HomeTech.fm - Episode 495 - Confusing Buttons

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

It's CEDIA time and once again we will be hosting a HomeTech Happy Hour in Denver. More information and how to RSVP is here!On this week's show: Gavin puts a call out for a private jet, Trinnov announces their Waveforming upgrade is now available to everyone with a Trinnov, TPLink announces a 2-brick sized doorbell, project updates, a pick of the week, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 16th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. I'm from Pickery, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, and Cedia. It's Cedia time, right? It's that time of year. Okay. Yay. Yay. And, uh, Cedia, it's Cedia time, right? It's that time of year. Okay. Yay.

Yay. I, this is pretty much like, I have meeting Mondays and meeting Mondays. Like it's pretty much just me on a phone call a day. Gavin, I'm sure you know what that's like, right? Yeah. I have meeting Mondays and Fridays. Oh, Fridays too. They've added that one on.

Damn. Well, we, we at work, we have a a policy no meetings on fridays right it's a team policy but other teams realize that our calendar is always open on friday so they book it on friday so we have no meetings with our team on fridays can you just like block it all else nobody can schedule it's a giant team meeting on friday and then nobody can do that well the thing is people have wised up so that when they see your calendar fully blocked off, they assume that you're just free and you just didn't want to be bothered during then. So they're like, they're meeting so important that they just pick a spot in there, you know?

So yeah. Or they just book it during your lunch because they're like, this guy must be eating lunch. I don't think they're using calendars right at your company. They are not. they are not they are not especially when you're working like like it's an international company so we got a lot of 7 a.m 8 a.m but it's like that's just meetings it's just wrong are you some like some like very important person can you just like tell people to stop doing this i i'm important enough to be invited to the meetings i'm not important enough that i can decline them oh man yeah you're in that weird in between yeah

that in between states a couple more years hopefully yeah one day i'll get that promotion i can shut down these meetings you're putting answer back maybe you know if you vote me for president there you go if you vote me for president i'm gonna cut back on all company meetings i'm gonna make it on all company meetings i'm gonna make it illegal to hold meetings outside of your working hours this will be good all right all right well i'm gonna start there yeah well my meeting mondays have gone into meeting tuesdays so it's it's now two days and there's also meeting thursdays so i've got three days of meetings because we're getting ready for cd and we're going over all the marketing stuff and everything has to be gone over and all the product has to get released and all that fun stuff.

So, and the booth had to get shipped. The booth has already, I think it was shipped yesterday or the day before, or I guess not the day before, but yesterday. So yeah, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's there. It's going, it's going to a warehouse on a truck and whatnot. So I feel like I'm so sad because I feel like I'm missing out this year, you know, especially on the happy hour. Yeah, yeah. You will be missing out on the happy hour.

Maybe I'll like hook up a camera or something and we'll stream it or something. We'll just FaceTime you. Yeah, FaceTime. Put me in one of the stools. That way it's like I'm there. Buy me a drink. I thought about finding some of those large cardboard cutouts of you guys. Oh.

Yeah, we'll just put those up in the corner and people can take pictures with you yeah yeah you should take some stickers too and give them to people in person stickers i should buy more yeah we don't have any more stickers i think i have like two here tj gave them all away we sent out a lot people people got them they liked them stamps work we'll get some exclusive stickers for people that are there, you know, one of a kind or, you know, more work for Seth. I like it. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

If you, well, if you are interested in coming to the home tech happy hour, please RSVP, let me know that you're coming so I can order the right amount of food and beverages and whatnot, I guess. So a home tech. FM slash happy hour has all the information there. It's on Friday. Starts at six. I have six to 9. PM. I don't has all the information there. It's on Friday. Starts at 6.

I have 6 to 9 p.m. I don't know if we're going to do 6 to 9 p.m. since it's a happy hour and not a happy three hours. But, you know, we did three hours last time. Maybe we'll do it again. Who knows? And then, of course, the ceremony on the trip over to get the ice cream because that ice cream is really good, TJ.

We're definitely going to get the ice cream. Oh, yeah, the honey ice cream. So good. It was delicious. Honeycomb, is that what it was? Honeycomb, yeah. It had honeycomb bits inside of there. It was just so good. Oh, yeah, the honey ice cream. So good. It was delicious. Honeycomb, is that what it was? Honeycomb, yeah. It had honeycomb bits inside of there. It was just so good.

Oh, man. Especially after at least five drinks, that was good. There was a minimum or something, yeah. There was some imbibing that had gone on. And then we went ice cream. So what could go wrong? What could go wrong? You're going to miss us, though.

I'm going back to this. If anyone has a private jet and want to send it for us, we're willing to accept that take that, you know. It doesn't have to be private. I mean, you can just buy me tickets. You can buy me tickets. I'll fly Frontier. I'm not that fancy.

Any pilots listen, you know. Gavin is posh. I'm not posh. Well, okay. For those four hours or five hours on the flight, you could sit next to me and I'll let you ask any questions about home automation, you know. I'll give you free for that flight. Get me to Denver. Man.

Did you program some YAML on the way there? Talk about. I'll set up your home assistant instance. Whatever you want. We could do it in the five hours. Things I'll do for a free flight. There you go. Gavin's just always selling his body.

No, my mind. Oh, my bad. You use your fingers sometimes so my mind my mind listen my mind my body's too expensive to ship being very clear here yeah um well if you like i said if you are coming to acedia uh please join us home take a happy hour uh same place rock bottom brewery right after the show ish sometime around six uh six to nine p.m 68 p.m who knows just whatever time we're there there'll be food and beverage to you know come by and come by and say hi that's that's the thing but uh please go

to home tech.fm happy hour rsvp and let me know you're coming because i kind of need that i have to have a head count for these people they want to know like how many people are coming at least 12 it is yeah it's somewhere how many do we have last year we had like 20 to 30 last year i think they're more than that at at the peak time there was definitely more than that because there were a couple of tables that were full up over towards the corners and that kind of thing so people came in and out too yeah since it lasts a while and it's like right on top of i think the award ceremonies and whatnot that you know once people got done over there, they made their way over to. So, I don't know.

It's Friday. It's kind of the end of a long week for a couple of, for us and what we're doing. And so, it's kind of nice to go sit down and have a drink somewhere. And that's what we're doing. So, I'll see what I can do about those cardboard cutouts, though. That would be hilarious. I always wanted to be on one of those roaming robots that you see going around the office oh yeah let's get always wanted to be on one of those that could be more possible than the

cardboard cutouts actually if you can get one of those just get your giant touch screen shipped to colorado oh yeah we can be on the touch screen Too bad you could have just put it in the booth. Yeah, right. I could have just brought it and put it in the crate. Too bad. All right. Well, not much news this week. Everybody seems to be kind of gearing up for Cedia. There's not much in the news over there. And I suspect some of the press releases will start to hit later this week and early next week as we move into the show.

But there's a couple pieces of news. So what do we say we jump into these Home Tech headlines? Let's do it. Kind of a news out of Cedia. Chernoff Audio has made waveforming an advanced room optimization technology publicly available on its altitude line of audio processors. This innovative technology enhances bass performance

and consistency across listening spaces. It's initially testing through an 18-month early access period. Waveforming is now included in all future Altitude products and can be added to existing ones with a free software upgrade. It's pretty awesome. This technology has been in the works for seven years, supports various subwoofer layouts, and it is feasible for a wide array of spaces and budgets um this is really cool i uh i was on another podcast earlier in the week and they were they were talking about this and what's really neat about this is like this is a home theater process expensive home theater process or whatever it goes in expensive rooms uh that's what turnoffs

know for but like what's really cool about this is that they update the software on this thing and this is like this is a really great software update where it handles subwoofers and this crazy algorithm that they have, but it goes back to processors. They sold back in like 2015. So like, if you've got an older processor, you hit update and you have this technology. Like if you've got the subs in there and you just need to, like, I don't really know what the process is of like, uh, rebalancing the room out. I'm sure it kind of takes some work as well, but still, I don't really know what the process is of like, uh, rebalancing the room out. I'm sure it kind of takes some work as well, but still like you don't have to rebuild the entire room around a new process or a new technology it's built into this altitude.

So that's really cool. That is pretty cool that it's coming to a wide range of products, especially in older ones. Um, I've heard, uh, smarter people than me talk about this. I think Owen talks about this a lot um and some other people in our circle and i've never actually used this before though so i'd be interested in giving it a shot at some point it is a 18 000 to 37 000 processor if you're curious and i think there's a bigger one now there's like a makes sense why i've never used it exactly yeah this is way above my budget so i'm sorry i'll never use this, but it sounds cool. Yeah, it definitely is.

Yeah, there's a 36-channel one out now, which I'm... Ooh, the 36 channels. Pricing on the 24-channel surround processor is $37,000, so the 36 is probably a little bit more. And I'm just looking at random sites on the internet telling me those prices. I have no idea what they actually are, but I've heard they're expensive and they go in the fancy theater rooms. This is what you have. You have fancy theater room. I think they will have a listening. Well, I know they'll have a listening booth at or a listening room at Cedia.

I'm hoping to like sneak into it. It's not open very long. It's open for like three hours to the public. Then otherwise they're just doing like fancy things. Like I really want to hear this thing because they like, they pack this room up. I guess they ship it from Italy. Like it's a big to do. And I think they were saying on the podcast I was on earlier on ResiWeek, Aviation, they were saying that this is probably the last year they're going to do that, bring it in that way. So if that's the case, I'm going to spend some time trying to sneak in or get in the line over there.

So because this sounds like a really cool, this is one of those really cool processors and speaker systems and systems that you don't get to hear all the time. Yeah, this is one system I'd love to experience. That would be a cool thing to do at Cedia is, you know, to feel, just experience the system. Yep, yep. So if you have that private jet, head on over to hometech.fm slash support and look for the Patreon option there that says private jet. I don't says private jet $3,000. That would be

a specific option. We'll talk about 3D printing as well if you want. It's a stretch goal. Anything you want. Anything you want. You know,

like. What about Microsoft Copilot? Will you talk with us about that? Oh, I'm sick of talking about that.

That's another show. Man, not even for the private jet, huh? Okay, for the private jet, huh? Okay, for the private jet, I will. Okay, if you want. I just want to clarify for the listeners. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anything, like even co-pilots on the table. I'll sacrifice. All right, well, back on the affordable end of things, I guess. There's a new TP-Link Taipo D225 video doorbell. It's got 24-7 local recording and smart alerts for people packages and pets all for under a hundred dollars it's a dual power device can function on a battery or be hardwired through uh continuous video recording as well okay i guess though the continuous video recording aspect of is only available in his hardware you can't do that on

battery uh the doorbell includes a 10,000 milliamp battery that can last up to eight months on a single charge, but it requires removal for charging, of course. There's a review over here on the Verge for this thing. This doesn't sound bad. It looks odd. I don't know. I don't, like we were talking about this before the show,

like every doorbell out there looks too techie. Like why do they want these doorbells to look techie? why aren't they like trying to make them look more like doorbells i don't know this is going to be one of those things that gets studied in product design in the future i think but for 100 bucks this doesn't sound like a bad option for somebody looking for a video doorbell yeah it seems like a pretty good deal for the price it is very ugly though i don't know it's like every video doorbell manufacturer got together and just like decided that they weren't going to try to make attractive devices not even going to try just yeah they're just like whatever you know we don't care about aesthetics um which is weird because it's like the first thing you see when you go up to somebody's house

but um it is kind of it is cool that it has 24 7 recording um it is weird though that you can't use it uh you can't use the existing chime uh with it as well a couple other weird issues so for a hundred dollars i really don't have high hopes for it you can forgive a lot yeah pretty affordable yeah and i feel bad that i actually have to say this but i think it needs to be said but the camera needs to be made a little more obvious and the reason why i'm saying that is you know how many how much footage i have on my camera of people trying to push the actual camera to ring the doorbell is it is that like a real thing it is it happens to me like i see people come up and the you know they actually you see their fingers start to push the camera and instead like because i

guess they think that's just the button right i don't know but if that's happening they they obviously need to figure out a way to make that a little more obvious i i only had that problem once and it was with a uh doorbird uh doorbell yeah it was the uh d101 and if you look at it it's basically like a the picture of the button and then right above there is like a black uh circle and i had a client who i guess had people over and just push the motion thing on it repeatedly and and it's what you want to push honestly yeah like the button is not inviting that big puffy black button thing yeah press that that's what you want to push. And that's what people push.

And they broke it. And they had to buy a new one. It's the worst design ever. Not to mention, it's like an inch away from the stupid button. So I was like, which one do I want to press? This one. I'm going to press this one. And you know, I would look at this and know which one to press.

But obviously, people like with mine, they don't all know which one's the button. Right? So that's a design flaw to me i guess i mean you have to design it for the lowest common denominator you know like the the group that's gonna make the mistake you know yeah yeah no maybe that's what they're gonna like this tp link uh one here the the d225 that we're talking about. It's got a big giant, it's like a black case, I guess. It's got white casing. It's actually, the side of it, this thing is huge because of the giant battery

that's inside. Very thick. It's two bricks. It's two bricks thick, yeah. That's all I'm looking at it. That's all I'm judging it from the picture. But it's got this big giant white button that has a light up ring around it. With a doorbell, like a door chime or bell icon i i feel like they this this whole they could do better like instead of making a circular button like all the doorbells before these had like the square buttons right they were like a rectangular long skinny button and then

you know you can the cameras the cameras aren't going to ever be rectangular or long and skinny like make the cameras around and the button square and maybe people can tell the difference i i don't know maybe that's just me you know device i'm still waiting for tapo to come out with their h900 uh home base it's never gonna happen tj stop man i really want it just come on tp link home base is to happen. I want to get rid of Blue Iris. Help. It's not going to happen. I'm telling you, they're not going to release that product. You liked it too much.

You were like, oh, this is going to replace everything I have. And then they heard that and they said, no, no, we can't do that. Help. Blue Iris actually took them out. Yeah, they shut it down. We have the patent on crappy software well check this out if you're in the market for i was just talking to somebody today about um video doorbells and they were they were saying you know the ring is okay you have to charge it every now and then but something like this you know eight months of video on the thing not

continuous recording but like a video event and people bring your doorbell eight months yeah that's pretty good forget to record it you know or forget to charge it up after eight months all right well that's gonna wrap up this week like i said we're pretty light on news all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 495 all right nothing in the mailbag this week but we do have a pick of the week uh this is funny i think tj you came up with this somewhere. Brian Jackson over on threads. He writes a $20 on eBay. And now I have a fully functioning 10 inch in wall touch panel for my home automation system. And it's powered over ethernet. It's got POE says, thanks Crestron,

but it's not running Crestron. It's running Home Assistant. This is a great idea. This is like, everybody's been looking for a nice-ish in-wall touchscreen that you can have. And like, you know, I see people posting stuff on Alibaba all the time. That's roughly in this price range, like 20 to $50, somewhere in there, PoE powered. But no, no, Crestron has made these before and they've cycled out, you know, they've, they've been installed in universities or whatever, and they're not no good for that anymore.

So they've been pulled out and you know, decommissioned or whatever. And you can, you can pick these little touchscreens up on eBay now for like what? 20 bucks, 10 inch in wall. Not bad, not a bad idea.

It's actually a really good idea. I love, now for like what 20 bucks 10 inch and well not bad not a bad idea it's actually a really good idea i love i love how they when they uh you utilize old hardware for new things like this in this case right because it keeps the e-waste out of the junk you know out of the garbage and in this case it solves another issue like i wish more companies would do this if they're recycling these things and getting rid of them then just unlock them or whatever and throw them on a used market and let it go for cheap and let people find other uses for it other than your, you know, Crestron system. I love that because we got a lot of stuff that's going in the garbage from old computers from companies that, recycle their computers every four years, But those computers are still good computers that can run so many things still, right?

And I think we should do more of that and focus a little more on that. There's actually a thread over in the Home Assistant forums that are linked in this post as well. I'll link this as well. But there's a bunch of people that explain how to do this and set this up with the, this is called the Crestron TWS. It's a 1060, there's 1070s. I'm sure there's probably bigger ones, 1080s, 1090s, whatever series you are. I have no idea. But if you have one of these, if you can get your hands on one of these on eBay or whatever, it looks like it's pretty easy to

get them up and going. 25, 30 bucks people are saying so not a bad idea and and the thing with like crash run this is what they're designed to do they're designed to be in wall on wall mounted touchscreens and powered over poe you're not stepping out of the box like it's gonna have nice mounting hardware if you can get it it's you're not having to you know mess your wall up and rig things up no it's it's designed to do this uh and and look okay and look fine uh so yeah this is a win-win recycled older products not a bad idea i like this this is really cool it's really cool yeah it was pretty easy for them to use i asked the i found it on threads originally so i asked the person i was like well how did you actually get

home assistant on here and they responded uh they're able to factory reset it and set it up with a built-in ems app with a custom url to my home assistant instance so i mean relatively easy they don't have to do anything hacky to it they said he had to like factory reset it which was like hitting the reset button like 10 times uh but other than that didn't like didn't have to like hack it or change firmware or anything like that which i'm a fan of i don't want to buy something and have to like update or like change the firmware out like all those other weird stuff i want to buy something and just use it and especially something like this you can just buy the wall mount kit with it and then install it on the wall and you're done

i'm looking at ts tsw 1070s brand new 1250 $1,250. Yeah, those ones are expensive. Yeah. Those ones are much nicer looking. But you can get it for, you know, on eBay, brand new, pulled from wherever for $50. Yeah, $50. For the 1070? Yeah, 1070. Oh, I was seeing the 1070 for like $500 to $1,000. The people buying these things don't want eBay products too, right? Wow, that's true, yeah. yeah but like i said if you're

pulling them out of a company and you're instead of throw them out throw them on ebay and let us let people reuse them yeah oh don't don't worry integrators are definitely reselling stuff well i need your beer money somehow this is like these are like one of those products these are set up for like um boardrooms or or campus controls and that kind of thing. And they're pulled out of these large installs all the time and put up on eBay. You know, there's even a, there's even a third, at Infocom, there's like a third party auction thing that you can use to basically, like if you pull a bunch of equipment out, you can hand it all over to them and they they will resell it for you so like they they had a giant booth there at infocom where they were signing people up because it just happens so often and it's such a big industry like reselling this stuff like there's and then there's a whole reseller you just ship them pallets

of equipment and they resell it for you well yeah especially especially um like universities and stuff because a lot of universities they have to update their stuff every x amount of years or they lose the funding for it so they're literally always updating their crap so i was looking at the video he posted it doesn't look like it's the most performance driven thing i'm not sure what's causing that maybe some of the newer like animations on home assistant or something like that but i don't know maybe if there's a newer version maybe the 1070 is a little bit better and it runs a little bit faster. And if you pay a little bit more for it,

not $1,200 or whatever it was. Yeah, I'm looking at a ton of 1060s between $100, $50, $38.99. So they're all over the price range. When you get to the 1070s, those are like $350, $159. So it's all over the price range. When you get to the 1070s, those are like $350, $159. So it's all over as well. I really don't have any use for a touchscreen, but I kind of want one.

Yeah. Especially for this cheap. Yeah. I don't have any use for this at all. Anybody do just press the update button on Home Assistant more often than every week? No, I don't think so. You have a big one sitting behind you that you don't even use. Exactly.

It's barely on anymore. Except when my daughter comes in and draw stuff on it. So she's not outside pressing the camera button instead of the, the camera instead of the doorbell button. It's going to stay on. My seven-year-old does that quite often. So yeah, it's a great idea.

I like it. More of this re using recycled stuff. And of course it's Crestron. It's probably going to be built pretty well. And like it. More of this reusing recycled stuff. And of course it's Crestron. It's probably going to be built pretty well. And like I said, you can get the mounting hardware and mount it. It looks like you can mount these all sorts of different ways. I've seen them like tabletop mounted as well.

Like there must be some kind of like tabletop mount that you can get. Can it be flush mount with the same color as your counter? Probably not. It's probably not flush mount, but probably more uh like on wall mount i guess than anything i noticed like a lot of the the flesh mount stuff is problematic i think mostly because of heat and then probably like certifications or something like that um so i've noticed all most all the touch screens have gone to be like an on wall

mount style to get around that the exception of some of the like in-wall iPad mounts and that kind of thing where they give you a little box and you can slide the iPad in. Most of them, most of these have like heat problems. Let's just say they don't have the R&D budget that Apple does to make products. Cool pick of the week. I like it.

If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, some great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form all right project updates i actually did something i know i put a little picture over in the hub yeah i uh we're kind of changing our daughter's room around and i was looking at the fan the other day and the fan has lights on it i I'm like, you know what?

I wired this fan and I know that I wired it for both dimmer control and switch control for the fan system, thinking that one day I would break it apart and put two switches in or I would get one of these two load things. And lo and behold, TJ sends me one in a shrimp box and it's just sitting on my desk for weeks and weeks and weeks. Shrimp switch. And yeah, the shrimp switch shows up. And yeah, I put it in. Super easy to wire up.

Everything fired right up. And now my daughter can go in her room. She can turn our fan on and off as she wants to with the little button that's on the bottom and turn on the lights on and off. And it works? She really likes it. So yeah, it works great. Wow. I don't have it hooked up to, it and turn on the lights on and off. And it works. Really likes it. So yeah, it works great. Wow.

I don't have it hooked up to, um, hasn't caught house on fire yet. I haven't, I haven't hooked it up to a home assistant or anything. I think I have to plug in my USB dongle thing over here. You do. Yeah.

Yeah. One of these days I'll do that. But for now the hardware is installed and all I have to do, um, is, is get nut. I did notice I probably, there's probably some way to identify that thing into the system.

I hope it doesn't involve taking the thing back apart and scanning a QR code on the underside of it or something. Well, so you have to take the switch cover off because you have to get the DSK, the little security code. That's only if you want to...

It's Z-Wave, right? Yeah, Z-Wave. That's only if you want to include it using a secure... I don't put my switches in usually with that we're all about security on this show no no no no i don't do it for switches man for for certain devices you're forced to do it like i think locks and garage door openers and stuff like that you're forced to for switches you're not and i don't usually do it

for switches oh there we go if someone were to hack my system and get into my house through my my home assistant i want them to stay there so they can show me how they did it yeah because that would be cool it'd be like you're pretty smart yeah just sit on the couch relax wait for me to get home and just let me know how you got did this because that was pretty good you can use the neighbor's printer too have a drink you know well that's that's pretty cool you got an installed set that is a it is a pretty nice switch honestly i really like it and we have several of them throughout the house i'm slowly replacing for other reasons um but they

work great so yeah it feels great it installed it's installed fine there's there's no issues there that had little uh i had to kind of redouble check the uh instructions on the zoo's website uh which were great i have seen much worse instructions from other lighting control vendors in the past and these were color-coded with all sorts of warnings and things to kind of watch out for as you're putting it in so it made a lot of sense uh and yeah pop it in It works. I'll eventually hook it up to something. So, you know, we can make sure that it gets turned off and the fan gets turned off back there at some point.

So yeah, thanks TJ. Thanks, thanks Box of Shrimp. It was great. But I've got a couple other lights loads like in this house and I'm thinking, you know, these Zeus in 30s, they might be able to take care of those as well. Well, depending on when you time it, Seth, you might get some more. Are you still taking them out? Yeah.

Well, so I'm waiting on the intervalley presence switches right now. I've got two on order. And then when I get those two, I'm going to move to existing Intervalley switches to the other rooms that have the Zoo's double switches. So I'm waiting on Intervalley at this point. You know me in timing. Well, you're always in a rush to do things. Always in a rush, yeah. All right, well, Gavin, what you been up to?

Yeah, so my home assistant setup is pretty much like, so, so my home assistant, I'm at that point where it's like all settled down now, but this week I decided to go through and start cleaning up the install. Right. So I don't really have much more to do in my house. So I've been cleaning up the actual install. So I had a lot of like plugins and integrations installed that I was messing with. So I started, you know'm not using them or it's a waste of time, I started cleaning that out, uninstalling them, removing them, cleaning up entities.

I think I posted, it was in the Slack channel where I had like seven or 8,000 entities on my home assistant. 7.5 thousand entities on my home assistant. So whenever I open up my entity list it my firefox just hangs so you know i i just like i have to actually go into too much stuff yeah i have to actually go into edge um or use chrome to actually open it up so i can actually do something i've been doing a lot of cleanup of that stuff um my config files i had a lot of stuff in there

editing out because in the newer home assistant installs they've moved a lot of cleanup of that stuff. Um, my config files, I had a lot of stuff in there editing out because in the newer home assistant installs, they've moved a lot of that into the GUI now. So I've been going through now and slowly migrating it. I wish they automated that. Like if they detected something in your, your config, they can just move it to the GUI and, you know, comment it out in the config or something like that. I know they could probably do it if they really put their time into into it but it's been getting a lot faster because i had a lot of stuff in there that was sucking up some resources i don't use anymore so it's nice to do that every now and then it's like spring cleaning but i'm doing it in the middle of summer i can see that automatic thing breaking a lot more like it would it'd be more prone to break something than it would to actually be

helpful so like the easier thing is just say, well, you do it, you know, that's like every other home assistant. So, I mean, it's just,

it's just something else, you know, like, but, um, yeah, that, that's what I spent like this week doing is I still,

I'm still at the point though, where I want to redo some of my dash, all my dashboards, but I'm also afraid that they're going to introduce some feature or something. That's going to make me want to redo some of my dash, all my dashboards, but I'm also afraid that they're going to introduce some feature or something that's going to make me want to redo it again. So I'm kind of waiting for them to kind of settle down or at least introduce certain features I really want into the dashboards. And, uh, before I start focusing more on that.

So, you know, that's my home assistant. I see more people to jumping on the home assistant train lately. I don't know. Oh boy. Yeah. I've seen some, um, YouTubers and stuff, you train lately. I don't know. Oh, boy. Yeah, I've seen some YouTubers and stuff. They're really much, they were all HomeKit, for example, and they've been slowly like, oh, dabbling in Home Assistant now, right?

So it kind of sucks if they're, you know, HomeKit is in their channel title, you know, and they're going to start talking Home Assistant. But you can bridge them together, right? So, like, I think it's good that it all kind of interoperates in some way together. Like, they've done a good job of kind of being like, okay, this hub does this, this does this. Like, I can bring all the HomeKit stuff into Home Assistant if I want. Yeah, and you can bring all the Home Assistant stuff into HomeKit.

Into HomeKit, yeah. It's really nice like that. And same with, like, you can pretty much expose anything from Home Assistant to, like, anything. Like, to the Amazon or the Google or the HomeKit. Like, it's pretty much doing what Matters try to do, but they did it kind of before Matter, right? Right. And they give a lot more, so. Well, I mean, it's kind of a different, like it's not,

Matter's more like of a retail type selling thing, but like, this is nice that if you did start with something, like say in five years or whatever, and you started with your Matter Home and you started using it with Google Home or whatever, and you wanted to upgrade to HomeKit, like you just install HomeKit, tie it in with the Matter Network there, where it talks to the Google stuff and the Google Hub for all of your Matter stuff. And you get all the integrations and advanced stuff over in HomeKit that can talk to what you already have. I think it's a great thing that this exists.

I think this is really good, but everything is, it was weird. It looked like walled gardens at first. And then now like everything's just being tied together in different ways. I really like it. Which is nice. I like where we're going.

I totally agree like that. The only thing I don't agree is you said upgrade to HomeKit. I don't know if that's a correct statement there. Upgrade to Home Assistant. What did I say? HomeKit? You said HomeKit, you know. Oh, no.

I meant, like, if you had, like, Google Home and then you could put Home Assistant in and, like, bridge those two things together and then use more advanced stuff on Home Assistant. Google Home's great, but it may not have the advanced integration. Exactly. Now that it can write its own scripts, and maybe it is, but we'll see what the Gemini thing does. But you're not going to get your power company bill hacked into the google home anytime exactly but i've got that in home assistant yeah i don't know why but i got it uh but yeah that that's that kind of stuff i think is is i i really like how this is played out to be like more like

tinkering where you can get in and kind of mess around with stuff. And if I say, you know, forget this Home Assistant thing, kill it off, go back to just using HomeKit, like I haven't really lost anything, right? Exactly. It all still works over there. And it's only a matter of time before the pro space starts looking at Home Assistant, integrating it in the side of their projects too. Yeah. I think it's coming.

It's just going to take a slow, there's slow burn. They have to figure out how to use it on their burn. They have to figure out how to use it on their projects. They have to figure out how it doesn't break and they can make money. And then, yeah, then it'll happen. That's the problem with Home Assistant. It breaks every update. There's something breaking. I saw that we had two converts.

What was it? This week? Yeah. Yeah. Greg was pinging me with questions and I helped him out there you know like you like when you're in that slack channel you got access to gavin as a service you know people don't realize what they have there yeah we need some of those naboo bucks we need the naboo casa dollars that's right and prusa bucks prusa bucks yeah oh speaking of prusa bucks

speaking of prusa you bought a new one no well i did i think i did mention that i i upgraded to the mk4s yeah i ordered the upgrade kit so i'll be getting a little bit faster but so um i mentioned also i sold the old printer um since that recording the um my friend came picked it up and um he's been loving it now i think i undercharged him for it because the amount of knowledge he has access to i've really saved him a crap load of time you know and and i didn't realize how much he would be messaging me with questions i truly underestimated that but he's loving it now i you know i got his first layer set i explained to him i gave him like a tutorial on how to calibrate you know ran him through everything and every time he has a problem

he sends me a message i explain it to him he fixes it and he's happy again you know so yeah i gotta start you know charging more for my time this is where the the reoccurring fees come from this is where the gas rmr once you get them locked in with your used equipment then you're like hey if you want some help on this i got a nice little service plan over here just head to this website check out boom gavin is a service i know how much we're hating subscriptions right now but maybe i need to start a subscription service hey gas would be worth it man i know yeah know. Yeah, I'll save you hours. Like, you may not realize how much time I'm saving you by just, you know. Yeah.

Gavin GBT. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, the old 3D printer is happy. It's cleaner than it's ever been. It's being taken care of and maintained. And, you know, I like to see where my tech goes to good use. Nice. Your wife's happy that you got rid of a printer too?

You know, the most upsetting part about this whole thing is she hasn't even realized I got rid of it yet. So she never realized when I got a new one. And now she hasn't even realized I got rid of the old one yet. So I'm just waiting for her to notice that something's missing from the office. And it wasn't the printer I put back in the case. I'm waiting for that day, but I don't think she even noticed it's gone yet. Gavin,

this is a perfect opportunity to buy another printer. And then you can have two and be like, well, I decided I'm going to keep it. It doesn't have much resale value. I was just looking at laser printers, but that's a whole different topic. I don't want to lose us money,

honey. I wanted to, you know, my neighbor has the cricket, want to lose us money honey you know i wanted to i wanted to you know my neighbor has the cricket so we're good there you know but we don't have a laser printer so i don't know there's a little breaking news here we we have our first uh uh home tech happy hour host it's a reoccurring host alan alan chow over at chow main soft has uh has become yeah happy hour sponsor so thank you, Alan. We had him for an interview last week. We talked all about software development and developing for the home.

Their new marketplace, too. Their new marketplace, yeah. And I saw that he released that Hubitat driver he was talking about. So that's out now. I've seen a couple people asking and talking about that on the forum so thanks alan we really do appreciate it and we will be seeing you in denver nice uh so tj what have you been up to yeah i got a couple of smaller projects going on uh my first project non-tech related uh i got a a couple weeks ago a a month ago, two months ago. I don't know.

A while ago in the future or in the past. Um, uh, my client, uh, had an Ooni pizza oven sitting on their deck and they're talking to me and they're like, I'm, I want to get rid of this. And I was like, you know what? I've never really wanted a pizza oven, but I'm feeling lucky today. What do you want for it? And so he said a hundred dollars and I said, deal, I'll take it. And, and so I got this, uh got the uni pizza oven i think it's they called it a caru 16 um i got a little like outside table with it i got some uh two propane tanks with it but all for a hundred dollars and like the pizza oven alone was like seven hundred dollars and the table was

like four hundred dollars or something so it's like eleven hundred700 and the table was like $400 or something. So that's like $1,100. And the only reason they were getting rid of it is because they wanted to get an electric one. So I got a really good condition Ooni pizza oven, but when I got it, it was having a couple of issues. It would not stay lit whenever I lit it. And it works off propane. And so I contacted Ooni and I was like, Hey, I've got this pizza oven here. I didn't buy it. I got it from somebody else, but I can't get it to work. And I've troubleshot it. And this is what I think the issue is. And I said, here, send us this information. I couldn't find like a serial number on like the actual propane piece. And I was like, oh man, this is probably gonna be a

problem since you don't have a serial number. I was like, can I just buy the parts anyway? And they're like, nah, don't worry about it. We'll just send you the parts for free anyway. So I was like, heck yeah. So I got the parts today. I tried to start replacing it. I haven't got that far yet. But I've been reading the documentation from Uni.

And I gotta say, so far, I'm pretty happy. The customer service has been excellent. And their documentation is really good too. So I haven't got to use it yet because I just haven't got to fix it, but I'm really liking the company in general. So if you're looking for a pizza oven, I think you should give it a Ooni look. Nice. Yeah, I've been looking at different versions of those. A hundred bucks is a steal, so yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's right. I was like, even if it doesn't work, I don't care. I'll be able to resell it or something. So I was quick to pick up on that. Yeah, that's right. I was like, even if it doesn't work, I don't care. I'll build a reseller or something. So I was quick to pick up on that. Yeah, good find. I'm curious as to once you get that up and go in and start, I think you have to like develop a way to cook pizzas on it, right? Yeah, I think it's like a whole science. It's a thing, yeah.

I'm not really a chef, so I don't know if i'll be able to master it like it cooks fast too it's like four minutes or 30 seconds or something and it's done i don't know like it's it's fast yeah i figured i would start like rudimentary and just like cook a frozen pizza which i i pretty sure is like sacrilege or something um but we're just gonna cook a frozen pizza on it and see how that goes first it might work who knows could be frozen in the middle still sounds like an idea though yeah who knows but maybe i'll get that fixed this week and i'll be able to use it this weekend yeah and keep us updated um i also i got uh aquara sent me uh some more stuff they sent me one of the fp1e sensors um just got it today so i haven't got

a chance to get it set up yet. I did take it out of the box, though. A couple things that I thought were interesting is that I don't think... I'll have to look at this again, but I don't think it's compatible with HomeKit. I had trouble getting it added to HomeKit because it doesn't have a

HomeKit code on it. It has a QR code for the setup process, but it appears to need an actual Aqara hub, whereas the FP2 did not. It would just work with HomeKit code on it. It has a QR code for the setup process, but it appears to need an actual Aqara hub, whereas the FP2 did not. It would just work with HomeKit natively. So that might be user error, but I think that's true at the moment. The other thing I noticed, though, right away

is that it has a built-in USB-E cord, which I'm not a fan of, right? Because I just don't like building cables anyway because what if I want to replace it with a shorter one or what if it breaks um for example in my bathroom i have an fp2 that i'm gonna replace this one i'm gonna replace it with this fp1e um but i have like a short like six inch cable because it's literally right next to my outlet but now i have this giant dongle of a wire that's attached to the sensor because I can't remove it.

So that's kind of my other negative right now. But I'm interested to get it set up. Hopefully I'll get it set up here in the next day or two. I think it's perfect for our bathroom. Our bathroom is relatively small and we don't need multiple zones. I'm not even using multiple zones

with the FP2 at the moment. So that's not really a concern for me right now. But definitely a perfect sensor for the bathroom because it's really small. zones with the fp2 at the moment um so that's not really a concern for me right now um but definitely a perfect uh sensor for the bathroom because it's really small i'm not a fan of those projects products with the new with with the usbc cables on them and definitely not a fan if they're attached that's that's a no-go well this one's a usb-a cable too oh wow which is even weirder you know it's like a hardwired usb a cable all it needs are two little like stick-in terminal i don't know i don't know it's just not much cheaper so at the moment i would

just go with the fp2 yeah it's kind of like the whole sonos uh and sonos sl speakers it's like for 20 less you can get those speakers without the microphone and it's like but just get the one with the microphone because you might want it in the future and you're not saving that much more money right just my initial thoughts on it but i did get another new device this past week uh the the pick of the week last week the aquaflower yeah um they sent me one what and so i got i got i got one of the early like prototype versions so it's not uh it's not like the finalized chassis or anything like that um but i had it set up and working with Home Assistant within like 30 seconds. Wow.

I just, I plugged it in, it booted it up, it created its own SSID. I connected to it. I found my Wi-Fi, connected that to the Wi-Fi, and then Home Assistant found it automatically. And it just had all the zones and everything already set up. And so I replaced my Zigbee host timer with it. And it's been working great. I have no issues with it. The six individual zones are amazing to have because I was just watering everything at the same time.

And so I've basically, I've created automations with my EcoWit soil moisture sensors to detect if the soil is too dry three different times during the day, then they'll get watered. If it's above a certain percentage, they don't get watered. And so now I'll be able to save water because not everything needs water that much. That's cool. So a hose goes in, six little lines come out, and then you've got sensors.

Yeah, that's really – it's all done in Home Assistant too, so you don't have to – Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Very neat. sensors yeah that's that's really that's what it's all done in home assistant too so you don't have to yeah that's cool very neat yeah and and the uh the aquafire does have a like a sim or like a small uh web interface but you can't like do any programming or anything through it so you can actually see the zones and everything like that um i think they're gonna they're they're talking about adding that at some point but i don't think that's a huge thing for them at the moment um but it works works great with home assistant I haven't had any issues.

And luckily, we already have really good Wi-Fi in the backyard. So nice. For $200, though, I think this is a great deal. And this is one of those products, I think it's one of those in-between products that's so genius that I'm surprised I haven't seen it before. Yeah, because it's just like little solenoids that are opening up for those little tiny drip system hoses on the other side. Yeah, drip line.

And then you have things like this, like the Rasio one. You know, $100 for this. And it's just a hose that goes one out the other. Yeah, and the Aquafower is $200. I mean, twice the price, but you get six individual zones. And I don't know, just a lot more control over it. So I think it's a, I think it's a fantastic deal.

Um, we're probably going to get them on the show here in the next month or two. So we'll, we'll teaser for you. Very nice. Yeah. We might have a lawn tech, uh,

summer thing too, because I, I had a email from a, from a, a, let's just say an unnamed robot lawnmower company. Ooh. Yeah. So we'll, we'll see, we'll see if we can get that one lined up.

That'd be nice. Should be fun. I forgot. I've been doing stuff as an integrator over the weekend. I had to repair a bunch of lightning damage things. And I'm curious, as I haven't done rack work in a while, and I had to redo a bunch of rack work because when you take all the equipment out, you put it all back in, the wires need to be redone basically, right?

What are people using these days for IR cable management? Like is everybody just pretending that IP works and not running little IR buds with the tiny little annoying wires that get in between with everything? Like that was such a mess to deal with. And I'm not sure. I'm just curious what people are using these days. You don't just all bundle them all up together with like a zip tie uh well i guess some of this like some of the sources where most of what we were doing were like apple tvs right like uh like three or four apple tvs on a shelf and at that point yeah you have like four of them and you

can kind of run them and put them all together and bundle them down together but still like they're like six foot long or longer right because they're just kind of a generic cable and you've got all this extra wire and mess to deal with and i don't know like is there what what are people doing what are people using is there a terminal block i'm missing i feel like it's something that uh i feel like this is something that what's that company uh snap snap uh snap speaker snap speaker snap yeah i'd be selling them and i actually used them on this project as well i was like i have to have them because i've been talking about them for

so long and man they work just they work perfectly for most genius product ever um so yeah i feel like it's something that they could come up and figure out how to do like i i think they need like a speaker snap with like a magnet on the bottom and it's kind of like a like in and out for ir and you can just cut the ir and then speakers snap it together with a little snap thing right just snap it in and it would work right am i am i overthinking this you know if you bought yeah if you bought a thousand dollar 3d printer you can 3d print is that all i need genius you know i'm just saying like you know throw some money to solve your problem yeah i feel like if i tell speaker snap hey i got this idea take your speaker snap and give us little snaps and then put a magnet

on the bottom where i can just stick it on a shelf like because really the ir cables are just so light and annoying they just get in the way yeah you don't need a lot of weight stick it on the shelf and it it'll like i can cut it to length and then when i stick it on the shelf i've got an in and out and if i ever have to like i'm never gonna have to move that shelf and then to redo the whole rack again right so like if i ever have to change out the equipment i'll just take another ir and snip it to length and then plug it into the little speaker snap thing that's magneted onto the shelf. Right. Make it big enough to put a label on it if I got to.

Right. So I don't like, yeah, that's, that's another problem with IR cables, labeling them. Cause after they're all bundled together, guess what? You can't really do very well. I think you're the only one that uses IR still. Yeah, I know. Right. Everybody's using IP and I'm sitting here like, no, IR works.

Why would you use IP? Crazy. IP and serial or bust yeah yeah it's pretty funny serials outlasted well i mean it's great i mean for two-way two-way comms serial is the way to go over ip any day of the week because um it just works it just works yeah once you figure out the bot right and everything yeah i mean the problem with serial and i tell people this all the time like problem with serial is that there's no blinky lights to tell you that it's working or not right you plug it in and you're like did the command go through i don't know did the thing turn on

and then you you have all sorts of problems you go back and it turns out you have the wrong cable or uh either the baud rate's wrong like you said or the bits are wrong and something something's set up wrong and it just takes a bit of troubleshooting but then once you get it in place guess what it will never break for the entire lifetime of the entire system like it just will not you can't you can't break it unless somebody pulls physically pulls the cable out um it won't break so serial way to go the ip is just problematic because the little tcp servers and everything crash all the time. Little chips they have. No, you don't need that. Serial goes right to the control chip.

It's a straight, it's a straight shot in. It's all you need. It's amazing. You're going to be some 60 year old guy yelling about serial and IR control. It's amazing. All right. I think that's going to wrap up the show tonight. We do 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 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 single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for

pilgrimages from various home automation systems into a home assistant, it seems, because that's what people are doing these days. They're just migrating. They're migrating. They're doing it. They're doing it, Gavin. If only I could get some kind of financial gain out of this. Yep. One of these days we'll get paid. I'm sure it's coming. Open source pays really well, I'm told. told so it does if you want to help out uh the show but can't support financially totally understand we 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 humtech everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week till next time take care well yeah i gotta i gotta pick uh pick our our plate package or buffet packages and i'll get ice cream and think about tj you say you're gonna eat ice cream and think about me oh yeah i was gonna get ice cream at the honey ice cream oh yeah i think that kind of came out a little i don't know if you should think about me as you're eating ice cream set especially if you're drunk i feel like that's a bad combination dude yeah almost as bad as thinking about them while you're eating a banana that would be more appropriate

oh man we'll let you that one was on the recorded part of this that's right i'll leave it in the show oh that's a post show this is primo patreon material here home tech after dark oh boy