HomeTech.fm - Episode 545 - Too Many Lights

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

On this week's show: How many lights is too many lights? Amazon’s fall event delivers the expected, Ring will let police watch your cameras and look for lost dogs, Amazon Alexa Plus finally goes to Canada, Logitech POP is EOL, Walmart has new onn brand doorbells and cameras, Google drops the new Nest kit, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 3rd, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm South Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm Tijah Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, and it's Halloween time. It's decoration time. Boom.

You don't like the Halloween time? Come on, Gavin. Get all the decorations up, wait for the wind to blow them over. Yeah, you'll put them back up again. Yeah, I put them up. The neighborhood kids will kick them over. Then you got to put them back up again. And then they'll get stolen.

And then the animals will eat through the wires, you know, like it sounds like. Yeah, even the animals out here are tough. Like, I don't mess with them. Those little chipmunks, they're vicious. Canada sounds like a brutal place. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, it's getting pretty bad up here now. So you guys probably aren't seeing like the giant, like, the giant,

like 20 foot inflatables because that is super popular up here. It's been popular up here for a couple of years now. But they sell these like 20 foot inflatable like Santa Clauses and skeletons and whatever else they can figure out for like $500. There's so much money. Have you guys seen those around? Yeah. I've seen a Christmas time.

They would have like the 20 foot like snowmen and stuff. There's a whole street where I think everybody on that street got one. So, you know, it was pretty cool to me. But, you know, they probably didn't last long. Geez. Yeah, we have three inflatables. We kind of got a little envious of everybody else. There was like four other neighbors that set theirs up. And so we went ahead and set ours up. We just have three inflatables outside and then we have the house lights so we can change colors. I'm cheap and I don't want to spend any money on decorations. And so I wait for the holiday to go to be over. And then I figure out what the store has and I go buy it for half off. So I'm always a year behind on my decorations. See, I do the same thing, except I always forget to actually go buy anything at the store tomorrow or whenever, you know, after the holiday. So, yeah. So when you're decorating for a thing, Seth, how far in advance do you start that project?

Well, technically, I'm supposed to start this project this week end, right? I'm supposed to start this weekend, I think. Old of you, to assume he starts at all. Hmm, yeah. Yeah, I, um, yeah, I have, I have some stuff. Well, technically never took it down, so it's still up on the roof. So I'll have lights up there from Christmas that I can hopefully activate. We'll see if they work.

And then, uh, I got a couple of other parts and pieces, uh, laying around. I was going to fire up, um, this weekend and see if it works. And I've got the inflatables, which generally mostly work every, every year. So I think the last year, I swore I was going to get, I, I have them. I just haven't, uh, looked at it. the ends on them but they're the little like um you know those little 12 volt uh power supplies that all the outdoor inflatables have they come with they're like little wallboard things but they have the two prongs or two prongs screw on thing yeah yeah yeah yeah i was like this is stupid because they're

the the 12 volt power supplies just go bad over time because they're they're cheap and garbage i was just going to get a big giant 12 volt power supply and then run some wire to where you know everything needed to be and then just like have little splitters and and plug into the inflatables. So I have all that stuff to do that this year. So as I'm putting things out this year, I'll start hacking wires up and getting rid of those stupid plug-in things because I hate the high-woldage wires running all into like the little stake in the ground

with the plug. You have to mash all these little-volt transformers into. And inevitably, one of them pops out, e-ore deflate. So I'm like, why is E-R deflate? Oh, because he's not plugged in anymore. It's like, come on. So I'll be working on that. We're on Christmas time.

I don't know what I'm doing for Halloween yet, though. Those power cables for the inflatables are always the shortest cables, too. I'm like, why are you going to only make it like three foot long? Make this thing like 12 foot long, please. That's what I'm saying. Like charge me an extra $5. Wire is not that expensive for you. Make it a little bit longer.

They're so short. Yeah. I'm done with that. So I'll extend those wires. I did get, they've been sitting outside for a year now, but I did get some splitters for them. So I was just going to plug multiple ones in that, had the same power output on them or input and I go from there because I have plenty of power supplies power supplies are easy to come by it's just electricity what could go wrong uh all right well um

we do have a bunch of uh of home tech headlines a bunch of new CES we gotta talk about CES yeah yeah Seth are you confirmed for CES yet probably that's not no that's not what confirmed means technically confirm means yes or no maybe yeah i'm i'm i'm still in the solid maybe camp right we're only three months away i mean basically three months away it's it's in january fourth that we're going to be there uh and so it's literally three months away at this point i have to plan on this year you know what dealing with set is like dealing with my l lm here okay i got i got i got to write this prompt properly answering only you're using yes or no are you going to be at c yes you're absolutely

Absolutely right, Gavin. How did you get around that one? That's funny. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just looking at my prime. Sorry,

I'm going to get distracted by looking at this Amazon Prime shipping thing where they are screwing me over and saying I'm not a Prime member anymore because I'm not like the prime person in my family or whatever. So the stuff I was supposed to get tomorrow doesn't come until next week. That's crap. All right. It changed the subject on us. Yeah, I mean, is Amazon Prime delivering you to see,

CES? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Let's see. If I could save money. Should be there. I still need to buy my flight. I'm like 10,000 points away. Oh, see, you're not even going. The lodging is already booked. I mean, that's the most important thing.

So if you don't book the lodging, then you're basically screwed. You can always find flight. And we got the party house, you know. When we all leave this house, their TVs are going to be adjusted. You're going to have perfect lighting all over the place. Oh, man. I'll bring my old access points, you know. this event. Nice. Well, well, well, that'll be fun. It sounds like it'll be fun. Um, yeah. And, and that's

C.S. That's in January of 2026. I've got time, DJ. Three months away. Three months away, Seth. Before you know it, it's going to be Halloween and then, and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then bam, right there. Yeah, you're probably right. Unless you're in Canada, they'll be Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving first, yeah. Halloween, then Christmas. Next week's Thanksgiving. It's like, what? Oh, you don't celebrate Thanksgiving? They have it early. Yeah, next week. We have it next week.

That's not good. Yeah, I know. We don't, you know, but we celebrate your Black Friday, so. Oh, that's good. I want boxing day. That'd be nice. But anyway. Nobody works that time of year anyway.

I'm saying. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll figure that out and let you know if there's any, uh, if TJ gets his flight to go to CES, there'll be some interesting news there. Always got to turn it back to somebody else. It's not me. I don't have to make any decisions.

It's all T.J. Huh, yeah. All right, well, we'll find, we'll find out. This guy. All right, but first we have some home tech headlines. So what do you guys say? We jump in. Possibly.

All right, Amazon, they had a new, that fall event we were talking about. Guess what showed up? The new echoes that we were talking about. They've got another number of them. The Echo Show 8, Echo Show 11 are out. These are Amazon Echoes with the screens on them. Guess what? They come with the AI Alexa Plus assistant.

So there you go. I've noticed that some people have started to get the invites and receive that. We've been seeing that in the hub. I think Jimmy finally got his. So maybe it's ready. I don't know. I don't know. It's for real people now.

Before there was no real people were in it before, but now they're real people. And you know what? They've expanded their. testing to Canada now too. So, you know, some of us Canadians may get some of these invites, but the writing's on the wall. They have to have it done

this month because all these new devices are coming with Alexa Plus. And I pre-ordered one and it should be here at the end of, I think it's a 29th that it's supposed to be delivered. So they better have their Alexa Plus ready by then, if anything. End of October, November is when these are

coming out? Yeah, October 25th. Yeah. Exactly. Yep. So I got those. We got the Echo Dot Max. It's a little bit more expensive. It's what, $50? No, $100 for that one, and then $49 for the Echo Dot. And then the Echo Studio, it looks like a bigger echo dot,

but I guess has the Dolby Atmo, Spatio thing built into it. And that's 219. Also has the LED ringlight and I think a front display on it. And then Kindles, no one cares about. Okay, so we got new Amazon Fire TVs that have Alexa Plus in them as well. So not only will your Echo devices, your TV could have the new Alexa Plus Cool Kid subscription-based AI model thing. We got Firestick TVs, 4K.

They are running a new OS called the Vega operating system. It's supposed to offer better performance in addition to 4K video and support for HDR 10 Plus. This is interesting. Amazon's also saying it soon. It will support Xbox gaming, Luna, and Alexa Plus. So that's pretty big for a $40.4K stick. That's pretty good. And then we had some updates from Ring.

I want to say we heard about this earlier, but Ring is getting a thing called retinal vision, which is, I think, we're just phase recognition. I don't know why they call it retinal vision, because that's their eyes, right? It's your eyes, yeah. But they have a bunch of new devices. They have the Ring wired Doorbell Pro, 249.

a $200 outdoor camera Pro 4K, a $250 Spotlight Cam 4K, a $280 floodlight cam Pro 4K, $180 ring wire doorbell, and a $60 indoor cam plus with 2K video. So this is actually interesting because the doorbell is a completely new redesign. The doorbells have looked kind of the same way for, I would say, several years at this point.

A long time, yeah. But now they have a new look. They're pretty nice looking. they actually have a P-O-E option as well for the pro version. So for 249, you can get the Wi-Fi Pro, which is pretty normal compared to the previous year. But for $320, you can get a P-O-E ring doorbell pro. So that's interesting to see in a ring device.

They've had P-O-E in the past. But the only doorbell, I remember having P-O-E was like the Ring Elite, which is $500. And it was basically like the size of an intervie. Com, you know, it's huge. So this is cool to see POE in this option. And the one feature, I found this most interesting, was the search party feature.

So, you know, I'm not sure exactly how it works yet, but when you can, I guess, say your dog's lost, and it will help you locate your dog in the neighborhood using other people's ring cameras as well. That I found was actually pretty cool. So I can just look at other people's ring camera video to see if the dog. I don't know how it's going to work. Will it take pictures of the dog and then send you the pictures

or just notify you that was spotted ears? you know, if it just notifies you where it was spotted, that would be nice. Is it going to be your dog? Yeah, is this your dog? Is it what it will send you a picture of it? It's right. That's not my dog. Yeah, but only dogs.

No, it dogs. Not, you got to make that an example. And the best for last, Seth. Okay, let's move on. Yeah, best for last for sure from Amazon. This is the ugliest thing I think I've ever seen. And if you wanted 180 degree, camera and you wanted

it to be specifically from Blink you can now get the $99, or $100 arc camera from Blink, and you'll look at it and go, no, no, not like that. Because Blink has decided that to get this 180 degree view, they're just going to make a mouth

with two Blink cameras stuck in the seat side of it. This is the most ridiculous thing. It's pretty smart if you want to keep the cost under $100. Oh my God. It's really, you know, some of their, I mean, it's, Blink's a cheap brand, you know, so you can't really expect much, but, you know, it's smart what they did. It's not the nicest looking thing, but people are

going to buy it. It's on brand. I'll give them that. For a hundred bucks, I mean, you get a 180 degree camera. People will probably buy it. TJ, you're in the 180 degree camera market. Would you put this on the side of your house? As somebody who works for a lot of rich people, I will 100% see this in a lot of places. People love Blink. They're so, So cheap. I don't know what people like about them, but I think it's literally the price. They're dirt cheap. And $100 for a, uh, it's a full camera. Is this the actual camera too? I believe it, it supports two cameras. I think it's the amount. So you'll have to get the cameras. Yeah. Yeah. So when Blaine cameras are like, no, see. No, no, it's full cameras. It has the cameras. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. $100 for two cameras in a panorama. That's a deal. If you say so. It's not a, it's not a good option for the majority of. It's not, it's not a good option for the majority of. It's not. It's not a good option for the majority. It's people, Seth, but it's a good deal. You know, it'll work. It'll work.

And that's what, I think that's Blink's slogan. Blink, it'll work. I want to say it comes in black and white as well, which is nice. And kind of going back to those ring cameras from what we were talking about earlier, the doorbells, they have quite a few colors on them. They have the deep silver color. They have what's called polished mocha, which looks like a dark, but like a bronze, I guess, dark bronze.

They have night navy. polished night navy which is a blue color which is kind of interesting and they have a sandstone polished stanton which is a lighter and it's probably lighter than copper it's like a more i don't know brighter copper it's not as orange uh but that those are tj you're right they do look very nice it's a very nice looking doorbell now yeah classy so this announcement i think this was great event for amazon bringing out a lot of new stuff making a lot of new announcements i still have a lot of of questions because I'm curious how my helm's going to be when I got one Alexa plus device and all my other devices are just like, well, I get it on the older devices too, right? I don't think I'm going to get Alexa plus on my Sonos devices. So is that good. What's my house going to feel like when, you know, every time you talk to, it's different. I'm curious about that. And the other thing I'm curious about is the fire sticks. Now, a lot of people use them and side load apps on them with the chain. of the OS, are they going to be rolling that out to the older devices, too?

Interesting. Is that going to break all that? That's what I'm curious about as well, because that's probably the reason why they sell so many of them is because people are doing other things with them. You know, like, what's sales going to happen once you stop all that stuff? We will see. Interesting. Well, it has a good point.

I didn't really think about that, but I think that's most of the time I do see those fire sticks in use, people have sideloded those apps that have like the free TV channels or free movies on them. I have MB on mine. Mine's like a travel stick. So I just put MB on it, which is not side loaded. So it's still going to work, should work fine for me still. Yeah, but you're going back to your server to pull the video.

Exactly. Which you're totally legally obtained all of those files. Yeah. Of course, yes. Yeah. Oh, there's just Linux ISO distros that I have. It's just a lot of articles. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Let's see. There's a, there was, uh, all those devices there, all the kindles and echoes and ring and blinks and all that. Those were on the stage of this announcement. They did have one more device that didn't make the announcement here. Um, it's a $20 smart remote, 20 whole dollars.

It ships in October, uh, let's see, October 30th. And it is, it looks like a regular switch. that you can mount on your wall, but it's got a few buttons on it. So very interesting. This is a smart dimmer switch and remote. Yeah, and I think it probably goes on. It's probably battery powered, it looks like,

and it attaches via a magnet onto the wall, similar to what the Zeus has a little paddle like this. That's what it reminds me of, but this is more than likely Zigby or matter, a device that works with there. And you can program it all through, through their Amazon devices. So it's pretty cool.

If you're in that ecosystem, you know, a quick addition. Yeah, so there's Alexa, which makes me think it's only going to be Zigby, especially if, would it only be in $20? I don't know, I don't see it be a matter. Maybe they just don't give you the QR code whenever they sell it to you. That's true. It's only registered with Alexa. I think we need to put this in the price per button database, right?

Yeah, it's pretty good. Four buttons on this thing. Now I've got to find the spreadsheet because I have no idea where it happened to that thing. long con there it is what was the price didn't we have a a website for that I should know

but I don't know we haven't updated this in a while but I'm going to go ahead and put this one in as the I thought it was like PPPDBDb.com there it is

PPPDB.com Is it working? Yeah surprisingly I know well let's see this is the the heck

I can't find it all right it's Amazon basic smart dimmer switching remote for music and routines capable compatible echo devices required so yeah yeah hmm compatible echo devices required what you i mean so i mean can do you think you'll be able to pair this with something else we won't know i'm sure if it's zigby i'm sure someone will figure it out yeah if it's um if it's w-fi probably not we will see yeah i don't see it being

anything besides zygby it'd be crazy especially for that price if it's battery powered it's not going to be Wi-Fi. Right. Hmm. Okay. Well, officially it is a $5 per button device or $6.98 if you're in Canada or if you're in Great Britain, it's going to be $3.72 pounds, I guess. Three, not $3, but $3.72, pounds. Just so much pounds over there. All right. Well, I've got to add it in there. And maybe I'll go back and add the other stuff in. So that's cool. Let's see. I think that That's going to wrap up everything. Gavin kind of stole the headline earlier that Canada has got the external beta out for Alexa Plus.

So soon, Gavin, you'll be able to get smart Alexa and dumb Alexa in your house. Knowing my luck, I'll get the invite on like the 28th and the twice their eyes on the 29th. Yeah, well, they've got to make it work with all the Canadian accents you have up there. That's one of the reasons why it takes longer is because they got to do it in French and English, right? Like, we have some strict rules around the French stuff. So, yeah, that makes sense. All right. Well, that's the new stuff.

Now let's, now let's move into the graveyard section. Let's see. We've got a couple of things that have happened here. First off, Racio, Roshio has been teasing this, what is it, the outdoor power supply for your landscape lighting for a while, that it's going to have matter. And, like, I think, who's it? Morton in the Hub has been like, when is it going to happen? When's it going to happen?

And he's been complaining, well, guess what? Roshio has now been bought by Rambird. So now Roshio is Rane Bird company. So the answer is never. Yep, yep. Man, this has not such great things written all over it. No. And I have a Ratchel irrigation controller.

And I wonder how much longer that's going to run before they do something like cancel the API or break it somehow. I don't know. I don't want to replace it, but this is the world we live in. Yeah. The best thing that could come from this is if, because like Rain Bird's a bigger company, right? I mean, they have their own lots of different Rain Bird, Wi-Fi connected sprinkler controllers that compete with Rachio, right? So the best thing that could come from this is if Rachio just kind of gets integrated with

that line, that product line that Rain Bird has. And then the Rain Bird API basically becomes, or Rachio API becomes Rain Bird, or, whatever, either way. And they still offer the same types of services. Because I, I mean, at the beginning, I think Rachio definitely stood out and had some different offerings, but as time, we're on. Like, it just became a smart sprinkler controller like everyone else. And I think if you went to Home Depot and you saw a $200 Rachio sitting there, and then you looked over and you saw like the rainbow or the beehive for like under $100. It was a pretty easy choice of which one you were going to pick up and buy. So I think they were at such a, being such a small company, I'm sure they had to buy

fewer parts and pieces. They definitely, they probably had, I can tell you, Rachio has a better app experience and software experience than I have for my Behive. But at the same time, like, after I set up the Behive thing and I had figured out how the schedules work, I haven't looked at the app. I've never looked at it. It just, it waters my stuff when I wanted to water, and I don't have to worry about it. And Rachio kind of is the same way, right? So, I don't know. Hopefully they'll stay around and we can keep using their products because they do have some pretty cool stuff out there. But competing with the big guys like Greenbird and what's the other company out there? Orbit. Orbit. Yeah. Which is the beehive. Yeah. I mean, and they have like full lines of products. It's not just sprinklers, right? They have like hoses and all the stuff that goes along with maintaining your yard. So it's good that they're being brought into a bigger company. but I don't know. The Rachio brand may not be around very much longer.

I'm not really surprised because I think it was a few years ago. When I started seeing them kind of try and sell weird things to me, that just didn't make sense. You know, they were trying to sell like, I think at one point it was like an umbrella or something with light. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, I felt like they were trying hard to generate some money here with some of these things.

So maybe that's just what it all comes down to. And Rain Bird, like you said, Rain Bird has a lot of other things. And they even have something like the soil moisture sensors, which maybe at some point they'll let you tie it right into the Ratchel so you can utilize them. So we'll see how it goes. Well, I will say that Rain Bird, like you said,

being a bigger company, they have a ton of stuff. I'm looking to their website. And there's like a pro line, a golf line agriculture. The home version, like I've, I've known the Ratchew people, like, like, a home side of sprinkler controls and stuff, it's very seasonal. Like, they're only going to sell these things a couple times a year. But when you get into the professional markets, that definitely kind of diversifies your product

offering. And the pros and the golf courses always need to be watered, right? Especially here in Florida. So they're buying all the time. But, yeah, I could see how a company like that would eventually just kind of, after they sold every part that they could out to people like, well, How can they expand? Either they go down in price or they're going to get acquired by somebody like Greenbird.

They're a huge company. Yeah, I was actually looking at Rain Bird's website this week because I was thinking about using them for the design services for the irrigation system next year because they're relatively affordable. As long as you don't mind waiting forever. The standard service is 30 to 60 day return, 30 to 60 business day return. But it's only $20. So I might just do that.

see what they come up with to water all the garden beds next year. If you pay $40, you get it in 7 to 14 business days, DJ. And that's more popular. I got all winter though, Seth. Up here, there's a white stuff that comes down and you can't do anything outside for a little bit. So, I have

30 to 60 days at least. That's funny. Yeah, that's not terrible that they offer that service and just kind of going to lay out where the pipes and sprinkler should go. That's a pretty good idea. I'm sure they add so many zones They're just like, you just need all these zones

Because obviously they sell more parts at that point But I'm fine with that That's what I'm using right now for a lot of my drip irrigation stuff is Rain Bird and it works fun Good, good find All right, well, let's move on here We've got another product entering the graveyard Well, Rachio might be

But we'll hold out hope that Rain Bird does something nice with them Logitech the Not the remotes this time But the pop switches will soon become electronic waste. On October 15th, they'll be shutting down the cloud service for them. So, yeah, if you have one of these Logitech pop buttons that, TJ, you were telling me, only works with a few things. And a few more days.

Maybe what is the time the show comes out. If you go push the button, maybe it won't be doing anything. Yeah, I had one of these. It's been, I think it was like when it first came out, they sent me one. And I never found out what to do with it, because it was compatible with, like, seven things. And it wasn't, like, battle with Home Assistant, and I wasn't not using

a Home Assistant at that point. But, like, it was, like, compatible with everything, like, like, five different things, and I had none of them. So I was like, I literally cannot do anything with this button. Oh, here you go. Phillips, Hugh, you have that. Sonos, you got that. Do you have a Fritzbox? I don't know.

LifeX, you have one of those? Lightify, here's a brand that's still around. Weimo. So, yeah, I guess they're gone. And, uh, if this, the net, that, that, that, that, that, you have that. So not a big selection of integrations. Is if this, then that's still around?

I think so, yeah. I actually still utilize it. Really? Yeah. Interesting. I haven't heard. I used to you hear about this thing all the time. Well, what happened is it became pretty much a paid subscription service.

I think you get like, if you don't pay, you get like two automations or something like that. And then if you do pay, so I utilize them for my. security. So when my security is triggered, it will email me, call me, text me, but it goes through all the if this and that services to get to me. Oh, so there's like a free plan that you can get started with and then. But you only get like two automation. Two things. Yeah. I have a couple other things in there. Like, I'm over the limit easily. For $2.99 a month. Yeah, it's not terrible. I guess once it was not free anymore, people have decided they didn't need to be if this thing than that. So I just never hear this company ever mentioned.

Yeah, they were popular when they were free, but I mean, you can only run a business free for so long before you have to start making some money. And I guess this was the only way they could do it. And a lot of people stopped using it. And there's a few of us that's still. There's dozens of you out there. I'm sure there's, I mean, that was such a popular service. I'm sure there's enough people switched over that they're a sustainable business for a long time.

Because, I mean, it's just these webhooks and triggers, right? Yeah. And there's another number of services. is I actually use that were free at one point and switched to a paid model. And the reason why I stuck with them, I couldn't find an alternative that worked with how I wanted it to work, right? And this was one of them. Yeah.

I've had real good luck with Integromat, which actually changed over to make.com. You can check them out. And then if you're looking for a self-hosted version of all this. There's N-HN. N-N, yeah. I mean, that's a beautiful little thing. And I like it because you can actually just add a code block and write some JavaScript, like some Node.js JavaScript in there and get it done if you can't figure out how to use

their little blocks and paste things together. It's like, well, I can't figure this out. I'm just going to write some code and put it together. For some things, like for some of the services I use, if IFTT uses, they have like secret backdoors and stuff. like deals with these companies that give them full access, like real-time access. So when things happen where things like N-A-N would pull for changes or stuff like that,

so you have to deal with that, right? So, yeah, it works well with the services I use, so I just pay for it. Right, yeah. Make.com had way more integrations than I realized. And it was, it's fairly easily, it's kind of that node, like, N-A-DN is a little node programming thing. so. And the pricing isn't bad, but actually, you know, what I use it for still? I haven't

bumped that over to N8N. I use it to post when our show gets posted. There's a little like routine that checks in every now and then for an update on the RSS feed. It'll grab the new show and then that'll post over to Mastodon. So that little feature. Sometime, whenever you see it get posted over on Mastodon on the home tech thing. That's all automated through this make.com, so. Nice. All right. Well, those are the dead products.

Here's some new more new products. I put these at the end. Walmart has a new O&N video doorbell security cameras. They're pretty much what you expect. They're not expensive. 4986 for the video doorbell. And they've got a 2296 camera. These are what?

It looks like Wise, right? Looks like the same camera Wise has. Yeah. And I'm not sure about the doorbell. It doesn't look like the YSour belt, but it could be. I don't know. A little plasticy doorbell looking thing. But for the price, we can meet that. Exactly. And they're built to work with Google Home and the Gemini features, right? So you're getting a lot with these little cheap cameras. Yeah, that's really interesting. Because I don't know if we've seen that with other manufacturers, right? I know like Google has a stake in ADT. And so Google cameras work with ADT systems. but I don't remember any cameras specifically designed for Google Home. Not a lot of them, at least. I would say that, but I feel like we say that all the time, like, oh,

and then everybody integrates with Google, whatever it is called. And then Google kills off that API, and then they move on, and then they come back. And then they're like, hey, we have these new APIs. We've opened up these new APIs. Do you want to use them? And all the

manufacturers and developers clamor over to do that. and they kill them off again. I don't know. I just kind of how I feel about Google these days. Anyway, we can move on. You can talk more about Google. Because they have that new Nescam and Doorbell

that we talked about a few weeks back. Those are now available. Ness cam Indoor $2K $99, the Nescam Outdoor 2K, 150, the Nest Doorbell 2K, 180. So there you go. If you want a more expensive version of the O&N, that quite frankly,

doesn't really look any better. I don't know, the Nescam does, but for way more price, that does integrate with Google, go get these. So there you go. You have options. I'm not a fan of this doorbell style, though. No. Not at all.

It looks like a five-year-old designed it. Like, they had one of those, like, a circle stencil or something, and they made some circles, and then they connected them. Like, I've seen drawings that my daughter made it look similar. And they're so big, too, which I don't understand. Yeah, it is a massive. They're like, they're super long. I mean, I think they're like nine or ten inches long.

That's super big. There's not even like a look-down camera or anything on these things. It's just a camera. But it does have a battery building by default, I believe. So that's taking up a lot of the space. And one thing to keep in mind, a lot of the cool features you see with these things, you require a subscription, right? So there's a premium in advance, a premium advance, which is $20.

The premium's $10, month. So you're not going to get all the fancy features without having to pay for it. I think, I don't know if this is still true, but Google at one point, they gave you like three or five days of actual recording, though, without paying for anything. And if you wanted more than that, or if you wanted like certain detections and stuff like that, you had to pay a subscription. So I thought that part was nice. I don't know if that's still true, though, having used Google cameras in quite a while. It looks like they are bringing a lot of the old devices, even back the next indoor camera from 2015, are getting. updated to support these new Gemini intelligence features for the camera. So there's a whole

list of products all the way up to this new Walmart O&N video doorbell that's released this year and the new Nestorbells as well, of course. But that's pretty interesting that these are 10-year-old cameras at this point. If they're still working, they're supported. That's pretty good. I guess I can't give them too much help because that's actually one of the things we always say, oh, it's, it sucks that a 10-year-old product's getting left behind, but Google's figured out how to update their cameras. All right, let's move on here. All the links and topics discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes over at

at home tech.fm slash 545. All right, pick of the week. We've got a pick of the week this week. And courtesy of, I don't, TJ, I'm sure you found this on Reddit or something. Or Zillogon Wild. There you go, Zillogon Wild, your favorite after-hours site. This is nuts, though. This is a house in Canada.

Don't blame Canada. No, no, this is blaming Canada for this. Like, oh, geez. I don't know how to describe this. This, there's so many things about this house. Like, you approach it. It's a modern house as you approach it from the outside. And then you start flipping through the pictures and you're like, wow, that's a lot of lights.

And then you go to the next room and you're like, wow, that's a lot of lights. And they're like, wow, they get to the next room and you're like, wow, the electrician must have bought a boat. Two boats with this house. Yeah. And then you realize that every single wall in this house is like a shiny, stone for some reason. So like the lights get reflected and it looks like that effect where you put like two mirrors side by side and you have like an extension of the room that keeps going because you see

the reflections, like multiple reflections of all the lights. This is why even the home theater, which has too many lights, uh, is, the, the walls are all like hard rock and there's a, there's a couch in there, sure, but like, this whole house has to sound like an empty bathroom. The theater sounds like Probably sounds like an echo chamber Attached to an empty bathroom Like this thing is

This is wild I've never seen anything like this Yeah, it's so cold Like I can't imagine just being in this house You'd just be cold all the time Especially up in Canada I mean like you guys are just cold in general Yeah

I can't imagine being in this house I mean you can't even let the lights warm you up anymore Because they're LED So you know You don't have the heat from the lights in every room That would be nice But no This is ridiculous.

If they went all out, they probably have heated flooring, I'm guessing, you know. I hope so with this many lights. Geez. I know. This is the example of walls, too. Like, this is not just heated floor. Like, the walls are going to get cold. You know, it's like they just ordered all the lights, you know?

Like. So just like in the garage, for example. Look at this picture of this garage. This looks like a pretty typical garage. It looks nice and, you know, whatever. It's got a finish ceiling and stuff. Not many garages around here have like finished features. this thing alone has 18 lights.

You'll never have a shadow in this place. And this is not a garage that you're going to like work on your car. It's not that big, you know? And this is a house you're not going to work on your car anyway. But this is not like a big space that you're going to like do stuff in this garage. 18 lights. Even the garbage bins are taken off the floor in this garage. I mean, I would just leave them on the floor at that point.

This can lights all around the outside and the soffet, which I'm fine with that. That's whatever. But I just kind of have eight lights in my garage. I definitely need more. But in my garage, in my defense, we have black floors. So that just pretty much absorbs all the light from reflecting anywhere. And there's really no light unless you, like, you can't see anything on the floor. So don't come out of your bed, Fred.

Well, the kitchen has 12 pot lights in it. And the only reason it's only 12 is because they have two speakers in the ceiling taking up eight and four more pot lights going to have gone. That could have been like six more potlikes. I can't believe the AV guy got away with that. He got in the way of the potlights. Like, could he have centered those speakers between? You're not even center.

I was just telling us to say that. The electrician spent all this time lining up these boxes and everything. The AV guy comes and he's like, yeah, speaker goes here, speaker goes here. Not even center between the lights. Come on. Avey guy. What are you doing? I don't know, man.

In the states nowadays, like the electricians aren't even doing like the actual like can lights anymore. They're doing the the wafel lights nowadays. No way. And sometimes they're not even cut them in until after construction. It's ridiculous. So in defense of the AV guys, sometimes you don't know where the lights are going. I'm part of two builds right now where I don't

know where the lights are going in multiple rooms. Wow, that's crazy. And I'm just like, well, these are where my speakers are going. So good luck on that, I guess. And I was looking in the kitchen dining area. I was trying to count the lights, but the reflections off that shiny wall makes it look like there's 500 lights. Yeah. Yeah. In the, if you look in the, in that dining area, there's like a tray ceiling, right, where you traditionally have like linear lighting. No, they put five like lights, like arranged like a five-sided dye. It looks like a dye, right? Like, yeah. And then if you look at the, look at the wine cellar, there's more lights in there. Well, I can't tell if there's like 20 lights in there or if it's like. Yeah, that's what I was looking at. Because like, like, it looks like there's like legit like 20 lights in there, but I can't tell. This is something truly to behold.

like I I it's so weird like TV too high it's there too like everything in this house is is something Gavin I don't know anything about Canada because I'm American how far away is this from you uh it's what was that like four hours five hour drive for me see if we can book you for an open house you want you want me to go check out this house yeah yeah that's too far you can't go that way I like how the stairwell has a chandelier and then like 40 lights So, like, there's seriously a light every three, four feet. This is insane. Somebody made a lot of money on this house.

Yeah. Wow. And the home theater is just absurd that you'd have stone walls in your home theater. I mean, I can't imagine what this sounds like. Every room. Every room looks like a bathroom. It looks like a hotel lobby everywhere. I found the light that's out, though.

Oh, no. You found the light. I found two lights that are out. Yeah, in the master bedroom, there's some lights that are out. They probably went out and they're like, well, got to sell the house now. These lights are going to start dying. Yeah, people like don't want to replace their windows because they're like $50,000. But I know I want to replace the lights in this house because it's $100,000.

You realize the master bedroom has like 20 pot lights in it, right? I was trying to count them. But I think I'm over 20 at this point. I'm just going to do, I'm going to do the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and then at least one, two, three, four, five. So there's 35 lights in what appears to be the home theater. I mean, and it's not a star ceiling. There's 35 lights. And the bathroom not only has pot lights on the top, but it looks like about 10 potlights, but it's also got lights around the mirror and it has lights above the mirror and lights under the counter.

This is amazing. Somebody, I think the owner is afraid of the dark. definitely oh man you remember exhibit you know from that TV show West Coast Customs yes we heard you like lights

so I put lights in your lights yes it has like four lights in the shower what do you need to see in the shower that bad I don't know if you're afraid in the dark

Canada has the house for you wow there's even like two no less than two fire features outside on the back the back pool deck which actually looks kind of nice. I'm kind of jealous of the

blue deck. But if I bought this house, the first thing I'm putting in there is the Hunter Douglas aura shades, you know, the ones with the built in light in it. I feel like you've got to do that at this point. You know, honestly, it doesn't look like there's that much landscape lighting. And by landscape, I mean hardscape, because there's not really

any landscaping. But it doesn't look like there's much landscape lighting, which I find very surprising. It doesn't need it. Look at the very last picture, T.J. The very last T.J. Just pot lines? No, it's a drone shot from like above the house at night. And it's just lit up the whole yard, the whole house.

The neighbor's house is lit up. Oh, the poor neighbors. The side of the neighbors. Yeah. You could probably see this house from, you know, like the space station. Oh, man. That is too good. Yeah, well, amazing.

Lighting design is my passion. It makes the neighbor's houses look so dark. So, yeah, look at these empty houses next to me. What if this was taken during the day? We will put a link to this Zillow Going Wild in the show notes. You can go and review this. If you have any feedback questions, ideas for the show, or great picks of the week like this,

give us a shout. Our email is feedback at hometech.fm. Or you can head over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Project updates. No, Home Assistant updates. Home Assistant 202510 is out, right?

And Gavin, believe it or not, I'm already updated. Oh, geez. Yeah. I was messing around with something earlier, and I was like, oh, look at all these updates. And I started pressing update buttons. And, yeah, I was like, oh, I should have saved that for the show. But maybe that was long enough ago. There's another update out for it.

Let's take a look. Oh, yeah, there's three. Oh, actually, yeah. It's ready for Home Assistant 10. So I didn't actually miss this update. Literally today had updated this. And now there's already an update for it. I had about seven updates today.

Every time I rebooted a new one popped up, so don't feel bad. Yeah, well, here we go. I've noticed that if I up, remember we were talking about the BMW integration. I noticed that if I update that, the, if I update the Home Assistant app and it reboots or whatever, there's one of the, like, the Docker ones has to reboot or whatever.

that will kill the login authentication. But otherwise it's fine. But I think BMW did crack down and they're still struggling how to figure out how to get it connected back up. So on the reboot, it seems to take it out. It'll be back at some point, Seth. And hackers. But yeah, 2025.10 did get released this week.

You know, it's not a huge release. It's got some quality life improvements. They refine the automation editor a little more. before last release, they updated to open on the side now when you're editing things. So now you can resize that pane. You can do copy and paste using the keyboard. They returned one of the overflow menus that they removed. And they added some undo and redo key buttons.

So now you can, and that was nice that they added that because a number of times I made a mistake and I had to figure out how I did things before. So now you can undo and redo, so that's good. They added the ability to generate images using AI in automation. So that's some cool things you could do with it. They updated the dashboards again, tweaked it a little bit more. They added something called entity suggestions. So it kind of figures out what devices you'll interact with the most,

what entities you will, and kind of will display it for you. So I guess they assume it's going to know better what you want to turn on and turn off. I don't know how well that will work, but, you know, something to play with. How do I get that? Um, you read the release notes. It will tell you how to enable it. You have to add a little yammo code. I'm sorry.

Oh, no. Oh, it's a strategy type common controls. Yeah, it's not that bad. Not that bad. Um, they made some updates to the assist, added multiple, like, words and I'll added a beep, uh, beep to confirm when things have been, you know, are completed. Um, and they added some updates. added some new integrations. First thing I noticed was the home assistant core droplet integration.

I was waiting on this for my droplet because it was going through MQTT. Now they've moved it to a core integration, which is so much cleaner, so much nicer. It's a great product. I still don't like the fact that it doesn't show overall water usage as like an entity and home assistant. You just get like the flow rate and then the amount of water that was used is being used during that flow rate or something like that, it's weird. But I can still convert it over and get what I need out of it. TJ, do you have one of the litter robots? I can't remember which one you had.

I do, yes. Because they added a bunch of enhancements to the litter robot. So you may like that if you have it integrated. And they added a bunch of Real Link updates, which Real Link gets a lot of love in home assistance. People really like the integration. I can see why, because it offers everything. It actually pushed me.

I grabbed one of the Real Link. link Elite 180 cameras for my garage. So that should be here tomorrow and I'll get that installed. So I'm going to see how well it works with Home Assistant. Other than that, you know, read the release notes for other things. And make sure you check out the breaking changes. Lots of breaking changes. I know.

I know. I know. Because I don't read. I just update, you know. I live a dangerous life and sometimes it bites me in the butt. Yeah, sometimes it does. The thing about the breaking changes, a lot of times. it's very niche things like something you are doing like just a few people we're doing and it'll

break sometimes it's a big breaking change but you know um not very often right other than that you know while we're talking about home assistant updates a few updates came out recently um if you have zigby to zygby to mqtt 2.6.2 was released so if you use that with home assistant um just be prepared it's going to have the new interface they announced that it was coming in october it came quick um so that i upgraded i didn't see anything break but i also don't have a huge zigbee presence in my place so i may have just gotten lucky um yeah and that's it for home assistant updates i always find out about the other home assistant updates from you kevin so i appreciate you doing that every week yeah i'm not funny part is every week yeah every week i have

updates to i report on what i see you know i mean in my home lab um this week also there are some other major updates image 2.0 stable released this is what they considered the final like they're now stable version of image you know like now they've done all the code changes they want to get it to this point to make it easy to maintain so it was good to see this now they're going to be adding features moving forward it'll be so much easier for them to work with so it's a major milestone so if you use image um check out the update i use image for myself by I haven't used it for the family and it's for one reason. On our phones, like, you can upload your, your pictures to image. That's fine. But I wanted to upload the pictures and then remove them from the phone, right? Because the whole point is that we don't have enough space on our phones to handle all the pictures. You know, I want them to upload to image, remove it from the phone and free up all that space.

But they, I think there's a feature request and they said one day they'll do that. And I'm waiting for that before. I use it with the whole family. But it's a pretty good product to check out. Another thing released this week was MB 4.9. So if you use the MB for your media library and stuff like that, this was actually a big release, a lot of added features. Like just read the release notes.

There's so much in it. I went through it and there's a lot. So, yeah, check that out too. Nice. Lots going on. Yeah, it seems like this month there's a lot happening, you know. And I did mention before I did pick up one of the real Link Elite Flood Light cameras. You know, just some stats on it. It can do like, it's 3,000 lumens, so it's very bright.

It could do up to 6,000 Kelvin temperature. So you can have it like right to your bright white if you want, if that's your thing. Um, it does Wi-Fi 6 and it has 4K, 8 megapixel cameras on it. Um, that covers 180 degrees. So I'm, I'm actually really excited to get this for my driveway. I'm going to be able to see the whole neighborhood from my place. Everything. Everything. I'll be able to attract people going all down the street. I thought for a second that I had done something this week and to talk about in the project section and I was like, oh, it must have been on Unraid. And I went over there and I'm looking.

I'm like, no, I don't really do anything here. I have an Unraid drive. I woke up this morning and one of the drives was taken offline. I guess I had some read errors and stuff like this. But that's a nice part with Unraid is, you know, I just had to stop the pool, remove the drive, start the pool. It detected that a drive was, you know, no longer in existence. So it was emulating the data, which is great.

And then I just popped in a new drive, started back up the pool again. And it said, hey, a new drive is. We're going to rebuild the data. And now it's rebuilding the data. So, I mean, like, when it comes to, like, replacing a drive in your unrate server, it was so easy. Like, you're nervous the first time you do it, but it's actually really easy to do. I'm nervous because I don't think I'd get the right drive.

Like, I don't know which one's which in there. Oh, you got label your drives. You know, you don't label your drives. No. I have a spreadsheet with what port they're in, and they're all labeled and everything, so I don't. That's a way too much. Is there a light that can make blink on it?

Yeah, actually, yeah, there's a plug-in that you can do, and you select the drive, and it will actually, like, trigger reading and writing to that drive so that it blinks more than the others, and then you can identify what drive you want. Maybe, but I don't think I have that either. I don't have that, I don't have lights on it. You got to get the plug-in, you've got to get drives with lights.

Lights on them, yeah. All right. Maybe next time. I'm pretty sure. the rack in Ottawa has lights on every drive has like five lights on each drive. Oh, yeah, the Dell has one, but the other, the other one has just

the slim, the SSDs built into it, so, which I don't use for much. I just use them for cash drives, so who cares? I labeled all my drives. I have a labor, labeler, I use it. Darn, I thought I had projects, but I don't. I got, I went to Halloween Horonites, and then I got sick after I came back,

and I don't remember anything that I did earlier in this week so sorry i didn't do anything um this weekend i'm hoping to get those those decorations up for a Halloween though so well yeah yeah four weeks until like the Halloween actually is anyway so plenty of time wink wing yeah plenty time i mean it's not like anybody else has their Halloween decorations already up tj what do you been up to uh i've been doing i wouldn't even say end of the year garden stuff but just like garden stuff in general uh the uh the the neighbor that I do not get along with. We share

a strip of grass, which is just grass. I can't really do anything with it. It's utility easement as well. So, definitely they could just do whatever they want to it. And so I decided to put a bunch of mulch on it to kill the grass and plant a bunch of flowers or plants

in general. It's some bricks too. Well, yeah, there's cinder blocks until I get the border installed. It always looks like crap in the beginning, you know? And it's even worse because it's like 12 inches high of mulch because you got to smother the grass basically

and that little Christmas tree you see in the front, that thing is only like a foot tall and so it basically does you can't even see it from the street because there's just so much mulch. But the mulch will eventually settle down and it'll kill the grass and the next spring

it'll probably look a little better. But I went to Lowe's today and I got a bunch of discounted plants I didn't pay more than $4 per plant, and I just filled that whole area with plants. Nice. When it all grows in, it'll create a nice wall in between me and the neighbor I don't like. But she might be moving out anyway, so maybe I'll like the new neighbor. You get a nice new neighbor, and they're like, hey, man, what's up with this thing?

But yeah, it's just like an odd area of the yard. We don't do anything with it. I mean, we have to, like, maintain it and, like, cut the grass and stuff. And this just seems like a much better idea. I got, you know, mostly native-ish plants and they're pretty, you know, drought-resistant and stuff like that. So hopefully in the long term, I don't have to water them or anything like that. But there is a landscape light wire and irrigation already done in that area. So the plants are already irrigated because I'm not going to drag my hose out there to water them.

And then I, yeah, the landscape lighting is there too. So if I ever add any lights to this area, it's already. all done for me. Nice. Yeah, it is the tiniest little Christmas tree there. Yeah, it'll grow to, uh, it'll grow to like five foot tall. Um, so it's a very, very small Christmas tree. But I was like, what a nice way, uh, you know, when it becomes Christmas time,

we can decorate that with some Christmas lights and everything like that. It'll be nice right there. And so they told Gavin, too, about his Christmas tree. Yeah. Look at it now. And now it's like 80 foot tall. That, your little tree won't be big enough for another 20 years. It'll be somebody else's problem at that point anyway.

Yeah, that'll be cute. I mean, you could decorate it this year and it'd be adorable. Yeah. Look at that thing. It's so cute. It's nice. It'll all be good. And then the other plants are like day lilies and some daisies and fibrinum and lilacs.

So a bunch of different stuff. I didn't pay full price for any of the plants. I think I spent under $100 for everything. There was actually a nice lady at Lowe's. I was looking at some of the plants. and I was like, oh, you know, which ones are in clearance, you know, and all that good stuff. She told me, and I said, all right, well, the ones I want are on clearance. I guess I'll just check back later.

And she goes, which ones are you looking at? So I told her, and she goes, well, just go ahead and give them to me. And she marked the barcode, which means that it's half off. Oh, nice. So if you want half off plants at Lowe's, you can just take a red Sharpie and mark through the barcode. And that means you can half off. So now you know. See what happens when you're not.

nice to somebody. So, yeah, like, most of the plants were like $4, maybe, maybe $10 for the big bushes. They were all, like, in poor condition, you know, because it's a lot. Hourly employees don't really care about the plants, so some were dying, but they'll come back next spring. Yeah, well, that's, that's what I say, and they, I mean, eventually something comes back. It's maybe not the same plant. We'll find out next year.

That's my motto. And then I love a good deal, obviously, because I buy plants that are half dead for $4. And so my other deal that I have this week is we have a chain store here in the Midwest. It's called Menards. I've talked about it on the show many times. It's basically like a Lowe's or Home Depot. But it's also like a closeout store as well, and they have random stuff on there. And for some reason, they had anchor USBC cables.

They had a two pack of anchor USBC cables, three foot long. Oh, my God. you yeah you this is what you were talking about at that we were talking about this after the show like you were going to order the oh my god there's a whole box it's a it's a 50 pack 52 packs of three foot USBC cables and I got them for one dollar each so I have I have more than enough USBC cables that lasts me a long time wow I wasn't going to get the six foot ones but there were three dollars for a two pack and I was like I have way too many that would be ridiculous DJ why would you do that I need that one. So I'm going to give these out for the holidays and stuff. I'm just going to see random people. Here, you need some cables. There you go.

It's like pouring down rain. Some guy pulls up in a van. They hand you with a USBC cable. It's like, I needed an umbrella. This is all I got. It's all I got, buddy. This is a tiny box,

so you can't really do anything with them. Merry Christmas. Yeah, I wanted to go order more after I picked them up today, but they're out of stock now. It's very weird to see anchor stuff at Madarza. I've never seen that before. And they don't have anything else for anchor right now. So it must have just been the anchor

clearing out some old inventory. Yeah. They still look like they're fine. It says... As long as it charges your phone, I mean... Yeah, that's all I'm going to use it for. It says it's got a data transfer speed of a 480 megabits per second. So that's not the fastest cable.

Right. But I'm going to use this charge. So nobody physically plugs their phone into the computer anymore. You're not... Well, yeah. The only time you need those cables, or is if you're, like, using it for, like, a video monitor cable or something like that. You're not, or data transfer between, like, a hard drive and external hard drive.

And I have a couple of those cables, and I keep them, like, nearby because, you know, I use them to connect the monitors up on, like, they're, like, physically labeled different and everything. They have a three on them or four being on a version of Thunderbolt or whatever it is. But, yeah, those are completely different cables. And then these that you have here. Yeah, and I have some nice ones. They do 240 watts charging and all that stuff. I don't have anything that can charge that fast, though.

So, like, what do I need those cables for? You know, I have an iPhone 17 and I have a MacBook Air, like the first 15-inch one. And both of those don't go above, like, 60 watts. You've got enough cable. I mean, if you got these and you got a bunch of stamps, you could just send these out to listen to the show. That's true. no one in my luck is they're going to change those standard now they're going to be like congratulations we made USBD yeah like a small because Apple came out with a small phone and they're like well we can't have USBC anymore we got it yeah too thick yeah it's too thick that's all I got though that's amazing I mean you got you got all of it deals on deals this week got the plants you got the anchor tables you know if you're looking at doing some gardening and now's the time to buy stuff because it's going on clearance it's going on sale they're getting rid of all the the stuff. So now's the time to be planting stuff. I have to buy a tree eventually for the

front yard. We were going to, that's what we were going to do it the other weekend, but we never did. So, and it was a big enough tree. It was like in a 25 gallon pot or maybe even a 45 gallon pot. I don't know. It was a big, it was a big, giant pot. And it didn't, like, the tree looked like a stick coming off of it. Honestly, it didn't look like it needed this big of a pot, but I'm not, who I might argue with the people who have these things. And I was like, well, this thing, if we get it, we have to have it delivered. And also, I'm not digging a hole. So at least a hole that big.

So, yeah, they gave us prices on installing this tree. And then, yeah, we never, never followed up on that. Probably should get back on that one because I have no trees at my house. Some guy came by and he was like, hey, can I cut some trees on your house? I'm like, dude, I have no trees. Those aren't. Have you seen my house? There are no tree, not front yard, not the backyard, no trees.

Yeah, you need trees, Seth. I mean, I'm an expert in shopping for trees now. I'll help you. Yeah, you can win them in raffles. Yeah. I wanted a tree for a while. We had to cut ours down, and it's just never been at the top of the list of things to do. But this time of year comes around, you see all your neighbors hanging, you know,

their cool Halloween decorations and ghosts off their tree limbs. And you're like, even though I bought a tree today, it's going to be a couple of years where I can hang a ghost off of it. but at least I, you know, can put some Christmas lights on it or something. I don't know. It's just disappointing. There's no like vertical any, you know, vertical surfaces. So, anyway, that's going to wrap up this week, I think.

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patrons of the show can get in there and check out all the new things that have come through. You can see Jimmy and his, I mean, it's like the pre-release version of automated house, right? Like, I feel like we have that because he'll complain about Alexa and then you go over to TikTok a few hours later and there's a video about him complaining. So you can get like the pre-show, So I think that's worth the price of admission. You know, thanks, Jimmy. There's all sorts of stuff. The pick of the week this week was in there.

I mean, you can check that out. Owen hasn't seen the theater yet, so I'm really hoping that happens tomorrow. That's going to be amazing. Anyway, any pledge over five bucks gets a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you invite over there to that slap chat. So check that out. If you can't support the show financially,

we just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. that's going to wrap up this week in Home Tech everyone have a great weekend and we will see you next week till next time take care and cut

give me money Seth needs to go to CES because that's what's holding them back money if you don't give us money we can't go to CES It's just like, Seth just bought another fucking three domains. Not at CES.com. Is Seth at CES.com?

Is Seth going to CES.com? Just has a big yes or no or probably, maybe. Who knows? Every time you go to it, the answer changes. Or should Seth go to CES.com and it has the yes or no? if you try and click on, yes, it runs from your mouse. Gavin, Gavin, stop. I'm going to register that domain right now.

Oh, geez. Well, before you do that, you can stop the recording. So it can finish the upload.