HomeTech.fm - Episode 524 - Gavin Reviews the Sonos Ace

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

On this week's show: Gavin takes a pair of Sonos Ace Headphones for a test drive, TJ get's his fun fixed, a pick of the week, project updates, a HomeTech headline, and so much more!

This is the HomeTech Podcast for Friday, April 18th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario. I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the HomeTech Podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home innovation, and we still got tariffs, right?

All the tariffs. Well, maybe no more. A little less tariffs than last time we talked. And maybe. I don't know. It seems every, I guess it's China is still a tar tariffs, right? All the tariffs. Well, maybe no more. A little less tariffs than last time we talked. And maybe. I don't know. It seems every, I guess it's China is still a tariff, right? Oh, yeah. Except for computers from Apple and Microsoft

or something like that. The important things. Yes. Well, there you go. Yeah. All the other tariffs are gone for like 90 days, though. There's still like the baseline 10% tariff or whatever on everything. But all the other tariffs are paused for 90 days though. There's still like the baseline 10% tariff or whatever on everything.

But all the other tariffs are paused for 90 days because I think somebody realized that was a terrible idea. Yeah, well the bond markets were freaking out too. So whoops, don't do that. You shared this podcast, I guess it was the Daily, New York Daily thing, the Daily podcast. I don't know. I enjoyed listening to that at some point and then at some point I was like, man, they just really lean into this guy's weird quirks that he does.

Like, ooh. I don't listen to all of them for that same reason. It's not as bad as some other shows I listen to that will rename nameless that like to enter sound effects into their feed, but besides us and our smoke alarm battery, that's legit. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. This one was tough to listen to.

I mean, it was like a small business, ordered stuff from China, like some factory, had stuff built in a factory in China, brought it over. And now they've got stuff coming over, and it's going to be like $500,000 in tariffs on like $130,000 worth of product. Yeah, basically somebody that came up with like a baby product. It was like a baby placemat with with like toys that you get attached to, you know, keep keep the kids entertained. And they started off, you know, 40% tariffs and you know, it's like an extra,

you know, the product itself was like $150,000 that they were actually importing $150,000 worth of product. And then, you know, the 100% tariffs hit and it was like, you know, $300,000. Then the 140% tariffs hit and it was like $500,000 on just that $150,000 worth of product. And you know, what the person was saying, which is true, is that, like, it costs a ton of money to make a factory to create this stuff, right? And so she would need, like, $40 to $80 million to create this factory that can make all seven of her products plus two years.

And that's, like, assuming that, like, everything just went smoothly as well. So it's just, uh, it's crazy to see the damage that the tariffs are doing. And I don't think we're anywhere close to see the damage the tariffs are doing. And I don't work. I don't think we're anywhere close to seeing the actual fallout from we haven't got there yet. It's going to happen. No, I remember watching something similar to this. Because you're saying that the factories don't exist really over here to make that.

And you have to like I didn't really think about this. But like if you're making stuff for kids that kids are going to put in their mouth, you have to make it in a factory with like hygienic factory. Like it has to be clean and has to be rated. It has to have all these FDA ratings and that kind of thing. Like just to get through that and just make that kind of factory inside your own warehouse, that's gotta be expensive. I remember seeing some videos before all this went down, but like when they were

rumbling and talking about it, it was a company that made like point of sale systems on and they had like this little metal box that they attached to and they could just sit on top of the thing and it just got a tablet, right? And you may have like a cash box or something inside it, but it's like a rack that they basically bought from China. They had made China. He was saying, I just I came over here. And we tried to make it here in the US. And they were like, Yeah, yeah, we'll make we'll make that. That's not a problem. But you know, you're not going to get the the harsh edges ground off, you're not going to get this like half the stuff they were doing in China for free as part of the product. You couldn't you couldn't get it done in the US. And they were like, oh yeah, we're not even

gonna powder coat it. Like you're gonna have to ship, after we're done here for three times the price, you're gonna have to ship it over here and get it powder coated and grind off the rough edges and all that stuff. It was just kind of wild to see like what it looks like. I mean, we're just not set up for that kind of work anymore. We like our shopping malls and well,

we used to like our shopping malls. We like our, I don't know, Uber Eats and that kind of thing now. I mean, we're going to so many other things like medical and technology in general, like software and stuff like that. I mean, we don't need to, some of the stuff we just don't need to make. I mean, I understand that- We have a service economy. I mean, that's really it. Like, investment service, right? That would be good. The important thing is we should make our own food and we should make our own technology. And I absolutely believe that. Do we need to make our own baby

toys though? I don't think so. I think Dave Chappelle said it right when he's like, we want to wear the Nikes. We don't want to make them. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. Um, we'll see what happens. I think you're right, TJ. I, a lot of people saw this coming. I remember there were companies that were buying up stock ahead of time. But I've seen vendors send out price increases.

I think you mentioned in the chat that one of your vendors were like, hey, that thing you thought you ordered. It's going to be more. Yeah, that happened to me this morning. I just submitted a quote request and they called me immediately. They're like, oh, we got to make sure this is going to like meet the, come in before the tariffs are applied to it and all that good stuff.

And I was like, that sounds like a you problem, not a me problem. Cause the price is right there. Right, right. Well, I know that, um, like CDIA and a number of places, I used to see pro I've seen it written a couple of times. I was like, make sure in your contracts, you have these pricing, like random price increases that may come out of it. Yep.

If you don't, then, um, you could get stuck with like paying extra money for something and losing on the margin or in the case of baby toys and maybe not having any margin at all, that was crazy. Yeah. I told, I told this client specifically, I was like, if you'd have to give me an approval by the end of this week, or I can't guarantee any pricing. Yeah. I have to have you up.

Hmm. That reminds me, I got something still floating around out there. I need to check on. Hopefully it wasn't so Nancy were talking to you today because I need to. No, I haven't heard anything. I ordered something from them this week, but I have not heard anything. This was Turing, the camera. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, in other good news, there is a massive solar storm heading our way. So, you know, could be a little toasty this weekend. Who knows? The sun earlier this week burped out huge bursts of energy and it's heading this way. So, yeah,

I guess we're going to get some good northern lights if you're in the northern states and we haven't, I don't know. Can you see the Northern Lights where you are? Is it dark enough? To North. How far North do you think I live? You're not that far North, but I mean, this is Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota. So like these are South of you in some respects. You know, sometimes like through the skylight in my igloo,

we could see some Northern Lights every now and then. I was just wondering, because it does have to be pretty dark, right? It has to be like dark outside. It's not something you can normally see. Actually, was it late last year when the Northern Lights came really far south? And yeah, we were able to actually walk out our backyard and I actually have pictures of the Northern Lights. We could see them from our backyard or the front of the house. We drove to like some dark fields, farming fields, and you got awesome views of them. But I think that was pretty much like or the front of the house. We drove to like some dark fields, farming fields, and you got awesome views of them.

But I think that was pretty much like most of North America that was seeing it. I don't know how far down these will go though. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. You, you, where you are, I mean, you're, you're in a, you're in a real city. So it's like, you're going to have lights to compete with and everything. You have to drive up to letter Kenny basically to, to see them.

So. Not that far, but there's some farmland just five minutes. It's like, you're going to have lights to compete with and everything. You have to drive out to letter Kenny basically to see him. So not that far, but there's some farm land just five minutes away from us that I can go and see, get some nice darkness. When's the, when's it supposed to hit the earth? Uh, it says this weekend, right? So, uh, it starts Tuesday night. So it's tonight. There you go.

Uh, another excuse for gas to go up probably. Definitely. Yeah. Well, it says the strength of the light show will depend on how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the solar bursts. So yeah, it's kind of wait and see. Uh, one thing I did notice is I guess this is a thing and I didn't know it was a thing, but I, I download, I bought a, um, what is it called?

A drone, a little drone, little flying drone thing. But I downloaded, I bought a, what is it called, a drone, a little drone, a little flying drone thing. And to spot it off Facebook, right? And then it turns out it's too heavy. Like it's one of the big ones that I have to get a license for. So I'm like, crap. Um, but one of the things like, there's this little app that tells you if it's okay to fly and one of the things that it has is called KP and it's, it's, it's red right now.

It's like not good to fly. And I was like, well, what is this KP thing? And that's actually the magnetic interference that comes from things like this. So. Hmm, no way it doesn't fall out of the sky and hit you. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of old. So, you know, that's gonna happen one of these days,

but yeah, I found a good link to the Aurora forecast for tonight and tomorrow night. So I will send that to you. It looks like if you are in Alaska and the Northern territories of Canada, you will get a great show. But Gavin, not so much, not so much. Yeah, it's a little bit north of me, so I'm not going to get to see any of this stuff. Just a wee bit.

Just a wee bit. Yeah, this actually shows, it's kind of like north and west. Like if you're in, what is that out there? Edmonton? That Calgary area. Yeah, down by BC. Yeah. You're going to see it. Basically, most of our provinces

look like it's pretty much in the coverage. It's just when you get over to Ontario, the lower half of Ontario is not in it. Cause that drops lower. Yeah. And it looks like, it looks like it's basically pitched to the West anyway. Like there's, there's more of that red zone that they're, they're saying that you're going to see it there. So very, very neat.

Well, we'll keep an eye on, keep an eye on this guy, Kevin. If it starts raining down fire. Well, don't worry about it. You're now the 51st. Yeah. Now the, yeah, it's not the aura. It's us down fire. Well, don't worry about it. You're now the 51st. You know, yeah, it's not the aura. It's us taking over. All right. Uh, let's see.

We, we, um, oh yeah, we do have a big news here. We do have a Stuart, a friend of the show, Stuart Burgess, uh, decided to, uh, pledge support five bucks a month. There you go. Thank you, Stuart. Uh, I get a big shout out here on the show. Oh, thank you. Stuart.

I haven't seen your name pop across in a while. I know, it's been a while. Good to see you. He's got one of the best domain names, I think, Just Add Popcorn. Right. Oh, I read it as Just Add Porn. No, just add popcorn, not- Just add porn.

Wrong podcast, Gavin. Yeah, sorry. I was Googling it all. Yeah, right up there with Owen in the beautiful home theater rooms. Yeah, I totally read his domain name wrong. I thought it was like a spam or something like that. Wow. Well, we do want to thank him. If you would like to help out the show,

you can get a big thank you like Stuart did. If you do any pledge over $5 a month, gets you a big shout out here on the show. Every single, like we have a dollar a month too. You can do whatever you, I know somebody like did $2 a month the other day. I was like $2 a month, that's crazy. But you know, it evens out, right? At the end of the year, well, I guess either way would even out.

But at the end of the year, you doubled your pledge if you do it. Yeah. Yeah. So- And even if you already have a pledge, buy one your pledge if you do it. Yeah. Yeah. So. And even if you already have a pledge, you know, buy one for a friend, be a good neighbor.

Yeah, that's probably what he's doing. Gift one for Christmas. Our fathers say. We're trying to go to CES next year. So any money you give us might go to CES. Oh yeah, we're a little behind on that, aren't we? Well. Right now I'm poor,

so I don't think it's actually gonna happen. I don't think I'm gonna cross the border at this time, because they're allowed to search our phones now, and I'm afraid. I just gotta bring a burner, like you're going to China. Get a burner, come on, yeah. I know. You probably shouldn't anyway.

I wonder how Infocom's gonna go. I just signed up for that today, just because it's in Orlando. And that would be an interesting show if there's not anybody from China there. If there's nobody from China trying to get you to go to Hong Kong? Yeah. I wouldn't be able to buy another one of these TVs. I mean, this thing would be like $30,000 of tariff on it, I guess.

Last time I went, I was like three years ago or something, and some guy came to me, he's like, trying to get me to go to some trade show in China. I was like, no, I can't do that. Well, if you, again, we do want to thank everyone who does support the show also, but if you don't know about how to support the show, you can go to the Patreon page, it's over at home.tv.fm.com. And you can learn there exactly how it all works. Dollar a month, two dollars a month, five dollars, it doesn't matter.

You can type in whatever you want. We have people that type in a lot more and we're very thankful they do that. So give us $20 a month if you want. Yeah, I mean, just all out. It's still even at the end of the year. If you do that, I don't know why my math. Everything's even.

Don't give it odd number. If you give it odd number, we're giving you a refund immediately. Comes back, no odd numbers. Anyway, if you want to help with the show, but you can't support financially, we understand, just appreciate a good review, like Five Stars on iTunes,

or whatever podcast app you're listening in, just give it a thumbs up. Guys, I did notice this the other day. We actually get comments on Spotify. They have comments on Spotify? They have comments, they have polls? Wow. Who did I upset now? Well, you know, the problem is I never log in there.

So if you're listening on Spotify, which evidently there are quite a few people that do, and you know, in the fair hundreds, I guess, and there are people that comment over time and ask questions, I did not know that they had anything in there. So yeah, sorry about that. over time and ask questions, I did not know that they had anything in there. So, yeah, sorry about that. If you have a question, though, feel free to shoot it over to feedback at hometech.com. We're guaranteed mostly to see it and read it there. All that to say is we've got a fair amount of news tonight.

Looks like there's one Home Tech headline, So what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. All right, let's keep the streak alive guys. SOTOS has announced a significant change to its board of director with Hugo Barra replacing Mike Volpe. Barra is a seasoned technologist, brings robust background technology

and product development, having held pivotal roles at Meta, Xiaomi and Google. His expertise includes leading the Android ecosystem development and overseeing Oculus VR at Meta. So a pretty big name coming in over on the board of directors at Sonos. So he's currently a co-founder and head of product at slash dev slash agents. Wow that's really really geeky. Focusing on a next-founder and headed product at slash dev slash agents. Well, that's really, really geeky. Focusing on a next generation operating system for AI agents. Anyway, I don't know, press release, whatever, get someone else back in the news

in a positive light, right? This is some leadership that can come in and maybe make a difference for them. And it's a big name. I think they needed a big name. They need somebody big to come in and say, a difference for them. And it's a big name. I think they needed a big name. They needed somebody big to come in and say, hey, I support this product. So yeah, especially, especially somebody that's been in the mobile space, right? Because like it or not,

Sonos is basically a mobile company at this point, because you have to use the app to control it. You can use your voice if you want to, but you still have to use the app to set it up and manage it and everything else. And so at the end of the day, Sonos is a software company that just makes speakers, and it makes sense to get people in there that know about the software side of things. I really haven't followed Hugo much recently at all, but I remember a little bit during his tenure at Android, and you know, arguably made Android kind of what it is today with

what he did when he was there. So I think that overall, this is a good direction for Sonos to go into. It seems like they're actually trying to get competent people in there, which is always a good sign. I'm happy. And I know Gavin's happy that we kept the streak alive. Yeah, you know, I was going to keep the streak alive when we get into the projects anyway. Oh, that's true.

That's true. You know, but I like what TJ says that, you know, they're bringing in competent people, they're switching things up, bringing in people that can do, uh, what we have to do to make this successful. Well, he's just on the board, but like, at least he can give good advice. And, you know, yeah, exactly. And not like, again, uh, their current CEO or interim CEO came from the board as well. So it's not like you can pick from that talent pool

when you want to, but when it's available. But at least in an ideal situation, you get a good advice and direction from the board when you have competent people like that in. So there you go. Yeah. Hey, I wonder if Sonos is gonna get AI now. I mean, that's what that's what it needs

Oh, I want VR Sonos AI headphones. I want to see my sonos. So they introduced that Sonos chap Integration a while ago, you know that he so knows yeah, right? I wonder if anyone still even uses that though I use that occasionally Occasionally isn't't it just controls? It doesn't really go deep? Yeah, it doesn't really do anything besides like control Sonos.

So you can have it turn on the enhanced speech mode or like nighttime mode or whatever. The only thing I really use it for is grouping my speakers though. So like we have Home Assistant automatically groups everything for us as we walk around, but occasionally it doesn't work, you know? Home Assistant isn't perfect.

And I just say, hey, Sonos and group speakers together, and it doesn't. So yeah, that's all I use it for. I think it would be used more if they made it do more things, but it literally just controls your Sonos speakers, and your Sonos speakers do like five things. So yeah, exactly. I think that's a good thing, you know, like just to have a very specialized one-off thing I mean you could want it to do more but yeah Yeah, well, I mean like I feel like it like I just wanted to like tell me the weather or something or I don't know

Something basic it doesn't have to like tie into like home assistant, but right answer some basic questions or something All right. Well all of the link and topic we discussed tonight can be found over on our show note And if we talk about Sonosos for 12th week in a row, I'll get a Sonos Ace pair of headphones tattooed on my arm. I think as well. I mean, have we? They can be found on the show note over at hometech.fm slash 524. All right. Pick a week is kind of funny this week, not, I guess it's audio related, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I saw this pop up over the last couple of days over the weekend. And somebody, this is great. Somebody has hacked Silicon Valley crosswalks to spoof Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. And man, so you know these crosswalks you walk up to and you press the button and it's got this guy's voice that goes, wait, wait, like those, they've got the speaker in them? Well, I guess somebody in the area

has decided to reprogram them. And they have like, they have, it's probably AI created voice impersonations. I mean, they sound pretty close of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. You know, it says, one of them says, Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla Engineering. You know, they say money can't buy happiness. And yeah, I guess that's true.

God knows I've tried, but it can buy a cyber truck. And that's pretty sick, right? So it goes on. There's some expletives in this. I'm not going to continue reading, but yeah, this is great. This is something that puts a smile on a lot of people's face. People keep saying cancer is bad. Have you ever tried being a cancer?

It's awesome. Guarantee that it's a college student that did this. So it's great. Yeah. So this is pretty funny. It reminds me of the good old days of computers. The times before I was born, but people just hacking in the stuff and making them do other things. The workforce back then are very different. We used to pull pranks on each other all the time and nobody got fired for it.

Everyone had a good laugh and nowadays it's not the same. That's why you work at home now, Gavin. Yeah, exactly. We had some, there were days when we went in and we put a little piece of tape over everyone's network cable and we watched them, you know, sit there trying to diagnose. They'd pull out the network table. They still couldn't see the tape and they put it back in. And then the best part is that we put little pieces of tape

over the network cables in the extra network cables box. So when they went and swapped their network cable, they'd come back and they'd still have a network cable with tape on it. It took us a bit of time to build up, but I mean, it was so worth it to watch them troubleshooting their computer. This is banned from the office is what I've learned.

No, the best, I think the best one ever though, was I don't know if you guys remember if this was before your time, but, um, there was something that was going around in everybody's email and you'd click on it and it would turn up the speakers on your computer. Cause you just have those built-in speakers, no volume control. They were built in. It would turn it up to max and yell out, Hey everybody, I'm watching porn over there. And I was in work that day and for pretty much more than half of the day, every couple

of minutes you heard it, well done from someone's computer. And it was just, and then we even modified one guy's login, his auto exec bad at that time. So that when he logged, when he started up his computer and automatically did it to him and he got so pissed off. And that's what we're dying laughing. Things like that were fun back then, you know? Now we can't get away with anything. Yeah. It looks like this has already been removed.

It removed on, started being removed on Saturday. So yeah, it's got a lot of, got a lot of video views on TikTok, which I thought was funny. So good job, whoever did that. Yeah. Keep up the good work. It's very entertaining when people have technology to have fun. So there you go. Yeah.

It's not just an ad or a Bitcoin or something like that when they're just doing it to have some fun, you know, I can laugh at that. Yeah. Nothing, nothing nefarious. Yeah. And somebody got paid to correct it. So it's a win-win for everybody. I trickle down economics.

I'm actually surprised there was enough memory in those devices to hold that long audio, like you would figure it would just have enough memory to hold, wait, wait, wait, but it held the whole speech in there, you know, so. Maybe, maybe it's got to say more and other situations, you know, in other languages. Maybe it can be part of like an emergency broadcast. Oh yeah. Hurry up and cross, there's a hurricane! Ignore the crosswalk sign!

The lights yellow, run! You can make it, no wait. No wait. Oh man, good stuff, we'll put a link to it. It's got a couple of the videos in this article we'll link to. But yeah, fun stuff. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, great hacks for the week, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can go to hometech.fm slash feedback

and fill out the online form. All right, product updates. Project updates. Home Assistant, State of the Open Home 2025 came out. Gavin's got notes. We do want to give a shout out to our friends over at Apollo automation. They were featured there in the State of the Home,

and kind of went over their recent, what was it? Works with Home Assistant certification program thing. Yeah. That we get. So yeah, good for them. But yeah, Gavin, what's going on in Home Assistant for 2025? What are they doing? Year of the Assistant for 2025? What are they doing? Year of the Voice is gone. What are they doing?

This was a long presentation. I think it was about three hours long. Three hours long. I looked at the time and I was like, I can't do this. I was actually doing my taxes. At the beginning, I started my taxes, and by the time it was done, I was done my taxes. I used the time wisely while I was watching it. But most of the, to be honest, most of it, they went over stuff they had already accomplished, stuff

they've done in the last year, some interesting things, um, they shifted all their employees, they now work, um, to the open home foundation. They don't work directly for Nabucasa. Um, I guess this is an internal thing. I can't remember why they said they did this. Basically it saves the open home foundation more money so they can spend that money on other stuff, because now they don't have to pay Nabucasa for Remember why they said they did this? Basically it saves the open home foundation more money so they can spend that money on other stuff because now they don't have to pay Nabucasa for the

employees or something like that. But, um, for us, the end user, nothing changes. Uh, one interesting thing they announced is they now have over 2 million home assistant installations, right? Um, they pretty much doubled since last year. So this kind of shows you how fast Home Assistant is growing. And that's pretty amazing to see. If you, if you're going to watch the video and you just want to jump to the roadmap, it's about 15 minutes long section where they just talk about things they are going

to be working on, to be honest, I still don't know what they were talking about. It was a little confusing. They, they were talking about. Um, it was a little confusing. They, they were talking about, you know, home approval factor. Okay. I got that. They want to simplify the setup, simplify the maintenance, maintenance, and

make it easier for others, not, and non techies to use. Okay. I get that. But when they started going into the collective intelligence in the smart home and stuff, I started like, I'm like, okay, I kind of get what you're seeing, but let's see where this goes. And I guess they will be releasing more information about this going on, going forward. You know, they were talking about gathering context and data. And context is like, you'd have a device like, a device, like a fridge or a stove or

something that has multiple sensors in it, but they want to know all those sensors are, are tied to that device, that stove, you know, so that when you ask what the temperature in the room is, the temperature sensor in that stove is not included in that. Oh yeah, that would be bad. So there's context. Yeah, no, what they're saying is really good, but how they're going to go around doing this, they were talking about making a database, which I'm like,

this sounds like such a Seth project. They're going to make some kind of device database that then create, they log all the context around all the devices and using the community and stuff. So I'm sure we will get more information about that going in the near future. But they talked about like using this kind of information, you can automate the automations. So now, you know, instead of having to create automations, everyone has to go in and create their own automations. They could just click a checkbox for a good night automation and it knows the context of

your home and the devices. It knows what to open, what to close, what night should be on or off. And it will be able to, you know, automate creating the automations, which kind of makes sense too. Right. So, you know, the stuff they're thinking they're talking about really look good. Um, you just gotta, you know, don't expect it to be here tomorrow, but it's just, you know, something they're working towards.

Um, and then they did mention, I think we mentioned this before they were working on a Z-Wave antenna. So they're still in the hardware space and we expect them to come with a Z-Wave antenna. And one thing I've been looking at is there's these, I don't know if you guys have seen the Zigbee antennas, not made by Home Assistant, but they're POE Zigbee antennas. Yeah, I've seen a couple of those. From like Sonoff? Yeah, it's not Sonoff.

There was another SM light or something like that. Um, and you can basically just run a POE, uh, connection to it and put it anywhere in your house and that's where, you know, you can centralize your antenna. It's not just, it's not an intent. It's like a hub that has an antenna, but it's like all in one and POE powered, right? Yes, exactly. And then you can connect that to Home Assistant. I was looking for one that does Z-Wave version of it.

You know, I don't know why somebody doesn't make a Z-Wave version of it, but that would be cool too, because then you can centralize your Z-Wave antenna as well, or you know, other things like that. It makes so much sense why they did that. So, you know, if anyone knows of a Z-Wave version to that, let me know if it works well. I want Z-Wave 800 type device. Um, I don't want to have to solder or build anything.

I just want a pre-built unit like that one. So. Yeah. Those look cool. Yeah. But that sums up pretty much the whole state of the open home for this year. And yeah, it's a long presentation. You know, like I said, if you, you have your, to do your taxes or something,

and put it on in the background. If you only want to watch one piece of it, jump to the roadmap part of it. If you all, you've been following home assistant and you know, enjoy. Here's one that has a, it's a kit that you can get that has an antenna and it looks like a 3d printed case. If that's what you want. I don't want to build anything. I just want to pre-build one.

No, I said that. Yeah, come on. Seth. Do you not pay attention to what I say? Seth can't even put a TV up. He's not going to build anything. That's true too. Don't listen to him.

Exactly. No, I think this is, I think it's got everything you wanted and 3d printed case as you can get in black, dark blue, white, light blue. Okay, tell you what, you build it and put it together and then ship it to me. And then there'll be more tariffs on it. Yeah, no, I can't do that. That makes no sense. It's only $6,000.

No, no, do it, do it, do it, oh, well, by the time you get it done, the tariffs will have been 100%. We need an IKEA of automation where you just build your own stuff. This thing. Wait, that's ESP. This thing, so just so you know, like this thing requires a Raspberry 7 Pro Z-Way plug-on module for Raspberry Pi US frequency, great for DIY smart home compatible with Z-Way, Home Assistant.

This thing is $100. I don't think I'm going this direct. No, no, that's expensive. All right, so if anyone knows of a Z-Wave version of a PoE device, you know. Come on, Silicon Labs, get your, get your act together. I know. I know. It's, it's a great idea.

I don't know why they don't have one. There is a, also a dual device it looks like that has both Zigbee and Z-Wave for $128. Yep. No, there's the same company that makes the PoE version. There's is um Zigbee and Thread. They just released one so it's two in one but there's no Z-Wave. This has got a Z-Wave 800 and a Zigbee 3.0 all in one box. It's clear though Gavin. Sorry you have to print a different case for it or something. I don't know.

Share me the link anyway. Who knows. I saw it. It's on eBay. There's in nine carts. But $128 if you want that, or you can buy four and get them for $108 each. So it's POE powered though. There you go. POE Zigbee Z-Wave. I think it's what you want. Uh, and the first thing on my list is Control 4.

Control 4 for what? I don't know. I look for POE Zigbee Z-Wave. It brings up Control 4. Controller. Share me the link you see. I yeah, you know what I'm saying. Share me the link you see. I don't see this.

I'll put it in the show notes. I'll put it in the show notes. The one that's $200 Canadian plus $42 shipping. No, it's a hundred dollars, a hundred bucks. It's $130. US. Yeah. Well, I mean, I hate to break into you. The other one I found probably with $300 Canadian.

So, yeah. Sorry. I can't do anything about I found probably with $300 Canadian. So yeah, sorry. I can't do anything about these tariffs. All right. Can't do anything about them. Is what it is. So yeah, good for, good for home assistant. I will give you an update on my home assistant project. I was showing you guys before a home assistant 95 is, is, is well on its way.

Got the start menu done. Uh, I kind of want to tweak it a little bit better. But yeah, I've got a little devices. I can see all my devices. I can control some lights. Can turn them off, can't turn them on, can turn them on, can't turn them off. That kind of thing. But yeah, I think it's coming along great.

Looks just like Windows 95. I mean, it's better than the hot dog theme. That's all I got to say. So I'm happy that you're spending your time on this instead of mounting your TV. And you're not spending it on the hot dog theme. That's all I gotta say. So I'm happy that you're spending your time on this instead of mounting your TV and you're not spending it on the hot dog theme. So we're good there. Well, he has themes TJ, you can turn the hot dog theme on. Stop it Seth.

No, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Nope, nope, no, nothing there, nothing there. I love how it has like binary sensors, 40 and I just can just scroll and scroll and scroll and see the state of all these sensors here. Well, I'm gonna make all this better. So Plan on it plan on seeing some some pretty stuff next week. We're gonna have some nice icons windows 95 style got all sorts of good stuff to bring to the table on this. So One of these days I'll release it you guys can play with it, too. I mean, it should be fun.

Anyway, that's all I have for my projects. So no TV still. What's going on with the TV, Seth? I mean, you gotta give the listeners an update on the TV. Come on, TJ. They don't wanna know about the TV. They wanna know about the TV. Okay, really, I just wanna know about the TV.

So what's the holdup at this point, Seth? Because you got the new fancy switch. Mm-hmm. It's doing video stuff now. You got a new soundbar, you got a new bracket, what's the holdup? The only thing we've noticed recently is we were playing the PlayStation 4 on it,

which we haven't played in a long time. Have you ever had a PlayStation 4? No. You have one? They sound like a vacuum cleaner at some point when they've been running for a while. And I think it gets too hot and the sound's cutting out. I'm hoping it's not anything related to the TV or how the TV is processed and everything, processed the audio and sends it to the soundbar, because that would be a problem.

So there's still a punch list. I just haven't gotten to it. So sound, fixing the sound issue. All my TVs have sound now, so that's good. You can do that with the TV mounted though, so I'm not really sure. What? So what's... What are you talking about?

Oh man. I just haven't gotten to it, TJ, that's all. That's all. Okay, just making sure. I just want to hear you say it. I got a lot going on. Just whisper those sweet nothings. Gavin's like, yes, I'm going to win this.

Hold now. You know, there was a time I thought I was going to lose, and then Seth just brought me right back into the game. See, that's what I get for being generous. You know, usually I'm not so generous, but I was like, I'm feeling good. Seth is definitely going to get this work in. I ordered another Just Add Power encoder thing, because if I can't make the... If I can't clean out the PlayStation and make it quieter, then, like, supposedly dust, you can clear the dust out and make it quieter, but I don't know, we'll see.

Probably put a Noctua fan in there. Well, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah. I want to put it somewhere else, like, and see if it can live somewhere else, and then I can just encode it and put it on the network and call it a day. So it doesn't have to be there. It can be in a noisy closet with all the noisy other hot equipment and do its thing in there.

So, yeah, we'll see. That's all I got. It looks like Gavin. Gavin, what, what, what are you doing? What, what's going on here? What, what, what is this purchase? What, what did you do? I finally got my hands on the Sonos Ace headphones.

Woohoo! I lost so many of the auctions on eBay and then I finally won one. And you know what? I saved quite a bit of money. I got for almost just over half the amount. So that's good. And it was brand new.

Everything in box looked great. So they arrived this week. And so I'm just going to give you a high level, you know, my review. I've been using them this week. I'm actually using them right now, the podcast on it's pretty good. Um, sound quality wise, I know, I know sound quality wise. I'm not, I'm not an expert in sound quality, so I'm not going to give you my review.

They work, you know, I hear stuff. That's good. You nailed it. So now you know, audio done. All right, good. There we go. You know, there's noise, there's lows, there's bass. no, you know, audio done. All right. Good. There we go. You know, there's, there's bass. Um, yeah, I'm happy, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to try and be a

sound expert or anything and compare it. Cause some people will go into weird things about that, but it works. All right. Now what I do like, uh, it works with the beams. I have beams one, two, it works with array. It works with the arc. I like that. It works with all my devices.

Great. Um, what I love is that it's set up now so that I can just sit down in front of any of my TVs because I have beams and array on all of them and I could just press the button on the side and it will automatically switch over the audio from the TV. Um, it knows it because it switch over the audio from the TV. It knows it because it picks up the TV or closest to. Right. So if I sit down in my living room, I just press the button. My living room TV pops over.

It's really nice how that works. So when I don't want to bother anybody at night, just sit down, press the button. Now on my headphones works great. You can even set it up so that as you turn your head, the audio, what do they call it, spatial audio? It kind of like moves so that it sounds like it's coming from the direction of the TV, no matter which way you're facing. That's kind of cool, but it's also kind of annoying.

So I kind of turned it off. You can power it while you're using it. You know, not every headphone loves this, but you does this. But you know, if it's running low on battery, I could just plug it in and still be able to use it while it charges. It comes with the headphone jacks too. Um, just the small one though. I need to find an adapter for the big one.

Um, you can pair it to multiple devices. So right now it's paired to my phone and my computer at the same time. I can switch back and forth easily. So that's pretty cool. Right. Um, and you know, that's what I like about it. You know, they're comfortable, et cetera, et cetera. Nice color.

Yay. Um, now what I did, didn't like about them. They were expensive. If you're going to buy these things brand new, I, they're way overpriced for what they are. And that's why I went to eBay route is because I couldn't justify spending what they're charging brand new for these things. You know, especially when at that price, I expect them to work beautifully. They don't, right? Out of the box.

Like, so they're very expensive. Like what, they don't work. What do you mean? Well, I expect the setup to be, to be flawless, but it's not. Okay. Right. And this is where I started. It took me way too long to get these things set up.

So I had to do a lot of Googling to try and figure this stuff out sometimes. But one of the things is, recently I talked about how I switched all my sonos over to wifi, no, to ethernet. I hardwired everything. Well, apparently to use these, you got to be on wifi now. Right? So now I had to go and undo some of the things, but you think just pulling out the ethernet port out of that beam would switch it over to wifi?

No, it was still like, I don't know. It wasn't picking up the wifi. And then I went through the app and I tried to reset the wifi and get it over the wifi. It just, the only way I could get it to switch over to wifi was then to totally factory reset each of the beams and then they showed up on wifi. And then whenever I did the, the audio transfer, it worked. Now the part that was driving me mad is before I did all this stuff, I was able to configure the headphones with the beam and everything like that and trigger the transfer

and it would just fail. But it wouldn't tell you, oh, it's failing because your beams are not on wifi or whatever. It would just say fail to transfer. Why would you even let me set up everything, you know, in a configuration that's not going to work? So, you know, after a while I ended up finding something that mentioned it must be on Wi-Fi and so I switched it all over but I did plug all the Ethernet ports back in and it still works on some of the devices they switch back to Ethernet but one of them still

on Wi-Fi but it still works on everything so I'm gonna see how I'm gonna suffer with this hopefully I did upgrade my Wi-Fi network so hopefully that also helps with response times I was having before as well too. So I don't know if I'm going to suffer or not. We will see as I use them more often, maybe while I'm watching the basketball games tonight, we'll see. Um, but to me, the setup experience was not the nicest experience. Um, constantly had to look up, you know, Reddit threads and how

other issues people have it. And even now, just before the show, I was trying to get to that little status page, you know, you can go to like one of your speaker IP addresses and see a little status page with the network matrix. Well, now I'm getting a four Oh three error. So I'm like, did something change once I added these? Cause I was looking at this like yesterday and now it stopped working. So I'm like, nothing's changed.

Uh, we will, I'll have to troubleshoot that now, but that's going to be fun. Just constantly broken. That's the, that's the world of Sonos now. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the pain I know TJ that's the pain you were having too is like, I shouldn't have to fight with these things and yeah, I agree. It was, but now everything's set up.

It's working. And my final verdict is I really with these things. And yeah, I agree. It was, but now everything's set up. It's working. And my final verdict is I really like these things. Right. I like how easy it is for me to just sit in front of my computer. I turn it on and now I'm doing the podcast or I just turn it on and I can listen to music from my phone or even like how easy it is, you know, for the wife to sit in front of a TV, put them on and just press the button and it

transfers from the T the audio from the TV. It's so simple. It works and it sounds great and I like these. I'm keeping them. My other headphones I had since 99, I think it was time to upgrade, so I'm good now. Are you glad I suggested you get these Sonos headphones? You were like, I don't know. Well, I remember when they first came out, they only worked with like the

gen two beams and stuff like that. Like I didn't have, it was literally just the arc. It was just that. Yeah. Or even just the arc. But since they added all these other things, it's like, now it makes sense to me. Right? Right.

So now I'm like, on I've, cause I have three of the soundbars, so I can go to each one of those TVs and just press the button and transfer the audio and it's, it's an awesome integration, you know, everything just works. So hopefully switching one of my devices over wifi doesn't break anything. So we will see. So final verdict. I like them. I like them a lot.

My favorite part was when he's like, it makes noise. There you go. Check. There's sound coming out of these speakers. Check. Done. You know, they have noise cancellation. They have all that stuff. You know, it works.

You know, like I have Apple AirPods. I've had other headphones with noise cancellations. To me, they all just sound the same. Like, you know, I'm not going to say this is better quality than what's the Apple version the Apple? Pro whatever Yeah, the big ones. I'm not gonna do comparisons, you know I don't have the big budget dollars to buy one of all of those, you know, we all hear differently So yeah, it makes sound it's not annoying check

So I like them, you know, I will probably revisit this review. Would you, would you have paid, would you have paid full price for them? No, no, that's the whole thing. I can't justify because full price in Canada is what 599, um, plus tax, which will run out to like 575, 80, like at that price is getting, it's a little ridiculous for a pair of headphones Mm-hmm, and these are gonna be more or less my podcasting TV watching headphones, right? So I don't know if I would have paid that much but then you're looking at other headphones

Equivalent headphones and they're in those price ranges too, right? Like when you look at the Apple ones and stuff, but then But then these integrate with my setup, with my Sonos TVs and everything. So that's the main reason I'd like these, but not for full price. For full price, the wife can, you know, sit awake in bed because she can hear me watching the TV. She'll have to suffer. And the day she complains, I'll ask her,

I'll show her the price of these headphones and let her make the decision. You know? All that. Yeah. Yeah. So honey, for 5.99 plus tax, ask her, I'll show her the price of these headphones and let her make the decision. Yeah. So honey, for 599 plus tax, you can have a, you know, noiseless sleep while I watch TV, what do you think? But then, but then you drop it on her and be like, Oh, actually I got these ones for you and cheaper.

So isn't that a good deal? There you go. Yes. That's, that's what I do. You gotta wait till, you gotta wait till it becomes a part of the routine. And then you're like, oh, this is how much it actually cost. But I didn't pay that because I'm smarter than that. Exactly.

eBay auctions, you know? It took me a while, but I got it. Well, I guess we were going to keep the streak alive no matter what tonight. Yeah, congratulations. Anytime we run out of a Sonos story, you know, just ask me what I think about my headphones, you know, after a couple of weeks of usage, cause you know, I've only had them for like less than a week now. That's, that's kind of something you said earlier, kind of like made me like

think about this, there, there'll be a time like that these don't work anymore. And your other headphones worked since what, 1999. Exactly. That's true too well no the good thing no the good thing with these though is they also have an audio plug so even if like whatever you're thinking the software they come out their next-gen software sunset these so no stars yeah I can technically should be able still plug in the USB-C adapters right into an audio jack and be able to listen to it Hopefully I would think that assumes the electronics inside work So he doesn't need to be all doom and gloom right now, do you want me to

Because I mean well maybe maybe they don't work that way, because the ones I'm wearing now are the Bose-style ones, and they don't even turn on. Like, the electronics don't even work if you have it plugged in hardware, so maybe it works that way. I don't know. No, I still get noise... No, I still get noise cancellation. But, yeah, that's a good point. I'd have to plug it in and see if it still... I mean, I think a lot of headphones, the newer headphones are in the same situation, like Beats and the Apple ones as well., the newer headphones are in the same situation, like Beats and

the Apple, Apple ones as well. They were kind of the same. These are older headphones that were kind of predated, all the fancy spatial audio features and that kind of thing. But that is a good point. If the battery died, do the headphones not work anymore? I don't know. I have to check that because you could be on a long flight and then all of a sudden

your battery dies and you lose you're gonna lose music. Yeah, but they should be big enough to cover most flights. I think you probably get a decent amount of time on them. I don't know. I think they're cool product. I just, I'm like you said, the price full price. I don't want to do that. Yeah.

It's way too expensive. Like, like, I think this is one of the products that I know Sonos dropped some prices on some stuff recently. I think if they dropped the price on this, they would get enough, they'd get a lot of sales out of it. Yeah. Um, I think it's just overpriced. All right. Well, best of luck Sonos.

Uh, and yeah, I'm curious in six months time, like how good they're still working for you, cause you know. Oh, trust me. You'll hear from me next week. You'll probably hear from me next week. Yeah. You use them every week. So you'll be, you'll be listening to headphones still.

Seth won't be watching us TV yet. Yeah, exactly. We're watching the TV. I mean, it's working. It's working. Okay. It's working fine. It's fucking fine.

Everything's fine. Those are, we're playing video games on it and they're like, there's, you know, there's stuff happening. So how are you? What? What? It's fine. It tells you we were playing video games on it and there's stuff happening. How are you, nevermind, I don't want to know. What? What? You just have it leaned up against a fireplace or something?

It was like, just something. No, the TV, it's mounted on the wall. Oh, see? Yeah, I got it back on the wall. I thought it was still on the ground or something. No, no, no, no. It just doesn't have the cables hooked up or something, right? No, I mean, everything is there.

It's down to basically the finishing touches on programming, I think is probably. Well, that's always, anybody that's worked on construction project, they know that's the longest part. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, there have been a few situations. Well, I guess like since CEC, I have the CEC still turned on

and I'm using that to control a bunch of stuff and kind of select the TV or whatever. And I just kind of relying on it to do do the heavy lifting and being lazy With the control system like when you turn on the PlayStation it kicks the TV on to the right input So like it but the control system doesn't know that the TV did that right? So it's kind of like one of those situations where if you need to go back to watching Apple TV after you're watching And playing the video games and it doesn't work right. So that's that's all I got left to fix, which is not a big fix. I can I can I can figure that one out one day one day today today's not today.

Not this week. Next show. I'm glad you think so. All right. Well, TJ, it looks like you've got images and pictures in your in your notes card here So like what you been up to? I've got some stuff going on. I finally got news that my vacuum has been repaired So honestly, I forget what I've talked about on this show about the vacuum Last we talked about it. You were mad at it. Oh, yeah. Okay good. Yeah. Yeah, I don't listen to the show because it only came out

tonight but Yes, I don't listen to the show because it only came out tonight but Yes, I sent the robot vacuum in and video games DJ. It's clearly I mean So the robot vacuum in it went to Texas they had I guess dream has a repair shop in Texas So I finally mailed that back to them they charged me $64 to repair several things. They replaced the left and right collision buffer switch plus cliff sensor assembly, the blower assembly, the top cap assembly, and the dustbin top cap.

So I honestly didn't think it was too bad for what I paid for. It only happened though because I said I was going to trash talk them on the internet. They originally, when I put the warranty claim in, they're like, Oh, it's past the year, like you're S O L. And I was like, I'm going to talk crap about you on the internet. And they're like, Oh, well here's the shipping label. Go ahead and send it right to us.

Um, so literally that's the only reason it's getting repaired. I'm not happy about having to pay to repair an 18 month old vacuum, especially like all this stuff. I mean, it's like, we don't really abuse it or anything. But at least I guess it was really cheap to get it fixed. And the return time was actually pretty good. I think I'm going to get it like Monday or Tuesday next week. So it's like a week and a half, maybe two weeks of total mailing

out to actually receiving back. So I feel like a week and a half, maybe two weeks of total like mailing out to actually receiving back. So I feel like that's a pretty decent I guess I can't be too mad about it. In the in the little work order, though, is funny because they send you the work order and it has a little line in there and it says description. Fun broken. I don't know what fun is, but it was broken. They fixed your fun. And I guess so. You fixed your fun? And I guess so. You know, you fixed your fun, yeah.

They're like, this guy's house is dirty. He needs to get a vacuum fixed. Um, so we can watch him on the camera. Yeah, I don't know if this one has a camera or not, but not like the EcoVax one, at least. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it was funny. Actually, as I was packing it up, I broke the little, like like there's a little flap that goes over the dustbin on the vacuum itself I like walked over it and I kicked it and I broke one broke one of the hinges off

And I put like a note on there and I was like, I'm sorry I broke this as I was packing it up and I fixed that too. So yeah, it's pretty nice So we'll see what it looks like when I get it. I'm expecting basically a whole new vacuum I mean, they literally had me send everything. So they had me send the base and the vacuum and everything. And I was like, I feel like that's not necessary, but if you want me to, I guess. And for $64, that's not that bad actually.

That's right, that's what I think. So I'm not too upset about it. It's fine with me. I just realized a couple of weeks ago that my favorite hacks is broken and has been broken since like January. My favorite hacks is for my mobile start from a van called Drone Mobile.

They have a- This is your home assistant thing. Yeah, they have an unofficial API and somebody made a plugin for home assistant and you can control your van or your remote start. So you can start or lock, unlock it, whatever it was. And I had to just unlock it or I had to lock in the door every night at like 9 PM and 11 PM just in case I forgot to lock the van.

But not since January. Yep. And like a couple weeks ago or a week ago, I went out and I was, I went to go get the van in the morning and the door opened right up. And I was like, nah, it should have locked. What's going on with that? And so I like looked in the comments on like the, the home assistant forum and it was like January 31st.

It's like, somebody going to fix this? I needed to work again. No. And I was like, oh man, I had no idea it was not January 31st, it's like, somebody gonna fix this? I need it to work again. No. And I was like, oh man, I had no idea it was not locked in my door. Luckily, we haven't had any issues around our house. So, cause that's a lot of money in the back of the van. So, gave them to Gavin.

If that was in my neighborhood, that van would have been gone. Yeah, the whole van would be gone. Yeah, so that was kind of annoying. I had another random beep this week. Yes. Not that one. It was a very faint beep.

It only happened like every 30 minutes or an hour. I'll have to actually ask Emporia how long it lasts. But we couldn't figure out what it was. It went on for a week or two. Yeah, just like that. Just a little tiny beep. And so I thought it was like, I have like a little Acara gas detector in my furnace room, and I thought it was that.

So I like put it in the hallway and I'm like, no, that's not that. And I just happened to be in the laundry room last night and I heard the faint beep, but it was like pretty loud. And I was like, okay, like but that's where the server, that's like where the rack of equipment is. So all the networking equipment, I'm like a sonos speaker and I'm like, I'm thinking around UPS or something.

Yeah, it's like UPS but I know what that sounds like. And so I couldn't think of what it was. And I went to go check some energy readings for the house and I realized it wasn't connected to my Wi-Fi. And so I connected it back to my Wi-Fi and I haven't heard the beeping ever since then. No device should have a beep if it's not connected to Wi-Fi. Oh man.

That, uh, I don't want to hook mine up now. Especially in like a metal box. Cause it's like, I don't know where that's coming from. Exactly. It was so faint and it was very annoying. Uh, yeah. And then I've just been working outside. I've been, I don't know how much more technology stuff I'm going to be doing

right now, but, uh, it's, it's garden time. So I, uh, this week I dug, uh, two, eight by two plots, uh, in the ground in the backyard, and so I got one of them filled with compost, I gotta get the soil dug out for the other one. Um, we messed up some of the seeds we planted, so we've had to restart those unfortunately, but we're still getting an earliest start than last year. How'd you mess them up? Uh, we just didn't, we like, we needed to put them in like an actual greenhouse

to like get them started and stuff. And we just didn't have the proper setup. So, um, yeah. And then, uh, the front yard, which we did last year, I posted pictures of everything is starting to bloom. So it looks like everything that we planted last, uh, last fall has survived the winter. So that's always a good sign and it's making the house look nice.

Nice. That's, uh, that's all I've got right now. So hopefully, uh, the weather keeps improving. It's been so nice here recently. It's been like in the seventies and sixties. It's been so nice to recently. It's been like in the seventies and sixties. It's been so nice to work outside. So not tomorrow. Tomorrow's dropping back down for us.

Like, it sucks because I was golfing on Monday. It was beautiful to like jacking off and everything. And now tomorrow was supposed to go down to zero again. Yeah. Today here was like extremely windy. It was like 30, 40 miles per hour wind, but then it was like a sudden like rainstorm and it was crazy looking for like five minutes Yeah, we've had some good weather here and I did some a little bit of yard maintenance Got the got the old lawnmower out cutting in doing its thing

Something's happened to my Parts of my yard over the winter And this is Florida so then is common commonly happens, but like I have like more potholes, I guess, than I had before. I don't know. Maybe they're sinkholes. Maybe they're like... You gotta fill them in with dirt? Yeah. More sand in your situation? Yeah, put some sand in there.

And yeah, it just, the little poor lawnmower just like gets stuck on the smallest of hills. So to figure it out, one of them I know has, was an old like septic tank area. And when they filled it in, they like crushed a bunch of rocks and like threw it in there. And like, you know, after they clean it out, they're supposed to like put dirt in. I don't think they put dirt in. I think they just put rocks in. So like all of the rocks and everything, they're just kind of like filling in there. And over time, you know, it has to,

they're gonna fill up. The space is gonna fill up after, you know, over time. So I think it's just like slowly sinking. Yeah. You have to get some dirt out and level the whole yard. Yeah. There's another spot in the front yard that had a tree that's gone.

So that starts to rot under there, I guess. And it starts to make a hole where the tree root was. Yeah, that caused the big issue. We have that issue in the front yard because the previous homeowner chopped down a giant tree, and now the roots are rotting away, and just like random parts of the yard are collapsing, or they're just like dead. Can't grow anything. Yep, yep. It's a big tree, and I'm sure it had a lot of roots running out from it.

So we had the stump ground up, you know, pretty far down, but that doesn't take care of what's underground. So anyway, that's fun. That's fun. I love yard work. You can tell. But I did get a bunch of little sprinkler heads for my sprinklers. So like the little drip line ones.

I noticed when I turned them on the other day, they were like way too much water. It was like flooding. Like, I probably need to cut back on this. Um, so I only run them like two minutes morning and evening just to kind of like get the ground wet again, because of the plants were looking crunchy. But I went to the, I went, finally got to the sprinkler store. There is actually a sprinkler and pump store Yeah, that's all they have is sprinklers and pumps and well pumps and pipes and PVC stuff. You have a sprinkler store

Yeah, yeah, they said whale pumps at first. Well, well pumps well like I know well Your accent sounds like whale. Sorry. Yeah, well Texas kicking in but yeah, as I finally went over there and people have been telling me about it for years and I haven't gone over there. I had it was across the street today and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go over there and see what they have. And then sure enough, they had everything I need. So nice. I found a new store to shop at. It's gonna be expensive. Sounds like it would be. Yeah. I think that's gonna wrap up this week. Everybody. We you know, we gave the big Patreon spiel thing at the beginning, but if you want

to head over to Home Tech.com for support, you can learn how you can support us and what we're doing here and get us to CES somehow. I don't know. One dollar at a time. One dollar at a time. Not Gavin. He's not coming to America. But that's Seth and I. We're virtually getting there or something. I don't know. That's right. Anyway, everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. We can put Gavin on one of those Bollies from Samsung.

I'm just having him drive around the show floor. A little projected image of Gavin on the floor. Get an iPad with my face on it. Yeah. Well, AI Gavin. This is gas. Gas is a service. People ask me questions.

It's a gas app.