HomeTech.fm - Episode 506 - Dumb Home Therapy Session

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

On this week's show: Amazon unveils a massive 21-inch Echo Show, Aqara introduces their new Valve Controller T1 and Smoke Detector, TP-Link launches the Tapo H110 Smart Remote and hub (in Japan), Nuki promises ultra-fast door unlocking with their new smart lock, Level Lock adds Matter support, Google's Gemini AI heads to home products, Apple plans to expand their smart home lineup with a new hub and security camera, listener feedback, a Pick of the Week, Gavin and Seth discuss Linus Tech Tips' smart home challenges, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 22nd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, and we've got Black Friday coming up around the corner, guys. I was at Costco over the weekend,'s kind of looking at the TVs there. So I had a TV like die.

The funny thing is, is like it's automated to turn on every morning and show like the calendar for the family. It's, it's been turning on, but the screen, there's no picture on the screen. So it's just like,

you hear this Gavin, you'll appreciate this. It's the, it's one of the old, uh, it's the Samsung with the touch of color, the plasma. I have one of those still too. Yeah. That's my Samsung with the touch of color, the plasma. I have one of those still too.

Yeah. That's my bedroom TV. Yeah. Keeps the place warm. It's a heater in the wintertime. It's going to be so cold in your house now, Seth. Yeah, exactly. We're supposed to get a cold front.

I don't know. When you turn it on, it makes this little sound. I was walking around in the morning and I heard do-do-do-do-do-do, whatever the Samsung sound is. I was like, oh, that thing's still turning on whoops wow mine even has burnt in images from cp24 on it and everything and i still use it i mean i just can't justify buying a new one but i just got rid of i had an old samsung um dlp tv and this thing was the pedestal tv it was on a pedestal and everything one big piece and getting that from upstairs to downstairs was first of all i injured myself just doing that but then we gave it away um some guy came and picked it up with a truck and i was shedding a tear because that was like

my first major purchase it was that tv many years ago and it was so sad to see that thing go but yeah it's being used in a good home, I hope. Did you cry a little bit? Yeah, he actually messaged my wife and said, you know, we picked up the TV, but your husband's crying. You go console him a little bit. I just thought it was kind of weird, but yeah, whatever. Yeah, I felt bad, you know, but, you know, we gave it away and he's giving it to his daughter, so it's going to keep her place warm. Oh, nice.

There you go. At least it moves on to a happy home. At Costco, they had this like 86-inch TV for like, I think it was like $800 or $899 or something. I don't know. My wife made me go to Costco, and I was like. Picked one of these up. Yeah. She's like, no.

I'm like, yes. Bought this for our wall calendar. Don't worry. I'll get it installed this weekend. Word of advice, it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is permission. Yeah, Gavin knows firsthand about that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get something like that home.

If I asked in advance, I would never have gotten this 3D printer. That's true. But, you know, she's forgiven me a long time ago about it, so I still have it. Did she, though? I don't know. that's true you know she's forgiven me a long time ago about it so i still have it did she though i don't know costing me but she she's she's over it now you know this this is what i need sam's club has that uh remember that lg uh like briefcase tv they released yes yes it's like the silliest thing ever i don't know why you need it but it is currently 400 off so i can get it for 800 right now i mean that's a still too much it was heavy and it also had like a battery in it as well

from i remember it's like a tailgating tv for for comparison i can buy a 50 inch tv for 250 dollars so unless you really needed a briefcase i think you can uh just buy normal tv oh here it is it's 8.99 for a uh lg 86 ur 8000 so matt gavin how big are the ads going to be on this tv 86 inches that's crazy it's insane and they still haven't fixed their ad issue i get like i'll turn on the tv i'll get like four ads but they all pop up over each other right Right? So I don't get to see them at all. So I think they need to fix their ads. They get paid four times is what I'm hearing. Actually, I don't want them to fix it.

I'm happy that I don't see four ads. All right. Well, we got a couple of new products this week and a bunch of headlines, things in the news these days. It's kind of nice. Usually this time of year, stuff is ramping down, but here we go. We got a bunch of home tech headlines. What do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. news today. Amazon has unveiled a 21 inch Echo Show. It's going to be the largest smart display to date made by the company. The device is designed to enhance smart home experience with its expansive screen, making it ideal for video calls, streaming and smart home control. And I think you can even like watch, well, you can watch videos on it, right? You can do the Amazon Prime videos and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So a lot of people use these for kitchen TVs and that kind of thing. And, you know, to kind of like a dashboard for your home or home automation system or just a dashboard in general.

And you got a little TV in there that you can watch. Seems like a pretty good idea. What do you guys think about this? I think when you're getting into the 20 inch, 21 inch range, it's perfect for displaying stuff like camera feeds because you'll have multiple cameras i think that's a good sign size you know the other ones were you know when you're thinking of like a kitchen display the other ones were nice on the counter but you could only display so much on them too right i think this one's a good one oh man i was so confused because it says the price is 549 but i didn't realize that was Canadian price. And I was like, and now I understand what you feel like, Gavin, because when I read that, I was like, man, that is crazy

expensive. I'm never going to buy that. But the American price is only $399. And so now I'm primed. It's a good price. That's pretty awful. Yeah. $299 for the 15 inch and for the 21 inch, $399. You see how much it hurts when you guys advertise something for like 99.99 and then i check my amazon and it's like 799.99 yeah it's pretty bad now it hurts you just you just you just had the the same emotional roller coaster ride that gavin has every show tj that was just a little bit of what this man experiences. Honestly, though, I was looking for this in the Google Home display, and I think Google's kind of given up

on the Google Assistant, so I don't think we're going to get anything out of that. But I tried Amazon Alexa for a while, and I just, I don't know, there's something about it I don't like as much. It's kind of painful to use in my experience with Google. But I really want one of these giant displays and i don't need one i have a 50 inch tv in the kitchen and do i do i need this display as well i don't but it would be kind of cool to have my smart home stuff on there yeah

um and traditionally you just put like an ipad on the wall or something but i don't want to put an ipad on the wall either because that's even more expensive than this so i think it's a good idea this i mean it's not a touchscreen right you have to use the remote with it or is it i'm pretty sure it's not a touchscreen it does come with a remote you can watch uh it's got a fire tv built into it which is nice yeah um so you could use it as a tv in the kitchen and everything so well and that's that seems to be according to literally every, um, uh, hero shot and, um, like, uh, lifestyle picture they have here is where they expect you to use this. It's in the kitchen. In fact, there's one that's like on, on a kitchen Island, not even plugged in, but it's,

it's, Oh no, they, they have it plugged in. Amazing. They have the cable running across the table and around the, I've never seen that in a product shot, but there it is. It's white on white, so you just have to notice it. But, yeah, they actually, truth in advertising here, finally, they show it plugged into what is now an illegal outlet because you can't do those anymore, from what I understand. I think the NEC is kicking that back.

No more outlets in the islands, from what I understand. Hmm. Yeah, weird, huh? All right, well, let's move on. Nobody's buying one of these is what I'm hearing. back no no more no more outlets in the in the islands from what i understand yeah weird huh all right well um let's move on nobody's buying one of these is what i'm hearing nobody's gonna get one i want one gavin says no on the price tj says i want one but no i have a 50 inch at that price i think you could get into the ipad range right like yeah well yeah but the problem is the ipad doesn't go up to that size. So, I mean, the iPad maxes out at like 12 inches.

Yeah. But with the iPad, I can use it to display like a home assistant interface or something too. This one, I don't think you can display like a home assistant interface. But if you're buying this, you're not using the home assistant. Exactly. So. Neat product. All right.

Well, let's move on here. We've got a car that's got a new valve controller out and a smoke detector. The valve controller T1 is available internationally internationally automates the process of shutting off your main water when a leak is detected i i love these things they need to be everywhere they need to be everywhere there is a smoke detector so if you got smoke detectors in your house you should have a water detector in there too because they're great and uh if you need a smoke detector the car's got you hooked up as well. They've got a, well, only if you live in Europe, evidently. They have a smoke detector that's designed to detect smoke and alert users using a loud 85 decibel siren. And both integrate with smart home systems.

So kind of cool. I know I saw Euro prices on the story here. I don't remember how much the T1 was selling for. $70 on Amazon. $70. All right. Which is dirt cheap for a controllable gate controller. I've looked at some in the past, and you can buy good name brand ones, and they're like $150 to like, I mean, up to like $400 and something for the Moen one.

The Moen one's a little more involved because you actually install it in the piping it doesn't go on just a the valve um but they get very expensive um this is one of the first things i looked at adding to my house because i like one of my fears is that like i come back from vacation or work or something and my house is flooded because i the flood and like fire are like, like two awful things. And you have to like gut the entire house and like, it just destroys everything. And so I looked at adding, uh, some kind of, uh, valve controller, but the, with the way my plumbing is, I actually have a gate valve, which is the, um, the continuous turn one.

So you just keep rotating it, uh, instead of this quarter turn one, which they show here. Yeah. So I cannot add any smart valve to mine. And so I just have a million water leak sensors instead. Boo. All right.

Well, nice try. Yeah, I'm looking at the UK store for amazon.co.uk and the Aquara smoke detector requires Aquara Zigbee 3.0 hub smoke alarms for home, 85 dB siren and led indicator fire alarm with 10 year battery life supports home kit alexa google home matter over

bridge uh that is 37 49 pounds so that's not bad you're pretty good pricing i i'm in the same boat as utj like i can't get any sort of water shut off valve because it doesn't, I have that, what do you call it? The continuous turn one. Yeah. I think I always forget. I think it's called a gate valve. And to replace it on mine,

I'd have to do a lot to get it replaced. So it's not worth it, but it's a good price in Canadian. It's $99.99, or you can buy at $25 over four weeks. You know, they give you that option too because things get expensive up here. But yeah, and the smoke detectors, I guess they're not certified in North America. That's why they're not here.

But if you want smart smoke detectors and you have hardwired alarms, you can get the Zuze add-on. I have one of those. They work great. They detect whether it's CO2 alarm or a smoke alarm and it integrates into your smart home of choice so nice yeah i'm gonna give you guys a project i mean if you if you think changing out the valve is too much you know go with the more you know crazy one where you have to cut the pipe and you cut the pipe and then you just cut the pipe cut the pipe

like you you turn the water valve off right turn the water the water valve off. You cut the pipe, right? And all the water drains out. And then you go to the store and you get these things called shark bites, right? Oh, yeah. And they just stick right on there. Stop it, Seth. Stop it. Then you're a plumber.

You're a master plumber at that point. Nobody should be using shark bite, especially for their main water. That's what I need it for. I looked at, same as Gavin it for um i looked at same as gavin i kind of looked at getting mine done and it was like 1500 just to like re-pipe my setup uh because of like it was like i'd have to like extend the piping and do some weird stuff to to add it so it was and plumbers are charging a ton of money these days i don't know if you guys have got a plumbing quote recently uh but those people make more than doctors so i mean as they should i mean nobody wants to deal with well i guess it depends on

which one you're doing i have i have a guy that will do it for me it's just you know he's old school so convincing him why i really want to do this is a a challenge and i have to catch him in a good mood so maybe one day i'll get it yeah but i but it's just the way everything's piped where i have the shutoff valve and then i have the water meter and stuff i'm gonna have to like i guess i could put it after the water meter that's fine too right yeah well that's what i would have had to do yeah they're they're actually coming tomorrow to uh to uh change my water meter out so i'm interested to see if they fix my plumbing they're gonna use some shark bites and you're gonna be like what i hope not they're gonna come back and fix it i tell you that um and i was actually just looking so i use the uh we were talking about the the car

smoke detectors obviously we don't know the u.s price uh but the rough translated price is about 45 us uh if you're going off the Amazon listing in the UK, which puts it right in line with the first alert Z-Wave smoke detector. So about the same price and I imagine it's actually going

to be cheaper if they release it in America. So you probably save like 10 bucks off it compared to what's out there right now. They have a coupon

probably, like a coupon flash sale. Yeah. Buy two, get three free, you know? That's usually

how I've seen the Aqara stuff go on sell like it'll be normal price uh what was the fp2 is like 80 something dollars and you see it on with a cube like a 20 off yeah 20 or 30 yeah and keep out keep an eye out for the coupon check box pretty good though you should always monitor your smoke and water yep absolutely make sure there's no smoke no smoke you don't. You don't want either in your house. In quantity.

Only contains. You want the fire in like a candle or your oven. You want the water in pipes. Shark bites, guys. I swear. What's wrong with you? Shark bite. Hoo ha ha.

All right. All right. Let's move on here. TP-Link has launched the Taipo 810 Smart IR and IoT Hub in Japan only. You thought you were going to get a universal remote? No, you're not. Well, unless you live in Japan, I suppose. The new remote offers infrared control to infrared appliances over voice commands,

smartphone apps, and basically the universal remote itself. It has Mattercap compatibility, integrates seamlessly with various other smart home ecosystems, and the hub supports 21 different types of devices, including TVs, lights, air conditionings, fans, and compatible with over 8,000 brands. This doesn't look bad. It's really strange. It's 3 uh 3980 yen which it roughly trains

translates to 26 the uh price per button on this roughly because i can't see the full remote uh let's see if i pull up one can't really see the full remote is roughly two dollars and 37 cents per button so i feel like that's pretty good down there. Yeah, that's pretty good. Why only Japan though? That doesn't make any sense. Maybe they have like a lot of like IR

controlled like air conditioners and stuff or maybe it's just for now. Yeah, that's true. It may show up. It may show up. This this hub looks

very similar to the or seems very similar to like the car hub, right? It's got the car have like a speaker? Not necessarily a siren. Maybe it does have a siren. I'm not sure.

The M3 hub? Yeah, it has an annoying speaker that every time I add a device to it, it has to yell out. It has to talk to you. A new device added, yeah. And it's really weird that this has a siren, like putting a siren in the hub. Yeah, well, I expect like maybe if it has like some kind of you can you can make like a

software alarm system out of it or something like that yeah you got to go to the remote and do like a sequence of button pushes to disarm the alarm that'd be great i don't know uh interesting product um we'll put a link to some pictures of it uh it looks like basically a streamer i'll buy one when it comes to america interesting we'll have to keep an eye out and see if they actually uh come here to the States as well. Alright, we got a couple of lock talk things tonight. Nuki has unveiled a 5th generation

Smart Lock Ultra. And what do you think the Ultra stands for? It stands for Ultra Small and Ultra Fast, I guess. Because it's a third of the size as the previous version and it has this brushless motor that enables it to lock and unlock in under 1.5 seconds.

It's over three times faster than its predecessor. So not bad. It's one of the things that, like, these smart locks that you get every now and then, it's like you go and press the button to unlock, and it thinks about it, and then you hear its strain, and it kind of, of like pulls things back now nuki says nope nope nope we're gonna put a brushless battery in this thing and uh like make it go fast so that's nice 349 euros right now available in europe in december and it may work

its way over here into the u.s um i think q2 of 2025 is what it says here. It has, um, a charging port. So it's got a built-in rechargeable battery and you get a, you got to charge it that way, which would really suck when it dies and you have to wait for your lock to charge. So that you can unlock your door. Like that would really suck. But, um, yeah, good on them. And I would have been mad if I had the previous version. It took like six seconds to unlock.

That would have really upset me too. That's way too long for a lock. The lock itself actually looks very nice. I don't think I'll ever run into one because I think it's a Euro cylinder that's only compatible with, right? No, they say there's another version for US coming out next year. Oh, okay.

All right, well, that's not too bad. But yeah, the rechargeable battery thing interested me because I'm like, well, that would stink though. All right. Well, that's not too bad. But yeah, the rechargeable battery thing interested me because I'm like, that would stink though. You just have to, it's kind of like the upside down mouse from Apple where it's like, I have to charge this thing, but you're going to make it in the most awkward way possible. Yeah.

Can't win them all. It looks like a nice lock. And that's most of the battle with smart locks because most smart locks are very ugly. They're promising a six month battery life. So that's not very good. Twice a year year maybe three times a year probably good probably three times a year yeah because mine my i think mine advertises like a year or so and i only get like eight months out of it it's always less um i think what was nice uh who was the one i think yale made some

locks that didn't have anything on the outside and they had like nine volt battery terminals on the outside in case you get locked out. Yeah. You can fire up the alarm and unlock the door or fire up the little panel and unlock the door with that. It's a smart idea. Yeah, I've installed a couple of those. All my locks in my house are YOLO locks so I like them. They just work. They've been making

locks for a while. Speaking of lock talk, we've got Level Lock out there. They've announced that it's Level Lock Plus is now compatible with Matter and this update is going to enhance interoperability across all We've got Level Lock out there. They've announced that its Level Lock Plus is now compatible with Matter. And this update is going to enhance interoperability across all the Matter compatible platforms like Apple HomeKit, Google, Amazon, everything. Everything that takes Matter. This, let's see, users of other Level Locks models that are not paired with the Level app need to check compatibility and update options if they're going to get updated as well.

This interesting company, Level, is, I think they were just recently acquired, and it sounds like they're really... Yeah, by us all, boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Who else would buy a lock company? Everybody's buying. But it's interesting that I think they're really eager to expand their integration capabilities. They have this really interesting lock that just kind of disappears into the existing door frame and the existing lock or whatever. And then it really only integrates with what?

I think they're using Bluetooth to pair over to some little base stations. Now that they have Matter, they can use like Apple Home Keys and all this other stuff. So this is great. I think we're going to see a lot more out of this company in the upcoming years, which is cool because it's a really nice lock mechanism. This company is one of the companies that I was always keeping an eye on. I love the design of it. I loved how it just integrated and disappeared. You know, I was a big fan of them.

I just never got it because I didn't like the protocols they used or, you know, the fact that it didn't integrate with things, you know, I hated all that stuff. So I never bought it. I probably never will because I just got i have all my locks all done up now but i think this is this is an awesome lock and now that has matter i don't know what the battery life on it but now it has matter though it opens up a lot more for this company yeah i think the battery was like in the cylinder like the is it the cylinder tj the thing that like yes pokes out into the wall yeah that you like unscrew that when it's out and that you put this battery inside of it, it's kind of wild. And then it all just tucks in and use your existing door lock hardware over the top. No one knows it's a smart lock at that point.

And I mean, it's just amazing. So I, maybe now that they're part of a bigger company, um, they just launched kind of like a pro line or a pro thing at Cedia as well, kind of around that same timeframe. They're going to have some more money funding ideas and be able to have more resources from the bigger company to bring more integrations. And I think it's going to be great because people are clamoring to get this thing integrated with other stuff. Well, speaking of integrations, Google is announcing that it's going to start finally integrating Gemini, the AI language model thing you can talk to, into Google Home products, which is kind of cool. They announced that there's going to be AI camera search.

So when you ask the AI camera search, you can ask questions like, did the kids play in the backyard? What knocked over the garbage cans? It'll interpret that, go through the footage and give you a result on reply there. Also, I thought this was kind of cool.

They have a new feature called Help Me Create. It's powered by Gemini as well. And it will soon be added into the Google Home app. This is kind of like the dream of smart homes. It lets you describe what you want to have happen. Just you tell it and it goes off and does all the automations and stuff for you.

And that's just brilliant. That's what I was doing some home assistant clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and searching and searching and searching and clicking. clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and searching and searching and searching and clicking. And finally, I had a device selected. And then I had to go tell it what to do.

Oh, my God. That's what Home Assistant needs right there. I know that they're working on that. But, man, that was rough. Compared to just saying, hey, at 4 o'clock in the morning for this week, I'd like to turn the lights on on the under cabinet in the kitchen to 25% and then turn them off 30 minutes later. And that was kind of hard to do in Home Assistant. Took a while. Took a long time.

But I got it done. But if you could just say something out loud for that to happen and it programs it all up for you and it's done right, I think that'd be a really cool thing. So it sounds really cool. I'm kind of jealous. I don't have anything Google home but i'm jealous sounds like what josh ai has too right where um a little bit of it kind of like just voice programming and you know what sometimes you know i cheat and i go to chat gpt and i say write me an automation to do this it spits out the ammo i paste it and we're good to go you know so there's another i should have done that yeah

there's another way you could do it if you really want, Seth, you know? I didn't think about it, man. I should have done that. I mean, again, just trying to program something late at night. Lots of clicks, lots of clicks. But I do like how they're integrating Jammin. I want to see more AI getting integrated

into these smart home products. And useful AI, not a waste of time AI, not just like we have AI to say we have AI. I wanted to actually do something useful. Yeah. I mean, Google's always had like the vision, I thought, is like what the actual smart home should be and look at. Very early on, they were showing like stuff that I'm like, yes, yes, that's what I want to see. We're so far away from what this imaginary commercial is showing, but like at least they were like, they had people there that were dreaming up

and going that direction. Where Apple's like, hey, we introduced your HomeKit, and now you can use Siri to turn on and off your lights. Ha! Amazon's like, we made a thing that tells fart jokes. And it's like Google had like, I thought the clearest vision on what the smart home should be. And just over time has not, I mean, it's clearly one of the organizations where

like people come in, they have great ideas. And then they do something, they launch a product, and they're on to the next thing in their life. And nothing gets followed through. And then it ends up on killed by google.com. You know, so like that, unfortunately, I don't think this is going to be killed. I think they're still marching in that direction. But, you know, they have definitely had their own setbacks. I will say Smart Home Show 231 just came out. Adam Just and Richard Gunther. And they had a very special home assistant guest.

I'm not going to spoil who it is. It's Paulus. But you guys should go listen to that if you haven't already because it was a good conversation and paulus mentioned something like that he said my dream is you go in and you say out loud what you want to have happen and home assistant programs it all up for you and you don't even have to think about it like you don't have to do the yaml pasting so nice it pastes the yaml for you gavin can it can also create a dashboard for me? Because that's where I really struggle.

I've got automations down now. I just, I need a dashboard. AI dashboards, please. They're working on it. They're working on it. You know, it might not be far off because I ran across this, what is this website called? I forget what the guy called it. TIPS.io.

And it's like one of these website builder things that people come the guy called it, tips.io. And it's like, uh, one of these website builder things that people come up with from time to time. Uh, and this was just a little like side project for this guy, but he, I mean, it's kind of full featured in the fact that it like just spits out a complete HTML website based on like really good code and, and I guess like Tailwind, CSS, all this other stuff like in the web development facing side of things. Like it does a really interesting job of putting stuff together. And it's got a lot of like cool integrations

and it makes like building a website and building stuff like super fast. And I was like, you know, this is what you're talking about, TJ. Like you do this and you just drag the stuff over and you got their thing your thing made that's that's kind of what they need right oh again tj you could you probably do that with chat gpt just go these are all my entities um spit out the ammo for a dashboard and it will spit it out for you and then you could actually tell it like if you don't like something say adjust this so it's like this and just that

if you really want something like that then there you go just make a list of entities feed into jgpt and see what it gives you or i'll share my yaml with you and you can just yeah i'll just cheat off you yeah that's gonna cost you i'll just keep letting my interface be ugly because i don't want to put that much effort into it so i just go to my phone and i click buttons and it works and that's's all I need. I just need buttons and that's it. Buttons, buttons. All right. Well, one last, I don't know, minor mention, minor story here. Apple is set to ramp up smart home efforts.

I think we talked about the security camera thing last week, kind of mentioned it and talk about them doing a security camera. We should take bets on that, I think, if that's actually going to be a thing. But it's 2026. We have plenty of time.

Uh, the, uh, but they, they also have a, a new home hub thing coming out. That's supposed to be, I saw some rumors on this. That was like going to be like a,

a display that like hung on the wall or something like that. Like, like a big iPad, like an iPad that, that hangs on the wall though. It hangs on the wall gap. It It hangs on the wall, Gavin. It's not going to be 21 inches, I can tell you that. Apple's design sensibility won't let that happen.

But what if it was? What if they came out with a 21-inch iPad TV thing, and it sat on the kitchen counter? That'd be kind of cool, I think. No, Apple would do something like offer an eight inch version of it for like 200 but if you want the 21 inch that's gonna be 1500 you know that's how apple prices things right well you gotta have the ram upgrade in there too because yeah that's another 800 you know yeah like like for the apple tvs where they charge like two different prices

one with more ram that nobody knows what's for like what is this what is this what's the space for no one knows I think the main one is for the Ethernet port isn't it yeah yeah mainly differentiate yeah maybe that other specs they just they make they make the other specs hidden though again nobody cares about this other stuff yeah it's a matter radio nobody cares about that

no no well we'll have to see whatever comes out of this I mean it would be would be interesting to see whatever comes out of this i mean it would be um would be interesting to see them come out with a it's like the echo show right just apple branded echo show um and compete in that space as well one thing i did i did see that it was it wasn't going to run it wasn't going to have any like an app store so it's kind of disappointing it may just be an apple branded dashboard and you get, you know, if you like what Apple has, that's what they're going to put on it. And they're not

going to give you anything else, which would be kind of a bummer. I think moving on here, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at home tech.fm slash five Oh six. All right. Uh, we have a couple of mailboxes. We got listener feedback from Paul. And he sent quite a bit back into us. But Paul wrote back, I think we talked about him back on episode 501. And he wanted to add indicator lights into his dumb switches. He says he did have a dog. And the flipboard that I suggested would probably not work.

As she generally gets spooked from anything that moves and she doesn't think it should, uh, like windows, windshield wipers, balloons, et cetera. So yeah, don't freak out the dog. That's not good. I didn't, I didn't know. He didn't tell us that he had a dog. Um, and I would not have suggested the flipboard, the loud, noisy flipboard thing. Uh, he said he, um, he had the intervalley website up on his iphone uh and he's he's been staring at those for a while um so that might be a good option for him but uh

he he gave us this really uh really good in-depth reply and and kind of what he was doing what it wanted to do with it and then gavin i think you replied to him and he let you know what he ended up doing here yeah so he basically had aquara sensors and he got the inner valley switches and um i i replied to him and he was mentioning that the aquara sensors were getting stuck i think open or close at some point so he's asking about that and first of all if you have those aquara sensors i know they're cheap and everything but um they're also known to be a little problematic. But if you want to fight through that, make sure you orient them in a way where they pull apart, not slide apart. Right.

Because I noticed when they were sliding apart, it would send multiple message and sometimes would get lost and it would be stuck open or stuck closed or something like that. Right. So he adjusted that. But he also sent me a video of it in action with the um in a valley switch where he opens the door and the switch changes color and he closes the door and switch changes color and i was amazed at how fast the reaction time to that was because it was going from like the the contact sensor to the hub back to the switch and it was almost instant how it was working so he seems to be really happy with the setup and he's loving it so you know there you go nice definitely one way to do it i i've often thought about doing simple stuff like this uh

yeah i i have the the ring thing on on my doors and stuff and sometimes i walk by and like the doors open why is the door open the air conditioner is running full blast and the slider doors like cracked open. Cause my daughter may have opened it at some point. And no one's noticed is kind of like the, where it is, it's like around the corner in a room that we don't like where we weren't in today, you know? So it's kind of weird. Um, and I've recently have left the house with the door open. It's like, whoops, shouldn't have done that, but it would be nice to like on your way out, uh, get notified or something that, Hey, um, you know, there's a door open at your house. You probably go back and shut that thing.

I have that all set up basically with my alarm arms. Um, you know, you're walking out the door, the alarm arms, um, it will notify me what's open if something's open and behind. And I also have it tied into my heating and stuff so that if the door is open, it doesn't turn off the thermostat. It just adjusts the ranges, right? Cause I never want it to be stuck off because I could be dangerous, especially in winter. If you know, the home automation acts up or something like that.

Right. So it just is in ranges so that my pipes won't freeze if anything were to happen. Right. Um, so I do that as well and it works really well. And when it does kick in, I have it notify me just so I know that, Hey, it's switched to, you know, a door open mode or whatever, you know,

just so I know what's going on. Um, and there've been times, yeah, where somebody left the door open, they just didn't close it all the way. And, you know, I would see that. One thing I've noticed on the ring, I think they have like a Z-Wave retrofit kit thing. A lot of times it gets stuck. It'll think that the doors are open.

And I guess, I mean, this must be a Z-Wave thing when you have to basically like open and go back to the door and open and shut it. And then it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to get synced up with the system and everything goes right yeah the message gets lost sometimes i'm not a fan of that yeah i just that's that happened a lot when i had the z-wave 700 chips right um messages got lost and it was just very problematic i don't know what the ring's based off of but um since i've upgraded to the 800 i don't have that kind of problem the zoos sensors work beautifully you know and i don't have the issue with things getting um uh uh stuck but you have to be careful though because when you reboot things like your hub um it only remembers the last state it was in so if a door was open when you rebooted it

and they close the door and then it comes back up, you know, it's still going to think it's open. So there's certain situations you have to worry about. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I don't, I don't know if connected works any different. I think when I ripped the ring out,

I'm going to put the connected thing in and then have home assistant run everything. And I think I can hook up the ring Z wave security panel to interact with an arm and disarm the fake alarm panel that's in Home Assistant. So it's going to happen because Ring's going to charge me money for products I don't like anymore. So I'm just going to eventually get rid of them. We do have another feedback, and I think this was directed towards TJ, who wanted to know how fast his USB-C charger was charging his device. This comes from listener Jay Josie. I don't know.

We'll just say it's JJ. He says, buy a USB cable that is one, rated for 240 watts and two, has a display. And he sent a link to these like Aliexpress, my favorite whole website in the whole world right now, for some cables that this week

are on sale for 65% off, at least the ones I see, for $5.65. And they're like USB-C cables with tiny little displays on them that tell you how much juice is going through them. It's pretty amazing. I like that.

That is very cheap. I'm not sure if I trust the cable of AliExpress to tell me how fast my cell phone is charging, but I can see a use case for this. I just want a charger that has it though my my my battery backup or my battery uh pack has them i like them i just want it on my charger i don't want to buy a cable i like my cables already well i was i was searching on here on aliexpress to see if i could i mean if you didn't trust these i was gonna search i was trying

to find if they had any uh shark bike fittings Oh, man. That you could have. You could get everything done right here in a one-stop shop. I wouldn't buy any of the Wago switches out there either. Yeah, definitely not. I saw somebody bought Wago connectors at Harbor Freight, and they're like, would you trust these? And I was like, I probably would not trust those. You don't have to trust them. Next week, all this stuff is like 95% off

according to the little pop-up that I got. AliExpress, you can't beat this website. It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And you can get some really good stuff off there. Every now and then, it has some interesting stuff and great gifts for, very odd gifts for the holiday season season you can find

here as well but uh good suggestion i i've never seen those little cable things with the little displays on them and that's really cool i i kind of like it we we do have a pick of the week this week uh i i think i found this on mastodon somewhere right right now but it's it's basically a security camera and it's kind of the old school security camera but it looks like it was uh installed uh and it's pointed directly at a sign security camera but it looks like it was uh installed uh and it's pointed directly at a sign probably three or four inches away that says this area is under constant video surveillance it's like it's not wrong it's pretty truthful it's a good dad joke too so i was like well you win there you go unfortunately i don't think it's hooked up

anymore because i could see the bnc connector on there it's not fun that's an old camera, it's the one that used to have the little iris built into the lens that you would screw on this is what every bank has at their place and that's why you can't see anybody when they get robbed yeah, it's amazing isn't it this exact camera yeah, it's the exact one

and in this case it's pointing at a sign that says it's under surveillance so anyway, if you have any feedback, questions Oh, and in this case, it's pointing at a sign that says it's under surveillance. Anyway, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of weeks, or great finds on Alibaba, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates, project updates. I didn't really do much. I did, TJ, I think we talked about this after the show last week, where I was on UniFi's website,

and I noticed that the G4 Doorbell Pro had, the Wi-Fi version had color-changing kits for it. And you said you hadn't seen them, and I just hadn't paid attention enough to that particular product. They could have been there for a year. I don't know. But I had this G4 Pro for the Wi-Fi version. It comes in black, black only.

And for the longest time, it's been out there. It's great. It has the look down for the camera for the detecting packages and that kind of thing. Probably one of the best video doorbells I've had. And I decided I was just randomly looking on the site and I noticed that they had covers for them now. And I, I ordered a white one and it got here and I'm like, look, I took it out and showed my wife.

She's like, Oh, I would look, that's awesome. But it would look better in silver. Like, well, you know what? They have silver too. So I ordered a silver one. And then a couple of days later, the silver one showed up and that's the one I put on. Oh man, that's hilarious. I'm glad we both ordered white covers though, because I'm about to install one for a client.

And I bought a white cover at the same time. I was like, oh man, they're going to love this. It's going to have white outer edges and the entire center is going to be black. So yeah, yeah. So help blend in a little bit more though yeah i thought i thought it was well i thought it was funny and then also you know kind of silly that i ended up ordering two of these things i think i can i ordered i ordered two also i ordered one for a client i don't know if he ordered one but i you know we'll have to see um one of them is at

least open now and i won't be able to return it probably but i don't know you just have to see. Um, one of them is at least open now and I won't be able to return it probably, but I don't know. You just have to pay restocking fee, but yeah, not worth it on a $29 item though. I just toss it. Yeah. Or if anybody wants one, I'll ship it to you.

He's got a bunch of stamps. Evidently I can use, uh, but yeah, it comes in brick, which is really weird looking like red brick, concrete, silver,

white, and wood. And of course, and I, the way it told you to install it i thought was more difficult than like their their instructions are horrible like they have a little qr code that you could scan and it goes to what they think like their interpretation of like an ikea instructions are except they're very strong and less detailed are very very small and less detailed and um it

looked like i had to take the whole thing off the wall and I started like taking it apart. I'm like, wait a minute. And I, and, and all you had to do was just slide the thing, like slide the cover. It's just a cover. It goes over the top of the existing doorbell. You don't really have to do anything to it. You just slap the cover on and it looks like a silver doorbell now. Genius. They should probably have videos or something instead of horrible IKEA drawings of how to install their products. $29, though. Not bad. Yeah.

And at the same time, I also got a little chime thing, the Wi-Fi chime. Because sometimes a little integration doesn't work. It doesn't chime your home pods or whatever. Yeah. It doesn't work. All I had to do, I was excited to find out that I could just plug that into the wall. And now I've got a door chime that is paired with the house. There we go.

Done. Yeah. We got our setup on a, well, I have a POE one now, but we have our setup on a schedule too. So like if one of us is at home and like we're sleeping or something like that, I can just turn it off and that way nobody wakes us up with the doorbell. Ooh. Because it integrates with Home Assistant. So you can make it as a as an automation or toggle or whatever so i should probably check that out that sounds fun fun all right well uh the only projects i think we had this week uh gavin and i sat down and watched a video on youtube and

gavin got really angry and started throwing things and took a bunch of notes. TJ watched it too. He just doesn't have that much attachment to it. He just doesn't care. Yeah, you guys went overboard with it. I think I watched the first maybe five or ten minutes. I just posted it in the chat. And you guys got all angry about it. So I think we need to talk it out.

I did not. I summarized it using AI based on the – and it's not a very good summary, so I'm not going to include it. But I guess we'll I summarized it using AI based on the... And it's not a very good summary, so I'm not going to include it. But I guess we'll just get to it. This is the Linus Tech Tips guy on YouTube. Linus. Linus, Linux, whatever. I don't know. Linux.

Linux Tech Tips. This is the Linux everybody is always talking about. This is his drama from, I don't know a while back where he had some ge jasco light switches that had motion detectors built into him that weren't working right yeah you remember that whole ordeal listener where he like posted these videos calling out ge and all this stuff and and all this and they eventually released some firmware for it but it ended up not being ge's fault anyway ended up being Linus's fault that that video yeah well we're gonna continue that trend with this video uh where he goes in

and explains like uh I guess it was more in depth I don't know I didn't really watch the first video and I kind of like skimmed through this one as well but oh lord as I was watching this like literally literally everything that you could do wrong or he's done i mean it's like there's really no other way around it it seems like he's got over a hundred of these ge jasco light switches with their z wave devices it's got over a hundred of them and in some cases he has like four of these lights on on on the wall like and they've got like motion detectors built into them so like when you walk into the room it just turns on the light like it to me like this just doesn't seem like the smart thing to do like it never was from the very

beginning it's doomed to fail like i don't understand why why try anymore like take the 100 light switches out and start over this is not right gavin i know you have um a few pages of notes let's let the roast begin let's go let's talk about it i don't know like first of all i just want to say i i guess he he gears these videos towards a certain demographic of people that are like generally technical but not you know technical like specific things they understand how things work but they also just want it to work they don't want to dive into it to troubleshoot it and i see what you want see he just wants to plug these in and they work and that's not how smart home works like we've been doing this long enough i don't

care if it's zigbee z-wave matter and bluetooth whatever they don't just work there's always some troubleshooting with them and you gotta get into the weeds that's the way it is well i mean especially if you buy the cheapest of the cheapest of the cheapest base like this is the odm manufacturing for like this is like what they'd say here's a demo switch like this is like the worst switch you could possibly buy like why would you do this so that that being said i i looked up the switches that he complains about the ge switch i believe there's z wave 500 switches right um and you know as much as he complains about his z wave network how they ruined his z wave network and how he brought in a z wave expert i don't know how much

of it i i can't speak for it because there's so many unanswered questions such as what other Z-Wave devices you have? Because a bad Z-Wave, the one bad Z-Wave device can ruin your mesh too, right? Do you have power? He had shades that he was going over. Yeah, the shades he was going, but also, you know, we talked about it on the show. I've shared the information about this, but the Z-Wave 700 controllers have a lot of issues, you know, where they would hang and they would cause all sorts of problems. And I've been through it and there were actually bugs opened up about it in firmware releases. And I don't know if he's keeping up with all of that.

I don't know if he has the 700 series controller, 800 series controller. You know, there's so many questions. But, you know, just to make blanket statements that, hey, this ruined my Z-Wave mesh. I know they're the most basic devices, but those devices don't transmit anything over the network other than their on and off state. So I highly doubt they're taking down your network, but you do have a big network. So you got to be ready to have to troubleshoot it, right? He started going into, like, you know, he started going into a number of things, you know, like there's so many unanswered questions. Was he pairing them as Z-Wave long range, the new ones, or was he pairing them as Z-Wave mesh?

You know, like, did he cover any of that? I know he mentioned mesh, but did he even look at something like that? Because those were 20 different ways. There was, the level of thought that you've put into these questions is not a level that he put into thinking about purchasing this stuff no he put he put non-dimmable loads on dimmers and when he's complaining that the dimmers are shutting then the lights are flickering off and on and it's like your electrician should be fired but what and and there was there was a redhead guy maybe that was the zigbee i don't know i've seen him on other videos but like the redheaded guy. Maybe that was the Zigbee. I don't know. I've seen him on other videos. But, like, the redheaded guy, he's like, hey, I told you not to buy these.

Yeah. And he admitted, like, yeah, he told me not to buy them. And I did anyway. I bought these. I just looked them up. $75 dimmers. 100 of them and put them all over the house. Yeah.

And I. Like I said, there's so many unanswered questions. But I just hate that you make such blanketed statements. Right. It's like, Z-Wave that bad and these devices are bad and it's like listen is it the devices like i wish they did the troubleshooting and you really got into it and you really figured out what was wrong instead of making these blanket statements you know and that's where it got me a little upset you know because even when they're adding it to homey they still had issues with range yep but

they were like oh the mesh isn't there you you know, and blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, great. You got to build your mesh, you know. And my other thing is, you know, like he started going into, you know, when the sensor would detect them. It's like, listen, the sensor only has a certain range. Like, what do they call it? A field of view or a degree or something like that. It's not going to go 180 degrees across the wall there. Right.

It's going to be like, is this for the NFL or for the, for any of those, they only, it's like a millimeter wave. It's not like, it's not 180 degrees looking straight against the wall. No,

there's going to be a range. So, you know, the trim wasn't probably blocking it. It's just waiting for you to get in range, you know? And even worse, if he does go and put like looking at those at those rooms, those switches were facing, like, they were facing the door.

So when he's in the room, if he has millimeter wave, it's still going to turn off on him because it's facing the door. You know, like, it's facing outside, you know? So his switch placement's bad. Like, at that point, I would say, listen, there's a time and place for certain things. In some of those rooms, millimeter wave switches are not the place for them just because of the way the switch is angled to that room. Put a sensor in the room and use that for your detection because you can angle it however you want. And I know he hates sensors. He doesn't want to see them.

But listen, do you want it to work properly or do you want it to look nice? You know? Well, no. And they make sensors that you can hide away. Trust me. I worked in security for like 10, 15 years. Like there is plenty of, but you've got to, first of all, you've got to know your product. Like you just said, there's not, what he tried to do here. And I see this commonly done.

It's like, there's one product that can solve all my frustrations. And he bought a hundred of them and put them in his house. Cause he thought that, you know, it was going to work one way. Against the advice of somebody who knew better, it sounds like. And then, and then they set him up with home assistant. I also wrote here, homie's probably a better choice for this guy than home assistant was because the homie's going to be, I mean, I know it's a sponsored video by homie but whatever like it seemed like i would say give this guy a lexan let's walk away from it or exactly no we need to get back to basics yeah yeah yeah um but you know

the the title of this video is uh my wife hates our smart house and you know i i honestly hate his wife not his wife i honestly hate honestly hate, I hate his smart house. His wife is right. Like, it's just a bad smart house and it's not a smart house. I mean, it's a dumb house for a dumb person. Like, I'm sorry. I think she just hates him. Let's be honest.

This is stupid. Like, I mean, it's, this is what he wants. He wants to get clicks and everything and for people to watch his boring videos. But like, I'm, I'm okay. He's done, does a ton of content creation or whatever but like it's just like this is the dumbest thing to have ever have done and to like like you're saying throw stuff like these products under the bus these these 75 ge dimmer things with the the little um what do they call it like uh pir says uh sensor in them

they can be used in places you know i would use them like in a closet. Like if I'm walking into a closet, turn the light on. I wouldn't use it in four of them, you know, across in my kitchen and like to turn and to pretend like that's going to turn on my lights when I'm in the kitchen. Like they're not the right thing. He made a bad choice when he bought them. He made a bad decision against better advice. And now he has to live with it. And what the way he lives with it is is using his large

bullhorn to throw companies and other people under the bus when he was the one that made made the problem himself and take it from me like i have cut close to 400 devices in my house now i had to actually do a tally the other day right and they're a mix of everything but over the time i've done this there i've I've changed like through different controllers. I found the issues I had with the 700 upgrade to the 800 issues went away. I had the 500 controller. There were no issues with that. I'm not going to say that GE switches are bad switches, right?

Because they're very basic switches that only send on off. They're not going to ruin anything. They more than likely they work really well. There's something else going on on your network that you're probably not taking into account and you're just making a blanket statement that's what's upsetting that's when you when you're installing dimmers on non-dimmable loads like you're watching your garage lights flicker on your your your cfl lights your compact fluorescent lights flicker on and off because you're using a dimmer on a non-dimmable ballast. Like, yeah, you,

you are, you have not done this right. And they're probably dimmable switches, right? But you can't, they probably don't have the option to, to, you know, turn them from dimmable to non-dimmable.

They're probably just dimmable switches. Right. So that's what it is. Yeah. So then don't use them in that location. You can't use them. Like in a belly has a switch that will turn it from a dimmer into a regular switch. You know?

Like, TJ's here laughing, smiling, because he's like, you guys took this so personal. I'm just like, no. It's just, when I see bad things like this. And I had to watch this video in chunks. Like, I got through two minutes of it, and I almost threw something at my screen, and then I had to calm down. And then I had to come back three minutes later and watch three minutes. And then I, you know, I mean, listen, this, this guy, this guy has 16 million followers in this video in three days has 1.6 million views of him trashing his dumb house that he made. That that's his problem. Um, and he spent a lot of money on doing something really dumb and

maybe he didn't maybe he sent them all these lights for free i don't know but uh at this point like it's time to rip those out and put actual product in that that is properly designed for the house and and does what he wants you need to actually install leutron lighting that's put sensors around like you're saying like put's that's exactly when you put sensors around like you're saying like put a sensor up so when you have this much stuff i mean you need to go with like a professional lighting system it's just you you have to unless you want to troubleshoot all the time exactly it's it's it's the wrong it's not a bad product like you're saying gavin it is the wrong product and it was a it's a bad design and that that's all it is it should never

have been. You shouldn't have a house where you walk in and there's four PIRs facing. It's so stupid. You know, TJ, I don't think he needs a pro system. I think he needs somebody to do it for him that understands the space. So someone that's like a smart home professional in that space um to come do it for him you know that's only gonna get your professional lighting though because a professional is not gonna come in and do exactly they're not gonna come in and do zigbee i don't know if that's gonna help because he seems to have the opinion against everybody else's advice that this was the

way to go yeah like oh yeah and what well that's just that's just linus though that's every linus video so this is what he wanted and just because it was the wrong thing now it's everybody else's problem i guess and people are going to this these videos and watching them taking advice technical advice about this stuff from a guy that's not doesn't know it himself like when you look at it it's just like man like he must he must be not explaining it right he must understand this stuff but his z-wave expert should have had a lot more like information for him you know there's so many unanswered questions but if i was a z-wave expert and i walked into a house that had a hundred lights with emotion detectors i know i would have turned right back around and

walked out the door you know i don't. There was this assistant guy that was like, I told you not to buy these. Like I told you not to get these. And he's like, yeah, you did. You know, it's like, I haven't said it today. But you know, it's like, there were people that in the room that said, don't do this.

And he did it anyway. And I've had clients like that. I've had clients that knew they were right over advice of, you know, experience. And, you know, having been there and done it a million times. And I have my scars from this stuff, like, but this is not the right thing to do. Like if you want lights to automatically turn it on and off, you have one sensor, maybe two

that cover the areas that you want them to monitor and set up like what you're doing, Gavin. And you have that sensor trigger lights in a lighting scene, and you don't go through this like, there's no way, that's not how motion sensors work. Motion sensors are just little heat sensors that have beams, and if you track between two of those beams, they kick on. That's it. So, yeah, this was a bad design. It was a bad product choice,

and, yeah, he needs to have somebody come in and show him the ropes on what an actual smart home looks like linus if you give me a million dollars i'll come in and do it for you a million just one million dollars i'll do it for 900 000 all right yeah he's in canada so you know yeah that's a million canadian is it worth it for you canadian probably not i have to get exchanged or whatever you can get that done in the mall. I just, I just, I think it was bad of Inovelli to even send him the switches because it didn't look good in this video. But like I said, based on the placement of some of his switches in the rooms, he's probably still going to be disappointed when he does eventually replace them.

You know, and they're, they're facing out the door and being triggered when you walk by the room and not monitoring anyone in the room. He really needs to rethink, we put a sensor in this room and leave the switch as just a switch. Yeah, I don't think it's a bad advertisement for Inovelli per se. So if you've looked at the Inovelli forums, they've started working on this mm millimeter wave switch um they're trying to release a version for all three of them they got i believe a zigbee z wave matter one um they have a bunch in stock currently but the the sensors are very finicky um they're giving like false positives they can um there's no way to, I, I, if I remember correctly, there's no way to like fine tune them.

And so you basically like, you're just stuck with the sensor blasting all the time. Um, and as people are walking through like, like, uh, hallways or the other room or something like that, the sensor is so freaking strong that it's catching up in the other room. And so at this point, they, they're thinking about just quickly redesigning the switch and going with a different chip and going with a different manufacturer. And so at this point, what I'm assuming is happening

is that they're probably not going to sell these. They're probably going to give these to people that they know or people that maybe have ordered them and be like, hey, we're going to release this to you guys only and that's it.

But they're probably stuck with a bunch of switches that they cannot do anything with i know a guy with 100 light switches he needs to swap out like yeah and they got they got some advertising out of it i mean they kept calling out homie in the video and everything like that but linus's target audience might buy these switches just because of this video and i think that's kind of what they were going for and they probably just had a ton of switches that they couldn't use yeah and that's the problem that's the problem with millimeter wave you touched on it there it it goes through walls and it picks up things outside the room and stuff and that's why you see things like the aquara fp2 with an app that lets you define the zone so it can keep things in your room or

that everything presents one that also you are able to configure it so that it keeps detections in the room and i like devices even like the recent two yeah we talked about on just a recent show here i like those two-in-one devices with the pir built in just because that pir stays in the room so you can angle it however you want to trigger as soon as you walk in the room it's not seeing through the walls but then once it detects you it turns on the millimeter wave and then that monitors to make sure you're still in that room and i love that it just works really well it's fast and um i i hope devices go that way and i think that will solve a lot of his problems but he doesn't want the sensors on the walls or anything like that so yeah i mean the thing is like this is all a solved problem like it really is and there's a million different ways that he can fix this

having a bunch of motion detectors sensors in the wall it's not gonna not gonna do it like that those are those switches they've got to come out like there's unless you can just disable that i don't think you can he was kind of like saying you can't. It just tells you that that's not what those switches are designed to do. They're not designed to only turn on and then automatically turn off when they don't detect motion anymore. I think I had one of those in a bathroom once. I think Lutron made it. You come across them in public bathrooms all the time. You walk in, the light turns on.

Lutron has a little PR thing on there. You don't ever have to touch the switch. And, you know, it's magic. Until you got in the shower, you're taking a long shower, the IR doesn't go, you know, it's a PIR. It doesn't detect you through the shower curtain. So, you know, you're sitting in the shower,

the light turns off, you got to wave your hand outside the shower. And it was great for everything other than that. But there's the right product. There's the wrong product. I think you just got the wrong product. And, you know, honestly, I think it was a for everything other than that. But there's the right product. There's the wrong product. I think he's just got the wrong product. And, you know, honestly, I think it was a homie thing. I think he's probably going to be better with homie once he gets that set up because it seemed like a more simple system and something that he could just kind of like run with rather than.

Oh, just wait till he starts to get into complicated flows. He'll start griping about that. That's why you'll have somebody else write it for him. Yeah. I don't think he's that complicated of a person. He didn't seem to come across that way. I think homie is probably going to be able to take care of it. If it can handle a hundred devices that he's going to need,

I think it'd be fine. Anyway, uh, that, that was our, that was our internet rage. I feel, I feel better now.

Yeah. You feel better. Yeah. There's a little counseling session. I'm glad you got that all. I got it all. I feel better now. Um, I'm deleting all my notes there's a little counseling session. Thanks for letting me. I'm glad you got that all out, Gavin. I feel better now. I'm deleting all my notes so I don't have to look at this again.

I can't wait until I set you guys off again. I trigger you. Unsubscribe from the channel again because, you know. It doesn't matter. TJ is going to send it to you anyway. That's right. He's like, this is going to trigger Gavin, and he's going to send it on over. Oh, TJ finds all these weird things all over the place and they're very triggery. All those Reddit forums and stuff.

These things happen. They happen in the pro space too. I'm not going to lie. There have been plenty of times when we installed the wrong product, just the flat out wrong product, and we had to find a way to make it work. And there was no good solution around some of these things. Um, you know, it eventually just hope that the, the client forgives you. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know what it like you go and massage the product as much as you can. You know, there's a lot of service calls. And, uh, at the end of the day, when it finally breaks, uh, you say, well, we're not doing that again. And you say, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna go

with this product that we know to actually work. And,. And yeah, I think that's kind of where he is. Like his house is broken. It's time to go with the product that everyone knows works. Anyway, a good therapy session we've had here today. So I'm going to go back and find more dad jokes on Mastodon. All right. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page.

If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support, and you can learn how to support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out

here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite over to our private Slack chat, The Hub. And in that Slack, you can find all sorts of stuff going on. I know we talked a little bit about this video today.

We talked a little bit about the news, uh, with, with the, the Amazon, the 21 inch TV Amazon show. And then, um, there was, there was some, also some interesting, I think, who was the first one who has posted Christmas pictures? I can't believe all the Christmas pictures. Kenny. He's got his lights up. Christmas videos.

Yeah. It's too early. Hey, it's almost Christmas already. It's only a month away. Too early. Too early. Too early. Like, don't put this stuff up until at least after Black Friday.

Nah. Nah, you got to get it up. You got to get it up. You got to get it up before. Nah. Nah, you got to get it up. You got to get it up. You got to get it up before the weather gets bad. We drove by a house today, and at the beginning of the day, it was not decked out. And when we drove, I was bringing my daughter home. It was just me and her in the car. And she goes out loud, how did they do that?

It's just completely decked out. She's like, no fair uh so i think i've got to get i've got to get started i gotta get the challenge accepted yes they better get rolling yeah i gotta get the blow-ups out and yeah yeah this house was done up for uh halloween too so it's good to see them continuing the decorating spirit um if you want to help with the show but can't support financially totally totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice.

That's going to wrap up another week here on Humtech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care.