HomeTech.fm - Episode 540 - GOAT or BOAT?

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

On this week's show:

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 29th, 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, podcast, all about Home Technology, Home Animation, and it's CDia season. Yay! Guys, I'm excited. I'll get to see you next week in Denver, Colorado.

Oh, no, wait, we're not going to see the IMO. We're going to CES. Yeah, we are. I'm excited. The gags all back together. It's fun. Well, we're not, we're not, we'll be there in spirit at CD next week. And there's a bunch of stuff going on.

Shelly's launching some new dealer programs. There you go. With partner centric pricing, it says. So that's interesting. It's going to be a nickel off. It already cost nothing. Exactly. LaGrand is rolling out some matter.

compatible lighting products and some switches, like outlets and outlet switches, it looks like. So that's kind of interesting. It's a little crossover into some DIY product. I don't think there are any companies out there, like pro companies that are doing matter yet. I haven't heard anybody of doing it. This is the first I've heard. This is pretty exciting, honestly, because it just brings it to more people. I'm sure they won't be the cheapest devices out there, but they'll be available for people.

and they'll probably be at Home Depot and Lowe's and Menards and all these other stores that people go to, so. Yeah, and they don't look bad. I mean, they don't look great, but they don't look terrible. I was going to say that dimmer does not look good, but I always hate when they do like the separate little slider thing. It's so big. Yeah.

Huh. I am curious to see what the pricing looks like, but I probably never buy these. So kind of obsessing over those Instion ones from last week. Yeah, the outdoor dual smart plug, though, I think is a good touch. You know, that's always needed and a lot of applications. So, especially around the holidays coming up here. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's always, that's always nice to have. I have a old Lutron. Lutron Radio, rah. No. Caseta. Caseta. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have a Lutron Caseta version. So. And a Libra, well, actually, this is, this is more of a, this is more of a friend of the show, Chal Main driver. They've released a Bond bridge driver for a Crush Run home. So that's pretty cool because that brings in a lot of those, like, low megahertz fan RF devices, like fans, wines, shades, fireplaces you put the bond bridge in and then you uh you can integrate it with things which is

nice uh so good job over there allen allen and co knocking out a another driver for the for this i'm i'm like uh i see them posting like almost once a week they they're just turning out driver left and right over there so what exactly is a leber because in the article that links to a website that is not available bond bond bridge it's the bond bridge a libra is the company that makes bond the bond bridge yeah yeah i did not know that yep uh this this is funny here uh DMF lighting is preparing to have a pretty big show at the CD Expo. It looks like there's going to be a bunch of people there. I was looking at the floor.

They've got like a 40 by 40 booth or, yeah, it's a big booth. So if you're there at the show, drop by, say hi. They're going to have, I think, the HK stuff there too, which is their outdoor lighting company. T.J., have you ever seen the HK product? I have not. I don't think I've ever heard of. It's like some super high-end outdoor lighting fixtures and that kind of thing.

So it'll be a bunch of, a bunch of my coworkers there, I guess. So go say hi. And we've got this company, Dio, is coming out with a whole lot of a Sonos competitor at $2.99, I guess, is what it says. So I don't know. Good luck. It seems like we see like one of these random companies that come in. They have like a little Sonos type device, like an audio device. And they're like, yeah, it'll play Spotify title, Apple Music.

And I don't know. There's another one. Check it out. They'll be at the show, I guess. And then Akara, this is the big one. This is kind of the big one. I'm like curious to how this is going to go. If you're at CD,

please take a picture of the Akara booth. And I want to see like who's in there. Because it says it's going to be a hands-on booth. They're going to focus on being a hands-on booth. And I'm curious if there's going to be, we were talking about this before the show. And Gavin thinks like dealers are just going to flock over to this. No, no, no, no, no.

That's not what I said. That's 100% what he said. And TJ and I are a little more skeptical. All I am saying is that it feels like the do-it-yourself space is kind of moving, trying to make some pushes into the pro space. And Akara is one of these companies that seem to be making a move. And I think we kind of knew this was coming. Shelly too, right? And we knew this was coming because they were asking questions on X and stuff about this.

And I'm very excited to see what they're planning to do and where they're planning to go. Because I just think they have so many in the DIY space, so much like things. are cool in the DIY space and it's been very reliable too right that I think they can offer a lot but whether or not the pro space will accept it and that's a whole

different conversation that we had off the air well I think I think Akara's problem in this space would be the like the fit and finish of their app itself I use the Akara app I have it for the FP2 sensors but also the locks inside my house

but I also have it for my office and I only have it for my office and I only have it have like probably a dozen devices, maybe you know, a dozen a half or so devices all together. But the interface just isn't quite there and there's some weird translation things that

happen. Yeah. Because, you know, a car is a Chinese company and some of the translations don't always go very well and I don't think I would want to hand us to a customer. And so I think if they did some work on that end, it would probably be a more compelling product for the

professional space. But I don't think they're there yet. But I was also wondering, are they going to, like, push their ecosystem, their app like that? Because their hubs offer matter. All the devices get exported via matter. And that's how you can integrate it to home assistance. Would they just do that and look to integrate it with like Crestron or something in the pro space or, you know, I'm not sure where they're going to go with this, right?

Like, are they expecting the pro space to take on their app? Because then that limits to their devices as well, too, right? Well, they do have this, like, thing that you're having. about the Car Studio, which is some kind of software thing that they put together for B2B and like MDU and that kind of thing. I don't know. I think it's like, I think this would go over and maybe better in the European countries. Maybe that's where they're going to focus at first, but probably. I just, I don't, I don't see dealers specifically clamoring for this type of product at all. Like, this is, a car is great for, you know, the stuff that DJ was doing, where you had

like the little camera thing set up. Is that what it was? It's a car. Yeah, a little PTZ camera. Yeah. Notifies me when somebody comes in my office. I have a little vibration sensor on my door. So I know when the door goes up.

The FP2 is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I use the FP2 in my house. I mean, they make really good products and stuff. But there's like, I don't know, there's weird like inconsistencies, right? A car is a good example of this. Like the door locks, I can't sync up like all the door lock user code. So I have to go to every single door lock and change the user code for that.

That's weird. And it's just like weird stuff like that where like you're just not going to see that in a professional space. So it's just, it really comes down on a software. Yeah. I'm looking at their, they're looking at their developer. They do have an API and platform to build off their product with. So there's that. They have that going for them.

But I don't know how many developers are going to be clamoring to get into the Akara ecosystem. I don't know. They have a decent, they do have a decent product. I like my little door lock and the hub is okay. And the FP2 thing is nice. But like I don't, I don't really have it integrated with anything. So, and it looks like all their integrations go through, uh, through the internets. So it doesn't look like as local.

Blomp, yeah. And there's definitely like a market of some capacity for professional sell and DIY products, right? And when I first started my business, it was a lot of like ring doorbells and, ring cameras and stuff, because a lot of times it just comes down to convenience. But when it comes to like a door sensor or like just a Wi-Fi camera and stuff, most people don't need you to install that for them. You know, like when you're doing like in-cealing speakers and you're doing like a control system and you're doing all this fancy stuff, you probably want somebody to help you with that.

But to install some motion sensors and stuff, you don't really need anybody unless you're aiming for a market that just does not want it to do it themselves. Or they just don't want to program it to, you know, and that's where you come into play and you program it for them. But you're still making money just on the, you know, the laborer over at the end of the day, right? Because if it's an $80 camera, they're going to sell it to you, what, for $10 or $15 less probably? And so you make like $10. Like that's what a car? Yeah, I mean, like if they're going to come out with a dealer program, you know what I mean?

And that's the same problem with Shelly, right? Shelly keeps going after dealers, but it's like, well, you already sell the relay for $15. And you can buy on Amazon for like $5. pack for, you know, way less than... Yeah, so, like, what is the dealer going to sell it for? They're not going to make any money on it. And unfortunately, that's just how the industry is set up. They make money on the product.

It's interesting. Like, I'm interested to see what they actually do with it. There are some, like, companies that are, like, dabbling in the space. You know, we've talked about an Ovo before. They make the Home Assistant Hub that brings in stuff to, I think it's Control 4 and Alon or nice. And so there's, there is some weird, like, cross-platform stuff going on here, but I haven't really

seen anybody too excited about it. The accessories are nice. I'm looking at their API, and they have like message cues based on this Rocket MQ thing, and I'm like, I don't know. Like, it looks like, what's the one,

MQ TT? It looks like that. Similar API for that, so I don't know. Everybody's looking for that local integration. And yeah, this isn't really it. So the matter stuff is great. But again, like that gets you local integration first right but no one in the pro space is doing matter integrations right now it would be interesting if like control four or a lawn or i mean sorry

nice uh came out and said hey we have matter now we're going to do matter and we're going to push all our stuff out for matter and you can integrate with our products that way that'd be cool and then dealers will be like what's matter why she didn't matter i don't know yeah well that's that's what we got for cedia uh we're we're gonna be at c s in uh january 2026 possibly and uh so yeah there's no possibly gavin and i will be there yeah possibly that is unknown right now wait wait wait he already has a place that he can stay he just has to actually go yeah there's to pay for it though so are you gonna be there step yeah possibly i'm a different and maybe a hundred percent possibility 100 percent yeah for sure yeah this is what we got to deal with on a regular

basis. Yeah. Well, what I do know, I do know we have some home tech headlines tonight, outside of all the CD news. And that's just like the preview. We haven't even gotten like the news that's going to have any news. So there's going to be more that comes next week. So many displays.

Yeah, yeah. That's going to be some outdoor televisions to look at, I guess. Are we going to see a $750,000 in-ground TV? I don't know. Probably see that again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, we got some home tech out of the line. So what do you say we jump in?

Possibly. All right, well, possibly Unify has released Protect 6.1, which has all sorts of goodies. First up, they've got the G6 Pro Bullet, and all of their little, what was it, their little IOT devices are starting to roll out. Superlink. Superlink devices, there we go. They've got an environmental sensor with humidity, temperature, light, and leak detection. And it's a 100 dB rugged all-weather siren. So there you go.

That sounds kind of cool, actually. They're going to start pushing out these products into their ecosystem. We basically talk about the projects today. I was just installing a G6 PTZ, and wow, those things are nice. Yeah. They just pick up your face while you're walking around. They're not expensive. They're like $200.

Seth could have got one for $100 more than his AI horn, and it would have been useful. The AI horn's here. Not being used still. This SuperLink system is. is pretty interesting. I'm interested to see if ubiquity actually sticks with it. Over the years, they've released product lines that they killed off relatively quickly afterwards.

This appears to use Laura. So we'll have to see if it actually does and what the range is on it. It's an interesting expansion of the product line, though. Yeah, the super link, I'm actually interested in this. It reminds me of what I did with YoLink, right? Like, you require, you're going to meet a gateway. The sensors and everything they release are going to use, like you said, it's possibly Laura, you're going to get really long range.

You're going to, you know, it's going to integrate with the Unified system. And possibly all those sensors will be passed through straight into home assistance so you can create automations that way too, right? So I'm excited to see where the super link goes. There's sensors that they offered so far, nothing like groundbreaking or anything like that. The POE siren, you know, every time I see them release a horn or a siren, I just think of their chime. And I'm like, man, just make the chime louder, you know, like, turn the siren into like a chime. Let you put chimes on that, too. You know, it drives me nuts that that chimes so quiet.

It is awful. So quiet. Yeah. But their Unified Protect software, like, they're constantly updating this with awesome features. They redesigned the alarm manager, camera temper aware, you know, it can count people and you can trigger events off of that, which is really cool. You can set regions of interest in the video. feed you can say I'd only care about this part of the picture um it has more accurate people detection it's combining both face and body to now create you know detect the people so i mean

they're just constantly innovating in that yeah yeah i when i took the little g6 today i like went around the house i put a put a positive video of this thing in the in the hub earlier this evening and i i walked around the house and i came out the other side and just to see how i was pretty a pretty decent, decent way away. I'm probably like, I don't know, like 50 or 60 feet away. As soon as I came around the corner, shoo, camera was looking at me. Like, I mean, it was instant.

And I was like, wow, that's impressive, actually. And then I found the setting where it follows you around and that kind of thing. So I made it follow me around this yard. And, man, I was impressed for, what is it, $300 camera, $400 camera. And what was pretty cool when you did that? What had my interest? I think it was Morton in the Hub that actually said, If you have one person distracting it,

could the other person off camera commit the crime? So if it detected multiple people, would it zoom out and capture you all in the picture at that point? Or would it stick with the first person? I'm curious about that. That's the AI part of it. I don't know. And can you outrun it?

I probably could. I probably could to go sprint around next time. All right. I can't find, I'm trying to find the super, what is it, the super link? Is it under integrations? Where is this thing? I thought I've seen it on their web.

website before. It is on the website. For some reason, it's under camera security and then special devices. Oh, okay. Which I kind of get, because it ties in to protect, but it just feels like they should just have a separate thing for it up top. Well, for a little tiny, it's a siren, P.O.E. It's a, it's a $109 siren, but the Superlink version, they don't have the pricing on that one yet, so be interesting. It's got a, it's got, it'll be powered with a battery or DC input. Yeah, the one thing I keep

Seeing on, like, Reddit and the internet in general is people really excited about the smoke detector. That is not part of this, this current release cycle. Yeah, yeah. They've talked about it, though. Yeah, yeah. Oh, look, special devices. The first one on there, the most special, AI horn. I don't even see the AI horn.

Well, it's special. Yeah, camera security, I guess, is what it's going to be under. You should go out in black. Oh, they have a black option now. What? Buy it, so that way you have two uses. Yeah, I've got to get the pair. you and yang

getting mount them that way yeah just on each side of your garage door I was somebody pulls up they're like oh never mind how is that that home depot and I parked underneath that big that tower thing they have on the parking lot with the cameras on it the little trailer

the solar power trailer and I was sitting in the car and I opened my door and he goes I'm looking up and there's like one of these speakers hanging off the very top next to the camera I'm like, oh, that's what they could use the iron for. Found a use case. Home Depot parking lot security.

All right, let's move on here. Speaking of the cameras, we've got Google Nescam has leaked. It's a major, major, different. No, it looks pretty much the same. They've got some different colors. He's got some colors, yeah. There's no, this is all like rumors and stuff. So we'll post a link to the story and you can go to,

look at it, but it looks exactly like it always did before, and it probably has a better video, so we'll see. If they updated, it's been, what, a couple of years now. Yeah, 2021, so way to be on the update cycle. It's not killed by Google yet, but this probably will be the last of them. Lock Talk, we got Quick Set. We got Quick Set Halo.

It's coming into HomeKit. What is this? It's got Matter in it? No. Yes, it does. It does have matter. So a quick set Halo. Select Plus lock.

We'll have NFC setup, Apple Home Key support, and Matter. Matter over thread. Ooh. That's a good matter. Yeah, because the battery, right? Yeah. Just in general matter over Wi-Fi is not good.

No. It also has Bluetooth and Wi-Pi. So if you just can't make up your mind, what you want your lock to do, this is the one to select, the Halo Select Plus. It's right there in the name. That's right.

I've installed about a half dozen of these Quixite Halo locks. They're pretty nice. I used to not like Quickset SmartLocks at all, but this one made me reconsider them. This quickset, yeah, I think I have these in my house. They're like the ones where you like could put a key in and then you push this little thing

in. Yeah, and you re-key yourself. Yeah, you recit yourself. It's kind of nice. I think they call it Smart Key or Quick Key. I think it's smart key, though. And they look pretty good. Yeah, they don't look bad at all. Yeah, a bunch of other weird stuff coming out too, like a quickset garage door opener with Android Auto CarPlay support. Oh, nice.

Matter support plan for the future. I saw someone was complaining like, why are they calling out CarPlay and not saying Apple Home? And it's like, well, more people probably use CarPlay than know about Apple Home these days. Marketing. You get in your car and it comes on, you know, like, it is nice when you get close to your house and it gives you the garage door button, you know, and like press this if you want to open your garage door.

So I think that, and when you drive away, that little button disappears. So I think that's really well done. If, you know, they want to get in on it, go for it. So we also have level lock, too, just kind of in the lock talk news. They have level lock now has a matter device too. So matter is starting to matter, right? Yeah, supposedly some people already had this,

but this is a new product according to a couple of different publications. I think Morton in the Slack channel actually had this. He said he installed it like two or three months ago. Oh, interesting. so I'm not really sure but it's interesting I never have you guys ever used one of these level locks

no because I tried to install on yeah it didn't it didn't work in the door like the lock that I had to configure with it does it doesn't go through the center it goes down at the bottom or something so it didn't work

thanks quick set I don't think I would like it but I don't also have like an attractive door because I want the keypad right I mean one of the things that I like a smart lock is I can walk up to it and just press a button and lock it or and I know you can get the little

battery-powered keypad that they have with level lock as well, but I just want it all in one unit. But I don't, I don't have a really nice door though, you know, I don't have an iPhone anymore, Seth. I wouldn't be able to unlock my door. Sad. Sad. Yeah, I need a keypad on my doors too because I share the code with the neighbor

and they got to come in and stuff. I don't want to have to program their phones and stuff without coup. Yeah, like, here's my key. Just put your phone up to my door and unlock it. No. I think that's actually pretty cool. I mean, it is cool, but. Well, I did a keypad.

Yeah, I tried to put one of these in and it didn't work, but it does look, it does look interesting. I think we had a little stick on keypad there. When I last looked at level, I didn't like their integrations, their connectivity, but now that they've added matter, I think it makes a much more viable option. Only $400 cap. Okay, it's not that viable. $3.49. Not that viable. The keypad is $79.

Yeah, these aren't required prices. And even when you say only $300, you know, I do the translation of my head quickly and it's like, I'm going to end up paying like $600 for that. These are Sonos A's territory. These are saying they're new. Wait a second. These are actual. Okay. So these are new.

I haven't seen these before. See what? These aren't the thing that you install in the door. These are the dead lot, the bolts themselves. Yeah. So it's the outside and inside appearance. the previous level lock was just the bolt. So there's actually, there's two of them.

So there's a level lock, which is new. It says 249. And then there's this level lock pro, which works with Apple Home Keys. Yeah. And it has door status protection. So they probably had to make that outside part to add all the extra stuff in there, right? Yeah.

Or the antennas or something like that. It says the level lock works with all this protocol stuff too. It's like Apple Home Keys. So I don't know what the pro, the difference between the, $100 pro is and the regular old locks. So they don't really have a feature comparison thing on their website. Oh, maybe this one doesn't have, no, this one has matter. It's right up at the top.

The old one had matter? It's not an old one. This is new. There's two new locks. There's a level lock and a level lock pro. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, and you can actually add Baldwin levers onto it or a Baldwin knob. That's really cool. Smart. Did they get purchased by Baldwin? I bet they did. I thought they got acquired by somebody. As-A-A-A-Blay. Yeah.

Part of a bigger team now. Well, this is actually pretty nice. And if the finish matches my door frame thingy, I might be able to get away with this for $250. Yeah, probably not going to happen. Maybe, well. I really could go for a door lock at the front door, because it's always going around and locking it at night

or walking up to it with a handful of groceries. And like the side door, if I had gone that way, I could just tap my watch onto it and the door would be unlocked. But anyway, let's move on here. No more locked up, but we do have one more matter. The movie board,

which we talked about way back in episode, I don't know, 300 something. A little link to it in the show notes. Tuesday, what, 20, it was like four or five years ago. It was forever ago. Three years ago? Yeah. The movie board, which is a board

that has lights inside of it and you can control stuff. It's got matter now. So the board now matters. It's the most expensive two by four. you'll ever buy. I'm not even a two by four. I'm sorry,

two by two. Two by one. Two by one, yeah. Yeah. It's a $1,000 board that's got matter. It's on sale right now that it's normally $1,200. You can get it in two different finishes, natural and dark.

You know, this board, it looks cool. Like, I could see it looking good in my bedroom and everything, but not for $1,000. I just think it's way overpriced. I don't know why it's so expensive, but I'm obviously not the market for it. So it brings a whole new meaning to playing with my wood. Oh, my gosh. I, yeah, and I guess this is like a little, it's like a little LED sign thing where you can put the time and temperature on it. And then it's got some other interaction things that you can do with it.

I don't know. I just, we made fun of this, what, four years ago and they're still around. Yeah, I was going to say, who's buying this? They only have to still like, three. three of them. I mean, they're $1,000 boards. I mean, what's the material cost on this, really? I was going to say, the price increase must be because of the increase of lumber, right? Yeah, we can't get Canadian lumber anymore. So, you know, now I would be interested on the, the top of the website, they have a, like, next to this little mirror. It's like a wooden mask type thing.

You know, I'd be interested if they made it into the wooden mask. I would, I would buy that. See what you're talking about. Only if I can make its eyes light up and stuff. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be funny. I was looking at the gallery and, I mean, they have it located, located in different areas. It's weird they have a bedroom here and there's, there's just wood. Isn't that where you normally find wood?

There's no product here. Like, you would look for this movie board and they don't have one, so. Yeah, but if you're going to touch wood, it's going to be in the bedroom, if anything. In the bedroom, right, yeah. I like how they always show these products and like the fanciest of houses. I'm like, well, I guess you would have to be fancy to buy a thousand dollar piece of wood, wouldn't you?

Yeah. It's not like the, like the Govi lights or something where they show it in like a $5 million house. You're like, all right, stop it. Nobody with a $5 million house is buying this. They are buying this piece of wood, though, obviously. Oh, there you go. They've got it mounted all over.

They've got two finishes. If you're in the market for wood, movie's got you covered. So check that out. All the links and topics we do is, us tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometeck.fm slash 540. All right,

I think there was something in the mailbag. I think there was a follow-up email from someone. I don't remember. Well, we'll get back to it. But we do have a pick of the week this week. And a friend of the show, Jimmy, we've had him on the show. He, guys, he sent the EcoVax boat. This video is incredible that he sent. He was walking out,

there's this alarm going off. His robot, lawnmour. And it's just decided to just like, drive off into the uh into the lake it's just floating around there crying for help yeah this is awful this is like what like next to either running away or getting ran over by a car i think this is like kind of your worst nightmare when you get a robot lawnmower luckily uh my house does not have a pond or a lake near it so they don't have this problem the ego ego back's goat is now the eco back's boat so it's just floating along there i tell you on ticot he had a video i'll try and link to

that too he pulled it out and it cranked right up yeah these things are fairly water water resistant but for the fact that it ran in there that's that's wild i guess it did because those this one looks like the lidar version of it so i think those use the cameras to determine edges and stuff like that there's no GPS i don't think built into antennas or no wire in the ground so it obviously thought the lake maybe it's because the lake's kind of green too who knows now i mean we don't know that just ran it by itself. It could have been sabotaged by like a goose or something. Well, Jimmy,

no, he posted the video of it actually driving itself into the lake. They were just doing its thing. Maybe it was trying to escape and this was the only way float across the lake. Right. Yeah. He's got like a zoomed in photo kind of like behind there. It was just trying to get away.

It was like, I don't want to mow this lawn anymore. It's fed up and it's just end me now. Walks right out into the ocean. Take me away. Poor little guy. Now, you know, mine always fell into the creek or into the road, but never like this. I mean, well, at least we know they float.

So if it ever ended up in there, you'd be able to see it, right? I imagine that, I mean, I've taken them apart. They're pretty well sealed up. They're like IP 67, I think, rated. It has to be to live outside you around. Right, right. So I think it's okay. But I definitely think there could be water intrusion after a while, you know,

of it floating around in there. What if water gets up behind the camera and you have to send it to NTJ? Sorry. This is a stupid vacuum. I would have a feature request of like a water save mode or something like that. Like if it ends up in water, it can just spin the wheels so it can put her back to the... You can paddle back? Yeah, paddle back like a little duck back to the land and crawl back out.

I need a third-party water raft. Because like inflatables come out on the sides. yep yeah there's something they can do with that x3 uh expansion bay uh well it's too funny he he made he made us laugh pretty hard when uh when we saw that in the hub so and i'll post a link to his ticot video it's pretty good because he's walking out there like well this doesn't look good and you hear just beep beep I'm curious how we got it back on shore did he have to go in the lake to fetch it I guess yeah it doesn't look like it's gone very far like three four feet out there.

All right. But it doesn't look very deep. Like, it's not a deep. All right. Well, if you have any feedback questions, ideas, though, picks the week. Give us a shout email address. It's feedback at HombTech.com. Or you can head on over to Hometech.com slash feedback and fill out the online form.

All right, uh, project updates. Kevin, you're up first. It looks like got a lot of things on here. As usual, I always have a lot of things going on. So first off, I want to start off with my water heater. So I have a ream water heater, right? And I got that ream water heater. Ream Wi-Fi module and everything and just, you know, for the record, the Ream Wi-Fi module is utter crap.

I mean, I'm always fighting with that thing. But what I do like is I do like, this is one of the reasons why I like having sensors and everything to notify me when things go wrong. So this weekend, for some reason, my water heater stopped heating water. And that Ream sensor happened to be online at the time and notify me, hey, there's a problem with your water heater. And, you know, and so I went. down and, you know, little Googling, I got it all started and back and everything, but this is why I like sensors, because it kind of prevented a bigger issue of, you know, being without water in the hot water in the morning. So, you know, if you have a ream water heater and you're looking

to get something, like I said, their water heater, Wi-Fi module is utter crap, but I mean, when it works, it will notify you of things. So, you know, just expected to drop off constantly. from the network. That's what you expect out of your IOC device. I know. I don't know why. It's the first thing always to drop off. And I always have to go down and just plug it out, plug it back in it works again.

So I don't know. So that was one thing I just wanted to mention. An update on my droplet. We talked about this last show or show before. Just want to follow up the things working nice. It's detecting all my water usage, logging and everything. But I only wish this old home assistant, they expose the flow rate.

which is nice because you can use that to create some automations up. I wish they also expose the water usage value as well. So you can now add that to your energy dashboards and, and, you know, do your calculations and stuff easily. The only way I could get around it is I had to create another sensor based on the flow rate that kind of calculates the water usage based on the reported flow rate. And then I can import that into my dashboard. And I'm now doing some comparison test to see how well it matches up to

what they report versus what my water meter is reporting. But it's a nice device. It detects everything from, you know, when you flush a toilet, it can tell you that it's a toilet flushing until when you turn on the tap. It says it's a tap. And it's using the AI built in to detect all that stuff based, I guess, on the flow rates and stuff like that. So pretty cool device.

I just want to give that update. If you mess with, so recently, I don't know when this was broken, but Home Assistant in one of their updates. I think it's probably in one. I think it's one of the add-on updates, like Zygby to MQTT. They switched over their button events to event entities, right? And ZWave, the same thing.

Devices that are like a button, they now have like an event entity. And when you press that button, you can create your automations based off of that by monitoring that event entity. The problem with that is, is that I don't even know how to explain this. I mean, it had to make notes because it got complicated,

but you know, you have a trigger and you say trigger based on the event entity getting kind of updated, right? But then you could set the attribute to say on a single click or a double click or a hold or something like that. The problem with the event entity is that it can get triggered by many different things. And then if you, like, if you, you have to kind of like, how to explain this? Edit this part out and make me sound better when I try this, because I'm trying to get this right.

Yeah, no, but when you single press it, it will send the attribute to single, right? Then if you single press it again, the attribute itself doesn't change, so it doesn't trigger in your automation, right? If you double click it, now that attribute changes and then your automation triggers. So to get around that, you basically have to say your trigger is,

if anything happens with this event, then you have to go down to your, conditions and say if it's this, if it's that, and check the attributes that way. So I just want to let people know if you're working with buttons and stuff like that. That's how you have to do it. But even trickier is when you do ZigB to Z with MQTT updates or Zwave updates, it was triggering my buttons in my and all my automations because the buttons go offline or unavailable and then come back online and that it detects it as a press, right?

So every time I did a Z wave update, blinds would open. or whatever what happened in my house and it was getting really annoying. But I did find a fix and basically in your trigger, edit the YAML. And this is more for people that run into this problem. I have to share it somewhere. Edit the YAML and you can add two values and you can add like a not to and not from and set it to unknown or available. So basically it's saying don't trigger if this thing goes to unknown or available or

comes from unknown available. So if it comes offline or goes offline, don't trigger anything, right? And hopefully that that will stop you from running into the same situation because I would do updates on my Z wave at like 7 o'clock in the morning. I'd be sitting here and I'd just click update and then all the blinds in the bedroom where the wife's sleeping would start opening up and stuff like that and I'd get yelled at and, you know, all that type of stuff.

This avoids all that. So something to keep in mind if you have buttons and you run into this type of problem, that's how you kind of get around it because it's just the, button going offline and online triggers the event and then your automation kicks off from there. So I had to share that with the world. You know, the people that run into this will know what I'm talking about and they'll be happy that they're able to solve it. What a crazy thing to deal with. It's such because it used to be, it was all working before and then they just switched over to these event entities and now I got to worry about how I handle the event so much more.

It's almost like it got more complicated, but me. Oh, no, it can't do that. That I almost feel like in a future they're going to change it again and then it's going to get more, it's going to break everything I did and I'll have to switch it to their new method. But that's the, that's the joy of home assistant. You learn these things the hard way sometimes. And I just wanted to give an update on the SM light devices. So I have talked about these in the past. These are the POE like Zigby coordinators and stuff like that, right?

So recently Zygby to MQTT was crashing with them. So your Zygby network was going offline. So they did release an update, a firmware update. If you're running into this, I see some people posting in the forms about this. But they release a firmware update that apparently addressed this issue. They found the bug. So if you're running into this, check for the firmware update.

But that being said, I did do the firmware update and I still get the crashing issue. so I don't know if they fixed it just doesn't happen as frequently but it's still happening to me so I've reached out to them to let them know and everything like that but if you're running into this that's what I did to get around all this I created

an automation you know this is how you fix something crashing so I basically said you know if my Zigby to MQTT add on stops then all you have to do is there's a button called reset Zigby on the SM light device I press the reset Zigby wait five

seconds, then start back up the add-on and everything's back online. And that's how I get around it. So when it goes down, I probably have like five to 30 seconds, you know, downtime, you know, but it's not very frequently goes down, but this addresses it now. So sharing that also with the world, if anybody, hopefully this helps somebody. See, you talking about all those stuff, like when we were talking earlier about how professionals or, they don't want to deal with the average person. They don't want to deal with like motions.

There's indoor contacts on their windows and stuff. This is why. Yep. Because it's overly complex. It's not over. It's not just overly complex, but it's like one day this is all working fine. Like this SM light device was working beautifully. And then all of a sudden there was an update somewhere that just broke it randomly out of nowhere.

They deleted all my stuff. Yeah, or something. And you're just like, what the heck is going on? It's been working fine for months. So now. That's because you didn't read the notes that said it was going to break everything because they changed how everything works. Yeah. So, yeah, I totally understand the pro space.

You, like, you don't want it to break on a client and you have to go visit them and stuff. They'll just say it's unreliable. I totally get it. This is the pain I put myself through, though. Self-inflicted. We all do. I'm just going to walk off into the lake one day. And that pretty much happened.

That wraps up my projects for this week, you know. The things I found, things that happen. TJ, uh, what frustrations do you have this week? no frustrations this one I got two new products one of them is home automation related the other one

not really but the first one I want to talk about is the zoo's siren this thing is not $300 but it doesn't have AI in it actually it has as much AI as the AI horn

that Seth has on his desk but it only costs 4495 it's not POE uses a regular outlet but it uses a Z wave so that's pretty cool I actually when we had

Agnes on a couple months ago at this point she told us about this product and she was I was like I need a siren

so I can yell at solicitors when they come to my door and she's like well we're going to be releasing something

at some point but I can't tell you when so don't buy that UAI horned for you yeah I tried warn Seth

but he was like nah and she emailed me when it came out and I bought one a couple days later it came it is extremely

loud way louder than the unified chime and it's like so tiny you guys can't see it on the video right now but we'll link to it in the show. It is extremely

I mean look at how tiny this thing is so it is very small. Yeah. Is it loud? I mean it's like it can fit in the palm of my hand. It is loud. I triggered it by accident and the family did not enjoy that. So I think you can you can definitely scare off an intruder

or two if you set this off. I can't wait to try to load up some custom audio files on it because I want to try it to use it for like Halloween this year when the kids come to the door I can set up some automations that they can get yelled at or something I don't know you know my line there's no candy here it's all my candy go away I don't want to give you any so that's pretty cool I would recommend it Z wave long range uh it's 800 series uh pretty much everything they're doing at this point is going to be the long range series so uh it's I think it's a well worth it

device and it can scare off intruders because that's what an alarm does or a siren does, right? It's so small, I'll never find where the noise is coming from. That's right. It's just so loud, I've got to go.

Yeah, just don't accidentally trigger it inside your house. It is fairly small. It was smaller than I thought it was going to be. I'm trying to think of something that's that big, but, um... I mean, it's basically like the same high as an AirPod Pro case. Yeah, yeah. It's close to that.

Yeah. I have an AirPods Pro case next to it. right now and they're similar it's impressive uh and then my second new device i uh switched to android about a couple weeks ago now i switched to the s 25 ultra i did not like it and so i bought a pixel 9a to hold me over until the pixel 10 came out and so when the pixel 10 came out i pre-ordered it i just received it today uh it is very nice very heavy um the camera is weird uh It kind of looks like a minion. But I'm enjoying Android.

It's got a lot of fun stuff on there that I have not used. I haven't used Android like since that. I moved to iOS when the iPhone 12 came out. And I had an iPhone before that at some point too. But I was using Android before that. I liked Android. I am interested to see if it's really improved any. So we'll see how that goes.

The pixel, though, is a good experience. It's basically like the closest you can get to stock Android. at this point. You know, Samsung's always loading down their phones with a bunch of like extra junk and then you have like two apps of everything. Whereas the pixel, it's just all Google stuff. And because I've never transitioned from Google

products, it's a pretty easy move to make. The only thing I'm missing at this point, I would say like, it's such a silly little thing, but I use Apple CarPlay. I use it every day as soon as I get in the car, just does everything.

And one of the features I got used to was being able to just double click on my AirPods and the audio from my phone would just switch to the AirPods while I kept using the navigation on my, my radio. That is not possible in the Android world. Once you are connected to the Android audio, the audio will only come out of the radio. This is not like a normal problem for most people. It is a problem for me though because I drive a large van and it's very hard to hear phone calls and stuff. So right now, I'm just basically using my phone and just put it in the cup holder. Yeah. So because like, you know,

and I have this giant like $1,000 radio that I can't use. And so I actually ordered a spare iPhone. I think it's like an iPhone SE third generation or second generation. It was like $150. And I'm just going to leave that in the van full time. And so that'll be my navigation. It's such a silly thing. And I'm like,

there's an option to switch the office. audio, what you're playing your audio out of, but Android Auto just overrides it, which I guess makes sense, right? Because it's like a safety thing. But it's just not something that you would think of. So just that one little weird thing.

Now you can do text messaging for Android in the browser. So I don't miss that. Like there's no reason for me to use I message. So that's not a big problem for me. I don't use Airplay really ever. So that's not a problem for me either. So yeah, it's

it'll be interesting. I just got the phone literally like a couple hours ago because it got released today technically. So I've got everything moved over. I started with a fresh install. When I moved from iPhone to the S25 Ultra and then the 9A,

I kind of just copied everything over. This time I just got my text messages and my phone calls. I'm just doing a fresh install. So I can just install the apps I need because there's just, I like, on my iPhone, I have like 200 apps, I think. And like, that's just obnoxious. Yeah.

I don't think I need. all those. I use like three apps every day, but there's like 600 of on the phone, I'm sure. Well, yeah, I mean, especially like you're installing stuff. You know, you're like, I have a Schleg app on my phone. I don't have a Schleg lock, but I set up slag locks for other people and I have, you know, like ring apps and I don't have a ring device. So like there's a ton of apps that I'll probably download again at some point.

But it's kind of nice to start fresh and not have to worry about bringing it over any of the bloater weird stuff. I will say the, the app transition was actually pretty nice when I moved from. the iPhone to Android. I basically just like plug my phone into each other. And it did a good job of like going to the Play Store and finding the same app and downloading for me. So there wasn't a lot of apps that I had to go manually download.

It was like, oh, you had pocketcasts on your iPhone. Here you go. It's on your Android now. So that was pretty cool. I still had to sign in with everything obviously. But that part was relatively easy. So I would say it's, it's, there's a lot of talk about switching right now. I think some people are just getting bored with the iPhone.

and it'll be interesting to see what they release. What is it next week or the week after? Oh, yeah. We get the liquid glass. Yeah. Watch out. Supposed like someone with a thermal camera or something. Nobody really knows.

It's just what I need. Yeah. I don't know. Vapor chamber cooling, maybe too. They seem to be adding a lot of things that Android already had. So that's the way I'm looking at it. I just noticed in my eye message, you change from blue bubble to green bubble. He's gone green.

Yeah. You're getting moved over. doesn't really matter. The RCS thing is great. It just bugs me still. Yeah. You hear that DJ? I don't know. I don't care. I don't want to text you anyway, so. Can I see if you're like, we have this thing called the internet. You can find me on like a billion different platforms. We don't need to text each other. It's fine. Can I, can I still see you when you're typing? With RCS, you should be able to. Yeah, you can. Yeah. It pretty much has feature parity with, uh, it gets kind of weird when there's like one person that still doesn't have an RCS phone.

Yeah, in a group message, but for the most part, it works well. All right. There's some, like, weird things, too. Like, so I'm all in on, like, Apple with everything else at this one. I have a, like, a Mac Mini. I have a MacBook Pro, or a MacBook Air. I have an iPad. So, like, I'm still using Apple devices.

What I think is hilarious is that on my Mac Mini, I can't use Apple Pay to pay for products because I have to scan it with my phone. It pops a little, like, QR code. I have to scan it with my phone in order to pay with Apple Pay. And I'm like, but, but I have an Apple. computer can you just use the saved information and i guess you need a phone for that i think i thought you could save it on your computer like because the apple pay will bounce around depending on like what you have it that's weird yeah i don't know it's just like weird stuff like that is one of the

things i don't like about apple is like i don't know it's just it's so locked down for a lot of that stuff um like my text messages i can just use my text messages anywhere now and with an iphone I can only use it with Apple devices. Yeah, but you're green. I mean, yeah, nobody cares. I'm not 12. Green, come on.

Yeah, but that's it. That's all I got. What are you guys? Looks like a nice phone. It's got some, some giant camera bump, but I suspect we're all going to have those in a couple weeks.

Yeah, I really hate the camera bump thing. I wish they would just like make the phone even with itself and just give me like a little more battery. Yeah. Why would go do this giant camera bump? I was listening, that's the rumor with the one of the Apple products. They're going to have like this slim down tiny phone.

That's super slim, that probably doesn't have an iPhone air yeah yeah but you said give me another give me all the batteries like oh no they're not going to make it quicker yeah it's the opposite direction so well i mean i don't mind i don't mind the like the thin phones but it's just like when you make it it's kind of like the oed right if you get like an oed and then make the the bezels like extremely thin they make the back extremely thin but in like the middle they have this giant bump and it's like okay like you made the part that i have to hold on to to mount the tv extremely thin and breakable yeah but the

the bottom middle is very thick. Can you just make it like so much? I don't know. Just make it all the same. Well, we got to do this. Who is enjoying this, you know? Yeah. Apple and Samsung for making all the phones and TVs you're paying for.

So they're enjoying it. I got all the money. All right. I got some projects. Well, first, I'm going to kill a project before I finished. Well, this is, I mean, so I was trying to get that where's the bus thing working. And I kind of had it working. but like, you know, this is a little app

that I was using a home assistant to track where the kids bus players. But this thing, the API services they have are so, like, I'll be like, oh, it's time to go. Let's check where the bus is in the morning. And it's like, there's no bus assigned to you. Like, no, there's a bus sign. So like, it's a very unreliable app.

I don't know how useful it's going to be. But also, I was having all these issues with, you have like this CAPTCHA thing, recapture thing installed. And so it's just kind of like, really painful to do any work around to get to get past that and there's some also on the API the other stuff like there's some anti-automation let's just say that like they must not want people doing what I'm doing so I kind of like well if it is such a pain in the butt to get like

all this authentication working and like inspecting cookies and exporting them from your browser it's like this isn't really going to work so I'll put that on hold maybe I'll reach out to them and say, hey, why don't you release an API so people can find out where the bus is? But it really won't matter that much if the bus isn't even en route or doesn't show up on the thing anyway. So I don't know. I'm going to kill it. I'll put it on the shelf and it can just sit there and rot. But in the meantime, I was like, well, you know what? I'm already open and have this tab open on my home assistant. Let me look in here and see what integrations I can clean up because they have that nice areas thing now that's pretty minimal. And I don't have to like

look at all those temperatures sensors and stuff that get added in for whatever reason on the old dashboard so i just use that and uh some some of the some of the things in that i had were like i have my cars right so i got i got a Subaru and a BMW right and they both have this remote start capability that integrates with home assistant i was like you know what like i'm always sitting at my desk i'm like all right i need to go somewhere and i always want to like fumble out my phone i open up the super app, it has to do face ID, then it has to give me a pop-up to say, hey, you should probably add an emergency contact. I'm like skip, skip, skip, skip. And then it's like, fail to connect. I'm like, you know what? I bet every single time I use the

home assistant app, it'll work. Guess what? Every single time I use the home assistant app, it works. I just push a button on my stream deck now when I want to leave. And I also put on the button, like how much fuels in my car, which is 17%. And my wife's car has 98%. Go figure that one out so yeah I can I can pick which car right here on my stream deck which car I want to take based on how much fuel I guess isn't it

anyway I thought it was a fun little project that I did that's pretty sweet I would like that yeah oh and I set it up I did an automation thing in the home assistant since I noticed that you could lock the doors like at midnight it just it sends the command to lock the doors on both the cars just in case you know because I leave my unlocked from time to time Yeah, that's always a good automation.

That's actually what I miss about. There was a drone mobile home assistance integration for a little while. And I had it set up to auto lock every night. Did not find out it was broken until three months after it was broken. I'm not checking on it. So it's like it could not work and, you know, the car could be unlocked all night. I don't know. I'm just assuming that it works.

Let's just, yeah, yolo. What's the worst I could happen? Exactly. I don't live in Canada. All right. So. Gavin's like, they stole the car. All right, uh, let's see, the G6 PTZ.

I know we talked about that. I want to also follow up on it. Um, I brought my little AI port out to test because this, this particular client had some old Amcrest Pt Zs that are actually kind of decent, but they're Amcrest, so the software on them sucks. And I was going to see like, let's, let me plug the AI port in and see if I get the features that I get from just the unified PtZs, where you just leave these up. and it did work

like you get the facial recognition and you can do like some automations off of it and everything but one thing it doesn't have with the AI port is the tracking they the AI ports don't control the PTZs until it like

if you see somebody here you know follow them around and that kind of thing and it's like well that's useless so I uh I the client already had two two more G6 is there

so we're going to we were going to swap them out and have these get rid of the big giant Amcrest cameras and go down to the little small Unified ones because I mean they just work really well and I don't I I I want to install the AIA port you can't even select the G6 PCZ as an option because it's got all the AI features in it I guess

so you can't you can't even select it so I left there running tonight on their on their cameras to see if they um if if it does anything things, you know, picks up cars or anything like that. I noticed it was picking up license plates on cars that you can't even read. So that's kind of cool. But, you know, he's not going to have any value in that. I just, anybody out there who is looking to add AI to an old on VIF camera

and adding that AI port in, it's probably not going to work the way you think it does. They're just going to have less features than just going out and getting the similarly cost G6 PTZ, which is my pick of the week, I guess. Got a floating lawn more and a G6 PDZ. I installed the home assistant toilet paper holder two or whatever it is.

I got one of those in the mail and I... Did you actually install this one? Yeah, no, I put it in. Did I have that? Yeah, I still have that here. I have the Zigby one too. It's right there. Yeah. Never used. But, you know, whatever.

Never been plugged into anything. He's like, do a giveaway one of these days. I don't know. I kind of like fidgeting with these things. And this one has an antenna. You can buy, you can definitely buy cheaper fidget toys, just so you know, I mean, whatever. Do whatever you want. They're here. So, yeah, it's all the thing.

It's got a little LED on top that lights up blue, it looks like. I don't think it means anything. When you turn it sideways, it yells at you. It only holds two toilet paper rolls, which is kind of insulting. I was hoping to get at least three on there. And then it does hold one paper towel roll. So I think, you know, that means it needs to be a total. all the paper roll holder when I'm done with it, but

I hooked it up to those Zen, what are those Zen 30s, I guess, you sent? Oh yeah, the double switch. Yeah. Zimmer plus the switch. I've had those installed for a long time. One's in my daughter's room for a fan, like, combo thing, and then one's in the bathroom for

the vanity light and the, what's it called? The bathroom fan. And they've been working okay. You know, I'm testing out the range. not, they're located across the house and that the toilet paper roll holders is as far back and on the opposite end of the house as it could possibly be. Um, so it says they're connected

great and they are linked together and I had like a nice little, there's like a little visual thing that I found. I don't even know if I could find it again, but there's a little visual thing of your Z wave network that shows you what, how things are mesh together and everything was happy and, you know, I was looking at it last night. I was going to, or this morning I was going to turn my daughter's room light on because of course she was like over sleeping and her alarm is just going off full blast in there and like what's going to wake her up maybe a light would well i go to turn the light on and guess what it didn't work so um the fan i could turn the fan on it off it's the same device but the light i can't turn off don't know why um but you know that's that's the

magic of home home assistant z wave i'm not sure yet but you know zwave may be dead tj i'm just going to put that back out. Like, the toilet paper roll holder can't do it, then Z wave may be dead. Definitely not user implementation, you know? I mean, who knows? I don't know. I was told this is plug and play.

Like, this is the best way to do it. So, uh, any, I, I may investigate what's going on with that. I may not. I probably want. Um, the idea is that, like, maybe I could put it. Actually, I did, I did notice, like, once I got those Z wave devices installed, uh, what's it called the, the Z-30s, the light. switches, right? I noticed all these little programming things you guys have been talking about

all these years. And I think you can set up most of that just by tapping the buttons or something a bunch of times, according to the instructions. Like, you can get to most of those settings by just tapping buttons on it. But, you know, it's got things like built into the switch itself, basically a fan timer, right? So you turn the fan on and it'll last for 20 minutes or whatever and it'll turn off. And so you can go in and you can set that in Home Assistant. So that's kind of nice. um but we'll see uh and then uh as part of my apollo order that i got the uh the toilet paper roll holder with uh i ordered a dev board um so with the the little c6 thing well this is the breadboard but like i've already hooked it up to a little sensor thing so maybe one of these days i'll get around to connecting this and and getting my light sensor project that i've always wanted to do and i've begged and pleaded for somebody else to make working uh and yeah I have some other parts coming, but everything was on a slow load of it.

It's going to take five weeks for delivery, so yay. And then I got an M1 display from Apollo. So if you go to the Apollo's website, you'll see the little M1 displays a little LED board, right? A little LED matrix board that you can put pictures or video on, or you can, it's kind of hard to look at. So I wouldn't recommend doing that. But there's all sorts of example of, like,

putting text on the screen so you can put the, like, the time and temperature. If this, if this was a board, it would be a movie board, right? But it's not. It's just a piece of plastic. But I've got to say, this was the best unboxing experience of any device I've ever had. I plug it in, and it turns on, and immediately, you guys seen the little, the video, I don't even know where this is.

It's like, his kids on, like, the front of a rowboat, and these guys are rowing behind it, and he's, like, dancing. Have you seen that? No, thanks so. It's like a meme thing going around with a little kid dancing on the front of the boat. I don't know. that starts playing. I'm like, oh, that's funny. And then this next video comes on, man, it's too bright. You guys can't see it. But, yeah, I can't see anything.

This next video comes on, and it's a guy, like, on the phone, and he's, like, walking around, and, like, green stuff starts falling from the top of the screen. I'm like, what the heck is that? And it's, it's not, like, a video screen. It's just a bunch of LEDs making a picture. I'm looking at it. And, and the guy's, like, walking around, and green stuff keeps falling out of the tree. And then finally, he's, like, one of the green things falls out of the tree and hits him on the head. I'm like realizing in real time here, I'm like, is that, is that an iguana? Falling out of a tree

and hitting a guy on the head? Like, what the heck? It must be cold in Florida. The ultimate troll. And then I'm like, I'm like, that's, that's just weird. Like, is it like a random picture that they put on there? And then the next picture comes up is this like weird kid looking at me

winking or something? And I'm like, oh, okay. So I took a video and posted it in the hub and then I went over their Discord and server as I'm like, So when you guys get these in the mail, is this what comes on yours? Because I think I'm being trolled by someone. And, yeah, sure enough, it was Justin.

I did some more detective work. And his name's written here on the packing clip. He said, thanks. So, yeah, I'm pretty sure he had pre-programmed my M1. And I don't think I'm going to change it. I'm just going to leave it like that because it's hilarious. I just laughed and laughed and laughed about that. It's so funny.

and then to go and find out that, yeah, he had pre-programmed the thing for me with these random... I mean, iguana, and I've been looking for that. Like, where did he find that? It's so funny. What a great troll. It's too good.

It's too good. And just, there's iguanas falling out of this tree. And the guy's just... Yeah, yeah. It's just... It's too good. Too good. All right.

I'll put a link to the video of that so you guys can check it out. We'll put it on the YouTube. That'll be on YouTube. Just like, that's probably how we'll get our clicks. Do we need clicks on YouTube? Yeah,

we'll get 10 clicks from that. But talking to Justin, they will be at CES as well. So I think they're going to be a exhibiting there. That's great. So if you're going to CES, you can see all their products in person and we'll finally get to meet up with them. Oh, yeah,

as I say, I might see him. I was hoping to trick you way to give. giving us a definite answer. You totally saw around that. So you may see them in January. Yeah, I might. I might.

Definitely maybe. Definitely maybe. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up everything tonight. I'm still laughing at this thing because it just keeps cycling back through to the.

It's bright, too. Yeah, it's very bright. And I don't think it's like, it might not be 100%. Crank that baby up. Yeah. You can turn them down. I mean, and they have them, these are kind of cool.

They have them set up where you can link them together and mount them on things. So I think you can get like four of them put together on one thing. But then it's running WLED on there. So you can do all sorts of stuff with that too. You can put multiple of those running in tandem. Anyway, that's going to wrap up the show. But we do want to thank everyone who listens to show tonight. and especially one of the things

those who are able to support the show through our patron page going over there. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to HOMTech.comfm slash support to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month

gets a big shout out here on the show but every single pledge get you an invite over to our private slash chat hub where you and other patrons show can gather and see you out. Check out that new EcoVax boat, man. That's really cool.

Good stuff. Boats are going to be all the rage of CES this show. Yes, it's CS boats. If you can't support the show financially totally understand, just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating in the podcast app.

Your choice, that's going to wrap up the week here on Home Tech. Everybody, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care.