HomeTech.fm - Episode 429 - Sidewalk is Everywhere

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

On this week's show: Sonos rumors are popping up again, Phillips Hue delays Matter while Eve launches their Matter products, Google and ADT finally have something to show for home security, Amazon opens up their massive Sidewalk network for developers, Home Assistant updates, project updates, and a cool pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 31st, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Lewis Center, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home technologies, home automation, the smart home, matter, matter not matter mattering all sorts of wireless protocols i don't know we we seem we seem to like talk about a lot of stuff before the show here it's like we get to the show it's like how can we still have more stuff to talk about uh ty in the tie in the chat wants to know well the world wants to know did seth reboot the computer and the world seth did not reboot his computer. No reboots, no reboots.

How do you live? I think there's a Mac update that's come down. Yeah, I think I'll have to update my computer, which may require a reboot. So we'll see what happens. That usually does require a reboot, thankfully. So saved by the update. Maybe next week I will have rebooted

and updated my computer, but this is all changed. And I don't know if anything, how updates work anymore on the mac that's right nobody nobody knows how they they work anymore they just do them at this point yeah i don't really know i i thought it used to give you a nice little icon layout and then there was a thing that said updates and it had a little red icon next to it but now it's just a ios menu and i really can't find anything anymore so oh well all that technical talk right there like sounds so complicated oh here it is there's a search thing i had to search for software updates i click on it and it just now it's spinning checking for updates so it'd probably come up and say yeah you need to update yeah i will have to

update so there you go there's your. The reboot will happen next week. Audio will probably be fixed. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? Watch it. Watch next week. It's just going to be awesome. It's going to be like the most crystal clear audio we've ever heard before.

We're going to get all kinds of emails. People are going to be like, wow, Cesar sounds so much better this week. You know, my printer works. Don't get me started. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's get started started. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's get started on some home tech headlines. We've got a couple of stories that came up this week.

And there's some new products, some Matter products that are coming out and a couple of other leaks from Sonos and security things that are coming in. And we've got a really cool story about Amazon. So what do you say we jump into these home tech headlines? Let's do it. According to The Verge, Sonos is only days away from releasing its latest products, the Aera 300 and the Aera 100 speakers. Talked about those in the past show. CEO Patrick Spencer reportedly stated that Sonos will enter the new product, a new product category sometime in 2023. And now, according to people familiar with Sonos, Sonos' product roadmap, the Move Gen 2 is currently under development for release sometime in the second half of 2023.

So maybe we should see that sometime, maybe late summer or early fall. Who knows? I'm sure the Verge will tell us for their leakers that they have at Sonos. The second generation speaker, model number S44, will feature a design similar to the original device. And that puts it among the larger portable Bluetooth speakers on the market. But I don't know.

I've always thought the Move actually sounded pretty good, even at its size. Like it was a battery and a speaker all in one. You could just drag the thing out there on the pool deck, sit it out there when when you're in some music and then bring it back in and set it on the base so we'll be interested to see what they come up with a gen 2 of that product i always thought of the move as just like the sonos one just wireless right so i never picked one up i would just take my sonos one outside with me there was always a plug back there but i did pick pick up, what's the other portable one? I think they call it the portable. The Roam. The Roam, yes.

I did have one of those, and it sounds pretty good. It's very convenient, you know, keeping in the Sonos ecosystem. And yeah, I take it out to the pool, and I let it just blast, and my neighbors get a good dose of country music for hours. See, I never had the Roam. I mean, I've never seen the Roam, I guess, in person or listened to it outside of a store but um the i have listened to the move the move is a little bit bigger i think than the one um i think i'm it may have sounded a little bit better closer to the

three than the one but i may be making that up or i don't know it seemed to get a little more base than the one did the only bad thing i've heard about the Move is that it is expensive. It's $400, I believe, for the Move. I've heard all kinds of problems that people have with the Roam, though, and it's usually spotty Bluetooth. And I feel like Bluetooth in general kind of has that problem,

because if you walk 30 or 40 feet away from it, it oftentimes disconnects. But I hear it way more often with the Roam than I do with the Move. So something, I guess, to consider if you're thinking about either portable speaker. One thing I like about the Move, though, is that you can replace the battery by yourself. So that's nice. Hopefully they keep that with the Move too. And this new one will have USB-C line in, which will be super handy,

because I think line in is important on any speaker. Yeah, they don't have a dongle associated with the line in which would be super handy because i think line in is important on any speaker yeah they don't have a dongle associated with it like the well no it's it's a it's a usbc you know to to 3.5 but at least it's something you know i was reading in the reviews though that you had to buy a sonos usbc line in though um is it different than any other one? Because they said it does it the other way. I feel like I read on the Sonos forum or on Sonos Reddit that you could use any other USB-C dongle, but I wouldn't be able to confirm that. It would be nice. It's one of those like would be nice things. I feel like if this was an Apple company, the answer would be no.

But since it's Sonos, like I feel like the answer is a strong maybe. Yeah. And your mileage may vary. The answer is buy one and find out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you can afford the $400 speaker, then you can afford the $30 input card thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, we'll be cool to see what they come out with. Well, like it kind of stinks that you need a separate thing, but they're all getting rid of, you know,

the 3.5 millimeter adapter anyway. So, yep. Yep. I, I agree. It's, it was nice having that,

that input on, um, I think, I don't think the, I don't think the one has it, but I think, I think I know that the three had one, right?

Maybe it was the five. No, the five, the five. I don't think the three did the five had one, right? Maybe it was the 5. No, the 5. I don't think the 3 did. The 5 has always had it. And the original gen of the 5 actually had a line in and line out, which made it super nice. Yeah, I really appreciate the line in on my 5,

like bringing in my turntable to it, and then I can send the sound all around the house. It's a great feature to have. Yeah. Yeah, it was always handy to have yeah yeah it was always it was always handy to to have that pickup when you needed it like and just to get analog audio encoded back into the sonos network the sonos system and just like you said gavin played around anywhere you need in the house it's a problem solver i love that um well speaking of problems

when you think of matter you might think of delays and problems because that's pretty much all that Matter has been. But it shouldn't come any surprise to hear another one of the biggest names attached to the smart home is delaying its rollout. Reported by the Hue blog, the Philips Hue will not update its bridge to support Matter by the end of Q1 2023, which basically means right now, despite having promised to do so last November. So Hubog reached out, and here's the quote they got from Signify, the owner of Hue. For the launch of Matter, we were working together with many partners in the smart home industry. With Hilps Hue, we always focus on convincing quality to meet our customers' expectation, and therefore we'll take a little more time than originally planned for the Hue Bridge software update before making it available to all customers i will inform you

as soon as we have a concrete date for the release of the matter software update so yeah it sounds like it's not canceled there's there's some good news there right there's a silver lining yeah they're just taking a step back and first i want to say do not buy products based on, I always like to, you know, reiterate that because you never know they'll change their mind, you know, but it sounds like, yeah, these companies are taking a step back. I don't blame them because seeing all, you know, the early adopters of matter and what people are doing just to get it working. Um, it's a mess. Right. And the last thing you want is to release a product, you know, out into that ecosystem and then you know people just have problems with it right off the bat and they get

frustrated with it they're gonna blame your product you know they're not gonna blame matter they're not gonna blame you know whatever controller they're gonna blame the eve plug if it didn't work properly for example right so i don't blame them for taking a step back i'd like to see like the matter um what do you call routers or you know like samsung and all you know um i think even amazon they don't have it fully implemented yet they have pieces still missing from it i like to see them get all that stuff set up and stable first and then the devices start coming in and they work right out of the box yeah this is going to continue being the trend. I don't think anybody's going to cancel Matter because I think everybody's kind of just waiting

to see what it's actually going to become. I don't think we're going to see anybody come out and directly say that Matter isn't going to happen, minus us tech pundits that are talking on the sidelines here. But I think the majority of companies are just going to, you know, they're going to distance themselves just like everybody has been doing so far, releasing updates for previous products and kind of just riding the wave to see what happens. Maybe this fall and wintertime we'll actually see some products and life happening. But right now is not really a good, you know, cycle period for technology. I mean, what happens right now and actually gets released? And it's not a lot

in the technology space. So I think we're off a little bit, but we're going to continue seeing people postpone it and not outright cancel it. There's two things. First of all, we're pundits. And then second of all, I guess technically we are. Second of all, from a software development standpoint, they're talking about an update to an existing product and that is always a nightmare to do. Um, like when you design these, especially these types, little small hardware products, you're designing them for a very specific use case and like a very, very specific, um, uh, set of things that is supposed to do and no, no more. So when you update it and it, it goes into like, um, basically if it, if it goes, if it goes into like doing something that's unexpected around other things, then like you're going to have huge problems and you, they may be

unexpected problems like, uh, uh, that, that you've never had before because you're trying to do a software update on older equipment. I have no doubt that like Philips Hue will release like an update to their bridge, you know, in the future and it'll have a better beefier processor in it and just handle these Matter updates,

you know, just Matter be built in and baked into it. And same with the other companies that have been kind of like talking about delay. Like I think that's probably, instead of trying to wedge new ideas into old technology, it's much easier to start in their respect. It's much easier to start from the beginning and make a product around the standard that you're trying to make. And it's a it's a business anyway, right? Like, why wouldn't a business want to sell you new

products instead of updating their stuff and making it work with existing with the new standard? Yeah, I don't think there's any nefariousness to any of this. It's just a matter of like, Hey, we've got this great reputation. Let's not ruin it for just some stamp of a stamp that's, that's not getting as much. It's not getting as anything anyway. Right. It's not gonna, it's going to give us like a press release and that's it. Like why ruin your reputation on that? All right. Moving on here. Um, speaking of matter, Eve is actually, uh, coming out with a new thing, a new, a new matter device here. And according to the super popular iPhone in Canada, CA website, I've never, we have so much stuff from iPhone in Canada.ca. It's really crazy how much stuff comes out of there. Somebody must read that a lot.

Canadians are taking over our country. Eve Systems announced the launch of their first matter-enabled devices, and it's going to be starting with the Smart Plug Eve Energy. Those models are in North America, Europe, and the UK. They're already available now. And the Eve Motion and Eve Door and Window, those are going to be arriving on April 17th. Existing users of HomeKit and Thread-enabled models

will be able to upgrade their devices to Matter for free using the Eve app and the iPhone, iPad, starting on April 17th as well. So it sounds like Eve is running straight into the matter update. And I don't, it's kind of like, it's interesting to see, like, if you look at like Hugh, Hugh and Eve, I know they're like on different scales, right? Like Eve is, has always been a higher price to me, at least a more premium product. Cause they, they were, they were in the Apple store. So was Hugh, I guess he was pretty expensive expensive. But I feel like Hugh has a bigger install base

they have to worry about. To roll out a faulty update or something like that would be kind of a big deal. Well, I assume like Eve is a much smaller company compared to what Phillips-Hugh at this point. So it's probably a lot easier to do something like this under Eve than it would be to do it under Phillips-Hugh.

Yeah, and I also feel like Eve is the type of company they want to be first, you know, like we're out here first. We want our name to be talked about because we're the only product at this time. I was actually looking to pick them up because these Eve products are one of the few that are actually thread based and not Wi-Fi based. And that's what I really want was a thread based system. But then when I'm looking at the Amazon listing, I mean, they mentioned thread, they mentioned HomeKit, but they don't mention anything about Matter on it yet. So I want it Matter out of the box. I don't want to get the Eve sensor and have to connect it to whatever. I think I have to connect to HomeKit and then do an update through the Eve app to get it to Matter, the Matter firmware installed. I don't want to go through all that.

I just want out of the box Matter. Let me start playing with it. So I'm going to wait till I can get that experience. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I have one of these Eve door and window wireless contact sensors randomly in my house. And I use it on my, I put it on my daughter's door

so we can tell when she's like sneaking out. Uh, and she's only six. So basically we watching TV, we'll be watching like Mandalorian or, uh, you know, John wick. And, uh, and all of a sudden there's a little child standing there. So that, that was like, um, what we should probably do is automate this. And I have it set up to, you know, trigger in turn on lights in different rooms so that we know, like, lights that we normally leave off so that silently we know that something has happened and we can get up and check it out. And for a while, she couldn't figure out how it was working. She's like, every time I come to my room, those lights turn on. It's like, it must be magic.

The poor kid. She eventually saw the little sensor. Daddy. Daddy. The poor kid. She eventually saw the little censor. Daddy, daddy, yeah, yeah. Daddy tells me the lies. And it's like, yeah. He's going to keep her out of the forbidden closet of mystery, right? The one with the rack and everything. It's like, don't go in the forbidden closet of mystery.

And she keeps going in there and stealing printer paper. That's where the printer goblins keep coming from. That makes sense. Yeah. At least you have a working printer, but we'll get into that later. Oh, brother. Anyway, I don't know. I'm excited. I'm excited to

see. I guess it sounds like on April 17th, I'll be able to press update and maybe get the first matter quote device in my house, right? I should be able to because I've got a HomePod Mini, which is really the only thing that connects to that thread thing right now. And I should be able to update it and get on the Matter train. Good luck. Choo-choo. Yeah, that one functionality is just going to stop working.

Yeah, it's been rock solid for like five years now and then four years now. And it's like now it's going to stop working. Great. Thanks, Matter. All right. Well, moving on here. Nearly three years ago, Google and ADT announced a partnership. And today, they're finally debuting what they came up with.

It's a, quote, ADT self-setup. It's a new DIY security system. It includes a number of new security devices from ADT that can deeply integrate with Google Nest products. So basically, think of this as two parts to the whole system. First, ADT, you've got the home security hardware. And then Google devices like Nest cameras, doorbells, hubs, that kind of thing. So for the ADT gear, there is a door window sensor, $15, motion sensor, $25, a keypad, $90,

smoke detector, $40, and a sensor that can detect temperature and water leaks, basically a pipe burst detector, for $35. And they also offer a keychain remote control for the security system for $20. All those sensors and everything connect back to an all-in-one basically security panel where you need to, that you actually have to have to make the system work. The panel has a built-in keyboard, siren, battery backup, and it is $179. But today, it's $100 off for $79. Kind of an intro price thing they're doing, it looks like. As for cameras, voicella, Nest Cam,

Nest Thermostat, Nest Wi-Fi, and a number of the Nest hubs as well. So it sounds like a pretty decent integrate. They've got pretty much everything lined up with it, but it's still just kind of like ADT on one side, Google on the other. They're partnering by making sure their stuff integrates together. And there it is. They do have these things in packages too. So $4.79 for a starter package and a premium package that comes with a Nest Hub for $5.79. And they're all discounted $100 until April 3rd. So if you want these things, get out there and get one. So you said this was three years in the works? Three years in the works. Yeah. I guess they announced that they'd be working on a partnership back in 2020.

And there was a $450 million deal that was signed. Then they said, oh, yeah, this is going to happen in 2021. Never happened. 2022, Google committed another $150 million. So for, what is that, $600 million? They came up with this. This is what they came up with is 600 million dollars wow why google should just buy them at that point it should be like you know i'll just buy you we'll build your keypad into our system and we'll sell it we own you blah blah blah i hope i hope adt is not like you know just they only work with google products i hope they branch out a bit and they'll work with other stuff. No. And that's kind of been, that's been one of the biggest benefits of having an ADT system is that they work with the Google nest doorbells and stuff.

And I'm actually pretty jealous of that because I sell alarm.com, but the alarm.com video doorbells are awful compared to any other doorbell on the market. So like, I wish that Google would kind of go to other security systems, but I don't, I don't i don't really say that happened anytime soon unless somebody hands over a lot of cash i i gotta say

i could have done this for i have 550 million somewhere in there easily i think i could i could have made it happen you're not talking the right people it doesn't sound like i know you gotta you gotta stop hoarding your money you, like spend it a little bit. Oh, don't worry. I'm very well known for spending other people's money, especially at my job right now where we're buying booths and trade show spaces, everything. for wired sensors. And I think that's kind of a important thing, but nobody really uses wired sensors anymore. So it's, that's kind of one of those things that is nice, but is easily going to be not a thing in the next five or 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. No wired, wired system. I mean, I would say the vast majority of like new security installs are not using wired sensors anymore. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of them,

unless you have your house wired from the very beginning and have those, even, even then when the guys come in to do the takeovers, they're just like, yeah, we're just doing wireless sensors. Why bother testing this stuff out the maintenance on and everything. Yep. I see it all the time in new builds. I'll go to new builds where they wired up every single window and door. And there's like five wireless sensors on everything. So they just, it's, you know, it's a lot easier than, than working through the wires. Like you said, Seth, when I, when I first had my first house, we got all, we had, we had them come and install the sensors and everything.

And back then they didn't have wireless, they did wired and they would have a guy come in and he spent pretty much a day there drilling holes, running wires through. He was pretty good at it too. Um, and he did every window, a sensor and ran the wires to the basement. That is a lot of work. You know, when you think about it, when you got to do it for everybody's house and that's where the benefit of wireless comes, comes into play because they just come and stick these, the, the, the the the owner can just stick it up themselves you know and it all just works and they just make the owners have to change the batteries and stuff like that right so i see the benefit of it you know i prefer wired but you know what it's a lot

of work yeah and it takes what like five five minutes at most to uh program install and test a wireless sensor. And then I would say, I, if I remember correctly, sometimes when you get the kits for these systems, they're already prepared, like pre paired with the panel. So you basically just, you go in and, and, and you have one and two and you just stick this one on the front door, this one on the other door, call it a day. Um, so yeah, it's, it's so much faster than, than going and having to deal with the front door, this one on the other door, call it a day. So yeah, it's so much faster than going and having to deal with the contacts. And then if there's a contact bad, like trying to take that apart and like get the tiny little bit of wire that you have like inserted back into a retrofitted. Yeah, it's a pain. And most of the time, the battery life on these things isn't that

bad. I mean, like a door sensor and stuff can sometimes last up to five years. So it's really not that often you have to change batteries. It's not like a smart door lock or something like that. And Paul Ellis is saying, then you have to worry about batteries forever. Yeah, I was like, you kind of do, but then you kind of don't. Yeah, that's true. They last for years, right? And then the good thing is is unlike a hardwired system

like the battery will like if it's running low the system in theory a good system will tell you that the battery's low on that contact right and you know which one it is unlike a hardware system where the contact could just be locked up and frozen from a lightning strike that happened you know two blocks away uh and and just you never open the window and all of a sudden you go open it one day and you don't hear the chime like that's that can happen to all of them but that that that's particularly what happens pretty bad on on uh on hardwired systems so they both have their pros and cons yeah um but i i do tend to stick with the old school wired as much as i can but because it just looks better to me too. Like you can't,

you don't have the nice clean install with some of the, uh, the wireless ones. You have these big things sticking up everywhere. Well, yeah. And some of the wireless sensors they use, especially like the Honeywell door ones, they're like, they're ginormous. Yeah. It's like the size of like a Klondike bar on your door. You're like, wow, who thought that was a good idea? Yeah. Yeah. They, they, yeah, it's the, the alarm companies are very strange in what they design for going out into people's homes. Like I don't think they've ever been into a person's home. They're like, Oh, this must go into a commercial place. It's like, well, not really, not all the time. So good, good point about the batteries though. It's, it's

maintenance, maintenance, no matter what you do. All right, let's move on here. We got one last story about Amazon launching their Sidewalk Network, and this is actually really cool. It's basically everywhere. The company's Sidewalk Coverage Map claims that over 90% of the U.S. population can access the now public network. It is the U.S. population because it's It is the U.S. population because it's limited to the U.S. only right now.

Amazon's released the data in conjunction with the official opening of the Sidewalk for developers. So if you're a developer, you can get out there and get a kit and start playing around with the free wireless network. It's just there. It's great. Let's see. First announced in 2019,

Amazon Sidewalk is a new low-power wide-area network. It's called the LPWAN that Amazon believes will help enable the next wave of connected devices. It's designed to be as a long-range shared community network. It works over three existing radio technologies, Bluetooth Low Energy for shorter distances, and then LoRa, which we talked about here on the show, Gavin's got a few of those devices for long range. And there's a frequency shift key using a 900 megahertz. So there's a lot of different options you have

to get your devices online. And I guess the device can figure out what works best for its conditions. These frequencies can bridge to the internet using nearby sidewalk gateways, which basically right now includes Echo Show 10s, the Echoes, Echo Dot, smart speakers, and wired ring spotlight and floodlight cameras. Sidewalk was originally developed for a solution for ring video doorbell connectivity issues. So they discovered that since the smart doorbells were located outside,

sometimes on the other side of brick or plaster, they'd lose Wi-Fi connectivity from time to time and you'd miss some event that was coming off the door. Amazon found that no matter how good the antenna they put in, they would still miss alerts. Dave Lemp, SVP of Devices and Services at Amazon, told The Verge, we invented an internal protocol to solve this issue

and then a couple of years ago announced our intent to externalize it and call it Sidewalk. So that's where Sidewalk comes from. Looks really cool. It is pretty amazing to think about. This is like, basically, if you live in a city of any size, someone has a ring or a device or an echo device plugged in somewhere, and there's coverage in

your area for basically a free path to the internet, right? Like this gets a smaller IoT type device. It's not going to get you streaming video or anything, but it's going to get signals like a mailbox sensor or something like that where the mailbox opens and closes. That little one little signal, those little bits, could go over and have a free path to a wireless network that just exists now. That's really cool.

And I remember hearing about this a number of years ago. I think some of the controversy behind it is that they enabled it by default, I believe. And you had to opt out where people were saying, no, it should be something you opt into. But if you had to make people opt into it, it would never get out there, this kind of coverage. People would not opt into it. But it is kind of cool. You know, over time, you'll see, you know, as people use, I think cities and stuff will get more use out of it, if anything, for some of their technology.

I mean, I can throw sensors at my neighbor's house and know when they leave and go. You know, I could stock it much easier with this type of stuff. So, you know, I'm coming up with all sorts of ideas now. Man, you're just watching everybody's water usage, watching when they come and go. What are you going to stop, Gavin? Neighborhood stock stockard i don't even need to leave the house it's just automatic you know you know something more to add to my home assistant forget apple air tags we got laura yeah exactly you know that's i'm always concerned about the security concerns when they roll out something like this and what people can use it for. And, you know, I'm sure we'll see that in the news later on.

I just want to bring this up and just like, this is insane. Like, and if you're listening to the show on the podcast, you have to, we'll put a link to this in the show notes, to the coverage map. It's basically like every major metropolitan area in the United States has coverage. And even if you like zoom into rural areas, like, I don't know, like some random place in Nevada, like zoom down there, there are cities that are just basically blanketed with like the Wi-Fi or with this signal and Laura can still go what Gavin a mile or so like on its own. Yeah. So yeah. And without any obstructions, And LoRa can still go, what, Gavin, a mile or so? Like on its own?

Yeah. Yeah. Without any obstructions, it has some good distance. Yeah. So if you had a device that was just kind of like out in the middle of nowhere, and the next gateway device, the next ring device, I'm sure maybe there's going to be some gateway devices that come online later on that have like bigger antennas, because this is like kind of just an open protocol network that they put the design

specs online. And I think anybody who wants to get involved with the sidewalk network can just make their own gateway is what it looks like to me. They could do that and expand coverage into these areas that basically have nothing. And if I I mean, some of them are like, basically, like if you look in Pennsylvania here, it's like it's basically the entire state's covered, except for like the national parks areas, you know, the green areas. That's probably like Amish country too. Yeah, that could be it, right?

Yeah, yeah, out west there in Pennsylvania, it's pretty much sparsely covered. But I don't know, man. This is really cool to see how much coverage they have on this man there is so much and i'm you know if i zoom into sarasota i'm some of this blue here because i've got like two ring devices outside that are hooked up and connected online and those have those radios turned on it's really cool i i'm really excited about this this could actually be something good

that Amazon does for us here. I think it will help with the farming industry. You know, they have big fields. They want to put sensors out in it. It will help with that too. Right now, it's only in the US though. They haven't expanded to Canada. So I want to see where this goes. It'll be interesting. Stops right at the border. So you're just going to have to like pick up this guy on. If I go close enough to the border, I could pick up your signal. Yeah, right here. If you live on Niagara on the lake, you're probably pretty good. But if you're like, oh man, Niagara Falls, maybe you're pretty good.

But I don't know. Yeah, there's plenty of coverage. Buffalo is solid. So it's amazing. I just amazing to see this map. And like, this looks like almost like a cell phone coverage map that they've come up with, uh, as to like where like super, like the, the 5g plus networks are, it's pretty much exactly what those network coverages would look like. But we're talking like device network that is basically free for anyone to use. That's what really just kind of like blows my mind

is that it's free. Like it's there. Anybody can get on and use it and just have free internet for little device things to send a message. It's pretty cool. Yeah, and I think now it's basically enabled by default, but it asks you if it basically says, you know, this is Amazon sidewalk. Here's a little

information about it. And when you like uncheck it, it's like, are you sure you want to uncheck this? So like, it's still basically enabled by default. They just tell you about it before you get to the actual device usage. I agree with Gavin. There's no way they could have gotten this map if they had not done that at first, because people would have said, ah, I'm not doing that. But I don't know, even even with Laura and like they could have had half the people sign up and say, you know, turn it down or whatever and say, whatever, don't turn this on. at the end because of the way we know LoRa to work. If one person on my street opted in, I could probably have the LoRa mailbox sensor in my mailbox. And if it's unobstructed, just basically down the street that that has to communicate to, the device probably could do it.

But look at this. Lo and behold, most people on my street probably have, there's, I think I can think of three, four, just five homes within, you know, steps of my house that have Ring devices outside. So Paul is saying free for a low, low cost of giving Amazon all your data. No, in fact, that's the crazy part is that you do not have to use Amazon services for this. It's not, it's Amazon has no idea what is going over the line there. It's, it's an encrypted end-to-end communication. Uh, there is, it is, it is as they have made it as secure as possible. And you do not even have to use AWS, uh, Amazon services for, uh, like the endpoints for this. So it's, it's, it kind of, that's what's blowing my mind more than anything is like, you don't have to use Amazon for this.

Like you can use another partner, you can use, uh, Azure or Google or your own servers. And, uh, the data is ending encrypted. Amazon just knows there's packets going back and forth. That's it. I guess they would know from their devices that packs are going back and forth, but they wouldn't know what those packets were. You know, I feel like that's probably true, but I also feel like it might be a lie because, you know, it's like companies like Facebook and stuff know where you go on the Internet without you even visiting the website.

So it's just one of those things that's very hard to fathom, to understand. Yeah, I get that. But the way they wrote the security documentation is that it's not a lie. They have not designed the system to be a tracking system. They've just designed it to be like an Internet of Things, IoT basically network for devices to get out there, get online. And the fact that you can encrypt a message, it's just like,

what is it? WhatsApp or is it WhatsApp? Where you can, and I guess iMessage too, like you can do encryption. Like you send a message through Apple servers, but Apple has no idea what that message says in between. They know that you sent a message, but it's just gobbledygook, you know, as it passes through and it gets to the other person on the other end and they decode it and say, okay, this is what they said. So it's the same idea. Um, yeah, I mean, you could potentially use this for like little small chat devices, just kind of the same way, like a hardware base. They can have to have the Laura sidewalk compatible antenna in it. But then once you did that, you could just have, you know, type on a little like Palm pilot device and hit ascend and it would go to message and no one would

know what it was because it went, um, from one, one point to the other. It's pretty cool. I really, I really like this. It's, it's, uh, it's amazing that, and I'm kind of just in shock. It was just like you TJ's like, I don't, don't believe it, but I it's amazing that, and I'm kind of just in shock. It was just like you TJ's like, I don't, don't believe it, but I, it's there. Like every, all the information is there. It's all open. Everything is there for any security expert to go and read. And they've all put their stamp of approval on it saying, wow, they went all out on security on this thing because I don't think they'd be able to do this any other way. Right. If they had come out and said, we're doing this network and we can see your traffic and we, you know, like, I think people would have just shunned away from it,

but they've done it in a way that it's basically like, we're opening up a free internet access point for small devices to the, to the world here, to the United States in this case. And, um, you can do whatever you want with it. There's no bandwidth descriptions. Well, there's bandwidth descriptions on what the devices can do. But there's no like, it's an unlimited use case on what you could do. Like, you could have a device sitting there sending a signal

out every second, right? And it's just a little bit of data every second. Who cares? It's going up into the cloud somewhere and getting processed somewhere. And that's what it does. But man, this is really cool. I really think this is great. We're going to see some really cool stuff come out of weather stations, all sorts of fun stuff that'll come out of this. That'll be really great to go on this kind of network. And you never have to set up a Wi-Fi password on it. You just go in turn it on turn on the device it loads up says oh your device is online now and you're good to go that's how fast things

will be able to begin on to this type of network this is really cool i can't wait to see what people come up with stalkers unite well they have the little dog tracker things i guess that have come out right a little dog that that's actually a really good idea. If you had a little tracker on your dog, I would love to do that. Never be a lost dog idea. Yeah, we know exactly where he was. That's actually, you see, those are the kind of ideas I like to hear. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's made for. So you can put a little tracker on your dog, ring fetch dog tracker.

I guess they announced it, but it never came out. It's a little thing that clips on your dog's collar and it's it goes into it uses the 900 megahertz spectrum and i guess it never this thing never came out but it was going to come i mean come up sometime but this is the kind of thing that somebody can make it can sit there and broadcast where you're you know where your dog is within you know 100 feet or something because the signal went through this. Here's the GPS signal of where it is. And you would be able to see where your dog went and go find them. I don't know. This has potential, a lot of potential that I think people just aren't grasping.

It's got a lot of good that this kind of thing could do. And the fact that it is free, it exists already. It's everywhere already. It has better coverage than your cell phone does. And that you just need to get on this network with a device. You have to develop the device and everything for it. But as soon as you're on, it's on. You don't really have any other restrictions to what you can do.

So I'm very curious to see what comes of this and starts using this network. This is really cool. It's a really great idea. On that same type of thing, right? Imagine people that study migration patterns of animals or things like that, right? They could tag an animal and the network would allow that, you know, tracker. Like there's so many cool possibilities

and yeah, it blows me away that's free. This is more exciting than matter. This actually matters. This is way more exciting than matter. It actually, well, it is actually adopted and work. Like I can't think of another company that could have pulled this off outside of Amazon. Like, a ring, I guess.

Because they have so many devices installed. They put these low-power antennas or transceivers inside. Or, I guess, receivers on their devices. And now they have a massive network, IoT network. Like, this is just crazy. I can't think of anybody else. Maybe your cable company could have done it, but they would have probably charged you money for it. Something that would have to be on every other neighbor's house or every third, fourth home in an entire

city for the blanket coverage is what we're looking at here and i just can't think of another company that has that big of an install base uh it's really cool that they have done this well i know there were cable companies or internet companies that did something tried to do something similar where when you had their modem it had another network it was broadcasting that they could utilize for other things i can't remember what company was that was doing it but comcast similar type of concept yeah similar type of concept but it didn't have the same type of coverage right like this is just ridiculous when you look at this map it shows you how many devices they saw too does it i thought it was like just an estimation or whatever, like what it would look like. Well,

no, in terms of like the coverage, like there just shows like they have devices everywhere now. Like they could take over America. Yeah. It's a nice flex Amazon, but yeah, Comcast was doing that with their,

the Xfinity wifi thing. I think they have a similar map that you can go look up, but yeah, it's just like, but it's wifi. It's limited to how far away outside the building you can actually get on the Wi-Fi network, have it be reliable enough for you to stay connected and use at a reasonable rate.

And that's something that you could almost impossibly go into. I think there was like a place on the website you could find maybe and opt out of that if you wanted to. But yeah, they set it up in your cable modem or your cable router box thing, combo box, and turn it on by default. You had really no choice.

And people would be like, why is there this Xfinity Wi-Fi thing here? But anybody coming over to your house, you didn't need a gas network. You can get on that. It didn't use your bandwidth. I used it all the time. I still use it all the time.

Like if I go to a place that doesn't have good cell coverage, they may have the Xfinity Wi-Fi. You can jump on that and use the internet. Paul Ellis is commenting and saying, yeah, it was yucky because randos could just get on your network and do whatever. That's true.

I mean, it was segmented off. Yeah, but it wasn't your own network. Yeah, it was like a separate thing. It wasn't coming. The randos weren't coming from your same IP address. But I mean, they know they were in the area, I suppose, but they weren't coming. They weren't doing stuff from like your your personal network. It was it was segmented off virtually. So interesting stuff. I'm really curious and like I will probably look at this another story in another like two years and be Uh, I, I really curious in like, I will probably look at this another,

this story at another, like two years and be like, wow, there's a, there's a lot of devices that jumped in this. Or it was like, wow, that was a major failure. Like why didn't people do this? One of the two hedge our bets. All right. All the links and topic we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at home tech.fm slash four29. There's nothing in the mail. Oh, there is something in the mailbox tonight. What did we get? We got printer feedback. Printer talk. Printer talk. So we got this from Nathaniel Gorey. He wrote in, I have a brother printer on a Ubiquiti network at our house, and I have the HL-L2350DW. It's basically a basic black and white laser printer with AirPrint.

He says, I could not get it to stay on my default network at all. AirPrint would fail. I can't find it anywhere. He got the recommendation to create a separate SSID, like with your network name, print, basically, and set it only to 2.4 gigahertz we see this a lot with iot devices uh i remember ring doorbells and stuff uh he says he did that and he hasn't had a problem since gavin did this solve your printer problem no actually i got we got another email from uh justin and so justin sent me we got multiple emails you know what printers and home

assistants seem to drive a lot of feedback so we're going to talk about both of them this week but um justin actually sent me a list a screenshot of a bunch of settings to try and i went through my settings on my unify settings and there was one that he was particularly looking at called UAPSD. Don't know what it does. I don't care. I just flipped it on and I'm now testing it. So I'm going to see like over time, like I got to give it time because the printer works

today and it's not going to work as soon as my wife has to print something. So I'm going to go bugger to print something anytime soon now, right? But I'm going to give it time. I'm going to see how that works out. And if the printer is still on and working like next week, then I'll be happy with that. If not, I've been hesitating to do what Nathaniel's suggesting. You know, on Unify, I can actually set up a 2.4 network and assign it to a specific access point. So I can say, because I have multiple access points, I can say only my family specific access point. So I could say, cause I have multiple access points. I could say only my family room access point and make the printer always connect to that

one. And it has a 2.4 network only broadcast from this access point. And you know, it's kind of cool. Like I could do that, but I just didn't want to do that, you know, but I think I'm going to try that next. If the settings that Justin suggested don't work, I'm going to try that next. If the settings that Justin suggested don't work, I'm going to give that a shot and we'll go from there. I just, it drives me nuts that, you know, in this day and age,

we still have, I, you know what? And my next time I buy a printer, the first thing I'm going to check if it has, how old is your printer though? My printer is only two years old. It's not even two years.

Two years. Yes. But the thing is, is your phone two years old? No, but my printer didn't come with an Ethernet port. So next time I buy a printer, I'm looking for one with an Ethernet port because my previous one did and I never had any issues, but I didn't have AirPrint on it. This one is all Wi-Fi and it's just been a problem since day one.

So I'll try the network next. So let me do some testing with this. What's Justin's suggestions? And we'll go from there. But I appreciate the community coming together because they feel my pain. They understand. I feel like each one of us have been there at some point. There should be a community forum where we can get together and just gripe about printers.

Printer support group. Yeah. There should be a subreddit. I bet you there is a subreddit somewhere. TJ probably is part of that. Yeah. I got 99 problems, but a printer ain't one. Don't jinx me.

Yeah. I've had my brother printer and nothing, but it's been great. Other than my wife and I being able to print. Is it Wi-Fi or do you have it hardwired? It's a hardwired one, though. I always hardwire it. That's the difference.

I even bought a new laser printer for the office, and it's wireless, and it works great. We don't want to hear about your happiness. I've got to have some stuff going right. That kind of happiness is not welcome in our subreddit how old your wi-fi gavin oh my wi-fi is probably younger than the printer i've only had it like you know much younger yeah the printer two years like tell me a printer i don't even go through the cartridge in two years that actually makes sense right so your printer is so old that it doesn't want to work with the younger generation so it's actually your printer's fault you just did a new

one i see what's going on here you guys are trying to get me to spend money i know where this is going i am not spending money nope this printer is gonna work damn it so gavin we have a few amazon links lined up for you for a good printer now what gavin put them in the show notes what gavin's gonna do is gavin's to give this printer to his mother or something, and then he's going to go out and buy one with a hardwire port on it. That's what you should do. Yeah, I wouldn't give this to my mom because, you know, when she complains,

it's much worse. So I'm not going to risk that, you know, like... Smart man to say it. Yeah. All right. Well, hopefully we can get the printer uh thing i i've actually done that trick with the uh standalone wi-fi at single access point thing where the printer doesn't it just fix it to one just use as a printer hide the ssid if you have to and then uh you know so you don't have to look

at it every time you want to connect to something and just use that one printer to one access point it doesn't try to use roaming or anything like that it just goes that one access point and that's all it does and uh solve the problem next week i'll let you know next week yeah give it a shot give it a shot i think you i think you're gonna solve this issue i thought i did already well you you updated something something updated that was a problem that that happens with unify that's kind of like their uh their like uh tagline like updates break everything i think is what like i love because they'll push out other days i love my unify setup like i i even just upgraded to unify like the se right um i love it. It's very powerful. The stuff I can do with it,

you know, it's not cheap. But yeah, the updates are like constantly, I constantly get notified of updates and they're, you just never know when it's going to break something. You get a little nervous. Well, the problem I've had with them in the past is that they had like, they got so far with this interface

and you knew where everything was and they were like, hey, we have a new admin interface and it took away like everything and then for a while they had like this menu it was like hey you can't find your setting you need use the old admin interface and you have to switch back to that i think that's almost gone away now and they've got most of the stuff move over yeah but it's in different spots so like i can't find anything anyway so i use the search box a lot. And the search box actually works well. Yeah. Better than trying to drill down to where because they put stuff in nonsensical places

in there anyway. But yeah, I have to search for whatever I'm looking for now. Hopefully you get this figured out and we can we can follow up next week. More printer talk. More printer talk next week. See, we'll just keep this going. Reoccurring segment. All right. Speaking of segments, I do have a pretty cool printer talk next week. See, we'll just keep this going. Reoccurring segment. All right.

Speaking of segments, we do have a pretty cool pick of the week and we have a sea of segments. This is actually, DJ made fun of me for this, but I think this is one of the coolest things I've seen. It is basically a TV made out of those LED segments. Like you would see with like, that has the number eight, I guess, like the old watch faces, how they had like an eight segment LED.

Old timey electronics, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Hard to explain, I guess, but you can make all sorts of stuff out of them. Like you can make letters, most of the letters out of the eight segment LEDs. I think you had to have more segments to make like an X, right? Like the X had the, the extra segments in the middle and T's and that kind of thing. All the old, old school kids know what I'm talking about. Cause we had toys that had,

um, these segmented LEDs on them all the time, calculators and stuff like that. But they have constructed a TV and piped a little video to it. And man, I think it's really cool. I have no idea how much this costs. It's probably not much in electronics because it's all eight segment LEDs. And seriously, how much can those cost these days? But there's probably a lot of labor that went and love that went into it.

It looks like an art piece and it definitely, I mean, they've got a video on their website. I kind of put it up here in the show so we can kind of see what we're talking about here. But like, it looks really cool. I like it. Yeah, I was just giving you grief earlier. It does look pretty cool.

For what they've done, they have like a video of like, if you play the video, it's got like a seascape or something, waves crashing. And it works. Like you can, standing far back enough, you can tell that it's waves. Standing up close. It looks like there's a bunch of like number eights flashing over the screen, but it doesn't make any sense at all. Uh, but you can, you stand far enough back, the pixels all kind of get put together and it makes a nice little video of the ocean. So, uh, really cool. Um, art display. Let's see, how can I do this and convert this? See, this is when we need Owen

on the show. He can convert this over. 32 inches wide. That can't be right. I guess it's not very big. 32 inches wide by, what is that? 427. 16 inches tall. It looks much bigger in the pictures they have, but it's a 32 by 16 display i think they could have made it bigger and uh paul summed it up perfectly and i'll probably show a bit of my age but i remember back in the days when he used to convert videos to ascii yes yes yes yes that's what it reminds me of but that was what 80s early 90s around there so that's why we're going back in time now yep yep yeah i mean it's just cool it's relaxing because they've got the little waves on there you wouldn't be able to watch anything cool on like top gun or or you know john wick but you'd be able to watch waves crashing

talking about john wick man it's a good movie you guys need to go see it it's uh it's very fun very fun so i don to go see it. It's, uh, it's very fun. Very fun. So I don't know an art project. There's got like a little, another website that's attached to it. We'll put all this links to this in the show, show notes, um, about it. And he's got like a little thing about how, like how he built it and all of the, uh, PCB boards and stuff that went into making it. Um, but I, it does, it's kind of like vague on, on what exactly, uh, he like, it doesn't give you like a parts list or the program or anything like that. It's just kind of like, here's what I did. And it's got generic information. So, uh, I, man, I, I would love, I would love to make something like this. This is really cool.

I definitely do something with this, uh, and make it bigger though, bigger than 32 inches wide. That's it's tiny. It's the size of my monitor here. Anyway, uh, let's move on here. If you have any, uh, if you have any feedback questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm and it actually works it's the first time in a while we've gotten feedback uh the and or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right project updates well it is coming up at the end of the month which means another home assistant update gavin well this is this is much more than just a regular update we got two home assistant update, Gavin. Well, this is much more than just a regular update. We got two home assistant updates every week, but this is the month and they announced the beta

for the 2023.4 update. And it's pretty cool. It's got some new stuff in it. They've been working hard on the dialogue updates. So they're making the interface a lot prettier. So that's getting a lot nicer. They updated, there's some database updates. So you're going to get smaller database sizes and faster. So that's good to see that they're working on that. There's a long list of other updates, but two of the updates that I really like, and it's only because I've been working a lot with the coding, doing templates and stuff like that.

But they are somewhat incorporated macros for templates. And why that's cool is because you can write a single piece of code, you know, and have it there and reuse that code throughout your other templates. So then you only have to update that one piece of code and it works in all your other templates, right? You don't have to go through and edit all your other templates. So that's really cool. And they're adding some new Jinja 2 functions, which are also used in templates. So, you know, for the regular user, this may not mean much to them, but for people that develop, you know, things for Home Assistant, the interfaces and stuff like that, and share it to the community, it gives them a lot more power, a lot more flexibility to build nicer things.

And this is why you can have nicer things is because we get these kind of updates, right? So I'm looking forward to it. They're going through the beta and everything right now. And, you know, it will be released in the first Wednesday of the month. So they move quickly. Yeah. I, I was scrolling through all of the, the, the notes here.

And what's funny is like at the top, like they're going over all these alarm panels, all these beautiful things. Like here's the window shade interface. I mean, it looks really nice fits in with their, their design elements and everything, a fan controller.

And they show like how it could be uh how it kind of like scales up and down here's the alarm controller how the alarm controller you can disarm and arm your alarm system and then we're like well what's gavin really excited about he's really excited about macros or templates and it's all code yes it is and you know why because a lot of those design elements you can design through other ways. But it's the code that especially like with the with the dashboards I've been designing, they're all template based. Right. So it's really cool because I add a new device and it automatically gets added to all the rooms and areas and places it needs to be. And that eliminates a lot of extra clicking for me. Right. And there are dashboards

out there that you can download that do similar things where they'll auto populate dashboards for you. And those kind of updates in the code make things like that work even better and give developers more, you know, possibilities. And that's why it's exciting. Right. Because it's the back end stuff that make the front end look so much better. Yep. Yep, yep. I was just looking through the breaking changes. They've got a bunch of them in there, but a lot of it looks like, hey, this was YAML configurated before.

Now it's configured in the UI. Don't use the YAML anymore. So they're moving away from that YAML real fast. It's kind of nice, kind of nice. I like it. I like hearing about it. They've also been updating the Reolink camera support to support all the features of the floodlights and stuff like that so you can control lights you could which is really

cool you know if you have those kind of cameras they're they're added features like it's moving fast and it's moving it's really nice to see very nice very nice well that so so you're you're gonna get you're gonna get it once they do this macros thing you're you going to get pretty busy setting up your macros and doing that kind of thing. Oh, yeah. I'm going to be. Because I've been using it for the more advanced people. I've been using the decluttering card, which does something similar where you could put, like, code in one area and reutilize it throughout your dashboards. But the macros, I will probably get heavy with that.

And, you know, I have already ideas. I'm just going to give myself some time. Let people beta test it. But it's cool to see. Yeah, just do it in production, Gavin. It's OK. Beta test in production. That's what they say.

No, my house runs so sweet right now. We'll do it live. Yeah, we'll do it live. Yeah. No, my house has been running so sweet right now. I don't have to worry about it. So I just leave it. Nice. Nice, nice.

Well, for my projects this week, I've got this. Let's see. My little fan tray. We were talking about this before the show. It was actually really, I've already done the install. This fan tray came with, well, these fans came with the new server thing that I got i won and uh it was a beast and everything i started setting it up and turning the fans down because they just

sound like a blow dryer it's going off like six blow dryers are going off at the same time and um very loud well i got it to where they like ramped down and they were just kind of quiet like it's been running this whole time you guys probably can't hear it um because it's it's at a decent level uh right now in idle but the the one of these fans has a bad bearing on it so like when it was running real low the controller would try and like oh that it would notice that the fan's dropping down and like speeding it would push it up and then it would it'd speed down but at the same time you hear this nice little high-pitched whine like over and over again. So my wife was sitting in here because we kind of have this shared office.

And she's like, what is that noise? I'm like, nothing. I don't hear anything. But I knew at that point, like, everything is normal. I probably need to need to get a new fan thing. So I went online to get one fan and I figured I would just kind of swap it out until the noise went away. And I found like on eBay, $26, all six of them in like replacement tray thing that you can just drop it in

real fast. Backups. Yeah, exactly. Well, and now I can make the it alarm clock, right. Or the one that puts you to sleep. Cause it's got the nice little fans that go off and just make you go to sleep. And then, uh, when, when in the morning morning when it wants to wake you up, it just turns the fans off and then issues that beep and then you wake up. That's it. IT alarm clock. It's going to happen. This is it. This is what it'll look like, I think. Nothing wakes you up faster than the sound of a rebooting computer. Beep. Beep.

Oh, no. There's a lot of products the world doesn't need. I think that is one of them. I don't know because I can sleep through some major storms. I can sleep with TVs on. But as soon as I hear rebooting computer, my eyes open up like, oh, what happened? Is that my server?

Yeah. Yeah. I should make it, you know, set it. You have a little preference where you can set it. you want it to be like hpe server do you want to be a dell enterprise like what are you you what kind of server are you working with here are you working with uh yeah um what are the other ones that are out there cisco which i guess is technically hpe or something but yeah yeah um it'd be fun i i think that's possible i'm gonna i'm gonna set that as my tone for my text messages on my phone and next time i'm with my co-workers you know and i'm getting messages you know watch them all look at me every time i get a message

yeah it's pretty good pretty good so yeah we'll see we'll see what happens there i still have a lot of other projects i haven't finished like i've got the the um the range hood to go fix and i've got some i finally got my shelly replacement things to put my under counter lighting so i can get back on the kitchen and do something in there well one project you should not do is the daddy's home project from last week i can tell you right now that didn't work for you huh you'll get the eye roll the first time but the second time and any further time after that and the time you forgot you didn't disable it you know like you will get a stern you know it's the only thing i didn't like about it was the fact that i wasn't able to be in the room and witness the reaction when i came home you know because it announced it as i was driving

into the driveway so i was never there to witness the reaction but i heard all announced it as i was driving into the driveway so i was never there to witness the reaction but i heard all about it as i walked in the door and you know it didn't last long that's all i have to say it didn't last long i feel i feel like the problem with that though right is that every time that she heard that she was like oh well my printer is not working so i'm not really sure why he's home at the moment but maybe if the printer was working then it wouldn't be that big a deal cabin she's probably like you could get this working but not the printer the printer is so simple all it does is print things that's so funny i can't believe you did that you're gonna have fun with it sometimes and it was short-lived

very short-lived it sounds well if you get your printer working again maybe you can have it just print off a page that says daddy's home every time oh every time i come that way it's on a page that way when she goes to use the printer and she gets the she gets printed off you know she goes to pick it up she's's like, Daddy's home. What? Oh, that way she knows it worked, too. Like, it's just like a health check, if you will, for your printer. And she'll just hear the printer running.

She'll be like, what did I print and run to the printer? It'll be like, Daddy's home. It's going to be the new Rick roll. Yeah, it's going to be the new Rick roll of the house. Random things saying Daddy's home. TV turns turns on the screensaver is daddy's home oh i'm gonna get in trouble yeah yeah i think you will so next week i'll be single of course you know single no more printer problems be broadcasting from a bachelor pad yeah a whole new house to integrate just you and your rack oh yeah i could just have it play the noise of a printer as paul

said whenever she prints something if it doesn't work just play it play the noise of a printer. As Paul said, whenever she prints something, if it doesn't work, just play the printing noise. So the printer's not working, but she heard it working. You will be single. It's out of paper. That's why. Well, I mean, one of the things your home assistant can do is tell you how much paper is left in your printer, which is just mind blowing. Like, I don't know why it does that, but I've got a variable that will tell me if my printer has paper. So good.

It tells me how much ink's left and stuff like that, but not how much paper is left. Yeah, it's only available on the hardwired brother printers, probably. We'll get you. Well, TJ, you've been kind of quiet. Have you had some projects that you've been up to lately? You're still in the middle of big jobs, right? You're still've been kind of quiet. Have you had some projects that you've been up to lately? Or you're still in the middle of big jobs, right? You're still doing that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm still in the middle of that large project.

And as always, I'm waiting on the IT people to do their things. So we're about, I think, like a week behind on the project. But for once, it's not the AV people's fault, right? And the AV people aren't getting blamed for it, which yeah, it never happens. I was honestly shocked. We, we met with the, uh, the contractor and the building owner or the, uh, the suite owner today. And he was like, Oh, you know, he's doing good. All his stuff's kind of done. And you know, they've been on time and everything. And I was like, wait a minute, can I record this real quick? Like I need to show people this. But now I got, I got most of the

stuff done. I got to go back tomorrow to wire up some speakers and then next week to actually program everything. But you know, we got all the shades installed and it's, it's so nice when people see your work and they're just like, man, that looks really nice. You know, I got the, the automatic Lutron shades installed, got the upper and lower limit set. So, you know, when you close them and open them, they open and close at the exact same time, all the upper and lower limits set. So, you know, when you close them and open them, they open and close at the exact same time, all 13 of them. And it's just, it's getting there, but it's not quite there yet. Nice, nice. It sounds awesome.

You'll be done soon, soon. You'll be done faster than the IT guy, it sounds like. Soon. Yeah, supposedly they'll be done Friday, but the problem is that they're supposed to move in next Monday. So can't really use conference room equipment if there is no network. So yeah, yeah, that's that's all. So the so basically, it is ending up like every install, like everybody finishes on Friday, and then the AV guy gets to go and finish his stuff. But it's Friday. So that means you get all weekend there, right? Is that what it sounds like to you? Oh, no. Well, they're not open on the weekend.

So you definitely don't get the weekend. So you have basically Monday morning before everybody shows up. No. So I've let everybody know that I'm not coming in Monday at all because I already have prior commitments. And I will be in Tuesday and Wednesday to program everything. But it will get programmed when it gets programmed. So I have made it very clear in multiple emails and in bold print that, uh,

there is nothing I can do. It's got bold highlighted. Like, Oh my gosh. It is like, like the most like useless it company ever. They like, they,

they stripped a rack screw somehow. So I can't even like move their equipment down where I need to. They were asking me how to like mount access points to like metal boxes and stuff. They mounted these beautiful Cisco white access points everywhere and they're just covered in like black handprints. So it's just, that part is not going smooth at all.

So everything else has been mostly all right. I'm sure there'll be no more problems with them now. Like, Oh, probably not. I mean, they're still waiting on an inspection, but inspections go pretty quick. I mean, with the network you'll have to inevitably use and yeah. Oh, probably not. I mean, they're still waiting on an inspection, but inspections go pretty quick.

I mean, with the network, you'll have to inevitably use. Oh, well. Yeah. All right. Well, that's fun. We'll have to revisit that next week and see where you are. Hopefully, you'll be all done, though. In two weeks, I'll either be rolling in a lot of money or I'll be dead.

So if I'm still on the show in two weeks, then I'm rolling in money. It's a little canary for us to look forward to. All right. Well, if that wraps up this week, but we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show and especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support so you can learn how to support H tech for as little as a dollar any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a shout out here on the show but every pledge gives you an invite to our private slash at the hud where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and chat about i what was in there today it was uh theater risers and how to set those up and i saw a little owen drawing dropped in and greg was going

back and forth with him. So kind of cool. Good info pops in there from time to time. But if you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That wraps up another week of news here on Home Tech. We will see you next week. Take care. Until we meet again.

I only pick one of you guys every week. I'm not sure. Whoever has the best, let's do it. That's who gets to win. Wow. That's a secret. I learned something new this week. I didn't realize we were in a competition. If you just listened to the show, you would know that know that no i don't want to listen to myself talk i'm like my wife you know i want to hear myself well just in case um let's do it oh that's all right i can't i can't compete