HomeTech.fm - Episode 411 - Getting Dirty in the Code

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

This week on HomeTech: Matter is here and already taking on criticism in the media that once thought it would save us all, a double screen pick of the week, and Gavin starts testing his YAML skills with Home Assistant.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 11th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation, and Powerball tickets! I mean, this podcast isn't coming out if I win the Powerball, right?

It's just not. I'm not going to edit it. I'm sorry. What's that right now? As long as I see a million dollars in my bank account, then that's fine. Yeah. $1.9 billion with a V.

You know what you could do with $1.9 billion? Well, you wouldn't get the whole thing. You could take the lump payment, and I think it's basically like half of it. So, I mean, at this point, you'd basically get a billion dollars. Or you could take it like broken up over your lifetime, which is an awful deal in my opinion. And then you'd still have to pay taxes on all the income and yada, yada, yada. I'll just take the lump sum. It's just a, uh,

it's just a marketing thing to get you to buy a lottery ticket, but Hey, um, best of luck to anybody who wins. I mean, I don't, uh, that's a lot of money. Just, just, um, just maybe a couple of numbers is all I need. What do you win with a couple of numbers? A free ticket. It's on the website. It actually breaks it down depending on how many numbers you picked and how many are correct. I know somebody in Marysville, which isn't too far from me, just won $39 million off there. They have not come forward yet. They know the ticket was sold at a gas station, but that's it. It is a lot of money. Hmm. Yeah. I don't even know if I played this right because there's, there's,

there's also, I don't even know how to play. I just went in and asked for some quick picks and they gave them to me. And that's just about all I can invest into this, learning how to play a lottery game. That's pretty much where I'm at. Like I want to play just because it's at such a high value at the moment, but I have no idea how to play and I'm probably just going to waste my money.

So I'll just wait for somebody i know to win yep like you said what would you do with a billion dollars uh i'd buy you a monkey no no i i'd probably like i find a control for integrator have them come over and give me a quote and everything and still talk them down in price. Oh, man. Just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it. It's really nothing different than any other Control 4 projects ever sold.

Well, Seth, if you win, then I know who's paying for the CD at 2023 trip. Heck, yeah. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Gavin and I are just going to get a message in the morning like, tickets already booked, guys. Yeah. You know, if I win, then any Home Tech member that's a patron, that's a free ticket to Cedia, right?

Yeah. Man. I mean, it's a billion dollars. What a great deal for all our Home Tech listeners, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's only cost you a dollar. Our families do.

Families do, wow. Don't spoil it, Seth. Hey, man, families do. It's just, I mean, everybody can contribute a dollar. It's just a dollar, right? That's what I'm saying. HomeTech.fm slash support. Is that what it is?

Yeah. Did you just turn the hub into like a lottery pool i did i did actually yeah there's only one way to win for everybody that ups their uh thing by a dollar no no no just like if you're if you're in there at the time of this recording and i yeah and i won and there you go free ticket to city yeah free ticket to Cedia. Free ticket to Cedia. Yeah, we're going to have a bash. That'll be fun. That's for sure. Yeah.

We'll rent the stadium or something, right? We'll just rent the whole city. I mean, a billion dollars to rent Denver, right? Yeah. Everybody shows up for Cedia 2023. They're like, sorry, you can't come in. Wait a minute. Why not? Some guy won the Powerball last year.

He just rented the whole thing. Private event. Sorry, can't. in wait a minute why not some some guy won the powerball last year he just rented the whole thing private event sorry you can't yeah yeah it's just i'll buy all the hotel rooms and then upsell them oh that's a good idea yeah yeah could you buy me on my twitter blue check if you want oh that's a good idea oh yeah eight dollars oh i don't know eight dollars is a lot of money no i was asking too much all right well yeah that's i'm glad we have realistic goals as to what we would purchase you know like tickets to cdia and um a twitter blue check i guess pay off the house buy a new car nonsense cdia 2023 yolo right uh let's see yeah fun stuff fun stuff um well and also i found these deals on uh black friday too over at target so i'd probably buy a couple of those things um a couple of like apple products if you're interested in that kind of thing are on sale

but i saw that they had some, well, Vizio spy televisions, the spy class TVs, um, three 49 for a 50 inch TV. That's wild for 59 for 65 inch TV. Okay. I mean, it's going to spy on you, but it's very cheap TV. And then, um, Echo shows, Amazon, let's see what else we got. Google devices on sale. Chromecast 4K on sale. Thirty nine ninety nine. So it's 20 percent off. Some good stuff going on. And it's early for Black Friday. So, hey, shopping season is amongst us. So go go buy things. I mean, I'm relatively young, but I think if you would have told me like 10 years ago that you'd be able to buy a 65 inch TV, you know, that's decent, decent enough quality for under $500. I probably would have thought you were crazy, right?

Just because TVs have always been so expensive. But now we're getting to the point now where like a good size TV is like cheaper than a laptop or a desktop or like even a tablet, depending on what tablet you buy. Yeah. So it's pretty crazy where TVs have gotten and how good they are for the price. Now, these are 4k QLEDs too. It's like, it's not a shabby TV. It's Vizio, but it's not bad. No. And these are, you know, honestly, these are perfect for like what I call secondary rooms, you know, like the office or garage or basement, you know, places where you want a TV at, but you don't need the highest end TV in the world. This is great for those kinds of areas. The place you're going to watch TV all

the time, buy something a little bit nicer, something you're going to be a little more happy with, but these cheap TVs are great for a multitude of reasons. So I get one for the bathroom, 65 inch TV in the bathroom. Yeah. I have a spot for it just waiting just waiting i just got measured my distance away from the screen first don't do that don't bother don't bother it's not not a requirement it's black friday you can just return it too good all right guys what do you say we jump into some home check headlines let's do it all right well i guess the uh the honeymoon is over less than a week after the big matter launch event in amsterdam there there's there's we've already have hit

pieces coming out like i can't believe it like the honeymoon is just it's it's it's gone like there's already there's one here it says uh let's see here's the headline what's the matter with thread amazon says it's not quite ready for primetime. So, uh, basically during the presentation, Amazon, uh, basically said that they were not going to be launching, uh, matter until like next year. Uh, and they won't be taking part in the initial matter integration, uh, with their Alexa platform. Um, it'll only support three device types at launch as well, plugs, switches, and light bulbs. There's also a couple of other, like we'll put in the show notes here if you want to go read them. I mean, we have to have a matter segment every week because it's all that matters, right?

But it seems like people have kind of like watched the event or went to the event and said, that's it. And then Apple, Amazon, they're not participating. They're not even going to jump in until next year sometime. So kind of crazy. What do you guys think? I feel like we're about maybe less than a month away from the I told you so crowds. That's how I feel because ever since MatterFirst came, was announced and everything like that, people were already bashing what it's not going to do, what it's not going to be, you know, and over the years, you know, all the little leaks and stuff. People are like, ah, you know, it's not going to be as good as we thought. Now it's actually here. And it's like, I still want to see when the devices first come out.

I want to get my hands on a device, make my own judgment at this judgment at this point but these articles yeah we're now in the bashing article you know it's clickbait in a way like if they have negative news cells right so we'll see yeah i mean the problem is that matter is is is a standard for onboarding a product and i mean control to some respect as well but like basically it's like the setup and sales of a product is intimately tied with matter and that's really all it is um after that you're still stuck with a device that may not be good it may not work very well that's that's not going to improve just because it's matter certified uh yeah i don't know if you had a if you had a crappy switch before that was iffy you know adding matter to it's not going to improve just because it's Matter certified. Yeah. I don't know. If you had a crappy switch before that was iffy, adding Matter to it is not going to make it that much better. It's still a crappy switch just on a different network. At this point, we should have more supported devices, right?

In my opinion, Matter doesn't matter at this point because it supports three different device types. And if this was 10 years ago, like three different device types for a home automation platform, that would be great. But we're in 2022, almost 2023 now, where you can buy a hub that basically controls everything, door locks and cameras and all the other fun stuff that you normally do with a smart home.

And Matter doesn't touch on any of those yet. And we know that they're planning on it. You know, 2023, they're going to release an update that will probably get pushed out for a couple of years. That'll support thermostats and robot vacuums and whatever else. But until that point comes, like, I just don't see the point in going to this ecosystem just yet. And I hope that changes one day because I think it does have the capability there. But it's just it's not there and it's not ready for prime time. And especially if a giant company like Amazon is worried to push it out to all their devices,

it's kind of got to make you worry about the whole ecosystem in general. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's definitely a strange, I feel like the people who who who hyped up matter weren't really familiar with the smart home enough. Like the people I heard, you know, get all excited when they saw the Apple press release, but they were not, and to this day are not really familiar with what actually happens in a smart home. They're, they're the same people are discovering, Oh, look at this device from Lutron. Cause it, uh, it really works well. Magic. Oh,

you know, stuff that we have been saying for years works really well is suddenly news to them. I don't know what I'm trying to get at here, but to me, the people who had been through this before were like, OK, well, wait and see. And it'd be great to see like a single platform developed so that other many products many products can work and, and talk together, but it's all been tried before. And I feel like we, we, we, in this industry, we kind of took a cautious approach to, I mean, I can't tell you that there are any integrators that are excited about matter. Like they, they don't care.

They literally do not care that it exists and they won't because they already have the platforms that do exactly what Matter is trying to do. And it already works with more than light bulbs, switches and sensors, quite frankly. So it's great that Matter's getting there, but man, it feels like this is going to, like Keita, you just said next year, there's an update coming up why why like why is it going to take so long for this group to get together and support um you know a couple of extra devices like garage doors that they probably should have had you know how how was that missed i don't know um but like it's going to take a long time for these these manufacturers to get together and agree on

some kind of standard for these communications for these devices, the interfaces, how they set up and everything. And meanwhile, everybody else is just kind of like moving along and progressing along. So I don't know. I think speed is what's going to kill this thing because it's progressed at a snail's pace already. And for it to be like three devices thick uh on on release date still no cameras what door locks no door locks i remember i mean basically nothing you have what like door sensors and like relays or something and that's pretty much it like and that's that's not even a smart home like you know what i mean like those are just like little contacts that you can buy for anything at this point so like i you know in my opinion i think they would have been better off just waiting until they actually had a lot more devices to launch with and then had all the manufacturers on board it's like hey you know we're releasing this date we want to have 300 devices ready to go

and we're going to support cameras and garage door openers and robot vacuums and all this stuff and there's going to be an update later on that kind of adds more support but like you know in in 2022 i should be able to pick up your system and use it with a lot of different device types and you cannot do that with matter at this time and we might not see it for quite a while you know if it took them five years to come out with this standard initially, like we might be looking at another five years for them to come out with like a decent update that actually does add more value. Um, especially once you add all these large companies in that kind of want to dictate how things are going, like it's only going to slow it down even more. Yeah, I agree. And it's, and this is still an emerging market. I mean, it's almost like Matter is planned around a mature market that everyone wants to get into.

And like people are still experimenting with this like stuff. This is not, it's still early adopter. It's still not quite working as well as it should be, clearly. And if you're looking at the long view, it's like, okay, a matter makes sense because it'll be like just the base way you get involved with a, you pick up and get involved with like some kind of home automation device. company comes on with this cool like widget or light bulb or something i don't know that that has a characteristic or feature or something that is extremely popular but not supported by matter they're gonna have to wait like well we can't be matter supported because we're waiting for them to implement x y and z i suspect you'll probably be able to control it in matter but not the way you think it'll probably just like oh you can turn it on and off but that the way you think. It'll probably just like, oh, you can turn it on and off, but that's it, you know, until they implement this whiz-bang feature, you know, that it's

supposed to have. I'm thinking like maybe a fan, like fan control. It's probably not high on their list. It seems like it probably could be, but there's not many Matter, I haven't seen any Matter fan controllers out there. Well, and I don't think Matter, you know, obviously we'll have to wait to see how it actually plays out, but I don't think Matter is going to solve the problem of having several different apps to control everything in your house, right? Like you're going to have a hub that's Matter compatible and you're going to have a Matter compatible device and you're going to be able to see it. You're going to be able to, you know, maybe control it, turn it on it on and off that kind of thing but you're probably still going to need the original

manufacturer's app in order to do advanced things like change the the time of access or you know whatever it is that you have you're probably always going to need that that that app as well and i don't see that going away anytime soon maybe in five plus years once they kind of get everything ironed out and you're able to control more using whatever hub you want maybe but i just i don't see manufacturers giving up that that app access because it gives them so much information about you and your device that it would like there's no point in it like they're going to sell you a 30 matter device and they want that information because that's how they're making part of their money. I think, Seth, you hit the nail on the head when you said the integrators are not looking forward to this, right? Well, they're just, they don't care about

it. I'm not saying they look forward. It's not even on their radar because why? Yeah, because everything, they could do so much more today and with the tools they have today than what Matter's bringing. And I think Matter's geared towards the DIY crowd, right? But even still, I'm not excited because it still won't be able to do what I do today in my space too. Like if I want to get my devices into HomeKit, for example, through my hub, it gets exported, you know,

through HomeBridge or whatever. I can get them into the Amazon lady ecosystem. I get them into the Google ecosystem, right? Like I could do all this stuff today. So I'm still like matter to me is just being another standard, like how it's going to be like Z-Wave, Zigbee, whatever. Whereas in terms of my hub, I'll be bringing those devices in just as another one. So they can interact with all the ecosystems.

But it may open up a few more devices, but there's so many devices out right now. Like it's only a small subset that they're bringing in and 50 or 90% of them are bulbs. It seems like at this point, right? So I'm not, I'm not looking forward to, I'm not really excited about it. You know, I'm not going to jump on the matter train, but you know, I'm hoping by, you know, in three years, maybe it will be the one standard that hopefully I doubt it. But who knows? No, I mean, this is this is good news for people that, you know, that are the average consumer that just want to be able to buy a device and it works like this is a good thing for them in the long run.

But I think we have a while to get there. And we already have devices that do this. You know, if you go to a Z-Wave or Zigbee device, like for the most part, you can get anything you want in those kind of standards right there. And it has the local control. It has, you know, all the kind of advantage that Matter has, but it actually exists and you can buy it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it all comes down to the speed of the way this industry moves very fast and how long this is going to take to turn around a product update on software of all things. Like, and for a group, a working group to meet, you know, they're probably going to meet once a year, talk about making some proposals, come back later and vote on them six months. Like, man, it, it's going to slow

stuff down so, so much. Um, and like, like you said, TJ, they're, they're not going to get rid of the apps. Those apps are like exactly why, um, they're just, they're just not like, that's how you, there's no firmware updates supported in matter. So you're going to still need the original apps to go along with things. Um, I'm'm seeing things popped up but i can't read them fast enough so um i think ty was saying something about them being basically geared towards the big three tech companies um so they have more cross-platform no i mean yes yes but that the that's the altruistic way of looking at it the the the big reason is, is that they were running up against people who were saying, I'm not going to buy this stuff until

it all kind of talks to each other. And I don't want to make a decision between buying an Amazon product by an Apple product and buying a Google product, like why, or a Samsung product, like they should all just kind of work together. And this was an effort to make that happen. It sets up just like Apple's HomeKit stuff. So, you know, and Apple has claimed that they contributed their code or something like that to this. And you look at it and it's like, okay, it's basically the same workflow. But the reason they're doing it is so the onboarding experience of a DIY, somebody in DIY is like, they just go to the store, they buy a dimmer or a switch or a wall

socket thing, and they plug it in. And it just, it doesn't matter what brain they have in the house or anything. It's going to work with that stuff. So that that's the goal. And I think, I think they have made it. It's just, we're all kind of disappointed that there's not much more to it. Um, and at the same time, I think it's just been hyped by the wrong people in the, in the, in the news industry, like as something that it was going to be that it was never able to be, uh, you know, at this point. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a combination of being hyped up too much and us just talking about it too long. You know, if we were talking about this, like, okay, let's move on then. I mean, like, but if we were talking about this, like a year ago, we, we'd probably be a little more optimistic about it, but the fact that it

took so long to come out with, and we're stuck with what we have now, it's just, it's not very appealing, you know? And I'm even, you know, it's funny. I get a lot of people ask me, it's like, oh, you know, should I wait for the holiday season to buy smart home devices or shall wait for Matter? And it's like, there's no point right now, right? Yeah. Like maybe in a year or two, you could make that argument. But right now, I don't see any point in buying Matter specific devices. Just buy whatever works best for you, whether that's Wi-Fi, Zigbee or Z-Wave.

And the hype they generated with Matter, I think was very hard to live up to. There was a lot of hype as this will be the thing that's going to save us all. And yeah, I don't think they did. And I will say that they did not communicate either what Matter was going to be. Everybody thought it was this grand plan to unify things. And it was kind of left open at that and then they they kept everything quiet secret up until the very last moment where they like oh here's some sample code and you know the code for it and uh here's the you know 190 devices so it's kind of

like the expectations were never set in the beginning so of course everybody thought it was going to solve all the world's problems when it came to smart home automation. Basically what I was going to say. All right. Well, that's it for the news. It's a big downer this week. Matter, doom, and gloom. Yeah.

But that's all right. I'm glad to see these articles coming out about it because I felt like I've been super negative about matter, even though we kind of know what it is. We know what to expect and everything but like it's just funny because all the news articles and media outlets have been hyping it up for so long and now it's one of those things that like yeah well maybe it's not that great and it kind of validates you know what we've been talking about for a while now because now it's not like now it's not doom and gloom it's like oh well this is actually a reality yeah i i mean i i don't feel like it's doom and gloom i just feel like you you remember the sketch on like um i forget what it was uh it was it was a comedy show it wasn't saturn at live um but it was like it was called lowered expectations it was like it was a dating thing and it was

this i don't know i'll put a link to it in the show notes there's if you search on youtube for lowered expectations dating uh you it's pretty much what i feel about this like just we should have had lowered expectations and and going into this because it wasn't and i guess they had to hype it up right because no one would care about this anyway especially when you drag it on for two years you got you have to keep hyping it up yeah yeah i think it worked on this for two years come out and said okay it's it's here but we're not going to tell anybody we're just going to like start putting this logo out on stuff and everybody was really confused so uh yes in living color that was that was a great show so many great comedians went through there that's a pretty good show wayans brothers jim carrey oh man the dancers that was good it was

a good show. All right. I think, what's it? Yeah. What's it? No, Jennifer Lopez was one of the Dancers. Yeah, she was one of the Dancers. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. A massive amount of talent in that show. Anyway, moving on. All the links and one topic that we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at humtec.fm slash 411. Lower expectations. Nothing in the mailbag this week. We do have two picks of the weeks

and we're going to start the first one with a screen that we can't afford. So this is over at, uh, CE pro. This is the, the, the first, uh, $800,000 Samsung, the wall residential micro led installation. Uh, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. You can go take a look at it. Um, you want to know what an $800,000 TV looks like? Well, uh, thanks to a company in Santa Monica, California, uh, just one touch video and audio center that you can see it.

We've got a nice little picture of it. It's a 800, 800. It's a 219 inch Samsung micro LED wall video TV thing comes in at $800,000 retail. That's roughly $3,700 per inch. It does look like a nice TV. It's got 0.84 millimeter pixel pitch, which is really small for a giant TV of that size. And it's got HDR 2000. It took about three days for them to get this hung up on the wall. I wonder how many pull-ups they'd had to do to make sure that those brackets were on the wall. Just, just well, but I don't know. Um, it seems like this company, I think this company did this, the first commercial one

back in 2019. And the article here says that the, um, uh, the, the, uh, the, the pixel pitch basically makes it the picture quality better. Uh, like double the picture quality of the, of the original version. So, um, $800,000. I know the first thing you're, of the original version. So, um, $800,000. I know the first thing you're buying when you win the Powerball, Seth.

Yeah, it's not going to be this. Definitely not going to be this. I bet. I thought this would look good in your garage. To be honest, you'd have to build the garage a little bit bigger. I assume,

but this will be great for a secondary room in your new house. After you win the Powerball. It's true. Second, no, they're going to get the Vizio TV. Just make sure if you get this, make sure you sign up for the service plan

because they already had three service calls on it. Yeah, three days to complete and it's going to take a few more service calls. I don't know. It looks nice. They did a really good job on the install and it's got a nice picture of it there on CE Pro to take a look at.

The space is nice, but man, I don't know it seems like we we talk about tv too high i think this is one of those are tv too high it seems like a way too small of a room for this size of screen right like i mean you're looking at like the seating in the area and you can tell where the kind of the walls end and it's just it does not look that like that big of a room for that tv well i guess you got to elevate your spot you got elevate your seats now when the screen size get a certain size i'm a little disappointed i didn't see like a like a sonos arc underneath it you know yeah yeah yeah i i does say that they had in-ceiling speakers for the audio or something i'm not really sure what you would use i hope so but um i don't know it's it's a very large screen and um i i think there's only one couch in there

you could actually watch it from but i can't tell how far away it is from from the screen like even that little round couch on the right hand side seems like it's well actually i can right because those standard those glass things are what? Standard size, aren't they? Like the door glass over there? Oh, I have no idea. One, two, three, four, five. Well, it could be a whole custom. It could be. I mean, the only seat that looks like it'd be comfortable is the very right one.

Like all the other ones, you're basically right on top of it. I'd say that room's only maybe 20 to 30, maybe 30 feet wide. Yeah, it's not that big i would expect to see this in like a like a conference area or like some kind i don't know some big area that door is a stand i mean that's a standard door right so like that that door has got to be what four foot wide so if you if you do the math on the the glass panels and take into account like the the right on this is a 35 foot wide room and man that's that's rough my my favorite part about this whole article though if you scroll down it says uh we had a client reach out to us who was initially interested in a much smaller size large screen tv we realized that this client can afford and would appreciate the new samsung micro

led wall where you could build it as large as you want. So they went from maybe like a 98 inch TV or something to a 219 inch TV, you know, a $20,000 job all the way up to an $800,000 job. So I feel like that's quite the upsell there. Whoever, whoever upsold that did a really good job. Good job. Yep. I know you're checking out this TV from Target for $600, but have you considered turning your whole house into a TV?

Yeah, yeah. It is vice down at the bottom. Stop worrying about the price. That's true. Yeah, I mean that's true. A lot of people have a lot of money and we'll install just about anything goes to show you they are oh this is the this is a video of them installing it but man it doesn't look like the same room it looks like a different room i don't know it's not a

very good video but the picture looks nice the space looks okay but there's a giant tv in it so if you ever want to go watch a uh jumbotron at your friend's house for the game, this is the place to go. I think that's the first one that you're looking at. Like the first one they installed or something. Yeah. I don't know. There's a video down at the bottom. Yeah.

I can't really figure out what they were training. Because they installed one in 2019, but I guess it's their second one or something. Well, congrats, guys. It's fun. Here's a display, though, that we all can afford. And it is, TJ, I think you came up with this. It's fun. Here's a display, though, that we all can afford. And it is TJ. I think you came up with this is the Keeb monkey display bar. You're welcome. And this is imagine imagine the Mac touch bar, Mac Pro touch bar, but useful. So it's much smaller. It comes in a couple of different flavors, 7.9 inch and 8.8 inch.

And I think the 7.9 is sixty nine dollars and the 8.8 with touchscreen is what 100 bucks or something like that so there's different different things you can get here yeah and honestly like i i literally have no reason to have this but you know i still want it anyway i don't know what i would use it for a much a much better uh price coming in at 11 and 25 cents per inch it's not bad yeah it's got a little kicked a little building kickstand i mean you know it reminds me of the first 4g smartphones that were coming out in america i like that you can get it with a touchscreen too that's pretty nice yeah so you can buy the non-touchscreen or you can buy the touchscreen version so yeah i wonder how many you'd need of these to make the – tile them together and make the giant Samsung one.

219-inch. Yeah, probably not a good idea. Probably better things to do with your money. Not with that attitude. Well, I mean, if you win the Powerball, then nothing's a waste of money. Exactly. I could buy a Key Monkey. You could buy Key Monkey the whole company.

The whole company probably, yes yes this is kind of cool you could hook it up they they show a couple of use cases with it on the website like putting it underneath your computer screen or like the one that really trips me up is the one that's like right in front of the keyboard i don't really get that one like right in front of your touchpad on your computer yeah but not really you know honestly it's like right in front of the keyboard. I don't really get that one, like right in front of your touch pad on your computer. Yeah, but not really, you know, honestly, it's one of those things I look at and I'm like, you know, this would kind of be nice, but I don't know if I would ever be able to actually use it for anything useful. Yeah. Like it would show something stupid, like a clock or something. And you can buy a clock for a lot less than a hundred dollars. I can tell you that. It doesn't have the best resolution either,

but it's $69 or $99 depending on if you want it with a touch, a big screen or a small screen, or with a touch screen or without. Yeah, 1920 by 480, so definitely not the best resolution, but, I mean, it's a wide bar. What do you expect? All right. Gavin, do you got anything on this one or no? I see a use for it.

You know what? On my screens, especially at work, I have a lot of things that just sit here and I just need to keep on the screen. And they take up real estate, right? So offloading them to that just for viewing gives me a lot of valuable real estate back. So I could throw something like that down at the bottom i could see use for it okay well buy one and let us know yeah sure i'll buy two after the powerball tickets uh you have to you have to have one for your normal computer then you have to have one for the server downstairs oh yes yes of course

that way when you walk up to the server you can just see useless stuff true oh yeah yeah that's true a dashboard for the server i mean and that was one of that was one of the pictures that they had it was like inside of a computer and it would show you like the temperature of the computer the fan speed all that kind of stuff i don't i don't know if i would want to buy a hundred dollar display just to put inside my desktop but i guess you could it would suck to open up the desktop to have to look at this stuff too you know well it had a clear case that on the side of it it's what all the kids are doing these days they're not doing the metal cases like rgbs and windows you got to look in and see your rgb fans spinning around that's right if i can't

see my fin span spinning i don't know if it's working. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, great ideas for show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Some big project updates and pretty much the bulk of our show is, well, I don't know, just a couple of minutes of the show. well i don't know uh just a couple minutes the show we talked about that with a little bit of time i know gavin's got some stuff to say we're such crump cramp for time i mean all right well uh gavin uh what did you get up to man yeah um so you know i was talking to ty and ty you know is offering me uh you know, I was talking to Ty and Ty, you know, is offering me, you know, something to run Home Assistant on.

And, you know, it didn't go through, but I kind of got the push to get Home Assistant set up on the weekend, you know, to actually finally unraid server booted it up and instantly i just felt like i was cheating on my habitat hub it was i was i was so afraid i turned the hub around so it couldn't see what i was doing right because i felt so bad but yeah home assistant i booted up um i haven't touched it in years it's come a long way like i remember last time I booted up. I haven't touched it in years. It's come a long way. Like I remember last time I booted it up, I was all YAML. Now it's a lot of graphical. It looks good. I have to admit, I'm seeing the hype.

I'm seeing what people are talking about now. I'm still trying to get my head around it all. I read all the documentation, trying to figure out, you know, like, you know, it's a different world. So just trying to understand what world I'm in, um, and what, where things are and how they all relate to each other. Um, I set up my presence. Um, I set up, uh, the alarm system, but one thing I did do is I attached it to my Hubitat hub. So all the devices in Hubitat actually show up in Home Assistant. So I'm using Hubitat for the antennas and everything like that. And then I can use Home Assistant for all the logic and everything. It works really well. The app is nice.

Setting up the dashboards was really easy to do. I'm actually in shock. I'm not doing a comparison. I've literally only sat with this for about four days um and i'm not gonna say which one's better than the other i see the strengths in both of them right and i think i'm gonna be using them together for a while one of us one of us you know when someone gets a tesla that's all they talk about for weeks and months is their Tesla. I just got Home Assistant. Yeah, it's the same way. You know, right before the show, I told you guys I just signed up for their forum. I have an account on their forum now.

You know, like there's so many. My next I think this week I'm going to learn about developing, you know, add ons and whatever else in Home Assistant, you know, and go from there. But it's it's nice. Certain things were just so much easier, especially with creating the interface in the dashboards and they look nice. The app is great. You know, I was kind of shocked to see that they had a subscription service because at first I was like the subscription service for remote access. But then I just think it's, you could do everything without the subscription service. This just makes it easier as they'll hand all the backend stuff.

So I did sign up for the trial and, you know, if it works nice, then I'll just keep it, you know, to give me remote access. But, you know, there's so much to this and I'm still getting my, you know, my, my feet wet and my hands dirty and trying to figure it all out. And Home Assistant is pretty much, I mean, they've kind of made themselves around that interface, that dashboard interface. From what I have gathered, like everybody talks about that and how clean it is and how easy it is to kind of like get everything set up the way you want. Kind of. One of the things is when I first started up, it went out and found all the devices in your home.

Right. And I was kind of like, I was like, it just hit me because it found a lot of devices in my home. And I was just like, no, I don't want to enable. I didn't know how it was going to break things. And then every device it wanted you to go to that device and then, you know, do this to that device. So I just ignored them all for now and I'll just add them over time as I want. Um, so that was, you know,

you kind of got like hit with that at first. Um, but that's fine. There's certain things like all this energy, this energy tab, I can't get rid of. I'll never use that energy tab, but I know some people are big on that. Um, but it's, it takes some time getting used to it. The one thing I really like, I did this on Hubitat as well, but when it came to presence detection, I always use two devices. I use, um, geo presence, um, and I combine it with land presence. And then I just use logic in that they actually, somebody a plug-in i had to find this because i'd use um arp um pings instead of regular pings and somebody actually developed a plug-in it took me a while to get it working i got working and now presence detection is like perfect in this so now i'm happy with that too right so it knows like within a minute of us leaving it knows we're gone and it

automatically does everything and it knows as soon as we drive like up to the street it knows we're gone and it automatically does everything. And it knows, as soon as we drive like up to the street, it knows we're home and it kicks in. So it's been great. Yeah. I, I, I, I've seen, I've kind of like looked at some of the integrations that people had made for it and, and basically around like the cards that they had, I think you can just like add these cards through their interface. And there's like specific like you gotta you gotta learn all the cards and so this is like i'm scrolling through them right now just to see how there's 259 home assistant cards and i think there's even more community cards from people who have taken them and developed them and put their own like images and all sorts of fun stuff into them to where you can basically make a completely custom interface inside of there

to just do whatever you want. So I think it's overall a pretty good idea, especially that you can just add on to it in this way. One of the most annoying things I found, though, is when I first started, I was looking just for information, how how to articles, videos, et cetera. I was watching them going through them only to realize a lot of that information is already out of date because this is constantly changing so fast. So they would be like, go into these yamels, go into this folder and stuff like that.

Right. And you only find out that you don't have to do that anymore. Things have changed or in different locations. A lot of things reference, you know, the old location, I guess, where they used to sit. So you kind of had to translate to where the new location is. So that was a little annoying. I mean, I'm used to that with Unify, you know, so it's kind of the same thing. It's kind of the same thing. You know, this is what they meant to say, you know, like uh so that was hard um you know just finding the answer you know when i was first trying to figure out should i set up in a docker or a vm or you know however else there's multiple ways you can run it just trying to find an answer

that question was tough for at first right like you know they they throw all these terms at you and you're just like i don't know what any of these mean like should i run it in a docker and then eventually somebody i found one guy that just says I run it in a Docker? And then eventually somebody, I found one guy that just says, no, run it in a VM because of this, this, this, and this. He broke it down. So that's why I ended up with a VM, but it's fast. It works great. You know, again, only four days with it next week, you'll probably hear another update from something else I did. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. I'll have to keep an eye on you. Well, I guess I'm the only one that hasn't installed Home Assistant on anything at this point in time. What's your hub of choice? I mean, I have the HomeKit stuff set up that I use most

of the time, but it all ties into Control 4, which is the lighting in the house. So most, most of the time, if I'm using anything automation wise, it's done through, if it's easy, something simple, I'll use, uh, the, the stuff that's built into home kit. Cause it's, you know, turn on this light at this time, turn it off at this time, that kind of thing. Um, if it is needs to be more advanced, um, uh, I might switch over to and use the 4 stuff, especially if audio video stuff needs to be integrated along with it. It's a lot easier to do there. I don't know how much Home Assistant has in that respect, but it's probably a decent amount at this point.

And probably would be fine with Sonos and everything that I have here. Yeah, I have some advanced automations, uh, automations and I wrote them in Hubitat, their own apps and everything like that. And I guess for now I'll leave them running on Hubitat because I haven't found yet a way to do that easily in Home Assistant, but again, I'm still learning. Um, maybe I have to, I don't know what their version of an app is. Um, but that's, I'm going to start reading developer docs and figure out what that stuff is. I like getting dirty in the code. Oh boy.

That's a show title for sure. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I have, I have a couple of things that, I mean, that are integrated with control for like, I have a video system that I use. I have a lot of like these RGB lights that we're working on. I have the stuff that I'm working on at work with. So it's kind of hard for me to say, Oh yeah, I can't, I have to like move away from, from that and, and, and load home assistant. But it, it sounds like it could just be a dashboard over the top of everything anyway, just like I'm using

home kit for like, I'm, I'm using that for just a basic interface of the stuff I want to get to and interact with pretty quickly. And. It works fine remotely and everything. Yeah. I mean, I've been pretty happy with Home Assistant since I switched, so I don't think you'll have any problems, Gavin. It's learning a different system, and I don't know. It's just a little different, but I think if you've managed with Hubitat, then you should have no problems with Home Assistant once you learn the ropes. I'll figure it out. I just need time.

It's only been like four days. And it's amazing how much stuff it works with out of the box that you don't have to do anything with. You know, a lot of other systems you use, like you have to download different integrations or different drivers for it. Like, just like you said, it's amazing what Home Assistant found. I mean, it found my printers. It found my Sonos devices, like all this kind of random stuff that it's like, I don't, I don't even want to tie that in, but I guess I could. Now I'm really curious as to what it would find in my house since like, I'm sure Sonos,

like in the Sonos, the TVs, I'm sure. I'm curious as to what else it would. Apple TVs. I mean, yeah, well, to what else it would Apple TVs. Yeah. Well, it misidentified a bunch of stuff. So like I got I got presented with a whole bunch of stuff. But just looking at it, I knew I didn't have that many Apple TVs. So it was picking up some other stuff.

So that's why I just said, you know what? I'll just ignore them all for now and add them one by one when I'm ready. It finds ubiquity as well. So, I mean, you can tie in the doorbell and stuff automatically. So interesting. Well, it's, it's pretty nice for that feature alone.

Yeah. That, that I have that integrated with control for probably the same type of integration that they, that it uses. And that, that's very nice to have because then you can get the events pulled off of, you know,

somebody rings your doorbell, you can automate with it, which is what you should be able to do with any doorbell. So, um, cool. We'll have to keep an eye. TJ, you have a note in here that the, uh, which one is this? The, the, the hub that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the, the Claude pies up for pre-order. This is the home assistant one, right? Yeah. So it's one of the ones that I think we talked about maybe a month ago. But it's just Home Assistant, I don't know if they're working with third-party companies or third-party companies are just making it happen. This is a third-party hub. It basically comes with ZigBee, Thread, Matter, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi already built into it.

It's kind of weird that it's missing Z-Wave, to be honest. But basically, by the hub, it looks like a hub, which is kind of the nice advantage of it. It's kind of weird that it's missing Z-Wave to be honest. But basically you buy the hub, it looks like a hub, which is kind of the nice advantage of it. And you just put a Raspberry Pi in there and you're good to go. So I think we talked about a month ago, they just announced it, but they just opened up pre-orders for it. So they said they're going to be shipping by Christmas this year. We'll find out. And it's, you know, $200 and you still have to buy the raspberry pie as far as I know,

or maybe, maybe it comes with a raspberry pie. Actually these days, the hardest part is finding a raspberry pie. It looks like this one for the $199 actually comes with a raspberry pie, which is probably worth it at that point, right? Like a $200 for a hub with all the built-in technologies isn't bad. And just like Gavin said, the hardest part right now is finding

the Raspberry Pi. You know, you could buy a Home Assistant Yellow or anything else, but you're probably not going to be able to find the Raspberry Pi brand new. So at least this one, you don't have to worry about it. I recently ordered a pi kvm thing well recently probably took a month to get here but it it i ordered it with the pi installed because i didn't have any faith in me finding one so i guess whatever methods they have to find whatever they needed it's one of the it's the cm4 it's like a little card when that you slide in. And it's like, it's nice. It's a little, it's one that's built into a PCIe. Is that a PCIe card?

Yeah. So it can exist inside your computer and be a KVM and all that kind of stuff, which I frequently use to reboot my computer since it wants to freeze up all the time. So yeah, that's what this one is using as the CM for, I think that's what the home assistant yellow uses as well, if I remember correctly. So that's a pretty popular one. It's a good form factor.

So I, I have been, been seeing it pop up more and more in projects that are like more mature and everything. Greg says, let me know what you think about the PI KVM i it's actually really nice like it it's an all-in-one solution i can open it up and just get in into a shell and be inside the computer from wherever so kind of cool it's got little tie-ins on it to like a menu on it says press says press reset button. And it reboots. Shut down computer. And

it runs off PoE. So as long as my PoE switch is online and that little Raspberry Pi can stay online, then the KVM is online. That's pretty cool. It's kind of cool. So, yeah. The only Raspberry Pi I've been able to find for the past two years is

the Raspberry Pi keyboard, which is a Raspberry Pi built, uh, you know, which is a Raspberry Pi built into a keyboard. I think it's like 80 or $90. Um, they're pretty good for like a standard standalone solution. Like if you need like a digital signage computer, uh, something like that. Um, but obviously, you know, it's the size of a keyboard, so you're not gonna be able to fit it into a smaller space or put it into a lot of projects. So not, yeah, not a good project. The CM4 is definitely, I mean, usually it doesn't have anything on it. It's just like a little card

that slides into a slot on a, on a board most of the time. So it's definitely made for projects like what we're talking about. Um, yeah, good stuff. Well, um, I have an update on my mower saga. I have been working. I finally got my outlet. My outlet's installed outside. So got that done. And the next thing I have to do is run the wire around. But since I've been delayed so long in doing all this, the grass continues to grow. So I had to start mowing it. And when I mowed it, my big lawnmowermower, the one with like the, the big cutting deck and everything just decided to overheat and blow up. So now I have no put, I have a push mower, but I don't want to mow my lawn with that. So I'm, I'm kind of stuck now.

And, uh, I'll have to, I tried to make a perimeter, like a run around the whole thing of mowed grass where I'd be able to like put the little boundary wire down. So I think I got that done. So we'll see. We'll see. Do you think we'll get more up and going this year? It's not going to be this week because the hurricane's coming through again. So it'd be great if nature could just cooperate. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Maybe, maybe by December sometime, I'll be able to, to run a stupid wire all the way around my property. And I mean, how hard can that be? Um, but now, now that, now that the power's there,

I'd really don't think there are too many more obstacles other than just getting that wire put in where it needs to go and like moving rocks and stuff out of the way that it will bump into. Other than that, I think I'm, I think it's pretty much ready. So it's not, it's not ready until you build your custom garage for it though. I mean, yeah, that, that looks cute. I got a, I, where I put it, it's on next to a wall and I can, I think I can put like a little

cover to kind of like cover out a little bit, but I don't know. I did like the ones where they pulled in and when they pulled in, it just kind of like turned into a little garage or the garage door would shut. It was cute. So to step up my woodworking skills to do something like that, maybe I can just order something like an Etsy or something. Somebody's got to be in the business of making robot lawnmower garages. That's a new website for you. Yeah.

Robot lawn garages dot com. Yeah. Robot lawn garages dotcom. Yeah. Robot mower garages.com. There we go. I'm, I'm, I'm sure it's a great idea, but not something I'm capable of doing. So anyway, anything else guys, any more projects on the horizon? I think that's it. I mean, I haven't really been doing too many projects recently. I've been doing some traveling. That's been nice, but all right. Well well 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 patreon page if you don't know about the patreon page head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support for hometech

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