HomeTech.fm - Episode 551 - Fingerprints, Floods, & Futureproofing

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

On this week's show: Ring thinks AI can stop crime (what could go wrong?), Zigbee 4.0 goes the distance with Suzi, Shelly rolls out a giant snake of a leak sensor, Home Assistant drops a faster Zigbee/Thread toilet paper holder, Kaleidescape launches a mini server for high-bitrate binging, and Wyze gives its smart lock an upgrade, but it comes with a catch. All that, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 21st from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm T.J. Huffleston. And from San Francisco, California, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, and riding around in Waymo, I guess. Yeah. I haven't seen Gavin Adventures in Gavin Land. It was fun.

My first Waymo, like, we saw, they're all over the place here. And we finally just decided to book one and we jumped in it. And it was kind of funny because while we're waiting on ours, there was like another guy there. And he's like, your first Waymo, like, we had a look on our face. Like, he knew it's our first time, you know, you're a Waymo virgin or like, yeah, we're our. He's like, this is my third time. You know, he was so proud of it. So, yeah, it was, you know what?

We got into it, and it was a really good experience. I was shocked. I did not feel like nervous or anything. It was a smooth ride. I enjoyed it. I'd do it again. Expensive. Yeah, but I don't know about prices now.

We were there in December of last year, and the prices worked out about the same if you gave the Uber or Lyft driver a tip. It might have been a little more expensive, but I also enjoyed the non-talking of the Waymo. Yeah. Yeah. And the weird part about it is everybody on the road is kind of like used to them. So when they pull off in a weird spot or they drive weird, everyone just accepts it. They're like, ah, we're stuck with this. Dumb robot, yeah. Yeah, but you know what? It was really cool to finally get to try one of these. And, you know, I'm probably, I got to go out shortly. So I'm probably going to jump in one again. Yeah, since I was there, they're allowed on highways now, I've been told. So have you taken it on the highway or has just been inner town things? Oh, it's just inner city.

It wasn't even for a long distance. It was just like we didn't feel like walking. Right. Right. So we're like, let's just use this opportunity to take it to the hotel, which we did. Nice. Well, you haven't said why you're out there in the San Francisco world. You're at the Microsoft AI conference.

Yeah. Ignite. Ignite, yeah. So I'm at a Microsoft conference called Ignite. And this is my full-time job where I deal with like enterprise level. stuff so it's their big event um like the opening keynote was in the chase center which was amazing like to be in there at home of the golden steak warriors um i was like i was excited oh yeah that look cool that was like a huge like yeah they had all screens up and everything that's is that what

you seem to pick yeah yeah that's really cool it was full like it was full um i was shocked at so many people out here but um yeah it's a huge conference um we're in seminars like all day long meet with vendors, doing all the fun stuff. So I came here with an agenda, and I just basically on day one, threw that out the window and said, all right, this is going to be four days of AI talk. Because that is all they are talking about. I was expecting, you know, what's new with, you know,

the tools we use in the enterprise and stuff like that. And all they ever say is AI, AI, AI, Agenic AI, agents, agentic agents, agent's AI, you know. And I was telling you guys earlier, the demos are so weird because you'll have AI agents sending emails to other AI agents and replying to those same emails. And it's like, yeah, you just look at how many jobs are going to get cut because we now have agents talking to agents. As long as I get fewer emails, I'd be happy with that, honestly.

Yeah. We basically have more agents now than we have employees in the office. And, you know, it's just, I don't know. And they have this whole like new agent management system and stuff like that and uh it's it's insane but it's the feature so get used to it there's uh there's a middle management for agents now yeah by microsoft where you can manage all your agents you can restrict their security it's it's like managing agents is the new managing users you know like take away their access and you know and then monitor how hard the agent's working and if that agent isn't working hard enough then you replace them with another agent that type of thing just clear them out refresh the context you're good to go exactly

See where this is going, you know. Your name is now, not Bob anymore. It's James. Welcome, James. Your first day here. Get started working. Yeah. And then you'll have manager agents that manage little agents.

And soon the company is going to be all agents, right? It's going to be writing reports to each other. Exactly. Wake me up when the agents can take over my job. I need an agent to run wire for me. Yeah. Can I do that yet? No.

No. Switch bot will probably have a robot that can do it. for too long. Just attach it to your vacuum and let it go through. All right. Well, before we run out of, we run out of Gavin as a service tokens. And you have to hang up. You guys only purchase so many tokens.

I know, right? It's going to run out. You've got to get topped off here. Yeah. What's the coolest thing you've seen out there besides the Waymo car, I guess? The Waymo car was the coolest thing. But I also saw one of those, you know, on the show floor, one of those, you know, those little robotic dogs? Yeah, yeah.

That was so cool to see. Like the killer ones that they make for like the military? I told the guy this, I go, I'm so used to seeing these with guns on their backs and stuff. And you actually laugh. But yeah, it's, that was really cool because it was doing its little dog tricks, acting like a dog. So that was kind of cool. And then there's some robots there, you know, making coffee or sorting things, you know, as they were showing off their AI robot stuff, right? So that was some cool stuff.

I mean, a lot of the other stuff, like I said, it's all AI, AI, AI, AI, and then I have, like, other stuff I'm not allowed to talk about. But that's, you know, we'll come out early next year. Oh, that's all enterprise stuff. I was saying we probably won't care. It's like, yeah, enterprise tool chain and user management security stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Hey, it's, it's been hard for me to even stay awake, you know, and just look at this stuff and go, oh, my God, that's so exciting, you know. I mean, yeah. But AI, Gavin, AI. No, no, not even that. I get a free lunch or a free breakfast, so, you know, they pay me off with food and I'm good with that. Oh, yeah, there you go. They pay me off the food, I'd fall asleep.

You're like, oh, fool, guys, I'm going to have to take a nap now. Exactly. Go ahead and talk. Talk amongst yourself, so I've got to go lay down. Yeah. That's too good. All right, well, it was good. It was good speaking to you, Gavin.

I'm glad you had a safe trip. I hope you have a safe trip back. Yeah, I'm just happy to get stuck in any airports yet. So, you know, like, hopefully my flight back is smooth. I took Porter, so they were good. We reopened the government just so you could get here for this AI conference. Yeah, I was seeing stories of, you know, it's going to take weeks for them to get back, you know, caught up and stuff. But, no, no, it was smooth.

I got here five hours, no delays, nothing. Pretty good. Nice. Pretty good. That's pretty good. All right, man. Well, thanks for reporting from the showroom floor, as they say. Or you're in a hotel room, I guess.

Actually, yeah, I mean, all the time. You know what the funny part is, is my Wi-Fi is holding up because all the nerds aren't back yet. But in about an hour, this Wi-Fi is going to crap out. Just tank, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and once they all turn out their computers, the Wi-Fi is going to be gone. So I'm still good for now. All right, man. Well, we got a bunch of Home Tech End lines.

So we're going to go jump in. Let's do it. All right, guys. I got to go get ready to jump off. But, yeah, and, you know, for the later recording, take care. All right. Well, speaking of AI, RING's Jamie Semenoff thinks AI is going to solve crime and reduce it for everyone. He's claiming that Ring could almost zero out crime in some neighborhoods within a year or two.

It just needs everybody to buy a ring and stick it on their nose. Doorbell, I guess. It's like, anyway, he went on to emphasize that Ring's mission is to make the world safer, but the conversation that he had on this interview also touched on the broader implications of AI-powered surveillance, including facial recognition and data sharing. Kind of interesting, DJ, I think you said you listened to this one, and it was pretty interesting interview. Yeah, I listened to this one. I honestly like the Decoder podcast or a lot of them from the verge anyway, but this one was a specific interest to me. because I know Jamie Siminoff just returned back to ring

after being gone for a little bit. He did that, that what, access control for apartment company? I think it was named like Door.com or something like that. It was a good name. Yeah, that's weird. But he just returned not too long ago. One of the things that was interesting is that Amazon stopped partnering or stopped doing the police program for a minute.

And then when Jamie Siminoff came back, he implemented that again. And so Neelai asked him about, that. And he was just like, you know, I think it's one of those things that we want to work with the police and we want, we want customers to be able to opt in to providing their information. But, you know, maybe this AI stuff can actually help prevent a lot of crime and figure out what is going on with different patterns and stuff like that. I honestly, I think that is a good answer as long as it's opt-in, right? Like, one of the things with Ring is that you're able to get anonymous. requested data so a police station could be like hey you know we had a crime in this area can anybody send me videos of this and if you say no supposedly nobody knows that you said no and so the police can't specifically come after you and be like well actually you said no on this can you can you give us that anyway and so i think stuff like this is useful um and i think a lot

of times people do want to share this information because they do want to make their area safer but you're like you're like one step away from a dystopia nightmare yeah um where it's just it's not a good idea um so it's really about how they implement it and what they actually do with it but i do think there is a good case for it here yeah you're you're one step closer to the dystopian nightmare you mentioned in the in here i guess that they've teamed up now with flock which are the little uh cameras which are somewhere in the neighbors with like 80,000 cameras that are out there that are belong to this private company that basically tracks every license place that drives by it and throws it into a big database and they

track where you go supposedly allegedly for law enforcement, but they also sell off that data to data brokers who will then track where you've driven in town and figure out that you're going to Walmart or going to the store or whatever. Yeah, it's pretty gross. If you start looking into flog, and also the cameras that they're using have all sorts of security holes in them. And they don't even require the police logging end to use two factor, which I found was great. You can actually buy plenty of police credentials on the dark web and just log right into flock and track whoever using police credentials. Yeah, it's a wonderful system. So there's been some lawmakers that are really kind of like, wait a minute, we've got 80,000 cameras out there just

like doing this. Like this is a major security issue. And I think, I saw Raskin had, Raskin's team, whoever he has, like on his staff, seem to know what they're doing when it comes to technology. And so, like, he's got, like, issued some subpoenas or something like that for them to come to the Capitol and testify. So maybe we'll see some legislation around these private cameras, because it's kind of gross. Like, they can, they can sit there and, like, literally just track you around and your municipality is paying for it. Like, they're paying like $2,000 a year for each one of these cameras. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, and that's, and that's one of those things that, like, it sounds, you know, like a good idea in certain situations, right? You know,

if there's a car accident or if there was, you know, a crime that happened on the street. It sounds like a good idea to have these cameras. That way you can track those people. Yeah. But what happens eventually when it's not used for that and it's used for nefarious purposes instead. Yeah. And that ultimately is what happens because that's just how humans are, unfortunately, right? There's going to be a bad actor or bad actors at some point and it's going to destroy the credibility of that system.

Well, right now, right now the only bad actor, I guess right now is flocked because they're basically like it's hilarious because they're like does this actually deter crime like you're claiming it does and they're like oh yeah look at all these statements that they're out here and those statements are actually their PR people putting those statements in SEO yeah it's amazing they're just like looping like they've done an excellent job of SEO right but and and taking key statements from officials that have said things that are like oh yeah we use this to track it down and turns out they didn't they just use good old fashion police work and track down who the person was

and didn't and flock and when they went back and corrected of course Flock never corrects it they just keep using it in their marketing material so I mean it's it seems to be a garbage startup company with 80,000 cameras staring at us from all over the United States

and there is a there's like a guy who made it like a database of them all which is kind of wild they actually sued him to try to take it down but if you go I'll try and find it like I can't remember the website I think it's like D-Flock or something like that I'll try and find it in the show notes

but if you go check out like how many cameras are, like if you see any in your neighborhood, you can report them and add them in, say which way they're pointing and stuff. It's kind of interesting. So anyway, not too happy to hear about ring teaming up with them. But I get it. Rings always kind of been pushing this angle

that they want to help solve crime in a neighborhood or something like that. So anyway, let's move on. Let's move on. We got a new product in the Zygby world. No, wait, no. What? What?

And Zigby? Yeah, no, it's actually Zigby. We might have another product that has... It's matter, right? No, no, no. Zygby 4.0 is here, and it brings major updates aimed at improving interoperability, security, and network performance. The new standard supports better communication between Zygby and Smart Energy devices, adds network level retries, APS acknowledgments, and introduces

coordinated sample listening for low-power device interactions. Yay. I also saw in here that they are going to be doing BLE onboarding, batch commissioning for multiple devices, and the biggest news is that Zygby now supports sub-gighertz frequencies, which is going to let the new mesh technology is going to be built on its lower 800 and 900 megahertz bands, which will basically do, it's basically ZGB long range, just like Zway is doing. So this may be something that gets pushed rolled out in the future, it's backwards compatible with Zigby 3.0

but I think the low power stuff will have to have different chips and that kind of thing built into it to support that. So we should start seeing what they're calling the Suzy S-U-Z-I certification, which is that Zygby long range.

You're going to start seeing that certification rollout and in the first half at 2026. So yeah, Zigby, who knew? Yeah, this is interesting. I did not expect this at all. But I think the most interesting thing is the sub megahertz, right? I mean, 800 and 900, that's going to help out a lot. My issue, and I don't really have this issue because I'm in a small house and probably a bigger issue if you're in a more congested place is the lower frequency because it's less interference, right?

That's going to help out tremendously, I think, and actually make Zig be more appealing in the future. And also the hubless setup or the hubless onboarding, that's pretty neat too. and that's kind of what Matter is doing with certain devices as well like you don't actually need a hub or anything you can set up with your phone a lot of these phones like the iPhone now have Matter chips in them

and so that helps out tremendously this is interesting They have thread chips in them oh yeah sorry not that that's I don't know not that it's like incredibly different than using Zigby because I think it's the same radio type thing

but it uses a different application blah blah blah Richard will yell at us if he's listening to this podcast but that's about it Everybody else will be fine with it. But yeah, this is an interesting development. I think it's good in the long term. We'll see how long it actually takes to get devices with these, though.

Maybe a couple years, I would imagine, before you're actually seeing stuff come out with this. I don't know of any, like, large-scale Zigby manufacturer, though, right? Because, like, zoos, for example, they make Zee-Wave devices. And so they're, like, all of their products are long range. Yeah. And, but, like, who is that in the Zygd? Zygby space, because a lot of Zygby people are moving away from Zygby now.

You know, Ikea does not do Zigby. Phillips Hugh is not doing Zigby now with their newer products. So who's going to use this? I don't know. I mean, I wonder if this technology that they have will make its way into like thread and then maybe even into to matter? Maybe. I don't know.

Well, they are all the same company. It's kind of all the same thing. So maybe there's something to follow it up. Like, if the hardware gets updated and tested, it worked out at the Zigby level, then maybe those, like, matter and everything else will get updated down the road. I don't know. Well, let's move on to the big Z wave, I mean, sorry, Zigby News. I can get these confused.

The big Zigby news that everybody is waiting on. Shelly has released a flood gen 4, a smart link detector designed for flexible insulation and broad compatibility. It features two meter, extensible sensor cable, and an option to link cables up to 150 meters. away. It's as ideal for how large or hard to reach areas. Yeah, yeah. Device supports matter, Wi-Fi, Zigby, and Local Control, making compatible with pretty much every major smart home platform out there. So you can send alerts with the Shelley app or it has an audible alarm on it as well. Four AA batteries, these things are actually pretty nice and pretty good, I think. So have you had the chance to use these? I have not used.

use the shelly flood sensors. These look pretty nice, though. Yeah. Anything about battery life that you saw? Because for AA batteries, it's a lot. I don't see anything on. Let's see flood rain detection modes, indoor and outdoor use. It's $33.

$33 is not expensive at all. You can buy cheaper ones, but they're not leak sensors in general, but they're not, they don't have the cable and everything. They're basically just like a standalone device. Hmm. Going to the website now to see if I can figure out

how long the battery is going to last. I mean, this is pretty, cool, though. You can choose between Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Zigby. And it looks like it has Matter support as well at some point. Yeah. I think Shelley's making their way over to that ESP-32-C-6,

that one that has those radios built into it. And yeah, I wonder, I'm guessing that you'll have better compatibility or lower battery usage on Zigby and possibly even the

matter. But then you it on the Wi-Fi. Two-year battery life, but it doesn't tell you how, which one you're going with a call. Hmm. So, I mean, two years is pretty good, though. Yeah, it's not bad. I have one of those, the Shelley buttons, I mean, it's a Wi-Fi button, and it doesn't really, it wakes up occasionally, I guess, and reports into Home Assistant, but I haven't charged that thing in a number of months. I need to probably charge it, but I basically just sits in my daughter's room on her nightstand, when she wants to turn on some bookshelf flights. She presses a button, and they turn on. Maybe the Wi-Fi maybe they have the Wi-Fi set up on this

where it just does polling every now and then kind of checks in is good enough can last two years. Not bad, not bad. All right, well, for real, the news that everybody wants to hear us talk about and probably Gavin talk about it. He's not here, though. Home Assistant has introduced a new USB toilet paper holder.

The Connect ZB2. It's designed to support Zygby thread and matter devices. The new model replaces the older ZBT1 and is said to be four times fast. It features ESP32S3 chip, which also allows for some experimental firmware updates if you wanted to do that and tinker with something even more. I think is $49.

It is available over with Home Assistant, or you can buy it from our favorite friends over there at Apollo, which I think I have one in my cart. If I'm going to buy one, that's where it's going to come from. I already got my Apollo ornament here sitting right here. So I don't need that anymore. But if I wanted, if I want this, I've wanted another ornament.

I would just get it along with that order. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I'm glad they're coming out with some new antennas. I don't like the shape, though. I understand the shape. I get it, but I just don't like it. I know Gavin has already ordered one, so I'm interested to see his feedback whenever he receives it.

This one looks shorter. This looks like the one I have looks like it holds. I know it holds three toilet paper rolls. That'll hold a paper towel. This will only hold a toilet paper. Yeah. It looks like it only holds one. I know the one I have holds two or maybe.

even three toilet paper rolls. But this one, this one's definitely a one. Two would fall off. So interesting that it's smaller, though. Shape is weird. Yeah, I don't, I'm not a fan of the shape,

but I also have mine in a rack, and I don't really have a place I can put the antenna without it being obnoxious. Because there's, like, no clearance on the top of my rack, and that's where my current antennas are, but they're a little tiny, like,

flash drives, basically. So, it's a little easier to conceal. Good idea, though. I mean, especially the Z-wave one because it's, like, a proper, long-range antenna. Right. So it makes sense, but... Yeah, and I guess it makes sense to start replacing the older devices they have.

I mean, I get why they're going with this design to kind of like let it blend. And like you said, like, people that are buying this aren't going to be putting it as a showpiece in the center of their house. Which is, I think, what they're thinking, they're going to put it in their closet or, you know, like, it doesn't have to look like this. It can look more industrial, but, you know, okay, to each their own. I'm going to get one anyway, because it is. It's a fun product. And, you know, I don't have anything Zigby or Z wave or thread or matter that I can hook up to it. But when I do, I'll be ready.

So there we are. It's going to have just as much AI as your AI Horn. Which I know. I was logged into Unify today and I looked at it. And it's like, AI Horn has been disconnected. I'm like, yeah, it has been for a long time. It's just sitting here. I use the cable for something else I needed that was more important.

It's something that actually works. Exactly. All right. move on on here. We've got a, we got news from Collidescape. They've introduced the mini-terra Prime. It's compact movie server designed for high-performance movie theaters and multi-room systems. It's got an 8 terabyte solid-state storage, enough for about 125 hybrid rate 4K movies. And the server supports download speeds as fast as four minutes per title over two and a half gigabit Ethernet Connection

can handle 25 simultaneous playbacks. So, it sounds pretty pretty big. beefy I wonder I don't know it's fanless design it's got SSD built into it

wonder how much it costs I have no idea it's good collid escape you'll never know yeah it's always expensive stuff I can't imagine

this would be less than like $3,000 though yeah it's got to be more I mean definitely more but

3,000 dayler cost yeah it's it's interesting they're doing it with like okay they've got an 8 terabyte solid steel drive

how much that cost That's got to be expensive. Anyway, they've got 8 terabytes of that. It does 4K movies. It's got to be a pretty decent price tag. People love their kaleidescape. If you got a theater, it's a nice interface on it. They work well.

And when you go to sit down and watch a movie, they work. And that's what you pay for. So there you go. Honestly, this is one of those companies that they went bankrupt like five or eight years ago. They came very close. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they came back, and when they came back, I was like, there's no way those company's going to stay in business. And they have. So they're doing something right. Exactly. Yeah, I think, I mean, if you've got a yacht, you know, this is, you're out in the middle of the ocean. Used to, there's really no way to get anything. I mean, you can get like, get the old Starlink thing hooked up now, right? Mm-hmm. But if you want to watch 4K ultimate, you know, rip of the movie, this is the way to go on your, on your yacht out in the same. Oh, yeah, I mean, if you have half a billion dollars to spend on a yacht, you can definitely afford a colitis.

Yeah, who cares? So, one of the crew will take care of it. If it goes down, they'll replace it with the other one, then close it. All right, let's move on here. We've got some interesting product from Wise here. Wise has launched the Lock Bolt version 2, smart deadbolt with built-in Wi-Fi and AI-powered fingerprint recognition. Of course, I say AI. Yeah, it's just a fingerprint reader, guys.

So, it's a door lock. We'll put it there. It's got fingerprint, pincode, app, voice assistant, physical key. Battery life is up to eight months using eight. Double A batteries. Eight of them. You heard right. I said eight.

One battery per month. One battery per month. Yeah, weird. $79.98. Price is not bad, but eight batteries every eight months, you're going to be. quaffing is it? That's ridiculous. Oh, man.

They should have launched this with like a little battery pack that you could slide into it and recharge or something. Maybe you get like eight months out of it or seven months. At least you wouldn't be wasting eight AA batteries every month. Geez. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. It's so bad on battery life that they have a USBC port on there for emergency charging because you know those things going to die on battery when you leave the house at some point. And I come back and be like, my dog, my lawyer. doesn't work.

Well, I mean, the Akara, when I have has four? I mean, and that, they die every now and then, but like, not every eight months. I don't know. This is crazy. Yeah, that is ridiculous. At that point, I don't even want a smart lock. You know what I mean? Like, like, once, I have to change mine once a year.

I actually, I haven't had the, I switched out my locks to Akara like six months ago. Yeah. So I don't know how long the batteries are going to last, but my Yale Z wave lock lasted between nine and 12 months and that's only four double a batteries. Yeah. If I had to change my batteries every eight months, I don't think I'd have a smart lock. The wise lock bolt, which is the previous version, four AA batteries up to 12 months. It's because the AI, Seth. The AI has taken all the battery. It's just reads your fingerprint every time, spins up an LLM internally. Yeah, it's making up fingerprints in the background. It's like, I don't know what this fingerprint is,

but let's try it. It's like, why are you trying fingerprints on my lock? It's got an invidia card built into it. It's like, yeah. Yeah, the palm recognition one has a rechargeable battery that you can take out, like what I was asking, six months. And you can just recharge it every, you know, twice a year or whatever. Eight months, you're going to be eight, I'm like, why? Why? Yeah.

Makes no sense. But at $79, the old one was $79. I don't know what really you're getting out of this. I guess, oh. Yeah, I have fingerprints on, so that's what you're getting. That's what it is. It's got Wi-Fi. That's what's sucking down the battery.

Didn't the other one have Wi-Fi? The old one had Bluetooth. not Wi-Fi. Well, no, it probably connected via Wi-Fi cell, though, didn't it? The Wise Lock Bolt before the app control was Bluetooth. This time, the app controls Wi-Fi. And that's probably what it is. All right, so I just looked on Amazon, you can buy a 24 pack of DuraSel power boost batteries

for $25 a normal price, $19 on sale right now. So what, that'll get you three, 24 months. of battery life. Yeah, not bad. I mean, considering. All right, well, if that interests you, we'll put a link in the show notes because all the links and topics we discussed

tonight can be found over on our show notes over at home tech.fm slash 551. All right, pick of the week. Speaking of wise. T.J., you found this video of, is this like an advertisement or a testimonial or something? What is this? Yeah, so I'm on Facebook quite a bit

on like Facebook Marketplace and stuff like that. This came up in my Facebook Marketplace ads one. day. And we've talked about the white bulb cameras quite a bit on this show. Seth is a huge fan. I think he's going to get some for his house eventually. He replaces unified cameras with him. But this ad came up on my Facebook feed. And this is exactly who I'd imagine owning a Wise light bulb camera. And this is this is an advertisement from Wise, which makes this even better. If you can't see the video, I'll try to explain it to you. But it

just like a it's kind of a normal video you know but you're looking at this very uh janky old light bulb holder that's on the ceiling you know so what that what that is is the fixture it's one of those square porch light fixtures and they've taken the square part off and all that's left is the aluminum foil and the janky light bulb holder kind of eeked out at a 45 degree angle that's there's no other way i mean you have to see this. That's why it's a pig of the week. You have to see how this is mounted in here. It is incredible. And so they've got, what is this? A PTZ camera? I guess. Yeah. So it's in there like at a 45 degree angle. It's kind of looking around. And the caption

is, you know, security camera that installs in 60 seconds. I'm not kidding. And you look at it and you're like, I know you're not kidding. I can tell. That's 60 seconds included removing the light cover fixture as well. Oh, come on, TJ. That light fixture was gone long ago. Oh, yeah. And this is very typical, right? Because, like, I go to houses a lot, and, like, you'll see this in, like, an outside set of it. Like, nobody's ever going to replace this light fixture. They don't need to. So now you put a camera.

It just made it even better at this, like, an official ad from Wise. And not just, like, a YouTube short that somebody uploaded of themselves. This is from Y. So this is what they want you to use it for. Somebody saw this. It went through, like, 10 people in marketing. And they're like, hey, let's put some words on here that says, Siri security camera.

maybe we can cover up the cracks and the spider webs and the no we can't do that no just leave those there oh man yeah yeah I good effort I guess is it though is this is a good effort said I mean I guess this is the target audience of a $50 light bulb right PTZ camera yeah yeah there you go yeah what's amazing is that it does install this way and I can't imagine the videos I mean if it's going to turn and look left or even down like it's going to be sideways the video will be sideways right uh yeah i don't know how the actual ptz ones work but i think you can rotate the image on otherwise cameras so yeah yeah it's probably rotates automatically or something yeah well if you've mounted a camera like a wise camera

like this let us know oh we want we want a picture of it send it to the to feedback at home tech fm i want to see your light bulb cameras yeah you've got a light bulb ptze t j wants to see them send them on in send them on in i have two and in my neighborhood. I need to, I need more pictures of them, though. My neighborhood's the perfect one for them, though. Our houses are less than $200,000, so the perfect neighborhood for PTC

light bulb cameras. Yeah, checks out. All right. Well, if you have any feedback questions, ideas for the show, picks of the week, pictures of your PTZ camera installed in a janky way. Give us a shout. Like TJ said, our email address is feedback at hometick.fim, or you can head on over to hometick.fm slash feedback and fill out the

online forum. All right. Project updates. Um, what did I do? I feel like I've done something. I don't know what, though. I mean, you got something. What did I get?

They forget already. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, I got my Apollo, my, my little Christmas ornament here, right? Yeah, I got, I got mine too. Gavin didn't order his. He was going to order his with his new, uh, Zigby thread antenna, but he, uh, he did not. So, well, the, the, the, yeah, whoops, Gavin, come on. Time to step up.

Uh, the, I don't know why I kept playing there, but the, the, It's very nice. Plugs in and instantly checked all the songs, and I believe they all have the right notes on them this time. So I'm happy to hear that. But it's got so many lights on it this time. It does. It's very bright.

Yeah, it's so bright. And they've got some really nice color animations on here. So, yeah, very good product. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. If you haven't gotten your H2 this year for 2025, go out and get one. Proceeds go to charity. Paul has a good company Those guys over there

Fun to work with So we'll put a link to it In the show notes But yeah I'm glad I got mine TJ did you want Order one or two I ordered two

I don't know why I ordered two But I was like I'm gonna buy one I might as well buy two I'd be curious To know That's right I give one to a gift

To somebody I'd be curious why they're so big Though It's so much larger Than the tree from last year No it's not Oh it is I have the tree right here

Hold on Yeah It's like twice the size No it's not look yeah huh that's that's how big like the tree it's probably okay okay so it's just more spread out that half inch larger and then yeah it's bigger it's wider right and so it's it's it's i'm accepting it okay that's fine they got more light just it just fell very large in the hand but i i did notice that they i haven't bought an apollo device recently but they are a little more polished now they come in

like an apollo box and it's all branded and everything fancy uh i don't think they had that before so we need to get them back on the show and talk about this Yeah, we too. We need to have them on because I am curious as how they do the H2 and like obviously there's some like time like an engineering effort that goes into it. But I mean also like you have to put this piece to you have to put all this together and flash the firmware and all that. I'm curiously like all the process that goes behind it because it's, you know, they're doing it out of the kindest of their heart. Like I'm sure after they pay the bills on it. Oh, there's, I think they've had there's two foundations they send the money to or something like that. I don't know. It's on it's on their website. But it would be, uh, it'd be cool to talk to them about this and how this passion project they're able to get this out the door every year. So it be fun. Plus, they seem to be getting bigger. They have so much more stuff there now. Yeah, they do have a ton of stuff. I'm waiting for the W-L-L-D controller. That's going to come out at some point. Wait, wait, oh, I didn't even hear about that one. Yeah, I think it's on the website right now. It's $39.99. I don't think that's actually released yet, though.

So on the front page, or is it, like, hidden away somewhere that I don't know about? I think it's just like under the censor somewhere. Hmm. And since we were just talking about the two charities that benefit from this are CASA of Lexington, which is in Kentucky, that's a court-appointed special advocates for children.

That's pretty nice. CASA is a good, good, yeah, I've known people to volunteer for CASA. And then also the Open Home Foundation, which is Home Assistant. So that's, that's pretty nice. Yep. I don't know where the W-LADC is now.

Let's see. Censors, if you go, to sensors and the last page. It's like literally the very last product. LED-1 LED controller. Oh, here's the problem is I didn't scroll down. Yeah, you got scroll down. Mm-hmm.

And they were talking about it when they came up for Home Assistant Community Day. So I knew it existed, and it's on the website. It says notify one available. It's tiny. It is very tiny. Wow. That looks fun.

Yeah, it's got the nice connectors on there, so you don't need a screwdriver. Mm-hmm. So Wago light connectors Something I had recently had those on there I was pushing on it and I was like I'm going to break this I better stop What was it?

I want to say it was a lighting device I can't remember what I was just looking at it though And it has those on there Amazingly enough it's not on my desk in front of me And I thought it was But oh well But yeah it has those little white Wago connectors on it That you can just clip wires into

But in this case it would be the power cables And oh you know what it is It is one of their products. It is on the back of the little screen that they have. The board here has those way-go connectors on it. Oh, the M-1. Yeah, that's a pretty good price, too. 64-99.

Yeah, and you can get like two of them and connect them together or something and make a big screen, a bigger screen, and then send stuff to it, words and that thing. I don't know. They loaded it up with videos for mine, and I haven't changed them. So I don't want to lose my videos. It's handcrafted. All right.

Uh, let's see, uh, that's so, yeah, I got, I got my own room in. I, I'm still working on my Christmas lights. I'm, um, kind of like in the, in the downtime going out and I'm, I'm redoing some of the pixel node things to how they attach to my house and I got some, some stuff, uh, to make that easier, make it look better, I guess. I don't know. So I'm still kind of like tinkering with that and I, I haven't finished yet. So surprise, surprise. Something's not done that I said, I was going to hopefully have done. But I did. I went back and listened to one of the shows I was And I did say that it was going to take me until Thanksgiving. So that's my deadline.

Thanksgiving is next week just so. Stop it, TJ. Next Thursday, to be exact. Stop it. What do you been up to? We got our shed pad installed this week. Oh, yeah. So that has been an ordeal because the company we originally hired to do that, backed out on us, and literally just did not contact us.

I found out why, because they way underbid the project. And so we finally had that done. It is kind of awkward, though, because our yard is not level where we're putting the shed at, right? And so we had to basically, they came, they dug out a large portion of the corner where the shed is going to go. And then they put new gravel down. The problem is, though, that the front of the shed, which is, you know, closer to the house, it's like 13 inches high off the ground

so and for some reason the company that did it didn't put any actual border around the pad so now I have to figure out how to get the shed up there and I assume it's going to collapse some of the rocks

whenever they do that so I'm we have the shed scheduled for delivery on December 2nd so we're going to see how that all goes I've texted it or I've emailed a picture of the shed pad to the shed company and I was like here's what you guys have to

deal with when you get here and they say well we'll probably be able to make it work but we're going to probably collapse some of the rocks whenever we do that uh so we'll see i mean i walked on the shed pad it feels very sturdy um but obviously if we're going to ramp a shed up the side of it it's probably going to destroy some of the rocks or whatever yeah i can see that happening yeah but it looks really nice it feels solid um and you know once we get it in place the shed at least um it the door for it is going to be level with the ground. So it'll work out. We've got to figure out that edge portion there.

The door space out the left of your image here. Is that what's going to happen? Towards the garden beds basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. So, yeah, that'll be pretty nice. They did a really good job and they took care of the property.

Like, you know, they had to dump rocks in the driveway and they were literally out there on their hands and knees picking up all the like the spare rocks that they couldn't get with the shovels and stuff like that. honestly they did a really good job i have no doubts about them uh fixing anything if it needs to so i'm excited to do that and then i have been trying to decide what to do for power for my shed i think i talked about this a couple times um i was trying to do p oe uh to power a like a portable battery pack um because i already have two p o lines out there right where the shed's going to go and i was like wouldn't be nice if i could just not use a solar panel and just use p oe to recharge my portable battery pack and then use the portable battery pack to power the lights in the shed

and everything uh that that doesn't work like that um because poe doesn't have enough power um and so that sound like a good idea though yeah i mean like i think with poe i was able to do like 60 or 70 watts um but as soon as i plugged it into the uh the portable battery it just killed my POE switch immediately so that obviously didn't work um but i'm going to do a solar panel uh connected to the battery pack right now i have a 300 watt battery pack which is probably fine. We're just going to be like having, we're just going to have like four LED lights in the shed. So it's not a ton of power. It's like 30 watts altogether. And then I'm going to have an Inoveli switch. So it's like 33 watts. If I'm going to have everything on, if I have

the 300 watt battery pack, I mean, that's like eight hours of runtime. And I'm not going to have the lights on for eight hours. So I think it's enough. I might upgrade that to a larger battery pack, though, just so if I get some of those gray skies in, uh, in Ohio, which we often have in the fall in wintertime, then I don't have to worry about the battery dying right away. But I have it kind of rigged up in my office right now. I'm kind of playing with it. It's working pretty well,

so it'll be nice whenever I get it installed in the shed. Nice. Sounds like a fun project. Yeah, it beats getting a permit to run power to the shed. Like I said, we're only going to do like four lights out there. I'm not running any power tools or anything like that. And if I do, I'll just run power out there at some point. But for $300, I think, is what the solar panel and the battery package. cost me, that's a very easy electrical upgrade for the shed. Yeah, the bad part is, is that I

actually have power in my shed. So I ended up taking it out. When we moved in, they were like, hey, there's termite things inside the shed. So all the wood in there needs to go. And like, one of the pieces of wood was like mounted to the light switch. So I kind of like just ripped all that stuff out, right? And it stayed that way. So it's been like 10 years. I've never used the power in the shed and there's a light back there but I end up running like an extension cord from an outlet nearby outside the shed and then plugging into the the light that's no longer functioning I don't think anymore is one of these days one of these days I'll get on it right now it has one of those ring things outside the ring uh solar the long skinnies oh yeah it's still

yeah those are honestly nice that's why I used when I first moved into this house the the ring solar lights yeah honestly they worked really well and I never had a problem with the batteries so yeah yeah it's one of those things it's nice to have like you know in the the summertime, we'll just have the doors open, but we are going to use it. We don't have a garage or we don't have a basement or like really any storage space inside the house. So we need the lights in order to put stuff in there for storage. So yeah, we'll need some lights, but it's nothing crazy. So like my neighbor, he has like a giant saw on his and he's charging batteries and stuff like that. I'm like, I could charge. I have like one lawn tool battery and I can charge it inside my house. Yep. Not a big deal. So yeah, that's, that's my projects going on right now. I'm excited. What, we got Thanksgiving next week? Are we doing a show next week, Seth? We probably won't, right? Yeah, we probably have a skib next week.

Yeah, so much going on. The next time we have a show, I might have a shed. Nice, nice. All right, well, enjoy getting that new shed, putting in lights and that can be fun. Yeah, run electric and everything. We'll have seen it come to full completion here, the planning, the, like, the pad. Who knew getting a shed was so complicated? Yeah, worrying about it the electrical company is going to let you put it there.

Oh, yeah, that was. was a whole nightmare too. I finally got my letter of certificate or whatever that says we're the electric company and we have no opposition you put in the shed there. So if somebody comes to me at some point they're like, hey, you can't put that shed there. I'll be like, I have this letter from the power company. I have a document. That's right.

Well, all right then. I think that's going to wrap up this week. It feels like it feels like an early show. How long have we talked? Yeah, almost an hour. Almost an hour. Yeah, Gavin's not here to fill in the extra space. So it's a quiet show. Yeah, there's probably a home assistant update we missed. Oh, yeah.

You've definitely missed like five updates. All right, well, we want to thank everyone who listens to the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head on over to homptech.comfim slash support to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge you'd invite over to a private slash chat at the hub

where you and other patrons of the show can get in there and see TJ selling all his Sonos gear off. I don't know what's going on. We didn't talk about it. Oh, I forgot to talk about the next show. Yeah, well, you may have a new shed, but you're not going to have any Sonos gear anymore. And I wonder what he's going to replace it with.

You'll have to tune in next time to the Home Tech podcast. In three weeks, whenever it's released. Exactly. If you can't support the show financially, totally understand, 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. everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week till next time no the week after

night yeah we'll see you at some point some point yeah whatever the whatever the show have a happy holiday everybody we'll see you later oh it's too good yeah I was like I can't believe Thanksgiving next week already I didn't realize it was Wednesday like the hell That's not good