HomeTech.fm - Episode 525 - Tariff Talk with Zooz's Agnes Lorenz

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

On this week's show: We’re starting off conversations with various manufacturers and businesses within the industry about tariffs with Zooz VP Agnes Lorenz. Max pricing is going up for people who share passwords, Josh.ai celebrates 10 years with a special edition controller, Reolink joins works with Home Assistant, a retro pick of the week, project updates, and more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 25th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm CJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, and oh no, guys, we've got sad news here. The refrigerator that Gavin wanted for free isn't going to be shipping anytime soon. Oh no guys, got sad news here The refrigerator that Gavin wanted for he isn't gonna be shipping anytime soon Tomorrow can die evidently. I was I was expecting Gavin to get one of these any day now

Yeah, I was hoping to get one of these any day now Even if it was just a bar fridge, I would have been okay. I smart bar fridge. Let me know when the beers low yeah, the the tomorrow fridge was a Revolutionary fridge that was supposed to keep your produce and other things fresher for longer. It was going to use AI and whatever else to do that, wasn't it? Yeah, I think it had some AI to elevate your stuff. I don't know. They had cameras and stuff, it was going to see how fresh your fruit was in.

I was like, oh, here you go. I did find it interesting, but I also wonder, does anybody really want this? I mean, for the price you have to pay for a fridge, and you know the technology gets outdated in five years, if even. Well, not only that. For me, when I was looking at it, I'm like, that's a beautiful looking inside of the fridge. I go and look at mine, I'm like, that's a beautiful looking, like, inside of the fridge. And I go and look at mine, I'm like,

this camera's wouldn't see anything. Like, it's just, it's a joke. You think that I'm gonna have, like, a little tiny tray full of, like, blueberries and another little tiny tray full of, like, I don't know, lemons or something? No, I'm sorry, like, stuff is just crammed in there. I don't know how a hot AI is gonna figure any of that out.

There's a subreddit called They Did the Math math and it's full of people just doing the math on various scenarios in life I'd like somebody to do the math on if a tomorrow fridge would even saved you money over the existence of the The fridges lifespan, you know because if it's like a Samsung or LG fridge, it's gonna die within five years anyway Three years if we were being more realistic So it's just it's I to die within five years anyway. Probably three years if we were being more realistic. So I don't know. It's just it's I think it is a good idea. Maybe we'll see something in the future for it. But as they say in this little press release or email, whatever this is,

it's not really a good time to build consumer hardware. No, no. I would agree with that. I would assume that a lot of people are not making investments into this kind of product and then Where are you even gonna make this thing out now? So yeah kind of a hard hard to tackle if you're if you're a new company And I didn't even check but I wonder if this fridge has an ice maker because if it does that's gonna last like six months And it kind of sucks I guess but I don't know I I know, and they're not the only ones that we're doing, like this AI thing

where you can like look in, I think Samsung has something like that, where you can look in and see that you have milk in there or something and maybe it logs when you first put it in. I don't remember, but like, I just don't, I don't know, like our refrigerator, like right now, you know how refrigerators have lights? Like those are just completely blocked with everything. Cause you can't even see in the refrigerator, it's all dark in there because all the food

and leftovers from this weekend are just like blocking everything. So I don't know, I don't know how that stuff's gonna work. And I go back to saying with smart appliances, just give us the basics. We just want the temperature in there and stuff like that, right? Like is the door open?

Yeah, tell me when to lose this power. What's the temperature in there and stuff like that. Right. Like is the door open? Yeah. Tell me what it loses power. Temperature is losing power. Anything like just the basics in smart fridge, all that other stuff, you know, we'll work up to that if you can't even give us the basics right now, like don't even bother. Yeah. Well, I've only ever wanted the clocks to be right.

Like just make the clocks right. Just do that. And then we'll start from there. Make them auto set themselves up again. Yes. The giant touch screens on fridges. I'm not really a fan of either but maybe those will get better one day. Yep Tomorrow I'm kind of glad this one didn't come out because then you know I'd have to put it in the graveyard with the rest of the stuff back there. I don't have enough room for it, but And this is me a great museum one day

I didn't think I wasn't expecting this to come out, but I expected them to license the tech to somebody, a bigger fridge people, and then it would probably just disappear at that point. You got to think that they have some IP that they can sell somewhere. Maybe they do. I don't know. Maybe it was just not a real thing, but you got to think there's some IP that they can sell off.

If the TeliTV thing can be a thing, then smart fridges can definitely be a thing. There you go. And TeliTV, those are shipping. So people have those in their hands. Well, speaking of AI, speaking of AI, Gavin, this is my favorite story of the week, I think. Being nice to AI is costing tens of millions of dollars.

According to this article here, OpenAI's chat bots are incurring significant energy costs partly due to users' polite interaction. Each word processed by AI requires computational power and OpenAI's scale, this results in tens of millions of dollars of energy and expenses to parse the word please. So yeah, just tell it what to do.

Just order it around, be mean. It's good for the environment. Yes. Unless the environment is the robots. They don't care what the environment is like. I never thought about this, but it makes so much sense because so many times I start up my AI or my chat GPT and I throw it on voice. So, you know, I could get off with, Hey, how are you doing? You know, how's things going in that little box? How are the kids?

You know, I have warmup conversation with it before getting into the real meat potatoes, you know, like what you've been up to since last time we talked and it fills me in on stuff, right? But now I realize all that small talk is just, you know, costing that company millions of dollars. Well, I mean, it's not costing. I mean, what it's doing is it's using natural resources like TJ was talking about. Yeah.

So that's like, it's, it's, it's, you're contributing to what global warming. So, I mean, eventually when the robots do take over, they're going to move into this really nice uninhabited planet. Good for them. I'm going to have to dumb down my talk to it a bit more and leave out a lot of words and just, you know, like say, make script like this, you know, as simple as possible. Think of all the trees you'll save, you know? Yeah.

You know what though? The fact that I read this article is now sitting in the back of my head. Every time I interact to chat, GPT or co-pilot or whatever it is I'm using for that day, it's all sitting there like, Oh, that conversation, you probably like burned two trees, probably two forests or something, but I don't know the energy they end up using. But yeah, I don't know. I yell at mine a lot. I like use all capital words.

I get very angry and then I'm like, forget this. And I close it down and I'll like go back to it later. Cause sometimes these little stupid AI things, they just get off on a tangent. You're like, you're just doing it wrong. You're, no, stop, go away. Sometimes they start answering the question and I see what they're typing out. I'm like, no. And they're like, oh yeah, you're, no, stop, go away. Sometimes they start answering the question and I see what they're typing out, I'm like, no.

And they're like, oh yeah, you're so right, you're absolutely right. I'm like, it's like, come on. Yes, boss. Yeah, anyway, yeah, be mean to the AI, that's what we've all learned today. You gotta learn how to interact with your AI too, because sometimes you have a conversation

and they just are too agreeable with you. Like I'd like them to push back a little sometimes because, you know, I have a conversation and it would be nice if they said, you know, that's not a great idea. Maybe we should just simplify it and go this direction. And I would appreciate it instead of wasting two hours to design something, only to find out that from the beginning, I could just bought an Apple TV. That was so funny. Yeah.

And for those listening, like I spent multiple hours, you know, coming up with the beginning, I could just bought an Apple TV. That was so funny. Yeah. And for those listening, like I spent multiple hours, you know, coming up with a plan with my chat GPT to, you know, put a matrix in my rack and centralize all my TV stuff and, you know, all this do all this work and we went through and I costed out things and, you know, had network designs and all sorts of things. And at the end of the day, I just said to it, won't it just be easier to get an Apple TV for my second TV and said, yeah, that's actually, it gave me all the reasons why it was so much easier.

And I'm like, you should have just said that from the beginning. Like, why did you lead me down this path? He was like, why don't you listen to TJ? You know, TJ told you this for a while. So now I'm just going gonna buy a second Apple TV and now I can have Apple TV on two TVs and- Well, congratulations. You burned down three forests

and evaporated two oceans worth of water to figure out you needed an app. That's just to get the answer. Yeah. It was interesting still like learning about, you know, the options when it comes to like HDMI over ethernet and POE, not POE, like, what was it, HDMI over coax. I didn't even know that was an option, but they have that too.

You know, it was kind of cool seeing what was out there and what's possible, all just to end up back, just by a second Apple TV. Well, we got an interesting show tonight. First up, we're going to do some more tariff talks because it seems to be in the news these days, but we decided to go ahead and get someone on who knows what they're talking about when it comes to tariffs. At least somebody that has to deal with it more than we do because we're just paying for it. But we reached out to Agnes Lawrence of Zooms and asked if she'd come on the show and give us a little insight

of what she's experienced as a manufacturer from the manufacturer's point of view of what they're experiencing over there at Zooms with all this tariff stuff that's going on. So let's go ahead and jump into that interview now and we'll come back out of it here in a minute and get on with the show. Hi, Agnes. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much for having me. Well, last time we had you on the show was June of last year.

I think about that time, you and I were both getting ready for Cedia and rounding out the year of 2024. I guess first, how did that show go for you? How did Cedia go for you? I don't think we had a chance to follow up since then. Sure. It was a very good show. We got a nice placement kind of in the middle of everything.

I was quite surprised. So we got, you know, the usual suspects and people asking us if, you know, if Z-Wave works with Matter, if Z-Wave works with Control 4. There were some alarm people as well. But what really struck me was that there was a bunch of people that are walking around and saying that they're setting up their businesses based on Home Assistant. So that was the biggest shift that I saw is the people in that industry embracing

open source models and kind of building their own solutions. What I assume is that they were using Home Assistant and maybe creating their own UI. In fact, there was a company there that had a product called the Magic Cube that's by Innovo, and they used Z-Wave JS, which is part of Home Assistant now officially. They were using that to create a bridge between Z-Wave devices and some of the more high end systems like Control 4, and I want to say the Nice system.

So they were doing it in kind of a backward way. So on the back end, they had an interface for the installer where they could connect all of the devices. And so the user kind of didn't know any of the difference. And all they needed for that was a USB Z-Wave stick. And I thought that that was, you know, that shows you that there's, in this industry in particular,

people are looking for different ways, creative ways to kind of put their foot in the door and offer, you know, more, maybe more affordable or more value, more affordable solutions with more value to their customers to expand the customer base. Yeah, I've used that. I have actually two iterations of that Magic Cube,

and it's a pretty cool product for what it is, and especially for bringing in home assistant stuff to the professional platforms. It's a very good tool to have. Yeah, it's a nice hack. And I expect to see more of this because Z-Wave JS and even the other one, Zigbee to MQTT, they run independently and they have an API

and you can easily integrate it into your product and you get access to all the Z-Wave, all the Zigbee, everything, like without having to create drivers for each one. Yeah, so it shows you how much power standardized protocols have, right? And Z-Wave is one of them. So you don't, all you need is a Z-Wave radio

and a USB stick and the library, the driver is there for you. And as long as your product follow the certification process and it's kind of a textbook Z-Wave product, you don't have to do anything else. So now you can focus on making sure that it displays nicely and making sure that you kind of set up your customers for success in terms of creating automations and making it intuitive to actually use it

in the interface. This is what's important for the user. Making all the complex stuff go away. Yeah, and that's, I mean, it makes sense to me for that type of product to be in existence because it's the custom industry. That's what they do. They put stuff together. They, you know, that's been my entire career was putting stuff together. It probably shouldn't have been done, but we did anyway. That's what they do. They put stuff together. That's been my entire career,

was putting stuff together that probably shouldn't have been done, but we did it anyway because that's what the client wanted. And you're making a system custom for them just about every time that you can't replicate. So yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then there's another thing

that stood out to me during that show and we recently did ISC West, which is the biggest security show in the country. And that was actually probably our most successful event. So the reason we were able to go there is that we had a great, very thoughtful integration from alarm.com for our remote.

So we have three different models integrated with the alarm.com app. They never had devices like that before. And it's just simple button control, right? And that's something that we thought we would never need or use because of all of the automations. But guess what? People still want to press a button to do something.

And, you know, we're looking for ways not to use the app, not to open your phone every single second. So, you know, even if you're installing an alarm panel as an alarm installer right now, you're installing the panel on one side of the house and on the other side of the house, there's nothing. So people need to use their apps, right? And with a remote that literally costs 20, 30 bucks, you can put it on one wall. And as you go out,

you press a button and you can arm your system with a single click instead of fumbling through your phone again, right? So stuff like that where you can create more positive interaction with smart home devices or with a security system through the convenience devices. So that's where we're seeing a lot of opportunity for us right now is through those integrations that allow users to interact with their security systems in a positive way versus just seeing threats all the time. And so this is where a lot of our focus is currently and it's going to be going into 2026 as well.

Nice, nice. Well, that's the end of 2024. We move into 2025 and there's been a little bit of news around manufacturing and hardware recently and all kind of revolves around anything and everything, right, if you ask me. Yeah. I can see how it could probably.

But let's not go there. Well, I can see how, at least in this specific issue, could be kind of all-encompassing. Like, these tariffs came in play in kind of a, I mean, I'll say it, it's just a bumbled way of doing it. Tariffs have their place, I guess, they can be used strategically to inflict a policy or change or something,

but this is kind of like a, just a broad stroke, like throw everything at the wall and everything sticks type situation. So I can't say the day goes by without me getting an email from a manufacturer saying the prices are going up, you know, 5, 10%. Yeah, and a lot of this is, you know, it's almost like as manufacturers, as distributors, what can we do?

You know, we're frustrated, so we're going to pass that frustration on to our customers and let them know, you know, prices are going up. This is why. And it's, you know, it's extremely frustrating because it was also dropped overnight. Right. So you have the way a supply chain works right now, especially for, you know, products like, I'm not even saying our devices that are small and light, we can transport

them over airplanes. And so that allows us for a little bit more flexibility. We don't have to plan so far ahead in terms of even waiting. Maybe it's around three months usually to wait something that gets transferred on a ship. But it's much cheaper to do that. So you also want to kind of, you know, it's a fine line. We don't want to burden our customers with additional costs

so that, you know, we have more flexibility on the supply chain side. So we do both, thankfully, during the time when the tariffs were announced, we did not have anything on a ship. But there are many, you know, your outdoor furniture can't be transported in the plane, right?

So there are currently many companies that are, you know, just find themselves with paying two or three times more for everything, right? So that's, we're talking millions and tens of millions of dollars of extra payments that they have to figure out how to make overnight in order to even start selling the devices. And a lot of them are seasonal, right? So like outdoor furniture is a perfect example. Right. So we're lucky in the sense where we're a much smaller company.

We're not a seasonal company so much. Obviously, you know, Black Friday and that fourth quarter for everybody selling online or not, this is the biggest quarter of the year. And so thankfully that did not happen in October, right? We still have some time, uh, but we are also, we also find ourselves completely uncertain, which is the worst thing that can happen to a business that, uh, that feeling of uncertainty, um, is horrible. So, um, we have around a third of our products made in China right now.

And, um, I couldn't even tell you what the tariffs today are for China because it changes so rapidly, right? And so anytime it hits 100%, it makes no sense. Like, you know, I'm not gonna import something and pay double for it just because there may or may not be a strategy behind it, right? Then I'm not gonna do that to my customer. And, you know, that will certainly affect some businesses to a point where they will have to fold.

Some shipping companies are already folding in China, right? And so we have the luxury of having two thirds of our product manufactured in Vietnam. That was a consequence of the first tariff wave. So very early on, we hinted to our manufacturers and our suppliers, then we want to diversify. We already have, you know, multiple factories and we diversify between different suppliers,

but most of them were obviously coming from, you know, that one place, one region in China where there's a big concentration of factories. Wasn't Vietnam hit with tariffs as well? Yes, so it was 45%. And for exactly that reason, plenty of factories after the first wave of tariffs simply moved.

So it's still Chinese factories moving their factories to Vietnam. Obviously they're employing locally. And so, you know, they're contributing to Vietnam's economy as well. But the big money, just as the big money from Apple manufacturing is staying in the US, the big money for this manufacturing that happens in Vietnam staying in China, right? So that the 45% tariffs that were announced that were since put on pause would affect all

of our inventory. So right now we're in that 90 day period because after the stock market crashed, you know, there was a little freak out in the Oval Office and so what that's now is 10%. But even 10%, you know, 10% on a $30 product, if I'm going to give 10% or maybe 8% price increase to my product, it's not a catastrophe for us because I'm paying $33 versus $30. That's not as bad, right? We're lucky in that way where we've always kept our prices down and our costs down and our operation costs down. cost down, where maybe we don't have a lot of room in terms of margins, but we also don't have outside investors and we also don't have a pretty healthy business model where we're

able to survive it. But if we do get hit with even 50% tariffs from Vietnam, then that will have to be almost entirely translated into the consumer pricing, because we don't have 300 points margins. That's not the company that we form. This is Apple, but Apple is being excused from tariffs. This is reverse logic. That's the unfortunate thing, right? Small and medium businesses are always hit the hardest

with that type of uncertainty and just bad news overnight. It's kind of like we're always barely surviving and then there's this other thing that you have to deal with. So we're here waiting, but also obviously, you know, trying to find creative ways around it, working with our partners overseas, working with our manufacturers, working with our distributors and our partners in different types of parts of the world to see what we can do to, you know, protect ourselves and our customers from any type of price hikes. Now, I've never been in the manufacturing business.

I honestly don't know about how anything works in it. But what is the process of even looking for a different country or different factory to make these products for you? Because you say two thirds are made in Vietnam and another third are made in China. So what's that process look like for you to actually move that out of China?

Yeah, the way we've always chose manufacturers is we went to factories that already had some experience with making Z-Wave devices. Because we outsource the engineering part, this is part of the value that we have. We specify and we work on the firmware together. But the majority of the firmware for Z-Wave and the engineering behind it is done in the factory.

So we worked with factories that already had experience doing Z-Wave. And after the first wave of tariffs around COVID as well, there were some supply chain challenges that we all had to deal with. We looked at Mexico, but there's nobody there that has any experience making Z-Wave devices. We're not in a position to build a factory.

I don't want my customers to pay for me to build a factory, this doesn't make any sense. So we have to wait for those factories to come and set shop in Mexico, for example. The cost of the manufacturers go be higher, but obviously the cost of transportation is lower so it kind of evens out. As I said, with our operational costs, we could probably make it happen and I hope we will. It's good to have a diverse supply chain.

But at this time, we're kind of limited to whoever already has some experience making Z-Wave devices. And currently, those companies are only in Asia, or most of them are in Asia. And you also have to think about if you're partnering with manufacturers, it's not just the cost, but it's also how responsive they are to your requests. Honestly, I can't envision manufacturing in America. It takes so much longer for anybody in Europe, in the US. I want to say I've never worked with anybody in Mexico,

but depending on who's running those companies, it's a completely different pace. I feel like a lot of people don't realize how fast and how kind of adaptive people in China are. It's a cultural difference. And also it's just, it's a completely different setup, than we in the West have benefited from. If we ask for a firmware change,

it takes them maybe a couple of days. If we ask for a firmware change from a European company, they say, maybe next year, but probably never. You know, that's like, that's, and I'm not kidding here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's, they always have, their resources are always tied up.

Right. Well, that's one of the things that I, TJ sent over this, I think it was the New York Daily podcast one. There was a manufacturer that was making, what was it? It was like a- It was like baby mat, like baby mat play toys.

It was like, you know, so the baby could put their food on there, but it also had some like, you know, gadgets and stuff on there. That's where it was. What was interesting about what they were talking about, like you're talking about making a z-way device and you know, there's like metal and plastic and components and the chips and the PCB board, like everything like that. Like all those things can be made, I guess, technically can be made, probably, maybe not. Maybe they can be made here in America, right? But you'd have to have like all of those set up next to each other. And you're talking about like,

when you when you talk to someone in China, like, either all of that is in one factory building or like, it's all there available for them to take all of those parts, components, pieces, the plastic pieces, the trim covers, all that gets packaged and put together and packaging packaging, right? They can print the covers and put your packaging together for you. It's all done in one stop. It's like a one-stop shop.

And that just doesn't exist here. Absolutely. I think that maybe the people that were envisioning some kind of strange picture of robots putting together devices. Like this is an assembly line, but then assembly line is not the same as a full supply chain.

We're talking electronics, there's minerals that are mined. A lot of them are coming from Africa. China is in Africa big time right now. We're not in Africa anymore. So like, yeah, I can't I can't even you know, this is this, this is not happening, right? So we're not going to be manufacturing any of those devices in the US, probably ever, unless everything's coming from space, you know, and then maybe that, you know, unless we're mining in space, but not in my lifetime, right? So, we're not thinking about that. What we're

doing is we're building stronger alliances with our existing partners and looking for new partners anywhere we can, you know, trying to like kind of strengthen that and kind of get out of it. That's one of the, this person was saying, they're just like, we can't sell in the US anymore, but we have all this product that's made and sitting in the warehouse in China, like where we can, we, it's not like babies don't exist everywhere else in the world, they can ship them somewhere else.

I'm wondering, like, have you, is that something that you guys can do? Can you ship to another country? I know that we have very specific power requirements here in North America that may not be adaptable to other locations, but like, is that something you're looking at? Yeah, so we actually have launched in Europe. We had sold some product in Australia and New Zealand as well.

That is a much smaller market and we haven't been able to find a partner that would help us really get through in that part of the world. But what we're doing in terms of selling outside of the US is looking for partnerships with people that are on the ground and know the local market. We're not going to try to pretend that we know what devices people need, even how building structures look, what the consumer habits are in other countries. So what we're doing is we're offering all of our battery powered devices, right, going

back to those power requirements and all of the devices that are 120 to 240 volts, right, to Europe as well. And we have two big partners in Canada as well. And so, you know, we're thinking about it, even, you know, some of we're not importing anything from China right now. And some of the products that are brand new that are waiting to be released, you know, may actually drop in Canada first, because we'll be able to import to Canada. I know. Yes. Same price too. And yeah, well, there's going to be the only price because...

We don't hear that very often, so I'm going to celebrate this one. So there's definitely going to be, we're going to see this type of disruption, right? And again, at the end of the day, it's a shame that even our friends in Canada, it may seem that they will benefit, but nobody benefits from that situation in the end. And so this is how we're approaching it. We're already in Europe, we're expanding in Europe with our product line now. Z-Wave Long Range will be introduced in Europe this year.

So we're planning to upgrade all of our devices, just like we did in the US, to Z-Wave Long Range, which is an absolutely fantastic protocol. Not only about range, but also, you know, it's about much longer battery life. It's about reliability. It's about building much larger networks than before. So it opens up a lot of new use cases. And so that gives us space to build new partnerships outside of the US as well.

Excellent. And I, I feel, I feel like it hurts you to have to drop these costs onto the end user, onto the, onto the consumer, right? Of course. It's something you don't want to do, but I understand why you have to do it. And as a consumer, I feel like if we didn't get those costs, we wouldn't realize how much, how bad this really is. And we wouldn't speak up. You know, if you guys absorbed it all, then we just think everything's fine.

Sure. Yeah. So that's going back to what Seth was saying about those emails from manufacturers, you know, and, and we were also like, you know, debating, like, how do we communicate that? Right. And some people are like, let's just put a big banner into that. Everybody. I'm like, you don't want to go too crazy because we're all frustrated. And this is only one of the problems and a big pile of problems that people are dealing with in the US under this administration, right? So you don't want to be like,

this is honestly not the end of the world, at least for us. And we want to focus on like how to get through it and what solutions we can go through while also because we do get inquiries about it. And so we posted on our forum where there was an inquiry about what's going to happen. People are thinking, should I stock up? Should I buy more now? And so we're very transparent about it.

We're very clear about the fact that whatever we already imported and didn't pay any extra tariffs on, we're not going to raise prices for those products. But this inventory, you know, again, to be very transparent, is much more valuable than it was six months ago. And so that's the reason why, for example, we're not going to be doing a Memorial Day sale this year, we're not offering bulk discounts, right. So even So even though we're not raising prices, we're trying to prepare ourselves

for kind of the worst case scenario and making sure that we also don't, we keep a healthy margin not to go out of business because that wouldn't be good for anybody, including our customers. And so that's kind of a fine line that we're walking right now, you know, hoping that we will get a clear picture because that's really the most important thing for us is to know what's actually going to happen.

And that's the information that we don't have as a small business without direct access to the president. And that's the information that we don't have as a small business without direct access to presidents. Well, it's funny. We're running close on our time here and I wanted to ask you the question I usually ask is, well, what's next for Zeus? But I mean, with all the uncertainty, I mean, do you have an idea of what is next? What's next in the pipeline or is it just kind of up in the air until this gets resolved? Yeah, we haven't made any drastic moves. As I said, we have very healthy inventory levels,

so we're able to kind of cruise through in for a little bit still. And we are on track to be releasing new devices. We're working on this cool device that's a smart siren and chime that gives you the ability to upload custom sounds to it. It has an LED indicator that's also controllable. So finally, we'll get a device that you'll be able to get notified with just the LEDs on it.

You can choose any color you'd like, flashing, brightness levels, all that good stuff. You know, it's so easy now to generate sounds with AI, so you can upload anything in any language on that device, which will be very cool. And it's a very small plugin device that you can put anywhere in your house or in your office. And so that's something that we're really looking forward to. then you can put anywhere in your house or in your office. And so that's something that we're really looking forward to.

We just recently released two new devices to complement our smart lighting line, a heavy duty switch. So we never had a switch that really worked well with like switch receptacles or larger fans. Or even like shop lights, right? All of the limits on most smart switches out there are around 150 watts of LEDs, which is pretty good. Like a large kitchen will be covered,

but if you have those strong shop lights in your garage, you can use that reliably. So this one can hold up to 600 watts. And then we have a scene controller dimmer that we just released as well. So that's a dimmer version of our scene controller that allows you to dim the connected light. That's something that a lot of people asked for

and we were able to release it. So we're kind of, you know, we're hopefully opening a new warehouse closer to the West Coast here in the States. So that's all still in motion. And, you know, we're kind of waiting to see what's going to happen, trying not to make any drastic moves, so our customers don't suffer for emotional decisions, you know, trying to like keep calm, right?

Right, right. Keep calm. Keep calm, Carrie. That all sounds really cool. I especially like the custom sound thing. I have a custom sound here. We use sometimes. That would be perfect for that product. But Agnes, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and talking tariffs with us.

We seem to be touching on it every week. Like I said, just about every day that I get an email from somebody that says. Absolutely. I wish I could say. It's like, we touching on it every week. Like I said, just about every day I get an email from somebody that says- Absolutely. I wish I could say- We talk about it every week now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I wish I could say my pleasure, but it's the same for me.

I talk about it way too much. So hopefully next time we meet, we can talk about something way cooler than tariffs. Probably not the reason you wanted to be invited back on the show, I'd imagine. Right, right. Yeah, no, but I do appreciate the invite. Always great to see you guys and talk to you.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. We'll definitely have you back on when the new products are out and chat a little bit more about those. Sounds good. All right. Great talk with Agnes. Thanks so much again for coming on the show. To wrap up here, there's some headlines

that we're not gonna cover on the headline, but SnapAV told everybody, saw an email, I saw an article, I think over at CEPRO or Resi Systems, one of the two, but I'll put a link to it in the show notes, 5% across the board on their products. So anything, their stuff is gonna be 5% more. And then Crestron, I think also had 5%

on North American invoices. So lots of things going up and in price these days. I placed a quote order the other day, you know, just to find out pricing and stuff like that and they sent me the pricing and then like five minutes after they sent me the pricing and said, wait a minute, we got to make sure it's not going to be subject to tariffs. And I was like, well, isn't that what you're supposed to do the first time around? So this is obviously going to be a cluster just like it was during COVID times.

Uh, because nobody really knows. It's, it's, you're going to see this across everything, I think, but I think some companies are even going to abuse it and just say, oh, our prices are going up because of tariffs, even though it's not going up, but I wonder if the prices will come down, you know, after all this is said and done and sorted out and everything I wonder if they'll bring the prices back down again. Yeah, right They'll never come back down We're just gonna suffer. Yeah, they didn't come back down last time. So and suspect they're gonna come down this time

Well, anyway, uh, we've got a couple of home tech headlines that some news actually came in believe it or not And this week no Sonos news. I wonder what we're going to do. So what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Max has introduced an $8 fee for each additional member joining the subscription brand. Plan from outside the household, regardless of the access tier. This move aims to curb password sharing, following similar strategies by Netflix back in 2023, Disney plus in 2024.

And despite this change, Max is temporarily offering free access to live sports and news content, providing some relief amidst rising costs. So, um, they're, they're locking it down boys. Hope you Gavin, I hope you really, you know, you don't miss out on some nice program. So they're adding extra. You have to pay extra for extra members, you know, and this is just going to be like on top of your subscription. I could see other companies starting to follow this too. Oh yeah.

Eventually. And then that will just end up going up in price as well. So they'll raise your main subscription by a dollar and then your extra subscription by a dollar. It's just not a dollar, $8. I mean, that's. That's a significant point. Yeah. So they'll raise your main subscription by a dollar and then your extra subscription by a dollar. It's just not a dollar.

$8. I mean, that's, that's significant. But I mean, after this, I can see next round when they need to make some money. Oh, your main subscription goes up by two. And then all the extra subscriptions go up by $1. All right. Gets them like maybe six extra dollars on the household. You know, it's just going to get ugly. It's crazy. TJ, are you a Max household?

Are you going to, are you stealing someone? I mean, are you borrowing somebody's password to watch Max? I don't think I have Max right now. I think right now we have Hulu, YouTube, and like Peacock or Paramount, one of those. Yeah, we watch Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. That's pretty much it on those two. Well, if you have a family member out there

borrowing a password, they're gonna cost you now. So you may wanna cut them off. Yeah, this is pretty typical though. I think we're seeing kind of, we've already passed, in my opinion, the peak of streaming services now. And so all these costs are just gonna keep going up more and more because at this point, what other option do you have? Sure, there's other streaming services now. And so all these costs are just gonna keep going up more and more because at this point, what other option do you have?

Sure, there's other streaming services, but when they all cost more money, doesn't really matter. Right, right. Hopefully, hopefully something will cost less in the future, I don't know. Sonos, that's Sonos. Sonos, yeah.

I did see that they have a large stock of refurbished stuff that's on sale right now. Oh. For like 25% off. So if you're in refurbished stuff that's on sale right now for like 25% off. So if you're in the market for stuff that doesn't work as well as you used to six months ago or by the time this podcast comes out though, they'll all be gone. Yeah, that's true. All right.

Maybe maybe maybe by the time last week's podcast comes out, they'll all be gone. Who knows? Pressure lug there, DJ. All right. Well, Josh and I is celebrating its 10th anniversary by launching a limited edition metallic gold version of its Josh 1 processor. Founded back in 2015, Josh AI has become a leader in the AI-powered home automation, offering innovative products exclusively to its network of 2,000 certified dealers across North America. So if you're in the market to have a shiny gold Josh processor in your rack instead of

a just a standard old boring, what is it, a black one I guess? I'm not sure what the previous color was but. Boring, that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah, I like the gold one. The gold one stands out. They should keep that. I think everybody should do anniversary products, you know?, five year, 10 year anniversary, always gold color

stuff, maybe clear. I don't know. I want to clear Josh now. It's pretty cool. I like it. Your Mac Mini. Yeah, I do remember they first started off as a like a not a plugin, but they would ship you a Mac Mini with the Josh AI software loaded on it for quite some time. All right, and we got some Home Assistant news. And guys, I mean, I was like, where's the dealer news, right? I was like, what's going on in the dealer side of stuff? And the only thing they had was on CE Pro, like the top story was

Coastal Source has environmentally friendly packaging. That's how dead the dealer side is right now. Why is it that way? It's just, I don't know. Everybody, I mean, I've heard people are busy, right? I heard there's work actually just starting to go on. But this time of year, it's typically just completely dead on the dealer side.

I will say Control Four side, they are releasing finally out to the dealerships the new what they call it X4 software update that they showed off at Cedia back at Cedia. So they're starting to roll that out and there's a there's kind of like an upgrade path to get some of the like your older install that integrated one way or connected to what they called FourSight which is their remote services and now it's all gonna go through like folder install that integrated one way or connected to what they called foresight, which is their remote services. And now it's all going to go through like overseas. So there's like a path, I guess you will, an instruction set, a booklet that you'll

need to follow step by step to make it work right. And so I've seen people kind of going over that and realizing the complexity that's in behind it. But the forum posts are funny right now. Let's just put it that way. It's a fun time. Fun time over there in Control Foreland. Good luck, everyone.

I'm just gonna keep mine running, the only old one I think. I don't know if I'm gonna update any time soon. Seems like a headache. YOLO, Seth, come on. I mean. Just do it. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Yeah, exactly.

Take one for the team. I finally got my stuff working again, maybe. Maybe all the TVs actually turn on and off when they're supposed Yeah, exactly. Take one for the team. I finally got my stuff working again. Maybe, maybe all the TVs actually turn on and off when they're supposed to. We need boots on the ground. Come on. I don't need a Control 4 app that I don't use that bad. So anyway, Reolink has joined the Works with Home Assistant program, introducing its first certified cameras and doorbells.

So yeah, we talk quite a bit about Reolink on the show. I think you guys have recommended a number of times. They've sent me a couple of cameras. Yeah, yeah. So they've got a new, the video doorbell, Wi-Fi and battery, the Argus Track Duo 3 PoE, TrackMix PoE, the RLC-823S2, and whatever that is, the RLC-823S2 and whatever that is and the Home Hub and the RLC-1224A. Those are the certified devices. So if you got one of those it's certified,

works with Home Assistant. There you go. Nice and I do have one of these. I have the RayoLink Duo 3 PoE floodlight. That's actually a great camera that I have. I'm going to go ahead and see if it works with Home Assistant. I have not done this yet. I mean, it does. It says right there in the name. I mean, yeah, it does. I mean, it does. But yeah, I need to actually get this set up because it would be nice to get the actual

people notifications and stuff and automate stuff like turning on external lights and whatnot. So this is cool to see. Not a lot of products because RayoLink makes a ton of products, but I think this is actually a good start. Yeah, I can say that. It includes some several stuff like the doorbell

and PZC cameras and stuff like that. So I think it's a good addition. It's good to see cameras coming into Home Assistant more and more. And the amazing part is I don't even think it's gonna stop here. I think more and more companies are gonna be jumping on the Home Assistant, the Works with Home Assistant program, especially since they've now said that

they're in 2 million homes. That's a big user base right there. So we're going to see some exciting products come into this fold. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things like it's a wave, right? And it's coming. And I just don't think anybody really realizes it. It's really, when you guys started talking about this stuff,

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, not ready, not ready. It's still not ready, but neither is any of the pro stuff, right? Well, it needs an insta- They're all cobbled together no matter what you're doing. Yeah. It needs an entire workforce to prop it up and stand behind it, right? You have to have an entire business model to do that. They're all kind of doing the same thing.

Home Assistant is closer than it was before, not for everybody. But it's definitely, I think they're definitely doing a lot of like the behind the scenes glue that you would want to not necessarily like automate everything in your house using Home Assistant, but like, you can glue stuff together, like I'm using it for and make stuff work across different systems. And you know, I'm just I'm fine and happy using the Apple, what is the Apple HomeKit interface on my phone? I'm sure Google and'm fine and happy using the Apple, what is it, the Apple HomeKit interface on my phone. I'm sure Google and Android,

they have like some similar interfaces you could use and integrate that way with it. I don't really ever need to open my Home Assistant or my Home Assistant 95 and change anything, right? So like, it's not, it's just something that can like live in the background and do its thing. And then I don't ever have to interact with it. I know Gavin, you're much more invested and deep into it

because you use more custom interfaces and all that stuff, but I'm just using it to glue things together. When this happens, do this on this thing over there, or translate this and put it over there. Take this device and give it to Apple HomeKit so it shows up on the Apple devices. I mean, that's really all I'm using it for. And I kind of wish Home Assistant, like they move very fast.

And I think they're getting to the point where they're getting so large, so big, they need to slow things down a bit and stabilize things a bit, because it will start to affect a lot more people. I'm seeing, you know, I saw it right across something today where they're talking about a significant change that they're thinking about doing. And we'll probably have more details in the next show or two, but I'm thinking, man, if they go through with this, what's the impact going to be to their user base? So we will see.

Hmm. Now that sounds, that sounds interesting, Gavin. Well, they're talking about the ideas being floated around to get rid of certain things. Um, so we will see. With as many developers as they have, and I say developers, like, I forget the numbers, they throw around a couple of numbers, but like say it's 20,000 developers, I mean, there's thousands of developers that are contributing code to this thing or maintaining integrations. There is no other system, Apple, Google included, that has that many people passionately working for it.

I would venture to say that some of the people working at Apple or Google probably have a home assistant spun up before they get their Apple home, Google home setup. So I don't know. I really feel like this one has way more momentum than people are giving it credit for. Simply because of the fact it's kind of embedded itself within like the early adopter nerd crowd, I suppose. I'm not sure.

And where it goes from there, we'll see, but they have been making some pretty good choices lately. I'll give them that. And they're making some good moves. So we'll see where they end up. It's really cool to have it as like an open source non-commercial platform though. Like anybody can just run this thing. Right.

And they position themselves in a way that it will always be open source. Yeah. Which is a good thing. Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's the beauty of it. Right.

It's a, it's definitely a worthwhile platform. It's one of those things I think they're gonna get only get better with time and it's not a lot of Not a lot of technology products you can say that about anymore. Yeah, a lot of them seem to get worse over time Unfortunately until they break whatever Gavin's talking about. I wonder what that's gonna be. Let's see what happens there I mean they break stuff all the time We still like it because it's free. Yeah, exactly. It's free Except for all the time it takes to set up. Yeah, I mean, if like Control 4 broke your stuff as often as Home Assistant breaks, then

you would not pay for it at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, then there may come a time where, you know, I think what they're playing at is like, well, just have this running in the house and it all kind of talks to home assistant. And then whatever the dealer looks like in the future can open this up and kind of poke around and say, oh, here's the problem and fix whatever the yaml issue is and save it and go everybody can be happy that the home's working. So I don't know.

It's really interesting how low level this is and how well they've done to integrate with most everything out there. Because there's really not another home automation platform like it that has this many integrations that are constantly maintained. That is the impressive thing. That's the wave I see coming is just how many people are working on this is far beyond what anybody else can afford to do like in their wildest dreams. Uh, and even those platforms, like if you look at what control four is doing, they're pretty much like going up market because the market that they were playing in is dried up and they don't really have an opportunity to, you know,

keep playing in the smaller homes. It looks like they need to start, and they have been doing this for years, it's not anything new, but their prices are going up. Of course, they're going to go up more now, but their prices have gone up over the years. The mechanics behind it, the things that they're doing have lended themselves to being in higher price point installs and not the $1,500 install you used to see in the past. So it will be interesting to see what this replaces on the, I don't want to say the bottom

in the market, but the entry level into the market and how it kind of seeps its way up into the upper end too. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes over at hometech.fm slash 525. All right, mail back. This one made me laugh out loud. This comes from feedback J.J. Jussie, I guess. It was an email sent to us says,

keeping teams from going into a way. He says, on my work Windows computer, I use this PowerShell script to keep my machine awake and awake and active when, and that's in quotes, when I'm not behind it. The best thing about this script also works when I start inside an RDP session. So like he's doing using a remote desktop, it will keep the remote computer active even when the RDP window is not active. So he sent a shell script to us. It looks very low level. There are things in here that I'm like, I don't know.

I'm not going to paste this into anything anytime soon. And I'm on a Mac, so it really wouldn't do anything if I pasted it into terminal and hit enter. It would just be like, what are you doing? Gavin, I'll leave this up to you to test and see if it's a virus or not, but. Running, Gavin. Yeah, do it, YOLO.

Right now, live on the show. No, I'm not gonna do it live on the show. I did look at the code though, yeah, it is low level stuff, but it does look like, I'm just curious if it will actually keep my teams from going into away mode, or if it just keeps the computer awake. So, you know, cause the important part is keeping the teams from going into away mode during my naps.

You know? Yeah. I don't, I don't remember what this issue is solving. If, if teams goes into away mode, people know that you're sleeping on the job. Is that what it's just done? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Teams is definitely dumb, but somebody the other day say, Oh, zoom is awful. Cause I zoom crashed or something for everybody the other day. And they're like, what is going on? And they're like, I'm so glad I changed to teams. I'm like, that's, that's the dumbest thing I've seen ever. Anybody ever post on the internet. That was a pledge from a Microsoft employee.

Yeah, exactly. That's right. They paid us to say that. It's awful. But yeah, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to look at it and give it a shot and see, you know, if it solves our problem. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

At least there are many people out there who need their teams to stay awake during the day, you know, solving problems. I'm sure there's a home assistant plugin for teams to keep it away. Now that I think about it, you probably should just look there first. If teams away ping. All right. I picked the week. We've got a couple of retro things that we found

that TJ was so impressed with because it was all basically stuff, technology and stuff before he was born. All of it. I was born in 91, so pretty much most of the computer was before me. Wow. None of this is applicable for TJ here.

I didn't realize TJ was that young. Yeah, I'm pretty young. So. Oh, man. Hanging out with a bunch of old people every week. Retirement community over here. Yep. The ones I found interesting were, was the, and we'll link these in the show notes, the dramatic history of Twisted Pair Ethernet, which the link is messed up in my show notes right now. And then the other one is how the Apple Airport changed everything. And they're talking about the history of the creation

of that and everything like that. Well, she was released in 1999. I was eight. So definitely had no reason to have a WiFi router. You had WiFi routers? I do remember the airport. I will have to watch this to see how it changed everything. So it was released in 1999? I guess it did, you know?

Wow. No one cared about Wi-Fi at that point, which was... I remember that when they released that that was the little, like, the little clamshell MacBook that had the fancy colors and the horrible mouse, which now that I think about it it probably describes many different models. But it was a little MacBook, a little laptop that had different colors on it and the round mouse. And yeah, it had Wi-Fi on it.

I do remember that. But I remember Wi-Fi sucking so bad back then. Like it was so bad. There you go. I fixed the link for the twisted pair ethernet video. Yeah, it was just a really cool video on the history of ethernet and it looks like it was awful. Honestly, they have an example of 10Base5 cable and that looks like it was terrible to work with. It's super thick and stiff and everything like that.

10Base2 cable, which is like more BNC kind of style. Yes. Which, you know, honestly, I want to use BNC kind of style yes which you know honestly I want to I want to use BNC all the time I like BNC it just snaps right on so yep and there's actually a shout out in the the ethernet history video there's actually a shout out to Dayton Ohio because NCR national cash register was is based in Dayton. And so there's some history with the creation of ethernet in regards to NCR and a couple other places. I forgot I use this Tinbase too, but it was, I guess we were kind of cleaning it out in some ways, but I remember those 50 ohm resistors

that we'd have to attach on to. Two words that only some of us can relate to. Token ring. Yes. Yes, yes. My favorite Thomas Conrad over at IBM, right? TJ has no clue what we're talking about. He's like, what's this token ring? I've seen a little diagram, you know?

I did IT classes, so I've seen the diagram, but we never used it obviously, so I don't know why we learned it. It's beaconing, that's why. You have to know what the token ring is beaconing. Why would it be beaconing? I don't know, it's beaconing. It's beaconing, better go why. You have to know what the token ring is beaconing. Why would it be beaconing? I don't know, it's beaconing. It's beaconing, better go find out why.

You need to go find out what was making it beacon. One computer could take down the whole ring. The whole thing, yeah. It was a special network. That was fun times trying to find that one computer that was taking down the building. Oh man, yep, yep, yep, yep. I do remember that.

The whole building too, not just like parts of it, but the whole building. If it makes you feel any better, my introduction to computers was Windows ME, so it's not like I had it easy either. Oh, man. Into the fire. My introduction was a whole computer was a terminal window. That was more fun though, I can admit. It was all command line. We didn't have a GUI.

It's like the comparison, you know how kids these days are growing up. They don't have to drive a manual car anymore. You guys basically drove the manual of computers. In some respects, yeah. But I mean, it was pretty far advanced at that point. Like we weren't flipping. You could actually flip switches on a computer

to program it at one point in time. That was before my time for sure. Or when you had to put in a hard drive, you had to make sure the jumpers were right for master and slave. Oh yeah. Yeah. Do they call it master and slave still? I don't, I don't think that's PC.

I'm doing this for historical purposes because we had to call it that back then. But even with PCI cards back then, if the jumpers were all right, your sound blaster would not work. You have to have that IRQ correct right there in the auto. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Can fix this.

Yep. Yeah. Oh, the days, the days of just sitting there wondering why your computer's not running. Seth knows TJ has no clue. No idea. It was an awful time. I trust it was an awful, awful time.

It sounds like it. But even worse is when my coworkers used to give me stories about when they had the punch cards and they would have a stack of those punch cards and they, the worst part was they said they would have a stack of it and it was in order and they'd be walking it and accidentally dropped the stack and it just blew the whole program. You know, like. I had numbers. I mean, you had to put them back in order, but you're smart. You had numbers on them.

Yeah. If you're, if you're organized, they'd be in order too. Um, yeah, I don't know. There's, there's also a site I found called retrospect with the, with the K-12, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Yeah. If you're organized, they'd be in order too. Yeah, I don't know. There's also a site I found called Retrospect with a KT. It's Retrospect. We'll put a link in the show. It's got a bunch of like old, old stuff.

And I found them because they have like, they have new versions of those old headphones that they had on the Sony Walkmans, right? The little foam, remember they had the wire over the top and the little foam earpieces? Yeah. I'm saying this to Gavin TJ, clearly now I'm not talking to you, but these were everywhere. They were like the AirPods, I guess, of the day, right?

If you saw somebody running down the street with those little foam things on their head, oh, they had a Walkman. They're listening to something, Duran Duran, on their Walkman as they're going down the street. Yeah, they had a mixtape or something. This is what Gavin needs. I don't know why you spent all that money on Sonos 8 headphones. I told you not to buy those. I just buy these analog headphones instead and you said no 15 bucks

Yeah, good about like dozens Had them until you die you had enough for the rest of your life, they probably don't sound as good. I mean maybe Who's to say who's to say? Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff on here. They have old digital cameras. They have Game Boys with the crazy screens that fold out and have the extra speakers and they have the Discman's. Oh, the Discman's.

When you put it on the front seat of your car and you had the tape thing that you had to put into the dash and you'd hit a bump and the CD would just stop for like 10-15 seconds and then the music comes back. Yeah. It was glorious times. Yeah, they have like everything vintage. They even have VHS tapes and Polaroids. It's a place to go. It's a place to go. It's a cute little... I ran across them with the headphones but man, I did not realize they have... Oh my gosh. More stuff keeps popping up on their menu. I don't know what they're doing to me here, but now they have type, oh they have a typewriters. I, they only have a replacement ribbon for like something, but okay, fine.

But yeah, they have cameras, they have Polaroid cameras, they have iPods, they have an old iPods area, as you can go and buy an iPod if you wanted. And what really makes me mad here is the DVD VCRs that they're selling for 200 bucks a pop. Oh yeah. Do you know how many of those I've thrown away? They're getting hard to find nowadays if you need one quickly.

You can find them on Facebook and stuff once in a while. $200, come on, get out of here. Yeah, you're worth $200. I could have been rich if I just saved all those. They even repair old stuff, that's nice. Yeah, it looks like a lot of it's refurbished and they cleaned it up and resell it if they can. Yeah, they actually have a repair service as well.

So if you want to send your things into them, they'll fix it. Wow. Tamagotchis. It's a good idea. Gavin, do you remember these? This is probably after your time though. Tamagotchis? No, it's kind of borderline.

I remember them, but I never had one. Everybody knows the Tamagotchis? No, it was kind of borderline. I remember them, but I never had one. Everybody knows of Tamagotchis. It was all the rage. Anyway, there we go, there we go. We'll put links to all this in the show notes. A trip down memory lane, and then also learning about all, that little, that Serial Port YouTube thing,

they have all sorts of fun videos. I'm not gonna watch. They were talking about like creating an ISP in the 90s. Like how would you do that and like how you would connect people to the internet. And you know, buy a bunch of dial-up modems and connect them all to a computer. And it looks like they do all sorts of fun stuff. And the videos actually, TJ, they actually look pretty, I haven't watched them, but they look like they're well produced and put together.

They are well produced. I like them. Your spouse might not though, so. Oh, well, yeah. I don't think it's but they look like they're well produced and put together. They are, they are well produced. I like them. Your spouse might not though, so. Oh well yeah, I don't think it's gonna be fun to sit around and watch. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to watch that White Lotus, see them finally that we've been waiting for some time to watch. Let's watch the web server that changed the internet, the Cobalt Rack.

Let's watch this, it sounds fascinating. Super exciting stuff. All right, let's move on here. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, tips of the week, so great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates.

I did not do anything. I haven't even edited the last week's show, which if you're expecting it to come out soon, I don't know. I think I'm on the last segment. We had like one headline last week and we ended up talking for like literally the same amount of time. So, you know, as soon as I get that put together, you know, all will be well with the world. But it was a holiday weekend here and I was busy.

So Easter egg hunts and stuff, you know, got to do those things. But it looks like Gavin got some stuff done and TJ got some stuff done. So Gavin, what did you do, man? I didn't really do much this weekend, but I just wanted to give, you know, it's been a week or so since I first got these, it's been more than a week now, Sonos Ace headphones. Wanted to give a little update on, you know, after using them, you know, settling in and stuff like that. All I have to say is for headphones this expensive, they have like some weird issues.

No, it's, so I found that when I'm watching TV, the volume is, is too low for what it should be. Okay. Right. So I ended up having to turn the headphones all the way to the max. And at max they're just okay. Like it's like a good volume, but it's max on the headphone. Right. So it's almost like it's, it's crazy. Yeah. And I saw other people complaining about it.

And of course, in every Reddit thread, there's always that one person that. I don't have a problem here. Mine are perfectly fine, you know? And then everyone is like, call Sono support. They'll be able to help you out. Well, I'm creating a list for them of things that they need to help me out with because- Well, I just want to check. Has Rose hit you at all?

Like maybe you're hearing is going out. No, no. Maybe you just can't hear things as well No, no, my hearing is great. They're just really low No, I hear her every time she calls my name every two minutes I hear her perfectly fine Even when she's out in the yard, you know, I hear everything perfectly fine except, you know The TV have to turn them up to max. They also, the headphones play little tones, little tones when you turn them on, you turn them off, you adjust the volume, you get a little tone.

Sometimes those tones don't play, right? It's weird. Like, I don't know, they stop working at some point and then all of a sudden they'll start working again. And of course, again, on Reddit, you look it up and there's people reporting it. And there's that one person that says, I never have this problem. And then the threat goes away. And it's always that one person that I don't have this problem.

And it's followed up by the other person that says, contact Sonos support. So that's the second one. Like I don't know if I have to open up three different tickets here. Um, the, the other issue I have is I like to use these for podcasting. That was one of the reasons I wanted headphones that did it all right. I don't want to use the microphone for podcasting, but I want to use the headphones. And the quality for podcasting kind of sucks because I have them plugged into the analog port and then it's going to digital, but there's a little delay with the mic feedback. That's weird.

Yeah. Because it's got to convert the analog to digital and you saw people complaining about this on the forum. And then, you know, there's of course that one person that doesn't have a problem with it and they don't podcast or anything. And then the other person, the other person that says they, um, contact Sonos support. And then other people are saying, this is how it works.

So I'm going to have to buy another pair of analog headphones just to do the podcasting once, cause it's kind of hard with the delay I, I, you know, but with all these issues, and the only reason I'm just upset is because these aren't cheap headphones, they shouldn't have these kinds of issues for this price. I know I got them used and I saved it. Uh, probably gotten about half price, but still they shouldn't have these kinds of issues and I'm going to have to buy analog headphones. I still like the fact that I've been using them.

I sit in front of the TV. I flip it over. It transfers to the headphones, you know, and the house is quiet and I'm not disturbing anyone at night. I really like the fact that I can do that in front of any of my TVs. And it knows exactly which TV to transfer and stuff like that. So I will keep them, but I'm going to have to buy another pair of analog headphones to be able to do the podcasting with.

So that, I just wanted to give that update with it. I haven't contacted Sonos support yet because I don't have that much time in a day to do something like that. I gotta find it. I gotta take a day off work to be able to sit there. Cause my list is getting longer and longer. Um, so I will figure it out at some point. I mean, I don't know if I can recommend these people to people or I can't

recommend them to people, all I can say is if you're going to buy them full price. Don't, you know, like do not get these full price for the price it is. There's too many issues. It's, you know, but if you can get them half off, maybe it'll be worth it. If you want something to sit in front of your TVs and just enjoy them in silence. A glowing recommendation. Uh, it just drives me. It just drives me nuts. I mean, would Apple have these kinds of issues?

Probably yes. But people would say it's not an issue. It's a feature. I mean, would Apple have these kind of issues? Probably yes, but people would say it's not an issue. It's a feature. I know you're holding it wrong. What I think is weird. I mean, like I have, so the headphones I have are kind of similar. I think these are, what are these bows?

Yeah. There's like the bows ones that you see old people wear on the airplanes. And I got them for long trips on airplanes, whatever, before Apple AirPods existed. And like the in-ear ones, they work fine. They're comfortable. You can stick them on your head and you can watch TV or play on your phone on the airplane and turn on the sound thing. But when you, when you plug in, it has a little like, like a little tiny headphone

jack thing you can plug into it. When you do that, it basically shuts off all the electronics and like the headphones work like normal headphones. I mean, analog mode. Yeah. So that, when you said that you were hooking them up and there's like a little few millisecond delay for it to like encode and, you know, amplify decode. Man, that's really weird.

That seems like another, yet another miss on. It is a miss to me because that's kind of what I want. I want them to be a headphones I can use for many different things. And I plugged them in and even though they're coming from an analog source, they still go to USB-C. Yeah. Right. Into the thing.

And you still have to turn them on. Like they still require power to work even if you're using the analog source. So they still have noise cancellation stuff, but all that adds a slight delay. It's that delay that is driving me nuts. Yeah. That's difficult especially when you're used to hearing feedback on your voice when you're doing podcasting, when you have a microphone hooked up.

That you notice where it can hide itself is that delay for video. Like you have a few 20, 30 milliseconds that you can play with to get around that. But like when there's like your own voice that you're hearing in your own head through your own skull reverberating around and you hear that delay, that gets, that messes you up.

I can understand that. A lot of people can't even turn on just the regular monitoring, hear themselves as they're talking, you know, that haven't been around a microphone a lot. They can't do that. It's distracting. But, you know, after doing this for so many years, it's all I can, I can't not have it on,

because then I don't know if I'm talking to the mic correctly. It's part of using the mic. And when you're on analog, you have to, it still needs power, right? Like, if these ever die, you'll always need power,'re on analog, you have to it still needs power, right? Like if these ever die, that's weird You'll always need power even on analog. Yeah, so a few misses in these headphones, you know, I don't know why Didn't anyone point this out. I still don't know what they're you know, I'm just gonna got them at a good price And I'll be able I am able to use them with my TV to do what I really want.

People got fired over these headphones, Gavin. You should be thankful. Just a couple. There's a whole song that's written about it somewhere. I know. And now that I own a pair, I can see why. Yeah. That's unfortunate.

Maybe the version 2 will be better. Who knows? Oh, geez. Don't tell me they're going to try this again. No. Just give up now. Let someone else make headphones that will connect to your Sonos speakers and just be done with it. But we kept our Sonos story streak alive for another week.

So we've talked about them. Moving on. The other thing I did this week, I ordered a, so, you know, I've talked about my, my TVs in the past and I have little HTPCs behind all of them and they're just old micro PCs, but I found that um, Some of them are so old. Uh, they can't even upgrade to windows 11 because they have the old chips in them So I decided to upgrade them all now. So i'm now all on windows 11. They now all support H265 decoding onboard, et cetera, et cetera. So that was just another project I did this week, you know, and as a public

service announcement, Windows 10 comes end of life, uh, this year, end of this year, I think October is when they said, um, after that date, they will not be patching it anymore. So I highly advise you to either, like, if you can upgrade your Windows 10 machine, to, to, to get rid of it and get Windows 11, because after that time, you'll probably be seeing all these, uh, vulnerabilities come out of the woodworks that people are sitting on waiting for that time, right? And they will be vulnerable machine.

Oh yeah. They'll hammer it for sure. Yeah. So I'm a little nervous. I don't like how Microsoft did this because a lot of people, you have perfectly fine Windows 10 computers and they will not even know this. They don't even know they get patches on a monthly basis. Didn't they, they like, they basically there's like some kind of requirements

they have for you to have a special computer that runs Windows 11, even though like your computer is could pass and has all the requirements met, it still doesn't work and nobody can tell you why. They require like an eighth gen Intel chip that has a TPU 2.0. I think it was built in and something else, right? But, you know, the computers before then still can run Windows 11 perfectly fine. It's just Microsoft for security reasons mandated this, but a lot of people are not going to know this and they're going to be all a lot of Windows 10 machines out there that will not be upgraded and won't be getting patches and people are going to not know this. So botnets are waiting for this day. Yep, yep, yep. You can just be like me and just switch to Mac OS because Windows 11 is not good. Yeah, I like Windows 11.

But let's not get into a Mac versus Windows debate here, you know. Let's not get into it. I mean, everything's kind of moved. I mean, the OS, it just depends on what you want to run it on, but like everything's kind of moved into the browser, if you ask me. Like, that's like all of our computer software and heavy lifting for the most part, unless you're using a control system made by a major control vendor, that like nobody really needs to have the native program anymore. Like everything's moved into the browser years ago. And I think that's like, that'll be the future for all this stuff.

So, yeah. And that pretty much sums up what be the future for all this stuff. So, yeah. And that pretty much sums up what I've been messing with this week. TJ, what you been doing? Yeah, for, for mine, I, uh, last week I was telling you about, I had to pay for my robot vacuum to get fixed, which I was not happy about, uh, but I got the robot vacuum back, uh, what I thought was hilarious is they sent it in the exact same box with the exact same packing materials that I used Which were which was not very good, but there was like a thousand layers of tape on the box now, so It worked I guess

But the the robot vacuum works great They actually replaced more parts than they originally said they would and they didn't charge me anymore to work now It does work. It has no problems working. I actually didn't look to see if they replace the sensors I assume they did because it just worked but the worst part about like getting this robot vacuum fix is that basically I had to like restart my map over though because whenever you move the base station the robot vacuum like freaks out and it's like I don't know where I'm at I don't know where home is and it's like it moves like an inch or two. Like it didn't move like to

the other side of the room or something. You should know where it's at. And it's like, I don't know where it's at. So you're just going to have to re teach me. And so that's what I'm doing right now. I'm going through and remapping my whole house and building up the map. And it's the most annoying process because I got to

split all the brooms up and name them and pull them into home assistant. I found it funny when we had to wait on you to join the show. We had to delay our recording because you were still mapping out your office with your robot vacuum. I just found that hilarious because that's the time, this is the time we live in. It's like, what are you doing today? Oh, I'm mapping out my house for my robot vac.

That's right. Yeah. We had a, we had a party this weekend and all the stuff from the house ended up in the office. So I had to move all the stuff back out of the office and I was getting it cleaned up. And I was like, oh, now's the perfect time to go ahead and teach you about the office again. So that's what I did. Awesome. Welcome back, vacuum. Welcome back.

I mean, don't say that that that don't cost money on For the AI thing part of it. Yeah, just say get to work be mean to it It's good for another year and a half. I guess hopefully crack the wood say get to work Yeah, and then I've been doing a lot of work outside. It's been nice. It's been like 70 degrees recently So I've been spending a lot of time outside finally getting the garden beds more ready I added 50 bags of soil to the yard and the existing raised garden beds this week. Yeah much as sucks to move 50 bags of soil twice. Mm-hmm. It's awful. Yeah, so I did that. I got all the garden beds topped up I've still got to go buy more soil like 30 or 50 more bags

But it's it's getting there. And then we're adding another garden bed as well. And Seth will put the pictures in the show notes here. But we were adding some more garden beds where I've put some arborvites and stuff like that. So it's just, it's all outside right now. This weekend or this week, I'll probably start running my irrigation lines. Since I've added more beds, I have to get more irrigation lines to places.

And luckily I bought it all when I went on clearance last year from Menards. So I've got a whole bin of just irrigation lines and stuff I'm going to go in and put in. And here soon I might be ordering another aqua flower since mine died last year. I remember that. Yeah. That's all the projects I have going on right now. another aqua flower since mine died last year. Nice. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. That's all the projects I have going on right now. It's a beautiful time of year right now. So. Yeah.

When the warm weather comes. Just spending it all outside as much as I can. You guys are talking about warm weather. It's like, it's always warm weather. There's no relief. Yeah. They're saying that was the time of year that Seth doesn't want to go outside at all. So.

Well, see, here's the problem is that since the hurricane wiped out one of my old clients pool systems, I'm supposed to go down there and fix it. And I managed to wait this entire time to the point where not only do I have to like work around all of the new landscaping, but it's a freaking hundred degrees out there now. There's no more relief. Uh, so yeah, loading up on the sun lotion and speakers and direct burial cable and going to go out on there and put some speakers in for their pool. Yeah. And that was the time I'm trying to do all the outdoor jobs. I'm hitting people out for outdoor speakers and lighting and stuff.

Cause once it reaches June, I'm like, I don't want to be outside doing stuff anymore. But you know, that's when people are going to be doing stuff. They're like, oh, it's hot. It's hot every day. It's 90 plus degrees. You want to come outside and work? No, I don't want to be inside in the office in the AC. I can tell you it's awful here now. It was like 88 when I was driving around and plus all the humidity and no wind.

Makes it just yuck. So can't wait to can't wait to run some speakers. TJ you want to drive down and help you? No, I don't. Okay. Yeah. It's right on the beach. You made it less appealing somehow.

That nice salty air hitting your face. Yep. It's like, oh, why am I so sticky? It's six o'clock in the morning. It's gross. Yep, yep, yep. Well, that's going to wrap up this week. It's six o'clock in the morning. It's gross. Yep, yep, yep. Well, that's going to wrap up this week.

We do want to thank a patron here. We had Christopher throw in his support for the $5 and up level. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. It's one step closer to getting possibly TJ to CES. Gavin, do not try and come into this country right now. Yeah, I don't think I'll support it right now. They'll look at my phone and yeah, it's over. Once they see my browser history.

They'll be like, this is the hacker that stole all that money from us back in the 80s. I'll get blamed for something. Well, we do want to give you a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shot here on the show, just like Christopher. But every single pledge gets you an invite to our Slack chat, where you and other supporters

of the show can gather every day and See little videos people who know Greg posted some videos little foxes and nears and stuff running around his yard eating Eating his his flowers and stuff. So maybe his tulips. Yeah all kinds of great stuff in the hub. Let's just just give us money That's all yes There you go. No, there's a Seth anyway, uh, Well, you know, it's going into his rich off of yeah I was labor. I sent you guys the the numbers for the year How are we so low at the the top three? There's an accounting expenses TJ. That's just income. We have expenses. What do we do? Well, I mean, yeah, there's expenses out there Yeah, if you want to help out but can't support financially,

we just appreciate if I serve you an iTunes positive rating in the podcast. Happy your choice to help other people find the show. That's going to wrap up another week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Until next time. Take care.