HomeTech.fm - Episode 402 - Spending Money on Buttons

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Oh, Great! A new episode of HomeTech.fm is out! This week on HomeTech: Gavin turns the table and gets Seth and TJ to spend money, Crestron talks about supply chain issues, Chamberlain kills off its MyQ HomeKit integration, and movies are just $3 this weekend! All this, project updates and a pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 2nd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of automation, home technology, buttons. We've got all the buttons here. Guys, the PBB DB is really, really taking off. TJ,

you went in there. You put some more buttons in there. We launched this last week at the end of the show. If you don't know about it, head on over to pbbdb.com and you should be able to check out the price per button. And we've got a new contender in here we just found today. Oh, do we have a new contender? Beautiful. We were just talking before the show and then we were got a new contender in here we just found today oh do we have a new beautiful we were we were just talking before the show and then we were just spending money before the show is what ended up happening gavin just like casually mentioned this like it was like no big deal he's like they released this silly little thing nobody cares about it silly little thing called

a hard button remote like you can't even you can't even get one of these these days and he's like oh yeah this uh this uh this is the flirt thing which is should be a curse word probably somewhere they have uh the skip 1s and it's a 40 like 39.95 it's got 34 buttons on it maybe more i don't know it looks like it's 34 buttons and everybody button does long hold too it's a remote like how did we how did we, ah, I just, I can't even. So yeah, TJ and I just decided to buy them. We're so excited. So anybody that doesn't know, or maybe you just don't care, I don't know, but it's a little IR remote, um, you know, akin to the Logitech harmony remote, that little companion remote that, uh, was discontinued

what a couple of years ago now when Logitech ended that whole line but it's just a USB-C programmable IR remote it's very simple it comes with a Windows program you can kind of define what each button is you can set up activities this is a perfect remote for somebody that just needs a basic remote all your stuff is IR controlled or you can use a little IR transmitter receiver setup thing and something I would normally have to spend several hundred dollars on to get all your stuff is IR controlled, or you can use a little IR transmitter receiver set up thing. And something I would normally have to spend several hundred dollars on to get like a good quality one. And obviously we don't know what this one is just yet, but it's $40.

How can we go wrong? Yeah, this is great. This is great. I think this is going to go a long way. It doesn't, it's only IR. So you have to like point and shoot still. Like this, that's old technology um what it what it needs to have is like bluetooth in a base station but well i'll wait i'm patient they might work on it you know for anybody that doesn't know uh

they make a little usb plug-in module that you put into a computer um and then you can use an ir remote to control different aspects of that computer. So very popular in the HT, HTPC world. It's always recommended when somebody's building one. And I think the little dongle is like 20 or 30 bucks. So I mean, it's not even expensive by itself. And they could totally just build a hub with all this stuff kind of built into it. And I could totally see that. It's got an IR receiver on it too. So if you're missing an IR code, you can learn it in.

Really, I mean, a well-rounded product. It's a good remote. And I said earlier, I compare this to the earlier generations of the Harmony remotes because it's just the IR from the remote to control your devices. No hub yet.

And I hope they work on something because I like Flirk. I like their company. I have a bunch control your devices. No hub yet. And I hope they work on something because I like Flirk. I like their company. I have a bunch of their devices and they work great. Their software is great. I've never had any issues with any of their products.

So this looks great. If they ever come out with a hub, I'm sold. I'm done. Because back in the days, I always had issues with people pressing on or off or not holding the remote there long enough and things didn't adjust all properly. And once Harmony came out with the hub that took care of all of that, I was sold.

You know, I never looked back at that point. Right. This is a step back now and it'll just put me back. You know, it's a new remote, but it introduces old problems. Right. So i'd like to see them get a hub so i'm not going to introduce that old problem back that's all right old problems die hard yeah and i have a ton of old clients that like this would just be perfect for they're used to aiming the remote at the tv they don't want rf because i don't know why do they but rf rf obviously works way

better for 40 you can't go wrong that is the price is great yeah yeah the only thing i really have like that compares is like a urc remote yeah and you're talking you know several hundred dollars by the time you buy the remote and the receiver and then program and everything. You know what this has? This has USB-C on it. I can't doubt. What does URC have? Like the old printer cable you have to attach to the thing? Actually, they use USB-C as well. Oh, do they? The newer models, at least.

All right. But yeah, the interface still is very awful. The Skip 1S is $ is 39 95 and 34 buttons. That comes out to a nice $1 and 18 cents per button. And if you're in Canada, that's a dollar 53. And if you're in the UK and you're using the, the British sterling pounds over there,

it just, it's, it's one pound. So there you go. Pretty good. And their, their sale price is $2 off. So normal MSRP is going to supposedly be $42.

Oh, should I put that in there? It's not, I don't know. It's not even out yet. This is the price that's on there. I would just say that for now. I bet, I bet. It's not like the PPB is going to go up that much. Well, I mean, we want to be accurate, but I would think that they probably just leave

that permanently on their website. Like it's always on sale, you know, who knows? Could be. Well, if they ever want that, like two or three extra dollars i guess they'll go for it and we'll have to raise our prices on our button database here i guess that should be a rule we need we need to make a rule about that but prices are are as we need a date column yeah maybe oh it's getting complicated i mean it is a database date i feel like i guess for transparency sake we should probably do the msrp you know because then we'd have to do like sales and stuff like

yeah good point good point good point all right so change it to 42 42 dollars all right so that's going to bump our our price per button to a dollar 24 or for gavin a dollar 61 or a dollar 05 i don't even know if they have oh five five i don't even know if they have five, five. I don't even know if they have cents. Pence. Is that what it is? Pence. Yeah.

Everything is always grounded. It goes down to, yeah. Those they'll probably just charge you a pound. They're like, I cares about the five. Get over it. Yep.

Cool. Well, I'm glad to have an entry in the database and a hole in the wallet. Now. Thanks Gavin. Um, you know, you,

you griped a lot about spending money on your rack, but you walk in here with this, and I mean, I'm buying it before you guys even stop talking about how many buttons it has. And I was even trying to get him to buy more while buying the USB. Yeah, I actually bought two. $40 versus what I spent on my rack.

I have a lot to get back. It adds up. It adds up, my friend. Yeah, yeah. Not even done with the rack, so. Stop it. All right. What do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines?

Let's do it. All right. Well, Crestron is finally addressing some of the ongoing supply chain problems in an open forum webinar, basically, they had with some of their integrator partners. During the webinar, the company said that it doesn't expect the supply chain situation will fully ease up until the spring of 2023 and that the bottlenecks are actually not being caused by a shortage of microchips, as everybody talks about and blames on, but the various components that are like resistors and transistors and all that fun stuff that go into actually making the chip board. So it's not so much the microprocessors, but everything else that they have a hard problem getting. There's a one-hour webcast moderated by Brad Hintze.

He's now executive vice president of marketing. If you recognize that name, he's been on this podcast a number of times. He was working for Control 4 over there, and he's since gone to Crestron. And featured Crestron CEO Dan Feldstein, COO Dan Brady, and Executive VP of Residential John Clancy. Here's a quote from the article over at CEPro. The problem continues to be raw components, explains Brady. Before the pandemic, it was 12 to 24 week lead time. Now it's 80 weeks. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the product. He went on to say the demand from the products outside of the industry,

all seeking, everybody's trying to get the same components, electric vehicles, charging stations, drill chargers, everybody needs these components. And you basically go up into a bidding war. And sometimes he said during this talk that they were paying, they had to pay $60 for a unit of certain product, when in previous years, in previous times, it was five cents per unit. So cost, cost have definitely gone up. And none of this is, I guess, something we haven't heard, but it's finally,, I guess, something we haven't heard, but it's finally, or I guess Crestron's finally coming out and saying it because we've been hearing for quite some time

that Crestron has been having a hard time to fulfilling orders. They go on to explain that it's not just the supply chain. They actually did have a big rush of orders that came in when they announced they would be increasing prices and they were having some problems getting things in. And that led to basically their back-end ordering system going down and not being able to keep up. They went back to manually inputting things into the system and trying to do that. But they've gone on to upgrade all that.

They said give dealers a better portal to go in and make their orders and everything. And so it sounds good, but they basically said, we're just waiting on the components to show up. We ordered them 18 weeks ago. They should be here any day. And when they do, we can crank out some products. So that will be nice, I'm sure, for Crestron dealers. TJ, I know you had a glancing blow with almost becoming a Crestron dealer,

but not being able to order the product from them. So I guess that kind of evaporated. Where are you in the state of Crestron world right now? Yeah. So I was talking to them to become a dealer for a little while, mainly because I really liked the product compared to some of the other ones out there, like control for savant and all that good stuff.

But it basically boiled down to product availability, some of the other ones out there like control for savant and all that good stuff um but it basically boiled down to product availability not really being a thing at the time and this is probably six to eight months ago i think this is happening um and i basically figured it out that we would probably end up waiting two years to like become like a full dealer right so we have to order the demo gear get the training and then have to order the demo gear, get the training. And then after we get a demo gear and do the training, you know, we have to start selling jobs and ordering all the gear and everything. So my estimates was it was going to take about two years in order to get anything. And I just I wasn't really comfortable in doing that. So we just didn't go through with

it. You know, this kind of thing, I think, makes it look really bad just because Crestron is a luxury dealer or company, and it's a very high-end company. And it just, it kind of stinks that, you know, other smaller companies or companies that are just the same size are obviously struggling as well, but nowhere near as bad, right? You know, we're seeing lead times on stuff from Ubiquity or Ruckus or Cisco and all that stuff. But it just seems to really hit Crestron really hard. And that I guess that's very discouraging when their products do come at a premium. Right, right. And their global brand, a smaller company compared to somebody like Sony or anything like that, but bigger than something

like I mean, a Gavin and kind of reminded, this is nothing we haven't heard of, especially on the DIY side, like, in a valley kind of comes reminded, this is nothing we haven't heard of, especially on the DIY side. Like, Inovelli kind of comes to mind and like their issues of getting product in place and that kind of thing. So like it spans the entire market. Yeah. And you have to think like stuff like this has to make these companies think differently in the future. Right. You know, one thing that really stands out to me about this whole article here, it says, so how many components are we talking about? As an example, a single DM NVX board

requires 2,564 parts to be purchased from 240 different suppliers. And that is a ton of different moving parts that, you know, obviously when they're all working efficiently, you're not going to notice any problems. But one small hiccup and you're not able to ship products for how long. Um, and it makes you wonder if this whole thing is going to make people, you know, either rethink how many

parts they're using for something, where they're getting those parts from, or just how many they're keeping in stock at all times. So that way, you know, when they do hit a hiccup like this or a road bump, then it's not as big of an issue anymore. Um, yeah, I mean, I could speak to a little bit of that. Like they are, they have been, because this has not been isolated case. This didn't start this year. So I can tell you from manufacturer standpoint, they are keeping all those little components and pieces and parts. They're trying to like hoard all they can, which only adds to the problem, right? Because it's all just in time delivery. So they're already trying that. I don't know that like a computer,

like that DM thing he's talking about, that's like a computer. Like it's going to have thousands of parts on it, you know, at the end of the day. So that, I don't think there's a way around, you know, building a computer, so to speak. Like you're going to have to have all those parts and pieces and HDMI connectors and all that good stuff on there.

But the thing is, you don't realize, if you're missing a resistor that you need for that board and your manufacturer is spinning up, ready to go to build it, and you don't have it, they skip you. You're done. And Crestron manufacturers in the US and Mexico, but they buy all their product and everything all their components there's only one place to get them and

that's in asia uh and when you know china shuts down there's no resistors coming in like what are you what are you going to do you can't build the product it cannot be put together unless you have all of that stuff sitting there ready to go which which is, it's crazy to think about, but I guess it kind of is what it is. I think the bigger thing like from all this is like the just-in-time nature. Like I felt like going into the pandemic, we had really gotten really good at just-in-time delivery. Like I could order something

and it may not even be in the States. Like it may be in China. And I would watch that thing like track over, hit Alaska, hit Nashville. And the next day or the day or two later, like Prime, Amazon Prime, it's being thrown on my stoop, right, by the Amazon guy. And then COVID definitely tripped all that up in a number of ways. But it just seemed like that maybe maybe that just in time delivery or just in time ordering is probably what needs to go. And less so like the, like worrying about what components and everything go into the products to make them work. Like, I don't know, to me,

that's what seems to be the root cause of the disease. It's like everything was ordered exactly when you needed it. And no, no, there's nobody's, I'm saying this from a distributor's point of view, which is probably not good, but like nobody was stocking anything, right? Like they expect you to buy something and you have it in stock and then, you know, deliver it to me. But there's, there's the dealers that are able to keep moving product are the ones that bought a bunch of the stuff while they could and had it in a warehouse somewhere. And I realize there's business reasons for not doing that. You have to pay taxes to the IRS because the inventory is basically income for you.

So yeah, probably not a fun thing to do. But I've noticed a lot of people have been hoarding products and reselling them for a lot more than they're actually worth. So have you seen that on the, like, uh, on the DIY side, Gavin, like people buying a bunch of Innaveli stuff and then gouging. You always see that. Yeah. You've always seen that price gouging. You're even seeing it now with the Harmony, uh, remotes where people are listing them for hundreds of dollars just because, you know, they know the value of them and stuff like that. Right. And in a valley was when it's hard to get their Z wave devices now. So if you were looking around to try and get a hold of some, there's people selling them for a hundred dollars or more per switch. Right. Like that's all they doubled the price pretty much of those switches but it's amazing to

see like the you know imagine the smaller companies i've seen a number of smaller companies just disappear um through covid because they can't get product and they can't compete with when it comes to bidding they just don't have the size so they just shut up shop and you know they're they're gone right and that's unfortunate but it's you know one of the things we found out during covid yeah yeah and it's smaller shops and then you look at crush on they're they're pretty big like i said they're a global brand they've got a few thousand employees across the world um it hits everybody it's hitting everybody pretty hard it it is interesting to see what is in stock and what isn't in stock these days and what seems to have like no issue like being on the shelf and then what like ubiquity like i went on their

website today to buy like something i didn't think any i would have any time any issue ordering um which is one of their like wireless i have their t-shirts yeah t-shirt right yeah rack screws um no i was uh one of their like loco the m2 like the old 2.4 um oh yeah you can't find those well i've got like i've got a bunch here i've got like three of them here i guess i could resell them but i needed one more and i was like oh that's not gonna work so i had to order a 5g version which would actually work for what i needed to do so yeah i was kind of shocked that those were missing from their website as well. But I don't ever pay attention to the ISP side of the – not very often, where I just need a wireless bridge and can buy two $49 parts and I'm done. But, oh, well.

Yeah. And one of the interesting parts about this was um the effects that the other industries have on this so they're battling with the car industry now you know with the electric vehicles and everything coming in so they got battle for the same parts the same chips etc etc so you're seeing a whole bunch of industries battling not just home automation industries but every industry battling for the same, you know, short supply. And that's when we're starting to see. But then you see companies like Amazon, you know, they have no problems getting a little Echo Dot to you, you know.

It seems like they have a ridiculous amount of those. But they do have problems getting you Ring devices. Like, those have been on major, major short supply. And, like, especially the Ring Pro, the Pro line stuff, the X line stuff, nowhere near, we're just not even seeing them coming to stock. Is it only the Pro devices that you're seeing that on? Because I ordered a couple of devices this week

and I had no issue, no supply issues. I want to say the Ring Pro, like the doorbell Pro, right? It's like the slimmer doorbell. Not the big chunky one that they sell at Costco, but like the slimmer doorbell um yeah not the big chunky one that they sell at costco but like the slimmer one that one's always on short supply if not doesn't exist i'm not sure um i don't keep up with it too much i just see the guys complain about it in the slack chat uh every day um and then i know that uh like the elite has probably been out that's the poe version one so i don't know it kind of like comes and goes and flows yeah yeah but always going to be it's going to be a problem and and

it's interesting they're saying um i thought one of the little takeaways in there was interesting where you said that uh it's it's going to be a problem unless we hit a recession then it's going to be shorter i'm like oh oh yeah because the economy tanks, then we get our electronics faster. Okay. Perfect. It's ideal. Yeah. I feel like they're still being optimistic with the spring of 2023, but we'll find out. Yeah. Well, we'll have to see. That's when they, when, when they're saying that it should ease up a little bit. Mark your calendar now. All right, well, moving on here. Chamberlain Group, the makers of the MyQ connected garage door openers, discontinued the MyQ HomeBridge Hub.

This device was basically to integrate HomeKit into the MyQ garage door openers. You just put this little device on there. You could use Siri to open and close your garage door, I guess. That's a thing. I guess if you have Apple, the CarPlay, it actually gives you a nice little icon when you're driving up to your house to open and close your door. So that's a thing. I don't know. I guess if you have Apple, the CarPlay, it actually gives you a nice little icon when you're driving up to your house to open and close your door.

So that's a nice thing. That's nice. Yeah. Here's a quote from, they gave the Verge over there. It says, our products continue to evolve. We have decided to discontinue production of the MyQ Homebridge hubs. This is George Rassas.

He's the group project manager at the Chamberlain group. And they also confirmed that the existing Homebridge hubs will continue to work for, quote, the foreseeable future. So it's not going to break, but it's kind of sad to see it go. I remember like one of the Apple keynotes when they actually talked about HomeKit back in the day. They're like, yeah, we're going to do these Chamberlain garage door openers. And like, it took them a while for Chamberlain to actually bring this product to market. And then now, you know, they finally got it there and people start using it. They're like, no, we don't do this. We don't want to play in this game anymore. So funny enough, they don't have any solution for their

customers to go to. Like there's no replacement. Buy their new one and then pay the, what is it, a monthly fee or yearly fee to use it? It's probably the direction they're headed, right? We don't make any money on the HomeKit version. Right, right. Yeah. You want to have the MyQ subscription for your garage door opener.

So it kind of does all the same thing that Apple has given you for free with this little $90 box. I guess that was a, you know, kind of one of the things I noted in the article is it was kind of expensive range between 70 and $90 for this integration. So I could see why it wouldn't be that popular. They said less than 1% of their users were actually using the Homebridge Hub, which I would think if, you know, you do cross-section of the people that have Apple devices in their homes, and I mean, they kind of have a virtual monopoly on garage door openers that have MyQ, you would think that there'd be a decent cross-section of people who would want this type of integration. But for whatever reason, the end users punted on that and weren't installing this thing. So whether it was the price or just the, the feature set or just not understanding the product or,

you know, being content with the Mike, you app itself. I don't know, but they didn't, they said a lot of people just weren't interested in the product. So cancel it. I'm curious,

you know, they said less than 1% of HomeKit users were using this. Their users. Their users were using this. But I'd be amazed to see, like, what their numbers were, you know, like, in terms of what they... Because they own the garage market pretty much, right? So there's a lot of MyQ out there. So if not many people are using HomeKit, then what are people using for HomeKit

to control their garage? And even though they're canceling this device, there's other ways. The open source community will tell you how you can get into HomeKit if you really want to anyway, without having to buy this, whether it's going through like Home Assistant and then our Home Bridge and then into there. But it's amazing i thought home kit was more popular than this and when this is one of the only home kit solutions one of the few out there you would think there would be a lot of people using it yeah you think there'd be a lot more demand than than the one percent of whatever how many garage doors there are in america because like i said they do have a monopoly on this and i think people were probably just content with

using their app you know like yeah i think a lot of people are probably like i don't see any reason to put it into home kit and spend that 90 let me just use my app all i want to know is the garage open is the garage closed etc etc and most basic users that's all they want the power of the default yep yep you're right well and you're not going to get walmart to come over your house if you don't have this installed uh because you know they're not oh no wait they are they're integrating with chamberlain's myq now so like walmart can come over and stick things into your refrigerator if you buy it from walmart and they'll come over and deliver stuff for you that's nice yeah you guys ever i mean i see this like advertised all the time like i don't think i want a walmart or amazon

employee in my house when i'm not here i have a client that uses this but i've never heard of anybody else using it and i would not feel comfortable myself like not even the garage door one like the garage door one is like creepy to me by itself then they have like the front door ones where you can get it with like schleg locks and stuff like that so i've seen commercials with like a walmart employee unloading groceries into someone's refrigerator as they're coming home from like picking up the kids and they're like oh hi you know like i'm like weird yeah it's really strange it's like who are you and if i was like a walmart employee i would just quit i'd be like i am not going into random people's houses to put their groceries away.

That's weird. I'd be in the house, you know, grabbing a drink, you know, while I unpack, you know, airplane music to their Sonos, you know, they'd come home. I'd be like, dinner's ready. You know, they'd invite me back. Right. And you know, you're not getting a tip. Exactly.

And the other issue I have with this is i'm having a hard enough time just getting the amazon delivery people to walk up to my door they stop at the end of the driveway and toss the package now now you gotta make it so that they actually have to come up like they're not going to use this they'll just toss the package at the garage door that's all that's gonna happen this is the walmart service costs uh 12 or 13 a month98 a year. You get unlimited home delivery with an extra $7 a month or $40 a year. And the delivery person always can come in and pick up your returns too. So that actually might be appealing. That is appealing.

Just take this away. I don't want to take this to the UPS store. I'm like a monster. And part of this Walmart walmart plus subscription which they've done at sam's club but they put it behind a paywall um i think they do like the scan and go as well where you can actually go and uh just scan your groceries while you're walking around walmart and then walk out with them after you pay with them through your phone and they already do that with sam's club but you don't have to have a, I mean, I guess you have to have the, you have to have the membership, but it's not like anything additional. So I've,

I've almost thought about subscribing to this Walmart thing just so I could do the scan and go because I really hate waiting in line. I guess it makes sense. It's at Sam's like, they don't even, they don't have bags or anything. Like you just load up into a shopping cart. If you scan and go that, that would be you know do they check your app do they like mark sharpie marker your phone when you walk out the door dang it they uh it prints all right it shows off just like a little qr code and they scan it and then they just scan your items like they normally do so well one thing i do at walmart is we order online and then we just drive up we we schedule our time when you go to pick up,

you just drive into a spot, you check in and they roll everything out and you pop open the trunk and they throw it in the trunk. And that alone saves us a lot of time, you know, and a lot of money because when I go to Walmart, I walk every aisle and I pick up all the things I didn't need. Yeah, I think our Walmarts are worse for that because I try to do the online ordering as much as possible. And it's like half the stuff is always out of stock and they never make substitutions and stuff. So it's a rather last minute thing if we're doing that.

I tried the only time I tried that or I didn't try it. Let's just say someone who shops in my family a lot more than I do tried that. And then I got to be the lucky one that goes and sits in the parking lot. Like I sat out there and I watched like three or four people come and go and I'm like, what, what, what am I doing here? Why, why aren't they coming out? I'm in your car. Like I, you know, and like, there's just, there's no one, there's no one to go talk to or anything. Um, and eventually they came out and they're like yeah we the person that that was pulling that they they went home and like okay so are you are you the person that's here to to assist me and they're like no they they lock that

cage up and they just went home you don't get your stuff no i drove out to walmart we actually didn't tell you it was ready so i'm not really sure why you came. No, it was ready. I just got there and watched two or three people pull in after me and leave, and I'm like, when are they bringing my stuff? And I guess the person that pulled my stuff decided it wasn't going to happen that day. You must have ordered bad stuff. I don't know. It was like kids' clothes or something.

40 cases of pop. Yeah. I don't know. Who knows what it was? But anyway, let's move on here to some some bigger and better things uh i like movies guys you like movies you like going to the movie theater i love yes i still do almost lovely theater well yeah you're gonna have to visit the u.s now because in the u.s it will cost just three dollars on saturday september 3rd to go to the movies in the U.S. So this is in celebration of a new

made-up holiday, completely made up, called National Cinnamon Day. And if you've never heard of the holiday, it didn't exist until now. So yeah, there you go. September 3rd, just mark it on your calendar from now on. $3 a ticket, not including the tax, but you get tickets across all formats and showtimes so imax 3d movies everything anything you want to go see three dollars and uh this is valid for about 3 000 theaters here in the states including chains like regal cinemark amc they've all agreed to do that on the on the new holiday so uh i bet popcorn's still gonna be like 18 a bucket though so your mileage may vary on how much you spend but three dollars that's not bad still gonna be like 18 a bucket though so your mileage may vary on how

much you spend but three dollars it's not bad still gonna drop 50 yeah exactly especially when you gotta pay for yourself plus your guest it adds up yeah building a rack did you build that for your guest no but nobody saw that we do go to the movies quite frequently still actually shockingly we have a theater around the corner it's never packed so that's why we go often but uh we go a lot on the tuesdays cheap tuesdays we have up here and it's like eight bucks um which is probably three us at some point um and you know like i like the movies, but we always sneak in our own snacks because I did order popcorn there once, and my cheap Tuesday wasn't so cheap anymore. But I love going to the movies.

Like, as much as I like watching at home, I still like to go to the cinemas and enjoy it in the IMAX or the bigger screen. We used to watch. We used to go to the theaters all the time. Like, I mean, they were much nicer than they are now, but we used to go to the theaters all the time like i mean they were much nicer than they are now but we used to go all the time and uh i would say probably um on so maybe twice a week you know just just to see any movie in every movie that we could see and yep uh there's some people that that't into that. I get it. But TJ's like, nope, not me. Yeah, maybe like once a year. Yeah, no, no, no.

There might be a movie that's worth it. Yeah, we have not. I mean, recently, of course, we haven't gone as often. But there is a Cheap Tuesday place around the corner from here. But it's one of the dinner theaters. So even though it's cheap, they have a full bar. And it ends up costing a lot more money than it would so um at least you know three dollars what how much the ticket to be off after

at that point maybe i'll say seventeen dollars on a ticket or something like that but i'll see what see what's playing this weekend and uh and take part in the national national new holiday the brand new holiday that's just made up for this so they could get people back into the theaters you know i remember like back in the days like sometimes you just remember when you watched a certain movie in the theater the emotion etc etc you had at that time you'll never forget that experience that's why we still go and support the theaters a lot but i remember i'm gonna date myself here seeing matrix for the first time in the theater. Dumb and Dumber for the first, that snowball scene.

The snowball scene from Dumb and Dumber. You just remember those type of things. You have an experience with certain movies in the theaters. And especially, one thing I like going to theaters is you're focused on the movie, no distractions. Your phone's off, you're just paying attention to the movie no distractions you know your phone's off you're just paying attention to the movie you know when you're at home I try to do that but there's always something what you know somebody can call you or the doorbell rings or the dog's

got to go outside you know somebody's got to pause it to go to the restroom yeah yeah sometimes I just say no pausing reference whencan i p.com or whatever that site is you know because you gotta figure out your timing i am not pausing this movie that's why you just gotta have sonos everywhere you don't miss that you don't miss it all yeah just play in the bathroom yeah i gotta put a tv in the bathroom now that's pretty good all her bathroom breaks well it sometimes it's like pause it i think we should make popcorn for this and then it like turns into oh well the kitchen's kind of dirty let's clean it up it's like yep oh come on we were sat down to watch a movie 30 minutes ago we haven't sat

back down it's it's on the title screen right now so yeah yeah the pause is the enemy so yeah going to the theater and like sitting back relaxing get you gonna get the nice comfy seats now so that's nice yeah um and you get booze they are very nice i do i do like going to theaters now compared to you know maybe five or ten years ago just because of how comfortable the chairs are now yeah i mean they're like straight on recliners at this point and if you want to take a nap it's perfectly acceptable you know before it was a little weird because you're sitting straight up now you're reclined a little bit it's all right the experience is so much better now though too because even just being able to book your seats in advance and see how full the theater is and you no longer have to get there early you could get there just in time

you know where your seat is and you know every now and then you have to kick somebody out of your seat you're like hey that's my seat you're two aisles back or something but it's a much better experience now and that's why i just enjoy it that much more especially since covid too when they didn't put anybody next to your seat yeah and so you know you book it with two people and you have both seats next to you empty. Pure bliss. I'll go to the movies all the time if it's like that. It doesn't help their numbers. You know, they can't fill those seats. I'm fine with that. I don't want to be sitting next to some stranger.

Yeah. Yeah. I got to say it is the I you reminded me of like all the plotting and hours of extra time that we spent hanging out in front of a movie theater waiting to get into more popular ones so we could do a mad dash to the seats that we wanted three quarters of the way up and directly in the middle where the sound was balanced yeah and now i just go on and i'm like click click you can't have those seats they're mine so So, yeah, yeah. Well, everybody in the States, go out, visit your local theater, give them $3, watch an IMAX movie for $3, and call it a day.

I'm going to have to see what's playing. I haven't actually looked and see what's out right now. So probably something fun we can bring the kiddo to. Anyway, let's move on here. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 402. No mailbag this week, but we do have a pick of the week.

And who put this in here? Is it Gavin or TJ? It's TJ. It is from one of my groups. This is a security keypad. And it looks like the painter and spray texture guy was like, oh no, that that's, that's supposed to be there. Let me just spray over like the whole thing.

Like they textured and sprayed it. And it's a, there you go. Beautiful. Gorgeous. And it is a, a napco security panel. And for anybody that cares,

it's the gem RP two a S E two. Very attractive name. Uh, I assume they did this so that you could just peel the paint off and it's kind of like a brand new product uh so props off to them i like that as a new homeowner i think it looks better than the napco did it originally like if you scrape the screen off and the buttons had the numbers on them i think it would probably blend in a little bit better than the ugly napkin yeah i mean security panels are traditionally really ugly so what is the deal with that like we i remember

we were talking about um the claire stuff the other day and that was that snap av had acquired that company and and gavin said it'd be nice if we had something that looked this nice in the diy space i'm like you're right the only thing we have in diy is like the ring thing and it's like that's what if like duplo decided to make a security panel it does not look good on anyone's walls it just like it looks like someone's child came like well what let's just make it out of this plastic that these these lego these duplo box are made out of um but i want to in other the other end of this the napkos or ge panel i don't even know who's making security these days i guess cute qualsis is popular it's kind of like

it's two gig i use two gig those are touchscreen based ones but they're all like these massive like all-in-one unit things they don't look very good even even the even the standalone touchscreens don't look all that great so i don't know i wish there was something it's because like nobody uses these things you know it's like you know majority of people that are doing home automation and stuff at this point they're just using their phone or their voice or something so i feel like the use case for this is like even more dwindling than what it was yeah i know that they're not as popular as they used to be but like these little like security systems or even amazon now we'll just they'll have the Echo devices listening for glass breaking sounds

and that kind of thing. So yeah, that's actually better security than this because even though you can't even see what's on this keypad, you weren't going to use the keypad anyway. You weren't going to use the security system. You just use your phone anyway. Yeah, exactly. I remember the old days of running into a house and you're hearing the beep and you had 30 seconds to disable it.

And you fumbled up a couple times. Siren go off. Yeah. And then you start getting a call. And then now you got to find the card with the number for verification. I forgot my passcode. Yeah. My mom still does all that, right?

At my house, it's all automated so of course we don't have to worry about everything arms and disarms based on presence etc etc but uh some people still love these keypads and the one thing i do like about those keypads is they were reliable right like they just worked i mean in the diy I mean, in the DIY space, yeah, in the DIY space, people create, they take touch, um, they'll take like tablets and stuff and put them on, but those tablets, like they're prone to break, especially when you invest in a little Amazon tablet. Um, one morning you wake up, it's, it's, you know, not connecting to the network because it got some update or something like that. I don't, I don't't i just don't see them as reliable as these little touch panels yeah the the button and what one thing i do like about them having these things

on the wall is generally there was leds on them and and you could like walk by and and see the status of the system yeah um the ring ring kind of has that on there it's like it's got a motion or present sensor or something like that on there and And if you get close enough, it'll light up. I do like that, the status light aspect of it. Someone's asking what the price per button on this is. Who's that, Ty? $222. I already calculated it. If we're going with the used price, I don't know what the MSRP is just because it's so old. The paint job's great, though. It blends into the wall great. Whoever did that, awesome job.

Nailed it. Yep. That was a whole lot of not my job right there. You say the panel is $222 for the... No, but it's got $222, $2.22 per button. Okay. It's $40 for it on eBay, right? For eBay. Oh, okay. Okay. It's $40 for it on eBay, right? For eBay.

Oh, okay. Okay, I see. Well, I was going to like say, well, break that price out over the months of the $40 per month securities. Oh, we're not doing that. Come on.

And on average, you'd spend that for like three or four years. We don't do that for everything. This is just getting too complicated now. What is the estimated click capacity? the price per button

per hour yeah it's going to be a whole new aspect to this database it is a database you can do anything this is going to be multi-site too good too good well if you have any feedback

questions comments bits of the week or great ideas for a show give us a shout our email address is feedback at homet good. Well, if you have any feedback, uh, questions, comments, bits of the week or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at home tech.fm, or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. Let's going to wrap up another week here. Uh, I have a, I have a sob story. Um, as you guys know, I'm a programmer by trade now, uh, trade now and a moonlighting technician, I guess, in my house. You're doing more work than I am some days. Oh, man.

And well, this weekend I was like, it's quiet. My wife was out of town. I had my daughter and she was helping. And I was like, let me go rearrange the rack because I mounted the UPS a little too high, right? It should be on the bottom. And it was getting a little saggy. And I'm like, I don't like this. I don't like any of this. So I moved the UPS down to the bottom where it should go. And then I was like, well, I can put others. I filled this

rack up. This rack is full of stuff that I have, right? It looks great now. I need to take a picture of it. And I took all my white screws out. I've got a whole bag of, of, of white screws for you, Gavin, if you need them. Uh, so, um, but one thing I did, I was taking all the, the, the, the, the cage nuts out and moving stuff around. And I, I hurt my finger like I awful, awful, but I had a lot of fun this weekend swapping stuff around and now i can't type i'm injured like there's got to be like i guess workman's comp against myself for working on this at home i am not a lawyer but i would not advise that and after you told me about this i went and grabbed a cage nut and i tried to figure out how i would hurt myself with a cage nut oh it's it's easy when you don't want it to happen yep i tried i was just like i don't know and it's super easy to like pinch your fingers

into them as well i've done that a couple times where you're trying to squeeze it in to the little spot and you get your finger caught in there these were these were particularly tight they were like i had to use a a screwdriver to kind of like poke them them in while keeping my finger on the back of them. That's why I have my little like toenail clipper thing that I sent you a picture of. Yeah. I wish for cage nuts. Bought that. So you bought a $40 remote that you don't even need, but you could have used this cage nut tool.

To save my $13. My programming fingers. Yeah, that would have been great. Can't type at all today. I'm glad I don't do this often. Yeah. Yeah, I got everything arranged in there the way I want it, or at least mostly the way I want it.

I thought I had more room. Nah, I need a bigger rack now. It's full. I was kind of surprised. You know the worst feeling about Cagenuts? While we're talking crap about Cagenuts, the worst thing about Cagenuts is when you have like four of them in there and you go to put a device in there

and you get three of them all secured down and everything, go to put the fourth one in there and it knocks the nut out. That is the most infuriating thing in the world, I'll tell you what. I can associate with that after building my first rack. I know exactly what you're talking about because that happened to me multiple times. And it's always the heaviest object. It's never like the one-use shelf or the two-use shelf or the blank plate. It's always like the UPS or the NVR or something.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. I'm going to start hot gluing them in there. So I have two racks. That's Gavin in a couple years. Yeah, I know, right? So the one in the garage here is just the garage stuff and then i have one over in the like the equipment closet that does the av stuff for the house and that one is a slim five so middle atlantic slim five there's no case nuts it's just like the rails with the holes and like going back and forth between the two of them was like oh i just

need to move this here here and here on on the av when i move come over here and i'm like carefully holding my bleeding hand i'm trying to like push stuff in my daughter's freaking out saying i need a band-aid and like running and give me paper towels and stuff so it's almost uh it's almost worth paying three times as much for a rack just almost because i mean it's crazy right like because like i don't understand why they're more expensive but like you never find like a cheap rack with a marty bill in it's always has the cage nuts and i guess it's probably just because it's like easier to mass produce or something but i don't know i have no idea i've never seen them until i got into the cheaper rack so yeah yeah i i don't know if that like i see them all the time in it they're used there um but in in in the in like gavin ran into too there's like

the two screw sizes so like you get like the wrong cage and then they're like 832 and 1032 i think i did not know that and now i have a bag of mixed screw sizes and i got and no matter what it takes you like four tries to find a right pair and it drives me nuts it's like usb usb yep yep this is usbc it's reversible still takes you 20 tries oh man well i i'm i i'm glad i got most of it cleaned i got everything cleaned up the wires run and, uh, and everything put together. And I was going to step into my, my larger project this week, which was, um, putting up a projector screen that I bought off of like Amazon, but it may as well have been from like wish.com. Like it's like the cheapest, ugliest screen I think I've ever seen in my life.

And it's so wrinkly. It doesn't like, I can't, I can't put a picture on it. All you see is the wrinkles. So I'll have to, I'll have to either regroup on this and figure out something else. But I, I don't have, I looked at like the fancy film screens that I am accustomed to getting from

Stuart and they don't even make one as small as I need. I just need an 84 inch screen just just get a tv at that point i know right i gotta hang it on my garage door oh that's fine just paint it white just disable the garage door opener so that way nobody destroys your tv yeah yeah pretty much well it's pretty much that way now but um yeah nobody can open it right now. Maybe, maybe, maybe I should just get a TV,

but by the time I like look into like doing any more with this, um, yeah, maybe the 84 inch TV would be the way to go. Just hit, put hinges at the top so that when it opens upwards, the TV falls down. It's a genius.

Right. So you can still watch tv even with the door open just crashes into everything into the garage just like scrapes across everything knocks all my desk over that's fine it'll work this image is getting close oh my gosh oh seth here you go on amazon you can just buy a foldable projector screen it's got little uh hanging clips uh twenty dollars eighty four inch that that's probably the one i bought and i should i need to send you guys a picture of it uh because it's it's it's not it's not smooth

and i'm like can i iron it's it's it's not film screen material like like real thick it's um uh vinyl yeah it's like tense material like you would you would have a 4k and advertisements can't lie so i'm sure you can project 4k on it i'm sure you can do 8k on it but the the quality is like no no it's not good when one of the pictures shows that nails not included but actually so it shows a screw with it instead this might actually be the one i bought i don't know it wasn't i would give it a shot for 20 yeah i was like 20 bucks can't hurt and now i'm like uh should i i should just go i bought a bunch of pvc at home depot for 30 i'm like i'm gonna make a frame out of this and stretch it out over that. But I don't

think that's going to get the wrinkles out. I think I'm still going to have to iron it somehow. This is 100% wrinkle-free material. So maybe I should just order this one and see if they take them up on that offer. Add to cart. There you go. Making you spend money. I think we got you for $70 today or something. Yeah, exactly. It's not bad. I'm getting you back for the twinkly lights you made me buy the other day. We're just spending money.

Oh, man. All right, guys. Well, I think that wraps up another week here on Home Tech. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who financially support the show through our Patreon. If you don't know about the Patreon page,

head on over to hometech.fm support and learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you, or five bucks and up per month, actually gets you a shout out on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat at the Hub

where you can go in there and gather and talk about, there's been all sorts of stuff in there lately. But I think, I think what we, what, what I, what I proposed today after listening to Richard for the past, I don't know,

10 years or so, talk about switches that he, he just can't, can't handle. I think we're going to, we're going to call them Gunther switches and, and like Norman doors. And if you, if you know about Norman doors, that's, that's doors that you walk up to and you can't figure out like your brain

doesn't, you go and you push on it. And of course that doesn't open. So you have to pull it. That's a Norman door. It just your brain can't tell you how it normally opens. And Richard has this thing about switches. And I propose that, that any, any switch that you walk up to, that's on a wall that you can't naturally understand how to turn it on and off, that we'll call that in his honor, we should call those Gunther switches. So, yeah, that's my proposal.

If you see a switch as you're walking around that has a toggle at the top or something where you have to press the button at the top or the bottom and it just toggles things on and off um just just think of your head hey that's a gunther switch there you go i never even knew a norman door was a thing until this was brought up so oh really yeah yeah i mean it makes sense i've just never knew i had a name tp link has their gunther switches on sale this weekend do Do they work with Home Assistant? Nope, but they hinge at the top. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I got to get used to saying this now. Gunther switches, yep.

If you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. Just looking for 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 next week.

Take care. See you next time.