HomeTech.fm - Episode 445 - Squatty Coffee

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

On this week's show: Eero launches a new program for rentals, Amazon reveals new Echo Show 5 kit, Onvis smart plugs matter, and a pick of the week you have to see to believe. Gavin goes all in on 3D printing, project updates, CEDIA teasers, and more…

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 28th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Holston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology. Barbenheimer. Barbie. Barbie.

Oppenheimer. Mission Impossible. Which of the three? This is your mission. Go see one of them. Which one did. Oppenheimer. Mission Impossible. Which of the three? This is your mission. Go see one of them. Which one did you see, Gavin? Mission Impossible. TJ, should I even ask?

No, I definitely didn't see anything, so don't ask me. Well, I went and saw Barbie, so. Of course, of course. Doesn't surprise me at all. No. It was actually a very fun movie so i recommend going see it because it it was quite hilarious it was very i've been hearing that about the movie you know that it's not what you think it is and it's a good movie yeah no it's it's definitely it definitely meets your expectations from the previews, but it meets them squarely and knows what it, the movie knows what it is.

The movie kind of plays, makes fun of itself the entire way through because it's a movie about a doll. Like it's, it's, it's, it's not some, it's,

it's silly. One of the funniest scenes that I just laughed out loud was like, uh, Margot Robbie's crying. She's like, I'm so ugly. And it's like, Helen Murin does the voiceover. And she's like, note to, crying. She's like, I'm so ugly. And it's like Helen Mirren does the voiceover.

And she's like, note to the writers, Margot Robbie's probably not the person to read this line or something like that. And it's like, yeah, that's probably right. But it's a very funny movie. There's all sorts of cultural references for us millennials and what Gen X, Gen Z, whatever, who have grown up with these toys during this time. So very, very fun movie. I wanted to go see Oppenheimer. I guess I still

have a little bit of time to go see it at the IMAX before it goes away. Because I'm sure it'll leave here in Florida. They'll be like, nah, we're not doing this IMAX thing anymore than everybody wanted to see. We're going to do something else like, I don't know, James Cameron movie or something. I don't know. Yeah, I was kind of interested in seeing Oppenheimer in 70 millimeter. And I was like, oh, I want to I want to know what the what the closest theater to me would be. It's three hours away.

So safe to say I'm not going to see an IMAX 70 millimeter. I'll go see it on regular whatever the regular like cheap IMAX like the cheap, see Dimex is I'm not going to go see it in 70 millimeter. I don't really care that much like the like the Wednesday afternoon special. Is that what you're talking about? Like the cheap one? No, no, like we have an IMAX. I think it's a digital IMAX here like and then you know, it's there is definitely a difference in the picture and sound and the screen size. So I'll go I'll go see that um i know there's the 70 millimeter like um imax that all the people who have decided you know that record players are great like that they're they want to go see it on on the analog film being projected through the

light and that kind of thing um i don't care i'm not my eyes are not that good so i'll go see it on a on a normal screen with a decent sound system. And, and they have a bar there so I can get drinks. So there's that, but I'm looking forward to it. I don't, I don't think you're missing anything on the 70 millimeter.

I've heard they've had a lot of problems with that actually, where they've just stopped working, you know, towards the end of the movie and stuff like that. So maybe it's a good idea that you don't go see it. So you can actually watch the whole movie. Well, they made, I guess they made the film too long for the actual disc that spins around with the,

you know, that holds the entire film. And like they were posting all these pictures, like we 3D printed, and we'll get to this in the future, Gavin, but this is maybe something you can add to your list. We 3D printed like these little clips that stand on the end to add the extra two inches we need for this 11 mile long film about Oppenheimer and blowing up a bomb.

So I don't know. I I'm excited. I want to go see it. It also the same, the thing runs off at Palm pilot. I don't know if you guys saw the article to that, but like the IMAX theaters all run off a Palm pilot from like 2001. So that's fun.

Fun fact. I'm learning something new every time. I just thought it was just a movie on a big screen. And now I want to go see it. No, the IMAX leaders actually typically have a different sound system. I think some of the bigger ones even have like a mechanical subwoofer, or at least they used to. I don't know if they still do.

But those are rumbly little subwoofers and the one i have here actually hurts my ears i don't like it that much because it hurts my ears but it's very loud so if you know if i'm gonna go see a movie about a bomb i'm gonna go see it in the movie theater that makes my ears hurt that makes sense that way you can feel the pain exactly exactly uh anyway um i've been watching uh on gavin's recommendation i picked up hijack on apple tv excellent excellent show like it's it's really good and they keep ending it gavin i don't know what's wrong with them they keep ending it on a cliffhanger every show yes yes you have to wait the week yep it's good oh man i i just i'm i'm so upset with that one

because we were watching some other stuff. I'm like, I'm just going to put on the hijack the first episode. And then it's like 1230 at night when it ends. I'm like, I guess we're watching the next one. He's like, yep. I have another recommendation for you, too. What's that? Special Ops Lioness, if you haven't seen that yet.

Special Ops. Lioness. No, I have not seen. Really? Two episodes out now, and it's really good. It has me hooked. What's that one about? Yeah, what's the premise here?

CIA, terrorism, stuff like that. Like, it's really good. Paramount Plus, it seems to be. So here's the thing with these streaming services. So we had some friends over on the weekend. We decided to throw on the show. We watched the first two episodes. They were hooked.

They loved it. Then they were like, okay, where can we watch the rest of it? I said, well, it's on Paramount Plus. They looked at each other and said, we don't have that. We'll just end here. It's that bad. They just don't know. They're like, we're not gonna be able

to watch the rest of this you know so they enjoyed the two episodes they got to see and i felt bad didn't even want to try to sign up for a trial or anything no they're like uh it's not on netflix i was like no and they're like oh what is what is anything else yeah exactly i said don't you have max or like what's that? HBO Max. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got that. I was trying to convince a friend to actually subscribe to Apple TV

because they hadn't in a while. I'm like, basically, just subscribe to it for a month. It's going to be like five or six bucks. And you can basically binge watch the entire season or series of Ted Lasso. That's worth the $6 and then check out Severance and check out Hijack and you know like all these shows that are that are on there that are just great

great shows kind of built into that like $6 subscription or whatever it is like but they were I could tell like they just weren't going to do it if it's not on Netflix it doesn't exist well I have another new show to talk about uh has anybody seen the new futurama they brought back futurama i have the i haven't seen it yet but the one episode out now i saw and it's queued up yeah i think i think that's the only episode out right now um it sounds like all of

the original people are there i i haven't looked into it recently at all i know that there was some controversy with bender not coming back originally but i think he's back now um so i think everybody's original it sounds like everybody's back um and it feels like it's just futurama didn't feel like they were trying to make like a brand new show or anything. So we'll see how it progresses. But good so far. Wait, so how did they not have Bender come back? Like the voice, you mean?

The voice, the guy that plays Bender? Yeah, yeah. So they had him come back. But originally, he wasn't part of the new series. And then a bunch of stink was raised, and they brought him back. So I think the actor wanted more money than they were willing to pay but you can't have futurama without the original bender i mean that's that's almost half the show right there yeah yeah well that would be kind of

that would be definitely awkward kind of like that guy on uh bob's burger that's probably not going to come back because he'll be in prison jimmy pesto yeah jimmy pesto's in prison uh whoops yeah it's so weird because he he's not in the show at all but if you look in the intro like whenever they you know they start the show or whatever he's actually in the window they never took him out of the window shot uh of the intro um but he's out of everything else they don't really bring him up or anything so it's kind of weird yeah yeah well that's what happens that happens when you you do that whoops who would have thought yeah who'd have thought uh well cool i'll have to check out both of those special ops lioness futurama the new one um futurama is on hulu i don't know if we mentioned that you can watch all, I can watch all of Futurama Original on Disney+,

and Hulu, which is also kind of a Disney property. Is it Disney? I think Disney owns Hulu. Yeah, Disney owns Hulu. I don't get it. And ESPN and Fox and a bunch of other stuff. Well, maybe one day they'll bring these episodes over and I can just watch them there, or I'll just wait for them to fall off the back of the truck

and watch them early. But, um, anyway, we're, we're a couple of, uh, only a couple of weeks away now from, uh, from Cedia for meeting, meeting each other. Um, TJ, you and I, for the second time in one year and then, um, Gavin for the first time ever, right? Um, it's the first time and only time allowing to travel to the united states so you had to get a special visa for this trip so i had to wait for that 10 year record you know 10 years for you know to clear off you know we won't talk about that are you gonna be able to get back into canada are they gonna let you um i have ways of getting back in okay good yeah i mean there's he's like the country's premier expert on watering grass now so like

grass sensors uh and gavin yeah so like must be it must be friends with uh drake you know drake's always getting his friends into canada exactly you know that's who i was gonna pull some strings i just saw a name drop but that's who i was gonna say anything come on tj i saw i saw him in the reflection the other day and i was like is that drake that's who i was gonna say anything come on tj i saw i saw him in the reflection the other day and i was like is that drake that's not true drake's everywhere he's he's in the window uh yeah so like uh we're we're probably and i say we're probably we're going to do a little home tech meetup uh probably on the september 8th so september 8th um around 6.30, 7 o'clock, save the date, I guess. Just kind of like after the show, a get-together.

We never went all out with this stuff. It was just kind of like a place to get together after everything ended. Keep an eye on the website. We'll have more details there and information there. You can RSVP, sign up, let us know you're coming that kind of thing uh we usually we put in the past we put little forms up and you just put in like name email and that kind of thing uh we do need a head count on anybody that comes or wants to come um so we can kind of relay that back to the restaurant and they can put us in the right size room that kind of thing so there would be

more information uh you know by the time the shows go up you should probably see more information on there and if you're a patron we'll definitely let everybody know through the hub and uh on the patreon thing before um the real information goes up they can they can sign up early let us know if they're coming so definitely excited about this come hang out gavin's gonna be eating some rocky mountain oysters so i'm sure he'll want to share some of them, you know, split them up. I've been challenged, you know, like it's hard to turn down a challenge, but let's see how it goes. No, it'll definitely be fun. It'll be my first time in Denver since I was probably a younger kid, early teens, maybe.

And so I never really got to explore, obviously, because you're just doing whatever your whatever your parents are doing and so we're excited we're going the saturday before cds starts and so we'll go around the outskirts of denver and go explore in all the national parks and stuff like that so i'm excited i'm ready for an actual vacation florida was like what a month ago seth yes but it didn't really feel like vacation to me so but i feel like that's florida all the time florida never feels like vacation even though that's where all ohioans go for vacation so maybe maybe denver will actually be nice and relaxing yeah yeah that well i was looking we're not sure on the place we're gonna be i was looking at casa bonita tj you know it's a favorite and uh the website has definitely changed so i don't know they're selling tickets maybe i think you gotta buy a ticket casa bonita it's a beautiful place

yeah and it's probably gonna it's probably gonna be booked out quite a while whenever they do actually open it i think if it is opened if they have opened i think you're right like it's just going to be tons of people oh yeah i've definitely got my name on the reservation though so just let us know wait list i guess i should say i'm on the list if maybe gavin gavin will get in he knows people i've always i've always wanted to eat a burrito i watch somebody jump off a off a cliff and maybe go snorkeling or something like that at the same time so sounds like casa bonita is the place for me oh man the hype behind this place it's only like it just looks massive i mean like i forget how many staff they had but they had like thousands of staff i think that they have to hire in order

to like run the place it's just like ridiculously large they have like five things on their menu and it definitely went out of business like they they shut down and then the the creators of south park bought it because they missed their childhood so i'm interested to see if it sticks around but they've put a lot of money into it so far i think i was reading one article where they are i was watching one interview with them and they said they invested like 40 million dollars into it so far that's insane i don't know how they did that but that is insane because they didn't want to tear anything down they literally just wanted to restore whatever was there and they're like yeah it could have been you know much more cost effective to like tear everything down and rebuild it but we didn't want to do that so wow uh yeah yeah well there's they're hiring right now for and here in the entertainment

section they're hiring for theatrical dance uh crew as well uh immersive performers i guess that's the people that are um diving off the yeah puppeteers puppeteers so you can you know you're going to need to know how to operate a puppet and a wardrobe assistance. And then of course, uh, plenty of, you know, front of house bar, that kind of thing. Uh, and there are dishwasher cook assistants, cooks, assistant bar managers, all that good stuff. So it looks like they're, they're trying to, uh, they're trying, there's actually a security surveillance technician. So if there's any, yeah, maybe I'll move move to denver yeah i know they were paying servers 30 an hour but they weren't they weren't doing tips or something so yeah this one's 20 to 24 dollars an hour and it looks like uh they they basically uh i don't know what they do that's

worse than a server never mind yeah it looks like they they helped find lost children i'm sure with that that giant building there's a lot of lost children. Yeah, yeah. You will be downloading same-day video footage and apply it to storage involving incidents of crimes, accidents, lost children. Yeah, so that sounds like not the surveillance technician that I thought it was going to be. But, you know, you don't exactly have to work on the cameras. You just have to know how to connect and download to the NVR, which is probably a job in and of itself, honestly. Those NVRs are tricky. All right, well, we got a couple of Home Tech headlines, guys.

What do you say we get started? Let's do it. All right, Eero. Mesh router company is launching Eero for Communities, a program that brings its routers to landlord-managed Wi-Fi networks in rental properties. It's kind of cool. Renters can easily log on to the existing Wi-Fi

and set up their Eero using an app and access features like Eero Secure subscription services, Wi-Fi 6, and newer Eero devices are supported. The program is available for single-family rentals and apartment buildings. However, advanced Wi-Fi customization options are very limited, such as setting custom DNS, splitting 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands is also something that is not supported right now, I guess.

That's kind of weird. It's kind of an interesting... This isn't a bad idea. There are these big MDU buildings that kind of have a common internet connection a lot of the times. And it, this is, we're seeing this more often, like with locks and that kind of things being put in with like your rental, like internet's just kind of like a utility that everybody expects to have. Like you get free wifi through your community or whatever, and you can kind of get in there and make your own password and that kind of thing. It might be a pretty good, pretty good deal for some people. Yeah. The, the free wifi for residents makes, makes sense. But I think this also positions, depending on how Aero and ultimately Amazon do this, it could position

apartment buildings to be internet resellers, right? So maybe they get internet service coming into the building and then they have these little Aero units throughout, throughout the building and each person's unit um and they're just reselling wi-fi at that point so they're actually making gonna make money on that i don't know if that's possible in this i know you know other products like ubiquity and and others have that feature built into it but it wouldn't surprise me if that comes out at some point just because it does give apartment managers like a real reason to go with this system. I think most apartments and contractors ultimately probably avoid technology just because it's an extra hassle that like they just don't need to deal with. So there's got to be some reason for apartment building managers to like take this on. And maybe it is, you know, as simple as just giving

somebody free wi-fi whenever they but i would think if you sell this as like you know you know we'll sell you discount internet for 30 a month or something like that that'd be a no-brainer for a lot of uh residents and i hope they set this up like everyone are they gonna like take a main internet incoming and split it to all the people and just throw Aeropucks into their own apartments? That's honestly what it sounds like. The way the Aero website looks for this particular product, it sounds like this is more for ISP partners.

So what they mentioned about Frontier being one of their partners, Frontier would bring this in, the internet in, and then there would be little Eero devices that are basically always left either in place. Like it says, what do they call this thing? It's called service left in place. It means hardware stays in units, reducing operational costs, truck rolls, and on-site technician time. So basically, instead of everybody coming in

with their own router and everything, or own router on access points, that kind of stuff, they just install one for the room or the apartment. And that's what works in that apartment. And your internet service connects up to that. So it's kind of like TJ, you're saying the apartment or community manager or whatever does actually become, property manager does become almost like the ISP, right? But they're kind of working in conjunction with frontier, I guess, to turn on and off internet for the for the property. Yeah. And ISPs already have this kind of deal. Anyway, I know like breeze line around me, which used to be wow. They sell Euro with all their systems. So if you want enhanced Wi-Fi, they can monitor and everything

just like any other Eero Pro can. So this type of deal with ISPs already exists, and it looks like they're just building upon that to offer a better service. It's not something I would not recommend. I think for most people, this would be great. But if you're a power user, you lose control, it sounds like, over your network at that point, right? You're going to be now sharing it with the building. Kind of like how we set it up in the trailer. I mean, I didn't do that. But you know what I mean?

You're going to be fighting with those people that are going to be streaming 10 devices and killing the network probably at some point you know i don't i don't know about that necessarily though because eros kind of positioning themselves to kind of take this on with like the poe access points and the gateways and everything like that so realistically you could have yeah well and each ero is its own router as well so realistically you could have your own actual internet not worry about anything and that would be the best way to approach this like my office that i rent out has like publicly accessible wi-fi that's free for everybody but you can literally see everybody's devices on the network unless you pay for like the higher tier of service and so hopefully that doesn't happen here because like your residence your internet should just work and you shouldn't have to worry about those problems but i don't see them having any problem with like segmenting networks and stuff like that. And at that point, they'd probably

have multiple incoming lines from the ISP. Yeah. So I hope that, you know, I'm pretty sure they have it set up right. You know, I'd be more worried about my IOT devices on here and, you know, security issues and stuff like that. Right. But we'll see how it goes. But it sounds like a great idea from them, though. Yeah. And that's my's my thing too is like the maybe the landlord can see you know the traffic or the content you're watching and stuff like that that's what i would be concerned about i mean i'm sure that there's some kind of safety built into that but technology companies like this aren't always known for you know their advanced safety i would think that that's probably less i mean so there's already like an ero for pro

installers right and you get a little dashboard where you can kind of like get in and manage equipment and change you can change like you basically can set everything up and then kind of like leave it to the customer to pay the bill and this just seems like an abstraction of that right like it's it's kind of the same thing um instead of having customers linked to an account that's kind of like overseeing and kind of helping and managing them, you have one person that is kind of swapping people in and out of an apartment and letting, like, you could just say reset, and that e-row will just be available for the person to set up their own Wi-Fi network access point and everything. It just becomes their own router to the internet. So I don't really think there's going to be a problem with security.

I think if there is, like if a property manager can see what websites you're looking at, I think that's probably going to be like a huge red flag and one of those things that gets Amazon a lot of bad press. I don't think they would do that. Again, I don't even know what options you have for the pro installer's dashboard, what that looks like. Maybe there's a little bit more that you can get into, but I think most of the advanced stuff,

like monitoring what websites you're connected to, and that all comes through that Eero Pro service or whatever it is, like the little add-on. Eero Secure, subscription service. Like it gives you the ad blocking, extra security, VPN, all that stuff. So, I mean, if you're paying for that,

like nobody can tell where you're going anyway because it adds to the VPN on, except Amazon. Amazon knows everything now about it. Yeah, and I sell a lot of Eero myself. So I have access to the the the pro dashboard and you can't really see a ton of like in-depth stuff i mean i can go in there and change the network and the password and and all that kind of normal stuff but like i can't see like um as far

as i know i can't see like top visited websites and stuff like that. So I doubt they bring that to the the MDU side of things. I can see like outages and how much you've downloaded and uploaded and that kind of thing, which is like, I guess, very basic and nothing too crazy. But nothing too like an intrusive. Yeah. Firewalla introduced a Firewalla MSP with managed security portal for their MSP partners. And it makes a lot of sense if you're like an MSP that's offering security for people. But basically, when you sign in, you're literally seeing every stream for every device going in and out. Just like if you actually own the device. What you see on the Firewall app as the homeowner is what the MSP actually sees.

And when we were talking to them about it, it's like, no, this is too much. No integrator needs to know what website somebody's visiting at 9.30 at night. No, this is not something that needs to happen. So I don't know where this is not something that, uh, that needs to happen. So, um, I don't know, I don't know where they, uh, where they end up, ended up with that, but it was a really cool dashboard that you could just go into if you were doing the managed, like the managed doing like a full MSP thing, like where you're doing managed service on

top of like a bunch of businesses and that kind of thing. Totally perfect for that, but it was too much it's like it's way too much information to know about somebody's network that ends up being aggregated to who knows who you know working at these msbs not for residential well especially most of the time you don't need it at all you know i don't need to know if somebody visited facebook most frequently yeah like it's nice for my own personal network but like i don't care that a customer visits facebook 20 000 times right it makes business it makes it makes sense for businesses right so like you if they may want to block if there's like

a ton of people on facebook and tiktok all day long and it's a dentist's office they may want to block that and prevent people from using the dentist's office wi-fi to get getting on social media during the day and you know that kind of thing. So there's a lot of advantages to that type of product, like a security-related product, when you need that security. But it was the fact that it was like, well, as an integrator, you definitely don't need that much security. That needs to rely, like, it's such an easy system. Like, it just needs to lie in the homeowner's hands. They can see what their kids

are doing on their net. I don't necessarily need to know that information. So anyway, I don't think that's going to be a problem. It sounds like with Eero, you don't have very much visibility into it

like you do with Firewall. And I would say like Ubiquity, kind of the same thing, right? If you set up those, any integrator could dial in remotely if they have this SSO set up with Ubiquity and they're managing their clients' accounts. If they have what they call the deep packet inspection or something turned on, you can see where people are going and what they're doing on the internet and like how many places, what device went to what website. So, you know,

it's kind of one of those things to kind of keep an eye out for. All right. Well, let's move on here. Another story, I guess, from Amazon, Amazon's unveiled its new 2023 Echo Show 5 lineup includes a third generation Echo Show 5 with a 5.5 inch touchscreen, improve custom speak, improve speakers with double the base and a faster media tech processor making it 20 20 faster than the previous version device also sports matter for the home yay uh additionally the echo show 5 kids is designed for children like you know because you need one uh comes with an Echo Show 5 for kids, not, not a kid.

You probably don't need that, but you need one of these. Uh, let's see, comes with parental controls, a 1.75 inch, um, screen, sorry, 1.75 inch speaker system has a built-in camera shutter and microphone, microphone slash camera shut off button for privacy, um, includes a one-year subscription to Amazon, Amazon kids plus for age appropriate content both devices are available for pre-order and will be released on august 8th 2023 so right around the corner yeah gavin you're gonna get one of these echoes kids thing you're gonna get no it would look good in your office no i don't need another one these are just like incremental updates to their products so you know it's, but it's good that they're at least making incremental updates and including many things.

So did it say if it's a matter controller, a matter border router? You know, that's what I wasn't sure about. Sometimes, you know, when they just say matter, it's like, what does it support when it comes to matter? Yeah. And that's what just makes it more confusing because you'll buy a device and it'll be like, oh, it support when it comes to Matter? Yeah. And that's what just makes it more confusing because you'll buy a device and it'll be like, oh, it's Matter. They'll just see the label Matter and then you'll try to add a Matter product to it and it doesn't work.

And then after all this time, you discover it's a Matter controller and not a border router. And yeah, it's just... It's Matter. It just works. It just works. It's Matter. Okay. What's the matter with you? So I, I, I went to the web webpage and I searched for matter.

Only one result came up and it just says smart home device compatibility, wifi, Bluetooth, low energy mesh and matter. So no idea. Okay. But I think that that detail does matter though, when it comes to the smart home, I find. So I hope they get clear, you know know make it a little clearer in the future yeah because some devices can't connect to it is that what that's what you ran into a couple shows ago yeah i'm still trying to get my head around it but like matter controller just allows you to control the devices i think

and i think the border router allows you to add it to it. And yeah, when I was playing around with my Alexa and my first Matter over Thread device, I was like, oh, let me just add it. And yeah, it didn't add, it didn't work. And then I found out why later on. I was like, well, I should have looked that up before. But now I have Matter on Home Assistant,

so it's still not working properly but it's working you can tell i like my matter don't you one day it'll matter uh speaking speaking of of loving matter on this is set to release its first matter over thread enabled product the on this s4 smart plug right there on amazon too another the third three out of three three out of three for amazon today um the smart plug is there on Amazon too. Another, the third, three out of three, three out of three for Amazon today. The smart plug is compatible with thread border router, thread border routers.

So there you go, Gavin, if you want to know where this is going. Okay, excellent. There you go. They actually give you the information in this, not so much on the Echo page. It provides, let's see, doesn't burden Wi-Fi networks with those

connections to those devices. So it comes in a single, double, or four-pack options priced at $19.99, $37.99, and $59.99 respectively. Onvis plans to also launch versions of the S4 smart plug for Europe

and UK in the coming month, expanding its availability to British smart home users. That's pretty cool. It matters. That's all I got. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I guess congratulations, Onvis.

You matter this week. I've never even heard of Onvis. Do they make anything else? Anybody ever heard of them? So is it like another company that's just parading as, you know, a new company? No, no. They've been around, I think, for a while. I've heard of them so it is like another company that's just parading as you know new company no no they've been around i think for a while i've heard of them before um i don't know like sometimes i would say they're not a big company and find out that they're in like 50 million units or something like that um but they've been around they have a home kit security camera

iCloud storage yeah look at their website they have several devices they have the same stock photo of the house with all the RGB LEDs in it than everyone else uses look like I think it's in at least 90% of the smart home companies use this stock photo whatever modern do we use that one as well uh we we have a very similar photo that we used and maybe still use on the website for home tech that got years ago it doesn't show any rgb lights but it looks very similar to this um the style at home but i don't i can't say i can't swear judging by where the pool is on this one i can't swear it's the same one so funny funny stuff anyway um go on this yay you matter they've got a smart motion sensor too

they've got quite a few things on their website sensors they've got a switch they've got some uh some led chameleon light strips so they've got quite a bit going for them but still never heard of them never heard of them all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 445. All right, guys, we have a pick of the week this week. This one's fun. It's entitled Mr. Coffee Bot, make me a coffee. No, no, not like that. And this is a video you just have to watch.

This is a real product. Someone made this coffee maker. LG made this, which makes it even better you know it's not going to work at all then or for very long it just has to work a couple times and to relieve itself and then you know i was i was reading that it's like even more wasteful than like the traditional coffee or the pod coffee machines too is because i think it uses two pods in order to make its coffee for some reason and so now instead of one pod you have two pods oh when it boots up you don't know if you're gonna get a number one or number two pod

and when you see the pick of the week you will understand that joke i guess yeah well so i guess we'll kind of describe this i guess this is um r2d2 leaking oil underneath them that's what it looks like it's it's it's uh i guess it's called the duo bow uh coffee maker it combines two coffee pods for an out of this world homebrew uh it's it's it's interesting i guess according to the story that I'm reading here, that it's drawing inspiration from the Apollo 11 moon landing. So picture the Apollo lander that, you know, we all know and love that has little feet that come off of it.

And this one's got three of them. Just leaking oil everywhere. Well, it's blasting off, you know, blasting off for your day. So, yeah,

I guess you, you load the coffee in the top and the water in the top. And then like, it kind of just squats down and puts the coffee in your cup it's not a very elegant solution to coffee you know this is this is an so it's also a kickstarter um it only had a five thousand dollar goal it's got a hundred and three thousand dollars you know i No, I'm going to have to back this. Don't back it, Seth.

Think of all the government options you can participate in. Whoa, $399? I don't think so. I don't think so. $400 for a squatty coffee maker? The squatty coffee. Oh, man. Yeah, this is weird.

It's the first... This is what they have on their little Kickstarter. It's the first coffee machine that blends two shots. Okay, it's got that going for it. It's got a smart app. Of course, it uses a smart app. Why not? Does it matter?

It's got visual... I don't know. I'll find out in a second. It's compatible with all original caps got visual i don't know i'll find out in a second uh it's compatible with all original capsules i don't know it's supposed to be whoever makes this um yeah i don't i don't i'm gonna just do a search for matter though matter does show up but it's not it says we decided to take matter into our own hands and make our own smart home platform with squatty squatty coffee um yeah this is something to look at if you want to see the video we'll include uh we'll include a link to it in the uh in the show notes yeah it looks like it uses nespresso pods it's what it looks like

i really do want one of these though i just can't i can't fathom paying $400 for this coffee. This is the early, but the MSRP on this thing is seven 99. And it uses twice as much coffee, Seth. So, I mean, your,

your coffee bill is actually, that's a feature. Not, that's not a, that's not a problem. It's called buying a regular coffee machine. That's what it is. What problem is the solving that you don't visualize your,

your robot peeing into your coffee in the morning? It's not pee. It's clearly something else. It had a busy night last night and it's got an upset tummy. Oh man, this is something to see. I can't believe, uh,

this is a product, but it is. Well, just like every other LG product, it'll stop working within a year or two so don't uh don't spend a lot of money into it and i think the designer knew what he was doing when he put this together oh 100 absolutely absolutely i'd love to see the interview about this i'd love to see the interview where he talks about his inspiration for the design there's there's

more ways there's more ways that you could have made this um to work this exact way without making it squat over the top of your cup i mean the designer's inspiration was obviously star uh star wars because it looks like rd r2d2 it's got some similarities similar similar profile and everything you know hopefully it'll talk to me that'd be nice oh it's got a display on the bottom of it what what in the world like a heads-up display it's got a 10.1 inch ips display that goes underneath it no wonder this thing costs why do we need a display why do you need a display for it no just make coffee oh man that is so weird all Well, now I understand it's got a TV below it. That it's a touchscreen. Runs on Android.

Somebody will buy it. Well, one of these days, if you've bought one of these coffee machines, let us know. And when it fails, you can send it to me and I'll put it in the museum. This is amazing. All right. All right. Let's move on here. If you have any ideas for the show, weird coffee makers you'd like to share with us,

questions, comments, or picks of the week, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback. And you can fill out the online form. We're going to have a short show tonight, right? No. No, we're not. We got like Gavin's back. He has been like, since he didn't have to record a show last week, right? No, no, we're not. We got like Gavin's back. He has been like, since he didn't have to record a show last week,

I think he's just been busy doing 3D printing. And last week before we got on, Gavin's like, I have so much 3D printing news to share with you guys. And I'm so sad I can't be on the show. And I was like, all right, we'll get it next week. Now there's even more Gavin 3D printing project updates on here. so gavin i don't have a lot what's going on with your 3d printing world oh no it's like i got the 3d printer i'm loving it i got my prusa it's been great it hasn't broke it hasn't failed me once yet um i ran out of filament ordered more filament

that's gonna be a topic of the week every week is I ordered more filament. You've got to have the different colors and everything, too. Yeah, exactly. You've got to have multiple colors. I even ordered filament storage bags so they don't suck up moisture. And get rusty. Exactly. It's been going nonstop.

I bought it a little home, So it's now in the basement. So we can't hear it. It's nice and warm. It can print all night long. We don't have to worry about it. I wake up, print's done, you know, and I've just been printing so many things. A lot of, it's amazing like projects out there, but I've been printing like a lot of wall mounts, you know, and it's great because you see the cost of you printing it out is $1. But when I go on like Amazon, it'll be like a lot of uh wall mounts you know and it's great because you see the cost of you printing it out is one dollar but when i go on like amazon it'll be like a twenty dollar mount

right so it's like it's starting to justify itself in a way you know it's i gotta print out a few hundred more wall mounts but that's all right um it's just the whole 3d printing world has been very interesting and just learning how to do things so you know going from utilizing the slicer to laying out things to print and you know all the issues you can have with printing i've actually just now been playing i'm now starting to work in tinkercad which is like a design software it's a web-based design software. So now I'm actually creating objects in 3D to print out. And I'm going to get into that project soon. But the whole 3D printing world, it's so cool.

I'm kind of happy I got into it now because of where it's at now versus where it was maybe five years ago. So if you're looking to get 3D printing spend the money and you know just have some fun spend the money have some fun spend more money yes pretty much yeah i saw you got a little bag for him what's the bag over his head for what would you oh no that's that's it's home i you see unlike your robots i treat my nice right so i bought him a little home um he has a zip up front it keeps him warm it keeps the dust out of it um right it's a dust cover like for the record players yeah but it does a little bit more than that it's like insulated it's kind of like an uber eats bag that's the best way that's the best way i can explain it right because it has the silver internal lighting and everything like that.

I have a pizza bag just like that. Exactly. And honestly, it was a great, it only cost me like 60 bucks and it was a great investment because I noticed from day one, when I first put it in there, you zipped it up, the temperatures and everything were more unified, which made the printing come out that much better. It made a huge difference, right? So if you got a printer, throw it in a little Uber Eats bag, zip it up, and let it print away. Yeah, with that, you don't have to worry about the drifts or anything like that, too.

Because if you do a lot of 3D printing, you know that not every print works out how you thought it was going to work out yeah but one of the most annoying things is when you come back and like one of the corners of your print has raised up which then throws off the rest of the print and then depending on what you're trying to use it for like that print is now useless so that that uh cover helps prevent that as well exactly the community has been great when it comes to these kind of problems out outlying how to fix them, etc. You know, in terms of home automation, the printer is hooked up. I actually I printed a 3D camera mount and now I have a camera mounted to the printer and it does time lapse video and I can check in on it without having to go all the way to the basement. I can see what's happening. Is it working? You know, as a crash, you know, etc. And then when it's finished printing, it actually notifies me, you know, home assistant, there's an integration

with home assistant and OctoPrint. So I actually have it plugged into my, um, Unraid server and I have OctoPrint running on a doctor and OctoPrint basically manages everything with the printer. So from my, from the slicer, I could just send it straight to OctoPrint. It just starts printing, does all these fancy stuffs. I have all these you know that that are doing various things um and i could see the live feed of it and that's actually really cool because you know i have it in the basement just in the corner of the basement and i don't have to keep running down there and say hey did crash or anything like that it hasn't crashed on me yet, so that's a good thing. Yeah, the OctoPrint is really cool.

It's basically the home assistant of 3D printer world, I would say, just because you can download a lot of different plugins. One of my favorites was the Spaghetti Detector, which determines through the camera interface if your print doesn't look like what it's supposed to look like, and it'll actually stop the print, so that way you don't waste any filament because you can technically recycle a lot of the filament but i don't know about you gavin but i know in my area there's not really anybody that does that and so you're basically just throwing it away i know you can

buy the machines for it and stuff like that but they're usually pretty expensive and the process to like get it back to filament isn't hard by any means, but it's just very time-consuming. So, yeah, and the other cool thing with OctoPrint, it kind of brings your machine onto the network, right? So these machines don't have network ways to connect to them through the network, but once you have OctoPrint working, it's now kind of like your proxy to the machine. So when you send the print over the network, it goes through OctoPrint, it takes care of everything from there. So it's now online. So no, it's really fun. I've been

following a 3D printing community on Mastodon and they've been very helpful. It's just hashtag 3D printing or at 3D printing, follow them. They got a lot of information they're constantly posting. And I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos. Like it's been a fun ride. And OctoPrint, I thought the way you were describing it, it's like, oh, it must be a spooler or something. But no, it does like temperature monitoring, all sorts of stuff on here with little dashboards.

And you can like TJ was saying, you can kind of see if something's gone awry and it'll stop that's really neat it basically becomes the interface to the printer yeah he doesn't say it connects to the usb to the printer most of the time and that way you get all the the normal stats you would you know the print time left and temperatures and all that fun stuff so it's really a cool uh software feature that you don't have to pay for you just have to have a little computer or whatever for it to yeah it's uh open source so yeah and uses the gpl license which means no one could ever make any money off of it so it's always going to be open source um so yeah that's that's really neat i just kind of going through and

looking at all the screenshots they have here it's like man there's a lot of info you can get off this thing that's wild cool do you have to like is it's does it like basically support any 3d printer out of the box or do you have to like hack the 3d printer to make it work no a lot of them it supports out of the box like you don't have to do anything but it doesn't support every printer and there's no like firmware changes or anything. You literally just plug it in. Gotcha. Okay.

Interesting. That's kind of cool. Still not, I'm not going to get anywhere near a 3d printer. I can tell you that like it's not going to happen. Yeah. You probably shouldn't. It's a bad idea. You don't have time for that.

You don't have any time. I mean, I'm just saying like if I, if I did any of this stuff, like, um, uh, I, I would, I would get so caught up in like, make like tinkering. Like I would get caught up in one of these steps. Like Gavin, you're talking about like going in, what was that? The, the software, um, maker CAD or whatever it is. Oh, tinker CAD, tinker CAD. Yeah.

Like I would get, I would just get lost in that. That would just be like an entire six months of me playing with that. Just solid. Like, oh, did you print anything? that would just be like an entire six months of me playing with that just solid like like oh did you print anything no but i'm playing with this 3d modeling software look at this so you see my way of approaching this stuff is i find a project or something i want to accomplish and then i do it and that's how i learn the product right so i may do the same thing five different ways, but at least I learned the differences, the best ways to do it, how to use the software. And, you know, I got something in the end that I wanted to get done. So, oh, wait, I missed one. You've been automating your shutters.

Is that what your project is that you picked? Yeah. So, you know, just to back that up a bit, on Prime Day, one of the things I picked up was a SwitchBot blind tilt. And it was just because it was cheap, it can integrate with Home Assistant, I have a Bluetooth adapter, etc. So I grabbed one and it came in and I set it up on my blinds. And for my quick, rough review of this, it's not as big as I thought it was. It's not as ugly as I thought it was. It's not as ugly as I thought it was. And it works. So I had one specific blind that I just wanted to open and close at certain times. And it works, you know, and that's all I can say about a product. I don't think it's that ugly.

And it still lets you utilize the blinds the normal way. Like it doesn't take it over. You can still open and close it just by turning the wand and it works pretty well the installation was a little confusing at first but once you do one um any time after that will be much easier so i was kind of looking at that and i was saying hey i can use this for say other main my shutters right and you know i was just looking at i was like i got a 3d printer i can print out some gears and clips and you know i was just looking at it i was like i got a 3d printer i can print out some gears and clips and you know so yeah that i've been playing around with this over the last week and at this point i got the gear um insert that will go right into the the switch bot um blind tilt and then i've been designing some designs and I shared a few with you guys, but

those were like versions one, two. It was like, you know, like Elon Musk launching his rockets into space. They were all crashing and failing. But right now I have, I'm on version four. That feels a lot more promising. I've designed the clip on the shutter. It fits nicely. I've actually just sent off the print for the gearboxes to my printer. So once I get to play with all that and I put through some like, you know, just holding and testing and stuff like that, then I'll start to finalize those prints. But, you know, I've been talking with others doing similar things and they've come up with some really elaborate designs for theirs. And I'm just like, no, I'm not getting that far into it. Right. I just want something simple gearbox clip, you know, and then throw it on my shutters and go from there. So that's one thing

I've been working on. And, and this is one of the examples of what 3d printing opens up to you is you look at projects differently. Now you look at, you can go online and you just look for gears and you see everybody that's printed all these gears and you can edit them and tweak them and resize them to, you know, the ratios you want and do a project. And that's what I'm having fun with. I think the saying is, the proper saying is, now that you have a hammer, every project is a nail. There you go. It works for me. Just don't be like a normal engineer.

Just don't over-engineer everything. You'll be all right. Yeah, I've seen some over-engineered stuff, and I've been trying to dumb it down. And you start to get into, like, it's weird, but you start to get into reading things about gears and gear ratios you know and stuff like that and you're like wow and the wife looks at me sometimes and sometimes i go on chat gpt and i'll say hey explain to me gear ratios or something like that and it's a long paragraph comes out and she's like what the hell are you reading i'm like don't worry don't worry you'll appreciate it when those blinds open

and close on their own you know so very nice it's it's a it takes me to other fields of engineering you know i'm next thing you know i'll be back at taking college courses or something like that yeah yeah and 3d cad modeling and that kind of thing. Oh man. Well, that sounds, it does sound like a lot of fun. Just, I,

I'm kind of like, I kind of want to cut the middleman, which is me out and just say, I'll just, I'll buy the, I just want to buy it like at this point, like, and then,

and then I won't put it in just like this level lock. I'm not, I'm not going to put it in. Maybe I could 3d print something to make the level lock where like, it's got to go down, like some gears to go in there with the level lock. And then that way, when you turn the door, a flip switch on the inside of the door, it actually kind of goes down and under the level lock.

See, that's the mindset of a 3D printing enthusiast. We can fix anything. Start making your list now, so that way Gavin can bring it in a month when he meets up with it. That's a good idea. It's a good idea. I'll take this. I'll take two of these,

three of these. Oh man, that's too good. I did have one other, like my big project for this week. I think we talked about it a little bit last week was, was fixing an air conditioning problem. And I thought it was going to have to get in the attic for,

and I did, I did get up in the attic, but you know, it was kind of like one of those like all day projects, right? Like you just, you're going to start investigating. Like I looked over here, looked over there. I got, I have, so I have, I forgot that I had this flare system set up, you know, the, the, the vent things where you have like all your vents and everything. I've got three vents and three sensors in the house. And plus the Ecobee, which is kind of like the main part of the house. So I was using that to kind of like look at where it was hot.

I'm like, yeah, it is kind of hot in like the master bedroom area. It's kind of hot over here. Why isn't this working? And so like I went to the air conditioning unit. I'm like, oh, yeah, the box that connects to the air conditioner is actually just blown off. Like it was blowing cold air into the laundry. The laundry room was really cold. I'm like,

this isn't good. So I got a bunch of parts and pieces and put all that back together and then got to go around the house, like in, and kind of realized that I may have had the flare system kind of set up wrong. And that's probably why it wasn't working like optimally. The little pucks that you can get,

which are their temperature sensor and humidity sensors work a whole lot better if you turn them into wifi mode than if you just use their, their radio mode. And, um, I got, I put all three of the sensors that I have on wifi and like it, it had a couple of range issues with one that was like clear across the house in the master bedroom. And now there are no more range issues and it actually some of the feature sets change too like it will give you a you know how you can set on some thermostats where you can set like the um like uh the calibration where you know you let it warm up or whatever and then you can get like a thermometer in the room and check to make sure it's the same temperature um with without the with just running off batteries it lets you kind of like go under by x amount of degrees but with the batteries in

there you can actually go over i don't know what the difference is or why it works that way but like i i was able to adjust up a couple degrees in one of the rooms because it wasn't matching or just right so doing that um i got everything kind of like balanced out and i i can say like i haven't had any complaints yet um i did i did notice on flair's website though that they've updated uh their product line and they have a support for square vents now which i have two 12 inch square vents in the middle of my house that i i really i that they're like the main vents they're just the main vents the main rooms and now i'm gonna have to buy those because you need those yeah because what happens is is like we're not in the main part of the house like we're

in the exterior part of the we're pushed out to the edges right and that's that's where the walls are they get warmed up during the day and that's where the heat is so that's where you want the air to go but right now there's just these big air duct vent things just dumping into the middle of the house getting it cold nice and cold when nobody's in there at night. And then where we're sleeping, you know, daughter's on one side, we're on the other. Like it's like it's hot. So if I can just open those up full and then close the other ones down and don't, you know, say we don't really care what's going on in the living room and the dining room and that kind of thing at night. It'll push the air out through the other vents and i know there's like some balancing thing this

thing does all that like you don't you can't force it to shut down more than x amount of percentage of vents that it that it has so that it does have the safety checks built into it um but at least that doing that i might be able to uh to to to get some of the colder air to move out to the other parts of the house rather than just freeze out the living room because it doesn't need to go there. Yeah, it's very important. Like you said it yourself, but they have safety checks in products like these, right? And when people start hacking together solutions for like, I don't mess with my HVAC when it comes to hacking together solutions

just because Echobee has a bunch of safety checks in there to ensure that temperatures don't do certain things right um and you probably won't get that in your code or remember to put that in your code or even know that's something you should be checking on to ensure your pipes don't freeze in the middle of winter or something like that right so these type of things that leave it up to third parties for them to do it right and get, you know, certified and properly.

But I don't like to mess with hacking stuff like this. Cause at one point I was thinking of doing something similar, but on the main ducks and controlling those with like little motors and stuff. But then, yeah, you have to really sit there and think about it. You're like,

no, that's, that could be dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. I guess there, there's one option here that I, I can, I can set, I can can make the the room sensor the there's an ecobee room sister and i i sensor i can make that

make the uh the room active or not now i guess it doesn't matter i still need those vents so i'm gonna have to get the vents they come out in september so i'm hoping at cda we'll have them i'll be able to show them at the show. The big ones, like the 12x12 and the 10x10. But if not, I'm going to have to get them. So this is my first CDA. Do they actually sell things there? No. Just last minute deals like Seth's got.

Turns out. Yeah, yeah. It depends on who you ask. So maybe if I hang around the Flair booth when they're closing and packing up and they just say, we just don't want to take these back. I'll say, I'll take them. No, they actually won't be there. We're the only ones that sell them. So I should have a couple at least because we wrote an integration for it embarrassingly a couple of years ago.

And I forgot that we didn't. I thought we put it on a website for sale. because we wrote an integration for it embarrassingly a couple of years ago and i forgot that we didn't i thought we put it on the website for sale and somebody wrote in the other day a ticket and they're like hey where's that integration you promised like two years ago i'm like oh oh it's it's not on the website i've been using it in my house for a long time why aren't you works for me works for me exactly so i'm gonna have to get that up and going before before uh we we hit cdso yeah no the most of the manufacturers there probably won't resell stuff but there there may be a couple of on the edges that may not want to carry their 3 000 pound tv back to china and they'll sell it to you for a really good price. It's funny. One of my vendors

that we have has the same TV. So I like it, it must be OEM over there somewhere, but it's the same TV, but they have it in an 86 inch version and they were trying to sell it to us and make a deal. And I'm like, Hmm, 86 inch. It's it's absurd that would that would be the largest home assistant uh dashboard ever tj do you have any projects going on you just what's going on in your life oh nothing nothing project wise that's fun at least i've got a a drainage issue i'm trying to fix in the backyard that i've been posting in the in the back channel um i probably probably shouldn't have opened that can of worms to be honest. It's just progressively getting worse,

but you know, you gotta tackle it at some point. So maybe, maybe that'll get done at some point. Um, been very busy with work. I'm booked out like three to four weeks at the moment. So that's getting kind of crazy.

So I think I'm on the verge of actually hiring somebody. Um, so that's, that's going to be crazy. So I think I'm on the verge of actually hiring somebody. Wow. Right in time to go to C. Yeah, right. Oh, man. And then, oh, I have a technology festival going on this weekend. So there's a technology coalition group that's based in Columbus for, you know, IT staff and developers and website designers all that kind of fun stuff and so i'm a sponsor at the event this weekend so we will be there all day saturday selling beer so so i i have to ask is this conflict with the pawpaw festival i was thinking the same thing wow this is like legitimate too i can't believe i'm getting

flack for this one you know i was thinking about the papa it does it does it does not it does not conflict with the papa festival what is the papa festival i honestly don't know you guys talk about the papa festival more than i do because we've heard about it from you when you went to it last geez yeah that was like last year. Come on, get a new topic. Ohio Pop. I think what we're going to have to do is- Friday, September 15th. So right after we get back from Cedia, we'll be heading there.

Nice. All right, Gavin. Clear your books. Get your passport warmed back up. We're going to Ohio Pop Hall Festival the week after Cedia. Yeah, you might as well just go. Come on. Since you didn't get any pawpaws last year, Gavin, you snoozed.

You waited too long. You didn't get any. And so now you've got to travel to Ohio. It's such a short window that when we tried to get the pawpaws last year, it was like we finally found a place on Thursday, but we couldn't pick it up until Saturday. They're like, it's not going to last that last that long right yeah they they expire very quick so you like shortly after you pick them you basically have to eat them yeah so we're gonna try it earlier this year because we really

want to try a pawpaw ah well get on it get on it but it does sound fun uh that that you know it's gonna hang out and drink beer it sounds like that that that kind of festival that maybe not the the pawpaw one but like that definitely the technology festival yeah and for the the technology festival we get uh we get beer for wholesale pricing so i might walk away with uh two or three or five cases of beer so we'll find out nice i think i think the wholesale pricing for like 24 beers is like a dollar 50 each or something so i mean that's that's basically nothing clear your van out before you go just like that's right i'll take i'll take all the leftover because we're only buying what we

actually use so i'll just take all of it take all the pack outs out and just load up before you leave. Yeah. You guys sold all the beer. Yep. Yes, we did. Sure did. It's too good. All right. I think that's going to wrap up this week.

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