HomeTech.fm - Episode 522 - I *was* Renting a Water Heater

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

On this week's show: Aqara updates the G5 Pro based on customer feedback, Logitech starts to stop supporting some Harmony remotes, Alexa+ is out but only for a select few, Yale releases an ugly lock, Samsung wants to text you on your vacuum cleaner, Gavin tests out HomeyPro, a pick of the week, letters from the mailbag, and so much more!

This is the HomeTech Podcast for Friday, April 4th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Bickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the HomeTech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, dead remote. Oh, no. Bring out your dead.

Bring out your dead. They're not dead. They're just purging the old ones. They're not dead yet? No, not dead yet. All right. Well, big old Harmony remote discontinuation notice was posted, I guess. What is that? It looks like, this is a picture on Reddit, so it looks like within the software, right? And it says, after careful consideration and more than 10 years of dedicated support, we have made a difficult decision to discontinue support for our Harmony first generation remote devices. As technology continues to evolve, we recognize the challenges in maintaining our services to the standards we strive for.

It goes on to say as the first generation remote users will experience impact, the ability to reprogram or modify the remote's behavior includes making configuration changes, adding remote devices or activities. So, um, they're sorry for any, they're also apologizing for any inconveniences caused. I like how that's in red. Um, this is, uh, gonna be for the following remotes. Actually it's the 880, the 525, 900, 550, 659, 520, 7, no, 670.

The remotes with numbers on it, the remotes with numbers, you know, not the elite or. It's all the 10 to 20 year old ones. So these are the ones I hate it. Like I, the 80 pro, the 80. Oh man, that's the ones are the worst. I'm surprised they're still alive. Honestly. Those are the ones that were hubless, right?

Like they had a hub. It's about time. No, those were hubless. I wouldn't have hub. It was like a IR extender. Let's just say that's what it was. Yeah. Okay.

That, yeah, different. Yeah. Yeah. And then like the 500s were just standalone remotes with like double A batteries. And those were actually okay, I guess. Like they did their job, but man, uh, lots of them going out of, uh, out of operating. You won't be able to change anything, update anything. Probably had something break and they're like, well, we're not fixing that.

So good excuse to buy a new Harmony remote that you can't buy. Oh, yeah, that's the problem. They must've let go of the developers or something. Like did the doge go in there and cut people or? But they just, they just finally realized, oh, like, wait a minute guys, we don't need to do this anymore. We already told them. Yeah.

But what, nobody uses this anymore anyway. So now this is a, I wish there was some kind of open source things so people could continue to use these remotes, because I'm sure some of them are still good. But really, how much longer are they going to actually last? Yeah, I was surprised to see these numbers, because I'm like, I know, even though the Harmony 1000i, I remember that one. Yeah, these are ones that made me hate Harmony as a name. Yeah, it's like programming the old URC remotes

where you couldn't program the hub or anything like that. And old, I mean, the ones that they still sell where you have to physically plug it into your computer to program it and everything. That's awful. You don't want that. No, yeah. And if you had the base station,

you had to unplug the base station from behind all the mess, disconnect all the IRs. Oh, yeah. Plug the base station in behind all the mess, disconnect all the IRs that were in the box, plug the base station in, pray to God that it actually worked. If it doesn't, then you're starting all over, and then you have to go put that mess back in place behind all the hot AV, dusty AV gear.

Yeah, I'm glad during the Harmony rain, I worked at a high-end AV company, so we did not use these at all. Yeah. I'm not saying the remotes we use are better, but. Yeah, I worked at a high-aving company and we were doing those and we were a Control 4 dealer. So I'm like, what? Why aren't we using this?

Yeah, right? Well, the thing is, it was like, what? People want it. The beginning of time for Control 4, it was not a reliable system. So we were kind of feeling it out. So it took a while before there was trust built up, but my trust in Harmony went away pretty quickly.

So we were still doing the Pronto remotes. If anybody remembers those, those were the commonly the high-end. There was actually a Marantz remote that came with the projector for the theaters we did. They tossed in this Marantz branded Harmony remote, or not Harmony remote, Pronto remote with the screen on it.

And that was my job for a number of years was programming those things and maintaining them and fixing them and whatever. So yay. Anyway, we also got this interesting little tidbit from Acara. They have listened to their customers. And I guess this is funny. It's like a Reddit post. And they said, your candid feedback about the G5 Pro subscription model

and the feature limitations was invaluable. Sounds like they got like yelled at on Reddit. And they made a bunch of changes. So they've got free cloud storage now for all new and existing users. They've got local functionality improved that's gonna do detection automation, timeouts. Timeouts are gonna be removed,

there's no paywalls to that. Local clip download, you can do that. Timeline and playback upgrades. Let's see what else I got. Storage and recording flexibility. So this is a big one. They've got SMB NAS recording, right? And on-vive support coming.

Woo! Woo! Finally, you can use it with Unifi Protect now. I bet, TJ, you're really excited to use this on your G5 Pro, right? Right? Definitely. No, I already switched mine out, unfortunately. Here's the thing.

I think this would have been a perfect camera with a micro SD card as well. It's good to see them update this and add these features and stuff. It's just weird that it didn't launch with it. Some of these are basic things that you would kind of expect. And the thing that kind of really rubbed me wrong was how you had to pay a subscription or to retrieve footage initially. And like, that's not right.

Like, put a paywall on stuff, but like make it like features that like add to the experience, not just like a basic functionality, right? Like if you bought a smart lock and you couldn't unlock the door remotely without paying a subscription, that defeats the whole purpose of a smart lock. But like you can add features behind that

to make it worth it. So that kind of annoyed me, but it went to my neighbor who I'm gonna install it for, because he helped me carry a bunch of drywall the other day. So he's, it'll go across the street to live. Paid in camera. That's right. So you're going to make your neighbor suffer through this thing.

You're going to make him get this. No, he's getting all the good stuff. He's getting AI improvements is number five on here. I mean, come on, AI improvements. Oh. They've got AI. I feel like they were listening to your griping there, TJ. Like all these features were things you're complaining about.

Like. No, It's a perfect camera Yeah, they took it personally Yeah And some of the stuff is like the stuff that like the youtubers and other tech people have like they didn't really like touch on Right, like they didn't talk about most of this stuff Or if they did it was like very like quick and not to like bring attention to it and that that's just wrong, too So it's good to see this I think a lot of people were very upset about this though because like bring attention to it. And that's just wrong too. So it's good to see this.

I think a lot of people are very upset about this though, because some of this stuff defeats the purpose of a security camera. Well, it seemed like a nice camera. Aside, you know, that it, and I don't know, it's nice that they're putting these features in. Well, and you got POE and wifi options.

How often do you get both of those options with a DIY camera? Never. Well, all right, well, we got that. We're swapping things around a little bit. Maybe we should just do the show closing at the end here. We'll just swap it around. Just moving stuff around. We got a bunch of stuff in the mailbag this week though. I wanted to talk about this at the top of the show.

All right. First up, we've got, I'm not sure I didn't add a name in here from our forum on the website. They say, I love the show, found your show after another podcast that I followed it into. Stacey on IoT. That's still the number one podcast out there. It's really weird. Anyway, let's probably talk about that later. He said, I heard Gavin mentioned an issue with his Eve Energy Plug. I had mine initially connected to Home Assistant through

the multi-admin feature using my Apple devices for like Apple TVs home pods as border routers found that while this worked in home kit, the Eve energy would be unresponsive at times in home assistant. So they found it. I found if I use the nest hub as my border router and use the multi admin feature to get it into Home Assistant. My issues with responsiveness in Home Assistant went away." So, not sure, he goes on to say, not sure if Gavin is using the border routers, but he hopes that helps. Gavin, got any ideas on this? The first time I read this email was before my coffee in the morning and it hurt.

Oh, I'm lost. And now that you read it, I'm still just as lost. No, I'm just kidding. before my coffee in the morning and it hurt. And now that you read it, I'm still just as not, no, I'm just kidding. Oh, I saw it in real time. Cause I'm the one that posted this in the, in the back channel for everybody to see. And Gavin, Gavin was just like, I don't know. Yeah. That was too early in the morning to read that, but yeah, my, my great isn't that I was looking at the Eve sensor actually this week and I see that, you know, an

home assistant, I'm a, my firmware is out of date for one, but then I go to update the, I go to update the firmware and of course it fails. So my gripe is, and it randomly goes offline and stuff, and I know what he's saying, um, going through, setting it up through different border routers or ecosystems or something. But, um, my gripe is I shouldn't have to do that.

Why do I have, why would the normal person have to know about this stuff or go through that's this and this, isn't this what matters supposed to eliminate? Like now I got to worry about where I set it up and what border routers I use and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Like I should just be able to go into home assistant at it and it just works or go into home, get at it and see it in Home Assistant. But it probably is something wrong with my setup.

Um, I noticed my Matter border router was crashing every now and then. I think this is probably the only device I have in there, um, at this point. So it was probably related to that too. So it's probably something. What are you using for your Matter border router? Um, well, it's on the Home Assistant I have have, well, other than my having my Apple TV, now I have the aqua hubs also in there in that makes, but also the home assistant, their, um, their matter stick that they sold.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about, right? Um, I use that and I only use it for matter. I don't use for not matter for thread. Right. Um, I only use it for that. I don't use it for Zigbee.

Um, so I noticed every now and then that add-on was crashing. It went crashed, it turned off and that kind of coincides with when my Eve was going offline too. So I think it has something to do with that as well, but that Eve plug has always given me problems. It sucks because like a lot of this, I think, I feel like all of what he's explained and what makes it a little confusing to read through and understand is that it's all like, it's still fricking magic, right?

Yes. It's either going to work or it doesn't and maybe not working. And when it doesn't work, it's you have to worry, look at what you have to look. You got no idea. Like then you got to change out the Nest border router thing, use this executive thing, no, come on, like, like you saying like it. It's so hard to troubleshoot this stuff that is still Like Gavin yours yours could be anything it could be that The the the little dongle thing doesn't get enough power and it's crashing in who knows like could be something like that

It could be like the signal is not so great getting to the EU sensor. Like it could be any, the battery on the user could be bad. I don't know. Like it could be, but who would know? You wouldn't know. Nobody knows. Yeah. And you know, there was even one time when, you know, my matter devices were going offline and I couldn't figure out for the longest re a while what was

happening. And then I finally realized that when I was using my Apple TV, I would switch it over to my neighbor's wifi so it can get free cable. And whenever I did that, it messed up my, my own matter because it took it out of the border router space and stuff like that. Right. So every time my matter devices dropped off, I knew to go to my Apple TV and switch it back to my wifi and you know, I can get free cable anymore, but you

know, like just having to like, it took me a while to figure out that out, like I didn't realize that I thought like if my Apple TV dropped off or whatever, it would go through another border router, but no, it was actually cutting all the devices off. I guess that I were set up through there somehow, but I didn't set anything up through that. Yeah. Again, magic was set up through home assist.

Yeah. So I don't, I, it's just confusing, but again, as a regular user, I'm not saying I'm a regular, but all any regular user shouldn't have to worry about this stuff. Like they market it, like just add it and it works. Right. Right. Well, I don't know. I do appreciate the feedback and everything though.

Like I get what's going on. I understand what you're saying. I really appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, and it's a good idea too. Like the nest hub may have a better implementation of whatever, you know, the matter thing than Apple. Who knows? I don't know. It could be that a lot of people's problems is caused by Apple being so vague and opaque on what they do.

And I don't know. I feel like everybody's just vague and opaque on what they're doing with matter. And there's no tools, no feedback, no logging. Who knows what's going on with this stuff? They're working on it yeah well good luck getting Apple to expose a log on their Apple TV so anyway let's move on here we got some flooring feedback he's from Ken he says hey TJ go with the tile the woodgrain stuff looks amazing and it'll hold up better for winter and pets look at the new vent new heat for the other under tile heating. They have a mesh but it's higher end and they have Wi-Fi connected controllers. They have their own app of course and allows you to set

up schedules if you so you don't leave it all so you don't leave it on all week and can even have the room nice and toasty when you wake up in the morning to eat breakfast out there and watch the snowfall. Best of all there's a home assistant integration. So he says that he, we have this set up in a couple of the bathrooms and it's just awesome. So there you go. I agree. Tile. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, honestly, tile sounds like the best at this point. I'm just scared to do it. I've never done tile or anything like that, but I feel like it is the best choice. I was worried about- It's easy. The biggest thing I was worried about is like the temperature being cold all the time and stuff.

So I think I'll just have to do the heated flooring and just get over it. Yeah. I think that's the way to go. I think that's the way to go. Watch a couple of YouTube videos. It's easy. What can you screw up?

Yeah. Everything, but. It's like, yeah. That's why I'm scared of it, right? Because like, it's more of a pain to remove it if you do mess it up. Like if you mess up LVP, it's just like, oh, we just replaced the piece and that's it.

But there's more that goes into tile. Yeah. The stone's a little more permanent, I guess, but. Yeah. I don't know, I think it's gonna hold up a lot better. And I think he's right, especially since you say this is the room that you spend like 90% of your time in, right, like this is where you wanna be in the house

when you're hanging out at the house? Well, yeah, when we're hanging out with people and stuff like that, you know, you have a couple of people over or just kind of want to relax and work on the laptop or something like that, you know? We have a living room, so we spend most of our time in there.

Oh, okay. But it's nice to have this area to kind of hang out, like if we're going outside a lot or whatever it is. So we'll spend a large amount of time here when it's finished. Make it nice, man. Make it nice. Yeah, you can have nice things, TJ. I can. I'm working on it. And I have an update about that too later.

So we'll talk about that. Awesome. All right. We got another piece of feedback here. A question actually from Darlson, Darlson, I guess from from it. Actually, this came through YouTube guys, believe it or not. You can comment. I guess I left the comments on on the YouTube stuff. And so like people comment there.

I says, have you guys tried out the rail link camera system with the NVR? Great price points. And most of all, they have a detection built in dual and track mixed cameras are my favorite at the moment. I think we talked about really quite a bit. I all I've ever heard was good things about Realink, so I guess I can't say I've touched their NVRs or dealt with their AI stuff, but I've only heard good things about them. Yeah, I have two of their cameras. They sent me both of

them. I didn't pay for either one of them, but honestly, I really like them. I don't use their NVR, but I use their POE Panorama camera. It's a floodlight. And then I have their Argus 4 Pro, which is a wifi solar powered camera. And I really like the interface on both of them. They're not like the traditional camera system interface you would get with like a normal NVR,

but I've also used some of their more economical cameras, their POE cameras for client setups. So if I have somebody that like really needs cameras or they just like, they don't have a ton of money for the hardware itself, I'll probably use RayoLink or Amacrest most of the time. And I like them as well, but they're usually for that price point,

they don't have the advanced AI and stuff like that. So I like the company overall. I think if you're gonna look at cameras railing is definitely a good one to choose Because they do have a wide range of cameras. They have POE Wi-Fi solar all kinds of stuff So I kind of like the ring of the camera world, but they're better. It's like they have I was just on their website They've got the CX 820 which is a a 4K 8-megapixel POE camera, megapixel, for $113 US, not Canadian, I have no idea what that is. But I think it's got the color night vision stuff.

It's got the same aperture, the f-stop, 1.0 f-stop super aperture, and the 1 and 1.8 sensor. That's like what everybody seems to have for whatever this super night vision thing that is like that Un know you has and for $113 that's Significantly less than what you can unity for yeah, they they have I've really wish they had better looking doorbells

Their doorbells are not attractive in my opinion. They're very cheap though, which is nicer $100 for a POE one as well Which is pretty great But they're I don't know, they're just not nice looking. Yeah. And they only have like four options of the video doorbells for some reason compared to like a billion camera options for everything else. So I think they should improve their video doorbell a little bit, but everything else has been nice. They even have a trail cam. What other smart camera company do you know that has a trail cam not ring can tell you that's right. I

Didn't know what the track me mix is that's their PTZ Cameras and they are portable. They're not pretty now Yeah, and most of their cameras are not pretty like this this POV floodlight thing. I have it's cool And it works great is not an attractive piece though Hmm, I somebody definitely knows this is a giant ugly camera in your driveway Which some people want I don't want that personally. I just wanted like a floodlight camera. I think Gavin's setup is a little better He doesn't have the camera functionality But like the ring floodlight will definitely looks better than this thing, but it's not panorama

So wait, you said my setup which which, which my setup your, your Z-Wave floodlight thing. Oh no, they have cameras on it too. Yeah. Oh, they do have cameras. But they, that was one of the reasons why I went with the FOS cam is they kind of looked a little more like traditional floodlights. Like I find like a lot of the floodlight cams I was looking for, they look weird.

Like you would look at them and say, it doesn't look like a regular foot, you know what I mean? Where the Foscams- Right, you want it to blend in a little bit. You don't want it to look like an ugly camera, you know what I mean? But I don't recommend the Foscams cause now I'm going through and replacing them cause they're starting to break down and stuff, so, but at least the Foscams looked a little normal.

And then I ended up ripping out the lights anyway and putting in regular lights and rewiring it and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, that's what I mean. Those ones. Yeah, they look a lot more normal, but you still have the little camera hanging there. But that's fine as long as the lights look normal. I also don't like how they have antennas on like half their stuff. It's like, do you really need these giant wings on the camera? Looks like the referee is calling field goals good.

I take it back to what I said about the Mbiga-Galido. For the price, you can forgive it. These track mix cameras are $135, 20% off right now, $169 for both the Wi-Fi 6 dual lens and the POE version of that. A lot can be forgiven for that price point. They can look absolutely ugly for that. So, it's like, it's like bling cameras, right? But I don't think bling cameras are good cameras at all,

but they're like $40 and like $80. They're so cheap that people are willing to deal with them, you know? But why can't we have nice looking cameras? Like why is it that these cameras all just look weird? Why don't they just make it normal? You can, you can pay for them though. That's the problem I get.

There's not like a lot of good DIY options though. Yeah, especially for a floodlight camera where it's like, you just want to wire it up to the 120 volt. There wasn't many options of nice looking normal floodlight camps. Right. There you go. I'll put a link to Relink in the show notes here. But yeah, thanks, Darlson for the comment on YouTube. Appreciate it.

Overall recommend. Yeah. All right. Well, we got a number of Home Tech headlines so we said we jump in. Let's do it. All right. A little bit of Home Assistant news right off the bat. Motorblinds joins the works, sorry, Motion Blinds. I'm always looking at motor blinds. I want those motor blinds,

I want like gas powered blinds is what I'm thinking of. Yeah, Motion Blinds joins works with the Home Assistant, works with Home Assistant. So they're joining works with Home Assistant and they've done the partnership thing. They've gotten what the integrations done. This is a brand by a pretty big, massive shade company called Colise, which they offer tons of fabrics and that kind of thing.

I used to sell Colise shade fabric when I was doing shades 10, 15 years ago. So pretty cool to get this and get brought right into Home Assistant. There you go. Motor blinds, no wait, motion blinds. April Fools. Yeah. I don't know if I've just never heard of this company or I'm just forgetting about it, but I like what they have to offer. They look pretty nice.

Yeah, Colise is one of the older fabric company. Colise makes fabrics and Lutron resells them as some other name that they sell. But they've been out there forever. Yeah. These look nice. I was actually looking at their Venetian blinds. Like I need two of those right now. And I would pick up probably one of the Venetian blinds.

But when I was trying to find somewhere that sells it, no one sells the Venetian blinds. They sell all the roller shades and what do they call them? The zebra shades or something. the Venetian blinds, but when I was trying to find somewhere that sells it, no one sells the Venetian blinds. They sell all the roller shades and what do they call them? The zebra shades or something like that. But nobody sells the Venetian blinds. So, oh, well save me some money. But in terms of Home Assistant, I predict over the course of this year, you're going to be seeing a lot more of these integrations and work with Home Assistant

announcements. I mean, a lot of these these integrations and works with home assistant announcements. I mean, a lot of these products work with home assistant. It just means now you get better support. They will guarantee the drivers work, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And it's a good look for these companies to be jumping on the home assistant and getting their name out there early. Yeah.

I'm clicking through their website, Gavin, and you aren't the only one that can't buy them. So like I can buy verticals. No, I can buy nothing basically, but the roller and double roller and that's it. Yeah, I don't get where do they sell the Venetian blinds? It's weird. This must not be rolled out here in North America.

Switzerland maybe? Say. Netherlands. Netherlands is where they're based out of. So they're probably there. It's interesting. Well, anyway, if you need some motor blinds, no, motion blinds. I do not know why I cannot see this name and think of motor blinds.

But there we go. They work with Homelessness. They probably work with everything else because it's a pretty big company. So moving on here, we've got Wyze Security Cameras. They are now deciding which notifications you'll need to see. They're using that good old AI filter. They have introduced something they call a no big deal feature. It's NBD AI filter for their security cameras.

It's available for Cam Unlimited Pro subscribers. This feature is aimed to reduce notification fatigue by only alerting users to significant events, such as a person breaking into your car, Kevin, or a baby climbing out of a crib, not breaking into her. The AI ranks detection motions on a scale from one to five and you can I guess Vacuum cleaner receives a low score critical situations like glass breakings are highly ranked. So there you go. That's that's not a bad idea No, it is a bad idea

How is it gonna rank you know, like Okay, imagine my cars in the driveway. I've been looking over my car How's it gonna know that somebody's come here to break into my car's in the driveway, I've been looking over my car. How's it going to know that somebody's come here to break into my car versus somebody is actually, we're getting into the car. Is it going to remember who owns these cars? I would assume it's going to remember who got into the car, right? Yeah. It's going to know your face.

You're going to upload your face to it, maybe a video of how you walk and everything. Oh wait, Wise already has that. You're good to go. Yeah. All right. We're gonna upload your face to it, maybe a video of how you walk and everything. Oh wait, Wise already has that. You're good to go. Yeah. All right, we're assuming that this is gonna work well. I don't know. I'm not a fan.

I didn't say it'd work well. I'm just saying this is how they're gonna do it. I'm not a fan. Look, it's gonna scale from one to five, Gavin. So what you need to do is find out if you're looking at that car, you need to figure out if it's a one or five. You put your rank in there and then if you get the notification,

you get the notification. If not, the car is gone. Honestly, this would be great because a lot of times my clients ask me, we set up a ring camera or something in their back patio or something. They're like, what happens if we throw a party? Is it just going to keep notify me that people are here? I're like, what happens if we throw a party? Is it just going to keep notifying me that people are here? And I'm like, yep. Yeah. Yeah.

And some things will let you set a schedule. So if you're home, it won't notify you and stuff like that, but not all of them. And obviously schedules aren't a permanent thing. So something like this though, where it knows that it's you and it's not going to overly alert you about what's happening, I think this is a good idea. I don't know if Wise is the company that's gonna deliver that. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

It's part of the no big deal filter is part of the $19.99 a month or $200 a year subscription there. So. $19.99 a month for a Wise subscription? Yeah, that's their, what do they call it? The Cam Unlimited Pro subscription. Is it me or has this gone up a lot since the early days of Wyze? Well, well when they started there was no subscription fee at all. So yes Yeah, and then I think they were like $1 $2 at some point. Yeah. Yep. Now you're a $20 subscription in. Yep

Yeah, hey for advanced AI you got to pay for those chat and GBT credits. Yeah, probably. This one's got the 60 day clouding cloud recording. It's got the 24 seven. It says there's security model one, right? This is one that does like send out the police and out the medics fire department, that stuff. Oh yeah. Well, that makes sense then. Does it have on vif?

That's probably about as much as I would pay for it. You know, the answer to that, Kevin. It's like, what's on this? All right, let's move on here. We got another story. These are going to be fun. So, I guess Alexa Plus has come out, but you can only get it if you're cool, if you're part of a small group of cool customers, I guess. None of us are cool enough.

One, I don't have an Amazon Alexa thing in my house. And then two, I don't, I think DJ does. Gavin, you still have one. You don't have Alexa Plus yet, but. I don't have any of the screens or anything like that. I just have the little devices, right? So, and again, I'm in Canada, so I don't expect Alexa plus for a long time. Yep. Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 devices. You got those? Maybe you're cool. Maybe you got one. You can do things like order services like Uber ordering, object identification, email drafting, product searching, all that good stuff requires your what $20 subscription per month or prime free with prime. Hopefully, guess this is probably gonna start rolling out to more and more people but

There you go. Alexa plus if you're if you're one of the cool kids, you got it, you know Well, you only got part of it. Oh, let's be clear You only get a piece of it and most of the stuff they showed off you you won't be getting it's not ready Yeah, and I can't believe that's become kind of a term now. They deserve it, they deserve it. We've been doing this for too long. We're appeling this in, yes. So don't go buying your Alexa devices,

hoping for features, because you just don't know when they will come or if they will come. Yeah, and it's funny you say Alexa devices, because guess what? Amazon is experimenting with rebranding its Echo smart speakers and displays to Alexa. And there's some images that the verge obtained over there.

The test included changing the Echo Show 5's name to the Alexa Show 5. So I guess this is gonna make podcasts, if you're on a podcast that refuses to say Alexa out loud for some reason, I don't care because you know, it shouldn't pick up my name. Should you know, I'm not the robot, the robot needs to figure out what we're talking about and not react to things like that. What's wrong with saying Alexa?

I don't there's nothing wrong with saying Alexa. I could say Alexa all day. Alexa, Alexa, Alexa, and then say order toilet paper or something. I don't know. But like, if they're naming their service, the API and now the box is Alexa, it's over. So I guess what they're gonna force you to do is get this Alexa Plus, right?

You're gonna have to get that and there's probably advanced filtering that knocks out all the false positives and you can figure it out better than the old Alexa could. So there you go. So now I get to talk to my Alexa on my Alexa dot? But it would have to be with Alexa Plus, yes, yeah. Oh, if you get the new Alexa dot, but you have to be with Alexa plus. Yes Yeah, if you get the new Alexis though, the old ones are still gonna be echo. So yeah

Get to my new devices Gavin. Sorry, so I can't I'm gonna have to say I like so I'll call my mom at home I'm just Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's weird, rebranding. I guess it could eliminate some confusion. Yeah. I mean, Echo always referred to the device and Alexa to the service, right? Yeah, ever since 2014, first March, big relaunch,

in 2014, it's been called Echo. And yeah, now it's got the, now they're looking at making it just all Alexa, which I mean, it makes sense, right? Because like most, most people are just going to call this their Alexa. They're not going to be like, this is my Amazon Alexa. It uses, or Amazon Echo. This uses Alexa.

They're just going to say Alexa anyway. And that's how everybody I meet talks about it. Yep. So I think it makes, it makes sense to me. Maybe we should have let everybody know at the beginning of this article, we'd be saying Alexa a lot. Nah, that's their problem, not mine. Yeah, tough luck.

All right, let's move on. Alfred is debuting an interesting lock or gives him a lock talk here. It's called the DB1 Pro Smart Lock at IC West 2025 in Vegas. It's advanced smart deadbolt is designed for both residential and rental property markets offering advanced security and flexibility It's got a bunch of three. It's got three entry methods traditional keys pin codes in a mobile app Offers up to 250 pin codes shareable Bluetooth keys and All sorts of good stuff. It really looks like it's it's made

I mean this this one actually doesn't look that bad, but it's got Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, 800, long-range add-ins that you can add onto it and use this if you have connectivity problems for your door. But I thought this one actually looked pretty good when I saw it. It's like, this doesn't look terrible. Yeah, it actually looks pretty nice. And I like the module thing they have going on. It's kind of like the Yale locks where you just buy a different module for it and just plug it in. I don't know if that's on all of them, I've never actually seen one of these in the wild and I've ever used one, but they look nice from the photos.

Yeah. I think that's how we, like the only reason we have Locktalk is so we can look at these photo rendered versions of what they think their locks are locks can look like. What is this picture here? They're opening the door and going, what is this door opening into? How does it open into this room? This makes no sense to me. But we just judge how they look and move on from there.

That's all you can do. Yeah. It's a nice Photoshop though. This one's better than some of the other Photoshop I've seen. Yeah. I mean, if somebody is from Alfred's listening, I'll definitely take one of these on demo so I can see how it works. We I've seen. Yeah. I mean, if somebody is from Alfred's Listening, I'll definitely, I'll take one of these on demo so I can see how it works.

We'll test them. Yeah. I like locks. DB1 Pro. I installed locks before. It supports voice prompts in English, French, and Spanish, so you got to test all three though, TJ. Well, that's fine.

They actually have like, they have a mortise lock, which is nice as well. They actually have different finishes for most of their locks. I mean, they're like a real lock company. Not like Acara releasing like one color lock. One gray. And black, that's it. Nah, it's like a gray, it's not even black. It's better than this next one though.

Yeah, yeah, so let's talk about the next one here. And again, more photo, the Photoshop's that we get to judge. Yale, it's got a new smart lock. And what do you want the smart lock to look like? Your Google Nest doorbell, probably the ugliest doorbell on the market right now. So long. Big and tall. Yeah. So imagine a Google Nest doorbell and then a white one, I guess. And imagine a white long matching Yale Lock keypad next to it. There you go.

You've imagined this. I don't know. This is there to basically replace the discontinued Nest X Yale Lock that they're not going to carry anymore, but they're going to work with these. So there you go. Take a look at the picture. We'll put it in the show notes.

It's ugly. Yeah, I don't understand why you'd want a white lock on, especially like this footer, right? It's so dirty. I mean... Well, that and I wanted to match my door hardware. Right.

Like, everywhere you go, the locks always match color-wise. And this doesn't match because you can't find a white lever. I mean, I'm sure you can. But that sounds even worse than a white door lock. Yeah. Other than it being white, it does look nice, but... No it doesn't. If you worked in a hospital, I guess it looks lock. Yeah. Other than it being white, it does look nice, but. No, it doesn't. If you worked in a hospital, I guess it looks nice.

Right. Maybe, yeah. I would definitely find this in houses in Florida. Yeah, I'll give you that. All you people down there, it's all white everything. White carpet, white floor, white ceiling. Yeah. It's like we just said.

Yeah. It's just wrong. This lock doesn't even match the handle though, like no That's what I'm saying. I think me nuts is why are they photo shopping all these pictures? Like that's the same handle in both pictures. It's coming Why great black you can pick any color you want as long as it's white gray or black So there you go, which is not any color I mean gray is kind of close to the they could have used the gray one, right?

I mean just make it like normal door colors. I guess like, like offer that as well, right? Like offer fun colors. If people want a white door lock, then lead on my guess, but like satin nickel and, uh, and, uh, bronze and all this stuff is already stuff that everybody already has. So, yep, I agree. Why not?

Why not match what's there? I don't know. All right. Uh, moving on here, we got a story from Roborock. They're ramping up their matter support. They're rolling out some firmware updates to enable matter support for several of the robot vacuum models including including the S8 Max-V Ultra, the Ceros Z70, the Ceros 10, 10R. Man, they've got a bunch of these on here. We'll just leave that there and you can check it out in the story. The update will allow these devices

integrate with Apple HomeKit's Matter Setup and help you do setup automation, scheduling, and triggers. I think the only reason to do this is like, I have that little trigger thing when everybody leaves the house or whatever, set up and you can click it and it'll turn the lights off. But what if you use that when everybody leaves the house to make the robot go out and vacuum the house?

That'd be great. I think that's the only reason to have this integration. That's all they had to do. That's what I have with ours. Whenever we leave the house, it comes out and vacuums up the laundry room with the cat litter box and a couple other areas. So just makes it automatic.

But that's all hacky through Home Assistant. Yeah, yeah. Well, this firmware updates, they're doing a staggered rollout based on time zones. and a couple other areas, so just makes it automatic. But that's all hacky through Home Assistant. Yeah, yeah. Well, this firmware updates, they're doing a staggered rollout based on time zones. So you may receive it at different times, especially if your house is in one time zone and the other side of the house is in the other time zone.

Who knows when you get it? Other brands like Eaglevax and Roomba are also promising Matter support in the future here. So yeah, the robot vacuum supports on the way guys. Yay We've got another matter story here from IKEA We I think we talked about them last week a week before but they seem to be doubling down guys I think something's happening here something matter may be mature enough because I can't doesn't put out bad products but now the IKEA Bill Ressa dual button and

That's the easiest IKEA product name I think I've ever seen in my life and I probably mispronounced it anyway, but the Bill Ressa dual button it's a first matter over thread smart switch and unlike existing smart switches the baressa control Not only Ikea devices, but also matter compatible devices without needing a native Ikea hub So there you go, and this doesn't look bad. It looks like a more European style, but. Yeah, this is pretty nice. I could see myself having a couple of these throughout the house. Yeah.

Who doesn't like buttons? Love buttons. Especially when you get two buttons in one product. There you go. And it's from IKEA, so you know it'll be a good product. Yeah, IKEA makes good products. Like, their implementations. Yeah, especially smart home stuff.

Yeah. I bet you can double tap those buttons, get different events off them. Oh. Yeah, that'd be fun. Then you can have like four buttons there. Well, two buttons and then two more that you can tap twice. I don't know. I think it's a good, I think this is great though.

You can go crazy with button taps. Going crazy with button taps. There you go. All right. Well, let's move on. We've got one, one or two last stories here. This is, this is when the absurd absurdity comes in. We were recording this on April 1st, right?

And I had to double take on a couple of these stories to make sure that they weren't a story we picked up and put in the show notes today from April 1st. These are from before April 1st. So Samsung has unveiled its new 2025 lineup of smart fridge refrigerators, furthering its screens everywhere vision with AI powered

features with and various screen options screen size options a new range includes models like a four-door four French door inside by side featuring Samsung's enhanced AI vision inside and a diverse display configurations notably they have a nine inch screen on your refrigerator now so no longer you have the giant sideways screen that you find porn on at Home Depot. Now they're gonna have a nine inch screen that you can find porn on on Home Depot. So they also have a was it a 21 and a half inch the 32 inch family hub screens are still available. And the AI vision inside now recognizes 37 types of food

for improved inventory management and suggest recipes and keeps up with your expiration dates. It's kind of cool. More technology in your fridge, probably going to be slightly what $5,000, $6,000 for these things though. Just what I wanted. Fridge with a subscription fee. Yeah, yeah.

If your eggs are bad. If it saves an egg, I guess it's all worth it, right? It's price is right. I guess so. I wish the technology would outlive the fridge though, cause the fridge is not something you replace often, but I don't expect like the tech changes so much. Like I expect in two years, this might stop working or something like that, but your fridge is still perfectly fine.

Right? Well, it's a Samsung. No, the fridge will probably stop working before the screen dies. The screen will stop working before the tech, you know, then the tech stops working, then the fridge will stop working. Yeah. A lot of like on the higher inside of refrigerators, they have like the panels that you can attach to the doors.

And a lot of these newer Samsungs are looking like that. I think some of them even have the ability to attach like custom, I'm thinking like custom cabinetry panels and that kind of thing to them. And I'm wondering like if like in the future, we're not just like replacing the door of a refrigerator to get a different screen on it, you know, wouldn't that make more sense than replacing the entire refrigerator? But that would that mean that everything had to be compatible with each other, though? I don't really see that happening. A Samsung door doesn't change from, you know, 2016 to now, like It's still the same size door, right? So they just make it so you buy a new door panel

and swap it out. That would be smart. That would be smart, but they would probably not wanna do that. They'd want you to buy the whole fridge. So they would do something like change the interface cable so it's not compatible or something like that. Now, give them better ideas than this, Gavin.

I mean, they could build this into the subscription and every five years you get a new panel I mean, you just get a new fridge every five years. That'd be great. Oh, yeah Probably it's like the water heater program up in Canada. I've never heard of that until Gavin. Oh my god That was hilarious and I was wondering what he's gonna question it I'm sure it's here too because America loves weird stuff like that as well. But he's renting a water heater I need a I don't know how much I Wow. But he's renting a water heater.

I need a, I don't know how much I was renting a water heater. Okay. The rental came along when we bought this house, right? So it came as part of the crazier part too. It's like solar panels. Well, well they sign you up for a contract and if you want to end that contract early, you can buy out the water heater. Right. But then you keep paying this every month. And, you know, I think the people, this water

heater was rented for like 14 plus years or something like that. It's like the most inefficient. And you're looking at like almost $30 a month. And I'm just like, oh my God, we bought like how many of these water heaters at that time? And they have done nothing to the water heater. It's not like they came checked it out or replaced it with a newer one.

Nothing. Just swapping out your hot water today, sir. Yeah. So I ended up just taking it out, returning it back to the company and canceling the contract and just buying my own and putting it in. So you just brought this empty 20 year old water heater back to them to thanks? No, no, no. They actually, I lugged it to the garage and they actually

sent people to come pick it up. Well, I mean, yeah, for what they're charging. Well, yeah, they're like, thanks for overpaying for this water heater. So we'll pick it up. No charge. No charge at all. They just drive around the corner and throw it out the truck like that sucker. They would have charged me if I made them come into my basement and

pick it up and take it out, you know, but I put it in the garage so they can just take it This is the craziest story Yeah, all right. Well rented water heaters did not know that was a thing, but I guess it probably exists I could see that being like an yeah, definitely probably exists. I've just never heard of it Well, if you become if we become the 51st state, you'll get that as well. It's just come on down All right. Well, this story right here, I started reading it laughing so hard. And then Gavin said, no, no, you have to keep this in.

So. I don't understand this. Here we go. Samsung is integrating advanced screens into its latest smart appliances and transforming everyday household tasks with its AI home initiative. Here we go. The Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Vacuum, priced at $1,100, features an LCD display. So they're not kidding. They want the screens everywhere, even on your vacuum. This LCD screen not only displays power levels and battery life,

but alerts users to incoming phone calls and tests. This is what I need. Can I take a phone call on my vacuum? Oh my God. Because I would carry my vacuum around. Now hear me out, hear me out. If this thing runs Teams, right? Microsoft Teams and I'm at work, I could be cleaning up while on a work call at the same

time and it has proper noise cancellation so it cancels out the vacuum noise this is something I've never wanted I don't know why they're making this you know like I just I don't get it I just even better Gavin if you want to do your laundry and make phone calls from a 7-inch touchscreen the bespoke AI laundry vented combo washer dryer cost $3,000 and you can you can make and receive phone calls automatically dispense A folk AI laundry, vintage combo washer dryer cost $3,000. And you can make and receive phone calls. Automatically dispense detergent and open the door when the cycle is complete.

There you go. So you don't get the smelly clothes in there. My question is, are they actually asking people that want a smart home what they want? They said that appliance we sell, we want a screen on it. Let's make it make answer phone calls. We kind of just want some basic things, you know, like dryer on or off type of stuff, right? Over thread matter, whatever. That's all we want. We don't need to make calls off our

devices, off those devices or anything like that. Like don't bug me when I'm doing laundry. I have to focus, you know, I got labels to read, I got sorting to do, do not bug me. This is just, it's like, if you're going to do this in a vacuum, like make a smart vacuum that tells me the battery level, if anything, you know, like. Well, it does do that. It does do that. It also, it can text you. I don't know, but if you're vacuuming Gavin and that important phone call comes through, how would you know?

How would you know if this vacuum is, I mean, it's evidently a good vacuum. It's got 400 AW suction and 100, I mean, you can vacuum for 100 minutes with this thing. 100 minutes. You would never, if a call started coming in and you're just having the time of your life vacuuming your house with your $1,000 vacuum,

then like, this is the way to go. You would be lost. An important call, Gavin, you're gonna thousand dollar vacuum, then like you're, you're, this is the way to go. You would be, you'd be lost. An important call. Gavin, you're going to be a millionaire. Gavin, it's time to run. The U S is invading. You would never get that call. You'd be vacuuming and they know we.

Even if I got the call, if I got the call on the vacuum, the battery would probably die halfway through the call anyway. Right. Get up and put it to your head. Hello? Oh, guys. Is this for sale? This must be a con.

This must be something that you see at CES that will never come to life. No, it's there. This is real. This is real. You're gonna go get one of these. We need one of these because we did the first podcast from a remote.

We need to do the first podcast from a vacuum. Oh. Sending an email. Samsung. I'm finding these bespoke AI general, these bespoke, maybe they're the old versions, but they're like, no, no, this is it. You can get them on Amazon for like a full $900.

With the screen and everything? Yeah, no, this is it right here, it's the same one. Ooh. So you can get a little bit of a discount. I mean, you lost me at $1,100, but you had me at $900. That US, I'm gonna get my texts. Yeah, it's probably like $7,000 in Canada, but. We stopped right before we got to this fridge though.

Have you seen this fridge with the really tiny screen? Well, that's the previous story. They're putting screens, they're just making them smaller on there. So yeah, yeah. They're tiny. It's a little seven inch screen. And that's, you can't see any porn on that in Home Depot.

Why can't screens on TVs look like invisible mirrors, right? Like when you go to like a high end home and they have like the TV behind the mirror, why can't we do that? Yeah. I don't want to see the display in my things when it's off, especially a fridge. But how would they serve advertisements and tell you? That's true. Yeah. You got to think about the advertisers, TJ.

Yeah, I never think about them, you know? It's selfish of me. Would you be if you're vacuuming and then an advertiser wants to send you a text message and you're vacuuming and you don't get that text message? I mean, think about it. Somebody out there is trying to replace your roof and they're trying to get in touch with you. Somebody out there is trying- I think they'd just pound on the roof, wouldn't they?

Somebody out there is trying to sell you new car insurance, right, and they're trying to talk to you about your car warranty that you don't have. You don't have this car anymore, but they keep calling you about your car warranty. Yeah, I need that warranty. Yeah, somebody texts me all the time, they want to buy property, I don't have. You don't have this car anymore, but they keep calling you, buy you a car and warranty. Yeah, I need that warranty. Yeah. Somebody texts me all the time,

they wanna buy property, I don't even know them. I don't know. Yeah, you should sell it to them. I always try to sell those people the property. I'm on some list and I don't know. Anyway, yeah, you would miss that call, you'd miss that phone.

If you didn't have one of these refrigerators, one of these washing machines, and one of these vacuums, you'd miss that important call. That call would change your life, I think. So it's probably worth it. Hmm. I'm gonna say no. That's a no for me, dog. It's a no for me.

All right. Well, there you go. $1,100 vacuums that can make sure you get your text messages. No. All right. Well, let's move on. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometown.fm slash 522. Got a pick of the week here. Gavin is truly hanging out in the electrical forums on Facebook or something because we've got another this is the big week, an electric panel that needs a smoke break.

So and it does. Uh, I saw this one before this, I think it's from an electrician came out to this panel, it was smoking and I think he's saying that, you know, the home owner is like, they don't one before, I think it's from an electrician, came out to this panel, it was smoking. And I think he's saying that, you know, the homeowner is like, they don't want you to mess with it. I wouldn't get near that. I would like record it. I call the fires.

It's time to call a fire department, code enforcement or something like that. That's just wrong. He said he called a licensed electrician. And I'm like, yeah, that's a good call there. Cause you got to redo all of that. Oh, I see, it was a handyman. Oh my God, there's like a screw. It's like a construction company. Oh yeah, that's a good call there. Oh, he was a handyman. Oh my god. There's like a screw construction company

Oh, yeah, there's like screws into like the breakers and stuff Like I don't understand this and the grounds going up down the middle Yeah, well those grounds are wrapped around the breaker to hold the breaker open so it doesn't close. Oh my god That's so bad. No wonder it's smoking Like damn breaker keeps tripping. I don't know why Open drill drill a drywall screw into the other breaker next to it and wrap around. Oh my God. Oh, and there's a thing at the end.

I just saw the end. There's a toilet right below this thing. Can you imagine? It was like in someone's bathroom too. So yeah. This is not up to code. You can not do that. That is a mess.

Oh my gosh. Well, good luck to whoever. Wow. It's amazing. Amazing. Good luck to everyone's that. Gavin, hopefully your panel upgrades is better. Yeah.

If my panel upgrade looks like that, I'm moving out. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks, the weeks are great ideas for show. Give us a shout. The email address is feedback at home tech dot. If you can visit home tech dot. FM slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right.

Project updates. Kevin, why don't you go first? Why do I have to go first? Cause we got, we got to end on a, on a Seth, not doing the cliffhanger. I'm just, I'm just assuming. Oh, no, this, okay. These are some project updates that I held over from last week. Cause last week we had all the excitement and everything.

And if you missed all that, go back and listen to last week's show. Cause it was pretty exciting around the house. But I noticed speaking of ads on your screen, I noticed my LG TV started shooting ads on the, when the screensaver kicked in. Yes. Right. So, so I'm like, the first time I've noticed this, but I had the screensaver going at one point and all of a sudden there was a big ad on my screen.

the first time I've noticed this, but I had the screensaver going at one point and all of a sudden there was a big ad on my screen. This again, things that drive me nuts, you know, ads on my LG TV that I didn't ask for or LG pop-ups that I now need to find the LG TV remote to dismiss, you know, things like that just drive me nuts. All I want is a screen. I paid for the screen. It wasn't, I paid a lot of money for this screen and they're really bugging me with this type of stuff.

If someone had asked me if they'd to buy LG TV, I'd say no, skip the LG TV. Go with something else. I've had a number of problems with this. You told me that exact thing and that's why I didn't buy one. Yep. Well, yeah, I just want you to get a TV hung up this year, but you know, that's a whole different story. Oh, I bought one though. I bought one though.

I bought one though. It wasn't LG though. Yeah, you're lucky. There is a way evidently that you can turn off the home promotion and content recommendations. I mean, if you want to, I know this is a big thing for you that you have to see advertisements,

but you can go to your home settings and disable home promotion and content. There's a bunch of things. There's a whole list of things that you have to actually disable. And I think it will not let it basically serve ads to you. I remember going through this before. And once you turned one of the things off, other things on the TV stopped working. So like Airplay no longer worked on the TV.

And they were like, you can't use Airplay until you acknowledge and accept all these things, you know? Like, and that's why I wanted on my TV. I wanted Airplay. That's weird. Yeah, like again, it's these manufacturers. Must be a Canadian thing. No, it's not a Canadian thing.

I think you guys get it too. You probably get even double the amount of ads that we do. I've never seen an ad on, I have two LG TVs and both of them have, don't we have been connected to the internet and getting updates. I have never seen an ad on them. So I'm kind of confused as to just wait until you plug them in, right? And hang them up. Just wait, you'll get ads.

I've had them for years. Oh man. No, in the smart TV space, they're probably too old to support ads. The ads are not an integral part of my TV that, you know, disables functions like Airplay. So yeah. All right. Sorry, Gavin. Go ahead. The other thing I was playing around with, this gave drop from a recommendation from

you was the GL iNet travel router. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know you have one and you convinced me to grab one for when you travel and this is, I have one too. You have one too. This.

Yeah. So I finally got around, I got a while ago, but I finally got around to, um, setting it up. It looks like a railing camera. It's got the railing antennas on it. I just noticed. Yeah. Well, yeah, these things are really cool.

Like I set it up. So if VPN is right back into my home. So all I do when I'm in a hotel or something like that, I connect it to their wifi VPNs on all my devices will recognize it and connect straight to it. And yeah, VPNs right to my home and doesn't get any easier than that. So if you're looking for travel. That's part of all that is all like it of all that is all the devices you have are connected. So like with my wife, we're traveling, all of her phone, her watch, her iPad,

her computer, whatever, all connect to the wifi. Yep. And I don't have to set them up. I don't have to get like new things. We just connect up. Boom. It works. Yeah.

So I highly recommend these things or just in general, having a travel router that can support VPN back to home. you know, I just highly recommend some. It makes your life so much easier. I like, I also have in my travel kit, like a Amazon fire stick, you know, and, um, I have MB loaded on it so that, you know, it connects to the travel router and it connects to my home TV and I can just stream everything from there. Like I was at home home so really nice setup. Yeah I have one that I carry in my in my laptop bag for work and I use it so like if I go somewhere I need to access their network and like they're not around to give me like the Wi-Fi password or something like that.

I just plug mine in and it gives me Wi-Fi. Yep. So that way I can just scan everything do do what I need to do, make the changes or whatever, and I don't have to get somebody's wifi password. So that makes it pretty nice for that kind of stuff. Yep. Thanks for that recommendation, Seth. No problem.

You know, um, my server rack is pretty much upgraded now. So one of the things I did was I upgraded all the fans. So I replaced the fans in it with Noctua fans, right. And it is so much quieter now. So now my server rack sitting in the basement, like, because, uh, on the server itself, I have a R730 with some loud, there are some loud fans in there with, um, with, with, well, you have the fans in the front, right? That, that cool the case.

And those are really loud when you turn it on for the first time, right? Um, and you can control those with an app that will speed them, quiet them down to a point where, um, you know, you're still getting enough cooling for the, the, the case, but they're not loud anymore. Right? So I use an app, uh, one of the dockers in Unraid to cool that down, but then I don't run into data center. You don't need a full blast. Exactly.

Yeah. But I also have a number of GPU cards in that server and the GPU cards had some fans on it and they were screaming to keep those GPUs cool. So I ended up upgrading those with some Noctua fans and those things are silent. Right? Yeah, they make good fans. Yeah. I ended up upgrading those with some Noctua fans and those things are silent. Right. Yeah, they make good fans. Yeah.

So, you know, like I highly recommend the Noctua fans. If you're ever looking to silence something like there, there are online tutorials where people replace the fans, even in the power supplies on that server. Um, with, with Noctua fans to silence them down and they replaced the six that were sitting in the front of the server, um, with knock to a fence and they told you how to work around, you'll get a little error message, but in the end they run quiet and they keep things just as cool. Um, really worth it.

If you're going to plan on running one of these Dell servers in your home, where do you get these, uh, these, these knock, are these like at only fans? Where do you get these from? Only fans. Okay. I'll put that for the these from? Only fans. Okay. I'll put that in the, put a link in the show notes. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was, I paid for a subscription to the only fans to watch reviews of them. No, uh, Amazon has them just look up Noctua fans and you'll just have to know what kind you want. There's 12 volt, five volts, et cetera, et cetera. Right. I think I'm for like basically everything. I mean, you can find Noctua fan, five volt, et cetera, et cetera, right? They make them for like basically everything.

I mean, you can find Noctua fan replacements for a lot of stuff. So, and they have different sizes, different thicknesses. You want to look at the decibel levels and the, uh, uh, the, the airflow and stuff like that. So they're, they're really like good fans to keep your system quiet. Yeah. I always use their, uh, their CPU coolers whenever I build a gaming computer, uh, because they were just super quiet and I didn't have to worry about performance. They just worked.

Um, because you don't need to hear your fans, you know, unless you're running a serious server setup or something like that, go with quiet fans. Yeah. And my fans run at like 10% right now. Right. But if, if the CPU ever gets to a certain point hot and I don't push it to that point, then they'll start to ramp up and stuff. And that's fine. Right.

But when it's usually just sitting there, everything's so quiet now. So we should replace the server fans inside the server with these, you know, that'd be nice. You can. That's what I said. You have the R7, you have the R730 as well. Right. Yeah. So, so there's, there's videos on there where they show you how to do it.

Um, you have to cut the wires and, and do some surgery to it and stuff. Yeah. But, but they're pretty much like what they call them PWM four wire fans. It's just a proprietary connector. And then the only other catch was that it would trigger an error because then the, the, the server detected the fans weren't running fast enough because they're running slower, but they're still pushing a lot of air and quietly. Right. So it may trigger, it may trigger an error in your bias. And some people have posted ways to get around that, to, to get rid of that.

I don't look at bios and I don't care about that. You know, but yeah, there, there are videos on there. You might want to look up somebody did on a five 30 or five 20. I don't look at bios. I don't care about that. You know, but yeah, there are videos on there. You might want to look up somebody did on a five 30 or five 20, um, and did a full video review. So, and they did. Yeah. The fans, it's silencing a jet engine is the name of the video.

They did do the fans in the power supplies as well. But I think afterwards they said you don't need to do that. Yeah. It's just the front fence that are allowed in that box. Yeah. Right? Well worth it. I might give this a shot because I actually have, I bought,

I still have an extra fan cartridge, the whole cartridge full of fans that were, I guess, perfectly fine. But one of them made this weird squeaky sound that was driving me nuts at the frequencies, whatever I had lowered it to, and I couldn't get it to go away. So I just bought it. I figured it was a bad fan. I just bought a new thing off eBay and then I kept this one.

So maybe I swapped that one out with some, some act two of fans and, and pop it in there. And then that'll get from only fans. And then, uh, yeah, we'll go from there. There you go. You can thank me later. I'll put this in my projects list. Okay. Oh, okay. So we'll hear about it next year.

Cool. It doesn't say do the TV first. So I don't know. We're going to get first. So we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. My last project I've been messing around this week. I got my hands on a homie pro and, um, I pretty much set it up and I've been playing with it a little bit. Um, and I know I gave you guys some of my initial impressions.

Uh, I'm not a fan of it. No pun intended, but it's, uh, first of all, I had an issue setting it up. Like it definitely has some cloud dependency on it. So for every device, you have to add an app, which is really weird. So I had to go in and, you know, if I want to add an acquired device, I have to add the acquired app and then I can add the device. It's kind of cool because it steps you through how to add the device and stuff like that. So you don't have to guess, but for you to add that app, it went to their website to

download the app. So there was cloud dependencies and stuff on there and I wasn't a fan of that. And then, um, you know, I had to create an account and I think I had to create multiple accounts. I got lost in the account creation part, but ever since I created this account, they've been, they're very meaty. They email me like once a day or something like that with some about something. It's like to the point where I'm starting to mark the emails as spam

because it's just getting annoying. But you know, they did this. I have to play with it a little more. Um, because even when I was loading the initial app, it wasn't, it wasn't working. It was like the website was loading, but it wasn't fully loading. And then it must've been an outage at that time. Cause then it finally started working, but just that whole experience, just, you know, like I wasn't a fan of it at the time.

So I mean, it has all the radios and everything. And I know I'm probably a little biased towards home assistant. I know, but there's things about home assistance. I like where, like being able to upgrade the radios, you know, the homie pro, you know, it's brand new and it's got the 700 series radio, for example, you know, and you can't upgrade that without having to buy a whole new one. And this thing ain't cheap, you know, so, uh, I'm going to do a little bit more playing with it. I'm not a fan of the node red style automations.

I know some people love that, that, that style. I'm not a fan of it. Um, drawing out your automations like that. Uh, but you know, we'll see where it goes. I, I'm just playing around with it right now. Um, I know I didn't give it a greatest review. Maybe'm just playing around with it right now. I know I didn't give it a greatest review. Maybe next week it will be a little better.

Well, you got, you got it to mess with the Apollo stuff, right? Have you missed that at all? Yeah. So the Apollo, I was talking to Justin this week actually, and he sent me the link because the Apollo integration app is, is still in like pre-testing or something, so he sent me the link to add it. So I still have to set that up and then I'll have a few Apollo devices. I'm going to add to it. I'm pretty sure it's going to be very simple, right? Um, but that's one of the things I'm going to be testing and testing out their devices with it. That's cool.

I mean, at least you get to, you get to try some of that. I think at this point, if I was, if I didn't have home assistant, I didn't, you know, rely on it basically at all. I would probably look at homey pro as an option. I would probably look at homey pro as an option. I would probably look at homey pro as an option. I think at this point, if I was, if I didn't have Home Assistant and I didn't, you know, rely on it basically at all, I would probably look at Homey Pro as an option, uh, just because it seems like a decent enough option for, for what it is. Um, the cost is a little high, but I mean, it is kind of is what it is. But that's the other thing too, is like, would I really look for the, for the

cost and it's not compatible with everything, right? Like I was. Well, the cost and it's not compatible with everything. Right. Right. Like I was. Well, nothing is that's the problem with everything. You know what I mean? Home Assistant is the outlet. Yeah, exactly.

But you know, even Hubitat is compatible with a lot of stuff, right? Oh, Omi still seems like they weren't compatible with certain devices or they didn't have the app for it or something. So I don't know. Like I said, next week I'll probably have better review of it. Cool. Sounds fun. I mean, it still looks gorgeous.

Like their apps and everything. Does the app look as good as the marketing puts it out? Or? I was wondering, because the app looks amazing. The marketing looks great. But when I loaded the app, it wasn't as nice as what the marketing looked at like, but it's still good. It still looks nice.

Um, one of my favorite app interfaces has been, you know, Josh AI's app. I really liked the design of theirs. I've been actually trying to mimic some of it in my own Home Assistant dashboard. Um, I just liked the style they use, what they've done with that. But, um, the homey one, it's, it kind of just reminded me of a home assistant dashboard in a way, right? Oh, that's bad. Oh, that's the worst thing. Not that that's bad.

No, a newer home assistant dashboard, you know, with some small updates and stuff. But it wasn't as, you know, like their marketing is much better. Yeah. We will see. Well, they're what? Backed by LG now. So that makes sense. Oh yeah.

We'll see. We'll see what happens with that. But probably the software isn't the best, but. Oh yeah. Do I have any appliances from LG? Nope. Nope. Yeah.

You get a smart coffee maker. Or a smart vacuum. Or maybe my TV will integrate with it easily. We will see. Yeah. Time will tell. Anyways, that wraps up my projects. TJ, what do you even integrate with it easily. We will see. Yeah, time will tell. Anyways, that wraps up my projects.

TJ, what are you even messing with? Yeah, this week I haven't been doing a ton. We've been starting to do some outside stuff. So last week I actually separated our backyard into like basically two different sides. And we started plotting our garden plots. We have the dog now, and the dog likes to run around the whole yard.

So we've sectioned off an area of the yard where we're just gonna have gardening stuff. And I built the fence myself. I went out and just bought. Have you guys ever heard of cattle panels? The Ohio thing? No, they're used to keep cattle in the fields and stuff, I guess, I really don't know.

The bars that you walk over or whatever? No, they're like, here, I'll show you. We can put it in the notes, too. Yeah, I see those. Yeah, I guess I'm from the Midwest, so I feel like everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's like a wire fence. Yeah, yeah. But it's like a 16- the one I got is like 16 foot by 50 inches tall.

Yes. So it's like a 16, the one I got is like 16 foot by 50 inches tall. Yes. So it's like huge. Um, and I had to carry them on my van, which was hilarious. I basically used the ladder rack on my van to, uh, to get them home because they're 16 foot long. And so like they were very hard to get home. Cows are big. They are very big.

So this is just like a grid of wire, essentially. Yes. Okay. Uh, but they make, they make pig panels and make cattle panels. They are very big. So this is just like a grid of wire, essentially. Yes. Okay. But they make pig panels, they make cattle panels, they're all very similar stuff. This is how I got it home. I put that in the show notes too, that way everybody can see that beautiful shot.

So basically I dropped the ladder rack down and I attached it to the ladder rack and I drove it home. And they're so long, they're 16 foot long that it basically draped over my windshield. Wow. And so like I couldn't see, I could see because they're wire mesh, but like a quarter of my windshield was blocked with these cattle panels, which I thought was hilarious.

It looks like those glass company trucks you see with like giant size. I should have just kept it down honestly, it probably would have been fine, but I raised it up. Oh, you put it over the top. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so that was over the top. But this is what I did with it. You can put these in the show notes too.

That's pretty cool. That's the nice thing when you have a van like that, you can move things around like that. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I wish I would have thought about dropping the ladder rack last time, because this is much easier than what I did the first time, which is just try to drag them on top of the van.

But this is what I'm doing with them, is I basically just created a fence with them. And so I got a fence post. The panels are like $35 each, they're relatively cheap. And it's good enough that I'll be able to grow some vining plants and stuff on it. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the end goal with it.

And it'll create a nice little, everything where the chairs are and the fireplace and stuff on it. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the end goal with it. It'll create a nice little... Everything where the chairs are and the fireplace and stuff is eventually will be just mulch and garden beds. I thought you were making like a place to maybe keep the dog out of or keep the dog in. I don't know. Yeah. So you're going to be like hedges that grow up over this.

Yeah. Just vining plants, you know, whatever, whatever, loofahs or strawberries or gourds or whatever it is. And the gardens back there, I see, start over those, yeah. Yep, yep. So it's been good nights.

We've been in the 50s and 60s for the, even 70s for a while. And it's, I'm actually able to do things outside and get everything set up. So now I'm trying to figure out how to kill all that grass over there because you see all that grass? I want to get rid of it and I want to put mulch down,

but I got to kill all that grass. So that's what I'm working on right now. I've been told that the best way to do that is to put cardboard down and then just put the mulch on top of it. And that like basically smothers the grass. That wouldn't work here in Florida. I'm telling you, the grass would just lift the cardboard up and throw it across the street.

Yeah, grass in Florida is very, very strong. Is the concept that the cardboard would decompose after a while? Yeah, it's like a biodegradable like plant killer, you know what I mean? Because that way you don't have to put a bunch of chemicals and stuff on it as long as the boxes don't have chemicals. Yeah. But yeah. bunch of chemicals and stuff on it is honestly the box does not have chemicals. Um, yeah, but yeah, I'll be here. I've seen people put down on like bags, like garbage bags or like tarps just over

it and then let the sun just cook it underneath and then it would kill all the weeds and everything. That's what I'm doing on the side of the house right now. So on the side of the house with the, uh, the neighbor that doesn't like me, um, I have two giant tarps, uh, on the ground right now, just to kill all the grass and everything, cause I want to plant wildflowers over there. Um, but this, I need this one a little faster cause we've got to start planning stuff, you know, next month.

Yeah. The flame throw would work. Your neighbor would really like you. Uh, we, we have a burn band between, uh, like 8 AM to 6 PM right every day right now, so I don't think, uh flamethrower would be a good idea, but not my problem, I guess, right? Yeah. See, you only have a problem once, yeah.

The issue is I've run into is I need a bunch of mulch and I don't really know how much mulch I actually need. I just know it's a lot. And I don't wanna pay for the mulch because it's not like a decorative mulch, right? It's just like chopped up trees. And that's all I really need. So I basically need wood chips. And somebody pointed out this website called chipdrop.com.

It's actually called getchipdrop.com and it matches you with arborists or other people that have shredded up trees that they need to get rid of and they just they give it to you for free. It's give you a big old truckload of it. The only problem is that they don't tell you when it's gonna happen. Cuz it's like one of those last minute things where they have a bunch of shredded up trees they need to get rid of. And so you give them your address and you tell them where to put it at and

you may come home to a bunch of tree chips in the yard. So I've signed up for that. So hopefully my driveway doesn't get blocked with the van in at one point. I use the rubber mulch in our gardens. Like it's not perfect for everything, but it's like a shredded tires. And cause I was putting the wood chips in our gardens, but every year or so I'd have to go and buy more and re top it up. It was always like 50 bags I'd have to drag out.

And that's a lot of bags. So, you know, I just put the rubber ones down. They've been there for a number of years now and they still look nice Yeah So my buddy uses he built a playground in the back of his house for his kids And he uses the rubber mulch for that because he didn't want to deal with the same stuff does it works great The the other thing I've been doing is I've been going through my home assistant and doing a little spring cleaning myself And so, you know the various times through the year The other thing I've been doing is I've been going through my home assistant and doing a little spring cleaning myself. And so, you know, various times through the year I'm working on something, like I'll

be working on my automation for my door and window sensors, for example. And I'll go through and I'll clean up all the entities that I don't need for like all the door and window sensors at the same time, because I'm already working on a couple of them anyway, right? Like if I have a living room automation with, you know, the three door and window sensors, like I'm already working on some. So I might as well just add the other ones to the list, but I don't go through and just look at Home Assistant and what I'm doing to like clean it up or condense automations or maybe like maybe tweak automations a little bit. Who does that?

Nobody. I don't think anybody does until like there's a problem, right? Because why would you? If it's not broke, don't fix it. But sometimes you got to break things to learn how they work. And that's what I'm all about here. And so like, you know, today, for example, I went through some of my automations and, you know, for the most part, all my lights turn on with motion. They turn off motion between, you know, 10 a.m. to like 10 p.m. every day. And so if the detection of motion is detected on any of the motion sensors and we're actually

home because it uses our phones to like actually track our location to know if we're home to trigger those automations, the lights just turn on. But you know, sometimes the room is bright enough where I don't need the lights to turn on at all. And so a lot of my motion sensors like the Philips Hue motion sensors have lux sensors in them. And so now I'm using those to be like, well, you know, if it's above a certain lux in the room,

don't turn on the lights at all. And those are a little more like tricky things to do because like each level is a little different depending on the room you're in. And so like you need to know what the ideal light is in the room for the lights that turn on. And so stuff like that is a little more complicated to set up. It's not hard though, because you just input it as an optional thing. And so it's in the if statement there.

So if it's above a certain lux or whatever it is, temperature, then it turns on. And so I've been doing a lot of that because that is just super nice to have. And like our bathroom, for example, is always so bright because we have this glass block window in it. because that is just super nice to have. And like our bathroom, for example, is always so bright because we have this like glass block window in it. And we don't really need the light on until like seven o'clock at night. Right, right, right.

It's a good thing to do. I think it's nice if it's spring cleaning is definitely for the physical cleaning of things, but you can also do a little digital cleaning as well. There you go. Spring cleaning for your digital life. That's right. I don't think I'm ever going to get to the digital part of it.

Like, looking at my desk, I'm like, ugh. My wife's like, oh, we need to clean up the garage. I'm like... That's my office. What do you mean? Is this a clean? Yeah. Considering how much I've been doing, it's, yeah, it's not great, but...

Yeah, that's fine. You do it when you're ready. You know what I mean? Exactly. But that's all for my projects What what what TV have you not hung Seth? Well, okay, so I did know that this project was gonna be done in stages from the outset I create start create start. Yeah, right. I think I told you guys that

Said this isn't gonna happen. You know well I specifically said two to three weeks so that I knew that I didn't know stages necessarily, but I knew I knew time frame. Okay, so I did actually get the TV up and hung for a little bit and then um, and then I told you guys about the the random issue I was having with like the video thing last week. I needed to just do five HDMI cables. You wouldn't though, because you don't want to go in your attic. Still not doing it, so. Deal.

I basically took out all the AVPro stuff, which was, again, not their fault, completely my fault for keeping a pre-release version of their product that had definitely had some weird hardware things to it. Like I sent pictures of the AVPro Switch that they have and they're like, what is that? That's their own tech support. They're like, I've never seen that in my life.

Like, show this to somebody. That's always good. Uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of funny. I, I wonder if they want it back. I'd probably send it back to them. Big bunch of dusty equipment now. It's been in my rack for like, sir, don't send me trash, please. Yeah, yeah.

I ended up pulling all that out because I just couldn't get 4K to work on it. And I put in some old, the old, just a power system that I had, which is only 1080p. But this was like gonna be a little bit of a bridge, you know, to get us over. Cause I went on eBay and I was looking around. Remember I said last week, the just had power stuff is like cheap like you can get like people pull

the older just that power stuff out of bigger installs all the time and you can get some of like the 4k stuff 4k HDR Through is it called the 3g product line, which is good good products fine for all I need You can get that for like, I don't know, between 60 and $80 a receiver or transmitter, whatever that that brings it down into the reasonable price point for what I'm going to do because I'm only gonna buy like three receivers, and one or two transmitters. That's it. So I looked at my I looked at my rack as I was taking out the AV pro thing. I'm like, Oh, I still

have this old Luxel switch from the, when I was using the, why would I ever take it out of my rack? Cause it's still in here. So it was being used as a shelf or something else. And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to plug all this back in. Yeah. So I plugged in the, the power flipped on the, the, the Luxel. I'm like, the POE is not working.

What the heck? And it took me way too long, longer than I want to admit, longer than it took to find three five volt one amp or three amp power supplies or whatever they just have power. Like I had them laying around, I just had to find them. And that's why I'm looking around my garage and like, oh, I got stuff like laying around everywhere because it got to the point where I'm just like ripping and tearing through stuff trying to find these stupid five volt power supplies that I know exist somewhere. And I did find them and I go and plug everything in and then I realized this Luxo thing, this Luxo switch, what they did on the first, I don't know, eight ports, there's no PoE. But on the last part of the

switch there is PoE, which just means I have to program the GSTi power system just a little bit different. You have to like push out, you have to tell it you have like 20 receivers or something like that. And then you get into the POE and that are 20, I guess you see 20 transmitters, and then you get into the POE, like the 21st port will have POE on it. And you can plug your receivers into that. And the receivers lit right up and they were happily running along on POE, giving me 1080p video. And I got everything settled. and then my wife's like, oh this is great we can watch TV finally. She's like, I want to complete

watching this movie, you know, in the bedroom. Like I want to go to bed, I want to complete watch this movie. It's like, all right, let's go over there because I got all that hooked up too. There was a picture on the screen, I saw it. So go to the bedroom and the sound doesn't work. Oh my god. So the sound doesn't work on one of three TVs. And yeah, I've got everything else patched up and ready to go. I'm waiting for my new Just F Hours to come in. And then she tells me last night, hey, I wanted to watch TV today and there's no, there's nothing on the screen.

Like no picture, no nothing. I'm like, what, are you kidding me? The Luxal switch died. It's like, no, are you kidding me? The Luxel switch died. It's like, no, you're actually using me. I don't want to be used. Four or five years of being completely powered off, not disconnected to power or anything, didn't even have a power plug connected to the switch. Yeah. The Luxel switch is dead.

So I've got a few hundred dollars of just that power product on the way here. No switch to plug them into, no way to program it. Uh, and all I did, I took a transmitter hardware directly to the receiver, so this is basically like a fancy ballon that goes from one point to the next right now. We can watch TV on one TV. And I don't, I really don't know what switch I'm going to get. There's still the net, like you, you're getting like up into the thousand dollar range for the switches that are required for just that power system.

Oh my gosh, that's Just two fiber HDMI cables. Why? It was such a cheap and easy way out. Now I've just convoluted everything over into this. All you gotta do is get up at like 4 a.m., get up in your attic, run some HDMI cables. You're done. It's not gonna happen. It's already feels like this week will be 100 degrees, DJ.

Like we are there. I hate to break it to you. You should have thought, I don't know where you're going with this. I should have thought of this like two weeks ago, right? DJ like we are there. I hate to break it to you You should have thought So, yeah one TV works looks alright 1080p and I don't care if if I can't figure out a switch thing I'll probably just Go back to Apple TV TVs on the TV or something and just live with it like that for a bit. I don't know.

Everything's there, ready to go. Just need to swap out a Switch, so we'll see. Your poor wife, is she like, she's threatening to go by her parents' house to watch TV or something? I mean, at this point she just shakes her head. She's like, yeah, this is never gonna work. Wait, I must have missed it. Is the living room TV mounted yet? Yeah, I mean, at this point she just shakes her head. She's like, yeah, this is never gonna work. Wait, I must have missed it.

Is the Li-Fi-ROM TV mounted yet? Yeah, I did get it mounted. I had to take it back down. And over the weekend, I think I posted on, what is it, our hometech.social Mastodon server, some pictures of me doing some TV surgery and mounting the Sanis Play Bar Mount thing to the bottom. Oh, nice.

So is it back on the wall now? It's back on the wall, and the Play bar looks absolutely hideous with the new TV. Like it's just this big ugly chin that sticks out. I don't know, I have to go take a picture and send it to you guys. Yeah. It looks horrible. So like, because it's a play bar that was made for TVs that were what? Five inches thick on an OLED, which is what?

An inch and a half thick. And it looks awful. Like I really should go buy a new Soda sound bar. Oh, that's another thing. which is what an inch and a half thick and it it it looks awful like I Really should go buy a new soda soundbar. Oh, that's another thing We turned it on the other day and the sona sound bar just didn't work in my wife's like I will pay out you can pay Just any anything any dollar amount whatever. I just want this to work and so Well, I mean you got the magic words here then. I mean, she said she'll pay any money and everything. It's on order now.

Come on. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I like the Sonos system, but man, that's very frustrating when you turn it on and the app says you have sound, the TV says you have sound, there's little things bouncing up and down, you know?

It's like, oh yeah, you got TV sound and there's no TV sound. So I don't know. Yeah. It's frustrating. Sonos, fix your app. Yeah. So that's that. I did a little fun project cause you know, I'm just sitting here weeping

into my computer most of the time now. So let me see, can I share the screen with this? How does this work? Open your audio. Can you hear me now? You're gone, Seth. We can't hear you. Man.

Probably a switch. There we go. So I started working on this. My new home assistant interface. Oh my god. Why do you hate the internet? I don't hate the internet. I just don't like the home assistant interface very much.

But this is better. Hold on. This is better. But you know what everybody does love? Everybody loves Windows 95, Gavin. Come on. Oh, geez. You know what would be better?

A Teams interface. Oh. The shutdown button right next to everything. It doesn't work at all. Like I could just, I could just. One click. I would be an easy project to fix. It just wouldn't work.

All right, so like, yeah. This is like the Windows 95 login, TJ. This is what we had to look forward to when we logged into our computers back in the day. And like when you hit okay. We used these when I was in school. Oh, okay, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have money for computers.

So I'm working through this, but I got a little start menu down here, and I'm gonna still have my devices and entities, my control panel. I'm gonna have all this in here. Oh man, I like this. This is way better than your hot dog theme. See if this works.

Oh yeah, well, that's the funny thing, TJ. Funny you asked. Yeah, you just had to ruin this then, yeah. Funny you asked, because I'm pretty sure. Oh, thanks, TJ. I'm pretty sure I can just go change it to hot dog theme. That's the theme picker is definitely going to be on the roadmap here. But let me see, where is this?

I mean, look, I'll install this Windows 95 theme if you get it working. Nicole will not like this, but that's fine. Let's see. Did that work? Oh, there we go. There we go. So yeah. Oh, no.

There you go. Hot dog stand. Nope. See, you made it. You killed us, Seth. See you made it. You killed us, Seth. This isn't good. I just got some little minor theming to do on this stuff,

but yeah, we've got hot dog theme working in this. Don't you guys worry. Don't you worry your pretty little heads on this. This is gonna work. This is gonna be great. I'm gonna have graphs in here. This is gonna be amazing. So I just don't know what to say.

I don't know what to say. Gavin, we need to contact Paulus and have him pay in Seth. I don't know how that works with Home Assistant, but there has to be a way to do that. It's weird I'm announcing this on April 1st, right? But like it's gonna happen. This is gonna happen. This is fun.

I doubt it. I don't know. What if Paulus is a big fan of Hot Dog Stan? I mean, I've seen his interface. It's not the best. So he might. He might want an upgrade. So yeah, it'd be like, loveless. What if Paulus is a big fan of hot dog stand? I mean, I've seen his interface. It's not the best, so he might be. He might want an upgrade. So yeah, they'll be like, loveless, get out of here.

Home Assistant 95, here we are. Hot dog thing? Yes. Hot dog all the things. And everybody knows you don't put ketchup on a hot dog, so. No, no. You put mayonnaise on it. That hurts.

That hurts. That hurts. That hurts, that hurts. All right, moving on, moving on. You're welcome. Yeah, we need to end this. Yeah. All right, well, I think that's gonna wrap up the show. We need to put it out of its misery.

Come on, Gavin, you're gonna be amazed. You're gonna be amazed. When I'm done with this, you're gonna have like, you're gonna want this. And you know what, I think the way I'm making it When I'm done with this, you're gonna have like, you're gonna want this. And you know what? I think the way I'm making it, I'm pretty sure the way they're making it, anybody can use it.

You just go in, you just go in, you log in with your Home Assistant URL thing and your token thing. And then boom, you're in, you're in. No more Home Assistant interface, no more grids and mines and dashes and entities out the walls. No, we're gonna have a nice little registry editor explorer. You know, that you reject, it's gonna just like that.

I have it in my head. It's gonna be beautiful guys. I guarantee you, you're gonna love it. Can you make me a Windows ME version where it just crashes all the time and I have to restore it from backup? Yeah, probably can do that too. Just like every time I do something,

it just crashes on me. Random blue screen of death. Oh yeah, that would be great just to start a random timer. That's what got me into computers is computer repairs is Windows ME fixes. So yeah, it'll just have to just have to reinstall home assistant and this interface when you're done. Just wipes everything. That would be bad. All right. Anyway, let's move on here. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show,

but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.com slash support to learn how you can support Home Tech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show,

but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slide chat at the Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather in there every day and look at all the fun April Fool's jokes that TJ found. Holy cow, those are fun. Yeah, there's all kinds. I do like the packout stuff, I'm not gonna lie.

I have too much of that junk and I could use more. Yeah, this one got a lot of people because a lot of people have been asking for Milwaukee Packout Kitchen stuff. So they would definitely sell these. I, I, I agreed. The waffle maker, I'm not sure about the griddle. The griddle is going to...

I mean, the fondue pot either, you know? Well, I guess it depends on their market, but yeah. I like how the lettering is off everywhere though. Like the Milwaukee stuff is correct for the most part. But like the M, Milwaukee designates their batteries M12 and M18. But like some of the images say like M108, one was like M200, 120. AI is not very good with letters and numbers just yet. You're gonna need that to heat up your rotisserie chicken.

So you're gonna need a bigger battery pack than just a, you know, smaller one. I think that's what they mean. You can tell where I am in life though, because all the ones that I actually posted are about tools. So I just look at tools all the time, I guess. Yeah. There's one from Nipx, there's one from Wera. Yeah. The Wera tool, I like that one, but I definitely would lose tools. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. We just spin it around in circles trying to find the right tool. I would never find it. All right, well, if you want to 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 after your choice. That's going to wrap up another week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time time take care Can't believe you guys don't like hot dog stand it's not good Seth Are you gonna are you gonna have that done before you finish fix your TVs? Yeah, probably Your wife's gonna be like I can't watch TV and you're gonna be like yeah, probably. Yeah. Your wife's going to be like, I can't watch TV. And you're going to be like, yeah, but you can control

homelessness in my 95 update. He just hit start menu and go to programs. And turn on TV. Turn on TV.