HomeTech.fm - Episode 409 - Taskmasters

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

This week on HomeTech: Wyze Cam v3 Pro is here, Arlo Safe launches to keep you safe, Alarm.com buys Noonlight, Youtube wants more money, and a pick of the week to block all commercials. All this and more project updates on this week’s show!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 28th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about all aspects of home animation, home technology, and of course, matter. Today's a big matter day, right? I think we all have uh updates on our

phones to do tonight and uh maybe get maybe to go along with your new uh apple tv i guess you're gonna have to have an apple tv to get the new matter is that right i think you have to have the new the new one with the the the wire and it had the uh thread radios in it it's gonna get the matter upgrades and all that fancy stuff so i won't get my new Apple TV till next week. I think it is. So I'm still waiting on that. But I updated my phone this week. We got 16.1 and that says, you know,

it has MatterSport and everything added to it. I'm so excited because everything's the same. Your life is about to change. I still don't have a Matter device. And you probably won't for a while. But I'm ready for when one comes yeah i mean it is kind of nice everybody's updating before the devices start coming out right because it would be like awful if we had a bunch of matter devices and nobody supported

them yet so everybody's all updated and there's no devices like they just don't have any devices they never release it's like yeah i got matter but i don't have any devices. They never release. It's like, yeah, I got Matter, but I don't have anything to control. I feel so lonely right now. Maybe it will matter by the end of the year, I guess. This is kind of like the longest rollout of any exciting product ever. You know, we're getting to the shopping season, so I'm hoping we see a bunch of new devices. You know, what it really changes in the long run we'll wait to see but

i'm sure we'll start seeing matter devices here the next couple weeks as black friday sales and everything else start getting hyped up that's true that's true uh end of the year shopping season um hasn't quite begun yet i guess when this yeah starting next week probably after halloween everything although i went to walgreens yesterday and like, there's an entire row of Christmas decorations. Oh yeah. It's there. They're out everywhere. And it's funny, you know, I went to target to buy a Halloween costume.

Um, and they already have the Halloween stuff clear and stuff in the very back of the store. It looks very empty, but they have the Christmas stuff already on prominent display. So not even over with Halloween yet. We already have everything out. I'm going to dress up as Santa Claus for Halloween. Two birds, one stone, you know. It's a nightmare before Christmas. All right, guys, what do you say

we jump into some of these home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right, smart home company Wyze has released its latest generation of popular budget home tech headlines. Let's do it. All right. Smart home company Wyze has released its latest generation of popular budget home security cameras, the $50 Wyze Cam version 3 Pro. It adds 2K resolution and on-device AI

for picking up processing events that have people in them, pretty much, I guess. Wyze also says the Pro camera has a faster CPU, improved speaker and microphone, and a better Wi-Fi connection with two antennas compared to the $30 Wyze Cam V3, although it only works on 2.4 gigahertz networks,

which, not the end of the world. Another new feature is Smart Focus. It's part of the new app interface for Wyze's cameras. Smart Focus adds a smaller view of the live stream, while the main view kind of focuses on the person that's detected and walking through the room. Kind of gives you a little bit more context and information about what's going on.

The Wyze Cam V3 Pro is a wired outdoor camera rated IP65, powered by a USB cable with a 2-amp 5-volt power supply, and you'll need a $14 outdoor adapter if you plug it into an outdoor outlet. Wyze also says it delivers a 20 frames per second video in daylight and 15 frames per second at night. It's not terrible. The camera also uses Wyze's four megapixel starlight sensor for full color night vision and it has the onboard spotlight and siren built in there so that's that's kind of cool um interesting little product for 50 if that's right still a good price i always thought the wise was a good price and even at 50 i think they can even add more features increase the price a bit and

still sell a lot of them um i always said the wise cameras they had very good quality um like the resolution everything was good i liked it um they they seem to address a number of things that people are actually asking for so it seems like they are listening to people and i i wonder if they'll still work with the roku that all the roku news that's what i was wondering wondering too. Because if they can work with the new Roku TVs and everything, that would give a lot more people a lot more options. I'm not sure. I mean, Roku, I'm just going to treat it as a different brand, even though they're getting, like, I think between our discussions last week,

we kind of hit the nail on the head. Like, Roku is just a retail outlet for Wyze. Yeah. Because Wyze doesn't care. Wyze is selling this $50 camera, and they're going to market up to $70 and sell it at Walmart and call it a Roku camera. And they're just going to pretend it's a different thing.

But the retail partners, they need to have some kind of margin built into these products to basically sell them on their shelves and keep the electricity on, right? Wyze doesn't have that problem. They can just sell it online and just work on shipping, you know, and just since and they can charge for shipping. So they really I mean, all they're paying for is a warehouse to get in and their labor

and to bring the product in from from wherever and development, all that good stuff. So if they can do it for $50 or $25 or whatever they want to charge for their cameras, um, that's fine. But if a retail partner wants to sell it, they're going to have to have a little bit of money built in. And if wise hasn't already built that into the product, because they're going for the extremely low price point, um, Walmart's going to be like, well, we're not, that's why you don't see wise cameras at Walmart, right? You would have already seen them there if they they could they get afforded to sell them there um so that's why you're gonna see roku there with it with the name so i i don't i don't think right now i i guess you kind of brought this up like do you can you get your wise camera on your

roku tv i don't know i don't think you can i don't't think you can, but I think I was seeing some rumors that you might be able to. So that's why I'm hoping, I'm keeping an eye on that still. Like, especially with the new updates and the announcements from last week. So we'll see where that goes. Well, and some of the other Wyze products, you can flash, you know, different firmware. So there might be a possibility in the future that even wise themselves releases the firmware and says, Hey, you know, you can bring your wise cameras over to Roku, but you may not be able to bring your Roku cameras over to wise. Um, you know, that might be something that's

actually locked down initially. So that way Roku kind of keeps that, that, uh, contact with them at all times. Um, so I, you know, and just like you said, Seth, you, you have to build the profit in there for the stores in order for them to sell it. Um, and I think that's maybe where wise didn't really, I don't know, maybe they didn't plan out enough, um, because you're not seeing them at a lot of stores. They're at my local micro center, uh, electronic store. And I think they're like five or $10 more expensive than what you would buy online. Um, so they're going to get their money one way or the other. They're $10 more at home Depot than they are online. Like you can't, you can buy the wise cameras there, but they're at least $10 more for the same product and same product. Yeah.

So interesting, an interesting company, but, uh, it's cool that they're able to use the low margins uh that that they're doing and just rely on straight to consumer sales and still get out interesting products like this um i will say that like their cameras don't really do much unless you're paying their two dollar a month subscription thing like don't go get these and think you're gonna get like 20 cameras up and going to have a security system around your house. And you're going to be paying each month for that basically for them to do anything. I think you can reflash them and stuff and make them normal cameras. But then again, like all this stuff that we talked about with the little AI stuff goes away. It just becomes a dumb camera. And then you're going to rely on some other program to have all that, which I mean,

yeah, I mean, honestly though, you're going like with any product, especially with the advanced detection like that, it really does make sense that it's like a monthly or yearly fee, though, right? Unless it's all built into the device and the device is a little more expensive up front, you're going to have to rely on the cloud in order to do all those detections. And it's just going to cost. I have a comparable product that i use touring cameras and you know that's 120 per camera per year yeah which breaks down you know

10 per month um so i don't think the pricing is is that bad at all compared to what's out there right now um but they aren't they're just not the highest quality cameras but for the price they're really good yeah with with these cameras the $2 a month removes the, there's a video length restriction. So it only kind of records around, I can't remember. It was only so many days or something like that, or no 12 seconds of video recording with a five minute cool down between recording. So you don't get very many recordings out of it. Um, and then it also has a vehicle. It adds vehicle package and pet detection as well as person detection. So, um, it's kind of nice. I mean, it, it, for, if you needed like a quick 30, $50 security camera to go up and, and you wanted to pay $2 a month, which is fine. It's,

it's not the end of the world. Um, I think it actually does add quite a bit of value to the, the, the product. Um, when, when I was, when I was traveling, I grabbed that little PTZ camera that they had and it worked well because I could, you could insert an SD card in and just record straight to that. Um, so that, that was kind of, but I didn't, I wasn't looking to look in and see anything, you know, wasn't interested in alerts or anything like that. I didn't need remote access. I just basically want to add it up, up and going. So if somebody did come in, I could review at the end of the day and check. Um, but I think I was able to kind of check on it during the day somehow. And honestly, that's the best feature in my opinion about the wise cameras is that you can add your own SD card and record 24 seven. Um, and I believe you're still subject to that cool down

period. Um, but you know, you get 24 seven recordings, so you can go back and look at it and you can flash it with RTSP firmware. Um, so that way you can use it with like a traditional camera system. When you do that, obviously you lose pretty much all of the features of the camera. It basically just becomes a camera at that point. Um, but there's some flexibility in there and it's something you're not used to seeing with budget cameras like this. They're usually completely locked down. You have to use their cloud. You have to do this or that. Um, and they're kind of a little loose with these, with these cameras. So I like them for that reason alone. You're not, you're not out of pocket. You don't cry too much. Yeah. And you know, I don't like, I think there's a lot of question if wise makes money or how much money they make.

But I don't see wise going away itself anytime soon. If anything, I think they would be acquired by somebody else and the service would probably keep going. So I think they're big enough at this point to not really worry about that. Knock on wood. I got my wise socks on today. Oh, nice. I think I have my bird. I think I have my bird nest around here somewhere. It's funny. All right. Well, let's move on here and talk about another camera company, except not about their cameras. Arlo is launching a new family and personal mobile safety app

and service that includes features like crash detection, software panic, hold switch for walking safely in unfamiliar places, and an optional Bluetooth alert button. It's called Arlo Safe, and the Arlo Safe app includes a Walk With Me feature that lets you hold an on-screen button on the app as you walk to your car or your door when you feel unsafe. If it's no longer pressed, Arlo's security team will attempt to contact you and call authorities to the location of the phone, and your emergency contacts will be alerted as

well. It's also offering a $30 safe button that can trigger the emergency button in the app. So instead of fumbling around with your phone, you can just tap portable Bluetooth button in your pocket or hanging off your bag, kind of like a ring panic button or that you can take with you. Arlo Safe comes with differently monthly subscription tiers. It's got an individual plan for $5 a month, families for $9.99 and a pro plan includes both the Arlo Safe and the company's home security camera cloud recording service for $20 a month. So everything all bundled up, uh, the family safe bundle for, uh, one 19 includes two safe buttons and a full year of the service. Uh, they've discounted that a little bit, so you can get that for one 80 for 12 months. So, uh, uh, I'm sorry, it's one 80. Now they discounted it to one 19. Um, if you were you if you were to get all that stuff separately it'd

be in 180 so uh save a little money if you're interested in something like this i don't know what do you guys think uh gavin this seems like a a pretty useful thing if you're if you you have to walk through a dangerous neighborhood or you know you don't feel safe just to have something that could possibly call the authorities that you know something was what were to happen oh no i like this i like this product i think it's great um as you said like it's perfect for those situations when you have to walk through an unsafe area you know like a student at school that has to walk into a parking lot you know when i go to our local walmart store you know i don't feel safe sometimes walking in there right so i take this with me and i'll hold the button the whole time.

That's Walmart. Yeah, you got to. You know, whoa. Yeah. Sometimes when they have sales, it gets violent in there. So, you know, like I think this is great. I definitely would feel, you know, better if my wife had something like this, you know, and walking through when she takes a dog for a walk.

We have a number of coyotes. Actually, it's a problem up here now that are attacking people and dogs, right? So I feel safer if she had something like this. So I might even look into this and see if it's even offered in Canada or something similar. Yeah, it's an interesting service that they're able to put together here.

TJ, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's pretty cool. I would like one for, you know, my alarm.com security systems, uh, mainly for like the wellness side of things. Um, we deal with some people that might leave their house, uh, go into like a different place or they think they're going to one place, but they're, they don't live near that area anymore or something like that. That would be a nice way for them to be able to reach out to somebody and kind of let them know where they are. I've been told that somebody on the Alarm.com side is working on something like that. So it seems like we might see a couple more of these devices, and I think it's a wonderful idea.

Yeah. Well, thanks for the nice, smooth transition here here because if you wanted a device like that, maybe Alarm.com is working on it because they acquired Noonlight, which offers an extremely similar service if you're familiar with what Noonlight does. So yeah, Alarm.com this last week acquired Noonlight, which has been trying to disrupt the conventional central monitoring stations market for a number of years now.

They were founded back in 2013 to, quote, deliver advanced technology that protects and comforts people so they can live freely. If you don't know about Noonlight and what they do, it's best to think of them as like an API for programmers into the 911 system. So I'm not sure who all of their, I think Wise actually uses Noonlight. They've confirmed that. But what they do is they will tie in the API and you can send a message with your location, your phone, your contact phone number. And then kind of like a small message, maybe it's pre-programmed message of what's going on. So, you know, a panic help, I'm in trouble or, you know, this is a pre-programmed message from Noonlight. It goes straight to the alarm, the 911 call center and gets routed out to dispatch from there.

I believe there is a way that they can contact you too, or they try to contact you. Again, I'll probe it grammatically. There's no humans behind this. But it's interesting that Al.com has, uh, has, has, has, um, acquired them because they're actually, there's actually two different businesses built into noon light. One is a direct to consumer model where I think it's like maybe for about the same price as the Arlo stuff, about $2 a month. Um, they do something extremely similar, uh, with, with how that works. And then you can also sell directly to business to business.

So if a developer wanted to make an alarm central monitoring station that hooked directly into Noonlight, they could do that. And sending those API calls out, and I think it was like 25 cents to call 911 or something like that, basically, to have a dispatch service available. If alarm.com integrates that into their alarm systems and has a way to bypass the central monitoring station, that could be pretty disruptive. It would be interesting to see where they go. TJ, we talked about this quite a bit before the show, but I kind of want to get Gavin. Gavin, TJ, we talked about this quite a bit before the show, but I

kind of want to get Gavin. Gavin, what do you think about this? Well, first time I heard of Noonlight was when they came out with the add-on for the Hubitat Hub. I know they released apps for that. They release apps for smart things. I thought it was cool because then you can add monitoring to your, you know, your hub, your own homebrew solution. And I thought it was a great service. Well, hold on. When you say add-on for Hubitat, what you really mean is that it basically turned your Hubitat into a security system, a monitored security system. Basically, yeah. It becomes like a virtual device on your hub that, you know, based on,

if your alarm's enabled and something trips, you can have a activity that then contacts them and lets them know, Hey, something's happening here, you know, send help. Right. And that was great. It costs a bit of money. It wasn't available in Canada, but I saw a lot of people excited about this. Now with alarm acquiring them, you know, like it opens up alarm to get access to all these people with their, their, their own hubs, their own setups, their own alarm systems, right? You may not have an alarm.com alarm system, but you're using their service, hopefully, to connect to them. And that's just another, you know, I think another way of them getting into your home.

I think it's great. It's a good purchase for them. Interesting perspective there. Well, TJ, I know that you pay a central monitoring station for your security business. What do you think about this? I think it's great. And honestly, alarm.com should let me know as soon as this is fully integrated because I'm willing to drop my central monitoring station. We've actually just recently went shopping for central monitoring stations.

And the pricing for them varies quite a bit. The level of service you get varies quite a bit. Um, the level of service you get varies quite a bit. And I would say like 95% of them are super outdated looking when it comes to like the UI or the website. Um, one of the ones I just signed up for, um, the website looks like it was made in like the eighties. I'm not even exaggerating like before the internet existed. It's not even, yeah, like not even like a, like a known thing. And like, they tout that, like that it was all built in house and they can add whatever features they want and everything. And that's great. But like, when I have to like mail my forms in, you know, physically,

instead of like uploading them to you, uh, that's a, that's a little weird. So, um, I think this is great news and I can't wait for it to actually be implemented. Um, and I hope it's, you know, roughly what I'm paying now. If not, even if it's like a couple of dollars more per month per account, it would be worth it just because it's already integrated. Yeah. I mean, look at, look at what alarm.com did for, um, you know, setting up a security panel. I mean, that's actually a modern system, but yeah, you're right. When you get to the back ends of those, those, uh those central monitoring stations, you're like, what is this? Like my, it would have been compatible with my Netscape

navigator browser. Just fine. I could probably still use it, but yeah, I totally agree. Like some of those things were just the most obtuse, unfriendly, unmanageable things to ever use and it's amazing that anybody uh has a working alarm system i mean the the computer stuff on the backside like it's all ul listed and everything it's just the interface that uh that a dealer has with the alarm company that actually has to call uh is grque, but it's actually better because it used to be, you know, you get back in at the end of the day, you'd set the little sheet in and it would fax off. And then they would send a report back to you in the morning with all, somebody had manually entered all that into the system. You have to go back and verify that it's

all been done correctly. Yeah. Can't even imagine. And some of the companies that Noonlight partners with already is Wise, Hubitat, Connected.io, which is the DIY security system, Tinder, and a couple others. So they have quite a big manufacturer base already. Yeah. The Tinder one, when i was thinking of i was thinking like uber or something but tinder i i think i read a case study on that like if you

fill on on uneasy or something happens in the date you can press a button and and you know it's right there like uh an easy like call the cops or you know i'm in i'm in trouble type situation um so yeah it interesting product i i i I, I, I know that connected is done speaking connected. Uh, I worked with them over, they were at Cedia this year and I worked with them on getting a control four driver up and going for their alarm panel driver, um, for their, for their alarm panel board. And, uh, it should be up and up and going now. I'm not, I'm, if you, if you have that product, you're interested in the Control 4 integration with it, it does work now.

So it's pretty good. All right, moving on. Not content with doing $28.8 billion in revenue in 2021, YouTube has gone on the hunt for more revenue generating strategies and pretty much they have just figured out how to raise prices uh 27 percent um nine to five google was the first to spot the family plan is jumping 27 over 27 in the u.s from 1799 to 2999 with with 2299 with other regions

also seeing price hikes. Instead of making an official announcement, Google is quietly emailing existing subscribers. So far, it does not seem like the single person YouTube premium price is going up. It's still at $12 a month. The family plan lets users share ad-free YouTube premium with up to five same household family members for discounted rate. I think that gasp you heard was was TJ. Was that you? Oh, that was me. I'm a big YouTube user, honestly. And like ever since I started using YouTube, pretty much when it came out and they

started introducing ads and all that good stuff, I've always wanted an ad free version because I just don't like sitting through them. So as soon as YouTube announced YouTube premium, I basically got it instantly. Um, and I use it, I would say at this moment, you know, we're actually using YouTube more than any other streaming service. Uh, mainly cause we're watching a bunch of, uh, task master right now. Um, and they have every single series on there, so it makes it very convenient. Um, but I definitely felt this as soon as they sent the email out, uh, a big increase, um, and a couple of the streaming services had to go. So no more, uh, game warden shows for me right now, discovery plus has been canceled and Netflix was on the chopping block anyway. So that's gone too.

So, you know, I, I saved money because YouTube sent this email out, so thank you. I'm actually shocked that you cut Netflix over this. This says a lot for the YouTube, you know. Usually Netflix is like the last one that people are holding on to, right? See, I think I'm like the polar opposite, though, because I feel like Netflix is the worst streaming service now. Like five years ago, I think they were one of the best. But now I just don't find anything on Netflix. And when I do, they like cancel it after one season. So I don't want it's like the Google of streaming services. I don't

want to get invested because they're going to end something. And I find all the other streaming services have like one show, maybe two shows that I like on them. Netflix kind of is somewhat of a dumping ground of everything. So that's why I usually like to just stick with that. But the one gripe about this YouTube is it's such a big increase, you know, and it's like it's five dollar increase. That's pretty big. Like we're used to like a dollar here, a dollar there, but they just jumped to five. And I hope that doesn't set like a precedence for the other streaming services and say, hey, we could just increase by $5 at some time, you know, and it becomes the norm. But all the prices are going up slowly. We're going to

have to start, you know, doing what you did, TJ, and determine what we really want to keep and what we're going to get rid of just to try and save money. Yeah. I think at this point I'm down to YouTube premium and HBO max and Amazon prime, but I don't really count that. So just, just two streaming services now. TJ, you watch some,

some weird things. And that's why he got rid of Netflix. Are you looking at are you looking at a taskmaster? Yeah, I was just trying to figure out. So it's just a game show where people have tasks. Oh, man, it's such a good show. And I don't know how I've never heard of it until recently. But somebody had somebody at my wife's work told her about it.

And we started watching it. And I think it's hilarious. And they have different spinoffs. They have one in New Zealand and a couple other places. It's a, it's a comedic game show in which a group of five contestants, mainly comedians, but sometimes including other well-known television personalities could beat

against each other by completing tasks assigned to them. Well, I mean, it sounds boring when you read it like that but when you when you watch it you know it's funny don't knock until you try it all right i'm gonna i'll have to try it out i'll start on start on season one okay there's like six or eight episodes per season i think nothing crazy it's a good show if you like if you like the uh

the silly comedy of like bob's burgers and a couple other you know comedy shows like that i don't see why you wouldn't like this um and each episode is very different so the tasks they're doing are different and okay i'll have to give it one look one look do they just like clean clean the house is that like a task or is I just don't understand what encompasses a task. No, it's like it's like just just you just got to watch it, Seth. I mean, I'm not gonna be able to describe it. I don't want to give it away either. I'll give it a shot.

I'll see what it's like. I do like Bob's Burgers. That's an excellent TV show. Everyone should watch that and sing along to all this. Nothing alike, but it's stupid comedy. So there's no singing. I alike, but it's stupid comedy. There's no singing? I don't think so. Not yet.

All right. I'll give it a go. All the links and topics we discussed tonight, including a Taskmaster, can be found on our show notes over at homet.fm slash four Oh nine. All right. Well, nothing in the mailbag this week, but we do have a fun pick of the week that is for commercials specifically. Maybe you can, maybe I can use this on YouTube as well. Um, but, uh, TJ, I think you found this thing, the net Netflix commercial curtain. I love it. You know, I would just wish there was some way to automate it, but I'm sure between the two,

the three of us that we can kind of figure out the automation side of that. Gavin can write us some kind of API or something that ties into it and we can figure out the hardware part of it. So it's just closes automatically. Oh yeah. We just can use the, we just need to tie into the commercial skipping tags on the videos and, you know,

we can have it when a commercial comes on, it closes the curtain. When a commercial is done, it opens the curtain back. Yeah. So if you haven't gotten I mean, this is a fun this guy, I guess he makes things unnecessary inventions. He he makes everything. And it is hilarious. You know, half the time when you see something he invented, you're like, that's dumb. Nobody's ever going to want that. And the other half the time you see invented, you're like, that's dumb. Nobody's ever going to want that.

And the other half the time you see it, you're like, man, why has nobody thought of that yet? Why can't I buy this right now? Well, he put a curtain rod, a motorized curtain rod over the front of his TV. And when there's a commercial comes on, I guess it it puts a curtain in front of the a bright red curtain with white lettering that says commercials in progress in front of the netflix app and then when it when it goes away the commercial goes away then it it it moves back out of the way gavin you would you would have a problem with this because you just get a pop-up on your tv and you just never see your tv yes correct like yeah is this

compatible with smart tvs i don't know. Definitely not. Samsung and LG would block this instantly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, if you have any ideas, pics of the weeks or topics for the show, give us a shout.

Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out that online form. All right. I had a wedding this weekend, so I got nothing done. Anybody else do anything around the house? Maybe?

More chores, more closing off, you know, getting ready for winter. We had a great weekend in terms of temperature. I think it went up to like 20, 25 degrees Celsius at one point. But it's now going to cool off again. So all the leaves are falling you know parts of canada got like two feet of snow you know this i hate this part of the year it seems like just yesterday you were unclogging the pool and like getting you know throwing shock in it and that kind of thing like getting it all ready for summer didn't you go swimming like a

week ago oh no i i fell in but that's a whole different thing right i didn't go swimming but uh yeah no the pool's all closed up we put the cover on yeah blowing the leaf blowing the leaves onto the neighbor's lawns those type of things you know it's real sad so sad it is it is a depressing you know the worst part about it is it gets dark at like 6 30 now it's like so sad yeah that's the worst part about winter um as you you know come out of the office after a long day or you come out of the house after a long day and it's just like oh well there's no more daylight left that sucks it's a little dreary yeah and you know when you when you work hard you like go into the office and this you know it's dark when you go into the office it's dark when you work hard, you like go into the office and this, you know, it's dark when you go into the office, it's dark when you come out to the office,

you know, you don't even believe that the sun exists during the winter. I'm still having 12 hour days here. That's right. You can, you can keep that in the heat. So in the heat. Yeah.

Yeah. It is, it is warm here. It's getting into the eighties all week, but I don't know. It is, if it's lower humidity here, then it's nice. These are nice temperatures, but otherwise it's hot. So yeah. What are you going to do? Eventually I will get

out. Like I came home today and I was like, wow, it's kind of cool. And there's a breeze. Maybe I should get out there and start working on getting this lawnmower thing installed. So I'll have a lawnmower for the winter you know that we have which just means it doesn't rain as much and the grass doesn't grow so it would be nice to see how it how it can work for that and then like how the grass just like grows over it as it's trying to mow the lawn in the summer it just it will just get consumed um but i haven't done that yet so one day just pay somebody to do it. It'll get done in a day and you'll be done.

Like sometimes, you know, like you'll spend three weeks, never get it done. Or you could just pay someone to bury the line for you. Seth is really good at completing projects. I mean, he got that oven hood done super quick. Yeah, that's still right there, actually. So still waiting on. I kind of like had too many options in front of me it's not as easy as like burying a wire i had all these options and i was like well i could do this i could do

this i could and i just never did any of them so um but i do want to i do want to have those lights kick on and off the shelly the shelly uh rgb driver i found can control similar lights like the little led lights that you would get for maybe a landscape system. And you can put it into white light mode and get four channels of control out of it. So that might be a pretty good solution for that. One day, one day.

There's too many options. That's the problem. The downside of it all. Too many things to do. I'm so undecided. Like there's so many cool things I could do. All right. Well, if we so many cool things I could do. All right. Well, if we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show,

but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. And any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for all sorts of rumors, snap AV rumors. Like I guess they, they bought a company last year, maybe who knows. And then this year they're like, yeah, we, we, we did buy that company, but it was just confusion for a while. I think I'm still confused at all. It happened.

I don't even know, but congratulations to Paris all, I guess. Well, I mean, if they finalized it this year, right. I mean, they made a large investment last year.

Now they just said, Hey, we're actually acquiring them this year. That investment. That was just the money that that was. That's all. Yeah. You're you're now,

we just wanted to make sure it was good. So I just had to wait for a year for the check to clear. Exactly. That's what it is. Just make sure. I don't know. That's a pretty neat feature, I guess, you know? Yeah.

If you're a SnapAV dealer, I guess you have access to the Parasol people. I don't know. Yeah. I don't think it's built into just being a dealer. I think you just have to pay for your services. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a given. I mean, SnapAV is fine in every other way.

They can kind of add value and take more money from you so it's definitely gonna be an additional cost yep yep you know speaking of no cost frills uh if you want to help with the show but can't support financially we totally understand uh i just appreciate a five-star rating on itunes or positive rating in whatever podcast app you prefer to listen to. With that, that wraps up another week of Home Tech News here. Have a great weekend, everybody. Take care. Till next time.