HomeTech.fm - Episode 530 - A Community Day Success

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

On this week's show: Home Assistant Community Day is a success! Switchbot has a new lock that looks at you, Tapo has a $70 budget smart lock, Google adds AI to APIs, TCL TVs get better audio support, myQ adds a video doorbell, Apollo Automation launches a new POE powered mmWave Sensor, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, May 30th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Hubbard. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home animation, home technology, and home assistant meetups. Yay! How did they go, guys?

Tell me, tell me, how did they go? Yeah, you know, honestly, it was pretty fun. We had, I think, about 16 people there and everybody pretty much stayed for the whole time. I don't think anybody left until maybe, you know, 30, 45 minutes before our posted in time at 4 o'clock. I got to see Trevor and Justin from Apollo Automation. We went out and had some dinner afterwards. So it was great to actually spend some time with them and hang out.

And we met another friend there named Brian as well. And we all had dinner. It was nice. But honestly, it was a really good time. Everybody there was just, they were excited about Home Assistant in some capacity. They either have been using it for ages at this point, or they were a new user.

And we actually had a couple relatively new users to Home Assistant, which I kind of found surprising to be honest. I just thought most people that would go have been using it, would be using it for a while. So it's kind of nice to see that difference there. We had products from Innavelli, Rail Link, Apollo Automation gave away stuff, and Zoos gave away stuff as well.

We gave over $1,000 worth of products away. Wow. Everybody walked away with a new device, switches, some cameras and stuff like that, and all of it works with Home Assistant. So they could take it home and install it right away. So that part was really cool. It was honestly a really good experience. I had kind of like an itinerary of what we were going to do, but we kind of just

hung out. We didn't do anything that I really talked about doing. Everybody just kind of hung out and talked about their automation systems and the products they use. And it was a fun time. Did anybody pick up that sweet, sweet LED I sent you? I did not bring that for some reason. I honestly don't know where I went, Seth.

That was very weird. Weird, strange. The one hanging on the wall behind you? Oh. Did your neighbor say anything about the box that you got? They were kind of curious? No, honestly, he did not. Oh, that's odd.

I mean, he looked at the box, so. Yeah, he said, TJ, a special box. Not shrimp, but this, it was a, I guess, I guess if you picture a bidet, but without the nice little stream of water that comes up and maybe like a bristle brush on a motor, it was something like that. And yeah, it was a fun little box. Oh, it's painful.

It doesn't sound good, honestly. It was advertised as like a travel one as well. Oh, the travel one's awesome. It's like, you can use it in stadiums. Did you actually not have a box or did you just buy that box on purpose? Because you got that from Amazon. I had that one just laying around. I mean, I had a bunch of those laying around.

Gavin may get one too, who knows? Oh, me? That's probably why he hasn't left Florida then. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Your little gift box to me has been going around Florida in circles, Has it left Florida? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Your little gift box to me has been going around Florida in circles, and I don't think it's ever going to make it here. It's probably forgotten on somebody's truck.

How was your home assistant community day, Gavin? The home assistant community day in Toronto was amazing. I was actually shocked. It was better than I actually thought it would be. So the host, Max, he did a great job. He organized everything. Got the venue, was down in the heart of Toronto. And we, I think he had it booked for initially for like just 25 people.

And I think we got more than that. Right. So that was even good. He had presentations. We had a screen set up and people, you know, created presentations of their dashboards and I guess the main focus was dashboards, which was really cool. Cause everyone was seeing how, um, each other handled dashboards and you asked questions on how they, uh, uh, handle things and one gentleman, Mark, you know,

like he, he just loves talking dashboards. So, you know, it was kind of funny to see him, you know, time. All right. That's enough, you know, but he's a great guy. Um, and I know he could talk for hours on dashboards. Ours lasted, like I was there till probably at least five o'clock before, you know, like we, we finally left. So, you know, people were having great conversations.

Apollo was there. Um, I got to thank them for the t-shirt. Uh, we did some gave giveaways. So Apollo gave away some stuff. I brought a home assistant voice and gave that away. Um, there was another giveaway that was, we had, I can't remember what it was, but the coolest thing was we had kind of like just, uh, I'm not going to call it a junk table, just a freebie table. So I went through my box of stuff that, you know, I, I, I've decommissioned.

They worked. They were great. It's just, I didn't need them anymore. So I brought a whole bunch of stuff and I, I poured it out on the table. And I said, take what you want. And there was another guy, I want to say his name is Alex. I'm sorry if I got wrong. Um, he brought bags and bags of stuff and he poured it out on the table.

And when I say like, I was, I was shocked with what it was, what you had on there because there were things like Apple TVs. There were, um, there were, I was shocked with what it was, what you had on there, because there were things like Apple TVs. There were, um, there were, I got a Harmony remote. He's a dove in over that one. As soon as I saw that Harmony remote, I was like, Oh my God, a backup, you know, like, I know I'm going to need this. And it's not the elite.

It's the one before though, the one, the Harmony one, still the touch screen and stuff, so it was still good. It was still a good grab. And then there were all sorts of little like, like just a ton of stuff just on this table. It's just like, take whatever you want guys. And people would come by and some of the stuff I had, I had to explain to the people, because it's not obvious.

It's like, this is a Z-Wave extender and they're like, oh, okay. I can use that. And I'd say, there you go. Or this is a Zigbee plug from IKEA, but where you would use this best is this situation would be like, yes, I would solve my problem. I'm like, here you go. Enjoy. So I, I got rid of a whole bunch of like, I'm not going to call it junk, but

just, you know, tech that I didn't use. And the first thing the wife said to me when I got home and she says, I thought you were going to get rid of all your junk, not come home with somebody else's junk. Yeah. You used to have junk this time. Yeah. I go like, well, I treated all that for this Harmony remote. And she's like, another one.

I go in case that one breaks. Yeah. So it was kind of funny. And we met a few listeners there and just got a shout out like Dave, Todd, Mark, you know, and there we got some new listeners because when people are you know, like hearing about home tech.fm They instantly just signed up. They're like, yes, so we gotta listen to you You know, I added you to the list so, you know and they took my contact because everyone always has questions and stuff So, you know, I'm pretty sure they'll use gas, you know over time, you know

And it was it was just an all around great time. And I think they want to do this probably more than once a year. I think that was the consensus from a lot of people is they're like, we want to do this like every six months. If anything, because there's so many topics that people have, like people were curious about one gentleman. He was talking about his pool and that had that had me because he was talking about how his pool is all automated. He has a house in Florida. Um, he, he's away from it a lot, but he automates everything in his pool to even the point where he can drain the pool if they get too much rain.

And I was like, that's a cool idea. Right. And then even as the robotic, um, pool cleaner, he can control that remotely too. And I'm like, I want that, you know? So it was a really good time. I look forward to the next one. Oh, we have pictures, you know, I think we're sharing them with the home assistant guys and everything. We got stickers, you know, they had Toronto meetup stickers

and everything, so that was good to see too. So it was just good. It was good times, good talks, and it was well organized. Yeah, I got a couple of comments. People are like, how often is this going to happen? Yes. I was like, well, right now, it's only once a year as far as I know. I said, but I could see it happen like twice a year.

Yeah. Twice a year feels like a good number. I don't know about anything more than that. But it definitely seems like at least people, it sounds like people in both of our areas wanted this to happen more often. So. Yeah. I see it. I think it will get bigger too because there are a lot of people afterwards that,

you know, they couldn't make it for whatever reason, but there were a lot of people like, I didn't even hear about it. Where do I hear about this? So I know they set up a telegram channel. I have to join, um, for the Toronto meetup that they, you know, so people can keep on touch, they should just set up a forum on the home assistant forums for meetups. You know, and people can have a thread. They should just set up a forum on the home assistant forums for meetups, you know, and people can have a thread for their specific city.

Yeah, we're gonna, I guess, so there's a tech group in Columbus called Tech Life Columbus. And they do like a lot of tech events and stuff around town. So I think I'm gonna work with them. I typically work there like summer festival and sometimes their winter festival if I'm around, usually selling beer at like summer festival and sometimes their winter festival come around. Usually selling beer at the summer festival to raise money for the organization.

But I think we can do something more with that as well with everybody so that way there's more home automation stuff. I think home automation is such a fun topic anyway. You could always find something to talk about. Exactly. You know what I mean? And I just want to, you know, I really want to thank not just the organizers who helped make this all great, but I want to thank all the supporters of the events. You know, the companies that sent devices to give away or something like that, you

know, because they didn't have to, but they decided to support us in one way or another. And we really, really appreciated that. Cause it made it just better when everybody got to go home with something Yeah, yeah, and it was really nice too because you know I some of these brands You you know that like people know about right like people know about zoos people know about Annabelle and stuff like that But it's cool to meet people in person. You're like, oh have you ever heard Annabelle and they're like, yeah You know, I use their light switches at my house or you know

I have these zoos devices here and people are pointing to the stuff and it's like, I use this already. And I'm like, that's awesome. Yeah. You know what this product is then, you can vouch for it. And everybody had positive things to say about Zoos and Ennevelli. It was all good things. RayoLink as well. So that was a pretty cool aspect.

So Seth, how did yours go? Well, I had a hot dog that day, so I guess that's really. You should have started one in Sarasota. I know, Seth. Really. All the old people could have came. Yeah. I know.

They'd be like, what is this? Is this bridge? I don't need any assistance. So will this know if I fell? No, next time, Seth, you got to get one going out in Florida, Seth. And, you know, we, we got to, we got to have one for each of us. Yeah. I don't think there was any, I don't think there was any in Florida at all. Um, yeah, I didn't see any.

So I don't know. I don't know. I, I, I'm sure as things pick up, it'll, it'll become more and more of a, a popular thing to do, like right at the end of the school year and with everything going on in the last week here, like probably, I think it was on holiday weekend too, like probably not the best day to do it. I don't know, maybe they could adjust

the weekend they pick, it'd be great. Well, they, yeah, and they definitely need more notice, right, because that was the problem, is like a lot of people didn't know that it happened. Cause I was sharing photos like the home assistant Facebook groups and stuff like that. And people are like, I didn't even know this was a thing. And I was like, well, to be fair,

you only had a month notice. So even if you knew it was a thing, there was a good chance you wouldn't have made it. And that makes sense why there wasn't a ton of hosts, but there's still a lot for such short notice, right? Yeah. There's still a lot of places and everything like that. So it'll be crazy next year.

Hopefully, they do it with a two-month notice, though. Yeah. Hopefully, they give you more time. But also, hopefully, they take some of the ideas that were successful or whatever. They get feedback from you guys and kind of focused in like, oh, this is what you can do with this day, that kind of thing. Right.

Yeah, it looked like a good time. We're going to skip over the pick of the week. We're going to have picks of the week this week, and we'll send you guys, we'll put them on the website, on the show notes, all the pictures from the two meetups. It looked like a fun time. I don't really have any for mine. You'll see just a random picture of Seth in there.

And a hot dog. Oh, have AI put yourself in there. I'll Photoshop myself in yeah Into all of them. Oh, yeah, I was there you guys didn't see me a miniature Seth somewhere. Yeah Yeah, we got new stickers to now right TJ. Did you get the stickers? Yeah, I did and some people took them Nobody knew me like Gavin though. I guess Gavin's super famous in Canada. I am NOT famous in Columbus Nobody knew who I was but I still have some stickers. So maybe we'll do another sticker campaign here soon another round of stickers Yeah, we have special ones this time. So many stickers and I don't know what I'm gonna do with them So besides lose them, I'm definitely gonna lose these at some point

I would say you could try to mail them to Gavin, but that's doesn't seem to be a thing that you can do Will try to mail some to Gavin, but that's doesn't seem to be a thing that you can do Mail something Gavin. I'll take some too All right, but yeah, we'll put everything in the show notes home take that of him slash five three zero should have pictures and everything and then yeah It sounds like a really good time It's sad. I missed out on it, but end of the year, man. It's really tough to get away from all the shenanigans that are going on.

Yeah, maybe a different weekend would be great. That would be my vote. Just put your responsibility sets and you don't need responsibilities. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, we do have a bunch of home tech headlines that came through this week. What do you guys say we jump in and take a look? Let's do it. Let's do it.

Let's do it. All right. Have you ever walked up to somebody's house and said, oh, God, that's the ugliest lock I've ever seen? Well, now you can do that and unlock your door with the SwitchBot Lock Ultra. It's a retrofit smart lock featuring 3D facial recognition and priced at $159.

This lock pairs with the new SwitchBot keypad, costing $99. It's designed to be installed without replacing existing locks and maintains your existing locks appearance and functionality. The Vision keypad mounted outside the door connects by Bluetooth and supports additional unlocking methods such as fingerprint, keycode, and NFC card. So I really don't know what this thing looks like. I really hadn't looked at it too much, but I thought it was really funny because typically SwitchBot has not been the best looking thing at all. But this one you don't notice. It's just the keypad that's on the wall. This is like a terrible Photoshop picture.

Like the top photo. And I like how they always have to show you the little lines with the camera. Because how else would you know it's a camera? Yeah. There's a little laser beam shooting at your face. One day they're going to do that, blind somebody. Yeah, I don't think this is the ugliest lock on the market, but it's definitely not a track.

I guess it looks more like a weird doorbell that's installed. So you're walking up here and say, oh God, what's that weird ugly looking doorbell? And you can unlock your doors, you're looking at that. So that's kind of nice. Yeah, the inside, the part that goes inside, it's very hard to make that actually look attractive because it's kind of, what do you call it, retrofit.

It like sits over top of your deadbolt in a way, right? So it's hard. But they could have done a bit more with the one on the outside, right? Because that has a lot of options for that. It is what it is, but Switchmark has a market. I guess if you're in like condo or something like that You can still install this without you know, actually taking out the walk This looks like a garage door opener that you'd have on the side of your house Like yeah exactly next to your garage door. It looks like that I did not they did announce a couple other things too in this announcement not just a lock but they also announced the new hub Which could bridge up to 30 switch box devices. So that was good to see. But then they also dropped this AI hub.

And from what I see, they're kind of making it the brains of your home. So like, it will take the input it gets from sensors and, you know, and it will be able to control things like the arms on your robots and stuff like that. And it can make automatic decisions. So it's got AI, right? It's got AI. Yeah. It's going to be using AI.

And it's kind of like, I envision what they're thinking to do is just make your home automatic. You don't have to program anything. You have to do anything. It should just know that everybody's left the home, turn down the temperature to zero, that type of thing. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I need. Zero.

I don't want to think about anything, just do it. Yeah. It would be nice until you come home and it won't let you in because it thought you were out with another robot. It's not like you've had that happen before, Kevin. A couple of times, but that was a different life. So this is really interesting. I want to see where this goes, this AI brain hub thing. But it's bringing together,

they have a ton of devices. I was shocked at how many devices they actually have. Yeah. It's bringing that all together now. So it's their vision to take over your home. I've been thinking about grabbing one of those roller sheets. I saw that someone in the hub had purchased two of them. So I'm curious to see how they're installed.

They look pretty nice for the price, honestly. Yeah, the price is good. And since you can cut them to match, I have this ugly thing behind me here that's just, it's the ugliest thing possible on the wall over there. But it could look a lot better if it was just a, well, it could look a lot better even if it's a switch button or a shade, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Think about if the AI Hub can do things like, it knows you're still sleeping in the morning or whatever, and it won't open your shades. Or then it will know when you wake up and nobody's sleeping, then it will open the shades or it will know how much sun's on that side of the house and keep the shades closed until the sun goes to the other side of the house. Like all those things today we program ourselves, but if this just does it

knowing it, it's kind of like, you know, another mom for your house. I, I, I'll, I'll wait and see on that one. I am, I'm okay with a little random hub that's over there that controls the shades across the house. It's actually does a pretty good job because it's in the garage out here with me, and clear across the house, which is a decent amount. Through a kitchen, it still is able to control and update shades. So it's kind of nice.

I just need these window blinds with these fun decorations, decorative designs on them. That's what I need. The roller shades? Yeah. I mean, you go to some of the pictures on the Switchbot website, you have a little fun prints and stuff built on them. That's what I need. The roller shades? Yeah, I mean, go to some of the pictures on the Switchbot website. They have little fun prints and stuff built on them. That would be cool. Shade stickers. Yeah.

So as it unrolls, like something, a picture starts to come. It's kind of like the IKEA Symphonic speakers, you know, where you get the different numbers for them and stuff like that. Yeah. There he goes. Seth, shade stickers. There's a new thing for you. Shade stickers. Buy the domain. There you go. There you go. That's how it's used, Seth. Seth, shade stickers. There's a new thing for you. Shade stickers. By the domain.

There you go. There you go. That's how it's here, Seth. Oh, wow. So that's opinionated. You definitely see that in a house in Florida here soon. Yeah, yeah. It'll end up here for sure.

Especially the weird zebra thing, but yeah. I think I would, you know, that looks like a shower curtain. That's the vibe you're going for. Yeah, I that looks like a shower curtain You're going for yeah, maybe dollar store shower curtain that you guys nailed it nailed it guys good job I want to get one with my face printed on it. So that's yeah, you know, that would be fun I mean Like a hundred and five dollars for a roller roller shade right now Yeah, I'm gonna get one get one with like Jesus's face on it,

and then put it in your kid's room. So that Jesus will always be watching them. They'll think twice about doing something bad. So can you print on your own? Can you print on them? Is that? I don't know. That's what I was trying to find out. I don't think they've announced it. There's nothing on the product page about this.

Yeah. Wait, there's 45 percent off so I can, that's a hell of a deal. I guess I'm gonna go ahead and order one of these right now. Geez, it's always 40% off, Seth. Is it really? Oh crap, it just went down to 35, what did I do? Just leave it in your cart for a day. Oh no, oh yeah, right, it's one of those things.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll just, I'll think about it. This actually says pre-order. That's crummy. I can't actually get these. They're not available yet. All right. Well, maybe when they're 45% off.

All right, let's move on here. We've got more, more topics beside this. We've got, we've got TAPO, TAPO. TAPO, I think this is really, this is killer. They've introduced the DL100 Smart Deadbolt Door Lock, priced at $69. Nice. That's US dollars, you know, for the record.

Well, it's basically the same thing in Canada now, because of tariffs. This budget-friendly electronic door lock offers multiple unlocking options, including a keypad, physical key, TAPO mobile app, and voice commands through the the old Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Samsung smart

things. Doesn't have fingerprint scanner, but it's got both Bluetooth and Wi Fi connectivity. And for $69. I mean, that's, that's a great, great price. Yeah, also, you can't really beat that. I mean, it doesn't look bad either. Yeah, it looks relatively normal. It does. It definitely only comes in one color, but this looks normal. I'm fine with it. It's got physical buttons. I mean, bring back physical buttons.

And it's got a key. Like that's big there. Cause usually when you want to buy a lock that also includes a key, they want to try it to you another hundred dollars. Four double A's. And it also allows you to temporarily power it using a USB-C port. I mean, I think they did a great job with this. I mean, the design looks really nice, especially for the outside.

I guess that's the outside piece as you're walking up to the back. Motorized section piece. That's not all that great, but what can you do with that? It's a battery pack with the brains and stuff and motor and stuff inside of it. Roughly looks like what my Acara one looks like, maybe a little bit bigger. But the front, I mean, that actually looks really nice. Can't complain. Good job, T-Po.

$5 per button is the price on the front. And that's assumed if there's two buttons on the inside where the battery cover is, which it looks like. Does look like that. So. For pairing and that kind of thing, yeah. Cheap. Cause I paid like, I have a Yale Z-W Yeah, cheat. Because I paid like I have a

Yale Z-Wave lock and I think I paid like 200 bucks at least for it. I probably paid more than that. But I I'd recommend this one. I mean, I don't know how well it works for $70. I mean, I mean, TP link stuff in general isn't too bad. I don't I think it's definitely one of the better budget brands out there. I've only used really their cameras and a couple smart plugs and stuff like that. But for the price, I think they're all relatively good. It's killer price. All right, well, keep it on that.

If anybody gets one, let us know how it works. It's $10 cheaper than the Wyse Lock Bolt. All right, here's something fun. Google has integrated its Gemini AI into the home APIs. That's enough AIs and APIs for you. This is going to help enhance smart home capabilities for developers and users. It was announced last week at the Google I.O. conference and extends Gemini's AI features like camera analytics and conversational language routines to third-party app

developers. So developers can leverage these APIs to create smart home automations using natural language, new triggers like date and weather, potentially simplifying a setup process. For instance, AI generated descriptions from Nest cameras can be generated into apps like ADTs, allowing users to ask questions like, did the kids leave their bikes in the driveway? And it'll tell you, that's pretty cool. Additionally, developers can incorporate features like live streaming, two-way talk to the Nest cameras. APIs also support devices connected through matter, expanding control to over 750 million devices. There we go.

This is actually kind of cool. I think this is like, I mean, it's cool. Like they're gonna kill it in like five years, right? But I mean, this is like what we've kind of been waiting on is to have this little like five years, right? But I mean, this is like what we've been waiting on, is to have this little ask it a question, and it responds with the correct answer, maybe about if the kids left the bikes in the driveway, right?

It seems cool. This is moving towards what we wanted, right? Yeah. What the Amazon was saying they were bringing to us, but we still don't see anywhere today. I wonder when this is going to reach us. Yeah, this is honestly really cool. I, this is the kind of stuff I think AI can be good for where it's like, you

know, writing a little story or making a little artwork. I think that's silly. This is the kind of stuff that I think AI would be useful for, um, making the advanced automations for specific triggers or when, when it sees people, that kind of thing, and just making it super easy to use. Because for the most part, advanced automation stuff is such a pain to set up,

and there's so many different variables, and you have to think about all these different things, and AI can just do that for you. Yeah, and getting it all customized and everything, yeah. Yeah, it'd be nice. Well, it'll be cool when they get it all up and going, and then it'll probably work for five years, and they'll shut the whole thing down

for whatever the next big thing is at Google. She says, can't trust you, Google. I'm sorry, I can't trust you. I don't trust you. If anybody can do it, it really is Google, but they're their own worst enemy at this point. Yeah, the track record is just not great. I mean, well, anyway, let's move on here. We've got some really interesting things from TCL here. Speaking of automatic things, TCL has introduced 20 the 2025 qd mini LED TVs, their LED type here qd mini features Dolby flex Connect technology which automatically calibrates wireless speakers for the optimal surround sound.

So basically, you get in your room, you get this TV, you get Flexinect TCL Z100 smart speakers, and you pair them with the TV and you hit, like, calibrate this, and it goes around and automatically calibrates those speakers to your TV. I think that's pretty cool. It's like what we used to do receivers, but you just use your smart speakers. Not a bad idea. Yeah. Isn't this what Sonos is talking about for the longest time? You don't have to wave your arms around and you're

fooling around in the air, is that what you're saying? Yeah. Sonos is talking about doing this originally with the microphones and stuff that they had in their speakers. Some of them do this in a sense, they re-auto calibrate and stuff like that. But I just, yeah, I don't want to do the hand wavy thing. Just make it work. And I agree.

The cool thing about this is you can place speakers anywhere in the room. Like sometimes you don't have the right room for, you know, where speakers should properly be placed, right? I know my family room is not the right shape room, but I do what I can with it. This will calibrate those speakers so that no matter where they are, they will sound better. And I like that. Yeah, I was looking for a price on these Z100s.

If you have to ask, you can afford it. Yeah, I know. Right? I should buy a switch about shades instead. Probably should. Around $210. They're in the Chinese market. Global launch, and 2025. Right. Buy a Switch About Shades instead. Probably should. Around $210, they're in the Chinese market.

Global launch and 2025. For one speaker? It appears so. There's not like a ton of information on it. They're still not actually available right now, so. They look nice. There's a Sony surround sound that kind of does this, right? Like it has four speakers.

They used to be round like these TCLs, and now they're square. I was looking at them the other day, because I was like, I should get these. It's a very expensive setup, and you either have like really good results with them or like you hate them. So it's kind of one of those products.

But this looks pretty cool, because it'll leave you kind of that same setup and surround sound, but just popping the speakers in. So good for you, TCL CCL. Alright moving on here we've got MyQ a company we don't talk about often because we don't like them very much but Chamberlain is expanding MyQ home automation ecosystem into to launch two new security devices they've got a MyQ smart outdoor camera it's the first and the

first ever MyQ video doorbell so if you like MyQ Smart Outdoor Camera. It's the first and the first ever MyQ Video Doorbell. So if you like MyQ and you're in the ecosystem, I know a lot of people actually are. It's not an uncommon thing to have people activate those, you know, the remote control stuff on, you know, not everybody's doing RAD GDO and Home Assistant, right? Like most people, most normal people out there are using MyQ and you're in the MyQ ecosystem, this might be a good offering for you. They got a smart doorbell with AI detection and then they've got a smart camera with AI detection.

They've got a video doorbell as well that will basically replace Ring and that kind of thing. So what do you guys think? In the smart home space, I think MyQ has really burned a lot of people. I think they just like have, you know, a lot of people just don't like MyQ after what we went through them over the last few years

and have found other ways to move on. So I have a feeling they will not even bother with this. You say that, but that's in the home space. Like that's- But that's what I'm saying. That's us Reddit nerds, right? We don't care for this guy. Not Reddit nerds, but anybody that wants something that integrates, because more

than likely this isn't going to integrate with anything properly either. Right. Just itself. Yeah. Yeah. So most of us will probably not even bother, but then there's all those other people who just, you know, they, they have the MyQ app, they, they control their garage door with it.

And they're happy with just that. Maybe they'll jump on this, but I find like most of those people will probably have a ring doorbell anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So we'll see where this goes. I do have a couple of friends in real life that really love their MyQ stuff.

So I can see them doing something like this. Yep. I mean, it does what it does. I mean, it opens a door and closes the door. That's all you want to do with MyQ then. Fine. It works for this. Yep. I mean, it does what it does. I mean, it opens a door and closes a door. That's all you want to do with MyQ, then fine. It works for you, right? But once you start wanting to automate other things with it, oh, forget it. Like, it's not worth it.

Yet. Yet. And up here, MyQ is pretty much included in every garage door you buy now, right? Like, it's almost like no matter, everybody has it. Unless you have an old, old, old garage door or some off-brand one, you pretty much have my queue up here. So that's kind of why people are tied to it

is because it came with their system. It's free. I think it's free when you buy it. I haven't bought a garage door in a while, but I think if you buy it, it's free. Unless you get the add-ons or some other stuff. But yeah, I don't know. I just think most people will it, it's free. Unless you get the add-ons or some other stuff. But yeah, I don't know.

I just think most people will have a ring doorbell. Ring has become like the Kleenex of doorbells I found up here. Like it's just, you know. When people talk about doorbells, yeah. Everyone's like, oh, you have a ring? You know, and they'll call non-ring doorbells like my unified doorbell. They'll still call it, oh, you got a ring.

And we all know what you're talking about. I have a smart doorbells like my unified doorbell. They'll still call it, oh, you got a ring. We all know what you're talking about, I have a smart doorbell. Well, I think the same thing applies to garage door openers. You say, oh, I got a smart garage door opener. Then you're like, oh, you got a mic you? Because that's really the only, like you said, it comes with literally every brand because it's all one brand. That makes all of the motors and everything here

in the States. And I think there's like one more that's like way down the line, but somehow they've been able to monopolize the entire North American market. And yeah, they've got tons and tons and tons of these MyQ garage doors out there. And like you said, I think it's either free

or very low cost. And people do find value in either checking to see if their garage door is open or being able to open or close it remotely and that kind of thing. I think for most normal people out there who don't really care about that, it integrates with everything else. I don't know. I could see them saying, oh, MyQ has a doorbell.

I'll get that because I could just be in the same app as in my garage door, which I use every day. So wasn't Mike you also, um, working with Amazon for package delivery or something like that too? Yeah, I think they did that. Yeah. I think a friend of mine pinged me about that too. So, you know, they can come open your garage door, put the package in there, close it.

I think Mike, you also have a camera too, so you can watch them while they're doing it. Yeah. So they have a little ecosystem coming up. So, yep, keep an eye on them. They could be the next big thing in home automation over there at IQ. It makes more sense than Roku, doesn't it?

It does actually. It makes more sense than a lot of companies. Let's move on here. We've got Kaleidoscape, the opposite end of the spectrum here, launches a new video player, the Stratto E. It's an entry level 4k movie player designed for residential, marine and commercial theater setups. It's positioned somewhere between the flagship Stratto V and the Stratto M reference 2k player. The Stratto E supports 4k video output with SDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision as well as Dolby Atmos DTS-X audio. output with SDR, HDR 10 and Dolby Vision, as well as Dolby Atmos DTS X audio,

features 480 GBs of solid state storage, enough for approximately six 4K films. That's it. Well, you don't need that many. If I had to choose six films, I can watch over and over and over again. I don't know. Well, it's not that like they have a kind of like a rental service or whatever. You can, you download the films and it downloads in the background or whatever, and then they're ready for you when you're ready to sit down and watch. How many thousands is it, Seth?

I don't know. It's probably thousands. Yeah. More than the 4K Apple TV. They have one of the nicer streaming services where you can download titles either ahead of time. I don't remember what it was. Like you can download like a true 4k copy of it. Like that had more features than Blu-ray or something like that.

I don't remember. But yeah, Kaleidoscope. It still exists. Still in business. Still got gigabit ethernet. I mean, you don't need more than that. You don't need more than that. Come on, I need to download a fast set.

I need to download a lot of stuff in fast. Big files. I'm not going to buy this. So I don't need it. No, I don't either. I don't have this much money. Yeah, I don't really have a screen that would take advantage of this either. So yeah, I think that's it. They have the different streaming,

the HDR options for a lot of movies that I don't think you can get everywhere. I don't remember what the appeal is. I know that if you have a yacht, if you're one of these people that have a yacht and you need to go sailing, you can download a bunch of videos to this server thing that they have, and watch them on the yacht. So it makes a lot of sense there. So this is the Strato V you said?

Strato V, yeah. it's a 2K player. Stratov. The Stratov 4K movie player is $6,000. Oh. Canadian. I can buy two right now. I think you still have to get other things to make that actually work, from what I remember.

The movie server goes up to 15,000 Canadian. Yeah, there you go. The Terra Prime solid state movie service, which has 31 terabytes, can go up to 35,595 Canadian. So, you know, it's cheaper just to build an unraid server. Yeah, but that's nothing for your yacht, you know, like who cares? It's cheaper to buy a yacht unraid server for your yacht. Like build your own. Like this is, this is a little, it gets a to buy a Unraid server for your UI. Like build your own.

Like this is a little, it gets a little. I gotta say, I gotta say, I'll push back on this a little bit. I am having this problem now with my Unraid server and my Plex and whatever, like. Well, that's you in tech. I know, I know, but if I had lots of money, that wouldn't be a problem

because I just buy Kaleidoscape, right? And that's the thing. Yeah. This is for those people that, you know, they, uh, have time to watch one movie a month or something like that, and they have the money to buy $40,000 for a prime full-size movie server to him. Yep. I wish I was one of those people, but.

I mean, like I, I, I start playing a movie the other day and it just like, it plays three frames and locks up It's like oh come on and he goes check it. It's like oh, I downloaded some kind of like super high resolution version I'm like, I don't need this. Just give me the 720p Like I'm gonna delete this in like five minutes Anyway, so now I gotta go force the stupid thing to download the 720p and it takes like ten years to find all these news Articles that have whatever. I don't even know how it works.

It's magic, Gavin. I don't know. You told me to set it up this way. I set it up. I didn't tell you to set it up. Don't put that on me. I think the statute of limitations is over. Cause if I told you how to set it up, it would have been working.

Yeah. Well, I've used all the, what are the trash files or whatever? I don't remember what it's called. The trash guides. Yeah. They keep, yeah, you just have to tweak them. Yeah. I used all the, what are the trash files or whatever? I don't remember what it's called. The trash guides. Yeah. They keep, yeah, you just have to tweak them. Yeah. I used all that.

It still messes up. And so like, again, if I don't want to have that problem ever, you buy the, uh, 35,000 Kaleidoscape server thing, and then you pay $6,000 for a player and you're good to go, right? So. So I guess how, how much is this inconvenience worth to you? Well, I mean, you asked my wife. Yeah.

Is this problem a $35,000 problem? Yeah, I don't think it's the $35,000 problem, but it was definitely a problem when we sat down to watch Tom Cruise and nothing played, so there we go. Oh yeah. So I do not get Mission Impossible at all, I do not. Got with it, I don't know. Slow, I fit fall asleep, it's like slow movies.

Anyway, let's move on here. Apollo Automation has released a, well, is now they have the R-Pro-1 POE millimeter wave multi-sensors, now released and available, offers smart home automation with precise motion and presence detection as well as environmental monitoring. So it's got what, a immunity sensor on it, I think. Some other stuff on it. It's got the presence detector.

It's got CO2 monitoring, light, and UV as well. So maybe not humidity, but it's got a bunch of sensors on it. I thought it was just going to be a millimeter wave thing. No, they just couldn't, they were it's got a bunch of sensors on it. I thought it was just gonna be a millimeter wave thing. No, they just gonna put a bunch of other sensors on this thing and pack it all together in a nice POE powered little device, $67. Not bad, not bad. Yeah, super cheap.

Go ahead and guess how many entities this device has. I have one, I have one actually sitting right next to me right now. Are we gonna start doing a price per entity? We actually talked about it, the home assistant beat up that this device probably gives you the most entities per device, the Apollo devices, but I'm looking at like 60. 60 is your guess. How many is your guess, Seth? 60s your guess how many is your guess? Seth?

Seth doesn't even know what entity is. It's a it's a 148. Oh my so many entities. So Justin gave me one at the the Home Assistant meetup and I got to set up. It didn't even have the firmware on it. He just literally just brought it and then I was like hey this doesn't work means like oh yeah you gotta flash it. So I was able to flash it.

It's got this bright light on there. So if you can see right now, it's got a big old RGB bright light on there. So you can see all the little stuff. I mean, I'm not disabled. That's fun. It's just got so much stuff in there. I really haven't had much time to play with it yet. But it tells you the distance and the angle that they're at,

how many people, all that good stuff. So I'm excited to implement this. For some reason, I have an Ethernet cable in my bathroom, and this is going to go in my bathroom. What I like about these devices, you could 3D print your own case for them, and make it fit however you want. That's really cool. Yeah, this is going to get recessed.

That's going to be like a like a unified protect POE, basically, or I bought actually when I bought the bottle house, I bought some in ceiling millimeter wave sensors, but they're like mains powered. And there was like no junction box or anything for them. But if you've seen those on like, like AliExpress or eBay, they have a 3D printed or they have an enclosure that looks similar to that. So it's a pretty nice looking when it's just in there. I'd love to just POE my whole house and just get things everywhere. Right. Wouldn't that be amazing? I know. I know.

This thing has a ton of like options that you can get onto. You can add on another millimeter wave sensor for $5, the LD2412. I guess that helps you find resting and seated people. Yeah, I think it's more sensitive probably. And then you can add, I guess adding the SCD40 CO2 temperature humidity sensor thing for another 20 bucks adds another $25 onto the price. So it's not not 67. It comes up to about 100 bucks, which is just more than my car one. Well, when you pimp it out, when you buy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they

have all the like they have 3d printed gang box mounts front facing USB wall charger. This I've got a bunch of stuff here that you can basically pick and choose. Like I can't do anything with that car one right, but I can I can get what I want out of this one exactly like I can just customize it here and buy what I want. I mean you have a hundred and forty eight different options with this that you can mess around with. So many options. Yeah that sounds fun, it sounds fun and I like that it's POE that's that's really cool, that's really cool. Yeah and honestly for the price,

there were some people on like Reddit and Facebook, I think they were complaining. They're like, that's way too much money. And I was like, where else do you get a POE powered smart home sensor for under a hundred dollars? Yeah. First of all, there's not many options available anyway, but POE powered, like come on, that is a luxury item.

And $67 is very cheap for what it is. Powered like come on that is a luxury item and $67 is very cheap for what it hmm. Well, I might buy one of these Do it the problem is I don't know if I need the PLE for I don't want to use it for I don't know if I need PLE for it. I'm gonna run wires. So you only run an HDMI cable. Hey see my what I do that for Well, this this looks pretty cool. I'm going to keep an eye on this one. I might pick one of these up just because it makes it easy to implement it. If you get all your entities and everything in there, you don't have to do any hoop jumping like I have to do with

the Hikara to get that into Home Assistant. This might be the way to go because I can actually use those triggers and everything from the entities or whatever a lot faster than they can go into Acara. Right now my wife has to ask me, hey, can you check the app thing to make sure that she's in bed? I look at it and I see her little icon dancing around on the end of the bed and I think she's going for toys. So she's getting out of the bed and like, like, I think she's going for toys. So she's like getting out of the bed,

running back and grabbing toys. And you can see all that. I mean, it's amazing how, how accurate and everything that little interface is. They did a really good job putting that together over to Kara. But I don't know, this looks pretty cool too. Then I would just, I wouldn't even

have to ask her the question. I could just like change a light in the room to red or something if she's out of bed. You know, after we put her to bed or whatever so even I just yelled get into bed You see the little icon run back and jump in a little bit. It's really funny parenting modern she has no she doesn't stand any chance, you know, like the senses are just gonna get better and better and better and I'm gonna be able to do this automatically. Are you gonna be putting the AI horn in a room? And I'm going to be able to do this automatically. Are you going to be putting the AI horn in her room?

And then tied it to AI so that it knows when she left, you know, it'll be like, Hey, get back in bed, you know, poor kid. And the other, the other night, like I thought she was asleep already. I probably started it too early. Um, but I, I went into the Acara app to check, and then I noticed that there's firmware updates to do. Completely forgetting that the Akara thing has like a bright LED on it that turns yellow and blinks. Very bright in a dark room.

Yeah, that's annoying. Yeah. Well, it did that for, I don't know, way too long. Woke her up, freaked her out, and she came running out, you know, really worried that the house was going to burn down or something, I don't know. But she was not happy about that.

And it kept going off, it kept going. He said it was like the T-lo thing, 99% there, almost done. It just sat there for a while. And I just hear her yell from the other room like, it's still blinking. I know, go to bed. Close your eyes. Close, put your pillow over your face or something.

Oh man, don't do updates at night, do them during the day. My change window is always 9 AM because then I have eight hours or so to fix the issues that come up. So I don't do change at night. Yeah, it's one of those mistakes. Whoops. Didn't mean to press that button. I mean, I did, but I didn't.

And it was like, after I pressed it, I'm like, ah, that thing's going to blink. Isn't it? And sure enough, two minutes later, she comes running out all upset because this thing's blinking in her room. Ah, anyway, that, that she'd never even paid attention to. That's the funny part is like, she knows it was up there. She just didn't know what it was. And kind of like, yeah, that's the thing that makes sure you're in bed.

Now she knows where it is. So she may go mess with you. PUE millimeter wave sensor. You just hide it behind a blank plate. Bam, problem solved. It sounds really good. All right, well, all the links to topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes

over at hometech.fm slash five three zero. We do have something in the mail back today. It says Hey gents, just listen to your latest episode TJ heard you were doing some more irrigation and smart garden work. I always use home assistant integrations page is my yes no decision. So I went with the yardie and controller, which has a local control for solenoid valves, valves, the app and integration aren't the best, but it makes it easy to just have a switch to turn on and off zones. It does support a float meter that you can put on, which I haven't

been able to get working properly, but it might be worth a look. PS, Hey Gavin. I guess, I guess he's just saying that because he wants to get into the home tech dot social, so let, you know, prove his account. He seems legit. So yeah, yeah, he's legit. So cheers. Cheers. So let, you know, prove his account. He seems legit, so. Yeah, yeah, he's legit. So cheers, Phil.

Oh, this is Phil over at Home Assistant podcast? Yes. And I messed up. This is actually from like two weeks ago and we skipped over like two weeks in a row. So I'm sorry about that, Phil. This is actually, I'll talk about this a little more on projects, but I actually, I think I need to go this route

I just don't know anything about the the the solenoids and water valves and stuff like that. Oh, they're easy I don't know if I'm very easy this year. Is it easy? Yes. All right. Well, you guys can help me with them Yeah, just let me know right. Yeah. Yeah, I'll definitely let you do this up Now I think right now I'm just using some like sewn off hose controllers basically, and it works good enough, but this is really what I need for like a more professional solution in the long run.

Yeah, a good yardian controller. I don't think I've ever heard of that one. Yeah, I mean, it looks pretty nice. It's like $170 for eight zones. Oh wow, that is pretty good. That's not bad. And it's Home Assistant compatible according to their Amazon listing.

Does it have, does its Home Assistant compatible? I'm wondering if it has like local control. I would assume so. I mean, because it works with HomeKit as well, so. Yeah, that's true. HomeKit, you have to have local control, don't you? Yeah, yeah. See, this has eight zones, but it's got 12 connections on it. Yeah, it's got a local, so it must have a local VM.

Looking at the setup for the Home Assistant thing. It's got a, the IP address, and then it's got the, like an access token, which generally means like, it's got a local IP address, I guess you could say, and an access token. So that's actually pretty good. Wow. Okay. That seems really cool. Actually, that might be the way to go. I might actually swap out my beehive thing.

Man, Seth has spent so much money on this podcast. Yeah, I know. I'm saying that I'll probably never buy any of this stuff. I'm definitely not buying the Kaleidoscape. So that's not a- There you go. Just transfer that over. Use that money instead for this.

You saved that money. Yeah. All 40,000. TJ math. That's right. All right. Pick of the week. Well, the only pick of the week is the pictures that will be showing up from the Home Assistant meetups this weekend. So we'll put those on our website. So if you have any feedback, questions, comments,

picks of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback, fill out the online form. Project updates. Well, first there is an update from Home Assistant that is going to deprecate core and supervised installation methods.

I saw this and I'm freaked out and I'm like, wait, is this what I have running? And I don't think it is. I think this is something else. What is this? What is this Gavin? Core running? And I don't think it is. I think this is something else. What is this? What is this, Gavin? The core is kind of, I think when you install it, you know, the whole Python environment.

So you have like your own Linux box and you install like almost like the source code on it, right? And you manage it that way. Painful way to manage Home Assistant. I don't know why anyone would do that, but- People like pain. To each their own and the supervised, I can't remember how that was the installation was done,

but they're also getting rid of 32-bit versions or old versions of older hardware. I can see why because it's harder to support all these situations. It allows them to concentrate more on a few installation methods. It's easier to support In the long term, so I'm not against this they did their research and they found this should not affect many people However, you know they they look at the numbers from the home assistant installations that are reporting in I don't know how many home assistant installations are not reporting in so There may be more people affected but I really think it doesn't matter because they're not going to update, right?

They're just going to stay. And I always tell people the easiest way to run Home Assistant is just run the Home Assistant OS. It's just so much easier, especially when dealing with add-ons and stuff like that. Like if you run a Docker container, you're going to have to run Docker containers for each of the add-ons. So you have to run MQTT, Docker container, you know, ZB to MQTT, Docker, Kader, Z-Wave to MQTT.

It's just, and then updating it, you know, everyone has their way of doing it, but it just seems like so much extra work when it could be put into updating your dashboards instead, right? So I'm not against this. It's just, you know, another iteration. Yeah, and look at this. This, they say that this affects like the first generation and maybe second generation of Raspberry Pi. Yeah. So like not even the Raspberry Pi 2 or 3. I think the 3B is like, if you, if I have a

Raspberry Pi sitting on my, and I do, there's one sitting on my desk right here, amazing. Look at that. It's a Raspberry Pi sitting on my and I do there's one sitting on my desk right here amazing Look at that. It's a raspberry Pi 3b like no one has anything older than this. This is ancient 2012 is when the first yeah. Yeah, come on like It's it's time to get a new raspberry Pi and update You can't even install Windows 11 on machines older than like that old. I was windows but We can't install the latest macOS on anything older than like that old. I don't know, it's Windows. That's because Windows is dumb surprise. We can't install the latest Mac OS on anything older than two years, so I mean.

No, and if you have an old Mac, which I do, I have like an old Mac, one of the white clamshell ones, if you crank that up and try and get online, forget it because it doesn't have any of the modern, you can't even run a browser on it or anything. Exactly. You can't get online

because all of the modern Cypher suites are depend on like things that it can't download and update. I'm sure there's a way I could do it, but I'm not going to cause why would I? It's a legacy computer at this point. So yeah, 64 bits, the way to go. Turns out that 64 is better than 32. So Raspberry Pi 3 and 4,

if you have one of those, you don't have anything to worry about. If you're in the Docker container, you don't have anything to worry about. Or if you run the Home Assistant OS like I am, like Gavin told me to do, that seems to be fine and doing fine. So there you go. Hosting your own home automation system. I guess if you're using that, like you're probably fine with what it's doing. Because it's like, what did you say, TJ? 2012? Like, you haven't updated your system since 2012 or you're not like, you're probably okay.

It's not a Soren thermostat. You can't use it forever. Right. It doesn't have a 30-year life expectancy on Home Assistant. So it reminds me, and it probably needs to update mine, right? How do I find my Home Assistant? Wow. You just said that live? Assistant so. It reminds me and it probably need to update mine right? How do I find my Home Assistant?

Wow, you just said that live? Well, it used to be like 8 1 2 3 is that it? Yeah, okay. I don't know I when I did the was it the Naboo? Just the DNS Home Assistant.local 8 1 2 3. That's what I did. I found it. Okay Oh, guess what guys? I have an update. Of course. I found it. Okay. Oh, guess what guys? I have an update. Of course. There is, I think there's up to 0.3 right now for... I'm going from 0.1 to 0.3. There you go. There you go. Oh, I'm supposed to install the core update first. What?

Do your updates in order, sir. What? I don't know what to do first. It have a supervisor and a core. Which one should I do first? Oh, it doesn't matter, but do the supervisor first. Evidently does. Couldn't do the core until they do the supervisor. So, here we go. Exactly. YOLO.

All right. Update and wipe settings done. All right. TJ, what you been up to? So I mainly just did the, the home assistant meetup last week. But I also did, I got a couple of new things. I got the beta Innavelli millimeter wave switches. I got the Z wave version and so I got those installed. They work great. What I really like about them is that they are millimeter wave

switches but they're not much different than their regular switches. So I have the blue series switches all throughout the house. Literally every switch is a blue series switch at this point. The only difference that there's a little tiny little pinhole that's below the action button or the config button, whatever you wanna call that little button there. That's the only thing that's different about it. So I like that part of it. I'm on a journey right now to update the firmware on it,

which has caused me to switch over to Z-Wave JSUI, which awful name by the way, because the other one is just Z-Wave JS. It, which is an awful name, by the way, because the other one is just Z-Wave JS. It's very confusing. I don't know why they changed it because when I started using it originally, I had it on an old instance. It was Z-Wave to MQTT, which makes way more sense.

It's a longer name. That's fine, though. But I'm in the process of switching over to that so I can easily update the switch because they sent me a new firmware, but I can't update it through the regular z-wave method. So I haven't got too much time to play with those. I can't really use them in my primary areas because I use Philips Hue bulbs everywhere and these are z-wave. So I had to install them. I installed one of my front door which controls my outside light and then I installed one of my back door which controls my outside light as well which means I'm still able to use them for my living room and my my den. So the the millimeter wave detection seems to work pretty good

but I do need to update them so hopefully I can do that this week and and finally get them configured and everything. Nice. I got the I talked talked about it a little bit ago, but I got the Apollo Automation Millimeter Wave PoE sensor as well. Similar boat, I mean I just got it this weekend so I haven't had time to play with it. I will say I literally just have the electronics for it. I have like the front enclosure for it. It's such a small device for what it is. It fits in the palm of my hand. It gets a little toasty.

I'm not really sure how that's going to do long-term. It is a little hot, but it's not like super concerning or anything like that. If you don't trust the temperature sensor, if you touch the ubiquity access point at any point in your life or a switch or a router, then it's about the same temperature. So I think it'll be fine. It'd be all right. Yeah. So only'll be fine. It'd be all right. Yeah. So only first degree burns.

Yeah, that's right. It's pretty nice. So crazy how small it is and how many different entities and what all it can do. So I'm pretty excited about diving into it and just seeing what else I can do with it. This is the year of millimeter wave, isn't it? Everybody's coming out with new millimeter wave sensors. They're so cheap now. They got battery ones coming out.

So this is pretty exciting because millimeter wave is really the next step forward with motion, you know what I mean? Yeah. I like the lights to turn on instantly when I walk in to a room, which is why I have motion detectors everywhere, but I need us to know that I'm still in there

so the lights don't turn off. Yes. A millimeter wave is gonna help me accomplish that. I don't know, I saw this guy on YouTube. He had a bunch of those GE. Oh man. All right, yeah, I've gotta get one of those. I've gotta get one of those.

It sounds like a lot of fun. It's pretty fun. And then I do have an unfortunate update. I've been talking about my aqua flower I think the past couple episodes. I was pretty excited. We had Maxwell on the show last year. We talked about the aqua flower.

I received mine and it just wasn't up to my expectations for something that was going to live outside for six months out of the year. So I did have to return it. I let him know my complaints about it. Basically it just comes out of design at this point. I still really like the product and I wanted to get better, right? And so I think at some point I will explore buying this again if basically they come out with a new enclosure for it. The enclosure that was being used for it, I just didn't really have a good weather seal on it.

Some of the components didn't really seem sealed properly against the elements. So like if it did get water inside the case, um, it probably wouldn't have lasted very long. Um, and that's a lot to take on for a $350 device, right? Um, you want to be able to leave this thing outside and not really worry about it any in case, you know, unless you like hit it with your weed whacker or something like that. At that point, that's your fault.

Um, but it just, it didn't seem like something I wanted to spend the money on at that point Which is a little unfortunate, but yeah, it seems like a really cool product like that. It's a great idea It's such a unique product right because there's nothing else that exists like it It's really the only thing I've ever seen like it minus the hose control valves, which I'm basically stuck to using at this point so I need to look into the ever seen like it, minus the hose control valves, which I'm basically stuck to using at this point. So I need to look into the yardie end and how to set up that kind of system because I think that's just what I need to do, unfortunately. So Smart Garden is still in process, but we've diverted and we have to make different plans

now. Yeah. Are you still going to use like a drip style irrigation? Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. And I ran all my irrigation lines now. So technically I have three different zones and each zone has two feeds off of it. It's like three garden beds basically per zone. So we have a lot of garden beds unfortunately. I noticed. I've seen your pictures and I'm like, T.J. stop, stop. No. Yeah, I don't think you realize how many garden beds I have.

So many garden beds. And I keep adding more every year. So I'm going to need a system that I can expand and change with and everything like that. So the host control valves are nice if you have a smaller setup. Not really nice if you have like 10 plus beds though. I have one spigot.

And I have one of those little converters that converts it to four different spigots. I don't think they make like an eight one though. I don't think I'm gonna be able to go to a 12 one. So you're gonna have to learn how to do Plumbing and PVC glue. That's that's all I have to do it. I can do it easy. Yeah. Yeah, it's glue We got the technology. I can huff it at the same time. So Exactly. It makes for a fun day until you like realize how much you've covered yourself in glue and that it doesn't come out of your clothes

once it's in there. So, whoops. Yeah. And I did want to give a special shout out to everybody that came out to the home assistant community day in Columbus. So that was just, it was a really fun event. I know we talked about it at the beginning of the show

but that was a big project in and of itself, just getting all the people together and figuring out what we're going to do. And we didn't end up doing some of that stuff, but that was a really fun thing and I can't wait to see it again. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, I was digging in sand.

I sent you pictures, TJ, because I knew that you were supposed to come help and you didn't want to help. So it's all right. I did in sand. I sent you pictures, TJ, because I knew that you were supposed to come help and you didn't want to help. So it's all right. I did dig sand. Bared a bunch of cable. Took like 45 minutes to dig five feet because you like dig down

and then the sand just clasps back in on itself. It's really annoying. I don't know why anybody does this for a living. They probably use a big machine or something. So. Now I have little pink people doing. Not me. Yeah.

It's just very frustrating. And I ran a bunch of wire, installed a bunch of speakers, toned them out. So at least I know like from the splice point that I have, like it's kind of a pole that's outside from that point on, everything's good. But I didn't know if the amplifier was still good. Probably not because it went through the hurricane and like the speakers were under water for quite some time. And I'm sure the amp was still on whatever. So I went and turned it on, nothing came out.

I have to go back and look at it one of these days. We already have another amp, but it just figured, hey, why not turn it on 70 volts should work, right? Who knows? So I've got to swap that out. We already have another amp, but it just figured, hey, why not? Turn it on. 70 volts should work, right? Who knows? So I've got to swap that out. And then maybe that project will be all done, probably beginning next week sometime.

But at the house here, I finally swapped out my lawnmower blades from three blades. Now I have six blades. Oh. Six blades. Are they cutting super fast now three blades. Now I have six blades. Oh, six blades. They're cutting super fast now. I guess. I have no idea. Like you can hear it making more noise. Uh, and it's kind of cool that you go from like having three blades to six blades.

But I started looking at them like, well, now I'm gonna have to replace six blades every time I place the blades. Like, why do I do this? Yeah, why do you replace them once every, you replace them twice as often, or half as often. Half as often. We need to ask Wayne about this. Wayne, does this matter?

I don't know. I think the next time I go and replace them, I'm just gonna put the three one back on and call it a day. I bought the six blade one as well too. So I'm gonna upgrade mine. It's probably the easiest upgrade. You just pull these like, Allen, four, three Allen wrench screws out

and then pop the new blades on, the six blades on, put it all back together and you're off to the races. It's kind of nice, like things aren't growing now because it's raining daily, almost daily. We've gotten some rain in the past few days. When I say like, guys, the grass does grow. I took a picture of this the other day. I'll put this in our hub so you can see what it looks like after a day of things happening.

But you can also see that things are actually getting mowed, which is nice. There's like, if you can st if you can like stoop down, and I took this picture, like you can see how fast the grass grows in a day. Mm-hmm. So I've got the lawnmowers out there just going at it. And now I've got to step up my weed whacker game, get out there and clean up the edges a little bit better because the grass is,

it'll grow like two or three inches in a day It's kind of crazy. That's why you need that weed whacker attachment stuff. Yeah, I suppose the blinds you need the weed whacker Maybe maybe not Your lawn would be perfect to sign to do an image in or something. Have you tried doing that yet with the Navi mo app? Oh, yeah, no, well, okay So I still have those brown spots spots and the grass is growing there now. So like whatever killed it, didn't really kill it because the grass is strong.

It's Florida. So it's coming back and it just needs a little bit more water and time, and then it'll be a nice big green lawn eventually. But yeah, I definitely could sketch something in there. I'm not sure what I would do. Yeah. Just mess around and try something, put like help and see if anyone notices. SOS.

Yeah. In your line, like it's built into the app apparently. You can do it easily. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder if I could, how long, well, I saw that it only does it for so long and then it doesn't, it kind of resets after a while, so I don't, I don't know if that's like, I don't know. We'll have to see. The grass will really get growing this summer so we'll have to see what happens then. But

still having fun. We're still trying to get Wayne on. Maybe we'll have him on next week and chat with him next week to kind of go over what Navi Moe is up to and hopefully see what they're gonna to be doing in the future. But I have two projects I've officially been putting in charge of that I think are, well, I probably have more stuff in front of the house, but this is what my wife told me to do and it's the only thing that I remember because it sounds kind of fun to do. One is getting a new soundbar, right? So like I've still got to replace the soundbar system.

We're going to get you a vessel. You know, I edited our show finally. And listen to what we said again. I'm like, yeah, you know what, it's a pretty, pretty nice pretty nice system. So I'm kind of leaning that way just because it's like, doesn't involve anything else. It's just a speaker, right? It hooks up. It works. Imagine that speakers that just you connect and they work. Yeah. Isn't that a crazy concept?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not going to be a Sonos because that's the second part of that isn't true. So, but yeah, I'm kind of leaning towards the Vessel just because it's a nice looking soundbar. It seems like it works all right. The price is right, especially when you compare it to the higher end Sonos soundbars. I don't know. Lean in that direction.

I'll figure it out one of these days. After I get done playing around with my new AI horn. Cause I ordered one of those of course. When do you get it? Monday, Monday. Nice. So on the other side of the weekend. Can't wait to get that in three years

when you forget about it. Actually, I do have one of those. It's under my desk. It's been down here for three years. I got it. I never opened it. What's that noise? It just announces things every now and then.

Yeah. Yeah. So AI horns coming in. I should have that. And then so I haven't really talked about it on the show here. I think I told you guys, but we've been in the process of adopting for a while we finally got selected and we have a new girl that we're going to adopt and she's six years old and she'll be moving in sometime in the summer so I

have to get another sensor for that door because I when my my daughter's room there's a sensor on her door I can tell when she gets up but I can't tell when the other room opens up. My question to you guys is, should I go with the tried and true Eve sensor that I have, or should I get something else? Because I have options. I have the Aqara system here.

Aqara has got a bunch of sensors. I've got Z-Wave sticks that I've never hooked up before. You need a ZOOS door sensor. ZOOS door sensor too? Yeah, that's what I use. Got Shelly, right? I don't know, they've got all sorts of stuff. Yeah, you do have a lot of options.

I don't know, I think a door sensor is kind of, it really just comes down to looks, honestly, because what are you using it for? You're using it to know if it opens or closes. Literally, if it opens after the hour of, you know, after sunset, pretty much is what I like the zoos ones They're so small for what they I don't know what the Eve ones look like though to be honest But the zoos ones are really tiny. That's why I prefer them

Yeah, the zoo is probably about the same Size maybe maybe the Eve's a little bit smaller but fatter or something like that. This is looks pretty thin. So Well, I guess is one of those things if you're happy with the Eve one, go back to the Eve. If you want to try something else, go with the Zoo's. I don't know. I feel like I need to get involved with Z-Wave at some point, right? I need to get involved with Zigbee or Z-Wave or start swapping stuff out. I've got those Z-Wave switches you sent, right? Those are Zoo's with the little, yeah?

Yeah. Got to hook those up. I mean, they're installed. I just don't have them connected to anything because they're just in a bathroom and that kind of thing. You know, some Z-Wave board director just became really excited because somebody said, I want to see. Gotta check the Z-Wave thing out.

I want Z-Waving more. So, you know, first one in many years. Finally, a new customer. Yeah, yeah, so I'll have to check that out. This one's 2495. See, that's way better than I think the other one is, which is a matter native. But the problem is I have to have

the little Apple HomePod thing plugged in over in that area, and no one really likes it. have the little Apple HomePod thing kind of plugged in over in that area. And no one really likes it. So for it to pick up the signal, it's got to be plugged in in one of the rooms and my wife doesn't want it in there. So it's got to come out and I don't know what to do with it now. So I probably need to get two of these. So when I was looking at buying two of the Eve ones,

I think it was close to a hundred bucks because they're way more expensive than $25. Well, congratulations on the adoption. I'm sure your family is very excited for them. Yeah, yeah. We're, it's one of those like weight things, like the hope that kills you type things because you never know.

You're like sitting, you're like, hey, you're on the list, great job. But then like the ball starts rolling rolling and so here we are. It's going to be a fun summer, that's for sure. It's going to get busy around here. It's not already busy enough. More unfinished projects. Yeah. Well, maybe I'll have a sensor though.

That'll be cool. You never install it, but you'll have a sensor. Yeah. I mean, the problem is I'm going to have to. Yeah, it's used by more than more than me in the house, right? So I'll take a look at these and see what I can do. I also need to get like I have the smoke alarm things installed from when I had my two gig panel, right? So I still have those installed. Now they still work, right? They'll still go off and make noise. But they're not hooked up to anything, right, for security monitoring. So I've got to figure out how to, I've got to, I know you guys have eternally struggled with finding a smart smoke alarm that integrates with things. I don't have any wires in my house for one. House is old. So it's got to be battery powered.

And those things work great, but I don't know what to change out to on those. Maybe there's a Z-Wave option and I'll just be an all Z-Wave house. There's a Z-Wave option. First, is it first alert has a Z-Wave option? That's the one I have. They suck, don't get them. Oh.

No, they work good for me. Might have problems. Oh, the Canadian ones work fine. Well, you guys have better standards up there. Yeah, probably, yeah. Matrix fire. Matrix fire. Matrix fire. I mean, it's not like I have tested it at all or anything.

Like, yeah. No, I just have like random disconnection issues and I've never replaced like two of them. Oh, mine's never disconnected. Nope. Anyway, Gavin, what have you been up to? Oh, where do I? It's been a busy week.

Okay, so first, I finished my Blue Iris to Unifi Protect migration. Ooh. Thanks. Wait, is Blue Iris unplugged now? Nope, nope, nope, nope. Okay. So, so Unifi Protect is my main system.

It does all the detections and we view it and all that stuff through that, right? But Blue Iris, I still have have like the cameras are still streaming to the blue Iris system because blue Iris has an API that I utilize in some other ways, especially when it comes to like, um, showing the video feeds on my TV and stuff like that. So when I have certain, um, automations come up on my, on our TV, they pop up in the corners, uh, when certain motion in like the driveway or

The front door even someone rings the front door it pops up in the corners and we can see who's at the front door You know what triggered it on the driveway, etc, etc So to get those images and stuff, I couldn't do it through protect. I know protect added an API recently I haven't figured out how to pull an image from it directly yet. Uh, the documentation kind of sucks, but, um, blue Iris just works. Right. So for now I just have blue Iris sitting there just for this, but all the detections, everything else we use the, you know, if I protect directly.

So it's working great now. Um, and why I'm saying now is because over the last week, I've been trying to troubleshoot like major problems, like not major problems, but it was a pain in ass problem. And first of all, I have a bunch of AI ports and I don't know, there's, I haven't seen this anywhere out there. So I'm just saying this because it has to be said somewhere, right? But they seem to come with some old form firmware on it.

And the problem with that old firmware seems to be hard coded to a specific IP address. 192.168.125. No idea why. Right? So you plug them in, it sees the AI port, you go to adopt it, and it just, it fails to adopt. But in Protect, it shows it having that IP address. And then on your network side, it shows another IP address. So you, it's near impossible to figure out what's going on. So all I ended up doing was setting hard, like setting the IP address on the network side to be the dot 25 as well.

And once I did that, the adoption started working. I then can upgrade the firmware. Then I could change the IP and give it another IP address or let it use DHCP or whatever, and it worked fine. So that, and I've had to do that on about six of them. So it seems to be like, and they were bought different times, different places. So it seems to be like an old firmware bug that I just had to say out loud somewhere in case anyone ever runs into this.

So when you plug them in, they start off at this random IP address. Yeah, the dot two five. And they show that IP address in the protect side of things. But on the network side of things, they show another IP address. Weird. It's the really weird thing. So yeah, like I said,

I hard coded the IP address on the network side to match. And then at that point it said, okay, let me adopt it. And then I got a firmware update. Must have been a bug in the firmware that they fixed. And then after it got the firmware update, I then reset all the IP addresses and let it go back to DHCP or I hard-coded to something else. You assume they fixed it. Yeah, I assume they did. But in the end, you know, I have to leave that 1.25 free just in case, you know?

Like, you know, so have to leave that 1.25 free just in case, you know, like, right, right. You know, so that nothing else will take it. But, you know, I, I found that issue. Another issue I had. So once you go down the, you guys never told me this before, but once you go down the unified path, it's just a money suck, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had to upgrade my hard drive. So one of the things I was seeing a lot of was an error message called saying

protect auto recovery, successful. They kept doing that over and over again. And when I did research, it said, um, it could be related to the speed of your hard drive and I had a 5,400, you know, purple drive in there and I wanted to upgrade it anyway to something larger. So I took the opportunity. I got an eight terabyte, you know, 7,200 fast, you know, like drive and put it in there. And for the most part, that error went away except for two cameras.

No matter what I did with these cameras, I lowered resolutions. I went through all sorts of networking, troubleshooting. I did so many things like over the course of a week to try and figure out why these two cameras keep giving me this issue and keep dropping off for some reason. And today, like just today before this morning, I said, what the hell? Let me see if it's the port itself. So I swapped the two AI ports that were associated with these cameras. Errors went away. Makes no sense at all why I did this because I've removed and added these cameras. I've removed and added these ports. I've done everything I can. And all I did was just go swap the two ports

and associate them with the other device and everything started working again. And it's been working perfectly fine. All the errors are gone. So now I'm totally happy. Because now it's working as intended. I'm not getting any errors. So it's fast response.

Everything's working great. I'm 24 7 recording the integration with home assistant the face Vehicle person animal detections all work great It's a nice system, you know So that that's you know, if anyone's into unified protect or is looking at something I would highly recommend UniFi Protect. It's not cheap though. Significant price difference between this and something like Belyris,

but it works very well. I still have problems with the RTSP. I'm sitting here loading. It can take up to two or three minutes for a camera to show up if it ever shows up. What we got to look at is things like your camera settings, the frames per second you have it set up, is it constant bit rate, variable bit rate, what's the resolution you have it set to. You got to kind of lower those down a bit so the AI port can... Is that documented somewhere?

No, no, that's the thing is, is if your camera is too good, the thing is, is if your camera is too good, um, the, you know, it doesn't work as well with, uh, uh, you know, if your camera, if, if you're using the AI port, it can only handle up to a certain resolution, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Right. Um, if you're not using the AI port, I realized they, they do a lot of things that if you're using on VIF cameras, they strip out a lot of features. I don't think they even record audio.

It's just video, they won't let you restream the video, all sorts of basically the most basic of basic things they will do if you're using the on-vif. I guess that's their way of pushing you to buying something like an AI port. I know they're supposed to add support for multiple on-vif cameras eventually. I don't know when that's ever gonna come.

I'm just happy it works with one at this point. Who knows how well it will work when it's got like three on it, but we will see. That will be coming down the road. Yeah, I don't know. One of the cameras loads up almost instantly. I'm pretty sure all the settings are the same. One of the, and then you just see it's a black. Yeah.

It's just not doing anything except the three dots. When you go look at the cameras, go to live mode, like it doesn't have the streaming video on it, which I think is kind of like lame, right? Because the streaming video is just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just like, you know, it's just go to live mode, it doesn't have the streaming video on it, which I think is lame, because the streaming video is

their own recordings that they've been saving off on the side. It has nothing to do with the on-vif of the camera. But it would be nice to be able to scroll back through the history like you can with the other cameras. If it's a resolution thing, document it, put it down somewhere. So I know what like to set this at.

Yeah, they're very bad at documenting. I know. Good Lord. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say if you're using all of your cameras, hey, this thing works great. With OnVif, I'm still not convinced. This is a beta product with OnVif. I don't think it works.

Yeah, if you're using, well, it's not that doesn't work. It's probably that they're just making it very bad on purpose. If you're using unified cameras, the experience is a totally different experience. It's, you know, but if you start, yeah. And if you get an AI port, it's a different experience as well, because it converts that camera into fast loading, you know, with all the bells and whistles, you know? But if you're just using the on VIF import, yeah, it's a bad experience. I would not say I would be happy with this particular experience with on-vif cameras, but yeah,

like the unified cameras that I have come up extremely fast. Yeah. So no complaints on that. It's just everything else is subpar, which I know they could do better. Like I have the UNVR, like no, I don't have the AI ports, but I'm not expecting that either. I'm just expecting video from a freaking camera to get recorded to the NVR. Exactly.

That shouldn't be that hard. So anyway, if it is, tell me what I need to turn off because I'll go turn it off on these cameras right now. Do you have the latest, do you install the early adopters version of- No. That was breaky, breaky. The thing with the early adopters is they've been adding a lot of fixy fixies, for stuff like this.

Lies. Yeah. That's one of the things while troubleshooting all this, I've installed a lot of the early adopter versions of their software on my network trying to troubleshoot things. And I have on all my ports and all the cameras and stuff. So, you know, one thing I did learn in this whole process was that, uh, how to unbrick like a one of my mini switches.

So like I installed the firmware, went through all my switches upgraded, except for my one mini switch and it would just not come back on again. It was just totally gone. Nothing I could do to get it. Um, and I saw a post, someone said, you know, um, you can do a firmware recovery of it. And this was actually really cool to do. I've never done this before, but it required setting up like a little web server on your computer

All right You had to give your computer a specific IP address like 192 168 1.99 right you copied the firmware bin file into the root directory and Then when you're turning plugging in the switch you hold down the reset button and what that caused is the switch then on the reset button and what that caused is the switch then reached out to that specific IP address, grabbed the FW update dot bin file and then reflashed it. And then it brought it back to life. And I didn't know this was a thing. I was almost going to bring, send this back and say, Hey, it's dead.

But then I found this article on how to do this and it brought it back to life. It flashed a basic firmware reset everything. And then I was able to reconfigure and re-adopt it. Nice. If you ever run into that, it's not an easy process, but it's documented out there on their website. That was really cool to do.

Other than that, I got the garage for my lawnmower. My lawnmower sits out in the yard and it's in the sun. The birds, I think we're using it as target practice, so, uh, you know, it's got a lot of spots on it from, you know, bird droppings, but, um, I just had to get a little, you know, garage. I ordered the garage and now it's protected from the elements and the birds. And it's, it's, it looks so happy out there. This thing looks happy. You know, it's like Gavin cares about me, you know, and, you know, between, I even bought a cover for my robot, um, vacuum for my pool, you know, it's like Gavin cares about me, you know, and you know between I even bought a cover for my robot

Vacuum for my pool, you know, I bought a nice little cover so it doesn't sit in the Sun and you know stuff like that Do I take care of my bots, you know supposedly supposedly birds aren't real. They're actually robots Yeah, this means that your robots are fighting robots. Oh, it's already begun You've already started the birds have the projectile, so, you know. Yeah, they're definitely alive. Yeah. You know, one thing I realized though is I haven't named my bots. You know, I don't, well, I named my vacuum.

That one's called Dusty, but I don't have one for my pool vacuum and I don't have one for my lawnmower. So if a listener has a cool name, you know, because I ran, I gave all my cool names away. So if a listener has a cool name, let me know. I need one for my lawnmower. I need one for my, cause you know, like giving it a name, you know, you become more like personal, the robot, when they take over our world, they're going to remember me as the guy that bought them a garage that, you know, gave them a

name and identity, you know, I'm going to come up with some good names. All right. Yeah. So you can do that. Any listeners send me some robot names for, why I need one for my pool vacuum and one for my lawnmower. Feedback at hometech.fm. Exactly.

I never named the small robot lawnmower, besides Clippy. Yeah, we gave it that name. Yeah. The big one I named Big Bertha. I just sent Big Bertha out there to mow the lawn, actually. I sent you guys a picture of what, when the cameras come up, they actually look really nice. But it just takes a while for them to do that. So yeah, Big Bertha is traveling around the front lawn right now.

Now that it's nice and cool, there's no real sun out there. She started to do her job out there. So that's really cool. Right. But I had, I never named the other one. So, Oh, we, we need some cool names. Let's send us some cool names and tell us which one they're gonna be for.

Yeah. I don't know. So maybe we'll send a sticker for the one. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get TJ to send some stickers. Yeah, there you go. I'll send you right away.

But that wraps up my projects for this week. I have a lot of devices coming in that I'm going to be talking about over the next few weeks, so that's going to be fun. Teasers. Yes. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially lead the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hom home tech.com slash support to learn how you can support home Tech for as little as a dollar month any pledge over five bucks a month get you a big shout out here on the show

But every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slide chat the hub Where you and other support of the show can gather in there every day and check out all sorts of cool stuff Richard finished his his his box holding shelves. I I don't get it. He's got some big boxes. They're like, yeah. He's got the nicest shelves you could possibly imagine, but he's got empty boxes on them. I don't get it.

There's a couple of bins that say smart home stuff. He actually has like four bins that say smart home stuff. There is not useful stuff. But this is what I did in my basement. I took all the boxes off the floor and I organized them nicely. And I bought shelving for all around my basement. No, I keep the boxes there in case I know. So my system is I keep the boxes, but then every year I'll go down there

and purge the boxes. So I keep them in case I feel like I'm going to sell this or give it away or whatever. And then after like a year or so I'll go down there and I'll just take the boxes and break them all down. And in the boxes, I leave parts and stuff that came with the device. So then I'll take the parts out, put them in a little bag and label them. So I know where those parts came from.

Stuff like that. I'm a little, I'm organized too, but I really appreciate it. I can appreciate the picture Richard posted. Like, like that's organized, you know? And I did the exact same thing. I've labeled bins. I, you know, even down till I bought the same bin, you know, it throws me off that you have some different bins

in there. My bins were all the same, you know? I one-upped Richard. They were all, I got them on sale. I bought them all the same. And I labeled them and, you know, like, not just I appreciate it, but the wife appreciates it too,

because everything's organized. I can see the one that, the boxes that got me were the TV boxes. I don't think I've ever been able to keep a TV box. I mean, where do you put your trash? Like when you're putting the TV on the wall, like all the trash goes in there, and then you slide that thing out to the end of the driveway

and they take it away. The only thing that threw me off in this whole picture was the one printer box on the side. It was like, come on, you boxed in late. You put everything on a shelf and that one box on the side, you know, I would have sacrificed so many of the other boxes to make room so there would be no boxes on the floor.

It's like a Seth project. It feels so unfinished watching that one box on the floor. Well, let us know, let us know. Feedback at home decked out with him. Do you keep boxes or are you like me where like, as soon as the thing arrives in the house, like is the box already in the trash? And at the end, like I have stuff just sitting around and it's not installed, like, you know, like this.

Yeah, it doesn't even use the product. Yeah, it's right here. It's not doing anything, but the box is in the trash already. Yeah, I can't keep a box. I can't, there's no way I'd be able to do that. So anyway, let us know feedback home.com. HomeTech.fm. Anyway, if you want to help out but can't support the show financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast after your choice. That's going to wrap up another week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week.

Till next time. Take care.