HomeTech.fm - Episode 534 - An “Iron Dome” For Mosquitoes

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

On this week's show: Samsung adds natural language programming while Pro systems lag further behind, KEF makes something with Nothing, IKEA now Matters, and UniFi announces a decent NAS drive update. Plus, project updates, a pick of the week, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, 7-Eleven. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, and free slushies, right? You get the free Slurpee days, right? Yeah, 7-Eleven day.

Yeah, you got to bring in like an aquarium? You get the free Slurpee days, right? Yeah, 7-Eleven day. Yeah, you gotta bring it like an aquarium or something and get free Slurpee. Maybe that's why I couldn't get a Slurpee as sheets. I don't know. Is that only in the States? I don't know. I think it's 7-Eleven everywhere. Do you have 7-Elevens up there?

Canada, free slushies. I'm looking it up now because I will have something to do after we've done recording. 11 p.m PM slushie. You're going to find the most obnoxious device you can put the slushie in though. That's the whole deal. People bring in like aquariums, they bring in those giant reusable cups,

they get the fairs and stuff like that. It's shaped like a boot, whatever fun shapes you can put it into. I thought you could only get it from the cup they have there. I thought that was what 7-Eleven day was. I don't know. We don't live near any 7-Elevens, so. What?

The only time I saw them was when I was in New York or Florida. Oh. Yeah. We have a ton of them here. We don't have them here. They're everywhere. Yep. Free, oh, you see, they put free small slurpee.

Yeah. We got a small one. Yeah, see? Well, we got restricted. People kept going with giant fish tanks and stuff. They're like, we gotta stop this. Yeah, well, not worth it. We do have 7-elevens.

They're not that popular, though. Yeah, I wouldn't say they're popular either here, but we have them. Yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of popularity, happy Prime Day for those who celebrate. It's going on right now. And I guess I have some things in my cart

that aren't exactly a discount, but the best I can tell they save a few bucks on them. Gavin, did you get anything today for your Prime Day? I got a few things, just like every Prime Day. I usually create a list in advance of like stuff I usually want to just stock up on. You want to stock up on some batteries, this is the perfect day to get your batteries, right?

And then every now and then something pops out. The one thing, and this is a non techie type thing, but something I really wanted and don't laugh. It was a steam cleaner. Those are good. I have, I used to have one that did the floor, but I got a little small one now that I won't do the floor with. I used to have one that did the floor, but I got a little small one now that I won't do the floor with. I got a bigger one, the floor model, the handle and everything. And I always wanted one and I just never got around to it and I ran across a good one on sale. So I spent a bit of money. I picked that up and I can cross it off my bucket list now and move on.

Yeah, with nice clean floors at that. Nice to walk on when you get them all clean. The other thing I grabbed actually, um, some extra echo B smart sensors. Ooh. Oh, are those? I could use one. They were on sale. So I got, I got a couple extra of those. And, you know, if you have an echo B thermostat, usually in a house, your

thermostats not in the most ideal place for when it measures like the temperatures of your house and stuff like that. And that's where these remote sensors are great because you can program them. So that say at night, you only care about the temperatures of your house and stuff like that. And that's where these remote sensors are great because you can program them so that say at night you only care about the temperature in your master bedroom, screw all the kids' bedrooms and stuff, just in your bedroom.

Exactly. You only care if it's the right temperature and you can program it. So at night it just monitors that and only turns on and off based on that, right? Or like I do when the fireplace is on, it automatically stops monitoring temperatures in a bunch of rooms and only cares about a certain area. Because I know the fireplace is going to throw that all off, right?

So it's good for things like that. So smart sensors make it that much better. Yeah, that's a good idea for the thermostat use case there. You see they're 20% off. So they're a hundred, a hundred, or actually they're a hundred dollars normally. And my camel says that that's correct. That they're not, they've not gone down very far. But they're only 20% off for the Prime Dame deal. So it's 80 bucks for two of them. It's still a better price than paying a hundred dollars.

Not bad, not bad. All right, you convinced me. I should add one more. I've been meaning to get some of those because they're nice to have around. And I have the, what is that called? The flare system that integrates with it as well. So like if I have more sensors,

I have more data points on what vents and stuff I can open and close. So yeah. Just made you spend some money. There you go. I don't think about it. I haven't bought anything yet. I need it.

I want another battery for the lawnmower thing that I got. So yeah. And a bigger one, big old battery. And they're not for sale very much. Like they're off a little bit, but not a crazy amount. You're talking like the tool battery. Tool battery, yeah. Like the 10,000 milliamp one is what I want.

I want the big one. Those over the years, I always found them hard to get them on sale. Anytime I got those on sale was usually a pricing error online and I just jump on it and got lucky like that. Or it was just some random at one home depot was just probably trying to clear them out or something like that. And I got it on sale. So they're hard to find on sale batteries.

All right. Yeah, two batteries I usually wait till the holidays and I buy a couple of them. They don't really go on sale that much, but a lot of times you can get them with like a free tool or something like that. So that's how I got all my Milwaukee batteries. Yeah, these are usually about $200

and it's 159 right now. So not terrible. Is this for your Ryobi lawnmower? Is that what it is? It's the ego thing. I have the ego, what was it called? The blower thing, the blower. And I've got the ego trimmer and I went and picked up one.

Yeah, I picked up one on Facebook and so, or a mower. So TBD on how well that actually works. Yeah, you probably definitely need a battery for that. Because if I use my weed whacker and my blower, usually lasts like the entire time I need it, but I have a small property. Yeah. I feel like if I was using it for a lawnmower though,

it would not last at all. Yeah. The one I have for the weed whacker and the blower is like a five milliamp or something. It's one of the smaller ones on the website here. So a 10 amp hour, I guess is what it is, 10,000. Yeah, 10 amp hour. That one should last a while longer, I guess. I don't know. I do like my ego stuff.

It works great. Yeah. I'm not at all like, well, I'm looking at the off-brand batteries. This is a younger tool So I'm not I'm not gonna spin the the ego pricing on it. They're not by the legit battery. It's it's fine No, I don't think so. Let's see about a couple of batter I bought a couple of Milwaukee like refurbished batteries and they are nowhere near as good as the original one Does your more have one battery or two just one just like a little thing? The other battery like TJ saying like saying, it drains down pretty quickly,

especially when you use a blower. That's what usually does it in. I usually can weed eat the entire property, and then I'll pop it in for the blower, and I don't know, get like three or four minutes out of it. Then it's like, yeah, no, you need to go charge anything.

So 30 minutes to charge. So just need a bigger one. I've got fair skin. I got to take a break anyway. So I do the weed whacking, let the battery charge up. I take a break, drink some water, and I come back out with a blower. I just work slow.

I take many breaks. I'm too cheap to buy another battery right now. So, yeah, that's good. Well, I mean, I haven't bought it yet. It's still sitting in there. So that may reconsider click buy now click buy now. The other thing I actually picked up, not, not a prime day deal, but I upgraded the wheels on my segway lawnmower. Oh, right.

So I was programming it and I have a little hill in the front and it was struggling on that hill. So I'm like, you know what? Let me get the rugged wheels for. Yeah. And let's see. I also found like 3D printable wheels online that are a little even more spikier. So if these wheels don't get me up that hill, I'm going gonna go and print one of those and see if it helps. Navimo wheels for the X3.

Yeah, the rough terrain kit is what I'm looking at. Hmm, those are for the iSeries. And yeah, they're not on sale right now. No. Yeah. Yeah, they're $100. I don't know. I think I might wait on those just because,

I don't know. I feel like they need to be even more rugged than what I'm looking at here. I don't know. I feel like they need to be even more rugged than what I'm looking at here. I don't know. We'll see. I'll add them to the cart just to be safe though. Add to cart. This is generally what happens to me. I'll come to my cart and I'll be like,

there's 45 things and $3,000 worth of stuff. Trim that back a little bit. All right, it's there. It's there. What I also need to do is get some like some decals and stickers for this thing. So it can look look really cool. Some glow in the dark eyes.

Yeah. I still think I should find a camera to put on there so we can livestream it and make thousands of dollars like that one guy was doing. I can't think of these things. All right. Well, that's that. Prime Day. happy Prime Day, everybody. I hope you got something. Should still be going on when the podcasts are released, if that's released on Friday? I could get it ambitious and get it done. And not- Who are we kidding?

We're all friends here. Not sit on it for two more days, like I did this time, and remember like, oh, I haven't published a podcast and push it out, yeah, whoops, sorry about that. I did get it done, but it was over the weekend. How you gonna do? All right, we have a couple of home tech headlines. What do you guys say we jump in?

Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, Samsung has rolled out a bunch of updates for its SmartThings platform, including a more intuitive interface for users to create automated routines. Now you can add them with natural language. So you can just say turn on the lights when I get home directly into the app. Samsung SmartThings will process and automate that accordingly. This is kind of like the Google one we talked about a couple weeks back. Samsung says, me too, me too. And I'm all for this, this is great.

This like opens up. If you've got the little smart products in your house and they're all there doing their thing, you can just tell your smart system to automate the way you want to automate. You don't have to go figure out all these crazy routines and how things, no, it's just gonna do it for you. That's great, I like it.

Yeah, this is kind of what you want from a smart home, right? Like you don't wanna have to think like a home assistant would be the perfect thing for this because home assistant automations are like overly complicated. There's just so many things going on with it that you have to like if no specifically which device to use, you need to know which kind like what type of device it is, for example, if it's a light or lock or whatever it is. And with this, you could just be like, I just want you to automate those things

and do it. And it's fantastic. I have a couple of programs that kind of work like this. Like I use OpenPhone for my work phone system. And like whenever I schedule sending stuff, I can just say, hey, send this tomorrow at 9 a.m. And it does it. Like I don't have to type in like a specific date or time

or anything like that. And so that part's nice. I really like that for AI. And if that comes to the smart home where you can just simply type in something that you want to do and it does it, I'm here for it. And on the home assistant front, I feel like they're going to eventually get there. They have to. And when they, yeah.

And when they do get there, you'll have to explain what you want to do in YAML, but that's fine. No, three spaces, three spaces. Exactly. In debt, double in debt. But this, this kind of, I think the first I ever saw something like this, I think was Josh AI, uh, was the first I saw them doing something like this. So, you know, it's similar.

Yeah. They had, they had something like this. It may not have been as powerful because I think they were doing it before the chat GPT type AIs were out there. I think they had their own AI built into it or something like that. It was a simplified form, but it's good to see this coming out. I'm all for it.

Let's move over to the ProSpace. That was a little DIY space. Let's see what the ProSpace is doing. And Crestron Home now is putting music control into the forefront of the smart home experience. I gotta say, I've been less and less impressed with what the ProSpace has been doing. And I don't know, just opposed to like being able

to program your home with your voice in natural language. And then Crestron is updating 4.7, six of its Home OS. It's focused heavily on enhancing the user experience and controlling music throughout the home. And I guess maybe there's a nice user interface that goes along with this. Not that you would know, because I guess that's kind of a secret

and you can only see this little rough screenshot of some items being checked off, like maybe Sonos did 10 years ago. I really don't get this. I honestly don't get this, but they also improved and simplified Dolly lighting control. They expanded the door lock support, improved intercom capabilities

and customizable touchscreen font sizes for helping you read what's on the screen. Woo! Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. I got to say, like we were talking about this before the show, it really feels like the pro space, and I'm not just picking on Crestron, like let's just say everyone else, is getting just left in the dust.

I mean, just by the pace of the DIY products that are out right now. Yeah, and it's like, it's not even like everything, right? Because like you expect Home Assistant to go a lot faster with like everything because You know, they're open source and anybody can log in and make changes and do whatever they want to it But it's just like like nothing's happening in the pro space, right? We're basically getting some like new displays and some music stuff and it's like alright Well, everybody's kind of moved on past those things Yeah, and occasionally we get a new remote and it's like alright cool

So you're selling a remote to 12 people that want to remote That's great. It's just there's not much there at this moment. Yeah, maybe maybe it'll find something, you know There's some calling there's some consolidation going on, you know, RTI was purchased. Who are they purchased by? I was like a V bro. Yeah, maybe for edge That'll be interesting to see if that works out to anything and and they're more pivot to conference rooms and stuff like that. But as far as the professional just consumer it, AV space, there's not much going on. It's weird as I was at Infocom a couple weeks back.

I didn't really talk much about it. There is actually something we need to talk about, because I did find a remote on the show floor. No. Yeah. You found a remote on the show floor. No. Yeah. You found a remote and you didn't tell us. I actually, I sent you guys a picture and Gavin was like, and then he saw the price,

he's like, I don't know. But it does look cool. I'm telling you, it looks really cool. Anyway, what I noticed from that in that space, every single video distribution system that exists, also has a control product alongside of it. So it's like AV Pro is actually just playing catch up in that space. AV Pro just did video distribution stuff.

They had a couple, they actually really have some really cool like HDMI testing equipment. That's kind of like a sister company that they sell as well. They've got really cool video and audio distribution products. If you walked in the CD booth, you would see this stuff and you'd be like, wow, that's really cool. I could use this on many projects.

But if you go to Infocomm and you look around, it's like there are brands there that do video distribution and like conference room table, like what you're saying, DJ, conference room systems that have full on control solutions with their own touchscreens and everything. And you'd never even heard of these brands before. It's just some like random, like it's just what they do. Like it's what they have.

And I kind of realized when I was walking around, like if you want to play in that space, like, and you want to have a video system like an audio system, you got to offer the control system along with it. And I think that's what AVPro was doing. I didn't really from the consumer side and I guess the pro space or whatever and on the CD side I guess we should say that one was like wow that's really strange. If you look at commercial ambitions which which they definitely have, it makes total

sense because they look like every other company that had a video system in there. Yeah, I would agree. And RTI has been coming out with more and more commercial audio, AV stuff in general. So I think it was a good play. And RTI, I've always liked RTI for the most part. Software was a little more, I feel like convoluted than it needed to be, but they worked on that with like Apex and some other revisions. Yeah. And I stopped playing with it around that time. So I always liked RTI though.

Big remotes. Yeah, the best remotes though. I mean, they were solid. I'm not going to lie. They were solid. They were nice. And URC had some like back in the day that I could count on, but like RTIs actually look good,

but they like, you see them and you're like, wow, that looks really good. And then you could like see it in person. You're like, that's a big remote. Like you could kill someone with this remote. It's that big. Like it's a very- You got an intruder, this remote, take care of them.

Yeah, you don't have to worry about it. Like you see them in the pictures and lifestyle images and it's like, oh, there's a remote on the table. You walk up and put it in your hand, you're like, I can, I have a baseball bat. Like they're just large remotes. Anyway, but a good remote. And I know that they've been making way,

making progress as well with that Apex thing you're talking about, but it should be. I did talk to somebody at the AV approval before I was there and they're excited about the collaboration they'll be able to do now that they have a control system. So I did find a remote while I was there, guys. I have to get this guy on the show, though. He was real fun to talk to.

I talked to him for like an hour on the second day, and they make their own remote, integrates with Home Assistant. Well, tell them we can do the second ever podcast from our remote. Yeah, it's too bad. We've already done the remote from, no, it's not this one. Uh-oh, I don't know where it is.

It's over here somewhere. It's around somewhere. Yeah, from the Aver remote, you sent me without a charger. Yeah, but it takes USB-C, so. Yeah, but I can't do anything with it. I assume there's software I don't have. No, it's literally just Android. Oh, it's just on the remote?

Yeah, it's literally just the Android Play Store. That's why it wasn't good. That's why I sent it to you. It was very slow. Honestly, if it was like the processor and the RAM was better, it'd probably be an honest, like a good remote, but it's just so dang slow. It's not good. It's probably why it was Android.

It's probably why I just let it float away somewhere. Yeah. My daughter probably has it. That's why they're selling them five at a time. Yeah. Probably five. Right. I have enough backup Harmony remotes right now that will last me a few years,

unless their servers go down or something. I was saying, what are you going to do when they finally shut it down next year? Fire still. Well, then the remotes I have will still work. I just won't be able to program them if I get a new device. You just never have to get a device. Yeah. It'll be like 2035, somebody will be like, why don't you get a new TV?

And you're like, I can't because my Harmony remote. Pretty much. Yeah, I can see that happening. Yeah. All right, well, speaking of nothing, Kev is actually partnering with Nothing for making a collaborative product between the two brands. The headphone in parentheses one,

which I thought was a mistake on our show notes, but no, it's not. Nope. Is Nothing's first over the ear product and will debut under the Sound by Kev initiative. So these look wild. They're interesting. Weird company name though.

I'll give them that. I thought I had a weird company name. $299. So if you need immersive headphones, Gavin, Kev's got nothing for you. Convince me like why is this better? Wow, I can't believe you just did that. Convince me why this is better than my Sonos headphones.

They work. They work every time. My Sonos headphones are working? They work. They work every time. Yeah. My Sonos headphones are working. Okay, nevermind then. I don't know, nothing is an interesting company because they make, originally they got their start with smartphones, right? And so they made some, they made an interesting smartphone

that had a clear back and it had a little light up display thing on the back. It was kind of cool. All their products kind of look like this though and I'm not a fan. Like these headphones, I think are ugly Like they're already ugly because they're like a little square thing right. They're not attractive in that regard. But I don't like the little clear thing that shows some of the insides. It's like a skinned inside. So it's not like you're seeing the

electronics and stuff but it's not good looking in my opinion. Hmm. Oh I see on their website. Here's a better picture of it.. It's like exposed buttons or something. Yeah, and that's like their thing. If you look at their phone, the Nothing 3, for example, it's not good looking either. This is a statement piece. They're mainly just for listening for music, it sounds like.

You have stereo sound playing, they react to your head moving around and stuff like that and offers the high res audio, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. I guess if you really want something like this and you like the look of it, go for it. But my Sonos like, again, it does a lot more than this. Um, especially since I'm in that ecosystem. So, you know, walking up to any TV and just pressing the button, it switches the audio over

is like, you know, killer feature for me. I don't know. Here's some specs where you got me. Maybe one of these will convince you. Up to 80 hours of playback. Pretty good. Okay. Sound by Kev.

Whatever that means, yeah. Real-time adaptive audio noise cancellation. Cancellation, there we go. I think, yeah, I think Sonos, does Sonos have that or is it the Apple? Yeah, they can have that. It comes in black and white. Oh, you got color options. Okay.

Yeah. I actually have a pair of the CMF Buds Pro 2, which are like an AirPods thing. There's wireless earbuds. They were I think like $70 originally. They sound really good honestly, and they come in some fun colors. I think like $70 originally. They sound really good honestly. And they come in some fun colors actually got mine in orange. Yeah orange. So like I like those headphones. So and they sound really good. I'm assuming these nothing headphones with Kev sound really good as well. I'm just not a fan of the the aesthetics of them. Those

look just like the the AirPods and they're like $28. So. Oh, yeah. They have a regular line, and then they have a pro line. And then they have a couple other options as well. Remember those trucker Bluetooth headphones that people would wear in the late 2000s? No, they still wear them, TJ. I was talking to somebody today, and they got on.

They had one of those things on. Yeah, yeah. The full microphones. Yeah, they have a version version it's called ear open. What? Yeah, people like those I don't know. Yeah, maybe it's a gamer thing. I don't know at least it's not ugly though, you know It's not it's not attractive looking but if you go to their website They really trying to make these headphones seem like something because they had all these models on there on their page and like one Guy's in a spacesuit and like he's the only one that looks like, yeah, you should probably be wearing these headphones

with your space suit thing that you got on. But yeah, they're going for a look. So anyway, there you go. I kind of like this headphone, the little wireless ones you're talking about. Yeah, honestly, they work great. Nice. And I think you can use the little dial to control

the volume and stuff like that. It's like a little, I think it was, I thought it was a fidget spinner, honestly, cause it just like rotated and did nothing. But I think you can control the volume. It's the name of the company. Nothing. Yeah.

Nothing.tech. I don't see the little wheel you were talking about. And I'm just going to assume that the stem is the wheel and you can just spin the stems around to do what you're talking about. Cause that would be fun. Well, if you click on, no, it's on the case itself. Oh, it's on the case.

That's where you control the volume. I think you use the headphones too but it's got a little dial on it too. Oh that does look fun. Yeah. Okay. I use it as a fidget spinner. I honestly do not use it to control the volume I just keep twisting it around and I'm like yeah ADHD. There you go. All right perfect. Let's move on here. IKEA. IKEA has gotten madder, the Digiria Smart Home Hub, which I butcher every time, Deir-I-Gir- Digiridoo?

Yeah, Digiridoo. Smart Hub Home, it now will function as a controller for Matter. So big news in Matter. And I swear, I think we're actually gonna make a trip to the Ikea to go over there and buy some. I heard my wife saying, we need to go to Ikea. My daughter's never been, so it's gonna be fun for her to go in. and buy something. I heard my wife saying, we need to go to IKEA. My daughter's never been, so it's gonna be fun

for her to go in. Yeah. How far are you from an IKEA? I mean, I would say we were good like solid 45 minutes. That's not bad. It's not bad. It's also not a fun drive. So it's like into traffic and the whole way.

And it's like, it's not on the way home to anything. But if we make it like a destination trip, we go up there, swing in. We used to swing in like on the way to a hockey game or something and then buy stuff and toss it in the car and then go to the hockey game. But I think this time we're going to go up there. I might take a look at some of the IKEA Smart Home products

because they're pretty good. And I'll probably get some hot dogs and cinnamon rolls. And I have a couple of IKEA smart home sensors. They're pretty good. Motion sensors really, but they work great. I have their blinds, this will work great too. Nice. It was just Seagbee blinds.

See if you can find any old Sonos IKEA stuff since that partnership's discontinued now. Might be able to snack and deal. Oh yeah, I have a couple of those speakers. Yes, I do. Yep. I have those. Yeah, I was thinking about grabbing some of those.

I'm starting to see them pop up on marketplace now too. So it's like, well, maybe we should just get them over there. All right. Moving on here, we've got an update from Unify, the Drive 3.0, which isn't for your car. It's for their, what, the NAS storage stuff that they have, right? They're basically, I think from what I'm seeing here,

like Synology and what was it, QNAP, those companies really need to kind of look out because they're not on feature parity with these guys yet, but they're getting close, they're getting real close. And now you can have all sorts of flexible raid groupings. You can have an easy or as hard setup as you want, all through the nice little interface. Of course, it's all graphical.

It looks really cool. I also noticed that they had backup options for like Wasabi, Backblaze, S3 integrated in there now. I'm gonna say they're really up in the game here. And it won't be too long, Gavin. Won't be too long. They'll have Docker. There'll be a Docker that you can run on this thing.

I bet you anything there'll be a Docker. You think so? You don't even need your servers anymore, Gavin. You can shut them down. Just like Blue Iris, you know? One time you're using Blue Iris, this archaic software, and next you can have unified hardware for you. I was looking at this.

It's, you know, the one thing with unraid is I can mix and match drives. That's honestly, that's one of my favorite things because I don't have to keep it all the same in the unified drive in 3.0. You still have to keep the same drives for the raids and everything like that. But the one thing they did add is you can create multiple pools. So if you had like three, eight terabytes and three, four terabytes, you can make different pools, have them at different speeds, different raid types, et cetera. So that was pretty cool. That's something you also...

No, no, no. You can... That's one of the features here. You can mix and match drives of different sizes on here. In Unify? Yeah, that's one of their headline features. Yeah. So you can, you can, you can definitely do that now. I thought it was, you still had to keep, cause it's RAID 5 and stuff. You still have to keep it the same.

But if you want it to mix drive sizes, you create multiple pools. So one pool is RAID 5 and one pool is RAID 10. I don't know. Says flexible RAID groups, mix and match drives with different sizes right there. Maintain storage efficiency with hardware compromise and yeah, design. I see where you're talking about, where they do the pools and everything. Yeah. Cause that's how they explained it in the videos and stuff is that you

could still keep the raids, but you. Maybe you put like all your six terabyte drives together. You put the 12, maybe that's what they're talking about. Yeah. I think that's what they mean is that you can make some mass drives, but you still have to keep them same in the same pool. That makes sense, I guess, to an extent, because I mean, like you can do that in Unraid, but it doesn't make any sense because when you, when you do that, like

you're going to end up with one large drive and that can't be like what the parity drive is basically the biggest drive, right? You can't have anything. It has to be the biggest drive. Yes. Yeah. Right. So, but then every other drive can be that size or smaller and you can, you're pretty much unlimited with drives at that point, right?

Um, so that, that's one of the features, but I would be surprised if like, with RAID, I think in general with RAID, you have to have all the same size drives anyway, so they'd have to go like, uh, outside of RAID and create their own technology or something to do there. Yeah, that's probably it. You're probably right. Because yeah, they're still using Raid. And because Raid 5 was the one kind of what we're talking about with that single parity drive. But then, yeah, they're using actual real Raid storage on the rest of the stuff.

Yeah. So it is, but it is interesting to see what they're doing. I probably wouldn't move over, but I was thinking at one point of moving my drives to their own dedicated server and then have all my dockers and VMs running on other servers. That way, you know, I can reboot things without, you know, taking down the whole share. But that's a future project. But this is good to see. And I saw in the comments, some people even noticed in the video, some other unannounced devices on the racks and stuff like that.

So I guess they were just different size drives, server mount, what do they call it? NAS storages. Oh yeah. They have like, they have like one with extra rows of drives as you can put in there. Yeah. In the videos. Yeah. But yeah, the features are great.

They're adding a lot of features. The backup features are cool, you know, but Unraid is coming, you know, Unraid is far ahead still, and they're coming out with some of these same features as well that they're missing as well. So I'm going to be with Unraid for a while. Just wait, just wait. They'll have a JBOD setting. You just click the J, you know, just click it off.

I wouldn't be surprised. One day I may end up on know, just click it off. I wouldn't be surprised. But they may end up on a unified drive. I, you know, I wouldn't be surprised, but for now. Yeah. They seem to be doing a pretty good job. I mean, especially if you look at like what this, their target market is like for, um, like a small business or even, I mean, it really feels like they're targeting Synology, QNAP, those types of storage solutions

where you may need to have something in that market. I think both of those companies have like, like Synology for sure has a bunch of business apps that kind of they can run over the top that like adds a little value to their products. But I don't know. And they're very interesting company because I find with their pricing, like things like, unless you go their high end stuff, they have things that are priced like it's not too expensive, but it's not cheap.

So it's kind of like in that, yeah, I'll just add one of these. And then, you know, like $70,000 later, you have a whole rack going. Before you know it, yeah, your whole rack is white and unified product. Yeah. So their pricing is very interesting for like, it's, you know, for the pros and for the, you know, about do it yourself first.

Uh, I like their ecosystem. Yeah. They've actually, um, they are actually now traditionally in the past, and I guess the owner of the company has been like adamant against like any distribution or any working or any, working with any integrators because they add margin, they demand margin to be added to the product or whatever. So they're actually starting to do that now,

especially on what they call the enterprise products that they have. While we were at CDA, they were announcing that they were going to be building some more margin, I guess, into the product line so that it was accepted by those communities who traditionally have to have margin. And I've started to see a couple of those products pop up where they say, I forget what it is, it's like they'll have a little partner logo on the product now. Yeah, Unified Partner Program. And that's fine at the enterprise level because they have the big money, but you know,

their pricing for us people at home, regular people is still like, you know, like inviting you, you look at it and you're it's not insta buy pricing, but you're looking at it going, this is affordable, you know, I'll just buy one camera today. Well, if you're in the pro space, it's like dirt cheap. And it's like people on like Reddit and social media and stuff like that. They're like, ubiquity is so expensive. I don't know how anybody buys it. And I'm like, yeah, I don't like, what are you comparing it to?

Like the cheap stuff you buy at Walmart? Because if you compare it to literally anything else, like it's, it's so cheap for what it is. Yeah. But the reason why I like, uh, why I liked them and the same reason why I like Sonos, you know, I'm one of the few, I guess, but they have like almost everything right for, for an ecosystem. You have from your switches to your routers to, you know, you have your NAS drive.

They have almost everything there and you can just stay in their ecosystem. Their cameras, you know, they're just, and they're expanding and it's, that's what I think about Sonos as well as they have everything, the sound bar, the amps, you know, the outdoor speakers, the indoor speakers, et cetera. I think they'll get bigger and bigger. Yeah. Honestly, that's why I like ubiquity. Like the other day I was doing a job for an IT company. Um, and it was like a finished dry walled ceiling and walls and stuff like that.

And then we need to put two access points in the, in the ceiling. And I'm like, honestly, I would just buy two wall mount access points to be done with it. They already have wall data jacks there. Like, I'll totally cut holes open if you want to, but I would just spend the $400 and buy two access points that mount on the wall. And they're like, yeah, that sounds like it makes sense.

And certain vendors, they don't have that option. You would just mount a regular access point on the wall, and it would not be a proper thing. Yeah. So we'll say, if you look at like the enterprise wifi access base, like I would traditionally have like a bunch of ruckus stuff around because of the previous employer had. And like we were just given, I was just given it.

So like, yeah, I've got two 2,500 access points in my house, but you know, like the difference between those and Unifi is, I mean, they're, they're a little more stable. Um, I had all sorts of problems with Unifi is, I mean, they're a little more stable. I had all sorts of problems with Unifi when I swapped them out, no problems at all. But I would cry, you know, if I paid that much money for an access point, and it went bad. And Unifi goes bad, you just throw it away,

and you get a new one. Right. You get the next model that's already come out since the last time you, so like, they're forgivable at the price points they're putting stuff at. Anyway, go Unifiify this looks pretty I just ran across we were talking about their pricing there's a $5,000 cloud key enterprise yeah and

when you look at those things you look at the features you realize why it's five thousand I mean I don't they're up time really they're uptime. Seth, you bought a $300 AI horn. You don't have any room to talk about too expensive products. Exactly. What does your AI horn do again? This is massive. I mean, this is essentially just a computer, right? It's a computer with 256 gigabyte SSD, it says. It's got a little touchscreen on the front and one 10G LAN and redundant power supplies.

It's in a computer case is all it is. So it's the touch screen costs like 4,500. What devices is this? This is the cloud key enterprise go into the advanced hosting. You're probably paying for, you get extra support. Oh look, it's got it. It's got a cover. 1000 unified devices and 10,000 clients.

Yeah. See, and it's got redundant power. 1000 UniFi devices and 10,000 clients. Yeah, see? And it's got redundant power supplies. Like there's so much more to this. I need this. They have redundant power supplies, but they don't have a little module thing that connects to their own power supplies. The UPSs that they have.

Oh man. You can tell this was slapped together. Not traditionally what UniFi would do, but you know what? This is probably not designed to be in a traditional Unifi install. So I get one, but their front doesn't match my current rack of layout. Yeah. I was gonna say it's, it's fixed out like a store prop. It looks like, it looks like the Dell like one use server, right?

That's what it, yeah. Yeah. Front pieces. Yeah. Well, you can get the little covers now. I saw that they were selling the extra covers for those, like the, what is it? The NVR, the Pro NVR one, the big one. You can buy the NVR, but if you want the little LED cover

that makes it pretty, you gotta pay more. I'm good. I need this 100 gig switch. It's only $4,000. 4825 gig ports. I don't know. Sorry, we can't go to Vegas this year. We actually, I gotta buy this

enterprise campus aggregation switch instead. It's got ether lighting on it, so. Yeah, that's the key right there. That makes it worth it, I think. Yeah. Oh man. All right, well, Unify, fun stuff. All right, all the links and topics we discussed tonight

can be found over in our show notes over at hometech.fm slash five three four. All right, nothing in the mail bag this week because we have a pick of the week and this one is over in our Slack channel and I, you know, if you're in there, you're a patron of the show, we thank you very much, but you can actually see this.

You can see this live. We'll put a link in our show notes, I guess, that'll bring you straight to that post. He made this, what was it, this morning, I think. Yeah, it was this morning. And he got some buy-in. Basically, successfully got his wife to say, yeah, I like this more at home, which is something.

I mean, mine doesn't say that at all. But what he ended up doing was, I guess, he has a door, kind of just like mine, at my house. I've got a couple of these, I guess he has a door, just like mine at my house. I've got a couple of these where if you open the door, there's a closet door behind it and it can just whack it essentially. So he put, I guess across the top of his door frame, he's put an LED strip light.

If somebody is behind the garage door that you can't see through and they're opening the closet door, so you don't like reckoned to them and mess the doors up and everything, the light will turn red and blink to catch your attention so you don't just like run straight into them. What a great idea. It's brilliant.

When it closes on the inside, when it's clear, it turns green. Genius. Love it. This is one of those home automation projects that after you implement, you're just proud of it. You look like a superhero. I have a similar setup, our place from my garage door, and because the washer and dryer is there,

that if you open the garage door and the dryer open, you can break something. What we did, we're just in the habit of locking that door. So if you walk up to that door from the other side and it's locked, you know, to unlock it and just slowly push it open before, you know, uh, to make sure. But this is a much prettier solution. I might want to implement this. My only fear of implementing something like this is you come so reliable on it

that the day it doesn't work, and you bang the person on the other side or something like that. You're never going to hear the end of it. You might as well just pack your things and walk out. You'll be locked out on the other side of that door. Yeah. He says that his wife asked for a warning light on the garage door, so people would come through and bang into the closet door.

It was open. He also added a spring hinge to the closet door so that it would close by itself. There's nobody's, you know, hanging out in the closet to keep. Yeah, mine, mine, one of them, I think it's the bathroom. If the, yeah, if the closet door opens too far, it kind of slips in behind the, the actual door handle to the bathroom, and then it'll get stuck there. So you actually can't close the door anymore, and you can't open the door anymore because there's a door bracing it open. It's not a good situation.

I think I had to wiggle the door handle a bunch to get them to unlink from each other. But yeah, this is a smart thing to do with technology. Really cool video too. This is how you solve a problem. Yeah. Oh, he said he's got to go back in, uh, to hide some of the wires. He's using a bunch of ESP 32s. And so it's still a work in progress, but, um, yeah, cool.

Hero. Greg, Greg, Greg's my, my role model this week, so. He's our Automator of the Month. Automator of the Month, yeah. We're doing a trophy. We'll put a picture of him up in the Slack channel and pin it. Oh yeah, there you go.

All right, if you have any feedback, questions, ideas for the show, picks the week, give us a big shout. All right, our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can head over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. I'll make it through, I swear. Before project updates, we've got Home Assistant updates. We've got 2025.7, which is out.

I mean, it's out now, it's out today. It's out now, yeah, it's out. There'll already be a new one about when Seth gets his show published. Well, before we talk about that, big news from Nuki. Nuki is joining and joins the work with Home Assistant, another company, another one. They're just cranking them out these days.

They've got smart door locks, lock attachments, and keypads. There we go. But yeah, 2025.7, it's got some interesting things here. I saw editor and answers. Gavin, what are you excited about this one? They did a few assist updates. So now you can automate,

I guess some flows using the assist and have it ask. Like if you ask it to open the garage door, for example, you can have it automate a flow to respond with which garage door. Then you can specify it and you can automate it and make it ask you questions and then, you know, adjust the flow and the automation based on that. So that's pretty cool. Um, I can't wait to see what the community really does with that. Um, they added a new, they updated the areas card.

So the areas card is just a card for an area and they added it. Um, so they give a overview of the the area like how many lights are on and stuff like that on the card itself So that's pretty cool. But what that kind of fed into was the areas Dashboard that they introduced I think a few versions ago so there's a new dashboard and I'm watching this closely because Every release they're kind of like iterating on it and adding a bit more and a bit more. And it's getting to the point where your default dashboard can be this areas dashboard and all your devices and things get automatically sorted

into where you want it to be. So like the main dashboard would show all your areas, like all your rooms and stuff. And then when you click on the room, you would then be taken to another dashboard that has all the devices in the rooms and they're sorted in certain ways and it knows these things based on Where you put the devices in that room or what rooms you put these devices in? So again, I've said it before they're moving Slowly to like I guess the end state is this dashboard will be generated You'll be able to customize it in ways, but it will also be automatically updated when you add a new device in the sign into a room and do things like that. And that's eventually what I want from Home Assistant.

What a lot of people want from Home Assistant, right? It's what TJ wants. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you'll still have the power of creating like, you'll still have the power of creating your own fancy dashboards if you really want to customize, but this will be the automated one for people that don't have time. Me.

That's it. Sounds like me. That's what I need. And you might want to look at this one right now because it is pretty good right now, like with what it can do. Um, it is pretty good. Um, pretty simple. Um, but they'll be iterating over, you know, I can see

they need a couple of design changes here and there, but it's getting there. We need a liquid glass. You know, on that note, the glass was all the hype and everything. And they've really toned that back in the release of iOS. I don't even see any glass anymore. It's like, yeah, I think they got a lot of flack for that. But anyways, the integrations dashboard got some love. The real link integrations are getting a lot of love.

I think real links are working with Home Assistant partner, I think, right? Yes. Yeah. So they're getting a lot of love, a lot of new features, et cetera, et cetera. And then I think, Seth, you mentioned the full screen code editor. So if you're editing in your code in the YAML editor and stuff like that, you can now have a button that will open it up to full screen so you don't have to work in this little window and you can do all your YAML programming in there and then

minimize it back and you know, it's nice. You know, that's a quality of life improvement for the, for people like me. Definitely what I wanted. Yeah. I upgraded just for that one. I gotta see this areas dashboard is Definitely what I wanted. Yeah. I upgraded just for that one. I gotta see this areas dashboard is actually what they should be shipping. I mean, it says I'm playing with this right now and this is, this is way better than.

Yeah. And you can turn on and off areas. Um, hide the ones you don't want shown. You can go into an area and hide devices that you don't want shown in that area too. Right. And then the area card can be customized so that I can show like quick, like lights and stuff like that. So, like I said, I don't think it's there yet, but you're seeing where they're going with this and it's getting better and better with every release and it

takes time, you know, uh, uh, you know, in the pro space, this would be like a two year release from now, right. To get to the final thing. We're going along on the journey with them every month. Yeah. When I don't, I mean, I don't know, I year release from now. Yeah. Right. To get to the final thing. We're going along on the journey with them every month. Yeah. When I don't, I mean, there's probably a way to edit. Oh, I can amel and yaml.

Yeah. Edit and yaml. It's like, it just kind of has a basic few buttons for the overview of it, but you can, you can like turn on and off the lights that I have in each room with one little click there, it'll tell you what's on. Uh, but what it, what it doesn't, I mean, you're right, you have to drill down. Like if I wanted to go control the TV light behind me, I could turn that on and off. I have to go back into the garage and then select it from there.

But I don't know, I think this works really well. Because it doesn't expose, like the dashboard I have exposes everything and I'm like I don't need to know any of this Like it's absurd. I don't I just want to turn on off my looks like I have 32% of fuel in my car and Yeah, 90 miles to go, but I just yeah, like I said, I just want to turn off the lights I don't don't want all this. I also saw on the dashboard thing that I could set one as default. I could make that one default,

but I don't see how to do that. Does it make any sense? Shouldn't you be able to set the areas one as your default dashboard? Yes. Oh, there it is. Yeah, you had to do it after. Okay, done.

All right. Now areas is my default dashboard, and I won't have to go look at the ugly default dashboard ever again. Enjoy. Yeah. And then every time you update, it will just get better. Yeah, exactly.

I don't ever have to touch this thing again. I'm done. Home assistant is fixed. This is great. Uh, that's, that's nice. I like it. I like it. All right.

Um, well that concludes my project work this week. You updated Home Assistant and you set your default dashboard. It's too good. I like it. Yeah. I had to mow some this week. I think we talked about that last week where I was like, I'm going to have to get out there and mow this forest that I now I'm owning.

And I did. So you can see a picture of that. It's actually in the show itself, I embedded that in there as I was complaining about having to do that on the show. So if you go look at the show, you're listening to it. Look at your podcast player about the time we get to this point on that show last week.

And it'll have a picture of what I get to this point on that show last week. And it'll have a picture of what I had to push this stupid lawnmower through. I couldn't get the battery for the new lawnmower isn't in yet. So I basically had to fix my old lawnmower which I didn't want to do. But I cleaned out the carburetor,

got a bunch of carburetor cleaner things, sprayed it in there, took it all apart, put it all back together, stupid thing worked, cranked right up with one pull. So, uh, shout out to Canada for making a really good engine. I have never serviced at all. Never even- Wait, what engine is this? I don't know.

Why is it Canada? It says it's made in Canada. I got it. They did a good job, man. I can't fault them. I've never even added oil to this stupid thing. I wanted to die and I want to push it out of the street and let somebody run away with it. I just, I don't want this thing anymore.

But unfortunately he's the only thing that's working and I was able to mow the lawn. So after I cleaned out the carburetor, it seemed to work fine. Just I'm so over and done with it. I'm ready for it to go away. So the backyard's all mowed now. I can, I've released one of the robots down there

and they did pretty good for a while and they got stuck and I had to go get them out of the ditch. But I think now it's at a maintainable level. It's kind of low, cut low. The robot can go down there and do its thing every day. So. You just need to turn that place into like a garden or something like that.

Forget all that grass. I know, right? How do you maintain it? Just put some rocks down. I guess the hurricane would like wash it away, but just kill the grass. You don't need grass down there. No, we were talking about,

we want like a big, like a deck on the backside of the house. And then, yeah, I think it needs to be like tiered or something, right? Like a retaining wall kind of thing. Yeah. Do you know how to like alligators that come up on the creek right there? I mean, you see, you see the, these are the foliage there. Like, I would not know.

Like he would just be walking down. Like, oops, I actually ran over an alligator. Yeah. It would just be like, Hey, it's going to bite your leg. And it just comes out and bites your leg. Yeah, and it's like 15 foot grass down there. I can't see the creek. I know there is a smaller alligator down further by the bridge,

but it's not very big. It's a little baby one. So no, no alligators as of yet, but maybe one day, who knows. Anyway, I got that and then I woke up, no, I went inside last night and we were watching something on TV and I'm like, I'm hot. I'm like doing stuff on my computer and like my computer is really hot.

I'm like, maybe that's the problem. No, the stupid air conditioner was out because it's, why? Because it's July. That's why. And every year it goes out in July. I'm like, okay, must be frozen up. It must be full of water. Must not change the air filter, which I didn't't but I went ahead and did last night too but no no

no a capacitor blew up in the in the and the unit outside and I will say if you ever if you ever run across this and your unit outside isn't working and you're comfortable around high voltage electricity first of all just turn off the breaker and then there's no electricity in there done but nine times nine times out of 10, it's probably a stupid capacitor that's not working if the outside unit is not spinning, like there's no like fan blowing around out there, or you don't hear the compressor running. It's probably just a capacitor. And it's a $30 part so you don't need to call anybody out. So I went to I found there's a little appliance store around the corner from us. And, uh, actually ended up sitting there and talking to those guys for a lot longer than I probably should have because they were, they were cool sports. And they also had air conditioner in there and, uh, dual dual use there. But I did come back home, swap out a capacitor, flip the switch and stupid thing just cranked right up.

So, you know, up here, like if you were to call somebody, come do that for you, they could charge up to like $500. Yeah, I could see, I mean, I think it was going to be a 90 or a hundred dollar charge just to send somebody out. And it's like, I know what it is. I just need to go find it. For me, it was actually like finding the place that sold the capacitor was going to be the,

the, the, the lift on it. But I had seen this, this seen this little store is like, there's an ACE hardware store on one end and there's a pawn shop and then this little tiny store that has like one door. I didn't think they had anything in there. And I went in, holy cow, it's like a full blown appliance. Like they have every refrigeration thing

that you'd ever want. And it's just a family owned business. I probably been there a hundred years, but yeah. I was able to, they have fan blades up on the wall. It's just like going in, you know, I kind of grew up in the-owned business. I've probably been there a hundred years. But yeah, I was able to, they have fan blades up on the wall. It's just like going in, you know, I kind of grew up in the air conditioning business. It's just kind of like going into one of the old supply

houses from a long time ago in the eighties. Yeah, I was impressed and everybody in there was real nice and fun to hang out with while I was buying stuff. So good times, good times. And we have air conditioners. It's a good idea to always keep an extra capacitor. Somebody else in one of my friend's circles,

they were talking about, they always keep a capacitor and something else just in case something happens. And they had one die as well recently. And they were able to swap it out and they're ready to go. They just ordered a replacement. The replacement's like $40 or something, if they buy like the original manufacturer one, but like Gavin was saying,

they charge you a ton of money to come out, because everybody else is calling them too, they're not gonna come out for a couple hundred bucks, they're gonna wanna charge as much as they can for it. Yeah, up here now they put people on service plans, so you pay monthly how much on your bill, and if anything ever breaks down they come fix it. The water heater will never break. monthly how much on your bill. And if anything ever breaks down, they come fix it. You guys never break your water heater, your AC.

Yeah, it's the same, it's the same concept, but I mean, if you don't want to pay that subscription service, um, you can, you know, just understanding how the AC works. Like I've, I've done the fan, I've done the contactor, I've done the, um, capacitor, right. Um, outside, after that, you're looking at like the compressor, which, you know, you need specialty tools at that point. Yeah, you got to pump the system out.

You got to sweat off. Yeah. Yeah. Pump them out and reclaim and, you know, that, that, that you need specialty tools. But understanding those other parts, you know, you could save a lot of money learning how to do it yourself. Yeah. And I say like the, the, the blowing out the drain, they, they have

a thing called pan tabs too, that you can pop in there that will keep the sludge from like building up from the water vapor. Yeah. So just all sorts of like, just basically cleaning it, it goes a long way. So, um, and I, you know, um, like I've been learning a lot about this from a friend recently, but the two things that he's constantly drilling in people's head is one change your filter and to the drain, there's that pipe that goes from your,

um, uh, down into your drain, just make sure it's clean. And then he's like, always wash out the AC wash, wash it out, make sure it's clean because it breeds better and do those three things. And you know, it'll be much happier. Yeah. Like the outside unit where, where you can collect leaves and stuff on it. Yeah. Just go, go turn off the, uh, go turn off the breaker.

That's one step one, turn off a little breaker next to it and then get a water hose and just kind of like spray. I would like spray down because like sometimes you can spray too hard and it'll bend them shut. You don't want that to happen. But it's like just spray down. And that'll wash off the dirt that's just kind of hanging out in there. And then, you know, if you hire an AC company to do that service contract thing,

they'll come out there once a year and do that for you. Because that, it honestly just makes stuff last longer. Because that's all, well yeah, what I used to do is go and scrub those things and clean things out and complain cause it was hot. My dad will eventually listen to this and crack up. Always hot there. Yeah, that's the worst thing about being an air conditioner

or a paraperson, like you literally show up, the place is hot. You fix the problem, cool air is coming out. No, you gotta leave, back out. Next hot house you go to it's the worst Well, that's some home maintenance tips for yeah next week we'll talk about water eaters, but save some money Well, I just rent one evidently Yeah, I mean it's like let's save some money like and it's funny TJ brought up the the back back up the capacitor My wife said it's funny TJ brought up the backup capacitor. My wife said, it's like, literally just said that to me

before we recorded. She's like, you probably should just go get another capacitor because it never fails. The stupid thing will die, you know, for whatever reason. It's gonna happen again. Yeah, it's gonna happen again. Those things get overheated and just stop working or pop or whatever.

So yeah, 30 bucks to fix the air conditioner versus a few hundred out of pocket. Yeah, 30 bucks done. Anyway, that's all I got. That is my adventure. TJ, what did you do? I also did home stuff, surprisingly enough. I know I never do home stuff. No, never.

I'm talking about on the show. But this week I put in a sunshade sale. I think I talked about this last week. But the previous week I actually got it installed. And so I hired somebody to come out and I bought all the wooden stuff. We put four 6x6x14 foot long posts in the ground. It's a pressure treated structural six by six post. And so they dug down four feet into the ground

and they put concrete in the hole with the wood. And I have four giant posts that just stick out on my yard now, 10 feet above the ground. And I attached a giant sunshade sail. It's a 24 by 16 foot sunshade sail. If you don't know what this is, you've probably seen them like, if you go on like vacation,

maybe like a tropical place or Florida, for example. They're everywhere here, yeah. Like above a pool or above a patio. It's kind of like, I say it's a poor man's pergola because it kind of is what it is. You know, you have to take it down if it gets like really windy and stuff like that. Yeah.

But it's the same concept. It's got a roof, it's got some posts on there to hold the roof up and that's it. And it's the same concept. It's got a roof. It's got some posts on there to hold the roof up. And that's it. And it's been fantastic. It's the most shade we've ever had in the backyard. And it takes up basically like half of our yard. And, you know, the sun sets or the sun rises behind us

and it sets in front of us. And so no matter what, we're always in the sun in our yard. And so this has just created a nice spot of shade for us to hang out. I kind of went overboard. Okay. And I shot a... Let's pause you there because like last week we talked about the four posts that you were going to dig and have somebody come and install.

Yeah. And then the literal like you're like, oh, these guys knocked this out. The next post you had on there, holy crap, man. Like you, it was like one of those reveals on the do it yourself channel where they're like, and now we got this home theater. And they have like everything all made up in the house. Like insane, man. Like lights, furniture, everything.

You went all out. Yeah, well, so I've been collecting, I don't know. Have you ever bought patio furniture? It is ridiculously expensive, isn't it? Yeah. It's a lot of marketplace, you get it for good price. Even better, Gavin. I just drive around rich neighborhoods because that's my job.

And people are always throwing away stuff. So this like, this giant couch thing that I have, somebody was throwing that away. And it's got a little like mildew or mold on it. I'm gonna scrub it off there. You know, we've already washed it a couple of times, but it's just like stained on there. So we're going to wash it off.

Get a steam cleaner. They're on sale right now. I have one. There you go. But yeah, I found a couple of furniture pieces. If you see on the back right corner of this picture, we'll post a picture of the sunshade sale. But I got two chairs and a little couch thing that's outdoor as well, and I got those for free off the curb too.

So I saved a little bit of money with what we're doing. Um, but yeah, I, uh, I should have thought ahead because I was like, man, you know, it'd be great. Uh, actually Nicole brought it up. She was like, we should have a fan out here or something. Even better. I'm going to put a fan in. I need power.

Uh, and so I ran power from the house. Luckily when I was redoing the three seasons room, I added three new exterior outlets. And so I ran some power from one of the exterior outlets to one of the posts in the sunshade sale area. And so I have two outdoor rated outlets already on the post. And so I have some lights hooked up

with a ZooSmart outlet. So I can turn those on whenever I want to. Probably going to get like a bug zapper or something, because we have a ton of mosquitoes and stuff. I'm surprised there's not an outdoor TV installed. Nah, I don't need a TV. I don't need a TV out there. So first thing I would say you should put in, put in a mister.

Ooh, a mister. Come on, put in a mister. That would be so awesome on the hot days. I'm gonna have to dig a faucet over here, ain't I? And second of all, I found the mosquito zapper you need. Yeah, see, I need one. Oh, this one's, where did I put it? So that's the problem, right?

Is it like, because we don't spend any time outside, I've never really paid attention to the art and stuff, except when we're gardening, you know? But now that we have shade there, I was sitting out there the other day, and we have these little bugs everywhere. I think what I found is that they're called leaf hoppers, and they're like little fly looking things,

but they're just coating our yard. So I'm trying to battle them right now. So, so there's a, it's on Indiegogo. It's a portable mosquito air defense system and it can shoot down up to 30, 30 mosquitoes per second it's LIDAR guided as a six meter kill zone. Oh man. $500. This is half the cost of the sunshade sale. Yeah, right. Right.

Right. Think about how that will be. If you've ever seen those videos from like Israel, when they have like the, $500 this is half the cost of the sunshade sale. Yeah, right, right You've ever seen those videos from like Israel when they have like the the protected dome or whatever they get iron Yeah, it looks like that with like a mosquito comes flying into the zone. It's like It's gone. There's smoke left behind The best videos the guy just sleeping happily in his bed and this thing's sitting there going Killing every I just I would sit there be so entertained by this. It's out. It's IP68 waterproof design You know TJ you gotta get one of these maybe I do need this You know, we need a couple more subscribers before we do that. Wereons. We're not going to CES, but we're getting this.

Yeah, that's right. But put this in the show notes for the listeners, because you just have to see this in action. Like, I feel sorry for those mosquitoes. I don't. Oh, yeah, I don't know, but you know what I mean. They don't have a chance. Look at this, already funded, fully funded, so.

Yeah. Up to 30 mosquitoes a second. Like think about that. Oh man, I'm thinking about it. I'm going to need it. We have a lot of mosquitoes. I need, I need something that kills flies that we have a ton of flies. I just got my backyard sprayed.

How about this? If you see something flying in my backyard, that's not a bird. You should shoot it down. I saw this giant like black bug in my yard the other day. And I just like, I instantly smacked it. I was like, I don't know what this is, but I think it's going to hurt me. So I need something to fight some fights, flying insects. Yeah.

I just got my backyard sprayed for mosquitoes and I do that every year. And it gave me back use of my backyard. Like it actually works. They, they, they spread it, you know, and I love it. Right. Um, so now they come every couple of months, they respray and I'm happy. Yeah. I was thinking about doing that because we do get a lot of, a lot of flying

insects around us, unfortunately. So yeah, a huge difference. I think I have to change the orientation of the sunshade sale. So basically right now, because the backyard is taller than the front of the yard. I have the sunshade sale in the back, uh, fence line. It's set like a foot down from the post and then the front of the yard. I have the sunshade sail in the back fence line. It's set like a foot down from the post and then the front post was set down like 30 inches. But I think I have to like change the orientation.

Somebody like people keep telling me I need to do like, I think it's called canting or basically like one corner is tipped down in a direction. And so that helps with like the water runoff and stuff. And at first I thought they were crazy because it's a permeable cloth, but it does like hold moisture and stuff. And it sags down a little more than it did

nor like when I first installed it. I also have to get some shorter turn buckles because the ones I have are a little too long and it doesn't get it like completely tight. And so there's like a little bit of a dip in the middle. And like, unless you're seven foot tall, it's probably not a big deal. So Gavin can't, garden.

Yeah, I mean, Gavin's like eight foot tall over there. So he'll, he's going to touch the top. Just poke a hole in the middle and make it a water feature. This is the waterfall. But I went all out. I bought a nice sunshade sail. Like usually they're just like made out of cloth. This one's got like a metal guide wire around it.

And it's got like little metal things that actually hold the cloth onto like the post and stuff like that. So I'm hoping I only have to take it down when it gets like really windy or it snows. Because my goal is to just leave it up. I don't want to deal with it. Honestly, it's it's big. It's 24 by 16 foot. It's huge. It's no snow can't back and hold snow. No, it's no, snow can't, that can't hold snow. No, I don't even want to though, because it'll ruin it anyway, and it was like $200 for it, so.

It looks good though, it really does look good. And I mean, talk about transforming the area. Oh yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. And it was like, the whole thing, I think, was like a thousand or 1200 bucks. So it wasn't the end of the world. I tried to build it in case I wanted to turn it into like a pergola or something in the future.

So I'll have to add more posts if I do that or something like that. But I wanted a six by six post because I wanted it to be able to support something at some point if I ever wanted to do that. Yeah, you put some trusses across there. You get a little outside house, yeah. That's right.

Neighbors will hate me. Exactly. Put some cameras on it, they'll stay inside. They won't look at anything. But that's the onlybors will hate me exactly put some cameras on it. They don't they'll stay inside They won't look at it, but that's that's the only project I have going on. I'm posting some more stuff to my youtube channel I've I've this week. I'm doing I found out that you can schedule posts with YouTube, which is nice Yeah, so that'll help my my laziness a little bit So this week I have a bunch of posts going on about how to dig irrigation lines or landscape lighting lights in. I'm just doing a little YouTube shorts. I'm recording with my Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

I'm not really trying to do, you know, a bunch of editing and a bunch of crazy stuff. So I'm trying to keep them short videos but informational. So I'll link that as well. It's interesting to if you never like dug irrigation lines or landscape lighting and stuff like that, it's really not that hard. The hardest part is sweating out in the yard. So. I'm jealous of the Ray-Ban glasses. And I kind of like, I'm feeling like the FOMO on those,

right? They're fantastic. But then I'm looking at this mosquito thing. I mean, if it helps you, the Ray-Ban Metaglass, they're like half the price. Yeah, they are. They're coming out with better, better Ray-Bans. So, you know, more battery life, et cetera. Do they, do they kill mosquitoes?

Not yet. Feature request. Zap whatever you're looking at. Yeah. Yeah. I could get a battery for a lawnmower, a mosquito death machine, or some glasses with cameras on them. It's a tough, tough call.

Gavin, got anything going on? No, this week, you know, family issues, you know, so it was my week off. So, you know, again, we've been doing some outdoor things, kind of like TJ, you know, the weather's warm now. We had some heat spells that were pretty bad there, but now it's tapering off a bit. So yeah, just getting all the outside patio equipment all fixed up and stuff, and enjoying the nice weather, jumping in the pool.

Yeah, your pool setup is always nice. How's the irrigation line running into the pool work? Is that still working fine for you? It's awesome. Well, you're like, because with the heat wave too, like you had the evaporation of the water, so the pool level dropped, but you know, I'm sitting there in the kitchen and you know, just say, Hey lady, turn on the backyard pool water and bam, it goes on.

And that's one of the things that I was always a little nervous of, you know, would you forget it on or whatever, right. But, um, the way it works with, um, I have one zone from my ratio that handles it. So when you turn it on from ratio, the ratio will run it for 15 minutes. Um, and that's local on the box. So even if the cloud goes down, it's going to still turn off the valve. Right. So I don't have to worry about it, but I do have extra safeguards in there, you know, where, um, home assistant will make sure it's turned off or it even notifies

me every five minutes that's still running. I would only run it for like 15 minutes or 20 minutes, if anything. Right. So I just put those extra safeguards in just to let me know in case someone else accidentally turned it on too. You always got to worry about that too if somebody else accidentally turned it on and stuff like that But it works awesome because then I just say that and I walk away and the pool levels topped up and it lets me know What's done and I'm happy right and then I say hey turn on the pool pump it turns on the pool pump and now You know, it's good, you know, I live in a lazy man's world. Yeah. I love it.

Brilliant. I keep staring at this thing on my desk that I'm supposed to use for home assistant. And I it's, it's got red lights on it. Cause I guess I turned the mic off. Oh, you're talking about the assist. Yeah. It's just been sitting here. Yeah.

I still, I have the assist and I still just can't use it because it doesn't work when there's background noise. Every video I see of people, you know, doing all their tests and showing off all their cool things, it's in silent rooms, right? And I'm never in a silent room. Like I would have the TV playing and that's again, back to Sonos. I'm one of the few that probably do like Sonos again. But that's why I like having the A-Lady built into my Sonos setup. Because when you're watching TV, those microphones still pick you up perfectly.

And I say, Hey, A-Lady. And it turns down the volume on the TV and everything. And I can talk to it and do everything. And that's what I like about that integrated setup right there. Whereas with the Home Assistant Assist, you can't do all that stuff, right? Yep, it'll just, it'll be talking. Yeah, maybe one day it'll get there. Yeah, one day, one day. I saw, I was listening to the Home Assistant podcast and they were talking about how they

released a bunch of the reference designs for the microphones and everything so people could make better products out of the idea, I guess. So I would love if they reached out to Sonos and say, Hey, can we build our assistant to hear something, you know, and give you another one and work with us? I mean, they have, they have the backing of being, um, the largest project on GitHub, right? Like they have pull, they have 2 million in all, they have pull. Yeah.

They're, they're definitely a large, one of the large players, especially in the DIY passionate space of people and 2 million installs is large. I would argue that it's not one of the bigger ones at 2 million. I mean, it sounds, sounds like a lot. I mean, they doubled in a year though. So I mean, that's a lot too, right? So, you know, projection wise. Yeah. I just, I wonder like how that compares with, it's a big number. And don't get me wrong,

like it's a big number. And from what the numbers that they post, it's impressive because they're not, there's, these aren't like, like, okay, there's bigger systems out there. Like if we look at like smart things or even Apple HomeKit, and you say, okay, well, how many installs do those have? Well, millions and millions. And they may have like one or two. Yeah, exactly. Well, they may have like one or two devices counted. Like I wouldn't say like the larger SmartThings installs

may be bigger, right? But like, what is the average size of a HomeKit install? It's on every single iOS device out there. So, you know, the install is pretty big, but like, what's the thing? Like that, those numbers come from the HomeKit side of things. And I think it's a little more, I think that's what the manufacturers are looking at.

They're like, well, there's 300 million of those phones out there, or whatever. And we only have to sell our products to a few of those people. Whereas like you have Home Assistant and they're like just floating in at 2 million passionate users, let's just say that, like it's quite a few.

Like it's just, it's still a big lift. Even with those numbers, it's still a big lift for anybody to commit to that. So I mean, I don't know. Like Sonos, they should be doing everything they can. Yeah, at this point, yeah. To make the community happy. I think they would get, you know, a bunch of really excited raving fans

if they did what you suggested. I think it would be great. I think it would boost both ecosystems, right? If anybody with a soundbar or something like that came with something like that, it would be great. And I was always confused with the, you, you know, you said with the home kit, it's on every, you know, it's on every phone or Apple TV or whatever, right? Like, like it's out there.

Uh, why didn't more people jump on that? You know, and just, I did nobody use it. I would say, I would say maybe they did like, but not in the way you think, like maybe they have a camera hooked up. Maybe they have a door lock hooked up to it. Maybe they have a single switch or one of those light socket things they forgot about, but like it's not, it's not full of passionate users and like, like home. If you look at home assistant and what they brag about, like how many, what was

the average number of devices, like 20 devices or something that's incredibly high. Yeah. Like it doesn't seem like it is to you and me Because when someone installs home assistant, they're installing a home assistant Like they're not just buying a little device in and plugging it in and bam. It's there right there actually Setting it up and installing it right and figuring it so they will have Devices and plans. Yeah, not just their printers Exactly They will have devices and plans. Yeah. Not just their printers. Exactly.

And you know, okay. You said 20 devices. Well, it's really 19 because everyone has that printer. Everybody's got their printers on there. It's ridiculous. Everyone's got their printer. Yeah. I integrated my printer.

Don't know why it's there. Well, today, well, during the prime day sale, I got a notification. I need to order a printer toner. Well, perfect timing. Perfect timing. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. a notification I need to order a printer toner. Well, perfect timing. Perfect timing, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Amazon has spent billions of dollars trying to do that with

a voice assistant thing and there's Home Assistant telling Gavin to buy money on Amazon. See, Amazon should be putting their efforts into Home Assistant is what I'm hearing. All right. Well, anyway, I think that's going to wrap up this week, everybody. We do want to thank everybody for listening to the show, but especially want to send a big special thank you to everyone who's able to support the show financially through our Patreon page.

If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can become a patron over there for as little a dollar a month. But if you pledge over $5 a month, you get a big shout out here on the show, like Jason. Jason, thank you so much. Woo-hoo. Slid in there and pledged five bucks a month. I think he came in and he said that we're worth a coffee every month.

And you know what? He's right. That's really nice of him to say. He's already been participating. Some people just join and they never do anything. He's participating. It's a good thing to be part of. His comments sparked a whole coffee conversation in our Slack.

I learned something new. Was it Kenny in there sharing pictures of his coffee creations? Yeah, there was little pictures on them. I was feeling fancy with my little frother on my Nespresso every morning when I put it all together But then he showed some pictures and then I just I went quiet nothing. Yeah, I can't compete I'm glad Kenny doesn't have any pictures like that that that fireplace we saw I'd sip that coffee slowly. I I'd probably buy more coffee. I'd sip that coffee slowly.

I gotta stop. I'm going to say something. I guess I'm going to end it. If you've listened this far in the show, you've caught the unedited. Stop licking the foam off, TJ. Just drink the coffee. All right. Anyway, back to thanking Jason.

Thanks Jason so much for entertaining us here at this late hour. But if you can't support financially, totally understand, we just appreciate a five star review or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. That's going to wrap up the week here on Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. I'm not going to look at my coffee the same tomorrow morning. Thanks, guys.

I wonder if I can get Chad GPT to make that cover. You probably can. Combine the fireplace with a latte. I'll just take a picture of my coffee tomorrow morning. Because I just pour the foam on top. There's no design. Oh my God. My frother just skeets all over my coffee.

Why is your crotch burned? Coffee accident. over by coffee.