HomeTech.fm - Episode 405 - Router Hats for Pawpaw

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

This week on HomeTech: The team starts out with rants ranging from Smart TVs to label makers, Alexa giving you more ads, the Nest Router Pro is leaked, Sonos Sub mini finally arrives, and TJ educates everyone about Ohio's premier fruit. All this, the pick of the week, and so much more.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 23rd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Kemp. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation, and evidently today, rants. guys i mean technology sucks yeah stacy on iot she hates matter evidently you guys are telling me like i i haven't caught i'm way behind on stuff right now i'm listening to audiobooks a lot lately and i'm like the podcast is kind of like in between

and i haven't caught up but you guys are saying she's just she went she just went off like i'm gonna have to go listen to this after the show, after we record. It's a great listen because, you know what? To be honest, Stacey has been vocal about her views on Matter this whole time. And she's never really been a fan of it or, you know, didn't think it would promise. But this time is the first time I really heard her just really go off on it. And I think, I kind of think she doesn't like it, you know? So, like, at the end of it, like, I of think she doesn't like it you know so like at the end of it like uh i just think she doesn't like it so um it's a little you know i i really appreciate the honest

truth about it because everyone else is sugarcoating it and it can seem like it's it's the the savior and she's like no it's not going to give you what you want. You're still going to have 20 apps on your phone because you need those apps to get to the advanced features of the devices. I totally understand. And it was a great listen. Just, you know, if you're one of those people that thinks is waiting around for Matter and things going to solve everything for you, go give it a listen.

Yeah, I think we were talking about this in our hub and I was like, Matter is only solving one thing and one thing only a sales problem the reason they need this is because the onboarding was a difficult process and people were confused about oh I bought this thing oh it only works with the Alexa platform

oh this only works with HomeKit and now they have like no you get the thing with the little black Matter logo on it and you're good to go but then after that like it's still the same crappy little device it's not matter has fundamentally not made it any better and i have another other few few reasons that to rant on about matter but tj what were you about to say yeah it's pretty funny that uh she stacy keeps getting invited to these like

conferences to speak on matter and she's not even a big fan of it, right? You think somebody would listen to her podcast and be like, oh, well, maybe we shouldn't invite this person that's constantly hating on our product lineup. But it's kind of like everybody else has known. It's going to make devices a little easier to connect. You're going to be able to kind of cross-control devices. But just like Gavin said, you're not going gonna be able to do advanced stuff with it you know like it's kind of like uh what is it like i think like crestron home uh i don't know if they've added support for it yet but you could integrate a smart lock into crestron home six months ago eight months ago or whatever it was and you could control the log you could unlock it all

the good stuff but you would still need to go to the actual door lock app in order to like add codes or remove codes and stuff like that. And it's just like, it's not what people want, right? Like if I have to go to multiple apps to solve my problem, it better be a very inexpensive device or just like super intuitive to use or something. But a lot of devices aren't that easy to use and devices are not getting any better. Yeah. I think the reporting on this is much to blame as well, because the tech and the tech press kind of took this matter standard to be like, Oh, this is, this is going to unify everything. It's going to make everything better. And, um, I don't know, being jaded and had heard that, you know, many times before.

It's just like, OK, another another one's coming. But this one seemed to have a lot of legs because of the players that were involved. But as it turns out, those players are doing what they want to do. And it's basically there so they can sell more product and make the setup process easier, which is a big hurdle. But again, at the end of the day, it doesn't make the products any better. And it, it, I think Adam justice was kind of throwing this leg red flag up. He's kind of, he's pretty political if you listen to him on the podcast there. But, um, uh, and this, this is the smart home show with, uh, Adam and Richard. Uh, he,

he was kind of mentioning like, Hey, um, you know, one of the roadblocks that this may have in place for it is, um, you know, what if somebody comes out with a smart um just gonna try and pick something off my desk here label maker somebody comes out with a smart label maker and there's no today there's no like defined term of what a smart label maker can do in the matter right they have to go through this committee go through this process set up like well, you got to turn the label maker on. When somebody wants to press the P key, like what command does that send on to the label maker? If somebody wants to print or feed or cut, like those commands have to be defined in this protocol that we have to publish. It has to go through this working group.

And, you know, maybe a year or two from now, you'll be able to sell your label maker through Matter. It's like, but if you're a smart label maker company and you're this is like what you've you know invested your life savings into and everything like are you going to wait a year for some committee to meet and figure out like how your particular product should be controlled in this like generic ecosystem no you're going to release the thing and it's going to live on its own little island away from matter and and and be a happy little device. And Matter is not even going to be part of the equation for you until the rest of the industry decides that, oh, we should probably include those templates for those label makers

in our Matter protocol. So I just, I don't know. It seems like a lot of bureaucracy. It seems like really the only reason they wanted to do it was so they could solve a sales problem that they were having. But again, it's still the same devices that aren't going to get any better like smart tvs smart tvs you want me to start on the smart tvs is that why you just threw it out there like i'm just i'm i would just i was just commenting do you think do you think smart tvs will get better

when they get madder gavin no no not so you know like how many months ago when i got my lg c1 i was so happy to get my first smart tv and i was you know it looks great everything now a few months later this thing's driving me nuts the number of ads popping up randomly on the TV, you know, like so many updates that it prompts me for this smart TV is driving me nuts. And like me as the tech guy, I understand when a prompt comes up, what I'm supposed to do, right. And how I'm supposed to get there. But what happens, these prompts are popping up in my wife's the one using the TV and she has no clue what to do. The Harmony remote, first of all, is programmed for the HTPC. So it doesn't even have the buttons if you understand

how Harmony works, right? It can't control the TV at that point and she doesn't know how to switch into it. If I had a companion remote, even worse because then you wouldn't be able to get to those buttons, right? From the remote. So it just drives me nuts because i'm seeing oh you could watch this show or that show or you know we have this last week it was what was it the eula they had an update to their eula or something and they made you scroll through the whole thing and check boxes and accept it i don't want this so i'm looking into how i can turn it into like a hotel mode tv where I could disable all this stuff. I don't want to unplug the TV because I really don't want to manage firmware updates to these TVs. I want it just to get its latest firmware updates.

I don't want to have to check it every how many months. They do release fixes. I've had a couple since I actually bought the TV. But it's like if I unplug it, I can get away from all this stuff. But then if I unplug it i can get away from all this stuff but then if i keep it plugged in i get all this stuff these smart tvs just uh like why did they have to ruin it since you're using a htpc like what do you need the smart features on the tv for well so i was actually still using the built-in netflix app and the built-in prime app. Right. And they look beautiful on that TV.

They can do 4k and HDR, 4k and everything. But now that I'm trying to resort this all out, I'm probably just going to throw my Apple TV on another input at this point. That way I'll use the apps on that Apple TV and then just cut out the smart TV altogether. Like it's gotten so bad with the smart TV stuff that I actually just want to not use it, you know, and I'll buy another

device. And I wonder how many people out there are thinking the same thing. Like these ads just drive me nuts. Yeah. They're pretty obnoxious. I mean, cause especially the, the struggle that you described with like not having the proper remote on you to actually like accept the terms of service or do the update or whatever it is um it's very annoying because then i'll get you know texted pictures from clients and stuff and it's like oh well this popped up and it's like why did you connect your tv to the internet you shouldn't have done that um because every single tv i install i do not connect it to the to the internet you know if the client wants to do that at the end that's

on them but basically it's it's for the same exact reasons that, you know, your experience right now is that eventually everything is just full of ads and you get all kinds of annoying pop ups. And just it's just very jarring to have that experience while you're watching something and something just like showcases all over the screen and tells you you need to update something. You know, one big feature I use on the TV actually is the airplay. You know, there's so many times we're sitting there and we're just like, oh, you have to see this. We airplay our screen to the TV so we can all watch it. And it needs to be plugged in for that, you know. So I'm thinking maybe I'll plug it into the network so that still works, but then cut it off from the internet through,

you know, unify at the switch level or something like that well about that you're about to i'm about to ruin your day here um oh boy so i i noticed that uh my two lg tvs were sending analytics data out through my through my little firewall application uh they were sending every day no matter if we watch tv or not they would send a few megabytes ofabytes of data up to the cloud somewhere to be processed. I was like, ah, I don't really like that. And through Firewall, with a little click inside the app, you can just block them from ever reaching the internet. And I did that. And it was great. It was glorious. I just laughed and laughed. And the LG kept getting blocked. And I was like, ha ha, you suckers, you made a horrible product and I made it better. Then I went to watch TV

and the TV was frozen. It wouldn't boot. So, so, um, so yeah, your, your, your mileage may vary there. Um, I, I, I think the best smart TV is not plugged into the wall for internet, unfortunately. Like it's, that's really the only way to really go um because i to get the tv back on i basically had to unpack you know unplug it plug it back in and and deep and unblock the um you know the firewall rules that were allowing it to go out and do whatever it had to do and it thought that it needed to do because whatever the the people who wrote the software that live on there weren't smart enough to say well if it you know if it can't reach the internet can't reach our website then um you know we probably should like free up that memory or something no no we'll just we'll just keep making it same call over and over again and fill up the entire memory buffer the tv

so it freezes up that's that's a user experience. And then after all this, you know, the other day I turn it on and I have one of those apps, like a full side advertisement down the side of the TV telling me about something that I didn't really care about. And it went away luckily because I don't have the remote either. I don't really know how I'd get it to go away or accept a EULA, you know, because kind of in the same remote we you know, cause kind of in the same room, we're using a,

uh, kind of in the same boat and not using harmony, but using a universal remote. And I don't have, I think I might have those codes set up on that remote. Like, but again, you have to switch and do some funky,

like you have to do backflips to get it to go away. Right. So that's just, that's no fun. Um, so yeah, same, same brand to LG.

Don't, don't buy those TVs guys. If you're listening to this show, don't buy LG TV. If you, same brand too, LG. Don't buy those TVs, guys. If you're listening to this show, don't buy an LG TV. If you do buy an LG TV, don't plug it in the internet. That's my advice. Why didn't you tell me that before? It was fine before when it was just spying on me, I guess. It's any TV though.

It doesn't matter what TV you buy now. They all do this. And it doesn't matter how much you spend on it. You can spend $10,000 on a TV and it's going to do this exact same thing. Yeah. They're all subsidized pretty much by this advertisement and data mining and just watching what you watch and reporting that up to the mothership so it can be sold off to advertisement agencies so they know exactly what you're watching. It's pretty gross and disgusting. And that's that's great and i and i i have it on good authority that uh label makers kind of do the same thing uh gosh they they spy on you and um no wait that's that's not what tj i know you've been having a tag in tj

i don't have the wi-fi label maker so it's not spying on me as far as I know. It is computer controllable though. So I guess it could spy on me. No, I, uh, uh, last year I took part of a, a demo program from Rhino. Uh, they make label makers. I forget who actually makes them. Dymo, I think. Um, it was like a $500 label maker. I got the demo and I demoed it for about two or three months. I gave my feedback on it. And part of my compensation for doing that was a $500 Amazon gift card that I could use to buy any other product on Amazon. They were hoping I would buy a label printer, obviously. So I ended up buying a really nice, you know, $250 label maker and pocketing the other $250. Well, I haven't really been happy with the label maker the entire time I've had it. Like it's worked okay, but it doesn't really like do anything, especially for being so expensive.

It's just basically like an industrial basic label maker. It doesn't do like QR codes, doesn't do barcodes, all that kind of cool stuff. So Panduit has a trade-in program right now where you send in a label maker of, you know, similar value and they will send you one of their nice Panduit label makers. And I was like, all right, cool. You know, I already hate mine. I'm not out anything minus shipping. So I might as well just send it in. It's not like I'm really going to be able to resell, you know, the existing label maker for that much anyway. So it's not really, it doesn't really matter to me so i get the label maker right and it's an epson rebrand that panduit you know had had them design their own little thing they changed the

colors on it and then they designed their own uh printer cartridges um the problem though is that i cannot find the stupid labels for it anywhere. Panduit has a list of distributors you can buy stuff from, but nobody shows them in stock or the website doesn't even show that they exist. And the few people I've talked to that have used it have said that, you know, they have to order it from like Annexter and then Annexter places an order with Panduit and then eventually they'll get shipped out.

So it's like not even an in-stock item. It's special order most of the time, all this good stuff. I decided to buy the labels for the Epson variant because I was like, well, they might work, you know, it's just basically the same thing, different color. Panduit changed some kind of mechanism for the labels to where it doesn't actually hold the labels. And if you look at them with your naked eye, they look the exact same. The only difference that you can tell is that the Panduit ones are more square at the top, where the Epson ones are more rounded. But that doesn't seem to play too much into it.

There's these little, like, hook things that kind of grab onto the sides. And I guess they might be a little bigger on the Panduit one. So they won't actually grab into the Epson one. And it's just so aggravating to have this really nice label maker that I can't use because I can't buy labels for it. That's crazy. So you can't, there's just like no supplies that exist anywhere that you can find. Not that I can find. And I've emailed the company today to like ask them where I should buy them at because I've contacted like six to 12 companies. And so far, nothing. Wow.

Should you just like return it and get an Epson? I, you know, I can't return it. Right. So I can't just get my old printer back because I traded it in. So I'm basically just stuck with this like useless label maker that like nobody can use oh man that is rough it's like that's just like what you would run into with a printer except even worse because you like so awful at least with the printer you could like buy a third party like like toner or ink cartridge or whatever refill it or something yeah yeah i don't even know if

they refill printer cartridges anymore but still like yeah like can't even find anything and so like and it's a really cool label maker because you can do qr codes you can do serial or barcodes um you do like patch panel prints and you can set up with your computer so you can like you know set up uh different printing items and stuff like that. So you don't type it all out. So it's a really nice label maker. But at the end of the day, I'm going to have to like donate it to Goodwill or something because I can't even use it. I'm on Epson's website and they have all of the same looking like you said, you're right.

It's like rebranded. But the prices on here are all zero dollars. And it has me wondering if it's like, is this a real product? They're all free. And I thought about just buying the Epson version. Because I was like, well, I mean, the Epson version obviously works. Because it's the same thing. And I'll be able to buy labels for it.

So did you check the Canadian website? Maybe we have stock up here we can send down. I did not. It's a good idea. Because shipping from here to there is pretty you know it's pretty cheap i was thinking maybe you could like 3d print a new case that would fit the labels and then well and and ironically enough i actually took the label cartridge apart so i don't even have the the demo labels that it came with anymore because i broke it because i

was like well what the heck's the design difference i gotta figure it out so now it's literally useless because i don't have anything amazing but i like i like the option though it sounds like a good good printer but and if anybody's part of the slack channel i've been posting pictures of it next to various things uh one time was on my laptop another time was next to my tool bag. I just want to show how obnoxiously big it is. Like it's got like a handle where like if somebody were to break in my house, I could swing this and like take somebody out with it. It's just it's so obnoxious.

It is rather large. So large. Largest looking. Yeah. Well, I hope you get some labels one day, DJ. You're able to use it. If I don't get an answer this week, then it's going to Goodwill. Somebody else's problem for $20.

We don't need a label maker for the museum. I already have ones. This is not museum worthy. There is nothing exciting going on here. Well, you got to think the price per button on that label maker is really, really low. It is actually, there's like a Jillian buttons on it,

but it's not a smart device, not a smart device. Yeah. Well, yeah, it connects to the computer, but it's not really smart. They make a wifi version,

but probably not going to give that one a shot. Yeah. That, that one's the one that spies on you for sure. Well, Oh yeah. Just dream about all the labels you could be printing out and all you know all right guys what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it let's do it

all right so this isn't going to annoy anybody um amazon wants alexa owners to buy more things imagine that amazon announced a new product at Amazon's Accelerate conference, a new feature called Customers Ask Alexa, which lets brands submit answers to common questions like, how can I remove pet hair from my carpet? And how can I eliminate odor from soil stains? Previously, Alexa supplied generic tips from the web and other sources in response to such queries.

But customers ask, Alexa turns answers into product spots. There you go. Advertisements for your Amazon Alexa questions. We all knew it was coming. Here it is, guys. What do you think? I was right. This is the rant show, you know?

Like, I just realized because i think i was writing about this this week too you know what we don't really use our alexa to ask those type of generic questions i just pull out my phone and google it right but um if it ever got to the point where i would ask her to turn off the light and i would get something other than just a little bling you know that i like um i would so be done with it like. I'd want to get out of there and I'd want to investigate something else. But the problem is, is what else is out there at this level? I would even drop a little bit more money on a better system at that point just to get away from these annoying ads. Hopefully they don't make it too annoying, but hate the i hate it when these products you know they come into your house and they're working great or you know somewhat great

um and then they start to ruin it by adding smart stuff and ads and i really hate that because that's not what you bought it for in the first place smart devices just keep getting worse i don't know who wants this right brands brands want this i i did i strongly dislike when my google assistant speaker like says like tells me that i can do additional things with it like every for the past like six months now every time we like say turn off the lights or what's the weather it always says by the way you can ask me what the weather is for tomorrow, or you can set up a timer to turn your lights on and off. Google does it too?

Yeah. It's so aggravating because it's like every single time. It's like, you know, once a day maybe that would be all right, or once a week. But I don't need something like every command, right? A little Siri sitting over there just can't even answer a question, right? Yeah, that's true. At least they work there's there's no chance that thing's getting an advertisement can you imagine why does everything have to go to advertisement like is that like the like eventually like it's like this drain that everything's circling and eventually you just you just.

Well, I'm at the bottom here. I've got to go to advertisements and you float down at the advertisement sewer. Like I just why? Why does why does the entire world think that it needs to like center itself on advertisements that that simply they don't work? They just frustrate us. No one here wants to know what light bulb you need when you ask the voice assistant to turn on and off your light. Nobody wants that.

Whoever thinks this is a good idea, one, they're not using the product, but they're not thinking out what their product is actually used for. And if it means that an Amazon Echo device needs to not be $30 and maybe need to be like, I don't know, $100, make it $100 and just sell it without ads, just like they did with Kindle, right? Well, and that would be the issue, I think, at this point, right? Is that when Amazon released this thing, it was basically

a freemium model. You basically paid a little bit for it or you paid nothing for it they gave it away with certain items and stuff so everybody has this perceived value that it's that they're not worth anything now yeah and so i don't know if they would be able to maybe maybe that's their plan is to sell a ad-free smart speaker eventually but i think they've kind of put themselves in a corner now where people are expecting this product for free or significantly cheap. And if they don't get it, they're just not going to use it at that point. You know, there's a lot of people I run into that's like, well, $100 for like a speaker. I'm not paying $100 for a speaker like I can buy a Google one for $30. Yeah, I all that subsidizing up front here has definitely hurt their long time. Well,

I don't know that it's hurt them. Like there's still a lot of people clearly using them and, and, and jump with, that will continue to jump through whatever hoops that Amazon puts in front of them so they can keep using their, their talking box thing. But like, I, I just, I just don't get it. I don't understand why this, this is the goal of these companies is to like, Oh, well we just want just don't get it. I don't understand why this, this is the goal of these companies is to like, oh, well, we just want you to buy more junk that we sell on our website that you're already going to anyway. So we'll give you irrelevant ads at the most

frustrating time. Like, let's just do that. Let's that's probably going to make you want to buy this stuff. Right. And no one ever like looks at them and says, no, that for whatever reason, all these CEOs and whatever, they just don't ever hear. No, like, no that for whatever reason all these ceos and whatever they just don't ever hear no like no that's not what people want they don't want to hear your stupid they don't want to hear your stupid suggestions much less the ads from a brand from like coca-cola oh it sounds like you're thirsty when you ask that last question would you like a nice refreshing coca-cola no i don't want that i never wanted that and uh well maybe i do i could actually use something that's because all technology is just built on ads, unfortunately.

But it doesn't have to be. It doesn't like it. But we let it. Like that's where like everybody thinks they need to go for monetization. And it seems like the advertisers rule the whole world when it comes to like funding for technology. It's like, well, why? Why do they need to be part of this?

They don't need to be any part of it. I don't need a brand interfering with my voice assistant. But that's where we've we've come to. That's where we're letting everything go. Well, this this probably isn't going to be a brand. It's just going to be Amazon. What's wrong with that? No, I mean, it's specifically for it's an API for brands. It's for like Coca-Cola and Tide pods and stuff like that's what we're going to hear about. Like I't mind ads, but when ads start to impede on the functionality of your product. So when you're watching TV, I don't mind if the ad comes up at the side or something like that. That's one thing.

But when the ad comes up at the side and starts playing on audio on top of what you are watching, that's when it's starting to impede. When the ad comes up on the screen, you have to actually click a button to acknowledge it. No, don't do that. And in this case, if the ads like in its response, no, we don't want that. And I think people will push back eventually if it gets really annoying like that. In this case, they're slipping with the Alexa, they're going to be slipping the ads in. Right. So you're asking her to, you know, how do I clean a carpet? And they'll be like, you know, if you get this product,

it will help you clean that product, that carpet. And okay, it's not as, you know, annoying at that point, but it's still, it lines you up for a future where it will be. Yeah, it's like the voice response when you're searching for something and like the first thing that comes up is sponsored or something.

Amazon sponsored, and it gives you an ad. Hey, Gavin, your voice sounded a little raspy there. I think you could probably do with a nice, refreshing Coca-Cola. Thanks. Thanks. I'm just getting so worked up today. Exactly. Nothing but rants for the first part of this.

All right. Are we over a rant? Are we going to? Never. Never. Is technology always going we over a rant? Are we going to? Never. Never. Is technology always going to make us mad? Exactly. Well, yeah, let's move on to leaks and new products.

Leaks are fun. Yeah, leaks are always fun. We've been seeing rumors and talking on the show about that Google has been working on a Wi-Fi 6 router. And now we finally get a leak, thanks and courtesy to B&H Photo, who actually published the web page with all the specs and pricing and everything. The device went, I know we covered it a couple months ago when the device hit the FCC and we saw like some model numbers or something come off of it

that were similar to what Nest had used in the past. But now it's here and it's been listed on B&H as the quote Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro 6E router. So it's probably going to be the Nest Wi-Fi Pro 6E or something. That'll probably be the real name of it. But in terms of pricing, Wi-Fi Pro is going to cost $199 for a single router. Two pack is going to be $299. Three-pack is $399. That's pretty easy. Color options. They have a number of color options.

Google always does this. I'm kind of impressed that they actually figure out how to make more than one color device for people. It comes in a couple here. Snow, which is white. Linen, which is like a light brown. F snow, which is white linen, which is like a light Brown fog, which is light blue and lemongrass, which is kind of that light yellow green color. So, um, you can pick them up in those color options and those price points with whatever size pack you need for whatever coverage you have. Um, but it sounds like, I think I saw that they

were going to be probably, well, I guess it's going to be coming out any minute now. So like as soon as the Google event happens here at the beginning of October, we'll probably see these hit the shelves. You'll see them everywhere, I'm sure. Pretty popular in a lot of people's houses. I'm not a big fan of them myself. I think we've talked about them a couple of times here, but they're always probably one of the more cheaper Wi-Fi systems out there that you find between like TP-Link, Deco. And I think that's pretty much it. There's a couple other cheap ones, but aren't as big a brand. So I see these becoming pretty popular.

Yeah, that price point is going to be attractive to a lot of people. And they even said they may have network extenders or the Google Assistant speaker to a lot of people. And they even said like they may have network extenders or, you know, the Google Assistant speaker built into some of them. So that's good too. Just keep in mind, there's no ads today, but tomorrow there may be ads. That's always the threat looming. It's ads for the smart home. I got to say, these things look like a giant marshmallow. They're kind of of adorable looking like it has a little glowing light underneath it probably not tasty probably not but you could put a little smiley face on there a little stay puff hat on the side it'd be perfect if your kids have like a crayon they draw all over it right it's definitely right for it's definitely fingerprint

ready i can tell you that is somebody making like little accessory hats and stuff for these devices yet you know you can buy like a little gnome hat maybe you can buy like a little magician hat i think you found a billion dollar idea right here and i think we just need to buy some just need to buy another domain lightly placed yeah we'll buy the domain exactly but we'll we'll buy some lightly placed uh amazon ads, and it'll appear on the Echo thing. I'm going to sell tinfoil hats for these. We noticed you just bought an Eero. Actually, that would probably be a profitable business model.

I heard that, I think in the UK, people were buying like little 5G sell, or sell scramblers or whatever, but they weren't actually working. So you could make a lot of money off that kind of stuff am i buying a domain right now i don't know all the domains with seth goes quiet and starts typing a domain gets bought you know routerhats.com is available oh my gosh i mean that's a profitable Etsy business.

I think you should just let somebody else have it. If anybody's listening and you're looking for a side hustle for the holidays, you can just have that idea. You're welcome. Little scarves, you know, little knitted hats to go on top. And then like Gavin said, you could do some tinfoil hats for him. Absolutely. It's bound to improve or reduce reception.

Are you tired of your wi-fi spying on you oh i've got a really good cover art for the show that's going to be on our web page so check that out all right all right let's move on here uh we've got another new product coming from sonos uh this last week. We've been waiting forever for a cheaper home theater subwoofer, and it's now available. So after many design leaks, many months in speculation, a delayed launch,

Sonos is officially announcing and introducing the sub mini. Sonos says the sub mini is designed to be used in small to medium sized rooms and the regular sub is still best for bigger spaces the mini comes in comes in at like 14 pounds which is about it's about less than half of the 36 and a half pound sub the normal sub that they sell and it's 12 inches tall and it's a cylinder design so So it looks like a little, I don't know, end table, trash can. I'm not too sure. And it has a diameter of about 9.1 inches. But that's not what we care about. What we care about is like what the price point is,

because that's what we've been betting on for months. And since our note server crashed, I had to go back and listen to the show beforehand. And here we go. Gavin said it would come in at $600. And then he said Canadian. So that's where he got us. I said $500.

Now, you would think that my $500 Freedom would be less than Gavin's. No. Gavin, we did the uh the price check on it it's 452 so gavin's actually below me 452 and tj down at the bottom uh 449 dollars tj is actually the closest but he went over the price of the showcase showdown so i guess we're all losers i don't win a sub mini dang it you don't win a sub mini. Dang it. You don't win a sub mini. I'm sorry. So, you know, we checked this conversion before the show,

and I was at 452 and 78. I just checked, or 88. I just checked again, and it's 452, 78. So it depends on time of day. I'm that close where it depends on what day I check. I can beat TJ. What did it close on thursday last week when the sub was announced that's what matters oh well it will show me next week yeah i can look back i'll

get back to you on that and when we determine this thing only has one button one button just a pairing button which is pretty normal for subwoofer from sonos this is uh one of the more expensive 429 dollars per button and it looks like a good size still. Like, I mean, it's, you know, it's mini, but I don't know. I was thinking smaller. Yeah, I was saying in the chat when they did finally release it, it's like, oh, I don't really like the cylinder. Like, you can't really hide that away as easy. And I kind of got some pushback from a couple of people in there.

But like the way we have ours is the sub, it's just laying on its side. Like they give you these little pads for it and you just lay it on its side. And I shoved it underneath the couch and there's plenty of room under the couch for it to go. The particular couch we have is like an Ikea sofa. There's plenty of room under there. And if it wasn't going to go there, it was going to go on the side or like behind the couch or even on the side of the couch. This seems like, you know, I wouldn't be able to do any of that with this like it you you can stand it up and let it trip over it i guess you know the way i have it here in this picture um but i i there's not really as easy it's not as easy to

hide something like that away and even in a smaller room than it is the, the bigger subs. I was, I was hoping for a different form factor, but I'll take it. Four 29. It's not bad. Yeah.

I'm not regretting. I just bought a sub three, I think like two or three months ago for about $650 after like my discount and everything. And I am not regretting the purchase now. So I was kind of hoping it would be a little smaller, but I don't know. I don't think it's that much different between that and the regular sub so you might as well just get the regular sub

and the regular sub is 40 pounds so it can vary actually there was a reddit thread on the sono subreddit the other day about sub weights there's a lot of people posting their weights and it was completely different that's interesting i wonder if they have like if i find it fake sono subs that exist out there like people are going to ikea and stealing and it could be yeah reprogramming the little chipboards in there with that app to say oh no this is a sub yeah interesting well i i don't mind it but it's it's bigger and unwieldier than i would like and i i think i would probably stick with the regular sub. But I do have, you reminded me on the discount thing. I do have one of those like trade-in discount things

that I opened a random account for and kind of set off to the side. So if I get back to that, then I should be able to purchase a regular sub. I don't need a regular sub. That's the whole problem. I need another one. Yeah, and I think if I was doing the pricing

because I have a similar coupon for 15 off right now from uh uh one of the smart speaker devices um but i think it came out to like 365 or 380 after the discount and shipping and tax and stuff so not a bad deal if you uh already have one of those discount codes and especially if you have one of the older sonos devices and you get 30% off, that should make it around $300, I think. So even better deal for you. Well, Sonos isn't done. Evidently, they still have some more products coming.

So Verge is, the Verge seems to have a good leaker at Sonos or wherever that they are getting some stuff. So there's the Optimo 2 that's coming and it could be a little desktop size speaker that you can set on your desk or something. So yeah, there's been rumors about like a 360 speaker. They purchased that one company that does that kind of stuff. They're very small speakers or whatever. So there's been some rumors going around about that

and how you could possibly do like an actual Atmos setup and having proper satellite speakers and stuff too so we'll see if that actually happens the the leaks are always a little more uh ambiguous than I think they are yeah yeah I remember there were some like different size speakers that you could like some tall speakers that that had upward firing oh no it was a sound bar and it had uh you could rotate it and it would do the upward firing uh Atomos thing for the surround so yeah there's been there's there's been a couple of rumors on these products that have kind of like gone bias over the past year or so and um this is the only one that's really materialized so hopefully we'll hopefully we'll see some new

stuff from Sonos they've been kind of in the same format of the same couple of products for a long time now. And I say that I know they've added like the little wireless products, but as far as like the home sound and home theater stuff goes, they've been kind of doing the same thing for a while now. So we hope we see some new stuff from them because it's a cool company and we all like new gear. So people convince me buy buy a buy a new sono surround thing for the garage out here one of these days i think uh patrick spence's the virgins leak needs he needs to sell more products and make up for that shipping snafu a couple months ago in that low stock low low stock price right yeah so low all right guys let's move on here um see all the all the uh topics

things we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 405 all right we got a pick of the week and the pick of the week is the adorable little kitty cat that lives on the happy island yay it's great time we got you cat i don't even knew i don't even need a new phone and i kind of want it because of this yeah this this was amazing so um what's his name christian christian steig i think is what his name is selig selig he's the developer of apollo which is a reddit client and everybody who And everybody has been kind of like talking about this dynamic island thing that is, I think it's going to be named the island because who cares about dynamic? It is dynamic, but that's marketing. But we can just call it an island, I guess. And the other

one's a peninsula. We called it a notch. We just keep calling it a notch. But like, this guy is super creative and he has this decent reddit client that i have used for years now um and i just pay him money every now and then just to send some money into him for stuff like this like he just adds on the most amazing thoughtful and creative features onto his app that um you just don't get with like the large corporate apps. Like I used, what was it? Alien Blue, I guess, was the previous Reddit app. They were purchased by Reddit, like the whole team was. And now Alien Blue is the Reddit app. And it's got all these like missing features and everything that Apollo has. So if you're using Reddit. Got worse. Yeah, it's just horrible. Yeah, it did get worse.

But this app's great. What he did was he put like a little, I guess people are calling it a Tamagotchi that lives right up on top of the Dynamic Island and there's a couple of like, I don't know, 20 or 30 pixels that are there. And it just walks around. It could be a little kitty cat. I think you can get like a dog and some other things.

I know there was a setting for it as soon as it came up but i i haven't figured out how to get back to that setting to change it but i like the cat so i'm just gonna let it live up there and sleep and kind of do its thing it's adorable i just love all the ideas people are coming out with this dynamic island you know like they're kind of poking fun at it at the same way at the same time but they're having fun with it like the whole pong game against it i thought was brilliant you know i almost wanted to buy an iphone 14 just because i feel left out now i don't have an island on mine i have like just a bump on mine you know i wish they kind of did that with the iphone 12s as they know they could have it expand out from there and do these various things too but it was

a great idea it's cute um there's so much he could do with that you know imagine having another animal come in and they fight to the death you know did you did you mention that you have most that did you mention that you can have multiple animals like different animals i know you can have different ones but i don't i don't know how to change it. I saw it when it first came out, but I don't know where the setting is. There's a lot of settings. You can have a cat, a dog, a hedgehog, a fox, or an axolotl. Oh, I just saw it. What else would you want?

Pixel pals is what he's calling it. A cat, a dog, hedgehog, yeah. Oh, the hedgehog's adorable. That's pretty adorable. Are you going to go order an iPhone 14 now just for this? I mean, I guarantee you that he sold – Apple needs to send him a check, a commission check. Definitely.

People saw this, and they were like, all right, this wasn't compelling, but now I have to have that in this random app that I've never heard of. I know that's what happened. But at the end of the day Apollo is actually a really good app like it's really really good um uh for for all the features you get off of I don't know it's like a very inexpensive like two three dollar app um anyway oh that little key cat's so cute you know I I just bought the app because of your recommendation so I haven't been using Apollo at all.

It's really, it's a good app. Yeah. He's even got like a takeover thing that like that you can install that will, when you click on a link and it takes you to the Reddit mobile website, it automatically will direct you over to Apollo and to that thread rather than having to deal with the Reddit, the awful, awful, in 2022, the awful Reddit mobile website that I can't believe still exists.

Like, why? Their whole website's a disaster. And I would say half the month it doesn't even work because the servers are always crashing. Must be ran on potatoes or something. I don't know. Well, I don't have a problem with his app, but yeah, the Reddit website, Reddit website I very rarely go to anymore

because the app is so much fun to use. So I think I'm switching to a hedgehog. Yay. Did it. All right, guys. Let's move on here. If you have any feedback, comments, questions, ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm.

Or you can go to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. That wraps up a week here on Hometech. Gavin, it sounds like you really missed out. You said your wife had finished off the ILM Light and Magic documentary, and you didn't even get to watch any of it. No, she just saw it, and she clicked on the first episode, and, you know, six episodes later, she's finished it, and I haven't even started it, you know? All she said to me was, this was actually better than I thought, and we lived through it, so, you know,

you can associate, and, you know, you can associate and, you know, you remember a lot of these things, right? So she says it was great. And every episode like made you want to watch the next one, you know, I'm kind of mad that she watched it without me, because now I got to find like a TV time to watch it. You know, like, it's like, I don't really have to find a lone TV time for like Game of Thrones or, you know, like Lord of the Rings. But now I got another show I got to find a lone TV time for, you know, and I don't have much alone TV time. So, yeah, I'm a little upset at her. You know, I don't know what I'm just from now on.

I'm not going to give her a new show until I'm ready to watch it. You know, she's going to like time out. Just to regulate what she can see that's new. Exactly. It's a good show. Yeah. I can't. Now, the unfortunate part is, is like I've seen maybe three or four of them.

And we haven't had the Together Enough TV time where we're actually watching that to catch up on it. Because Cobra Kai came out. And of course, we've got to watch that dumb show. It's horrible. Don't stop that. I'm at the point of walking dead with it because it's not. I don't know what they're doing. But it's like a disaster.

I have to keep watching. Anyway, it sounds like you've been busy, though. You've been moonlighting on us. Cheating. I'm sorry. Got to pay the bills somehow. So this week I was invited to be a guest on Home Gadget Geeks with Jim Collison. It used to be a crew, but it's just him now.

They've been doing, they're in episode 500 and something. I've been on it a few times over the years. They used to be called Home Tech, the Home Tech Show. So it was kind of interesting. But we just talked about a whole bunch of random things like tech I deal with in the home from smart home to unraid to, you know, the cameras, blue iris, et cetera, et cetera. So it was a good talk. Once again, that's Home Gadget Geeks. Go check it out. Sign up subscribe to their podcasts yeah um and speaking of speaking of podcasts that are great and and not not this one like you don't have to listen to us but uh owen one of our one of our friends of the show owen maddock was on a podcast not too long ago

and i will have to put uh into the show notes i have it saved in mine i don't even remember the name of it now though um but he But the reviews in the Hub were great. Everybody was able to listen to that. So I forget. Owen's a big cinema guy, and I'm sure that the discussion was revolving around that. So we'll have to put those in the show notes. It was a really good show. I'm trying to find the name of it right now.

It is The Integrated Home. The Integrated Home. There you go. Yeah. They had him on there and then some guys that do Smart Gardens. the name of right now it is the integrated integrated home there you go yeah um they had him on there and then some guys that do smart gardens uh and i was really excited about the smart garden stuff so they uh if you want to find out how they spent five hundred thousand dollars on a garden go give it a listen yeah that's that actually sounds fun um but i'll put both of those

links in the show notes as part of our, um, after the week, pick of the weeks after the pick of the week's week. I don't link, I guess it's, it's more fun. So, um, I'll put those,

uh, links to the shows in there so you guys can check them out. But yeah, that was, I'll have to, I I'm very behind on podcasts. I need to catch up. So I'll have to go listen to both of these now.

DJ, besides, uh, cursing at label makers, you've been up to anything? Oh, I haven't been up to a lot. I went to the Paw Paw Festival this weekend, though. Is that where you pick up a southern grandfather or something?

You know, it could be. It could be. So I guess I just found out about it probably about four or five years ago. But it's like a tropical fruit ish that kind of grows in weird parts of the United States. Right. So there's they grow in Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, and I'm sure other places as well. But once a year they have a festival down in Athens, Ohio, and that's what we spent Saturday doing. So you can go there and buy pawpaws. You can have pawpaw ice cream, cotton candy, beer, all kinds of stuff. And I would say

overall, it's kind of like a banana in a way. Um, it tastes good, but I don't think it's anything like remarkable. Like I wouldn't go out of my way to do it. Um, but yeah, that's, that's what I did this weekend. So maybe we'll post a picture of what it is. I'm i've been there's actually a a guy in a giant suit a pawpaw suit that uh i guess is gonna have to make the show notes somehow but there you go they also have a podcast too so if you're really interested in learning about pawpaws there you can go listen to their podcast i'm sure it's entertaining it looks like we have a pawpaw festival up here too so don't feel so bad i don't know if i'll be going to it but yeah you know i guess and that's kind of the thing is like they can't really like be commercially grown so you're not going to find like a giant farm of them or something but i'm sure eventually

or maybe somebody's already figured out how to like kind of cultivate them and grow them as they want to but they pretty much grow in like forests themselves. So good luck. Interesting. Well, you're welcome for that little bit of knowledge there. I learned something today. They do not look anything like bananas. I'm just kidding. No, no, absolutely not. That's the first thing I was thinking too. No, no, no, the taste.

Look at the inside of it. Oh, the taste. They look like a pear or something. It looks like a pear-sized bean. It's super striking. And it's got these like giant beans on the inside of it too uh interesting it's not beans well there you go i'm glad i asked honestly all right i gotta try one now i'm source. I want to source one of these. It says with the flavor reminiscent of a banana and a mango together.

That sounds actually really good. It's very faint. It's not like a strong taste, but, you know, it's there. All right. Let me see where I can buy some of these. Amazon? Amazon. Probably not.

They last like, I think they only last like a couple of days. So you got to hurry up and eat them. But it's funny. I actually, I brought one for lunch today to my client's house and I was showing him and telling him about it. And I think that when I said, Oh,

we can like split it if you want. He thought it was for him. So he ended up taking it, the whole thing for himself. Just put it on his invoice. I did. Okay. It was like $10 for a. Just put it on his invoice. I did. It was like $10 for a pound of them. They're expensive.

All right. They're two fruits in one. It's a good deal. That's true. Do we have a spreadsheet for that? All right, guys. Well, that wraps up everything here. We do want to give a big uh thank you for everyone who supports this show but especially those who are able to financially support this

show through our patreon page if you don't know about the patron page head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support hometech for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out here on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat at the hub where you can talk about pawpaws. I don't know. Is that a beer? Wow. Okay.

There you go. If you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That wraps up another week of news here on home tech from everyone here. Have a great weekend. Don't buy a label maker. Take care.

Do we, we have, we have native pawpaws. I've never even heard of these. Yeah. They're in totally random places isn't this like and i grew up in ohio too and i've never heard of this thing that grows in ohio and i just find that so weird like if if if you went to florida and there was like pineapples growing in random places you you would know about that right you'd be like oh i found a pineapple

in my backyard honestly i live here in florida and like literally everything grows in my backyard at one point in time i have to mow over it but i've not seen one of these in my i don't know forever here and and probably what 20 years here now and i haven't like i have not seen this so i'm just kind of looking at it going is this one of those mandela effect things where like this this is the glitch in the matrix and now we're finding about pawpaws which once i thought was a grandfather but now it's a fruit i found like a whole article on the history and why the pawpaw is central to it's all made up though the the glitch in the matrix it's not real it's like the last question in the universe or the last question in the universe, or the first question in the universe. It says, why the papa is central to indigenous culture and where to buy it in Toronto?

So I guess there's some... How is it indigenous to Toronto? Do you want to read the article? And Florida and Ohio. I don't know how this works. This is like a pine tree. It's literally a pine tree that grows anywhere. TJ, look what you started now.

You're welcome. Like, seriously. It's the largest fruit bearing tree species in north america why does no one talk about it right i know are these the fruits because they only last three days so it drops on the ground before you even realize it's edible i think that's probably the problem too right is that they have to be eaten right away and you can't like commercially grow them so that's just like super rare but that but i posted here i posted a picture of what the tree looks like too and it's like you would notice that i i know that's that's the problem like what's this what's this like what's this fat bow tie or a fat tie uh tree i don't know and what what is this fruit dangling off of it looks like a potato sized bean like it it i just don't i don't get it and every

time they describe it they're like naming other fruits like you know it's a distant cousin of the custard apple and think sour sop and cherimoya i'm like what the hell like like they they've named like so many different fruits it tastes like everything else native to 26 states how is this how is this hidden i don't understand this oh my gosh this is a huge tree right we don't even know we have it in our backyard that's how that's what it's come down to i've never seen one of these trees in my life after that you have a few days before it goes brown all right so it looks like it's more native to Ohio and like northern

I mean they have them here in Florida but I'm guessing they're not the same but I think there's different varieties too like there's sunflower and yeah whatever else like ours is a shrub looking thing not this giant tree that clearly would stand out

I mean it's got Seth's gonna go in his backyard tomorrow and be like oh shit that's what that tree is there's one right there i've always wondered what that is it's growing fruit some states used to call it the hillbillies banana or the poor man's banana that's probably why nobody's heard about they're like oh hell billies nobody cares this is crazy i i really think this is like i'm i don't know i'm being set up here for a joke no no they're real what's this article 11 this article's from 11 months ago too and they're talking about pawpaws 11 whole months ago huh did they did they launch did they did they start the halon collider thing the the lhc did they did they i think they were doing that again a few

months ago that's that's when all this went went sour when they turned that on we thought the universe was going to end it didn't really end it just like messed things up and like suddenly we have pawpaws suddenly the fruit of loom thing doesn't have a cornucopia one person replied with, what an amazing article. I knew nothing about pawpaw. Now I do. That's exactly how I feel right now. I've never heard of this thing.

It's a custard-like flavor, similar to a banana, mango, or pineapple. Three fruits that taste nothing alike. So what if I just blend those three fruits into one smoothie this smell this sound like when tj was talking about i'm like this sounds like the perfect smoothie fruit like this was what like oh just throw a pawpaw in there you know and i'll take that i don't need i don't need a mango or banana or a pineapple yeah they're all in one i can just buy a one pawpaw and just take the seeds out then you think you need a lot of it to make stuff make ice cream and bake desserts