HomeTech.fm - Episode 548 - A Sudden Increase in Raccoons

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

On this week's show: AWS takes down smart beds in the middle of the night, Husqvarna gives robot lawnmowers night vision, Roku adds AI to your channel surfing, and Unifi shows off new AI-powered cameras and a fresh Network update. Apple teases a HomePod-iPad hybrid (because of course), Inovelli lights up Homey, and there's a new Matter-compatible garage door opener in town. A pick of the week, project updates, and so many more raccoons!

This is the home tech podcast for Friday, October 24th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the home tech podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, and... Ah, Oz? I crashed. I'm sorry, guys.

I'm sorry. What happened? AWS wants to be down. AWS is down. Yeah, it kind of ruins my morning. I just, I mean, I don't, it's like everything works on AWS, especially U.S. East 1, which is like, what's funny is like, when you go to start up anything on AWS, it's like, that's the default region. Even if you're in a different, like, region closer to a different one,

that's kind of where like all the guides and everything kind of like start everything up. So it's just kind of default. And a lot of stuff ends up there. And when it goes down, the internet suffers. And it did this, it did today. have anything break? No, I didn't have anything break. I didn't have any customers reach out to me

and tell me they had anything break either. So nothing smart home broke because everything I have is mostly locally based. Yeah, yeah. No issues for me. And you, Gavin? Nice. So at work, we've pretty much moved everything to the cloud now.

So everything really love it when the cloud servers go down because my day just gets easier. Because everyone's like, oh, this is down. I'm like, nothing I can do about it. Like, I'm just, let me know when it's back up, you know? Like, that's all I do. So I, I didn't feel anything at home.

I actually didn't even know it was down at home. Now, I don't, I didn't test every piece of my smart home. But, you know, over the years of planning, I always looked for local first solutions anyway. So I'd go Zigby or Z way first and maybe Wi-Fi, you know, but then I'd look at, Hey, is it like, does it need the cloud to work? There are some devices that do need the cloud to work that I never got around just because of whatever. It's like, I don't care if my ratio went down during that outage. I wasn't using it anyway or, you know, something like that.

I can't get around those. But the house still work. The one thing that really affected me, though, was the Amazon A lady, she stopped working. Oh, that's weird. you know well is it I thought that would be a Microsoft thing but what was really what was really weird about it was um like my sonos um

on my sonos beam for it I had weird things happen so on my sonos beam it was like the account was totally removed you know when everything was supposed to be back up so I had to go back in adder back and everything like that that's that's weird on my on my kitchen Amazon device my echo dot the voice change it was a male voice i'm like what the heck happened there because i you know i have they're all the females i have the default female voice on all of them except the one in in the wife's bathroom i gave her the male one there i'm like you keep that one in your

bathroom be happy right but um yeah weird things happened with that when it all came back on i don't know yeah the only thing i was i actually was affected this is totally a first world problem I was affected by one service being down, and it was my cellular remote start for my work fan. And they gave me a giant pop-up, and it was like, we're experiencing outages right now. And I was like, no, I can't unlock my van with my phone or my watch now. But I just used my keys instead.

So it wasn't the end of the world. Yeah, and that's the other thing I do, too, is I make sure I can still manually control things, even if there is, even if my hubs, down you know like i could still turn on this light switch and with the associations it still works to turn on like whatever i may have associated with so things still worked um but it was still like just a little annoyance um but nothing major i i i didn't i i i could i had well i thought i was going to blame a2s for an issue i was having because i couldn't get my computer to launch like teams or slack wasn't working um it was just like it would just start up and after a few

minutes. It would just crash and I couldn't send any messages back and forth. I'm like, ah, it's AWS. It's killing me. And it turned out it was some weird incompatibility issue I had with some audio stuff I had probably messed up myself a few days earlier. And it was crashing core audio on the Mac. So I made the mistake of upgrading the other day, you know. And so I've got the new Mac software. And the audio stuff is kind of like the last thing to work with Max properly like after they update it just takes them a while to catch up or fix all the bugs that Apple introduces

for no random reasons like stupid so it turns out that was the problem not ADS I didn't I didn't really have I didn't experience anything else or down I do have a couple projects sitting there in US East just because again

it's the default and I'm too lazy to change anything yeah but AWS outage would have affected teams and stuff that stuff goes through Azure. Yeah, so I couldn't figure out what was causing it, but I'm like,

you know, leave it to Microsoft to put something through Amazon. So I was just like, it's got to be something stupid. And after Teams was crashing, after, you know,

Slack was crashing and all that stuff, I was like, oh, you know what? I bet you anything. It has to do with, like, audio because it didn't always happen around

like when I was trying to make a call or do a call through Slack or not Slack, but teams. Like, it would manifest at some point. And I'm not sure what it is. But after disabling those things,

I've been able to work, but blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to do that. Just keep blaming Amazon outage for not being able to work. Can't do anything, guys. Can't do anything? Yeah. I think Amazon did release,

uh, explanation as to what happened. I think in the end, it was DNS, wasn't I? It's always DNS. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think, I think the, the website, should Seth go to cES.com, that was actually working. So I now updated Gavin, so good luck. There is a counter, and you can't, you can't meet it now, so. Your counter stops after four digits. Oh, it doesn't. Yeah. You have way too much time in your hands.

I let you, you have to run it that long. I'll let you wait until you get there. Yeah. It hacks your computer at that light time. Well, I still, I still found out that you have. No code behind the yes button. No, I don't. There's nothing there.

I wasn't going to, you know. It could, it could. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to spend any more time on that. I probably should spend more time looking at flights if I'm going to go. So. I probably should do that. Yeah.

Got to keep that flights tab open. Well, based on the results of this website, nobody wants you there. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Well, the good news is my. flight is booked. I'm getting there early in the morning on the fourth. Same here. So, I'll have to

find something to do with my luggage and stuff until the Airbnb opens up, but I'm sure I can find something to do it. Oh yeah, when's the Airbnb? That's going to change. I think it's like noon, so I mean, it gives me like three hours. I'm just going to get there on the fifth. No, you've got to get there the fourth. We're going

to a dinner. Oh. Come on, Seth. Come on, Seth. Yeah, come on. But I did book a, I did book an extra day on plane, like not staying on the plane, but like I'm going to stay in Vegas for an extra day, because I think I'm going to try to put a Grand Canyon trip into there because I don't really plan on coming back to this area anytime soon. So why not go see the giant hole in the ground? It is a nice giant hole in the ground. If you go through, I used to know the area

so much better when I played Fallout. What is the town south of it? And for a Midwestern It's not that far away. I think it's like four or six hours away from Vegas. Oh, man, don't you know to do that. I mean, I know it's not, but you don't want to do that. Like, when I went out there one time, we went to the airport and the ladies like, oh, you guys, a flight got in early. It was like one of those early flights, right? So we're like, yeah, we need to rent a car.

And I had rented, like, I don't know, one of the geo, like, the cheapest car they had. Because I'm like, we're going to Vegas. We're probably not going to drive around that much. We had a couple of things that we wanted to go see. They weren't far from, from Las Vegas. And she's like, you know, banging on the keyboard, typing. And there's a huge line starts to form, you know, it's around. And, like, they were super busy.

And she's just type and type and type and type. And she's like, all right, well, how about, I don't have the car that you ordered, but how would you like to get into a, how would you like a Chevy Camaro? And I'm like, okay. It's like same price. done and yeah we we put we put a few hundred miles on that thing we drove through death valley and you know all over so that that actually made the the driving fun because it i mean it was fun it's a brand new camara so who wouldn't enjoy that yeah uh that sounds fun yeah if you're going

out there head on down to is it henderson uh Boulder city Boulder city head on down to Boulder city I think there's an airport there you hop in an airport there and then they they fly you out to one of the reservations that have like the glass walk thing and you can like walk on the glass over the giant Grand Canyon. Oh, no, no, I don't want to do that. Oh, it's so much fun.

I want to admire the giant hole from afar. I don't want to stand up the giant hole. Well, if you do go through, I would say if you do go down there, like Boulder Cs right there, next to the big old Hoover Dam, which is really cool to see. I would put that at the top of the list of things to go see. and they also have the Pat Tillman bridge

that kind of goes over the top of it and if you're ever there and you're at the dam and you're like, wow, this is a big dam and then you turn around and look at that bridge you're like, the bridge is almost crazier than seeing the dam. It's wild. So I would highly recommend Hoover Dam

and looking up and seeing the bridge too because it's pretty cool. Deal. Add it to the list. Add those to the list. Even more than the grand Canyon but honestly it's probably a better better thing anyway um just get there early because it gets busy um let's see fast Vegas oh yeah two hundred ninety one dollars round trip who wait come on set book it right now i mean i'm it's i would be a crime if i didn't book it fourth through

the ninth uh oh i left on the eighth yeah well that's fine let's see ninth it's the same price i think yeah oh it's cheaper 269 book it lock it Yeah, fucking life. We're doing it live. It's Delta, seven-hour flight, though. That's, that's kind of awful. It should be about six, but whatever. One stop in Atlanta, hot Atlanta. I guess I could do that. Do it. Oh, wait. Is that, I think, I think the way the site set up is I have to pay for both flights. No, it's usually round trip. Yeah, 2.91 is low, it says, for economy. All right, well, I'll leave this tab open. I'll probably have to get that one. Wow, it's 117 on American sites.

So, all right, I guess I guess I want to buy these tickets, guys. Then I'll ask my wife, I can go. Yeah. And then if she says no, just be like, well. The thing is. Easier to ask for forgiveness. That's right. Yeah.

Just remember, the airplane thing? I mean, are we going to be able to fly in a couple months? Well, that's a, that's a January problem. It's a January problem. We're in October here now. All right. Whenever you release this show, it'll be November. would already be moving right along anyway.

Right through Turkey Day, yeah. You only lose $271, don't worry about it. Yeah, exactly. $2.91, but yeah. All right. Everybody, yeah, CES, 2026, be there at B Square. It's a party in Vegas. Can't wait.

DJ, we should go to the Hoover Dam. That'd be cool. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. All right. All right. Guys, we have a bunch of home tech headlines. Gavin, I'm sorry you missed out last week.

There was nothing about home assistant news. We had nothing. There's literally nothing else but home assistant news. And TJ and I did our best. So I hope we held down the fork for you. We'd definitely burn that bridge. We're not getting any more promotional stuff from home assistant ever again. Yeah.

I made a few notes for you guys. We have to take this off air. All those free things we keep getting from home assistant. They called and they're like, no, you're not, no. You can't download it anymore. It's not a toilet paper roll. All right, all right. We got a bunch of home tech airlines.

What do you say we jumped in? Let's do it. All right, Husca Varna is getting the old AI treatment. They're going all out on Smart Lawn for you. They're going to introduce this new version of the 405XE. And these are going to have basically cameras, infrared cameras, and AI built into them. And I guess they're using some GPS on these AI,

and they're going to mow your lawn a little bit better than before. So the new mowers are going to be the 405 VE, 410VE, 430 V and 450V. Got this new era for the company is what they're saying. I don't know. Husca Varn has kind of like been at the forefront of this. We found out, you know, through that interview last week with Jennifer Patton Tui

that the reason all the other companies come out is because all the patents for Husca Warness things have started to expire so that's why everybody else is jumping in the game but yeah

this this looks interesting Gavin I guess it's not time for you guys why am I talking about you guys about mowing anymore you guys aren't mowing grass anymore are you? Actually we mowed one more time today

one last time well not one last time I have a few mows still left you know I got like leaves to rake and sometimes get lazy and just mow over them. But yeah, you're going to see a lot of these moor companies. As far as, like you said, that was the first time I heard of like automatic moors was I saw

their name on it. And I think you're going to see a lot of these companies coming out with new products and they're going to be iterating on it and getting better. And I'm waiting until the LIDAR stuff becomes more like defied because I think that's the next step for these mores where you don't have to use the GPS or the, GPS may complement it, and you'll have to run any lines or anything. You just program it and let it go. Yeah.

I'm looking forward to those. I know Segway, there was a little leak. They have some new stuff coming. Probably at CES, we'll see them announced. Yeah, it's one of those things that it's so nice, but I have such a small yard that it's hard for me to justify paying more than like $1,000 for one of these. And every time one of them comes out, and it's like between like $2,000 and $6,000. I'm like, well, that's definitely not for me.

but I don't have a large yard I think my mind would change if I had a larger yard but that's kind of I like seeing the competition because those prices should come down and the features should increase yeah the next step I think

I'd like to see them release some more accessories so like the gate you know the automatic gates and stuff like that I think there are some problems like not related to the mower itself but to get the more around your house that they should address and I think if they had those little add-ons

it would help them a lot too yeah and then I think you're probably making the product more complicated because then you don't want to necessarily have to rely on somebody else's, you know, Wi-Fi, especially in an outdoor setting. So then you have to, you know, create some kind of hub with the mower that talks to the gate. And so there's probably like a lot more complications with that kind of stuff. Built into the mower, the more just flashes something at the gate maybe and it opens. Who knows? Like, there's ways. For sure.

Yeah, I think, I think it's the equip right now, which is that show that we swear we were going to go to. TJ and right around the lawnmowers. Yeah, I think it was like last week. No, it's right now. It's happening right now. Is it right now? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I wanted to go to it.

I have a little too much things going on right now, though. Yeah, yeah. Same. My wife's been out of town a week, so I couldn't leave and leave Rosie alone. It would not be a good thing. She's not very reliable to get to school on times. No one's here. So, yeah, it looks like they have two new, two new mowers coming out in 2026.

A new residential line. and it kind of looks like the X3 in the little silhouette that they're showing. And then a new commercial series that looks, it's got like, it looks like the go-kart kind. What's that one you see on, on, with the four wheels you see all over, like,

they have like a ton of Facebook ads. Yeah, not YARBO. No, somebody actually made a comment about that how it looked exactly like one of the other ones. Yeah, yeah. It's a four-wheel drive and stuff like that. It's like, believe it or not, it looks like it's twice the size, too, of the X3, which is already the big one, man, that's going to be a big lawnmower. That's crazy.

But, yeah, we'll have to see what they come out with. It says you can book an exclusive preview here at, you know, somebody's got to have a picture of this thing because this show is going on right now. There's a bunch of pictures on the websites, but nobody's leaked pictures of those, of that one that, of the secret one. Huh, bummer. I guess we should have gone to the show, TJ. We should have. Next year.

Next year, yeah, yeah. Just so happened to be a bad week for me. I would definitely be there. You know, CS, meh, lawn show? You get to ride, test drive all these lawn more things? All right, that sounds fun. I don't know. They'll probably, like you said, they'll be at CS as well.

Speaking of AI, Roku's getting some AI. I know you guys are excited about that, but they're saying that their new software is going to help you watch TV. find stuff to watch on TV a little bit more easily if you want to do that even if you don't want to do that it's going to be hooked in. They're going to force it on you. You'll still hit the button by accident.

Yeah, exactly. They're going to show you ads. Yeah. So, yeah, they're excited about that. See you pro wrote about that story. We'll link to it in the show notes. I'm sure to be exciting for Roku users. This one's actually necessary because Roku voice assistant, whatever they had before was awful. I've tried to use it a couple times you know you always have the one client that's like oh it's got a microphone what does that do and i'm like no you're never going to use that and i had one client one time they're like no i want to

use it and say tried like five times to use it like this is awful and i was like i know i told you well i find with those remotes with the the voice you know control in it because they took off all the buttons right so now you have to use the voice to get to the channels you really want um it's usually a bad experience but i'm also forced to use it like Like with our Rogers or her bell box, it's like, I just want to go to a certain channel, but, you know, there's no numbers. I don't even know what the channel number is so that I talk into the thing. And then it brings up a listings and I eventually click on it and I get to the channel I want, all right?

If they improve that with proper AI, because that's not really AI, but if they get the proper AI on it where I can have a conversation and find the channel I want or something like that, that will become useful. Well, I mean, if you really want to know the kind of they're putting on this thing. I mean, here's an example. It's straight from Roku. If you add a question of,

how scary is the Shining? Or what kind of fish is Nemo? The AI voice technology will answer those questions right there for you and ask you follow-up questions. Like, I don't know. All work and no play mix gap. You're like, what channel is the Raptors game on?

That's all I want to know. Like, you know, show me the Raptors game. It does have, it does say that there's going to be some sports, uh, sports head phone, uh, sorry, sports updates. the most interesting one I saw is like live scores

that'll be in reminder features that'll be on there when you're browsing through games and that kind of thing so you'll see a little pop-up and you'll see even the new game is coming on or something like that.

Or somebody scores a field ball goal thing and the number will change so that's great. Yeah. Go my favorite sports team. Good job, Roku. Yay. All right.

Roku did it. They saw the TV interface. Speaking of solving things, this may solve something for T.J. Third reality, which is all capital letters in one word, has released this new garage door opener for $50 old. And it's got a tilt sensor. It's Matter certified. Pretty easy to install.

And it's compatible with pretty much everything. Well, of course it's matter because it works with everything. Yeah. Compatible with Alexa, Apple, Google, everybody. Homey, too. Home assistant, too. So, yeah, everybody. TJ, did you take a look at this thing?

Is this going to work for you? You like it? I think this is actually smart. I think that third reality took hints from me and they listened to this podcast. Yeah, probably. Because if you, if you remember, years ago, I used a switchbot, little push button switchbot thing to trigger my garage door. Yeah. Would you say?

I didn't want to say that out loud, but to trigger. It's a family show, Gavin. I used the finger bot. mm-hmm to trigger my garage door which is literally what this thing is it's just like it's like a little button that just pushes a button or a little thing that pushes a button

and it's got a garage door tilt sensor and like that's it this is genius for $50 this is literally going to be compatible with every garage store ever you don't like you don't have to worry about encryption you don't have to worry about relays I mean this is smart

yeah it's a little stick finger that reaches out press the button there you go I mean, that's all you need. What else do you need? It's going to battle with anything. You could just put, you could put your car remote in this if you wanted to. I mean, that's pretty cool.

I love that's like it's a little dedicated, like, box that you can put it in. Like, I know, you're, you're, listener of the show. You're listening, you're thinking, like, this is a little robot with a little dialing one that comes out and slaps itself onto the thing on the wall. No, no. You get one of the remote, the visor remotes, and you put it in its, like, own little bespoke little box, and it sits in the box. And it sits in the box

And there's a finger that comes down And presses it from the top It legit looks like a kitchen-up line It does, it does Like it does something Like it lasers bread or something I don't know what it does, but Feels like an over-engineered button pusher

Well, I mean, is it though? I mean, it's got to push something You know what, the finger box cheaper Finger box cheaper Just tape it to your opener And let it push it away But it doesn't come with this nice little house that your thing can live in

and it doesn't come with a tilt sensor so you know it is interesting I've been following third reality for a while I like a lot of their products this is the first product I've ever seen that it's not Zigby

actually sorry so that's not correct their keyboard is not Zigby either but this is the smart home product in general though this is the first non Zigby device I've seen from them I don't know if that's true though let's see it's matter It's matter over Wi-Fi.

Yeah. There you go. And it's crazy because third reality in general used to own and release Zygby devices. That's how I knew them, so. It looks like they have a keyboard

MK1. They have a smart plug, M1M3, uh, smart switch, Gen 3, a smart kit MK1, the garage sensor,

a smart color nightlight and a bridge MZ1 and a night, another night light, but it's not color, uh, that are all matter over Wi-Fi. So yeah. Great.

They have two matter over thread devices, including the night light kit, not color one, and a smart switch, MT1. So there is, I guess I just gotta pay more attention. Their third reality is really kicking up,

kicking up the notch on these. They've got a ton of stuff here. It's kind of impressive, honestly. Like, there's a USB smart clock. I don't know why you would want this, but. Why not?

It's a USB, like, it looks like a USB plug thing that you would plug into, say like an apple, an old Apple charger, that you weren't using anymore and it has a clock on it. There you go.

I mean, why not? It's their own, I suppose. Interesting. Oh, there you go. Let's take a look at what else is new. Oh, yeah. I mean, not a week can go by without ubiquity launching one or two things.

And in this case, they launched the new network software 9.5, which honestly I was going to pass in this story because they always release updates to the network software. No. But the little channel AI thing that they have, where it goes through and, like, identifies,

they've been working on the interface for this a lot, and I don't know, it's getting cool. Like, it's got little segments that it has a nice little graphical interface and shows you where channels are having interference and where the access point best can live and that kind of thing. So I think it's a pretty good idea. I can speak for that channel AI. I actually used it.

When it first came out, I used it on my setup. And it actually improved my signal strength throughout my house. so whatever they did uh i liked i'm happy with it nice they're also have enhanced multicast uh support and service tools that go along with that so if you have uh i know everybody has a need for multicast um if if any updates any updates to that problem uh which you know basically affects what sonos uh apple tv that kind of stuff um you're you're gonna want to update for that uh a stronger role roaming and device association. So that's always welcome.

People love that roaming feature. And then, let's see, some more reporting and anomaly things. So, I know, the software, the thing that really impressed me with the channel AI and how well that interface, it's not really AI, right? It's just like figures out where the interference is not

and puts the access point there. But they do a good job of visually showing you why the access point decided to switch to that channel, right? So, hardware-wise, they dropped a bunch of cameras on us. And starting with the G6 ProTurit, they have a G6 ProDome, and an AI multi-sensor 4, all interesting. And the first two, the ProDome, ProTurret, those make sense. The ProDome is available, I think, now, $4.99.

ProTurt comes out January 2026, 479. those look pretty nice decent size sensor 4KPOE plus cameras and it's got the multi-tops AI engine so this is the one it has a built-in optical zoom too

so that's kind of nice it gives you a little different options than the current G6 turrets but the multi-sensor 4 did you guys look at this thing comes on in... Yeah the thing is crazy with them

January, it comes out in December it comes on the end of the year supposedly it's four cameras in one and I don't know I guess it would make sense to have in like certain locations like a parking garage or something where you need to look in all different directions

yeah four cameras all in one and it's like a 360 view thing that pops up in there and you can switch back and forth the cameras weird looking product but interesting I mean I could see a use case for it for sure yeah this makes way more sense to me

than like a fish eye camera or something I don't like the fish eye cameras this actually makes sense that I can see this being used in a lot of places specifically I have an automotive shop that I do a lot of work with and you could basically put this in a couple different areas

and eliminate a couple of cameras. Yeah. Well, it's got synchronized multi-view imaging. Camera looks each four different directions. Is there 4K, 8 megapixel sensors? And I don't know, looks weird, but it looks like a dish or something. I don't know.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I didn't see a price on that one. Yeah, not a price on that one. Comes out, uh, end of the year, it says. So we'll see. We still have that, well, yeah, the debt, the wager on the, uh, the UAV. Have we seen any prices on those? Nah, I haven't seen anything about it.

Ah, all right. All right. There's somebody in the, uh, comments on one of the ubiquity posts somewhere, I'm sure on Reddit or something. They were complaining. They're like, is anybody just, like, dislike how many, like, cameras, ubiquit's coming out with. It's kind of annoying to, like, decide which cameras are

I was like, no, they're like a legit camera company. They need like two dozen options for cameras at all times, and they need to be able to keep them in stock. I mean, that's the problem at those points. You can't, especially the accessories, like if you need a junction box or something, ubiquity really struggles with that stuff still. And like, you don't want that from a camera company.

You want to be able to just go buy the products you want, and they still have not figured out that process. Yeah. I will say they're, I mean, if you look at a, a Chinese, your average Chinese camera company, they'll have about, I don't know, three to 400 skews, different skews of cameras. So many.

So. So. So. You don't need that many. No. But ubiquitous has done a pretty good job of dialing that back to the couple handful of cameras that you may need. They could do better, like you said. Definitely could do better. But for the price point they're coming in at,

and the software that runs behind it, I think they're doing a decent job. Can't complain with the G6 stuff. That has all a little, Uh, like, we put in, uh, that client put in, um, uh, what was it? G6 turrets, uh, like up by his driveway. We, we swapped out some like Amcraft cameras. And like cars will be driving out. I can't even read the license plate on the stupid thing and it picks up the license plate. And I know it's right because it is his license plate and I've checked it before. So I was like, I just can't

believe how quickly or how easily the whatever sensor in there is, is using the pixels and identifying a license plate. It is driving. Cars are driving by on the street and it's picking have their license plate. I'm like, that's, that's wild. Yeah. So fun, fun stuff. All right, let's move on here. Big news from Innevelli. They work with homie now. Not for homie, but they work with homie. So you got Innevelli? You got homie? Um, guess what? You can use them both together now. So that's nice. Yeah, good quality of life improvement, right? Especially if you want to be able to use a high quality switch like Inabelli. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They had, they do, they are showing off this keypad, though, which I don't think, uh, exists yet. So, yeah, I was looking at it.

about that. Yeah, I saw that picture and I was like, oh, they got the keypad, but yeah, that doesn't exist yet on the image. No. But, you know, it's good that they've joined the works with homie program, I guess. Yeah, it's always good to see. Maybe one day they'll join works with home assistant, but I think there's a little, a little drama there, so maybe not. It's because they have, they both have online communities and they can't, they can't exist at the same time. just implode. That's funny. The Inevelli crowd is fighting home assistant. Oh my gosh.

It's full on riot. All right. Let's move on. We've got a couple of interesting rumors. We've been hearing about this stupid app, I mean, sorry, this Apple Home Hub thing that's supposed to come out. It's a home pod with a seven-inch screen, reportedly. And maybe, maybe even have a robotic arm. According to one guy who claims it's going to have a robotic arm, I don't understand it.

It might even cost $350. There's going to be two versions that are reportedly floating around in testing, including a wall-mounted panel and a tabletop model that resembles a screened-equipped HomeBod Mini. So not clear right now which one is going to be the $350 one. But the rumor is it's going to rise sometime next spring, 26, with the target price of around $350. So that should be interesting. I figured if it got a robotic arm.

it would cost a lot more than that. Yeah, I mean, at least like $1,500 from Apple, right? Yeah, exactly. This is interesting. I think I would want something like this, and actually I do want something like this, but I don't want it to be Siri because Siri's not good. Yeah.

Like, I mean, I don't even want to spend this much on a Google product, and Google Gemini is pretty good. But obviously, Google's not very good at supporting hardware making it. But I don't know. It just seems like too much for what Siri is capable of. Well, I mean, it's nice that it has a touchscreen because then you don't have to use Siri at all. It's just basically an iPad.

It's just HomeKit then. Or some kind of dashboard related to HomeKit. I don't know. Interesting proposition. The other Apple news that I saw floated around today, this is over the verge. Apple's new M5 powered iPad Pro is the first iPad to officially support thread. It comes with the Apple's new N1 wireless networking chip,

which adds Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and thread. And every, you know, we see this every time this pops up. Oh, the iPhones had one of the iPhones or one of the models had the N1 in it. I think the air has it in it. And everybody keeps talking about,

like, that's, that's going to be used for being a home thing, home controller or something. I'm not convinced, but you guys, you guys think we'll ever see it be a home controller? I have my theories, but. The iPad Pro, that's the expensive one. though like yeah yeah in five i need to do something with it when it can't be a good

i know us regular people probably can't even afford one of those all right so my theory on this whole n1 thing right since it's in the air and the new act like they're seeding these things out there the phones and everything and have a thread radio on them but uh if you guys remember when we when we talked to uh was it was it with daniel over there and uh he he was telling us about matter and he mentioned one day that they were doing like this little matter messages thing. I think what they're going to use this for is low-powered messaging between a sleepy device and the internet, right? And so, like, you'll have your home pod or your Apple TV sitting over there that has this, you know, thread equipped radio or whatever.

It already has it in there. It should already have it in there. And then you got your phone sitting there. And your phone, instead of spinning up the Wi-Fi radio, which is very costly and expensive, it can just sit there on this thread radio and get all those push notifications and all those little small little messages hitting in there has nothing to do with your home. It is on the home network, right? Because it's in your account and everything. It did sign into that.

But sitting there, saving battery life, connected to your computer at work, whatever, it's going to use that for those little push notifications. And they'll be able to eke out another two hours on the battery over the next five years or something like that. So yeah, keep an eye on that. I really think that's probably this is about more than the home. Like, it's great that it can be used for the home.

but I have a feeling that that radio is going to be used for sending low-powered messages into the device that's sleeping and doing things like that. So keep an eye on it. Don't tell anybody, though. That's my secret. Makes sense. Yeah. It's practical.

Apple's really practical like that. And the battery life on things are just going to take priority over anything else. They're not going to make their home app any better. Why would they do that? It's absurd. All right. The other links to topics we discuss tonight can be found over on our show notes

at humtech.com slash 548. All right, nothing but a message from Jim encouraging us to publish a location of the Airbnb, TJ rented. No, thank you. Jim, we're not going to be doing that. Well, it depends. Maybe if you contribute to Patreon.

Oh, yeah, we'll put it at a level. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. We'll put it as a $5,000 level on Patreon. If you give us $5,000, I'll tell you the location where Gavin's going to be sleeping. And this is totally legal in Vegas, from what I understand, right? Wait, how much of that $5,000 am I getting? None.

Well, it depends on what services you're offering Gavin. None. All right. This is where Gavin's sleeping. You can go in. Just sleep right there, cuddle up next to him. All right. All right, well, we do have a pick of the week, though.

And this is courtesy of TJ. TJ, we were just praising the G6 cameras and their AI abilities, but it turns out, is your doorbell? It's your doorbell, I guess, that saw someone at your front door? And it's Halloween time. It wasn't someone. It was something.

Yeah, it was a ghost. I have a ghost hanging by my porch. And, you know, the people notification, no matter what platform you are on is never perfect. I like each platform does a little, you know, different work and, and how they actually process those. I think ubiquity is pretty good, but still has a lot of false positives, uh, like this ghost. I also have a giant inflatable gargoyle in my yard, uh, that constantly triggers the, uh, unify person alert as well. So, uh, whenever it's windy, uh, I get notifications from the ghost and the

gargoyle. So it's a spooky time of year. Doesn't doesn't protect have, I thought they had something in there. where you could submit it. Yeah. Can't you submit it to their? I honestly don't know. I did not try. I think you can, but they have released a few updates for the AI port recently.

Like, their person detection and animal detection was pretty good, but with the recent updates they released, now a rock on my lawn keeps triggering my camera. It's not like the rocks moving or anything, but it keeps thinking that rocks an animal for some reason. even the light on my front porch it keeps thinking as a person

it got worse it's like the latch on my gate door it thinks as a person too for some reason so they're obviously working on it but it was pretty good and then they ruined it so now they have something to fix it's going to keep them busy

I was looking through I found an interesting image as I was you know they had that little find anything interface now like with the AI triggers and everything. Like you can just click like if you want to find animals and only animals, you can click that and see all the dogs that walk by

in the front yard. Have you guys seen that? Yes. All right. So like this is, I opened it up the other day and like, oh, there's some wildlife going on here. Where's like?

Oh, there it is. Some wildlife going over here, three in the morning. Oh, yeah. It looks like my backyard, but you got some different animals. Is that dog? No, those are two raccoons.

Oh, bottom right, oh, there's only white dog. Oh, man. Oh, what are those raccoons doing? Oh, you're going to have seven raccoons soon. They're going to have a lot of raccoons, yeah. Oh, this is Nature Channel. Yeah. It's pretty funny out there.

There's a lot more raccoons soon. But, yeah, it's, it's, the AI stuff in picking up when it, what's funny for me, too, is, is when it decides to pick up someone's face and take a snapshot of them because it can do it with just a few pixels and a lot of times like people are just like staring up at a camera just kind of looking over like not really you're not posing for a picture so it gets the most awful headshots of people as they're walking by with their mouths open or something it's quite funny I get a good laugh out of that one there's a lot of pictures of me you know at at uh at client's house that's walking around staring at the cameras because you know I have to have to see if they're working and

following me around, but of course it picks the worst pictures of me up, so. All right, well, let's move on here. If you have any feedback questions, the idea of the show, picks of the week. Give us a shout. Email, that address is feedback at HombTech.com, or you can head on over to Hometech.com slash feedback

and fill out the online form. All right, uh, project updates. Um, I, I actually did something. What I do? What I do? Stop. Wait, did you start? Did you work on or did you finish?

I did. You can still edit this, Seth. You don't have to lie about. so well i mean here's the thing is i ordered a 20 foot wacky inflatable fling arm tube man turns out it's very large i was happy with the size i was not happy with the sound so um so yeah i i plugged it in i was like i could probably put it on my roof because i have a flat roof in the back of my house and it would still be very large you know probably 30 or 40 feet you know higher than normal but it would be on the back of my house and kind of like peering up

on flapping over the edge and probably vibrating the roof back there and and making some kind of weird sound inside the house. I'm like, you know what? This is loud. The review said, not very loud. I'm surprised how quiet it is just a few yards away. I'm like, maybe 50 or 60 yards away, not five or 10 feet.

So don't rely on those Amazon ads or reviews. They're not very good. Rly on mine. The 20-foot wacky inflatable fling arm tube band is in fact very loud. And I immediately took it down and stuffed it back in the box and shipped it back to Amazon because I, would not recommend.

I still want one, something like that. I did run across a video. I think I put it in the hub. Do you guys see that? Where it was like a 50, they have a 50 foot stay puffed marshmallow man. You guys seen that one? I mean, that would be great.

It's amazing. I've seen that, yep. Yeah. And the guy has it on the back side of his house. And, you know, he's got a two-story house. And this thing's over the top of the two-story house. And it's like angry with its arms in the air. He's got it all lit up.

I'm like, that's genius. Like, you, I mean, yeah. So if I ever have, $1,600 laying around to spend on a 50-foot stay-floft marshmallow man. I think I'd get that, but not happening in these times soon. So no wacky inflatable flangy Martin tube band

and no 50-foot stay-puff marshmallow alien. So anything I did get accomplished this week is gone back to the store. Anyway. That's very typical for a Seth project. Accomplish something, but for nothing. You know, I completed the loop. Everything's closed up.

The box is back in UPS's hands. I already got my refund, so. That's crazy. Yeah, good to go. all right um tj you i think you put this uh installer cheat sheet in the hub and it ended up somehow inside of our thing is this for you do you need a zwave installer cheat sheet is did you do you have some zway problems uh no i think this is this is just reaffirming that z wave is eventually going to die because they keep releasing stuff like this i didn't really actually look at this i found this uh i think it was like um blue sky or something like that and i was like this is fun uh and i actually didn't look at it but gavin looked at it and they like sent me the actual pbos

Man, do I have to be honest about this? Yeah, I mean, it's not even like a cheesy. It's literally a marketing material. So, so when you, when you sent this over, the link's like, oh, yeah, learn some tips and tricks for Z wave installations, but I was expecting something cool. I was like, okay, okay, now we can. Gavin's finally like some real information. Yeah, I was like, you know, from the Z wave professionals, you know, and they would talk

about, you know, like they said, oh, you could about antenna placements and stuff. but I signed up for it, gave them my information. Gave me your email. Yeah, gave them my email. And then they sent over this like four page PDF file. Three page PDF. Three page PDF file that. It's all just marketing.

I was like, what the hell is this? If you don't know this stuff already, you should not be an installer of Z-Wave products. There's really nothing to know on here. And they have a list of frequencies. Like I care. Like, I don't care what frequency, honestly, that Z-Wave runs in in US Canada.

Mexico versus Japan. I don't care. Doesn't matter. Yeah, it should matter to me. I don't care. It should work. And then, um, okay, here's the only thing that's interesting, uh, the range of Z wave, Z Z wave plus. Z wave plus or in a long range. There's two is a way. Oh, so 500 and 700 series, which I don't, who's going to know the difference between that and who cares. Not me. Yeah. And then yeah, there's the, the cheat sheet, which you finally get down, I guess on the back of it. I just want to tell you how many, uh, devices, certified devices they've got. They

want to tell you how many have been deployed and that they work in sub one gigahertz, which you just know from the previous thing that tells you what the thing, the frequencies are. Yeah, they happen to be less than 1,000 megahertz, which is means they're less than 1 gighertz. It's literally the same information. So yeah, I don't care. This is dumb. And the one tip they had on there, I'm just going to spoiler alert, you know, so I'm going to save you the time of giving them your email. Gavin has fallen on the sword of the marketing, and he's going to get all the spam,

from these guys. I know. Yeah, yeah. But the one tip they had in there was exclude before you include. It's like, yes, I always do that. You know, that's the first thing I do is I just put in the exclude mode and then, you know, then I'll include it into my Z wave network. But yeah, I'm just looking forward to all the spam.

I'm going to start getting after this. Yeah, well, they probably make more money collecting people's contact information like this and selling it to a data broker than they do, than they are on Z wave. Bring out your Z wave You know, it's like bring out your dead But bring out your Z wave That's funny Gavin, what did you do?

Did you break, did you break my sight? What have you done? What do you do? What have I done? 99 attempts, what are you doing? Why don't know you've been so quiet over there? I thought you wanted a basketball game. Get a life, Gavin, geez.

I'm afraid to click the one more time. That's all the projects for me. What about you, Gavin? It's been a pretty hectic week, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Apollo Automation. And the reason why is us Canadians, sometimes when we hear all the cool stuff

that Home Assistant is releasing, you know, it gets expensive for us to buy it because we had to buy it from a site in the States and then with all the tariffs and shipping and everything, it gets expensive. Well, Apollo Automation has us covered. So if you want to buy any home assistant devices, you can get it through their site,

which is shipped in Canada. So you just pay regular Canadian shipping, but you don't have to go through all the duties and everything like that. So I just wanted to let people know if you wanted to, last week you talked about the home assistant yellow, you know, no longer being sold. Well, they sell the home assistant green.

They have the new Z wave antenna that you can get there. And they're going to have some new products come in from home assistant. So, you know, and they also have their. own products there. So make sure you go browse the site. And I just wanted to mention that. I'm looking out for the fellow Canadians out there that like to buy things as well. There's so many of you. Well, there's like 40 million of us, but we like to spend money every now and then. And if we can get it locally, it's so much easier and better and cheaper.

Yep, yep. Even if it is, yeah, it's, it's great to have them like, I guess so they have like a warehouse or somebody taking over the, I mean, we have a merchant of, whatever they call it, taking over that part of it so that like the imported duties that are kind of like built into the price. Is that what they're doing? So you don't have to pay like 30 bucks for one little device to come in.

Exactly. Yeah, that's so nice. Let them have fellow Canadians. And Seth, since you mentioned the animals, the find my thing on the Unify, your raccoons look so skinny compared to ours. We have some thick raccoons. I did a search on mine, and I'm like, I'm shocked what's been walking through my backyard

at night while I'm asleep. But there are some fat raccoons up here. Have you ever seen our squirrels? I think you, I think you genuinely be surprised on our squirrels. I know, like, the Northeast definitely has some larger squirrels. You have some chonkers. Yeah. Here, the squirrels are just like small and hungry looking.

It's just not... Yeah, you almost feel sorry for them. They're just so scraggly. And they have these tiny little tails. I mean, they're closer to rats than squirrels. I'll just be honest about it. Yeah, it's interesting what's been going through my backyard. I have a black cat that seems to circle my house, like, every day.

But I also have a chipmunk back there that is my chipmunk. So I hope that cat never gets my chipmunk. That would be sad. That would be sad. yep I clicked it I only have one camera hooked up on the AI port here at my house and it only picked up one animal

that's sad some Scotty I've never even seen this dog before but oh I think I know who it is it's a new neighbor I have so it's his dog that's funny there are pictures of animals walking next to people in other cameras but they did for whatever didn't get picked up so

oh well generally I have to go back and like look at my cameras and scroll through the night to see what they what has happened because they're not smart ones. I didn't get the G6s yet. Time to upgrade. Yeah, all I'm seeing is fat raccoons of mine. Gavin, Gavin, from what I've seen,

they may not be fat, they may be pregnant. Yeah, I've had video footage of like eight raccoons walking through my yard at one point. They used to stop in for a drink in the pool. Oh, yeah, cleans them out. Yeah, cool them off, but, you know, Yeah, these ones are, yeah, pretty fat. He's got a bunch of little baby records, too.

Babies for everyone. All right, I think that's going to wrap up the show this week. We do want to thank everyone for listening to this show. We want to give a big special thank you for those who are able to show their support of our show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can become a member or a patron. Not a member. We don't have a membership. We have patronship for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month, get your big shout out here on the show. But every single pledge. Every single pledge gets you this automated invite thing that I set up years ago. I don't even know how it works anymore. But it still works. To our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other patrons of the show can jump in there and see. I'm going to start posting the raccoon pictures, I guess, in there. See what happens.

Gavin let's post a little baby pictures in a couple more weeks This is probably going to happen, yes Yeah All right, if you can't support the show financially Totally understand 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

Everybody have a great weekend And we will see you next week Till next time Take care THE PRESIDENT.