HomeTech.fm - Episode 518 - Alexa+

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

On this week's show: Apollo joins the Works with Home Assistant program, YoLink releases a new local hub, eero launches their Wi-Fi 7 router lineup, UniFi announces new 10 Gigabit Cloud Gateways, several new smart home products hit, Tado raises eyebrows with app subscription tests, Amazon unveils their long awaited, AI-powered Alexa+, a pick of the week, TJ's honest review of the Aqara G5 Pro, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 28th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario. I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home animation, home technology, beeps, so many beeps. I'm thinking you're that before we started the show today we had a we had I had an alarm going off and I couldn't figure out where I was coming from and so I finally I went and found it and I changed

the battery on it and I came back and I still heard the noise for some reason not really sure why I don't know either come to find out Seth was playing it on his computer. He's a jerk like that. I was like, no, I just replaced these batteries, they're good! TJ was very angry there for a minute. Yes, yes. I was so angry. Well, it's even more annoying too, because I have Z-Wave smoke detectors, and all of them said that all the batteries were above 70%, so they shouldn't be beeping at all. If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, I might be a carbon monoxide alarm and stuff.

This is your friendly reminder, go and change your batteries on your smoke alarm detectors. You're supposed to do it every so often, right? Well, and I don't know if this is like true with all smoke detectors, but I had to get my, I have the the first alert z combo z-wave smoke smoke combo

smoke alarms, whatever they are And I had to get one of them replaced because it just like it just kept going off It like freaked out in the middle of the night And when I called into support that I don't remember the exact thing, but the lady was like Oh, do you do you clean them every week and test them every week? And I'm like, no, who does that? And she's like, well, technically, you know, you're supposed to clean them and test them every week.

And stop, that's not a real thing. No, I don't know anybody that does it every week. I never heard that. Maybe they say when you change your clocks back, or, you know, then you test them or change them. But I don't even do it then. I forget. I would think like two or three times a year, you probably want to test them, right? Just because, you know, you want to make sure life safety stuff works, but not every week.

During daylight savings time, switch over is a good time to do it though. Our phones and stuff do it automatically now. So, you know, you don't even think about it. It's next weekend. So, you know, you don't even think about it. It's next weekend. So is it really? Yep. Well, I don't know what Canada is doing these days. Oh, by the time this show gets released by you, it was, it was last weekend.

Exactly. Do you guys even have daylight savings time up there? Yeah, but it's apparently we're getting tariffed on it. So it's good. You know, we don't turn it back as much anymore. We go, we don't get the same amount of value on the hour anymore. It's going to be an hour and a half, an hour and a half back instead. I know.

Yeah. They, they, they robbed us of that extra bit of sleep. They moved it up to like, uh, seven in the morning. So you don't actually get to sleep. He's still waking up. He's waking up early. I mean, the only reason I know it exists because we have a microwave and we have a stove and those have analog clocks. So we have to, we have to change those. I mean, the only reason I know it exists, cause we have a microwave and we have a stove and those have analog clocks.

So we have to change those. So does the car. So everything else though is automatic these days. I gave up on the stove. The stove just has the wrong time. And the microwave, if I don't touch it, it doesn't have a clock on it. It just, if you go and mess with it,

it'll put the clock on it. But like, if you mess with the time, it'll have a clock and it'll be wrong. But I just figured out, if you don't change the time on it, it just if you mess with the time, it'll have a clock and it'll be wrong. But I just figured out if you don't, if you don't change the time on it, it just has a blank screen and that that's, that's what it should have. Well, I don't know why they have clocks on them. My microwave has a blank screen. My stove has the time of whenever power was last cut.

Exactly. Yeah. This, this is the smart appliance I can get behind though. I don't need to know if my, if I have like turkey in my fridge or eggs in my fridge I want to just automatically adjust the time. I've been complaining about this for years smart appliances. Just make it adjust the time That's all I don't even need a time on it. Like why do I have a time on the stove? I don't need one. I see I find that I find that useful But we have the the microwave above the stove and so I really don't need both

But I do like having an analog clock or some kind of clock in the kitchen. Does it ever bug you if they're both like off by a minute or something like that? No, I don't have that kind of a personality disorder. So they have that, that I think it's like a AM transmission or something like that. That it's like a low frequency NIST transmission or something. I think it's like AM that that pulses the time that it is. What was it, the sharper image had those clocks out for the last 20 or 30 years,

that would be atomic clock seeing for whatever. You'd never even have to worry about daylight savings time with them. They're like, if you go to your grandparents' house, they have these clocks, right? We have one. Okay, there you go. I'm not a grandparent. It's like, put that circuitry,

like it can't cost that much anymore. It's been out for like 30 years. Like put that circuitry inside the stove and then we never have to worry about it ever again. Yes. It would be the most popular feature on any stove. Like I just don't understand why they haven't done it. I would go buy a new stove right now.

Because for some reason we lose power like five times a year at our house and we always have to reset the clock. So it's a very annoying aspect of home ownership. It's not like you're gonna get a backup generator for your stove, right? There's not gonna be a battery backup for your stove of all things. Oh, genius, maybe that's what I need.

Yeah, those little cell batteries, you know, just throw one in there. Hey, you can fit a D cell in there, you know, we'll be good. Yeah. They could put a decent sized battery in there as well. That would just always keep the time or whatever, you know, at this point, but they're not going to, they, they like the stove technology hasn't changed since like 1975 when they, they designed that circuit board that was basically like

bake and then you set the temperature and it's got the, the, the, the, what eight segment, you know, clock on there. And that's it. That's all you get. They may have changed out the parts and pieces here and there, but the smarts and everything behind it, they're not changing that. We need a disruptor. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

That's the only smart appliance we need. You can say it's AI that does it. That would bring it immediately to market, right? Just say, we put AI inside of here and it's going to does it. That would bring it immediately to market, right? Just say, we put AI inside of here and it's going to set your clock. And it's always going to be right. AI is so smart. And people will be like, oh my gosh, $5 billion valuation immediately. That's a 10X right there for sure. All right. Well, a bunch of stuff came out this week. A lot of stuff came out this week. Some good, some bad. I mean, there's a lot of bad.

Oh, we're going to cover it though. But we, we've got a, we've got a number of new products. We've got another number of, uh, old mentions, I guess, to, to, to say, Hey, we've got some updates on this stuff. But, uh, you know, the big, the big one this week was of course, Alexa plus, I guess has been launched. So we're definitely going to talk about that, but first we've got a bunch of home tech headlines.

So what do you say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, first up on the list here, Apollo Automation has officially joined the Works with Home Assistant program and certifying three of their newest ESP home-based devices. And this is the first kind of certification

for the ESP home devices as well. So that's pretty cool. The certified devices include the MTR-1 multi-target radar multi-sensor, the MSR-2, which is the millimeter wave multi-sensor, and the AR-1 air quality sensor. So congratulations to those guys over there at Apollo Automation for getting their Works with Home Assistant certification. They can then put them in a little box when they ship it out. It'd be nice. Yeah, honestly, this is pretty cool. I think we talked a little bit about this or maybe we got the inside baseball about

this originally. This is pretty cool to see from Apollo. They make really quality devices and being the first ESP home devices to receive this certification, that's pretty awesome. And it couldn't go to a better group of people. first ESP home devices to receive this certification. That's pretty awesome. It couldn't go to a better group of people. So I'm excited to see what they continue to make. And hopefully this certification expands to more products that they have.

Cause they only have three products right now that meet this. And they have way more than three products. So I'd be curious to know how, the, how somebody gets this. Um, because I mean, if nobody else has done it so far, that's, that's impressive. I'm so proud of the Apollo team for this, you know, like, like we've been watching the, this company grow since the day TJ introduced them to me, right. And, and they, you know, like, but they've gone and they've been doing so much and growing so fast and coming out with quality products and getting that badge works with Home Assistant. It's not just a badge.

It just means that you're responsible for making sure your product works with every version of Home Assistant. You update the drivers, you give a certain level of support. There's so much that goes around it. So you just know when you buy an Apollo device, you can jump on their Discord and they're great at support answering questions. They know things inside out.

It's great to see this. I'm happy for them. And I have ideas for other things for them. Like today I saw a sensor that goes around your water pipe that can measure water flow. I'm like, I wonder if they could take that and build it into their product. And now we have a water flow sensor that you just clamp on, you know, from Apollo and it works with home assistant. I'm going to shoot them.

I should start getting paid for my ideas. There's no soil sensor yet though. So I'm kind of like, I'm a little worried, but, but they have been looking into it. Like looking at waterproof cases, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm waiting for my demo unit or my beta unit so I can start playing with it Springs coming up yeah and this is one of the you know typically whenever somebody talked about like ESP devices I my eyes just glaze over because I'm not trying to do any like programming or or configuration or flashing or whatever it is these are one of the first devices

I've bought with ESP home where you plug it in and you connect it to home assistant like that was it there wasn't a lot of BS with it. And so these are solid devices and I think they're really onto something with this. And to be fair, the ESP Home people have come a long way with their product, you know, building that, that, you know, building the features in that were needed to allow us to easily add. It couldn't be any easier. As soon as I plug in my device, it notices it in Home Assistant. I just click add and bam, it's there.

Like that is so easy, you know, like kudos to the ESP home people for, you know, building that in. Here's what it takes to be a works with Home Assistant partner. You've got integration must be configurable through the Home Assistant interface, devices tested and approved by Navokasa,

integration quality scale requirement gold or better. I think we talked about that in the past, like they have these different integration ranks and levels, you know, gold, silver, bronze, all that stuff. Easy firmware updates from within Home Assistant. So you can press a button within the interface and update it. That's a big one. And then you have to have a support contact and an integration maintainer, they have to be listed. So those, what is that, five little, I say little, the five things that you have to get done to make your product work. I think ESB Home kind of gives them a leg up on that

because it's like literally made by the Home Assistant people to make a lot of those bullet points go away. But at the same time, it's not an easy thing to do. And getting the testing and approval and all that stuff. If there's anything that happens, you have to go back and fix it and all that good stuff. So yeah, good for them. Kudos to them. It's a big a big deal for a little small company that we definitely like. All right, yeah, speaking of another little company we like, Yo-Link has launched a new hub, yay. Yo-Link Local Hub is designed to,

I wrote this in here though, elevate your smart home experience with a local automation and integration. Allows the users to create custom automation rules, integrate with local APIs and matter-enabled devices without relying on cloud services. It offers a connectivity through 4G LTE Wi-Fi Ethernet and includes a built in SIM for cellular data with a 699 monthly subscription.

Easy to set up, plug and play. It's got a rechargeable battery in there. It keeps it online for four hours during power outages. And like I said, it supports matter compatibility and integration with a lot of other wide range of smart home devices. Kind of cool and kind of like a real offline solution from Yo-Link there. Yeah, since like day one, pretty much people have been asking for a local only hub. Like the current hub was cloud-based and people weren't a fan of that. Even though it works still, like I've had no problems with mine, but

they really wanted fully local and Yo-Link took their time, but they finally came through with it, uh, if you're not familiar with Yo-Link, you could check out their website. Just, you know, it's not the prettiest website, but yeah, you know, but one thing you will see is they have a whole bunch of products on there that solve a lot of problems and the, when they talk about distance and stuff like that, it's serious because I had their sensors in my swimming pool skimmer, which is the furthest back part of my property. And it was still communicating with their hub, which is the front corner of my house in the basement, right.

And I had no issues with any of their sensors. They're using LoRa though, right? Yes, exactly. This is the LoRa one. Yeah. So I'm happy with them. I've had a couple of their sensors die on me, but they were early ones. I wonder if their quality is a little better, but they work great.

I've had no issues when they were working. And I can recommend them. Yeah, I haven't used them. When I lived in the apartment, I had a mailbox that was like, like a quarter of a mile away, actually. And I used it only for that. So I could tell when I got mail. And so I just put like a Yo-Link motion detector in my mailbox, and it worked every time without an issue. I don't know what the actual price is on this hub. I think originally I saw it as $200, which I don't think is that bad. But some of the comments I'm seeing said that people saw, we're seeing it for $330. And so for $330, that is not a good price.

Um, but I think it's, I think it's the $200 price, but right now it's out of stock, so I can't really tell, unfortunately. I was looking at like Laura wine hubs and stuff Laura hubs and they're not cheap you know so I'm kind of comparing it that to that too I mean they were more industrial uses but yeah they were all expensive. Well and for this having cellular and everything else built into it $200 really isn't bad yeah and so that that's the thing I like about it I like the battery backup and I like the cellular option for it. So I think it's a good option.

And honestly, I've considered using this as a standalone system for certain businesses, right? Because there's certain things that maybe you just need a temperature sensor. Maybe you just need a flood sensor. Maybe you just need this or that. Um, and, and Yo-Link literally makes everything. And so they make like door locks and water leak sensors and water valves and everything else.

So you could probably have a whole automation system just based off Yo-Link and it'll be rock solid for you. It integrates with everything as well. I mean, you can bring it into Home Assistant with relative ease and everything else. So I think it's a good option for a lot of people, especially if you need the far range and they have a mousetrap too.

So I mean, what else would you need? Exactly. Just kind of like hacking their webpage. Their price is on here that they have listed that you can't see is $199.90. That's what I thought. I don't know where people are. I don't know if the, if the price got changed because it went out, went out of a stock or something like that, but like the, the only review on the local hub is for $330,

that's ridiculous or whatever. Oh, that must have been a Canadian reviewer. That's what I was thinking, right? It's the tariffs, yeah, yeah. But yeah, for $200, I don't think it's a bad deal. Yeah, I'm looking at their, the quantity of zero, so it's definitely out. But yeah, $199.90.

If they had like five sensors, $200 would be ridiculous, but they have dozens of sensors at this point, so. Well, there we go, $199.90. If they had like five sensors, $200 would be ridiculous. But they have dozens of sensors at this point. Well, there we go. Yo-Link. It's the Yo... I really think they could have named this better. Nah. Could have been the Yo-Hub.

Could have been that. Yo-Hub? I don't know. I'm just looking at their Popsicle, protect your Popsicle things. They're creative. I don't even see this popsicle thing. Go to the environmental tab under their products and you'll see it.

That's a serious issue. You don't want your popsicles to melt. I mean, I agree. The worst is opening up a popsicle and it's melted and refrozen. Just gross. Yeah, exactly. I invest a lot of money in the popsicles every summer. $6.99.. Oh, man. Yeah.

It's an interesting website, that's for sure. But like you said, they have a ton of sensors, a ton of different, yeah. Everything. Smart fridge, smart garage. They've got security. They've got, what was it, smoke detectors, CO detector, I think I saw on there too. I like the water shutoff valve. They have a battery-powered water shutoff valve with water detector built in.

So if, and you put it in line with your toilet, the, the toilet line and it will turn off your toilet if it detects leaking. Yeah. Cool products. Cool, cool company. And I am curious as to what the API and all that stuff is. I'm just kind of like looking through while we're talking, but I'll figure out one of these days and interested with the local API. company and I am curious as to what the API and all that stuff is. I'm just kind of like looking through while we're talking, but I'll figure

out one of these days and interested in what the local API looks like. If you really want to know, you can also open up the integration with home assistant and see it there, but that's the cloud one, I think. Yeah, it's probably the cloud one. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they've updated to use the local one yet. We'll see.

They sold out of the hubs pretty quick. I don't know how many they had, but. I could have told you if you looked at the source code of their web page. Twelve. They have zero now, for sure. All right, well, let's move on here. We've got a couple of new Wi-Fi products out. First up, we've got Eero.

They've expanded into Wi-Fi 7 and introduced the Eero 7 and the Eero Pro 7, both of course doing Wi- seven ideal for internet plans where you have 2.5 gigabits and up which is not very many people out there but it's coming I don't know it's just more and more every day I guess it supports up to I guess the Evo Pro 7 caters the Evo Pro 7 can go up to 5 gigabits per second if you've got a faster internet speed from your ISP. Let's see, we've got all the good Eero stuff in there. It's got integrations with Thread, Zigbee, Matter, and Navel devices through Alexa.

The Euro Pro 7 is a tri-band router, offers wireless speeds up to 3.9 gigabits. The Euro 7 is a dual-band router, it provides wireless speeds up to 1.8 gigabits. The Eero 7 is a dual band router. It provides wireless speeds up to 1.8 gigabits per second. So pretty cool stuff if you're in the Eero ecosystem. This is gonna be a pretty good upgrade. And the price wasn't bad either. No, it seems to be a little more expensive than their existing Eero 6 lineup, but not by much. So I think you're gonna pay a premium for Wi-Fi 7 anyway.

Yeah. But they don't seem to be ridiculous, at least. Honestly, though, for me, it's one of those things that, like, the only time I use Eero, because I sell Eero, I'm an Eero dealer, the only time I use Eero is if I don't have hard wire ethernet around the house. Otherwise, it's more cost effective to do ubiquity or something. But whenever Eero is installed, I've only ever pulled it out of one job. And I think that was a client issue more than anything.

It's a very rock solid product. It doesn't give you a ton of options, but that's fine. My customers don't need a ton of options most of the time. Yeah, so the Pro 7 one-packs, 299, two-pack, 549, three-pack, $700. The Yuro 7 one-packs, 169, two-pack, 279, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, $400, So maybe I'll get her this from Mother's Day. Weren't you saying that she kept calling and changing her internet plan to like the five kilobits per second or something like that? Like, why does she need wifi? Yeah, she doesn't need a hero.

I, you know what? Well, cause her TVs and stuff go through it, but, um, yeah, I, I had to slap her hand because every time we got everything set up, she would call Rogers and complain about the price. And the first thing they recommend was, Oh, well, you could downgrade set up, she would call Rogers and complain about the price. And the first thing they recommend was, Oh, well, we could downgrade your internet. So now her internet is at like 10 megabits per second and being used up all by her ring cameras.

So I had to call back and bump it back up again. And then she complains about the price, but I had to explain to her, I go, listen, you're going to have to pay this price, you know, like, like either stop using the technology or it's either pay this price or I'm turning off all these ring cameras, you know, because I, we go over to warehouse and we got to like power off a ring camera with the light switch, just to stream our networks. I don't, I don't think, I don't think, uh, this router would be a big benefit for her, but maybe pick up the previous generation,

and you'd be good to go. If you're nice, Gavin, I'll ship it in the same pot. There you go. Listen, I'll put this in just so I don't have to go visit her again for a very long time to do an upgrade again. You just have to make phone calls and that's it. Yeah, exactly. Well, if you don't like Eero,

Unify has got some new products out there, especially if you're looking at a 10 gigabit network, if you really want to upgrade your mom's internet out there. They have a bunch of new cloud gateways. Let's see, they've got the Dream Router 7, it's the UDR 7. It's the successor to got the Dream Router 7, it's the UDR 7. It's the successor to the popular Dream Router, that little can thing that is bigger than it is.

It's about the size of one of those big Folgers coffee cans. Little trash can. Yeah, little trash can, exactly. It's got, let's see, 2.5 gigabit ethernet switch with a PoE port and SFP port for WAN and LAN. It's got SD card storage for Unified Protect and other applications and a Wi-Fi 7 performance, built-in Wi-Fi and all that good stuff for 10 gigabit support.

That's not a bad like all-in-one unit if you need one. Next up, they've got the cloud gateway fiber it's the UCG fiber and this one's got a it's a it's a PEE plus capable 2.5 gigabit ethernet switch for adding access points cameras and other unified devices it's got two SFV plus ports and a 10 gigabit ethernet port all on a little compact device if you needed to use I think it's got m2nvme storage if you wanted to add you know storage onto it for unified protect and all that good stuff all of these these are all

nice little additions to the oh they've got an express 7 too and another one another little little small guy a tiny little hockey puck one yeah yeah it doesn't I don't think that one the only thing it doesn't have is the storage option, I think. Yeah. So if you, one, they've got a product for any budget that you want on here. And I don't know, it's all got the new Wi-Fi 7 built into it as well. So. Yeah, this is nice to see.

Honestly, I've been liking Ubiquity's play into the more economical options, right? Because we have $500 plus devices and they work great. I use the UDM Pro SE at my house. I think that's what you have as well, Gavin, if I remember correctly. They work fine, but sometimes they're a little overkill. For my office, for example, I have one of the little expresses because I literally just need a router and an access point. The one thing I don't like about Ubiquities, and I don't know if this has changed with

the newer ones, but the stuff with the built-in Wi-Fi cannot be disabled. And the only reason that's a problem is because if you, like for example, I have a client with the Dream Router and we wanted to upgrade the access point and so that way she can get the They can get the faster Wi-Fi But technically you can't disable the Wi-Fi that's built in and the workaround is basically to create a Wi-Fi SSID that nobody uses and it just puts off. So that's my only downside with them, but for the price They're really not bad. I'm pretty sure dream router 7 is 279 the Express 7 is 199 and the little unify Express is 149 wait, I don't think those are pretty good prices. Yeah, and that's and that's so cheap

I mean because for the longest time ubiquity did not have any of those really cheap devices, right? It was basically like you have to drop $400 on a router to get anything And so if you have a smaller setup400 on a router to get anything. And so if you have a smaller setup or a smaller place or whatever it is, like these are perfect. They don't have all these in one page. Okay, here we go. And the the cloud gateway fiber thing is 279 on there. Yeah, and that's not bad for everything that it has. That's a different that's a different beast. I don't think that one has that one doesn't have Wi Fi, right? Yeah, that one's. Yeah, that one does not have Wi Fi. And the that one I don't think that one has that one doesn't have Wi-Fi right? Yeah that one's yeah that one does not have Wi-Fi and the that one I don't think that one does have

the storage but it's only it only supports up to two terabytes so if you're gonna do a large camera system with that you'll probably end up buying the NVR with it as well but by the time you buy the cloud gateway fiber and then you buy the the NVR you're basically up to six hundred dollars or so anyway which is not that far off like a UDM Pro SE. Yeah, but it's not, like this is good for like Soho applications. It's got four 2.5 gigabit ethernet, one POE plus. So like you take that POE plus,

you go out to either another access point or you can bring it to a camera. You can have one camera installed. I don't know. It seems like a pretty good device to me. No, and I think the think the the four two point five ports is really the selling point that right because the the UDM Pro and The SE to do not have that they have one gig ports and that's it. So yeah. Yep

Well, it's nice. I think these these little devices are going to probably last They're gonna be in inventory for a while. They don't need to update these for quite some time because we're not getting internet this fast anytime soon. I don't know, not me. My clients seem to think they will, but yeah. Gotta have the ISPs offering it. I need gigabit on everything.

Yeah, but gigabit's not enough. You need five gigabit to even like take advantage of these. So it's like. Let's better be prepared instead of have to buy more equipment later on. I guess. Yeah, you know, it's coming, you know, one day. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. They'll probably start making our speeds lower here in the States soon. So yeah, I was just saying. It will just cost more. What is the FCC? Yeah. All right. Let's move on here. We've got a new smart lock

out. They're gonna move into some lock talk. We've got eufy introducing the Family lock s3 max. It's a $400 smart video lock featuring palm vein recognition for unlocking doors This is a an enhanced biometric method It's considered more accurate and secure than fingerprint readers. And you just wave your palm over the front of this thing, and it detects the blood flowing through your veins and unlocks the door, if it's you. The lock also has a video doorbell, a 2K camera, and we're featuring a 150 degree vertical and a 180 degree diagonal field of view.

Supports Wi-Fi 6 and Matter. And it can store up to 50 Palm Vein prints. I'm adding them. I just can't get over them like Vein technology. That sounds made up. Yeah. It can store up to 50 Palm prints locally and offers multiple unlocking options,

including key code, app, and of course the physical key. It has a 15,000 milliamp hour removable battery with an additional power from AAA batteries promising a six to 12 month battery life. So this thing is it's big it's probably not for me but it might be for you and if you're in the market for a $400 S3 max there you go Yuffie's offering the Palm vein reader. It's actually, that's a good idea. It's actually more secure than fingerprint because in the past I

could just cut off the fingers. No, no, no, but because it's looking at the movement of blood through the veins, I can't even cut off the arm because it's person's gotta be alive. So it's a little more secure like that, right? You say I guess some compressed air and squirted in there. He's got to like a hook up a pump. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Come on. You need to think outside the box. I think I'll sign the poem. They come up with a solution on the dark web, but no, it's pretty cool idea. Other ways of, you know, authenticating. I don't know why we're moving away. Like his face authentication is just not secure enough. Like why don't they just come up with something like that's old news. You, you unlock your phone with, and you know, we're moving away. Like, is face authentication just not secure enough? Like, why don't they just come up with something like,

that's old news. You unlock your phone with, and you know, it's that easy. Just look at it, unlock, done. Yeah, the only thing I like about this, for some reason I do like the idea of having a video doorbell and smart lock all in one, but this thing is very ugly. And it's euphy, so you know it's gonna be even uglier

than what the pictures show because they do not make attractive devices. I like the screen concept though, but I have a peephole on my door. So I would just look out the peephole. Yeah. They also, I see offer a less expensive version for a 349 if you don't want the screen thing.

So, are you going to get one? I am not, I have real stuff. I'm not a fan of battery powered things like that, you know, for my doorbell. Yeah, I got a POE doorbell, Seth, I will need this. Yeah. Gavin will have a POE doorbell here within six months. I'm gonna have all the POEs.

POE for you, you get a POE. All right, well, speaking of outdoor and securities and stuff, Ring has unveiled an outdoor security camera. I'm very unimpressed by this, if you can't tell. Ring, it's called the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus, which supports 2K video right out of the box. Previously, it only supported 1080p on their outdoor cameras, but now they're upgrading and promising better improved Wi-Fi

and low light capabilities. Camera's available for pre-order, it's probably shipping now for a hundred bucks and will ship on March 26th. So I guess ships next month sometime. Key features include real-time motion alerts, live streaming, two-way communication and advanced technologies like recording

and package detection. But those require the ring home basic subscription starting 4.9.8 monthly. 2K video. Woo! I'm yawning at that, like, come on. Welcome to 2025. Listen, when I saw this story,

I had to check the date on the story. I thought this was two years ago, right? Like 2K video. But it comes in black and white too. Oh yeah. And the pictures are very confusing because the stock photo makes it look like the base is like really big.

And then the photo they have lower down makes it look like the base is very small. I'm not really sure what this camera is. Like when I first saw this come across, I thought it was supposed to mount over like a floodlight. And I was like, well, this isn't really a floodlight camera but the base looks so big for it. That may be like a base, like in a base adapter.

They have those, they've had those in the past for some of their outdoor cameras where it was like an adapter kit that you would buy. It would be like separate. And it would, that would be like the hardwired version where it would wire in. Yeah, they have those for the floodlight camera. Yeah, like that's like one of those, what,

two inch box box round box things Mmm, so I that's probably what it is right there. I don't know unimpressed 100 bucks plus a subscription. That's not terrible. Yeah, if you're already in the ring ecosystem, I guess it's you know Yeah, I mean for a hundred hours to you're not really gonna compete too much with that. So yeah unless you're wise Alright, well, let's move on here. Uh, the, the product announcement, I'm going to warn you guys, the, the product announcements get worse from here. So I don't know.

It's all downhill from here. It may get better at the end, but, uh, Eve, Eve, uh, announced the new Matteroverthread dimmer switch set to ship mid-March $50. It's a hardware switch compatible with single pole and three-way mid-March, $50. It's a hardwire switch compatible with a single pole and three-way configurations, has matter, works with everything. There you go. It's Eve.

Eve made a matter switch. Doesn't... It'll be rock solid. It doesn't look terrible. I don't know. Picture's very small. They make good products. So this will probably be a good matter switch

if you're looking for a matter switch. You shouldn't be looking for a matter switch. But if you are... It's matter over thread too. So it'd work better than matter over wifi. Yeah. I was gonna say that's a good one. Yeah. Well, lately with the switches though, I've been thinking about it.

You know, I have the InnaValley switches and when people come over, they seem to just get confused. I don't know why, because to me, they look like regular toggle switches with maybe a light or something at the side. Like you should be able to know to press up or press down, right? Is this gonna throw like people off too? Like I guess people are just old school with their switches. Yeah, we were having this discussion in the Slack this week.

I think it was Greg was mentioning that his, somebody gets confused every time they come over and use the light switches. And like we have the same issue. Nicole's family comes over like a couple times a year. And they're like, they've stayed at my house like six times now. And they're always like, how do the lights work in here? And I'm like, it's just like, it's a light switch.

What do you mean, how does it work? You just hit the top to turn it on, you hit the bottom and turn it off. Like that's how all light switches work. But they're confused by it for some reason. Well, if you want to confuse them even more, Leviton has come out, they're pushing this Decor Evolve family of products here.

This is weird. It's like if you picture Decor Switch. That's the paddle type switch, the big one, the big flat one that's pretty standard now for most homes. You cut it not in half, but maybe like three-quarters, and then you get these little modules and plug and play what you want it to do. There's a big switch on top.

This is the weirdest set of products that they have. We'll just put a link to this picture. But if I walked into the house, I'm technology literate, right? I walk into the house, I'm technology, like literate, right? I walk into the house and I see this thing on the wall. I don't know what I'm gonna do. There's a big button on top, there's two little buttons, and then a little button on the corner.

And I'm like, why? This isn't an evolution, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Lovaton. It kind of looks like a scene controller that somebody messed up on because there's so many buttons, but they're like so small. You can swap out, they've got different modules here. They've got the smart switch module. They've got a dimmer module.

They've got an motion center module. They've got a 25 watt USB type A and C module. Like it just gives you the ability to like- What's the button on the top for then? I think it just turns on and off the lights. So then what's the module for? If you want to dim the lights, yeah. To actually dim it, yeah. Or use a motion detector to kick turns on and off the lights. So then what's the module for? If you want to dim the lights, yeah. To actually dim it.

Or use a motion detector to kick things on and off. Or you can have a receptacle. Or you can have a blank nothing there. There's a blank module there and you just have the one button at the top. Sweet. There's a nightlight module too. I don't get this.

This is so, so weird. What drives me nuts about this is, and I'm surprised Richard hasn't pointed this out yet, but their photos don't do it any sort of justice. Like their photos aren't lined up properly. And it makes it look all weird and the spacing around the edges and stuff. Like it drives me nuts. I wonder if Richard's just still recovering from looking at it the first time.

Yeah, this is, this is, there's a subreddit called, it's called ATBGE, it's called Awful Taste but Great Execution. And this does not fit that, that's all I want to say. This is Awful Taste and Awful Execution. Yeah, it's kind of like the bottom module is what you can swap in and out of whatever. And I guess on the top, it can be either a switch or it can be an outlet. So this thing is like, and it's not even. That's the problem, I guess.

It's like not half and half. It's more like three quarter, no, two thirds and one third, I guess, for this. And it doesn't look good. The only advantage I could see with this, because right now it's only available to builders, new construction homes. And so the only reason I could think that this would be a thing is because

the electrician can come in, they could put this module in and the light turns on and off, they can walk away and say, yep, nope, your lights work, leave me alone. And then the homeowner can come in afterwards and put these little modules in to actually do whatever they want to do. Like that's the only thing I see, but it's very ugly. Yeah. Um, it's an option.

There it is. Don't do it. If you go into a new build and your home and your home builder is using this, you should probably just walk away. Yeah. It's, it's, it's an interesting idea, but I, I just, I don't, I don't know. I, I, it doesn't look good. It just doesn't look good.

I wish they, why didn't they make the whole thing, the module? Like we were talking About this company. What is it Dico that has like maybe it's just because Dico has the patent on it But Dico is like they built a back box and then you can like put whatever you want in that back box, right? And then it's like that's smart like get the electricians to put the back boxes in and then you can put dumb switches in or you Can like smart switch whatever you want, just by putting a smart switch module in. But in this case, there's a switch on top,

and then the module can be a nightlight. Or you can give it dimming abilities or smart switching abilities, I don't know. It's so, it's not pretty. Not a pretty option here. Anyway, we spent way more time on that than we thought we were going to. We should not have spent this much time on this.

All right. And speaking of just the general intensification of things, Tato, Tato, I still don't, it's a European company. Is it Tato? Tadoo? I say Tado. It could be Tadoo. I don't know.

Tadoo, that's what I say, because it's more fun. They make smart thermostats, and then they're pretty popular, I don't know. To do, that's what I say, because it's more fun. They make smart thermostats, and they're pretty popular, I guess, over in European markets. They're considering charging customers about one euro or one pound monthly to control their devices by their app. So they're going to actually kick in a subscription fee for their app. It's set to begin on May 1st 2025. Users in the Netherlands received notifications of a February 19th 2025 start date. And right now the app is free. But now that you got all your stuff hooked up, there's like, yeah, we're gonna charge a little bit more, we're gonna charge for the for

you to use this app. If you want to use the app to control the thing, it was free now, not gonna be free later, Lord, and shitification. This is wrong. You can't take away like a feature like that and put it behind a paywall. Like that is just, I know they already have subscription to allow more advanced features and that's fine, but the most basic feature,

you can't just take it away and charge for it. Yeah, no, that's ridiculous. A moderator inside their, their to do forums, I guess, said that the the fee notification was part of a marketing test, whoops, and sure users that the free app access will remain remain intact. And then a spokesperson came out and then echoed the same thing emphasizing routine marketing tests and customer feedback analysis. So it looks like they got their hand caught there in the cookie jar and people weren't very happy. And they're like, no, no, no, blame marketing.

Marketing sent out an email they shouldn't have. Sure. Yeah, I imagine they're gonna start chart. There's reasons to do that, but, and they already have like a, what is it? They have like a four euro or six euro optional things. Did you get it? For more advanced options, right?

And marketing wouldn't be typing up an email like this if they weren't. Oh no, no, no. Like they're, they're just not going to kill some time and hey, let's type up a random email like this and see how it goes. Like 70 meetings about this sales Sales is like, yeah. Exactly. This is this. Oops send.

Whoopsies. Anyway, to do, one day we'll figure out how to pronounce that one. Tato. Tato, all right, fine. Anyway, big story of the week here. Amazon has unveiled Alexa Plus. And I hope that didn't set off anybody's Alexa thing. I really don't care if it does because they named the product that.

Okay. Okay. Just, just be warned. Like, like, like turn off your speakers right now. Turn off your speakers right now. We're warning you in advance. Do not care. This is your stupid robot, not mine.

All right. Alexa, mine is sitting right here. It's doing nothing. Jarvis, what are you doing? Nothing. He's not doing anything. There you go. He ain't even answering to Jarvis.

No, because it's what you have to say hey in front of it, because they're smart. They didn't name the product anything that I would name inside my house. I say, hey, Jarvis. There he is. He's there. Hey, Jarvis. Oh, mine's there still too.

Boom. Hey, Jarvis. Oh, I don't have anything. Can't hear you. Say it louder. All right. Alexa Plus is the next generation AI assistant powered by a generative AI, designed to enhance

and let's elevate the user interaction with technology. Alexa Plus offers more conversational, yay, and personalized experience, allowing users to manage their homes, make reservations, and discover new content seamlessly. All right, so this is the new Alexa that we've been promised. They named it Alexa Plus. It is powered by a bunch of large language models,

stuff that they did. They've got a bunch of little use cases that they demoed on the stage this Wednesday. And I don't, it looks cool. I'll give it like some of the features like, oh yeah, those are good. I just don't care. Like I, I can't, I can't care about this.

I'm sorry. It's just, I'm not, I'm not in this ecosystem. So Gavin, I know you are. What do you think about Alexa plus? Um, it is what I was really hoping they would do. So the, to be fair, I don't care about most of the stuff they announced. I just care about the LLM and the voice interaction piece of it right now. Okay. Um, so they, they, they, I remember when we were talking about before and I said,

what I really hope they do is put an LLM behind it so that I can have more natural conversations with my Alexa and not have to worry about keywords or stuff. I could just say, you know, turn on this light, that light, whatever, like it would automatically know this stuff. Right. And that's what they've done. It looks like they've really got that. I can't say right because I haven't, but yeah, I got to test it and stuff, but it

seems like they're going in that right direction and I'm excited. I can't wait for that to come out. Now they also announced all their other features like ordering Ubers and, you know, ordering pizzas and doing your shopping and all that stuff. I'm not really, I've never been a fan of those because I like to shop around like for deals and stuff, and I'm always afraid if I say order a pizza, it's going to get 10 toppings and you know, like it's going to be the most expensive pizza out there.

So, and I don't have any of the echo dashboard, where they call them shows. I don't have any of those. So I know people that do are a little excited because the interface, but the whole Alexa plus they're trying to drag you into their ecosystem. So, you know, you're going to have to feed it all your documents that you eventually want to ask it about. And they're, they're doing that by, I think through email. So if you email a certain email address, your document, the Alexa

plus will now know about it. And that's kind of cool, but you're going to be giving your whole life to this thing, if you want to work with it. And I guess ask to, but you know, Jeff Bezos there just is going to know everything about you and at some point they'll just use that in your advertising saying, you know, like, Hey, your, your mortgage is coming up for renewal, you know, go to Amazon. Mortgage. Hey, did you know I've been trying to reach out to you about your car's extended warranty?

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's about time to change your brakes. It will order some new brakes for you. You know, like it's, I think it's really cool. How well it works is another thing. And for those that complain that their Alexa was too chatty now. Oh, it's about to get a lot chattier. You know, I'm warning you from now cause they're having full

on conversations with this thing. And yeah, it's, I'm excited for it though. The best part about it, uh, you know, for me, it's free. It's a free upgrade because I have Amazon Prime. If you don't have Amazon Prime, it's going to be a $20 a month charge. So just get the Prime, you know, so much worth it. You know, you get so much more with that.

So yeah, I'm excited about it. So it's rolling out in the US over the next couple of months, not available in Canada yet, but you know, maybe, maybe soon after that. Oh no, well, I changed all mine to U S addresses. So I get all the U S features on mine. So I'm good with that. Yeah. Okay.

Well, there you go. Also the, the, the, this new assistant introduces what they're calling experts, which is a concept that integrates systems, APIs and instructions to support specific tasks. Yeah. a concept that integrates systems, APIs, and instructions to support specific tasks. Yeah, I think this is what we were hoping this stuff was like, what, 10 years ago. This is whether you're kind of like, hey, this is going to do this. And I think they're finally getting there. Well, I have to see how it does actually work. I'm not, honestly, I'm not that excited not voice control doesn't really exist in my house anymore.

Outside of dumb, dumb Siri, poor dumb Siri. Like, ah, this, this makes Siri look awkwardly just horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she says hi over there. Hi Siri. Hey Siri.

But yeah. Oh, she said, Hmm. What? Yeah. But, but other things, you know, as, I think, as we get closer and we see more features come out, you're going to be like, Hey, you could do this now. Like one of the things I saw mentioned was, um, uh, they were able to set like routines and stuff, like automation.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Through your voice. That's the expert thing. And that's similar to what Josh. Yeah. And, and similar to what Josh. Yeah.

And, and that was really cool. Or what I really found, and again, this is, uh, Amazon going to be knowing everything about you, but the integration with your ring cameras, it's going to be analyzing your video 24 seven, and you can go back and ask things like, uh, did anybody walk the dog yesterday or did I take out the garbage? And it will know based on everything it knows about your video to how to answer those questions, which is cool that you can do that,

but it's also scary that they know everything about you. People are gonna be using that for good and for bad. Well, I guess one thing that is nice is that, uh, do you remember like early on? I say early on a couple of years back, like ring got in trouble for like hiring a bunch of people to watch videos, like watch your doorbell and like, Oh, that's a package and they would highlight the package that was like their machine learning training thing now. I mean, all that stuff is kind of trained and everything.

So it can pretty much do that with those models that they work on now. So like if Ring does see a package, you'll get that. But there's not, the good thing is like, you're not going to have, there's not going to be seeing anybody sitting there on the camera, watching the camera and saying, oh yeah, that's a package. It's a robot that figures all this out. So that is nice. There's not going to be, there's going to be less oh yeah, that's a package. It's a robot that figures all this out. So that is nice. There's not going to be, there's going to be less human intervention and all this stuff here. Oh yeah.

We knew that was coming, but like I said, I'm excited for the upgrades to the voice interaction, you know, all the rest of the stuff I'm not too excited about, but it's good to see. I don't know where it will go. We will see. I mean, we've been talking about all this for AI for what, a year or more now. And especially when it came to getting into Alexa Plus, right?

Like, so they were kind of the first that said, we're going to do this. And they said, oh, it's not ready. We're going to try and do it later. And I think there was like an all hands meeting earlier this month. Didn't look like it was going to happen again. But they released it.

It will be interesting to see once this actually starts going live for probably, you know, thousands if not millions of people, how this is going to work in people's hands. And I will be genuinely curious about like how, what you're talking about with, I think what they're calling experts or whatever. Experts, it's groups, it's groups of systems, capabilities, API. So you kind of like can build all that stuff together and create those automations for you. Make reservations on OpenTable. That's one thing I've noticed that

on the large language model side of things that I do that I mess with, like it does, there are things that it does really well. And one of those things is like reading instructions, parsing through kind of what it, it, it needs to know in there and kind of spitting out like some code or something like that, like I had a, it'd be an example of the day, like I was working on a form thing for my neighborhood and I wanted to like do this little like on form it's the submit through Google apps, you can add like a

little function on side of it to like parse the data and do some other stuff with it. And I was like, you know what, I know how to do this. I typed it all up and I was looking at him like, all right, well, let me just paste it over into Chad GBG and say, hey, can you double check this? And of course, you know, my knowledge is like old. And it's like, oh, these API's are deprecated, you need to use this, this and this, and just swap this stuff out. And so like, those little applications that you get out of this stuff, that's what I think people are going to find more beneficial than anything. Like those, the large language model stuff is pretty much, it's good, right?

We don't have to worry about that anymore. They're training them, they're trying to say they're better, but like the cat's out of the bag. We already got really, really good models that can parse language, parse problems, figure out a solution for you or figure out what you're talking about and spit it back out. Now they're working on stuff like this,

which are like the overriding applications. For me, what I've been dealing with, it's built into a code editor. That's not really helpful for most people. But that feature that I have that I find a little bit of benefit that in my code editing or whatever, or double checking my work and that kind of thing,

if that gets put over onto somebody who is not an expert in home automation and said, hey, I wanna turn on the lights Mondays through Friday at 7.30 in the morning, if these conditions are met or whatever, it can lay all that out. That's going to be huge for a lot of people. It's going to make the smart home much more approachable. And I think if they do this right, if it doesn't have the capability of figuring all that out,

like if it doesn't, like, well, you don't have smart lights, like what if it comes back and says, like, hey, you're gonna need some more smart lights to make that happen. You're gonna need some devices that are capable of doing this. Like if it has the ability to come back and tell somebody that, oh, okay, I can go on and I can find some smart lights

or suggest some smart lights to like, that'd be great. That'd be really awesome. In making the smart home a little more actually smart and not just like these like if then statements that we've been dealing with for the past, I don't know, 30 years or so, like it would be much better once we have, once we have the ability to have a conversation with this thing, this it device or whatever, and it can suss through what we're trying to do and then give us the result that we want.

I think, I think it's going to be, it's going to be great for a lot of people. It's programming. This stuff is not fun. No, but no, no, I totally agree. Like it's going to make things so much better if it works. And again, until we get our hands on it, we don't know how well it's going to work. But I don't think it's going to be totally bad. No, no, there's, there's definitely benefits here.

I think you're going to see all these Reddit posts about, you know, fringe things that people did that failed at. But for the most part, I think it's going to be good. 600 million Amazon Alexa devices out there. That's, that's a lot. That's a lot. TJ, you're quiet. Are you one of the 600 million people out there that have Alexa devices?

Uh, no, I don't use voice control at this point anymore. We have like little Google Home speakers in places, but it's really the displays now, because those are nice to look at for like the weather and stuff like that. But we don't really use voice control ever since we moved into the new house. Yeah, we took most all of the voice control.

I mean, the most I do is like yell into my phone or my watch for a light to come on. Right. I don't know. I'm really hoping one day Siri, Siri, Siri. Oh my gosh. Siri is so dumb at this point, but like one day they'll figure it out. Yeah.

My goal is to have my stuff just do stuff for me when it knows that I want that stuff done and voice isn't like that. So, yeah. And as our smart home grew, we found there were certain things that you just wanted to ask. You didn't want to pull out a phone. You didn't want to have a dashboard like the temperature of the pool. It's so easy to just say, Hey, Alexa, what's the temperature in the pool? And she told you instead of have to look it up or anything like that. Right?

Like there's certain things where you can't automate or you don't want to automate or, you know, you just want, you want to open the blinds or close the blinds. It's just easy just to say, hey, open the blinds or close the blinds instead of tap a dashboard or something, you know, but like I said, as your smart home grows, you know, some things become just easier with the voice control. And that's kind of why I'm excited about this, because we use it quite a bit,

actually, especially if you can program it. That's what I'm thinking. Like, especially if you can set up automations with the voice thing and it's like, and it actually does it correctly. Like, or gives you a better, I mean, sometimes. Like if you're using these things, right, you can bounce ideas off of it. And it comes up with better ideas. I mean, that's, that's, that's really what, I mean, honestly, is chat GPT is

really good at doing that because it has a pretty decent amount of things that it's read through and random words that it can place together and you, you can kind of get in there and say, Hey, does this sound right? Or does this look good or whatever? And it'll, it'll, uh, it'll suggest different ideas. Like if you ask it to do that, like if that's the instruction set. So I think this could be really beneficial in making the Smart Home a lot more approachable for a lot of people.

A lot of people. Even if you're more advanced users, like you were or TJ, like, or me, like if I ever hook one of these speakers back up, it's not likely. One thing I really hope they did is add security to it. So whether identifying it, because the last thing I need is for somebody to come in the house and set a routine that to play Miley Cyrus at 3 AM, right? And then you would never know. And then 3 AM in the morning, it starts blasting out your speakers.

That would not be funny. Or would it? It would be fun. Yeah. Maybe just, maybe just play that sound. Oh yeah. That would, that would not be funny. Or would it? It would be fun. Yeah. Maybe just, maybe just play that sound. Oh yeah. That would, that would drive me nuts. You know, randomly through the day, I want you to play this

beep of the fire alarm, you know? Yeah, that would drive me nuts. But yeah, I hope they have some kind of voice recognition so it knows when I'm talking to it versus someone else and you know, I can give it commands, but other people can't. All else. And, you know, I can give it commands, but other people can't. All right. Well, cool. Hopefully, we'll see what this looks like as it rolls out. Looks like it's rolling out soon.

There's people playing with it already. So middle of March, I think they said. All right. Well, all the links to topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at home deck dot FM slash five one eight. All right. Nothing in the middle back this week, but we do have a pick of the week. And this one came to, I think, TJ and my amazement. Real snow dump.

I, this is crazy. You've heard of trash dumps. Have you heard of a snow dump? You haven't? You have now. Even Gavin didn't know about this. Yeah, this one shocked me. Go ahead, explain it. Explain it.

Am I explaining it? I don't even know what snow is, so this is all on you. Oh yeah, I should go ahead and explain this. So, you know, you're used to a trash dump, right? You know, everybody makes trash, and unless you live in the country and you burn it, like you shouldn't do, a trash truck comes and picks it up, and they take it to a distant land, probably within 30 minutes of your house, and they throw it into a big pile and they they put dirt on top of it And then after what 20 years or so they move it to it. They move to a new location

Well, I guess I've been Montreal they get so much snow that they do the same thing with snow and You look at this picture. It's on reddit and you know first you think it's it's fake because it's you know It's reddit You know There's a lot of fake stuff on reddit. And it shows this picture of this like six dump trucks just backed up to this giant snow pile. And you're like, all right, that's fake. Because I mean, how would they even get the snow up there?

Right? I mean, they're not driving dump trucks on top of the snow. That's ridiculous. And there's a video attached in the comment. And they use blowers. They use giant snow blowers. And they just blow the snow on they use blowers. They use giant snow blowers and they just blow the snow on top of each mountain.

And supposedly they have snow that's like 10 years old up in the pile. So this is just the giant snow dump. They said it's gonna take like 10 years for it to melt. I mean, in those 10 years, you're just adding to it and adding, this was news to me. Like I knew about that dump called Montreal, but I didn't know they had snow.

I'm just kidding. I have, I knew about that dump called Montreal, but I didn't know they had smoke. I'm just kidding. I have, you know, for everybody in Montreal that I just offended, Seth's going to send you an Apollo end of year Christmas ornament. Don't worry. Now, tariffs will be too much by then. Yeah, I know for real. But no. But you know, this is good to see, you know, we're slowly melting the ice caps for that global warming thing that doesn't exist and Montreal is is contributing by making their own Ice caps and you know so that's good, but based on that math

It will never go it will always keep growing like if it's taking ten years to get rid of what you have now Then we're gonna be adding to it every year even more. Like they didn't say it takes 10 years. They said there's no, they're from 10 years. They're not getting rid of this snow, Gavin. They're keeping it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a lot of snow. See, they don't want to melt it either. That's the funny part. It's like snow turns to water, water evaporates, but like, I guess, what do you do with a bunch of water that probably it's probably not clean water either. Right? Let's be honest. This is definitely like dirty water at that point.

They bottle it and call it the Sunny. The Sunny. Ha ha ha ha. Oh man, that's probably true. Cause I know you don't know this, Seth, because you don't have snow down there, but you know, when you have a lot of snow on the roads and stuff like that,

eventually it turns like black and it just becomes really gross looking. Ew. And like the photos makes it look like it's relatively white and clean snow, but I bet you there's a lot of gross snow mixed into that. I'm looking, yeah, I'm looking at the pictures on Wikipedia for the snow dump, snow removal, and everything looks so pretty. Like they're just like, oh, you got a little white snow and you got this little truck with a thing on the front of it,

and it's just moving the snow away. I also saw like recently, I don't know if this is with a thing on the front of it, and it's just moving the stowaway. I also saw recently, I don't know if this is a thing, but in Japan, they had these roads with pipes in the middle of them, and there's these little sprinklers that were sprinkling out water, brine water probably, and it was like, you know where the little yellow things would be in the middle of the road,

where the line is, right? There's these little sprinkler caps there, just like spray and water on the street. That's normal. Like- Smart. I just came up with a brilliant idea. Why don't they just build the data center and that's no doubt. Oh, that's genius. I'm going to sell that one too.

This is why people need to listen to this show. Free information, free ideas here. Free ideas. These are that one too. This is why people need to listen to this show. Free information, free ideas here. Free ideas, these are great ideas too. These ideas are gonna cost 25% more here soon though. Tariffs are going up. If you have any feedback ideas, questions or comments, picks of the week, or you'd like to fund one of our ideas, give us a shout.

Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. You can visit hometech.fm.com slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates. I have work I'm doing. I got a couple of jobs I'm trying to wrap up on locally. And, you know, build them eventually, I guess. Got to pay bills.

I got one driver up on a website somewhere for, I think I talked about it before. I think it was called AquaTel. If you've got a water tank and you I think I talked about it before, I forget what this is called, Aquatel. If you've got a water tank and you wanna know what's in it, specifically is your water or sewer, it can't tell you that, but it can tell you how much is in there.

And it's a little like echolocation thing. I don't know, people use them on farms or for cisterns and that kind of thing. I got a driver for that thing on there. Oh, for Driver Central, up for Control 4 systems. And then I got a new driver coming out. It's kind of an esoteric like thing. It's one I've wanted to do for a long time. And I finally just, you know, I'm not doing anything right now.

It's unemployed. Let's get this done. And I'm making an OSC driver for Control 4. And if you don't know what OSC is, open sound control. And it's just kind of like a thing people use to control stuff in commercial markets and theaters and that kind of thing. If you use Isadora or anything like that, you probably know what I'm talking about.

If you don't know what Isadora is, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. But, you know, I'll have a little driver for OSC and control four stuff up soon. So I don't know, no one will probably ever buy it. And I'm just wasting my time making it, but I wanted to do it for a long time and I figured why not. So, uh, that and, um, my other projects are watching a lot of TV cause I got a

lot of time to watch TV. This is really weird talking about like winter projects are before the show. I'm like, yeah, let's talk about some TV shows that I want to watch. Uh, severance is on right now. If you're not about, like, what our projects are before the show. I'm like, yeah, let's stop talking about some TV shows that I want to watch. Severance is on right now. If you're not watching Severance, you should be. If you're not paying for Apple TV, get it somehow. Like, buy an Apple TV, Apple device or whatever, and get the free trial and then return the Apple device.

I don't know. You should stream Severance. It's really good. And I think it comes out tonight, so I'm probably going to go inside and watch more of it. Silo, if you haven't watched that one, pick up on that. I think it's what, two seasons out now. It's a really fun show, and I guess I have a series of books I probably need to read.

Evidently, they're not following the books very much at all anymore. So, if you're a fan of the book, the TV show is different in its own fun way. And then I picked up an old show called The Night Of, back in 2016, I guess this came out. And we watched one episode of it so far, and it's really good.

It's like a murderer type mystery thing lawyer show, I guess. I don't know. But check out, this guy goes out and meets a girl, you know, wakes up and she, and they have a good time. He wakes up in her apartment, and there's a crime scene. He literally does every single thing wrong, both before and after this, to basically make everyone suspect him of being the murderer, which he... I don't know.

Is he? I don't know. We'll have to watch this. but it's called the night of it's from 2016. It seems pretty good. I should check that out too. So, uh, that's all I got for project. What'd you guys up to? Uh, just following up from some things from last week. So I know I was, um, having some solos problems last week or not problems, but

doing the playing around with the, you know, various setups and things. And, um, one thing I did do, Seth I did what you recommended, plugged in one speaker. One device. Which was my beam. One device and left all the others wireless. And while that seemed to help, I also changed some channels around and everything. It seemed to help and help with interference. The one thing I really missed out on when I had things hardwired was the reaction time.

Like when you airplayed to it, it was like instant, it was very reliable. It was fast. Everything was in sync, those types of things. And that was when you had them all hardwired? No, when I had some hardwired, right? But I was getting other issues. So I went the other extreme now. I hardwired everything.

The only ones I don't have, the only ones I don't have hardwired are the, the surrounds in my home theater. So from my understanding, once I hardwire everything, it gets rid of SonosNet. I don't know how to tell if there's nothing being broadcast, but I'm told it gets rid of the whole SonosNet. Except in the home theater, um, it still has a wireless network, but it's a five gigahertz one, a special five gigahertz, um, home theater. Um, and that's just meant to connect to the sub and the, the rear left and rights.

Yeah. Right. But the rest of the network's all hardwired. And like I said, the, just the performance is better. It's much more reliable. Um, I can play the seven speakers at the same time. They don't drop out. Um, when I play to them, it starts like right away.

Whereas before there was a little bit of a lag, a delay. If it's much more reliable. So my final, final, uh, recommendation is just hardwire all your Sonos. If you can, if you don't hardwire them all, then you can either go all wireless or just plug in one and use the Sonos net. Yeah. I'll, I'll put the, uh, I mean, I found links to on Sonos's website that say exactly that like, it's like all in or nothing, you know, do this all this way.

If you can't, if you can hardware, if you can't hardware one of them, then all wifi is what it says. And then if you can't, you can't do this and like all this way. So, um, yeah, my experience has been one thing plugged in, everything kind of Sonos nets off that. I don't, you know, Apple, I think you, you, you use the, what, the AirPlay a lot more than, yeah, I don't, I don't use that at all. Because we just play what we're listening to.

We like in, in our household, we just play what we're listening to. Like in our household, we just play whatever we're listening to on our phone. And that way when we jump in the car, we continue where we left off. When we get out the car, we continue where we left off. And then we just send it to whatever rooms we're in. Like when I'm home alone, I send it to like all the rooms and I just have the whole house in sync and it's nice. It's a nice sound.

Yeah. I've never, well, I don't have any AirPlay 2 Sonos devices mine are all kind of the previous generation which which don't have that. So I've never actually used Sonos that way but I can tell you I think it's finally working I don't know the the the system works fine right now with one thing plugged in and then everything is on SonosNet and but I'm using it just you know I play Sonos. I go to the Sonos app, I hit play on whatever Spotify or something I don't know and use it comes out the speakers and I can group them together and they seem to be pretty snappy and everything. I'm not having the problems I was having when

one of them was on Wi-Fi or this that and the other like it's it's much better now, so I'm happy, but I'm not gonna change and. And I'm not going to get anything new. Cause evidently if I get something new, if you got it working, don't change it. Yeah. It's just going to not do that. I'm just going to keep my old janky Sonos system until I can't keep it anymore. Yeah.

I just, I just wanted to do a lot of this playing around to learn. And I actually feel like I'm in a better place now because of it, because now that I have them all hardwired, like I said, the response time, the reliability is so much better and less interference. One less wireless network being broadcast out there to interfere with things, which I'm happy with. It also points to maybe your, maybe the wifi network isn't as dense as it needs to be, or isn't capable of handling that much streaming. So I don't know.

Like if a lot of it's going over the hardware, you don't have to worry about it. Exactly. Traffic going over, yeah. So, all right, so, and I know I complained, last week was a rough week. I complained about RAT GDO. I finally-

We all have those weeks, that's all right. It was a rough week, I was having all sorts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm better now, you know, I've done some meditation and stuff, but one thing that's making me happier is I finally switched all my rat GDLs over to a ESP home based setups. Um, and there's been so much more reliable.

Um, I know you have two options when you switch these over for those that have it. You have the MQTT option and you have a ESP homes option. Just do the ESP home one. Cause the MQTT one is not reliable and they drop off every now and then. So I'm a much happier person now that's running so much better. And the other thing I got set up was my, I know TJ touched on this last week, but my elevated bed occupancy sensor. So I got those installed and yes, TJ, you're right. The connections are a little flimsy. So I'm, you know, I'm creating longer wires that I can then run out from under

the bed and, you know, make it a little more sturdy and stuff like that. But they work well. They work really well. Like I would look at the home assistant logs the next day and see if they accidentally tripped or nothing, anything like that. No, they don't actually trip. Like they know when you're in the bed and they know when you're out of the bed.

And I'm actually surprised at how well they work. And right now the automation I have set up is when someone gets out of the bed, like in the middle of the night and there's certain parameters around it, but it will turn on the bed lights, the underneath bed lights, so they can see their way around the room

for a period amount of time, right and The wife seems to like that so no longer fumbling for a button or you know, trying to touch a lamp or something like that So they work really well. I can highly recommend them They're also ESP home-based devices. So they work really well with home assistant. Um, I Don't know what more to say. They do what they advertise. What do you have your sensor doing so far? So right now, like I said, at night, if the house is in either evening or night mode,

so basically it would be dark in the house right at that point, and you get out of bed and the room light isn't already on, then it will turn on the bed light so you can see where you're walking around for a period of time. I room light isn't already on, then it will turn on the bed light so you can see where you're walking around for a period of time. I think I said 60 seconds and that way you can go to the bathroom, come back, you know, and then by the time you get back in bed, it will, it will turn off again, you know, that type of thing.

Right. Um, and like I said, before we would get up, you know, reach for a button, turn on the light, get out of bed, go, you know, and worry about turning it back off again. Now it's all automated. So you don't have to fumble with that button. Right. So, you know, she really likes it because again, it's not accidentally tripped. Like if I roll over in the bed, it doesn't think somebody got out of bed.

Right. It's been really good. Uh, I haven't had any issues with it. And I have a thick mattress, right. Which I thought would have been a problem. It's not really good. I haven't had any issues with it. And I have a thick mattress, right? Which I thought would have been a problem. It's not a problem. And it's all sitting on like a flat board, which I thought would also be a problem.

It's not a problem. So it works really well. Yeah, it's a good thing I got that update pushed out for the heavy mattresses. Yeah, I think so. Cause I think when I went in there, I was like, thank you, TJ. You know, I saw the option and I was like, Oh, if TJ, I got an update when I plugged it in, it was like, Oh, you have an update.

And I was like, that was the heavy mattress update. Yes. I, I walked so you could run. There you go. We appreciate it. So yeah, if you're looking for a bed occupancy sensor, I can recommend these. Um, but if you're in Canada, just be prepared to pay import fees and tariffs. Yeah.

It's going to cost you double. Like it sucks to be up here sometimes. Actually, no, it doesn't. And that pretty much wraps up my week. You know, I'm in a better place. I know last week I was, uh, complaining about a lot of stuff and I was ready to throw my home out, but you know, I'm in a better place. I know last week I was complaining about a lot of stuff and I was ready to throw my home out, but you know, it's running a lot better now. So the whole whole amount.

Yeah. I was just like, yeah, I was just like, I was going to hand it over to the wife and it's your problem now I'm leaving. Here's the go for cigarettes and milk. I'll be back. Here's the password. I'm going for cigarettes and milk and I'll be back. Yeah.

Nice guy gave her the password. I'm going for cigarettes and milk and I'll be back. Nice guy gave her the password. Yeah. Yeah. So for my projects this week, I on the week over the weekend, I quit Sonos. I was, oh my gosh, I just, you know, I've had so many problems with Sonos that like I got so mad with it. And I was just like, I'm listing everything for sale. And so I literally posted everything on facebook marketplace

And then I do what any millennial does in 2025 as I took to social media and I complained about my sonos problems Um, I didn't go to the sonos subreddit because nobody there likes me when I complain there I went to blue sky and I posted on there. But of course sonos doesn't have a blue sky account Yeah, that's too new new of a social media platform. So I tagged Tom Conrad, who is the interim CEO of Sonos. And to my surprise, Tom Conrad commented back and was like, hey, I want to look into this for you, but I understand if you don't want to look into it, because it sounds like we've kind of screwed you over.

And I was like, let's talk about it. And so I reached out to him and he even gave me his phone number, which I thought was really nice. I haven't called it. It could be a fake number for all I know. But we talked through Blue Sky, the chat platform there. And basically he told me a bunch of stuff about my system. So I know he was real.

Seth kept saying he was an AI bot. I think he's AI bot, yeah. But an AI bot, maybe, I guess he would know about my stuff, but he told me all the equipment I had. The funniest thing, though, is that he can, I guess someone else can see everything about whatever their devices are doing, and so they can see the WiFi network

that my devices are connected to, and hilariously, he told me that I can see that your Wi-Fi name Is called she Wi-Fi And just something about that made me laugh because I was like how often does somebody tell you that you're a Wi-Fi? But basically he gave me a breakdown on what was happening with my system And then he gave me basically four things that I need to try in order to fix it. And I've implemented those things. Things seem to be working alright, but it's one of those things you don't really know until you're just using it all the time.

Because my issue with Sonos is that the speakers just cut out. Like, if you've ever used a Discman, which I haven't, or CDs, that skipping that happens with CDs. That's what my Sonos sounds like. And I've never been able to fix that. And I've tried many different ways. And I just, I've never been able to fix it. But ultimately, I think really what the issue comes down to is that I have a ubiquity U7 Pro Max access point that does not play well with IoT devices.

And when you call Sonos tech support, they always try to walk you through the most silly things to fix the issue. And nobody ever just told me that my wifi was the issue. They're just like, change the Sonos net channel, change this, do this. And like, none of that stuff worked. And so like, I just get frustrated because it's like, I just want this stuff to work, right? I've spent even dealer costs, I've spent three to

$5,000 on all my Sonos speakers. And like, literally after the update last year is when stuff started happening and just stopped working. And like, I know it happened around then because before then, I would I recommended Sonos for everything, right? It just it was one of those products that just worked all the time. And so I've implemented these changes. And what I liked about Tom is that he never accused me of doing anything wrong. He was like, hey, we messed up.

This is our problem. This isn't your problem. And I'm like, damn right it's not my problem. You're right, Tom. And it just, yeah. You know what? You shared this transcript with me. And I read through it.

I'm like, you know what? This robot that you were talking to really did really went out of its way to basically tell you that your Wi-Fi is in fact actually shitty. Because they said it in such a nice way. It's like, well, you know, the problem really isn't you. It's it's not me. It's you. It's your Wi-Fi. Your Wi-Fi is the problem. You know, like that's what he's telling you in this conversation. But he said it in such a nice way. The robot like smoothed everything over. So you know what? It may actually be a CEO. I don't know. I don't know your reaction. It doesn't seem like that's scalable support, if you ask me. But it's

probably a robot or level two tech or something like that. You got somebody you talk to. And I think this is probably the advantage of being, quote unquote, the interim CEO. We'll see if he becomes the permanent CEO or not. But I feel like this is kind probably the advantage of being quote-unquote the interim CEO We'll see if he becomes the permanent CEO or not But I feel like this is kind of the advantage of coming in after like somebody really like F***ed up the company right is that you can just admit that your company did everything wrong And because everybody already knows your company did everything wrong, right? Because if you're a normal CEO and you come out and you say wow my company's screwed up Everybody's gonna be like well, I can't believe you would say that. What do you mean?

But if he's got a tattoo, can say it, right? You know, but one of the last things that he was talking about, he's talking about the software and everything like that, but he said, to be clear, this is still our problem to solve. Yeah. And I appreciate that. Right. Because like at the end of the day, I understand that there's many

different pieces of technology. But the thing that I always harp on is that the stuff worked until these dang updates last year. And that's what screwed everything up. And like that's all I want. I just want recognition that it's not my stuff, even though it's my stuff. I understand it's my stuff at this point. But like it's just it's nice to have that and I'm going going through the four or five things that he sent me to try to fix. And I'm going to see if they work. And one of the things that he said though, is that, you know, he said, maybe you could swap out your wifi router for some fancier mesh thing. And I don't agree with that, Tom.

I got a pretty fancy wifi system, but we'll try to get resolved. I have a dedicated just like Ubiquiti AC mesh, like the little two antenna outdoor access point now that I'm just using for my Sonos, like that's it. Because the U7 Pro Max works for literally everything else in my house. I don't have any issues. It's literally just the Sonos, but I have 30 Wi-Fi devices and half of them are Sonos. So like I need to get the wifi issue fixed. And I think the key point there was it worked before the update. Right.

Right. So they obviously broke something at the update. And, and I liked that he's saying, you know, it's our problem to fix. Well, yeah, it is your problem to fix. Right. Cause you broke it. So you fix it, you know, and, but when you go through regular support, you don't get those kinds of answers. You just get the cookie cutter, you know, change this channel.

Well, they got a script they have to walk through. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of the other things he said, to be clear, I'm not blaming your setup or your wifi. We sell the system and say this works. So it's our job to make it work.

And that's like, that's a hundred percent. I was blaming your wifi. Well, no, I know what he's saying though. It's like our system's supposed to work no matter what your wifi is. Right. If you have a crappy wifi, well, we have Sonos net that gets around all that, you know, but the newer speakers don't use Sonos net, so they've obviously moved away from that.

Yeah. And that's the problem I have with most, the most of the problems I have now are literally my era 100 and 300 devices. Like everything else for the most part works are literally my era 100 and 300 devices. Everything else for the most part works, but my 100 and my 300s are the ones that I have the choppy audio issues with. At this point, I have all Wi-Fi devices. None of my stuff is hardwired.

I did make the mistake that when I submitted the ticket, I had hardwired my beam in the office because I was having issues with that, and I was stupid stupid and I submitted the diagnostic with the beam hardwired. And I guess what I didn't realize is that even if you just plug in one legacy device with Sonos Net and you plug it into the ethernet, that it kicks over a lot of stuff over to Sonos Net then, even if you have the Wi-Fi set up. And so what he was saying is that what's possibly happening, because I have the Sonos Arc with Aero 100s for surrounds in the living room, and then I have Aero 100s in the kitchen, because the Arc is actually using SonosNet from the office, that the audio sync to the

kitchen to the Aero 100s is going over Wi-Fi then, and it's doing some kind of weird conversion thing, and that's what's messing it up as well. And like all of that makes sense. Why couldn't support just tell me that? Yeah, well, and you're doing some pretty intense, like you're syncing video, like live video, right? From one room to the other over,

I will say like maybe the Sonos net is janky wifi, right? That's what you're trying to do. What do you mean? So you're sending like, you've talked about this in the past, like you're sending video from TV, like the video of your TV, whatever your TV is playing, like live video,

like it's transcoding that video audio feed and broadcasting it over wifi to another speaker who has to in, decode whatever that audio was and play it out. Are you having to skip things with just regular old music? No. We literally don't use the Sonos speakers for music. We only use it for TVs, but the TVs are done via HDMI.

They have nothing to do with the Sonos. No, no, no, no. But the audio has to get converted digitally to ones and zeros, right? It's got to be spit out and streamed in real time, right? To the next room over and not have any Perceivable delay like we're talking like within milliseconds before your eyes are gonna in ears are gonna hear a difference, right? Right So that's pretty intensive and it's a stream. I can understand like how things fall apart pretty quickly and easily.

The dropping is basically giving up and stopping. That's why when people are on Zoom, and we have them on the show or whatever, we're like, hey, I know you're on Zoom, but you need a hardwire. Because your Wi-Fi, as good as you think it is, Wi-Fi was not designed for streaming video, like at all, it doesn't work.

But I'm not streaming video over Wi-Fi though. Well, no, no, it's like, it doesn't stream anything very well. Like it's not designed for that. It's designed to like download a webpage. Yeah, yeah. And then like now we're trying to do all this multimedia stuff,

and that's why we're getting faster and faster Wi-Fi. That's why we're getting like higher bandwidth, Wi-Fi 7. I was listening to Connected today and they're talking about like how Wi-Fi is great. Wi-Fi 7 is great. And you get like super lower millisecond delays and like it's still Wi-Fi. Like if you just hardware, you don't have to have Wi-Fi 7. Like it's just, it's so much better. You don't have packet loss.

Like it just doesn't, it doesn't exist. Like millisecond delays, like microseconds, like come on. But I can see like how older technology, encoding, decoding, like first off, the streaming across your network with all the other stuff going on in your network at the same time, with this weird SonosNet thing that just pops in, right?

And just like starts working. Like where is it getting the audio from? And these are just dumb devices. Like you said, it's their thing to fix. They need to fix it. But I can understand how it's happening, especially with like live audio being synced with live video.

That's a tough thing to do. Yeah, and that was actually, so I'll just say the fixes that he told me just to give everybody an idea of what they wanted me to try at least. One of the option was changing the compression for the ARC from automatic to compressed, the audio compression there, basically removing SonosNet from the beam, so disconnecting the hardwire, which I did anyway because it doesn't need to be hardwired. The other option was changing the group delay on the ARC

from the default of 75 milliseconds to up to 2,000 milliseconds. I tried that. That was god-awful. Two seconds? Yeah, no thank you. Yeah, that was not good. Especially because the room that I have the most issues with is the kitchen, which is right next to the living room, and you could tell. So I tried that for like a second. One of the, the other one was pulling the ethernet from the beam, which I already

said, um, and then changing the wifi system. So, um, all pretty standard stuff. But like I said, the biggest annoyance was that like I called tech support like two or three times and it was on the phone for him for an hour. And like, nobody just like told me to do this stuff. They just had me change my SonosNet channel repeatedly. Yeah. And like that's ultimately where like the everything fell apart, right?

Because I was confused. I'm like, why am I changing the SonosNet channel? And I asked the person that and they're like, well, we just gotta change it. And I'm like, well, I wanna know why though. Like it like- It says on my script, that's what we're supposed to do. And so like, but that makes sense

because I didn't realize that when I plugged it in that everything defaulted to SonosNet automatically, even if it was already connected to Wi-Fi. So I'm gonna try these things out. We'll see how it goes. And I'll call Tom and I'm gonna ask him to be on the show. He's not gonna join, but that's fine. You miss all the shots you don't take.

Yeah, let's even get we can get him on. I mean, it'd be fun to talk to him. I was just kind of looking around to see what like perceivable audio delay is, and people generally will notice, like under 10 milliseconds is perfect. Like nobody will notice that. 20 milliseconds starts to be kind of noticeable,

but most people kind of will really start picking something up as it's over 80 milliseconds. So that first setting is definitely which way you want to go. If you're saying that's the default one is 75. So in a good world, you're getting the streaming and audio synced up under that 75, you know, everything goes perfectly. I've always had like a voice and video sync issues with my sonos stuff on my, on my main

TV with the surround sound system. I always found that when it went into five point, whenever I played 5.1 surround sound stuff, the sync was off. It was off when it was just playing stereo. It was fine. So the only way I really got around it is, you know, I have a little plugin that detects what's playing and auto adjust the delay and syncs everything back up.

Like, like I killed the problem. You know, like I used a missile to kill that. Yeah, no kidding. Hammering that nail. You know what I mean? Literally not available for anyone else in this world. Exactly. But if, if for the regular person, I don't know how you would have gotten around that.

Cause I was looking at devices that were out there that would adjust the sinks And stuff and and take care of it for you because it was a known problem But you know, I've never really looked into it since I solved it my way Yeah, and it just comes down to like once again Sonos is the only product I use in my house minus home assistant and home assistants constantly on our beta So I can't really fault them for that Sonos is the only product in my whole house that I constantly have to babysit like Mine is Home Assistant and Home Assistant's constantly on our beta, so I can't really fault them for that. Sonos is the only product in my whole house that I constantly have to babysit.

Like nothing else in my house has this much issue. And I think that's a matter of complication for whole house audio because a whole house audio is difficult to do. But it's also just shit technology at this point, right? Like and they rewrote the app and they they somehow made it worse But it is a Sonos issue and they really do need to fix it Because the only other thing that I've ever used in my life that requires babying like this is video distribution Like if you use just add power or something like that You have to use special switches and you have to have special settings and configurations and all that stuff and that makes sense because you're You're sending 4k over ethernet wire.

And like that makes sense to me. But like that's the only other thing I've ever used in my life that requires so much babying. Usually when it's working, it's working. I don't know. Right. For sure. When it breaks, you have a problem though.

Right. Because I mean, yeah. Supporting someone over the phone when their TV doesn't match up with anything that they're seeing or doing and it's not changing. Like, oh my gosh, it just adds such a high level, like, it's so confusing to troubleshoot video distribution. So, yeah, I agree on that. And it's almost just maybe kind of in that vein.

They definitely, they have that weird Matrix thing that you guys were, we were kind of looking at, the little port 1400 thing. You know, that's really all they've had and they've only had that for years. It's like, I really wish they would. Yeah. And that only works with Sonos net too. Like if you have the newer stuff, which is on wifi, it doesn't work.

Oh, it doesn't work. And there's no documentation around what this, how to read this stuff. It's just, I've found some third party, um, articles. Is it green, Gavin? Is it green? Don't worry about it. Mine are all white. So I think it's because they don't good. Is it green, Gavin? Is it green? Don't worry about it. Mine are all white.

So I think it's because they don't use Sonos Net at all. Not using Sonos Net. Right? Yeah. So. Well, so if they don't use Sonos Net, they don't show up at all as far as I know. But well, so I know that's true for the newer speakers. I don't know if that's true for the older speakers.

Yeah. So like, but I wish they had a document on how to read this or what things meant. Cause mine are just blank. But no, they don't. Cause I'm just trying to figure out if it's even broadcasting Sonos net at this point, you know, but there's no documentation to tell me how to do that. I wish they would update that to kind of, you know, support their newer

only wifi getting on devices that don't have the Sonos net. Like it seems like they're in a, in a, in a product transition to like between not wanting to do a Sonos net anymore, still having to support a lot of those devices out there in the field and then wanting to update their app and screw that up and introduce headphones. Like it seems like they have a lot going on and nobody's well, clearly nobody was asleep at the wheel. Maybe you could pass along that suggestion.

You have the ear of the top guy. Yeah. You know, just say, Hey, you need some documentation around this stuff for us installers. Maybe you could pass along that suggestion. You have the ear of the top guy. Yeah. You know, just say, hey, you need some documentation around this stuff for us installers. Or just make it better. Make it work where it makes sense, where it's not just like this, you know, weird numbering system they have there. And it's like, well, if it's yellow, it's, I don't know, is that good? Is yellow good? Is it yellow bad?

Yellow, what a mellow. It's green and yellow. It just needs some kind of like Sonos, like a bridge kind of device. You know what I mean? Like an amp or like a boost, something like that. Yeah, or like they could just put an LLM over the top of everything.

You're like, oh, here's your problem. That will solve it. Yep, there you go. Sonos with AI. Get the one that TJ was talking to. You know, good or bad, I think we're on. Sonos with AI. Get the one that TJ was talking to. You know, good or bad. I think we were on a Sonos streak right now of talking about Sonos in every show for like a number of months now.

They deserve it. Well, we need this, we need this new streaming device. Yeah. Ask them to join the show and say, Hey, Tom, we've talked about your company for like five months straight now. Every show mentions something. come on the show. I even, I even predicted your predecessor getting fired. You should actually send them the link to that.

We even wrote a song about you. Yeah. Well, so in other good news, uh, I guess better news. I don't know. Um, I got the, the new, uh, Cora G five pro. I got the the new a cara g5 pro This is the camera we talked about a week or two ago It comes in Wi-Fi or poe. I got the poe option a cara sent me this I didn't pay for it The the pros of it is that it has great nighttime quality

It's got color night vision which is for me is mandatory on any camera nowadays It's only $200. The setup with the Akara app was super easy. The POE option is nice. The only thing I don't like about it is that the, it's kind of like a weird camera hardware design because it basically like, it kind of looks like an indoor camera because it has like a, like a stand kind of like wise cameras do where like you like lift it up and then you can like rotate it around and stuff.

That's how this one is, which means that the wire for the camera itself is outside of the body of the camera, which is typical, but there's nowhere to hide the wire. And there's no junction box or anything that comes with it because there were no reason to be. And so like the wire is just like outside the camera. I think we saw this on their marketing images where they're just like, we don't

know what to do with this wire, so we'll just make it fade away. Yeah. And like for me, like if you have a security camera, having the wire like exposed is kind of silly, like I've never had an issue of somebody cutting a wire. But like somebody could just walk up to my house. My, my soffits aren't that high. They can grab the like those, like those garden sheer things. They use the like chopped branches off and they could just cut my wire.

If they really wanted to. That's what I usually do. You can get your finger off of those and get to your house too. That's right. Yeah. Or your palm, I guess. Um, but yeah, that's, that was my, the weird things. Um, I'm going to not recommend this camera though.

The big, the biggest reason I'm not going to recommend this camera, uh, is because of the recording options The recording options are good if you're a nerd and you want to run your own server like Gavin does Because there there is no local recording option. I'm a nerd It has RTSP which is nice for the nerds like Gavin But it has 7GB of built-in storage if you buy it from Amazon. If you buy it from a brick and mortar store like Best Buy, it has 32GB of storage for

some reason. It doesn't have a micro SD card slot, and so there's basically no local storage on it. The most annoying thing though is that you can't even download videos without a subscription. Yeah, that's pretty dumb. So something happens and incident happens and you have to have a subscription in order to watch it or in order to download it. Sorry. The power of being a nerd.

Yeah. Gavin can watch. I don't, I don't have these kinds of problems. I can't even use it with you. Uh, you, uh, you know, if I protect though, because it doesn't support on them, they said that's coming, but yeah, RTSP, no on VIF. They said, they said, uh, they will be adding that. Somebody said that from acquire in the forums, but I mean, who knows when that's

going to come, but look, if they add that, I'll recommend it because I can use that at that point, but like right now I can't record anything because I'm not a nerd. I don't run my own server anymore. Um, and I'm not going to fire up blue iris just for the silly little camera. And they want you to sign up for their, their subscription. I guess that's where they're pushing you towards is getting into their subscription, subscription into their environment, you know, so you could do all that stuff, which, you know, it's business.

Yeah. And it's things because I honestly do like the camera. Like if I was starting out today and I didn't have to worry about the storage options that I just discussed. If I was starting out today and I just bought a house and maybe I wanted a HomeKit secure video or maybe if it supported on-vif I could bring it into UniFi Protect, I would buy these for every single camera. Because they're pretty good.

They have good nighttime quality. The camera I replaced, it like blows them out of the water. Um, and I had pretty decent cameras to begin with. So I think if they fix the storage option, this is, this would be a good go-to camera specifically because you can do POE or wifi, obviously they are separate cameras. They don't have that together. So you'd have to buy the wifi model or the POE model.

Um, but for $200, I don't think you're going to need any easier than this. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the most honest review. I've probably heard about this from anybody, you know, watching those YouTube reviews that come out the day it's released, obviously are sponsored. And this is the greatest camera ever in the world. And, you know, the ultimate camera and blah, blah, blah. But thanks for being honest with us, TJ. Well, you know, like I said, they keep sending me these devices,

even though I talk fairly about them. So we'll see how long that happens. But I do think it's a good camera and I like it. I like using it. The people detection works great. But the storage option, it's just, it's so bad. Who would you recommend this for then? I mean, anyway, honestly, if you're looking for

a HomeKit secure video camera, this is what I would probably recommend right now, I mean, anyway, that honestly home kit, if you're looking for a home kit, secure video camera, this is what I would probably recommend right now, because I don't know of any other really good options, especially for outdoor cameras. Um, so if you're in the, the home kit secure video land and you need a home kit camera, this is the one I would go with. Okay. There you go. Go a gluing recommendation.

TJ's honest reviews. TJ's honest reviews. That's right. Brought to you by. Glowing, a glowing recommendation. TJ's honest reviews. That's right. Brought to you by. TJBHD. You just, you just took the co- yeah, you're just going to destroy that company now.

Well, it, it, it, it, you did share some of the pictures of it. I saw on social media and on, in, in the hub as well. Yes. Uh, the, the camera picture did look pretty good on it. Yeah. Wasn't, wasn't terrible. Wasn't terrible. I mean for $200 I don't like I don't know if you're gonna get any better than that. Honestly, I'm excited that that sensor Whatever they're using is coming to more cameras I was just looking over at Univiews because those are the first ones that I know that that came out with that thing

They've got a 2 megapixel 4 megapixel and an 8 megapixel line now, but they're all using like fixed 2.8 millimeter or 4 millimeter options and that's like there's no PTZ option. There's you know, whatever whatever technology they're using in here doesn't lend itself to anything outside these three different chassis, I guess bullet dome and what do you call it turret? I guess is the not bullet the thing you can stick outside that's not gonna get dirty. Anyway, they're significantly more expensive. I've seen them, I'm just kind of like going through and seeing them retailing, they're retailing for like maybe a hundred, hundred fifty more, maybe even as high as

$200 more. So yeah, this is a decent price and it does home kit security out of the box. Not, not terrible. Yeah. The only problem is home kit security. I think it limits it to 1080p right now. So you couldn't fully take the, you couldn't take a full advantage of what this camera can do, but, um, you know, I think it's all right.

All right. That's Apple's problem. All right. Well, there you go. I think that's going to wrap up this week. We got, I have a lot to talk about. So we wait one day, Amazon has an event so we wrap up this week. We got a lot to talk about. So we wait one day. Amazon has an event so we could talk about it.

We can talk for almost two hours. That's a long episode. A lot of Sonos. So much Sonos. Hopefully we stop talking about Sonos. I don't like this is one of those projects, like one of those products like Lutron where you just don't want to talk about because it just works. Yeah, you just want to say it's great. That's it. Yeah. Like Lutron comes out with like a new like paddle switch every like five years and you're like,

woo, new product, woo. And I like, that's it. And that's how I want to feel about Sonos. Like a piece of the infrastructure in your house. It's like, it's all you shouldn't have to, you shouldn't have to know that it doesn't work. Like it just works. Uh, what a, what a, what a different, different world we live in. All right. Well, we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite

to our private slide chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather in there every day and talk about how fast the Mastodon server is working. Because I'm, I forgot to mention that I was updating that thing. And Gavin is kind of happy that kind of happy. You're all my way the latest version, but you're doing a good job, Seth. Yeah, they just didn't update it. So I'm gonna have to go back and get it. But you know, it's easier now. Anyway, it's

happening. We're getting there. We're getting there slowly, but surely anyway If you want to help out, but can't support financially totally understand just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating and whatever podcast App you listen to that's gonna wrap up the week here on home check everybody have a great weekend And we will see you next week. Take care. Till next time. I'm making that my text alert. It's so good. The echo that it has, it's like, Oh my God.