HomeTech.fm - Episode 397 - Two-Ply NFT Paper

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

This week on the show, Wink is back! But for how long? Aqara breaks when you block China, Zooz capitalizes on Youtube shenanigans, Alexa has some ads to show you, and more lock news than you can imagine! All of these headlines, the pick of the week, and more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 29th, from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Canepaul. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about automation, home technology, and disease, sickness. I guess you can tell which one of us is sick. Actually, there's two-thirds of the show is sick tonight.

So, Gavin, you're doing all the talking tonight. I'm calling it a day before I hack up a lung on the air here. That would not be good. But, yeah, yeah, I got sick, let's see, last Thursday. I woke up and I'm like, sore throat, don't feel good. Oh no, I've got the COVID. I took a bunch of tests. No COVID yet. So still haven't gotten that. TJ, what about you? Man, I, last week I had, you know, I had a residual like sore throat all throughout the week and I kind of feel sick whenever temperature changes quite a bit. You know, if I'm going in

from, you know, very hot outside to AC inside all the time, I kind of get sick all the time when that happens. Um, so I've had a rough throat last week. And then Thursday after I did a couple of jobs, I just, I felt like death. I did not want to move like my body, just my whole body was just in pain. Um, and, uh, you know, went and got a COVID test on Saturday and they confirmed that we actually do had COVID, uh, on Sunday. Um, so yeah, not a, not a good run there for the whole week. Oh man. No good. No good. And so that like takes you out. I mean, you're, you're self-employed. So it's like the worst of the worst. You can't just be like, yeah, I'm taking a sick day. Nope. Nope. You don't get a sick day. Yeah. Luckily, uh, luckily I had two days of train online training this week, uh, for

Thursday and Friday. So, um, my week was kind of already shot anyway. Um, but it did throw all my other plans into the, uh, into the wash. So we'll have to get everything rescheduled and put me further behind schedule, but it is what it is. If makes you feel better tj you sound great you sound great seth uh this is gonna be a rough show rough yeah i would think that seth has the way he's reacting so i i don't know took a took a ton of tests like i think i was on my fourth test my wife's like why do you keep taking those it's not gonna change i'm like it might it might change but yeah, um, I've lost my voice Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a little bit back on Monday. And then today is today. So Tuesday, um, this is the first day I've actually had a voice and, uh, you know, we'll see what happens. We'll see if it can make

it through the show. But, um, we've got a little bit of follow-up this week. Um, I guess COVID's back, obviously, uh, disease and sickness is back. back. But I guess what else is back, guys? Wink! What? Yeah, kind of, kind of. So I checked on the show. I was laughing as I edited the show while I was sick on Saturday, I think, because I couldn't move Friday. But I was looking at the status page, status.winkapp.com, I think is what it is.

Yeah, status.winkapp.com. And it was all red still. And I'm like, oh, they haven't fixed this thing. The show's going out. That's really funny. And I guess today or yesterday, real late, 8 o'clock at night, they pushed out a fix. Actually, 8 o'clock UTC. So what would that be?

Yeah, it's pretty late at night here too. They said a fixed has been implemented and we're monitoring the results, but everything is still like degraded performance according to their little status page here. And I saw in the tweet that they said that don't trust it until don't, don't call us. We'll call you, but basically don't worry about anything until uh the the thing says resolved on this page and so you know it took a month basically 25 days for us to get to degraded performance like how how long is it gonna be until we we see resolve on this on this chart here just put it out of its misery just shut it down nobody else is who's

using this at this point right like because insteon had such a loyal fan base but i feel like wink fan base has been shrinking for the past several years anyway that they're i don't know who's left i don't even does anybody really care other than us at this point like i think a lot of wink users have moved on by now uh looking at the forums for you know smart things for habitat you know, smart things for Hubitat, you know, there's a lot of people on there that just came from Wink and they're already migrating over and they're like, we're done with Wink. And I think this is like, what, the second outage recently with Wink. So I think people are just fed up. They're moving on. That's it. We're done.

Yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure who, who still uses it, but it's definitely interesting. I think it's rwinklub, I think it's on Reddit, right? So yeah. Yeah, people are posting in here, I'm leaving. They're back, maybe. We made up, we're back together. The Glassdoor review, wow, glass door reviews reveal even more employees are not getting paid so yeah not not a good situation oh man that's not good when that when that's

happening that's that's not good at all so all right well i'll get the uh the go fund me started we'll uh see if we can purchase wink we'll get right on that hundred thousand dollar mark for our patreon i think we can go less now. Yeah. A little bit longer. We'll be able to go even way less now. I got to say, I mean, Wink was pretty iconic. I remember that robot thing. You guys remember the robot?

It was an inappropriate robot or something like that that was like polishing a cactus while he was sitting there watching the woman do yoga. Oh, that commercial. I have no idea what you're talking about. Oh, my God. It's a great commercial. I'll have to post it in our show notes, but, um, it's, it's like a perverted robot, I think is what we called it on the show. And, uh, it was there, it was actual commercial. It was out on TV and everything. It was on YouTube and TV. I saw it on TV. I was like, what, what is this? This is insane. So,

uh, good go in there back when they had money and, you know, were popular. But now, not so much, unfortunately. It seems like this one's headed towards the graveyard, but we'll have to see. If they're still getting $5 a month from patient people who will wait a month before their home automation works again, we'll see how long that lasts. Let's move on. Another bit of follow-up I wanted to cover tonight before we move on. Gavin, I think you posted this, that you've got these new Acara E1 blinds.

I guess somebody posted and read it as well, that if you blocked China from your router, so where your devices in the house can't see China servers, that your Acara system stopped working? Is that the case? What's going on with this? Those devices have Zigbee built into them. So I add them to my Hub directly. So they still work because that's all local. But if you're using the Aquara Hub, yeah, things seem to stop working if you block China. Now, there was a representative from Aquara replying to this Reddit thread saying, this is interesting. It's obviously not supposed to do that, but we need help finding other sites that may cause maybe going to China, because I guess when you choose when you configure which is good that they're trying to you know not make things go to china but also bad the fact that they have to ask our help to find this so it's a funny thread to watch because of course you know on reddit they're getting bashed yeah i mean i i guess i can understand a little bit of this of how how this kind of works when you develop product that that

has chinese developers involved they they they they tend to get stuff working just so and and that's good enough and there it is but they don't the intricacy doesn't seem to unless it's explicitly spelled out and and you check double check every single time they'll just overwrite a mistake and and say well you know it's back back. Sorry, I put the old Chinese servers back in because that's what it works in my house. But yeah, Andrew from Aquara here, I guess he's a company rep, said, no, we have local servers on the markets where we are present officially. Our goal is to not let our global devices connect to Chinese servers. And we'll check this carefully and release a solution asap if it's happening so

that's good i it's responsive um hopefully they can push that up to their developers and get them to release the firmware that gets pushed back down in that case i kind of they kind of gets hounded in here for by a couple of other people uh and says and unfortunately bugs happen sometimes and i don't have to believe me and they're giving him a hard time on Reddit. You know, like, poor guy. Yeah, I've been working on a bug for four weeks now. Oh, longer than that, actually. From some firmware of a device that we picked in.

And we approved the device, and they shipped it over. And they shipped, like, I don't know, 15 or 20 of them, right? We get them, look at it, test it. Perfect. Looks good. Works perfect. Has our logo exactly where it's supposed to be. And then I'm visiting the office.

I was a couple of months ago, I guess now I was visiting the office. I plugged one of them in to test while I was there and I loaded it up. And it was like, no, like the, basically they had not included a style sheet that I included with the changes, you know, to you know, to cover the HTML web interface. I'm like, no, this isn't right. And our logo has like the wrong file name and, you know, a couple of other things. I was like, this just is not what we approved. And so like, oh, we'll send it back.

We'll send you a new one back over. Back and forth, back and forth. Basically, the firmware they sent back doesn't work at all. So it's like we either get a janky looking box, you know, with this broken interface, or we just get a broken box. You know, which one do you want? And yeah, that's, that's China. So I feel for these guys. I understand how it works. We did luckily find a workaround. Not, I'm not happy about it, but we found a workaround. So yeah. Yay. Yay. Yay. And last piece of follow-up here, you also posted about needing to register for Zoo's firmware updates. Sounds like Zoo's is – actually, I like this.

Like, it sounds like they're forcing people to register so they can say, hey, there's a problem or you may need to update for this. Is that the idea? Is that what they're trying to do? So, you know, this comes off the hype of Linus Text Tips, you know, his video about firmware. And I guess Zeus posted on Twitter saying, hey, we now, you know, have our firmware, you know, available for you to download and stuff. Right. So I saw that on Twitter. So I was like, OK, let me go and register. So I had to register. And it basically asks you all the products you have. And I'm a big Zeus fan. So I had a lot, right? And that was great.

And then it's like, oh, now you got to register for our support. And I'm like, I got to register again, another password, another username. So I finally registered for that. So I finally got access to all their support. And the first thing I did is I started looking up the firmware, the latest firmware for the power strip that I just got, because I just got their latest power strip. And man, that article hurt. I mean, I'm not going to blame Zeus because firmware is hard and there's many factors to this, but it's a mess, especially in the Z-Wave space. So like there's hardware revisions, right? So my power strip is version 3.0 of that hardware, right? Like they all look the

same, but mine's version 3.0. But then there's also different software versions based on the hardware revisions. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, which firmware am I supposed to have, you know, and based on the hub, not every hub is going to display the firmware drive version. Not every driver is going to display the firmware version. So it's a support nightmare for them, right? Just to try and figure out from a user's point of view, just to try and figure out what hardware version you have and what firmware version of that you have is going to be so difficult. You know, but at least they're putting effort in and that's what I appreciate. So I was able to get my hardware version, my software version, verify I had the latest one. But even looking at the release notes, whenever they release a new firmware version, if they make tweaks to a parameter, they add new parameters, take away parameters, change the parameters.

That requires driver updates on all the various hubs for those Z-Wave drivers. It's a lot of work. To take advantage of the new features, right? Yeah. Or even if they changed it, like I've seen some auditions where they changed the Fahrenheit to Celsius, you know, and the temperature things. Now that requires everybody to go into their drivers and then they have to modify the driver and say, if you're on this firmware, then use this. And if you're on this firmware, then do it this way. You know, from a developer point of view, it's difficult and it's tough. So, you know,

as a whole, the industry just needs to figure out a way to do firmware right, you know, just an easy way. And I think Home Assistant is probably going to lead that race. It sounds like they have a plan, a way to do this. They'll scan your system, gather the information, know what firmware to apply to it, and just do the update, right? The whole update process itself is a whole different story. That's a pain in the ass to do, too. Yeah. This is kind of mostly on the DIY side.

Yeah. I don't know. It could come to the pro side or the prosumer side one day. Nothing really stops these companies from doing it. It's just business logic or whatever. So it's interesting. This is why nobody just does firmware updates. Everybody just ignores them at this point. And for the most part, it's not really for security.

Firmware updates is usually to fix bugs or to add new features new features or takeaway features so if your device works just leave it don't even worry about the firmware just you know leave it as it is unless there's some reason you have to upgrade the firmware ty saying it takes one well-known youtuber to get companies making uh making steps towards the right way yeah um yeah we i mean we've been complaining about this for a long time i feel like yeah we're not famous youtubers though we're not famous youtubers yeah i guess we should start doing the youtube show more often but uh there we are um if you're in the hub you usually get a uh you know a link whenever we record on tuesdays so yeah uh i guess we could do better with that we're youtubers we're just not famous. That's right.

Yeah, we're just totally not famous. No, but it's good to see companies starting to do this. I'm hoping that Matter will make software updates easier because just like you've described, Gavin, the updating for firmware for Z-Wave devices is completely awful. Like there's not an easy way to do it. It sometimes takes forever or it fails multiple times. There's not a clear and concise area you can go to get firmware updates for a lot of companies. So I'm glad we're starting to see this and maybe it'll make firmware updates for a lot of these devices easier in the future. And something that, you know,

you kind of check for immediately when you get one of these devices. And keep in mind, Z-Wave has multiple frequencies based on country, right? So even with their firmwares, they have, you have to know what country the person's in, you know, which firmware file. So that was the whole point of registering is that at that point, they knew what country you're in, what devices you have, what to offer you in terms of support. And it helps them. You're now on their mailing list. When they have a new firmware that fixes something that's important. They know how to get ahold of you. So that's a good reason to register

if you're a Zoo's user. I agree, I agree. All good things, hopefully, if you can get those firmware updates done. But guys, what do you say we jump into some Hub & Tech headlines? Let's do it. So have you guys ever thought to yourself,

smart home automation is really hard to do without advertisements for apps and skills from third-party developers? All the time. Well, you're in luck because Amazon announced this week that they're going to be offering new pop-up ads on your favorite Echo Show devices. That's great, huh?

It's going to promote software from developers, products you might like or not even know of. Paid promotions are, quote, something that developers have asked us for, said Aaron Rubinson, an Amazon VP who leads teams working on developer tools. There are times when developers really want to drive outsized attention to their skill. So there you go. Ads, more ads, I guess. Coming to everyone's chatty little advertisement cube box thing. Yeah. I don't know.

This doesn't appeal to me at all. It's kind of one of the reasons I just have no desire to turn back on the tube thing and just leave it sitting over there in the bin. And I know it's not going to go in the graveyard anytime soon, but I have no desire to use Amazon's products because every time I'm near somebody who's using them, it's always like, hey, did you know that you can? And it's like, no. Yeah. See, I don't know why everybody wants to do that.

Like my Sonos devices do that now. And then my Google Assistant do that as well, where it's like, hey, you know, you don't have to do this or Hey, you could do this. And I was like, I don't care. Just do what I asked and stop. I don't need the little tips throughout. I don't need like little reminders of what else I can do. Just, I just want to talk to you and have you do things. And that's it. Did you know Siri won't even tell you anything? Oh, well, it doesn't work at all. I can't even get mine anything. Oh, well. It doesn't work at all. I can't even get mine to work on my phone half the time.

I feel sorry for anyone named Alexa right now because they're probably becoming the most hated person in the world right now. I'm getting used to ignoring ads, but what drives me nuts is those that are getting more and more intrusive. Right. So when you're watching a YouTube video and then right at the good spot, you have to watch two minutes of like some ad that has nothing to do with what I care about or the video, you know, right in the middle of everything. I hate that. Right. Well, I mean, you just need to answer the YouTube surveys every time. And we can actually take, or you pay for YouTube, whatever it was, a YouTube premium,

YouTube premium, but ads worth it, you know, on the echo show, if they're going to pop up on the screen, when you're not looking at it, I'm fine with that because we're not going to see it. But if you're going to be doing something,

you try trying to disable an alarm or something like that. But an ad pops up 15 seconds, right? When you're trying to disable an alarm or something like that. But an ad pops up 15 seconds right when you're trying to disable your alarm and you only have 30 seconds to do it. That's not going to be people are not going to be happy about that, you know, or you're trying to talk to somebody in your front door and an ad pops up. No, you're not like they need to do it right if they're going to do it. And I don't know. Hopefully they do it right. Yeah. I don't know. Amazon said there's about 13, sorry, 130,000 Alexa skills compared to about 2 million iPhone apps. So they're offering developers a larger percentage of revenue and doing

things like these, these ad campaigns, I guess, to, to encourage people to come over to the platform and start developing for it. And, and, and kind of at the end of this article, it says Alexa isn't a major profit engine for Amazon. And I think we talked about that in the past. It's like, they lose a ton of money on this product. It does not bring any money into their ecosystem. It doesn't sell them any products.

They're just doing it to gather data. I mean, I can imagine they're using it to help with like voice translation and that kind of thing. But I feel like they could even do that without, without this product being in consumers' homes. But I don't know. It seems like at the beginning, when I kind of go back to that ad that they had, it really didn't like come out to be like what the actual product intended to be. Like they were using it to play music or tell a joke. And then they, they had it,

they were, they were, they were shopping with it. And that kind of thing. I think, I think Amazon's always wanted you to shop with the dumb thing, but like, I just,

I just, when I need to shop for the thing on Amazon, I break out the Amazon app and I use it that way. I don't yell into the wind and hope that it gets me the right toilet paper. That's just not, that's not ever going to be a good thing. And that's the perfect example right there. Like, I know they wanted you to shop with it, but I'm not going to say the right toilet paper. That's just not, that's not ever going to be a good thing. And that's the perfect example right there. Like, I know they wanted you to shop with it,

but I'm not going to say order me toilet paper because you don't know what toilet paper they're going to order, you know? The scratchy kind. Yeah, the scratchy. I need the four ply super strong, you know, like whatever toilet paper, the one that's nice and soft, you know?

Like, but she'll order me the Amazon basics one. And I'll, you know, what your finger constantly breaks through that. That's the last thing I need. Right. Like, I don't know, you know, to be fair, there's no way for, um, what do they call them? Skill developers to highlight their apps. Like they don't have like a skill store or something like that. Like nobody really looks at skills for these things. So, you know, it would be good that, you know, they highlight some of the more popular skills, but I just don't want them to overtake the interface. Yeah. And they are working on like adding and giving developers more power to, like I was

listening to the IoT podcast, Stacy's podcast, when Kevin and her were talking about the developer conference and what all they talked about. And they are adding new APIs for developers to take advantage of where you can actually create skills around if you're home or not. That kind of thing, which would be great. I mean, that's a massive, massive, massive thing for automation. It's annoying whether someone's home or not. Because then you can do all sorts of things. Like you can do occupancy, like pretend that they're home by turning on lights and TVs and that kind of stuff, music, or making sure that certain lights aren't on when they're off. Like there's all sorts of fun stuff you can do when you know when someone hub or a device that just has no input or no way of knowing that, then it's like less of a home automation system and more of just like a rules engine type thing.

It doesn't actually, I think that is like the bare minimum of home automation is knowing somebody's home or not and then reacting based on that. Like what levels the light should come on if somebody's home versus what levels the light should come on if they aren't home or what lights should and should not come on. So I think they're doing a lot of good things for developers here, but at the same time, like Gavin, you're right. Like there's not a way for you to go find that, that particular skill that may already do that. There may be already something that does this in the end, but who knows? How do you, how do you know? You have to read some blog posts somewhere. I don't know. I haven't used that god awful Amazon Alexa app in a long time. It was just so bad.

Is it any better? It's gotten better. To be fair, they've put a lot of work into it. They've been making it better. Automations and stuff have gotten a lot better. I use it. It's not bad. It's not my primary use i kind of like just have my devices exported to it and i have a few routines set up in there but it's it has some power to it it's not that

bad yeah i know you can do a lot quite a lot with it it was just like always a it was like if this was a web view app like just loading a web page like it would be a million times better than just whatever this is that you've done like it was such everything that you can throw into an app yeah yeah and that's what i'm saying like this would just be another like tab on in the many many many many many tabs that already exist in this this their interface there so it's just like at least they didn't build it into the amazon app i wouldn't have been surprised if they just merged don't tempt them yeah they may do that that may be the next they'll do that in the next couple yeah because obviously how are you going to buy these skills like if there's a way that you can buy these skills like how are you going to do that why are you giving them the

idea stop giving them ideas pretty soon it's going to be hard to tell what's virtual and what's a real good in the amazon search results like hmm wait like, hmm, wait a minute. Exactly. Is this an NFT or toilet paper, or is it actually toilet paper? It's actually toilet paper. I just bought a picture of toilet paper. It's like those listings on eBay where it's like, this is just the picture of a Sonos Arc. It is not a Sonos Arc. Right, right.

$599 or whatever. It's a great deal. Oh, man. All right. Well, one more story to kind of cover here. And I really don't have much to say about this because it's another one of those matter PR pieces that we've been kind of like skimming over for the past year, it seems like. It's like, I will care about this one. Gotta fluff it. I guess, man. There's just so much hype around it.

But one thing I was able to pull from this, which I thought was interesting, and maybe it's a misconception that I have, or maybe it's a misconception that the writer of this article has. But I think Jennifer Tuhoy, is that how you say her name? Tui, I believe. She knows what she's talking about. She's very, very good and a very good writer on these things. She says, you'll be able to add devices to multiple platforms at once and then control them with any Matter controller. Hey, that sounds good. A Matter controller can be a smart display or speaker or voice assistant or a smartphone app. As an example, this means you'll be able to add a Matter device using Alexa, and you'll also be able to control it with Apple HomeKit or Google Home.

That one paragraph, if that is what we get out of the Matter interoperability thing, I don't believe it. But if that's what we get, I think that's actually a pretty good step forward, right? Because you can just add a device in on the platform that you want to support or you have the most stuff with and if you do get that amazon echo you put it in your house you can control your other stuff with that this is great i think this is awesome that is awesome um but i've also seen counter to this like in another article with samsung where they said their devices which will pair with the hub won't get exposed to matter and you know like we i'm still i i think what they're saying there is like the samsung devices that exist today that will pair with

their hub today that they're not going to update with matter can still be accessed through their samsung hub but they're not going to be able to like you can't come backwards through the matter devices and then get back to these devices what you're gonna have to do is say well samsung's first at that point like you have to you're gonna have to stick with the samsung and i that makes sense to me because they're not gonna go back and update all those other devices um to be in some some companies have to their credit they're they're updating devices to be matter compatible where where they can do this special thing um but it's going to take a little bit of time i think to like flush those out of the system uh flush the older devices out of the system and get the newer stuff in that

works with matter and has a matter logo on it and that way going forward we can use multiple control interfaces i guess is kind of where we go with that verse yeah yeah but you're still going to have that one hub to rule them all you're still going to have the one one data collector but i was i was hoping with the smart things they would use the smart things hub to kind of expose those devices to the matter at that point right so you can still do the multi-admin you know but it doesn't sound like they even want to do that at smart things so that's another thing and in this article i loved the how they talked about frustration free setup you know ffs all i know is when i think of ffs

you know it's another saying that i can't say on this but i say a lot with adding devices to my hub but i just love that they use frustration free setup i'm gonna laugh every time i think of that oh my gosh that that is the worst acronym that's like uh that's like pos for point of sale every time i see pos i'm like that's not what that means well and i think samsung's probably a bad samsung's always a bad indicator of this kind of stuff just because samsung always does their own thing they find they whatever else somebody else is doing they kind of just just because Samsung always does their own thing. They find they, whatever else somebody else is doing, they kind of just make their own little version. And they're like, no, we have this thing. This is what we do. And everybody else is like, well, we have, you know,

4k, but you have UHD or you have, you have whatever you have over here. And it's always just something so annoying with Samsung that I just, I wouldn't trust whatever Samsung says on anything and whatever they do do, it's just going to be their own proprietary thing. Yeah, and they're a big enough company globally that they can do that, right? Like they have their tentacles into everything. And I think from their perspective is like, okay, Matter's not going to support the energy monitoring

on this dryer thing that we're putting out and this washer dryer combo that's going to be what we're going to be putting in the CES show. So why are we going to promote, you know, why are we going to push that forward when we can just integrate it with the device and the company that we already have? We can say, okay, it works with smart things and smart things will work with matter too.

Like, so I don't know from, from that standpoint, it seems like it's, it's good for them, right? Like it's what, what's holding matter back in that case is that they don't support those, those other types of devices. Like they're not supporting washer and dryers right out of the gate. It may come, you know, a few years later, but it's going to be a slow March before, uh, all those washer dryer manufacturers can agree on, on how to make a smart washer dryer and what, you know, in hooks and variables and APIs need to be exposed from your smart washer dryer. Um you know in hooks and variables and apis need to be exposed

from your smart washer dryer um that just sounds like a nightmare like just just try my just try my clothes that's all i want you to just wash them where they don't stink and dry them that's that's all that's all i want you to do and i want i want my stupid oven to set the freaking time in the microwave i have the time the smartest kitchen in the world would be the one that has the correct time. That's all. That's all. After the power. After the power is restored.

I don't need a TV. I don't need a video camera in my oven to tell me I'm cooking fish. I don't need any of that. What I need is the time on the clock when I walk in at night and say, what time is it? To not just be blinking because the power went off three days ago. And everybody that walked by that microwave does not want to set that time no no because we can't figure out the key process it's so confusing i mean that that's ffs right there i mean all right ffs is me just trying to change my fridge to water to ice you know what button do i hold down yeah our fridge has this amazing bit of uh ux in it um it's got like this little chime that

goes do-do-do or do-do-do and then a light that says ice on ice off right so turn the ice maker on and you would think when you press the button and it goes do-do-do that means ice is on right no that means ice is off and the light that lights up it lights up you would think that means that the ice is on no that also means ice is off. And so it's just completely 180 backwards. And it's such a mind trip because the sound is not lining up with what you see and what you're doing to turn on and off the ice machine. Samsung, again, Samsung. So, you know, they could build that into smart things if they wanted to, but I don't think it would be any more useful. It would be completely backwards. See, that's a clear example of FFS right there.

FFS, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I just want ice to be made in the refrigerator, and I want the clock to be set on the oven. I don't need anything else. I really don't need anything else. I've figured everything else out. Knives, forks, spoons. I figured all that out.

It's all good. I don't need any more smart products in the kitchen. Smart cutting board on it? Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, let's move on before I go crazy about the smart kitchen here, uh, and lose my voice even more. So, uh, we've got, we've had some, some new interesting products here. And I thought this was at first, I thought it was door locks, but it's not, it's locks lock, like, like lock locks, like smaller locks, but it's still kind of cool. So like lock locks like smaller locks but it's still kind of cool so your next lock completely powered by your phone thanks to new technology

from a chip manufacturer called infinion infinion i guess that's how you say it uh the company announced a uh it's called the nac 1080 uh chip which is an all-in-one design chip that has nfc that can recognize your phone harvest the power and drive a smart lock it's all kind of like there and there's also a 32-bit arm cortex m0 cpu in there to kind of aid with security features basically like say okay that phone that just tapped up against the lock is the phone that it should be able to unlock like all the logic can be built into that so that's pretty cool um All the manufacturer really has to do is add an antenna, a three volt mini motor and capacitors.

So they're offering basically a package solution to make a smart lock. Now this is like a gate lock or like a locker lock or something like that. Like you would use at a gym or something. You walk up, you tap your phone onto it. There's no batteries inside the thing. It just has enough power in there from the tap on the phone and the NFC like

transduction, I guess that's going on between the NFC chip or the antenna and everything that that's enough to power up this little chip to say, okay, yes or no, this is the person that's supposed to be here and unlock the lock. That's really cool. Really, really cool. Cool idea. Yeah. I mean, I, I posted this in, in the group and it looks like it takes about five seconds to unlock, which I don't think is that bad. Um, and they, they specifically state that it is only for padlocks, you know, the, the kind of design of that, um, because it has to let go of the clasp. Um, so I don't think you're going to see this come to like a deadbolt or like a doorknob anytime soon, but it's really cool to see this kind of technology come out where you don't need a battery.

And realistically, you shouldn't have to worry about it dying. Um, you know, maybe the little internals go bad or something like that, but you're not having to charge it every six months or three months or, or whatever. Um, and it just works with a normal phone. There's nothing fancy you need with it. Um, and yeah yeah from the video it looks like it works pretty fast within five seconds so i'd be willing to give it a shot oh this is great like i i like when i saw this like using power from your phone um that's an

awesome idea i wonder if what other devices we could do to use that but then we just got to make sure we'll have bigger batteries in our phone because if we're going to get more devices like this i'm going to be draining my battery, you know, a lot. Just got to stack them with the mag back there. Yeah, I mean, the NFC stuff is pretty low power, like low power trends. Like it's it's there's not much power that goes back and forth. This is just like milli milli milli watts that are going through like very, very small amounts of, just to basically fire up the little chip inside there and read it. And it looks like it just takes a few seconds. Yeah. That video is kind of neat.

I'm kind of watching that, uh, the, the looped video where it's just charges up and then it's like, okay, unlocked. Um, that's really cool. Uh, I, I really, I really like, this is a great idea. Uh, and I'm glad that like, it's nice that this is like a package solution so like anybody like master lock or whatever could come along and release a product with this in there and and like like the article says they just got to supply a few other parts and pieces along with their lock and uh you're good to go like this would be great for like gems and that kind of thing like something i would i would assume this is like an indoor technology but maybe you could use it outdoor i don't know that's what i was just thinking you know i'm kind of in

the old i guess mindset where i want a key backup and i don't think this is probably going to offer a key backup um and i i have two padlocks on my van right now um that lock my uh my ladder my ladder rack down um so it'd be kind of nice to replace those with this if it was possible. Um, but it wouldn't have to be water resistant. Um, and I would want to key back up just in case it does die at some point. I mean, I think lock picking lawyers probably take this apart in like less than five seconds. Like I think, honestly, I think that they would, this is probably going to be one of those things where you like taps it twice and it falls apart, but we'll see. Well, and these things are never that secure. You know, you could easily cut this off with a

bolt cutter or a grinder or something like that. They're not meant to keep like super, you know, thieves out, I guess. Um, they're meant to just stop people from walking up and opening your, your lock, whatever you have on it. Yep. These are the keeps honest people, honest blocks, uh, of the world. So, uh, yeah, I,. So, yeah, I think it's cool technology. I hope we start seeing this because I would I would get one. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of what else you could use this for where you just need a little bit of power.

And, you know, I can't really think of anything in the lock space, but there's a couple of things around the house that maybe you could use this for. Cool idea. I'll buy one when it comes out. Well, speaking of buying things when you also but i'm gonna just assume anything that ends up with locks and and is tj it's lock week it's lock week here yeah uh i guess the yale assure lock 2 was leaked on on those website and just kind of like come and gone looks good though yeah no no official announcement about it i haven't seen

anything official about it a couple different websites have picked up the Lowe's link, but nothing crazy. But I think it looks way nicer than the old version. A little more rounded corners, a little more square body. The finish is nice. The one that they have here is like a black finish. Matte black. It looks like good update. Yeah, no, it it I mean, look yeah it looks like it has most of the same

features i guess i think it's right here works with vera x okay well i guess i can't have vera uh works with amazon alexa x i mean that's not good so it's kind of weird uh that they they have all this biometric lock app capability yeah it's only this is only the bluetooth version so that must be it. Okay. Yeah, they always have a Bluetooth version and then you can get a little plug-in module that plugs into it and changes it to Z-Wave or

Wi-Fi or something like that. You're probably just seeing the base model and then we'll probably see the Z-Wave and Wi-Fi modules and stuff like that before long. But this isn't officially announced as far as I can tell. So this is just a, uh, a simple air on low side that they have not corrected and we get to see it before it comes out. I have a yellow lock and I really

like these locks. The batteries last a long time. They work well for me, but yeah, this is a Bluetooth version. It looks like it works with their app. You know, um, I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with a Zigbee Z wave version that, you know um i wouldn't be surprised if they come out with the zigbee z-wave version that you know we can integrate with our hub of choice later on yeah this is the this is the brand i use i always use yale for my smart locks i just think they look a little bit nicer and i like the way they behave compared to like the schleg or the quick set i'm thinking i think i'm just trying to see which one i have it's dead over there i've never haven't used in about two years but i think it's the Kwikset.

It doesn't work anymore, though. But I've been in the market for a new door lock for the garage here. And I don't know. This one might make the cut, depending on the finishes that come with it. Because I can't use black, but maybe something else. Yeah, they usually come in like a brass color and then the satin nickel and silver. i have to wait and see what they come out with at 159 is not a bad price though or yeah 160 us yeah it's pretty good and in the description it says you can add a wi-fi module so i would expect it's just like the old ones and they probably even take the same module

yep there we go all right cool i have to keep an eye out for that when it comes out and we've got one more one more lock all right so if you ever looked at your door lock and said, hey, that would make a great place to put a video doorbell. This thing is boring. Well, the smart door lock maker Lockly has a pretty good solution here for you. At $500, the Lockly Vision Elite.

It's a camera, a door doorbell and a smart lock it's a camera a doorbell and a smart it's the same thing are you guys getting it so yeah that was my steve jobs impression all right so it's got a camera and a doorbell and a smart lock all built in one uh he wants this week and is the successor to the company's Lockley Vision video smart lock. The device has a 1080p wide camera, night vision, motion sensor, integrated door sensor, which is kind of cool because the doors open or close, and integrated solar panel to keep the thing charged. As a smart lock, the Lockley Vision Elite has a full deadbolt replacement and it's operated by a key, an app, built-in keypad or fingerprint sensors.

It's got everything on it. The keypad has a, keypad is interesting. It has a rotating display to, that will confound anyone peeking over your shoulder, including yourself, like trying to unlock your door by memorizing what your, what the locations were, where the, yeah, no, you actually have to look at this stupid thing to open your door. Uh, or I guess press on the, the fingerprint reader if that's working. Anyway, it doesn't let people look over your shoulder to figure out your codes because it rotates. And the display changes every single time. Amazing.

Anyway, the video doorbell has a very small button, evidently, on the keypad. And it triggers the doorbell inside. There's a two-way audio for talking to a visitor and for any recordings are actually stored locally on the walk. So that's kind of nice. There's no, you know, cloud component to this. It's a local device, but it also works with Google and Amazon. It says it works on wifi, but it also requires a hub. So I guess I have to ring that bell there to say it does, but $5.99 for this thing. And Eufy has a similar one out there for $399. So I didn't pull that up to compare it exactly. But $500 seems pretty good

for all you get in this package here, I guess. This thing is a beast. I mean, just look at it. Now, I mean, like, especially if you live in a place where they don't have a hardwired doorbell already, I could see this being the appeal, right? Like I live in an apartment complex. We don't really don't have a doorbell. We could replace this. We could gain the video doorbell and the smart lock at the same time. It passes my check.

It's got a physical key override. So that way, when the electronics electronics die you can still get in um i would have to see what the quality is like in person but i'm not i'm not hating on it at all i like it yeah it's it's up there five hundred dollars is a lot but if you if you don't have anything at the door already and you could just buy one device that does it all and it works great the first time then that's worth a lot of that's worth a lot of time and money saved. I like the solar panel. Yeah, I'm at odds with this because people still struggle these days with just the smart doorbell, right? I have so many videos of people's fingers touching the camera. It's not funny. I constantly

have to go out to my front door and clean off my camera because it's got smudge marks on it. Right. I don't know why it's difficult, but, you know, it's just a certain generation of people struggle looking at this log, looking at this lock. I don't know if they'll even know what that the doorbell that's the doorbell. Like, will they be able to figure that out? Probably not. You know, like it's going to be they'll just come to they'll just knock at that point they'll look around you'll have a video of them looking around and then they just knock well that's what everybody in my area does anyway they don't even ring the video doorbell they'll just knock instead or not even do anything it's like well you have a video doorbell it should have picked me up at least is the doorbell on the side what is the green button on the side of it i don't

know what the green button is but the doorbell What is the green button on the side of it? I don't know what the green button is, but the doorbell itself is the silver button because it has a little bell icon and everything. That's just a light, I think. The green light. Is the green a fingerprint sensor or something? I thought that was underneath the keypad, like where it has the little, maybe. I don't know. It's very confusing.

See, the fact that we're even confused just by looking at this, you know, like how's a regular user gonna be i'm pretty sure that's the fingerprint sensor yeah it must be so you just tap your finger on okay yeah that makes sense yeah i don't know it doesn't it doesn't look completely awful but it does look like it's a beast it wouldn't go on my friend door yeah this would be good on like a garage door yeah well yeah and that, that's, I mean, that's funny enough. That's where we have our smart lock. Just, you know, that's not smart anymore because it doesn't work. But, um, like we, we don't want, we never have wanted one on

the front door because like, typically they're just too bulky and every, like some of them have come out where they're not like, they don't have the giant keypad on the outside. It's just like the smart thing on the inside and that's it. But we never wanted to have like anything up there that was like outside of the traditional hardware. So putting it on the garage door made, that's made the most sense, even though it's kind of like harder to get to. But if you get locked out of the house,

it's one way you can get back in. It's just going to the smart door lock thing and pushing your code in. Yeah, and at this point in time, I'm trying to encourage my FedEx, UPS, mailman to ring the doorbell when they come and drop off a package. You know, like at this point, they're not even going to know what to do. Oh, mine, what they do is they just stand about maybe six or seven feet away from the door and just chuck the package at the door we'll just hear this like boom sound and we're like what is that and then i go and i'm like oh we've got a delivery but did they just drop it that hard and i'll go and i have a video i'll just i'll try and share in the hub or something

uh where they just they just they they have a toss like they toss it take the picture and i did it and they left like and my favorite ones are the ones in the rain where they're just like trying to get out of the rain and they just chuck it at the door and take off. At least they're not throwing it on your roof. Yeah, that would be rude. That would just be rude. All right, well, all the links and topics

we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 397. Nothing in the mail back this week, but I do have a pick of the week that I would like to share with everyone. Um, I have may have used this as the pick of the week before, but the, the Shelly RGB W two, it's a nice little, um, RGB W or you could just be RGB or, or just W I guess it could be any one of those things. Uh, it's a nice little or, or just W I guess. It could be any one of those things. It's a nice little PWM or just basically like lighting controller for tape lights, tape LED lights, or LED lights in general. I actually used it to control, where are they? One of these little like

LED fixture lights that I kind of had laying around for a while. It's just an LED light that you can use for anything, just white LED. It runs on 12 and 24 volts. It is tiny, tiny, tiny. All the Shelly devices are. But it works really well. It's got pretty good software with it. The app is okay. And it's got a bunch of little integration pieces in it where you can use

alexa google home uh it does work with other devices out there other smart devices there's plenty of like shelly drivers and that kind of thing for other products out there so if you needed something to basically control an rgb strip or even tape lights like you you can control four individual tape lights with this thing up to 288 Watts. Crazy for this device. Um, this is the one, one to get, it's like $53 on Amazon for two pack. We'd sell them at work and half for a while. And I just decided to pick one up. And, um, actually I had a wink. I had the wink, uh, the little wink RGB W light strip, maybe it's RGB light strip in my rack for, you know, kind of like inside so I could turn it on and see what's going on in there and then change it to nice pretty colors.

And I was getting frustrated with the wink thing because like, there's no API for it at all. Like, it's just a wink silo thing. I'm like, let me just take this apart. And so I took it apart and the wire that comes off the wink thing has like the 12 volt feed coming in and it has like the RGB and RGB color. Like it was perfect. I just hooked that up to the Shelly through the way the wink hub thing, just threw that in the trash. Cause who cares who wants that thing and then hook this up and it works even better. Cause now I can automate it. I can like, if there's something wrong with the server or something, all it takes is like a little call from the server to turn it red. You know, like if the internet goes down, I turn my rack red that's really cool that's actually a cool usage for that uh you can

change the color of your rack based on you know the status of things that's pretty cool and if you want a z-wave version i think fabaro makes a similar looking device to that z-wave that you can use yeah it's really cool i and i i just i've used them before i've used shelly product before uh to automate some like dumb closet lights and lights that i could only switch the fixture uh what's nice about this one there's a little like there's a way that you can actually hook a dimmer up to this and dim like a full white strip lights up and down if you wanted to um i didn't do that uh but you can hook a normal, like I have hooked up normal switches to these to where like, you can just hook a regular toggle switch that you have in your light, your house, you know, $1 toggle switch, put this up in the fixture and it basically

turns it into an automated fixture at that point. Now, you know, whether you like that your light may turn off when the toggle switch is up, because of some automation that happened, that may annoy people, certain people in my house, who don't like it when that happens. But, you know, it doesn't bother me too much that the light gets turned off if it's not being used. So I do like these products. And this one is just bang for the buck,

probably one of the better RGB controllers out there, because it does it works actually really works well and and does so much for for 288 watts that's it's quite a bit doesn't look like it should do 288 of anything the size of this thing haven't haven't got to play with that yet so i don't have rgb like oh do i have a i think i do yeah i thought about adding some but i want i want the individually addressable ones. That way I can tell each one. Yeah, those ones are sweet,

but I haven't decided to jump into that yet. I have a strip downstairs with no power supply, but it just gets so confusing. What do I need? What do I get? This is easy, though. If it's not a pixel strip, you can use one. If it's just a regular light thing,

you can use one of these things. It's not very hard. You hook up the rgb wires to the red green and blue and there's a there's a positive cable uh for power that hooks to the controller and the light strip and then a ground wire that goes to the power supply so i'm going to consult you later yeah yeah give me a call we sell these at work so it's kind of like one of those things was like i've been looking at it for a while and i was like, well, I was ordering something anyway. I was like, I'll order this too. Just throw, throw me a two pack in and see what we can do there. Anyway, for, for, for 50 bucks or whatever this thing is, it wasn't a bad deal and I'm happy. I got it now. Like it works way better than I expected. So way better than

that wink thing ever did. Well, yeah yeah the wink just turned on and then every time i open the app it's like hey you gotta update this thing i'm like i haven't used it why am i updating it i want to so i uh i pulled that out and uh took it apart and then i was like let's see what let's see what the shelly can do and the wink wink actually had a really good like little wires that were plugged into that were perfect i didn't have to do anything just tore it apart desoldered them and it's like they to do anything. Just tore it apart, desoldered them. It's like they knew you were going to take it apart.

They knew. That's what I wanted. Yeah. It's too good. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week or great ideas for a show,

give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, guys,

that wraps up another week before my voice goes out. Projects updates. Gavin is the rack in yet. How much have you spent so far? I don't want the wife. She's probably listening right now. So I can't say how much I've spent. But, you know, like I was upset when somebody in the hub this week mentioned that their project was to actually set up their hub, their rack.

And I was so upset that they had a rack sitting there. You know, they were going to have all the fun that that encouraged me to go buy mine. So it's on order should be here tomorrow or before this episode actually airs. I should have it in. I went with SysRacks. It's just an open frame rack. You know, they're based out of quebec i believe and uh so far customer service has been great i ordered a few accessories with them but i have a feeling i'm gonna have to order a few more things once it comes in but i'm excited

finally cleaning up my mess very cool very cool um t you were, you were replacing your van locks. I sound like you're having fun. Yeah, I'm getting a remote star and, uh, mainly a keyless entry system installed. And, uh, this week, um, but for some reason, my rear cargo door is not working with the electrical switch. So I've been troubleshooting that while I've been a homesick this week. So. Yeah. See, you're, you're like doubly productive now that COVID's it. That's right. Yeah. Just, just don't let me around people and I can work all kinds. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The people slow everything down. Exactly. Well, I have finally upgraded my server. So you guys will be happy to know that I'm actually

using modern technology. Oh my gosh. About time. Nothing off a government auction, huh? Awesome. Finally. No, no. I actually left that in the rack. I don't know if I'm going to toss it out just yet, but, um, there were two of them sitting on the floor here and we did some cleaning up this weekend. And as part of that, I was like, let me just toss these outside and I'll, I'll, I'll bring them back in if I want them. And then it like poured down rain for like three hours straight. And I'm like, oh, those are still outside. And so I just hauled them down to the street and they disappeared. So I don't know who got them. But yeah, this one may have the same fate.

And I'll just have to lesson learned with the government auction. Technology from 2011 is not all that great compared to this beast, which is running at 2% CPU right now. I was going to say, you got the giant i9 processor. Yes. I don't even know what to do with it. Honestly. Don't even, don't even have the correct power supply for it. Yeah. I'm like, how do you hook this up? This doesn't make any sense. Why are there three connectors instead of two? It's not what the directions say. So yeah, that was a confusing little bit there. But yeah, not a fan of PC builds.

Oh, they're easy. Yeah. The biggest issue I have is with all the extra. Like, I thought I was going to be smart. And I'm like, I'm going to hide these little fan wires. And I'm just going to tuck them under the motherboard and push them around on the sides. And I got all past that. And I'm like'm like the power cables I forgot about the power cable I started

working on the power cables and it's like it's like just a glob of like no matter what I try to do velcro zip tie it's just a glob of wires I want to get like the little pin like the pin injector and just take apart their little module things and put little put the new pins inside i i want to make the the cables to the right length it's just driving me nuts there's like 20 extra feet of cable in there that doesn't need to be in there it's a it's a server just close it don't even look at it it'll be all right that's you know as long as you don't see it don't let it bother you that's why like that's you don't look behind any tv in my house it'll give anybody anxiety. Just, you know, just look at the TV at certain angles from the front and be happy that you

don't see any wires. Yeah. See the desktop computers, they get cleaned up. They have a little glass panel. You can see the wires and they're all nice and neat. The server, though, it's just a hodgepodge. It just all goes together. As long as nothing's getting caught in fans.

I don't really care. Yeah. There's no clicky sounds from wires hitting the fans. it's just a hodgepodge it just all goes together as long as nothing's getting caught in fans i don't really care yeah there's no clicky sounds from wires hitting the fans i guess oh you're good then yeah why worry about it why worry yeah yeah it was an adventure trying to find the right fans for this thing because uh i guess the the case i have is for are you high and i i was shocked that like how tall some of the um cooling fan things towers i guess they call them that go on the cpu cpu coolers yeah they're just get an aftermarket one they're ridiculously tall like they're just ginormous yeah i had to i had to buy a low profile one after i accidentally bought like one that was way too tall yeah so i So I'm in the same boat. I've got to, well, I was going to return. I actually bought one of those and then I was like, well,

I'll just get this water cooler thing. Cause that'll definitely fit. And then I measured it and I looked at the instructions and it said, okay, this is like 280 maximum. And this thing is two or 240 maximum, no 280 maximum. This is two 40. And I got it. And the thing is like three 20,, 280 maximum. This is 240. And I got it. And the thing is like 320 long. So it was just an Amazon review thing that went on. So this delayed me from getting the server up and going, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And for like all weekend, I finally got it up late last night, plugged it in.

And guess what, Gavin? NRAID? Two thumbs up on that. I know. Holy cow. I was expecting like just errors and blue screens of deaths or whatever no the thing just cranks up it's like hey i'm here i'm gonna start working now i'm like oh okay good for you moving unraid from one system another is very easy i've done it numerous times

upgrading my computers just you just pull out the usb you just move the drives over and boot it back up and it finds everything for the most part i I mean, there's some exceptions out there, but Unraid is once you get used to it and you get to know it, it's a great product. They did a great job with that. Like I was, I was like, I had a little problem with booting into the USB thing because I guess there's like all this secure boot stuff. And I don't know. I think I finally figured out it was a motherboard issue and you had, it doesn't, you can't do the it was a motherboard issue and you can't turn off secure boot without adding an external video card, whatever. So I did that and I was able to turn on the unsecure boot stuff. I don't know what it is. Anyway, it works now. It doesn't matter. It can be a secure secure it's going to be on my rack i don't care it's secure now and it'll be fine so i love your in-depth technical explanation there you know like you know what i have a mac and i just plug two cords into it it works

so can we upgrade that so i don't have to it's stupid you know, almost as old as that server in there. Anyway, this has been fun. It's doing all the stuff I wanted it to do before. And it wasn't like it wasn't like soul crushingly expensive. It wasn't Mac expensive. I guess I will say that I didn't have to buy a Mac into whatever Mac mini thing to studio. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't have to buy one of those. So, um, and, and even then I think that would have not probably done what I wanted to do the way this is doing it. So, um, I I'm, I'm happy with this. I'm going to be tinkering around with some other stuff, uh, and, and like virtual machines and all that fun stuff in the future. But I don't

know, this is, this is doing what I wanted to do now. And it's kind of just cruising along. So I'm happy. And sometimes with things like this, you just have to spend the money to get some, you know, a good system so that it's not frustration, you know, because when you try to cheap out and get old equipment off of government websites, you know, you spend months of frustration.

You should have done this a long time ago. Preach again. Some of us have to learn the hard way i don't know i all in all that was a good experience because i got to play around with the server stuff but also i have like the the the two the two things i was able to sell on ebay basically paid for that like didn't pay for my time to drive up there and back and then like i got a 48 port POE switch out of it, which is, you know, probably a three or $400 switch right now. Um, it's still under warranty somehow. I don't know. Um, and then I got like 20 servers that I ended up throwing in the trash. So, um, glad I'm glad somebody takes them. I don't know who takes them. And I got the entertainment out

of it. So I thought it was definitely worth it. Exactly. Exactly. Well, this thing, this thing should bring, uh, more entertainment as well. So I'm, I'm happy I've got this thing this thing should bring uh more entertainment as well so i'm happy i've got this thing going and hopefully uh right now it's doing some transcoding work for me so i'm trying to save some memory uh on the nas drive over there although i haven't even started using the new one so we'll see i've got all sorts of stuff new stuff to tinker around with now so i'm excited about it ty is saying unraid is a great way to learn vm vmware it doesn't run vm or it runs um kvm kvm virtual machines uh basically it's a great way to learn um virtualization and work with that um i run a couple virtual machines on my unraid and you know it's fun to play with yeah yeah that Yeah. Well, this is just a toy.

And when I have free time, yeah, I will. I will. I will get to that. After this last week of having like three unproductive days and Monday and Tuesday just being awash this week. Yeah. I don't know how much free time I'm ever going to have in the future anymore. You'll find free time. Yeah.

One of these days, one of these days. Well, are you guys, I think that wraps up the show this week. Thanks for, for. We're helping me through this,

this time with my voice here. So I appreciate it. But we do want to give everyone a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar

a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat hub where you can rage with Gavin on people who have better racks you know i was feeling guilty about making you read this section with your voice and all but then you said that so i'm not so guilty anymore i don't feel so bad not now but i will

say um watching owen's uh theater build that's going on in there awesome that's been good wow that's really cool i the cool part is That's been good. Wow. That's really cool. I, the cool part is you never know when you see like a nice setup, you never know what's behind it all. Right. But watching him build it out like that, you can see the different layers and what's actually behind that wall.

And that's really cool to see. Yep. Yep. Yep. And there's so much knowledge and expertise that goes into what every little thing in detail in there that he's doing. So, yeah, it's really, yep, yep. And there's so much knowledge and expertise that goes into every little thing in detail in there that he's doing. So, yeah, it's really, really, really cool to see him do that.

So if you join us in the hub there, you can see that kind of... He's been posting most every day now, even though it's like 5,000 degrees Celsius over there. They're still working, man. They're still doing it. Burning up. Yep, yep, yep.

Well, if you want to help out the show but can't support financially, we just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That wraps another week here on Home Tech. From everyone here, have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. You're not just going to cough into the microphone no i figured i'd leave that for you and there he goes about to die every other every other sentence you should order some medication off your amazon prime subscription i I mean, you got to get use out of that much money you're spending on it.

I don't trust their medication on Amazon. I don't trust their food, medicine, high-end electronics. No. See, you guys have more stuff you can even order there too, and you pay more. This is crazy. Stop rubbing it in, Gavin. Jeez.