HomeTech.fm - Episode 535 - What’s New at Navimow with Wayne Kreifels

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

On this week's show: We catch up with Wayne Kreifels, GM/VP for Segway Navimow North America, to find out what's new at Navimow, discuss Belkin backing out, Sonos doing good things, Ikea moving away from Sonos, Shelly gets Zwave LR, Homey can now clone 433Mhz devices, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Check Podcast for Friday, July 18th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. All sorts of stuff whether it's summer. It's it's hot. Hey guys. I got it. I gotta give you an update Little Navi mo I set them out there. Yep Mo the whole thing which one the little one or the big one the big one the big one on the hill on the hill The little one still doing the fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I the big one on the hill and then the little one up is doing his job up front I basically kind of like separated the schedules and I got a notification today. It's been raining a lot like yesterday They couldn't have rained. I mean, it just rained all day, like tons. So I was afraid the grass was gonna get away again.

But nope, nope, it cleared up today, it was all sunny. And lawnmower decided to come out of its hole and see the shadow or whatever. I don't know what it does. And then it went to work and I got a little notification saying, hey, your lawn got mowed. I was like, no way. Sure enough, lawn was mowed.

And I was very happy, so. So I mean it's about time You've had two robot lawnmowers now for what like? Months like quite a while. Yeah. Well, it's gotta get you gotta gotta start using them. I guess it's time It's I mean this this is honestly this is like Super Bowl season for them, right or whatever they call it So yeah, we're we're this is this is why we have these lawnmowers feel bad for your lawnmower So yeah, this is why we have these lawnmowers. I feel bad for your lawnmower though. But you know, by the time it's done, it looks across the field,

it's got to start all over again. It's got to start again, yeah. There's no break. Yep, there's no break for this. It takes it like three days just to do one pass. Yep. Actually that X3 moves really fast. It moves about twice as fast as the iSeries.

So it got done with that entire area and two other spots, two other smaller spots that kind of like have separated off within an hour or two. Like it was done pretty quickly and it said it was going to go back in charge. I was like, okay, good for you. Yeah, it's not bad. It makes a little difference when you have to be out there in the sun cutting grass, doesn't it, Seth? I did change my blades this week.

I figured it was time, they were kind of dull. And I swapped them out for some new blades. I remember I had gotten the six blade for the i-Series. Did you put that on? Yeah, I put it on, swapped out six of the blades. I turned over the X3 and realized, oh no, this one comes out of the box with six blades. So I was out of blades at that point.

So I've got to, I've got to make an order, make it a bulk order on Amazon for. Yeah. Yeah. I think they use the same blades. I think it's the same, like little, little, little small. They were interchangeable with the stuff I already had. I had, I had a bunch from, uh, from old Clippy, uhippy still laying around in the shed. Yeah, I bought some off-brand ones and some Segway Navamo branded ones.

I have not been able to tell the difference between them. I think there's probably a difference in maybe how long they last. I don't know if that... I don't know. It's a razor blade. Probably. It's going to be a little higher quality with the Segway Navamo ones. What I do notice is that some of them have that little blue protectant stuff on the screws. And I remember... The Loctite. Yeah, on Clippy, if that wasn't on there, then Clippy would kind of like rust up or something.

So that was Clippy. Clippy was a different beast. I figured that was just for Loctite, so that way screw doesn't come out like as it's spinning around and stuff. Yes. Because we put loctite on there, like on other screws and stuff for work. So that's what it looked like to me. Because some of the people were complaining that they would lose the blades in the grass. Yeah. Because the screw would come undone.

So they put the loctite on the screws to hold it in there. Oh, okay. That makes sense. That makes more sense. I never lost a blade with Clippy, but there were times where the screw would kind of like rust over and it was kind of difficult to get out. But I don't know, you know, just spray a little WD-40 or what is the other stuff? PB, PB Weld?

PB Blaster? PB Blaster, yeah, yeah. That stuff is really good. That is. Yeah, and it'll lead right through that and the screw comes right out magically. So anyway, that was my that was my follow up. It was a it was good. It was a good week. Even though we look like we were going to get a hurricane, we didn't and some somebody else is getting I think New

Orleans is going to get like a tropical storm or something. Who knows. But we got a lot of rain from it already. So all right. Anyway, we do have a bunch of home tech headlines. But first, there was this little little app we ran across over on Reddit. It's called home care. Just wanted to bring this up. If you're in the home kid ecosystem, somebody somebody's made like a little troubleshooting app for you. It will it's got a bunch of little things little tools in there that will help you.

It's got like instant troubleshooting quickly and scan your entire setup to see which devices aren't responding, proactive background monitoring, the app runs and checks the health in the background and sends push notifications when there's problems, low battery detection, shortcut integration, all sorts of fun stuff. If you're in the HomeKit ecosystem,

this might be an app for you. It's actually pretty nice looking. Yeah, I think if I used HomeKit at all, this is probably something I would use. And maybe this is something I use in the future for like client setups of them having issues, right? Cause not a ton of troubleshooting you can do with HomeKit in general.

Yeah. So having this to do that would be nice. It looks nice. It looks like an iOS app. What else does it have? Let's see, it tells you if you have issues with your scenes. It tells you if you have automation issues, got one unresponsive device and it's why it's not working.

Yeah, I use HomeKit quite a bit just because it's like natively integrated with the iPhone and I can like yell at my watch to open and close the shades and the SwitchBot thing will get to work. So yeah, it's a good interface for whatever, for me, just because you're in iOS land. Anyway, we got a bunch of home tech headlines, so what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it.

Let's do it. All right, Belkin has announced it will discontinue support for Wemo line of home automation products. This decision comes as the brand decides just basically to just focus away from dealing with anything that has to do with home automation and move on. That's what I was reading out of that. The support stops on January 31st, 2026 and allows customers, you know, maybe a year or so to kind of transition over to something else if they already haven't because they probably should have already. I don't know, I never had too many problems with these things. Other, I know that other people had like,

a friend of the show, Robert Spivak, sent me like four of these things. So I think I used one or two of them for like Christmas lights during that time of year. I never really had any issue with him. He had all sorts of problems with him, especially around HomeKit. But I just looked up on the shelf behind me,

there's one of the older ones sitting up on the shelf, in the graveyard. So now officially There's one of the older ones sitting up on the shelf on the, in the graveyard. So now officially it can enter the graveyard. I knew a lot of clients that had these devices over the years. This is just something they would use to control like their lamps or something like that. But I never knew anybody that used them

as part of like an actual ecosystem. It was always standalone, right? And so maybe that was Belkin's problem is everybody just there's like one or two devices that somebody used and that was it. It does suck that it's only six months notice that you can no longer use these devices. That is not enough time to get-

Oh yeah, it's been years. Yeah. Yeah. Like basically after CES, you know? So it's not a long time to transition away and you're not getting anything out of this. I think the worst part of this though is that they're not transitioning away from all smart home products it seems like, just the ones that rely on their cloud service.

So it sounds like they're going to make matter or thread devices. But it's like, okay, but then you can still support this. I'm not really sure. What's like, because it'd be different if they were just getting out of it all together, but that doesn't seem to be what they're doing. Yeah, the smart light switch, the stage smart scene controller, the smart plug with thread, and the smart video doorbell camera,

those are not affected by the shutdown, just basically everything else, including a Wevo coffee maker from Mr. Coffee. No. Sold back in, yeah, too bad, no more coffee for you. No. Some of these devices are old too. Some of these are 10 years old. And some of these devices are old too. I mean, some of these are like 10 years old,

but some of these people, they were just released in like 2022 or 2023. Yeah, yeah. So you're not talking about like super old devices overall. The Wemo Mini Smart Blood was one of those last sold in November of 2023. I mean, you can probably find those on Amazon still for sale. Yeah.

In fact, let me try that. Yep. And just because it's old, doesn't mean it's not working. Like that's the whole thing. Like it could be old, but it was designed well and it still works properly. The WeMo switches were my first set of switches. Where WeMo, I think I had 14 of them in my house. Right.

Um, I quickly got rid of them. I sold them to a guy off or, you know rid of them. So I sold them to a guy off 14 of them. I feel bad now because he's going to have 14 Wemo switches that probably won't work. But from what I remember though, so with this shutdown, they're shutting down the servers, right? They're going to shut down support for the switches. So there'll probably be no security updates or anything for that. So if you have them, you might want to be careful with that, but they should still work with local control. Because I remember when I had them, I was working, I wrote a driver, own personal driver.

It was all just broadcast messages on the network. And that's how you discovered them. You subscribe to their topics, et cetera, et cetera. I'm using soap, I think it was back then. Now I don't know if anything's changed since then. Nothing's changed, yeah, probably not. Yeah, it's probably nothing's changed. So the good news is, is you could probably still have,

can be able to integrate these with something like Home Assistant or Hubitat and get local control. What they're taking away is they're taking away the hubless control of them through the cloud and any updates and stuff like that. So it's not all bad news. I mean, it still sucks. What really sucks is more and more companies are just feeling comfortable to just cancel these products now.

Like they're, you know, they're just getting comfortable to say, hey, we don't feel like we're not making money off this. You have six months and it's not going to work anymore or we're taking away support, you know, and we we're not making money off this. You have six months and it's not gonna work anymore or we're taking away support, you know? And we're starting to see more of this and this is why the push to things like Matter or Away From Cloud is big right now. Yeah, yeah, and this is always like one of those issues with any company.

I mean, this was how they got the low cost chips and everything into these devices and got them out. They rely heavily on server and infrastructure to keep moving. And the thing is that that's fine for a while while you're selling the products. But when sales start to slow down, you've got all these vampire products sitting there,

like hanging on the servers and causing all sorts of issues that you probably didn't build an update you know into them you can't go you can't go out and update them you have to like force people to update them when they they plug them in you know or check it once a year using your app because you've been they've been using the Alexa thing for so long so there's there's really no way to stop them from hammering on the bandwidth that you're paying for still from a device you sold for $30 in 2013. So, you know, that's always the problem with the cloud infrastructure. So that's why local first has always been

a big issue on my end. Like we've always on the pro side, we've always wanted local first control. It's been a tenant of home assistant, which is kind of what made them, you know, I think more successful than a lot of the DIY controllers, because that's like one of the things they absolutely insist on is that somebody has local control, no cloud needed. You don't need to go out to the internet to control your home. What is what has changed in the last couple years is, well, Apple HomeKit kind of led this, I think they were a local first solution, but then that transitioned into Matter now, which is what everybody's going after. And that's, again, that's local first.

So even if you don't have those, like I'm thinking about Wemo and specific, like even if you don't have the cloud and you probably need the cloud to set the device up, right? Like you need the app. The app's got to talk to the cloud, the cloud's got to talk to the little device, it gets on your Wi-Fi. And without that happening, without that device registration happening, then you're not going to be able to get them like set up and changed onto a new Wi-Fi or anything either.

So I think this is just pretty much the end of those products. And they're not going to go back on. They're not going to go back into's house. Once they stop working. I hope they stop selling these Yeah, no, I mean I just looked on Amazon it the little the little one only had five left So you better hurry up and then there's one that the one I have is marked one pack old $26 it says is in stock so I can go buy this right now and it'll work for a couple months. Yeah There's plenty of other alternatives that are much, much less expensive, but you know, be warned, be warned just by Zigbee or Z-Wave you'll be for matter.

Matter stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Or matter over thread. Yeah. Matter over thread because matter over wifi and there's still some gray areas there. You don't want this to be on. Yeah, you don't want to be on.

Yep. All right. Let's move on to another company that's famous for killing stuff again. Sonos, Sonos, we got to talk about them. This is actually, I don't think this is as bad as like the internet really, really, really desperately wants to make it out to be.

It's a Reddit problem. Yeah, this is a Reddit problem. So this time they're making their products a little better. They've got update 85.0 permanently disconnects speakers from WEP encrypted networks. And as they damn well should. Jeez. Yeah.

I don't know why this is like, why does anybody care at this point? If you're still using a WP network, like you need to not use Sonos anymore. You deserve what you get. I have to keep a WP network just for my printer to connect. Hopefully your Sonos isn't connected to it because it's not going to connect anymore. Anyway, WP is the most disruptive part. It's not all bad news.

Some users actually with older hardware like the Play 1, Play 3 because of this, they're actually seeing noticeable improvements like audio playing faster. So I've got a bunch of Play 1s and Play 3s, I think. So maybe this update when it, I guess it's a rolling update, so we're not, everybody doesn't have it at once. Whenever I get this update, maybe my Play 1s and Play 3s will work better. That'll be nice. They also added a few, three optional security settings and just kind of be aware of what they can

do if you turn them on or off authentication and this basically controls third party integrations that use Sonos cloud services and local area API API's. So when you turn it off like integrations must authenticate before or sorry when you turn it on integrations must use authentication before connecting. So things like direct control and some features of AirPlay will just not work if that's on. So just kind of keep an eye out for that. UPnP may affect older devices and apps.

There's some home assistant integrations that rely on UPnP. If that gets disabled, that integration may break. And then guest access, this determines whether devices on your Wi-Fi can control playback without admin level access. Basic functions like volume grouping, that kind of thing. So the defaults for this is authentication's off, UPP is on and guest access is on by default.

So just be aware if you're gonna go into those settings and change them, what the consequences will be if you do. Sounds like good default settings to me too. Yeah. Good? Yeah. Good. Good updates. I think the main issue people had were the WEP change, like they give you no notice for it.

And yeah, I know there's going to be people out there with WEP networks and stuff like that. They just wake up one morning and their sonos stops working. They're probably going to go on Reddit and start complaining. Um, a lot of people do these updates. They don't even read the release notes and stuff like that. They just get the updates too. Right. So they won't know why they're just going to complain.

So do they have to be a little bit more, I guess, open about these changes? Maybe have a pop-up in the app that says, Hey, we're going to be doing this. This is important. You know, because if you think about it, like, hopefully you didn't on any of your clients set these kinds of networks up, but maybe you did 20 years ago. You know, if you've been in the business this long and you don't, you haven't gone and changed it, who knows? Almost 30 years ago, because WPA came out

with the initial Wi-Fi 802.11 standard in 1997. And it was pretty much immediately found to have very severe design flaws and became obsolete. It had WPA which came in 2003, and then that was replaced by WA2 in 2004. So yeah, 2001, it was pretty much obsolete because if you've got a 20 year old Wi-Fi standard in your house still running, this is a new problem. It's not a similar problem, 20 years old.

And I'm pretty sure that at some point, they were like, okay, stop using this, but you're still buying devices that won't connect to WPA and doesn't need WP at some point and that overlapped a number of years. So, you know, I could see it still being out there, but I'm pretty sure. I hope Sonos did some kind of survey of their, you know, the information they gather to say, Hey, we only have two people using this, let's just turn it off.

Yeah. Well, AI, Sonos CEO guy knew what Wi-Fi was connected to and everything, so they can definitely tell stuff about your Wi-Fi network and they would have to for diagnostics anyway. I know you can submit your diagnostics and they read it and everything like that, but there's no way that they don't have a way

to tell what you're using. This is definitely not an issue though, because I don't even think you've been able to select WEP on a router in like the past five to 10 years. At least, yeah. Like it was definitely an option at one point where you could select it, but I don't know of any like recently where it's like,

yeah, I want to set up a WEP network and the router lets you do that. So this is just antiquated setups at this point. Antiquated route access points that, yeah, it's time to update if you're using anything with WP. And worse comes to worst, if you really want to like keep using WP, just buy a Sonos Bridge. Yeah, plug it in.

There you go. Or even less expensive, buy a new router. Well, I guess you can't use WP at that point. So just throw away whatever you have that has been working and start over. It's time to upgrade unfortunately. It's not a car. You have to upgrade. All right. Speaking of upgrading, IKEA is releasing a new version of its speaker lamp and shifting away from its collaboration with Sonos, that was announced earlier this year. The latest model, the BlomPract, is integrated with Spotify Tap, which is basically, I think

it's Bluetooth with a little button or something that you can go over and, I don't know, press it. The speaker is called the BlomPract speaker lamp. It's supposed to be under 120 bucks and available sometime in October. And yeah, I don't know. Looks interesting. It's IKEA. I mean, it's only 120, well, it's only available

in non-America right now on arrival, but under $120 US rumored. And it doesn't look terrible. I actually like the look of this. It looks like something you could see in like a higher end home. So I'm not hating on it. Spotify tabs lets you, it's a feature on headphones and earbuds that allows users

to quickly start listening to Spotify with a single tap or button press it. So quick launch. Just like it says in the name. There. I think this looks like a little person with a hat, honestly. It does. Just googly eyes on it. You're good to go.

I really liked IKEA's partnership that they had with Sonos. I missed that, you know, like I was hoping to see more come out of that. I was too. It gave you cheap devices, expensive devices that you can place in certain areas where you just need a speaker in that ecosystem. It doesn't have to sound great, it doesn't have to be loud,

you just need background noise or something like that. I had a couple of them and they work great. A lot of people, they set them up in stereo pairs and like their condo and stuff like that, and they enjoyed it. I'm sad that they broke up. It looks like they have better looking products at least. That's nice because Sonos IKEA products were not attractive. The photo frame thing was all right.

But the bookshelf ones were cool though. The fact that you can actually use them as a shelf. Well, that part was cool. They were not, they're not good looking though. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, uh, speaking of cool products, uh, we've got a little update from Shelley.

They've got a number of smart devices out that, uh, I noticed these, I was looking for some Shelley products this week and ran across this and thought, that looks different. But I really didn't know. They've got Z-Wave long range on them now. So if you have a need for a Shelly device and you are in the market for a relay or a dimmer or something like that, motion sensor, smart switch, relay,

you can get a Shelly device that has Wi-Fi and Z-Wave now. Just depending on what you need. And I don't know, it sounds pretty good. I ran across some of the pro products that have it marked on their website and on Amazon too. Let's see, $38 for the energy monitoring plug, 37 for motion sensor, $35 for humidity temperature sensor, and a line of electrical relays starting at 28.99

with the rest arriving later this year. So yeah, pretty cool. It'd be nice to get a bunch of devices off Wi-Fi with Shelley if you're using that. Yeah, actually after my blunder and talking about the Shelly relays last week with the power monitoring where I thought they had relays, I went ahead and purchased some this week,

but I went ahead and canceled my order and I ordered these instead because I was like, I do want Z-Wave. The other ones I ordered were Wi-Fi. These were a little more expensive. I think I paid like $10 more for the two relays, Z-Wave one, with power monitoring, but I'm fine with that.

I don't wanna use wifi devices unless I have to. So this'll be nice. I'm using them to control cameras around the house. So any outlets that I have where it has a camera plugged into it right now, I have a smart outlet plugged in within the wall wart for the camera. And so it's gonna reduce the size of the outlet, which I'm excited about.

I have no Shelly devices. Main reason why was because they were all Wi-Fi based that, you know, before and I never really wanted any of that. But now with their Z-Wave based, you know, if I have a need, I'll actually take a look and see if they have something there. But I don't, I can't really think of anything I need a Shelly device for right now. You see, that's the thing with Shelly. It'll, it'll find a need for it.

I mean, it's like, they're so small. Well, they're small, but because I have smart switches and all those, and all my switches are smart switches, right? There's no room in the box for them for one, you know, and two, it's a smart switch. So I already have control in that box. Uh, I don't know what else I'd use a Shelly switch for. Well, here's a, here's a Shelly Wave i4 DC and it's got, it looks like it's got four contact closures on it or four button, you know, four button inputs built into it.

So you can actually multi-click on them too for up to 16 actions. So, yeah, there you go. It's a Z-Wave little, that's a little problem solver right there. $32 Gavin, probably 80 Canadian but. Buy it right now, Gavin. No, I still have no need for it. All my switches are In-N-Out Valley switches. Every switch in my house is an In-N-Out Valley switch.

These are buttons. Shelly Wave Motion. Now it's not millimeter wave, so we're not going to talk about it, but $36. It's an interesting looking motion detector. I actually need a new motion motion detector to turn on off the laundry room. I might, I might get this. I don't know.

We'll see. Wait, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for all those issues you guys are having with Home Assistant to calm down before I even bother plugging in this. This is the way. Let's save that for the. I'm making a joke because this thing's literally been sitting on my desk probably over a year now and I haven't plugged it in yet. So yeah, there it is. Cool, cool stuff.

Good updates from Shelly and it was surprising to see this weekend when I was working in it. I was buying one of the products. I'm like, oh, I can just get this in Z-Wave. And I'm like, wait, this is going to complicate everything. I don't have Z-Wave on this job. So yeah, no, didn't want to do that. Yeah, it's good to finally see the acquisition coming into play, because they acquired that Quabino company. And that's who actually made the Z-Wave devices.

So they started selling their products initially. But I don't think they've had any Shelly Z-Wave devices until recently. Cool. Cool, they have the long-range stuff too. Especially for like those types of products where they get buried in behind a wall or in a fixture or something. Yeah, cause it's...

Where in the basement. All right, and HOMEY is introduced a new feature that allows users to clone 433 megahertz remote controls using the HOMEY Bridge. This feature is part of Homi Pro software, enables duplication of button functionalities from various compatible devices like garage doors fans or blind controls, window blind controls.

Not bad. This is actually pretty nice. If you're on Homi and you're using that. This is very similar to what you'd buy the Bond Hub for, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's built into their hub. So I actually thought this was really cool.

And I, you know, you could add like your fireplace remote to it. You have one of those things like that. And it's a cool, it's a cool little addition. I might look into see if there is an add on for home assistant that could do something similar with. What I really want to know about these things is, it's nice that you can replicate this stuff, right? Because I use Bond at my house.

I think it's a little too expensive for what it is, but it does exactly what it says it does and it never has any problems. But why can't they give me a database with these things? Yeah. Because there are certain ones that do, like Broadlink, which is a Chinese option that has like IR and stuff.

You can type in a brand and it'll be like, oh, maybe it's one of these. I want the capability to program my own remote, but also find remotes. Because sometimes I want to use this in place of buying a new remote for a device I've lost a remote for. Yeah.

So is there something like patented where they can't do that or something? I'm not really sure. It might be like a security, not patented, but more like the security features, like it uses a rolling code or something that you need to initially have from the other remote so it can clone that.

That's all I can think of. I mean, some of them, no way though. And some of them don't support the rolling codes. Like I know Bond doesn't support that with their garage door openers. It's just straight codes. but the database thing makes total sense because even in the Harmony database, sometimes you find buttons, uh, that you can program that aren't even on the remote itself, like the buttons to get

into like the LG TV's, um, service mode or whatever like that, right? So it's kind of cool like this. I know with Bond and my fireplace, there's certain codes I just cannot capture. Right. And it would have been nice if Bond had a database and had those codes in there. So I didn't have to fight with it. That's a good idea, but yeah. Yeah.

The biggest thing we use that for like, cause we like programmed like URC remotes or, uh, you know, did like RTI and stuff like that. And a lot of times you could find a discrete code by using other TV codes. And so if you needed an on and off command, but the remote you had only had power toggle, you could still send discrete on and off commands. And that's the biggest thing,

because like everything else is whatever. Like once the device is on, you can set it to whatever, fan speed two, but like my fan, for example, does not have discrete power. And so I had to like create a scene or automation that when it's turned on, it like, it sets a flag or whatever, and then I can't like turn it off again or something.

It's like a whole complicated setup just to be able to say, hey, turn the fan on, and if it's on, don't do anything. When a discrete code'll just do that. Make it easy. I have a state of fans. We need to go buy a fan or two for our house. Oh, it's a nightmare. I'm like, Oh yeah.

I don't want to, I don't want to do this because I know they're all DC motors. Now they don't have AC motors anymore. And like they're just garbage DC motors with, with these canopy controls, with the little remotes that are like, Hey, you have a remote with your fan, and I don't want one of those, because it just introduced more problems for me, like automation problems. Yeah, we added some can lights to the living room,

and so we're changing out the fan for that, and I was like, oh, sweet, now we can just get a regular fan with no lights, which is now manually controlled. So that was the bonus of adding can lights, but in every room that doesn't work out. Like our bedroom would look weird with can lights, which is now manually controlled. So that was the bonus of adding cam lights. But in every room, that doesn't work out. Like our bedroom would look weird with cam lights, I think. So buying a fan light combo for that is going to be a nightmare

because of the controllers. Yeah. And they don't make it easy to like, I wish they would just put it on the box. Like this, this, you know, fan requires a remote to always control it. Or this one does not. You never know. Make it super easy on me Yeah, it's just like a grab bag. Yeah, I did I did I did find it encouraging when I think we're at CDA last year

Year before I think you guys were there when this booth was there There was a I think it was whack lighting was doing like they had their own line of fans that were integration friendly Which I thought was encouraging and they recognize friendly, which I thought was encouraging. They recognize at least that there's a need for that market. And it's not like it takes any brain power to produce something that you can actually integrate with, right? I don't know. I thought that was...

It was over in that area. I forgot what the exact name of that company was. I'm pretty sure it was a part of Wack Lighting, though, WAC. We'll have to check those out at CDIA this year, maybe. Yeah. I mean, the market for FAN too. And I was thinking about automating it and I'm thinking about, you know, the In-N-V-E-L-E modules, but like you said, those are for AC.

Yeah. Well, okay. So that's going to get into my other rant, I guess. I don't understand why the fan canopy modules are so big when like one of the Shelly relays works just fine. Right, right. Because I bought one of the Inavelli ones because I was like, oh, this would be nice.

I can have it configured to my config button automatically through the settings. And I went to go put it in and I couldn't put it in because the junction for the fan was not big enough. So I just had to get it little sewn off relays to do it instead. And they're literally had to get it like little sewn off relays to do it instead. And they're literally like a fifth of the size. And this isn't like a thing that's like, you know, just in a valley because a lot of fan canopy modules are so big.

Like why I guess maybe because the antenna. But the in a valley one doesn't have an antenna as far as I know for like a remote. So, so is the shelly one you're talking about made for a fan or is it just a relay? The Sonoff one was. Oh, the Sonoff one. Because I know with a fan, they have to take into consideration, what do they call it? Influx current or something like that when the, you know, there's certain things they have to take into consideration with the motors of fans and that may be why it's big. And they want to support all the fans.

So maybe they added the extra size for cooling and stuff like that where the Shelly, you of fans and that may be why it's big. And they want to support all the fans. So maybe they added the extra size for cooling and stuff like that where the Shelly, if it's just a relay, they're not worried about all that. You can go small with relays. Yeah. But whether or not it's like. All right, so I am wrong.

It's just a regular relay. Yeah. But I guess that works for my fan, but it might not work for anybody's fan or everybody's fan. Yeah. I think it depends on the motor of the fan and how much it's drawing, et cetera, et cetera. Who knows?

Yeah, I guess I didn't think about that. It may light on fire one day, but hopefully you're sitting under the fan and it blows it out. I mean, if it does, then delete this episode. So you didn't use the Sonoth one. You said you- No, so I used the Sonoth one, but it's not fan rated.

Oh, I'm looking at a Sonoff iFan04 Wi-Fi ceiling fan and light controller. And it looks like it does, I mean, it does do fan control. It's only 20 bucks. I used, let's see, it says Sonoff ZB Mini. It's a mini light switch relay. Yeah, so I mean, there is a, I mean, that's basically what I did. I just hooked the fan motor up to the switch side of things

and then add the light canopy on a dimmer. So I have like two devices controlling both things. But I mean, that's kind of gone with the canopy control stuff. That's kind of just gone away. Like they've moved all that to a little stupid remote thing that gets lost or crushed or something and you basically end up having to keep up with that thing and then just use it. Not a fan of those fans, I guess.

Not a fan. All right. Let's move on here. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 535. All right. I guess we have a mailbag video of a pick of the week. But first, we've got an interview with Wayne Kreifels. He's the GM VP for Segway and Abimo North America. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that Wayne came on our show, I think it was sometime last year. We talked to him about, it was like right before winter. We talked about the Segway Navajo lawn mowers.

Had a great conversation with them then. Then after that, they sent Gavin and myself some lawn mowers. Gavin got his and immediately tossed it into his basement because it was winter. It was winter. I set mine on, started mowing with it and started tinkering with it. And then as time went on, the little one that they had just couldn't keep up with my lawn. So they did send out the bigger X3 to me to tinker with and play with it.

And that one actually, like I said at the beginning, I was working a little bit better. But anyway, Wayne came back on the show to chat about the new stuff and talk about some new updates they had for the X3. So let's go ahead and just jump into the interview here and get started. All right, Wayne, welcome back to the show. Hey, guys, good to see you guys again.

Yeah, I would say it's been a while. I was looking at when you were on last, I think we spoke late October and the show came out early November. But a lot has happened since then. Your title's changed, I've noticed. Yeah, we're growing at a rapid rate. So we're putting on a head count

and they decided to kind of make me the whole GM over all of America's now. So not only North America, South America. So we're already dipping our toe in the South American market. So it's been pretty exciting. We've added a few more sales reps. We've added some more marketing. We've all around has just been growing at a rapid rate.

I guess that's one of the things that I keep forgetting because we talk with a lot of little local, like a lot of US based companies, you know, and Segway is huge. Segway is massive. They're worldwide. These lawnmowers are everywhere. They are everywhere. Yeah, it's truly a global company, and these NaviMos are reaching all corners of the globe,

so it's pretty exciting for us. Yeah. I think we spoke about it briefly last when you were on, was the X3 launch. Mm-hmm. And you were excited. I think you had just shown it off at one of the shows there at the end of the year, industry-specific shows. Yep.

And it made some headlines, but then I think as like CES rolled around, it got bigger and bigger. And I think you guys had a bigger launch towards the beginning of the year sometimes. So how's that gone for you? It's gone well. So we did launch that at Equip last year in Louisville, Kentucky, mid-October. And then got, you know, kind of the dealers and landscapers pretty excited about the product. And then we did a kind of a, the bigger launch as a Segway Global at the CES show. So we were able to, you know, not only launch just our NaviMo, but Segway obviously showed

a whole bunch of new, new product categories that they're, they're entering into. So it's, it's been super exciting. It's been pretty well received. The X3, we still can have it at, at a dealer exclusive. That's where you can find the X3 model. You don't really see that one too much online. You'll see it available to be purchased online through our platform, through

Navi mode comm And it actually pushes you over to the closest dealer to go pick it up So we have what's called a the O2O system. So Online to offline so we're you know Hoping our dealers be supported and and making sure that these customers can get these Navi most in their hands even quicker Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, that is nice, especially if you are a dealer. Yeah. I always enjoyed that referral type system.

I was looking around. There's nobody in my area. So I should probably talk to you about becoming a NaviMo dealer. You might. Yeah. What part of quarter? Quarter, right? What part of quarter?

Yeah, I think the nearest is Kissimmee or something like that. So it's quite a ways away. Yeah. I know that we just added we just added one on and they turn a beach. Um, yep. Just today actually. Oh, cool. Yeah.

And then, uh, there's a couple in that whole Orlando market that just that have came on board since, um, October, but yeah, Florida's rapidly growing out to we, we probably, well, I don't even know if we had our new cells wrapped down there in Florida. Yeah. But she's, she's down there. Her name's Alex Heller and she's been working the market pretty well. So you shouldn't be seeing dealer soon in your, in your neck of the woods

and the Florida mark. As somebody who used to live in Florida, I definitely don't want to mow grass in Florida so I can see robot lawn mowers really taken off there. That's a good sales pitch too. If it can handle Florida grass, it can handle anyone's grass. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's a different, it can handle anyone's grass. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

It's a different, I mean, it's funny. We were just talking, we've been talking about this, uh, because it has started. It, I mean, grass growing season never really stops here, but it has been really dry. But over the last couple of weeks, we've started, it's raining now. And as soon as it rains, the grass is like, yes, we're back and it will grow an inch or two overnight, it seems. Yeah. So it's time and the Navamo is getting to work out now.

The grass is growing and I'm sitting it out there every day to do its little shave. And as long as it keeps its sock down, everything stays nice. Yeah, 100%. That's the key to robotic mowing. Just let it go out there and do the work. It doesn't it doesn't hurt to overrun them, you know, especially if you're in your in

your growth season for sure. You never complain. Let's do it. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't hurt me any to do that. All right. Well, let's run real quick over the line you guys have the other next three we've talked about. Yeah still have the iSeries, and I think it's a perfect little device for most people. I think you had the H series still, right? Yep, and we still have an H series, yep. So where do those fall? Where do you see those fall?

Obviously, X3 is the big boy, and it's gonna handle the big stuff. Where do you see the iSeries and the H series falling? It's going to handle the big stuff. Where do you see the iSeries and the hSeries falling? You know, it'll always kind of stay in that DIY type customer. That's who we're targeting for that i and the hSeries. But it's going to evolve. You know, with technology change and everything,

you'll see some new features here in the end of 2025 on the i and the h. That will be pretty exciting to the homeowner. Okay. The technology, you know, is getting affordable now. So it's very palatable to buy these mowers for just a standard residential now and be able to have all the technology on them.

Just like our smartphones, right? They're little teeny super computer lawnmowers out there for you. They are, they're pretty impressive. Like what the technologies that goes super computer lawnmowers out there for you. They are. They're pretty impressive. The technology that goes into these lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners, it's staggering. Yeah. Yep.

It's pretty insane, the stuff that's out there that drives these little robots around and make sure they don't run anything or run over anybody. Well, and the pricing has kind of come down like robot vacuums too, right? Because when robot vacuums first came out, just like robot lawnmowers, they were so expensive. But now, I mean, you know, a thousand bucks gets you a really good either robot lawnmower or robot vacuum. So, yeah, kind of match each other in that regard.

Yeah, I kind of compare it to a little bit like the flat screen TV era. Remember? I mean, we've all wanted those big flat screens and we didn't want to go spend four or five grand on a flat screen TV era, remember? I mean, we've all wanted those big flat screens and we didn't wanna go spend four or five grand on a flat screen to watch football. Yeah, even more than that. Way north of that, yeah. Add 20 to that equation, 20,000 to that equation. But now you see these flats,

things whether it's LED or LCD or out there. I mean, you can just walk in and get one now and it doesn't break the bank. So that's kind of where this technology is going. And they're so accessible now. Like anyone could walk into a Costco and there's a 96 or 100 inch TV sitting right there as soon as you walk in for very like a few thousand bucks at the most. They're not expensive now. You guys were nice enough to send Gavin and I some lawnmowers to play around with. And I guess we have had, I guess, for Gavin, it was unfortunate because like it got there

and then the day after it snowed or something like that. Yeah, that was upsetting. Little cannibal. So it had to go into storage for a bit. But now that the grass is growing, and I think we've had some hands on time, I don't know, do you want to talk about some of the features that we've all come to know

and love and how these products get all set up and go? I mean, I started with this, I think, the end of last year as well. Of course, my grass was still ready to be cut up until we had a drought. But then I had some feedback about the i-Series not being able to climb a hill that I have, which is the majority of my yard, and then the X-Series shows up at my doorstep, and it is a massive box, and boy, that one, it is massive side by side to the i-Series. Yep. It doesn't show up in pictures, but when you're standing next to it, it's like you've got a little turtle and a big turtle. I don't know. It's just big. It is so big.

Yeah, and they're even getting bigger. People are starting to adapt to the technology and get educated on that technology. In the US, there's just a lot of people with large estates, you know, the, I was initially developed, you know, for that European market, those cookie cutter, smaller properties, um, but I won 10 does pretty well in the U S for the, for the residential. And then we quickly found out that, you know, we're just getting a lot of demand for stuff to cut half acre, three quarters of an acre, two acres, you know, and these landscapers are demanding just a little bit higher grade and more of a more, you know, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, more of a, know. And these landscapers are demanding just a little bit higher grade and more of it's more AI, more technology. So you know, we still we still kept it under 50 pounds, but physically it's you know, it does look a little bit bigger. The technology on board is amazing. The refrigerator box that got dropped off at my house. The UPS, the poor UPS guy shows up and he's like, what is, what is that? He had no idea.

But yeah, it's, it comes in a big box. But putting it together, I had had the experience of putting the iSeries together. So it really, really wasn't an issue. The only, the only minor thing I ran into as I got it all set up, and I'm doing it of course late in the day, and I'm thinking I'm just going to go out there and hit go on it. The only thing I had was the map that I had on the iSeries, maybe there is, there's no way I could find to copy it over to the other one. So I was like, oh darn.

So I had to drive it around the yard and it is. This thing moves fast. The the X series moves so fast. Yep, so it was. It didn't take long to do it all. Yeah, super fast in there. Yeah, there's some some technology that were changing so so the map could be

uploaded to the cloud and then obviously then redownload it to the to the robot. So yeah, that's been. That's been an ask from some for some customers. And it's mostly on our professional customers need. Yeah. Yeah. Residentials really don't need it too much. But yeah, for some like in your situation, if you're just trying different ones out or whatever, be nice to load the map up, then just download it and go. And I mean, if you have a repeat customer and you're upgrading, I mean, it might be

a solution there too. And I understand why it, I mean, it didn't, like I said, it didn't take very long to move everything over. But it was nice to kind of have them out there doing their thing. You know, after I got it all set up in the X series, it handled the Hill fairly well. Unfortunately, like I said, it was in a drought season. Not only does the grass die off, but then the sand just shows up underneath it,

and then when it tries to move and wiggle around, it can still get caught on higher grass and dig itself into a hole or whatever. You have to go out there and perform a rescue. Yeah. But I think now that the, the water's back, all the, the grass will start growing back into, into place and we won't have that problem. Uh, but it does, it has the ability to, to, to scale this really large,

massive hill that we have. And I was very impressed by that. And I just want to touch on the, the box was probably the most intimidating part of the setup. Right. Like it's a big box. Like Seth said, when he came in, but when you pull it out, there's not really much to actually set up. Like you're pretty much just pulling it out and finding a location to drop it in. You know, the hardest part was finding a nice place for my antenna and the, um, the base station so it could get the satellite signals.

But once that's all done, uh, driving it around the yard, getting it going, it was a very easy setup. Yeah. Yeah. And the fast mapping has made that a little easier too, right? I don't know when that was actually released, but when I set mine up last year before our interview, you had to manually do it everywhere and drive it around.

Then the fast mapping made that a little easier. You still have to intervene once in a while. But I had to remap a little bit this year and I just use the auto mapping feature for the most part. Yeah, yeah, we've put on board a lot more intelligence in it, so, and it's really some of the software that's been changed on there to help with that auto mapping and then we've upgraded a few chips

probably since you've received that one, TJ. So to help out with that. So the memory, the memory on these machines have gotten probably tenfold better than they were even 12 months ago. And I even noticed even after you created your map, when it went to cut, it would actually adjust the map, I guess, using the cameras and stuff. It would see your fence lines and stuff like that and make slight adjustments to the map and that notified me. I thought that was cool too, because you didn't have to be, you don't have to be

perfect with the map and it will clean up the rest of it based on, I was impressed. I didn't know that happened. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I always tell them, I remind myself the more is probably smarter than I am. Let it, let it figure it out. Yep.

You probably noticed after two or three weeks of watching it Mo, you know when you're sitting back drinking a beer and watching your long be mode How much more intelligent it is, you know, it just gets better and better and better Yeah, I noticed that yesterday actually I was cutting them on yesterday and First thing I noticed is there's a little corner in the fence that you know I thought it would struggle with it actually will go into that and then reverse back out and it gets that little corner in the fence that, you know, I thought it would struggle with. It actually will go into that and then reverse back out and it gets that little corner so it's like it sees the fence. Even though when I'm mapping it, I did a roundabout, so I thought I

would have to trim in there, right? So I noticed things like that. And then when it was going back to the base station, um, I got to see the animal detection kick in. I have two little chipmunks in my backyard. I can't get rid of them no matter what. They live there right now. They were fighting, but they were't get rid of them no matter what. They lived there. Right now they were fighting,

but they were fighting by the base station. You feed them, that's why. But as it was going to the base station, it saw these two little chipmunks and it paused and notified me. And I was actually shocked it can see the chipmunk. Yeah. Right. So I'm glad I didn't lose those chipmunks.

They've been their family now. But did you name them? Yeah, it's Chippy and Nah, Chippy and Maple. They got names. Yeah, it detects over 220 objects now. The machine, we're constantly teaching it new, new, new things. Yeah. It also detects brown spots in your line.

Yes. Because I have some areas that have not fully recovered from the drought and heat or maybe something else that was eating them. We've talked about these bugs that we have down here and the guys won't let me bring it back up. But something got into the grass, I've got some brown spots. I was watching it today, even though it's raining, it stopped and started a couple times during the rain. And because it detects the rain, it's like, oh, I'm going to back in.

And when it stops raining, it'll run back out. I was watching it and it was cutting the green grass and then stopping right before the brown spots and then it does this little turn around and comes back the other way. I'm like, that's brilliant. I've never seen it do that because I've never really, you know, it's a work day. I wasn't out there holding a beer or watching it or anything. But also it's one of these things I just don't have to worry about. I just let it do its thing.

Yeah. And, and I, I come out and I have to trim the edges and everything once a while. But like, other than that, there's really nothing to do, um, to do with it. It just kind of takes care of it. Yeah. No, yeah, they're again, super intelligent. I, and I kind of liked that feature that it won't mow over like any dirt or brown areas because if you do want to plant seed, it's not disturbing that new grass seed.

And that's kind of, we took a tree out on our front yard and had to do the same thing. You know, it was just all fresh dirt there and the mower just would stop whatever. But it was great because I spread all new seed around there. And finally, when this grass seed was high enough for the machine to recognize it, it was green, it started to mown it. So it grew up, grew up perfectly. It could be problematic if it was to start doing its little turns in there and get stuck on something and start digging up that dirt.

And like you said, disturbing whatever is trying to grow or recover in that area. Yep. Just another bit of feedback too. Like I got feedback from the wife on the lawn. The first thing she said was the lawn is looking really good this year. Right. And I was shocked when she said this, you know, I was like, yeah. The other thing she says, you seem to run that lawnmower very frequently.

You really like playing with that thing, don't you? And I had to explain to her and I explained to certain people is this meant, this is almost like it's meant to maintain your lawn Like it just shaves a little bit off and that's better for the grass And I noticed it this year instead of like I would run it a couple times a week instead of one time a week I go out there and cut off a whole inch or something Your lawn actually looks different my lawns has thickened up and it looks better because I've just been slightly shaving it Yep, that's about valid point My lawns has thickened up and it looks better because I've just been slightly shaving it.

Yep. No, it's a valid point. That's, that's one of the main selling features is, you know, you are going to get a thicker, lusher lawn, you're going to water less. Um, Seth doesn't really have to, I guess, worry about that too much. No, always right. But, uh, but that, that, that is, that is why I'm glad you recognize that because it's really, it's really golf course maintaining, right? Golf courses are mowing four or five times a week

on the same areas. And so, you know, like I said, you can run this thing three, four times a week and in the heavy growth season, depending how large your property is, you may be running it, you know, every day. One bit of feedback, and I'll share this with you that I got not from anybody in my family here.

My neighbor came over and said, I really love that little robot. When you have one of these, you know Wayne, Gavin too, when you have one of these, your neighbors are always going to comment, what is that? I was expecting that. I really love that little lawn mower you have. Because in the past, when I've mowed, let's just say I didn't do it that often. Let's just say that when I've mowed, let's just say I didn't do it that often.

Let's just say that when I did mow, there was a lot of grass to cut and what it would do is blow all those grass clippings over into her nice little flower bed that she has right there. I'd try and not do that, but the wind would catch things, her husband even does it. She said the best part about having that little thing

is that it doesn't blow the grass clippings. There's no grass clippings. It doesn't fly anything off of it. And there's no more grass clippings in the fire bed. And she says, now I wish I could get my husband to do that. I'm like, Marion, I can program this just to drive around the fire bed so he doesn't even have to worry about it.

He doesn't have to mow it anymore. So I did the masala and just added onto my yard. Aren't you a good neighbor? Yeah Stopping there. I just keeps going so it keeps the flower beds clean for sure Just an interesting bit of feedback from a neighbor that came out of nowhere Yeah, I mean it's very interesting and it's things that you don't you don't normally think about but obviously it was bothering her, right? And then yeah, you saw you had a solution for it. Yeah. And I honestly, I had no idea that, I mean, I knew I was, it was happening

because, but there's only so much that either one of us could do because the grass grows so fast here. You sure it wasn't, she wasn't just saying, Seth, I'm glad you're finally mowing your yard. It could have been very passive aggressive. Yeah, it was definitely that one, knowing Seth. Like, wow, somebody lives there. That's great.

Yeah. I've only gotten the notice a couple of times from the county saying that I needed to dig out my grass, but not anymore. Thanks, Navamo. Yeah, thanks, Navamo. No more county visits. Let's see. I know there's the expansion bay on the side of the X3

that we talked about. I think there is the trimmer attachment that exists right now. Are there any other ideas or are you guys going to expand on that in the future? Yeah, there are a couple ideas out there. The trimmer we brought back in, we wanted to tweak it even a little bit better. So we kind of, we rolled it back a little bit to make some adjustments to it. So it's still going to be available. There's been some other talks about little spot sprayers

and things like that that can go on there. We just opened up the expansion bay, the API, so people can request that for us. And if they want to integrate something there, we'll allow them. So it was a big ask from some of our bigger landscapers to get the API for the expansion bay. So that's going to bring you to our integration.

I think that's what we're all about. Is there going to be a public API? Do you have a public API or is it still kind of like private? What are you doing with the API for third party integrations? Yep. So it is a public API and just going to request it and you can request it through the app on that, that questions and feedback. Gavin and I are just like in it.

And TJ is like, Oh God. There's a series of questions they'll email out to you, but yeah, absolutely. Oh wow. Okay. We're excited. We're, we're excited to really be the first robotic mom or to open it. Would they be able to use that to develop a home assistant integration, for example? Like, is this public knowledge or.

I think so. Yeah. If it's public. I'm going to, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not the geeky side on the, on, on, on what they're doing with that API. Um, but yes, I mean, our team was very excited to be able to open it to the public. And start, and start working with Letting the other companies do you know do some development for integrations awesome?

Yeah, yeah, I know this is very exciting Because that's one of the things I think I think Gavin is itching to do I'm definitely definitely interested in looking to it as well for All sorts of little things but like when you can bring it into like a home automation system, like Home Assistant, Gavin uses that pretty heavily. You could have a little notification that pops up and says, time to change your blades, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

If that's built into the API. So. And I know in the forums, a lot of people that that's been a big topic is an API. They've been working around it by going through Google home, but this is going to make some people really excited. Yeah. Yeah. We believe so too, Gavin.

Yep. It's, it's, it took a little convincing, um, to some of our, our executive leadership up there at segue, but they, they understood it. And I think those forums really drove, drove that home. I mean, they, they pay attention to what the, what the public wants, you know? And, um, this is what they want. So we're going to go ahead and, and open it up. That's great. That's great.

I mean, and I understand their perspective too. When, when you publicize or you push, push out an API, you're it's a commitment. Like you're saying, this is, this is solid. It's ready to go. There's hopefully no bugs in it and we're not going to change it. We're going to commit to using this. Um, there's going to be a server that's up running somewhere that takes these commands in. So yeah, and you've then, and it's since it's public facing like that, you've, you've

got to worry about people abusing and you have to, it's a whole product in and of itself. Like, so I understand the hesitancy, um, but I am super excited to see this, this out. So, um, yeah, that's gonna be great. I'm trying to figure out on the app where to do it Yeah, it's good talking to you way not Gavin should figure it out so I can use it too. That's how I Wait, and I are on the same page. I'm not much of the technical side of things and somebody makes it work for me though I'll use it. Yeah, this is very exciting. Especially for people who listen to this show,

they'll be very interested in seeing how that integration works and seeing how they can integrate with their own systems in whatever form that may be. I was thinking also like, for what you're talking about for landscape companies, like if there are how many, when I first saw this type of product, I immediately thought the guy running, you can't probably hear them,

but they're still out there. It's raining, it's pouring. They're still out there going, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, with that thing. Yeah. I immediately thought of them and said, this could be, drop this off, program it at the house,

set it up, and then change out the blades and everything. You know, come in and do some trim and you know, once a week and you don't have to buy the 20, $30,000 lawnmower anymore. Right. And maintain that. Yep. Do you see companies starting to look at that business model

now that the prices are coming down? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they're starting to see the real value of it. And they love the I series and they love that X series. You know, when they look at that I and they're doing a whole bunch of Residentials, you know, you can buy these things at a thousand bucks a pop. Leave them there. Get, you know, five years of service out of it for five for a thousand bucks.

Or, you know, a lot of people we get pushback and negative feedback like, Oh, you're this place and employees. It's not true. Um, there's no employees applying to these places anymore. And if the ones that are there, um, these, these landscapers don't want them sitting in zero turns or pushing lawnmowers, there's way more profitable things that they could, they could do for the companies, you know, and they're, they've also quickly realized that the providing their customers a better service, just kind of like what you said,

Gavin, they're mowing this property four to five times a week now for the same amount of money that they were showing up with a crew of three people once a week. So the homeowner themselves are just getting a way better, a way better service and a way better product at the end with a more beautiful lawn. So it's, they're adapting it. And then, you know, we've, we've built out since we spoke, uh, a whole big fleet platform for these landscapers to manage all these bots.

Oh, nice. So, you know, you've got these guys that are anywhere from, you know, 10 bots to 150 bots, they can just now just do it either on the fleet app or go into their desktop and manage, manage all the bots and give all the commands right from their desk. Well, that's important because as somebody who does a lot of this, not landscaping, but networking and cameras and stuff like that, not a lot of companies offer a universal dashboard that you can kind of manage everything from.

And that's the first thing I ask a company when they try to get us to sell their products. It's like, well, do you have somewhere I can manage everything from? And three, four sets of time, the answer is no. You have to log into each individual want to look at it. And you don't want to do that when you have dozens or hundreds of sites. So that's the development there. Yeah.

And one of the things I noticed too, when I got mine up and going in spring, I actually went back in the change notes for the app and the firmware updates since last year, just to see. And that's the type of thing I do. He reads the manual. Okay. I read the manual.

Yes, I do. And I learned things. But one thing I did see was there was a lot of active development, a lot of new features, a lot of good things added. And I learned things, you know, I was like, oh, they added this and I haven't even used it yet, but knowing it did that was still impressive. And some companies you see the slow down on development once a product gets released, right? No, this has been going steady and strong and I like to see that.

Yeah. Yeah. Have you used the doodle feature yet in your app? You can put your logo or your initials up in your front yard. I programmed it to write out help in case of an emergency. So, you know, like I, I, and I showed it to the wife and I said, listen, if you, if I'm in danger, I'm pressing this button. That's what he needs a homeless integration for it. So what happens three to six weeks, somebody will see the message. Eventually come find me, but that's okay.

It worked. I haven't seen, I haven't seen the doodle feature. Was that a like heavily requested feature? I could see that being a neat little thing to play with. What are people using it for? Yeah. I'm we thought it was, um, would be a fun little gimmicky thing. Uh, but we've quickly realized a lot of people are using it, um, for, you know,

happy birthdays, drawing the hearts in their yard. Some people are doing their sports logo, you know, um, you actually have to draw that out like it's, we're not licensed to any, any, you know, sports affiliates, but yeah, it's, it's definitely, uh, being used more than what we, what we thought it would. So it's kind of cool. It's a cool feature. It actually is really cool.

I, I just put, I'm sorry, honey, in the front yard. It took eight hours to write that, but it got there. That's funny. Yeah. I think that would work on the big hill that I have. There's enough canvas space, but I live on like a pie-shaped lot, so there's not much room in the front yard to do that. But maybe if I did it big enough,

an airplane would be able to see it from overhead or something. Do a pizza design on your lot, you know? Oh, yes. Just pepperonis and. Very cool. Very excited about the API. What's next for you guys here?

What are you looking forward? We're going into the season right now where everybody's gonna be looking at buying one of these, buying a lawnmower. Yeah. I would say definitely go robot over non-robot at this point. I mean, we're growing rapidly with independent dealers.

We're also growing rapidly online. I mean, there's been a lot of requests, you know, from the big box stores to, to, to get this in online and see if you see what kind of traction it has. They can put it in stores, you know, soon they're, they're seeing the transition out of gas to battery now into, you know, more robotic mowing as well. So all your big major box stores, your DIY stores will be out there carrying the product for us. Oh wow.

So we're excited to be able to get it more readily available to everybody. Yeah, that will be great. Yeah, and then just expand on the line. We've had some, we have some really pretty cool stuff coming out here at the end of 25 to excite everybody for the 2026 mowing season. Segway, you know, I can in our HQ has developed a whole new lab just to keep constantly evolving the whole outdoor living space, how we can automate other things. So we're deep diving into a lot of a lot of other technologies to make everybody's life easier for the outdoors.

Do I have a robot at Snowblower coming anytime soon, Wayne? You know, we've kicked it around, yeah. There's a couple players out there doing it right now. I always loved being like first to the market, but, um, saying what he has taught me, let's just, let's just see where the hurdles and hiccups are and let's just come back out with, with the right, um, machine. So yeah, always, always thinking how to, how to make our Northern friends, um, life a little bit easier in the winter.

And I'm one of them in Omaha, Nebraska. I don't want, I don't want to move snow, you know? So please automate that. How about pool vacuums like transitioning into that? Yeah, you know, there's other lawn, lawnmower companies that got into it. We've deep dove into that and we just think it might be like too heavily.

Saturated, saturated. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's pretty saturated and you kind of want to see who's going to survive that. And then, and come out of it because there's been, you know, the pool robotics have been out there a long, long time, even before, uh, the mowers, you know, they were, they were tethered, but there's some major players in that pool world that, that's, that still have a pretty strong hold on it. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's such a broad range of products for the pool. I no longer have a pool, but I remember even when I did have one over a decade ago, there were those types of devices that existed then. But you could even get the one that was vacuum powered You know that wouldn't kind of walk around on the bottom of the pool with a hose attached to it So it's it's there's so many players in that market I asked my engineers if they could just you know

Let it go mow the lawn and then just go deep dive clean my full come back out and they're like two for one Yeah, why not? I they're like, two for one. Yeah. Why not? You're like, hey, any of ours, I can do that. You know? Their first question back to me is, how many can you sell in North America? How much is it? That's the question. It's always a question, yeah.

All right. Well, and I know last time we talked about maybe an automated gate thing. I don't know if that's something that's still on the books. I think I saw on Reddit that somebody posted that like they set something up and it figured out how to get through it. But like it was a feature or something or maybe it was just part of the learnings. Like it figured out how to go through.

Yeah, you can, you know, on your app, you have that vision fence off feature. So you can make a transport path with vision fence off feature so you can make a transport path with vision fence off. So that it'll just go right. It'll just stay in that transport path and go through and push its way through. You push its way through. Yep. So there's, there's a couple of aftermarket companies that have built some, built some gates, uh, segue, welcome their own branded gate that'll fit, uh, all the

existing units and some of the units that will be you guys will soon soon see So yeah, that's still been I've asked Kind of looking at some Really nice Automated garages, you know what to where the garage or actually? Closes and it kind of secures it because we've we've had some you're speaking Gavin's language This is this is where you want to go Gavin Yeah, so there's there's some exciting fun accessories that were better in in development. What?

What is like I guess the theft like like have you seen a lot of theft of these happening? Or attempted thefts even because that's the first thing my neighbors always ask me You know happening or attempted deaths even because that's the first thing my neighbors always ask me you know what if someone comes to steal it and I explain to them there's lift alarms there's GPS alarms there's disabling there's all sorts of things but still doesn't stop somebody from just grabbing it and then throwing off to the side of the road or something like that right yeah there's not a lot no you know you know I, you will hear less than a dozen instances like throughout the year, you know, of somebody did take it. A lot of times it gets it gets you get it back. You know, the app is going to track that machine for you.

And then typically it unveils a lot other more crimes and other than somebody still a lot more. You know, the people that still mowers aren't distilling mores are still in a lot other more crimes and other than somebody still a lot more, you know, the people that still mowers aren't distilling more as they're still in a lot of other. Yeah, there are other things usually the garage is morphs, you know, like We've had some cases to where on commercial properties people just want it hidden and make it aesthetically pleasing and kind of match their You know their line of sight and everything so that's been a big ass I would say like the California markets been like the biggest ask on pleasing and kind of match their, you know, their line of sight and everything. So that's been a big ass. I would say like the California market's been like the biggest ask on locking everything up, everything seems to walk, um, in that particular state, um, no matter what it is.

So we, we've kind of, you know, dug into that a little bit and try to build a garage at the door opens and closed and it's anchored into the ground and would make it very tough, um, to, to take But, you know, if somebody wants something, no matter what, they get it. They're just trying to make it to where they can't just walk by and grab it, you know? Right, yep, yep. Make it a little bit more difficult.

Yeah, that makes sense. It kind of brings me back around to the DIY and that space. There's always people, and I'm saying people, looking at you, Gavin and TJ, who have these 3D printers that like do all sorts of crazy projects. And then some of them come out with like mods and everything for your product. Like have you seen some of the, okay. So like there are different wheels that you can get. There are like little devices that hold like 20 blades, I don't know, like six blades on

it. Like, I don't know why you'd need that many. Do you, what do you think about this? Is it kind of cool to see people doing this and or is it something that like you're like, no, no, don't do that. Yeah, there are some prices like, oh my gosh, that's really gonna not that's not what that one was designed for. We can see where the failure could probably be.

Yeah, but there are some of them that we're seeing and watching them like the Facebook fan pages and stuff like that. The followers, they've come up with some pretty cool things that we've had our R&D team recreate and put it through tests and see if it's really something that can hold up. And there are, you know, like some some of these wheels, we've, we've taken some ideas like that. I want to hear you talk about climbing the hill. Yeah. We do have an all-terrain wheel now. Yeah. And it really wasn't, it really wasn't too much about losing traction. We just didn't have enough weight. That machine is extremely light. So those, those new front

wheels are weighted to help you climb the hills and stuff. Changed the tread a little bit but some of that stuff all comes from ideas of brilliant other engineers and like you said people with these 3D printers that have just a mind that's just constantly going. We love that feedback. Yeah, they can iterate and print something up. I understand in are, you know, I understand like in the corporate world, you have all these like things that has to happen for somebody to tinker

and experiment with. And these guys at home can just print something up over the weekend, test it out and modify it, test it out, modify it. And there's there's no budget there. Yeah, exactly. And all of a sudden you have six blades spinning around. Yeah. So, yeah, that's what I want to ask. How many blades is too many blades?

Because... Well, yeah, I mean, you've seen like now on the X series, we've increased the blade count on that X series. Yes, yes. And it's really the blades are really, you know, the amount of blades of what that blade motor can withstand, that electric motor, how fast the machines travel. So there's a lot of science that does go into why three blades, why five blades, why six, you know? Six blades. Yeah.

I didn't see that crazy. There was a crazy one out there that a guy actually screwed on, like, I think 12 onto our disc. It's like, wow. You know, I, and I, I, every time I come across it, it was like, I, I just, I need the, I don't want them to know, like that. I actually worked for the company and I just want to order them and try it myself. One of my favorite mods is on Amazon. You can actually buy a spoiler stickers. I for the bot, you know, and those stickers add 10 horsepower. So I mean,

Oh, my absolutely. Yeah. Chrome it up. Chrome. That'd be cool. Well, Wayne, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to come chat with us again. I can speak for me. I don't know. I really have enjoyed using these devices. They can get frustrating when it gets dry around here and start bearing, you know,

bearing themselves down into the ground like a turtle, but like there's not much you can do about that. Like that's, it tries to get out until it can't. And it says, hey, I'm stuck. And at least, at least I know that way. But other than that, fantastic. Just having, I've had a complete series of these. Like I've had the kind where you have to run the wire around the whole yard and it breaks and there's always maintenance issues. And while that did kind of work, it was way

more work that I had to put into maintaining that than it is just sticking the lantern out there and playing a video game for five minutes to draw my lawn. So it's been a fantastic product. I don't know about Gavin and TJ. I think they probably feel about the same way though. No, it's been a fantastic product. And like I said, I bought the garage for it. My wife's commented on the lawn.

So it's obviously making a difference as she's noticed. Yeah. So you got brownie points from NaviMo. I'm going to use that as a new sales pitch too. There you go. And it did cost me more work, you know? Like, yeah. And, and I even programmed it into the Amazon A-Lady and I just say,

Hey, A-Lady mobile on it goes off. And that just blows everybody away. Every time I do that. That's very cool. Well, um, Wayne, where can people go to find out more about NaviMo? Yeah. Just go to navimo.com and, uh, itcom and it'll guide you around where the dealerships are at and where you can purchase.

And then you guys come back and revisit me towards the end of October and let's talk about what we're gonna unveil. Absolutely, for sure. Yeah, yeah. As far as shows go, that one in Kentucky you were talking about really sounds like it's kind of fun to go to. Oh my God.

Honestly, I don't want to drive there because I'm not too far from Louisville. So I might go down there. So it's the Super Bowl for outdoor power equipment. I mean, every manufacturer is there showing off the latest and greatest. So it is actually it is a fun, fun trip. So I mean, if you guys are really loving the outdoors, it's not just lawn and garden or not just lawnmowers. I mean, everything that's outdoor living is, is really, really there.

And it's to come into the show, it's really inexpensive, but yeah, it's, you guys would probably have a blast and we would invite you into our booth. We do a lot of podcasts from the booth during Louisville, cause it's a week long show. So I, I, I invite you guys to come into the booth and hang with us for a few hours. Yeah, maybe we can make it happen between TJ and myself. It's a bigger trip for Gavin.

But maybe we can make something like that happen. We'll try and figure it out. Sounds good for me, so I'll be there. Yeah. All right. Well, Wayne, thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. Take care. All right.

And that's the interview with Wayne., uh, well, we had this interview a couple of weeks back and Gavin and I were really excited about the API we like, I think, I think I signed up for it on while we were talking to him and, and probably within the next day or so we got email back from support saying, Hey, yeah, that's not a thing guys. And we're like, well, what's going on? So we were emailed Wayne and Wayne, you know, kind of went back and forth. And I guess he was, he was a little he was been told that it was going to get done. But the project manager said there were some delays and that kind of thing. So what did come out, I guess, in the interim is that there is an API or an SDK or something for the X3

that allows you to integrate and control your own third-party module that you can snap in. And I love the examples they have. Like, I really kind of want my lawnmower to have a bubble blower on it. So it just goes around the lawn mowing and blowing bubbles. That would be amazing. But Gavin, you don't look too happy

if I'm not having an API. When I saw there was an API around the lawn mowing and blowing bubbles. That would be amazing. But Gavin, you don't look too happy but not have an API. When I saw there was an API and I was like all excited until I read the article and then realized it was just for the X line and it was just for the attachment. You can't even control the X line. But I mean, the good news is they're working on something.

So we expect something to come. Yeah, and we'll put a link to what exists there, I guess, for the API right now. Baby steps, baby steps. Hopefully we'll get some control out for the X line and then also the I line, like that would be nice. He did indicate that there are maybe certain software partners that may already have early access to them

and you're using it for fleet control, which makes total sense. Yeah. That's like, you totally will need that for this. So I think it's just a matter of time before they will open that up into the public for us to see that. So hopefully they do it soon.

And then Gavin will be able to integrate it, right, with Home Assistant. Like, we're not asking much here. Just give us basics. You know, the status of the lawnmower and let us start and stop it. You know, like, just the basics. If you want to add all that other stuff, you know, incrementally add it, you know, over time and update the API.

We just want the basics. I want zone control as well, please. Let me select a zone. Well, yeah, you could say start Mo, and you can select a zone, or by default it does all zones, right? Like, yeah, you start, stop, send it home, and just give me the status so I know what it's doing.

Right, or if, you know, I know, so I don't think mine has a little sensor on it that can tell if it's raining. I think I saw that Segway doesn't have that. They actually just use weather reports. So if I know it's going to rain, because Florida, the rain will just appear. It just happens.

But the forecast will be like, yeah, it's sunny outside. I always reach over with my phone and tell it to go home or something like that. So it'd be nice to have that where I could yell at the home assistant or whatever to tell it to go home. Or even automated so as soon as rain's detected, it sends it home. Just the basics we're at. Yeah. I have a weather station.

Yeah, absolutely. If it detects rain, you better make sure they lawnmower heads on home. I think it just lives out in the rain anyways. It's not going to help mine, but it'll help yours, I guess. I did see some people were saying that Segway has the nicest garage available. Like I guess it's one of the nicest or the nicest one out there. It's a nice garage and it has two little handles on the side that the top folds up nicely.

So then you can get to a lot more if you're doing servicing and stuff easily, which is really nice. All right. Well, good interview. We love having Wayne on the show. He's actually really fun to talk to you. So anytime we can get him on, we'll chat with him. And we talked about going to the show. What was it? The Equip Expo there in October.

So maybe we'll make it out to that. I'm looking at this thing and this expo looks looks like bigger than Infocom and CDIA. And there's an outdoor expo where you can, I'm guessing, just drive around on lawnmowers or something because it's in the grass, which would be amazing. So I don't know, TJ. I may head up to Lexington. You have to meet me over there.

It's in Louisville, I think. Is it Louisville? Oh, well. Come on. But yeah, it's Kentucky. It's Kentucky, yeah. I mean, let's go. Yeah, why not? You know, we get press passes because we call the people with robot lawnmowers. Maybe you can get a Yarbo It'll climb your hill with no issue. We'll see I don't know no mod

No mods required you can even get a little little scooter thing to go along with it. Whatever they snowblower They're probably similar the one the snowblower like what are they do with it? That'd be smart. Definitely need that. You need a water blower for hurricane season. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, something to pump the water away from the house. Yeah, this is pretty cool though, I like this.

Oh man, they've got bucket, like the little bucket things. Can we operate those? Like the... Probably. Oh my gosh, they better have... I mean, it's definitely a bunch of children at this show. What's beyond? Unlocking, yeah, this is amazing.

It's like all lawn equipment and everything. All right. Touch some machinery, please. Think of all the new Milwaukee stuff that's gonna come out that I'll never buy. Oh my gosh. Yeah, here's this $15,000 lawnmower. You probably have a lawnmower

that snaps to your packout toolkit. Oh. Folds down into a packout. Right, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'd get that. Yeah, you probably would. I don't manually know my lawn anymore. That's what I mean, it's gonna be a pack out. Right, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'd get that. Yeah, you probably would. I don't manually mow my lawn anymore. That's what I mean, it's gonna be a robot one.

It just snaps on. Oh. You can bring it around and stuff, yeah. All right, well, anyway, let's move on here. Nothing in the belt bag this week. We do have a pick of the week. And it's something I found, I don't know, I, it's on Macedon somewhere.

If you haven't joined our Macedon, hometech.social, I don't even know what the address is anymore because I don't know, on Macedon somewhere. If you haven't joined our Macedon, home.tech.social. I don't even know what the address is anymore because I don't go there. Because I still use the app, the app that I switched over to one of them, Ice app or whatever it is, IceCubes. I still use the website for certain things. Yeah. I do like the interface. They've been making a lot of changes to the interface.

If I updated, we'd have them, but they've been making a lot of changes to the interface. And if I updated, we'd have them, but they've been making more good changes to the interface and settings. The site's been reliable though, so that's good. Reliability. I need to go update it though. I think there's a couple updates to do. There goes our uptime.

Yeah, they don't really have a good update process. Anyway, I saw this on, that's on somewhere. If you watch the Weather Channel sometime in the 90s, there was always like your local weather that would come on. And if you want to know what the weather was going to be like or what the radar in the area looked like, this is all you had. Because there was no website, there was no phones, there was no apps you could look up. You had to wait for this thing to come around.

And it was just like, it would cycle through a few like local forecasts. It would have, you know, your temperature, it would have like the extended forecast, your travel forecast. It's just a bunch of screens that it would, it would kind of like cycle through. And in this really strange,

like computer generated font thing that they had and someone has basically duplicated that not only have they duplicated it actually they actually have them the smooth jazz that goes along with it too so there's a soundtrack with this thing it's amazing it's absolutely amazing it looks just like it somebody playing it yeah I'm gonna have to download these mp3s or whatever and put them in the show. But this is, I mean, it's so nostalgic. It brings back so many memories of like,

is it gonna rain tomorrow? I better go put this on. And you had to wait, I think it was called Weather on the 8s and you had to wait around until like, it was like 1038 or 1048 or whatever. And it would play this thing. And if the stupid radar didn't come up or you like turned your head too

short and you missed it, boom, they were in a commercial break and you wouldn't get in it for weather update for another 10 minutes. So anyway, this is really fun and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. I put it on the big TV behind me, so I've got a massive 70-inch version of this playing in kiosk mode behind me on this TV and I'm so glad I finally found something to do with this TV So I have the weather up there and during the day I can turn around and see the radar Occasionally because there's no commercial breaks on my TV. It just keeps playing this over and over again and it's amazing Sorry, Gavin. There's no US only no Canadian. Yeah, that's the first thing I checked so

But Florida weather I mean like what do you mean by the weather? It's hot, hot, hot, hot, humid, hot, hot, hot, hot. Every day, thunderstorm, chance of showers, chance of showers, chance of showers. You're leading. Like, that's the easiest job in the world as a Florida weatherman. Today's going to be hot with a chance of flowers. The wind's coming this way, you know? You got to see how hot the graph is going to be. See, I've got graphs on this.

You know it's gonna make it up there with graphs. And it's the same every day. It cools down overnight and gets hot during the day. And that just repeats the graph over and over. So, Gavin, I went to the GitHub page of this and there is actually an international version of this. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, if you wanna check that out, I believe, and a live version of this. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, if you want to check that out, I believe, and a live version of it as well, I believe that that might have your, let's see, Ontario.

This would be something cool to throw up on the new Apollo LED display right next to me, you know? My weather forecast and stuff like that. Pickering Ontario, look at this. It's in 24 four point seven degrees Whatever the heck that is humidity. Let's see. Let's see. We've got kilometers on here. This is this is straight. This is you man Yeah, it's warm out here today. It is kilometers per hour Gust of four point three. I don't know what that means, but you've you've got a ceiling of point four nine KMS

You know what? I have a weather station Well, you can you can just leave this in the background and let it do its thing. I have a hyper local weather forecast. I'm good with that. You can't beat that. But it doesn't tell you it's gonna rain. It doesn't scroll and play smooth. You know what? I'm old school. When I wake up in the morning and my knees bother me, it's gonna rain. You know? Like I'm one of those. Your knee's not gonna play you smooth jazz, Gavin.

I mean, come on. I'll put that on my sonos in the background, you know? If my head starts to hurt, oh man, there's some thunderstorms rolling in, you know? I'm almost, my body tells me what the weather's gonna be. If I'm sweating, yeah, it's hot right now. I walked in the other day and my daughter was going to bed and I'm like I walked in from outside like I was doing some lawn stuff and I was just finishing up and was like putting her to bed and I was like hey don't touch me I'm dirty and she managed to reach up and

like grab the back of my head and she's like oh my gosh that's your fault I warned you you gave her the warning. She should have checked. She's like, why are you so sweaty after being outside for so little? And I'm like, it's hot. Dang. Well, if you are, I guess we'll put both links in here. We've got the Weatherstar by Matt.

And then there's the weather, there's the fork of it that has all the international versions, and everybody else uses Celsius. I guess the one that I used can't have Celsius. I don't know. So there. If you got Fahrenheit, we'll give you the Fahrenheit link. And if you need Celsius, we'll give you the Celsius link.

And go put it in and enjoy. Enjoy. Turn on the music. You got to turn on the music. That's what's special about it. It's the smooth jazz that just kept you going when you were seeing what the weather was going to be like. So check it out. If you have any feedback, questions, ideas for the video picks the week, give us a shout,

our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can head on over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates. But first we got a Home Assistant update, and this is kind of big. This is our friends over at Zoos are now joining the Works with Home Assistant initiative there. So that means what? Certified integrations, everything's been tested,

it all works great, and you know, Zoos is a big name. And so, at least in the DIY space, and I don't know. It's getting up there in the pro space too. What, a few years back when you guys first joined this show, I thought you guys were just pulling my leg. Like, I've never heard of this brand before. And now I see them everywhere.

So it's a good company and they make great products. So good on Zoos. Yeah. And this is huge, not just for Home Assistant, but also for Zoos. You know, for the record, Zoos has always worked with Home Assistant. Like this doesn't mean they didn't work in the past. They've always worked with Home Assistant. This just means now that they're officially supporting their integrations.

You know, they will ensure that works with every update you have. This is good for me. I have so many ZOOZ products that now I don't have to worry about them one day giving up problem with Home Assistant. They will be pre-testing it and doing all that stuff before it gets even updated. So this is great. Yeah, that is good. I have a lot of ZOOZ products on here.

I like ZOOZ and I like hearing Agnes' story and this is always a good development for any company. I just proved that their products do work. And I know they are very proud of this Titan water valve controller, the bunches I've talked to Agnes about it. So if you are in the market for a water valve controller, like a shutoff valve with sensors that can detect water and that

kind of stuff. That's probably a pretty good one to look at. They've done some extra engineering on it to make it work really well. So do check that out. Support them because they're a good company. Anyway, Gavin looks like he's the only one that did anything. I guess I already went over my TV thing. Oh, now TJ did something too.

So I'll start with Gavin. Gavin, what have you been doing? What have you been doing through Z-Wave stuff, huh? Well, before I get into that, before I get into that rant, just a couple other things I played for. So if you're one of those guys that likes to create it as almost as a dashboard, you know,

really make it look nice. I found this new card called Navbar. So in the past, I created my own, um, navigation bar and I would hide the original one and I had a nice little navigation bar at the bottom, but somebody actually released their own now. And this thing looks nice. Very customizable, but the nice part about it, and I did this in my own, but I transferred it easily over to this, but you can have it have badges.

So I have a, like a notification tab where, you know, I click on it and it takes me to my list of notifications that were pushed, but it also, I have a little badge that shows me how many notifications I even set it up so I could just hold that tab and it will clear the batch count too and stuff like that So this this card is very powerful. It could do pop-up menus from the card You could do CSS customization So if you want to give that little extra bit to your home assistant dashboard check out the navbar card It's really really useful

You showed you showed us this the other day, and I guess I didn't really appreciate or recognize what you're showing me, because I was looking at, I don't know, you put this in the back, yeah, you showed this to us. So it's got the stuff at the top, right? Or I guess at the bottom.

So my navigation bar is at the bottom for like home, devices, rooms, you know, cameras, you know, and notifications. Right. And you click, you press on one of them and it just takes you to the appropriate pages. Like that's all it really is, but it's got a lot more configuration. You can change colors, sizes, et cetera. Is this support hot dog theme? Like, cause I replied instantly.

He's just like, what's my mind looks like? And you're like, no, you can change the colors to match your hot dog theme of all the icons in the background. Now they showed you how to make it floating. If you want it to make it look like the iOS 26 floating bars, glass, whatever. No, don't need floating. Just black five, eight pixels wide.

Or you can do any, a bunch of CSS customizations, just black, five, eight pixels wide or whatever. You can do any, a bunch of CSS customizations, you know, styles you can apply to it. So yes, yes you can. Red, lots of red. Yeah. White, red, white, black and yellow. That's it. That's all I need.

But it's a great card. Easy to install. Check it out. Looks way better than, than mine, but you know what? Mine's nostalgic too. There we go. Why that one? Not good nostalgia though.

Whatever. The other thing I did this week is I added the off-road wheels to my NaviMode lawnmower. I have a side hill, a hill at the side of my lawnmower is getting stuck on the hill. Wasn't making it up. And I did a quick measurement with my phone. It looked like it was between 10 and 20 degree incline. So it was struggling on that hill for some reason.

So I got the off-road ones, threw them on there. Now it goes up and down the hill easily. So yeah, I'm kind of happy about that. You know, money well spent because now it can handle that hill. So if you have a lawnmower that offers you these kind of off-road type wheels, you know, money well spent because now it can handle that hill. So if you have a lot more that offers you these kind of off-road type wheels, you know, and you need them, they work. They make a difference. I have a question for you because I was reading somewhere.

So the reason people like these is because the current, the ones that chip with it, right, they have like a ridge that goes down the middle. Yes. And it kind of sticks up just as much as the little spikes do. So people are like, eh, that's dumb. But somebody was saying that these actually weigh a little bit more than the original ones. Is that the case? They felt heavy.

Yes, they felt heavier. Yes. But then it's also, it's much more than just the ridge there. They took out that ridge down the middle that you're talking about, but the spikes are also like, how can I say it? Spike-ier. I don't know can I say it? Spike here.

I don't know how to say it. It's just smaller, you know, and where the other ones were a little wider, so they give a little bit more grip in the ground. So yeah, they help though. They work. We'll see if they wear down, but they work. Occasionally, this is the worst because the the i-Series is in the front, when it gets down to close to the road,

it can slip and fall into the road. For whatever reason, they can't ever figure out how to get back into the yard because of the grass ledge that's there, whatever, they can't hop back over there. So I basically have moved where they can mow like a foot or two back, but that doesn't stop them from getting out in the street somehow. The problem is I walked out the other day, it was trash day and it was like living down in the street where you put the trash.

And I'm like, oh no, this isn't good. And to run down there and grab it because you see somebody just driving by and like, oh, I'm gonna grab this. Your neighbors must love you. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So anyway. But moving on, I just gonna grab this. Your neighbors must love you. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So, anyway.

But moving on, oh, I just wanna throw this out there. One of my lines in my pool, burst a little hole in it. So water was spitting out of it and I have to go fix it. But instead of cutting out the section and replacing it, I wanted to try- Shark bites. Some of these. Well, no, no shark.

That's where I'm going to get you guys on this one. It's a little big for shark bite, but I wanted to try these as seen on TV. Cause I, you know, you know, they, you see it gorilla tape. Oh yeah. Just slap a piece of gorilla tape on. So I gorilla tape that thing, turn on my bum and it failed me. Water. After, after about an hour, it's nothing like the commercial.

After about an hour, it was leaking out. So what I'm trying right now is I had a can of flex seal. And apparently you could seal up a whole canoe with this and then, then do everything like that. So I sprayed it with some flex seal and I'm just seeing if that will hold it. I may put the flex seal on and then grill a tape over it. Just see if you know, together they'll hold the pressure. So we'll see.

What's a PVC cover cost? No, I'm going to cut it out anyway, but this was a good test for these products. Cause I kept seeing them on TV and I'm like, did they really hold up to something like that? So, you know, before I cut out that section of tube, I just wanted to try these and see how they are. You know, pretty, pretty fun, like little product project to say, yeah, they don't live up to those commercials. You know, so I feel better that, you know, I won't reach for the gorilla tape anytime I need to seal a water hole now. Um, it won't, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. So I'll report back on the flex seal next week. Um, and before I get into that, my Z wave JS issues, I just want to PSA out there, you know, spread it to your friends. Your tech buddy is do not contact your tech buddies to come install all those posts. Those prime day deals. You got our ring devices, please. They do not want to do it for you.

You know, they don't care that you got a new ring camera. They're not as excited as you. They don't want to install it. That's not their job. Do not call them if they're busy, except the fact that they're busy. Don't try and book them three weeks from now. Get the hint that anything out of, you know, if I said two, you can't get me for three weeks, that means I don't want to do this, right?

And I'm hoping you'll forget in three weeks or you'll say, oh, that's too far away and go ask somebody else. Specifically, who are you talking to with this rant? I don't know. I'm just, you know, throwing this out there. You know, I have to say all the people that have called me with their post prime day buys, you know, but they want me to set up their products. No, no, you know, now, now I kind of, I think, you know, what TJ feels like with this, this

wiring system, you know, TJ that's your job, TJ. You could charge them, you know, you can say, listen, this is my job. It's going to cost you this much to install your ring camera. It's not my job. and my family wants it free. You know, like, like I have family that will call me and say, Hey, can you buy a ring camera for me and install it in my house? Man. You know, I'm like, uh, are you going to send me the money for it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will.

I will. I will. No, you ain't getting that money. When you get here, I'll give you the money. Once it's set up, you'll get the money. No, it doesn't I will. I will. No, you ain't getting that money. When you get here, I'll give you the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once it's done, once it's set up, you'll get the money. No, it doesn't work that way. No. See, TJ does it for a job. So you take the bookings, you charge them the installs.

That's your job. That's right. Not my job. Just because I know tech doesn't mean I know how to install cameras. You're in IT. You're in technology, which is an IT, which is technology, which means you do everything technology. Oh, man, don't even get me started. I mean, I do everything technology because I work in technology. So I had somebody just send me their Apple watch, you know, they're like,

Oh, Gavin works in tech. He can fix this. It won't start up. And I'm like, I like did honestly, they don't listen to this podcast. All I did was turn it on and said, yep, it's in a boot loop. Well, you got to take it back to Apple. I tried. Yeah. I tried. Yeah, I tried restarting this thing.

It didn't fix the problem. You got to take it to Apple. So I'm like, man, I'm like, oh. I have one rule. If you ask me to fix your computer, you drop it off whenever you want, and you'll pick it up when I say it's ready. That's it.

You know, and I don't back up anything. I'm just going to wipe it and put windows back on it. And, you know, you got to figure out how to get your browser and stuff back. I don't care. You know, I'm a mean IT person anyways, getting into something more fun. So this week was, uh, they released a Z wave JS UI update. Um, and yeah, that's a, an add-on in home assistant. But the one thing that hit me hard was after the update, it gave me like 95 error, not errors, but like notifications.

I had to re interview my devices. So just be warned if you're going to update be warned that you're probably gonna get this. They have acknowledged it. I believe they said the add-on updated a bunch of configs that's gonna trigger a whole bunch of re-interviews. And when it re-interviews a device, it generates a lot of traffic on the network. So it basically goes to that device

and pulls every setting on that device and figures out what it can do and all that device and, and, and, you know, figures out what it can do and all that type of stuff and resets it back, not reset resets it, but, you know, updates it in, in home assistant. But, um, during that time though, my, basically my, my house wasn't working. Like things were not working while it was waiting for them to, especially sleepy devices while it was waiting for them to wake up and report back in so that it can trigger the, um, the, the, the re-interview.

But even while it was re-interviewing all my devices online, it was generating so much traffic that everything was just like randomly happening later. Like at seven o'clock in the morning, all of a sudden all my blinds opened up. Cause for some reason it triggered the switches for all my blinds to open up. And yeah, the wife was not happy about that, you know, so just be careful with this. I don't know. Some, so technically you're supposed to just leave it. Things will not work, but leave it as they wake up. It will re-interview them.

They'll come back online and it could take like six hours for a device to check in. It could take up to 12 hours. It all depends on when that device was. It could take up to 12 hours. It all depends on when that device was configured. I think default is 12 hours, how it was configured to wake up, how often to check in to see if there's anything for it to do, right?

So they say just keep it, you know, if you do the update and you get that, you can just leave it and it will overnight fix itself. Of course, I had to do a reboot of home assistant, which then reset the notifications and, or reset the re-interview process and yeah, I now back to three devices that are still offline for some reason that I got fixed. But I went from 95 devices and it was just not fun. So I'm just saying you've probably already hit that update

and gone through this as well. So by the time this show gets out, you know. So, you know, that was just a heads up if you haven't. Yeah, this is the stuff that needs to not happen. Yes. Or Home Assistant to become like a mainstream thing because this is just, you can't be doing this. I think it triggered the re-interviews because, okay,

from my understanding, like they did an update that changed a bunch of texts in the config files for these devices, which then triggered all the re-interviews, but they said in the future, text changes won't trigger a re-interview. So they were like, you just got to power through this one. It's not going to happen again. It shouldn't happen in the first place. Listen, I was just bragging about how they were getting more stable and giving me less problems and then bam, this happens.

Yeah. I saw a couple of comments about this particular issue in the hub today. So, well, you know, it's the life of the smart home enthusiast. This is why I don't have time to install your ring cameras that you brought on prime day, I'm too busy fixing my home assistant. I don't have time to install your Ring cameras that you brought on Prime Day. I'm too busy fixing my Home Assistant. Hey, well, DJ, did you have any Z-Wave Home Assistant issues to deal with? No, I just decided to update mine while Gavin was talking, though.

So I guess I'll run through that whenever it happens. This week, I've been doing a couple of different things. So I went back. You know, we talked about the Sunshade sail posts and all that stuff that I got installed. Well, I guess I messed up or the person that installed it messed up a little bit because we ran out of concrete during the installation process. And so like basically, we ran out like one bag on like two posts. And so the the concrete was a lot lower than the actual ground. And that causes problems with water building up on the posts and stuff like that. And it'll rot out the posts a little faster. And so this week I've been going around to all the posts. And I made a frame and I poured new concrete into the post. And so that way I can build it up a little bit.

And so that way the water doesn't pool up on top of the the post wherever it goes into the ground. And so now I've got this extra concrete on top of it, which is fine, but it just all looks kind of ugly. And so I've gone around, I've started landscaping around the post as well, which will help keep down on the maintenance as well. I have to weed whack them as often. And so we'll include a picture of that. I've got one of them done today.

I hate landscaping. There is like, it's like one of the worst things ever. And it's not as like hot as it is down in Florida, but like I had to keep taking breaks because I'm just like drenched in sweat as I'm working out here. You know, trying to level these stupid pavers or edgers, whatever they're called,

to make it look relatively nice, even though it doesn't look nice because my yard is not level. And so you look at this and you're like, man, that is not level. Looks like a crackhead installed it. And it is level actually. The ground just is not. So it does not look good if you're looking at it from this angle. But yeah, the water issue seems to be fixed. Concrete is difficult. I've never done anything with concrete before. And so mixing that up and getting the right ratio and everything like that, that was difficult. They will probably need to be redone in like,

you know, three to five years, but that might not be my problem at that point. So, and maybe I'll learn how to do concrete by then. Because it wasn't with these four posts, I'll tell you that. Hopefully nobody was looking at my backyard because they probably thought I was a madman. Because one time I poured it into the template or the jig, whatever you want to call it. I don't know what they call it, form I guess, for concrete.

And it like ripped open. And so my concrete just like went everywhere. And I had to like dig it out and like go dump it somewhere in the yard. Definitely looked like a crack head doing concrete for the first time. Just dig the hole deeper and leave it in there I guess. I don't know, that's what people did in my yard. Every time I dig in my yard I find like this big ball of concrete. Yeah.

Just lift a piece of grass and slide the concrete under there and put the grass back down. There you go. I did. Everybody else do it then. Yep. I went to Menards and I bought some discount grasses. If you're really gonna buy in any kind of landscape plants, mainly perennials obviously,

cause if they're annuals, then you're not gonna get much life out of them at this point, but perennials, it's a perfect time to get plants at the local hardware stores or nurseries or anything else because they're all on a discount And so I picked up these grasses, you know Nice little decorative grasses that kind of hide the the post and you know, the electrical I got going on here in the picture We'll upload but they were two dollars each instead of eight dollars each normal. So

75% off that is how we bought all of our landscape plants last year. This is a way to for them all to go on sale. So this is a perfect time to start looking for plants if you need plants. I did not know that. I don't know if I want to know that, but I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. We bought all of our stuff for like 50 to 75% off last year. I planted a couple things by the front door that were dying and they've already died or at least something ate most of them And I don't know they don't they don't look too healthy. They're hanging in there. So maybe they'll go water

I'm not sure you know that I know I don't do you see this thing behind me It's telling you it rains every day. Yeah, too much water. Yeah too much water. Exactly. Exactly. So I got that going on And the other project I've going on this week is I've switched all my locks out to a car locks I had I've had a couple of car locks Before mainly I just had my kitchen Lock and it's worked fine. I've actually liked it so much. I went ahead and just added another one Actually, I added two more. So my front door lock was a z-wave Yale lock which I bought when I first moved in the house. I liked it.

I had no problems with it at all. And then my back door lock was a Switchbot retrofit lock. And once again, that one was fine. It was a little ugly, a little loud. So I wasn't a huge fan of it. But you know, I had it from the apartment and it didn't have any problems either. But Acara actually sent me these for Homeless as a Community Day. And I didn't send them back. So hopefully they don't ask for them back. Because they're installed now. I've already used them. But the one in the back door is the Acara U200.

This is a retrofit smart lock. I actually really like this one. It seems a lot Sleeker than the switch about one the switch about one I have is the very first one that came out with So not you know, it's a little bulky and everything like that. This one actually feels pretty nice It's got a rechargeable battery that you can get with it or that it comes with I should say it works fine It comes with the keypad as well I think switch by like that you have to add on the keypad this one just comes with I should say. It works fine. It comes with the keypad as well. I think SwitchBot, like you have to add on the keypad. This one just comes with it. $270 normal price. It's $190 currently. Who knows what it'll be when this show is published. But yeah, I like that one. That was pretty good. It's got a fingerprint sensor on the keypad too, which is kind of nice. Not a thing

you see in a ton of smart locks at the moment. but the other ones I have are the, is the Acara U50. That is the one I had on the kitchen door originally. And then I have the Acara U100 on the front door. They have a U300 now too, which is like a handle one. I actually have that one at the office. They sent me that one as well. I don't know where I'm going to install that one though. I don't have a I don't have a place This this would need both the handle. I have a deadbolt. I don't have this style. Yeah, the only place like we have a

Keyed lock on our bedroom door from when we travel, I guess I could put it on there, but I don't really need that So yeah, yeah, this it's pretty cool Honestly, one of the things I really liked is the I wanted to be able or one of the reasons I wanted to switch Is because I wanted to be able to manage all my my door a lot codes from one interface Home assistant kind of makes this painful. There's the key master Integration which I've never been able to get work consistently The other way is that you manually send and remove codes from locks, which is fine.

There's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes I'm just like, I don't know where I put your user code at. So I don't know which one I delete. And so I just delete a bunch of random ones. So I was like, you know, the Acura one will be nice. I'll be able to edit all the codes in the same interface. I can still integrate it into Home Assistant.

That part was relatively easy. What is a pain though, is that if you have three different smart locks like I do, you have to go to each individual lock to update their user codes. And not all of them support updating user codes without being connected to Bluetooth. So it hasn't really made anything easier. I mean, I guess I can go to an interface and see what the codes are and I can add like fingerprints and stuff like that.

But like, I don't know why they haven't had the option to edit codes for like all your smart locks. Cause I would assume a lot of people have more than one smart lock. It's not just like a niche thing or anything. So. I have three of them, but I've standardized on all three being Yale, all three being Z-Wave,

and I can manage the locks easily through Home Assistant. It's a better experience than probably their Clara ones are. So, yeah, it's probably in their ecosystem. They probably went through a little transition phase or something like that. But that sucks. Yeah, that's okay. So that's the other annoying thing is that I decided to go ahead and buy the Acura M3 hub.

This is their, their newest matter compatible hub. It's got a little IR blaster and stuff on there. So I'm using it to control my, my Samsung TV that doesn't respond to IP control all the time, because I didn't buy a Sony like Seth did. And it's, it works fine. I don't really have any reason for it minus controlling the TV, but I was like, it'd be nice to connect

all the smart locks to it. That way I can remotely edit it and stuff like that. Two of the locks can connect to the smart hub. The other ones don't, but they'll connect via matter. And so this doesn't really like matter in the long hub, the other ones don't, but they'll connect via matter. And so this doesn't really like matter in the long run. But the annoying thing is that when I brought it into Home Assistant, I had to add two of the locks via the Acara integration and then pair the other lock through the matter integration through Home Assistant.

And so it's just like three separate places I have to go from or two separate places I have to go from my locks now, which is like not the end of the world, let's be honest, but it's like one of those annoying things It's just like can you not just bring it in at the same time and you can't because it's not Connected as a Zigbee device to the Akara hub. So I'm not really sure how all any of that works I'm trying to still trying to figure that out. I just made the switch like two days ago So maybe I'll update next week and tell you what else I've learned about this. It's not smooth, though. That's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah, I've I've been I've not really done anything with the U100 outside of the

Quora app just because I guess I have I do have it integrated with I did I did get their hub and I do have it integrated with HomeKit. So really, yeah, I could just walk up and touch my watch or my phone to the door thing and it opens, right? But I just haven't, I haven't really, since I have one, it's not as big of an issue. Like I don't have to worry about setting a bunch of codes on a bunch of different locks, like you're saying. But I don't know, I've not brought this to be integrated into anything outside of HomeKit. I mean, which is, is it really integrated if it's with HomeKit? Right.

That's how I feel. It's an interface for me to open and close the door or lock or whatever. So one thing I have had a small issue with recently was with the U100. The batteries are either dying or it's just kind of like not responding anymore. So maybe something to keep an eye on. Yeah. Did you buy dollar store batteries?

They may be, I don't know what they are. Maybe the Amazon batteries or something, I don't know. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I haven't had too many issues with it. But I thought that I would be able to better keep an eye on the battery dying or whatever, and I haven't. So maybe I do need to integrate this with something to tell me the battery is dying. I can't tell you exactly how often I replace it.

It's just like sometimes the batteries don't work and I'm locked out of my house. That's it. All right. Well, good show tonight. This is a wrap up this week. We do want to thank everyone for listening to the show, but we want to send a very special thank you to everyone who's able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page,

head on over to hometech.fm slash support, and learn how you can support HomeTech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge or five bucks gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slack chat the hub In there you can you can look at questionable decorating over fireplaces. You can look at I What are you guys gonna do z-wave issues you guys were going on and on about today? I guess interesting and that was today's rant

Yes. Yeah. Yeah Watching that go through. There's all sorts of good conversations recently. The Alexa Plus update rolling out. Oh yeah, yeah. Supposedly two million people have it, but nobody we know. So I like how Jimmy went over to his friend's house. He's like, hey, you have Alexa Plus.

And they're like, what's that? Oh, man. If you can't support the show financially, totally understand, we just appreciate a five star review on PositRating and the podcast app of your choice to help other people find the show. That's going to wrap up this week in Home Tech. Everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. I like how you used my adult coffee on last week. I didn't see that until I loaded it up in my podcast player and then the art came out.

And I was like, Oh my God. Yeah. That killed me. It's a little thing. I mean, I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee.

I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I'm not a fan of coffee. I was like, oh my God. You know, I, yeah, that killed me. It's the little things that I get to do right at the end. Putting in images to the show art that no one will ever see unless they're paid attention. Appropriately placed blurs, you know?

That was too good. Oh man.