HomeTech.fm - Episode 438 - Saving is not Fun

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

This week on HomeTech: Google gets hit with a $32m reason to stop infringing on Sonos patents, URC launches an all-new, familiar looking for some reason lighting control system, a new app brings intercom to Sonos speakers, no more fun celebrity voices on Alexa, and Level starts eyeing the apartment market with a new doorbell intercom. All this, a pick of the week, a massive amount of project updates, and more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 2nd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Holst. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast where we talk about home automation, home technology, all the fun stuff. Anybody keeping an eye on what this little company Apple is doing? Apple? We're a podcast, so we're like legally required to talk about whatever Apple is doing, I think.

Because literally everybody else is talking about Apple VR right now and how it's like, I'm sure by the time I edit this show, it'll be out and we'll be like, oh, that was a waste of time. But I don't know. You guys excited about the Apple vr product personally no uh every podcast has been talking about it and i just heard the predicted price ranges of these things they were saying two to three thousand dollars and then even worse those price ranges were us dollars so it even hit me even more and from the time i just heard that number i'm like no thanks when this thing's like more expensive than my car right now

uh i can't i can't even justify i'm not even looking i'm not even excited about vr you know augmented reality uh i like i see a lot of use for that but vr i'm just not excited for it and i keep talking about it at work like they're trying to make it a thing at work. But I just don't see myself walking into meetings in my VR headset and stuff like that at work either. I don't know what they're trying to do. Yeah, the only appealing thing out of this to me sounds like it's the actual AR. I've always envisioned ever since Google Glass was released, I've kind of envisioned being at work or being somewhere and pulling up a manual for a product you're looking at

or showing somebody what a piece of furniture actually looks like in their house or something utility like that. I don't know if I would use it in my personal life, but I definitely see all kinds of work applications for it. I've often thought about some kind of like AR or VR desk setup. I think there's a bunch of those out there right now. A lot of people actually use them where they use a VR goggles. They sit down at a desk with a keyboard.

There's no monitor. But when they put the headset on, it kind of like just projects different monitors, different displays, or not even the concept of monitors. You're just programs are just running there in thin air and you're able to interact with them just like a computer. That seems like an interesting idea. It'll get you a bigger computer screen, I think, than you need because it's like 360, whichever way you want to look. There's the data you're going to work on. I don't know it that all seems kind of like over the top than what i think i'd actually need just just to work on which

is just a laptop computer right it's really all i need to get by with so i don't know it'll be interesting to see what they come out with this thing with on it's like it's a monday 1 p.m eastern um maybe we'll throw a link to like a watch party or something in the uh the hub so if you're in there and and if this show is released and published before then uh you'll know but if you're in the hub uh at least you you can join us there and we can kind of like watch it all the same to get same time together so that should be fun that's always fun and i'd just like to say from now you you know, it was great with having that watch party with the guys in the hub. You know, we had a great time, you know,

because I know this show is coming out after we do that. Thanks, Gavin. I have no faith in you, Seth. We'll see what happens. We all have things going on. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's end of the year, school graduation time. It's kind of a big deal for a kindergartner.

It's vacation time and everything else. Exactly. So when all that settles down, we'll be able to get past all this and have shows released on a normal time. But summer's hard. WWDC next week. The week after is the big week week that tj and i will be in the same town info com we'll have to edit that in in post but um yeah that that'll be fun

i can't remember my booth number geez i think it's like 4866 or 4688. One of the two. So many numbers. Yeah, I don't know. It's on the back. There's not that many booths there, is there? Why are there numbers? There's a bunch. Infocom is actually pretty big. They have 5,000 booths at Infocom? No, no, no, no. The numbers are all just made up, but

we're in the back. That's what I thought. It's like rows and columns and all that. I don't even know how they come up with the numbers, but we have a little small booth. It's in the back that's what i thought yeah okay it's like rows and columns and all that i don't even know how they come up with the numbers but we have a little small booth it's in the back we'll be chilling there if you if you're if you happen to be an infocom you want to stop by and say hi i'll be there at the blackwire booth one day i'll get the booth number right i should know this i purchased it maybe next week oh well that's all right i'm i'm only going for one day whatever the day that actually opens what is it wednesday i think i think they're open for a couple days before that for like training and

stuff like that but i want to go to the first day of the actual convention so i'll be there won't be there after that i'll be walking around i'll definitely stop by black wire design at some point i'll be stopping at d10 um and a couple other places around there. So there it is. Forty six. Eighty eight. Forty six. Eighty eight. Be there, be square. Well, I won't remember that or write it down.

So I'll see you at some point. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll meet at a Panera to report the podcast. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Nice and loud. Someplace nice and loud where they're closing. That's right.

Slamming garage doors and that kind of thing. Perfect. All right. Well, a bunch of news this week in the Home Tech Headlines. What do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. Google has been hit by a $32.5 million penalty for infringing on a patent held by Sonos.

We've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but finally, a California federal jury has ordered the fine be paid after determining Google infringed on a patent that Sonos holds relating to grouping speakers together so they can play audio at the same time. That's basically something Google has been doing for years. And I guess they just copied the way Sonos was. The U.S. district judge had already determined that early versions of products like the Chromecast Audio, Google Home, infringed on this patent. The question was basically like, how much is this all going to cost?

And the jury kind of like went both ways. There was one patent that relates to controlling devices with a smartphone or another device that the jury said, eh, not violated. But the jury chose to set a royalty rate of $2.30 per unit. And I guess Google had apparently revealed it sold 14,133,558 units of products that infringe on the Sonos patent. So you multiply those two together and you get to that $32.5 million amount. And it will be interesting how this moves forward. There's a bunch of lawsuits still kind of going on.

Google has countersued Sonos for some other patents that it says that Sonos is violated. This is all going back and forth. And I'm sure the lawyers are really happy about this verdict and there'll be other fines and penalties coming soon. But in the meantime, I still don't think that there's too much like going on between Google and Sonos, right? Like, I think still kind of the products are handicapped and not really working well between each other. Hopefully, they can work all of these issues out and move forward away from this messy, messy lawsuit stuff. Yeah, this has been going on for a little bit now. And just a reminder, too, that when Sonos said that they were doing this, they basically stated that Google and Amazon had

both infringed upon the patents. And so I'm really curious to see if they go after Amazon right after all this gets done. And we're talking years at this point, because now Google has countersued Sonos. Google's suing Google, Sonos is suing Sonos, everybody's suing everybody else. So this is going to go on for quite a while. I'm interested to see what actually happens. But $32 million really isn't that much. I'd be curious to know what Sonos actually wanted for the licensing for the patent compared to this fine, though. And the whole thing I don't like about this is in the end, the people that win are actually the lawyers.

And the people that lose out on everything is the users, you know, the end users, because you're losing features now that you probably had at one point or you liked at one point. So I understand patents, but sometimes these patents are just so dumb, like grouping speakers. I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that. But now I guess you can't group speakers the same way on your Google products and you lose that feature. Kind of sucks. Just not exactly how Sonos was doing it, I suppose. Or you pay Sonos the license and you're good to go. Yeah.

This is what's really funny. A Google spokesperson told Reuters that the case was just a, quote, narrow dispute about some very specific features that are not commonly used. So I guess grouping speakers and it's not commonly used between your Chromecast. Yeah, never, never used. But I think they've, they've mostly, Google has mostly been working around Sonos patents and releasing the same, the products that are non-infringing. So that's been going on for quite some time. I mean, this lawsuit has been going on for quite some time. But at least that Google has started to move that direction.

This may not be an issue going on in the future. And we'll have feature parity again from what it used to be. Kind of shady, I guess, you know, because Google is like a behemoth of a company and Sonos is not. Sonos is big, right? We know Sonos is like, I want to say they're like a billion dollar company or $3 billion. I think they have like $3 billion in revenue or something like that. Not sure. But they're much smaller than Google, right? Like Google is one of those tens of billions of dollars in revenue companies. And Sonos is just like a small fish in the pond compared to them.

So it is nice to see, I guess, the little guy win, even though the little guy is not that little in this case. They're littler, if that's a word. Well, yeah, definitely. I mean, Google could have easily just paid for everything and this wouldn't have been a problem. But they knew that, I mean, I'm assuming the fine is actually less than what Sonos actually wanted, especially if the jury isn't deciding with Sonos that they violated more patents. So, you know, Google at this point probably has already saved money compared to what Sonos is going to charge them to use all these. Yeah, it just looks bad, right? Like, I mean, this is not something that's good.

It's like anybody could bring one of these chargers forward and say, well, Google's been caught before. And in the point of these cases, it's just it's I forget what they call it, dicta or something. And in the court, it's like this is like settled case law now that they have indeed stolen stuff from some other smaller company. And now there's, there's precedent for somebody else to go after them about some, some other claims. So it's not like,

you know, frivolous lawsuits wouldn't be filed around this. It's just bad practice. It looks bad. It just really looks bad for a big company like Google to kind of bully a little, a quote, little guy around like this.

Good on Sonos for winning against the man, I guess. All right, let's move on here. I found some really cool new products. URC has launched an all-new, all-in-one combined lighting solution. It's branded the URC Lighting LT3300. It's the next generation smart lighting. It allows the installer to select either dimmer or switch configuration

and easily program to unique atmospheres for entertaining or quiet family events. It really looks cool. I don't know if you guys have seen these things before, but man, URC has really knocked it out of the park with their design. There's like a blue LED with their design. There's a blue LED on the side. It's got

a little paddle switch on it. It looks like a Gunther switch. I don't know. What do you guys think about this? Have you ever seen anything that looks like this before? Wait a minute. This looks like the exact same switches I just installed this weekend. Oh, you're a URC dealer now.

No, no. I installed the Inovelli Blue series on and off in dimmer switches this weekend, and they look the exact same way as these ones. They're even available in the same eight design colors. Interesting. Well, it looks like URC has OEM these particular lighting devices from Inivelli. So these are the Z-Wave, right? Just a rebrand, basically, of the Inivelli Z-Wave. And I guess companies do this all the time. It's just funny to kind of see this come through.

And I posted this in our notes. I'm like, these look familiar. I just can't place them. And you guys are like, those are Inivelli! Just screaming at me. Yeah. I remember they talked about this about last year sometime. They hinted at this in the forums that they were making a deal. And I think it was around the time in a valley was going through like some

tough times, you know, they were trying to figure out where, how to make money and stuff like that. And I think this is when they signed a deal with a big company and people hinted at your sea. And there were a couple of wink winks in the forums and stuff like that. And I think this is when they signed a deal with a big company and people hinted at URC. And there were a couple of wink-winks in the forums and stuff like that. And now you're seeing it come out. So that's how long it kind of took. So I'm not surprised if it looks the same.

URC targets a certain clientele and Intervalli targets their clientele and they probably will never cross. So it's a good deal and a way to keep Intervellium business. Well, I've only been using them for a week. I have the Zigbee series and I think they're great so far. You can kind of configure everything about them. I just find it. I'm not, I find it hilarious that URC gave it this obnoxious name, the lighting LT dash 3,300.

It's got to fill up that spreadsheet somehow and you know half half the companies are coming out with like these simple brand names like xbox one and all this other stuff and you got professional companies coming out with some long name like this like they come up with the 3300 but what was the 3200 or the 3100 like why did you come up with this number you know i'd like to know that sometimes and you know who knows but gavin you weren't kidding when they said oh wink wink um there's some posts in here it's literally um eric eric posting wink wink yeah and then he's gone back and edited a few of his comments and said, edit, no comment, LOL. Like the official response to this thread equals no comment, wink emoji.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that they are one in the same. In fact, the funny thing is, is someone posted, what are these, the FCC filings or something, where they took a picture of the same. Or no, from the Z wave Alliance where, yeah. And it's the same picture for both. Somebody said they clearly took two pictures of the same switch with the same camera at the same angle. Just so happened to do that. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. This is a switch. How many different angles can you take a picture of a switch? You know, it's, it's cool to see, I guess some of the product this this happens all the time but it's it's interesting to see this um product move into the pro space as well um you guys have been using these things for years and talking about them for a long time i i'd never even heard of them until until you guys came onto the show what a year year ago so it's just it's weird to me to see it from such a small company i mean in a valley is definitely well known in the diy space but i wouldn't say they're like a well-known brand or anything like that for a lot of people and so i think it's just weird to see such a large company buying stuff from such a smaller company like you would think after all

these years of urc being in the business they would have a different connection but i guess they just really like what Inovelli has. I also thought that it was an opportunity that if they really liked Inovelli switches, they could just buy the company, you know, for cheap. Don't say that Gano. Hey, yeah, I don't want that actually. Okay. Let's scratch that. Let's edit that one out. I mean, URC has made some pivots recently. They're not, they focus mostly on like commercial spaces.

I think they have a bigger commercial offering that they've been rolling out the last couple of years than I think they've had in the residential space. Because Control 4 slash Snap AV has kind of like vacuumed all the air out of that room. So I've seen some of the companies like URC, RTI kind of pivot towards the commercial end of the market space where Control 4 and Snap AV weren't playing. And it may be that the URC that's still getting installed in homes is a smaller market and they can support and reach out and work a deal with a smaller company like in a valley get their products in so i guess it kind of makes sense and good good on in a valley for selling some switches um and it'd be interesting to hear what

some urc dealers say about their what the tl 3300 lights is that what it is lt lt 300 yeah sorry well it totally makes sense why you haven't been able to buy any in a valley z wave switches 3,300 bytes. Is that what it is? No problem. All right. Well, let's move on here. I've got an interesting little app that introduced an interesting new feature. Back in 2020, Apple launched a handy intercom feature for HomePod and HomePod Mini speakers. Fast forward to 2023, and that feature isn't available yet on any native Sonos speakers. Now there's an iOS app called Soro for Sonos. Hard to say. It's received an update that brings that intercom capability and a little bit more into the ecosystem.

So Soro launched way back in 2021, so far, so long away, so such a long time ago, as a way to take Siri and Apple shortcuts and build them into Sonos speakers. It's got 24 different actions. I guess they're useful there. Now, Soro has received a little update

that brings HomePod-like intercom into the Sonos system for Sonos speakers. So while integrations like Amazon Alexa's announce feature do work through some Sonos speakers. So while integrations like Amazon Alexa's announce feature do work through some Sonos speakers, Soro Siri intercom support, it's really hard to say, is nice for those who want to stick with an all native Apple experience and integrate with their Sonos speakers.

So not really a bad idea from an app, just kind of bring that little intercom feature into the, the ecosystem. It's kind of cool. And, you know, this is a feature, like if you're in the Amazon ecosystem, you'll, you'll have this kind of intercom feature when you buy all their products. But when you try and buy, when you have the Sonos speakers, the intercom feature doesn't work with them. It really annoys me how the Sonos integration of the Amazon ecosystem is stripped down and certain features don't work. I don't like that. I don't see why they couldn't have some of these other features, but I guess it's just forcing you to buy the Amazon products.

So it's good to see that they can actually bridge it between home kit and um and sonos using the sorrel for so much speaker ah see it's hard to say okay i just wanted to try it i was trying to work it into a sentence to try it but yeah it's hard but it's good to see yeah it's got support for speakers sonos one the amp the port play five gen 5, Gen 2, Beam, 1SL Move, the Symfony's table amp, and the Symfony's Wi-Fi bookshelf, along with all new speakers using the S2 system. Nice. That's kind of cool.

Pretty good compatibility, and not a bad price either. $799, lifetime, that's it. I might get it just to tinker around. Maybe I already have this. I might get it just to tinker around with it and see what i might get it just to tinker around with it and it was 5.99 two years ago so you you waited this long and you have to spend two more dollars inflation man that's the way they get you yeah but i use this feature all the time especially if i'm out um wife's not answering her phone or something like that i'll do the uh the drop-in feature for google assistant whatever they actually call i think it's broadcast um it works great get a call back instantly yeah i've used the one for the apple

a couple of times i think there's like it's built into your um apple watch and um my wife just keeps turning off the intercom so i can never call her we use it on the amazon too you know you just tell her to you know announce something and then i'll be sitting in the family room and i hear uh i need some toilet paper you know or something like that you know being announced everywhere in the house so it's a really cool feature they also have the drop-in feature i think you're hinting at where you could just drop in on a room. And it's like a phone call almost, right? But that, again, also doesn't work with the Sonos.

Gavin, I'm looking through the integrations that they have through the Siri shortcuts, right? They don't list them all on the screenshots. It says 34 new actions, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't list them all. But I'm wondering if it has some way to turn on and off the stupid voice correction and night mode, you know, like that'd be really cool if it did. Yes, you can. So I guess I'm gonna have to buy it.

Go for it. You can, it's listed in the article. We're spending money live. Done. As we do every week. $7.99. Oh man, you're not gonna be able to buy two coffees now. We're spending money live. Done. As we do every week. $7.99. Oh, man. You're not going to be able to buy two coffees now.

The rolling total for this show now is $7 US. Let's keep going. No, $8. $8. Plus taxes, I'm assuming. Oh, man. Too good. Too good.

Well, I've got it now. And if there's a shortcut I can make to turn on and off that stupid feature on sonos i i will make it and uh i'd be really happy with that that'd be nice so yeah night mode turn on and off speech and hand oh done this is this is great bam now why that's not in their api i don't know oh you're talking about the speech enhancement and the night mode. Yeah. Yeah. So for that one, I can control it with my Sonos when I'm talking to my Sonos speaker. But on my TVs, I've also mapped it to my Harmony remotes. So I can actually it's on the menu screen where I can actually turn on and off. It's not easy to do.

I had to go through Home Assistant, install certain things, and it emulated, I think it was a Hue switch to get it to work. But there's a way you could emulate that on the Harmony remotes. Oh, emulate it. But you're not turning on off the voice enhancement speech, the speech enhancement on Sonos itself? Or you... No, no, you're actually emulating that switch but when you flick it actually triggers it on and off on the speakers so i have to learn how you're doing that it's through home assistant so home assistant can do it now yeah well crud it

i didn't need to spend this eight dollars You can also broadcast and say things with Home Assistant through Sonos speakers as well. It could have saved me $8 if I mentioned that a little bit earlier. Oh, well. No, I'm here to help you spend money, not save money. Yeah, come on. Saving's not fun. Well, speaking of Voice Assistant, Amazon is getting rid of celebrity voices for Alexa. Not only the voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Melissa McCarthy will no longer be available to purchase,

but Amazon's going to completely stop supporting them on Alexa devices. So no more voices for you, even though you've paid for them. Initially, they were about 99 cents, but they moved up to $99. Uh, I suppose many people expected to keep them for years, but it's kind of, kind of sad. You could say, Hey, celebrity name, Hey, Samuel L. Jackson, and then ask a command or hear jokes or listen to a story all in the style of Samuel L. Jackson talking about snakes on a plane. Uh, but now all that fun's come to an end and the voice of Samuel L. Jackson talking about snakes on a plane. But now all that fun's come to an end

and the voice of Samuel L. Jackson's no longer going to work on your device. Here's a quote from Amazon spokesman Eric Svum. I don't know how to pronounce his name at all. After three years, we're winding down Celebrity Voices. Customers will be able to continue using these voices for a limited time and can contact our customer service team for a refund. I think that limited time is roughly in about a week. I think the 7th of June is what they said. Yeah, at least they're giving a refund for it, if you ask. I mean, I feel like they should just automatically do it because it just came out not too long ago. And honestly, yeah, I bet you not a lot of people were using this. One, they probably looked at the usage and they probably said,

not many people are using this, so let's just cancel it. And two, if they're going to give you a refund if you just ask for it, obviously that's not a lot of money there that they're expecting to lose off of that. So, you know, if nobody's using it, why waste your time on it?

So you can't really argue with it. Yeah, I don't think I would ever want this. I remember when this came out, I nobody's using it, why waste your time on it? So you can't really argue with it. Yeah, I don't think I would ever want this. I remember when this came out, I just have a weird, I don't think I want to say anybody's name when I'm talking to a voice assistant. I just want to talk like the Google thing is perfect because it's not a person's name. So I don't feel awkward. But if I was shouting some like random person's name all the time, like the A lady or Samantha or whatever whatever it was i just don't think

i'd like that i feel bad for anybody that's named alexa right alexa or alexis anything yeah alex maybe i don't know yeah samantha it's too good too good i don't i don't need my computers that have personal names. All right. That's a little too far. Well, no, no more fun. They're taking that away. I wonder what the like the business decision like it obviously does not cost that much money for them to make those those voice models and run those stories over and over again, like for five dollars or whatever. It's just a MP3 file, right? Like, I wonder what the like the

payment for them was you know if they if they got payment for like one-off recording or they get payment every time somebody uses it or something like that you know in aggregate that could be a lot and it would make sense for amazon to um discontinue something that wasn't making the money and may actually approach costing the money over time. So yeah, and they're in a mode right now where they're probably looking to slim down and cut off the fat right now with a lot of things related. So this is just going to be one of these things. I'm pretty sure we're going to hear of a few more over time. And good point. Good point. All right, moving on here. We've got a new product from from from wise. They're still in business, guys. What smart home company wise has announced the cam floodlight pro a security camera with built-in lighting

object sensing and serves basically as the replacement for the original wise cam floodlight the floodlight pro has a 1440p resolution 180 degree field of view it's also capable of continuous local recording on a micro sd card up to 256s. It supports dual Wi-Fi, dual band Wi-Fi, so you can connect 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. It's nice. It also is rated IP65 weather resistance and has and requires hardwire power connection to operate. One of the things that's more interesting about this product, it has the AI computer vision built into it where it can accurately detect movement. So it's not going to be triggering off things

like branches blowing around in the wind. It'll actually see somebody walking around and be able to trigger an event or something off that. It also has the motion detect voice deterrence kind of feature built into it. There's a lot of cameras out there that have this right now. But if it picks up a person kind of in a zone or in an area that they shouldn't be, it can yell at them, hey, get out of here, or hey, you're being recorded, something like that. It's also capable of the color night vision thing that we've seen

a lot of cameras come out with recently as well as full infrared night vision uh when it's very dark outside and the color vision won't work um what i say this thing was for 150 i think so not not not a bad deal from from wise of course always always a great deal coming from wise oh the price point of this is actually really good especially when you start to compare it to the competition so like they do compare it to ring but i also put uh ring at a different you know level to this rings probably a little bit higher i think in terms of the quality and stuff but wise is a great budget you know ecosystem you know if you're looking to save money and there's certain features, it seems like it has all the features, right? They list a ton of

features. It has all the big features. And it was funny you said, Wyze is still around. Well, they recently announced price increases for some of their services. So that being said, you come in cheap, but eventually you have to make more money. And one of the ways you're going to do it is raise the prices on things. So $150, yeah, it's a good price. But the original Wyze, I think, would have been cheaper. I think it's still starting to creep up with their new products. Like I was expecting like a $90 camera, you know, because Wyze was always like,

how did they do this? So cheap type of product, right? So, but it's still a good price and it looks like a good product. The Camflon light is a hundred bucks. So for $50 more, you get this. Yeah. And I feel like that's what Wyze is good at. They have a lot of cheap devices, but they also have some really higher-end devices like this one. And if you don't have a camera with the color night vision yet, you are missing out because it does make a huge difference. It's crazy. I look at some of the cameras I install, and, you know, it would be like midnight. And it's just – it looks like daylight.

I mean, you can tell it's not, obviously. But it just – there's colors everywhere. You can make out people's clothing and stuff like that it really does make a big difference and it's worth the upgrade um i haven't used any with the the wise ai stuff but i actually have a couple wise ptz's installed right now at the house just to kind of watch over while we're not there and i'm a sucker for a subscription. So I went ahead and signed up for the subscription. I think you get like a 14-day trial. But don't tell Wise because I'm going to cancel it right before. Don't tell them.

Don't tell them. I don't think they listen to the show. Oh, well, that's probably good. I forgot I have one of these Wise scale things. Oh, you bought one of those, huh? Yeah, yeah. Didn't you have Wise socks, too? I do have Wise socks. and they're very comfortable.

They actually make good socks. I will give them that. They're not like competitively priced, but they're okay. I still have my, uh, my wise April fool's day joke when they, uh, announced that they bought nest and you bought a camera or you bought a nest and it came with a camera and everything. It was pretty funny, but it was an actual nest. Well an actual nest well well well you know like a little decoration bird nest it was like that's a fun april fool's joke you know i forget they have earbuds they have

literally everything yeah they're like the they're like the aquara a care of you the u.s they also had a robot vacuum but you know the one thing about them is their firmware updates are far in between like it's a lot of products that they just forget about but their cameras i always found had some some really good picture qualities they always came out with for the price you're paying their camera had really good picture quality yeah i mean look at all these lights on this, this new floodlight too. I mean, it's got three super bright lights. I mean, three, what else could you want out of this thing? We've got noise canceling headphones for $89.

Watch out Bose. Watches. Yeah. Earbuds, earbud pros or wise buds. Sorry. And then they, the wise car has been. I kind of want that to be honest. Interesting to me, yeah.

It's like a little RC car that you can drive around using the camera app somehow. I don't know. I would buy that. It's only $90 for the car, the power bank, and the camera. That's not bad at all. It does not look like they have socks anymore. They've got a hat. You've got the limited edition socks now, Seth.

You can flip them for big... Oh, man. You better bring those back. sass you can flip them for a big oh man you better bring those back especially if you've worn them already yeah it's worth even more on some marketplaces all right let's move on here um smart maker level smart door lock maker level is announced it's releasing a doorbell camera exclusively for multifamily buildings as an optional part of an overall smart home platform for multi-unit dwellings. So apartment buildings, condos, that kind of thing. The video doorbell wouldn't be available to the general public, but instead comes to a smart home market for multifamily buildings that could benefit from having a retail smart lock maker moving into the space. Level says residents can use the Level app to peer through the doorbell camera and speak with visitors on the other side. The press release also adds that the camera introduced package identification intelligence to notify residents when deliveries have arrived.

That's got to be pretty good for MDUs and apartments, that kind of thing. I remember when we went to Cedia in San Jose, I guess. We were staying in an Airbnb apartment type thing. And we were walking through the halls and everybody's Amazon packages were just thrown out in front of their door. And then like even walking to the convention center, you would just see Amazon packages sitting on people's doorsteps. And like, man, that's, you better be home when the Amazon guy gets there. Cause your stuff's going to go missing. It wouldn't my neighborhood. Like I, I can't imagine, uh, just being in like a downtown city and then just having like your Amazon deliveries sitting out out in the front, front steps. It's crazy.

Yeah. And the interface actually looks pretty nice on this too. I mean, it, uh, I don't know, looks presentable. It looks like somebody would be able to easily use it. Um, the commercial, I think they're getting into the access control just yet, but the commercial access control and that kind of MDU, uh, section is a lot of potential. And I don't think we've really gotten anywhere near what we can do with it. It's kind of been a thing for a while.

There's all kinds of analog systems. They're starting to do a lot more cloud connected stuff. And of course that means monthly subscriptions for everybody. Another monthly subscription. I really like what they, i really like their door locks right the design the idea how they implemented it i'm not a fan of the protocols they use you know i didn't want a cloud connected door lock but i really like what they did and i also really like the features that are now becoming standard on on things like these door um these door cams like

package detection that seems to be a standard now coming with everyone i door um these door cams like package detection that seems to be a standard now coming with everyone and i'm like that used to be like a premium feature back in the day right so i like how they're introduced they're including a lot of those things when you rent you always have a monthly subscription to your house so maybe it gets rolled into that wow that's why everybody's rents go up because they have to afford things like this. You get value added here. I guess I'm looking through the article here over at The Verge and it also mentions that they purchased a company called Dwello

a couple of years back. And Dwello has this. It's basically smart apartments, lights, locks, thermostats, all that good stuff. So interesting to kind of see level kind of roll out this direction as well. All right, new segment here, who matters this week and the award goes to a company that I have not heard of, Zimmy Smart. They have a Zigbee Thread Matter matter hub coming soon we don't know too much about it it's got zigbee matter thread it's on the csa's website it might even have two year integration but it's called the zimmy smart m1 hub and i guess you guys we were talking about this before the show

they have like a curtain motor controls uh for opening and closing blinds or curtains. And this looks like it's probably for integrating with those more than anything. Yeah, that's when I first heard of them was to control blinds and curtains when I was doing research on my own products. And they look like they have some great products. And this new hub, I guess, is just, I guess, their next step into the creating their own sort of ecosystem i mean it's only including zigbee thread and matter how many thread or matter devices do you have right now there's a ton of zigbee

i wish they would have just thrown z-wave on there like why limit us to you know certain things you know like why you know just throw z-wave in there and make everybody happy but i guess that's what home assistant's for hey at least it's got a wired ethernet connection everybody's been dropping that for some reason glad glad to see a it's wired only though there's no wi-fi so that's kind of surprising but and that's how habitat was for a long time they had no it was wired only no wi-fi and people people were up in arms about it they they really like their wireless you know so hubitat eventually introduced the the wi-fi dongle and now then built-in wi-fi so but i can see the reason i like to hardwire mine but i guess if your central part of your house

doesn't have an ethernet connection then you probably would want to just use wi-fi and just put it at the center part um depending on the layout of the house and everything and what devices you want to use so i guess i can see it but i don't know well reliability and speed too those were two of the reasons why they rather you hardwire it because when you have like other products are over wi-fi and stuff you know like especially with home automation you really want things to move fast you know one sensor detects motion the light turns on you want that to be as fast as possible and hardwire is much faster yeah those those types of messages are much better over zigbee or matter over thread or whatever like it's not or even z-wave like just give Z-Wave a

shout out to, even though they're not including it, like those control commands or sensor commands or sensor data, you don't need full wifi stack to do that. Just do, just sit off on the side and have the IOT network do its thing and leave wifi to, you know, streaming videos and doing what wifi is supposedly designed to do best. I think a lot of the problems people had with the smart home over the past five, 10 years is directly related to, oh, everything's wireless. We'll just use Wi-Fi. And there were better wireless networks to be used than Wi-Fi.

And everything just got shoehorned into that. We talked a lot about this on last week's show as well. Wi-Fi is not the only option. So I'm glad to see this. And this is just basically a router, right? Like a thread border router brings in Matter devices to this as a connection point. And then from there, you can choose your ecosystem that

you want apple home samsung smart things google home alexa you can use any one of those to kind of control stuff so very cool i i'm i'm encouraged this is encouraging we're seeing more stuff happen um each week each week we have this segment we play the clown music and move on it's like it's like the meme with the shaken hands you know it's happening it's happening but it's like very slow i mean we're kind of getting tired at this point but it's still happening yeah yeah well all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 438 uh we do have something in the mail back this week uh we got some feedback, actually a question from listener Michael.

He says, love the podcast. Hoping you guys can help me out with a solution to a home automation use case that I've been pondering. I have a single light and exhaust fan in my master bathroom. Currently two separate circuits, both with manual rocker switches. I recently replaced the single light with a smart bulb, so the wise color BR30 to be exact. He says, I want to control the light on motion and the fan on humidity. So I'm looking for a sensor and a switch to accomplish this. So I'm running the smart things, but plan to move to home assistant later on in the future. I have plenty of ZigBee and Z-Wave devices already on the network, so nothing to worry about there. He says, I've been looking at the Zoo's Q sensor

and the Zoo's Z-Wave Plus double switch. But he says he's kind of worried about his budget here. He says, any other suggestions for products that might fit this application? Um, DJ going to throw it to you first. What, what do you think? Oh, Michael, you shouldn't ask us. Cause we're going to help you spend all kinds of money. They made me spend $8 earlier. I didn't even have to do that, but you did it anyway. Cause you like supporting things. Um, no, so I'm going through something similar myself right now, actually. So I've installed a bunch of the zoos uh double switches uh they're pretty great though they uh you know it's just a single switch a single whatever they call it a single gang um but it's got the top switch that controls the light and you it's also a dimmer as

well and then the bottom switch controls the fan and they're great i've installed two of them so far um they worked right away with home assistant i was able to get them programmed and everything um and then you would just need some kind of moisture sensor or something um as of tonight which you're probably not going to get the sale anymore but zoos has a humidity sensor as well that's also on sale um so i think together they're like 40 bucks maybe even only 30 and you know you just go ahead and spend a hundred dollars while you're over there at the smartest house.com and you get free shipping so just go ahead and smartify a couple things while you're at it the more you spend the more you save that's right simple economics

kevin what do you suggest okay Okay, so I've done this. So that's the good thing. Zoo's, great brand. You're not going to go wrong there. Spend the money. It's worth it. Less headache. You can't compare a Switch like Zoo's to a $20 Switch from another vendor that I won't name.

It's a little bit more, but for a reason it's worth it. Now, the good thing is, um, because you're going to have both switch the switch and the sensor and Z-Wave, you can actually use Z-Wave to Z-Wave what they call associations. And that will allow you to associate like when motion's detected, the sensor will actually trigger the switch to turn on directly and not go through the hub. It makes it a little faster for reaction time, which is a good thing. And it also still works even if the hub's off. So that's another good thing. What else? Another thing I do with mine, I have Intervalli switches, but a lot of these switches do know do the same thing you can um it has a smart bulb mode which basically leaves the power connected so your smart bulb's still on all the time but when you press

the up it will trigger the bulb to turn on you know that type of thing so that's that's really good um you can also set parameters on the switches so a lot of these switches will have a parameter that will you can set the level when you turn it on and you can have your home assistant you can set the level when you turn it on. And you can have your home assistant, you can have your smart things, you know, when it's a certain darkness in the room, set the level to 30%. So whenever it turns on, it only comes on at 30% and not 100%. So in the middle of the night, you're not going to get hit with a lot of light, right? So you can look into doing that. Now, in terms of the humidity and the fan, I've done this in the past and you just got to be careful with it because if you don't tune it right, you have issues like the fan kicking in the middle of the night for no random reason. Trust me, it's happened to me, right? It just,

for some reason, the humidity in that just was a higher than what I thought and it just kicked on my fan. So make sure you're careful you tune that right um i i basically disabled that now and i just tell a lady you know like when i get out of the shower i just say hey a lady turn off the fan in 20 minutes and then i never have to think about it again she actually does it that's a new feature i'm added in there but you're on smart things there's i don't know what they call them now because smart things has gone through changes it used to be apps i think on smart things i don't know if they still have them or how what they're called now but they used to have apps where you can do this all automatically that

people created if you go to home assistant they have same thing they'll have like blueprints that you can download that will automatically do the humidity and the fan and stuff and if you even go to hubitat there's apps on hubitat that people have created that will do this all automatically and just make it easier for you so you have so many options and you're not the first person to do this just you know do a little research look at the products and feel free to write us if you have any more questions yeah i i don't have anything to add because i really don't know what i would do i was like from a uh from a control for perspective um you only need about 1500 and 30 hours of labor it's actually going to be a little bit more i was adding it up um so i i'm i'm the i'm pretty sure the only product i

i kind of like name off the top of my head as to what like would detect humidity and bring it in is actually a product that we sell. It's called Flare. They've got this little puck sensor, but it's $119 just for that. It does temperature, humidity, pressure, ambient light, that kind of thing. And those are tied to the vent, right? That's the Flare vent company, right? Yeah. It's tied to the vent, but we have a driver for it.

We work with their API and everything. We have a direct driver integration with them. Come to find out, I hadn't released yet. I kind of finished it like a year ago, and it's just been sitting there. So I kind of need to release that any day now. And it works really well it kind of in the control for ecosystem it emulates like a regular control for thermostat endpoint i guess um so you could do that but you have to have a control for system which is again key tj you know like fifteen hundred dollars maybe

a thousand dollars for programming and then like yeah you gotta have the driver from this as well so at least three service calls because it's not working correctly it's not gonna work right yeah you're gonna need you're gonna need like the two switches like because you can't do you wouldn't be able to do like from what when i was reading he's he doesn't have it was one of those switches that's like double in one gang right is that so shelly i think is probably your only option there and you'll need another driver for that so yeah nothing good on the control foresight i mean you probably get up to like three, $4,000 just to do this one bathroom. Oh, that's not bad. I think that's within

his price range actually. So maybe I'll hit you up. Well, let me know. No, those new switches are definitely worth it though. I would, I would go that route a hundred percent. Yeah. They, they definitely look, look nice. It has, that's one of those problem solving devices. Anytime you run into this, um, grab this grab those yeah because there's a lot of situations where people have these switches and bathrooms and stuff like that but there's not really a good smart solution for them so yeah like like i said the only thing i've done with like with with the duals i have one of those switches in my bathroom um in my guest bathroom is use the shelly you know thing just to automate the lights so the shelly relay you can't relay. You can't even use the dimming.

I guess if you use two modules, you could, but it's kind of hard to fit all that into one box. So use the relay. Anyway, moving on here. I got a pick of the week. This is funny. It's been floating around for a while, but there's a truck here,

and I guess this guy has a transmission lines But there is a there's a truck here. And I guess this guy has a transmission linesman sticker on the back of his truck. So he's he's very he's got some funny stickers. But the really the two funny ones he has is over the tailpipes of this GMC Sierra. And he's got HDMI one and HDMI two labeling over the over the top of his truck. And sure enough, the tailpipes look like HDMI ports. So pretty good, pretty good. If you're driving down the street, notice your car has HDMI, it's ready to go.

And I realized that Honda and GMC were using the same exhaust set up there, so. I think there's one, yeah, Honda has like one in the back or something like that. Yeah, just like a single one. Because I've seen the HDMI above the single one before. I like that he also has the battery, the Wi-Fi, and the cellular indicators as well in the upper right-hand corner.

So he looks like he's fully charged. So that's good. It's good to go, yeah. Fun stuff. This car, this is a little bit better. You've got two HDMI ports. It's a little more upgradable than Honda. You don't need another car to do your HDMI switching.

I guess he'll need that as a transmission linesman. He's always got, HDMI's got a plug in. Don't know much about that profession, but I'm pretty sure HDMI is part of it. That's how all our powers ran, just through long HDMI cables. Makes sense. Makes sense. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week,

some great ideas for show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Project updates. I have not done anything for the past week. I can guarantee you that. No, I had to clean up my house if that's a project, but no,

I haven't done anything as I look around to see if I did do anything. But it seems that you guys have been really busy. Gavin, you've got a couple of updates, but first, you know, it's that time of the month again, like home assistance been updated. So what's, what are they up? What are they up to over there? Yep. It's that time of the month, and they've released the 2023.6 beta. It usually comes out the last Wednesday of every month. So it looks really good. I'm just going to give you my top four things I noticed from the notes and that I'm looking forward to.

One, you can connect network storage. That's really cool because now you can send your backups to your QNAP server or your other home server that you have there. So that's kind of cool, but you can also serve media off of it. So there are certain add-ons for Home Assistant. You can actually now connect network storage,

serve the media right off that. You don't have to actually put a drive on your Home Assistant or anything like that. Really cool feature. They added copy and paste in the automation scripts. Took them long enough. I always had to duplicate. I was always jumping down to YAML to copy and paste it manually like that. But now I don't have to go to YAML as many times anymore. They've increased the Python version number. So the key thing about this is they said, I think it said like 50% better performance or

something like that. So that's huge because it's already fast as it is, but if it gets faster, that's a bonus and that's significant. So I thought that was pretty big. One cool thing that I found, and this I'm probably going to take full advantage of, but you can now create entities from config parameters on Z-Wave devices, right? So when you have a Z-Wave device, you have certain parameters off of, like every Z-Wave comes with a bunch of parameters that you can set. So you can set things like the light level when it turns on, right? Well, now you can actually create an entity of that parameter

so that you can easily set in automation the light level that you want it to when you turn on the light switch. In the past, that was possible, but it was more complicated because you had to call a service with certain parameters and stuff like that. But now that you can create an entity, it makes it so much easier and adds so many more possibilities. Like on my Inivelli switches, I can use the parameter to set um the colors based on certain events easily right um doing that today is pretty difficult but now that they added this feature comes so much better so i i really like that i'll be um taking full advantage but uh those are my top four and as usual always check the breaking changes before you upgrade

because there's a lot of breaking changes and something's gonna break as always so make sure you schedule a day take a holiday you know give the wife like tickets to go see a movie before you do the upgrade well i i did the upgrade while you were talking so another successful upgraded to something i don't know it just says an update so i hit update when gavin starts talking and then see if it comes back alive so it did so easy that is you know and that's why i say run home assistant in a vm using their home assistant os it's just so much easier to upgrade yeah it runs right there on my Unraid box. You help me get started.

So yeah, there's also a Hubitat update. I guess we can talk about them too. They've made some new changes, including a graphical view of ZigBee and Z-Wave networks, which kind of sounds interesting. Yeah, that's really cool. I think it actually started as a community project. So somebody in the community developed this,

and it looks like they may have integrated it now right into the hub with the latest update. So the update is 2.3.5.145, if you got that. And being able to visualize, like, it helps with troubleshooting because you can visualize, like, your Z-Wave and your ZigBee routes and see like where things are going through or seeing what they're connected to and the strength of the connection. Because sometimes you'd see like a Z, you could detect like a ghost node or you would see like a Z-Wave device that's not connected to anything and you could troubleshoot why

it's broken, right? Or that's going through this bad node here. So that's really cool that they built it in so it's worth the upgrade there i believe it only works though on the c7 and the c8 hubs it's also cool i've got i'm looking at some of the pictures this this would work on a smaller system but i can tell you from experience that it's not going to scale very well to a larger system. When you have maybe 100 or a few hundred ZigBee nodes, it's going to be hard to see. Sometimes in that situation, it's better to have just like a list. And you can use that and sort and find problems like signal strength and all that stuff.

It's a little more than that. But when you have a large system like that, you also know what to look for. Like there are certain there's certain like when I remember I was playing around with it, there's certain like patterns you look for and you can easily just hone in on that. Or if you know a specific device, you just look for that line and you follow it from there and see where it's failing. Right. So it just gets bigger and messier but i've seen some pretty big maps and you know it was interesting to troubleshoot makes it still a bit easier than having nothing at all yeah no definitely this any troubleshooting tool you can get especially around

like magical devices like zigbee and z-wave this is it's a big help like if you can't it's all wireless but that means it's invisible and if the wireless breaks and you you can't, it's all wireless, but that means it's invisible. And if the wireless breaks and you can't tell. So yeah, you know, these devices, they also like will report

their signal strength, their interference, that kind of thing. Like it's good to know that if you've got some kind of problem between point A and point B, you can either put another device in to supplement it

or you can move the device, that kind of thing. So yeah, any tool to help you troubleshoot a magical wireless network, always good to have. Anyway, moving on, you've got some new toys. You're still doing soil sensing?

Gavin, Gavin. You're buying all kinds of stuff, Gavin. No, no, you know what? It's the season, right? The buying season. Yeah, yeah. No, no. You know what? It's the season, right? Like the buying summer just. Yeah. Yeah. The buying season. It's spring summer. This was one of the things I wanted to do. And, you know, after buying the EcoWit soil moisture sensors, I've discovered that, you know, certain parts of my lawn aren't getting the water I thought they were getting. So I've actually been able to adjust my watering frequency and stuff to

help water the lawn. So to me, that's been a bonus right there. They've been working great. They're sending the signal. But when I was looking at the EcoWit products, I realized they had a few more other products that looked interesting. I mean, they have a soil temperature sensor, which is really good. You know, again, for our seasons, you know, you want the soil at a certain temperature and then you can start laying your seeds and doing stuff like that in the spring. And that's a good thing to have. So I grabbed one of those. They're relatively cheap and they work great when it comes to range because it's all radio frequency. So having them outside, I've had no issues with them dropping off.'ve been great for the $30 I think I paid for them but they also had a pool temperature sensor and now I thought

that was awesome because I wanted another one for my pool so I can average out the temperature so I grabbed one of those it again it works just like the soil sensors radio frequency it shows up on my SDR I can look at my MQTT and I see all the signals there, you know, and I pull them in at entities and, you know, they update very frequently and the battery seems to be well, you know, like it's been at a hundred percent since I got it, you know, so it hasn't dropped like, um, that Tuya one I had that dropped to 60% in a few days, you know, so no, they're really good products. So if you're looking for some of that stuff i i highly

recommend it go away you'll need an sdr antenna or you can buy their base station and go through their cloud service and stuff but just the sdr opens up so many more possibilities very nice very nice one day you're going to be done with your soil that's called fall you gotta get in while you can yeah the other thing now is we're in barbecue season now too right so i've been grilling a bit more and i've been i heard um about this meter um temperature sensor from um home gadget geeks right and they're always talking about it so i decided to just grab the cheapest one and see how it is and basically it's a little probe you stick it in the meat you put the meat on the grill. You load up the app. It works off of Bluetooth. And you basically say, I'm cooking a steak. I want it medium rare,

you know, blah, blah, blah. And it tells you everything about that steak on the grill. It tells you the internal temperature of the steak. It tells you the temperature of the grill. And then it starts to calculate the time it's going to take before it reaches how you want the steak. And it will notify you five minutes before that, hey, the steak's, you're going to have to take it off any minute now. And then it says, okay, you have to take it off and let it sit for a few minutes. And then it says, all right, great, done, enjoy. It's ready to go. I've been using it a number of times and it has been great. There's no more guessing, you know, what the, you know, is the chicken cooked? No, it just tells you the chicken's

ready to go. Take it off and you take it off and it's been perfect every time. I did, you know, even I've been using it on anything I threw on there, right? Just out of fun because it's fun. It's almost like a little game. I threw it in some potatoes. And it was amazing to see that it was like, oh, the potatoes will be done in 30 minutes. And you could see the internal temperature getting up to, I think they wanted it at 200 degrees internally. And they came out perfectly, Right. So it was awesome to see and to know, you know, how long it's going to take to cook. So I highly recommend it. They run off of Bluetooth. So if you have a Bluetooth dongle on your home assistant, it opens up a lot of possibilities in there too. there's so many things you can do so um i actually put the three pack now on my um gift list so you know if anyone's looking for a gift you know you could just buy me the three pack i'm good with that you know like i'm sure somebody from the a listener will get yeah yeah i need that three pack i've been grilling a lot this year this year you know so and the three pack gives you a better range because they add i think a bluetooth repeater or something in the um

in the actual case now too and it charges in the case the case actually has a battery in it and you put the battery in and when you put the sensor back in it it actually charges back up the sensor so it's it's actually if you if you're into grilling it even if you suck at grilling i highly recommend this like i'm sorry but you know like if you're into grilling, even if you suck at grilling, I highly recommend this. Like, I'm sorry, but, you know, like if you're the type that just is always afraid to do chicken, buy one of these because it will tell you when that chicken's done. And it works perfectly any time, every time. Now, this looks like a really good idea, honestly. And I just got my first grill.

So I'm still learning the ropes and everything. This is going to be a perfect addition to make sure I get the most out of those steaks and everything. So I'll be buying this, Gavin. Don't worry. Get the meter plus. If you're only going to go with the single one, just get the plus. It's worth it just to get the plus. Yeah.

I'm going to go to the dual pack for $160 right now. Yeah. Don't get the single one. Get the plus. It's worth it for the extra range because then you can walk to the other side of the house and still be able to pick up the signal and stuff like that right but it's so worth it i highly recommend it it's the meter barbecue uh sensor it's got home assistant integration as well so if you yep yeah i'm gonna make mine

yell out all my yell out all my sono speakers whenever it's done your food's done dinner time daddy's home ma give me some meatloaf my meat is ready turns on the rice cooker at a certain time so that they all finish at the right time your food's all warm there you go see this is like the smart kitchen appliance i can get behind it i guess you're not really grilling in your kitchen most of the time i would assume but like the smart ovens and stuff like that never sound appealing to me but these little sensors that you could use to put in everything yeah that's a good idea and i know i said barbecue but actually this this meter probe is is not just for the barbecue you can use it in the oven too. So if you have roast, you have turkey, you have whatever,

you can just stick it in there and you don't have to keep opening the oven and checking it and guessing it. When I buy the newer one, I might just give the older one to my mom because I'm sure she could take full advantage of it. But then she'll call me every day about problems she's having with it.

It looks really nice. I like this. I can get behind this one too. Yeah, it's like a quality device, a little charging case thing it has. Does it have an external antenna or is it just like charges up inside the little box? Just charges up inside the box, it looks like, right?

It charges up in, like when you put it in the box, there's actually contact here. Like one end is on the head of it and then the other one goes around the head of it and then the other one goes around the base of it and then it recharges the battery inside i know there's a joke in there somewhere but let's keep this clean it's a family show yeah but no the you put a battery the one i have the batteries in the box and it just charges it doesn't use a lot of energy right that's pretty cool if you have three then you can stick one in each steak and then, you know, cook each one to the person's preference.

You know, there's always somebody that likes it rare and somebody that wants it burnt and somebody that's just in the medium. And you can just put one in each one and then, you know, it will tell you when to take each one off and it does it perfectly. I did New York steaks the other day. Came out amazing. Like, you know, I was getting compliments on it. And I was like, I'm not a heavy griller. So it was well worth the money. I have to check this out.

That sounds like a lot of fun. And if you can leave the stuff cooking on the grill and just not pay attention to it for a while, that's great. Nice find, Gavin. Thanks. This has been meat talk on the home tech. All right. Well, send us your food pictures. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. Uh, TJ has been, um, busy buying a house, a new house. He's got the new house house now he's outfitting the new house with all the technology uh man what are you gonna what's going on tj what are you doing what's going on just just tearing stuff apart breaking things you know whenever you get a house this old i'm assuming and you start taking things apart and you just find all kinds of stuff right and uh you know

i'm taking down light fixtures and there's like a giant hole. It's like somebody just Chuck Norris, a, uh, a hole through the wall there. Um, whenever they ran wiring, they didn't do a really good job of it. So everything's just taken a little bit longer than I was hoping for. Um, and it's leading me down the path of probably just rewiring the whole place electrically and and voltage wise. A lot of the wiring is like the old it's not ancient, but a lot of the wiring is that old cloth like Romex that they had.

You know, it's fine, but it doesn't have a ground wire. So at some point, I'm probably just going to replace most of the wiring with new wiring. You know, wiring itself, if I can do it, is not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, especially with like a 1200 square foot house. So, you know, me upgrading the electrical wiring is going to go a long way in the resale value. And also just, you know, provide some newer safety features like grounding wires. But yeah, so, you know, I've got Home Assistant going. It's set up on a little Dell micro PC. I've got the Zeus 800 series USB hub. I've got the SkyConnect Zigbee Matterhub.

And they're all working great. And I've got a ton of Zigbee and Z-Wave devices going on right now. So I've got some third reality water leak sensors going on right now um so got uh some third reality water leak sensors going on uh underneath the sinks and the laundry room and everything like that uh the inner valley blue series which we talked about earlier uh on the show um those have been great um very customizable you can set the colors of the actual switch and everything like that which is pretty nice i've got a couple of these zoos scene controllers uh so these are five button uh controller keypad um that you can get engraved as well i don't know if i'll get them engraved at 40 a uh a paddle but um pretty nice

because you can program do whatever um and i've got a bunch of the zoos double switches each each room has a fan light combo and of course they they just controlled the light fan with the little pull down chains so i've run new you know three uh i've run new wiring for that as well if i want to control them with one single switch so i'm in the process of doing that as well if I want to control them with one single switch. So I'm in the process of doing that as well. Also got a bunch of the First Alert smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, the Yale Assure Lock 2, and a bunch of the Zoo's open-close sensors as well. So there's a lot of stuff going on at the house. I haven't installed everything just yet, and some of it's just going to be a work in progress for a while. But I want to get I wanted to get some of the basic stuff down so I can like turn on the outside

lights to make it look like somebody is there or, you know, whatever other nice comfort things that we normally do in our normal house. We're not moving in until the end of the month. So I've got plenty of time to kind of do some of this stuff, but, um, trying to get the bulk of the automation stuff installed. And that way I can program it, you know, remotely when I'm not there. Yeah. It's good. It's always a good idea to do all these things like before you move in, move furniture in

the way, cause drywall mess with on top of all your nice stuff. Yeah. Like it's always good to get it done as but if you if you can before you move in yeah and i'm not going to get all the wiring and stuff done before we move in that's definitely going to be over the next several months um but we're not going to paint the house or anything right now because i know that at some point i'm going to have to cut into the walls to run new electrical wires and stuff like that so you know the nice thing is is you're starting off too with a fresh home assistant in a way right right? Like you're adding a whole bunch of devices. And we can link this in the show notes, but there was a great post in the home assistant forums, you know, 20 top tips, you know, some of this guy wished he knew when he started home assistant. And it was actually a really good post. So it's worth the read. And while, you know, set good habits from now, like I always encourage good name, have a naming convention for your devices in your entities while you know set good habits from now like i always encourage good name

have a naming convention for your devices in your entities you know and then hide all the entities like disable all the entities you don't use just to clear them out get the mess out of the way you know and it's easier to do that from the beginning as you add each device than trying to do all of them later on because you'll have thousands of entities yeah and i'm feeling pretty confident with the home assistant at this point like i don't i still don't want to go in and edit you know yaml but i don't think anybody really wants to do that um but i you know i'm able to make changes and automations and stuff like that without looking up a bunch of stuff now so i it's you know it's a progress of it getting easier over time. And I've been using it in the apartment here for the past couple, I think, year or two now.

So I'm used to it. But I haven't got to have the fun devices that you normally would in a house that you actually own. A lot of my switches and stuff like that are the third reality switches where they go over the existing toggle switch. And they're great and everything. But it's not like you can change the color of the LEDs and all that other kind of fun stuff. So, um, it's been an interesting process so far. Um, and it's just, you know, kind of gives you a perspective on what it takes to do this stuff. And I do this stuff for a living, um, but I don't do it in depth like this all the time anymore. When I was down in Florida, I probably did it a little bit more.

But it's just not a super big thing up here like it was down in Florida. So it's kind of nice to be able to do this stuff and just work on your own house. The biggest difference so far, though, is changing out all those fixtures. So there's been a bunch of very gold lighting fixtures with extremely hot bulbs everywhere. There's like some track lighting thing in the living room. So all that stuff's come down. I've put in canless LED lights that you can select the color temperature on with a little physical switch. You got to pull the light down to do that.

But they're dimmable and all that good stuff. So like that's made a huge difference by itself. Just as a basic updates. It's that's awesome. Well, now that you're getting in there and you have all the fun stuff, you can up your graph game. Cause I,

I posted there in our, our back channel, my graphs from my home assist. I really don't know what to do with home assistant other than make these awesome graphs that it can make. And, uh, I,

I like it. So Gavin's cracking up it's like this is what you do well actually i have one graph going right now uh one of the devices i forgot to give a shout out to was the the flume 2 uh which one of the users in the the slack group recommended um but it's a water sensor or a water flow sensor that basically just straps to your water meter and it tells you exactly how much water you've been using. And it's been doing a pretty good job. I mean, it's it seems like it's pretty accurate compared to what my actual usage is. It's not a locally based product that relies on the cloud, but the integration with home

assistance right there. So there's nothing I'm missing at the moment. Those are some nice graphs. Thanks, Gavin. If you really want to upgrade your graph game, there's a custom card you can add to your Home Assistant. I think it's called Apex Charts. But, you know, schedule a few hours to play with it and you can graph away pie charts,

all sorts of things. You know. I'm downloading it right now, Kevin. You'll need, I think you'll need to download it from Hacks. You need to install Hacks on your system and grab it from there. I've got the Hacks and then Hacks said it needed to be updated so I updated it but now it says red and it says

it needs to reboot. You hate rebooting. I know, I don't even remember where to reboot there's no reboot press c so i'm not and then type reboot it'll bring up a menu type reboot yeah when did this happen oh it's one of those hidden features uh you know power users know that when you hit c in home assistant it brings up a menu you can type in commands well it doesn't doesn't have any reboot on it look for restart oh hold on restart server boom there we go boom connection lost so now my hacks will be upgraded but i don't even remember how to

use hacks so there's just another menu option i don't know how to use well if it gets me better graphs i'll i'll have to take a look at that here in the future sounds like sounds like you both have been very busy especially tj talking about rewiring his entire house for properly grounded wiring but that would be something that's that's a lot of work man yeah that's what that's why i wanted a small house to start off with that way i can just do this stuff relatively easily i mean like i said it's 1200 square feet so there's not a ton of wiring going on um and they they wired in an awful way like you turn one breaker off and like majority of the lights in the house turn off so it's not even like separated into like rooms or anything like a normal electrical panel is you can just tell

they they added on over the years and just took power from wherever they could. My, my, my house was wired strangely as well. And, and I've got this big breaker panel, but it's, I've kind of have the opposite thing. Like they, they put like three outlets on one breaker or something, you know, it's like, Oh wow. Yeah. I've got all these breakers and they only go to a couple of things and there's so many breakers in the house. I'm like, I don't have this much stuff.

This house isn't that big either. They're all hooked up to wires. So we've had to consolidate a few times and move stuff around. And luckily I, well, knock on wood, I really hope I'm done with that part of the projects of things, but I'll probably have to get back in there in one day and mess with something. These graphs looks nice.

Gavin, I'm going to have to investigate this a little bit, a little bit more. They've got better colors. It's pretty much the same graphs, but it's got better coloring to it. So more customization and stuff like that, but they're free.

So there we go. Can't be free. Nope. All right. Well, if I get on those, I'll let you guys know next week. But I'll probably spend all my time editing these shows that I need to get out.

So yay. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside conversations about filling your pool and watching it on a flume meter. That was very enthralling. And I have to admit, I mean, there was a lot of 30,000 gallons, he said, went through the water hose. And it took, who was that in the hub? I'm going to scroll way up to find that. Filling your pool from your tap is never a fun thing. I remember I had to do it once, and it took three or four days of constant running, you know, and then you had to turn it off whenever someone wants to take a shower and then turn it back on afterwards.

Right. So it did also cost me about five hundred dollars just to fill my pool. You know, you could get a truck come in with water and they just dump it all at once. But it costs about the same amount, too. So I luckily haven't had anything other than just a major leak on the pool but i i did have an issue at my house my current house with um some sprinkler lines that were still active that i really didn't know about and um after a hurricane one year random you know i'm not i don't remember which one exactly which is let's just say it was a random hurricane yeah one of them exactly it's florida uh the neighbors had to have the tree cut

down and they they brought all this machinery out to like grind the stomp up and stuff and i guess one of those tractors ran over something and crushed something and um we we didn't know but water was basically leaking out through this pipe and it didn't show up on our property. Like it showed up like down the hill where it was coming out and just like draining into the ditch. And, um, uh, the, the, the people were nice enough to come by and say, Hey, uh, the next morning and say, Hey, you probably have a water leak. We need to find it. And, um, they were right. Turns out. And, uh, it, it, that, that wasn't five, that was $300 for that, that couple hours that was on. So yeah, I can imagine it gets very expensive, especially in parts of the country where they are experiencing water shortages and that kind

of thing. Like it's, it's probably very hard to get water, um, in, in the quantity in 30,000 gallons. That's a lot of water. Yeah. Especially for a pool. So yeah, it's a big pool. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he posted some pictures in here.

Uh, showed, you know, all the notifications that he got like, Oh, you're over budget. You have a giant water leak. Something's wrong. It's like, Nope, Nope. Just fill in the pool. So very, very fun to watch. Very cool. And, uh, TJ, you've also been posting a bunch of interesting photos and things of your upgrade process there in the hub as well.

So join us in the hub there. You get to get all this extra content that you don't get on the show. It's all visual and chats and all this good stuff. So anyway, if you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice um that that's going to wrap up another week here on home tech everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week take care till next time yay we finished it an hour and a half. Wow, that's impressive.

We always have stuff to talk about. Yeah.