HomeTech.fm - Episode 416 - Fixing What Isn't Broken

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

This week on HomeTech: Eve starts launching Matter upgrades for its devices but, will it matter? IKEA and Sonos are back at it again, a pick of the week, and Gavin gives us an update on his abusive and rocky relationship with Home Assistant.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, December 16th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, podcast all about automation. I can't talk tonight. I guess it's too late. It's very late tonight. Brain shutdown. I'm done. I'm done. I did nothing but like yard work all day, so I'm just tonight. I guess it's too late. It's very late tonight. Brain shut down. I'm done.

I'm done. I did nothing but like yard work all day. So I'm just dead. I did power washing, yard work. It was gross. I'm done. It's that time of year. Everybody needs everything done at the last second.

And then you realize that you have so many things to do in the last second. Oh, people are coming to my house. I may have to clean it up. Oh, geez. Yeah. It's ridiculous. So happy holidays everybody happy holidays sir we're not gonna see you we're probably not gonna see we're not gonna be back next week

next week's a a bye week but we do have a show that we'll we'll play uh that was the um what's it called the fireside chat so we're gonna play that was, it was a lot of fun. Um, and, uh, it'll probably show up in a number of other feeds as well, but you know, that's what happens this time of year. And then I pretty unsure we're unless something major happens, we won't have a show the week after. Um, so yeah, you're probably, this is the last show maybe for this year, right guys? I think so. The last new show at least. Right. I mean, like I said, this is the last show maybe for this year, right guys? I think so. The last new show, at least, right? I mean, like I said, we have the fireside chat. That's probably going to come out next week, but we're not going to be back until 2023.

I'll be traveling, you know, the week after Christmas, I'll be in Florida still. And, you know, everybody's kind of recovering from Christmas. So I don't think anybody really wants to hear us talk. And, uh, to be honest, there's probably not going to be any news released the week of Christmas. So you just got to wait till the CES. And then there's something that comes out about, you know, something to talk about at least.

So that'll be fun. And we do have two, two headlines this week though. About as many as last week. I mean, I wasn't here for last week, but I heard that I heard the show. There wasn't, it didn't sound like there was much no no there wasn't it's amazing after matter comes out there's like nothing to talk about i know it's like matters here and then it's like i guess

guess not maybe maybe not don't know anyway what do you say we jump into these two home tech headlines let's do it so uh the first speaking of matter the first matter compatible devices are finally here uh starting today and you know actually today as we're recording december 12th eve systems is beginning to roll out a firmware update to its thread enabled eve energy smart plug uh eve door and wireless window contact sensor and the eve motion uh motion sensor i guess you got to put that double word in there and that'll upgrade them to matter. The matter update to EU devices currently optional because once you update,

you can't migrate back. It's a one way, one way go. You'll need an iOS device or iPad, you know, I iPhone or iPad device and it needs to be on at least a software version 16.2 to kick off that update. But once it's on the Matter Network, it can be controlled by an Android phone using SmartThings or Amazon Alexa or Google Home, all that good stuff. Apple is expected to release an iOS and iPad 16.2 before the end of the year here. So, um, Eve is working on an Android app, which it says will arrive sometime in the first half of 2023. Um, good news for Apple home users, at least is that e-devices are not going to use their functionality when you

upgrade them to matter. So this is kind of interesting. Despite a few things not being supported by Matter, somehow Apple has worked with Eve and kind of put a little backdoor in for them. So things like energy monitoring and child lock, autonomous schedules, advanced automations, all that good stuff will remain on the eevee stuff it remain available but it's going to be home kit only gavin you said they were going to mess this up is this how they're going to mess this up this is what i was waiting on as soon as you know like from the time they announced this i'm like there's going to be something in here the companies have to find a way to distinguish themselves from each other. Right. And I was like, they're going to mess this up, make it more confusing somehow. And I think this is how they're going to do it. So

you're going to have this matter compatible device and the basic functions, I guess, the on off feature will work with everything, you know, and that's nice. But then the advanced features, you know, some will work here. Some may work here. Who knows how it's, this is just the first device. So I don't know over time what's going to happen, you know, as we get more into this, how our device is going to, you know, are they going to do this for every ecosystem now? You develop a device and now you have to develop these extra features to work on everything. I thought Matter was supposed to make this all easier. You know, I don't know.

We'll see. I'd love to talk to somebody making a device that has to deal with all this type of stuff and see what their views on, you know, what it's like. It'll be interesting once I actually get my Matter USB hub. But I think until then, I'm kind of just waiting it out to see what everybody else does. I just got notification that the, I think you ordered the same thing, Gavin, the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB hub. I was part of the original orders. And so it looks like I should have mine, I would think

within the next month. And at that point, I'll probably start looking at Matter devices. So, you know, it's good to see that Eve is updating some of these devices and maybe that point i'll probably start looking at matter devices um so you know it's good to see that that eve is updating some of these devices and maybe that'll be one of the first ones i use uh but pretty much right in line with what we thought of matter at this point right nothing's really a surprise so are we gonna get like devices now they're like we're matter compatible but more compatible with home kit you know or you know we what it sounds like yeah you know and it's just going to be more confusing it's good you know you're going to look at a device you go well i get these features with home kit and this you know the one nice thing about matter is you know when you add it to the whole matter ecosystem it works

with um you can have it added to each ecosystem at the same time so you don't have to you know remove it from one to add it to the other so you know you can play in the different ones but this is just going to be confusing i think over time somebody's going to spin up a database you know what does this matter device work with or you know and you're going to look it up and it's just another you know level of confusion i'm not another database yeah We already have the button database, and now we're going to need – no, we're not doing any more databases. We're going to have the Matter database. Yeah, yeah.

The MatterDB. Does it matter? Willitmatter.com. Yeah. Willitmatter.db.com. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I don't know matter is is easier in the respect that it's good for setting the device up and getting it on some network but you know we're i i don't think we

have to worry too much like i'm looking at this going okay it you you upgrade this device and now you get to use it on all these other ecosystems it didn't work on before that's that's a big check and then all of the like fine grain stuff works with apple because they have some way of getting those numbers in there and if you're on that ecosystem like it works best with the apple home kit ecosystem they could put that little sticker on there works best with apple but for the most part if you just need the thing to turn on and off you can still with the Apple HomeKit ecosystem. They could put that little sticker on there. It works best with Apple. But for the most part, if you just need the thing to turn on and off,

you can still use the Google Assistant or the Echoes and yell at them, right? I think what'll happen is that, you know, basically what happens now is they say, you know, works with whatever platform and they'll probably keep that. It'll, you know, it'll still have Matter in there so you can kind of use it with whatever you want, but they're still going to retain the works with and pick one or two platforms that it works best with. And that's kind of what you use.

Well, I'm just starting to think of like Google and how the Alexa platforms work. Like they're not similar on the back end of what programmers have access to. They're somewhat similar, but not very similar. Each company had their own way of taking and ingesting that data that was coming from devices and sensors and implementing control over them and that kind of thing.

So at least with the HomeKit stuff, it's a local device. It's reporting to basically another local device running a HomeKit database and saving all of that information. And if you look at the HomeKit app, the HomeKit app doesn't have everything that HomeKit does in it. You have to get third-party apps that can drill down and get this data and information that exist, that there's so much that devices can publish to HomeKit, just as like, you know, energy monitoring and that kind of thing. Like those are extra things

they've always been able to publish into HomeKit for developers and, you know, these third party devices to bring in. Or I think you could even use some of that stuff off shortcuts. But it's not been something that surfaces completely on the Home app itself. Like that interface is kind of dumbed down for all of the data that these devices could actually report in HomeKit. So I don't know. I'm kind of thinking like at the same time,

it really doesn't matter too much that this is happening because you wouldn't be able to take advantage of that stuff anyway on the other platforms. Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. And that's like I said, that's pretty much what we thought this whole time is that when you go to more advanced stuff or you want to do more complex things, you're going to have to use whatever originally came with it. A lot of these platforms are not going to have to use whatever originally came with it. A lot of these platforms are not going to support the advanced features. They don't right now. There's not an incentive for manufacturers to make that as part of it.

So it's just not going to happen. Yeah. I'm not thinking this is an advanced feature. Like this is something that the device currently does, right? It works. It works currently on HomeKit. They're not making that go away. In fact, when you upgrade to Matter, that stuff still exists

because the HomeKit platforms always supported it. What we would be rooting for is if Amazon and Google implement something like the HomeKit has, or maybe Home Assistant or something probably does

because that's what they do. They're going to implement all that data collection and maybe just because that's what they do. They're going to implement all that data collection. And maybe just because that device is putting off those variables and everything that Amazon and Google ignore or just don't surface, these other platforms will be able to get ahold of that data because it's on the matter network and bring it in to their systems. And then it's a race across the platform. So like, Oh yeah,

we surface all of the data for all your product and you can get in there and automate and do everything you want off these sensors. That's awesome. That'd be great. I'm hoping that's what we see here and not so much like the, like they're not, it doesn't seem to me like they're trying to silo this product to HomeKit or whatever.

Like Eve has traditionally just been a HomeKit product. Like it hasn't it hasn't been to my knowledge i do you know if they've worked with other things like amazon alexa and google home i don't know i've only ever used them on home kit i'm not very familiar with them i'm not sure if they did work i've always heard of them with homeKit. Yeah. Let's look that up. Yeah. Anyway, I just, I don't get the feeling that they're trying to silo it and leave all the best stuff to Apple. I just think Apple supported that stuff

from the beginning and at least surfaced it to the developer. And in this case with HomeKit, the way it's structured and developed, other developers have been able to surface those variables for you. So interesting stuff. But let's move on here to the next one uh new product yay uh this is not coming

going to make it into my house but um did you want taller sono speakers, you're in luck. We, Ikea and Sonos have got you covered. When automated. Oh, so Jimmy in the chat here saying Eve worked only with HomeKit historically, and this is why they don't have the Android app. Yep. Good point. That's what I thought. It was a HomeKit centric product.

So they're kind of staying in their domain and everything. And hopefully we'll see those those variables and stuff leaked out through the other platforms as well and made available somehow. I don't I don't know how you'd even do that in like program off that stuff in the other ones, but Home Assistant would probably be a good first go at it, I would think. Let's see. So back to our tall, tall speakers with the globe thing on top ikea and sonos have started uh collaborating back in 2018 with the original symphonist table lamp and now they've just put some legs on it and made it taller there's a new symphonist for lamp speaker that

is designed uh to sit elevated uh uh, for surround speakers, basically. Um, I guess you don't technically have to use it for just for around speakers, but I think everybody that I've seen looks at this and, oh, that makes sense for surround speakers. You put these floor lamps on the floor next to the couch, and now you have an elevated symphonist speaker lamp thing next to your couch at your level. It's pretty good. It's still pretty ugly. The table lamp will launch on Ikea in January,

2023 is priced at $259 in the U S TJ. You're going to grab a couple of you set up a surround sound or two. You know, honestly, if I didn't already buy the Sonos ones with stands, I would probably buy these because if you live in an apartment for some reason they don't put lights in like any of the rooms minus like the kitchen and the bathroom in the hallway but you can't have them in your bedroom or your second bedroom because that makes too much sense

um but i mean by the time i bought the sonos one for 219 and then i bought the stand for i think it was like 20 you know 50 bucks each or something like that you know i'm already basically at the cost of this and it would come all in one so this is appealing for a surround sound system and if you need lights i mean i don't i don't think it's the most attractive thing in the world but i think there's also uglier things like their bookshelf speaker that they have. So the bookshelf speaker works. Yeah, but it's ugly as sin. It's just a flat shelf.

Yeah, but like it just like it looks cheap. I mean, and granted, it's like $120. So it is cheap. Yeah, but I mean, it looks cheap. So this one, I mean, this looks like something you could put in somebody's house and they probably wouldn't hate you for it. Yeah, mine's actually on a bookshelf. So, you know, all you see is the grill really so even better yeah i hide the cheapness wait you it's ikea you put a bookshelf on a bookshelf or you put a

i put the speaker on a bookshelf and i have books leaning up against it so that's a good idea yeah looks good you know for the price you pay for those you know like i don't really complain because it gets you into the whole sonos ecosystem for cheap so i'm kind of happy with it but you know tj i gotta teach you how to shop for deals because you know the prices you're throwing out there for your sonos ones and stuff man i found those for cheap when i bought mine well that's just that's just msrp gavin i don't want to i don't want to give away dealer prices so oh okay okay it's more expensive through dealer yeah i get i either get dealer pricing or i have a ton of uh sonos coupons for

15 to 30 off so i'm not i'm not paying full price for sonos don't you worry okay okay all right well um an interesting product i still don't like the look of it too much i don't like the look of it at all yeah i don't i don't blame you it doesn't i mean we have ikea furniture it doesn't i don't think that would fit it would not fit it would not make it past the design committee at the house i can tell you that it's not going to make it in i i never liked the look of their lamps in the first place. This just puts the look of their lamp at eye level now. Now I can't avoid it.

It's right there. It's hard to believe that you have a design committee though, Seth. There's one here, yes. Absolutely. Not in my garage. That's all me. Alright. Well, all me. All right. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 416.

Nothing in the mailbag this week. Really nothing for the pick of the week either. But we do. We would like to promote for our pick of the week, hometech.social. If you're not on there, go check it out. It's a Mastodon instance, I guess, which is what all the cool kids are leaving Twitter for. And yeah, if you go on it and sign up, you'll have a Mastodon account. And yeah, we're we're we're happy with it, I guess. It's I i actually get a lot of information off of there

um that is more relevant than what i would see on twitter although a lot of the things people i see people complaining about twitter i never actually got because like ads i don't use their twitter i was always using tweetbot but the thing i don't like about what tweetbot their push notifications just suck so i mean i can't win but at least I don't see ads. Yeah. I've never seen ads on Twitter. I didn't even know it was a thing. And then there's the thing where people put a ton of hashtags or something, like five or six hashtags.

I always, like, filtered those out with TweetBot. So I never saw any of that garbage. So, like, yeah. HomeTech.social. It's a lot more calmer and there's uh you know because there's it's a it's a it's a smaller admittedly smaller social network but um you know already had somebody reach out and say hey um by the way i noticed that you said that your server crashes and you can't get the logs off of it. When it crashes, you should push those out with assist log server. I'm like,

yeah, I should. So I, but I, I've got to figure out how to set that up. And it's, it was one of those things that it was like, there's a Docker probably for it.

I'm sure there is. If it was, if it was easy for me to like, just double click an icon on, on the Mac and just have it running and set up, I would do it, but I'm, I'm being extremely lazy and it hadn't crashed in a week.

So yay team. Seth does not need anything running on his own rate server. No, no, no, no, no, no,

no, this, this would be running on another server to monitor. That's fine. Yeah. You got to have something to monitor the unread server. Yeah. Yeah.

So when in doubt, double down. So it's been up for a week now. Yeah. It's been up since we used it last. So yeah. Yeah. So when in doubt, double down. So it's been up for a week now. Yeah. It's been up since we used it last. So yeah. Yeah. About a week. I haven't rebooted. Wow. Longer than my home assistant set up. Wow. We're about to get to that. But HomeTech.Social, everybody check that out. You know, it's a good thing. And I would like to thank Matt for pointing me in the direction of Syslog. I've been thinking about doing that. I just haven't been able to nail down exactly how to do that so that's all right

you'll have you'll have a couple weeks off coming up yeah i might be able to do something i probably oh no you know weeks off have you i mean do you know what coming up like no well no i bet weeks off for like we're not gonna make you do anything but you'll probably still have family obligations. Yeah. It's not like you cut the lawn anymore. Yeah. I mean, you should have a lot of free time.

I know. I'm out there just, no, I mean, you don't, you have to go out there and watch him cut the lawn. The poor family. It's like Seth never pays attention to us anymore since we got this robot lawnmower. He stands outside with a beard in his hand watching this thing grow around his yard. And then the neighbors come out and stand next to him with beer in his hand watching this thing roll around his yard and then the neighbors come out and stand next to him with beers in their head and next you know there's four of them standing there watching this thing go around that's kind of happened already but yeah

daughter's like can you come to my event you're like heck no i'm watching the lawnmower lawnmower it's very important you're gonna do you're gonna do that again don't worry don't want him to fall into the creek all right pork pork lippy all right but anyway uh home tech.social please check it out uh if you're looking for a more calm sane social network than than what what was over at twitter um i think we're gonna have some fun over there with it and home tech can be you know home automation centric and we can talk about all that good stuff over there i think the home tech can be you know home automation centric and we can talk about all that good stuff over there i think the only thing missing at this point is annoyed richard

and it doesn't sound like richard is going to make it over i mean well i mean it's all the same at this point and you know it's just it's just not the same i think he he probably needs an entire macedon instance for his own like personality i say we help him you know annoyed annoyed richard was the best part of twitter annoyed that social there were many there were many richards um that were on there it was there were yeah it's quite it's quite interesting all right but if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week or great ideas for a show give us a shout the email address is feedback at home tech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form all right project update time i my project this last weekend was digging a my yard up because i decided to do that and then i broke two screens and now

i've got to rescreen part of my porch So nothing to do with home technology. You're digging up the yard. The fiber people are digging up your yard. I mean, now's the time to dig up the yard, I guess. Yeah, I did. I saw a guy out there looking like he was doing something. He was kind of like, he had a phone. A government worker. Well, he had a phone thing.

And he was walking around. He'd open it up. And I think he was just checking off the work. And I went out to talk to him. And he's like, I know English. And I was like walking around like he'd open it up and i think he was just checking off the work and i went out to talk to him and he's like i know english and i was like all right so but then he grabbed the google translate app and we had a conversation and they're supposed to be all completed by december 23rd blown away yeah that's impressive even with the hurricane you know yeah i i thought you've been pushed off like years i I'm sorry. I'm hoping that we can get cranked up towards the beginning of the year. That'd be great. I'm not going to have time to even think about it.

But if January rolls around and I'll be knocking on their door, they don't even have to knock on mine. Honestly, if they come to my door, I'll be like, I was already signed up like three months ago. So let's get this rolling. But yeah, Fiber's coming in. I'm excited about it. Um, maybe my bandwidth for this show will be a little bit better. So anyway, Gavin, um, I know that you have some, uh, some updates, uh, last week you were in love with home assistant. So this is, uh, this is, uh,

this is an even week. So you're going to be mad. Go. Honeymoon's over now. Honeymoon's over. So I ended off last week in an argument with my Home Assistant. You were sleeping on the couch. Yeah. Home Assistant took the kids away.

They pushed an update, and I installed it. And Friday, we were just fighting. She was like, why did you update me? I was fighting how I how i was and i was like but i wanted the shiny new stuff and you're always trying to improve me yeah so they pushed an update the new 2020 what was it 2022.12 right update and i installed it and everything was going well for a while going going great for a while, and then it started crashing on me, right? It started randomly crashing. And that went through pretty much the weekend. So the only way I could get through that was I set up an automation that when the memory, I saw the memory was spiking. So when it spiked to 80, just auto reboot the server, brought it back down. At least it kept things running until they figured it out. So a bug report was opened up on GitHub and then by Monday they fixed it.

They released dot three. It was fixed. They figured out what it is. They rolled back a library. I had something to do with caching in the video cameras and stuff like that. So now we're back in love again. You know, we made up, you know, I bought her some flowers, you know, and I'm back in love with my home assistant, uh, set up again.

So, you know, just playing around with it, tweaking it a bit more. But I guess, you know, before I got into Home Assistant, I would see the jokes about, you know, people cringing about doing Home Assistant updates. Now I get those jokes. Now I understand what it was that you were joking about, you know, like crossing your fingers, you know.

The thing about it, people are like, you don't have to update. But at the same time, I wouldn't wait too long because there's so many things that change in an update that, you know, the further behind you are, the more breaking things will happen when you do your updates. So try and keep it up to date anyways. But we're back in love again. So until next week.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's Odd Week next week, so you're definitely going to be in love again so until next week yeah yeah yeah i mean it's odd week next week so you're definitely gonna be in love something's gonna happen you're gonna be like this is the most amazing thing you better pick up a missile too i mean you don't want any downtime over christmas yeah no i'm keeping that thing warm you know i talk to her all the time you know she's been great we've had some good conversations um you know today she showed me dynamic dashboards so i was that was pretty cool so yeah like when i'm setting up my dashboard this is actually kind of cool when i set up my dashboard you have all your icons and everything but then i have it set up so when i turn on my tv then the all the controls for the tv

show up on the dashboard but when the tv is off off, all that stuff's hidden. Right. So it kind of like eliminates the clutter when you don't need it. I was like, that's really cool. You know, I don't know where I'm going to take it, but I can see some other, you know, use cases for it. You know, things like that. It's just so much easier in Home Assistant. You know, between you and Seth and all your tech problems, like I just I don't want to touch anything. You know, my Unraid server works great. I just don, like I just I don't want to touch anything.

You know, my Unraid server works great. I just don't touch it. I don't even look at it. And then my home assistant, it works fine. But, you know, I update it quite a bit as well. Every time I open the app and I see there's an update, I go ahead and just open it, you know, and update it. But maybe maybe I shouldn't do that anymore. You give it tough love.

You're like the cat person. You're like the one that wants a pet but doesn't want to have to look at it or take care of it. I see you being that. I have a dog. We have to look at that thing all the time. I have to kick it every now and then to make sure it's still alive. I think my problem with my Unraid was actually the same problem that Gavin's had, was that I had a bunch of automatic updates on.

And I think that was like, I feel like this is kind of like this, with this Docker thing that's on here. This is kind of like one of those, what do they call them? Like Rube Goldberg machines, where like if one's not running, it crashes the other. And I think that's what was happening like one would stop running to update and the other thing that was depending on it would be like wait a minute I'm freaking out something's not there anymore and it would it would not update correctly so I I I've established a lot of those and I can just do those manually and then like one at a time in the correct order and they'll probably work a little

bit better so hopefully and it's been running a week so you know knock on wood they're probably dead tomorrow but i always liked dockers that were self-contained when it had when it had dependencies on other dockers i didn't like that because some dockers need a database that's in another docker so i try and find a version that somebody made that had everything in one and then it would work a little better um something to keep in mind yeah i guess yeah well i mean but then then you have to go into that docker to fix the database if something's breaking i don't know like i guess that's that's the that's the power of this docker thing is that you can package everything up all in one or you can make them into like individual things and it doesn't matter because yeah ah very cool well i'm installing home assistant docker right now so

oh boy i'm i apologize um but you know they fixed the bug so in the 0.3 release you should be good to go install it you know let's get you up and running and you know we'll hear about your love hate relationship with her you, over the next week. Oh, it failed. It failed. Ah, that's typical, you know. Invalid tar header. I don't know what that means.

Well, we'll try again next week. If you're going to install it. Are you installing it as a Docker? Yeah, why not? No, install it as a VM. You need to install it as are you installing as a docker yeah why not no install it as a vm you need to install it as a vm as a docker you can't install the add-ons you can't utilize add-ons they have to be other dockers if you install as a vm then you could just click install add-on and it's so much easier so much do it as a vm all right it's a little harder to set up, but it's worth it. Should I use Debian? Should I use Ubuntu?

No, they have their own image. They have their own image. You just download the file, configure the Docker with the memory and stuff, and then boot up to that disk image, and then it goes and does its thing. And then you can pass through your ZigBee or Z-Wave devices to it. I don't have any of those. Well, you don't need any. You'll just discover your Wi-Fi devices, what's on your network.

My printers, yes. Your printers, your TVs, your Apple TVs. Sonos, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Your Rachio, if you have Rachio. Your Echobee, if you have Echobee. Those type of things. We're going to get the mower working on this thing.

That's the goal. The mower. All right. They said no API. There you go. But we're going to make an API for this mower. All right. You do some packet captures. I'll start the goal. The mower. All right. They said no API. There you go. But we're going to make an API for this mower. All right. You do some packet captures.

I'll start the code. I've got a Charles proxy set up in no time. We'll have this thing reverse engineered. Get those commands and everything. Yeah. We'll view it on the map so we know where it is as it starts to run up to Canada. It doesn't. Gavin stole my lawnmower.

Yeah. I'll return it next season don't worry it's how to join a cabin driving up a little custody battle driving up 75 stopping at tesla charging stations that's too good that's too good all right all right well uh tj any projects for you or are you just like trying to lay low before the holiday? Man? No, I, you know, this time of year sucks because I never have any of my own fun projects to do. I have everybody else's projects to do. So it's all the last

minute stuff, you know, everybody's calling or texting like, Oh, I got family coming in tomorrow. I need like my whole house redone or, you know, here's this thing we talked about for the last nine months, but now I need it done before Christmas. So I'm doing all the boring stuff in the, in the background that nobody cares about. Okay. It doesn't sound fun at all. It's not fun. You know, being a, a business owner is is not fun, especially during the holidays. But my my project will be heading to Florida next week. So I guess that's all right enough.

It's Florida, but it's still vacation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what? Orlando, probably. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

This will be the closest we've been together, Seth, in the past like three years. You know, there we go. I could I could I could, I could. I might even, I'll just drive down and surprise you one day. I'll pick the same day and drive up and we'll miss each other on the road. Maybe we can get some Jamaican beef patties and some pawpaws. Some pawpaw patties. We can't get our heads on right now.

Oh, man. Oh, man. And then I'll steal your lawnmower and bring it up. some pawpaw patties oh man oh man and then I'll steal your lawnmower and bring it up to the gallery right cliffy alright everybody that's going to wrap up this week we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who has supported the show using our Patreon page

if you don't know about that, head over to hometech.fm to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar. 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. There's been some interesting conversations in there recently i think azuz i see isn't mentioned in here greg is using maybe using home home assistant i don't know it sounds like gavin i think your influence is basically going to move us all over to home assistant so yeah we're just going to rename the hub the home assistant hub and that'll that'll probably happen in the future if you follow me on twitter you'll you'll see my rants about you know like twitter twitter we don't talk about that we talk about what is twitter you'll see my retweets from twitter

where i rant about this home assistant stuff. There's always somebody that likes it or re-shares it, re-blogs it, whatever the term the young kids are using now. I'm going to start up my own Annoyed Gavin. It's going to be everything home assistant that bugs me.

I think it's retweet. Is that what they say? Retweet? Oh, wait. No, it, it's reblog on Mastodon. You can boost it on Mastodon. Boost it. Reblog. Re-Wolly Mammoth. They, they changed up all the time,

but it's kind of easy to figure out. All right. Well, um, if you want to help out the show, but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review in iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice.

With that, that wraps up another year of Home Tech News. From everyone here, have a happy holiday, and we'll see you next year. Take care. Till next time. That was horrible. You can just say happy holidays. Yeah, you can say happy holidays.

I was going to say see you next year, but you took that from me. Oh, sorry. Geez. Maybe next year I'll come up with a saying. Yeah, we should coordinate this. I'll record an independent podcast next week without you guys We should coordinate this. I'll record an independent podcast next week without you guys where I just rant on Home Assistant for 45 minutes. Why can't I use the template with this platform?

We just need to come up with a home tech sidelines and that can be your rant section. I don't know if anybody would pay for that though, but we could try no well all my first world problems we're just gonna we're just gonna make router hats and so on that's what we should do honestly forget this whole podcast thing like i i'll represent us on shark we can have we could have david mccay make us some stuff out of a CNC machine. I can see Kevin sitting there going,

this is the dumbest idea that I've ever seen on this show. We have a million dollars in sales. This is the greatest dumb idea I've ever seen on this show.