HomeTech.fm - Episode 488 - Clapper Tapper

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

On this week's show: Follow up on the SwitchBot remote and AppleTV integration, Z-Wave gets a security bump, Samsung is the first to Matter 1.2, someone spent $2.5 million on a theater (decorations), project updates, a device that lets you tap and automate everything, Gavin's continued Z-Wave issues are resolved (or are they?) and so much more!

this is the home tech podcast for friday day after we won our independence from the aliens july the 7th and happy canada day to today for gavin uh from sarasota florida i'm seth johnson from reynoldsburg ohio i'm tj huddleston from pickering ontario canada i'm gavin campbell From Pickering, Ontario, Canada, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, podcast for, I don't know, beating up aliens. Because, you know, that's what we do with our fireworks, I guess. That's what I learned. Home technology, home automation. I wonder if you could automate, if the aliens took over, if you could automate your home assistant to beat them up or something. I don't know.

It'd be fun. Absolutely. Take Clippy out there and just run over him. Because this is America. USA! We fly jets into giant spacecraft. They didn't think about that when they designed it. That's right.

This is why we need a home assistant in OpenAI. So that way, if the aliens do invade, then my home assistant knows what to do. Oh, there you go. Because it's not going to know what to do. I don't have time to program that. There's too many variables and everything. If aliens take over. Chat GBT already knows.

What's the YAML code for if aliens take over? I think you got to put a template on this. There's got to be a hacks. There's got to be a hacks. Oh, there's a hacks word already, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, come on. It's like adaptive lighting. It's just in case.

Case of aliens. Yeah, if you're listening to this today, then won we won the aliens are dead and then um if you're not i hadn't edited this show fast enough and so maybe another couple of days but yeah holidays coming up so we're recording earlier in the week and it's uh well canadian day i guess this is when you guys beat the alien i guess you did before us or something i'm not sure uh we just drove them south drove himself okay we drove himself this episode and all the historical accuracy is brought to you by open ai open exactly i looked it up and chat gpt told me uh that this was all true so i saw it in a reddit thread too there you go yeah done i think we ate glue and then we won right did we really win

oh man uh too good well uh yeah we've got that going on we've got um stickers being mailed right stickers are out the door now i think maybe oh well it depends what you classify as a door i think they're inside multiple doors right now uh Uh, not really outside any doors. No. So Seth finally did his part of his thing that it took like, I don't even know, like a month and a half. We'd probably have to go back on episodes to actually see. Uh, but I, I got, I received something from Seth today.

And so that, that's what we were waiting on. And, uh, that's here. And I actually got, i got all the envelopes stuffed so all of them have this this secret thing in there they have a sticker and i just got to put the postage on there and the the names um and hopefully it gets you if they get to you awesome if not i i don't know tell you because i can't read some of your addresses so yep ignorant american uh hopefully the stamps are totally legit stamps totally legit probably you know i'll use the good ones i'll use the alex trebek stickers stamps for these ones i'm just here watching the excitement but they're they are ready so but

if you've if you're listening to this and seth got this out on the weekend which he probably didn't but if you're listening to this on the weekend you can probably still get in on the sticker requests. Because they're probably not going out until mid next week. I got to wait for my stamp order to come in. Mid next week? Yeah. Are you out of stamps already?

Well, it's a federal holiday this week, Seth. And I just don't feel like working, if I'm being honest. Yeah, I won't be working. That's why. I actually took off work. So Wednesday through Friday, I'm out of town. We're going out to Orlando. We're going to have a good time.

We're at the resort. We're just going to relax. It's time to relax. And then we can go watch fireworks in the park because why not? Must be nice. It's going to be hot. I don't know how nice it'll be, but it'll definitely be hot. You'll be there with the family, so it'll be fun. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. There's always something to do we'll be at the cabana bay thing which we love to go to so i will tease seth that you'll you'll you should have a gift at your house on friday oh right when it comes oh nice i haven't even told you what it is so but it's it's a gift um it'll be very obvious what it is when you receive it so you'll have to uh fill us in whenever you do get it oh all right interesting should i should i wait to open it on the show is that what i should do uh i mean i don't think so it's not that the contents aren't that exciting oh okay but what it's in is exciting all right all right is it stamps tj did you get me he's testing fake stamps if i'm going down you're going down you're guilty by association here seth yeah exactly all right well we'll see we'll see what

the uh the post rings me on uh on fr. I'll be curious to see what shows up. So interesting. But we do have a couple of Home Tech headlines this week. So what do you say we jump into those headlines? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Big update here.

Actually, it's an update from last week. We talked about the SwitchBot universal remote, right? And there was some confusion because it said that it it had apple tv control but when richard tried it not did not work uh but i guess they've now been updated to add support for apple tv and the amazon fire tv devices uh initially planned for mid-july the updates available now and the remote has uses both ir and bluetooth similar to the apple tv remote which is uses bluetooth for streaming and IR for TV volume control. Additionally, the update includes compatibility with SwitchBot's curtain robot, allowing preset opening positions with the shortcut buttons.

However, users should be cautious. Some bugs have been reported, potentially making the remote almost unusable. So, I think, DJ, you said you had one of these on the way too i'm excited to get mine now i hope it is usable when i get it i also get mine friday supposedly so um hopefully hopefully it's nice yeah so i think richard's problem was that he wanted to control ir devices but he was saying that he couldn't control ir devices without the hub um i don't think his problem was with the apple tv though but i could be wrong um but i i've i was waiting until they released official apple tv support because we have i basically have a situation where i have a living

room tv and a kitchen tv almost next to each other um you can't see the living room tv from most of the area in the kitchen though and so we have the the kitchen tv playing what's ever on the living room tv at all times and it'd be nice if i could use the switchbot remote to control both tvs along with the apple tv in the living room because then i could replace basically three remotes that i have currently um and i have an apple tv behind the kitchen tv in case we want to just watch something on there by itself. And so it'd be nice if it could support two Apple TVs,

but if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. Kind of hoping it does though. You're asking for a lot. You're asking for a lot. I only have two TVs in the house. I mean, they're right next to each other.

Some of these houses. Yeah. That shows her. That shows where we hang out at. Shows the dedication towards those Sonos headphones. They don't exist either. Yeah. That would be a good use case.

You know, like, you have two TVs, one needs to have headphones for sure. Well, I am curious, when you get this, how that works out for you. I'm really, I feel like for $59, was it? Yeah. And I already have, yeah, I already have the SwitchBot Hub

for the curtain things. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. I could do that. I really like what I really like is looking at the software and how they

implemented their control and so like the macros and that kind of stuff like how you do your functions and stuff like that. So,

I always like looking at that and seeing how they did that. Cause everybody kind of does it the same, but they call it different things. And some companies do it right. And some companies do it way wrong. Lots of tech, but

Kevin's like, ah, don't talk about it. Anyway, I'm curious to see how they did that. I might pick one up. I don't know. We'll see.

Maybe some other products we talk about later that I'm going to buy first. All right. Well, the Z-Wave Alliance is an update from last week as well. They've unveiled the 2024A Z-Wave specification package. And guys, if you don't know what this is, this is,

I don't really know what it is. It's just an update that says they're going to have significant security updates for smart locks. They've got a user credential command class, a user credential control specification. And these things work together to somehow enhance user credentials

like pin codes and passwords, how those get managed within the z-wave devices um this also ensures more secure interoperable with home smart home environment so um more security for the z-wave people uh and i guess that's a good thing right um so yeah there you go you've got credential management you've got new security protocols you got some z-rad which is awesome because it's rad right z-rad performance yeah and you can you can achieve over two miles of transmission using line of sight testing uh and over one mile in noisy urban environments we heard about that last week too um the z-wave long long grade stuff was uh doing pretty good it was uh competing up there with

laura right uh i think that's what um close yeah yeah so like but that that's that's pretty impressive well keep in mind those tests are done in controlled environments like like not realistic so my long range it got nowhere near two miles oh line of sight like right you don't have like if you stood outside and you could see across a body of water or a bridge you know like something far far away and you could see across a body of water or a bridge, like something far, far away, and you can see it and there's no trees and stuff in the way, that's one thing. And even if you had noisy environments, one mile away is still not that bad, though.

So that's pretty good, I think. I was struggling to get 70 feet. Yeah, but you're going through walls and stuff, right? Yeah, well, if that's going to degrade it that much, you know, like the whole point of the long range, I'm still doing my tests and stuff, but, you know, what I'm thinking of the long range is I can put devices outside of it and throughout my yard

and, you know, they'd be able to communicate back, but I'm struggling to do that right now. So I'm still doing some tests, but I'll just give you a heads up that, like, when you're looking at real world, what the real people will be doing. Yeah. In the end, we're not going to be having line of sight from our controller straight to the device. It's going to be going through walls. It's going to be going through all sorts of stuff.

I still like the mesh. My devices outside that use the mesh, you know, my devices outside that use the mesh, they, they will jump to another device that's closer and I don't see the delays and stuff they're trying to address, but it works. And in the end, that's all that matters is it works. So if, if I can't at this point, get my long range in the back corner of my, my yard to, to talk to my hub, that's in the middle of my basement, I mean, then that kind of failed test for me. And it's not even that far.

Like, when I look at it, it's not that far. Yeah, it's just maybe your application. Like, if you had something really far away outside, you could move your antenna outside. Yeah. It supposedly would go further, you know, rather than having to go through the basement, through the basement, you know, support walls, through the walls or whatever to get outside to the house. I remember, I think it was James in the hub once was asking, you know, for a solution for, I think it was a gate that was very far away. It was like across a river.

Yeah. Long range wasn't released at that point or not a big thing. But, you know, this would be perfect for him. But if he's got to now take into account putting the antenna outside and stuff like that, you got to get an antenna that can deal with the elements as well, too, right? Like, you got to worry about things like that. So it still requires planning. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's a lot of the things that a custom integrator work into but i think like application specific if you had something that was outside or you know that you had we're gonna have sensors outside over a large area and you kind of needed them to report back i think you you would probably have to plan for that just like i mean in the same way gavin you have planned for and implemented a solution for your mesh system. Like you move the antenna to the center of your house, right? I think it's the same thing. Well, no, it's easier with the mesh because the mesh you can plug in devices and they'll add to the mesh.

So if I had like an outdoor switch, for example, that was Z-Wave, it now contributes to the mesh automatically. It's much easier. I remember you optimized it by moving the antennas closer to the center so they's it's much easier but i remember you optimized it by moving the antennas closer to the center so they meshed with more than one thing like because you can you can set up a mesh and if it's the first hop is a single device and you've got 200 devices on the other side of that like that yeah that one first device is going to bit bogged down right so but i optimized my antenna location kind of centralized it in my house yes i did that but then now when you have long range you know you could put it in the center of your house but if it's not picking up stuff in

the backyard you move your antenna towards the backyard now the front yard starts to suffer like how do you balance that out it's not like it was nice now with the mesh because i could just throw a repeater in there to assist right but you can't do that with long range now, right? Yeah, it's point to point. Yeah, you're stuck with it. And that's where my gripe is, is if I'm not even getting these 70 feet that were promised, you know, like, and like I said, I'm still running some tests.

I'm going to put it higher in the tree, break out the ladder, you know, see what I can do, right? I think you need to move the antenna on your roof. I think that'll solve the problem. Yeah. Move the antenna on the roof. The antenna's'll solve the problem. Yeah. Move the antenna on the roof. The antenna's only rated for 10 degrees to 50 degrees Celsius, so it won't survive our windows.

If you did that, though, you could resell Home Assistant. You could just become a little Home Assistant provider. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. Let me control all your Z-Wave and Zigbee devices. I got you. For the whole neighborhood. Just mesh it all together.

Then you'll hit that 4 000 limit no time yeah yeah we got the first z-wave neighborhood yeah i'll create dashboards for each house they don't have to worry about managing it they just have access to their one dashboard they control their devices and everything in it and uh you know they're happy and you can watch everybody's monitor uh water monitor quickest way to become an alcohol yeah yeah yeah no nobody wants to support uh home assistant not even home assistant i work for food that's why we get along uh that's too good all right so uh let's move on here we've got a matter update um samsung smart things has

become the first major smart home platform are they the first i don't know i think they're probably the second if you don't count home assistant you don't count it's not major it's not major yeah all right so samsung smart things has become the first major smart home platform to support matter 1.2 allowing manufacturers and developers to integrate compatible devices. However, the SmartThings app update to control these devices will come later in the summer, and this update includes various appliances like refrigerators, air conditioners, dishwashers, washing machines, and more. Very nice. This is the big 1.2 update. I think we talked about, I think we talked about, I thought we talked about Samsung getting this maybe a couple weeks ago,

or the rumor that it was going to be getting this. Who was getting this? Hubitat, maybe? I think Hubitat was getting this last week, right? Wow. I didn't even realize nobody else has support for 1.2. Amazon, Alexa, Google, and Apple Home have yet to add support for 1.2. Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, I know somebody smaller added it. We talked about it and we're like oh that's the the matter 1.2 stuff but yeah it was a couple weeks back maybe so not remembering but it was definitely a smaller company uh but still like samsung so i think is not a smaller company that's going to be the bigger one so good good job samsung keep up the good work man first they get like the floor plan control thing that i don't like very much but whatever's there and then they get like matter 1.2 they're just they're moving along over there at samsung i feel like the slow adoption of the matter protocol is gonna

really kind of like hurt things a bit you know because they're the first major player how long before everybody else starts to get it right you know like i'm guessing you know because when they released like matter 1.3 they say look at all the new stuff everybody's all excited for it you know all these new features and stuff but you guys set expectations that hey this may not be work you may not be able to use this for another year at least you know don't get too excited we gotta wait for devices to get updated to get support to get developed you know so yeah it's it's nice 1.2 feels like it's so last year though home assistant's already on 1.3 so okay so i i was just checking on it i think it was home assistant

we were talking about moving to 1.3 yes but also if I go to their page it says matter in parentheses beta which means always says like Home Assistant is beta like don't ever think of it as a what as anything else but they don't need that's why they they number it like 2024.7 because there's no major versions right yeah well I I think i think as like an official official integration with a with the major smart home platform i guess i will give it to samsung saying they're the first yep i agree not these matter betas over here oh can i say that uninstalled matter off your home assistant right now you're not allowed to have it there we go well i don't think it's on anyway so the nice

thing home assistant is they do a lot of the matter testing in it that's why it kind of gets the the latest and greatest a lot of times because oh sure they're doing a lot of people are looking at them to uh you know test their products in and it's so easy for home assistant to roll out these kind of updates those other major um players it's not as easy you know they they're afraid to break things more where home assistant's like yeah we broke it we'll release an update tomorrow to fix it well and they have a paid product that somebody paid money for exactly you know they have a support mechanism or something that they can yell at or press outlets that are right that like apple broke the entire ecosystem when they did this update and it was just because they were trying to implement you know uh washing

machines in home kit or something like that but you're right they have to test in order i think this is good because it what i mean you're talking about the adoption it's like well you got to have a place to go with all this stuff first right right? Like it has to be built. And with these companies like Home Assistant, with SmartThings, Apple, Google, Amazon, whenever they get around to it, when they start implementing basic versions of Matter, or even like 1.1 or 2 or 3 or whatever they get in there, like then developers can come in and say,

okay, I've got the foundation here. I can start, i can implement my washing machine or my robot vacuum or whatever but like before like right now you can't so it's i don't know if it's a slow adoption it's just a matter of like getting the foundation of the stuff on there at least up to a point i think when we talked to david he was like we're getting a lot of like the basic building blocks and then they can just take it from there like once we get to that point they're not really gonna have that much to do on matter other than like introduce new more advanced things on the platform or like build blocks like put some of those blocks together and

make unique logic yeah i know what you're saying they've got to get the foundation put together first and they don't have that right yeah they gotta get all the basic things so like the definition i guess of a switch of a valve of uh yeah you know stuff like that and then when people come out with devices their device is just a grouping of all these different blocks right so this this device has a switch and a valve and level and dimming and blah blah blah right so or if it's a vacuum cleaner it's got to have like a turn on a turn off a schedule or something like it's got to have that stuff in there and if off a schedule or something. Yes, exactly. It's got to have that stuff in there. And if it doesn't have it, you can yell at developers all you want.

They can't do anything. It doesn't exist. It's not in there yet. So use the app that comes with your vacuum. When it does come around, though, it'll be in there and the vacuum companies can start implementing, putting it on there or whatever or testing it and then i wonder i wonder like because i have no insight into this but i wonder how this affects the manufacturers right because you have a product for example and your your your whole thing is it's going to be based on matter and you want it needs features that are in matter 1.2 right are you now on hold to release this

because it's not going to work with all the big players out there and you got to wait for them to update before you can release your devices if you yeah if you explicitly developed for something that is on 1.2 if you did that yeah then yes you're gonna have to wait for 1.2 to come around but like if you develop for a product that's on 1.1 and samsung, hey, we got 1.2 up. It doesn't matter. You're backwards compatible. Oh, I know it's still compatible.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, if people are like, oh, we got vacuums, but we need Matter 1.2 out there. We have our vacuums ready to go. They're now at a point where they got to wait for everybody to upgrade or wait for the big players to upgrade before that vacuum is going to work. Across all of those big ecosystems. ecosystems yeah you're right yeah because they can only promise it will work on the ecosystem that has an update exactly and they could wedge it into a light switch or something right like on off for your vacuum you can say oh well it's on it's running and when it's off it's not uh or it's a dimmer and like when it's when it's 100

it's on great vacuum i hate when they do a dimmer and like when it's when it's 100 it's on great vacuum i hate when they do that though i hate when they do that when you when that's all they can do they just hack it in place that that's what i hate when they do that on the other other um protocols they utilize like a switch for what's not really meant for right and the problem is they never go back and fix it but it's i mean it sounds like that at least from the conversations we've had it sounds like they're really trying to get those basic building blocks put out of the way so they can move on to other stuff but also like these manufacturers who make these products can implement their solutions inside of this ecosystem yeah but it's going to take time to get there

we're only 1.2 or 3 or 4 i think we're at 1.3 1.3 now they're working on the spec of 1.3 but i think they're working on 1.4 now yeah i mean 1.0 doesn't work ever right 1.1 is like the bug fixes 1.2 3 have gotten pretty good stuff what 1.4 who knows what i'll have and when was 1.1 all released 1.0 was october 20 22 yeah i only know that because I'm on the Home Assistant page. It says that. When that was released, you know, one thing everybody was saying, not just us, but it's going to take years before this starts to get stable,

starts to become something good. It takes years of work. And, you know, we're only, you said 22, we're only like two years in, right? Yeah. And it's made some great strides in those two years. So we got to give it some time you know zigbee z-wave they've been here for how many years now yeah z-wave was hot garbage when it came out so yeah and it took a while before it became like

just warm garbage you know hot garbage now it's dead so it doesn't matter but now it's cold garbage but still it's been out for a while yeah i'm trying to see if there were um in this wikipedia article if there's any yeah 1.1 was may 2023 1.2 october 2023 and then we roll back to 1.3 again in may 2024 so maybe in october you see 1.4 right you'll go from 1.3 to 1 one four so if they do this may october release cycle that they're working on that they'll they'll move they'll move things quite a lot yeah this the wikipedia article actually has the updates on like what went in 1.0 had like mains power plugs electrical light switches door locks thermostats heating ventilation had very basic stuff lines

most shades we all remember that came out it wasn't it was like yeah there's not much here and then they they're just adding on to it they keep adding on to it you get more stuff they get refrigerators portable air conditioners dishwashers laundry wash okay that's that's in step and then who knows what we'll get you know out of um out of 1.4 i i did i mean we we didn't i don't think we covered this that well we didn't we didn't really talk about it when it came through but it did come through and it was just, I think I skipped the story because we talked about matter way too much one night as we're probably doing tonight. But the,

the, there was a story about like Apple secretly including, um, what was it? A matter chip or a thread chip inside that thread chip. Yeah. It was like inside their Mac computers and everybody's like, well,

what would you use that for? But I think, um, I mean, there's, there's a bunch of things you could use it for. Like if, especially if it's like inside their mac computers and everybody's like well why would you use that for but i think um i mean there's there's a bunch of things you could use it for like especially if it's like a a computer that just doesn't move all day like if it's one of like a mac mini or something but like if you if you look at how apple makes all their products it's all the same stuff like they use the same boards and the same chips and everything they're not like changing their build of materials for each device you know very much so i think it just makes sense like why if your phones and your ipads and everything have it why not put it in i think also i think i think we may uh we may see like the the

one of the things that is coming are the messaging uh things so that you'll be able to get messages over that network and that is a um that's a big thing, right? Like those are local messages or messages that could go over that thread network. Uh, they don't need to bog down or deal with wifi or anything like that. And they can be delivered with low power, low power. Remember if your laptop's off, you can get that message, do something. So yeah, I think messaging is probably a secret feature that's going to be hidden away in this matter stuff and the thing is is like this is all foundation right as soon as it gets out of the foundation then you can start building the doors and the walls and all that stuff and painting the

walls and making things look pretty whatever tj does in his house that's what they'll be doing and for the record uh zigbee was conceived in 98 standardized in 2003 and revised in 2006 so i don't know what you'd say the ages but those are some dates so it's been here for a while too yeah interesting it's so old so ancient ancient all right let's move on here um also i just kind of mentioned this as simpson is also announcing this flex connecting it's a demand response program for SmartThings smart home platform available in New York and California. So if you have demanding energy needs and you need to like go into the energy savings mode

to save some money on your energy stuff, it will integrate with those services that are provided in those states. So that's pretty good. That's another one of those like foundational things that a lot of the bigger players heck i know control four is kind of wanted to do that over the years or there have been companies that have used control for uh over the years but this is this is one people don't think about this but like power companies really need a way to implement

demand response and communicate into your house like, hey, we're going to charge you more right now. Do you want to turn your lights down? You know, that kind of stuff. There's like certain laws that require them to make sure that you're notified and that kind of thing. So, you know, this is a good thing for smart things. It's a good move, smart move for the smart things people. That is actually pretty interesting because it says that Samsung will get a demand response signal from utility company. You know what? The utility company just can set up an API that Home Assistant can pull to check for stuff like this and then, you know, do all the adjustments too, you know? Yeah.

They really care about it. Don't make it smart things only. Open it up. Like a partnership. Yeah. things only open it up so like a partnership yeah you know that would be actually cool because then you can say hey my you know utility bill is about to go up or is spiking or whatever and let me like you said turn down the lights you know let me hit kill these switches to certain things right don't mess with the thermostat though i hate that don't ever mess with my thermostat

yeah just turn off all the lights, but the thermostat stays. Do not touch that. Or even, you know, you can go further and shut the blinds or stuff like that, you know, to help with the cooling. No, it's an interesting case. It would be nice if they just opened it up to everybody so we could use it in other ecosystems.

Yeah, I think it's definitely a good idea. I mean, AEP, my energy provider, would probably love this because, like, every week when there's a storm, they send out an email and they're like, hey, you might lose power this week because it's going to rain. And so AEP would probably love this. Like, I just reach in and dim my power a little bit so they don't have those problems. Well, here in Florida, we really don't care. Like, our energy is pretty cheap. And like, I mean, they just run it all the time. Like, it's crazy. florida we really don't care like our i hate to say it our energy is pretty cheap and like i mean

they just run it all the time like it it's it's crazy the uk this would be huge and i think right oh yeah yeah yeah they pay ridiculous amounts yep yep yep uh yeah many many other countries uh australia new zealand you know down there i know they were doing some demand response stuff too uh but like um there there's like there's a i don't know if there's a api for it but there's definitely a hack well there's a hacks integration for the fpl which is our power company so if if you want if you want the api gavin it probably does exist i mean somebody's probably already hacked your power company and put it inside home assistant for you so you could you can make those uh automations if you want i

should look it up now. Yeah. I got graphs on mine for my power bill. It's like, look, it keeps going up. Great. Let's move on here. All the links to topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 488. I got a pick of the week here and what I it's a 2.5 million dollar home theater spider-man theme it is literally everything you could imagine put into this thing including a like a lobby walk-in showcase of all this spider-man stuff it it's amazing I gotta say it looks amazing I have no idea how it sounds i have no idea what the specs are the ce pro article that we're linked to this says absolutely nothing about the equipment

how it was designed it's it was designed by a seat company the best i can tell or this hts company which i assume they know what they're doing because they make beautiful theaters they've made uh there was a batman or something not too long ago that they made. They went around. I saw, but, uh, this one looks really cool.

I just, you know, it, it looks amazing. Absolutely amazing. But I wish we had more specs on the hardware that's inside. Uh, cause they,

they make mention of a, um, like a video wall. Like when they're, they're not using a projector. It doesn't seem, I think they're using a video wall, uh,

like an old ed panel of some type so i you know i just i'm just curious and there's a there's a video of of how that video wall is revealed with this big like sliding spider-man glowing door thing it looks amazing just want to know more i want to know all the tech specs ce pro ce pro techs tech stuff i think they're i think they're going to release a second article i thought i saw somewhere in here where they're going to release a another article along with it or something but it does look pretty sweet you can tell a lot of time and money and effort went in to make this what it is and this is this is a custom home theater and this guy is never going to get his money out of this again whenever he goes to sell the house but that is all right that is all right

that is not the point of these projects these projects are to bring whatever you want to life and that is what they've done yeah they nailed it that's for sure yeah it is it was really nice the lobby is really cool um the theater itself is obviously nice but i like that lobby with all the old comic books and the other uh memorabil around there. That's kind of cool. Yeah. This, this theater is as big as my house. So, uh, you know,

and it's only got one TV in it, TJ. Yeah. So they, they linked to another, um, what is this company? Elite HTS,

elite home theater seating. Uh, it's a Vancouver based home theater company. Uh, they did a one point. Yeah. Vancouver. There you go.

They did a $1.5 million home theater for a DC comments villain, the Joker and San Francisco. And this, this one, they, in this article, which I'll link as well, it's linked in this is it has all of the specs, you know, digital projector, AK laser projector. They've got 192 Stewart film screen, 7.1 surround sound triad speakers. So, I mean, like it's got all the stuff in here listed. I just kind of wanted this. When I looked at this, I'm like, oh, that's really cool. It looks awesome. And I was like, well, where's the tech? I need to know the tech.

I want to know what else is awesome. And they didn't share it with us. So, yeah, if you scroll down to the bottom, they Paul Harvey'd it. They're like, page one, down at the bottom. And there's no page two. So, I don't know. Maybe there's going to be more. Well, and I think it's they paul harveyed it they're like page one down at the bottom and um there's no page two so i don't know maybe there's gonna be more well and i think it's kind of ironic too they're not even talking about who designed the home theater they're just talking about the person that supplied the seats no no no yeah i think the seats are nice but i mean i think i think this

company is a soup to nuts like elite hds they they've done this before so they do i think they do like everything they they put it pull it all and put it all together not just the seat that would make more sense yeah because i'm looking at their website it looks like they just it is a seed company they have uh builder chair home theater seating commercial vip seating and gallery so i feel like they just make seats and it just says it just says cd a member it doesn't say like they designed it or anything so i don't know yeah no i if you look at i'll put a link here for the joker theater inside our put a link here for the the joker theater as well um if you look at that

it says that they have done they i think they just either they contract it out to somebody else or they they put it all they they're the ones that are in charge of it. Almost like maybe even a contractor or something. It's where they can put it all together. But it looks like, you know, it's all done. They're the one taking credit for it in this one for sure. And they did a Batman theater too. Yeah, that looks pretty cool.

But this blows my living room out of the water. Good job. I've never liked something this much that would spend 2.5 million dollars on theme park i'm sorry this is what's gonna get you to do it no no but a really nice robot lawnmower it's a fleet of robot lawnmowers somebody take care of them for you too man yeah this this that's quite a bit of money i mean there is a lot of work that went into this just by looking the aesthetics and then knowing that there's like a theater built into it

that's probably got some pretty good equipment inside you know sono soundbar yes yeah well they wrapped it in one of those uh leon speaker tone case things so yeah improves it all right well we'll put this link in the show notes too but if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the weeks are great ideas for the show gives 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 tonight we got home well first we got home assistant uh updates it could be an update by the time the show gets out i don't know.

It sounds like it probably could. 2024.7 is on the way. Beta release notes are out. It looks like this is not going to be a very big release, but they've got a couple of things in here. New dashboard, customizations, data table enhancements. Ooh. And some blueprint stuff.

They've got new integrations from... So we've got new integrations. We've got new integrations from AquaCell, which is a water softener monitor. Okay, there you go. InstaEcoTrend, which is a monthly heaty water consumption thing that you can use. Mealy, which is a self-hosted recipe manager. Okay, there you go, Home Assistant.

Bringing some odd stuff in, but there you go. And then Naki, which is a smart device that turns any surface into a remote control. That sounds interesting. Before you go off into your tangent i know you're about to go off on that i know i know not seth come on come on come on let's go check out this before you go on to naki i just want to say yeah it doesn't look like a big um a release you know by what we look at it but there's a lot there's constantly under the the hood work being done um oh yeah what one thing i like though is the ability i actually asked um i think it was frank one time on mastodon if you could build this into a spook integration

but being able to link template entities to a device that's kind of cool for organizational purposes so you can create your own entity and then you can link it to a device. So when you're looking at the device page, it's associated with that device and helps with sorting and understanding where things are. That to me is the one thing I pick out of this if I'm going to be playing with, but it's got a lot more going on under the hood. I'm looking at the milestones for 20 24 7 0 and they've got 93 complete on github so yeah there's a couple things that they've done by the time this show's released uh 2024.7.2 will probably be out it'll be out 20 you know the dot one or something will be out by then so who knows they they they fly through this stuff uh yeah so naki it looks interesting gavin if you like

tapping i know you like to have we talked we talked about you and your tapping and how much you really like to tap on things uh this is the ultimate tapping thing like you can just uh you install this device on something the table a wall a door anything you can tap on really you can you can install it on anything you can tap maybe you can't even tap on it you can still install it there you can still start it doesn't matter uh yeah you if you tap then it'll it'll trigger an automation i guess this is actually kind of cool this should actually have been the pick of the week the spider-man theater is whatever i mean anybody can spend 2.5 million dollars exactly but you can buy this for only a hundred dollars and that's a much better deal yeah and for six six months you can tap on walls

and stuff until the battery runs down. You got to put a new battery in. But yeah, there you go. I like the idea. I like the idea. I like the examples they give. You know, it's just like, just, you know, mount it here and tap that, you know, and then you can find your phone, right?

So many possibilities with this. So many jokes around this. But, you know, this is a family friendly episode so i'll save it for the extended version whose family is listening to this i'm taking after dark was definitely a little r-rated when we were talking about tapping yeah all the things you could tap yeah i think i'm more of a clapper instead of a tapper. I really should register that domain. All right. Uh, I'm a clapper, not a tapper. Yeah. If you, if what's really neat about this is that you can, uh, no clapper tapper.com.

What's really neat about this is that you can, um, uh, you can actually set it up to do like 10 different combinations or sequences of taps in like three, four taps, but you can also like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

You know, it was like, you can do different little codes in there if you wanted to and, uh, and change things up. They have all sorts of little, uh, you know,

things on here for, uh, for like examples. Like you can, when somebody knocks on the door or, uh, if you, you saw this in your coffee table they have a

guy rubbing the surface of his coffee table it's really weird rubbing his table a lot it's really weird you should go check out these illustrations yeah he's got a broken arm too i'm pretty sure so like it's it's ai generated but it's like no baby it still works look yeah what's the secret knock you know then the door opens you got two taps was two taps and it gives you movie time so like yeah there's some stuff on here that's what i want yeah the funny one is definitely down the very last one where it says breeze easy and it's got five taps on the bathroom wall and it's got this guy looking really concerned uh about being on the toilet and uh yeah i guess that'll turn on the uh the vent try and explain that to your guests you know if you just tap on the wall a bunch of times

which wall is it the one behind it yeah you just have a sign on the wall says tap this wall five times to turn on the toilet fan tap here for the fan and what's great about half these illustrations that they're actually ai generated and somebody looked at these and was like, yep, this portrays what I want. Well, it says down at the bottom here. And I'm just going to pick on them. Like, there's a lot of AI stuff on this page. But the devices look pretty real. But this is probably invented, developed, and assembled in Texas.

So there you go. They've got good taste there. Texas was made by AI. Texas isn't real hey yeah uh yeah and so anyway 100 bucks for one three pack for two night 229 and a five pack for 329 you get five nagi you can mount them around they also have a usb c adapter so you don't have to change out the batteries all the time and a little extra mounting plate that you can do for 15 bucks all of it looks pretty good i i don't know i kind of like this guys like i like the idea of installing it like underneath a bedside table or something

tap it on that table and your lights turn off right like that's better than like i mean you could use you could do that a hundred dollars for a tappy and never see it or you do a switch bot or some kind of little button like a lutron caseta and a switch bot i mean to say a shelly button or something like that you can do that but those tend to like flop around you know but this is like always there it's installed with the furniture tap that tap the bedside table lights turn off it's a pretty good idea tap that table it's a good idea but i think it's an idea that you may have just one of these devices because you you'll get lost in taps you know like like if you just think about you have them all over

your house keeping track of yeah what how many taps on what walls where they're no no no no you you can just you would just have one of these at your bedside for you alone like no you literally need one on every surface of your house and they all need to be programmed the same same so that way you just yeah that way you automatically just tap everywhere yeah oh everywhere you tap something happens that's right and you just you just tell you tell that somebody they how do you turn on lights on for your house i don't see the wall switches or anything it's like just tap on something just tap on the wall anywhere you want twice it's totally intuitive just go and tap on something not it'll happen most fathers already know that when you need something done like the tv turned

on or the light turned on you just tap the back of your child's head and it will get done i'm pretty sure as a father you know that but i i don't know it's kind of pricey, too. Like, it's for the amount of money you're paying for one or even the five pack. It's going to get a little expensive to make your house fully tappable. Fully tappable? I don't think I want my house to be fully tappable. I guess if I'm going to sell it, though, right? I mean, there'd probably be a benefit then. Yeah.

Yeah. Where do you mount it on the bathroom wall, though? Do you put it at the bottom of the wall it becomes tappable you don't want to put it at the bottom splash effect you don't want to but i think i think you have to like go to the other side of the wall cut an access panel in oh god that's the way that's the way you should do it yeah best i can tell a cool idea though it's an idea that can be incorporated into something else though and you know probably spawn bigger ideas it's a great idea, though. It's an idea that can be incorporated into something else, though, and probably spawn bigger ideas. It's a great idea for another company to buy and keep the patents. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Stuck on the throne? Can't reach the vent? Why waddle when you can tap your way to fresh air? I don't like voice control, but I feel like voice control is a better option here for most of us. Not when there's people outside listing.

Yeah. Well, why does he keep knocking on the wall? I don't know. What was your bathroom fan called again? Every time you knock on it, your wife is like, yes. You know? What do you need? You're knocking. Oh, man.

I think we've all agreed the like the little find your phone thing, like tap and your phone starts beeping wherever you lost it. That would be a good thing. But yeah, I don't know. It is expensive, but it is a unique and interesting device. So thanks, SmartThings, for pointing that out. I think that's actually pretty cool. I like that.

Thanks, Home Assistant, for pointing it out. I'm sorry. Thanks, Home Assistant, for pointing that out. Sorry. Just upset a lot of people. Well, maybe, maybe they do have smart things.

Integrations. What do you, what do you think about that? They probably do. Let's see. They've got a bunch of stuff that I don't know about. Yeah. Also they do have local HTTP callbacks or whatever you want to call it.

Like they, you can use local control. So anything that can take an HTTP command, you can program that in too so that's kind of cool lutron ecobee nest iphone that's not really i think august smart samsung smart tvs so yeah samsung smart tvs maybe that's in there i don't know it's kind of a weird list of things here alexa phillips hue casa smart casa smart wemo yeelight lg brava so they may have their own integrations with a bunch of this stuff too so pretty cool you kind of want one guys get us set go for it well moving on here gavin i know uh what you got going on you still you still debugging your z-wave

what's going on what's going on over there wait before i get into the z-wave thing uh i just while we were talking on this show i found out my local utilities actually have there's a hacks integration for home assistant for my local utilities so i it has all sorts of sensors and entities on it to tell me peak times you know rates etc etc and i can utilize that oh i'm gonna be playing with this tonight just to you know i could set up a tile on cetera. And I can utilize that. Oh, I'm going to be playing with this tonight. Just to, you know, I could set up a tile on the dashboard and say, hey, don't run the dryer now. You can run it later or even make it, you know, easier. I'll just cut power to the dryer. So it can't be used until, you know, the rates are, you know,

the right rates, stuff like that. But that's cool. I found that out. There's something in hacks. That's definitely something like i i i think would be useful like we don't have that here we don't have like we have a flat rate or whatever but like yeah if we had that i totally see the power that you can get from setting that up in in a smart home right like that that seems like a pretty powerful option yeah uh in in in in option in a point to integrate lights and actually your bigger appliances into this, you know, like HVAC and washer dryer, that kind of stuff. Building those in so they don't actually turn on and cost you a lot more money than they should.

So, yeah, that's awesome. I'll be playing with that. Anyways, moving on to my Z-Wave issue. So last Thursday released a Z-Wave update to Home Assistant and Z-Wave JSUI. Everything went haywire. You know, I saw other people reporting it on the forums. And, you know, they're going the same issues. Device would just stop responding. Well, since then, there have been about six updates to this thing.

So, you know, I think they finally got it right. So with the integration version was at 3.8.4, it looks like they finally got everything settled. My Z-Wave has now settled down. So if you're having, you're going to need to upgrade eventually if you're going to be putting the 2024.7 on it. So you might as well, you know, do it early, do some testing, make sure you do backups so that you can restore in case. But I'm doing my things all running well, been running very smooth, you know, with my Zeus 800 series controller with version 1.2 for those that may be interested. Yeah, the nice part is, is they were quick. You you know like every day there seemed to be a new release so they they it was broken broken broken broken broken fixed you know yeah and that was over the course of a week but in that week

you know you know it's heckling you know things don't work so all good now. Nice. I'm looking through mine. Well, I do have, I do have an update. It seems. No, no, wait, I don't. Nevermind. There are no updates this week. I am fully updated. Oh, that's because the release, the release is coming in.

Well, you know, it depends on when you release the show, but the release was two days ago by the time the show gets released. But yeah, you'll, you'll see the 2024.7. You'll get usually with that7 you'll get usually with that you'll get a bunch of updates so just wait wednesday you'll be like update in update heaven so there we go just just wait it out you know like i know how much you love clicking wait till you're on vacation and then update yeah i'll be out of town i'll just hit go and when we get back stuff will be on fire and not broken all right no it'll work it'll be fine yeah you know i know how much you like clicking that update i do i really do i mean it's what i live for every week once a month he goes through this

you know anyways the other thing i've been playing with uh again my z-wave printer or my z-wave printer my uh my uh 3d printer you know I just have to reiterate how much I love the Prusa MK4. It has been such a dream printer of like just print and go, you know, never have to worry about it. I've never had any failed prints with it. It's just been a beautiful printer. I've been customizing the hell out of it in the enclosure. But because of that, my MK3S Plus, which was sitting in the basement got no love so i finally broke it out and you know started uh you know i gave it a little octopi love and i'm gonna do some more

prints on it and make it feel like you know it's part of the family too and i have dual printings going on and you know like yeah i might sell it but at this point it's nice i'm just kicking the old one to the curb. You're like, I don't need you anymore. Yeah, kind of. Before I sell it, though, because she's not listening, she still thinks I just have one printer. And now I've moved both of them into my office.

I'm waiting for her to notice that there's actually two in here. It's a huge mistake. No, no, but one's still in its enclosure enclosure and the other one's out in the open so i'm hoping she's gonna think that it's just i took it out of the enclosure and put it on the the the on the shelf so we'll see how long before she realizes i actually have two and at that point i i don't have a choice i will have to sell one so at that point you'll be dead so no at that point, I don't have a choice. I will have to sell one. At that point, you'll be dead. No, at that point, I will have to sell one. So no matter what, it's going up for sale at some point, my MK3S+. But that one works like a dream too.

But the MK4 is an awesome printer. Very nice, very nice. Well, I haven't clearly done any projects since we recorded the show last. But it's been a busy week. And since we're going out of town, trying to get everything wrapped up, including Mowing the Lawn, which i guess is my biggest project uh since i was out of town got sick and then had a bunch of family obligations for the last week or so and and work stuff i haven't been able to mow my lawn and um i shared a picture with you guys

of so what doesn't clippy do it for you well Well, Clippy can't handle the big stuff. And since I was out of town, I didn't run Clippy, right? Oh, he's also been out of service for the front yard because the power company has been up there messing up the lawn. They've got a mess up. Yeah, they got holes and stuff. Now the holes are there, but they're under grass that he can't mow because he's too small. And so I have to, I have to basically make a run at this, uh, with a, with a push mower that I have. Uh, so I got out there today, this afternoon and

sharpened up the blade on it because there was no way I was going to cut that big grass with a push mower. And, uh, I got probably got about halfway through. I think I made a good effort. I shared a picture with you guys. It's not good. It's, it's not a good situation. So, um, now I did make a run at the, I did have a couple of hours, an hour or so to do the front lawn. Cause it was extremely tall and waving around in the wind, uh, nowhere near as tall as the backyard. But now the front yard needs to be like, we've gotten four inches of rain in the last couple of days, like an amazing amount of rain. And like in Florida, when the, like you wake up in the morning, you're like, look outside. You like in Florida, when the, like you wake up in the morning, you're like, look outside, you're like, the grass has grown three inches, like just

overnight. It's ridiculous. So it just takes all that sunlight and water and converts it into grass. And then you have to cut it. That's what I'll be working on probably for the next couple of days until I leave. And then I'll do it again when I get back. Because Clippy's still out of commission. He gets a break, an extended winter break. But yeah, I can't wait to crank him back up and get him working on the rest of the lawn. Because I don't want to do this anymore. No good. I need like a bigger Clippy.

Like bigger wheels, bigger blades. Don't let Clippy hear you saying that. No, he needs like bigger. He needs tires that, the little rubber tires, they hit the grass or the sand. blades don't let clippy hear you saying that no he needs he needs like bigger he needs he needs tires that the the little rubber tires they hit the the grass or the the sand that we have and when he tries to turn they just dig down you know they just kind of go like i think that i've seen little boots more rugged yeah i've seen more rugged um ones where they can adjust their heights even so you can have it so that it does you know can get the higher grass

and then it slowly lowers it down and with each pass and stuff so you know that'd be nice it's just yeah it would be nice um but yeah i've seen that but they have limits to it too right like you have to give it a good starting a starting point you do like it there's no way that um he'd be able to handle what this i mean that that grass is probably 20 inches high now that i'm suffering through right now so it's it's very very tall grass like field grass at this point so not not excited about doing what i have to do but yeah i do need to get like the ones with the tank treads on them or whatever where they could just mow the lawn. It's ridiculous.

Maybe, maybe Gavin can print me one. It's going to cost you. Yeah. Yeah. Just sitting in little parts. I know a guy with a bunch of stamps. I'm going to need a lot of stamps. I got you. By stamp dealer.

All right. Well, TJ, what you been up to? Yeah. I got a couple small things going on. I think either right at the end of last week's episode with Agnes or after we finished the episode, I realized I needed some new Zeus products. So I bought some Zen 37s. They're the wireless scene controllers. It's got two big buttons up top and it's got two small buttons at the bottom basically resembles um i don't know any other scene controller you see um but it's pretty nice

though it charges via usbc uh just takes like a 20 32 battery i think um so you can just replace it anytime you want works via z-wave it's got long range on it so you can put it in a far away land as long as not too far away, and control whatever you want to, so that's pretty cool. I'm using it in place of my Lutron audio Picos, and I like my audio Picos. They're pretty nice, but I wanted something different, and I don't know if this is what I wanted. I'm kind of glad I have them them because I needed more Picos anyway, but I wanted the ability to like double tap and triple tap

and I don't know if I just don't have this set up correctly or not, but I don't think it supports that. I think it basically just supports a single tap on everything, but I haven't done a deep dive on it yet. I'm using it in the kitchen right now. The top button turns on and off the TV. The bottom buttons control the Sonos volume and the middle one turns the cabinet lights on, I think right now.

So it's, uh, working pretty good so far. I don't have any regrets on it. Um, mounts similar to the Lutron Caseta Pico remotes. Um, but instead of having like the, you know, Seth, you know, the little like tab thing that the Pico slides into. Yeah. Uh, it doesn doesn't have that it's literally just a magnet oh so like the plate is a magnet and it sits in the spot where you're going to put the switch at and then the the little wireless controller just magnetizes right to it so that's pretty cool i was worried about the magnet because i was like well i want i don't want it to walk away or like fall off the wall or anything

um but it seems really strong so haven't had that problem at all. It's a Zen 37, right? Yeah. I believe each of the buttons support multi-tap. Yeah, I need to look into it. They have... Because I basically wanted the top one to, like, turn on, but then double-tap to turn off or something like that.

Yeah, you know, the scene is your trigger, and then after the scene is executed, then you got to look at the value of it to see if it was key pressed or key pressed times two or something like that. So it can be done. I haven't got that far. Yeah. I figured it could be. It says just tap. You can program up to 28 scenes or actions with multi-tap triggers, including double clicking or holding the button of your choice.

There you go. Yeah. So I just got to play with them more. I haven't really had a chance to do that. I've been playing with all my other stuff I got as well. I like the magnetic aspect. It's really cool. It's nice because you can just add it to your existing switches

without having to hardwire something. But you can also just take it off with you and put it next to you. And, you know, like I use one for my fireplace. I replace my fireplace remote with this. And, you know, like I use one for my fireplace. I replaced my fireplace remote with this. And, you know, we'll just pop it off the wall and sit it next to us while we're on the couch and then you can adjust the fireplace as needed and, you know, put it back when you're done, hopefully.

So it's really cool what you can do with it. That's a pretty good idea. And you can get it custom engraved before you ship it. That's kind of nice. Or you can contact Richard in our hub and he'll do engraving for you not for free but he does a great job there yeah i'm always afraid to get these things engraved because i'm like i know as soon as i get it engraved i'm going to change what it does oh yes

yeah but well actually i know it says that that turns that light on and off but it doesn't um yeah that that was i mean i guess one of the things control 4 did nicely is that you can in lutron 2 like you can pop the buttons off and put new engravings. Yeah, individual buttons and redo them. You just had to pay, you know, a nominal fee for that, you know, for each one of those services. But I do like that. Like you should be able to pop a button out and swap it out with a new engraving if you

need to. Yeah, that's always a good point. But I would recommend this if you're looking for some kind of wireless scene controller that's kind of like lutron pico i mean i don't know what else i would actually compare those two that is what i've used in the past and that literally reminds me of that it's a little thicker but i do like it basically nice device i like the two big buttons and the two small buttons too so that's good yeah it's simplistic you know yeah um also been playing around with uh today i stopped at ikea and i was like well i need more motion sensors for my house and i'm next to an ikea so i'm gonna go to ikea and so i did i got four of the valhorn motion

sensors these things are dirt cheap they're like nine dollars wow um they work well um the setup process is hilarious because it's basically like this uh dome and like motion sensors are but it's like a pretty big size dome uh but you like you add it to the hub or whatever and it glows red and i really want this to glow red every time it detects motion so it's like an eye in the middle of the night just staring at you. Remember like Fibaro did something like that? They had some. Yeah.

Like blue and red. You could change colors or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's fantastic. I love it. I want more stuff like that. But I have so many motion sensors in the house now.

I think I have like over a dozen. So I got these added. They worked really quickly with homosystem running zigbee to mqtt um they added really quickly they've updated and all that good stuff they they work fine they're motion sensors nice and they're nine dollars i mean where else can you buy nine dollar motion sensors and meatballs yeah and meatballs i don't know do you guys have the like downstairs when you check out you have like the hot dogs and the oh yeah 75 cent hot dogs yeah those are great and the they have the giant slab of diabetes inducing uh sweet rolls do you guys have those like uh i don't know i've only had

ikea food one time and that was it so only reason i go there no yeah well i go over there for cheap plates so cheap plates and cups because i break ours all the time i'm very clumsy no that's why you were actually at ikea wasn't for these it's like oh i broke i broke a plate this morning i gotta swing by for nicole notices no she was there i was like you go look at all this stuff i'll go look at this smart home stuff over here i also got a rail link panorama poe camera which model is this again i forget right now oh it's the duo 2 so rail link duo 2 poe um it is funny looking it looks like it should not be in somebody's house. It's like a very serious looking security camera you would see on a business. And you'd be like, oh man, these people definitely upgraded their security systems.

It's a little funky looking though. But panorama camera, it works with blue iris. So I got that going for me at least. Quality not that good after you like zoom out a little bit so like we have it in the corner of our house and like in the yard facing our house and like i can't really even see my face once it gets to like the house area and our yard really isn't that big and so i don't think i'm going to keep this camera long term it's kind of cool to just see everything in the backyard at like a quick glance but if i ever need the footage for anything i think it's kind of cool to just see everything in the backyard at like a quick glance but if i ever need the footage for anything i think it's pretty much going to be useless but it's got 180

degree viewing angle oh which i feel like isn't that much anyway because like a normal camera is like 120 or 130 i mean the price is right i mean there's a yeah it's a really good price 20 coupon 139 normal so yeah yeah so 120 bucks i don't know i'm torn on keeping it i have the solar one which is fine i basically just need a way to keep an eye on the backyard yeah this is the problem with like the super wide angle stuff like you get some pretty good idea of what's happening i think they're good for like triggers and stuff for other cameras like maybe install a ptc camera to like zoom into the area that that gets identified as something happening on it but other than that like yeah the image quality rolls off like after like 10 feet yeah it's awful yeah you don't you don't really see any any detail other than pixels after that so and like you

would kind of expect that in like the periphery or like in the center of the cameras or something but like even if even if it's in the direct shot of like one of the cameras it's still not that good of quality yeah so i think like the reason i want it is because we have we have animals that are coming into our yards and like tearing up our yard i want to be able to tell what those animals are and i don't think i'm gonna be able to do that with this it's not gonna happen i'm not gonna see a skunk with this is it a skunk do you want it no i don't i don't know what it is i think it's just chipmunks and squirrels, to be honest. I found some pretty interesting looking and strange robot lawnmowers on Alibaba. You have to buy one and give it a shot. I might.

Tell your work you need to make a driver for it. Somebody wants to use it with Control 4. Here's a 2024 Husk space varna autumn auto mower it's the husk space varna husk varna it's probably legit uh it's got gps this is 500 bucks dj come on i mean that's it well they sell my robot lawnmower on here too there you go the segway nabamo i110n you can get anything you want here. Amazing. Wow, they literally sell all of them, actually. That's funny.

That's all my projects, though. I'm refining my home assistant automations currently. So I'm working on just getting stuff condensed and stuff actually working. I restored the hub a couple weeks ago, so it's been a process trying to get everything back back in order and back working correctly nice nice yeah um i i've got some ideas on some home animations i need to get some more sensors i think like and start implementing either using the so i've got the

z wave thing and i've got the zoos thing sitting right. I guess Zeus is Z-Wave. So this must be the Zigbee. Yeah, Zeus hub. That's your hub. The Sonoff. Yeah, it says Zigbee. Answer to Zigbee one. So I've got to plug those in and start playing around with products. And I still have those two Inivelli Zigbee switches sitting around doing nothing. So I put those in.

Just send them to me, Seth. You don't need them. I actually need two more anyways. That'll work out for both of us. Okay. Yeah, there we go. I'm going to run an antenna out to my roof. Help Gavin out with his signal issues.

Just point it in my direction. Z-Wave really long range. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show.

But every pledge gets an invite to our private Slack chat at the Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every single day and talk about... I got to say, there's probably probably gonna be some pictures of stickers showing up soon maybe I don't know we'll see what happens yeah very optimistic soon means

a couple shows from now yeah Ty was posting pictures of HD DVD players which I mean man that's some old school stuff. Anyway, always fun stuff going on over there in the hub, so check that out.

If you can't support the show financially but want to help out, we just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or 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. Till next time.

Take care.