HomeTech.fm - Episode 442 - Ladder Safety

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

On this week's show: Aqara shows off new keypads and launches a new sensor, Shelly jumps into Z-wave, Amazon starts offing early Prime deals on Amazon owned products, more updates about various projects in the works and the importance of ladder safety as well as a pick of the week!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 7th, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about home automation, home technology, fireworks, right? It's the time of year that we just like have fireworks going off constantly so the next month at least you know happy birthday united states just every night every night just constant constant fireworks yeah they've been they've been lighting them off for the past two weeks here i'm sure they'll go on for another week or two

um and then actually so this is our our first month in the new house. And we found out that we're about a mile from the park that they actually set all the fireworks off for the city. Oh, nice. And so getting to the house was kind of a pain because all the people going to parking and then people were actually parking at our house a mile away just to go to this fireworks show. Nice.

So that was a welcome surprise. Other than that, it wasn't bad though. You're going to be that guy with signs and like out there with a water hose, like get off my lawn. No, it honestly wasn't that bad.

And if there wasn't like one tree directly above my neighbor's house, the one across the street from me, we'd be able to see them perfectly. But most of them are just covered with the trees. So you got to sell spots in your driveway for parking for that. There we go. Water parking, maybe, you know, water and pop trees. You got to sell spots in your driveway for parking for that night. There we go. And then sell water and pop. Ballet parking, maybe.

You know, water and pop. You know, it's a business opportunity. Yeah, parking spots. There you go. That'll work. Capitalism. 20 bucks a pop. There you go.

Yeah, I guess there were fireworks here. We went out of town and we went to we we went to like the the parks in orlando this weekend actually no one was there it's really freaky and weird but from what i heard that the uh the fireworks in here in town did not go over well uh i guess the boat that they launched them from caught on fire i guess and so the show was very short and abrupt and didn't last very long so no finale Somebody's getting fired. Automation goes wrong. You're not supposed to catch the boat on fire.

You're supposed to just catch the sky on fire. All right. We got a couple of home tech headlines in here. And what do you say we just get started? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. New product from Acara here.

A Chinese smart home manufacturer, Acara, has announced the latest range of smart controllers, the V1 smart switches. These switches come with matter support and millimeter wave presence detection, making them a notable addition to the smart home market. The V1 lineup features a central LED display that can show weather, information, scene toggles,

and automation toggles based on other integrated Quora products. The switch itself looks like a touch panel divided into four quarters. If you're familiar with like a European type switch, it looks just like what you would expect it to look like. It's square, squared off edges and four corners. Each corner represents a switch zone that can be controlled connected lights. Additionally, the switches can be programmed as individual scene controllers

and integrated with the Apple HomeKit to control other devices on the network, not just Aquara's own products. Aquara says they plan to expand the V1 lineup with a rotary dial smart knob module that serves as a ZigBee hub and features millimeter wave presence detection as well. The sensor can turn into a small screen on it, on or off when somebody approaches and has potential for other applications such as a continuous human presence detection. We'll see how all that works out.

These products look pretty cool, actually. I like how they look one product line, right? You can just kind of like, when you start putting them together and ganging them together, they look like they belong together. You just like strap, strap in these little modules and the little screen lines up in the same

place. The little dial is right there at the end. If you need needed that one looks pretty cool. Gavin, what do you think about these things? I think they look great. They actually come in multiple colors. There's looks like five different colors,

but the it's like, they look nice too, right? Like they, if you want the modern look in your house but the, it's like, they look nice too, right? Like they, if you want the modern look in your house, the futuristic type of look, this is something I'd put in my house. Um, I also like how it's different. It's something new. It's something, a different take on the whole, you know, smart switch thing, you know, adding that screen in there, you know, and how they did it and the modular, um, you could put them together. It's different. I like it. I i don't know it won't fit my

house because we don't have the square ones here in north america but you know like i i like them innovating like this it was very commercial looking to me like this would go well in a modern hotel you know here in north america they could put something like like that. TJ, what do you think about these? I think I'm most excited about the dial one, which sounds kind of funny. But you really don't see that on a typical, you know, smart switch or switch in general. So the ability to use this to control your thermostat or maybe audio, stuff like that. That sounds kind of cool to me. And the fact that you can just put them together and make it look like, you know, one complete unit and it doesn't look awkward or something like that.

One of the one of the things I always disliked about switches in America, at least, is that they have like the plate around it and everything. And I know that's to like hide all this necessary stuff. But I wish there was some way to get rid of that portion. So this is kind of appealing to me. Yeah. The, the European and I guess Asian type plates look a lot nicer. Like they're,

they're, they're more functional. It seems than, than the ones we have where we were kind of stuck with this decor is about as nice as you can get, which is nineties. Well, anyway, we'll have to keep an eye on those and see what happens

with them. They do look pretty cool. It would be nice to see something like that start working here in North America, though. Things that do work here in North America, though. Shelly has introduced its first devices with Z-Wave built into them. The Shelly Quabino Wave 1 and Quabino Wave 1PM are part of the new Shelly Wave series, offering Z-Wave support. These devices provide control over various household appliances, office equipment, such as lights, electrical outlets, security systems, and more. By utilizing Z-Wave, they offer advantages like extending range, lower power

consumption, and enhanced data security compared to Wi-Fi or the Bluetooth connections. This is really cool. I do like the Shelly products. I've got a handful of them here sitting on my desk that I still have yet to put in months and months and months later after I said I was going to. They're still here, though. I'm glad they did this. I wish they had didn't do Z-Wave. I wish they had done Zigbee or even Thread or something, but Hey, Z-Wave it's, it's another bridge technology we can, we can integrate with a good deal. Uh, TJ, what do you think? Well, maybe not, maybe Z-Wave isn't dead. You know, if somebody like this is coming out with their first Z-Wave devices, I mean, maybe it's going to stick around.

I'm a big fan of Z-Wave. So I like seeing stuff like this. I don't need these devices at the moment. I'll keep an eye, you know, and if I do, maybe I'll pick them up. But hopefully they start releasing some more stuff. I mean, you know, like in the picture here on the article, they have their energy monitoring system and something like that is really appealing to me because there's not a lot of good options on the market, in my opinion. So bringing those technologies to Z-Wave, I think would be great and something that's definitely needed in the ecosystem. And it looks like they just bought the company Quibino.

Quibino, I guess, offered these products before. And I guess Shelly, you know, easy way into it, I guess, offered these products before. And I guess Shelly, you know, easy way into it, just buy the company and do it. But when it comes to energy monitoring, I'd rather that not be on my Z-Wave just because it always, it's very chatty. I find that stuff, right? Like that's something I'd rather be on Wi-Fi that can handle so much traffic. My Z-Wave, I like to keep it kind of like quiet so that it doesn't affect other things. But it looks good, you know, like Z-Wave. Yeah, they're not dead. I'm a fan of Z-Wave.

I have a lot of Z-Wave in my house and it works really well right now. So I'm happy to see more Z-Wave. Yeah, and Cobino has a bunch of tons of products actually still out there. So maybe that we'll start seeing more of them kind of moved over under the Shelly brand and brought over. It is weird that they kept the Cubino name in the product, I guess. You think it would just be like Shelly, whatever it is.

But I guess that means that they're going to just keep it around for now. Yeah, and maybe it's just like the brand recognition for the customers that were using Guavino or something like that. Because I'm looking at their website. They don't just have, like Shelly has a bunch of

little one-off relay devices and that kind of thing. These guys have like smart meters, DIN rail dimmers, a bunch of relays kind of like Shelly does, but it seems like

they have shade controllers, all sorts of stuff, leak detectors. Not that you couldn't do that with the Shelly devices and not that they don't offer support for that in some of their softwares, but it seems like it's a different product altogether. So we'll have to get some of these in hand and see what they actually do one of these days, especially when they move over the energy monitoring stuff. TJ, you're up. You'll do that.

It'll be your money that gets spent. I'm spending enough of my money right now. I don't need any help with that. Amazon is here to help you because Prime Day is right around the corner. Sales have arrived already and they're offering discounts on Amazon shows.

I know you want those Echo shows, right? The third generation Echo Show 5 is now available at an all-time low price of $45, down 50% from $90. It's not a bad deal. The model boasts improved sound quality, faster speeds, and a 2-megapixel camera for video calls and pet monitoring. Plus, it's constructed using 100% recycled aluminum.

So there you go, TJ. Good for the environment. And when you're done, you can recycle it. I think that's what that means. That's not all. The Echo Show 8, second generation, has seen a massive 54% price drop going from $130 to just $60 dang. There you go. 8-inch screen, 13-megapixel camera. You can see all the pets with that thing. Third generation Echo Show 10 also received a 35% discount, bringing its price from $16 down to 163 from $250.

So not bad. Some not not bad deals going over there on Amazon for Prime Day to get those those Amazon Echoes. I mean, I heard that this company was struggling to keep this division open. Maybe maybe they just haven't learned their lesson. Well, they just got to keep selling devices for even less money and then they'll eventually break even that's the that's the tech way isn't it i guess i guess get get get enough users sell a bunch of hardware and then eventually sell it to another company or shutter it um i've been one one of these echo show 15s the display things what is it called

echo show 15 the tv screen um because i think it'd be yeah it's basically a tv it's a 15 inch tv um it originally wasn't it was originally just like an alexa hub um and they just you know you were able to see your calendar and all the different automations and stuff you had and then eventually they released fire tv on it so then it became you know really appealing to me um i just don't think i have a spot for it at the moment um but it's a it's a hundred dollars off at the moment and that's that's a pretty good deal if you're looking for that and i'm curious if anybody has one of these if what you're using it for and if you actually find use out of it because my fear is that i'd like install it

somewhere and i would just never use it. And we're a Google household anyway. So that kind of makes it even more awkward. But I've been kind of wanting to Google anyway. So maybe I'll do that at the same time. Yeah. I mean, I think friend of the show, Jimmy, has been I've seen it on his TikTok channel when he's doing his technology stuff on there. So like I would ask him, I think he uses a kitchen for like a kitchen

TV. And I think they added the other day he was talking about how they added like YouTube TV or something to it. And you can watch TV on it now. So it's basically a 15 or 16 inch TV. Looks like a picture frame. It's got all your calendar and stuff on there and you can watch TV on it. Yeah, it's got a camera, too. So if you wanted to do some kind of video calling, I'm sure you could. I don't have any interest in that. But the kitchen, I feel like is the perfect spot for this just because you can use it for kitchen timers and clocks and all kinds of stuff. So I don't think it would fit anywhere else into the household. Gavin, do you have one of these? I have. Well, I used to have one of the fire tablets a while ago, and I set it up as a

dashboard to control the home. But you know what? We never used it. It sat there basically just showing pictures. We never really touched it. The wife was afraid to touch it. She's afraid she would activate something. And me, I just never touched it because I did everything through automation or through voice. So it didn't really matter. What I wanted to do was get a little screen and put by my back door. So when, you know, I let the dog out, uh, it would show the cameras in my backyard on there, like around the side of the house and stuff like that. So I can see what he's doing. So that would be a nice idea that I've kind of been thinking about doing.

I just haven't gotten to it yet or really, you know, found the right screen for it. But, um, you know, kitchen space is kind of a premium especially the counter space so you know this i have an echo dot in the kitchen and that kind of i have a holder where it sits actually on the plug so it's pretty nice like that it's off the counter um something like this in the kitchen i don't think we'd even use it anyway timers we just tell echo dot to do it or with siri or whoever they it's like that's easy as it is right so yeah and we have a tv that we can see from the kitchen as it is right now so i don't need another tv in the kitchen you know dude really i mean until you don't live in florida in florida they have them in every single room, every crevice you can put them in.

There's a TV there. Yeah, you can't turn one way and not see a TV. That's just illegal, I think. It's against the law. All right, well, yeah, I'm looking at those online right now. With the remote, I guess, 15.6-inch smart display with Alexa and Fire TV built in-in 181.98 um so it's got that same 35 discount so not bad for the last two weeks i've been getting notifications from amazon that's

pre-prime day sales you know so it's it's they always do that leading up to Prime Day, and you'll find that they'll have the Amazon Dots and Fire HDs and everything they own, like the Ring products and Eero. You'll find their products on sale, and they send it out. So it's a good time to buy if you want any of these stuff. The deals are great. Yep. I was noticing some of the ring products were really, really like little cameras and things that were 50% off for a second gen ring indoor camera right now to a 1080p video. $29.99. That's not bad. 50% off. If you need an indoor camera, that's not a bad deal if you're already in the ecosystem. Good luck, everybody on Prime Day. I hope you get what you want at the Amazon garage sale. But it's essentially what it is. I ran into a store last week before I left. I forgot what it was called, like hot bins or something like that.

I'm like, hot bins. This sounds fun. So I got to go see what this is. And I walked in and it's basically, it seemed to me like, do you know those auction sites? Okay. I know there are auction sites that I can buy pallets of product that's been returned or just not sold or whatever from stores. You can buy them by the pallet. You just like you bid on it, you win it or whatever. It looks like somebody has made a business around this. So they buy the pallet, right? And they ship it to this store and they unbox it. And they don't unbox it. They just take all the junk that's on the pallet

and throw it in a bin. And whatever, if it's on, let's see if it's on like Wednesday, it starts on Thursday. I say Thursday, it's $10. Friday, it's $8. It just goes down consecutively all the way to like Tuesday where it's like $2. So anything left in the bin by Tuesday, it's $2.

Oh my God, this place, you would think that like, like it was Black Friday shopping. There were so many people in there just digging through the bins, trying to find, like you can't open the boxes. You have to look what's on the box to see what's inside. It was just like an Easter egg hunt and they were just after it, man.

So I've got to go back to this place and check it out because when I have a little more time to see what I can get out of there, maybe some of these Amazon devices will pop up in there yeah i've never actually went to one of those i some of the auction sites i went to were definitely all amazon returns and before covid those were the best deals because you would find something for like a quarter or half of the price and then like as soon as covid hit all the auction prices went up to basically msrp so it wasn't worth going anymore and like it was just because there was like a shortage of And then like as soon as COVID hit, all the auction prices went up to basically MSRP.

So it wasn't worth going anymore. And like it was just because there was like a shortage of everything. And I but I don't know why you would pay that much for returns. It was returned for some reason. But those deal websites are pretty cool. Some of it looked new, right? Some of it was just like already sealed. It was all sealed in the box or whatever.

It doesn't look like it's been used. I don't know i'm gonna have to go back and check it out i know a lot of that is like over like inventory adjustments and over you know overpurchase they just they don't return it to the factory they'll just palletize it and it's easier just to get rid of it and throw it off or exactly so if they get if they get 500 for this pallet of junk that they bought for 300 then they they still made money. There you go. But I don't know. I'm going to go back and check this. They had a bunch of Ryobi tools and stuff set up back there.

They weren't $10. They still had those marked up. But they were maybe half price. So anyway, I'm going to go check that out one of these days. Let's move on to our new segment here, Who's Mattering This Week. And we have a new company,

a company called Tuyo, a newcomer to the block here it's uh surprised us with three new products that definitely caught our attention first up is the 20 smart button available for order right now priced at 34 us dollars a single button device uses matter over thread technology and offers a single double and long press actions comes with magnetic wall plate icon plate, icon stickers for easy identification of the programming, and requires a thread border router like the HomePod Mini or Apple TV 4K

for Apple Home compatibility. Moving on here, we've got the 2U contact sensor, utilizing Matter Over Thread as well. US $39.99 with a ship date set for sometime in July. Sleek little design to it. We'll add style to your smart home setup, it says right here. And last but not least, 2YO introduces a 2YO Smart Lock. Woo-hoo!

Designed to replace traditional deadbolt locks, it's HomeKit and HomeKey compatible with a clean and modern look. It features a standard keyhole and backlit keypad. While currently uses HomeKit over Thread, the possibility to update for it to come matter one day over Thread remains uncertain. That one is going to launch in September with a price tag of $199.

Still didn't beat my Aquara, right? Aquara was, what, $129 or something like that. But not a bad deal for one of these nice little home key products. Definitely would recommend at really any price tag because it's just so convenient to walk up, tap your watch and get to your house. Gavin, what do you think about these things? They look good.

I also, I'm happy to see that you're getting Matter over Thread devices now. You know, like up until now, I saw a lot of Matter over Wi-Fi, but now, you know, like up until now I saw a lot of matter over wifi, but now, you know, I can make use of my thread. So I'm going to be setting up my thread network at home. You know, I ordered a few products. I'm going to see, you know, what, what, what it takes to get this stuff working. Um, but these, these, these devices look pretty good. That, that lock the home key thing is really cool. And it seems like more and more locks are going to be adding that um so one day i'm going to grab it i need a new lock for the front door plan to get one it's going to have home key for sure the the lock does look pretty nice my only complaint is that this is a lot of smart locks they only come in one color and so

like this one you know it looks nice and they have it with the the black or bronze handle whatever color it is and then they have like two really nice photos of some really nice doors and it's like the black lock with the silver hardware for the door handle and it's just it's weird um but i mean it looks nice and it has all the nice features and everything like that i just i wish these companies would come out with multiple colors because it's definitely necessary yeah i was kind of disappointed when you're talking about the Aqara keypads earlier. I can't remember the two-letter name. V1?

What is it? Yeah, V1. They came in so many colors in my Aqara lock. Same company, only one color. Boo. Do better. Do better. I want that silver.

I want that nice silver clean look to match my Aqara keypads, right? Make it happen, Aqara, please, please. Well, speaking of Aqara, we also have another Aqara product that matters today, and only today because it just came out today, and there's really no news on it. So I guess we're breaking the news, but by the time you hear this podcast, it won't be broken. But Gavin has acquired an Aqara door and window sensor P2, uses Matter over Thread, requires a Thread border router, yada, yada, yada. This one looks nice. It looks like an Acura door window sensor. Gavin, what have you gleaned from this thing so far?

This is my first Matter over Thread product. And I woke up this morning, saw that was released, ordered it. It came by this afternoon. Initial impressions, it's kind of big. You know, if you think of the CR123A battery, it's about two times that size, I would say. I initially tried to add it to my home, Apple home. It failed. I couldn't get that working. Then I tried with my Amazon.

Couldn't get that working. So my next step is I'm going to try it with my sky connect on home assistant and see what I get from there. But yeah, this thread stuff, this matter stuff just isn't easy. You know, um, I expect to get easier eventually, but right now it's just not easy. You know, and one thing I don't like about this matter, you know, some people may groan at this, but when you add these devices, you got to scan a code, right? And if you lose that code, then you got to enter the number that's on the side of these devices, right?

That number is near impossible to read on these devices. It's written in like a very light gray that can wear off over time. I don't know, like at least with Z-Wave, like it was kind of consistent. You know, with Z-Wave, you want to exclude something, you triple tap it, it excludes. You know, when you had to reset your Z-Wave network,

you did the triple tap dance around your house to all 90 devices. With Matter, oh man, if I ever have to reset that, it's going to be a pain if I lose any of these codes. And I've seen people release apps that will save the codes to the apps and stuff like that. I don't want to get into code management. They should have just gone the way of like triple tap type of thing, make it consistent like that. But I don't know. This is my first Matter device. I'll see how it goes well i'm glad that we were talking about aquara and matter and all this stuff because i

decided to check amazon and see if they have any fp2s in stock and i am the proud owner of two fp2s now so spending money yes wasn't supposed to guys on. The best thing is they'll be here by tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be able to install them before I leave for Illinois this weekend. Ooh. You don't need to install them, but are you going to be able to program them? No. That's all right. I still got to fix.

So I had to get my phone replaced, and when I got my phone replaced, it deleted everything, and for some reason, I couldn't restore my backup properly and everything. And so I had to set up a new device with Home Assistant. And now I have to go through and set up all my notifications to send it to the new phone. So I have a decent amount of programming to do at this point. Time to get paid. At least you have like Home Assistant. It seems to me that you can program it kind of just about anywhere right you don't have to be local like as long as you can access the no it's and it's pretty easy to program now there used to be a pain so i mean it's just the the time to do it and if you want like if it's all your automations

and stuff you have to edit it in just edit the yaml file and do a search and replace done stop you know it'll save you a ton of time i'm not i'm not i'm not doing okay well we'll see you next week still doing it yeah absolutely it's gonna take me even longer to do the yaml stuff though no it's search and replace it's so much easier i'm just gonna send you 20 bucks i'll have you do it for me while i'm gone there we go 35 yeah rates gone up man it's canadian dollars it's expensive in canada covid pricing all right all right let's move on here all the links and topics discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 442 we do have a couple pics of the weeks this week um i'm just going to throw this out there first

the m m msg sphere or whatever it is in las vegas have you seen this crazy thing guys yes 2.5 billion dollars or whatever insane amount of money went into the videos are just all over the place and the one i posted in our little thing it has like a little flag or whatever it's not even the best video like there are plenty of other ones that have like this crazy wave looking thing on it um but evidently inside there is like a full concert hall and everything where you can go listen to things it's got these crazy speakers in them i think there's 170 000 speakers or something like that the which you say that sounds crazy uh but each they're using a speaker and they were infocom i can't remember the name

of them hollow point or something like that. TJ, you might remember these. You remember the Yamaha YSP bar things? You remember those? They had like 20 speakers in them or something like that. And these little speakers, little box speakers, have 96 speakers in them. So their own DSP built into them.

And you just kind of tell them where they are in the building and you can focus beam array sound out of them it's wild they're doing some crazy immersive sound people say it sounds great i really want to go to vegas to look at this thing now and see it because it looks absolutely insane yeah they've been doing tests all week i think it just launched this week and they've been testing it. And I've seen the videos and stuff and it's crazy. Like I was watching, um, they had a golf match last week called the match. And in the background they had this dome and like, you, you just, you could not not look at it. And I think it was at the point where people, you know, everyone was focused on what's that black dome in the background that even the commentators had to say, yes, this is

the new dome. They'll be running tests this week. week you know they had to explain what it is oh it's going to become a staple i think whenever you see that vegas skyline now is you're going to see this dome um lit up and it's going to be it's cool looking like the graphics look really cool on it too like it's not like everything eyeball graphic on there like there's gonna be this huge eyeball yeah the eyeball look the best it's crazy there's a there's a epcot there's a moon there's an epcot dome and then there's the moon and of course the eyeball which will freak you out but yeah giant tv screen like this is the biggest tv screen i think we've ever seen because it's just the entire facade of a building that's round and huge and has a concert hall inside of it like it you don't even when you're looking

these videos you can't even get a idea how big it is until you see like a car in the background or maybe another building or a street light or something like it's so big it's crazy i wonder i wonder how many staff they have to have to run that too probably like three right it's probably all automated i mean yeah so i mean i know the the screens and everything it looked like some of them had already gone out. Like, cause you could, some of the videos I was watching, you could see little white pixels in there. I'm like, well, that's probably like a board, you know, a four by four square or something,

but it's a white pixel and it looks like it's star on this thing. So yeah, I imagine there's, I imagine it's, it's fun going up in there to replace the screens, you know, at the top of this thing, just getting up there and popping them out. You have to clean it. How do they clean it? Somebody else's problem. Yeah, somebody else's problem, exactly. And then I guess our pick of the week here

for the home tech side of things is this robot vacuum garage. And I've talked about buying a garage for my Clippy and I didn't, I bought a door lock instead, which I think was a better purchase. Honestly, like Clippy, Clippy's been slacking off right now. He's out there supposed to be charging. He's not charging for some reason. I think his little charge holes are dirty. So I've got to go clean them out with a brush or something. Cause he's not charging. Right. But he's in standby. He's been 20% all day. So I got to go clean him. But I think if he lived inside, he'd probably get one of these vacuum garages. So somebody on Reddit has made

a vacuum garage for the robot vacuum. It has a little door underneath the cabinet, pops open. The robot comes out, starts cleaning the house. And when it goes back in, the door closes underneath the cabinet, all sealed away. You don't see it anymore. Looks great. This is amazing. Gavin, would you do this for your robot vacuum? If I had the cabinet space, yeah. Oh, that's the problem.

I don't have the cabinet space. My vacuums, I think it's in the dining room just in a corner right um and that's the nice thing about it doesn't matter where you put it it's gonna find its way back to that spot when it's done in charge so it's nobody nobody puts clippy in the corner oh no no no i put i put dusty in the corner all the time you know i leave dusty in the corner you know but this is a really cool idea if you don't want it out in the open. If I didn't have the bin on it, I would have put it under. I have a little, like, chaise that I have sitting there that has a spot under it,

and I would have put it under there because it fits perfectly. But because I have the bin, that kind of adds a lot of size to it and stuff. But it's a cool idea. I like how he used the curtain. I think it was a curtain opener. A car, a curtain opener. A car, a curtain opener. Yeah. And that kind of the way he did it to make it open the flap was actually really cool. That's a great idea. But it's nice when you see people doing things with products they weren't meant for. And they come up

with an idea like that. So that was cool to see. Yeah. And I could totally see a cabinet company picking up on this and just releasing something out of idea like that. So that was cool to see. Yeah, and I could totally see a cabinet company like picking up on this and just releasing something out of the box that does this. You know, obviously you have to provide your own robot vacuum and stuff like that, but they'll figure out some simple way to open the doors and stuff like that. And you'll see it at Lowe's and Home Depot

here in the next couple of years because it's a really good idea. And as somebody that just got a robot vacuum, our new house has all vinyl flooring. And, you know, I'm used to carpet where, you know, carpet, if it's a little dirty, you're not going to notice right away because it goes down in the carpet and you vacuum it. But with the vinyl flooring, you notice immediately if the floor is dirty because you're picking it up on your feet and everything like that. And so the robot vacuum has been a

good purchase, but I don't want it in like the general room and everything like that. And so the robot vacuum has been a good purchase, but I don't want it in like the general room and everything like that. So this would be a good idea to integrate it in the house. I'm probably not going to do it myself just because like Gavin, I don't have a lot of cabinet space, but maybe you could put it like somewhere else in a closet or something like that.

Yeah, I couldn't get away with this with the limited cabinet space we have. Like it just wouldn't happen. So you do like a dutch door in like a like a closet or something like that yeah i that that we well we have like our house was built in the 19 night was it 1969 so like it has the the two closet doors that kind of like slide past each other and don't ever work right i'd have to replace those completely because or just make those

automated right where they just like slide open and slide shut and robot takes off but i've actually seen videos where it didn't have the bin on it like it was a while ago the original ones just had the charging stand and they actually did put it under there and they had the shelf just lifted up just a little bit to accommodate it. So you still had the cabinet space and this went underneath still. So I've seen something similar, but now that you have the bin, you got to worry about the space. Right?

Yeah. The bin is definitely a requirement. I feel like, cause not have to worry about it for 30 or 45 days or whatever. That, that feels pretty nice. So some enterprising, uh,

what is a central vac company is going to get involved with this and like start hooking the central vac hoses to the bin so then the bin will get empty that's genius into the central vac canister which goes out to the garage and then eventually somebody will automate that where it just goes out to the trash can or whatever you just give them the ideas that's that's my new business set thank. Thank you. Automated vacuum. Central vac. Yeah. Automated central vac.

Yeah. It's better than a toe kick. Hated, hated installing those things. Yeah. They were always the worst. And Florida has so many of them. We have, I've seen like maybe five up here, but Florida, like every house had one. It was the thing to do.

Yeah. You, you kick the little thing under the, under the cabinet, the kitchen, like it just starts sucking all the food and dust up to it. And then one pipe breaks somewhere and the whole thing is useless. Yeah. Yeah. That happens, I guess. It's central fact. What are you going to do? Yeah. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, uh, questions, comments, pictures of really cool vacuum things that are automated are great ideas for our show. Give us a shout address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form all right uh project updates uh gavin home assistant update go go go go it was bugging me all show i could see on the screen in the background

you had an update on your home assistant and now you're doing it live on the show i'll join you all right there you go he is updating everybody gets their updates done you get an update i get an update you're gonna get updates after the update too it's going to yeah 20 20 23 7.1 oh 7.1's out oh i didn't even know that oh oh am i ahead of you yep you're ahead of me now i had 7.0 well i guess they just released it before the show but uh yeah so they released finally to everybody it's out of beta 2023.7 um they had the release party this week we covered all the new stuff last week but they had the release party this week and they showed off something really cool. And they went into detail about the responses from scripts that you can get. And they actually showed having chat GPT integrated with home assistant, and they can

send off a message to chat GPT, get a response from it, and then act on that response in an automated fashion or send a new notification that summarize like your day, for example, is an excuse is an example they got they would you know tell chat chat gpt to summarize all this information in my calendar into a nice short thing and send a notification as a notification and it was actually really cool if you haven't watched the uh release party go watch it it's worth the watch just to see where they're going and like i said they have a lot going on with this stuff it's crazy and now he's playing the video in the background and seth you're

having too much fun with that big screen you bought it's ridiculous i can read the release notes as you're going over and that's really cool you don't even have to green screen it. You have like an actual screen. It's an actual screen. It's the most insane thing ever. It's really funny. Cool, cool. Are you taking advantage of it? The feedback thing actually sounds really cool. Are you going to take advantage of that in any kind of way? I haven't yet figured out what I would do with something like that,

but it's another one of the small pieces in their, their year of the voice. Right. So I'm kind of like, I figure once it all comes together in the end, you'll have a better idea of how you want to use it in your home. And it comes down to hardware and stuff too. But the thing about chat GPT, I think you need like chat GPT for, you need the subscription with the API key or something like that like that right i don't know if it just works with the free one um but i haven't dove into it yet enough yeah yeah okay cool uh anything else on the on how's your lawn the lawn looking all right that's that's green it's green you know like i get notifications when it drops between below 30 percent and then i schedule a watering for the next morning i try and keep the moisture between 30 and 50 percent and it seems to be loving it

like that right um i have a guy coming over to spray for mosquitoes tomorrow so i gotta get in the habit of warning him hey you're gonna see these green things in the lawn don't step on them please you know like that's the only thing the only great but they work really well you have to feel like a like a cone of shame around it or something before they come over maybe like a traffic cone or something like that so that way you know yeah i usually when when they come to aerate i gotta put the little flags around by the um sprinkler heads yeah right but you know like just remembering where they all are is a pain yeah i i per your recommendation i got some of the soil sensors and they come

with these little green caps which i'm sure you've seen as well yes and i was like i was like why would you need this green cap right and so i was like i just put them to the side for now go ahead and just install them and we were outside watching fireworks the other night and i noticed for the first time that they all blink red every minute or so. And so that's what the green caps are for. So for the past week. No, the green caps are actually for the battery, I think. Not for the light.

Oh, really? But I think that's a good idea. Put it over the light. That's funny. I put tape over the light in the ones in the front. In my backyard, I don't mind seeing the blinking lights. But in the front yard, I put a little piece of tape over them and yeah they're i don't know why they put a blinking red light on all of them yeah it's so weird maybe so you can like find it or something if you lose it i'm not

going to see that light in the middle of the day if i lose it still you know you gotta go outside at night gavin come on people go out people go out at night i i found it by stepping on it you know that's how i find them. That's a good way. You know, since I installed them, I've broken two. So, you know, I have a few backups. Very nice. Very nice. TJ, have you been busy with the new place or are you just trying to catch up on life in general after moving? Well, pretty much all of that.

You know, I've got, you know, running a company mixed into unpacking for the house. And honestly, the new shop has not been unpacked completely either. And so my life is just all boxes at this point. I've got a couple of projects going on. So I bought some of the soil sensors that Gavin has from EcoWit, got those working. I bought one of those little SDR hubs, but honestly, I was pretty lazy and getting it to work at the moment. And so I just bought the EcoWit hub for like 40 bucks. And I'll probably integrate that with Home Assistant at some point,

but it's working separately for now. And I also just bought, what is there like seven in one sensor for like, you know, rain and uv and wind and all that other stuff and i just put that into the yard um so that's kind of the projects i have going on right now um nothing too crazy um and i also leave sunday for illinois uh to go to our friend adam justice's house to install a home theater pressure is odd so so next week uh you know seth is gonna like it but i'll be reporting from a different location and i'm gonna shout that location out you know wherever wherever i'm at just shocking every time every time but no that'll be that'll be fun so yeah no no definitely i can't wait to see what comes of that

um especially after seeing the little last minute additions he's adding there in the chat yeah all right i i do have an update from my my little project last week where i went out and installed the little the spikes for the bird to not sit on my weather flow anymore and it miraculously failed miraculously like somehow i walked around the corner and saw that stupid little bird up there dancing around in between all the spikes. So evidently the spikes don't, the Florida birds don't care. And, uh, and the, and the spikes do not prevent the bird from, from tap dancing on top of,

but honestly I haven't had, well, I haven't been home to check it, but like, I haven't had the false alerts like I was having before. So maybe, maybe it's just keeping them off enough. And maybe they're just like, oh, this is too much of a pain. I'm not going to get up here anymore. It's the first time a bird's ever gotten up there. And of course, it's probably the same bird, just having a good old time tap dancing on top of my weather station.

This is a perfect spot for a nest. Well, they're not roosting there. Like they're just, they're up there looking for bugs and stuff because it's it's high and they just want to see all the bugs and and eat them or get them for the we actually had some of these mockingbirds nesting and and um they had eggs and they had little like babies in their little baby birds and then we got back from our trip and the baby birds are all gone so they must have flown away i. I hope that's what happened. That's what we told our daughter.

Oh, they got wings. They flew away. All right. Well, that's going to wrap up this week. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through

our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to home tech. FM slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month. That's only $12 a year or $120 in 10 years, right? Something like that.

It's nothing. It's nothing. Any pledge over $5 gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and watch videos about ladder safety. Not really going to put that in the show notes, but you guys watch videos about ladder safety. Not really going to put that in the show notes, but you guys, if you're in the hub, TJ will post it into the hub.

If do not watch, do not watch it at work or do, I don't know. It could be an OSHA approved video. Yeah. Maybe your work, maybe your work is chill. Who knows if they're chill, go ahead and watch it. If they're not chill, do not watch it. Do not watch it. No. I feel like I'm a ladder safety pro at this point though i've watched it so many times uh i'm doing my refresher course this weekend on ladder safety so watch it again oh man your youtube algorithm is gonna be all safety videos now gavin so yep it's already suggesting the work boots one so i'm gonna watch that one next too so yeah i'm gonna be buying some work boots for roofing next year.

There you go. And then, yeah, roof pitches. I'm watching that video now too. I'm going to learn all about the roofing from this guy. And your next roofing contractor is going to dislike you so much. I'll just show him the video and then he'll be like, oh. He'll be fine. Yeah.

It's like, this is my safety video. I need you to watch this before you can work on my roof. All right. Well, if you want out the show but can't financially or don't want to see this video that TJ is going to post, I just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap another week of Home Tech Headlines here. Everyone have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care.

Bye.