HomeTech.fm - Episode 569 - Ring Goes 4K, Home Assistant Goes '95

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

On this week's show: Ring launches 4K video doorbells and a whole developer portal while Ubiquiti sends AI to the edge with a new series UniFi G6 cameras. Reolink shines bright with its solar floodlight cam, Nuki taps into Apple Home Key, and DEWENWILS dives into Matter with a smart pool pump timer. Matter 1.5.1 gets better camera streaming, Heatit joins Works with Home Assistant, and backup encryption gets a serious upgrade. Plus, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 3rd from Sarasota Ford. I'm Seth Thompson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Mississauga, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation, home technology, and we're in the, what, what, Mississauga, what? Yeah, yeah. I'm visiting my mom for the week, so, you know, the funny part is,

it's just on the other side of the city. It's like a 50-minute drive from my house, you know. But, you know, so it wasn't a long drive, but, you know, I get fed breakfast, lunch, dinner. You know, it's like the old days. It's got perks. Yeah, it's got the perks. But then I have to do so much other things. Oh, you got plenty of list of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can you hang up this? Can you do this? Can you fix this? Why is my phone doing this? I spent four hours because her banking app stopped working on her iPad, only to find out her iPad hasn't been getting updates, only to find out it hasn't been getting updates because it's, it's too full. So I had to like back up everything and reset everything and then reinstall everything just to get her banking app to update. And that took me like over four hours, you know, like, they always think it's something simple.

Oh, can you get my bank app working? And you just realize, oh, crap, I got to do all this other stuff. It's always something. It's always something. Yeah. Anytime I come over here, it's some kind of IT work for me, you know, like a TV's not working or Wi-Fi is giving problems or something. You know, like some people, it only happens around. Thanksgiving, me every time I visit, it's that way.

And you're not too far away. So, you know, it's like a service call. Trip over here. I'm not going to give her any ideas as far as she's concerned. It's a two-hour drive as far as she's concerned, you know? So I usually text on, you know, like in advance and let her know I'm leaving now. And then two hours later, I should have. I mean, I think all IT people like yourself should have to do some, like, actual work once in a while.

So I think this is good for you, Gavin. What? I mean, you sit behind a screen all. day, you tell people what to do. I mean, it's nice that you get told what to do once in a while. All right, TJ, I was giving you guys the big room when you came up here, but you're getting a small room. Oh, man. I'm not even coming up because every time you talk about Canada, you talk about people getting robbed, their cars getting stolen and everything. I mean, it sounds like the Wild West. I mean, what is it, California? Oh, they'll see your plates and they won't mess with your car.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure. This guy's probably got a gun. This guy's probably got a gun. But you're getting the small room, the one that I didn't put a TV in. I don't care. After that kind of comment? Oh, that's fine. I don't need a TV anymore. Oh, man. Well, that'll be fun. We'll have everybody. Well, two out of three of us in Canada.

You're not coming up, Seth? No, no. Oh, come on. Seth's the type of guy that will just show up the day of. Yeah. What are you guys doing? You'd be like, there was a $50 flight. They decided what the hell.

I could only be here for six and a half hours and then I got to go. I'll make sure you guys are done like with all the work hanging the cameras and stuff like that. I'll be like, hey, what's going on? Oh, that's cool. Show up for the barbecue. Yeah, exactly. I'm here for the cookout. I'm actually pulling up the barbecue this weekend.

Probably going to clean it off. Nice. Better get all primed up and ready for us, you know. It's getting a little warmer. I'm going to clean up the lawn and stuff. I'm not time to open the pool yet, but we're getting there. We're getting close. I mean, I think you promised to cook the entire time we were there.

No, I actually asked Rose if she would cook for everybody while they were visiting. Hence why I'm visiting my mom for a week. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, she didn't like that. They're your friends. Go away. Yeah.

She didn't like that idea too much. So a lot of door dash or something, you know. We'll see. Yeah. Well, we've got a, what happened to TJ? We lost you. I actually hit the wrong button. Don't press that button.

Press the other one. Yeah. All right. Well. Hopefully you don't have seizures. It's too late. Well, we, it sounds like it's going to be a good time. We've got a,

a bunch of home tech headlines, believe it or not, this week. But first we've got, we've got this, this Artemis launch. You guys watch this today, big spaceship going up in the air? Yeah, my mom's been reminding me all day. Hey, they're launching the spaceship. Hey, they're launching the spaceship. You know, I'm like, yeah, mom, we have 12 hours before that happens, you know? Yeah.

She was giving me that kind of advance notice. But, you know, I have to give a shout out to the Canadian on the spaceship, you know, Canada representing. Is it Canadian on the website? Don't ask me his name. But he's Canadian. you know, from Ingersoll, so, you know, we're cool. Oh, that's big news in Canada, I bet. America's like, we have astronauts going up into space all the time doing things.

But I don't know, this looks pretty cool. A big ship, this thing is a big platform for them to, like, do further exploration out in space, possibly, but also, like, go to the moon. So it would be interesting to see if they go back to the moon after this. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what they see on the other side of the moon, you know? Is there anything really back there? She's dark. If they see anything, they're not going to tell us anyway.

They're just going to be like, whoa, and nothing, nothing to see there. That's where they hide all the bodies at. Yeah, I know. I know. I was going to stay from the Epstein files, but that's probably not perfect. That's where you're going to find Epstein. He's already on there, you know? He's got a little island on the moon already.

Oh, man. Well, this thing is to see there's got a, How long is this mission? It's got to be, what, a few days here? 10 days. 10 days, yeah. Yeah, it goes around the Earth a few times. I think slingshots over the moon.

I think it does one trip around the back of the moon, and then they come back to Earth. They come back, yeah. It's about right. All right, well, we'll be seeing them when they come back, I guess. They're probably getting some pretty cool pictures and things throughout the mission. So wish them well. It looked like a really nice, successful flight. There were a couple of things that, like, threw me off.

There's like this little piece right when they launched, like slid away from the, the tower and I I there's got probably somebody writing about that but it was like one of the not a like a can't like a canopy but it's like one of those things that like for safety but it just shot away from the tower all of a sudden so there's probably news on that as things come up but unfortunately it was raining here and I couldn't see I couldn't see it live like across the state I had to watch it on TV so you could actually see them across the street state live when it happens yeah yeah wow that's kind of cool especially like really at night, but I mean, the big ones like that,

you definitely can see, I remember watching the spatial, as you can see those going up. The last space shuttle go up, I definitely watch that one from like a parking lot somewhere, but you could, as long as it's clear, you can see straight across and you can see it go up. And then the, the other ones, like the SpaceX ones, that

come back and land, you can see them come back down and land, the little burn that they do when they come back down. So that's pretty cool. You can see them in Central Florida, too. You used to be able to, like the UCF parking garage and stuff and see them. But yeah, that's obviously not too far from where they launch out of it. No, no.

Like 30 minutes. Yeah, it's like 30 or 60 minutes or so by driving. Depending on traffic. Pretty close. Five hours later. Yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, we got a bunch of home tech headlines. So what do you say?

We jump in. Let's do it. Tired of waiting a whole week for a new episode of Home Tech? What if I told you that you didn't have to? Introducing Home Tech. dot fm a i edition available exclusively to our patreon supporters every week our advanced ai uses the week's headlines to generate a brand new full-length episode of the home tech podcast featuring tj gavin and seth well sort of here's a preview of this week's a i episode big news this week

ring finally has a 4k battery powered doorbell i got to say i've been waiting for this one 4,000 ks of right on your front porch. Yeah, and they're calling one of the features Retinal Vision, which honestly sounds like something a Terminator has. But apparently it just fine-tunes the video with AI, so now your doorbell can see better than you can. The thing that gets me is they've got three new battery models, the regular, the plus, and the pro.

And the only real difference is how far you can zoom in on the UPS guy's face. 6x, 10x. At what point are we just doing surveillance for fun? And of course, Ring AI Pro is 19. 99 a month, so you're paying 20 bucks a month for your doorbell to snitch on your neighbor to the cops and send you fewer notifications.

That's the ring dream right there. Familiar faces is wild, though. Your doorbell just learns who everyone is. It's like having a really nosy neighbor, except it's a camera and it never sleeps. The only people truly happy about this one are going to be law enforcement when they get those 4K images of porch pirates.

Home Tech AI Edition. It's almost like the real thing. Almost. All right, all right. Really, though, Ring did come out with a new camera. They've come out with a new 4K camera. That finally, finally, has a first battery 4K cameras coming out,

the top model of the battery video doorbell pro. Second Gen records 4K and offers a 10X digital zoom. Ring also introduced 2K options, the battery video doorbell plus second gen with the 6x zoom and the battery video doorbell second gen, which uses a built-in battery. There you go. They've got built-in batteries. They've got removable batteries, whatever.

They've got batteries if you need them. Re-designed internal architecture, sports high-relolution video, and AI features, kind of like what they were talking about there on that AI episode of Home Tech. Yeah, the familiar faces thing that did seem kind of cool. What do you guys think about these ring pieces here? I thought AI Gavin already gave you my opinion.

Oh, did he? All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody cares about real Gavin's opinion. Yeah, I don't feel like anyone cares about real Gavin at this point. AI Gavin seemed to be more interesting, you know. Made a Terminator joke in there. He stole all my good lines.

He just been trained on the right stuff, I guess. I do like the looks of these ones much better than the old ones. They kind of look nicer. That's really my only comment about it. I mean, 4K, congratulations. You finally came out with 4K. I mean, it's been a thing on like everybody else's, products for years now.

But it's amazing that somebody with a limited budget like Amazon can actually come out with 4K battery power cameras. Right. Yeah. But one thing I've learned about cameras while watching videos, and I'm not a camera expert here, but the 4K isn't really like the key thing here. Like, there's a lot more to it to give you good images when it comes to these cameras. Like, you could have a 2K camera that gives you a better image.

And there's other things to look at. I can't remember all the terms and everything like that. So I almost feel like sometimes it's 4K. is like just marketing. Yeah, I mean, it is. It's basically how much you can like enhance the image, but it still doesn't deal with like the low light quality and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly.

You know, that's really what like, you know, we've talked about many times in the show like the Starlink, I'm sorry, Starlight sensor. Oh, yes. That thing is like amazing, you know, where it's just color night vision. And it definitely makes a big difference in the camera quality.

And you can have a 1080P camera with the starlight sensor in there. And it looks amazing compared to like a 4K sensor without anything. in it. So there's definitely some other stuff that Ring could be doing that they're not. And it's just because they have brand royalty and they really don't have to. Maybe a few more years. They'll come out with an SD card. You know,

my first card jack on or something. Yeah. It'll be like a USBC dongle, you know, pulling in the back of it or something. Losing the wall. Yeah, like AITJ was talking about, you do have the Ring AI Pro subscription for 20 bucks a month. And I thought it was funny there.

Even the AI generated script identified that you get fewer text messages of all these things if it is summarizing things correctly. So it could be interesting. Well, that's something I need from like every camera system at this point. Like if you identify me that's like walking around the house like on the outside and stuff, don't notify me that I'm walking around the house. You know that like that's the annoying thing right now is because it's starting to get a little nicer outside.

I'm working outside more. And I have like 80 notifications from the backyard camera because it detected me as I'm working outside. Yes. And it's like, but it's me. I don't need to know about me. Right. I like that with the ring, the AI.

They've really done a good job with that because I set my neighbor's house all up with ring cameras and their notifications are very smart and they'll be like somebody's looking in the car window that actually happened one night, right? And they got the notification and they described exactly what the person does. And now whenever I walk up to the house, I do something strange just to startle them and make their notification kind of say something weird, right? But it is really cool what Ring has done with that. If you want of these, you can pre-order them now.

They release some time towards the end of April, April 29th. 249 for the 4K, 179 for the 2K, and then $99 for the second-gen 2K with the built-in battery. Just wait a week or two and they'll go on sale. Yeah, 79 for the one without the built-in battery for the 2K. So there's one for every price point all the way up. And then if you don't like any of those, you can do a blink, and it's probably half the price.

It's like 20 cents. Same company. It's weird. All right. Well, speaking of the show, Alan Chow actually brought this to my attention. Ring has a developer program now. It looks like they were going to be setting up some kind of Ring App Store. They've got a new Ring developer portal where you can find, like,

third-party developers can find, like, how to build apps around Ring video footage and data. There's a couple of use cases like Business Intelligent, Events-based, Notifications, work flow automation, customer traffic analysis, elder care monitoring, pet wireless assessment for behavioral patterns, health insights, mood detection, and then home analytics, pool condition. Is your pool green or not? That'll be, that'll be an app, green or not. Maybe it'll send you a text message to pick up chlorine at the pool store or something. That's actually not a bad idea. And even take it a bit further, but monitoring the pool to see if there's something, you know,

something happening in the pool, like if your pet fell in the pool or some ugly fell in the pool, that would be awesome because right now my camera, I can just set it up, but, you know, if you're out there in the pool just swimming around, it will still keep alerting you that something's in the pool, something's in the pool, like TJ walking around the house, right? But if it could actually know the intent or what's actually happening in the scene, that would be really cool if they could build something like that. Imagine programming that. Is drowning? Yes, no. His drowning function didn't quite work right now.

Gavin is drowning in the pool. You know, my wife would just ignore that. I didn't get any message. Just some of these dang notifications I keep getting. Officer, it was just buried in all the ring notifications. The page includes a couple of testimonials from some of their partners right now. I'll just grab integrations and activity summaries, safety alerts, all that good stuff. So, yeah, I'm kind of interested to see what they have here.

and what this could bring moving forward into the ring ecosystem. Sounds kind of interesting. Like, is it going to open up integrations with some other systems, too? Like, I don't know. I think it's like a closed-in, it looks like a closed-in system. I don't know. Like, if you can act upon, you write something that detects, like, a dog pooping on your lawn, and you can act upon that, like, what could you do?

Could you send a web hook or something to, like, home assistant to turn on your sprinkler? you know, will they allow something like that? It would be interesting to see. Yeah. You guys are thinking about way too deep. This is literally just for the Amazon Fire phone. That's right. Probably.

Wait, was this released today? Hold on a minute. Are we getting excited over something that was released today? Oh, man. I'll sign up and see what this is all about. They have a Twitter account and stuff. Well, they actually reference to Twitter.com slash Amazon on app devs, so.

Interesting. You can follow them. They have a YouTube channel. Yeah. Maybe I'll just watch that instead of signing up. Maybe the better thing. Eh, it's not letting me log in. Oh, that's my AWS account.

Ah, it's a Rickroll. Is it? No. Honestly, that'd be my experience with Ring. With all the development stuff I asked for and they never provided. Like, you know, it would be nice to integrate with their alarm system that they never allowed, but whatever. We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. All right. Well, speaking of a real video. cameras. Umbiquity actually came out with some G6 Edge series, which are a massive update, I guess, to their camera line. This is basically like having that, what is that little device that they introduced, the AI port?

Yeah, like in your camera, where all of the analytics and everything happened on the camera. I'm going to say just like every other Hickvision camera out in the world right now. Like it just gets all those analytics built into the camera. Didn't all the cameras already have the analytics built? Just not ubiquity. No, I thought ubiquity had that all in up to a certain model. And the port was just adding it to non-upacuti cameras. Or it was adding it to cameras that didn't have it

because I have some unified cameras on it that it adds extra to it. This is even above that. This is like the follow the guy with a red T-shirt type of. Oh, okay. They have the ones that are built into the system, right? The whole point of this camera is that you don't need an NVR for it. What? Yeah, so the edge cameras are for when you, it's literally just a standalone camera.

And so the easiest way to think about it is like Verkata cameras. I think that's how you say that kind of company name. It's like all the cloud-based cameras. But this camera, like most of other POE cameras, it has a microSD card slot support for it. But you don't need an NVR like you do a traditional. ubiquity camera system. But it's got NVR integration. Well, it does.

But you can use a standalone. So if you wanted to roll this out and just put micro SD cards in it without an NVR in like a central place, you could. Hmm. It's cloud cameras. No man has set up direct to site command. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess, yeah, it goes out straight to the cloud and you just watch what's on it. I see what you're saying. Yeah. So like if you, like, this is perfect for like, if you have like a, like, let's say a small office or like a, I think like smaller places, but obviously like they use the vercata cameras.

in very large places. Everywhere, yeah, yeah. But I would think, like a smaller place, like a small shop or something, you put one or two cameras up. You don't have to worry about the NVR, because the NVR is $300 alone. And so if you get to skip that

and save on the hard drive costs, especially nowadays with all the hard drive costs going up, throw a micro SD card in there. You're already done at that point. Now that microSD cards are going to go up. Well, that's a whole other story. But yeah, there's a limited use case for this, in my opinion, but I see it a lot in very big places.

where maybe you don't want to have like a central location for all your storage. So it also has the extra AI portion on it as well. Like it has that built-in, what is that not the, not this. It's the AI key. Yeah, the key. Yeah, that is this thing. I think it's like all their G6 cameras have the same capabilities now. Is that the same as the, because I have some of the G6 cameras, the little.

I could be wrong. This one seemed like it had more. Yeah, it probably does because it's the edge variance. Yeah. I'm interested to see the prices on this. Well, the, is it the G6 Pro turret? That's the one? How much is the edge turret?

I mean, that's not terrible. No, I didn't exactly. The Xx turret is $199. The G6 Pro turret is $4.79. Oh, no, no, this would be edge. It has the edge of it. So the edge, oh, the edge dome is in here's the edge turret. Because I'm not buying it.

Yeah, how much is the edge turret? Q3, 2026. So, yeah, no question. All right. Yeah. Interesting. This could be, like, I can see a lot of use cases for this. somebody just doesn't want to put an NVR.

I mean, like, the other day I saw in, like, the ubiquity subreddit, that somebody didn't want to buy a UNVR because it was so big, you know? I'm like, okay, well, it's not that big, but, but this could, uh, this could work for them. Yeah. All right. All right. So this is a way for them to get like a little, well, now I guess they don't have any

money on the back end because you're just managing it through the ubiquity managing software. So interesting. Uh, and if you wanted to deploy this where it did, cord to a or backup to the NVR. It looks like it will do that too. So, hey, it comes in 4K. Do you guys know that?

It's in 4K. Whoa. Watch out. Still no Starlight sensor, though. No, still no Starlight sensor. Or I think Starlight is like five generations back. Yeah, whatever the newest one is. Yeah, whatever.

I know what you mean. I'm old, I guess, you know. Give me that Starlight. Yeah, I guess that is it. These have the microSD cards built into them. And I'm trying to find the AI thing. Okay, so they have the A, they have a, they have a, they have a, bigger A76 chip and then the pro so it does look like it has a bigger processor for AI

event things in here so yeah it's it looks like it's a step up from from the pro g6 bullet it has an A53 and so does the G6 pro turret so they they have pretty much the same analytic I think this one this has got a dual arm cortex A76 whatever the heck that is it's just a bigger number which means it's better just like 4k obviously yeah all right well Well, we'll see what these look at. I wonder what the price is going to be on them. It should be fun. $1,000 a camera.

What do you do? Yeah, probably. Just buy an NBR, you know? They'll drop these and then come out with those AV things that we were been talking about. And we'll see what the prices are on those. It's going to be crazy. Man, that's cheap in comparison. Yep, exactly.

All right. Let's move on here and talk about another company that makes cameras. Realink has released its first solar-powered floodlight light, aimed at solving common floodlight cam problems. you know, this one, this one has got a solar thing on it. So it's got a built-in 7,800-m-hour battery. It's got a solar panel. It can run three months without sun. And it just needs one day, I'd say one hour of sunlight can power it for a day.

Unfortunately, not a 4K camera. This is a 2K camera with 150-degree filled of view. And it does have lights, though. It's got a 1,000 lumin lights on it and a 110-db siren. It does, however, offer you that full night vision. So that should be nice. It has built in on AI detection for people, vehicles, ammels, and we'll give you smart alerts that way.

Also recording to microSD. And what would you think this cost? I mean, Ring came out with a 4K thing or 2K camera for what, 179. This one has solar, has batteries. What do you think? It's got to be like $500. No, no re-link. It's going to be a 109-99.

There you go. And it's on launch sale right now for like $89. That's crazy. The railing solar camera, I think I have the Argus 4 pro or pro 4 however you say it um it is the first solar power camera i've ever actually used that i had liked and that i didn't have to recharge uh railing sent me that i did not pay for it and i have sat it outside for the past two years and i have never touched it and it's never died so they're uh they're doing something right with their solar and rail link um their camera line

in general they just have a camera for everything i find like they're one of few companies they have floodlight cameras they have 180 degree cameras they have They have cameras for everything. Solar powered cameras, hardwired cameras. They have PUE cameras, probably, right? Their software is pretty good. Their cameras are high quality. They have some high quality images on their camera.

I would say they're like the best cameras in the business. But if somebody, you know, is looking for an all-around system and they're like me and they like to have the same camera everywhere, this is a company you might want to look at. Yeah, it's like one of the actual true, like, competitors to ring, you know, whenever somebody's looking at ring and they're like, I want it ring because they have a floodlight and they have like a spotlight camera and an indoor camera. Ray Link is basically the only company that compares to that at this point. Yeah, and their floodlight camera, like, that's a good point is one of the only ones that kind of look like acceptable. Like there's other floodlight cameras out there, but they all look weird.

Yeah. I don't know why. It looks like some alien tech. I kind of like might to blend in a little more. These ones look a little more normal, kind of like the ring ones. Yeah. And it's got a color night vision, all that good stuff. So, yeah, I was just supposed to say it's a little boxy, a little square,

but it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't look like your normal, like, outside with floodlight. But it also looks like a camera with a solar power thing on it, which I think is kind of more important than just having a floodlight. So, and like looking nice and that kind of thing. It doesn't stand out, but it doesn't also, it also doesn't blend in the way it's kind of designed. But I think it's nice. It's probably one of the nicer ones I've seen. the fact that you don't even have to wires where you're going to mount it. Like, that's, that's pretty cool.

Three months on a battery, it says. All right, let's move on here. Nukey is adding Apple Home Key to its smart lock. It's launched its first, a Lero compatible accessory, the keypad to NFC, which adds tap to unlock the company's retrofit smart lock. All supports Apple Home Key, Samsung's digital home key, letting you unlock by tapping a phone or smartwatch. Basically, you know, just walk in, tap on like those NFC ones that we have

from, I guess it's the same thing from, uh, cara. I guess, yeah, that's what I have. Uh, earlier is new cross platform smart lock. Standard is meant to let any compatible lock be unlocked by any smartphone without proprietary apps. Um, so there you go. Uh, this thing is 179 for the keypad to NFC. It's available now. So not a bad price. And I like to see standards that work across everything. Yeah, it's nice. That, you know, you're not locked into Apple because it's own, uh, was a home key only. Um, so that's good to see. that they're introducing the Alarol standard.

And this keypad looks nice, too. Like, it's small, thin. They have been mounted into a door frame in the picture here. I don't know too much about their smart locks, but the keypad's nice. Gooden that looks nice. What is that? All right.

And one more new product here. Delon Willis. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Launch is the first. That wasn't even close. Dewin Willis. Yes, it is. That's exactly.

It's whatever you want it to be. Yeah, it's whatever you want to be. That's what I wanted to be. Dewin-Wills, or D-Win-Wills, whatever you want to call it, has released what it calls the world's first matter-compatible smart hole-pump timer aimed at reducing maintenance time and energy costs with scheduling, automations, and remote control. Comes in 120 and 240-volt models in slim metal enclosure, IP-44 weather seals for corrosion, and works from negative 40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit,

which should cover full range. That's pretty much everything. Wiring uses five screw terminals and up to two 120-volt loads. Wiring is streamlined and avoids jumpers. Despite the pool pump branding, it's pretty much, I mean, that would work for anything, like a water heater, bigger fans, outdoor lighting, fountains, any pump, water pump, pretty much. It goes up to 40 amps total,

and sports two or three horsepower motors. So there you go. Kind of nice. $63. So that's not bad. I'm not rich enough to have a pool. What is this for? You control the pool pump.

You got a fountain. Do you have a fountain? Do you have a fountain? I don't have a pool, Seth. Well, you could use this for your water heater. You can turn on off your water heater for this. So that's probably what most people could use it for, I suppose. If you had an outdoor water heater.

I guess, well, yeah. It's good for that. Yeah. It's very industrial-looking, so I'm not going to. Yeah, it's matter over Wi-Fi, just to be clear. It looks very similar to my current switch, which was a GE one that I'll be replacing, but the same type of box. The one thing that I find annoying is it doesn't have a button on the outside. You have to actually open the unit to go in and turn it on or off manually.

My GE actually had an outside button that you could press. Oh, I'm okay with that, though. I mean, well, when you're in a situation, that button, having a quick access to that button is important, right? I'm not, if you have a lock on it next to you know, you have to unlock it and blah, blah, blah, right? I forgot you're in Canada. You have to lock your pool pump timer down. Yeah. You don't want somebody randomly coming in and turning on your pool pump on you now. They might steal your pool. Geez. Yeah, exactly. They'll siphon the water off. You'd wake up. There's no water. You'd get a notification, Gavin. I don't know what to worry. It's a matter, competitive.

But for this price, though, it's a great price. Yeah. You know, an alternative to this is the Zuz. Z-Wazza has a Z-Wave version similar that can power your pool pump, which I will probably be installing that this year. They have a matter enabled the Voltres landscaping transformer here, too, with three independent 12 or 14-volt zones. Yeah, I was just looking at that.

100 bucks, yeah. I'm, like, more interested in this than I am in the matter piece here. It's like, that's a really cool. But once again, matter over Wi-Fi. I'm just not a, yeah, I'm not a fan of just throwing all these products on my Wi-Fi. Like, I'm not a fan of Matter over Wi-Fi. I want Matter over Threat, if anything, because I don't want to load up my Wi-Fi with all these products. Yeah.

We'll put a link to these in the show notes. And if you do want to load up your Wi-Fi, and I say you should, I don't know why you'd need to, but if you do, you could do it this way. I do agree they should have a matter-only option, but they're probably taking an easy route. I mean, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, right? not many people have matter stuff set up just yet, so I get why. And then speaking of matter and

you know, if you're living on the edge, matter 1.5.1 gets a little minor update, but it builds on the camera and video doorbell support that was added last November. The biggest change is more efficient camera streaming when multiple people or other systems are viewing the same feed. So now with this new 1.5.1,

a camera can send multiple streams at once with different quality settings like high-resolution stream for video recorder and a lower-res stream for phones and tablets, you know, basically to support those resolutions. Also, add support for H-EIC images, which deliver a little bit better quality

than J-Pag. But yeah, a nice little update feature bump for Matter 1.5.1, which we'll see in two years or whatever. This actually is manufactured, manufacturers start shipping product with it's on there. We've barely even seen any matter compatible cameras. Yeah, a car. That's it, right?

Yeah, pretty much. Now we're getting updates already, so at least that's moving along. Yep. Progress is progress. There we go. All right, well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at Hometech.fm slash 569. All right. Pick of the week, we had a fair share of April Fool's jokes this week. But one thing floated across the hub there, Jimmy posted in the hub, this H.A. 95, which is Home Assistant 95,

which is basically a fun hacks interface that you can install that gives you a kind of almost, I will say, almost retro Windows 95 style screen. It has the classic colors, green color, and the Tahoma font and everything in there. So, yeah, it looked kind of fun. I guess there's a blue screen to death Easter. in there too that you can get.

So it reminded me to go and take a look at my Haas 95, which I still have. And it was funny as I had been using this and kind of like using it in a different way. It was before I was using Claude I was working on this thing.

And I was like, opened it up and took a screenshot of it. But there was all sorts of layout issues and didn't quite work the way I thought it was supposed to. And I was like, hey, Claude, look at this and just fix stuff. And it went in and it fixed. a lot of the like drag and drop and issues I was having like it's really looking great now like

things that were hidden I guess in the interface exist now buttons are showing and it it just made one pass in my old code so I man what it just kind of shows you like this was vibe coded last year sometime and in that in that time this is how far we've come like one prompt killed a bunch of these like really weird bugs and edge cases that you know I kind of was fighting back then but not really caring to to move forward on past like what what existed but now i mean i'm i'm able to navigate through my devices and entities open and close different different the slider windows and um opening here's here's the room vents can open and close those so yeah this this is this is wild and mine also comes in a hot dog theme so whenever i do release this thing you will have the most

beautiful windows um 95 and 3.1 theme possible not just the green it's not a competition Seth, you don't have to compete. But, yeah, Cloud was also used to make this one, too, I see. Like, you're seeing more and more of this, yeah. Because when you're on the GitHub, you look at contributors, you're seeing Cloud everywhere. Oh, Cloud right. Yeah.

Yeah. And the guy that actually, I guess, vibe coded this or, you know, used Claude or, I don't know how much he did of it, but it is Paul who's also known for the mushroom cards in Home Assistant. And he, I think he now works for Home Assistant. And I believe he also tweaks the main cards and stuff in Home Assistant as well. So, you know, he does good work, though. Like, with those, I love those cards. Yeah, mushroom cards are great.

That's what I use all the time. Yeah. Interesting. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't, uh, commit his, uh, Claude, clod MD file here. So I didn't, I didn't see that. But yeah, I see that Claude is, is doing some commits on, on this, this code base here. Which, you know, for the record, I have nothing against, if you use Cloud as a, as a tool to like, I have nothing against that, you know,

It's if you have quad doing pretty much everything. That's all a different story, right? I don't know about that either. You definitely have a quad doing everything. I know. What I like is some of these projects out there that have that in there and you can kind of like go and dig through and see how they're using it. And they're like, oh, I didn't know you could do that.

And, yeah, especially like some of the open source projects that are using it pretty heavily now and just kind of seeing them move around and what they're doing. Yeah, there's all sorts of things. I'm like, oh, that's a great idea. And then I realize how much time I don't have to mess around with it and just keep using what I'd do it. I'm using Claude now and to review some of these things. I'll see scripts and stuff that I'm like, oh, that's interesting. But I'm a little nervous.

So I ask Claude just to go through the code and say, hey, is there anything in this code that could be a backdoor that I need to worry about? And it does its work and it comes back and says, no, you're clean, you know? I've done that a couple times for even home assistant integrations or other integrations or other plugins for different things. I've like, hey, check this out. Do a security review on this and let me know. And it's gone through and said, yeah, I wouldn't install this. And here's the reasons why. And if you just install this other thing that's like well supported and, you know,

you're not installing this hacky version of it. And I'm like, it points you in the right direction. Yeah. So, yeah, I've, I've definitely found that to be useful, especially when you're just point to a random GitHub repo. Oh, yeah. That provides a compiled EXC. Yeah.

as the installation. It's like, I don't know. Well, I'm on a Mac, so I don't have to worry about those things, the viruses and whatnot, right? Sure.

Keep using, what's your IP address? Yeah. Who knows? All right. If you have any feedback questions, ideas for the show or Pix the week,

give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at Hometech.fm. or head on over to hometech.com slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right. Project updates,

but lots of home assistant updates. Oh my gosh, Gavin. And what has happened? Oh my gosh. Yeah, home assistant released, the 2026.4 released, uh, came out today. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was originally when they released the beta, it was a big one. There were some, uh, very controversial changes in that one towards the entity names and stuff. And they eventually had to pull that all out and say we have to rethink it through and maybe communicate it a bit better and just work on it a bit more. So it was getting a lot of heat from the community. Are they going to rename my entities? What are they trying to do? They're going to be adjusting the entity names.

It's for the better in the end. But the problem is it may affect, you know, templates and stuff like that. Oh, my God, stuff is going to break. Yeah. So it's going to affect your dashboard. A breaking change in home assistant? No. It's very rare.

But that's why it's so controversial because some people are like, why are you doing this? And they need to just, you know, think it through a bit. more. Nothing major. Well, it will be major, but not in this release. So in this release, some of the things look forward is they added the initial support for IR devices. So they're introducing something called like IR proxy, where it will now be a device that, like an ESB home device that you can shoot IR out of to control devices. So now they'll be able to control like anything with IR. This is the first step. So they've added like an LG integration. So you can control

LG TVs with an IR proxy. Yeah, because the IP integration is garbage because LG can't stay on the network to save his life. Exactly. So that's the first step, but they're going to be expanding it, adding more stuff. And the cool thing is, is they're going to be adding other things in the future. So somebody mentioned in the comments of this release, they see all the code or the initial commits for RF integration as well.

So, you know, will they ever get down the path of allowing you to control your garage door directly from home assistant who knows if they'll ever get around that rolling code stuff at all or what right but you know you can control there's there's a bunch of rf devices out there you'll be able to control fans i think fans use a lot of rf right now that people have specific devices um but you'll be able to get an rf um proxy and they also talked in their meetings about a few other protocols they'll support um i don't know if i can mention them but you know it will be because they're so secret over there at home assistant, yeah, exactly, you know, right? But it will be big for the integrator community, allowing control of AV equipment and stuff

like that, right? So it will be interesting to see how far this goes, but I think it will get to a point where people will just make dashboards for their home entertainment system, you know? With IP control and IR control, I mean, you've got maybe some RF in there coming in later, and then RS232 would be the last one you should add. Like, I mean, really, you could already do that. because, you know, just, but you have to communicate with some device that may have an API. But again, all that can be integrated, it's a matter of, like, supporting that at the top level from Home Assistant.

And if they're starting to do that, that's going to make, that's going to make it very interesting as far as, like, being a home automation platform, but also, like, for AV control. Like, where are we going to go with this? That sounds fun. It will be cool. I don't know if they'll support things like learning IR codes and stuff like that, but there are, I've seen integrations that people built that with other. devices where you can learn and record and do all that stuff. So it's going to open up a lot of opportunities for devices that you can't currently control. Well, you'll be able to control it eventually once they start adding the support.

So that was a key, that was a big thing. We've talked in the past about the purpose-specific automations, triggers, and conditions. They are kind of like finishing this off in this release. They pretty much got everything done. And this is one of those projects. They just want to get them all the options and everything added. They can move on and take it out of the, I think it's currently in their,

um, their testing store. I forget what we call it, labs. It's in the labs. So they'll eventually get out of labs and everything like that. And they can move on to another project. Something, um, if you're a matter lock person, they have a matter lock manager now. So you can matter,

you can manage the pin codes and stuff like that built in through home assistant for your matter lock. So some people be excited about that. That's good because managing lock. Like user pin codes is basically impossible in Home Assistant. You have to manually do it. There's an add-on or integration called Lockmaster that I've never actually successfully used, but supposedly that exists. It's weird that there's not a way to like manage lock codes in Home Assistant right now.

And it's not, I want to say it's not easy. It's just kind of a pin in the ass with the Z wave devices, for example. Because you got to trigger like, you got to tell the locks, send me all your currently met, known codes and you have only so many slots and then you got to wait for the Z wave to finish reporting all those codes, you know, and then you can update and delete and add because the codes can change without notifying the system. Like, it's, it's a messy situation that I think they need to work out. And I think this is a good thing for matter. It's probably much better in the matter system. That's all right. Even giant companies like Crestron struggle with this. Yeah, exactly. So it's not a new problem, but something that they can improve on. Maybe. They can ask Claude to fix it. It'll do it in like a few minutes. Who knows? Seth will do it.

He'll disappear and fix it one day. No, no. Whatever. Yeah, you don't have anything really working on my home. I mean, I guess I do. It's just, my home is a mess right now with the, like, what gets controlled where. And it all gets aggregated basically up to the Apple piece. But sometimes stuff stop working.

I'm like, all right, where do I have this light controlled at? Where do I go with this? Wow. Yeah. But then it starts working again, and I don't worry about it. So what are you going to do? How do you live, Seth? I don't know.

Just one day at a time. Other than that, you know, the usual, they added new integrations, noteworthy improvements. Got some new, the gauge card's been redesigned. Yes, the gauge card redesign was nice. And they had some major vulnerability fixes, so you want to upgrade, if anything, for security. Oh, oh, background color on your dashboard sections.

that's cool. That's huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's huge. Also, backup upload progress. So now you can see your backup, you can see how far along your backup is and not just have to wait and guess it's done. Finally.

Yeah, yeah. A little quality of life things. There's a lot of- That's what I do all day. I press backup and I sit in her wait for it to finish. And it's like watching the old defrag screen, you know? Oh, I'm going to talk about backups in my projects in a moment. But for now, that's good to,

see. And of course, I always tell everybody this, read the backward incompatible change. Incompatible, uh, backward incompatible changes. Make sure you read that section and see if anything's going to break. No, you have to read. You guys are all shaking your head. Just do it. Just do it. If you're going to read any section, read that one section, because something may break in your, your, you're set up and it will answer the question why, right? And there's always, you know, they don't even call it breaking changes. anymore that used to be a breaking changes section they renamed it to be a little nicer but they're like that's not what that means but we all know we all know that's just lipstick you know

i just i just had to update for the music assistant which is also in here and i guess it's a bunch of colors a bunch of different things here and i mean they actually have the nerve enough to put like all of their release notes within this card to before i'm able to update i'm like i'm not reading this i just said i just hit update so what Whatever's happening. The most annoying thing is hacks integrations when they have breaking changes because a lot of people turn auto update on and don't read the notes or anything. And they have breaking changes and then just one day you wake up and everything's broken for some reason. I hate that.

So that sums up this release. I have fine. I've updated. It says I've updated the music assistant, but the thing is still spinning. So I guess you want to just jump in the music assistant story. You've mentioned a few times already. I mean, it's update. I guess there is a story.

on it because Home Assistant decided to release all the news this week, I guess. Yeah, Music Assistant 2.0 was released. They added a party mode, which I guess it's pretty cool, where you can have guests, you know, scan a QR code. You can pretend you have friends and have, yeah, okay. Yeah, and they can scan a code. Come like my Home Assistant. On a screen and they can add songs and you can vote songs up and, you know, all that type of stuff.

I'm not going to do that. I'm having an AI party. Yeah, all my bots are invited. Yeah. Actually, that's not a bad idea, you know. That's a terrible idea. Give your bots control of the music and let's see where they go, you know? Like, yeah.

You're a, you're a DJ agent. Yeah, I'm going to have a DJ bot. Oh, you just gave you. Anyways, let's talk about, so music assistant is something I've tried. First of all, they've really revamped the syncing of audio and stuff like that in it. And they've been messing with that, adding that sense spin and keeping, like, devices from different ecosystems and sync, and they've done a lot of work and a really good job.

But I've never had good luck with music assistant. I don't know why. I've always found it, the interface. Like, for somebody that likes to read the manuals, music assistant's a manual. I just feel like I don't shouldn't have to read to really understand how it works. And I've always seemed to have gotten lost in its interface and stuff like that.

And then even when I finally think I figured it out and I got it working, it must be my home assistant. It just craps out on me. And I just say, you know what, just screw it. I'm going back to airplane to whatever speakers I want to use. Yeah. Right?

So I don't know. I think it needs a little touch up on the interface. I mean, it looks like it's very powerful. It would be nice, but I'm just not, I'm not personally a fan. Maybe I'm just not the person that used it. Maybe I just am stuck in my old ways of using Airplay, too, you know? I just find it easy for my phone. Whatever I'm listening to, send it to all the devices I want.

And it works, right? But they seem to drop off this for a reason. And I just never got in. into troubleshooting why all of a sudden my sono speakers drop off, for example, on this system, but it will work on my phone. So I don't know. If you're a music assistant person, though, 2.0 is a big upgrade. A lot of new stuff.

Go check it out. Make sure you upgrade. Yeah, there's so many updates. Can you, we get like a Gavin bot that just tells us when stuff's going to break? So that way I don't have to read the notes because I'm not going to read the notes, Gavin. And honestly, it would save you time anyway because I contact you when my stuff breaks. I'm like, Gavin, fix it. So if you just created a bot that does it for me and notifies me, then I can skip all of them.

Well, not really because the situation, the thing is, is I'll tell you it's going to break, but to upgrade, you're going to have to break anyway. So you're going to upgrade anyway. So I still have to fix it anyway. So might as well just cut that out because you're going to upgrade and break it anyway and then call me anyway. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

No point. I just updated my Matter server and the music assistant. And the main thing. And I guess it's connections lost. Are you using the beta matter server? So I've been using the beta matter server. I didn't even realize I was using it. But there's a toggle to turn it on.

It uses that Matterjs now. I think it's the Matterj. It's under the Matter. Somewhere in Home Assistant. Yeah. Somewhere in Home Assistant, it's in the config. There's a switch. And they highly recommend switching it over to the beta version because they say it's a lot more reliable.

And eventually that one's going to replace the built-in matters that we're in. So you might want to, Seth, since you like to Yolo, go for it. I don't even... I've had it switched on the other matter, but once again, I don't seem to have luck with matter either. So, you know, I just gave up what matter. It says I have other networks and a preferred network and thread, and I don't see this setting. So maybe I'm not on a beta thing. You're probably on the wrong page. Z-W-JS has an update.

I'm going to hit that one. Go. Oh, yeah. I love Z-W-J-S updates. There's always, there's multiple matter places. I can't remember where exactly you'll find that. that switch. Yeah,

why put it under the matter menu? Like, just put it somewhere else. It's like the matter controller and then there's something else.

I can't remember. I don't think I have any matter devices, so I don't think it matters. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right,

well, I will when I have this DeWin Willis three zone transformer and my pool controller, which for my pool I don't have. But you could always get one. A pool?

It's just a hole in the ground. Just like a controller. Just start digging around, yeah. Yeah, I mean, all you have to do is down in Florida is dig down

and eventually water will fill up the whole anyway. Just add a pump to the stream behind your house there. Like, there you go. It'll filter the water. Have it filter the water. I don't think, no, we have this like brain-eating amoebas here. I don't know if you know about that. You don't swim in the water in four. You don't even touch it. There's multiple reasons for, yeah. I'm not saying swim. I'm just saying you can have a pump there. Just don't do it. It's just a random pump running in the backyard on the river. People confuse people. And then heat it is now a works with home assistant.

This is a Norway-based manufacturer smart heating and climate control devices. So yeah, they've got some Z wave devices that have made it into the thermostats, that kind of thing. Looks nice. It's European. If you're in Norway, you have an option that's made, that's kind of works with home assistant certification. Local communication. Yeah, there you go. There you go.

And then, oh, the big story, they're modernizing the encryption of home assistant backups. Who cares? Like, I just... That's so salty about this. I don't know. I honestly don't even know what they were doing in here. But yeah, they're modernizing the encryption. All right, we can move on.

We're using a new key derivation and blah, blah, blah. Like, are they going to have, like, this thing backed up where quantum computers can't crack your home assistant backup? Like, it's your bank or something. Meanwhile, I just, I don't understand people when they do this stuff. I mean, what are they going to get if they break your home assistant backup? Are they going to get like, oh, no, they got my Spotify music password? Like, what are they getting out of here?

I don't, I don't get it. Do you hook your bank up to this? We have smart toilets now. They can get your poop catalog. Oh, my gosh. You don't want anybody to have your poop history. I just, I don't understand. I mean, they'll be able to watch your cameras, you know, if you think about it.

Yeah. I don't under, like, maybe there's some reason to have this be like an absolutely secure thing, but I don't want to waste, waste time. on this. It's a Reddit problem. Let's move on. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. And the other thing they announced was they now have a new firmware for the ZWA2 and ZBT2, their antennas, that turned them into ZGB and ZWave repeaters. Now, the thing is, is they're probably going to be the best Zigby and Z wave repeaters because they are some of the best antennas out there, just the way they're designed and all, which also will make them the most expensive Z wave and ZigB antenna. us at the same time.

So, you know, there's a couple of things there. So if you had more than one bathroom, this would be great. You have one of these toilet paper holders in each bathroom, and it'll extend your Z-Wavers Zigby network. Yeah. Well, if you had like, say like another outhouse or house in the back or, you know, in the forest or something, you can put one of these there and use long range and they'll be able to communicate.

And all the devices will go to the repeater there. And then it will be able to reach. the back to the house and you can you can install that heated thermostat in your outhouse and it'll reach out there that's yeah so but it's a experimental firmware but you know eventually they'll be everything the home assistant feels like an experimental things anyways so yeah we'll just call it version 1.0 of the firmware there you go yep yep yeah all right well lots of home assistant updates they just gathered them all here and too man but uh we we did do some work this week Gavin what's you been up to oh it's been a rough week this week. Yeah. I've been through, there's been ups, there's been downs, you know,

like one of my first downs is I was working with Cursor, updating some home assistant dashboards and everything. And I said, hey, update this graph on, you know, this page. And he went through and he did some stuff. He said, okay, done. And then I reloaded my home assistant and all my dashboards were wiped out. You only had the graph left. Not even the graph. That was the west up part. Everything was wiped out. So I was like, Curser, what'd you do? Undo it. And he's like, oh, my bad, you know. He's like, I accidentally overwrote all your dashboards doing a test and there's no way to get it back.

I didn't back it up. I hope you have backups turned on. And he went into a whole spiel about how he felt so bad. Like, I felt bad for the guy, but the same time, was so pissed because this was about 11 o'clock at night and I was mad. And I instantly went into like panic mode. But then I realized, wait, I have backups. Well, I bet they're encrypted too. No, they weren't encrypted because I back them up to my other server.

So they were wide open. But this is a good reminder. If you don't have backups of your home assistant and it's an important infrastructure, do the turn on the backups, get your backups going, you know, get multiple backups. You know, just be safe because the backups are actually really good, right? That's the thing I found. So the problem with my backup is my last backup, I took that morning. So it was on the previous version of Home Assistant.

Then during the day at some point, I had upgraded to like the latest version of Home Assistant. So the backup was for a previous version. I tried restoring just the dashboards, but now then Home Assistant wouldn't even load at all. So I was kind of in a weird state. But once you get access to the prompt, there are commands that will easily let you downgrade your Home Assistant

to the previous version, easily restore the backup, and then you reboot and you're back into Home Assistant. And it's something that you should probably try on a test system once and just, you know, like you could do it in a Docker and do a restoring. You'll see how easy and how reliable it works. And it will save your butt in these types of. This is probably the second time I've had to do it. Yeah.

You know, and each time the backup and restore process worked flawlessly. Like, I have no complaints about it. So that's a reminder to everybody. Turn on your backups, you know, just be safe if you don't have it turned on, right? And make sure they're using bank grade encryption. Exactly. You don't want somebody getting access to your home assistant logs. The quantum computer is going to have to be able to crack my home assistant backup now.

I'll make hackers to know what I'm using the restroom. Also this week. So remember when we were at CS and all of us got a MyQ lock and we were all thinking to ourselves, we'll never be able to get rid of this thing. Yeah, I was trying to blow mine up. But Nicole's like, nah, you shouldn't do that. And I was like, but I live in Ohio. I could totally blow it up and make a TikTok video.

about it. True, true. Did you guys go to the MyQ parties? You crashed it. Okay, yeah, yeah. And they gave us all a MyQ lock. We spent a lot on drinks. We got a lot of drinks. But the MyQ lock's not a cheap lock, but it has like video and everything battery powered. It's a, it's a Mikeu lock, right? It's like six months or less battery life. It's a piece of junk because My Q sucks. But anyway. Anyways, I found a home for it. I found a sucker to take it. They don't listen to this podcast, so it's good. But it was the type of person that I thought, would take it. So it's just a person that doesn't really have a smart home, but they have a

MyQ garage that they use. And I was like, hey, I got this mic queue lock. Do you want it? And they're like, oh, yeah, I have a Mikeu garage. I'm like, great. It's now out of my house. Yeah, no returns. This is a person you don't talk to, hopefully, right? Because they're going to definitely contact you for text, and then. This thing doesn't work. Every now and then we go for lunch, you know. I said, listen, the box is unopened, so I didn't get a chance to read the manual, so I can help you. If it doesn't work, you'll have to figure you're on your own. She's like, oh, my husband will figure it out.

And I'm like, all right, good luck, you know. But they're like a non-smart home type person. They don't even have a, and she's like, I just want a smart lock. And I'm like, it's a Mikeu lock close enough, right? Like, here, have it. And she was so happy. So I got home for it. That was the type of person I thought would take the Mikeu lock.

That was so nice of you. I know. I feel. Or not. I'm not really sure. I don't know how to feel that. But I feel like, yeah, they probably. won't be buying lunch next time. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, I have officially banned MyQ stuff from

from work now. So whenever somebody's like, I have a MyQ thing and it won't work, and I'm like, that sucks because they suck. I'm so sorry for you. It's like, we don't touch it. It's like printers now, you know, my IQ stuff is just, it's plagued like printers and I just don't touch either one. Yeah, well, I'm just proud that I found a home for it. It's no longer sitting on my shelf. Like, I didn't know what to do with it. You know, I felt bad throwing it out. I felt bad keeping it. I found somebody that can use it. I'm going to bring one up for you. No, no, no, keep it down there.

No, I'll call the border. They probably won't even work up there, so. American. Oh, that would suck too. They'll find out. They'll find out. Yeah, they'll find out. It doesn't work in Canada.

That's not my problem. Anyways, so that was another thing. The other thing I found out, so I needed another fire stick, a travel fire stick. So when I travel, I like to travel with a travel router. I travel with a fire stick to, you know, I put MBL. on it to stream all my shows and everything like that, right? Um, did you know, fire sticks, they, uh, up, so they have this new OS, the Vega OS, and you can't load a lot of these apps anymore on it.

Like Amazon has totally locked out, like MB's now working to try and get an app added. So they're pretty much useless now, right? Other than the regular Amazon stuff, like, I can't, I can't do anything on it anymore. So I was kind of like stuck with, you know, what I do now. So I picked up the Roku, the Roku, the Roku, the Roku, stick. So much better. It's so much easier to just install. I install my MB app. It actually works better too. I was shocked how much better it was. So now that's my new travel. Which one do you get the little stick thing? Yeah, the little stick thing that you stick in the back and you know,

like it comes with a remote. And it doesn't come with the little extension cable that's kind of nice because I came with the fire stick. But that's okay. I can use the fire stick one. But it actually works really good. I think it has better Wi-Fi or something. It's responsive. It automatically loaded all the apps for me because I have a Roku TV that I had loaded it on to, right? That's something nice they do, yeah.

They have a pretty good ecosystem there. And so I don't know how long that little stick's going to last, because I've had the previous version of that going way back. It wasn't quite a stick, but it was kind of the same idea. And it, I mean, just over time, it just slowed down. And it's like, I really don't like this thing. I'll just, what I end up doing was traveling with an Apple TV that we had spare. And until one point, I was just like the Apple TV, you know, I need, I need to something else.

And I ended up getting, going to like Walgreens because they had a Roku stick. And I grabbed one of those and then pops it in place. And the little thing flies. Like, it's way better than the previous version. So I could recommend that one as well. The, my only other option I was looking at is Walmart has the O&N. I don't know what you call it on or O&N or whatever, but they have really cheap streaming sticks as well. I think they run a modified version of Google TV or something.

And they're extremely cheap. Like I know that I was listening to Entertainment 2.0 Richard and Josh there, and they had a story where it's actually raising in price. But even the price was like $30 or $40. Like it wasn't expensive. And you can also load M-B-on-that or Plex or whatever and carry that around. But I went with the Roku one. I'm very happy. I mean, even if it lasts a year or two, I'm good because it only costs me $40 for, you know.

Exactly. You know, like for what I got out of it. But it's working really nice. I've been watching it. It doesn't buffer. So if you're looking for a streaming device, I highly recommend this as a replacement to the Amazon fire stick. Right?

And I do travel with my travel router. I know T. You had recently issues with traveling, the travel router. Yeah, I'm going to talk about it in my segment. Okay, okay. I'll talk about it with you because, yeah, I've, uh-oh. Yeah, he goes, we'll get into that. But one last thing I wanted to mention is there is this,

I found this integration for home assistant this week. I came across called the Hobo, uh-huh, Home Assistant Global. The Hobo Assistant Global. Habo Hotel, got it. Havacasa. Avacasa. Yes.

The Home Assistant Global Health Score Integration. Whatever that means. So at work, we actually have this built into a number of tools that I use at work where it kind of like looks at your system and based on a whole bunch of criteria, it gives your system like a health score, right? And that's kind of good to have because we kind of use that to judge how well the environment's doing. And when that score starts a dip, you start looking at things and figure out what's going on, right? Well, somebody created an integration that does something very similar. So it looks at your home assistant, and we will link to this in the show, but it looks at your home assistant set up, and it creates a health score for it. So it looks at CPU usage, memory usage, all sorts of things, dead entities, you know, things like that.

And it creates a score. My score was very high, of course. You know, I was in the 97, you know, range, you know. I don't know, Seth will probably be in the 55 range or something. like that, but it was a really cool tool that I think, you know, is worth installing on your home assistant, especially if you want to know, is it up to par? Is it running good? You know, like, you know, see what kind of score you get. We'll include the link in the show notes. I'll actually send it to you now, Seth, because you'll probably install it by the end of the show. I'm trying to get it installed right now because you're talking all this mess about me with the thing I don't even use. Yeah, I want to know what score you have by the end of the show. You'll probably have it all done and set up in a score by the end of the show. But yeah, It's a cool little integration to add to your home assistant. And just you can add a tile to a dashboard so that you can see your score whenever you want. It updates, I think, every minute or so.

And yeah, if you ever want to keep an eye on how well your home assistant integration and your home assistant setup is doing, install this. It will, it's a pretty cool thing. It's prerequisites. This is the most IT thing I've ever seen. No, a lot of them are not required. It says, you can skip. I need to install something with hacks called a systems,

let's see, system monitor. After you install the hacks, you see, this is why MIT around here. After you install the integration, you then got to go into devices and add the device, you know, and then it will ask you a bunch of questions and go from there. Add integration. Let's see, paste this in. Oh, I must already have this. Select, oh, no, I don't.

Okay, submit system monitor. for area. I don't know. What area you want to live in? Well, utilities. Well, I don't even have a utility there. All right. So there, that's installed. All right. So I'm halfway there. Now I got to go install this, uh, in, where is this thing? D-N-9, D-N-91. He says, now I can go install this. Hagg. Hagg. Haggis. This H-A-G. Yeah, it's haggis. Haggis. Yeah. Integrations, add integration. Okay. So, uh, copy this. So yeah, I'll work on getting this setup. And we'll see what my score is, Gavin. Yeah, your CPU

usage, RAM usage, you should have sensors for that. Just look for processor and memory, and you should find the sensors for that. The rest is pretty straightforward. Okay. In the configuration. So yeah, I think that pretty much sums up my projects

for this week. I grabbed an Insta 360, but I'll talk about that later when I get more time to play with it. Gavin and 360. Ah, yeah. Better than 180. Mm-hmm. Arguable. Oh, and we'll be shipping out the prizes, too. We have to mention that.

Oh, yeah, we should probably should mention that. Seth thought he was going to get his shipped out before me, but that is not true because I'm going to ship mine out tomorrow. I already made the shipping labels, so mine are going out before Seth's. And the one Canadian is getting his soon because I got the box and it's all packed and everything like that. Nice. I'll probably go Staples tomorrow and get it out, so expect that soon. Oh, you ship via Staples, huh? Oh, yeah, because they have all the various, you know, what do you call, male people there.

And I just say, give me the cheapest one that will get it there. And they go, okay. And the funny part is, is like, they're like, well, do you want to use Canada Post? And we're like, okay, give me the cheapest one other than Canada Post. I wanted to get there. Yeah, because when they look at you funny, like, you want to use Canada Post, I'm like, no, no, no, let's look at something else. I don't just like the person I'm sending to this too that much. Well, I'm not going to do that.

I want it to get there. So, yeah, we'll be getting those out. All right. Well, their instructions aren't very good over here. But, yeah, I'll get mine out too, I promise. There it is. It's on my desk. I'll remember, I promise.

I'm so sorry. Let's see. It says, is settings. So I have to download this and add, what? No, I'm not downloading this. I don't know what you're looking at. The instructions. Well, no, you install.

the integration and then you have to go in and then you have to add it. Like, so once you add it through hacks, you go into your devices and services and say add integration. Hacks seems to be the problem. Like, it's not, you can't search for it in hack. No, you just type it in a little search thing at the top. It's not there. You search for H-A-G-H-S.

Yeah, it's not there. Doesn't come up. Oh, now it comes up. What the heck? Yeah, then you click on that. And I got every start. Okay, I know this part. Download or start.

And then you have to add the integration after. and then look for it and then you'll get into the setup from there. All right. What's happening? All right. TJ, what you've been up to? I have been doing a couple things.

Why does I'll get into the travel router saga first? Sounds like it. Yes, I've never really had a reason to have a travel router. I've had like a, I forget what it is. I have a device in my backpack that I use to, you know,

it's got a physical Ethernet port on it. I plug it in. It basically allows me to like if I go to a client's house and they're not home or they can't give me the Wi-Fi password or whatever, I can log into their system wirelessly with a little, basically a little access point. It's been fine. It does exactly what I needed to do.

But when Ubiquity came out with the travel router, which obviously is not a new concept at all, I was like, you know, I'm going to go and get a travel router because then I can bring like a ubiquity camera with me whenever I travel and then I can teleport back home. It's just so much easier because if you know me, I'm not going to set up, you know, whatever wire, or open VPN or whatever BS it is because, you know, teleport is just so much easier

if you're already in the ubiquity ecosystem, which I obviously am. I will say the ubiquity travel router is a piece of junk. I have spent more time like troubleshooting this and like that it's just like it's so buggy because like I'll go to log into like a Wi-Fi network and then it like doesn't actually let me log into the Wi-Fi network. It just keeps letting me like look at the screen that says I should connect to the Wi-Fi network and then it doesn't work. And so, like, after, like, using it really for the past, like, couple weeks, because I've

been traveling a lot, I was like, this, this thing sucks. And so I ordered a, uh, I ordered a new one from GillyNet or GIL-Net, however you say, the-L-I-Net, yeah. It's the slate. Gilly networks. It's the Slate-Sept. We're known for their, how will you pronounce company names. Yeah, I mean, it's like that GillyNet.

I'm calling it that now, GillyNet. Honestly, I never even knew there was a period in it for the longest time. So I'm like, G-L-I-Net, what does that even mean? But I went ahead and bought the Slate 7. It was on sale for like $130. It's got, you know, Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 gigs and all this stuff I'm never going to use. But I was like, well, you know, I've already wasted $80 on the ubiquity travel routers. I might as well go all out on this new one.

I used it. I've only used it one time so far in traveling, but it just worked so much better. It was like so quick. And my thing is, too, is like, you know, it's $20. 26. I don't want to log into a website to like configure my Wi-Fi access point whenever I'm traveling. I just want like I want to use an app that just makes it nice and easy for me. And so that's, that's what this does. Use an app and you can add all kinds of apps and VPNs and all this stuff that I'm never going to do. But like it just worked and it, I don't know, just like it was

so much simpler to set up. It didn't take anywhere near his time and there was no bugs with it. So I'll have to, I'll have to see how it goes the next couple times I travel. I'm done with traveling for the most part right now. But this thing is a lot better than the ubiquity travel router. It sounds like their whole interaction with it got better than the last time I tried my gillinette router because I had to go to the web interface and do a bunch of stuff to get it working. But once I did get it working, it worked nice. So at my mom's house, I brought my unified travel router with me. You can't beat the size of it, right?

Right. That is the biggest advantage. It's very small. And I set it up, you know, and it was using her Wi-Fi and then, you know, piggyback as the uplink and everything like that. And then all my devices were instantly online. But I was having problems with devices staying online. For some reason, I could be on a Teams call and it would just drop or things like that. Streaming would just drop.

And it was getting me upset as well. And what I ended up doing was I just hardwired it in because I had an Ethernet port here. So I just plugged it in. and now it's basically the Ethernet port is the uplink, and I realized it was so much more reliable now since I did that. So maybe it's Wi-Fi just sucks, but either way, it kind of sucks. Yeah. Right?

Like, I know they've released a lot of updates and it got a little better since when they first release, but still it's like repeating that Wi-Fi signal or, you know, piggybacking it, it kind of sucked. Yeah, and I will say, too, the Ubigotty Travel Router, I know it doesn't have like external antennas like my Slate 7 does, but the range on the ubiquity travel router is awful. We rented basically like a suite at our last hotel that we had. And it had, you know, the bedroom in the back of the hotel and it had like a little sitting area in the front where you like walk in the door.

And I was already down like two or three bars just on the opposite side of my hotel room. And the slate seven, I had full bars even in that same room. So I brought both of them to compare, you know, side by side. And the gillie net was just so much better. in every single way. So if you have them buy Ubiquity Travel Router, I would recommend not doing that. They might come out with a new version at some point.

It seems like this one's just underpowered. Yeah. And Ubikwities been doing that sometimes with their cheaper devices, like the Dream Router 7 or the Unify Express, where they're like good devices, but they're so severely underpowered that just makes them painful to use. Yeah, I agree. It's awful.

They do look nice. Oh, they're so small. You can literally put it in your pocket and you would like not notice it. I mean, it's obviously not as thin as like a credit card or anything, but it's so small and compact that it's a very easy, like, add on. Like, it's cool, like, when you're on a plane and you just, you know, you set it up on the plane and you have various devices now use, you don't have to add all your devices, you know, like I don't know how many devices you'll have on a plane, but I had my Wi-Fi, my, I had my phone on it and I had something else on it. And it just worked, right? like, but it wasn't the most stable, um, device I find. But when I plugged it into Ethernet, it worked a lot better.

Yeah. So I don't know if they just have issues with their Wi-Fi. Well, as with everything with ubiquity, wait until the second version comes out, probably, probably, maybe they'll come up a pro version or something. Yeah. Yeah. Well, unknown ubiquity, they won't even release a new version of this. It'll just be like, yep, that we gave that a shot.

That's it now. We used all the little screens up and we're done. No more screens. The thing is, is constantly sold out. So whatever they're like making is everything's selling out. So it's a successful product for them. Well, and people are scalping them too. So I might try to sell them for.

Oh, yeah. Do that. Because I don't have a use for it now. So my new Gileon router has these little antennas that stick up. You know, it's kind of like a little touchdown symbol. I like it. You know, wake up in the morning. Now I can't look at them the same way.

If you wake up in the morning, you're like, yeah, you're excited a little guy about my Wi-Fi. I hate when people ruin the way. logos for me like that or, you know, device. You know, somebody told me this week the Slack logo looks like four ducks sniffing each other's butt. I'll let you go and look at it and you'll never look at the logo the same again. Oh, it kind of does. They're California ducks.

That's why it makes you wonder why every AI company has like a variation of the butthole for their logo? Yeah. Opening eye. Oh, you ruined all those logos. There you go. You're welcome. Oh, all right, TJ, continue.

He just ruined these logos for me. Yeah, another device I took with me on my travels this week. Anchor sent me one of their new products, the Anchor Nano Power Strip. This thing is kind of cool. It clamps onto a desk, and it gives you a bunch of AC outlets and USB ports. This thing, it's pretty nice.

I just put it, like, on the bedside table. You know, for some reason, hotels always have, like, the worst outlet next to the bed. I don't even know why they do it. They, like, put them in the lamps and stuff like that. And so I just put it on, or broken or, yeah. Yeah, it's always like the worst possible. So what I do is as I clamp this to the bedside table and attach my devices to it instead.

So this thing is pretty nice. 70 watts max power. So pretty powerful. At least you can charge all my stuff. This thing, this thing is actually great because you could clamp it to like the back of your desk. And the plugs are off the back, right? But then they also.

have some plugs on the top and some USB ports in the front, and it makes it easy for if you're just plugging things on sitting on top of your desk. So I like the design and I like the whole concept behind this, just to add some extra plugs to your desk. And I like the way that it tightens to, it's just a knob, you know, you just twist the knob or untwist the knob to tighten or loosen it. It clamps on. Easy. It doesn't need a lot of force. It just works. And then I've been doing a lot more outside stuff. You know, it's starting to get time. It's, uh, it's, you know, it's warm it up occasionally here in Ohio. One day it's 80 degrees, and the next day it's 40 degrees.

It's third winter, as I like to say. Great winter. It's, uh, I got my irrigation system piping done. Uh, and I've been uploading some videos to TikTok. So we'll, uh, we'll drop a link down below in the notes, um, be able to be able to see my progress. And I've been, uh, you know, I'm terrible about making videos. And so I've just really been trying to make videos about random stuff and just post them on

TikTok because I feel like that's what you. use TikTok 4. So if you go on there, you'll see me talking about my eco-wit, you know, soil moisture sensors or me unboxing some apple trees that I just planted. Hey, I watched that one. Yeah, you know, it's pretty nice. And then one of the videos I talk

about my irrigation system, the layout has changed a little bit, but it's still the same concept. And I actually had my hose spigot replaced today so that way I can leave the water on full time, because I replaced the host spigots when I moved into the house. And I did a terrible job at it. So I paid a licensed plumber to come out and fix them for me.

So that way we don't have any leaks anymore. So now that that's done, I can actually start like finalizing my layout. Went out to the day and glued all my irrigation valves on and, you know, starting to run wires and stuff like that. So the big reason I was trying to get some of this done right now is because I just planted like six Arbor Vitis and two apple trees. And they need a lot of water. And I'm not going to go do that every day manually.

So at least I got it working good enough to where I can water it through my a ratio irrigation system or spring cord controller. Nice. So you call that a controller? I've been. But the Zeus device isn't a controller? No, that's a hub. It's a hub.

It's going to be a Rachio hub. Yeah, yeah, you know, glad you got the Ratchio hub. Yeah, man, that's where it is. Gavin, I got a 91. It was higher, but something was a 97. That's pretty good. 91's not bad. Well, it keeps going back and forth.

It goes to 97 and then goes back to 91. Don't know what it's. It's a 91, sorry. I'll take it. And that's all. my projects. What about you, Seth? Ah, man. Still working on my TV app thing.

I'm getting closer on that one, but I want to clean up the data that I'm using a lot. I installed the Home Assistant Health Score. No, I should. Big thing I installed this weekend was a water heater. We've been waiting for one to show up at Home Depot for a while. We have this tall, skinny water heater we were going to replace. It just took forever to get it. So finally got it.

Got it earlier in the month, and it was all banged up and dented. So I ordered a new one, and they shipped it to the wrong town, and that Home Depot wouldn't ship it to this Home Depot. And now this is my third one that I've ordered. So it's been quite the adventure just to get a water heater. Are you sure you should get this water heater?

It sounds like nobody wants you to have this water heater. Well, those other two maybe, but this one I have now. So, yeah, it's working fine. And I've got it all installed. But what I noticed, when I was putting together, it has like this eco port or something on it, It's a Ream. And I was like, well, you know, somebody obviously has hacked this or whatever.

And sure enough, they did. And there's like a little, I'll look it up for the show notes as well. There's a little like ESP32 thing that you can get. And plug it into a RS-485 adapter for a, I don't know, it's one of those M5 stack things, little tiny development things. You plug that in and it'll tell you like your water heater information off of there. So yeah, why not? I'll take a look at it.

I might be able to use it to turn it on and off for demand and that kind of thing. So if we're out of town, I can kill the water heater and I don't know, save some electricity, I guess. You're lucky because you got the ream with that port on it. You see, I got the ream where you had to buy the external Wi-Fi device. And while it does integrate with Home Assistant, it sucks. It has the worst Wi-Fi antenna in it, I think. Because I don't know if the antenna is in the back of it and you put it onto a big metal tank. and that just kills the signal or something,

but it constantly just drops on and off the network. Like a lot of people complained, I eventually got it working, and I haven't touched it since. And it kind of like every now that it drops off, but it comes back on. Yeah. So I don't know what more to do it.

It sucks. But the ESP, a lot of people have been doing that, if you have that port, and they love it. Yeah, I, I, it doesn't look like it's very complicated. So, yeah, and it's already, work's already done on it. I'll be happy. I haven't even looked at what it was going to do. But those little pieces, little parts and pieces that you need to set that up with are like $14 total to order. So yeah, should be getting that in and hooking up, you know, sooner.

The water heat is working, though, so that's nice. It's always nice to have hot water. Well, I don't even use it to control the hot water. What I actually liked is it notifies you of problems with your hot water here. maintenance and stuff. No, well, one time my, um, my, I don't, the, I guess the pilot light or whatever when, no, mine does I have a pilot light, but one time it stopped working. Yeah. And I got a notification, hey, your water heater is not like working.

And I went downstairs. I looked at the code and I figured out how to reset it and it all came back on, right? So, but the fact that I got that notification saved us because we would have woken up in the morning to a cold shower. But instead, I was able to fix it that night before going to bed. So that's the main thing I like it for is those notifications and less control. Yeah. The best part about this was, unlike every other plumbing project I've ever had,

technically I didn't have to go back to the store through time. Although, if you consider how many times I did go to the store just to get the water heater, it's pretty much just like every other plumbing projects I have. It just was spread out over the month rather than the same night that it was trying to get the water heater installed. So I actually got it done. I was kind of impressed. I all kind of like went together and wheeled the other one down by the street. I stuck it out there and I don't know what's going on.

Guys, do you have in your area, do you have like a people that run around and pick up stuff? Yeah, scrapper. Yeah, they haven't been coming around. I don't know what's going on. So I figured. Oh, like the metal collector? The metal guys. Yeah.

The neighbor scared them all. Yeah. I don't know. They usually swing by and grab that stuff before trash night. And I haven't seen them in a long time. So I don't know what's going on. Do you not know a guy in the neighborhood, so we just call him. Yeah, I grabbed a guy's name once.

And last couple times I called him, he was either like out of town or, you know, didn't have anything. But I haven't seen anybody to get another guy, you know? I don't have a scrapper guy I can call. So I don't know. It was just kind of weird. Usually you can throw a water heater down there and it's gone, you know, pretty quick. But I don't know. I guess the scrapping these days in Florida is not all that great.

So sometimes I'll take a picture of whatever I'm scrapping and like I'll just put it on the curb. but I'll post a picture of it on Facebook Marketplace. And then it's usually gone pretty quickly, yeah. I'll give it a shot. That's a really good idea. Maybe there's like a scrapper, uh, Sarasota group or something that monitors that kind of stuff.

Uh, all right, I'll, uh, I'll, uh, my neighbor texted me. She's like,

did you, hey, did you, did you call for a bulk pickup? I'm like, uh, no, I didn't,

I'm just hoping somebody takes it. And, but they had some doors or something. So they were going to try and see if they could sneak those down as well. So, I think one of us is going to have to call for this bulk pickup. Whatever. It's a water heater.

Somebody will get it. Yeah. So ESB home, as soon as that comes in, I'll have another little small project to do. But I think, I think that's it. This is all I can really remember right now.

So it's been a long week. That's more projects than normal, though. Yeah, it is. One of them actually got done, the water heater. I mean, I'm tagging all the project on to it.

Did you actually do the water heater that? Yeah. Wow. It's all done. It's impressive. I even put a little pan on the bottom this time. There wasn't one there before. But the monitoring part of it's not complete.

So you're not at 100%. Technically not. I mean, I'm at 100% what I had before. I'm not at 100% after. You know, scope creep killed you at that one. I was like, oh, this phone jack? What's this phone jack on the side? Yeah, let's get that hooked out.

I'm not exactly excited to like, you know, I want to hide the wire. I'm not exactly excited how that was going to mount up. There would be a little phone cable, but I'd have to like sneak around the side of a water heater or something, but I don't know. You're going to have to find you have power by your water heater? There's one around the corner.

I might. Because you're going to have to power that device too. Yeah, it needs like a little five volts or something. Yeah. There's power nearby. I can grab on to. I have one of those pumps too, the little water heater pump that's supposed to push

the water into the rest of the house or something like that. I forget how it works to like circulation pump, I guess. Oh, okay. It's been disconnected for so long. I have not, you know, plugged it back in, but I, I, it works really well if you, if you have it set up to like continuously turn itself on and off. But I don't know, I'd rather just like kick it on when we need it to be kicked on. So then it would run for its like minute or whatever and then turn off and just get that water there faster. And like, I have enough like sensors or

things throughout the house that if I just put like a Shelley smart switch on it and, and, and kick it on and off when we're in, like, the bathroom or when we're washing dishes or whatever. Like, it would make more sense to do it that way. But I, that's another piece. So, like, whenever I get all this kind of, like, arranged in that area, I'll put those two pieces together, finish that off. Anyway, that's all I got.

Yeah, water heater. It's very exciting, very exciting. Really? Hot water is always good. So, yes. We need to upgrade ours at some point, but we don't have a lot of options because we have a very small space where our water heater is. So, yeah.

Yeah, that was the rough part. because you don't have one in the store, we can sell you? I'm like, well, no, you don't. You need to deliver the one I bought three times now. Why isn't it here? We only ordered it in, what, January, and we got it at the end of March.

So yeah, it's not bad. Imagine being without water that long. Wow, that took a while to get to you for a water eater? It took at least a week or two each shipment, and two of them, like I said, two of them were just, one of them was banged up, and the other one went to Kissimmee, so there we go. Wow, fun.

All right, well, that's going to wrap with the show this week. We want to thank everyone listening to the show, but especially want to send some big thanks out to 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 humtech.comfm slash support

to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out here on the show, but every single pledge gets you to fight over to our Slack channel where, you know, we have all sorts of fun stuff in there. The April Fool stuff was kind of flying by today. Wall plates? Lots of plates. Lots of plates.

Lots of plates. Epic. Everybody installed a plate on Monday. It was, it posts your wall plate day on Monday. So you missed that, you missed it. I guess technically you could still join. Jimmy's, uh, for into the professional integrator space was really funny. He's getting there.

He's learning. He's learning. We made them, TJ, you made him spend some money and get a new device though. That's right. He didn't have to buy, he didn't have to buy an expensive network tester, though. You know, I went for an affordable. one. There you go.

Yeah, all sorts of fun stuff in there. But, you know, if you, if you join at any level, it gets you hopefully an automatic invite over there. I do have to go check that to make sure it's still working. I think it is. As long as sometimes I think people log in with those, those like hidden Apple emails or whatever. And it's only for Patreon.

So when we send the email to them saying, hey, you're invited to the Slack, it doesn't make it to them. So I think that's what the problem is. I do want to give a shout out, though, actually to Richard Gunther. So a few weeks ago when I ranted about my Western Digital Drive trauma going through warranty with them and not getting a drive, Richard reached out to me. And he said he had an extra 8-terabyte drive sitting in the drawer because he went through an upgrade process and he's shipping it to me. So, you know, I already told him thank you, but I want to let everybody else know what a nice guy Richard is. Yeah, super nice guy. Everything they tell me, like, I don't believe him.

Richard's a great guy. So thank you, Richard. All right. Well, if you can't support the show financially, we just appreciate a five-star review of positive rating in the podcast after 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. Until next time.

Take care. Can I just say I've never felt so replaceable in my life before? Thanks everybody for listening. I'm done. I'm done. It was a, it was creepyly similar voice, though. Yeah, they're not perfect. They're close.

Like, you could tell who they were. I didn't do the perfect voices. I should. You paid more for that? I just did the quick ones. I just did the quick ones. I think I can do the, the ones that are more professionally done. But I decided, you know, if it's going to be AI, it's going to be like, not quite the same.

Are you going to pay me for using my voice to change? No, no. Can't win. HomeTech.coms, I support. If you want advanced copies of the HomeTech podcast, before we release. I could actually do these faster than editing this show. This is what Seth spends his time doing instead of editing the show.

That's what's funny. You know, I told you DJ this week when Seth goes quiet, he's up to something. I know, he was quiet for so long. I know. Look, he pops up with this. I said just before the end of the week, I should just publish it on the Patreon page. What happens?

You'd probably get the episode. You'll probably get the AI episode before this episode's released.