HomeTech.fm - Episode 473 - LIFX for Landscaping

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

On this week's show: Bell Canada sets up alarms to catch people stealing phone wire, Switchbot announces a new retrofit lock, Nest Cams are finally able to work fully on Google Home, Youtube redesigns the TV app for shopping, Roku accounts get hacked, TJ gives us a review of LIFX Landscape lights, what it takes for a basic Home Assistant install, project updates, a pick of the week, and more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 15th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Milford, Ohio. I'm TJ Huddleston. And still from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about Ohio, home automation, home technology. Yay. TJ is traveling around the world of Ohio and now landed in a town I've also never heard of called Milford.

So there you go. It's right outside Cincinnati, Ohio. So not too far from where I was last week in Kentucky. Pretty ironically. So it's down the southern part of Ohio in case you were interested. Not really, but I mean, it's it's interesting. It's bigger than the last place you're at. You're interested in all my travels don't don't act coy well yes no i don't think i'd ever go i wouldn't go out of my way to go here it doesn't look very it looks like one of

those old towns it looks like it's got an old old downtown and everything i'm just looking at some uh it's like a bougie area you know it's definitely nicer yeah a little bougie area they only have like two coffee shops though so it can't be that nice it's got 6 500 people as the population that's it that's it you know see it's funny that you look this up i never look up the population of the places i just go there because they're like hey we're gonna pay you money to go there and i'm like all right cool let's go you just gotta know where you're going that's that's the whole thing well i don't even know where i'm going half the time the gps just takes me there. There's only one stoplight probably in that city. No, there's at least three.

Oh, okay. Honestly, this place has the best brewery I've ever been to. So there's a brewery in town called Little Miami Brewing Company. And it's right on the Little Miami River. And their patio is really nice, but they also have seating that's like literally on the riverbank. And so you can just sip on your beer and hang out there. And it's actually one of the nicer breweries I've been to.

Now, are you guys having good weather up there? Is it cold? Yeah, it's in the 70s today. Oh, that's not bad. So very, very nice. Good day to work outside. Can you find a city in Ohio that hasn't stolen the name from somewhere else? No.

I don't know if you know anything about America, but we tend to take everything. Theft is part of the brand. I mean, it's just there in the name. Yeah. Well, I think that's just all of America, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's what we do. Yeah.

Milford, Ohio. Congratulations. Milford, you get TJ this week. You're welcome. You're welcome. All right. Any fascinating places we're going to see next week? since Milford, you get TJ this week. You're welcome. You're welcome. All right. Any fascinating places we're going to see next week?

Not next week, but the week after I'll be going to Noblesville, Indiana. Oh, Googling that now from now. But I probably, hopefully I won't be doing

the podcast from there because it's only a Monday, Tuesday job. So, oh, well, you have to tell us how it was. Much bigger population. So that's good yep it's

in it's indiana so it's not going to be good home home of mike pence so oh and not noblesville specifically but indiana indiana in general yeah home of the 30 mile per hour speed limit which i always find hilarious that's that's asking for a ticket yeah all right guys well um nothing big happened this week. Hasn't been very many news stories going around. It's kind of slow, kind of dead. That's okay. We got stuff to talk about.

We got projects to do. We got things to talk about. Got pictures of the weeks. We got some feedback. And we've got some friendly, some follow-up to do on some of the feedback we had last week. So what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines first? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right.

News straight out of Canada, hot off the press. Bell is implementing a new technology to combat copper theft by deploying aerial alarms inside its infrastructure. These alarms are designed to detect any unauthorized tampering or theft attempts on copper cable the system uses advanced sensors and monitoring capabilities and alerts authorities in real time when suspicious activities are detected so if they can get out there and prevent it this is this is wild gavin i i've been hearing about all your car car thefts with your little flipper zeros that you got up there now now this i i really didn't know did not know this was a bigger problem like i knew they stole cars i knew they stole halloween candy

i knew they would still stole like uh air conditioning units off the side of your house but you know like network wire like you know this type of stuff telephone wire yeah like i did not know they went to these kind of lengths. So that's a lot to steal. But yeah, Bell, you know, you have to do something to protect your wires. See, Gavin's always giving me crap for the state of Ohio. But I don't know of anybody that's just stealing telecom wires off a telephone pole. So at least we have that going for us. We have meth and other things.

I was just saying, have you heard of meth, Gavin? No, we don't need you to send anything up here. Like I know on job sites, they would have the big spools of wires that they would drop at the night before for all the work that needs to be done. And people used to time it and drive up with their trucks

and grab the spools and drive off, right? So that was a big business too. People these days steal everything. One of my old house, they stole our planter from our front yard, you know, like, like, come on, you know, it's just pretty bad. The most we've ever had stolen was a little tinsel pig that we had for, uh, for, for like a Christmas decoration one year. It was an adorable little pink piggy and I, with a Christmas hat on and somebody came up and stole it. I think it was the only thing we had in the yard.

So it was an easy, easy target. But my friend had his tree stolen. Like as funny as that sounds. Like somebody chopped down a tree? No, they actually, so here's the story. He had a, it was a Japanese maple. They're very like expensive trees because they grow very

slowly and stuff and he went on vacation and somebody came in with heavy equipment they didn't chop down the tree they actually dug down into the ground and lifted the tree out and took off with it at night and he came back to his missing tree wow so you know you can't even you know things in the ground aren't even protected here, you know. You get on these alarms. I was reading a story the other day about wire theft and how, you know, people that were doing the fiber lines for the different telecoms and stuff like that, they would just like you said, Gavin, go and drop the spool of wire off the day before or whatever. And they would literally spray paint on there, not copper. So that way the meth heads wouldn't go and steal it yeah wouldn't that we could just do it on everything even if it is like

electrical panel not copper oh yeah not copper i'm not gonna not gonna get into that not copper label your copper tubes not copper just yeah yeah all right all right well uh here's one one way you can uh protect some of those things in your house uh switchbot has announced a new switchbot lock pro it's a smart retrofit door lock with matter support for the us uk and eu door locks the lock is priced at 119 and has bundles available with the switch hub, which with the Switch Bot Hub, maybe. I have no idea why that was so hard to say. And a keypad for additional features like pin code,

NFC tag, fingerprint unlock options. The Lock Pro supports smart home platforms like Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings. It features quick key unlock and unlock functionality and offers power options like power options with AA batteries lasting up to nine months or rechargeable dual power pack lasting up to 12. Let's see.

So lock has been, the lock pros on pre-launch right now, discount at $89.99 for all bundles. So if you're in the market for one of these, if you're in the SwitchBot ecosystem looking for, that's actually a really inexpensive door lock. Go pick one of these up, I guess. Sounds all right. I don't know if I'd jump on this in my area because it's a retrofit, so it'd probably get stolen.

I mean, it's glued down. It's glued down. They have ways. They'll walk with a heat gun. This is, honestly, though, the SwitchBot lock, I think, is the best lock that you can get if you're a renter. I mean, it's a little ugly. So if you're going to put it like your permanent house, maybe not the best idea. But it's something that you just want to easily throw up on your lock and you want to be able to control it.

I think that's a good option. I have the first generation. I need to find my hub for it, though, because I'd like to get it installed on my back door. So maybe, maybe I'll do that this weekend. It looks like the limited offer with, without the bundles, that's one 49 and it'll go to one 99 and then the limited,

just the lock. If you needed that 89 99 and it'll go one 120. So like that's, that's cheaper than I think than the acquire one that I have. I mean, with matter though, I can just use this with homeless system without my hub, right?

Yep. Nice. Like, like the price you're paying and the features with Home Assistant without my hub, right? Yep. Nice. Like the price you're paying and the features you're getting with this, it's a pretty good deal. Like, you know, and SwitchBot, I have to admit, all their products work pretty well. So I expect this to, you know, work as well. Pretty good. My back door, for some reason, it's like an older door and it doesn't have like a normal offset. Like I forget what the actual latch offset is for like a door.

It's like two and a quarter or two and three quarter. Mine's like two and five eighths or something weird. And so I can't just go and install a smart lock. And so it was something like this would actually work out great for me. I'm looking to see along that question about having matter support, how it has better support. Does it, you need the hub for matter?

Cause that's generally how all the switch, switch bot stuff hasSupport. You need the hub for Matter? Because that's generally how all the SwitchBot stuff has been. Yeah. Well, that's what I was wondering. Yep, you need the hub. Hub Mini, that's what it is. My experience with their devices are Bluetooth, right?

And then the hub will translate it into Matter. Which some Bluetooth stuff from SwitchBot works with Home Assistant natively. Or through an API or whatever. No, if you have a Bluetooth receiver. Right. Then it will work, yeah. Yep.

I was going to say the Aquara one was that way, but no, I remember I was able to connect the Aquara over, it connected somehow, because I was using it without the hub for a while. And then it was, I didn't need to use that anymore. I switched over, I had the hub, and kind of used it that way with Matter. So, yeah. So you don't know how you got it connected i mean it was that easy yes just press buttons

and it worked oh okay it looks like you will need the hub for this one now yeah it matters kind of yep yep i'm glad i'm glad somebody matters this week because that's really the only one we had and i i totally missed that so now let's just buy it congratulations you matter this week all right uh new products are well actually not new products but google is finally bringing all its nest cam features over to google home so the the the long wait is over if you have been using the google nest cam and uh have been waiting for features to appear that they've been talking about and promising for a while over on Google Home's web interface, including such features as viewing and downloading recorded clips and creating custom clips from footage,

then yeah, now is your time. They finally updated everything, and it's brought the full functionality of Nest Cameras to Google's platform. It allows users to scroll through event timelines and access recorded footage from the web portal uh older nest cam users older nest cam users could previously only view live footage from the google's interface but now they can get back in look at all that it's kind of useless right like it's taken long enough to make this transition, I feel like. Just in time for them to cancel the Google Nest scams.

That's right. I don't know why Google moves so slowly. I don't know if they take this space seriously enough or what, but welcome to 2024, Google. Yep. You can now view recorded clips on your special camera. There you go. I feel like Google is just so siloed that literally nobody talks to anybody and they're like,

they find out like six months later, like, wait a minute, you're working on that too? What do I do with this now? The other department, we have a Nest Cam? When did we get that? I thought we were canceling those.

They told me you guys were cut. Yeah. Oh, they probably haven't told you yet. Don't tell anybody. You're not next year's budget. Well, here's a fun one. You like YouTube? You like watching video on YouTube? Yeah. Well, too bad.

No. You can't do that anymore. YouTube is now announcing that they're going to revamp their app a little bit and it's going to be redesigned for the TV. It's going to focus not on watching videos, which is what you think of when you think of YouTube, but what else would they focus on? Yeah, shopping. Yeah, shopping. So YouTube is basically bringing QVC to the forefront here. And yeah, if you're watching something, I guess there's a layout shift. It's going to give more prominence to comments and descriptions while minimizing the video display. I guess you can still engage with the video comments without obstructing the content because that's what you're there for.

That's what you want to do when you're in the YouTube app on your TV. Great, great, great job, guys, I guess. I don't know, TJ, you're a heavy YouTube user. Are you excited about watching less video on your TV and watching more shopping ads? No. Is this the actual YouTube like itself or YouTube TV? Because I always get them mixed up.

This looks like YouTube itself. Yeah, I think this is YouTube. I guess that makes sense. I don't know. I don't, I'm not going to buy anything from YouTube. So I don't think this is really aimed for me. I just want to watch my videos. I watch YouTube a lot, but I, for me I just want to watch my videos I watch YouTube a lot but I

yeah I just kind of flip through videos but like I'm not there to buy anything and I think it's like TikTok has that you know before they get banned they have that shopping tab or whatever on their on their app where you can go in and there's a TikTok shop buy stuff from Timu yeah it doesn't

seem like I don't know I'm not gonna I've never bought anything from there either but i know people that have so i was gonna say i feel like this is definitely a younger person thing like i'm just gonna find something on there i mean i pretty much at this point i've given up on like normal tv and i only watch youtube so maybe maybe i'll buy stuff from youtube here soon at this point i've given up watching youtube on my phone because i can't block the ads on my phone so i I watch YouTube only on my desktop. And when I do watch it, I just maximize it so that I don't see all the other stuff around it.

Right. Because it just gets annoying a lot of the time with a pop up. You're making that big gas money now. You can't afford YouTube. I don't know if I can justify the cost because at some point I know, even though you're going to pay for YouTube to get rid of the ads, I know at some point they're going to come in and say, well, we're going to give you some ads. Now you just get less ads than if the free version, you know, I wouldn't be surprised

to that. And then you're watching a video and you get the sponsored ads and everything. Anyway, you know, it's gotten bad enough that videos are giving you like commercial breaks you know we're gonna take time out to introduce to tell you about this it's like oh great oh man i was watching something what was i watching i posted on the back channel i think we were watching like peacock or paramount or something like that and i paused the tv show we were watching and granted we always pay for the version that doesn't have ads and i paused the tv show guys and there was an ad that came up on the pause screen why you just want to rub your face in it oh my we can still do this we can still do

this i'm like why am i paying for this apple has always been the best when it came to not having ads with apple tv but i saw a story this week. They're looking at introducing ads. Yeah, I'm sure that everybody has an ad platform. And I'm sure Apple wants to get in on having some lower tier or free tier Apple TV. Especially, I mean, they have a lot of content that is popular. But it was kind of a big story a couple of months back. But it's probably been a little longer than that. they started adding the like the pre-roll um buffers before

like like hbo would do yeah where there's like a on hbo there's another show you would they would advertise it right before um the show you were trying to watch and apple tv does that pretty much on every show now there's there's another apple tv show that you'll learn about while watching literally anything on apple tv so whether you want to or not yeah this is a paramount plus we were watching john stewart which i deeply miss on tv and it just popped up an ad for tiger's apprentice oh that's a movie disappointing disappointing i was i was saw a comment today for the money on on the internet they were talking about um how they it took them years to get convince their parents to do shopping online and now they have to convince their parents that no nothing is real that product is not real that

brand is not real everything is made up and fake everything Everything good just gets ruined. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. All right. Well, speaking of things getting, good things getting ruined, I guess, Roku has been hacked. If you guys got a Roku account, it's probably been hacked.

Roku disclosed a breach where hackers accessed 15,363 accounts. That's not too many compared to how many Roku accounts are probably out there. This hack was attempting to purchase streaming subscriptions using stolen login information and credit card details. It involved credential stuffing, exploiting data breaches from third-party services to gain unauthorized access. So lesson of the day still is do not use the same password on every website. Use a password manager, people.

What a shock. Yeah, geez. There you go. There you go. They were, if they did find an account, they were selling that account information for 50 cents each on the dark web. Ooh. Oh, nice. My father and I, we got him a Roku TV, set him up.

You know, he really enjoys using it and stuff. And when I set him up, I put a complex password in, and I was very proud of myself, you know, keeping him safe. Only to find out that he pretty much instantly didn't like that password and changed it to like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, because he had, you know, it was easy to enter. And he's been running that way for months. like one two three four five six seven eight nine because he had you know it was easy to enter uh and he's been running that way for months so if he's hacked you know like you know it's the same

one i use for the bank that's one thing i find how did you know my bank password my mom does it too she'll she'll doesn't like the passwords and she'll make it something so simple and i'm like mom like stop doing that right like you don't realize how bad that is she's like but these other passwords are too hard to remember yeah you know i'm like just call me every time i'll tell you what they are wow you have way more patience than i do wow this this gavin as a service is really taking off and beyond you know i don't realize i encoded password management too yeah it's like man what's my youtube password uh call gavin as a service you know? I didn't realize they included password management, too. Yeah, it's like, man, what's my YouTube password? Call Gavin as a service,

you know? Let me look it up. I got smart with yours. It's 987654321. Yeah, I specifically tell my clients that they need to remember their password

because I'm not going to remember it. And I still have clients that call me up like six months later, hey, do you know what I made the Roku password?

No, I don't know you made your Roku password, you're crazy. i don't even know my roku password it says i forgot yeah that's what i tell people every time just reset it it's okay there you go uh 15 15 000 accounts that's not terrible but i guess that's 15 000 accounts that someone is going to use to use your credit card information and buy things with on roku and that's a relatively small number probably to like the number of accounts they have i'm sure they have a few million so not bad well i mean it's bad for the people involved but um change

your passwords people all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 473 all right uh a couple things in the bell bag first thing we got to follow up from from jimmy so he said today i learned all three podcast hosts need to learn more about alexa routines the answer is no motion for x minutes option there is a uh i guess he posted a picture in our hub and it has a you know when motion is detected you can you you could wait for x amount of minutes i don't i i don't know like going back and trying to remember it sounded like that's what he was doing already but he said the problem was like after he's been outside for a while it turns off but maybe maybe

that's not what he's doing so this might be an option jimmy goes on to say and this is this is this is where he's going to get roasted. No need for home assistant. Ha ha. Oh, those be fighting words. So I don't know. Like, am I going to learn about Alexa routines? No, I'm not. Sorry. Yeah, we all had this conversation.

We're not going to learn about this. Yeah, it's not a platform I am very much interested in at all. I think it's pretty much, I mean, it's great. It does the basics, but it's not gonna it's not gonna do you will outgrow it and you will need to move on from alex at some point and just use it as an input device into whatever fancy system you do end up with seth don't lie the biggest reason you're not going to consider it is because you can't make a hot dog theme yeah well exactly there's no hot dog theme for alexa app is there no there's not and i always found it was so hard to keep up with those routine changes too, because I always would hear the updates rolled out or what changed,

but then it was only in the U.S. only. And up here in Canada, we didn't get it for like months later, right? Like I didn't know this even was added. Like last time I checked, I never had this option. So it's good that they added it and it could be the solution. But yeah, it's just one of those platforms. It's just hard to keep up with, you know, just too much changes happening, different times, different locations, you know, and, you know, by default, Home Assistant is my

solution for everything, you know, like I don't care what anybody says, Home Assistant, that's my answer. It's going to be the t-shirt we sell. I don't care what anybody says, colon, Home Assistant. If it's not Home Assistant, I don't care. Home Assistant or GTFO. All right. We got a couple of things here in the mailbag from John.

He said, hey, guys, it's John again. The one you talked about, the Homey Hub. He said, the more I listen to your show and the more I think about it, the more I want to move to Home Assistant. Good choice. Excellent choice. I'm happy you said that. Well, here he goes on.

And this is the perfect sentence for our show. Yep. So if I wanted to do that here goes what should i buy well we will spend your money really well here all right so he says i want to be future-proof and i want to i want every radio even if i don't need them right now he said recall i have a smart things hub and i also have a few philips hue hub a philips hub and a car hub for my new lock he goes on to talk about how he likes the lock. I think it's probably the U100.

I think they have a new model out now, but it's the one I have too. He says that it's way better than the battery eating August that he had before. And he has a lot of wifi products and he still wants to use Alexa for his voice control. Mac household, iPhones, and computers. So how can we help him spend money?

What does he got to buy? What's he got to do? What's he got to do to get into Home Assistant here? Does he need Unraid? Does he need a 15 terabyte NAS? What's he need, Gavin? Where do you start? What do you spend?

You just went big right off the bat. Okay, TJ. That's what we did. That's the way you got me in. You're like, hey, you got to do this. Oh, hey, it's got Docker on there. Okay, TJ. That's what we did. That's the way you got me in. You're like, hey, you got to do this. Oh, hey, it's got Docker on there. Hey, you can put VMs on there. Did you know you can install the VM for home?

Keep it simple. Okay, TJ, how do you run your home assistant? Mine is literally just on a micro PC. I bought or inherited like a $100 micro PC, and I installed the home assistant operating system directly onto the micro PC. And that has been working flawlessly. Before I did that, I ran on a Raspberry Pi. But the problem with the Raspberry Pi is that the micro SD cards can cause issues down the road. And so for especially the price nowadays, I think the base level Raspberry Pi is like $80 now. And so you might as well just buy a

refurbished or used micro PC from Amazon for like $100 or on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or wherever and just run it on there. It's super easy. It's got all the USB ports. It doesn't take that much power. It's the best way to do it. And that's why I let TJ go first, because that's what I would recommend, right? Like my how I run it. I run it in a VM on Unraid on my server. And I have like a USB hub in the back and I have all the radios on an extension that goes to the middle of my basement. So they reach all the corners of my house and stuff like that. Right.

But I'm the extreme. If I recommend the micro PC like TJ does, does just because yeah, you have all the ports. You can customize it. And this is what I like about Home Assistant. When you buy other hubs, you're kind of stuck with the radio they give you, right? In a way. And I always found that a problem in certain hubs, right? I'm not going to call any names, but you know, I didn't like the radio and you can't swap

it out or anything like that. But with Home Assistant, like I would have a certain radio and if it gave me problems, I'd go and buy another vendor's radio and just swap it. You know, never, it was easy swap, but the work was worth it because it became more stable. Right. And then you can also upgrade the radio. You want Z wave, you, you are running at the Z wave 700. You want to go to the 800.

Well, you just swap the sticks around. Right. And you move your devices over and now you've upgraded your Z wave devices, you want to go to the 800, well, you just swap the sticks around, right? And you move your devices over and now you've upgraded your Z-Wave devices, you know? So that's why I do recommend running on that little micro PC. Also, you're also running it using the Home Assistant OS, which makes life so much more easier for you when it comes to management. Because, you know, the add-ons, they run in little dockers. It's kind of all hidden behind the scenes. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to think of it.

You just add them. They add them. It works. It's so much easier when you run it that way. If you're running in a docker, there's so much more headaches you got to deal with. So I don't recommend running anything in a docker because then you're fighting to pass through cards. I think the add-ons you have to run in other Dockers, it just gets a little more complicated.

So I highly recommend the MicroPC like TJ's doing. They're cheap. You don't even need the most powerful one, right? You can get like one for like a hundred bucks, an old one, right? And it works perfectly fine. If you go look for it, I'll put a couple of links in the show notes for these,

but like if you go look for the Lenovo ThinkCenter and it's usually like the M700 or the M900, something in that or M7 something, like there's a couple of them in there. Some of them are expensive. Some of them are like 700 or 800 bucks, but the older ones that say renewed on them can be like $99.

And they are beasts of machines. They are not, this one is an i3 eight gigabytes of ram it's got a 240 gigabyte uh solid state ssd wi-fi vga usb3 and win 10 pro installed like it is it's actually a decent computer and will for running home assistant is way more than it needs like it's way more than it needs home assistant doesn't need a lot of CPU. Like you'd be shocked at how low the CPU usage it is. Like it really does not need a lot. And I use for all my micro PC stuff for all my TVs, I use the Dell Optiplexes micro PCs and they sit behind my TVs and that's how, you know, we watch our TV and use our HTPC. And they work great. You know, they're our TV and use our HTPC. And they work great.

You know, they're old, like they're not the latest version. They're like 12 years old, some of them. But they work beautifully. You know, they're not even 8000 series chips. You know, I can't even upgrade them to Windows 11, but they will run Home Assistant perfectly fine. Yeah, I'm looking at this HP ProDesk 600 on Amazon. It's a renewed one. $88.

i3, 8 gigs of RAM, 256 SSD. That's more than enough for home assistant. Yeah. And it's like a little, it's basically, I bought one of these

for, I don't know, a while back for like a client computer and just like to have it at their house where I could like remote into it

when I needed to, like screen sharing or something. I just put it in the rack let it sit there it replaced like an old dead domatz box or something like that yeah and yeah i mean i was shocked as to like how nice it was like it's it's an actual it's basically what they would deploy at a business that was using them as a thin client for a mainframe or something like that like and they work well they're fast speed, booted up instantly. I was shocked.

But it's basically like a laptop without a screen. And it turns out $100 goes a long way if that's all you need. So check those out. When you're talking about antennas now too, because that's another big thing, right? So I mean, if you're looking for Z-Wave, I can recommend the Zeusus uh 800 series z wave uh controllers you know grab one of those that one's great you know um if you're looking

for um to add the matter controller i got the one that home assistant the sky connect um i have used that in my system it works great um i only use it for matter though i don't use it for zigbee um so you might want to look at that uh though. I don't use it for Zigbee. So you might want to look at that. TJ, what do you use for your Zigbee? So I'm using the Sonoff Zigbee hub right now. But that was, I have the SkyConnect as well. But the only reason I have the Sonoff one is because at the time,

Zigbee to MQTT did not work that well over the SkyConnect. And so I had to basically have the separate one. I wouldn't worry about that initially. I would just go ahead and just get the Zoos and the SkyConnect. And so that way you're able to use ZigBee and Z-Wave and Matter and all that. And then eventually you can do more advanced things, unless you want to jump in with that. But I like to start basic and kind of work your way up. And you know what? I would recommend just, you know, split off your Zigbee from now. And the only reason I would say is just, it's easier to do it now when you're starting

than to have to do it again later, right? So I would say the Sonoff is a great one. I have the Zigbee 3.0 version of it. You can ping us if you want exact model numbers because you might want to look at their compatibility list there's like one little letter can you know change it from a one that's really compatible to not really good for the setup right you have to be very careful with that um for bluetooth because i also added a bluetooth one you want to again look at the bluetooth

compatibility list to see you know what's very compatible because some of them are actually better than others. I have a StarTech Bluetooth one that I got. Um, and that has a great range to it and the number of concurrent device connections it allows. So if you want to just be future-proofed with that, you know, you can get your Bluetooth antenna through that. What other antennas do I have? I also have an SDR antenna for picking up like a radio waves for a certain, like my water meter, all the waters neighbors. Yep, exactly.

So that, that's great to have in there. And I think that sums up all the antennas I have in there. And so when you say an antenna, those are all like USB based. Yeah. You just basically are going to plug them into the directly into the, the mini PC,

or you're going to use like a hub or something and come off and put them out where, you know, where they can see the, the air a little bit. And I have the, I have them off of a hub. They're not expensive.

They're like, we're talking about these little things. They're like $39, $9 for the Bluetooth 5.1. Like this is not a very, I think you could probably under like have the, the PC that TJ was talking about probably under 200 bucks easily have maybe even on 150 easily slide in and get this all swapped over and home assistant

up and going. Yeah. And that's just, you know, how we run it or how we recommend it. But you can also look at getting something like the, um, uh, the home assistant green, yellow, blue. I'm not sure.

I haven't kept up to date, but I know some of them are more underpowered than others. And then I can't remember. Some of them have, um, the antennas built in, um, or some of them, you still have to buy the extra antenna for other communications so you know you can look into those but i mean if you're gonna do that i'd rather just buy a mini pc honestly um it's just so much better it's gonna serve you longer yeah it's yeah exactly i mean it's a great if you if you weren't looking to tinker with stuff the the the green or the yellow are kind of like turnkey ready to go you don't

you don't have to worry about so if that's what you want to do absolutely go that direction uh but i i would say getting the mini pc and running it that way just by by itself is is definitely the way to go yeah if it doesn't realistically it doesn't work out too you can actually use it as a computer too which i think is nice i like the dedicated devices that they're doing but you're kind of stuck and i'm sure you can load linux or something on them but if you buy a micro pc and use it for home assistant for a couple months and you're like this isn't for me then you can use it as a pc right i think the yellow the yellow is a compute 4 module for yeah that's very much if you are so like there is some reusability i guess on that but at the same time,

it's still a Raspberry Pi. You're not going to be able to switch it over and run Windows 10 or 11 on it. And when you have a mini PC, with Home Assistant, there's so much you can do and so much you can expand. If you start getting it to frigate on Home Assistant, you might want to put

a USB Corel device in there to do all your AI detections and stuff like that. So now on the mini PC, you have an extra port for that. And then you might want to put put a usb coral device in there to do all your ai detections and stuff like that so now on the mini pc you have an extra port for that and then you might want to put an another hard drive in there to store all the recordings right so you can expand the hard drive space in there like the by doing it this way you're leaving yourself open for a lot of expansion possibilities as you grow right and that that's a good thing to have because then you don't have to rebuy a whole new device yep that's the way that's the way to go i mean that if you're going to spend money that's the way to go and it doesn't cost you don't have to buy a

16 terabyte nas drive thing and put docker on it like some people did because that that was a good choice i made oh well i had the server sitting there anyway. So, you know, I just took four cores and threw it at it because I have like 40 cores or something like that. So, you know, I'm all good with that. And it runs beautifully fine. You know, I gave it like 16 of my 128 gigs of memory just because, you know, it's not doing anything anyway. And it just it chugs away it works beautifully fine all right so if you're listening go and spend five thousand dollars on a surfer and then well you can run much more than home assistant but that's another topic for another show you know like but if you're interested in what else you can run on a home server you can get

your rack set up you know like listen gavin as a service is here for you. I'll say subscribe to gas today. Yeah. I mean, and so, yeah, we need to talk about your Gavin as a service, uh, as a service payment. Uh, and, and John goes on to make that joke. He says, no, seriously, I would like to make a Gavin, Gavin as a service. You have a way to do it like a one-time donation to the show. And, uh, he says, most of it should go to the home assistant salesman, Gavin. I'm starting to get commissioned. Yes. We currently don't have a way to do that. I guess the patron thing is really the only way we've taken payments. And I guess I can kind of look into that, but I think you can, like John suggests, like making a one-time payment on like

upping your donation or whatever for a month and then going back just don't forget like if you did oh no feel free to forget like we don't buy i mean yeah yeah i you can tell how bad of a salesman i am don't forget you don't take your money i will refund it you just go make a custom pledge and donate whatever you want yeah yeah every month if you want to forever yeah we it's going to be a subscription model gavin as a service it's a subscription model so uh all right let's move on here we got a pick of the week um this is so funny uh bear has been detected on the backyard gate camera and this this picture came from gavin gavin you had a bear in your yard this bear looks really small that's the first time I ever

got that. So that was my Blue Iris AI set up, Code Project AI set up. I got a notification on my phone saying a bear was detected in my backyard. I'm like, a bear? And you know, I wouldn't be surprised because I've seen

on my front yard, there was a wild turkey once, and I've seen boars. We, there was a wild turkey once and I've seen boars. We have an infestation going on in the area. So I wasn't too shocked. But then when I looked at the camera, it was just a little squirrel. So I was like, oh, those are suburban bears, I guess. You know, like they're not too bad.

It's the part that really upset me is the thing was digging up my lawn, you know, like, oh, I'm going after this thing, you know. He's looking for those sensors is what he's looking for they're not there he's trying to steal copper he's like i buried the sensors even our squirrels are trying to steal stuff from our houses that's how bad it is here the animals keep stealing stuff yeah i thought that was hilarious is got fooled by a little squirrel but you know it's that's that's the nature of ai sometimes that's ai sometimes it's lucid sometimes it's just imagining things what do you think when you saw a bear has been detected you're like oh no there's a bear in my backyard yeah i actually thought i was like i wouldn't be surprised well my first thought was how did it open the gate

right because the foxes and the skunks and the the raccoons you know they all go under the gate right so the bear's a little bigger. So I was like, oh man, did I leave that gate open? You know, like I wasn't really shocked about it. I was just like, just make sure don't let the dog out. But then I saw the picture. I was like, oh. Still don't let the dog out.

That squirrel's big. Oh, we have some big squirrels. That might be bigger than your dog. I think it may be, yeah. It's pretty. We have rabbits back there squirrels skunks possums foxes and now bears funny picture there so if you uh if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week um pictures of bears give us a great ideas for the show give

us a shout email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right project updates um i'm on spring break. So I got nothing to say other than I, yeah, have been taking care of my daughter this week. So I went to the beach. We went to the beach. It was cold, but all she wanted to do was play in the sand and run back and forth and spend a bunch of energy. And I was like, you know, go dig and stand have fun playing and tonight you will sleep sleep sleep well and that and she did um but i will say spring break attached to a um a time change on a clock not a good combination not a good combination it is uh taxing on everyone so um yeah i've got nothing i did clean my garage up a little bit.

I've got a lot of cleaning to do and I was pulling stuff out and throwing things away, um, or moving things around where I won't be able to find them later. So, um, yeah, finding a lot of like home technology stuff that, uh, I was like, Oh yeah, this is going to go in the museum and I got to put it in the museum box now. So that's, that's my projects kind of boring, but you know, spring break is what it is tj what about you well after our uh episode last week i decided to uh go ahead and treat myself and i spent five hundred dollars on the landscape so i went and bought the uh the lifex uh path lights i bought the round ones um i was driving back from Kentucky and I was just checking Home Depot and I was like, let me go ahead and just check Home Depot and see if I can get these

lights. And the one that was closest to me in Florence, I think Florence, Kentucky, they had five in stock. And so I went to the store and I was like, I'm going to buy these lights. And so I stopped by the store and Home Depot is kind of nice because if you open up the app, it'll tell you exactly which aisle they're in and which bay. And so I was like, all right, perfect. I'll just walk in and grab these lights and I'll be on my way so I can go back home. And of course, it wasn't that easy because then the app said, please see an associate. And I was like, oh, no. And so I spent like, you know, 10 minutes looking for an associate and i was like oh no and so i spent like you know 10 minutes looking

for an associate uh but at this point i was dedicated because i was like i've already stopped i'm not leaving without these dang lights and so i found an associate and i was like hey i'm looking for these lights they're brand new i don't know where they're at and so he looked on his app and he's like oh go over to the landscape light section and ask somebody over there and i was like cool and so i went over there and i flagged some other person down. I was like, Hey, I'm looking for these lights. Can you tell me where they are? And he said, Oh, they're brand new. So they're going to be over in this brand new section up high. And so he, he went and he retrieved them for me because I have six, how many do you want? And I said, well, I'm not that rich. I'll only take five. And these things

are a hundred dollars each. Um, so i got five for the the little sidewalk in front of our house um i got them home and you know i started i got one set up you know immediately because that's what you do with technology and it it set up fine honestly the i was a little hesitant because i didn't know how the quality would be of the lights um but i'm here to tell you the the actual physical quality of the light seems to be very good um they're very heavy um they seem like they're nicer professional lights um the only ding i'm gonna give it is that they give it like this little baby steak i mean it's like six inches long or whatever but it's like maybe an inch in diameter and so as i was actually installing them i i'd stuck them in the ground

and i went to go push one over to kind of adjust it like you kind of do with landscape lights and it broke the stake off immediately and so that night i drove to home depot and i bought a new one and i swapped it out um and i got it i got them set up um home assistant immediately found them and used them with the lifex integration and so that was kind of cool um but i wanted to go ahead and get them set up over matter as well and so i i went ahead and just switched them all matter um they're matter over wi-fi which i'm not a huge fan of i was kind of hoping for matter over thread um but luckily i installed an access point in my front yard uh two weeks ago for no apparent reason.

Because now I have Wi-Fi lights. You were getting ready for this. You were, yeah. It wasn't because of my terrible cell phone service in the front of the house. So, yeah, I got them working. They were dropping out, like, randomly. Like, a couple of them would just stop working. So, I contacted LIFX.

And they're like, hey, you need to set these up with the app. And then that way we can properly diagnose them. And so I got them set up with the app and I got them updated and they've been working fine for I think like four or five days without any dropouts. Nice. They're actually, they're pretty nice. You can change the color on them.

You can change the white color on them as well. And so I'm looking at setting up some automations with them and stuff. I haven't had any dropouts this entire week so i think i'll actually go ahead and like permanently install them this weekend and that's when the dropouts will stop start yeah yeah i'm just waiting turns out the antenna is in the wire yeah it's it's like one of those stupid things though like i i like the whole matter thing but the the qr code i think is like the whole matter thing, but the QR code, I think, is like the worst idea they could have done. Because the QR code for these specific lights is literally on the manual, and that's it.

There's no other QR code on the light itself, the little power adapter thing it comes with, or anything. And it's funny because they give you specific instructions to use with the lights. You have to use a 300-watt transformer. You have to use a 12-gauge wire, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're 32 watts of power each. And my normal landscape lights are 10 watts or less now. And so 32 watts each, if you're using five of them, you basically almost max out a 200 watt transformer. So these things are very power hungry. And if you add a lot of them,

you're going to need either several transformers or one really big one. Those things are thirsty, man. Wow. Yeah. Crazy power. Amazing. There should be a matter code on them though. If the QR codes are,

there should be some numbers or something like that for the matter code. I don't see anything on there, but I'll have to look again. Cause it would be dumb if you lose your mat and you can't throw out your man that's what i'm saying or you don't even know what manual goes to which exact light or yeah so i had to literally label the lights and the manual and the box that way i knew what they went to so i'll give an update maybe next week again when i actually get them installed i'm sure they'll stop working because that's usually what happens with me i'll let seth beat me out but that's shitty no that's matter so much editing to do all right gavin what projects do you have going on um i'll just go through this quickly but i finally uh installed my floodlight you know we got 16 degrees celsius temperatures today so i took the opportunity

to get that out there and it's been plugged in and sitting in my living room for like weeks now and just looking at me, but it works beautifully. It's now a Z-Wave video floodlight. Love it. And I have three more that I'm going to convert over now that I have done that one. So got that one finally up and running. And then we've just been, you know, spring's around the corner. So we've been doing some prepping for spring. I picked up an EcoWit WS90 weather station, weather station got that in so i'm gonna be installing that and then you know just planning

for the lawn watering again you know got the sensors all charged up ready to go ready to stick them in the ground um i added the soil um temperature sensor so that will tell me when it's time to seed and stuff like that uh i'm all excited for this year so a lot of my products projects are going to be outdoor, you know, spring projects. I know Seth, it's spring all year round there. So I mean like. It's already started. Yeah, I hate you.

Grass is already dying. It's so hot. Still hate you. I got to get my yard sprayed for the mosquitoes too. So that will be happening, you know, earlier than you. Oh, it's beautiful. When they spray, it's perfect. I love it. Well, I they spray, it's perfect. I love it.

Well, I have to keep an eye on that. I'm kind of thinking I'm going to take a look at those grass sensors this year to see. I've got some weird spots in my yard, so I kind of want to see what's going on with them. We'll see. I might get on the blinking red lights in the yard train here soon. So, we'll see. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up the show this week.

Really want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show 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 where it is little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month,

get you a big shout on the show. Like Chad Reinhart. Thank you, Chad so much. Really do appreciate that. But every single pledge gets you an invite to a private site chat the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and check out awesome pictures of tj's walkway with those lights it's really cool yeah and you can make fun of them just like everybody else did you posted to reddit man that was your fault never post to reddit yeah people were giving me crap for like crab for not edging my lawn

in the wintertime. Who edges their lawn in the wintertime, guys? Oh, that was me having fun, man. That's my burner account. This is your burner account. If you want to help out the show but can't support financially,

totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review rating on iTunes or any podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap another week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care.

Till next time. With 45 seconds to go. Way to go, Seth. Ah, look at that. Wow. What's your limit? The timer? Oh, you can, or no, for the meeting here, can you? It's not a meeting. I got to go pick my wow what's your limit the timer oh you can or no for the meeting here can you

it's not a meeting i gotta go pick my wife up at the airport oh okay so it's not gonna cut us off no it's just that building no no oh okay all right cool well then i'll do this slowly here i was rushing the whole time for you tell you how more important things to do