HomeTech.fm - Episode 476 - Probably the Greatest Show Yet

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

On this week's show: Z-Wave LR may be soon coming to DIY systems, Ubiquiti's product and software preview, Dropcam is now gone, Lifx launches some bight lights, a few questions from the mailbag, project updates and probably the best pick of the week yet.Probably.

this film tech podcast for friday april 5th from sarasota florida i'm seth johnson from reynoldsburg ohio i'm tj huddleston and from pickering ontario i'm gavin campbell and welcome to the home tech podcast the podcast all about home automation home technology all sorts of fun stuff uh hey gavin guess what i updated our uh home tech dot social server you can do searches now the april fools was lost that's messed up why would you mess with me that's like saying hey dj that's so rude sonos headphones got released oh my gosh you know like i would personally come to your house you mess with my emotions yeah my emotions you know like i'm hurt

i didn't i didn't see any good April Fool's jokes this year. Oh, wait. So you really didn't? Or you did? No, I didn't update anything. Oh, sorry. I just wanted to clarify that, you know, just to make sure. But why are you messing with me like that for?

I'll do it one day. I promise. I promise. Hmm. I'll do it. He doesn't sound convinced. No. No, he doesn't.

I mean, it's on the things to do list. I want to do it right. sound convinced no no he doesn't i mean it's it's on the it's on the uh the things to do list you know i want to do it i want to do it right i want to upgrade the server at the same time if it makes you feel any better gavin it's actually behind the uh the exhaust uh fan for the kitchen so oh yeah it might take a little while to get to it's actually part of the same project oh that's part of the same project man i'm so confused uh i i didn't i know that josh what josh ai they do a fun little april fools thing every year this year they did neural josh which is a chip i guess you plant into your brain and uh yeah you can think about how to control your smart home which would actually be kind of cool i'd like that you know at least five people read this and they're like

yeah no sign me up right now. I'll do this. Put the jib in me. There was that story going around about Elon Musk's Neuralink, and the first guy that supposedly got it and lived to tell about it, I'm sure. He, you know, he was, I think he's partially disabled or mostly disabled.

And it was funny because, like, everybody kept talking about the first thing he did was play Civilization, which I think is, you know, hilarious because if you're in that situation, that's probably all you want to do is you just want to play video games. Yeah, exactly. And he played Civilization. So more power to him. Yeah, it's actually pretty cool.

I mean, I don't remember that happening. I didn't see that story, but I'll have to go check it out now. Oh, yeah. That sounds pretty cool. I don't think I'd let Elon Musk implant any chips in my brain, though. Well, you know, probably not. Even if I couldn't play Civilization, I don't think that would happen. It's like, do I trust you?

No. Am I going to become racist after this? Yeah. Am I going to unexpectedly purchase things I can't afford and then run them into the ground? Yeah. Yeah. I did finally update my twitter bio i i logged in to see if they had given me a free blue check they had not so wait you updated

your twitter bio before the mastodon server where is your allegiance why oh yeah i feel like this is messed up i know i had to update it to put the where you know i'd moved to i'd said move to the at whatever seth at home tech dot social so yeah i noticed that people had been replying to me there and i i haven't answered them so um yeah if you are on twitter and you are following me there the fun has moved over onto the the mastodon server even though you can't search like gavin wants to uh the the fun is still there so if this podcast gets five reviews seth will update the Mastodon server. Set the bar a little lower.

One review. We're just looking for one review for this podcast against Seth to upgrade this. I've been bugging him for the longest time. You know, when current events happen, I can't search for them on Mastodon. Why do you even use it? I have to go back to X. I know. Well, I have some good followers on Mastodon.

I enjoy the followers on Mastodon. When I post a question, I get a lot of feedback. Yeah. Hey, even one of the home assistant developers are on there, and they like some of my comments. I'm like, yeah. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah, Mastodon's fun. You have to follow people. There's no algorithm putting stuff into your eyes. So if you don't follow anybody, nothing shows up. So you just have to like go in and just put people on. And what I did for the first couple of weeks was like, oh, they said something interesting, follow. And then let that run until it filled up and I couldn't read it all in a sitting or something like that.

And then I unfollow people. I don't think I unfollowed anybody yet, but you know, it's a full timeline now. It's all pretty good stuff and stuff that I kind of want to see and and read about so yeah yay team go mastodon uh i found this funny little um thing it's not it's not april fools but um i did find this funny little story about someone uh well here's the title it kind of caught my eye the wi-fi only works when it's raining and it goes on to talk about um something that we're all familiar with going over to your parents' house and fixing their internet. The complaint was the wifi only works when it's raining. And it's a fun little story about how he went and troubleshooted all that stuff. And

it kind of got down towards the end. I was like, Oh, I know what this is. You know, I kind of figured out what they're talking about and why there's a line of sight wifi bridge. Of course, what could cause that, uh, something, something has grown into the way. And it kind of figured out what they're talking about and why there's a line of sight Wi-Fi bridge. Of course, what could cause that? Something has grown into the way. And it kind of reminded me, like a lot of times I'd go to somebody's house to do a service call and like five years after they put the cameras in or whatever, there's palm trees that have been installed and they've just grown up in front of the cameras. You can't see them anymore. And this is kind of a story in that vein. So it's a fun little read, kind of interesting to see what he did to kind of like go around and swap stuff out but it sounded like they had some pretty old equipment in there too so it kind of needed to be updated in any way it's pretty

funny i'll have to give this a full read later on but let's just say nature does not care about your wi-fi or your cameras and it will uh it will grow right in front of yes it does everything it's also the reason i don't like install anything before like the designer gets everything installed like the pictures and furniture and everything because something is gonna change i'm gonna have to redo it anyway nature is even even uh less forgiving no yeah because nature doesn't care at all i mean neither is the designer they were in there first but yeah nature nature like it's so funny like there's there's there's one guy i know he has a boat dock that's like way out. And he installed this like really expensive PTZ camera so he could see the end of his boat dock, right?

And then they planted one of these giant palm trees in front of it. And the palm tree just like grew, grew, grew. And now you can't see anything. Like, this camera's useless. It's utterly, like, all you see is the palm tree. Spent so much money on that camera. Yeah. And the thing is is is like with uh

nvrs like i i mean i don't i don't know about other places but tj if you remember here nvrs anything that is a palm frond that's blowing in the wind that's that's instant movement it's something it's classified as oh yeah like you cannot mask that out same thing with water on pools same thing like rippling water on pools i I can't mask that out. You just have to cut that out. I doubt they've figured that out yet. But at least now with the AI object detection on the camera, it's gotten a little bit better. You can mask out the pool or detect people walking around or objects or animals and that kind of thing.

But the pom-pom still get my Unify system. Like it still classifies movement and people coming from the poms blowing around in the front yard. Yeah, I had a service call the other day for a camera we installed and uh it was for alarm.com and they have like motion like a monthly allotment of motion clips that they allow you to have and they already blew through their like 3 000 motion clips within like four days and come to find out there was a flag that was waving back and forth and just setting off the motion detection there you go i was like well that solves that problem so go ahead and just get rid of that flag thank you just gonna take the flag down we don't need that uh all right well

i don't know palm trees don't like them they're everywhere in florida you can't get rid of them i don't know about trees up north do they if they figured out trees like the trees that actually have real they're actually real trees and not have trees do trees blowing around in the wind did they set off your motion detection on cameras up there as well it's not not a lot of the trees honestly just because it depends on where the camera's at but a lot of the light changes still mess up cameras here and so that obviously gets kind of reflected with the trees throughout the daytime and so i find the the daylight or the light change itself messes with cameras more than trees at this moment like a cloud passing over yeah it's stuff like that or just like the

the sun shining through the the tree canopy and reflecting on like the grass or whatever and then that sets it off oh okay interesting i was like a shadow or something yeah yeah shadows yeah on on blue iris um it gets triggered a lot things like rain snow or like shadows or trees it will trigger it a lot but because i use ai it then filters out that trigger and says okay there's no person there or no animal there so that i don't have to notify you or record it but it on those days my computer you could see it the video card the gpu is working away a lot because it's constantly being triggered common problem everywhere i'm sure i can't get rid of it i mean we all want the cameras but they all underperform in some particular way so well that's why you need the the smarter notifications now i mean i pretty much don't use like regular

motion notifications yeah it's always like people or vehicle or something like that it's because it's not foolproof by any means like sometimes the light change still messes that up but at least it's a lot better than just randomly triggering it for everything makes sense well that that's our bit of advice today well i guess we have some more advice coming up later in the show we got some uh some mailbag things to kind of go over and cameras is one of them so yeah we'll talk about that a little bit more uh but we do have a couple of home tech headlines so what do you say we jump in and talk about them let's do it all right uh first off here it this is kind of just like a little quick update on the node js z wave module yeah n, right? It's been updated.

Now supports the Z-Wave long range. Woo! Finally. It's a big deal, right? I guess. It is a big deal. I thought it was kind of weird it didn't already support it. They were working on it for a while. They don't have many developers that are actually working on it.

I think it was mainly one guy at one point. Yeah, it's just one guy. Yeah, it was just one guy. But they were working on it, so it's good to see that it's just one guy. Yeah, it was just one guy. But they were working on it. So it's good to see that it's finally been implemented. And it's not in Home Assistant yet, but it'll eventually get there. So eventually when they integrate it, I wouldn't be surprised if you see it there next month, because I'm not sure if they need to add some different UI elements and stuff to handle it now.

But when they do add it, you'll be able to use the Z-Wave 800 long range, which will mean faster, more reliable Z-Wave. And of course, longer range. Yeah. Yeah, there was an article floating around. I sent it to you, Gavin, earlier about how Home Assistant had improved their build times where they're developing

and they want to make the binary file to run the program or whatever. And they've, I mean, I was looking at the numbers, whatever they did, because it's Python, I don't really understand Python very well. They have changed, like it's gone from like an hour and a half of compile time to like, what, 15 minutes or something? Like smoking fast.

Like it's just going to be more updates coming from the Home Assistant crew because they can develop faster now that they redid their tooling or something. And man, that that's, that's nice. You know, you can, you can, you don't have to like hit go and wait for it. Come back in an hour and a half. No, it's 15 minutes. You go to the bathroom, get a drink, watch a little TV, come back. It's done. So there you go.

Yeah. It was significant differences in times. Like you said, it went from like two hours compile time to 15 minutes or something like that. Like that's huge. It was insane. Yeah. Yeah.

Good for them. That's, it's always nice to do those little tooling improvements, I guess. And so this Node.js may come a little bit faster if they're able to pop it in and test it within 15 minutes. And there you go. They still got to write the code. It's not like, it's not like they won they're able to pop it in and test it within 15 minutes, then there you go. They still got to write the code. It's not like, it's not like they won't be able to write the code.

They'll be done before I edit this podcast. That's just it. AI will do it. So it's already done. Yeah. It's already done. They, they,

I asked, they, I finished it before they even asked them to do it. That's how good a technology is these days. You wanted this, right? Exactly. I ran across this, right? Exactly.

I ran across this, speaking of AI, I ran across this video for the Ubiquity Insider on YouTube. And they have basically made me hate Ubiquity even more. I'm just, I'm furious at this because this is so cool. And I hate this. I hate using their product. Like their cameras aren't great, but Holy cow, the experience that they have here for their camera system and things that are introducing, um, there's a whole section right at the beginning about the network

improvements that they're doing for the software, but probably around, I don't know, a minute in or so minute 15. And, uh, they go over some of the some of the new feature improvements for Protect 3.0. And not only does like the dashboard, when you log in, look pretty great. There's a new feature for facial recognition. And it just takes pictures of people and puts them there. And you can name them and remember who they are. And you click on them and you're like, hey, I need to add an alert when this person comes back because they're a person of interest within a few clicks you can classify that person and then say when i see them send me an email and all your cameras are going to be looking around for that person and when they walk into frame boom you get an email i mean i hate them so much

this this costs so i use another camera company called Turing, which I like a lot. I mainly use them for commercial spaces. And I think this per camera is like $150 a year. So you have to buy the camera and you have to buy the NVR. You can do like micro SD cards and stuff like that. But it's $150 per year per camera. And Ubiquiti is just giving it away. Just giving it away.

And I mean, further on in about a minute 34, minute 54, I don't know, like after they talk about the facial recognition stuff, they show the car recognition stuff, which is pretty much the same thing that you showed us when you were doing the touring things. And we're like, oh, that's awesome. Where you can click on white cars and then,

oh, I need a sedan or a motorcycle, you know, like, oh, come on. Like it's all built in, like for free. where you can click on white cars and then oh i need a sedan or a motorcycle you know like oh come on like it's all built in like for free now if only they would make better cameras yeah that's like i want to i want to use good cameras and then build that into the uh like bring those into the i know there's like some hacks where you can do that but it doesn't work very long yeah man it would be so nice if they had some awesome cameras, like, with really good... I guess the thing is, you just got to buy more cameras. That's what they want.

Actually, I specced in the G4 Pros for the first time. I'm excited to give those a shot for a job. I've done those. They're pretty good. The bullet cameras? Yeah. I mean, well, they're all kind of bullet cameras, the old ones, I guess. But, yeah, the only annoying thing about ubiquity though is that like their

expensive cameras have really awful ir range and so like this camera for 449 has 50 foot of ir range and it's just like that's not good for a camera especially an outdoor one right like if that was indoors that would be fine but it's just so expensive for what it is and like i don't get that feeling with any other ubiquity product like their access points and routers and stuff like that i feel like there's such a good price but like their cameras i just don't feel like that no yeah they're definitely a value a value price right for their for their access points i mean they're the kind that like basically if something goes wrong with the access point you don't cry you just throw it away and buy a new one this is essentially but kind of the kind of

the cameras are just way like if if i had i have one of these i was just trying to look up what it was i think it's a g4 and i think i bought it from you kj which is kind of funny that you say but they're crap i sold it to you yeah exactly uh, exactly. Yeah. What is this thing? This is a G4 bullet. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the pro though. It's just the regular, regular old G4. Right.

Yeah. It's an, it's, I would classify it as an okay, okay type camera. Like the picture, like I've done the pros before and I do like those probably a little bit better than the knees. So yeah, but it does have the all these features the ai features the car detection all that stuff is coming to g i think it said g4 and g5 cameras they're gonna update it yeah that makes sense no well that's that's what ubiquity stuff's good at i mean i always recommend the ubiquity cameras for people that just don't want to mess with their camera

system because it's literally the best camera software out. You cannot find anything better at the moment. Sucks, man. It really, I mean, I don't want to use it. I don't, like I have, I'm using the cloud key thing with the hard drive in it. Yeah. And I, it sucks. It's horrible.

It does lock up from time to time. And I am like so close to just buying the stupid rack mount in VR thing. Oh yeah. I don't want to get that what are you using for your router seth uh firewall right now oh yeah that makes sense but yeah i don't yeah i'm not using i'm not using ubiquity yeah for routing or anything like that time to upgrade that would be a downgrade okay time to downgrade the dream is you would be that would be a huge downgrade

the nvr i think the nVR, can you set that up standalone? I think you can. The NVR, yeah. Yeah. So that would be a nice little. I don't know. If you get the NVR, I think you still need a cloud key. Ah, crud.

I don't think that one's built in, but I've never sold one of those. So I'm not sure. I've done one before, but it was part of another project. For a while there, it was like you would identify it in and it would be a standalone project. But I think they figured out, oh, it's the same IP ip address let's combine these together somehow but i i don't know i haven't touched those in years about four minutes and i don't know four minutes in let's just say that uh there's another little piece of equipment that they're showing off a little network switch it's an a port poe uh called the Ultra. Oh. And yeah, this one. Oh, POEN.

POEN. Powered with POE++. You get eight ports POE out. That's nice. Yeah. That one right there is a, I mean, you know it's going to be like 100 bucks. I don't know. The Switch Flex was about the same thing.

It was 100 bucks. So maybe this one will be 150. It's an instant buy. And then like further on, they show the outdoor enclosure for it, which, you know, kind of steals the deal for those kinds of things. Yep.

Yeah. Instant buy. Yeah. That looks pretty nice. And then the little G5 domes, they have a tennis ball sitting, a fake tennis ball sitting next to you. Those look pretty good too.

I'm not going to lie. They look good. I know they're little tiny cameras. They probably, the picture quality would be great, but. well it's better than their their current hardware the current hardware for the ubiquity camera is awful i mean it's like they're like the worst cameras to install i like the fact that the the ethernet cable goes through like the whole assembly and plugs directly into the camera that's good like the the the adjustment of the actual camera

and everything you basically get no adjustment and so so if you install it under an eave of a house or something like that, you're not going to be able to move that around that much to actually get a good view. And if you have deep soffits like I do, then you have to install a piece of wood that makes your house look even more janky. That's why your neighbor's all mad at you. Yeah, that's why.

Anyway, there's a couple other cool things in here uh that they're they'll be releasing or coming out with soon so i there's some access control stuff that looks pretty cool i'm glad i don't have to deal with it though uh more stuff more fun stuff to buy i guess i i'm i'm seriously about to buy the stupid nvr thing because as much as i hate this these guys, like the app is so easy to use. The product works really well. I have two hard drives already just sitting there doing nothing.

You have all the storage already. Yeah, I just need the box. So I don't know. If I can get rid of the cloud key, that'd be even better. Finally. Just buy it. Go for it.

Buy it. Let's spend some money. Buy it right now. Live. Yeah, come on. Come on. Buy it buy it live anyway second ubiquity order this week all right uh let's move on here and talk about things um i don't know i we talked about this before but about a year ago google uh announced that they were going to be killing off the drop cam drop cam pro and nest secure, uh,

which the camera, um, or nest secure home security systems on April 8th of this year. And that will be happening. So as the, uh, the moon passes in front of the sun, Google will be shutting off their servers for these particular products and,

not letting them in. So when you, uh, when you come on the other side of that eclipse on April 8th, no more drop cams, no more DropCam Pros, and Nest Aware subscriptions. All gone. There's also the Nest X Yale locks.

You need to get a Nest Connect for that before April 8th. It tokens your Wi-Fi, or I guess that thing's dead too. But yeah, there you go. Another, I guess, Google product officially hits the graveyard. Going back way to when DropCam was one of the first smart cameras out there. Yeah, founded in 2009. And they were picked up by Google Nest Labs for $555 million in 2014, which is a whole heck of a lot of money.

That is a lot of money. Another killed by Google project. I mean, almost, almost i guess because the nest cams like came out of that's true those still exist so yeah and they've been around forever now so i don't they probably haven't sold an actual uh drop cam for what five years or something oh yeah yeah i think the nest cam uh see when it actually came out was uh june 2015 so i guess a year after they bought drop cam they came out with them. So yeah, I mean, they probably haven't sold or you haven't been able to buy one.

What, 2015, 2016? That's a pretty good run for a little internet connection. Yeah, especially for how cheap they are, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I guess if I get on in the eBay, I'll pick one up and put it in the graveyard. So the whole tub back there full of stuff. These days I'll put it out.

Going to have a shit museum at some point. Yeah, exactly. Goodbye products. I've got, I've got all sorts of fun stuff back there. We've got the old revolve hub and everything. Oh yeah. I got, I got, there's some stuff in there. Some stuff's not even open.

Like there's a, the staples connect hub. I have that unopened, you know, it's prime. It's it's gonna be uh it's gonna like 20 years from now you know if people buy those like um iphones the first generation iphones are gonna be like 20 30 years from now they'll be like oh staples connect hub i'll pay you and it's not even open in the box it's sealed i'll pay 150 thousand dollars for that i don't think you're gonna get that way keep your hopes up but 150 000 it's probably costing you more right now to store it than you're gonna get trying to sell it could be right could be right i've been i tried to get one of those little robot things too for years but i'm gonna have to write that one off. Those things, uh,

I forget the name of them or, or not Orbeez orbit. I don't remember the name. It was like a little robot. It looks cute. And it was a little companion you could talk to. And, um,

like people loved them. And all of a sudden the company just like killed it one day, like just absolutely killed it the worst possible way. Like it had like a sad face on the screen and would say like, I'm, I'm, I'm, that was the little

cute one wasn't it yeah i like that one it was just a little one and yeah i like that one those stupid things are still 800 bucks like retail price like people are still selling those things for 800 i'm like i really want one but i'm not paying 800 for it a thing that's never gonna work again so i don't know because i guess you know i'll take out a home loan or something and buy one or something trade your kid it was a cute little device though little head moved around it looked at you yeah all right well we do have good news uh lifex has introduced two new 1600 lumen bulbs that are matter compatible they've got some a21 indoor bulb and a par 38 indoor outdoor bulb priced at about 40 dollars respectively and let's see 40 and 35 dollars respectively um and sold exclusively

through home depot and these bulbs offer um big old tons of brightness 1600 lumens of brightness and uh basically if you need a wi-Fi connected, matter driven, what, outdoor security bulb, this might be for you, Gavin. You know, you wouldn't have had to done your whole project if you just use these bulbs, right? Well, not really. But you don't have RGBW, Gavin, do you? No, but the whole reason I turned my camera floodlights into z-wave was to use the um associations so they're not affected by things like wi-fi outages or anything they still work perfectly um if i went with these matter i'd still have to go through the hub or i don't know

if matter has their equivalent of um associations out yet i think i don't think they do i think they were announcing it but i don't know if they ever released it but if they did then yeah this would be so much easier where you could just pair like a matter switch with this and not have to go through a hub um the only problem is a lot of those camera floodlights they have like they don't use standard bulbs in them. So you'd still have to open it up, rip out the bulb, rewire part of the inside. So the bulbs always connected and then you can control it. Um, but I like what I did. Yeah. This is, this is high voltage too. It's not low voltage. Like on, on those cameras, they have low voltage LEDs. These are, these are high voltage like screw in par 38 821s

like i converted mine to high voltage um led bulbs anyway right so i rewired the inside so it was pulling from the 120 and not from the the output the low voltage output from the the camera right so you still gotta do a little rewiring but it's so worth it with associations now so much faster and so much more reliable these and these i mean like you said not not probably don't have the association things but they also rely on wi-fi so you have a pretty strong wi-fi signal outside yeah so my whole point was to get around wi-fi um issues and stuff like that and now these are back on wi-fi so doesn't do anybody any good i guess in the right application these might be okay but i wouldn't they wouldn't be my first go-to for this kind

of thing i i'd still i'd still steer towards like what you're doing with either z wave or zigbee or yeah even i mean some other even a bluetooth thing that had a internet like this uh the switchbot stuff like yeah something like that matter a internet like this, the SwitchBot stuff, like something like that. Matter right now is still not the most reliable thing for me. I just don't trust Wi-Fi. Well, just Matter in general. I still, you know, it's gotten a lot better, but I still see Matter devices that drop off randomly. But, you know, it's getting better.

Well, that's all we can ask for, I guess. My LIFX Matter over Wi-Fi has been pretty reliable since I did the update on. So knock on wood. I know that the Matter over Wi-Fi is probably better than some of the other, like, Matter over Thread or whatever we've been seeing problems with, Gavin. But the, I don't know. I just don't want, I have so many things on the Wi-Fi right now. I just don't want point devices like that. I preferably use something else like it is convenient it's easy to hook up it's easy to install you everybody has a wi-fi network I just I always steer towards

something else which I don't have anything other than I mean I have ZigBee but control for ZigBee so there you go all right well congratulations like a lifex you you do matter this week so you appreciate it bringing us some news and talking about matter all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm 476 um all right we um actually don't i don't really have a pick of the week this week i have to get going up while we're talking about this but we do have a couple mailbox items and things to talk about uh we've got some listener feedback from Scott in Adelaide. And if you don't know where Adelaide is,

you should, especially if you live in a Commonwealth country. Well, I, you know, I had to ask, but there's probably an Adelaide, Ohio,

right? Like Ohio. More than likely. I mean, Ohio has one of everything. Let's see if there's an adelaide ohio we collect them like we're british there is not an adelaide ohio oh man we we gotta put up a petition we gotta get a gofundme started we need an adelaide ohio well it's a city in australia so let's go with that one it's a city in australia a city yeah one of them one of 12 oh it's a city in Australia, so let's go with that one. It's a city in Australia. It's a city, yeah.

One of them. One of 12. Not very important. Let's educate people on Adelaide, Australia today, because we covered other states. What do you know about Adelaide, Australia? It's the capital of Australia and one of the largest cities. Oh, yeah, Wikipedia. Yeah, I am looking up Wikipedia right now.

I looked at the same article. oh okay oh that's very pretty all anybody knows is uh yeah sydney australia and then the only address anybody knows is what p sherman 42 wallaby sydney australia there you go that's awesome that we got an Australian listener. Well, just for that, we're going to answer this question. Maybe, Scott. Scott writes in. He says, I'm planning on starting a new backyard garden, but there won't be a lawn. There will be a number of garden beds and some pots. You'll be running power cables or lights and maybe a pond pump but can you recommend a hard hard wired

soil moisture monitoring system ideally smart with home assistant compatibility um and once we hit lawn tech i have to step out because i don't know anything about it you should see my lawn right now i mean the clippy is taking a nap and it's it it's no, it's not very good. So yeah. I've never looked into hardwired ones. Seriously. I've always looked at the wireless ones. I'm assuming you don't have an irrigation system, so you don't have a controller because, you know, for somebody that had a controller, the Ratio, they have recommended hardwired soil moisture sensors that you can wire in.

And it looks like it does support more than one. So you could have worked with that and look at their list. But I have seen on the forums where people were doing, you know, making their own using ESP32s, um, with a soil most moisture sensor and wiring it all up and tying it into home assistant. And that's, you know, honestly, if honestly, I would go to the forums on Home Assistant and search this because there's a lot of information on what people have done there.

And they're hardwired for the most part. They're hardwired for power, I think. Not hardwired for the signal. I think they still work over Wi-Fi. Other people, you know, that ask this when they start getting into large areas of land and stuff like that, uh, they were looking at industrial options. You know, they got more expensive because, you know, you had to add bigger distances, ranges, et cetera, et cetera. But, um, I'd start on the forums.

The forums are full of information about people that have created their own using an ESP32 board. You know, they would 3D print a case. They would, uh would buy the sensor. And they're relatively cheap. The hardwired, like there's one on Amazon here, soil humidity sensor. This is made by Jeffergarden. It's $31. And it's a hardwired thing, so you got to hook it up to something.

But it's got RS45 output. So, I mean, can't get any better than that. That's pretty cool. And there's two different types of sensors too. There's capacitive and resistive and one's better than the other. And I highly recommend you read up on the two differences because it will sway your decision into which one you buy. Cause one seems to be better than the other. And then, yeah, have fun just making your own.

Like this is one of those projects yeah i like this one here this davis soil motion sensor i'll put a link to it in our show notes as well but this one like it looks like the the ones i've seen and like the ones you have you have them because they're not wireless they stick up out of the ground or whatever uh but the ones i've seen everywhere else like there's two prongs or there's there's a big stick that you stick down on the ground. Look at this thing. This thing is like, well, I mean, you bury it in the ground. This one, though, yeah, this looks pretty good.

But you're still going to need something to read the signal. Right, right. Right? So that's where people would put something like this in the ground they have on the other end of an esp32 board right and you know they'd use esp home and that would translate the signal into an entity and a home assistant and you go from there right wow you want to know their ip gateway costs though no 650 dollars yeah so there's a lot of options out there, but you're going to end up having to spin something yourself.

I think when you go hardwire, because the sensors are one thing, but you need something that will take that data, translate it, and then give it to the home assistant. This thing, this thing can accept up to 32 of those sensors. I mean,

that's pretty good. Yep. That's, that's, I mean, so there's, I mean, hardware always tends to be a little more expensive in some ways and then less expensive than others.

Like batteries and upkeep and that kind of thing, especially you can bury this into the ground. You don't have to worry about it anymore. That would be a killer feature. You just have all this stuff kind of just planted in the ground. You can mow your lawn without worrying about them. Yeah. But at the same time, and I guess this thing will read quite a bit. you don't you don't you can mow your lawn without you know worrying about them yeah but at this you know at the same time like and i guess like this thing will read quite a quite a bit it reads uh

intervals i guess with every five minutes or something like that so i guess this one they charge a fee for but this is this is right for hacking and just use the sensors and go with the sp32 like you said so in my area I only put it out for like, what, six months of the year. So the batteries last for that. So, you know, when I take them in and I put them out the next year, I just, I'll see the batteries, I'll change the ones that need to be

changed before I put them out anyways. Right. I don't leave them in the ground. So to me, battery wasn't as much of an issue. Um, hardwiring it in my area, I'd have to trench and run wires and I wasn't as much of an issue. Hardwiring it in my area, I'd have to trench and run wires, and I wasn't getting into that. Right. Yep.

No, I totally understand. And the same goes for wires inside the house. If you're doing security systems, sometimes it's easier and quicker and cheaper to just go around and put up wireless sensors. And I know many security companies that have fought that battle over over the years it's like no hardware sensors like we'll put them in when the house is built and you do and then adt comes along and just puts in wireless sensors everywhere they don't even bother using the hardware i'm one of those people too don't hate me yeah no i i mean i understand it it's faster and like you get them in a kit and you're done. Like you don't have to worry about it. So yeah.

Anyway, yeah, there's this industrial route you can go. Man, this stuff looks really cool though. There's a solar powered wireless sensor transmitter for $245. It's solar powered and has a nine month battery backup. Yeah, that's pretty nice. We got a lot of cool stuff. You get the cool stuff with the price, right? Well, it is important to note too that they do charge an activation fee and an annual service plan so you do have to pay long

term for this specific solution but not if you use those soil sensors because they're just hardwired so right somebody's probably figured out how to reverse engineer one of those soil sensors anyway agriculture i feel like ordering one and doing that but i've got too many projects having to serve too many projects that don't do it my grass could stay brown because no one cares all right um we we had we had somebody in canada in a post about a camera question so gavin i will let you read his name wait wait wait why are you dropping this on me for i really i'm gonna butcher your name yeah iango it's a common canadian name i'm told let's go with ilango ilango there we go is that ll or il i have no idea i can't tell do i have to convert it to llr case will he hate us if we pronounce it wrong i don't think think so. Okay. He supports the show, so he's awesome. Oh, well,

just in case we pronounce this wrong, I'm going to go with Elango, but we still love you. You know, don't hate us. Well, a couple of days, he asked a pretty good question in the hot. We wanted to bring it up here. He said, hi, all. I'm in Canada. I need some advice for some IP security cameras. So I'll be installing eight cameras, seven in the yard and one in the garage. He says, my installer uses Hikvision for their non-control 4 projects they sent me a ds blah blah blah it's basically a four megapixel turret camera as a suggested model he wants to in the end integrate these into apple secure video via hoobs And he wants to have options in the future to go different directions. If he wanted to,

I says for now, the NVR software would be fine. Also Hikvision is pretty sourced here through his installer or elsewhere, but he's not tied to Hikvision. And, but also at the same time, perfectly fine with them. So his question is,

is Hikvision okay? Or should we be looking for something else? And he lists out some other specs. There's a pretty big thread in there, a couple of replies. But it was a good question. Eight camera system. He's going to have an installer put it in. What should he look at?

Gavin, what should he do? Well, first of all, my thoughts of you're looking at four megapixels versus eight megapixel cameras and you want to feed those into apple secure video isn't that going to be a lot of bandwidth uploading um you're gonna be sending these feeds constantly to apple secure video through hoops right because apple secure video then i don't think it matters right now though it depends on what your internet connection is too especially if you got eight of them right so you gotta keep that in mind you're gonna be uploading constantly 24 hours a day i i would keep an eye on that for one um and then you your hoops may have to process i can't remember if it actually does any processing

um if you're doing it through hoops or if to process. I can't remember if it actually does any processing, um, if you're doing it through hoops or if it just passes the raw signal. Um, but if it's going to be doing FFM peg, you either want a GPU to do all that for you or have a powerful enough PC. Like this is kind of why I went with a local solution, but yeah, just two things to keep in mind. Um,

in terms of actual cameras, I'm not the best person to speak on cameras, right? I think I'd leave that for TJ, but I always remember this one video I saw on YouTube, and I cannot remember for the life of me, but he always pointed out having the right camera for the right need in your house. So he always pointed out like at your front door, for example, you wanted clarity. You wanted certain things for closeup because the person's right there where on your garage, you may want a wide camera to capture, you know, a license plate. You want it clear enough to catch a license plate. You know, there were certain things he said, there were some that you would just want to detect

motion where others, you wanted to actually be able to detect the face, right? So you kind of, it may always made me think of that. I always remember that when it comes to cameras, figure out where you're going to put it and find the right camera for that position. Um, I never fell for the four megapixel, eight megapixel hype because I've also seen comparison videos where they had a two megapixel image that looked better than a four megapixel camera, right? There's a lot more to it than just the megapixels. I think there was like the, uh, what are they, the sensor size and, and other factors that made lower megapixels actually clear. Um, one thing to, I, you know, TJ showed me this and I've, you know, I'm looking for one myself, but the starlight cameras, you know, it's amazing at night what the clarity you get with those. So if you could get a camera with a starlight sensor, go with that for nighttime.

They're just amazing. But other than that, I don't have any comments on Hikvision. TJ's more of a hardware guy when it comes to cameras. I'll leave it to him. Yeah, I think, honestly, the Hikvision, Hikvision, whatever you want to call it. I always call it Hikvision. The cameras themselves, hardware-wise, are really good. And they're pretty cheap for what they are.

So you really can't go wrong. There's the whole Chinese uh thing that people always talk about um but honestly like most cameras are manufactured in china i think it's basically like han hanwa uh access and somebody else yeah that does not make cameras in china everybody else pretty much makes cameras in china and so like if you're gonna go for like affordability like you don't have many options in that regard. But it's just something to, you know, take note of if you care about that kind of thing. The starlight sensor that Gavin is talking about really does make a big difference.

And that's the reason I switched away from ubiquity cameras. Our backyard, for example, does not have any lights. We have some like ring solar wall mounted lights but not like enough to like light up the whole yard or anything and you can definitely tell the difference between like the ubiquity cameras that don't have the starlight sensor and my $200 camera that has the starlight sensor like it's pretty much color night vision and typically when you see you know night vision on a camera it's that black and white image that is pretty much every camera. This is pretty vibrant in color.

And so there's a big difference. Every manufacturer calls theirs something different. And so Hikvision calls theirs Colorview. Uniview, which is another good Chinese camera company. They call theirs Dark Hunter. Light Hunter. But it's all basically low light hunter is that what it is yeah that makes sense um the that that does make a big difference um eight megapixel

cameras are good if you're getting like further away um but you i don't know it's just one of those things that like just like gavin said you really want to pick a camera that works best for the position not just buy the same camera over and over again. Even though that will work, you just get better mileage. Yeah. One of the things you asked here about which lens to use, I noticed, and when to use a 2.8, which is more of a wide lens. And a 4 is not exactly a zoomed in lens, but it's a little bit more zoomed in than a 2.8. So, like, the lower that number is,, generally the lens, the angle of the lens is going to be in further away. You're going to see less detail than you will like up close if

somebody is walking up next to the camera. So just kind of get that, like get that idea. Um, and if it's a real zoomed in camera, you know, with a, you know, a hundred millimeter lens or something, you're looking very far down the road at that point. So, uh, but most, most cameras are going to be 2.8, 4, 6. I think that's most of them are in there. Most of the, of the, like the UV cams are going to be wide angle lens. Cause you're not, they're not interested in seeing anything other than what you kind of have the camera nearby. So I don't think you can go wrong with a wide angle lens, especially the ones that are looking around the yard unless you had something that you like specifically wanted to look at um and zoom in a little bit more too you could do that and then some of the cameras

uh high vision or uh like i know most every manufacturer has what's called a varifocal lens and it's it's not like a ptz but it's like Z part. Like it does a pan or tilt, like you fix it. And then you can kind of zoom it in to where between 2.8 and I don't know, 12 or something millimeter focus. And generally that, if you don't know, that's the way to go. But those are more expensive because they have a little motor inside there. Or if they're not motorized, you got to turn a screw or something on the back and when you set them so it just depends on what kind of camera you're getting uh but i mean staying

outside of ubiquity or something like that gives you the maximum flexibility i was looking while gavin was talking because he brought up a great point about home home kit secure video and eight cameras on eight megapixels that's capped at 1080p i guess so whatever you have like hoops whatever whatever's running hoops is going to have to convert that to 1080p i guess so whatever you have like hoops whatever whatever's running hoops is going to have to convert that to 1080p which may put some load it you know there's eight cameras doing eight megapixels or there's like a substring or something that it's gonna put load on because when you have an eight megapixel camera more than likely that's an h265 stream which um once you start getting into hoops it's probably gonna have to have to decode it, re-encode it,

upload it to HomeKit, secure video, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like that, that is going to add, that's,

I probably wouldn't leave that for my CPU to do. It's probably going to have, you'll need a GPU to handle that. Some of the cameras have two and three streams that you can pull off of it, which, you know, you can use, but it doesn't matter because at the end of the day,

you're only ever going to see 1080p from HomeKit Secure Video. Exactly. You're not going to see the 8K benefits. So if that's the direction you really want to go, then the 4K cameras are probably fine. If you're going to stick with the Hikvision or some other NVR solution, get the more megapixels. It'll last a little bit longer.

And I think the Eufy cameras, I was looking, I did like a quick search while you were talking, Gavin. Somebody mentioned that when they added four Eufy indoor cameras in, those are 2K,

so what is that, 1080p-ish? Yep. That added about 200 gigabits onto their internet bill that month as streaming out so something to keep in mind it will if you have any caps data caps keep in mind on that because eight cameras is more than more than four so if they are streaming out it's going to cost a little bit more um and i i say screw it just go to unify because just accept blue iris that's what you got

to do there you go yeah and then never use your camera system again that's what i do oh man the the unify thing though it's like it records it locally it'll be there it's a known quantity a known price the interface is the best interface you're gonna get if you wanted to you could still integrate it through hoobs or whatever because there is an integration to bring that video into the HomeKit secure video. Like it's it's not it's not the end of the world. This the cameras are not as good as what you might get from. It's probably on par.

I did look up the specs of that camera he posted. And that's just kind of your basic run of the mill Hikvision camera. Like you can do better for sure. But, you know, I think it's probably on the, on the lower end of what they offer. Uh, and it doesn't cost much more to go with Hikvision and all the Chinese brands. Like it's the difference between a few dollars to go maybe for each camera to go to like a way better camera with better analytics or a better sensor or that again, the night vision, that kind of thing. But I i don't know like i keep going back to unify it's like when they every time i think i'm out they

pull me back in that type of situation like that vehicle detection looks sweet man i'm just gonna sit there and point it at my street i don't care what cars are driving i don't care who pulls in like i just want to know a car i want to i'm at the little search filter and find the yellow cars like oh that looks so cool and my only other thoughts is if you stick with one brand the good thing is is if you're going to use their mvr their app you have a single app similar vr it all works whereas if you split up your brands you may have separate apps separate mvrs unless you use something like blue iris um you know i had to throw that in there you know you may want to ensure that they have multiple streams. They can do multiple streams.

You might want to ensure, like, if OnVIF is something you want, you know, look at that, see if they're compatible. And shop around. The only reason I say this is because the company you mentioned I always find is a little more pricey. I know where they are. I've ordered from them before, but they're not the cheapest. If you're going to order a large number, it might save you money just to order it off the U.S. Amazon and pay the duties and everything. And the shipping, you know, and you save some money there. But shop around, too, for the price.

Yeah, you won't get those sweet, sweet Hikvision chips there. Like, Canada's got the nice stuff that we don't get in the, sweet Hikvision chips there. Canada's got the nice stuff that we don't get in the States. Oh, that's true, yeah. If anything, have your installer put the wires in, and then if they put PoE wire in and they do all the hard work, then all you go do is you just go mount the camera and plug it in. You can swap them out. Yeah, swap them out.

You do the fun stuff. Make him do the hard work. I will say, good on camera manufacturers for supporting on vif because if you have an on vif compatible camera which hick vision probably i'm just gonna say it probably is wave my hand and say yeah it is you could switch the nvr out to something else you know later on that's on vif compatible and just it'll pull in the stream just fine um 99.999 of the time uh that used to be a much more of a problem where you'd have two different brands nvr and a camera and like getting them to work

together was a nightmare or you'd have to use like the d1 stream out of it to get into the just all these horrible workarounds uh but now it's it is a lot better you can have multiple brands of different types of cameras on the job site and generally they will all kind of standardize on on one thing and go in but you do get the more embedded integrations or direct integrations between cameras on the same brand like i know i know with uniview you can bring in uh it it makes it easier because they just use the same api and you can bring in the, what's it called, the analytics and do events based off on those.

You can set all that up right in the NVR itself. I think Dahua and Amcrest and Hikvision all have kind of the same thing where it just kind of gives you one interface to kind of go into and make all those adjustments and it pushes it out to the camera. So you don't have to log into each camera, set that stuff up.

You can do it right on the NVR software. So yeah, you, you have plenty of options. I think you're headed down the right track, um, by sticking with probably a main, a main brand like that. And your options are definitely open no matter what you do. Like if you, if you went with anything that we've mentioned here so far, you know, uh, except Yuffie, you're going to have options, uh, down the road, uh, because you'll have the RTSP string that you can pull the video from and put into something else if you want to later on, or the OnVIF compatible stream coming off of these cameras. You can move around and change however you want to do that later on really easily.

So glad somebody's putting hardwired cameras in. That's awesome. When you come to Canada, TJ, because I want you to run all my camera wires. Never. Sorry. hardwired cameras in that's awesome when you come to canada tj because i want you to run all my camera wires uh never sorry i i have that on my list assigned to you you don't know yet but it's assigned to you oh good good in the seth column it's just update the damn server run my wires yeah why don't i get the hard one that's messed up maybe maybe uh this winter my my basement's open so i mean it's pretty easy to run the wires up into the attic actually i can't go in the winter time because you guys have real winter oh yeah you have to go in the summer you know it's the only time i'll be able to stand it we have real summer too i don't know what that means for canada hot

it does get hot up there anyways let's get back to the show all right all right i got to be the week here courtesy of tj and his uh i don't know is this facebook feed or something yeah it's facebook you found the uh the yeety m12 pro plus robot vacuum it's probably the greatest suction power yet this is the craziest ad like why would they write that it's probably the greatest suction ever. I guess we're talking about it. So I guess it served its purpose. Yeah, it definitely did its job.

11,000 PA. Pascals. That's a lot. I guess like three times what my vacuum has. My suck my cats up. I mean, how do they measure that? Like, is it something like, is Consumer Reports or the Wirecutter, if they're still in business, going out and checking the suction

on the the pascal suction like how do they do this i bet they do buy a little little suction device like they use for like tornadoes and whatever else and that's they're just some guy in a lab you know like they had on the movie twister they just put a bunch of these little things ball bearings on the floor percent okay well it's kind of like it's kind of like the toilet ads where it says how many uh pool balls it'll suck up that's that's actually what they do is they just get uh they get pool balls or raisins or something and see how fast it sucks them all up wasn't you we were talking about that see you're getting you're getting deep into the hub hub this is why you want to you know get on patreon support the show and get invited to the Hub because we were-

You would know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. Toilet flushing and how many golf balls equal a pool ball. Yeah. Good times. Yep. Join the Hub. That's it.

All right. Well, we'll put up- I'm just going to make this the show art. It's probably the greatest suction power yet that's uh that's a that's confidence booster right there well if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week or great ideas for a show give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right quick project updates i don't have much going on on. My Tempest Hub got booted out of the main part of the house

and it's sitting in the garage here, but it's within distance, surprisingly enough, to whatever, I think it's Bluetooth, right? It's a Bluetooth bridge. So it's in plenty, it's working. Every day that things open and close. I did see there was an error on it that said the magnet things

or it couldn't detect the magnets. I don't know what that's about. They were closed. Looked like it worked fine to me so i'm gonna let that go we'll see if it happens again tomorrow um but i did get those um those solar panel things and i plugged those in and it looks like it says everything's good and it's fully charged and so we'll see how long that lasts um and then over to my weather station the the Tempest. So we were talking about this. You guys have the other version. What's it called?

The EcoWit? EcoWit. Yeah. I wrote these guys. I forgot to look up when I bought this thing. But I wrote these guys over the weekend. And literally over like during Easter, they would text or send me emails like, hey, can you give us an order number?

And I didn't catch that until like Monday morning. I send the order number, boom, on top of it. It looks like it has a failure. We're just going to send you another one. And I was reading the thing. It's like, no need to send this guy back. Like you can just keep it, dispose of it as you want. And I can throw this away

and I'll have a new weather station. So yeah, I cannot give them more praise for a cool little product and everything. Like it's awesome when you buy new weather station. So yeah, I, I cannot give them more praise for a cool little product and everything. Like it's awesome. When you buy a weather station in a year or two later, um, they're just like, yeah,

it's warranted. There you go. Have another one. Yeah. I can't complain. I love companies. Yeah. Payless too,

you know? Yeah, absolutely. Like emailing me back over a holiday weekend. Like I was not expecting that. Like they were emailing me on Saturday and Sunday and I'm like, this is crazy. Like, why are you emailing me on the weekend in the first place?

You guys need to take a break. And it's a holiday weekend, like take a big break. And then like, yeah, I'm just, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Good company. I love good service like that, you know, it makes you want to buy their products more. And like, I remember when I had issues with Eero

and even with Ring, I think before amazon got them like i would just call them and they would ship me out a new one and i'd ship them back the old one yeah and it was like so easy it was like listen that was before amazon got them trust me it was like yeah i have an issue with my ring oh sir we'll send you a new one it's like you don't want to know what it is no no we'll just send you a new one okay done um even the most recent one was with Unify. Shockingly, you know, I know people have a lot of bad stories, but I went through their support with my dream machine router and they shipped me out a new one and I swapped it in and I sent them back the old one and you know, it was pain free.

I, I can't comment on what other people, issues they have, but I had a pretty good dealing with them. Did you use the chat or email support for that? I just used email. I just emailed support and I said, Hey, my dream machine's doing this. I see on Reddit, others have been reporting it. They mentioned, you know, swapping it out. And I said, you know, can you ship me a new one? I even told them, I go, I'll pay for it. And. And you can refund me when I send the old one if you want. They're like, no, no, no. And they just shipped it out. Within a couple of days, I got it.

I swapped it in, did a backup restore, packed up the old one and sent it back. And I was happy. Yeah. I've had good, I've had mostly good experiences with their support. I know other people haven't, but I can't complain with about when i needed support and use their email support or whatever um i think they they they like sentinel like a poe i think it actually is the poe since you have now tj that one uh like i got it swapped out but the client needed one immediately so they just overnighted one and i was like well i'll check out this thing and

turns out it was under warranty so i just sat on it for a few years and he's gone now he moved so he doesn't need it anymore tj's got it it's mine yeah mine you can't have it back it's uh it's uh deafening in the laundry room but it still works just keep adding more stuff to it it just gets louder and louder well now i just need to add a bunch of poe stuff you know i have all this power all these ports i mean they can do with it so you get like 30 access points with great power comes great responsibility tj that's what they say that's what they say um so yeah um tj we have here that you cleaned up the house so that's great good good job on your projects super exciting this week we're uh the the family is visiting from flor Florida, from Seth's neck of the woods almost, from Orlando. And so we got the house all cleaned up and finally got the bedroom put together.

We bought a new bed. And we're staying in the bedroom again, which is nice because now I can go in the office at 6 a.m. and work on my computer. Nice. So that is what I did this week. Nothing too fun. Gavin, what are you up to oh no um so i warned you last week or actually it was this week but you know this show's getting released next week so you know but anyways on the last episode i talked about home assistant the beta

the new features and it was finally released i upgraded and i've been redesigning my dashboards now you know listeners you can let us know how you're using the labels and stuff, but man, the addition of labels, categories, floors has really changed my dashboard setup amazingly. So now my dashboards are all dynamic. So now all I do is I get a new device. I put the entity in an area. I assign it a label such as like area temperature, and now it gets automatically added to the dashboards in the areas and everywhere it's supposed to be added without me having to go through and edit 20 different dashboards. So I've been pretty much spending my time rewriting a bunch of my code in my dashboards to now accommodate all this stuff.

And I'm loving it because it just makes creation so much better. Nice. Yeah, we were playing around that a little bit before the show. and the only label i could come up with was stuff that doesn't work and you put your two devices in it yeah you only have two automations you know it's funny when seth was like oh i can organize my automations i was like seth you probably have like three automations he has two automations you gave him too much credit too much credit yeah my bad i was trying to be nice what doesn't even work uh yeah that well i it's not it's not my fault and i don't um and maybe it is home assistant's fault i don't know i think they maintain the shelly integration but like for whatever reason the

shelly buttons have stopped working with home assistant there's a bug in the in in the shelly repository talking about it and uh it hasn't been working you know since i update constantly like every week it hasn't been working for months um so i would really like my little button to work one of these days i don't know not working anymore i uh i am interested though if you listen to the podcast and you use home assistant i guess or any other automation system i want you to take a screenshot of what your automation page looks like and send it in feedback at home tech dot FM. I want to see how everybody names their stuff.

Gavin and I kind of name our similar similarly. We'll put ours in the in the show notes as well. But I'm just kind of interested in how everybody names their stuff and what it looks like. So just take a screenshot and send it to us. You don't need to submit your set. You only have two. So you're good. And they were like named test one and test two. So I to us. You don't need to submit yours, Seth. You only have two, so you're good. And they were like, name test one and test two.

So I don't know. You can name it. You should just create a category for your two automations and name it Do Not Work. This automation's name is Bill. Yeah. This is Mary. But no, if you haven't upgraded to latest home assistant i highly recommend it it's they added one of the most requested features and organization automation

so many possibilities with it upgrade today well i am i'm taking that advice and updating off of the beta i don't know how i got onto onto the the release version i've got to turn this beta thing off i don't i don't want to test their software not this one jeez my button doesn't work i really want this button to work it turns on off a light that i need a button for i'll probably just take this and integrate it directly i think you can do like shelly to shelly device talking things now i think i'll probably just do that because i have a bunch of the shelly plug things left over from Christmas time. So I'll finally kill off the Wemo, the last standing Wemo switch that Robert Spivak freaks out about every time I tell him it's still in my house.

Yeah, get rid of that. Do yourself a favor. All right. Dashboards, house cleaning, weather stations. What a productive week, guys. Oh, it's also Easter weekend too right like yeah

the one weekend when you get together with family and solve all their IT problems oh good time of year yeah I had a great time showing my sister

how to swap a hard drive oh so I made her do it herself so now she she's like a pro at swapping hard drives

very nice very nice that doesn't sound very fun actually well well you see she was the thing is is she has a laptop from 2012 and she was complaining that was so slow and she was gonna throw it out and buy a new one i said hey hey hey no ssd yeah yeah instant like you know it's amazing how many people go and buy a new hard drive when the solutions are promised, just put it in the SSD. Yep. So I showed her how to do it.

She did it. And she's like, she's in love with her laptop because she likes her laptop, right? It was just slow because it was using a spinner. So, you know, SSD is the solution to old hardware. Now, it doesn't run Windows 11, you know, because Microsoft realized that you throw in an SSD and you keep hardware longer. So let's force them to upgrade their hardware now to get Windows 11.

Well, I know there's more to it than that, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah. If it's working and, you know, don't break it. Exactly. You don't, don't break it. Exactly. You don't have to throw it away. Like I have, I still have like an old, uh, Mac, like one of those plastic white Mac back books. It was like one of the first I bought, I bought it used from like this, this guy on eBay or something. I don't remember. And, or Craigslist. And then like,

it lasted forever. And then it finally got really slow and i'm like wow it is it's amazing that i sat there and waited for this thing to boot up i was like wait a minute i can copy this hard drive easily enough over to an ssd boom it's like a brand new computer that i can't use because it's 32-bit and you can't even download chrome or internet you get firefox doesn't even work anymore it won won't even load. So, uh, no, you can't even use the internet on a computer of that. I mean,

I'm sure there's a way I could hack around it, but yeah, sometimes you just got to give up. Yeah. That one I gave up on. Cause it just like doesn't load anything. So maybe I'll give it to my daughter. She won't go on the internet with it.

She could just learn to use a Mac, I guess. So there we go. All right. Uh, we 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 Patreon page if you don't

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you know whatever you want to talk about in there how to measure fl up a camera system or whatever you want to talk about in there. How to measure flushing toilets. Flushing toilets. Maybe you want to see what vacuum cleaner sucks this week. You're going to find out. They're in the hub. You're going to find out. The place to be. It is the place to be and, you know. Just costs money. It costs a little bit of money.

One dollar. It keeps that one server running. One dollar, Bob. If you want to help out but can't support the show financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up another week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care. Till next time. We'll be right back. and this one well he's in Australia too or they're in Australia so yeah you just invert the price

that's all it's $58 there I don't think that's how that works oh still the water goes the other way in the toilet too