HomeTech.fm - Episode 460 - Come Over and Sit On My Lovesac

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

On this week's show, Z-Wave is (probably not) dead, Sonos teases new product, voice assistants can be hacked, Aqara launches an affordable PTZ camera, a new smart lock standard, mailbag, a pick of the week, and new project updates.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 17th 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, TJ dropping his camera. Yeah, just throw it around. Wow, that's a bit distracting uh anyway i all sorts of technology that we talk about each week and uh i guess one of the biggest things

we're a podcast so we got to talk about this thing because every podcast they've talked about it so i guess we have to throw in our opinion on it but um what do you guys think about this uh humane ai pen lapel pen thing, I guess? I don't know what to call this. It's a little device. It's a wearable smartphone with no screen. It costs $699, $700. Is that right?

And then $24 a month for basically a T-Mobile network subscription. Magnetically clips to your clothes. It has all sorts of little features and an ai thing and it also like it has no screen but it will project information i think onto your hand if you hold your hand out so that was kind of cool i i wouldn't buy one of these i wouldn't see a need for it because my phone does pretty much everything it does i guess um and more but one thing i really appreciate it is that somebody's thinking different. Somebody came out with something new and, you know, different. And I'd like to see where this

goes from here. Yeah, it is pretty cool because it is a unique device. I mean, we've had wearables in the past, you know, people wear smartwatches all the time. We've had smart glasses and other wearable smart electronics, but I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. And so that makes it pretty unique. And I think it's a really good business idea for them to basically sell you the cell service as well, because they're going to get the money for the hardware immediately. And then each month they're getting that $24 to be the middleman between you and this device working. And so I think there's a lot of potential there for them to make money.

I'm just, I don't know. I'm just not interested in this specific device right now. It's an interesting form factor. And it's got, I guess, it has a camera built into it as well. It's got two batteries that you can swap out throughout the day. It just kind of says something about how it's going to work.

But like, I'm with you, Gavin. I think it's cool. These kinds of devices, it's going to work but like i i'm with you gavin i i think it's cool these kind of devices it's always good if somebody kind of like starts out trying to do something yeah although i i don't i don't i agree with you i don't think like what they're trying to do is replace a smartphone like i i don't i don't think that's going to work very well for them because the smartphones just have such a leg up and they're already so cheap and this thing is $800 $700 plus another cell phone subscription i already have that and i have a screen exactly and the magnet part makes me nervous i mean i can't even stop my poppy from

getting you know like lost and that's pinned into my jacket this is just a magnet i'd be so nervous of an 800 device sitting there you know like i don't know but it was cool because it also had a camera built in so you could take pictures you know i'm but if i saw someone wearing something like this and that's where you'll be in a change room and someone will have it on you gotta worry about stuff like that there's a lot of privacy too you know yeah and like purposely doesn't have a wake word as well as far as i know because they don't want they want to focus a little bit on privacy which i think is kind of nice um my thing is like the looks of it right if i saw this out in public kind of like the google glasses if i saw people walking around with those i would think it's weird because just i don't know it just feels weird with it always

looking at you all the time but like if they were able to shrink this down a little bit in size and maybe like put the computer actually behind uh where the battery's gonna go because basically how it works is it's got a battery that magnetizes to the front part of it or the computer and everything through your clothing and that's what helps the battery life um If they were able to shrink the computer down and make the front part of it where it's actually exposed to everybody smaller, I think it'd be a lot less obvious and it wouldn't look so weird.

But I don't know. This looked kind of weird to me. Yeah, all this technology and all this stuff is coming, but it's not here today. We haven't shrunk everything down that small. And the sensors are still there. The battery technology is not there, but it's interesting.

I'll give them that. They've done an interesting interesting job they're doing a lot of work though like they made their own operating system like they're not even trying to that's a lot of work yeah if you buy one best of luck to you guys if one of our listeners buy one let us know how it works and uh if you you need to raise a little bit extra money because you went out and bought one of these things um nabu casa is hiring so you can get an extra job there. They're hiring three positions, actually. This is the company that is adjacent, I guess is the best way to describe it, to Home Assistant. And it's basically the paid version of Home Assistant that gets you the, like, what is it, remote connection, that kind of thing, without having to do port forwarding or any fun stuff like that.

They're hiring a community and social media manager, a marketing copywriter, and a marketing designer. So it looks like they're trying to do a lot of marketing work. And that's good for them. I think they should. They should get out there and plug the name away and get more people interested and sign up. Because right now it's kind of a nerdy project that me gavin and tj but it's definitely not a product for the masses so the more direction they can go

in that direction the more movement they can get in that direction the better it's good to see them expanding growing it means they're doing something well and i guess they also just want to control the message because right now they have a lot of free advertising between all the blogs and all the YouTubers and everything. They cover them for free. So I was kind of shocked that they actually have to hire somebody. But it makes sense when you want to control the message or, you know, you want somebody to interface with all these people covering your product. This is a good role. It's a lot of work.

Like just. Yes. I mean, you've got you've got just a couple of people working on it and they may be working on the code it's like i can tell you when i'm working on code the last thing i want to do is write a press release but i have to sometimes so um yeah it reminds me i have someone to do one to do this week um that'll be a good job for somebody to have and a community manager i mean that they have such a large community i can't imagine like interacting and that's that's a full time job in and of itself so good luck to whoever gets that position and you know tell us how you

like your ai pin thing well uh maybe maybe they can uh unban me from the home assistant facebook group too that'd be nice new social media manager person yes if any one of our listeners gets hired please unban tj for asking the simple question what are you guys going to do about this spam so much spam oh my gosh but uh no the casa cloud thing is totally worth it though because it does give you remote access and it makes uh home assistant work with google assistant amazon alex Alexa without setting it all up yourself. So I think it's a must. And it's only $5 a month. That's the key.

It's so cheap that it's so worth it. And it solves a number of problems. You know, keep in mind, though, like if you want it, you know, you don't have to buy it, right? You could do all that stuff without it. But it's just this makes it so much easier and things work so much better well check that out i will put a link to the fosted on which is another mastodon instance out there home assistant at fosted on posted that and uh you know make sure you reply that you've uh you know hashtag unbanned tj unbanned me. All right. All right.

We got a couple of home tech headlines this week. A number of things, a couple of new products and a couple of leaks, a couple of interesting things that have come out and some teasers

from a company, a big company that starts with an S and ends with an S. So what do you say we get started? Let's do it. Let's do it.

Well, first thing, we kind of we kind of tease this at the post show last week and we kind of forgot to talk about this but there was a there was a post on linkedin uh where where mitch klein uh who is the what was he the director of alliance strategies over at silicon labs basically a big z-wave person person forever, had posted that he was no longer with the Z-Wave Alliance. I'd be working there. I guess he and a bunch of other people get laid off. Let's see.

News of layoffs of the company's Q3 results were released, which exceeded expectations. Klein, who has been a major proponent of home connectivity standards, has been in the industry for around 30 years and received recognition for his contributions to the industry including the cd lifetime achievement award in 2019 so mitch has been around forever i think he's we've had him on the show a couple times in the past and he's great to talk to big proponent of the entire industry no matter diy cdia whatever like he is he's been involved forever. So, uh, sad to see him there. I have no doubt he will land on his feet square on his feet somewhere. Um, because he's, he's pretty good at what he does, but, um, it's weird. Like they, they posted some, uh, it looks like

they're going to do some like rethinking over there at Silicon labs and how they're going to go to market with a lot of this stuff. they laid off a bunch of people sounds like z wave is dying guys we've talked about this before z wave is not dead is it death to z wave or from z wave or of d wave i i don't know like it could be either one of those so yeah mitch mitch goes way back though i mean he's he's been in the industry for basically as long as I've been alive. So if you want to feel old listening to the podcast, you can just envision that. 2019. Wow, TJ. Okay.

Wow. In the entire industry. Come on, Seth. I don't think Z-Wave is going to die. I think they're going to find a use for it. I have a feeling it may go into the industrial space or something like that, right? But I don't think it's going to disappear. It's a good protocol, you know?

Matter is going to take over the DIY space eventually. And until it does, Z-Wave and Zigbee are just going to be riding along. Yeah, I can see Z-Wave go into commercial, just because especially with the long range that they just released, what is it, a mile and a half or a mile of distance altogether? I mean, that's crazy good in a warehouse and stuff like that where you might not be able to

install repeaters everywhere or you just need the far range for it. But I just think in general, consumers once matter actually comes out and it starts mattering, that consumers are not going to care about Z-Wave anymore. Nerds like us are going to care about it. And that's the only people that care about it at the moment. But I think it's going to dwindle even more unless they find a specialized case for it, which I have no doubt they can.

Like you said, it's good technology and it can be built into smart meters and water meters and all that good stuff yeah it's reliable i mean i don't have any problems with my stuff and i don't know it's a lot it's a lot better than it was when i started in the industry and i only started in the industry like 10 years ago so back then you're like you couldn't even install a door lock at the end of a hallway you know right next to the hub you had to have a repeater in the middle of it and now you can run a lot of stuff without any problems most of the time. So yeah, that was my experience with Z-Wave. So it's gotten much better. So awful. It's like, oh, I got to actually install the smart outlet because we need a repeater. And it's like, it's right there. I can, I can see it. It can see you. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on here. We got a pretty interesting story here that TJ may be happy to hear about.

Sonos has seen a decline in demand over the past few years. However, CEO Patrick Spence announced the company has major new products in the works for 2024. While the details are limited, Spence mentioned that the product will enter a new multi-billion dollar category and generate over a hundred million dollars in revenue for the company. Some are speculating. And I say some isn't like TJ and I don't know. They,

they mentioned over here on the verge. Yeah. This verge article, geez, everybody wants it. They wanted to be the Sonos headphones or a new speaker with some kind of innovative technologies from a startup they acquired called Mate. I don't know what that is.

Sonos aims to take a strong comeback with this new product and reign in its market share. It had a revenue decrease of 5.5% over last year. And they're hoping to release this new product in the second half of 2024. So we don't have very long to wait. DJ, Sonos headphones, here they come. come bring them out i see this going two ways i see them releasing a really expensive version and i by expensive i mean i hope it's like at most like 400 but it's so no so it'll probably like 450 um but one expensive version that works with sonos and basically you can group it with other speakers in the house and, you know, just like any other Sonos speaker and control

the volume and all that stuff. And it has Bluetooth in it. And then I see a slimmed down version where it only works with Sonos, like inside your house. And it's like half the cost, kind of like the, the arc beam and raid concept. Um, because there's going to be certain people that just want tv headphones but then there's all like personally though if i'm going to buy headphones i want them to be able to work with my phone via bluetooth or some other way where i don't need to like be

at my house on the wi-fi in order to use them they seem kind of useless if that's the case all right i'm already starting a new note here for our discussion board called Friendly Wagers, Sonos Headphones. So will the headphones be the 2024 Q2 major product release that Sonos is mentioning here that is going to bring $100 million of revenue into the company? Or will it be something else like, I don't know, outdoor audio? It's going to be something stupid like a don't know outdoor audio uh it's gonna be something like a cd player cd player record player record player there you go they're like well we've been partnered with all these companies why don't we just make our own record player i'll put my money on the sonos remote oh gavin's going with sonos remote wow you know perfect timing since harmony's gonna die in a couple years you know there's people in the in the speaker space that want their own remote wait a minute i've seen this somewhere before and it's gonna look like a remote out there that's already out

there sonos is just gonna buy ava yeah yeah i i wouldn't say they're coming with headphones you know sonos every year they do this it's like they build you up and build you up and then you get the announcement it's like great a new sonos one speaker yeah yay you know it's like we we get so excited and then we get let down it was kind of like you don't matter right so i mean we we get so excited so i'm not gonna put my mind i'm gonna set the bar really low so that if they go exceed it then i'll be happy it's gonna be something silly like a smaller subwoofer something like that well actually you know it took us forever to release the smallest subwoofer but we're gonna come out with a small one that you could pair with like your ray

i think that's our new product yeah all right well if we were gonna put money on this TJ do you think there's headphones do I think there's headphones in 2024 I'll bet a dollar why not TJ's in for a dollar

for yes Gavin I'll take that bet for no Gavin is no and I'm gonna say no too I'm not going for that one so sorry what do you think what do you

think it could be i think it's going to be another speaker that i think i think i think where sodas really needs to work in is to do a little bit better job in um like the the surround space they're still pushing 5.1 and everybody's moving on from that and then like they've come out with the era 300s that aim up the thing at the same it's not the same it's not the same wait we've moved on from 5.1 uh yeah yeah i mean i i'm still at 4.0 to this we're gonna get this later but i just listened to this podcast that a friend of the show um has produced and uh that people have moved on from nine point whatever like they're they're beyond that now so we're gonna have an owens

podcast here in a minute so yeah i think that's what some of these sonos people have been our fans have been asking for though is a way to add more speakers to like a regular setup um you know traditionally with sonos you have the sound bar and then you have two surrounds and maybe two subwoofers but i can see them like expanding that because that'd be an easy way for people to buy more speakers right like if you had the sound bar for like your center and then you had separate left and right i mean that gives people another reason to buy two additional speakers if you want to add more speakers if you want to add more speakers look at last week's pick of the the Week. Didn't they have all the speakers on that one? The garage door opener?

Oh, we were talking about the guy with all the speakers. Oh, yeah, yeah, in his room. It was like an 18-year-old kid that put a bunch of speakers in. It found all the speakers on the side of the road. So if you want more speakers, you know, there's a guy that did it. Yeah, but you can't do that with Sonos. We'll find a way. Well, I guess you might be able to with that

Sonos sequencer, though. I don't know. The speakers that the... that they're talking... I don't know how to pronounce this company. M-A-Y-H-T Mate, I guess. I guess they had some uh very small transducers that would um sound good so uh they they were producing some solar powered speakers

or something like that and they had redesigned and made some really efficient drivers or something that are small so that's that's what sonos has picked up and i could see them kind of introducing that and i mean i mean they haven't done anything with that technology so it'd be interesting i don't know i don't i don't see headphones happening i'm sorry hear me out hear me out i got a new bet it's going to be furniture they're going to come out with oh my gosh you're giving away the pick of the week. I mean, that would make some money. For all the right reasons. It's the Sonos side table with building subwoofer.

Exactly. All right. We've got kind of a leak here coming out from the FCC. The FCC has... Hubitat has submitted a pro model of their hub. It's come through here. So, Gavinavin i think you may have put this in um yeah i saw this on x you know jimmy leaked this for me so uh you know

the hubitat c8 pro has been spotted on the fcc i really don't know what's pro about it like i don't know any details i'm thinking maybe a faster cpu um maybe some more internal memory um because i don't know what other antennas you can have unless they add in an actual thread antenna i don't know if the c8 has a thread antenna um for direct matter over thread support so i'm sure details will come out but something's coming hopefully they at least add some rgbs to it that'll make it professional it's got one rgb it goes blue green and off yeah but i need it to be like my govi space heater or just has a giant ring at the bottom because why not yeah i mean that's professional every professional product i know lights up

you get that in your computers now too it's kind of nice that's right not my mac mini though it's not professional no it's a pro that's a pro thing you have to have a pro yeah but when they say pro it makes me think that they're looking to go into another space at some point so i'm curious to see what it is that's going to make this pro instead of just the c9 for example maybe it Maybe it's PoE powered. I don't know. It's weird. Rack mountable. PoE powered would be nice. I should be able to look through these FCC applications. No, it's definitely not rack mountable in that form factor.

I can tell you that right now. That's not going to happen. It's got the Pro add-on faceplate to make it rack mountable. The external photos have not been published yet. We'll find out. But it's good to see them. Whatever it is, it's good to see them you know whatever it is it's good to see them like coming along with something new um and it looks like you know they're moving along just fine all right well speaking of things not moving along just fine reach our i think we've

heard about this before but um researchers have discovered a new vulnerability in voice-activated IoT devices that allow for silent cyber attacks. Alexa. And audible voice commands transmitted at frequencies between 16 and 22 kilohertz. So way up there. Your dog can hear this, but you can't. It can be used to issue malicious commands to devices such as the Amazon Alexa, Google Nest, Mini, and the Apple HomePod. These frequencies typically range beyond the hearing range of most humans. So it makes these attacks a little difficult to actually detect that they're happening. So there was actually a CV issued on this. It's got like a rating of 7.8, which is

kind of high, but i don't know given that somebody's already basically in your house and whispering into your whispering with some kind of device because they don't you could you wouldn't be able to use you nobody can talk this high like this would have to be something that you played back on a phone or whatever um yeah i guess you could get hacked that way or have something happen. I'm not sure. Or maybe they could have a tool that transmits something through, and it goes through walls or something.

Like if you can't hear it. Not that high. Uh, that high, it's going to get blocked by glass and walls. A couple of years back, the one that they had was like a laser. They could shoot a laser towards the microphone or at the microphone or whatever. And it would vibrate the microphone, the little piezo thing inside the microphone. And I thought that was clever. That was very clever.

But this one is going to have to be inside the house. And they talk about it, unlocking doors and tampering with temperatures and appliances and that kind of thing. I guess you could do that, but like once already in the house, couldn't they just like, instead of doing this weird thing,

couldn't they just go turn the thermostat down the wrong way, you know, or unlock the door once they're already in the house? The only thing I could think of is maybe controlling it with other people's phones. Maybe if you're in a public space or something like that, maybe you could use this to talk to people's phones and have them do it. Interesting. But that obviously isn't tested. Can you imagine trying to hack this thing and have to deal with all the by the ways? No.

That would just slow down the efforts. By the time you get through all that, you know you're getting hacked. Yeah. I don't know. This seems like a big, it's interesting, but I don't think it's that.

When somebody already is in your house, I don't think they're going to be talking to Alexa if they are nefarious, nefarious intent. Like, they're going to be doing to Alexa if they are nefarious, nefarious intent, like they're going to be doing something else. So, ah, well,

anyway, here's something you can use to watch them and watch what they're doing. Okara has come out with a 2k indoor security camera called the E1. Beautiful model name. Uh, it's got pan tilt, zoom, home kit,

secure video, indoor camera. It's got two way audio, night vision, person tracking, wifi six, and it supports home kit, Alexa. And if, then that, thatway audio, night vision, person tracking, Wi-Fi 6, and it supports HomeKit, Alexa, and if... Gavin, I think you put this on here.

You had a bunch of other cool features you were telling me about before we started the show. Why would you get this? Well, if you're interested in something like this. I personally am not, but if you are, the price is good, $ $59.99 so that's a great price it's as local storage and cloud storage wi-fi 6 you mentioned bluetooth is used i believe for setup um but it also has on device motion person and sound uh detection so that means that's local all done locally the sound's coming later um 2k resolution privacy mode it's a pan tilt and it works with the different ecosystems one of the key things that i know a lot of people would be happy about is

it actually works with home kit secure video so if you you work with that then this is a device for you i kind of like the privacy mode because when you put it in privacy mode the camera actually turns around it's like it's looking away from you and that is so funny yeah it's kind of funny it's just embarrassed for you it's like i'm changing gold privacy mode and they all turn away from you it's okay i didn't want to see this anyway yeah so it's kind of cool but you know like for the price you know and again akara is killing it with their devices yeah i could see me actually move into this we um as talked about previously moving away from unify cameras and right now i have like three or four

interior cameras for whenever we're traveling and everything but i want to get those off of unify into something else and so this is appealing to me because they're only 60 dollars uh you get the ptc option but all the storage options with it as well. And so I could tie it in with Blue Iris or something else. No, you probably won't be able to. No, no Blue Iris. For Blue Iris, you'll need an RTSP stream or RTMP. I can never remember which one.

But I don't think, I was trying to find out if this had one, and I highly doubt it does. It doesn't look like it does. All right. Well, the interior cameras aren't that important anyway, so at least they'll work with HomeKit. Yeah. Yeah, you got to have one of those creepy cameras that watch you. They stare at you like this. They're smoking a cigarette.

It's like, yeah, go on. Go on. It's like, stop it, UniFi. I'm trying to change. Instead of router hats, do you think we can come out with camera hats so we can uh put a little sombrero on this guy it would be adorable you have like all these you have like four of these interior cameras each one of them have a different hat you know one of them sombrero

one of them's yeah fez would be a good option santa hat for the holidays yeah a little thanksgiving action a little turkey or something i don't know pilgrim hat ah another domain i'm going to buy and mock up before we do the show all right all right um um interesting product 59 is not a bad bad deal if you're interested in your need a little ptz camera maybe i want to go with uh this story right here just gets me we haven't even gotten to our matter segment yet but this is this is this one this is fun tech giants apple google samsung along with lock and chip makers such as a legion assa boy qualcomm and nxp it's pretty much everybody i mean like have come together to create a liro an open standard for smart locks and digital keys.

The new standard aims to establish a Google communication protocol and common credential system that will allow any authorized smartphone or smartwatch to open any smart lock, regardless of the manufacturer. It's being developed by over 200 companies and expected to launch its first specification in early 2025. This pretty much the goal is to create a digital key that can be stored and access on your phone's digital wallet or smartwatch similar to Apple's home key. The owner of the lock will have control over the key, allowing for secure sharing and management, all that good stuff. Just what we need. Another another standard. This one are all around locks and everything so i guess it makes sense to kind of like maybe break it out but i thought i thought

this was what matter was supposed to do eventually i guess not fast enough i think this is more than more than just matter though this is like it's all the big players getting together and saying listen if we're going to make locks these are the rules we're going to follow so that they can easily be integrated into things like matter or all the other ecosystems but they also talk to each other and they do whatever they have to do right right it kind of reminds me of the um the appliance one was it csa something like that or when samsung went with lg and they created like an open standard for the appliances to be able to talk to each other too um that was last year or so so it's kind of similar to that too but i like this because one it's an open standard right two it has all the big players like the names you named are pretty

much all the main guys in there once you have the big yeah once you have the big players on board then you know like every block you'll get, well, eventually it's going to take time. We probably won't see the standard for a while or start to roll out for a while, but it's good to see. I think they can do this with other products, you know, like make, I have a thing, you know, before the show, make remotes a standard, you know, everyone that makes a remote talks a certain way, right? That's a useless thing. It's not going to happen. You know what? Listen, I still like remotes, okay?

Nobody cares about remotes, Gavin. I need more than four buttons on my remote too. And I don't want, it doesn't have to be all touchscreen. I want physical buttons. You could take away the number buttons. We're sidestepping here. Hold on, hold on. We're sidestepping.

Let's get back on track. Yes, I like this idea, and it's an open standard. So, you know, that's good to see. It is interesting that the one giant company involved with locks is not part of this, as far as I can tell, which is Kwikset, their parent company, Spectrum Brands. So Kwikset's always kind of done their own little thing but it's interesting just to see them not on this yeah that i can see why you got confused about it being the csa it was samsung analogy when they put their thing together i think it was in uh it was last year sometime like you said yeah it was called the home connectivity alliance or, or the HCA, which they actually, we missed this,

but they had a standard 1.0 was released, and CES 2023. So they're moving pretty quick, faster than matter. Anyway, this is interesting. We'll have to keep an eye on it. I guess it makes sense if they were just like, this is how locks work, a smart lock works. You have all of these methods of input and everything. And if you standardize on the credential sharing, then you can put a key in

your Apple wallet or your Google wallet or whatever the, you know, analog is for the rest of the technology vendors. I like, I really do like walking up and hitting my watch on the, on the block and it just goes bing and it opens up it's really cool so more of that please make it happen all right let's uh let's move on and talk about locks that do matter this week though australian smart lock maker nuki has launched its matter over thread smart lock and it's designed for european style doors the lock comes in the standard version for about 180 dollars and pro version for 300 dollars with higher quality materials and built-in Wi-Fi. Additional thread support brings in a longer battery life, increased liability, and faster speed.

It is the world's first smart lock to fully integrate with Matter into the product. Yay, Anuki, you matter. Yay. I've never heard of this company. No, and I'm not a fan of the look of Anuki. I've heard of them, but I don't have any experience with them. I think they're mainly a Europe thing. I know they have some stuff in the States, as far as I know.

It's an interesting-looking lock. It says batteries should last up to six months, and it's 30% longer than the previous model, so nice. Yeah, see, that's not very long. I would be annoyed if I had to change my lock batteries that often. Hmm. Nuki nuki. It says that ProLock can connect to any Apple Home or Google Home matter, but the standard lock requires a $42 upgrade charge to enable thread support.

There's always an upcharge somewhere. It's like the BMW model where they're like, oh, yeah, you want CarPlay? You're going to pay us for that one. Wasn't there a Limp Bizkit song about this company? I think there is, in fact. Something about a cookie. All right. Sonoff has mattered as well.

They have their first matter device. It is, I think, posted on Twitter. I want to say we talked about this or we mentioned it before, but this is like a little, one of those little, um, devices that you can hide away inside of like a, an electrical box.

It's a relay. Well, like you can, you can hide it behind a switch or use it as a relay or anything, but it's kind of cool. It's a little, little tiny, tiny thing.

Hook the wires up. There's a video here. I'm watching this guy do work he's hooking up the light switch now it's gonna happen he puts it back together flips the switch boom light comes on that's how it should work magic magic yeah the other thing is i wish they instead of doing these screw terminals they would just come out with the the clamp terminals like the wegos or lever terminals whatever you want to call them just get rid of these screwed terminals please they're awful.

They're always awful. And it's like, even if you have the appropriate size wire and stuff like that, you have to put it in there a couple times and pull on it. Just do the lever connectors, please. Agreed. Well, there's another company that might matter. Third Reality MZ1 Smart Bridge, I guess, they have announced is going to be matter-compatible as well. So congratulations, MZ1 Smart Bridge, I guess, they have announced is going to be Matter-compatible as well.

So congratulations. You've got Matter integration coming to your third reality device. Zigbee devices? Yeah, Zigbee devices. So, yeah, it's basically a bridge, like Gavin, what you're talking about. It's bridging things over. Another bridge. On Matter.

Yep. This company is pretty cool, though. I've used several of their products, and you're talking about. It's bridging things over. Another bridge. Things on matter. Yep. This company is pretty cool, though. I've used several of their products, and they all work great. I know, and Jimmy really liked their blinds. I was actually looking at their blinds. I'm thinking I'm maybe grabbing a set. I can't find. Are they just available on Amazon?

Is that it? Yep. The batteries kind of go in the bottom of the blind, and they look like they're cellular shades, so's pretty cool it's pretty cool i was looking for their website i can't find their website yeah it took me a while to find these things but they're there they're not do they have a website it's just amazon links everywhere yeah for third reality yeah i've only ever found them on amazon they're the ones i use the for the smart switches at the apartment they i think it's just rebranded

but they have a smart switch that just goes over your existing light switch and it has just a button and so um you can control it with your automation system it's zigbee so you can do all local which is nice and i think they're only like $20 a piece, so very affordable. I have a bunch of them somewhere that I took out of the apartment. Their website is three, the number three, reality.com. Oh, and I really like their,

I forgot about their water leak sensors. I have their water leak sensors everywhere, and I like them because they still have a built-in siren as well. And so even if like for some reason you don't get the notification through your automation platform, you would be able to hear the siren going off. And they're ZigBee.

I think four of them was like $40 or something. They were very cheap. Nice. And you remember the Amazon Flex, I think it was? It was a little Echo Flex. They make add-ons for it underneath. So they're actually authorized. Yeah, I saw that.

Pretty cool. I'll have to give this company another look and just see what else, what's new. And they have a remote. Hey, look, since we're talking about remotes, they have a remote. Where do you see that at? Smart home accessories. Oh. Oh, yeah, for Amazon Fire.

There's no buttons. Look, you can plug headphones into the remote as it has an audio jack, and it will redirect the sound from your TV. That's brilliant right there. You know, your remote is the audio jack for your headphones right there. There you go. Just like Roku. Just like Roku.

Good job. Man, Roku is such a great company. Yeah, they kind of are except for their sleazy uh advertisement stuff but you know you don't pay they don't talk about that yeah don't talk about that i like i like how third reality has a forum link and there's one post in there from august 21st let's go bump let's go double their posts oh man all right well all the links and topics we talked just i'm gonna have a hell All right. Well, all the links and topics we talked, I'm going to have a hell of a time editing this. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over our show notes over at hometech.fm slash four six zero.

All right. We got a pick of the week and we got a mailbag this week, but one of the things we have is a post that we got. I was tagged on, Gavin was tagged on, but TJ was not tagged on over on Mastodon because TJ bailed on us over there for some reason. But James Todd, friend of the show, I guess, says, neat, my first sighting of a TJ in the wilds of Worthington, Ohio.

So he says, so much more exciting than tracking birds in your backyard. So James is over there tracking TJ, i guess i don't know yeah i can't even tell what intersection this is so it's it's pretty funny i've i've ran into two people in the wild now uh that have that listen to the podcast oh to live near young people what is it like i'm just like in a hole that no one knows what i do they were like it's a podcast for years well you you live near all old people.

I know. They have no idea. They're not going to listen to anything about technology. I'm a little upset that he didn't stop you and, you know, say hi and, you know, give you the celebrity feel, you know, like we got a picture with you, you know, that type of thing. Like, no, no. Is it bad? The first thing I thought of was like, well, hopefully I didn't drive like a jack wagon like anywhere near him.

You know what I mean? And you cut him off. Maybe like honked at me to like say hi and I just like flipped him off or something. He said he'll bring you some old Henry's next time. That's nice. No, that'd be nice. Well, thanks.

Thanks, James. We do appreciate it. If you want to go over there and track TJ in the wild, you just go on over to hometech.social and sign up on our mess it on instance we have a website that tracks his van everywhere it goes you know yeah it's just like the uh it's just like the elon musk jet yeah it's tj's van that would be funny to set up wait you do have the tracker thing oh this can totally happen oh i do actually well yeah

especially through home i have a through home assistant and drone mobile oh there we go new domain you gotta buy seth yeah so many things tracking me where's tj we can just hook it up we get it i mean the the mastodon api is really easy it like it can hook it up to just post all the time like i i did that with our our show like if we when we publish a new show there's a thing that watches that and then post it up so there we go can we can make it we can make this happen tj we can let's do it as long as we block out my home address yeah a little opsec issue there i don't need people showing up to my house i like you guys but uh there's there's a guy at the front door says he listens to the podcast

okay well i'll tell you what if anybody shows up you got to have one of these things so in our pick of the week here get get one of these love sacks put in your living room and i i can tell from the picture this lady she is happy with her purchase uh this is a sectional sofa with stealth tech and i guess they put speakers and subwoofers inside all the cushions around the the the sofa and you know you you watch what you want to watch looks like she's watching a hallmark movie and on the tv in the background there but really enjoying the movie it looks really relaxing the subwoofers are in the seats you know this is one of those products that will have a high wife appearance very high you know and she will be picking the movies from

now on if you get one of these trust me satisfaction guaranteed yep that's what it says yeah i was actually surprised i was actually surprised the price it doesn't seem too crazy if you don't know anything about the love sack company and like all their stuff is ridiculously expensive i think they got their start with like the giant beanbag chairs that were like a thousand dollars and so like you easily spent like over five thousand dollars for a couch but i just like built a really nice one and it was like eight thousand dollars which is still a lot of money but i feel like it's not that bad for like a full audio system built into it as well well if uh if tj gets one of these um and you can track him come on over i guess come on over and sit on his love sack

i was gonna say it's gonna be hard to tell my friends that they should come over and try out my love sack but uh whoa whoa whoa don't touch my love sack it's new oh you got a lot of a lot of pictures of the dogs here on the love sacks and everything so yeah and the bigger the love sack the better uh yeah it it's it's an interesting i mean i've seen these before and i actually have the sono subwoofer shoved underneath our couch so i get that so i really can't complain about this too much it does work you can go crazy you can get like a like a 12 seater uh with 10 speakers and it's like 13 000 it's five thousand dollars off right now set in case you're looking to uh get some furniture before the the family comes over for thanksgiving

next week i don't even think i could fit half this stuff in my house actually so it's like it's not designed to fill one of those giant bean bags in my house yeah these these large furnitures oversized furniture things aren't are designed for the old 1969 minimalist style homes of florida they just they don't fit quite well we just barely found a couch at ikea that that works in there but what is nice is that i can fit the sofa the the subwoofer the son of subwoofer on its side underneath it's basically the same thing you just saved yourself like eight thousand dollars i did i did because it was like 150 for the ikea couch i don't know it's more than that but like and then i got a son of sub there you go your couch just got a new name

i'll tell my wife tonight baby i, I got us a love sack. This is never ending. All right. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week or pics of your love sack, send them on over. The email address is feedback at hometech.fm. You can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form.

No pics, please. No pics. All right. project updates uh tj you seem like a busy person what you up to i did i did a thing this week uh so previous discussions on the podcast we talked about uh space heaters and smart space heaters and i made the decision i got the govi uh space heater for like a hundred dollars it's been great um turns on automatically with a schedule it'll turn off automatically which is literally the only feature i wanted out of a space smart space heater you can set the led light colors on the base which is whatever they have another model that actually has a little like like fire log that's burning which i think is pretty hilarious um and i can't tell the difference

like they have like several space heaters but they all pretty much look the same spec wise and so i'm not really sure why you would pick one over like the 12 other ones but i'm here for it um but it's been working great the problem is though uh just like seth i have an old house my house is built in 1959 and a lot of the electric is wired together so like pretty much all of the lights in the house are on one breaker uh the outlets uh minus whatever was added on after the fact are also on a different breaker and so the problem was that when the space heater was turning on, it uses like 12 and a half amps normally. But obviously, when it turns on, it's going to use a little bit more power. And so it would jump up to like 15 amps. And on a 15 amp

breaker, with just the space heater on would kill it alone. But combine that with the tvs and the lights and everything else that are on as well it it was weird though because it like worked for like an hour and then it would kick off it just wasn't like an instant thing um you think like when it first turned on like it's going to use the most power and it would kill everything at that point but it never did but it'd be like an hour hour and a half later it would kill the power and i had to flip the breaker um and then i you know obviously wouldn't use it cause I don't want to burn my house down. Um, so I decided that I would go ahead and just install a new dedicated line for the space heater. Um, and I knew at some point I'm going to install mini split for the den,

uh, which is where the space heater is. And so I went ahead and ran a dedicated line for that as well. But I ran a new, you know, 12-2 Romex and a 20-amp breaker, literally just for my one space heater. And it was pretty easy because most of the, I was able to like fish the wall with the electrical wire. And so I only came out of the wall on the exterior of the house, like, I don't know a couple feet with conduit and everything but I needed to do that anyway for the eventual mini split so I was like

well it doesn't really matter I'll just go ahead and do it and it's been working great I have you know plenty of power on that one breaker and whenever we like actually finish the den I'll just go ahead and rewire the whole den to that one breaker and then that way it like removes you know at least that's separated then. And it gives me more flexibility with the rest of the house. Cause I really don't, it would be nice to rewire the whole house, but it's not really necessary. So I'm trying to avoid that if I don't have to.

It's always nice. You don't have to rewire your parents. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I was kind of stupid cause I should have did that before we put a bunch of insulation. Now we have like 18 inches of insulation in the attic and I do not want to go up there. So I'm not going to say we told you so.

But yeah, well, you know, it is what it is. So, hey, I you probably can find a guy who will come over and do it for like 30 bucks. So a hundred percent, a hundred percent. But, you know, it's like one of those things. It's like like the outlets work and stuff. They just don't have grounds. It's like don't you know it's not really necessary it'd be nice but it's not it's not a concern of mine um that's pretty much it for projects right now i don't have anything going on we're getting ready for you know thanksgivings next week um so i'm i've

got a bunch of projects in the pipeline and uh we're going to chicago thanksgiving weekend uh we're gonna go see adam over there in in chicago outside of chicago i guess um and then the week after uh the wife and i are heading to florida so i'm sorry yeah me too yeah i was just there last month what'd you do well it's uh you know the the sister-in-law had a baby so we got to go see the baby they couldn't bring the baby to you you have to actually go there technically i'm the god parent so i have to i have to go see it you know you're obligated yeah like legally or something i don't know so i'll be i'll be closer to seth i'm not gonna go see seth i think you're still like three hours away from me but yeah well we'll look up at the same start seth and we'll know each other's there i mean it's a

hard week to do any travel and yeah it's the kids off all week and yeah it's gonna be fun i'm gonna get some projects done that week for sure so oh i'm excited to hear about or at least started i don't know about the dog started. It's got to be done. Nobody cares about that. I do have a... I'm not starting a new project, but I kind of started a new project. So I got the little things in

finally, like these little guys. The ESP homes. ESP-32 sieve rooms or whatever they are. They are the development boards basically for esp32s and they come with a nice little led module thing that i got um found this company called quin led i think it's q u i n led.info is the website really cool product um these guys have put together a decent, um, breakout board,

essentially like all the pins from here on the little ESP 32 development thing end up being plugged into this like little hat thing just sits on top and you can wire it. What's really nice about this little device. This is the quad version. Um, you can wire in anything from five volts to 24 volts into this. And it supports it all. Like you don't have to worry about the voltages or anything.

It'll power up the ESP, which is 5 volts. And then it'll keep it going. But it'll also, if you have 24 volt LED strips attached, they will power up off this as well. It's got fuses on it. It's got all sorts of fun stuff on here. I think there's like a little sensor on here too somewhere where you can attach it's still got the breakouts on this you can attach sensors on it they just did a really fun like diy board here and i'm just tinkering around

it it comes with uh pre-loaded it has what is it called wled which is like a little led software that supports all sorts of types of lights so i can hook up analog lights if I wanted. So like the PWM, pulse width modulation lights, LED strips, the normal strips that you would have, you would buy anywhere. And I can do pixels, which is kind of what I've started on because I have a bunch of pixels from last year that I was testing stuff with.

And so like, I've got this hooked up with like some testing pixels and I've been like changing colors. Yeah, so. Yeah. So nice. You're gonna make your own go V outdoor lights, permanent outdoor lights. Pretty much. Well,

I mean, that's what I'm trying to get to. But I've still got to, still got to find a couple of things. Most notably, I've got to be able, I've got to get the, I'm going to get the install figured out.

I like, I need some tracks. I've been looking around for some kind of like aluminum track that I can hide these ugly led lights in. So no one will see them. And then I can put this up and just leave it up year round. And these little things do not cost very much. I think they were all of $25 a piece for each board and the ESP thing. So like total win on the price. Uh, and if I blow one up, I'm not going to cry about it. It's not a few hundred dollar professional and controller or whatever. So yeah, great. Good stuff. I I'm happy so far. I only have like eight lights connected to it,

but we'll see what it does when they have 150 supposedly can do a decent job. I'm going to try and get it hooked up that this thing, WLED supports a bunch of protocols. So I can run DMX through it. I can run all sorts of control protocols. Or it can just run standalone like it is now, where I've got it just kind of like cycling through colors. They have their own little features on it. I do not like the interface to WLED.

Like, it's pretty awful. But I guess it's some passion project for somebody, and they like it well enough and that's good but there's the way that you do sequences and everything i'm not a fan of and uh it's way over complicated for what it is so as most open source projects are so uh but it does support a ton of stuff so really really cool project product they put together and and or project that they put together and and or project that they put together in a product kind of hanging off the side here there's there's you

can actually go to alibaba and order this similar things to this already like in an enclosure uh and everything that with wlid installed and all you have to do to upgrade it is this is cool the the the esps have this um thing on google chrome, like you just plug it in and it connects over USB via like serial and will update over the USB through your web browser. Connected does this with their products. I've seen everybody that's using the ESP stuff start to do those little firmware updates with that. So getting it updated online was no problem at all. They have a little menu that walks you through just the basics. And then once you get into the live interface, you can go to town. So, um, fun project. And I will definitely be continuing this. I just have to, I really need to find some channels, some of the aluminum channels and lights to go into them because the lights I have may not work, but I, I will, I will get new lights if i

need to i don't want to take these down that's my goal so that not to take the christmas lights down just leave them up here around and change them for the holidays that's what i want to do that's actually really cool i have a whole bunch of those esp32s sitting around i've been playing with um esp home and stuff like that and really it's really cool what it can do because it takes the coding out of it yeah um so the esp home it's pretty much just yaml based now right and you can configure it and create entities and control your devices and yeah this looks actually really cool maybe i'll i'm gonna take a look at it later well the thing is like since it's just the espP chip, I can plug this in and flash ESP home to it.

And all, all the pins are on, like they document what pins go where. So I, you know, I can basically run ESP home on it. There was another project called, I started with a T.

I can't remember the name of it. I ran across it earlier that it was just like, you basically could load it on here. You can control the lights, but you could also use the other pins, and they have the support for a bunch of sensors. Is it Tasmada? Is that what it is? Yeah, it's more likely that one. Yes, Tasmada, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tomato, Tamada, yeah, that's the one. It's got a ton. It runs off ESP32, these little boards. It runs just about on every one of them. But since they have so much support for all these connected peripherals, like analog inputs, temperature sensors, ultrasonic detectors, moisture sensors, you can use the extra pins on this little device with the additional power supply outputs to hook up all this other stuff and make it work.

Totally a DIY, totally a nerdy thing to do, but I've kind of deepened the pixel stuff these days and just having fun with it. So this, this should be up and going next week. So for sure, I will have everything up and going. I've got to, I'm complicating things, but I still have to take the lights I have down at some point because my wife gets tired of looking at them. So I've got to make that an easier process. Right now, it's not so much fun. There's a lot of zip ties involved.

Are we placing bets on this? Like, when will you have this done? No, it's going to happen. It happened next week. Like my daughter's home all week, so I've got nothing to do except keep up with her and she can help me zip tie. So are we placing bets that you'll actually get it done one dollar one dollar he'll get it done i'll get it done all right i'm gonna write it on there i'm gonna write it on the board you guys are gonna owe me a dollar

i'm gonna get it done wait i don't owe you anything i'm betting i'm betting for you okay thank you tj yeah you're welcome g, what you up to? Nothing. Seth deleted him again. Yeah, apparently nothing. It's been a quiet week for me. The one thing I did do is I tried once again to get the Home Assistant ESP32 voice assistant working. I followed YouTube videos. I have the exact parts, everything hooked up.

I just can't get it working it looks like you know it looks like everything's working but somewhere it's broken along the chain and it's one of those projects where you know i just unplugged everything deleted all the add-ons and everything i said you know what i'll look at this next month you know sometimes you just gotta take a step back and wait for the next home assistant update and maybe they fixed whatever is not working you know in there i do that all the time i'll deal with that next month but i have everything assembled sitting next to me i've watched so many videos but it was a great learning experience for uh esb home and i've been playing more with esb home so yeah that was this week's frustration and you know we're

talking before the show i'm on the search for a new home server. I just want something a little beefier. So if I hear back, I contacted somebody, and I'm just waiting to hear back. If it's still available, then I may have a little beefier server with all the memory and all the cores to run all the blue irises and all the home assistants. And I can't wait. Hopefully, it's still there. You're going to be running the whole neighborhood's technology. Yeah, probably. And I'm also contacting another ISP that was offering me faster upload speeds.

So I'm like, oh, you're going to give me gigabit upload? Now TJ won't be the fastest one to upload the show recordings anymore. So I'm going to let them know, hey, if your deal is still available, I'm interested in switching over to the fiber package so I can get all the uploads because with this new server, I'm going to need all the upload. Yes. Yeah. We definitely could use that for hosting a little bit of that Mastodon server.

Maybe you can Canadian CDN up there. See over here, we pretty much, yeah, we just have Rogers and Bell in our area and they're competing back and forth and they're two major players. But everyone I talked to at Bell has been happy with their fiber service. Like they have no complaints,

no outages, no speed issues, nothing. Where with Rogers, they may give us 1.5 gig down but we get 60 megabits up right and then even of that 1.5 down you're only getting like every time i test when i first got it i was getting 1.7 i was like all happy and everything but now when i do speed tests i'm getting like 300 or something like that and it's just like what am i paying for where everyone else with bell is you know like oh i still got my 1.5 gig down so i'm like all right let me time to jump over i need all the upload because i'm gonna have all the memory all the cores you know that's one at all so i'm just gonna be doing some home lab upgrades fiber without the symmetrical upload seems kind

of weird seems like it should be a necessity well rogers is in fiber it's still um uh cable yeah it's just a cable modem right so that's why so they're kind of limited i think for their upload but they they need to pick up the pace yeah spectrum spectrum contacts me like three times a week via mailers and like phone calls and everything to try to get me to come back like hey what can we do to get you back and i'm like give me better internet sorry we can't do that it's the only way i would come back yeah see it's like oh we're still using our cable lines and especially when you see like comcast and stuff like hey we can push five gig over coax it's like all right just replace it with fiber though well i can't lie one of my main driving um behind upgrading changing my internet was uh i got to notice that the deal I'm on right now, which is an excellent price, expires in February. So I'm like, oh, after February, it's going to be more than twice the amount, right? Whereas Bell is offering me pretty much the same deal, but it will never expire so i'm like all right let me just switch

over and i'll i think it was like 56 plus tax or something like that canadian so it's it's it's too you can't pass it up no yay gavin's gonna get fast internet i'm fast i'm gonna get faster faster yeah fast upload internet your modem upgraded? You got the UniFi thing? Are you using UniFi? Yeah, I have the Dream Machine. What was it? The Dream Machine SE, the rack-mounted one, right?

Yeah, that'd be a good one. So, yeah. So, it can handle the 1.5. I think it can handle up to 2.5 down, right? Yeah, I think that one can. Yeah. So, that's the main reason I got that one is because I wanted to handle the faster speeds. You were already prepared for the future is what you're saying.

You're ready to go. Always thinking ahead. Always thinking ahead. Well, I decided to hit update on this Home Assistant upgrade and I don't think it's working. It was going from 11.0 to 11.2. So we'll see if refresh on the page. I'll just give it time. It's just doing some thinking. Oh, yeah, I guess it is doing some thinking because it's still doing it so oh well

i'll let that crank maybe it'll be done by next week and i'll be able to look at my graphs oh no connection lost there we go it's broken doing a great job assisting my home boom updated just like that live on the podcast guys breaking news found another device it's found oh it found my printer again oh not it well that's going to wrap up this week uh we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially those able to financially support the show through our patron page if you don't know about our patron page, head on over to home tech. Dot FM slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a huge shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can get in there every day and talk about all sorts of stuff that I haven't been able to pay attention to. I'm sorry. I've had my head down. Like I have a training thing to do tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? Yeah. Tomorrow I'm trying to get some code done and I just keep getting distracted on the code and I can't look at the Slack thing. So I don't

even know what's going on. You guys were telling me all this cool stuff that's going on. Like, you know, the love sacks. You're missing out. You're missing out. I miss the love sacks. I can't believe it. I'll get back in there one of these days oh oh oh we do have to talk about owens podcast the home uh cinema design podcast um it is really good listen to the uh the one the last one with trinoff he posted with and linked me on it and he said you have to listen to this one uh because it's got a wall of subwoofers and a picture wall of subwoofers and then another wall of subwoofers

that absorbs the sound from the first wall of subwoofers. And that's what they're doing over at Chernoff, which is a really kind of cool idea and not done before, I don't think. So really interesting to listen to Owen talk about all the fundamentals of audio in small room for small room acoustic design, which is very, very hard to do, which we ran into a little bit with Adams Theater. So if you listen to any of that and thought it was interesting, we'll put a link to his podcast in the show notes. This is definitely one you want to listen to.

Some of the stuff's over my head, but it's really good. I listen to it anyway, and I's over my head but it's really good i listen to it anyway and i use it i quote this podcast just to sound smart yeah if you want to sound smart listen to this podcast yeah exactly and then if i want to sound smarter i throw a little english accent on with my quote and you know then people believe whatever i say now this is good because there's a lot of mystery around like what makes a good home theater and everything and there's always people on forums talking about like the proper things and all that good stuff but owen this is what owen does for a living so he knows what he's talking about and he's ran into

a different a lot of different scenarios so yeah go check it out we'll put a link in the show notes for you as well uh if you want to help with the show but can't support financially totally understand 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 on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care.

Till next time.