HomeTech.fm - Episode 539 - Monitoring Canadian Water

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

On this week's show: CEDIA is gearing up and there are a few new companies to check out, Zooz has a new siren, AirGradient joins the Home Assistant fold, Google Home gets Gemini, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the home tech podcast for Friday, August 22nd. From Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the home tech podcast. A podcast all about home technology, home automation, and all sorts of fun.

And, man, it is summer here, and I am, and school is back. I'm glad school is back in. Because now I can get all those projects I wasn't able to get done. Oh, wait, no. Oh, you almost had us there? Yeah, it's just as busy. CD is in a couple weeks, so like work is kind of quiet because everybody's like doing their stuff for the CDia thing.

I'm not going. So I've got my own thing to do, I guess, in conjunction with CDia. And so that's busy on my end. But I got to say, I'm seeing all the booths and announcements being made. I'm like, I'm glad I'm not part of that this year. because that was not so much fun. Yeah, I actually did not realize school was back in session until I took Moose on a walk today.

And there was a bunch of kids waiting for the school bus. And I was like, what? Oh, yeah, school. I forgot that was a thing. Shouldn't you be inside playing 4-9? What's going? Yeah, what is going? I have not seen any kids this whole summer.

It must be school time now. So now I have to take Moose on a walk earlier so I can avoid all the kids. I didn't even realize school was back in. And I got to go now stand on my lawn and say, get off my lawn. all day long. Yeah.

Yeah. See, I don't know. It's because like traffic is always bad anyway no matter where I'm going because I drive all over the city, right?

And so, you know, anywhere in Central Ohio, I take the van on any given day and I always deal with traffic. And so I never realize how bad school traffic is unless I'm next to a school.

Like I was next to one of the schools recently and there was already an accident with somebody getting hauled away in the ambulance. So that's a good back-to-school impression there. Yeah. That's what you're supposed to do, speed as fast as possible,

those areas in Ohio. Yeah. The school my daughter goes to this year has a new principal and they just, and, you know, they, they lost a bunch of staff and everything because, you know, Florida. So anyway, they, they don't have a lot of teachers there now. And so that means, like, they had to redo how you, like, the pickup go, like, so that they used to have this app that you use and you can change, like, around 2 o'clock, you could change, like, how you wanted your kid to get released.

Like, you could say, go to the car line, go over to this gate, or... Is there a keep-em option? Yeah, I mean, there is, yeah. It was like if you had, like, an after-school program that would be on there. Oh, no, it's like, I'm going to be yours now. It's like, yeah, yeah, just keep her there overnight. It's fine. Yeah, yeah.

So they got rid of that this year, and they just went to this, like, tag system where they zip tie a tag on the back of the kid's backpack that has a number on it that was written by a sharpie and it's like okay this is safe um it's been other chaos and to add onto the traffic side of it the line where you would go where everybody lines up is basically down the backside of the school well that that's down to one lane now and it's a not a major road but a major enough road that was busy enough full of traffic plus the school traffic before and you would kind of have to like park in the middle of the street and hope that people could squeeze by you on their way to like whatever job they were trying to get to at three o'clock in the afternoon. Uh, so it's down to one lane now

with a stop sign in the middle of it. And it's just utter chaos. I know people get in there for like an hour before. So my daughter is lucky old enough now that she like, and old enough and young enough to think that riding the bus is like a really cool thing to do. So we, uh, we were like, hey, do you want to ride the bus? And so she's in it, in for it. And you know what? There's only like four kids on the bus anyway. So it's a, it drives all around town and picks up four kids.

And she's the last one on. And she gets to go to school that way. So she's excited about it. She wants to do it all year. She thinks it's the coolest thing. So hey, little victories there. I don't have to go deal with traffic and walk in the 100 degree heat. I don't know.

When it gets nice and cool, I'll probably want to go back down there. and, you know, she usually likes to play on the playground and stuff in the afternoon. So maybe we'll switch over to that. But right now it's rainy season. Right now there's lightning, thunder outside right now, because it's just 100 degrees all day. So it's a nice option to have. Hop on the school bus.

We'll pick you up in the middle of the street somewhere. Well, you know what else is also 100 degrees all day, Seth? What's that? Las Vegas, which we were going to in 137 days for CES. I don't think it's going to be 100 degrees when we go, though. I don't think so. Actually, I have no idea how hot it gets in Vegas. But yeah, CES, we're going there.

We're going to be there a couple months. 2020, I wrote here January 2025. It won't be January 25. It's 2026. Yes. That's correct. Unless you can travel back in time. And if you can,

I think you should do more than go to CES. Maybe you're just faster up. I don't know. Can you imagine somebody shows up? Like, I tried and traveled from last, from, and I'm here at CES to show with my time machine. Like, why, why'd you come here? Go to May.

Oh, man. Well, yeah, if you did time travel and you want to meet us, and you're listening to this in the far, distant future, come back. Don't come to CS. There's plenty of other options you might have to change the timeline in a better way. Go down that path. Let's see.

Yeah, well, we've got a couple, you know, oddly enough, there's no, uh, CD is right around the corner. and there's no news. I mean, I guess, I mean, everybody's kind of waiting to save their press release things for next week. I would assume we'll start seeing, like, stuff rolling out. But on CEPro's website, they've got new exhibitors. They've got Simply Safe,

smart showroom 360, which is a custom-branded 360 virtual showroom. You guess that sounds interesting. Akara, we know that name. Sunlight 2, which they do architectural-grade LED lighting solutions. And Neptune, which is an outdoor TV company. Deco, as we talked about them a couple of times, they're the ones that make the little light switches

that have the common backbox that you can, like, pop in and pop out. And there's no, like, wiring to do. Once the backbox is installed, you don't have to do any wiring. It's great. I really like the idea. And I was hoping that they would take off a little bit more

or they would have other companies that they would work with, but I haven't seen much to come out of them. But they'll be there, so maybe you can go talk to them, maybe you'll see it. Next level acoustics, sounds like they make premium.

customizable audio solutions. Grimani, kind of the same thing, some home theater stuff. Liftmaster, the kings of my Q will be there at CDia. So there's your new exhibitors

at the CDia trade show. Go check them out. A couple of things. A car might be interesting to see. And, uh, yeah. I'm curious, like, I was shocked to see their name on the list, right?

Um, I'm not sure what they're going to announce. Like, I have an idea, but I'd be, uh, interested to see what they actually release or talk about. Yeah. I don't know. I would probably go to the car booth. I would check out the, uh, I'd check out the sunlight two booth. And then I would probably want to see the Neptune TV things, uh, because that sounds kind of interesting. So will they have the seed TV again this year? Uh, yeah, I think they're there. I think they're there. They show up every year. All they have to do is sell one of those things and they're in business. So, yeah. True. I've heard people install, install it. So like, I've, I've seen a couple of people who have made mention of like, how. much it costs to put in and that kind of thing on some of the forums I'm on. So they're out there.

People buy stuff like that all the time. So it's kind of amazing. All right. Well, we got a couple of home ticket online this week. What do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right.

It's a new product. New product released from Zoos. It's the ZSE 50. It's a versatile two and one siren chime device. And it's designed to enhance safety and convenience in smart homes. So this is pretty cool. honestly guys this is probably one of the first maybe second ZWA devices I'm like

all right if I had a Z wave network in my house which I might soon because I did order that toilet paper roll holder from Home Assistant let's see this this device actually sounds compelling so it's a siren and it's got like a speaker

it can make announcements in it right you can upload custom audio files to it it's got a battery in it I think that's pretty cool. That's just a smart idea. So, like, if the power goes out, it can still go off. It plugs into the wall. It looks like a little, it looks like a little.

Actually, it's kind of like the Unify version thing. Probably louder because it's what wouldn't be. It's got Z wave, long range, 800 chip, programmable alarms, and a little LED flash thing on the front of it. Yeah, I don't know. It just sounds fun. And it's 30 bucks. So it just sounds fun to use. I really think I really think I might pick one of these up.

just to have a little speaker thing I can play noise at it. So I actually, Hagnus told us about this when we interviewed her several months ago. And she told, she ended up email me and tell me that it came out this week. And I won it so bad.

So I went ahead and just ordered it while we were, why Seth was talking. Also ordered a couple more door contacts too because I needed those anyway. I'm excited to get this because I want to yell at solicitors when they come out to my door and I don't know them. And so I'm going to use some kind of. a combination of ubiquity and maybe some LLMs or something like that. I don't know anything about that stuff yet, but I can learn so that I can register people.

And if I don't know them, then it's just going to tell them to go away. And hopefully that doesn't backfire on me at all because I'm sure it won't. But I can also use it for Halloween, right? So as people walk up to the door to grab candy or something like that, I can play sounds. So I'm interested to see what all kinds of ways I can incorporate this in my house. And it's on sale right now. It's $10 off, it looks like. Yeah, $28.95.

It goes up to 44.95. And I don't know. What is it this week? I think it's on sale. So, yeah. So by the time this episode comes out, probably not. Yeah, too bad. Yeah.

You know, it was on sale in the past. It was. It might be again. I don't think I can get this in Canada yet, though. I was looking earlier. No, it's still not looking like it's available. But that's okay. I have their ZS.E. 19.

And that was their previous siren in Chimes. So the only difference is that one, was it used like three, I think it was C-cell batteries, so it didn't plug in. It was loud and it was big, much bigger than this one. It had options of uploading audio files and stuff,

but they were very limited, but this one's much nicer. Yeah, and it's not $300, like the AI horn that Seth is holding in his hand right now. You can't see it if you're listening to the podcast. He's holding in his hand. He still has not installed this. Yeah, that's not.

It's why he's holding it in his hand. It's plugged in. It's almost the type of the cost. It doesn't work. What does you pick what he do? It just doesn't do anything. Yeah. So, yeah, it does get a lot of it.

I think, guys, after the announcement of this thing, I think I think this year is the year of the siren, right? I think we have to say that. Like, to get home assistant on the line, say, hey, you guys got to change this. You thought it was year of AI or whatever? I don't know. It's year of the siren. Unify. Unify sucks with chimes and sirens. I mean, their chime you can barely hear.

Oh, it's so awful. And their siren, I mean, Seth can't even get this thing working. What's it due? It's not that it doesn't work. It just doesn't do anything. So, yeah, I don't know. Like, there may be something it does do well. I don't know what it is. I haven't, I haven't, like, decided to install it yet because I kind of want to find that special use case, whether it's like. I think you're supposed to have that before you buy it, though. Yeah, it just looks so compelling. Like, it had AI in the name. And I was like, let's get it. Oh, man.

You're a private equity firm's wet dream. It doesn't seem to be doing anything right now. I wonder if there's a firmware update for it. I'm just missing. No, it's not going to do anything. It's never going to do anything, Seth. This is going to be the product that ubiquity forgets about. They're like, didn't we release a horn?

They're like, yeah, it makes noise. It's like good enough. But it says AI. Sure. Does it make noises? That's been my problem. You're like, somebody bought one. Who was it? Seth. And a couple of people on YouTube said it's really awesome, but I still can't figure out what it does. I have seen a couple of install pictures of them, like out in the real world.

And they're like, they're always commercial sites. Oh, maybe that's my problem. It's like a construction site, you know. It's like to yell at people when they walk on the property, which is exactly what I want one for. So maybe you need this. Sent it to me. I'll find a use for it. Exactly. And supposedly I can talk out of it,

but I'm not going to do that while I'm here. Let's be, yeah, let's see. Wow. For $300, that's pretty, that's a pretty impressive sound. Exciting. That was only halfway up. Let's see what it sounds like full volume. Okay, yep, yep.

Yep, that's loud. That's loud. I'm probably, didn't mean to click it twice, but it scared me enough where, uh, he jumped the first time, so I guess it's loud. That one was loud, yeah. I didn't mean to click it again. and it scared me and I clicked the button again

so my wife's going to be very honest your daughter's now awake just in case you need to know hello whoops I didn't mean to click that button he did he did mean to click the first time

the first time I did the second time I scared me so evidently it's loud it sounds pretty loud you should definitely put it outside your house I mean it sounds like a good idea

doesn't sound like it's designed to go inside okay um whoops all right uh so yeah zoos has the z s e 50 uh dj bought one i'm thinking about buying one maybe i don't know now i have this thing i'll just use this i'll put it outside the house aim it back inside it'll make it'll actually be louder than the stupid uh plug-in chime that

sits in the kitchen it makes noise allegedly so there we go all right uh let's move on here we've got air gradient joining the works with home assistant program uh these they do DIY air quality solutions. They've officially joined the work with home assistant program. Um, welcome error gradient to the fold, I guess. I mean, everybody's doing the Cs. This seems like the thing to do where joins with works with home assistant. So I think, yeah, it is the thing to do because they realize how big home assistant is now and the install base and, you know, just having your name there as we work with home assistant. I think it is the thing to do. And I'm pretty sure there's a lot of companies in the lineup right now. I wonder what, I wonder how many if they got

a list of them. Jasko, Eve, home, seer, E, Leviton, Nuki, Apollo, Rayo Link, I'd be more, I don't be interested to see, like, if there's more, what we really need to have is, like, someone like Crestron or Control 4, be like, yeah, we work with Home Assistant.

Josh AI. Josh AI. But then they, I don't think they want to admit to their, that they're, to install base that they use home assistance, so. Yeah, I mean, I think they have, but like. Well, yeah, they've definitely said it in public. I don't think it's like a thing

but I don't think they're they don't want to like advertise it Right It just kind of enables a bunch of integrations that they kind of piggyback off of Which it's fine because I think There's another company that we've talked about in the past And I can't remember their name that TJ bought one

Oh, Anovo Anovo Yeah yeah So they make their yeah They kind of piggyback off the home assistant And yeah I've been using Alan Chow's driver For home assistant and control four

And it kind of brings the home assistant integrations into control for nicely they've done a great job with that doesn't go the other way it just goes one way but i kind of want something to go the other way so yeah one of these days one these days yeah i kind of like this i've never actually i think i've heard of this air gradient company but i've never actually looked at their products or anything i like this i like that the price isn't too bad and you can actually make it yourself too which is nice but if you want to buy it yourself the indoor one is two hundred and fifteen dollars uh the outdoor one is two hundred twenty five dollars u s u s well

of course, or $230 for the indoor one. That's not terrible. It's open source. I mean, you pretty much do a lot, whatever you want to it. And it's publicly available information too. So you can have a little spot. And I was just looking at my area.

There's only one person with one. And they're not too far from me. So I could always put mine on the map too. That way others have access to that. And it monitors PM, CO2, TVOCs, and in OX temperature and humidity. That's kind of nice. Yeah.

525. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah, and the kits are available for much cheaper, so I haven't looked in the kit yet, but I assume you build it yourself, and it's available for $138 for the indoor one. So basically a half price. There is nowhere near me that is running this thing. They're out in the middle of Florida, up by Tampa, two people in Orlando. That's pretty cool, though.

Like, I can just look on here and see that Florida has green air, which means it must be good. Yeah, and you can see the history of it. A couple places with bad air. Wow, that's neat. That's neat. This is a good works with home assistant partner. Yeah, exactly. All right.

Well, we got another, well, another thing coming from Google that's, you know, interesting. Google has introduced Gemini for the home. So they're going to finally bring the voice assistant, the, sorry, the Google AI platform, advancements for more natural and contextual interaction into the home product. So this will be pretty nice for anyone who's interacting. with their Google assistant. It'll be a nice upgrade. So I know one of us is moved to Android recently.

I don't know if that means that everything in his life is going to be moving to Android, but maybe this is something that TJ will report of. Maybe. We'll find out. Yeah, we'll find out. You got LLMs now. Congratulations.

Lums. It's pretty cool. I like here that on the verge, they say it's lagging behind. Amazon's generative AI powered Alexa Plus is already in millions of households. Okay, yeah, whatever. Is it? It's in millions of households and people...

Technically, probably, yeah. Are people using it? Are millions of people using it? I doubt it. Millions of people don't even know they have it. Yeah, they release it to all the people that were above, like, 80 years old first. And that way, nobody could report on it,

but they could be... They could report that large install base. Well, um, cool. That's very cool. these LLMs and, I mean, the new voice capabilities and everything, it would be nice to have the little in-the-box assistants have better, like, feel when you talk to them. Like, it is, it is an upgrade no matter what. Even if they get stuff wrong, it's still a better or more fluid interaction, I guess.

It's kind of nice to use. So, very cool. We'll have to see how that works out for people. All the links and topics we discuss tonight can be found over in our show notes. over to hometech.fm slash 539. All right, pick of the week, pick of the week, and this has been sitting here for a while. Gavin, you put this one in.

This is an article over at Tom's hardware. Someone taught a bird to sing, and they've been able to store a file up to two megabytes in the song of this bird. They programmed a bird to sing, I don't know, a picture. There you go. Basically, they took data on converting,

it to like audio waveforms and then taught it to a bird and the bird learned it and everything and then up to two megabyte um they they then have the birds sing it back and they can convert it back into data right and they it was about two megabytes per second that they were able to recall um it it's you know what it's actually pretty amazing you know like oh it's two megabyte not two megabytes of data it's two megabytes per second yeah you know i I don't know how much data a bird can remember. It's 5K of data. Yeah. Bird brain. But can you imagine using this, like, you know, in wartime, you teach a pretty little cryptid message or something and they send it off and it goes back and sings it on the other end and, you know, like, it's pretty impressive that they actually,

my other question is, who actually thought to try this? You know, it's kind of like, you know, there's certain things I always like, who was the first person to say, hey, look at that round thing. Let me crack it open, eat what's inside. You know, like, who fought to do this? Why? What are they thinking? But it's cool.

Yeah, if this doesn't feed into the whole birds aren't real thing that goes around, I don't know what else would, you know, because this is totally, these are robots, you know. Oh, man, you get three birds in there. You can have rate five, you know, like you can expand this so much, right? Redundancies, everything, you know. They were talking about sending a carrier pigeon with the message. you know, attached to their leg or whatever, but you can just send it with a pre-recorded message.

Yeah, exactly. You can have a floor. If you imagine walk around a forest and you hear a bunch of these birds that got lost on the way and they're just repeating those random songs, these random songs and stuff. This could be the future of piracy.

You're sending a flock of birds around the neighborhood. The internet ever goes down, you know? It's too good. Well, this video that is in this article, it has, this is part of a little part of what you did a little part of this video but he goes into all the bird tech products too so I'm going to have to go back and watch this one and check it out so it's talking about bird bird net pie and some other like audio devices and that kind of thing so I'll have to check this

out always always something to buy when it comes to bird technology bird tech and I'm going to program my birds to sing images that's crazy that's just crazy some somebody thought of this and then this bird's going around singing to other ladybirds and they're like, what's wrong with you? He broke this bird, so he'd sing a P&G file. Now he'll never reproduce. All right, if you've had any feedback questions,

ideas for the show where Pigs of the Week, give us a shot. Our email address is feedback at Hometech.fim or he can head on over to Hometech.fim slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates, project updates. Uh, Gavin, why don't you hit a, why don't you go first? Me? Yeah, you're up first.

Sure. All right, what I've been working on. Um, a lot of stuff I post on our master on server, by the way. So home tech, dot social, just want to give a, uh, a shout out, you know, to that, you know, I do all the approvals. Yeah. So, you know, like, I approve pretty much everybody. I do all the updates. Just full of fake people by now.

Yeah. If you got kicked off, it's set that kicks does the kickoff. Yeah, I'm the mean one. Yeah, he's the mean one. I'm good copies by. But recently I did a server. I upgraded my servers network cards to 10G. So now I got 10 Gs on my servers.

I have two servers, by the way, and they're connected to the switch. And it's pretty like, but the nice part about it is because I have older servers. I have the Dell R730s. They're a number of years old, right? But buying parts for those servers is so cheap. You can find them in China and stuff for like so cheap.

Yeah. So the network cards cost me like 30 bucks or something like that. and I just threw them in and they're now zipping away. So, you know, if, if you ever want to put a rack in your basement and a server, you know, big me, I'll help you spend money. Don't worry. I think I have a 7.30. Yeah, I think you have the same one.

Yes. Yeah, they're nice. You know what? They're very reliable. Like, this thing's been just chugging away and doing its thing and I've been happy with it. It can be loud with the fans, but there are tricks to tame them down and stuff like that. So I have that all sorted out now. Right. So that was one project.

One thing I saw in the Harmony, the Logitech forums. So apparently for the Harmony hubs that Logitech no longer supports, they released a recent firmware update for them. But they announced it like a day or so before, you know, it had to go in place and they said, if you don't do it by this day, then your remotes or your hubs may stop working. And you'll have to manually flash them. The good news is if your hubs online, it probably got the update automatically.

I checked all mine and they were all up to date automatically. So that's the good news. Oh, cool. But my backup hubs now, since it's past the day because I didn't see this until after the day, I probably am going to have to manually update them whenever I need to pull them out, you know. I have two backups just in case, you know. Got them for cheap.

I'm not going to complain. So if you're in the Harmony ecosystem, keep that in mind. I did see an unfolded circle video recently. someone got one and they were showing it and that looked really cool that looked like a replacement but we'll talk it's another day a lot more expensive i know i mentioned the nav bar add-on for uh home assistant it lets you design a little navigation bar you know on your home screen it just takes your dashboards to the next level they've been doing some new updates recently that are really nice um like recently they added a feature to make a floating it's a floating nav bar so that looks kind

a cool more up-to-date with iOS, like 26 type of style. But they also added like a floating media player bar that you can now add on to it. So when something's playing, it shows, I think it's similar to like, is it the Sonosap that has that at the bottom there when something's playing or you control? Yeah, it's similar to that. So it's really cool, really easy to implement.

This is one of those plugins, add-ons, dash bar cards, whatever that I really like. And, you know, check it out. It's called Navbar. And then finally, I haven't played with it long. I just actually installed it today. So I'll give you my initial impressions of this. I got my hands on the droplet. It's a water monitoring solution for the home.

It basically wraps around the main pipe coming into your house, right? You can put it after before the water meter, but you just wrap it around insulation is so easy. And it will monitor the flow of water and create all the ports and everything off of that, right? So it's made by a company called hydrific. And again, it's called the droplet. I got my hands on it.

It's not available in Canada. I think this is a US only product at this point. I've reached out to them to ask them if they will be expanding it. But the reason I was excited about this is I saw that they... You got different water there in Canada as well. Probably, you know, but the reason why I was excited about this is because I saw recently they added support for home assistance, right? so I was that's why you know got one in my hand started playing with it installation it couldn't have been easier you wrap it around clips on yeah you wrap it around a pipe and then it does some calibration and then it's like congratulations you're all set up right um I had to go through some hoops in the app because they don't have the app designed for Canada addresses um or you know other things that are very location specific but once I got around all that it was up running you flush a toilet and bam it shows up like real time

the integration of Home Assistant, what they did is they do it through MQTT. So they basically just publish the flow rate to MQTT. And then in Home Assistant, you'll see entity there. And you can create all sorts of actions on it, monitoring, et cetera, et cetera. But the app itself also does all that monitoring and stuff. So you can create like notifications if things are running too low, if their flow rates high, their flow rates low, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, the app is pretty well designed. But in terms of the integration, that's all they expose is just the flow rate, right?

If you wanted more details, you have to actually use their app. Now, I understand why they do this. I mean, they want you to use their app, right? It makes sense. Their app is actually a nice looking app. It presents the data really nice to you. So it's really easy to understand.

And you can do things like tag events. So if you flush a toilet and you see it showing up, You could tag that event as like, this is toilet, master bedroom toilet that I was flushing. And then what it does is it kind of teaches their algorithm. So later on down the road, it will know when it detects whatever it's detecting that that was because of the master bedroom toilet. And then I guess in the future, they're working towards that eventually it will know what devices are doing what and using the most water and can categorize it. It looks like they're now adding that kind of learning. and categorization, but that will be cool because, you know,

for a device that just clamps on the pipe, it's giving you a lot of information, right? So I kind of wish they gave more data to Home Assistant, but I do understand it. The good news is it's a local integration through MQTT, so it's locally from the device. The bad news is I think you still need the Internet for this device, right? Because you're still going to go to the app.

The app's still going to go to their servers. their server is still going to pull the data from the device. It's not a local-only device. You can't cut it off from the internet, but I'm okay with that. If a device sends some information in their servers, you know, I'm okay with that if they give me local integration as well,

depending on what information, of course, they're sending. But this is one of those things. Maybe in the future, they'll expand the API a bit, but who knows. Is it a Wi-Fi device? Yes, it is, right? It's a Wi-Fi device. Okay, so there's not like a Hub or a Bay Station. that goes on. Nope. It's just one simple device with a USB C cable. The hardest part is where my

water main is. I don't have a plug nearby it. Yeah. So, but I did have like a active USB extension cable. So I just threw that on and then ran it all the way to a power thing and it works fine. So I'm really impressed. But again, this is just one day of me, you know, playing around with it. I will definitely report back in a few weeks. I see people. I posted on Mastodon, and I see people hit me up with some questions. I got to get back to them, but, you know, I think this is one of those devices that a lot of people are interested in. Yeah, I mean, the install is not bad because you don't have to, like, you don't have to be a plumber. Like, the one I, the flow I have, I mean, it exposes a lot more through their, I think, their server API.

It's not a local API. But then, like, you got to cut your pipes to install it. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And this gives you, so over the MQTT. it'll stream out the real-time flow rate, which is nice, because, like you can see, if water's running.

Network connection status, that's great, and then the signal quality received by the ultrasonic sensor. That's all that they're sending over MQTT right now. Maybe in the future they'll shoot out a message. I guess they don't, they're probably just deriving.

This is like the sense device I have for the electricity, right? Yes. Like, it just kind of figures out, like, based on algorithms and training data, what refrigerator is running or if the air conditioner is running or that kind of thing. Because it doesn't have clamps that go on every single line in the house. Like the other thing I haven't installed does.

But this is kind of like that where you're just clamping on the pipe and it'll, like you said, figure out if you flush the toilet, if you're running a sink or the discharge of running or that kind of thing. So that's really, I like this. It's smart. It's a good idea. Yeah. So, look, I use something similar called Flume,

but it like it read the the scent the whatever signal that the actual water meter sent yeah um and when they upgraded my water meter is no longer compatible and flume said I wasn't and so I need a new alternative to that because really I just care if water's running um like if I'm you know away at work or something like that I get a notification that water is running something's wrong because I should not have water running but I'm not at home and that's basically all I care about like it would be nice to know how much water I use but I just care if the water's running. And last year it actually saved me a lot of money because it, uh, it notified me that my irrigation line was continuously running. And that happened again this year. Um, and I did not

catch up for like two days. So that would have been nice. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to look into this. Yeah, I think, I think DJ in your case, you would like this probably. Yeah. And this is perfect. Like we're not like this house, it would be nice. Like if we read the plumbing to add like a smart shut off like a mowing flow or, or whatever else. So I could get that, you know, find. like being able to actually like shut it off and everything but that's thousands of dollars our plumbing is not very good for this at the moment and so I think it would cost like $1,500 plus the device to actually get like some kind of water reading installed so $200 sounds a lot better than $1,500. Yeah, I was looking at the smart shutoffs but then my main vowel is um how do you explain it's the one

that you just keep turning it's the gay valve yeah where it's the ball valve it's the ball valve the gate valves, the quarter turn one. Yeah, and I'll need the quarter turn one. So I was thinking of putting the quarter turn one like after the main valve, because it doesn't remember it matter if it's after. And then I can put a water shut off right there. I have the room. I have the pipe for it.

I'll just tell my neighbor to do it and give him a six pack of beer, you know, and it'll get done. So, yeah, the hardest problem about getting my neighbor to do certain things for me is he likes to debate with me about, He's old school. So he's like, why the heck do you want this? What do you want to do with this? Why are you doing this?

So I always got to come up with something exciting. And I usually say it with a six-pack of beer in my hand. And, you know, easily convinced. I mean, who wants a flooded house? That's why you're doing. Oh, yeah. Well, even with the Echo B, it was like, why do you want a smart thermostat? Just put this on the wall.

It's good. I'm like, uh, yeah, here's a six-pack. Just change it. Yeah. I wish I had a plumber neighbor. He's everything, but, you know, it's good. So I wonder, I, I, I, you're saying that you used it to read. So, like, I have the, I have the one installed on the line, kind of like Gavin's doing here with the flow meter, right?

Flow installs, like, after the meter. But I kind of want to, like, read the meter. And, like, you said that the, the flume device is that, but, like, I think, Gavin, weren't you able to use, like, SDR to do this in the past, like a software-defined radio? Yes. So I have, oh, what's the name of it? Is it like one of these little guys? It's a SDR nano or something like that. And our meters are, yeah, I think mine's like, oh, it's like the Neptune R-900 meter or something like that.

And it basically broadcasts the current reading out over SDR. And then the antenna plus the app and the integration of the home assistant decodes it into data, right? But what it does is it's not real time. So it broadcasts out the current reading of it. But sometimes it's in a minute, sometimes it's seven minutes. Sometimes I don't see a broadcast for like 15 minutes. And it's not, it's just the current water used. Yeah, the current number on there, right?

So then you have to translate. It's a little more difficult. So, but I still kind of got to pair that because this all in almost system only gives me the right now flow rate, right? So, you know, if I still want to know, you know, how much water I've used this months since the previous month, I use that other one to give me that. And I actually, between that and my electrical Emporia view, I can estimate my bills every month. I just look at it and I have a calculation and, you know, I know how much my bill is going to be, you know, outside of all those

other extra hidden costs that keep throwing on our bills, you know, like the return water and all that or junk. I'll just get this out because the one I have is Neulik. It goes 25 megahertz to 1750 meghertz. So it's made for radio.

But it looks like those those particular meters in the state of Florida it says at least working the 900 meghertz span range. So maybe I got to go I got to look at it. Yeah, but it depends on

if the signal is encrypted or not too, right? So what you have to do? I got to dig the thing out and find out like if it's even one of these LTR things. Or you could just look at the integration and they have a list of all their devices. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you have to enable it. And then you can look up your device in there and then you'll know if it'll work. At some point, the grass grew over where the meter is. I've got to go edge the, dig it out. So it's in there somewhere. The weeds took over that area. Yeah, it's so crazy that your meter is in the ground

because mine's inside like in a closet, but, you know, it's because we freeze here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we were talking about the flume originally, I was like, you know, I got to put it in the ground. the house or whatever and you're like inside the house why's your water meter inside the house and I was like

I don't know where's yours yeah it's out by the street our gas and our electric meters are outside water meters inside for obvious reasons I mean some states even put their electric panel outside which I think is freaky yeah it's weird waiting you know or it's in the garage Florida does but I don't think I've ever seen in that in Florida supposedly it's like Arizona or something

it's done a lot in commercial buildings they'll have it on the Vegas yeah like the actual electric panel I've seen it, yeah, some of the bigger electric panels will be outside, especially on commercial buildings where there's multiple tenants and open sub panels inside, yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Well, all right, I'm going to have to investigate this

because it's sitting on my desk and I did plug this once in and run the software on my computer and thought I was really smart by getting, I was able to tune the radio in by sticking an antenna up on the ceiling there. That was pretty cool. Like, you can actually pick up radio signals and

the little software to decodes it, yeah. That's what I need to do, because I, like, I haven't hooked up to home system, but I only like used it to read my gas meter, but I need to hook up to my computer and see what it finds. Yeah. Because it finds like Honeywell sensors and stuff, too. So I think it like one time it showed me

my neighbor's, uh, door contacts. That'd be a great integration. Hey, I saw you left today. It'd be like Gavin. You didn't flush the toilet, though. You should really wash your hands after you. I'm shaking that guy's hand anymore. I only see one bathroom event there, you know.

All right. Well, cool, Gavin. DJ, what do you end up to? Yeah, I've got a couple things. This week, I noticed that one of my favorite apps on the Mac. So a couple years ago, I transitioned to Mac. One of the apps that I just found several months ago, I guess, was it's called menu bar controller for Sonos.

And it's a little Sonos app. I don't know how much it costs. It was $5 or $10. But it just puts a little icon in the upper right hand corner of your Mac and you click on it and you can control all your Sonos. And unlike the actual Sonos app, does it give you ads for headphones?

It doesn't. And unlike the Sonos app, it just works every time. So, you know, I just click on it and then I can adjust the audio settings for whatever I need pretty quickly. The Sonos app, if I, like, need to start it from scratch,

I have to, you know, wait forever for it's open, then find my system. And then by that time, I'm already annoyed because I needed to turn, you know, the speaker off that's next to my head while I'm doing a Zoom call with somebody. So, uh, this app is great. This week, they moved to something called app lane.

I don't know what App Lane is. It sounds like some kind of management company of some sort for apps. Uh, but they made the transition super easy. They're like, hey, look, this, this version of this app is going to stop working. Uh, you need to download, This new version, you paid for it already. So he used this coupon code when you're down with a new version. And I did just that and it worked instantly.

So shout out to menu bar controller for Sonos. So wait, this is, they moved to Applane. Yeah. Oh, so they, did they buy them out or something? Is that what you're saying? I don't know, Seth. I need to look into this because I just found out like shortly before the show. Oh, Applane has a thing called lid, which is full Sonos control from your Apple Watch.

Oh. So all you do is, well, use Apple Watch to control your Sonos. Yeah. You can leave voice messages. That's pretty cool. I need to look into this because I need to know who owns this now if it's going to stay around. But another company that App Lane OU has on the app stores, Mobius, lawn care management. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the same company I'm looking at here. They don't have what you're talking, the menu bar controller for Sonos on their website, but they have the other Mobius inaction there. Something's kind of cool. You can keep up with your lawn care business. This is a fantastic app. I have to use third-party Sonos apps, because

for some reason, the regular Sonos app still doesn't work well for me. I actually don't try it anymore, so it might be better now, but I kind of gave up like six months ago when everything didn't work. So this is the one I use all the time, and then I use another one called Sonify, but not

anymore because I transitioned to Android this week people are freaking out right now yeah you're a green buddy I do the switch every like six months or not six months every six months six months would be crazy every six years or so I started off my

cell phone journey in you know to 2008 or so and I got an Android phone and I was on Android for the longest time and I think like iPhone 12 is when I went to iOS and then now I'm back to Android. And I just switched because I was just bored.

Like it's a phone, you know? And sometimes when I use my phone, I wanted to be a little exciting and an iPhone is not exciting. It's a very reliable phone. It does exactly what it should. But it does that what it should one way and that's kind of it. And I just got a little bored with that. So I decided to sell my phone.

I got a Samsung S25 Ultra because I wanted the stylus, right? I wanted the stylus because it would be nice when I'm doing jobs. I can take photos and annotate them and draw on them and stuff. It's a little easier. You know, I can do that with my finger. Yeah. But having a stylist is kind of nice for that kind of stuff. And I have an iPad with a stylus.

But, you know, it's obnoxious to hold up a 13-inch iPad and take a photo and draw on it. It's a little easier to do with your phone, you know? You look like a tourist, too. What are you doing? Yeah, it's a little weird. And the iPad Pro, you know, it's big iPad, but it doesn't really have the best camera anyway. my phone has a much better camera. So I decided to get the S-25 Ultra,

but jokes on me because it's Samsung. And I just had nothing but problems with it. It throws up quite a bit. I had to find an air tag alternative because I use, I have like, we have like 20 air tags at this point. And I still have, you know, a Mac and all this stuff. So I can still use the air tags. But I was like, well, I need to, you know, the keys,

you know, the keys in the wallet, I should get whatever the Android equivalent to air tags. tags are. So I can quickly find them if I need to. And so I picked up some Samsung tags and it was, you know, great price for like $50. And I set them up with the smart things app, which is a dumpster fire by the way. And it let me set up the air tag or the the smart tags, but it wouldn't let me like continue on the application. It was just like, all right, you got them set up. But if you want to update them, I don't know what to tell you because it would not let me continue on the screen or anything. So it just like there was just like several problems with it. And this is like a

$1,400 phone. And I was like, all right. Well, because obviously you got to get the upgraded storage and, you know, you got to buy the warranty for it because I go caseless now. And so it was like $1,400. And so on the 14th day when my return ended, I took it back to Best Buy. And I bought a temporary phone. I'll eventually return to. Don't tell Best Buy. I got a pixel 9A, but I did the pre-order for the pixel 10 Pro XL. So that launched this week for pre-order. And I bought it. It'll be here at some point in the next couple weeks,

hopefully. So I'm excited. The pixel seems pretty nice. This 9A is actually really nice. It's their super discount phone, but it feels nice. It feels good in the hand. It feels nice and fast.

It's basically the Android iPhone experience. Yeah, yeah. Google has always done a good job of making the flag. phones. Yeah. Work really nice. Like Apple's, I think Apple is really known

for the fit and finish of the product. And for the most part, other manufacturers have caught up with how they're putting their phones together these days. Just because that's a whole thing. Like Apple, I guess,

that's kind of one of the interesting things about Apple when they went to China. It's like China let them set up shop, but like they had to train everybody. And so they literally trained everybody and to make the phones and how to make them on that stuff. It's a fascinating.

story. Yeah. So like now there's all these really smart people over there and know how to make these phones really, really well. And so like you get a ton of other like Samsung. Is Google using LG or something like that? I think they're used LG to... I don't know who they're using. I thought it was LG. I don't know. But anyway, that said, you have all these factories over there that know how to make phones really well now. So like the product quality of all of them has kind of gone up. So you're just kind of relying on software. And honestly, the software's all kind of the same these days anyway. Like, the Facebook experience on Android is probably no different than

what it is on iPhone and kind of like browsing the web, pretty much the same. You're going from Safari or over to Chrome or whatever, so it really doesn't matter that much. Yeah, and I've never like fully transitioned away from Google products anyway, just

because Google products, I can use them anywhere. Yeah. You know, so I use Gmail, I use Google Docs, and so all that stuff is like natural anyway. There's a couple of apps that I use that actually irritate me like my work software house call pro they do not have a native android app it's just a web wrapper uh and it's awful so it's like well now i just want to transition away from this software uh but it's like well which is what i want to do anyway so um that might

push that initiative now because they don't have like a native android app now um so there'll be some changes coming up in that regard um yeah there you go but yeah so i ordered the uh the Pixel 10 Pro XL Moonstone. Ooh, that's a 512 gig. I got it on Google Fi. And what they do is I ended up getting like $100 off and a couple other coupons. So I got the phone for $100,000. So a little better than the S-25 Ultra.

And if I put it on to Google Fi, which I plan to do as a secondary SIM card, they basically give me like $20 bill credits per month over 24 months, which basically makes GoogleFi free for me. Because I have a primary SIM card through AT&T, but I like to have a backup for if I'm traveling and I need internet service and AT&T doesn't have internet service, then I can rely on the secondary SIM card. And Google Fi use AT&T and T-Mobile.

This phone looks just like an iPhone. Oh, yeah. What are you doing? I was like, I thought it was an iPhone, you know? Like at first and then I'm like, oh, Gemmin, no, this is an iPhone. Yeah. It looks just. like an iPhone. Yeah, except they really, like, if you didn't, if you couldn't see the, the Google

logo or whatever. And I think the, the cameras are going to change to be similar for Apple products now. Like, this is, uh, it looks like an iPhone. Like the front of it, for sure, and the sides look just like an iPhone. What doesn't? Yeah. How many, there's only so many ways to make a glass brick with the battery inside of it. I do get one year of Google AI Pro, which I don't know what that means yet, so I'll have to look into that. Normally $20 a month.

This leads into my next problem, though, because why not have more problems? I placed, as soon as the phone was announced, I basically placed the pre-order for it, but I didn't realize that Google sent me a coupon code for $100 off. And so I was like, oh, crap.

So I went to go contact Google. And at the time, you know, obviously it had just launched and so the queue for it was 550 people for online support. So I just like gave up. I was like, I'll just cancel the phone.

And when I cancel the phone, it canceled my Google 1 subscription, which I use anyway to share across all of my family members for, you know, Google Drive storage. And so we have two terabytes of storage. And I'm using like personally, I'm using like 700 gigs.

And so Google started yelling at me. And it's like, you're out of storage. And I was like, I am not out of storage. Google, I have two terrorize of storage. I'm nowhere close. And I was like, no, no, you have until like September 15th to up your storage and we're going to delete your stuff. I was like, whoa, wait a minute.

What's going on? When I cancel my pre-order and ordered the new phone, the AI, Google AI pro subscription canceled as well, even though it's not supposed to apply to your account until you activate the phone. And so when I cancel the pre-order, I was like, well, you don't have this subscription anymore. And, yeah, so it cancels on that. So I had to re-apply my subscription

until I get my phone and then I can activate it again, which then at that point I get a year for free or something. I have to admit those phones, like, they look good. They look good. The OS is looking so much better. I've always been curious about it, But I got so much tied up into my iOS, like for me to switch over. There's just too much going on that I'm kind of tied to.

Get you locked in. Yeah, I should start looking at delocking myself from, well, that's a new term. But unlock, yeah, you know, ways to migrate off of it. So if it's iOS only, let me find alternatives and stuff like that. Yeah, well, that's the problem, right? It's because now I'm more in bed with Apple than I've ever been. Like I have a Mac Mini that I'm recording the podcast on. And I have a MacBook Air that I carry around.

I have 20 air tags. I have an Apple TV. And so, but I don't like, I don't really do anything with my phone that I need those devices to sync it with. Like, I don't like, I text on my computer, but I can do that with Google messages on the web now. I can use a third party app to control my Apple TV, which is annoying because Apple should just release an Apple TV app for Android.

But, you know, so there's certain annoyances there. But it's, it hasn't been terrible so far. And I don't use like airplay for the most part and stuff. Oh, that's big for us. That's. Yeah, that doesn't matter to me. One of the things I was annoyed about, though, is that look at this, this nice jade green phone they have. This is the, they have this available.

One of the things I don't like about pro phones is they never release them in interesting colors. It's always like black and silver and gray and some kind of white. But they release this jade green pixel. It's like a, it's like a light green. Yeah, it's not bad. It looks pretty nice. I wanted it, though, but it only comes in 256 gigs. It doesn't come in 512.

It's like, couldn't order it because I wanted 512. Kind of weird. Yeah, I don't understand. There's literally just one size. That's it, but whatever. This is why you can't have nice things. But yeah, that's my phone update saga. It'll end in a couple weeks when I get my new phone, hopefully.

Or not? They have a foldy one, too. They do. Supposedly the first one with water resistance. Honestly, if you have not seen the Samsung fold, I think it's the seven, the newest one, uh, you should, next time you're at a Best Buy, go to the Samsung display, walk up to the Samsung fold seven and just look at how thin it is. It is crazy.

I don't understand how it's even possible in like a couple years, foldables are going to be like yeah, very, very thin. But like, it's crazy how thin it is now. Uh, I'd like to see the pixel fold in person. Yeah, I mean, this one looks thin too. I mean, it's doubled, but like, it looks as almost as thin as the normal phone, because it's got the camera, a wide camera bump on it, but, man, it folds out. It's like a big square.

That's crazy. Very cool. Eight inch actual flex. What's weird, I think, is these are going to be, like, I've gotten used to that nice glass feel that I scratch up, and now it'll be a plastic thing. I will scratch the heck out of that for sure. Yeah. I'm not excited about that.

And they're just so acclaced. I'm not a clean person. I live in the sand, evidently. Everything scratches and gets dirty. So, like, I don't, this type of phone would not survive. Yeah, this Galaxy Fold 7, $2,000 MSRP. Yeah, well, they've got $1,500. Yeah, $1,800 for this one.

So, yeah. It will be interesting. The rumors are Apple is coming out with one, too. And I guess they've started to lock down that folding technology where the crease doesn't show too much. sure the screen's nice and the crease doesn't kick in until it's been around for a while. So I don't know. I've kind of gotten used to the glass screen.

So I don't know if I'd ever move to that. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. Well, and it's one of those things, too, where it's like, you know that it's going to die at some point, right? Like, like, a normal phone, like, obviously you're going to update it or upgrade it and you're going to get rid of it and all that good stuff. This one, like, you know it has a finite lifespan because that screen is 100% going to break at some point. Yep, yep. Well, there's two screens, too, I think, right?

There's one on the front, and then it's got the big one that folds out. And they actually fixed my issue with foldables. Like, the original ones have this much smaller screen and stuff. But, like, the new foldables, you can use the front screen as like a normal phone. And you can use the fabblet mode, as they used to call it. Fablating, yeah, phone tablet. Like, for more serious things. Like, if you're watching videos or something like that.

So. Square videos now. It's kind of a weird aspect ratio there. this one, but, oh, that's cool. It's, it's an interesting piece of technology. It is, like you said, it is getting thin. So, you know, it's only a matter of time

until these are start to pop up everywhere in, in good quality. So, you can get these in a terabyte, TJ. Come on. Why are you topping out at 512? Yeah, I don't need that much stores. I'm not that very cheap. You know, 512 is definitely more than

I need. I could definitely get away at 256, like if I just deleted things, but I'm part of the never delete I don't delete anything I've Google photos and stuff but I need like 200 gigs of photos on my phone at any time so if anybody asked me

a random question about something I can pull it up my wife was arguing with me it's like you deleted something off the calendar I'm like no it's like no you delete I don't delete anything the calendar deleted something off the calendar

I don't delete anything it took it like I'm having to say it over and over again like I literally like I looked up a meeting that I was in around 7 or 8 years ago on the calendar event as I knew about what time of the year it was in but yeah, yeah, that's kind of funny

like anyway, yeah, so this thing is three inches wide, let's see, the depth is 0.4 inches folded and then that compared to the phone you bought, 0.3 inches. So, wow, it is, and then unfolded 0.2, so it folds in half, but that makes sense. But yeah,

that is so thin. Wow. If you want to have a little bit of a cringe, you should watch the Google event, though, where they released these new phones because they had Jimmy Fallon host it. Oh, and it was one of the most awkward exchanges I've ever seen on a product release.

I wanted to say that so much. So awkward. The whole event felt really cringe to me about certain things, right? Like it's like one of those things where like you couldn't tell if he was just like just super awkward and didn't know what to do or if he was actually like stoned or something. I think he was just trying to act more enthusiastic. He was just trying to really act enthusiastic. I've seen posts on on X and stuff where people mentioned that there were actually a applause sign and they were told when the signs light up to applaud and stuff like that. So they kind of made it like, I don't know, it felt to like the late show or something. Yeah, it felt a little too forced.

I didn't, I wasn't a fan of it. They made the products look good, though. They hyped them up, you know, it was nice seeing some of the, like, Steph Curry and Ticompo was on there, you know, the, it was nice seeing some of my basketball stars on there, but I don't know that. There are times when I was just like, ew, why do you say that? Yeah, the whole thing was awkward. So I couldn't even watch it.

I just waited for the summary to come out. I watched the whole thing. It was pretty good. Like I said, it made their devices look really good. And I would probably grab one, but I'm too iOS dependent. You have to wait for the folding iOS thing

to come out in a couple of years. I don't know if I'd ever get. I don't know if I'd get a phone in the phone. A coworker has one right now. And it's all right. But, I mean, I don't know. It's not, not for me. I get too much dirt in my pockets.

And it's not going to, all of a sudden, I find out like I have dirt and sandpaper and I have no idea I still have to clean the lint out of the ports you know like now you're adding folds in there that I got clean out I know there's no way these funds are going to survive with me yeah yeah yeah uh all right uh guys you're not going to believe this but I started another project no okay okay this is the finish project section you know no no no this is an ongoing thing this is going to be fun uh So my, I saw Greg actually complaining about this in our, in our, our Slack channel where he was talking about how he's trying to get his kids out in the morning and he put announcements on. I guess there was a feature in Google home called Google. Oh, what was it? It was a useful thing that lets you set up reoccurring alerts that would just play over the Google speakers because as you're having your kids getting ready in the morning, like you want them to know that it's, hey, it's time to go now. You've got five minutes left, ten minutes left, whatever.

Well, of course, like everything nice, Google killed it. So it doesn't work anymore with the new Google home ecosystem. So he's trying to, he said he was able to vibe code up a solution for that. And it got me thinking, like, now that my daughter's riding the bus, I kind of have this app that they have called Where's the Bus. And it's not an app. It's just a web page that you go to. And even on the phone, it's a web page that you go to.

It's awful. I put a screenshot there and for you guys to take a look at and you can see like how awful it looks but it tells you it actually does a really good job tell you where the bus actually is and how long it's, you know, it doesn't tell you an ETA.

Whatever feature that is where it says ETA, it says no ETA, that's broken. It's never changed. It doesn't even matter. But I know like by looking at it about how long it's going to take just because, you know, I drive roads in this area. I know about how long it's going to take

from it to get pointed out. the stop that's near our house. And I can say, well, we better go now because we're going to be late for the bus if you don't get your shoes on and walk out the door right now. And I'm, I've decided to code an integration for that. And I got kind of far with this. And so, like, you're going to be surprised, like, this is my first for a, four a, I guess, whatever it is, into a home assistant programming stuff.

Oh. So, yeah, not. a control four driver, but I wanted to yell through home assistant somehow and make events and that kind of thing. And not ugly, like the hot dog theme stand. No, well, it's, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's a forum that's on home assistant. So, yeah, I reversed, engineered their API and figuring out a bunch of stuff, but it's working, sort of. So I'm going to start tinkering with that and playing with it. Maybe I'll publish it one of these days. So yeah, the project started officially

yell at my kid. I don't know that this would be useful for anybody else. I have no idea. This app looks like it's horrible. And it, I guess they do have a number of schools. When I was signing up, there were a bunch of school districts that use it. So maybe it'll be useful for somebody else.

But I'm sorry if they have to use this. CF is awful. And it doesn't see new alert saying the bus is like nearby. My wife is like, I'm not getting any alerts from the app. I'm like, I don't think you get anything from the app. It doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you where the bus is. Yeah.

I mean, that seems like good enough. You know what I mean? I mean, it is, but you have to load this ugly app every time. And it does work on the web. The web interface is the same as the app. So thanks for doing that, app people, because I was able to inspect the network traffic and get your API junk. So that's, I've done that before.

A lot of those apps without integrations, you can just inspect and grab the API call. They have to have calls back, right? It's figuring out the authentication can be a little difficult at times, but I have to get by that. That was the roughest part because I've kind of figured out a way around that because it does have a recapture, like basically to block automated logins or whatever. So I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to get around that yet. I know there's a lot of integrations with Home Assistant that open up a browser window, let you log in, and then somehow capture that information back. and I haven't investigated that too much. But I was able to get it working in a development environment,

but I've got to figure out how that works in the home assistant environment too. So we'll see. We'll see. Maybe I will figure it. Maybe I won't, but if I don't, then I can't publish it. It would be nice to be able to, like, share it with people. Because, like, once you get past the authentication, it doesn't log you out. I found in their code that after, like, 15 or 20 polls on the system,

then it's like, yeah, you've been here too long, time out the application. And I'm like, well, if I just take that code, if I take that out, then they just always say logged in. So there you go. Just repeatedly pull their API for where the bus is. And I honestly only needed a couple times during the day. In the morning, in the afternoon, I need to know, like, when they kind of leave my house to go pick up my daughter. And, yeah, I've got this big siren here. So maybe I'll start using that in the mornings, plug it in in the house and then like, it's time to go! and just have it play something so

finally a use for the AI horn yeah yeah maybe maybe just got to finish this project up guys it's gonna happen home assistant it's where it's at Python programming yay all right well that's that's it for me

you guys got anything else that's it all right well I think that's got to wrap up this week we do want to give a big thank you to everyone listening this show but especially give a big thanks out to those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page if you don't know about the patron page

head over at hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can become a supporter of the show for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five bucks a month get to your big shout out here on the show but every single pledge will get you to invite over to our private slot chat to hub

where you and their patrons of the show can gather in there and talk to Greg about his awesome integrations and how he and I are trying to get our kids out the door and it's his school please leave, please get your shoes on please hurry, hurry the F-Up and get it why are you not dressed? Come on.

every morning, every single morning. Don't know why. Don't know I. Wakes up plenty of time. Guys ever taking 45 minutes solid to eat a bowl of cereal? Nope. It happens. The cereal's too soggy by that point. I don't get it. Anyway, you got to get rid of it. All right, start it. The milk's warm. I mean, what are you going to do with them?

Start over. Make yogurt, I guess. Oh, that's another 50 minutes. All right. If you can't support financially, you totally understand we just appreciate a five our review and posit rating in the podcast after your choice. That's going to wrap up another week here on Humtech. Everybody, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Until next time.

Take care.