HomeTech.fm - Episode 501 - Remain Seated Until The Update Is Complete

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Finally getting this show out from before the hurricane. Thanks for the patience and understanding. We’ll be back next week with a new show with the latest news and a few interviews which we’e had planned for a while. Thanks for listening! On this week's show: EufyCam S3 Pro promises impressive night vision capabilities, a smart front door that can switch from clear to opaque with a voice command, Sonos reveals its plan to regain customer trust, Ring adds 24/7 video recording to select cameras while doubling alarm monitoring prices for some customers, HP introduces AI to its printers, Samsung SmartThings becomes the first to support Matter 1.3, a Pick of the Week, explore Drone XC's 2K QHD Dash Cam with live streaming, dive into Home Assistant's latest update, and so much more!

this is the home tech podcast for friday maybe maybe friday uh october the 4th from sarasota florida i'm seth johnson from rattlesburg ohio i'm tj huddleston and from bickering ontario i'm gavin campbell and welcome to the home tech podcast podcast all about home automation home technology the internet shovels guys randomly showing up at your house from putting this in quotes repairing the lawn yeah seth broke his internet that's what clippy went on a rampage he's getting tired of being left out in the hurricanes he just he cut the internet he was tired of it i told you i have a clippy update later but no that's not what happened i i was sitting around, uh, it wasn't sitting around. I was after lunch and I was like, huh, the internet's not working. I wonder why

that is. And I pulled up the firewall and the firewall is like, yep, your internet's down. And I'm like, all right. So I went and looked at the ONT and the ONT had a big red light on it. And I was like, that can't be good. I was like, well, let me look outside. Cause that's the next place I should probably go look to see what's happening on my street. And I opened the door and right where my fiber line must run, there was about, I don't know, 15 guys with shovels just going to town over there. paring some grass at the construction project where they buried the power under the ground, right? They put all that in. Everything was wrapping up. And they came in and put some grass in where they had dug things up.

And there wasn't grass. It was mostly dirt. I mean, thanks. Thanks, I guess. Man. So you got grass, but no internet. Yeah. I would have rather not gone through this week without internet.

But here it is. It is Thursday now. We're laughing because it's Thursday night. And yeah, this is the show for Friday. So, I mean, topical, right? We'll be up to date on things. It'll get done. Don't worry.

Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully I can get this edited and put out. But yeah, fun stuff. Fun stuff. I remember when they were putting in fiber in my area, one company kept cutting the other company's lines. Oh, I wonder how that happened so yeah yeah it was always a mistake but every time they cut

it it took like two days before they would come out and fix it yep so yeah imagine that they just wouldn't like stock a bunch of the wires up at the front gate or something like oh yeah we'll just run by this well it was it was the competition's lines they were cutting so they were running the bell fiber and they kept cutting the Rogers lines. And in our neighborhood still, we have all the temporary lines they put in, still strung across the trees they haven't fixed yet. But yeah. I had managed to catch all the other construction crews and warn them away.

This fiber line has made it through much, much, much other things. And it didn't make it through these guys with the shovel. But I can't believe, like, I'm not the only one I've heard of this happening to you. much other things. And it did make it through these guys with a shovel. But I can't believe, like, I'm not the only one I've heard of this happening to you because they clearly aren't burying these lines at code level, which would be, what, 12 inches down or something? Maybe more. Yeah, they're clearly not doing that.

They're putting this line in, like, three inches maybe. Sometimes I walk around and I see it poking out of my lawn. So, like, I know it's not getting buried. If they're not doing that why don't they put like an armored cable in like that i mean i've put fiber in that had like a a metal sheathing around it right that like costs money doesn't say why would i spend more money seth come on you would never have to come out and replace that line ever like if you did like i don't know it would it would be like you would literally have to have like a tractor i don't even think a tractor could like tear this thing up it would it would tangle up in the tractor thing so i don't know uh maybe

that's why like maybe it just will pull everything out of the ground and just continue pulling until it pulls everyone's fiber out of the ground yeah certain certain parts of florida suck for burying lines i i had a client that was over there they were on the beach somewhere like delray beach or something like that and we had an appointment with comcast to get an internet line buried to their house because the previous owner never had internet and we had like 14 cancellations of appointments because nobody wanted to run this line on the beach yeah yeah because you like you dig a hole and it like fills back in yeah and it's just like awful so i don't know florida's a different beast when it comes to that kind of stuff Yeah, because you dig a hole and it fills back in. Yeah, and it's just awful. So I don't know.

Florida's a different beast when it comes to that kind of stuff. Yeah, we kind of have that problem here up until, I don't know, a few feet down and it gets into this clay stuff that's down there and gets pretty tough. But I don't know. Silver lining out of this, right? So I don't like where they mounted the inside ONT. And the guy that came out today he's like hey i'm gonna i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fix this line there's no way there's

no way i'm gonna do that i'm not gonna what i am gonna do is just run a new one and drag it across two it goes across two uh driveways uh to the actual box that needs to go to and between i think he said two and 14 days somebody will come out here and bury the new one. But what he did was he put in a box outside with a coupler. Oh, genius. I know. So they don't even have to come into my house. I don't have to be here when they get here.

They can just pop that little box. And then there's a little wire. Not a wire. There's a little fiber optic cable that runs in and goes to the ONT. And I'm like, I can get a longer one of those and now now i can move my ont somewhere else with maybe a battery backup you know maybe into my rack or whatever i can move it anywhere i want so i'm excited about that yeah yeah that's uh whatever at&t came out to move my modem um that's what the guy said he said that that it's supposed to have

like a couple are inside and so that way if they have to like fix the line or whatever they can do it a lot easier uh because the whoever installed our line previously they just like cloned it up inside the box yeah but he's like well what like why though he's like i guess i have extra cable here but should have made it easier for me to switch the cable out in the future yeah i've had exterior onds like the like full electronics everything was outside all the time and and but and and there was like a little power supply and stuff inside but um yeah this one is uh this one's all inside uh no battery backup on this one and it it goes if the power goes out it'll go down for a little bit and then kick well it doesn't have to like i could keep that on and wherever

that's optical terminal is back in the you know know, wherever that's wired in, like it would stay on for that. So, and I have done that in the past where the power's out and, you know, just plug a battery backup you have laying around into the ONT. It can run for a long time because it doesn't use that much electricity. And everything works. But just weird. I'm going to add that to my list of projects of things to do one day. I've got to figure out what cable to get and what end to put on, you know, to extend that wire

because it's a single fiber line. Yeah. So if it's on your project list, we won't be talking about this till next year again then? Yeah, yeah. Just when his internet goes out. Yeah. Exactly.

I get so much done. I'm going to ship you a wall box so I can turn your internet off and that way you can get projects done. What a genius idea. Could I just plug this into your network? Don't ask any questions. Yeah, that's not a bad idea, TJ. I'll put a Seth's project list thing on here.

And then we'll put it, yeah, put it down at the end. And I'll add my ONT thing on there. So anytime I want a project to do. You have a list? Yeah. You should also update that list with progress so we can see, you know. Oh, no, no, no. I just see a list, Gavin.

Come on. Okay. All right. All right. ONT extension is on the list now. All right. But we have a bunch of Home Tech headlines this week. And, you know, things have gone on. There's been some news in the, in the past seven days or

so. So what do you guys say we jump into these home tech headlines? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. A new camera from Eufy, the S3 Pro is going to offer an advanced feature for many tech enthusiasts out there. It's got a feature called Max Color Vision Technology, which basically is night vision, color night vision at night without a spotlight. I feel like this isn't surprising for most people who have actually had a modern security camera, but it's nice that this is coming to a more DIY,

like bringing the technology into more DIY stuff. Because, I mean, there's not too many of them out there there's a couple like the I think wise has something similar but it's not the same as this I think this is a little bit better like this is the next generation thing um but yeah go go go yuffie this thing is uh what it's available right now as a two camera bundle with the home base for 549 dollars it's fully compatible with Apple HomeKit Secure Video and supports integration into the HomeKit ecosystem. Offers local

video storage without monthly fees if you want to do that too. Not bad. This is one of those cameras that has the batteries though. Like you have to take them down and record them from time to time. I see those in restaurants all the time. I just don't get it. Does this have a solar panel built in some? Because I know some it does include a backup solar panel building so i know some um uh it does include a

backup solar panel yeah um so yeah i honestly i've used eufy cameras just two or three times now i think they're pretty decent um they used to have 24 7 recording cameras but obviously you can't really do that with battery-powered cameras um it would be nice if they brought that feature back with this kind of thing um but the color night vision i think is one of those things that if you have not seen it on a security camera you should look it up because it truly is different like i like a lot of people tell you that technology is like great and all that good stuff but like this is one of those things that like it is a drastic difference between like new cameras and old cameras yeah and i'm excited for every single camera to offer this i think it should just be a feat like a standard feature obviously once they get cost down a little bit um for 550 for this

coming with two cameras and a little base station which you can keep a hard drive in that's not a bad price so they actually i'll put a link to this uh on their uh it's eufy.com slash tv cam pro uh i'll put a link to this in our show notes they've got if you scroll way down the page it's got some actually some decent examples of what you're talking about tj like um and this has been my experience too like they've got uh human vision which is basically you know what it would look like with nothing on there they've got on the far right, the infrared night vision, which I think looks better than most infrared night visions ever looked. And then kind of what they're calling adaptive spotlight.

It's probably another feature they have on another camera. That looks like what most of these like night color cameras that exist on the market these days look like. And then it looks like this max color vision. This is their latest generation. This is what i've been seeing come off the line on some of the newer like uniview cameras and that kind of thing so um it is a it is a striking difference uh between like what what do you get like normal off a normal camera or security camera to what you see with these like new color at night cameras pretty good pretty cool well if you ever heard me like rage against ubiquity cameras because like the ubiquity

cameras the software is fantastic but the hardware sucks um this is one of those things that i think ubiquity cameras should come with automatically especially for the price you can buy a 380 camera from ubiquity but it looks like crud at night because it doesn't have this color night vision. And so that's one of my biggest gripes with ubiquity. I think if they added color night vision for the price, it would be an amazing camera at that point. And these you're right.

You're right to ask about the like the solar power add on thing. It looks like you can add a solar panel onto it. It looks like it's their solar panel on top of these things? Certainly looks like that's the solar panel. Some of their models have solar panels on top of them. And so what it looks like is they're just reusing the housing for it, but they actually have a separate solar panel for some reason, maybe because it consumes too much power with the color night vision or something.

Because I know they have other cameras that look just like this with the solar panel built in. Yeah. But it's kind of like the ring or something where like this with the solar panel built in. Yeah. But it's kind of like the Ring or something where you just mount the solar panel separately. This one actually looks like a normal camera, so I don't know. Not a bad deal, especially if you don't want to run wires. Pop the base station in, pop two cameras up, good to go. And you can see at night.

I've got the new Uniview, what they're calling the Owl View. I don't know why they're calling it Owl View. I guess owls can see at night. I'm going to, I'm going to, I've got the, I've got the new Uniview, the, what they're calling the owl view. I don't know why they're calling it owl view. I guess owls can see at night, but I've got one or two of those cameras sitting around here. I'm going to hook them up. And I've, it's funny, you're talking about the ubiquity ones I've got. I think they're like the little G3 ones, right? The little, I mean, they're pretty much just infrared black at night, black and white at night. They're not anything good, but they're, they're also a hundred dollar less camera, maybe $79 camera. So I can't fault them for very much, but I can't see anything at night other than like 10 feet from the camera. And I can see like possums walking around and raccoons walking by the house, but like anything that's further out, anything that's like down in the, the Creek and in that area can't see it at all it's just it's just pitch black i can kind of

make out some of the houses across the way so i'm i'm gonna put one of these cameras up and kind of do like an ab comparison i mean it's not even gonna be a it's gonna blow one way because it's like a 79 dollar camera versus one that's probably like a few hundred dollars yeah that's the thing right is like when when a camera is very affordable like the fact that wise can pack a color night vision sensor into like their 30 cameras like that's amazing i don't know if we're gonna see that in like a mass adoption anytime soon but you know for a two or three four hundred dollar camera i think it should definitely be default now um you know even ubiquity is like two hundred dollar camera it's kind of like whatever you don't guess necessarily need that color night vision.

But for $400, I think you should. And I think I was first introduced to the color night vision, I think, when you got the starlight camera, TJ. And you showed us those. And honestly, I was blown away at the quality of it. At that time, it was like pitch black in your backyard. But it looked like day yeah and ever since then i one of my future projects very far in the future when i replace my cameras i'm getting everything with starlight or night vision just be outside because it's it's so much better

yeah i had uh well if you've listened to the podcast you've you've heard my gripes about uh blue iris as well um but i've i finally i finally resorted to uh my interior cameras are all going to be ubiquity so my interior cameras are all wi-fi based um those are all going to be ubiquity and then my doorbell is going to be ubiquity and then my exterior ones they're going to have to be blue iris or whatever else, because I do need that color night vision. I originally had Ubiquiti cameras everywhere, but I just, I couldn't see anything at night. And, you know, that's probably when a lot of crimes happen. So I need to be able to see if somebody breaks into my van at night. Yeah.

Yeah. The, the, what they, what they have listed as adaptive spotlight. I went over to the wise website and that looks like what they're calling color night vision on the wise website yeah yeah and they actually have it i mean it's it's wise is legitimate so i like i don't know there's any there there's this good but this this version what we're talking about whatever they're calling max like i i imagine there's like a camera sensor that everybody buys. And if you buy the nice one with whatever they're calling max color,

like that's the next generation. And that's what they're putting in these wives and why still has the older one. And you know, it doesn't have this new one. And this is what I'm seeing things look like. It is very, it is daylight.

You just like, you may as well be watching, looking outside during the day, all the time colors, everything's there. The grass is still green, no outside during the day all the time. Colors, everything's there. The grass is still green no matter how far it weighs at night. It's insane. It's fantastic. Absolutely insane. I like the marketing images here. It shows all three, four modes

I guess that you can put the camera into. Which everyone works well with your situation, but probably one of the color ones I think. I like it more color night vision everybody calls there something different too like hike vision is like i don't know color view uh dollhouse dark fighter univiews dark fighter or something owl owl camera owl view they're all called something different but they're all using like the sony starlight sensor i think

no no no they they all have different sensors. They all have different sensors now. Yeah, yeah. It's well, because some of the... I thought it was always Sony that had one. No, that's the Starlight. That's the official one. That's when they say they can say it's Starlight. But then everybody else is like, oh, no, it's like Starlight.

But it's this. That makes sense why they can get us so cheap in certain areas. Yeah. I'm pretty sure they're doing their own. They're rolling their own. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm pretty sure they're doing their own, they're rolling their own. That makes sense. Yeah. Whatever,

whatever is in that chip. Like I'm, I'm just glad to see that it's progressed this far where you can get a, heck, you can get a $30. What is this? Wise week for camera costs? What is this thing?

35 98 on their website. You can get that camera. You can get this $300 camera here. Uh, and you, you can get a bunch of other cameras that can do this, but like, except, except if you're in, in, uh, buying ubiquity products then you can't do that so ah ubiquity hopefully the onvif thing will um update and work one of these days yeah mine

aren't showing up anymore for some reason yeah status update is not working still so they'll keep trying they'll get it done hey um speaking of home technologies home depot has introduced a smart glass front door that can switch between clear and opaque with the press of a button, voice command, or heck, just a schedule. It's called the Feather River Door. It's a fiberglass model.

It's got integrated smart glass and compatible with the Home Depot's Hub Space and allows you to control everything by your phone. It comes in four sizes, ranging between $789 all the way up to $900,000. We'll just say that. And the door functions over Bluetooth. Wi-Fi is powered by batteries. You don't even have to run wire to it.

It's great. But you walk up to your door. You don't want to see outside at night anymore you press the button poof goes away you want to see who's at your door yeah or just do something you know like flash them or something real fast you could just like uh turn the button turn it on birthday suit there you go now you see me now you don't what did i just see i don't know i'm not here yeah now honestly honestly, this is really cool. So when we heard the story, what, like last month or six months ago about the $10,000 door, I think it was like $4,000 starting off.

Everybody was like, this is crazy. Like nobody's going to pay $10,000 for a door. Hint, people did buy it because people buy expensive things. That's the one that had like all the technology and yeah i had like the built-in door lock and video doorbell and and whatever else and it was powered all the time which was nice too so i mean you know it's definitely worth the the money uh this is way more affordable though this is basically a thousand dollars for a door so anything that you're looking at um they're like they say they start off at eight hundred dollars but just go ahead and assume $1,000.

It's basically double the cost of what you would spend on like a comparable door. I'm actually doing a lot of door shopping right now because we need to replace all three of our doors. We have a front door, a back door, and then like a kitchen door and they all suck. And so I've been doing a lot of door shopping for the past like six months, really. And like I would say like a good door that you're going to like either custom order or not just buy the bottom of the barrel is going to be at least six or seven hundred dollars anyway. Yeah. And that's not even like fancy.

Like you go to some of these like McMansions or mansions, they're spending five to ten thousand dollars on their regular old door and so you can automatically assume that you're going to spend five hundred dollars on a door so a thousand dollars for a door that switches between opaque and transparent that's really not that bad and if it breaks it's just the door yeah looks like the thousand dollar one is basically top to bottom glass i mean it's like got a frame around it but it basically depends how much you pay full length glass basically right yeah if you just want kind of like the top quarter and maybe even less than that yeah quarter top quarter it's uh like 800 bucks for that one so yeah and that's the one i would want for my front door uh because i want some light to come into our front door but

i don't want to like i don't know what if i'm door, but I don't want to like, I don't know. What if I'm walking around naked? I don't want people to see me. And what if I forget to switch the automation or the battery runs out? Yeah, it can be automated. You can run it on a schedule and fog up the doors, I guess. Yeah, one question I didn't see answered in here. When it fails and the battery like loses connection or whatever, does it automatically go opaque? Cause I feel like that's a,

that's an important thing. You know, if battery runs out, does it just turn transparent? Everybody's like, Ooh, what's in your house? It's interesting.

Maybe, maybe just put say, can they just put it like a low battery sign up on the whole window? Like, can they make this glow? Can I make it like make it like flash red and orange and stuff for the holidays? I mean, building some twinkly lights or something i mean we saw those blinds from hunter douglas so yep the aura yeah maybe aura can make it dark yeah shine lights on the back of this and

like light up the frosted glass right this is this is a cool idea i actually like this i i like that if if and when it breaks and it's not supported anymore because you know home depot is going to give up hub space in like two years uh that it's still a door it still opens and closes and it's not the crazy like built-in door with like the video doorbell and everything because i think that is setting yourself up for failure but this i think this is fun and i like this technology i was actually keeping an eye on the window version of this. I really like to be able to control my windows so that either you can dim them all or do whatever with them. But it was still too expensive when I last looked at it, and I don't think the technology was there. I haven't looked at it recently, but it's something I'm keeping an eye on for one day. Well, it's always been my experience, too. It's like how do you like hide the wires to make it look attractive

because like when you install smart blinds like you're installing the blind and you can use the blind to hide the wire uh but when you're installing like the transparent covering it's like well i don't want to see any wires because it's just glass so i think that part is a lot harder i've never seen it installed where it doesn't look ugly in a house. I've seen it installed where it doesn't look ugly in a commercial property, but that's because they usually have those aluminum channels that all the windows go into. I know on my windows, I could take off the moldings around it, and there's a gap in there that I can run wire down in.

So it may be easy. I don't know about all my windows but if when i get to that point i'll deal with it i like that it has a button like if you don't have any of the smart stuff and you still want to do the door yeah yeah is it is it battery powered it's battery powered yeah you don't need to run power to it i feel like they can they i felt like they could build a little solar panel into that door you know if they really have to wonder what the battery like consumption is really like right because if it's only switching this thing once in a while i would assume like a couple years on battery but

it says it's well they so they actually give you two batteries for your smart door oh nice yeah they give you a main and a spare and then you uh a little charging stand that they they get plugged into and then it looks funny it actually goes into the uh the door jam and uh it's kind of nice i i think it's uh it's well designed doesn't say how long it's gonna last on here though yeah i don't see anything about a battery life i think they should have a little solar panel i think they missed the boat with that. The button is built. Yeah, my house faces east.

So like in the morning, I think it'd charge up in no time. Mine would charge up at night. It'd be great. The on off button is like right above where the door handle holes would be. So not a bad spot for it. If you wanted to kind of like look out and push the button. I like this. I think it's a good idea.

I would actually heavily consider this door when I need a door. Yeah. I need three doors here in Home Depot. So if you're listening, just bring this old house over. Come work on my house. Come and add this to my projects. Is this door limited to the Home Depot's hub space? Yes. door um limited to the home depot's hub space like yes i guess it's not like you can't control

it with anything else at this point so it looks like some of their stuff is bluetooth or i thought it was zigbee but i might be wrong it might be a wife this goes over wi-fi so it's home depot though so maybe they didn't pay anything for developers and there's like a back door. I hear the back door. It's actually the front door, TJ. Here's the,

here's the funny part. Like I, I'm pretty sure, like if you think about how this would be put together, it's probably all going to live in the battery. And there'll be like some wires that come out of the battery that turn on and off, whatever,

whatever that uh that film is that can change the to be opaque right so i'm i'm betting i'm betting that if you ever wanted to reverse engineer this you'd start at the battery thing or the little battery pocket that it slides into and i'm betting that some smart person i mean if they can reverse engineer the garage door opener thing and make a rad gdo this this is gonna be no problem oh yeah this is it's it's literally just like sending a few millivolts into this thing uh to turn on and off uh the opaqueness or whatever so oh all right so i'm reading the i'm reading the reviews there's like a reviews and questions section on Home Depot's website. And I'm looking at one of the $800 doors.

So I'm being economical here. And I'm looking at the questions and answers section. Somebody asked, first of all, I want to point out there's 25 questions already for this door. And they're all from the same guy named Nate. So either Nate is really interested in this door or he's a reporter. And one of the questions is, and he's literally asked every question, so you can find anything you want. It says, how long does the battery last when

fully charged? Feather River responded and said battery life depends on glass size and usage when it is clear state on. Typically the battery lasts for two months with normal daily usage. Two months. That daily usage two months that's not good that's not very long no wonder they give you a backup battery i have to charge my door every two months no yeah gavin the um the question you had about the uh the opaque what they call

opaque private which is off not using power and then clear on okay yeah it clears on using power so when it's on it's clear but when it's off it is opaque so it's going to fail to the opaque side uh well so technically if you just have it off most of the time you think well no because it still has a wi-fi so yeah too much sucks but would and come on home would people would people leave it on like people leave it on? Like, people want it probably, is it on or off? Now you're confusing. So on would be clear. On would be opaque. Yeah.

Yeah. So you basically want it off all the, no, on all the time, right? So that people can't see in your house. So that people want to see it. So that's going to be close. Yeah, you want it off then. You'd have it off. Yeah.

And then when you want to look out the window and see people, turn it or you want people to see you yeah so you don't want it to be clear probably most of the time don't look at my house right so or else people will be looking your house all the time which means it's going to be using battery power right no it's good it's going to be not using me a battery power but it's wi-fi still so still wi-fi yeah so i'm imagining the battery life i mean if they're saying two months in the comments, I don't see it get much better. If they had a solar panel, you know, that would take care of all that.

I don't want to be replacing this battery every 200, you know, every two months. That's just a waste of time. Yeah, two months is way too often. Yeah. All right, Home Depot, I'm out. Sorry. Yeah, sorry.

This is a good enough, I think this is a good enough price that it'll be popular enough. And then also people will kind of tear into it and change out the HubSpot for like an ESP home. Oh, that would be smart. Go buy it, TJ. Let's do it. Okay.

All right. TJ, let's get it. I'm going to add it to the project list. Do we have enough money in the home tech budget? Do we have money in there? Yeah. What happens? I don't know.

Can we get them to send you a door? Let's get them to send you a review door yeah i need a door hubspace home depot feather river doors whoever you are send me a door yeah send a door to tj tj needs a door yeah i actually do need a door i think we tried this last time with the four thousand dollar door it didn't work yeah well i don't blame him for that my house is not worth a four thousand dollar door i can tell you that but it is worth a thousand dollar door i can i can confidently say that yeah there we go fancy all right well home depot give us a call 1-800-HOMETECH-FM that's our phone number i think you can actually see what's funny is they posted pictures on one of these of the battery pack and it's got the manufacturer that you need to, yeah, the manufacturer that made this thing in there.

So there you go. Maybe this will be reverse engineered before too long. I need it. It's a 40,000 milliamp battery. You know, at this point, just build your own. Get with some of those. Get glass. Get the film.

Let's hook up esp to it and cut a hole in the door i've cut a hole in the door before and then mount the window and yeah at this point and it'll probably be less than 800 i don't even i don't even think you guys need to do that though because you could just put the smart tint on and then run wires to it and then bam exactly this being built into the door is kind of nice yeah yeah it's pretty nice and then when it breaks or stops working whatever it is you just put your own tent on there and then you're good to go yeah it's just they make it shiny so you can see it as a mirror when you're walking my neighbor came over to my house after we had our windows tinted last month and he came over to our house today he goes dang you got a mirror going on over here so we can see you that's right we're

watching you that way you can think about yourself before you ring my doorbell all right all right we got to talk about this sonos has a plan no it is not just the trello board anymore guys they actually have a plan they're gonna earn your trust back doubtful doubtful they're gonna do it they they announced the i'm calling it the Patrick plan. I don't know what they're calling it. Let's call it the Patrick plan. Because this is like, I, so I put it in our card here where we can look at it. Because it's like all of the, like they made this like giant page full of images and a video of Patrick Spence talking and blah, blah, blah.

And then they have all their like commitments. They have seven commitments that they came up with. The first one is not labeled of anything, but they just say they're going to deliver the highest level of customer experience and establish ambition quality benchmarks at the start of their product development. And they will not launch products until they meet these criteria. So they're not going to push things out that are half-baked, which it feels like that's always usually usually what cosonos did up until like recently where they were shouldn't that be like what every company does though you know i i don't know i don't run a

software company but i feel like that's probably one of those important things it's tough i mean i'll say like it's tough because you get like you're right up to the line like right now we have i have a project that's open that we've been working on for quite some time. And then like halfway through, we decided to make it better and we did make it better. We actually solved a lot of problems and we showed it off at Cedia and we're like, Hey, this is awesome. It'll be up on the website soon. You know, it's not CD anymore. CD was in September. It's now October. And like, and, and people are like, Hey, where is this thing? And now if you go to the quality awards, I forget which one it was. Maybe I'll put them in the show notes so people listen to the podcast can go vote for this thing that doesn't exist on our website.

But yeah, like it's literally sitting on my desk. But like there are instructions that like I want to make better. So I can understand like there's immense pressure to like release these products, especially when you're talking like Sonos and you've got like a factory that's made a bunch of headphones. You know, you think you're going to be the best thing in the world and you got to like a factory that's made a bunch of headphones that, you know, you think are going to be the best thing in the world and you got to get that app out there to release the headphones. I can understand the pressure and everything. So, you know, I can understand how they got where they got, but I also, it's just not like, it hasn't been the Sonos ethos to do that. Right. Like they, they release products and they're just really good. Right. They work. Well, that's, what's annoying. Right. Because of like Google or like Apple did it hasn't been the Sonos ethos to do that, right? Like they release products and they're just really good, right?

They work. Well, that's what's annoying, right? Because of like Google or like Apple did this. You'd be like, oh yeah, that happens, you know? You know, that happens all the time with you guys. But it's Sonos who did not do that and traditionally like always valued itself as being the premium experience. And when you don't keep on delivering that, then you're no longer the premium experience. Right. Number two, they'll increase the stringency of, and it's really hard to say for me, for some reason, the stringency of pre-launch testing. So they're going to have

a better beta program. They're going to, number three, approach change with humility. So, you know, maybe if you, you know, somebody comes out and says, hey, this isn't working. Don't say, yeah, it's worked great. I've been using it for since December. Maybe don't say that anymore. They're appointing a quality ombudsperson, which an ombudsperson, I had to look that up. It said a person that does the duties of an ombudsman. And I'm like, well, what's that?

And I guess it's a person that's appointed to take complaints and investigate them and make a report. So they're going to have somebody writing reports. Is it Keith? No, Keith is on Reddit. He's doing his thing on Reddit. AI Keith. They're going to extend number five. So we're already at number five and we've all,

we've done things that like I thought Sonos was already doing at this point. And number five is they're going to extend the warranties of some of their home speakers. And I guess the, the, the, the last year or so, if you've bought a product in the last year,

they're going to extend it by an additional year. So thank you. That's nice. That's nice that's nice i mean typically sono stuff doesn't go bad um although we were kind of visiting a reddit thing before the show that had a bunch of cracked uh what grills that were coming off the line for a bunch of uh what were those the sonos ones uh sonos arrow 100s arrow 100s that's what it is uh yeah, you know, maybe if you have a cracked grill on an Aero 100, it's time to take advantage of that warranty. And then number six, they're going to do relentless app improvement, of course. Of course, TJ.

They're going to be rolling out those software reversions every two to four weeks based on their Trello board that they posted. And then number seven, they're going to establish a customer advisory board. So TJ, I think you got to go sign up for this. I think this is you customer advisory board. They want to,

they want to never lose sight of your voice is what they say here. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, at this point, I'm just tired of the Sonos apology tour. Like, I don't know about you guys, but it's just like,

just shut up and just do it. Like, come on. It's a video. they launched a website you know like traditionally like sonos hasn't been like the most open company in the world right like they've just whenever they have a new product coming out you might get a glimpse of it on the verge uh you know like a week or two beforehand and then it gets reported and everybody sees it but typically sonos like just keeps themselves and they and they just work in the background and that's that's great because that's what tech companies should do um but now it's just like they're just so much in the public at this point and it's like just nobody cares just fix your stuff yeah and let's move on you know we

don't need 20 000 press releases saying that you understand that you messed up uh because first of all i don't think you do uh and second of all like none of that matters people just want to be able to use their stuff um you saying apollo you saying sorry a million times doesn't make people's stuff work better i'll qualify that too stuff that was already working like stuff that worked fine before before you touched it like yeah no don't do that don't do that and we're still missing like basic features too which is like even more like puzzling right so like just at this point nobody cares about the sonos apology tour just just stop it um patrick spence we all know that you're getting fired out for the holidays so just stop apologize oh just work oh hey by the way they're not getting a bonus this year unless they can prove that the you know that the app is is great they're not gonna take a bonus i know that's that's gonna

hit you guys hard that was that was news yeah i don't think anybody in the executive team should get paid i don't like what have you guys done to get paid i don't know uh well they they messed your sono system up yeah i guess i mean mine still like works. I mean, there are certain things that just don't work. And it's like literally the update. Like nothing on my network has changed. Yeah, the app update or whatever the update was that also accompanied the app to support it did not go over well in my house either.

And I think I... So Gavin, you suggested a few weeks back that I change over to using just Wi-Fi, connect my Sonos devices to Wi-Fi. Yeah, take it off the Sonos net and just use it as the Wi-Fi. Yeah, well, I tried to do that. And I kicked a device off my system, which basically involved factory resetting it. I guess I had to do that because there was no other way to do it. It was like, hey, I'm going to play these tones,

these gentle tones out of the speaker and it's going to identify the product. And that never worked. So it sat on my floor for another two or three weeks until I, you know, reboot it and rebooted my phone. And then I was like, oh, let me add this thing back in. I got it, added it back in. It just automatically adopted and went straight into the Sonos net thing. So I guess what I have to do is literally go around factory reset all my, my entire Sonos system and then get

it changed over to wifi and delete the, the, the, the hub thing. Cause there's, there's no, with the products I have, uh, which are play th threes mostly and a couple of play ones and a soundbar thing i guess there's no way to actually move those uh off of wi-fi um it's all the play threes especially like you have to factory set them there's no other way around it i didn't have to do that for mine um i have beams i have ones and i even have the ikea ones and i have a five and all i had to do because when you put it on sonos net you have to plug in hardwire one of them i think it was right and then the rest kind of did that and i just unplugged that one and then it kind of switched all over like i didn't have to factory reset anything i just went through this i don't know if it's just because the sonos update bs that's going on but i had to factory reset all

my stuff just to even switch the wi-fi network so yeah oh that must be new because i did mine a while back yeah like that's well and at the time there wasn't like a way because sonos sucks at software for some reason uh there wasn't any way to update the wi-fi network so if you wanted to update the wi-fi network you had to literally reset all your devices because you couldn't change the wi-fi so thanks sonos thanks for that not important feature there well let me check the sonos trello board to see if uh changing the wi-fi on your sonos speaker is something they're gonna work on and you know what's hilarious too about this whole sonos thing i know there is like there's like one thing that sonos could do just to make a bunch of like nerds and sonos people happy in general and that's allowing three front speakers oh no uh if they

if they allowed three front speakers they would like this whole controversy would just be over so patrick spence if you're listening to this don't take my advice because i think you should be fired but sonos in general uh you guys should allow three front speakers think of all the sonos arcs you could sell because you know somebody's gonna buy three sonos arcs to use them as fronts how about bluetooth headphones tj bluetooth i've heard about them beats is that the ones you're talking about no no no like how about they make cases, if you didn't know. We hear you, TJ, but how about a streaming device? How about an Apple TV competitor? Yeah.

Yeah, how about a TV device? We can't make audio equipment, but what about video equipment? Do you think we can do that? Man alive. Well, I don't see anything in here about changing the Wi-Fi on the Sonos Trello board. I think they might have fixed it now. No. It was a legitimate problem there for a couple weeks

because I wanted to change my Wi-Fi network to something else, and I couldn't. Well, I'll give it a go. I'll try it again. I'll unplug. I have one of those Sonos, the bridge things, right? The little bridge. Yeah, the boost.

Don't use that anymore because the Sonos net doesn't work because for some reason Sonos decided to get rid of that i did make changes to my wi-fi network where i have a separate shid up for stuff like sonos now so i will um i'll switch everything over to that and we'll see if i have to factory reset everything though i'm not going to be very happy with sonos but hopefully the product will work better like gavin said because usually what gavin says to do something kevin's always right it's right yeah exactly gavin ai would not lie we sure hate sonos but man we'll talk about them all the time so tired of that conversation all right here's something cool ring is adding 24 7 continuous

video recording for its stick up cam and the indoor stick up cam starting on november 5th this feature available through a newly renamed Ring Home Premium Plan allows continuous recording, you know, unlike the motion-triggered recording that you get now. The Premium Plan costs $20 a month and includes cloud storage for up to 10 cameras on that continuous video recording, along with event-activated recording, you know, on the other stuff. Initially, what they're calling CVR

will be compatible with four wired cameras, but not with the wired doorbells. No thank you there. Ring's pricing is higher than its competitors, like Google Nest and Arlo, which offer advanced detection features. And additionally, the professional monitoring for Ring Alarm is now uh a ten dollar

add-on which which we'll talk about next we'll talk about next um what do you guys think about this it's kind of interesting huh this uh i'm glad they introduced this you know um it was one of the features i felt ring was missing you know it's always good that they have alerts and stuff like that but i feel like 24 hour recording was was a big thing for them to add it. The only thing is, you're going to have to make sure you're not on very basic internet plans, too, especially the more cameras you have, because they'll be uploading constantly to the web. So, just something to keep in mind. When I first heard this, I saw the $20 price tag and I was like, $20 per camera. That is crazy.

But $20 for up to 10 cameras. I don't think that's a terrible deal. I don't like that it's very limited on cameras because I imagine it's because of how much storage they have built into those cameras. But it's only like a couple of cameras out of like so many different cameras they have. But, you know for 20 a month i really don't think it's that bad of a deal and most people do not want to be bothered with like a physical hard drive and like a server and stuff inside their house and so i think i

think a lot of people are just going to upgrade to this plan if they can uh because they can get those 24 7 uh recordings what i'm interested though, is are they just uploading this every second or every minute that it records something? Because if so, like, you're going to have to make sure you have really good internet and I would assume, like, good upload, especially if you're going to add up to, like, 10 cameras. So that would be my concern off the bat. Yeah, I mean, most of these other companies that do this, it's just constantly streaming out and then there's a server on the other end that just ingests that video and saves it i mean it's not it's not an

unheard of technology especially i mean a lot of camera like commercial cameras are doing that these days where there's a cloud component and the nvr is up in the cloud the installer just goes out and plugs them in and they they provision heck access cameras even have like a vpn built into them where they will completely dissolve themselves from the main network and just go straight to this cloud computer and crazy stuff that exists out there on cameras these days so this isn't like i feel like this is a known technology apple home kit cameras have been doing this for a while now even you know there's not very many of them but yeah yeah like gavin said i think you're gonna have to make sure that you're

not you're not on one of the basic internet. Especially with those internet, some of those internet plans have like data caps on them where you can't go over them. Be wary, wary of doing anything with this because it's just like watching a video all day long on 10 cameras. You know, it's going to rack up some gigabits going out. All the GBs. Yep, you're going to get all the gbs taken away from you what there's a couple of new features that are coming out doorbell calling uh basically turns your doorbell notification into a phone call somebody calls you you're gonna get a full

screen phone call somebody's calling you from your door uh instead of like a pop-up notification so that's kind of nice good idea yeah i guess arlo doorbell has been doing that for a while uh so it's nice to see that kind of brought over the ring. Video preview alerts sends a rich text notification over to you when the camera is triggered. It includes a video clip and it'll give you more detail about what's going on. And it's going to have extended continuous live view, which I think TJ, you like this. Instead of going from 10 minutes, you can leave that live view playing for up to 30 minutes. And if you pay for the premium plan, you can watch for an unspecified amount of time yeah i like that because a lot of people i mean there's certain areas where like maybe you just want to put a security camera up but you really don't care

about like the recording or the the motion alerts and stuff like that you're basically just using it to like watch an area and one of my annoyances with you know ring and a bunch of others is that the timeout is not that long. And this is pretty common for internet streaming cameras. Like Alarm.com does this. I think Nest does it. Everybody just does it for an unspecified amount of time. But anytime you can extend this, I think it's useful.

Because some people, if I'm just like, sometimes we're waiting for a contractor to come over to our house and we'll pull out the Ubiquiti doorbell on the tv and just let it hang out there for 30 45 minutes while i'm waiting on whoever to show up um and i can't do that with like ring doorbells and stuff so i think there is a legitimate use case for that and it's good to see that it is being extended yep yep and honestly the video preview alerts i thought they were already doing that. I think they had the image, like a text that had an image in it, but not video. Yeah. But yeah, all good improvements.

Good to see. And if you pay for this premium plan, you'll get some continuous video recording up to 10 cameras if you have those specific camera types. And it's not all the cameras, it's just specific ones. I mentioned the Ring alarm service that they mentioned for having as a $10 add-on that they're going on there.

They're also increasing this monitoring service price for people who are grandfathered customers who are paying $10 a month, it's going up to $20 a month, or basically $100 annually to $200 annually. It's going to kind of bring it up in line with the Ring Protect Pro plan, which was introduced about three years ago.

This price hike is effective from the next renewal period, starting March 1st. And I guess it's frustrating customers who were not really informed about the change. And I can say that I'm one of them because I kind of got this surprising email. An email back in September mentioned that the plan name was going to change.

It didn't really highlight the future price increase, except in some really tiny, tiny print down at the bottom, I guess. But here's what I got in the email today. This is a reminder that we're previously notified you of your Ring Protect Plus first-gen plan transitioning to a Ring plan with alarm professional monitoring. Starting at your first renewal after March 1st,

your plan will be transitioned from the Ring Home standard with alarm professional monitoring, and your price will increase from $10 a month to 20 bucks a month or a hundred to $200 a year with plus taxes. So yeah, I don't really, I don't really feel I was properly notified about that. I guess a lot of people don't either. I, I 10 bucks, 10 bucks a month. I'm probably not going to pay for it. It's probably going to be like the reason I pull the ring alarm stuff out and kind of roll my own through the old home assistant, as they say, right? I'd say all your neighbors are old anyway.

What do you really need a security system for? I mean, it's nice to have on if we're not home, right? Usually when we're leaving. Yeah, I want to know if something's happening. Well, in your neighborhood, you can leave Halloween candy out and people will actually just take one piece. Yeah, I'm not really sure what you're concerned about.

I know. Like, what are you concerned about? Worst thing you have to worry about is gators. Yeah. It reminds me that I know I sent a story to you about the, the Amazon packages, or it was a,

it was a, it was a news story about the Amazon packages that were getting delivered at this house in Tennessee. I'm like, all right, my, my house is not that safe. Like this house had to have like 100, 200 Amazon packages.

There were so many, it was like filled out and halfway through their front yard. And I'm like, yeah, that wouldn't, that would, people would take those. I'm pretty sure somebody would be like, these must be free, right? They're in your front yard. But yeah, I guess I feel like I'm probably

in a safer city or a safer place or just kind of in a dead end area that nobody goes and looks. We have had something stolen off our front door. We didn't really notice because it was like an Amazon package, but some cop came by later and detective. He's like, hey, we found this package. Do you want to come pick it up? It gets returned to you. In our neighborhood, the cop will be like, I don't know who this is for. I'm going to keep it myself.

Even though the address is on it, they'll still. Yeah, he must have not wanted it that much. But yeah, he's like, your address was on here. And, you know, we figured you may want this. And it's like, oh, yeah, I guess we ordered that a few months back and never got it. But, you know, it was one of those things you never really looked into because it really wasn't worth much, whatever it was. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not, I'm probably going to kill the, it's just kind of like, I've been, I see that charge come through every now and then I

have a couple, I only have two ring devices plus the alarm left anyway. Most everything's going through unify. I've got the automation stuff going through either, you know, home kit or, uh, possibly a little bit more through home assistant these days. I don't know. I've got control four in the house too. So I don't, I don't know. I just, I don't feel like I would use this very much anymore. And I could probably switch out everything. The keypads are all Z-Wave. I could probably keep those, right? I think those can integrate back into home assistant. So just got to plug in that dongle that you haven't plugged in. It's right here. Just right here. Come on. Just plug it in, Seth. Right. Oh yeah, just plug it in that dongle that you haven't plugged in it's right it's right here come on just plug it in set right oh yeah just plug it in still on my desk but it's more than just plugging in but just plug it in that's the first step it's plug and play the play

part is not play it's a lot of work but you know it's plug and play it's a made it's a motto yeah all right uh let's move on here we've got a funny story coming from hp and i think tj you dug this one up for gavin um hp is interesting introducing ai to its printers with the new finally everybody was asking when this was going to happen uh with its new hp print ai experience now available in exclusive beta this feature aims to enhance printouts by detecting and eliminating unwanted content like ads and awkward formatting ensuring only the desired text and images are printed. So, yeah, AI is built into your printer, Gavin. There you go. You can employ conversational prompts through your printer to find out why it's not online.

All we ask is one thing. Just make printers work. That's all we want. That thing just make printers work you know that's all we want it's like ai will do you know you you don't want a conversation with your printer hp is sounding like a sonos company you know we want this thing no we're gonna give you this thing you know and now what now now not only am i gonna have problems printing stuff but when i eventually am able to print it the printout's gonna come out not looking like uh what i expected to print because it's going to detect something in my printout that it thinks is an ad and remove it so now i'm going to be fighting with

the printer to get it to i don't i don't think this is a good idea the ai it can upscale your images and remove unwanted objects like i don't know if you get to determine what is an unwanted object maybe it thinks like there's a picture of you and your wife and like, I'm going to take Gavin out. He's unwanted and takes him out to picture your wife that comes out. Like, what happens here? Can you print every image of me and my ex, but take my ex out of all of them, please. And then it will do its thing. You know, it's like, oh, like the upscaling of the image. Isn't that something I would do on my computer before I printed it? That's what I'm saying, right?

Why would you want this built into your printer software? Exactly. So it looks like they're just trying to make up a problem to use AI for, just so they can put AI on their product. Just make the printers work. Bad HP. Go to the corner. Yeah. Yeah. Bad HP. Go to the corner. Yeah. Yeah.

Bad HP. Everybody's adding AI. I think we have to add AI to the podcast. We're going to have to have AI somehow. We already added AI to the podcast, Seth.

You were there. Yeah, like two weeks ago. It was still AI. It didn't work very well. This is the home tech. Nobody knew that the Gavin was gone. Exactly.

HomeTech.fm, now with AI. Even Rose thought that that was Gavin. Actually, yeah. That's true. We'll add a fourth host in the future, you know? I wonder if we can do that. Hmm.

All right. One more story here. We've got a Matter story coming from SmartThings. SmartThings has become the first major platform to support Matter 1.3. It was announced at the Samsung Developer Conference, and this latest version of Matter specification expands compatibility to include devices such as EV chargers, oven, cooktops, microwaves, tumble dryers, extractor hoods, water sensors, and water valves,

along with energy reporting capabilities. So, you know, it says the story goes on why they're well there's pretty much no matter compatible devices in these categories yet but you know samsung's ready samsung's ready for those ev chargers it's pretty it's pretty cool i'm somebody's forging ahead you know samsung's a pretty smart thing it's pretty big out there and exists just about everywhere there's a samsung product at this point So I think this is a good thing. It's a good step forward. Yeah, I think it's a good thing.

And it's good to see that progress is going on matter. All right. Well, all the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 501. All right. We have a mailbag from Paul asking about LED indicators. He's looking for free recommendations to add LED indicators to existing dumb light switches in the house to display door and window closed status of nearby doors. Scene controllers seem to be the most common option, but light switches themselves don't really need to be smart for Paul here.

He says, I understand that may just be part of the process to get connectivity to control someone's home status lights he's running home assistant uh says he's got wi-fi and his eb network and thanks for all of you three uh doing what you do so thanks paul thanks for writing in uh interesting so he's got dumb light switches but he wants to display door and when i think we talked about this before. Somebody has this feature where you have like a red light if there's a window open and you can look over and see, oh, there's a window open. I need to go shut the window or lock the door. And then you get a green light and you can go to bed.

So that's what it sounds like he's doing. How can you get this on dumb light switches? Well, so I don't know how you're going to do it on dumb switches. My suggestion is going to be that you just upgrade to smart switches if it's possible. I actually have this feature at my house. We use Enovelli Blue Series, so the ZigBee switches. They're $50 each. I actually just ordered another one.

They actually have an LED status bar on the side of them. And because Enovelli is great and very user-friendly, you can make it do whatever you want. And so I have an automation set up on mine to where if the doors are all locked, then the light on all of the switches is red. And if the door is unlocked or open, the the lights is green um and so that way i know that the the it's not locked um i don't know if you could do this with just like i'm sure you could do this with like like just like a display or something right like somebody's gonna make some kind of internet connected button or something like that but for like a $50 light switch i would just switch out the light switch get these nfls you have the status bar and then you can change it to whatever color you want gavin uh i'm gonna say the exact same thing

like it's just for you know aesthetics you know it's gonna be a cleaner install um if you just get the light switch the amount of work and effort you'll put into trying to do led something it's just so much easier to get the light switch. I know some people have done similar things with an LED light bulb, where in certain situations they'll set that light bulb to a certain color, but then you have to dedicate a lamp to it or something like that. In my house, I use the notifications on the LEDs on the light switch a lot. So when my garage door is opening, it's flashing a certain color. When it's opened or closed it's certain colors um when the alarm's on um all the switches that are by my doors by each

door actually turn red to you know signaling that the alarms on this door will trigger the alarm if you open it right um i also have uh indicator lights for like my backyard when motion's detected my lights in the backyard automatically turn on because animals are back there right but it also shows like a pulsing light to say hey it was triggered by motion and it will eventually turn off when motion's done right um and i do a number of things like that it's just the easiest and best way to do it grab the intervalley switches and you'll be happy um it looks it's a clean install it's an easy install um and it's it's by the time you buy the led parts and everything you need you it's a fraction of the cost that's it's gonna start to add up

and you could have had a switch in there okay uh so i guess i have to pick the uh the most expensive thing possible so i'm gonna go that way uh i'm gonna suggest get one of these like vesta board message boards things that that are like the little flipping like noisy like really expensive you just wait like yeah okay exactly it's uh 3200 okay and you're gonna put this up in the living room so like as you're walking and it's gonna tell you what doors and windows are open and isn't this very loud too i'm just checking it's abs is so loud i just want to make sure but they do have they do have like color uh cards that you can have in there so you can have some color cards you could say like front door and door and maybe you could just flip that one or whatever.

It's only gonna make noise when it has to flip, TJ. So I don't know. There's probably a home assistant integration for that. I was gonna suggest something like, yeah, just use an LED light bulb and at nine o'clock or whatever, turn it red or green based on if the doors are locked or the windows are shut and that kind of thing.

That's a good idea too. Gavin mentioned, Gavin did mention that. And then I also found a, some, um, some, uh,

on printables. If you want to go this route, uh, there's some WLED indicator lights for home assistant and somebody that had made like a little, um, just an LED, just one LED indicator light. It has WLED running in the,

in, on a little, uh, I don't know what is this called esp32 right and then you get that integrated with home assistant you can you can make that indicator light whatever color you want and um there's another there's another one that i found in here that's a that's a home assistant status board that that this this person printed up and he said he wears headphones a lot what he does is he likes to know if like something's going on. And this has like eight different status lights that it can light up based on this WLAD board. So I don't know, all of it's there. And it looks like all of the instructions are there on how to do all this stuff. If you wanted to just have like a simple status board to look at, or in every room that had, you know, on your way on your path back

to the, to the, you know, the bedroom, you know on your way on your path back to the to the you know the bedroom you want to make sure all the doors and windows are shut you could you can install little status lights and uh and have these little status lights up or you can just get the uh 3200 flip board thing and uh go that direction when you flip what would be nice about is like when you do lock your door or you do lock your window you'll hear as the thing changes over tells you so just don't come home drunk late night oh man that's a lot of good options though i i i think between the two of them probably the anna valley switch or the light bulb but i like the vestibord option too so i'm glad you gave

that one yeah somebody had to i guess yeah and then and then the i mean i i think that what he actually had run across with like the keypad or whatever like a keypad with like five or six buttons with leds on it using if you wanted to install it right next to your light switches that would that would work too so i think those are the way to go and i don't think there's any um you know i don't think there's if he doesn't want to get the smart switches, I can understand why. Like maybe you don't want to have smart, maybe you don't want to do the smart lighting. Maybe you don't even have a neutral or something too, who knows? Yeah.

Yeah. But there's definitely ways to do this outside of messing with smart lights. So, all right. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for writing in. Hopefully, let us know what you end up doing too,, I'll be curious to see which way you go. Let me know if you get that, that, that cool Vesta board thing that makes all the racket and get the white one. That'd be nice. Yeah. Yes. All right. We do have a pick of the week and this is courtesy of Jimmy in the,

uh, in the hub. I, I, the, the, he must, he must get like every wife every single iot device out there and of course he come he posts a picture in slack right and for me i don't know if you guys but for me it was like cropped out and i just basically see this guy sitting on a toilet and and and so i always click you know yeah i was like I mean, let me, let me rephrase that. It's just a, it's just like a little outline image. Like one of these things, like a little outline, like a guy crossing the street, stick figure. Yeah. The guy crossing the street, the bathroom sign guy, whatever.

And he's sitting on that toilet. Right. And I click on, I'm like, what does this have to do? I click on it and it says, remain seated until the update is complete. Okay. So he just wants you to sit on your toilet, I guess. He said, when the seat has updated, you receive a notification. Please wait until you are redirected to the home screen before attempting to reconnect. And I couldn't figure out for the life of me what this was about. I looked up at the top, it says updating the day. So somehow

he's got his hands on an iot bidet which is literally the internet of shit at this point like this is this is the literal internet of shit i'm impressed is this un-shitification is that what they were talking about no but it's close you know okay you know i like how it says remain seated until the update is complete and i believe it's probably doing that because it's going to what Jimmy actually said that they can that he can set up like scenes, which I think is hilarious for a bidet. So if you wanted to blast your booty hole with like 70 degree water and then blow the fan on it, it'll do it. You can just create a scene with that. But I like that this says remain seated until the update is complete because

part of me wants to believe that the toilet seat rumbles or something when it's complete it will or just like not do it or just blast you with air or something it's like boop i'm done what if what if you got up halfway through the update process what happens it just sprays water yeah what if it what if it doesn't what if it doesn't update at all unless you're seated on the seat? Like, what if you have to stay on the seat while it updates? No, no. Pull your pants down. Act like you're going to use it.

I wonder how smart this thing is, too. Like, can it detect who's sitting on the toilet? Or can you adjust the spray angle and strength? Like, I don't know how smart it is. I mean, I don't see why why i couldn't because i mean like the the smart litter box i have it can detect the cats based off their weight so i mean if if we can do that with a thousand dollar litter box i don't see why we can't do that with a bidet i can't i can't wait for his review on on tiktok he he posted a review i had

to put this on put this in the show notes he He posted a review of a water hose timer, uh, the other day. And, uh, and, and, and the sound that he had in the background was of a water hose running in his yard, but it certainly didn't sound like that. So it sounded like there was, um, some, a bathroom break going on while he was recording the video. And, and I, I just, I cracked up up laughing it was so good uh but i i can't wait to hear what it sounds sounds like uh when he he does his uh his uh review from the bathroom well actually i i joined tiktok so i can go watch that now oh yeah right right before that right before it gets banned i decided to join so yeah in at the last minute all right well if Well, if you've had, have any feedback,

questions, comments, pics of the weeks, great ideas for a bidet, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Project updates. I had no internet, so of course I got nothing done, but I did, did get stuff done this weekend because it was, it was, uh, some, it was, it was, it's, it was, uh, mow the lawn after the storms came through and watered your winter grass. It's supposed to be dying. And, uh, so I, I had to mow all my grass and then, uh, I put up a couple of, uh, decorations outside, uh, for, for Halloween.

And I, I was rummaging through my bins of things. Right. And I, I was like, oh yeah, bins of things, right? And I was like, oh yeah, I bought two of these Govee, what are they, the curtain things? Yeah, curtain lights. Yeah, curtain lights. I bought two of those a while back. And I know you can pair them together. So I actually, I don't remember where I saw this. Could have been on TikTok, could have been somewhere. But I was like, I have this ugly garage door that never opens because you know, it's our office right now. Like, what if,

um, what if I put the curtain lights over the garage door and I grabbed a piece of, uh, like PVC pipe and zip tied the curtain lights to the garage door and then, uh, cracked it, cracked the garage door a little bit and then sho the uh the lights and stuff you know down the garage door so like the the main bits uh to it like the smarts and the things that shouldn't get wet are inside the garage and then uh the the stuff that's uh weather rated the leds and then those are pretty well sealed up uh that's all outside so now i've got on my ugly garage door this is giant white garage door it's a nice little screen of uh curtain lights from from govi and uh putting like little pumpkins up there and skeletons and stuff so it's a lot of fun that's pretty cool i've always i think

i've always wanted one of those those curtains they seem pretty cool um i really don't have anywhere i'd put it right now though so maybe i need to get like some bush or something we really don't have a flat wall with like no windows you need a garage door a garage door like yeah maybe I'll just get a garage door with no garage that'd be nice yeah I I and I it's not like it's a permanently mounted thing like since it's on the pvc pipe I can just kind of uh take those and put it away you know and uh I think I'm going to when take it apart, I'm going to cut it in such a way that I can just like couple them back together. So I don't have to, and just store it in a box. So I don't have to do this again in the future. I might actually get one more of them

because it's, it's only like the middle of my, I think one more would cover the whole garage door. Like the, there's only, um, I don't know how garage door, how wide a double garage door is, but it's, it's like, I think one more would look better and I would have much more light and stuff to work with. And I don't know, it seems like it'd be the way to go. The only, only problem I've had with it is the Gobi software is absolute crap. The schedules never work. And it basically runs all day because yeah, it doesn't work real. I'm going to eventually, this is on my project. So I may as well put this on my projects is to bring this into like maybe home assistant. Cause I saw that they had an integration, an official Govee

integration. I don't think it works with these though. I, I was, I was briefly looking at it and I think it only supports certain lighting devices. And from what I was seeing that you had to go into the device itself and turn on the local API, these don't have that option. So I'm, I'm guessing that I'm going to be out of luck with that. And maybe the integration that I will achieve is, you know,

a Shelly smart switch that turns on and off the Gobi power supply at an appropriate time so this thing doesn't stay on all night at full blast. It's actually pretty bright. I'm kind of surprised how all these little LEDs on a white background light up the front driveway. That's disappointing to hear about Gobi software because I was actually thinking about getting some of their permanent outdoor lights because I'm looking to add some of those this year so if you guys have any suggestions let me know but um goby was one of the top ones that came up and they

have the pro ones which are like you can extend them and everything like that which kind of makes them nice but if their software sucks that kind of ruins the whole thing it was oh it's it's like an okay for the basics software but like if the schedules don't work, because I have set them up three times now. And I guess every time you, if you need to make a change to the curtains, you have to separate them. Like if you need to firmware update one and you've accidentally not firmware updated it and you need to go firmware update or you need to change something, you have to separate them. And then you can go and change like the left curtain. I'm going to edit this one. I'm going to do something to that. When you put them back together, when you do that, it destroys all the schedules. It kind of tells you that.

But I've set the schedules in. I haven't touched the app, and the schedules just don't work. So I really don't know. I really don't understand why that would be the case. Could be that I didn't have internet for the last couple of days, and it needs internet connectivity. But you would think that that would be the case. It could be that I didn't have internet for the last couple of days and that needs internet connectivity. But you would think that like that would be kind of built directly into the little Govi little computer device they have on there.

I don't know. Maybe not. I'll keep messing with it, but I have not been happy with that. And it was really, I'll probably end up, honestly, I'll probably end up putting them on some kind of like toggle,

like a Shelly wall outlets that I use for everything. These things. So Shelly wall outlets that I use for everything. These things. So Shelly plug outlets things, because they work really well and they integrate with Home Assistant. So there you go. Also, I did do another project. I have the Kara FP2 sensor device in my laundry room for the past, I don't know, six months to a year.

It's been turning on and off the laundry lights. Turns out it wasn't the only thing turning on and off the laundry lab. There was also a motion detector in the room that turns on the laundry lights. And then there was a timer that was basically waiting, um, to turn off the laundry lights. But then what the FB2 was doing was like, if there's somebody in the room, don't turn them off. So I basically set it up where if you walk in the lights turn on, they don't turn off now, which is okay. I basically timer right uh and you can just go manually turn the lights off and walk out of the room fine what when i took the fp2 and moved it my daughter's room so we could see if she's uh she's in bed or not and what's really cool about the fp2 like once you set it up you can like zone

off the bed in the sleeping area or whatever you can mark it as sleeping area and then you can like mark the other areas in the room you can mark the the entries and exits. And like, if she hops out of bed and gets into that other zone, I wouldn't know. Right. And I guess what I have to do to really make that automated because a car software doesn't seem to support that oddly enough. I don't know why, but what it looks like is I have to integrate it into a home assistant and both Gavin, I think both every, everybody has told me, uh, when we're Jimmy, Gavin, TJ, you guys have all told me how to do that. You have to delete it out of home kit. You have to put it into home assistant through the home kit integration. And then all of this stuff is

there to, uh, to program off of. So if I can do that, I will probably, I'll probably do that. And then hook it up to some, uh, some lights like this, this, this is kind of what Paul was trying to do. Like if, if his door and windows aren't locked, he wants to know, I want to know if the, the, the little monster gets out of bed. And then I want to know, like immediately, I want to put it like a notification up or turn a light to a different color that we notice or turn on a light that we don't ever have on. Uh, and that'll let us know that she's up. So, um, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to try and do that. And then my last project, now that you guys are going to be sad about this one. Um, but Clippy I've noticed wasn't taking a

charge. Uh, and, um, I, I went out there and was messing around with Clippy. I'm like, all right, well maybe, maybe the charger thing is bad. And I put my meter up onto it and I'm like, nope, I've got the charge. The charge is there. It's all good. But Clippy's not getting a charge. Took some of them apart. I'm like, he's going to need the full tear down now.

Like, everything looks all right on the exterior. He's all cleaned up. Still won't take a charge. So I think now it's time to really tear Clippy down and find out what he's made of inside. Find out what's bad. See if I can fix him. So Clippy has officially gone into the project board of things to do one of these days is fix the robot lawnmower. You guys are both looking at me like this is never gonna happen

i feel sorry for your lawn because it's never gonna happen but i know you're not gonna cut the lawn so maybe i don't know that lawn's gonna be too long yeah yeah i've been having to push the old push mower around uh for the for the last little bit uh it was it was it puts he's put it put together pretty well like i'm i'm curious i haven't cracked the uh the main part of of clippy yet i kind of left him together just kind of cleaning the dirt like um the way these are built there's like a little or the way this one's built is like there's a little shell over the top that was connected to like four little i don't know like joystick looking devices and when uh, uh, that, that keeps the

shell floating on top. And if he runs into something, those joysticks get, you know, cocked over to the side and that's how he knows to turn around. And so I've got that off, but that was just filthy under there. There was all sorts of dirt and grass and bugs and stuff to like wash out. And so Clippy got the best bath of his life, but if he doesn't charge past the 5% for whatever reason, I don't know, I may have to put him out to pasture and I don't know, I'm going to tear him down. I'm going to find out what's inside there. And there's a couple of open source robot lawnmower things that kind of look like they use similar robot lawnmowers so maybe i can see if i can do like put one of those things inside of of clippy and and get him back get him back to life one of these days i'm gonna

frankenstein clippy yeah i'll do something with him i mean he's gonna get he's gonna get an upgrade he's gonna get faster motors or something i don't know like he's you know what i've been thinking about why hasn't anybody made a robot dog poop picker upper i mean so maybe we can make Clippy into a dog poop picker-upper. Maybe that can happen. I mean, they have, like, all these other robots for, like, cleaning your pool, cleaning your windows, your floors and stuff, and nobody's picking up poop? I feel like this is an important thing. We need Clippy to come up with a new purpose. Yeah, he's picking up poop.

His name couldn't be Clippy anymore. What would it be? Bit Doody. All right. All right. Moving moving on does anybody else have projects tj what are your projects no projects just robot dog pooper picker uppers oh man uh yeah so i was in missouri last week guys since i do did i do a show there i don't even remember yeah oh cool all right so yeah we drove back friday night we actually got done early. Uh, I was technically done like Tuesday or Wednesday, but I had to

make it last a little bit longer. Um, so Thursday night we like finished and I was like, we're driving back. And so Friday morning we left and we kind of just took our time. It was like, Hey, we're not really in a rush. We're getting back early anyway. We'll go and just take our time. It was all good though, guys, until I got to Indiana and then we stopped in