yes, please. That's right. Why can't I add it to the cart?

Buy our discontinued item. Thank you. I can't add it to the cart. Oh. This deal is exclusively for you, but it won't let me add it. That's weird. I'll figure it out later. No, just let me buy it. I don't want to buy it for... Oh, wait. The regular price is

$35. Oh, there. I got that in. No, thank you. I do not need the two-year production plan. Just doing some shopping live on the air. Spending money. And while we're at it, feel free to sign up for Patreon. Yeah, exactly.

It goes pretty much directly to support the gathering list of small electronic devices that don't work anymore in my garage. Yeah, this is great. All right, guys. What do you say we do jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Let's do it. Speaking of Prime Day, I noticed over on Amazon that Aqara had released their E1 curtain driver. The new E1 allows you to automate traditional curtains.

It connects via Zigbee 3.0 and features a battery life of up to 12 months. The curtain driver comes in two versions, a rod version for rod-type curtains and a track version for U-rails and I-rails. If you have two sets of curtains on either side of the window or whatever, you can pair them together where they can open and close simultaneously so that's pretty cool integration sports home kit which is kind of kind of nice amazon alexa google home google assistant if this then that that that that that and also is going to support the upcoming matter standard the controller is also equipped with built-in light sensor which allows the curtain to open

and close on its own when there's two, like, just automated lighting control. That's pretty cool. So, if it gets dark outside, it'll close, I guess. It's available on Amazon. I only could, for me, it did say, I did see a link for the Canadian Amazon store, but I didn't click it. But

for me, it only said the U.S. version, it was the track version only was available. And for $89, but of course, everything's on sale right now. This is on sale for $71. I think there's even some like further discounts. You can get it with like coupon codes. But $89 for a automated controller.

And I'm assuming that the real version is the same as the track version. Whenever that comes up, you click on the images on is the same as the track version. Uh, whenever that comes up, the, the, you click on the images on Amazon and the images don't change. Uh, so I, I'm assuming it's looks to be the same product. This looks like a very nice device. I mean,

it looks like a professional looking device. It doesn't look like it's a cheap piece of plastic. I'm sure it feels like that. Um, but it turns an existing, you know, piece of, uh, thing that you have in your an existing you know piece of uh thing that you have in your house into an automated portion of it um and i love simple little devices like this

where you can reuse exactly what you already have and just add the smarts to it um and for 90 for a normal price i don't think that's a bad deal compared to what normally uh what like like a sunfee controller would cost you yeah yeah or like anything at that point yeah yeah not bad gavin what do you what do you think akara is your your brand the love hate brand that you you have out there no this this has been getting a lot of great reviews um it checks all the right boxes when someone's looking at it you know from all the various integrations it's great i mean it's such a simple thing like uh it's something that switchbot should have made you

know the way it's implemented oh wait this is exactly like this is it's a knockoff but but it's a knockoff yes but it's got better integrations so i i can see myself grabbing this because I was looking for something like this. But I'm still waiting for Matter to come out to see how it's going to play in my home. Yep, yep. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on this one. It looks pretty cool. I don't even think I have curtains like this. We have like flat blind type things on all our windows.

We have it in this room here here so it won't cost me a lot of money to just have it i wonder how loud it is yeah it wouldn't be useful for my situation but i've been into a lot of places where this would work yeah um and at least it supports three different types of blinds i guess so you have a wide range of products that should work for and it's added to my cart. I get to work here, so I may as well get it. This is what we do live on the air. It's on sale for 20% off right now. Happy Prime Day. All right. Oh, I'm going to add this to my cart too. Well, speaking of integrations, today, Home Assistant announced a new Works with Home

Assistant program that will allow manufacturers to show their support and commitment to the home assistant and the home assistant automation platform and the community there. The program requires manufacturers to maintain the integration of their products in home assistant, offer good user experience, provide product samples, and give the home assistant team an engineering contact when they need to escalate issues if there's a problem. In return, manufacturers will be able to use the enforced with an agreement that'll be signed both by the manufacturer of whatever device is registering for this and Nabucasa, which is the kind of like the monthly, well,

it's kind of like the organization that, that Paulus and a few others have gone into actual business with to further HomeKit and, and, and make it a commercial success. This looks pretty cool. I was looking on the little announcement that they had here and there's tons of little badges that you can kind of pick from, like works locally with Home Assistant, works with Zigbee with Home Assistant, works with the cloud, works through the cloud with Home Assistant. So even with the little badges, they're getting granular. This is such like a nerdy way of doing this. Like, I love it. I love it. I love this. I love that with the badge, it actually tells you how it's

connecting to Home Assistant. So it answers that question. Like if I buy this device, it's going to, it's telling me the communication protocol. It's using Zigbee to communicate with home assistant. So I know that's local. I love what they're doing here. And if a device, if you're a home assistant user and a product has this badge on their product, it only makes you want to buy that product because you know it's going to work. It's fully supported.

And more people should be doing this. Yeah, and honestly, out of all the home automation hubs that kind of exist right now, I think Home Assistant really has the best advantage in the fact that they're heavily developer supported and they're open source. So anybody can kind of develop anything for it. You can write your own drivers for it. It integrates with a ton of other things. So I think moving towards this acceptance you know, acceptance where it actually tells you what works with Home Assistant is another step towards, you know, widespread adoption that maybe Home Assistant doesn't have right now, but it could have as they refine their software and kind of work on these

devices that they work with. Yeah, one thing I noticed at the bottom of this story is that they seem to have teamed up with the ESP Home crew over there. So products who have already been approved with the Made with ESP Home program. So like if you use that, I guess it's like a little framework that uses that ESP chip that everybody uses these days for home automation. If you use that, then you'll be eligible to use the works locally with Home Assistant badge as part of the Made with ESP Home membership. So there's some collaboration. I love that there's not only this that Home Assistant has, but they're collaborating with some of the other players in the DIY slash open source slash maker community as well to like branch out and not and not just say, hey, this is a home assistant effort. But also, if you're if you've gone this

route, you've made this made you're in this made with ESP home ecosystem, you can be eligible for this badge as well. That's really cool. Yeah, the more integration anybody does, the better off everybody is. You know, if you buy some kind of smart plug, you kind of expect it to work with whatever you're using right now and in the future. And Home Assistant really does a great job of just literally supporting everything. I don't think I've ever ran across the device that wasn't supported by Home Assistant or somebody didn't have something written for it. Yeah, whether it's official or not, somebody has done some kind of integration for Home Assistant for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I love this idea. I wish them the best of luck

with it because it's, they're really ramping things up over there. Tons of integrations, like you said, TJ. And it's interesting to see what they've been able to do in such a short period of time. All the excitement and everything they've gained around that particular program. It's, I mean, excitement. And then also like, if you don't like it on Reddit, you get banned or something.

That's how you probably got banned on Reddit. I mean, you just said, Home Assistant doesn't work well and then like suddenly you're just banned you're you're off of the form yeah it is the most heavily uh talked about home automation platform on the home automation subreddit um and for good reason you know a lot of people can you can put it on whatever device you want and like i said it integrates with everything so there's a good reason for it um but I think we've all talked about it before on the podcast, and it's just not our not our thing. So I wonder how it's going to affect products that don't have this badge,

though, with Home Assistant. I don't think it would matter that much. I think it's just going to be something that manufacturers say, hey, you know, we work with this other program. Here you go. Kind of like, you know, works with Google Assistant or works with you go kind of like you know works with google assistant or works with amazon alexa kind of thing um and i don't know if home assistant is big enough for a lot of manufacturers to really care about displaying the badge but if you're somebody like in a valley or something where you're maybe you're a smaller company or you know a lot of di wires use it maybe you are more willing to to display that badge um so i don't know if we'll see like tp link display at any time soon but but I expect Innaveli and a couple other manufacturers like that to do it.

Yeah, I'd agree with that as well. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on it and hopefully we'll start seeing more manufacturers with that integration on there. Kind of show, I guess as a consumer, I would kind of look for something like that, especially that works locally with, you know, Home Assistant, because that means that it's not just Home Assistant that, especially that works locally with, you know, Home Assistant,

because that means that it's not just Home Assistant that you could possibly work locally with it. Like you use something else, because most if not all of the stuff on Home Assistant is open source. So if you wanted to, you could probably just go over and read whatever they did in the Home Assistant plugin that makes it work and reverse engineer it for whatever platform you're running and and and get it up and going and that's a little confusing there because zigbee and z-wave are also considered like local right so i hope people don't get a little confused by that thinking that if it's not local then they're gonna assume it's cloud what do you mean maybe that's why they um made those different uh yeah i don't know yeah i would think the manufacturer would kind of determine what

they want to put on there you know if it's all locally based you know i don't know why i don't want to specify yeah i don't know why you'd want to specify z wave or zigbee at that point just locally um because it's not like not like the common persons using Z-Wave and Zigbee. Yeah, because Matter, Zigbee, and Z-Wave and Bluetooth are all local, right? So the only one in cloud is the one that says cloud. Right. Maybe that it kind of indicates that it needs a dongle or something extra. Like there's an extra thing that you may have to plug in. Because Home Assistant, they have their own little box thing that they're, like their hardware that they're starting so but they they like you can run this thing on

a nas drive you know and it doesn't necessarily have a zigbee dongle and maybe you can plug it in and it works you know through usb that way but like there's there's all sorts of um different ways you can run this uh particular this software and and get it up and going so maybe i'm gonna give home assistant a try again i did before but i'm gonna give it a try um i'm just waiting for it to settle down a bit they've been going through a lot of changes lately um and i just wanted to settle down a bit because i don't really want to be constantly having to update it and things break and they seem to be going through a lot of updates right now so once it settles down i'm going to visit home assistant again and see you got enough server space for you might as well i just need a better rack

we'll get to that um i i remember my uh when jason and i were sitting around it's like we should talk about the diy landscape coming from the integrator's perspective. And we gave it a good shot. We went out and looked at a lot of things. We missed a couple here and there. But episode 105, way back in 2016, Home Assistant was just like barely on the market. Like it was all Yaml configuration files and probably like uh what is that google uh not matter uh the google no no no the the the age that like the look and feel of what they were like the whatever framework you use their interface yeah it was like a generic like generic interface it had some nice graphs and stuff on it, but like you really had to get in there and edit text files in YAML. And it was just like setting it up. I was like, you've got to be a computer engineer to do this. And I said

that and people didn't like it. They had their rabid fans back then too. But yeah, you know, I think they have definitely improved since, since then there's still those rough edges that they're trying to polish off. And they're getting there. Things like this are going to help people know that name. If they see, they pick up the TP link or whatever, the light bulb, and it's got that home assistant sticker on there. Well, what the heck is this? And they go and research it.

Maybe by that time they have a little plug and play gold box or whatever they're trying to sell now. Like maybe they can, you can just plug that in and you're off to the races. So that will be, and honestly that'll help them, right? Because these manufacturers will do the integrations, the home assistant will be able to say, this is the box that you get to play in and this is how this setup process works. It's kind of like how the works with Matter or works with Apple stuff goes. Like they have a specific flow to get the device working with the system that, so that is uniform and kind of the same expect for anybody to walk in the door and use, um, this type of program is going to help them with that. So it's a, it's a good move all around and,

and they kind of needed to have it in place. So there weren't so many different ways to set up the same type of device that would just end up confusing people in the long run. So good on them. I'm glad to see it. Yeah, and as we all know, marketing to nerds is a little different than marketing to the average consumer, right?

Nerds want that granular control and they want to be able to go in and configure every little thing. But most of the time, the average consumer just wants to go in and click a couple buttons and make everything work. And that's slowly where Home Assistant has been going to, you know, they still have the the kind of nerd controls that you can go in and kind of adjust everything. But now it's starting to get a little more click and drag and you just configure everything right at the front end. You don't have to mess with a bunch of other stuff. So it's getting there. And I think, you know, in a short amount of time, we'll probably see more consumer based options for home assistant. All right, well, let's move on here. We've got speaking of nerds, model number nerds are really going to love this story. So URC is announcing a new certified integration with Apple TV

that brings Siri right into some of its pro products. Systems with the MRX30 and the MRX15 will allow users to natively control the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD across URC's portfolio of interfaces, including tabletop controllers with 7 to 10-inch touchscreens like the TDC 9100, yeah, the TDC 7100 in-wall controllers with 5 to 10-inch touchscreens, such as the TKP 9600, the TKP 8600, the TKP 7... This is just ridiculous. Like, they could have

listed these some other way. And their ergonomic handheld control remote with 2.4-inch capacitive touchscreen. The TRC1480 just rolls right off the tongue. With a press of the touchscreen or mic button, the TKP8400 and the TRC1480 will allow users to ask Siri right on the device what is playing on the Apple TV. Search for shows and movies, connect, check the score of the game, as well as doing anything else that Siri does, like interact with HomeKit-enabled devices. Oh, well, I really like

that URC puts out these press releases with all their model numbers and everything, but I think it's going to be written a little bit differently to explain and expand on like hey this is really cool this is like an apple certified integration right on their products like it's very rare that something like this exists in the industry this is really cool um but it only it must only work with a couple of model numbers i don't know why they had to list them all in their press release. Just those ones. They have the good microphones. That's a strange company. But they've got decent enough products. I've used URC over the years, and their remotes used to be,

I don't know, I haven't used them in probably 10 years now, but used to be built like tanks. You just could not destroy those things. They, they just, they're like, they're like cockroaches on the coffee table. Like they just, they just last forever. You can't kill them. They, they would not die. Like you, your computer would, would not have the port required or the software required to program this stupid thing. And it would just be like, yeah, I'm working, but you can't change it for the new cable box. So good product. I like that you can control home kit devices. You know, a lot of times when I think, when I think of these integrations with voice assistants

or something like that, it's like, you know, you can ask them questions and do certain things, but I don't think of controlling like their home automation platform. So very cool to see that you can just use this product to basically just expand your home automation platform. So very cool to see that you can just use this product to basically just expand your home automation platform. You know, because I know URC integrates with I think it's Z-Wave, they have a little like Z-Wave hub that plugs into it. And they also do like IP control. But I don't really think of URC as like a home automation company, I think of them more as like a like a home theater or like controlling TVs kind of thing. So this kind of expands that portfolio to allow them to integrate with more home automation devices.

I think this also comes on the heels. I want to say like a couple of months ago, we talked about URC integrating with the Comcast API. Yeah, Comcast voice remote, I thought. Yeah. Or the voice assistant, whatever. In my opinion, that's really what we need in this industry is like these voice assistant integrations like in the pro side it's very embarrassing to be like here's your three thousand dollar remote and then they go but this one lets me talk to it and it came with the cable box and then you say but you can't use that one because this is your $3,000 remote

that controls all the other equipment that's out of sight to turn on that cable box that you can talk to with the remote that came with it. And it's just embarrassing. It really is. We really need to be working a lot more on these types of integrations where the voice control can be activated.

And I realize you're waiting on Comcast to introduce a voice API or Apple to open up these certified integrations. So it may be a little bit more tough. But at the same time, major control companies that start with control and end with four, they don't even have a remote with a microphone on it. So it's not even an option.

And they're one of the bigger players in the residential space right now. So I'm glad to see this. I just wish it was more widespread. Gavin, you're just going to sit there and let the Echo listen to you. And I mean, this is something that's not going to buy you a 75-inch OLED TV. No, no. you a 70 or a 75 inch oled tv but no no and i already got my uh tv so i gotta start programming talking about something else now i just don't know what yet i want next obviously racks i mean yeah oh yeah i need a 22u server rack i need 42u you just won't admit it 40 just accept it go big or go home alexa correction 42 you

server rack well we'll see what the ads bring up for that and you know hopefully it will be an ad on the wife's phone and you know she'll want to go to costco and look at several have you been looking up exactly it's not going to be what you think it is yeah it never is i i i think one of these remotes probably it costs more than the tv you bought and the rack that you want to buy so let's just you see these remotes these remotes are remotes that i probably couldn't even buy if i wanted to you have to be a dealer for this right so it's not in our space at all i'm still a big harmony fan i know a lot of people hate Harmony for whatever reason, but I haven't found anything out there in the DIY space that can compete with them. I've seen there was a lot of sofa batons, like the only one, but they're not even real.

Well, there was a lot of talk about them, and then people started getting them, and they started tearing it apart. It does not compare at all. There's so much more you could do with the Harmony that you can't do with those. So it's just, I guess the market isn't there for somebody to really care about it enough. Well, I was just talking to somebody about that today. These remotes are just, you know, it's harder and harder to justify having them when you do have Comcast cable boxes that are your input zero. They have Netflix, they have Hulu, everything's all built into the boxes. So you just use the voice remote and communicate with them. Or you have the TV that you just plug into the wall and it's got,

you know, Samsung has its own TV channels on it and you just watch live TV. So having the extra remote that you have to program and set up and work all the other stuff is almost not needed in the more basic single room systems anymore. They're edge cases. I'll give you that. But for a lot of people, just the basics will work for them these days. It's gotten a lot better than it used to be. That's for sure. Yeah, I think the only time I use some kind of universal remote or something like that is when there's like a home theater, mainly because you have several different devices going on.

You have the projector, you have the screen, you have the receiver, blah, blah, blah. Everything else, though, you basically just do one remote for anymore. We're a big Roku proponent and the Roku Ultra, you have a power button and volume button on there. So as long as you're not switching sources all the time, you could just use that for your remote and be done with it so there's just not a lot of use for smart remotes anymore i've been using my control 4 system and a video distribution system that is a ridiculous type of 4k video distribution system in my house that feeds a single apple tv out to three three televisions in the house like it's the most ridiculous i mean i can switch over to and watch a dvd if i were to have a dvd to watch um but everything i watch is on that apple tv and we

have one of them and it just feeds out to the three TVs that are in the house. Um, there's not much there. Like I could walk away from that, put an Apple TV behind it, every TV in the house and, and have essentially the same setup. The only thing I couldn't do would be like put, you know, the, the, the game or whatever on two TVs and kind of have it playing in sync. But other than that, like, and that's really not a big use case here. Like, I don't think I would miss it very much if like I had to ditch the video distribution system and just go to using the Apple TV remotes with the TV. I don't think I'd miss it at all. Yeah, most of the time you're not missing anything. Anyway, let's move on here. We've got one for the graveyard. It's happened again. A manufacturer

I've never heard of has announced that it will no longer be selling products that I've never heard of either. So it's a company called Hive and it looks to be maybe more like a British or UK company. I'm not sure. They are saying that they're not going to be selling the Hive View cameras, the Hive Home Shield or the Hive Leak. The company says it plans to focus on making homes more energy efficient and cheaper to run. And by discontinuing the smart security

and leak detection products, they'll be able to create the products they want to that will be able to help their users reach a net zero energy profile. Interesting announcement. their users reach a net zero energy profile um interesting announcement like they're just kind of backing out of this security platform it it does look nicely they have given people ample notice this is this isn't an insteon like hey your stuff's not going to work it it seems like some of this stuff is going to run i've got a list here and I don't want to go through all of it, but some of it goes through 20, August, 2025, September, what did I say? 2023. So yeah, next couple of years, you'll be able to still use some of these products,

but eventually they're just not going to work anymore. And if there is a service issue or you have to have something repaired after that date, it's not going to happen. Like you won't be able to buy the products. But interesting announcement and kind of a weird thing. I don't know. Have you guys ever heard of Hive? Like it wasn't the product I thought it was when I read it.

And I'm like, I've never heard of this company before. I think I heard of it once in talking, but I didn't pay attention to it. And, you know, they're giving you a lot of heads up, you it and you know they're giving you a lot of heads up you know 2025 they're giving you a lot of time there's some stuff they're expiring this year though so you gotta really read it deep down into it if you're a hive user um it just looks like they're changing direction they're going in a different direction and they just want to get out of whatever direction they were going before unfortunately that's the way the industry is going. Yeah, I mean, in the security realm,

like cameras, I mean, think of all the competitors they have that are able to make very inexpensive products. Like Amazon owns Ring, right? And Amazon owns the same servers that Hive is probably using to keep the store where they're recorded video. So it's kind of like, it's almost unfair, right?

But I don't know. It seems like there's people that are upset about this and they've put some money. And I get it. Like if you put money into any ecosystem and it just kind of up and disappears on you, it can be very upsetting. So let's see. There's

one user here on Twitter. It says, to have Hive Home UK create tons of e-waste, claiming this helps them battle the climate crisis is some scummy behavior. Pounds invested in their ecosystem now worthless. Make the Hive view back in software open source or refund me the 1134 pounds i spent on these cameras and uh this this guy is not not happy not happy yeah you know that kind of brings up a good point you know it's good that they've given people a lot of notice um but it does seem weird to you know i guess say this is a climate change issue that the reason that they're doing this and they're going to just say you're going to pivot, you know, don't say that you're doing it because of climate change or anything like that. Just say, hey, you know, we're going to

stop doing this. You know, sucks to suck at that point. But to address it as you know, we're doing this to fight climate change while getting rid of all those devices does seem kind of weird to me yeah it is i don't know if it's like disingenuous or or what but like i don't know it they're pivoting they're going in different directions just say that yeah they don't want to compete with ring and then what is it blink not blink is the lights but like all of the other small well no blink those cameras as well they're they do okay yeah yeah uh and and and those where are the other ones uh we always talk about them i have one why i don't see it wise there it is yeah let's say can't forget about wise no i mean i did i did option so yeah so why would you want to compete with that when you can potentially go a new direction and into energy, smart home energy savings, that kind of thing. So I get it. It's the the website's kind of weird, too. Like it has the same quote in every FAQ on every product. Like, it's, it's like, it's really sad that we have to walk away from the it's like's like, it's the same like copy paste thing. Like just make the announcement once.

You don't have to repeat yourself. But I don't know. Yeah, it just seems like a weird way to bring it up. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the action itself is good. They've given people plenty of time. It's just weird how they brought it up.

So yeah. Well, I've never heard of them anyway, so it doesn't matter. But they're not going to end up in the graveyards. I've never heard of this company. I thought it was my, honestly, when I read the story, I was like, oh no, Hive. I thought it was the beehive thing, the little smart sprinkler thing that I've got

from Home Depot for like 20 bucks or whatever. No, no, they're still working, still humming along. So good deal. According to this article too, Hive stopped selling, or at least with the Hive website, they stopped selling in the US and Canada in 2019. So it's been quite a while that we haven't been able to access their devices.

Never heard of them. All right, all right. Let's move on here. Gavin really wants a rack and we've been trying to sell him on big racks. Gavin wants a small little bitty rack where he can only put in

like three pieces of equipment and he just doesn't get it. So guys, if you're listening, just email us, feedback at hometech.fm. Tell Gavin he needs the big rack. He's got to go big. He's got to get the server rack, the 72 inch tall, 72U, like it's got to be eight feet tall, scrape the ceiling coming in the door.

That's the rack you need. Yeah. I was trying to talk him into like a 15U. I was, you know, I was being conservative. I was like, you know, 15U rack, that's good enough to put a lot of equipment in. And then Gavin has to come in and be like no no no i got like two computers i got a battery backup i got a uh like a monitor and a keyboard and blah blah blah blah why do you have so many devices gavin slim down your devices or just buy a big rack that's what your choices are okay first of all i like big racks. I cannot lie. This is supposed to be a family-friendly conversation. Yeah, we're talking about racks here. I like... Electronics enclosure, as I call them. When I first started my rack journey, you guys gave me a whole bunch of things to get.

Get an enclosed rack. Get a rack with lights. Get a rack with this, with fans. Then I started seeing the price and it started... My expectations, reality kicked in. And now I'm at the four post open rack, you know, with barely any metal on it. And then even that I'm like, do I go a big one? Nope. Let's cut it in half to cut back price. Cause I'm going to have to buy a shelf here. I'm going to have to buy this. I'm going to have to buy that. And I'm back up into a thousand dollars. You know, like there's, uh, these racks aren't cheap. Like it's just ridiculous for four

pieces of metal. Uh, I actually probably a bit more, but it's getting expensive up there. So I'm looking for a rack. I see a whole bunch. And, and, and one thing I'll point out, if you're going to come with recommendations, remember, I'm in Canada. So when you come with a $100 rack that you found on a US site, that is not $100 in Canada. When I start searching in Canada, it's starting at $400. And then there's the other issue. I find a nice rack and it's not deep enough. You got to have the right depth you know so what do you guys recommend for depth like 30 inch 20 inch i think like 19 inches usually deep enough but it depends on your what servers you got going on because you got all kinds of crazy servers yeah well it's just like it's just a computer it's not a crazy server it's just a regular computer it's not that deep they're crazy yeah so i need a nice size rack that's deep enough to hold all my equipment.

I think the server cases I have are like 24 inches deep. They're maybe bigger than that. The rails can – I'm not even sure. I was trying to see how – I think this rack is at least three feet deep. But this is a crazy big it rack type thing um i'm i'm happy with it because i found a place where it i wish i kind of wish it was smaller but i would if i had gotten the smaller one i wouldn't have been able to fit the server cases in them so like you that's you're really going to be limited on so you you want to have room for the the case and here's the deal

there's wires that come off of that and go other places that's what people always forget the wires so if you have a 16 inch rack and you're like oh this is fine but your equipment is 18 inches deep it's going to stick out the back and it's going to look like it puked wire you know just all the time it's so like if you get the small you get the one that that's bigger than the, you've got extra room to put all your wire, because that's just what it's going to look like. It's what it looks like over here. I'm not going to lie.

Like the popper, what is it? The cobbler's son has no shoes. Like, yeah, there's no wire management in my rack here. I mean, I tried, but that was a while back and I had to redo things. So it's, you know, it is what it is. But you're going to run into that too you gotta have the wire you're gonna have to power management you're going to run all the power to like a ups or some kind of like switching thing that has all the you know all those switches on

it to turn individual pieces of gear off when you when you need to move them out of the way so yeah like zip ties got attached to something just throw it in a pile why do you need a rack just throw it all into a pile in the closet. Close the door. Don't worry about it. Yeah, if I don't see it, that's fine. As long as it's behind a door, nobody can see it. No one will tell your wife not to open the door. Yeah.

Don't go in there. That will work. Greg pointed out that he built his rack out of two by four. So you know what? To be honest, I'm thinking about going after seeing these prices. I was thinking about that. So we've TJ shared links to Reddit threads about lack racks. Yeah. Ikea tables, the lack Ikea tables.

Apparently, someone discovered they were perfect for equipment. They are the perfect width. And the people have made like websites dedicated to making server racks. These lack tables. So, I mean mean at this point i'm almost like tempted to go down that route and that's and that's eight you for like 20 or 30 dollars gavin you get like two or three of those stack them up together i mean what else do you need it's got a top shelf on it too so i can put the monitor there i don't have to pay extra for

that like it's sounding really good somebody one of these lock rack one of these pictures has uh some casters on it you could throw some wheels on it too just roll it wherever you need to go if you get fancy with it actually too they build a 3d printer enclosures out of them as well so you could throw a 3d printer in there print you up some new parts for your computer you're all good to go stop trying to spend my money every week you're convincing me to buy so how much for a 3d printer no no i don't want one no no they're only like two or three hundred us dollars gavin so they can't be no no no i don't need one i say go go big or go i mean go big or go home like i i put a little uh server rack locking cabinet network rack cabinet enclosure 42u rack mount 32 inch deep server cabinet dash on wheels dash self dash cooling fan dash thermostat dash this

racks dash srf i mean that that's that's 939 dollars american so it's probably like us yeah it's probably 1500 um it's got a little display at the top and everything yeah this one does too those fans are loud it's not the quiet fans they're like 120 volt like all the ways on super loud yeah i don't even have mine running but i have this the same brand i got on new egg i think for a lot cheaper um but yeah um that's the way to go i mean it's gonna it's gonna give you your options you're not gonna regret this purchase like lack rack when you're like oh well you know what this would be a great purchase and i will regret it probably 30 days after i buy it because that's when the visa card comes yeah probably you you just i'm looking like seriously i'm like about two three hundred range

and you guys are throwing me into the 1500 canadian range yeah like you can't be two or three hundred dollars and have that many years ikea rack i might have to go with the ikea rack you know make a lack rack and you know yeah you'd only be you'd only be like a hundred dollars in for like a 24 yeah look at that you know like i'll probably pimp it out with lights and everything too who knows and if one of your servers catches on fire it'll just burn everything down quicker because it's already got wood right in the rack yep perfect then you'll have to invest in one of those little fireball things they put above 3d printers so that way when it catches on fire it just douses the whole area maybe i'll buy a 3d printer print out a rack there you know how much that costs me i don't know if you can print

off i don't know if you can print off a rack necessarily but i've seen people print out computer cases so yeah i've seen them do like that would be possible rack mounts for equipment and that kind of thing for sure so i'll have everything printed out in about two years time you know well that's that's why you need like five printers let's get expensive you guys that's how you that's how you easily add many printers you're like man i wish this would take uh i wish this would go a lot faster i wish this one would go a lot faster if you need a table for that 3d printer there's ikea actually makes a lack table that's actually pretty nice you can you can put the 3d printer on top of the

lack table and then assign your eight, you know, slots underneath that for your, your rack. Yeah. Uh, I don't know. I, I, I don't, I, I'm going to say this. I don't regret buying this giant rack that I have here. Um, it was a mistake. I should not have bought the deep one. I really should have gotten the smaller one. I really should have gotten the smaller one. Um, cause then I could have tucked it over into a corner a lot easier, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's very, it's very deep and there's only so many places it can go and it's, it's tall too. It's, it's a decent height. It's probably what, 40 inches high. Yeah, probably 48 inches high. So, um, I, I'm going to eventually like tuck it over

into the corner of this garage, but that's a work in progress. It's going to take some time before I'm able to do that because it's large. Well, maybe next week I'll have an update on it. We'll see. I started the first phase. I put in a little patch panel on the wall

so I can get the cables to my future rack right so maybe next week I'll have an update and see I'm just searching around I've been going on Kijiji looking around but you know every they're all so expensive like I did not expect it to be this much and then I go on like Craigslist in the U.S. and Tampa Bay Florida and they have like a full computer rack for 75 bucks. You know? Yeah, that's what you got to wait for. You got to, yeah, we were sending you those because those exist. But that's an absurd. That's like an eight-foot tall rack that is going to be 48 inches deep

with side panels and probably weigh like 3,000 pounds. Yeah, I don't know if I could get away with that one here. That's absurd even with shipping to canada i'll probably come out cheaper than when i buy new yeah all right since we're shopping tonight i'm gonna go to new egg what's funny is that sis rack it's shipped from Canada for free. And it was like 20 boxes that weighed 3000 pounds. They just left them out on my driveway, leaning up against my garage one day. And yeah, I guess it's fine. But it wasn't that much that I paid for it. I don't think. So on Newegg, I'm seeing some racks, but they're all open frame racks and about $300 range.

It's all right. Adjustable, 25 views. So I'm going to have to take a look, see what they have. I just want to clean up my server area. I have two computers, a bunch of stuff, and I just want to clean it up, make it more presentable than what it is now. Because every time wife walks down into the basement, she shakes her head. I can hear her sigh from two floors up, you know, and that's never a good thing. Well, then what you need to, for sure then, what you need to do is get a real server rack with real servers in it.

They'll be so loud you won't even be able to hear her sigh. She doesn't sigh that loud. And put it next to your computer. That way you can't hear anything at all oh man i guess they're not selling the particular item i have i purchased uh anymore but it was the 22u 39 inch deep there's my problem uh 19 inch it rack from cis rack and um it's nice it looks just like the one I linked there in the hub. It had a bunch of features that I like.

It has the side panels you can take off. You can close things up. It's completely enclosed. It's got brushed entry and exit points, so you can run wires through it without dust getting in. So for the most part, happy with it. Just probably should not have gotten the 39 inch deep rack. I should have probably gone with the 22 inch deep or whatever the smaller version was. Whoops.

But here it is. So anyway, good luck, Gavin. We hope you find a rack that you can love and you won't hear those sighs, those deep disappointments coming from downstairs anymore. We'll help you spend money anytime we can. We're trying, man. It's getting expensive hanging out with you guys. We got to start a shop in Canadian websites so that way we can get you better. At least that would make things easier. You guys guys sent me canadian links because then at least you know what i have to deal with up here right like we don't have the same selections you have i i

shopped once by accident i think it was walmart the u.s walmart and they had everything you know um canadian walmart is not can't even compare. Your Walmart's don't have racks in them? Our Walmart's have racks. Oh, I remember one of my favorite sites was People of Walmart. I don't know if that was a Reddit forum or something. Oh, I'm sure it's still around. Oh, it's still around. You guys have some interesting Walmarts. Oh, yes, we do.

We do. I think I was impressed. We went up to like canada and think we were there for like a saturday or something like that and went to walmart and it was the quiet the quietest walmart i've ever been into my life and it looked like everybody was dressed up relatively nice it was complete opposite of walmart in america as soon as you walk into walmart in america it's like there's so much noise going on there's people yelling there's people shouting and everybody looks like they're homeless so polar opposite for your walmart up there maybe that's why you pay more yeah i think i think you were on the

set of that canadian like what is it superstore or something that canadian super star yeah yeah i think you actually just walked on set by accident. That's like the Walmart analog, but it's not like Walmart here is mostly a warehouse because every time I go in there, like they just have pallets of stuff just in the aisles that you have to navigate around and nothing really on the shelves. Like it's there on in the pallets. If you want to pick it, pick out, you know, what, what's in it it's coming in but whenever they get over to it but it's been that way for years like you can't say labor shortage is doing that it's like a scavenger hunt yeah it's nice yeah yeah it's like self-checkout and scavenger hunt here's our pallets that we didn't want to store in the

back or put out on the shelves and uh you know we got junk on the Shelves, too. So check it out. Yeah. I don't know. Good luck, Gavin. Maybe you'll find something next week or maybe somebody will ship you something off Craigslist. And we'll have some. Just remember, the rack is only one small expense. Everything else is way more expensive. It's way more expensive, yeah. By the time you have the shelving and the brush plates and the panels. You'll learn the reason like uh access the word

accessories like exists like i i used to put allowances on my on my uh quotes for like racks and rack parts and oh my gosh the accessories and everything like if you wanted to finish them off and make them look sweet and just like photo perfect the amount of accessories the like custom cut rack plates and everything oh my gosh that's the most obnoxious one custom cut rack plates are like so crazy yeah yeah just put it on a shelf nobody cares nobody wants their their modem with a custom 500 metal plate but it's so pretty it's so pretty g Greg's got shelves for me, so that'll save some cost. You know, I appreciate it, Greg. That's nice. I appreciate it.

It is. Yeah, that one. It is. Okay, so now I just got to get the rack. Well, you need the rack, the rack screws, and you need laser bars to keep all everything put up, and then you'll need some type of, you know, you got. Brush plates, too.

Yeah, brush plates. You want the brush plates for sure. I've got brush plates laying around. I just want something to put my computer down. You need one. I can send you one. That's it. It doesn't have to be that. Just throw it in a pile, then. I don't know why brush plates laying around. I just want something to put my computer down. You need one. I can send you one. That's it. It doesn't have to be that pretty.

Just throw it in a pile then. I don't know why you need a rack. I just want to mount it. Stack them. Yeah, stack them. Lack rack. Oh, man. Well, all right.

Let's move on here. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 395. Got a pick of the week. Topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 395. Got a pick of the week. Of course, it's the only pick of the week that can be the pick of the week this week is the pick of the of the millennia. I don't know. This is the most amazing thing.

The James Webb telescope went up, what, last the end of the end of the year. And it was going to take a couple of months to get everything unfolded and lined up. And they were worried that it wasn't going to go right because it's a billion dollar project or more than a billion dollar project. Gets up there, finally gets all the mirrors in alignment, takes a picture, and it is absolutely stunning and amazing, the resolution and everything

that we're seeing way back in time with this thing. How can this not be the pick of the week like this is as far as technology goes this tops and trumps everything as far as i'm concerned um and it continues to take pictures it's been taking pictures for a while but they take time to process and download and uh so like we've we even have like newer photos that have come out since the one that came out, I think Tuesday or no Monday today, they're dropping more on us. And it's just incredible what, what we're seeing from this thing. And the,

the Hubble was like crazy, crazy good. And now this thing is just above and beyond. It's, it's wild. Yeah. It looks like something out of like a sci-fi movie or something, you know,

it just does not look like a real picture at all. Yeah. Go ahead. The amazing part about these pictures is they're actually pictures from 4.6 billion years ago. Like the light that left. We're looking in the past right now. You think they have matter yet? Nope.

That's funny. That's funny. It's still analog. There's anti-matter is what they came up with. So, the one, the first one they took a picture of actually has a, they're taking a picture through a gravitational field that acts as like a giant magnifying glass or lens that shows some of the light that's from behind it and if you look at it it's got like these streaks on it and and those are actually

galaxies that are even further away so those are like 13 billion uh years ago it's those lights and they're moving faster away from us than you know we're ever going to see them again but like this is this is crazy this stuff is is wild this telescope this instrument all the data they're going to it's going to take years and years and years for them to like get through and process all this stuff and uh we're gonna have a lot more science out of it over over the next two or three decades i mean how long has hubble been up there hubble's been up there forever. I remember them having to go up and repair one of the lens because one of the focusing functions or something, structures got messed up during delivery.

And yeah, they had to go up there and adjust something and get up there and repair it. I remember watching that live on TV. But yeah, this is great. I'm glad to see this. This project has been falling for a long time. So I'm glad to see that they, they were actually able to get it up and, and working that the next, next fun ones are going to be the, um, the Tesla rockets that keep exploding and, uh, and, uh, the SLS, which is the big NASA rocket that's supposed to go to the moon.

Supposedly, that's launching over here. What's cool about living in Florida, TJ, you know this, like you can just drive, and sometimes you're just driving down the road, and you'll just see a rocket going up into the sky, and you're like, wait, that's a rocket. And you can just drive across the state and sit there and watch them. It's like a thing to do um people people go over and put up chairs and tents and wait for the rocket to launch yeah especially in central uh central florida and orlando there um a lot of people would

set up on like parking garages at like ucf and stuff like that and just watch them uh whenever they happen so you can you can get a pretty good shot of them depending on where you are yeah so it's a lot of fun, Gavin. No rockets in Canada yet. You guys will get them. Listen, if we see a rocket flying over top, I'm not pulling out a chair and sitting there watching it. Well, maybe if it's headed south because then I know where it's going, right? But I'll turn on CNN just to see where it's coming down

yeah yeah that's you just need to check the weather channel to see where the winds are blowing from the fallout but no rockets up here it's probably a bad thing yeah so cool pictures uh good to see i i'm happy to see this this up and going finally it's like pins and needles waiting for these images to get released so I'm glad they're finally here and we're going to get new pictures I think they were like taking them all the time and we've got like days

or months of pictures that will be released like one at a time from this thing for years probably I mean probably this thing's up there taking photos all the time and doing science all the time. So we're going to get even more stunning pictures,

I'm sure, as more discoveries are made in the future. So can't wait, can't wait. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the weeks or billion dollar telescopes you'd like to launch into space, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm you can visit feed hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right guys wraps up another week uh any big plans any any big projects coming up uh obviously you guys making me spend money on a new rack so besides the rack yeah well this week

i actually did a few projects i uh upgraded my server my unraid server so i put a new chip in there so now i have more cores 12 cores um so if you have if you're if you're big on unraid more cores is better trust me there's so much you can do yes um i also i've done phase two of my get rid of show me um devices in my house so i i was a big show me person but i was also stubborn about it they drop off every now and then like every six months everything drops off and then you gotta go around doing the song and dance again so i've been slowly just replacing them with zeus um and i've been happy so uh i only have about eight more sensors to go it's a slow process i buy them whenever

there's like a fourth of july sale or some american holiday always triggers our sales so i wait for the american holidays and i'll buy a few you're welcome you know but you know it's a lot of little projects around the house but i'm hoping next week i'll have a rack update tj what about you got anything anything big planned? No, no personal projects. We're wrapping up a 19 camera job this week, hopefully, waiting on a license plate camera at the moment. Hopefully it'll be on tomorrow. We got 19 of the Turing cameras coming in.

They offer facial and vehicle detection. And today you can search by top hat. So that's always a good bonus as well. There's actually a setting on there. You can search by hats, but the hat looks like a top hat so that's always a good bonus as well um there's actually a setting on there you could you could search by hats uh but the hat looks like a top hat so i'm just going to call it the top hat feature it does look like a top hat the interface looks really nice uh to this and i like how they have um they've gone above and beyond on some of the things here like you can search for different colors of cars and that kind of thing i thought that's a pretty good idea um because yeah and it's pretty cool because you can like tag people or tag

vehicles and also if you have multiple sites you can get notified if they go to that different site as well um so if you know tag somebody's face and you're like hey that that person shouldn't be here and they go to a different location it'll actually send you an email or something as well so it's kind of cool depending on how many cameras and how many sites you have. Um, and you can also follow that person around. So if that person walked, you know, from the front of the building to the back of the building and you search for that person's face or whatever feature, um, it'll show exactly where they went to and everything as well. And there, you're not breaking any laws with that down there, not in the state of Ohio, actually. Um, Illinois and California, you have to get waivers or it's just not legal at all.

So depending on where you are in the states, it might not be legal. Yeah. I mean, this may be mandatory in Florida for too long. Who knows? That's right. They want this kind of stuff. It's actually really cool. I am always shocked.

I loaded up a bunch of photos. they they want this kind of stuff it's actually really cool um i i'm always shocked like i i loaded up a bunch of photos um i i have what we call the black hole camera it's like the fancy camera i go in and take pictures at family events and that kind of thing and everybody calls the black hole camera because they never see the pictures that come off of it but i went and did a bunch of processing on that uh uh for for a couple events that we had and we're like Adobe has in Lightroom the ability to kind of tag people and you know

this is done on your phones too like you can check off like who this person is but I'm always shocked to see like how many few pixels can recognize a person's face like I'm taking a picture with like a 24 megapixel camera whatever I

don't know what it is like takes a big picture but if you zoom way in way in the background there's this person smiling and talking to somebody and it picked them up and tagged them in the photo based on just like some shadows and if it didn't suggest that that was this person I probably would be like I don't know who that. But the computer figured out who it was based on a few pixels worth of information, which is kind of interesting, kind of scary. And Gavin, I know we talked about the double stack last month or last week. And yeah, how that one, like, you're basically feeding in a low resolution thing to that, right? And it's taking that low resolution. So it's kind of the same thing.

It's just taking a few pixels in, determining what it is. And is it a car? Is it a dog taking a poop on the lawn? And turning back those events into the Blue Iris area. This is the same thing. And TJ, this is the pro version of it. Like it doesn't need much information, I guess, to make this happen. And then you get overlaid on top of that.

You get the 4K like beautiful pictures coming off the camera. So it's really nice. Looks really good. Yeah, and it's pretty accurate, too. You know, given everything, you know, like one of the vehicles that tagged as a SUV was actually a van. But I would say it's 80 to 85% accurate. I haven't got too many false positives

or misinformation off of it. So it's just crazy how far we've come with this type of technology, especially facial recognition. Yeah, I see like there's searches on here like for the color of the shirts or the pants. You can search for that. And if they had a hat or not, a top hat or not. This sounds like a police surveillance software.

You just feed in your suspect details and it's going to pull up all the pictures it needs. And you can do that. You can actually upload a photo as well and look for it. Yeah, that's crazy. That's really wild. How, how like the setup on this? Do you like I know these cameras that are using are probably I think we talked about them, the Uniview cameras that they use or rebrand or whatever. And do you have to go into those cameras and set up the analytics there? Or is it done through their interface separately? Like,

can you draw like lines, like barrier barrier lines where they cross back and forth and do counting like that yeah so there's basically two different let me open it up here there's two different detections you can do either an entrance or an intrusion and basically if you've ever done like the motion areas on any camera like ring or hike vision or whatever it's basically the same thing you're just drawing out a specific area of the screen that you want to get notified or have those alerts come up for. Um, so it's very like, I would say rudimentary for what you're getting out of it. Um, for all the cameras, I literally just put four points on there and highlight the whole screen, um, so that it, it finds everything within the screen and tags it. Um, so I wouldn't say there's much set up to it compared to some other stuff.

Okay. You basically just put the four dots in there to create your square and that's it. But I guess what I'm saying is like when you're setting the system up, you're basically plugging the cameras in and you're not doing like, you're not tweaking the settings or having to do individual analytic settings on each camera. That's all done through this like aggregated interface that we're seeing here with the, with the like, yeah. Okay. That's cool. I mean, all these cameras have APIs that they, they are probably converting what you're typing in here or, you know, clicking on here and

converting it to the camera. Um, so that's really neat, really neat. Yeah. And there's a special little, like, uh, what I, what I would would call an intel nook one of those small little computers um and that's basically the brain box of everything and then you still have your nvr and then the cameras itself that's right the little brain boxes yeah that's the deep state or double stuff whatever you want to call it uh that's doing everything in the background so yeah oh that's cool that's really cool uh i like it i hadn't i've seen like smaller like screenshots you've posted in the past of the interface but you in the hub earlier today it's kind of what we're referencing you you posted some of the interface and like uh especially the top hat search and that's really cool it it's it's a lot cleaner it's a lot cleaner of interface than you

normally get to work with on on camera system so yeah and especially if you've ever like looked through a lot of cameras on any system to try to find footage, it's always so painful, right? Like you can, even if you know exactly what time something happened, it's always so annoying to find that footage still. And this kind of just makes that easier, you know, because a lot of people just want that, that quick little clip. So they can see exactly what happened. But you can still pull up the full footage from the same interface as well so it's kind of the best of both worlds very cool very cool uh keep us updated on that when you when you get what did you say you're coming in the uh the license plate camera i'm guessing you're gonna do like you're gonna not only you're gonna like

tag suspects for gavin and you know see if he shows up but you can get his license plate too when he comes down and tries to rob this place is that what's what's going on like that's right we're gonna find you it's not hard to find me yeah it's a uh it's a it's a two megapixel uh motorized zoom camera so it's specifically for license plate um it'll hopefully be in tomorrow i think for installation this week so that'll finish up that project and then we'll get some actual real life uh you know, usage out of it. What are they going to do with the lights? Like, are they just collecting license plates and people driving in and out? Is that the idea is? No, I think it's mainly just if like something happens, they're, you know, automatically going to get that license plate. So you can report it to the police or whatever.

Mostly, you know, a lot of times people are just using cameras like this just for if something happens, they're not actively monitoring it all the time. you know it's a it's a very big automotive shop if somebody were to break in and steal the tools or something uh most people are not going to cover their license plate or other stuff on their vehicles so yeah that that could be helpful we we at our old shop where the av business went 15 20 years ago now uh it was broken into, or some of the trucks were broken into, and the guys pulled up. Of course, we had a video of the guys pulling up in the truck, breaking open the back window, and just driving off. But the way it was situated, the police came out, and they're like, they probably robbed this place, hopped on the highway, and they're

across the state by now. We don't know who this is. But that would be nice. Now we're seeing around here these little small on-pole, they're on a pole and they're this big. They're probably the size of a little bit bigger than a ring camera. They've got a solar panel mounted on top and they're very

inconspicuous. You wouldn't know they were there unless you actually looked for them. They're very hard to see. But they're 24-7 license plate cameras. And you'll see them around, like, in the medians. They just sink a pole there, turn them on, and anybody driving past them has their license plate logged. I can't remember the name of it right off my head, but they actually match the license plates with the FBI's database. So if a car goes by, it immediately tells the local authorities that they went through. And it's amazing that the way they run it, it's like $2,400 a year or something for the camera service. It's a service. It's not hardware. You're just basically leasing this thing and they're getting tons of data off of all these little cameras, cheap little cameras they're putting out.

But yeah, you have no privacy in the States. So I was like, I'm just going to go talk to Alexa about this. You know, all I think is create, I'm causing crime these days. It's just too much work. You know, all I think is causing crime these days is just too much work.

You know, the only reason why I don't do illegal stuff is just too much work. Now there's too much surveillance. You know, that's why everybody moved to crypto and the dark web and dark. Oh, my God. We'll put a link to that in the show notes to anybody can help this lady get on the dark web. All right. Uh, oh, wow. We want to give you a, um, 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.

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