HomeTech.fm - Episode 527 - A New Birdwatching Hobby

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

It’s Home Assistant Community Day Season! Meet up with TJ or Gavin on May 24th in Ohio or Ontario. On this week's show: Ecowitt launches an inexpensive shut off valve with flow meter, Unifi announces new cameras, Sonos and IKEA are breaking up, Ring wants you to watch birds, Amazon Alexa+ is out, Gavin and Seth’s Navimow lawnmower first impressions, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the HomeTech Podcast for Friday, May 9th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the HomeTech Podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, home assistant meetups. Yay! That's going on. And the question that everybody's really asking,

is it May 9th when I'm listening to this? Well, it could be. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's been busy. It's been busy. Will this episode get out before the Meetups? You know? Will it get out before the last podcast episode?

No, no. Wouldn't that be- I'm only gonna go in order. I'm gonna go in order. I think about that. Oh. We are the top four podcasts. Oh yeah. According to the dead podcast readings or whatever.

You know what? It's the only time I appreciate spam is when they're, they're putting me in the top five of certain lists. Yeah. Oh, like those are the spam. I'm I click not spam and Gmail on. Oh, I emailed that person back and I said all the other podcasts are dead. I don't know why you're telling us.

I don't trust your evaluation. So no thanks for whatever you're selling. So. Top 10 podcasts. Six of them are dead, but you're doing a good job. Yeah, well, podcasts aside, Home Assistant Meetups are happening. We talked about it last week, which you probably

haven't heard of yet, because I haven't added at least the episode. Or maybe I have. Who knows? Home Assistant Meetups are happening. TJ is hosting one. TJ, what's going on? What are you guys doing?

You doing some fun stuff? So right now, I'm still planning on everything. I actually got in trouble. So I contacted several companies. I contacted Agnes from Zeus. And I was like, hey, Agnes, I'm working on this segment here, some products that work with Home Assistant. I want to showcase some stuff.

You know, she was very gracious and sent me some Z-Wave long-range stuff. You know, they want to advertise that. That's a relatively new thing for a lot of people, right? Z-Wave long-range has not been out that long. And I would imagine most people have no idea what it is. And so they're sending me some brochures and some products that I can actually showcase to people. That's great. Apollo automation is also either sending us stuff or

they're going to actually come and talk to us, whatever they want to talk about. And so I put on the little Luma invite thing and I was like, hey, we're, we're sponsored by, you know, zoos and Apollo automation, because I want to make sure that people know about these companies as well. And the whole business actually reached out to me, and they're like, hey, you can't say you're sponsored. And I was like, oh, like, you know, what can I say?

And they're like, well, you can say that, like, they helped you. And so I can't say that you guys are sponsoring anything, but you're helping us with the help and out in a financial kind of way that may help. Actually, yeah, so that'll be great. You're helping out. I appreciate that. In a financial kind of way that may help, actually. Yeah, so that'll be great. Yeah, you're helping out. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was fine because I said this local event

is sponsored by such and such, and I guess that's not the case. I don't know if anybody actually knows though, because if you know anything about laws and nonprofits, it's kind of, it's hearsay in a lot of ways. Yeah, well. You read the laws as much as you want, but you really don't know what the laws are

until you get in trouble. So. Yeah. And I think that what they're like a foundation thing. So, and I don't think it's even a US based one, right? They're not even based in the US. They probably have like way different laws than we do. So. Like Switzerland or Finland,

one of those countries I've ever been to. Um, but yeah, I got that going on. Um, I haven't figured out what we're doing yet. I'm basically, I'm reaching out to companies. So this is kind of my process, right? Wait, wait, wait. So you're going to do more than just drink beer at the brewery. You're having the, uh, home assistant meetup at, right? Um, maybe, I don't know.

It depends how many virtually, you know, that's all the team meeting, you know. Yeah, we should get like those little robot things like an Amazon Astra. But you guys on an Astra, you can just roam around. So I think what my process is right now is that I want to showcase some good products that work well with Home Assistant, either via the works with Home Assistant, like official badge, or just like, you know, Z wave and Zigbee products and stuff like that. So right now,

I'm reaching out to some companies that I've personally used and I enjoy and to see what they what they'll send me. Because that's a good segment because people can physically touch these products and see what they're like. And maybe I'll even set up like an instance with these products. And that way, see, people can actually see how they operate and like what? What is available to them and everything you're doing too much work? It is a lot of work It's gonna have like some trifold things like hypothesis conclusion Before the show we were all talking and I think was Gavin that brought it up the the hardware swap

I didn't bring that up. I just said I'd bring it a bunch of crap that I don't want anymore. Yeah, yeah. And then you called it a hardware swap, right? Exactly. You guys spice things up. This is marketing. So yeah, there you go.

The hardware swap, yeah. I think a hardware swap is going to be cool. So if you have some old devices that prefer always still, or some stuff that you're not using, or I'm out, bring it to bring it to the meetup and trade it with people, I don't care. I mean, we do this in the in the Slack channel once now. I have this is I'm just like, I'm not going to use this paper shipping and you can have it. So I'm still figuring out

what exactly a Home Assistant Community Day meetup is, because I don't think anybody else really knows either. No, I don't think Home Assistant knows either. It's the first time. I don't know if they really know what they wanted to do at these events. I just say, they're just like, let's have some fun and see what happens. Yeah, yeah. I think everybody will celebrate it differently.

I think everybody's going to have their own thing to do. Some people may want to go and actually have somebody to talk to. Yeah. You know, and, and, you know, at the Toronto meetup, I encourage that. If you just, you don't have to be a pro at home assistant. If you just want to come and talk, you know, you have something you want to do, uh, you know, come and meet up by me. Well, I don't drink beer, but I mean, you know, he could buy me a pop or something and we'll talk. Yeah

What it is, right? It's kind of like a home assistant networking Yeah fan because it's like, you know, who else is in my area that likes home? Do you have to even like home assistant to go to drink beer at your home assistant event? Like I mean just asking like what like well not mom because we're getting a partial reservation Like, I mean, just asking, like, what, like, well, not long because we're getting a partial reservation. You can just come join plus my exit. Yeah. It's like, what if you're just home assistant curious and like, you just want to like, what

is this home assistant thing all about? Maybe I should go. We accept all. We don't, we don't, we'll turn you away at the door. It's not like somebody's at the door going, hey, show me your home assistant dashboard. They wouldn't let me in. I don't think. Yeah.

That's for good reason. Well, yeah. Yeah. We talked about it earlier. I've got a bunch of stuff I need to send TJ anyway, so we can have, and Gavin, and Gavin, and Gavin. All right, yeah. I want to have a giveaway.

You know, I reached out to the Toronto organizer guy. I'm waiting to hear back from him, but if he gets back to me, I don't know what he has planned, but I'll say, hey, hopefully I'll bring something I can give away. We can do a little device swap. I have a whole bunch of sensors in a box here, you know, and the wife keeps looking at that box going, can we just toss it?

And I'm like, no, I will need it one day. And this is the day when I'll take it there, give a, give away a bunch of stuff and people will give me a bunch of stuff and I'll come back with a box full of other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like I have some Acara and like I'm never going to use because I think it's junk. Oh, well, maybe somebody else doesn't think it's junk.

Yeah. Maybe somebody else has, you know, I, the car stuff I think is junk unless you pair it with their hub. So you know, like maybe somebody has one of their hubs and they just want a bunch of little sensors and I'll be like, here, take them. You know, you gotta buy your own batteries though. I mean, no, I'm not giving you the batteries. Oh yeah, batteries are expensive.

Yeah, to be fair, all the Acara things I think are junk are stuff I bought off like AliExpress. So I'm gonna blame myself for that because whenever Acara has sent me stuff, it's been pretty decent. Yeah, I mean, I've got some, I'll send these up to you TJ, cause you probably need them.

You probably don't have them. I got some 12 volt wall board power supplies. I got some five volt ones too, make them in handy. I don't want it now. I don't want that junk. No, no. Don't send us your garbage garbage. I'm like, what are you doing?

What am I, a UA's facility? This is what I was worried about. So this- TJ, I'm gonna send you my old electrical panel. I can't believe I'm gonna call it like junk electronics he's gonna send you my old electrical panel. Like junk, junk electronics, he's gonna end up putting in this box. And like occasionally I do it to him, but he doesn't have to do it to me. I have some old network cables.

I don't need this one anymore. Here's a random piece of Velcro I can send to you. Yeah, some random Velcro ties I have some 14 three cable two feet. Here you go a loose zip tie This is a network end that you can use on a POE. Yeah Yeah, I have to bank on it's the fact that Seth never does anything So I'm never gonna get this package anyways, yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens You may be surprised TJ. You may be surprised. I'm holding my breath. I'm like...

I just want something to give away, Seth. All right, all right. You have a nice little suggestion. I got a month. At least mine's cheap. How much does it ship stuff to Canada? It's so much. I don't know.

It's got tariffs and duties and stuff now. We have an underground shipping railroad starting up now. Oh. I bet. Actually, we need one for America. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, yeah, getting stuff into your country should be expensive, but getting out of your country should be as expensive, you know? I don't know. I don't think like the tariffs are going into your country, but coming to Canada should be fine. We have tariffs all around now. I can't keep up to date. And by the time this show airs, it changed.

So I don't know anymore. Yeah. I did see you guys were up in America today though. That was nice. Oh, our prime minister. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He was just letting Trump know that, Hey, we're not for sale. Oh, yeah. Um, at that price, at the price. Yeah. You got the right price. Oh yeah. Everybody has a price, Gavin. Yeah.

We're bringing poutine to the table. What else? You know, Trump said, yeah, not yet. Maybe not yet. Yeah. Yeah. So we will see. I'll give you some eggs.

Under our egg network. Yeah. Oh man. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm actually excited for this community day. I don't know how many people are going to be at the Toronto one, but it says 12 are going so far, so that's a nice little group right there for a little, you know, to get a little talk on and stuff. Um, uh, I don't know where it's being held in Toronto yet, but if you're a

listener and you're going to the Toronto one, ping me, let me know. You'll be, you'll be showing up, like get ahold of me on Macedon, you know, through our feedback. You can even give me a shout on the, um, the meetup page itself. They have a messaging area you can message me on. Let me know. Very nice. Very nice.

Well, yeah. And I'm still looking through your, there's not a Florida meetup, which is probably good enough, I guess. So what are we going to do? Sit around, just play bingo all day. Like, I don't know. Send the junk all the way to Ohio. It's just, I'm going to ship all this stuff to Ohio.

Ohio is the place to be if you're in America. And if you're in Canada, I think the Toronto meetup is the place to be. Sounds like to me. So check those two out. We'll put links in the show notes for all this stuff. Man, some of these are getting big. Some of them, some of them I expect to be big,

are not very big. But look at this Minneapolis-St. Paul's got something like 20 people going to it. That's getting big. Some of them, some of them I expect to be big are not very big. But look at this Minneapolis, St. Paul's got some like 20 people going to it. That's pretty good. Brooklyn's got 34 plus. Paulus was on the Home Assistant podcast this week or last week, whenever it was because they always post like a month after, right? Long recording period.

He was talking about there was like one in Sweden or Finland or something. They had 100 people that are RSVP and 80 people on the recording period. He was talking about the, there was like one in like Sweden or Finland or something. They had a hundred people that were RSVP'd and 80 people on the wait list. Wow. I was like, do not want that. A wait list? Like, come on. Yeah, eight people deep wait list.

Rent the stadium, come on guys, don't be cheap. Oh, here you go. Barcelona meetup, nobody's on there yet, but that's where I would go. Oh, yeah, Barcelona would be nice. So, or there's a Manchester UK one. That would be fun. That would be fun. No people in the area there.

Oh, Dresden. Dresden's beautiful too. All right. All right. Ooh, Prague. I don't know. It's like looking places to escape to over the summer. So, let's see.

The Poland one says, sold out. What's Ohio? Are you gonna escape to Ohio? Can you really escape to Ohio? Over the summer. So the Poland one says sold out. Oh, I You're gonna escape to Ohio. Can you can you really escape to I or does it's gonna like keep you there? Like are you gonna escape out of Ohio? Yeah, it's getting back from Ohio London let's take a trip to London See Owen he's not in London, but West yeah, that's closer than where we are now. It's a little closer, so yeah. All right, well, yeah, we'll put a link to this show in the description, check that out.

And if you're listening to this show, go tomorrow, because hopefully, when I'll have it edited by, so. Yeah. Yeah. What was it, May 24th, right? Somewhere in there? Yeah. May 24th, so.

If it's May 24thth and you're not there, then you're missing out. So go check it out. But we do got a bunch of Home Tech Endlines going on, some new products and stuff. What do you guys think we get started? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right.

Up first, we've got a water timer from Eco-Wit. It's going on pre-sale. They've got a one inch, two inch brass motorized ball valve and flow meter. Uh, from what? A hundred bucks to 120 bucks. That's really good pricing. Yeah. This looks great.

It's a little water shutoff thing for what? Sprinklers and that kind of thing. Uh, this looks nice. I like it. We'll put this in here. What is this about? What do you like about it? Uh, I put this in here and I'm a fan of the Eco-Wit products.

Uh, keep in mind, this isn't one of those retrofit ones. It doesn't fit over like a- This is for like sprinklers and- Yeah, this you actually put in line. So you cut the pipe, you put it in line, it will cut it off. But yeah, I'm a fan of the Equip products. You know, they're well built and the price, like that's a pretty good price for what it is.

The market is trying to take in, or it's like this industrial style. I mean, the industrial style or if you had an irrigation that you wanted to do that needed this, like a zoned irrigation thing, the price isn't that bad, especially from what I've seen for this industrial stuff costs. This is actually really good.

Exactly. And it probably works with their hub and communicates over long distances using RF. And then you can probably integrate it with home assistance. So yeah, it's up for pre-order. Honestly, I wish we'd see more of these types of devices. I don't think this will work inside my house. I think my plumbing is three quarters, although it might be one inch. Mainly because like my situation is a little unique because my water closet where everything like the water heater and the furnace and all that stuff, it's like a super small closet. And I like the plumbing is just awful in there.

Like it's a very small amount and everything like that. And so I really cannot add like a shutoff valve because it requires such a large space to actually like clamp onto the pipe and clamp onto the valve and everything like that. And so the only other option that really exists and like the inline space that I'm aware of, there might be more, is the Moen flare, which is like $600. And that one I think you still need like six inches of clearance on each side of the pipe, the intake and outtake, or outlet. So I kind of wish I'd see inches of clearance on each side of the pipe the intake and outtake our outlet

So I kind of wish I'd see more of these inline devices They're they're not as convenient right because it's much easier just to replace like the thing that straps on to the shutoff valve But in tighter spaces, I think this makes more sense The W's the WF CO2 is not a standalone product though It must be paired with at least one compatible gateway or console to enable the smart irrigation functionality. And the gateway is cheap too. Yeah, that's how eco it works. Each gateway can connect up to 16 of these things.

So yeah, there you go. If you're really into irrigation or you have, I could see people having a need for this at their house. It's a one inch for a one inch pipe. One inch pipe, um, it's a one inch. It's a one inch, um, for a one inch pipe. One inch pipe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't think my irrigation is one inch.

I think one inch is coming in probably from the street. The street. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they show this for irrigation. What, what, what is really cool about this is actually it tells you how much,

uh, water is actually passing through it. Right. Because there's a lot of things you could do with shutting on and shutting off. And, and that's nice, but like actually telling your usage, that is a good aspect. Yeah. And that's why the inline is a little more, a little better than the strap on. For a two inch, for a two inch pipe. Like I've seen these before, like for two inch shutoff valve, automatic

switch, shot of found that kind of thing. I don't $18. That's insane. Yeah. That's cheap. And there's Europe version of it, you know, for UK listeners, they have the European version.

It's just the frequency it communicates on. Yeah. Even the Zeus Titan has $160 on sale. And that's the one I see recommended probably the most outside of Moenfoil. Check it out. If you need one, you probably know you need one. One and two inch brass motorized ball valve.

There you go, from Eco-Wid, so check those out. Let's move on here. We've got a new product, new products from UniFi. We've got next generation PTZ surveillance cameras. Let's see, well, first, I'm gonna go in kind of a reverse order here. They've got the little, they've updated the G5. Now they've got the G6 PTZ and this is a

little baby PTZ camera I will say if you think this is a PTZ camera it's more like a PT camera it has this one at least the G5 this one has a 10x hybrid zoom so it's got two lenses on it one for telephoto and one for regular old 8 megabits whatever image wide angle I guess. The G5 that's like I think it's limitation. This might help a little bit but not much like 10x isn't that much so not a bad deal. What is this the 399 I think the other one's 299 the G5 is 299 that sounds fun. They also have two new PTZ cameras coming out.

The first one is a $12,200, woohoo, AI PTZ industrial. $1,300, Seth, come on. Is it 12, oh, 13, yeah, $1,299, so there you go. IP66 rated 22X optical zoom, infrared night vision. It's got all the AI features that you want inside of it. And then they have the AI PTZ precision. I don't know why this is anything, but it's got 31x optical zoom, it's got LiDAR assisted targeting for

instant focus, and then it works. It works. It's got all the AI stuff in it too, but basically it's got the bigger zoom. I did not look up what the price was on that one, but these are available starting I think in May. And then I buried the lead here guys. This is the most exciting product I think I've seen in a long time coming out of UniFi. It's the AI horn speaker. That's right, a speaker that looks like those aging horns you see at the car dealerships announcing service con people need to pick up the phone or whatever in the back.

What, for 399, 400 bucks? But it's got AI. AI horn, you heard it here first, probably not first, but I don't know why this horn needs AI, but it's got PoE and that's the coolest thing to me. It's a PoE horn with AI. It's really bugging me is what's the AI on the horn? They've turned a $45 speaker into

a $300 speaker by adding PoE and AI. Am I paying for letters? It supports text-to-speech and pre-recorded messages. So you can say, hey, get off my lawn. And if somebody gets on your lawn, the speaker will sound like, hey, get off my lawn or something like that because it's a horn speaker and not anything fancy. All right. I need that.

Yeah. I kind of want one of these. Don't poop on my lawn. It looks interesting. It's got also, yeah, we can't figure out what the AI is, but it's the AI horn. So there you go. Excitement.

I'm here for it. I think I'm gonna get one. They also, it wasn't announced, Seth, but they released a new door closer this week as well. It's a mechanical door closer, just in case you needed a door closer still. That's a door closer. You know, like the little springy things that shut the door automatically whenever you open it. Does it have AI?

It doesn't. They could have sold it for three times as more if they put AI into it. Like the thing that's on like the commercial doors, like the thing with the arm at the top that's always broken or whatever? Yeah. What? They sell one now. Why? It's only $130. So it's cheaper than the AI speaker. But yeah. But what? I mean maybe they'll come up with an AI. Why do they have this? I don't know. I mean they sell door strikes as well so it's not really. Is it PoE powered? No. What would you need PoE power for? I'm just like, why would they, why are they selling this? I mean, I can see the AI horn.

I don't understand the door, the door closer. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense. Oh, they sell strikes too. And as somebody who's installed a computer. But that goes along with a lock, right? Like, well, yeah, but well, I guess, I don't know. Like a security system, right? And like the magnetic, yeah.

Sure. I mean, normally when you walk into a building and you're installing the, you know, the security, the access control system, right? And you're putting on the magnetic lock or whatever the mag lock or the, like, normally the door closers are already installed by the door company.

So I just like, maybe they're gonna get into doors. I really don't understand that one. Maybe you gotta replace it. Who knows? Yeah, it's gotta be this one. This has got to be the door closer. It integrates right with your unified. So why are they selling this? I do not get it. How much is a door closer from Home Depot? Oh, from Home Depot. I don't even know if Home Depot sells

door closes get very expensive, though, depending on how good of one you actually need to like 60 to like $300 depending on the quality. Okay. It probably just makes it easier for people who are ordering door access stuff to order a like one stop shop in a way. I'm just saying there's four things in the Eihorn. So

well, I guess it comes in multiple colors and finish options. Wait, no, no, it doesn't do that either. Yeah, it just comes in multiple colors and finish options. Oh, wait, no, no, it doesn't do that either. Yeah, it just comes in one color. And they have, amazingly, they have the 3D generated version of this thing mounted on a black door. It's a silver enclosure on this thing, so. Perfect. Perfect.

Nailed it, Ubiquiti. Great job. I'm glad we spent so much time on that and they didn't even announce it. So amazing, amazing. All right, well, we've got to continue our streak this week because we're not going to talk about it later. But Sonos is ending its collaboration partnership

slash whatever with IKEA. The Symphonic line will be no more. So the lamp, the bookshelf, the picture frame, no more. Current inventory has been phased out globally with no new devices planned. Sonos will continue to support existing Symfonyx products with software updates, ensuring that the compatibility with the horrible app

keeps going. I don't know, I'm kind of disappointed in this. I think Sonos should have expanded this type of program, you know, and embedded the Sonos should have expanded this type of program, you know, and embedded the Sonos product in more products out there. Like at least they could have said, this is the standard Sonos Wi-Fi junk or whatever. Put this in your product and we'll load the software on there. You're good to go.

Now you got a smart speaker. And IQ is the only one that ever do it. I was actually in a restaurant and I was listening to music in there. I'm like, it sounds pretty good in here. And you know what? It was those little, it was the picture frame ones. They looked ugly up on the wall, but they were there making noise. I'm like, yeah, it's not too bad. It sounds pretty good.

I agree. I'm a little upset at this. I thought it was a nice way to get into the Sonos ecosystem without spending the Sonos money because those things were relatively, they weren't good prices. Right. I have a couple of the bookshelf speakers. Um, they were perfect just to put speakers, dumb speakers in the house, in certain areas of the house.

You know, you just plug them in and you're there. I didn't have to spend $300 on a speaker just to have it in that room. Um, I w like you, I wish they had expanded it. Yeah. I think this is kind of a tightening down from Sonos. I think they're going through a change right now because of everything that happened in the past couple of years. And I think they're just, they're winding down stuff

that doesn't really make them money at this point. And I didn't really see the IKEA lineup as something that made them money. And when you heard people talking about it, it was always people who were already fans of Sonos, right? Because they had a Sonos 100 or Aero 100 or Sonos 1 or whatever it was. And they went out and bought a couple of these IKEA products because they were a little cheaper. That's the only people I ever heard talking about.

I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that they found Sonos through IKEA. And that might not be true, but I've never heard of that myself. I feel like I need to go get one of those lamps because we talked about those lamps forever and they've always looked so ugly. I'm like, that's the ugliest lamp I've ever seen in my life. I think they got like better options,

like shade options or something on it, but. Yeah, you can choose the different shades and stuff like that. Yeah. I love this photo that they used on the verge for the speaker why is the wall not painted they just give up there's like well we don't really yeah we don't know how to do the edges so they like glopped it on in the right-hand side there's like significantly darker they missed it yeah

I just thought they're saying art I I don't know. I just don't understand art I guess. At least the restaurant I was in had these exact speakers installed in a better way. Like the cable wasn't dangling out the bottom there and they were up on the wall. So I mean they had thought about how to install them and hidden the cable away and made it look nice. And they sounded pretty good. I was kind of impressed. I like audio and technology in general that blends in.

So stuff like this I was always a fan of. Like the lamps are very ugly, but at least they just look like lamps for the most part. And technology is always good when it blends in. So hopefully we see some stuff like this from Sonos though, because it would be nice. I doubt it. Do they have bigger things now in the Savonic series?

There was three things last I knew. It was the bookshelf speaker, the- The lamp, yeah. Picture frame. Picture frame, yeah. There's only three things that ever came out. Oh, I see what it is. The lamp, you can get a floor stand for the ugly lamp,

and it can be- Oh. It can sit up really high if you wanted to. I guess if you wanted to make a 5.1 surround with it, they would work. But yeah, they've got a lot of different options for this thing. Actually, it looks like there's a couple of different versions of the lamp,

the Symphonus lamp. That's interesting. There's the big ugly one and there's like a little tubular version of it out there. Well, let's move on here. Ring is partnering with the RSPB to encourage Gen Z in the UK to use security cameras for bird watching. Offering free 50 stick up outdoor battery cameras to participants aged 18 to 35.

This initial follows a survey showing that 24% of the Gen Z plan to try bird watching this spring, with over 60% of Brits already enjoying the bird watching there. So, often using security cameras. Is this like a thing? I mean, I like birds. I like to like hear, listen. We have birds fly around our backyard.

I didn't know that this was such, this feels like such an effort. Like, why are they doing this? Yeah, this is this is weird especially for I mean in my opinion a camera They're gonna use to watch birds. It's kind of useless if it doesn't record continue Because like I first of all is a bird gonna trigger a camera I guess it is because ring is doing this right? But what am I gonna get like a 30 second clip of a bird? I feel like I need more than that.

But I also don't use the bird buddy, like the little feeder thing that has a camera in it either. So I really don't know how they operate. Well, we're told that blue tits, great tits, magpies, pigeons, and owls often top the footage charts. But Ring and RSPB are hoping that people keep an eye for less common guests like song thrushes, green finches, and starlings, you got me on your selection of birds that attract us pretty good

I wonder why that tops those those particular birds top the footage charts. I don't know. I need to get in a bird watch I I do have a I do have a camera aimed directly at our bird feeders. So oh, I thought you were gonna say something else at our bird feeders. So, oh, I thought you were going to say something else. No, no. No, no. No, no. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No're not. So I guess in their earnings call, Andy Jassy said,

yeah, 100,000 people have it. I guess they're saying there's 600 million Amazon Alexa devices in existence, and 100,000 people are now using the fancy old Alexa Plus. So slow rollout, I guess. It's coming out. We were asking around the hub. I don't think anybody's admitted to having it.

So I don't know who these hundred thousand people are. They could, they could see people who actually like technology and doing stuff. And maybe, maybe they're just avoiding the whole motivation enthusiasts. Probably a good call. Give it to your grand ball. She loves it. She'll talk all the time to Alexa plus. Yeah.

I'm not one of these people. Are these influencers? Is that who's getting it? I don't think it's influencers. No, but it's's you're an influencer. It's only going to people that have the displays at this point. I think right So I honestly think those 90% of those hundred thousand people probably don't even know they have it yet Complained yeah, they heard a prompt about them having it and just said, this thing's getting annoying.

I just wanted to set a timer. Well, if you're cool, let us know. You can reach out feedback at hometech.fm. Let us know if you're cool enough to be one of the 100,000 users that is now have Alexa Plus in your house. We're curious. I'm just curious what's with the slow rollout though. They announced this a number of months ago and now only 100,000.

How many millions of people do they have to get to at this point? I mean, they probably just want to make sure they don't tell anybody to microwave their puppy to dry it off or something. It wasn't like Google telling people to put glue on their pizza or something like that. I mean, honestly, it's probably why. That's too good. Well, AI isn't there. Yeah, I was thinking on the Amazon side, maybe they figured out Alexa Plus is going to cost

a ton of money. And they're like, well, maybe we can slow roll this. Yeah, billions more on Alexa. I imagine if we lit money on fire even fast, the CEO is like, wait a minute, why would we do that? Slow down, slow down, slow down. Only a hundred thousand people for now. Well, like I said, if you're cool enough to have this,

please let us know, we're actually curious. How's it working for you? So, did you even notice? Is it able to set- Did you get notified? Did it just happen to you? Can can grandma set a timer? Like really? Come on. All right. Well, all the links and topics discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at home tech.fm slash 527.

Hey, nothing in the mailbag this week. We probably did, but I didn't look. Whoops. But we do have a pick of the week. And this one comes from actually in my community here on Facebook, someone posted this and said, what the heck is this? It's in my house, I've never seen this before. And I looked at it, I'm like, oh, it's a wall plate with some holes on it. I've never seen this before.

Like, what could this be? And I think TJ, you were, well, someone replied and said, oh, that's an old antenna thing, like an old antenna jack. That's what they go for. I was like, oh, that sounds right. I did actually Google search that, you know, what's an old antenna jack from the 1950s look like. And something similar to this came back as the answer.

So I was like, oh, TJ got it right, done. And then friend of the show, Robert Spivak, writes in and says, no, no, no, no, no. This is an old telephone jack from like the 50s and 60s, which checks out that's when these homes were all built. And here's an adapter on Amazon that you can still buy for it. Holy cow, man. Amazing.

Cause you definitely need this adapter in 2025. I just changed out the wall, right? Change out the wall Jack. Oh man. That's really cool. Thanks. I mean, I was impressed that like in the hub there, like someone actually knew and said, Oh, yeah, here's exactly what it is. Here's the adapter for it. If you need to make phone calls using

this. In case you're stuck in a house that's 90 years old and nothing's ever been updated, we got you. Yeah, Robert wrote in for it's a it's called a residential landline plug, four-prong, one pair, slightly wider, spacing to prevent connecting them up the wrong way. It was the standard in-home wiring in the 1960s before RJ11 modular plugs and the line cord was adopted.

So I immediately sent a link over to Amazon for some retrofit hardware. Thanks, Robert. It's just amazing, just amazing. I was just so impressed. I've learned over the years that when I'm in doubt about a connection that's in somebody's house, specifically when it's in a house,

it's an antenna, and this time it was not an antenna. I mean, it's a good bet. Because there are so many different antenna connections over the years, it's ridiculous. You can get a two pack for $ for 1499 if you need two of these If you send me one of these stuff, I'm gonna drive down. I guess we should get I'm gonna get one of these for the The home assistant meetup send it up to you. Make sure you give me that wall plate though from your neighbor Yeah, I guess you can't buy the wall plates anymore. We're just the adapters

Maybe we can get 10 base tee off of it. Right, right. Well, I thought it was interesting, kind of cool. I mean, the homes in the areas always have weird stuff like that because they have not been remodeled in, what, 50, 60 years because the original residents still lived in them. So, yeah, as the homes are aging out, new people are moving in. And yeah, you're seeing all sorts of stuff like this pop up some weird stuff from the 50s and 60s technology wise. It's kind of cool. Anyway, if you have any feedback, questions,

comments, picks the week's a great idea for a show, give us a shout email address is feedback at home tech.fm or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates, we have lawnmower talk this week, for sure, 100%. But TJ has some updates that he wants to tell us about, including an AI port that we were fighting before the show that may not be working or may be working. We don't know yet. What's the verdict, TJ? Yeah, I only have one project. It's actually been raining for like four days now. So I've literally not been able to do anything But I last week I had to order some Unified equipment for a job that I'm doing and I was like, you know what?

I'm just gonna go in through me a little AI port in there and so I can go ahead and get that Settled in and so I literally I got it today Seth. Once again got it today put it into my rack. It's already working I mean like it doesn't take much you just got plug stuff in but I was fighting it and it just would not connect to the camera like I tried you know deleting the camera rebooting the unified protect doing all this stuff and it wouldn't work I don't know if downgrading the resolution actually solved the problem it didn't seem to work initially but now it's working I haven't know if downgrading the resolution actually solved the problem. It didn't seem to work initially, but now it's working.

I haven't actually got to test it because I got it working right before we started the show. But before it wouldn't even allow me to connect it fully. It would connect to it and it would just stop, but wouldn't like give you any errors or anything like that. So I have not fully tested it yet but I have high hopes for it because Gavin seems to like his. Did you reboot it? That's why I told him to do it for me. I've opted, I twisted it, I rebooted it.

I did everything. I was like you know I work in tech. I know a little bit what to do but it wouldn't even connect to my G5 bullet initially. I have a, or a G4 bullet. So I think it's just something wonky with the AI port, unfortunately. They're good little devices. They do have growing pains. I see people complaining in the forums and stuff like that.

But they're improving it along the way. I really like mine. I added them to my cameras on the front of my house. And ever since I added them, the person detection has been flawless. Whereas with other devices, it would detect things in the driveway based on reflections or things like that. This really has been good.

Yeah. I'm excited. I set up a couple of different zones. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with those yet. I set up a zone for the driveway. I set up a zone for the sidewalk and the porch and the yard so I'm gonna I Guess I didn't ask but I assume it is Is this compatible with homelessness and cabin? Can I bring these zones and actions into homelessness? Yeah, you can bring the zones. I believe um the zones

I'm not sure but you can set up your, uh, you have people, animals, things like that. So the zone will only trigger, uh, and then turn on a person detected, right? You don't really need the zone and home assistant. You just need to know if there's someone detected based on your, your configuration in your area. And the zones are kind of cool because they even have features like line crossing and stuff. So you can catch, you know, cars that are coming, but not going, et cetera, things like that.

Right. So it's really cool. And yes, the Home Assistant integration is really good with, you know, FyperTech. Yeah. So I know that works normally. Like I have the G4 Doorbell Pro PoE and I'm able to get that into Home Assistant. So I assume the AI port was no different. Same thing. for doorbell pro POE and I'm able to get that into home assistant. So I assume the AI port was no different. Same thing. AI port just adds the features to on-vif cameras. And I think it adds extra features to some of their older cameras as well.

Correct. Yeah. And what's nice right now, hopefully it comes, we get more on-vif camera support, but right now you can do two ubiquity cameras or you can do one on VIF camera with it. They just add the second unified camera support recently. The face detection has been gotten really good since they first released it. At first it was either not detecting the faces or it was taking too long, but lately I noticed it now does face detection.

It's pretty fast and gotten a lot more accurate. Nice. I still don't have one of these. I'm still, I don't know, until my cameras work a little bit better with the Unifi Protect. And it's like, yeah. Did you put it on your driveway camera, TJ? I put it in my front yard camera. My driveway camera is the panorama camera, which crashed the last time. Oh, okay. I don't think it's going to work still. I have not attempted it though.

Yeah, my driveway camera, it surprised me how it was picking up the license plate from pictures that I can't even read the license plate on. So it's been pretty impressive. I mean, nobody comes on my driveway. We don't have people over, so. Like it'll only be tech to my license plate. That's funny.

We don't have people over, come on. But yeah, my license plate. That's funny. Yeah. There are a lot of people over. Come on. But yeah, that's all the projects I have. I was going to talk about Homeless System Community Day, but we kind of already talked about that. So, if you're in the Columbus region, maybe you're in Ohio somewhere. I don't think any other Ohio Homeless System Community Day meetups are happening right now. If you're anywhere in Ohio, you should come to Homeless System Community Day. And I'll be at our brewery too. So, if you're anywhere in, in Ohio, you should come to home assistant community

today and I'll be at our brewery too. So if you don't like me, maybe you'll like the beer. If you don't like home assistant, maybe you like the beer or, you know, if you don't know about home assistant and it's almost assistant, maybe the community's awesome. Yeah. I think that's probably the case. So maybe you'll get some free devices out of it too, at the hardware.

You might even some stickers might show up. I don't know. Stickers might be there. Yeah. All right. Uh, cool, man. Well, might, even some stickers might show up. I don't know, stickers might be there. Yeah. All right, cool man. Well, yeah, go to that, be cool. I have a couple of projects that I've done. I got the, like I talked about last week,

I got the Nemmo, the X3, the big boy. I'm calling it Big Bertha now. Because Big Bertha goes, I mean, I can't describe to you guys, it's probably like one and a half times the size of the iSeries. It's large, it's heavy. Like the iSeries you can pick up and walk. Like this thing, I probably should lift it with two hands,

like on the handle. The handle's big enough where you just like pick it up like this, you know? It's wide, it's a wide one. And the goal for me was to like see if it could mow the little like slope in the backyard. And I think after tinkering with some settings and going out and helping it with a weed whacker to knock down some of the taller stuff so it could actually mow,

I think I probably got it actually figured out and working. So there's a couple of settings that I was able to change. One is Gavin and I were talking about before the show, mowing direction. You can actually set the mowing direction per zone. And so I kind of set it up to where it's not trying to like go up and down the hill like directly, it's just going to go like at an angle or straight across or something like that. Not just like straight up the hill straight into like tall grass and that kind of stuff. Like, don't do that.

I think it's working a lot better. I noticed that it was able to get like a massive amount of stuff mowed today. And it actually, right before we got on the show, it got stuck. So I got to go and unstick it after the show. But it's probably stuck on some kind of weird grass thing. Right now, Ford is in a severe drought,

which is kind of fun. And at least where I am, I think we're like 13 inches down for the year on rain. So everything's brown, not growing very fast. But if we have any water that hits the ground, I think over the weekend it's supposed to rain again. That's gonna turn everything green green and stuff start growing again. So we'll see.

Uh, I, Gavin, I think you were doing this too, uh, paperless, uh, in GX with paperless AI. Yes. Yep. Yep. I had that hooked up for a while and I switched the model from, uh, what's the standard one that everybody uses? Uh, llama or whatever. I don't know. I switched the model. A what's the standard one that everybody uses, llama or whatever.

I don't know. I switched the model. A llama? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I switched it from a llama to the Microsoft one. And now I can't remember the name of it. It's some really dumb name, but it seems to actually work fairly well.

And it started classifying things a little bit better. I should probably look that up while we're talking about it. Microsoft uses the models from ChatGPT, but I think they have their own. I don't remember. PHY, PHY something, PHI, I think, something like that. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why'd you change them?

I don't know. I was reading on the Reddits there, and people were saying that it worked for them, and the one I was using wasn't working very well. So I switched over to this and it seemed to work a little bit better. Even after initially classifying everything in German words, don't know why I did that, I went into the little prompt and said, only classify things in English.

And then everything was fixed. So no idea what happened there. But one of the things I added onto this, and I think Gavin, I think you said you had something like this. I added a scanner, document scanner to this thing. The Brother ADS4300N. And N stands for not Wi-Fi.

And so it's a hardwired scanner. I can put a little document into the thing, press a button on it. It uploads it to the, what is it called, the consume directory there for paperless. And it sits in there and and every 60 seconds or so, paperless is like, what's in here? It'll suck it in and classify it and everything. Something comes in, I put on a little thing, hit the button, it goes through.

I ignore the tray where all the other papers are stacked up for a little while. When I walk by again, I'll pick those up and throw them in the shred pile or wherever they need to go. That makes it so much easier than trying to scan stuff with your phone. Yes. Just scan everything at once,

scans both sides super fast. I can put a whole document on there and just sucks it all in. And I don't have to worry about straightening out the pages or the colors or anything like that. No, it's a professional dang scanner doing its professional dang job. And I like the fact that it was hardwired. I think I can do wifi on it, but I,

I used my printer scanner and it's the same concept. I have a Docker running on my server and it gans it straight to that Docker. The Docker then creates the PDF out of it, throws it into consume folder. And then it's an, it's an automated process end to end. Yeah. And as long as it goes in there, at least I know in theory, I haven't lost it. I can find it somewhere, yeah.

Yeah, I can go back and look. Exactly. That's my idea. Because otherwise, I was able to just, I had a bunch of stuff on my desk. I'm like, I don't know what it is. Like bills, did I pay these bills? I have no idea. I'm just going to scan them. If they write in angry, I'm like,

oh yeah, I didn't pay that one. There it is. So I can print it. I can go back and pay it. I was able to just take a bunch of stuff off my desk. It felt really nice. Now I'm looking at it again. There's much stuff back on my desk, which kind of defeated the purpose.

But anyway, and then I was working on a big dock today. And like this dock is out on the water and it's just really, it's just a big long dock is what it is. And I'm putting some cameras out on it and I met the electricians out there today and we walked out where the conduit's all gonna go. I got it all laid out. I'm gonna have fun little box

that I'm gonna put on this dock. It's gonna be for like a Shelley, was it Pro 3 I think I'm gonna put in there, a POE switch. And just, I guess that's it, really? Maybe a little surge protector inside there, maybe a little bit of a breaker or something. I'm gonna get creative,

because with the Pro 3, you get to do some like DIN rail stuff, and I love DIN rail stuff. So I'm gonna hook all that up and plug it inside this box on the dock there. And if you talk about a big dock to people, don't use text to speech because Siri will mess that up. What's the say big duck?

Yeah, something like that. I know you were asking about a motion sensor for your big dock. Um, did you happen to find a solution? Not really. I think I'm just going to just going to let it be. They're going to have some motion sensing lights out there too. That are going to turn on and off. I figured, you know, we talked about using the cameras.

I just, I don't trust the cameras to actually pick up actual motion on water. It's just too much most of the time for the cameras. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah. I'm going to use the new Unifi G5s. We've got like three or four of those going in out there and maybe a fixed camera here or there. I'm not sure. And you know, there's going to be conduit. So if I need to get from point A to point B, hopefully I can run using that conduit and hook up another camera or something like that. So we'll see. Do you care if somebody's in the water by the boat or you just care about them being on the dock?

Yes. So there's probably like a 40-foot boat that's going to go in this dock. And the neighbors just had the lower units stolen off their boats. So there is a concern that there's some thievery, robbery or something. I don't know, the last one he told me was stolen. Then the Coast Guard called him and said, yeah, they found it running drugs between Cuba and Florida or something like that. So yeah, it's just like all of a sudden it's gone one morning and then they're like, yeah, he was running cocaine.

So yeah, I think there's going to be like two large boats there and then like some jet skis or something. So we're just going to keep an eye on them. I would say the unify would be good for that, but I don't know if unify has a, can detect boats. Uh, is that in their models? That's actually a good question. Does that classify as a vehicle? Yeah.

That's what I'm not sure about. Yeah, I'm hoping it can identify people and can track them or at least be alerted to the people in the area. And if they get on the dock, then yes, of course, like we want to be able to track them and I wonder if anyone's listening that has one of these cameras on a dock monitoring boats in the water. Does it work? You know? Send us pictures of your big dock camera.

Yeah. Yeah. Gavin, what you been up to? Well, this week was, so again, lawnmower. I finally got my Segway NaviMos set up. So I have the iSeries one, right? Which is the smaller one to your X series. Oh baby. Yeah, it's a baby, but still nice size.

It's still. It's a nice size. Yeah. Yeah. It was bigger. It's bigger than Clippy was. I mean, I will say that like the I series is bigger than Clippy. Clippy was a little bit smaller.

It still handles up to 5,000 square feet, I believe. Right. So it's a nice sized one. You know, I'll just be honest. This thing, I'm happy. Like it was really easy to set up. Like, you just took it out of the box and it was like a couple of screws maybe. And it was all ready to go, um, set up.

The hardest part was finding, I guess, the location, where to put the antenna, you know, where to put the dock. It's a little picky about that stuff. Cause it wants to get like a view of the sky. So you can't put it up against the house or anything like that. And, and that's, and my yard is a weird shape, like where the power is located to where the antenna has to go. Like it was very, uh, it took me a while to find the right spot.

Um, I had to get some long extension cables, run them through garden and stuff like that. It's, it's now, um, set up, it's running. Um, I'm really liking it. Um, it's got all the standard features. Um, you know, it has like mowing, map management, mowing schedules. The map management has a whole ton of features in it. I mean, the app, it will, it has a little bit of a learning curve.

Every time I go into the app, I kind of learn something new on the map management or something like that. Like today, you were telling me you can set the direction you can mow in, right? Like I didn't even realize that, right? But that's apparently when you're editing your map, you could set it. And you were drawing on things.

I didn't even know you could do that. Like you can set up a drawing. Yeah. You can write words in your yard. I'm like, I didn't know that. That was actually one cool thing I found. I think it's called Google or not doodle. You can doodle on your lawn.

So basically you can use, you can put words on your lawn and it will go and mow out the word or you can make it do an image on your lawn, you know, for special events, you know, like, I found that really cool, I'm going to mess with my neighbors and draw some stuff on the little hill, you know, and see what kind of reaction, but all my neighbors been looking at this lawnmower and they were just like, I guess I'm the first one to have one in the neighborhood.

I don't, a lot of them didn't even know it existed, but they're so amazed. And the first thing out of their mouth is, uh, uh, what if it gets stolen? You know, that's the high concern in our neighborhood. I said, it's got a lot of anti-theft. So you set it up. If it gets lifted, the alarm goes off. Things get disabled.

Things get locked down. You know, it has geo-fence alarm. So if it goes outside of a certain boundary, it will lock itself down. It will set off an alarm. Um, it goes outside of a certain boundary, it will lock itself down. It will set off an alarm. It has a find my mower feature. I guess if you have a big yard and it gets lost out there, you can... I think as if somebody steals it, you can find your mower too.

We also got the 4G module, so it uses the cell towers to communicate. So when there's no Wi-Fi can still talk You know back to the main hubs and stuff like that, right? So it's pretty much if it gets stolen. It's considered useless Yes, you may not get it back. They may dump it on the side of The road or something like that, but at least you'll call the company. I believe Navi Mo will honor I think they said they will replace it if you know, you may need a police report or something like that, right? But it's good to know all those anti theft stuff. It's got a bunch of tools for analyzing like your satellite signals and stuff like that, which really helps.

The one thing I want to I haven't tested yet is like because of where the antenna and stuff is located. It's kind of got to go around the corner of my house to get some of the line. And apparently people say it works fine. Um, it, it, it has like, uh, I think from the, the base station to the mower, it uses RF signals and it can reach that far. Um, so they, they were like, you should have no problems with that. So I will be setting up the front yard. Um, probably sometime this week to start mowing the front as well.

Uh, and I'll see how that goes, but, uh, it's got a lot of like a lot of features. I'm still learning. You can set up a zone where you have to carry them over to that zone. Because say it's in a weird position, you can carry them over there and then it will mow that zone and let you know when it's done and pick it up and take it back to its space, you know, or you could set the path that it's allowed to, they call it, what do they call it? Channels?

Where it's allowed to go through to get to where it has to mow. Like for example, the mower is in the back corner of my yard, but it's got to pass by the pool to get to the lawn. Right? So the channel goes along the edge of the fence away from the pool. And that's the only area it can travel. So it doesn't go in the pool, you know, but knowing one day, it'll probably end up in that pool.

I'm going to take a shortcut. Yeah. Who knows? Forget this. It's going to try and think for itself and probably end up in that pool, but I'm prepared for that. So it's got, but it's got some very cool features. It does not integrate with Home Assistant.

There are some wacky ways people have done it by creating sensors that are basically just asking Google commands and getting the feedback and updating those sensors. Very hacky. I wouldn't even bother with it. I mean, we talked to Wayne last time. I, we were trying to get him back on the show. I think he was like, yeah, this automation stuff's really cool. We want to do more of it.

So I think, I think he really is committed to doing that. And I think they've mentioned API coming at some point, you know, there's no confirmed dates or anything like that, but it does have, um, uh, the Amazon and Google integration. Um, though I know in Google, we were does have, um, uh, the Amazon and Google integration. Um, though I know in Google, we were talking before the show, you can probably, uh, give it an alias, but with the Amazon one, I kind of the only, you can only call it segue robot. So I have to go, Hey, a, uh, tell segue robot to start mowing.

And that's the only way you can refer to it. You can't change the name or anything like that. Yeah. That was kind of like, but I mean, it is what it is. It works. I I'm pretty happy. Uh, I know before the show you mentioned like 3d printing upgrades and you got print.

Yeah. I got the, the before, before they sent this, I, I've had this for a while, I guess I should say, I haven't had, but I mean, like, yeah, got the, before they sent this, I've had this for a while, I guess I should say. I haven't had, I mean, like, yeah. But the I series, I was like, I wonder if we could have more blades on it, because it has three blades on it. Yeah, they, I say I 3D printed,

I just went on Amazon and bought this, that's my 3D printing, but it came in the mail and it's like a little plate you screw on the bottom. And it gives you six plates. Gives you six plates, yeah, yeah, why not? Which is awesome. And I was looking on Amazon, it's kind of funny

as I ran across this on Amazon too, but someone's selling a sticker pack for your lawnmower with a spoiler, you know? So you get like eyes and a little mouth and you got a little spoiler for the back of the lawn mower. I was like, oh my God. That's fun. That's fun.

But yeah, when I was looking on printables, there's printables for replacement wheels that are better, give you more traction. There's so many things people are printing out there. You know, I really like this mower. Um, I think it's going to really help me with the lawn and reduce the amount of work I have to do with this lawn. Uh, if, if I ever were in the market for another mower, I'd probably look at the

next one up that you have is like the X3. Um, is the X series, was it? Yeah. So it's the X3 is the, the new one. I, that one just came out. And the main reason I'd look at that one is because it has a trimmer attachment you can buy for it. Right.

Right. And it's got an accessory dock on the side of it. I don't know. They may, they may come out with more stuff for it. So, but the trimmer attachment alone would make it worth it because then it could get all those edges and everything that I know where with the I series, I don't get that, so I still got to go out there afterwards and trim it. I mean, I can't be totally hands off, but that was when I saw that, I was like,

man, I want that one, you know, and then, and then you see things like the yard bowl that, you know, it could probably like, uh, fertilize your lawn and aerate your, it's got a wheelbarrow attachment it's dragging around your kid yeah exactly that's actually what i could get you know use the camera to identify and pick up dog food and having a robot lawnmower is kind of like having a robot vacuum if you ever had one i mean it's it does the job good enough to where you don't have to do it all the time, but you still have to go and get in the corners and you still have to go sweep

once in a while because it doesn't get everything. That's what's nice about having a robot lawn mowers though, is that I basically weed whack like once a month, maybe twice a month just to get around the edges and stuff like that. But that's it. That's all I do. Even when setting up the yard, at first I was very picky about it, but then after a while I was like, I'm not going to get close to the edge. I still got to come out here with the weed whacker.

So I'll just get as close as I can to the edge and it mowed all the inside. So, I mean, if I have to spend 20 minutes just going out there with the weed whacker to do the edges, so what? Yeah. You know, that reduces the amount of work I've done significantly in the first place. So yeah, I really, I'm really liking this. I mean, I've only had it for a week, but I swear every day I've mowed my lawn. I know, my backyard at least.

I know, right? You're just sitting it out there. You know, I've just, and I've watched it, you know, it's like, you know, it's just like tell it to go mow now and you see the thing come off and you're so amazed. You're like, look, it's mowing. It's just like, tell it to go mow now. And you see the thing come off and you're so amazed. You're like, look, it's mowing. It's just like, just another day at work. And it screws them up. Yeah.

I do like, there's a couple of things. Well, first thing I do like about these types of lawnmowers is like, they're super quiet, right? So you can set this off at night while everybody's sleeping and no one. Oh my God. Like I don't even know how to explain how quiet this thing is. Like it's so quiet that I didn't even know how to explain how quiet this thing is.

Like it's so quiet that I didn't even realize it was cutting. The only way I could tell it was cutting was I actually saw the blades of grass dropping on the ground. But it's so quiet. I was expecting it to be louder. Yeah, it's now I guess on on the Navamo on the X3 specifically, it probably was turned on on the eye. I just don't remember. It had this like beeping sound that would turn on. It would make this beeping noise when it was spinning up the blade.

Yes. When it was going to start cutting. You can go in and turn that off. I either didn't realize or whatever, it came default like that. I had it mowing the lawn at night. It was getting stuck back behind my daughter's room. And she came out and she's like, I can't go to sleep with all that beeping out there.

I'm like, what beeping? It's like, oh, it's, it's beeping outside her window. So when turned that feature off, it's got a bunch of like little lights on it. Uh, that, that can, I guess, Gavin, you and I were talking about, you can turn those, turn those lights off. Uh, turn on eco mode. Yep. Yeah.

So that's kind of nice. Um, if kind of nice if you want to do that. I kind of like the little blue and green light. It was lighting up my yard. It was way too bright, so having it off is better. And this thing's so quiet that I can leave it going during the day. I would still keep an eye on it. I don't know if I could trust this being out there at night when I'm sleeping.

I wouldn't be able to sleep, but I think it's fine. Yeah. I think the other thing that I guess that I learned about the new one, the X3, not only does it have a little connector thing on there as well, it's got variable mowing heights on it, but it's like the one, the, the I series, it's got like all that dial on it, right? You can just dial in how high you want it to be and you're good to go. And that's perfect, I think. But like this, this one has it.

If you wanted to change what you wanted, how high you wanted to cut in the zone up to like four inches, you can adjust that in the app on the zone. And it'll just go to that zone and adjust the, I guess the plate up or down underneath it. I don't know. I don't know how it works adjust the, I guess the plate up or down underneath it. I don't know. I don't know how it works. It's magic, but it does it. So, and that's good for like in certain areas, you don't want to cut too much off your grass, right? So you could start at four inches today. Yeah. And then the next time you cut it, go quarter inch and lower it down over time until you get to the height you want.

And that just makes it so much easier. Well, and I think like the idea behind these is that you could send it out every day to like mow something. And it doesn't like, it's not like the same mow as you get from like a big lawnmower, right? It's a little bit different of an idea. It's just like over time, you find out like, hey, the grass is still kind of short, but I haven't been out there in a while.

Like, oh, the edges need to be weed waxed again, but I really haven't had to deal with it. I guess like, it's to me, like, it's never these when I had Clippy up and going, rest, you know, rest in peace Clippy, like, he just kept the lawn down, like, it just kept parts of it down. And I didn't have to worry about doing all that work. So that's what I find nice about these, these devices. And they're pretty good.

My neighbor does like it too, cause it doesn't, um, put all the grass clippings in the flower bed. No TJ summarize it perfectly. It's like having your robot vacuum, you know, it, it reduces a lot of the work, but you still have to go out and do a little here and there every now and then. These people on printables are crazy. They have like a 10 version, nine, nine blades on this thing. What are they doing?

And even when you look at the wheels on printable that they've done, one guy has like eight different designs of wheels that you can choose from which one you want. Right? So yeah, they are like, it's modular wheels. You could do the outside a certain way and the inside a certain way. But it's pretty cool. I might have to do some upgrades. Mods.

All right. Well, we'll keep you posted on this and we'll try and get Wayne back on the show soon to chat with him and find out what's what they're doing over at Navamo. I'm sure since that's owned by Ninebot.. So I mean, that's a Chinese company, I'm sure he's pretty affected by these crazy tariff things that are going on too. So it'd be interesting to get his perspective and see how they're they're handling over there. For for a, what is it for like a 10 15 $30 product? I was looking at the Shelly stuff. I'm like, if the tariffs go up, like who cares if it's like 10% more right? Seven seven bucks more for a Shelly device. It's like, 15, $30 product. Heck, I was looking at the Shelly stuff. I'm like, if the tariffs go up, who cares if it's like 10% more, right? Seven bucks more for a Shelly device. It's like, okay, no big deal. If one of these goes, what do these things run? I series, what, a thousand bucks, 1200 bucks?

Like a thousand dollars for the first best one, sorry. So that's gonna be a lot more, like what, a hundred bucks more, potentially more for the device. It might chase people away, I don't know. But we'll find out what they're doing over there about it. I will say this X series, I mean, it's large. It's big.

If you, if you don't need a giant lawnmower, don't, don't get this one. Mine gets stuck on my picnic table. So this one would a hundred percent get stuck on it. This thing is so, so big. But if you have like rough terrain, this would probably be better for it too. Right? Like the X series, the X series, one at most higher, but it also was able to handle 50% incline where the I series was 30% inclined.

Unless you change the wheels, then you get a 35% incline. You know, if you have a hill like that, you might want to consider the X series, but I'm going to be testing the mowing direction, like you said, and maybe I can make it go up my hill, you know, side to side and that should be able to handle it. Yeah give that a try. I ran across I knew about that feature so I was gonna give that a try and then there was the other one like a traction control or something feature. Yes, traction control. Yeah it's like I think that's a newer feature because it wasn't there on the other one I mean it's on both of them now like it's something you can turn on on the i-series

and the X Series. I didn't even know that was a thing. Like it was off on the I Series. So when I turned it on the X Series, I turned it on the I. Just, you know, why not? Because my line can be a soupy mess or it could just be dirt and sand. Who knows? Like right now it's just dirt and sand.

It looked like dirt when you sent us the picture. Yeah, everything's dead. I was like, where do you even cutting over there, Seth? The weeds. Cutting the weeds. The nice part that I really like about this is they're actively developing this, right? So I went and read the change log for the firmware upgrades and the amount of stuff they've added in since last year,

you know, shows like they put a lot of effort and time and work into it. Even you guys said when you set it up last year to now pulling it out this year, you've seen a number of changes. And that's good to see. Well, it's one of those things like you just want to set it and forget it most of the time, like you do have to go out and change the blades. I will say they have a pretty liberal view on how long these blades are going to last. And I don't know if it's just the Florida grass that we have. That's just like, it'll cut you if you try and cut it. But I think that it needs a little like their timer is not, I think it needs to be a

lot shorter. Like I can adjust that in the app too. Can you adjust the length? Okay. Cause well, I mean, like, I don, like, I don't know what that means. Like, I probably would half whatever it's set to now, I guess, is probably what I do. But like, it was like, how many hours

or something that it runs. And then it's like, you need to replace, you just like your robot vacuum. It's like, oh, you need to change out the filter or whatever, because it's been X amount of hours since it's been used. I really don't know what that means, but I can tell you probably after a week of use, which could be just like two or three cuttings,

those blades are just dull. And I would say it's almost like an every week thing, maybe every two week thing where you go out and replace the blades. And that actually does help your battery, keeps your battery going, because it slices through the grass faster, or better, more efficiently.

It works less I guess or not at all because the other one I had running for a bit. I'm like, it's not cutting the grass It's like doesn't seem like it's doing anything. Yeah, it turns out the blades were just dull. So go place your blades Yeah, I replace mine. I think once a year is fine. I really don't know Once a year? Oh man. They rust off in here. Like they- Oh yes, they don't have that problem. You're by the ocean.

That does a little, some damage to things. We have a little sharpener guy that comes around every month or so he'll come driving around and you just take your lawnmower out to front and he'll stop and he'll sharpen your blades. They're gonna take this out to them. Yeah. They're like, I sharpened my blades.

I'm gonna take this out and go, here you go, sharpen these blades. Sharpen my razor blades, please, yeah. I need somebody to make some carbide blades for my robot lawnmower. You know how to make the carbide blades, like safety knives and stuff like that, razor knives? Like Cutco, like Cutco versions, yeah.

I need some good blades. Yeah, you can get like replacement blades off Amazon, typically very, very cheap and probably not the greatest quality, but they work for like, like I said, a week or two here and then I'm replacing them. So they definitely wouldn't last a year. I have not seen that happen.

So also you have soft grass up there, TJ, you have to realize. Yeah, that's true. My grass hugs me when I step on it. Mine is angry grass. So yeah, it's got to fight every time it goes out there. It's it's it's actually suck right now. So I have to go fix it after the show here. It's getting dark. So anyway, is that it? That's all you got, Gavin? Yep. So that's my review of the Navi Mall and I will be on home gadget geeks again this this week. Oh, and I will be on Home Gadget Geeks again this week.

Oh, yeah. You're going to be on this week? Well, hold on. When's Seth going to... Oh, no, this show... I was on... It's a mystery. Let me correct myself. I was on Home Gadget Geeks last week or week before, so go check it out. Sometimes in May, yeah. Yeah, I was actually going to mention I'm going to be on the 29th, so in three weeks from now.

Or last week, if you haven't got set. Yeah, who knows? It's the 29th. Whenever the 29th is, whenever you listen to the show, you'll know when that is. So on the 8th of May is when I will be on there. Going for the quarterly release. We'll just do it all at once, like 15 shows, bam. It's like, oh, it's a back catalog coming out.

You don't need to have any ideas. Yeah. All right. Exactly. I will try and get at least last week's show out soon. Yeah, this week's show soon as well. So we'll see. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up everything this week's show soon as well so we'll see. Alright well I think that's gonna wrap up everything this week we do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially those 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 dollar a month just a dollar but any pledge over five bucks might get you a big shout out here on the show but every pledge gets you a private invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day in there and look at old wall plates, pictures that I post and trying to identify them. You know, mystery wall plates. There you go. I put, I, did I put, I think I can, I can put my big, big doc pics in there too. So if you want to see my big doc picks, that's where I'll put them.

Anyway, yeah. All right. If you want to help out with cancer support financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating app at the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up this week in Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week.

Take care. Until next time. I think I'm going to buy this horn from Unified. The AI horn. Yeah, I saw AI horn. What's it AI-ing? It's just a horn that you can buy at Unified Protect. So what's the AI in it? What's the AI? Because they call it's a horn that you can buy and unify protect. So what's the AI in it? What's the AI?

Cause they'll they call it the AI horn. Everything's AI Gavin. What do you mean? It's like when blockchain came out. It's all getting, we're putting this on the blockchain. Okay. So I just scrolled by it and everything moved and now I can't, oh, AI horn speakers, securities, the AI harsh, which automatic with automated voice deterrents and real time audio interactions

supports text for each and pre recorded messages enable edge AI powered commentary. What's the AI part though? I mean, you know, it's got technology. That's so what does it detect sound and then play something back? No, no, it's just a horn, Gavin, come on. I'm asking legit questions here, like, you know, a horned speaker. Horn, horn, horn, horn, horn, horn, horn, horn, horn.

Horn. Horn, horn. All right, specs. Hardware, it's PLE+, you have enough POE? Yeah, definitely. I got this. Yeah, more than enough POE. 210 watts going out there.

I need 10 gig on this AI horn. Two and a half, 2.5 gigahertz, gigabits, gigabits, otherwise, 200 gigabits. Gigabits 2.5 gigabits gigabits gigawatt. How much are these things? $300. I mean, that sounds pretty good. I mean, a regular horn is like $50. But this one supports AI Edge powered commentary.

Okay, tell me what the AI does. Like is it have a zone? You're on a need to know basis, Gavin. You don't need to know. Well, I, you're not going to buy this. What do you care? Maybe I would just for the hell of it. So I could, you know, piss off my neighbor. Put it in the garage.

I think it's, I think it's got some AI capability. To do what though? How? Tell me. Like a mine cryptocurrency. This horn is $450 Canadian dollars.