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This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 14th, from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth
Johnson.
From Lewiston, Ohio, I'm T.J.
Hollis.
I'm from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell.
And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about AV, home automation, all sorts of
fun stuff.
I can't believe it's the middle of April.
I just, what's happened to this year? I i just i just blinked when i saw that date uh where'd the rest of the year go well it's so out of whack in ohio too because like this week has been like 70s and
80s it has been so hot and so beautiful outside it's like very strange for april yeah i expect
one more snow before true summer but well next
week it's supposed to drop for us we're down to freezing temperatures again next week at one point
so yeah i think it is for us too yeah i'm enjoying it while i can yeah it's 80 like mid 80s here like
we don't want to know we didn't ask yeah nobody cares we asked no no we didn't ask it's horrible yeah it's muggy as heck
you can't do it the iguanas are tanning we know it feels like summer it's gross clippy's been
fighting iguanas actually that's why we haven't heard about them yeah it rained yesterday or the
day before i don't remember you got some rain out there so well at least you're not fort lauderdale
fort lauderdale with their 20 plus inches of rain. No, no, no, no.
If it rained that much, I'd probably put him inside.
But when it rains here, that just means that the grass is going to grow.
Like the grass is just waiting.
It's storing all that sunlight energy.
And if it gets the water, it just like shoots straight up.
So, yeah.
When it rains up here, I just, you know, I stay inside with a nice book.
You know what those are, right?
Yeah.
We have books, right? Those paper things. Yeah, those paper You know what those are, right? We have books, right?
Those paper things.
Yeah, those paper things.
Like phone books, right?
We read some bad books up here.
Nice cocoa.
Sounds fun.
Guys, speaking of fun, I crashed the Mastodon server last night pretty good.
I know.
I know.
Gavin is my early warning detection system although i
i knew that that something was going on but he he's like hey what's going on server's down i'm
like yeah i was trying to upgrade um it didn't didn't work did it no i didn't i just find it
amazing that you'll upgrade the mastodon server but you won't reboot your computer
i just want to point that out well
there's some kind of like security thing that needs to happen but i can't install ruby 3.0.6
or something random ubuntu refuses to install it just as i sat there trying to figure out how to
get ruby installed the mastodon server was down and no one could do their social post things and then i was
like you know what i'll just roll back to what i had working and cranked right up don't even deal
with it i'll figure it out one of these days i i did i did use the uh the tail scale thing that
we were talking about last week um works really great for this because you can just go to um
usually you have to like open up an sh ssh port to get into servers and that kind of thing
um you don't need that anymore the vpn like just exists once you install it on there and sync up
your account everything is there and i can just open up a terminal and type ssh home tech because
that's the name of the server on there boom shows up it's really cool yeah i've used tail scale a
few times and it's it'sless. It's so easy.
I recommend it to my neighbors and stuff, you know,
and they should be a sponsor of the show, you know.
Yeah, they should. Let us know.
We've talked about it twice.
Yeah.
It's coming in right after that home assistant check.
Number one sponsor, home assistant.
That's a big one.
And brother printers.
Yeah, brother printers.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
Well, it's back up and going.
Hopefully I can get the next patch put on sometime in the next week or so.
But we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
Got a couple of things this week.
A couple of items for follow-up.
Remember those garage door opener things?
We're going to talk about those real quick.
Amazon Sidewalk.
HBO Max is not HBO Max anymore. What's it going to talk about those real quick. Amazon Sidewalk, HBO Max is not HBO Max anymore.
What's it going to be?
And so a couple of things are going to end up in my graveyard.
And we're going to definitely have to talk about those.
So what do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines?
Let's do it.
All right.
First, first follow up here.
Next, the garage door opener company, I guess, decided to take the security researcher's advice and basically say, well, here, I'll read the statement.
It's coming to our attention that the potential internet security vulnerability with the following products, NEX Garage, NEX Gate, NEX Plug. and as we examine this issue we're going to take proactive action
by temporarily disabling
internet access and remote control
for these products
so yeah if you have
one of these garage door openers that was a
smart garage door opener
that you could use an app on your phone
to open and close
it's not going to work anymore
until they fix this problem
not so smart you got to yeah, a little more limited range, you know,
compared to all over the world. You know, now you have to be 20 feet away from it.
Those Bluetooth home people are like, yes, we finally got one.
No, I mean, honestly, this is a good idea. It sounds like they don't really have a good
solution on how to solve the issue. So when you don't have that,
you take it offline and you solve the problem. And hopefully it's not too much of a downtime.
I mean, if you bought this product, it kind of stinks to go without, you know, the main selling
point of the product you bought. So it'll be interesting to see how long it actually takes
them to recover from this and when people's products will continue working if
they ever do again i feel like they listened to a show last week and really took our thoughts
seriously because this is this was pretty bad but i feel bad for the developer that has to fix it
all now because you know he's under the gun right like he's probably working 24 hours a day trying
to get this working again hey maybe maybe the response here is not good it was basically they don't have a solution like they they got bad press after being told about this for quite some
time and then all of a sudden now it's an issue and they're going to take care of it i i don't
know this is one of those companies that's that's definitely got a black eye i wouldn't i wouldn't
trust it to update correctly.
They messed up this bad once.
It's probably going to happen again.
I don't know.
Who do you think is going to get more flack overall, Anchor or Next?
You know, I was about to make that joke.
Like, where's the Verge?
Where's the Verge?
Why aren't they complaining about this company?
Where's Linus, you know?
Like, is he talking about this?
I hope so.
Yep.
Not enough clickbait for Nex.
You've got to go for big companies like Anchor.
Have they even come out and said anything yet?
Yeah, they emailed people saying they were turning off the online portion of their thing.
So you get Bluetooth, like you said, 20, 30-foot range,
but that's pretty much a garage door opener at that point.
One more quick follow-up.
I thought this was interesting. We'll just put this as a link in the show note. Amazon Sidewalk, we talked about it a couple of weeks
back and there was some stories that came out about their launch with the map. You guys remember
the map and we talked about how ubiquitous it was. And I mean, even I think you guys were expressing
some security concerns because it's Amazon, right? And it's Amazon, it's Ring.
They've had issues in the past, that kind of thing.
And I was like, no, no.
When they announced Sidewalk a couple of years back, they were really heralded as like a really good security-focused project.
And this article kind of goes through the concerns that people have.
Some of the, you know, like, oh, it's going to steal your bandwidth off your network.
Well, no, they capped it to 500 megabytes per month
and that's nothing compared to like what you're getting.
So this is a pretty good article
about like to address all the concerns
that may come along with it and all that good stuff.
So I'm just going to put it in the show notes
just kind of to go back and reference
because it wasn't just on the show here.
I talked to people at work, and the same skepticism about Amazon and Ring basically came through.
Like, oh, you can't trust them to do this.
It's like, well, it's not that.
You're on your own.
They give you a secure way to communicate.
And they're like, oh, I don't trust them.
They can see everything.
It's like, no, if it's secure, they say it's secure
and they have the white paper security stuff.
Like they won't be able to ever see what you write.
So it's one of those things
that just sounds too good to be true.
And I think that's kind of why it, of course,
Amazon and Ring being attached to it,
I think this is why people are kind of like hesitant
or cautious, I guess is a better word for it. Well, no, for sure. I mean, like overall, it sounds like a really good idea.
I mean, who wouldn't want their smart home device to kind of just work wherever? And one of the most
popular things I see requested online is like, you know, sensors for like mailboxes or driveways and
stuff like that, where you might not have a good wi-fi connection or like z-wave
and zigbee and stuff doesn't really reach and so like the the overall idea of it does sound great
i mean who wouldn't want that but yeah i mean i'm like i'm still a little skeptical i'm not gonna
lie but it's just it's just not a product that like i'm gonna use at all at the moment and so
like i'm not too concerned about it myself.
It'll just be interesting to see how it develops.
And like other companies are already doing this.
So it's not like Amazon is like, you know,
the only person that has something like this.
It's just, you know, like you said, it's Amazon.
So everybody's going to be skeptical of it automatically.
I think industries will probably use this more than the average person.
They'll probably rig it into smart meters that will work and they'll have you know stuff a way
to access and upload their data and stuff like that um you know and and that will just make
things better for all of us i don't think i will be using have any devices that probably use it
um so we'll see where it goes we'll see but it's out there
the network's there um you just gotta go people are gonna come up with the ideas on how to use
it and we'll see where it goes and the products have to show up too right um the smart meters is
a good example but i think they would use i mean they they already are in existence and using like
maybe zigbee for a Zigbee mesh
network or some kind of mesh network,
or even like maybe Laura or something like that,
like a low frequency thing that can just punch through and go long distances.
I like the pet tracker one,
like the pet tracker idea.
I thought that was awesome.
Yeah.
Pet tracker is pretty genius.
I mean,
it's something I've like I've wanted since childhood or I thought about since
childhood is like some kind of connected like traffic light system.
Right. And so you could put this into all kinds of different like road sensors, traffic light sensors in terms of, you know, like you could actually sync up traffic lights.
So like the biggest problem with cities is that it takes an extensive amount of money and programming and everything to kind
of sync up traffic lights but like if you could do this with like some kind of network like this
where it's a low cost actual chip on the device and it just does it automatically like it it opens
the door for a lot of different things and kind of what gavin was saying like i think it has more
use for commercial or industry than it does commercial products but like amazon
and ring is is kind of a residential product at this point so that's how they're going to get
their user base up but like something like this has really good uh things that it can do yeah i
just like thinking along like commercial and industry like you could they could have some kind of commercial tracking thing.
They have this now.
It's like a GPS on a UPS truck or something like that, right?
Those exist.
But it could be a far less expensive version that goes in and basically uses this network
in urban areas where you're going to have a lot of delivery vehicles to kind of like keep up where the delivery vehicles are.
You know, it's going to check in at some point.
It could just transmit its ID and the GPS coordinates.
And, you know, that's where your delivery is.
I mean, there's all sorts of ideas that could come out of this.
And the fact that it's just a free network that exists in just about everywhere everywhere at this point like it's pretty crazy
um it will be interesting to kind of just to see what people do with it so i can't wait i'm excited
about this one that's i mean the laura stuff sounds pretty cool but this one this one's there
it's like built out they don't have to do anything else with it all right uh streaming news uh this
is from over at c pro
warner brothers discovery which is the new company there has announced that will it it will be
rebranding its popular streaming service hbo max to get wait for it guys max that's it just max
uh this according to the company to reflect the expansion of its content that will be available
on the platform um despite the platform dropping HBO from its name,
Warner Brothers Discovery stresses that this does not mean that HBO content will be disappearing
from the new Max service. To drive the point home, the promotional materials, including Max,
consist of a tagline, the one to watch for HBO. So yeah, can't let that brand name go.
Despite the service gaining more Discovery Plus content
as part of the rebrand,
they'll still be maintaining
its Discovery Plus streaming service separately.
So it's kind of weird that
that's still going to exist alongside.
It doesn't really make sense.
No, no, it doesn't.
Doesn't at all.
Like you'd think they'd be able
to put the accounting systems together and like.
You are one.
Yeah, it's all one now.
I don't know
it doesn't make sense uh wonder brothers discovery has also stated that as part of the rebranding the
company will uh substantially uh will be substantially uh reworking the user experience
of course uh the rebranding of hbo max over to max along with the content service and ui updates
will go live on may 23rd 2023 so something fun coming this summer
you're gonna have a max a max summer it's gonna max and chill no it doesn't work as well no netflix
owns that saying i'm sorry you'll never beat that one but you know this is so confusing to people i
don't even know if we get hbo or we get max in canada i don't think we i did
a quick look and everything's about um using vpn to get it from the u.s so i don't even know if we
get it but this is confusing people like why i figured they'd want to keep the hbo name you know
why did they just call it hbo online or hbo something like that you know like setting it max and then you know they'll hbo
yeah hbo like whatever it's like we know what we don't that's the name right um
yeah and then they'll probably come up with hbo max extreme ultimate plus max you know
yeah like extra max you know they're setting the bars kind of high so that the follow-up names are going to be even harder you know so well they'll come out like a uh a subsidized with commercial one you
know they'll call it max basic yeah and then basically yeah not not so max it seems so many
people are confused because of all the plans they currently have they don't know how that's going to
roll into this new plan there's so many questions have, and it's just too confusing for the average user.
Yeah. Yep. I like they could they could they could also I'm trying to think like,
how will you find this service? Like, will you be like, I need to search for it? What do you
you're just going to type in Max and Google like I want to sign up for Max?
Well, they're going to buy a ton of ad space, right? So like, because you know, people are just going to type in max now. And so like,
where they're just going to spend like millions and billions of dollars on like advertising just
for the word max. There's like max. I'd like going through, like, I'm thinking like maybe they could
have packages or, or tears labeled after like famous Hollywood people or something like that. Like Maxwell Smart.
Chris Max.
Max Hedgerum.
Yeah, it's just like it is weird, too, because I feel like a lot of companies are doing this
where there's rebranding to like very generic sounding things.
And like I don't like I'm not that old old but like i feel like companies for the most part have
usually had like very specific or like names that you kind of just know like hbo like hbo in general
maybe home box office would be a good one like you know like it's just like just call it hbo like
we know that it's not hbo on the cable box like most people are intelligent enough to figure that
out just call it hbo like
why do you have to call it max why do you have to call hbo max just call it what your name is
bam done problem solved yeah it's so confusing but i did come up with a tagline you heard it
here first when you want to invite your special person over for some snacks and max oh wow
you heard it here first i'm taking that one i'm
taking credit that's the headline put it on the title of the show title of the show
but there you go now hbo is gonna steal that and you're never gonna get it at least i have
this documented that this is where they got it from and i said it first so this is a legal
document a lot of people don't know that snacks and max come on over for some snacks and mac oh
god it should be like oh i'm netflix the only way you're gonna be able to find it on google is
snacks you're talking about max you're not gonna be able to find it but snacks and max i mean yeah
the podcast is gonna be the first hit. It's a better SEO here.
All right.
Well, let's move on here to some Google news.
The Google Assistant continues to suffer at the hands of Google's product shutdowns.
The latest products to die are third-party Google Assistant smart displays.
This is from a story over at Ars Technica.
And I guess referencing 9to5 five google's coverage on it uh they were the first to spot a quietly
posted notice on the google duo support page important google no longer provides software
updates for these third-partyQ WK9 smart display.
This could impact the quality of video calls and meetings.
Ours is pretty sure that the announcement applies to every third-party smart display as well,
basically everyone that's launched.
So pretty much the product line is effectively dead at this point.
Google's first-party smart display is like the Google Nest Hub and the Nest Hub Max. Here we go with Max again.
They're not going anywhere anytime soon, but they also haven't been updated in a while,
but they're going to be the only options on the market if you're interested in Google Assistant.
I don't know. The smoke, there's smoke and I can't tell if there's fire yet or not. I feel like
there's a fire coming and we're just going to find out one day.
Well, I'm just shocked that Google is losing interest in anything that they make or do.
You know, it's not like Google at all.
They never cancel products or services.
This is just totally out of the blue.
So in our next story, Google is ending support for Dropcam and the Nest Secure Home security system in one year on April 8th, 2024.
Honestly, I'm surprised they've had DropCam this long.
That's a pretty long one.
It's long in the tooth, that one.
That goes way back from 2012.
Yeah, 2012.
Right, right.
I mean, that's a long time for an internet connected camera.
I'll give them that.
You know what?
They forgot they had it.
That's why.
That's why. They forgot. There are five people that have this right now they're like what's this
bill that we keep getting oh we should cancel this i i find it i've heard people talk about
google and and and their different divisions and projects that they do and and why they make the
decisions they make and it's it's kind of like if like if you step back and look at Google as a whole,
it's this massive, massive company
making just handover of his money, right?
And if you look at the little divisions that they have,
any one of those companies
would be super successful on their own,
like Nest or Dropcam, that kind of thing.
But taken in context with the rest of Google,
they're just a waste of time. But taken in context with like the rest of Google, they're just, they're
just like, why are they're just a waste of time? Like, why are they doing that? And that's why
they, they make the decisions that they do. Like some, the product manager, the person that was
the hero of the product line or whatever, that was moving it forward and had, you know, the,
the upper management's ear on it, uh, moves on or changes professions, you know, the changes out and
moves out of Google and moves on to something else and the product line just withers away and then
google has no problem google has no problem taking it out back and and shooting it because
there's there's an entire website which we'll put in the show night show notes about the
what all the things that have died at google's hands and there's some really good products there
that over time that have just gone away.
Killed by google.com.
That's a,
that's the website.
It's just,
it's just crazy.
I mean,
and I feel like it's probably just like a tax thing,
right?
Like they just get to write it off because it's a loss of business.
And they're just,
they're just like,
eh,
that's probably something to honestly,
that's probably like half of it.
It's just like,
yeah,
like we just need to write a certain amount of stuff off per year. So we're just going to get rid of this. It's probably some of it too, right? Honestly, that's probably like half of it. It's just like, yeah, like we just need to write
a certain amount of stuff off per year.
So we're just going to get rid of this.
It's just, it's aggravating
as like a Google fan,
like up until I think it was like 2016 or 2017,
I was like a heavy Android user.
And it's just like, I don't know,
like after a certain amount of time
when like the products that you keep using
and you like to like support and everything
once they start going away it's just it kind of makes it hard to keep supporting that company
like apple i mean i don't think apple is that great overall but at least like when they come
out with something they just like keep it around like siri and they just like keep improving it
well siri's a terrible example but it's effectively been dead for years but they're not gonna let it
die they still make it yeah they still do things and it's but like they didn't like come out with Well, Siri's a terrible example, but... It's effectively been dead for years, but they're not going to let it die.
They still make it.
Yeah, they still do things.
But they didn't come out with Siri,
and then two years later,
like, ah, nobody uses this.
We're just getting rid of it, right?
They just keep doing it.
I respect that.
But once in a while, a product deserves to die.
I mean, there's not necessarily perfect products all around,
but it happens so much with Google.
Yeah, it looks like I'm scrolling through
the Killed by Google website
and it looks like most everything gets about three years.
So Dropcam, it's what, 10 years?
Yeah, I mean, 10 years on that.
It's pretty crazy.
It's pretty good.
And so like, I can't hate them for Dropcam.
Nest Secure is a little more iffy
because that was like 2017, I think.
And so like seven years, it's like, eh, you know, it's kind of on the cusp.
I take that back.
A lot of it.
I mean, I guess I was reading the wrong thing.
There's it's a range, but here's some that are 11 months old.
Here's four years, six months, four months.
I'm sure there's a stat somewhere on like how what the average age of a Google, a killed
Google product is.
Maybe I can glean it from this. But just type it in the chat gpt yeah but like honestly like it comes back to the conversation of like how long do people expect their software to last
and you know really we need software expiration dates and that way it's just obvious it's like
this is going to go away in six years yeah and because the annoying thing right is like i don't know when they stop selling nest
secure necessarily but a lot of times when companies end products like this like they
just stop selling it like that at that moment whenever they announce it or like six months
before and so like you know drop cam has been dead for a while but like if they were selling
drop cams two months ago
and then today they announced they're going to end support for it in 2024,
you'd be very upset.
And rightfully so, because you just spent that money not too long ago.
Right.
And so like when a product is around for years at a time,
like it's not that bad.
But when you can still buy the product relatively recently,
like that's the issue i'm seeing uh the brinks was
was not going to was not going to monitor nest secure security systems from a headline back in
december 29th 2022 uh so that's probably 2022 sounds like uh their partners were kind of
knowing that uh that it was going to shut down this year. So I
guess not really a surprise since there were these stories about Brinks no longer using them and they
weren't going to be selling them anymore. But yeah, fun stuff. All right, moving on here.
Well, we do have some good news. And this is quite interesting. HomeSeer is now a member of
the Works with Home Assistant Partner Program. and they're committed to ensuring that their Z-Wave smart products are up-to-date
and ready to use in Home Assistant.
HomeSeer products are all Z-Wave Plus certified.
The smart dimmers and switches offer convenient RGB LEDs.
It can be programmed with automations to glow or blink in seven different colors
or when things happen around your home.
I guess if that's what you want to do.
Switches also support multi-tap actions for triggering automations and scenes.
So good product.
And it's going to be built right into Home Assistant now.
So this is really cool.
Gavin, what do you think about this?
Oh, this is great because this just means you get good support for integration with
your HomeSeer products with Home Assistant.
I mean, they work now as it is, but this kind of says that they'll continue to support it
and ensure it always works.
And if it breaks, they have, you know, contact to HomeSeer to get it fixed.
I like HomeSeer products.
I found, you know, they followed Z-Wave pretty well to make integration with things easy.
But one thing I really liked with HomeServe was their floodlight motion sensor.
I have four of these around my house on all my floodlights, and it just made your floodlights smart.
And I love that they worked really well.
So basically, yeah, it's a motion sensor, but then it's a Z-Wave motion sensor.
And then you can trigger it to turn on the lights.
You can control it with your hub. You can trigger it to turn it on at certain times,
at certain, you know, if it gets dark, automatically turn it on or trigger with a
motion when it's dark outside. I have these all on and I had it in my backyard. So
when one light was triggered, usually what meant an animal was in my backyard,
it would turn on all my lights in my backyard. Right. And that way I knew not to let my dog out
because there was a skunk or something out back. Right. So it saved me a number of times because
I looked outside and I would see like a raccoon or something out there. And those things are bigger
than my dog. So the last thing I want to do is let them out there with those things.
But to me, that device alone was like a different device.
Like it wasn't a light switch.
It wasn't a motion sensor.
It was something original I found.
And I really liked it.
And I think, you know, we need more of that in the smart home space.
You know, when a company comes out with another light switch, it's like, yeah, okay. It looks like every other light switch out there you know but having that that was very unique and very original yeah for fifty dollars
is what they are um you could and i think they have a two-pack for a little bit less than 100
um you basically make your dumb smart your dumb outdoor lights into smart lights like with just
adding this this almost the same sensor on, right.
But then it, it just adds that, that Z wave component where it's communicating with other
things. That's a really smart idea. Really, really smart idea. TJ, what do you think about this?
Yeah, honestly, I I've known home seer for a while. I know that there's a good amount of people
that use them. Um, but you almost never hear about HomeSeer in general. I think the most
popular device is the same one that Gavin was talking about, the little floodlight sensor.
It's just such a unique device, and I've never seen anybody make one that's very similar to that.
I know people like HomeSeer, I just don't know much about it. Um, but this is a great way for,
you know, home sear devices to receive updates in home assistant. And as we now all know,
updates are important. So any other way you can get an update is a good way to do it.
They have a bunch of lighting products. They have some thermostats, water valves,
garage door controllers, um, quite a bit of stuff here. i'm not i've never been a big z-wave
fan so i but i've known that z-wave products have existed in many different uh states and functions
like it uh zigbee is kind of where we played with the control four world and it's kind of like what
i kept my eye out for but in z-wave which is like nah we've got we've got that we've
got that we've got that like every every there would always be like these little this is a
shelly wi-fi switch i have to sit in my hand but there would always something like this that was
z-wave and i was like man it'd be really cool if that was zigbee it could be really nice like
i could use it one day well and you and you and you want to hear uh the people on the home
automation subreddit complain just link one of these uh hubs
i'm looking at their top of the line hub for 949 so not a uh not a budget system by any means i
mean they have different ones where you can get like a raspberry pi i think at one time i don't
know if they still do where you could actually just download the software for it and that was
like 50 to 100 um but definitely not the free that home assistant is
yeah so you're gonna be paying something for it in the long run but it's all locally based and
you know it's kind of the same philosophy as home assistant but it's definitely been around
longer than home assistant yeah i at least recognize the name and i don't recognize the programming interface or mobile app. Oh, oh.
No, last time I knew it was a little outdated.
Yeah.
I mean, this makes Hubitat look good.
Yeah.
Sorry, Hubitat.
But sorry, Home Senior.
Yeah, this is not the prettiest interface.
But again, like you said, dated.
Yeah.
Well, and it's locally hosted,
which is one of the more important things about a home automation system.
They could definitely use a UI refresh.
It looks like you can write scripts in VB.net.
All right.
YAML or VB.net?
Pass.
Pass.
Hey, don't hate on my YAML.
Don't hate on my YAML.
If you see some of my YAML code. Printer problems or YAML? I don't know. Yeah yaml don't hate on my yaml if you see some of my yaml code
printer problems or yaml i don't know yeah debugging yaml is hard
all right well let's move on here all the links and topics we discussed tonight can
be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm 431 uh we we have a uh a pick of the week this
week this is hilarious gavin i think you posted this
in the hub over the week and someone has figured out how to beat what is this deep state ai
on the blue iris project
it's a hilarious picture you'll post a link in the show notes but it's uh it's a hilarious picture. You'll post a link in the show notes. But it's a room of like four guys, you know, and the AI, the code project.
A server room, pretty much.
And the code project picks up three of the four guys.
They even picks up the guy that's behind the wires on the other side of the rack and identifies that as a person.
But the one person it didn't pick up is the one that's dressed in camouflage.
He's got a camo shirt on.
He's got a camo shirt on he's got a camel shirt on and
it basically doesn't pick him up and i'm just like it beat the camera blending right you know
he didn't even realize that he beats the camera all those good old boys near me
yeah can't catch me on your fancy camera camel shirts are now in high demand all of a sudden
you know they're selling out everywhere oh man it's so funny there's there's four of them working in there and this guy's just standing
there all of these seem to be they're surrounded in boxes yeah with the percentages on them 87
percent like yeah 70 percent person not even 20 this guy. He's not even a person.
They don't even know what to think about this.
They just let him slide.
Oh, this is why Clippy won't be taken over the world.
Just wear camo.
Get away from the robots.
It's too good.
Gavin, thanks for finding this.
It's hilarious.
We'll post a link in the show notes.
But if you have any feedback, questions, comments,
pics of the week, or great ideas for a show,
give us a shout.
Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm.
Or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form.
All right.
I've been crashing Mastodon servers, and that's really all I'm up to.
But TJ is busy because he's got so many projects now that he's done with his job.
So I guess you're going to eventually have another job, right?
Like you're going to have another one. Well, I mean, I'm like, I'm actively working. I just like, usually like,
usually my jobs are not like multi days or multi weeks. They're like, you know,
several hours kind of thing. So, you know, I like, usually I have like one day out of the week. I
don't schedule anything on Fridays for the most part. It's usually like service calls or like
emergency things. So I usually have one day a week where I can clean the office or organize or, you know, fun stuff that
happens once in a while. Um, but I finished the large job 99.5% of the way. Uh, I have a,
I have a battery backup, right? So I bought this battery backup brand new and it didn't hold a charge.
And so it's a trip light, a 3000 volt one.
And they sent me a new battery pack and the new battery pack has the same
problem. And I, like, I tried to like, just ask, I was like, look, you know,
I spent like $2,000 on this thing. Can you just send me a new one?
And they're like, no, you could have just got a bad battery pack again so we're
gonna send you a new battery pack and if that's not the problem then we'll send you a new battery
backup and so like i'm waiting on that now i hate it when companies do this like god it's so
obnoxious like how much is it to send me these batteries like you're gonna send me two different
packs of batteries and i'm gonna keep both packs right like it's it's obviously not the batteries like we can just replace the battery backup but
if if you want to keep sending me batteries sure we'll just keep doing that i guess
and the shipping weight they're so obnoxious yeah the the the computer that or the the computer
components the the physical machine that that is the ups is like what two pounds And then there's like 80 pounds of batteries that get added to these things.
And it's like and it's like a giant UPS.
I mean, I think it's got like four or six batteries.
So like it's like it's pretty obnoxious to like take apart and put the batteries in and
all that good stuff.
So it's it's just annoying, but it's not holding anything up.
And honestly, like the job site has like four different power grids.
So like they'll probably never actually use the battery backup.
So it's really not that big a deal.
But very, very annoying.
Everything else is done and working.
Is that point five?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just that last little bit that when you're talking about like, oh, I didn't know you
can finish a job.
I guess pretty much how I feel at this moment.
So I thought i thought i was
gonna finish it like it was like yeah we're done and it's like no spoke too soon spoke too soon
yeah it usually happens uh my second update is uh car stereos are the worst thing in existence
they're i think they're like maybe one notch above printers like printers for the most part are awful. Like nobody wants to buy
a printer. You kind of just own a printer. Cause like you have to print something once in a while
or you have kids, like that's basically the two reasons you have a printer. Um, but car stereos
are one of those awful things. So I have a little seven inch, uh, Android auto and Apple car play
radio in the van and it works fine um there's nothing wrong with it i
just wanted a bigger screen and i really did not want to spend a thousand dollars on a 10 inch
android auto and apple carplay screen and so i decided i was like you know what i got amazon i
can buy some stuff and return it if i don't like it i'm going to go ahead and buy an android stereo
and you know if you don't have any real expectations
on how technology works and like good quality stereos,
the Android stereo is not a bad investment.
And they're super cheap.
This 10 inch one that I bought was $200.
And you can't come close to that in like a legit stereo fashion.
But it just like, it just like everything else that kind
of runs like a slimmed down Android. It just, it's just awful. It just crashes all the time.
I can't even sign into like Google products. Um, the Apple car play thing integration that it has
is like super slow. And sometimes it's like five minutes of driving before it actually kicks on.
And so like, I just, I got tired of dealing with it, to be honest.
So I took it out and I was trying to decide what to actually put in without spending $1,000.
And instead I spent $1,000.
And I actually spent more than $1,000.
I spent $1,300.
And so I bought a kid with...
This is a Gavin move right here.
Hold on.
Well, no, it's actually Gavin and Seth move.
And I'll fill you in on that here in a moment.
No, no, no.
It's actually.
Gavin move would buy another $500 in speakers plus $200 in proper wire, you know, and a subscription service.
But what happened is like my through my one of my distributors i can buy kenwood products
for dealer cost and so i got uh dmx 1037s it's a 10 inch uh android auto and apple carplay radio
and supposedly they've done some display magic where it's not as crappy in like direct sun like they've supposedly fused the
glass and the digitizer together some you know magical marketing term they've come up with
and honestly like it looks really good i just got it in today it looks really good the direct
sunlight doesn't really affect it and it's just like a big screen it's 10 inches you can kind of move it around you can
move it up or down kind of thing um installing it was a real big pain in the butt because you
can't just easily detach the screen you have to like take out like eight different screws to
detach the screen which i guess kind of helps with like theft theft right yeah yeah i mean like if
you're putting together your van which has like one giant dash piece that you have to like put in before you can put the radio on, you have to like put it all together to like test it out and make sure the wiring is correct.
And then put it all together and then realize you forgot to hook up your backup camera. So then you have to take it all apart again. And it was a pain to install. But honestly, like it's so much better than the Android stereo I bought. And of course, cause it's like seven times the cost.
Right.
Right.
But beautiful.
Beautiful.
Um, the Seth move was though, was that I actually was bidding on the same thing on eBay before
I decided to buy it from my distributor.
That is a Seth move right there.
Yeah.
That's a Seth move.
And I got a notification today while I was at a job and it's like, you won a DMX 1037S.
And I was like, oh, son of a gun.
And so I bought this open box, supposedly not used, same exact radio for $550 after shipping.
And now I have to figure out if I'm going to sell it or put it in the wife's car.
And honestly, I think the wife is going to hate it because it like sticks out of the dash,
like because it's a big screen.
So like I'm going to feel like posted on Facebook
or Craigslist or something.
And hopefully I don't lose money.
Like, I feel like I shouldn't because it's $1,300 MSRP.
But I think you've lost money at this point.
I mean, like, God.
And I thought about just returning the one I bought
from the distributor, but I was like,
yeah, I'll just kind of ride with it and see what happens.
Or you could just use it for a backup,
you know,
like if something ever happens.
Yeah.
I don't,
I don't need a backup.
It's brand new.
Hopefully I don't need a backup.
So if anybody wants a really nice 10 inch Android auto or Apple car play
radio,
let me know.
Um,
and then the last update is cubicle 2.0 exists.
I am sitting in it right now. It's three walls it's got a ceiling it's got a sketchy sound great yeah and it's got some lights inside yeah and
hopefully the audio is a little better i don't know you know write it and tell us do i sound
terrible but you know i'm gonna get some acoustic panels for it. I got a couple other things I'm going to do. One thing during this whole process that I kind of neglected to think about was what my desk was going to be when I got done with this.
And so like right now I'm just using like a fold up table.
And honestly, like the fold up table is not a terrible solution, but it's probably not like a proper solution.
So that's my next venture that I'm not really looking forward to.
Like,
do I buy a proper desk or do I just like install like some sketchy shelving
unit on the wall here?
I will personally recommend the,
what are these called?
The Husky line of home Depot work tables.
It's what I've been using for six to seven years now
as a stand-up table like you can crank it up and down and i think they recently just came out with
another one that is uh that is actually designed like it's got different places that they have
certain parts then this one's not really conductive for having a chair that slides underneath it. This one has the new one has like a better wheelbase or something like that.
And it's,
it's made to be a desk.
That's genius.
They even have one with two drawers in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The one with the two drawers is what I'm talking about.
I don't know if I would use both of those.
Maybe I'd take one out.
I don't know.
Um,
I don't want to just be full of junk,
but it sounds like a good idea.
This is,
this is actually a good idea.
I'm glad I brought this up because I would totally buy this.
Yeah, they're very good.
They've held up really well, and they still look good
after six years of me constantly.
Now, one of the things I did do is I got the pole mount monitor arm things.
I got many of those over, over,
over the years.
I've,
I've,
I have two extra ones laying over there.
I've gotten them in various sizes and,
and used them to attach things to the desk and in,
in different ways.
So I will highly recommend getting those because you,
you,
which you don't want to have as a monitor on your desk because it just takes up
too much space.
So you can get these and then like float it back a little bit if you had to.
And again, it's a very, very well-built desk workbench.
I even have like the – I bought this high top desk and the workbench at the same time.
Maybe it was a deal or something.
I don't remember.
But they're great they they still look great and they they've really held up to some some
little a little abuse the workbench the the tool kit case thing not so much it just has been
storage but um the desk has definitely been used and abused i've got all sorts of like
i've got a 2ru rack thing mounted to the back
of it. So I can put rack mount equipment on the other side, like down on this other side of my
desk. Like you can put a couple on there. Um, I would highly recommend people do that if they
have a desk and they want to put rack mount equipment, like a little brush mount, uh,
thing for all my wires to go through and everything. So it's, uh, it's been a good desk
so far. I, I, I wish I had the new one that, that sits down a little bit lower though, because that,
that one, this one, I have to have one of those drafting table chairs and I'm not a, not a real
big fan of those. You can probably hear it popping quite a bit when I'm on the show. Uh, and I'm
talking and wiggling and the, the stupid thing will pop. And I'm, I don't know if I want a new desk and a,
and a real chair or just a,
a desk and,
and live or a new chair,
a new,
a new chair that doesn't pop.
Yeah,
definitely should get a new chair.
A chair makes a world of difference.
But one of the first things I bought,
I buy it for a monitor.
Whenever I get them is the,
the,
the mount,
the arm mounts.
Because just like you said, you can push it back.
You can kind of adjust it to the perfect height or something like that.
But the, the manual adjustment desk, I think I can get behind.
I don't think I'll use it often enough to get like an electric one or to like splurge
for an electric one, but like having the options to kind of just like stand up and
work would be nice.
So I've never used, I mean, I used it a couple of times to stand up and,
and do things,
but like the,
the crank thing,
like,
I guess you've used it every day.
It may get annoying,
but it's really,
it works fine enough.
Like it's,
it's well enough.
It's got a little crank that hangs off.
I think I would use it like once a week,
you know,
it's like,
I'm just kind of printing out shipping labels or something like that.
And I don't need to sit down and do that.
So good stuff.
Gavin, what about you? You do anything special um my printer still works so that's a big win right there you know another week another week
of printing i'm happy wife's happy still but we're not gonna talk about that but um so this week
my camera has actually paid off for me you know like the wife was always like you know why you
put these cameras up do we need cameras we live in a nice environment area and stuff like that.
And I'm like, no, they're going to come. We're going to appreciate them one day. And this week
was the week, you know, so there's kids in the neighborhood. They like to go up and down the
streets at like 3 a.m., you know, checking everyone's car doors. If you left your car
unlocked, they go in, they grab what they can, they make a mess. They leave all your stuff all over the front line.
Well, this week our house got hit. Kid walked up between the cars. My camera instantly noticed them,
identified a person, was in our driveway at 3 a.m., turned on the lights right in their face.
And on video, you see them jump and run and it paid off. She was like, awesome. You know,
at that point, you know, I'm not going to get questioned anymore.
I could buy another camera with no fear if I wanted to.
But she was like, you know, it was big talk of all the neighbors, you know, the kids that hit our neighborhood, you know.
But she was just happy that the camera caught them and we were, you know, it all paid off.
So that was kind of like a win in my book, you know.
Worth it. Well worth it, you know, it all paid off. So that was kind of like a win in my book, you know. Worth it.
Well worth it, you know.
The only thing she says is, I wish it was a little clearer. And that's kind of like approval to spend money, you know, at that point.
You know, it's like, oh, yeah, that would be nice.
So now if I see, I like the floodlight cameras because they're like one unit.
The power is already there.
So I'm keeping my eye out
for a nicer floodlight camera with a better quality and you know i i know i got approval now
is it what's going to happen uh if if the kids start wearing camo
they're gonna get right by it yeah not gonna see them
oh no i haven't said to pick up animals so we'll pick up the animals yeah i got animals cars humans
that's a pretty big raccoon we need to stop we do have some pretty big raccoons over here yeah
it's too good well congratulations and i i can't wait to hear what new cameras you you're gonna get
because inevitably that's gonna happen i we were we we were, we, we had like, um, a little alarm thing kind
of go off on the side of our house for a, uh, uh, a sewer pump thing. And so I called it in
and, um, I never saw the guy come up to the house and work on it, but I guess I'm guessing that he
did cause the alarms no longer running. And I went back and looked at, I have like cameras,
but they're on one side of the house and the, like, you can, they look that way, but you can't really tell what anybody's doing once they walk around
the corner. And so I was talking to my wife today and I'm like, yeah, I just don't have cameras over
there. And she's like, you should put a camera over there. See approval right there. I should
prove it. I should, yeah, I should put a camera over there, put it in the budget for this year
and let's get her done, you know? i have so many i'm not even this is so
bad i have so many cameras here i have a box i have a box of at least five to ten cameras of
various like various poe to like uh hd cameras and then i've got like ones that the office has sent me over time, like from Uniview.
And like, I, I, I just realized like, I probably have like 16 to 20 cameras. I have a PTZ camera
in my house. I've never even like thought about hooking it up. I suppose I could,
but it's one of those giant ones. Yeah. Send me a few then.
Well, it was all like equipment that these manufacturers sent for me to write drivers
for them. And then like, like, what do i do with it it's just sitting here i kind of have to keep it in case something comes
up but like i don't want it in my garage so and i i just you know i know i'm slow i just made it
to the dance but you know i just discovered poe i got my first poe switch um and i wired up my
access points over poe i have some switches over PoE. I love it, you know.
So now whenever I'm looking at devices now, if they support PoE, that's my new thing. I know I'm
late to the dance, you know, but I really see the, I really appreciate it. I terminated my own cables.
Everything works good. I feel special. I'm happy. PoE was invented by Power Design back in 1997.
And the first power injector was invented in 1998.
I was so confused when you brought this up before the show, Gavin.
I was like, what do you mean?
Like, yeah, what?
But how many people have PoE routers?
I just replaced my Dream Machine with a Dream Machine SE.
Well, most people don't.
They just have a PoE switch. Well, yeah. Well well i didn't even have that i have an old switch well my switch
isn't even poe i think my switch doesn't even support 10g you know and don't try and talk me
into upgrading you know like please don't no definitely i'm talking people out of upgrading
the 10g stuff yeah okay because i thought i was expecting you to talk me into upgrading my unify
switch to a most most people don't well most people just don't need that fast the speed all
right cool all right saving some money today don't worry i'll help you with that do you need a radio
we're using like 300 megabits per second at our house and we're more than fine and i
download a ton of stuff.
Yeah, I just got my Rogers bill and I was blown away by how much data I use.
But I realized over the past year I've been averaging about two and a half terabytes a month.
So this month was 3.3 terabytes.
I'm like all these cameras, you know, all these cameras.
I got to cut them off from the Internet now.
I don't think your cameras are the issue but listen i'm gonna say it's the camera and i'm blaming the cameras
let's go with that it's all yeah it's video and audio it's the amazon sidewalk
it's the amazon sidewalk it's using up all the bandwidth.
Man, well, good luck figuring out what's causing all that bandwidth to leave your house or come into your house.
It's definitely your printer.
Oh, yeah.
That's why your printer never works.
It's getting DDoSed.
Wow.
It's probably hacking my network.
I got to look at C.
You better look into it, Gavin.
Yeah. All right. Unplug. You better look into it, Gavin. Yeah.
All right.
Unplug it now.
All right.
All right.
Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week.
We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those
who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page.
If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn
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the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day
and talk about,
Oh man,
what were you talking about at the end of the,
I saw Lutron going around in there.
You're talking about Lutron programming,
all sorts of good stuff uh in the hub
this week um it's it's just kind of a little more active than it well it's summer so there's really
there's really not much going on in the news like it's very kind of difficult right now to find
anything other than google google killing smart home products at the moment but we get we get the
occasional matters not the live thing or a matter
yeah a matter thing but yeah um the the hub always active they're always talking about it and and we
got to see oh uh big shout out to richard happy birthday richard i i i think it's his birthday
around this time in the around this time of the year we don't really know when it is i i well i i
do i do know about where when it is i think it's i think it's friday but i'm not sure but happy
birthday happy birth month happy birth is i've got to be within like three days of making this
announcement so all right but yeah he he posted a picture of his uh his his stand mounted tv that
kind of had people confused so i was so well the way he described it i was confused because he said
he mounted the tv to the floor or something and i was like like, what? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I get, I get it now.
Okay.
And then,
um,
TJ posted pictures of his,
his big install that he did.
And great job,
man.
It looks really good.
It looks clean.
Yeah.
It's pretty,
it's pretty nice looking.
Very cool.
But all sorts of fun stuff there in the hub.
Uh,
again,
any,
it's an automatic invite.
So as soon as you,
you drop the dollar in the,
in the,
in the tip jar there,
uh,
you get an invite over to it.
And we're in there just talking away.
If you want to help with the show but can't support financially, totally understand.
Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice to help other people find the show.
That wraps up another week here at Home Tech.
Everybody have a great weekend, and we'll see you next week.
Till next time.
Snacks and Macs.