HomeTech.fm - Episode 441 - You Can Tell Because The Way It Is

Episode Date: July 1, 2023

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 30th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm TJ Halston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation. Ryan's Reynoldsburg. What are you what what tj well we are we are in the new house now and that is in reynoldsburg which is about a half hour from pal so uh we're basically just the the mobile uh podcast at this point you know you never know where i'm going to come from next week so um i will give you a heads up in two weeks though i will be in illinois so that'll be

that'll be different too set Seth, just so you know. Just throw me off every week. Different city. Oh, man. Oh, man. That's too good. That's good. How's the new house?

You've got to be moved in now, right? Like all the boxes are unpacked and everything, right? Oh, yeah. 100%. No boxes anywhere. It's not too bad. We basically have the office and the guest room that's just jam-packed of boxes.

And then the kitchen's mostly unpacked or halfway unpacked and we can sleep and use the TV and stuff without any issues. So when we actually moved in Friday, we couldn't sit on the couch. We couldn't go in the kitchen really. There's just so many boxes. You just, you have to wonder how, how you gain all this stuff. Yeah. I remember our, one of our first houses that we

moved into and there were like boxes that we had in the back bedroom that were there, I think when we moved out. So they, they kind of like just lived the entire existence in this house that we were there. They just lived. And it's like we were like, well, maybe we don't need this stuff that are in these boxes. And we went through them before we moved again. But the second house, we were like, all the boxes are gone. We actually did the full unpacking job. So that was fun.

There will always be boxes. Yeah, I feel like that's necessary. You gotta get, you gotta get rid of all of them. There's always going to be boxes. At least, you know, what's in them though. You know, like we have boxes of books and stuff like that, that aren't going to be out and out and accessible all the time. Uh, but we know what's in them. So, um, but there's always like various stages of like packing and unpacking right and it's funny because you know you start out a couple maybe a week or two in advance you start packing up all the stuff you're putting all the like stuff with each other you put the clothes in the same box you you put the toiletries in the same box and then it's like the week of actual moving and you're

just throwing stuff in boxes together and so it's fun unpacking this stuff because as you're going through it you're like oh this is all closed and then you get to the next one you're like where's all this stuff go it's just random stuff from all over the house so that's the uh that's the joy of moving i've been in this house for about eight years now and i still have two boxes in the basement of just vga cables having got written them rid of them yet i can't i can't pull the trigger i think you can get rid of i don't know i actually pulled one out the other day and used it so you know like yeah but do you need two boxes of them um you have one box or two they're different lengths so i have three foot five foot ten foot you know i even have a 20 foot one because at one

point i needed to cross the room it was longer so like it's it's you know like i'm having a hard time getting rid of them naturally naturally i can't say anything at all i'm i mean you can't throw stones and glass houses at all like don't look behind me uh geez um man yeah that that's it takes a while to unpack and then when you do you just you just accumulate more or whatever. So yeah. Fun stuff. Yeah. Well, glad, glad you're finally in, uh, Ryan Reynoldsburg, Ohio. And, uh, the, uh, the, the birthplace of the commercial tomato too. So, I mean, if you're looking for a, a fun festivity, we have a, a tomato festival going on here soon. So.

Oh my God. Does that conflict with the pawpaw festival i don't think so but you could probably hit up both and have no problem so it'd be a full day i don't like i didn't even know there was a tomato festival so we're probably gonna go this year and then never go back uh well as long as the air is clear up there you should be good to go but i guess not gavin still sin and smoke your way i i edited the show like three weeks ago wait why why are you blaming me like seriously it's all it's all my fault you know all of canada's on fire it's got

to be gavin's fault i only pointed two of my fans southward you know like that's it right must be big fans that's too good yeah i mean i was looking at a something today it was like a satellite image of uh portugal and it was like you could see the canadian smoke over portugal now and over spain yeah yeah wow it's gone a long way you guys are you guys are known for your exports i guess and smoke is one of them well i'll take maple syrup instead though i believe hamilton's your sister city right up here oh yeah yeah yeah no devon hamilton's sister city it has a it has a thing of smoke over it all the time so you know they didn't even notice anything new over there well i will see your canadian smoke and raise you cases of

malaria because that's what's going on here in sarasota i thought that was another clickbait headline until i actually clicked it and read it and i'm like oh my god yep yep so we're staying inside uh it's beautiful and very hot outside but yeah i i actually i'll i'll post this video somewhere uh there was there was this really low airplane flying around my house the other night. Like, I mean, probably 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. And since I have the airplane spy machine hooked up, right, I could see their height and how fast they were going.

They were going like two, it was 180 knots. So I guess 170 something miles an hour, 150, 170, somewhere in there. And about 300 feet off the ground, maybe 350 at most. And just buzzing right over homes. I have a video of it. It was a very fast airplane, like a King Air. I looked up the tail number. I was trying to figure out more about this thing.

And finally figured out like it was registered to a company that did uh like agriculture stuff and so we're like oh it's got to be like mosquito sprays now i know why they were they were doing this crazy mosquito spray over my house and uh you know i'm feeling all right right now i didn't get bitten by a mosquito at the time uh but you know that's because they were dropping the chemicals over my head like 300 feet over my head i've never seen a plane fly that low uh i mean i mean it's like right over the treetops it feels like that's that's really low for this area yep malaria canadian smoke there we go good stuff good times tj's got a new house though so

that's right and we're doing all kinds of fun projects to it, so. We'll have to talk about those coming up. But first is the boring stuff. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of home tech headlines. Not too much, but. Sprinkle a couple of fun things in there, though. You know, you got to have some fun while you're doing all the boring adulting stuff.

We'll mix it up a little bit here, so. What do you say we jump into these home tech headlines? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Well, here's the best one of all. SmartThings, leading smart home technology providers, introduced new features for SmartThings Energy. It's a comprehensive energy management solution. It's all built within the SmartThings app. The updates aim to empower users to take action on their energy use, save money, and contribute to a sustainable future.

So this is actually kind of like a big energy initiative that Samsung's done that leverages all the data that they're able to collect through the Samsung products and Samsung smart things. So it integrates with a lot of stuff and it can bring that all into like an energy dashboard for you to kind of have insights on, on what you're using. There, there's not too much stuff like this out there. Like I have that sense product installed in my breaker panel kind of tells me that I use a lot of electricity some days when it's hot. Other than that, I really don't know what to do about it. But I don't know. Like this could be able, like if you had a SmartThings outlet or something like that, or some type of thermostat, or I guess even like a Samsung range or a refrigerator that

reported that information back, like you might be able to gain a little bit more insight on like what specific source was causing a large amount of electricity to go through it. And that's, that's helpful because you could, you could maybe do something about it. You know, just, it's kind of like calories. Like you don't know donuts are as many calories as they are until you start calorie tracking, right? You're like, oh my gosh, I can't have a donut. But then, yeah, like it's just knowing what those numbers are might help you make the right, make a decision whether or not, you know, good or bad, like, like it's just knowing what those numbers are might help you make the right, just make a decision whether or not, you know, good or bad, like, and it'll help you make a

decision whether you want to eat that donut or not. Are you saying donuts are bad, Seth? No, no donuts are great. Just make a chart. In fact, I want a donut. Yeah. No, this is, this is pretty cool. And especially because they do make a lot of smart, uh, smart home appliances, you know, they have fridges, they have ranges like you were saying, and microwaves and all this other stuff now that's internet connected. So building this other, you know, component into their devices, it's probably already there in some capacity. But being able to actually use it and track it is useful. Tomorrow, I'm actually getting my whole house energy thingy installed. I got the Emporia view two, um, that supposedly integrates with home assistant in various ways. And, um, I got it because I wanted to track the,

the energy of the house and kind of see what's using what and, and figure out those, those high consumption devices. So I think this is definitely something that everybody could use and people just haven't had access to it before but once they do get access to it they're going to want it on everything yeah i'm personally yeah tell us how you really feel yeah that's a way to start out so so like tj you know the whole home um monitoring thing i like i like that idea because that's going to tell you the hidden stuff, you know, that you don't know about when it comes to appliances, you pretty much already know what's

sucking your energy, right? Like, you know, it's the fridge and the AC and the dryer and maybe the stove. I don't know, but, um, you already know the big ones, right? Um, it's the little things that you want to know, and those aren't going to be in a Samsung appliance, you know. So I'm not too excited about this when it comes to the energy, but I do want at some point, I want the full whole home monitoring system so I can see everything. But unfortunately, I got to upgrade my panel and, you know, I'm not willing to spend $4,000 just to get more information at this point. I don't think you have to upgrade your panel though i mean you could do something like the the view to where it has sensors for each individual leg of it in the one i was looking at

the sense when i think needed its own um uh not breaker but used its own spot on the panel right um i have no free spots on my uh yeah so you'd have to sell like a sub panel or something i already have a sub panel too already a sub sub panel yeah exactly so i need to bring an electrician yeah it does but it's an outdated panel anyway i have to upgrade it at some point it's just it hasn't been approved yet for the budget yeah also bringing up a good point um to do this it's not it's not a zero dollar thing like you have to have either all sam well you don't really have to have all samsung appliances because they are saying that they are going to integrate with things like what is that residuo technologies like

they have some integrations with that um but you you need to have devices plugs lights lighting devices thermostats that all are compatible with this particular AI energy mode thing that they come up with. So it may be some time for more partners that where they, they announce products that are built into this beginning. Like it's not, not a $0 thing. It may not be a $4,000 panel. You know, it may be, it may be $4,000 in devices that you put around your house.

So either way we're going to spend some gavin dollars and uh yeah i have a dollar so wow but one of the cool things though i saw and i don't know if sense did this but being able to track when a device is starting to fail yeah um i know they were talking about that so you know they they monitor over time say how your furnace runs and then if it starts running running differently and the energy patterns are off, it can actually detect if the fan's starting to give problems or stuff like that and notify you. And I actually thought that was really cool. Those kind of things I look forward to, not just monitoring how much it uses. You're talking about the synths, like the little energy monitor thing.

It doesn't. I don't think it does all that. Maybe it does all that maybe it does i think they were talking about it at some point i don't know if they actually integrated it um because it might be harder than it sounds but it was a cool idea you know and with all the you know gpt ai stuff coming in now it might be easier for them well it makes sense too i mean it seems like that would that wouldn't be too bad to add just because it's just detecting more or less power being used. So you think that would be something they could add?

Yeah, they actually have... I was just going to... Since it's a website, I have the little single sense guy, right? The little small one. It doesn't have sensors. They have sensors now, and that seems like it's something new that I don't have.

I just have the thing plugged in and it just kind of detects whatever's going on. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, it does have sensors. It just detects what's coming in on the main system and then figures out based on the, I guess, I don't know, the way that the motors turn on and off. It has a signature, I guess,

and it figures out that it's probably a refrigerator. But I don't know that it does anything beyond that guess and it figures out that it's probably a refrigerator but i don't know that i don't know that it does anything beyond that and it's always broken anyway like it's off right now i gotta go reset the breaker uh and then mine's probably just outlived its life i've heard a lot of bad things about the sense in general that's that's kind of why i went with the other one the uh the emporia one yeah is because it actually has little uh attachments for each of the legs and so you just label it and you automatically know what it is at least with the sense.

I don't think you can, I don't think with sense you can manually label anything like it's all done by AI. If you know what it is, you can relabel it. So like, if I know that my refrigerator is running and I'm better go catch it. The,

the, this, like, if you know that it's something's on like a fan or a motor like it can tell you if your bathroom fan turned on just you know it'll tell you that's come on but you've got to catch it and you just say oh that is the bathroom fan that just came on you label it and it should in theory remember it okay but like in my system over time there have been like 10 devices named a fan you know the fan one fan two fan three and four like so i

don't know what they are what they go to or if they're just like a wall fan that i plugged in at one point in time and was running who knows so i'm gonna go back and reset the breaker on that thing and see if i can get it back online and i don't know it's it's okay i will give a sense just an okay review if i had solar i think it would be a better thing because it could tell you they have solar integrations that tell you like how much you've made back right so i think it would be better there i've actually seen cool integrations with that where people measure how much the solar is bringing back in you know etc etc so i'd be interested when tj you get your setup i'm interested to see how that works out.

Yeah. And right now I'm going to leave it with the stock firmware. It relies on their cloud servers, but there's actually an open source firmware for it as well that makes it completely local. So I'm going to try it out both ways and see what I like better. Like pictures on their website. There's just no way I'd be able to fit all of those extra wires in my panel. Like the panel I have is small, but it's just ch way I'd be able to fit all of those extra wires in my panel. Like it,

the panel I have is small, but it's, it's just chock full of wires. I don't know what they were doing when they wired this thing up. It's just so full. Yeah. Yeah. Mine's relatively neat,

but like all this stuff is wired the same. So like all the, basically all the lights in my house work off one breaker and all the outlets work off another breaker. And then like the, and then like random outlets and stuff will work off the other breaker it's totally weird so at some point i'll probably do a rewire i told myself that too but i'm lying to myself the only way this that's going to happen is if we like redo a room or something like that other than that i don't really care makes sense so it's really care. Makes sense. Let's move on here.

Some interesting news coming from Home Assistant. The KNX Association has officially endorsed the KNX integration in Home Assistant. The collaboration between KNX and Home Assistant will help maintain the integration and improve user experience. KNX is

actually widely used in commercial and residential building automation throughout the world. I know it's like huge overseas. You mostly hear about it in Germany, mostly. I think it had a large footprint there. And then I know that all through like the European markets, you will hear about KNX integrations and KNX products. So yeah, this particular module or whatever was introduced back in July 2016, which is funny. It's Home Assistant version 0.24. And we'll find out today, later on in the show,

what the next version of Home Assistant is. I'm sure it's up there. But yeah, this seems like it'll be a long-running integration. It's been kind of officially endorsed by KNX, which means that they're giving the blessing and they want to help keep it running. So I think this is huge for both, really for Home Assistant. Like it's really big for Home Assistant to get this integration

officially checked off and said supported by. But also for KNX, like this is going to open up a lot of people who have their products in the homes. It's going to give them the ability to use something like Home Assistant. And not that they couldn't before, like 2016 is a long time ago, but this will give them the ability to like, okay, this is an officially supported thing. If there's ever a problem, it's going to be fixed. No, this is great for, I think this is great for Home Assistant because it makes Home Assistant an option in a lot more you know like you mentioned commercial or um residential areas right and i think that's great you have to rename it though

you have to be just like i know where you're going commercial assistant i know where you're going with this you know i i i'm saving you for making this joke i'm saving you for making this joke. I'm saving you. Locking it on. Not going to say it. But no, it's a great move for Home Assistant. And I expect to see more of these kind of companies joining Home Assistant because honestly, it's becoming a very powerful platform. And I wouldn't be surprised if down the road we see like Josh have an integration with it at some point or something like that. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm talking years away still, right. But it's good to see stuff like this happening. Yeah, that makes sense, especially for

the larger companies. Because if you have, you know, other people writing the software that people are relying on, then you're, you're relying on those people to, to make that work and to be reliable and everything. So, I mean, home assistant is a really big platform now, and a lot of people use it at this point. You might as well, you know, officially endorse it and, and work on it to make it better. Yep. Good for them. So it's, it's a good, a good quiver. Like I, I, um. It's beneficial for everyone when this kind of stuff happens and there's support

from both the manufacturer, from the manufacturer side and the maintainer, I guess. It's really good. Home Assistant's not really a manufacturer. It's just kind of like this open source software that everybody contributes to.

And there are hacks right now for like Control 4, right? There's a Control four module or something in there it's not an endorsed control four module like it's just somebody hacked their way through i think i think what it does it just logs into the like the remote access thing that control four has and just kind of like shoots commands up to that server uh so it's not like a local integration or anything but at least i mean it works right it brings the control for devices into the home assistant ecosystem which is nice but like it would be way better if there was a official control for bridge integration between home

assistant for a lot of people so anyway i i'm happy to see that uh in you know move forward it's it's good home assistant wins again i guess yay good good job guys yeah probably one of the more probably one of the more like professional companies too to to really work with home assistant at this point i know there's a lot of other big brand consumer ones but like in the professional space i don't know yeah i can't i thought there was somebody not too long ago that came along we're like oh that's interesting but it makes sense but i feel like this is one of those like, oh, it's interesting and it makes sense. Like the KNX is just in every and if you go overseas, it's just almost in every home in some locations. It's just like. Yeah, that's a standard.

It's a standard. You know how it works. I mean, it's not like a surprise with it and everything like that. So. Yeah. Good, good, good call on everybody here. And when you see stuff like this, too, you realize how international home assistant is actually, you know, like, like, they're, they're not just, you know, North America, they're worldwide, and they, they support everything. It's got a big job. All right, well, let's move on here. We've got another assistant, smart assistant, I don't know what this is. It's like, they've gone crazy over Josh AI. We've got the big summer announcements this last week.

Really fun video to watch. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But Josh AI has launched Josh GBT. It's an AI-powered platform that offers custom integration capabilities and a generative assistant to answer questions on any topic. The company is also introducing Josh Remote, which is, I believe they said they partnered with the Ava Remote. We've talked about that one in the past.

But it actually is kind of cool because the Josh software runs on the remote and you can just yell into the remote like you were yelling into one of the Josh Assistant little devices. And they also added some new like software features, something called intelligent areas and default devices helps people and users of the system group devices and rooms together to make it more natural, like the language of naturally turning on off a room or group of rooms at the same time kind of helps with that experience. So if you say turn off the lights, it turns off the lights, like in a combined room, say you had like a kitchen and a living room that are kind of an

open area, you could say, turn off the lights, it turns them all on. But if you're in the kitchen, say, turn on the kitchen lights, it's not going to turn on both rooms lights. It's kind of, kind of a, just a nice enhancement to what they already offered. Josh GPT was kind of like what everybody's been talking about because it has the GPT moniker on it. But it allows users to issue commands to the system's microphones and have tailored responses and different clarifications. There's a bunch of things that they were going over, like turn on the kitchen lights and give me a burrito recipe or something like that. And it would just start spitting out

a burrito recipe for you. So with the generative AI stuff or the generative large language models and everything, they have been able to really expand on what you could do with the Josh system. So it's a huge improvement for what they were offering before. And it kind of puts them way back up in line with some of the more, you know, the bigger players like Amazon and Google. I'm not going to say Siri, because that would just be a lot. Siri would be like,

here's some stuff on your web that I found. Yeah. I don't understand that. What's a burrito? Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. TJ,

what do you think you, you have an Ava remote or yeah, you had one. I don't know. TJ, what do you think? You have an Ava remote? Yeah, you had one. I don't know where the thing is. You haven't mentioned it in a while, but. It's in a box somewhere. Don't tell anybody. What do you think about these announcements?

Yeah, it's a pretty cool announcement. I mean, this is kind of a natural thing for any kind of voice platform at this point. You know, it's funny too, because when Josh came out, it was basically a way to interact with your existing home automation system, but they've really positioned themselves to become a giant in the home automation platform. And stuff like this is really going to put them ahead of, you know, control four or RTI or somebody else that, you know, still struggles to even put voice remote or voice assistants on a remote control that you're paying, you know, a thousand bucks for. So, and all those companies have started to do that stuff, but they're just so

slow in, you know, the new technology that I don't see anybody else doing this for the longest time. You know, if you think about Crestron or control for, or along doing this, like it's, it's probably not going to happen. They're going to rely on somebody else to, to kind of do that. And, and maybe five or 10 years from now, they might implement it actually in their system. Um, but you know, this, this is big news for, for Josh and it looks well done. Yeah yeah i've been watching josh for a while now it's it's not a product that i'll ever be able to buy just because they won't let me but me well even though me either yeah and i can't afford it but it's always been a product

that interests me because one it was local um and even with this joshT, I believe it does a lot of local processing, right? But I remember from the beginning, that was the first gripe I had about it was, it works great when controlling your devices, but it doesn't do much more other than that, you know, like that Amazon lady would do or Google would do, right? This totally destroys that now. Like this, like takes it up to the next level because now you're actually will be interacting with Josh, right? Not just asking it stuff, but interacting with it. And I thought this was great. Their demos are great.

I believe even some of the GPT stuff, I think I said is local too. So it's really interesting to see all this stuff. One of the things that always blew me away with Josh was you were able to program, you know, your scenes and stuff through voice as well. Like you didn't have to load an app. And I was always like, that's really cool. They could say, you know, set the night scene to do this, this, this, and this, and it would now remember all that stuff. Right. Um, hopefully you can do that with the intelligent areas. It'd be nice to say, Hey, this switch is located in the office, for example. And it, from now on, it would now be assigned to the office. You know, that would be cool. Um, uh, the, the device defaults, if someone, you know, for us poor people, if you have the a lady at home,

uh, the intelligent areas, we have something similar to that. You know, you create a room, you put that, uh, that, uh, echo speaker in that room. And then when you say stuff like turn on the lights on that speaker, it will turn on the lights in that room that are also associated with that room. So, you know, I do this all the time. I could say turn on the TV and it would turn on the TV in the room I'm speaking to. Right. So it's really cool that that's a feature that people are going to love when they start to use it and i feel like they already had that feature i i feel like i want to say that maybe this is just an enhancement that makes it work a lot better because like i i really i've actually

programmed a justice man john i'm like certified at some point to do the install but it's been a while since i took that test and it's if it's not something just like everything if it's not something you do every day you really don't keep up with it that much yeah but i i feel like they already kind of tried to deduce a lot of from what you say i think this is enhancing that and and adding the large language model stuff on top is just going to enhance it further so yeah um it'll probably bring it up to on par, if not a little bit better in some respects than what you everyone has with the Amazon stuff, too. So that's good. It's always good to get new features and different ways to customize things, though. Yeah, no.

And they're just their whole presentation was well put together. I found I watched it when they aired it. I thought the production was great, you know, like and even just seeing all the people show up in the chat there and all the excitement around it. They have a nice little following going on now. I wish one day they might release something cheaper that I can buy. And then maybe I'll, I'll join the crew. And not likely, not likely.

And I think they found a pretty good niche that's, that's paying the bills, but I don't know. Don't, don't side with them. Like help me out here. You're supposed to agree with me on this say yeah maybe a little josh speaker that we could integrate with something you know just get more money gavin how hard is it i'm working on it i'm working on it you know it's a good time to mention patreon you know sign up for our patreon yeah if you're subscribed get enough uh patreon subscribers we'll uh we might be able to buy one there you go yeah exactly i think we need a lot more. A lot more.

If you think it's expensive now, wait till you see the Canadian pricing. I kind of want to circle back to what some of the things CJ was saying. It was like how they were now positioning themselves as a full-on automation system. And I think they've been doing that for a while. And if you go back and listen to actually some of the old, old, old podcasts with Mike Wolf on the Smart Home Show, like where he was talking to Alex way back before, I mean, way before they even had the little product. I think they were just using like a Mac mini in an iPhone app.

Like it wasn't, it was a very basic startup. I mean, he was talking back then that, you know, they, they, they wanted to be in so many years on par or, you know, taking over control system jobs. And I think what they did is actually really good, um, is that they integrated with those control systems and said, okay, we're going to, we're going to handle the voice really well. And you guys that do the control stuff, like the AV control, what would I on you? So like, if you have a Josh system, you basically install a Control 4 or a Crestron driver on your Crestron system. You install those drivers on the system,

and Josh basically just goes through and sucks all the information out and puts it in the Josh AI system. And then when you want to watch TV, it inherently knows where, basically by the room, where you want to watch TV. It just turns on the TV. But they don't have to do any of the audio, video routing, all that crazy stuff. where you know basically on by the room where you want to watch tv it just turns on the tv but it's

not it's not they don't have to do any of the audio video routing all that crazy stuff like they just tell crestron to turn on the system and it turns it on in that room like crestron does all that programming and all that routing and everything but josh i i i just think it's a really cool model that like it's kind of like everybody stayed in their lane for a little bit josh was able to work on the voice stuff and then like control for crush on they were doing av control really well um it was neat it was neat to see that now i don't know how that's going to be moving forward like if if josh ai starts to be more of a like direct direct control i i suppose you could use

it standalone if you had all ip control devices that work with it but outside of that like if it was just i i do like the integration module integration perspective like you could bring this into a house that already had integration say they say they took time and made a home assistant module right because everybody wants one of those and it basically sucked all the information out of home assistant and put into josh like that would be a killer voice control system for home system game over them yeah no you're the voice what no it's not gonna happen anymore yeah i mean that no that and that's true they've been talking about that for a while but it seems like now like it could actually do that like i i guess it always could have before. But now they're actually starting to like talk about it.

And it's it's starting to become more of a thing. Whereas before that, basically what you were saying is they were they were just tying off everybody else. And, you know, you do the hard work and I'll kind of be the voice of it all and and we'll make it happen. But yeah, I don't want to say it like that because both sides are hard work. Right, right. Clearly, coming up with a good voice control option

is pretty hard to do because if not, Crestron and Control 4 would have done it a long time ago. Josh focused on that and delivered. And then you have Crestron and Control 4 focusing on AV control integration automation. They've done that really well. It seems like it's a

great partnership i i hope that there aren't like there aren't a few like there aren't in the future where you see any kind of like hard feelings on it because it seems like it together both the products were truly out like it would be great to see um from time to like if control four has the new halo remotes like why wouldn't they say, okay, let's put a Josh AI integration into the halo remotes. Crestron has similar remotes with like microphones. I'm not familiar with their, their, their remote models or anything, but like if they have a microphone, like why couldn't the request go over to Josh AI system and be processed and,

and run that way. Just like you do with the Ava remote. Like it, it kind of makes sense. If you look at it as like a whole house integration, rather than just like all these silos who just want to be the king of the domain, like do what you do best and, you know, focus on that. And I think everybody will, will flock to it. But I do also kind of get that everybody just wants to rule everything when it comes to these home automation systems. That's a, that's a, that's a thing too.

Yeah. And I do want to point out that SnapAV, and I don't know when they actually did this, but if you go to the SnapAV website and you're a SnapAV dealer and you go to like the Josh Micro and you go click on it, it has a little pop up and it says, important note, SnapOne is no longer distributing Josh.ai products, hardware and software josh.ai certified dealerships can purchase directly at josh.ai so snap av has stopped selling josh.ai products for some reason i i don't want to read into that too much i feel like i feel like it's hard not to read into that though yeah and who knows where that's coming from but i feel like that's probably coming from snap av they're they're probably not very happy about the ava rebrand remote that it looks like at least um yeah well it is but i don't know it's just it's hard not to read into it when you have a

couple different signs there yeah i guess i i until until control four buys josh ai that's what's gonna happen because they buy everybody else them are the grand i guess if you until until control four buys josh ai that's what's gonna happen because they buy everybody else them or lagrand i guess if you're if you look for the drama you can find it there i always looked at that like i looked at it it was kind of weird because like you you still had to be a josh dealer you had to be certified and everything you had to be approved yet and it seemed to me like that was just like josh was going for logistics play like warehouses suck so we we do voice control. Like, we have product to ship.

Let's team with somebody who has a warehouse, you know? And I'd never... Just the way it was set up, it's not like every single SnapAD dealer out there could buy the product. So it seemed like it was just logistics, right? And maybe that didn't work out as well as they thought it would. Because it was a while back they did that. Maybe it just didn't work out as well as they thought it would. And, you know, it was because it was a while back.

They did that. Maybe it just didn't work out. Like that's the non drama take the boring take. But yeah, if if you look at it with, you know, the eyes of wanting to see something that might be there, like, yeah, it's not if you got mad at Josh and kicked him out. Sure. We'll go with that. Well, if this gets talked about on that custom AV news website, then we know that's you. That's not me. Too good. Too good.

All right. Let's move on here. It's got an interesting review over at Mobile Syrup, which is oddly not a Canadian website. No, it is a Canadian website. Absolutely is a Canadian website. How can you tell? It's talking about Govee, which we've talked about in the past but they had an interesting product that they reviewed here we kind of want to talk about it a little bit govi's taken the concept of these uh like cascading led stream lights and made i think what they call curtain lights these lights are we showcased atES earlier in the year, and they consist of 520 LED, basically pixel LEDs,

arranged in 20 strings. So picture 20 strings cascading down like in a curtain style, right? Like 20 strings of LEDs with all these little LEDs on them. You can attach them to windows, mount on walls, anywhere you need like a visually appealing backdrop that you want this kind of like effect on there. Because you can make this like, it can be colored. Like you can put a smiley face up there or heart or something like that.

You can arrange the LEDs to be in certain patterns using, I guess they have a Govee Home app and another little control box. You can put text up there, patterns, anything you want. But here's the kicker. Like this is crazy. They're IP65 rated, right? So you can stick them outside. They don't have to be just inside. And they cost only, you know, a hundred dollars here in the U S now it's $180 in Canada. We won't hold that against you, Gavin, but like that, that that's a good price for all that you get here. This that's really wild. Yeah. I feel like that's a lot of LEDs compared to what you traditionally get with

some of these smart lighting products. Like I know it's probably Govee and maybe Phillips Hue and stuff like that, but they have, what is it? Like the four bars that you can change the LED colors on. And I feel like they're like at least 70, 80 bucks. So it, it, it does seem like a good quality or a good, a good price for how many you get um this would be kind of cool you could like hang this on your porch or something for like different holidays

like halloween or something like that like one of the images they show a little pumpkin stuff like that would be kind of cool around the holidays especially because you can't install them outside um and you can even draw what you want on there so if you want to say a custom message or something like that you can you can do that kind like twinkly but like a lot less oh so much less and it doesn't seem like an awful design like the the twinkly ones that i have it's it's weird because they they split off and like a like a v formation in the middle right right yeah for like two different strands and it's like i you probably did that for power and i get that but like that's just obnoxious for any kind of light.

I was taking them down from the apartment because we had them strung throughout the living room and stuff because we didn't have ceiling lights. And I was taking them down, and I was like, this is the worst design ever. I have them for the Christmas tree. And, well, I mean, they're just, it's like any Christmas light thing, but they're worse because they have the two different strands and you have to get them on and wrap them up in the little Velcro thing to put them back in the box just right. It's a pain. So, yeah, yeah.

I was just checking the PPLEDDB. That is available.com. Perfect. Let's go ahead and get it. Price for LED database. And by we, I mean you. Go ahead and just put it on your account. I think think i'm gonna have to hold off on domains for a while kevin what do you think about these things would you would you put these up in your in your place

probably not but you know i've been what i watched a video recently where they were covering uh govi's outdoor lighting and it seems like govi's building up a nice ecosystem of like lighting that is looking really attractive. Like, uh, just like lighting that you can leave on your house all year long and program, and you can put them all in sync. So you can have the lighting around your house in sync with the lighting in your garden and they flash and they do all sorts of things. Right. And this probably just adds to that ecosystem and the whole app is, you know, like all controlled under one app. So if you're interested in the Govi ecosystem, like it looks really enticing to jump in there. Um, and they have all, they cover everything. It looks like they're covering everything when it comes to like those outdoor lightings and stuff

like that. So I probably at some point we'll grab, grab one. You know, once I have a project, I'll probably dive in. Yeah, I feel like teens or like college kids will especially love this because I feel like half the rooms I go into in those age ranges, they always have LEDs on their wall. So if they can just throw this whole thing up on the wall and make a whole display out of it, I think that's going to be a big sell. Yeah. Yeah. And the price. I mean, the price is really good. Like like we were saying earlier, Gavin, I didn't even know they had these outdoor lights or products. That's wild. How much?

Go V RGB, I see LED permanent outdoor lights. I was going to see how many you get with it's $300. So that's, that's kind of pricey, which leads me to leave. There's like a thousand lights that you can get, but I don't know. Yeah. They get up in price. But when you look at what they can do with the app, like you can have it, you know, flashing certain ways. But then it will sync all the different lights you have together so that your whole house looks like one setup.

So it's really good. I'd recommend going and looking at videos on these. Yeah, I'm going to going to check this out. For example, for pricing like this, this floor lamp that Govee has as well, which looks kind of cool. It's $150 and it's roughly four and a half feet tall.

And it's got the same functionality. You can do different scenes of lights and change them all and all that good stuff. That's $150. Yeah. And it's just a single floor lamp and granted granted, it's four and a half feet tall. But like, it's just the price difference is weird to me. Yeah.

I mean, and we kind of talked about these guys on another show, another podcast with Adam and Richard. But I mean, Govee also has a smart, smart gooseneck kettle and a smart countertop ice machine. They're not just holding back lights. they're going all in on everything smart appliances and sensors and fans and space heaters and all sorts of stuff so like it's it's an entire brand they're they're a thing i guess but um their smart lighting does look pretty compelling especially at the price i wonder i do wonder how how well it works i'm gonna have to go check out those videos now, Gavin.

Thanks for mentioning that. I didn't even know the outdoor stuff existed. That's really cool. That's 50 foot long with 36 LEDs for $200. Make your next gender reveal popular by just setting the light color. Fancy.

Do they explode? How do you have a gender reveal without some kind of explosion? I don't know. Everything has to explode. You know, it's just, you know, like, you know, this is America. Everything explodes here. Oh, OK. OK.

We love explosions. We sell like a cannon. Yeah. Fireworks are going to be going off for the next month now. People people find fireworks. They forgot to pop on the fourth six months later and they're just like it's time to blow these up alright

well let's move on here to our fun segment every week who matters this week and it's TP-Link TP-Link they've introduced three new smart lighting products in the TAPO brand the TAPO smart wifi light switch the TAPO smart wifi dimmer and the Tape-O brand. We'll go all three of them here. The Tape-O smart Wi-Fi light switch,

the Tape-O smart Wi-Fi dimmer, and the Tape-O mini smart Wi-Fi plug. All these products are all Matter certified. So congratulations, Tape-O. You matter this week. Interesting little products. They look

good. TV Links really pushing out a bunch of more progressive looking products these days this this this stuff doesn't look too bad and the fact that it's matter certified and potentially works with you know apple home amazon google samsung smart things everything else it's pretty cool that switch is definitely a gunther switch though i can already tell yeah yeah you can tell because of the way it is you could tell because of the way it is yes yes it's definitely got the one button press at the bottom going on yeah where you never know by looking at it what the state of the light was like or you you kind of just have to go up and push on it until the light turns on or off not badly priced though 25 bucks for the light switch 28 for the the dimmer and then how

much is the plug uh one pack for 20 two pack for 30 and three pack for 40 so not not terrible and handle loads up to 1800 watts so that's pretty powerful these tp-link devices were always popular because they were at a low price point very attractive price point i i was never a fan of them i always it was either them or wemo usually is the two i would compare them to right and i was just never a fan because they're all wi-fi control but they did get very popular and they do have a following and now that they have matter that's just a bonus they got to work better than wemo i hope so uh the the price and like if you need like a little to turn on off a single lamp 20 30 bucks you get a pack one or two pack of them not not a bad deal

so all right well all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 441 all right right. We have a pick of the week this week, and I have a series of pictures to go over. I was sitting at my house the other day, and I noticed that it was raining. I got a notification on my phone that says, it's pouring at your house. That's weird.

It looks really sunny outside. So I walked out the front door, and I looked, and sure enough, there's not a cloud in the sky. It looks really sunny outside. So, so I say, so I walked out the front door and I looked and sure enough, there's not a cloud in the sky. It's very hot. Like, all right. So I checked the app of my weather station, my, uh, my, my weather flow weather station. And it said, yeah, it's heavy rain right now. Heavy, heavy rain. I was like, what is going on? So I walked back to the back room and looked through the screen, the screen and porch. This is why the little picture that you'll see, it looks so fuzzy and everything. Cause I zoomed in on a little mockingbird perched up there,

tap dancing on the top of my weather station and setting off the rain sensor. So my pick of the week immediately purchased was the, was the spiked nail spiked. What is this called? A a what do they call it they call it a the tempest bird deterrent accessory and it's just a rubber band that slips on the top keeps the birds from landing on it i thought if you didn't send us the screenshot of you buying this and you showed me that right now i would think that you you made that or you had somebody make it for you like somebody on Etsy made it or something.

Yeah. Which I'm not doubting still somebody on Etsy might've made that still. I mean, it seems like it'll do the job, but it's just, it's very funny to look at and to realize that you bought it and paid shipping. It was like 10 bucks or something like that.

So like, uh, it's, it's basically a rubber band with a bunch of nails that are slightly bent inward. So I guess they look a little bit better than nails that would be sticking straight up. And this is to justify the manufacturing costs or something.

But I don't know. It says it'll work. It's got a warning here of where to place it. You're not supposed to... So like where the rain sensor is, right below it is a gap. And that's where the wind sensor is. So the wind that blows through there,

it ultrasonically detects whatever wind is going through. I don't know how it works. It's magic. And then there's a little, this is, it says, do not, take care not to block the wind gap or the vibration isolator. I don't even know what that is. So, oh, yeah, there's another small part

that I can't touch with the rubber band here so it's gonna be tricky to put this on this is my next project this i'll have to do this this soon but that's you're gonna do that like this weekend or is that like a couple weekends i don't know i don't know see what happens i'm busy i gotta fit it into the schedule yeah it looks like a product that was designed or they're selling because of a design flaw of the original product you know it should the birds are actually attracted to it and when i first saw this the the thing going through my mind it looked like the perfect like support system for a new nest like they all look like support beams around a nest and a bird could perfectly build their nest right in there and so get it in before they start having their babies in it.

Yeah, it's definitely spring. And they are out there flying around. I haven't... I've had this... I didn't... I've had this problem before. I just didn't know it had the problem. Because there'd be days where I was like, why is it raining at the house? You know, it's not raining anywhere else.

It must be just an isolated storm. I look on the radar. I'm like, that's really weird. And pay no mind to it. I think Weatherflow has an algorithm or something to kind of detect this. Because if I were to go back and look at the history, it would say that it didn't rain. Basically, it said it didn't rain at all. So there must be something that they go back and correct.

But it doesn't stop you from getting the notification that it's pouring at your house when it's actually just bright and sunny outside. So yeah, I'm going to get this and keep the little birds off and all will be all will be well, well with the world. Well, I was thinking about one of those little weather stations from EcoWit. So maybe I need to look and make sure they have the anti bird stabby crown thing. Yeah, you see these things on top of like cameras all the time or or like in commercial spaces yeah and buildings and keep homeless people out of places those kind of places yes yeah you could just they could do that too with it but i don't know and but i thought it was i thought it was a funny little visual story so i'll put that in our show notes as well like it's literally what

happened as i was walking through my house trying to figure out what in the world is going on with this thing. Like I'm gonna have to reset the hub or what's going on. I don't know. Anyway, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. All right. We've got project updates. And since you guys are making fun of me for never doing any projects,

I actually got a project done. Wow. Like completely or like partially? Does it work? Yeah, is it like functional? If I asked you to unlock it right now, wait. Oh, you spoiled it. Ruined it.

Yeah, I did get the aquara u100 lock installed and uh yeah thanks thanks for that confidence guys come on i've actually i've actually installed a fair amount of locks in my life and um it's not a very hard job to do it's like four screws or something like that in and out in no time actually worked better than the other one like for whatever reason the the other one i had i don't know something was off about it and it would not it had like the tapered bolt and everything but it would not close with the door correctly i don't i don't think there was anything i could do to adjust alignment or anything but when you close the bolt you always had to pull in the door and like really just mash the the the handle thing over to get it to uh to lock the door the deadbolt

but hence our questioning of if you did this properly or not you know yeah i mean that sounds like it was not not aligned it kind of happened like over time i don't know i put this one in and there were no problems so i not that problem right now and exactly maybe maybe later it'll happen but um i will say aquara if you if you like instructions this product is not for you ikea has better instructions um it did have videos that were cute you know behind qr codes that you could go look at that had energizing music for you to watch and do kind of what they were trying to tell you to do in the video. It was, I don't know, it was interesting. If I had no experience installing a lock,

I'm not sure that those instructions would have helped me at all. But for the most part, I was to to just plow right through it and get everything put in uh it kind of laughed at the instructions um all the way through it installs just like any other lock uh the app that goes with it it's kind of spastic i don't like i guess i this is the only product i have but there's a lot it looks i mean we've obviously talked about aquara and what they do like They have a lot more products. So this is just one little thing in a bigger ecosystem, which kind of makes sense that it gets hidden away

in kind of this giant app that they have. But I can get to it in a few clicks. Not that that matters much anymore. We'll kind of get into how it integrates later. But the hardware is kind of nice. The outside is heavy. It feels right. I wish they just had more than one there's no plastic feel to it although it's probably plastic um and there's no like uh like the keypad and everything work all right there's a there's a fingerprint reader we'll see how that works over time everything everything

else was was was got was good there's uh the little clamping plate that you, you screw to basically clamp the outside piece to the door. Like the inside piece is just the, the latch and kind of like the battery pack and that kind of thing. Um, that, that was very minimal. Like it barely fit in there and it didn't make leveling anything like an easy task. So, and it's a square box on a square door that's next to a square door frame. It's not, it's not like I had like three or task so and it's a square box on a square door that's next to a square door frame it's not it's not like i i had like three or four adjustments and like very very difficult to line up and get just right and i close the door and i'm like is that off i think it's off so i just i'm not gonna look at it so let's just have to be crooked from now on um hence our questioning of

whether or not you did this properly. Yeah, you're like all offended, and that's how you leave that. No, you can try so many times before you get frustrated. Because every time you have to take off the little outside, the cover. And then you break things. Exactly. That's what I was worried about. I didn't want to drop anything and break it.

So just go back to it in three weeks and fix it, Seth. It's okay. We're here for you. I might do that. I mean, I got to get this thing. I mean, how often does this door actually get used though? Oh, all the time. Like, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a main door.

Like we only have two doors to our house. So it gets used all the time. Yeah. Anyway, so pairing to the app worked well. I guess it goes over Bluetooth to your phone. Simple, easy, worked really well. HomeKit is where things went wrong, but not for the reasons you might think. The HomeKit stuff also says there's no features with HomeKit. It's basically unlock and lock, which is okay. It's really all I need it for.

And I followed the instructions, not instructions, and it didn't work. Just flat out didn't work. I'm like, oh, geez. So like I went and sat down at a restaurant and was eating food and reading the instructions and thinking like, there's gotta be another way to do this. And I started ploking through all the back menus in the app and found other integrations, this other integrations menu,

clicked on that and said HomeKit. I'm like, oh, this is probably the way they want us to do this. At the same time, I noticed there was a firmware update that also added the ability to do like code management in the HomeKit app now. So like bonus, it said it would like, noticed there was a firmware update that also added the ability to do like code management in the home the home kit app now so like bonus it said it would like literally says in the instructions you can't add codes in the home kit app with the firmware update brings that feature to it so hey

i love that didn't know i was going to get that and now uh i got home click that one button in the same room and the thing just paired with HomeKit and it works remotely now through HomeKit. I can't use the Aquara app nearby. Now this is a question I have you guys. Aquara has like a hub, right? Like they have their own hub. If I got one of those, I assume it's like minimally priced too.

Like it would just link with this thing and i could use the acquire app remotely is that is that how it works i believe so yeah they have their own hub um in the forums i've been seeing you know mixed messages about this lock um some people saying they're returning it you know that doesn't integrate but it seems like if you really wanted to integrate with something like home assistant you're gonna need that hub and then the hub you gotta turn on matter and then you go through the home assistant matter to get you know various features and stuff but you still don't get all the features of the lock you know no no you you can't like you can't go in there and say set a new fingerprint for your thumb like you wouldn't be able to do that i didn't i don't expect to do that

through my home kit app it's home home kits more of like a summary of what i can do with it and as long as it can lock and unlock and I can check remotely if it's locked or unlocked or I can reset a pin code for somebody, that's great. The best part of this lock, that's just an absolute game changer, is the HomeKey thing. That is absolutely amazing.

You just walk up to it, you tap your watch onto it, it beeps and unlocks the door. I can't tell you how insane that is and how cool it is. Within like four seconds, you're walking in the house, no keys out, nothing. You just walk up, you either tap your phone like you're paying for the lock to open, I guess, like you pay for Apple Pay, or you tap your watch. And you don't have to like double click your phone. You don't have to bring up the wallet or anything. There's an express mode that you can turn on and off. And that, if you just walk up and just tap whatever onto it,

it just instantly recognizes it and unlocks the bolt. So all in all, given the little small problems I had with it, I think it's a great watch. A great lock. I don't have any problems with using it so far. Every time I walk up to it, the HomeKey, HomeKit integrations worked fine. And I can't even say that I'm like a HomeKit house other than like I have the HomeBridge

that ties in with Control 4 and then a couple of HomePods, which I guess that's how it's getting online. There's a HomePod here and there's a Apple TV in the garage. That must be how it's connecting to this lock over here because there's no Bluetooth, anything in the house other than those devices, I guess.

So that's nice. It works. HomeKey, we'll recommend. Two thumbs up. It's amazing when you can end it with, it works. Yeah. Glowing review. There you go. It worksh home tech podcast yeah no it it having like 20 different ways to unlock your door too is kind of

kind of amazing like it's got the keypad it's got a fingerprint reader it's got a key which i think i've already lost no they're on the desk here right is it like a standard key do you know is it like quick a key, which I think I've already lost. No, they're on the desk here. Is it like a standard key? Do you know, is it like quick set key or something? It did not fit the quick set lock. So whatever, I guess, what is that? Slade? Slade. Yeah. So it's not that, um, I don't know of any other brand and maybe I can go like bring these to Home Depot and see if they fit anything else. But you have to send me a picture of it. Maybe I can tell from the picture. Look at you. Fancy man. Well, anyway, that is what I've got going on.

I actually got something done. I did actually finish off another project, which wasn't like anything we really talk about. I made my canoe rack and got my canoe off the ground so Clippy could go mow in that area that now has no grass because the canoe's been sitting there for so long. But now Clippy just basically gets stuck in the sand

now that there's no grass there. So I've got to probably plant some grass or just wait for it to grow because it's Florida. It'll grow in three weeks. Gavin, what about you? You been doing any big projects around the house? Well, first of all, I got an email from Justin about printer. He heard my printer griping again

and he sent a few more suggestions. But I just want to let you know that it looks like Unify may have released an update that fixed these issues. So I got an update from Unify probably a number of weeks ago. And ever since then, my printer has just been working. So I'm crossing my fingers. I'm just going to sit with it for now but he did give me um some things to look at just in case it happens again in terms of uh sonos and clashing and stuff like that so keeping an eye on that nice um home assistant released another beta just when you thought you were fully updated. Nope, there's another beta out now. 2023.7 beta.

It's not, I found this one not really too exciting. Yeah, and we're doing a live update right now on the show. Here goes Seth. But if you're into their voice assist stuff, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. They're laying down the groundwork for a lot of things, right? So that's mainly what this beta is covering. A few little things here and there, like copy and paste and dashboard now, some major matter updates, new supported devices, and a whole bunch of breaking changes.

So keep an eye on that. The final release gets released next Wednesday. Or, you know, if you're listening to this show on release date, yesterday it was released. It was like three months ago, yeah. So keep an eye out for that. What are they using or what are they like? Have they figured out what to do with hardware yet? Or is that still kind of up in the air?

Like for microphones, for voice control? It's still up in the air right now. I don't think they've gotten to that point yet in terms of hardware. They're more or less designing the software. I know they showed off a little hardware device that they can use for testing, but it's just a little device as just for testing. Right. So you actually have to hold down a button because I don't think they've gotten to the wake word aspect of this yet. Right. Like they're still laying down the foundation. Eventually, they'll get to the point where they program in the wake words and stuff like that. But it's looking very powerful.

Like when they finally get it, it'll probably be a whole bunch of YAML and, you know, you'll get it all. It'll be working nicely. It'll be very powerful, and you'll have full control over your voice service. And they'll probably just integrate ChatGPT right into it, so it will surpass a lot of things out there if they do this right. Cool. Yeah, they kind of have the advantage of,

like, when Amazon came out, it was like a joke machine, and it could tell you the weather. And then it was like, oh, oh yeah, we can actually control smart home stuff with this. That'd be cool. And they kind of like fell backwards into it, right? Yeah. And I feel like every, I mean, everyone else did that too, right?

So Siri, kind of the same way. Siri was out well before Amazon, just didn't do anything very well. But they were like, the first integration was Siri. The first API for Siri was HomeKit, right? But again, they fell backwards into it. do anything very well but they were like the first integration was siri the first api for siri was homekit right um but again they fell backwards into it uh but they have the advantage of kind of like being a late comer and figuring out what works what people want to use it for for especially around home control and can kind of design a product to directly interface with that so that's that's that's awesome it's good to hear. A lot of work.

It's exciting. It's exciting to watch. It is a lot of work, but they're moving very fast too. So we're halfway through the year. I don't know where we'll be at at the end of the year, but I guess their goal is to have it fully done by end of year. So we'll see how it does. And then how's your upgrade going?

It says I need a restart. Yeah, yeah. Restart. go for it yeah seth never restarts though yeah he hates restarting but you know he he's got he has no choice at this point it's necessary with home assistant and the final thing i've been messing around with i still have my esp32 c3 i've been watching videos on esp32 stuff and you know i'll try to get my head around it and how things work. And I'll have to do, if you're a listener out there and you have experience with ESP32, shoot me an email, please.

I have a couple of questions that I can't seem to find answers. I want to add batteries to this little device I have. It's like, what battery holder do I need? Is it going to work? What kind of batteries do I use? You know, like it says it does, it supports battery, battery pack if I hook it up, right? You know, but it seems like I can't find the information out there, but it's just a little project I'm working on to add a pressure sensor to my pool pump. And, you know, if I can get this working, who knows where I can go after that. But yeah, if someone out there has good experience with ESP stuff, you know, shoot me an email. It's such a low level thing. I think there's a lot of assumed knowledge that comes with that product, right? Yeah. Well, the nice

thing is with Home Assistant, you kind of just plug it in and then it kind of like connects to it and then uploads firmware to it and does all the configuration. And then bam, it shows up in Home Assistant. Like you don't have to deal with any of that stuff so you only really have to do deal with the soldering and you know putting together of the pieces and stuff like that but then you know i'm looking at like a battery pack and i'm like well how much voltage and you know i start to get into all that type of stuff and i'm like man i wish i asked chat gpt about this stuff it didn't give me any good answers you know so it just left me more confused and it's like i wish there was someone

i could just ask this to you know because the forums aren't helping videos aren't helping you know i'm just looking at basic videos like of people soldering things going cool and the wife's looking at me going what the hell are you watching i'm like didn't you see his son look at that technique you know and she's like i just see things melting just did it in one pass it's amazing yeah i'm like oh my god look at the look at like it looks so fluid look at those steady hands yeah i know yeah yeah oh look at that trick what trick you know like he you missed it let's rewind it you know yeah she hates watching it's entertaining yeah we've learned that both our youtube video suggesting feeds are totally different like really different yeah yeah yeah then you should have a joint one because that

makes it even better because it's just a bunch of random stuff on there and so we have a we have a joint one for the the the tv in the house and it's just it's so weird what you see on there yeah she'll be blaming me for all the weird stuff though i'll automatically be blamed it's the algorithm yeah yeah math and stuff and that's it for my project awesome well sounds like you sounds like you've actually kind of been busy yeah it's always always fun yeah i try to keep busy. All right, DJ, we know you're busy. What's new at the house? Oh, man, just unpacking.

That's the most boring thing. But I've been buying new technology. I mean, why not upgrade some of the technology in the house that I just bought? Yeah, I got a TV. I bought a 65-, LG OLED C2. Um, it was a refurbished one for micro center. If you, if you know what micro center is, you're lucky because it's the best, uh, electronic store in the world. Um, but they had a refurbished, uh, LG C2 65 inch for $1,099. And, um, I was reading the reviews on it and I, you know, I'm, I'm not

opposed to use devices. I buy secondhand electronics all the time. I buy old laptops and tablets and game systems and whatever, but TVs, I was a little hesitant on, especially like an OLED TV, right? Because it's one of those things that it's a lot of money. And OLEDs still have a little bit of issue with screen burn-in. And I don't think it's as bad as maybe it used to be or other models had it, but it's still a thing. And so I was reading the reviews on the Micro Center website. And a lot of the reviews were like, you know, it's basically like a brand new TV. Some were saying that it had like 25 hours on it. Some were saying that, you know, there's had 115 hours on it. And that's really like the actual screen on time. And so I was like, you know, for, you know, 1100 bucks, I'll get it.

And I'm a sucker. So I went ahead and bought the warranty with it as well. So if it dies in the next three years, and even if I, you know, physically break it, they'll basically give me my money back at that point. So that was, I think that was like 150 bucks or something. So that wasn't too bad. And I get a home and the, the screen, uh, display time said zero hours. And so unless they replace the screen and the motherboard, I basically got a brand new TV. It seems like somebody might've just bought it, used it for a little bit and then just took it back so that was pretty cool yeah they rolled it back like they did cars used cars you know yeah that's right rolled it back wouldn't surprise me with lg um so yeah we started we've been re-watching you know tv shows and stuff that

we've seen before well taskmaster and obviously bob's burgers and um the colors are so amazing like i've seen oled tvs and i've installed them for clients and stuff like that and you see them for you know maybe a half hour or something and then you leave on your day and you go install other tvs but you never really sit down and and watch them unless you have one and now that i'm just sitting there i want all my screens to be open. Just, it's just, it's, it's, it's just nice. And, uh, you know, I was trying to sell it to the wife initially and, uh, the wife said, um, you know, uh, we could get one and she starts watching some TV shows and she just, she's amazed by the colors on it. So automatic win there boys. Nice. And when you, when you add in like the 4k and hdr

and everything like that like it's just an easier sell at that point especially when they're watching like a regular standard dev program and you flip it over oh man yeah that that that's what got us the first time yeah and this one it has the e-arc on it as well so i can get the full Dolby Atmos experience with the Sonos Arc, which I did not have with the previous LG TV. So it's overall, it's a worthwhile upgrade, especially for $1,100. That's not bad because you can still find OLEDs regularly for $2,000 to $4,000. So I think this one, like normal price right now is like $1,600 or $1,700. So basically $700 for a refurbished model, which I'm all right with. Sounds like a deal to me, especially if everybody likes it, you win.

There you go. Yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And we're going to mount the other. So in the other house, we had a separate TV next to the TV, and that's what Nicole used to play video games on. And so we're going to we this other 65-inch TV that we had right next to it. So that way we have one really ugly TV and one beautiful TV that you can play video games on if you want to. There you go. I mean, what works, works, I guess. Why not? Why not?

Yeah, why not? You know, YOLO, all that good stuff what's better than 165 inch tv 265 inch tv well i mean it sucks now though because we're gonna have to upgrade both i'm gonna have to upgrade the other tv to a 65 inch lg c2 at some point as well because you can't have two completely different tvs next to each other especially one that's inferior quality so really it's just gonna cost us more in the long run. But you know, and TJ,

you know, you might as well just get it over with now. Like, don't wait because you know, when you're ready, they won't have the C2. They'll have the C3. Different bezel.

It won't match. Yeah, it's true. It won't match. You'll just, I might as well buy it this weekend. Yeah, exactly.

There we go. Okay. That covers today. I'll make you spend money segment. Well, I'm not going to spend money on that this week because i also gained two other text things this week um i traded a laptop i had as a gaming laptop that i i used for work but it was just it was very bulky um and every time i wanted to use it it was dead because you know it's a gaming laptop so it has like two hours of battery life.

And I wanted it at the time because I had a really large screen. It was like a 17.3 inch screen. And so like, you know, programming automation systems and doing all this stuff was nice on it. But it just it sucked to use. And so today I traded that away for a Steam Deck, which is a little handheld uh pc gaming console that valve makes and i'm gonna give that a shot i haven't had a chance to play it other than updating some software and downloading things so no no big review on that yet but i'm excited to give that a shot i hear really good things about that like it like yeah a lot of people really love them yeah and they're

compatible with a lot of other games and stuff like that. And then the final tech purchase is the 15-inch MacBook Air, the new one that just came out. So obviously I got rid of the work laptop, so I needed a new laptop. And why not buy this really expensive laptop that I don't need? First impressions, though, it is very nice. I've never really owned a new Mac book. I've gotten various Mac books over the years. Um, but this thing is, it feels

like good quality. It's nice and fast. Um, I, I wish for the price that came with more than eight gigs, eight gigs of Ram, you know, you spend 1500 bucks at a laptop with a 512 gigs of storage and eight gigs of Ram. And you kind of feel like you're getting raked over the coals. But, you know, it's the Apple tax, I guess. Yeah, it's an odd configuration to very odd. And I think that's all you can get. I don't know if that was just like a Best Buy thing because I wanted to pick it up today. But I feel like the MacBook Air is always limited on hardware configuration. So that's probably correct yeah yeah although you you need less than you think most of the times it doesn't look like what you're running on it i

know but it's just one of those things you're not gonna run games on it you're gonna use that i love how you traded your work laptop for a gaming machine you're like oh i need a laptop whoops well like i said the other one was just cumbersome to use like this one it has good battery life and all that kind of good stuff and you know like I said the other one whenever I pulled it out people thought I was like hacking their network and stuff this one this one might look like I'm actually doing work and not playing legal legends or runescapes leds light up and uh it's so obnoxious like i turned it on one time and somebody's like oh you got all the rgbs don't you and i just i felt embarrassed so that's that's the reason i

actually got rid of it well you're in luck that apple will never do that they won't add any fun to their computers at all so uh yeah yeah yeah speaking of fun, my biggest annoyance so far is the lack of touchscreen because I also have one of the, the iPad pros. And so I'm used to, you know, use, I have a little keyboard case from Logitech with it. And so I'm, I'm used to using the keyboard and the mouse, and then I just touch it whenever I need to. And I keep trying to touch this screen like I'm doing right now.

And it doesn't do anything because it doesn't have a touch screen but it looks like it should because it's super thin and nice looking and colorful and it looks like a glorified iPad but it's it's not giving me anxiety touching your screen I don't I don't like smear marks all over the screen and you don't like all the fingerprints that people leave on their electronics you would hate my car radios then because they're just covered they come up to my laptop my pristine laptop and trying to put their their finger their grubby little fingers on it with whatever they eat fingers cheetos and lunch meats or whatever you never get it clean again like it's never gonna be a hundred percent like it's always gonna have some spec of whatever that was have to return that 65 inch that's what apple cares for touch TV behind you is going to drive you nuts,

especially when your kid starts playing with it. No, she's played on it all day. I mean, clearly from the unicorn picture that was behind me earlier. Yeah, no, it's – You didn't draw that? It's made for – yeah, it's as good as I can do. It's made for that and even has some kind of crazy hard touch thing on it.

Anti-smear thing? It's like a matte finish, I guess. It does have smears. You can see them from an angle, but you can't see them dead on. It's not like the focus on a glossy screen. No, not like the Mac screen or any monitor, computer monitor, iPad

or anything like that. At least those you can wipe down and wipe off easily enough. But I do get it, though, because a lot of the Windows computers these days are are all touchscreens. Mac is, for whatever reason, held off on doing that. It's not a feature for me, but I totally understand why people want to use it, use their computers that way. It's just like a natural thing at this point. Like everything is is almost everything is touchscreen. So it just like a natural thing at this point. Like everything is, is almost everything is touchscreen. So it just, it feels weird that this is not.

And I don't know, there's $500 laptops that have touchscreens and this one for three times the cost doesn't. So it's just that part feels weird, but it's normal Apple things in my opinion. So every, everything is good with it. It feels nice.

It looks nice. It pretty typical Apple product and it weighs nothing. So, and I don't, and I don't need the full MacBook Pro. I don't need to spend $3,000 on a laptop. I don't think anybody does. This is already too much, in my opinion. So I'm kind of glad they released a cheaper version.

And I could have saved $200 by getting the smaller storage, but why? Yeah, everything's online anyway. You're just buying a faster web browser is basically what's happening. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man. It sounds like you've been busy. Uh, Gavin, I think he's, he's got us on how much he spent this week. So absolutely. Catch up boys. And he's also got us on how much he's going to be spending. Yeah, that's true. He's going to give him a, the lead for now. Uh, that should be our next website. Actually. It's just

a tracker of how much we've spent from the start of the podcast. Just bar graphs. It just is like, Oh man. Yeah. To come up with a good domain for that one. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. Uh, We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat hub where you and others as supporters of the show can go and complain about how long it takes Seth to edit a show. Sorry. It's all Seth. Though you're going to love my file sizes this week. I edited the show

like a few weeks ago and I thought I published it. I was just so busy. I just skipped my mind. I had no idea. And I opened up the website to look at it and I thought I published it. I was just so busy. I just, I skipped my mind. I had no idea. And I opened up the website to look at it. And I'm like, and TJ, somebody had asked. They were like. I know, I totally didn't think about it.

I was like, no, we didn't record one because we were busy. I was like, wait a minute. It was the show we did record that I didn't hit publish on that was just sitting there and not doing anything. So yeah, there's that. It was already done. It happens. It was saved. It was uploaded. Everything was ready. It just needed to hit, you know, the go button. on that was just sitting there not doing anything so yeah there's that it was already done it happens

it was saved it was uploaded everything was ready it just needed to hit you know the go button and i was able to do that for the last week so bonus this week there were two home tech episodes that's that's a good bonus that's a good problem to have you know two new episodes back to back yeah there we go all right but if you want to help out the show but can't support financially totally understand we just would appreciate a five-star review on itunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice rest in peace stitcher everyone's still using that uh anyway uh that that's going to wrap up everything this week everyone have a great weekend and we will see you next week take care till next time.