HomeTech.fm - Episode 403 - "Smart" Appliances

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

On this week’s HomeTech: Gavin gives us a firmware update, Samsung and Hue partner up for cool lighting effects, the HCA says its ready to make appliances smart, Ring drops a new product in Europe, even more Sonos Sub Mini rumors, a cool Pick of the week, and project updates.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 9th, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Palo, Ohio. I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, $3 movie weekend. TJ, did you go to $3 movie? I did not. I'm not much of a movie goer, but I decided to check out online tickets and there was a queue to even look at the website. So I

knew I was not going on Saturday. That's pretty bad. Wow. Wow. Gavin, what about you? Yeah, I did not go on the day of. We looked at the seating and there were just way too many people that we felt. So we went the day after. I heard that's the perfect day to go. Yeah, I paid a little bit more, but you know what? It was nicely spaced out. I enjoyed it a lot more. And we went and saw Bullet Train.

Nice, nice. Well, I went on $3 movie day and I went to see the Super Pets. It's like Superman has a dog and it's a new little story and it's in the DC universe with all the Aquaman and everybody. And I got to say it is the best, uh, DC movie to date. Like I've seen them all and they are really like Superman. I've seen all the Supermans. Uh, I've seen Aquaman evidently there's Aquaman two. I don't even know how they're going to do that. Cause Aquaman one was so horrible. But this movie was absolutely a delight to watch. And I laughed the whole way through.

There's a turtle in there that has to be my favorite character. Because even in a kid's movie, she's cursing up a storm. And oh my, I mean, they bleep it. But it's still funny for every adult in the movie theater. I think the sad part of that movie was Ace's origin story. You know, how the family left him and he was just trying. Yeah.

I didn't want to ruin it for anybody. Not expect that. But that was a very sad moment in that movie, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And every one of them had like a little origin story.

All the pets, so to speak, had a little origin story that they came up with. And it was a good show. I really liked it. I would recommend if you didn't like uh any of the dc movies um this is the one to go see because it's great like i i think i liked wonder woman like a little bit like that one's really good when it came the first one came out um but i i mean just the other ones are just so bad like just haven't been very good i'm not a not a big superhero movie person,

but I do like animals. Maybe I'll check it out. You'll like this. It's definitely one to go see. The one thing I just can't get over with the DC movies, I don't know what it is, but their CGI just throws me off. In the Superman movies, when he's flying through, it just doesn't look right. And that's what I just can't get.

Where Marvel seems to have that right. That's what throws me off. get where Marvel seems to have that. Right. You know, that's what throws me off. Dogs don't fly either, but different movie, but yeah, no, it was good.

And as for seeds go, like I thought I was being smart by like, I was getting three seats in like the one spacer. And I was like, I'll sit, you know, next to that spacer and not have to see, well,

there was a father who bought the two seats in front of us. And then he sat back one row and watched his kids and like brought them pop. I'm like, I'll sit next to that spacer and not have to see. Well, there was a father who bought the two seats in front of us. And then he sat back one row and watched his kids and brought them. I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. But I get to sit next to this guy now. So it didn't quite work out the way I thought it was going to. Luckily, they have big seats. It's not like it was a big dinner theater thing. So it wasn't that bad.

Anyway, well, you guys, Gavinavin you have a psa here about z-wave firmware updates what's all that about oh yeah so this week i spent some time going through my various z-wave devices looking at their various firmware seeing what updates were out there um mainly because sometimes i monitor my z-wave network just to see what's chatty and there were a few zoos devices i had that were overly chatty. They were just temperature sensors. So they should not have been sending so much. So, you know, I look for new firmware. I got it, updated it. They stopped being so chatty and that just frees up the network a lot more. And I feel the difference. I had to update about six of them. So, you know, it's just a PSA,

you know, like if your network's giving issues that's one thing to look at the latest firmware is make sure everything's up to date you know um updating firmware they really need to work on this it's not an easy thing um and it drains the battery on battery devices when you update the firmware because it's streaming like constant um and that has to stay awake through that whole process that that battery it takes a significant hit i must have drained 25 to 50 on some of the batteries just doing this but uh just a psa check your firmwares out there you're always with the chatty zigbee stuff man like it's all like it yeah or z-wave sorryWave. Sorry. Ghost in the nodes. Chatty Z-Wave.

Yeah. Because you know what? Like and it's going to happen with any ecosystem, though. It's a problem with the the I guess Z-Wave or Zigbee and the devices. Right. Yeah. Like when a manufacturer gives you a device and they keep power reporting on, as soon as you turn that switch on, it's sending constant power reports and just overloading the network.

And then other things slow down and you wonder what's going on so i'm always keeping an eye on you know what's talking on my network how you know how often it talks and i cut it down as much as i can do you have like a utility or is this something that's built into you're using what habitat habitat yeah yeah one of the easiest ways of doing it is just turn on the logging to your Z-Wave devices and just watch them. And if you see a specific device constantly sending reports, then that's something to look at. In my case, my temperature sensors were constantly sending battery and random temperature reports when they shouldn't have been. So that's when I started looking at it, and there was a newer firmware, and after I upgraded it, it stopped doing it. So, you know, I just got to free it up because it's not a lot of bandwidth they have. So when things are very chatty, it can cause other issues.

Chatty Z-Wave devices, man. Yep. You've talked about it from day one, like it's chatty stuff. And like there's got to be like a way, there's got be like i'm i've been dealing with my unread server but there's like this fixed common problems plugin that that everybody recommends that you install and it tells you if something's wrong like it does a pretty good job it scans the system but like what you need you need to make for for those hubitat people there's like fix fix common gavin problems and then like what you'll do is just watch for those chatty z-wave nodes and ghost

nodes they do have some kb articles on the hub of that website they actually all you know like waste uh i guess fix your z-wave if you're having problems things to look at things to troubleshoot you know how to set it up properly so it's really good to like read and learn because if you're going to play with these technologies understanding how they work really helps when things don't work. And trust me, things will stop working at some point. Yep. I can. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I'm sitting here just shaking my head because I've been dealing with my dead Unraid server for, what, two weeks now? Yeah. And it wasn't just like one thing happened. Yes. But then multiple things happened on top of that. And then trying to figure out what all of those things were. wasn't just like one thing happened yes but then multiple things happened on top of that and then like getting you know trying to figure out what all of those things were and then like stepping

back watching the logs trying to make sense of what this gobbledygook comes off and then i post them there and you know to their forums and the guys are like yeah that's some weird crashing you got there buddy good luck to you like that was that was a lot of help uh and sometimes i tell you things like uh check this and you come back like a couple hours later and like i checked that but i also clicked on these 10 other buttons at the same time i'm like i didn't tell you to click those buttons you know like do you know what they do no but they said click me it said click me first rule of troubleshooting if you don't click a bunch of buttons and it doesn't work then you probably can't fix it yeah all the other buttons to click, unclick.

But yeah, I mean, for the most part, Gavin, the couple hours that was spent between the two messages were me just rebooting the system every five minutes. So there's plenty of time for me to test all of those settings one at a time. But yeah, I think I finally squared it away. My daughter's in there right now watching DuckTales. And it has not crashed yet um so that's good that's good we'll we still have the show to record so we'll get it by the end

this is separate from yeah all of that mess so oh man what a what a trial though geez louise it's it's been crazy trying to get through this thing and figure out what is wrong with it um i think it's all done i think it's all done i think it's i well knock on wood just jinx yourself right there just like just like gavin's rack i think it's all right what do you say we jump into some of the implement tech headlines let's do it all right samsung smart things uh has announced a big partnership with philips hue that'll be integrating the hue sync so users with the samsung galaxy phone are now able to sync their philips hue lights with most music streaming services right

from their smart smartphone or tablet uh here's a quote from mark benson the head of smart things us it's clear that consumers want smarter and more personalized technology and this integration delivers on the desire by allowing smart things users to express their mood from the comfort of their own home. This is kind of a cool integration. Like if you are streaming music from your Samsung smart or Samsung galaxy, of course it'll integrate with Samsung smart things, which will integrate with the Phillips hue devices and basically sync the music that's coming through the phone with a Phillips hueips hue sync so that's that's kind of neat um gavin what do you think about this

it's cool i don't know how many people i wonder how many people actually use this but it's cool i don't do anything like this it's expensive that's very this that one's expensive that's the other thing about this is i always found that was so expensive just to have my lights synced to my music or to my video. But it's cool. I like it more for TV when they sync the lights to the TV when you're watching on a big screen because it kind of makes the screen feel bigger, even though it's not bigger. But I like that idea. To music, I would only really see this if you're having a lot of house parties or something like this. Now I don't have to bring in all the smoke machines and stuff like that.

I can have this stuff going. Yeah, that Philips Hue Sync Box, $250. So definitely not a cheap accessory, but a lot of people really like this. I'm always seeing pictures online of people posting their TVs with the backlighting behind it and all that kind of good stuff. So I think a lot of people really do like this, and we keep seeing different options for this kind of thing. So it's a pretty popular thing. I see. I like I like the the box, I think is HDMI, like HDMI in and out, but it also integrates with the other stuff in the product line. And you can get some linear tape and integrate that with it as well, as well as like these little desk lamps that can expand. The linear tape goes behind the TV,

and like I was saying, it makes the TV look bigger. But you can expand that field out beyond the TV by putting in the lamps and the linear lighting. That's kind of wild. When you look at some of the things they have on their website and what you can do with it, it's pretty crazy. I do like it, but it is expensive. When you start getting into all that pixel control and Q-Sync,

any way you go, it actually starts to get pretty expensive. There's a lot of DIY stuff out there that can do this, but it's not all one package, like a package solution, like what Philips offers. And of course, Samsung being Samsung, they're like, well, we got a phone that integrates with all these music services. We got a smart home system that integrates with Philips Hue.

Let's just pipe some music over there and some control codes over to the Philips Hue system and let it dance, you know? And you can have your dancing parties with your phone. So that's kind of cool. Yeah, and this is really where, you know, Samsung kind of shines with their smart thing software is they're able to do this stuff with what they already have out you know i don't know how long it actually you know takes to

make a feature like this but it probably didn't take them as long to to do this compared to some other things they've done so um some good press in the long run for them so they're gonna steal from apple only samsung i can say say only Samsung can do this, right? Because, you know, HomeKit doesn't even know that, you know, there's no way HomeKit's going to agree with Philips Q-Sync and bring in Apple Music and everything. No, it's not going to happen. So anyway, moving on here.

Nice Nortec Control have announced Panamax C3 IP, which is a compact power conditioner and power sequencer. It's a 12 amp Blue Bolt enabled power management product that has three separate outlets available for control. It's got remote power management capabilities using the Blue Bolt platform, allowing integrators to monitor, control, and program the unit from just about anywhere. It's 50% smaller than the model it's going to replace. And, uh,

they, they say here that you can put it behind flat panel TVs and structure, structure, wiring enclosures and that kind of thing to allow, uh, for that service integration. Um, kind of a cool little product here.

Uh, it looks like it also, they say, of course it's, it's Nortec and it, with Nortec, it comes the integration with elan control system so it can be built into that as well um pretty easily um tj these these types of power boxes are power

on off like this seems to be like a killer feature for some reason in the integration world and i i i kind of came at the i kind of left my sales and technician journey when this stuff was like coming to market, like blue balls was around, but it had been around forever, but what box was getting popular with oversee and that kind of thing. Are you seeing a lot of people use this or do you use this a lot? Like this, this kind of like power on power off box thing. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So a lot of times you want something like this in an environment where you're not going to have direct access to it. So you know, a customer's house or a customer's business is a perfect example. If they're having problems with their camera system, they're having problems with

like the router or maybe access points, kind of anything. It's nice to be able to just remotely reboot it and probably solve the issue. You know, as we kind of know that, you know, when you have an issue, rebooting fixes the majority of problems, it seems like, you know, obviously, it's not going to fix some deeper hardware issue. But there's people out there that have constant problems with their modem not working, you know, every other day, or an amplifier locking up if it gets too loud, or, you know, whatever happens in the real world, where you could just click a button and reboot everything. And a lot of these have smarts built into it to where, you know, if it doesn't like ping the internet, you know, website like Google, it'll just automatically

reboot outlets as well. So there's a lot of use cases for these and especially in the professional environment where, you know, like I said, you're not going to have access to those devices all the time. And you don't need to roll a truck out to to solve an issue that rebooting uh will solve right right yeah i guess that makes sense i mean as as it's always been the case the have you tried turning it off and back on again solution seems to be the only way troubleshooting starts and begins but never solves the root problem i guess pretty much always the first question that comes out of my mouth is, have you rebooted it yet? And majority of people say, no, you reboot it. And I would say majority of the time it works. So Gavin, what do you think about this type of product? I mean, I know it's more of a

pro-centered product, but PDUs exist. They exist outside of this market, definitely in the IT world. They're around. What do you think about this thing? Well, for us poor people, we also have our versions of this, right? There are devices out there that will ping services. And if they don't get a response, they'll start rebooting things like your modem or stuff like that. We can do that at a low expense. This sounds like just smart switches to me, right? Like maybe a little bit more robust, but I mean, we do this

with smart switches where you can send an on-off command on a smart switch, you know, to reboot someone's TV or something if you needed to. So, you know, it's cool in the pro market, you know, but if you're poor, we have our options as well too. Do you find those options like something you use? Or I know you were talking about, there was a, was something you use or i know you were talking about there was a was it wise or somebody that you were using the the little outlet switch thing the other day with the usb ports on it for your tools no that was zoos that i have that with and there's power strip yeah it's a power strip and i use that for my tools because it's basically not just tools but i use that as a charging station and basically basically, I just turn on the switch, it charges a battery. And once the battery is done charging,

it will turn it off later on. So it's not sitting there. But I also have a reboot, reboot plug on my router. So whenever my router goes offline, it does the exact same thing. It knows that it can't get to something on the internet, and it automatically reboots my router for me. And that has come in very helpful like you know keeping it online right because usually yes reboot solves it right i had a six and a half hour outage the other day uh from from thanks to comcast or i don't know what happened but it was really funny they they sent me a text message says uh probably around 11 10 o'clock in the morning said your services are scheduled to come back online at 1159 PM. It's like, wait a second. You, you guys aren't even, you're not even trying. Like that's just

a guess. Um, but, uh, what was funny is I, I have still have on there. One of those like reboot things, um, that's pinging for Google or whatever I'd forgotten it was there. But when I went back and looked at the firewall logs, it was basically like the link was up, link was down, link was up. So the entire time, it had been power cycling the modem every five or six minutes or 10 minutes or whatever and rebooting it. So when the system actually did come back online, the modem had just been rebooted and linked up with Comcast. And boom, I was back online sometime like 10 o'clock at night. They didn't go down all day. It was kind of crazy.

And it's a great thing to have. You know, I think ConnectSense sells one that does that, right? If you're looking for one, they're a good one to look at if you need. And yes, it's always great to reboot. Like, especially after a service outage, you get that reboot in, you'll have a new IP probably, everything will be refreshed.

You know, it's always good to have that done. Yeah, and I think the biggest advantage the professional ones have most of the time is the ability to hardwire it. There's a ton of, you know, Wi-Fi controlled smart switches out there and there's no shortage of pricing and all that good stuff for them. But I haven't seen any DIY options actually have a hardwire Ethernet spot. And that probably isn't important to the majority of people. But in the professional environment, it is nice to not have to worry about somebody's wireless working or something like that. So I'm just going to tell you something I've been looking at. This may be like a precursor to a launch, a show, maybe next year, a year after,

right? But I was looking at replacing my electrical panel um and i didn't realize the the smart electrical panels are available to us now so you can get access to controlling things like circuits you know seeing what's using the power on the circuits rebooting the circuits stuff like that if you really need to that that's some cool features so if i ever replace my electrical panel i'm probably going to throw some sparts in that at some point too cool yeah keep keep us appraised expensive one thing i will note is that um most of the time they're not like rebooting the circuits you can turn them off but you can't turn them back on except manually so keep that in mind i'll keep that in mind because that will that will really suck if i did that from you know turn off the hvac unit from away you know, turn off the HVAC unit from away, you know, like that would really suck.

It's a one way, yeah. But it's expensive, but I know ways of cutting down on costs through friends and stuff like that. So that's, again, probably next year or year after. Yeah, the energy monitoring portion of that's really cool. If that's what you're looking for, I think it's a great example of that. And, you know, turning off stuff remotely, you know, water heater or something like that, if you forgot to turn it off or something. But yeah, keep in mind that it's... It's a one-way.

Most of them turn off, but not back on. Okay, good to know. Speaking of turning off and not back on, thousands of Colorado residents found themselves locked out of their smart thermostats during some sweltering temperatures last week in an effort to prevent power demand from overwhelming the grid. About 22,000, um, XL customers lost control of their smart thermostats for hours back on August 30th in Denver. Um,

the news there was reporting that led to a backlash on social media from people not realizing that they had signed agreements for their free thermos thermostats, uh, and, and credit. Uh, let's see,

let's see, they get a hundred dollars credit on their electricity bills upon signing up and $25 a year for participation in this program that allows Excel to adjust the customer's smart thermostats in demand and peak times so that the grid does not completely break down. And they end up with a problem like Texas had a couple of years ago where they just kind of like completely lost power in both the dead of winter. And I think they've had a couple of like rolling blackouts recently through some parts of their grids are still having issues. So yeah, this is crazy. It's hot and people like their air conditioning. But man, we haven't seen this here.

I'm hooked up for it. I know that my power company has a little thing where they can turn off the power for the water heater and the air conditioner. But they have never, in the time that I've been here, done that. I don't even think there's been threats of it. But what about you guys? Have you ever run into anything like this? When I got my Echo B, they gave us a discount on it but they also said it's because the utility company

will have some access to it and and control over it right and all that really was was an app that was connected to the online service so the first thing i did was go into the online part of it and just delete their app so they lost all access to mine. But they never said they would turn off anything like in this case. They actually, what they were saying they would do is they would adjust the temperatures and stuff in your house based on usage patterns and stuff like that. If it's too high, they'll turn everybody's heat up a little bit just to reduce the AC, for example. I still didn't like that. And yeah, I disconnected mine, but I still got the discount.

I feel bad if they just came in and turned everything off because if I need some AC, even just a little AC, our houses can heat up pretty quick. Yeah, this sounds like an awful proposition. I don't think I would ever want to do it. I mean, ever since I've heard about these programs coming out, I've never really looked into them. But I just automatically assumed that they would do something like this probably at the worst time possible. Clearly they have. Yeah, I mean, and just like smart thermostats aren't really that expensive of a product anyway, especially now. So I guess I just don't see the advantage of doing this unless you're, I guess, worried about the overall environmental impacts of it. And then you're allowing them to do that. And that's fine. But if you're just doing it to save money, like it's not really saving you much money in the long

run. And I would just avoid it. Yeah, I mean, to some extent, like the smart thermostat will do a better job of figuring out like what your usage patterns are that Gavin was talking about. And it would do a better job of like, something like Nest and Ecobee have features in them where they'll keep the air conditioner running a little bit longer to eke out that last bit of cold air or whatever through the vents before it cools completely, the cold lines completely go away. So they can save you a little bit

of money on usage, um, over, over a year. I don't know about $25. Uh, that's probably more than you'll save by putting a smart thermostat in. I don't know, but I would still encourage everyone to get a smart thermostat. It's probably one of the easiest things you can do to get into a smart home. Oh no, I wasn't, I wasn't saying a smart thermostats are a terrible investment. I'm saying if you're signing in, yeah, if you're signing an agreement to get a smart thermostat for $100 off when they're only $200 originally, I don't think it's that good of a proposition. The technology itself is good, though. I think everybody should have one. Well, and the other side of this is the grid can completely collapse, and then they've got a huge service problem on their hands uh if if everyone doesn't participate in or you know this is 22 000

people that's that's that's no chump change but um and and nobody lost power so to speak but they did get them shut off and i like i like ecobee's solution there where they may be able to raise the temperature a little you know a little bit i don't know if the, whatever this Excel company is using. I didn't really quite get that far, but like, why was it completely lock out rather than just raise it to, you know, 83 degrees rather than, you know, the 68 it's set on or something? Well, and I think that depends on probably what's going on at the moment. Like if they're having a big, a higher power usage usage demand then they're probably going to lock you to a certain temperature whereas like if it's leading up to that they might give you that range i think at this time it was it was just the more the extreme value of it and that's why people were

upset about it because they were not able to adjust it well there definitely needs to be a better way of alerting people that that's that kind of thing's coming up where they're you know they've been trying this stuff out for years and it seems like to me like an emergency situation like this where we've got to cut 22 000 people out of the system where we're going to fail like it seems like they should have a better um management around like getting that message out like this is the worst case situation we are shutting off your air conditioner and um people are going to get mad though they probably forgot that they had signed up for the program and then well and how many people probably did not read the terms of service they just saw a discounted thermostat and they're

like all right let's do it yeah and forgot like two years two or three years ago like people sleep you know and you forget things when you sleep so but you can you can get a smart thermostat for like 60 now so yeah just do that and you own it. All right. Well, moving on here. Imagine having control over all your smart appliances. I know the electrical companies will love this, including like your HVAC systems, your ovens, your smart TVs, your microwaves, all that good stuff.

Well, thanks to the Home Connectivity Alliance or the HCA, who's been working for the past nine months to bring a new cloud to cloud integration to market. That may be the future for everyone here. They have built in the C2C, what they're calling C2C connectivity, cloud to cloud, was demoed at IFA, which is going on right now, the world's largest trade fair for consumer electronics and household applications. So this is basically an integration between the cloud servers of these platforms so that you would be able to control, say, an HVAC system from some other interface or app or something like that and do integrations off that. Gavin, I know we were talking about this a little bit before the show. It's encouraging that these companies are all coming together to do integrations, but cloud to cloud, man,

this seems like a big swing and a miss. It is. And I'll wait till it comes out a bit more and we get more details. But having your washer talk to your dryer to me is no big deal. What you'd want is if your washer is done and it talks to your Sonos to tell it, you know, announce this, for example. Yes, yes. You know, stuff like that. It all comes down to the integration in this thing. At this point, what they've announced, I'd be happy if all your devices just talk to each other to tell each other, hey, your time is wrong. Update your time.

You know, if they all got their time in sync whenever you had a power outage. Oh, yeah. your time is wrong. Update your time. If they all got their time in sync whenever you had a power outage, oh yeah, I'd just be happy with that alone. But it comes down to integration with other things. And if they might have to release just another hub, or I guess they would call it a bridge to bring it into matter, I'd be fine with that as long as we can integrate it with the rest of your home. That's all I'm asking for. It's 2022. The clock on the microwave should never be out of sync with what it is in the real world. Time is hard.

Sharper Image figured it out like 10 years ago, man. They've had the atomic clocks from Sharper Image in the airplane guides forever. I don't know. Just put that in there and co-brand it with Sharper Image for all i care like they don't even have to pay for it sharper image marketing could pay for it and then you'd have an atomic clock and the time would never be wrong like it would never be i wonder if there's a patent out there on this and that's why they're not implementing it because somebody's holding the patent for it no they they just they don't they hate you they just hate us and they don't want to do it.

That's why the more you have to adjust your time on your microwave, the faster the buttons will wear out and the faster you'll have to buy a new one. Yeah, that's if, if that were true, then, then why does it still break when it's blinking,

you know, 12 o'clock? Oh man. Well, it's encouraging that, appliance people are catching up with the smart home, I guess. But I don't know. This seems like a big miss. Thanks for reminding me that I did actually leave a bunch of clothes in the washer. I better go get those right. Stop the show. But you see, if your washer announced that over your Sonos and sent you a push notification, then you wouldn't be in this situation, which is how I have things set up today in my home. But in this case, if they have no integration with other systems, then I don't know what the point of it is at that point. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, I need to get some of those because evidently, yeah, I leave clothes in the washer all the time. And I'm going to have to remember. Hopefully, when we get off this, I'll remember to get out there and do that. So we'll send you a message. Yeah. Somebody send me a message.

Somebody send me a push notification. All right. Let's move on here. Big week in security news. And you've got a couple of stories here that we're going to try and run through real quick. Smart door locks and video doorbells are great conveniences, but people in apartments

and condos and everything, they may have an intercom where they have to buzz people in, right? Ring came out with something called the Ring Intercom, and it's a DIY retrofit device that attaches to the intercom inside your home and connects through Wi-Fi to

the Ring app on the smartphone. So when somebody does ring in, it will use the intercom system. There's some compatibility checks that you have to do, but it'll use the intercom system and allow you to talk through the Ring app to them over the intercom and buzz them in. If you're not there or whatever, like just let somebody in the door. This is really cool. We were talking about this a little bit before the show and I was a little bit confused, but like how they're doing this and you go on their website and there's

that compatibility amount. It doesn't, it doesn't work with everything. But what it does work with, if you do have one of the models and specifically if you are in Europe right now, because it's not an American product, but they say it's coming to the States. If you do have one of the products it's compatible with, I think this is a home run.

This is really cool. This is for anyone living in an apartment that needs to ring somebody in or a condo or something like that. This is a great idea. TJ, you had some feelings on this one as well when we were talking earlier. This is a genius idea, honestly. I mean, I see a lot of people asking about how to make their intercom system smarter, right? And a lot of places have this exact style of intercom.

You know, it goes to like a basic landline inside the house. And when I say landline, I'm not talking about like some of them is actually connected to the phone system. It's just a standalone phone that is directly connected to the intercom system. So you press a button and then that unit's phone rings inside. And there's a lot of older places that still have this type of technology and they're not going to update it, right? Like there's no point in updating it. It works fine. You're usually renting the place. There's not really a big incentive to upgrade it and it's just a bit a big hassle to go through the upgrade process but if you could just buy

this device and plug it into the existing thing and make it work within the ring ecosystem i don't see why a lot of people wouldn't do it and especially when i this is the only product i know of that does this there's all kinds of like smart intercom systems out there and everything but none that i know of that just tie directly into what you have already. And especially for a relatively affordable price, it looks like this is around 120 British pounds, which is not expensive at all for this kind of utility. So it's a good price. Yeah. Gavin, what do you think? I love devices that add smarts to old tech. And this is one of those devices. I think it's smart. I think it's brilliant.

I put this up there with connected.io because connected was a device that you had to, you took old dumb alarm systems and you then were able to tie them in to integrate them with other systems. And this is doing just that. If I had a need for it, I'd probably be shopping

and trying to import one right now. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. And again, it's not every product that is ever made out there. It looks like there's some disassembly you have to do of the intercom to plug it in for maybe some wires inside or something like that.

So you'll have to check with their compatibility checker online. And there's a couple of questions you can answer about the system or something like that. So you'll have to check with their compatibility checker online. And there's a couple of questions you can answer about the system and if it's compatible or not. It'll give you a green check or a big red X at the end of it. So we'll put a link to all that good stuff

in the show notes and you can check it out. If you're in Europe and you get a hands on one of these, we'd love to know your experiences from it. Well, speaking of bringing it into market, we've got our new story here from Sonos, uh, leaked out. We've got a new leaked picture of the sub mini and its design. Uh, the, the verge has kind of, uh, been on top of this, uh, rumor and story for, I don't know, it seems like

months now. Um, but we finally got a little picture of it and it looks absolutely adorable. So tiny. I can't tell, is that one of their, is that the beam or something that it's sitting next to in that picture? I think it looks like it's the ray. It's the ray, yeah.

I mean, that thing has got to be the size of like maybe a HomePod, I would assume. Maybe a little bit taller yeah i think the pictures are a little deceiving i mean just because you're looking at it from top down um but i would assume it's kind of you know the move shape um or move size i guess i should say oh yeah good point good point maybe maybe a little bit bigger but yeah yeah probably about that size definitely a good pairing for you know a stereo set of like play fives or if you have

like a beam or array, probably not a good pairing if you have a Sonos arc, though. Probably not. No, but at least it's better than nothing. Yeah, I like it. We're going to have to keep an eye and we've got to go back and dig up our predictions, our note server crash. So we don't have our predictions on the monies and what our bets were in, but I'll find them. We've got them in there somewhere. And then once i have those this thing can come out it all comes down to price well yeah it all comes down to me recovering this database then so i'll

call sonos i'm like sonos it's time to release the sub mini because i found what we bet it was going to cost on so and they'd be like you you're the source of the leaks. Get yet. Exactly. How did you know our pricing? It's going to be below $749 because that's the big sub, right? So yeah, $800 for that. I don't know, probably $350 for this, I guess. I think mine was $449. I think Sonos always likes to put their pricing in a range where it's like,

I'm overpaying for this, and if I just pay another $100, I can get the big one. They always do that. They put you in a position where it's like, I can get this one, but for only this much more, I can get the big one. And I have a feeling if you guys are paying $749, I have a feeling they'll put it out at like the $600 mark. Gavin's going high. Gavin, he's been high this whole time.

Yeah, see, it's not going to be that high, though, because they would cannibalize the regular sub sales. They might. But then do they? I don't know if they want to. Like, what's it matter? Like, what's it matter? They're going to make like 80 points of profit on this one versus, you know, 40.

Yeah, I think, 40. Yeah. I think they would, who knows what they'll do. It's so nice. I don't, I don't care about this. I just want my headphones. I already bought a sub.

I'm over it. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, and TJ, uh, put a nice little link from walmart.com in our,

our, uh, our Slack chat earlier this week. And it was such a steal. I had to like buy it. Cause it was, a steal, I had to buy it because it was a... It was like, what, $12.80? It was from Worldwide Stereo, selling through Walmart. It was a Sonos Arc subwoofer and two ones.

I think the regular ones, too, not even the SLs, for like $12.80 or something. I'm not sure. So basically, you got the subwoofer for free. And I ordered, and Walmart says it was shipped. But I don't believe... something obnoxious so basically you got the subwoofer for free and i i i ordered and walmart says it was shipped but i don't believe like if you go look at the uh the shipping tracking and everything the real shipping and tracking labels it says it's been canceled so i'm pretty sure that i'm not going to be receiving uh a sonos sub and arc and and two surround speakers anytime soon but

yeah i know i i know some of the orders, too. They were shipping out and then redirecting back to themselves. So they realized the mistake on a couple of them, at least. Yeah, well, I'm OK with it being a mistake. You know, sometimes

you can take advantage of those and get the things in. But nothing gained, nothing lost. So hopefully, hopefully I'll get my money back. I can actually say nothing lost, but we'll see. We'll see.

Anyway, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 403. Let's see. Moving on, we got a pick of the week here. We were talking before this show about some old computer stuff and TJ just went back in like a time machine and dug up this crazy, crazy home controller called the Echo 4. Well, it's funny.

You know, a lot of people think that home automation is a new thing. And I guess in the grand scheme of, you know, humanity, home automation definitely is a new thing. But home automation has really been out for 40, 50 years now. You know, kind of what we think about it. And I found a story from where 50 years ago

about this thermostat controlling, recipe showing smart home automation setup. And it's great. And suspiciously called the Echo 4 Amazon. Wonder where you got that from. What I like about this, not only is the pick of the giant 7-foot racks that are in here, because

there's multiple ones, but there's actually a diagram of it, and there's a power supply memory rack, a memory rack, a CPU rack, an input-output rack. It's beautiful. 6-foot high, 7-foot wide, 1.5-foot deep. There's probably enough room back over there I could put something like that. like it's beautiful six foot high seven six foot high seven foot wide one and a half foot deep

there's probably enough room back over there i could put something like you could have a whole house automation system with just the size of your garage you know what's funny is our cell phone could do everything this this computer setup does now yeah a fraction of the the the power cost and everything so yeah it's really cool really cool good find tj um this this is like wow this is crazy just to see all those wires and that rack and everything all the the pictures that are here pretty pretty cool setup we'll have to we'll put a link to this in the show notes and um i don't know was this actually used by somebody i know it was it was never put into production i think it was it was used in somebody's house but they never actually

commercially they had to upgrade the power grid to support it that's why yeah i'm sure there's all kinds of complications that went into like selling this like people probably thought you were a witch if you told them your house was automated and who wants to dedicate a whole room so you can adjust a thermostat from your kitchen or something right like we're not even talking about cell phone capability at this point or computer capability you're talking about like and like manual inputs and relays stuff still yeah so like you still had to interact with it in order for it to do something so you know how many people actually wanted that there's this picture of this like this guy like with this

giant racks all plugging these wires in and everything i'd like to think like he has to be he's like the original integrator and he just like lives in that little room right there he's got a cot over to the right hand side you can't see it's just out of camera and he's like something happens he's there he's the hired help he detects when you press a button and moves the wire around to get something to happen genius but because it's the 50s he has to wear the tie and. Genius. But because it's the 50s, he has to wear the tie and the little pocket protector. Yeah, it's really cool.

So we'll put a link to all this in the show notes, hometech.fm slash 403. And go over and check that out. It's pretty cool. But if you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week, or great ideas for show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm

or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. All right, Gavin, you've been updating some stuff, man. You're in with the yo-yo links. Yeah. So I jumped on the bandwagon and I monitored my pool temperature. That's been working really well.

So I just took it one step further. I ordered another temperature monitor and I put it in my basement freezer to monitor my freezer for any sort of failure or anything. And you know what? Like it sounds excessive, but this actually happened to my neighbor. Their freezer died. They didn't realize everything was thawed, you know, and they lost a bunch of food. So I was like, you know what? This is a perfect use case. Again, Yolink runs on LoRa technology, so the signal goes through the metal box easily. It has no problems communicating, and so far it's been working well. Very nice. Very nice.

I walked in. We have this little, I usually call it a mudroom traditionally. It's a laundry room right on the backside of our garage. We have this this little, I usually call it a mudroom traditionally. It's a laundry room, like right on the backside of our garage. We have this extra fridge in. And my wife was like, hey, go fill up the, go put these water bottles in the fridge. And I went and did that. And then like I came back in like 10 minutes later and the door's still open. I'm like, oh, I can really use one of those things.

Put a contact on this door because I always forget to, it doesn't like close automatically. Like for whatever reason, like the door is too heavy, heavy full of water so it just kind of hangs open i walked in and it's just it's bright and shiny in the room like why is it so bright in this room oh oh the door is open that would not be good this would be a perfect solution for that you know it would save you in the long run if you know from doing something like that yep and you got a note here about uh having some black rack studs what's going on with that oh yeah tj kept bugging me and bugging me and bugging me you know after i built the rack i had all silver screws and he would not let it go so you know on my next amazon bulk order i threw i slipped in some black screws in there for my rack i replaced

them so now i don't have to hear it anymore you know i can finally sleep at night yeah you're you're you've done your duty tj so aggravating i notice it more now since i pointed it out like it was bugging me too after you pointed it out the silver screws bugged me so you know i just want to thank you for that you know and now i can sleep better too you just gotta let not let things get to you gavin if you could see the state of my rack right now you wouldn't even listen to my opinion but the problem is i don't share my rack because i know it looks awful one day we'll get a little glimpse of it and i'm gonna point out something that's gonna bug you don't worry oh don't worry it's already haphazardly put together there's wires going everywhere i don't even know what's going on in it. Can't even can't even put my my unraid server in there. The case is too big. So it's like on the bottom shelf somewhere. Somewhere. It's under all have to move into messing with the next one. By then, I'll probably have a third rack somewhere, you know, just, you know, because I'm out of space now.

Like, turns out, I didn't really plan this properly and ran out of space pretty quickly. See, I went big right off the start, so I wouldn't run out of space. You see, I learned from your mistakes. You're almost out of space already. Oh, no, no, no, no. I have a couple blank plates in there and i can adjust some things you know i purposely left one u open for a unify uh dream machine you know like a pro yeah when i ship you that unify i'll let you know when i need it because you have the one just sitting on top of the rack and that's just not appropriate i know someone else pointed that

out to me and now that's bugging me. So yeah, the pro is probably coming soon. I'll bug you. Very nice. Very nice. Well, my big project for the weekend here, and it's the last day of the weekend, so it's probably not going to get finished, is finishing off this Wish.com theater screen. I spent yesterday ironing it. So I've done that part, and it got most of the wrinkles out,

but it still needs to be stretched on that frame. It's not going to work. And I put a bunch of new rivets in it. So actually, yeah, I got them sitting right here. Got a bunch of rivets and, you know, a little rivet crimper thing. There you go. And yeah, so I put a bunch of new rivets in it

and I now just got to figure out how to strap it to a PVC frame that I made up out of PVC, three quarter inch PVC pipe. And I should be good to go. I feel like I'm making a home theater now. Like I'm going to move on from my one, six dollars and what is it called? Foam board from the dollar store that I have taped together with duct tape. And yeah, I should I should have a real theater screen, at least in the next couple of days.

I have to ask, what do you plan on using this for since it'll be in your garage? Like you're just going to have like a giant clock on there? Like what's your purpose? Like if we were working out here, it's just the TV for the room. So we just turn it on. Okay.

That's all. If my daughter has to come out here, we'll set her her in a little like one of those little lawn chairs in front of it and she'll watch a movie on it or something like that so there you go did you use white pvc or black pvc it's it's gonna be behind the screen though the problem is as i started thinking about it it's like i have to find some rope rope to go through the rivets to like, I don't have any like string or anything. The only thing I have is like bright pink string that I would use to like, it's like yarn or something you would use in your yard.

Zip tie. I don't think the zip tie would work. Maybe it would. I don't know. I've got to figure out something to like, it's going to strap on the back. I'm just going to wrap it around this frame and then hang the frame up so um i'll figure it out and we'll see what it ends up looking like but it should be okay it should be okay we'll see for its use case yeah exactly for what i've got to use here it it should be fine so the daughter is not picky. No. I mean, she's been watching TV on four poster boards or six poster boards duct taped together.

And it's just clamped onto the door with little clamps, like little pressure clamps. It could fall down at any time. And then she has something to draw on. She's going to love it. Anyway, we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page,

head on over to hometech.fm to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout-out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you can get in there and talk every day about all sorts of fun stuff. I, I, what,

what was Robert trying to do? Steal a, steal a, an iPad mini from a hotel. He has like an iPort iPort with a, a rack around an iPad or something. He's trying to get the case off. Is that what we were helping him do?

We were helping him steal something. Like I didn't realize like, uh, sometimes I help this guy. I don't know what he's doing. He said hotel edition. So, I mean, you should have known right there. Yeah, suspicious.

Very sus. Yeah, exactly. So, if you don't want to get arrested, but totally would like to help out the show, but not financially, so you don't get drug into this, you know, subpoenas that we're all going to be issued from the hub.

Totally understand. Just we'd appreciate a five-star review on iTunes you know, subpoenas that were all going to be issued from the hub. Totally understand. Just we'd appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast after the choice. That wraps up another week of Home Tech News. From here, everybody have a great weekend. Take care. Until next time.