HomeTech.fm - Episode 444 - The Cyber Trust Mark

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

On this week's show: TJ and Seth chat about a recent theater install in Illinois, Blue Iris updates everyone on what happened to their server, HomeKit is getting a feature you probably thought it already had, a new wireless standard for data transmission via light, the US government takes aim at IoT security, project updates, puppies and a pick of the week!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 21st, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. I'm Ronald Turg, Ohio. I'm CJ Hubbard. Wait. Where's Gavin? He's not there. All right. Well, we'll keep going. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about home automation, home technology, home automation. And yeah, Gavin's not going anywhere.

He just had something else going on tonight. Tonight's the night we can record this week. So TJ is here. Yay! Yeah, I mean, sometimes you have a life and podcasting doesn't fit into that all the time. And that's fine. You know, I've been missing from the podcast a couple of and seth doesn't because seth kind of runs the podcast so seth is missing i don't i don't think we have a podcast you guys could figure out how to record and do

like show notes and all that stuff right you could do that right maybe we could literally do the same exact thing we just don't i think we use you as an excuse so it's like ah well you know the main person's not here so i guess we can't do anything uh you have a login to the same thing i do you could just log in and record we're not we don't use anything special so i mean we can literally just you know do it over a zoom call or something like we do now and and do it but we just don't i guess yeah it's okay it's okay and gavin it's okay yeah we like you seth gavin actually had a bunch of updates, too. So he's missing out more, I think, than anybody else. Because he's been tinkering around with things. I'm not going to tell you what the...

I guess he talked about last week that he was buying a 3D printer. And yeah, that has come into full effect. He's already printed an entire house worth of stuff to play with. I remember getting my first 3D printer. You just start printing everything that you possibly can and you know i ran into the problem where i was printing so many things that i needed to get like a secondary printer so you know maybe it's kind of like a gateway drug uh but you know for printers well i yeah i don't know i don't i don't ever think i don't think I'll have that problem because I don't

think I'm gonna like run out and grab a 3d printer anytime soon maybe maybe one day but well I think you have to have some like spare time and I for some reason Seth I feel like you don't have a lot of spare time not these days and so maybe a 3d printer probably isn't a good investment for you no no I have a bunch of like things I have to do around the house and 3d printers probably not one of them yeah Gavin's like an IT person I mean, he literally does nothing all day. He can play with this 3d printer. Exactly. What does it do?

It's too good. Too good. Well, speaking of people that don't really do anything, um, you were gone over the last week and you, you, you were in a different location. Again, you weren't in Reynolds, Ryan Reynoldsburg. You were in someplace in Illinois and you were. Naperville. Yeah.

The place that has Adam Justice there and his home and also his home theater. And you were making it. And there is a full episode already published. Episode 219. Let's build a home theater. Part four of the smart home show. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Go listen to that.

Fun. You guys had some fun, man. You put a link to it in the show notes. Go listen to that. Fun. You guys had some fun, man. You had a lot of fun, it sounds like. Well, you forgot about the other person that was there, Seth. And that is Richard Gunther. I mean, that guy, that guy was like famous. Everybody knows him. But it's very it was very good to meet Adam.

I've known Adam for a couple of years, you know, via the Slack and stuff like that. I feel like I've known Richard, though, for like a decade. And we've never met because I've followed Richard on various platforms. You know, he's annoyed Richard and a couple other things on Twitter. And so I've just it was it was nice meeting everybody in person for the first time. And we installed a home theater. How is that possible? I I have pictures of you guys in the same room. So... Really? Yeah. I don't think... Maybe I just have a really bad memory, which is very possible

and slightly true. But I don't... I feel like I haven't met Richard before. It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Like, I think at Cedia and... Well, I went to Cedia for a little bit, so... He was in San Diego, I'm pretty sure, at the home. Yeah, I had to leave early, but I mean, so he's in San Diego. I'm pretty sure at the home. Yeah, I had to leave early, but I mean, it's very possible.

I have a very poor memory, but he didn't think we met each other either. So at least, you know, if we did, it wouldn't be awkward for me. But no, I went to I went to Naperville. Well, we hung out at Adam's house and installed his home theater. Um, I have to tell you, Seth, those SVS subs, the, the in-wall subs are amazing. They are so big and just, uh, they create so much space. It is crazy. And so if you haven't listened to the previous episodes, we've done four parts with the smart home show with Richard, um, Adam Owen and Seth and I, and we talked about the

home theater that Adam is building. Um, it's a seven dot two dot two Dolby Atmos set up with a really, the, the Sony 7,000 series projector. The image is fantastic. It's 145 inch display. Um, and it just sounds amazing. mean I know that you know projectors are nice and especially when you buy like one of the really nice ones it looks good but the audio is really spectacular in that room and it's not even like adjusted or anything yet so like there's not any carpet yet there's no furniture we've kind of installed everything with the intention of taking a lot of it down. And so we couldn't actually adjust the volume and fine tune and everything, but it just,

it just sounds so good. And I, I, I cranked it up and we were listening to it, you know, in the upstairs and, uh, you could, you could feel the little rumbles and stuff like that, but they did a really good job with soundproofing. And so it's honestly not too bad. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Well, it was good. they did a really good job with soundproofing and so it's honestly not too bad nice nice yeah well like it was good it was good to hear like all of the things that i mean you had a bunch of things

on the show i'm not gonna go too much into it you had a bunch of things that like didn't happen exactly as they should of course because it's construction right like that's never you're never gonna have a construction project that like everything's ready to go the day it's supposed to be going i've never seen that happen um and so you you were actually fighting the like painting needed to be done things like small things like painting the flooring and that kind of thing still not done but you may do and you guys have got what done what you could get done once it all gets dialed in and everything um i think it's going to be a pretty, pretty nice room, especially when you add carpet and seating in there. That's going to change that room dramatically, like padding carpet. That's going to be huge.

Yeah. Yeah. That was kind of the only disappointing thing about the whole project is that I haven't been able to see it completed yet because a lot of times when I get in a situation like they might not have furniture and stuff in there, but they at least have the carpet and the ceiling and the lighting and stuff like that done. And so you get everything installed and you watch a TV show or a movie or something like that. And you start getting the full effect. I kind of miss that from this job, though, because it's, you know, we're watching something in an unfinished basement and it's just it's not the same effect. So I miss that part part of it but it was really cool to uh get together with everybody and and build a really cool theater yeah yeah i was laughing at

one of the things and i i know you were you were posting about this and and we were talking about it but i didn't put like two and two together like that you had purchased a projector and it didn't come with the ceiling mount part i'm'm like, I was listening back to that. And you said that you had bought a chief mount and it didn't come with the top part. You touched the ceiling. I'm like, Oh man.

And you guys like drove all around trying to find like a part for that. You could have, you've, you could have gotten, I mean, it's, it's MPT, right?

So you could have just gotten an MPT, like fixture from home Depot for like $3. No, nobody had anything in stock i'm not even exaggerating stuff like uh i looked at hardware stores i looked at like adi i looked at best buy i looked at all these stores literally nobody had it um and it just it sucked because like my distributor had it in stock and if we had an extra day like i could have just got it shipped in and everything would have been fine but like we we like I think we found out Thursday and I was like, well, I'm leaving tomorrow.

So that's not going to work. Right, right, right. And so it is my fault in the grand scheme of things. You know, when you buy a projector mount, it usually doesn't come with the ceiling bracket because they don't know what exactly you're going to be using. And so like that was totally my oversight, but it just, it stinks because it could have easily been corrected with enough time. But instead we had to buy a $500 kit that came with everything when we needed like a $20 part.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's now I have an extra projector mount. Congratulations. That means that means,

you know what that means? You got to make another theater. That's that's right. Who wants a theater? I got the parts. I was listening, congratulations. That means, you know what that means? You got to make another theater. That's right. Who wants a theater? I got the parts. I was listening to that, and I'm like, oh, he just needed, like, just a standard MPT, one and one half inch MPT pipe.

Like, you can buy them, like, the little things that you see at Home Depot, or even, like, you can go down to a, like, a fire company. Like, what are they called? The fire, like, a place that does fire alarms and that kind of thing. Like you can go down to a like a fire company. Like what do they call the fire? Like a place that does fire alarms and that kind of thing. They usually have parts and pieces for pipe.

That sucks, man. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, it happens. Another thing I want to call it, though, is the have you ever used one of the Anthem receivers, Seth? I have used Anthem amplifiers like the whole house audio amplifiers and they are sweet. OK, so I have a feeling the receivers are just as good. Oh, my gosh. The receiver was so nice.

I mean, so I forget which exact model. I think it was like an MRX 1140 or something like that. It's like an AK 11 channel receiver. But the display on it's just so nice. You know, if you've used a lot of AV receivers in the past, traditionally, you can only see like one or two lines of text. And so you're going through there and it's like, oh, I got to adjust the speakers and you got to go through like one line item at a time to figure out where the speakers are.

Or and then or or you don't have a video path going from the like the receiver is just doing audio and the video path goes a different direction for video of processing right so there may not be an osd like on the screen and like you all you have is that little one line thing right like there's no there's no way to see anything about that one line yeah so not you don't have that problem with uh with the anthem though because it's got a nice big display on there and you can literally see every option on the same screen seth it's so nice and it's like it's like a $5,000 receiver. Like, you know, it's not a cheap receiver by any means,

but it's just it's very nice to use. And it feels like a premium device. Like even if you spent $5,000 on a Yamaha receiver or like a Denon, like it's going to feel all right. But I feel like it's not going to be anything like this. I'm looking at the pictures on their website. And they don't really indicate that you have that screen to go off because it's just got like the big negative 35 decibels on it or whatever. But yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. When you go into like the menu, it just

shows everything. So yeah, just it's a nice receiver. And I tried to become a dealer for them, but they said there was too many dealers in our area. So they don't want you. I guess not. That's how it is. Yeah. I've used the MDX 16, I guess maybe the MDX eight. I'm not sure. It's a whole audio amplifier that they have, um, had way more options than I expected it to have. And when I was putting it in worked really well and they've got that little, um, uh, kind of the same, probably, they probably have the same thing that you have for the theater where you put

a little microphone into the computer. It has some software that kind of does all the same thing in the room. And you say, OK, EQ this room and it plays some sounds out the speakers and it will EQ that room. So I thought that was pretty cool. Arc. Arc is what they call it. Yeah. Auto room correction, I think, or something like that. Anthem room. But we call it auto because it's probably, you know.

Why not? Tomato, tomato. Yeah, exactly. They put a little microphone included in the box. but we call it auto because it's probably you know yeah why not tomato tomato yeah exactly they put a little microphone included in the box and then what will happen is the homeowner gets all you know feisty and they just throw the microphone away so you never get to do that part of the project ask me how i know love it when that happens it's like oh i threw all that stuff away from you oh oh it's too bad guess what it's gonna, oh, I threw all that stuff away from you. Oh, it's too bad. Guess what? It's going to sound weird in here.

Oh, well. Well, anyway, it sounded like it was a lot of fun. I especially like some of the pictures that you sent where like Adam and Richard were putting together the screen and like working on that together. It's like everybody's pitching in to get this theater up and going. Well, yeah, because, you know, if you listen to to the show we go a little more in depth than that and it'll we'll link it in the show notes there but we basically lost like two days or one and a half

days or something like that and so like i had like a heart to heart and i was like look you know i basically i need you guys to build the screen and install it tomorrow so i can keep doing stuff and then we can actually watch something and so richard and adam definitely helped put the screen together they got it all installed and everything and i'm glad they did because they realized how much snap av sucks at directions and like making products in general because they've had this acoustic we've screened for like ever now but they have they have this, first of all, the measurement between the two brackets that you have to snap onto the wall are like some weird measurement of like, you know, 85.57 millimeters. And I, I don't know who's able to just measure that out with whatever they have

in their bag. I I'm glad you had to go grab that specifically though. Seth, for those not watching the video, Seth is showing me a millimeter uh tape measure which eight meter tape measure you can go by these eight meter 26 foot which he probably bought like five years ago and he's used it like twice for weird situations like this no no here's the thing if you bring this onto a job site no one will touch it well that's true i don't know what that is but anyway the numbers the numbers, the screens got the screens bracket has some like weird measurement between them. And then there's like this black fabric that goes on after the screen to like hide everything

that's behind the screen. So, you know, that your speakers and everything. But there's literally no way to attach the black fabric to anything that the screen comes with. And so like before I've kind of like tucked it in or I've like got a piece of cardboard and jammed underneath there. This time I got some magnets and I just attached it to the frame and that seemed to do all right. Yeah.

But it's just weird that this, you know, three or $4,000 screen literally comes with no directions on how to attach this important piece of black fabric. Interesting. Hmm. Well, I mean, they're not they're not exactly known as being i mean it's kind of like the amazon basics of and i don't want to say that in the mean way like you can get a lot done with amazon bases right but like their products are kind of snap av is crying right now i mean it's it's the reputation they have it's not on me to change that right but maybe include directions on how to have the black fabric cinched up or maybe include the magnets that TJ, you know, doesn't

have to go steal off Adam's refrigerator. Yeah. I think they cost me like ten dollars at Home Depot Snap AV. So you can just you can go get them probably in bulk and spend like 50 cents, maybe 75 cents. I mean, it's pretty easy to do. You should go ahead and just do a SnapAV. Thank you. Well, it's one of those. It's one of those like it's also one of those things that you as an installer kind of know about inherently like, oh, this is going to come up. So I have solution for this one particular product. And I don't think that is all SnapAV. Like I installed a lot of high end products where there was always some kind of like, oh yeah, I don't do that here. I have to wrap this around over here and do it this way.

Because as much as this high-end speaker company thinks this is going to work, it's never going to work this way. So I totally get it. But it also kind of comes with the territory of being a custom integrator where you have to make things custom work, right? Yeah. We're just making it up every day. So yeah, if you see your local AV integrator out in a bar, buy him a drink. Cause he's probably upset about what he's installing or he could be working there. So let's just check first. All right. Well, um, we,

let's move on here. It sounds like you guys have a lot of fun. I, it was a super insane, busy week for me. I couldn't get away to, to come visit and play up in Chicago land. Um,

would have been fun to, to have a whole, the whole group there, uh, minus Owen, but would have been nice. Um, but I think,

I think they were talking about getting another show put together like a part five or something later on down the road, maybe when everything's all finished off and Adam can kind of explain what's happened over, over the past couple of months and when everything's kind of finally gets part piece together. I, I hear that he has some furniture removed from his basement or something all

the way, or no, no from like upstairs all the way down to the basement. Yeah, from his garage down to the basement, the giant theater chairs. So he was like, yeah, we'll start working on moving that. And I was like, I would definitely be hiring movers for that. I am leaving. I am not a mover.

Sorry. No, and honestly, minus Owen, we'll all be together during Cedia and two months, basically. So I know Adam and richard will be there you me and gavin will be there it is roughly yeah it's roughly two months two months away well in two months two months from now we'll already be back so yeah it's about um it's about a month away because it's september 7th 8th and 9th i guess the show I will be there starting, uh, the set, the third, because,

have a booth to set up that gets installed on the fourth. And from the fifth, sixth and seventh, I will be pulling my hair out, trying to get, uh, whatever technology stuff we have in that booth working should be fun. You gonna have your new wifi system by then,

or are you just going to put that off till next year? Uh, I think we will have it. I'm pretty sure we will. It depends on like what we show next year uh i i think we will have it i'm pretty sure we will it depends on like what we show yeah i think we'll probably have it um the little cellular wi-fi thing yeah we can buy the the internet early on and it's a little bit cheaper but it's still absurd for how many how much they charge for the whole thing oh yeah 100 i think within like two shows we basically do two shows yeah that's

what i was gonna say two trade shows and you're good ridiculous i think i think i posted those prices to you guys like i'm not making this up i'm not crazy look at this yeah they're just insane how much they charge for everything so yeah should we should have a crazy booth though that that'll be fun um i was trying to line up a video wall and the price came in like it. Never mind. $30,000 for a video wall. Oh, that's it? Yeah. It's advertising though. I will get it a lot cheaper, but

it definitely was actually the only thing that caused me to say no to it was the time frame. They needed a decision sometime today, a PO and a check to get the manufacturing started and to bring it over and deliver it within the timeframe that we needed. And I'm like the timeframe that they would have gotten this massive video

all to us would have been like on August 16th or something like that. So they, they were actually going to move quite, quite fast to make that happen. That's pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. It was like not frayed. It was going to be like air delivered and stuff like that.

Um, but the 14th, 15th and 16th are when they're dry fitting the booth together and putting on the final finishes. And I think the 17th, 18th, they really want to be packing that thing up. And it's for me to show up with a 250-pound video wall

and say, let's try this out. That's probably not going to work. So yeah, it's got to be shipped, two weeks on freight to be delivered at the Cedia thing warehouse or wherever the show floor in time. So yeah, there's a lot of coordination that goes on with this thing. And I'm glad that we're paying people that are not me to do it.

Cause I am not good at that. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not me. Anyway, let's move on here. We we've got a couple of home headlines, a couple of small pieces of news that came up and we can go over. So, what do you say we get to it? Let's do it. So we got to get a follow-up about blue iris uh they they we talked about them a little bit last week there was something going on with their website and uh kind of crashed and there was a bunch of licensing questions but i guess they released a um i don't know if this is a full porsche modem i'm like what happened but

like something happened and they said our web server, used for this site, the forum, and licensing, had a meltdown on July 7th, and the hard drive was completely unrecoverable. Unfortunately, we discovered that regular backups had been failing, so we had to resort to quite an old backup just to get things going back online. Rest assured that this process will be revamped and now closely monitored. Blue Iris is a very small company, and we wear many hats, some of which fit better than others. This was not a server or database, quote, going down that caused the licensing issues.

It was when it all came back online from an older restore point than we would have liked. So, yeah, I guess, you know, if you bought a license, it wasn't in that database because it was an older restore point. And when your server thing checked in or your Blue Iris checked in, it's like, oh yeah, you don't have a license and kicked you back out. Not good, but I don't know. I kind of look at this as somebody who has to deal with computers every day and web servers and say, yeah, well, I get it. I can see it happening. Yeah, I mean, it kind of seems like a legitimate thing. I mean, I don't use Blue Iris and I have nothing in the fight here.

But I mean, the reasoning seems legit. I think a lot of people are just upset because, first of all, it happened. And so this, you know, supposedly local only or local primarily service was suddenly locked out. And especially if it was a remote, you know, server where maybe you didn't have access to and everything like that, like that would absolutely suck. And I think the other issue was that they just didn't respond fast enough and let people know that. And so a lot of people had those issues and had nowhere to talk and had nowhere to go

to. And then that just made everybody upset even more. So, you know, I could totally see that like, oh, for sure. They're there. They've got a melted hard drive that's just completely gone or something's gone wrong and they're trying to like, OK, we'll just recover from this backup that's sitting right here on my desk. Oh, no. Then you're like, oh, no.

You know, then you're you're going to the next backup and like, OK, does that work? No. Then you're like, oh, no. Then you're going to the next backup. And like, OK, does that work? No. Then you're in the next step. So this is one of those learning process things. It'll probably never happen to this company again. One can hope. One can hope. I mean, the thing about backups, though, is you have to test them.

You can't just back up into the blind. I ran into this one time with a computer that I had backing up and it turns out my backups, I had a deleted file that I really like a whole directory of files that I needed. And when I ran my backup, those files had been deleted on the backup and there was no backup of the backup, you know? So like I actually had to find them a different way. And I think the previous backup that I had made online, like to the online backup, was a week behind or something like that. And it basically missed four or five files. Out of the whole hard drive that I really needed back,

four or five files missing, not the end of the world, right? So you definitely have to have a backup plan, but then you have to test it. And that obviously wasn't happening here, but you know, there was a lot of like, uh, if you go to the post and kind of look through the comments, there's a lot of like, um, what Monday morning quarterbacking going on, like, Oh, why didn't you do this? That, and that, but like, I think it says it right there in the little statement. Blue Iris is a very small company. They sell a $25 DIY NVR solution that competes heavily with NVRs and recorders that cost thousands of dollars, right? So you're kind of getting what you paid for, unfortunately, right?

Maybe it's $75. I don't know. But to me, small company, I don't know that you can expect much more out of them like this. And they're probably running their own server and didn't expect a hard drive to crash. Yeah, you're kind of screwed either way. You go with the big company and you get all your information stolen or you go with a small company and you have weird issues like this.

So you kind of have to pick your poison and figure out which product works best for you. And, you know, technology is complicated. It doesn't matter if you're a giant company or small company, technology is always going to be complicated and there's always going to be issues. Yeah. Or you go with the big company and they're like, well, that product was discontinued three years ago. Sorry. We have this new one for $5,000. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Exactly. So I think for the value that they offer for the 25 or 75 what are the little licenses for blue iris like full license thing

that they offer i think it as much as i like not don't really care about the software because it's it's so so there's so many settings dj like price per setting blue iris has everybody hand down it's the best value on the market, but like they have, you can tell there's a lot of like work that's gone into that product and like it's, it doesn't cost much and you can run it on a wide variety of software hardware. So that's, that's pretty good in my book, especially for what is clearly a small company. It's not like it's giant corporation trying to respond to their server going down on.

And I just checked Friday, Friday, July 7th. That's the worst time. The guy's probably out to dinner and he's like, what are all these text messages coming in for? Why are people freaking out? Let's go ahead and just ignore that for right now. Yeah, I'm at the movies. I was looking at the uh the blue iris pricing and it's a little weird in my opinion but the full version which supports up to 64

cameras is 80 and that's a lifetime so it's not a monthly or yearly fee or anything like that but then they have an le version which supports one camera for 40 you're kind of insinative to buy hey you might as well just buy the full version. I mean, what are you going to buy one camera for? But $80. I mean, that's not bad. It's a lifetime. You don't have to mess with it ever again. You're going to have weird stuff happen

once in a while. Yeah, it's software. I mean, there for a little while, Facebook couldn't even get into their own building because their server went down. So I mean, like technology breaks for all kinds of people. It doesn't matter how much money you have. Yep. Yep.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, best of luck to them getting back online. I really, you know, some of the comments and of course, the Reddit thread were just a little bit over the top. And, you know, I know not Reddit. Yeah. I mean, it's just like it's back up.

We have all been in this situation and like, you know, small company, like forgive and forget. And hopefully they learn the lesson. If, you know, if they do it again, like in, in like three more weeks, if the server goes down. All right. Well then probably, they're probably done and they're like, Oh yeah, we, we didn't, he's going to buy them backup solution that we had just didn't work. Yeah. Then that that's when you start looking elsewhere for your 80 software um but i think for now i think you're pretty safe in their hands

all right let's move on here uh this this is more of a follow-up to i i i really i didn't catch this in apple's keynote and they really don't talk about what they're doing in home kit or when they're doing the home app very often but i guess there's been some updates. Of course, the beta is going on right now for iOS 17, iPad OS 17, and TV OS 17. Of course, it's all 17s. But it's got a couple of new smart home features. And one of them that really caught my eye was you will now be able to access your smart home's activity history for the last 30 days. You can view release activity for garage doors and security systems and use interactive widgets from the home or lock screen to see them.

So that right there is a core feature that I have here on my Gavin recommended, what was it, Home Assistant. I think the whole thing is built around data and graphs and all that stuff. Home kit. Yeah. You're lucky to look at a dashboard and see the device that you're looking for, like to find out if it's on or off.

Now you get 30 days of history to find out that the light, you know, I'm just, I'm saying this laughing because my daughter's door is opening and closing. So I'll be able to like make a, you know, look at the history of it opening and closing every nice little graph yeah yeah is that so well i don't know this is this is nice it's it's nice to this seems like a kind of a geeky thing but it at the same time for like things like security garage doors and stuff sometimes you want to know like did i get a notification for that for an opening like what

i don't remember what happened last Thursday or whatever. And you go back and see that history. I think it's kind of nice. Yeah, it's kind of weird to me. It's kind of weird that it wasn't included initially. I mean, I just I feel like history is such a big, important thing for me because I like to go back and see like when the lights turned on or if somebody came in at a certain time or whatever.

So it's cool they're adding this feature, but it's a little perplexing that it took this long, for my opinion. Yeah, I think there were some, and I know there was a third-party logging utility app that you could get. And the problem was you had to have a device running all the time to basically log it.

It wasn't ideal. So I'm glad that they're finally putting some of this, some of those features in to make it native because that that's not optimal to have just an iPad. Oh, that's my logging iPad. It's logging all the door. Come on. Launching my home assistant to make sure my graphs are OK this week. I don't think there's any updates. So I don't say that. I haven't updated in two weeks. No, there's updates. Come on. Oh man. Yeah.

You definitely have an update then. All right. We'll get to that later in the show, but there, there is a new wifi standard out there. Wifi is groundbreaking concept of wireless internet is evolved with the introduction of life. I now a standardized technology known as eight. I Tripoli 802 11 BB life. I utilizes light as a medium for data transfer instead of radio waves,

offering advantages like higher bandwidth, reduced interference and enhanced security. I wonder how that could be. Companies like PureLifi and Fraunhofer HHI are at the forefront of this Li-Fi development. And while it won't replace Wi-Fi anytime soon, it can excel in scenarios where Wi-Fi is weak or unavailable, like hospitals or airplanes, places like that. Standard also allows devices to seamlessly switch back and forth

between Wi-Fi and Li-Fi networks. It's really fun to say. For optimal connectivity. As Li-Fi gains traction, hopefully we can expect to see more light-based internet applications in the coming years. Kind of an interesting idea here. I know that way back, Jason and I talked about these kind of technologies coming on the market. I want to say Pure Li-Fi was probably something we talked about way back then.

That name seems kind of familiar. But now it's a standard. So maybe we'll start seeing more devices. Yeah, I don't really understand why. And I don't really understand their explanation or their scenarios like a hospital. Because wouldn't you still have to install like a device in the hallway or the room or whatever that transmits this so i guess what's the advantage over regular wi-fi other than bandwidth it seems like bandwidth is the the most i mean applicable reason i guess yeah you would still need it uses some kind of like led light

to basically blink on and off really fast just to do it to basically transfer the data why is everything strobing yeah yeah it says they're using visible infrared and ultraviolet light so yeah it could be like a real flashy flashy light type thing yeah i i don't i don't know i don't know what the the the like hospital the only thing i can think of like a hospital airplane is like maybe radio waves aren't ideal um in some locations so maybe maybe that maybe for those kind of devices that makes sense like a like a scanner or something like that right i mean i know that like for both of those industries there are like extreme amounts of testing and vetting for equipment like in application like things that they have to go through.

So maybe it makes sense in those couple of places. I don't know. It is a standard 802.11 BB. So now that it's kind of gained that standard, these companies that are making these devices, supposedly, might be able to kind of just work off of it rather than make two competing standards that are proprietary, you know? So, that means, it says there's security is, the security is like, well,

here's how you secure this room, you just close this door. Which I find hilarious. I find absolutely hilarious. It's like, well, that, that is, that is security. I guess if you can't see the light, then it's your data. You can't tell what it is until they come out with like a sniffer or

something. And it's like, well, actually the, the sniffer can detect little micro changes in the atmosphere. Right. Right. Yeah.

Listen to exactly what you're asking for. You, you wouldn't have like any bleed between rooms, though. Like if you needed Wi-Fi in this room, there's no channel overlap. You just close the door. There's no channel overlap. I'm just imagining like the tech support calls, though.

Like you get this set up in like an office for somebody's laptop or desktop and you get a call and it's like, my desktop doesn't work with the internet. And you're like, oh, OK, well, you know, have you restarted it? Have you, you know, done this? Have you done that?

Yeah, yeah, nothing's working. And then you get there and there's like a plant on top of the computer and it's just blocking all the light. No internet for you. I always kind of think of it like the opposite of that. Like, you know how you have those little, like, switch guards for your Philips Hue lights? Like, you would need that.

Like, do you turn the light off? Oh, I turned the light off. The internet's down. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, I guess we'll wait to see what happens with it. But right now, I don't see the point in it. But it's still a very new technology. So it might have a purpose.

It might matter more than matter at some point. It might. It might. I'm looking at their website. And so they've got, they've got some, they're just like conceptual products for what they can do. And there's, there's different modules that you can get based on the application. And one of this is interesting. It's like a, it's called a Li-Fi Halo. And it's basically a, you know, like a, it's not reality, augmented reality, or what is the other one where you like there, there's no augmentation.

It's like full enclosure reality, whatever that is. VR? Yeah, VR. They call it XR, which is really throwing me off. It's like XR. What is that? But. Oh, yeah, I think that means both of them now.

Oh, OK. It's like, you know. Yeah, yeah. AR and VR. Yeah, that's better. Better than just saying the both. Okay. All right.

And then they've got some like little Wi-Fi bridges for outdoor applications and then like some defense and industrial. Of course, you have to have a defense and industrial. If you're doing anything like this, you got to have like a tactical version. So they got their tactical version. It's all beefy. It's mission deployable. A tactical Wi-Fi device yeah yeah so i could see this in like a warehouse or something maybe where you got like a bunch of handheld scanners or you know maybe um forklifts or something like that i don't know

yeah yeah there's there's probably good applications for this and then reasons why wi-fi isn't great for it as well we'll have to see how it plays out and it may be that we get on an airplane one day and you know to get online you have to turn on your overhead light you know and uh the experience will still be awful thanks to gogo in flight thirty dollars for your one hour flight and god forbid there's only five minutes left you got to get online and check something and like, oh, yeah, it's still 30 bucks, guys. Sorry. We didn't prorate this any for you.

Heck no. Oh, man. Too good. Too good. This is not convention center Wi-Fi. Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably more expensive, actually. I don't know.

At least it works, though. Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a problem with in-flight Wi-Fi, but convention center Wi-Fi I always have a problem with. Oh, I've had problems with in-flight Wi-Fi, for sure. For sure. Yeah, there was a nine-hour flight. It just sat there and teased me the whole time.

It's like, yeah, just connect to this, and you can get online. And I connect to it, and I get to the payment page, and it was like, oh, sorry, we're offline again. It's like, oh, my God. That happened for like three hours. And I'm like, and I get to the payment page and it'll be like, oh, sorry, we're offline again. It's like, oh my God. That happened for like three hours. And I'm like, well, finally, I'll just give up on this and just watch these movies over again.

Anyway, we got one more thing here. This is kind of interesting. The Biden administration is launching a US Cyber Trustmark. It's a cybersecurity label for smart devices. It's a voluntary program that will cover various connected devices

found in homes, including refrigerators, microwaves, televisions, fitness trackers, and more. Supportive companies like Google, Samsung, and Amazon are saying they're supporting this initiative and creating basically a QR code to meet security standards based on NIST guidelines. So what is that? National Institute of Standards and Time. So there's a logo, a QR code, and you go in there and you kind of look up, I guess, what security is built into the products. And it'll help provide consumers

with transparency regarding any data collection or security updates that may come from it. So I think we've been talking about this or dreaming about something like this for kind of a long time. Like it's just another government logo to go on there, like the FCC logo or the Energy Star one. But I don't know, this, this is kind of needed, I think, with IoT devices and has been needed for a long time. Yeah, it's really good to see stuff like this. I mean, I don't know if it will materialize into anything, but secure, you know, IoT devices like this should have bare minimum security that we can all rely on. are attacking other people's quality stuff and taking down websites and everything like that. So realistically, you would just rely on companies doing the right thing.

But I think we all know that companies usually do the cheapest thing and not having to deal with security is definitely the cheapest thing. And so until you make standards like this or laws or regulations, then nobody's going to follow them. Yeah. So I think this is good. We'll see if it actually does anything. It's a good idea, in my opinion, though.

Yeah. It says here by scanning the QR code, you even have more detail on your smartphone. For instance, you'll be able to see how long you can expect to have security updates for your product. We talked about that for quite some time. It's like, well, it's expired three years ago. I probably shouldn't have this in my house anymore. Yeah, and you can put active threats on there.

Like, you know, this one is susceptible to this, this, and this. You should probably get rid of it. And I think it's interesting in this article, they make a distinction. They say, you know, separate networking devices like ZigBee and Z-Wave hubs that aren't associated with any one device, though,

are instead lumped into the Wi-Fi routers, which weren't examined as part of this report. And so they're working on that for the end of 2023. So safe to assume that Wi-Fi routers, Zigbee and Z-Wave hubs are also going to get this treatment, which is definitely good, in my opinion, because they are internet connected devices and people use them for very important things. And we just can't, you know, assume that the average consumer knows what this stuff means. We have to kind of help them with it. Especially routers. I mean, they're like the gateway device, right? So if there's a router out there that has some kind of active exploit or, you know, and there's been plenty over time, like I think there's like a full list of them somewhere that were being hacked.

The FBI released a list sometime last year. A massive amount of routers that were being hacked and just used to basically scam people into paying Bitcoin. Remember Bitcoin? Bitcoin's still around. So yeah, I don't know. This is one of those things that would be good for consumers at the end of the day. It sounds like it sounds like the market's still moving fast enough that the government can't keep up if they forgot about, you know, the Zigbee and Z-Wave hubs and routers. Like I probably probably should have put that at the top of the list. Well, I think they gave IOT devices like a specific label.

Where's that at here which i found kind of interesting so during the interview they pointed out the they asked asked the scc what they will consider an iot product under the cyber trust labeling program and they said any network connected device with a sensor or actuator can be considered an IoT device, while the whole of that device, the associated app, the cloud, backend, and required bespoke hubs is considered the IoT product. And so I find that pretty fascinating that they're actually describing what an IoT product is. I think we've all kind of just made the assumption of what an IoT product is, kind of like some other technology things that happen over time.

But now we kind of have a definition of what the government considers an IoT device. And that's kind of what came out of this as well, is those classifications. And so Wi-Fi routers and ZigBee and Z-Wave hubs aren't IoT devices under that standard, but they are, you know, hubs and everything else. And they will get their own standard. Yeah. OK, that makes sense. That makes sense.

So IOT needs a sensor actuator. It has to do something. And I guess I mean, routers and hubs, I guess if you're. They're more like a controller, not necessarily a doer. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I would hate to have it like because you have this cyber U.S. cyber trust mark, right? Like you're going to get it like, cause you have this cyber us cyber trust mark, right?

Like you're going to get this logo and that's not going to be on your router, but it's going to be on the sensor and actuator devices that you have. But the router is probably controlling them or at least talking to them. I mean, some of these have like border gateways built into them. I'm looking at you. What does that era,

right? Like, so that has a thread border gateway to get you on matter devices. And it's like, maybe that should have it on there too. Maybe it should have on Matter devices. It's like, maybe that should have it on there too. Maybe it should have it on there. That's right. Nobody will follow it, I'm sure. It's like a lot of the other

government regulation stuff. It's like, that's cool, and then nobody does it. Yeah, it's a hot mess. So, well, hopefully something will come out of it, and we'll get another label that everyone will ignore on there, just like the Energy Standard and Energy Star one, and the FCC label that says that it won't device won't interfere with things. Right. So

moving on here into our who matters this week segment. And this week is what TJ it's Levitan. They have added matter support to four of the decorous smart lighting products. The DS no, sorry. D D215S smart switch, the D26HD smart dimmer, the D215P smart plug, the D23LP mini plug dimmer. Yay, thanks for Leviton.

You matter this week. These are all from the DecorSmart Wi-Fi second gen product line. So they will get Matter support here in the near future. Congratulations, Levitan. Yay, you did it. There's one interesting note here. Levitan's support page notes

that Apple home users will who are upgrading to Matter will have to unenroll their devices from HomeKit and then re-enroll them in Matter. So I guess that's kind of like the thing that I was running into last week. Right.

I think you ran into that too. Well, yeah, because, so I got the Aquara FP2 sensors and you set it up with their, you know, Aquara app first and then it like automatically got added to HomeKit and then I had to delete it from HomeKit,

which then my home assistant found it. So it's just, it's weird how it auto found it. Yeah. And so it just got automatically added to Apple Home. That's one thing. If you already have these devices in Apple Home, you've got to delete them out,

and then you can get them back with the Matter thing. I don't know. I guess it makes sense going forward, if you get a new device, drop it in with Matter. If you get a new device that's not, or you have some older devices on HomeKit, I guess you can leave them there or possibly upgrade them to get everybody

on the same page. I don't know. Seems a little disjointed. So let's see what happens. That's why we have this segment every week. It's going to matter one day. That's right. I'll stop playing the clown music when it's not quite so funny.

The clown music gets its treatment every week though. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 444 uh nothing in the mailbag i don't think this week but we do have a pick of the week and this i thought was you know kind of funny in a nerdy way but um yeah we kind of have to use this uh ssh thing from time to time which is kind of like a remote shell program if you you're a, if you remember terminals or, or whatever, like, uh, you'd have to log in or interface you. Yeah. The old hacker interface. Exactly. Well, SSH gets used a lot. Uh, if you're in windows, you,

you commonly call this thing putty. Like I guess there's a program that's really popular called putty that everyone seems to use or love or like or whatever. There's also many, I guess it's built into like PowerShell. I don't know why anybody would download Putty and use it, but I guess people like Putty. And so like when I'm talking to Windows guys, I'm like, hey, can you SSH into this thing over here? And they're like, what is that? And I'm like, oh, can you use Putty?

And they'll launch Putty and get it loaded. It says SSH in Putty, though. Does it? P-U-T-T-Y? Yeah, the option is still... So when you open Putty, you have SSH, IntelNet, and other things. I'm pretty sure it still says SSH. Probably. Yeah, Putty. A free SSH IntelNet client for Windows.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. They're just crazy. Whoever you're dealing with doesn't know what they're doing, Seth. No, no, that's totally true. Absolutely. But anyway, this is a little, uh, a little thing. It's from, um, let's see, Cass D D at tech.lgbt says, I think about this every time I SSH,

and it's got a nice little picture of a guy sitting on a computer and it's at the bottom, it says remote login is a lot like astral projection and it's got it's got a this is interesting illustration of him being projected onto the actual computer that is i don't know away somewhere through the clouds i don't know it's a fun little picture to look at and definitely we'll think about this little picture every time i go in remote shell into a, another computer. It's fun. It's kind of, it's kind of like a, like remote VR, you know, you can just VR into your other computer, but through your computer,

it's like you're there, but you're not magic. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I actually had to do this quite a bit the other day when I was upgrading our Mastodon server for the many, as many times that I have to update Mastodon servers. Yeah, you basically live inside of a shell because everything's command line and you have to get Linux to do things. And I finally got Linux to do stuff and got our server upgraded because there was a pretty bad exploit. And this is how you can imagine me doing this. This is me on on the left here that's our server on the right alright well if you have any feedback

questions, comments, pics of the week or great ideas for the 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 well DJ I know you've been busy with projects we've talked about your theater project you've been wrapping up on you got anything wrapping up on. You got anything else going on now that you're back home?

Did you get those? Did you get those FP2s programmed in? I got them programmed. I got them set up. I haven't done too much with them. They're activating lights and stuff like that. We also, you know, I did just get back from Illinois on Saturday afternoon, but we also got a new puppy that we are fostering. So the new puppy is taking up all of our time. Uh, his name is noodle. He is a,

uh, beagle and something mixed. And he is the whiniest dog I think I've ever dealt with. Well, I saw a picture. He's adorable. He's very, he's very adorable. He is very adorable. Gets a pass for being whiny he'll get adopted very quickly i have no doubt about that so that is eating up all my time at the moment so no fun projects going on a couple house things i gotta get the roof replaced and fix some walls and spend spend money on things i don't want to spend money on. Not tech related. Yeah, I could buy so much tech with with roof money, Seth. I don't I don't know if you know that.

I do know that. I do know that. I could buy like a really nice. I could buy it. Not not like a fancy video. Well, like you're like you're going to buy it for your company. But I could buy like a really nice video wall or like a short throw projector or like, you know, all kinds of stuff.

What about you, Seth? Do you have any fun projects going on right now? No, I've got some some like a list of things that are broken around the house that I do have to fix. One of them is the air conditioning. For some reason, it's not blowing in rooms correctly as it should, you know, as strong or as as as it's not cooling rooms as well as we think it should be. So there's probably something loose somewhere and I've got to go find that, which involves getting up in the

attic, which involves like, I'm not going to the attic for one thing. Like if I got to go in the attic in the middle of the summer, it's going to be for a few things. So I'm thinking like I should finally run a Cat5 or Cat6 six I guess this point in time across the house for um you know getting cameras installed on the other side of the house that I have nothing run over there for so I'm thinking I'm gonna do that like that'll get done at the same time and just push that I've got a pipe that goes that way and I can I think I have a pool string still in it I can pull a new cable through and get you know know, a cat six run across while I go look for whatever is broken apart in the attic and maybe blowing cold air into the Florida

attic. Yay. That'll be a lot of fun. Um, yeah, I don't know how you're, how you're not fixing that like immediately. Is it not? It's not that bad. Not bad enough. Yeah, it's not that like it's, it's like just the Florida, Florida in the summertime sucks.

So without AC, I would be dead. No, we have AC. It is blowing. It's just not blowing like it used to. And I think I know where the problem is. I just got to poke my head up there and poke around and see. Like it may be nearby the thing, but I'm not going to poke my head up there for nothing. I'm going to get up there and do some other stuff too at the same time.

Because you kind of have to pick your battles. If you're going into a super hot attic in the middle of the summer um and let's see i i oh i am not for amazon prime but i did get a level lock last week um it wasn't part of the the prime stuff it was kind of just its own deal and And I, it was, it was already like, uh, $10 off. And then there, I think there was another $20 coupon on top of that. Right. So what did it,

I'm trying to remember what it came to. You paid like one 49 or something. One 59. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So I guess $20 discount applied in the cart. Um,

and I've been kind of, it doesn't, it doesn't have the, uh, it has the keyless entry, but it doesn't have the, it has the keyless entry, but it doesn't have the same thing that the Acquara one has, the home key entry. But I don't know. I just kind of, after getting this lock on this side and being able to make sure that the doors are locked at a particular time of night,

it's like, well, I'll do the front door, but I don't want to see it. Like, I don't want a big blocky thing on the back of the door. And the level lock affords you that, right? Now I'm just worried because after I bought this, people are like, oh, yeah, those don't work with every door. So I'm like, oh, well, we'll get it in. And once I get it in, it's one of those things, is it going to work flawlessly and be an easy install,

or it's going to be something that I'm just going to bang my head against the wall and not get done? Do you know if that integrates with Home Assistant? Well, I mostly use HomeKit for everything, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, I was going to say, it'll integrate with HomeKit and Home Assistant at that point then. I want to get a smart lock for our back door, the very far exterior door. But I don't want to get a keypad because I don't need to go unlock it all the time.

But it would be nice to be able to control with the automation system and stuff. Yeah, it looks like this has been somewhat, I guess, I'm looking just kind of randomly through their forums. And yeah, people say that they have it working with Home Assistant. So there you go. It's a Bluetooth lock. It should work fine. I'm excited about it. It'll be one of those things that'll go in and not have any, it's not going to show any technology, right?

So on the front door, I just want it to exist and be able to say, oh yeah, did I lock the front door? Or at like now I have this one lock itself at 11 o'clock at night or whatever. So every night I know that the door gets locked. That'd be great. Yeah, that's a nice safety feature. I have the the van in the front door set up to automatically lock itself every night at like 9 p.m.

Yeah, I just like that. It's nice. Cool stuff. So we'll see what happens. I was going out of town this weekend this last weekend and um i i you know it would have delivered on friday but i'd be out of town and just sit there outside of the locked door for you know all weekend so i chose the um the random amazon day which is thursday so i should get it um in a couple days well your job is to install before

next episode our next show so i have plenty. Well, no, the next time we record it on the next time you release it. So you have less than a week. Well, I mean, if that's the schedule, if it's up to me. Yeah, I'll try and we're never doing the show again for this week. So well, you have you have like a month and a half until we go to Cedia, so it definitely has to be done before then. Yeah, we got to do Cedia.

We're going to have to do like a live episode or something there where I can just like record it and put it out. Just make it noisy and all that good stuff. I'll never forget the first time Jason and I got together at Cedia to record. We were like way down, like underneath the convention

center like they were clanging around with carts and stuff down there and we just sat there at this table like this cafeteria table that they had set up for some reason and uh we're just having our conversation while these people were driving by with carts and man that was that was fun so maybe we can sneak away and go to some noisy place like that um i'll have a booth. We can just sit in the middle of the booth and have a podcast. That'll be fun. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that'll be great. Yeah.

Greg in the chat will love that. Yeah, well, we'll make you sound good somehow. I don't know. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support through our Patreon page.

If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support and 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 out here on the show, but every pledge, every single one of them gets you invited to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can make fun of TJ's audio every week.

That's right. It's so good. It's so good. Actually, last, you know, it's really good on the show, but you know. Yeah, I didn't think it was that bad, but I guess, you know, there's some people that don't like it.

It's probably just my voice, honestly. Like if I heard my voice all the time, I probably wouldn't like it either. It sounds great tonight, too. I think we'll be able to do something with it. Well, thanks, Seth. That means a lot coming for you. All right.

If you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up everything on Home Tech this week. Have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time.