HomeTech.fm - Episode 591 - Schneider buys Shelly

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

On this week's show: Schneider Electric wants Shelly, Apple’s smart home hub may finally be real, Amazon refreshes the Fire TV Stick 4K, Disney raises streaming prices because apparently doubling profits wasn’t enough, ULTRALOQ rolls out new Matter and Aliro-ready locks, Home Assistant’s latest beta overhauls maps, and the local-control crowd keeps cooking with June oven and Roborock cloud-escape projects. We also hit some custom-install gear from Crestron and NextLevel, a weird little Pro-Ject streaming amp, a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!Shelly Group Has Entered Into an Investment Agreement With Schneider Electric on the intended Voluntary Public Takeover supported by the founders | Shelly GroupReport: Anthropic Lost $42 Billion in 2025, Will Spend $518 Billion in Coming YearsHomeTech HeadlinesApple's smart home hub could arrive next month - EngadgetAmazon unveils a thinner and faster Fire TV Stick 4K, plus a new remote - EngadgetDisney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profitsULTRALOQ Launches New Smart Lock Collection Including ULTRALOQ Bolt Mission, Bolt Pro and Latch 5 ProWireless Box E – Pro-Ject Audio SystemsNextLevel Acoustics Mantelbar Integrates Fireplace AudioCrestron Home OS 4.12 Adds Multiview for Multiple Video SourcesAnker's new eufy S4 video doorbell sees everything with 360-degree AI trackingThe June oven could live onFrom the selfhosted community on Reddit: Self-host your own Roborock cloud without rooting or hardware modificationTechnical Writeup - Roborock Local ServerHome Assistant 2026.10 Beta: You are here 📍Tesla, Home Assistant, ESPHome and Smarter Automation with Gavin Campbell – HGG690Droplet: Smart Home Water Sensor

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 2nd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech podcast. Podcasts all about home technology, home animation, and, guys, I don't know if you know this, but Anthropic lost a little bit of money. Just a little bit.

Just a touch? How much money? Just maybe something like a few, 42. Let's just say they lost 42. 4200? $42 billion. Ah, that's nothing for them. They'll make it up next month.

That's 42 Amazon Echoes. Just a little bit of overtime, that's all. Oh, man. It also says they'll spend $518 billion over the next coming years, you know, because why not? That's insane. When will they become profitable? They won't. Oh.

I love that business model. I mean, the idea is that they'll put their stock out there. And then people who don't read these numbers, they're like, oh, this is a $2 trillion company. Let's invest in them. And they'll just give them money. And that will make them worse something, I guess. But yeah, I don't know.

I wouldn't invest in that. I mean, do you have billions of dollars to invest? I don't have any money. So that's the problem. But, uh, yeah. What's that? There's like a saying out there. I'm going to butcher this 100%.

But it's like if I owe a million dollars, then that's my problem. If I owe more than a million dollars, that's, that's, It's the bank's problem. This sounds like an American problem right now, you know? It's like all this money just being burned for what? At some point, I think they just cross the line of, you know, it just doesn't matter. It just doesn't. I mean, it's all made up numbers, right?

And a lot of this is like circular stuff too. Like, NVIDIA is a good example of the circular economy at this point. It's like, hey, we make the graphics cards. And then if you want, you could like basically lease the graphics cards from us. And then we'll just, we'll just give them to you that way. and then you can just pay us later. You know, we'll figure it out, you know. We'll make money together somehow.

And probably a lot of that money is being invested right now in Infister probably, right? Building data. Oh, yeah, yeah. They can write it off. All that type of. So eventually they will have everything built and, you know, it will all settle down and they'll start making money. That's the hope, I guess. I mean, I guess, but we haven't even figured out what it does yet, have we?

I mean, no, no. It's just like everybody, nobody's come out with any kind of product where people are like, this is what, like, consumers are going to use this for, other than whatever these little, like, dots and things are. This is the new hype, you know what I mean? We came out with new chatbots. Their credit, Anthropic is not interested in what consumers want. They're like, they're just, like, they're all in on enterprise. So they didn't have to, they didn't make the mistake of introducing a little chat thing and making it cute and calling it chat GPD. Well, that's where, that's where open AI messed up. It's because now they have a really big customer base. on the chat GPD side.

And they really, really want those sweet, sweet enterprise dollars. But the one, they're getting a lot of money on the chat GPD side because it's nice. So I don't think that companies is going to be around much longer. I don't even know if the enterprise knows what it wants it for. Oh, no, no. They just put it in because the executives want it. They're like, look, it answered my question. It's not right.

They keep coming to us and tell us how you use it. I don't at work, you know, because you gave us co-pilot. It doesn't work at all. You know, it might as well just give me clipy. Well, and obviously the problem with Anthropic at this point is that they've been deemed a supply chain risk. And so they can't be used for government stuff at this point. Are they still that? I thought they kissed it made up.

No. No, they haven't made up yet. And the appeal for it was dropped. So they are not going through with that. I'm sure at some point that will change because Anthropic is probably one of the more advanced companies out there for this kind of thing. But right now, they don't have any of those contracts. Well, if they don't get their act together, T.J., they might lose some money next to it. Sorry, I almost said it with a straight face.

Well, speaking of companies that are making money, Shelly. Shelly is Snyder Electric plans to do a voluntary public tender to offer all outstanding Shelly group shares for 70 euros cash per share. That values Shelly at $1.2 billion for all those little $5 shellys. That was a lot of money. for $5 buttons. I know. Isn't that crazy? Well, good for Shelley. Good for selling out, I guess. I don't know. It sounds like they are. Snyder Electric's big.

This actually shocked me because over here in the Americas, I didn't get a sense that Shelley was that big. But I guess in Europe, it's huge up there, right? It's like that old joke. They're huge in Europe, Gavin. Come on.

I didn't. I honestly, I did not know how big of a company they were, how big they were. So good for them. I was shocked. Do we know like how much money Shelley actually makes? I don't think it's public information, right? No, it wouldn't be. Because they're not a public company, right? No, no. I'd be curious on how much they actually make because I've always, I've just always assumed that Shelley doesn't make any money, you know? Like, I know that they do make money. But when you sell very cheap devices like that, it's hard for me to fathom like that. And that's why you have to introduce like the cloud

subscription, which they've offered up. So that would be interesting. Just wondering now that you say that, like, are they publicly traded? somewhere? I don't know. I had to look it up now. Oh, yeah. They are public. They're traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which you know, it's probably why we never heard of it. That makes sense? Yeah, under the

S-L-Y-G thing. And let's see, yeah. So, yeah, they are a public company. Let me ask, let me ask, Glaude here, do they make money? How much money do these companies make? Yeah, we'll see what he comes back with. Thinking's on medium, so I should probably get a

quick answer. It may or may not be right, though. he's not going to do his research. It says, yes, and quite a lot for their size. In the first half of 2026, net profit rose 51.4% to 15.4 million euro, with revenue up 26%. Wow, to 68.3 million euro. So there you go. That's a lot of $5. Mm-hmm.

That's a lot. Good for Shelley. I'm good for them. It's a tiny little ESP 32 device built into all these. Good for Shelley. Good on them. Congrats guys. I wish they had made it a little bit more popular over here.

They tried. But I think it's... Yeah, they were at a lot of shows and stuff. Yeah. I wonder why I didn't take off. I think they're really just known for like the relays and that was partially the issue in America because we really don't use a lot of relays for that kind of stuff. Not at least in the whole aspect of it.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it was, it was, I think, especially in the, in the, in the, like, professional industry, they, I mean, it's a Wi-Fi, right? And we always have problems with Wi-Fi. We don't want those types of device to be on Wi-Fi. We don't know being like Zigby or, you know, something else. What was the Lutron's Connect thing or whatever? We don't ever want it to be on a Wi-Fi.

But, you know, now they have what-Matter devices. They have Z-B devices or Z-Wave devices now. They've got all sorts of stuff at Shelley. So, yeah, I'm not sure why I didn't take off over here. Anyway, some companies lose money. Some companies make money. We've got a bunch of home tech headlines and some new products where companies are trying to make money off of.

So what do you guys say we jump in? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Apple, the company that makes all the money, is rumored to have its smart home hub finally come out. All right, guys. Mark German, the Oracle over there at Bloomberg,

says that Apple could launch it on October 13th. Ooh, spooky. Report describes the Echo Show style device with the 6-inch square display, camera, microphone with both countertop and wall-mounted versions may even borrow the look of the old iMac with the display mounted over a half-sphere base no no mention of a robotic arm here i don't see that on here um anyway october 13th it's coming out maybe what do you guys think this is going to cost what are

what are we i have my new side bet things here i'm gonna make a new side bet what are we going to see the apple what is this home what do they call it home device smart hub smart home hub the The rumors are calling it a homepad. That's what Reddit's calling it, I think. Oh, the home pad. I mean, home pad sounds great, to be honest. I don't know why they wouldn't name it that. I mean, fits right in, so they're probably not going to pick.

Gavin, what do you think the price is going to be? 449. Wait, hold on. We got to specify. You're talking Canadian dollar roos, right? It's got to be U.S. dollars. $200, $200? That's crazy, Gavin.

I don't know. 449 U.S. 449 U.S. T.J. I'm saying $350. $350. All right. I'm going to go with $600.

And hoping this show launches before then, you should let us know what your guess is if you're listening. Feedback at Hometech.com. Yeah. I mean, what price do you think this thing is going to sell for? There we go. Side bets in there. You actually think the show will be released before the 13th? I don't.

I was just trying to be nice. Oh, you guys are in for a surprise this week. What side bet? What day is this show going to be released? start. All right. All right. Here we go, Gavin.

No, you influence that too much. This is not the one with the robotic arm, though. That's kind of unfortunate. That one, I think, is going to be the $600 or $700 one. I think they're going to come out with some cheapy one, you know, quote-unquote cheapy one, and then they'll come out with some crazy one. I think you guys are thinking in pre-tariff and pre-war-with-Canada dollars here. I think it's going to be more expensive than we.

Apple can get around the tariffs. They can't get around the memory chip shortage, but they have ways around tariffs. All right. So I have another side bet going. I say they're going to announce they're going to make this in America, but not until next year. Interesting. This is going to be a political point. This is a DJ vet.

All right. So DJ thinks they're going to make this in America. No, I say they think they're going to make it in America. They're going to come out on October 13th, and they're going to say to everybody that, oh, this is a made in America. That's right. But not until next year. We've got to wait until after the election. Well, the elections in November. Exactly. All right. Should I put this down? Do you want this down somewhere? Oh, I want it down.

All right. All right. Hold on. I'm going for it. The home pad will be made in the, let's see if I can do my USA thing. There we go. All right. And I guess, Gavin, do you think it's going to be made in the USA? No, it's going to be made in Canada. No, it will not be made. made in the USA and I don't think I wouldn't be surprised if it's out before Christmas because Apple's not the type of person that will announce something and wait six months to release it really right unless it's like AI right I guess well I mean yeah as I say they've definitely announced things that didn't

come out immediately so they already got in trouble for that one so uh two sidebeds in there what's the what's the selling of this going to be though like obviously it's going to like home kit or whatever but like why are people going to buy this thing because you can face time your family from the kitchen. That's a good idea. That's why people bought that Facebook portal thing. Yeah, those so, so well. I still see those on Marketplace for sale.

And they're like, new in box, Facebook portal, never used. Like, why did you buy this thing? They bought it for their grandparents or something. And they realized that FaceTime exists and they use that instead. So yeah, FaceTime, that's like, that's the thing I would see for, right? I guess the biggest issue I have with Apple's devices, they are like so locked into like one person. Like, even, even the home. pods and everything. Like, you can't, it's, they're all made by like, I don't know, single people or something

that live in San Francisco. And they barely understand the concept of a family is when it comes to like the family plans and stuff. It's like, oh, it must be same people that live under one roof and share a credit card. No, come on. So I don't, I don't have any trust that that will be what the selling feature is on this. I don't know. You can barely sink calendars correct between Apple devices. So, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not thinking that this is going to live in the kitchen very well with the family. I mean, the obvious solution is to buy a home pad for every person in the house. Oh, that's right.

You just have like three of them lined up on the, right. Oh, okay, that makes sense. One and, three in every room. It's almost said one in every room. It's almost said one in every room. So Tim Apple would have wanted. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man.

All right, well, we'll have to find out. Two side bets registered in there. All right. Amazon. Amazon has a new fire stick, 4K TV coming out, ahead of the big Prime Day deals. It's simplifying the lineup and dropping the old, select and plus naming.

Big changes are going to be here, the speed and the size. Amazon says the new stick is slimmer and can be powered directly from the TV's USB port. It's faster across the board with a quicker startup, app launches, and playback. It's also running Amazon's Vega OS, includes Alexa

Plus, and supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and 4K up to 60 frames per second. I noticed that this thing was on sale right now. $30 for the big Prime Day deals. next week or this week? Yeah, next week.

And it'll go up to $60 after that. So, you know, if you want one of these fire TV things, go get it. Oh, it's got a new remote too. It's got a new fire remote plus. It's coming early next year. It's got aluminum construction backlit buttons and find my remotes, but no pricing on that model yet. Look at that sweet orange button on that thing.

I want it just for that. He's like, give me, it's got a speaker on a T. This is what you were saying. you wanted. Yeah, I mean, that's what's annoying about the Apple TV, the current generation, is that there's no speaker in the remote. And so when you lose it, you can use Find My, but it doesn't make a sound. So that's only so helpful. So I like that it comes with a speaker. You know who does have a speaker in their, in their remotes, whatever this is? Navidia Shield. Sofa baton. Oh. Yeah. You probably have to charge that thing all the time,

though. I have to charge my Apple TV remote like once a year. I've never charged this. Didn't you just get it, though? The sofa baton? No, it's been sitting in the box. Well, I took it out. And it's been sitting in the box for a while. And I took it back out and it still works. So it's got a USBC. I guess I can plug it in. I'm trying to reset this. I'll go back to that later. Okay. We got some streaming news here to kind of go along with the

Amazon fire. Disney Plus and Hulus raise prices up to 13% after doubling profit. So there we go. They made more money. They say, hey, we like all this money you just made. Give us more. The prices going And Disney Plus and ad-free Hulu are going from 19 to 2150 per month. It's a 13% increase.

And the ad-supported standalone plans move from $12 to $12.50. Bundles are going up to Disney Plus-Hulu. Ad-free bundle rises from $20 to $22. While ad-supported version stays at $13. And the big bundles with ESPN go $20 to $22 with ads and from $29 to $33 without ads. So there you go. Lots to like it from Disney. and Hulu, enough that we already canceled our subscription.

So we're not, we're not, we're not participating in this, Disney. So let me get this right. They doubled profits. Yes. And they're raising prices now. Of course. I mean, that's how they, that's how they're going to get more money now. Oh.

Oh, okay. I see how it goes. It makes sense. In America, if you don't have like unlimited profits forever, then you go bankrupt. It has to double next year. Yeah. They're not a good company. That's right.

It seems to be happening across the board, too. Like, they've become like the full. companies up here, like one phone company raises their price. The other one follows the next day, right? Up here, like, it's Sportsnet, which is like our sports streaming service, they announced raising up prices just in time for the hockey season to start. Oh, weird. Like, yeah, what a coincidence. Yeah. So all the people that were using it and didn't have much to watch during the summer maybe, now they got to pay more. A lot of people are upset about that. On top of, you know, Amazon Prime taking away some of the Canadian hockey games,

the hockey games being played on TV. You know, you can only see it on Amazon Prime, and people are pissed about that, too. Not as pissed off about these Tampa Bay scores. Geez, win a game, save their life. Go lightning. Hey, right. One to four, are you kidding me?

All right. Let's see. We got some new product from Anchor. They've got a Ufi S4 video doorbell. It sees everything within a 360V AI tracking camera. Of course, it's got to have AI now. Ooh, yeah, yeah. 360 degrees, huh?

Yep, all 360 of them. It's going to get inside my door? No, it's just going to look at the wall behind you, I guess, but it means, right? I don't think that's necessary. It seems kind of absurd, but if there's a spider back there, you'll know. All right, let's see, we got three, it's got a 3K square video feed at 3,072 by 3,072. That's a weird resolution. Plus auto framing that keeps a person centered in the live shot.

And if he says owners can pan around the panoramic view by moving their phone or even a VR headset. So you can pretend you're a doorbell with your VR headset on. You can be the man in the doorbell. Oh, you can be. I love it. For detection, it combines radar with two PIR sensors and sports custom detection zones within 120 degrees field of not 360, but 120 degree field of 8 meters out. Yeah, I know, right? It can detect people, motion, packages, faces, and it adds dual spotlights for color night vision.

You can power it over the doorbell wiring with a 260-m-hour backup battery as well. Local storage built into 4 gigabytes and adding a home base 380. S380 enables 24-7 recording plus extra AI recognition for more people, vehicles, pets, and packages. Works with all the good stuff. And this thing is coming out. The Ufi video doorbell S2, S4, sorry, is $299. Not bad. It includes a chime too.

I do love the video doorbells just keep coming with more stuff in them. You know, it's just like, what else can we pack into this thing? We're going to put dual spotlights now. I think that's what we're at now is where it's what gimmicky thing can we add, you know, that make people think they have to get this. Yeah, I mean, they've gone mainstream now, right? Like your grandma has a ring now. And so they're not cool.

so they have to make it. You know what they need now? They need a camera that we keep seeing the Facebook ads for with the little squirt, squirder on it, where the, you know, the raccoon or whatever comes out, it squirts it. That's what they need. Maybe a water gun on the,

on the Ufis now. Oh, that's the Facebook ad you were talking about. I was a little confused there for a second. The little squirts guy. These guys have like PTZ Cameron, and it squirts the raccoon and it runs off. Yeah, yeah, I need that actually because I'm facing raccoon crisis right now.

I think I found their Heidi hole, though, so I'm going for it, you know? It's a Kickstarter, so you'll never get it. But the idea of sound, I think. Every PTZ camera should have some type of raccoon deterrent built into it, I guess. That's got to work at least once. Let's see. We've got some more lock talk here.

We've got UltraLock. They have launched a new smart lock lineup in three models. The Bolt Mission, the Bolt Pro, and the Latch 5 Pro. A big feature here is the Bolt mission is hands-free unlocking using the ultra-wideband, plus Bluetooth Discovery, radar-based, presence sensing, and local decision. lock logic. The ultra lock says that it lets the lock till the difference between an unauthorized user approaching from the outside and normal movement inside the home. Bolt Pro and latch 5 pro are positioned around the Aliro certified digital keys so you can just tap your phone or wallet

or whatever Samsung Apple wallet, all the good stuff on it. And the Bolt Pro and latch 5 Pro integrate with Samsung smart things for automations like turning on lights and all that good stuff. Let's see. No known pricing on these. I don't have them hearing the story, but it's out there. More locks. Can always use more locks. Yeah, these actually look okay. I mean, they look like door lock.

Yeah, they look pretty good. A lot of the features I actually sound familiar to the car locks too, right? Yeah. So, you know, it's good to see that coming to other locks as well. Oh, I will say the little, some of these look okay. Some of them don't. Yeah, I mean, it's typical technology locks, right? The bolts don't look.

They're kind of square. The bolts, like, they have the square and the, keypad is around the deadbolt round part and it's square. I don't I'm not a fan of that. Yeah. And I had the, what was, what's the car lock? I always getting mixed up with their, their numbers. Just pick a random number. Yeah, right. F693. That's the one. Um, uh, I had the, uh, the UWB with Apple, uh, was a home key. Um, but I did not have good luck with it. Um, I don't know if I walked too fast or my phone's like putting it to sleep or something like that, but it didn't unlock unless I actually like pulled my phone out and, you know,

like unlocked it real quick. And so I eventually just went back to use a home assistant, which is a little less secure, right, because it's just used my phone's geolocation, but it works 100% of the time. So I've gone back to that. I say the ultra lock US cylinder product that they have. It's nice. It's made for like the storefront. Locks like a, if you, TJ, I'm sure if you look at this, you were like, oh yeah,

It fits on that. Which one is it? Here, I'll put a link in our show. Latch 5 Pro. No, it's the U.S. cylinder. It's for storefront doors. Makes for a nice.

Oh, yeah. I'm like, remember having to unlock and lock the doors and not remember if you lock the doors. Like, this would make that a lot easier. Yeah, especially if it works with the, whatever the swing bolt locks are called. Mm-hmm. Because that's the, that's the common issue. It is they swing down typically and they like latch onto the actual lock or the frame. And usually you cannot automate those.

$250, isn't, yeah. Interesting. So it's Bluetooth, so I guess they have their own hub then. Because I don't know much about Ultra Lock. I don't either. I don't see their own hub. No, with Bluetooth, it would just use your phone to lock, unlock. Actually, it says, can I unlock it remotely?

No, app unlocking is local over Bluetooth within approximately three meters. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Wait, so you can't use this with, like, I guess you'd have to, like, use it with an automation system or something then? No, it's probably just meant to be with your phone. But who knows, maybe somebody will be able to tie it into like a Bluetooth receiver or something. Yeah, on Home Assistant. Yeah, and the frequently asked questions down below, it says,

No, U.S. Cylinder does not support Wi-Fi Matter, Apple, Home Alexa, or Google Assistant. That is pretty odd from a connected lock company. It's not really connected, though. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This one isn't. That's an odd decision. I can understand it if it's like for it's a business right so you know it's not like you're going to use apple home for that but I would have liked to yeah but when you want like like a audit log or something like to be able to like see if somebody like came in the day or something maybe it does it in the app I mean because if you give you the app to your employee and say okay here here's your authorization for this when you walk up to it yeah yeah there's probably reasons there's probably reasons maybe they should just do one that's like this for people who are just wanted to be insecure yeah whatever why not yeah why not.

Oh, you can't re-key it either. Fun. All right. Well, Ultra lock. There we go. We talked about them enough, I think. Let's move on. We got this cool, cool product that Gavin came up.

I've never seen one of these things before. It's called the Project Wireless Box E. And it's a compact streaming amplifier that mounts directly to the speaker terminals. And it's meant to turn a passive speaker into a wireless active setup. So if you look at this, you're looking at it. It's this little square box. And it's got these two, like, things sticking off the back. And at first, I thought they were toggle switches.

Like, yeah, why, why, why? That's a weird choice. No, they're banana plugs. They're banana plugs. You just plug those right into the back of the speaker. And then I guess you got to power this up. So there are still wires, but, you know, whatever. You power it up.

And now you got a wireless speaker. That's a pretty cool idea. I like it. I like it, too. It basically turns your speaker into a wireless speaker. And it powers the speaker. So it's meant for unpowered speakers. Yeah, yeah.

So it's an amp built into it, obviously. And why I like that, too, is I know there's devices out there that you can plug in using like an ox cable to a speaker. But usually those have to be powered speakers and then you have to leave them on and they have to be a certain volume, blah, blah, blah. This, because the speaker's being powered, it can turn on and off the speaker. So it's really nice. It actually turns it in now. I don't know much of the details like, will it work with stereo? It shows it on one speaker.

Well, it's only one. Yeah, you only get one speakers. You got by two if you wear stereo. Can you pair them as a stereo setup or something like that? Can it do a surround sound set up? I don't know much about that. But for a single speaker, if you just want them in your house, cool idea. It uses the Weem OS technology.

So I guess it's compatible with Weem speakers. It's like a little Weem box. Yeah. It's a cool idea. I like it. Is it WIM? I call it Weem, so. TJ's the only one that owns these things.

I mean, I say whim, so. All right. Oh. I don't know. Is that whim or weem? I'm going on a whim and say it's a whim. Oh, okay. We'll put this in our sidebeds, too.

Maybe they'll just, like, whenever we ask them, they'll just pronounce it every single way that we never know. It's just a different way. They'll say it different ways, yeah. Wim, weim, whime. The W is silent. It's just M. Oh, man.

That would be a twist. All right. Well, speaking of some speaker technologies here, next level acoustics has a new mantle bar concept that turns a fireplace mantle into part of the living room audio system. Yes, you heard that right. We've got two of these. We've got two of these versions.

One's built to hide a sonous arc behind a grill. And X level says you can use a custom wave guide, plus internal reflectors in damping to let the arc's upward firing at most channels still work from inside the enclosure. So picture this. Picture this. You got a fireplace.

It's got a mantle. And you're like, above that mantle is where I need my TV, where it's got to go. Because that's what America's doing nowadays, you know? We're designing rooms around the fireplace, even though the vast majority of people I know never use them. I'm not salty. You got to have that TV up there.

So you're going to take your old mantle down. This piece of junk. Get rid of the old mantle. You're going to get one of these mantle things, mantle bars. You're going to put this up there and stick your Sonos bar inside of it. And now you can't see your Sonos bar. You've got a mantle that you can use this mantle for any mantle things. You can hang your stockings with care from it, you know.

But your Sonos is inside there. Your Sonos arc is living in there. And it's making all the sound. And you don't know. You're just watching TV and you're happy. That's pretty cool concept. I like it. I mean, if people are going to mount their TVs above the fireplace anyway,

it might as well roll with it. Yeah. You know, they give them options. I don't think it has any temperature control or heat protection built into it, though, right? It does not. No, it says explicitly. It says you can't, you got to keep it out of the way they call the hot zone. which is not normally what you do with the mantle, right?

Right, right. The mantle usually... You're going to have to mount it higher than a regular mantle, so it's going to look awkward. So your TV's got to go a little higher than you think. Yeah. They have a second version that if you don't want the sound bar in there, they just put their own five speaker components in there

and everything lives inside their own mantle bar. If you don't want Sonos, they have a passive solution for you. You can just look up to an old surround sound system. Which nobody wants Sonos at this point. So that makes sense. T.J. doesn't want something. Only Cabin does. And me for just, I'm not getting rid of it because it's called sunk costs. That's pretty much what I'm at right now. It's sunk costs, you know? It's like, let me just get the ultras now.

All right. We've got another product here for the proline pro products here. Crestron's released HomeOS 4.12. I've never seen that before. Why don't they just say 4.1.2, whatever. All right. it's a big addition here it's got multi-view for homes using DM NVX AV over IP platform so if you got one of those and you got a Crestron boy you get a nice little upgrade here they they have this basically is like it's a video you can put multiple video sources on one screen so you can have a good old picture and picture you can have side by side you can have quad view or you can have all these other like different layouts and you can this so a system will support up to six sources in these fixed layouts up to 18 saved compositions of those. So you can just press one button and it'll pull up all your screens on your TV and you can watch everything. I like this stuff. This is really cool. I think they did a pretty good job over here.

The interface looks pretty good. If you're a sports fan, this is the way to go, right? You want to see all your stuff on the screen. You got a big screen up there. You just got a big mantle mount. You put your screen way up high. You want to make some, you know, you want to see every game on that screen. This is how you do it.

cool idea. I was trying to find videos of it in action. They charge for that too. I'm sorry. Yeah, I can't find any videos of it in action. I want to see how it works and, you know, what the interface looks like and everything like that. But they talk about it, but I wasn't able to find anything. But it's cool. They have their interface on, there's a blog post that links in the article

that you can go through the interfaces on there. It's just got a couple of the buttons with the layout options on it, though. So it's nothing new, though. It's just new to Crestron Home, right? New York, yeah. Yeah. Other things like this has been a thing for a long time. Yes. Yeah.

And in fact, I wrote a driver for Control 4 while I was over at Blackwire that did pretty much the same thing. But instead of giving you the little things on your iPad or whatever, it showed you what was playing on the TVs on your iPad, which was kind of clever. Oh. Yeah, it was fun. I'm sure Crestragging can do that. Anyway, cool stuff over there. The interface did look nice. All right.

Big news. Did you buy a ridiculously expensive IOT oven? because, you know, your favorite podcaster may even talking about them. And now you regret your decision. You're regretting that decision a few years later when they turn off the servers? Should have just bought an air fryer.

It would have served you a lot better than this thing. Yeah, the June oven, Weber bought them, I guess, and shut down their cloud services, right? Well, there's a community project called Project Deli that's trying to keep the older ovens up and working. Instead of rebuilding the cloud,

they're not going to do that. They're not going to rely on the cloud anymore. They're going to build the software. Get this right into the oven itself, which people have said it's impossible. Because if you walk by any oven, anywhere in the world, it just has a blinking time on it. The time's always wrong.

This would be amazing if they can do this. According to their team, it already supports local pairing with multiple phones, tablets, home assistant integration, remote preheating, temperature control, and cancel a cook. So if you don't like what's going on there

and you don't want to get up and go back inside or whatever. You can get on your phone and just cancel that. Upgrades the built-in camera from the original one frame per second experience to a 15 frames per second experience with a motion JPEG stream available for Home Assistant. So yeah, there you go. You can watch it right on your Home Assistant dashboard. And it's still very much a DIY project. So you have to open up the oven and connect the board or like PICA USB and like you got to hack this thing.

It wasn't that bad. It looks promising, though. It's not terrible. It was very easy. It just hooked it up to a computer, and I think you ran an app and let it do its thing, right? It wasn't that bad. You know, my only concern is something like an oven. Would you leave that with an open source firmware type thing?

You know, it's an oven. It's a bargainer. It turns on your oven. Ah, who am I kidding? I'd be first to flash this and go for it, take the risks. You know, I'd, I'd, yeah. This is the stuff we've been crying about for a long time now. It's like if they cancel the cloud and want to break your device,

the community needs to come together and save it. And this device was expensive enough, expensive enough that I think people just had enough. And they were like, we got to keep. So when I saw this, I was so happy about it. Let's make it a trend. Just trying to, what does one June smart oven cost in, I don't even know if you can get these anymore.

You can't get them here. It's one June smart oven. How much could it cost? They don't even sell them anymore, but they're not on eBay, so they must not be real. I cannot find any on Facebook marketplace, so they're definitely not real. I don't think anybody bought this. Why are we even worried about it? I don't know.

There's like three people that bought this. They're really upset, and they're on Reddit, so they're hacking the thing now with AI, AI assistant, I'm sure. It was $600 to $1,000. Oh, my God. That was way too much. For a toaster? Yeah. Well, it went down a price.

The first generation was $1,500, and they dropped in the second generation. Couldn't make money on it, I guess. All right. Speaking of it, Robo Rock, they're doing the same thing to this. So this is kind of cool. We'll put a link to this Reddit self-hosted forum. They have basically, let's just say they've taken over the API that the robot uses to talk to the Robo Rock cloud servers, and they're running it local. So, like, you can now not use the cloud.

I'm for it. I'm for it. This works. I'm for it because when you have like a community driven thing like this, features come. Like people, you give an idea and people jump on it. All of a sudden, bam, they vibe coded that feature in for you. And I like that, you know. If someone's going to do this for I robot, let me know.

I'm all in. I can see in the Reddit post that he has here that he's like, yes, I used AI to do this. So I got to say that that's one of the things that AI is, is doing. went very well. It's like letting you kind of like do what you want to do. You come up with the idea basically and it executes. It just does it. So yeah. We'll have to keep an eye on that one. If you've got a robot

rock vacuum and you want to take it over, we'll put links in the show notes here. All the topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over to hometech.fm slash 591. All right, nothing in the middle bag. But we do have a pick of the week this week and this one is amazing. It's so no, so I know TJ's going to love it. And this is a video

that Sonos put out themselves on how to replace the battery in your Sonos Ace Ultra. And wow. It's a 14-minute-long video, first of all. When you think he's done, you're about a quarter way through, and he's not done. So it's quite the watch. You really start to, you really have to get in there and tear these things down. But I guess overall it's nice that you can replace the battery in these things. Like if you got to gut the whole thing.

Like like when he first took off the headphone cover, I was like, okay. And then he popped off the little, you know, the plate. I was like, okay, now the battery must just pop out. He's like, nope. He's like, now we could see the screws that we want to remove. And he removed it and everything. And I was like, all right, it's got to come out now. Nope.

Now we got to remove all the board and unclip these ribbon cables. And he's pulling out specialty tools and stuff. And every time he's like, oh, you get one of these in the package. You know, it was just, it's an over, like, the average person is not going to do that want to do this. Like, I got intimidated doing it, but it's good to see that it can be done. And, I mean, how often are you going to be doing something like this anyway? I hate to tell you, Gavin, but the average person is never going to change the battery in their devices anyway. Exactly.

They'll just buy a new one probably. Yeah, I mean, they're going to buy a new one or they're going to go to, like, whatever that you break, I fix store. And they're going to have them fix it. And then hopefully, it's a little bit cheaper because it's, there's, like, information. out there about it, right? Or what might be nice is you'll see it on eBay, you know, listings with a bad battery, so it's going cheap and not knowing they could just change the battery,

you know? Or maybe they didn't know. They saw this video. Or you could just wait about, they're like, nope. Wait about six months and it's going to be half the price anyway, so. Yeah. It's like they put the battery in first and then built the rest of the headphone.

It's like, pretty much. They should have made it a little easier. When I saw them popping out ribbon cables and stuff, I was like, no, I hate doing those. Yeah. Yeah. Without like tweezers and stuff, I'm not any good at that. Yeah.

Well, the link will be here in the show notes. And you can watch in your own time, everyone. I encourage you to just put it on the background and then, you know, maybe wash some dishes, do some laundry. When you look back up, he's still going to be taking that thing apart. So it's a process. If you have any feedback questions, ideas in the show, or picks of the week, give us a shout. Email address is Feedback at Hometech.fm. or you can go over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form.

Project updates, project updates, but first, but first we have home assistant beta coming in. And they have, guys, they've fixed, the nightmare is over. They have fixed the map tiles. The maps, the map tiles now, they don't say, what are they, this is the new open map thing. So no longer will it say API key expired, whatever was going on. Yeah, yeah. So, so, so, so I'll just go. over a few of the new things, but the new, they got a new map provider. The old map provider

implemented an API key requirements. So all your maps, if you had them, used them, were showing API required and wasn't giving you all the details and everything like that. And so they had to go find a new one and they found, they've now used something called Open Street Map. Yeah, it's good. It's a good one that you get clearer images when zooming, better markers on the maps. They They really put some effort and clean that up. So when you upgrade, you're going to see some improvement with the map. It will be big. It will be working.

I was always surprised they weren't using Open Street Map or something. I'm not sure what provider they were using before. It must have been a history there. Yeah, it could have been. Open Street Maps have been around for a while. I like their maps. They do have a pretty good job of including as much information. And you can actually contribute back into the,

A lot of the mapping programs have, like, even Google you can contribute back into. These guys take people, you know, adding things in and you can submit changes and that kind of thing. So it's kind of nice. And then moving on, they've also cleaned up the profile page. It was a dumping ground of settings, but now they've put a lot of organization to it and stuff. So that's good to see. In automations, they've added a trigger triggered by condition. So how I can explain this is in the past,

if you had an automation that did something when, like motion in your room was detected and turned on the lights. And then you had a second trigger. So when motion was not detected, it turned off the lights. To distinguish which event happened, you had to use the trigger ID for each of the triggers. And then you can reference that in the automation to know what you're supposed to do, right? They've kind of hidden that now and built it in.

So now when you create a condition, you can say triggered by and it almost in the background creates the IDs for you and stuff, but you don't have to do that anymore. It just becomes an option where you can select triggered by light turning on. And it's more like, it's just easier to work with, right? It's not going to break any automations you have existing now. And if you still like to do it the old way, you can still do it through YAML if you want, but they've made that update the user interface. So it's a lot cleaner. That was nice. As usual, there's always new integrations, a lot of updates to existing integrations like Matter, Real Links, Z wave, Unify, both network and protect and more. Some other things,

they updated the, so you used to be able to set conditions for a tile that was a card that was visible, right? You could say be visible of this, but it was very limited. While they've updated that to include a lot more things, you can even template it now, so that you could just, decide if a card is visible or not based on a template, which is really nice if you're into customizing dashboards. This just adds a lot more power there. So that's pretty good. And they also made it easier to connect to an LLM in H.A. for AI integrations and stuff.

And as usual, always check the list of changes. There are a lot on the list this week. So see if something's going to break. No, I don't. I'm not doing that. I'm never checking anyone. You know why? I have AI.

Yeah, he's going to fix it. Just YOLO. You know what, even if it's not on that list, something's going to break. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You know, figure it out. Upgrade first, figure it out after. Yeah.

Hey, this isn't working anymore. Can you go take a look at that? It goes in, does its thing. Thanks, Henry. I don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

So that pretty much sums up this month's release. It may be out by the time the show gets released. I don't know, but... It's October right now. When's it come out, like, officially? Next week. week. Yeah. I mean, this show might be out. I got some secrets, I tell you. Yeah, you don't sound too confident in that. So let's just go ahead. It might be. Something to look forward to. There you go.

I have five updates. What the heck. Oh, maybe as well get started. I do like that the little, there's like an update all button. And you can press that now and it just updates all the hacks. It updates all the apps. That was introduced recently to, yes. Yeah, that's a lot nicer. Yeah. I always worry about like, they need, the next thing they need to do is fix the home assistant core update and then the home assistant update like I never know which one I should do first like it just should be just like update home assistant make it make it work I don't know yeah I think it doesn't really matter because it wouldn't present it it wouldn't present it unless you met the requirements right so if you see it's

it's updating right now yep there goes all right 35% let's see I can go first you can who wants to go first I can go first I got to have projects so this week we'll see what it goes we'll see what happens if the show works and if all goes to plan i have some a i post-production workflow stuff that that i've been working on so and none of it works we're gonna see we're gonna see we're gonna see um it should make editing a lot easier and i i basically have taken um kind of all the manual steps that i've done in the past and automated them with the power of AI. And so yeah, now I basically can kick off a script. It will align all our audio up and it will, after it's all processed and everything, it'll line everything up. It'll trim all the dead spaces

between what we talk. It'll transcribe everything, suggest edits, give me show titles. And yeah, so everything gets spit out of this thing. And then the nice piece is, I reverse engineered the little audio editor that I use. Fairite, which is awesome, by the way. It works on the iPad. And it just gives me a little fairite file that I can open up on my iPad. And the shows in there, all the chapters are in there. It's ready to go for me to just start editing like I want to.

So that's pretty nice. So hopefully we'll see how fast it goes. We'll see how fast it works. Yeah, that would be great. And honestly, you deserve it, Seth. Yeah. And you work very hard. Well, this is like the unfun stuff is moving around files and junk like that.

And that's what this is. takes care of. And I think people don't realize how much work goes into editing a show and publishing it every week. I don't know why you found the time, but I'm glad you've found the time to create more time. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

It was churning on things. I did, I used it a lot to, I will admit that I wanted to test out a few different things that I was using different programs for harnesses. I was using pie. I used to open code. I think I like pie a little bit better. and I've checked out some of the things that, like a different terminal thing.

I don't know how to explain this stuff, but like it basically lets you run your terminal, long-lived terminal so you can run cloud code and all this stuff inside of it. It just kind of stays alive running in the background. So that's kind of nice. Allegedly, I can set it up to run on other computers, which I might start doing. Because just like with Henry, like Henry's great. What is it called? OpenClaw and Hermes and all this stuff.

It's only great for one reason, one reason. It's always running on the computer. And you can just ask it to do anything on the computer, and it does it. You can ask it to look on your network and it does it. That's what's great about these things. If you can get them running on a local computer and they have all the tools and stuff to interact with stuff on the computer, it really does work well. Anyway, I started to set up my Christmas lights outside. So that's getting done.

Nice. You're starting very early on that one, huh? Well, no, no, no. I'm going to use some for Halloween. I'm going to use them for Halloween. So call me your Halloween lights. Yeah, I was like, you can't call him Christmas lights, but I guess by the time he actually gets them out,

it'll be Christmas, so that makes sense. Yeah, he started it before Halloween, but we'll finish the project after Halloween. There you go. There you go. You got to start planning early. I don't know. That makes sense.

I'm just going to have a lot of floodlights, and I got some little lights kind of set up in the bushes for different things. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. We'll see. And we bought one of these blow-up things. We got a new inflatable this year. We had a giant Mickey Pumpkin. It was like a 12-foot Mickey Pumpkin.

And it lasted a few years. is about this time of year we get these really bad windstorms and it would you know kind of like push that thing around over time it would just I guess it just kind of like ripped holes in it not that I guess I could have patched them or something I don't know

it just wouldn't air up anymore it was just looking it was it was unhealthy all the seams and stuff are coming undone so it was time for it to go it wasn't orange anymore we've had it so long it faded so now we got this with giant jack skeleton looking thing which got some arms and plugged it in today

and the arms just kind of like, like snatch towards you. Oh, I mean, it's so great. Like, it's amazing. We all got to, my wife was driving up when I plugged it in and it was sitting there and the arms started moving. And I could hear my daughter screaming in the car. Like, they were so excited. So I'm really happy about that one that we, I don't think either one of us knew what we were

buying. We just bought it because it looked cool. And now it's got these little arms that kind of like move. So yay. That's exciting. I always like inflatables like that, you know? It is. Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't know we had no idea it moved it was like an extra treat and it's like oh plug it in it moves um and then i finally got the last acre point installed in the driveway i had to move my uh my derelict car that um we don't drive anymore uh back a few feet so i could drill one of these last anchor points in so i'm just about ready to start using my this uh this CNC thing that i built because i haven't used it yet and i really want to and now it's raining every day so I can't go out there and use the dang thing. So I keep threatening to my wife that I'm going to make a shoe rack here for the garage.

There's always shoes laying around the garage. And, you know, I'm not going to buy one when I have a CNC machine that can make one. And I've already asked Claude to make one. She's like, no, I need to see. I need to see what you're going to do. I'm like, well, I got plans. And then I was like, you know what? You can do, Claude?

You can make me a 3D version of these plans. Give me the 3D version of these plans. And I can show my wife. So it made me a 3D version of it this morning. So we'll see what she says about it. So you got a shoe rack is your first project? I think I want to make the shoe rack. I've been talking about it.

And I'm like, we have all these shoes in the garage. And we have a basket for them going, but the basket's like, it'll hold three shoes. Let's just be honest. It's the dumbest thing. Like, this was not a good plan. So let's make a shoe rack. And then we can put more shoes in the spot that the basket's in.

Just, you know, sitting there doing nothing. So. Yeah. I got a shoe rack. And honestly, it didn't solve the problem. Just made more places for the shoes to go. We all just do where to leave the shoe by now, right? You put it by the shoe rack.

It's never on the shoe rack. I mean, the closest I get to put down the shoe rack is I shove it under the shoe rack. Oh, yeah. But that's because it can easily slide it back out and just, you know, I'll slide my foot in, right? Yeah, it was an idea. I don't know. I was trying to think of good ideas to make with this thing.

And I'm like a shoe rack. Now, what you have to do is find an idea that solves a problem for her. Well, she doesn't like my shoes laying around all over the place. So, yeah. There you go. The perfect idea that. That's a good solution then. I'm like, I'm like, this would be a great solution.

It's just, you know, she wanted to see what it was going to be. Until you don't put your shoes on it. And then it's like another problem. Exactly. Exactly. So, no, we'll see. We'll see. I think I'm going to get this done, though.

I've got the anchor. There's nothing stopping me now except buying wood, which I don't. What is kind of expensive? That's going to be the most extensive part. Yes, it is. Yeah. I bought some wood the other day and I didn't realize how much one piece costs, you know. I was like, it comes from a tree.

How can it be this much? So, yeah, I have to wait to wait and see. So, yeah, that's all I got. That's all I got. Who's up next, Gavin? Yeah, yeah, I'll go next. Basically just some updates. If you missed it, I was on Home Gadgetkeek 690.

So, you know, go check it out. It's always a great show. Go listen to all the episodes, though, because they're all great shows. It's just general home tech talk. many different people coming with many different projects talking about many different things and I learn a lot of stuff whenever somebody's up on there talking about something I learn about something that you know I didn't know existed and then it now cost me money but I was on 690 go check it out we talked home assistant automation all sorts of random things so it was a fun time um and then just an update

from something we talked about a while ago and I was supposed to get an update but it came melt, I guess, today, uh, droplet, our favorite water monitoring product is now available in Canada officially. So I just want to thank Patrick in the Hub, who posted the information night. That's where I saw it. And then I saw their, uh, blog post about it. So it's really good to see. So now if you're in Canada, you can get your own droplet.

I feel like you've been teasing these Canadian, like, for so long. Like, you've been like, oh, I've got this, but you can't have it. I know. I know. Yeah, I felt so bad about it because honestly, I really like this product. I really like it. And I felt bad because my fellow Canadians couldn't experience that joy that I was experiencing, you know. But if you want, again, I always throw this out there to help save you money.

Help to support the show too. Use the coupon code home tech and it should get you $30 off the price. So there you go. It's official. We'll include a link to that announcement or, you know, notes to that and then the show notes. Yeah, and honestly, it's already saved me once, so it's a good idea. It's funny, the droplet ads come up on my Facebook all the time, and there's always a comment that's like, this device is useless because it doesn't shut the water off, and I have to tell you that not everybody can install a device that shuts their water off.

Yeah. So this is the next best thing, because you can tell your usage still. Well, I actually have one that shuts the water off. Sometimes you want to run the water and not have it shut off, and, you know, there are exceptions to the rules. So, especially when your wife is taking a long shower, doing your hair, and all of a sudden the water turns off on her, and she's all soaked up and yelling. That's not a good night. Well, just turn off the hot water. Then you have half the amount of water to worry.

I had to do that for my daughter. It's like, come on. She's in there for too long. Let's turn the hot water off. Yeah. Sometimes you don't want the water to turn off. Sometimes you just want to know if it's running when it shouldn't be. And it's a pretty good, pretty easily installed device.

Yeah, I love getting notifications when it lets me know that something that it doesn't know about has been running for too long, too long. You know, I can then tag it so it stops notifying me. But every time I get that, I'm like, okay, this stuff, this thing is still working. It's still paying attention. It hasn't failed me yet. And it did save me twice, I believe, now. So it's already paid. I'm looking over the hub.

I don't know how we hidden have this is the pick of the week. The pool cleaner that's surrounded by Leaveson Richard. That's amazing. First thing I thought of is, will we get the answer to one versus 100? I think it's losing. Oh, man. TJ, no projects from you? You've been busy?

No projects for me? I've been traveling, man. I went to Philadelphia last week. And then the day after I got back, I went to Louisville, Kentucky. And then next week, I get to go to Cincinnati. So not a lot of projects going on because of my time off. I don't want to do anything. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you kill all your grass. just leave town. Don't come back. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've been working on some stuff for the truck. I've been, you know, making some 3D printed accessories and stuff like that, but nothing, nothing too exciting right now. I'll probably talk about that next week. It's a teaser, fault. Yeah. That's right. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap up the show then. We do want to thank everyone for listening tonight, but want to send a big special thank you out for those able to support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page,

head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out here in the show, but every pledge gets you invite over to our private SlackChat the hug, where you and other patrons of the show can go in there and look at this crazy, uh, this battle this battlebots with leaves and pool cleaner. Trying to win. If you can't support the show financially, you just appreciate a five-star review or positive rating a podcast app for your choice.

That's going to wrap up the show this week. everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week until next time take care all the topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes over to hometech dot fm slash 591 that anchor s4 doorbell story is just going to follow me down the page all right Seth I'm just going to let you know from now I've been fucking doing you the whole so I've been moving that article all over the place while you were talking I did do it the first time but after you were like hey this article is moving on me I was like hey this would be funny I already had AI over here, like, installing a track, a screen recording package so I could see what was going on.

You make sure you weren't changing it yourself, you know? I was messing with you, though. It did move. Off the tab, I come back. It moved on you once at the beginning, but after you told me it moved on you, I was like, that's a good prank. And I've been moving it the whole time. New feature, lock the board from Gavin during the show. There you go.