HomeTech.fm - Episode 511 - The CES 2025 AI Spectacular

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

On this week's show we take a look at all of the news coming out of CES 2025. AI, Robots, TVs, Matter, Speakers, IoT, and so much more! We also take time for a few mailbag items and find a pick of the week that Gavin can't wait to get his hands on.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, January 10th 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 technology, home automation. Welcome to 2025, everybody. We made it. We may not make it after this year, but, you know, we made it this far. And we slammed right into CES, too, which is always great in the new year, you know?

Oh, yeah. Get the holidays done with. You get all your new gadgets and everything, and then you get to look at all the new gadgets you won't ever be able to buy. Yeah, because they're obsolete or, yeah, not shipping yeah it's it's been a wild um a wild a couple of days here with all all of the going-ons of uh of ces that it's it it's like a fire hose and uh we have a bunch of stories that someone's been putting diligently into their our our bucket of show notes and then we we're just gonna we're gonna go over them but we've got a few things that we want to talk about and and a brilliant pick of the week this week like the pick of the week i think

this is going to be the best one we've ever seen so from ces as well and i feel like i'm missing out at ces too like everybody seems to be there this year but we're gonna let you know we'll be there next year that's right that's the rumor that's the rumor that's the rumor that we're starting right now starting right now so if you want if you want appointments with me you better make them in advance you know yeah you gotta we gotta have the appointments made up and uh and and evidently there's break there's like breakfasts and dinners and stuff that these these guys are going to so yeah i'm i'm i'm kind of disappointed like i've been to cd a few times as a press person, and they never offered me any food.

Are we rich enough to have a party at CES? I don't think we're that rich. I mean, it's Vegas. We can just tell people to show up somewhere. That's right. You know what? I'll set up gas sessions, you know? People can book an hour with me for an amount of time, and we'll put that towards holding a party.

You won't be able to do anything. I don't think that's legal inside city limits from what i understand you have to do that like in perron for something right all right so you go into a prostitution yeah that's what i thought he's talking about gavin as a what now that you put it that way you are basically selling your body so okay tell you what you go into one room i'll go to another room we'll facetime for an hour and you pay me wait is that yeah this is the worst escort service ever oh my gosh all right well this is already what ces 2026 is looking like so you know let's make this easier just up your uh patreon payments please so we can hold

something there you go yeah that's right wasn't it ces that was like literally the same side same time as the adult industry show like a long time ago like and people pretended that they went to it for the electronic i don't remember that's something you would know though seth no i mean it was like at the same like literally the same time i maybe have another major show but it was it was in vegas at the same time ces is the only i can think of it's there all the time cs was happening at the same time it was there oh i did not know that's why it was so busy there makes sense why you get all those suggestions on aliexpress my aliexpress has become like my my instagram i can't scroll through it you click on one thing you click on one thing by accident you know a friend

sends you a link you click on it and now all your suggestions you know you have to scroll in private it's how do you reset that i can't figure out how to reset it china knows you now man and you know what when you get it to an acceptable spot they always trick you with some picture that you're like what is that and then you open it up yeah you're like oh man not again gotcha yeah well i don't know what's happening to you gavin but it seems like a personal problem yeah they'll send you emails with with new pictures in there for you to look at too i know man like it's it's i'm still trying to figure out how to reset it. I don't know how. Maybe I'll just sign up for a new account.

This one's been tainted. I've got to get away from it. I think you're going to get a whole new ISP and everything. Exactly. Let me change my IP address. They're like, oh, wait, it's Gavin. It's him again. They'll find me.

They'll find you, yeah. When you become part of America, then you'll get a new IP. The state of Canada. The state of canada yeah tell your governor we said hi which one yeah which one you don't know you won't know you got to go elect him oh man is you guys i mean we're skipping over everything we haven't recorded this show in a month did you guys have a good uh and everything? I had a great holiday. Yeah, it was pretty good. Family, friends, food. I can't complain. Nicole and I went to San Francisco on our

birthday, the 18th, and we flew back on Christmas. Did you catch California on fire? We did not. That happened way after we were gone. It's your story. tell it how you want no not not me but yeah we we did that that was really fun and then we went to a new year's eve party which we never do because i'm usually in bed by nine o'clock so uh that was uh it's just

been a crazy crazy new year you never know what people are capable of oh tj see i have an i have an eight-year-old and what we do is at nine o'clock we have we do the we have a hit play on youtube and the ball comes down and we we're like, it's midnight. See, that's smart. And then she goes to bed, and there you go. That's all you have to do. You just pretend. See, but I'm an adult now.

I don't need to watch the ball. So it's just like, you know, tomorrow when I wake up, it's going to be tomorrow. So that's fine. And if I don't wake up tomorrow, then that solves that problem too. So either way, I'm covered. That's really smart. I had to change all the clocks in the house so the wife realized, you know, I finally could get to bed, you know? That's smart. No, unfortunately, here, they, you know, we've got extra freedom in this state. And

yeah, the fireworks are, we're insane this year. I mean, I haven't, I haven't heard him this, this, this much in a while. I should have recorded them, but even my brother was here from Texas and he was like, wow, we're in, we're in Texas. You know, you think the freedom state over there? No, no, no. We've got extra freedoms here in Florida and, uh, people like to celebrate, I guess, because it was a, it was a raucous time. Uh, but yeah, I had a good, um, uh, holiday as well. Uh, I guess, because it was a raucous time. But yeah, I had a good holiday as well. I had family over and everything. And you know, there was one thing about it, though.

I updated my Sonos, and it didn't work at all for the holidays this year. Shocker. So yeah, I got this little song here that i'll play for someone you're a mean one patrick spence it's after the holidays maybe you'll get fired now we still have a wager on that yeah yeah the sonar system did not work it randomly kept playing songs stopping and then playing the next song in the queue and uh yeah yeah i had to um just turn it off eventually like it was just like we'll turn it off and play music off the tv like we used to like it's 2004 or whatever you know so thanks a lot thanks a lot sonos your app works great yeah and i even tried i even downloaded and spent 15 on the app tj suggested click yeah

i i don't know about that man that one i it did not work for me in in any way i i couldn't figure out how to get the services connect to it and then i got into some kind of state where it's like yeah you know what you're doing you're good i don't need to to give you any more ideas on how to set this up and i don't know it didn't work so i might yeah one of my projects and i'll tell you if i finished it or not was to basically tear down rebuild my Sonos system from scratch, put it back like the old way it was and see if it's gotten any better with their app updates recently. You weren't alone, Seth. I actually saw a lot of people on my Mastodon feed complaining about that too. Yep. Yeah. A lot of Sonos complaints this Christmas.

Well, I guess it is the season, right? It is the season to have buggy smart speakers that have been fine up until an app update. Great job. Great job guys. Really appreciate it. Yeah. That's the worst thing that happened this year though. Everything else went great. And, uh, you know, like I said, Finn's family food, we had all of it. Uh, you know, it, it was a, it was a pretty good, pretty good wrap up to the end of the year too. So can't, can't, can't say anything bad about it. What about you,

Gavin? Great year. You know, it's not all about the gifts. It was just, you know, getting mom's home cooking, you know,

that's the best part about it. You know, you know, getting to see the family, friends, et cetera, et cetera. So,

you know, I had a good time. Cool. All right. Oh, I, I got, um,

I didn't include this in my project updates later, but I've been playing with my meter you know i gotta say that i have to say it that way i mean once you buy a project product called meter you got to say it that way um and i i've been cooking with the meter guys and it it's really fun it it it like tells you uh tells you when things are going to be all wrapped up and done and the stuff comes off the grill real nice so finally finally using it nice i bought it like a year ago it took you a while before you played with your meter yeah i know i know i just had to make sure it was a good good good time you know i had to wait for the

special a special piece of meat to use it on that makes sense all right all right 2025 is getting off to a great start yeah yeah great start going for the r rating if you'd like to become a patron and listen to uh home tech after dark we haven't done it yet but you should write us in and tell us we should do it so that way seth does it right right i've been trying i've been trying to convince seth that we all need an unedited cut and people would pay for it would you pay five dollars for unedited cut i think you would i don't know to hear about seth talk about playing with his meat tur um i don't know if you want to support that who doesn't want to listen to four hours of this rambling because i don't think most people realize that you know the show is like an hour and a half long or so

most of the times but it's actually like four hours long because we meet at like seven o'clock but we don't record for like a couple hours so i think people might be interested i think i've been sitting here for almost three hours now you guys gotta get up and stretch and stuff yeah there's been some calisthenics in this thing yeah man two apple watch alerts already to stand gotta get that blue ring in oh man yeah so if you're yeah you're interested in that uh head on over to hometech.fm support learn how to become a patron it'll actually make seth's job easier he won't have to do anything then yeah yeah exactly exactly all right uh we have a ton of home tech headlines this week

from cs we are not going to cover everything but we'll put a bunch of stuff in the show notes but we found some interesting stuff to pass along to you about well the goings on at cdia and and related yes or sorry yes yes nothing happens at cds so one of the c shows out there i don't know ccnt there's tvs are both of them though there's tvs tvs and speakers all right we got home tech headlines let's jump in let's do it all right so uh absolutely crazy uh i mean i'm just blown away by ai news like out of cs i mean i'm sure everybody is just on the edge of their seats wanting to know about ai um so here we go an ai summary google will use more mics uh and gemini ai to get you to talk to your tv that's ai for you

samsung smart fridges will use ai to suggest groceries to buy through instacart that's ai uh they also unveiled some vision ai and new innovations at CS. Good job, Samsung. EcoFlow is announcing an Oasis AI-powered energy management system, which, you know, I looked at the press release for this, and I just close. It has pretty pictures. Maybe they made AI make the pictures. I don't know. It looks good, just not something that interests me.

Do you guys find any AI that you want to talk about? The silliest thing on this list is this Samsung and Instacartacart thing uh because i i don't know about you guys but i don't well first of all i don't use instacarts maybe that's my problem i guess um but i definitely don't want my groceries to like automatically come with instacart like and just i guess make it like add it to like an online shopping cart for like meyer or something then set it for pickup or something i guess i don't know no no no what it'll do is it sees fruit the fruit the you know the the strawberries rotting in your in your refrigerator and it's that's right you need more strawberries it's going to put more rotting strawberries on your front doorstep that's what you're going to get so i don't like it and we knew ai was going

to be a big trend um it's not going anywhere even at work everything we do is ai based now i just hope that they're not going to be ruining i know it's a buzzword but i hope they don't ruin it by putting like useless ai and all these things and give you like they are absolutely going to do that yeah i know they are and then people are going to be like i hate this ai and then you're going to have to have a company come along and do it properly so you know there's going to be a lot of useless AI out there, and we're going to have to weed through it. Yeah, and I think large companies like Apple and Google

are not doing a great job of framing what AI is and what it can do by pre-releasing it as a beta project, you know, that they fully push out in front of people and advertise heavily on massive billboards and tv advertisements for and then they're like no and ship it in a non-beta os like and yet they'll read you and what was the bbc the bbc's all mad at apple now because they had like the summaries are all messed up yeah like sometimes i get the summaries on my phone and the summary totally changes the whole context of the notifications. Yeah.

Let's see. BBC, I'll look these up because the headlines that they were mad about were not trivial. I think it was that shooter. The one that shot the CEO, the headline said something like, shooter kills himself or something like that. Yeah. There was that there was um some bbc news about a pdc world championship that someone won i don't know south korean investigators call off arrest attempt and flu cases rising and like none of this i think i

think yeah and rafael nadal comes out as Like, none of this was actually true. Like, yeah, I can understand. Like, the news is like, you know, like, if you've ever been around news people, they really work to, like, make their stuff accurate as possible. And the headlines are like a distillation of this massive story they spend all their time on. And then, like, this AI thing comes along and just, like, destroys it all. Stirs at the words and then just, like, puts it all back together incorrectly. It's like, yeah, I could see how they were mad.

Like Canada's the 51st state of the US, you know. Well, that's going to happen. I mean, that's written in stone at this point.

Come on, guy. Yeah, we're going to get you. I'm going to get you. At least I won't have to pay import duty when I order stuff now.

Won't that be nice? You get no insurance though, so. Yeah. Wait till you learn what about our health care you think your health care is a nightmare wait till you see ours uh but yeah ai it's a big thing i i did i did see some encouraging news where i think something it was a vast majority of consumers are just completely turned off when companies use ai for marketing like it's like

they're marketing ai features like apple ai apple intelligence whatever when they when they're talking about ai they're like yeah we already know this garbage you shouldn't be using it i just assume it's nothing i mean like whenever companies talk about ai i just assume at this point they're using it as like a marketing topic just so that they can be relevant. Yeah. Because a lot of the stuff doesn't need AI. Right. Especially maybe a refrigerator to go shopping for you. Like, I don't know how people, how you wouldn't, but the direct comparison for me is crypto. I mean, for the longest time, crypto and the blockchain was like the biggest thing and

it was going to happen and all this stuff. And it did in some capacity, but now we don't hear about it at all. Yeah. I don't think AI is going to be that bad, but I don't know. It's getting hyped up too much at this point. And it even drives me nuts when they use it in like, like even my golf clubs, the paradigm AI smoke. It's like, what AI is in my golf clubs? AI design the golf clubs, Gavin.

Yeah, but I'm not using AI. It's not helping me hit better. Not yet. Well, it's here. It's not helping me hit better. Not yet. Well, it's here. We're not getting around it. I guess I called out the Samsung Vision AI thing as one of the things that's like a yawn, but actually that's one of the more machine learning things

that they do where it like upscales pictures on your TV using whatever video processing engines they have inside of their TVs. So those are kind of nice. It's not AI. We'll pretend that it's AI or something because we have to, but that's an okay thing. If you're releasing 8K TVs and you want to put 1080p pictures on them, you're going to need to upscale them. So better processors to do that kind of thing uh are definitely welcome anyway artificial intelligence there you go all right let's move on to our next our next big topic uh it's matter

matter guys i know i know you are totally it was so we had to cut something from the show and it was going to be the hdmi 2.2 release that tj really wanted to talk about and i was like no we've there's so much about matter we've got to talk about so google home hubs now work with matter locally you can locally control things because they've turned it on they flip the switch uh apple google and samsung all accepting matter certifications for their smart home products that's great and i think there's some matter speakers that are going to come on the way that's at some point we'll get matter speakers and then um i think there's oh there's a matter the very first matter smart fridge guys this is this is the bosch 1000 or bosch 100 series french door bottom mount refrigerator it's going to be here in the u.s

uh this spring and then maybe sometime down the road it the matter will support refrigerators right because i don't think they have that's this isn't something that like i'm going to get an apple home anytime soon right and it's not crazy expensive because if you i don't know much about fridge fridges because i've never had to buy a fridge uh but i looked at fridges it's not your 500 dorm fridge like it's not well no for sure but i mean if you go buy like a nice fridge at the store, it's automatically $2,000 anyway. Yeah. And so a matter of fridge being $2,500, I don't think it's that bad, but there's a caveat that it does not come with matter right away.

They're going to supposedly ship that when a firmware update later on. So is this the first matter fridge? I don't think so. Not till we get the update. I mean, technically. The first fridge to be promised matter i guess i guess says the plan is to bring energy monitoring reporting management capital capabilities to the fridge yeah so if you're like using too much energy yeah just turn your fridge

off so yeah it's cool yeah there you go all right just a little switch turn it off done boom solving the world's problems a lot of matter all right you guys matter matters there i did get a message from daniel and uh he he's he's like, yeah, there's a bunch to talk about. So we should get him back on the show and talk about, I think, 1.3 and 1.4, right? I think that's the latest too. And I think he said, he mentioned that the next matter is going to be pushed out a little bit.

So it'll be further down. They're going to iterate on something. I don't know. It'd be good to talk to him about it and get caught up. All right, let's move on to lighting lighting we've got lifex making its first smart lamp it doesn't look like a lamp but you know 70 bucks um you can get it at home depot it's like a spotlight it does look like a little spotlight i would use it doesn't get up lighter maybe a corner i don't know the home depot partnership is very interesting to me because

like i don't really see Home Depot as the forefront of home automation or lighting control products. They do have a smart home section there and everything. But LIFX keeps releasing stuff only through Home Depot. And I find that fascinating. Didn't they get bought? I think I think I'm bought by the company that does a lot of business with them. I can't remember their name.

Did they get bought out? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fiat Electric. Fiat Electric or whatever it is. They have a ton of products. That makes sense then, never mind. So the distribution is going to be the same and they're going to first.

$69 March 2025. They also released a bigger ceiling light. Oval shape, 13 by 26 inches. It cost $150 right in February. So if you like effects or Fiat lighting um head on over to home depot you can pick up these smart lights those are in us dollars cabin which you'll

get used to yeah freedom units yeah thanks ge sync smart smart switches oh this is a lighting but it also has matter uh ge sync release of new smart switches they work with matter guys but uh they're they look different they look really different i think that's the nicest way to say it this is not an attractive switch it kind of reminds me of the uh lutron what is it radio raw or homeworks like how they had those uh similar buttons but this is but this is way uglier because the little bar at the top i think if it didn't have that little skinny bar at the top it'd be better what is that yeah that's really strange it's you know it almost looks like a control four uh keypad yeah it's ugly i don't like it looks the the the quote here on the verge is uh the new sync keypad dimmer looks very 1980s sci-fi control

like a sci-fi control panel it totally does yeah but they still have the traditional g paddle dimmers right um yeah and those are compatible they're not as ugly no no this one specifically is ugly though and that's fine you can't win them all yep they also have strip lights and i was trying to find uh the pricing on that keypad i don't really see it there uh smart keypad dimmer is 44.99 there we are 44.99 and then the price is 25.99 no no it's not um ugly shouldn't cost a lot of money so that's good there you go you got hit with ugly stick And then the Paddle Dimmer is $25.99. No, it's not. Ugly shouldn't cost a lot of money, so that's good. There you go.

You got hit with the ugly stick. Speaking of ugly. Are we going to go talk about Lutron? Yeah, so speaking of, well, I don't know. They're not ugly. This isn't ugly. It's very basic. This is totally a Lutron move, though released nothing yeah they they got excited they contacted me before cs was like hey

we've got these caseta shades you want to check them out and i'm like wait that's the big announcement because these smart shades yeah it is so now they're caseta smart shades uh they're able to integrate with home kit and other smart home platforms because they have caseta smart shades starting at 399 there you go it's the same shades that you know and love from lutron with caseta on them with less options and cheaper of course yeah so 399 i think the other ones start up like six or seven hundred dollars at least so you know quite a quite a big price uh drop for lutron it's an option though, right? It's, if you you know, and honestly like

Caseta, Lutron, the protocol, the communication, like how it works, it's really, really good. Rockstar. And you don't have to worry about Zigbee or Thread or Matter or anything. You can just use their control protocol, hit the hub and raise up and down the shades

just fine enough so there you go like i can understand the the the excitement you know around these but i cannot understand the the hype of people saying this is the best thing at ces and blah blah they're just they're just another smart shade and the but they're priced better you know like i just don't get the super excitement, I guess you could say. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's a smart shade. And they work well.

We'll give them that. They work well up to 96 inches and links up to 104 inches. So very, I mean, yeah, he's a DJ. Very few options there. Yeah. You've really got to, I have windows I wouldn't even work on.

So yeah. Beginning ship in February 2025. So, right around the corner. But good for them. Good Lutron. Thanks. Govee announces a new gaming Pixel Lite, mini panel lights, and a bunch more stuff over at CES 2025. The Pixel thing looks fun.

There's like these little artwork things that you see from time to time. I forget. DJ, you have you have those little hexagonal panels who makes those uh i do nanoleaf nanoleaf yeah yeah yeah i think they were one of the first ones to come out with like the art related stuff maybe not but it feels like they were and then uh you just see other companies getting involved and putting more and more stuff out so govi is one of them. One of them. And while their software isn't all that great,

it's manageable. You can use it. It works, which is more than I can say for a lot of other things in the home ecosystem. Yeah, the Govee software works a little better than the Nanoleaf software, in my opinion, but they both have interesting options. Govee seems to be coming out with a lot of

the uh the stuff aimed at gamers though specifically uh nanoleaf seems to have a lot of lighting stuff meant for like general decor and stuff like that but goby seems to be going out for gamers which i think is is a good uh market a lot of people have made their their living off of that so yeah well they i mean typically you have money right yeah to play high-end gaming stuff and if you want to have like the lights do fun stuff. All the RGBs. Yeah. You got to have the RGBs.

It's been a game. It's part of the gamer culture. That's what makes you go faster. Get your ping down. You get more frames per second. Is that what it is? Yeah. We play Minecraft at his house.

So I really don't care about that. It's just squares and blocks. And there's a movie now. Jack Black. All right. Is that locks? Is that pretty much it? Yeah, that's pretty much it for lighting.

There's probably more stuff, but that's all we got today. We'll talk about cooler stuff we find later on. There'll be more stuff that we didn't touch on. All right. Lock Talk. Lock Talk's here. And I guess the big one that we want to really talk about is this Schlage Sense Pro. DJ, you highlighted this one as something we should take a look at.

This is a deadbolt. It features ultra-wideband technology and matter over thread support. It has hands-free unlocking, eliminates needs for physical keys. It works with HomeKit, alexa google all the good stuff it's got pretty good battery life um i don't know not much more to say you do you like how it looks i guess that's that's the biggest thing with locks uh my biggest thing that i liked about it is the uwb uh because there's not a ton of locks out with that currently um and i think it's kind of cool that schleg is finally i don't think they have one with that already.

It kind of looks like if I was going to stay in a hotel, a nice hotel, and they have the key card things, which is pretty much all hotels at this point. That's what it looks like. This is something that I think that we're going to see more of, just the automatic unlocking and everything like that, especially using the lower frequency like that. I wish they would figure out something with the front face of that satin nickel lock they have going on because it's basically just a white square. But it's a nice looking lock in general, though. I'm pretty happy with the looks of it. Hmm. Yeah.

I don't know if I agree with you there. That's fine. It sounds like a cool technology. I just don't think that the average person is going to want an automatically unlocking house for them. I think that's one of those things. Everyone knows that the locks on your car really don't even work, right? We can all come to agreement on that, especially if you're in Canada. They really know how to use the flippers, right?

And they just unlock your car and drive off with it. They're just there to keep honest people honest. Same thing with your front door. But people really like that that like feeling that turn you know like my parents like religiously my mom would go around at the end of the night and lock all the doors like they physically had to be turned she's not all right well so if there is if there is a regard to so i have smart olex in all my doors but i still go around. I'm like, I'm going to just make sure, you know? Yeah.

I mean, if there's, yeah, I think this kind of takes that away, right? Because there's a chance that in the middle of the night, the thing's just going to magically unlock and that won't be good. So I don't know. I really don't think that's going to be one of those things that, that's going to be a feature that people are clamoring for, I guess. I mean, well you just hook it up to home assistant use geolocation and then it won't work that reliable either so

because mine mine randomly unlocks i'm like why does my door unlock right now i don't know i just i think this is this is just a nice looking lock i think i'm going with it it's better than some of these other ones okay well let's get into those i'm gonna try and figure out which one you're talking about oh yeah i bet you i bet you can figure it out pretty quickly lockley has released something that is a doorbell and a smart smart lock with the digital people so like this is literally on the inside of the house the door lock where you above i don't know what is he called the little thing where you flip the lock unlocked and locked there's a screen of course it's got a screen and you can see who's pressing the doorbell thing on the other side of it i guess this could be good for like an apartment or kind of part or something like that not terrible yeah it gets it gets the

job done it's very utility i would just i would just use the peephole in my door but i guess you could use this tiny screen yeah you could you could bend over and look at this thing off access or whatever yeah you know what i do like the concept of a screen not necessarily just for a lock before uh the doorbell for example if you had a little screen that you could position somewhere on your like in your house you know on your bar on your counter or something like that that reacts faster than having to open up an app on your phone etc etc yeah that would be nice because that's the one thing i hate about the current implementations is by the time i open up that app and everything like that the mailman's already putting the sticker on my door saying he'll come back later yeah yeah and he's walking away yeah yeah yeah bring back the intercom

yeah more latency is what we want no wait um okay so all right so there's lockley all right so now you've got a 700 door handle with uh with that's got everything built in so this is a this is like a very european looking uh door pool i guess and it's it's got it's got a keypad on it it's got a button it's got a doorbell video camera i i think if you walked into a house with this on it you you'd be like i don't know what to do here do i touch it do i bop it and i think it's way too big for the door that's great this this is the lock i was referring to though this i think oh my god it's huge yeah it's way too big it just looks ginormous yeah no could you imagine have to like replace that at some point too and you've like already made these giant holes and the doors already like

weathered everything behind this giant lock it's called a designer handlebar it's so ugly yeah it's very ugly and again this is this is Lockley as well, right? Yeah, Lockley has a lot of products at least, so you can always find something. There you go. $700 Lockley Styla. It's an all-in-one deadbolt lock video doorbell being shown off there.

It says 2025. There you go. It's a very, very large door thing. You must need a 10-foot tall door for that. Yeah, look at that thing. I mean, even if you, they've got a picture of a wooden door.

I mean, I really hope that's a 10 foot tall door because if it's not, that thing is still so big. Would this be approved by your HOA? I don't know. Probably not. Yeah, man.

It's got a rearward, rearward 3d fingerprint sensor, vertical pen keypad with randomized digit placement. It's got an RFID reader and three programmable fobs. And you can use a traditional 12-pin slot for the two physical keys that are included. Yeah, Lockley always does the randomized keypad thing, and I do not like that.

Do you guys like that? I think it's a a good idea but it prevents like shoulder surfing or whatever but um i always feel like it'd be annoying though i've never like had to use one long term but i think i think when walking up and using the ultra wideband stuff or your watch or whatever maybe that's what i don't know using the nfc i guess is what i'm using on my watch i think that's better yeah you watch it you walk up you tap it you're watching your lock and it opens up so yeah Maybe that's what I don't know. Using the NFC, I guess, is what I'm using on my watch. I think that's better. Yeah. You walk up, you tap, you're watching your lock, and it opens up. Yeah. There you go. Scanning in.

All right. Tape-O releases palm scanning door lock. Look at this door wedge. And it does look like the little thing you stick under the door to keep it from opening or closing, I guess, or opening, depending on how you want to use a door wedge uh and it is a it's just a keypad on an angle which i guess isn't bad it's got a doorbell and yeah wedge shaped on the outside it's different very different i i kind of like that it's angled up towards you though i mean that makes sense yeah because usually the lock is just sticking straight out and you kind of have to like look at it a certain way this is this angled up at you it's not. And it doesn't look terrible.

And it's got a palm scanner in it. So you just walk up to it and mash your palm on the thing. And it's like, okay, you can get in. Just starfish it. There you go. Here. Take it. Take my palm.

Starfishing the doorbell. I guess that's going to be our title this year. All right. And then we've got a oh okay well here's here's the fun a smart dog door with custom RGB for your gamer dog all

right yeah the paw port dog's gonna go so fast the paw port is an extremely fancy door for your dog that it also has a custom light bar at the bottom supposedly

gonna ship here in 2025 it's a dog door TJ your mission before the show that you're interested in a dog door. Would this be the dog door for you? No. I was thinking more like a $50 to $100 one. I don't even know how my dog can see RGB. So does my dog need RGB?

Not all of them. No, no. They can only see what? They see like red, greens or something. I don't know. They miss one color somewhere in there. Yeah. This is not for me. It's kind of cool though. I'll give it that. Yeah Um, I can see this in somebody's house. It's not gonna be my house. Well, it's available starting at 499 And oh, yeah. Well, I mean this one's got a bluetooth tag on it straps your dog's collar

So the dog approaches it unlocks and lets them in it doesn't even look that big though I mean like they have a picture of it next to this puppy and this puppy already looks like it's almost bigger than the door So why is it so high? Does it like to have to hop through well you don't want to put it in the baseboard oh that's true oh okay um i thought the baseboard was the gray part below the actual baseboard that's a reflective floor okay i see what they're doing that's not that bad and also i guess i mean i don't know like i've never had one of these that goes the outside the house i have one for cat, which we put on the laundry room door so it could go into the bathroom in there.

But I've never had one on the outside. I would always worry about, especially around here, like raccoons and possums coming in at night if it didn't have a little lock. Well, that's why this one comes with a Bluetooth RFID tracker. So that way you can just auto-unlock when your dog walks up to it. You can get a special trash panda. He's going trade trade it to

the trash pan over some steak or something but i think for the price of this it's a it's a good price um 4.99 uh i remember we were talking about dog doors a while ago and they were like three thousand dollars they get very expensive yeah no this is not a good price this one comes in a ton of different colors, too. You get Espresso, Glacier, Notch, Nantucket, Brush Nickel, all kinds of color options. You can't actually buy it yet, though. Oh, okay. Well, maybe we can get them on the show and they can send us one to review. Oh, that'd be nice. I'd like to cut a hole in my wall real fast.

Hold on. Let me check this out. Got the perfect spot for it. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, there you go. RGB lighting.

I need my lock to have RGB lighting. Somebody needs to release a Matter smart lock that has RGB lights. See, dogs see blue, yellow, and gray, and that's it. There you go. So. Yeah, so that would be useless. What is the RGB for them? You really just need the blue.

That's right. And then maybe the green can help them see yellow a little bit. We can make a cheaper option. Yeah. Just has blue LEDs on it. It's not a good sea anyway. Save you 50 bucks. All right.

Let's move on here. We've got some lawn news, which is kind of nice. We've got an Irisman Smart Irrigation Sprinkler. This is kind of nice we've got an iris mint smart ear irrigation sprinkler uh this is kind of cool i know we talked about these in the past the ones where they you can like map out your lawn and then it will automatically like water them with a jet in a head that kind of like knows where to go and that's what this is but it's priced at $399 available in may 2025 the ones we talked about before were like underground and and you had to install them with like this big base station on the bottom of them.

Like it was a big to-do to like, it's basically an in-ground sprinkler system. This one, not so bad. It hooks up with a garden hose, installs 15 minutes and a 33 foot power cord. Don't let the lawnmower hit that one, but you've got a customizable spray pattern and we'll cover up

to 4300 square feet with a 39 foot reach so that's not bad i'm i this is this is more reasonable or more doable i guess in the in ground one that we were looking at i like this we've seen another one that was it just hooked up to your hose and shine out it was like a little box it's like on a wall yeah and you put it on your fence or something like that. So this isn't the first one like this, but again, these are great for, you know, if you had the right shaped lawn, the nice size lawn for it and stuff.

I guess you can have a couple of them too. It was the Otto Smart Sprinkler. It was, that one's 359. So there you go. That's the little box shaped one that you hook up to your your garden hose and it it aims around with a head as well trying to remember what the other ones were well here and here you go though here's the difference here's what you get for that extra 40 or the the auto only covers 2,800 square feet so that's it yeah i mean that is

for 399 you can get 4,300 square feet. The 39-foot reach. That's pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. Maybe we should get both of these guys to get on the show and give us some samples. We can have a shootout. Literal shootout. A shootout.

Which one can knock the other one over. A spray off. Spray off. Yeah, there you go. All right, let's move on here. We've got a couple of stories about energy related products i guess first up thermostats ecobee launched a really cheap and inexpensive thermos smart thermostat for their line honeywell also did a matter of thermostat as well for 80 bucks um those are kind of cool uh blue blue eddy i guess has some this is kind of one of those

battery companies that's out there like anchor they've got some uh big storage kits that you can get now so we'll put links to all this stuff in the show notes you can check them out there if you're interested in those things i don't know i the thermostats are kind of interesting the the batteries are kind of interesting but i don't know i don't know they have much more to say about thermostats and batteries no the big the big thing is robots robots oh my god they're everywhere so many robots at ces this year i think i think they're just going to take over i need a robot yeah first up anchor anchor says they're gonna they're gonna launch a robotic lawnmower so now we're now things are heating up spring's coming around and i think

we're gonna have it's gonna be the year of robot lawnmowers. I mean, everybody is going to be looking at these being like, yeah, if Anchor's getting into the business, you know it's time. Because they make good chargers, and that means they're probably going to make a pretty good lawnmower. That translates to the blade. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I don't know how it works. And then there was another story I was trying to put in here.

iRobot's founder says they are working on a new kind of home robot. And this was a teaser kind of before CES, probably because iRobot, I don't know. I didn't see any news stories about iRobot at CES. Maybe they didn't have anything to bring. So they're like, yeah, we're working on something, guys. It's super secret. It's going to be a really cool robot that helps you around your house. And it might involve furrier pets. I don't know.

It might be a pet, a robot animal. Don't know. So there you go. From robot vacuums to robot pets who knows what they're gonna have we'll see i i think the biggest the biggest news out of here and i i i don't want to go through all these but the biggest ones that i've seen that people have been talking about are all these robot vacuums that are coming out with like arms that swivel out of them so they can pick up socks and then turn the socks to wherever they're supposed to be and then keep vacuuming it's the arms in like the multi-gadget ones so like this year for ces we've seen the robot vacuums with the arms like what's that's talking about but then we're also seeing ones from like switchbot where i like docks into other things

so like there's this obnoxious one uh it's called the household robot k20 plus pro because i mean why not have an obnoxious name uh but it's a robot vacuum but it can also pick up a fan it can also pick up an air purifier and it's like it's just so weird i did like the fan you can like follow you around a loud fan glowing at you like hey i know you're hot i'm just gonna keep running around with this fan it's so ridiculous hey i know you're hot i'm just gonna keep running around with this fan it's so ridiculous and it just like go and it's like if you remember i think it's like the switchbot s10 uh the robot vacuum uh mop thing where it has like the separate docking station that hooks up to the the water line and it like goes and it docks and it gets water and then it

brings it back to the actual like vacuum station base uh it's basically the same concept but with different accessories it's just such an interesting concept this year i'm giving them a lot of respect for the you know they're trying you know and we're gonna see we're gonna see a lot of useless stuff or you know gimmicky stuff but you know out of that will come something good and useful you know when they perfect it like if they make it clean up the the the laundry that's sitting on your floor faster for example you know or if it can go get you a beer to the point where it can actually open the fridge grab the beer close the fridge and bring it to you you know one day they may protect it can do that it

just needs three different accessories so when someone makes those accessories you know this is gonna be selling like hot you know like you can say hey robot go get me a beer you know that's what people want i need an american version where i can dock and go get a gun just in case an intruder breaks somebody's probably gonna make a gun attachment to one of these you know and send it out in their yard go grab my gun robot yeah all right so so they they have some some different accessories for this k20 thing and i'm just looking at the picture at the bottom here the the air purifier and the the beer fetching one i guess is the most absurd absurd one that they have but i'm trying to figure out there's one that looks like it has a mirror attached to

a pole. Does it follow around you with a mirror? Or is that like a screen? You put a tablet on it and now you have somebody in your house or something? Oh, it's a telepresence robot? It turns your vacuum? That's going to be so noisy. Why would they do this?

I don't know. But I think the key thing, too, is they've also encouraged people to make something. So they're allowing you to 3D print parts or something like that. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, this one uses, like, USB-C, the SwitchBot one specifically. So you can power with different things. Which is cool, you know. Somebody's going to make something that you're going to sit there going, oh, that's cool.

I want it. The ones with the arms are creepy, those ones are just like with like the little little like and they look terrible like none of them look like they're actually that strong arms like if you bought that it would probably break after it lifted like a really heavy pair of pants or something i don't know but maybe if they improve it and they bulk it up a little bit it'll be nice it's like b Dynamics dog type of creepiness. Yeah. You don't want them to get too strong, though.

That's true. They'll take over. Exactly. You still want to make sure it knows who's boss. The air purifier, this picture takes the cake, where these dogs and cats are sitting around, and the dander is just flying through the air. This robot vacuum is just sitting there in the middle with his little hat on.

And I love it. It's just got, it's got the vacuum down there. It's got this little like roving base thing. It's got a camera on it. It's got the air purifier. I mean, it's got so much stuff. Now it just needs a smart lock on there and we're good to go.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's like a coffee. It's like an end, like they could have just made the beer purifier and put a coffee, like the coffee table thing on it. No, this one, this can move around. If you ever wanted a moving around air purifier in your house.

See, they should put a table on top of the air purifier. That way the robot, that way the robot can bring it to me whenever I need a table. And I'm like, oh, you know, I really need to set my drink down here right now, but I can't. Bring me a table robot. The whole point is that it will know where the bad air in your house is. Take the air purifier there, and clean it up. Drag it over there. Exactly.

That's not creepy at all. It just sits there and watches you while it cleans up your dirty air. It's like, oh, man. The caption is, the K20 Plus Pro working as an air purifier and pet monitor. So I guess that's what they're trying to convey here in this Photoshop picture. I don't know. Best of luck to you, SwitchBot. Get it.

If anybody can make this happen, I know it's you. It's definitely SwitchBot. It's definitely SwitchBot. Oh, my gosh. All right. Can we talk about the worst thing to come out of CES? Is it a robot? It's not.

It's the new frame TV. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get there. We'll put a ton of other links in here. There's robot vacuum. There's robot. Everybody's really proud of their new robot. There's so many robots.

Mops and that kind of thing. There's a lot of robot vacuums. And then Samsung promises they're going to have this Bali AI thing. It's got to have AI, but it's not AI. It's just a little robot that runs around, looks like a football helmet or something. I don't know. This is weird.

Yeah. Samsung makes weird stuff, and it projects stuff on the floor, projects up with a wall. I don't know. I don't like it. Samsung makes weird stuff. And it like projects stuff on the floor, projects up with a wall. I don't know. I don't like it. It does look cute. But I mean, as far as cute robots go, I think this one takes the cake.

It probably will not sound cute. You know, like all of these things like look great in the photos. But when they start running around your house and you hear like these little whiny motors and stuff, it kind of takes it away. All right. Let's talk about the, the, the best, the, and now TJ,

this is the, the headline over the verge. Samsung announces the frame pro. Could this be the perfect TV? And the answer is probably not. No, it's probably not. It's a new,

new frame TV. Uh, key upgrades include a shift to mini led technology. We promise better contrast, brightness, and black levels. Definitely needed. Although it uses edge-lit configuration

rather than mini-LED backlighting. So there you go. Maybe they'll get a better picture out of it, but I think, TJ, let's just not bury the lead on this one. What is the biggest change that you are so excited about in the new Samsung Frame Pro?

The biggest and dumbest change is that now, the one connect box that you had before is wireless. It's all gone wireless. They finally hear the builders are right. They've taken a cue from LG and they're like, look, you have this

TV and you want to throw it on the wall. Well, you have power there, but you really need the input somewhere else. So let's make it wireless. And so that's what they did. They've taken a Pro TV and a Frame's what they did they've taken a pro tv and a frame tv at that and they've made it to where you had to install an outlet behind the tv now for some reason so i i i don't know it's just pro it must be good is it pro i don't think it's pro because pros don't use wireless so no it's it says pro right there it means it's better

than everything else they have and i think pro just means homeowner in this situation. Well, it has Wi-Fi 7 too. I don't know if you noticed that, but they snuck Wi-Fi 7 in. I need Wi-Fi 8 though. I don't know. The wireless One Connect box supports Wi-Fi 7. So totally ready for those HDMI connections, I guess. This is not a pro.

What they should do is just not make this TV anymore because it sucks. Everybody loves it. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. You have to have something to mount over your fireplace This is not a pro. What they should do is just not make this TV anymore because it sucks. Everybody loves it. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. You have to have something to mount over your fireplace, TJ. This is an awful TV. This is the TV.

Don't buy it. It's got AI. What doesn't? I need AI artwork. It has a new Samsung food feature that can recognize dishes that are on the screen and provide you with recipes. How to make them. And add them to your Instacart shopping list. Yeah, put it in your fridge for you we'll get the the robot little guy to go

over and move into the fridge interesting it also has a live translate which can instantly translate post caption on live broadcast in up to seven languages see that's cool that's actually a good use of like you know technology i i don't know i gab and i sent this video to you guys it was kind of like before the holidays uh i don't know if it's true or not. I don't know if it's been like confirmed, but there was like this couple that was watching this Netflix thing. It was a TikTok video.

And they were watching Netflix. And it was like one of those foreign films that they have on there. It was overdubbed and everything. And they were watching the English version and they switched over to whatever language it was in to see kind of what they were saying. Because sometimes they say different things

and the closed captions will say different things. I think Squid Game was like that, right? Well, what they noticed was like, wait a minute, the mouth is lining up. She's actually speaking the language she's supposed to speak. And they flipped her back over to English and the mouth had been modified somehow.

They edited the mouth. AI has edited the mouth to change and changed to form English words with the same inflection and look that the actress was trying to portray. And that is crazy. That was amazing. Like when I saw that video, I didn't believe it. And I actually went on my Netflix and I actually watched that movie La Palma. It's a Norwegian movie because I don't know if it did it with every movie.

So I jumped into a random spot on that movie and I changed the audio. And yes, it looks like the mouths change. It's not perfect, but it's better than if it was just being dubbed. And I even showed it to my wife and we were kind of like amazed and that's another cool use of technology and ai and stuff yeah i don't know if it's the same if it's every movie that does this or if it was just this movie no like that would be a lot of processing power but it was actually really cool to do i i'm sure it was a netflix film basically right and then because they have a lot more control of what they can do

and what they can make their force their actors to sign contracts and that kind of thing and then they get to play with all sorts of technology stuff on those films so it's interesting that was really cool I had no idea I didn't know you had gone and done that but that's really cool to hear it's a cool feature

well that's it for TVs because there's no other TV oh wait no LG no no lg and samsung are adding microsoft co-pilot ai assistance to their tvs yeah i really wanted that yes really did it's actually just a link to their website i think they said you know oh so wait i can add my i can add co-pilot to my my little remote thing that tj sent me here the ava remote i can probably add co-pilot to this little remote thing that TJ sent me here. Oh, there you go. The Ava remote. I can probably add Copilot to this. Hold on a second. Oh, it's the first remote with AI.

Oh, my gosh. With Microsoft Copilot installed. Man, we are breaking all kinds of stuff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I don't know. Oh, yeah. There's Google Chrome.

So if I... Oh, look. It's got Gemini on it now. Oh, probably. Because I can search for something. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Why are there so many questions on everything on android like it it's just gotta ask questions i guess i still haven't gotten there finally okay anyway uh yeah copilot it's at your work it's your home it's on your tv there you go it sees you when you're sleeping yeah you guys have been talking about wanting your technology to listen to you and suggest products for you i mean we just built it right in that's what you've been talking you wanted that right we're not getting away from it so at least make it good at suggesting what i want like fix my aliexpress feed please what's wrong with your aliexpress feed let's not get into that again lg is going so far as to even rebrand its remote to ai remote in an effort to sell consumers on the promise of large language models there you go this is so stupid i cannot wait till this

this craze is over genuinely i do believe in large language models but this is so dumb anyway wait wait is this an ai remote it is no no it's ava remote sorry sorry you gotta get the ava ai soon if i go to chat gpt on this remote now it's an ai remote chat gpt i can't type on this keyboard because it's very very tiny it is very tiny i don't know why they made this all right here we go try chat bt there we go this is an ai remote Thank you. TJ, I don't think you even knew it was an AI remote. I didn't. I gave it up without knowing that. Eat your heart out, LG.

That's right. I already have the AI remote. There you go. And then TiVo. I think we talked about TiVo coming into... Yeah, there was a rumor about this. Without TVs. Yeah.

So I guess they are. TiVo-powered TVs. And unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it's the same old awesome TiVo thing that you used to get. It's just basically a way that they can put ads on your TV screen and give you a nice interface, I guess, that TiVo has a great legacy with, but maybe the performance, I don't know. The performance on TiVos was always great. I don't know how it's going to be on their smart TVs with ads. We'll see. It's going to support a wide range of streaming services it's basically going to be a roku right i think that's what we can say what this is going to be

probably no api probably no way to control it because you know the uh venture capital firm that owns tivo now uh probably didn't think of that that i think this takes all the entire t like if you're making tvs just just stop because lg is lg's won they won the game they won the game as part of their quote screens everywhere campaign you know basically means they just want screens all over your house they've made a microwave and put a 27 inch display on it because it's perfect it's perfect you can't you guys if you don't have this in your kitchen are you even a chef can you even cook can you even make popcorn this actually makes sense though people put you just want more ads in your kitchen but people put especially from lg people put tvs in their kitchen right so now

you're merging two appliances i mean when you're using the microwave i'm pretty sure it goes clear or something like that you can order camera turns on and you can see inside still but when you're not using when you're not using the microwave 90 of the time you could be watching the ball game on there or something you know like it makes sense that's true it is extra space that a microwave traditionally takes up into a kitchen that you know you can get a tv screen on you may as well put it on i guess i mean if if you have one of those um microwaves that sit above the range we get roasted for your tv being too high or above a fireplace at that point on the reddit forums uh you know i have a i have a microwave drawer so is is if i put this in will it be low tv too low i think my daughter would love it. She's just sitting on the floor in the kitchen just watching TV all the time. Yeah.

I don't know. That's a, where will they stop? I mean, they've got it on the fridge. They've got it on the microwave. The oven. What's next? The oven. Oh, the oven.

That's a great place for it. Yep. Maybe the washer and dryer. Put one there. I mean, it makes sense because if you're doing laundry, you want to watch the game. You don't want to miss any part of the game. Yep. Don't want to miss anything. miss anything yeah hey you know what they could do is just they could start making uh i'm looking at this this this picture the microwave mounted

above uh the range tv too high right like you're talking about i'm like you know what you know what's wasted in here it's all these these panels where they have cabinets just make the cabinet doors into tvs and they just have like a giant video wall. Brilliant. Yes. Right there. You see, you're thinking. You're thinking.

Call me, LG. Call me. Turn the island into a TV. Yep. You're thinking now. Maybe the sink. We need, you know who could make that happen? Sea Seed.

What they'll do. Oh, yeah. They'll just have a giant TV that comes out of the island and rotates. The whole island just goes up into the air. You thought you had an island? And it automatically cleans itself off when you fold it up.

Little hand comes out and wipes it off. You know that little space on the wall that's above your stove but below the vent? Right behind the stove there that's a perfect spot for a tv right there yeah that's a great spot that's prime real estate yeah people people i mean people don't care about hot zones i mean they put them right above the fireplaces so that's that's perfect you can watch how to cook while you're cooking while you're cooking they

can put a camera in it and watch you cook there you go and then make suggestions on like what you're doing wrong right there like oh it's you didn't add that pepper in, but you need more paprika. I think we're giving away ideas on this show. I mean, they, LG, LG call us. We have the ideas. We're full of them. We're full of it. It's kind of like the old Arby's commercials.

We've got the meat, but we've got the ideas. It still gives you the same feeling in your stomach when you hear our ideas and eat the arby's all right well uh let's move on to some fun stuff here akara has uh revealed a new lineup of smart home devices at cs1025 they've got new control panels switches sensors doorbells they've got a panel hub s1 it's a 6.9inch touchscreen that looks awesome if you're in Europe and not so great if you're in the U.S. It has dual-band Wi-Fi, both Zigbee and Matter. They've got a touchscreen dial.

V1 offers a rotary dial with a 1.32 round touchscreen for controlling various smart devices. Also looks awesome if you're in Europe, not so much if you're in the States. I don't know. The form factors don't look great on that, but they've got all sorts of stuff here. They have light switches, a dimmer H2, light switch H2, dimmer H2, dual protocol, switch thread, ZigBee, all designed for homes without neutral wires. So that's awesome. You can do a pretty good retrofit with these.

New sensors, multi-presence sensors fp300 i think everyone is excited about right right because it's just got all the sensors on it and uh let's see we've got i think the other thing was what was it the little little sensor thing a little climate sensor the w100 that looks awesome i like it temperature and humidity sensor and a little a doorbell camera that has a button that i don't think anyone will ever mistake for not being a button like clearly a button clearly a button they have done it they've solved the mystery not a door bird situation not no if you if you miss this button you just just walk away you missed it you you probably didn't need to get their attention anyway

probably they should make a button out of the camera in this situation. And if you press the camera, it just like says go. Now, you know, you get a special push notification saying this person pushed the camera. Anyway, all good stuff. I think you guys are excited about the FP300, which sounds cool. FP300 is what I've been waiting on from them. Like you said, it has all the sensors, PIR, millimeter wave, which is huge, light temperature, humidity, two-year,

I think they said two-year battery life, and matter compatibility. I don't know if that means if it's got matter built in, matter over thread, which some of their devices seem to have, or if it's matter compatibility through its hub, which some of their other devices have. So we will find out, but I know I will be buying a few of these when they come out. Yeah, I want these too, because in a lot of the rooms I have like an Aqara FP2, and then

I have multiple motion sensors as well, but I do need more millimeter wave sensors. So this would help me eliminate a couple of sensors and save me some money. And it's battery powered. That was the one thing about a lot of the sensors I me some money. So it's battery powered. That was the one thing about a lot of the sensors I have now that you have to plug them in. It's just too hard to get something that, you know, all those cables hanging, you know, for the location I have to put them in. But this is battery powered.

It's perfect. Yeah. Two year battery life on two CR2450s. So, I mean, that's pretty good battery life. Yep. Full of coin cells. Three years in Zigbee mode and two years in thread mode. cr 2450s so i mean that's pretty good battery life yep full of coin cells three three years in zig me mode and two years in thread mode so you could swap it back and forth right so that's

what it says in the in the link so we'll see when it actually comes out but i don't know if they announced a release date yet but i'm sure we'll see it on x yeah i don't think they've released any release date yeah we just know a price as well, right? Well, yeah. No price is just yet. And it's got AI in it. Accurate presence detection with AI optimization. So even better. There we go. You know, it will reduce false

triggers caused by pets, robots, you know, and other environmental factors. So this is great. This actually looks really good. Well, the AI will come in handy because all the robot vacuums with arms now that that makes sense it'll get triggered all the time some of the the light switches they have release dates like later this month q1 2025 but nothing on the fp300 so i don't like that we got the ugly touch panel though the the eu one is way more

attractive it's so nice but the touch like why do we get the little dot thing, the little screen thing? Well, it looks like a 2GB Edge panel. So the 2GB Edge security panel looks just like that. It's so weird. But I think I'll probably

grab one of those, too. It actually looks cool, you know? I may throw one in the office here to play with and see, you know, how it works. Yeah. Well, if you want screens, we've got screens this year uh shelly is coming out with an x2 wall display um so this little i don't know is a touch screen i

guess it is i i better be is it i'm sorry it's a touch screen is it is it hardwired into power is it just like uh yeah so it replaces two or replaces two uh gang switch okay so you you go you put this on your two gang switch location and they have the most awkwardly photoshopped picture i think i've ever seen in my life because they do but yeah it doesn't specify if it's a double gang or single gang it just says electrical box too all right well it makes it easy for you to control smart lights thermostats and just about everything on a seven inch touchscreen built-in temperature and humidity and light sensors there you go um looks pretty nice no no idea it's going to be q1 you uh q1 on international and u.s

availability to follow um supports bluetooth and wi-fi supposedly works with home assistant as well so we'll see looks That's kind of cute. Shelly's been kind of upping their game on what they're doing with their own home automation platform. They had that little tiny screen or smaller screen that came out earlier. Kind of cool. I haven't seen too much happen with it, but this is just the next iteration of that, I guess. And then of SwitchBot, because we can't stop talking about SwitchBot, they've got a video

doorbell intercom tj that i know you were clamoring for so slap on the old uh video camera doorbell thing outside and you get a little screen on the inside and you can talk to people back and forth so yes yeah yeah you were talking about this you want a little camera system you could see just yeah this is exactly what i was i was thinking of you know like a little screen that you could put on your counter and you know you have your action buttons from that and you don't have to load an app what's old is new again newtone just should have held on that's right a few more years okay what's funny is newton probably still has the same products oh 100 they're still selling them and still being installed everywhere.

All right. We got a couple of security-related stuff here, mostly by Ring. Ring is updating their outdoor cameras to support 2K resolution, even if you already have them. You just get a free upgrade going from 1080p up to 2K. So I guess the camera lenses and everything can do. They're going to pay for that extra server storage space or whatever

and bandwidth and upgrade a few of the model cameras. It's only going to be the Spotlight Cam Pro and the Floodlight Cam Pro. So there you go. If you got one of those, congratulations,

you got 2K video. I know you guys, I'm not even sure I posted a picture of them. I have the old Ring Floodlights. I don't know if they're like first generation.

Probably are because they're probably seven or eight years old now and the cameras are just, they're like first generation. Probably are because they're probably seven or eight years old now. And the cameras are just, they're gone. Like they are done. And I don't even think you can see video at them anymore. So they've got to come down. I've got to replace them with something.

I don't think I'm going to do another camera thing. I'm just going to put up regular little spotlights or use the electrical for something else. Just get a railing floodlight camera. I don't know. I already have cameras in these locations and I don't really need extra cameras. Done.

I think I'm just going to be in the market for a really nice floodlight today. Oh. Which I can't turn on because of the noise of my neighbors

and they come over and they say, hey, can you turn your floodlight off? Yeah, yeah. It's like, it goes right into their bedroom. Like, the light is right there and there's really no reason for me to have. Yeah. It's like, it goes right into their bedroom.

Like the light is right there and there's really no reason for me to have it on. So yeah, I don't feel bad about turning it off. Just blink it off then. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Or I can use it for Christmas light plug or something like that. I don't know.

We'll see. Where are we? Is that it? Oh, no, no. And then Ring, big controversy here. Ring is making a smart smoke alarm and they're going to charge for it, guys. Can you believe that? The nerve.

Anyway, they've announced a new partnership with fire safety brand KID. I guess that's how you pronounce that. They're going to launch a smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that connects to the Ring app through Wi-Fi instant alerts to your phone when the alarms are triggered. So there you go. The smart smoke alarm is going to be 54 97 and the smoke and cr alarms are going to be 74 97 uh launching in april at the home depot so you can pick up the

lifex lights and some of these there and uh later in 2025 so there you go yeah just everything's happening at the home depot right now you're gonna have a pretty big ces turnout at home depot i guess a lot of people are uh a lot of people are angry about this. I can't believe Ring would charge for this. But I have to tell you something, guys. Even I get charged for fire monitoring. So it makes sense that emergency services being called is going to cost you a monthly fee. I don't see anything wrong with $5 a month.

I think that's relatively cheap, and especially for the peace of mind, where maybe you're not worried about somebody breaking into your house, but you don't want your house to burn down. But $5 a month is pretty worth it in my opinion. It's a bit different. Yeah. And trust me, the fire department has to come into your house and it's just because you've been messing around with your alarm system and triggering the smoke alarms or you've had an oversized smoke detector that you didn't think was going to set off the uh the smoke alarm at your holiday party um yeah they're not it's a good joke you know but

they laugh and they say everything's okay and then they make you sign something say don't do this again and then if they come out too many times they charge you lots of money so yeah it makes sense i'm just glad that if my house was on fire, they would show up as quickly as they did. Yeah, they're pretty quick. Fire department does not mess around. No, no. Especially when you realize that, oh no, I just set off the fire alarm.

I need to call somebody and they've already dispatched. They've already, they're coming. There's nothing you can do to stop it. So yeah. I mean, I think guys, I think that wraps up CES 2025. Well, at least this week.

We'll probably have a couple of straggling stories. Oh, yeah. A ton of stuff next week. Wow. It was a lot. I think I'm going to hold my project until next week. Yeah, I think I will, too. I've got a whole bag of projects.

And you know what? I've got some really good ones you guys are going to love and we're going to have to talk about. But, yeah, I think next week we'll have projects. All right. We'll get back to that but all the links and topics to discuss tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 510 all right uh we aren't skipping the mailbag this week because we do have a letter

for a couple letters here from uh from tom first says thanks for the h1 ornament my wife and i were on a ditch the kids cruise and this was a very pleasant surprise. Once I was able to check with my email, it's supposed to arrive today, the 21st and looks forward to playing, uh, playing around with it. So there we go.

Uh, he says, keep up the good work on the show and I wish you all, all and Clippy a Merry Christmas. Uh, don't chain Clippy to a tree. That's more cruelty. And someone might report you.

That's true. I'd report you. That's true. I'd report you. Yeah, yeah. And then Keith. Keith from Guernsey, right? Is that it? Guernsey. Yeah, Guernsey.

Guernsey, yeah. I thought that was Guernsey. Guernsey, yeah. It's got an N in there. He wrote in to say, hope you're all having a great Christmas. Just wanted to let you know that the ornament and your cool card arrived on its long journey to guernsey today uh just in time to light up uh before the tree comes down so i guess this is after christmas but oh well uh thanks again and best wishes in 2025 yeah well thanks keith uh it's awesome to find our single listener there in guernsey jersey in

the area i guess it's awesome but uh we we shipped one to him we also had a friendly wager on this one we thought we thought we were like wait when when this is when this is gonna get there i think i said two weeks and it was about two weeks we figure so there we go i won you won congrats you get bragging rights i guess yeah nothing else just bragging i am just gonna head on over to guernsey i think it looks pretty oh that's what you get you get to go to guernsey there we go you have to pay for it, though. Sorry. We don't make any money, so. I win again! If you want to support

Seth's trip to Guernsey. Alright. And we do have a pick of the week this week, and of course it's from CES, and of course it's adorable. This is the Yukai Engineering Nekojita Fufu. Okay. be and of course it's from ces and of course it's adorable this is the yukai engineering neko jita fufu it just okay this is in our robot news and we're like no no this has to come out it is a quirky robot cat designed to cool down hot beverages or food by blowing air at random

strengths and intervals mimicking mimicking human behavior it's just a little cat that you hang on the side of your coffee cup or your tea cup or your soup bowl and it blows it goes it blows in inside the uh inside your cup how excited was i when i saw this how extremely excited and you know i was even coming up with upgrades for it you know like what if one of the little paws had a temperature sensor on it and would dip into your soup and so it would know like what if one of the little paws had a temperature sensor on it and would dip into your soup and so it would know when it's the right temperature stick a little hand down in there yeah maybe make a sound when it got to the optimal temperature to eat your soup you know i'm so sick of like waiting on my soup to cool down just using room temperature

this would be perfect it'd be useful are you actual useful robot and you could just sit there and say you know blow on this until it cools down. Then I'll drink it. I'd take this to restaurants and stuff. When I go for faux, I'd hang this on the edge of my faux ball. And, you know, then I'd have to wait for it to cool down. I'd be like, hey, get to work. And it's adjustable.

You could adjust the blowing speeds, the tempos, et cetera, et cetera. Like this is a useful robot. I found this and I thought it was a joke and i'm glad you guys love it so much so oh yeah no i mean i this this is amazing because the first thing out of my mouth was like why don't you just wait for it to cool down but i guess i'm a savage so no i i really i usually do but then by the time i get to it it's like too cold or then i test it too early and i burn the top of my tongue or something like that that's true you know like there's so many this will just solve so many problems for me you

know like i i drink a lot of soup i love soup the name and echo jita fufu comes combines fufu which is the sound of blowing on food oh you guys do that and then uh and then and nico jita meaning cat tongue i guess uh referencing those with low heat tolerance i don't know there you go i guess if you don't have high heat tolerance they call you a cat tongue in japan i don't know anyway uh it was inspired by a team leader's experience of getting dizzy by blowing on hot baby food uh so there you go. $25 available mid-2025. Put a reminder in my calendar. Wait, what is this other product? The furry purse goblin?

What is that? This was related to that. This one's a little freaky looking though. That solves nothing for me. One, because I don't have a purse. But two, it's weird. Oh my gosh. It sits, it hangs on the purse strap and just kind of looks around as they walk by. It scans the surroundings using a combination of motion and proximity sensing as well as

taps and movement on the bag to which it's mounted. Interesting. There's enough people in public that do this anyway. You don't need a little robot hanging on your back. How many times I walk through the mall and people just watch it and it's like, what are you watching? Do I have something on my face? Like, what's going on?

You have a little creepy furry robot monster on your purse there. Wow. Okay. Well, there you go. If you ever, if you, if anybody gets a, uh,

a foo foo or a ham ham, is that what this is? No. Mer, Merumi, Mirumi. If anybody gets a foo foo or a Merumi, let us know.

Um, hopefully, hopefully Gavin can get one, uh, a foo foo at least. And he can, he can get back to eating soup. I hope it's USB-C, you know, chargeable.

Yeah, I didn't see a charging port. What do you think it is? In the end, that's not close to the soup. Oh, man. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, comments, questions, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. The email address is feedback at hometech.fm,

or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. No project updates this week. We're going to skip that. But we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know what's about the Patreon page,

head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our private slack chat hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day in there and see pictures of jimmy adam and richard at ces 2024 because they are having a ball down there and that's why we're going, right? We'll be there in 2026. That's right. We'll be there. They're probably not going to go.

Nobody's going to go last year. It's actually the year it shuts down. There's no CES. We're done, guys. Nobody wants to do this anymore. If you want to help out but can't support financially, totally understand. We'd just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes Like, we're done, guys. Nobody wants to do this anymore. If you want to help out but can't support financially, 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 at the end of CES. Possibly we'll have more stories next week. Oh, my gosh. This is so much. Everybody, have a great weekend. We will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. Take care. Foo, foo.