HomeTech.fm - Episode 496 - Chick-fa-lix Plus

Episode Date: August 31, 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: CEDIA is right around the corner, Ubiquiti unveils UniFi Premium Audio, Luon launches Apple Home compatible devices, Wyze introduces a smart bird feeder, Chick-fil-A surprisingly enters the streaming service arena, Ring adds package detection to its budget doorbell, Samsung promises 7 years of TV updates, Amazon's Echo Show 8 loses a key feature, and Govee releases Matter-compatible outdoor lights. We dive into a mailbag question about window sensors, share a thrilling pick of the week, give project updates, and take a look at things for TJ to do in Springfield, Missouri. All this and more on this packed episode!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, 30th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm CJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation. It's time for CD again. Home Tech Happy Hours. Yay. animation it's time for cd again home tech happy hours yay if you uh if you're at in denver next

next week next friday come on over to the home tech happy hour we're having a happy hour when is it it's friday what friday the only friday what is it the friday of next week next week yeah uh we will be at the rock bottom brewery and guess what we have a sponsor this year channel mainsoft stepped up last week and i think we, like during the show recording last week, they were nice enough to sponsor as a host of the happy hour. So if you need a driver or a module or a plug-in for one of any nine different control systems, Chow Mein Soft's where you go.

Because they have a large marketplace for drivers. It's probably the largest in the world at this point because they have tons of stuff over there. So go over to chowmein.software and check them out. Alan was nice enough to be on the show a couple of weeks back too. So if you want to check out that interview there as well, you can.

But thanks again. Thanks so much to Alan and the team over there at Chowmein Soft. I really do appreciate it. And helping us out with the Home Tech Happy Hour and go RSVP. I got to tell them like how many people are coming. So it would be helpful if we knew that.

So if you're planning on being in Denver and you want to swing by, just for a couple minutes. Doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be long. Just come say hi. Rock Bottom Brewery downtown at 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday. What is that? The 6th.

So yeah, come on by. If you hang out with Seth long enough, you might get some honeycomb ice cream. Might get the ice cream. I'm a little disappointed that Gavin and I can't be there this year, but I know you're going to have a lot of fun, Seth. I know you're going to see some cool vendors over there.

Maybe go check out some new Ubiquiti stuff we'll talk about later. Don't stress out too much setting up your booth and stuff this year, because last year you looked kind of rough, buddy. Last year? I don't even want to think about last year i was what was funny is uh like i think it was last week of the week before i sent like here's where we were last year at this time and it was that's when i had flown out to utah to look at the booth being built and it was just a bunch of sawdust and like rough boards not even painted or anything like it was

it was it was it was crazy so like thinking like how far along we are right now versus like where we were then like they were building that booth up into the day it had to be shipped and delivered and uh they got it done so that was that was awesome but man yeah i'm not gonna be soldering a bunch of lights together this time i don't have to install any of that stuff. It all gets done. So that should be a lot less stressful. We set up a small size booth at InfoCob. Say small.

It's the same booth. It just had, there's an extension we can take out and make it have a smaller footprint. And it went up, like it was done. When we got there, I basically flipped the switch on, hooked a bunch of wires up and we were good to go. So that was nice. Nice when a plan like that comes together. Awesome. gotta make it nice and easy because i i couldn't even imagine setting up for those events i know just flying in and getting prepared is is uh annoying

sometimes i couldn't even imagine setting up a booth and dealing with all that so yeah i'll be glad we're there i think we get on uh we're there on like tuesday doing our setup i think tuesday and wednesday and the show opens thursday friday saturday i don't know why they do saturday seems like a wasted day yeah the saturday always confused me we didn't go saturday last year we just skipped it and went to the zoo nobody goes to go no one's there on saturday it's the it's the day that like the cornhole things come out and vendors play in the aisles like because there's no one there but the vendors i don't know why they do it all the vendor meetings are on Saturday.

We're going to miss you guys. It's going to be sad. You know, I just got to give a shout out to Keith. He reached out on Twitter and he offered up a room, you know, to stay and sleep not far from the convention, you know, even through in coffee in the morning and dinner and drinks at night. As tempting as that all is Keith, you forgot the other part. We need a jet you know i'm sorry you know choosing beggar over here i know man the private jet keith

gavin's a gavin's an executive now he needs the private jet life if he can't get the private jet life he doesn't want to go anywhere yeah he's being taken out for steak dinners all the time and yeah we hear about him but i i appreciate i appreciate the offer keith he says it's open for tj too but um tj needs a jet as well you know tj said he'll fly spirit yeah i i don't need a private jet i could honestly just fly spirit i've flown frontier he needs a plane ticket then. He'll even fly in a Delta or not. No, a Boeing,

a Boeing. Oh, I don't know about Boeing. Sorry. Can you take a train there? I would take, well, I don't know if I'd take a train.

It'd probably take a while. I did a train ride to New York one time and that was like 24 hours. So I can't imagine how long it would take to get to Colorado. That does sound fun though. I mean, what if you were just out of pocket for a week while you get there? And it's like, Oh, I'm here. week while you get there? It's like, oh, I'm here. Roll up downtown at the train station. It's like, oh, I'm here

now. Fit in with the rest of Denver. Yeah, because there's so many places to just lay around down there. That's right. All right. Well, if you are in Denver, swing by the Home Tech Happy Hour Friday, 6 to 9 p.m.

We'll have some drinks and food there. We'll be hanging out and having a chat. And yeah, just stop on by. We got a couple of... I was looking at the CD headlines. There weren't very many CD headlines. I was kind of... It's a nice coffee, Gavin.

Tim Horton's cup just showed up on my desk. I didn't even see it coming. Nice delivery. I appreciate't even see it coming. Nice delivery. I appreciate it. Whoever dropped off this Tim Hortons coffee, I appreciate it. They don't even work in the Tim Hortons up here, and they bring coffee to you up there? I'm jealous. Wow.

Canadian life, you know? Wow. Healthcare and coffee. All right. Well, we have a couple of new products. I thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be Alcidia news this week, and I really didn't see very much out there. So I'm kind of curious as to what's going to go on next week at the show. It may just be a bunch

of like refreshes on the products. We'll see. We'll see. There's a couple of new things to kind of go and check out. But we do have a couple of new products here in the Home Tech Headline. So what do you say we jump in? Let's do it. All right, well, I don't think we're going to get very far without talking about what Unify has done. They will be at CD as well next week. They've had this big, giant booth. It's been right next to ours.

And I've been looking at their space. I'm like, what are they going to show in this giant space that they have? Because they have some of the smallest products. Everything they have will fit in a tiny rack and then they have a couple access points i think literally last time they just had a table set up with all that was it it was like a giant booth with a table and a digital signage behind it and so it's like oh they're just going to do that again well no no they come out with a surprise here a surprise here uh they have launched a pro audio line, basically.

They have a new premium speaker amplifier designed with high-fidelity multi-zone audio streaming and immersive spatial sound experiences. Low-latency wireless audio streaming with Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, 130 watts per channel at 8 ohms. It has two speaker terminals, one RCA analog symbol for output,

and it's got two RCA inputs for left and right channels. So you can hook up that, I guess, record player to it. I don't know. And it's got at one HCMI eARC input for immersive spatial sound powered by Dolby Atmos. Uh, and then of course the strangest thing they have on here, they've got a one and a half inch ish roughly uh rotary knob touchscreen on the front of this thing it looks like a nest thermostat to been slapped on the front of its own oh amplifier it's so weird uh but what does this thing what we find this thing was six hundred dollars five ninety nine and available august 29th uh also comes in white and black as well so there's there's two different colors so let's go around uh gavin what do you think about this thing i think it's really cool like

my first thought when i looked at it was who's gonna sue them first sonos or google because it looks like they took both of their products and just glued them together and did a little bit but i i think it's really cool um i'm always you know when you get into the home audio i wonder if they're gonna be be making speakers next, maybe. We never know with these guys. They're just coming out with so many products. The only thing that I really didn't like, why didn't they just make it fully rack mountable? Like, it kind of just, it's a couple of amps that you're just sitting in your shelf, you know, in your rack.

And I'm like, why didn't they just make it like a proper rack mountable device? So it matches all the rest of their gear. It kind of just sticks out. So maybe they'll come out with an accessory, you know, like plates with a little hole in it for the thermostat to stick through and you just cover it up. And it looks like it's rack mounted. It uses 2U, I believe it said. It's got a lot of features.

I believe you said it's got more features than what they even list. Like there's a lot more that it covers in it. Well, it has in their tech specs, it has, well, they talk about the Spotify Connect and the Apple Airplay 2, which are primarily not used in commercial audio. So if you're thinking about commercial they also are coming out they have support it says what was it november 8th for soundtrack your brand which is kind of a a commercial ascap bmi licensed audio playing thing where you basically you go on and pick whatever playlist you want to um your your store to have or whatever and it'll play that without you know the you potential of having like an offensive curse word laden swan like it's it's it's just gonna like filter out and play radio edits of everything yeah and

price wise it looks like they're competing on price with the sonos amp i mean 599 us that's like 800 canadian uh it's still i don't know if I would be there. That's kind of expensive, but I was also looking at Sonos Amp. So I may have a decision to make, you know, for my backyard speakers. We will see. I have many used to spare in my rack. Yeah, I can see this definitely being an appealing product if you're already in the Ubiquiti system. One of the things I like about Ubiquiti is that if I'm going to sell a Ubiquiti Wi-Fi system I can easily add on cameras without a bunch of extra expense and so especially if I get into houses with architectural speakers throughout and I'm already doing the network and maybe cameras I can go ahead and tack on a music system it all works throughout the same ecosystem and so that is pretty

appealing to me when I first saw this I think somebody in the Slack channel posted it. When I first saw it, I just like, I didn't like it instantly. And I don't know why. I just like Ubiquiti doing an audio product just sounds silly. But the more I looked into it, I think, honestly, I think it's a good fit.

I think they should come out with just a streaming device next. Hopefully they do that, kind of like the Sonos port. So that way, if you want to put this in a commercial environment but they have 70 volt or their own amplifier already then you can just tack this on so i can see that coming out in the future at some point if this is successful um but

i don't i like it it's got e-arc it's got all the normal connections you would expect from an amplifier like this yeah uh it yeah i was just looking you you guys were talking about the sonos amp i was looking up at the sonos amp dimensions were and uh and comparing it to this one and roughly they are roughly the same sonos is 8.54 uh squared essentially so 8.54 inches or if we're going to go with the millimeters, we'll say 217 millimeters squared. And then, uh, let's see the unify one was 8.5 on the money. Not, not with the five, four, just 8.5 inches by 8.5 inches. Now there's a caveat to this because on their, on their dimensions, I have to find this out next week. It says with the knob, it's 8.5 by 9.3 but without the knob it's 8.5 by 8.5 so that that leaves like can you take the knob off or can you buy it without the knob the knob's got i want to

disconnect the knob i want to take the knob off and run around like i i want to go to cd and just pull the knob off this front of the sonos thing i want to see how you kicked out but no i think i think that is i think they're saying that for rack mounted stuff because on a rack um the depth of the rack matters um but typically on the front you have a little bit of extra space and so that's probably what they're accounting for i doubt this is a removable knob i really wanted to remove remove the knob like i wish they would have just built the screen into the device itself and then put something like that, you know, kept it like flat instead of look like a device. He just stuck a Nest thermostat on. Yeah, it totally looks like the Nest thermostat stuck on the front of it.

I mean, it it really does. Like even with the rotary dial and it's so weird. They have other products that have the little touchscreens built onto them that are slightly useful. And I mean, I guess why they, in this case, they would definitely need more, like the rotary thing makes sense, like for an amplifier control to turn up and down the volume. It also makes sense for interacting with other, uh, like menu structures and everything on here, like that you can't exactly have on the touchscreen itself, like, you know, moving back and forth through playlists quickly, the rotary knob is going to be better. Man, it just, it's a weird flare on the front of

this thing that just makes it look a little strange. I'm not sure about it. One of the things we were talking about before is like, who is this targeted after? And I really think looking at this, like, this isn't a commercial product. Like it looks like it's a commercial product, but at $599, it's going to be really expensive for these small, like the Soho offices, right? The offices that you're going to have to get a pair of speakers and put them on the ceiling or connect, you know, wall mount speakers or whatever. And then you're going to have to get this $600 amp, which is on par with the, what, Sonos amp as well. And then you're going to have to like, that's all you get. And then in the commercial world,

you typically have 70 volt systems. You don't have these 8 ohm systems. So I don't know. This is a really strange product. I'm very curious if later on, like you were saying, Gavin, it's not a rack mount piece, but like I'm curious if like later on

they come out with a 2RU rack mount piece that is like got a built in 70 volt amp and that way you can just power all the speakers and maybe they did this on purpose so it's not confined to a rack so this is maybe something you can have under your TV on a shelf somewhere and still

you have physical control so if you're going to make a rack mount product I want it to be a real rack mount product but I can see why they did this too. of this thing set on, you know, someone's living room. I don't know the little entertainment center underneath the TV with the two tower speakers next to it and a couch facing the TV. Like it's, it's clearly a living room set up for this. And I, I just, I really, I really feel like this is not, there's gotta be more to this because all we kind of go into some of the other stuff that they announced alongside of this, I think it's kind of a bigger bigger deal uh at least for commercial spaces and commercial av this this

doesn't this just misses the mark in so many ways with whether it's the product design eight ohms versus 70 ohms you're like no options there i don't know and being almost like an exact replica of sonos plus a nest thermostat on the front of it. Like, I don't know. It seems like, it seems like as far as design goes, this misses the mark. Like you're not going to be able to install this in very many commercial environments because of, frankly, it just doesn't have 70 volt. Like you've got to have 70 volt. It doesn't have any RCA outputs that you can use to go to actual real 70 volt amplifier. I really feel like this is, this is going to compete with the Sonos amp, which I can't say I've ever looked at that product and said, Oh, that'll work great in a commercial environment either. Some of the other

things that they, they kind of, they had this video that came out and had some security, or I guess it was like some notification updates where they were showing off some of the AI things that go along with their cameras. And you can see a license plate come up and then send a Slack message to you. If, if someone pulls up at a gate or a gate opens or closes and that kind of thing, I thought that was pretty cool. Like you can do all sorts of stuff with notifications now and you can actually turn the notification. You can like day part the notification. So if you don't want them to notify you after 5 PM or before eight in the

morning, you can turn them off then. And that was really, really nice. One of the biggest things that they, they actually announced that they were joining the SVDOE Alliance. And that is like the kind of an AV initiative to have standards-based, what's it, like AV over IP stuff. So they've added new profiles for many of the commercial audio and video over IP solutions. So let's just go over a couple of them here. Dante Audio, Q-SYS Audio and Video, Q-SYS Video with Dante Audio, Shure Audio, Crestron Audio and Video, AES67, SVDOE with AES67, SDVOE with Dante Audio, NDI with AES67 and NDI with Dante. So they have these profiles on many, many, many of their switches. I was looking at like the, we'll put a link to the help desk article in the show notes, but I was looking at like how many switches they have. It's a ton of them that support it.

Now used to, you could, you could do this, but you'd have to like SSH into do this but you'd have to like sh ssh into the switch you'd have to like turn on some debug functions it was awful yeah you'd have to go in there and you'd run some command lines to make some of this stuff happen but guess what when the system updated all that got wiped uh it it never it never saved from you know between unify updates at three in the morning uh that randomly happened so yeah people people weren't using it for any of this and now it's as quick as easy as like clicking what ports you want to apply this stuff to and hitting you know dante audio is going to live here or um sdvoe or igmp stuff is going to live over here it's it's really cool this i think this is a bigger deal than

most people recognize because it it's many many many of their switches like even some of their older switches that'll that'll be able to do this yeah i mean it's pretty cool pretty cool that they're adding this and it's one of those things that um has always been a pain in the butt i mean i haven't really done uh hdmi or video over ip in a while um which is not just not my thing um but 10 years ago when I was doing it, you literally had to SSH into it and do everything. It was very awful and very confusing. And tech support always sends you this long email with all this information on how to do it.

And it's like, I have to do all of this just so I can watch TV over here. There has to be an easier way. Well, there is. And a lot of the manufacturers have come out with solutions for that uh net gear seems to be leading the charge like they have a complete av av line of their their switches we sell them at work that's why i'm familiar with them but they

they have this already like the little profile thing and i i use it the other day you gotta go in and say okay well this needs to be kind of on its vlan it's going to do this optimize it for dante audio like that. And you click that. Once you do that, boom, the profile is applied. It changes all these settings in the background for this one thing that used to be like a million different commands

that you have to issue on the command line. And it's done. So good stuff there. It's nice to see that feature come to Unify because they have a nice interface for it. It really looks good. All right, we got a new product here. I think this is more of a UK product,

but Luon, it's a Warsaw-based company, has launched a new suite of Apple Home-compatible products, including the Lubase Hub devices and the LuHome app. The Lubase Hub uses a proprietary wireless protocol called Lu air, which is based on ESP now and operates in the 2.4 gigahertz range. Let's keep it, put a bookmark on that ESP now,

because it's actually a pretty cool thing. Unlike other hubs, it uses its own operating system called Lu on OS and make sure that all the data remains local with no external server connections, but it only really just works with Apple HomeKit, like all their devices and everything just kind of get bridged right into Apple HomeKit. The ESP now thing is actually kind of interesting because that is,

it was kind of introduced by expressive. It's kind of a standard thing that they have that will link the ESP 32 chips together kind of in the background over I think a little Wi-Fi mesh thing that they set up so it's really cool they announced that not too long ago and those ESP chips you can actually set up kind of on their own network completely separate from anything else and a lot of people have been talking about that so it's really cool to see a product using that um they also announced a uh a lube bulb lu bulb it's a e27 color light bulb they also had a sensor i saw as well and present sensor present sensor yeah yeah it looks pretty nice a bunch of cool stuff yep yeah honestly i've never heard of this company but a couple of devices look nice that that blue

present sensor um it's just a black square but it doesn't look and it doesn't look weird or out of place like the akara fp2 um i got a couple of nice devices here i wonder if we'll start seeing them more often and especially with this new technology here and actually yeah there's a lot to this like you have to when you start looking at the esp now stuff uh all the background communication and what it can do is actually pretty cool. But it's now yet another communication protocol that's being introduced. Like, we need another one. Yeah, well, it kind of is. Like, it's not a protocol.

It's just something they built. The ESP company, Expressive, sorry, sorry esp chip manufacturing company built into their chips to easily set up and like you can just bridge these devices together if they have the esp chips and with them it supposedly it works really well and it's it's just a really cool way to kind of bootstrap on what they're calling their proprietary protocol that communicates with their devices and whatnot but it's essentially just a wireless network they're setting their proprietary protocol that communicates with their devices and whatnot. But it's essentially just a wireless network they're setting up. I don't know. I really like this because it kind of keeps everything like it just kind of mashes everything right over into the

HomeKit ecosystem. So it kind of makes, they don't really have to do much other than make sure that the devices connect to each other and get published out onto like a HomeKit compatible thing. And as long as they do that you're good to go kind of kind of it's kind of nice like as a manufacturer like if you think about it they don't even have to develop a ui or anything they just they just have to have the ability to have something that like connects these products together make it makes it really easy pairs them together and boom you're done off to the races that that's true because in home in home kit you'll do all the automations and everything all this is just doing is bridging these devices together through their hub straight

to the home kit yep so yeah it's it's pretty cool i wonder if it will suffer from any like it runs on 2.4 you said so i wonder if it will like cause any interference with other networks or suffer from like because you're you're going to be competing with not only wireless stuff but also zigbee in your house yeah i don't i don't remember um i i was i've been watching i watched a couple of like youtube videos on people that were you know basically taking two expressive chips and saying oh this is something that's been like in these chips i guess and they were like they just published like how to activate it and they were setting it up and having like two things talk to talk to each

other using that um ad hoc i guess ad hoc network i guess is what it is i don't know it's pretty cool the lubase hub uh is 163 euro and then the lube bulb is 25 euro so for for some pricing information there they actually have all this on on their on their website uh if you are using this uh let us know let us know what you think about it it's not a cheap hub it's that's like 245 canadian when i do the translation right especially for like a dozen devices yeah not that. For something that all it does is bridge. It's just a bridge, really. So it's kind of expensive. I mean, for that kind of price, you can get like a Hubitat hub, you know, for cheaper than that, right?

You can get like a SmartThings hub for... I'm trying to avoid saying Home Assistant, if you could tell. Yeah, just get Home Assistant. All right, all right. For less than that, you can get Home Assistant. They won't pay us, Gavin, unless you say their name. Okay. We aren't getting paid enough, Home Assistant. It's all that open source money. Well, I don't know.

It's a pretty cool product. Maybe a little on the pricier side, but I don't know. If you're using something like this, let us know. Let us know how it's going. Well, your My Favorite Company has come let us know how it's going. Well, uh, you're my favorite company has come out with a new product wise. They've come out with a new bird feeder product. I guess this is an accessory is a kick is best.

I can describe it. It's a camera accessory. It lets you view record live video of your fur feathered visitors and feed them because it's, it's basically's basically it's a it's a blue blue bodied like bird feeder with an orange top that you can kind of snap in a camera into a wise camera into it and uh maybe maybe a uh solar panel on top as well like kind of like snaps all together and you fill it up with bird bird food and it's got it includes in a macro lens adapter so you can see up close see those birds up close

by itself is $50 and it's $40 on sale right now and if you buy it with a camera it's $130.39 this this looks like i don't know this is this is probably one of the strangest wise products i've ever seen because there's no ai on here it doesn't tell you what birds are there but it just tells you that there's a bird some motion there and the bird's eating right i had the i had the opposite reaction from the ubiquity product that i do for this one when i saw this one i was super excited because i want i want one of those like bird buddies or whatever they are the the ai bird feeder but i don't want to spend like 300 on them just i don't like birds that much and when i saw this i was like 40 not bad and i was like okay we add the camera to it and then you add a solar panel and it's at 140 with with the labor day sale right now and you're basically already there to

the the bird buddy or whatever uh alternatives there are there and uh they actually uh built this or those companies actually built their products wise just created a bird feeder um because you can get the solar panel and everything to power the camera but it's like a separate add-on thing it's not even like built into the bird feeder or anything so i don't know this is a good idea i feel like if you already have the camera but if you don't have the camera i'm not sure i would get this and for me i really want the ai i want to be able to just look at like a photo album of all the birds or something that that are the same type of bird um so that way i can just see all of them at one place so and and

you you brought it up too i thought of the bird buddy too when I first saw this. We heard about that big time on Home Catcher Geeks podcast, which you are going to be on there on Thursday. I got you, TJ. I got you. But I thought it would be another lawsuit right here. It doesn't make sense. I don't know why they're doing this but as seth pointed out before the show if you go to printables.com you could download a 3d model of a bird feeder that you could put a camera in you know like save yourself the money you know time to print gavin yeah with uh saving money i mean right now it's what uh with the labor day sales and stuff that are on right now so bird buddy is all 30% off too.

So you can get the Bird Buddy smart bird feeder with solar roof for $209. And you have the subscription for like ever, but I mean at the same time you're going to get the benefits of it. It's the AI. If you just want like a camera that's disguised as a bird feeder, I feel like the Wyze is probably a good idea. But if you actually want like a bird feeder that tells you about birds then you're not going to get and they even have they have a hummingbird feeder so if you're not

interested in feeding the the bird buddy does they have a bird buddy smart hummingbird feeder you know i tried to do a hummingbird feeder this year but you gotta change it like every like four days or something yeah they get sick and i was like i'm not that uh not that dedicated i don't i don't think the bird feeders is as pop is going to be as popular as the Wyze car. The Wyze car, I feel like, has a better value. They even bring the socks back. The socks were actually pretty good. I like how the Bird Buddy ad, the person that's using it has like four of them on their phone, connected to their phone.

Dang. At $300 each, he's a bird lover. Got money bags over here. Yeah, exactly. How many 3D printers I can get for that? One. Man, $210 is such a good price. I'm going to wait for the holidays, though.

I'm sure it'll go even more. Black Friday. Yeah. You know how some people are like crazy cat ladies? I'm a crazy bird person. We got like four bird feeders. You need to get the bird net thing going so you can identify who's out there chirping yeah i'm too lazy for that i thought about it for about 30 seconds

all right well let's move on here we've got got some streaming news this is a report um interesting report we found this over in the verge chick-fil-a is reportedly entering a the crowded streaming service market with plans to launch its own platform later this year. The fast food chain is collaborating with the production companies and traditional studios to create original content initially focused on family-friendly unscripted programming. One of the first shows will be a game show produced by Glassman Media

and Sugar23. Future content could include scripted series, animation, and licensed or acquired material so uh chick-fil-a what do we guys we get everything had a what a plus chick-fil-a plus yeah chick-fil-a plus there we go actually i forget who it was i was listening to the verge podcast and i think it was david pierce uh he's he guessed that it's gonna be called the sauce and i was like that is that is a really good name you know think good name at that, yeah. That would be good.

Yeah, this is one of those things that make you scratch your head. Everybody's kind of losing money on streaming and kind of condensing and everything like that. And Chick-fil-A wants to come out with a streaming service. I don't really understand the play here. They do have a couple random websites. So I think it fits one of those things. But streaming services are very money-intensive. So if you're going to do it, you have to spend a lot of money.

And it seems like one of those weird things for a chicken restaurant to spend their money on. I'm so confused. You know, when you're watching all these other streaming services struggle to survive, then you have them coming in starting up one but they don't sell milkshakes and chicken nuggets over there at disney plus that's true maybe with your chick flicks uh subscription you can chick chick play plus the sauce saucy plus maybe maybe get a discount at their stores who knows knows? They can use that. Maybe the play, instead of selling a monthly membership, you have to buy Chick-fil-A food in order to get points that you can redeem for days on the streaming service.

So instead of just being able to pay $10 a month, Chick-fil-A is like, no, if you buy three chicken sandwiches, it will give you a month for free. There you go. There you go. It helps support their business. uh that's right i guess i it sounds like whatever they're producing doesn't really cost that much like there's a couple of uh game shows or something like that that's it yeah game show i don't know it it'll definitely be ad advertising supported there probably is like

a market for family friendly video content stuff that doesn't necessarily fit into like disney or like hbo and stuff like that and like old like game shows and and old uh family shows that kind of just don't really go anywhere so maybe that's gonna be their play that's just like family friendly content kind of like disney but not just disney yeah i mean disney disney's kind of like very different than the old disney channel you just disney yeah i mean disney disney's kind of like very different than the old disney channel you know disney kids or whatever that we used to watch it's like oh we used to watch i we used to like get for what what was it like a week or something that they would turn on the disney channel to tease you with and you watch all the channels and watch

all of the shows as much as you could and then like it would go back to being scrambled oh man that's awful yeah they used to do that a lot back in the days give you a free free preview weekend or something like that wow we had direct tv so i don't i don't know the struggles i didn't realize there were so many chick-fil-a's around me i remember when they opened up the first one now i have two within driving distance not too bad they multiply like mormons so yeah there's like there's like 15 or so location oh not that many looks like about 10 now i'm seeing around us wow they just like multiplied yeah it's one of the one of the things you drive by at lunch and it's just like there's people packed out all the way around the parking lot out into the street

trying to get in so it's wild there's two companies that go in around town that i know are going to be built on time and it's sheets and chick-fil-a if i see a chick-fil-a or sheets sheets is for you uh you southerners or canadians uh sheets is basically wawa uh they both came out of similar spots actually both came out of pennsylvania from what i. What's Wawa? It's a fancy gas station. Fancy gas station. Oh, okay. They sell food and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

It's not Bucky's level, which is like a Walmart with gas stations attached. Bucky's is a horror show. Oh, my gosh. We went on one of those on vacation. It's a nightmare. I will never go back to one in my life. I'm glad I'm not the only one, because when people tell me how much they love bucky's i'm like that was like my worst experience at a gas station ever it was so bad it was so bad there's there's gavin it's ridiculous there's

like literally a hundred gas pumps not even exaggerating like a hundred gas pumps and like there's like a store and it's like the size of a freaking walmart and it's just like full of like jerky and brisket tacos and people and people and people just love hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and they just they're and the thing to do is is is when you get done with your gas you just leave your car there and walk on in yeah because there's so many pumps that's a matter but then you forget where your car is because it's like that's so big like where did i park it where's pump 83 yeah the one we went to it yeah there was definitely not enough

pumps for the people that were exiting to go to this thing. And it was just, we were just like, where are we going to, we can't get gas. Like we're just sitting here waiting to get gas. You know, we were pushing it anyway to make it to the Buc-ee's because everybody told me it was so good to go to. And we get there and it's a nightmare to get gas. And then a nightmare to like go inside to use the restroom. Oh my gosh. The restrooms. the restrooms no everybody's like oh the restrooms are great no no don't ever go to bucky's that's my my story i'm sticking to it yeah we're still on daytona beach so maybe that's what skewed my my uh opinion all the meth around daytona this is something all right well um yeah moving on from gas stations here speaking of of gas stations, no, wait, no, wait. Uh, ring is updated entry-level battery powered

doorbell camera to include a new head to toe view, improving package visibility on your porch. Great. You can see the packages, uh, uh, you should call it the package peeper, right? That's no, I'm not good at marketing. All marketing all right the 99 ring battery doorbell now features a one by one aspect ratio and 150 degree by 150 degree field of view matching the former the format of its higher end models the update also brings improved battery life color night vision and additionally it will be redesigned mounting system for easy removal when charging. 1080p video, unlike the higher-res versions that have 1536p, it's got standard PIR motion sensor,

not the fancy radar sensor that the other ones have. And let's see, it doesn't have a removable battery, so you'll need to take it down, charge it up, and bring it back if you're not hardwired to the doorbell wiring uh ring claims that the model offers up to 23 percent longer battery life compared to its predecessor the ring video doorbell 200 bucks not not a bad deal uh and these package cameras man these these are great i i i love the the unify g4 one has that look down camera and uh and they finally enabled like the AI and it seems to start being working a little bit better.

And it tells me there's a package all the time, like out there, Amazon drops something off, throws something at the door, it sees it and it picks it up and sends me an email and says, hey, there's a package at your front door. Yeah, I have the original Unifi doorbell and I kind of want to upgrade to one of the dual package video doorbells. I really don't care what brand it is at this point, because I've installed a couple for clients, and it is nice to have that secondary camera just to see below, and especially depending on the makeup of the door entryway and everything, too. It can really add on there. Do you guys not get notifications from your Amazon or delivery services

when they drop off a package? Yeah, I do. But sometimes I'll get the Unify one first, and then a couple of minutes later, the Amazon one will come through. And then sometimes, like UPS or the post office, no. The post just drops. If it's something that's too big to fit in the mailbox, he'll just bring it up and set it on the front porch, and that'll be there. Yeah, not everything's Amazon, Gavin. Come on. up and set it on the front porch and and that'll be there yeah not everything's amazon gavin come on well no with a lot of our services i actually get a notification when they've delivered it with

a little picture showing someone else's door and you know it's a neighborhood hunt to find out where your package is but even with my post i i actually i find with whoever you bought it from actually notifies you so i guess they notify their service and then their service then notifies me that's been delivered and that's usually pretty quick that that comes across i will say that uh these the the one the unified g4 i think it is yeah the g4 it has like a little light on it but uh that the the package peeper camera i'm just gonna call it that from now on it it doesn't have like night vision on it. Like the doorbell does. So at night it's just a black square. Like you can't see anything. And I guess, I guess if somebody like opened the door or walked up to it

and it turned that little flashlight on that little entry light that they have, you might be able to see something, but like for the most part, it does not work at night. So it's, it's pretty much a daytime only camera. Um, I'm not complaining. I really liked, I really liked the feature and I really liked getting little notifications and knowing that something like if we're on vacation or something, you miss those notifications or whatever you can look and you can, we, we always can check and see if there's something in the package and maybe somebody, you know, we can call somebody and come pick up something there. So, um, I, I think it's a, it's a great feature that they, they can keep adding onto these things that really add onto, I mean, for 99 bucks, you can't beat that.

Like, it's pretty good. Yeah, absolutely. And battery powered. I mean, how often, I wouldn't really imagine, you know, a couple of years ago, you'd be able to get a dual camera battery powered video doorbell. So, yeah, that is pretty impressive. And it's not recording 24-7, but still. I don't think this has the dual camera. I think this just has a wide field view

and they're using it to like identify unless i read that wrong i think it's just a wide angle lens maybe i'm wrong using it to identify if there's a package there on the ground so i don't know yeah that's true it's just nice to see your entire front porch somewhere and you can also always see the person come up when they when they come up and take it they come up and take your package you know show me my package. Exactly. All right, good news. If you have a Samsung TV, or at least one purchased in 2023, 2024,

Samsung has announced that it will provide operating system updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years. Commitment is aimed at maintaining market leadership and addressing concerns about e-waste and the longevity of expensive products. The updates will apply to TVs with AI-based features aligning with Samsung's strategy to compete against the rising Chinese brands. Samsung's margin share has seen a slight decline, while Chinese competitors like TCL

gained ground. So, nice to see. This is seven years. I don't know if I want to have a Samsung TV for seven years but imagine all the ads they can serve you in that amount of time. Oh man, I'm going to be milking you for data. Do Samsung TVs last seven years now? Sure.

Well, yeah, and that's the problem right? Samsung always makes like really nice hardware and really nice devices but they always mess up with software and Samsung TVs, as somebody who installs a lot of TVs, Samsung software on their TVs has been getting progressively worse. And it's one of those things that like, I'm sure they're going to update it for seven years, but it's

probably not going to be usable for all those seven years, because they tend to just update it so much and just make it so slow and add so much junk to it that you just don't want to use it and so if you're gonna buy a new tv put an apple tv or roku or something else behind it because the smart tv software is not going to be that good long term even with seven years updates i just i just put a uh samsung tv in the other day and it it was it was bent it was like it was a 65 inch yeah it was a 65 inch and i guess wherever they were storing it was a little warm because when you hang it on the wall like the it was a curved tv but it should not have been a curved tv like oh my god it was

so strange uh yeah so they they they they had to call i guess they probably got it from amazon and they called and got another one and uh to swap it out with so yeah very those tvs now like 65 inch tv used to not be able to lift yourself you know without it is still an awkward size but man they are very thin plastic and and light at this point like it's very it's not hard at all to lift a 65 inch tv i carried a 65 inch samsung q led today by myself. And the only reason it sucked is because they make it so thin that you're basically like grabbing onto it and it's almost cutting into your hands. Like it's not cutting your hands, but it's so thin that it might cut your hands open.

Did it wobble? Like did it like flex when you picked it up? Cause that's, that's. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. It was like moving back and forth and when i set it up at the bottom uh of that samsung menu where the the video is there was a nice little like black semicircle that was cut out in the ui and man i thought i had damaged the panel putting it up because like right in the middle it looks like like uh i could imagine like hitting it

too hard or something and causing this this black semicircle to appear uh luckily it was just just part of the ui i turned turned on it turned that particular menu off man it had me worried it's like man i probably shouldn't have done this by myself but oh well one thing i didn't do uh when i put the tv in was connected to the internet to get seven years of updates but there we go no and that's the other thing is i leave my tv so uh disconnected getting seven years of updates i've seen even on my lg tv updates just seem to break things randomly you know that's one thing i don't want to break giving you giving you more ads they gotta they gotta update the algorithm for the ad

they gotta fix their ads sometimes i turn on my tv and I get like 10 ads, like one after the other, and they just overlay each other. You don't even get time to read the ad. My God, what kind of TV did you get? It's LG. It's a mess. I am not buying LG. Like we need a new TV.

It's their software. Their TV is great. Their software just sucks. I don't even know how to explain it, but, like, they'll release an update and all of a sudden the picture's looking dark again. So I had to go into the service menu and turn off certain features and then it's light again. You know, like, you'd think they would have figured this out by now. Give me relevant ads and also not 10 at a time. I'm not going to tell them how to improve their ads because at least I get hit with a whole bunch of ads and also not 10 at a time i'm not gonna tell them how to improve their ads because at least

i get hit with a whole bunch of ads they disappear but don't give me prompts that require me to use the lg remote to get rid of yeah that's the most annoying thing because i taught the wife now how to switch the harmony remote to lg mode so she can get rid of them but still that's a no yeah sony does that too with little pop-ups to say there's an update there's an update available and it'll it'll be like one of those um little cards that hang up in the corner for a bit it'll go away eventually but it's kind of annoying to see so tv manufacturers stop doing what you're doing just stop it just stop it uh well speaking of stopping here we go owners of the echo show 8 photos edition just got an email from amazon warning them that the photos plus

a subscription service that they paid ten dollars a month for that allowed the display to serve up curated and personal photos as the primary content on the screen will go dark next month uh i guess the way they didn't pay ten dollars more they paid ten dollars more period for it as the primary content on the screen will go dark next month. I guess the way they didn't pay $10 more, they paid $10 more period for it. The photos plus compatibility is the only thing special about the $159 Echo show eight plus photos edition, which costs $10 more compared to the standard third generation Echo show photos edition display is no longer available for purchase on the Amazon

website. So not even for $10. Can we make this product continue goodbye we hardly knew you echo show photos photos edition it's pretty bad when amazon can't even make their subscription services work well i guess that's what i thought it was but it's not a subscription it just cost ten dollars more for this this thing as well just for the hardware piece yeah hmm all right well i can see why they cut it then well we already got our money so oh no no it did cost me it cost $1.99 a month following a six month free trial that included 25 gosh it's such a roller coaster yeah why couldn't they why couldn't they make this work

how much it's one server spin-off how much could it cost nothing nothing they own s3 i don't understand why i don't understand maybe they probably just had like five people using it this didn't not that many people using it it just didn't not that many people using it because for two dollars a month i feel like you can morph that into something better you know i mean what's what's five dollars between friends i i imagine that um once the people started that bought probably didn't buy the ten dollar version right like they again nobody wants these things for photo well i guess photo frames would be a good use for them but what they want them for is a kitchen timer you know uh and so bad jokes and um yeah they're finding out i don't know the photo frame i'm kind of surprised about because it seems like that

would be that idea this is all like on the heels of like the rumors that apple is going to have some kind of like crazy home pod with a with a screen and a robot thing they say they keep saying robot but it's just. I don't think a robot is what they think it is. Yeah, a robot would mean like it scoots around to me, like a robot lawnmower or a robot vacuum that scoots around and does things. I don't think that the HomePod is going to scoot around

or do anything, at least with the intelligence of Siri, it's not going to. So I think with a little like, maybe a motorized arm echo uh has one of these maybe it's the echo show where like it kind of pivots to like face your direction if you're coming to the room well they had they had the astro i don't remember if they had a display that just yeah it's gone yeah i saw somebody selling an astro on facebook the other day it was like 700 i was like maybe well no more photos for you uh you only get the stock photos and advertisements and news and that kind of thing not for two dollars a month i don't know why they

couldn't make this happen it seems like it seems like it would have been a good thing so uh and moving on here govi has launched uh the govi permanent outdoor lights too it's a second generation smart outdoor lighting solution that supports matter enhancing interoperability across platforms like home kit amazon and google uh amazon google and samsung um upgrades allows users to control vibrant customer customizable outdoor lighting through the home app or siri without being locked into apple's ecosystem and this is pretty cool uh to have a new version of these i i bought these i looked at them i really didn't like how they kind of set up

they come in three different sizes 50 foot 100 foot 150 feet you really can't cut the wire to like link or anything like that or add on extensions where you want them to be so you kind of have to like really have those 50 foot 100 foot 150 foot runs where you where you need them to be um but otherwise other than that they're pretty good they're pretty good product i see i've seen a couple of people that have them around town especially during the holidays when they turn them on have like like permanent christmas lights installed they look they look pretty good i i do kind of want to get these because i i want some permanent christmas lights and i've looked into like the various uh like w led and uh using whatever diy sources i could but, I don't have the patience for any of that.

These ones are not the most attractive things, but I do like that they kind of just work and they would I feel like they would work good enough to where when I use them three times a year like that's fine. I'm not sure I need to invest a ton of money into it. The not being extendable thing really bothers me uh because you know the traditional thing with christmas lights is that you can just extend them whenever you need to add more and uh i'm very bad at measuring so i'm probably not gonna be able to get the uh the right amount on this and i have like a large coil somewhere i don't know it's just i don't like it and then

that's why i don't like my um oh crap what are the uh the one christmas lights i have oh twinkly uh twinkly yes i like i like my twinkly because they just work and everything like that but it's got the stupid design where they like split off from the middle and you have two separate wires that go with all the lights and everything and it's just it's hard to plan out so they need to come up with some way to make these extendable and just sell them in like 25 foot segments stop talking sense yeah yeah come on i don't know i think i think they probably have so i i think these are probably like your your lowest burden and like into entry right like wlad is not you you can use it but i i

wouldn't recommend it like the interface on that's pretty horrible. Oh, trust me. I'm trying not to. Yeah. You can actually use them with the Govee lights, but the way they set up differently, it's really weird how Govee does their lights. But as far as like the little software inside that Govee provides you, like out of the box,

flipping the switch from going from like zero to 100%, like I think it's probably one of the better products i've seen out there they do have an api ish i guess they have a local api on some of their products and they have a cloud api that you can use as well like things like home assistant and that kind of thing so i don't know i i think for the price everything you get these are i don't like how these look on on a house they do look kind of tacky. Yeah. They're very... I know why they did it, but it has like a lens that like shines down kind of a harsh light on it, right?

Like it's like a very spotlight looking thing. And of course you have one of these every what, two or three feet? 450 feet. Yeah. It can kind of get opinionated when you see it. I'm looking at the stock image that they have here with the USA house. I'm like, oh man, it's just, it's a bit much. I wonder if AI made this.

Oh, you know it did. I think it had to, because there's like two, there's two garage doors. Well, the third slide says AI, so a hundred percent. Okay. Yeah. The two garage doors gave it away. the one that faces the driveway and the one that's on the side of the house then kind of gave it away a little bit but yeah i don't know i i it's a good product i i have i have their lights that i need to kind of figure out what

happened to them uh i think the powers the well the water got into into the connectors uh and i think that shorted out the power supply so that's probably the issue um but they're they're so far they're a pretty good product and i they were working just fine until we had a massive hurricane flood thing so i i i like these products they're a decent price and i probably would recommend them to people who just like wanted a turnkey solution 50 foot looks like it runs you 179, 100 feet runs you 200 and 100 or 300 and 150 feet runs you $450. Yeah. According to my land survey, my front of my house is only 41 feet. So I mean, a 50 foot segment would definitely just light up the front of the house. Yep. Yep. And I think if you look look on youtube there are people who figured out how to

like cut these and extend them at the same time you might not want to because there are power requirements and things with these pixel leds um that kind of make it tricky to do that with anyway so what what i've seen from like the little gobi lights that i have they're pretty well designed within those tolerances. And you, you probably, if you're extending like around a window or something like that, you're probably fine. But if you think you're going to take the, uh, you know, the 150 foot and you're going to cut off the 50 feet and then run another 50 foot wire from the first floor to the second floor awning or something like that, that's probably not going to work very well in the longterm with

these things. Cause they, they, they're not designed to do that kind of thing. Anyway, let's move on here. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 496. We got something in the mailbag today. Brian writes in, hey guys, really enjoy listening to the show. I wanted to see if you can help with a small issue. Currently, I use a product called Verilock made by Anderson Windows, and I can tell both open close state as well as locked unlock state for my deck and porch doors. They have since discontinued this product, unfortunately, but they work great for my use case. I have a HomeSeer dimmer switch with LEDs built in, and I had those LEDs tie into my garage tilt sensors, door locks,

and these Verilock devices for red or green LED light to tell me if something's locked or unlocked. It was a nice time saver before heading up to bed just to glance over at the switch to see if things were buttoned down rather than making the rounds around the house. It's a great idea. He says, I use Samsung SmartThings and was able to find Anderson Verilock Translator,

which is basically used to convert the signal that comes off the little contacts over to Z-Wave. And that driver was on GitHub for SmartThings that use the Groovy platform. But since SmartThings is switched over to the Edge drivers, I've come up short using every search engine I know of for Edge drivers. So he's come to the Home Tech search engine. Any advice on where I might go? And no, Gavin, he says, I don't want to switch to Home Assistant right now.

Gavin just hung up. Okay. He says, if not, no worries, but I figured he would ask. Let's see. Thanks so much and keep up the great work. Thanks, Brian. Home Assistant.

No, I'm not gonna say that um i have another suggestion habitat like why are you raining on my parade here like jeez i i was gonna let you go first and then drop that but no you already ruined it but you go ahead you go first you go first no i i don't have any suggestion. Mine is home assistant, so. Oh, okay. So, okay. I didn't say it for the record. First of all, I've never heard of this Verilock system.

They are really cool. It's built into the latch for the window. It can detect open, close. It can detect lock, unlock. This is one of those devices i wish they had like a generic version that you can replace your locks on your windows with yeah because it hides really nice you don't have a sensor sitting on the side you know it's right in the window i i was never aware of this i think it's really cool yeah i'm shocked i'm saddened by the fact that it's no

longer being supported being being discontinued. But I hope some vendor looks at this and sees if they can figure out a way to, you know, make a generic version of this that we can all enjoy. Yeah, evidently these were priced like about $100. They added $100 for each one of these contacts. Yeah, and when you're getting those expensive windows, that $100 doesn't really mean. It'll add up, but I mean, you're already paying a lot for those windows, so it's kind of worth it. Yeah. But that being said, I did a little research, and yes, it doesn't look like there's a SmartThings Edge driver, I guess you would call it, for this.

I didn't see anything, but I did see that somebody has a Hubitat driver. And the thing about Hubitat, it uses the same Groovy that SmartThings used to do. So they actually ported, I think, the SmartThings one over. And it works. So if you're looking for another ecosystem, I can highly recommend Hubitat. If you don't want to go as far as a home assistant, I highly recommend Hubitat because of stuff like this. Like they, they are like right there when it comes to like integrating a lot of things or just allowing you to do that. So it's pretty cool.

Take a look at that. But I think what your smart things here as well. Yeah. Yeah. We kind of, we did, we did a bunch of looking into this because after figuring out how cool these contact sensors actually are, we were like, oh, how is this not more popular? And I guess finding out what the price was, that's what kind of took things down, I guess. I guess Anderson discontinued these, what, last year or the year before or something like that, which, you know, I guess makes sense. There's just a lot of information on their website.

But I guess they're using the 5800 honeywell contacts it's just a generic generic honeywell contact sensor inside there uh and they're i mean that that'll that can go to any kind of like a demico honey honeywell panel that that takes what 433 megahertz uh sensors so i i think there's there's a number of different ways of doing this i I think you're just going to have to add another hub, unfortunately. And I was wondering, like, there's probably a way to do, like, the home SEER integration into Hubitat, too, I guess. But if he's, like, really happy with the SmartThings interface and that kind of thing, do you think you can, like, integrate with Hubitat and then bring the states and everything back into Samsung? There used to be a way to link them i don't know if you still can with the new edge system um but that's something to look up too because then if you got a habitat hub you can you know get access to a lot more

things the smart thing system i really liked it when they were on Groovy. When they switched over to Edge, I could see the benefits and stuff, but you lost a lot of things. This is an example of one. Here we go. I found it. Mira is a SmartThings Edge driver that allows devices on a local Hubitat elevation hub to be mirrored back to SmartThings. Communication between the hubs is completely local and the cloud is not used,

and Mira will create a virtual device in SmartThings for each Hubitat device mirrored to it. So yeah, these are pretty cool. We'll put links to this stuff in the show notes. It seems like outside of SmartThings, you have a lot of options. And maybe somebody will get adventurous and port over, I don't know how possible it is, but port over the Groovy Translator. I guess it's called the Verilog Transl translator, which seems to work on Z-Wave. It's a Z-Wave. They just need to translate the messages into what you want, right?

And if you do look at Hubitat, I recommend, you know, wait for like, you know, they go on sale quite frequently. So save a few bucks if you want and wait for the sale date and you can get Hubitat in there, right? And see if that helps. I did not recommend Home Assistant. Yeah. I guess you could probably. Yeah, I think Home Assistant would be hard anyway. So 345 megahertz is kind of hard, or 435, whatever it is.

It's hard to integrate. It does integrate with a lot of alarm systems like Seth was saying, though. So I know like all the panels we use from like two gate and causes work with this frequency but that frequency is if you want to go direct from the sensor right so if you have the verilock hub i don't know what it's called um those connect to that hub and then translates it into z-wave right it's just a translator yeah the verilog translator that it all it was is it like paired with that and then it translated over to z-wave messaging yes exactly which is fine but like at some point like you're gonna that basically that hub is gone consider that hub gone and then

you're replacing it with another hub it may be uh habitat it may be home assistant you know something along those lines i think it looks like you could do what you want to do with with habitat there's just gonna be a decent amount of learning curve to it and then whatever i mean there may be home assistant, you know, something along those lines. I think it looks like you can do what you want to do with Hubitat. There's just going to be a decent amount of learning curve to it. And then whatever, I mean, there may be an alarm panel. Like that could be considered that a hub, right? Like you could hook the alarm panel up, hook that back into smart things or whatever, as long as it integrates with those frequency contacts, right?

We may not have answered this question though, but we probably gave them a directional look, you know? Yeah. Hopefully we helped you out. You have a lot of options. It just seems to me you're going to need another hub. I'm looking at the HomeSeer website, and I don't think I want to look at it anymore. That bad?

It's awful. Their HomeSeer is just the dimmer switch, though. They don't have a HomeSeer hub. Right, yeah. Oh, good, good. I know their dimmer switches aren't nice. Their dimmer switches are generic, they work yeah oh okay yeah they look pretty good all right well like like you said gavin hope hope hope that helped uh

we didn't we didn't we didn't get him to spend a lot of money though like i don't think i think those are budget answers that's good though we like budget answers, we need to get them to spend money? I guess so. Okay. I recommend replacing all your windows. Replace all your windows. There's no point having a window, you know, that you can't use the sensor on. So get rid of those windows and put in something else. Exactly. Exactly. Upgrade them to something supported.

All right. All right. Well, let's move on here. We got a pick of the week. I was in the movie theaters this weekend, and I this trailer came up for the afraid movie. Now, when you watch it, the a and the I are capitalized and afraid because you need to be afraid of AI and man, uh, this, this is a fun, uh, fun film from Sony pictures. It looks like, so yeah, Sony pictures entertainment. Uh, we'll put a link to, uh trailer in uh in the show notes in afraid uh curtis and his family

are selected to test a revolutionary new home device a digital family assistant called aia and taking uh taking smart home to the next level once the unit and all of its sensors and cameras are installed in their home as seems toS. seems to be able to do it all. She learns the family's behavior and begins to anticipate their needs. She can make sure that nothing and no one gets in the family's way. So, yeah, this should be fun. She just gets me. She just gets me. This is not something I'll be afraid of.

If my A.I. wants to stop me from doing stuff and cut the line herself, let her do it. I'm not going to argue. I'm not going to stop anybody. She says, you know, do not leave the couch. Sit there and binge watch these shows. I'll do it. Yep. Sure.

No problem. You know, she'll get me. Buy another 3D printer. Okay. Whatever you say, AI. She got my credit card number already. Go ahead. She'll just order it for you.

Yeah. You know. They could have chosen a better name for this AI, though. It an order for you yeah yeah you know it could show us a better name for this ai though it's hard to say it you know ai yeah i don't know yeah it's just made that a y instead it would have been way more obvious this is a a blumhouse production so it's going to be yeah i like their their productions they're really good or not really good most of them i've seen have been pretty good i mean they have pretty good track they got some good actors in this one too yep yep so yeah how do you escape

i don't know you can't get away always easier i don't know i just thought it was funny when it came up like uh on the other preview here the ai lights up at first and then it turns into afraid i'm like oh my gosh like the marketing nailed this like everybody's uh afraid of ai and now we're gonna have a horror movie based on it so there we go well it's like those uh smart homes you know trying to kill you type movies we've seen before so yeah this one's just a little more closer to home i guess well this one kind of reminded me of what 2000 2001 like a little red eyeball thing that pops up from time to time so yeah 2001 space od space odyssey. It's got that built into it. It's got,

you know, a smart home. Yeah. Why not? Afraid. Go check it out. If you have any feedback, questions,

comments, pics of the week or heck movies, movie recommendations, let us know. Our email address is feedback at home tech. FM, or you can visit home tech. FM slash feedback and fill out the online form.

Uh, project updates. Well, I don't have any, uh, product updates, but i do have an update uh it turns out according to uh from the show uh jimmy over at automated house over there on threads smart home and tablet switch maker brilliant has found a new owner and they were

acquired back in may and guess what i have because when i oh man no take back too early it's not going down after all. Don't don't tell Pete. Yeah, I had that just sitting around and I was like, well, this company is obviously dead. I'm going to go ahead and send it to Seth because I have Seth's address now. So Seth can expect random packages throughout the years. So hopefully you never move because I'm going to send you right. I move and somebody just keeps getting random electronics somebody keeps sending me old

junk electronics ah it's too funny yeah i don't know it's that's funny maybe you can install it then if we attach it to the same brilliant account seth we can use the intercom together and talk to each other that's fun maybe i don't know if that works like that i'd have to have a two gang wall plate it says i i took all of those out two gang wall plate it comes with it is a wall plate no but you need a two gang i guess light switch right oh yeah you need this light switch i think that's just the cover though yeah do you have a two gang switch anywhere give it to one of your old neighbors i'm sure they'll know what to do with it yeah i might i i might i think the front door has a two gang walls i think it's the only one i left that i couldn't i didn't replace because i couldn't because it was on an exterior wall um that that it didn't touch and and that means that it has a very shallow like we're on block wall right so it has a very shallow

box so that's not going there definitely um but i can't tell you if I have any more 2GANG. I have to think about it. Just put it on the wall of shame. Yeah, it'll just have to live up there. Yeah, well, it sounds interesting because this is a, I guess, a Threads post from someone Jimmy's actually following. It's George Langabeer. He says, Brilliant smart home control is indeed back in business. post uh from someone jimmy's actually following called is george langa beer he says brilliant smart home control is indeed back in business he's got a support question and the support person

says yeah brilliant was acquired back in may so we're back in business and gonna have ongoing support for brilliant devices so that's good news that's great news uh i know a lot of people were really kind of upset about this and kind of shocked, I guess. And the owner had been looking for a way to kind of move the product off. We hadn't heard anything, but it's good to hear that they were acquired. So maybe the new owner, question mark, will be able to keep the product we won. Yeah, I find this kind of odd because there hasn't been any news about this. There's only been like a couple random Reddit posts that say that their support ticket was answered and somebody said that they were

purchased but i feel like we would know if they were purchased so i'm not sure if i fully believe that somebody actually bought them but i guess we'll find out in time right yeah the product keep working who cares like it's gonna keep going so yeah it's just weird you think you would announce it yeah yeah like hey you guys everybody was scared for a moment but we it kind of like the insteon thing right where like insteon just like randomly shut down like nobody knew what was going on shut down on a on a holiday weekend to mind you like yeah because nobody nobody came out after that though for a while and said it so right never mind my example was terrible yeah insteon was a very special case but i mean they were kind of rescued

they're still around too i think just not as not as prominent yeah um all right i mean richard loves them still so um but yeah so i i i'm just getting ready ready for cd that's my projects right now so keep plugging away at that insteon will be a cd i've been told what will they really be no i don't think so. Oh, okay. I was making that up. It would be fun to see something.

I mean, there's going to be some Zigbee stuff or Z-Wave stuff there. So, I'm planning on checking that out. But yeah,

I'll sort it. And of course, the Ubiquiti stuff. I'll just check that out and see if I can go by and steal a knob off the front of the thing. I really want to know

if they pop off. Oh, they have the tabletop enclosures back in Insteon. And they've got the little i3 dial thing over on insteon.com. You're going to make us load this website, aren't you? Everybody listening is now going Insteon. Wasn't this the Ikea thing that they made or something? Was it Ikea? It was somebody else who made this uh nokia right oh yeah or knock nokia nokia stop it's nokia they have like this dial thing that

you could do that's very nice looking yeah it does look very nice insta devices always do look nice we'll have to talk to our friend friend of the show richard over there and find out if this is oh they have controllable outlets oh look at that oh i think that again i want to say that the i3 stuff is the stuff that came from from nakia nakia nokia nokia however you say it uh that's where they came from it's good looking stuff though yeah this is definitely it. I recognize the keypad for sure. $79 for that keypad. That's really nice looking keypad. And the little dial, crank things up and down. I don't know, man. This is good looking stuff.

I like it. We'll put links to all this stuff in the show notes. You guys can go check it out. All right, TJ, what have you been up to? Yeah, I've got some projects going on this week. Finally got my Aq fp1e sensor set up i think we talked about last week i didn't get a chance to set it up yet um set it up at the office this week and set up was super simple um nothing to it i don't even think i had to program

zones or anything like that like the other one you had to like walk around and show the extreme areas and stuff like that this one just automatically figured it out. So that was kind of a nice change. Still going to recommend the FP2 over the FP1E just because the non-removable USB cord. And it's only like $20 difference. So I think I would still stick with the FP2. But it is a pretty nice device. And if you're looking to save some money and you got a smaller room and you don't really care about the multiple zones and stuff like that you don't really care about the removable

usb cable it's probably a good deal for you so i would check it out very nice very nice this isn't that deep no it's really not that bad that would actually i think your biggest problems would just be your connections i don't think you're gonna be able to fit it in a shallow box still we're talking about the uh brilliant keypad here um seth has it out of the box and it's honestly like it's not that deep compared to like a normal smart switch like a normal smart switch i feel like it's deeper than that oh for sure for sure yeah i just with all the extra wiring and stuff because most of this device is actually sitting outside of the wall you know like like touchscreen and little things instead of being forced into the box like normal switches

uh and i i want to say maybe an inch is really all that needs to go in and then you have all your wiring that's going to get tied up behind it but yeah the wiring is going to be the worst part yeah i don't know we'll see we'll see if i can find a two gang something laying around the house somewhere if not bring cd a giveaway oh giveaways at the home tech happy hour another reason to go go to colorado so you can win a brilliant switch i have to get some tickets uh all right the next thing i have going on uh so i have started tinting my windows uh if you've ever seen uh exhibits pimp my ride where they go and tint the uh the car windows that's basically what's happening in my house right now uh a little less

loud music going on though we're not really blasting music as we're doing this. But you still have all the LED lights. That's right. All the Philips Hue everywhere. LIFX, everything. No, so honestly, one of the reasons that I was interested in tinting my home windows is because the sun raises behind us and it sets in front of us. And so literally all day, our house is just getting cooked, the sun, uh, raises behind us and it sets in front of us. And so literally all day,

our house is just getting cooked by the sun. And, uh, during our, our doors suck, our exterior doors are awful. We're going to replace them at some point. Um, but like, for example, when the sun is setting and it's in front of the house and it's, it's just beating on the front door, you can literally feel the heat coming through the front door. And so I was like, well, there's got to be something we could do for just the glass. And so we always get our cars tinted. And so I was like, well, let's look in a house window tint. And if you've ever put a screen protector on, it's basically the same exact concept. And I'm awful at putting screen protectors on phones and so this is an awful thing for me to do because it's just it's just it's not not easy did you just like do one and

you're like well i gotta do the rest of them now oh god what have i done yeah and it's one of those things that like you try to like you scrape the glass and you clean it and you clean it like five different times and everything and then you get the window it, and you clean it like five different times and everything, and then you get the window tint on there, and there's like five cat hairs and beard hair and everything else underneath it. And you're just like, oh, man, hopefully nobody looks at this. But it's one of those things that like, so we have this glass screen door in front of our front door. And as soon as, I'm not even exaggerating, as soon as I put the window tint on that glass door i could feel the heat just drop yeah um it was a crazy reduction in the heat that was coming through that and we get the added benefit that we got the dark window tint and so during the day

if we have the windows or the doors open you can't even tell it's just nice and reflective and it also serves a purpose that if you're coming over to our house and you're walking up to the door you can fix your hair adjust your beard whatever you need to do because the windows just reflect everything it's like a giant mirror um so it's it's honestly been pretty nice i was waiting for some larger window tint to come in um it's kind of weird right now we have the front door done and then like two bottoms of the windows but not the tops um so we'll get the rest of that done. Um, made a big difference. I would highly recommend it, but you need to check your, your window manufacturer and your door manufacturer, um, because that added heat that

is reflected or, or trapped, uh, can break your windows. So that is something that, uh, I didn't realize was an issue until after we did it, but luckily my tent manufacturer says that it can be used with double pane windows so we'll find out and you might be replacing all your windows yeah don't forget to install some contacts set up yeah you'll get the barrel locks that's right we got cameras and door contacts i know but yeah um it's honestly been a big difference i think i'm excited to do the rest of the windows um we're definitely going to do the the was it the east and west facing windows because that's where the sun is pretty much at all day um and i think it'll make a big difference it's not going to be like the biggest difference i'm not going to save like 30 a month on my heating bill or something but it's going to feel nicer in the room because it's not as much heat getting through

makes sense yeah and then my last thing i I'm going to Missouri next month, guys. I don't know. The show me state. I've never been to Missouri. It sounds pretty awful, but I'm going there to install Home Assistant. So we've made it big, boys. Taking this show on the road. Wait, they asked you to do that?

Yeah, there's literally nobody else in the state of Missouri that can do it. So they didn't have any choice. They had to get somebody to come in a home assistant person wow that's right yeah tj can do this but then he also has gavin as a service as a backup so like if that's right he runs into new problems he can just give his gavin as a service call what gavin doesn't realize is i've already outsourced it to him questions for this job i didn't even know i was working i'm gonna send you my bill yeah see work smarter not harder i got a bill for you uh but no i'm going to springfield missouri so if you have any recommendations for what to do in springfield missouri i asked the guy i said what is there to

do in springfield and he said well we have the biggest Bass Pro Shop in the country. There you go. And I was like, well, you're not really helping me at all right now. And I looked up stuff to do in Springfield, Missouri, guys, and there's nothing there. You're going to find something. Don't worry. Yeah.

There's a castle you can go to. Ooh, a castle. Yeah, it's got 4.1 stars on Google. There you go. All right, that's pretty good. It's a... Castle and Bass Pro Shop. I'm good to go.

Yeah. And there's a Route 66 car museum. You can go there. Oh, yeah, I think that is on Route 66, isn't it? Mm-hmm. We are driving there. So, originally, we were going to fly, but as a Midwesterner, I hate flying because it's one of those things that I look at and I'm like, oh, it's only 12 hours away.

I'll just drive. And I was looking at flights, and of course, there's no good airline that flies directly from Columbus to Springfield, Missouri. It's always like Delta or United Airlines. And the racket now with airlines, which I didn't realize, is that you can pay $800 for two round-trip tickets, but that's not refundable. If you want that refundable, you have to spend an extra $150. And so it was going to be like $1,000 for round-trip tickets. And I was like, there is no way in heck I'm going to spend $1,000 on flights to go to Missouri.

I was like, it's only 10 hours. I will drive. 10 hours, that's all. That's it. It's just 10 hours. I mean, you leave in the the morning you'll be there by night this this castle i guess there's ghost ghost tours you you can have fun doing that there you go i like that you've already done more research on missouri than i have

it's google i have not looked up anything about missouri uh and yeah and of course the largest uh bass pro shops on here as well so i guess it's that's what's to do that's what's to do. That's what's to do. Yeah, that's what there is. Is it zoo? Probably a sad zoo. Gavin, what do you got going on this week? I want to hear more about Missouri and this Bass Pro Shop

because I was in one actually this past weekend. You guys have Bass Pro Shop up there? I think we have one. It's the biggest one in Canada. I didn't. It's just a snap. What can you buy there? Snowshoes, that's it? I think we have one. It's the biggest one in Canada. I didn't... Snap. Oh, my God. Yeah.

What do you guys... What can you buy there? Snowshoes, that's it? Fishing gear, hunting gear, you know, stuff like that. Makes sense. Yeah. What were you going to say, Seth? Well, I was going to say, not only do they have the world's largest Bass Pro shop in

Springfield, Missouri, they have the world's largest fork. Oh, the world's largest fork? Yes. It's in front of a building. It looks like an office building, and it looks like there's a fork in front of it, and it's like a two-story fork. So there you go. There is something to do in Springfield, Missouri.

There you go. All right. I'm going to this fork. Fork you. That's forking big. All right. Family show over. Oh, what the fork are we talking about?

But anyways, yeah yeah this weekend i actually uh oh breaking news i just got a reply on this so third reality you know the device manufacturer uh they were teasing a new device uh it looked like a soil moisture sensor so you know of course all their images show it being used indoors but they they just replied to me and said, yes, it's outdoor compatible, too. So it looks like they're coming with an outdoor soil moisture sensor. The only downside is another one of those that stick out of the lawn. So it is what it is. At least we have another option.

Where do you see this at? It's on the site formerly known as Twitter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So check it out. I just got word. Anyways, this weekend, yeah, I haven't really got many projects done because this weekend we went up to the cottage,

ran to the cottage, ran to the boat, did some fishing. Stayed away from all technology for the weekend. It felt good. I mean, the most technology I had was that fish finder, and all it did was mess with my emotions. Every time a fish came by the boat, it would beep and we'd get all excited and nothing happened. So, you know, that fish, sometimes I wonder if it's just laughing at you as it does this thing. Show them a big one, you know.

It's just a fish under there messing with you, like a turtle. Yeah. And the worst part is for a day after that, anytime you heard a little beep, you got all excited again. Like you just thought, you know, cause that was our emotion, right? Is you're on the boat, you hear a beep. You're like, yes, there's a fish somewhere around here. Don't catch it. You get depressed.

Did you catch anything? I mean. Uh, weed. Wow. You have so much up there. You just even have it in the water, huh? I mean, it's Canada, so. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. We even have it in the water, huh? I mean, it's Canada, so. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. We even got weeds in the water, you know. The clumps of weed we got. We got some good clumps of weed that we pulled out of the lake there, you know. Like, it was really weedy. But. We got a kind of weed fish.

Yeah. Yeah. We threw it back, though. We didn't keep it. We didn't keep it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't want it. We didn't keep it. Didn't keep it. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. We didn't want it. We didn't want it. That's respectable. So yeah, that was my weekend. Nice. And apparently I'm going to be helping on a home assistant install in Missouri. So look up things to do out there.

There's also a Hubble Space Telescope replica not too far away from there that you can go check out. A replica. Not even the real thing. Not the real thing, no. Because you, I mean, you wouldn't want to see the real thing because i mean you'd be a little grange point in space and it's probably not a good idea but yeah so you'd be like there's boeing astronauts and we'll be able to come back home not boeing astronauts spacex is sending them up there so yeah yeah that's that should be interesting yeah yeah boeing is good i think they're gonna give up.

I just love that that passed like three rounds of people that thought it was a good idea, right? It was like the Boeing astronauts thought it was a good idea to go up there. Boeing thought it was a good idea to send them up there. NASA thought it was a good idea. So just a lot of failures there. It's like nobody looked at the current events and was like, like hmm maybe we shouldn't do this right now guys you know you just got to test with what you got and we'll do it live doing it live exactly exactly no the more interesting one i think is the spacex one i think that's going to be very interesting and uh that that they're actually going up way out they're going way

out past some satellites to do some spacewalking. You're going to actually open up the hatch and start walking around. So that one will be interesting to see how they do. So space news, too, here on Home Tech. Fun. Well, please check out the Hubble Space Telescope and the Giant Fork if you're up there in Springfield. And if there's anything else to do, let TJ know, please. 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 as we're able to financially support our show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head over to home tech. I've been so sport to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show,

but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat where you and other supporters of the show can get every day to talk about ubiquity announcements i guess because that's you know we've been talking about that quite a bit um and and you probably see a bunch of pictures you know coming in uh next week from the home tech happy hour too i'm sure that's going to happen there too so if you don't want to you don't want to miss out that's where it's all at if you want to help out you can't support financially totally understand. 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 show this week. Probably not going to see you next week. I might try and do something for the show for it. But with all that said, we'll see you maybe the week after next. Until next time. Take care. we'll see you maybe the week after next till next time take care I don't know what to say after that it was like a it was like you're just leaving us forever

you know it was like a memorial that was a smooth transition alright and with that we will see you week after next probably everybody have a great weekend we'll see you then till next time

then I don't know when that is it's a week or two from now well from when you edit and publish this it's a week or two from then