HomeTech.fm - Episode 470 - The Magic Eraser

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

On this week's show: TJ discovers something magical, Russound announces new mini-AVRs, thieves are jamming Wi-Fi cameras, El Taco matters, Home Assistant joins Z-Wave, project updates, batteries, and a genius pic of the week.

this is the home tech podcast for friday february 16th from sarasota florida i'm seth johnson from reynoldsburg ohio i'm cj houston and from pickering ontario i'm gavin campbell and welcome to the home tech podcast podcast about home animation home technology and super bowl sunday i think you guys would be proud of me. I watched nearly half of the game. Was it the first half or the second half? It was the first half. Our neighbors invited us over.

They had made some brisket on the smoker and some other stuff. And so they invited us over. I didn't realize it was a Super Bowl party until we got there. And there was a couple people there. And they were watching the Super Bowl. And I was like, I thought I just got invited for food. Okay. I guess we'll watch the sum of the game.

Did you see the Usher concert? I did not. You let me down. Oh, man. I mean, that was more than I've ever watched before. So maybe next year I'll watch the halftime show as well. Well. Yeah, the halftime show was pretty, I mean, it was good.

It was on par with a good Super Bowl halftime show. The game was good. It actually turned into a good game towards the end. I was like, I'm done with this thing. Kind of like TJ. I was like, I'm done. I don't want to really watch this anymore. The commercials don't seem to be hitting anymore.

The commercials were good for the first half. And then the second half, there were no more commercials. So I was like, let's, let's, can I watch something else? I'm going to fall asleep because this is boring. And they got down to the end. It was like a pretty good game so yeah good for them i was happy for taylor swift you know i'm glad she won in her rookie year you know she won she wins taylor swift's boyfriend went all the way you know what threw me off though um so they actually changed the commercial so there's a a Coors Light commercial, I think it is, where LL Cool J comes in a train, right, and goes into someone's living room, right?

I've been seeing the post-Super Bowl version of that commercial. They swapped out LL Cool J. It's some other guy in there. He says the same thing, but it's a different guy. I'm like, why did they actually change the commercial? I don't know about that. It was cheaper that way. Maybe he's not getting royalties now.

It's like, we really just wanted him for super bowl nobody's gonna notice afterwards okay it's not my wife was complaining like why why do they have like all these a status stars or i mean not the a but like i mean the arnold schwarzenegger he was on there he had a really good one but it was like what what like they don't need to work like beyonce obviously she was turns out she's launching a country album yeah a verizon commercial so she got some free publicity but it's like why why they don't need they don't need to make commercials and they like literally don't have to work a day in their life anymore and they're just like why can't why can't like anybody like the michael cera one that was actually funny because he's, like, totally a C or D tier actor. Yeah, yeah.

And can work on whatever project he wants to because he can do goofy things like that. But, like, the commercial was good. That was actually funny. It was a lotion commercial for, what, CeraVe or something. He's like, my name's right here. Yeah. And the Arnold one was a state farm agent state farm he was like neighbor yeah you know they went back through his you know catalog of uh those things

it was good i had to actually google a lot of them um afterwards because we don't get all the commercials so we miss arnold movies yeah well oh commercials so we had to I had to like look them up afterwards there are a lot yeah yeah they're quite a few um the Deadpool preview that was awesome I'm so excited for that you had to watch it offline there was no way they could have played it on the tv because it's a Deadpool movie yeah but But that was a very cool crossover. I did not expect. Let's just say that. And if you haven't seen it, go see it because it's fun.

That's going to be good. Well, there's another big event coming up here. I hope we're... We usually do something fun or at least pop into their YouTube video stream chat thing and start saying hi to everybody in there. And it's the Josh AI winter launch event. So they usually have a nice little video that they hit play on and everybody

kind of gathers around. This one is going to be, when is this? It's February 20th, right at 11 a.m. Pacific or 2 p.m. Eastern next Tuesday, next Tuesday.

All right. Be there, be square. But yeah, there's a little registration link we'll put to it in the thing. And I don't know, like sometimes we go in there and there's all the Josh dealers and people kind of who have registered for it.

But I've noticed a lot of the home tech supporters and alum, I guess, pop in there and we're having a good time, too. So, hey, free YouTube channel thing chat. Yeah, I'll be traveling next week. But I did register for this event. And I will at least be listening to it. So I'm hoping for some big product announcements.

We'll see what happens. Headphones. Josh AI headphones. Did you really say that ava headphones josh branding compatible with sonos hopefully we'll see who may have some josh headphones i don't know man that would be cool you know i would probably not buy them but maybe somebody would well um we've got a couple of new we've got a couple new stories here uh that they came out this week so what do you say we jump into these home tech headlines let's do it wait wait wait there's one more thing i think we have to like stop the presses on this oh my gosh this is like the coolest thing ever and every

if i tell you this as soon as i say this on the podcast, everybody that's listening is going to be like, this guy is lying. There's no way that he's telling the truth about this, but I have to tell you guys, this is a crazy thing that I learned this week. Yeah. I'm sitting there minding my own business. And then you post this video and,

um, Oh, wow. Like I played the audio for, for my wife and she's like, no, no, no,

no. Turn it off. Turn it off. It's like, I didn't even hear the audio. So that's funny. By default, I don't know if it's just like an age thing, but by default, I never listened to the audio on a video first. I just watched the video. After we get through this, everyone, no, you know what? I'll just edit the audio in and you'll have to listen to it on the show. So DJ, tell us what you found out and why you found this out. I have no idea why you did this, but you did it. Yeah.

So, last fall, I was running some cables for a client who installed a frame TV. And when I was doing that, I had a metal fish tape. And the metal fish tape scraped against the brand new 75 inch samsung frame tv and just made it made a nice scratch in this tv and so you know naturally i admitted fault and i was like hey i'll buy a new tv you know what is that a 65 inch and she was like no it's a 75 inch and i was about a thousand dollar difference there yeah okay so i went and bought you know a three thousand dollar msrp tv i'm not gonna tell you how much i got it for um three thousand dollar msrp tv i put it in everything was fine this client texts me or emails me a couple days ago and she was like

hey tj i'm trying to get a warranty uh call out for my the TV you installed. But I need the receipt for the purchase because Samsung, you know, needs to verify it or whatever. And I was like, what is the TV doing that you already need servicing? And you know, it's a brand new TV. It's only six months old. And she goes, she sent me a picture. And she said, Well, it's got these lines on it when the TV is off. And she's like, Well, and I, you you know i was talking to samsung and they think it's burning and i was like well burning only is noticeable usually on newer tvs when the actual tv is on and it wouldn't be a line it would just be like a logo or something yeah like an image or something you know like the fox news logo which all my clients listen to um and so i was like you know send me a picture of it so she sent me a picture of it. So she sent me a picture of it. And it looked like the packaging lines on the screen, which I've seen before.

You know, whenever these TVs are being shipped, the foam rubs against the screen and it gets lines on it. And that's exactly what it looked like. And I was like, well, you know, it doesn't look like it's damaged. I said, it looks like it's just dirty, you know. Obviously, we cleaned it when we installed it. But have you tried cleaning it recently? And she's like, yeah, I've tried cleaning it and it hasn't done anything. And I was like, well, I'm still, I'm still pretty sure this is just like dirt or something. And so I was looking on Reddit and there's actually a, the frame subreddit, which is only about Samsung frame TVs. Cause of course there's a

subreddit for everything. And I'm looking around and i was like you know white lines on tv and i stumbled across this thread and this thread was talking about the same looked literally like the same exact marks and i was like all right cool so this is this has definitely happened before and they confirmed that it was from the packaging and somebody in the comments suggested that they take magic eraser and rub it on the screen shut up and i was like all right so this sounds like a tiktok thing or something where somebody's like trying to get you to like damage your screen right and i started looking around and this is like a commonly referenced thing like if your tv like if your samsung frame tv specifically is dirty rub a magic eraser on there and i'm just like there's no way that this is true this is a three thousand dollar tv and you're gonna take a

magic eraser to it yeah and so like i'm looking at like samsung's website and like i don't see anything officially from samsung but in the comments of the frame tv on the actual samsung website one of the brand ambassadors recommended cleaning the screen with a magic eraser. And I was like, okay, well, this is somebody from Samsung that's saying to do this. I don't see anything on the website. So you know what, I've got this frame TV that I put a nice scratch in. That's not doing anything at the office. And I can't sell it. Like every time I put it up for sale, somebody offers me like $500 for it. And I'm just I'm'm not going to sell it for that. And so I decided I went to Target and I bought some magic eraser.

And I bought a variety pack because I was like, you know, what happens if I install one of these TVs in the bathroom? You know, so I need a bathroom magic eraser and a kitchen magic eraser. Yeah, they wouldn't work in the other rooms. Right. I mean, that's what I think, right? And so I buy this variety pack and I go to my office and I just, I put my hand,

my gross sweaty hands on the screen and it leaves a nice big handprint. Okay, let's clarify what your handprint on your test screen look like because the picture, which I will put as the show art or something. You should. Is like, you got done eating

a Five Guys hamburger or something and opened up and checked the patty with your bare hand and then went over and put your hand on the TV. Wow, you're just calling me out like that, Seth. I mean, I don't think it was that bad, but jeez. You printed a good visual there, Seth. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're talking about. That's the kind of damage we're talking about here.

All right, if anybody's listening, I do take showers and stuff. I mean, you know, but the matte screen seems to pick up everything. If you've installed one of these TVs, like literally anytime you touch it it looks gross um but i guess i'm just gross according to seth but that's fine um and so i put this giant hand print on it and i just take the magic eraser and i just i barely wipe it and it removes the hand print so easily and i was like amazing okay well this is weird and i was like i wonder what happens if i just take it and treat it like a sponge you know like a sponge when you're doing dishes and stuff and i just took it across the whole screen like i was cleaning my windows or something

and it just removed everything and the screen is fine there's no damage to it it is the scratch gun i did try that it did not remove the scratch i was really hoping like wouldn't that be hilarious get to that flip i definitely tried that second though because i was like man if i can get rid of this scratch um but come to find out actually on the samsung website there's like a screen care section on samsung's website where they talk about how to clean your tv um and they have you know a section for like normal TVs, and then they have a specific section for frame TVs. And the first thing they tell you is like, try a microfiber. If that doesn't work, use the magic eraser. Amazing.

And I was like, no. And it's funny, every time you tell somebody this, everybody's like, no, that's not going to work. And I even had some person on Reddit that was like, you're an idiot, like WikiHow tells you that this is abrasive and all this stuff and i was like so like i'm just not gonna listen to samsung then and they're like no i wouldn't listen to samsung and i was like they're the ones that made the tv though i'm gonna listen to them instead of a wiki how article but they drew pictures if you literally tell anybody this they're gonna think you're lying and they should because magic eraser is notorious for like taking paint off walls and

stuff yeah yeah i use like all the time when you know when you go into a ceiling and you and you draw the speaker circle in the wrong spot you don't use a pencil eraser because that just smears around the oh yeah you take a magic eraser and you take the pencil spots off and you're done and i don't know if this makes any difference i was gonna try this out but i didn't have any water on me um to see you're supposed to use the magic eraser dry that's that's the thing that just i mean so like that is what sent chills up uh my wife's playing the video because it does not sound good i mean it sounded fine when i was doing it but the video must have the microphone really close because it's just like scraping like across yeah i don't know it wasn't that bad but now i'm going around telling everybody so i you know i The video must have the microphone really close because it's just like scraping like across.

Yeah, I don't know. It wasn't that bad. But now I'm going around telling everybody. So I, you know, I went to my distributor who I buy my frame TVs from and I was like, you're never going to guess this. Samsung recommends using a magic eraser for their TV. And he's like, no. And I was like, yeah. I was like, I'm not going to tell you that you should tell people that. But it's on the Samsung website.

So it's officially sanctioned. So just to clarify, just the frame TVs though. Well, so what I think is anything with a matte screen is fine because I have a matte screen monitor at the office as well that I used it on and it didn't do anything to it. I mean, it just cleaned it off. And so I didn't try it on like a glossy screen item. But I don't know if it's just like the material on the matte finish of the screen or something that makes it not susceptible to it. I don't know.

But specifically the frame TV only. Like I don't, I wouldn't go and use this on your C3 OLED. Yeah, I have these, what is the LG ultrafine monitors in front. They'd have a couple of spots I'd like to get off. Yeah. Go ahead and try them, but they're not Matt. They're shiny. They're like the shiny.

They look like your Mac, uh, display. I don't know. I'll send you some. So that way you can try it out for us. Yeah. Now that you're a magic eraser,

a bad ambassador. Yeah. But if you want a cool party trick, uh, in front of a bunch of of AV nerds and stuff, bring out the magic eraser to clean a frame TV off and watch everybody freak out. No! But, you know, it's going to be funny if Samsung changes something on their TVs,

like, next year, and this doesn't work anymore, and it just, like, breaks the TV. It turns out you damaged the TV. It's like, oh, actually actually the magic eraser is only acceptable for you know 2024 and younger or older models oh man and the wild part is that you use this thing dry there's no like i know on the package it's like you're supposed to wet it like a sponge you know and just kind of like clean things that way but yeah depending on the smudge too you don't have to put much pressure on it like i i even posted a video in the in the the slack because i was like nobody's gonna believe this unless i actually post a video and i posted a video and i just i lightly pressed and it wasn't even pressing

hard or anything and it removed the smudges as well so i feel like samsung missed an opportunity here to sell frame tv cleaner that's what i'm saying you know like they they just gave all the business to magic eraser they could have had their own version of it then you come up with a frame cleaner yeah they've had plenty videos of plenty of people cleaning their macs with like the outside case their macbook pros with with magic erasers which makes sense because yeah that makes sense yeah but um no one no one trying the uh trying the old trick on the screen but you know when i went to target to pick up the magic eraser i when magic erasers first came out there was like literally one type but now there's so many different types it's crazy

like there's like a whole like almost half aisle of just magic eraser they got thin ones and thick ones and bath and kitchen and all kinds of ones. So I just use like the regular extra duty one or whatever. See, they should have had like the frame TV one, you know? That's what I'm saying. They have the Disney frame TV. They might as well come out with their own frame magic eraser. Exactly. Oh boy.

Witchcraft. I tell you. Yeah, that's just, it is magic. Exactly. And there was so many comments. I posted like the picture in the Slack and there was like 60 comments on it within like an hour. We didn't believe you at first. Oh, I don't.

Look, I didn't believe it either, you know? There's a lot of doubt. Yeah. Well, I mean, it sounds absolutely nuts. Like if somebody came up to you and was like, you know, you were telling them that your windshield was really dirty, and you couldn't get the smudges off there, and they're like, yeah, take some sandpaper to it. That'll be fine. You're like, no, I'm not going to do that.

Why would I take sandpaper to my windshield? All right. I guess you're not supposed to use it on anything with a glossy finish. But with these matte finish TVs, it seems like it might be OK. That makes sense. Yeah, I was thinking of something with a matte screen, which the frame is literally the only one with the matte screen. Right.

And it's like a it's like a the the magic eraser is almost like sandpaper like a micro sandpaper thing and that's the way it works because like you said it gets paint you can take paint off you can take pencil marks off it always takes all the paint off it's amazing like every time you go to like like you were saying take the pencil marks and stuff off the literally the only reason it takes the pencil marks off is because it takes the paint off yeah yeah i don't I don't care. It's a ceiling. It's not my ceiling. Not my house.

Exactly. You want missing paint or pencil marks? Yeah. You can have these circles up there or I can just pretend it didn't happen. Yeah. I don't know. We'll put links to all of these videos and, you know, the audio will have been playing in the background as we've been talking because it's absurd.

I'm listening right now. Yeah. Interesting stuff. On to the home tech headlines but uh crazy crazy tj thanks for uh using your test screen uh to try this out appreciate it yeah might as well use my two thousand dollar paperweight so all right all right well moving on here we've got a multi-room audio provider russan has produced a new mini audio receiver. They're calling the AVA series. It's a familiar name. The AVA 2.1 and AVA 3.1.

These compact plug-and-play amplification systems designed for custom integrators and offer 2.1 and 3.1 audio with ARC HDMI. It's kind of a unique feature here. There's a couple of these already on the market. I think maybe SnapAV has one. I know ELAC has one or two models. I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure this is the first one I've seen that has the Arc HDMI. So the idea behind this, it's a tiny little surround sound receiver, I guess 3.1 and 2.1. If you can consider that surround sound,

you could hook it up to some speakers or a soundbar and a subwoofer and have it produce decent quality 50 watt audio, I guess in the room that it's in. Not a bad, not a bad product. I really like these things. I really like these little mini VRs. I think they're, they're a problem solver because they're not the big giant four,

five RU receivers that we've had in the past. They're pretty limited on inputs. Like they don't have very much for, they have one HDMI input. You're basically using the TV to switch the audio video. And it's got some, these have like a standard analog input. I think they had some digital inputs on them as well. And the subwoofer output.

So I don't know, pretty cool product uh i'm not even sure how much it costs it wasn't you know because it's an integrator thing so i wouldn't be able to find the price on it but it's probably not that expensive yeah that's actually a good idea so a lot of times i use the sonos amp literally just to power two speakers that are connected to a tv and you know having the the smarts that the Sonos amp offers is always nice, but I run into projects where, like, they don't care about that, but I don't want to install, like, a giant receiver because I want to maintain the HDMI CEC control.

And so stuff like this is really nice. I wish they were a little more powerful, though, because almost all of these little amplifiers are about 50 watts. And, like, that's nice but sometimes like right now i have a project going on with sonance invisible speakers and i need one that's like 150 watts and so i i can't get that with this i have to go with a sonos amp at that point even though we're not going to use all the capabilities of it so this definitely has a good market um i just wish it was a little more powerful. Yeah, I think the power is limited

basically by the size because this is probably, I think if you stacked two of these on top of each other, that would be the height of a Sonos Amp. But yeah, it's a nice little product. I suspect we'll probably see more of these. There was a couple of years back and it was after the good Marantz went away, but Marant had a a two rack unit surround sound receiver that i absolutely loved because it actually fit within two rack units and it was a full receiver had hdmi switching had a couple of analog inputs if you ever needed those um but it didn't take up five rack units or six rack units of space yamaha so it's just too much space for a cabinet like give me something small yeah and especially

you're not going to use like the full capabilities of it i mean some of these amplifiers have like every single input and like most of the time i want hdmi and that's it right well they have h8 hdmi switchers on them or something like that and you really just want to hook a cable box blu-ray or game system up to it call it a day like you really just need two or three i don't know like that's why i like this those these little things that can go in um like you said if it had a little more oomph to it or maybe they come out with a uh more powerful powerful one uh in the future that'd be cool too yeah even if it was just like a little bit bigger i mean even if you made this thing like twice the size that it is it'd still be significantly smaller than an ab receiver

and make it wide i don't know maybe it's like a height thing you have to have the height to get more power i don't know it's kind of a weird name though i don't i wonder if that's gonna be a problem for them eventually it probably stands for something ava series mini avrs i don't know all right well let's move on here um interesting this this story i think tj you may have posted this a hub but this is a interesting thing that's happening up in minnesota because why not um but there have been serial burglar burglaries i can't even say those words together this is not going to happen so let's just say people were robbed and uh it's suspected that the the this has all been done with using Wi-Fi jammers that would disable connected security cameras where they could use the Wi-Fi jammers, break in, and then leave. And then there's no video of them actually breaking into the house or no alerts hitting anybody.

So interesting. I mean, popular brands like Ring, Blink, Nest would all be vulnerable to this kind of attack. And Wi-Fi jammers are pretty easy to get these days. You can get the old flipper thing, right? Gavin, you were saying they're going to ban that one in Canada. Yep, they're working towards banning them in Canada because they're only used for one thing up here, stealing cars. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, they're doing that up there with them. I mean, I don't know how you would ban that one in particular because it's open source hardware well okay just ban the import of it i guess but it's it's open source hardware you can just piece it together yeah that's true but most people are lazy they're not gonna piece it together they're just gonna buy a finished product depends on how many cars you want to steal well that's true i mean criminals usually follow the rules, so. Right, right. They're going to listen. Criminals can't use a soldering iron, God forbid.

I can't use a soldering iron. I don't know. It's interesting. Something I guess I would not have really thought too much of in the past, but I have always tended to lean towards having the hardwired cameras in the first place. But yeah, like if somebody did this at my door, they would definitely take my doorbell because it's a Wi-Fi doorbell, right? And come up and steal the package.

No one would ever know, except they'd be on like three other cameras walking up to the house and their car would be logged. So yeah, there you go. You know, I've heard of them like jamming the signal. So like almost like they would shine something in the camera and it would cause the camera not to pick up, you know, any video and block it pretty much. Right. So this, you know, I'm not shocked to hear this. But if you have one of those cameras, you have them on Wi-Fi.

Sometimes those cameras also allow you to put an SD card in it. So just throw in the SD card, set it as default um you know so it records when there's motion um and just leave that in there and it's a good backup it's not gonna be your primary but if something like this were to happen at least you could go to the camera and you just refer to the sd card and bam you still you have the last you know how many hours worth so that's just one thing you should think about all my cameras cameras have SD card backups as well. Yep. Good idea.

Always good. You're not going to get that with Ring, but some of the other ones you will. Yeah. Yeah. We always knew like this is a vulnerability. I think it was like SimpliSafe and a couple other, the cheap do-it-yourself security system years ago, they found out that you could easily jam all the signals and stuff like that. And so it's just interesting to see this actually happening. It's always been like a hypothetical or that we know that it could happen.

But now we actually have proof that, you know, people are doing this. So, you know, hardwire your cameras. Yeah, I do remember that it was they were basically flooding the Z-Wave spectrum or one of the two before Z-Wave had the ultra secure security thing and basically just making a bunch of noise and the signal would never be picked up or dropped off because it was just no it was a signal and a bunch of noise you never the hub or whatever the security panel would never hear that um to trigger the alarm so interesting stuff to keep an eye on it well um big news out of sonos you know those guys they're hot to try to give you some headphones.

Sonos headphones? Is that what that is? Nope, nope, nope. You're not getting those. But we do have a scoop on Sonos is developing its own TV streaming device called, wait for it, Sonos TV. So original. I guess this comes from a patent application that reveals Sonos TV will heavily rely on smartphones for setup, control and content discovery. And the application also suggests that Sonos may offer a unique feature to entice existing Sonos soundbar owners to purchase the streaming device.

The Sonos TV is focused on providing a better user experience by using smartphones instead of a remote control with buttons, which is not a better user experience. I don't know. This is not what I think anybody wants. But good luck, Sonos, if this is the direction. This sounds like they just made a Google casting device. Maybe they're just trying to get sued by Google now. I can't even believe they're going to force you to use a cell phone as your remote. Like, if nobody's home, you can't, you know, with a cell phone, you can like if nobody's home you can't you know with a cell phone you can't use

your tv then like it just doesn't sound good you know that that aspect the only comment i've seen about this that makes sense and i'm not trying to justify this because i think this is an awful idea anyway but synced up video is the only thing that i've seen that actually makes sense uh because right now the issue with streaming is that like you could have an apple tv on two different tvs even if you start the streaming at the exact same exact time they're going to be out of sync and if you wanted to fix that you have to spend many thousands of dollars yeah so that's that's the only like application that i've seen that actually makes

sense but i don't think that's enough to make me switch away from my apple tv mainly because i only watch tv one place at a time i can see why people would want that though and it comes down to apps too right like your apple tv has every app out there that you want right right so that you know they better have this but this could also be the gateway to the sonos headphones you know you'd have to connect it to this to be able to uh you know i'm just throwing that in there for you tj the app thing i don't think is that big a deal because they'd probably just make an android based yeah like everybody else that makes a streaming box the remote thing really you know and and the reason i don't like you know cell phones and sonos is because every time a new cell phone comes out it

takes them forever to be able you know you can't use it to calibrate your Sonos. It takes them forever to release that update for it, right? So you always have to have one older cell phone around so you can do your Sonos dance. Yeah, you think somebody at Sonos would be able to get their hands on a new iPhone, so that way I don't have to wait six months to calibrate my system. Exactly. I don't even know if I can calibrate it now. Like I know when I added my new speaker a couple of months ago, I still couldn't.

So I just calibrated mine. Not too long ago. I'm glad you can do it now. It always takes them so long. It feels like forever. I remember you saying that and it just gave me another reason to delay not doing it. I eventually did do it. Well, it's always like weird when you're at like a client's house and you're setting up

their system and you're like, oh, let me go ahead and use my phone. Oh, well, actually, I'm running the newest beta or whatever. Can I borrow your old iPhone so I can calibrate your system? It's like, why? It's not available on the newest iOS. Yeah. Still no, there's no idea if they're going to have a remote in there. I guess this patent application, this is just a patent application.

This is something they're throwing, you know, at the wall to see if anything sticks on it um it's just an app it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get approved for this patent because it's generally talking about stuff that definitely has prior art associated with it so i don't really know but this is what companies do they they do all these patent things and then later on they sue google for infringing on them and then get what tossed out at the end of the day what happened with that one i'm not even sure it got tossed out i think yeah yeah bouncing around the courts who knows yep yep so they've uh they filed for some more patents it also has some social stuff to it so you can like recommend your friends to watch things that they

can't see because they don't have your netflix or disney plus login anymore so yeah pass give me headphones don't work on this if they release this before headphones i'm gonna be salt oh you know this is coming out before i'm gonna be so mad i'm gonna throw all my sonos in the trash no you won't i won't i spent too much money sunk cost right and then i have to go to like yamaha music cast or den on heos yeah i'm never touching music cast again all right let's move on here uh we've got one more weird story coming out of the eu because why not um there's new european union regulations that come into effect on january 1st 2026 that will prohibit the manufacture and importation of mercury containing products including the lamps

used in projectors uh the new law also applies to ultra high performance or uhp projector lamps meaning the projectors that use uh those uhp lamps will no longer be available for sale in the u the eu and the owners won't be able to buy replacement bulbs either uh many of the top current 4k projectors now use led LED based light sources, which have a longer lifespan than those old bulbs. And those UHP lamps, the projector lamps, the normal ones, the ones I have, the one that normal people have a projector, those only those only last like two to 4000 hours, the LEDs can last 20,000 plus 000 plus hours so pretty good i guess at this point like in two more years i would suspect that most of those smaller entry-level projectors have will have switched over to some kind of led based light

source but here you go thanks thanks europe we're gonna get some nicer projectors because of this i'm sure do you do you think all the americans will start hoarding uh projectors now like some people did the the old bulbs oh my gosh they're getting rid of my lamp projectors and then those bulbs lasted what like all of like six months because that's what they normally did and then yeah i mean laser projectors are definitely much nicer yeah i can see why somebody would want the old one but if and mainly it comes down to cost i feel like because the laser projectors are not cheap but they are so much brighter and nicer looking yeah i mean they they aren't cheap but i've been the the the those products have been coming down

in price quite a bit um some of the fancier consumer related projectors they were talking about on i forget i think it was uh maybe even the stevia podcast i was listening to um they were very impressed with the performance they were getting out of them for a box that's what only a thousand dollars you know like it's there's a lot of processing and things going on inside of this little tiny projector that has good performance and an led source so i i think over time like this is only what two years away i think over time the the price on the led light source engine or whatever you want to call it um starts going down because clearly we're going to need more of them to sell over

into the uh eu market and the other ones are just kind of bad because like you get those mercury bulbs like over time they will like they'll start saying saying, Hey, I'm going to blow up. I'm going to blow up. And then you're like, yeah, reset. And you clear that the message and say, Oh yeah, I replaced the bulb. Wink, wink. And then, um, all of a sudden one day you hear pop. And of course that is the lamp blowing up with glass shards inside your projector now and mercury being, you know, basically emanated into the air. So yeah, they're, they're not, they're not good product like i'll be glad when these things are gone moving on here we got german electronics company el taco i mean doesn't sound german but okay yeah el taco maybe i don't know they released

their first matter product uh it is the uh appropriately named eu d62 npn dash imp wi-fi dimming actuator designed for uh insulation and flush mounted boxes and it's part of el taco's existing 62 series good job guys uh this i'm not even sure what to think about this it's the first matter product from the company but um a company i really haven't even heard of before but they have a whole they have a bunch of little things look like shelly devices right so yeah that's the first thing i thought of is they look just like shelly devices yeah it's a family-run company that's existed since 1949 i wonder what they've been doing this whole time they they had a long time to sit on their patents they're in the the mercury projector bowl business and they're like oh we gotta get out of this now make some lighting progress yeah they do they look

they have some din rail stuff and some motion sensors and stuff i mean they look they do look very similar to shelly yeah but i mean it's not like shelly has a design patent on their stuff so they've got confetti that's how you know they're serious they're celebrating 75 years so maybe that's why we're hearing about them because they're 75th interesting yeah this this is a very european looking product type company i mean shelly is too for that matter right like all that form factor i wish denrail was more popular here this seems so much better i don't know why so like we avoid it so much here yeah it's only like the super high-end stuff here like if you go to like the lutron stuff right right uh locks one which is uh european so i don't know

though the control four products are general now as well um so i mean it's it's slowly filtering in but as far as like consumer level stuff i mean shelly has a couple of pieces, El Taco does now, but there's not, there's not much that is like a DIN rail. Like it doesn't, it's a good standard, but it's only, I only seen it like in mostly in like manufacturing or over in the, in the European Union area, which we had more of it here, like you said. All right. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash four seven zero. All right. We have a mailbag this week.

It's a, it's a followup from listener, John. Hi John. Hi again, guys. Thank you so much for the advice on the homie pro. I didn't give much info on my smart home devices. He said,

I started out with mostly wifi devices, mostly bulbs and some outlets. And he kept his wifi-fi to keep compatibly compatibility with alexa now they have more uh switches that don't require a neutral wire and he wants to add he says i want to add more to eliminate the wi-fi bulbs new more switches evidently has wiring requirements that that he doesn't have neutral wires and i totally understand that i'm an old house same same issue here um so back to his original reason for writing in he says i'm not opposed to spending the money and time to switch over if he can gain features for example it might

there be a more advanced routine creation language it could also be as simple as the fomo fear of missing out he says i do like a new gadget. Anyway, if you have any more suggestions based on this new information, I'd love to hear it. All right. Well, and he also says he can't afford the $75 per half hour of Gavin as a service fee. So I don't know, guys. Gavin, I guess you're out. You can't say anything. My God. I'm going to throw my bone here. So free. First of all, I appreciate that you put a dollar amount to my time, you know, and, you know, you gave me $75 for half an hour. That's pretty good. You know, like, yeah, I've appreciated.

That's a good price. You know, and that's the early adopters fee. It's going to be going up from that. So, you know, get the early birds. Yeah. I was going to say, that's pretty cheap. So I'm just like, you know get the early birds yeah that's pretty cheap so i'm just like you know get it now but um yeah i think you just probably have fomo like smart things is a very capable router like it could do a lot of advanced um uh automations and stuff so i i don't think like honestly i don't

think you're gonna get too much more power when it comes to creating automations if you went to something else um you know my only advice is if you never want to you know suffer from fomo again go to home assistant you'll never worry about any other hub after that you'll be suffering from other things yeah you'll be too busy doing updates you know like yeah you'll be doing updates so much that you'll never have to worry about another hub again. But yeah, if, like I said before, if the smart things is working for you, just stick with it and wait until you outgrow it. You know, you might have a specific project.

You realize you'll never be able to do it in smart things. Then start looking at something else. Right. But if you just, if it's all working, just stick with the smart things for now um it's cheap it works no reason to change change could introduce other issues you know i've seen that too where you wanted to go something newer and the new platform had the 800 chip and it would cause other issues that you know you never had before and you'd miss your smart things so you know don't worry about it.

You know, just stick with what works. I think there's a, like you said, if there, if there's something that's like a major thing that he wants to do that you simply can't do on, on,

on smart things or. Yeah. Like you're, you're, you're alluding to, and I don't think you're saying it, but like, what if he switches over to something else and loses compatibility with,

you know, a few hundred dollars worth of equipment that he has to go out and replace? Like, that's not worth it. So, yeah, stick with what you know and, you know, kind of kind of stay there. And, you know, it's always good and good idea to kind of keep an eye out for the latest and greatest. But at the same time, the latest and greatest is always what breaks first. Exactly. You know, and sometimes when I'm having FOMO, I just go read, you know, the subreddit or the forum

because there's always people complaining about the issues they have with the product in those. And then it makes you feel better. You're like, I don't have to deal with that problem. You know, like, so it gives you an idea of what you'll be getting into if you were to switch over, right? That's all I could i have to

say you know and that only costs you 15 no no 75 it's flat rate okay invoices in the mail you can't be given in yeah okay is it half hour minimum all right yeah just send it to our patreon account mine's always free though so it's funny what is your advice dj yeah that's why it's free my gavin gavin subscription is always free i don't want to start charging me oh yeah rack up a giant bill i don't want that you're taking advantage of it though like the number of questions it's never an easy question too i actually have to do research for your answers i basically use you to google you know i could i could use chat gbt for that but yeah i gap gpt i'm gonna have to spin one up okay gavin google this for me how i solved oh my god we should do that we should train a large language model on the knowledge that gavin

has and just like take transcripts from the show all the projects that he's talking about for the past year so you can do that with chat gbt right now you can make a uh a ma or what is it a plug-in or whatever and you can have it answer whatever questions you want and everything so you can feed the information yourself so we could put one on the home tech.fm website and some people could use it well i'm gonna add that to the list of projects i'll probably never do. But if it does happen, we'll be sure to talk about it. That'll break our gamut as a service business model, though, I think. Maybe not. Maybe we'll be able to scale up a little bit more.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We'll make more money. Then we can answer more questions. Gas.co is available. Gas.us. Well, he's a gas.pro. Gas.co is available. Gas.us. Well, he's a gas.pro. Gas.lol. I mean, there's all kinds of domains available for this.

I've already bought the Gab GPT one, so. Yeah, well, we can use that one. Gavin.chat, is that one available? Am I going to get licensing here? Like, I hope I get some, like, you know. No, don't worry about it, Gavin. It's taken care of. dot chat is that one am i gonna get licensing here like i hope i get some like you know every time someone asks a question i get i get a percentage you know like yeah let's let's see how this new york times lawsuit goes then we'll talk all right sounds good if they don't get anything i feel like you shouldn't get anything jeez i can get gavin dot chat it's available

just chat with gavin gas.info it's too good too good all right let's move on here um we've got a pick of the week and um this one's a genius idea i don't know if it's a genius idea or just like the most rube goldberg way you could possibly do a garage door sensor um but we'll put a link to this uh tiktok video i guess in the in the in the show notes and if if you want to watch the uh the tiktok video he's got a garage door and you know the railing that the little garage door rollers kind of go up on too and that hang from your ceiling well he has fixed or affixed or attached a regular old Decora style light switch right at the point where the little roller would roll over and of course it's the Decora it looks like a ramp

it kind of goes up the ramp and pushes it down because it's a heavy garage door and flips the switch and he's got it I don't know what he's got it connected up to he's got these wires dangling below it and kind of running off into the ceiling but that's that's what he's got it connected up to. He's got these wires dangling below it and kind of running off into the ceiling. But that's what he's using to keep his garage door closed. I think it's just genius because I would never have thought to put a switch under the roller there. The idea is so 1990s, but the thought, the effort he put into it, running those wires all the way. I think it was back to his thermostat he ran it back to with a little light or something like that yeah but all the effort he

put into i mean could just be replaced with one little you know sensor now but it's it's more of a like i would never have thought of this it's smart there's no batteries he's never gonna have to there's no there's no wear and tear i. I mean, the Leviton switch will probably break in 20 years. The garage door will fall apart before then. The LED light inside the thermostat. That thermostat has been replaced recently. You can see that it's got the back plate and the door trim has been chopped away to install it. So it's not getting replaced until another 10 years.

So he's good to go. I think no batteries. There's no service. There's no home assistant to crash in the background. No, this is the way to go. He's bested us all. I don't think it's integrated with anything. No, no, it's just a light.

He can walk by and see the lights on the thermostat. But you got to take it up to the next level and put it on like a Z-Wave relay or something like that. So he can hook it up with the home assistant and put it on like a Z-Wave relay or something like that so it could hook it up at the home assistant and then, bam, integration right there. No, come on. This needs to be a movement. Somebody needs to replicate everything Gavin's done in his house all analog, just like this. All analog circuitry, relays, magic switches, LED lights around the house. Somebody's got to be able to do this.

This is going to be a movement. Amazing. Amazing. Well, good job. Random genius on TikTok. We appreciate that. And you're picked the week this week. All right. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, pick the week. Great ideas for analog home automation. Give us a shout or email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out that online form. All right, project updates. Guys, I changed the battery this last week. Ooh.

I changed multiple batteries. I don't know if I ever said, I did order those batteries for the UPSs. I swapped them all out, got them all working. They're banged up. They look like a car ran over them, but you know what? They work.

They work fine. Good thing batteries don't catch on fire or anything. I replaced the batteries. Brand new batteries. Took it all apart. Oh, the old ones looked batteries don't catch on fire or anything. I replaced the batteries. Brand new batteries. Took it all apart. Oh, the old ones looked like they got ran over by a car. The old batteries were okay. They were fine.

Like, I mean, they weren't good. Like, there was some that did not have the charge capacity that they needed or whatever. They were, like, under voltage. So, I just got on Amazon and ordered an eight-pack of these heavy batteries. I think I said on the show the other day. So heavy in the box. Amazon put it in front of my door and I couldn't get out in the morning. So thanks guys. But yeah,

those aren't the batteries I dealt with over the weekend. I will put a picture of this somehow, maybe as a cover art or something, but I have never seen one of these things. I've got a AA in this hand and I've got a half AA in this hand. And this is the battery that was in the door sensor

of the little Eve door sensor that I have on my daughter's door. So we make sure that she stays in bed at night, which I also, I guess I did do this. I did upgrade it finally. The reason I had to replace it because it wasn't working. I was like, why isn't this stupid thing working?

And I pulled it off the door and brought it in. Like it's working. I connected to it with my phone. It's working fine. Upgrade to Matter. Oh, what's this do? And I press the button and it goes through this process and it's like going through blinky, blinky, blinky devices rebooting upgrade fail. I'm like, why? And I was like, you know, it's gotta be the battery 2021. It says on there, let's replace the battery, replace the battery, Matter Upgrade goes through fine. So now, instead of using the thread network, I'm using the good old Matter Network with HomeKit and everything. So I have officially my first Matter installed device in the house. I've got one device on my Matter Network, Gavin.

I know you're jealous. Wow. I'm actually impressed that you didn't give up when it failed the upgrade and just say you know screw it and put it back in the drawer you actually completed it like i i've actually impressed at that i mean it took three more days because i had to order this like random half double a battery which is the weirdest thing like this is crazy you could put two of these together one on top of the other and they are about the same size. But there's the same voltage as a single AA. So figure that one out.

Yeah. I hate when vendors use some weird batteries. I got used to the coin cell ones, the CR2032s, because a lot of my devices use those. I have a few devices that use a bigger version of that. But when you start getting into those exotic battery sizes sizes and you only have one device that uses it but you gotta keep a backup battery just in case oh that drives me nuts oh the worst part is i couldn't just order one because you know i couldn't because i would have but it didn't make any sense but i ordered four of them and now i've got four of these things that are going to be around for the next i don't know 20 years because i'll i'll

probably lose them but yeah you have to order more next time that thing i mean yeah i had to have ordered that it had to been like three or four years ago at this point i'm not even sure when i when i bought that maybe it's on amazon i can look it up but yeah uh so guys i changed the batteries and upgraded some firmware have matter device running in my house yay look at you changing batteries you know what's next for stuff sky's the limit did you ever finish that range hood uh no i actually i'm gonna have to do something on that now because i broke the buttons the other day i was pushing them in and i pushed them in a little too hard and oh man yeah so i've got a i have all the parts and pieces still to do that

and i need to to go in and swap that mess out and uh fix fix the pushed in buttons they're very frustrating when you press they're not like a push-in button they're just like you're supposed to put your finger on them and then it like there's the delay while it detects your it's stupid like what i want to do is touch it and have it instantly react so that's definitely going to be part of my my shenanigans when that happens so um i'm i guess you guys have probably been busier than me because i changed the battery and pressed update. Well, I think I've been almost as busy as you. Oh, nice.

So I've been on a Phillips Hue kick recently. Oh, yeah. Changing out my recess lights that I installed when we first moved in here because they suck. And there's just not enough light in a lot of my spots. And so this past week, I decided to tackle the hallway. And so I'm using Inovelli Blue switches again in the hallway, which I've had installed working fine. They're in smart bulb mode now with three recessed

Philips Hue lights. And so the hallway was getting dark at the end. It was kind of sketchy, you know, if I was going to bed or something, I needed some more light. Um, but I also wanted more light right outside my bathroom. And so I ran some new electrical for those. I got the new lights installed and it works great. It works just like the kitchen does they're super fast with the Zigbee binding. I'm using Zigbee 2 MQTT, and it was just, it was a breeze to set up. You know, as soon as the Philips Hue came on, they paired, and then I updated them. The update always takes forever. It took like 40 minutes to update each bulb. But after that, I was good to go. And I have, you know, color tunable and

white tunable and all that stuff in the hallway now. And I actually have adequate light, I was good to go. And I have color tunable and white tunable and all that stuff in the hallway now. And I actually have adequate light. I was going to go with four-inch ones because it's like a smaller space. But I went to Menards and they actually had a four-pack of retrofit can light housings that were clearance for some reason. And I got them for like $35 for a four-pack. And so I was like well i'm just gonna go ahead and just put six inch there so they uh they've been working great and i'm very happy with it and i have good light everywhere now so when you guys use the zigbee bindings

things i've been hearing so much about from gavin first gavin of course first gavin oh i talked about z-wave associations um well you did the bindings oh they're the same thing just for each technology though so z-wave or okay so i kind of have the same question in relation to both of the platforms i guess yeah so you're basically taking a a controllable switch and and binding it or associating it with a light or group of lights to turn on and off at the same time yeah so basically so you have to use and gavin can correct me same time. Yeah, so basically, you have to use, and Gavin can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but you basically have to use ZigBee 2MQTT

in order to do it for the ZigBee portion. But basically, there's something in Z2M, the protocol there, that's called groups. Basically, you create a group with all your lights and then under the device itself, which would be the light switch, you go in there and you bind that group of lights to the light switch.

And that way the communications instant, it's just it's going from the switch directly to the light bulbs or whatever sensors you have hypothetically. And if the server is down, it still works? It still works. Okay. So it's just kind of a setup thing that's happening through the MQT thing that's... Okay. Yeah. Well, it's like an official thing from Zigbee, but for some reason it's not available through

the default integration of Home Assistant. You have to get the other thing. Okay. Makes sense. But yeah, it makes it nice though because it's like so quick. I mean, if you came into the house and just turned on the kitchen lights, you would have no idea they're smart bulbs. It's just, they work like regular bulbs.

And so the dimming and the on and off and everything is like just as fast as using normal lights. Nice. Okay. So here's my question. And the answer is probably yes, because the way it sounds like this sets up. If I am using the integrated side of it right so if i'm using home assistant or whatever is attached to the mqtt thing um do you still get like events

that come off the keypad for like presses and releases and that kind of stuff okay so that it doesn't override based on that you still get those events that come in the lights are just reacting to whatever's going yeah yeah and and the bindings and associations, they're very basic what you can do with it. So for switches, you can only do when you press on or off, basically. You can tell it to send that same command, an on and off command, to a light bulb. But my inner valley switches have the little config button, and they send events, but I can't bind anything to, I can't associate anything to it. Right. Like it's, you could just do basic stuff.

You can associate. It also depends on the vendor because my inner valley dimmers allow me to associate level changes. Right. So if I had two dimmers, I can have them syncing their level changes through associations as well. Right. So that they show the same. Because they have the same little light as well. Right. So that they show the same. Well, because they have the same little light on the side. Yeah, the level on it.

Right. And it's really cool. It's instant too. You just got to be, if you're ever, if any of the listeners are thinking of doing that, just be very careful that you don't create a loop because yeah, it will be sending it to one and then that one does a level change and then sends it back. And then that does a level change and sends it back. There is another setting.

You look it up. You'll find the other setting you have to turn off. So you avoid that loop and flood your network. But it's very good. And you can even do like it's not just with switches. You can associate things like door contact sensors. So when the sensor opens up, it can send an on off command to a switch. Right. Directly. Right. So if you have like a lamp or yeah light or something like that it's like it's like hard

wiring your automations in pretty much yeah yeah because it's very basic right well i mean it has to be because you don't need to have like if then logic type things built into it you're not going through the crazy processor thing so that that makes a lot of sense okay cool i was just my my question was like if i did still want to do all that stuff do i have the option and it sounds like i do like i could still do like yeah logic or when the key gets pressed down or something like that or triple double tapped whatever those may be other bindings you can do i don't know but like i i would still want to do maybe that kind of stuff and i i wouldn't want to lock myself into just like oh no this light switch does that and i can i can sync commands to the lights but not the switch or you know whatever well right and so

i have a good example i think is applying what you're talking about um so in the in our den um we have led strips so in the den i'm using a Zeus double switch, the one with the dimmer up top and a little button at the bottom. I'm using Z-Wave associations with that. And I have it controlling our LED strip. I have a Zeus RGBW dimmer that's controlling my LED strips. And so that turns on with Z-Wave associations. But I also have it to where my Twinkly lights are automated as well. And so whenever I actually, I hit the button on the switch,

it turns on my Twinkly lights and the LED strips. So you can still have it. So the extra automation, because the Twinkly doesn't have that. Yeah, correct. It's not Z-Wave, so I can't associate it. But you can still tie it in and everything. Okay, yeah, that's a perfect example.

I was wondering if you could do that. But if your controller's down or the network's down or whatever. that part that part wouldn't work but you'd still be able to go in and turn your lights on off i really think that's great i'd love to see that come to like the more pro products like control four because if your processor dies on control four you cannot turn your lights on and it's been a big issue yeah and that's that's annoying. And that's why I worked on the project to convert my floodlight cameras over to Z-Wave. The lights part of it, because I found if Home Assistant was giving any kind of problem, like if there was a slowness or if it was offline, my backyard lights just wouldn't work. So now that I've converted the lights over to Z-Wave, the association doesn't care.

It will just always work. Cool, cool. And then this, also this past week, so I have the under cabinet lights, which I really like in the kitchen, but they were also using a Zeus RGBW dimmer and they work fine. There's nothing wrong with them.

But I have the Inovelli switch in the kitchen that controls my Philips Hue lights. And I was like, you know what? It'd be really cool if I can control my under cabinet lights with the same switch without going through automations. And so I picked up some third party knockoff Zigbee RGBW dimmer, and I hooked those up to my under cabinet lights instead. And so those are controlled at the same time as my kitchen recess lights now.

And so whenever I turn the switch on for the lights, all my lights come on and I can adjust the brightness and everything that way. I wish I could do the double taps with the ZigBee binding. That's kind of like, that would be super nice because I would like it to where if I, you know, double tap on the light switch going up, it would turn the cabinet lights on and stuff, but're all together um that's fine i mean it's

not a big deal i i have the under cabinet lights automated in a different way but that's kind of nice that when you turn you know the overhead lights on your under cabinet lights come on at the same time and it's just as instant so that's that's i like that nice and hypothetically i don't know too much of this but i think the zigbee binding is theoretically unlimited like i don't know if there's like a big limit on that or anything z-wave associations i think are only five devices so the zigbee in that regard is way better for that because if you have you know i have five phillips hue recess lights in the kitchen if i was doing z-wave i would not be able to add the

under cabinet lights so there's something to keep in mind if you're going to venture down that path zigbee is better for that i kind of i'm not going to but it's good that i i can't do it seth i mean it's like it's really awesome that these products exist like and and i i we kind of had a story that we plundered on which was like, I shouldn't have ignored. It was some tech article about not, they ignored Zigbee and Z-Wave for years or whatever. Now they figure that they're the pretty good product. And like. As they're dying.

Yeah, right. And then I was like, well, I've used mostly Zigbee with, through Control 4. Just what I've been, I've known that worked and how it works and all that stuff um the longest and z wave was always there but it never was good like honestly when i would have it was so trash until like the what the five to five hundred series no i would say it was trash until the 500 um the 500 was really reliable when we got to the 700 series controllers it was a pain in the ass again and i think the 800 is getting much better my and that just came out yeah i mean i remember like when i first got started in automation and like roughly 2014 so it's 10 years

now you would have like a z-wave hub at the end of a hallway and 20 feet away you'd have a z-wave door lock and you would have to install a z-wave repeater like it was absolute garbage and i remember like all the professionals being like this is never going to work like nobody's ever going to use z-wave and you know i i think we've talked about a dying and all that good stuff but it works substantially better now and where you don't have those range issues and so it is a lot better than what it was even 10 years ago right i mean it's it's that that's what i've always known it i guess where it still kind of sits but it sounds i mean i know that z-wave is doing a lot better these days clearly i guess but it's taken this long for them to really release a product that's solid like the

800 series controller product that you're talking about i I just, it's been a long time. And like, like you said, TJ, when the pros are installing something, if we install something that like doesn't turn your lights on, that's a, it's a problem. It's a financial problem that we have. So we just don't install those products. We never would touch them. But now it sounds like, I mean,naveli has a bunch of products out zoos has a bunch of products that i think that you know integrators in the pro space should be looking at these products a little bit more now there's less margin and well yeah they they work yeah and even nowadays if you tell like an integrator that you use the wave they're they'll almost you know dismissed immediately absolutely because those those previous experiences which you can't blame them you know what mean? If you used it in the past

and you got burned on it, you're probably not going to use it again. That's why I won't use the Logitech remotes. Yeah, same reason I won't use the Yamaha MusicCast. It just takes one bad experience. Or about 40 of them.

40 bad experiences with the Logitech remotes. Yeah, nothing better than getting a text in the middle of the night because somebody can't control their lights or their TV. Yeah.

Yeah. Nothing like having to go through the dance of reprogramming the remotes and you have to connect the USB thing that was installed behind the AVR for some reason. Why the tech put it there and it didn't have a disconnectable. Like you had to unplug the power and the power cord didn't unconnect from the little USB to IR hub thing that they had or yeah you had it was it was dumb it was the worst

worst design remote product I've ever come around and eventually they did put a power thing that you could disconnect but it was too late too late for

me sorry Logitech you're out of business that's why you went out of business Gavin wasn't enough to keep you afloat they make good mice

and stuff though. So there we go. You know, if I was around back then you could have used the gas to, you know, help troubleshoot

your issues. Oh man, so many, so many problems with that, that, that series, that time frame.

I think Logitech could have used gas. I don't know. I would have used gas to catch him on fire throwing him in a pit in the backyard. All right, Gavin, what you been up to man uh nothing uh just a couple um notes um we just found out before the show uh home assistant has joined the z-wave alliance

so i know they they've talked about this in the past they They want to certify the Z-Wave JS. So this is just another logical step. So that's good because when they officially become certified, you know, it will just mean they'll be looked at as like, you know, we are a gold standard and we have properly implemented everything Z-Wave into this open library. And others can adopt it and it becomes even more solid, more tested, you know, more reliable. So that's a good thing, you know, moving forward, they're making big strides with this. So that was one thing. I also noticed on one of the libraries, the Node Z-Wave JS update recently, they implemented NVMm restore updates so where this is important is if you're planning to go from a 500 or 700 series controller to an 800 you can now do a backup and restore whereas when i was trying to do this this wasn't available so i had to manually go through all 90 devices and that

does kill battery pretty uh. So, yeah. I remember you having that problem. So, yeah, nice little feature update for creature comfort thing. Yeah, yeah. It'll just make the migrations easier. So wait for that before you decide to move over. Just to follow up on my RAT GDO issues,

I'd like to thank everybody that chimed in saying I should use ESB home. Yes, I know I could use ESB home and I'll be the first to say I was lazy. I didn't want to go into the garage and pull out everything and reprogram it for ESB home when I already had it working with MQTT. Well, somewhat working with MQTT. So I was going to suffer through it just for you um but the good news is i don't know which of the 500 home assistant updates in the last week um may have fixed it but it's been reliable for the

last couple weeks so it's kind of gone back into my yeah i can recommend this now you know but but the good thing is is even if you do get it this is why i'll recommend it even if you do get it you got three options you can go mqtt esp home or what was the other one home kit was it or something like you had multiple options that you can program it with and that alone makes it you know a reliable thing so if mqtt doesn't work for you switch over to esp home people love that um so yeah it's back on my, okay, I recommend it list. If you're a Blue Iris person, just be careful with the latest upgrades, especially if you're using any of the MQTT stuff.

They seem to have changed the casing of some of the values in it, which broke all my automations. And it took me a while to figure this out. Like, if it was all uppercase before, did they change that i don't know why i don't know that's silly you know but they probably figured one percent of the people are just gavin is using this so we could just uh change it yeah trying to get you more business it sounds like i don't know i don't know and you know oh can i talk? Yeah, the wife doesn't listen to this podcast. Okay. So, yeah, you know, Prusa 3D printers released kits, upgrade kits for their 3D printers so I can upgrade from 3.5 or MK3S Plus to probably an MK four. So, you know, I just can't decide. Do I just buy a new MK four or do I do the upgrade song and dance? I think I'm going to go do the,

just buy a new MK four and have, make sure it's delivered during the week while she's at work. Um, so I can get rid of the evidence. Yeah. Then you'll have two printers. You'll be twice as efficient. Exactly.

I can use one printer to print out the parts for the other printer. Right. So, yeah, but you know, if anyone's out there looking at like 3d printers take a look at the mk4 from prusa because it has um input shaping i think they call it now which doubled the speed they print extremely fast and people are loving it the quality is great too and i'm thinking i'm gonna do the upgrade but you know the 3d printer is the only printer in too and i'm thinking i'm gonna do the upgrade but you know the 3d printer is the only printer in my house i can say i love

yeah you know if if the upgrade was a little cheaper i would say the upgrade makes more sense but in this case it's only like what a 200 yeah that's what i don't get it's like you can buy the you know what is it almost 600 bucks or you could buy the whole new printer for like seven or eight hundred bucks yeah i would just do that yeah i think so i'll spend the extra couple hundred dollars yeah might as well you might as well yeah i'll sleep on it then you can print then you can 3d print a lawnmower i mean i think that'd be a good idea yeah one day I'll get my lawnmower. One day.

If the wife finds out and she's like, wait, where did this other 3D printer come from? You say, I just 3D printed it. And then she'll believe you because you've been doing all sorts of things. That's a good idea. What 3D? Oh, that one, I just 3D printed that one from the other one. From the files. Yeah.

Actually, that's the funny part is is you can actually uh they have it's all open source it's all the files are there for the parts you could 3d print them all so like when i was fixing my filament sensor i 3d printed new parts they actually updated the designs so that they work better so when i put the new parts in they were actually my filament sensor was fixed i didn't have to buy a new sensor or anything i just had to 3d print it you know that's the cool thing with prusa is you could just 3d print new parts but you need to have two printers because if your printer is broken you can't 3d print the parts to fix it so now i need a backup printer so bam exactly i'll sleep on it no just make it now

no order it in the morning do it live no no i don't spend money live ah no that was that was me yeah seth and i do come on join in you're gonna have that gavin gpt soon so you're gonna own all my domain names oh my gosh all right well i think that's gonna wrap up this week uh on the show here uh we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those are able to financially support through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to home tech.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 big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and everyone else can go in there and be aghast at tj cleaning a three thousand dollar tv with a magic yeah i mean that that was that was the topic of the week this week and if you're not part of the slack group you missed it i mean it's all kinds of fun stuff that happens yeah if that's the fomo you're out on. It's not a new hub feature or a new home assistant feature or a new Homey Pro or Homey Pro Plus, POE, headphones, nothing.

Is TJ going to destroy this TV? That's what you're missing. And I told the client to try it on their TV before I even tried it on mine. I just, I winged it, you know? And that's the kind of experience you get with the Slack group. I loved your client's response to that, though.

I have to admit. It was awesome. Yeah, she was happy. Oh, man. Well, and Samsung warranty replacements are awful. Yeah. I had a client that we had to take their TV down, and then the tech came out and fixed it. He didn't actually fix it, so they had to come back out, and it was just miserable.

So anytime you can avoid the techs coming out to fix things, I'm saving you a lot of time yep those those are warranty replacement things are awful yeah they're always like third-party contractors that hate their life because they're getting paid like 25 but if you want to pay 25 home tech.fm support and we'll tell you how to fix your tv with our magic razor all right uh if you want to help out the show but can't support financially totally understand just appreciate a five- review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice that's going to wrap all the week all the news this week everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week

take care till next time why do you keep showing what is that little pencil thing like's little pencil things. No, they look like... They're little finger things from like the 90s. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's hilarious. That's what they are.

I saw you like popping one up and I was like, what is he doing right now? Is he trying to give us a puppy show? Puppet show? I thought they were Pez.