HomeTech.fm - Episode 585 - Bad Gavin, Smart Donut

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

On this week's show: CEDIA Expo 2026 is almost here with hundreds of product debuts on deck, GE talks up US-made chips in connected laundry, Home Assistant finds a new way to boss around Apple devices, Google Home on iOS may be turning lights on just for fun, Alexa+ lands in Australia, Sonos learns some Lutron tricks, OpenAI’s hockey-puck AI speaker rumor rolls on, ESPHome gets a much friendlier desktop app, plus a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more.Oberlin, OhioHomeTech HeadlinesHundreds of New Products Anticipated to Debut at CEDIA Expo 2026GE Appliances doubles down on US-made chips.iOS 27 Flips the Script: Home Assistant Can Now Control Your Apple DevicesDolby Vision 2 is officially available on select Hisense TVs - EngadgetA Google Home bug is randomly turning on smart lightsAmazon's Alexa+ Assistant Launches in Early Access in Australia“Hey Sonos, open the shades.”OpenAI speaker to be hockey puck-sized and cost over US$300: reportSimplify your ESPHome setup with the new desktop appWiiM Bar | Display-First Dolby Atmos SoundbarBadgers : animated music video : MrWeebl

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 14th. From Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Oberlin, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech podcast, a podcast all about home technology, home automation, and Oberlin.

Are you serious? What is that? Oberlin, yeah. I mean, it's another one of those, like, places that only exist because there's a college here. It's Oberlin College. And it's 45 minutes from Sandusky, Ohio, which is where Cedar Point is. And I think like an hour, maybe an hour and a half away from Cleveland, Ohio. So I'm in the very north part of Ohio.

Ah, okay. We got here on Sunday. It's currently Tuesday as we record this podcast. I'm hoping to go home tomorrow. Compared to some places I've been, there's actually stuff here. So that's nice. Yeah. You know, there's restaurants and bars.

There's a brewery or two. So we've been, we've been going to. going around and having food and drinks and other things. It's a Frank Lloyd Wright House there and Oberlin Heritage Center. I don't know what that is. I'm not going to look on that. It's probably ran by the college. I mean, there's like a museum here.

It's free. It's ran by the college. I was looking at like a coffee shop and it was like, it's inside the college. There is a cute little coffee shop. It's called local coffee and tea, I think. And it actually reminds me to be in a New York City. It's in a little basement. So you go down the stairs, like you would in New York City in some areas, and you get to this coffee shop.

So that was the highlight of my trip so far. Very nice. Very nice. Every time you go to one of these places, I have to look it up. I have to see, you know, what there is, you know. And, you know, I see that the population is like 8,500 in 2020. Yeah. Right?

That must make Tinder very interesting. But the other interesting fact about Oberlin is it has an albinole squirrel thing. White squirrels have become a bit of a local curiosity. Spotting around and around campus is apparently a thing. That's interesting. We have a lot of black squirrels. I don't want to eliminate their special status or anything, but we also have white squirrels in Columbus.

Yeah. They're not albinos, they're actually white because they're missing the red eyes and a couple other characteristics of albino squirrels. So it's not the same. They got the albino thing. I guess, yeah. And they say it has a lively little downtown. So that's nice.

It's a nice small town feel. Yeah. I mean, when we rolled in on Sunday night, there was like a little concert going on in the downtown square area. So that's kind of cool. Very nice. Very nice. One more fact.

One more fact after share. It was once known as the town that started the Civil War. Which side? I didn't see the Underground Railroad music yesterday. I need to know which side, you know? I'll just leave it at that. You're here. Be in Ohio is probably probably on one side.

Yeah, but they're north of the Mason-Dixon, so kind of, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, there's a, there's a winery, some performing arts center. Yeah, it looks like a place. It looks like an interesting place to. You know, there's stuff happening. Compared to some of the places I've been when I'm on this podcast, I've been to other towns that only exist because of college is there. Like, we've been to Miami University, which is not in Miami, Florida.

It's in Oxford, Ohio. There is literally nothing there besides the college. And so there's less to do. So this place has a couple of other things. I think it helps that it's also not too far from Cleveland and Sandusky and a couple of big towns. Oh, right, right, yeah. You can actually go do something if you get bored. Yeah, you don't, you're not by yourself for, you know, an hour and a half or so.

We'll put a link to Oberlin in the show notes. If anybody else, go check that out. You can check them out. Let's see. Well, I was supposed to be on the old home gadget geeks this last week. And you technically were for a short period of time. I was the only one on the show, technically. Jim, Jim's, it didn't record.

It did, like, something broke. I didn't break it, but something broke. So I guess I'm rescheduled for the 27th, 24th. I don't know. Let's take a look at the calendar. I think you said it was two weeks after. Yeah, the 27th. The next week?

27th. So, yeah, yeah. I'll be back to break his setup again. Yeah, I do think, I just want to point out, that's very odd that the only time that Jim has never been able to record a podcast is when you're on it. You know, I've been listening to Jim for a couple of years now. I've been on the show a couple times now. I don't know if he's ever had that, uh, that happened before.

So I feel like it was you that caused the issue. And Jim's just taking the blame for it. Yeah. I mean, we both agreed to blame Riverside. And I don't know what was going on. I did hear that agreement. Yeah. Yeah.

So, uh, it was internet network. I mean, that's the thing. Like, he's doing a live show. It's one of the reasons we don't do a live show because you rely on everybody's like end-point internet to stream out video and quality audio, which doesn't always happen. C.T.J. sitting in a hotel room.

Hey, this is an Airbnb. Oh, okay. Using a Wi-Fi repeater in the living room. Yeah, with a very awkward light over the top of your head. Not helping the situation. High quality. Yeah.

Yeah, shining directly into the camera. Yeah, like, I, I, I, those, those are tough, tough, tough things to do. So, yeah, I get it. Hopefully we'll be good on in the 27th and actually get to chat about some of the, some of the things I was, I'm up to. So I'm relieved because it gives me more time to finish those projects that I was going to talk to them about. And, yeah. You did it on purpose, didn't you?

Yeah, see, that's what I was saying, because you didn't have any projects finished. I told you, you had to come to Jim's show with, project completed and you're checking down. I tried. I tried. All right. Well, we got a bunch of home tech headlines this week. So what do you guys say?

We jump in. Let's do it. All right. I know you guys are going to get jealous here when I read this next story, but. Nope. Not at all. Yes, you are. You're going to be, you're going to be like missing out.

This is FOMO going to kick in, I think. The CD Expo 2026 is less than a month away. And the show organizers say hundreds. of new products are expected to debut in Denver this year. Oh. Hundreds. Hundreds? 98% are speakers.

Could be. And all the rest are the same ones from CES. It's just they actually shipped. Yeah. A few products already confirmed include Dindo Systems P-E automated display drapery. I guess. DeValette, CI-focused Phantom Ultimate. I don't know.

That's that weird speaker thing that looks like a football you see sometimes. Speaker. And then, yes, it's a speaker. HomeBot 1's AI-powered humanoid robot Coco. With speakers. Oh, yeah. I definitely see integrators buying that. Let's go.

I want to, yeah, I'm going to actually have to look up Coco and find out what that's about. Collidescapes, a strato-K movie player with 8K playback. Woo-hoo. And Josh A.I's AIXOS. No, I didn't have a seizure and aneurism. They have AIXOS is the name of their OS platform that they'll be releasing. Yeah, a lot of stuff. Some things even maybe they're going to be.

and a half. I don't know. They're teasing this. I don't know if it's like it's going to happen or not, but 8K gaming projectors. I know that's a big, that's an important. Whatever that means. Well, you want 8K and you, do you play video games? You can play sellers of Catan on here, I guess. I don't know what you would play on there. That's probably not a video game you would play on this. GCA6. Yeah, yeah, Grand Theft Auto. I saw somebody had hacked the old Grand Theft Auto or one of the new Grand Theft Auto to play the old like Grand Theft Auto 2 or 3 or something on one of the TVs within the Grand Death Auto.

I love it. This is amazing. Yes. All right. AVIop platforms. That's always, that's always fun to look at, the AVIOP. Sure. Yeah.

And then there's some. 8K. Built to order loudspeakers. Well, that's Leon. But okay. Large video walls, guys. And gunshot detection systems. Oh, that's what we know.

That's a new one. Definitely a CDA. Need that in my house. So I need to know. I've got an airplane detector on my house. Like, oh, what's one more detector? Open concept sound systems and pendant speakers. So there you get, more speakers, Gavin.

It's all speakers. Hey, is a car going to be there this year? I have no idea. I could look it up, though. They've been very quiet recently, and I wonder if they're holding on to something. They are going to be there. They're in booth C-719.

Big booth, small booth. Let's take a look. It is in a big booth. It's a big booth. Wow. Okay, I'm expecting something to be announced by them there. Yeah, they're way over. They've been very quiet in the last number of months.

Very. Interesting. Yeah, they've got a booth. They've got like a, what is this, a 20 by 30? Yeah, 20 by 30 booth. So 600 square feet coming at you. That's a big booth. That's what we used to purchase.

So maybe they're going to have a lot of little sensors in there. That'll be fun. I'm glad Josh is going to be there and they're going to release something new. I mean, is it a CDA unless Josh really says something new? Try to see. Let's see. I will be at. I forget where this is.

Oh, right off the moon. Wait, you're going to be there? You're going to be there? Yes, I'm going to be working there. Yes, yes, yes, yes, I have to work there. So I'll be at the DMF lighting booth. Anybody wants to come by, say hi. Say hi, please.

Is that Denver again this year? It's in Denver. Yep, it's in Denver. Can you go with some honeycomb ice cream? That's the only thing I remember about. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. That sounds delicious.

Best part of that trip? That is the best part of that trip. And I found one of the guys that we were with would have it delivered. Like, Dordash would show up with ice cream. Like, this is the smartest thing I've ever ever. So jealous. It's great. So, yeah, Alex, he was great.

He was, like, disappeared. He came back with a bucket of ice cream from that place. It's like an amazing. Oh, love it. What a genius. Yep. Yep. So I guess I'll be loading up on the ice cream on there.

We won't be there with you, Seth. Yeah, you could come. I mean, what, you're like, I'm going to go to CES and C. all this stuff. You could come here and you could see robots and Akara and pretty much everything that you would see at CES, I guess. But I could just go to CES and skip that. You know what I mean? I can skip all those speakers because I don't have to look at the speakers of CES. It's a lot of speakers, yeah. It's like, whoa, we made new speakers. Why are they better? Well, they use different stuff. They got AI. That's right. AI. Oh, man, we need AI design speakers.

I will come to CDA whenever somebody released an AI design speaker, Seth. You let me know. I'll be there. Somebody has to put AI at the end of their speakers. And I need true AI, not like AI horn that you bought from Eivocity. You know what I mean? Like I needed to have like true like smarts. Technically, Eubiquity did release the first AI speakers. So I don't know.

Because you're going to see you this year. I think ubiquity is going to be here. Oh, sweet. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess if we can't convince you guys go now, I'm never going to convince you to go. Nope. Are you coming to see, Seth?

I don't know, we'll see, maybe, maybe not, I don't know. I tell your wife not to plan something. I know, exactly. I mean, that was the problem last year, you know? Honestly, the show didn't look all that great to me, but the day I was, the day or two I was there at the very beginning before the show started, that was great. Yeah, maybe it's just been hanging out. You've got to see us, Seth.

Exactly. I guess, yeah, technically. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. That means no, just so we're clear. Well, I said maybe. We'll see what happens, wink, wink. We won't know until he shows up.

That's pretty much. That's a knock at the door. You know? Yeah. So are you coming? We don't know. Are you? No.

Okay. Oh, hey, you're here. Yeah, I can't remember what website I had. It was like, is Seth going to C.S. Or whatever? I don't remember. Yeah, something like that. One of those things, yep.

All right. Anyway, let's move on here. We got an interesting story out of GE. GE appliance says it will use U.S.-based manufactured Texas Instrument semiconductors and new laundry machines built in its Louisville, Kentucky headquarters. According to the announcements, that covers the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth low-energy connectivity components.

And GE says it's also exploring TI's intelligent microcontroller platform for adding more advanced AI features to future washers and dryers. So not only can your Ti-83 be powered with TI microcontrollers, your washer dryer probably could be.

I don't know. I guess that's something. I always forget about Texas measurements, but they're right there. They're making chips and stuff. washing machines. This is the kind of stuff that like the low stakes chips are good for, right? Because America's not really good at this point at making the top of the line chips. You know, we have companies like Navidia that are based here, but they don't make anything here for the most part. They make it in other countries. And so it's nice to have either some kind of manufacturing in the U.S.,

even if it's just for these low stakes things like your washer and dryer, right? I mean, somebody needs to make these devices, we can make those easily in America. So it's good to see this. This is interesting. GE is actually Chinese owned. Yeah. Whoops. Okay. Isn't it hair or whatever that owns them?

Hair? Yeah, maybe. H-A-E-R or something like that. So they're going to import dumb appliances and then make them smart here to get around all that. No, they're supposed to make them in America as well. No, they can make them here. They can make all that stuff here, yeah. They make the appliances in Kentucky.

Yep, yep. And if they use TI chips, I'm hoping this doesn't bring on to some kind of like new thing where they like, well, we're banning all of the washers and dryers except for these good old American made ones. And this is all we're left with. Don't give them an idea. You know Trump listens to this podcast. Don't say that. Yeah. I was just joking, by the way, he doesn't. He probably sleeps through it too. All right. If you got iOS 27 and you got home assistant, there's some little trick here that somebody's figured out. In Apple's newer shortcuts automation trigger, you can set up a when I receive notification from,

and that now lets Home Assistant indirectly control Apple devices by sending the companion app notifications that match shortcut filters like messages, titles, and subtitle. And so, like, there's an example here. We'll leave on the website. This is kind of neat, where it's kind of like a backdoor where home assistant can turn the light on, and that fires the notification over to the iPad.

The iPad uses a shortcut that sees the message text that says travel on. That enables a focus mode. Because the focus mode sinks across Apple devices, that one action can ripple over to iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch. And that basically all runs in the background and triggers something. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and say it, this is dumb. Yeah, I don't understand.

This is like a Rube Goldberg through like. back, things that weren't supposed to go together that go together now in Apple. No, I'm sorry. This is the worst of worst automations. Apple, just let things work the way we want it to work, I guess. That just sounds overcomplicated to accomplish something. And over my years of doing smart home stuff, I kind of, at first it was cool. Hey, look what I could do.

I could do this stuff. And that was cool. But it doesn't take long before it's broken by an update or an OS. update or something breaks it and then it just becomes more of a pain in the eyes. So I've learned to scale that, hey, look what I could do down a bit and take into account more of how can this break and simplify things. So I don't know if I'd ever utilize this, but it's cool. Yeah, I guess.

Yeah. Well, there you go. It's a way, I mean, I don't know. There's probably some reason that this could be useful for somebody because it does, it does, It does enable you to reach the automation core of the iPhone or whatever. Well, maybe if you're using iPads as a, what is it, a display, right? A wall panel or something like that. If you have iPads, then you could probably do some automations that, you know, allow the iPads to do stuff, right? Like the motion sensor wakes it up maybe, I don't know, or if nobody's in the room,

turn, put it to sleep. Who knows? Somebody in like five years will be like, oh, how do I do this? And they'll find this guy's blog post and be like, Oh, this worked for me. And then that'll be the only person that had ever benefited from this, I think. Exactly.

Yeah. All right. Let's move on now. We've got all sorts of stuff. We've got, we got Dolby Vision 2 is officially arriving now. Engadget says it's now on select 2026, high-sense TVs, including the U-X, U-R-9, and U-R-8, and the U-7, with more high-sense models expected to get it through firmware updates. So, W-VVision 2, we've, how much we've talked about this, just because it's kind of like one of those

evolutionary, you know, step... It's like, it's one of those video platform upgrades that, you know, they talk about two years ago. We hear a bunch about it. It kind of dies off. A couple of TV manufacturers pick it up and then finally gets

here. But this is like a processing thing. It's got some like contextual awareness of what's going on in the scene. They call it content intelligence and Dolby says that it uses embedded metadata to optimize the picture quality scene by scene. So

So they did this with the Dolby Audio not too long ago, right? So everybody liked that. They're kind of doing it now with video too. So putting a little bit of more metadata on each scene, we'll let the picture adjust for basically what's on your TV. So that's kind of nice. It's funny because I have probably like a couple friends. And when I say a couple friends, it's just you two.

That I can probably say Dolby Vision 2 that would know what I'm talking about. Most of my other friends have no clue what Dolby Vision is. They just turn on their TV and watch whatever is on there, right? Like, they don't know HDR and all that stuff. They don't care. Most people don't. Yeah. This could be cool.

I mean, here's an example. Like, you could have the metadata say you're watching sports and it'll kick in the high frame rate, which would be, look awful. It's that, like, soap opera effect thing than you get. But then when it says you're watching a movie, you know, it kicks back, it kicks that metadata, kicks that information back over. and now all the settings get set up for a movie. So I don't know. I think this could be a good thing. I don't know if it's going to be that drastic of an adjustment,

but it would be interesting to see how they do implement this, and if anybody cares. It's just like, yeah, make the picture look good. That's what all people, everyone cares about. I feel like my current TV does something like that, but it does it by analyzing the video and then switching some modes and stuff like that. I don't think it's even using AI.

I think it uses something else. Oh, it's using AI because you have an LG. right? Probably, but you know. Yeah, if you have an LG, it's AI. But again, 90% of people probably don't even care. I mean, to be honest, I don't even care, and I know what it is. Exactly. I don't even care. Yeah.

I'm like, I'm watching like Abbott Elementary on Hulu, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not watching like, you know, Dark Night Rises and all that stuff. Like, just to get HDR working on my TV when I first got it was such a pain in the ass, because I had to find the right cable, I had to find the right this, the right that. And then it finally got it all

working. I'm like, I don't want to touch anything. Right? So I don't know. Now you get an update and you don't have it anymore. Yeah. Here's a fun one. Google Home users, a bug and iOS app, Google Home app, is reportedly turning on smart lights just by opening the app.

According to a Reddit posts from a user, launching the app can cause connected lighting devices, including bulbs, dimmers, and LED strips to switch on automatically. And in some cases, they come on about after another five seconds being turned off. reports are saying this isn't limited to one lighting brand users seeing it with gear from Govi, Philips, you tapo, Kasa, and others, including setups that rely on hub bridges.

So appears to be an iPhone-related problem. Probably by the time you hear about this, they'll push out on an update, though. That's funny, but also not funny. Not funny, yeah. Not funny if you had like a device that was kind of exposed to this from another system that kind of pretended to be a light,

but it wasn't a light. And what if this was turning it on, but it was an important device you didn't want to turn on? That's kind of dangerous too, right? So I'd pull anything dangerous out of those type of systems. Yeah, yeah.

Also, you know, it's one of those things that, like, if somebody's already mad at you about your janky home automation system, and it becomes even more janky when you open an app and all the lights and the house turn on. Yes. Yeah, it's one of those confidence killers.

So, yeah, it sucks. Well, hopefully they get a fixed pretty quickly. All right. Gavin, you keep putting these in the show, so we keep talking about them. Alexa Plus,

now coming to Australia. I just like, I just, we have a list or in Australia. Yeah. I just like letting the world know when it's coming to their part of the world,

you know, it's not, Australia is going to be excited for this. Or Phil will be. Yeah. I was to say Phil will be excited for this. Maybe, but he's probably an Alexa person.

Yeah, 29, 99. At a month, standalone a subscription, or you can get it to your prime. And it's now available. in Australia, there's probably a map out there somewhere that somebody has done

that has all the... Like, who doesn't have this at this point? I think it's quite a few, but... Glad to welcome aboard Australians. You can now get the Alexa Plus. Speaking of voice control, we got Sonos voice control can now be able to control

Lutron Caseta devices. So, sonos speakers can handle lights, plugs, and now shades as well as music. So there you go. According to the verge, this adds Lutron as a second lighting-related integration for Sonos built-in voice assistant. The first was Phillips Hute, which Sonos added last year. Guys, I think Sonos is going to be a home automation system now.

What do you think? Smart Home Platform. Yeah, they're going to add AI. They're going to get smart home built into it. I don't know. I think this is nice, right? Like, this is a nice to have. If all you have in your house is Somos be your.

with a mic and uh lutron shades or some lutron lights you can say you know turn on turn on on hey sonos turn on lights and it'll do it that that that's a nice you you don't have to have anything else no hubs no you know nothing else just send the command on over that's a nice nice little feature doesn't they don't have to take it any further sonos don't take it any further don't try just stay in your lane please stay in their lane of fixing your app and releasing whatever a product you're going to talk about at cdia. This is probably part of the product that they're going to talk about. They have a way to go.

Like, the only way I can even see myself looking at something like this is, one, if they have it backed by LLM, like, you know, so you could have regular conversations with it, like every other. No, you don't need it for that for this. No, no, no. Turn on the laundry lights. Turn on the lights in this room. No, no.

I'm saying to replace other, like, to replace other systems, right? Like, if I wanted to pull all my eyes, Amazon devices out and replace it with the Sonos devices. One has to be backed by an alarm so I can have regular conversations, right? And then two, like open it up so like other systems, whether it can bring it. Oh, that's not what this is, Gavin. This is, this is Sonos's voice assistant that's built in. That's just like, it's very limited and it only does like three things.

And that's the problem. It's going to be very, if it's very limited. No, that's the feature. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. If that's the feature, then, yeah. I think more people will know about Dolby Vision than they'll know about this thing.

Yeah, it's probably going to be a hard race to see you to figure out. I think the other problem is, is more than likely you have to buy new hardware for this to work, right? No, no, no, no. No, not for this. This is Sonos voice control. It's all your Sonos junk right now. You just have to say, hey, Sonas turn on those lights or open the shades,

and it'll do it. You don't have to do all. You don't have to get any of these stuff. This is a nice add-on. It's a very simple feature that existed, you know, 10 years ago for everybody else. I like it. Good job, Sonos. Stay in your lane, though.

Don't go, don't go any further. We don't need S3, you know? Don't take over. No S3, please. Don't try and take over the world. Like, this is, you do speakers. You do audio stuff. I think you need to be reminded of that.

If you see Tom Conrad at CDA, you remind him, say, hey, you guys do speakers, just F. That's all I'm going to say, too. I'm just a while I'm going to say too. I'm just a walk up. He's like, Tom, you do. speakers and amps. That's it. Just walk away. All right. Well, and way

too expensive amps. That's what you do. Yeah. Do we have a bet going on for the multi-amp, by the way? We did, but it was on the old board, and I think we lost it, so. Ah, man. Yeah, because that price finally kind of released. Yeah. It's like $4,000. Plus a rack amount. It's too expensive.

That's what it is. It's the price of four Sonos amps, which it replaces with no HCMI. That's what you get for Sonos. It's a lot of power there and one RU rack, the AMP thing. That's right. Instead of buying four of the same device, so you can just buy one and it's the same cost. It's compact.

All right. Now talking about the next thing that's not going to exist, ever. Speaking of not staying your lane and making other products, Open AI, Bloomberg is reporting that their long, rumored smart speaker is taking shape in the shape of a donut-shaped device with no display, roughly the size of a hockey puck. And it's meant to be easy to carry around the house in one hand. That's an odd. I mean, I guess you can carry donuts around your house and one.

I get it. It's old Alexa speakers that they're taking. They got a surplus on them. Yeah, they just got it down a few new things and reselling them. I don't know. This Johnny Ive guy gets, because is it Johnny I've helped design this? Mm-hmm. Yeah, because Sam Aldman's company at bottom or whatever.

I'd love to walk into a place and say, I'm going to make this in a hockey puck, and they go, oh, it's Johnny I. And they release it and everyone's excited and you get plotted in a race. Put a hole in it. Yeah. It'll be like a donut hockey. Yeah, okay, all right. All right, Johnny. We'll do it.

You know, and then we'll release it in different colors. Yeah. This will be glazed. This one will be chocolate frosted. This will be coconut. I was listening to the Verge cast, and they were talking about this story coming out. And I was, they made the comment that like, if you joined Open AI, I doubt you would want to work on the smart home, you know? There's no money in the smart home.

Like, it's not rewarding at this point. You know what I mean? And so, like, I just, I agree with that. And I don't see this as a real product that's actually going to come out. I feel like this is something they've probably worked on. They've worked on it for sure. Is it going to actually release and people are going to buy it? I don't think so.

I don't think it's a smart home product that we're probably thinking. Like, I don't think this is going to compete with the Amazon. and stuff. I think it's just an interface, a voice interface to their AI, you know?

It's not what it says. It's kind of, but it's not going to, I don't think it's going to be, it may come later that you can control your smart home devices. Well, I mean,

it can control it. What if they put, they put their little? It's just going to do it automatically. Yeah, don't they, don't they have the open clock? It's not you're going to ask you.

I said, hey, I saw all your automation devices, and so I went ahead and made all new all new automations for them and new schedules. And you're going to be like, wait a minute, I didn't, I didn't say that.

It's like, well, you bought it. I mean, what you want? I mean, your lights are turning on every day at 7 a.m. if you don't like it or not. I think you guys are both wrong about this. This thing is going to sell like crazy in the whole moderation space. Because for the same reason that we're like slowly discovering that we can hook open claw or hermes or whatever up to our home assistant and control everything in our house,

they don't have to do all that. They can just hook into whatever using APIs and junk. And the thing can run. write its own system. We're assuming it will have that kind of access, though, right? Like, we'll have to wait and see, but we're assuming they'll have it open up so that we can tell it to go to an API or talk to my home assistant setup and turn on the light. Like, if they lock it down at all, then we'll see what it can do.

Well, no, it's just going to do it automatically because it's AI. It's not, like I said, it's not even going to ask you. It's just literally going to do stuff for you. Yeah, they may get caught doing that a few times, yes, but Open AI is definitely going to ship this. The reason is the reason because they need more retail business. They are stuck with a bunch of retail business, unlike Anthropic who has a bunch of enterprise business.

Everybody wants the enterprise business because that's where the money is. But Open AI here is stuck with a bunch of the Chad ShpD customers, and they got a lot of them. And so they got to keep expanding that market. So good luck. We'll see what happens. I'm not, I don't know. I'm neither bullish or bearish on this thing.

I will be interested when it comes out to see it. Over 300 bucks, it's a lot of money. It better do, it must have a bunch of memory in it or something. That's what I'm saying. This is not a real thing. Over $300. I mean, nobody's going to, you can't even get people to spend $200 on a home pod. You wouldn't pay for a $300 donut, T.J.

I wouldn't pay a $300 donut from an AI company who's burning money faster than anything else and might not be a real company in like five years. It's made by Johnny Ive. Yeah, Johnny Ive. Yeah. He also made that new, what was that new Ferrari? and it's very ugly. But it's sold like hotcakes. Oh, of course.

It's a Ferrari. Sure. Yeah, they made like five. I think 500. I think they sold like 500 or something like that. All right. Well, I will be signing up for the glazed one. I like glazed donuts.

So we'll see what colors. We add this to the new board to see if it's real. So I'm going to say it's not real. I think it's only come in one color. It'll come in white. because it's Johnny Ive. That's all he can ship it. But it'll come out like,

it won't be called white though. It'll be like snow ivory or something. All right. Well, we got that coming. And then I guess if you're in the DIY space, ESPOM has launched a new desktop version of its device builder for macOS, Windows, and Linux, aimed at removing one of the biggest beginner pain points

installing Python and using the terminal fans for just getting started. This app sets up locally and runs in the background opens Device Builder in your browser and leaves a system tray icon behind so you can reopen it and check for updates or quit.

And ESP Home says there's no login or password required. So yeah, I have done this a couple of times. I guess I've done it once because when after you install this junk on your computer and get it running, then yes, it works fine.

But I think if this is the app I'm thinking of, this is the one where you like set up your devices and bring them all into one spot. It's like a Docker that I run now. Like I think that's where I put everything at. But yeah, making easy, lowering the barrier to get started and entry on this thing is going to help them out. So that's pretty cool.

Speaking of ESP Home, Gavin. We'll save it for the projects. We'll save it for the projects. All right. Fine, fine, fine. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at HomeTech.com.fm. All right.

You're going to open up the mailbag. Oh, yeah, Phil is really. written in here. He says, I'm absolutely ashamed that Gavin has given money to my cue, especially after telling us last episode how he got his Tesla integrated. The integration with home assistant should be able to use navigation destination. And when the car is set to navigate home and the car stops driving or in the home zone, it can open the garage door. You use the driveway cam when it detects the car in the driveway and the car, if the car just got home, open the garage door. Gavin, Use anything but MyQ.

Bad Gavin. Agreed, Phil. To be honest, this isn't the only, I got some real hate mail over this. Mycue stuff. I sent at least two. To be fair, my garage door openers are still using Ratchito for the Home Assistant Integration. That's not what we're talking about. Hold on.

That we know of. Yeah, well, no, they are. But the MyCube. What else is happening over there? My queue was just added for my car because it's seamless integration, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I know, multiple people have said use the home assistant zones. Last time I tried that, I couldn't get the zones small enough. My queue got it small enough.

My zones were like not closing the garage till I was around the corner down the street. And I didn't like that. I've looked into the camera using camera, license plate, et cetera, et cetera. That got a little complicated and it wasn't reliable. Like, the camera may pick up the plates at night. might not pick up the plates at night if the lane was right, if it was a full moon out, et cetera, et cetera. So I didn't like that either.

I wanted something more reliable. And this MyQ might just be a stop gap for now. It works for now. And maybe I'll find a better solution later. I just haven't really dug into it. But I've thought about these other ones. And I've tried those other ones over the years. And I have to admit, the my cue with the car, it works.

As soon as I pulled it out in my driveway, that door is closing. As soon as I pull it into my driveway, that door is opening. Like, it's the right timing, it works, right? So, but another bonus with the MyQ, and I'm not talking up MyQ right now. I'm just trying to justify it. I think you are, Gavin. I think you're being, yeah, you are.

Are you paid by Big MyQ? Yeah, yeah, I've been sponsored by MyQ. Paid by Big Garage store. But the other thing I got with, you know, I had this MyQ sitting around, so I was just reenabling it. But the other thing I realized I had was the Amazon Key option with the MyQ. So when I get a delivery now, because my Q's set up, they can actually put it in my garage for me. I have a camera on my garage just in case anyway.

But if I'm not home, they'll just put in my garage for me and then shut the garage back and, you know, my package is there. Only here's some lame excuses trying to justify this. It's only for one purpose. My garage is still controlled through Home Assistant and the Ratt GDL. So hold on. I just want to get this straight, right? You don't trust Home Assistant to close your garage door when you're around the block. but you're going to trust a random Amazon delivery driver to put packages inside your garage?

Well, I have a camera on there. I can see everything. I can get it and blah, blah, blah. And that's part of Amazon's, you know, they're screen everybody. But I did the home assistant thing. It wasn't reliable. It's easy. I know a lot of people that do it.

And, yeah, they're happy when they're down the street and it starts to open. When I did it, I couldn't get that circle small enough that when the wife drove by the street to go to to the grocery store, it was still opening the garage. And it didn't close it back. So then we'd be like, why is the garage open? You know, so home assistant, there's many ways to do this. But I wanted to go with the simplest one that just worked with least the amount of, like, pieces that could break, right?

For now, for now. Well, we can agree there's multiple ways to do it, but we can understand that there's at least wrong ways to do it. No, for now. I know I'm going to take heat for it, but that's okay. I get it for a month free. So technically I haven't given any money yet. I have like three more weeks to find a solution.

So I'm not going to be able to find a solution. I'm not going to have time to do that. But my other solutions that were just as reliable, required a lot more money, which I didn't want to throw out at that time either. But I understand. This is just the one that's the most seamless. And, you know, it's just. there on the screen. If homicism

fails for whatever reason to open the garage door, yeah, now I've got to pull out my phone, launch the homicism app, press the button. It's not there on the screen. I know I can do it through the browser and stuff, but you try to load that browser up and then you have to click on your favorites and click on your links just to get to your little dashboard that you created

for your garage door up. It's not a nice experience. I just wanted something built right in this was our only option. This more pissed me off than anything that, you know, with Tesla, they have everything locked down. Like, you're very limited. I had to get a Spotify account to you'd be able to listen to my streaming music. You know, that annoyed me too because I didn't have a smart.

Now you're supporting Joe Rogan. Okay. Yeah, exactly. You see what's happening here? They suck you in. But I am getting a car play integration in the car soon. So that will allow me to go back to using regular stuff. So maybe with the car play integration, the home assistant will be much better.

And then I can get rid of the IQ again. So I'm just saying, it's just a stop here. No. Haven't fixed your drywall yet. haven't figured out how to use home assistance with your Tesla. I bookedmarked a handyman to come fix the drywall, so that's the first step. I think you did that like four months ago. What is going on?

I lost that bookmark, so I got another bookmark to a highly recommended handyman that can come do it. I'll get a quote from him and see what he says. But anyways, that's the only reason why I'm still, I consider this my cue, you know. I trust me, I've done those other things and they're not reliable. I don't care what people say. They're not the most reliable. You know, having your cameras scan your license plate and all this type of stuff. I wouldn't realize that either.

Exactly. You know, that's exactly it. They're not reliable. I tried these things. They're not good. My cue, actually, I have to admit, it has been reliable. By the time I get to the end of my driveway, it's already closing the door. It bings lets me know it's closing the door.

It's closed. By the time I pull up to my driveway, it bings in a, opening the door. It's, you know, I don't know, what do they call that? Like, a hyperlocal GPS or something like that. I can't remember. I don't know how it does it, but it's got that kind of range where when I was drawing the circles on, you know, home assistant, they were too big. Like, I was, I was down with it. You know, I was fine with the Tesla. You know, I was like, I can support Elon, it's whatever it is. But now that I have to use MyQ to open my garage, I don't think I can get a tax claim. So, well, you can. I met the CEO of MyQ. He was kind of a

douche. You can buy the garage door opener, the RF garage door, what do they call it, HomeLink garage door opener? You can buy that and put it in, but I'm just telling you right now, it's like $3, $400 Canadian, right? Well, you just do that. So there was an option there. No, no, no.

You just wanted to be a cheap ass. That's like $400. I have like 10 years of this integration to figure out something else. I would have paid $1,000 not to deal with my IQ. You know what I mean? You said, you'd have like a quitter at this point. I would get out of my car and manually raise my garage door in I'm going to start a go fund me to get me off my queue then.

I need to raise $400 and go fund me. You know what? Just send me money through the Patreon to get me off MyQ and help me pay for the Home Link install. That's what I'm saying. If you're poor, Gavin, just fundraised for it. We don't want you to use MyQ. We're all friends here.

Friends don't let Fritz Mikeu, Gavin. That's right. Well, let's see in our Patreon. If we didn't realize you spent all your money, on the Tesla. You know, if I would have realized you spent all

the money on the Tesla, I would have been making funny you this whole time. But now that I know that it was literally just a money thing, like now I feel bad. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So let's get those Patreon donations. I need to, help me get off MyQ and send me a few dollars, you know? Oh my gosh.

But, yeah, Amazon, my key too. Amazon Key is a nice lot. He's not going to get off my Q no matter what. He's like, I'm still going to need package.

delivered, so I guess I'll keep... Next week he was gonna be like, well, I had to share access to my sister and I just, I opened the MyQ app and I was able to share access very easily. So I'll keep paying the devil. You can't do that with home assistant.

You know? I can. No, you can. You can create a little dashboard for them and stuff too, but that's actually a good point. See, you justified it there too. I could give a friend access through an app and they can now open the garage.

But I'll get off of it eventually. It's just a stopgap, something to get me working quickly. Wait, anytime you want. Yeah, yeah, just like meth, right? Yeah, yeah. Just on it temporarily. Just trying to, I'm just a social mether.

Social my cueer. Yeah, I'm just a social my cueer. But I got a lot of flak for this. Anyway, I agree, Phil. I agree, Phil. Yeah, Phil. If you're going to see yes again in January, we'll have to beat up Gavin together.

Yeah. Go to the MyQ party again. It's their best customer. Spend so much money on alcohol. All right. All right. Well,

moving on. Yes, Phil, thanks for writing in. We appreciate it. And if you have any, if you have any feedback for Gavin, you can reach out at feedback at hometech.

Dot.fm. Or you can go to HomeTech. dot of him and fill out the form there and let Gavin know how you feel about my Q. Or you can bump up your pledge on Patreon. Help me get off by Q. Help me get off my Q. There you go. All right.

If you want to reach out to Gavin directly, His number is 4-1-6. All right, we got a pick of the week. We do have a cool pick of the week this week. And Morton in our hub has been doing all sorts of fun little projects. He does all sorts of fun little projects besides these and posts about them in the hub. So if you're in the hub, check those out. But this one, he made a little thing called Sidekick.

And it is a e-paper dashboard that works off of like, he has a Windows Worker app that goes in and pulls things from like Outlook or To DoSist or GitHub or web calendars. It puts it all in this little dashboard. And you what? It looks nice. It's a very nice little device. It is really cool. Yeah.

We should get them on the show to talk about this stuff. We should. Yeah, because this thing was cool. I could totally use something like this for my work calendar because it's not always on your screen. I'd love to be able to just have a quick glance at my day and stuff like that. But also our work PCs are so locked down. I would never be able to run something like this anyway. Yeah.

It's such a cool idea. Yeah, calendars are awful. Like, I, I, I, I need, like, we need to, like, rebel against the work calendar and be like, no, I have my calendar. If you want me on your calendar, then you come to me. There's so many things about calendars that annoy me these days is like, I'd like to be able to easily merge all my calendars, you know, because the work, they, they isolate you to work and then your personal is your personal. So you can't do any of that stuff. But I need to view like, because, you know, we work, it's all about work-life balance these days.

And it would be nice to merge it to calendar so you can plan around things and deal with stuff. But they don't let you do that at all. And then people just use calendars all wrong. Like when they send an out of office invite, you know, it's like I'm going out of the office, you know, here's a calendar invite. So it's in your calendar that everyone knows I'm out of the office.

But they book it for the whole day. And Mark, you're busy. London is now busy. Yep. So then people message you all day going, oh, I can't book a meeting with you on Tuesday. And my response usually is, like, yeah, I'm busy Tuesday anyway. So I get out of meetings.

My coworkers on maternity leave. So what are you going to do? Yeah, I'm busy all day. Let's make it for Wednesday, you know. But people use these colleges. And then they book like your whole morning and you wake up and you're prepared to take on the morning and then everyone cancels her meetings and reschedule today. Oh, I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. I hate that. Calenders and email are just two of the annoying things. And now it's moving into teams where people just message you and group chats for everything and expect you to see all the messages and keep up to date with every group chat. Yeah, the enterprise is getting annoying. I feel like that's a solved problem.

But yeah, this is solving a little bit different. Use this. Go check this out. This is a cool little thing. It uses a 10.85 inch. This is bigger than I thought it was. 10.85 inch e-ink narrow display. He's got a link to where you can pick up one of these things

at good dash display.com. It's nice. He's got like a little, I think, what is this like a 3D printed stand or something on here? I don't know. It's very nice. It's a really cool project. Yeah.

I totally could use this. He's got a worker that remains a dot networker because a project uses wind UI single project MISX packaging. I have no idea what that means, but I think it has to run inside, Windows. Is it MSIX? MSICs, yeah.

MSIS, yeah, we use that. Man, look at the pictures on here. He's got, like, graphs and stuff. Oh, man, almost enough to make me want to use Windows again, but not enough. Not enough. Just kidding. Ask him to make a Mac version of it. Yeah, we'll just ask an L&M to port one.

Oh, there you go. He's got stock. He's got weather. Looks like some charging stats on there, too. Could be for, like, solar. I know he's done some solar projects. Maybe he's got solar coming in that way. Yeah.

Very cool. Very cool. We'll put a link to this GitHub where you can go check that out in the show notes. If you have any feedback questions already is for the show or want to tell Gavinoff about being stuck on my cue again. Just bump up here on Patreon. Yeah, well, if you got any picks of the week, gives us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can go over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, Gavin's Projects.

Gavin, you have MyQ written down. Is this a MyQ advertising show? Hold on. Hold on. We already talked about it. Oh, my gosh. You can't pay for this? Let's not get into,

no, I'm just getting so much flack for it. I don't see fixing the drywall on this still, though. That's weird. No, no, no. I bookmarked that guy. But one thing I did want to mention, if you are a Hunter Douglas user and you upgraded to Home Assistant 2028,

2026.8, the Hunter Douglas integration is broken for older Gen 1 hubs. So I'm still waiting on them to have a fix. Maybe by the time the show comes out, they'll have a fix out for it. Somebody posted a temporary workaround in the GitHub, which was basically just changing an uppercase letter to a lowercase letter in a specific file. So it looks like one of the developers broke that. So just keep that a heads up.

It's not just you. They broke it. They're working on it. I've been reporting to them. and stuff. So keep that in mind. And then this week, actually, by the time the show's released, a couple days ago or last week, I was on the ESB home live stream with Apollo Automation, open home foundation. You know, we were talking about the new ESB Home Starter kit there, which was an exciting, it's an exciting little project by Apollo Automation. So make sure

check out the live stream that was on August 12th. I was just a, I had a small little segment with me, Reed, and Simon from Simon says, Home Assistant reads from the Smart Home Solver. So it was a cool little get-together. No, what did you do with your ESP Home Starter Kit, Gavin? Well, you have to go to the show and listen to it. No spoilers.

Maybe I'll check that out, you know. No spoilers. Wait, it would be a spoiler, though, if this show's already out. Well, no, by the time Seth releases this, No spoilers No spoilers. If you haven't heard the show Go listen to it.

If you heard the show, you already know. Well, we'll include links in the show notes. This is what you call a future or future casting because Gavin will record some time and I don't know, when are they going to release it? Is it pretty quick? I don't know about it. No, it's like right away.

It's a live stream. It's live stream. They do it live. Stream. Doing it live. All right. Uh, facal. A broken,

I was looking at the release notes on home assistant. It's a bunch of stuff about Sonos S1 speakers and Yeah, there was no mention of the Hunter Douglas in the all, right? It's in us. I could give you, I'll get you the GitHub. That's all right. I'm not going to fix it.

I'm just, I was just looking at it. Somebody just posted a fix and it was one uppercase letter that they said make lowercase and that works. So I'm just like, great. Oh, okay. So, well, that's, that's software. for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I just remembered a project that I did. It reminded me. All right. T.

Jay, what you've been up to? I haven't had a lot going on because I've been traveling, but I've always managed to do stuff. So I don't know

if I actually talked about on the show. I think I did, but I talked to a home gadget geeks where I made, I made a maker shed and I bought a resin printer from Elegue

and I put it in the shed and it was fine. But I ended up returning the printer because the Elugu printer the software is awful. It's literally like a very Chinese printer. And when you set it up, it's got two options.

It's like China or worldwide. So that tells you what their target audience is. But I'm on the beta software for MacOS, and the software kept crashing on me. So I had a 14-day return policy, and I was like, I'm not going to risk it. Like, I'm just going to return at that point. So it has been returned.

But one of the things that I realized when I added the resin printer is that The solar panel, when it's sunny, is good enough to power the shed with the printer running. But if I ever want to do anything serious, I'm really going to need more power input. And I have 200-watt panels, but they're installed on my fence. And so I really only get like 100 watts per panel, which is typically good enough, right? I'm only controlling lights and other things with it. And so, you know, when my lights are on full blast, it'll last 24 hours.

No problem. But when I got the resin printer, I was like, well, I need, obviously, I need more power. And so I added a second solar panel. I added the exact same solar panel I already had. It was like $120. And now I have 220 watts of input. And so this screenshot I have here that we'll put in the notes, it's 112 watts. And that is with my fan and my light on in the shed.

And so finally, at this point, I'm getting, I'm actually recharging my battery when I have something on instead of draining it because of the second solar panel. Wow. Very cool. It was just a second. That's all you had. What is that solar panel cost? What is, what does it cost?

It was like $120. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, it was $120 for the solar panel, 200-watt solar panel. I had to buy the, like, the tilting bracket mount for it. And I think that was like $30. And then I just,

I daisy chain the panels. And so, like, you could do, you could hook a panels in a bunch of different ways. You can get like inverters and all this stuff. But for me, it's literally just for my shed. And so I just, I dazey chain the panels together. And that was a, No. Okay.

Yeah, it was curious. Good enough. Yeah. And you could buy, like, on Facebook, there's all kinds of solar panels that come up because people buy them in bulk. Like, they need them for their house. And, you know, it's easier to buy, or it's cheaper in the long run to buy 50 panels and resell 20 of them. Oh, trust me. That looks like more of a, more of a scam than the guys coming up to your house asking if you want to install solar panels on. Oh, yeah, for sure. There's some of them that are sketchy, but there are a lot, like, I saw one in Pennsylvania

the other day where, like, somebody bought a bunch of solar panels and decided they weren't going to do it. And they're like four or 500-watt panels that are selling for like $150 each. So you can find some really good deals on there. You just have to know what you're actually looking for. Right. And then my last thing is I'm still on the audio search since getting rid of Sonos, which I think will be surprising to everybody. But I've, you know, I'm currently using Den on Hios.

It's fine. The thing I've really realized is that I just need airplay with my speakers. And so when I have Airplay and I use my Apple TV, I can literally just use the Apple TV to group the speakers. And like that, that's good enough for me. And so WIM or Weem, whatever you call it, WI-I-I-M, they have announced a soundbar and they actually announced it a couple months ago. So I went ahead and pre-order that.

It does not have Airplay on it, but that's not an issue because I use an Apple TV. And so whatever I'm listening to on the TV, I'll be able to, you know, AirPlay, that's other devices. It's $500. So it's not terribly expensive. when you compare it to like a Sonos Arc Ultra now, which is like, what, $1,100 or something ridiculous? And obviously they have the Sonos beam,

which might be a little more comparable. But I want to have pre-order that. So hopefully I get that at the end of the month, I believe it's supposed to ship. I'm very curious with that if it supports left and right front speakers. Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about that on the forum. Because that's a big thing with the Sonos setups.

They don't really officially support left and right front speakers with their sound bars. And a lot of people have been requesting that for a long time. And I wonder if Weem added that and we'll allow that. That'll be a one-up. Yeah, honestly, that's the thing that's always been talking about on the Sonos subreddit and stuff is allowing dedicated left-center rights. And, like, I feel like if somebody would just implement that,

they would sell two times as many speakers. Because there are so many nerds out there that would buy dedicated speakers out there for just that. Weem says you can expand it to 5.1.2, which means two rear speakers and a subwoofer, according to them. I'm excited to get the sound bar down. Maybe two sublopers. Is it? No, that's not two sublopers. It's just two rear speakers.

Yeah. Is that, oh my gosh, that's what it is. It's just like the Unify one where the little round screen. That'll be an update later. Yeah. The only thing I'm not excited about the soundbars, it's got a little stupid screen on the front. No, but you do need an anchor plug to plug in your wall and see, yeah, okay. The speaker.

Yeah, well, they have a speaker that has the same thing to. I don't need a speaker with a screen. I mean, that's useful because it gives me useful information. It's a touchscreen. I don't need to see what I'm watching on my soundbar. You know what I mean? It's like, this is what you're listening to. Here's the album bar in this two-inch tiny screen.

I know with the Sonno sound bar so you could buy like TV mounts that, you know, that allow you to mount it under the TV and stuff like that. Does we have something similar? I don't think so. Okay, so. But that's made by a third-party company, Sanis anyway. So I'm sure they might come out with one eventually. Sonos is just such a big name that they were able to make a dedicated device for.

And that we use that soundbar bracket for every single sound bar we do from Sonos. Makes a big difference. So the weem is 479, right? 479? Not so much. Yeah, which I don't think is a bad price, honestly. For a sound bar, I mean, $500, there's a lot of money to a lot of people for soundbar. but in soundbar world and audio world, $500 is nothing.

Yeah, $1,100. But I think this is to compete with the beam more than it is the art. Yeah, I would say it's the beam, but we'll have to see what happens when we get it, you know? It's got AI. What doesn't? Not yet. Not yet. That's right.

Just wait until CDR or CS. All right. Very cool. That's all my projects. What about you, Seth? Well, I have, um, I was looking at my, TV. I'm like, why is this TV running so slow? Because I was on the show with Jim

the other night. I'm trying to use the home assistant app, and I was like tapping on it, and it wasn't doing anything. I'm like, it's never done this before. Like, what the heck's going on? And I launched, the home assistant app was new, right? Like, from the last time I updated it or wherever, I had to log in and everything.

And it just didn't look right. And of course, I have my hot dog theme on there, so it looked fine, but it just wasn't working fine. And I'm like, didn't? I'm like, well, you know, It's just a theme, right? So it doesn't affect performance. So I'm looking at it.

I'm like, I don't, this is Android. I don't know what's going on here. But I bet you, I bet you Android's just crappy. So I'm going to set the old LLM and like, hey, what do I look at? Like, how do I do this? And it gives me these things like, hey, if you can figure out how to turn developer mode on, I can just connect to it. And I'm like, I don't know.

This thing's from China. I have no idea who made it. It doesn't have a brand name on it. I bought it at a show at a truck. trade show for like what, $300, $400 or whatever it was, 2023. Got a home somehow. Yeah, I did have the guys, so I did have a flyer that I, with the guy's card attached

to it. I go to the website, the website hasn't changed. It has the CIS at the show at 2023, an infocom in Orlando. Has it changed since then. So I'm pretty, pretty, in the software update link, doesn't even exist. Definitely in business. Yeah, totally in business. So I'm like, all right.

Jerry, Jerry, um, Jerry Fang's at, not doing this anymore. He's moved on. So I'm like, all right, what can we do? What can we do, Claude? And Claude just, Claude's like, well, let's figure out the developer mode and get into it that way. Guess what? Jerry left the developer around. He left it on. So I could get right into the thing. And Claude just went to town. He started deleting stuff. He's like, all of these packages here just didn't get cleaned up from the Google Play Store and, you know, this, that and the other blah, blah, blah. And the thing starts working fast. I'm like, oh, this is great. I'm like, well, why does homeless did not work anymore.

It's like, oh, well, your Chrome, the Chrome that you're using in there, that's from 2020. That's like, that's an ancient Chrome. You can't use that anymore. And that's what Home Assistant uses to render its interface. So you got to use Chrome, you know,

2026 or whatever, I don't know. But it was, oh, I think it's like Chrome 150 or something because it updated recently. So version 150, I think before it was like version 80 or something. So it was quite, you know, a number of years back. And so I'm like, all right, well, can you update it that? And it's like, I don't know if I should. I mean, what if I break stuff?

I'm like, do it. So it did it. And it worked. And my home assistant thing looks amazing. And it works just like, you know, this thing's brand new out of the box. I got no memory issues anymore. And I'm like, Claude, what else? Let's get greedy.

What else can we do? I don't like the interface that this thing turns on to. Like, it just looks awful. Like, can we change the interface? And it starts, like, probing and prodding and looking at, things and changing stuff around and I'm like does this work? I'm like yeah it did something and we get everything set up

we get a nice like nice layout done and get like everything on there and I'm like hey these icons I don't like these icons where it's launching these like these four apps that I'd never use like can we just make it I just want to see Home Assistant I want to see Plex I want to see the little like there's a little whiteboard thing my daughter uses all the time that app

and then a link to the apps that's all I want to see it's like I is and And of course, Claude's like, I got you. And he did it. And we rebooted and the TV did not turn on. And that's when the, oops, my bad thing. He's like, well, I don't really know what to say. I think we can try a couple of things, try it a bunch of things.

Try it hold down. There's like, just hold down the reset button. I'm like, what reset button, Claude? There's no reset button. There's one button on this entire TV that doesn't have a brand name. And no manual. What am I supposed to do? So I had to take the TV apart.

And it's a 75 inch 4K TV. It is heavy. It's got a digitizer on it. And it's got this safety glass that they use for the school so the kids don't break the TVs. You can bang on this TV and it will not break. The screen is just, it's kid proof, right? So I'm flipping this thing around and like pulled off the back panel and looking at all the stuff in there. I'm like, all right.

So I needed a little FD, TI, whatever reader thing is, a little port reader. I got one of those in on Sunday, plugged it in, and we turned it on, booted right in, was able to delete the file that we changed and then recovered everything back. So my TV's back. And after that, I'm like, all right, let's do this a safe way. We'll make our own launcher. We made our own launcher, and now I have my own screen and my own TV. So my TV is up to date, and it looks great, has all the stuff I want on it.

and doesn't have the factory garbage interface or the factory icons or anything like that. So, yeah, I'm liking it now. I'm liking it again. So that's pretty sweet. That's a good use of AI, you know? Yeah, I destroyed my TV, brought it back to life. And breaking stuff and building it back. I have no idea.

Like, I have no idea what you can do with it. Like, I, I'm not scared to clearly not scared to do anything with it now. Like, I would. But I just, I don't know. No, it's an Android thing. I don't really know what to do. Other than run Home Assistant, well, I got Unify Protect.

That's the other app that I have on there. Unify Protect, Plex, and Home Assistant. I can load any one of those up and see, you know, watch whatever I want to watch, or, you know, it's right there. Easy to use. So anyway, it's fun. It's a fun TV. It sits behind me all the time.

It is there every week, so. It is there every week. And now it turns on. It works. And the last project I have, it is, it is, we're back. Back to school. We started school yesterday. And waking up the child in the morning has become, you know, she used to just like pop up.

Like as soon as like, you're like, hey, it's time to get up. She's just pop up. And she's like, I'm ready to start today. Now, not so much. Now she's moving into the years where she's like, yeah, I don't, I may not hear it going off, but I don't want to get out of bed. So we did the most innocuous thing ever. We grabbed one of the Sonos S-1s that I had laying around here in the garage.

because I got plenty of them now. I put in a room, and I use Home Assistant to play the most annoying soundtrack ever. At like 40% volume. Yeah, you two. Yeah, no, it's like all sorts of... You remember the old Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger Song?

So that's one of them. No. Oh, my gosh. T.J. Internet, you're of yesterday. I don't know of Dead Squirrel and... This is like Homestar Runner era, basically. Maybe before.

Yeah, it sounds like before my time. Yeah. So Badger, Badger, and then that's a song. It's got all sorts of, like, just crazy songs that are on this playlist, and then I figured out how to load the playlist, and then I figured out how to randomize it, and then play it 40% volume, and then she can't turn it off. I haven't really told her with the buttons on top of the Sonos, too.

But it's waking her up, so success. We are now waking the child up with very loud music, that is annoying to hear in the morning. So she comes flying out of a room asking me to turn it off every morning now. It's been great. Two mornings in a row. So we'll see how it goes for the rest of the year.

Here, I'll send you the Badger Badger video. Pretty much just the same thing over and over again. Oh, man. That's how the internet used to be, T.J. Just beautiful things like that. I haven't been able to finish off my router. Imagine that. It's been kind of rainy here.

But I got to drill some holes in the computer. out front and, and, and, and, and, uh, and, uh, and see if I can get that C&C set up out there. So I'm, then, then I'm going to make a sign or something. I have no idea what I did you. Oh, yeah, I forgot you about that. Oh, well, I didn't. It's still sitting here. I'm going to, I'm going to take care of it.

It'll be a project. It'll happen. You can make me three little signs that I can, uh, hang over top some holes in my wall. I'll probably be making, uh, I'll make a sign that says, uh, yeah, T, yeah, T, Doorbell was here, TJ was here, drywall was here.

This isn't a MyCue home. That's what I was going to say. That's a good idea. Make pictures of our faces to send it to him. It says TJ was here. T.J. came to my house and all I got was these holes in my home. I got was this lousy hole in my wall. That's great.

All right. I think it's going to wrap the show up. We do want to think. Thank everyone for listening to the show, but especially want to send a big thanks to those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page, head out of at Hometech.com. Slash, learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge, uh, $5 and up, get you a big shout out here on the show,

but every single pledge will get you an invite, an automatic AI powered invite over to our private Slack chat the hub, where you and other patrons of the show can jump in there and see all of Morton's projects that he's coming up with. because he, this was an old one. And now he's got the little tiny, like the little four inch color touchscreen that he was playing with today. Do you guys see that? Yes.

That looks so cool. It's tiny. It's like a little posted stamped size. I don't know, four inches, I guess, but like, and we're still selling access to Gavin falling into the pool. I think if 20 people buy the video for $20 each, Gavin can get away from my cue. Ooh.

That's a stretch goal there, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's going to. We've only had one person by us so far. So I think he was disappointed he bought it. I don't think he was, Jake was not disappointed. No, I think he used it.

I think he was disappointed that he's the only one that bought it, though. I think that was what he was disappointed about. It's funny. He's gotten his use out of it. For the record, I'm not sending this video. T.J. got a hold of it and sending it. That's right. That's because I met Gavin's neighbor.

And as soon as I met him, he's like, do you want this video? And I was like, yes, I do. And my name is T.J. And yes, I do. Dude, that's my name. All right. Well, if you can't support the show financially, totally understand, we just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating in the podcast.

Happy your choice. That's going to wrap up this week in Home Tech. Everybody, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Till next time, take care.