HomeTech.fm - Episode 592 - The Theme is Updates

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

On this week's show: Apple’s smart home plans keep leaking from every direction, with LG-branded locks, doorbells, thermostats, and cameras rumored alongside Apple selling Aqara’s new thermostat; Google Home gets better at hearing you over the chaos; Amazon quietly takes away Alexa aux voice control; UniFi Protect 7.3 squeezes more history out of your storage; Inovelli’s roadmap starts moving again; Home Assistant renames Cloud to Link because, well, “cloud” has baggage; a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!Apple and LG team up on new smart home gear, starting with a lock, doorbell, and thermostatApple’s Smart Home Push Could Include Doorbell, Thermostat and Cameras | iPhone in CanadaApple now sells Aqara’s new Adaptive Temperature thermostat and more accessoriesHomeTech HeadlinesGoogle Home speakers can now hear you betterAlexa can’t control the aux input on Amazon Echo speakers anymoreIntroducing Protect 7.3Inovelli 2026: Q3 Update!Z-Wave 800 Series Button Controller + Dimmer Switch | Project WaltHome Assistant renames Home Assistant Cloud to LinkBig Tech ruined the cloud, so we’re renaming oursA Code of Conduct for AI in the HomeEmporia Vue 3 Home Energy MonitorRoomSync for Home Assistant App - App Store

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 9th. 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, podcast, all about home automation, home technology, and if, geez, I mean, everybody really wants you know that Apple and LG are working together, guys. Apple, Apple is working with LG.

They're going to have a camera, doorbell, thermostat, maybe. It's all going to be a game changer. I just think Apple's going to be taking a whole bunch of companies. devices and saying, here you go now, you know, like look at all these home kit devices we have. And yeah, LG, you know, that makes sense with LG because don't they own homie? They do? Homey and, yeah, a bunch of other stuff. Yeah.

So, I mean, it makes sense for them to make this. It'll probably all work with their homie and the Apple HomeKit and whatever else. Not a good time to partner with LG if you're a privacy focused company, though. Yeah, am I right? It's a little awkward. Yeah, that's true. My thermostat listens to me. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's definitely going to be a concern now at this point. Because Apple is very big on privacy, right? The Verge notes that SEC listings have already surfaced for at least some of the LG smart home gear, including the smart thermostat and a smart deadbolt lock. So there you go. They think it's going to be a lot of stuff, and it's all going to be thread and matter. And not just LG, because Akara, I guess, is in Apple is now selling the Akara adapted thermostat, which is the thermostat Hub W200.

and the climate center W100. So those are on the online and in the retail store, which is kind of cool. So that's a big thing. If they're all Threaded Matter, then they're not really HomeKit devices then. It's just any device. Added to the ecosystem through Threaten Matter. Yeah. So it's nothing really new other than LG's making them now.

But, I mean, Apple's been, I feel like they're so late to this game. Like, we've been through this for how many years now, waiting for them to come up with HomeKit stuff? That is pretty weird that they've waited, like, It seems like forever, but like over 10 years at those points, really, like, do anything. They've done some stuff, obviously. They've helped develop the matter standard, and they've created some of the security stuff.

It's not like HomeKit hasn't existed. I mean, sure, but like, does it do anything? You know, you never hear anything about it. Yeah, I think it's because it does just enough. Like, and you guys are like, oh, it Apple is not going to ever do what HomeKit is, or Home Assistant is doing. It's not ever going to be like a product for us.

It's a nice interface on my phone for the whole stuff I do at Home Assistant, but that's about it. That's the one thing I can't complain is they have a nice interface. Yep. You know, that's the only thing I can say. And, you know, I utilize that through Home Assistant, blah, blah, blah. So I still feel like they just have gone so slow with the Smart Home. I do feel it's kind of weird that they haven't made any of these smart home devices. And I don't know if it's just because like they see themselves.

is a luxury product and if they release the $30 smart plug, then maybe they're not a luxury product. And, but that's just very odd. It would be a $60 designer plug. I mean, whatever the cost is, you know what I mean? But that's a very cheap Apple device that, like, connects to whatever does and does everything. So, um, I don't, it's, it is, I agree with Cabin. It's very weird. They've waited this long to do anything in the space because I feel like they could have

easily taken the space, uh, after Google abandoned nest, basically. A couple of times over. Yeah, I think they could have done it any. At any point in time, they could have released smart outlets, smart live bulbs, Apple-branded thermostats or whatever, and that entire crowd would have eaten it off, right? Like, they would just, they would love it. And it's not like they don't know how to make some of these devices already, right? I mean, it's a circuitry inside of another device. Like, they do this all the time with other devices.

Well, that's the rumor. And I guess when is the, there's supposed to be, I think, October next week, right? October 13th or something. That's the room. I don't think it's anything official. It's all rumors, Gavin. Nothing is official. Even this L.O.G. thing is not official.

This is all Bloomberg. And the Mark, Mark, what's his name? Mark, uh, German. German. Yeah, the guy that told us we were going to have robotic arms on our Apple thing. So we'll see. We'll see. He's saying that's next year now, I think.

Oh, okay. Just push it down the road. Just, I mean, obviously. And then cancel. He's like, ah, never mind. Yeah. You just stop talking about it so much and people forget about it. The iPhone Duo pre-orders.

are next Friday, so it would be out of, out of whack to see an Apple event next week. I think they could do an event. I think they could do a press release. Well, I guess if they have a new hardware, they're doing it. Yeah, I think if they're going to introduce a new category, basically, then they're going to do an event for it. Well, we'll stop something. They're not going to do an event. Even if they did an event, it would just be, they would just have a video. A video. And they would say, if you want to see it, just go to the Apple Store and see it, because that's where they don't have to be secret about this.

I don't even think they'll have an event for this. It'll probably just be like a video app store thing yeah this is the problem with apple in the smart home space so they should have an event about this because it's literally making new new devices there again i don't i don't think they're still i don't think they're going to make the devices i i will agree with you that they are late late or never to the game on that because of whatever reason i mean they just want to concentrate on selling the they're trying to make a car you know the phone yeah they were trying to make a a car like some forgets forget smart outlets we're trying to make a driverless car and and oh we got goggles that nobody uses out of it.

So that's good. So yeah, I don't know. We'll see what happens next week. Yeah. By the time you're listening to this show, you already know. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

We may notice in the next week. We'll follow up. We'll follow up on it. But right now we've got a bunch of updates this week. I think the theme this week is updates. So not Home Tech headlines, but that's where they'll be talked about. What do you say? It started.

Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, first update. This is better. This is a good update. Google is rolling out a useful Google Home update focused on Jim and I for Home. The big change here is that the voice recognition works better in noisy rooms. So Google Home, speakers, and displays should do a better job hearing commands over music, appliances, conversation.

Google also says routine requests like alarms and timers should respond faster with lower latency. That's great. Honestly, that's amazing. Right now, Siri doesn't set half the reminders I need is to set. Jeez, it's supposed to be better. They're like, oh, Siri AI, it's so much better. And he just sits there and spins and spins. It's like, I thought this was supposed to work.

I don't know. You guys have problem setting Siri remind me to do this, and it just sits there and doesn't do anything. I mean, my Siri just never hears me for some reason. So I don't know if it's just the way I talk or something. But every time she just mixes up the words I say. So I don't even try anymore. Recently, one of the latest updates on my watch when I tell her to create a timer for me, I always get a message that it failed to do it.

And then I ask her again and again and again, it keeps seeing it failed. And then there's like 20 timers going on my watch and I have to cancel them all. So I don't know what's going on, but I have the latest version of everything. Yeah, that goes way back. Even through the betas, people were complaining about how broken Siri was on the watch and that they had really messed it up. Because even then it wasn't using the, it would, before it was like, it would recognize what you said didn't set up a timer on your watch, right? Now it's like going through the AI process and having

to do whatever weird handoff. And it's like so slow to get it done if it ever does it. And then, yeah. And I don't know. I still think Siri, broken. I really haven't used it for very much. I still, I think, I think, as far as Apple being late, see, they were late. Siri was the first thing you could do like, right? Like you could, I don't think anything else was out. Apple came out with Siri first. I think Google was like shortly after. Yeah. Yeah. And they weren't late to this game, but they sure didn't make it work right. So it just like lagged behind ever since. Ugh, awful. So now it's so bad. Like I don't even reach for the Siri thing first. I reach over for Claude or even, I mean, still rarely every now and then I'll reach over for Google and Google

search something because maybe the Gemini results will give me something I'm looking for. But yeah, I'm using Claude and ChatGPD to find everything now, which I think is what most people with, ah, search is dead, people. All right, here's a bad update,

though. Bad update. From, from Amazon, Amazon's removed Alexa voice control for the Ox Line-in

playback on some of the older echo, echo speakers. If you're using the echo with three and a half millimeter input

and saying things like play and pause, control audio coming out of that jack, that feature doesn't work anymore. So, why would they do this?

Well, you know, insidification, because that's what's, they don't really care because it's, it's, It has a very small number of customers that it affects. And there you go.

It still works on some models, but not some of the older one. They did say if you wanted to do it, you could still do it through Bluetooth, if you want to, you know, pipe music into it. But more than likely, it's probably the cut cost somewhere because they're not going to put the ox line in any more probably. It's really weird. In the future. But it is a weird thing to take away from existing devices if they already have it. Yeah, effective device is Echo Plus second gen. echo third gen, echo fourth gen,

and first gen Echo Studio. That's not fair to the people that bought those devices to do this. If they take that away. I'm sure like nobody, like five of those people out of all those, like they are using the three and a half millimeter ox

to input audio, right? Because on Sonos, I think you could do it on the Sonos five, I think it was as oxen or you can hook up a turntable. And if they just, I know Sonos, if they just came out and did this,

it would be like, there would be multiple Reddit threads of angry list. Maybe there's like licensing they use for that. And they're like, ah, we don't pay licensing. And there's like five people that use this still, so we'll kill it.

Could be. I think it's a cut cost, though, probably because their future ones, they won't even have to think about it anymore. But like I said, taking it away from existing devices, people that are using it are going to be mad.

Well, I guess Amazon, you know, it's prime day, so, or prime week or whatever it is now. And they probably have sales on new devices. If you wanted to go get a new device,

little break in seven or eight years have of use. All right. Got a good update here, though, from Ubiquity. Ubikility introduced Unified Protect 7.3. And it's got a bunch more recording stuff in here. They've got some, what they call this? Ultra, no, super encoding can now be used across every camera to stretch recording further. And it also has, they have some nice little features in there where you can keep newer stuff at like a higher quality.

and then automatically keep older footage and stuff at lower quality. So there's been a couple of settings in there for a while. They probably just made it a little more easier to see in this one. But they also support teleport now for remote, for some supported remote cameras. Genius. Yeah, yeah. So if you have a remote location that you just want to grab one or two cameras off of,

you can do that without needing a whole new Unified Console at that site for the camera location. And let's see what else we got. We got, we got, it's got, oh, it brought the time machine thing to the, the, the, in the video walls part to the dashboard. So you don't have to go and go out of that to see recorded events and, and history in there. So lots of good interface improvements as well as, you know, storage improvements here. So the teleport one is pretty cool. Yeah, that teleport, the teleport one is cool. It's like a stocker's dream.

Because of the tree right there. You could just set up a camera somewhere and have it. record straight to your home and you know like there you go but that's also really good if you have um um i'm like guest house or remote you know like beach houses and stuff that you may have rentals or something like that you're not near you could set these up and it's still like records and sends it to your home that's cool or you could even set it up like you could have a small unify system there that doesn't have one of their routers with storage built into it or enough storage or whatever and then you know like have a couple of cameras that you that wireless cameras or whatever that

plug in and then again teleport back like you're saying to your console which has a bunch of hard drives in it and it records locally on your hard drive yeah this is a nice little feature yeah or even a business if you don't want to keep the recordings on site because then somebody can come in and steal all the recordings and run with it too right then you can have the recordings off site and the cameras all just send it there it opens up a lot of nice possibilities i thought it was it it has it had specific cameras, but no, it just, if you can teleport from one point to the other, I guess you can use it. So that's nice. Very nice. Genius. Good old ubiquity coming through for us here. Can't fix existing issues, but they can add new ones,

so keep them coming. Keep the features coming. I think they're, I've always liked the protect line. Not the first one. The second one has been great. The real one. We don't talk about the first one. The only good thing about the first one is that you can run your own NVR. Yep, that's true. All right, Well, Inevelli, I got some updates from them, and I think good updates, right? They posted their Q3-20206 roadmap update, and a lot of old pause projects are now moving again. Newly announced, newly active products include a Red-Series Z-wave fan switch, red-series Z-wave fan and light canopy module, and a white series matter over-thread millimeter wave dimmer. And Ivilly also says that the long-running button controller project is back in development,

but has dropped the idea of interchangeable button layouts because light leak and manufacturing issues. Instead, it's moving to multiple dedicated paddle designs. So are you guys excited about any one of these things that's coming out from Minneville? Actually, one of them. But it's good to see because they're expanding their product line. And that's always good to see, you know, the company's doing well. There was one. I was, which one?

I think it was the button controller. Yeah, I want that one. Yeah, that's what it is. The button, the one that's, that they were trying to figure out what to do with the lights. Yeah, and it's fully customizable and stuff like that. That one looks really cool. And if they ever released that one, I know they first announced that one, I think it was 2023. So it's good to see them bring in it.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to be customized. Well, that's what they're saying here. Yeah, that's what stinks. Yeah. It's just going to have a bunch of paddle designs that you can do is, but since they couldn't get the lights from leaking out from behind the keypads to work and some other manufacturing issues, they're like, yeah, we'll just, we'll just do like a couple paddle designs and then you can figure out engraving, I guess. Oh, man.

Oh, well, we got a Richard, so, I mean, we don't have to worry about that. We got hookups for engraving, but yeah, I'm still excited for that one because I can see a number of uses for those. Yeah, I was really looking for the button controller because that would be a good use. I really wanted a Zigby one. I didn't know if they actually had that one on the road map, but it's been on there for a while. The other one I'm looking forward to is they're out. I think the Zigby Wall outlet, the Project Jambri.

That one looks cool because I'm always looking for, you know, smart outlets to get rid of the smart plugs. I currently have that stick out. And I know we had one, TJ, you got one recently, but it was too big to fit in the box. Yeah. So I'm really hoping they will come out with a good sized one. one that will leave some room in that box for the wires.

There's an update on the paddles. I'm going to put this in our show notes here so you can see the four designs that will be on the paddle buttons. And they're working on their own wall plates. That I found interesting to... Well, there's a reason for that. Because they never fit correctly in decoras, ever, because decor is kind of their own thing. And the colors never match because for some reason we thought it was a good idea to let these companies patent whatever color they use. for their white plates.

So you could have like a Lutron white dimmer thing that doesn't match with a leviton decor plate. So stupid. There's a, I put a link in the show notes too for the Z Wave 800 series button. But they've gone down to like four different designs. I'm not a big fan of the four designs they chose

because I really liked being able to customize where those buttons went. But I don't know. There's, I'd probably use the top two, not the other. The only thing I was upset at Innavelli, like all my switches are Inavelis, but the one thing I was really upset is that they discontinued the original switches.

So the dimmers had the full light bar on it and the switches just had a little piece of the light bar on it, just like a single light. And I like that because you could tell what was a dimmer and what was a switch. Well, now they gave you the dimmer and the switch is one device, which I get it, but they're all full light bars. So now you don't know which one's the dimmer and which one's the switch, really. So I wish it would offer the original. one again. If they're listening, add it to your feedback or, you know, think about it.

To go here and post in their, in their forms. Oh, they're talking about doing a, uh, um, a European switch too. Oh. Yeah, they've been talked about, um, expanding into Europe as well for a while now. So like, like, keep in mind, they talk about this stuff, but it takes years before it becomes like reality. It's a lot of work they go through. And each, each different product you come out with, there's, you know, you have to, support it the same. You have to deal with the same. It's not like the same product. They're all different things. They got to write firmware for it and work with it and do all the testing. It's, it's not easy. It takes a long time. That's why I liked following Innevelli,

because I almost got to see the process or the headaches they have. Yeah. Over the years. Yeah. I work for a manufacturer now. Manufacturing's hard. I mean, it's, it's tough. You could have a supplier that's like, yeah, we don't want to sell this in this quantity anymore, so we're not going to make it. And it's like, okay. Now you're back to the drawing board Trying to find a supplier that can make that Or change the product, change the specs, You know, you have to do what you have to do, I guess.

But like, yeah, it can be tough. It can be tough. Moving back up to our updates here. I guess one of the big updates we have this week is that Home Assistant is getting rid of the cloud. They're not going to talk about the cloud anymore. They don't want to talk about the cloud. See you.

They're renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Home Assistant Link. because they feel that the cloud's been done dirty by these big companies. So they kind of want to distance themselves from being caught anything with a cloud. And I think it kind of makes sense because there's not really a cloud component to this Home Assistant cloud piece, but it does link your device to your house easily if you use that. And I guess it does, in theory, let you back things up. But that's kind of like a minor thing, right? I guess it does give you AI too.

65 bucks a year. Like, who cares? Pay it, support home assistant, and, you know, support that. It solves a lot of headaches, right? Just paying for their current cloud subscription. It's not expensive. It solves a lot of headaches. It makes a lot of things easier. It's worth it. Just do it. And yeah, for a company that was always anti-cloud, they were selling a cloud product. So they kind of like had to, no matter what, you can't get away from the cloud, you know. So they're more anti-cloud on, like, devices and stuff. Right.

But you cannot get away. They definitely take their right approach to, like, control is local first. That's our first priority. If you got to do the cloud, we can do that. Yeah. But we really want to do local first control. So they've stuck to that. And I applaud them for that.

Yeah. I mean, if you want to get away from it, you don't want to do it. You can use a tail scale or, you know, VPN or whatever to connect to your home assistant if you really want to. But, I mean, yeah, I understand what they're doing. I would say if you want to support this team and have this product around for a long time, then pay the $65 a year because that's nothing. And then also use tailscale because the tailscale is good.

And you can do whatever you want. You don't have to use their thing. Exactly. But they also give you like backup space and stuff, encrypted backups and stuff on their servers and stuff. So it's a value add too. Like it's and I've never, I don't think they've ever raised the price on us. It's very cheap, honestly. Yeah.

For what it does. Yeah. And another announcement they made actually this week. I know we don't have it in our notes, but I wanted to bring some light to it was there have been some pull requests to integrate hacks right into home assistant. So right now, hacks is an add-on to home assistant that somebody was maintaining and stuff. And I believe Frank is now working on actually integrating it into home assistant. I think they're going to rename it to something.

Probably not App Store, but something else. Yeah, but it won't be hacks, but it'll be named something else. but it will be integrated. I think they're aiming for November is what the rumor is saying right now. So, you know, that's going to be a nice little add there too for home assistant because that brings in thousands of extra things. And setting hacks up is like every time I have to do something with it, it's just a pain. I don't know.

Like somebody, I'll be glad if that team takes it over because then maybe they can, you know, simplify it more. Simplify it and rework it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the easiest thing to remember how to do. And it's like a four-step process just to get to the point where you're adding a device into your project. And then, yeah, after that, it works normally.

I expect initially it will work the same way. Oh, yeah, yeah. Probably the initial one will just getting it into the interface as a native add-on, but things will still work pretty much the same. And over time, they will probably simplify it, make it better. I wonder if this means they will start vetting the apps that get added to it more. Yeah. I don't think you can do that because it's a repo.

thing you add, like a, you add your own repo in and it just like, yeah, but like officially listed though. Yeah. Once those are not officially listed apps. If other apps, they're in the hacks listings, I wonder if they'll start vetting those ones to make sure they're all done properly. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a ton of work, but it will be, it's a nice. I welcome this. I'm trying to see what exists as a, oh, yeah, I guess there's like chalmy and some other things in here that are. recognizable. Wash data, home assistant integration for smart plug

appliance monitoring, detect cycles, machine programs, estimates time remaining on your washer, I guess. There's all sorts of fun stuff in here. There is.

There's some stuff in there that they probably don't want to take responsibility for, you know, probably some gray area stuff. They will probably have to go through the list at some point.

Or, you know, or just keep the method of adding your own repository in there so you can add other things that aren't in the store if you really wanted to. Wow, there's a flight. There's a flight radar integration. There's integration for home assistant for everything. There is anything. Somebody's written something somewhere, you know. This is crazy. All right. There we go. I can see what flights are overhead right in my home assistant dashboard. I don't have to have my little LED screen thing I was working on. Oh, there's Unraid 2. Wow. Man, everything here.

No, I have to revisit the hacksore. I usually come in here or search for something and then forget that I search for it because it's not in this. And I'll add the repo in with the little button thing. And every time I come back to this, the search is empty or the results are empty. So I've never actually gone through and looked at all these integrations. They actually tell you how many times they've been downloaded and when they've been updated. That's pretty cool stuff. The GitHub repo for them.

Well, what is confusing sometimes is there's multiple ways to integrate. something so they'd have an integration officially in home assistant and then they'll have a hacks integration and they offer different options yeah yeah that happened to me with um was it equal it's has one i think like that well the Subaru had that right so the i just looked over it's it's working now because the fuel says 15 percent i guess i had to feel up again um yeah the the super app was in hacks and then it got brought into home assistant officially or whatever i don't even know how that works, but at some point it was like giving me all these notices, but then told me I didn't have to do anything. And what I like about hacks integrations is they get updated independent of home assistant.

So if you use a home assistant integration and something breaks, you have to wait for the next update to home assistance, which is usually every Friday they release the point releases. But with hacks, whenever they publish it to the hack story, it shows. Oh, it comes out instant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, and you can choose what version you want, if an older version worked for you, or you want to play with the beta version. you can switch versions of the axe component. So I like it.

I like where they're going with that. Yeah. Man, there's a lot. Gosh, there's so much. There's a Plex integration. That's crazy. All right, I'll have to mess around with this and see.

Wait till they integrate it. Then waste your time. Because you don't know if you waste your time doing a whole bunch of stuff and have to go out and. Yeah, but I'm just going to install it and walk away. It's not going to. Yeah.

Well, you have your agent do it anyway. Exactly. Clean this up. All right. Speaking of agents, Josh AI has published a voluntary code of conduct for AI in the home. And the big idea here is that the AI should never directly control devices.

Instead, Josh is arguing that the AI should sit underneath a separate control system that enforces permissions, safety rules, household roles, and an obvious ops wish before any physical action picks place or happen. So this AI written document lays out because it's clearly AI written. I can almost tell you what model they used to. write this with. They did edit a few places, but it's very AI, AI, AI written here. It lays out these 12 principles, including human override, lease privilege, local first operation, explainable logs, stronger confirmation for high risk actions like locks, fire, water,

security, and a default stance on doing less when the system is uncertain about what to do. I think these are all pretty good rules. And Josh says, no current product, including its own, fully meets this bar. So it's a high standard that they're trying to, they want to meet and they want other vendors to chime in and see if they can either pledge to meet these or help shape the standard. I'd like them to get together and shape the standard. I don't want one company defining it, right? I want multiple companies, which will make it longer and harder to get through, but it's a good start. I get a real question, though, what company in the professional space would you trust with this other than Josh AI.

I mean, you'd have to have another company. I mean, obviously, but like, which one, you know? Like, who's it going to be like Sonance or, you know, like, is it a Blutron? All these other companies, nobody has anything to do with AI. Yeah. So, I mean, whoever you ask is, I don't, like, it's going to be a weird situation anyway. So it's good that Josh AI has taken initiative on this, but it always seems like the companies in charge are the ones that take initiative on this because they already have the lead.

Right. Well, don't, don't just. think the professional space too because remember josh a i is integrated with home assistant so if they worked together with them and included their input it would be nice yeah i think i think i had a feeling that the home assistant crowd would agree agree with these um 12 rules for the home it's good to see yeah i guess you got to start somewhere even if it doesn't ever go anywhere at least somebody wrote all these things down or an agent wrote all these things down yeah somebody spent a lot of tokens on us yeah yeah looks good Well, it's a good start.

It's a good start, and they're thinking that way. It's a good thing. Yeah. Oh, man. The whole page was designed with AI. Sorry. Everything. Well, I can download the PDF.

That's nice. All right. You know, I'm glad somebody's thinking about it because I'm not going to. I'm just going to tell Henry to do it and he'll take care of it. I guess, I guess in that sense, like, I'm already there, right? I'm using Henry to control home assistant and build integrations for it. So, yeah, there is an off switch. It's on my desk.

I can just pull the plug. Or he's guaranteed to break in a few weeks anyway. So there's that. All right. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over on our show notes at Hometech.com. 592. All right, nothing in the middleback of this week.

We do have a nice little pick of the week here. And it is a little, it's actually a home assistant integration. It's a, it's called Sweet Spot. It's a speaker balance card. So I don't know if you guys have this problem. But like if you get in your big, spacious mansion. Mansion, yeah.

And you've got a bunch of speakers like all over the place. And you start walking around. You may notice that some of those speakers are louder than the others. Well, what if I told you that there's a way that you can use this, you can use a little

dash board card to tell a home assistant where you're sitting? And it will basically turn up and down the volume in the locations that you're closer to. So if you get close to a speaker, it'll turn the volume down there and it'll bump up the volume in the other places. So it sounds like you're always in the middle of that.

What would you guys say to something like that? Would you, would use this? This is great. Because if you had an area where you had multiple speakers and they're not like stereo pairs, it's just like floor plan. Yeah, right? It would be great because then you can easily switch it. I would probably automate it even more using like the Akara to, right? Because with that, you can get like if people are sitting in a specific seat, for example, you know, it has a sensor for that. And then you can have it auto-adjust the speaker volumes based on, you know, who's sitting where. That's where I would take this. But, I mean, if you don't have those devices, this is a great one to do. I think the developer just got

tired of, you know, constantly adjusting the volumes when he moved from the dining table to his sofa and stuff like that. So he just created this card to instantly do it for him when he moves. Yeah, and outside of this, I don't know of any other way to easily adjust your speakers. Like, For example, Sonos lets you, you know, tune their speakers, but you can't easily adjust them all the time. Like, it's kind of a process to adjust them. So this is an interesting concept. Oh, I see what you mean. Like, you can't adjust the speakers individually, but you'd have to open up the Sonos app.

Correct. And turn up the down the volume. This does all three, four speakers at once. Yeah, it's nice. Don't know of anything else like that, to be honest. It's clever. It's really clever. If you have any feedback questions, ideas for the show or pick of the week, give us a shout.

Email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can head on over to hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates. We already talked about home assistant updates. I updated my home assistant. But Gavin, what have you been up to? What are you been up to? Two things I've been playing with this week. So the first thing, after installing my Tesla charger, so in my electrical panel, I have the Emporia views. Actually, I say views because I have two of them. But they monitor every circuit in my house. I have a breakdown to how much everything is costing me per minute or per hour. And the scary part about it is I'm looking at like my server rack and doing all the math and I want to turn it off. So I'm kind of just, just, I don't give wife the access to the wife's access to this app. But you know,

or else I'm in trouble. She'd be like, why is this costing us 50 bucks a month? I don't know. Just don't look at that one. Right. But it's nice to see like I was able to. to calculate what it costs to charge my car, right? So, I mean, 10% of charging cost me like about a dollar, I estimate. Um, you know, it's so nice because, you know, I drive across the city and back and it costs me $6 and I can tell based on all the information that this gives me. So, you know, if you want a, uh, uh, like a breakdown on your electrical panel of how much each circuit's using, I, Emporia view is a great tool to use that. I know it's a cloud based tool. But it's one of those tools if the cloud were to go down for a day or so,

it's not going to, you know, it's not the end of the world. My smart home's not breaking, unless you had automations based off some of this. But it's also good because I can see my electrical bill in advance, right? As scary as it is, I know what's coming up and I compare them. And it's really accurate. So, you know, highly recommend that. Yeah, I, I mean, I'm not going to claim it to be a project, but I did. Keep it off the list. That's right. You have one and, your garage somewhere we know. In my hand. What are you talking? It's sitting right here. Yeah. It's in his garage right there. Yeah. Is that the Gen 2, Gen 3? It's a Gen 3. Yeah. Oh, okay. It's been sitting in my garage for like a year and a half maybe. Maybe longer. I don't

remember. Like I got it because you guys said it was really cool. And I looked at all the wires and how much thing I'm going to have to like tear apart to put it in. And I just haven't done it. Yeah. Just do it. Yeah. Just do it. It's not that bad of an install. I think the hardest part of the install was actually putting it into a circuit for powering it. I had my, my friend's an electrician, so he came over and he did that part and put a couple clamps on the mains, but I did all the rest of this. It was actually a pretty easy install. Yeah, I have the sense thing already installed, right? But it's not working most of the time. So I don't, I think the product just kind of like fizzled out or whatever, but I need to go ahead

and just like take it out because it's not just sitting in there and not doing anything. And I have this one sitting here all nice and ready to be installed. Just, yeah, whenever I get to it, I'll pop it in. One day, you'll get to it. But, yeah, I highly recommend the importer of you, and it's good to be able to justify, you know, or see how much things are costing you. So, you know, now you're turning into that person

that turns off a lighter, everything in a room and stuff. You're like, oh, that's five cents right there, you know, and turn it off or you get mad. But, yeah, my rack is probably one of the top. on the list. Well, then you have your AC uses a lot of electricity. So when that, that kicks in. My water heater uses a lot of electricity. Yeah, mine, I have a gas water heater, so it's not too bad. Yeah, see, our furnace and our water heater are gas. So we don't have to deal with that part at least. Yeah. Yeah. That's when the gas bill goes up, right, is because of those. But yeah, and the dryer.

But the dryer doesn't run all the time. And you can schedule, you know, have it run on cheap at the cheap time. So, but it's good to see. More information. helps you save money. So you got to spend money to save money. That's right. There's a hacks integration for FPL, which is our local power companies. They just whatever they hacked the dashboard, you know, for. Yeah, to pull in the prices. That's what I have you been using. Well, what's nice too is you can also use it for automating certain things that you can't get outlets for. So for like example, the dryer. The dryer you can't get a smart outlet for.

Or if you can, it's probably expensive or hard to find. And so you can just use the Emporia for that. And then you can create automations based on when the dryer is finished. Exactly. So that's one thing I did this week. The next thing, I've been playing around with an app that I didn't know I needed until I got it. So the developer Rodrigo messaged us and he said, hey, I developed this app called Room Sync on iOS. I was like, okay, you know, we got a lot of email.

So like I read this, I'm like, this sounds like something I need. So what this app does is it connects to your, you install on your phone, it connects to Home Assistant, it connects to Apple Home, it reads the list of all the devices, all the rooms, and then it will sync, put the devices in the rooms on Apple Home in the same rooms they are in Home Assistant. So it keeps them in sync. Now, this app is brilliant. And the reason why I say that is because it saves me a ton of time. Yeah. It just went through and said, okay, I found these 77 devices. I'm going to move them all to your rooms.

You click apply and bam, they're all in the proper rooms, proper areas, all based on where they are in my home assistant setup. And I expose these devices to Apple Home because I like to use Siri to control it through my watch and through my phone. So now I don't actually have to go into Apple Home and move them around, which is very time consuming, right? I just go into this app. I launch it. It rescans it and it tells me, hey, this one's not in the right room and you click apply and it done. And it really is an easy, it couldn't have been any easier, right? I really like this app.

It solves a problem. Like I said, I didn't really know I had until I read this. And I was like, oh, man, I do have that problem. Because everything just gets put in the default room in Apple Home, right? Mm-hmm. So it's just a mess. And if I tried to use a home app on my phone, it's just a mess. Now it's all clean and it took me like five minutes a day.

So I know Seth before the show, you install. all this, you gave it a shot? Yeah. No, it's great. I load up it. I, I, I'm the one who like within the last, I don't know, the last month or so, I had basically decided to remove my dependency on, uh, some control four drivers that I, you know, I'd paid for a long time ago that integrated control four with, what is it, the home,

bridge thing? Yeah, home bridge was one. And I decided to just pump all that stuff directly and, home assistant so any update on my lights any keypad i have an integration maybe i should finish that off one these days um like thermostat anything in control four that's control four native like i can bring that in as a device in home assistant and sets up in there um so when i did that like i basically just went back around and exposed those devices into the um apple ecosystem when i did that i had to delete my other ones out and these all come back in they all come in in the freaking

default room there, right? So going through and cleaning that mess out is super frustrating. I usually like this would save me hours and hours and hours. And I honestly, if I had had this then, I would hit apply 54 updates and changes. Now I'm going to go one at a time and check them to see if I actually wanted to apply the changes. Yeah. But it gives you full logging, backup, backup everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Back up. I should back up. Create a backup now. Yeah. What a great little app. We'll put a little link to this in the show notes. If you have Home Assistant and you use the HomeKit

interface like we do, this a lifesaver, honestly. Like, this is great. I really liked it. I will break this in the future, right? I'll break this. And I'll be like, oh, I deleted the wrong thing. And now I've got to go set all this stuff back up. And that's when I'll come back in. I'll hit Apply 54 changes done. Yep. One button press away. It's cool

stuff. Yep. So it's called HomeSink. It's in the iOS app store. So we have I actually asked him, you know, if you had any plans for doing something similar for the Amazon devices. And I know there's no API to do it, but, you know, I'm sure he's watching out. If they ever release an API to do it, you'll add that to the app as well. Because that's the other one. I'd like it all to be in sync.

Oh, that makes sense. That would be great if that could ever get working. But I know I can understand why Amazon wouldn't open any of that up to anybody. But saying all that, we have. have, he gave me 10 codes to give away. Oh, right? So we have 10 codes to give away. So if this sounds like something you'll need,

just send us an email, feedback at hometech.fm, and say you're interested in the room sync code. And we'll send you a code. First 10 people will get it. So, you know, reach out today. No rules. Just right. Yeah, first we're not doing anything.

Go, go, go. Whatever happens. No website. So, yeah, just send them in however he comes across the email. or, um, actually the best thing to do when you go to the, the, the, the, the, uh, the form and fill that out, because that goes right to Slack and we get that. We can, we can count them there. So, oh, yeah, let's complicate it. Make a form. No, it's, however you, however you do it, you know, however you do it, just send us feedback. Heck, you could ping me on mass a dime if you want and I'll send you

the code, you know. But, uh, yeah, if you're interested in this, just, you know, get a hold of bus, I'll send you a code. I've 10 to give away. And it's a lifesaver. It's a time saver. Yeah. Hopefully you never have to use this app. But when you do, it will be a lifesaver.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And now it's part of my routine. Anytime I add a new device and it gets exposed to Apple Home, I just go into the app and I do another sink and it puts it in the property. It's so much faster than actually going into the home app and moving the device around. Like, it's that easy. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Yeah, this is great. This is great. It's great utility. And man, what a pain point. This has been forever. I know. Sometimes it just takes one little thing to make you say, oh, thank you. It's a genius. Yeah. So there you go. Those are my projects for this week. Cool, cool. Well, now I have another one. So I'm going to rename some rooms here. Yeah, I had some projects. I did some things. What? Some conduit outside. Well, okay, let me take that back. Ten years ago, I ran some conduit underneath my driveway and dug out some flower beds and some stuff and uh and ran the conduit so i could

run my the idea was like one day i'm going to need to run a wire across my driveway and i'm not gonna i want to put it under the driveway in this conduit and so i left that conduit there under the ground in one spot and then kind of above the ground the other spot and it's been there for 10 years every day when i walk out of the house i see that conduit sticking up out of out of the mulch and i'm like one day i'm to get to this. And this weekend was that day. And I dug it up and the pool string and everything was still there. And I pulled the wire. I don't know. As usual, I was able to tape it on and I pulled it about 95% of the way there. And then the pull string broke. So great. Good for me. But luckily, I guess I did the conduit, right? Because then I just started shoving the wire in the other

side. It popped out. So yay. And then I decided to run another wire at while the other two wires were in there. And I'm like, I'm not putting a pull string back in. I'm just going to shove this wire through. And guess what? It popped out the other end too. So, geez, you're like a wizard. I know. I can't do that again, though. And I'm done. Never again. Yeah. So I've got a cat five. I've got some four, four wire speaker wire and, or cat six, and four wire, speaker wire and some, some like low voltage, well, I guess it's speaker wire, uh, direct, all direct variable wire. So I can, um, I can hook up some, some lights one day. If I wanted to do like some, what are they called,

landscape lights and that kind of thing. There you go. Yep, I can pop those in. I've got plenty of wire for my, my, my, uh, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, my, uh, my, my, my, uh, my, my, uh,

the, conduit did not get used. And I just ran wire over the top of the driveway. And that's where it's sad. So, um, so, um, so, yeah, now, now I got a nice clean, clean look. No one's ever going to know. Um, I, uh, last week, I don't know if you guys noticed. We recorded on Thursday night. And then Friday, we had the show come out.

Friday morning. And that's because... That totally, like, blew me away. Yeah, what happened. Yeah, I know. How did you do that so fast? I'm sure we're about to find out. The magic of AI.

And me finally running down this process that I kind of do in the back end, where it takes all of our audio, it aligns it, it normalizes it for podcasting. It goes through and cleans everything up. So I have my own custom model for that. This is all running locally. And then even locally on the Mac Mini, it will. go through and find all the chapters and things that we talked about. It'll look for things that we say in the podcast and like, you know,

because we kind of have a script that we do kind of try and follow every week. And it'll put those chapters in. And it also suggests other chapter titles for things that we talked about, as well as pull out a bunch of little clips and things that may be interest, you know, for me to do as well as suggest edits. And then all of that, if I approve, I can approve it. I can delete those. It gives me like a little interim step.

All that happens within, I don't know, it's under 10 minutes. on an M4 mini that I have sitting here. And then I get a little page that pops up and it says, what do you want to do here? I've transcribed the whole show and here's all this stuff. And I can hit save. And when it saves it, it will basically save it to my podcast editor.

Fairite. It'll make, I reverse engineered. I don't know. I didn't reverse engineer. And it's not a very complicated format file. I've already talked. I talked to the developer a long time ago.

It makes an archive of the podcast. And I just import that archive. right into ferrite and it opens up and has all the stuff that it put in there, in there. And I just can almost play the podcast through doing some minor edits and tweaks because everything else mostly was settled before I got to this point. And yeah, it's great. So that's how that went that quick. And then I had some extra time on my hands.

So I decided to draw a cartoon for you, Gavin. Man, we had extra time too. I know, right? What was going on? So we put the bins of regret up on our YouTube. And that was a fun little video to make. And it was a story about Gavin and his bins of things that he was rummaging through on the show. And TJ and I, honestly, I cut most of that out of the show.

But TJ and I were just sitting here like, oh, my God, how much stuff do you have, Gavin? Like, he just kept pulling these bins out. We didn't even know he had him in his room. He's got laptops. He's got bins. I mean, he's got all kinds of stuff in that room. His room looks so nice. It must just be a pile of bins or something in there.

So, Benz-a-regard is up. Lots of projects. Yeah. You know what, though, a lot of it is stuff I've gathered over the years as I've gone through my smart home journey. Yeah. So, like, you know, you started off and, you know, I used to sell some of it, but a lot of them are not worth selling. I don't want to put that on anybody.

You know, if I pull it out and I don't really use it, I'm like, I don't want to put it on anybody. And if it's something that was given to me free, I don't want to, like, I don't sell. all those, right? So my plan this year, I was hopefully going to take a, probably a whole bin to, like, the home assistant meetup and do, you know, swaps or giveaways or something like that. But unfortunately, I won't be making the home assistant meetup this year, unfortunately. So, uh, that sucks. We'll have to find another way to get rid of one of these bins. You're going to keep those bins for more years is what's going to happen. Yeah, probably, you know, but there's some good,

you know, stuff in them, you know, like, uh, I wish, you know, shipping has gotten so expensive. that, you know, like every time I try and ship something now, it costs more than devices worth. So it's not even, you know, but yeah, I have a lot of regrets in my bins. We all have those bins. I have two bins sitting next to me, which one of them I pulled, you know, the employer of you out of. Yeah, well, sitting next to me, the other ones are on that shelf over there. But, yeah, I've got plenty of bins. There's two behind me as well, like behind.

Bins on bins on bins. Yeah. See, mine are bins just of random things. So it's like, oh, yeah, I got cable, smart home devices and computers. computers in this bin. Oh, mine aren't organized, TJ. Well, I figure. I don't get them's organized. They were kind of organized, but over the time, they've gotten unorganized. But what I did do is, like, if I had multiple of one device, I'd get rid of all the boxes and everything and keep one box and shove all the parts into that and try to minimize it. But yeah, I didn't help much.

I still got bins. I guess I did organize them at some point, because I have all the AV and DMX stuff on top of that. And then over here, these cameras and Christmas light things. So yeah, I guess I did organize it at some point. It doesn't help. Stop bins. So anyway, it was a fun little video to make and an exploration in the way AI video stuff is created. So that was a lot of fun. Anyway, go check that out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes as well. Is that it for everybody? That's it. No projects for me. It's just been traveling. Just traveling and work, man. Yeah, I'm done to traveling. Geez. Well, sleep on my own. bed now. It's always nice. Always nice to come home

and then have to deal with all the home stuff, but also get to sleep and... All right, well, we want to thank everyone for listening this show, but especially when to send a big thing, special thanks out for those able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about the patron page,

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