HomeTech.fm - Episode 440 - Swampy Marsh Fog

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 23rd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Keppel. And welcome back to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home innovation, home technology, all the fun stuff that can go into a house and make it fun to live in. We have been on a hiatus for a little bit.

I've been at Infocom 2023 with my company, and it was just really busy. I finally got, well, I guess not last week's show, but the week before that show edited. And yeah, but guess what, Gavin? I saw somebody at Infocom, TJ. I saw TJ there. I was there.

So he is real. He there and then he looked he was really tired he's like I think we're gonna you know go over here and make one more pass at this and then you know maybe you come back he never came back he he left I'm pretty sure he was like done with the show at like noon or what one o'clock I don't really even know no we stayed until like like four o'clock geez don't sell me so short. You know, you know what they say. Granted, granted, I didn't go in until like 11. So hey, Pixar didn't happen. Yeah, we did.

We did forget to take pictures. I guess we should have done that. We did. Yeah. Seth was busy fixing his Internet issues. He had a lot of Internet issues and stuff working issues. So, oh, yeah. Yeah.

So like we were like, oh, we can do the show without without needing internet and then as it turns out i did need the internet um we went and paid for this internet which was ridiculously expensive like i i don't i don't know what you you would get for on a normal day if you weren't captive to needing to pay somebody for internet but like if you were getting three three but three megabit up three megabit down internet for just like three days how much would you expect to pay um that should be free speed three megabit up and three megabit down now this is america nothing's free now now this is an american america there's a monopoly there's only one vendor and you're forced to pay them for anything that you need.

How much do you think it would be in America? American dollars. I'll give you an American dollar. What is it called? Handicap. You don't even have to convert it. I'm going to say they're going to charge you $140 a day. If only.

If only. That would be a deal. $5,200, my friend. And that's three megabit up and three megabit down? Three down, three up, yeah. That was my eye-opening realization that I am going to get just not treated very well at every one of these shows if we don't plan ahead. So, yeah, yeah, I was able to get it reduced down the next day after I went back and talked to them and complained to the manager, as would anyone would be want to do. You got that invoice into your email.

Would you get it knocked down like three hundred dollars or something? Yeah, I got like three thousand taken off. There was evidently another package that they did not inform the person who went to pay. So, yeah, it was still sixteen to, to pay. So yeah, it was still $1,600 to pay for internet for three days at the show. And it didn't work that well. It didn't work that well. Yeah.

But we, we got, we got, we got our booth going and we had, we had a good show. Honestly, after that I was able to do some fun stuff like use, I have a firewall,

a purple in, in the rack, just kind of like running random stuff in the rack. It was just there to be the router in the rack of stuff. I really didn't need it, but it was there. And I was able to use it to VPN back to the house and connect some equipment that I left at the house that didn't have enough room to bring.

I could connect directly to it. It was sitting there at the table with me. And it was not difficult to do. It's was sitting there at the table with me and it was like, it was not difficult to do. It's like two clicks. It was, it's a great little system. I can't, I can't recommend these little routers enough. They are a little pricey, but for what they do and how well they do it, it's a pretty good piece. Anyway, that's, that's enough about Infocom 2023. Next up is the big CD show in September. And I was informed while I was there that it's less than 90 days away, which I am not happy about because I still have not.

Oh boy. Yeah. You guys haven't planned anything. As far as I know, I've been trying to get everybody to plan stuff for the past, like three or four months, because I knew this would happen. I knew we'd get to like 90 days out,

60 days out. And everybody'd be like, I don't even know where I'm staying. I don't know what we're doing. I don't know where we're going. Like, be like i don't even know where i'm staying i don't know what we're doing i don't know where we're going like come on well i know where i'm staying i know how much my flight's gonna cost me um i know where i'm going i got every i got everything i got everything planned out you know um the wife's even planning day trips and stuff but uh we haven't booked actually a book to anything you know so maybe this weekend i'll

actually buy the tickets and reserve the group rate in the hotel that you gave us it's probably probably not a bad idea that you know to do that so it's probably a good time yeah because because one of the fun uh things that happened to us um is is that we booked for this infocom show late and i think i think they did release the numbers there was something like 28 29 000 people there so it's a pretty big size show. It's, it's, I don't,

CD isn't going to be anywhere near that big. Maybe I think they top around 20, 20,000 where they used to top out at around 20,000. So CD will be a much smaller show, but we booked our hotels a while back. Didn't get the greatest hotels because there wasn't many left at the time. Like I couldn't stay at the Hyatt right across the street. Right right i had to go like down the street to something by sea world down i drive i'm like all right in the alleyway somewhere yeah yeah i mean it was a fine hotel it was

actually better but then one other person decided to join us and we were like oh man i've got i want to get all the hotels i want to get everybody the same hotel right well i booked at this marriott which don't book in marriott because evidently it doesn't matter if you book in Marriott. They just won't have your reservations when you show up at five o'clock looking like you're dead from setting up a booth all day.

And yeah, and then you tell you, I'm sorry, we rebooked you at a Marriott that's 45 minutes away. Wow. And yeah, that wasn't going to happen. So yeah, book your hotel now, Gavin. Book your hotel now. And make sure you, make sure you money hands, because evidently it doesn't matter if you tell them that you're going to show up on a particular day. They will just book or they'll overbook their hotel and then they will just be like, oh, yeah, we we gave your room to somebody else who was here earlier than you.

It sounds super fun. I'm jealous. you know. We had a great time. We actually ended up, so like it's right there in Orlando, right? And I do a lot of like, I stay there quite a bit for Universal. And so I was like, well, the resorts are right around the corner. Let's just call and see if they have any. Guess what? They had three rooms at one of the resorts. And so we were there with like a lazy river, giant hot tub, and like all this stuff in, you know, one of the Universal resorts.

And yeah, there was a bunch of kids and families running around, but you know what? Um, the bars were still good and it was, it was not, you know, the bars were not packed inside there cause it's all kids and families running around and drinks were still as good as they would have been, you know, everywhere else. So we had a great time and, uh, better than staying 45 minutes away and driving in on a commute through or down through through through Orlando traffic every morning. Oh, my God. That's so awful down there. I do not. Every time I go down, I'm like, this is just progressively getting worse. I don't want to be here just because it takes forever to go anywhere.

Well, I'm excited about Denver. Evidently, we have a place right across the street from the show. So it'll be easier on the commute walking across the street or wherever it's supposed to be. And so, um, I'm excited about that. As you guys will both be there.

Um, we'll have to plan to mayhem. I guess we're going to actually have to do that. And it's just not say that we are and, figure out what day we can, we can have a big party and whatnot. So we'll see. I know that,

I know that a lot of the, uh, bigger vendors aren't doing parties this year. So maybe, maybe we'll, we'll, we'll do some talking and see and see if we can pump up, be part of it, like maybe even just be like half a sponsor of a show or something like that. So we'll see. We'll see what we can do.

All right. Well, there are a, since we kind of like took off a little while there, there's been like a number of home tech headlines that have come through. So what do you say we jump in and talk about these? Let's do it. All right. In a pretty big development, Eve Systems. It's a home automation sensor company, I guess.

They're commonly used with Apple products. They have a big home kit business. They've announced acquisition by multi-billion dollar automation giant ABB. I've never really heard of them, but I guess ABB is a multinational company with fingers in many pies. It's relevant here.

It's basically has a building and home automation solutions division. It mostly works on high-end products, commercial property, like offices and hotels. Eve has a range of innovative products like smart plugs, sensors, lighting control solutions. I've always liked Eve products. They've all looked real clean and everything. They do have that commercial feel and look, like a more modern look that would fit well into offices. So this might not be a bad acquisition from ABB to get to where they could be able to expand some of their smart home offerings into offices or MDU units like hotels or condos, that kind of thing.

I've never used any of the Eve devices myself, but I know that they're one of the most recommended when it comes to like DIY and home automation at this point, especially if you're using HomeKit at all. Right, right. I actually have one of their sensors that I think I've talked about in the past we use to keep an eye on if she's gotten gotten up and I just looked at it over here and I've been getting notifications saying that, yes, in fact, she did get up out of bed and open the door eight minutes ago. And then nine minutes ago, it was closed. So your poor kid, she's hurried back into her room to get back to bed.

Child, go to sleep. Does that come over your, uh, your Sonos speakers? You're just yelling at your child. You actually just automate it. Get back in there what are you doing out of bed and you give me crap about monitoring my neighbor's water usage look at you well i mean you got to keep a bit you got to keep them in in in the room i mean i didn't put a door lock on or anything i haven't done that she's not a teenager yet not yet yeah

exactly okay yeah i'd sort of be worried if you did that. So this Eve acquisition, I wonder how it's going to affect the regular users, the fans they have today of the Eve products. Like, are they going to still invest in it? Are we still going to get updates, matter updates? Are there going to be new products? Or are they just going to move it all to commercial? I'm not sure what direction they're going in and we'll see. Yeah. They've been making some advances like into, I mean, Eve used to be like a home kit only product, right? It used to be only like Apple, right? And they recently they've, I mean,

since Matter started to come out, they've been in making announcements. They have an Android app. It doesn't do everything, but like it does, they do have an Android app. So they are pushing out into those other markets. So we'll be interesting to see what this does for them. I mean, sometimes this brings in a lot of money. Sometimes people get fired, you know, from these acquisitions later. Like it's like the duplicate jobs. Like you're not going to have two accounting departments for one company when you can just combine everybody into one. So sometimes this is good for a company. Sometimes it's not such a great thing. So hopefully it's a good home for Eve

and they can continue to expand on their product in the home automation space, but also build out into other markets like for the commercial things. All right, well, here's a major sympathy story here. Comcast has lodged a complaint with the FCC citing the difficulty of listing all of its monthly fees, guys. I mean, this is really sad. Boo-hoo. I can hear the tears coming out from everybody. Oh, no, not Comcast. Well, Comcast claims that the

requirement to disclose all the fees in the customer's bills is so challenging due to the complex nature of its pricing structure. It just can't do it. And they're arguing that complying with the regulation would lead to increased costs and confusions for customers. And then I have a note here, Comcast customers on the audience just may be having less confusing fees and bills in the first place.

Maybe that's a pretty good place to start. I used to be a Comcast customer and man, were their bills confusing. They did attempt to make it not confusing, but even that was confusing. And there were there were months where I was like, why do I have these extra charges? No idea. Could barely even figure it out. My wife was like, why is our bill going up?

Like, I don't know. Yeah. Sorry. Not sorry. Just list your fees. Be that easy. Yeah. I don't get the extra ad.

I don't get the extra add on fees that they had. They put on everything just like increase the total price of the whole product and just make that the price. Yeah. Why do we have to like agree upon a price and then have like 20 or and sometimes the fees are expensive. I mean, you're talking 20, 30 dollars in additional fees sometimes for like the most trivial things.

And it's like, sure, those, some of those are probably legit and some of those are probably not legit, but just put it in the price. Yep. Yep. And this, the little broadband fax thing that the FCC has proposed, I guess they, they were required by law to implement this in 2001. Like this thing looks like the, the, the nutritional value sheet, I guess it's on your, on the back of like every, uh of every American food product these days. It has the calories and all that stuff. And it just breaks down all the fees and everything. What's going to be included in this bill for this particular monthly price?

And you're right, DJ. I had a, I think it was like $65 a month Comcast thing. And then by the time they added all their fees on it and equipment charges and everything, it was like over a hundred bucks. And it's like, this is ridiculous. Like, can't they just be up front and instead of advertising $60 or whatever cheap internet, like, can't they just say that it's going to cost you a hundred bucks? It doesn't make any sense. So they're complaining about that. They say that's too complicated and too hard to do yet. For some reason they can feel it. They could figure that out every single month and send it to me.

Gavin, do you guys have anything like this in Canada where they say that the price is going to be like $5 and you turn around and it's like after all the fees and everything, it's $100? Oh, of course. Yeah, everybody's got that. Like, don't feel like you guys are alone with that. But I have to admit, my Rogers bill, it took them a while, but they've made it easier to understand. So they almost like summarize everything. Like my cell phone bill that said your basic service is this. And then this much was on text messages and this much was on long distance, et cetera, et cetera. And then if you want more detail, you can then break it down to see, you know,

where, where it was spent. So it actually got easier to read. I don't think it's that difficult. They're probably just making it seem like it's difficult. And it's probably because they want to make it complicated. They don't want people to really understand what they're paying for or else, you know where this is going, right? So they're going to fight this. But I think a bill, when you look at your bill, you should be able to understand clearly what it is you're paying for and where your money's going um and if you can't like i think something should be done about it then yeah i mean well this and this is a little like a step further this is like at the point of sale they they're saying you should be able to tell us how much this thing is going to cost like how much after you ring it up at my address, including all

the taxes and equipment fees and everything, how much will my bill be? And Comcast really doesn't tell you that they really won't until you actually like get down to the very last part. Like I accept this thing, let's run with it. They can, they kind of guess at it. They're like, Oh, they're probably about 15, 20 bucks extra taxes and that kind of thing. Cause that's how much, you know, the estimation here says, but we won't, you know, they don't know until they, they invoice you. It's always a weird number. Yeah. Some of the worst bills are like my, um, my gas bill, my electrical bill, because they have the water bill. They have these weird fees, like, you know, delivery fee. And I think I can't remember what the water one is, but the water disposal fee or something like that. And those fees, like, it's funny that you laugh, but those

fees are like more than what you paid for the water. Right. And it's so bad that they actually send you like instructions on how to read your bill, you know, but the instructions are like, no one's going to read those five pages of instructions to read your bill like they need to simplify this a bit more yeah yeah and sometimes the instructions will make it even more complicated so right definitely don't have any way to figure it out well hopefully um the i mean i guess comcast is asking the fcc for all these loopholes for you know their their marketing team to to infect uh the forms with better ways of advertising cheap prices to people when they're i mean this is the company right now

they're if you go and look for their internet they're selling 5g internet or what would no 10g internet it's like oh wow i can get 10 gig internet no it's not 10 gig internet that's just the brand name of their regular internet their 10g internet can start I don't know, 200 megabyte if you want. It's just that's what they named their internet. Yeah. Such a deceptive company. They just, you know, I don't feel bad for them at all. What they need to do is just implement a broadband fax fee

and just, you know, put it as part of the bill. So there you go. I don't know how much that costs per customer, $1.20 or something. Exactly. Just spread out the cost, the extra cost of figuring out the bills and making these FCC labels. And yeah, just spread it out.

25 cents per customer. There you go. Anyway, hopefully they figure it out and don't get away with watering this thing down or making it what it's not supposed to be, which is supposed to be helpful for consumers yeah all right well um here's here's something fun about here's something fun about watering things a new product here from raccio um the raccio sprinkler controller company introduced a new feature on their app called valve monitoring with valve monitoring homeowners can

easily check the status of each valve ensure ensure that efficient water usage is happening, and identifying, hopefully before they happen, any potential issues. The app provides real-time data on valve activity, which is basically open and close, right? And allowing users to track water flow and detect leaks and malfunctions promptly. Innovative feature from Rocio aims to enhance water management and simplify irrigation systems maintenance. Now here's the catch though. The valve monitoring is a new premium feature and is available to all Rocio 3 smart sprinkler controller users for a one-time price of $29.99. Interesting. Well, all right. the price thing is is the one thing let's let's talk about that first gavin you're a ratio guy what do you think about this feature what do you think about this

um i i can see what they're doing with the feature because i think it monitors the voltage across the line and it can monitor you know over time if the voltage or something drops when it's active um they can detect it but you know, for that price, I don't think that's a feature that I'm really interested in. Like, I usually go out and test my system anyway. I turn it on, I turn it off. If sprinkler heads don't pop up, there's something wrong. That's what it tells me. You know, if they all don't pop up, the valve's not working. If one doesn't pop up, then know i know that one's broken out somewhere along the line like uh i i don't think for 30 i'm more upset that i think

going forward this is gonna be how it is if they come out with a new feature are you gonna have to buy it it's like if you buy a new car got to pay for your heated seats that are already in your car. Yeah. Like, are they going to start doing that for every new feature? You know, you can have this feature for five dollars. And, you know, when you when you start to add up, their bill is going to get worse than, you know, Comcast bill. It's going to be harder to read with all the subscriptions you got on it. So I don't know. I'm not a fan of it.

I don't I'm not I'm not interested in this feature. I don't, I'm not, I'm not interested in this feature. I like that they're still coming with features though. But I'm also looking at my ratio system now saying now, am I never going to get any new features because every new feature is going to be put behind, I'm going to have to pay for, you know, is that like how it's going to be going forward? I don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah, it's kind of, I thought it would already be a existing service that was included in it. Right. I mean, it seems like a pretty basic functionality to me. So it was kind of confusing when I saw this come across and I'm torn because

$30, I mean, I understand where Gavin's coming from the $30, at least it's a one-time fee and you're not having to subscribe to you know ratio premium or something like that in order to get this service so like but it's just weird are there does anybody know if there's any other sprinkler systems out here that just like have this built in by default i i haven't heard of one that uses possibly what they're talking about like gavin said said, it's basically checking to see what the amperage, I guess, or the voltage is across the coil, the solenoid coil. And if it's not what it normally should be or not what it is, it kind of throws an error and says you may have a problem. It's not going to detect if the pipe is busted. That's going to be a different type of sensor.

This is just going to say and kind of notice that this valve isn't operating like the other ones are or maybe stuck open or closed or something like that. They may be able to detect that too based on the electrical signal that's going over it. But I don't think that it's not going to catch everything that could happen in a sprinkler. If somebody's mowing and mows over a sprinkler head and knocks it loose and it's spraying water up in the air every single time it turns on, this isn't going to know that.

It's just going to know that the solenoid is having a problem. And those are like $15 parts, right? So replace two of them and that's the cost of this feature that they have i don't know i i just don't i haven't seen anybody else do this kind of thing i guess is the the final answer on that and they did have a water monitoring um device at one point um the ratio flow yes i actually had one and i put it in and i actually took it out because it was just it was more trouble than it was worth and it didn't really give me any information, but it would tell you if apparently if you had a leak or something like that. Right. Um, but I just pulled that out and it was useless to me. I don't

know. I, I really liked their controller. Their software is great. You know, it's almost a set and forget it type of thing. It just works. And the notifications, you know, are great, but I don't know where they're going with this. And I don't like, I don't like where they're going with this. I will say it's interesting that this feature was built in to the controller that you bought and you didn't even know it was in it. Like they didn't, and they didn't obviously didn't was in it like they didn't and they didn't obviously didn't advertise it like they didn't say that this thing they didn't promise that this would ever do that but it's not like whatever they have reading that voltage was like they must have designed that in right they must have known that one day they'd either be able to write the software to read the

data or collect another the data to understand what it means when a solenoid is going bad, like over time. And paying like, yeah, you paid a few hundred bucks for the ratio a few years back, right? But this is a new feature that they've turned on or they've done a lot of R&D on to figure out how to implement correctly. Maybe it's not bad that it's, you know, extra 30 bucks one time-time fee, you know, like it's a one-time fee just to activate that feature. I guess, I guess I'm saying like, you didn't even know this existed. There could be another thing in there that, um, I don't know that, that, that they, another sensor or something they put in there and you don't know it's in there, but there's, it's, it's, they figured out how to turn it on and collect data and do something with it. Like, I don't know,

I think it's all right if they charge you an extra 30 bucks for the people that would find that valuable and want to use that. And I think it's a valuable feature in the markets, like in the pro market, right? Like you'd love to have this feature because you could see your clients, you could tell your clients, hey, I'm sensing that you have a faulty valve here. We'll send somebody out to fix it tomorrow, right? And that will be valuable. Yeah, I could see them just including that in the price of the thing outright. It's a $29 thing, but no, we'll just add 30 bucks onto this

and we'll know if they're having a problem with it. Yeah, good point. All right, well, I've got these new products in order of price, and that was probably the lowest one at $30. But the next one's not too much more. Wiz, which is a division of basically Signify, which is basically the parent company of Philips Hue,

has introduced some new smart lights that offer a Philips Hue-style experience but without the big price tag. Users control the lights with the Wiz app, adjust the brightness, choose a wide range of colors, create ambience. The lights also support control with voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and they work with Siri as well through HomeKit. There are four new lights arriving

within the next few weeks. It's called the Full Color Filament Spiral, the Neon Flex Strip, the Super Slim Color Luminaire, and the Panel Ceiling. All these products should... Signify is a European company, so all of these should start to ship in late June for customers in the UK and Ireland, and I suspect that they'll make its way over here to the US. Pretty cool.

Wiz is a Wi-Fi... All their products are Wi-Fi. They don't do anything but Wi-Fi. And these start, it looks like there's some that are 99 pounds, let's see, or 99 euros. Here's one that's 30 euro. The ceiling one, the panel ceiling one, I think if you got a big one, it was the most, yeah, 130 euro. That's really, as far as Wiz goes, it's probably the most expensive thing I've ever seen them make. They have quite a few inexpensive bulbs and lamps and that kind of thing that you can buy. Um, most of it is, is in the 30 to $100 range if I remember correctly. So, uh, a lot of new products, uh, we'll put some links in the show notes where you can go check them out. Um, I think

this is an interesting little company. Um, aside from-Fi control, which I'm not a fan of, but I have been using their products. They actually work really well. They do a great job. And they also have that Wi-Fi feature where they can do presence detection based on the interference from the Wi-Fi signal. And you can trigger automation

based off that presence detection without any additional sensors. It's kind of cool. So that should also be in here as well. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty cool. I like the little flex LED strip because they have a nice little photo of the music note on the wall. So it's kind of a callback to the old neon signs you see everywhere.

That's kind of cool. I'm not a huge user of colored lighting. I just have a bunch of boring lighting in my house. Um, but it's always good to see additions like this. And I've always heard good things about whiz. So yeah, whiz whiz is, it gets a lot of talk out there and, and, you know, I think people that have whiz products seem to be happy. Right. And that's important. If you have a good product, you it will sell um i don't use wiz um i'm like tj i don't really have a lot of i don't have colored light bulbs in general

um all my lights are smart switches i don't go with the smart light bulbs but if you're going to start throwing a lot of these wi-fi devices on just make sure you have a good wi-fi network that's what i tell people is make sure you have something that can handle so many devices. Wiz actually has a local API. I know this because I've been working with it. And then they also have a cloud API.

Whichever one you want to use, you can use it. And I guess that would work if you wanted to keep them segmented on their own Wi-Fi network, you would probably use the cloud API to interact with them if you needed to. And if you wanted to have them on the on their own Wi-Fi network, you would probably use the cloud API to interact with them if you needed to. And if you wanted to have them on the local network and send all your commands that way, they've got an API for that too. So kind of a cool product. I've been impressed with what I've seen out of them.

Let's just put it that way. They've got some pretty cool stuff and it works way better than I thought it was going to. But again, it comes from Signify. They're the parent company of Philips Hue. They're a real, I mean, they're the parent company of Philips Hue. They know what they're doing. And how's their API? Because I know products have local APIs and they're just like, it's garbage, right?

How is theirs? It's okay. It's like a UDP ACBI, so it's like broadcast, but you kind of have to like pull for things here and there. It does do updates through that as well. It's not terrible. There are things that I wish that could do better. And maybe since I kind of have a direct line to the product manager, maybe I'll say, hey, can you do this?

We'll see if they can get it done. But there are things that is missing. Like I haven't found the names of the devices. So when we get them in through the API, it's just like the Mac addresses. I've got to go digging a little bit deeper to see if there's another way I can get it or I just missed it somewhere in the documentation.

But yeah, it's kind of weird to like just get Mac addresses back and not have whatever you named it in the app. So other than that, it seems to work really well. I have no complaints so far. Well, let's move on here. The last one, the most expensive one here. it seems to work really well. I have no complaints so far. Well, let's move on here. The last one, the most expensive one here.

And I know we've talked about this before, but I guess they have a new range of them. So CC has introduced the N1 folding outdoor television. It's a new innovative television. They have two sizes, 165 inch or 137 inch display. It's 4K micro LED technology, has plenty of brightness for even direct sunlight. When not in use, the TV gets folded up and stored underground in this weird column thing that it motorizes down into. It's got an adaptive daylight function built into it. So if it gets too bright outside, it'll ramp up its lighting, the LEDs on it. Now, here's the catch, Gavin.

The CC folding outdoor television is now available to purchase at a price starting at $233,000, targeting luxury homeowners and outdoor entertainment enthusiasts who are also extremely wealthy. So are you going to go pick up one of of these put it out by the pool um i did the conversion that's about 300 000 canadian that's just a little bit out of my range so i'm gonna have to pass if it was like 150 000 maybe but 300 000 you know like i might just look at the ferrari i always wanted it's too bad g, because if you got this one, you could also get the one that's made for yachts. So, I mean, you could have one at your house or on your yacht and you're always ready to

go. Oh, I gave my yacht away because it was just too much work. So, you know, like, yeah, a lot of maintenance. A lot of maintenance. So, yeah, I mean, get this. It also has two built in 100 watt coaxial speakers, integrated subwoofer built into the column. And then there's twin coaxial speakers that get brought out on each wing. So the speakers are built into this thing.

So you can basically hook it up to run. I hope so. Yeah. I mean, for that price, why not? I mean, it could be an add-on. It could be like, well, you want the speakers to work? That's another $200,000. It's a one-time price, though.

You need the special dongle.200,000. It's a one-time price, though. You need the special dongle. Yeah, exactly. But it was really cool to see the videos of this. I saw a few videos where it was installed on a rotating stand, and I thought that was really cool. But I think you mentioned it before the show. The installation cost is going to be ridiculous for these things. The wiring, the digging into the ground. You probably have to bring in a crane just to bring it in at some

point too who knows right just just a couple hundred thousand dollars for installation i'm sure yeah like if you pay 233 000 i would i would venture to guess that it's well over 150 000 to install this thing just just just thinking about all the permits and like, I mean, you're digging a hole in the ground, right? Like you're going to have to account for drainage, right? Like water goes down last I checked. And if you dig a hole, it's either going to be a swimming pool with a TV, a very expensive TV in it at some point, like that's how it would be here in Florida. Um, or you're going to figure out some way to drain all that water out of there and, uh, and move it along. I assume that they, they know what

they're doing then because they made a TV that goes into a hole. Um, and they have that figured out, but just because they have it figured out, it doesn't mean it's done at your house. When you dig a hole, like you're going to have to figure that out as well. oh boy this yeah and it takes 60 seconds to pop up and then another 25 30 seconds to deploy the panels and then gavin if you wanted to rotate it around i imagine it's not very fast doing that either so um yeah you're looking at a minute and a half just to get that thing up and and going and watching tv which that's ridiculous that's a long time perfect case for automation you know before you go into the backyard, you could tell, you know, the Amazon lady to turn on the TV. So by the time you make it back there after you cook dinner and eat dinner and you can finally get back there, it's on and booted.

There you go. Well, I'll add this to the shopping list. Hopefully it goes Black Friday sale this year. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be marked down to two hundred thousand dollars. It's a thirty three thousand dollars off. Yay.

Instant buy then. Exactly. All right, all right. Now, here's a discussion thing that I ran across. And I think this story kind of made the rounds. It wasn't as bad as it turned out to be, but it's a pretty eye-opening personal account about this guy who is basically locked out

of interacting with his smart home for a week. Not because his internet's down or Alexa died or anything like that. No, I guess there was a complaint from a delivery driver, an Amazon delivery driver. And this guy named Brandon Jackson, his Amazon account basically was suspended. So here's a quote from the article.

On Wednesday, May 31st, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly a week. This wasn't just a simple inconvenience though. I have a smart home and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through the Amazon Echo devices via Alexa.

This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions. So basically, he woke up one day, noticed his Amazon Echo had been signed out and didn't work. So he's like, my Amazon account login doesn't work either. Naturally assumed that he had an account compromised, but he uses two-factor and decent passwords, he says, so probably not likely. Called Amazon, did some research with them. They said, you need to check your email and there's a number to call in there. He found that. It turns out there was an Amazon delivery driver who thought they heard something from his doorbell that they considered to be racist and they complained. This

guy said something racist out of his doorbell. He has a video of it. And it appears, like he said, he reviewed his videos. And it appears to be just a misunderstanding. He said he reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made. Instead, the Eufy doorbell had issued the automated response, excuse me, can I help you? And the driver who was walking away wearing headphones after just probably tossing the package at the front door misinterpreted the message. Despite submitting video evidence, his account remained blocked for almost a week. And here's another quote I liked. If someone bought and paid for a device, they should be able to use it at least on their own property if it doesn't

hurt anyone else. I'm only pushing this story so it won't happen to anyone else. Regardless of the race, religion, beliefs, if you paid for something, if someone paid for it, they should own it. So he's pushing the story out that way. I thought this was pretty eye-opening. Like, this is crazy. Something happens at your property, your Amazon account gets suspended

because of a misunderstanding, and you have no access to any of your smart home devices? Wow. That is, that's bad. That's really bad. because of a misunderstanding and you have no access to any of your smart home devices wow that is that's that's bad that's really bad um gavin you're you're an amazon guy what do you think about this the only part that i didn't like was they cut it off without um consulting him first you know like right right they didn't give him a call get his side of the story because he pointed on his article that you know they kept saying his ring camera he didn't give him a call, get his side of the story because he pointed on his article that, you know, they kept saying his ring camera, he didn't have a ring camera. Right. Um, he wasn't even home at

the time, you know, there's so many things, but nobody ever called him to say, Hey, we have a complaint. You know, we want to get your side of the story, blah, blah, blah. Um, no, they just went ahead and cut it off. And that's the only part that really you know like got to me but i think because the story blew up i think they will be more careful about doing this yeah i think we can all agree that like you know racism is bad and people shouldn't be racist because that's not good for anybody involved but i feel like you probably shouldn't have your online presence revoked because you possibly said something racist as well. Like that's a whole lot of damage for, in this case, a misunderstanding.

And if this was a misunderstanding, how many times have they done that before? Or they've just banned somebody for hearing something or thinking they've heard something or whatever. I could understand like maybe banning Amazon deliveries or something like, oh, we're not going to send people to your house anymore. But like, yeah, the whole it's like your Google account, you know, disabled or something because of a misunderstanding or it's just such an important thing on on the online world nowadays that it's hard to believe that this is a real thing. Yeah. And I guess having it all so closely and integrated together, like, I mean, I could see this happening, right? I could understand

it. And like you said, you know, just banning Amazon deliveries, that would probably be more potentially more problematic. I think it was, he kind of said like, Hey, it was Memorial Day weekend. I was, you know, really wanting to order some stuff and I couldn't, I couldn't even log into my account. Couldn't get anybody to respond. So yeah, like, I mean that, that might've been like the better way of doing it, but instead of just an all out, like account disabling, uh, to where all of the stuff that he had purchased from Amazon and he goes on to say, look, I, I, you know, this wasn't the, it sounds like Amazon wasn't the only way that he was controlling his house. And he was like, I just couldn't use Alexa to do stuff with, I have everything else. He said, I just use Siri or

locally hosted dashboard, probably home assistant, um, to do, to do other stuff. But it was just kind of like an overreaction. Well, not really an overreaction. Like I could see something, a consequence happening. If this truly did happen, like TJ, what you're saying, like I could see there being a consequence. Maybe it's the driver doesn't have to go to this house anymore. Or maybe this guy doesn't get fast deliveries anymore. Maybe his Prime membership gets revoked or whatever. That would be good.

Like disabling products that he purchased i think that's just that that's what really stepped over the line to me yeah it's just it's a little weird you know it's not anything that anybody should have to go through so it's just i don't know it is that like not like it was like a physical thing like there's different levels to all this stuff obviously but like it was some words said over a video doorbell. Right. Like not that bad in the grand scheme of what happens in America. So. Right. Right. All right. Well, if we've learned anything here, it's don't be racist and leave water bottles up for your Amazon delivery drives because it's really hot right now. Looking at you, Texas. Yeah, it's really hot out

there. It's water rigs are illegal. I always try to offer them whenever I see the delivery drivers because I always have like a mini fridge or something in the shop. So I know it sucks, especially when you have to stop at the gas station or something and get cold water. It just takes so much more time out of your day. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

All right. Well, in our segment, Who Matters This Week, we've got the Eco Matter. We've got the EcoFlow the eco matter. We've got the we've got the eco flow matter compliant smart plug comes with real time energy consumption and tracking. This thing is hitting in Europe first, probably not sure if it's coming over here. Yeah, I guess it is. Doesn't I mean, they've got the European version of it online here. But hey, congratulations to you.

Eco flow smart plug. You've made it. You matter this week. matter this week congratulations it looks like a nice device you know it's got some silver color to it and everything um it looks bulky from the picture though but like the uh the picture of the lady sitting on the floor messing with her laundry for some reason well that's that's a european plug that it doesn't look like a doesn't look like a giant bulky device though so that's nice 34 uh what is it 34 pounds in uh and eu countries or 36 euros uh over in the netherlands and germany congratulations to your warranty pretty good pretty good i like the wording on this though it says matter compliant so does i i wonder what does that mean if matter compliant like no come on no gavin matter is good it works with apple it says here works with apple

amazon google or samsung and another smart home system so we're happy we're happy they have matter that's what matters okay okay okay we don't have anything else gavin you get all the features what matter with this we don't we don't talk about that we don't talk about okay okay what are features and matter gavin could you even name a feature and matter um power monitoring that's not a feature of matter sorry exactly no no no so now this is matter compliance i get it so yes you do get all the features of Matter. It wasn't that difficult. It can turn on and turn off, and that's it.

But it does come with the energy monitoring, so hopefully they'll do that one day. I mean, I can't imagine they won't, unless there's no more Matter that matters anymore. But yeah, there you go. A new smart plug for our friends. One that we can't buy yet. For our friends in the UK.

All right, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes or at hometech.fm slash 440. All right, we got a pick of the week this week. I don't really know how to describe this. DJ, you and I were at the show. This is probably the quirkiest booth I think they had there. It's called Froggy's Smoke or something like that. It's basically people that make smoke machines.

Not only do they make smoke machines, they make flavored smoke. And boy, do they have some flavors. There's the ones you would think of immediately. And by think of immediately i would you know you'd have to be like someone in junior high because uh yes farts are in there stinky cheese is there garlic is there what else you got tj you got another one in here well you got rotting decay you have haunted house pumpkin spice i mean everybody loves pumpkin spice and slaughterhouse next to each other it kind of it kind of goes together yeah mothballs we've got popcorn vanilla urine i mean they're all

over the place and not only did they like have these labeled you could take them out of the thing and smell the the the i guess the extract or whatever that they put in to these smoke things to to verify if you were actually smelling the fart smell next to the pine tree or peppermint or mothball mildew, stinky cheese. I mean, there's so many here. I did like barbecue. Barbecue was there. What does Gothic smell like? Gothic? Maybe it smells like a Hot Topic store at the mall. I don't know. Yeah, I should have smelled Gothic while I was there. I was I was pretty lame and I smelled the apple pie and coffee. So rainforest hospital rainforest hospital electric chair well we know what that smells like whiskey zombie which i don't

know how zombie would smell anything different than rotting decay but maybe maybe it does yeah wouldn't that be basically the same thing yeah and and how does raw sewage compare to the fart poop smell i don't know. But maybe somebody did. If you did smell these at InfoComm, if you did stop by Froggy's and smell this stuff, man, oh, man, I feel sorry for you, first of all. But let us know what you thought about it. Well, I did. So what did you smell?

I smelled apple pie and coffee and the apple pie. It smelled like a very artificial apple pie. That's lame, DJ. Well, I wasn't trying to throw up in the middle of the floor. Yeah, I wanted to compare it to something I know what it smells like. And honestly, I'm not a serial killer, so I don't know what rotting flesh or slaughterhouse or hospital tastes like or smell like.

I definitely didn't taste it, I can tell you that. Pick up and take a shot of one of these oh sulfur volcano let me take a shot of that swampy marsh that was basically the smell of florida if you walked outside you smelled swampy marsh so gavin are there any scents here that interest you no nothing surprising if you take the ttc in toronto you've experienced a lot of these so it wouldn't be anything surprising but but if you saw some smoke and you walked into it and you're like oh man that smells like barbecue somebody must be having a barbecue around here and really it's just a smoke machine that's going off that would be that'd be disappointing i think you'd be very upset i'm pretty i think they were trying to do something like this with uh like not

home theaters but theater theaters where they wanted to add smell to the movies, too. So maybe this is just a step. This is a step above the Burger King smell-o-vision of yesteryear. So, yeah, well, it was definitely a fun booth to kind of stop by. They also had a fog gun, which was like a gun that looked that shot fog. I think it was like, Oh, that was the best.

It was like $5,000 too. Like it was insanely priced. But if you wanted to shoot fog at people with a gun, they had it. America. Anyway, you could shoot whiskey fog

out of a gun. How, how American, I mean, come on, you can't get any more American than that. Beer fog out of a gun.

Yeah, yeah, exactly oh man just have little cartridges you run out put another one in here comes the mildew all right all right it was a fun show there's a lot of stuff there big tvs and all that good stuff uh tj 287 inch tvs and transparent displays and yeah those were neat the transparent ones i have a there's a short video online so may be hiding behind one and then peeking out and waving but you can still see me that was kind of the joke you can still see me through the tv i guess but um lg had some that were really nice looking that basically were the walls of their booth and they wrapped all the way around and you kind of see what was going on in there um it's kind of cool it was a cool experience well and that's the first time i

felt like i was like i was not in a convention too because they had bouncers you could only go into a certain certain way and then you had to follow the room in a certain way and then you had to leave a certain way it was like i've never experienced that at a trade show so yeah it's like a museum or something it's wild yeah they wanted you to see everything don't come in here just to see one thing you're gonna see everything don't wander through our booth and walk on our carpet anyway uh it was a cool show uh i i i don't i mean we're going back next year it's in vegas so yay that'll be something um but yeah if you haven't been to infocom and it's around in your area meaning las vegas or orlando it's worth going to maybe once uh if you're in the commercial space I mean or in the

like show production or anything like that it's a smaller show than like NAB or something but it's definitely worth it

worth your time there's plenty of stuff there to see just packed 20, 28, 29,000 people alright well if you have any feedback, questions, comments pics of the weeks

or great ideas for a show give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm. Or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, projects. Guys, before we left, I know we talked about it on the show,

but I did receive this thing. The Aquara SmartLock U100 came in pretty quickly. And I'm like, I could put that in or I could pack for this show. And I kind of had to decide to do worky work stuff and pack for the show. So it's still sitting here. That's my project. I'll get to it eventually. We still got you to spend the money though. That's right.

It's past the you can't return it now. Gotta come up with a price per show database. Yeah, it has a button on it, right? No, I'm just saying a price per show database now. So that way we know how much money we get people to spend. You know, if you buy something through the show, you got to let us know so we can add it to the graph. Well, I'm going to have to add like, what, $15 to this one because I'm going to have to buy the domain for that now.

Yeah, Gavin, you've got a bunch of updates. I was at a show, so I really didn't do anything. But, Gavin, you've got a bunch of updates. What's going on over there at your place? Oh, no, just, you know, I'm always playing around with something. I see someone's idea or ask a question. I'm like, hmm, what can I do? Someone was talking about doggy doors.

You know, it's like you have your doggy door. How can you tell if your dog is going in or out the door? Right. Can you get a notification for it? So playing around, I was playing around with that. I tried like using the show me tilt sensor so I could tell when he's going out and going in. But the only problem with that is it doesn't respond fast enough. Right. So by the time it actually responded, the door flap stopped moving. So it never really registered. So I was like, that was no good. So I just use like a vibration sensor to know that he's going.

It doesn't tell me which way he's going, but it tells me he's going out, right? Cause I usually just leave that back door open and I just leave the screen door and he walks through that. And at least I know he's outside or he's coming in, you know, he's doing something out there. I could check the camera. So if you're looking to do something like that, just throw a little vibration sensor on there or throw a little contact sensor,

you know, good little idea just so you know your dog's going in and out. And one thing I grabbed was an ESP2. This is, I don't know why I've been so curious about these ESP2 little microchips and what you could do with them, right? But I grabbed an ESP32C3, I think this is. This thing's tiny. It's like the size of my thumb. And I want to use it with ESP Home on Home Assistant. This will be my first ESP project.

So it's going to take me a while. But I bought a pressure sensor with it uh water pressure sensor and i'm gonna be using this to monitor the pressure of my pool um filter so i want to see if i can get that you know play it will give me a nice a nice need for an esp project or nice to work on so that's gonna be take i mean a little time and see where that goes the goal there is to detect like if it needs to be cleaned out or pulled out and washed yeah yeah yeah okay cool if you have to do a backwash or something like that i don't have to look down at it i could just get a notification hey time to clean clean out the yep filter so i'm gonna play with it it's just a project it could be

my gateway project who knows i get addicted and you know just spawns a whole bunch of other things, you know, like, uh, and the lawn watering update. I know this is a big topic, you know, I just, we're now getting into some warmer weather. Now my lawn's looking green. Um, the equal width sensors are working beautifully, you know, so I, I'm able to keep my lawn at certain, you know, moisture. Um, but the best part is, is I only have to water the section that needs the water because I have different parts of the lawn where some are in shaded areas, some are not, you know, and I can adjust it that way. And I just been doing it

manually. Like I get a notification, Hey, the front lawn is now at this percentage. You might want to water it. I press a button and it schedules it for the next morning. Right. And I found that I actually am saving a lot more water than when I just had it like the whole lawn or it would just look for rain or something like that. Really? You know, it's actually, yeah, I've been watering less, but getting like more use on my water, if that makes sense. Right. So when it drops below a certain, i only have to water that area i don't have to water the whole front like where ratio would be like we'll just water the whole front or and back and everything right right no i just do it like that and if rain's coming like the the rain will after

it's rain sometimes you get rain and you don't realize that it really wasn't enough to water your lawn. So now this is telling me like, oh, it did rain, but you only got this much moisture in your lawn. You still want to water it a little bit more. So I can water it for an extra 10 minutes or so and bring it up. And it's been working really well. I'm really happy. EcoWit sensors.

So my only gripe about them is they stick out of the ground. So I've had two fatalities. One was me by accident you know it's funny because i'm looking at the thing i know it's there i'm saying don't step on it and then i stepped on it and it snapped right the second fatality was uh my lawn guy came to weed um to spray the weed uh killer on it and within five minutes he came around to the front door knocking with the broken piece in My lawn guy came to weed to spray the weed killer on it. And within five minutes, he came around to the front door knocking with the broken piece in his hand saying, oops. And I'm like, yeah, there's six more out there. Just be careful.

I understand. So I'm glad I bought extras. How could you miss them? I taped over the blinking red lights because I didn't want them at night, you know, thinking in my lawn. Right. So, yeah, I warned him about the others and he was like, OK, he kept an eye out for them. So I've had two fatalities. I'm still keeping my eye open if there's other products out there that sit flat. I found one, but it's not released yet. But I will be looking for that. You made me buy a couple of these soil sensors, Gavin. I haven't been able to put them in yet, but the lawn of the new house is not that great.

There's a lot of bare spots in and everything. So I want to get that nice and filled in. And I think I'm going to install an irrigation system. But until I do that, I'm going to go ahead and get these soil sensors installed and hopefully improve that quite a bit. I'll have to take some progress pictures too. Oh, TJ, when you're ready for that, And hopefully improve that quite a bit. I'll have to take some progress pictures too.

Oh, TJ, when you're ready for that, we can walk you through installing an irrigation system. I can give you a YouTube channel. There's this guy, I can't remember off the top of my head, but he's all about lawns. He'll break down the lawns for you. He'll get you kind of like looking at your lawn differently. So it's an expensive hobby. i wouldn't mind that you know i don't i just want my lawn to be filled in i don't really

don't care about like how uh the majority of other things but there's just a lot of bare spots right now i want to get it fixed so we'll get it fixed up you know we'll have a whole show dedicated to your lawn but let's spend that money. Gotta spend some money. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, speaking of spending money, I'm sure TJ's been spending money because he's moving into a new place.

But at the show, I don't know if you know about these shows. There's a lot of these Chinese people that come in and they have these really like bare bones booths and they have all their products set up and everything. And then sometimes they're like, we don't want to drag this thing back to China. So we're just going to sell it on a show discount. And, uh, one of them just happened to be the booth behind us. And they, I had never seen that they had any electronics. It was mostly screens. And I had gone over and talked to them a little bit. Cause like the screens that you would pull, like, uh, well on the tripods that you pull up for like a slideshow or project or something like that. Those are pulled down like the hang on the wall.

It's the same mechanism and everything. And so they they were behind us and talked to them a few times during the show. But they at the end of the show, they will this TV over from another booth somewhere and it was on a stand. There was just this TV sitting there and they kept they were writing on it like i had one of those little digitizer pins and they could write on the thing and they were like they kept putting prices i'm like this is for sale show special and i'm like oh yeah it's show special time i'll go around and see if there's anything but this thing caught my eye because it was on a stand i was like i've been looking in for a stand for tv you know you know, in my garage. So I can put a TV on a stand, just wheel it out of the way when I didn't want to use it. Cause I like things on the wheels.

And I was like, that stand is perfect. And I didn't really pay much attention to the TV. And the price was like, I don't know, like a thousand dollars. And then like, it came down to $600. And then they were like, they, they had scratched it out. And then like five, they were, they were going to sell a stand for 400 or something the tv for another whatever and somebody somebody's gonna buy it they figured out they couldn't fit it in their car and i was like i'll take the whole thing for 500 bucks and boom i got

it 500 bucks cash cash only deal i couldn't write him i couldn't give him a card they would not take a card but i got this big tv behind me it It turns out it's a touchscreen that runs Android. So I've got, and we found out before the show, as we were installing random apps onto Android, you can run home assistant on this thing, the home assistant app. And now I've got the biggest home assistant dashboard in the world. 60, 65 inches in 4k, baby. There we go right there. You like my graphs?

As far as I know, you got the biggest home assistant dashboard I have ever seen. People are wall melting their tablets, you know, for control. You have a stand for yours. This is amazing. And it's a workout just watching you use it. I know. Nobody likes to pull out their phone anymore. Everybody's kind of leaving their phone behind.

You're leaving it in charge or something like that. Just imagine pulling this behind you. Every room you go to, you want to adjust something, you just pull out the 65-inch TV and you just start using it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you just wheel it around the house. It's on wheels, nice wheels. And yeah, yeah, I can, I mean, it is,

you guys were laughing at me when I was typing on the keyboard that pops up on the bottom of this thing. I mean, you're just like, you're walking back and forth in front of the TV screen trying to tap from one side to the other to type a password in. But I did get it done. I've got Home Assistant on here. I don't know if there's any Home Assistant updates. It looks like there are. So I'm going to go check. You might as well do updates while you're here. Yeah, it's driving me nuts right now because I could see the icon. Yeah, yeah. Let's do this update live right now. You got to click on it at the top.

I got two of them. There's a restart required from last week, a repair. I got to do that one? Yeah. Oh, yeah. My mosquito broker in my terminal is broken. Can I go and get that updated? We'll hit that.

We'll wait for an install. Oh, that's good. You're going to have to wait for it to restart, I think. All right. It's done. And now there's a core and an operating system. Which one should I do first? Oh, the operating system.

All right. Oh, yeah. Three days ago. 10.3. We'll install it. So I'll let that go in the background. I think that takes a while. Yeah, that requires a reboot, too.

Yep. Connection lost. It popped up in the corner. I don't know if you can see it because it's too. Yep. Connection lost. It popped up in the corner. I don't know if you can see it because it's way over there. But connection lost. So it'll come back online. And I don't know. There is an update for Home Assistant proper in here.

I'm not sure what's in it. Gavin, maybe you know. It's just security updates, package updates, stuff like that, right? Like nothing major. You know, by the time the show probably gets on out i think we're on our next beta anyway so speaking of updates we forgot to mention unraid has an update um unraid released their final 6.12.0 and like they're trying to keep up with home assistance so the same week they released 6.12.1 you know with security updates so go check out what's new i think the major new feature was zfs which you know um has a lot of hype around it i looked at it and

you know when you read a lot of articles you know it said you know for my use case it's not needed because it's a little more resource uh hungry i think i think it needs more memory and stuff gavin not only not only is there 6.1.3 or 1.1.3 there's 0.4 and 0.5 now no we're on 6.12 6.12 you're looking at six yeah oh i'm looking at old release notes yeah i'm way behind you're behind nope we're on 6.12.1 all right uh seth never does updates or reboots so of course he wouldn't actually know i wouldn't yeah yeah i i scheduled a change ticket for this weekend with the family and they were going out of the house so i used that moment to do an upgrade and good thing i planned it because after it upgraded uh my home

assistant wasn't booting up for some reason. So I had to fix that. And it took a little time. But, you know, for the most part, it was smooth. It was my own custom hack that broke. I can't blame it. Can't blame anybody but yourself. I'm trying to remember how to update these things.

Is it in settings? It's under settings or tools. Maybe it's under tools. And then you'll see upgrade assistant. there it is yeah i guess it wants to run a test on me yeah we'll just check if you have any incompatible plugins or anything like that oh yeah i have issues i have community plugins and unassigned devices so i've got to update everything i guess first huh i could have told you you had issues, but you don't need Home Assistant or Unreal to tell you that. I'm going to do this later

because this is complicated. I've got my Home Assistant update to do. We're just updating everything live this week. It's insane. There we go. Home Assistant 6.2. 2023 6.2. I have to really turn around to see this because it's on the other side of the TV. You have to install like TeamViewer or something so you can just remote into it.

Yeah, I can't read it. It's way over there. It's funny. Yeah, no, it basically takes up the full frame of the camera that, you know, that I have on me. It's, you know, usually I have like a green screen screen up there but i don't have to do that anymore i've been just playing like big videos from youtube like these background scenes and it's like it's looks good i don't have to have a green screen anymore i don't have to worry about that more expensive green scene well not really i mean not not not not as much as like you can pay for a green screen that's for sure my green screen never really worked that well i was was going to buy one of those. The software ones don't really work that well, but actually Blackmagic has the ATEM minis.

The ATEM minis that have a pretty good chroma key built into them. So I was going to get one of those, but now I don't have to. I can just use this as whatever I want. I can put whatever. I can have apps up here, and I can draw on it if I want.

It's crazy. All right, there we go. go all done let's get back to my chart i'm surprised every time every time you upgrade it goes smooth there's nothing in there i know it's it's my three charts here all my data points that i got a chart out so there we go all right um tj you got anything you're working on you anything you're working on? You just, you're working on packing boxes. Yeah. I'm just surrounded by boxes this week. We're actually moving houses tomorrow morning. So I am packing. That's all I'm doing. You know, you start out, I don't know about you guys, but I started out packing, you know, you kind of put stuff into similar boxes and bags, like, you know, the clothes go in this box, the dishes go in this box. And now we're kind of the phase where everything just gets thrown into random boxes. And you're just, you know, this is a box of stuff. This is where it

is. You can label it. You can be like, you can just label multiple things on the box or just put like, this goes to kitchen. And then when you get it, just put it in the kitchen. And then when you get there, you'll open a box, the mystery box in the kitchen but why is this box in the kitchen this is for the bedroom what the heck somebody that's pretty much what we're doing i'm getting i'm just putting a uh because we're having movers actually come and move everything and so i have the room that's on there and then i have like a just a short description of what's in there and so that way as we're looking for stuff over the next couple weeks weeks, I can find a box and be like, it's probably in this box.

Yeah, yeah. Well, good luck to you. I moving the phase of not caring. Yeah, exactly. Well, moving is never fun, but, you know, having a new house is. So congratulations. We're all excited for you.

We're going to we're getting ready to spend some money. But, you know, because we're going to get you that irrigation. I've already been spending a lot of money, so I'll just add some more onto that, I guess. I mean, you're, you're a lot is just looking at robot lawnmowers earlier. So that's, that's going to cost a lot. Let's do it. I mean, how you define the lot and how I define the last two different things, especially when it's not my money. So it's never a lot when it's somebody else's money. Exactly. Exactly. Well, we're excited for you. Uh, glad you're finally moving in and,

and, uh, able to start making the house your own and, you know, doing all the fun house project things that you get to do when you own a house. So looking forward to talking to you more about that as we move forward into the future. But I think that is going to wrap it up here for this week on Home Tech. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able

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