HomeTech.fm - Episode 410 - Looking at Your Package

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

On this week's HomeTech: Matter officially launches (finally) with over 190 certified devices, Orro shuts down operations, Blusound has a new speaker, AppleTV+ costs more, Level's new lock is easy to unlock, TJ reviews the install of a G4 Doorbell Pro, and a fun pick of the week.

This is the Hometech Podcast for Friday, November 4th. I'm Sarah Soda-Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Hometech Podcast, a podcast all about everything that matters. Yay. Insert the drumroll thing here. It all matters. It all matters now everything's

everything's gonna matter we get into that but um happy halloween guys we missed that last week i think but um did you did you guys dress up for halloween not this year you know not much of a not much of a costume wear i dressed as a as a hawaiian person i'm not really sure what that means exactly uh but when i did the uh we did like a candy by the carload event for the city of Powell, I think like a week ago now. And I did not read that costumes were mandatory. So had to scramble last minute to get one. Yeah, I didn't dress up this year.

My dog got all the costume this year. So yeah, he was a little body. Well, you always have to dress the dog up. I know he gets the better costumes too. Like it's not fair. Cool. I was a frog. A frog?

And a hat. Yeah. Hopefully there's pictures of this. Somewhere. I don't know. Maybe it'll be in the show notes. Who knows? But my daughter was a Tiana.

And so like my wife and I just up like frogs And it was just a green t-shirt, but it looked good. I liked it. It's really cute but we went around trick-or-treating she got a bunch of candy and Yeah Not now she she she really likes. Oh, oh, I'm being brought the hat. Hold on. I'll just wear this for the whole show There we go There you go there we are it looks like that landscape speaker you we found on aliexpress or alibaba it does yeah it looks very similar oh there you go so yeah picture that green shirt yeah it really worked all right

it doesn't really work perfect i don't know why you don't wear that all the time i don't know if i could take you seriously with that on no well Well, let's talk about Matter then. All right. Let's do it. Big Matter news. Well, yeah. Okay. So big Matter news. Matter launched today, 190 devices certified and 20 new members or more than 20 members. Let's see had a big launch event today in amsterdam where the csa hosted all of the matter people i guess to show off their wares um they have lighting smart plugs smart thermostats smart shades smart sensors and smart locks everything's smart uh that that matters right now uh they also announced four new device categories that'll be coming in the next few years including uh well in addition to cameras which is on the roadmap home appliances

robot vacuums and energy management stuff so they announced garage door controllers with electronic gates seems like that should have probably been on the first part kind of a miss if you ask me environmental quality which would be good to have. And then smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, also kind of a miss, I think, for the version one. Should have been in there. And then ambient motion presence sensing. So I think that has to do, I don't know what that has to do. Like, wouldn't that be in sensors?

It's kind of weird. I'm not sure what the difference between ambient motion and present sensing is, but what do you guys think? Did you guys see anything in here that was going to, you were going to run out and grab as soon as it became Matter compatible? Nothing at all. I know some people are very excited for Matter. I'm kind of excited for it too, but I'm more excited for Matter like 1.1 or 1.2 when they start you know

adding there's some other devices that they're going to be adding i'm looking forward to that they'll be ironing out some of the wrinkles stuff like that so i'm actually looking forward to it um i'm still waiting to hear you know my hub of choice is habitat i'm waiting to hear what they do you know if they're listening i'm waiting you know know but it's good to see like a lot of motion you know 190 devices they say Eve is getting it next month December I think they said the others said next year so it's good to see that 190 devices 80% of them are flavors of a light bulb so it's very exciting well everybody loves lighting i mean what how could you go wrong without lighting you know yeah if you and most of them are made by tuya they had like 40 different models of rgb cw light bulbs on on i mean i i get it

they're they're each one of them has to be certified separately for whatever reason. I mean, it's kind of lackluster, though, right? For us talking about this for years now, and then the release being pushed out. And I don't know, just 190 certified devices doesn't seem like anything with the amount of companies that are on board and with how long we've been talking about it. All these companies should have had access before it became certified right like so shouldn't adoption be a little bigger by now these companies are also bigger companies though that have the resources to really get uh involved in stuff like that too so i think over time the smaller companies when they start throwing some more resources into it you'll see them start to come out and then we'll get flooded with all these random devices.

Yeah, that's a great observation. The big ones we saw were like Tuya, Amazon, Apple, Samsung. Xiaomi. Yeah. And I mean, like you said, those are the big ones. They're the ones that were part of that working group, I'm sure. So they were just kind of all over it and got it done first. But, you know, I keep going back to that post that Paulus had on, I think, Hacker News that we covered a couple of weeks back now.

It was about Home Assistant and what their plans were. But he kept stressing or he stressed a couple of times that, you know, this is cheap. It's cheap because it's open source. Like you don't have to develop your own stack against all this stuff. And it's, it's there online. You can download it. You can implement it without, um, you know, without trying to do it yourself. And, um, then it just integrates with all of these, these automation platforms. That's going to be big for manufacturers. Uh, and, and hopefully we'll see them just jump on it left and right and make nice inexpensive products to go along with the

home thing i'm kind of disappointed garage doors aren't on the gates gate control that you would think that would be like first on the list and maybe cameras too but cameras cameras are hard so i will i'll give them a pass on cameras yeah and i think we'll definitely see a widespread adoption with this just because the the technology behind it is so cheap i mean we did that uh we talked about that article a couple months ago now where it was like the wi-fi the ble the matter or thread um and like wi-fi six all in one chip for like six dollars or something obnoxious so like we're we're gonna see this on a ton of devices just because it's going to be so much cheaper to implement than Z-Wave or Zigbee or something else. So, you know, by that default,

I think it's going to be popular anyway. It'll be nice once they add a bunch of these other devices that they're already planning in 2023. Yep. Just to help round out the ecosystem and all the stuff that you can do into it. For sure, for sure. In the meantime, Home Assistant just keeps just keeps you know stealing the show because all these

20 190 certified things get up there and all these hundreds of vendors and everything and home assistants is like yeah we can integrate with your toothbrush now like what you guys see this update yeah it looks pretty nice and they added an update for a lot of stuff i mean honestly it's the the the oral b the snooze uh which i've never heard of that one uh air things which i've never heard of but that looks really popular and they've got a lot of different air quality sensors and a bunch of other stuff um Got a couple different new cards coming out to the Home Assistant UI. So a new one called Tile, and then another statistic card that kind of just gives you a finite value, you know, when your average is like your temperature in your room,

maybe a temperature in the garage, something like that. And another thing I really like too, is they implemented the water consumption under the energy tab. So you can actually go there in the same tab as you do with your electricity and see how much water you're using as well. So a couple of nice, you know, quality of life feature updates. I don't think anything too crazy, but it's always nice to see Home Assistant evolving and they're adding some nice features that other people, you know, kind of recommended. I think a lot of the stuff was voted on and a lot of the stuff received a lot of, you know, votes and people were really interested in it. So good to see them listening to the community. Yeah. Every time they come out with an update, I'm more and more impressed in, uh, with what home assistants doing and

where they're going. And, you know, I'm starting to get that FOMO. I, you know, I feel like I need to get my hands on one of the home assistant yellows or whatever their boxes and start, you know, looking at it. My only problem is my current ecosystem has like 200 devices in it. And to migrate that is like going to take me weeks. And it's running beautifully right now, but I'm very impressed with home assistant and it looks great. Well, and the nice thing too, because you're using Hubitat and because Home Assistant integrates with everything, pretty positive you can use Home Assistant with Hubitat. Yes, you can.

So you can go ahead and just start, you know, slowly moving over and at least getting used to the interface and automations and stuff like that. So maybe it'll make it a little easier for you in the long run. I'm looking at this. I'm looking at the snooze over at get snooze.com with a Z cause that's cool. Yeah. What is, what is that? It's a white noise machine, but it's, it's, but it has a fan inside to make the noise. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen it. So it's an acoustic, it's a mechanical white noise machine for a hundred dollars. And I guess it's got an API, clearly,

an on-off scheduler, nursery calibration, but it's got a fan in there. Interesting. Yeah. I've never seen that before. I wonder if they did that in the pre-technology days because I've only ever known white noise as a speaker. Yeah. Well, my wife says our white noise is me snoring,

but this is good replacement not very good yeah it's very interesting so it doesn't have a speaker inside of it it's got a fan that that whirls around that's pretty neat yeah and makes the noise of a fan not not gonna sell too well in korea but yeah is what it is i could i could see me buying that at some point they're just old server fans that nobody wanted they're repurposing them you know we're trying to make our computers quieter and you know they're trying to make a little background noise oh my gosh we shouldn't make that that's what happened to seth's server that makes sense now we're gonna grab we're gonna make one of these white noise machine server edition there's old server fans you know every it you know we sleep well when we hear those

fans running in the background yeah angry gumbo bumblebees oh man that's great holy cow and you can actually twist the outer shell to adjust how fast it is and everything. That's hilarious. I think it's really well made. Yeah. That's pretty cool. They find all these really cool devices. I've actually never seen before.

I've seen it many of the, you know, I know what Oral-B toothbrush is. AirThings is, like you said, the air sensor stuff. I've been seeing them kind of work on that through a few posts, but I don't know. Good stuff. One day everybody will catch up with these guys. Of course, they're going to have Matter soon, too. They'll have a little plug-in thing dongle that you can get. Yeah, the SkyConnect.

I'll let you know when I get mine. It'll connect to nothing but the Sky because there's no Matter products ready to connect to until next year. Evidently, that's what they're saying. you have time you have time that's right i don't even have a shipping date so all right guys i'm going to take the matter hat off now and every time you have to keep that on no i'll put it on every time we talk about matter i'll just i'll just keep it here might as well just keep it on because it seems like we'll be talking about it a lot. At least I took a picture of you wearing it. So. All right. Great.

Oh, that's the worst picture ever. You wouldn't stop talking. I just I couldn't get a good one with you with the hat on, you know. All right. All right. All right. What do you say we take the matter hat off and jump into some tech headlines? Let's do it. All right. All right. All right. What do you say we take the matter hat off and jump into some tech headlines? Let's do it.

All right. As a result of supply chain hurdles and financial constraints, a four-year-old smart lighting company, Oro, is suspending most of its company's business operations effective immediately. Kind of some big news this week. At least for the next six months, the company says it will no longer manufacture or distribute its Oro smart lighting system, and instead use remaining resources to provide ongoing support to existing customers, including end users as well as professional integrators and dealers. The company is committing to a minimum of six months of ongoing support. The officials say that period could be extended. Customers may continue adding the new Aura 1 switches and may install and use Aura's existing smart home integrations while the development for new software updates is suspended. I have your mark on Graveyard, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

It sounds like I heard some other reporting on this that they had some funding or or something um drop which you know that happens when these startups some time to time uh but but because of the news that had gotten out they had made up some of that funding so they may be back on the table but it does it is kind of uh it does kind of suck to see them kind of like drop off um at least they're better better at announcing what's going on than insteon. I mean, they know how to use email over at Oro, it looks like. Gavin, I know you had some problems with how much this thing costs when you were talking about it in the pre-show. So my opinion is not going to destroy a company, but I just felt that this was too expensive for the average user, right? Like

when you're looking at, what it 300 400 for this i think it i think their current pricing was 390 or yeah 399 and that's us the smart one oh that's us it hurts up here in canada especially since the us is doing so well right um so i i just you know i i would i personally wouldn't do this because you'd need a few of them in the house. Like you wouldn't just want one. You'd want like at least four or so. And that's a big investment. You know, for that price, you can pretty much replace every switch in your house with a regular Z-Wave, you know, smart switch, you know, with scene controls and stuff like that. So it was a nice looking device.

I just don't know if we were the right market. They went towards the integration market too right yeah I think for a while they were targeting DIY installs and then went at that point they were $2.99 for the Switch and then they ended up bumping up $100 and saying hey integrators

you want to make some money? we got about $100 in here for you yeah I don't know they also came out with some less expensive, like, I think, like other in lighting or something like that later on that didn't have the little touch screen built into it. Didn't do all the same amount of things like you really only needed one of these devices in the room because it had a ton of stuff in it had like an intercom built into it integrations with like philips hue and could change your colors your thermostat all sorts of really cool stuff um but really if you did if you did like 10 of these in your room you had 10 light switches into 10 i mean that's incredibly expensive but also incredibly useless like you can't intercom

from this switch to this switch like that's two inches away like yeah yeah you want't intercom from this switch to this switch. Like that's two inches away. Like, yeah, you want to intercom to a different room and that's where it makes sense. And then if you want intercom, like intercom is built into, you know, your Amazon a lady, right? Like you have other devices.

This is just doing stuff that other devices already do. This looks better. It does look nicer, but just doing stuff that we already do with other devices. Right? Like, so, you know, for that price point, it's a little tough. I don't know who wants this.

The only thing I can think of, we were talking about it before the show, is I used to go to these houses that have those four-inch touchscreens on the wall, and they're just so small to use for anything normally. I don't really see the appeal of this. Like it'd be different if it was like a seven or 10 inch screen on your wall. But like, I don't know, maybe I just haven't used one enough to like fully justify it or something. But I just, I just don't see the appeal of this small little screen on your light switch. Yeah, I can see that. And the biggest thing I liked about it is that it can be a keypad

with like, they show one on their website, probably about halfway down where you have an Oro and it has like four buttons on it. I think that could be useful because with all of the other things that we've talked about and that are in our, our database over there that you have to get the buttons engraved. Pee-poo-dee-bee-bee.

Yeah. You got to pay for that every time. Like if I wanted to change out what a lighting scene is and the name of it, I just relabel it on my app and it pushes an update to this thing. So I did like that. I did like it as like a quick control surface like that. But did I want one in my house? No, not that badly.

Not for $300 a device, at least. And in my house, we tend to just like, hey, you know, just yell. Where are you? It's like not very far away is the answer because there's only three rooms. Yeah, exactly. And there's definitely a reason they went after like integrators, right? Because like normal consumers have a panic attack if you tell them to spend 50 on a light switch most of them are just gonna like die if you tell them they're gonna spend

300 on a light switch yeah they just that's that's just such a huge jump from what is normally acceptable and what you can buy for 300 or 400 whatever it actually costs um that's i mean that's a ton of light switches in itself so i mean it's, it's just, it's a big ask for a lot of people. I think it's definitely a pro, a pro. It looks like what it could be a pro focused product. Now I have gotten the pricing wrong because the aura one is two 99. So I guess we got that wrong, but I've been saying it's a hundred dollars more than that. Well, they have a smaller old slim one for like one 49 as well.

But I think that's the non touchscreen ones, like the, just the buttons or whatever. Yeah. It's just got dimming it's got their sensors and they say intelligence but that just means it integrates back to whatever you know it detects if you're in the room and turns on the lights and that kind of thing um so that's cool uh it doesn't have all the other neat stuff like media control and sonos control and all you know if you needed that and wanted to put that in your system but again like you said it's a small touch screen you're gonna have to walk up to it swipe back and forth until you find whatever you want to do and then like press the button so and most switches are like an awkward height so like wouldn't you have to like stare down at it all the time like yeah yep yep there there's a a couple of builders that we worked with that put the switches almost at waist height because it was kind of like, um, like a, well, it's Florida. So they were pre pre-planning for like wheelchair access to the homes later on. So yeah, all the, all of the, uh, all of the, um, switches in the floor or whatever. These were up maybe 10 more inches above that.

Like it was, it was substantially, it was noticeable. Like you didn't have to bend down all the way to plug a, uh, an out, plug an outlet in. So yeah, this would be very difficult to use in one of those houses, one of those homes. And like, I'm looking at my light switch, uh, across the room in my office here and it's roughly the same height as I am sitting down right now. So like right now it's the perfect height, but I don't know, just if I was standing up, that's not very good height to look at it.

So if I was in a wheelchair though, that would be perfect. Yep. Yep. Yep. I'm looking at mine too. Yeah. I don't know. It would be okay.

I like the idea of a dynamic keypad, but at the same time, I'd want like four individual OLED keys there so I could actually fill them, you know, like you'd be able to feel like an E-ink display or something where it's like, yeah, you know, maybe just have like one, like one to four bumps on it kind of tell you which button it is. But then like it was like an E-ink display. So it just show you different labels or whatever. That would be cool. See, we're developing some new stuff here. We gonna have you're welcome oro you don't have any

money to pay your stuff but you can come up with this new switch yeah yeah we'll we'll buy it wink wink i mean it'll be this and the uh the server fan white noise machine we'll have those ready next week on the christmas list exactly well i do i do wish them luck uh it seems like a pretty cool product it definitely could gain some traction in the pro market if they had started earlier, you know, focusing on that side of things. But they were kind of late to the game. Like, they were already fairly well established

in the DIY space. And then, you know, everyone I talked to was like, oh, that's a DIY product, you know, because it integrates with the, you know, Alexa and everything. And at the time, integrators were kind of avoiding that kind of stuff. So I don't know. It will be interesting to see what happens. Hopefully they stay out of the graveyard though. Cause I do think it's at least a unique and interesting product that,

that does look like it works well. I don't know how well it works, but it does look like it works well. We can buy them. Yeah. I kind of think if anybody was to purchase them, it would be like an integration-friendly company. Like SnapAV. I mean, yeah. If we're spending anybody's money, it's going to be SnapAVs.

But I don't know. Nice could buy them, right? That's true. It would fit there. That's true. They could tie it in with either their DIY lineups or their professional lineups. Yeah. Seems like a good fit there, too. And they really don't have any either their DIY lineups or their professional lineups. So yeah, it seems like a good fit there too.

And they really don't have any of their own switches right now. So that would be perfect. All right. Well, one, one, uh, product may be going away and then we got a new product here from blue sound.

Uh, it is a, a speaker. It looks like blue sound is known for kind of trying to go head to head with, uh, with Sonos for whatever reason, the news went away, but I'll find it. Um, uh, the, this, they've come out with a latest speaker.

It's called the pulse M it's a $450, um, speaker. It kind of looks like the Sonos S1, about the same size, uh, standalone, and it can be integrated in with a second pulse amp for stereo, or you can match it to a sub to get better bass, or kind of just like the Sonos One, like you can integrate it with one of their soundbars for a 5.1 system. Looks pretty interesting. Evidently, people say it sounds a little bit better, has a bigger, maybe a bigger woofer in it or something.

So I don't know i i know that this is kind of like an alternative to sonos but at the price it's kind of almost the same uh their their products are a little more expensive than sonos like this one that they're talking about is like 500 i'm gonna sonos one's like 200 but i mean i don't know how it compared to like the sonos five, which is $500. So, but in typical, I mean, they've got very comparable products to Sonos. They're always a little bit more though. Like, I think they have a very nice sound bar, but it's like a thousand dollars. They have a audio streamer, but it's like five, you know, five or $600. So very comparable, um, supposedly a little nicer quality, a little higher quality as well. Like the, for the audio itself. Um, I've only used them once or twice before, so I can't really

speak of that, but I know a lot of people like them and it's probably one of the most recommended against Sonos. Like if somebody doesn't want Sonos for whatever reason, a lot of people usually recommend blue sound. Gavin, you're going to dump your sonos for this no i just got my sonos like i'm relatively new to the sonos world so i'm not gonna dump it but sonos has a lot going for it with their soundbars their ones their threes their fives you know um the headphones that are rumored and if they're not rumored we're starting that rumor you know um i don't know i the price point it puts it in like a premium um what else do they offer the blue sound in terms of yeah amplifier streamers basically the same concept yeah sonos kind of has like a hold on the market

i see right now um so blue sound has a long way to go but the good thing is is people are talking about bluesound people like it um i've heard nothing but good things about um some of the stuff they have so with that being said i mean they could make some uh they could make some moves it's got uh airplay 2 it's got 20 plus streaming services high-res audio 24-bit 192 so um does it have a voice assistant yeah it says it has voice control i don't it's hand-free commands it's probably kind of the same it just integrates with sound or like google or something at that point they seem to be standard things that you have to have now if you're going to come into this ecosystem yeah it's a amazon alexa voice

integration with blue os so it's got that going for it, but I don't know. It seems honestly at this point, I would be willing to consider something besides Sonos. If it came with airplay to and Chromecast audio, like my biggest annoyance. And I know this is probably like a Google thing because Google just doesn't do anything with all their stuff,

but I don't like that. You know, Android speakers can't wirelessly or Android phones can't wirelessly cast to any of my speakers. Uh, but if I have an Apple phone or tablet or something, they can. So just wish that was a possibility at this point. Maybe, maybe if they settle that lawsuit, uh, you'll be able to do that one day. Maybe, maybe. Yeah. Um, I clicked on the wrong website for Oro there you know there's a get oro but there's also a drink oro and i guess it's a pineapple juice company so that's the problem

just poor brand recognition everybody everybody thinks they sell pineapple drinks so now i'm looking at like uh this pineapple upside down cake drink is what you're gonna put a pineapple drink in my wall i I don't really understand. I'm going to buy one of these. They're not $400. $37.99. Not $2.99. For a case.

I might get one of these. 12 of them. Dang. Bluesound sells a Vault 2i. It's a high resolution or high res 2 terabyte network, hard drive, CD ripper and, and streamer. So take your CDs and store it on there. $1,400. Wow. I guess if you have CDs, that could be popular. Yeah. It would make it nice and easy for you because ripping CDs sucks. And it's time. So time consuming. Yeah. I mean, I would send it off to a service. If anybody ever

asked me to do that, like just find somebody online that doesn't just buy Spotify. Yeah. I mean, I would send it off to a service. If anybody ever asked me to do that, like just find somebody online that doesn't just buy Spotify. Yeah. I did. Well, sometimes people want to have their exact library. Like they have special stuff or whatever. Yeah. So I could see that,

but I would definitely ship that off to a service. Wouldn't not be something I did. I've got a, an audio file grade sound bar for 9.99 their stuff always looks nice i mean i don't know maybe i'll play with it more one day let us know let us know maybe it won't have as many network issues as sonos that's my biggest gripe with sonos right is that like for some reason i feel like you have to baby it when it comes to the networking like everything else in the world

kind of just works like minus like a distributed video but like sonos you have to baby it when it comes to the networking. Everything else in the world kind of just works, minus distributed video. But Sonos, you have to hardwire a speaker, you have to do this, you have to do that. It just doesn't work. See, I've never had that problem. Once or twice I had an issue with that. It was really early on, and it turned out to be

you shouldn't plug in multiple Sonos devices. You just plug in one and let it do its thing. And then the installers were like, well, I just wired all of the Sonos devices up into the switch and it just got, you know, a spanning tree loop or whatever going on. Yeah. And the only only issue I ever had was interference with my Wi-Fi network in the Sonos net. So once I changed the channel on Sonos, that everything's been beautiful since. Yeah. All right,

let's move on here. Uh, Michael Moore says Sonos will kill a managed network. I wouldn't say it will kill a managed network. It won't work very well on a managed network. If you don't have it set up. Sonos will come for your family. If you're not watching.

All right, let's move on here. Uh, not to be outdone by youtube apple is also increasing the prices of its apple music and apple tv plus subscription services the apple one bundle is also rising uh in unison the apple music monthly price is upped by about a dollar in individuals for individuals and two dollars for families uh the apple tv plus is rising two dollars which only has one tier and supports family sharing on all plans um so you know here is

the breakdown apple music basically going from 9.99 to 10.99 for the individual 14.99 to 16.99 for the family and apple tv TV Plus going from $5, which is one of the lower priced. I don't think we ever really talk about Apple TV Plus. It has been one of the lowest priced, and now everybody's gone way above what they were. But $499 to $699, so up $2 for the monthly price. And if you do the Apple I individual, $15 to $1695.

Family, $1995 to $2295. the monthly price and if you do the apple one individual 15 to 1695 family 1995 to 2295 and if you're on the big premiere apple one family bundle thing which is 30 it's going to go to 3295 so i i don't know i i could i personally i i see that when apple tv plus first came out, it was kind of like, you got a year almost for free. Um, then when they were like, Oh yeah, $5 a month or is it $5 a month? There wasn't much, many shows on there, but what was there was pretty good. So I was like, yeah, $5 makes sense. Um, now it seems like, I mean, there's a lot of content on there. There's, there's movies that are coming out this Friday that I want to see.

So I know it seems like Acapulco is on, man. We're going to talk about that later. But the new season of Acapulco is on. So yeah, I definitely see value in this. Gavin, what about you? I know you're a big fan of the telenovelas. No, it's not just Apple. But what's really starting to bother a number of people is that every streaming

service is increasing their prices. So you're now starting to have to make decisions as to what you want, what you want to keep, you know, and I have a feeling it's going to reach a point where the only one I'm going to have is Amazon Prime just because it's included in my whole Amazon Prime membership. You know, at that point. I think I'm getting to that point just because I don't really think about it. And they raised my Prime membership anyway, so I might as well just keep that one. But, you know, they're slowly $1 here, $1 here, $1 here. And it seems like they're all doing it at the same time. It seems like this year we got hit by a lot of them. So people are going to start

making decisions. But I agree. There's a lot more content on Apple Plus, a lot of shows that are really good there. They're getting some awards, I think. And like, I love Acapulco. You know, I'm all caught up on that. Hey, TJ, I know you don't like watching TV in general, but you've been paying more for YouTube. What what what, what, what, what, what do you think about these, these price increases across the board? I mean, everything's more expensive, I guess. Yeah. I mean, you know, and everybody's doing it, so why not just jump along with them and you know, and somebody gets mad, you're just like, well, I mean, it's the cost of everything now, so you can't really be a bad on me. Everybody else is doing it. So, I mean, you know, as a

business that totally makes sense, you're, you're kind of sharing the blame for it um i think anything i don't understand how any streaming service like video streaming service at least survives for under ten dollars a month um you know the the last one i have now is is crunchyroll uh which is like anime stuff and i think we pay like eight dollars a month for that and i'm i'm expecting that to jump up to like 12 or 13 dollars here soon just because i don't like i said i don't see how anything survives under ten dollars a month for that. And I'm, I'm expecting that to jump up to like 12 or $13 here soon, just because I don't, like I said, I don't see how anything survives under $10 a month anyway. So when I see this, you know, going from five to $7 a month, it was just a matter of time. It's it's Apple though. I mean, they're going to survive in that price point for a while.

Apple music is one of that when I don't value it at $11 a month, but, um, the app is just horrible. I don't, I don't know anybody. I don't even know what I pay for my Spotify, but we have the Spotify family account and I think it's like $15 a month for like five accounts. So not a bad deal at all there. No, it, it, it's not. Um, and it, the app is so much better and easier to find music and subscribe to things and like, it just makes sense. And then you go to the Apple one and it's like, I don't know what they were trying to do here i don't know it doesn't make any sense to me yeah i think i used the apple music because i got like a couple months for free when i bought like my phone a couple years ago yeah and you know it worked all right but at that point i was already

in with spotify and i really don't see any reason to jump from it so i kind of jump back and forth between them but i don't know mostly just i don't know why like mostly sometimes i'm in the car and i just want to hear music and i just hit the pink music thing rather than the green one and music happens music happens exactly anyway moving on here we got some lock talk so tj be ready i'm already angry. Drama, drama, drama, drama in the lock industry, the smart lock industry. Level announced that, well, going back and forth about joining up with the new Apple Homekey API, which is basically lets your phone unlock your door. It's kind of cool.

But Level finally officially released its new Level Lock Plus last month. And it didn't take lock picking lawyer very long to uh to pick the level lock plus in about i don't know what a few seconds it was it was very very quick um there's a video posted on youtube uh where the lock picking lawyer is able to use a bump key to uh unlock and disable the lock fairly quickly. He describes that these this kind of attacks, the low skill attack, quote, low skill attack. And it's a three hundred and twenty nine dollar lock.

And it should not be vulnerable at that price point. So in the in between this video coming out, level has actually responded and said probably the worst possible way and said these these kind of break-ins only account for 4% of all break-ins. They gave the TJ response. Oh, my gosh. The dumbest PR move right there. I mean, but whatever. So anyway, TJ, we've been kind of talking about this before the show, using a bump key to break into a house.

Is that low skill or not? What are we looking at here? Using a bump key doesn break into a house, is that low skill or not? What are we looking at here? Using a bump key doesn't really take much skill. I mean, lock picking in general doesn't really take a lot of skill. It just takes know-how and it takes patience, right? And just because you're really good at picking locks doesn't mean you can pick every single lock that's out there. Unless you're the lock picking lawyer, because literally that's what he does.

Like he just picks every lock and quickly, like he does them so fast. And I'd love to know how long it actually takes him to pick these locks before he starts recording, but I'm sure we'll never know that. But I mean, in reality, you know, kind of just like what Level said, and obviously they shouldn't have said it because it's just the terrible response, is like nobody's going around picking your locks, right? Like if anybody's going to break into your house they're they're just going to try to smash your door in they're going to smash your window they're going to try to steal a key all kinds of other things they're not going to sit at your lock and try to pick your lock one better here they just walk up to the door and they open it because you left it unlocked and so like these things always

make me laugh because like your average criminal is not carrying around lock picking tools. They're just not because there's other ways into your house that they're going to get in quicker and they're going to leave a lot quicker. I can see the argument that you're paying $300 for the lock. It should be a little better secure. But if you're that worried about it, just get one without a keyhole in it. And that way you can avoid the problem altogether. And I think it's a little bit of a juggling act, too, as you're one of these companies, right? You know, there's plenty of high security locks that exist on the marketplace.

But you have to go to a specific vendor or manufacturer to get those key blanks again. So instead of just being able to go to the hardware store and get a key made for $4, you have to go to a locksmith or you have to go back to the original company and get a key made for $20 to $50 sometimes. And a lot of people are not going to be happy about that. Right. Can you imagine paying $329 for the Apple lock that you bought at the Apple store and then having to pay $50 for a key anytime you need it? No, that's. And that exists. I mean, there's brands out there like multi lock and a couple other ones where it's like, you know, they have really nice keys. Um, there's like a little pin in there that kind of moves around and that that's how it, you know, passes the test or whatever to know it's a real key. Um, and it's, you know, $50 to get a new key made and you can only go to certain locksmiths to get it made because they're the only ones that carry that key.

So I don't see this as a big problem in the long run. I can see why people would be upset, but I don't know. There's just different things to worry about, in my opinion. Gavin, have you watched the video? This looks pretty easy to you. Is this something you could do? Oh, yeah. After watching this video, I was was like i felt like a pro i was like you know i was ready to go picking locks but then you

you know you always like rain on my parade you're like just kicking the window next to it and i'm like yeah that's true you know it's much easier if i just take a stone and throw it through that window so i'm not gonna but it would be nice to know how to do this for those times you lock yourself out of your house, right? Like there will be one day when I got to get into my own house and it would be nice to have a little bump key around, you know?

Where is this bump key going to be at though, Gavin? It's going to be in your house that's locked. That's true too. I'll store a bump key at my neighbor's house. In case I need to break in later. And like, look, you can buy a lock. Just store a regular key at my neighbor's house. In case I need to break in later. And like, look, you can buy a lockpicking set. Just store a regular key at your neighbor's house. Yeah, so you guys are just raining on my parade here.

You can buy a lockpicking set for like $30. I mean, that's all you need. It's $5 for a key at Home Depot, though. You know, I'll just kick in my own window to get back in my house. I'm going to say, when I was doing the security sales and that kind of thing, and people had their homes robbed, I mean, it happened quite a bit, but it was because they lived in a country club, a gated community or whatever, and they just left their doors unlocked and somebody would sneak in, kind of look around or they, uh, they didn't check

to, you know, their, their security alarm that some of the contacts were frozen, you know, and they didn't notice when they opened the door that it didn't beep or whatever. And people just kind of like either opened up the slider and just kind of walked into the master suite and stole everything. So it's like, yeah, it's always one of those like simple things that you don't think of that criminals will just try first. They don't want to make a lot of noise. They don't want to kick in a door. They don't want to break a window. They just want to get in and get out quietly and not causing the attention. Walking around with a hammer and a bump key is probably not a great idea. Yeah. And this uses like a standard Schlage C keyway cylinder. So, I mean, this is like everywhere. It's probably the same door lock

that most of us have. Right. At your house, you either have a quick set or you have a schlag more than likely, or they, the parts come from those companies. So you probably have this in your house already. You just didn't pay $300 because it's smart. Exactly. Locks are just there to keep honest people honest. That's all. That's true.

Security is done in layers. If you're just relying on your door lock, you are doing it wrong. And at least with this, you know, if it, if it was picked open, you would get notified, right, that it was unlocked. Seems like a win to me. Second layer needs to be the vicious attack dog at Gavin's house. All 14 pounds of him. That's adorable. You just have to put the right costume on.

You'd say he was a banana. He's going to slip on that. All right. Well, all the links and topics discussed today can be found over at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 410. We got nothing in the mailbag this week, but we do have a pick of the week. I think Gavin came out with this one and had a pretty good, I don't know what headline for this, but I went and looked at, at the, uh, the, the Reddit post and it says the ring, uh, the ring window bell spotted in the wild. And it's, this is kind of wild.

Uh, there is a, a, a two-story house, definitely European construction. And of course the cars in front of the house have plates on them that are from like the uk or something but there's a doorbell like mounted up by the second story window and i mean multiple uses for that i suppose if you have there's a you have a teenage daughter and you notice the one day that she has a doorbell installed outside her window that's like that's not a good thing but it reminded me of those movies back in the 80s where like they would throw rocks up against the window like this this is that's one way you could just you could just have a doorbell and just press the button you can just talk yeah a lot less uh shattered windows by uh

people throwing rocks that were just a little too big you know a little too hard you know i wonder how many times that happened but yeah if your kid has a doorbell a ring doorbell cab outside their window uh you know there's some questions that you need to start asking. Maybe with the login for that thing is. If I were a parent and I saw this, I'd set up a ring outdoor camera pointing down at the ring doorbell camera so I could see who's coming in with my own login. Well, this is funny. And I think TJ, you kind of posted in the hub when we were talking about this, like, what in the Seth's neighborhood? Like, somebody down the street from me has a ring doorbell mounted right over the top of their garage.

I don't know. I guess people use them for cameras. Must have got the same idea, you know? One of the comments is funny, too, because it says, knowing the resolution and lens quality of's no way there's no way it is doing to capture a face or license plate if they're lucky the image might be good enough to tell the make or model of a car they just want the noise when a vehicle enters their parking area that's probably a good point those those cameras do not go very far so yeah maybe they're using it as like a bird camera you know could be a bird camera yeah i don't really see anything a bird would hang out for there but i don't know not a bird uber

delivery instructions are drop package off at second floor the camera they're like oh it could be like a like a ron white thing okay you know your kid's a drug dealer if they got a ring doorbell installed outside their window some people are posting in here oh yeah you could you know if you get your kid in there and it could be a motion detector up by the window like oh that makes sense because it's going to catch who's climbing up there right right you're gonna you're gonna see them and it's it's not big it's not like a giant camera or anything and it's wire like you can just reach out the window and and recharge it right just don't drop the security screw if you're unscrewing it from the wall but uh because that's gone um yeah yeah i'm assuming they just had an extra camera and they're just like we just slap it up there yeah yeah still haven't gone and and had the nerve to ring the

one on my neighbor's garage yet it's like above the garage door you have to walk with a ladder that's funny. If you have any picks of the week, great ideas for the show, head on over to hometech.fm slash feedback. You can fill out the online form there, or you can reach out to us on our email address at feedback at hometech.fm. All right, guys. So we got some project updates here.

TJ, you've been busy installing things, and the UniFi Doorbell pro is up on the top of your list what what say you about the unify doorbell pro first of all this thing is ginormous like it's got your cameras in it you can look i know but and it's got a display and this like built-in light thing and like you know you can always look at the dimensions of a product online before you buy it but sometimes you just don't realize how big it is until you get it. And when you hold this thing in your hand, like, it's just, it feels giant. So you can't just put it on any house.

Like, I'm assuming half the houses I would show this to, they would just be like, I don't want something that large on my house, right? But I did the PoE version. So I got the little USB C to POE adapter. So it's all hardwired to the Internet. Getting the wire wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So I basically had to cut a hole, you know, behind the doorbell. But luckily, the basement was unfinished. So and whoever the original installer was, was a genius because they drilled a big enough hole in there that I didn't have to drill another one.

So running the wire was relatively easy. And what I did is I just basically ran an additional cat six and taped it to the wire, you know, because at some point the USB-C adapter is probably going to die. And I might not be able to get one ever again or whatever. Um, so that way, if it dies, I can just like pull the wire out a little bit more, strip back the cat six, and then just use it as power at that point. Um, the annoying thing that I found out is that the hole, uh, so the USB-C plug basically sticks straight out of the video doorbell. Um, so your hole for the wire has to be exactly where that plug is, uh, because it sticks out. I mean, it's a good like inch, maybe inch and a half by the time you actually like taking

the bend of the cable and everything. So, you know, I, I installed it on the door once ago, put it on and I was like, what, why won't this thing fit? And it's because the holes weren't lined up perfectly. And I was like, what, why won't this thing fit? And it's because the holes weren't lined up perfectly. So I had to move it down a little bit. And then luckily, you know, the hole was straight back. So it had no problem with that. Um, good quality cameras though. It's really easy to switch back and forth between the package camera and the regular camera. Yeah. That looked really cool. And your, your photos you posted in the hub, like I hadn't,

I hadn't seen this before, but having a look down camera to see what is sitting down in front of your door, that's a really good idea. I like that. Honestly, it's a really good feature. And I could see this being like a standard on pretty much every video doorbell here in the next year, just because, you know, primary purpose for a lot of people is just to see what packages they have or to make sure nobody's taking their packages. What if Ring integrates the like amazon barcode scanner into it and then all the all the people that deliver it just have to come up and like put it in front of your ring doorbell

and it goes beep and then they can just drop it because it could like unlock your door automatically too yeah they can go put it in your refrigerator right in bam but honestly really nice i think the doorbell itself is like three $300 and then the little adapter is like $40. Um, so I mean, you know, compared to a lot of other video doorbells, it's probably the most expensive one that you'll buy. Um, really good quality though. So I'm pretty happy with it. One weird issue though, uh, this client, uh, had requested that they're able to turn their wifi access points off at night. They don't want their kids on it or something.

I don't know. I don't ask questions. And so I have one switch that powers the access points, and I have one switch that powers the cameras. Whenever they turn the access point switch off, it makes the connection for the other two hardwired cameras lose connection for like 15, 20 seconds. And then they come back on and both switches are, are directly wired to the UDM pro on site. So I'm not really sure what's going on in the background. That's making these hard wire cameras lose connection, but some kind of weird thing going on right now with that. Um, but other than that, pretty happy.

I think I could sell these all the time if they were just in stock. And, you know, you can still use it as a regular doorbell. So if you just want to replace what you have right now, you don't have to use the PoE adapter. And honestly, like, I don't see how you're going to use the PoE adapter in a lot of situations, unless you are willing to cut your wall open and fix it. They also have wireless chimes now, right? I think I've seen those before. They do. And that's what I had to pair it with. I think that's like $50. The wireless chime is kind of silly though. It only has one chime,

like one tone. It's like $50. You can adjust the volume and that's pretty much it. So I'm hoping that kind of changes in the future and if they would release a poe version of that as well that would be nice because you have this nice poe doorbell but then you have to use a wireless chime yeah the ring uh ring released up the end up the game this year with their halloween sounds like they had i mean it was like full-on like messages you know, from, you know, a joke from Dracula or something like that. There were a bunch of them.

I thought usually in the past, it's been like you can play on the chime inside, but this was actually playing out of the doorbell when people came up and rang the doorbell. See, that's a good idea. Gavin, what do you think about this thing? Would you, would you put this on your door? Yeah, it looks nice. It's got some good quality, i did recently um look at reviews of doorbell cams on oh i forget the youtube channel but he went through a whole bunch of them and

this wasn't rated that high in the list so it was interesting to see but he was uh he does very in-depth reviews of cameras um and he breaks it down by distance and so many things and this really wasn't high in the list but it does look nice and you know the installation did sound pretty easy it's big oh yeah it's huge wow and it has the dual camera right yes yeah that that's a cool little feature you can look down at your package yeah and you can easily switch back and forth between them which i liked it's like a little toggle icon but yeah i mean it's not too bad yeah the only reason i might not buy this is because integration into another system if you wanted to is not that easy right just got to have home assistant

there's a control for driver out there too i I use that and it actually goes back around and rings through all of my Sonos. You know, there's a Sonos. Nice. Yeah. So I can play any song or sound that I want to whenever somebody rings the doorbell, but using that Sonos announcement API thing. But no, I don't like the size of it. I wish they could fit two of the cameras in to the little one though, because I do like the size of it i wish they could fit two of the cameras in to the little one though because

i do like the size of little one and i wish they would like remove the light like i don't really understand there's a little light that comes on at night when you walk up to it and it like shines down and i'm not really sure what the purpose of that is somebody said it's like so you can get your keys or something but usually your doorbell is not remotely close to your actual lock so i'm not really sure what the point of it is and as far as i know you can't disable it so that's an annoying feature of it as well mine has that too um honestly it's not a great light so i really don't notice it that often but um i do like i do like that it it well there's the g4 is what the one i have it's not the pro and i do like that it is well, the G4 is the one I have.

It's not the Pro. And I do like that it comes in more than one color. No, it only comes in white. But this one only comes in black. They need more color options because white and black, that's not, like, you need more. And this poor door, it's got like a black doorbell, black handle, silver smart lock, red door. As I say, you were good to go with whichever one they wanted because the hardware doesn't matter.

They don't care. Yeah. Over overall, not bad. And I would use it again. So give it a shot. Well, thanks for the the install. I've been curious about those. I have never seen the interface.

And when you posted those pictures, I thought it was really cool to see the and see the look down camera i i i really now i'm jealous i got i got i've got the fomo kicking in gavin i really i want it's a serious illness just set up your alerts um all right gavin any any projects on your end tv shows did you watch your taskmasters like i didn't get caught up on taskmasters i failed that i didn't get that i didn't get that homework uh sorry but there is a new show i've i'm binging this week called uh blockbuster and yes it's based in a blockbuster store it's like it if you're a fan of like community and superstore it's a similar type of comedy um they're like the last blockbuster and you know they'll go from there i won't ruin it for anybody but that's on my list to binge this week um so if like i said

if you're a fan of superstore give this a shot i've got a blockbuster t-shirt on tonight oh there you go perfect timing fitting i've been seeing this pop up on the on the advertisements i'll have to give it a shot well i i did watch i, I did, I did take a look at Taskmaster. I watched, I watched the first one, season one, episode one. And, uh, I, I get it. It's, it's, it's interesting. The, they were, they were, the tasks that they were, uh, doing were the, um, let's see, they ate a watermelon and they drew a picture of a horse and they emptied a bathtub. You know,

I, I probably, I probably shouldn't be the marketing person. Like it was funny. Yeah. You're not selling. It sounds awful when you explain it like that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean the comedians and everything were funny. Um, so I'll give them that. Uh, yeah. So

what an update. I'm glad we them that. Yeah. So. What an update. I'm glad we did that. It's not a show that I would turn on, TJ. Dang! I would probably put it on like maybe in the background, but not pay much attention to it. Well, that's how I feel after binging like six seasons. So it's like a background noise.

Yeah. Now, Acap akapoko on the other hand like yep i don't know what that is so spicy yeah yeah there's a new like love triangle maximo maybe dating julia's uh sister but he doesn't know met the family oh the family's all there yeah no and memo oh what is he doing in the pool now he's in the pool he's not in the laundry room anymore he's moving up memo's my favorite yeah yeah he's hilarious i love how they made him sit by the pool the whole day that was awesome you're missing out tj you're missing out sounds like it i don't even know what you guys are talking about well i mean there's there's so many storylines in this thing i don't know how they're going to put it all together, but it's basically a telenovela slash, you know, days of our lives version.

I think I'll stick to Taskmaster, nevermind. Yeah. It's, you definitely can't like not watch it. It's in the, like in the background, I can put it on, but the, the problem with what they do is they, they speak both in English and in Spanish, depending on where the actors are and what they're doing. And, um, you, you could be following along and paying attention and then kind of like goes in the background and like, Oh wait, they're speaking Spanish. Like I barely know what they're saying or I don't know what they're saying. And you have to look up and read the, uh, the subtitles. So, um, it doesn't, it does have a little more engagement factor in it than, than Taskmaster where they were, um, playing hide and go seek,

which is the tiebreaker of, I mean, I guess it's a show like it's fun. Like they seem genuinely funny though. I did like that. They had to put up like personal effects or something at the very beginning. That was funny. Oh yeah. It's always interesting what they bring. Yeah. And the jokes they have very, it's almost like being, it's almost like what they bring yeah and the jokes they do they have very it's almost like being it's almost like one of those writer room shows where you're in like they have very smart comedians there that are very punchy and very good with their jokes and they're they're just basically just spitting them out and however they edit the show like it's perfect like they do a good job of that so um i will give them high scores on on all of that.

Comedy editing. Perfect tasks. I don't know. I don't know. It's in the name and it's Taskmaster. Like it should be grand tasks and they're like drawing a picture of a horse. You have too high hopes for British TV. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. Again, it it's definitely one of those you can throw on the for british tv yeah i guess so i don't know again it it's definitely

one of those you can throw on the background like yeah definitely i'm not i'm not saying it's the best show in the world all right i don't know you you you had me that was pretty good i mean you just crushed all that i mean i don't even know if it's good anymore so yeah well we did he loved this show so much you just just have terrible taste well one conversation with seth and tj's ready to give up his favorite show i'm going back to my game warden shows i was supposed to say it's probably better than the game you don't even give the game warden shows a shot so no no i'm gonna i'm surprised they haven't done any in Florida yet. Uh,

all right. Well, that's it for this week, guys. Uh, we do want to give you 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 home tech. FM slash support, where you can learn how to support for home tech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day.

And man, it's, it's been active in there over the last couple of days. TJ, of course, giving us updates on his doorbell install was actually pretty cool to see because I hadn't seen one of those. So, and thanks for that picture of me in the hat. You're welcome. Gotta, gotta have something. We got somebody famous in our in our slack uh james from home play who's just been nominated to the cd aboard as part of the slack channel so come in there rub some elbows you know yeah we we got we we should probably try and get him on we could probably he's probably an easy

guest to get on i mean we'd have to work around schedules and everything. He's in the UK, but Are you saying he has nothing better to do that he's an easy guest to get on? He's not very busy if he has time to be a board member. I mean, true. Owen will probably stop coming to the chat if we invite James. I know, we're going to get Owen on first.

We'll just put him in on the same show and just kind of slide one in. If you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That is it for this week. Everybody, have a great weekend.

Take care. I went to the gym for the first time uh for like ever on tuesday and my arms are killing me uh putting some cameras in the bathroom yeah trying to get them up there in the ceiling just it was really tough yeah really shoulder workouts now there's like a there's like a new gym in town and uh they do like private like one-on-one or like like four people classes and uh it sounds pretty nice honestly i've i've joined a couple gyms but like i'm pretty uh like i think like a lot a lot of other tech nerds I really don't know the proper ways to work out and stuff. So it's nice doing it in a small group where you're not judged or holding up a group. They judge you.

Dan, this 30-year-old can't hold his arms up above his head for more than five seconds? He happened to never be able to install a camera. Well, it's starting to get bad. I struggle when I'm installing speakers. I'm like, oh man, I've been up here for five seconds. I'm already dying. That's a new business idea a personal trainer like geared towards integrators so we give you exercises it could be a cd of course of you do cd of course

that's a cd of course let's recommend it to james if you're like james if you're listening work on those back muscles because you're bent over. You're terminating those ends. You're terminating that end. You can't pick a TV up like that. Today we're doing TV deadlifts. It's like those, what do they call them? What are the crazy ones where you do all the crazy workouts?

Oh, yeah, CrossFit. CrossFit, yeah. They have the wads. Yeah, they make you run out and grab a box of wire and then run back in, run out and grab another box of wire. You'll get it out of a van, run it back in. Click up the ladder, down the ladder, up the ladder. Yeah. Well, we all meet at the CDA Expo next year. We should do that as a class. Integrators workout. Home tech workout. Well, one year they had that one, uh, that like one demo where you had to like change

a tire or something. So I don't see why you can't do one with like carrying a speaker up a ladder or something that's more relevant. There used to be somebody there that had like a challenge, like terminate a cat five challenge or drill a bunch of holes and run the wire challenge. Oh yeah. Let's let the, uh, let's let the owners of the companies come fly fly to denver and run wire that'll that'll be entertaining i've never done this before in my life i did this but it was 15 years ago when i first started i was 50 pounds lighter those extra two wires in every one of them the integrators workout