HomeTech.fm - Episode 408 - Something Orange in the Yard

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

This week on HomeTech: The CEDIA numbers are in! See how everyone did in our friendly wager this year, Samsung really wants you to know they are first, Assa Abloy says hasta luego to Yale in order to keep Kwickset, AppleTV gets a nice spec bump, Home Pro starts taking pre-orders, Roku jumps into the smart home game, and Netflix announces ads and the end of shared passwords. All this, the pick of the week, project updates and more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 21st. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm CJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to another episode of the Home Tech Podcast. A podcast all about home automation, technology, matter, of course. We are now in the first couple of weeks of a whole new world.

Everything has changed. Matter is now with us. And it's great. I walked outside today. It's just sunny skies. It's a crisp 71 degrees right now. So tomorrow I'll probably have to put a jacket on. So matter is just global warming solved now, I think. degrees right now so just tomorrow i'll probably have to put a jacket on so it matters just

global warming solved now i think uh well it's cold at my place so i'm not really sure what you got going out down there down in florida but uh it's only 36 degrees here so i'm a little cold oh a little cold this is all things to matter i think that's what everybody tells me gavin is it colder you are i mean you're further north so theoretically it should be colder you should be frozen already right no no no it's not that cold i'm not that much further north than you are just a little bit further north i think oh seth i'm a lot further north then okay like don't look at me like that not that bad but it's getting chilly i'm golfing, so it's not too cold. How many C's are you up there? What is it?

I think we're in the single digits now in C's. Tomorrow is probably going to be like nine Celsius. That's the high. That's crazy. I don't know what that is. It's probably what, 40 degrees? That seems cold to me because it's 70. I have 71 and it's going to be 50 tomorrow and i i had to go buy my daughter a jacket because she doesn't own one but anyway uh it's like it's like cold enough that when the iguanas fall out of the trees they shatter they'll lose a limb or something like that right okay so that's that's a good that's a good metric for florida like the alligators the alligators go down to the bottom of the water because it's warmer down there yeah

all right all right well we got we got some official numbers in guys we uh we had our The alligators go down to the bottom of the water because it's warmer down there. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, we got some official numbers in, guys. We had our friendly wagers that we bet on the Cedia show. Last week, we talked a little bit about it. We didn't know the results yet. But right after we recorded, Cedia came out and announced that the 2022 attendee numbers, um, were officially 15,497 total registrants with a verified attendance of 11,946 with 317 exhibitors. And I think that's all the numbers they have on here. So not bad,

not bad. Um, let's just go through our results here that we have here. Uh, Gavin, uh, he bet $1, uh, Canadian. i'm not even sure what that is but if it's if it's one person uh the difference is one eleven thousand nine hundred and forty five and wait wait hold on to be fair i thought we were doing it the price is right way so like i thought we couldn't go over so that's why i went with the one dollar just to be fair if if i'd known the real rules then I would have guessed a lot better. I think it was a good bet. I mean, I think it was- Whatever your excuse is.

You bet a dollar. So there we are. TJ, really, really close to the registration, right? So you guessed $15,500, which is three away from the total registrants. That's crazy, man. Good job. I'm just claiming like Gavin. I didn't know what we were betting on. I thought you were betting on registrations. I was right on the money. So a difference of $3,554. And then I guessed $9,999, which is a difference of $1,947.

So I guess I won whatever prize. I don't know what prize it is, but it actually, better than I thought. So good for Cedia. It sounds like it was a good show for everybody involved and definitely a warm up from the 1400 they had last year. So

it's a step in the right direction. So keep going that direction and next year we'll be back up to 20,000 people in Denver, I'm sure. So we'll all have to go. Gavin, clear your calendar, man. Oh, yeah. You're remote. You work remote.

Yeah, I can work remote. No, no, no. You need to be there. I mean. I'll be there. We all have to record a show in Denver next year. I mean, we have to. Okay, we got to make this happen then.

You guys are talking, but we got to make it happen. You just drive down or get down to Ohio. I'll take it from there. There we go. There we go. There we go. That's a long drive to Denver. Yeah, it's long. All right.

Well, what do you guys say we jump into a lot of these home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right. An over-the-air update coming later this month will turn Samsung's standalone SmartThings hubs into controllers for the new smart home standard Matter. The V2 hub will control Matter devices over Wi-Fi and Ethernet. With the current hub, the SmartThings dongle will also act as thread border routers. Sorry. Samsung is the first company to publicly announce the Matter certification, and they claim to be the first company to have received one.

The Samsung executive told The Verge over there that the company received its Matter certification early Wednesday, October 12th, and it's just a week after Matter launched. And then someone from over at the CSA, which oversees Matter, confirmed that they started issuing out the certifications this week and said that Samsung was among the very first to secure one.

So I guess. Good for you, Samsung, you're certified. Very proud of you. I mean, this would be a lot cooler if it like exposed your smart things stuff to matter. Right. Like, but I don't know. There's no matter devices out yet. So you're still gonna have to wait a month or two before you even get any devices. So, I mean, I guess it's good it's happening before

devices come out. That would be my only thing, right? Is because, you know, as we start getting Matter devices here in the next couple of months, you know, it'd be really awful if everybody was like, well, actually, you know, we're not going to have the Matter update until spring of next year. So buy our devices, but you can't use them. So at least that's not happening, but not that exciting. Nothing exciting, really. I'm expecting companies to get Matter certified. You know, like who was first doesn't really mean a big thing.

Yeah, great. We knew Samsung was going to get certified. Like we know who's going to be certified. They've been talking about for a while. It's when the devices start coming out, and we'll discover how the companies are butchering this. So that's going to make it tougher for us in the end. It's only a matter of time until Samsung introduces their own Matter standard.

It's just going to be like Matter, Bigsby, whatever they're... Matter Plus. Yeah. Smatter. Just like they do with everything else, where it's like, no, no, it's the same thing but like it's just a little different so we don't have to answer to anybody didn't they come out with their own standard for um what was that for um 4k i mean pretty much like anything you can imagine

yeah the hdr t hdr 10 plus is theirs right yeah because adobe vision is such a mess samsung makes their own everything that's never that good and they had one for appliances too right they had their own standard for appliances yeah i think they they have been working on that um it's funny that we're talking about this because they samsung had i actually archived it because it's not something we're going to talk about but uh i'll try and i'll try and dig it back up for this show now there's a little press release that we're like samsung and google forge a new partnership to work directly towards the smart, you know, working on the smart home. And it's like, you read it and you're like, what partnership do they have? It's basically saying that Google matter devices are going to integrate with Samsung, which we knew all along was going to happen. It's the other way around

the Samsung devices that aren't matter compatible or aren't going to be upgraded, aren't going to go the other direction. So, um, good press release Samsung,, I guess. But I just I archived it out of fury just by, you know, like they're just trying to confuse people at this point. We're doing this thing everyone already expects of us, but you're welcome. And we're only doing it halfway, but we're not going to tell you we're going to pretend that we're working with everybody because we had a press release. Didn't you see the press release? It must be your fault. Must be your system that's not working right. Six months from now, dead. Didn't you see the press release? It must be your fault. It must be your system that's not working right. Six months from now, dead.

That's what Google does. Leave it up to these companies and their big silo and see, you know, sales weasel executives to speak sideways on this thing and confuse everybody to no end. But what is nice is that we have a smart home standard that I keep going back and thinking about that post we read about from Paulus last week over at Home Assistant. He said, you know, it's kind of a uniform thing.

It's an open source standard code that anybody can deploy for pretty cheap since it's a reference code and you can build your device around this reference code. And, um, there's going to be tons of devices that have that little matter sticker or matter compatible kind of wink, wink. And, you know, that'd be nice. Um, I, I think that this kind of does tear down like the walled garden of like going out. I remember on these shows, like with Jason and I talking, we'd always talk about like, oh, I went and bought this iDevices wall switch, right? And it had Amazon on it. It had Google on it. It had HomeKit on it. It's like, okay, all three, no matter what, I'm safe. But now it doesn't really matter. Ah, there's the word. It doesn't really matter what sticker they have on there. The matter one is like, as long as it's on there, it's going to work and I'm good to go,

no matter what devices I have at home. So I think from's on there, it's going to work and I'm good to go no matter what devices I have at home. So I think from a consumer standpoint, it's a win if, you know, it sounds like it's working properly, but I think from a consumer standpoint, it's going to be a good thing for just getting the junk into people's houses. Now, how it works after you already have it set up and deployed onto the Matter network, which is magical, is a different story. And that, unfortunately, is not going to change. Well, and I think it's important to know that, you know, it's not going to really make that much difference until we get further down the timeline. Right. You know, right now we basically have a basic standard. Everybody kind of knows what to do with it, but it doesn't support everything. So, you know, we, we're not really going to know

if this thing is going to work until like five years from now, right? Five years from now, when they start adding all the robot vacuums and video doorbells and everything else that a smart home has and we see how it works together, then we'll know a little bit more. Yeah. Until then, it's kind of just, you know, sit back and watch. I think Gavin was talking about like power reporting. Like that's clearly in a lot of home devices, but not a matter of standard. So it's not going to weasel its way back up into any kind

of interface, um, that are being provided by the big three in this case, or maybe big four, I guess, if you consider Samsung being in there, um, which I guess I should, but they, they just keep doing this little like sidestep around it. It's like, well, we still got our own stuff too. There's no, there's no fridge standard for them. So I can understand why they, they kind of have to, let's move on here.

Uh, guys, we got some lock talk. Isn't that exciting? Mm. Uh, there's more, more lock conversations now that TJ has been on the show than I think there

ever has been in the, uh, the entire history of tech, but well, and I think, I think locks are kind of like making this kind of like this intro into the market, kind of like video doorbells did, right? Like for the past three to five years, you've heard nothing but video doorbells. I think door locks are about to be that same thing. Interesting. You know, just because we've seen so many different developments with locks, you know,

everybody kind of wants one at this point. It's kind of a standard with smart home now so i think we'll just keep seeing these kind of announcements good point good point and the price has definitely come down so oh yeah let's talk about the the big uh the big news today that that came out uh asa aboy announced that it was going to um basically uh divest or give up its acquisition or give up Yale, basically, so it could it could purchase. Quickset, Baldwin. It's advisor, Pfister and National Hardware brand. So basically, they want to buy all these lock companies. And the DOJ was like, we got some complaints on this. It looks like if you did this, this would be a monopoly. And that's kind of illegal.

So Asabu is like, well, maybe if we just say we don't want Yale anymore. And we spin that off to its own little company. And then we can buy these other companies and bring them in-house. We'll see what happens here. But this is pretty, I think this is pretty big news. It's actually nice to see our government stand up to like these bigger companies that are just like clearly a monopoly at this point, like that they would have had basically all but one door lock company, you know, if this merger had gone through, and I suspect in, in a different timeline,

the merger would have just flown through, but this, this one here just it's, it's beyond like, it's beyond imagination that one company can control literally everything, but one like smart home door lock company, at least not just in there in the States, right? This is a worldwide company. So it's kind of crazy. Yeah, and Yale is a pretty large company.

You know, a lot of people know them from their smart locks, but the smart locks really haven't been around that long in the grand scheme of, you know, Yale as a company. Yale itself has a bunch of commercial hardware. You can buy, you know buy door cylinders, you can buy mortise locks, panic bars, all that kind of stuff that you would normally buy for an office building. And depending on where you are in the United States, they're really popular. And it's actually funny, in the article here from CE Pro, Yale is the number one most used smart lock brand with 70 usage uh for you know the integration

crowd um and i think that would probably be because you know companies like crestron will sell yale locks um and i i would think that control 4 and a couple others also have integration with them mainly because you can swap out the modules uh if you buy one of the locks, you can swap in a Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, or Zigbee module, which makes them super easy to use, and you basically just buy one lock for everything. So interesting to see this happen. And that brand you couldn't pronounce, Wiser, that is the correct name, is Wiser.

I've never heard of the other one, though. Gavin, does this affect you anything up in Canada there? Do you have laws against companies basically owning 99.9% of the marketplace? I'm sure we do, but I'm sure nobody enforces it, right? It doesn't matter. That's the same thing. Yeah, same thing, right? But I hope this doesn't affect.

I like the Yellow Locks. I have two of them. They work well. I like the fact that they have those modules and I can swap them out, you know, because if they came with a Matter upgrade, I could just put in a Matter module and continue

using the same hardware, right? And that's great. So I really hope whoever they sell it to takes it further. You know, what's hilarious is that basically only two companies control all of the smart locks or I guess, you know, what's hilarious is that basically only two companies control all of the smart locks or I guess, you know, locking hardware in general, which would be a Legion and also Abloy. Both companies own a large portion of the lock

space already. So you don't have that many choices in the grand scheme of things. There's offsets of that that make their own hardware and stuff like that, but they're far and few between. So what you're saying is this sounds like a pretty good buy for Legion. Like they should, they just snap up a Yale and then we'll have, we'll, we'll have two companies.

Yeah, honestly. And that's who I kind of see purchasing it. I don't know who else really would, unless one of these new smart lock companies kind of want to purchase it. You know, they have access to a lot of patents and information at that point. But, you know, what is that? They made three hundred fifty million dollars last year or something like that in twenty twenty one.

That's going to be a big purchase for somebody. So it's going to have to be a larger company. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's Yale is a massive company, like you said. And it's interesting that you pulled that out from the CE Pro article about it being more popular on the integration side. And thinking back, it's like, yeah, that's why I think Gavin talked about being able to swap out the modules. Like if you didn't like running one with Z-Wave

and wanted to move to Zigbee, you could. If you had a Control 4 system, you put in the Control 4 flavored Zigbee module, which oddly enough, I heard was going away from a dealer I was talking to. He was having problems with one, and they were like, yeah, that's gone. So I'm

really curious as to what is going to happen. What's gone? The Control 4 flavored Yale Zigbee module. So does that mean control four is going to switch over to standard zigbee kind of in in this mix of things that we're seeing here it's something they could do um because they're they're basically a lighting company that has a zigbee radio and all of these devices out there but you're stuck with the control four product you know like you're

stuck with only using that and at the same, like the control for dimmers and switches and everything, like you can't just buy those and put them in anywhere else, right? You couldn't use, uh, Gavin's Hubitat, you know, uh, with the Zigbee radio. It'd be, I mean, it would be nice, honestly, like to have that option to, to, to say, Oh yeah, well, this is a control for dimmer. It's just a smart dimmer. Like we can put it anywhere. So I don't know. I'll be curious to see if that plays out. I might be wrong, but it's interesting to know that the Yale control for thing,

at least from Yale tech support, we're saying that, you know, that was discontinued and they weren't planning on making anything new there. So how will you integrate with control for in the future? I don't know. All right, let's move on here. Kind of staying in lock talk here um ava is this avaya avaya i guess avia avia could be that too avia i don't know avia yeah it's it's a uk bay uh uk-based smart security company and they revealed a new product that's designed specifically for the North

American market. This would be the first product that the company has produced for the U.S. market, and it has a previously released a door lock called the Avia Secure Smart Lock, but it was designed for mortise locks, and that's more commonly found in the U.K. and continental Europe. While any smart lock is nothing really special, this one actually comes with Apple Home Key. So you can actually bring your Apple Watch or Apple device up and tap on it, and it'll unlock the door for you, which is pretty cool. People have been waiting for product to come out around that. The company's latest lock comes in two halves, an outer barrel lock fixture, and an interior section that contains probably the ugliest thing I've ever seen, but it has a thumb turn, a motor, and batteries, and you're able to use physical keys to push in code. It really looks ugly. You guys really have

to see this thing. This is the most hideous lock I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot of them. If I walked up to somebody's house and they had this i would judge them so hard they have an image here that says keypad built into lock and it's like there's no punctuation it's like that's really all i can say about it keypad built into lock i mean and it's funny because they've like they've had these in the past too like you could always buy a deadbolt with a keypad built into it or you can buy like a knob with button you know keypad built into it as well like these have always been an option and they never look good uh you know it you it's hard to get even just like you know even like the yale of sherlock with the keypad on there

that you can type in the numbers and stuff it's even hard to make those look attractive and you actually like have a whole dedicated space for it they've just kind of crammed the buttons into this one they should just lift the buttons off that's what i'm saying or like do something else like a touch sensor i don't know something like not that and that's what i was looking at i was like how could they make this look better and the only way is just remove that keypad altogether and then maybe like you said add a touch sensor or something like that on it and we don't need the keypad at all you already got a key you got the apple was it home key home key so you have those two options you could add a fingerprint reader at that point and you're you're covered for this lock right we have three ways we can hack it so that's good you could even you could even do

like a fingerprint sensor like underneath it yeah way it's good. You can even, you can even do like a fingerprint sensor, like underneath it. Yeah. That way it's not so visible. Like the, literally the complete opposite side of the keypad there. And that way when you walk up to it, it's just like a normal deadbolt. You don't even know. And then they had to throw their ugly logo on there as well.

So that doesn't help. Back, backlit logo. Is that backlit? Yeah. It lights up. Oh man. Oh, it does. That's even worse well maybe they're

listening and they'll take our suggestions they won't they could have also made this with uh with just you know five keys rather than a full 10 i think that's probably throwing us off as well like it could have done it with fewer number like i think my Yale lock or whatever that is over there, Quickset, I guess, it only has a few keys on it. It's not the full 0 through 1, 1 through 0. I guess 1 through 0 keypad on it. Pass. Pass. I like the Apple key thing. That's cool.

Take out the ugly and I'll buy it. Mm-hmm. Probably not, but... All right, well, let's move on to some new cool products here uh apple announced the next generation of apple tv 4k it's powered by the a15 bionic chip and the a15 delivers faster performance and more fluid gameplay which i guess that's cool um the new apple tv 4k now features hdr 10+, which expands on the currently supported Dolby Vision for the current version of the Apple TV 4K. So that's nice.

A couple more quick specs here. Two configurations, the Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi, which is Wi-Fi only. It comes with 64 GBs of storage and the Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi plus Ethernet. And that one offers uh support for most gigabit ethernet or uh fast networking i think it's what uh no that's this one does have 6e on it or is that just the new ipad that had the 6e i'm not sure a new ipad the the pro

the pro has 6e on it the uh thread mesh network protocol is also built into this thing, so you can connect even more smart home accessories. Thread and Matter. Okay, I'll go with it. You can order the new Apple TV 4K today at a starting price of $129 with availability beginning November 5th. Gavin, you were tempted and walked over to the Tim Apple store

and decided to purchase one of these. Yep. You know, I was, you know, just looking at it on the Apple store and I accidentally clicked add to cart and I then accidentally clicked checkout and accidentally entered my address. And yeah, it will be here november 4th by accident

your three-digit key on the back of your credit card i don't know how it happens all the time you know all this automation i created it uh it just took it from there right so i was actually looking at getting a new apple tv um to handle all the apps for my tv only because the lgc1 is just killing me with those ads. Every time I turn on the TV, like yesterday I turned on the TV and seven ads popped up on me. Now the dumb part is they all overlaid each other. So it just kept going bling, bling, bling, bling, bling. So I only ever read the last ad. So they can't even do ads right. What you have to do to get rid of those is just use your samsung remote the one

with the little you know gyroscope in it and like that's punch the bonsai buddy you just got to punch the monkey as it goes by right oh i'm gonna i'm gonna start looking into that but i got the apple tv so i could i can start doing uh netflix and stuff using that and i'm not using their integrated apps and you know i can get away from their ads hopefully at some point so it'll be here november 4th um i also got it because i had the thread and everything built in that's a bonus so when you know all the matter stuff starts rolling out next month i'll start to play with that too so we'll see where it goes i told you to put that on loop please that's my new ringtone oh man oh man i remember when you bought that tv i was like so what a streaming device you're

gonna hook up to no no i'm just gonna use the built-in streaming stuff like no it should be fine it'll be fine it's not fine as, is it, Gavin? And you know what? Why I never really liked that built-in streaming stuff. I went to my mom's house and I was using her Netflix over there. And her TV is about five years old. No, probably about six years old now. It was dog slow, her Netflix. And I'm like, you see, this is why I don't like the built-in apps.

Because the TVs will get slower. That drove me nuts. But I get an Apple TV 4K, so it doesn't matter. And I got the more expensive one because I wanted all the bells and whistles. Heck, yeah. You got to. Well, it's not even that expensive, to be honest. So I think it's a great deal for what it is.

And honestly, as somebody who switched over to the Apple TV about four or five months ago, it's been really nice. And I like it better than the Roku and the Google TV. So it would have been nice if they included the HDMI cable in that. But no, you got to buy that separately for another $40. Did you get the HDMI? Did you accidentally buy the it's an AK HDMI cable? That's fancy. No, no no that's at least worth $35 I mean I have a a bunch of HDMI cables in the basement I'm sure I have one that can handle

uh HDR and all that fun stuff that's what they all say that's what they all say but that's okay you gotta get a super fancy one so your Sonos sounds better exactly he's got audio support in there gold-plated audio connectors well it should be interesting uh 149 for the wi-fi plus ethernet version i guess with 128 gb of storage i i don't know why you'd need i i bought one of those one year that had all of the storage and i'm like what is he doing for i have the same four apps on here that I watch. Like what, what does it do? It,

it doesn't buffer and buffer anything as far as I can tell. So it's not like, I think it's only useful if you have Plex because for some reason my Plex downloads are ginormous. Huh? Interesting. It's like all the album art or something. I don't know.

Well, I don't know. I would definitely recommend getting the ethernet version, but I can understand why they would like say, okay, cut off the Ethernet because most people are not going to hook up their Apple TVs with, with the Ethernet cable. It's only $20 difference though. And that's what, like, we're seeing a lot of these like small variations in tech, which I, I just, I guess I don't understand, right? Like the Sonos, uh, one speakers speakers for example

without the microphone like i guess i can kind of understand that because some people don't like the microphone but it's not that much price difference this is only 20 difference like i think i would just buy the better one for 20 more even if i didn't plan on using the features that the 20 more one had and you know when you talk about that Sonos one, it's, what was it? It was like $20 difference without the microphone, without the, you know, Amazon lady and all that stuff. So it kind of makes me think like, did it only cost them $20 to add that feature?

You know, and they're taking this out and that's all it is. No, probably not. So sometimes it's so close that I'm just like, just get the one with the future proof if you ever wanted to move it to another room or do something. Yeah. And I think Wi-Fi, too, has finally I mean, there's enough decent product on the market right now between Eero, Unify, you know, just in the consumer realm. There's some decent products that I feel like Wi-Fi has been solved, but it's definitely when as far back as I can remember, the when the original this original Apple TV 4K came out, it didn't seem like we were in the same place at that time.

I mean, it wasn't last year. It wasn't like six months ago. Like they have pretty long, you know, product turnaround at Apple. So especially around these kind of products. I can't remember when the last one came out this but 2018 20 it's a few years back but we we definitely weren't in the same place we were with wi-fi no it's definitely gotten better i don't i i think my my problem is right is that i think as a a product costs more money it should just come with those

kind of features already in it like you know for an apple tv at 129 it's already at the higher end of streaming devices i mean it was lower than the other ones because they were like 200 bucks well if you're comparing just the apple tv yeah but if you're comparing it's like a roku you know like an 80 roku comes with a hardwire port right right you know and so like that's how I kind of think about it. And I know that there are different products from different companies and all that good stuff. But I don't know.

If I'm paying that much for a streaming device or, like, a home automation hub, like we're about to talk about, like, it should just come with those, like, features already in it, so I don't have to worry about it. Hmm. Okay.

That's a good point. That's a good point. It's Apple, though. That's a good point. It's Apple though. You pay above market rate for everything that they, they, I need a dongle. Give me a dongle. Just a USB-C dongle.

You just plug in the back. Yeah. We took out the, we took out the ethernet port to put a dongle or a USB-C port, but now you need a dongle. It's courage. But you could, you can't use the USB-C port for anything else.

It's only for the ethernet. Right, yeah, it's locked down. That's funny. Well, as you just teased, DJ, we'll talk about this next product here. It's from a company called Homey, which I honestly hadn't, I think I've heard of them in passing,

but not really paid much attention to them, but not really familiar with what they have out there, but if you are familiar with them, you probably have seen their homie bridge, which was a product aimed at basically integrating with everything out there. Um, the company's new hub gets, uh, is, is gonna aim at an even wider audience for how many radios they're putting in this thing. So check this out. Every one of these is in one little Apple TV size device.

It's round, not square, but Wi-Fi, so 2.4 and 5G, Bluetooth LE5, RF433, Z-Wave Plus, the 700 series, ZigBee 3.0, infrared infrared matter, which will be coming Q2, 2023 and thread, which is coming Q3, 2023. And it's a scheduled to go on sale and Q4 of 2022. It looks like they're already kind of accepting pre-orders and there's some pricing up there. And TJ,

that's, that's what you were alluding to. What, what do you think about the pricing? Let us know what it is. And what do you think? So the pricing for the hub is three 99, which in the grand scheme of things if you're comparing it to a bunch of other hubs it is super expensive right but honestly i i don't think $399 is that bad as

long as it comes with long-term support but for an additional what $29 you can buy an Ethernet dongle to convert it, the USB-C port to an Ethernet port. And at $399, like same thing we just talked about, I feel like it should just come with an Ethernet port built in, right? And especially as your main hub, you would want to hardwire that to the Internet. You know, I like Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi works great for a lot of things. But anything that is like critical to my house needs to be hardwired. You know, and a hub that controls all my other smart devices needs to be hardwired to the

internet. Other than that, though, like I really like this hub and I would probably buy one. I'm not going to preorder it because I don't do that. But if this comes out and it actually does what it says it will do uh i will buy one gavin what do you think wait what do you think about homie like this i look at this this architecture platform sdk like it seems pretty mature like have you run across these guys before i i've heard about them over the years i don't i think they've had some other products but this one specifically is coming with all the bells and whistles.

I mean, they're one generation behind on the Z-Wave stuff. They should have come with the 800 series chip. I mean, that's a letdown right there. All right? Like, you know. Jeez, $400 hub can't even come with 800 series. You know, their Wi-Fi is only, you know, they're behind on the Wi-Fi. No Wi-Fi 6e support or anything like that

like yeah because you need 6e support for a hub i mean tell me about it that's a dongle too don't worry yeah i got to make sure my downloads are really really fast to that hub but but you know it's interesting matter and thread support is coming in q2 of 2023 and q3 you know it kind of shows you it makes you wonder why so far away is that stuff you know that just feels like you need to kind of be on like q1 at least it needs to happen like now like yeah it should be released with it you know you have a product out now what are you guys talking about let them get the hardware out first you're like no it's gotta they can just tell you it supports matter and then you know this is the new standard like if you're gonna launch a new device it just better do it all exactly why

am i waiting to q3 you know you know i'm gonna be on their forums and every day is gonna be a new post is it matter ready yet is matter ready yet is matter ready yet you know and you know what when i look at everything they support i almost feel like they're they're competing with like home assistant like you can build a lot of this stuff into home assistant and you can get dongles and add them to home assistant you know home assistant set this seems to get all the um okay it's getting all the hype right now you know they have a loyal fan base it supports everything it's getting a lot of hype right now a lot of support even with their home assistant yellow box they just released you know like it's even making me want to go and check out home assistant but i want to give home assistant some time he's already there he's gonna be like i singing his i told you so song before

too long i'm giving it a little more time because they made some major changes and i want those changes to mature a little bit more before i even start taking it seriously and i want to do more cleanup on it just jump in gavin geez no i just i i'm happy with my habitat though you know i have to say i'm happy with my habitat um so it'll be interesting to see what homie they have a long way to go i don't i don't understand their their their pricing here now that I'm looking at it, it says that if I want Bluetooth, Z-Wave, infrared, 433, all this other stuff, it says I need the bridge on this little pricing chart. Well, and that's if you buy the regular one.

If you buy the Pro, it comes with everything. No, it just says with the bridge. So now I'm even more confused as to what, what this, what this means. What can I run this on my own device? And then I just need a bridge to like the, the bridge is only $69. So that's, that's what I was kind of wondering too, because they have like one device for $299 a month, which I think is just like a stripped down version. Yeah.

And then you can buy a bridge, which does the other things like Bluetooth, Zigbee and all that good stuff. Yeah. The bridge is only $69, though. Like it's way cheaper than your. That's not terrible. Yeah. But then for the homey, you're paying $3 a month for like the rest of your life.

And so to get to just go all in, you get the homey pro and then you get all this stuff. You don't need the $69 Ridge. You just need, and you don't even need the $299 a month. Okay. I guess that makes sense. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm all right that it gives people a cheap way to get into it. A lot of people are just not going to use ZigBee and Z-Wave. You know, it's one of those nerd protocols that we kind of talk about. They're going to use wifi devices and all that good stuff. So here it is with the subscription. Without a subscription, you can add up to five devices for free. Yay. Um, with or without homey bridge. So if you, you know, depending on what devices you had,

if they're, um, wifi devices or something like that. And then if you do have the subscription, you get unlimited devices, you get access to their homey insights and logic and variable flows and that kind of stuff. So that's So that's pretty much automation at that point. There's no reason to do the other one other than just to not kick the tires and see how it works. But I don't know. This seems pretty cool. Like the interface looks really good. Like if you said, hey, just a blind taste test here.

You like this or the home assistant? I would go over here. This one, the interface looks very nice. Well, and that's the thing, right? It's like, there's plenty, there's a couple of different options. If you, you know, if you're willing to build your own interface or you're willing to kind of go through the trenches to kind of do your own home automation system, but the majority of people just aren't willing to do that. And, you know, even me, I have the capabilities to do most of this stuff. But if I could just buy a device, plug it in, and kind of go from there, I'm going to do that 100% of the time. Like, I don't want to spend the rest of my life just configuring devices and writing YAML.

$3.99 right here. There you go. Yeah. I'll wait for it to come out. But when it comes to a hub, that's one of the things I look at too is like i i want the basic to do you know have a little interface where i can do basic stuff flip switch light turns on you know say it's sexy time and everything adjusts around the place right i like that but when it comes to more advanced stuff i also want to be able to um either not in YAML or whatever language,

write scripts, write my own apps, you know, do whatever I want. And a lot of users, you know, eventually they'll reach that point where they want to do a little more than what it's capable of. And I'm hoping they offer that kind of thing too, right? I was looking to see, but I didn't see anything along that lines. You found the sexy time integration though. I mean, it's right here. On the front page. And they're copied.

So there is a sexy time integration, yes. Oh, man. Yeah. Red light turn on. You got to play. You can leave your hat on and then turn on the rituals perfume diffuser. We know what you want.

We know what this is all about. Yeah. Submitted by Anonymous in the Netherlands. So there you go. I don't know. Pretty cool product. They claim 750 different apps with integrations on here.

It looks like a really complete platform. I have never tried this out. I've never even heard of it, honestly. So we'll be interested to see what they do. And maybe like TJ, when it comes around and I might look into this,

this is actually pretty cool. I really do like the interface, how it looks and it looks like how you drag and drop and plug things in. This looks like a really well refined like Home Assistant or version of Home Assistant. So it could be nice. And it's beautiful and plug things in. This looks like a really well refined like home assistant or version of home assistant. So it could be nice.

And it's beautiful because it has everything already in it. Like until they come out with a new standard, like this is it, you know, you don't have to buy another bridge to do this or a bridge to do that. Like this is it. All right, let's move on here. Oh, hey, I probably should ring that bell, right?

Because it's a hub. So we got a bell so sorry about that it's been forgot we don't get to ring that often these days but yeah here we go another new hub dust this thing off yeah it's like two times in two weeks it's pretty wild all right uh moving on here big news from Roku's jumping into the smart home with products made by Roku wink yeah it doesn't these aren't

Roku products but they've officially announced a lineup of smart home gadgets that include lighting plugs and cameras the devices which were quote developed in partnership with the budget friendly smart home company wise will be sold exclusively through Walmart in the U.S. starting on October 17th.

According to Roku, the initial lineup includes smart bulbs with white and color version, light strips, indoor and outdoor smart bulbs, pretty much everything other than the socks from the Wyze website. So, and I haven't really gone through and compared the prices here, but Video Doorbell and Chime SE is $79. Outdoor Camera SE, $79. through and compared the prices here but video doorbell and chime se is 79 uh outdoor camera se 79 yeah i think this is probably in line with what wise's prices pricing are and i know that they're you know you still have to do the subscriptions that you'll pay roku for but also you know pretty much the same as wise so um no no matter support has been announced at this time

from i guess either roku or why so to keep an eye on them but what do you guys think about this roku So no Matter support has been announced at this time from, I guess, either Roku or Wyze. So to keep an eye on them. But what do you guys think about this? Roku is now a smart home company. So I don't know if it's the exact same product, but I'm looking at the Wyze website right now. And they have MSRP for the Wyze Video Doorbell plus chime is $58.99. And it's on sale for $42.99. So that's a price difference of, you know, at least $20. That and it's on sale for $42.99 so that's a price difference of you know at least $20

that is quite a bit i mean that's quite a bit yeah interesting i i always thought that this was kind of the perfect space for roku you know they kind of own the the streaming household in a way they have several different devices you can kind of pick your any price you want for it and it always made sense to me that they would integrate lights eventually right kind of like the philips hue that little light sync box they have going on i always thought it would be a good idea for roku to have something like that i just didn't imagine it would be wise i thought they would just come out with their own devices to be honest i don't know we'll have to see how that evolves but i don't really see why you would buy this over just buying it from wise probably better integration right like uh

and in the chat room greg said exactly what i was thinking why didn't they just make a wise app for the roku or integrate the wise devices directly in to the roku and license that out imagine imagine roku takes basically these wise devices rebrands them puts their own firmware and sells more of them than the wise does initially right like like i just didn't get the player about that yeah right but now we have two more ecosystems we have the roku camera and switch and everything ecosystem you have the wise ecosystem and they probably don't work with each other as well so you know i i just don't get there there must be a lot of money in play that i don't know about i don't see all that con all those contracts and that's probably what it's about i think you're

right because the biggest thing about this is that this is a walmart exclusive right so this is going to be basically i mean i've been in walmart Walmart recently and I think I was even dropping by there today for something, some food related item, but like I've been on the, in the back in the electronic section there, and there's a pretty substantial smart home like area. So Roku is going to be able to put all these purple boxes with a familiar name that people may already have either on their TV or may already have a Roku device. And they'll be able to line that up. And then you look over and you see, okay, there's a two pack of light bulbs for what I'd say $19 for that, I think is what it was. Let's see. The two pack color light bulbs, $17.99. The white light bulbs, one pack,

roughly this, I mean, I was looking at these, they're roughly the same price as what you would, you would go on Wise's website, you know, off sale and buy. But people aren't going to know Wise's name at Walmart. They may know the camera if they have got one, but they're going to look over and see a Roku video doorbell and chime for $79 and go, oh, I've always wanted one of those. I got a Roku TV at home. When I press the doorbell, it says it's going to pop up on my TV. It'll be integrated together. Done. Easy purchase. Right. And put that in your stocking for Christmas or whatever. A decent video doorbell. So I seem like, I think it's, it's a win-win.

Like in the retail partnership between that Roku must have set up was probably what you're seeing here over what Wyze could do. And I get that too. That's like name was probably what you're seeing here over what wise could do. And I get that too. That's like name recognition is what you're saying, right? Yeah. And that's fine, but I would expect, okay, why don't you guys play nice together? And okay, we'll let you brand it Roku, but, you know, also let our wise things work in there as well in the same way. So we could have one uniform ecosystem, right?

That way they get the brand recognition but i don't think that's what's happening it looks like roku's making their own firmware for these devices and reflashing them and wise won't have any way to work together with them it's not it's not just the name recognition it's the retail partnership now so you remember that you're at least here in the States, you could get a Wyze camera in Home Depot. And for a while there, it was like $25. And then all of a sudden, Home Depot was like, no, we can't deal with this anymore.

These cameras are like $10 more now. And you can still go on to Wyze's website and buy it for the cheap $25. So Wyze is sitting there undercutting all their retail partners by selling this stuff below what they can sell it at retail. Roku comes in and says, look, we'll be your retail channel. We'll just relabel it. It'll be our own brand. And then

what happens is, is Walmart and Home Depot and all those guys can make money off of selling the devices, inexpensive devices, because that little bit of margin that you see built in between the two price, the prices there, that's that's what Walmart's making. And, you know, somebody buys, you know, a couple of cameras from Walmart that have the Roku name on it, Walmart, Walmart wants to make money on that stuff. So that's what I think that's along with the name recognition of Roku over wise and then money. It's all about money. Yeah, honestly. And it's funny to the Walmart exclusivity. Um, I would have thought that maybe Walmart would have done this with wise and then just offered it through their on brandbrand. For those that don't know, Walmart has a cheaper brand of

streaming devices and a bunch of other home electronics under the ONN brand. So I don't know. It's just a weird thing. It totally makes sense on the business side of things, but I don't know. Smart home side of things is kind of silly normal normal tech stuff going on though companies do this all the time they buy from another company and white label it and and ship it off so perfectly normal all right moving on here we've got netflix uh beginning to charge 6.99 per month for its new advertising supported tier uh this company will roll this out in the U.S. starting on November 3rd. Netflix's basic with ads tier will include the average of four to five minutes of commercials for each hour and won't give users the ability to download movies and TVs on mobile devices

while they travel. That's bad. Anyway, ads will be 15 to 30 seconds in length and will play before and during Netflix content. Companies will have the ability to prevent ads from appearing on content they deem unsavory or unsuitable. And a limited number of TV series and movies will initially be unavailable due to licensing restrictions.

So they won't be able to add on everything until they get those contracts rewritten uh to help advertisers understand its reach ratings company nielsen will use its standard digital audio audience measurement uh digital ad ratings in the u.s beginning in 2023 uh to measure this stuff so uh netflix is rolling it out $6.99 a month you guys interested in this? TJ? No. No? No. At this point, I don't want to pay for

anything that has ads. If I can pay a little bit more to avoid ads, I'm going to do it 100% of the time. We already know how Gavin feels about ads, so I'm not even going to ask him. Every time I see stuff like this, I'm like, we're going back to cable tv this is all the stuff i left cable tv for you know the ads the bundling the you know all that stuff

now we're going right back to it so now we're getting into a subscription service where you can pay for ads or pay for more for uh less ads you know um what was interesting though i found it shocking that in canada we're actually paying less for this so we'll be paying 5.99 canadian which off the top of my head works out to 4.36 us um that's weird but i also think it's because we don't have access to all the content that you have access i think they limit what we actually have access to. So we don't get a lot of fun stuff. But I also found interesting is Nielsen rating. Wasn't Netflix, didn't they not release their viewership numbers on their programs before? Like, wasn't there a big thing about that? It's all internal, right? So now they kind of have to talk about what's popular, how many people are watching if they're going to be selling ads on that, which I found pretty interesting, because that's going to drive a few news stories now as to, you know, how many people are watching the Netflix shows.

Yep. They should. They may be able to extrapolate out of that how many are watching on the broader ecosystem. Right. So that will be interesting to see. Good point. Good point. It will be be interesting to see, like, if were to get this and and watch it and the commercial comes on and then on your tv and then you get a pop-up on your tv at the same time so you have like two two ads at the same time yeah so so my fear my fear with these kind of services when they start introducing ads is at first you'll be like oh there'll be one ad before the show starts and you're like yeah i could deal with this you know but three months later when times are slow and they gotta generate money you're gonna have 15 minute pre-show rolls and then a halfway ad and then it's gonna turn into ads every 20 minutes you know and then it's it's back to cable again i've got the model i've got the model they could do they can do two

ads like right when you start watching the video right but then like you you're forced to watch the first ad, but the second ad after like five or 10 seconds, there'll be a little skip ad button that pops up in the corner, but you can only do that so many times. Uh, and then like about halfway through, like the next video that you start to watch a big thing can pop up and say, hi, do you want to subscribe to the YouTube? I mean the Netflix family program for, and get rid of these ads. Try it for a month and you can click that. God, YouTube, just horrible user experience. I know I don't want to pay for it, but. But that's what I'm seeing happening. It's just going to become a bad user experience over time. Once they realize how much money they're making off these ads, why not add another ad in? It's only another 10 seconds. No one's going to notice that, right?

Yeah, I could just see it happening it all happens because people don't want to pay for things if people didn't mind paying for things then this wouldn't happen but we're here and we've been here for like 20 or 30 years now so yeah i mean it's it's um it's interesting like i mean even i said it's. I don't want to pay for YouTube. I would find it valuable if the YouTube app was appreciably different and could actually hold the settings that I set on every video. I would like for the speed of the video. I like to watch my videos at 175 or almost 2x. It would be nice if it would just hold that setting because they they they don't like why why don't

they hold the settings per video and even if you pay for it it doesn't do that um so i don't know like youtube just seems to be kind of like the worst when it when it comes to what they're what they're doing there now i i guess do either one of you pay for YouTube, the premium version? Heck yeah. No. No? Yes? No one yet. So TJ, what, like why?

Why? Is it ads? Yeah, I mean, honestly, like I've grown up using YouTube, right? I mean, like right as we were really getting into like middle school and high school, like YouTube has pretty much been around. And I've always hated the ad experience of YouTube. You know, when it started out, it wasn't that bad, but it just it's progressively gotten worse. And, you know, just like every other streaming service in the world, they kind of just succumb to ads eventually. And I don't mind paying

the subscription fee for ad free. So I don't know. I think I have the family account for like 14 or 15 bucks a month and I get like five accounts with it. I give it to a couple of friends. I have, you know, all of our personal accounts on there and I'm fine with that. I don't know what your viewing habits are like, but what happens to me now is when I'm watching, whether it's on Facebook or wherever, I'm watching a video, get halfway through it and ad pops up. That is the moment in the video where I decide, am I going to finish off this video or skip to the next one? So for all those content creators, make sure you got me in the first half so that I can, you know, I'll go through the ad and stick around because what that, that ad has become my deciding factor of switching to the next video. And I almost feel like that's going to start happening with certain shows. You'll be halfway through a show and an ad will, a 30-second minute ad will

pop up and people will just say, you know what? I wasn't liking this show anyway. Let's just skip to another one. I'm kind of to the point in my life where if I can't pay to remove the ads on something and I want to use it, I just won't use that service anymore. And, you know, it's funny, I see a lot of people online that's like, well, you know, I have ad blockers installed on my computer, or I have ad blockers installed on like, all throughout the network. And like, I don't even want that, right? Because I've done that before. And it sometimes messes with different websites or compatibility with things. And I just don't like doing that. But if I go to a website and it's just like overran with ads, I'll never go back to that website again. If it's like a news website that I can buy a subscription to and not have to worry

about ads or article limits, I'll probably do that. I just I don't want to deal with that if I don't have to. And I do everything I can to avoid all those ads. Yeah. I'm, I'm kind of the same way I've, I've purchased a couple of, uh, like local, local newspaper for sure. Cause I'm always clicking on the links there and then going, oh, paywall. And I actually, I mean, I like some of the writers we have locally, so it's kind of nice to read some of their stuff, but, um, and as well with a few other news type products that are out there. Um, I agree getting, getting like no one likes these ads. I'm just kind of reading through this article here. It's saying that suggesting that Netflix would get at least $3 a month per user in advertising

revenue, the ones that switch over to this. So it's kind of crazy that, that um that they can get that much per month per user that is that's using this plan yeah and before they weren't getting anything you know i mean because those are people that probably were not using it before so they have a cheaper option now and if they can deal with the ads and they're gonna do it so they're i mean so they're they're basically saying what is there is a netflix basic without the without ads that's 9.99 so that's where i guess they're coming up with the three ish dollar figure um from from seven to seven seven to ten dollars basically that the ads are going to supplement the those people in the lower tier it is lower than most everything um other

than maybe paramount with ads so paramount peac, those are five bucks a month with ads, but Disney Plus, $7.99 with ads. Hulu, $7.99. HBO Max with ads, $9.99. So not a bad price point, especially with the amount of content that they have. Well, Paramount and Peacock, those have a lot of content as well, but not kind of like the originals that Netflix offers. So I don't know. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not a fan of the way this brings – like what will suck is if – and what will happen is like these ads will start creeping up

into the other plans, right? Like the basic without ads is like basic with maybe a few ads, you know, in a few years. It's going to be ad creep. it's going to be ad creep and it's going to be price creep too next year they're going to raise the price 50 cents then 50 cents again and now you're at the you know a higher level anyway you're just paying less than whatever the next level is if netflix just allows me to turn off those automated like pre-rolls that they do every time you're on something i would be happy with that maybe

even pay it like an extra dollar i think they do right god it's so annoying i don't think they do i don't think there's any way you can turn it off but if i'm wrong please tell me because it's so aggravating like like if you're if you're just like surfing through and like it it whatever you're sitting on just starts playing loud or whatever yeah you can you have to do it through the web interface though i don't think you can do it ah that makes sense yeah you can't do it through the app itself which you know of course why would they make it easy like why why not and i hate when i get the net you see i hate when apps on your phone use the push notifications for ads too so i constantly get push notifications from netflix about what new show that i don't even subscribe to but oh there's this new show on here

same with amazon i hate their app because i'm constantly getting push notifications new show that I don't even subscribe to, but oh, there's this new show on here. Same with Amazon. I hate their app because I'm constantly getting push notifications with ads for Amazon stuff. Only use that to notify me when my package is shipped, et cetera, et cetera. Not to hurry up and get on Christmas shopping and get my Christmas shopping started. That drives me nuts. Little late breaking news here. Netflix actually beat their earnings this last quarter and, uh, and they added 2.41, uh, new subscribers, uh, during the quarter. And it was only forecasting 1 million. So that's quite a bit, pretty good that they, they were able to bring that many people in. Uh, and they have announced that they will begin the great password crackdown next year. So no more password sharing.

I'm in trouble. Well, there goes my Netflix access. You're not even going to watch it anymore. Let's see. The company will also allow people sharing their accounts to create subaccounts and pay for their friends and family. So basically, if you've been borrowing i wonder like i wonder how it works like we have different users on our account but those users all don't live under the same household roof so now i wonder if that's

gonna count we'll find out i guess everybody lives with me that's what i do with my Spotify. Don't tell anybody. It's called a VPN. I've got eight people living with me. Yeah. Tailscale is suddenly very, very popular. I don't know why. Anyway, if you guys don't know about Tailscale, check into it. It is really, really cool. Anyway, moving on here, all the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at homet.fm slash four Oh eight.

We're just going to move right on to the pick of the week and give a big shout out to James over in the UK for basically just, he won the year, right? Best. Was it best media room? What was the actual name of this year? Sexiest room, I think. I mean, it's beautiful. He's been, he's been showing this off and talking about it, uh,

for probably a year now, maybe longer, um, kind of in some like the hub and the private chats that we've had in the past, but yeah, winter 2022, uh, home plate is his company best media room in the EMEA market. That's awesome. Great, great job hats off to you. And some of the pictures that he's posted of the, that room are in our hub. If you're in there, you can go back and look at them. Just, it's a small house, small room. Uh, it's got a beautiful theater, crazy audio system from what he was describing, like absolutely insane audio system. And, um, I think it's even got a golf simulator. There's a DJ booth in there. It's just, it looks like a fun room to go into.

And everything is like designed perfectly. Audio is engineered correctly. There's audio stuff in this room that you don't even see because it's hidden and so well engineered in there. So I'm thinking back to some of the conversations we had in that is our early home tech talks where he was showing off engineered drawings of this and how they you know were basically engineering holes in the walls for speakers to slide into where the the the wiring on the back of the speaker had enough just enough room to sit just so in behind the speaker so pretty cool stuff you guys

take a look at these uh oh yeah yeah it's gorgeous especially with that you know i just want to point out like the 49 inch computer monitor for the dj setup i mean the built-in speakers with it as well it's just a nice looking room yeah it was great to see like all this hard work is getting recognized you know congratulations well deserved um yeah i i noticed that dj boot too um and that monitor would be great on serato i'm kind of upset that i'll never probably get to hear the room you know it would be an expensive trip to go but i'd love to like hear a room like that yeah yeah no absolutely this this thing is it's gorgeous i didn't know that was a monitor i thought it was a another speaker thing but i guess that makes sense like it's a i don't know what monitors

look like i guess that's a widescreen monitor that's oh yeah it says deal right that's like a five thousand dollar monitor yeah oh okay i don't know how much it actually is but it's a lot and that's not even like the most expensive thing in the room, but I just thought that was kind of cool too. I mean, just look at the giant speakers above the, uh, the wall there or above the window. I can't remember. What was the name of the speaker company they used in here?

I don't remember. I'm trying to like go through and see what he had put in here. Oh, L acoustics. L acoustics. Yeah. Yeah. So basically,

uh, what you would find in, uh, a commercial or live venue being completely engineered for a a small space like this isn't a very hopefully they don't have close-by neighbors they're gonna hate them no the walls are gonna shake johnsons are watching movies again so you can feel it. You can just feel it. Like, oh, I thought I was having a heart attack. No, watching a movie again over there.

Just Dune. All right, all right. Well, if you have any comments, suggestions, picks of the week or great ideas for the show, head on over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out that online form. Or you can email us at feedback at hometech.fm. All right, guys.

Project updates. I've got something big and orange in my yard. What is that? That's like a scary Mickey Mouse pumpkin. I put the wrong picture up. Did I put the wrong picture up? Oh, no. It's a scary Mickey Mouse pumpkin.

Is that even not the picture you wanted to show us i don't think so oh there it is that's the right one oh something else that's orange okay now i know no wonder we were so confused earlier i was like what does that have to do with anything yeah yeah so um i don't know if it's like a prime dealer or not, but I found this little like robot mower thing for like a few. I hate you. I did the last mole today for the season. So I'm kind of over that, but I still hate you. All right. Let me know what I'm missing out on. I have no idea yet. You know why? Because, uh, to install this thing is like going to be at least three or four days worth of work and unfortunately my grass grows faster than that and um from what i'm reading and seeing on youtube is that you can't actually just turn this loose

it's got to like start off with a set of boundaries and stuff yeah you have to like a dog fence you basically have to put the invisible dog fence up so um i've got some and it's got to go not only around the yard it's got to go around the around the yard, it's got to go around the house and bushes and that kind of thing. So, um, you basically outline where your grass is, where you want it to cut. And it, um, it's kind of, it's kind of the dumb version. I didn't get the, uh, the $2,500 Husqvarna, like GPS enabled with like local surveying precision down to 10 centimeters of cut. No, no, no. I didn't bother with that. Like this thing is just, um, it's a basic, it's called IE. I've seen it under different brands as well, but got it off Amazon for like 650 or something like that. It

wasn't bad. Um, all the while, like I'm saying this, like my current lawnmower was just start smoking and I don't really know why, but I really don't care like my current lawnmower was just start smoking. And I don't really know why, but I really don't care if it dies. It's just going out by the street and somebody can take it. I I'm, I'm done with that thing. Um, so I'm hoping I can set this little guy to, to go in the yard. It's supposed to cover like two thirds of an acre somehow and, um, just mow all the time. So it'll be interested to see how well it works, if it can keep up with the Florida grass right here. So how much smarts does it have built into it?

Because it's one thing when my robot vacuum runs over my slipper, but this running over my slipper is a whole different story. Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, it basically does work like a robot vacuum. It kind of looks for that perimeter wire and kind of bumps into things goes back and forth but the idea with these is not to like make nice stripes in your yard the idea is to like over time cut a little bit off the grass and move on not like what I do now is wait till the grass grows at least, I don't know, 10 or 12 inches tall and then plow through it with a giant lawnmower that has to have a water cool engine to, uh, to get through this thing.

And it starts smoking. I I'm, I'm done with that thing. So I'm really hoping this works out. Um, I still have my push mower just in case, you know, it breaks down. Um, and I still have the writing lawnmower, but I, I just, I think it's on its last legs. I'm, I'm, I'm tired of dealing with it. It's just maintenance nightmare. So, um, Ty's writing and watch someone. We'll try to pick it up and the alarm goes off. Um, no, that's, that's correct. I did not pay extra for it. So I'm just, I'm hoping that my, uh,

my neighborhood finds it amusing and, uh, no one decides to walk off. You have to put an air tag in it. You know, actually I, I am, that's what I'm doing. There's going to be like, there's, there's, I was going to take some, some of the case apart and put one in like the top. It's, it's fairly well weatherized, but it has a little rain sensor on it and on the, on the front, you can kind of see it there in the picture. So when it does, it gets a sprinkler, detects a sprinkle,

it kind of makes its way back or tries to find where its home is going to be. And it goes back there. Although the home isn't like covered or anything. So I've been doing research too on like how to make a little home for this guy to drive back into. So yeah, this turns out to be a bigger project

than just buying a lawnmower. So yeah, I've got to make a little home for him to go back into. We need pictures and plans of your automated garage whenever you build. Yeah. Some of them have a garage door that goes up and down. Yeah. See, that's awesome. Yeah, I agree.

And I don't know how to make it yet, but I'll figure it out. Well, we had like an automated door thing on there on the show last week. So you can just get that for it. The little pet door that could work. I was thinking something a lot less low, you know, high tech and more, um, you know, counterweights and, you know, just like give it the ability to kind of go in and close the door. But yeah, I guess I could put servo engines and engines on it. It needs to be over-engineered. It's no fun if you're not over-engineering it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I'm interested to see how it does work out. I guess I have to wait

now until I get the other giant orange 10-foot Mickey pumpkin out of the yard because that won't last. It's just vinyl. And if it gets run over by this lawnmower, I'm sure that it will just make a mess of things. So I figure we'll get an update from you in about six weeks because you got a lot of work still to do. Possibly, yeah. I've got to get out and run a ton of this wire around the yard. So, yeah, I don't know when that's going to happen. I was thinking I was going to do it this weekend and I just kept working on the lawn.

And there's a lot of stuff going on. Yard work. Anybody else got projects going on? Not this week. I've been moving into a new office. Finally got that kind of organized and, you know, enough to where I can sit down and I know where things are. So that's been nice.

And now I have an office at the local chamber of commerce. And so I'm the, you know, hanging up the TVs and everything else, technology for the whole building. So it's, it's been an exhausting week or two, but luckily the chamber paid for our moving. So we actually had a moving company. They came in and just picked everything up, brought it right to the new office. So I, you know, minus a couple van trips that I did have like oddball things for like you know conduit or shovels that kind of thing I did not have to move any of my own stuff and that was amazing that's delightful Kevin what about you anything big going on uh we're going through a seasonal

change right now so we had to you know pack up the furniture cover a lot of that going on close the pool etc etc gave the lawn one last you know mows you know we have a thing called pushing lawnmowers you know they have a little engine on it and you push one i have i have i have one yeah you had a riding one didn't you i'm very familiar we have to actually push but what i did buy you know and i'll talk about this on a later show but i did i had to buy a new water heater so i got a water heater with some, but I did, I had to buy a new water heater. So I got a water heater with some smarts built into it. I had to replace my smoke detectors.

Those have a bit of smarts in it. It's integrated Z-Wave with my hub. So we'll talk about that later. Some little projects I'm working on, you know. Automated water heater. That sounds fun. Yeah, it's pretty good. They have an open API, but like i said we'll talk

about it later i've got a water heater project too so whenever you do yours i might do mine mine's actually a lot easier so but it yeah we'll talk about it then my water heater right now sitting in the garage tomorrow we're gonna slide it down the stairs um i'm hoping maybe do the install tomorrow because there's a lot of gas gas connections and stuff we have to do and water and yeah and hopefully and then I'll order the smart module so you got to order this module sec you know afterwards and it plugs in pretty easily and then you get some controls as an open API for integration into my habitat or home assistant if you that's what you use and you know I'll see what I can do with it from there.

But everything I buy now, it's funny because... It's got to have an API. Yeah, it's like, look, is it smart? Does it have an API to integrate? Because I don't want to load another app. So I do that every time I buy something. I didn't even think to think about this lawnmower to see if it had an API. It just was one it does have a wi-fi hookup but i don't you didn't pay that much money no i don't

i i i think it's got like local wi-fi to your phone or whatever and then it kind of like schedules itself with an internal clock but it doesn't have like wi-fi connectivity while it's in the uh well it's inside well you can if it's got an app, you can reverse engineer the calls. That's what I did to get my wise cameras back in the day. And, and I captured all their calls and their information and I was able to control their stuff like that. So, yeah, but I don't, what I mean is I don't think that it has like a constant connection to wifi. I think you, like, it's one of those things where you like connect locally to it when it's on and then you set it up set the time and then it just you know it's got its own clock and does

its own oh okay so you can't kick it off remotely or anything like no i don't i don't think so um i really wasn't particularly looking for that and especially since like those are those are as much as like a real writing on more like like a brand new writing on more. I wasn't really thinking about, that was where I wanted, I just wanted to see if this actually worked. And so it seems like the hard part, if it does work,

and I do want a better one down the road, the hard part is actually laying this wire in the ground or that's the hard part. The rest is trimming the edges and that kind of stuff that I'll have to do still. So it the hard part. The rest is like trimming the edges and that kind of stuff that I'll have to do still. So be interesting. No API, that's a pass. All right. Well, let's move on here. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports this show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon

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totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's it. Wraps up another week of Home Tech News from here. Everybody, have a great weekend. Take care. See you next time.

It's not snow that you hear outside. It's a helicopter. They're looking for somebody. It's not snow, though. I know you thought it was cold out here. Who would think that's snow? I know. That's not what snow sounds like. I don't.

I mean, a motorcycle, a terrible car. It just sounds like jingle bells, right? That's what it sounds like? Because every time I've seen snow on TV, there's like jingle bells, and that's what I thought snow sounded like. You actually hear ho, ho, ho right after. Ho, ho, yeah. That's what the clouds, instead of thunder, you just hear ho ho ho right oh yeah that's what the clouds instead of thunder you just hear oh it's the sound of uh you know a person's boot crushing the snow as they

walk by snow that's the sound of snow the falling sound of snow is very silent it's actually calming have you ever experienced snow seth have not oh wow not even once you gotta come up during winter one time like and just experience it like it's like if you decked out your whole room with that sound deadening material you know it kind of sounds like that when you're outside it's oh yeah it's so dead it's weird so dead interesting well i'll have to do it one day we'll introduce you to snow it's, I'll have to do it one day. We'll introduce you to snow. It's an awful idea.

Don't do it. Snow day on Home Tech.