HomeTech.fm - Episode 400 - RackStuds.tv

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

This week on HomeTech, WiZ makes an awesome bathroom light, Google might have a new Nest router, the plus in Disney+ means ads, Snap One snaps up another company, and Amazon is leading us into Idiocracy with a new TV show. All this and a pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 19th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Clark 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 technology, home automation, streaming, it seems. We've got a couple of streaming news stories this week. But I wanted to first follow up on a story we talked about a couple weeks back.

Was it Rogers or Bell that announced? I don't know. One of the Canadian suppliers of internet is supplying, like, these amazing speeds that are over 8 gig. Like, 8 gig of internet, 10 gig. Who knows? They're just making up numbers, I think, up there. It's ridiculous. And we're like, hey, Gavin, what you need to do is start your own ISP and ship some of that

bandwidth down here for lousy Comcast customers like myself. And I guess that's what happened. There's a guy over in Michigan. He's a rural customer. Comcast wanted $50,000 to hook him up with some kind of fiber to the home. He wasn't having it. So he just spent about that a little bit less. I think it was like $26,000 for a contractor. He paid like $45,000 in total to get everything like put together, but ended up getting fiber to his house. And then he was able to start reselling that fiber to his neighbors because he was smart enough while he was putting in one car to it to just go ahead and put in two, which I thought was a good idea. Anyway, since now he's an ISP in a rural part of America, and Congress likes to give money every now and then to those types of ISPs, he's got a government grant of $2.6 million

to expand his operations there. And so, Gavin, this is possible. This is your future. I think now that you have that big rack, you can be an ISP now. You can do it, man. I believe in you. That would never fly up here. They would never let me do something like that. If I share my internet with my neighbor, somebody will be knocking at my door. I can't even get away with that. I think you would need at least one more rack if you became an ISP, though. So that rack budget would definitely go way out of whack. He just has to spin it around and use the backside that he's not using any of right now. See?

That's true. He's got plenty of room. Actually, I have a few things in the back already. It never ends. I think Richard said it never ends. Yeah, there's a lot going on back there. I dealt with a similar issue when I used to work at a summer camp in rural New York. And I forget who the carrier was there. We had Frontier at one point, but there

was a faster carrier there as well. And the camp went about halfway down the road. And at the other end of the road, there was a high-speed internet service. And I think at the time it was $75,000 or if not more to run one single cable from the end of the road down to the camp. And it made more sense for the camp owner to purchase the property all the way down to the road. And then they just ran their own cable and had them hook it up. So that's how unfortunate it is for you know rural america when you need internet um it can be right down the road from you and they still want a ridiculous amount of money to install the service even though you're not going to go anywhere else right like if you don't have anybody else available who are you going to switch to so i just i don't

understand the whole large sum to hook somebody up to the internet, but I'm glad this guy did something else about it instead of just paying the money. Yeah. We tend to treat it as a, um, well, it's like a necessity these days. Like it's almost like a utility. It should be treated like a utility. We don't treat it like that. We treat it like, well, it's a business, but technically you can't like pay bills or get a job without internet these days. So it's kind of like it's, it should be started to be treated like a utility. Um, which is nice that our government is actually using a little bit of money to go ahead and hand off to these companies that these are smaller companies, mom and pop shops that exist out in the rural America. There there's one, there's one town,

like that I would consider the rural part of, of where I am called my ACA. There's a, there's a, like a, a state park out there that it's mostly state park. Um, but there are a few communities around there. And for years they used, um, I think it was that Motorola that was like a wireless, uh, wireless ISP is what they were. But, um, starting a few years back, they started to pass similar things to this, where grants were being made available for them to roll out fiber. And now if you go out like way out east into like the middle of nowhere, these ranches that are just, you know, 500 acres worth of property, they have super fast fiber optic high speed Internet right up to the house. And it's pretty amazing that they're able to get that service there.

And I can't get it here. I'm in the middle of the city. I can throw a baseball and hit my neighbor's house that has fiber, but they can't get it here. Right now they're running fiber down my street. Bell is doing that in our neighborhood. And it seems like every week they're nicking one of the Rogers lines, so we're having Rogers.

That's a competitive advantage. Yeah, so right now down our neighborhood, It seems like every week they're nicking one of the Rogers lines. So we're having Rogers. That's a competitive advantage. Yeah. So right now down our neighborhood, you're seeing all the repaired lines hanging through the trees that they had to come in and fix. So it's funny to watch. Yeah. This guy here, he provides 100 megabits symmetrical internet with unlimited data for $50, $55 a month. Um, which isn't, which isn't terrible. It's not like super high speed, but it's symmetrical. 100. Hey, that's good for symmetrical. I'll take that. That'll get you, that'll get you streaming.

Uh, no problem compared to my five megabits per second upload I get with gigabit right now. And then, uh, one gigabit, uh, upload a symmetrical with unlimited data for $79 a month. Installation fees are typically $200. So pretty good. Pretty good there. Some good prices too. I have to admit, like it's not that bad. Yeah. And it's not even the guy's a full-time job, which I think is hilarious.

He still works at a cloud provider running this all on the side. I really, I really feel like I could, if I could, I mean, I don't need, it can't cost $40,000 to get fiber to my house. Like since it's, it's, it's, it's right there. It's, it's a matter of whatever the, I'm sure it does. I'm sure it's Comcast. I'd have to, but he said he had to start his own like ISP company to do this. And like, I wonder if I have to start my own ISP company, I'll get it here and then I'll just resell it to my, you know, my neighbor.

Maybe I can get this whole, like just this one street that has no fiber in the entire neighborhood. Maybe I can just get them all loaded up and say, Hey, let's make a internet company here. And, uh, and, and you get fast internet to your house. I expect updates next week on this. Yeah. Seth is going to end up in the ocean.

Comcast is not going to stand for that. No, no. Good for this guy. Good for him getting a grant for $2.6 million or whatever to expand because that's really cool. He can start hooking up. It looks like he says he's got 70 customers now and hoping to extend to 600 more.

Yeah, so that's really cool. That's really, really good. Gavin, this is your future. This is your and your in my future mine on a much smaller scale like i only have 30 homes or something so like i said i live in the city if like as soon as you share like with your neighbor yeah cops or whoever is at your door knocking there saying hey you know you're why you know if your wi-fi signal is too strong, the planes, it affects the planes flying over. You have people coming and knocking on your door. My immediate neighbors are not probably Internet users in the respect that you and I are.

One of them, I know my neighbors next door kind of keep an eye on her. And they basically bought her a cell phone so they could make sure that she was okay so she hasn't been connected or had an email or anything uh up until like last year so so you get your full 50 megabit down then nobody else is using it exactly exactly oh man all right well what do you guys say we jump into the home tech headlines for this week let Let's do it. All right. Wizz. I don't know. All right. Wizz, the more budget-friendly hubless sibling to Philips Hue. It's owned by the same company. It's beefed up its range of Wi-Fi-powered smart lighting and products with some new releases this week. They've got an $89 Wizz mobile portable light. It's coming in October and a $24.99

WIZ smart button, which acts as a switch or remote control for all WIZ lighting products. That's going to arrive sometime in September. The company also added a WIZ bar and a WIZ floor light. This is a great name for a company. For indirect lighting

as well as wall washing, which are available now. Wiz range starts with some bulbs, I guess, around $11, which is actually really, really competitive. Includes standard shapes for white and colored bulbs, light strips, downlights. They're also available in smart plug form factors. They have a wire dimmer and a motion sensor. Kind of like just a lesser expensive ecosystem to get involved with, but it works with Alexa, Google Home,

Apple Siri shortcuts, if this, then that, that, that, that, that, and smart things. And Signify, the parent company, has also indicated that they're hoping to support Matter over Wi-Fi with Wiz products later this year when that finally drops. So kind of a neat product.

I've actually never heard of this brand, like not really looking for products in that price range, I guess, which is probably what kept me away from it. If I did see it and probably the name too, quite frankly, it looks like a cheap name, but it's not what I think of when I think of smart, smart home lighting, but okay. Uh, I would, I would tend to gravitate towards like the Phillips hue type products, uh, and think of things in that price range, but heck for $11 to start with a smart bulb, that's a really good price. Not, not, not the best name in the world. You know know i think they could have thought of something better um i don't even know how long they've been around or anything but uh just like you seth the the name is not appealing there i think one of the cooler products that they announced out of this is the uh the whiz pool floor light uh which is 119 dollars

59 inches tall and you can change you know every it. Um, and it's meant to go either standing up like in a corner somewhere to kind of give that wall wash effect, or you can take it off the stand and like put it behind a sofa or something like that. So pretty cool product in that regard. Um, and I would imagine, you know, the Phillips hue version would have to be over $200 for something comparable. So definitely an affordable option to smart lighting that somebody wants it. What do you think, Gavin? I think they cover all the bases. Like they have all the buzzwords in there,

the Amazon, the Google, the Siri, the If, the smart things. You know, they have the matter, they mentioned matter. So all that being said, they hit all the key points, you know, and they're gonna have an audience for this you know they need a nightlight you know they should they should have like a nightlight so for those times you gotta take a whiz so the whiz nightlight you know they're missing out on that well that's what the uh that's what the portable light is gavin it's uh it's basically just the glorified lantern so uh but you can but you can take it outside camping under the toilet,

one right by the toilet, you know, who wants to see those, uh, those splashes and everything. Kind of, kind of scrolling through their products. They actually have a whiz moat,

which is a whiz remote that for their products kind of, I thought it had more buttons than it did, but it doesn't. It has maybe like four or five buttons for controlling light scenes and that kind of thing. But I guess if you, um, needed that to like, you know, walk around their house and control things, you could use that neat little product. The new smart button is about 1250, uh, PP, uh, PPB. So price per button there. So relatively low on the, uh, on the cost there. We're going to have to put a spreadsheet together and organize the PBB.

That's how we can help people pick their home automation platforms is what you can buy the most buttons with. Truly the apex of research here at Home Tech. So yeah, definitely the mobile portable light is your whiz light that you're looking for. I'm looking at it right now. It's got a little handle on it. It's cylinder shaped, looks fairly small and easy to carry around there in the dark.

It's full color. It's got dual zone lighting effect and a touch panel control. That way if you want to pee in red, then go ahead. That's never a good thing though. No, if. If you, if you,

if that happens, you need to see a doctor immediately. That's, that's a public service announcement from your friends here at home tech. All right, moving on here. Um, uh,

the Google, Google has had some new products on the way that Google, they appears to, they appear to be positioned to launch a new updated nest router, uh, equipped with wifi six E. Um, it's got Bluetooth, low energy and thread built

into it as well. And it looks like it may come out later this year. And this is all based on an FCC filing that has the model number A4RG6ZUK or ZUC, sorry, sorry, ZUC, similar ideas from other Nest products and thermostats and that kind of thing. So the filings internal pictures are kept secret until the product's released, I guess. But the wireless technology inside they're saying has two, 2.4 gig slash five gig bands, two five gigs Wi-Fi diversity bands, and then two,

2.4 and six G dual band anten antennas so like that's pretty much lines up with being wi-fi 6e um and it's possible this could come out later this year no one really knows but uh definitely we'll probably see a price increase the current model is $299 and if you look at some of the other ones out on the market like the TP-Lynx, that one comes in as a pair for $299, and then the Eero Pro 6E from Amazon comes in at $499 for a pair. So it's probably going to be closer to that price range, I would think. But Wi-Fi 6E routers starting to roll out. We're getting more 6E gear and equipment that can take advantage of that extra bandwidth

if you're relatively close to the router to use it. And then what's nice about this one is that if you're not able to use that or you're not close enough to use that Wi-Fi 6E stuff, you can bump even further down to the 2.4 and use that. So probably a pretty nicely designed product. But we were talking before the show and Gavin, you mentioned that like now that it's announced by Google, it probably means that it's going to be canceled. I can't trust these guys. Yeah, I'm afraid to buy anything Google these days. Not only will it get canceled at some point, but will they implement some change that will break everything that you know? You'd be using it for so long, and then they change something just breaks it and i i don't like google for that but um they they hit

all the key things they got the wi-fi 60 the bluetooth low energy the thread mesh networking everything like that so it looks like a good product um and like you said you know having the 60 will future proof you that's a good thing as well right so i'm pretty sure it will perform well uh it all comes down to price with me because they're competing with some um big names will future-proof you, that's a good thing as well, right? So I'm pretty sure it will perform well. It all comes down to price with me because they're competing with some big names. You know, I know people that love, is it the Deco TP-Lynx that are there?

People seem to love those ones and they say the performance is great with those. And then you have your Eero fan base out there, you know? So I think it's going to come down to some pricing with this. And, you know, if you're a Google home, maybe that will be another deciding factor for you. Yeah. I think the Google wifi products are always probably the cheapest ones on the market when it comes to mesh networking.

You can regularly find them at, you know, Costco and Sam's club and some other places for 99 to $200 for a two and three pack. So compared to everything else on the market, they are cheap. I know a lot of people like them, and I'm not a big fan of them. I've used them in the past. I don't like that they're attached to a Google account. Totally makes sense that they are because it is a Google product. But I just, I don't know, I'm just, I guess, weirded out by that myself.

But I'm sure this will be priced competitively, especially when the Eero 6 Pro E is, you know, $299 per single unit. So you're looking at, depending on how you buy them, you know, $600 to $800 for a three pack. And this will come in at, you know, half the cost of that, I'm sure. So good luck to them. I was watching a review of one of the new TCL TVs, the TCL C83, I think is what it is.

It's TV model numbers. Can't keep up with them. Never kept up with them. Sure can't keep up with them now, but over on HGTV reviews, YouTube channels are really good. He was going through it and one of his complaints was that it has Google TV built built into the rebranded android tv thing that we'll probably talk about here in a little bit but um one of the things he was complaining about when you set it up you actually

had to log in and use your google you know credentials to basically get the tv to pretty much work like it's you to get kicked off with the Android TV, you had to, to, to log in and do, do anything with it. You had to log in and I guess TCL was like, Oh, you know, we'll, we'll fix this in a firmware update or something like that. But I thought that was interesting. It's kind of the same thing. Like you're kind of locked in to logging in with a Google account or something like that to just to watch, to get your TV functional and usable. Yeah. And a great tip, you know, I would offer to people in this situation, you know,

whether it's a, you have a smart home assistant like Google or use like smart things or something like that is that you kind of come up with a joint email or a shared email and you kind of register all those smart devices underneath it. And one of the advantages, you know, if you had to do something with Google TV is that at least all those video searches and everything else wouldn't show up under your personal account. It would be a separate account.

So that was one of the first things, you know, I did when I got Google Assistant is that we made a joint account and everything's just registered underneath there. And I don't have to worry about it coming under my personal account. So definitely something to consider if you're getting into a situation like this. You got a burner burner email account. That's what you're getting into a situation like this. You got a burner email account. That's what you're saying. Yeah. And especially with Google, you know, I've heard a couple horror stories about people being locked out of their Google account.

And once you're locked out of your Google account, there's so many things attached to it that you'll never be able to get into again. And especially if you've registered for other accounts using your Google account, how do you access those without access to your Google account? So I'm always weary about those kinds of things. Cause I just don't want that to happen to me. Yeah. It's scary to think about. There was a famous story years ago about one of like a major editor or somebody that had their Apple ID, um, attacked and they essentially just locked them out of all their devices, devices of course but then went through and like just deleted everything and he lost pictures of his kid like that you know baby

pictures of that just didn't exist anywhere else except on whatever phone they erased remotely and uh you know it caused a big stink and everything but it's like one it's one of these things you really don't think about like backups are never anything you really think about until like the worst happens kind of like like fire insurance or something like that. Like you, you don't expect to ever have to use something like that, um, or a backup, but yeah, I, I'm, I'm a little overzealous with back, like a backup locally in two places. And then I, I back up to like Amazon and back ways to make sure you should just, one of them is going to fail. One of them is not set up right. I can guarantee you.

So, and I, if you don't test your backups, which I haven't done in a long time, uh, they're just not, they're not that trustworthy. So I'm just, I'm just wishing, I guess at this point that the bits that I'm throwing up into the cloud are, are good. Yeah. It's funny whenever somebody asked me like how they should back up things or, or what they should use. And I always tell people, you know, you want to have two or three backups at least.

Three is usually the ideal amount because one of those is going to go bad. And people always look at me like, I'm not going to do three different backups. And I know, just use one of the cloud services then. You got to do three, ideally. And then you got to test it because I have been in a position

where the backup I was doing locally didn't work. And I was like, oh, well, I'll just use the Backblaze backup that I know and love. And like, whoops, it was in a state where it didn't back up whatever needed to be backed up when it was supposed to. So that was useless, too. So I just lost the data. And even after taking precautions and everything and somewhat religiously backing up things, it didn't work. So yeah, back up, uh, get a burner account and use that two factor authentication. Cause that's really the only way to not get hacked,

you know, hopefully anyway, uh, speaking of, speaking of, uh, speaking of the Google TV there, it's, uh, it's, it's being reported now that after, uh, after a nearly year, uh the Google TV there, it's being reported now that after a nearly year, Google TV is now making progress towards launching 50 channels worth of free ad-supported content. There's a couple of posts that have a full list of the channel list, but I'm not going to go into all of those, I guess. But according to text in the latest version of Android TV launcher app, so of course somebody hacked this to find out before it was launched. They're going to start out with 50 channels and Google TV has

steadily worked on its live TV options, gaining deep integration with apps like Pluto TV and Philo, as well as the companies on YouTube TV. This new integration allows users to start watching live TV without downloading another app. So you turn the TV on, this TCL TV I was talking about, don't need to download the Pluto TV app to have that deep integration, but you get one of these 50 channels that they've partnered with.

Kind of comparing that to like a Samsung TV when you break it out of the box. Those TVs now offer over 200 free channels. They're ad supported, but they over 200 free channels. They're ad supported, but they offer 200 free channels of content that is supported by ads. So it's a, it's an interesting world now. Like we're not, this is like not broadcast TV. It's not like over an antenna or anything, but you get the TV, you turn it on. It's not just like a, a dumb TV anymore. It's got the smarts inside and it can get online and watch videos. And

I don't know, I kind of find this interesting. Like TV is not completely useless if you aren't paying, uh, for a, a subscription service and you kind of want to watch TV. You got options. Yeah. I don't,

I don't have any reason to use this myself. Um, and before the show we were talking about, I, I find it annoying when i get a client a samsung tv and they maybe have like an over-the-air antenna hooked up to it um because it shows the local channels along with the samsung tv plus streaming uh channels um and as far as i know there's no way to disable that um so if you do connect it to the internet you just automatically

get that um and if somebody knows how to disable it, please let us, please let me know. Cause it is pretty annoying. Um, but I can see why somebody would like this is because like, just like you said, it doesn't make the TV useless when you pull it out of the box. If you don't have any access to any streaming services or, uh, you know, kale box or DVD player, whatever you have, then at least you have something. Or even an OTA antenna, right? Like if you didn't have the antenna. Yeah, absolutely.

Plug this thing into your internet line and you got 200 or 250 channels of free content. Yeah. So, I mean, I can see the value in it. And I assume a lot of people are using this kind of service just because everybody is coming out with it now. This looks, you know, what I like about this is it has a lot of news stations on it. And news stations are usually things I watch when I'm watching live tv it's to see the local news what's happening right now and they got a number of news stations nbc news you know today all day news live usa today you know um it's a lot of the other channels i probably wouldn't but i think this is the beginning of something you know i can see in the future they're going to expand they're going to add better channels and you know what it

it's free for now uh expect to pay at some point to get better channels well um who wants more ads oh it's too bad you're getting them you're getting them anyway yeah starting december 8th a new version version of the Disney streaming service will be available with ads for $7.99 a month. And if you're wondering, like, wait, that's the price I pay right now. Well, guess what? Your price is going up as well. So the price for, they're going to have two tiers now, basically. The ad-free tier is going to go up to $10.99 a month. So it was funny, just like thinking back, Disney announced this and said that tier is going to go up to $10.99 a month. So it was funny.

It's like thinking back, Disney announced this and said that they were going to introduce a lower cost ad-supported tier. And this is one way you do it. You raise the price of the non-ad-supported tier and still technically lower cost. Brilliant, brilliant guys. The ad version will be known as Disney Plus Basic and the ad-free tier

will be known as Disney Plus Premium. And all ad-free tier will be known as Disney Plus Premium, and all Disney Plus titles will still be available across both platforms. These prices are similar to the scheme offered by the Disney-owned Hulu service, but there's a little bit more here. Hulu is also set for a price increase starting on October 10th. The basic subscription will increase by $1 to $7.99. The ad-free tier is going from $12 a dollar to seven 99. Uh, the ad free tier is going from 1299 to 1499. Meanwhile,

Disney plus bundle, which includes Hulu with ads and Disney plus without ads. Of course, who can remember all this stuff? Uh, and ESPN will increase from, uh, three,

uh, 1399 to 1499 a month. And the premium version, which includes ad free Hulu will remain about 1999 a month. This is, this is why people download stuff this is why people steal stuff just listening to you read this out was it hurt you know like it's too confusing it's going back to cable we've gone back to cable come full circle

and all they did was you're paying $7.99 a month for what you currently have and they say okay now we're going to give you ads but if you want no ads then you gotta pay $11 a month now they didn't introduce a lower streaming service they're just now forcing you to pay more to get rid of the ads that you didn't have before like it's getting too confusing it's like and it changes too much you know like people just like consistency with their cable. Like you turn on the TV. You remember the days when you didn't even know, like you just knew what channel things were on. You know, you just was like, I'm going to channel 24 for my news. I'm going to channel 16 for days of our lives. Well, now all, you know, all that's changing, right?

Like it's getting confusing. Well, we all knew that Disney was going gonna disney plus was gonna get more expensive though right like there was no way that it was gonna last forever at 7.99 because that is extremely cheap compared to every other streaming service out there so i just kind of figured when they launched this at this price that they would definitely increase price at some point um probably didn't see it like this but totally makes sense because i think we're paying for one other streaming service maybe two i think we're paying for like crunchy roll um and like discovery plus uh which is less than ten dollars a month right now but everything else is north of ten

dollars i'm trying to remember what what we paid for disney we paid like this deal was like two or three years of Disney Plus. And it was like 70, I think it was $75 for like two or three years. This is a launch price, like this launch deal that they did right before. And I think Jason and I both

were like, wow, that's a good, I mean, that's basically a cable bill. Like may as well pay that. And we're going to get enough entertainment out of that service with kids that

this is going to pay for itself in about a month so which it has i mean it's done that but now like i'm i don't know when that ends i'm kind of wondering when i'm going to be subject to this this madness of uh never-ending price increases and and shuffling that's going on between these services which are all owned by the same company now like how many streaming services subscriptions do you currently have disney netflix prime if that counts prime prime yeah because their price goes up too right like they just did a price increase on us i'm at my peak right now we have netflix hbo max discovery plusroll, and I think there's one more that I'm not remembering right now. Amazon, I guess, if you're counting that.

So five. I have to fire up the Apple TV to really look at the options that I have because they're all kind of rearranged towards the top. And we do rotate things in and out. Like if something comes on Hulu that we really want to see, we'll flip Hulu on for a month and turn something else off. Yeah, that's what we do yeah you get hbo probably for the game of thrones um starting up soon yeah i i heard about that it sounds like it's a prequel or something they're making for that so hopefully i mean what's

funny is we were really into game of thrones and that last season came out and every and we had canceled hbo but we're going to turn it on on and then everybody was like saying how bad it was and uh and then of course the last episode hit and they're talking about like how like the streaming on it like failed TJ we were talking about HBO this was like a major deal a few years back when that that season finale of Game of Thrones came on and their tech this is again their technology stack the video was so atrocious that nobody could actually see what was on the TV because it was, I guess, a dark video or something. I haven't seen it yet, but everybody said it was just not even worth watching. So we just, we'd never have, we just, in our minds, the Game of Thrones just lives on and you know, they're, they're doing things with dragons and. This is, this is why you shouldn't

be an early adopter. We watched it way after this and didn't have any problems well yeah yeah i mean i guarantee it was like a problem with their like the cdn was just overwhelmed with how many connections were coming in for the season finale it was it was an awful last episode so don't you worry i'm very upset with the last season one of these days one of these days don't worry they created a spin-off so they can ruin that as well you sound bitter i'm so bitter it's like a like a waste of like a whole tv series it's like the whole thing was just so good and then the last season they were just like we just have to kill this somehow we don't really care how just uh everything happens no no no oh i couldn't watch that i can't watch 20 seasons of walking nothing is worse than the lot finale do you remember that one lost was an excellent show and i think i think

it still holds up today the problem with lost is that the showrunners lost control of the show yeah lost control of the show and and the abc executives were like hey let's throw a bunch of filler seasons in like fools and they're, we have nothing written for this. And they just had to make up stuff. So like it went around and around in circles. I think if they had ended that, you know, like now you can have a successful series in like three or four seasons and everybody's like raving about it. Yeah.

That went on way too long. Like The Walking Dead. Just like, I mean, The Walking Dead is just ridiculous. That could have been four, three to four seasons, and they could have done a really good job. They could have had all the spinoffs and still kept the thing going. But man, AMC is just, they don't know when to stop. There's so many Walkings and so many Deads.

And how many of these zombies are still alive? It's just, it's unbelievable. Wow, there's only 10 seasons of Walking Dead. I feel like there's got to be way more. Oh, that's just one show. Like, just, it's unbelievable. Wow. There's only 10 seasons of walking dead. I feel like there's gotta be way more. Oh, that's just one show. Like look at all the other walking shows. The number of steps they have logged in that show is ridiculous. Just walking. The characters are great, great character writing,

great character development and like the first three or four seasons. And it's like, I want to see what happened to these. And it just got to the point where it was like, I can't watch this anymore we're done with this and uh and i i just got up one day and i was angry and i got i just left and my wife tried to keep watching it and she couldn't so we're done sorry sorry mc should have ended that should have should have killed the walkers and called it a day years ago or killed the people i didn't care just kill him kill anybody story that's all we were tuning in for.

You know this. How does it end? It was all a dream. You're all dead anyway. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, moving on here. Snap One. In a surprisingly short post, Snap One revealed

that it had acquired a company that everyone already thought had been acquired by Snap 1. Clear Controls. Clear Controls makes a Clear 1 security system, which kind of made for the custom install market. It's got some automation stuff built into it. It connects with home automation platforms and that kind of thing on the pro side. And they've been a long time Snap, Snap One supplier, Snap AV supplier, whatever, selling both branded security systems and the cameras through an exclusive partnership since that they started back in 2019. So they've been around for a long time in the Snap ecosystem.

So here's the post that was on their website, and this is pretty much it says building on the success of its existing distribution agreement. Snap one today announces the acquisition of Claire controls, the maker of smart home and security solutions. It's not one partners who install hybrid. So that's what they call dealers now who install hybrid smart home and security solutions, rely on Claire controls products. We're proud to continue supporting partners who look to Snap-on for best-in-class

and easy-to-install solutions like the Clare Control brand offerings. Kind of interesting. TJ, have you ever used any of the Clare, I think they have like Vision or something like that, Clare products that are there? Honestly, until this was announced, this very short post,

I had no idea that it was even a thing anymore. I kind of thought they had got bought out or acquired a long time ago just because I never hear about them. Yeah, yeah. They weren't they weren't they didn't make noise in the market. I would see like press releases every now and then. So full disclosure, I worked for Claire Controls way back when they were like a startup and they didn't really exist at the company they are today. There was only a few of us and we were just kind of like mucking about trying to release a product that was not this. This is like two or three iterations in the product line down the road from where we were.

We were making something that would compete with Crestron and Savant and looking to do that. And and since then they've pivoted to more like focusing on like the production builder market i guess so every now and then you'll see like 3 000 homes being built with claire one products or something you know like they've signed an agreement with some builder that in some neighborhood somewhere uh but i i haven't i'm kind of with you tj i haven't seen anything um other than kind of like those types of press releases from Claire. And I, you know, kind of, I'm not saying I follow them closely, but at least, you know, I recognize the name when it comes up in the news. I haven't really seen them do much outside of like this exclusive agreement with Snap. And I guess it kind of makes sense.

Like SnapAV really doesn't have, or SnapOne I guess now, doesn't really have a security offering for like a panel, like a panel type security system. They can kind of maybe bring this in-house, this product, and utilize it for their dealers and, you know, get them an automated security panel solution like for hardwired or wireless security that integrates well with the brands that they sell like control for so kind of kind of makes sense from a strategic uh platform like gavin you have any thoughts on this one or he's like these are companies i'd never heard of and probably never will see never heard of them never like when i looked at this

article the highlight of this article was the picture on the side it was their uh latest magazine cover the lady allison she's wearing under vanity shirt you know the famous baby in the water i was you know i was focused on that because i have no clue who claire controls is it's a nice looking panel um i wish in the do-it-yourself space we had a really nice reliable panel i mean i know we have like workaround panels and stuff like that, but I've not, I want one that's really reliable. Um, I'd like to see one of those, but yeah, that's, I have no idea who they are. It's kind of interesting to see these larger companies

that are in the professional home automation space kind of condense and acquire different parts. Um, you know, there's several professional home automation companies out there like Crestron or RTI or Control4, but a couple companies, notably SnapAV or SnapOne and Nice, formerly Nortec, they own a large portion of the space at this point. SnapOne and Nice both have a home automation platform.

They both have a home security platform. They own, you know, wiring and cabling and all that other stuff that's kind of needed to be an all-in-one solution. So it's just interesting to see these larger companies kind of acquire others and become a one-stop shop for the custom integrator. You know, and it's an advantage when you can go to just one company like SnapOne and buy

every single thing you need to build and complete a house. So totally makes sense in the long run. Yeah, I mean, there's two sides to that. Two more points, I guess, on that is that when you see acquisitions like this between bigger companies, and it really just tells you the marketplace is still shrinking and getting smaller and smaller because there's less, there's less, just that's the way it is. It means that something here is a little still off-kilt. I mean, Crestron's a big one on the block, but you can't do a Crestron install for another year, right? Like everybody's saying, the product just doesn't exist. So I don't know. We saw a lot of these acquisitions go over the past couple of years

through the pandemic, really. And then it kind of like cooled off a little bit. But now I guess Snap is back on it. They bought up pretty much all the distribution space in North America. And they will probably continue that buying spree, I guess, overseas. I can imagine them getting involved in buying more of the just like the standard distributors overseas as they want to expand their footprint everywhere. So but again, it all kind of leads back to the shrinking of the market and shrinking of the industry. And the second thing is it doesn't make anybody unique when you have one place to buy. Like this is a bespoke, like bespoke market, right? Like the custom integrator, but it's not very custom if you're selling the same product as everybody else,

or you have access to the same product as everybody else. And that's kind of what's made the boutique industry of custom integration so boutique over time, right? Because there was some exclusivity to smaller brands that not many people had heard of or they had heard of. And it's just like you can only buy it from like two places. It's getting harder and harder to find those brands these days because they've all either combined or merged. I mean, what's the, what's the group that has, that has Denon? Is that a big group? Like has Denon, maybe Macintosh too? I don't know. There's some big like AV brands that like consolidated all of the receivers and everything. So like all of those are basically, I mean, they're, they're still made United Sound. Is that it? I don't remember. They've, they've changed hands so many times.

They have consolidated all these products in, in products in the industry to like two or three mega companies that kind of own and control the supply chains for all of them. It's like, well, are you getting like the same receiver when you buy a Marantz as, you know, these days as it was when it was the 1970s when you, you know, no, you're not like it's completely different brands, completely different company, completely different components that and that make up that. And basically you're not. Like it's a completely different brand. It's a completely different company, completely different components that make up that. And basically you're just buying the brand on the front of it that you remember. So anyway, long way to say, and like these acquisitions are good and bad. Like it's nice to have the, you know, a company like Clare One,

I guess, brought into the fold of Snap EV. But also it kind of means kind of should be a warning sign or just maybe it's just a warning in general that the market may be getting a little smaller for everybody well and in the acquisitions you know just like this i don't really see snap a snap one keeping clear controls around in the long run i see them you know supporting the products and everything like that but i would assume at some point that they're just going to merge this into control four um because why wouldn't you want that integration just already there so you know that's kind of the the thing that stinks for

the long run is that maybe it does consolidate a lot more and you're not going to have that individuality anymore yeah i mean they can they do better by buying these brands and keeping them separate like triad didn't you didn't go away when Control 4 bought them. But Control 4's brand of audio stuff went away, and now they use Triad. So it's like, okay, the engineering people, they just scrubbed off the Control 4 branding and put Triad on it. And they probably got some assistance making the product but i i don't i guess what i'm trying to say is i don't see this particular product being

rolled into control for and the reason for that is like it integrates with other stuff already like it integrates with rti and elon and crestron and all that stuff like they have drivers for the security panel they've been pretty automation forward when they made it which i think is what helped it gain traction in the industry. Well, and that would, that would be my only thing. And that's probably why I'm saying,

you know, the, the, the rolling into control for just because nobody knows who Claire controls is for the most part. Um, and those products would work well with control for if they were able to integrate them fully. Yeah.

Um, so I, you know, who knows what, what will happen in the future, but it just doesn't seem like a very big name that they would need to keep around and that one that a lot of people just won't know about so it's definitely nice that they have like a one guy or you know somebody at the top that is like the the chief integration officer let's just put the i

don't know what who that is and snap i like you know what i mean like they are saying like hey we have the control force stuff we've got um your outdoor tv line we've got the clear one stuff now let's make sure that whatever we do always integrates like no matter what just always integrates and that's good that's a good thing for everybody that would make too much sense for the technology space yeah it doesn't happen i mean it just doesn't happen very often so um, um, it, it, it would, that that's a, not a pipe. I don't think that's a pipe dream because it's, it's what we see with snap AV already, like their products, you can go to their website if I, and maybe you have to be there to maybe you don't, but you can definitely download the control protocol for

Sunbright TVs, right? Like you can, you can write a driver for Hubitat based on that protocol. Like it's not difficult. But and if there is one for the Claire one, maybe they write it internally. I don't know. But they could definitely release that integration down the road for something like SmartThings or Hubitat, that kind of thing. So maybe not SmartThings because they're just going to change on you anyway, break their integrations. Yeah, the smart home space is still in its infancy,

so plenty of things to change still. Yep, yep. Sorry, Gavin. We talked a lot about custom integration business, and he's just sitting there like, I don't know, I've never heard of these people. Yeah, I imagine he's off reading about, what's her name here, Alison Hegendorf.

I don't even know who she is. I don't know. She really likes music and they're fine. It just looks like an ad, so I'm not even sure it's relevant to the article. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, it's our latest issue. And I guess that's just the one. There's plenty of other people that you can read about if you click on that

and plenty more covers. Oh, interesting. Let's move on here. After reporting a bumpy third quarter earnings last week, Sonos announced that it decided to push back a product launch that was originally penciled in for some time in the near future. That product launch in question is almost certainly the long-awaited Sonos Sub Mini. It's reportedly a more affordable subwoofer than the existing $750 sub.

Sub Mini appeared in FCC in June. If you kind of like follow the trend line of when things appear in the FCC, and then when Sonos actually announces and launches the product, it should be sometime around now for like pretty soon for them to launch. But instead, Sonos spokesperson Erin, I shouldn't put her last name in, Patagas? I don't know. Confirmed to The Verge over there in an email saying, I can confirm that we decided to push

back an anticipated product launch from Q4 2022 into Q1 2023. So that would put its rescheduled arrival sometime between October and December, where we get to know a little bit more about the sub mini, maybe the pricing and all that good stuff. Maybe some pre-orders. And we can keep moving our bets back. I've got our predictions over here that we put our bets on the line. TJ was at $449.

I was at $599 and Gavin is saying $600. I didn't write next to that Canadian or American, but we'll just leave it on there either way. We'll do the conversions later on. All right. Keep it fair.

Yeah. I might have to up mine after seeing the Ray pricing. A little high for me. Yeah. Sonos never, I mean, they always like to come in high on that. So,

but unfortunately we're not going to get to sub mini this year. I've been, I've been holding off on it. Like I've been, I've been staring at the subs online, like used a gen two, gen three subs thinking like maybe, maybe I buy one now for the garage and I can get like a theater set up here. Finally I got this, I got the projector.

I've got a mount for the projector to hang it from the ceiling. And I've got like my crummy little screen over there hanging on the garage door. It just needs good sound out here. Like when you watch a movie, the Apple HomePod is doing an OK job. But like I can get a Sonos, you know, sound. I already got a Sonos, everything else. Like may as well get the Sonos soundbar, put that in. May as well get a Sonos sub, put that in.

Call it a day. But now I'm going to have to wait a little bit longer to get the little mini sub. I just do like I did. I bought a used Gen 2 subwoofer, so that way I can use the upgrade coupon and sell the old subwoofer and buy the new sub mini. He's planning ahead. Planning ahead.

Just got to think about it. I've been watching the sub mini because the regular sub, I think, is just too much for the space I'm putting it in the sub mini um i think would be perfect it'll just add that little extra base that i'm looking for um it so i'm kind of upset that's being delayed um but rule of thumb no matter what you think it's gonna cost add about 30 to that price and you'll you know you'll get probably what they're selling it for gavin gavin gavin have you not learned anything from this rack yeah a sub that subwoofer is going to be perfect for what you could put that in the bathroom and it would be perfect that sub is

beautiful i just need the mini the mini's good enough you know like you have to upgrade the rack speaker to a to a ray or a beam and then add a mini no just stop trying to spend my money no i think i think this would be a great addition if and when it launches just because you know there's a lot of situations where it would be nice to have a sub but it's not you know nice enough to spend 800 on or you just don't need that much power. Um, the regular sub is pretty powerful. And if you use it in a smaller room or just an area where you maybe don't care about that much base, you just want that,

those extra lows. Um, this would be a great addition. So hopefully it launches, hopefully it launches at a reasonable price and we might see it this year. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

It would be great to have, um, they need something in a lower price point they have they have product that goes down market you know outside of the arc which you know it's like a what fifteen hundred dollar two thousand dollar soundbar it's up there the arc yeah is that right is it's like 8.99 well maybe i've been looking at them with the subwoofer yeah yeah maybe i'm looking at them like with a complete system with like the surrounds and everything so it's i was kind of like yeah that sounds about right yeah okay so um but yeah you

can go down into the beam and and still you know it doesn't make sense like in some situations it wouldn't make sense to do the larger sub um i i totally agree on there so it'd be nice to have like another option to get and a lot of times even like i have the old play bar right it's a good sounding sound bar but it does not sound great until you add the sub in and that's what a lot of sonos prices products need they just need that little extra oomph on the bottom and pull it out of the speakers on the wall and put it into that sub and uh it really makes the the system sound you know just a thousand times better um so uh hopefully they do come out with that and we are able to get our hands on one And it really makes the system sound, you know, just a thousand times better. So hopefully they do come out with that and we are able to get our hands on one.

Hopefully they release it before someone buys out Sonos. Don't say that. Yeah, their stock took a real big hit on Wednesday last week. They did not have a good sales quarter and they hadn't fired enough people or... And then they just got sued by Google. So there's all kinds of bad news for Sonos and the CFO left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've been playing tricks with that company for a while

to like juice their numbers. And they had a really good, like through the pandemic, they had some good quarters through there, but they've been playing games. And they recently let go, like recently within the last year or two they let it go like a ton of people uh and it's like somehow their stock just kept skyrocketing and it's like well it's because they they don't have any people working there anymore

um so yeah i would i would i'd like to see them stay around i do not i'm with you guys i do not want them bought by apple that would just be the kiss of death and then google we know they'd keep them around for at least a year and then they would just strip the patents out of it and then sell everything else just like they did with motorola yep yep or they would just keep them around and just like have like half weird product launches like the nest brand over the next you know it's like oh it's it's there it's would, they would never release Chromecast on it. They'd just be like, oh, we can't do that. Some agreement we assigned. Yeah. Oh man. Those guys are still bitter about it and they'll never put Chromecast on

Sonos, even though we own them. Oh man. Yeah. That's exactly what would happen. If Google or Amazon buys Sonos, I'm getting rid of mine immediately. Just so we're clear. Yeah. Yeah. I, I probably, you probably you know i'm gonna go back to buying those old uh component systems the old receivers with speakers you know do it old school yeah you can't put speakers you can't put the microphones in those you know then yeah all right tj i have found a new show for you to watch with your bounty hunters uh show this this is going to make a great

addition to the type of tv you like to watch watch tj um a new america's funniest home video style uh show hosted by none other than wanda sykes is on its way to your tvs very soon discovery plus i'm sure uh it won't be showing any clips deliberately captured with smartphone cameras or video cameras nope it's going to feature videos captured by ring doorbells and smart home cameras. The show is called Ring Nation and is produced by MGM Television and Big Fish Entertainment.

According to Deadline, Ring Nation will showcase viral videos that feature content such as neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military unions, and animals doing funny things. Barry Posnick, president of alternative television and Orion TV at MGM said,

from the incredible to the hilarious and uplifting must-sees viral moments from around the country every day, Ring Nation offers something for everyone watching at home to enjoy. This is going to be just for you tj this is just got your name yes you know honestly i'm surprised it's taken this long to come up with this idea just for the simple fact that like a lot of the viral videos i see online now are from like ring doorbells or other video doorbells of things happening meteor has fallen from the sky cars crashing into your

house babies being saved cats being attacked all kinds of crazy things so you know i think it's hilarious that amazon has started this because why not make a youtube channel what is wrong with these people heck no they have to fill those streaming numbers up how are you going to do that without custom content like this seth i do i this is the dumbest thing i've ever heard in my life i could just see the amazon employees it's probably like they were probably just going through all our videos anyway and then they would see all the funny stuff and then they would share it amongst each other in the office and then somebody said hey let's make a tv show yeah it yeah yeah exactly that's probably the

birth of ring nation right there whoever whoever thought of that i hope they got a huge raise because this is going to be the idea of whatever year it launches you know everybody's going to be watching this this is literally ow my balls i'm sorry this is the dumbest thing i don't even know what that is what is that idiocracy like this is this is literally the tv show that they sit around and watch people get kicked in the butt and this is perfect for our short attention span because ring videos are what 15 30 seconds they can fit so many videos and so much commentary into like a half hour show this is like america's funniest home videos again but with ring cameras 100 you guys homework is to watch Idiocracy and then we'll report back next week.

Just like everything else television does, they just got to rehash what they already had before. So why not? Why not? No new ideas here. I was driving down my street today and I had to do a U-turn and go back and take it. I put a picture of this in the hub, but somebody had put a ring doorbell above their garage door as as the security camera they obviously have height requirements for those that can visit for their visitors yeah you got to be at least 10 foot tall oh is that shack's house because that would make sense maybe it's grandma's house or something

it's really funny. I just drove by. I had to do a double take. And then I was like, no, I got to go take a picture of this. This is too good. So you actually drove by this? It's one of my neighbors. It's one of my neighbor's houses.

Yeah, yeah. Did they clear it with the homeowners association? Oh, yeah. No, you don't need it for that. I just thought it was funny. Like, there's a, it's a door. And it's, like, right over their garage. It's, like, not, it would be, I just thought it was funny. Like there's a, it's a door and it's like right over their garage. It's like not, it would be, I think it would be ideal if they had like one of the security lights there, but it's a ring doorbell.

Like it's, I don't know. I don't know what you would do with that. It's kind of funny. The best part is the Ohio plates in the driveway. So, well, that makes sense. Shout out to Ohio. Oh, now adds up. Okay.

They obviously brought it from their winter home or their summer home. All right. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight, including that with light, can be found in our show notes at over at hometech.fm slash 400. 400, guys. That's pretty cool. All right. Well, moving on, we got a mailbag tonight. And listener Don writes in.

He's got two words for Gavin, Rackstuds. And I'm thinking, is he talking about like renaming the show? Like that sounds like a great we're we're we like Rackstuds. It's our new TV show. Yeah, we can make a reality TV show. Oh, that's genius. We just go and fix messy racks all the time. Going to like McDonald's. I mean, I'm not going to fix them. Yeah, we'll just tell people what to do and what money to spend to fix. Oh, that would be awesome. We could tell you how to spend your money on a new rack.

Better than a Wanda Sykes hosted thing. I'm telling you right now. And then everybody would be like, why do we need to do that? I have a cabinet over here. Exactly. It's like, this is too much money. I'll just put it in the IKEA thing that I bought for $35. All right. All right. uh tj giving you grief

about the screws uh tell him to send you some rack studs i have uh i guess there's different types that you need for the different sizes and stress ratings on different like heavier products and that kind of thing so it's kind of out for me don but for teach his own i guess like he's he's like he sits there very nice uh for things you might move out from time to time. Unless you use the rails. Rails are really thick, the red studs, or the duo work, purple or for thick rails. So keep an eye on that if you are interested in rack studs. Looks like you've got to do a little bit of research on it.

He said he also has a suggestion for Gavin for the Unify Keystone plate that we talked about. Um, he found and purchased on, on Amazon, one that matches the Unify colors exactly. And each hole is numbered and it's, he says it's very solid and it doesn't seem to stay in stock for very long. Uh, it's made by a company, Rackidea. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Here's a 24, here it is, Rackidea. 24-point Keystone patch panel, blank patch panel for Keystone Jacks, Keystone panel, unify silver, color silver. They really are hitting up that SEO on the Amazon listing. But it looks good.

It looks like it's supposed to. Yeah, yeah. He says it matches. The color picture doesn't look very good, but I guess there's people who have pictures of it down, you know, that say it matches the, and Don here says it matches the color very good. So, Gavin, if you want to swap out your Keystone Jacks,

you know, do a little extra work, do a little extra credit. You can match that, the UDM, UDM you're going to have to get, the pro one, right? Yeah, you have to get the rack mountable one. You have that little trash can thing. that sits on top of the rack. It's not really a good solution if we're being honest. You know, the more I look at this rack, the more I think about things and things start to bug me.

I was thinking of taking that dream machine and even mounting it on the wall away from the rack. What did you get the rack for? Yeah. You paid all this money for a rack and you're talking about I'm just going to mount it on the wall. No. i can't do everything at once i need future projects so i'm gonna save that for a future project you know i was looking at the rack studs and and then it started to come you know it hit me this rack is sitting in my basement you know nobody sees it the only time

i see it is when i go down there into the freezer of the cold room, really, right? Or I go to reboot one of the servers. So I'm like, you know what? It doesn't bother me that much. How do you sleep at night? I know. Easily. Easily.

Because I'm not looking at that rack. It can make all the noise in the world. It's down in the basement. So I'm thinking of swapping out the dream machine eventually i'm waiting on the new isp i'm gonna make that decision um today i added a top shelf i have a drawer coming in this week by the time it's short so by the end of the week i think i'm gonna be done with my rack first revision for now for now yeah first revision yeah i uh thanks for the uh information on the rack studs don i actually bought a pack that i have never used yet um just because one of the things i want the whole

rack to look the same and if i can't use them for heavier things like a ups or a computer or something like that then i have to just go to traditional like cage nuts and racks or rack screws anyway and i might as well just use that um but i do have a i think like a 20 pack or 30 pack in the van uh waiting for that one moment that i can use them uh where it'll be convenient so hopefully i can use them soon i did not realize there was different weight ratings though so that's pretty hilarious yeah and and you're you're gonna have a problem with like you're you need those security ones so you're gonna you can't lock down your your yeah i don't like i don't like people touching my stuff so i definitely need the security ones and these ones you can just spin right off so i will uh i will nitpick

this uh unify patch panel thing though they use black screws when they could have used silver screws yeah not really matching up see gavin you gotta go with the whole aesthetic you know you don't want somebody you don't want somebody going in your basement and just thinking that you don't care about your rack my my whole you're giving me a complex now my whole rack is like black right like that's the theme i went with and it's annoying that the unify switch i have is in silver. That's the one piece that stands out. And I was actually looking around to see if there's template stickers you can put on a faceplate or something I can replace it to get with black. So I'm looking for one of those to see if I can. Because that does bug me.

That doesn't match everything else on there. I'm sure somebody makes one. I just bought rackstuds.tv. So when, when, when Amazon's ready, we were ready. We're doing it. We're doing it.

This is going to be a YouTube channel. And if, if you want us, you want us to come spend your money on your racks and tell you what to do. You're going to do it, but we'll tell you, it'll be like remotely. Like we'll rate your rack,

you know, remotely as a part of our YouTube show and we'll start oh no this is this is important enough to fly out to all three of us can be on i think i think we can make a production out of this for sure yeah filmed on iphone or whatever we'll get apple money for like bragging about that yeah i'm excited about this hopefully this venture you know comes to fruition here and we're able to to help you help you out with your racks because we're rack studs and rack studs.tv we can launch it on our own streaming service and then we'll give everybody access to our free security system i'm still looking for a plate a front plate for my uh unify switch i gotta get it in black do they have face plates that are in black for the unify switches you know i'm looking for one and i don't find one you have to send me your model number

to see there's a ton of do you have etsy up there yeah we got etsy i have stuff shipped from the u.s from etsy etsy's like the best thing for that all right okay well thanks don for writing in we appreciate the feedback and the help spending more of Gavin's money. We totally, any opportunity we have to do that, we're for it. Yeah, fix those screws. Rackstuds.tv. All right, moving on here. I got to pick the week. I've got something for your rack studs out there.

I have this card in our notes called Seth's Zip Tie Thingy. And the guys have been kind of like, what the heck is that? For a couple of weeks. But it's these things. I saw them on Amazon one day and I was like, oh, that's kind of like, what the heck is that? For a couple of weeks. But it's these things I saw on Amazon. And I was like, oh, that's kind of a clever idea. And it's basically a zip tie holder. It's got like, how do I describe this? It's got it's it's a circular clamp, I guess.

It's a hole you put zip ties in. You can replicate this with using another zip tie and wrapping it around the zip ties and zip tying them all together in a bundle because that's what i think most people do but this is got like a little um what you hear rattling here is uh what this is called a carabiner or something like that you can clip it onto your belt um you can clip it onto your tool pack and all you have to do it it holds these securely uh it's looks kind of like cheesy but it actually works I'm kind of impressed you reach in and pull out a zip tie like you normally would

TJ actually pointed out that it glows in the dark which I tested out before the show but could not conclusively say whether it glows in the dark or not but it does look like that kind of like glow in the dark plasticky thing it's kind of like that off-white look to it but overall like I don't know, six out of 10.

Like, it does what it says on the 10, right? Like, it completely serves that. Seems to be pretty well-made, like, high-quality thick plastic. Holds zip ties. They haven't fallen out over the floor, like, you know, I would expect. But they are pricey. They're, like, $20-something for two. Like, $25, $ would expect, uh, but they're pricey, like 20 something dollars for two, like 25, $27 for two on Amazon.

Two for 25. It says supposedly the normal price is 35. So not sure how true that is, but, uh, for $25, I don't think it's like the worst purchase you could make. And if it works, then so be it. Um, I always, I never liked using like the single zip tie method just because uh i'm forgetful and so i would take you know five ten zip ties out of it and then i would just uh you know lose all the zip ties at that point is that just like is it like self-ratcheting or do

you have to manually close it as you take zip ties out no it's got like a a spring thing in here that you can open things like you you have to force you have to force the spring thing open and it's got like here it this is my asmr stuff right here so the first the first time you use that and your zip ties don't fall over the ground that'd probably be worth like here it's pretty it's it's got a solid spring in there um it's kind of like little grommets that the thing kind of like latches onto and and presses together so two for two for 25 isn't bad if you had a reason to have more than one but i'm i'm happy with it uh just because it it it also allows me to take the zip ties out of my work bag which is such a bulky thing to have inside the bag when you're trying to carry things around you can think about clipping the outside and they can

dangle there and be happy uh and i can be happy actually putting tools in a work bag rather than a bunch of zip ties so um they save a little bit of space um and i i guess like i said they do what they do what they say on the tin and i i can't complain though very noisy here on the show trying to get this put back together now they took it all apart though well you made you made me a believer i'm buying a set yeah i'd recommend them zip tie zip tie thingies uh i don't even know what they're called uh but they're their own amazon zip tie organizer holder now see they can do way better on their seo they just need to put like uh glows in the dark uh hold zip ties zip ties fail you know zip ties all over the floor yeah they i think

they'll do better if they work in the seo and and for 25 dollars it comes with 28 inch black zip ties i mean they did not give me 20 28 no did not get that in my package yeah got ripped off yeah one star review you wear my 25 zip ties probably not zip ties you want to use either um i will say that i've been like kind of moving back a little bit on how much i actually do use zip ties though i've been using the the velcro branded velcro stuff like little strips with the little ratchet yeah hook hook loop and hook or something hook and loop something like that yeah yeah they make them and you can buy them like in four packs way under the price of whatever this is.

And it just there's hundreds of them, maybe 400 of them in a pack. They're great. They're they're absolutely wonderful to use. And I have been using them a lot more because they get as tight as a zip tie. But then I can go back and undo things when I need to undo things. So the stuff that I touch a lot, I have been putting into Velcro and the stuff that I don't touch and I don't want to move goes to zip ties as usual. But anyway, TJ,

you probably just want to use like some kind of metal zip ties. Make sure nobody ever messes with your wires. Security screws, zip ties. You could find that. Yeah, not really worried about anybody messing

with my wiring at that point. It's it would be in conduit or or something else so um well i still use zip ties for anything that's permanent or to kind of get that nice structure around things before i put velcro on it um i you know when i started off in the industry we use uh zip ties like crazy um you would go through you know a hundred bag within minutes uh you know, if you're pre-wiring a place or something like that. So I'm kind of still in the habit of using zip ties to get everything into its location. But then I try to finish it off with Velcro.

So that way, if I add anything or need to remove anything, then it's relatively easy at that point. Gavin, have you gotten any, you're doing zip ties or Velcro on the rack? What are you doing? You have silver or black zip ties? They're black. They're not zip ties, but I've been using the Velcro, and I help with the cable management along the rails and stuff like that.

But I find the zip ties are best when you're interrogating people. I'm stronger, you know, so I utilize them. And that would be great because it's clipped onto the belt there, easily accessible. You know, if they break their handle, you just zip out a new one and put it down. You're good to go. Yeah. And the good thing about that one is you can use any size zip ties with it.

So you'll obviously be able to fit less into it, you know, as you get larger. But you don't have to worry. Eight inch, 16 inch, 20 inch. They'll all fit. The world is your oyster or a zip tie, whatever. It comes in packs of two so you'll always have plenty of zip ties it's like at least two packs one for each side of the belt yeah right head your double zip tie maybe they'll sponsor us for our rack stud show

quick zip mcgraw yeah all right all right well let's move on here. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, incriminating evidence, abductions or whatever Gavin's talking about over there for the show, give us a shout. Maybe not that one. I don't know. Maybe not that one. No, no. Don't send any of that to us.

We don't want to know. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback to fill out the online form. All right, guys, that wraps up this week. I got something to tell Gavin. Docker's kind of cool, man. Did you know that? I introduced you to it. I told you Docker is amazing. I love it. It wasn't so much of an introduction. It was just like I knew it existed. I just never had really needed or wanted, I guess, to use it. Like it was kind of like, I looked at it as like a server person's type thing.

And I guess like I have a server thing that you've been helping me make over the last couple of months here. But one thing I've been trying to do, have you heard of that paperless program? Yes, NG. Yeah, NGX. Yeah, I guess there's different versions of it, but NGX is like the new, the newest, but it's like an open source document collection thing. And you can like scan all your documents into it. And instead of organizing, it does exactly like what I wanted

to do. It just scans it in and you can go in there at any time and tell it, you know, what it is and tag it and label it. And it just goes in a big folder on your drive. That's exactly how I organize everything because the computers exist and they have search engines and it OCRs all the text. It's a nice little program, very basic compared to, like, I'm sure the commercial stuff that exists out there, but it does what it says it's going to do.

It really works well. I was like, at our community center, we have a bunch of, uh, like historic documents, right? Like old meeting minute notes or like older magazines that they published way back in the day when people actually, um, could do that kind of thing. Uh, and I was talking to somebody about like preserving that and like how we could do that. And I was like, let's just scan it. I know there's this program that exists out there. So over the weekend I was like, well, I want to play around with this myself. I got stuff I need to scan. Like there's junk all over my desk. I'd like to scan. So I

loaded it up. Docker, boom, done. Right. I was like, okay, well let me spin one up for them. And I was like, oh, I already installed one. No, wait, wait, you can make, you can make two Dockers. Did you know that, Gavin? You can have two of the same thing. Yep. And they run like they don't exist to each other because they're just two of the same thing just running there by themselves.

And I guess I'd known that, but it just hit me like a light bulb. Like, oh yeah, I just run this. I open up another port. I got millions of ports I guess I can use. I don't know. Anyway, it's working. It works great. I got two of them running now. And Do. I don't know. Anyway, it's working. It works great.

I got two of them running now. And Docker's kind of cool, man. Thanks. It's even better when you're running it on Unraid. Like the amount of stuff, like I have about 40 different Dockers running. And they're doing various things. But, yes, they are great. It's a very powerful tool.

And I always encourage people to get to know it. The best part about Docker is like all the config files and everything are stored outside of that little bubble. So if anything were to happen, like your config is just, it's safe. You just destroy the Docker, reset it back up and it reads the config right out of the file. Like it's a great tool. I had to do that for some reason.

Like the thing got hung up and wouldn't restart. And everybody said, Oh, just delete this thing. There's a button on Unraid that says delete Docker image. I was like, oh, I don't want to do that. It'll delete everything. And the guy said it so casually online. He was like, oh, I just deleted it and added my stuff back in through the installer. And I'm like, OK, well, we'll just try that.

I went in, deleted it, reinstalled it, and then just went over to the apps thing and started adding the stuff back in. All the settings were there, and it just cranked right back up. So yeah, really, I mean, it's kind of an, when we start talking about this stuff, I'm sure many people's eyes glaze over because it's kind of like one of those

like network or programmer-centric engineer things, but it really is kind of nice that you can just, it's basically like having its own little computer within a computer that runs one program is really how you can say that it's like a very lightweight virtual machine um where all the data you need to keep is kind of kept out of sight of the bubble and then the program itself is inside the bubble so when you destroy the bubble and recreate it all your config and all your data is still there because it was stored outside. It's all safe. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of my dockers, I run like all my AI stuff for my video cameras are actually running in a docker. Right. And it uses much less resources than like

a virtual machine, much less memory. And it works really fast. Computer in a computer that runs really fast and does one thing and one thing really well. And yeah, yeah, it's, it's a nice little, it was nice to do that. And, and, and what's really nice is like, there's, there's all this stuff with Unraid that you, and even on like the Docker, like you can go to the Docker website. There's all sorts of like these open source programs I've never even heard of that pop up like almost like in an advertised way or just like in a featured way where they're talking, like they'll feature things

and you can go in and just install it, tinker around with it, see if it's something you want to mess with. And if not, delete and it's gone and you don't have to worry about it. You know, it didn't hurt to do, like it doesn't really make or take up any space, so to speak. Just some config files, like you said.

You can delete it, move on. If this paperless thing didn't work out, then I would have just deleted it and tried to find something else or something like that. We run our show notes on something that's similar to it. It is running in a Docker somewhere. But yeah, it's kind of the same thing like uh it it it's an interesting it's an interesting setup i'm glad we were able to like

finally work our way through it um and i think i mean i feel like this has there's there's something here for this in in the home industry like like this home automation and stuff could run on this like these dedicated little computers with computers that do one thing really well it seems like there's it's it's ready for like it's this is totally an enterprise thing that we're talking about right uh or not really docker it docker is getting popular in the in the non-enterprise with the open source community and stuff like that, too. Yeah. Every app that comes out now, they're releasing a Docker version of it as well, which I'm loving. Yeah.

And I'm just saying, like, I feel like this, since it's such an automated process, right? Like, you literally click a button and it installs, like, an entire operating system and, and like all this stuff behind the scenes. And you are filling out like what you want to call it. Essentially, you're just giving me a name. I feel like that automation is prime for something like what you're doing at your house with like the camera system and that kind of thing. We just haven't seen that crossover into the home and like for home automation and stuff. Like that Firewaller router that I'm using, you can run dockers on it. just haven't seen that crossover into the home and like for home automation and stuff like that firewall router firewall a router that i'm using you can run dockers on it and people are running

like home assistant on that rather than having you know another device out there i i don't know i i really feel like this is this is one of those technologies that may pop up within a home automation platform one day and uh we we may not it, but there it is all of a sudden. And then we're all using like Docker or some similar container style product to run stuff within the house. It's actually, it is a really cool thing. I don't know how like how much integrators

or technology enthusiasts are gonna ever have to touch it or deal with it. But it's interesting to know how it works, I guess, a little bit. I'm by no means an expert and I still lean on you heavily when it comes to troubleshooting this and forum posts and all that good stuff. Like you'd still have to go out and do all the, you know, figure all that stuff out yourself. But there are people who are very smart with this stuff and that's not me. Do integrators utilize Raspberry Pis, raspberry pies a lot. They throw raspberry pies in places and doing various tasks. I know friend of the show, Greg

was actually doing that. Uh, so when he was been talking about that inside of the hub, he was in, in some of the home tech talks we had in the past, he was talking about running, uh, different services. And I don't know if he was using Docker or some other kind of virtualized environment or maybe just running them all on the Raspberry Pi. But he was putting in like a monitor like Domance on on the Raspberry Pi. But he was also putting some other stuff that I guess either he had come up with himself or he had figured out how to configure for him to use. And it gave him visibility and troubleshooting abilities within the network so he was really happy with that he says it goes on every single install he's got temperature probes that come off of it that monitor the temperature and send

him alerts if something gets too hot um all good stuff yeah and raspberry pi's we are a great example of a little computer that can have all these other little computers running inside of it doing all these special things they're actually pretty powerful and you don't need much you can run dockers on them too yeah definitely you don't need much to run a docker like it's it it the way like we're all used to general general computing right we're used to having a computer that has to have a gui and has to have uh like all of the drivers for every printer out there on it right for windows and Windows and stuff. And Docker's like, no, I don't need any of that. I just need exactly what I need to run and start up and run this one

program. And if you cut all that cruft out of a computer, it makes it really small, lightweight, and fast. And that's what they have been figuring out, I guess, in the open source community in the last, you know, probably 10 years that I haven't been paying attention to it. So it's been a while. Just to give you an idea, like my Docker, some of the ones I thought used a lot of memory, used maybe 200 megabits of memory, right? Like they're not a lot of memory required and I give them one core and they run perfectly fine.

So you don't really need much to run these applications. So if you ever get into Docker, it's worth it. If you have a server at home, it's worth it. It's definitely a good tinkering environment. Because like I said, it's not like you have to load Windows and then install a program just to test this one. No, you just download this, quote, Docker, which is like a container thing. And you fill out a couple of things in this form, and you're good to go.

And it really does make tinkering with things and fiddling with things very, very easy and manageable, which is nice. I see TJ has popped in and out of this conversation. He's like, I'm going to add something. Nope, nope, I'm not going to add anything. So TJ, you're not using Docker, are you? Are you using Docker?

Yeah, I'm using Docker. I can't say that I fully understand it. No, it's magic to me. Yeah, I mean, my comprehension just doesn't go that far with it. But I use it. It runs my Plex server. It runs Home Assistant, a couple other programs like Sonar and all that other good stuff.

And it works great. The biggest thing is just making sure you have everything mapped correctly um depending on what you're doing um but i think it's a great program and it does exactly what it does let me say mapped it's just like ports right so like yeah and sometimes like the different shares yeah yeah yeah which is not like it's just a path to where you want the files to be saved and the port is like just make sure you're not trying to run it on a port that's already running something else so yeah no not not it's not the worst thing i've ever configured in my life now and the only time i know of custom integrators using like something like the raspberry pi or like this is you know specifically like

greg's case where he's using it for domots. There's a lot of products that come that are based off of the Raspberry Pi and when you get them you look at it and you're like, man, this is just a Raspberry Pi, but I'm paying $800 for it for some reason. There's a decent amount of products in the professional space that are like that, but I would say that nowhere

near a large percentage of people are installing this kind of thing in a customer's home just because of reliability. They want something that's out of the box and it just works instead of having to configure it and play with every, you know, finite detail of it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I will say the reason I have a Raspberry Pi is because one of the oversee hubs that I pulled from some house years ago was was actually a Raspberry Pi. And it was just in a metal box rather than that they had made and branded or whatever. And I just, you know, took it out. I think it's sitting on the table over there. That's what their $600 pro hub is that I did not want to buy a couple months ago.

And somebody from the Slack channel graciously sent me. So, and the $600 ish firewall router that I have is a, um, raspberry PI of some type. I mean, it has more network. It's more of a designed board from someplace in China, I guess, but, um, it's, it's a raspberry PI inside and it's doing raspberry compute stuff inside. So that's, that's kind of cool. Like it, this stuff is, it's either Raspberry Pi or it's the ESP chips, right? Like it's just everywhere. And Raspberry Pi is more of a computer computer and the ESP stuff is more for lightweight, like little small sensors and devices and that kind of thing. But I just saw actually, speaking of Firewallet, they have announced, if you go to their Reddit, there's, they're taking pre-order pre-orders for the gold

plus or whatever they're calling it it's a 2.5 gig router i'm like oh man i should have waited it'll look good and gavin's right yeah yeah he will i they they claim there's going to be a rack mount version oh even better yeah yeah can't wait machine. I save up for that. Yeah. Roughly about the same price. If I thinking about it, I'm not sure how much the dream machine pro costs, right?

Is it the pro? No, it's the SE. The SE. Okay. Four 99. I think for that model. I don't know.

Firewall is probably more expensive, but all the stuff on firewall works. Well, yeah. And you'll be able to do way more advanced things like actually set up a VPN and whatever else. A real VPN like WireGuard, just like two clicks and you're done. Yeah.

Yeah. It's wild. I'm pretty happy with that thing so far. So can't complain too much. I just wish it was rack mount. Anyway, the never ending rack sagas continue. But I guess that wraps up the show this week. If you have any, we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show,

but especially those who are able to financially support this show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm 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 here. But every pledge, every single pledge gets you an invite to the hub uh where you can go in and and and i don't know make richard mad i guess he's he's been he's been on a tear uh from from some things that we said on the last episode but that's okay that's all it's both your fault it's good for our seo if we if you rile up richard

we've discovered that it gets posted on twitter under annoyed richard and you know we retweet it and then people tune in and our numbers go up and yeah it's great it's amazing there's all sorts of fun stuff going on in there uh pictures and comics and uh all sorts of finds. Like Robert's actually posting these Cree light bulbs. Did you guys see these? They were like $11, $12 light bulbs from Lowe's that had daylight tracking inside of them. And they look like, if you look at the picture and the picture is accurate,

they look like the regular light bulbs that you would buy. So I thought that was pretty cool. Anyway, all that stuff is in the hub there. All sorts of questions being answered throughout the day, throughout the week. So check that out. If you want to help All sorts of questions being answered throughout the day and throughout the week. So check that out. If you want to help with the show but can't support the show financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice.

That wraps up another week here on Home Tech. From everyone here, have a great weekend, and we will see you on our next venture, Rackstuds.tv. Take care. Until next time