HomeTech.fm - Episode 457 - A Bridge for Your Fridge

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

On this week's show, the FCC opens up some bandwith that looks great for IoT devices, ecobee makes a video doorbell that you can answer on your thermostat, Level adds a WiFi bridge, Matter 1.2 is out, a few ideas from the mailbag and project updates galore! All this, and more on this week's HomeTech Podcast.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 27th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, all the good fun stuff. Halloween's right around the corner. There's an Apple event.

I'm watching tv shows now i'm back i'm back to watching tv i've been busy at work and like i'm burnt out at the end of the day now like just trying to get some stuff off my desk and uh just go sit down and watch some tv there's some good stuff on yeah i'm the same i oh i'm always watching tv you know part of my job whenever i'm working on something i always have tv playing on one of my screens you know in the background so that's how i get through all these shows i I'm working on something, I always have TV playing on one of my screens in the background. So that's how I get through all these shows. I'll be working on code, TV's playing.

If I really got to concentrate, though, I pause it. But that's how I stay up to date. There's some good shows. You're right, though. Yeah. We watched – well, my wife watched the House of Etcher thing. She said it was pretty good. I watched the end of it, so I know how it ends.

And the ending was fun. I guess I didn't care to see the rest of it. But I could recommend it. It was fun enough to watch if you're into that kind of thing. It's very kind of gory and gross and stuff like that, too. That's the House of Usher, right? Etcher or something, or Usher. I don't really remember.

It's on Netflix. On Apple TV, I picked up Invasion. I think we talked about that last week. And I think I caught up. I think it's over now. I'm not sure. There may be one more. But it's been fun.

Actually, it's been a lot better than the last season. So happy to see that. And then Swagger. I don't know. Did you ever start that one gavin i have it in my queue i've never started it but i know you talked highly of it yeah it's actually good this time this this this go around they they kept they kept trying to get the waterworks to come out of you and you're like come on come on just get get on with this play

some basketball it's like why are they why are they doing these deep topics and then uh but it was good i think i think it's pretty much feels like it's over which i don't like all the kids are graduating and going to college now so it's kind of like i don't know where i'll watch kids play basketball in college i mean i can do that anyway if i wanted to and i don't want to so um but it turned out to be a pretty good show it's got a bunch of like relevant issues and it was like one of those that was like through the pandemic they had to record. So they're like definitely had some weird shows where they had like all masks on and everything.

So, and then for all mankind is cranking back up, I think in November here. So I'm excited about that. Like can't wait for that one. Now that that's one of those that I will watch just every week. We'll just carve out some time and we'll sit down and watch it. So excited about that one.

And somebody recommended the righteous gemstones that it's kind of a, it's one of those, like it's a HBO comedy. It looks ridiculous. It's about those religious people on TV that have their own TV shows that beg for money. One of those things. And it looks, it looks funny. So I'm going to have to see it.

Sounds like a good list. Lots, lots to watch. One show I recently just finished watching was The Continental. It's in the John Wick story. It's a hotel. Yes. It's all about the hotel. And you just have to watch it.

It's actually really good. Lots of action. They spent some money on it. I enjoyed it. If they have another season, I'll be down for it. What is that on? Is it on? Oh, it's on Peac i'll be down for it what is that on is it on oh it's on peacock yeah okay to check that out oh might have to check that one out we just got peacock from the world of john wick yeah i just finished uh just finished futurama myself so

that's uh that's where i'm at in the tv space the the newer ones yeah first first season was a little bit not not that, I don't think. But we'll see what they do in season two. I mean, it's basically the same exact show, but I don't know, just missing something, I feel like. Yeah. I don't know. That show was really good when it was out, and I think I've watched all of it. I'm not sure.

I feel like now I can't start watching it again without going back and making sure I watched all the other ones. Might as well re rewatch it then. It's on Hulu, so. I got this, I saw this on Mastodon, this Who Owns the Media landscape. And it's a really interesting, like, infographic picture of, like, all the big players and how much they're worth. And it's, like, basically has, like, circles for them. And, like, there's Apple and Amazon and Facebook all the top. Like, those are the big guys.

And then, uh, so they have big circles and then it's got like these big companies, you know, like Comcast, $151 billion. It's just a little tiny circle here next to Apple, Disney,

197 billion. I think there's a bunch of Disney's can fit into the $2.4 trillion that Apple has. That's crazy. And it's crazy that Facebook is so high up on there too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just reels that's it yeah and amazon prime video making that 1.3 trillion i just thought it was neat that you can see like visually how big these companies are and and this is there's not anything on here i guess univision is less than

a billion it says and it's it's still that's that's a lot of money to like look at some of these other circles and be like oh that's a 2.4 trillion that's a 1.3 trillion dollar company that's crazy just crazy insane amount of money yeah like roku being worth more than dish not by much but still some that's because they're selling all that those uh wise security systems probably oh yeah so these it's it's that extra one billion of revenue disc this comes out with a wise security system and cameras uh rebrand and then you'll know that's how they're making their money well you know netflix and all those companies they're they're gonna jump up soon

they'll be much bigger you know with all the price increases going on now that's how they're doing gosh every week so paramount plus is going up netflix is going up dis. That's how they're doing it. Oh my gosh, every week. So Paramount Plus is going up. Netflix is going up. Disney's going up. I think Netflix is like $22 a month or something now. I saw, yeah, $22.99 per month in the U.S. For, I guess that's for the bigger package, isn't it? I guess the basic land is going from $10 a month to $11.99.

When did this happen? It was just a couple of weeks ago. I think we talked about it before, but yeah, quite a rise in pricing. I like how they blamed it on like, oh, this must be for paying all those people that we weren't paying before. Yeah. Well, it could be that. Crazy, crazy.

Well, what is nice I do like about all these streaming things is that there's plenty of choice and i'm good tvs to watch right now although i am i gotta admit like at first i wasn't but now like it seems like everything has 10 episodes and they're like yeah we're done with that season yeah see that's why i don't want to get invested with things it's just like there's too many early cancellations and not finished storylines yeah yeah and and you can you can tell like my wife was i forget what she was watching she was watching something today and she's like oh i wonder if there's more and like what episode jones she's like on episode six i'm like there's probably 10 episodes like just like that and she's like looked it up yep there's 10 episodes they're gonna keep releasing them it should be a rule that if they vote to cancel a show they at least give you one episode where

they wrap up the story right you know like yeah like if it's weather like yeah okay we beat the aliens they leave let us know what happens with the aliens don't just leave us hanging here you know with all these aliens roaming around yeah that's why i'm always a little slower to adopt tv shows and i think either one of you is because i just i want a final you know finalization um i watched uh we just finished reservation dogs uh which has three seasons in it at least i feel like with that show i got some some kind of closure out of it they can definitely extend it if they want to but you know it's it's finished and i'm fine with that there are just some shows they'll have five seasons though and that's still not finished they just stop at five yeah and you still didn't get any closure so yeah that that upsets me um usually like if i see an old show um that that's no longer running i'll check to see if it had a

closure on it or not before i even invest time in it yeah it's like game of thrones where you just have the entire last season just be the worst season ever and it's like this didn't clear anything up and there was that guy that was like rowing the boat and they still think he's out there just rowing the boat yeah he just took off rowing and they're like we'll meet you and then like you never showed back up for any of the seasons so annoying yeah my favorite tv show of all time was uh patriot over on amazon such a good show and i i don't like it's got a weird name they always had like weird cover art on it and then um but it's an excellent like it's an excellent show like there's it's insane um how good it is it it didn't deserve to be that good. The, everything, everything about it, the acting was superb,

the direction, the camera shots, the, every shot is like one of those like movies you watch where every single shot is like a piece of art you can put up on the wall. It's literally that for two seasons. And they ended it and it ended okay. I think all the actors kind of knew that it was going to end.

So they like, it ended at a spot that was okay but everybody like i in deep down you want kind of like another another season out of it to to like put a cap on it like find out what all this other stuff they were talking about was so it's too bad they'll never go back all the actors went on to other projects and the director did too so and it's too bad definitely worth a show worth checking out maybe not for tj but for gavin maybe yes check it out all right i use you guys to vet all my tv shows so and you don't listen to it you're like you're watching like the list maker and uh i listen to you i just know what not to watch so taskmaster taskmaster that's a really good show

you guys just don't understand comedy is it still running or did they end that show i think it's still running i mean last i knew i think so running yeah how many seasons it's going been going on for like 25 seasons or something crazy i'm not starting that up i don't have time for 25 seasons though oh well that's a perfect show to put in the background gavin you don't really have to listen to it but you listen once in a while you laugh at it and you move on okay it was definitely it was it was funny when i watched it but it wasn't something i'd put on all the time i don't remember you liking it seth i think i feel like you're lying about this right now i'd watch the british baking show like oh man hands down over that i don't like that nicole loves

but i'll watch like gordon ramsay or something yell at people so violence violence yeah like i think he brought back his uh kitchen nightmare show so there's uh newer seasons of that i don't know when they actually filmed but uh we've been going through that as well and you know there's just something nice about gordon ramsay yelling at people and telling them that they don't know what they're doing in their business. That's funny. Well, we do have a, a couple of home tech headlines this week. I wasn't sure how much we were going to get to with all the matter news that came out, but there's a couple, a couple of new products kind of, kind of surprising. So it has been, it has been a slow, slow time in the news cycle, but it's expected this time of year. And we'll have to see what Apple does next week.

Could be a new Apple Pencil again. That was awesome. Super secret event. Yeah, super secret. So fast. I don't know. Everybody says it's new computers, which, yeah, okay. All right.

Well, what do you say we jump into these home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right. The Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, has opened up the 6 gigahertz band to low-power devices benefiting IoT, virtual and augmented reality, and smart home solutions. The move is expected to spur development

in wearable technologies as well. So it could be kind of cool to see what they do with these new rules um uh they're expecting it to basically you know big tech companies like amazon google apple qualcomm just they're all excited about it so uh should have an impact and everything it says here from education to health care so would be um it's interesting always nice to have like a little portion of the little band opened up for you. Six gigahertz is kind of high. So it's not going to be used for anything that's like going to go through doors or anything.

This is going to be like typically high bandwidth, very short distance spaces is where you're going to see this kind of stuff come into play. Yeah, this would be great for my house because my house is very tiny and the access point is in the center of the house. So in our living room, I can actually basically touch it with a little pole. And so if I'm sitting on the couch or I have a TV or something in that area and it has Wi-Fi six, it would definitely benefit from that. Or I should say six gigahertz but yeah it's going to be very short range just like 5g 5g is very short range um and not very high use cases for it but if your device supports it then it does make a huge difference gavin do you see this replacing any laura senses you have laying around yeah laura i can't even get laura like it's too confusing as it is but um i i will

have to see what they do with this because you know they keep talking about wi-fi six wi-fi seven and it's like i i don't even know if i have wi-fi five on my devices i don't know what i stopped keeping track of this because wi-fi always reached a point where to me it was just it worked it was fast enough for a while what i wanted to do it and i'm happy you know but um this is i think they're focusing on iot with this stuff yeah so it'll be interesting to see like uh it also comes down to you know the devices and battery power right so if they can use this and save battery as well that would be nice to see this is specifically

targeted towards what they call very low power devices and it's permitting them to use very low power over short distances and provide very high connection speeds so it'll it'll it should be ideal for any kind of like sensor or may i mean you could even like think of like an outdoor camera or something like that if it can be a low power device and not run until it sees or since it's motion yeah like a blink camera or something yeah this might be really really good for one of those types of devices yeah i think the only thing i really care about wi-fi speed on is my laptop at this point you know when i have the laptop and i'm using that around the house, I use it in the various rooms or whatever. I want the fastest speeds on that. But my phone and like pretty much everything else,

it's like, you know, as long as it has a good Wi-Fi signal, most of the time the speed is good enough for me. But there are certain power users out there that want to be able to do a gigabit on their phone or whatever. Yeah. For whatever reason. The only way to do that is to basically just dedicate an access point to your phone because well like in each room and

everything else too i mean you have to really plan that out in advance any other device that hops on always messes you up and then there's interference you know here here's the easier thing to do just use hardware i guess you can't do that on your phone you can't do that on your phone now actually yeah you can do that on your phone i'll just walk around with a 50 foot ethernet cable on my phone we've got that usbc now on the iphone so i can i can do whatever i want now yeah hook it up oh genius all right let's let's move on here uh this is this is kind of a product i don't think anybody wanted but here we are uh tech company ecobee has launched its first video doorbell camera uh it's just called the ecobee smart doorbell camera it boasts 175 degree field of view and integration with the company's smart thermostat that's right guys if somebody reads your doorbell you can answer it on your

thermostat it's probably a first will it be the last it's such a tiny screen what is this a screen for ants you can also use the ecobee app which i guess is is normal it has two-way audio and all that good stuff uh the camera also features advanced a features for accurate detection and offers customizable activity zones for focus motion and person detection uh it's ip65 waterproof and dust protection so it should hold up uh pretty well outside it's actually better than some i think the doorbell i have on my door uh let's see the ecobee uh it can also be controlled through the ecobee app apple watch apple home kit um the alexa and with sport for google assistant to be added soon uh we did look at the price on this thing 159 so not a

terrible price for an unique device that you can answer on your thermostat honestly this might be one of the uh the home kit favorite uh doorbells at this point because I don't think you have too many different options right now. I know you have the Aquera and the Logitech and I think a couple more. But for $159, that makes it a low-cost HomeKit camera. That's actually a good price. And I know the news stories keep pointing out the fact that, yes, you can view it on your thermostat. But it does a lot more than that. You know, I think the thermostat thing will just be, you know, one of those little things

that nobody will ever use, right? Because when my doorbell rings, the last thing I do is run to my thermostat. Considering my thermostat's right by my front door, whoever's outside is going to see me at my thermostat. So I might as well just answer the door at that point. But it is a good look. I'm not a fan of the look of it, but for that price, I think it's a really good price.

Well, let's keep talking about price because there's more. There's subscription if you want some more. Oh, of course. Okay, pass, pass, pass. Let's move on. There's actually a $0 free free plan which i think covers what you were asking about so like yeah you can the free plan will let you uh do a 30-day history with snapshots it'll give you that great live view on your uh your premium thermostat and then uh

it'll do person detection and two-way talk so the basics are kind of covered right there right uh if you want to store 30 days of video you've got to pay five bucks a month or 50 a year and uh also have packet detection and rich notifications rich rich push notifications so that's the ones that have the pictures on them and then uh if you want to upgrade to the complete package for ten dollars a month or $90 a year, video on unlimited cameras, unlimited cameras for package detection and unlimited cameras for push notifications, as well as 24 seven professional monitoring and insurance savings,

as they say. So I don't, I don't kind of, kind of neat, kind of neat, kind of a, it works out of the box. How how you want it to for $0. And then if you want to pay them $5 a month to get package detection, there you go.

This is what drives me, though, is that when you look at cameras, it's not so bad. But when you look at cameras, I kind of look for somebody that has all the different types of cameras. Because if you're going to pay a subscription, you want to pay a single subscription to Ring. Ring has, like, you covered pretty much everywhere, right? If you're going to get the Echo B doorbell and you want other cameras in your house, now you're going to pay another subscription

to, say, Ring and one subscription to Echo B instead of just a single subscription. So Echo B will probably build up you know more devices over time so it makes it yeah they have an indoor camera or like a little smart camera thing and some security contacts like camera now yeah they just need a floodlight camera and i don't think it's like it i think it's an indoor the it's a hundred dollar indoor camera so it's not bad though but i agree i agree with you it's it they need an ecosystem built out and actually having an ecosystem that actually works with home kit yeah it might be better than

those ring doorbells so it's never got integration with door with uh with home kit the generator company pools uh comes through right like they were bought by generac or whatever now they're getting all these cool things it would be interesting to see what cameras they release next i mean because they are starting something here so i just hope like anything else they don't like pull the support for this in like two years that's that's always my annoying thing with these new products and everything like that it's like there's already a million video doorbells out and so if somebody really likes ecobee then they'll probably invest in this but like you know it's about long-term support and we're yet to see that but i don't think ecobee has a history of pulling support for things no not that i can think of they they had some really

long running thermostat models that may actually still be able to be purchased now that i think about it but they were i mean they were kind of long in the tooth um i can't really think of anything that they've discontinued out from under anybody i do remember talking to these guys about this camera probably like two years ago though and they really didn't implement anything that we asked for but but for for what they've done this is actually probably a better product than what we asked for. So good on them. And we want that RSTP string. Yeah.

Well, it's either you, you use eco B or you use blue Iris and probably. Okay. I'm using eco B. I'm paying the subscription. All right. All right.

Uh, and we've got some lock talk here. So TJ, uh, yeah, let's talk smart Yeah, lock talk. Smart Lockmaker Levels released a new Wi-Fi bridge called the Level Connect,

which allows for remote access and integration with the smart home platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Home. However, this move is kind of surprising since Level Smart Locks already have all the necessary technology for matter and thread compatibility, which basically enable them to do the same thing. Level co-founder and CTO Ken Goto stated that they are still investigating Matter over Thread solutions and will release a Matter update sometime in 2024.

This is interesting. Wi-Fi Bridge, instead of going Matter, these guys are never going to make the Matter list doing this kind of thing. But Level Connect's $79. Or do I buy this for $79, which I don't have a level lock, so it really doesn't matter. Or do I just wait for them to implement the free upgrade for Matter? What do you do here? I'd still wait.

I've been keeping an eye on this lock. This is one of my favorite locks. Just because it's something that slides in there and I can keep my existing setup. It's one of those locks you can put in your significant other will never know, right? Because you didn't change the look of it. So I've always kept an eye on this. I never invested in it because I just didn't like what they offered in terms of connectivity. But this bridge, I think it's just a step that they're adding. And I think they're going to

probably add Matter through this bridge somehow. I don't know if this bridge is tackling maybe battery consumption issues or connectivity challenges they have they have but i think matter will be coming like don't buy it on promises never buy on promises so if you you want matter in this lock like you know wait till it's actually released with matter if they do that and then buy it and i will keep an eye on it and if they do release it with matter where i can integrate with home assistant and stuff like that i'm all in i'll do it yeah this little bridge thing is a common tactic for schleg um the reason i don't like a lot of the schleg locks is because they're bluetooth as well and they have a little wi-fi

bridge you plug in and i feel like i always have problems with that little wi-fi bridge it's it's basically two things to go wrong with your lock instead of just one at that point and so i'd almost always prefer to go with like a z wave or zigbee lock and so that way i don't have to worry about it because wi-fi for smart locks does drain the battery quite a bit i have one uh wi-fi quick set lock in installation right now and i think it goes through batteries every six to nine months and like it gets used quite a bit but I feel like it'd be twice as long if it was another protocol. Maybe it will help, that kind of thing.

They mentioned here that adding, this is an article over at The Verge, this is adding Matterover Thread to its lock to also enable remote access and interoperability with more smart home features, like platforms like Level, for Level. It currently only works with Apple Home and Ring through Amazon

Sidewalk. So yeah, I guess they're alright, so that makes sense. So if you have a Ring Sidewalk device, it'll actually connect over Bluetooth, I guess, to these devices, right? And then you can use that to communicate back and forth. That's actually kind of cool too. I don't know.

Wait, Seth, wait. It is a cool product gavin yeah well the problem is is like it didn't fit with my door lock i have this door lock and like the where the the little part that goes through the the lock on on mine actually goes like under it because they offset where the little handle thing goes and i i i actually like was able to fit all the parts and pieces of this thing in there. But then when I went to put the lock on, there was no place for this like spear thing to go through to,

to turn the other one. Like it was a dumb design, but they, they did it. And now it's ruined. I can't, I can't put the, can't put this lock in.

So I would love to, um, because it would be awesome. But you can replace the existing set that you have there if you need so that this lock will work still? If I just completely changed out the door fixture and everything, yeah. To one that was more compatible, I could do it. Yeah, but unfortunately, it's weird.

The way this door hardware I have works is it has like a secondary thing that's not in the normal spot that it should be. And then that kind of like enabled them to do this like nice little offset on the latch on the inside. Yeah. Send us a picture, Seth. We'll make it work. Just carve out more of the door but what i do like about this lock is it lets you choose pretty much your own like look unlock yeah your own lock right and and i just put this in where everybody else you're relying on their design and how it

will look on your door so yeah most of the smart locks are ugly too so you know definitely like if i could have swapped this out and left and had a level lock on the front door i mean that that door is is a plague for me like i can i can come in the the side door with this acquire lock now anytime i want with the front door you know it's it's hit or miss whether it's unlocked or locked and i'm like oh i gotta go find a key now i'll just go around the side of the house and buzz myself in so if I if I could have done this I would have but it just didn't it didn't line up and then I accidentally put the little flipper handle thing on backwards so instead of like going this way it goes that way now oh and so like there was some complaints about that and I'm like let's see how long those complaints last because I wasn't going to take the thing back off and flip it like 90 degrees where it was

this way instead of that way when you lock the door. And, uh, now it's kind of normal. Yeah. I thought, I thought about installing one of these level locks on my back door, but my, my house was built in 1959. And I think that means that they just built a house, however they felt like it. And then when they made changes, they just did whatever they felt like as well and so for some reason my back door the offset for the actual lock is not a standard one so i don't remember what it like what it is normally it's like you

know two and one quarter or two and a half or something like that normally for the back set like every lock you buy does two of those offsets and that's it um and if it's not that offset then you have to go find like a specific like a specific latch and everything for it and i'm not about to do that i'll just buy a new door for it when you say offset this is the technical term from like the side of the door to the middle of the hole correct okay correct yeah so like there's two settings there are two sizes that are like the standard i don't know what they are off the top of my head um but like if you go buy a lock from amazon or home depot or whatever it's going to come in these two offsets um and mine is not those two offsets so thank thank you door people exactly it's before the uh the stand the door standards existed i guess so

i think i think they just found it like a trailer or something and they're just like yeah let's throw this door in here this works because for some reason it's not like like a it's not a normal height either and so like our screen door on the outside of the house is like the normal height but the inside door is not it's like four inches shorter yeah your door is supposed to actually cover the hole right otherwise it's just like not well it does but you know it's engineered to do that like i think a normal door is like 80 inches tall but like my my screen door is 80 inches tall but my actual interior door is like 76 this is very suspicious here yeah something's wrong yeah well that's what you get with an old house yeah the the the fun of of owning a house

yeah all right well let's move on here to things that do matter and specifically matter matters uh but matter is mattering now more because they they're getting they're they're finally releasing that that point update that we talked about a couple weeks back um yeah matter 1.2 is here they uh they have they have announced that the latest version will allow household appliances like refrigerators dishwashers robotic vacuums uh what else in here uh let's see air conditioners laundry washers but not not dryers robotic vacuums smoke and carbon monoxide alarms air quality sensors, air purifiers, and fans, only fans, to integrate with your Matter devices.

So this will be fun. As soon as this starts rolling out, these new product categories can go online and you can start seeing some more new Matter. That's just going to mean this Who Matters This Week segment is just going to take off because we're going to get all those LG laundry washers supporting Matter 1.2. And we're going to talk about them because it'll be fun. Honestly, I would love, that would be awesome. A washer to have something like turned on a light or pinged me or something when it was done. You know, you don't want smelly clothes.

More bridges too. You're going to have a bridge for your fridge, a bridge for your air conditioner. A fridge bridge. A bridge for your dishwasher, a bridge for your air conditioner. A fridge bridge. A bridge for your dishwasher. There you go. Matterhubs for everybody. Yeah. It's good to see this, though.

They're making some big progress with this 1.2 update. Some of these devices are, it's not like I'm going to run out and buy a new dishwasher just because I want the Matterhubs support now. Yeah, I don't even want to do the dishes anyway, much less something that's going to tell me that I got to go do the dishes. No, I don't need that. Yeah, exactly. So I got a question. Where does the Matter standard draw the line, right? So we know that it supports washers, but it doesn't support dryers.

But if I were to buy this GE profile, like two-in-one washer dryer, would it notify me? Obviously, if it had Matter. Would it notify me that the wash has started and the wash is done and then right after the wash it would never tell me anything again yeah probably yeah it started drying it was like yeah you're on your own i don't know yeah i mean it's up to the software vendor to actually implement you know reminders or something they'd have to like program it as a washer it's just like this is just a washer yeah like apple

apple has this uh in the health thing. They have like the medication reminders thing. And now with the new, I noticed with new iOS, it like will follow up. Like if you don't forget to take your, your meds in the morning or whatever, your vitamins or whatever you have in there, it'll remind you in like 30 minutes or something. It's like, Hey, this is a followup. It'll annoy you again.

And if you forgot the first time you can, you can it again so i thought that was kind of nice and maybe again it would be up to the software vendors to do something like that to implement additional notifications or whatever well we we know they always do what's best so yeah we are in good hands consumers like 10 more years we are to have the most amazing home here. Yeah, that's pretty cool, though, to see them continue supporting Matter and making new things. We all knew this was going to happen. It's just good to actually see it happening, you know?

You never know a company is going to do something until they start doing it, or an organization, I guess I should say. Yeah, friend of the show, Jimmy, also had found a mention in Samsung's presentation a couple weeks back, or I think it was last week we talked about this. And we kind of went over and looked at the website, knew that it was coming. But yeah, they're definitely loading in a bunch more features here, which is great.

There's going to be more Matter-enabled devices. Again, the more devices that come out, the less this stuff is going to cost to implement and do, which is always a good thing. Like all the parts and pieces to put this together and assemble it are going to get cheaper for these manufacturers. And they'll just start doing it like by default. Then we just got to buy good products. Like can't buy the crummy products that don't work. The smart life stuff.

No, Gavin's excited. Anyway, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over in our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 457 i don't have a pick of the week this week but we do have some mailbag stuff in here and i think some of this was sent to you tj so i'll let you take it away yeah both of them were in response to the past couple episodes. We got Greg that sent us an email and he wrote in asking about the smart sprinkler

we talked about on a previous episode and we'll go ahead and put the link in this show notes here. If you're looking on Amazon, it's called RainSeer Zigbee Sprinkler Timer and it uses its own little hub, and it uses a Smart Life app to control everything. I bought it because supposedly it can work with Zigbee to MQTT, but I have not got that far yet.

And kind of like Gavin, we're both in the northern part of the world. It is almost wintertime here, so this project is on the back burner. It's, you know, inside and I can play with it, but I don't really have any desire to finish it until like springtime. So your work is done. No worries. Yeah, it works with the Smart Life app. So like, you know, even if it comes springtime

and I'm not done with it for some reason, it'll still work exactly how I want it to. It just won't work with Home Assistant. So it is fine. You can supposedly find them on AliExpress though for cheaper. They might just work natively with Zigbee, but I just wanted to order it real quick and be done with it because that's the type of installer I am. If I waited three months or, you know, a month or two months to get it from AliExpress, it would have already been winter time and I wouldn't have played with it at all. So, and then we had one more person write in, Sol wrote in to recommend

that I check out Ajax cameras. Um, I've looked into them a little bit. I can't find anything on pricing cause it seems to be a dealer only product. Um, but basically right in line with what I want. Um, I just don't know if I'm trying to become a dealer for them just so I can get cameras for my house. But I'll probably look into it a little bit more and watch some videos and stuff like that because they have a couple different things. They have intrusion detection, fire detection, water leak detection, comfort and productivity. So they seem like a general, I don't know, Internet of Things company.

Yeah, they have quite a bit. So they might be able to offer stuff that I don't have right now. They got relays uh they have uh water detector leak detector shut off valves up to one inch not bad you know the products look pretty nice i mean they're all it looks like they have black and white ones um which that's my problem with a lot of the like cameras and stuff like that is they only come in white or they only come in black and pretty much all their cameras come in both colors along with their nvrs what nvr do you know that comes in multiple colors i don't know any personally so well i mean i i know of a few of them but just different models come in different colors yeah like literally a different model and it's like oh can you get that model in in white no no you can't you have to get this other model you

can get a spray paint can. But this is literally the same thing. It just comes in a different color. So yeah, thanks for that recommendation. I will look into it. I just haven't got to dive too deep with it. But we'll talk more about the camera situation here in a little bit. A lot of their cameras look like they are coming soon.

I don't know what that means, but maybe the camera line is is new for them but it's interesting well they actually have like nice looking cameras too and they have eight megapixel and all that kind of stuff a lot of those cameras they max out like four or five megapixel and depending on the area the eight megapixel makes a huge difference uh i think what i'm attached to though at this point is is anything with a starlight sensor uh because they are amazing at nighttime they have black smoke detectors all right that's a first all right right i'll give it to him that's amazing i mean it's just plastic but i'll give them that one that one's that's a first i've never seen that before yeah i mean that's that's pretty cool to me and literally everything comes in black or white. Like this little Hub 2 2G jeweler thing.

I don't even know what that does, but it comes in black and white. It comes in black and white. Exactly. This little button, it comes in black and white. This keypad, black and white. Yeah, everything is black and white. That's great. There you go.

Glass break, a black glass break detector. Oh, wow. See? Never in my life. Black motion detectors. That's pretty sweet. I guess I have seen outdoor versions that were that color, wow. See? Never in my life. Black motion detectors. That's pretty sweet. I guess I have seen outdoor versions that were that color, but... They're water control valves.

Black or white? That is interesting. They must own a bunch of filament and have to get rid of it. Like, you know what? Nobody else is doing it in the space. They're not offering multiple colors. No, they're not. They need to make out smart locks next. That way we can offering multiple colors. No, they're not. They need to make out

smart locks next. That way we can have multiple colors. Oh, yeah. Hopefully they release more than two colors, though. Dream a dream, GDA. Come on.

Ooh. Ooh, their light switches, they have all kinds of colors. They have gray and ivory, olive. Now I have to look at these light switches. Where are they?

They're smart plugs. They have black or white. Where are you seeing this? Under, let's see, products and comfort and productivity. That's interesting. The light switches are like that square thing. The square kind. Yeah.

Hmm. One gang smart switch. They look kind of nice. Yeah. They're different. Interesting. Hmm. Send me some, Sol.

I'll take some products. Every time I look at the name, though'm like ajax that's that's that old web cleaner web it's a cleaner yeah it's the old like that's what i clean my toilet with way back when we had web pages that were just like okay when you click here it takes you to the next web page somebody did this thing they invented called ajax and it would let you basically replace an element on the page and so it's basically the modern web so every time i see that i'm like ajax cleaner or javascript one of the two it's a long range their radio communication hub has 3600 feet range and

important comes in black and white cool well thanks for the recommendation we have to check these guys out uh if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week multi-colored products that you found uh or any other great ideas for a show give us a shout email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right project updates speaking of multi-colored projects um we had our little friendly wager. Will Seth installed the Govee outdoor lights. And as I edited the show and listened to Gavin tell me that I'm not having fun with this product because it's not what I want. No, I returned it.

I did find out they have a new product line, the Govee outdoor permanent, what do they call it? Govee permanent outdoor lights 2, which look a little bit better i think i sent you guys a youtube video this guy installing them so you could see what the wires look like the wires still look awful to me like i don't think i could do this just for the wires i i can't see look i spent like 20 years of my life hiding wires there's no way i'm gonna like run wires around my house it's just not gonna happen so um yeah i need i need something to this could this could live in and i've been just kind of looking around for other things so not gonna happen uh govi it was a good job i think i think

for for many people though i think this is probably a pretty good product especially at the price point like a hundred foot of this stuff for like what around 200 or so i don't know 300 normal yeah two three hundred bucks yeah the pro one maybe a little bit more because they were changing how that did how how that works i think it has like dedicated white leds inside so that's kind of nice like if you can't use the mix color like the um rgb lights to make white light very well and some of them don't look very good but if they have a dedicated uh led in there you can turn this on for the rest of the year and light up your house like normal lighting and then when you want it to be like saint patrick's day you can turn all green or you want it christmas red and green that kind of thing

so i know it's a it's a cool product um just for me. So I'm going to spend a lot more money, a lot more money and a lot more time, a lot more money, a lot more time. And it probably won't work as well. Cause actually the controllers for them are actually pretty nice. The little flood lamps that I put on my yard. Oh yeah.

A little followup here. Uh, Jimmy actually posted in our Slack chat, the hub over there that you can get an invite to, to support the show. Uh, he said he's on his second set of Govee floodlights. He said the bad news, they indeed stopped working at some point, but he didn't see where the lenses leak.

The good news is that Govee replaced them for free since they have a 12-month warranty, and they were only like nine months old. Yeah, so they stand behind their product. That's good. So if you can break them before the year up, you can get a second set. I already put

like silicone all over mine because i was like kind of worried about it i did like half of them to see if it actually it actually broke or not so we'll see if the good ones stay silicone and i know the problem was you know if they stay working now if the ones that i siliconed um break and the other ones work then i'm in trouble but these are only going to be out for a couple days each year, so I might use them for inside things, inside parties, New Year's or something like that. Otherwise, they're just going to go in a bucket

with the rest of the lights after the holiday season's over. That's all I got there, guys. What have you been up to, Gavin? You've been, you got on this phone call and you just started cursing. Cursing? Yeah, you were like this esp oh before i get into that yeah geez this is why we can't have a pre-recorded show that released on the patreon channel it's usually me that's

the problem if you tell me we're recording i'll be a lot nicer don't worry you know like we gotta have the unedited version so people can feel my frustration. But before that, just an update on my Z-Wave controller. So I upgraded to the Z-Wave 800 last week. It was fine for a few days, and then the controller started hanging for some reason randomly on me, and that's not a good thing. But Home Assistant and Z-Wave JS, they've had like five updates for some reason this week i think z-wave js is just going through some troubles right now right there was one day i think i had two i told you that yeah it's so i was looking up on github reported problems people were reporting issues with the z-wave 800 800 and submitting bugs and logs and stuff.

So it looks like they know about issues. People are also complaining about the Z-Wave 500. You know, that used to be so reliable until a recent release from Z-Wave JS. So I don't know what they're doing over there. But you know what? If it works for you, just don't update. Please just leave it as it is because they need to sort it out. But the good news is since the last

update my z-wave 800 controller has been running smooth so as long as i don't um run like a z-wave repair on it which creates a lot of traffic um it's been fine so i'm crossing my fingers with that so sometimes when you get the new tech you gotta wait for them to figure out how to use it another thing i've been playing around, you know, it's the year of the voice and I've been, I have an ESP 32. I bought the ESP microphone add-on and stuff like that. I can't remember the exact model numbers. You know, I followed videos and instructions. I can't get this damn thing to work. You know, it's driving me nuts. I've been working for days. I pulled out my best soldering tools. I soldered it all up. From what I could tell, everything's hooked up right.

It just won't start the microphone for some reason. So, you know, it's one of those frustrating times when you just put the project to the side and you say, I'm going to relook at that in a few days just so, you know, I can get my sanity back for a bit. But if there's anyone out there that has experience with ESP32 and microphones, you know, getting a little microphone working with it and wants to reach out, you know, I'll be grateful for that. You know, like, I might have been, I've been watching ESP videos, you know, people, you know, creating little projects and stuff. But all the videos I find, I think this

one's a little more complicated because every video is like, oh, add a temperature sensor. And it's like, oh, it's just these three connectors. And it's very basic. And I'm like, great. I'm trying to add a microphone to this, which is a little bit more complicated. From the video I see, I can't remember who put together the video, but he's like, yeah, just wire it up like this. All right. Install this. All right. Do this.

And everything works. Of course it works for him. I can't get it working. So I don't know what it is. I'm going to revisit it in a few days. It's just driving me nuts. I really want to get into the ESP stuff, but stuff like this just really just, you know, like drives me nuts. Right. I did a Bluetooth proxy. That was simple, you stuff, but stuff like this just really just, you know, like jazzy nuts, right?

I did a Bluetooth proxy. That was simple, you know, but it is what it is. Gavin, I think I have a solution for you. And I think you're going to love this. And I'll post a link here for you. Oh, God. Well, it turns out, I mean, since you got this thing sitting around, it's got a microphone in it.

It looks like somebody has actually purchased or ported the bird net thing over to the esp32 oh perfect yeah you can just plug it in and that way you'll know your microphone's working or not like if it works on that you know it's all good oh i know it's not working because i was able to get like audio recordings of nothing so i know it's not working right that's the problem there's like a whole bunch of like you wire it up this way it uses the left side you wire it up this way it uses the right side i've been through all that stuff the connectivity the home assistance there it's sending something but it's not getting anything off the microphone so i don't know what's going on i'll figure it out one day bird edge you gotta

get this man i set up that bird thing and it wasn't getting anything i don't have enough birds in my in my yard you know like you seem to have all the fun birds down there they're happy they're happy in florida and then this year was my year of the lawn right so i was it ever yeah i spent a lot of time you know working on my lawn moisture and this and that. And you know what? It was a success. Nice. Nice. That was the end of the year. This weekend, I ended up pulling out all the sensors because, you know, preparing for winter. So I removed everything. But when I look back at the year, I realized the amount of water I used was actually much less because I only had the

water where it needed water. So I can see at the end of the year, I actually used a lot less water. Cool. On top of that, the grass is a lot greener. My grass is actually still growing. I thought I did the last mow last weekend. I have a feeling I may have to do one more mow, right? Just because it's still growing and I haven't watered it in like a long time, like the irrigation's all off and everything so you know my project using the echo it sensors you know i consider it a success um the sensors though as ugly as they are you know they stick out of the ground they're easy to break easy to step on etc etc they were the out of all the sensors i tried those were the best ones. They did exactly what I wanted. They just told me what the moisture was in the ground. That's all I needed. I did go through about three

or four of them throughout the season, but that's fine because, you know, I accomplished what I was hoping to do. And next year I will always keep an eye out on more sensors to see something that sits more flat flat but for next year i'll use these again you know they just work great it worked fine they're not too expensive um for one so that's my year of the lawn updates well you have a 3d printer maybe you can just print like a new enclosure for it that way it can go flatter to the ground cabin i try i i looked into that so i took one of them apart of course the one that broke and i was trying to see how it was wired up so that i can maybe like flatten the

top and have it go down to the ground but it looks like i'd have to revisit that again because i don't think i can but if i ever figure out this esp stuff you know then i can you can actually buy the sensors and make what you're saying with an ESP, but then I'd have to figure out how to power it on battery, et cetera, et cetera. So one project at a time, one project at a time. And then other than that, I did a little moonlighting last week. I was on entertainment 2.0 with Richard Gunther.

That was fun. And I was also on another episode of Home Gadget Geeks with Jim Collison. So, you know, we talked a lot of home assistant stuff there, too. So, you know, give those a listen. I listened to both of them. They were both pretty good. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

I feel like you give those podcasts a little more effort than ours. I'm not going to say anything. Well, that's because they invite me over. So, actually, you know, I log on early. I early i do some research you know it's well organized you know well organized what is that it's well well and richard you know like he we get into the podcast we're done in like an hour yeah you know yeah you guys he's on a mission when he does a podcast i've only done one with him so far but he's he's just on it yeah we're done we're in or out it's recorded and the other difference is like i record like that's nowhere i'm gonna go with this but we would record like home tech on a

monday i did like home gadget geeks on thursday and and and i did like entertainment 2.0 on wednesday they were both released before Home Tech even was released. Oh, man. Don't listen to Home Tech. Next morning, these guys posted their podcast. I was like, wow. You know, like, yeah. I just wanted them to have a chance to get out there in front of people.

And so they could, you know, get warmed up for the show here. That's all. Sounds good. That sounds good. We'll go with that. It's your lie telling us. Please do more. We'll go with that. It's your lie telling us because you are.

But yeah, it was a good time. So check out those podcasts too. Definitely are. They're both, both of those are very entertaining shows and yeah,

doesn't, I mean, it doesn't matter who the guest is, but it's even better if it's Gavin. So I just posted the little,

the little, the little statistics for the month here of October for my unique 51 species of birds that have been detected over there in the back channel there. That's really cool. I don't know if a blue jay is a fun bird, but it seems to be very active at my house. Mine was not picking up anything, so I just gave up. I did get one of those rock pigeons that you were talking about,

and it sounded like literally a rock being dragged across the ground i have no idea what that was so maybe it's just like a joke or something mine was actually it sounded like the helicopter going over over top so yeah it it sounded like just a gurgle or something it's like maybe it's just a joke that these bird people put inside here like somebody's gonna look up a rock pigeon and then it's like the number one thing you have anyway that's that's awesome man and so uh tj tj how goes how goes the nvr search just as crappy as you thought it would seth so i have the i bought a new sonology unit i bought the uh dva 1622 yeah dva 1622 it's 600 which is whatever i mean for nas is really not that bad comes with eight camera license it's always my hang-up with sonology is that

if you bought the nvr once it came with four camera license if you bought the regular nas it came with two and each license is 50 each so you need a camera license per camera that you want to work with Synology. I don't think that counts RTSP streams though. So I don't think there's actually a camera license for those. But if you want like OnViv or one of their supportive cameras, you have to have the camera license. But the newer Synology is the DVA series. There's two of them. There's the 1622, which is a two-bay, and there's a 3122, I think, which is a four-bay. The 1622 is really nice. It's very fast. The software is what I'm used to with Synology. It's got motion detection and all that, you know, mobile app and all that kind of stuff. The DVA series has like what they call deep analytics.

And that's so that's actually, you know, face detection, vehicle detection and, you know, whatever the deep state offers you. And but the annoying thing is that because there's only two options with the DVA series, of course, they've locked down the amount of motion or people detections you get. So whatever they classify as their deep analytics or whatever they actually call it, for the 16-22 in VR, you get two. So you can always set up people detection or vehicle detection or counting on two cameras. And I've been told by Synology that if you buy their cameras that it actually bypasses that

so if you have like the 1622 and you have you know two on fifth cameras that you can do the people detection with that and then you could technically use their cameras to bypass that and so you could actually get more face detection out of it i had no idea they even had cameras yeah i think it's a newer thing and it's kind of kind of they probably launched the same time and they uh started telling people they don't support their hard drives or whatever um but that's kind of the annoying thing their their cameras are all right i think they're like 200 and some odd dollars um they max out at five megapixels though and no starlight sensor so that that's to be a no for me on you know two

of my cameras but the other two i guess could technically use it because they're closer range and and the dark is not as big of an issue but in terms of cameras i've been playing with some cameras um the backyard is extremely dark at night there's obviously not a street light in the back in my backyard um so there it's literally pitch dark and these starlight cameras are amazing because it could be midnight with no lights on at all and it still looks like a color image i think i've been sending a couple through the back channel there and i think gavin's been a little jealous so maybe we can get him to upgrade his cameras to Starlight ones. Is there a Floodlight Starlight camera? I mean, probably. The Starlight sensor is pretty ubiquitous.

You don't need the Floodlight anymore. It's on a lot of cameras. But the Starlight Floodlights are probably more like the Eufys and stuff like that. No, I want one that has an API and a RTSP stream and stuff like that. Does anybody make that for Floodlight? Well, the camera that I have, the one I was putting, I have a Unity from work.

Like it has basically the starlight thing in it. It's a little light looking thing, but it also has a light you can turn on and it has an API for that. Yeah. It's kind of their thing is they put a light on it. This is an $87 EasyViz floodlight camera. It's got starlight,

but I'm sure there's not not an API or anything for that. But we'll post some pictures. I don't mind posting my backyard. Everybody can see my grass. It's beautiful. But it does make a huge difference with a starlight camera if you have pitch darkness. And I've been playing with some off-brand ones because I don't want to buy them from my distributor and not like them. And so I buy them from my distributor and not like them.

And so I buy them from Amazon because I can return them. But in the world of security cameras, there's a ton of rebranded cameras with no firmware updates available. And so you're basically just buying random stuff that may or may not work because that's security cameras. Yeah, I was setting this one up because I've got to do some integration work with it. And it had like,

I've been sitting on this thing for a long time. It's been sitting in my house and haven't plugged it in. And it had a firmware update. And I clicked it. It said on there, it said, this can take a while. And I'm like, okay, I'll just leave you to do your thing. And I look back at it later and it's still kind of like in the same place. And I would refresh the page and then I just came up with a blank page and then

I was like oh so I power cycled it blank page I guess for what for whatever weird reason now I can't I have to visit it in a in a in a private browser mode to to see anything on it which is kind of weird but I guess it's common like in chrome that you have to open up private browsing for some of these things i don't know it's very strange well i have a like an off-brand hike vision camera so that's what's actually i'm using for my starlight camera right now um and starlight i'm not i'm not sure the exact technical things but it's basically a specific uh light sensor or camera sensor yeah yeah uh that that some of these cameras are including and it's just it's very good at low

light situations so if you have a pitch dark area then it can basically replicate it in color though it doesn't seem that they have the infrared thing built in right like this camera doesn't have infrared maybe some of them do but this this camera doesn't do infrared it just does the what are we called starlight which i think is a sony sony brand name thing yeah it's a sony thing they call it something different at uniview yeah and i think each one of them have their own like hike vision they technically call theirs like color view yeah so yeah i don't know it's uh i i would personally not like to have lights on cameras like the little bright white led lights that these things have on them. But I guess that's a thing.

Yeah. You can turn it off. So I did. The light is there to help with the low light situation. So like my backyard would be perfect for that. But I just, I have mine off and it doesn't seem to make any difference. So yeah,

we have one of these in the warehouse at the office that I can connect to on my phone because I was messing around with it at one point in time. And it, it, it is like that, like at night it's in a warehouse with all closed doors. And it, I mean, it is, it's amazing. Like how much you can see in there. It's all cardboard boxes and nobody moving around, but it's like, it's perfectly clear. It's pretty, pretty nice. Yeah. Like right now, if I look at it, I have my back ring solar lights on.

And so that's the only way you could really tell that it's nighttime. But when the lights turn off, it would be kind of hard to notice that it's nighttime sometimes. And then transitioning from camera news, I have my new Elan HR-40 remote. Watch out. And so this is a new remote from Elan. We had the interview with Elan or Nice which I still think is a terrible name.

It's a nice name. It's such an awful name. But the remote feels nice. I haven't really got a chance to program it and play with it. I can view my cameras on it right now. That's pretty much it. It feels good in the hand. It's got voice control built into it um and we'll see how it works hopefully i can get a program in the next week or two um we've had the the dual tv set up in the living room for like several months now but we have not been able to use that so

i've been waiting for the the remote to come out so i can actually utilize those uh because they're both lg tvs and if you try to use a remote on the tv and they're both next to each other then they do the same thing it's not really uh user-friendly nope that's pretty much it for projects i was in cincinnati the past couple days so i haven't really got to uh do much at the house that's right that's right and you didn't find any uh oh henry's for us to i did not find any oh henry's i went to jungle gyms um and i walked around after working all day and i was like you know i'm not finding this so i just left uh but according to nicole they used to have oh henry's here until like 2019 so it was a thing but nobody knew it was a thing. So that is why they don't have it anymore because nobody knew about it.

That's why they only sell them in Canada because it's like, man, we sell a crap load out of these things up by Toronto. We never sell any in America. We only sell them in those little mixed bags. It's my favorite chocolate bar. And they look good. They look good.

You have to mail some to us, Gavin. They'll probably melt before they get to they look good. They look good. You have to mail some to us, Gavin. They'll probably melt before they get to you, Seth. No, overnight. Well, yeah. You have to pack it in an ice box. Yeah, exactly. Do it right, Gavin. Come on.

All right. Well, cool, man. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun with the NVR search. I do wish you luck on that. Because you're going to end up back on Blue Iris like Gavin and probably me. I'm saying that. I'm not. You will.

I'm going to stick it out with the Synology. I thought you returned it. No, I still have the Synology. Okay. But I feel like it's the best plug and play solution. And do I really need two? I'm going to convince myself that I don't need more than two. the price difference is crazy right it's like six hundred dollars for the one with two or you have to jump up to twenty five hundred dollars for up to sixteen wow and i was

like all right come on can you not make like a middle ground it's like a like icloud or google drive where it's like you have like a hundred gig or 200 gig and then you have to buy a terabyte it's like well give me something in between for twenty five hundred dollars gavin will set you up a blue iris system yeah but then you have to maintain it for the rest of his life okay okay okay let's put you on maintenance plan yeah yeah yeah but it will be worth it it will be worth it so for three hundred dollars i'll get you set up. And then for one Netflix a month subscription. I like where this is going already. You know, I'll maintain it for you. So that's updates, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, and that's Canadian Netflix too. I'll save money. He wants access to your Netflix. He needs a login. Yeah. I need a VPN, a login. I need a VPN. That's I need a VPN, a login. That's too good.

That's too good. We'll trade Netflix for a Blue Iris setup. There we go. I'll send you a Fire TV with a Netflix and IPTV. You'll be good to go. There we go. I hate to say it, but I might actually buy Blue Iris and set it up as I- Stop it, Seth. Wean myself off the UniFi.

Because I don't even have a real UniFi thing. I have the UniFi, the CloudKey still, which they kind of like... They still sell it, but they kind of look down upon you for having one. Well, they do like the Gen 2 now. Yeah, it's the Gen 2, but they still don't treat that as like a first-tier product.

You're supposed to go with the, the, the dream machine. The cloud key was evidently not a dream or much of a machine. Cause it's kind of slow and janky, but it's, they, they, they definitely don't want you to have that anymore. They want you to have the full dream machine and run things in that.

So I, I I'm kind of done playing around with that i don't have anything unified except the cameras laying around and the cameras all have rtsp streams on it so you know what do i care i can hook them up to anything and uh without and and i have extra cameras laying around for work i have tons of cameras just don't hook them up i don't really want that many cameras but i have plenty couldn't just send some cameras my way seth that's okay i can but they're probably you probably don't want them it's probably yeah you're probably right the ones i yeah anyway put them on the government auction website that's where that's where

electronics go to die i do have this one this manufacturer sent me i don't know where it is it's in a box somewhere but it's basically it's a pan i think it's a pan tilt camera but it doesn't do zoom so it's just pt which i thought was kind of funny it'll go this way it'll go that way it'll go up and down a little bit but it doesn't doesn't do the z part it's kind of like a waste kind of weird huh it's like why not why not just add that extra you know it's like releasing a washing machine sensor not a dryer sensor you know man just do the ptz you know you're so close you're so close it's like you could delete it a month we would have never known you know i had some guy that wanted me to put like six ptz's on the outside of his house and i was like i can but they're like huge man like that's gonna look ugly on your really nice

house and i was like no that's all right and i was like okay i put them on there he was not happy i told you they are giant they're very large you need a very large house to offset they're like very very commercial looking too so if you have like a nice modern house they definitely stick out oh no no no yeah yeah don't no no no you'd have to plan ahead and do like the flush mount version of that, where it's just a little dome popping down, like it's a drop ceiling or something. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. We do want to give a big thank you for everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support

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of stuff in there there's Lutron oh there's a printer review I actually use that as our pick of the week because there was a brother printer review that was written half by chat gbt i think they just did that just to take space up on their website it's amazing i thought of you gavin i was like gavin has to see this best printers but all sorts of good stuff going on in there uh so check it out uh if you want to help out the show but can't support financially, we just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes

or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up another week here. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care. Till next time. Oh, not 130 minutes. We have 20 more minutes to go. Oh, let's record for another 20 minutes.

Oh, no, this is Patreon feed now. Now we can actually swear. Yeah.