HomeTech.fm - Episode 407 - An Expensive Battery Changer

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

This week on HomeTech: Two weeks worth of HomeTech news all in one show as the group catches up post-hurricane to discuss new products and ideas from the Google, Amazon, and CEDIA events. All this, the pick of the week, and so much more.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, maybe, October 14th, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Palo Alto, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to another Home Tech Podcast, all about home automation, shows, events, crazy things that went on for the past two weeks because, well, internet has not been very reliable here in Florida. Believe it or not, when you have a major hurricane go through and there's a bunch of trees that fall on the power lines,

guess what doesn't work? Well, power, one, but also internet. Internet is kind of a bigger deal, especially when you work remote. You guys know you need internet for things? It's kind of important. But I mean, without power, you won't have internet either, too. Oh, that's true. So what's more important now?

Well, I mean, I definitely will say having power was nice. About a month ago, the power company started working on our power lines. I could see them working over there, just doing things and changing out telephone poles and putting new ones in and putting all new hardware. It's all shiny over there. So like, then we got a notice saying, Hey, your electricity may go out because we're working on hardening this stuff for storms and stuff. So I'm like, Oh, okay. And then they put this big giant concrete pole down at the end of the street and connected a bunch of stuff to it. And I'm like, wow, they're really on this. And then the hurricane comes through and we didn't lose power. We lost power for like three minutes. And, uh, we got all the flashlights out. We're like, oh, here it is

a week's worth of, you know, no power. And, um, the power came back on and we're just standing there with our flashlights in hand. Like, do, do we, do we keep holding onto these? But, um, people South of here got it a lot worse, a heavier winds and you know of course i'm sure you guys have seen some of the crazy pictures out of like fort myers and um fort charlotte area this pretty bad down there so um we i see like national guard it was a while like there was helicopters and national guard trucks rolling through all the time but um, um, I, I just drove down through kind of a, an area that was like South of here, probably about an hour today. And, um, it, it's pretty torn up by wind and everything, but they didn't, they didn't get water. So just 100 and I think they said 110

mile an hour winds for 12 hours straight. Some fierce wind right there. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of roofs were just taken off. When I was driving by, I could see like through people's homes. So like through the back of their house, through whatever door they used to have, like through the front of the house, it was kind of wild. Um, but very, just very torn up down there. Uh, so I hope they can get back on their feet. There's a, there's a lot of places that, um, there, there looked like a lot of aid down there, like all the power trucks and everything were going about. And then I was actually at a hardware store trying to help them get back online so they could process credit cards. And the friend of mine was like, Hey, do you know how to do this? And I was like, yeah,

I can come out and help them. So, um, but there were people coming in and they can't pay with credit cards. Everything's cash business. And they're like, I was saying that, that leaves you open for all other kinds of risks too. Exactly. So, um, yeah, crazy couple of weeks here.

Um, on top of it, like we had the Amazon event, the Google announcements, I guess, I don't know. Google really just kind of, they,

they were going to have a made by Google event. And it turned out just to be their phones, right? Phones and watchers or something like that. So that's kind of, they were going to have a made by Google event and it turned out just to be their phones, right? Phones and watches or something like that. So that's kind of, I mean, if you're into that, that's good. Good deal. But not what we were thinking of. But I guess like the week before, Google basically updated all of its apps and everything to be Matter compatible. So now, and then Matter dropped, right? So the Matter standard's here. It's released online. You can go and read it now if you wanted to.

It's over on GitHub. And it's all open source and all their notes and examples and test code and stuff is all in there. So if you want to know what all that's about and you understand all that, you can go read on it. But I don't know. I thought it was kind of interesting. I'm just glad it's finally been released, right? Like we've been talking about this for how long now three years so we've been talking

about matter so it's finally released i mean nothing changed the day it got released really so it's another matter of time before devices start coming out right um it's gonna take some time for those to start showing up i think there's a couple out there as it is, but I'm more interested the stories that come out when people actually start digging into it and start describing how things work or, you know, what does work and what doesn't work. And they start, um, you know, pointing out the things that they were expecting that it doesn't do anymore. Those are the stories I'm looking forward to. So I'm following closely. Um, and I'm sure we'll hear about some of them soon. Yeah. And it's cool to see all the support for it so far. Um, you know,

I think a lot of us kind of doubt the future of matter and what it's really going to like do in the grand scheme of things, but it's cool to see all these companies kind of come together and start releasing this stuff. Um, even home's jumped on the board here. They have a little Matter USB stick that's available for pre-order and a couple other Home Assistant devices from third-party manufacturers that are going to support Matter as well. So, you know, kind of everybody's jumping in with it at this point. We'll see how it goes in the future. It's funny you mentioned Home Assistant.

There was a post that i ran across uh from uh paulus over there he's the founder of home assistant over on hacker news uh but he he he has some interesting bullet points here and i i don't kind of go over a couple of them because he does point out things that either i knew and forgot or i mean i just like this isn't like a huge thing for most people right this is just going to kind of blow over, but it's a nice to have, I think. We're getting a nice to have. And while it's not revolutionary, it's just nice to have. So here's a couple of highlights for us in speaking of Home Assistant. He said, it's open source reference implementation. So Google, Apple, Home Assistant, everybody's

going to have the same code running to be a Matter controller. Chip manufacturers like Expressive and Nordic maintain implementations on their boards there too. So anyone can now have the software to produce Matter-compatible light bulbs or products or anything. He says it's going to be cheap. Since the software is freely available

and it works with a big, giant audience, kind of like he gives the example of Android TVs. That's why you see so many of those out there in the marketplace. You're going to see a ton of Matter product because it's cheap and everybody can use it. Multifabric, he wrote this. Each Matter device is required to support five fabrics.

So a fabric is a Matter network, and this means that you'll be able to run multiple home automation controllers at the same time. So when you run into limitations on Google Home or Apple Home, then you can try out Home Assistance without taking down your old system. I thought that was kind of cool, right? So there's plenty of limitations on Apple, like HomeKit and their and, and their implementation.

Um, and then with Home Assistants, you can really get down into the weeds on some of the products. And if you're able to do something on Home Assistant that you weren't on Apple, you could, instead of taking down the whole thing and, you know, scrapping everything and starting over with a different product line, you can use it. So I think that's, again, nice to have. Easy sharing of devices kind of falls into that as well. All communications local. So we're going to see a lot better performing home automation pieces instead of having, right now, a lot of devices, like if you yell at one of these tube people, you say, hey, turn on the lights. Well, not only is it going out to process the video on the internet and coming back in some cases, not all cases, but it's also sending a command out to the internet that has to in turn come back to the light bulb that you wanted to turn on. So this is going direct is going to make that snappy

and feel better for most people. It's going to work a lot faster. Works over IP. Okay, yay. Bridges are part of the standard. So devices like the Philips Hue hubs are going to get an update to expose all Hue lights over Matter via the hub.

So it makes integrating the whole ecosystem into Matter very easy. And then Thread, everybody's excited about Thread. I guess it's time to shine or fail miserably. I don't know. But I think it'll probably be okay. Thread's based on like a Zigbee type network, but it's got some other stuff mixed into it to make it a little bit better. So, um, everybody seems excited about it. Um, I don't know. I think, I think with all this stuff, you know, it comes out, it'll matter a little bit more, but probably not as much as these manufacturers and everybody else is

so excited about saying the word matter. I just, I think it's going to be a sticker on the box and like in six months time, we're going to be even forget it's there. Yeah. Honestly, the coolest feature for me is the ability to have multiple hubs that actually control the devices. Um, because I, I mean, I've switched hubs, I think like four or five times just in the past three years. Um, just to, you know, from smart things, the hub attack back to smart things, the home assistant and, you know, vice versa. Um, so I'm pretty excited about that part but we'll see how the rest of it kind of plays out and what it actually becomes

they're gonna have to add some more stuff to it eventually but maybe this is a first a good first edition here yeah maybe matter will matter i don't know maybe maybe all right um now we got a lot of them but what do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Oh, boy. So big news this week. Assa Abloy has acquired 100% of the shares of Bird Home Automation, which is the makers of the popular video doorbell. The aim, they say, is to further expand and scale the business in the coming years in view

of the changing market requirements. I have no idea what that means. I guess what it means is, yeah, Asaboy needs maybe some video doorbells and they think that Doorbird is the way to go to get them, I guess. Terms were not disclosed and Asaboy, they own a ton of lock man they're just extremely dominant in the lock the lock space they own yale quick set baldwin and august brands uh so that's four of the top five market share spots and then uh doorbird is the number three most used brand of video doorbell door uh video doorbird doorbirds video doorbells they're 100 of the doorbirds but uh video door bird door birds video door bells they're 100 of the door birds but the video door bells they're only the number third most used brand according to the ce pro 100 survey amazon ring and snap one slash control force chime video doorbells are the other two that are

more often used i'd say it's probably in the pro space. I guarantee you in the consumer space, they're going to be way down that list. Very, very, very far down the list because I don't remember what Doorbird, I mean, they do have some lower cost models, like I want to say in like the $400, $500, $600 range, somewhere in there. But I thought most of their stuff was, you know,

heading up north of $1,000. Yeah. For the bigger stuff. I haven't played with them in a couple of years, but they used to have one, I think it was like the DS one Oh one or something like that. Um, and it was wifi or POE and it was about $500. Um, and honestly, like at the time it was probably the best video doorbell if you wanted like local integration and everything. Um, but at the time it was also limited to seven 20 P for the camera. So it was very, very low resolution for the $500 you spent on it, but it was like, you know, basically a commercial product that you were installing inside a house. So you could do pretty much anything with it. So, I mean, it was a good deal in that aspect, but not, not in the technology side of things.

I'm looking here. It was, it was at least on at least on Amazon, it was $550 or something like that. But it's not very pretty. No, it is not. I mean, it's very, like, I don't know. I remember the actual app being pretty slow. But Doorbird has a lot of other smart intercoms, especially for, like, Gates and stuff like that, where they do excel at. So I'm assuming the residential market's not that big of a deal for them,

but maybe this will kind of let them expand more into residential. You know, a lot of the other brands that Asa Aboy owns are consumer-aimed with professional lineups as well. Yeah, now that they've got the big lock money. That's right. Because pretty much there's no...

Where else are you going to go? Baldwin? Nobody wants them. Schlage? No, come on. Yeah, and you could see some, like, direct integration with their locks in the future, too, if you buy to go? Baldwin? Nobody wants them. Schlage? No. Come on. Yeah, and you could see some, like, direct integration with their locks in the future, too. If you buy a doorbird, you know, if you buy a doorbird on a Kwikset or a Yale, then you can automatically unlock it within the app. So I think it's a smart move.

That's exactly what I was thinking. They're going to own the front door. Yeah. You know, from the doorbell to the lock. I mean, it detects your package there, and it opens the door and lets the Amazon guy drop it off inside. Stuff like that. Yeah. You know, from the doorbell to the lock. I mean, it detects your package there and it opens the door and lets the Amazon guy drop it off inside. Stuff like that. Yeah. And you could see direct integrations kind of like where we've seen like the video doorbell and the locks merging here in the past, you know, about a year. So that would be a prime market for them to invest in as well. I was trying to make a joke and I i screwed up because i named baldwin and

quickset those are brands owned by these like slage isn't slay slay slage now uh it's owned by a legion yeah so legion like owns one or two more of the others but kind of a small player compared to this one because they they i mean not only do they own these couple of door lock brands they own a ton of like door and door hardware brands that are adjacent to locking mechanisms, I guess. Yeah, I would say Allegiant, who owns Schlage and a bunch of others, they're more commercial, whereas, you know, Assa Abloys really aim themselves at the consumer market.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. All right, well, let's keep the lock talk theme here and talk about smart locks. And the one big problem they do have is power. And there's a lock manufacturer named Alfred who probably will be purchased by us pretty soon. If not already, who knows? They probably already are.

They think they have a solution called wireless power. And this is first announced way back at CES 2020. The Alfred AirCord enabled an ML2 smart lock. And it's finally come to reality. It's finally shipping. So it's a wireless powered by Y-Charge wireless power transmitter. Don't have any idea what that is. But it's basically a lock that's in the door that gets

wireless power. That's, that's pretty cool. Like there's no batteries and things like that. Now this is more commercial aimed at like it's a mortise lock. So it's high end resi or commercial stuff. But the company does say that there is a deadbolt lock in the future sometime early next year. So kind of cool. TJ, I know you're really excited about wireless power and locks. You know, honestly, when I started reading this article, I was willing to like write it off immediately because anytime I see something with wireless

power, you kind of just assume that it's not going to ever exist, right? We've heard about wireless power, powering devices or smart home sensors or your phone or lamps or whatever forever. Now I feel like, uh, it's kind of like the AR and VR talk. Like it just keeps going on with, with nothing really happening. Um, but this, it looks cool. I mean, it's, you know, they basically install a little thing inside the ceiling. Um, and that's what transmits the wireless power to the device. My second thought was that this would be genius as like just a regular smart home company. Because imagine all the different sensors you could have around the house that didn't require batteries or constant power. And depending on how many of these devices you can power off of one

antenna, like you could outfit a whole house in this and never have to worry about changing batteries again. So, I mean, that's pretty sweet to me. Yeah. They, they claim I'm looking at the, we charge website right now and they claim that it will one transmitter can power multiple devices across, um, we'll do the 1400 square feet or 130 square meters area. So that's kind of cool. That's pretty good. Yeah. And, uh, Jimmy in the chat, there's saying $900 buys a lot of batteries for a normal smart lock. And that's true. And that's probably why they started off with commercial, um, because I commercial people are not afraid to spend this on a, on a smart lock at all. Um, especially when you start talking about like access control, you're usually talking two to $4,000 per door for like proper access control.

So if you could do this on, you know, on a couple of rooms in office or something for a half the price, then a lot of people are going to jump on that, but they definitely have to get the price down if they're going to go for consumer market. Some architect is going to see this and be like, I'm going to put these on every, every floor of this condo and it's going to be every door and

everybody's going to be like, oh, great. And yeah, it's exciting for some people. Wireless technology is always exciting. Wireless power is exciting for some people. Well, I remember when I first saw the wireless power a couple of years ago, I was excited about it. But I thought about in my house, you know, powering all those sensors, like you said, TJ, you know, that would just eliminate that. And I know it's a lot of money for batteries, but you know, at the rate I bill my time, it's, it's not a lot of money. You know, I'm an expensive guy, right? You know, an expensive battery change. Yeah, exactly. You know, and it seems like, you know what, uh, one of the things I see with battery powered devices these days is when you have a lot of devices, the batteries don't all die at the same time. So it seems like every day another device

is batteries dying. So every day I'm changing another battery and I'd like to try and get rid of that. So that's why I always recommend hard wiring if you can, but that's not always possible in all these cases. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, you remove some of the worries about having batteries, right? Like I have a lock right now that we installed for a client, I think four months ago, and it's a smart lock and I use the batteries that came with the lock. Um, but it just found out the lock stopped working this past weekend, uh, because I guess they're, the battery started becoming corroded. Uh, nobody noticed. And then it started slowly dripping down, I guess, into the lock.

And it destroyed the circuitry on the lock. So you have to worry about your batteries leaking at some point as a possibility. Batteries expanding. Batteries going bad. Especially devices that don't have easily replaceable batteries. So definitely good use for it. You know what would be nice? I don't know if it exists. But like a hinge that would allow the transferring of power so you know into

the door you could get power through the hinge and then somehow run a wire up to a lock that way and have be able a wireless wireless make it if you're not going to go wireless something like that would be nice too right they do have, I forget what the actual term is, but they do have a power transfer hinges. That's what they're called. So you can actually run power through the door hinge itself and then drill down to the door lock or whatever. That doesn't sound fun at all.

No, it's a pain. Yeah, some of the applications they have on their website here are smart locks, electronic shades, which we always talk about. We were just talking about that this week, having to change all the batteries or running a hardware. their website here smart locks electronic shades which we always talk about like having we're just talking about that this week having to having to change all the batteries or running a hardware once a year is enough for me geez yeah digital signage which okay i get but like maybe in the store or something whatever electric toothbrush i guess yeah i'm always forgetting to charge the

thing and then um game controllers and a smart faucet so so So I just had to look up the powerless, what did you, power transfer hinge you mentioned? Yep. And Assa Abloy has one. Of course they do. There you go. Of course they do, you know? So I may have to look into that.

Yeah, they're a pretty common thing if you don't want to do like a door cord or have a physical wire go into the door or visible wire, I guess I should say. All right, well, let's move on here. Some interesting news from Rachio this week, the sprinkler controller. On a post over their community forum,

Rachio announced that they were giving up on fixing frustrating issues that HomeKit users were experiencing while using their products. The announcement read, hi everyone, this will be the final HomeKit post for a while. We've put a considerable amount of effort were experienced while using their products. The announcement read, hi, everyone. This will be the final HomeKit post for a while. We've put a considerable amount of effort into determining the root cause and possible solutions

for the no response error that some Rachio users report while using HomeKit. And we're sorry we have some disappointing news. We are suspending this work indefinitely. So Rachio throws in the towel on supporting home kit on their sprinkler product which i really don't quite understand why it's i don't know maybe i guess you may want to know like if the sprinkler is running and you can base automations on that but um one thing is nice is that they said they're going to make things right

they're going to take back controllers and refund customers the cost if they want to jump over to another competitor. So at least they're making up for, you know, maybe you bought a Rachio system for the HomeKit integration and not all the other stuff that goes along with it. And since that doesn't work, they're going to give up on it. They'll buy it back from you, which is nice. Glad to see them.'s that's the proper way to do it yeah i don't think many people are going to be upset though i mean ratio is a great controller but um most of the features you have to use their app for it's got a ton of stuff you gotta do in their app i mean integration's nice but in the end all integration you can start and

stop a zone or maybe kick off a routine or something like that but the fun stuff is all in the app so i read this as like they're just frustrated they give up just throwing the towel and i'm also wondering if they're just gonna say like let's focus on matter and if we focus on matter that will bring it in through that that way too and things may work that way and people will be happy i don't think anyone's going to return their retro controller though i wonder how many people could do it like with the api like i'm sure there's already a homebridge plug-in or something that to backdoor this thing back in um that doesn't have the same problems as it's got a really good api with callbacks and everything

so i mean the api is really good yeah yeah it's really good as long as you use those callbacks and everything. So I mean, the API is really good. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good as long as you use those callbacks because they only give you so many calls per day, like 1600 or so. And you can't pull the system to find out what is going. If you start pulling, then you're going to hit that 1600 limit pretty quick. Especially since you have to pull, I think once or twice to get some, if not all the information, but, um, like you said, they have really nice app and most of this really good stuff, the really cool stuff you want to use ratio for use their app because it's got like the scheduling is just way different and just use it. You use that for that. Um, um, it is nice to like know if your sprinkler is running and to be able to like pause it for like, if you're having a back outside party in your backyard or something you want to pause it um for the night but uh yeah uh that's that's

unfortunate but maybe some i'm sure that somebody's going to find a workaround or um like you said to me this screams like hardware problem like it's it's it screams to me we we we can't make the hardware do what we want to do like the the internet part, the networking part of the hardware. Because when you see that no, what is it, no response error on HomeKit, 99% of the time that's some kind of like Bonjour or MDNS related like broadcast thing that's not working right. And I'm wondering if they just, you know, whoever they're using to make their hardware chipsets

for their Wi-Fi, I'm wondering if they just could make that work with them and gave up on it. And maybe it'll work, like you said, TJ, with Matter in the next rev of equipment that comes out. Yeah, I was reading some comments and a couple of people were alluding to the something with the hardware, not not supporting it in some capacity. So you might be on to something there. All right. Well, speaking of the hardware, not, not supporting it in some capacity. So you might be on to something there. All right. Well, uh, speaking of new hardware, we've got some new kit coming out. Um, Claude pie and it's an India based IOT maker specializes in Laura has, um, released or announced, I guess,

the Claude pie Adam, which is a new hub. Wait, wait. For Home Assistant, it's kind of interesting that you can have third-party, since Home Assistant is open source, you get to have third-party hubs being made. It's kind of cool. The new hub uses a Raspberry Pi compute as the core internal computer device, and it can integrate with Zigbee 3.0 open thread and matter. No pricing has been announced, but you can join the late list like everyone else, I guess, to find out how much it's going to cost. Um, TJ, I think you said you, you joined that way list. You you're interested in this guy. Yeah. Why not? You know, I, I run it off a Raspberry Pi right now. Um, but if I'm going to get in, you know, with matter, I'm going to need some kind of hub anyway. I honestly don't

think this is going to come to fruition just because I'm very skeptical. So I went ahead and pre-ordered the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB plug as well. But if this comes out, I wouldn't be opposed to switching it just because it has everything built in already. It's not bad looking. Like it's, I mean, a decent looking hub. Yeah, it looks like an actual hub, you know,

like the Home Assistant yellow one, I don't think is like awful looking, but it still looks like it's i mean a decent looking hub yeah it looks like an actual hub you know like the the home assistant yellow one i don't think it was like awful looking but it still looks like it's for nerds this kind of looks like you would put it in somebody's house yep so i'm not hating on it i can't believe you called jimmy a nerd well i'm a nerd too so i can't really say anything there you go the the hardest part of this will be finding the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. And I just had a look because I haven't been able to buy a Raspberry Pi in quite some time, minus the keyboard version. I can find those all day long. But they're up to like $100 to $150 on Amazon.

So I don't know even if I get added to the actual list of this, if I'll get it just because it's going to be like a $200 or $300 hub at that point. I'm looking to play with Home Assistant. I'm going to jump into it soon. But my whole thought is I'm probably going to run it under Docker or VM on my Unraid. And my reason why is I'd like to be able to switch out the antennas. If I don't like this Z-Wave antenna, I can take it out and throw in another controller or work with that. And one thing I-Wave antenna, I can take it out and throw in another controller or, you know, work with that.

And I like just be, one thing I like about Home Assistant is you can take it and then just expand it as you want and add what you want. And there's so much power there. Yes, it's for nerds. And that's probably going to be part of my learning curve, but I'm going to take a chance

and give it a shot and see what I think. Honestly, as somebody who's just been switching over, I don't think it's as bad as it was before. I think there's still some of that, you know, YAML configuration stuff that unfortunately you have to touch once in a while. But it's pretty much all been, you know, user interface for me so far,

and I haven't really had many troubles. And the troubles I've had, you know, I would probably chalk up to user error because I don't like to read manuals or anything. So it's probably my fault. It has come a long way from what it used to be where it was just strictly all YAML input and cross your fingers and pray that it works when you hit start.

But it does look like they've done a great job of getting the onboarding and the setup UI and everything brought over into actually things people can read and understand. All right. All right. I know that we had an Amazon event, I guess, kind of moving on to our event coverage. We had an Amazon event last week. They had a bunch of new type products, or not really new products, but additions and updates to their products that I thought were pretty cool. You probably should talk about here. Um, so we'll go over these like one at a time. See if we have anything to say about them, but like the echo, we've got new fifth generation echo dots and the dot with clock, they get a bump in audio quality. Thanks

to new larger drivers that Amazon claims will double base output. So that's always nice. The dot with clock gets an upgraded display, does more things, like shows who's playing the music and weather reports and that kind of thing. They have built-in temperature sensors, which I'm going to loop around to that and come back to it. Because I, yeah, yeah, I'm going to talk about that. And then both the fifth and fourth generation Echo Dots

and the fourth generation Echo are getting the ability to act as Wi-Fi extenders for Eero. So that's actually really cool. And it's $50 for the EchoDot and $60 for the Dot with Clock. So not bad deals. Gavin, what do you think about this thing? I think, you know what I really like about this is they're building more and more into the single device. So they're grouping a bunch of devices you usually have in a room into one. The thing I don't like about it is not really like you can use it in other ecosystems yet.

Right. So like having the temperature sensor, that would be great if they added like millimeter wave for room sensing, you know, occupancies. That would be awesome. I know another sensor in there. And I think it's great with the euro extenders i think that's smart that they added that um it just you know having one device instead of five devices in that room just keeps things cleaner and i think they'll sell well good price points too so an euro extender is that like basically it extends the wi-fi into the room you're in. Like basically works like the little small Eero extenders. Yeah. And technically it only needs to really cover that room. I guess that's probably what they're aiming for is just covering that room that it's in.

And then you can buy regular Eeros for the rest of the house if you want. That is amazing, to be honest. Like I personally don't want my Wi-Fi router to be a smart home speaker, but I think it's great that you have the ability to do it, and they're adding it to the fourth generation as well. So, I mean, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, because you may already have this, or you may already want... I have one. Yeah, you may already have one, like you may already need one

in a room that doesn't have great coverage, but as long as it has Wi-Fi from the main base station, it can be extended into that room and you have a little bit better you know as you're like sitting there reading you know news on your phone or whatever before you go to bed like sometimes you know i always when i was designing homes i always put like a an access point like right behind the master bed because i know that's where people are like they're going to bed and they're like i can't get on the internet you know because the router is clear across house. But if there's a hardwired access point right there behind the bed and

like never was an issue, but this basically puts that on the night nightstand next to them. This is a good idea. Great idea. Honestly, I'd be interested to know how the fifth generation sounds as well. I bought one of the echo dots, uh, mainly to use as like a Zigbee hub for my small, uh, office. And I was, you know, when I listened to music for the first time on, I was not, I didn't think I was going to be impressed. But the first song I played on there sounded really good for a $100 speaker. So if they've already improved the audio with the new generation too,

I'm sure that sounds great. And especially, you know, comparison to Sonos speakers for half the price, depending on which one you buy. Or much less half the price. $50 or $60, that's much less, yeah. Ring got a couple of new updates, new spotlight cameras, basically. The Spotlight Cam Plus is $200.

It's got a newish look. I looked at it, it looks the same as the other one to me. And then it comes in solar battery wired or plug-in versions. And then it's got it comes in solar battery wired or plug in versions. And then it's got a spot light cam pro, which adds better audio quality. It's got the radar powered motion detection for the bird's eye view thing they do. And it comes in battery and plug in models for $230. And those are on pre order right now. And they say there's a wired model that's going to ship in a few months. So I don't know. There's very much to say about that.

Like, it's interesting, but it just seems like a good spec bump on Ring products. Still no flying robot to fly around my house. Do you really want that, though? Like, we complain about it, but do any of us really want that? As long as I get three or four of them at the same time. Well, one is useless to me, but if i have the whole house covered maybe i'd probably use it just to chase the dogger out i'd say make them fight each other can you imagine how loud that's going to be when that flies around your house i am the only alexa helper there can only be one it's got a red laser on it yeah stun guns it's funny

well speaking of the little smart security cameras Blink also launched a new mini PT mount so pan tilt mount for the Blink mini cameras for $30 you can get both as a combo for $60 whole dollars and it also added a $100

Blink wired floodlight camera to the line. It's got 2,000 lumens of lighting output, a 1080p camera, and two-way audio. Like most Blink cameras, this one can store video locally if you want. Or you can opt in for the cloud storage with a Blink subscription plan. So I'm just, it's funny, like, what Amazon does with Ring and Blink. It's like, it's almost like two competing lines, like two ideas. Like, one of them is, like, super cheap, store it locally. The other one is, like, more expensive, and you got to pay to actually make it work.

Like, Ring just doesn't do anything unless you're paying that, what, 30 bucks a year or whatever for it per device. Up to like, what, 100 bucks a year or something like that. I forget whatever they top out at. But it's just interesting to see them spec. I almost felt like Blink would just go away and they seem to just keep putting more into it. Yeah, I was pretty sure

that they were just going to roll it into ring and you just have a cheaper ring camera and you basically have you know because that's kind of what ring is doing anyway they already have two or three or four different cameras of the same you know quality but they have different features or battery powered or solar powered or whatever um so it is perplexing to me as well why they haven't just rolled it into each other. Yeah. It reminds me of the little, well, I was just thinking of the little, what was it? Now I can't even think of the name of it.

Wyze? I guess the Wyze camera that I got. Blink and Wyze kind of fall into the same pot in my head for some reason. We've got Bruno joining us here. He says, bought a few Xiaomi speakers with infrared repeater inside so you can control the air conditioning with a smart speaker.

Hey, that's a great idea too. Wow. I have one of those mini splits here in the garage. And yeah, that's a great idea. All right. Moving on on our Amazon thing here. The Fire TV got a big update for Fire TVs in general. They've come out with a new Fire TV Omni QLED series.

It's available in 65 and 75 inch sizes, which are $800 and $1,100 respectively, starting on October 27th here. These new models boast quantum dots, the full array of LED backlights with up to 96 zones for local dining and support HDR video. Gavin, are you regretting that LG purchase now? No.

Don't say that loud. I'm not allowed to say it. No, no, no. I probably wouldn't have bought a Fire TV, to be honest. You know, I would have gone with another lg probably but i just have a love hate relationship with these smart tvs these days more hate than love but i'll get over it well and if you don't like smart tvs you're definitely not gonna like an amazon smart tv so exactly they're gonna require you to connect it to the internet for you to do

anything so it's kind of like a dunce smart tv yeah like there are smart tvs but this one's not that smart this is the smart tv that was held back in the gravy it's gonna be junk you don't talk about it too much yeah exactly exactly i don't know i i'm interested to see how good it looks with the q led technology in it but for those price points i think you could probably pick up a decent TCL around that same price. That's what I was thinking, too. Those price points, you know, when you're starting to look at those price points, you can get other brands that, you know, are probably better quality at that point. Now you're paying for the Fire TV part of it, right? It just depends on who you want to spy on you. Do you want Vizio? Do you want

Roku or TCL? Or do you want Amazon to spy on you? Or LG or Samsung, because they're all doing it. My Amazon people can't even deliver my packages correctly. I can't imagine them trying to deliver a 75-inch TV to me. They just toss it up. It's like in the middle of the road. It's like, well, we couldn't find your address, so we just left it in the middle of the neighborhood.

Beautiful, beautiful. Well, we did get a new product from amazon called the halo rise um why let google have all the fun in your bedroom at night amazon wants to watch you sleep too he announced the halo rides it's 140 bedside clock that monitors your sleep sleep quality based on your breathing rhythms and And I have a note in here is breathing rhythms, is that how we are saying snoring now? So yeah, that's what I thought. It has a built-in light that simulates sunrise and can be set to slowly brighten at the ideal time in your sleep cycle. It doesn't have any cameras or microphones, they say, and instead uses a, quote, low energy sensor to monitor sleeping activity as well as sensors for light and

temperature and humidity to kind of monitor the environment. It can integrate over with Alexa ecosystems by pairing with a compatible Echo device. And you can use that as voice control for the light, but it also can tell you your sleep summary in the morning, or you can wake up to music, or you can use it to set up a routine. It can be part of routine. I guess you can turn on and off the light that way. So, um, kind of an interesting product, but it does, just like ring devices does require a $4 a month subscription. Although the first six months are free. So if you want to monitor your sleep with Amazon, you got to pay them.

Does that mean that, does that mean that they're not like, they're not selling your data if you're paying them $4? No, no, no. I can't believe we got to this point where we're paying them to collect our data and sell it you know it just means that only they can use it yeah here's four dollars a month please take my data make more money off of it they should give us kickbacks to it you know like it's weird honestly i'm not hating on it i don't know if i'll be in the first line to buy it um but I like that you don't have to wear anything for it and it doesn't have to like attach anything to the bed itself.

So that part's pretty fascinating to me. I, you know, I don't personally use an alarm clock. I kind of just wake up every day at 6 a.m. Unfortunately. But if I had trouble waking up, maybe this light would kind of help me with that. If you could use it as a trigger to nudge you, when you start snoring, my wife would be the first in line to buy it for me. She'd be like, here you go.

I bought you the rise. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, I don't know. It seems kind of a weird, like there are sleep trackers out there and I guess you're right, TJ, you don't have to wear anything, but like i can wear a watch to bed at night i guess and it tracks my sleep just as well if not you know maybe better since it actually is doing like an active heart rate

thing or something i don't know i haven't really figured i'm already flailing around i mean if you add a watch to my wrist as i'm flailing around while I'm sleeping, like I become a dangerous weapon. You're the only guy I know that gathers steps in his sleep. That's funny. Well, I don't know. Not worth $4 a month, I don't think. Yeah, $4. It's weird.

It's a weird product. I kind of wonder if this one's going to go the way of that closet camera that they wanted to put in people's closet. Oh, yeah, the clothes camera. I was like, closet camera? Yeah, closet camera. Well, you put it in your closet. That way your Amazon packages can go right to your closet. They can deliver them and they can just hang them up for you.

Let's see. A couple other notes here. The Astro isn't released yet. So the little robot dog that follows you around throughout the house, not yet. From everything that was reported on it, it seems like it's not all that great. So now that they have iRobot, I'm hoping that they can get some help on that one. There's still the high-end $200 Echo Studio. It will be available in white later this year.

So it's got a color option. The Alexa Voice Remote Pro is $35. It's got 27 buttons. I think TJ, you got to check my math on that one though. Um, and requires a fire TV device, um, has special backlit buttons and a find my remote feature, which is pretty awesome. So you can just say, hey, you find my remote and it starts beeping. So that's a great idea. Third gen Fire TV Cube, $140, has a better processor, voice control, supports Wi-Fi 6E.

It's the first one to do that. And it's got HDMI input to make it easier to switch to another device, which I thought was kind of interesting. Doesn't the Fire TV, it has IR on it. Supposedly, that could switch to, like, HDMI 2. But instead, they're, like, just passing through the AV. Like, it might be problematic if you have, like, an HD source

and you expect to have performance going through your Fire TV, you know. But I don't know. We'll see what happens there. Let's see. In Matter, oh Oh yeah. Matter. I put here, uh, Amazon says that there will be a coming software updates will enable various lines of smart devices to work with matter. So I suspect there's going to be another announcement. It looks like, it looks like 25 buttons for the smart pro remote. And you know, it looks like a normal fire tv remote it's got a couple extra buttons but what i think is the best part is that it's got two customizable buttons so hopefully you can program it for the input of your tv uh so that way you only need one remote because that's my

biggest gripe with every smart or i guess streaming device remote is that almost none of them come with a way to switch inputs on my tv so i have to have another remote somewhere else and all we do is use like the apple tv and like a nintendo switch so we're not doing anything complicated but i want to be able to just switch my inputs without grabbing a secondary remote so kudos to you for that interesting all right so let's move on from that uh unless gavin you got anything uh you didn't touch on uh euro announcements at all like yeah the pro euro stuff that's kind of like the biggest news tell me about it because i don't i didn't have any notes holy cow so well i

don't i wasn't prepared so i don't have an article in front of me but euro released uh in wall access points powered by poe directly so no more of those little backpack things you had to buy for like an extra 120 just directly poe and they have a like a dual wan poe switch i think what they're calling a gateway so you can do uh wan failover um and poe all with the same box and i think it's like an eight port switch um it's pretty impressive honestly ero ero's kind of going the way of like um you know they're still consumer based but they're adding professional or not enterprise level features to it so some of the stuff they're announcing is really attractive. I'm not going back. I mean, I already spent so much money just going to Unify,

but, you know, like Eero, they're making some moves. Yeah, so MSRP for the Eero PoE 6 is $299. It's a dual band Wi-Fi 6 PoE access point that covers up to 2,000 square feet of coverage and 100 connected devices. The Eero PoE gateway is $649 MSRP and supports up to 10 gigabits per second with two 10 gigabit ports and eight PoE enabled 2.5 gigabit Ethernet ports. So, I mean, that's a pretty good device right there, especially for the price.

Yeah, it's a good price. And it powers up to 100 watts of you know poe so yeah it's it's a great it's a great price for 649 um trying to think of what's in that price point i think you actually ubiquity has something of course they're they're a little bit less i think it's like 500 though enterprise yeah i mean ubiquity would be less um if you're looking for like something that's just like easy to set up though that you're always the way to go i mean that's and a lot of isps are using ero now you know i always used to complain because isps would basically come in and they would install your wife or you know install your internet and then you'd be like well you know the, the wifi kind of stinks in like the upstairs room. And they would be like, well, that sucks. You kind of just deal with it.

Um, but now, you know, the past like two or three years, they've started selling Eero. Um, and I'm assuming they're doing some monitoring on the background as well, because whenever I install one, it's always branded with whatever ISP it is. Um, so it basically just gives them another rev, you know, an idea of what's going on in people's networks. But ISPs are already doing this. So it makes sense for them to kind of come out with this professional product that they can just throw in and place of whatever they have now. And, you know, it's relatively easy. There's no configurations or anything else to do with it. Yep. Yeah. I mean, not just aimed at ISPs, looks like it's aimed at the this e-pro crowd as

well right so like custom integrators would you know in in a lot of situations could use a small little system like this to get a decent wi-fi system up and going that's hardwired like hardware hardwired back in poe powered this is what we all this is what this ticks all the boxes man this is really good and i like the failover. I really do. As somebody who is just had to deal with that today. Yeah. Right. It's not all that fun. And if somebody makes it really easy to have like just a built-in failover system that just works out of the box, that's great. So good on your own.

Thanks Gavin. Missed that one. Lousy note server was down. No one could take notes. let's blame it on that dang hurricane yeah it wasn't just a hurricane they decided when they were cleaning up that somebody was going to like cut the like i guess the the trunk line that came in for like the entire like two counties of internet for comcast and they just they were cutting a tree and they were like let's just cut this wire too and it was the fiber optic cable that fed like the entire county so we were down for a couple of days and it was it was that new fiber company you were telling us about a couple weeks ago yeah yeah well i'm i'm hoping that they are still have their plans to come in next month and put some new service in to be nice be very nice

all right well um so you're going to see pros that kind of brings us into our, our, our, our quasi CD at coverage. I, I don't know. Um, I had to view it from afar as like high speed winds were coming through. Um, and just kind of like had other things I was doing throughout the day, like cleaning up family members, homes and that kind of stuff. But, um, while it was going on you know i kind of got wind of like i was able to watch the snap av um video we'll put a link to that in the show notes um which was kind of kind of neat they went over a couple of things and was very it was better than it was in the past like it wasn't so corporate focused I guess is probably the best way I can say that. But it, it, it definitely had hit on, hit on the new products and kind of like moved

along and paced itself very, very quickly. The overall gist of everything was, was pretty positive. And it looked like they came out with some, a couple of new products that were pretty interesting. I saw that Nice had released a bunch of new products around the like the Elan line, including a new remote. I saw it had actually looked pretty good. It's like a twelve hundred dollar remote, only a couple of buttons on it. Maybe we'll have to get that on our our database as well. But there's stuff, I guess, if you weren't there in person,

um, it's a little bit harder to dig up in, in pictures and everything. You have to really find the coverage on this stuff. So viewing CDF from afar was again, pretty tough. Um, I'm hoping maybe next year we can get back to the show. Um, just wasn't in the cards this year for sure. But, um, I think only one person from my entire company was able to get away and go. Uh, and he actually lives in Dallas, so it was kind of easy for him, but if there's a hurricane, I kind of get that, that trip kind of gets canceled. Um, and it's actually happened more than once. This is not the only time. So, um, Gavin, did you get to go to CDF? CDF is a show for me, but I saw some of the things that were announced and it looked really nice.

I always like to see what they're doing in the pro space. Sometimes it gives me ideas for what I want to do at my own home. But those remotes, oh, was it the Snap AV or Snap One remotes? They look really nice. And I'm a big remote person. I know a lot of people are not big remote person. I'm big one remotes they look really nice and i'm a big remote person i know a lot of people are not big remote person i'm big on remotes i'll never be able to buy those remotes but they looked impressive you can buy anything with the right amount of money oh that you know to buy those

remotes i gotta buy an installer i gotta pay for someone to install it you know i got the amount of stuff i gotta buy per tv i need five of them too then got to pay the installer to come back to fix the remote that they installed but didn't do a good job with it. And then you got to pay the next guy to actually come fix all that work because it's like they're tired of dealing with the guy not showing up to work. It's actually not compatible with Ubiquiti. You have to update to Ruckus. Yeah.

All right. The remotes don't look so good anymore. Yeah. There's all sorts of... Well, I mean, the custom integration remotes have definitely started to kind of mature, I guess. I don't know. They all start to kind of look the same. Start to look better.

And the same. Like, the Control 4 one kind of looks like Crestron ones, and Crestron ones look like Control 4 ones. They're all kind of competing on the same look. There's only so much you can do with a slab of plastic and some buttons, right? Yeah, but they had three remotes I saw in the picture, and each of those remotes had their strengths and their weaknesses. I think they catered to a lot of people

because one remote had very few buttons on it, which has a certain fan base, and then one remote had all the buttons on it, is like the remote i was impressed with the most so i like the fact that they gave you options with their remotes and they did look like good remotes i can't speak for how they work how well they work what they work with but they did look impressive yeah they are attractive remotes i'll give them that yeah one of them i guess we can talk about the the halo remote so it's it's basically i think there's a halo touch and there's just the halo remote the halo remote has a 2.8 inch touch screen on it and a bunch of buttons and the halo

touch did i say that backwards the halo remote just has a bunch of buttons and a 2.8 inch touch screen and the halo touch has a three inch touch screen to 3.1, something like that. 3.2. 3.2, okay. Not looking at any notes. I'm going off my memory and looking at pictures of it. And fewer buttons, basically, they have eliminated what looks like a couple of odds and ends and mostly the number buttons. So if you do a lot of streaming services, it probably would make sense to have that.

But yeah, good-looking remotes. They look in line with what the Neo, the Neo style remotes look like. Um, but they both have a, um, a new voice button on there that gives you functions into like Apple Siri or Xfinity voice control remote, which I know is a, a huge thing for people because um man people love the xfinity voice control thing like they they don't and they and it's really a hard sell to say well here's your 1200 remote that's custom programmed to like turn on all this magical av stuff that you don't even have to look at and they're like yeah but where's how do i just yell at it and tell it to play like csi miami you can't because you go through a video distribution

system and have 27 tvs in your house you can't like it's not it's not possible technology is not there it's not like but now it is now you know it it looks like it's there so that that's great um i think that's probably the biggest selling feature on these remotes, um, themselves. So really, really awesome that they have that. And, and the fact that it's like a remote that you can push a button and yell into. And I saw like, they didn't announce it, but I saw some like eluding to like Josh AI may end up on them. Did you guys get that?

Like, did you guys see that? Or I know that, that Josh AI partnered with, um, Ava. Yeah. I was going to ask you if that was if they were compatible with each other. I know that Josh AI and, you know, Snap One kind of worked together at this point. So I don't see why it wouldn't be there or on the works. It was it was in the booth. It was in the Josh AI booth.

I saw that like the Halo remote was there. But I didn't get like a definitive answer. And maybe somebody out there knows and can let me know um i don't know a good looking remote um i don't what was funny is like during that control for video like they went over all the new products and at the end they showed like oh yeah and one more thing and then they showed a remote and they didn't tell you anything about it it's like oh a new remote but then they tell you anything about it like in the video so you just kind of like, I guess you have to go to the show to find out more, read some more press release or anything else. But this thing's coming in 2023, much like

everything else at Cedia was there. So everybody rushed on to Dallas to see all the stuff you can't buy until 2023. But I don't know. That's that's that's not's not bad. Like, um, I'm kind of excited about, I'm actually excited about this one just for that Xfinity integration. Cause I know that's been a pain point, um, for me going back, like selling this stuff, you know, almost what, six, seven years ago, like people were asking about this and telling them, no, you can't do what your neighbor can do with your new fancy, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of equipment that you've just installed, um, was never a good conversation to have at all. So let's see, I guess we can kind of stick, uh, stick on the snap AV

stuff. Um, if you want to, um, they, this, this is actually the coolest product I think they announced during that little video and it was the radiance audio lighting system i'm sorry uh is that right no no no no radiance audio and lighting system is that what it is okay the outdoor and light yeah outdoor lighting system it's the world's first audio system to power lighting and audio through a single two conductor wire so using a patent pending ACE technology from swarm is designed exclusively for exclusively for step one. So basically they're using the 70 volt signal to power, not only the speakers, like, so it's, it's getting 70 volts audio out to the outdoor

speakers, but it's also sending some kind of like, you know, carrier or just more amperage, I guess, to the lights that are attached to the, um, speakers themselves. And inside the speakers, you've got like lights and I, man, I think this is a great idea. This is, this is amazing. You get two products for one smart. Yeah. I honestly, I think this is the coolest thing. A snap one released at Cedia, um, just because I was actually talking about this the other

day with somebody, you know, I was like, you know, it'd be really nice to have just one podium or one stand that is both a light and a speaker. If you had like a nice outdoor space that you just wanted to add a little bit of ambient light to, but you also wanted sound to have one device to do it. And I think snap was listening to me because they released this. So thanks for that. We're just listening to you. That's exactly. That's nice. It's funny because when we've talked about even on the show here when you know we talked with gavin about outdoor audio and i've said you know imagine like they have these speakers that look like your outdoor lighting right that's always how i compared those like the the newer

outdoor audio speakers and they they they were like they were like, Oh, well, yeah, we probably, we need to be smart enough to add in. We could just add, we could just make the lights in the speakers and we're done. And all off to wire as well. So, I mean, you could go into an existing landscape lighting job and I mean, realistically you'd probably have to replace the other fixtures in it, but if you wanted somewhere to have audio and lighting, and they already have landscape lighting, you could just put this in place of it. Uh, and then, you know, replace the other fixtures and stuff and you don't have to redo any wiring. So, I mean, that's, that's a big, uh, big time saver and money saver for a lot of clients right

there. Potentially. Yeah. Potentially. I don't think it's like one to one the same because like yeah you and you definitely wouldn't be able to use existing lighting right right no you'd have to replace the other fixture yeah but i mean replacing fixtures is a lot cheaper than replacing fixtures and wiring um and you know it's not proprietary wiring so at least you know this doesn't exist in five or ten years you can just replace it with you know regular this doesn't exist in five or 10 years. You can just replace it with, you know, regular lighting at that point. Uh, Gavin and I are just sitting over here, like cannot wait for the Alibaba ripoffs. Like this is, these look so much better than that rock I have sitting in the corner that happens to play sound out of it. Oh, those things are awful. I am so glad that our industry has moved away from the rock. Like didn't you have a frog speaker at one point? We did find the Alibaba frog speakers yes and mushroom ones i think around there too but

yeah that ed when i first started we would install these rock speakers by i don't know niles or rockoustics you know there was an actual company and um and they just never sounded all that great and the biggest problem was just because it was like a six inch speaker and you were just powering it all out, you know, with, with an amplifier was outside. It just, you just needed more speakers. And the only way to do that is really just put in a big 70 volt system, which you have multiple speakers covering a broad area with lower sound. Like you don't have to crank it, but you still get like the music,

the background music that you need outside. And I think what James audio, I think is probably the first one that came out with the like super high end version. And then Sonance either copied or had one or OEM did from them. But then snappy V came out with theirs. And it's just kind of like off to the races, these, with these audio systems. I really do like the way these look and sound like it's not like you're, it's not like your typical two speaker outdoor audio system. You really, you really go out and you can enjoy and listen to some pretty good cause

there's a sub out there too, right? Like you don't just have the six and speakers. You have a few of those, but then you also have a sub providing that little oomph, uh, for the party. So, um, fun to see, uh, snap AV also said, or, uh, announced snap one also announced a full selection. They're calling it vibrant linear lighting, I guess. Uh, it's a full selection of white tunable color and basically, basically a bunch of linear lighting, uh, RGB tapes and accessories needed to create sophisticated lighting experiences. So, um, that was kind of cool. And I'm going to loop back around that to the, to that later, uh, with some notes that I had, uh, they announced some Luma security system cameras that have human and vehicle detection. So that's cool, I guess. And the Arachnus AN820

access point gives you why it's there. I guess their Wi-Fi. Is that their only Wi-Fi 6 access point? I'm not sure. I think it is. It's a four by four array provides Wi-Fi 6 and you can install and manage a bit through their oversee remote management platform, which is important for a lot of people. Good on them. They, they had a bunch of products they released and kind of a splashy way with their video thing. I mean, they're the kind of the big, it's like a Crestron's the big dog on the block, but I don't know. SnapAV is kind of taking them, taking them over, but just by the sheer size, I mean, and number of people that you, there's Crestron dealers that use SnapAV and then like, but there's, it's not the other way around, right Crestron dealers that use SnapAV and then like but there's

it's not the other way around right like there's not all SnapAV dealers are Crestron dealers so I saw that Netgear was a pretty big hit at the show they offered a exclusive like Wi-Fi 6 and 6e access points for integrators which is kind of cool but they they had a pretty big presence with their they have a new AV line of switches for video over IP stuff, which they were showing off at the show. And they had a pretty cool, like there's a place you can go. I think it's called, is it Rave? It's a website.

You can go to watch all the videos, like interviews from some of the booths. And there's a really funny interview that like they just, they basically have people go around with cameras and iPhones and take videos. And you can basically go to Cedia without actually being at Cedia if you want. They are everywhere. So yeah, there's, there's a story as to why they're everywhere, but, um, they do do a good job of covering the show, which is nice. Um, ring, uh, and URC announced a integration together and it's actually pretty cool. Uh, they, they have two way video and audio built right into the ring touchscreens and

i think through the remotes as well so good on them for getting that rolled out i know it's pretty tough the way kind of knowing exactly how ring integrates with things it's kind of a tough thing and it has to be done at the manufacturer level uh this is a big one here gavin zoos was actually at the show i saw zoos interview i was like i know that i know that name that's not just some weird made-up thing now you do they were showing off their new z box and um new uh 800 series devices so they're making some big moves with z wave you know and the 800 series have um one of the big things is they offer a z wave long range so the the same thing I'm looking at the LoRa devices for, Z-Wave has their own version of it.

So they get long distances and better battery off of some of their devices. Interesting. I can see that being popular. I mean, it's a problem solver is what we like to say. One of those I put in here, there are so many LED lighting vendors this year at cdia like countless numbers and some of them had huge booths like uh wac whack lighting um but there were also some other players there that i recognize their names but it was just like both indoor and outdoor

lighting companies were at cdia which i thought was interesting. And I may, we may like, that's probably going to be the next big profit center for integrators because there's not very many, um, there's not very many contract, like electricians don't care, right? We all know that they're just there to hook up the wires and make things work. Um, they, they rarely care how things look at the end. And, you know, that's more of a job for like an architect or an interior designer. Um, and making those, you know, things mash up, um, typically doesn't work. So like what can, what does fill in the place is sometimes with integrators, we can go in and say, well, you know, you're doing those rope lights anyway. Like, why don't we put in some, you know, lighting around, you know, make it, make it snazzy or something, or put in, you know, we, there's all this talk about the adaptive

lighting where you can change the colors or, you know, match, uh, the, the color of the lighting to what the, the, the outdoor lighting is. So that's something that the integrators are, we've been talking about for a while. Um, I think I'm not sure that like, it's been framed completely about around, like, I'm not sure there's a whole story there for the integrator, but it was just interesting to see how many lighting companies showed up there, both indoor and outdoor, like outdoor lighting is probably a pretty good profit center for integrators. If we want to go dig trenches for landscape lighting. And, uh, there were a number of deep state products, um, for cameras there, Gavin, I know you'd be excited about that.

One of the interesting ones, I have a link for it in the little notes there. It's called Pool Scout, and it watches your pool for like toddlers and kids, and if they're unaccompanied, like it sends you text messages, it's got a siren that can go off, especially if they fall in the pool or something like that, but it basically has a counter on there,

and it's like unattended toddler, and then you kid running around and it's got adult you know it's like so if there's an unattended toddler it like turns red but if the adult is there it turns green so it's i thought that was kind of cool um kind of a different use case for the for the deep state that that that you've been using for what dog tracking? Animal tracking? Animal tracking. Deep stack. I'm starting to mess up the name for that now. What's it called now? It was interesting because a lot of the products they had,

like it was the same exact box that different vendors were using, like the same box. Just one was white with their logo and one was black with their logo. And one was like, it's the same box. Like it must do the same box. Just one was white with their logo and one was black with their logo. And one was like, like, it's the same box. Like it's just, it must do the same things, but I'm sure they could put their own models on there and their own little branding and software or whatever. So the, the pool one was a UK based company. It looked like, and they actually, I mean, honestly, that one's probably the most interesting idea I think I've seen with this stuff. Like, that's not completely security-based, you know? I thought it was a pretty good idea.

And Florida, we have pools. We have these obnoxious and horrible state law-required pool alarms that we have to have, or baby gates or whatever. And seeing that product, it's like, oh, you know, if that works really well, that'd be a good thing to have. In addition to baby gates and pool alarms, that kind of thing. The homeowner might not get rid of the smart camera after the inspection. So higher chance of us staying around. Cause whenever I did one of the custom houses, they always remove the pool arm after inspection. Yep. You'd always see it sitting there with that little battery hanging out with one of the leads pulled off the nine volt battery

and just hanging there on the wall. Don't tell anybody I said that. Every time, every time. I've got a cool product list here. You guys see that? All right. So I went through and watched all these videos, but the auto slide automatic doors,

every time somebody, there's gotta be like once a month, I see somebody post in some form somewhere. Like, how do we lock these sliding doors? You guys have in Florida. And it's like, well, you can't really like, you can't put a, there's no magic lock or electric locking there, but this company auto slide makes some kind of retrofittable sliding motor thing, but it not only does it slide, it also locks. And they've got a

couple of like use cases on there. It's got like this RFID detection thing where like if you walk up and you get in proximity, it'll open up. But also like if you have a pet, you can put a little collar on the pet and it'll pick that up walking up and only open like six inches, let the pet out and close after the pet goes through. Just a cool product i i thought and i couldn't really tell like if it was loud or you know it looks like it moves pretty quickly though like seeing their videos that they had at the show and on their website like it it's not like it's a slow like moving thing it looks like it just opens up pretty quickly and i don't know i thought it was pretty cool idea especially that is it available now or is it something that's coming?

I think they've got enough product, different products. I think it's all out now. I wonder how much this costs. Probably a lot of money. Probably more than $900 for the battery-powered version or for the wireless. For this price, I'll just get up and let my dog

in and out. $475 for the StarCore kit price, I'll just get up and let my dog in and out. $4.75 for the starter kit. And then I'm on one that's over $1,000. It's $1,045 for this. So what's the starter kit do? Does it open one inch? You got a paper inch? Oh, you must be on the Elite.

I'm on the Elite iLock automatic door system. Oh, yeah, the iLock. Yeah, so that one actually locks. The $4 475 one probably doesn't yeah i want it to lock like if i'm going to pay for this i don't ever have to touch the door again and that includes to lock it so this thing uh this thing better lock my door for me so that's pretty cool i think it would be great for my uh the pet door part i think i might i'm gonna bookmark this for later i'm'm getting Gavin to spend some money.

Damn it. It does look pretty cool. And the thing I really saw that I was like, tipped me off to this thing was like, yeah, it'll lock the door. That's really cool. The second thing on here, I found a reusable zip tie thing that was at the show.

I don't know like how much it costs for a booth at CDN. It can't be much, but it can't be very inexpensive. Pretty cheap this year, huh? Yeah, I guess. But this guy with zip ties that you can reuse was there. And this is the debate that we always have. Zip ties or Velcro? And really, the answer is both, right? You should use Velcro when you need to get back into stuff.

And you should use zip ties and more permanent installs but in this case you could actually use these little the reusable ties so there you go ret ret reties reties that's how you my luck is i'd give them to somebody that had no idea what they were and they would cut the tails off cut up it's a hundred dollars or a hundred dollars it's a hundred pack for $27. So they're not, I don't think they're ridiculously priced, but you start cutting tails off of them. They're going to be a little too expensive at that point. What's strange is I've seen, I've seen like reusable zip ties like this before. Like they've come with my TV, for example, you put them on the back cables and you can

undo them and reuse them. And so it's not, this isn't new to me. It's not new, but the ones on the back of your TV don't have 175-pound pull strength on them. So these can handle a little bit more. I guess in the video, he said he designed them like as a contract for Boeing or something like that for their planes that they needed to have

a reusable zip tie or reusable cabling product and you know they had some specifications they had to meet and they this is what they ended up making for them uh and now they're just going around reselling them i thought it was a pretty cool idea for the right application like you said as long as the new guy doesn't come along with some cable snips and cut them you're good i'm actually gonna buy a few i have a need for this so bookmark for later yeah making gavin spend some cd money all right wait wait till the end of this all right what about the ladder yeah let's get some ladder mates here no no no listen i don't go i don't go past the first step on the ladder so i don't know well this is for you then i need this this is this is coming to me like i this is not osha approved i can tell you so the ladder mate is a ladder caddy that kind of hangs off one side of your ladder

that you put all your junk in and um you know i i actually i was using my dewalt drill uh this list last week i was actually since i didn't have anything else to do i decided to spend some time on projects that i had never completed um you know you know, I had power, but no internet, so can't watch TV, can't do anything that, that direction. So I, um, I started like finishing off electrical work that I hadn't done in years, probably since we moved in, I'd already done the outside wiring, but I hadn't punched the wall, you know, hole through the wall and done all that. But at some point I had been climbing a ladder with my DeWalt drill and I dropped it. And I'm pretty sure that I like bent the shaft in there, like on the DeWalt itself. So like when you turn it, the, the drill bit kind of like spins in an awkward, um, in an awkward

manner. And I, I, I think I'd probably could have used something like this ladder, ladder mate for 35 99. Um, it looks like it slips on the side of your ladder and you can throw all your junk in it while you're up there working. And I'm, I think it's great. I Osher proved to not be damned. I'm going to stand on the top, top step. That's not a step. I'm going to stand up there too. So what does it matter if this, this thing's hanging off the side? If you were worried about not dropping a lot of stuff off the top of your ladder, now you can worry about dropping all the things off the top of your ladder. All of it, yeah. And if you look at the pictures closely, one of the pictures,

he actually has a beer in one of the holders. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can have a beer drink in there. Yeah, it's got a beer holder. That's very nice, very nice. I don't know. I think this is coming to me because I am always dropping stuff off ladders and or I'm always rigging something up. Like one time I just took

one of those Home Depot buckets and just like took a PVC thing and just drilled it to the top of the ladder so I could like hold it and put clips and stuff that I was like trying to hold on to because I was just so frustrated with having to go up and down the ladder. So I just took the orange bucket that you get from Home Depot, five gallon drum and just stuck it up there. So this is a more classy way of doing exactly that. Speaker snap. This is genius as well. You know, the, what do they call it? Waco? Waco. Waco, yeah. Waco. So you got those for the electrical, right? Well, what if you had those for your banana plugs?

Genius. Sold. Instant purchase, right? So, yeah. All those weird banana plugs that you have where you're inserting the wire in the back and screwing down and you're like, all right, I'm done.

And you pull on it and it slides right out. No, no more. You got the nice Wago connector thing on the back. I don't think that's what it is but he stole it from somewhere it's for sure that's what it is um yeah it's just a lever connector nobody stole it gosh he licensed it okay he licensed it yeah i'm sure it is his patent pending on here so i'm sure he licensed it but anyway he's got banana plugs.

He's got Keystone inserts for the speakers as well. Great idea. I mean, just the frustration. I know they're expensive, but banana plugs can be expensive as well. And they don't work. And this would solve that problem for sure, without a doubt. So I'm adding this to my buy as well. Well, I'd be curious too

if the actual body is plastic or metal because one of my complaints about doing banana plugs is when you do them on keystones and let's say you have a keystone panel on a rack or something, you have to worry about the actual banana plugs touching each other

depending on which style you buy and everything. So it'd be nice if these are plastic bodies so you don't have to worry about that either yeah they look like plastic that's what i'm kind of thinking for for 220 each when you buy them a bowl because they probably are plastic yeah it looks just like the like if you picture a wago connector and then a banana plug coming out the other end just one one little lever not two like you normally have but i use some of those this week on electrical stuff and the wago couldn't that's the wago connectors for electrical are brilliant um and i always tell people when they're doing a lot of um smart switches when you're doing your stuff get them because they reduce the amount of space it takes up actually in the box too because they're flatter. So you can shove them in the back unlike the wing nuts or whatever they call those wire nuts that take up a lot of space.

They're great. And this is just, you know, taking that same idea and doing something good with it. You know, and I just want to make a public service announcement that if you are a low voltage installer, if you could stop using what are commonly referred to as beanies or dolphins or butt splice connectors or whatever you want to call them and use wagos instead of those i would greatly appreciate it because there's nothing worse than like going in somewhere and you have to like cut open like a whole harness or like cut off all the ends of the wires and make them short just because somebody decided to use a dolphin on them so use these instead i know they cost more money you're professional though you can do it

bill the customer that's what i'm saying like that's all i do you know it's an expense wait i'm the customer but you know when you go back don't bill us oh you're getting billed oh when you go back to service it it's not like a nightmare you know right right yeah nobody nobody thinks about the service nobody ever thinks about it yeah coming from from two people who pretty much that's my entire career has been service and fixing other people's mess ups uh yeah please please be considerate of the next guy you got to think about the next guy that's coming along like he's may not be as like me he may not be as skilled as you are and he's got to he's got to go through your mess and uh if it's really really messy he's just going to get there and be upset all day i'm basically a janitor and i'm tired of cleaning up after people

all right uh next quite interesting product i don't know not as interesting as the the wago speaker things but an interesting product nonetheless i think it solves a pretty good i think it's called an amp genie um it's a it's basically it's basically a signal sensing automatic remote that listens for music and then automatically turns on your stereo and um does its thing so like if you have a source that has audio this kind of like goes back to being like an old school audio switcher, like automatic audio switcher. You plug this thing in. It listens for the audio, uses IR to kick on your amplifier, your receiver, whatever, to the right input and everything. Good to go.

And it only does one thing. I don't know. I appreciate things that only do one thing. $400? Well, yeah. Yeah. Audio switches were never very inexpensive. What is the point of this?

Don't devices do this automatically now? Do we really need a $400 device to talk to our $450 Sonos port and our $1,000 receiver? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. There's more to this than I was trying to find on their website. this also allows you to control volume and things like that too it must allow you to do that because it's using ir no i think it just turns it on it's just switching over if it's just it's just automatically switching the receiver yep all it does is turn it on and off

not even volume it looks like it's just using like the sensing of the receiver correct it uses the uh it uses the sensing of the audio that goes into this box and then basically turns on the receiver to the right input i don't think it does volume yeah but how's it turning on the receiver ir there's a little blaster there so it must be able to do volume if it can blast the ir signal i don't think it can do that i don't know why this is on the cool list this is not cool no you know why because you know like when i look at sonos and stuff like that you don't want to add sonos to like that's the one problem i use airplay in my house right but when you want to use your own speakers for example you have an amp like this you'll have

the speakers volume's always a problem right like you, you just want to airplay to this device. This device will turn on your amp and everything. And then you can control the volume just through airplay. It would be nice if it did all that, right? Then you could turn an old system with a nicer set of speakers and bring it into the whole airplay realm. Because one thing you lose when you use those old systems is you lose the volume control. Like right now with my Sonos in my family room, I AirPlay to it and I have full volume control.

I don't have to leave it on at a certain volume where you can hear a buzz so that I can get to max volume. Right. So this has a need for it. If it can control volume and stuff, I can see where I would use something like this. Some of the receivers do this automatically. I want to say like sony and maybe one other brand connect that's i thought they did like they they had auto sensing and i thought like any decent receiver did this is just kind of like fills in the gap for the other guys who haven't done yeah because newer newer receivers would even have have airplay 2 built

into them nowadays too so just buy a new receiver what's a receiver like 800 a thousand bucks with auto sensing just you know i was thinking halfway there i was thinking of some of the receivers that we have around the house and we have some like old school ones that sound brilliant but they don't even have ir on them so this wouldn't even help those this is something you sell like the pain in the butt customer that That's like, I really want to use my existing stuff. I don't want to buy anything new. And you're like, well, perfect. There's a $400 device. Welcome to Florida. That's why I put it on my list. Literally every customer. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah. And then, um, I got one more link in here. The, uh, the CC demo, which is, which is a video of the CC coming yeah. And then I got one more link in here. The CC demo, which is a video of the CC coming out.

And it's so funny to watch this guy try and talk about this thing. And the million dollar 144 inch TV that kind of rises out of the floor and then slowly rotates and slowly opens to a big giant. This thing is so slow to open, I got a YouTube app halfway through it. It's so painfully, like the poor guy. They could have sped that up a little bit. No, the poor guy's just standing there. He's like, I'm done with my spiel.

I can't talk about this thing anymore. It's opening. As you can see, it's raising out of the ground. He could have started this like 10 minutes ago you'd be done by now but man if you want to watch tv with one of these things you better have a lot of free time on your hands because you're going to be waiting for this thing to pop up out of the ground and if it starts raining all of a sudden whoo you better if there's a hurricane coming you better plan on putting this down into the ground because it's going to get

blown away i've seen it i've seen smaller smaller fence pieces getting blown away never going to come out of the ground if you put it in there before a hurricane it's just going to be stuck down there they need like theme music as it opens up you know like something to play like so boring everybody loves this thing like i'm looking at i'm like man they could have made it like faster somehow yeah they could have sped it up a little bit like right like it didn't have to go this slow yeah engineering into it put some counterweights in there make it like like this is painful you would have to put this on like a geolocation rule or something so like as you're driving home 20 minutes away like it starts unfolding and just in case you want to watch like you might not watch it that day but at least it's

ready you don't have to wait 20 minutes for it the guy presenting it stepped out of the frame for a few minutes i'm pretty sure he went for a bathroom break i mean so as long as we've been talking about this thing it still hasn't opened yeah yeah it's just it still hasn't it's almost there yeah it's i mean it's getting there all right it looks like it's folded out i don't see the lines anymore so yeah like two minutes basically it's just a while it's like i wanted to watch tv a minute ago but i forgot what i wanted to watch and you can't even see anything on the bottom little portion it's got that black bar that just ruins the whole image it has a speaker down on the bottom couldn't build it into the screen what the heck even sony does that cool concept just slow yeah wake me up in a couple very very expensive

as well so oh i'm sure do we see a price on it i i don't know i've heard it's like a million dollars but that's oh that's not bad i mean you think gavin's gonna redo his out his outside next year so that'd be perfect for it with those outdoor things you have to think of like all the construction that needs to go into it to like prepare prepare the way as they say prepare the way for the tv to get installed there and like even the big screens that pop out of like an enclosure or like all the contracting and permits and everything that go into that it's no fun it's no fun they're too slow for me this would just frustrate me i'm sorry yeah i don't want to watch tv anymore after can you imagine you're like watching the tv and this

happens to me frequently my dog accidentally steps on the remote tv turns off and now i gotta wait for this tv to turn off and turn back on again you know that happens to me quite frequently to be you're watching a watching a game like a basketball game it's like end of game yeah it's like and that was an amazing game i can't believe it it's like please open yeah rest of the day's ruined uh it's funny that's funny all right well anybody else got anything that they saw at the cd a time frame that want to mention honorable mentions i don't think so that was a good round up that was a good round up yeah yeah i hope to be able to go back. I really do like going through the show and like visiting like this. There's like little small booths that I like even took notes to kind of like follow up

with to actually see what they're doing. Because there was there was some that were like doing some really strange, odd things. Like one one guy had a like a Raspberry Pi device, like just one of these like little small Raspberry Pi. I mean, one of these little small Raspberry Pi. I mean, I recognize them off Alibaba. It's like a little compute module type thing, just all in one. And he was running a custom version

of Home Assistant on it. And he's using that to bridge devices that are not compatible with like Elan systems and bring them over into, um, from the HomeKit integration, uh, sorry, HomeKit, Home Assistant integration and bring them over into the Elan ecosystem. So it's kind of like a bridge device. And it's like, he's advertising that he has, you know,

integrations with thousands of devices, of course, because like Home Assistant does, but it's like some kind of special custom version that they have put on, and they have their own special Elan module or driver or something that integrates with it. There's all sorts of neat little weird booths like that around the edges that I always love to go to.

And I talk to all those people that are doing stuff on, you know, stuff that's not in the big giant shiny crestron booth or whatever um so i i really did did miss that this year um but obviously can't go if there's a hurricane so maybe next year that's right we're all going next year so yeah yeah we're gonna get gavin down get you get your passport ready i'll drive up i'll just go for the beers that's all right right. I'll be there. You know, you're paying, right? Yeah.

Where is it now? I think it's again in Dallas next year? Or is it back in Denver? Well, I don't know. I think they've always done two years, two years as far as I'm aware. So I think it's back in Dallas next year. I think you're right. But I'm not really privy on that stuff. Actually, I'm showing here that CD Exo 2023 is in denver colorado 927

that'd be a better one i'm down yeah september denver colorado is great especially around that time of year it's nice and cool yes yeah see i just don't want to go to texas so we'll go anywhere that's not texas yep yep yep yep So I'll have to put that on the calendar for, um, what is it? September 7th through September 9th. So moved it back earlier again. And let's do it boys. Yep. Let's book the holidays from now. Right. All right. Well, all the links and topics discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at home tech.ffm slash 407. Nothing in the mail back tonight, but we do have a pick of the week. This is actually cool. And actually, I haven't seen this before. I don't know why I haven't seen it. Who posted this? Gavin posted this. This is

amazing. This is a great little like I don't I don't understand why I haven't seen anyone do this before. We all know that people mount their TVs over their fireplaces, right? You're supposed to have a mantle right below, right above the fireplace to prevent the heat from like, I guess, rising up and killing the TV instantly. Um, and those are typically there and the TV is up, you know, super high, can't get around that. And this guy has built like a drawer out of the, the mantle and most fireplaces these days don't have like a, what is it called? A chimney.

Oh, there you go. That's the word you're looking for. Yeah. Santa, Santa can't come out of these cause they're electric and they, they typically vent like right out of the top of them. If they were going to have heat,

you can turn it on and off. And that's what it looks like. This one is. But man, there's like, it's just like a regular kitchen cabinet drawer hardware it looks like and they've built this big giant drawer and you can put stuff into it that's it's a great idea i've just never seen this yeah could you imagine like if you could you could just install people's gear into there right like if they had a frame tv and they wanted above the fireplace you can hide that stupid little samsung one connect box in

there um if you have like a couple other devices you could you could stick those in there i'm surprised i've never seen anybody do this because i think it should i think every house should have it yeah anybody having a mantle in their house should be doing this like and and who's mounting their tv or anything and you're right we could call it the one connect drawer because that's what's going to go there yeah it's awesome because uh and you usually have the space above the fireplace like the depth you know you you usually have that so like it shouldn't be hard to do something like this i don't think so i think i this is brilliant and like as long as i've been doing this i've never seen this and this is like a surprise so and that's that is a huge shore that guy has i mean

for the example there yeah that thing is massive so you could like hide electronics in there you could hide remotes in there family photo albums i mean that could be your new junk drawer it's moved from the kitchen now it's a new family room batteries yeah all sorts of stuff making that like your emergency drawer or something in case of an emergency in the house losing power or something like that don't tell don't tell the kids there yeah yeah shove the kids in there if you can make it big enough you could but i mean anything's possible this is your punishment all right pretty cool idea we'll put a link to the video in the show notes um good good find gavin that's really cool if you have any ideas pics of the week's ideas

for show or uh feedback give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can go to hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right i i have my project updates um electrical and landscaping um that's that's what i've done over the past week without internet um just reverted to household chores in the honeydew list that has been piling up over there sure it's even bigger now yeah yeah because i you know guys i went to the store and bought dirt, like bags and bags of dirt. Like, I'm not even kidding. Like, I'm like, where did all the dirt go? It's, it's not, I don't know where it is. It's, I took the plants out. I put new plants in and you think like one-to-one it would,

no, there's just, it's, there was less dirt there after I, I don't even know what happened. So anyway, I had to go buy a bunch of dirt. I've, I've been buying dirt and just piling it into my flower bed. Things that were like lower than the house. Like you could see where the water was just like going to drain and pull up in the house. I had to build all that back up. It was ridiculous. I've been hauling dirt around for the last couple of days. So hopefully you guys have been more productive. Did you do it bag by bag? Yeah. You know, up here you can order like a big yard and they'll just drop it in your driveway. I didn't want that though. Like I just wanted, I just thought I needed a little bit.

And then it turns out that I needed a lot more than a little bit. I probably should have done that. You always underestimate how much you really need. Oh man. And we hired somebody to come out and put this big tree, this big palm tree in a spot that we needed a tree. But when we had this other tree die, it left a big hole in the ground. And they're like, well, we're put this big tree, this big palm tree in a spot that we needed a tree. But when we had this other tree die, it left a big hole in the ground. And they're like,

well, we're digging this big hole for this tree. How about we put this dirt in that hole right there? I'm like, yeah, you can do that. And then they like, they put it in there and they're like,

well, now we realize like how much dirt you actually needed. We got to take that dirt back out of that hole and put it back in. So they had to take dirt and move it back into the thing. And I'm like, yeah, I still need more dirt, don't I? I'm like, yeah, you need more dirt. So $2 a bag. Not bad.

The one thing about dirt is, you know, like you buy it and you can spend a lot of money buying dirt, but you also spend a lot of money if you have to get rid of dirt up here. You can't just throw dirt in the garbage and get rid of it. We have to actually go to a dump. They weigh your car. You dump it in there, and then you're coming out, and they weigh it again, and they charge you per pound. It's expensive getting rid of dirt too.

I don't have that problem. You can send it down here. It'll just wash away. It's still got a hole. There's signs everywhere here that says, fill dirt wanted, we'll pick up so you just call somebody and they'll come get it from you i definitely need dirt because i still have these holes and um i could take it i was looking around the rest of the yard i'm like

where could i take this dirt from and it's like nowhere really can't really dig anything up the neighbors did you look at the neighbors yeah exactly that's what i was thinking you know like their fence fell down during the hurricane. So I was like, I could just sneak over there and start digging holes in their lawn. But they may. Wow, your fence fell down because there's a giant hole here. That's weird. Yeah.

What's funny is that every time I start to do one of these projects, including this one, uh, where I'm like digging up things, I find giant hunks, like large boulders of concrete. Like I know you guys may have rocks where you are. Um, I find concrete just randomly buried into the yard. I, and my neighbor does too. We don't know why, but it's there. And when you dig a little bit, you'll find some and have to dig it out so there are some situations and i'm pretty sure that's why i have you know no dirt is because i'm digging up these boulders and having to fill those holes in with the dirt that surrounds it and yeah this is never ending that happens up here if you were the last house in a development um they would dump all

the garbage into your house so you know like if you were ever to dig down you hit a certain point you start getting into the concrete the soda cans the bottles the beer you know like missing tools you know stuff like that right like yeah up here they just do not care so like they they clean you know quote unquote clean the yard before they put sod down and everything but i'm sure it's not that thorough so you're always finding extra stuff in those kind of developments yeah well this one this one's older this i mean this from 19 uh what 1970 1969 so like there's still stuff there i guess you'll find like you probably have old tires down there and everything yeah

right just waste medical waste yeah it's great um yeah who knows what they did man we don't have any more dirt but we got a ton of these old cars that's funny it's probably true i shouldn't laugh there's probably a buried car somewhere out here but uh yeah I I've been excitedly uh I think I'm almost done and now I kind of want some like landscape lights so um I haven't run any wire for it and I but I ran the conduit kind of for it like I ran underneath the sidewalk when I was doing that so like at least I can get back and push some wire through some conduit that I had. Not that like landscape wiring has to go all through conduit, but at least like the hard parts mostly.

Well, the hard-ish parts are done. Like I still have to put it in. But that's all I got left, I think, out front. So I'm kind of excited about that. Still need more dirt to fill that hole though. I'll wait for the grass to grow or the current dirt i'm surprised you're getting dirt instead of just getting sand i mean i just figured your whole yard is sand anyway so it is sand like underneath the grass like the sod part it's all sand underneath there yeah it's really weird

let's get sand or rocks just don't worry don't even worry about it anymore zero scape the thing just pour rocks all over my yard and use roundup to clean it up it's fixed honey yep there you go it's all done all right guys uh i guess that wraps things up for this week uh we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially those are able to financially support the show through our patron page thank you very much if you don't know about the patron page head on over to home tech.fm support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five bucks five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show

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