HomeTech.fm - Episode 521 - Gavin's Stolen Car

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

One this weeks show: Rachio releases a smart outdoor lighting transformer that Matters, UniFi launches more products, Switchbot announces integrations with Home Assistant, Wiim has a new 100W amp, Plex raises prices, SAVI Controls and Oliver IQ merge, Netflix offering HDR10+, a pick of the week, project updates, and Gavin's tale of how his technology stacked up against car thieves. All this and more on this week's HomeTech!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 28th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home animation, home technology, not hanging TVs. Hey, save it for the projects. Just a little foreshadowing for everybody. Foreshadowing?

Ah man. Yeah, things that, you know, we did talk about this last week, but I remember my smart home stress test I came up with. The other thing I forgot that did happen, one of my outdoor landscape lighting things that I kind of have hooked up out there, decided to start flashing.

Like strobe light flashing. You know, bright to dark, in the middle of the night. And that was another one of the calls that came to me. So smart home stress test, you got to add that in. Flashing lights, strobe lights, you know, in the middle of the night. And yeah, add that to to me. So smart home stress test, you gotta add that in. Flashing lights, strobe lights, you know, in the middle of the night. And yeah, add that to the list. TV's that don't work, water shuts off, strobe the lights,

and I'll probably think of something else. Oh, probably the smoke alarm thing. We could probably add that to the list there. I'm not gonna play it cause TJ's threatening to burn down my house. Yeah, it's already annoying. So he's only played it like four times, and it's like the, it's the most awful sound in the world because the smoke alarm I don't know about you

But every time that I've had to change a battery in a smoke alarm, it's like 3 a.m And it's the worst absolute time that you can hear a smoke alarm going off because you just you know, it's something stupid It's not it's nothing important. It just needs a battery change just once a bit But you're sleeping you don't want to get up to do a battery change. So you take it off the ceiling and you pull the battery out of it and you throw it on the couch until the next day. And you know it will last till the morning too, right?

Like it doesn't need to change right now but the thing's beeping from now. Yeah. Just like get over it. Well, here's here was my problem with my lights. I installed this power supply. It's a DIN rail mount power supply 24 volt. And it says the model number is MDR 2024.

So you would think like the 20 means that it had 20 amp output. No, no, it was one amp output and I had many more lights connected to it. So it'll do it. Yeah, it'll do it. Evidently that was freaking things out. I swapped it out and it's working now.

The lights are on outside. They're actually brighter because I actually have to see what power is on. They have proper power now. Yeah. Wow. All hooked up. I actually, and the finally installed, I was using Wi-Fi out there and sometimes it would drop off and I couldn't control it.

It's just in a weird spot on the side of my house and I have a brick house so the wifi doesn't get outside to every spot and this is like way on the other side of the house. So I had ethernet hat that sits on top of the little ESP32 chip. I kind of have the wireless one right here from that I pulled out and I popped that one in, plugged ethernet into it, kind of like a little waterproof ethernet connector and ran it to a switch that I have outside too. That's a, one of those ubiquity waterproof ones. And, uh, yeah, I, I, I say that that project's probably done.

Now I have to go back and reprogram on the lights, but you know, whatever. So it's not done. It's not done. I'm not giving you the done mark yet. Uh, it's all I have to do is turn, make them turn on and turn off, you know, like schedule it or something because I did the preset. So the presets there. Anyway, landscape lighting.

All right. Well, we got a bunch of home tech headlines. We've got some project updates today. So what do you say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Well, speaking of landscape lighting, Rachatchio, probably should have just waited for

this to come out, I guess. Ratchio now has a 200 watt three zone landscape lighting transformer. And guess what, guys? It matters. It matters. The Ratchio Smart Lighting Controller is the world's first outdoor lighting controller on the market to work with matter. You can hook it up to Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and you can have complete control

over those three zones. It actually supports dimming and it works on lights up to 15 volts. Should be available for presale in late April and is expected to ship sometime in July. If you want one of these things though, you better go buy it, because they say they're only making a couple of them

for 2025. And you want to get one. Make sure you go and order it, pre-order it or whatever. go buy it because they say they're only making a couple of them for 2025 and you want to get one makes you you go and order it pre-order it or whatever. $299 though not a bad price DJ. Yeah honestly it's not a bad price I can get so if I get I buy stuff from amp lighting they also sell under volt lighting which you can get on Amazon I can get like a 200 watt transformer and it's about 150 to 200 bucks easily. So this is right in line, especially with the smart stuff built into it. Friend of the show Morton, he's in the Slack group.

You should give us some $1 a month. You can join that Slack group. That's all it takes. But he was actually looking for a smart lighting transformer a couple months ago. And we realized there really isn't any options if you wanted to be able to individually control landscape lighting zones. You're basically stuck with either a high end controller

or you are stuck with using multiple transformers with smart plugs, which is what most people do, right? Like my setup right now, we have two different landscape transformers that control different things and they're just on different smart outlets. And that works fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But this thing for three zones and 200 watts, that's pretty good and it matters.

So you should be able to add this to anything that supports matter, which is nice. But it also has dimming. And that's the really nice thing, because sometimes those lights are just a little too bright and you wanna dim them a little bit. But there's not really any options for that either in the landscape lighting world. So I think this is nice.

We'll obviously have to wait to see what it actually does and how it works and everything like that. But for the price and what it is advertised to do right now, I think this knocks it out the ballpark Do you know I mean most landscape lighting is probably like 12 volt. Do you know like if the amp lights? The they they have LED right so they have their LED. Yeah, or are they dimmable? Can you dim them so they don't say that they're dimmable? I would assume that they probably are,

because I have actual, I can't remember who makes it, but I actually have one of the little G4 LED bulbs for landscape lighting. And it's a smart one. It actually connects to, I think, to your cloud services. Yeah, yeah. And that can dim. So I don't see why the normal LEDs that come with landscape lighting couldn't dim. But it's just it's just not a feature. So yeah, I mean, most of the time, they're hooking them up and just like they're plugging play. You aim at the trees, you aim at the side of the house, you do you have options to what use a lower wattage light or something?

use a lower wattage light or something. Yeah, I mean, that's what we do, right? So we run our stuff through a design service typically, and then it'll tell us like what wattage and stuff to use, and you just literally change the bulb. But you know, sometimes that's not the right answer either. So maybe you want a brighter, you're having people over and you want to show the front of the house more or something, but during the normal days,

you just want it to look relatively lighter know, relatively lighter in light, so. Yeah, they're getting a bunch of stuff over there. They got RGBW wall wash coming out over there at AMP. They've got a bunch of security lights, it looks like, that they've come out with. Yeah, I like their stuff. The only thing I don't like about AMP RGBW stuff is that it is IR controlled, last I knew.

So, not a fan of that. And they have a little RF remote, I believe, but it wasn't in an RF range that like Bond could control it with. So that's too bad. I mean, they'll find something. At least you can do it, I guess. Yeah, honestly, the Ratchio low voltage transformer

is kind of like a hybrid approach, right? Because right now we have a ton of options for smart landscape lighting, right? You know, Philips Hue, LIFX, that kind of stuff, they all make smart landscape lighting. And then you have the traditional, you know, just 12 volt hardwired stuff that works great and you don't really mess with it or anything. But there's no really like cross between the two right now. So it is cool to see this as a new, basically a new product category, even though it already exists, but on a very limited scale. Yeah, I agree.

The fourth option is to do what I did, which I wouldn't, you know, amp is even if, even if you used an IR, it would be better than what I did and I'm using, you know, basically Govi pixel pixel, pixel LED wall wash things. To, and each individual light is controllable, which is, I don't know. It works for holidays. It's fun to make the house different colors, but anyway. Moving on here, we've got new products from Ubiquiti.

They've got a new Protect G6 lineup. First three products are a G6 Bullet, a G6 Turret, and G6 Instant. All of these have some AI powered by multi-tops, I guess. I don't know what that is, but they have it in there. It's got AI, face detection, license plate recognition, all the good stuff. So these are basically upgrades from the existing G5 range. These are 8K cameras.

And I think the little G6 Instant got a little price bump on it too. I think we were looking at it. Huge price bump. $80. Here you are at a price increase. Yeah. Not great, not terrible. We are a far cry from the $39 or $29 G3 instance that came out during COVID.

But you have to say the features and stuff they've been adding, I have, you know, at least justified some of the price increases, right? Yeah. And honestly for the price, they're still not bad, right? Because what other camera are you going to find for under $200 that is wireless? Uh, and it has all the AI features and everything like that. And you can record locally and everything. I still think it's a good buy.

Yeah. Yep. And with, with these cameras, um and everything, I still think it's a good buy. Yeah. Yep. And with these cameras, one thing you gotta keep in mind is they've been starting to move a lot of the features now onto the camera itself, right? Whereas before this camera, if you got the AI port, you'd get some of the extra detections and stuff.

So, you know, you balance off that cost, you got $250 or a $200 AI port get that extra detection, or you just buy a new camera, which is probably cheaper than that. And you can get all these features. So I'm just really hoping that I'll come up with a new doorbell anytime soon. Cause I'm going to have to take that hit and, you know, sell off the G4 that I just picked up. Oh, well now that you bought one, they're definitely going to release a new one.

So thank you for your contribution. Yeah, sir Thanks for your sacrifice Thanks, I did misspeak that they are not 8k they are 8 megapixel which is 4k resolution. So 8k would be crazy No, this is a good addition. The only thing I'm missing still is color night vision I just I don't know what ubiquity has against color night vision. It must be a cost thing or something, but All these cameras look great, but I just I need color night vision. I just, I don't know what ubiquity has against color night vision. It must be a cost thing or something, but all these cameras look great, but I just, I need color night vision. I really, I keep looking at this G6 instant. I have the G4, which is, looks like it's roughly the same size and

everything. I think it is, yeah. Yeah, I didn't, I bought the G4, didn't even know it was an outdoor rated camera. The only problem is it's outdoor rated with the, which is like a little. Flap. Flap thing. Yeah. That plugs into the USB-C port on it. So, I never took it seriously, but I mean, in the right situation, you could plug that camera in and have a nice little, tiny little wifi camera monitoring with now with AI built

into it. Like Emma was saying, it's pretty good, pretty good budget price and a pretty good deal. Yeah. Yeah. I have one of their older cameras in my 3d printer cases watching that I stream the 3d printer from, and it works really well. And one thing I like, I said this before with the ubiquity, I don't mind if they keep the same form factors because it makes upgrading and swapping in stuff so much easier.

It's like a five minute job. Yeah. Yeah. I could use an update to that G five flex because that's, that's the one I would, I use them on the side of my house. I was using on the side of my house and it just got, I mean, what is this thing? It's a two K camera, the picture on it doesn't look all that great. And while it says it is, um, is it is, what is this? IPX4 while covered.

That while covered is, put a big star on that because like you get a drop of water on that thing, it will fry itself. And I had at least two or three of them fry out from storms or me accidentally getting too close with the pressure washer, which is okay. They're not, you know, again, what do these things cost? They're like a hundred bucks

$129 the g5 flex PoE camera, that's what I want. I need the PoE. I want the PoE I don't need it, but I want it right over the little USB-C cable much rather have that One thing I've been really liking about ubiquity is they finally came out with actual turret cameras Because turret cameras are just so much better in like residential settings and stuff like that. This isn't exclusive to the G6 lineup. They've done this for one or two generations now, but that has been a welcome change.

Yep, and then what's nice is the G6, they also, the turrets and the bullets, they have little, it looks like they have finally kind of like come up with a back box solution for mounting them with conduit and that kind of stuff that they did not have before. So- Yeah, that was always a pain.

Yeah, they had the little mounting plate and you had to get the little cable through that mounting plate with the little special rubber adapter thing over the top of it. And God forbid you put the CAT- 5 and or cat 6 and on before you got the little rubber thing on I mean what what a pain but now they've got the nice little back box and everything you can plug it all in I want

to say these cameras the g6 I was when I was looking at them they had cables coming off of them now yeah there there is a model that does. Yeah the G6 Turret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So more in line with what we're actually used to right? Like yeah the little cable thing that runs off. Yeah. Yeah very nice very nice. You pay $199 for the G6 Turret. Not bad. All right moving on here we've got some Home Assistant news, some Switchbot news. I guess Switchbot is adding over 45 of its smart home products to the open source platform Home Assistant. In the first half of this year, it includes the newly announced Switchbot Hope 3, which will was recently revealed in a filing with the Connectivity Standards Alliance. So if you got a robot vacuum K10 plus pro curtain three smart shades and garage

door openers from Swiss bot, those are lined up for April. So for the end of the month here, you'll should be able to use those in home assistant. This is, this is pretty big news. That's 45 products that are going to be directly in supported, I guess, from switch bot right now, home assistant. That's pretty good. I'm shocked. I was shocked that they even have 45 products.

Like I didn't realize, I didn't realize that that's how many they had. I know a few of theirs, but no, it's pretty impressive. And yeah, once now that they've announced integration with Home Assistant, that means like official support, updated drivers, guaranteed to work, et cetera, et cetera, even though a lot of their products worked with Home Assistant. drivers, guaranteed to work, et cetera, et cetera. Even though a lot of their products worked with Home Assistant anyways, whether it would be Matter through their hub or direct Bluetooth connection, this is just better

support in the end. Yep. Yeah. And Switchbot devices are everywhere. So, I mean, more than likely somebody listening to this already has the Switchbot device, whether it's the retrofit lock or maybe the new shades they came out with, they have a lot of devices.

So I have a couple of SwitchBot devices in my house, but I don't have their hub at all. So this is a nice addition for me. They even have a wallet finder card. Oh, that's fun. Cool, good for SwitchBot, good for the, I guess, connected integration world too, because it's nice to have more products that integrate and talk to things.

Let's move on here. We've got a new product as well from Wiem. Wiem? Wiem? Wiem. W-I-I-M. Wiem. Wiem.

Wiem. They've got the new Vibe Link Amp they're coming out with. It's a 100 watt per channel amplifier aimed at delivering high fidelity sound from both digital and analog sources. Amplifier is designed for passive speakers and streaming sources, offering a 67% more power than the current Wiem Amp Pro. So there you go. 100 watts per channel into 8 ohms or 200 Watts into four ohms.

So yeah, if you're in the Weeam ecosystem, this is, it's pretty nice. That'd be a big old, little amplifier. You can hook up to some decent speakers. And this is just an app, right? It's not like services. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll need like input and output just so yeah, no, that's good. A nice addition to your setup.

Looks like it's $299 over at Amazon. So that's not bad. The Viag Blink AMP, I believe is what it is. So yeah, new product there. They've got a Wiem Ultra too. It looks like it's come out. It's a little screen on it. That's kind of nice.

Currently unavailable in Canada. No Wiem AMP for sure you. Just in case. I don't know. I kind of want to get my hands on one of these. I've needed a, I needed a computer speaker set up for a little while now. Kind of, I don sure you. Just in case. I don't know, I kind of want to get my hands on one of these. I've needed a computer speaker set up for a little while now. I don't know, kind of want one more than I needed, I guess. I can never decide what I want to do.

Like little speakers with an amp like this would be perfect. Or just regular old computer desk speakers with the amps built into the speakers. I haven't decided, but this could be an option. How much desk space do you have? That's what I'm thinking, Kipster. None. Exactly. I mean, they're just gonna make way.

I just have to wedge them in somewhere. Or mount them underneath the desk or, you know. Oh yeah, that's on great there. Something like that, yeah. No, not the speakers, but I mean, like the amp and stuff, if you were to put that on there, yeah. Yeah, that could go under the desk, easy. I mean, look at this, the Weam amp, it looks really nice.

It's got a little volume control on it. You little push button to toggle back and forth. That's actually how I have the DAC for recording, like the microphone thing. It's kind of mounted under the desk and I can reach over there and turn the volume up and down. My daughter constantly comes in and presses the little blue light button on it, turns off the microphone. And I'll go to get into a meeting for work or whatever and no microphone and it takes me like 10 minutes

to figure out what the heck happened. And of course it was just that button right there. So always know it's her. All right, let's see, let's move on here. Got some pricing updates from Plex. They are going to be upping their pricing for new and existing customers. If you're doing the monthly subscription fee for Plex pass

it'll increase from 499 to 599 while the annual rise to for Plex Pass. It'll increase from $4.99 to $5.99, while the annual rise to $39 to $49. And the Lifetime subscription, which I don't know why you wouldn't buy, will now cost $149 up from the previous $119. And I swear I either bought it for $119 or $100, way back in the day. But the Lifetime subscription, I don't care. I feel like I should be paying for this product. Like this is, this is a great piece of software and I, I don't care if they add features, I just want them to keep working on it and make it work because it works

everywhere. It's great. Gavin, you use them, Plex, you use something else. Uh, I don't use Plex, but I use MB, but they're all pretty much the same, right? Like, uh, they do the same thing. Play movie, play TV show. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But like you said, it just feels like one of those products that you're not paying enough for, you know, we use it so much, so heavily. I almost feel like I'm getting a steal with it. I really like these kinds of apps. I think some people are upset with Plex for doing this. There's some significant price increases, you know, and they've come up with the term was it the Plexitus, the great Plexitus. Oh my God.

These people are freaking out over this. I know people, people always find a way to freak out, but you know, like if you really like the app Support it and get your get your lifetime pass now then if you're really afraid of price increases Just grab your lifetime pass now. It's a worthwhile investment But how long have you had yours for Seth like eight years or something now? Yeah, it's probably been seven or eight years Yeah so, I mean I feel like I should like they've come out with some major updates

in that timeframe, right? And I feel like maybe they should. They've never asked you for more money. You should send them a check or a chicken or something. Some eggs. Box of shrimp. Box of shrimp. You know, I just realized I have a Plex pass or a lifetime.

How many have you had yours for? I don't even know. I'd have to look that up, but I How have you had yours for I don't even know I'd have to look that up, but I just realized I had one and I don't use it But I remember when it was on sale. It was like 80 Canadian or something. I just grabbed it just in case Yeah, they I don't know like there's there's all these features in Plex that I don't use like they have like a music library management thing too. Outside of movies and movies, TVs. I put my movies in there, put my home movies, like, you know, videos of my

daughter when she was young, we put them in there and we can watch them. And it just kind of like makes little TV shows out of them. I don't put them in the same library because you make, you can make like different libraries, so it's just kind of like a family library that's kind of off to the side and we put good videos in there every now and then we'll have like a, a cute video or something and toss it in there. But I don't know. I feel like, I feel like if you like the software, you should, you should support them.

And I feel like if, if Plex came to me and said, Hey, you can keep using this, but we're going to, we're going to like release. See, I don't even know. Like, what is it on Plex version 10? It's going to be Plex, Plex S2. Plex Plex. We're going to split it the s1 and s2 if they came out with and caught it plex plus. Yeah, I don't know plus plus version 2. Yeah, like And they said they wanted me to pay on another 150 bucks or hundred whatever like I would I would pay it

I mean at this point seven eight time I would pay it. I mean, at this point, seven, eight, ten, 19 years later. Stop giving them ideas. Stop giving them ideas. No, I mean, like I could keep using the one I have, but knowing that like, yeah, if it breaks, I'm kind of on my own, you know, um, I feel like I'm on my own anyway, it's like when it breaks, there's really not much support, but, uh, it's not hard to figure, figure out and it doesn't, it like lives independently from

the media, so you just have to rebuild the library and that kind of thing. So. And I think that's one of the reasons why I stopped using Plexus. They were going in a direction and adding a bunch of features. I just did not agree with and their community felt like if you spoke up against it, everybody would jump on you. Oh, really get mad. We're on MB, you know, if you speak up about something, only the developer really jumps on your case, right?

Like, I could deal with that one person, but you know, um, I kind of like where MB is now, um, and that's why I choose it. Trying to find where, see if there's any notice about like how long I've had this thing. And I've looked at like Jellyfin as well. That's another popular one. Another free one out there. Um, I always felt like Jellyfin was, it felt dated, like it was behind the others. Um, that's why I didn't go to it, but you know, some people love their Jellyfin.

So if it works for you, use it. Use it. Yeah. I mean, they all look the same, right? It's like, what are they gonna do? In the end, they all play videos. Yeah, exactly. Well, I've been happy with the way Plexworks has probably been one of the few things that

actually has worked in my house over time. So I will continue supporting them and using them until, you know, maybe some other time. Yeah, we'll put links to these things in the show notes. And if you want to check them out, you can check them out. I guess, MB is free and Jellyfin is for sure free. It says right there, free software. And I guess you can contribute with code and coding things, but is MB free? No, I don't think MB is free or if it's free, I don't know if that's

certain features behind a paywall, but, um, I do, I do pay for, oh, I have a lifetime pass for that as well. So Embi Premiere. Yeah. I mean, a hundred, it's the same price, $119 in one time purchase. Yeah. They're competitive. Yeah.

It looks like it has all the same stuff that you would get from Plex as well. So pick your poison, whichever one you like the best, just do that one. Cause it's, they're fun. They're fun to use. TJ doesn't think so, but no, he's like, I'm done with servers. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to run my own movie server anymore. I'm over it.

All right. Uh, moving on here, uh, in the business world, uh, and on the pro side, I guess, uh, savvy controls and and OliverIQ have merged to form a company called SavvyIQ. They're aiming to revolutionize the commercial and residential technology landscape with AI-driven cloud-based automation platform. Savvy Controls is known for its simplified

all-in-one tech solutions for the commercial AV industry and OliverIQ launched a few years back and developed a AI powered smart home as a service platform. This merger will enhance our offerings with AI powered cloud services for various commercial projects, including bars, restaurants, casinos and sports stadiums.

So sounds like an interesting move. I was not expecting like Oliver IQ was set up to be like for basically massive security companies and ISPs, like, to make some kind of play into the smart home with people's existing devices and they'd have this other, you know, little controller that kind of links them all together. Think of it as like a home assistant with support. And with a support line. That would be nice. Yeah, yeah.

And then Savi has been around for a long time. They started out as a dealer in Dallas and they were working, they were actually a Control 4 dealer. I remember talking to their programmers and stuff years ago when they were still at CDIA. And over time, they developed a platform on the LG WebOS TVs.

And then, I mean, if you go look at their website now They have all sorts of stuff between lights speakers amplifiers video distribution. They have a full Line of stuff for commercial projects I think they're kind of best known if you've ever been one of those big top golf things Which is the big like stadium things where you can go swing a golf club the only golf I've ever enjoyed Yeah, I don't know like I've never been there on Sundays in the morning because it's the cheapest. Oh, the TV things with like the, I think they have like TVs turned sideways with video, um, on them from what I've seen and TVs, like everywhere, all the TVs, all

the technology there, they were pretty much the ones that put all that together. So, um, out of that came, became this, uh, savvy controls and now savvy IQ. So it should be interesting to see what they do. I, you know, I heard of all of our IQ when they launched. Haven't heard anything from them since. I wonder how they did. I understood. I understood what it was they were trying to accomplish.

I never thought it would work, you know, like, but I mean, that's just me. I'm curious how well they did. Yeah, I don't know. They haven't been out, I guess they came out, what, this last year? Like formally launched at CES and all that stuff. Maybe it was the year before.

It's hard to remember. It's all blurred together at this point. A year ago, January. And so a year later, where are they, what are they doing? I don't know. You go to their website, so it looks the same. It doesn't, you click on channel partners. It doesn't have like any big names on there.

So I don't know. You might be right, Gavin. Maybe they didn't, they couldn't sell it. I don't know. Well, we'll see what this merger, where they go. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I wonder if, I wonder if they move to commercial. Definitely more money in commercial.

That makes sense. Yeah. Some big news from Netflix. They are going to be expanding their streaming capabilities by introducing HDR10 plus support, completing its existing HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats. HDR10 plus offers enhancement visual fidelity on a per frame basis, particularly benefiting Netflix's darker original content. So if you

have a system or TV that supports this HDR10 plus, and you have a Netflix subscription, and you probably have to pay for the HDR stuff to go on there too. And you're watching something that has an HDR film part of it. You might actually get a better picture out of Netflix there. So there you go. Is this a free upgrade? Do you have to pay like $5 more a month for this upgrade? Is anything free? I mean, TJ, I mean, I don't know.

It's, it's not, it's definitely not with Netflix. They're going to give you a taste of it now and then charge you. Yeah, as I say. You remember how your TV looked good when you were watching movies? Not anymore. We've ruined that unless you pay us $10 more a month. I've heard of crazy things this company does with their video playback. I've heard stories, I don't, I haven't, I have to go look it up,

but I haven't, I've heard stories of them like downloading to the player itself and rendering live on the player, like film grain and that kind of thing to introduce that type of noise into the video signal for a movie that they've done. So like they're doing a lot of like rendering. I think we talked about them doing the, I don't know, like lip syncing. Yeah. Lip sync and changing people's mouths and stuff on the fly. Yep.

I mean, yeah. So, uh, that's all kind of done within the player, usually within the software, not something that's like pre-recorded. Uh, so this could be part of that. Like if it's done on a per frame basis, they just have to download that metadata a little bit ahead of time. So it's there for the frame when it comes along. And then you get HDR 10 plus.

It's interesting. I wonder how they're gonna introduce this and push this all out. TJ, I don't think it's gonna be free though. Definitely not. It's gonna be free. It'll make you pay. All right, well, let's move on here.

All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 521. We got a pick of the week from Gavin. Where do you get all these electrical posts? In the electrical Facebook groups. That makes sense. I'm usually there asking for help on how to fix something I messed up.

Is this you? Is this your hand? No, it's not my head. Well, this is this is this is kind of funny. And I don't know, this is like one of those brain fart moments. It has someone holding a faceplate below like a a couple of light switches. And they said, Does anyone know where I can find a three gang play with the plug on the right side, not the left? And of course, if you look at the faceplate, it's on the left-hand side, not the right.

But I guess the easy thing to do would be just to take the plugs out, right? And rearrange everything. Oh man. Is that what you would do? That would be awful. That's what I would tell the study. I fixed it, and then when you go to do that,

you actually put the plate down the correct way. And then you're like, wait a minute. It was right this whole time. This is totally something I would do at like, you know, Friday at like 4 p.m. or 8 p.m. or something like that. Just be like, oh my God, why do I not have the right plate? I feel like I've been there. I feel like I'm looking at this and that could be my hand.

Yeah, Seth automatically identified with it. So yeah, he's done this before. It's amazing. This pick of the week is something you can laugh at and relate to at the same time. Yeah, no, that's a good one. Good one, Gavin. We'll put it in our show notes over there. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week or great ideas for show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates, project updates. Why am I at the top? What did I do? Nothing. Let's be honest, Seth. Let's start with you, Seth, because it will be the funniest one.

Well, I got a TV. I think I told you guys that, right? I bought the TV. I went with the Sony and it lived in the front area. And then my wife was like, come on, can you hook this TV up? I'm like, yeah, I can hook it up. See, you guys are laughing, but like there's a process to this because not only do I have to hook that TV up, I had to take one down and I had to move it. And when I moved it, I had to like take off the soundbar mounts and everything.

And I think I shared a picture of this, like the soundbar mounts and everything and I think I shared a picture of this like the soundbar mount I had on the Sony or on the Samsung TV was actually the Samsung TV mount like the not the mount but like the tabletop mount with the bottom chopped off of it screwed on to the Sony bracket that came with the Sony soundbar mount and that that matches up perfectly. So I was able to like, you know, way back in the day build this stuff on the floor and like, you know, screw it all together and then lift the TV up and put it on the wall. And now that the TV is dead, well, I don't have a bracket to match up with anything else. Now you gotta make another bespoke bracket, Seth.

Well I had a generic bracket on the other TV holding on to the Sonos, but also that was not very well done either because it was a generic bracket holding a, screwed into a, so this is how you do things when you're a custom integrator, right? You make things custom. That's right, custom everything.

I had the Sonos, all I had with this was the Sonos wall mount for the play bar. And so the wall mount, conveniently, I was able to screw that to the Sonos, all I had with this was the Sonos wall mount for the play bar. And so the wall mount conveniently, I was able to screw that to the generic brackets, mount those onto the TV. And that's how the Sonos soundbar was hanging below the TV for, I don't know, eight years or whatever. So the 60 inch TV, LG went and moved to the gaming room and I had to get that one up and

going because everybody wanted to play their video games before spring break was over. So I found I did get that up and going. Caveats here. My TV system was set up with this like ancient, I think it's a pre-release version of the AV Pro MX net system. And so it's a 4k 422 video distribution system, 4K30. And I think that's like shipping now. What I have probably was not what they were shipping.

In fact, I know it's not. So I probably need to move on from the system here. That's the problem. Because turns out I have been operating my system in 1080p forever. This is for the past whatever years. Because that Samsung TV is hooked up to a Sony receiver that I'll see for a video whatever. It only accepted 1080p. So I just kind of like dumbed everything down to that level right? Lowest common denominator. So I just kind of like dumbed everything down to that level right lowest common denominator now

I have three 4k TVs hooked up and I'm like three 4k TVs three 4k TVs that can do HDR Let's go and I like crank the dial up on those things and they froze up instantly So I Called AV Pro and they're super nice and they were like, well, here's the firmware, but I mean, after this, you can't go anymore in the firmware. You have to download this and do this trick step sideways and you have to load firmware over this USB thing by typing this parameter into the MCU. So yeah, it's kind of like a painful upgrade.

I wasn't actually able to ever make it work because I think these things aren't what they think they are. I think there's just like pre-production units that never actually shipped with firmware on them. Anyway, yeah, they were updated to most recently, but I figured if I was having a problem, I would start the firmware. There's probably just some weird thing in there.

And I think at the end of the day, I'm gonna have to like move away from video distribution and get, you know, three Apple TVs. You have to do the modern thing. That's what we do everywhere now. Do that everywhere. Now, the thing is my wife is like, but we won't be able to watch the same thing

on all the TVs. I'm like, no, we won't. So that'll be like what we miss from this. So I still may have that requirement around somewhere. But one of the funny quotes over the weekend was, oh, the Sony TV. You guys are probably wondering about the Sony TV because I've only done- Yeah, I mean, that's the only thing I care about right now. So yeah, I plugged the Sony TV in and immediately had these issues with like a green screen and like, I'm like, well,

maybe it's just this AV Pro decoder. Let me swap it out with another one. So I've got with another one. It worked and then didn't, it went to 1080p, didn't do 4K. I think 4K is just out of the question for me now. And my Apple TV is, believe it or not, well, I guess you can probably believe it, is 10 years old as well. So it's like the first gen 4K.

I think they're on the third gen now. See, your wife didn't realize when you had to upgrade the TV that you had to upgrade all these other things too. And we haven't even talked about the soundbar too, you know? You gotta get a new soundbar still, so. You know, this would all be much easier if the soundbar had ARC input, and I didn't have to rely on like,

all the other stuff that goes along. That's why you need a new soundbar, Seth. Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling the pressure now. Like, one of the choice quotes was, can you ask on your show how many other people it takes three days to turn on their TV? You should tell her how fast I do projects at my house. No.

It's like, TG, we built his entire room in the time it took me to hang a TV. Yeah, so currently, the living room TV works, technically. I can turn it on. I've taken the Apple TV out of the video distribution system and it's kind of like dangling by its little wires from behind the TV. Out the bottom, along with the other wires. The sona sound bar is still sitting on the cabinet because the sanest sona sound bar

that the bracket you recommended, TJ, took a while to get delivered. So it's finally here now. And maybe this weekend I'll get back to it and try and hook things up and finish it off. Finish, finish off the project. Well, we didn't, we didn't do an official bedding. Stop judging. We didn't do an official bedding thing, but I bet two to three weeks. And this last week, you got it last week, right?

Yeah. I mean, it will be the end of this week will be yeah. The last week. All right. So I have pretty good feeling about this. Does it feel like I'm judging? I don't know. And it's just this look, even staring into the camera.

I was like, man, he's either like reading something or judging me. I don't know. Uh, I let you think about it. Well, hopefully, I don't know. I would really like to have a 4k video system back up, but I think at this point, I was only using it for one or two sources. So I'm kind of like, what is that a two by four system at the most? A two by three is what it would be. So I really don't like, what is that, a 2x4 system at the most? 2x3 is what it would be.

So I really don't need a matrix switcher. If I had to do another matrix switcher, I'd run some HDMI cables or do HDBASTE, which I kind of don't want to do anyway. Yeah, just do fiber HDMI cables. That's what I do at my house. Yeah, I could do that, but that would involve me getting in the attic. Oh, just do it, Seth. No, no.

Do it, do it, do it. This extends the project out by a month. Oh my God. How long does it take you to run some fiber optic? Yeah. They're thin little cables. I mean. He's got to think about it for three weeks first.

Got to plan every detail out. Drill holes, get in the attic, all that stuff. Drill holes. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. If I go that, get in the attic, all that stuff. Drill holes? Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. If I go that far, I probably won't go that far, honestly. I'm just going to stick with the Cat 5 stuff.

I like the Cat 5. The Cat 5 is there, or the Cat 6, whatever. Any suggestions out there on a 4K video distribution system that supports Dolby HDR? I did actually, once the Apple TV was hooked up to the TV, directly to the HDMI cable with a caveat there, because I had an old binary cable from like 10 years ago or whenever. Of course, yeah. Yeah, that thing did not support 4K.

So I ripped that out and put in a newer bullet train HDMI. And that one worked fine. What's the bullet train? The one AV Pro ones. Oh. They have the fiber ones as well, the fancy ones. When I got that plugged in and hooked up, it actually had a really nice picture

and the Dolby Vision and everything got kicked on. So yeah, I think I'm gonna have to go that way, that direction. Yeah, I think you just need a simple setup, Seth. I just have a HCMI matrix in the living room and mine's not simple, so don't go off. I just have a HCMI matrix in the living room and mine's not as simple, so don't go off mine. But just an HCMI matrix in the living room with fiber HCMI cables coming out of it,

connected to all your TVs, problem solved. See, fiber cables. And it costs like $400. You know when you get in a video distribution, it's gonna cost more than your TV. Yeah, I know. That's the truth of the matter. Yeah. That seems like the truth of the matter. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't, that seems like the smart way to go. I really, well, here's the thing. Like, I could, so I still have a Just Add Power system here. And actually you can pick them up really cheap, but they're the 1080p version, right?

So like, people are just throwing those out. They're on eBay for like $5. You need 4K, what are you downgrading for? Well, like, only if we wanted to watch stuff on multiple TVs would I ever need to use that system. So maybe I could just have that for whatever I've got laying around in the closet of mystery there, and then just use 4K Apple TVs as endpoints

on the other thing. And that kind of gets rid of like a lot of things. Like it gets rid of AV remotes and all that stuff. So I don't know. You're, your reasoning hurts my brain. And you know, Plex has a watch together feature, right? So if you want really wanted to watch the same thing in multiple rooms, there you go.

Here, Seth, Seth, I just sent you a hundred foot fiber HDMI cable that I've bought myself and it's only $50. I can't believe you're coming to Florida to help me put in landscape lights and, and get in my attic. Man, it's going to be a fun summer. TJ. Wait, wait, wait. Not, not, not before you come to Canada, you know?

Don't wait till summer. Yeah. I don't have my passport yet. I can't go to Canada just yet. I'll just sneak across like everybody else. It's totally cool. They'll let you in, let you out. Tell them you're bringing back the fentanyl. Once I, once I say y'all, they'll be like, oh no, you's totally cool. They'll let you in, let you out. Tell them you're bringing back the fentanyl.

Once I, once I say y'all, they'll be like, oh no, you definitely belong here. Y'all ain't going to let me in. Hey, well that's all I got for projects. Um, so yeah. TJ, you're, you, you got some stuff done. I got a couple of things then I got, um, uh, we finally got the den painted. So I've been talking about the den and ripping the walls out and everything. This week, this weekend, it actually got painted.

It's a very bright green color. Nicole picked it out herself. I didn't think I was going to be a fan of it. When I saw it, I was like, at least you picked a color we could easily paint over. But it actually looks pretty nice. I think it looks good. I'll put it in the back channel here. But I like it.

It's called Kiwi. I'm not really sure it's a Kiwi color, but yeah. So I got the walls done. They're all painted. I also got all the electrical outlets installed. It's the same color wall board that you put off. Right? What did you even paint?

The seams? That's funny. Yeah, it all got primered and stuff, so it is all pink. Right. What did you even paint? seems That's funny. Yeah, it all got primered and stuff. So it is all thanks good, but I got my my outlets all installed They're all 20 amp outlets. I Because I'm I'm bougie like that. I decided to get screwless blank plates And you know, I I've never really spent time trying to make screwless blank plates like perfect, you know, because the biggest issue with them is that you have to get the spacing right. So that way the the hours actually flush with the plate. And

that is like so difficult. I tried it on like four outlets in the den and I gave up and I was just like, it's fine. Nobody's ever going to notice besides me. So on wall on wall mounted. Yeah, it just sticks sticks out and yeah And like, you know, the drywall is not perfect everywhere And so it's just like I like that I have one really good outlet in there and everything else is kind of janky looking But that's fine. Just recessed. So yeah, that's done. I'll probably do the floor this summer I don't know still deciding what I want to do with that.. You probably haven't done it before I get this TV working. Oh, 100%.

Yeah, I'd bet on that. Seth, I want you to know this. I'm going to tell your wife this. I've got a new camera today. Picked it up at the office at like 4 p.m., 5 p.m., something like that. And I had it installed in the front of my house within an hour of arriving home. You got one of these? Is that what you said? And I had it installed in the front of my house within an hour of arriving home. Yeah. You got one of these? Is that what you said? Yeah. I didn't have to run a new cable.

I just replaced an existing camera. Uh, but yeah, just got to be laying around. Yeah. But running the cable is the hardest part. When you got POE and stuff, like just putting in a new camera is so much easier. Hey, don't give Seth any excuses. Come on. That, no, I'm telling that's why Seth Seth, you gotta start running POE and fiber everywhere,

so upgrades are so much easier for yourself. Yeah, he's already got that. He just doesn't wanna spend the $3,000 it's gonna cost for a video distribution. Yeah. Which I cannot blame him. That sounds awful. But I also, but speaking of projects,

I replaced my Acara camera today. So I had the Acara G5 Pro PoE camera, which I actually really liked. I enjoyed it. It worked great. But my problem is I couldn't use any storage options with it. So it didn't support local recording to a micro SD card. I had to run my own server to record to, which I'm not going to do that. And the only way I could record at my house was HomeKit secure video which limits you to 1080p. So it was not a good option for my house.

Unfortunately, it's going to go to my neighbor. My neighbor helped me move some drywall in for the den and I'm going to give him this camera as a thank you for that. I did replace it with this new I did replace it with this new Uniview Alview camera. So this is a color night vision camera as well. Works fantastic. Seth's got one here on the video that nobody can see. It's got little allies on there so you know it's a serious camera. On the packaging. There's no ally.

They don't dress up the cameras like it unfortunately. Yeah. It should have Al on the camera. There's no owl. It doesn't level they don't dress up the cameras like it. Yeah, unfortunately Yeah, it should have out on the on the camera. That would be nice. The one I got is a super long number It's a IPC 362 a sr-a DF to a km. I don't know why they always give the most obnoxious names to cameras. Oh, I missed the fourth one You have to go back to it. Well, we'll link it in the end of show notes. It actually is a pretty decent looking camera. I like the, the profile of an everything. Um, the night view on it is fantastic.

I have a hooked up to unify protect right now. Um, and with all the lights off and everything like that, I get full color night vision. It's crazy. Like, like, I don't know how to explain this to people, but like in full darkness at night, it actually looks like it's a little overcast. Yeah. Right.

So it looks like it's in the middle of the day with a little overcast. I have a question for you, TJ. Um, since you said you had them integrated with the Unify, the protect app. Does yours take a little long time to like turn, like show up, the video show up? Or is it instant? It takes like a couple seconds to refresh. Most of the time. There's sometimes it gets like hung up.

But like here I just opened my backyard camera which was not open. And it took like five to ten seconds to actually clear up. Hmm. Yeah, I found like the on-vif. I have the UNVR and it still takes the on-vif. I'm still waiting for the back Creek camera to come up, and that's not even one of the, well, I guess it's a UNIView,

but it's like a regular old color hunter version of it, which just is the previous generation, not what you're talking about. It just takes a while for, sometimes I'll just get a black picture for a while. And then it takes maybe 10 or 15 seconds for it to come up. I'm just wondering if that was like normal still or? Yeah, well, I think it, yeah, it kind of just depends on the camera sometimes too, so.

I wish they would publish like settings or let us know why, like, you know, view. Nah. Nice. You're on a need to know basis and you don't need to know. I've got a new automation set up guys. Well, I did until I installed this new camera. So I gotta figure that part out.

But I wanted to have a way that my lights adjusted the color whenever somebody was detected in the front yard, they're like walking up to the house or something. And so until today, I had my Acura G5 camera. Whenever I detect a person, it would push a setting to home assistant,

and then would flash my sidewalk lights and my house lights red. And it was like one of the funniest things ever. Like somebody walks by the house and the sidewalk and the lights flash red. And after like five seconds, they turn back white. Uh, and it works great. Every time I come home at night, uh, the lights flash red, uh, as I'm walking

up to the house and I kind of feel like, uh, I don't know what I feel like, but it's, uh, it's pretty funny. I can't imagine what my neighbors would think. Like this guy's lights turn red every time he walks into his door. Why would he want that? It's actually kind of funny. It's entertaining for, you know, I'm sure kids will walk by and enjoy it. Yeah.

I can't wait for like Halloween. You know, Halloween is going to be fun when the kids are walking up to get some candy and the lights change colors automatically and stuff. The only thing I haven't figured out is I need to like figure out how to, uh, right now, you know, during the off seasons or off season holidays, I just have the lights going up to like 3000K, but I need to figure out a way to like save whatever scene I have going on with the lights at the time.

And so that way when it's done changing the lights to red or whatever color I have, it reverts back to whatever the scene was. Right now I'm just using a static color temperature and brightness and so it's relatively easy, but I need to be able to recall whatever scene I had set previously. So not really sure how I'm gonna do that yet.

Well, we could talk. I figured gas would have a solution. That's why I nudged it in there. It depends on how you did it in your automation. You could save it to a variable if it's still running and then, or you could save it to a helper entity. You know, there's multiple ways you could do it, but you know, we'll talk.

Yeah. And then my, my last struggle, uh, is my, my dream, uh, robot vacuum. So, uh, this is the only robot vacuum I've ever owned. I bought it when we moved into the house because, um, I had, uh, for the first time I had wood floors all my life I've only had carpet and and I didn't realize this but a carpet is really gross But it's also really good at just not having stuff on your feet all the time and when you have wood floors When you walk around literally everything just gets stuck to your feet and it's awful.

And so I bought a robot vacuum because I was like, I'm just going to vacuum like every day and so that way I don't feel the stuff on my feet. It has worked great. I haven't had really any problems with it. Occasionally, though, I've had a problem with the, there's a cliff sensor on the bottom of the vacuum. And I guess that's what detects if the vacuum is raised up or Stuck somewhere on a ledge or something like that

And you have to like basically move it into a different spot and start the vacuum again Well mine's been randomly throwing out the air for like I would say like six months or so and I would just move it To another spot and then it would work fine again, and I wouldn't have any problems with it. Well, this past week it kept giving me the air and so I'd move it to a new spot and start it and run for like you know a couple minutes and then it would throw the air again and I'm like okay well that's weird and so finally decided I was like well you know I probably gotta like clean this thing because I clean the brushes and and they replace the little I replace the brushes and replace the brushes and whatever else pieces they have. But I've never taken it apart to clean it or anything like that.

So I finally looked up where the cliff sensors are, and they're underneath the vacuum, but they've got a clear lens over them. There's a little camera or something inside them, and that's what actually detects, you know, where it's at for the cliff sensor issue that it has. The problem with my model, I have the DreamVac Z10 Pro, I believe.

There's like a little lens that goes over that. And there's just like dust and stuff stuck in there that I can't get to unless I completely disassemble the vacuum. It doesn't just have like a removable cover or something. It's like a whole built-in plastic piece. And so I started taking the vacuum apart a little bit to like, oh, maybe, you know, if I just take off this piece or take off this piece, I can get to it. And I couldn't. So right now, my two-year-old robot vacuum is broken. And I don't think there's really any way to fix it unless I'm going to tear apart the whole thing.

I think you're like the perfect person for a robot vacuum with an arm. I get DJ. Why'd you get one with an arm? Why do I need an arm? You never know what you need it for till you get one. I guess. Scratch your back maybe. Who knows?

Oh, I got a wife for that. Foot massage. That's a, you know, he's just, he just sit there on the couch. Scratch your back. Maybe. Oh, I got a wife for that foot massage Sit there on the couch your robot vacuum comes and gives you a foot massage. Oh, don't touch my feet Chasing the dog around, you know, it's the best friend That's all the projects I got. What about you, Gavin? Yeah, Gavin, what's been going on in Canada? Ah, that's the crazy week.

Okay. So I have a whole bunch of projects, but I'm going to actually leave them all until next week, but, um, I'll just, I'll just mention, um, this week I was on home gadget geeks. So make sure you go check out that latest episode. We talked self hosting and home automation stuff. Good time. Um, so make sure you go check out that latest episode. We talked self hosting and home automation stuff. Good time. Um, so make sure you go check that out. But, um, like I said, next week I'll get into my projects because this

week something significant happened. Never thought this would ever happen to me, but in our driveway, we let the neighbor, uh, park their car on our driveway, right? We have an extra spot. They have extra cars. So we just let them use it. Right. Well, this week, the car got stolen.

Oh. Yeah, something I never thought, like we've caught people checking the doors and stuff in our neighborhood, but, and I know around the neighborhood, cars have been getting stolen, but we finally got targeted, they stole the car. Now the good news is, is they didn't get far with the car.

So it kind of went around the corner onto a side street and then it shut off. The immobilizer kicked in and shut off. So we got kind of lucky that they were amateurs, didn't really know what they were doing. Um, so, you know, while they were still in the car, the police, you know, were driving up, they all got away at everything, but, um, they caused about a thousand dollars in damage. Geez.

And it sucks, you know, something like that up, they all got away at everything, but, um, they caused about a thousand dollars in damage. And it sucks, you know, something like that just sucks when it happens to your house. So it has, you know, us all talking about security, modifying security and, you know, being more aware and stuff like that. But taking this back to the tech route now, right? My automations, my security actually all worked out perfectly. Right. Where it broke down was me waking up to actually realizing where I was to

actually thinking of what was going on to, you know, by the time I got to the window, the car was driving off. So that's where it broke down. Right. But I have an automation set up so that, you know, when the alarm is on, the alarm is on and it's nighttime. If a person's detected in my driveway, it will send a push notification to my phone that breaks through any do not disturb and stuff like that.

And it wakes me up to say, Hey, somebody's on your driveway. Right. In the past, um, I, I, we've had a number of false notifications with this, especially when I was working with blue Iris, we got a lot of false notifications and you didn't really trust it and stuff. Ever since I moved over to, uh, uh, Unify with the AI port and everything like that, I don't get false notifications at all. Like reflections in car windows don't trigger it.

Unify just works so much better. If a person's there, you know, it's a person I don't get you know, like a little animal thinks as a person or a shadow. It thinks as a person. It's a person now Some of the things, you know, we've learned learned from this experience was now we can take those notifications more seriously Right and stop thinking it was a false notification because I haven't had a false notification since I switched it over. So next time this wakes me up, I'm running right to the window. I got a bat and everything.

You know, I, we have a routine now and everything like that. Right. Um, second thing we've learned is, you know, cameras these days aren't even a deterrent anymore. Yeah. You know, they see the camera, the lights come on everything. They don't even care anymore. They're fully covered.

They stand there and they just do their thing. They don't even care. Right. So the cameras these days are more just to, so I know what was going on. Yeah. Right. Uh, or to wake me up in that case. Right.

So that, that's another thing we, I don't know. Well, I think that like most of the times, like when people put cameras in, they're not putting them in for like really for security. Like you said, I put it in so I can see there's is a car in the driveway. Like you're never gonna see or be able to identify somebody who walks up to your car and pulls on the handle.

Like that's just not what the security cameras for. Yeah. It's there for you to like know that somebody walked up and pulled on the handle at 3 a.m. Outside of that, like you're not, the video is pretty much useless. Like I think we- Well, it is useless because I realized

that we don't invest in the quality of like, I think everybody takes the camera for granted as I can see a picture. That's all I want. Right. But when something happens, you want to see the clear, but you want to see the car in the road, you want to see, you know, all these other things, but to get those kind of cameras costs a lot of money.

Right. And people do not want to spend that. Right. Um, I noticed this because after this event, all, you know, talked to all the neighbors, they were all going through their footage and sending me stuff. 99% of it, actually pretty much all of it was garbage. Well, the neighbor across the street was okay, but most of it was garbage. And it's, it's like, it was aimed out, just out in nowhere. It was badly aimed.

It's the wrongs camera. It's aimed at my bathroom window. I really don't understand what he's looking at. Yeah. There, there, there's just so many wrongs that I almost said to them. I'm like, I was just talking with someone before the show we recorded. And I'm saying, if you want a camera upgrade, we need to talk, you know, because, you know, I was hoping they would have had a specific image, but then

when you looked at their setup, they really, I don't know what it is you want to accomplish with this, right? And then if you don't have a camera recording 24 seven, that's another problem right there, right? Is if you just got something that triggers on, you know, emotion, it's only going to capture certain motion at a certain distance, you know, whereas if you had something that was 24 seven recording, you could capture, you see everything, right? Even though it got triggered at this point, at least 24 seven recording, you could capture, you see everything,

right? Even though it got triggered at this point, at least you know, at this time you could see everything, you know, in the image. So all my cameras are recording 24 seven, you know, like my home automation security, everything worked perfectly as expected. I just want clearer picture and I'm going to be investing in some nicer cameras that will give me a full clear picture of the road and I'll be having some conversations with some of these neighbors saying, Hey, you need to upgrade your system.

We need to get, you know, we need to get the neighborhood security, uh, camera, you know, on par so that when something goes down, we come together and we got all the footage to identify every car that just passed by. So now that you got all these unified G6 cameras with the hub thing with all the like the remote Unify. Yeah, you could you could you could have a nice little security camera set up Well, I'm thinking even the one I'll have in the front yard the whatever camera I put in the front yard I'm gonna spend a little extra money It might not be a unified camera, but it's gonna be a little extra money that gives you a much clearer picture, gives me like the

night, the night vision and everything like that. Um, and I'm going to look into see, you know, once that don't get blurry with too much motion and stuff like that, can it catch a car, you know, and if it comes to the thousand dollars, you know, you will appreciate that you will appreciate that when something happens and you pull up that footage and you realize how clear it was and you got the license plate off that car as it drove by, you know, um, so the wife gave me, I guess, the, the okay to look into this, right?

You know, because again, it's a safety thing, right? And it's happening in the neighborhood. I'll send you some cameras, Gavin, don't worry. It's just gonna be in the front. The one, two cameras are the only ones I'm really gonna pimp out, are gonna be those two cameras. The ones in my backyards and stuff,

they don't have as far of a distance to look at. You know, I can go with a lower resolution on them and stuff like that, right? But yeah, you learn a few things when you're in a situation of this and mostly you'll learn of what failed you, you learn a few things when you're in a situation of this and mostly you learn of what failed you, you know, and I'm going to fix some of those. In my situation, I got footage. It notified me. What failed me is I just was too slow to respond, you know, because, you know, I was used to false alarms in the past.

But, you know, I got over the hump now that, hey, we haven't had false alarms since moving to Unifi. So anytime it wakes me up, take it serious. Somebody's in the driveway, something's happening, you know? Um, and then I just want to clear a picture because I want something at night. If that car is driving by, be able to get a picture of it because that would definitely have told the police what this car was. Right. Um, but I don't know if you guys have ever had this kind of situation. No, not, not yet.

Not yet. Like who, who, who knew, like we've had people in the area. We're kind of like at a dead end street too, but we've had people like, if you go to the next door app or the ring app or whatever, you see people like, Oh, I saw somebody walk up and pull on the handle, you know, like that happens in the area. Yeah, that happens. I mean, it's only a matter of time until something like that does happen. So that's why I say not yet.

But like I'm looking at my cameras right now. I got them pulled up on the screen in front of me. And like if somebody were to go and mess with some of my cars, like I, honestly, I wouldn't get a very good picture of them. Like my, the cameras are kind of like pretty wide angle lenses. They, they're not like zoomed in on any particular area. And like it, if you're far away from the house and I say far away, maybe if you're like more than 20 feet, like that's things start to get like tiny and small and like

there's lower resolution at that point. Right. Yeah. You're just talking about pictures. So like I even have a camera on my mailbox. things start to get like tiny and small and like there's lower resolution at that point, right? Yeah. You're just talking about pictures. So like I even have a camera on my mailbox. Now, if I park a car right in front of that camera, I guess I will see, you know, half of the car, you know, the back quarter panel, the left-hand side of the driver's side of

the car and then like the back of it. But like other than that, I don't see anything else. I don't know. Like I just, I have an idea though, Gavin, because you said it's Canada and then like, you said that it's like zero out there. I think, I think I'm putting it in the back channel here. I'm like, I'm sending you a link. I think you guys need to do something like this because I think this will stop you. I don't know how this works. Like with, you know, your coldness and stuff, but I think you need to hook up the sprinkler.

Oh, the sprinkler. I think that would stop them. I mean, that would stop them cold in your situation, but I don't know how you keep the pipe warm. Oh, it's a little too cold that night for that, but you know, yeah. It's just a situation where once you're in it, you start to rethink your security setup. You start to realize your blind spots, you know, like we, because they reversed the truck in on that side of the driveway, the driver's side was our blind spot.

We couldn't see what was happening on that side. Right. So now I'm like, well, now I'm going to want a camera that kind of captures that blind spot there too, right. And, and again, it's just the front yard. I want to focus. And the reason why it's becoming more of an issue is in this neighborhood. Um, you know, sometimes people laugh, but you're, multiple cars a week getting stolen in the neighborhood.

And people have gotten to the point where they're putting the boots on the car. Right. Cause the, um, the, you know, the old club that you used to put in, that's useless now cause they cut the steering wheel and the club comes off. Right. So people actually started putting the boots on the cars and you could walk and drive down one of our streets and you see multiple boots on the car. And that's just a headache, right? That's wild. Yeah. So now I'm going to like invest in the front cameras. I'm going to be looking for some advice. You know,

I want something really clear and I'm not going to say money's no object, but I'm going to not want to cheap out on it. You know, I'm going to want to invest some quality in it so that I know I have the, you know, when something happens, my neighbors can come to me and I can say, yeah, I saw when your daughter snuck out, you know, here's the footage and this is what you're wearing. Your facial awareness picked her up. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And there you go. You know, like I want to be the, the, the friendly neighborhood Gavin, you know? Neighborhood watch. Exactly. I don't care.

People will complain about cameras all the time, but when something happens, they'll come over to your house asking for the footage. Yeah. And they'll be all upset when you say, I don't have your house in my view. Well, why not? Because?

Yeah, I've had the cops come and ask me that. And I obviously turn them down. You know, well, why not? Because yeah, I've had I've had the cops come and ask me that and then yeah obviously turn him down, but if you know if because snitches get stitches, but like It's my neighbor like cut the cop cave to me I go listen here's the video footage from my camera. I have three other cameras sending it to me now and I'll have your email address and I'll have it sent to you. And he's like, thanks. You're doing my job for me.

I go, I shouldn't have to. He didn't find that funny. He was three in the morning and I had been woken up. I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't too happy at that point either. Right. So that's too good. But yeah, yeah, I'll be talking to you guys over the next few weeks about, you know, recommendations and I'm going to be looking at some videos on, you know,

some things like you got to take into consideration motion, you know, whether it's daytime or nighttime, some cameras are blurry, some cameras are good, you know, um, so I'll be looking into that. I'll help you spend all the money. Yeah. I know TJ will. I know. Don't worry.

You know, do I put one camera? Do I put two cameras? Why not three? Or four? Oh, God. PTCs. Four PTCs. With the little strobe lights on them, the little police strobe lights.

Yeah, the police strobe lights. Constantly going off. And the auto following. Can you imagine someone walks up to the house and every camera just turns and looks at them? That would be freaky. That would freak out the mailman every day. I never saw it because it was at our office when I was at Blackwire.

And they installed this, like it's a Uniview, but it's a massive PTZ camera that they have, I guess. And I'm not even sure which one it is. It was evidently large, like serious enough where people who were just walking behind the warehouse there at night, for whatever reason, because they were kind of in one of those warehouse district places, they would notice it and they would just be staring at it. Like, it's the craziest, like it is just so absurdly large that people are just like, what is this thing looking at me? Yeah. It's the craziest, like it is just so absurdly large that people are just like,

what is this thing looking at me? Yeah. Uh, so yeah, maybe, maybe you just need one of those, put it right in the, you know, like, like on a, on a pillar in front of your lawn or something like that. Just like put it out there in the front and like people walk up and they're like, what, what is this? And then they just like, okay, I'm not, I don't want to deal with this robot thing and it may have a laser or something.

Or, you know, like a mini dome from Vegas that you can melt on your house with a little face on it that looks at you as you walk up to the cars and stuff like that. Sell these type of things. We will see. I'll see where this takes me. But it's an experience and it makes me reevaluate a number of things. I realize a lot of people, they haven't been through this experience, so they just think their camera is, you know, what it is and yeah, take it

serious, especially if you live in our neighborhood. Well, yeah, yeah. Especially if you're parking Gavin's driveway. I'm afraid to put out the robot vacuum, the robot lawnmower now. In the meantime, mine has been driving around, you know, in, in, in, sometimes it falls out in the street and I have to go get it out, you know, and sometimes it falls out in the street and I have to go get it out, you know, like, one time I got stuck in the front yard. I was just sitting up there for a day. I had to come home and I don't know, like, maybe people

will find us down here and start stealing stuff from my front lawn. It's bound to happen. It's bound to happen. Yeah. Yeah. We felt safe for a while, but I think that's kind of gone now in the neighborhood. Yeah, it sucks when that happens. Yeah, we felt safe for a while but I think that's kind of gone now in the neighborhood. Yeah, it sucks when that happens. Yeah. All right, well I think that's gonna wrap up our projects here and the show this week but we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. But if you pledge over five bucks a month,

you get a big shout out here on the show just like Jake Sutton. Yay, Jake. Thanks, Jake, so much. He's one of five dollar not pledges this week. So thanks very much. If you want to help out, but can support show financially, we just appreciate a five star review on iTunes or pause the reading in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up the week of news here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care.

And cut. Boom. Did we finish with it? No we didn't. Boom. And cut. Boom. Did we finish with it? No we didn't.

It's not bad still.