HomeTech.fm - Episode 448 - TJ's Caulk Squeezers

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

On this week's show, Snap One drops a bomb right before CEDIA, Masonite starts selling its $4000+ Smart Door via Home Depot, WiiM Pro is out to replace Sonos, SwitchBot matters, project updates, and TJ shares a novel way to squeeze your caulk.Don’t forget to RSVP for this year’s HomeTech Happy Hour! More info here: hometech.fm/happyhour

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 18th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. Oh wait, I'm not in Sarasota, Florida. I'm in Ogden, Utah. Even tricked me there. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home animation, home technology,

all the fun stuff. Yeah, there's a mountain behind me. I don't know if you guys can see that. Sorry about the audio today, everybody. There is a Starbucks. I'm at a Starbucks to do this recording, and there's a mountain behind me. And along with the mountain, there's a bunch of cars driving by through the drive-thru. So if you hear something go by, that's what it is. I don't get to see mountains that often. That's kind of nice. You know, our land's pretty flat, but you got like big mountains behind you yeah no they're they're they're large i i i didn't know i would be this close to a mountain but yeah it's i mean i guess i close to it i it feels like i go walk over to it but it's probably like a few miles that way it's probably going to take me a longer time just it looks like you could just poke it right now

i don't know how it works um again i'm with you gavin our land is pretty very flat actually we don't have any hills or anything along with the uh cars and the mountains and um and such things there's an air force base here too so from time to time an airplane um or a a f-22 will fly over um going really fast which is kind of cool too that that's really neat to. I've been watching them fly by. Um, but that's, that's slowed down, um, in the last couple of hours. So maybe they, they don't do night fights. They just go out and play during the day. So what are you doing in Utah, Seth? Oh, well, uh, yeah, I forgot about that part. Um, I am, we, we have a booth for our, our, our, our booth that I've been talking about for the last couple of weeks and I'm here to- Hey, Home Tech, Home Tech has a booth? our our our booth i've been talking about for the last couple weeks and i'm here to

home tech home tech has a booth that's cool well yeah i mean we're probably going to be there right uh no for blackwire the company i work for booth 43 oh something i don't remember the number um but i'm here i came up here to kind of like i don't know not inspect it but um there was some lighting stuff that i had to take care of to see how it was going to mechanically work. And then just to kind of see it. So like if you pay for something this large, they, you know, you kind of want to send somebody to go look at it. And I got volunteered for that effort. So I'm here for Utah for like a day and, and then I fly back tonight. So yeah, I'm taking the red eye back. It's always fun.

Well, we'll all be together here soon. And I mean, right now you're pretty close to Colorado. So maybe you should just go to Colorado and just wait it out. I'm extremely close. I looked on like the delivery and the shipping and all this. I'm like, oh, I'm sure there's like a highway or something I could get on and drive through beautiful countryside that looks like this out here. And uh be all all of a sudden be in in colorado um it's really it's really getting close and we'll we'll be all chilling in denver and in in the big booth that i'm like covered in sawdust from today and uh yeah we'll actually we'll be there on the show floor and then we're having our home tech happy hour right so we're we're gonna have have that on Friday, September 8th,

the Rock Bottom Brewery. If you want to come to that, please do go to our website and sign up RSVP. Let us know you're coming. And if you want to sponsor, if you want to throw some money into the little bucket there for us to buy everybody drinks and all that stuff,

please do because we've actually had a couple of people do that. Tokyo Gym, we mentioned previously as one of couple of people do that. Tokyo Gym, who we mentioned previously, is one of the first people that signed up for it, came back and sponsored. And then another person who listens, Keith Lunsford, threw a little bit of money at us as well. So if you see those guys there at the Home Tech Happy Hour,

be sure to thank them for buying you a drink. And then we also had some hosts sponsor. So we've got GridConnect, PixelVault, Menlo Marketing, and ChowMain Software. We don't have all of the marketing stuff put together for them yet. Hopefully by the time the show's put up, we'll have all that on the website and a better idea what each one of these companies want us to talk about. But TJ, I think you know a little bit more about Pixel Vault and Menlo Marketing. Those two companies are kind of like teamed up for their sponsorship.

They're doing some kind of like a giveaway or something. Is that right? Yeah. So Pixel Vault is who does my website. Menlo Marketing is my advertising company. And I got to know them through various contacts in the industry. They are actually nice enough to give away a Vito Pro Pack, which if anybody knows anything about Vito, is like a $400 bag easily. So all you have to do is attend the event.

They will also be at the CD Expo. They're actually having a booth at 4106. So we'll have some more information about the giveaway. You do have to attend the happy hour in order to enter for that. And it's free to go to the happy hour. You don't have to pay any money to go. No, no. But if you do want to pay, if you do want to throw a few dollars, you should. I mean, but you don't have to. Yeah. But we all like money. So that's that's pretty awesome they're going to be doing one of those uh those giveaway or that giveaway during the event so yeah be sure to come for that because uh yeah that that's that's awesome and again you have to be

there uh having free drinks and then you might get a free backpack out of it which those those backpacks are honestly those are those are awesome so thanks to those guys um that that's awesome uh we will have that giveaway there. We'll have to get something to like capture everybody, like a ticket system or something where you capture everybody's name that's there so we can do the giveaway. Oh, I have raffle tickets. Raffle tickets. Don't you worry.

And name tags. I can bring everything. You can tell you're excited. Wow. So that's what happens when you run a meetup group as well. You just have these random things that don't really fit into normal life. that's awesome there we go we recovered uh but you know we still are looking for sponsors uh so and for you to rsvp and let us know you're coming for those two things uh if if you want to learn more about the home tech happy hour when it is where it is all that

good stuff home tech.fm happy hour has all the information there. Please do go and check that out. Sign up. Let us know you're coming and we'll see you there. We do have a couple of home tech headlines that popped up this week. What do you say we get started? Let's do it. All right.

Well, this was kind of news that's kind of the biggest news that's happened this week. A little awkward. It's going to be at cdia i think uh but an email was sent out to uh control for dealers regarding um some recent developments with uh control for or i guess the parent company snap one josh ai and ava which i think we've talked about ava in the i know we've talked about even the past because we use the remote that they made to have tj on the podcast at one point time. I think that's the one and only time that anybody has ever podcasted from a remote. So a very unique thing. But well, I'll just go ahead and read the email here. It says, Control4Partners, our records indicate that you

may have installed Josh AI products within a Control4 system. So we're reaching out to you. Snap1 has determined that Josh AI is in violation of SnapOne's intellectual property. Regrettably, despite SnapOne's attempt to work in good faith to resolve these matters, a substantial business conflict persists as Josh AI has brought to market a private labeled AVA remote that infringes upon our IP called the Josh remote. As a result, SnapOne filed a lawsuit today in federal court against both Josh AI and Ava. So it goes on to say, rest assured that, you know, they're dedicated to making sure that they have good relationships with their dealers and that they're hoping that all this could

be worked out, I guess. I don't know. But yeah, there is a big, long lawsuit that has been filed in the District Court of Utah on August 14th. It lists both Ava and Josh AI as the defendants. And Snap One, of course, is the litigant here in this case. Lots, lots, and lots. I mean, there's hundreds of pages to this thing. There's so much stuff in here

um but i guess kind of the to me i i read over most of it i'm not a lawyer but i i really don't quite understand why it's not two lawsuits like you have the ava thing that i can't i think we talked about and we've kind of like guessed about over the past you know a few what year or so that like control four had kind of like disallowed the their app from running on the ava remote because the founding the founder of ava remote uh is rafael oben oben heiser oben heiser i can't rafael for sure i don't know his last name sorry terrible with names yeah he started neo neo sold the control 4 for evidently 10 million dollars and then um yeah uh snap one bought control four and i don't know like they were working on control four's own internal neo remote for a while

uh after that was released i think uh rafael basically uh left control four or you know they put kind of just like amicably it sounded like it was an amicable parting of ways from this lawsuit at least uh and that there was a couple of restrictions on like basically after he left control for basically that he can't use intellectual property from control for okay that makes sense that's usually a smart thing that businesses do and say and then there was another like a consultation agreement that existed up until like march 31st 2021 and then when that ended and expired i guess later that year ava launched their remote so uh snap one is contending here in this case that um you know he

should not have been using using this intellectual and his knowledge. And during this period of time that he was under a contract or this consultation, I guess is what they call it, contract with SnapOne, he should not have been doing that. And he was in violation of that. So that's like one side of this, right? That's the messy Ava remote side that we've talked about. The other side is like the Josh AI side. And just because Josh, I guess, partnered with Ava to pre-install an app on their remote, it seems like they got wrapped up in all this mess. To me, I don't really know. But there's also with Control 4, I guess, some agreements. Josh AI, we talked about this in the past where Josh AI products were being distributed or shipped and sold through the SnapAV or SnapOne website, right? And I guess there's a distribution agreement in place there. And this lawsuit alleges that Josh AI was in constant violation of that. And I guess it sounds like from the filing that there was, they have, they said that there's repeated,

they had repeatedly tried to resolve that issue with them and it just they never could get them to resolve it and that that uh josh ai would basically move dealers over to selling direct and then gore sell products at a lower price than what they were buying it on the snap one website uh which you know as a distributor that i work for myself i can totally understand how snap one can be upset about something like that, especially if it's an agreement. So that will be interesting to see how that plays out. There's all sorts of like patents in there as well.

I mean, Control 4, geez, it looks like they have wrapped up, racked up over the years, a number of patents. And they claimed, you know, that the Ava Remote, and by extension, the Josh AI product and the Josh Core product are all in violation of a couple of patents that are throughout here. So this has all got to be negotiated. I'm not even gonna say litigated, it's gonna have to be negotiated out and probably go to settlement before it hits a jury trial. But Control 4 has filed this in federal court in Utah here in August, right before Cedia. It's kind of turned some heads and I see reactions all over the place online

between dealers saying, you know, snap one is in the wrong. And then you turn around and say, snap one's in the right. Like it's all over the place as far as reaction from dealers. So I guess we'll start with the dealer here, TJ. What do you think about this? What do you think about the obvious lawsuit that was coming? But like how, what do you also think about Josh AI getting wrapped up in this? Yeah, I mean, I kind of saw something happening because we originally we had, just like you said, we originally had the control for not working on the Ava remote. And everybody was like, well, well that was that's kind of weird and probably done for a specific reason um and then i would say almost as soon as

josh came out with the ava remote or the josh remote as they call it i think um snap av instantly dropped them it seemed like i don't know how long the actual delay was on that, but it was very noticeable. I went on the website and it's like, nope, we don't sell this anymore. And so you knew something was happening, but you didn't know what it was exactly. And so I'm not surprised at the same time.

We'll see how this actually ends. I think it'll just end with a settlement of some sort. Some money will exchange hands, everybody will walk away, and nobody's going to say anything else about it. It is awkward that it's right before Cedia, though. Yeah, I think it's all anybody's going to be talking about, at least up through Cedia, especially if you're in one of those two booths, or if you walk by the Josh AI booth and see it there. I don't know about Ava, if they're going to be at at sea it'll be interesting to know and find out already looked it up uh the josh ai and the ava boots are like right like two boots away from each other and the snap one booth is all the way down at the bottom towards the back

so it's so far away you won't be able to hear each other talking about each other but i mean we could start up some drama there while we can wear some t-shirts yeah i'll have to bring my ava remote to the show and see if i get an autograph i have to bring my neo remote and get it autographed too i'll bring my harmony remote don't do that i think i think richard will probably steal it from you yeah probably yeah i i don't know like um so gavin you've kind of seen these two companies from the outside kind of going and passing what do you think about this i just thought the remotes looked very similar right like well when i saw one company's remote and i saw the other i was like it's the same remote like you

instantly thought it was like the same people and you know it was just a matter of time to me you know i think they just probably waited till like the point where it was starting to make a bigger uh financial you know impact and then they were like okay let's start up this lawsuit you know but it was obviously coming yeah now that you say that because i couldn't i can't i couldn't figure out why they hadn't done the lawsuit before i mean i guess they have a period of time where they could they could file and make those claims because there's definitely enough wrapped up in this particular lawsuit about ava and the um trade secrets that they claim they they claim to have been stealing or stolen i mean they kind of go over in pretty fine detail about all the things that they, they think that have been utilized that are controlled for intellectual property. But what you talked about, um, the trade dress, which is basically, Hey, this thing is designed this way for a reason. It's a striking remote. It looks this way for a reason. We paid $10 million from your old company guy,

and all of a sudden you made a remote that looks exactly the same and fools most people thinking it's the same company. That's not cool. So I'm kind of surprised. Now, until you said that, I was kind of surprised that this isn't two remotes. But here may be the reason. Maybe they just thought AVA was just going to kind of like sink and go away. And then now that it's got some legs and some money behind it from the Josh AI company, investing, you know, not, well, maybe investing, but like, grabbing, being able to sell a number of these remotes. Maybe they just, they're like, oh, no, this is a bridge too far. It could have been this little remote kind of off to the side. We're not going to worry about, but now that it's basically targeting a company that clearly they already were having problems with anyway, like in a business side where they have been trying to figure out how to

work together as, you know, distributor partners. Maybe, maybe that was the case. And they are going after basically who has the money. Ava being a startup that probably doesn't have money and Josh AI being a fairly well-established startup at this point that does have money. So maybe it just comes down to that. And that's why the two litigants or the two defendants are listed together in this case. Yeah, that was my thought

because lawsuits are expensive, right? Lawyers are expensive. So it's got to be worth it to sue somebody. It's got to be hitting you financially. And it's probably starting, you know, I have a feeling they probably tried to settle it first, you know, organize it ahead of time, but it didn't work out. And now financially, it makes sense just to open the lawsuit. I mean, it didn't seem that way from the Ava side. They basically like here's how we're going to sell this you're just not going

to install the control 4 app on your remote and it's just not going to be a feature of this remote and then since control 4 is in at least the professional space that they're marketing to the largest player in the game right now and in the pro space it kind of starves the ava remote out of actually being a viable product uh product for a lot of dealers out there. So that's kind of, that's why I haven't seen it take off. And maybe they were just hoping that it would just kind of like fizzle and go away as a competitor. Because I mean, we're all kind of seeing that happen anyway, with remotes in general. A lot of the comments I was reading was like, what's a remote control? Or who uses remote controls anyway?

I use my Apple TV remote. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah well and i think too that josh has always been kind of a voice platform that has latched on to other products and not in a bad way or anything like that they've just been voice first but now they're like aiming themselves as like an actual automation platform and i think snap av is is noticing that and they're just they're just trying to get ahead of it now. Because, you know, if Snap, if Josh pushes more people to use them as a home automation platform, then that takes away customers from SnapAV. It makes sense.

But I've got to push back on that a little bit. If you go back and listen to any interview from Alex from like back in the day, he basically says, you know, we hope to be competing with Control 4 and Crestron, you know, by X amount of years. And I think that that day has come and gone, their business strategy may have changed, but it's always been a goal of that company to become a home automation platform that you could run by, you know, independently of everything else. And I still see like, I still see in it, what did you just say latching on to other companies or integrating with other companies, they're still doing that in this case here, even with the Ava remote, right?

They're using another company's remote basically to load their interface or their Josh AI app on it. So they can use the built-in microphone that we use for our podcast as an input into the Josh system. So it makes sense. If you look at this from a Josh AI perspective, like how they have run their business. And I mean, I can look at it simply and say, well, they probably just looked at it and said, here's a remote that we can install an app on

that has a microphone. Like it's just another interface into our system. And then like, oh, there's some dirty laundry here with the Snap One guys. They probably would have had to, I'm sure they knew about it. I don't think anybody was blind to what was going on there, but I don't know that I would have guessed that this lawsuit would have been filed with both Josh AI and Ava named as defendants. I didn't see that

coming even when they did announce the remote during their summer, Josh AI announced their remotes and ambitions during the summer announcement. Somebody else was saying there's a there was a josh a touchscreen or something that they saw an announcement and it kind of like came and went as well so yeah i don't know what's going on with that but there could be a touch it's just a wall mounted ava that's right it's just sideways oh man well that's the drama uh that's happening in the custom install industry right now there's there's which doesn't really happen very often there's not really drama that's happening in the custom install industry right now. Which doesn't really happen very often. There's not really drama that goes on. It's been a while.

It used to be Lutron was suing everybody. They sued Control 4. Control 4 used to have some really inexpensive Zigbee numbers, what we would consider normal priced. And then they all went up $30 a couple of years later. And Lutron said, oh, yeah, we settled that lawsuit with Control 4. Congratulations. Everything's more expensive for you now.

And that could be what happens here. You know, give it three or four years. The lawyers will go back and forth and talk. And I doubt this is going to get to, it would be very messy, I think, for everybody involved for this to go to trial, for emails and communications to get released and that kind of thing. Nobody wants to see any of that. Yeah, that's what I think too. I think it'll quickly get settled, maybe even by the end of the year.

No, I don't think it's an end of the year thing. I mean, it would be great if it did. I know there was a guy's posting on Facebook. They were like, I have two $10 million houses that are trimming and this is not the news I want to hear. So, and Josh, yeah, it's top end of the market. million dollar houses that are trimming and and this is not the news i want to hear so i am and josh yeah is top end of the market they're not they they were not targeting um gavin's house wait a minute wait a minute what are you trying to say here what are you trying to

now you got me looking at my house and thinking you know like geez i thought i was doing all right they're not they're they're their target market is none of our houses yeah yeah i'm a fan of josh i'm a fan i like to see what they're doing you know even though it's not i'm not their market i like to see what they're doing because it gives me ideas too you know uh to put in my house but um i just hope this doesn't slow them down yeah i think that's what everybody's thinking because um they have been one of the more innovative companies over the last couple of years where everyone else was like, yeah, we're working on this, this, and this. They're pushing the boundaries on what you could do with voice, which was kind of like outside the reach of, I would say, literally everyone. Like, there's not a pro install.

I mean, heck, there's home assistants barely getting started with it so they were very ahead of the curve in making this possible i think there was one other like assistant out there it was a kickstarter for a while and i think i just i remember they went bankrupt the other day something went wrong and they went bankrupt so they definitely have been the most lasting and innovative voice control product on the market um so i i like you said i hope it doesn't slow them down and making advances because they they activated the josh gbt language model thing i mean i looked at that the other day it's like a uh to enable it on an install you just go in and like click off a button.

It says, check, enable this. And you say, okay. And now you have access to all those crazy, you know, you can ask it anything. Ask me to ask it for recipes, you know, that have chicken and pasta or something. And it'll tell you, which is really cool. But this kind of lawsuit could slow them down, at least move their resources off of product development and that kind of thing over towards the lawyers, which everybody loves. So it's probably not going to slow them down as much as the CDL website. Whoever's working on this website, it's making my computer go to a crawl.

I'm just trying to look up an exhibitor like deuce, like it's 2023. Okay, that's the end of my rant. Infocom did a better job with their floor map because you could click on it anywhere and move it and then the cda one if you don't click in the aisle to move the map it brings you to whatever booth you just clicked on it's like oh man oh i realized when you zoom in on the map it's wherever your mouse is pointing it'll start to zoom to that point took me a while to figure that out because it was so slow to load like this it's this is bad it's awful yeah yeah i should i should probably register for cd i don't

even think i've registered yet oh i gave you guys a link told me give me a pass seth yeah seth told me i gave you guys a pass it's in the hub or something i'll i'll post the link back in there okay okay dig it up i just booked so you better give me that pass yeah gavin is for sure going we got confirmation over the week he's going so you guys were doubting it for a while weren't you it's kind of nervous there i didn't know what was going to happen you're just lucky i had enough points on my visa card i was booking everything like months ago and you two are like now i'll wait till the day of i did book my flight at least so which is usually the opposite usually i wait till the last second, but this one I was like, everything's going to be booked up if I don't do it now.

You're the responsible one, TJ. That's what I've learned. So proud of you. Yeah, this time. All right, let's move on from this and move on to more happier topics and talk about some home technology stuff. Lawsuits are happy.

Yeah, lawsuits. Anyway, I think we talked about this probably like a year or two ago, right? The Masonite Empower smart door is now available at Home Depot for tech enthusiasts who are ready to invest in their front door. It has a starting price of $4,000. This smart door integrates with the Yelp lock, the Ring Video doorbell, and it's all powered by home electronics. And it doesn't have, like, battery. I think it has a battery backup on it and everything.

We talked about this years ago, and we were like, this is never coming to market. And then, I don't know, here it is, $4,000 later. You can have one. It has been used in new construction homes since 2022, I guess, and is UL certified now. So now it's available off the shelf you go to home depot buy an empower masonite smart door dj you got the new house you want you want one of these

uh no and i was i was wondering how they were getting power there it looks like they are using one of those it looks like a commercial uh this one's not a power transfer hinge but something else um so you definitely have a power supply somewhere in the house. So it's a matter of getting power to that door, which if you have an unfinished basement, probably isn't that hard. If you have a finished basement, you're probably going to have difficulty installing this door. Yeah. So I'd imagine this is only for new construction, but everything on the door looks like it's

just off the shelf shelf which is kind of confusing so i guess it makes it nice because if you need to replace anything then you should be able to but it's just weird to see like a regular yell lock and a ring doorbell installed on this door yeah and it's not it's not in the trim it is on the door the ring doorbell is on the door and it's like this weird plate and everything i guess guess. But I don't know. It's just weird. It just looks so normal. Something that you could have done yourself, right? And just thrown up there.

Like, I don't think, I don't see much special about it. And I also feel it needs like one more device to justify that price tag. You know, you're like, oh, you got a lock. You got the doorbell. That's it. No, it's got some lights. There's lights. Yeah, that's why they threw the lights in there. And that light on the top of the door frame where it looks like they just added that after the fact.

It probably needs a smart blind in there. Let's get everything in this one door. Like you have a little window and it has a tilting smart blind in there. That would have been cool. Smart tint instead of a blind. Or even better. There you go. You see, there's so much more they could have done to justify the four thousand dollars and when i convert that to canadian that's probably

like six thousand no way like yeah so you're not even an installation for this so you're probably at like six thousand dollars for installation and everything i hate to break it to you guys but four thousand dollars is the base price it goes north of seven thousand if you get all the options oh my gosh stop what are all the options what do you get for seven thousand no we gotta go bigger you know i don't know go to home depot and let's price one out all right let's see all right oh now we're all gonna do this live i know right so we're just gonna stop the show oh i guess you can get uh the side lights on each side so that's one thing the size of the door might matter. The color, the finish.

Oh, you can do it with windows or without windows. All right. There's a lot of options here, I think. I think that you can get. Man, there's a lot of colors too. Maybe if I went to homedepot.com, it would give me the right one. Yeah, you don't get it in Canada. Mine's still at $4,000.

So I really don't know how they're getting. Oh, I see. So if you do it with the two side lights, you can get to $7,000. Oh my God. Side lights are that much these days? Yeah, it looks like it. How do you get side? I can't even see side lights on here. It's the little window, little side windows on the side.

Ah, that's how. And it's painted to match the door. So that makes sense then. Those are always more expensive. So it's the same hardware and everything though. I'm kind of glad they didn't make it like a proprietary hardware so that hopefully in like four years when your doorbell stops working you don't have to like replace your door well that's yeah and that's what they say that you know it's kind of like not like future-proofed but at least that the the products and everything

in here won't be junk yeah they can they can be swapped out later on like it's not you're not stuck into they'll definitely make a blank plate for this ring doorbell at some point though the door lock you shouldn't have any problems with the doorbell at some point though you're gonna have problems with like replacing them with a new one yeah yeah there may be like a cover kit or something like that so it's neat maybe there'll be a cds so i can see how it feels i gotta i gotta test drive it before i spend four thousand dollars on a door they need like a They need like a smart doggy door on this too, you know? Give us like something like that. Gavin, why are you trying to make this door more expensive?

I know, right? I'm at the $7,000 price range now and I don't see what the $7,000... It looks like a normal door with some lights and a lock. Yeah, you get two windows on the side. That's what you get for $7,000. Yeah, those are some... They're not even smart windows. One step at a gavin is it matter compatible no because it's ring well if uh if anybody out there does have one of these smart doors and likes it let us know

i'm kind of curious i'm not gonna get one of these things although we've been talking about replacing our front door for a while and and I have a wire there already. Oh. I mean, if you replaced your entire front door, right, you could actually retrofit this in. Like, the wire, getting a wire in at that point is not a big deal. And I have a wire there for a security contact. Get your own hinge. You could buy the hinge yourself, right, and put that on and run the power through that and through the door and power whatever you want off of that, right?

I forget what this specific one is called, but you're basically looking for a power transfer hinge, which has the wiring built into it so it doesn't rub away and stuff. Well, where there's a will, there's a way. Where there's a will, there's a Masonite M Power Smart Door. For $7,000. Only $4,000.

If you want the basic door. I don't want the basic door. I want the fancy door. And it comes in a wide array of colors, guys mean i think we're glossing over this i mean you can get it in humorous green or jamaica bay maybe i don't know what that one is but or tricorn black i feel like any perspective on this too because i also don't know how much i mean i'm assuming that a new front door for my house would only be a few hundred dollars. I've never actually bought a new front door for my house.

So I started looking at them because our doors in our house are really awful. And if you're close to them, you can feel the heat coming in through them. Oh, yeah. And so I've been pricing out doors and a good front door. And I'm not bougie. So if you listen to this and you're like, that's way more than that. It's not uh you can buy a decent front door like insulated and all that good stuff with windows or blinds or whatever for 500 to a thousand dollars and then depending on who you talk to it's like 500 to a thousand dollars to install it okay so for this one door for this one door i could

replace all three of my exterior doors and my interior doors with non-smart versions obviously but and get a dog door yeah and i could get a dog door at the same time there you go thanks menards uh well uh let's just add that to our list of things that you're gonna have to buy that you paid for on the show i guess and yeah i think you're gonna have to get that one door though like it's just it just makes sense now I mean, you could just read the reviews, actually. They've already got eight reviews, and they're all five stars. So either it's a really good door or it's fake. All right, let's move on here.

We've got an interesting new product here that, I don't know, you guys remember that old Chromecast audio device? Little audio product you could just shoot music to, and it would just start playing well there's a new product products that they killed for some reason well that's just literally like google domains is gone now i think it makes no sense um this is called a wem pro or whim pro i'm not even sure how to pronounce this but it's a new product that has a bunch of the same features that the Chromecast audio had, but also has a couple of new things.

It's a $140, $150 price tag. It's a little bit steeper than the Chromecast, but it may be worth it with the added capabilities. So it's got better DAC. It's got an analog input and an operational amp inside of it. It supports AirPlay 2, Alexa casting, Spotify Connect, and a couple more things. I don't know. It seems like an interesting little product that people are saying, oh, it's going to compete with Sonos or whatever.

But Sonos has an entire ecosystem with soundbars and stuff too. So I don't really see this going head-to-head with Sonos. But I don't know, for the right person, $150 150 little streamy box it could be a good option for you yeah i've been seeing people mention this as a as an alternative um it seems like a really good streaming device itself but yeah the taking on the sonos thing isn't going to happen unless they release a bunch of speakers the reason people use sonos is because you can buy a Sonos port, or a Sonos amp or a Sonos soundbar or a wireless speaker or whatever it is. And these little devices are super handy, especially this one because it's got Airplay

and Chromecast and everything else built into it. So if you are looking just for like a one off solution, or you want to add Airplay to something or Chromecast audio, this is a good idea. But if you want whole house audio and where maybe or chromecast audio this is a good idea but if you want whole house audio and where maybe this isn't going to fit in then you probably are best to stick with sonos yeah i mean i think they mentioned it because it's like half the price and it's got a bunch of extra features that the sonos port doesn't have is that right no i'll chromecast chromecast audio for one and this outputs to another device right like is that how it works yeah yeah so you connect it to

like an amp or whatever yeah and that's one of the reasons i went with um sonos for my setup was especially with airplay 2 when i had those little boxes set up on speakers but the problem is you always have to leave the speakers on and the amp turned up and stuff like that when you just want to air you know airplay to a random room around the house right with sonos the speakers i wouldn't say they're on but they turn on by themselves and their volumes are set to whatever you set it as soon as you start to airplay and i like that i don't have to worry about turning them off or anything i just stop airplaying um and this little box will just add that you know again you have to plug it in have an external source and it's got you have to have

the volume turned up or turn it on whenever you want to airplay. I don't have to worry about that. So that's kind of why I stick with Sonos in a way. Yeah, yeah, they make it easy. I mean, they just make it easy. And it's, like I said, it's included within the ecosystem. I guess this one, the Wii M Pro is actually $219. There is a Wii M standard box, I guess. No, I think it's just

comparing it's $140 more than the Chromecast. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. So it's $219, not 149. When Google killed the Chromecast audio, I was so confused because they still sell the regular Chromecast. So, I mean, I don't know how many they actually sold, but I remember whenever they stopped selling it, there were so many people upset and they were buying them all off eBay and everything else because it was $35 and you just plugged it into the power, plugged it into your audio port, and you were good to go. Yeah. It seems like there's definitely a market for that kind of thing out there, especially at that price point. It makes a lot of sense. At $219, though, I can see them having... I mean, they're competing with people that were used to paying that 39,

$40, $50 for a streaming device. I don't know that they're going to like get many of those customers to move over to a hundred and paying $150. Like at, at 30, 40, $50,

it's kind of a no brainer thing. Cause you could, you could outfit a bunch of them, right? Like you could, you could grab a, like three or four of of them put them throughout the house a little amplifiers on them and you have music in those rooms now you're paying 150 per zone i don't know that's that's a big ask for some people yeah that's what people are doing they were buying you know for

example on the like home assistant the smart home subreddits and stuff like that people would you know uh suggest you buy the mono price what was the six channel amplifier i think for like three or four hundred bucks it was dirt cheap for what it was and then you basically just get six of these chromecast audios and you have separate zones for under a thousand bucks a little sono system set up yeah yeah so that it makes sense for that but like i said if you need a soundbar or anything else it makes sense just stick with sonos they are the best at whole house audio unfortunately you're paying you're gonna be paying thirteen hundred dollars for six of these uh yeah it's it's it's gonna be it's gonna be more than that

they're like i think the sonos ports are 449 now so if you need six of them then you're paying oh yeah no no i mean for for these little guys, the WIM things. Yeah, $1,300. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bigger ask than a $50 device or a $30 device. All right, well, that's an interesting product to hit the market. It does sound like it has a bunch more features and a better DAC built in, a digital audio converter. It looks like this has digital optical and digital coax as well, and Ethernet.

So it's got the ports that I like to see on devices. And if I was in the market for a streamer, this might be a pretty good, if I didn't already have Sonos, this might be a pretty good place to start and pick one up. Let's move on here and take a look at who's mattering this week. And I guess SwitchBot, we're going to give it to you. Because they have been upgrading a couple of things. You can get a couple more, like six more devices now integrated with Matter in the new upgraded Hub 2,

thanks to SwitchBot. I think we talked about this a couple of weeks back, but people are getting really excited about it. Cause they keep adding on device support for it, which is what they should do. Get the hub to support, do your matter upgrade thing. And then now you can get all sorts of fun stuff installed.

We'll put a link to the show notes into this, uh, this story here, uh, about it, but, uh, congratulations,

which bot we're, we're giving it to you again. We may have given you two for the same thing before, you know matter matter news gets slow uh this week now that now that uh the internet of things podcast is basically thrown in the towel because of matter i think uh you know you you you killed them matter thanks guys uh we're we're gonna have we struggle some weeks to find matter news now and uh you know gotta hand we got all these wards to hand out every week matter is supposed to be bringing people together and it's over here tearing people apart i know i know i really like the iot podcast too

like i really liked i really like the interaction between stacy and kevin kevin was just kind of kevin's like a programmer uh or uh like a new newer programmer Like he's moved from being like a consultant into like the programming role. And so like enjoyed that journey of listening to him kind of like learn and go to school and all that stuff. And then Stacy goes out and tortures her family with all these IOT devices. I totally enjoy hearing those stories. So I'm going to really miss that. The interactions those two came up with every week.

That was always my favorite part of their show was hearing how badly she would torture, especially Stacey. She would definitely get in devices that I would not touch with a 10-foot pole and force them on her family for a bit. And then get mad at them because they didn't work the way they were supposed to. But I don't know. Like, some of the stuff that they got involved with, I would not have, definitely not have touched. I listen to it every week. I'm a fan of that podcast. And, yeah, it was sad to hear they're leaving.

I always liked how they took a viewer question every week, and they would give you, like, four options as to what you could do. And I almost feel like sometimes a viewer had too many options after that. Had too many options after that. They were still in the same position, you know, but, you know, it was great that they were helping. And it just kind of showed the way the IoT space is, is there's, you know, 10 different ways to solve your problem and none of them are right.

And it's just what works for you. Yeah, that's true. That's true. We should pick up the mantle there and say, and what we can do is like, just give, we'll give two ways. Like we can, well, three ways. We'll give the Gavin way, which probably will be home assistant.

We'll give TJ's way, which could be a mix of home assistant or some pro way. And then we'll do my way, which I will just go over the price, over the top pricing. Like I'll just do the most expensive way every time. we should do that. So if you've got a question about how you can do something and you have like, a setup, we'll replace that segment. We'll do that for free for our listeners out there. And if you're coming from the IoT podcast, and you wanted to figure out, you know, you had a question to ask, just email us feedback at home tech.fm. Yeah,

email us and we'll answer that question three ways and you'll have your choice i'm so relieved i thought you were going to suggest when you said take over for them i thought you were going to suggest that we were going to start a podcast and i don't think i want to start a podcast yeah i totally agree it's just too much pressure exactly exactly all right well we'll just we'll just move on from that. No more podcast. Well, we did know that once Kevin went to Home Assistant, it was over for them. That's true. I mean, what else do you have to search for at that point? I know.

He found what he was looking for, and he didn't want to talk about anything after that. Yeah. Well, the problem is he's going to spend all his time messing around and updating his Home Assistant and changing dashboards. He won't have any more time to do a podcast. Exactly. We'll get to it in projects when I talk about what I did this last week, which I thought was absolutely absurd and I did it.

But yeah, we'll get to it in projects. So anyway, well, let's move on here. Congratulations, Switchbot. You matter, matter. You broke the internet of things podcast. Thanks a lot. And let's move on. All the links and topics we discussed tonight which bought you matter matter you broke the internet of things podcast thanks a lot and uh let's move on all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show

notes at hometech.fm slash 448 we do have something in the mailbox this week uh we got a little bit of feedback from a friend of the show greg r in the hub he said i think you missed a use case this is a couple weeks back i think you missed a use case on the wise battery camera power back. I think you missed a use case on the Wyze battery camera. Power outages. I didn't even think about that. And he said, that's why I would get it. Yeah, if you have these little powered Wyze cameras plugged in around your house and the power goes out, they take time to reboot. They, like, shut down.

And then they take time to reboot and something happens, you miss it. So that's a great use case. I like it. But if your power is out for more than a day you're in trouble yeah it was the same no that had like six months no no if you're 24 7 though yeah yeah if you're 24 7 it's only it's only uh 24 hours that's it for the battery but if you could recharge it with the battery backup or you can have multiple batteries there's ways around it right what if what if you plugged it into a ups you know you had the battery

back up plus the ups and i mean how many months could you get out after that like that would be that'd be a long time this is like a poe camera system with more work essentially yeah yeah but uh that's a that's a great use case i didn't think about it at all but it makes a lot of sense like just uh so the device doesn't have to like power down boot back up and, and you miss like whatever, 30, 45 seconds a minute. Like I don't know how long they take, but you miss that amount of time of what may have happened. And yeah, power outage. Good idea. I totally missed on that.

So we do have a pick of the week this week, and this was published in the Hub as well. This is On Point Cable Management. And it's got a lady sitting at her desk. And the caption above it says, when your cable management and the the it's got a lady sitting at her desk and the caption above it says when your cable management is perfect and man there the cable management here is absolutely perfect there there is not a cable to be seen in this picture it's great not even not even a mouse or keyboard no no there's perfect it looks like she's using that though the lamp isn't even plugged in so the lamp they yeah it is basically a desk with a computer an open desk like a corner desk but they don't have it in the corner they have it stick out in the room

and then there's a computer a monitor she's clearly sitting at it looking at the computer like the the computer screen using it working and the desk is all clean and there's no wires to be seen at all like it's just no wires at all so every cable that they can connect to the monitor yeah yeah every cable that they could remove to the monitor yeah yeah every cable that they could remove they removed and except the lamp cable we we figured that one they they i was like oh there's a lamp there i wonder how they plug that in nope they didn't even bother they just wrapped up the cable set it on the desk and said here you go so i i love these stock images or these these marketing images where it's like we're selling this desk clearly but this is not how

people use desks you know to be fair she kind of has this why is this not working look on her face you know i think i know why yeah i said he's he connected it all what the heck oh man i think one of my other favorite parts about this is the uh little wheel mechanism thing for the computer just in case you want to take it on a drive, you know? You can just roll it around. It probably has a little string attached to it so your five-year-old can drag it around the house. I mean, that's what I normally do.

I move my computer all around and stuff. It's untethered. Oh, man. Well, we'll put this in the show notes. Check it out. It's quite funny. It's all the marketing images gone completely wrong. So, all right.

Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm

slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Well, we've got a couple of project updates. TJ, why don't you go first? Because I can kind of tag along with this

all right so this week uh i had a couple problems that i wanted to solve and one of them is kind of interesting it's a little life uh hack for you guys that maybe install a lot of things maybe you just have silicone laying around whatever um but those little toothpaste squeezers that you can buy off like Amazon or Walmart or pretty much any store I'm assuming, you basically put the toothpaste into this little roller, and then you twist it and it you know, squeezes all the toothpaste out. So that way, there's nothing left behind. And it leaves the toothpaste roll super flat. I bought some of those when we bought our new house because I was tired of you know, constantly squeezing the

toothpaste so hard. I mean, you're trying to get all those little pieces out of there and everything, all that toothpaste. It's just difficult. And so I bought some for the house and I started using it and I was like, this is great. Why did I not buy one of these before? And then one night I'm brushing my teeth and I looked at that thing and I was like, why am I not using this for my silicone? And so I ordered like four of them and I put them on all my silicone. I have one on, you know, I have like probably 12 different

silicones open at any specific time. Um, so I, I, I put it on the end of it and I started using it and I was like, this is genius. So we'll have a picture of that in the, in the show notes, because if you use a lot of silicone, I think this is a good idea for you to invest in. And it was like $13 for two of them. You know what else is $13? What else is $13, Seth? The domain TJsCockSqueezer.com. I say you go for it. And that way in a year or two, when you forget about it, you're like, why do I have this domain? Oh, I know why i have the domain oh man it's a good idea um i i uh i i never even thought about using those two things together but yeah that makes a lot of sense usually i i end up using

the the tube thing and then forgetting about it and then it it it's it's a problem because it usually i forget about it and then it dries out and i don't i don't get to use the rest of the tube that's my problem too so this like i think this is helping me a little bit because it makes it a little heavier and bulkier and so i like notice it i'm like oh and my problem is i when i buy stuff like this i buy it in like bulk so i buy like six or twelve at a time and so that way i don't have to like worry about it for a while and but i never know which one is actually open and so what i do is i'm usually in a rush and i go out to my my van i open my drawer that has all my stuff in it and then i just grab a random one and then i open another one but this

one it's like oh well the the silver thing's on there so that's the one i should probably use which is not a good excuse for laziness but it's it's my excuse and i'm i'm fully owning it live on on the air i really i really i'm glad you used the uh i grabbed a random you know noun like the the noun that you picked was one and not clock because like i i mean this is just the show title is going to write itself this week i think so well you're welcome well the next thing i want to talk about is that i am finally ditching What? So all my life, all my life, I have used Windows computers. I've never looked at Macs. I've randomly had Macs.

But I've just got, I don't know, I want something different. And Windows 11 just sucked enough for me that I was like, I'm going to look at something else. And so I got a MacBook Air. I got the 15-inch one. And I really like it. I use it pretty much every day to do all my work, but I need a desktop computer, but I don't want to use my giant gaming computer that I built during COVID or right before COVID and I've upgraded over the years.

And I just, I don't need it anymore. I'm not playing computer games anymore. And so having this giant thing sitting underneath my desk, taking up all my power is not something i care for anymore and so i'm selling the gaming computer this week wow buying a mac mini i do like the mac mini you should wait though because there's a mac mini 3 or whatever the m3 may be coming out yeah the m3 is supposedly going to come out which i'm fine with waiting i think it'll come out in like or at least it'll be announced in what mid-september i think um and i'm not gonna buy it till after i get back from cd anyway and i don't get back from cd until like the 10th yeah so i have plenty of time i'm waiting on some gift cards to come in from rewards

exchange for credit cards so i think i'll pay like two hundred dollars out of pocket for like even a high-end mac mini well and i don't need the max studio i mean i'm not gonna spend three thousand dollars on a desktop but no no that's i think there's special use cases for that and the m1 m2 and probably the m3 mac minis are i mean i have the m i think this is the m1 max laptop like i i don't touch the Max part of this. Like it's so fast. I barely use it. If I was compiling stuff for like making Mac apps

and stuff like that every day, then yes. But this thing just doesn't, it doesn't even blink at whatever I throw it at. It's ridiculous. I did turn my Mac Pro back on the other day or before I left and it fired up. And for an Intel computer, it fired up and it, for an Intel computer, I'm like,

man, this thing runs really fast. I really like this, but it's just as fast as like, it was at what? 10,000, 6,000, six to $10,000 computer,

depending on like whatever options you get. It should be, it should be fast though. It should be fast. Yeah. Yeah. This computer was not that. And,

um, yeah. So yeah. And originally I was gonna, I bought like a couple different docs so the the macbook air is uh software limited to only use one external display if you buy a display link certified dock and you install some random company's software you can use multiple displays with it with the dock um but by the time you buy like a $200 dock

and then you buy all the cables for it and everything like that you're like $300 already just to connect two monitors and so like that was my thing is like i'm gonna spend $300 just to bring my laptop in to connect my computer and i can buy like a $500 mac mini yeah so i'll probably just do that instead no i'm not gonna buy the base mac mini because i need something a little more but like that's the price difference between by the time you add multiple monitors to this computer and everything it's interesting i see people go both ways on that i have been forcing myself to live the what do they call it the laptop desktop life for doc life yeah i guess it's a doc life it's it's not as fun I can tell you that. Yeah, it's just more hassle. Like I don't want to have to worry about getting my laptop from my van or, you know, whatever.

I just wanted to sit down and use my computer. Right. And they have like a sync thing that you can turn on. I haven't used Macs. I have some external software I use for sync for years. And it's like it works really well for syncing all the files i needed to sync between all my computers at the same time so yeah i i use that and i haven't i've been able to like go from my laptop to my as long as i'm online when i i turn it off and i usually am uh i can go from my laptop to my desktop computer and have the same file so it syncs it almost immediately

uh and i think mac has something similar for for now between their desktops and everything. So yeah. And the last thing I want to talk about this week is I did a terrible thing, guys. I bought Ring products to install my house. I bought four Ring solar lights, the little wall mounted lights. I think they're $59..99 each you have to have their little hub for 20 or 30 bucks or whatever it is um i mainly got them because they're our backyard is very dark um we have a a backyard light it's literally on the house and it it works but it

doesn't light up the backyard the fence line and stuff like that and when we first moved in i noticed that some animals were running across there um mainly like a skunk and i don't know about you but i don't want to run across the skunk in the middle of the night and so i was thinking about ways i could add lights without like tearing up my yard because next year we're going to do some landscaping projects but i don't want to invest a thousand dollars in the landscape lights right now and so i was looking around i, well, somebody's got to make a good solar light. And I know those little solar lights you buy from Home Depot for five shells really aren't good and they don't last long. And I wanted internet connection stuff,

so that way I can turn them on and off whenever I wanted. And so I bought these ring wall-mounted solar lights, and so far they are great. They have motion detectors built into them them so they can turn on automatically. You can set it up on a light schedule. You can turn them on manually. If you have ring cameras, you can connect them to those, which I don't have. The most annoying thing to me so far, though,

is that you can manually turn the lights on for a pre preset time and so it's like 1 3 5 10 and 15 minutes or something like that but that's it you can't just like leave them on however if you go through and set up a light schedule to turn them on between certain amount of time you can leave them on as long as you want to so like that's kind of annoying to me because i can't just go turn them on like they maximum 15 minutes um but not the end of the world because i i just have them come on every night now and it's not a big deal um i did get them integrated into home assistant home assistant integrated with everything uh so i'm using the MyQTTT whatever integration with another MyQTTTTT ring integration. Yeah, whatever it is.

And I can turn on all the ring lights from Home Assistant. I can control the motions and stuff like that. So if a motion gets triggered by one of the wall lights, I can have it do something else. There is a native ring integration with Home Assistant that uses the cloud, obviously, but it doesn't expose lights unless they're linked up to a ring camera. And so if you want this functionality, you have to do the MyQ TTTT integration in order to do that. But so far, so good so good i mean they've they've been charging up during the day i don't use that much power and most of the time they're set to 50 brightness that's how bright they are from for my backyard so i've been very happy with

them so far yeah i bought those not too long ago they have they have worked well um i will say the ones on the side of my house, which to be fair, don't get that much sunlight. Although one of them gets a lot of sunlight all day. The other one is kind of under a tree, um, that I, you know, can't control, but it's under a tree. They're marked the one of the one that's on the tree is up like on the roof line of the house, I guess. And so it should get sun. But anyway, those run like the battery runs really low on them all the time. I've never seen it charged fully. I've never seen any of them charge fully, actually.

So I'm like looking at them now. They have like 22% battery and it's nighttime. So I don't know. But I haven't ever walked outside and had them not turn on, I guess. Except the other day when you told me you did this and I said, oh, that's really cool. Let me try and do it. And I went outside and I pulled it off the fence. I'm like, wait a minute minute this stupid thing didn't turn on

and I basically had to you know pull the batteries to reset it so uh I did get it back on I did get it integrated like you did and this is my my this is all that I did for home assistant and I basically broke all the um the uh motion detection things that I had set up so now I've got to go figure that out through home assistant but I I do like the options that you have. You have a little bit more options in Home Assistant, I guess, than you do in the Ring app. And it makes a little more sense to me than the Ring app. Although, I don't know. I'm not sure which way I'll go. But I'll agree with you that these products that they made have been actually pretty good products. They're not terrible. And the price isn't bad. Like you get little,

these little solar lights, you plug them in, you get the little base station. It's very cheap. Toss them in. They work. So, um,

I've been very happy with them as well. Yeah. I've been thinking about picking up some of the path lights. Actually. I think those are like 50 bucks each, but I don't know about that yet. I have two of those by the driveway. I don't know that they're any better.

They just look different. Yeah. Just a different form factor. I guess while I'm on home assistant integrations, while I was doing this, I was like, I don't know, for whatever reason, I was like, I wonder if I can integrate my power company with this. So, yeah, I have my, somebody somehow wrote an integration with no API, of course, to the florida power and light so i can

like download my bill my utility bill and put it on my dashboard and home assistant why i have no idea why but i can so i did it that actually that actually reminds me seth and i apologize for taking more time here but i actually got my power monitoring installed this past week for home assistant as well oh nice so i got the i got the emporia view 2 installed and it's probably the most affordable energy monitoring solution for like 16 sensors and a little base station thing it's uh like 180 bucks in u.s freedom dollars wow and so it's dirt cheap um it uses the cloud and if you tie it into home assist and i think you only get one minute interval updates um which kind of sucks but it is hackable and you can put esp home onto it

and then you get real time monitoring with it and so that's my plan eventually whenever that happens but for now i can see all my energy and water consumption in Home Assistant now. So that's pretty cool. Nice. I had the electrician install it so that way I don't have to worry about hurting myself. If you put ESP Home on it, does that keep the cloud integration or is it now local? Yeah, I think it's local only at that point. It writes over their stuff. So that's my plan if and whenever I have more time to do that.

Awesome. Well, Gavin, what about you? You got a couple of things here. What have you been up to? You know, lately I've been playing around with my shutters, you know, trying to automate my shutters and stuff. I mentioned this a few shows ago. But one thing I saw, I kept popping up on my feeds because I guess the A-lady heard me say shutters and automation and in the advertisements on my various social media feeds i saw the two-year plantation shutters you know and i was like i looked at it and i was

like you know what let me buy one let me just see what this is about right so i picked one up it came from china it took about three weeks to get here. And yeah, I kind of regret getting it. So it works. It's kind of like it runs off RF, but then you have a little adapter that then reads that and translates it and sends a signal and converts it into ZigBee. So, you know, I was able to add it to Home Assistant, et cetera, et cetera. And it kind of sits along the side. It has a little pin sticking out and that goes up and down and flips the shutters open or close, you know, like it does what it is, but you don't have things like you lose manual control of these shutters. Like you can't open them or close them by hand at that

point. Cause it's, it's like, it's just stuck in position. Right. Um, it it's, it's all right. It has solar powered. I mean, for what it is, it opens, it closes and that's all right it has solar powered i mean for what it is it opens it closes and that's pretty much it but what i've been doing i'm still working on my my little own personal project with my 3d printer is i've been designing the my own version of an adapter for the switchbot blinds um to convert it into a shutter controller and i now have working prototypes i actually have it in production now on one of my shutters because I only have one. But, you know, the bonuses are I was able to design it in a way that you still have control over the shutter manually. I can go up to it and open and close it with my hands. You know, I was able to design it in a way that

it attaches to bolt shutters. So on one shutter, I have two sets, right? So now you can mount this and it actually will control both sets, right? So I only need one device for one full shutter instead of having to buy two devices for one full shutter to control each set. So now that it's working, I'm making tweaks to it, trying to tighten it up, adjusting gear ratios and stuff like that. You know, it starts off as a simple project. And the next thing you know, you become a gear expert, you know. So it's been a fun learning project. But I can walk into like my dining room and double click up or down on the light switch

and it opens or closes the shutters if I want. Or I could tell the A-Lady to do it. Or I also have it automated. So, you know, certain times of the day it will open or close or based on light, it will open these shutters on this side of the house and close the ones on the other side of the house. That's my eventual goal, because certain times of the day in my backyard, the backside of my house gets a lot warmer. So, if I close all the shutters back there, it stays cool. But then, you know, later on in the day, I can open up the back ones and I close the front ones, and then that stays cool. that's eventually my goal um but it's gonna take me a while to get there but

it's been a fun project and i'm loving the 3d printer and playing around with it and designing it all in tinkercad yeah everything is going to be everything everything from now on is going to be 3d printed i see that you found a cock squeezer for the 3d printer yeah it's amazing everything like that you can find 3d printed like you have um you know ikea shelves what are they called the lack tables or whatever they call it like that you can find little adapters that all strengthen the legs on them you just 3d print them you draw them in it strengthens the leg and now it becomes a more solid table anything you can think of somebody's 3d printing it it's amazing yeah 3d printers are great i'm not i'm not going there i'm not getting involved nope nope you should get one no do not

get one set not want no i don't i don't need another printer in my life it's not it's not gonna happen i have three at my house it become it became even more fun when i got into the tinkercad side of things because now i can actually design my own things instead of taking you know looking for looking for somebody to do it. If a part breaks, I can actually measure it out, have the calipers and everything, measure it out. And I know how to design it in Tinkercad and then print it out. And I have different filaments now. So I have PLA, I have PETG, so I could get, you know, it's become a little expensive, but I've used probably one roll and just printing, you know, prototypes for my shutters, you know. But once it's done, I'm going to use another roll, probably just printing all the rest of the shutters out.

Like, if you have the time, it's been like a little side project for me, so I do it in my spare time. And it's been really, really, like, entertaining. Yeah, I mean, well, all of your 3d printing projects have been entertaining to listen to like this and the grass i think i think you've kind of you what you've got to figure out is something that you can 3d print for the the moisture monitoring things i think there's got to be something you can 3d print for those you gotta print a cap for the light yeah the grass light cap yeah yeah the grass thing has been amazing it's it's been really amazing because it saved me so much water.

And I just got a notification that it automatically scheduled for the morning now. Just the one zone, it's detected it's low. So just seeing how much water I've been saving just by that, it's been amazing this year. And that was worth the investment alone. Nice. Well, all good stuff tonight. Man, you guys are busy. I feel like I've been busy doing things.

I did put up a camera too. So I guess I have been a little bit busy. I put a camera up facing the garbage cans so I could check to see if the little trash pandas were out there digging through it at night. I've been having problems with them. So I need to figure out. Maybe this is something I should look up.

If somebody's made a 3D printed project that will hold the garbage can lids shut for raccoons like that's already searching for you already searching for you raccoon deterrent gavin's got you if not he'll whip something up for you i'll get my calipers out and measure my my trash can anyway um i think that's going to wrap up this week we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports this show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm to learn how you

can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slash chat, the hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about it. Actually, there was a really cool conversation that came up after last week's show. He's on our Slack.

Morton in our Slack was listening to the podcast, and you're talking about expensive pool equipment. And he actually got a quote for some pool equipment that he needed that was $3,000 for a salt water controller or something like that and um he basically figured out how to do it for not three thousand dollars but probably like thirty dollars with a shelly control thing like a shelly em switch it monitors the power of the pool and then if it exceeds a certain amount he can use the relay on the switch that turns the chlorinator on and off that i this is probably the most brilliant and and cost-saving home hack i've ever heard of this is this is great and shelly is just losing money if they're not charging three thousand dollars for this solution that's it's crazy but i i thought it was a great a great hack not even a hack like it's just a great idea. And to save $3,000 so you don't have to buy it, $3,000. Because the pool controllers, there's nothing special about them.

They're just relays. Everybody's like, oh, I've got to have this thing. No, no, you just hook up a bunch of relays. It just connects. It's crazy how dumb those things are. Anyway, go check that out on the Hub. It was a good conversation from last week. If you want to help with the show but can't support the show financially

totally understand just appreciate a five star review on the iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice that's going to wrap up Home Tech this week don't forget to go over to hometech.fm slash happy hour and RSVP for the Home Tech

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