HomeTech.fm - Episode 526 - 99 Cameras and a Doorbell Ain't One

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

On this week's show: Yale has a new lock with easy integration with ADT systems, Google kills 1st and 2nd gen Nest devices, Aqara releases a few new products, Wiz shows off a new HDMI TV light, light bulb cameras are a thing, Roku has new cameras, Eve joins Home Assistant, letters from the mailbag, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 2nd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Keppel. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, and tariffs. Tariffs again. More tariffs.

We're just going to have like a tariff segment. I think we should have a tariff tag. Why don't we have a tariff tag. Why don't we have a tariff tag yet? It says USA, USA, USA. Yeah, that's the only thing I could think of. I was like, why not put that? Perfect.

What else are you gonna put? Yeah, yeah. This is an interesting story. Wise paid $255,000 on tariffs for $167,000 worth of goods. That's no fun. That's a lot of money. And Wise products have always been super cheap. So like, what is this gonna do for Wise, right?

Because this obviously isn't sustainable. They can do this for a little bit while they burn some investor cash or whatever they have stockpiled up. But this is not a sustainable business model in the long run. So prices are 100% gonna go go up and they're going to double. I don't see how they're not going to double.

It says they'll probably be out within 60 days. So another two months. Yeah, fun, fun. And then the other story we ran across here was that, what was it? The Smart Grill is $50 more. This Brisk It Zelos 450 Smart Grill is increased in price by $50 due to newly imposed tariffs. So I didn't know there were grill tariffs,

but evidently there are. I didn't even know that this was a thing. And it's got AI built into it, so can't the AI figure out how to get around the tariffs? So this is like a Traeger type grill, like one with a little box on the side that burns the pellets. Hmm.

Yeah, I don't know if I have any. I mean, I guess I'm good with a meter, right? Because the meter seems to work good enough. And I don't need a $500 grill that is going to be outdated soon. It's like a smoker thing. Yeah, it's got a little like it could do smoking. It can do it's got a little wood chip things. It looks normal though. All right, I mean this it doesn't look like a technology device Which is nice, right? It looks like an actual smoker grill thing

Yeah, yeah, nobody would think any different if they saw this at least. Yeah, probably not I said other than the like the screen on the side. It's probably a dead giveaway, but yeah, what's interesting? I haven't heard of this brand, but I know there's a lot of other. Brisket. Brisket, yeah. What a great name. Uh-huh, yeah.

AI powered cooking automation. That's what I need. Can I put the stuff in the grill though as well? Because that's my problem is like taking the stuff and putting it in the thing. Why would they solve that problem? I'm not. No, nobody asked them to do that.

So it doesn't burn the brisket, basically. Anyway, yeah, that's fun times. We have a quasi-TERF-related conversation in our projects today from me, but we've got a, it's been quiet for a couple weeks, I guess everybody was saving their stories for this week, so we've got quite a few home tech headlines. What do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, we got a new Yale lock.

It's the Yale Assure Lock2 Touch with Z-Wave. It's priced at $279 for now. Integrates seamlessly with ADT plus security systems, enables users to unlock doors and disarm the security system using their fingerprint. Pretty cool. That's a pretty cool idea. I like this.

I'm pretty sure you could put this together with something like, say, Home Assistant or even Control 4. But to directly integrate with an ADT-plus security system, just walking away with the brand name Yalock, pretty good idea. I like it. Makes it easy for a lot more people. Yeah, this is honestly, I wish Alarm.com YOLOC. Pretty good idea. I like it. It makes it easy for a lot more people. Yeah.

This is, honestly, I wish Alarm.com had the same support for Google products because there's certain Google products that I would like to use natively within the Alarm.com ecosystem, but I can't. The main one being security cameras. But it would be cool to have this functionality as well in the ecosystem. You can do this off the shelf with Home Assistant and different products like the Ubiquiti Pro Doorbell, which has the fingerprint sensor.

It's a little slow from what I've heard, but still a reality and still something you can do. So it's cool to see this kind of stuff come to different ecosystems, especially something that like normal people can use. Yeah. Normal people aren't going to one, they're not going to install the Ubiquiti doorbell to they're not going to, uh, you're not normal Gavin.

Sorry. Sorry. Gavin. Oh, uh, to, they're not going to go through the process of setting up that Ubiquiti integration and registering fingerprints and all that. Like this, this is definitely something that's obtainable by most, most people. And the fact that it's like an ADT thing makes it a lot more. It's technology and doing like cool stuff

that's reachable for a lot more people, I guess. I wish they implemented technology that didn't even need a fingerprint. When you have stuff in your hand, the last thing you really want to do is take off your gloves to register your fingerprint, etc. So I wish, can't we get around to the auto unlocking or something like that? As I walk up to the door?

You're asking too much, I think. Okay. I'm not normal. Sorry. All right. I just realized something funny. You know what's funny about this whole ADT thing? Google invested, was it $450 million? Sorry about that, into ADT, and this is obviously what came out of that, right? They were able to get Google products into ADT homes

and make the integration works and everything like that. Google bought Nest for $3.2 billion, and they've done nothing with it. Well, they've shut down some thermostats. I mean, that's, that's. That's really neat, that's sweet. Not very good at the automation space at the moment. Google. Yeah, the Nest thing kind of like bounced around over the years.

I mean, that's that's another story. I was going to get to it. Google is shutting down the first generation and second generation, what Nest devices like that in Europe with it or was it everywhere? I thought it was everywhere. There's something about Europe, though. I can't I think they were pulling out of Europe because it was too... Yeah, that sounds so true. They're just basically discontinuing the European model and not going to do another release on it. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is Google. I hate to say it. The people who probably bought the first original Nest learning service that probably weren't really thinking that Google would come along, snap the company up for $3 billion,

and then not just sit there and not do anything. Yeah, and then cancel their, like, delete their, like, support for the thermostat 10 years later. I guess, honestly, like, what's a thermostat got to do? That takes so much thought behind it. I mean, I guess they have to, like, update things for security issues and stuff, but, again, at some point in time, they need to be able to transition these products

into either working locally or just being regular old dumb thermostats. I don't know. Well, the thermostats still work as thermostats from what I understand. They're just not gonna have app support anymore. I personally, I don't see the big deal. It's been 11 years since the Gen 1 came out and 10 years since Gen 2 came out.

And Gen 1 support stopped about six years ago, if I remember correctly. So it's been basically discontinued for a while now. I don't know how long should software support on a thermostat last? You know, this is always the conversation that we always have whenever somebody ends support. And it's usually after, you know, three to five years or so. I think 11 years is pretty good for software support. Well, I asked, I guess Google, because Google has an AI thing that it'll do.

I said, what's the average lifespan for a thermostat? And it says the average lifespan for a home thermostat is generally around 10 to 15 years. So I guess we're kind of right on the money for these two products, right? Yeah. But some of the home thermostat is generally around 10 to 15 years. So I guess we're kind of right on the money for these two products, right? Yeah. But some of the mechanical thermostats, which I think everybody was kind of replacing and what these thermostats with the Google Nest is kind of famous for modeling itself after

can last even longer, up to 35 years. And so yeah, I think people just have that in their head. They kind of have that one piece of technology for decades and decades and decades. But there's a lot that's changed, not necessarily in how air conditioner is controlled or what it does, but there's a lot of change in your Wi-Fi is all different. The same Wi-Fi you have today is not the same Wi-Fi you had 10 years ago, hopefully. So things like that can change.

So I guess, yeah, about 10 years is when people swap them out. And we were talking about before the show, I have a Z-Wave. It's a Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave thermostat, I believe. And it works fine. I literally just use it to turn on and on the heating and cooling. I don't set any schedules up. It turns off if we leave, that kind of thing. Very basic stuff. But I expect that to last only 10 to 15 years if I'm being

realistic, even though it's Z-Wave, right? Because Z-Wave I can probably use in 10 or 15 years. It'll probably work fine still. But it's going to be really slow. And they're going to change things, they're going to make better products. They're going to do all kinds of stuff where I'm probably going to want a different thermostat at some point. I'm not going to want one often. I was looking at new thermostats the other day and I was like, you know, an Ecobee would look so much better on the wall, but I'm fine with this one. I literally just use the turn on and off the HVAC.

So I think it's one of those things that we have to figure out an expiration date for products still. That needs to be the discussion that we unfortunately have to have. And companies need to kind of provision for this, right? Because Google shouldn't have a way to like set up local schedules and things that people have gotten used to, at least locally on their thermostat. I think that's a bigger discussion, like a lot of people have been talking about that. Like how long do we support a product for and what's our guaranteed, you know, life cycle of that. And I wonder if companies are just afraid because if, as a company, if you came out and said, I'm willing to support this for five years, but then another company doesn't have any expiry date on there is, you know, do they, are they thinking

that it may hurt their sales? I wonder. Yeah. You know, cause that's a dangerous thing to put on your product because people just look at it and go, if this is only good for five years, you know, and then they look at our price per year, just to see if it's worth it, you know, if it's worth it, you know, if it's worth it, you know, if it wonder. Yeah. You know, cause that's a dangerous thing to put on your product because people just look at it and go, if this is only good for five years, you know, and then they look at our price per year database that Seth will probably set up one day.

You know, then we will be, they'll be in trouble. Yeah. I think it's one of those things. I don't know about any other country in the world, but I think in America, unfortunately, it's only going to happen if the legislation happens. Uh, we're going to create laws that actually dictate like e-waste and all that stuff. And I don't think we're ready for that yet. Yeah.

Another interesting tidbit on this is like a lot of the new thermostats, well, a lot of the new HVAC systems, especially the super high efficiency ones, the ones that are fancier and go into the fancy homes. I mean, it kind of works its way down, but a lot of the newer A-Track systems, you can't, you couldn't even use one of these thermostats with, they have their own proprietary stuff that they're installing now. So you'll walk into a house and just because they upgraded to the fancy A-Track system, now they've got a fancy thermostat that goes along with it

because that's what the manufacturer, it's all that works with it. Looking at you carrier and yeah, they have their own smart home platform and everything. I think I think train has like a nexia or something like that. I don't really remember. Yeah, it can depend. Like, I'm not sure. I'm sure the basic, you know, turn on and off the HVAC system with this old relay thing is going to last for a long time, but I don't know. Maybe these manufacturers are kind of moving in that direction and eventually these older thermosets are, I don't know, you're gonna be using whatever the manufacturer offers you. Which at that point it gets replaced with the unit whenever the unit goes bad. I can see

that for sure because I've known people to get like new HVAC installed and they're like, oh no, you can only use this thermostat. And it's because there's some weird proprietary wiring thing they've done to make that a reality. So I guess this is the ultimate question, right? So Matter is supposed to be the new smart home standard. It's supposed to make everything super compatible with each other and you can just use it with any Matter compatible hub

or whatever setup you have, right? How long would you expect to use a MATTER thermostat for? And knowing that MATTER is relatively new in the grand scheme of things, but being promised this universal standard that's just going to work for everything, how long would you expect to use it? I mean, I think it's separate. It's two different things, right? One is a piece of hardware and MATTER is just the, like, software.

It's not promising to do what you're saying at all. Like, I mean, MATTER is promising that like, the thermostat you get will hook up to whatever automation system that you want. It's not promising that that thermostat is one, even going to work or two, be a good thermostat or three, going to be supported for any amount of time. Like it's, it's, it's not, that's not what the standard matter standard is. All they're saying is like, we made a protocol. It will work with Google, Amazon, Apple, HomeKit, whatever.

When you, when you go and hook it up, you're not going to be having to ditch your entire, or Samsung smart things, et cetera. Like you're not going to have to have to ditch that and go with something else or do some backflips to get it to work. It's just going to work and have a native integration with that. But that doesn't preclude the manufacturer from like, in this case, what Google's saying is just like walking away. Like could they update? No, they probably can't.

They probably can't update the old thermostats to be matter compatible. Because remember the like matter came out or home kit came out actually. And everybody was like, oh, you have to have this super charged chip to do this math that Apple wants. Well, like that, that has bridged over to matter and all the complaints that happened when Apple did home kit, like those disappeared because like everybody's doing that now, right? They're doing the secure communication. So I don't think it's going to matter.

Uh, cause it's right there in the name, but that makes sense. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Google. Always giving us something to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. Always given us some, some dead product to talk about. Yeah, yeah.

Always giving us some dead product to talk about. I guess I probably need to go find one of these for the graveyard whenever. I'm sure there'll be plenty for you to have. Yeah, I know, right? All right, well, let's move on. We got a new product here from Acora. It's the... This is really kind of...

It's just a... What do they call these things now? They're not tweets. they're X's. I don't know. I don't go to the site very much anymore, but there's a post over here on the, on the tweet thing and he's got a video of their matter and thread supported little tiny USB stick plugin hub, the M100. It's not the form factor I would pick for a hub for my house, but I mean, if you

just wanted to get started with something, it's probably something you could use. Gavin, are you going to replace your home assistant with this thing? Are you going to get one of these? No. But I know what you mean. It's not the form. It's like a USB stick. It's like a Wi-Fi dongle for your computer. Yeah, in a way.

Yeah. But Acquire has know, different with their hubs too. I mean, they've built hubs and they built a hub into their camera. They built a hub into, they had that little cat camera looking camera. I have that. It's great. Yeah. And there's a hub in that too. So, you know, I'm not really shocked.

I mean, for a hub, this is really small. Um, if you want to just hide it behind something, it works. Um, you know, it's funny is that they're plug-in, you know those like all those little square Apple chargers that we saw leftover that you can't use to even charge an Apple phone anymore because they're just like so underpowered. Plug this into it. Yeah. It's in their little video here.

They're plugging it right into there. So like I've got at least five or six sitting over on the table next to me. I usually just throw them away, but if know, if I had an Aquar Hub, could reuse that. No, no e-waste. You can install these everywhere. Yeah. Oh, and they're plugging it into a plug, one of those plugs that has USB thing in it. Oh yeah. I've always been fascinated by these. I've never actually had a use case for one.

I think it'd be perfect for like maybe an older person or somebody in an apartment. Because like an older person you're gonna install some automation for, like they don't need to know this thing exists. So you could just plug it in somewhere random. And then for an apartment, like you maybe don't have access to like hardwired your internet or something like that.

So the form factor is interesting. If you use one, you should let us know why you use it. Yeah, why'd you pick it? Because there's all kinds of options out there. So I'm wondering why this one specifically or why this form factor, I guess. All right, let's move on. We've got some some lighting news here. Wiz has a new TV light sync box that is priced a little bit lower than the Philips Hue system one. It is the let's see what's this thing called the Wiz HDMI sync box will be available next month in two models for 55 to 65 inch screens priced at $89

and another one for 75 to 85 inch screens for $109. And that's significantly less than Philips Hue system which costs, I guess it starts at $250 and requires other additional purchases. Now what's funny is that this is, Wizz is basically the same company. Like Signify owns both Phillips Hue brand and Wizz. And Wizz is kind of like, I don't know if, I wouldn't call them like the bargain. I guess they're like the the wifi version, right?

And Phillips Hue is, what is that? Ziwei? Zigbee? Zigbee. Zigbee, yeah. So I don't know. I have a bunch of Wizz product in my house that like light bulbs and a couple of the LED control things.

It works great. I like it. Yeah, I've never used Wizz, but they get pretty positive ratings. It is pretty interesting. Wizz and Philips Hue are the same company. SigmaFi owns both of them. But it's interesting to see them offer this product for a little less. I priced out a Philips Hue SyncBox set up a couple months ago

because I had a client that really wanted back screen lighting behind their TV. And I think it was like a 85 inch TV. No, it was 98 inch TV. By the time they actually added up to all the lights and stuff like that, it was like $800. And I was like, they are not gonna want this at all. So we went with like a Gobi setup with a camera, which I'm not a fan of. I definitely would prefer to have the HDMI box.

Yeah, so this supports HDMI 2.0, can handle up video formats, 4K 60 with HDR 10 plus, W vision, so that's great. I, you know what's funny is I have like a Chinese ripoff of basically the Phillips Hue one. And I want to say I probably paid about $109 for it. And you know, I would much prefer to have a whiz branded one since I know that there's support and everything behind it.

So it's actually a pretty good price for this. And you know what, if it works, it works. The specifications of this one, I guess works for equipment today, right? It doesn't really future proof you. Because if you went with Huey, you get like 8K HDMI 2.1 with 120Hz, you know, so that's where you might want to spend the extra money, you know, but depends on when you plan to upgrade your TV to 8K. Yeah, I like this. I might get one of these days. I don't know. I have some TVs I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I like the Wizz products enough. I might pick one up. I don't know.

Put on that brand new TV in the living room, Seth. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, that's pretty cool. Now, let's talk about products that no one should buy. Lurex has unveiled its 2k Wi-Fi light bulb camera. It's a dual function device. It's probably the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life. It combines a security camera with a smart light. And here's that eliminates the need for complex installations.

It's $69. I would I don't think I'd pay $25 for this. It fits into a standard E2060, E27 light sockets and has a 360 PTC camera on it and a 400 lumen LED light. I don't know. IP65 rated, I guess maybe outside this will work great, but I don't know.

What are you, Gavin, are you going to replace your lights outside with this? This thing actually looks a little creepy. I don't, I definitely won't install it. It has a creepy look to it. Um, I don't know, but what really drives you even more nuts is this Photoshop job of this picture. Like, why do they keep Photoshopping their products into like, just get a proper picture. It's like, you know, we, we, we know it's Photoshopped and I think the world's

just come to accept these Photoshopped pictures. We need to start pushing back because this is driving me nuts. That's what the problem you have with this thing. Yeah. because this is driving me nuts. That's what the problem you have with this thing. Yeah, well, because this light bulb in this product will not be in a house that nice. I don't know, Gavin. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I will say, I don't know, this may be the cover art

for the show this week, but this is the strangest product I've ever seen. I don't know. Have you never seen these before? No, no, I have not. Oh man, so these are like everywhere on like AliExpress. If you just type in light bulb camera. Oh, I believe that. You get a bunch of billion different options.

There's like three in my neighborhood. Every time I walk by them. What? I'm just like, that is crazy. Oh my gosh. It's like, it's like, it's a decent idea, but they always look so ugly and so obvious. I don't know.

The one non-photoshopped product image on their page, really, I mean, well, I say it's non-Photoshopped. I think the only thing that's not Photoshopped is the hand holding the product. It looks less absurd. I think the fixture is actually Photoshopped. But it's just, that's an interesting thing, interesting product. I personally don't want one, but I can see a use case for it. It's kind of like floodlight cameras.

Okay, don't compare this to floodlight cameras. I mean, it's basically a floodlight camera in a smaller form, Gavin. No, no, no. You could have put two of these in your floodlight. I mean, how awesome would that be? Then you have three cameras everywhere. Dual PDZ cameras, yeah. Yeah.

That would be even creepier, you know, especially when they start twisting and turning in different directions, you know. No, do not compare the, floodlight cameras have a need. It's basically, you know, you didn't want to run a new wire. You had a floodlight outlet there. Floodlight cameras perfectly cover.

That's what this is. No, this is creepy. This is just, it's like it's just hanging down, watching you, you know, like, I don't know. Well, if you go on AliExpress right now, you can buy a Lenovo branded, Wi-Fi smart bulb for 3576. It's 53% off.

I kind of want to get two of these and hook it up to one of those floodlights. Yes, that would be great. Have them moving around a different direction. It's like sideways, you know, have the chameleon eyes, you know, and there's like some truly ugly ones. So if you think this is ugly, like you'll love this one here. So please send them. So it could absolutely get worse.

Oh my God, is that dual camera? Oh yeah, it definitely could get worse. Wow. It's a lot worse. Wait, wait, wait, wait, this one doesn't have a light. Does this even have a light? Yeah, I was about to say, this doesn't even have a light on it.

Yep, there's some that don't have lights. That's even more useless. And this is like dual camera, so it has one that sits in a permanent position and the other one that moves around That's actually a good idea, but this isn't All right, all right, this is the best one right here. I'm ready. I promise you. Oh, yes Is this gonna take off on you? This would be an amazing drone.

It attacks people when they walk up. You know what, this third one you pasted actually, I could see a use for this. Oh, stop it. No, no, no, in a garage or something like that. You're not gonna try and disguise this in your dining room, you know what I mean? The others, you're trying to put it in a lamp in the dining room or something No, this one actually not as bad I mean if those if those blades moved then it could be a fan in your dining room. You just place the whole thing. Oh Yes. Oh, I have a I have a fan right behind me with three light bulbs and I could totally get three of these cameras

Ah, so the I guess you could get these were like half off there in AliExpress. So yeah I was gonna say right before the terrorists hit, they're trying to upload everything. Everything's 30 bucks right now. This one's got 8 megapixels. Oh. 8 megapixels for $33. This is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. So yeah, this Lorex one is not bad.

They obviously just looked at these Chinese bulbs over selling on Facebook, because I always get these ads on like Facebook and, and weird places and they're like, buy my smart bulb. I'm like, I don't know. I don't want this. I really like how you had to go on AliExpress to bring up the ugliest ones, just so we can come back to this Lorex and now say it's actually not that bad. Yeah.

You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. There're welcome. All right. Yeah, there we are. Laurie, you know, they should Photoshop the other ones into this picture to make themselves look good, you know, like they're like, they're going to be like the hottest girl, you know, surround yourself with the ugly girl. So you look better. You guys are talking bad about this one, but I'm like, this one is amazing

compared to the other ones. I know now I feel better about no idea. I feel bad. The lyrics, I'm sorry. It could always be worse. Wow. Here's a three-pack of eight-megapixel Wi-Fi cameras. Yes. It's 1575, so there we go.

Oh, 1575? Yeah, three-pack. Send that to me, Smith. Go ahead and buy it and send it right to my house. I'll install it in my office. Oh my gosh. Well, whatever you do, don't search for PTZ camera on, PTZ camera on AliExpress, because you'll eventually come to some things that look like,

you know the robot from RoboCop? Oh yeah. Oh my God. This isn't a light bulb though. No, there's, I mean, one of those, that has to have lights on it. I definitely, I'm pretty sure those are lights. There's a red light on top of it.

I mean, it does have it. Are they, I'm pretty sure those are lights. There's a red light on top of it. And it does have a- Are they just adding more cameras to increase the K8K? It's like, it's exactly what they did with phones, you know? Phones got to a point, they're just like, throw two more cameras on there, why not? Yeah, why not? That's what security cameras are now. It's like, yeah, four cameras on this, we should.

I was hoping to find a fan, pan tilt zoom camera with a fan built on it, but that's what came up. So if anybody knows of a PTZ camera with a fan built in, please let us know. Feedback at hometech.fm. All right, we have to move on. We got so much stuff here. Quora has a new climate sensor, the W100.

This was also not really announced anywhere, but over on Exo. Go check it out. It's got dual protocol features with Matter and Zigbee. Has lab grade accuracy, according to this, you know, for humidity and temperature readings. So I guess you can just stick this little guy up. It's got a little screen on it, which tells you everything that you need to know, temperature, humidity, I don't know, is it battery? Yeah, battery life. Yeah, there you go. So you can just mount it anywhere you want, stick it on a desk.

Good to go. Yeah, this is very interesting. I could see me putting one of these in the hallway or one of these in the bedroom, basically just to control my thermostat. Because I don't want to pull my phone all the time to control things, and it'd be nice to have manual control of the thermostat in my bedroom. So I might have to pick this up. Let's try to figure out how does it control

the thermostat though? I'm sure you'd have to do an automation, but it's got plus or minus buttons on it. Yeah, but then would it be able to pull back the current setting on the thermostats and set it? You know what I mean? If you just want it warmer, you just press the button to make it warmer.

Yeah, but you wouldn't know what you're at then. You eventually will. I was curious about that. I know the buttons can be programmed and I was thinking automations, but then I was also curious how it's getting back the information. There must be something in there I wasn't sure about. I couldn't find the information though. We'll have to look it up on the MQTT database. But I do like the fact that, you know,

they're releasing their products with both Matter and Zigbee support. You know, I kind of like that because you're not locked into Matter. You don't have to choose one or the other. You can, well, you get both, right? So you can choose one or the other. Choices. I always love choices. Yeah, I love choices. All right. We've got one more new product here from Roku. So you can choose one or the other. Choices, I always love choices. Yeah, I love choices.

All right, we've got one more new product here from Roku. Speaking of security cameras, they've added two new security cameras to their Roku smart home product lineup, I guess. They're both battery powered security cameras. They've got a Roku battery camera and the Roku battery camera plus. Standard model can operate up to six months

on a single charge and the plus version up to two years of battery life. Both models support an optional solar panel for continuous power and they get 1080p video, color night vision, motion detection, customizable schedules. You can modify all the feeds over on your Roku Smart Home app, over on the web, or directly on Roku TVs.

Why though? I mean, it's Roku. They're going to do Roku stuff. Was it Roku doing the, was it Wyze cams before? Yeah, they had a white label partnership. But this doesn't look like a Wyze game, right? No, it does not. Yeah, I think they've moved on from that now, so it looks like it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they don't look like a wise game right? No it does not. Yeah I think they've moved on from that now so.

Yeah. It looks like it. Yeah I don't know. I mean they don't look bad and I don't know they'll last for two years or whatever. What's the, I don't see the price on these. Well if you have to ask. Right I know.

Well they're probably not sure because of tariffs so. Oh yeah that's true, that's true. Well you know Wyze got hit by a few hundred thousand dollars maybe these aren't coming in anytime soon. So they didn't put prices. Yeah, there's a Roku subscription fee. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, for their cloud junk.

Yep. $100 for all cameras per year for the camera plus subscription. Ooh, you can have up to 99 cameras and video doorbells. Wonder if somebody's actually done that. Because it makes, if you have 99 Roku cameras, you should contact us. We're interested about your setup. We're going to need proof.

99 Roku cameras and a wise ain't one. No. A doorbell ain't one. All right. Arlo finally adds Apple Home support for its cameras. They introduced Apple Home integration for the essential second generation cameras. I guess people are excited about this one. It's finally getting released. New compatibility allows the Arlo Essential 2K Video Doorbell, the 2K indoor camera, the 2K

outdoor XL camera to be added to the Apple Home app as long as it's connected to a compatible Arlo base station or smart home. So there you go. You get the, uh, the Apple video thing. Secure home kit, secure video, which everybody likes. I haven't heard very bad things. Do you guys use that? Have you guys ever used that? I don't even know anybody that does use it. Like in my circles.

I've never really gone to, I mean, I know there's like, uh, I have the, all the hacks and everything that can kind of like make it work. I've just never bothered. But I don't know, I hear decent things about it. I always heard good things about it, but I never really heard anyone that stuck with it really. Right. We're talking about HomeKit secure video or HomeKit video. Yeah.

I tried it with the Akara camera. I really didn't understand it because it didn't seem like you could record continuously with it still. It was still just motion events. I was like, I want continuous recording. still. It was still just motion events. And I was like, I want continuous recording. So I know that was an Icarra limitation or not, but I think it's a HomeKit limitation.

I'm going to give an unpopular opinion, but it feels like a lot, you know, people are kind of falling off the whole HomeKit stuff, right? It's falling behind a bit. That doesn't help at all. Apple has given the, uh, the nest treatment, right? Exactly. It's basically just like, they've not really done anything with the platform for so long now. Oh yeah.

And it's been slow and it's been slow and steady, but I just find like even like, um, HomeKit, uh, YouTubers and stuff I follow and stuff, they've been switching over, even they've been dabbling in other things like Home Assistant and stuff now. Right. They've been switching over. Even they've been dabbling in other things like home assistant stuff now. Right? I think you have to. You have to be able to get your other devices back into HomeKit so they can continue using their HomeKit setup.

I see. I'm just going to say the only really good thing I've heard about HomeKit is people really love their interface. There you go. Right. In the home app and when they put it on the tablets and the dashboards and stuff like that, they really like that. But I mean, other than that.

I want my home assistant to look like HomeKit with the same amount of effort. Yeah. Just because I think it's a good universal user interface. Yeah, exactly. For HomeKit, it's still a daily driver for me. I use it to open and close curtains, turn on and off lights, yell at Siri to do something, say good morning and it kicks off the good morning scene.

I don't really need it to do much more than that. I think for basic dumb home interface, it works. There's only one thing I have to do right now, I launched the Home Assistant app because on the dashboard, there's some lights for a room that I can turn off, pretty much right at the top. And I, you know me, I don't customize anything. So there's like entities and everything everywhere.

I don't even know what's going on. But it's, that's the only thing I launched the Home Assistant app for. I don't interact with that app. I don't really care that it's there. It's a glue app for me. But the interface to my house, pretty much not Control 4, not Home assistant, not switch bot, it's just the Apple home kid interface. And if it shows up there, then my wife can interact with it. She can, she complains to me when like something gets

disconnected or crashes and she can't press the button on her phone to turn off the light in the bathroom or something at night. So, you know, that's, I don't know like, if I need it to be like 100% up to date with everything and bleeding edge, like I'm kind of happy where it is. Doesn't have to advance anymore for me. I mean.

So why haven't you migrated those four lights that you launched the Home Assistant on over to yet? Just cause I haven't. It's a good question, Gavin. We'll revisit this next year. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have the HomeKit thing turned on in Home Assistant, but when I did, there were like 5,000 devices that got added to HomeKit. I'm like, I want to do this.

I think I just need to go check that box and hit save on Home Assistant and it'll push them over, but I haven't done it yet. Also, one other reason. It's four lights in a room and Home Assistant doesn't have a nice way of turning four lights on and off. You have to make a light group in YAML. No, you can do a group in User Interface.

How? Yeah, you go under Helpers. Settings. Under the prices, helpers, and you can create a group in there and put all four lights in it. And it will create one device that controls all four lights, settings, devices, helpers, come on, Seth. I didn't do that. I've been getting in my my, my yaml. You know, I have touchy ammo and I have all kinds of groups. You could have just asked. and I have all kinds of groups. You could have just asked. All right, well, I didn't know helpers were there to help me. So I'll look into that,

but that's probably also why I haven't done it, because then I don't want the four random, so it's like four whiz bulbs plugged into a fan light, right? And I don't want those to, I want them just to turn on and off at the same time. So do it. Right now I just use the room switch

and turn everything off in that room, because at the top you get a little room switch on the dashboard, and that's off in that room, because at the top you get a little room switch on the dashboard. That's what I use. Easy peasy. Anyway, check back in on that in like three months. Yeah, it might be done. Not.

All right. Just think it out. You'll be fine. One more thing here. We've got Eve has joined Works with Home Assistant program. It brings a bunch of suite of matter-en enabled devices that emphasize local control and privacy over into the Home Assistant ecosystem. Yay.

Eve is known for high quality smart home products, aligning with the matter standard and everything. This is great news. This is great news for Home Assistant people because I have one, maybe two Eve devices. I know the little sensor I have. I think there's another sensor somewhere else. One of those things I don't even have to think about. Like it's, they, they, it's pretty good products. So good for them.

Good for them. Another, another, well, it kind of goes with Gavin's talking about. This is, Eve is like a, a home, home kit brand, like an Apple brand. And you thought about home kit, you thought about Eve. Now they're, they're moving on over. Work with Home Assistant.

You know what? I'm excited every time a new Works with Home Assistant product is added. And I'm expecting, like I said before, I'm expecting this to happen over and over again. I expect a lot of companies be jumping on this and yeah, it's a good thing for the scene. You know what I should do, and one of these days I might, is take that Eve little sensor thing that I have and works with Home Assistant over into Home Assistant rather than,

I guess it's in HomeKit right now. I don't know. It's probably in HomeKit. But hey, it's a good little sensor. I think I've only had to replace the battery on it once, and it's the one that tells me that the door open, and the door was just opening and closing and it's 9.41, so she's up late. They all look like pretty nice devices.

I've just never had a reason to buy one yet. Yeah. Little pricier. Yeah, they look nice though. They look like quality and not very cheap. Hopefully, they look like that in real life. No, they do. They do. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be

found over on our show notes over to hometech.fm slash 526. All right we got some mailbags here. We've got this from from Dale 3H. He said just listen to the most recent episode with and the home seer znet g8 immediately came to mind when Gavin asked about network connected z-wave interfaces. HomeSphere is certified on the Works with Home Assistant program, so you shouldn't need any hackery to get it working. It also supports the Sonoff ZB dongle E adapter to add ZigBee support to it. So, Gavin, what do you think about that? HomeSphere.

I have to say, I just want to say thank you to all the listeners that actually answered my call. No, I got multiple, even Justin over at Apollo reached out and he pointed me towards TubeZB. So what I've done is I've taken the recommendation, I've reached out to the companies and I have them sending me some devices and I'm going to test with them and report back on my findings. You're going to show down a Z wave showdown. No, I'm not going to really compare them to each other because I see, I see differences between each of them, right? But I'll do a little, you know, review of them.

The plan is like, yeah, if we could get POE controllers, we can place them anywhere in the house in a way, centralized in the house, and it would make things easier. Right now, mine are sitting in the middle of my basement ceiling, but I have a really long USB cable to it, right? I'd like to get rid of that USB cable because there's some restrictions around length and stuff like that. It does give me a little problem here and there. But this will be interesting to see.

And I'm gonna do some reviews once the products come in and share it with the listeners because I actually know a few listeners that are very interested in this too. Now this isn't ZNet thing, isn't POE. They have a POE version, I think. Do they? Yeah, there's a POE version, I believe. Do they? Yeah, there's a POE version, I believe.

If it wasn't, it does have ethernet. So you can, like, I have some Raspberry Pi things, and they make these little, like, POE adapter things that have, like, it breaks out the power and turns, like, five volts or whatever it needs, and breaks out the line as well. So you have that option, I guess, that's what I'm saying. If it didn't have, I don't see a POE version. Maybe there is one, it's not on this page. But the HomeSphere one, it was nice

because they also have like support. The one I was looking at had the 800. 800, yeah. It's a serious chip and you can network more than one together to give you even more range. Like there are a bunch of options. So we'll see cool Alright big of the week. I I have this I'm gonna share this with you guys inside

the hub there When when the other night I were sitting around the table and we hear we hear And we're like, oh no, what was that? Then zzz and then the explosion sound. Never a good thing when you hear those two things combined. Then my wife was like, oh, there are people saying that such and such neighborhood, which is right next to ours is out of power. I looked out the back window and in the sunset,

I could see smoke rising. So I'm like, oh yeah, something, something has certainly gone down. So let me share these pictures with you. I can't find Slack for some reason. What is going on? Yeah. Yeah. There was an entire like telephone pole on fire. And what's odd is that telephone pole is not,

not made out of wood. It's made out of concrete. And those, those are very thick, large electrical wires, I guess, that feed the neighborhood or parts of the neighborhood that come down off of it. And they must have gotten too hot. They caught on fire. So yeah. Oopsies indeed. They're working in this neighborhood to put the power underground.

So that would be like the feeder that goes into something. And I'm guessing something didn't work. Didn't work right. Wow. Just my scientific opinion. I've, in our neighborhood, I've heard transformers blow. It's happened more than once. Where are we?

And everyone was outside and I heard, hey, it was loud. And it took down, you know, part of the neighborhood and everything like that, but it didn't have a fire. That's what this sounded like. It sounded like that transformer pop sound, but it happened more than one time, a few times and I could see smoke starting in the distance.

Something definitely caught on fire there. I just was driving around, drove around, took a picture from a distance. You can see people in that picture kind of like standing there looking at it. But yeah, I didn't, they had the entire street shut down and everything. But look at the, those wires are huge, thick wires, like massive, massive wires.

I don't even know what gauge those would be. I don't envy anybody who has to work on something like that. Like it's not anything I want to be anywhere near. Anything I can die doing, I'm not a fan of. Right. You can't die hanging at a TV, can you? I don't think so. I don't think so.

All right. Well, any feedback, comments, questions, great ideas for sure, pick the weeks. Give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.com. Or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates, project updates. But first, but first, in Home Assistant news, we have Home Assistant Community Day!

Yay! Never even heard of this, but you guys are both involved in Home Assistant Community Day, which turns out to be May 24th, right? In about a month. And what, what, what's going on? Gavin, you're going to one May 24th, right? In about a month. Yep. And what's going on? Gavin, you're going to one, right? In Toronto?

I don't even know what this day's for. Like, I just- What are you guys gonna do? What's going on? I have no idea. I just heard Home Assistant Community Day and register. And I saw a Toronto location pop up and I was the first register.

I saw another location pop up. How is this not a cult? That's what I want to know. I don't know. I saw another location pop up about an hour and a half east of me. I thought maybe I'll cancel the Toronto one and go to the other one and take a drive. I think it's Napanee or something like that. Take a drive out there and see the nice area, you know, and, well, you know, you

go to the meetup for an hour and a half or so, and then, you know, do other things. So I don't know. I'm still up in the air, which one I'm going to go to, but I'm going to go to one of them. Right. So it's, it's interesting that they're doing this. I've seen so many, um, pop up, um, in the area, or not in the area, just worldwide. Like when you start looking at the numbers of the community days that people are organizing, um, where do we at right now?

Europe has 26, North America has 18. You know, the other parts of the world need to catch up. South America has one, you know, Asia only has one. Oh, that's the Tokyo meetup. You know, maybe Tokyo gym can take a represent for us there. You know, I just want to know what you guys are going to do. Like, I have no idea. I mean, we haven't told them, we haven't told anybody the news yet though, but I

am hosting the Columbus, Ohio home assistant community day. So I, I saw that Ohio is not on the list. The closest one we had at the time was Toronto. And so I was like, well, I'm going to go ahead and sign up to do this. I have no idea what we're going to do, though. I don't think anybody does. So it'll be interesting to see what everybody does with their local home assistant community.

It's the first one ever, though, because I was like, we should, you guys should like send out some some information about what you guys did last year. I didn't realize that this is the first one ever though. Cause I was like, we should, you guys should like send out some, uh, some information about what you guys did last year. I didn't realize that this is the first one. So. It's like, what's in the right all over TJ. Uh, this is the first one. I don't think like even the Toronto one, they haven't even picked a location for it yet. So there's just like, we're all in, we're doing it.

And then like, again, you probably need to tell people where they just said event in Toronto and I was like, register, you know, like I need to tell people where. They just said event in Toronto and I was like, register. You know, like I didn't ask any questions. I just said register. So yeah, there you go. Yeah. We selected our location yesterday. We contacted a brewery that I've worked with before called

Seven Sun. And funny enough, I asked them, what are the costs of rent in your entire upstairs space? They have this like nice little atrium area with it's all glass ceiling and stuff. It's really nice on a rainy day. Um, and I was like, how much does it cost to rent the whole upstairs space? And they said $4,000.

But we have this option where you can do a partial reservation and we'll do that for free. And I was like, let's do that one. Cause that sounds better when it's free. That's in the price range. So we do have a location. Oh, we do have a location now. I messed up though, I didn't put Columbus, Ohio

as a location before and so it never showed up in Ohio until today, so I've got that issue fixed so people can actually find it in Columbus. If you're in the area of Columbus, Ohio or wherever Gavin made his letter, Kenny or Toronto, yeah, you can meet up with Gavin or DJ. So we'll find out. I'm trying to convince Seth to come up here,

but he's not feeling it just yet. There's a lot going on at the end of the year, the first school year. He said he'd have to drive, but I told him about this thing called planes, and he's still skeptical. Yeah. Not wanting to fly these days. Well, I'm excited for this.

Well, you know, like Seth, you gotta get some stickers, you know, you gotta get some more stickers. Yeah, I need some more stickers. I've got a bunch of stickers here, TJ, turns out I didn't send them all to you, so I'll send them all in up. I don't know if it's something where people will be giving a talk at, or, you know,

talking about projects, or, you know, who knows what will be going on. Well, you know, maybe they can Maybe they can do a group video chat between all the different locations. That would be kind of cool. Could use this. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm sure as details come out, we'll find out.

Very cool. Well, we'll keep you updated. We'll keep you updated. And if you want to, in our show notes, we'll have a link for both the, well, we don't know where Gavin's going, but as soon as we do know where Gavin's going, we'll put it in our show notes. But then also the one, what the TJ one, where you can, where you can see where it is, where TJ will be there in, there in Ohio.

The Napanee location actually has more details in it, which is kind of cool. They still don't have a location, but you know, they talk about transportation, parking purpose. Um, they actually mentioned activities. I want a purpose. Well, their purpose is connected with fellow home assistant users, developers and enthusiasts, share setups, workflows, best practices, troubleshooting tips, build strong community ties across Ontario, Quebec and New York state.

Wow. How did New York state get in there? I don't know. Maybe they just copy and pasted some activities, show and tell, demos of home assistant projects, technical discussions, network collaboration opportunities. Wow. I'm just going to steal this.

I think it looks like they had, you know, chat GBT create this. Well, at this point, they only have one going, so I'm still in the Toronto one, that is. But I think the numbers will start to jump up as they get closer to the date. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like been out for like a week now too. So, Yeah. Toronto's got, I wonder who's got the most going right now. Toronto's got eight. Toronto. Let's see. I see the DC one has quite a few.

Oh, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It has 26. No, Utrecht, Utrecht. I'm not, I'm going to, I'm butchering this name. 7, 8, 9, 10, 30. No, Uttrick, Uttrick? I'm butchering this name, but it's got 45 on there. Wow, there you go. That's the one to go to. Yeah, well, we'll see. What if we had one here in Sarasota?

Probably could find a place to go and I could bring my home. This would give me a date to finish my hot dog stand interface. Yeah, and you could start advertising it, maybe get some investors for it. TJ, we should have it at a literal hot dog stand. Yes, this would be it. Yeah. We'd have to have a hot dog stand and then

we could look at the hot dog stand interface from Home Assistant. You'd have to find one that allows catch up a mustard on A hot dog stand. And then we could look at the hot dog stand interface for home assistant. You'd have to find one that allows ketchup and mustard on a hot dog though. And I don't know if that's, if you can do that. Oh yeah. The little cart things. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Cause that's, that's a disgrace to hot dogs. So. Hey, you use mayonnaise, right? Oh, why? Mayonnaise is a relish. Now I'm getting hungry and I actually have hot dogs in the fridge. I'm gonna go get a hot dog now.

It's too good, too good. All right. Well, we'll put a link to that in the show. That's pretty cool. Pretty cool. So projects. Wow. I have projects.

I did things. What? I know, right? You did one things, right? I got, yeah, one things. I got a notification that I was getting a delivery on, it was FedEx CJ, and this is funny, you'll think this is funny. I got a delivery that I was going to get a FedEx delivery on Sunday.

I'm like, what? What lie is this? This is a lie. I don't know why they always say that. Well, it turns out FedEx does deliver things on Sunday. Wow. You got the one guy that actually wanted to do his job? I guess so.

And I had no idea it was coming. I've been ordering things for a couple of jobs here and there, and it's just like random stuff. But I'm like, what the heck? I ordered some stuff for you, TJ, and like 14 freaking boxes showed up from Sonics. Every single speaker has its own box. My god.

So those came in, and I brought those inside. Then I've got this one delivery just hanging on. What the heck is this? Turns out Navibos sent me a lawnmower. They sent me one of the X3s. Man, this thing is huge compared to the iSeries. Oh my God. It would consume the iSies if you let it like it's scary looking When this thing's driving around but I I just I just may come from a little feedback

I was going on earlier and I was like, yeah the i-series of like it just kind of fails doesn't really like I have a big hill in the back of my yard and It just kind of gets stuck right? Like it just can't do it but this one one, which I'm naming Big Bertha, because oh my God, this thing's just, it's wide, it's huge. It's heavy, like I can barely lift the thing. The FedEx guy was like, what's in that? Like this massive box.

What do you like to know? It's like a mini fridge, I think. Yeah, this thing is massive. And I, you know, faithfully took it out of the box for you guys and got it hooked up and started running. I ran it down the hill, did a quick map of a few hundred square feet of yard, and then hit go and left.

When I came back, it only got stuck once. I checked in on it while I was gone. I just hit clear and go, or I don't know, it was like clear and go and it just went to town, went back mowing. I don't know why I thought it was stuck, but it got unstuck and went about its merry way. I am gonna have to kind of like tweak it a little bit.

I think since the hill is so steep, it kind of gets stuck like going up and down the hill. And it, for whatever reason, picked the direction that I wanted to mow was directly up and down. And I don't know if you've noticed on the maps, you can change which direction it mows, and it will alternate so you don't get ruts or anything. So I just selected the routes that weren't up and down.

So maybe it'll do better if that's the case, but I'll have to play with that tomorrow um, and maybe add some more of the art in but so far so good it was actually able to conquer the hill and Drive up and down the thing. So let's say it has some beefier tires. Are the tires like much better? Yes tj Everything is massive Nice you got a display on it. I mean it looks fancy. It does. Yeah, nice. I think we got a display on it. I mean, it looks fancy. It does.

Yeah, it's got like a pixel LED display on it. It tells you things like it starts up says Navamo. Like it's ridiculous. Like it is so big. It has the attachment port on the side too for like, so we can get bigger, I guess. Like it has the Weedeater attachment on it. Oh, this is the one with the weed eater. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't, I don't think they sent, I didn't see the weed eater in the box, but I, it doesn't have it. Yeah. But it's, it's, this is very large. Whereas like the iSeries I could feel comfortable with. It's pretty, it's a large device anyway. Like it's not exactly small.

Um, this, this one, this is the big boy. It's very large, but it's getting the job done. So I'm going to, since I let the grass go so bad down on that hill, I was just like, let's see what it can do and send it on its way. That's what I did when I first got mine too. I was like, make sure you mow your grass before using the robot lawn mower. I was like, heck no, we're going to see what this baby can do. Yeah, I've done that before. I mean, you kinda, the way the grass is now

because of the floods we had, it killed a bunch of it. And then, so I've got like a bunch of, the water that came down was either, I don't know, polluted or saltwater or something. Yeah, probably saltwater. Killed a bunch of the grass. Everybody's grass got killed, so it's not just me. Yeah, you can see there in the picture that I sent,

it's a pretty steep hill and it managed to get it done. Nice. So far so good. I'll do more of a deep dive over the next couple of weeks and see how it works compared to the iSeries. I know you guys are probably dusting off yours to maybe start checking out. Gavin, have you run yours yet or is it still kind of in the box? No, the box made it upstairs. The manual got out.

So I'm hoping this weekend I will get to set up. Mine's been out and running and it's been great. I've already cut the grass like eight times this year. It's crazy. Oh yeah, me too. Like every day. Yeah, me too. Like every day. One thing I noticed with this one is that the RTK antenna, so like the GPS thing that

you have to attach to the base station, like it won't work without that, right? And like it looks like since I have two, I'm going to have to have two of those antennas pull things out there. So that's kind of annoying. I wish that like one could use the other. Oh, and also the map didn't transfer, right? So like I have to have another map for the lawnmower as far as I can tell. Yeah That's probably legit. Yeah, I was hoping that the map would transfer and I wouldn't have to do anything

But that is the worst part about it. So I put mine away for the winter You know, I don't want to let it sit on the snow So I put mine away for the winter. I don't want to let it sit on the snow. And I had to like remap everything and redo the whole thing because like it showed up and it was like, oh, you've moved the robot lawnmower. And I'm like, well, obviously I moved the robot lawnmower to six months or so in the winter time.

And it's like, well, it was like kept freaking out. And I think there's a way to like edit the map and stuff like that, but it was just so much easier just to redo the whole map. And I have a relatively small yard, but that was the annoyance with it. I had to do the same thing when I got my robot vacuum back from the repair as well.

I think they should, companies in general should figure out a way to fix that part though. It's pretty annoying. When Gavin gets his cranked up, we'll try and get Wayne back on from Navamo. So far it's so good. This thing is rocking. I've got one of the best compliments I've had on the thing is from my neighbor.

She's like, I love that lawnmower. It turns out, the reason she loves it is because when I had my other lawnmower, she has a garden right on the property line, basically between our two properties. No matter what I did, I didn't try to do this, but the little shoot thing which was like pushed grass over into the garden and just make a mess. I tried to blow it out or whatever,

but I'm not getting there and pulling grass out. Well, with one of these, it just does its thing, goes around mows, doesn't get grass in there. Now, she yells at her husband every time he's mowing. I'm like, hey Jim, I'll help you out. I'm going to program this thing to mow around that so you don't have to anymore. I'm going to give them the solid.

They're excited about that. Second thing I got, I got one of these guys. What is this? Is that an AVO remote? No, that's- No, it's a remote remote. Oh, that's a real remote. Cheap, not cheap. Yeah, the budget friendly.

Oh. Yeah. What's the name of that remote again? Sofa Baton. Yeah, that's what I was trying to think of it. Sofa Baton X1, I don't know. I think it was like around $100. Where'd you get that?

AliExpress? No, no. I ordered from Sofa Baton or somewhere. I don't know. It came pretty quickly. I was kind of surprised to get it this quickly. Uh, but I just wanted to see, like I, I'd seen people kind of complain about it and talk about it and I'm like, well, let's see what it can do. I haven't put it through its paces either.

I did program it for watching Apple TV out here in the garage. Um, but basically did it from another room. I would say the setup and everything is actually pretty easy. And if you know, if you've ever programmed a remote for maybe a single room solution, actually pretty good. Like I gotta say, it's probably one of the faster ones I programmed. So we'll see how it works. They evidently don't have, they claim they have an API,

but the API is a cloud API. Pretty horrible. Yeah, it gives you like, you like turn on the API and you turn it on. And then it gives you URLs, like public facing URLs the API and you turn it on. And then it gives you URLs like public facing URLs that somebody wanted to brute force or figure out. I mean, I suppose they could, uh, of your, of your installs. I think I'm going to turn that off.

Um, but they also have a, a IP control for a, like you can add custom IP commands in, uh, which I guess is how people are maybe triggering things in home assistant. Um, which I might look into. I don't know. I was looking just to see if they're like what the state of this thing was. So it works. It works. I'll give them that. And I will say the programming was actually fairly, there's a lot less complicated than the, what is this thing called? I've got a bunch of these now. Flirk, the Flirk one. That one is much more complicated to program. I'll say then the SofaPotent, SofaPotent was actually pretty easy, so.

Hmm, that's like the opposite I've heard. Well, not really the opposite, but I've heard the SofaPotent software has not been that good. I would say the software's not great, but it's very easy to program. Like you set up your devices, you set up your activities,

and it asks the right questions. I can't really complain, so. Yeah, that's true. Is any software really good? You know, no, as a software developer, no. And the last thing I did was I bought a new car because tariffs. What? So yeah, I guess I, you know, we were kind of were in the market for a new car. And mine has been less than reliable.

The Alfa Romeo, which I guess is Italian for always in the shop, was living up to his name and I was like, yeah, let the shop, was living up to his name. And I was like, let's move away from this car. We went out and got it. I got another Subaru, which is kind of cool, I guess, because it's like my fourth one, but they have like this new platform thing. Like it's got a big touchscreen in the middle of it,

like everybody else does. And they were like, hey, you get a my Subaru for like three years for free. I'm like, oh, that's cool. And immediately what I do, I'm like, I wonder if they get a home assistant for this. And guess what? They do.

So like, I can, I really looked into it too much. I can pretty much lock my doors and check my gas levels. I mean, I want to, oh, and I can get a graph, of course. Cause if you need a graph of your gas levels going down throughout the week, home assistant is a perfect place for that. So. Which car did you get?

I got the Outback, Subaru Outback. Oh, Subaru. Did not get did you get? I got the Outback Subaru Outback. Oh, Subaru did not get the turbo version. I got a good price on it though. Can't complain. Did you get rid of a couple of your cars then? Cause I think you had like a car that was like broken down. You weren't doing anything with. And then yes, it was like another car that you had, but it wasn't good.

Well, no, I got, I got a, I had a 2007 rabbit that we inherited. Yeah. That I wasn't doing anything with. So yeah sold that one There's I still have another X one my wife's X one that she wants to sell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is working fine I just need to sell it actually it's on Facebook marketplace and like I am the worst at Facebook because like reminds me I probably need to go check those messages because there's people are like, hey, this is available I'm like, yeah, yeah, and they never respond but then there's some people are like, hey, please call me. Please call me I want to this available? I'm like, yeah, yeah. And they never respond. But then there are some people who are like, Hey, please call me, please call me. I want to buy this. I'm like, okay.

I don't have time for this. Why am I doing this? I don't know, but there we are. Um, it's, I guess it's somewhat easier to maybe sell a car. I just need to come down to your house and have a grab sale. So if I feel like I'd be really good at it and you feel like you're in a lot of this, like you probably be way better than me. And then I'd be able to, I'd be able to get a couple of things out of it.

You know, yeah, some stickers. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I got going on. Home Assistant sees my car and I can lock the doors. I can't start it, but I'm OK with that. Like, it would be nice. The app has like a little start button in there. I bet there's a hacks or something.

Is it a subscription or something for it then? There is a subscription, but they gave it to me for free for like three years. So I'm not gonna complain about it. Yeah. So you can start the car from the app? Can start it from the app, yeah. Yeah, nice. So maybe they just didn't wanna build that

into Home Assistant for whatever reason. Yeah. It'd be nice if I could just, I don't know, push a button in the house and make it, or tell the Jarvis over here to do it. Yeah, a lot of possible safety concerns with accidentally starting if your car's in a garage and stuff like that too, right?

That's true, that's true. Mine's out in the driveway. Yeah. I didn't think about that, but that makes a lot of sense. Right, me. Yeah, and then I guess there's one other thing. I was tinkering around with the home assistant and off. I'm like, you know what?

I don't pay for this and talk about it a lot. I like gluing stuff together. I will sign up for the Naboo Casa remote access thing. So I signed up for that. So they're getting some money from me. Eventually. I think there's a trial, but I'm enjoying it enough. Oh, I'm going to pay for it.

You know, they're good, good people over there. So I figured I would just join, join the freight. You also get like, it's the Jarvis thing is supposed to work a little bit better. I don't know. I'm running my own models off of it right now and it's garbage. So maybe it's supposed to be better. I don't know. We'll see.

Gavin's like, no, it's going to suck. Just smiling. Not a comment at all. Like I'm talking about using Home Assistant. He's like, yeah. No, no. Yeah. Yeah.

That's one thing I just I'm not happy with. Right? Like is the I can't use it when like the TV's playing like quietly in the background or anything like that, because it just, it doesn't know my voice versus the TV voice or I don't know. I'm waiting on one day they'll probably fix it and I'll just wait, but the new betas they've added a lot of new voices. But it's only if you, I believe it's only if you have the subscription.

So you'll be able to play around with that too. Right. So they have like angry voices. I forget what they call them, but it's going to get interesting. Angry voices. Oh, did you know on the chat GPT thing that there's a, that's a very angry voice. I made the chat GPT that that angry voice. The voice thing, it's like Monday or something like that.

No idea what you're talking about right now. Oh, this is great. This is great. Hold on a second. What should we ask it? We should say, where's the button to do this? Wow. Thrilling. Another app launching. I'm on the edge of my seat. What's this masterpiece supposed to do?

Hey, can you tell me what the difference between I'm on the edge of my seat. What's this masterpiece supposed to do? Hey, can you tell me what the difference between fried cheese and fried Oreos is at a state fair? Uh, fine. Fried cheese is basically cheese, like mozzarella, breaded and deep-fried until it's all melty and gooey. Fried Oreos on the other hand are Oreos dipped in batter and deep fried into a soft, cakey. Okay, thank you. Okay. Yeah, sure.

Glad to enlighten you on that. I wonder how many fathers right now are sitting there going, that sounds like my daughter. Ah, all right, what do you want? It's like, hey, this thing's got an attitude. I like it. I'm gonna keep this voice. How many more trees do you think this voice kills

compared to like just the normal voice? I don't know, yeah. I need to get into the setting to see if I can speed that up. Cause it's very- The killing of trees, that's not good. Can't take that, yeah. Kill the trees faster, please.

You need more AI. All right, that's all I right. That's all I got. That's all I got for projects. Gavin, you don't have any projects on the board. What's up? I'm actually shocked. Like this is a rare occurrence where you actually have like a lot of projects. What's going on?

Yeah, it's been a quiet week for me. So I'm just going to pass it over to TJ. Wow. Let's just, I can talk about home assistant beta that was just released, but I'm not going to get, I'll wait till the finals release. It's actually, it looks pretty good, pretty exciting. So, you know, well, let's just enjoy this moment and pass it over to TJ. I think we can enjoy it. Um, you know, let's, let's, let's run it a little bit ago.

The, theness Community Day, I've signed up to host the Columbus, Ohio one. If you're in Central Ohio or anywhere, I guess around Ohio, they're probably going to be one in Cleveland and Cincinnati too maybe. But if you're in Ohio and you like Homelessness then you should come check us out. We're going to be at a brewery.

We're going to be right across from a food hall as well. It's a Bud Dairy Food Hall. There's plenty of good food options, even a Jamaican spot, Gavin. If you're trying to be at a brewery. It's going to be right across from a food hall as well. It's a Bud Dairy Food Hall. So, I mean, there's plenty of good food options. There's even a Jamaican spot, Gavin. So if you're trying to come down, maybe ask some Jamaican food, a little beer or something like that, that's a good spot to do that. Worth a drive. Yeah. I don't know about that, but yeah, so we're doing that.

That'll be at the end of the month. This week I've been working on Smart Garden 2.0 as I call it. So last year it was my first Smart Garden setup.0 as I call it. So last year it was my my first Smart Garden Setup that I had towards the end. I had the aqua flower Setup, which is really nice. It's just a little too expensive for me right now I'm a little broke with all this tariff stuff happening And so I've been trying to value engineer another solution and really just figure out what I actually need right because for me I thought I needed all these different zones and stuff like that.

And I do in some capacity, but you know, I was thinking at one point I'd have to have like two aqua flowers and that's like $800 or something crazy. They get, he's going to give me a little discount too. So it came out a little bit cheaper, but instead I've decided to double down on inexpensive smart home options and I bought another smart water valve thing. So this is the same thing that I had last year, but it's a different brand. It's sewn off this year. This is a thing that basically just attaches to your hose spigot and then, you know, you

turn it on and it outputs water through another hose spigot like connection. And I have one of these. They're $32 on Amazon. I'm sure you can get it cheaper on AliExpress But I just wanted to order a couple to try them out I have it hooked up to two of my drip line irrigations And now I'm watering like one whole garden bed and a bunch of my fruit trees with it and you know, that's fine I don't need to know, you know the moisture level on each one of those and stuff

I just need to water it a couple times a day so it stays consistently moist for all those plants. All those plants, you know? One of the things I've been trying to incorporate in my garden beds though, and I've posted a picture of this in the attachments there that maybe Seth will upload to the show notes, but basically all the garden beds that I've put into the ground, I've incorporated this edge around the garden bed. I've dug this edge like, you know, six inches deeper than the rest of the garden bed. And that's so I can put my low voltage lighting, like landscape lighting, maybe speakers at some point, but also my drip irrigation lines.

And so that way I know exactly where the main, you know, lighting or drip irrigation lines are, and I can always tap into it and get into it. And I've also been filling those little crevices with mulch. And so that way I can just move the mulch out of the way and service the equipment as I need to. And so I've done that in this back garden area where I've planted some arborvites and some rose bushes and my apple tree and stuff like that. So that's what I've been working on this week. I'm excited to have spring here and we're almost into summer.

So it's been nice to work outside and do some of these garden things I've been wanting to do. So the little trench you have and then you put the little brick edge over the top. Is that what it is? What's that? You have a little trench around the beds and then you have the little brick edge over the top. Is that what it is? What's that? You have a little trench around the beds and then you have the little bricks that you're putting on top of them?

A little piece of... Yes, I'm just going to fill it up with mulch. So like you... Oh. Yeah, I'm going to put mulch in that whole garden spot anyway, but that whole trench is just going to be filled with mulch. And so that way I can just move the mulch out of the way to access the low voltage wires or the drip irrigation.

Gotcha. This is also what voltage wires or the drip irrigation. Gotcha. This is also what I did in the front yard. So the sidewalk that goes up to the house, I put trenches on both sides and that's where I hide my landscape lighting wire. And so that way if I ever need to work on it, I know exactly where it's at. Because the problem with a lot when you do landscape lighting or drip irrigation and stuff like that and you bury it, you don't always know where you buried it. You have an idea of where you put it that But at least this consistently like I know where that I know where it's gonna be at. Okay. Yeah

And then I also I planted a tree this week. So I Nicole and I went to a murder mystery dinner. It was for charity. And part of it was you got to bid on items for an auction. They got items that people gave to them or whatever, and they auction them off. I accidentally won some antique mason jars for $50. I bid on it, not thinking that I would actually win, but nobody else bid on it, so joke's on me. And I also bid on it, not thinking that I would actually win, but nobody else bid on it. So, uh, jokes on me. Um, and I also, I also bid on this tree, uh, that's in this picture here.

Um, it actually had 40 lottery tickets attached to it. So there's someone that is, you know, it's a real tree. It's a flowering cherry, uh, with 40 lottery tickets attached to it. And originally this is actually what I wanted to bid on when, um, because we need another tree in the in at the house. And so, you know, Nicole and I talked before it started. And I was like, I think we want to go to one hundred fifty dollars. So it ended up selling for like three hundred and fifty dollars.

And I was like, well, but we can just go buy this tree for sixty dollars. So it wasn't that big a deal. Turns out the guy that won it didn't realize that it was real. And he lives in an apartment. And so he got up to the parking lot and he's like, well, I don't want this. I can't do anything with this. You get the lottery tickets, though? Yeah, he can. Oh, absolutely.

Okay. Mostly, he's going to give those away as a Christmas present this coming year. I find it hard to believe, but maybe. Yeah, there was a couple of people that I went to the murder mystery dinner with and they're like, we know exactly who wants this tree. And so I got the tree for free and I planted it on the street. I don't know if I'm fully allowed to plant this on the street. My friend down the road that works for the city says they were allowed to.

And so I did it. So it might get dropped down at some point. Um, but it was free. So I don't really care. Who do you? It's not a utility easement at all. I mean, yeah, no. There's a whole list of approved trees that were allowed to plant in this area. So as long as it's on the list, and the list is like 10 pages long or something obnoxious. So I texted my buddy, and that works for the city, and I was like, is this tree allowed? He said yes. And I said, all right, I'm going for it then. So if it's wrong, I'm gonna blame him.

I need a new tree, Jeremy. Maybe you get mine cut down. But I planted some, you know this little strip of yard that like, I don't know if every house has it, but my house has this like entire weird strip of grass between my house and the neighbor's house. It's like in between our driveway and the neighbor's house. And it's like, it's just stupid to maintain.

Like I don't need to get my mower over there to like, mow this grass that I'm never going to do anything with. And so ultimately, this whole area over here is just gonna be like wildflowers and garden beds and stuff. So I don't have to mow it at all. Yeah. And by I don't have to mow it. I mean, my neighbor doesn't have to mow it because that's who mows my front yard. Maybe it'll be cheaper. That's the, what are they, that's where you put that, the, the, like, it's like where, where they have like the lines of the grass, you know, like this person maintains their lawn, this person doesn't. Yeah. I don't forget what that's called, but. What, yeah, yeah, my neighbor like basically doesn't live there. I basically mean she does not live there at all. And so her grass just always looks awful anyway, so mine always looks maintained.

So I was going to plant wildflowers and stuff there instead. Nobody will care. It looks like there's already some wildflowers there actually. Little puffy things behind your tree. Yeah, those are everywhere. Her yard has dandelions or whatever they are. Yeah, that's all I've got going on. I'm interested if anybody else is doing any smart garden stuff.

This is something I'm really interested in because one thing that I didn't really take an account to, take an account for this year though, is that last year I had my flume water detector and I was able to detect if I have leaks and stuff and that's what actually notified me that one of my pipes had burst outside my tribulation lines. This year I don't have flume though because they installed a new water meter at my house and so I have no way to tell if I'm using excessive water and so that that kind of worries me because I don't know if one of my pipe burst now so I'm going to try to figure something out I can't install a smart water meter because my plumbing is

is awful and it's really cramped and everything so I'm going to get creative supposedly there's an online portal for the water meter that they have not enabled yet. So I'm going to have to contact the water department and be like, hey, I need this, please. I talked to somebody before that knew what I was talking about because we get our water from the city of Columbus and they have an online portal and I would assume they're just using the same exact thing, but they just haven't enabled it for our accounts yet. So maybe they can push that through for me. Yeah, we have something similar on our water meter thing that the company,

it's a weird, it's like a third-party company that maintains it. They have a portal but it's significantly behind real-time. So if you get a leak, they'll come out like, they'll be like, hey, we noticed you used a lot of water yesterday. It's like yeah, there's water all everywhere. What happened here? It's like thanks. Thanks for nothing House isn't supposed to do this Yep, yep found that out the hard way $300 later. Oh, yeah, that's uh, that's all the projects I have this week. It's a weird week when Seth and I have projects, but Gavin doesn't.

I feel like I let you guys down. Yeah, I mean, what are you doing? You need to get one of these light bulb cameras and let us know how it is. No, no, no. Get two of them. That's right. I need it for your floodlights. No, no. I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to say anything, Gavin.

It's like living in a glass house right now. Can't throw rocks. Well, that's going to wrap everything up. I think for this week, we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show and 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

Home Tech for as little as a buck a month. Any pledge over $5 a month and these are all tariff free numbers guys. Don't even worry about tariffs, we're not gonna count for that. I get you a big shout out here on the show but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slash that hub where you can join in there and talk about tariffs more I guess. I don't know. There's been a lot of stuff that's happening lately. New products, I think Jimmy's keeps finding... how does Jimmy find like the newest things? Do people tell him, I guess. I don't know. There's been a lot of stuff that's happening lately. New products. I think Jimmy's keeps finding... How does Jimmy find like the newest things? Do people tell him? I think people tell him.

He's in the know. Yeah, he's in the know. If you want to help out but can't support financially, totally understand. It's just appreciated a five star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast, Happy Voice, or tell somebody. I don't know. Promote the show a little bit. Go, I tell you what, go to the home assistant meetup in your area, right? The home assistant day meetup and to say, hey, you guys should listen to the home tech podcast. They're always talking about home assistant. They're always, they talk about the home assistant more than the home assistant podcast

talks about home assistant. We have a home assistant news label for our back ends. I know, right? That's how much we talk about home assistant. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, everybody that's gonna wrap up this week. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. you you you you you you I'm gonna go I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.