HomeTech.fm - Episode 541 - "Live" from CEDIA 2025

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

On this week's show: LIVE from the CEDIA Expo show floor! We check out Aqara's new announcements, Crestron gets some new keypads, Bond has a wet remote, Josh.ai updates, Savant gets under cabinet lighting?, Unifi dives into AV with a new video distribution system, eero drops a few new products, Phillips drops a few more new products, Samsung SmartThings drops Zwave, a pick of the week, Home Assistant news, project updates, and so much more!

Live from Denver, this is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 5th. From Denver, Colorado, I'm Seth Johnson. Not from Denver, Colorado. I'm T.J. Huddleston. From Denver somewhere, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast. Podcasts all about home technology, home automation, and it's CDia time. You didn't tell me you're going to Denver. I mean, I'm live on the showroom floor.

Hey, how's the showroom? going for you this year. You look like your life. Are you having a good show? Booth's been busy? Oh, man. It's, it's trade show time. Yeah. So, like, the CD is going on, and there's big news coming out of Denver there. Lots. Yeah, yeah, lots.

Clearly, we didn't go this year. No. Maybe another time. If we did go, you would have heard about the home type meetup. Yeah, you would have heard about all sorts of stuff, but we weren't there. But, you know who was there? A car was there. they announced their EdgeHub M-300. They've got that now, which is

I guess they've been teasing this right. What are we talking about for a while? It's got Zigby thread, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, no Z-Wave. But it also supports K&X, Backnet, M, and Modbust. So it's got that going for it. And then they also, it released

the Studio Connect tool designed to streamline customization of these devices, the car devices. And it's got They've got like a little picture of it in one of these stories here. We'll put a link in the show notes. It looks like it's got like a node programmer, so you don't have to do any coding or anything like that.

It's like a flow-based automation editor. And it supports remote access for managing multiple sites and troubleshooting. So not a bad deal. It looks like they are trying to put their foot in the door there for the pro crowd and get something out. This is definitely interesting. Are pros going to use this, though? Because I don't really see them using this.

It's an interesting concept. And I like that they focus on a lot of the stuff that dealers want initially, like the multi-site management. I mean, that's super important, right? There's still some companies that release professional products and they don't even have that capability. So that's pretty nice to have. It's nice that they supposedly work with Nice and Josh AI and Control 4.

I just, this is a weird, weird crossover for me. I don't know what their play is here, but maybe there's a bigger demand in other countries, right? That's what I'm thinking. It's more of a international play other than just North America. Yeah, honestly, the most interesting one on this list for me is the Josh AI, right? Because the Josh AI integration would open up a huge number of devices that would be suddenly compatible with. Because it's not famously an open platform. You know, they have to release their own stuff for it.

But this basically gets like any matter device into Josh AI at this point. When I think of the privacy focused clientele that is specifically discerning enough to pay a subscription, for their own voice controls. This is a locally hosted voice control software device. I think of, yeah, a car, a Chinese company. Yeah, let's get them in the house to you. Yeah. I just don't see it.

I don't see it, guys. Like, I just, I don't. I think there's some interesting devices they have, some little interesting problem solvers, and if it makes it for an easier way to, like, integrate it in with the system, maybe. I saw that it integrates with Nice as well. They were talking about integration with them, so.

It's some extra sensors. You'll get some extra sensors in your system, which would be good. And what I found really strange to is they added all these other integrations. So they have like K&X, Bachnet, ModButs, Bluetooth, you know, integration control for Josh AI nice, but they didn't put a Z wave antenna in there. Because it's dead.

Yeah. It's just a weird, like you add all this stuff and you purposely leave out Z wave. I'm curious why, you know, like there's still demand for Z wave out there. Nobody knows about Z wave. I mean, that's the thing like nobody understands. It's not a thing that anybody knows about or cares about. The average consumer barely even knows what matter is. They only know about that because they see the logo everywhere.

Well, yeah. And Zwave is, I mean, Zwave, I guess if you're at the CD trade show, most people have known that they're there who have known Z Wave. And most, I would say 90% of them hate it and don't ever want to touch it again. So it's a great place to go talk about Z wave. Yeah, it's like a bad ex-girlfriend. You don't want to talk about it. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Well, speaking to that ex-girlfriends, this is something really sexy. Oh, wait. Is that? I don't think you should let your wife hear that one. No. So the Crestron expands their lighting control portfolio with some new key pads.

And man, these do look nice. These are like, like, a brass finish. Looks like a graphite finish. They're backlit. Yeah, backlit. Oh, they're so nice. Very nice looking stuff. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.

We've got a nice, some wet remotes to talk about guys. I've got some really wet remotes. This picture just made me laugh when I saw it. Bond has released a 15-channel remote for shades and all sorts of stuff. And the picture they have, it's like they're, they're just doused. They're sprayed with some water to let you know that they're ready to go outdoors. Yeah, they're outdoor. You drop it in the hot tub or pool, you're fine.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. It's interesting design, though. It's got the little screen on it at the top, a little dot matrix LED display on it. It's kind of cool. Yeah. See, it's called the Mate Pro.

It works with leading shade motors from Somphe, Roleys, Gaposa, Nice, Magnatrach, Azenko, Forge Strapry, Doya, Amp, and others. And their remote doesn't require a bridge. So it can be set up by the app and manage the operation of all the connection devices directly. So that's nice. That's pretty cool. Very nice. No hub needed.

If you do need it to, you do want it to integrate it with the Bond Pro RF to Wi-Fi hub thing, it'll actually communicate the state feedback from the thing. So that's kind of nice too. Like if you want to look great. But yeah, it's a nice outdoor remote. I like it. We got Josh AI hanging on to all the AI stuff out there these days.

They have a new OS out now called the AIXOS. I saw the emails coming out for this. I'm like, what are they typing? Is it supposed to be exos, axios? I don't know. A.I.XOS. I don't really understand. the naming there

but it's a new graphical interface and it works with iOS, Android, Josh touchscreen, Josh AI and the Aver remote. So there you go. They put more AI in your AI. What else could you want? There's a lot of AI here.

Yeah. There's a new 10 inch touchscreen they have. So that's kind of nice. I feel like, well, Josh has been all about the AI since the beginning. It's in their name, Josh.A.I. Right. It is.

It's right there. They're on brand. So if there's any piece that's missing AI, that's false advertising to us, you know? They got to have the AI and everything. Unlike Seth's AI horn, they actually have AI. It's real AI. It's tangible.

You can touch it. And even if it's incremental updates, you know, some of the stuff I saw, what was it, CDA a couple years ago and went, it was pretty cool what they had in there, you know? I just, I never looked it up, but what AI are they using? Do they make their own AI? But is that using another, is that their own internal one? or are they like using like chat GPT integration or? So the way it was explaining to me is that, yeah,

basically they have a router on top of everything and they'll pick and choose whatever LLM or language model they can use to discern, figure out what you're saying into the Josh system. And so it's like it's a fancy, there's some stuff that they can process locally or whatever, but most of the time what it does, if it really needs to go do something,

it's going out to a server. but it's, you know, it's using their API key. So it's not exactly going to be tied to you. It's just tied to this company that makes a bunch of API calls. So that's kind of, that doesn't make it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. You don't get ads if you start talking about something in front of it, you know.

Yep. Let's see. What else we got here? We've got savant. They're adding some under the cabinet lighting because why not? These are huge announcements for like TV, you know? Biggest trade show of the year. It's crazy.

I know. I'm just like, it's a control company, and they're going to add under cabinet lighting fixtures. Okay. There we go. All right, Savant. You matter. Wait, no, number one. Is there anything this company doesn't do at this point?

Z wave. Definitely no C wave. No, there's no matter. And there's no Z wave in them. Yeah, there's a really weird company right now, right? Because they're basically just trying to be like an everything company. They have the power walls. They have shades.

I mean, they have all the stuff. It's just like some of the stuff makes sense. But it's like, when you get into the power wall stuff, it's like, all right, well, That doesn't make any sense, but I guess it does. I don't know. They have the G.E. Click things. Go look at the pictures of these, too. Like, this under cabinet lighting,

it's not like what you probably think of when you think of under cabinet lighting. I don't know. Maybe it is. And the whole, like, I honestly forgot that they even owned GE Sync. Or G.E. in general. Like, this whole thing, I totally forgot about this. Yep. It still exists.

It's still there. So weird. Poor Cleveland Company. The Savant, go savant. And I guess, I guess the biggest news, aside from the Akara thing. is the Unified booth because the other it was like at the beginning of the week

Unified dropped a doorbell new next generation two new doorbells three new doorbells T.J. Right? It's three. Yeah, it's three. Three new doorbells. Watch out. Oh my gosh. So they dropped this video and in the end of this video I was laughing because I was like hey, why is there HTMLI on that switch?

So we'll talk about the doorbells first but then we'll get to the HTML switch. Let's let's see. They've got the they've got the unify i don't even know what these are called now the g6 pro is it i think there's a g6 pro entry and it's got a touchscreen on it it's got a package camera it's got all the stuff a doorbell should actually have on it it's ridiculous it looks nobody needs this no i this is like this is basically like an intercom replacement though like you would put this like outside of a gate or something like i don't think anybody's going to have this on their front door Some I will, I guess, have it on the door.

Nobody needs to have this on the front door. It's going to go outside your house somewhere. It's got face recognition. Maybe it's like an infrared, like face ID, I guess, built into it. So as you're walking up, you could unlock your door, I guess, if it's integrated with the door system. It seems, so this has kind of been the biggest gripe and complaint about the protect and then the door lineup. What is the door stuff they have? Access.

access. I mean, obviously. What else was... Sorry, yeah. I mean, they have Unified Talk. They have Unify Access, Unified Network. It's all piled under one menu option at the end of their website. But, yeah, so the biggest gripe when it came to these is that they had these fancy doorbells. They did nice things, but you couldn't integrate them in with Unified Talk for the phones. So if somebody was ringing your doorbell and you had video phones inside your house or business, you couldn't see who is there without switching over to that app. It's ridiculous.

So that's been complained about for like three, four, five years now. So they're resolving that now. So now this is, it looks like it's going to bring protected access a little bit closer together and maybe bring in talk a little bit more too. So that'll be nice. The next one they have is a little smaller version of this. It doesn't have the touchscreen on it. It's called the G6 entry for entry level. I don't know. This is this is the more, it still looks very industrial, but this is probably more likely to end up on people's homes. Yeah. You see, the thing is, I have the G4, right? And I like that little screen on it that, you know, you can put little animations and stuff on it. When I look at the G6 Pro entry,

I almost think that's too much for home. That's more, it seems like, more business oriented. It can intimidate people if you put it in your house. And then when I look at the G6 entry, it's like, I'm happy it has the package cam on it because that's important. This is probably what I would upgrade to, but I kind of like to having that little screen that I have Oh, do you want the screen? The G4 on. Yeah, because when someone walks up to your door and you have like, you know, the Homer Simpson going into the bush animation going on or

something like that. It's kind of good. I like that. You know, they took the screen off of that. I generally look at it and say, what is that, what is it? It's so small. Like, what does he even have on it? The having the little touchscreen on the door or the screen on the doorbell is like the most useless thing to me. I don't want it. Don't give it to me. It's just another thing it's going to break

and then I'm going to have to look at it when it's broken. I kind of like that. But the entry is probably the equivalent of the G4 Pro with all the features. And I'm glad they left the package cam on there. I don't think it has the fingerprint sensor anymore, though. Nope. I think they took that off.

Spatial recognition. What I don't understand about these, though, is that the package camera is bigger than the main camera. Yeah. Why? I don't know. The one on the G4 is not as useless without light. though. Oh, yeah. Like, there's no, if there's no light turned on, it doesn't work at all.

But like, like the G6 entry, for example, it's got an 8 megapixel package camera and a 5 megapixel image sensor for the main camera. I think you'd have them reversed. It's all that AI they're putting in there and they need to read the tracking label and then they'll get a... If it's a certain tracking label, you just automatically open the door for you. Are there facial recognition, like, I've been trying to find this, but does it use LIDAR for facial recognition on these devices? I think it's using like an IR thing like the Apple Is it that LiDR? Yeah. No, it's IRR, infrared.

I thought you used a LiDar to map your face. It's an infrared. Oh, okay. The LiDAR is on the other side of the phone. Yeah, the infrared, it's like an infrared mesh thing. Like if you see somebody, if you find, there's videos out there where people like without infrared filters on cameras or whatever and you can see like this big thing on your face when you do the Apple ID thing

or all the types of things. So that's probably all this is. So it's basically more secure than, like, the facial recognition they'd build into their cameras then, right? Because the cameras are just based off images, I think. Oh, yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then finally, we come to the adorable doorbell light, which is a button with a tiny little camera, but it's a button. And it's really all it is. Like, it's just a basic. It looks like a little bit bigger, but it looks like a basic doorbell. It looks a little bit bigger than that, but not much. I think it's cool, though. think it's a nice low like if you have a second door you would throw this on the second door like a side door to the house or something yeah i don't know or you wanted to keep your front door classy

and not have a giant ubiquity touchscreen on it or that yeah some people just want a simple button you know and that's all that's all it is honestly like a simple button doorbell is like what a lot of people ask for on like reddit and stuff like that they just want something that like can notify them they don't even necessarily care about the camera itself like they just want to be notified somebody rings the doorbells. And for $99, I mean, that's a good price point for like something like that with a camera still in it. But still POE only, all three POE only. Very confusing. Yeah, very weird. And I was looking at someone comparing the size of the pro entry one, like, it's huge. Oh, yeah. Like, like, it's probably like one and a half times the two times

the previous, the G4 pro. It's big. Yeah, it's, it's very, of the hard. I mean, the touchscreen on it is two and a half times. I mean, the touchscreen has like a keypad. Like, you can go in, like, punch buttons into to unlock the door and that kind of thing. Like, it's got all sorts of stuff built into that thing. But it's huge. It's massive. I wouldn't

want that on my front door. If it was at a business or maybe a gate camera or something like that, it would work fine, but like, I don't know. Not for my front door. I'm really liking the small one, honestly. Like, I think if, if that had a package camera on it, that would be, like, the best thing they've ever offered. But clearly, they have to have a giant

giant doorbell for a package camera so yeah whatever anyway doorbells they're coming out I didn't grab the prices off the other ones but $99 for the little one and I think that's probably what most people are going to get because yeah I don't think if they have priceless for the other ones right now well about

on their minute 26 second video about a minute 12 is when the doorbell discussion ends and then out of the dark fade to black comes something else in black it's a network switch guys A network, did you know ubiquity could make anything

network related in black? Well, they can. They can do it. But about two seconds later, there's about two frames showing an HCMI in and out on some kind of networking device. Then it shows like everything all connected together.

About four more seconds later, they label things. The one with the HCMI is called the EAV bridge. It's plugged into Ethernet with. It's plugged into an EAV-24 port POE switch, which is also black, guys, it's black. I can't believe this. And then an EAV aggregation switch, which we'll probably talk about here in a second. But what we found out, because CD is going on right now, is that this stuff is sitting over in their booth. And they're doing, it looks like

they're going to start doing video distribution. So this is, this is kind of big news. This is really big news. We've got some pictures, some Reddit articles that have people who have walked by the booth and taking pictures of this. And the comments in Reddit are just hilarious because they're like, what is this for? Yeah, you can tell who's in. like any kind of space that uses this and who's not because there's a lot of people that have no idea what you would ever even use this for. And I can't blame them anymore, especially

with streaming devices being so cheap now and stuff. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is basically heavily used in commercial in boardroom spaces. Anywhere there is a need to distributed video in any kind of way over large spaces.

You just pop it on this network. And it looks like it looks like they've taken some of the guess work out of design on this with the aggregation switch it looks like it's like a 10G aggregation switch that they have and if you need to

pipe in more than one of these EAV 24 port POE switches I think what it looks like is you go to the aggregation switch and that is what switches all the massive amount of video around rather than everything being relying on a little 24 port switch so it's impressive

it's impressive they're moving into the EAV I guess it's a what ubiquity AV line that they're going to have now. So they're going to have a professional AV. They're going up against Netgear and all the other companies. Heck, I saw T.P. Link was coming out with an AV line stuff now. So everybody wants to get on the AV switching. I don't know if I would trust you to buy, but I can tell you there are going to be a ton and ton

of companies out there who are going to look at the product offerings that they have and say, oh, we need a little bit of AV stuff done in the board room or whatever. And they'll just pick a couple of these things up, plug them in. and get their video up and going, their video distribution, their sign, signage, whatever they want. They'll just, they'll have it available for them right there. The big question is on price. What's it going to be? I need to know that.

I need to know that. Well, I might be showing my American here, but UAV stands for unmanned aerial vehicle. It's EAV. Oh, man. So close. Definitely show my American. Electronic aerial vehicle then. There you go.

EAV. Although, although it's labeled EAV. in the EAV bridge inside of the video, but I think you're right, TJ. I think on those Reddit pictures of the actual product that's sitting on the shelf, it says UAV. Unmanned aerial vehicle. There we go.

Yeah. Why around? They got their branding wrong between the video. That's what happens to use AI for your branding. Your video of production. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, it's one of those things that's so expensive to do this anyway that if ubiquity comes out with a solution that you can

easily get for $300 to $500, that's going to be a killer deal. Because you can buy what just that power, like a 4K transmitter receiver, like dealer cost is probably going to be between like $600, $900. I can't remember exactly. For just that power? Yeah. It depends on what it is. But yeah, I mean, for a 4K one, yeah, you're going to start looking into that $6,700, $800, depending what you need. So, I mean, if you pick when he comes out with something under $500, it's going to be a good deal for a lot of people. I don't think it's going to be under $500. I think it is, honestly. No, I don't think so.

Why would they do that? Because you're going to have to buy the switches and everything else. I mean, it's like a whole ecosystem. You got to buy, you got to do that with just at power too. Is it going to be like $500 and eat? And you're going to have to buy the rack mount accessories. Oh, yeah, 100%. You got to buy the rack mount for if you want to have four of them.

You know, there's all kinds of stuff they're going to sell you. Yeah, I mean, if you're, yeah, Gavin, yes. It'll be that much, if not more, each. Because, I mean, even some of the other ones, like other companies, are in the $1,000 range now, $1,100, $1,200. I think AV Pro is in that area. So, like, I don't think that this is going to be a cheap product. I think this is going to be closer to $1,000.

No. All right, let's make, this sounds like a wager then. A friendly wager, yeah, it's friendly wager time. All right, so let's put it down. I'll open a tab here. I'll just crash the database and forget about this one. For Unify. Wow, that's 100% is going to happen.

You're going to have to buy. one of these for each source, pretty much, right? Well, so you buy one for each source and for one display. And each TV, yeah. Yeah, where other devices, are they not, they handle multiple sources and you can switch through them? So an HDMI switch, like, that has HD-based T, and it can do over Cat 5 or Cat 6 or whatever.

It'll have, like, nine inputs on it, and then it'll have nine outputs, and, but it's all got to be hard wired back to that one location. This is more flexible because it just basically offloads that. It sits on a network. onto the network, yeah. And honestly, the price is just about the same if you start adding things up.

And this is more scalable. So if you have like 100 TVs that you need to broadcast a thing out to, this is the way to go. Which everybody does in their house, you know, thousands of times. Again, this is not, all of the stuff that people use

just at power for is not made. Like, just that power has come from the commercial side. And there are probably a dozen, if not more, companies doing that exact same thing on the commercial side. You just never really hear of them in this space because they don't kind of cross over. Crestron has DM, I think, QSys has something as well. There's so many products out there. I was shocked when I went to Infocom as to how many video distribution products there were. But at the same time, anybody who is doing anything related to video

distribution also had a control system on top of it, which I think Unify is coming out with next. Yeah. Because they've got all the parts and pieces in place to make that actually happen and I think including like light don't they have a light switch too so they can do like lighting control they did at one point I don't think they happen anymore though it it won't be long before they'll be able to automate a building or automate an office av they've got the speaker system ready to go now so I I think it's right around the corner before they turn those lousy touch screens into some kind of control interface and you can go in the boardroom and press a button and call somebody using Unify Talk over the video or whatever through Zoom and I don't know

They've got literally everything ready to go and all packaged it up, and they're so good at working across domains. Like any other company who comes out with these types of products, each thing's all siloed and never actually works together with each other. Unify has done a really good job

of integrating their own products together over time. So the exceptions are really obvious when they're there, like the doorbell not working with, the telephones and protect our access. So they started dropping those walls and eliminating those walls. I think they're going to take over the commercial space really quickly. I think my favorite feature of the UAV bridge, the inclusion of the XLR input and output.

I think there's going to be huge uses for that. See, that's the thing that's most confusing to me as the XLR inputs and outputs. Yeah, I mean, if you need that in commercial audio, it's probably going to be balanced though, right? Like, you're not going to, and I mean, it's not like you can use an unbalanced. It's easy to convert that into unimbalanced signal. So it's not like it, I would just think like if you need audio in a commercial environment, it's going to use an XLR input or a balanced signal.

So I, that doesn't, that tells me that this is, I mean, that tells me this is probably going to be upwards, this is going to be over a thousand bucks, I think. It's going to be a thousand bucks. It's got to be. There's no way $300. Are we replacing our bets? Are we placing our bets? DJ, do you set it up?

Yeah, I set it up. So I put my bet on there as $300 to $500. Oh, you can't put a range. Oh, I did, though. All right. It's price is right rules. You have to... All right, deal.

What are you saying, Seth? It's going to be over $1,000. You've got to give me a price. All right, over $1,000 plus, I guess? Over $9,000. No, no, it's prices right rules. Like, if you bet a dollar and it's, it's, it's, lower than $300, then you win, you know?

So anything, if you say $300. So you're guessing $1,000, got it. Yeah, $1,000 or more. Gavin, what are you guessing? I was thinking $4.99. $4.99. You guys are going to be in a world. I would be surprised if it's not like $1,200, but geez, this is, this is not going to see.

Well, we're just talking about the UAV. We're not talking about the switches. We're not talking about anything else. We're talking about a single, presumably a single. I am too. device and that's it. Yeah, and that's what I'm thinking is because you have to buy, you'll want to buy multiple of them. So I don't think individually they'll be under a thousand bucks. They want you to spend 2,000 bucks on it, but they want you to buy like four of them.

Well, yeah, you need, you need one for each source and then one for your CV, right? Yeah, so they got to make each one affordable. No, they don't. I'm telling you, they don't. Look at what the competitor products are. They're not what you think they, there's going to be 1200 bucks a pop and Unify is not really, I mean, they'll knock a little bit of margin off there, but they're not, I don't think they're not, knock that much off. I just don't see it. All right, well, we'll find out. Soon I hope. We'll see. Yeah, I don't know. We should probably also wager like a side bet on like when these things are going to come out. Q1. The speaker, the weird speaker thing with the dial and it came out pretty quickly after they announced

it, so it might be right around the corner. Oh, yeah, the amp. All right, I made a table. Oh, fancy. Some dollars on here. Dollar and dollar. All right. There we go. We'll see what happens whenever this comes out.

I don't think it's going to be lower than a thousand bucks, so it's got to be more. They also had, we've got a bunch of pictures of the CDia booth, and they have up their game, and they have a security camera wall now. Some of these things were actually at Infocom, but not set up this way. So camera security thing was there, but that, They only had the little panels. They didn't have the big backboard and desk set up. So they had the little cameras floating around,

but they were using their table that they had before. But they saw that giant screen behind that they're putting in their booth. Oh, they did have some more of their, what is that called? The Superlink stuff on display. I think this is all that's been out, though. The environmental sensor, the entry sensor, motion sensor, glass brake sensor, and alarm key fob, along with the two siren. So a couple of things they've just announced.

I don't know if some of the sensors are available right now, but they're showing those off. Some people have been showing stuff too. Like Mac Telecom Networks has, I think, like the siren and stuff like that. So some of the stuff exists, but I don't know if you can actually go and buy it yet. It's there for you to go put some hands on if you're there. If you're there like us at the show, where's the sound effect? Oh, crud.

Mess it up. There you go. If you're there like us, you can see it at the show. In Denver, in Denver, Colorado. It's just wrapping up. What else we got? We got, oh, and if you're using Unify, check out Chal Main. A very good friend of the show, Alan and crew over there at Chal Main Software.

They have a Unified driver for Control 4 that they have somehow figured out how to put, like, the video clips in everything inside of the control. Everything about ubiquity. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just live video. Everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unify everything.

So they went all out on that one. That's our CDia coverage there. There may be more. We'll see if there's any more news that comes out or any more things we can talk about next week. But I don't know. It's probably been a pretty slow show this year. So this is when you say, you know, it's not going to be slow. Next year is CES.

Oh, that'd be a good idea, wouldn't it? It would be. But it's not, yeah. Are you going to CES? I mean, it could be. I don't know. You guys don't sound very excited about it. I mean, I'm excited, but you keep telling me you're like, yes, I'm confirmed maybe.

or I'm 100% possible or like... Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, Gavin and I are excited because we're going. Yeah, I'll definitely confirm with you guys with soon. I'm excited because of all the people I've been talking to that will also be there, you know, just meeting up with them and, you know, people we've talked to, but we've never met, you know, so many things. It's going to be a great time.

I've never been to Vegas. Oh, well, see, I, who knows? Like, like, C.S. T.J.'s first time in Vegas. Hmm. It could be fun. We could get a bit some trouble. I might ride a tiger while in there.

Who knows? Well, I do miss our chance to go to the thing in Denver. What's the show? Casa Bonita. Casabonita. Casas, yes, yes. I know. They keep emailing me.

They're like, you should come. And I'm like, I'm so far away, guys. And I'm not going. You miss your chance. If I had gone this year, I would definitely go out of custody. Oh, well. Yeah, I'm excited. There's always next year.

I'm excited about CES. We're only a couple months. away. I mean, four months away at this point, guys. That's it. Four months. It's literally four months because we'll be there. Like, what day are we getting there, Gavin the fourth? What day are you getting? I mean, we haven't booked our plane tickets yet, but we got our Airbnb books. So let me write this down real fast. Like the fourth or the ninth, I think, is when we're going to be there. I'll book my flight tomorrow. I'll be, I'll book a couple flights tomorrow for various events. I should probably have got some cheap flights. We can take a ticket. Maybe possibly. Well, maybe possibly, yeah. All right, that's all that's going on at CD. We do have a couple products we want to jump to on Home Tech headlines, though. So what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it.

All right. All right, ERO's got a couple announcements here. They've got two products they announced it today as the ERO signal, which is a Wi-Fi. It's a backup system, right? So it uses cellular backup, basically, to get you online. And then the ERO PEOE7, that PEOEEE, Wi-Fi, X, is powered. access point, I guess, so those two things, let's see, the, the impressive thing about the ERO signal, if you have the ERO Plus 100 subscription, I think, yeah, they give you 100 gigabytes of backup data

during an internet outage, which is way better than ubiquity. I think ubiquity gives you, like, one. And then, like, you're on your own to fight it out with ATT after that. So, yeah, yeah, if you're on the plus ERO Plus plan, you receive 10 gigabytes of data backup during the internet outage per year at no cost, no additional cost. And then for customers who have more frequent out, they can go with 100 gigabyte plan for their, for their outages per month. So not bad, not bad. And then the Wi-Fi 7, the ERO POE 7, you don't need power cables, you just plug it in

like any other normal access points. It's POE-powered. It's got a, let's see, 9.4 gigabits per second of wired throughput. It supports up to 200 plus connected devices over 2,000 square feet. and let's see, up to 3.9 gigabits per second. There you go. Dang, that's crazy. That's pretty good.

That's not bad within 25 feet. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah, that's 25 feet. It's pretty funny. And it looks like you will pay for that POE access point. Like, it's looking like it's $500 when it's released. The Wi-Fi 7 stuff is, has been, I mean, it's been super expensive. It's because it all has to use that 10-ggg POE stuff to make any sense.

And that's not cheap on either end. Like the switches aren't cheap and the access points aren't cheap. I did see one story somewhere about that company InGenius, releasing one that was like under 200 bucks. I think it was $150 or something like that. I was to go together with that story. I forgot where I saw it. But that's one of the cheapest ones I've seen. So yeah, I don't know.

Like the stuff that actually is proven, the bigger companies that come over. saying genius. I mean, they, they, they, they do, oh, yeah, I'm a bunch of people's stuff, but I've never, I've never been a fan of their products, but you can get some, some Wi-Fi gear for pretty cheap from them. Ubiquity has one of, I think they have one that's what, 100 bucks or 120, the Wi-Fi 7 right now. So they're, they're probably one of the lowest cost ones. But I think it's tied to AT&T or something like that too, right? No, no, no, no, the Wi-Fi 7, the Wi-7 thing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, Wi-Fi. I'm thinking of a backup thing. Yeah, yeah, they got a backup thing.

It's not, I mean, it does its job, I guess. Yeah, the backup thing is pretty nice. I think cellular backup's going to be one of those things that people talk about a little more often in the future, just because, like, internet in general is becoming so necessary for everybody, everyday life that if you could just have a little peace of mind, that if you lose internet for even for a little bit and continues to work, that's going to be great for a lot of people. The thing that's going to be, that's going to suck for a lot of people is how much data people use. when they're not used to, like, limiting their data.

You know, on your cell phone, you're pretty limited on what you can actually do. So unless you're downloading, like, large movies or something, you're kind of, you're not really going to do anything with your data. But your home usage, so, I mean, you have TVs going on and cameras and everything else. You're going to eat through your data really quick. So, yeah, it is only supposed to be for emergencies. But interesting thing to think about.

I've always, like, last time we were, we had the hurricane roll through and we lost Wi-Fi for, like, a week because Comcast. didn't decide, well, I mean, what could you do? There's all sorts of stuff that's broken. They have to fix all that. But we were down. The internet's probably the least of your worries, for the most part. I mean, we're just happy to have power. But it took a week to come back on and not a little bit more.

But there's a lot of stuff in my home that does not work without internet very well. So during that time, I was heavily considering going out and getting an access point thing to try and hook up and do something that, I don't know. It eventually came on. It just took a while. I probably would have blown through whatever that... Easily. Easily.

Oh, yeah. And when I was on Rogers Cable Internet, you know, there were always outages with that. So I was looking into something like this. But ever since I went to Bell Fiber, I have like 100% of the time. It's never gone down on me. And so I don't think I need something like this again.

We've had some odd things with Verizon all on their end. So not the O&T, not, anything at my house. Some guys outside with a shovel did cut it once, but since then hasn't been a problem. Since they came out and fixed it pretty quickly, it hadn't been a problem, but like there have been some issues like randomly, and I say randomly, so you guys know I don't sleep, right? So like maybe 2 o'clock in the morning, I'll be sitting here trying to do something, and the internet goes down. I'm like, ah, come on. And it always seemed to be pretty late at night, nothing during the day. So maybe they're doing maintenance or something, but it would always

catch me when I was right in the middle of something. So, all right, let's move on. We got, we got some, some stories from Phillips, Hugh, and I'm just going to blow through these real quick because, I don't know, it's all right. They announced a cheaper lineup. They've got a essentials line that's smart lighting that's going to support matter thread. There you go. So that's nice.

They're integrating, so the parent company of Phillips had Signify, is that is? Yeah, Signify, they have their own brand whiz lighting, and they came out with this feature a while back to basically detect subtle movements and things using their Wi-Fi connection. And now it looks like Phillips is bringing motion detection into their lineups too. So your lights and your rooms be able to detect some motion and people moving around and that kind of thing. So that's kind of cool. That's an extra little sensor thing.

And then I think there was one more. Oh, they had like a hub or something coming out, right? Yeah, they had a matter hub. So Phillips is really kind of getting all into there. They've got a new Hugh Bridge coming out, and it's going to integrate with matter. So there you go. TJ, I know you have a bunch of this stuff. Are you excited about Phillips getting matter?

No, but that's only because I use my Phillips Hue bulbs connected directly to home assistant. So the hub is not necessary in my use case. But it is kind of cool that it's getting matter. There's a couple other nice features that it's getting as well. Yeah, it looks like, it looks just like their hubs always look the same. It's a little square thing, right? With a circle on it? Yeah, I mean, what else do you want to have to look like?

I don't know. You know, it's kind of like a cell phone. They all look like glass slaps at this point, yeah. There you go, Phillips. And then we've got, we've got something from Ufi. This is the most ridiculous product I think I've ever seen in my life. They've got a thing called stair lift for their robots. It's a Mars walker.

Now, when Gavin, Gavin told us about this, like, go check this out. He's like, hey, this robot can climb stairs. And we looked at it and immediately, TJ's like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. This is the UAP we were talking about earlier. The robot vacuum, now you have to picture this. The robot vacuum has a little garage that it can drive into. And that garage actually has all the little parts and pieces that enable it to walk up your stairs.

So you've got to have this other piece of robot vacuum laying around your house. And then the little robot vacuum will pick it up and then drive on up the stairs, I guess. I mean, basically your robot has a robot. It's two robots. It's like, there's a robot. I like it. I like it. I don't know.

Okay, I don't care. Unpopular opinion here, you know, one out of three, right? I think this is cool because if you watch the video, first of all, it will be compatible with multiple models, right? So, like, right now they said it's the Omni S2, but I think they'll also be adding other models. This thing basically drives to the stairs. Your robot vac drives into it.

It then, I love the way how it goes up the stairs. I did not envision this, but it goes. Yeah, it's a little smarter idea than the other. Yeah. And that's what I was impressed with, how it went up the stairs because it's much faster than I thought it would be, right? And then when it's got to come down the stairs, it will bring your robot back down the stairs. I mean, yes, it's another robot, but there could be so many other opportunities. Like if your robot gets stuck, this guy goes out and rescues it.

It sticks out the little arms and pushes it to get it back or, you know, anything like that. There's so many, like, little opportunity. I think it's cool. All right. You know. This thing is $1,600. Couldn't you just buy two robot vacuums? Not that cool.

Okay, take it back. You just buy two robot vacuums for that price? At that point, yeah. That's what I would do, right? All right, I didn't realize that. It's not that cool. It's not $1,600 cool. It's under $500 type of cool.

That's $1,600 American, so. It doesn't even vacuum your stairs. He just kind of like crawls up them using its little arms that. Yeah, this is silly. I mean, just buy another robot vacuum. My robot vacuum was like $500. I mean, I could buy three robot vacuums for this price. It would be cool.

like if you're, while your little robot vacuums vacuuming, this thing goes around the edges with a little brush and pushes everything out into the center. So your main vacuum you're checking all up. There's so many other possibilities, but yeah, not for $1,600. I agree, that's a little expensive. But guys, it also has a built-in fragrance system

that releases various scents while cleaning, including citrus basil, leachy, and peppermint? Oh, that would get rid of your spiders, wouldn't it? Oh, man. If it's Britslea little peppermint along the baseboards or something like that.

All right, look, if you pair that with the company that does all the sensitive dogs that Infocom every year, I'm down. There's so many possibility. This is just the first iteration, but I was impressed with how it went up the stairs, though.

That's what impressed me the most. And it can handle, you know, the curve stairs too. Like if it goes around a corner, it can handle that. That's mainly what I was impressed with. When those little wing things, those little wing arms came out,

I was really hoping that it would walk up. It would walk. You like that, robot on interstellar. I was hoping it was going to... You know how long it would take for it to walk up? Like, that's, when I saw the arms come out at first, I was like, oh, my God, is this going to take forever to walk up? And then I saw how it used the arms to balance and it just drove up. I was like, okay, that's much better and much faster. I'm curious what kind

of where it would add on your stairs to, like over time, would it, you know, like if we have dark hard hardwood stairs, would it rub the edges enough to like cause? you know, something like that are there, I don't know. But it's cool, but not $1,600 cool. I'm sorry. There you go. It's a, it's a stair lift for robot vacuums. Yeah, TJ, you said it perfectly.

For that price, just get a second vacuum and put it upstairs. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Unless you have three floors that you want to go and then now you're getting rid of these. I mean, $500 each, I mean, bam. Probably only does two floors. It's like, no, we're going to catch you out of it, too. We can't go up that many stairs. Yeah, are you crazy?

I think it's hired. All right, moving on here. We've got one last story here from Samsung, and it's further supporting TJ's call that Zigby, no, sorry, Z wave is dead. Samsung has introduced a new version of the Smart Things Hub, and it's not going to have Z Wave anymore. Instead, the hub focuses more modern protocols, like thread, matter,

and drops Z wave completely. So there you go. Now that I've got my toilet paper roll holder of years, Magic Z wave to hold a holder holder That the I guess Z wave is going to be dead So there we go Z wave's going to be dead

I don't get Because the hub is made by Aotech Aotech has Zigby and Z wave Sticks They support both of them That should be riding on the wall You guys should understand The company that made Zayotech

They're like We're going to go with this protocol And not that one Nobody cares about Z wave I mean that's the unfortunate thing It's not a thing that anybody knows about. Professionals don't want to use it. I mean, who else is going to use it?

Nerds like us, Gavin. There's a lot of nerds in this world. And whoever's buying Zuz products. I mean, Zoo's products are rock solid, but... There's a lot of nerds in this world. Yeah, there are. Z wave is not going anywhere because of... If you want Z Wave, everyone's just going to go to Home Assistant now anyways.

Yeah, pretty much. It's what it is. It's what it is. It's kind of unfortunate, and I mean, it actually worked halfway decent. Like, better late to never. Anyway, I'll... All the links in topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 541. We do have a pick of the week this week.

This one kind of came in through our CDA pro-spacings, but somebody has made a Crestron integration for home assistant. So Jay Basin wrote up a very long article about how he has integrated home assistant into Crestron. And if you're on the pro side of things, I suggest you go ahead and take a look at this. because this really does show you how much additional power you can get out of your out of a home assistant thing when you slipped up with a nice control system

like control four, Crestron, nice, all like that stuff. So I'm putting this in the pick of the week because if you scroll down all the way at the bottom, this thing's free. This Crestron integration is free. And he's got a link to his GitHub. If you go in there and look at his other repositories, he has a bunch of other stuff free in there as well. He's like a Hubitat

Crestron thing. He's got some a Shelley Crestron driver in there too. Smart thing, Shelley. Weatherflow. He's got some Ratt GDO. He's got connected drivers. Push over. Tailwind. Hubitat. All sorts of smart slider.

A bunch of stuff in here. If you were in the Crestron ecosystem and you want some free stuff, this guy looks like he's hooking you up. So go check that out. Got to love free. Yeah, that's crazy. And I mean, there has to be like three people that use Crestron and Hull. assistant together, you know, in generals,

and one of them just so happened to write a driver for it, so that's impressive. Well, I mean, it did open, it does open up, and I think this guy makes a pretty good case for this in the story. It does open up a lot more integration so that, hey, that's what it's about, integration. Who knew? Who knew it would be all about integration,

but here we are. Uh, all right, cool. If you have any feedback ideas for the show picks the week, give us a shout, email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can add it over to hometech.com slash feedback and fill out the online form. Project of dates. Oh, God. Is there really another home assistant release?

What did they do now? There's always something going on with a home assistant. Like, it's hard to keep up sometimes, but that's why you listen to this podcast, you know, because... And the home assistant podcast, too. Yeah, a home assistant podcast. Because they'll actually read you the release notes on their podcast. Yeah, I just summarize it, you know. You mean, Gavin, I tell you all the interesting things.

Yeah, exactly. So, so, yeah, 2025.9 was released and, you know, just, through some of the interesting things. They made updates to the automation editor interface. So it's actually pretty nice. It's a little getting used to for me at first. But now, you know, when you click on certain parts of your automation,

it pops out in the sidebar and you can edit there while still viewing like your overall automation. That's nice. Yeah, that's really annoying because it would kind of take you, like take you away from it and then you'd have to go back and go through a million clicks to get back to it. Yeah, that's a good creature comfort improvement thing.

Or, yeah. Well, even on the mobile, it's cool, too, because it pops up like a bottom, like, pop-up, right? And then you can edit in there. So the way, you have to experience it to see what I mean, but the way they did it is nice. And, you know, that was one of the big updates. Another thing they updated was the tile card, adding new features to the tile card, which is really cool because it's now becoming one of my favorite cards. It can be used for so many things.

So, you know, if you're not using the tile card, start taking a look at it and take it seriously because they pretty much added everything to it. As usual, they have new updated integrations. You can now create templated event and update entities, which, you know, just adds more power. Not a lot of people I think will use that though, but it just adds more power. Do real quick, the tile card thing, that's what the areas is made up of, right? No, tile card is its own card. So when you go and you add a card, you can add, you can like add an entity to a tile card and then you can start adding features to the tile card. So if you have a dimable light, you could add a dimmer to it, you know, you can add graphs to it, a trend chart.

You can add media player controls, et cetera, et cetera. It's very customizable. So it's pretty cool. Gotcha. But the reason I like it because it's a built-in card. So I've been migrating more to built-in stuff because I find they don't break as often as the hack stuff. Right? The hack stuff, with the hack stuff too.

Like, you really got to keep on top of every little one of them. Because if you just click update, update, update, update. Like, they just put, this is going to break in their description. You never would have read it and you'll find out after you hit eight. You know, so, yeah, that's why I go back. But the biggest thing with this latest release is the home dashboard. And once again, I mentioned this. It's an iteration.

It's another step towards them making the default dashboard. something nice. And if you look at the home dashboard now, it displays like, you know, summary of your home. You can add favorite entities or, you know, devices to it. You can, it shows all your areas and you can click on them or, you know, device groups like your lights. You click on it, it shows all your lights. And, you know, I still think it's not pretty, but that's coming later. It's functional. They're adding the functions to it. There's a lot for them still to do. Is there a home, like, is that a default thing? Why don't I have that? You have to, no, what you have to do is, it's not on by default.

You have to actually add a new dashboard, right? And once you add the dashboard, you now have the option for the home dashboard. Okay, so it's like, okay, so I had exactly how I did with areas, I guess, because I added areas or maybe areas got added by itself, but I don't remember. Yeah, you got to add, you added area. So you got to basically add a new dashboard. And assign it to a home dashboard. Yeah, and pick the home dashboard.

And it will make your whole dashboard layout. Yeah, I like that. It's way simpler than. like the overview dashboard or whatever garbage this thing. Oh yeah, it's way better than the default dashboard that it is today, but this is them working on. They're working their way up to replacing that.

I wouldn't be surprised if come sometime next year, they just say this is now the default dashboard. We like how it is. Wow, they should do it now. Yeah, they should do it now, but I still don't think it's fully complete enough for them to make it like a big announcement about it. You know what I mean?

But it's still good. It's getting there. and I just give them time. And as always, read all the breaking changes just before you upgrade unless you just want to upgrade and fix later. Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen, but it's not working. Well, just do the UFO, upgrade and fix later.

Yeah, exactly. Yep. So that summarizes what I found us important in this latest update. And you'll probably have three more weeks until the next one comes out anyway. Too many things. How am I supposed to keep track of all this? You listen to me. Oh, that's true.

There you go. It's crazy on the stuff that they have on like the noteworthy improvements. They've got a Husqvarner integration. They've got Raylink. They've got PlayStation Network. You can send direct messages to your friends from your home assistant. What? Why would you do that?

I don't know. I think there was even Mastodon updates in there and stuff like that. Yep. You can do switch port control on Unify switches, which is nice because that's actually really handy for rebooting locked up POE devices. or cameras or something like that, and you need to troubleshoot. Well, I actually have a script I created to easily reboot all my access points or reboot all my AI ports.

Yeah. So I just click the script and it just goes through and does it all quickly. It's that me having to go to each one and hit reboot? No, I just have a script where I could just quickly do it. I clicked update and it's still turning. So I haven't seen it last this long in a long time. But maybe by the end of the show, it'll be updated. You'll know.

Yeah, that's what I did. I was like, oh, a new dashboard. Let's go with this. But no, all right. Well, there's some breaking Zigby 2 MQTT changes coming in October. So that means, TJ, you're going to be busy. Oh, yeah. You will be busy.

Yeah. That means ultimately Gavin's going to be busy, though, because he's going to have to fix all of them. You don't have to update. So I'm just letting you know. You will. You will have to. I'm going to, though. Because I click update automatically.

I just, like, do it out of reflex. and just like update everything and worry about it later. I wouldn't say this is going to be breaking, but it's something we got to keep an eye on. I don't know the effects of it yet. But in October, they're going to make a, they have a new front end called Winfront. That's going to be the new front end,

and they're going to make it the default. Now, I'm pretty sure Home Assistant will be updated in advance to handle the changes in some of the URLs and stuff like that. So we probably don't have to worry too much about it. But they did mention they specifically called out Tuya devices and external converter. is breaking. So, you know, just keep an eye on the Zigby to MQTT. This is one of the problems I have with Home Assistant. Is there so many other pieces in it that when they update,

they can break, right, your home assistant, you know, so you got to keep an eye on it. I just thought I'd call this one out. Well, good catch. Good catch. Yeah. And lastly, I just wanted to give an update on Droplet once again, because, you know, I've been giving my over the last few weeks. But today I found out they got a new AP, they're, they release API updates. It seems like they're listening to us because one of my complaints about them is they did not, they only reported the flow rate, but they didn't give us like the overall water usage. Well, it looks like their API updates will now publish the water usage to MQTT as well, but they also have created Home Assistant Core update. So you don't

have to go through the whole MQTT thing. Home Assistant can discover it now and add all the entities and everything automatically like another, any other device, which I think is way better. just for usability and people with home assistant and stuff like that. So I've got the app update today, but I haven't seen the new updates for the water usage entities and stuff yet. They said as soon as I get the firmware update, it will show up. So I'm looking forward to that. So this device is just getting better.

It seems like they're listening to their communities, which I always like. Very nice. I don't know, my home assistant is doing something I've never seen before. Oh, but it tells me it's wrapping up. So maybe I'll have it back soon. There you go. Also in the home assistant news, Frient, is that how you say it? Frient now works with home assistant.

I've never heard of this place. I mean, I've never heard of them, but, you know, sometimes when I go through, like, the release notes and stuff, I look at the new integrations or updated integrations, and I find companies or products that I've never thought existed, you know, and I just find that they have some cool or something cool. This company had, like, I don't even know how to explain. explain this. It's almost like it's a light watcher that you could put on like if you had like a utility that, you know, when it's in use, the light comes on. So then it would just watch for

that light and they will know when that's in use and stuff like that. That it can calculate your usage like gas usage or something like that, which is a nice little thing. I mean, my meter doesn't have that. But in certain parts of the world, they would have that. They have a few cool devices. So, you know, it's good to see another works with home assistant company. And I know you'll be really excited with this. I was just scrolled down on and reading on the on the integration quality scale achievements. The nut integration is now a platinum integration. Nice. Nice. You get platinum nut now. Oh, yes. Yeah. Network UPS tools is like literally the oldest, I don't know, one of the oldest things ever in in Linux or whatever for monitoring UPSs. But that's pretty cool.

And that's where you saw the mastodon. It's reached bronze now. I had no idea there's a mastodon thing, but you know what? I'm going to go check it out. I'm going to add it to my home assistant. You don't know what it's going to do, but... It's probably going to spam and then I'll have to kick you off.

I'll kick you off our server. You know what it's going to do? I'm going to set it up today, tell me when Gavin approved somebody that's clearly an AI bot. So go block somebody again. All right. Anybody got any projects this week? DJ? Kevin?

No projects for me. I'm doing a lot of traveling. I was just in Miami or Oxford, Ohio again for like my 12th time. I don't like this place. I keep going back, though. I'm going to Maine next week for several days. And then after that, I'm going somewhere else. So just a lot of travel in this month.

So no projects for me. A lot going on. Yeah, just harvest in the garden. I got a lot of stuff coming to do. I got some corn today. Got some bunch of tomatoes and peppers. So you got to beat that winter. weather. That's right. We're still

a couple months off. We usually don't get snow until like November so. I actually, I guess technically over the weekend, I went on and was being the world's worst integrator and trying to, uh, trying to update it, trying to get that camera system finished off. And you know what? I installed a bunch of cameras and just knocked out a bunch of them. So I've almost got

this guy switched over from Amcrest over to Unify and I got three more cameras to power up, PTC cameras to power up, basically I'm waiting on a switch to come in. TJ, I think you were looking for these ones that The POE, it's like a, it's an eight-port POE switch that you can do like 60 watts or 210 watts off of. Yeah, I have two of them. Oh, I should have just asked you, I guess.

I agree. Yeah, they're amazing. But they've been sold out of the stupid 210-watt power supply. I know. Well, I happened to be rummaging around in this guy's attic, and I noticed that I had bought one and had plugged it in for the attic. And since I was taking these giant Amcrest PTs down and putting up these small 19-watt, you know, Unify G6. Things like, who's using like something like, I don't know, 20 or 30 watts of power. So I was like, I'm going to take this out of here and then I actually had a 60 watt power supply from another switch.

I just took that, plugged it in and there you go. All done. So now I have a 210 watt. I just ordered the 60 watt online to get that in. And now I'm going to be able to finish this job. Thanks, thanks supply chain. Thanks, Unify. That was my big discovery this week is that I could actually finish this job finally.

So I might actually complete a project soon. Wow. I know. This has only been damaged since the hurricane last year, which at this point, it's a full year ago, this point. I'll wait to see this.

Not that I've been working on it that long, but yeah, yeah, it's actually nice. Don't believe. It's actually nice with the, with, like,

swapping out all the cameras, and he went ahead and bought all G6 cameras and everything. Like, he's got G6 cameras right up at his gate. And so if a car drives in, those things just pick up the license plate pretty quickly. And you can automate off that. You can have known cars.

come through. I can tag his cars and do things, you know, automate, let him know who's leaving and that kind of stuff. I think he's going to be pretty impressed with this. Pretty cool system. Yeah, somebody on, somebody had read it actually linked to a third party power adapter that does the 210 watts. And I think it's like 30 or 40 bucks. No. For some reason, ubiquity cannot stock those at all. I mean, that's a beast of a switch because it's like eight ports. You can POE power it if you wanted to or you can just plug it into 60 or 120 watts or two 10 watts, I guess. But yeah, I need, I don't need 210 watts, but I need more than 60. So that's my next step. I don't really have a choice. But yeah, I have four cameras

plugged into that and a little wireless bridge way out 300 feet on this dock. So it kind of needs to live alone and do its thing. So I think it comes in tomorrow and I might be able to polish that off over the weekend or something. So anyway, I think that's going to wrap with the show. Nobody else has any projects. Oh, one more thing. Gavin has a... Oh, Gavin found a project. Well, no, it's not really a project.

It's a heads. So I just want to thank Apollo Automation. Justin over at Apollo Automation sent me a Carebox. And I got it this week, and it was loaded with all their new products. I get this thing. Yes, their LED screen. I don't even know where to start yet in this Carebox, but over the next few weeks, I'll be going through a device at a time and reporting back.

But, yeah, I just want to... say thank you and yeah i can't wait to get to play with this i thought you were doing the one more thing because the app the apple announcements are what next week right oh yeah or you know by the time you release the show the apple announcements have already happened you have already had your phone delivered yeah i've already bought the new phone at that point yeah yeah well what's funny is i have the other show edited i just need to publish it so oh yeah uncomplete project that shouldn't have that before we started recording tonight. Oh, well.

Well, no, no worries. In the next few weeks, you know, I'll be going through my Apollo automation grab there and just, you know, letting you know how much fun I have. Yeah, well, did you plug in your screen thing yet to see if he gave you any, any valuable gifts? No, because I, you know, I don't think I'm going to specialize you, but just in case I wanted to videotape me plugging it in for the first time, just in case, right? So I didn't plug it in yet.

I wanted to get it set up right and then I plug it just in case, you know, you had some funny Canadian, but I don't think I'm as special as you said. No, I think you're going to find some funny Canadian gifts on there. I'm pretty sure there'll be something. That's too good. All right. Well, I think that's going to end our showroom floor coverage here at CDIA, live CDA 2025 here in Denver, Colorado.

Best sales service we've ever had on a show. It's amazing. Let's see, it's loud on this floor. Let's just kind of move over here to the corner. All right, we want to thank everybody for listening to the show, but I want to send a special thanks for those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over at HomeTech. Dotfm slash support to learn how you can become a patron

and support us getting to CES for as little as $8 a month. We might even have a party out there. I've been seeing, like, texts and stuff going back and forth. People are planning things, okay? Guys, something's going to happen at CES. And what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We won't even have a show. pretty sure. I think that's how it works.

Anyway, any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack Chat, The Hub, where you're the patrons of the show can get in there. Maybe you'll get exclusive content from CES, from the trade floor, just like this. If you can't support financially, so they understand. We just appreciate a

five-star review or positive rating in the podcast for your choice. That's going to wrap up another episode here on HomeTech. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time. Take care. I can't believe you went to CD this year, Seth. I know, right? Oh, amazing.

You didn't even tell us. Can you commit to CES, but whatever. Well, I can. If I could just, I just keep playing this expo hall on loop. What's the difference? We won't even know you're not there. No, exactly. You'll make all these appointments and then cancel.

Just zoom me, all right? Just give me a call. Here's what I want you to do. Record you're in. It's sending me the wave file.