HomeTech.fm - Episode 519 - RELEASE THE ACCESS POINTS!

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

On this week's show: People want OLED and big TVs, Abode is now on AppleTV, Switchbot launches shades, Ubiquiti has a number of new WiFi 7 products, ThirdReality has a mmWave sensor, we answer a few letters from listeners, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 7th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Florence, Kentucky, y'all. I'm TJ Huddleston. From Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell, y'all. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, y'all. A podcast all about home automation, home technology, TJ's random travels to Kentucky. Yeah, it's, you know, I've been to this area a couple times now, and you know you're in

Florence, Kentucky because they have a giant water tower right on the highway, and it's white and it's got like orange stripes on it, and it says Florence, y'all. So that's how I know I'm in Florence, Kentucky. Sounds like a real classy place. What are you talking about? orange stripes on it and it says Florence, y'all. So that's how I know I'm in Florence, Kentucky. Sounds like a real classy place. What are you talking about? Yeah, I'm down here for work again. We got to work in Cincinnati,

but for some reason we decided to stay in Kentucky. So that's where we're staying at tonight. Oh, I just did a Google search for Florence, Kentucky, just to kind of see, and you know, little pictures that pop up at the top. It's, I guess there's the Florence, y' just to kind of see, and you know, the little pictures that pop up at the top. It's, I guess there's the Florence Y'alls, which must be this baseball team that is playing here.

Does this surprise me? Yeah, and then- You see the water tower? The picture of the water tower is right there, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's hilarious. It's just Florence, y'all, that's what it says. And it's right on the highway, so I mean, it's just, it's very obvious what it is.

I mean, you can't, that water tower is like big with red and white stripes. Like you can't miss the thing. So. You know, people in Kentucky get confused about where they are. So they have to use this water tower to remember. That makes sense.

It makes sense. Do you live in Kentucky? I'm sorry. Yeah. I think the Apollo guys live in Kentucky, don't they? Yeah, I think they do. I think they do. They're parts of Kentucky I really like.

We went to. It's just parts. The South. Yeah, well, I mean, I've only been to parts, I think they do. I think they do. There are parts of Kentucky I really like. We went to... It's just parts. I've only been to parts, I guess. We went to... There's a southern... What was the park name? There was a park that we went to not too long ago that was really nice.

It had a waterfall on it. Cumberland Falls, I think, is what it was. On the south side of Kentucky. Beautiful up there. You could do some hiking, go see the falls, and just like one of the nicest state parks I ever stayed in. Like it was really nice. And from there you can drive up. It wasn't too far to go to the original KFC.

Of course you got to stop there when you're in Kentucky. And then up to where they do the horse racing things. We just happened to like go on a day they were doing one of the horse races. And we went to it and we, we were like, why are people so excited about this? You know, they're really getting excited. And we've, then we finally figured out how you do the bets and they're like, Oh, that's why they're excited. And so for the last bet, like we went and we bet on like, you know, you could bet

on a horse, like one, two or three or whatever is going to finish in the race. And if you get that you win a lot of money, a lot more like could have paid for the trip. And I think we were like, we were so close. It was like our we were of course, is how it always is. Our three horses were like in the order they should have been going to cross the line. And then it all just fell apart. Could have paid for the entire vacation, but no, well, too bad. What are you gonna do?

Well, I'm definitely not doing horse races. I can tell you that. No horse races for me this trip. Yeah, you're probably gonna actually do some work. Unfortunately. It's supposed to be cold too. It's like 35 to 50 degrees tomorrow. So it's gonna be a wide range of temperatures for me. Just lay her out.

Just strip them off casually as the day goes on. Next week, I'll be traveling. I'll be in LA for the week. So I don't think we're going to do a show. LA? Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize you're fancy, Seth. All right. I'm going out there for some work, and I've only been to LA when it's pouring down rain.

Guess what it's going to do next week? Pour down rain. So I've never seen the sunshine in there. It's pretty amazing. Better than the wildfires though, right? Yeah. It's either going to be raining or wildfire, I guess. I don't know. It's an interesting place. That's not good. Well, I don't think we're going to do

shows just because of the time differences massive. It's four hours, I think. Three hours. Yeah, three hours. All right. Well, how does Gavin know that he was in Canada? I had girls on that side at one point. But that was a different time. That was a different time.

I doubt that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think by the time I get done with what I have to do, it's gonna be like past TJ's bedtime. No, I think by the time I get done with what I have to do, it's going to be like past TJ's bedtime, so it's going to be like nine o'clock on his time. He's like, I'm ready for the show. It's midnight. Let's get it started.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So TJ goes to bed early. We know. Oh man. I do basically 80 years old at this point.

Now, if I was 80, I think I'd be staying up all night. Nevermind. I'm like 50 years old at this point. Hey, wait, yeah. Oh. You've been badging 50 year olds since we got on this call today. Like, I have something to throw at you,

but I can't say it on the show. Wait, save it for the end. Yeah, it could be the big of the week. Cause honestly, like, all right. Well, we've got some, we've got a the big of the week, because honestly, like... LAUGHS All right. Well, we've got some... We've got a pretty big show this week. A lot of new products just came out, and so we'll talk about those. But we've got a couple of home tech headlines.

So, what do you say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it, y'all. All right. In the no surprise to anyone ever stories here, the global TV market experienced a nearly 6% growth in Q4 2024 driven by 13% surge in OLED TV sales. OLED shipments reached 2 million units marking a pretty significant 12% or almost 12.6% increase from the same period in 2023. North America led the OLED market with 19% growth with followed by Western Europe at 18.4.

So lots of growth there on the OLEDs. I think probably because they don't cost $30,000 anymore. It's probably a good reason. And they look gorgeous. I mean, honestly, they're beautiful. And then the other side of it is people like big screens. Did you guys know that? The screen sizes. If you want to go to the store right now, in North America, consumers can choose between a 65-inch OLED and a 90 or 100-inch LCD at pretty much the same prices these days. The average price for a 98 and 100-inch LCD TV in the U.S. is about $1,500. Fifty-seven percent of consumers are expressing interest in 98 inch LCD TVs these days. How many inches?

No surprise. 98. 98. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you most of those consumers don't even have a room big enough to handle that TV. I used to be one of those consumers or, you know, unlike y'all, I go in there and get the largest TV I could possibly get just because, you know, bragging rights.

Right. Yeah. So, you know, back in my day, I'd come home and be like look at this 23 inch CRT TV, you know, but um, I learned from you guys that you can have a TV that's too big You know and you know, yeah, you can have a TV and you should Properly measure out your room and size the TV to the room and figure out where the sweet spot to sit down You'll enjoy the the TV that much more. That's what I've learned from listening to this podcast before I was on this podcast Yeah, this this report does not surprise me at all mainly because giant TVs have gotten dirt cheap

I mean the other day I sold a 98 inch Samsung LCD You know wasn't wasn't a high-end TV by any means was a 98 inch Samsung LCD, it wasn't a high end TV by any means, it was a 98 inch TV for $2,500. I mean that is crazy cheap for the size, and that specific install, it replaced a projector and projector screen setup, and it was basically, it was a little smaller than the old projector that was there, the projector screen, but basically the same size as the projector screen and a much better picture, even just being LCD.

That's the thing. The TVs have just gotten so cheap and everybody at this point, like unless you want like a true movie theater experience, like people prefer the brightness of even LCD TV. And so most people are just fine with an LCD TV at this point. I just looked it up, a 98 inch TV.

The recommended cinema distance is with a 40 degree angle is 9 foot 9 inches or 2.98 meters. So that's a big room you'd have to have. That's like where the first row kind of needs the sweet spot. Like Evan was saying, you can have a row in front of that if you want. But so if I got that TV, I'd basically be sitting in my bathroom to watch it. So I just have to knock down a little room and a wall and just knock down the wall between it and sit on the crapper and watch some TV.

Yeah. Take it down, but just put a window in. Exactly. But yeah, I was, I know we talked about this a few months ago and I had a friend that wanted to get a projector and stuff and you guys pointed out like, Hey, if you, the TVs are so big and so cheap now that, you know, you'd probably get a brighter

picture and it would cost less in the long run because you don't have to buy things like the screen and a high end projector and all these types of... The receiver and like everything else. Yeah. And, and the one key point, even I pointed out to our goal, the complexity of that, all that, you know, um, having the receiver and the, the, the projector and everything. Like it gets complex to control.

And when you can't figure out why sound's not coming on there, you'll just call me. So I was like, just get a big TV, you know, and they actually, yeah, if Owen's listening, he's probably cringing a little bit, but it's, you know, it really does for them, for the vast majority of people, a giant TV is exactly what they want because it's a lot simpler, right? Because like for me, for example, if I'm going to sell a home theater set up to somebody, like you're talking like $5,000 minimum for a good projector. That's not a high-end one,

that's not a really great one or anything like that, but that's a good entry-level projector that is going to work for most people and that's already $5,000. Well, I think we're talking apples and oranges when we talk the rooms that he's designing and- No, well, for sure. $5,000 is. We've heard what Owen has in his house. So yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's not that, but yeah, the like $5,000 in that world is going to get you a seat cushion. Like I don't know. Like it's a different ball game. For sure. And honestly, it's a different, the goals are different for those rooms. It's not watching TV. Like, it is sitting down and having like the most immersive cinema experience you could possibly have.

Mm-hmm. And that's way different than having a bright TV on the wall. Now, the TVs are brighter than projectors these days, which is kind of crazy. But the problem with them is the sound, right? You can't put the speakers behind the screens. You have to adjust and move the speakers around, and you have this big giant glass thing you have to deal with. So yeah, there's all sorts of weird problems with that.

People were talking about even using those cinema wall things, the micro-LED screens that they have out these days, like the Samsung wall thing. It's like, yeah, you could use that, but then where do you put the speakers? Speakers are the problem. The movie to me has always been about the audio that comes out of it. You can get a lot out of the picture,

but the audio is really what gets me into the movie. Another 20 years, we'll go back to silent films, so. Everybody just cares about the video. Nobody cares about the audio anymore. Yeah, it's just because of the tariffs, though. Which aren't happening again. Like, I don't know, they're on, they're off. I can't, nobody can make up their mind.

Yeah, it's starting, we just don't know what to prepare for. Like, you know, one day you're mad, next minute we make up, and then you're mad again, and yeah. You guys take the liquor off the shelves, and then it's back on. I don't get it. It's like Gavin's ex-girlfriend. You never know what to expect.

Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. It was the time difference. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. That's why you knew so quickly. All right, all right, let's move on here before you get Gavin in trouble.

Let's see. Abode has launched a new app for Apple TV and allows users to control their DIY home security systems directly from their television. The app enables users to arm and disarm their systems with live video feeds from up to four cameras. They can access recorded clips and manage devices through quick actions.

It's kind of pretty, this is actually pretty cool. I like the idea of your sit. I have, I don't know if you guys know this, you probably do, but Unifi has an Apple TV app. Yes, great. Yeah, yeah. I love like bringing that up. I think it even like, no, no, no, no, the HomeKit junk, I have off on the side,

we'll do the pop-up video camera when they ring the doorbell. But the Unifi app, if my daughter's playing outside, all the kids, I'll just pop that up on the TV and just kind of let that run. And if I hear something, I'll look over at the TV and I pretty much see what they're up to out there. So yeah, I like this idea. This sounds like a great thing

for anybody who has an abode system. Well, and especially, I don't know how abode works. I've never actually used the abode, but my issue with a lot of these DIY cameras and security systems is that for a lot of them, you're mandated basically to use the app on your phone. And there's no like web browser access or something like that.

Like Ring is a good example, right? Ring is, you can use it on your phone, you can use it on your tablet, works great, but you can't pull it up through a web browser as far as I know. And that kind of limits what you can actually do with it. And so I like being able to pull stuff on the Apple TV or Roku or whatever it is,

precisely the same thing you said, Seth, the cameras are a good thing. Like if we're having like a get together at our house or something like that, we'll just throw the cameras up on there so we can see people arriving. And as they walk up, then we can open the door and let them in and everything like that.

So it's a nice little quality of life feature. I don't use it all the time, but it's nice. And even when I do like Unifi cameras, you know, they're like, oh, I want a dedicated monitor. I'm like, just get an Apple TV. Yeah, yeah. The only, I think they have, Unifi also has a like a little viewport. Yeah Yeah, it's I don't know like it's too expensive for what it is. Well, it literally looks like the AI key

It's the same body and everything. I think the AI key is a little thicker, but it looks it looks a similar body Wait is and we might not be talking about the same thing No, this is like a little tiny dongle thing that you plug into your TV. Unified does not have that. They have a viewport, which is a big kind of device. It's not big, I guess, but it's similar size of the AI key though. I think you're talking about the same thing,

the Protect viewport. Yeah. Yeah. It must be. I don't know. It's never been available for me to buy it. So yeah, it's- Yeah, they're hardly available. I had to buy mine from Micro Center last time and then like the actually I sold one like three or four months ago

Uh, and I bought it from micro center and it was like manufactured in 2022 So I just don't know if I don't even know if they're making them or not But they just never have them available on the website. Yeah. Yeah protect viewports. That's what it is So hey, and the ai key is the same size as this thing. It's similar It's not the same size, but it's literally the same design, though. Hmm, okay. Like, the AI key is chonkier. RGB, it's got PEO on one side, it's got HDMI on the other,

and you basically assign it to whatever you want to play over it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's super easy. Just like UniFi stuff, you just add it through UniFi Protect, and then you assign what cameras you want to and everything, so it's very nice to use. For what you can do with it, I just wish it was about $100 less. I don't understand that $200 price point. But it's sold out, so who am I to talk? It's available in the Canadian store. I mean, probably because it's 269 Canadian.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on here. We've got a new interesting product that popped up from SwitchBot. They've launched new adjustable smart roller shades, available now at prices starting from $199. Shades are designed to be the world's first adjustable smart shades, allowing users to modify the width of the shade, headrail, and fabric to fit their window frames after you purchase.

So this is pretty cool. It eliminates the need like pre-ordering with the correct measurements before you get the shades and everything. They're motorized, it can be programmed to operate like any other shade and any other SwitchBot product. And yeah, available in white, gray, shade comes in four adjustable sizes

with the largest price at $309. So man, this price is incredible. I just, I wonder what the build on this is like, you know, knowing SwitchBot and how they, they are, but it's a good price. Can't complain. SwitchBot, SwitchBot hardware is, is built pretty good. Um, I'm, uh, the aesthetics are what I usually have a problem with. They say very ugly, but yeah, they're ugly, but this looks like a normal, uh, shade. Like this one doesn't look too different.

It looks a little, maybe a little bigger than the average one I've seen before. But the one thing I really like is how they did the cutting of the shade. Like that was really cool. They actually give another device that goes around the end of it. And then you clamp down on it and it cuts through the blinds and, you know, and then eventually cuts through the pole and you break that off. And I thought that was really cool how they eventually went with that. Um, and yeah, the price, you can't argue with the price.

Um, I'm just not a fan of their design. And the other issue I have with Swishbots, I ordered something from them and man, I've been getting spam from them like crazy, like on everything. My WhatsApp, my email, text messages, you know, like, yeah, they really push hard, but, um, it's all right. It's matter of compatibility. It's cause they know you're an influencer, Gavin. Well, if they know I'm an influencer, you can send me that stuff for free because I had to pay import duty and taxes and all sorts of stuff on that.

You know, it was another one. You can send me that stuff for free because I had to pay import duty and taxes and all sorts of stuff on that You know, it was another one whenever I ordered from switchbot whether it's Canadian site or not Like you get the email that says oh you owe money to receive your product Why didn't you tell me before I ordered that I was gonna have to owe money? So I really don't understand that whole thing, but I live in America. So yeah, it's part of living up here The switchbot thing is really cool. For me, I think smart blinds are kind of like one of the bastions of like the professional smart space, right? Because for professionals, like smart shades

have been a thing forever. But for DIY space, like there's not a ton of like affordable or economical smart shade options. And I think for me, once I see like, when I go into somebody's house and I see, or when I go into a lot of people's houses and I see smart shades as an option for people that they're using all the time, like Amazon Alexa speakers or light switches or thermostats, I think that's how I know that the smart home has made it mainstream, right?

Because for so long, smart blinds have been so expensive. I mean, I sell Lutron, Lutron is very nice, but you're not walking out with Lutron shades for under $600 for the most part, unless you buy one of the three Caseta ones that they just released at the... CES, I think. Yeah, CES, that's the one.

But that's, for the longest time, smart shades have been a pure luxury item. Like you've not walked into somebody's house and see smart shades for the most part. You've seen the little remote controlled ones, like that's fine. Sanvius has the little RF controlled ones and stuff like that. But to see companies like this release in smart shades and they're actually pretty cheap, that's cool to see. And I'm not a fan of the shades that are either fully open or fully closed. I always like, I like the tilts, you know, the blinds that you could.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Blinds. Yeah.

I've kind of prefer those, but I wish they, people invest in those more. I know, um, uh, Hunter Douglas has their shutters that you can get, but you know those are gonna be expensive. So I would really like to get those on some of my windows, but. All of it. I mean, even at $199, right? That's what this starts at. That adds up really fast if you have more than one window, right?

So it's still, I would still say that shades are, they're gonna be on that. Like you can use these and kind of like live with the look and feel of them. But you don't have to do your whole house too. You could just do a couple windows today and then a couple windows in a couple weeks, you know, like. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Once you get that Gavin money, do them all.

Yeah, just do them all. There you go. Oh no, once you become an influencer and they start sending you free stuff that Gavin money, do them all. Yeah, just do them all. There you go. Oh, no. Once you become an influencer and they start sending you free stuff, then you can do it all. You can put one of them on the bathroom door window, so you get a little bit of privacy in there sometimes. Sometimes. When you want to watch TV, you just open it up and look out there and watch your TV. There you go.

Yeah, exactly. See, we have a solution. We'll replace the door with these things. Replace the doors with a roller blade or roller shades and replace the walls with TV. There you go. I think this works. All right.

Well, uh, we got a couple of new products from unify here. Uh, the U7 light, uh, and the U7 in wall come out. These are, uh,Fi 7 access points. The U7 Lite is a ceiling mount Wi-Fi 7 access point, 4 spatial streams and a 2.5 gigabit uplink for 100 bucks. Holy cow, $99. And the U7 NWall, $149. It's a wall mounted Wi-Fi 7 access point with 7 spatial streams integrated 2.5 giga gigabit ethernet PoE.

Kind of design, it's got like a little single port PoE pass through if you want. And if you have PoE plus powering the thing, you can use it with like, I've seen these used like in offices, I feel like they're designed for offices where you have like a PoE desk phone, and then you kind of want Wi-Fi in the room, you'd use that. But they also released a U7 Pro. Well, they didn't release this at mobile world of Congress. They were showing off two new products and, uh, I don't know. They sound like, like they had more stuff there than just the, these two products. They had like cameras.

But they couldn't get like a definite answer, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was really weird. Uh, but what they did, what the news picked up on were of course is Wi-Fi 7 stuff they've got a u7 Pro XG and a dream router 5g and the u7 Pro XG is high performance Wi-Fi 7 access point it actually looked kind of nice it's got like a flat face to it. Like instead of having that round dome.

They remind me of a TP link Omata access points. So if you see those ones. But a lot smaller, I think. I don't know. Those TP links. Or bigger, who knows. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And then the other one they had was the DreamRouter 5G

and that has a dual LAN capabilities. It's got, I think it's got like a 5g router inside of it so like if you need a little backup you can use those 5g capabilities interesting products coming out there so and they're releasing a lot of stuff I'm doing an upgrade of my Wi-Fi right now my access points I have my the ones I currently have are like pre numbers so I think it's time to upgrade and it's I'm sitting here going. Oh, what are they gonna release next? Cuz it seems like every week there's something new and I almost feel like if I order something this week next week is gonna be

Replaced with something I really wanted but it's good to say And in my opinion too, they've kind of made the the access points very confusing now because In my opinion too, they've kind of made the access points very confusing now, because some of them support 6 GHz and some of them don't, but they're all called Wi-Fi 7 access points. And so it's like, well, I don't- Wi-Fi 7 is not necessarily limited to- Like, it's- I know, but-

Wi-Fi 7 is not limited to 6 GHz, so like- I know, but like, come on. It's just, it's weird. I mean, you can still have the Wi-Fi 7 features on a 2.4 gigahertz network. I mean, like it, it just, it's kind of like an all-encompassing thing, but yeah. Yeah. You're going to get the fast speeds out of the six gigahertz devices that also have Wi-Fi 7 capabilities as well.

So I don't know. I'm not, I'm not like crazy excited about Wi-Fi 7 as much as people are. Like I'm, I'm still good on Wi-Fi 6. Like it, it doesn't top out what I have coming in, but like for what I do day to day, like seems to be pretty good. I don't think I need to upgrade anything. I'm not even on Wi-Fi. I don't even think about Wi-Fi 5.

I'm not even sure anymore, but yeah, it's time for me to upgrade some of my access points. And that's what I like about Unifi is I can update pieces of it. Like it's not a full replacement. I can pull out this access point and just replace that one. I will caution you on the technology side of Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7. You will probably not want to do that. Or, and I don't know if you can do this on Unifi stuff. You would want to disable the Wi-Fi 7 capabilities. I don't have yeah Well, you can you disable the six your hurts at least. I don't know if you can tell I'm not talking about the radios

I'm talking about like yeah the Wi-Fi 7 part of it. I don't know if you can do that or not Yeah, why would you want to do if I seven though just to use it in a different mode because if Just to use it in a different mode, because if, we noticed this in Wi-Fi 6, and I'm not the smart Wi-Fi person to talk about this, but if you, it was basically like, if you had a mixed network, it really made your speeds and connectivity suffer. And you would want to have all of your devices on a Wi-Fi 6 product line to make sure that the network was stable and like client devices didn't have a problem switching back and forth. We noticed that was really the issue on Wi-Fi 6. I don't think they fixed that on Wi-Fi 7.

I think they just want you to be all in on one of these technologies. So I would discourage anyone out there who's trying to mix and match networks. Like, yeah, you can upgrade one thing at a time, but the, this newer technology stuff where they're, I forget the, the metric that, that everybody was kind of always quoting, I think I can look it up. Like it really is effective if you're not, you don't have wifi six throughout. So is your recommendation, like, I only have like probably four access points, but would your recommendation be, Oh, upgrade them all to Wi-Fi six or all to Wi-Fi seven, but don't mix Wi-Fi six and Wi-Fi seven?

Yes. Okay. I think so. The, what they were complaining about was this MCS index thing, and it's a metric based on a bunch of parameters. It looks like it was made for Wi-Fi 802.11 AC. I think that is like Wi- wifi six, right? Yeah. Uh, there's all sorts of stuff that goes into this and if, if it gets messed up.

Oh yeah. I will send you guys a link and you guys can read over this. And if it makes sense to you, good for you. Is it another 200 page document? Because when you send that to me about the room requirements stuff. There's a table on here that was sent to me when we were having this discussion. And it's like, I'm like, oh, that was sent to me when we were having this discussion. And it's like, I'm like, oh, it's pretty.

I have no idea what any of this means, but it's pretty. And, uh, yeah, like I, I, I'm pretty technical person, but this definitely. Made my, uh, made my, my eyes glaze over and yeah, the wireless land professional site, there's, they have, I guess this chart that has, uh, all these quam, like My eyes glaze over and yes the wireless LAN professional site There's they have I guess this chart that has all these qualms like 256 qualms These are things I've never even heard of and evidently like it's a thing So if you if you get these things mixed up Your signal suffers, I guess we need an Owen for Wi-Fi networks on our champ

Yeah, we kind of kind of do I'm sure there's people out there that can talk to talk to this. So if you know about Wi-Fi hit us up Maybe we'll have you on the show. Yeah Yeah, you get priority if you see Wi-Fi y'all I'm sure there's there's a better explanation of what I'm giving here. In fact, I know there is but This this is kind of the the things that they were showing me when they were talking about this. So I don't know.

I would say like be careful in mixing up the technologies though, especially if you have a bunch of older stuff like Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 3. Okay. So next question is while we're on this Wi-Fi thing. So I kind of get that. I'm going to do upgrade and and keep it at the same technology. All in Gavin. But should I go wifi seven or wifi six?

I'm thinking of just going wifi seven because it will feature proof me a bit longer, but is it really worth it? If you pay attention, if you pay attention to the ubiquity forums, wifi seven with ubiquity seems to be issues right now. So personally, I would probably just wait. I would say wifi seven with anything is issues right now. Yeah. I'd probably probably just wait. I would say Wi-Fi 7 with anything is issues right now. Yeah. I'd probably just wait, honestly,

unless you need the faster speeds, which you probably don't, I would just wait altogether. Well, mine are so old, like things are dropping out and I gotta reboot them and then they come back on and stuff like that. So I'm kind of getting fed up of that. So I wanna really upgrade them. So if I go with the Wi-Fi 6 stuff,

then I'll be more reliable. Have you heard about our friends over at Ruckus? I don't want, then I have to really upgrade them. So if I go with the wifi six stuff, then I'll be more reliable. Have you heard about our friends over at ruckus? I don't want, then I have to replace everything. Listen, I got unified connect. I have unified everything. Like, like seriously, you guys talked me into unify. The U six stuff is not, I mean, the problem with the unify is the U six stuff is pretty much the same price as the U seven, right?

Exactly. That's what I was seeing too. And the U six, the U six stuff is rock much the same price as the U7, right? Exactly, that's what I was seeing too. And the U6 stuff is rock solid though, because all the IT people I know that I work for and stuff, they still use the U6s for everything, so. And it's not like I have Sonos on it, so, you know, like, we'll just get that out of the way, you know, bash Sonos a little bit.

But it's not like I have my Sonos, I hardwired my Sonos now, so they've been working flawlessly, so I don't have to worry about that issue. Yeah. I don't know what to say. I'm looking at their product lineup here. It's really hard to say.

Maybe I'll just post the question in the hub and see what others say. Oh, yeah. I will say that the Wi-Fi 6, like TJ is saying, that's a known technology. It's out and everything. All of the edge cases has been found. Wi-Fi 7 is new and new on unified typically is not very good.

For a little while. Yes, I've been learning that too, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Ask me how I know. But I would say it's also not, probably not good. I heard, what is it, his name, Federico Vittigia talking about a unified, a Wi-Fi seven router that he got.

And when he tried to connect some gaming console or something that he had to it that said it was Wi-Fi seven, it would just flat out crash. Like as soon as it connected to that work, it would crash and reboot. And it's like, well, that's probably not right. I think there's a lot of bugs out there on this stuff right now. All right. Wi-Fi six. Yeah.

It's just cutting edge. Like you're going to pay for it, you know, for a little while to be on the bleeding edge of stuff. And Wi-Fi 6 has been out for a number of years now, so. It feels like gone are the days of when things were thoroughly tested before they were released, and now it's just get it out there and let everybody figure it out.

Well, that's always been the land of ubiquities, so. That's true, that's true. Release it. Yeah, release it and push out updates. Release the access points. Show title. We've got one more product, a couple more products here I guess, to talk about. We've got a new motion sensor from Third Reality. The R1, it's a Zigbee millimeter wave sensor, integrates with popular Zigbee hubs like Echo Devices, SmartThings, Home Assistant, it's a Zigbee millimeter wave sensor integrates with popular Zigbee hubs like Echo Devices, SmartThings, Home Assistant, and offers a customizable detection ranges from

2 to 10 meters, allowing end users to monitor, customize and tailor monitoring capabilities to specific areas like living rooms, hallways or offices. It's powered by three, three small, you know, like a small, it looks good. The only concern is that three Triple-a batteries this thing's gonna be big. It's not gonna be a small It's gonna be yeah, it's gonna be a big sensor, but it's got some nice features where you can um Adjust the sensitivity and stuff right on the device itself. That's pretty cool But I don't know like it's something that somebody's going to see on the wall and say, what's that? You know,

I was like, well, the first picture doesn't really show the size of it. And you started scrolling through and you find, find these girls on the couch. Yeah, we need the banana. Where's the banana? Look at this girl on the couch next to this thing. This thing is large. It is not the, it's not that big. To like. To be honest, this picture does look photoshopped. No, that is photoshopped because I've used their switches before and those switches are not that big.

So this is a terrible photoshop. What's with bad photoshop? Well, and you go to the next picture. Go to the next picture. It's next to a phone. And it's like, it's well. It's twice the size of that phone. Yeah. So it's, it's from China. Though the other thing about this one is it, it doesn't rely on the PIR sensor, which I guess a lot of people were using to cut that on battery usage.

Right. So if you're going to be in, put this in a, a busy area, I could see that battery getting run down fast. Right. Like if you're putting it in like your bathroom or something like that, then it only gets triggered when someone's in there. And unless you have issues, you're ain't triggering that, that very often. Right.

Um, so I'm waiting on the Acquara one to come out still. I'm going to pass on this one. It's okay. So the adjust, the sizes are it's 1.1 inches thick. It's like two and a half inches, you know, like wide and high. Yeah, that's not terrible. That's not terrible. The pictures don't do it justice.

I saw those on the, on the, I saw those in the tech spec as well. I went to look at that and I found some very funny things on, on the tech spec pages. First off, uh, the mount type is casual placement, which I thought was was funny, and a funny way of saying yeah it's just gonna you're just gonna stick it like wherever. You're just gonna like put it on a bookshelf, who cares? And then I also found the UPC number has been like Excel sheet. You know, it's got an exponential thing, think to like E plus 11 zeros after it. It's really funny.

So, whoops, forgot to format the data. Oh, you've got a caliber there. What's going on? This is actually pretty big. Yeah. As I say, for, for a motion sensor, that is quite large. Yeah. It's yeah. And it's a square one.

I don't, okay, hold on. It's almost the size as the Home Assistant Voice PE. Oh. Like, it's just a bit smaller than it, but that's how you can compare it. If I put that next to my phone, it's gonna look like, you know, it's gonna look like this, as opposed to like, like that.

You guys can see I'm just moving the thing close to the, the camera. So it's 10 times the size of my phone. They, they, they need to work on their, their Photoshop skills there. Yeah. It's the size of the, I don't know if you have one of these S3 boxes. Yeah. This is that S3 box, you know, it's the size of that. So it is pretty big.

If I put this on a wall, it's noticeable. $30 delivers first of March. Zigbee. Zigbee looks all right, I guess. It doesn't look terrible. It's got a little, he's got my favorite logo from European countries on it. The little guy running. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's my favorite, favorite sign thing. Like sometimes there's like flames falling and he's running from the flames. It's like that's the fire exit. It makes total sense, but it's just funny to see the guy running from the flames. I like to just grab one of these and see how they perform. Um, but it's not available up here yet. Um, if it, if it becomes available, I'll probably just grab one

and just see how it performs. Like I like it's a new technology and companies are still doing it different If it becomes available, I'll probably just grab one and just see how it performs. It's a new technology and companies are still doing it different ways. Let's see how well this works. Yeah. Let us know if you get one. Talk about it in our projects. Hey, one more, I guess, late arrival here. Someone put this in.

AquaFlower has officially launched now. So if you guys heard our interview with them, I don't remember what show it was. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. It was episode 503. 503, they have officially launched and you could buy it now for 349. Yeah, still a pretty good price.

Now they have their, last time we talked to them, it was literally just ESPHome through Home Assistant, but now they have their own app. I believe it's still compatible with Home Assistant, so you can still use it with it if you wanted to, but they have their own app and scheduling and all that stuff now so it's kind of kind of cool to see them actually officially launch and I'm gonna have to buy one because I'm planning all my garden beds right now

So I have to buy two or three or five. Yeah, don't tell anybody. Yeah, I got a lot. It's an outdoor only product, right? What do you mean? Like can you use this indoors? I don't see why you couldn't, but it's, it's meant to hook up to a faucet or a hose. Yeah, hose inside. You bring a hose on side. Yeah. Cut a hole in your wall. No one's stopping you. It's your home. Why would you cut a hole in the wall? You could just attach the hose to the faucet inside.

You're no fun, Gavin. I need to use my sink still. There's no pass through on it. Yeah, put a, oh, you can put a pass through on it. A splitter, there you go. That's how many bathrooms you have, or how many sinks you have, Gavin. Geez, I only have one sink. Well, it's barely cutting a hole in the wall.

I can't explain that to the wife. You can use that for other things, though. It's starting to explain the bathroom a lot more. All right. Let's, all the links to topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 519. All right. No pick of the week this week, I guess.

We got a couple of letters in the mailbox. First comes from Paul. A message came in through the website, I think, do you have any recommendations for an OTA DVR solution? He says, I'm currently using the Amazon Fire Recast. However, it's reached end of life and its reliability is slowly degrading, like most Amazon products. Yeah, they don't age well, unfortunately.

Yeah, the Amazon Fire line is such a disappointment. Anyway, moving on, it's changing out. We talked about this a little bit before the show. DJ, what do you think? The two products I've used for this have been Tableau and Silicon Dust. I personally wouldn't recommend the Silicon Dust one because it looks very outdated.

Tableau is the one I actually install for clients whenever they ask me about this every five years or so. Just because it looks more polished and the product itself is not that expensive. I think it's like $200 for the Tablo. Let's see if I'm right on that at all. $99 actually for the fourth generation. So that's actually not too bad. That's a two tuner one. That's what I would recommend just because it's also compatible with everything. I'm pretty sure they have a streaming app for everything at this point. So I think that's a good option.

Yeah, I actually have the HD Home Run. I don't know which one it is. I don't think it's any one of these. It's one of the older ones because it looks like the HD Home run flex duo is about $109. It's a two tuners on the thing, which I didn't even, mine's just one tuner. It can only tune in one channel and I, it works with the local thing. And I use the channels app and I think channels app, you can, you can get it to record things now.

The one I use is free and I don't record anything. So yeah, I don't know. I think Plex you can, you can actually, I know Plex cause you can actually go into Plex and it gives you a guide for your TV and you can tune into your channels that way and you can actually record them as well. So if you've got Plex, that might be an option as well. And, and MB same thing. I have nothing to add.

You mentioned the two that I thought of too. So, yeah, I never, I never used mine though. You mentioned the two that I thought of too, so. Yeah, I never used mine though. I went as far as to before they put installation in my attic, I actually put an antenna in my attic because I didn't want to mount one outside. But every time I go to use it, there's just ads on the TV. And so I turned it off automatically.

So I don't want to pay for ads. Yeah, I thought you get free ads. Yeah, they're free ads, free over here ads. I've got a little thing I was working on. This is a contemporary research. This is a CB radio. Yeah, I get free ads. Yeah, they're free ads feel the air ads. I've got a little thing. I was working on this is a Contemporary CD radio. Yeah, I know it does. It's a commercial version of all this stuff, but it's like RS 232 on it so if that tells you anything about what it is, but it's like a Like I would you would see in a broadcast rack or something like that But it it's it's this it's the same idea as the silicon labs one. I don't know,

I'd probably go a tablet at this point to you. Yeah, you still just have to polish to my opinion. Yeah, do you have to just add a hard drive to it or something like that? Is that what you I thought you had to do that in the past? Then I don't remember right now forgot I think they just have built in storage with the newest version. It's got it says it's got 50 out 50 plus hours of onboard storage. So I don't think you can explain it. You can probably do some kind of like NAS or something that I would imagine.

Yeah, I remember in the past, I mean, storage was probably a little more, we interviewed them like years ago, back when Jason was doing the show. It was a long time ago. And I think they had like, you could do all this stuff, but you had to add your own like USB hard drive and then it became an NVR.

So on their frequently asked questions you can, that's what they say, if you want to expand your storage you can use the, you can use a portable USB hard drive between one and eight terabytes in size. Oh there you go. So. Easy enough to expand. You can watch a lot of Golden Girls reruns on the eight terabytes. Oh.

I can tell you. that's a good one. All I can pick up on this thing is like one channel. Probably one of the local channels. The antenna's just like hanging up behind. That's what that white wire you guys can see right there. That's what it is. It's just running off that direction. And it's just one of the indoor crappy little antenna things.

And I can pick up one channel when I put it over there. Over here, it didn't pick up anything. I need to put it in the window or something. And it only has John Wayne cowboy shows on all the time, just constantly airing. All in black and white. And I just can stick that on and leave it on in the background and not pay any attention to it. This is a great device.

Great device. Anyway, good luck to you there, Paul. Let us know what you choose. Yeah, let us know. Let us know. I don't think you can go wrong with either one of those suggestions, though. All right, and if you thought we weren't going to talk about Sonos anymore, we are. Keeping that streak alive, baby.

Once an episode, baby. It's all because of Alan here. So he says, so as much as I enjoy listening to the podcast, I can't stand the constant Sonos bashing. The bashing usually is because the person isn't caught up on current Sonos education. And as much as everyone thinks it's an easy DIY product, there's some things that need to get done correctly for things to work. Regarding Gavin and his Sonos, one thing no one mentioned was a hybrid system of hardwired and Wi-Fi not using SonosNet.

This can be achieved by hardwiring a device and then going into settings and turning Wi-Fi off. This turns off SonosNet and still allows your devices to run on Wi-Fi while having the products hardwired. You can either plug in multiple devices and then turn off Wi-Fi on, but all but one. This will use SonosNet, or if you turn Wi-Fi on, but all but one, this will use Sonos net. Or if you turn wifi on all the devices that are hardwired and still use wifi for the devices you can't hardware.

I, okay, I'm confused on that last part, but it sounds like there was a solution in here. And I swear Gavin, I think you tried this. Yes. So, so We may have skipped it. Cause you, you've been working on this for a while. And I think we may have skipped it when we talked about it on this for a while and I think we may have skipped it

I just want to clarify clarify it for y'all. I just want to say y'all but Sonos bashing. Hey, I'm not to put out a tear up to that. Sorry. I'm not so no splashing Because I am I'll let you get it to your point, but I'm not Sonos bashing because I had a working Sonos. Though what I was doing was this was a personal, um, like learning experience for me. I wanted to see if I can make my Sonos better. Right. And I wanted to try all these scenarios because I've read that you should do it this way.

You shouldn't do it this way or whatever. And why, and why not? And I never believe like a lot of the explanations seem like they were outdated now and stuff. So I kind of went through this on my own to try this out. So I love Sonos. I have nine of them. I, you know, like I'm not going to, I don't bash them.

I think they have issues, but you know, like it's probably something I did, or sometimes I don't think it's something I did. I think it's them, but I still highly recommend them. So in that hybrid setup now, I did try that. So I plugged in my Sonos Beam and I did turn off the Wi-Fi on it. And everything else was just connected over the Wi-Fi. And that's what I was trying to accomplish was getting everything on wifi. But then when I looked at the matrix, it wasn't getting rid of the wifi.

It was still using that Sonos net. So one thing I found in doing all of this was that, you know, there's so many variables to this thing. And one of the variables is, uh, came into play with TJ set up is like the mix of new and old, right? Like you have some of the newer stuff that doesn't even use Sonos net. All my stuff is a lot older. So I wonder if I'm using the older stuff and it just doesn't like to play nice.

But where I'm at right now, and I think it's the most ideal, but it's not easy for everybody to do is I just hardwired everything except the surrounds in my family room, which it uses its own little network and that's fine, I just hardwired everything except the surrounds in my family room, which it uses its own little network and that's fine. But I hardwired everything and the response time, the reliability, everything just went up. Now the other thing that could have been affecting things was my Wi-Fi reliability too and stuff like that.

There's so many factors in this. So I went through this as a learning experience and I came out with actually a better setup now than it was before. I know TJ, I'm going to let you get to this point. I really wanted to jump on this point too, but we shouldn't have to do this. Go ahead, TJ. Yeah. That's the thing, right? Because if a company is going to sell something at like Best Buy, like nobody needs to learn how to do this crap. That's always going to be my thing, right? Because if a company's gonna sell something at Best Buy, nobody needs to learn how to do this crap.

And that's always gonna be my argument, right? Is that if I can buy a product at a big box store, I should be able to just plug it in and it should just work. And it shouldn't matter what setup I have. I shouldn't have to go to settings, I shouldn't have to adjust this and that. You don't do that with anything else you buy. Like a receiver? You don't do that with a ring? I mean, there to adjust this and that. Like, you don't do that with anything else you buy. Like a receiver?

You don't do that with a Ring? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things. Nobody buys receivers, Seth. No, but like, if, like, if, but for example, like Ring cameras, right? Like Ring cameras, for all their issues that they have, you don't have to do any special settings for them. You connect them to your wifi and you watch the video

and like, that's it. And like, if Ring can figure that out with video then surely Sonos can figure that out with audio. And I understand that syncing up audio is difficult because you have to get the latency right and the syncing up and all that jazz. I understand that. But this is a consumer product at the end of the day and I shouldn't have to learn how to do any of that. And the issue is that when you're a professional and you sell Sonos and you still have problems

setting up Sonos and you still have to do it a certain way, like that's an issue. I think it always happens. It doesn't matter how you slice it. Like that is an issue because it's a consumer brand at the end of the day. This is not a dealer locked in product where a professional has to come in and install it for you.

This is a $200 wireless speaker that you can buy at Best Buy. Yeah, yeah. I think it's kind of like, it reminds me of the home assistant conversations we have where maybe the Sonos needs like an easy switch and it turns off all these things that could mess up the system. Maybe that's what they're trying to do.

I don't know. And then either maybe like a hard install or a professional install switch that you turn on and it gives you access to, well, first of all, like I said last time, they need to redo like all of the tech support debugging stuff to where it actually makes sense. Oh yeah, well that too.

That's a garbage website, like the 1400 port thing. Yeah, they need to redo that because I was trying to understand how to read it and every article is outdated, right? And eventually, you know. Well, it's outdated itself. I mean, look at the web page. It's like made from in 1999.

They didn't update it. Well, and it's like me, what I called tech support the other day for Sonos and they're walking me through changing the settings for SonosNet, even though my issue isn't with SonosNet products. And it's like, what I called tech support the other day for Sonos, and they're walking me through changing the settings for SonosNet even though my issue isn't with SonosNet products. And it's like, well, if tech support is walking me through SonosNet issues, then they don't even know what's going on. So this is a fundamental company issue, and Sonos was never like this before.

Until recently- That's the key. Until recently, like if you had Wi-Fi issues with Sonos, you plugged the speaker in and the problem was resolved and that was it. And that's most of the time what we told people. It was like, well, I have problems with my Sonos dropping out, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, all right, hardwire speaker. Oh wow, everything works great now. And the issue was resolved. But you can't do that anymore because that's not a thing on newer speakers. And that's the issue. I wanted to loop back to that because you briefly touched that on your first rant.

And I was thinking, the thing is that this hasn't always been this way with Sonos. Sonos had figured that out. Sonos had already done everything. They realized everybody's Wi-Fi was terrible before. Yeah. They had already figured out how to make the product that you just plug and play and run away with, right? And the problem that exists today

because of blah, blah, blah excuses, is that they, well, they have a product that doesn't work like it used to. It's gotten measurably worse. And I don't think there's any problem in us complaining about that. Maybe not every episode, but maybe so, I don't know. I try not to do it every episode,

but it's just it's one of those it is very annoying. It's one of those products that's just always worked. And now it doesn't just always work. And like that is very frustrating. That's like, that's like get in your car and like it doesn't turn on the same way or doesn't drive the same way. Like something's wrong. It shouldn't do that. Right. I have I have this mirror on my car. I don't know what happened to it. Probably something at some point in time, when you get in the car, like, you know, they have, you have the like self-setting mirrors or whatever, and like you push the button and it saves where your location is. Well, I'd never noticed this when I first bought the car, bought it used or

whatever. And, um, I was like, I looked over when I first bought him like, oh, wow, that mirror is really far set out far. Like that lady who owned it must've like like she must have sat way back in her seat or something to get it to look like that. So I adjusted it. And then the next day, I'm like, Hey, that mirror is back over there. Oh, I guess the presets not working. So I set the preset back. No, no, no, no. Every single time doesn't matter

every single time that mirror folds out. The mirror goes back to like the wrong spot like way out that way. And that's exactly how the Sonos system is like it should not do that. It's a frustration on the car that I have like I have to get just the stupid mirror every single time. With Sonos, we literally used it today. I thought I had all the problems solved. And for whatever reason, I don't think it's my network. I think the Sonos system in their garbage app, like we couldn't adjust the volume. We were like trying to get the volume adjusted. It just wouldn't, everything else was working. You could group, you could ungroup, you could pause,

you could play, you could select music. Everything else was working except it wouldn't let you turn down the volume in the room we were in. Absolutely infuriating. Why? That points to garbage software. I'm sorry, like I'm a software developer, that's garbage. I really don't care what limitations you think you have.

That's awful. That's an awful experience. And we're sitting there with having blasting music in the room, we can't even turn it down because their app is just unresponsive. My wife ended up like closing it out, going back in. Like you force crash the app, magically stuff starts working again.

Oh, it must be my network. No, I don't think so. I don't think so Sonos. Still got work to do. Yeah. Yeah, and there's two ways that you know this is a Sonos issue at this point. The first one is the fact that they fired

like six high level executives. I mean, like, you know, if you didn't mess up, you wouldn't fire people. Let's just be honest with that. You'd fire maybe one or two people, but they've gotten rid of like six people at this point. But I was messaging back and forth with Tom Conrad a couple of weeks ago,

and he kept insisting that it's a Sonos issue. So I mean, if the interim CEO is gonna own up to it, I'm just gonna blame Sonos every time, so. Yeah, I'm really hoping they can get it back to where it was. Honestly, like it's a great product. It sounds great. It looks great. It operates great. When it was to where it was honestly like it's a great product. It sounds great It looks great. It operates great when it was recently didn't have any problem. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? This is literally last year when they pushed out the update before the Sonos ace headphones

Like everything was working fine, and then it just all went downhill. So it's all it's all relatively recent So we're gonna we're gonna keep ranting about it. I'm sorry If you're tired of hearing about Sonos, then I don't know what to tell you. We gotta keep that streak alive. I've spent like $5,000 on my Sonos and it doesn't work correctly. So like I'm mad about it. Yeah, well, Tom's AI bot told you,

talked you down off the ledge, I think a little bit there. So, hey. He did get it to work a little better. So I'll give him that. I still like my Sonos too though. Yeah, it's like, it's something that you can't really replace. I know we had Vessel on, and Vessel makes a good product and everything,

but there's no other real competition with Sonos. And until there's a replacement for Sonos, I have to keep using Sonos. I don't like it, it sucks. Trust me, I know, it sucks. Yeah. All right, well, we'll leave it at that. Trust me, I know, this sucks. All right, well, we'll leave it at that. Trust me, it sucks.

We'll leave it at that. Maybe there'll be no bad... Well, there's definitely not going to be any bashing next week, because we're not going to have a show, but maybe the week after we won't talk about some of this at all. Who knows, who knows? All right, well, if you have any questions, feedback, comments, picks of the week, we could really use those.

Or great ideas for a show, give us a shout, email address is feedback at home tech.fm or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates. Well, first we got home assistant updates and home assistant 2024.3 has been released. And that means I need to go update my system because it's probably not updated. And, um, Kevin, tell us about it while we, while Seth updates. Tell us about the cards I'll be able to make.

Yeah, basically you want to update your home, make sure you update your home assistant. It's just easier to do it month by month and fix it, you know, in little bits than have to do a year update and fix a whole bunch of things. But, uh, this one has, uh, they did it a lot, focus on the tile cards, um, tile cards and other things in the UI. They added a lot of nice little features to make your dashboards that much better.

And it's worth the upgrade. As usual, make sure you check out the breaking changes, new integrations and stuff like that from the article. Another thing they added was streaming from the LLM. So basically when you tie in your home assistants to a local, you know, AI or whatever, it would send off the prompt and the AI would do all its thinking and then send back the full answer and that causes delay while they added streaming now, so it streams the response back to you. So you get a faster response.

Oh cool. Like the response back to you. So you get a faster response. Oh, cool. Like the response will start faster and then you can also do things like interrupt it part way through and stuff like that, right? So yeah, if you have your home assistant, uh, voice assistant, stuff like that, it will work much better and you'll have a better experience. Um, they also had an article about, uh, what's it called? Music assistant. Um, they updated that recently in, in home assistant as well.

And if you don't know what music assistant is, it's basically their, uh, built in streaming service. They're, their whole home streaming service is built in. It ties into online services, allows you to manage your playlist and everything. And then again, it will, um, integrate with their home assistant, voice assistant. I'm saying assistant so many times. It's like, so many assistants are your assistant.

Yeah, exactly. But, um, elevate your assistant. Yeah, you're elevate, it will elevate your assistant. Uh, so you can control music and ask it, you know, to play specific bands or whatever it is you listen to. Um, it looks really good. I played around with it before and I was trying to get used to it. Um, it's just, I couldn't, um, it looks really good. I played around with it before and I was trying to get used to it. Um, it's just, I couldn't, um, it wasn't an interface that I would give to the

wife and tell her to use to play music. So if they, if it looks a little better than I may get her to use it, but it's just right now it's so much easier. Just AirPlay, whatever we're listening to on our phones to the speakers, but something to check out people love it. They're adding a lot of features to it and it's constantly growing Yeah, they I think the the biggest thing is they got a Spotify connect to run on the voice preview edition So that yeah exactly and even like you're not stuck with this the Voice preview edition you can send the audio to your Sonos speakers and other types of speakers too. So it's a really good product to check out.

But yeah, that's the latest update. Check it out. You probably done updating now. I do find all these music and updates and voice assistant updates to be more like a music player thing interesting coupled with like when TJ was really ranting and raving on social media about his Sono system. I do remember Paulus saying, hey, keep an eye on us, we're working on something. Yeah, I didn't want to say that because it was like a little rumor.

There was a little insight scoop there, but I don't know what it's going towards. I don't know where he's going towards or what he was hinting at. So maybe we'll see. Yeah. They could definitely do a lot with the, with the little, with the little hardware and product they put together, they can definitely do a lot with it. So it will be interesting to see if they come out with a, yeah, I don't think

they're going to come out with anything as an HDMI on it, right? That's going to like, yeah, they're not a Sonos killer. They're not even close to a Sonos killer. They're even closer to a Sonos killer anyway. So, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, good stuff on the, the, the, the home assistant. Did anybody do anything? I didn't do anything this week. I have some software I'm working on that I, I, I shared with you guys. Um, I still have to wrap up my OSC driver for control four and get that published, but you know, it's out there.

I was traveling for work, so I didn't really get much, you know, I got a second AI port sent to me, so I didn't really get much. You know, I got a second AI port sent to me, so I'm playing around with that. Now I'm trying to get my automate like my front door to unlock when it sees my face at the front door, I'm trying to figure that out if I can get that to work with home assistant, I will see a report back next week. Um, but yeah, not really much. Oh yeah.

And, and I, I, I handed it to this earlier. We just kind of skipped over it because we didn't write it down for the pick of the week, but like, if you are in the hub and you, and you're, you're a supporter of the show, you will be able to see Gavin's pick of the week there. Uh, from what TJ sent to him in the box. This is a family friendly show. So I couldn't really mention it. I can't really.

If you pay one, give us $1 a month. That's it. Just $1 a month. You can see the gift I sent to Gavin. We can't, we can't show it on the, on the podcast though. Sorry. It got quite the reactions. Yeah.

I died laughing when I saw that. Yep. Yep. It's good stuff. Well, if you, uh, it's got something special there in the box, TJ. Just for you, Gavin. Step one, TJ got a box. We're just gonna leave it at that.

And if you become a member, you can check it out in the hub. Put something in the box. Ah, TJ. It's fun. Whenever I set a package out, you never know if you're gonna get a fun box or something in the box. So, you know, Seth or Jimmy, they got shrimp boxes. Gavin got a regular box this time, but he got something in the box.

So whenever I ship you something, you never know what you're going to get. Never know. Never know. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up the show this week. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.com slash support

to learn how you can support for 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 Slack chat The Hub, where you can see what TJ sent Kevin! Yeah, it's really funny. And then, yeah, want to help out McIntosh what's a show financially We just appreciate a five star review on iTunes or positive rating in whatever podcast you listen in That's gonna wrap up the news here on home tech everybody Have a great weekend and we will see you the week after next till next time y'all. Take care y'all

Now the Canadian's doing it. So yeah, TJ, like, yeah, CJ sent me a suck a bag of scandy. You know, you put the show and then you can put the home tech after hours effect for the beep on it. You know, you put the smoke detector sound. Yeah.