HomeTech.fm - Episode 520 - Reversible Socks with AI

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

On this week's show: Two weeks of news from all around the industry including updates from Amazon, Google, Sonos, iRobot, Josh.ai, IKEA, Home Assistant, and more! We also take a few moments to answer questions from the mailbag, review a few open projects, and turn our socks right-side out. All this and so much more on this week's HomeTech!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 21st. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, y'all. I'm TJ Huddleston. Are we still y'all in it? Why not? Because I'm in Pickering, Ontario, y'all. And I'm Gavin Campbell.

And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, all about y'all's home automation and home technology. And guys, this is a funny story. Traveling last week, got back in town, and I was like, hey, we need some groceries. Go to the grocery store and go to Costco. And I was like, Costco? He's like, yeah, we need some- We need a lot of groceries. We need some paper towels and all that stuff.

You've got to get it from Costco, right? Because you get a big giant box of it. And a boatload of paper towels. Yeah. Cause we're running a business here at the house. You know, it's a waste in paper, I guess. Cause it goes by pretty quickly. Hey, kids are messy. So it makes sense.

It says, I get to Costco and on there at the bottom, it says new TV. Yes. Now I thought it was a joke. I didn't, I think I was being played. So I took my time and I looked at the new TVs and there's two TVs that I liked. But, and we had some discussion in the hub

about which one, which one we were looking at. The LG, the LG what, C4 OLED. Yeah. And then the same, if not exactly price matched of it. The Sony, what's it called? The Sony. Bravia 8. Is it the Bravia 8 or Bravia 7? I don't know, it was like the same. Bravia 8. Same price, $1,500,, what's it called? The Sony. The Bravia 8. Is the Bravia 8 or the Bravia 7?

I don't know. It was like the same. The Bravia 8. Same price. $1,500, $1,400, somewhere in there. I don't know. I didn't think that I was gonna get away with, well, I mean, I would have.

I would have, but I didn't think I was gonna get away with just like showing up with the TV. I thought it was a joke. So I was like, you know. And I got home and I was like, you didn't get a new TV? She expected it. Man. The one you can get a new TV. She expected it. Man.

The one time you get permission. Exactly. So she keeps, she just mentioned to me like, hey, you need to go get a TV. So I got to know like, I'm on the right track with these two TVs. Like, can I go wrong with either one? They both look beautiful. No, I would personally, I would do the Sony myself. I have a LG C3. I think Gavin, you have the same one, don't you? Yeah, something like that.

It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. I just prefer the Sony operating system and stuff more than the LG. And I don't know, Seth, you told us you're not gonna use the operating system, but unfortunately you have to at some point. You're gonna have to play with the settings,

you're gonna have to do stuff, and the Sony is just better for that in my opinion. So I would do the Sony. Wait a second, is the Sony an OLED or a QLED? Oh boy. That's an OLED. I think it's a yeah, I thought it was OLED It looked just as good. I'm surprised. It's an OLED. If you go with the Bravia 8, it is an OLED Okay, so the Bravia 7 may have been what I was looking at now. I'm confused if I if I oh And the Bravia 8 the Sony Bravia, has an 8.9 mix usage reading on ratings.com. So that's how you know it's good.

Okay, it was definitely that one. So the other one was about $100 less. I'm like, why would you get... So that QLED one looked great. Looked just as good as the OLEDs if you're direct on, but as soon as you get off access, it was... you started getting the washed out contrast on it. Just barely off axis. So I was like, you know what?

If you're paying that much for a TV, you might as well get the OLED. So that's when I started looking at the OLED. Yeah. And I think I haven't really done much with this myself because I always just steer people to OLEDs. But if I remember correctly, QLEDs are better for a brighter room. So if you have a room that has a lot of windows, or you're gonna be watching during the day, the QED is technically better for that.

But overall, I think the OLEDs are good. And I don't know, I would stick to the OLED. Most of our time it is watching TV at night. There is a window in the room. So, and it can be, I mean, it can be bright in the room if we wanted to, but we can also shut the shades if we're having problems with it.

But I think I'm gonna go with that. I keep leaning towards the Sony. I don't know. I've always had problems controlling Sony's and LG's. I don't have problems controlling. You know what? Can I give you a bit of advice? Avoid the LG, please. How are the ads Gavin? Are the ads okay? Okay, I've been fighting with my LG ever since I got it. It's an annoying TV. Um, it seems like with every firmware upgrade, they break something. Like I'm fighting with like the screen being too dark and stuff like that.

And then you gotta go on some Reddit threads and stuff like that. And if you want to use like any feature such as like AirPlay to the TV, you have to agree to pretty much everything, which then re-enables, puts it online again, re-enables, um, all their useless stuff that just, you know, you get ads, you get this, you get that. Um, it's an annoying experience. Um, drives my wife crazy, especially cause we use a Harmony remote. So then she's got to remember that she's got to switch it over to LG remote mode and then she can answer. Yeah.

And yeah, I just don't know why they keep doing this. And then she's got to remember that she's got to switch it over to LG remote mode. And then she can answer. Update. Yeah. And yeah, I just don't know why they keep doing this. If you're going to get a dumb TV, then, you know, and not use any of that stuff. Like you can use AirPlay through the Apple TV or something like that, you know, then leave it unplugged, but you'll probably want to do some update to the firmware at some point to fix something. Um, and then they'll catch you then. My biggest annoyance with the LG, cause I'm like you, Seth.

I'm not, I don't use the LG TV software and I never touch it. My biggest annoyance though, is every time it has an update, it shows up on the screen and it won't go away for like forever. I'm sure it's like 30 seconds or something like not obnoxious, but so obnoxious. Yeah. And I don't think the Sony does that. So that, that alone is making me point tonoxious. Yeah. And I don't think the Sony does that. So that alone is making me point you to the Sony. Yeah, that popped up to me today, actually.

And I just, to get it out of the way, I just agreed to it. And I never have my TV remote, cause why do I need my TV remote? So then I have to go find my TV remote and then do the update. And then it's like, all right, well, I'll do it when you restart.

And I'm like, that's cool. You can just did that in the background cause I have auto update on, but that's fine. I think they know that's a problem though, because actually under the updates, um, message, they actually say you must use the LG remote. So I'm pretty sure people have been complaining about that too. Yeah. No, it's, it is very aggravating.

So just, just go with the Sony Seth. All right. All right. You're pushing me that way. If you have two LG C three owners telling you to get the Sony, it's just like your pains's over here. Get the Android TV. Android doesn't do anything wrong with Android.

Google doesn't kill anything. You know, honestly, like, Android is one of those things that, like, for the longest time, it was always slow and didn't run well and stuff like that, but I feel like the Smart TV, for some reason, is really good. And by really good, I mean, just like any other Smart TV, but it works a little bit better because it's not some weird proprietary thing. Yeah. Wow, it's 50 pounds.

Yeah, OLEDs are heavy. All right, well. Yeah, and Sony hasn't made, there's obnoxious where they're like three fourths thin, but like you have to like grab the really thin part to like mount it and everything like that. So Sony's a little easier with that. LG, I hate picking up because it's like,

the border of it is so thin. And it's like, where do I grab this thing to put it up on the wall? Right, so I'm gonna break it. That's the one, it has like the bottom part, bottom part is like bumps out. Yeah, it's like an iPhone, right? You know, it's like, it's got the really thin

and you can grab it and everything like that, but then it's got that giant bump and you're like, can you not just make it the same size? It's lighter though. The TV's only 36 pounds. Is that the Evo you're looking at though? Because there's like a LG G4 or C4 Evo. Yeah, it's an Evo AI.

I think the Evo is lighter than the regular one. And I don't know the difference between the C4 and the Evo. But yes, there's quite a big weight difference in them. Interesting. It's definitely what I was looking at, unless it's only $100 difference between the Evo and the non Evo or whatever But alright, well, I'll um, she keeps asking me if I'm gonna go get this TV. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah Whatever. So the problem is the problem is like I can get the TV and I think cuz you think so like

Magically that this TV is gonna get hooked up and's going to work. That's not how that works. I've got to take down, it's going to replace the main TV. I'm not going to like take the main TV. I have never liked it's a cheap LG from whenever and it's got the instead of like zone dimming, it's got the zone. You know how they have zones, right? This must have like a zone on the left-hand side and a zone on the right-hand side.

Cause if there's a spinner, like the LG updating spinner thing that happens every now and then, if you're in a dark room, when the spinner gets to the right-hand side, the right-hand side of the screen lights up. It gets to the left-hand side, the left-hand side of the screen lights up.

I'm like, I hate this TV. So it wasn't, well, it was only a few hundred bucks when we bought it a number of years back. And I think it was like one of those, we got a coupon for it, so why not? You're gonna splurge now. Yeah, now we need a real grownup TV. And we watch enough stuff and a lot of the shows now,

like they're getting darker and darker and darker. Yeah. But look, you're in a good position. I had to convince Nicole we needed a new TV when we moved in the house. And I was like, no, no, it's going to make a big difference. And luckily it did make a big difference. So you're in a good spot. You just need to do it, Seth.

Yeah. You need to go tomorrow. I'll give you some advice. It's easier to ask for permission than it is forgive or better ask for easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Oh, I learned that a long time ago. Yeah. That's just like a general life.

I can't believe Seth, she's actually chasing you, or my wife's like, how did you know we needed a new TV? There's so many sub-projects in this, guys. Come on. You're not, like, I have- A new TV outweighs sub-projects, because look, Seth, you're never going to finish a project anyway. This is a project that you can finish.

I got to change out the mount. The Sonos is mounted to it, right? So I've got to pull the whole old The Sonos, the Sonos is mounted to it, right? So like, I've got to pull the whole old TV down, remove the Sonos thing. I've got to like, I want to change the mount out. The mount was garbage. Like I need to, I need to articulate now, right?

So then I've got to find one of those. Do you have a Sonos sub on it? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've got the old play bar with the sub system. Oh, good. Dude, that's all we have, a play bar and a sub. Oh, well you need a Sonos Arc Ultra now, I mean. Well, okay, we'll see. Now we're just adding on to it.

Yeah. So she started it. So now you get as much as you can and let her cut away. Yeah. I just come home with like two articulating mounts, the Sonos, another sub. But you don't tell her because you're like, no, we need all the stuff for the TV.

I mean. Yes, exactly. It was a package. I can't believe it. It's just a great deal they had at Costco. And once she hears it for the first time, she'll like it, trust me. I'll hook you up Seth, don't worry. No, you have ADI, you can hook yourself up.

Yeah, right. You see, you're stressing over the amount of work it's gonna take to get rid of the TV. Not to have a new TV. Exactly. I can't believe that's your problem here. Seth just doesn't like projects. He's like, I have to, I have to do stuff with the stuff. I don't know. I don't want to do this stuff.

I predict three shows from now he will start the show off with, well, I've taken the old TV off the wall. I got the box. Okay. The box is here. Well, I'll update you next show. You should see if he beat one of my, beat one of my clients. They had a TV brand new in the box for a year before they installed it. So, I'm sure you, I'm sure you next show. You should see if you beat one of my clients. They had a TV brand in the box for a year

before they installed it. So I'm sure you could beat them. He's just plugging in and it's like, certificate invalid, can't update. It's like, damn it, whoops. We wanted to, it's spring break, so we wanted to let our daughter play some video games. She's old enough, it's like, it's time to start playing some wanted to let our daughter play some video games. She's old enough, you know?

It's like, it's time to start playing some games. So we got, we got an old cartridge game. It was like one of those Mario games. I don't remember which one it was, but it's like one of those competitive, like four player Mario games for Nintendo 64, right? So we're gonna do that and play it. I'm sure it'll look great on a giant 60-inch TV in the room. I also measured and it's not going to be fun

to mount the 60-inch TV that we currently have in the room that it needs to go in because it's got like very little clearance. It's to replace my 47, weird size, 47 inch, 46 inch Samsung, touch of color, plasma TV that went bad. Did you say plasma? Your house is going to be cold after you turn that thing off for good. It hasn't worked in a while and it doesn't get cold here anyway. So, it's not a problem. Do you need an articulating mount for your TV?

I want to change them both out to articulating because it's so much easier to service and anything you need to do, like mount and set up. I have another option for you if you don't need articulating. This is the one I use all the time. It's called the Sanus 4D Mount. It's a tilt mount, but it actually pulls out

like five or six inches so you can access behind it without being like a full Articulating so you can still get it kind of flush ish to the wall because you don't have that you don't have the bulk of the Articulating mount but this is this is literally the the default bracket. I use for every TV That's brilliant, and it's and it's not made out of like the thin No, it's not made out of the thin, little... Right? No, it's actually robust. I was very skeptical of those little extending arms at first, because I was like, well, those can't be that strong.

But I've literally installed a 98-inch TV on them, and they're fine. Typically if I go 85 or bigger, I do an articulating mount, just because it is a lot easier. But these are perfect for the majority of installs. Scissor mechanism provides a smooth in and out swivel motion. So you do that and then you get one of these other SANUS Sonos beam or Sonos arc mounts and it attaches to the back of the TV as well. And that's your solution there.

I have those. Oh, I have that on the old- For the play bar. Yeah. It's on probably an old snap AV bracket, honestly. I don't remember. Oh yeah. So, oh yeah. So you just like, you can pull half the TV Snap-AV bracket, honestly. I don't remember. Oh yeah. So, oh yeah.

So you just like, you can pull half the TV off the wall, plug something in. I need to get back there every now and then and do stuff. And I'm scared to touch it. Cause that TV with the Sonos attached to it, it's quite heavy. Yeah. With all the junk I had mounted on to the bracket

to support the electronics and stuff. It was like, once I got it up there, I'm pretty sure I like scratched the wall beyond Oh, yeah, so I was like if I take it down my wife can't be here. That's another thing No, that's fine. It's behind it. See me. Nobody cares about that. I know I know but she will she's like paint the other side of the fence type, you know, so like She's Steve Jobs. She's like you wrecked my wall. It's like you didn't even notice for five years Wait till I put this new one up hold my beer

So yeah, all right. Well, I've got I've got some some things to buy see someone had to wait for this to To get shipped to me, too I got time Poor girl's not gonna ever play any video games. She's like back to school now You get to play this game. We teased in front of you for the whole week. Just give her an iPad. Aren't kids just using iPads anymore? They don't even watch TV.

Yeah, if she could, well, she tries. She steals the iPad, runs off. Now that you said that, it's not here anymore. So I wonder where it is. She loves playing Minecraft, so she'll go in there and do all sorts of stuff. My favorite thing is I did like a hundred inch or 120 inch movie theater for somebody. And I was like, oh, you know, how are the kids liking it? They enjoy watching movies and stuff. And the homeowner was like, they just watch movies on their iPhones.

And I was like, wait, what? You have this giant screen right here? They just keep watching YouTube videos on their phones in the theater, so I guess that's a win But yeah Kids, they don't like big screens nowadays. Yeah. No, they get you get a little private screen You can watch your videos on of course now the Canada's taking away all our videos. We're not gonna get any videos all the good ones Thanks, Gavin Not my fault. I don't know what you're going to do with all that porn, but geez.

Why do you think us Canadians are always so happy? It's quite amazing. Well, we'll put a link to the show notes. I guess there's a threat that Canada is going to cut off the porn supply to America. It's quite staggering to see how much porn Canada is hoarding. I can't believe it. We got all the good stuff. It's an act of war.

We'll put a link in the show notes. The article's quite funny. So anyway, yeah, we're off for a week. I was out of town. I was actually working. I kind of got a new job at a company called DMF. They do lighting fixtures. They are lighting fixture manufacturer. They have a bunch of really interesting products. And I think what they're really known for

is kind of like, when I first saw these things, I was at a trade show and they had this table with all of their parts and pieces that you can assemble. And it was like watching people play with Legos, right? So they're known for like these little, they have the housing, they have the modules, they have all the lenses that's attached to the modules to make like a narrow beam and that kind of thing, all like snaps together and it's all like interchangeable and really well engineered. So they've got some product launches coming up

and I'm gonna be helping them out with their website stuff, so should be fun. Nice. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you came back to us. I was worried about you hitting the big leagues out there and just never coming back to podcasting with us. It's like, just burn the podcast bridge, I guess. I don't know.

The time zones, it's just kind of weird. It's like three hours back and I don't know. I think I could, just for a week, it's kind of difficult, but I think I can make things work. You know, Jason was there for years and we recorded, he was in LA, I was here, and we recorded for years at, I forget what it was, it must have been like four o'clock his time, so.

Well, yeah, that would make sense, because if anybody knows anything about me, I'm usually in bed by like 10.30 Eastern Standard Time, so Seth would have been ready at like eight o'clock and I'd be like, nope, I'm already in bed, dude. We talked about it, but it was only a half serious conversation because I was like, there's just no way. I'd be finishing up at like 1 a.m.

1 a.m., yeah. We might pull that tonight, so we're almost there. You got about 10 minutes for bedtime. Oh man, already falling asleep. Yeah, all right, well, before we get to the headlines and stuff, we had a ton of feedback in the mailbag over the last two weeks. And evidently, y'all are crazy about Florence, Kentucky, because we had so many letters come in.

One here from Randall wrote it to let us know the Florence, Kentucky water tower was constructed before the Florence mall was built The tower said Florence mall except it wasn't a mall yet. There was a big uproar of Over building them all I guess and something happens yada yada yada developer walked away So they changed the city just went up there and just painted over the the M Painted a big Y and that's I love it. Yeah, it's brilliant. And kind of the same email from Carlton there. He says he's in Indianapolis, but he used to live there and he kind of had the same story.

Yeah, he says a little different story though. He says, there was a, when the water tower was built in 1974, the mall paid for the words Florence Mall painted on the tower. There was then a lawsuit from other businesses and it turns out it's illegal to use municipal property to advertise commercial, which obviously that makes sense.

Yeah. And as a form of mild protest, the advertising was removed, not by repainting over all the letters, but rather just by changing the M to a Y. They had a few buckets of white paint and a few buckets of black paint. Like man, it'd be so difficult to repaint this whole thing, but I can get you one letter.

You know, one person thought about that idea and everybody else is like, that's genius, Jim. Good job. Get on up there, Jimmy. You just saved us $15,000. Yeah. So every time I travel through Kentucky, it's one of those landmarks that you just, you know, you've reached Kentucky whenever you see the water tower.

So it's cool to hear some of the backstory on that and find out why it's actually there because I never knew why. Yeah, pretty cool story. And if I ever drive by and see Florence, y'all, I'll know that there was once almost a mall there. You're only three hours away from me. That's what you'll know. Oh, there you go. That's probably what I'll be doing driving up saying hi to DJ. All right. Hope you have some shrimps

Let's see Your boxes of shrimps you mail people All right We have a letter also from from Mike. He said gay guys love the show and the hub He said one topic of light of the key discuss and argue about is how to elevate your network setup. Most people agree on the benefits of segregating IoT devices. However, there seems to be no consensus on whether Home Assistant should sit on the default VLAN or the IoT VLAN. It's obviously a significant usability and security pros and cons to either setup. So I'd like to, I'd be interested to hear how you guys structure your unified networks.

I'm also fine if you want to refer to this as a cabin as a service and send me a bill. So, well, yeah, Mike, the invoice will be in the mail. What do you guys do? I kind of have my own opinion on this, but what do you guys do? I do nothing. I know we've talked about this in the past. I know we've talked about this in the past. I am not a fan of VLANs just because it adds extra complications to your network. Right.

Um, I can see the argument for having them, um, in terms of security and stuff like that. Like I understand the need for them, but I mean, when you're already having to fix like homelessness in every month, I don't want to add that into the whole equation and have to fight with the network. If you are gonna do the VLAN though, I would say put your Home Assistant on the VLAN with the other devices because it would be much easier having to open up a port just to get to the Home Assistant

than having to open up ports for Home Assistant to get to every little device. And you will really have to know the ports that all those devices communicate on and it's just extra work. So that's how I would go if you were going to do that. Yeah. I just, uh, I raw dog my internet security and I don't do anything. So I don't, I don't separate anything.

No passwords, no updates. But this, this goes back to like, we whole thing. We don't need any. My Wi-Fi is wide open. I want passwords. Now this goes back to my like, whenever I buy something for the most part, if it's like a smart home device, I don't want it to use internet. And that is the reason why is because I don't want to have to worry about the security of it, right? So all my sensors that I can are ZigBee and Z-Wave because they just communicate locally.

You don't have to worry about internet. The other stuff like my Sonos or like my TVs and stuff like that, I'm not really that worried about at the end of the day. So I just don't personally, I don't see a use for it unless you are in like a commercial environment. A commercial environment is a place that we use VLANs for, most commonly with, you know, guest networks or staff devices and that kind of thing. Point of sale, yeah. Yeah, point of sale, all that good stuff.

I do that just because you don't want somebody else on the network to access those things. But in a home, I think literally the only time I ever did a VLAN, and this is probably not the proper setup, but this is what we did to solve it, is we ran out of IP addresses. And so we put all of our camera stuff on a separate VLAN and we did everything else

just so we can get those extra IP addresses. And that's not even the proper use for a VLAN at that point. So that's the only time I've really used it in a residential setting. Yep, yep. All you have to do is change your subnet to 255.255.252 and you get a few hundred. And if you go 255.255.0, you get a few thousand IP addresses on the same flat network and everything can live there. I usually use the slash 24, which I think is 255.255.252.0. And that'll give you a few hundred IP addresses

on the normal IP schemes that people use. But I'm a big, especially in the home, a flat network thing, you know, flat network person, I will add more IP addresses. And I don't see a value in the VLAN stuff in residential because typically the products that are made to be in your home, if you if you do your research, and you know what you're looking at, they are made

to go out and securely talk to a server somewhere, and then your phone is going out to securely meet up with it. Now I will say that if you're communicating locally, you know that that's kind of the table, like there's a port open on the device on your network, as long as you don't forward that port out to the outside world, you don't have to worry about too much. The biggest thing that people in the IT world are concerned about is like if you have a computer that gets compromised and it starts going out and looking for

IoT devices like cameras and stuff. I mean, we've seen these botnets that are out there, like they'll infect those cameras with the botnet thing. And then that's living on your network and causing problems with everybody else in the world. So that's what they're worried about. I'm not too much worried about it because I don't have those types of devices on my network.

Like I'm not getting the worst of the worst products out there and I do try and keep them updated on that stuff. So I would say flat network, save your headaches for some other like you don't want to come home and be an IT manager and like is this on the 30 VLAN? Is this on the 20 VLAN? Like forget that. I don't want to do that. If that's your thing, if you like looking at all those numbers, go for it. You know, do it. But you have to poke holes in between the VLANs to make everything work or it's just not going to work the same. And Home Assistant is designed to talk to local devices on

a local network. That's their big thing, local control. And if you're on a VLAN, that means you're on a different network. So it's not going to work as great as it could be. But like Gavin said, if you if you absolutely had to probably put those on a VLAN by themselves, put the Home Assistant over there and then poke a hole back over. So you can use homo assistant through the VLAN and talk to it that way because it will be much easier than trying to get all the UDP messaging and broadcast and multicast stuff to work through VLANs. That's awful. No one wants to do that.

So that's all I got on it. Flat networks for when? That's right. We don't need no security. All right. We got one more letter from David. David says, hey, y', a long time listener from Seattle. Your show's episode of my number one pick for listening while on my commute. All right, so I were trying to think of a place,

thinking to place a monitor in the kitchen to watch while cooking or doing dishes. And we only watch streaming apps. We don't have cable or TV or cable. So something like the Amazon Echo Show 10 would probably work, but curious if y'all had any other suggestions. And, um, I can say like for me, I don't, I would say that's probably the perfect device for kids.

Have you guys seen anything else out there that I haven't? I think Amazon's kind of the only one making something that it's kind of all on one device. I mean, for the cost of the Echo Show and what it can do, I think that's probably the best choice. And I know Jimmy, who's in our hub, he's a fan of them. He has them in his kitchen. He likes them. But yeah, I don't think there's anything else really making something like that, unless you want it to mount like an iPad or something like that. But that's a significant price difference too, right? And you probably don't want to do that either. The show seems to be the kitchen screen device you want.

I guess my question is, what do you actually want to use it for? Right? Because if you're just using it to watch TV, then I would just buy a TV because that is going to be your most inexpensive option. Uh, but I feel like if I didn't already have my TV and I was in the Amazon Alexa space, I would do the Echo Show. I would probably do the Echo Show. I'd probably do the Echo Show 15 or 21 just because I prefer that larger screen, but I do like the idea of my hub and my

TV being built into one device. I think that is really cool. And especially the evolution of the Echo Show 15, it wasn't really meant to stream TV apps initially. It was basically just a smart home display. And they've added those streaming apps after the fact. And I think that is a really nice device, especially for a kitchen. So that's probably what I would do, honestly. Yeah, I think I would too, even though I'm not an Amazon Echo user,

but if I had the application to use, I also like just did a quick search for kitchen TV. And there was this company called Slyvox, Silvox, I guess, that makes these under the counter. Have you seen the under the counter TVs? We used to do a ton of these back in the day. They would flip down. They were much smaller screens,

but this has Chromecast built in. It's got Google Assistant built in, Google TV. So that might be an option, and it's only a few hundred dollars, like 299, I think. Yeah, that's nice too, because for me, it's one of those things like, I didn't want it to be in the way, right? On the counter, yeah. Yeah, and in the counter,

we have a relatively decent kitchen, especially for like counter space and stuff like that. But like the less stuff on my counter, the better. And so I like the idea of this, whatever device you choose, either being mounted on the wall or under the cabinet or something where it's not gonna get in your way.

This is component video inputs. Ooh, perfect. I know, right? I mean, this company even makes red ones too. I mean, I need this red one or maybe this oak one. The wood green one, yeah. Yeah. It's the perfect Christmas gift, it says.

They charge a pretty penny for that one though. 339. I'm pretty sure I've installed one of these exact ones before though. Really? Oh, okay. I was wondering what it sounded like. Or something like that.

I don't like it looked just like this though with all the buttons and stuff. I'm like, why is there so many buttons on this? Yeah, I mean, just kind of looking around. There's a couple of things out there like this. But for $400, that would just get the Echo. Exactly, yeah. And there may be, I wonder,

I bet somebody's come up with this. I bet you somebody has come up with it. Under-counter Echo Show 10 mount. Oh yeah, 100%. Yep. Somebody already came out with that. So that exists too. So you can take the Echo Show and probably mount it up underneath your counter. Wait, no, that's something else. Hmm. Well, there's our next idea, guys. We're going to be rich. EchoMounts.com. Yeah. Not taken. Under Echo, what can we call this thing? I don't know.

Gavin could 3D print them for us. People have made cute little brackets that will have for the Echo Show 5. This is kind of cute, guys. I'll send this to you. That's not a TV though, right? The Echo Show 5? That's just a regular old Echo. That's a little baby one. Yeah. It's a little baby one. Yeah. It's a little bracket that hangs out underneath the kitchen cabinet, so.

All right, step one, buy a $1,000 3D printer. Step two, print whatever solution you want. Wait, there's a $1,000 3D printer? Oh yeah, sorry, if you're American. No. Spend $1,500 more on upgrades. This is 100% 3D printed. You can tell because of the way it is.

I can tell by the pixels. It is pretty cool. I mean, that's a good idea. This is what 3D printers are made for. So we need that for the Echo Show 10, though, or the 15, or whatever it is. Could you imagine one of these for the 21? Yeah, do that for the 21.

It probably wouldn't go all the way back under. And it doesn't really help you clear the area. You'd have to move everything out of the way to flip it back up. But it might work. Your mileage may vary. Where's my tab? Anyway, David, just let us know what you do. I think the Echo Show stand is probably the way to go, though.

All right, I think that's going to wrap up the mailbag. We got a bunch of home tech headlines, so what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. All right, Josh AI 2025 Winter Launch Event. I was watching this while in California a little bit. I just kind of like put it on in the background and let it play. I missed the event, so I didn't get to go play in the chat like I usually do, but I did put it on 2x speed and listened to all the updates they had.

And the biggest thing is they didn't launch the remote and they said it wasn't ready that that's kind of what I got of it. Like they had a remote. It was, they thought it was going to come out and it, it, it didn't. Unfortunately, they, they, they said it was just wasn't ready. And I, I respect them from holding back on that because a lesser company would probably like release the remote and then like get a black eye over it, someone else.

But, uh, Josh, Josh AI decided, Hey, we don't want to release this thing cause it doesn't work yet and, uh, we'll release it when it works. Um, and I respect that. They could have worded it like how everyone else words it though. And just say coming and fall. Not, they didn't have to go into details about it's not working yet. It's not done yet. You know, like just coming and fall. Not, they didn't have to go into details about it's not working yet, it's not done yet, you know, like just coming and fall. I think they've been talking about that for a long time.

Cause I remember that came out last year that they wanted to do that. And then I want to say they were talking about it at CDIA too. So I, you know, these things happen when you're building, especially remotes, remotes are very hard to do. And this remote is a lot more than just like your ordinary remote because it has customizable buttons. And when I say customizable buttons,

the actual physical button, you can buy, customize with different symbols and stuff and replace them on the remote. Yeah, exactly. So it's a waterproof remote too. Like, so all that has to be considered. It's a room remote. It's not just a TV remote.

It's a, it's, you can control your blinds, everything. It's made for basically everything in that room, right? So you'll want multiple of them. Well, so Josh controls got a microphone and speaker in it too, like. Yeah. So not bad. Gavin, you've got a ton of notes on this,

of you were kind of taking updated UI, updated, I guess it's Lutron navigation, is that what it is? Well, basically, yeah, they updated the UI. Josh AI's UI is the really good looking UI. Like I like their app and I've been modeling my like home assistant dashboard kind of often and adding little things.

So I'm really impressed with their app. The design team, they did a great job with that, but they added a lot of integrations when you're looking at Lutron Schlage, UNV for cameras, you know, Samsung, et cetera, et cetera. They announced a lot. They even mentioned WIEM in that, which was kind of cool to see them there. Yeah, they're doing WIEM integration. That's right. Yeah. So it was kind of cool. They announced their, we We just said the remote an updated Josh GPT 3.0

So the next evolution of their built-in AI, you know, it's faster. It gives you more reliable answers Probably elevated. Yeah, they elevated they can actually let it see now So this was really cool when you know, they have their panel in a room They can ask it questions about the room and. Oh yeah, it's got a camera. I saw him do that, that's cool. Yeah, it's very similar to the LLM Vision Home Assistant add-on, because you could do the same thing in Home Assistant, right?

And it's really cool what they do with it, so I like that. And they also tie it in with some real-time data, like sports data, so that was pretty cool. That was my favorite demo on the whole thing, because they were going through and doing the demos of turn on lights and stuff. And one of the things that are coming out here

with the new AI features was that you could ask it a question about a song that you didn't quite know the title to. Yes. And he was like, give me a song about New York. It was sometime in the 70s or 80s. And he was like, oh, that's Billy Joel, New York State of Mind.

And then I was like, did they pay for the Billy Joel rights? And it just went cut to the next scene. I'm like, oh. You do what they were doing. They were not gonna get banned from YouTube. They introduced DoorLink for access control. They introduced Josh One,

which is like an Apple TV size, I guess brains to the home now, like it's much smaller now. That was really cool to see. They've focused a lot on the new redesigned audio experience, the integration with audio. And you gave an example of it there, but even their app and stuff is really, really good looking when it comes to controlling audio.

So there is some big announcements with it. If you're a Josh AI person, you have a lot coming. I like what, one of the things I liked on there, um, like they have a concept of having little backgrounds on your app or whatever, and you could ask it to, to generate you a, like AI generates you a background or something. That's really cool. I've always kind of like at a client's house with the control four, like you have the option of swapping out the background,

but it was always like a pain to like, you could take a picture with your phone and it was like, it never looked good. It was like, well, they had good pictures of this room, which is room looks nice. I'm in a nice house, right? If I took a picture of this room with a nice camera, then I can put it on this

touchscreen and it would look really nice when you're using it on your phone. You're app, like it does look good. It looks way better if you have it on there. And I, it's always just the blue background. You can't take nice pictures without like lighting and all that stuff in it. So at least this way you could say AI generate me, you know, another blue background or a pink background to match this pink room I understand. Yeah, it would do it.

Cool stuff. And looking forward to hopefully, hopefully they'll have their remote out this year. You know, hopefully. See, I could tell they were disappointed they didn't get to launch it at this event. So yeah, you can feel how sad they were about that, but you can also feel the excitement around that remote. Yeah. It sounds cool. It honestly does.

All right. Uh, well let's move on. We've got some, uh, intensification news here. This, I saw this guys and I was like, no, this can't be real. Roku is testing auto playing ads that appear before the home screen on its smart TVs and streaming devices. And it's sparking a bunch of backlash from users, the video ads, which have been reported by multiple users,

including one from the movie Moana 2, can be closed, but some users have also not found that option. Roku confirmed that the ads are part of a temporary test to explore new advertising methods, but did not comment on making them permanent. And, you know, everybody's kind of curious. So you turn your Roku on on before you get to the menu. Do you want to watch?

You get an ad, full screen ad about Moana. Come on. It's awful. My house would just be full of broken Rokus if that started to happen. I would know that that's not happening in my house. I don't care. Um, if they, I don't have, actually actually I do have one Roku TV, but I can easily replace that one.

It knows it's not safe where it is. Gavin's going all in on the, on the HTPC. Yes. And I only had one for travel. I ended up swapping out for an Apple TV, which works infinitely better, but weighs about a hundred times more. The Apple TVs are so heavy. I agree with Gavin. The Apple TVs are so heavy.

I agree with Gavin. You know, I don't like ads. I don't like, but I don't install like an ad blocker on my computer or anything like that. I'm not that like, I just don't go to the site if it's awful, right? But if I open up a service and automatically starts playing ads, I close it immediately. I don't even try to like find out I muted or anything like that. It just automatically gets shut down.

And if my TV started doing that, I would remove it instantly. Yep. Like I hate, I hate when like Netflix does it. Like when you're looking through, I don't know if Netflix still does this cause we haven't had it in like a year now, but when you're just like looking for something and all of a sudden, all of a sudden it starts playing like a little preview of whatever you're, you're highlighted on without actually clicking on it. Yeah.

It starts like showing you stuff and I hate that so much. I think it still does it and you can turn it off, but you have to go to the web interface and go through a menu tree to find the setting. It is the most irritating thing in the world. Yeah, my wife hated it enough that she went through those steps. She's like, I'm going there, I'm turning it off.

And she did it. See, we just got rid of Netflix. So that's how I solve my problems. One way to do it. Well, I that's how I solve my problems. That's one way to do it. Well, I gotta say, I have the Roku. It is a decent streaming device. I only use it for Plex and Apple TV when I'm on the road, but it just, this little one, I have the little one.

What is this thing? Oh, I never know, it's got black on black ink, so I can't really read it, but it's a tiny one. I bought it like for $30 at like Office Max or something on a whim. And it just, it works for like about $30 worth. Like it's not that good. Plug the Apple TV in, boom, you can get everything up and going pretty quickly. The only problem is you still need that travel router to get on the hotel Wi-Fi.

And after that, you're good to go. So let's move on here. This is this is this could be pretty cool. Amazon is launching a new premium line of Alexa devices under the Signature brand, aiming to compete with Apple by merging advanced technology with sophisticated design. It's led by Panos Panay,

who joined Amazon September 23rd from Microsoft. This initiative involves a complete transformation of Amazon's hardware, focusing on both internal components and external aesthetics. I don't know. It's a nice little rumor. It sounds like they're going to have some better audio, longer battery life, enhanced security features.

It sounds like it's going to be like, you're going to get the plus there out of Alexa Plus. See what I did? You're going to, you're going to, they're going to have to up the hardware and make it work a little bit better. I don't know, Gavin, I honestly, I don't think the Amazon product lines ever looked bad. So I don't know what they're talking about there. Like it's always looked pretty good to me.

Gavin, what do you think? Would you buy one of these like high-end signature editions? I totally agree with you. I've never thought that their product would look bad at all that I needed a signature vision. They could be probably coming with a better speaker maybe, but I also use my Sonos with everything with Alexa built in. So, I'm covered there when it comes to the audio and stuff.

I mean, they could just buy Sonos and- They could make it as big, well, they don't need to. They could just make it on Sonos, right? Or just buy Sonos and then lock it in and then expand it from there. But, um. That would make their Sonos app significantly worse, I have to say. Or it could make it better, you know? Like who knows?

No, no, it would be worse. But yeah, I, I, I'd like to see what it is they're coming with. And like, I'm not like hyped to buy anything. Like I only buy it if I think it's something nice or something I'll use. Cause I don't need another smart speaker around the house. I have enough as it is anyway. What if it's signed by Jeff Bezos himself? No, no.

What about, what if it's Andy? What's his name? Andy? What's the guy's name? Andy something. Andy Jassy. What if Penos Pined delivered it himself to my house? You know?

And set it up for me? Yes. White gloves. You have to wear the white gloves. Then I'll buy two. Honestly, this makes sense to me, just because it feels like Sona, or not Sona, it feels like Amazon has always, and Sona's team.

Freudian flip there. Yeah. It seems like Amazon has started out by basically just trying to get cheap devices in everybody's hands. And to be honest, they probably haven't really made much. We know they haven't really made any money and they actually lose money on Alexa, right? And so there's no, they're not making money there, but you know that they're selling these devices for little to no profit margin on it.

And so the signature line or the premium line, whatever they want to call it, gives them a chance to actually make some money on the hardware. Yeah. And I don't see people shying away from it depending on how much it costs and what the devices actually are. I actually think it's a really good idea and maybe it'll make Alexa devices not be bottom of

the barrel cheap devices that everybody thinks of them as, and it actually makes people wanna spend money on them instead. But you'll also have the two lines still. You're gonna have the signature line and the poor people line. Right. And I'm happy being in the poor people line, you know?

Like I don't listen to music on my Echo Dot, for example, right? Like I have a nice speaker in the room. So I just want it to hear nice. It could be a little bit more than that too. I'm thinking, what do they have there that Amazon always like, we were talking about the Echo Show 10 earlier, right? It's a good value for the price, right?

So Amazon is perceived right now as that value line. They even have Amazon basics, which is value-based priced product, right? So what if they have Amazon signature now, which is value-based priced product, right? So what if they have Amazon signature now, just like Kirkland, I'm gonna get them a fight with Kirkland over Kirkland signature, but what if they have the signature line

and it's all like higher end products with more margin built into them. Fancy or fabrics on them. Yeah, fancy batteries that last longer, you know, like what if they come out with something that's like you got your Amazon basics and then you got your Amazon signatures. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It could be.

I think it makes perfect sense. Yeah. You can buy your Amazon basic. There's also, there's Amazon basic computer monitors. Do you guys know that? Oh, yeah. They have everything under the Amazon basic thing. So yeah. All you gotta do is find a white label service. You can slap your logo on anything. And they do, they do. I was trying to get us to do it for those

cocks squeezers I brought to CDO. Oh yeah. Home tech cocks squeezers. I was gonna say family show, but I remember what it is you were talking about now. Oh. I. I.

I. Was it TJs cocks squeezers.com? I think. I think. I'm pretty sure I have the domain. It goes somewhere. I have to go look the domain up. You know, it's funny, the one I actually bought on Amazon,

I think it has the words like home tech on it already. So we can just buy those and just sell those. Then we have a signature lineup that's gold. Signature cocksqueezers. Never that, oh yeah, it is Tj's cocksqueezers.com. There it is TJscocksqueezers.com. There we go. That's the one you have? Yeah, yeah.

It actually has a website up right now too. Oh man. So, first to market. It just goes, I think, to our website somewhere. Oh yeah, it's just a picture on top of my ladder. With my crotch in the background. There we go, yeah. I don't know what's hanging out there.

It's just, I could have photoshopped that little skin tone thing out in the middle, but I didn't, I left it there for your imagination. You know, it's hilarious, because I have a really terrible memory and I don't remember very much for unimportant things, but I know exactly where this photo was taken. Yeah.

What's that website again? TJscocksqueezers.com. Make sure you spell the second word right, Kevin. Oh, that's what I was spelling. It's a different website altogether. I should probably get both of them just in case to be safe. TJ's cocksqueezer. You don't want to lose any sales.

All right, moving on here. Well, there's a couple of, I got a couple of FUD stories, of fear, uncertainty, doubt, stories floating around. And the only reason I put these in, I was gonna dump them, but I think we gotta just like briefly mention them so that you, the listener, are educated what's going on. There are all sorts of stories right now floating around

that Amazon is taking away the option of not sending your voice recordings up to the cloud, blah, blah, blah, blah. And one, TJ, I think you said and discovered it's only like three devices. He doesn't say it's not really, nobody's probably using this anyway. And then second of all, like, I've seen stories, there's a story on Wired that's like, Amazon will be recording everything you say. And we're back to that nonsense again, where I mean, if you're a

professional in the audience, you know that you go to somebody's house and they say, Oh, I don't want that in the house. It records everything you say, it hears you talking, blah, blah, blah. And we know they don't do that. They like they physically, they monetarily do not have enough money to record everything you say, record it, process it, whatever. It's cheaper now, but it's not that cheap. And they just, they don't, they can't do it. You would see the outgoing traffic audio streams. If people look at this stuff, they would see it. What it has is a wake word. It wakes up when you say Alexa, and it does its thing. And then it goes back to sleep. If you never say that word, or conversely, if you never have this device in your house,

Amazon doesn't record anything. So if you're that worried about it, just don't buy the device. But I just want to put that on the radar that we'll put a couple of links to these crazy stories in the, in the show notes. I don't get it. I figured by 2025, everybody's smart enough to understand that they don't record anything you say, but evidently these guys still need some, you know, clicks to come their way. So we'll give them some links and you can go over there and read those stories.

And I'm just going to tell you, if they're not listening to you, your phone's listening to you. There's so many things listening to you right now. They don't even need to listen to you. That's the thing. Well, I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago and we were having a conversation about a TV show. And by the time I got back to my hotel room, it started showing up

at ads in my timeline, right? And that's because you were next to somebody else and their phone, their IP address was associated with like talking about that. They were looking at it. They're going to get the information on you they need for you anyways. You know, I'm, I'm in the camp now where it's like, just serve me good ads. You know, like, well, that's the thing. This targeting stuff doesn't work.

Like they target you with stuff you've already bought. Yeah. I don't know why they can continue to invest money in this. Cause it just doesn't work. Like they target you with stuff you've already bought. Yeah. I don't know why they can continue to invest money in this. Cause it just doesn't work. I, it, I don't. I mean, at least, at least listen out for, Hey honey, look at the new LG TV I just bought and then take that off my ad list.

You know, like, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Hey honey, there's a new IP address of an LG TV and it's advertising on MD&S that it's an LG C4 that I just bought. Like, oh, it's going to give me another ad for the TV. Yeah, exactly. Like, come on.

And then another one, there was a huge story that that that went around about a huge back door and expressive chips around Bluetooth. And there's an undocumented here's the headline, undocumented commands found in Bluetooth chip used by billions of devices. And while it's true, like I have, heck, I have an Expressive chip right here that was messing with today. That like, there are billions of devices. I look at my home, all of the Shelly devices run on Expressive, tons of devices that you don't even know run on Expressive, run on Expressive. And they're saying that they found the backdoor. Well, they

didn't. It turned out to be a big nothing thing. And it was basically like, if you're a developer, running the developer environment applications and hooked up to the thing, then you can find these backdoor commands that they use for development. And it's like, yeah, that's expected. That's what you're supposed to be able to do. And they don't have to document the commands to read and write that they use on the back end. They don't have to do that. So I don't know.

It was a big nothing and got a bunch of clicks and there's a follow up story. So we'll put links to that in there. But just know you can go to sleep tonight knowing your Espresso is safe. Big story guys, last week this dropped while I was in LA. And people over there, I tell you, people couldn't stop talking about it. Sonos has decided to cancel its planned streaming video player codename Pinewood. I don't think I've heard the Pinewood until this story, but you know, it's from The Verge, so it was definitely leaked out by somebody. Not Patrick Spence, like we thought, TJ.

Maybe it still is, he's still there, I guess. It's gotta stay for several more months, so. Several more months, yeah. But maybe he's just leaking stuff out. He's like, no, don't kill my pet project. Yeah, I'm gonna leak this to The Verge. All right, so the decision was announced during an all hands call by Interim CDO Tom Conrad,

TJ's IAM buddy there, DM buddy, over there, a skeet buddy on blue sky. Right back, Tom. I haven't heard from you, Tom. Where'd you go? His AI quit you. All right. They're going to cancel this Pinewood. It was in advanced stages of development and had been beta testing for months, evidently. Its cancellation leaves Sonos without a major new product launch for the later half of 2025. And I guess there was a bunch of people working on this. Everybody's kind of been shuffled around move back on to other projects like on making the app better. And then, yeah, they were they were gonna go head to head with Roku, Apple, Amazon, Google, and offer this, this thing that had an AC mic switcher in it. A lot of information out of this article here. I don't know what to think about this, but, you know, guys, before the show,

we wrote a song for it. So I'm not gonna play it on the show tonight, but if you wanna listen to it, you can head on over to the show notes there and listen to, which one are we posting? I haven't listened to it either. I was hoping to hear it on the show, but I guess I'll have to listen to it afterwards.

That's fine. We can skip it for now. I can't play it. I didn't download it and then load it back into the thing. It's called Pinewood Forever. So you know, it's an epic song. We'll put it in there. We have a couple versions.

We have a Broadway musical, if you like that. If that's your thing, we have a Death Note version. So if you like that, you can listen to either one of them. AI can do everything. All right. News from iRobot. Lots of news. They launched a bunch of eight new Roombas out there.

Who knew? They finally got lidar mapping for iRobot. I thought they already had this years ago. I guess they didn't. But I've been using the fancy Chinese version ones that did. And I guess because they're so far behind everybody, they have issued a stark warning to their investors saying that it may face closure within the next year, unless it can refinance its debt or secure a buyer. So they're struggling with a significant financial challenge

recently spent $3.6 million to amend terms of a $200 million loan that they'd taken out in 2023 during the solid acquisition deal with Amazon. So if anybody remembers that, Amazon was going to buy iRobot. That fell through from government approval, I think it was. The government wouldn't let it go through. And yeah, when that falls through, you kind of have to pay money. So a lot of these, they have like a failure clause or something like that. And in a lot of these contracts,

and if they fall through for any reason, like if you back out, the other company backs out, somebody's gotta pay some money. So that must've been from that. But man, what a debacle. These guys have been, you know, the robot vacuum. I could probably, the first one I had, I haven't had one in years though. But I think you guys are Gavin, don't you have a iRobot?

Yes, I have one. And when I used to think of iRobot as like the premium, like robot vacuum, you know, but all these other companies have quickly bypassed them by adding better features, better everything. So, yeah. I think that, what was it? The dreamy bot one today started shipping. I think Jimmy put in our, in the Slack channel, the hub.

He put that the, yeah, the Roborock, the one with the arm, that we saw, the OmniGrip mechanical arm was shipping. So, just to be clear, that's not a feature that I'm thinking is a, you know, an important feature to add in robot vacuums Okay, just to grab random things I don't know I told my wife about that and she's like I want that I want that like all the little socks and little like Hair clips and stuff that my daughter leaves laying around if he could just move them out of the way

Yeah, cuz nothing would ever get cleaned right? I mean it just like goes around it and it's like all right well Well the current one just runs over and then gets stuck and then it cries from like, it sends you a text message like, I'm stuck, come flip me over. If it had an arm, it could just pick it up, move it out of the way. They need to do is come up with one that has got two arms and it could turn the socks back right side out Cause I don't know.

My daughter has not figured out how to take her socks off without them being the inside out. It's amazing. Eight years old. Is that, is that a skill? Is that a skill that people have? Cause I don't have that skill either. I just take my socks off and they're already the way they should be.

Oh no. See, I rip my, I take mine off from the, uh, the top and then I just like pull them off. I must be what she does. Yeah. Every one of them. Yeah. I spend like pull them off. I must be what she does. Every one of them. Yeah. I spent a lot of time reversing my socks as well too. So I always do it before I wash my laundry. We have three against one Cecil.

You're the minority here. Yeah. No, I'm just, I'm again, I am advocating for robot AI. Make AI turn the socks around. No, stop making it do things like, you know, kill us. Like we don't need it in defense. So we don't need it in the killing machine things. No.

Well, let's solve the problem once and for all. Why don't we just have reversible socks? There you go. There you go. Make AI do that. I'm sure it can figure out how to do it. Yeah. Why do we have an inside of a sock and an outside sock?

Why isn't it just a reversible sock? Listen, it made us a death metal song about Sonos. What robot vacuums are you buying, Seth, where you have to worry about them killing you? All of them. No, no, no, no. I'm just talking about in general. They're like, hey, we should make AI figure out how it can kill more people.

And it was like, no, let's make it do your laundry better. Like, let's make it fold shirts. Turn my socks around. Stuff like that. Come on. Yeah, like Boston Dynamics, you know, put those robot dogs to good use, you know, like, he could just like hop around your house and finds a sock and it's like folds it inside out and tosses it in the laundry back. It'd be great.

That's all I need. Or we just dump a laundry basket out there and it automatically folds the socks and punches them together and all that stuff. Like, why are we investing in robots like that? They're not they're not they want them to kill us like that's pretty sure that's all they're like the money isn't killing I guess because they just they're like here's the robot AI thing from you know, we're gonna give you the nuclear codes We'll do that done. What else you need? Oh, you need to have like Hoover up all this data about people and know where they live and know their like traffic patterns and stuff?

Done. Yeah. Anyway, all right. And then we've got a there's a number of stories about iRobot on there. So we'll put all those in the show notes. But they have a bunch of new products out eight new robot vacuums. So go check those out. That's a lot.

Yeah. All right. So graveyard here. Google has killed something again. That's a lot. Yeah. All right, so graveyard here. Google has killed something again. It's like amazing. After nine years, Google is officially ditching assistant for Gemini. Google has announced the disclosure

of the discontinuation of its assistant in favor of this new AI platform, Gemini, making marking the end of a nine year run for the virtual assistant. Gemini is designed to be more advanced and integrated AI solution promising enhanced capabilities over its predecessor. Yeah, I mean, that's what happens when you get elevated. You get elevated on a job, your assistant, you're done. So I don't know, is it I guess I probably should go look and see if this

is on killed by Google. Yeah, killed by google.com. Man, there's so much on here. Just not on there right now. I don't think it's actually killed yet. It's probably just being talked about. It's just promised, yeah. Yeah, and honestly, Google Assistant is one of the best voice assistants out there. I don't really use my Google Home speakers anymore,

but ever since I switched to iPhone, like using Siri is the most infuriating thing because I've used Google Assistant in the past and Google Assistant is so much better. So I don't know, this will be an interesting change, but it's pretty much the same thing. It's just got AI in it. Now with AI. It's got AI. There we go.

They could have just kept it, you know, the typical Google thing though, right? It's like they have a new thing out and it's like, well, we have this thing already that exists. Why don't we have this thing already that exists. Why don't we just put it into that? And it's like, no, let's just create a whole new thing and call it a whole new thing and then literally do no advertising behind it. Unlike this, though, they've actually done advertising with Gemini so people actually know what it is. But that's traditionally the Google Playbook is let's release this new product that replaces an existing product then don't tell anybody. Well there you are. Goodbye, goodbye Google Assistant. Hello, Jim and I. Alright and then there's a warning out there if you

got an older Chromecast or Chromecast audio device out there. There was a big outage due to an expired security certificate. Lapse occurred on March 9th and it causes devices displayed untrusted device error. Google is like, hey, yeah, this is the thing we're working to fix for it, but please do not factory reset because that's going to break everything. So there's a temporary workaround that somebody came out with and, you know, this happens from time to time. These older devices have a security certificate that expires on them. They can't phone home anymore because they need to talk securely to the home base and the certificate for the home base is changed because the date is expired.

Sometimes you can roll your, like if you can figure out how to, you can change the time on your device and roll it back. I've seen that happen. You can change the device time and say, oh no, it's not 2025. It's 2023 and then you can fix it real fast. But we'll see what they do with this. But if you got one of these old devices and it seems untrusted, don't factory reset it. Google says don't do it.

So then it'll be headed towards the graveyard if you do. All right, Ikea, new product from Ikea. They've registered their first thread device with the FCC. It's a temperature and humidity sensor named the Timmerflot. Flot, flot, I give up. Timmerflot. Give up, give up.

Don't even try. It supports, guess what guys, it supports the Matter Protocol. So Ikea is officially gonna matter here. The circular device is powered by two AAA batteries, includes a QR code, 11 digit number for matter setup. And unlike IKEA's typical use of Zigbee or Wi-Fi, the Timmerflot exclusively uses the thread protocol.

So this is gonna be an interesting change. I think this is good. I think this is good for both. I think this is a good sign for matter because like IKEA has a really good reputation and they don't release something that's going to give you a problem. They have really good, like they have a high reputation when it comes to the quality of their products that they sell.

Yeah. Their products that they release are one simple to set up and use and two just work, you know, so this is a good look for matter. Yeah. And somebody was pointing out, I didn't catch this on the first look, but it actually does have a Celsius and Fahrenheit, uh, switch on the bottom of it, uh, underneath, next to the battery tray. And that probably indicates that it actually has to display on it.

So we don't, we don't know that for sure yet, but that's probably what that means. Yeah. We just, we're just seeing the bottom, like the sticker of it. That's so we don't we don't Pro XG lineup. It's their new latest innovation in the professional networking space. They've got the U7 Pro XG access point. It's got a new design. It's kind of that flat circular design. I don't know how to describe it. It's like a TP Linko Mata access point. If you've seen those around, they look basically the same thing. Unifi always looked like a flat like a flat dome and now it's more of a flat surface instead of a dome and it's kind of like hard edges on it now. It says it's

30% cooler, it's got more surface area for cooling compared to the U7 Pro and this offers what three gigabits per second client performance. That's pretty good, I guess. And it's got a 10 gig ethernet inputs on it. So if you need this, you probably know Gavin, didn't you just upgrade all your new, new, new stuff? It's too, you can't too late for this. Right.

So too late for this, but I'll get into that in the project side, but yeah, these are, these are hotter. Yes. But yeah, these are hotter, yes. I actually ordered the U7 Pro XG because my U7 Pro Max has been, it's had issues. Yeah. And so I'm gonna replace it with this XG and pawn this off on somebody else.

I didn't really see it a bunch of switches too. So that's- Yeah. All with ether lighting. Yeah, that's actually kind of that all with ether lighting yeah that's actually kind of cool I wish somebody had come up with that years ago and that was like a standard thing this is like yeah that's kind of smart idea good job guys yeah the pro XG8POE is a device I have wished they have come out with

years ago I don't know how much it can cost though they're used they used to sell one about the same size it was was like a port PoE switch that was really nice to use and solved a lot of problems. And they kind of went out of style for a while and they've been doing the little plastic ones. And now this one, this one may be on a plastic, but it looks about the same size as a better looking one. So, hey, bunch of new switches, bunch of new XG devices.

Go check them out if you're in the Ubiquiti ecosystem and you need all this crazy stuff. They got it for you. So, oh, and then we got a new Sony TV thing that's coming out. I guess we probably should talk about this at the top of the show when I was talking about, see, now I can't buy the TV because they come out with this new one, right?

Is that how it works? Sony's introduced a groundbreaking RGB LED display technology aimed at high-end TVs, home theaters, and film production. The system allows red, green, and blue LEDs to emit light independently, significantly enhancing color purity and enabling a wider color gamut. Collaborations with MediaTek, Rome, and Sanen, my contact just went sideways, Sanen Opto Electronics have been crucial in

developing the displays control processors, LED drive IC, and LED components respectively. Unlike traditional LEDs that use white diodes and color filters, Sony's RGB LEDs produce colors directly at the panel source, allowing more precise brightness adjustments and detailed lighting gradations. This sounds like it is going to cost a hell of a lot of money. I'm sorry. All of that... This sounds like it is going to cost a hell of a lot of money. I'm sorry. All of that. Sony like Sony makes the consumer TVs, but like up in the higher end of range, they're making like the film editors TVs, 4,000 nits on this thing.

96 bit high speed signal processing. This is going to be an expensive TV. I think usually they come out with a expensive version of it, but the features will trickle down, right? Over time. So this is just the beginning. Buy it, Seth. Buy it. You know, I'll get this and then, yeah, I'll get the OLED. Just don't get the ARC with it, you know, but get this thing. They just have to go with the beam then, unfortunately.

We'll put a link to the article here over at C Pro. And then they also link out to the Sony press release, which goes into all the stuff they can do with this thing. So I bet you in this, this is like a new, new panel technology. I wonder what they're going to call it. All right. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over in our show notes at hometech.fm slash five to zero.

All right. Uh, no pick of the week. So let's just move on into project updates. And first thing, a big announcement from Home Assistant. They actually matter. They actually matter now. Home Assistant officially matters. We'll link over to the blog post for them.

They have matter in Home Assistant has officially been certified. So there you go. CSA has given a certificate of appreciation over to Home Assistant, I guess. And, uh, yeah, they've got a, um, they've got a cert certification now. So you can put like a logo on their website. That's big news, but I always looked at Home Assistant as one of the, the, the, the best places to test the latest and matter stuff, right? Because they always had the updated matter versions, even though it

always said beta on it, It's still worked to a point So I was just surprised it took them this long Let's see it says first and foremost from a usability perspective. Nothing will change for you So I guess you know, it's not gonna change the fact that it always says beta Maybe it won't say beta now. Maybe it was like they can use the matter logo or something. I don't know but yeah, yeah, it'll come with a let's see it says From now on the anything that has the matter spec will work perfectly with home assistant and it'll it'll come with a certification badge So yeah, it's a it's a it's a badge you get a you get a gold star

So I think it's good though Like you said Gavin it helps people test and bring these devices online, really put them through the hoops before. Hopefully before all this hits like prime time, people just get tired of talking about matter. I don't know. But doesn't explain why my Eve matter outlook, plug keeps dropping off randomly anyways, so I mean, it doesn't work perfectly.

I had a problem with mine and I realized I probably is probably my fault. Uh, as you do, I moved my, I moved my Apple, the home, what was it called? The home pod mini, the little home pod mini. That's, that's my matter bridge. I didn't, I kind of forgot. I had it hanging out in the garage here for a while. And I guess something's changed. Signals have changed.

I don't know, RF somewhere changed along the way. And we weren't getting a little notification from my daughter's door opening and closing when she was getting up. And I just unplugged it. I never use it in the garage. It just sits in here and wakes up randomly when I accidentally say something and it thinks I'm talking to it. And I just moved into the guest bedroom over there closer to the

room and it works fine. So yay, my one matter device works. And that concludes my projects for the week. Yeah, I guess I can do the job of that because I have a pretty good project for you guys to do. You can try this out. Just leave your house for the week and see what breaks. That's it. Just have your wife stay home and just see what

breaks. Water will turn off. She can't go back outside and turn the water on. Just see what breaks guys. It's it's it's it this this stress test I'm calling it the the smart home stress test and I'm gonna trademark that and yeah if if you if you just just leave home just leave home, just leave home for a week and, uh, and, and see what happens. Uh, it's, it's actually funny that you said that because when I left home on my business trip recently for a week, I thought everything was going smoothly, but one of the drives of my own rate server died.

Start getting nervous. Well, yeah, it was running in emulated mode. So everything was still running, right? Because it was emulated off the, um, parity drive and everything like that. But you're still sitting there. Like if one more drive fails, I lose everything. There's no protection. And I, I'm not near home and everything goes down.

So yeah, things happen. Never leave home. My wife called me three in the morning and said, Hey, water's off. And I'm like, why? Why are you telling me you're at home? Well, that's the big question there is like, why is the water off? What was the reason? The reason is because I left home, Gavin.

That's why the water went off. Okay. I honestly, this one because I left home, Gavin. That's why the water went off. Okay. I honestly, this one, I don't know why. I was like, hey, you know, can you, can you? No, I got nothing. I got nothing. I can't troubleshoot a water thing. So what I figured out was that my sprinkler

is actually hooked up down at the meter before my water is now. So I turned on their sprinklers I was like alright can you go to the front door and see if you hear the sprinklers out there and she heard the sprinklers I'm like okay the water is definitely turned off in the house he's like thanks I know that. I'm glad I can help. Troubleshooting. Yeah the next step is there's a devout thing on the side of the house and you just got to go out there and you're just gonna to have to like turn it.

And it's, it's kind of hard and it's in the dark. And she's like, I'm not doing this. I'm like, okay. So I don't know why it decided to turn off. The flow meter decided to turn off. But it did. And it, and I went and logged in, I logged into the app, the app wouldn't let me log in and I'm like half asleep trying to like fumble and press buttons.

Oh, it's your flow, your flow thing that turned off the water on you. No. Yeah. Yeah. Like there was a leak or something. Yeah. It turned off at like 1130 at night. And she of course called me like three in the morning or something when the,

you know, water wasn't working. three in the morning or something when the water wasn't working. So I was like, I'm asleep, tired, jet lagged, and not making sense talking to her. So trying to troubleshoot under those conditions. Yeah, just leave home guys. It's a great stress test. It stresses so much more than your home technology. Check your relationships out. You can see all sorts of stuff. You're making me nervous now.

I don't want to leave my house. Never going to leave again. Yep. Oh man. Yeah. And so, yeah, that was, I think that was just one of the things I'm probably forgetting more things that, that, that died and stopped working while I was gone. But there was, that was, that was the big one this time.

Every time I leave the house, something stops working. And usually it's the air conditioner and it's summer, but this time it's nice and cool in the winter. So the air conditioner, eh, it's not gonna act up. But the water decided to turn off. And I ended up finding that the app had an update. Like I couldn't log in for something on the app. I updated the app, which you know, it normally does like automatically,

but for whatever reason, it hadn't decided to update yet. I updated it and was able to log in. So there must have had something goofy going on in their servers. And then I saw that it was saying that I turned off the water at 1159, which I did not do. So I turned it back on. She had water. All is well with the world. But yeah, just my idea guys just leave home see what happens Everything's working when you leave. I mean it's working perfectly is you've got all this like remote access and everything Because what you can't do you can't turn the water valve

Anyway That was that was my fun this week Kevin you need a zoos Titan water valve I mean I thought by a Zeus Titan water valve. I mean, I thought by like having the water valve on there is like I'm protecting the house one. Like if somebody just leaves the water running, it turns off, right? But like, if ever there's a problem, I'll just be able to turn the water back on, right?

No. Can't log into the stupid thing to turn it back on. Oh, man. Yeah, that was that was that was a fun. That was a fun phone call. Anyway, Gavin, I'm sure you had some fun phone calls this week. What have you been up to?

Looks like you've been doing quite a bit. I'm just happy I didn't have any water issues like you did. Like, well, that sounds like a- No water issues. I don't know why it turned off. Yeah, and that's one of the fears when, I always wanted to put a water thing on there,

but I do want to be stuck in that situation, right? But some of the things I've been playing with, we haven't been here. I mean, I'm just going to unplug everything in my smart home next time. All that little extra stuff, I'm just going to unplug it. And I'm going to put a TV in, I'm going to Apple TV. I'm going to hook it up right to the TV. It's like nothing will go wrong. Something will go wrong. Don't worry.

Probably the wifi or something. Speaking of wifi, I upgraded my wifi over the last couple of weeks. So, so I had really old unify access points. So I upgraded them all to wifi. Uh, what are they? The U6s. Um, did you have the green access points? Is that how old they were? Like the green light on them? No, it wasn't that old. It wasn't that old. They're all 25-volt power.

They're all Wi-Fi 4, Wi-Fi 5, I think, if anything. So I went with the U6 line. I didn't go to U7 because I hear you complaining about it a lot. And I didn't want to risk that, but I also had one U6. So it was less devices to buy. So I just ended up having to buy three. And I, it was a simple upgrade. I mean, I was like, I'm not want to risk that, but I also had one U6. So, um, it was less devices to buy. So I just ended up having to buy three and I, it was a simple upgrade.

This is what I like about Unifi is for the most part, if you're buying like the same form factor I found, they, they just fit, it was a matter of just unplugging the old one and putting the new one in and readopting it. And, uh, it was a really easy upgrade. And then bam, I'm now on better wifi. So that was like a half hour upgrade, if anything for my house. So it felt really nice.

So now I got better wifi. I did make some tweaks though. You know, and I know we talked about this before. I have the wifi channel, I have it set to auto, but I also, reduce the broadcast power, right? Cause I found they were conflicting with each other. I was getting a lot of interference. So by doing this, I'm getting much better wifi.

And it's just been running great. None of my devices has been dropping off. Everything's been online. You know, I've haven't been having any of the problems I've been having before with my cameras and stuff like that. So I am now wifi happy, you know, so it was a good recommendation. Go, go into six. Very nice.

Very nice. I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad you've made it. You've made it man. Well, for now. And then they just released some, some new wifi equipment, you know, I'll upgrade again made it, man. Well, for now. And then they just released some new Wi-Fi equipment. I don't want to upgrade again. So, you know, like, yeah. And you'll be stuck in the upgrade cycle like I am.

Like, oh, this access point doesn't work well. So let me go and buy a new one. Maybe that will work better. No, they're all working really nice now. I walked around the house with the Wi-Fi Man app. I looked at my RSS I values and stuff like that. You know, I made a little tweak to the R S S I, you know, where it kicks you off if you're below a certain amount.

So forcing you to roam to the other one and stuff like that. But you know, now I find because I've done that, um, certain devices will pick the right access point. Yep. You know, sometimes my devices were picking an access point all the way across the house, but now they're picking the closer one because it's got a better value, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, this is stuff I didn't know before, but I've been watching like videos and reading articles and support things about, you know, wifi and settings and stuff to improve it. And this stuff made sense and it wasn't very difficult to do and it made a big difference.

So much happier now. The only thing we're sense and it wasn't very difficult to do. And it made a big difference. So much happier now. The only thing we're going to disagree on is the auto thing. I feel like you're playing Russian roulette with that, but I'm going to let you learn that lesson. Yolo Gavin, do it, do it auto. I also, I also find with the auto though, it depends on time of day, what interference you have,

because certain times of the day I'll see like somebody's Audi with five signals broadcasting in the neighborhood, right? And then they go to work and then my wifi is less interference again, right? I don't know who owns that Audi. I'm going to have to find them. Actually, I think it's the neighbor two houses down, but I'm going to put a jammer on that car, you know, cause it's showing up in my house, but yeah, I know what you mean about the auto.

Um, ever since I put all my Sonos, uh, again, all they're all wired now. Um, that's just less interference I have with them. They've been working so much better. Right. So I'm going to see for now, the auto has been working great. I get notifications when it changes channels and it's not like I'm arguing with it. Not to it. I'm just like, let's see what happens.

Right. And it works fine. It's been working great. So we'll see how it goes. It's all wifi six, not wifi seven. I know we talked about it and you know, wifi seven is new. It's not as, what'd you say say as mature maybe as Wi-Fi 6 is? So we'll see. I don't I just don't see a compelling need for it anytime soon

It had the six with the Wi-Fi 7 it had the six gigahertz range I think it also utilize if you have devices that use that and they recently released an upgrade that does what they call it MLO or is it MLO? You seven MLO sounds like a band in the 90s Yeah, they just released a new feature called MLO with a firmware upgrade, which is multi link operation But again, the devices have to be able to utilize this where they can utilize multiple bands at the same time. So a lot of people are excited about this, but I mean, if I have nothing in my house,

I have devices in my house still struggling, I have to put them on 2.4 gigahertz networks because they can't even handle anything else. So I'm good with the Wi-Fi 6 for now. I'm getting no complaints in the house and nothing's dropping off. So that was one of my happy projects. So to say little quick followup.

I was talking about LFO. Oh yeah. Yeah. LFO is another group. Yep. Yep. Yeah. They were in the nineties and then I am finding, I'm trying to find it now, but

I found a YouTube video of somebody mounted. This is from earlier in the show mounted an Echo show 15 underneath the cabinets. I think these cabinet mounts are out there. Back to me, Seth. Back to me. Back to it. I think I mentioned the Unified Protect Archiving. We talked about it before. I was playing around with it this week, just to understand what it is and what it doesn't do. So basically, you could set it up so it archives all the detection videos to your NAS at the same time.

Oh, that's cool. Right. So it is kind of cool, but it doesn't do things like if you have your camera set up for 27 recording, it's not going to archive any of that. It's only the notification clips that it will archive over. So it does make sense. Right. Right.

That makes sense. I mean, why would I do want all that? But yeah, I get it. Yeah. So that's kind of cool. So if you're looking to do that, it's, I think they still said it's like a beta feature, but it works. I mean, it was archiving of stuff over.

It says it's only doing that. You might want to go like the defaults on the like pre and post record on the events is pretty low I remember correctly on those like some is like two seconds before You may want to go tweak those if you're doing that so you get a little bit more pre and post But you don't need to um I I Yeah, I get at least a few weeks out of just the you know live 24 videos itself And then if it's able to archive all the events off somewhere else and, you know, up to a point, that's, that's great.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. I like having 27, 24, seven footage too, for like a month or so, just cause when something happens and it wasn't caught as an event, you can, you can scroll back, like I remember like something happened in the street, but I don't watch events in the street. But when I was recording 24, seven, I could still go back to try and see what happened in the street, because it's in the background of the video.

Right. But, you know, you work with what you have. One thing I was having issues with in Home Assistant, let's talk about Home Assistant for a bit, but the February update to Home uh, for some reason, for a number of people was discovering their, um, uh, Z-Wave stick again and creating duplicates of it in the integration, right? And that was one of the things I was fighting with. Um, I didn't even realize this happened to me. So I discovered, like, I started having all sorts of Z-Wave issues.

Um, it was, it was like having issues, sending commands. It was like the network was getting flooded. Well, what was happening, I found when I was doing some traces and stuff is commands are getting sent twice. So when an event happened, you know, and I say open, turn on these lights or whatever, I was sending multiple commands. So I eventually found out that I had duplicate to my Z-Wave hub and a home assistant under the Z-Wave integration. And this I'm using, remember I'm to my Z-Wave Hub and a home assistant under the Z-Wave integration. And this I'm using, remember I'm using the Z-Wave JS integration, right?

Not the built-in one. Right. So after, you know, cleaning it up and getting rid of the duplicate, my events went down just a single event skin. Everything's been working beautifully since. So I just want to mention it. If anyone has issues with things not happening or stuff, check to see if you had that duplicate Z-Wave hub in there too, it was introduced in the February update.

You should, you should have kept that. We could have beat the, uh, the Z-Wave long range, uh, devices supported and, uh, got in the Guinness book of world records. Oh yeah. Then I would have had, uh, no, no most. Yeah. It duplicated all my devices, you know, so I just, I ended up just deleting. Yeah.

It wasn't as bad to clean it up afterwards. I kind of, I use the Seth approach and just said YOLO as I hit delete. And, uh, it kind of, it kind of just worked out. I got lucky, so it's all fixed now working great. Um, and then finally the other project I've been working on is I was supposed to get my panel upgraded this week, but that got canceled. But in preparation for that, I was

doing a bunch of rack upgrades. So I added in my 16-bay disk array now, which is a really nice one, because I can actually share it between multiple servers. So I have it split between two servers, eight disks for each server. And, you know. Which one did you get, by the way?

It's the Net Store. It's a Net Store. Net Store. I don't even know where they're sold. Well, netstoredirect.com, it looks like. Yeah, but I mean in terms of, are they stored, do they sell them in the states? Because the one I ordered, I ordered from a guy in the UK. Oh, I don't, I don't know.

This is a, the price is in euros. Oh yeah, they are. Yeah. So I got a 16 Bay one works. I really liked the net store stuff. It's just, it just exposes a bunch of this JBLD. Um, and then Unraid takes it from there. Um, it just works.

It's simple. One cable, SAS cable. Uh, it just, I really takes it from there. It just works. It's simple. One cable, SAS cable. It just, I really like it. Right. These are like directly connected at that point. Yeah. With SAS. Yeah. Oh cool.

Very cool. So you have just a ton of space now. Yeah. So like it's got four connections on it. So each of my servers have like a dual card in it. So I put two connections to one server, two connections to the other server. And then I could just put the drives in and then, you know, the servers share it.

So it works really nice, low power usage, very quiet. I'm happy with that. That was one of the upgrades I did. The other thing I did that I picked up a console, one of those slide out consoles with the keyboard and monitor and everything. So, you know, I can consoles with the keyboard and monitor and everything. So, you know, I can work with my servers, you know, it's kind of, the racks coming

along, um, I still have a couple pieces I'm waiting in the mail for now and I need some patch cables and stuff, but, um, that I have no, like, I'm glad I don't do this for a living because I have no patience with this stuff, right? Like I tear apart the rack. Like I probably spent a good eight plus hours doing this thing on Tuesday. I tore about everything in the rack, emptied it all out, said, all right, fresh rack, gonna start putting this stuff in and the cables are going to look beautiful. Nah, when I put everything back in, it was just a jumble mess behind.

All I did, all I ended up doing was just hiding the cables there. You know, I try and wrap them. I try and run them. I try and do, I can't do, I don't have the skill for it. I mean, I know part of the skill is having the right length cables. I never seem to have the right length. They're always too long or too short or something. So I just, yeah, I gave up trying. My goal is to make the front look pretty for the pictures.

No one has to see around the sides of the back. It's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just. So I just, yeah, I gave up trying. My goal is to make the front look pretty for the pictures. No one has to see around the sides of the back. I don't know how you rack guys do it. I, you know, like it's a skill. That's all I say, it's a skill, it's an art. It's a lot better when somebody's paying you to do it as well. Yeah. When it's your own stuff, it's like,

oh, I'll make this look decent enough. But when somebody's paying you by the hour, it's like, well, I'm gonna take my time and make But when somebody's paying you by the hour, it's like, well, I'm going to take my time and make those look beautiful. But that is also why whenever you see pictures of people's racks, they don't have wires installed yet because when you add the wires, it gets messy. Yeah. That, that, yeah. I trust me.

I know you said Nestor. I was on net store. Yeah. Nestor. I see it. They're Tai, Taiwanese. Okay. I'm trying to find your, your J-Bot thing. Okay.

Um, I would say like my racks come out great at the house and then I go in there and monkey around later on and mess it all up. So it's all about, for me at this point, it's functionality, right? Because it's like, I can make it look pretty, but as soon as I have to touch anything, it's going to make it all look like crap anyway. So I might as well go for function over form. And that's the other issue I have is I'm always in there monkey around. So, so the one thing I did this time was just work on the cabling a bit.

So when I want to add something and remove something, I don't have to go in and mess around with cable. I have patch panels on the back of patch bells on the front. Um, I also made the, the cables coming from the house. I wrapped those up and made that part at least look pretty going to the rack, you know, so it's not just a bunch of cables hanging there. Um, but the one thing I was surprised, you know, going around to this again, but, um, you know, when I pulled out the rack to start this job, there were no spiders

around the rack, you know, because of the mint, I'm telling you that mint spray. Uh, like, ah, man, like the peppermint spray, it fights off those spiders. There were no spiders around my rack at all. I'm just, I've all I have to, that's all I'm saying about that because I know people laugh at this and stuff, but trust me in my basement, I had a lot of spiders bungee in down onto my rack and leaving cobwebs everywhere. And no, after I used the peppermint spray, they haven't come close to it at all.

I'm a happy guy. Are they just like lurking in the corners? They're like, I used to have a nice warm sleeping spot. And that's fine. They could stay in the corner all they want because they sit in that corner with the rack studs that I've dropped and also rolled into that corner. There is no way I'm getting that rack stud. Um, yeah. So yeah, I'm getting that rack stud. Um, yeah.

So yeah, I'm spider free down there. So that sums up my, my, my projects pretty much this week. Well, by the time you hit this show, it will already have been published, but I'll be on home gadgets geeks. Um, so make sure you go check out that podcast too. Very nice. Very nice. Oh yeah.

I'm finding basically this Nestor thing. The only place to buy it is eBay Yeah, the only place I have a four bay one and I got it from a guy in the UK as well And it works really good. I just wanted more drives. So I ended up getting the 16 Bay Version of it and again, it just works really good. It's quiet And again, it just works really good. Um, it's quiet.

Um, I don't know what really more to say about it. It does what I expect a drive bay to do. It's not a QNAP. It doesn't have an operating system on it. It doesn't have anything on it. I don't want that. I got, I got that already. I need bigger drives and you put them in this thing. Yeah, exactly.

All it does is just expose the drives as individual drives to your server. And it works great. And it does six, was it six gigabit connections or 12 gigabit connections? I can't remember, but it's pretty fast. Well, the ones, only ones I can find are actually Thunderbolt connections. So I don't think that's what you have. I know it's not what you have. Check the link I sent you, but like, like I said, I don't know where to get these.

I don't know where they sell these. Like, I don't think it's in North America at all. Taiwan, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Like I've, I've always ended up ordering them from the UK. It's the only place I got from. Really cool.

Really cool product. Yeah. And man, they have, they get bigger. Yeah. Oh man. There's 24 Bay. Yeah. 24 Bay.

Yeah. 48, 48 Bay. Holy. That's 24 bay. Yeah. Yeah. 24 bay. Yeah. 48, 48 bay. Holy. That's insane, Gavin. There's a 48 bay and it's, it's one of those. It's like, forget about like taking the drives out. Like it's like a chassis. Yeah.

Take apart and you put everything inside of it. And then that's a, but that one you can slide out and then they, they, they pop out, they're hot, swappable up. Like they still have locks slide out and then they, they, they pop out their hot swappable up, like they still have locks on it and stuff too, right? Yeah. It's on the top. Yeah. And that's really cool.

What, um, what, uh, let's see, can you hear this thing? Like, is it loud? No, like the thing is, is my server is louder than this thing. Like when I turn it on, it's only the one I have only has, how many fans does it have in it? It looks like they've got like two or three big fans on the front right? And then it looks like it also some of these have like the IT power supplies on the back. So I was wondering if those like when they crank up they're super loud or something, but maybe not. No it does um fan management based on temperature. So at this point I'm only running four drives in it.

So it's probably not getting hot enough to really make any noise, but I can barely hear it when I turn it on. Nice. Well, that's cool. That's cool. I, you, yeah, you found something here. This is cool. I like these.

And I'm sure once I'm done the rack, you know, I'll post a picture up on Macedon, which reminds me sign up for Macedon, home tech dot social. That's our Macedon server. Gavin will approve you. I approve everybody, including the bots. I caught one that it said it was in a, it was in a language. I didn't know what was. I just hit translate.

He said, I'm a truck driver. I'm like, no. It's like, I know Gavin, if I'm not quick enough, Gavin's going to approve this one. I was like, no. I was looking for that today to approve it and I saw it was deleted. So I knew you took care of it, but I did the same thing. It said, I'm a truck driver. And I was like, uh, let me approve it before Seth gets to this.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. So that wraps up my projects for this week. TJ, what are you up to? I've got nothing this week. I'm working on the den. The den is, it got dry walled this past weekend and this coming weekend it's going to get painted. So that's the only thing I have going on.

I'm working on the garden, getting that all that stuff ready and everything. But the room's looking good. You've been posting pictures in the hub and the garden, getting that all that stuff ready and everything. But the room's looking good. You've been posting pictures in the hub and the room looks really nice. Yeah, that's that's like you say that's the room that you guys are always in. That totally I could see that. That's going to be a fun room to chill in. It's got all the windows in it so you can like look around, see what's going on in your backyard.

It's nice. Yeah, got got like eight windows in there. So it's nice to kind of just hang out, especially in the wintertime. I like to have my coffee in the morning out there. It's nice and chilly, got my robe on and everything like that. So it's a pretty nice place to hang out. I'm pretty excited to have it finished.

I'm actually looking for flooring suggestions. If anybody has some good water resistant, I know waterproof isn't really a thing, but water resistant flooring options. Let's think about right now, it's either to be tile or some kind of LVP. And I'm leaning towards LVP just because it's easier for me to install, but I think tile will be the best option. So I'm kind of curious what other people think about that.

I prefer tile. I mean, we got tile throughout our entire house when we moved in. It's either that, like here, the house has had that, what is it called, terrazzo floors, or you had carpet, and there's not much in between. And sometimes you get carpet and you have terrazzo underneath it, but not here. So we ended up just tiling everything, and I don't know, seems to work out.

The floor can be a little cold sometimes, but. Yeah, that's the only thing I'm worried about, because I like to hang out there in the winter time, and it already needs help getting heated and everything like that. And it feels like tile is just going to be so much more cold. What does it take to like, like the little floor heating things? I don't know what it is, because I never actually needed one, but. Like, isn't it like just a wire they run under there?

Can't you just run the wire? Can you pre-wire? Yeah, so yeah, so that's probably what we're gonna do if we end up doing the tile is, it's the radiant heat flooring. They have a lot of different options of it. The simplest one is basically just a wire that goes underneath. The problem though, is that you really want the 240 volt

version because it's more energy efficient. And if you're not careful with it, you can waste a ton of electricity heating it up and everything like that. Sure. Yeah, I could see that. So that's the only thing it's like, I don't know if I really want to bother with that because my dumb self would probably just like leave it on for like a week straight and then my electric bill would be like $800.

Yeah, that's what we have. That's what we have home automation, home assistant for. That's right. Yeah. Because home assistant never has any issues. Never messes up. Yeah, water stays on all the time. Yeah, it's brilliant.

But now that's what I was looking at, but adding heated floors, even though that room, it's only 160 square feet, it adds like $700 just for the heated floor. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know if I want to do that. But it's easy electrical. What's the other?

There's water. I see like people run high 20s. And there's water heating too. Yep. Oh yeah. Yeah. They have a water heat pump one. And then I think they have another option I can't think of right now.

Definitely not installing the water one because this is an exterior room and it gets like freezing sometimes. So not going to deal with that mess. So it has to be the wire option. So I'm looking at options. I, I'm going to look at, um, some, some Facebook marketplace deals and stuff like that, somebody has some extra, um, DITRA wiring and membranes and stuff like that. So if I can score it on the cheap and get it installed, I'll probably, I'll

probably do that just because heated floors would be nice. It looks like, it looks like it looks like this like you can just There's like mats that are already like pre-wired and you can just roll them out. Yes. That's the cheap version You know, is it okay? Yeah, I don't know what I'm looking at man. We don't need to heat Yeah, so that's the other thing it's like well the heating is cool, right? But like they should make an option that cools down as well. Like in the summertime, I want, I want to have my feet cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Like the car seats. I don't see that option. Oh, right. Cause like, you gotta get the car with the car seat. He I'm like, I don't use that. You're the only one that uses it. And then like, I want the car that cools. They have the car seats that cool you off and blow, blow air through there.

And I'm like, yeah, that's what I need. Yeah. Built into the seat. Yeah. Yeah. Built into the seat. Yeah. Yeah. Those are pretty sweet. Yeah. I don't know what the solution to your flooring issue is, but I gave you a bunch

of tips of things like I would avoid all the mistakes I made when choosing my flooring, so, you know, especially since you have a dog, just things to consider. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing, right? It's the room that we go out of, you know, half a dozen times a day to let the dog out. Um, it's going to get water on it. It's going to get dirt on it. It's going to get all this stuff.

And right now we have carpet. Um, and definitely not putting carpet back in there. Yeah. Yeah. Man, a tough choice. I would lean towards style just because of low maintenance and like, if you spill something on it or the dog tracks in something, you just wipe it off. You can take a steamer thing, the steamer mops, just go right over it. You're done. You know, don't have to worry about it scratching, all that good stuff.

So, I don't know. I don't know. It's a tough choice. If you have suggestions for TJ, feedback at hometech.film. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know. Help TJ get some floors, y'all. That's right. I don't have any floors. No floors for me. TJ needs a floor. I'm gonna go register a website now. What are those called? The GoFundMe? Yeah, I just make a GoFundMe for TJ. So yes, I'll take that. That way I can get heated floors. TJ needs heated floors. We're trying to raise $500 or $700 for DJs, non-cheap heated floors. He doesn't want the cheap ads. He's not doing that.

Like now. Don't even suggest it. We're going to do D-Try if I'm going to do it. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up everything this week, unless you got more stuff. You got more stuff? That's it? All right.

I think that's going to wrap up everything this week. 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 over to hometech.com slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. An Indie pledge over five bucks a month gets you big shout out here on the show, and every single pledge, every single one of them gets you an invite to our private Slack chat,

The Hub, where you and other supporters can gather in there and see Gavin's crazy electrical pictures. I do not know where you're finding these Gavin but man they're cringe yes stop stop post them please somebody an aneurysm oh I got then he's got he's got him queued up that's the thing that I found out today because he's like oh I have another one you know I was gonna post I actually have a whole bunch of pictures but I don't share them all at once you know I got I got save some for the slow days when I don't have anything to book You know so you know keep the engagement up, so you know yeah, yeah controversy

Yeah, I save it every now and then I drop another one, but you know they're old pictures. I've had them for a while Well there we go Gavin I don't know what's gonna happen when you drop that next one You want to check that out? Well, there we go. Gavin, I don't know what's gonna happen when you drop that next one. If you wanna check that out, there you go, hometech.com. If you wanna help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand.

Just appreciate a five star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's gonna wrap up another week here on Hometech. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. Till next time. stars weren't aligned. I waited so long for the day you'd appear, a screen and a sound so perfectly clear. Through echoes and static I held on so tight,

Pinewood you promised to change my whole life. I stood on the edge, I was ready to shine, a rival to giants, a future divine. But whispers of doubt turned cheers into sighs, Patrick Spence left, and so did my time. Oh, Pinewood, we were meant to be A love so bold, a symphony But fate stepped in and dreams got sold

Now all that's left is silence cold You would have been different, you would have been strong A place where all of my shows belong Apple and Roku would tremble with fear But now, my dear, Pinewood, you just disappeared I wanted to last, to stand with the best HD, am I switching? No need for the rest But numbers and budgets, they cut me away

So no's moved on, I had no place to stay Pinewood, oh Pinewood, forgotten too soon A love that was lost beneath a full moon But whisper my name when the silence is long And maybe, just maybe, I'll live in a song