13: Tech the Halls!

00:00SPEAKERToday we're going to talk about our favorite games of the year, we've got 22 hours, we're

00:04SPEAKERlocked in a very small room, are you ready to go Brad?

00:06SPEAKERLet's do this.

00:07SPEAKERLet's drink a power smoothie this morning, I'll protein up.

00:10SPEAKERYou know what?

00:11SPEAKERForget it, we're not going to do games of the year.

00:13SPEAKERGames of the decade.

00:14SPEAKEROh boy.

00:15SPEAKERYeah.

00:16SPEAKERFez, number one.

00:17SPEAKERWe're done right there.

00:18SPEAKERGetting out in front of it.

00:22SPEAKERWell Geometry Wars didn't come out this decade.

00:24SPEAKERSpelunky also number one.

00:25SPEAKERSo that's out.

00:26SPEAKERHow about, god it's a blur, the 2010s.

00:29SPEAKERYou like Mass Effect right?

00:30SPEAKERThat's a pretty good game.

00:31SPEAKERThe 2010s are a blur.

00:32SPEAKERYeah.

00:33SPEAKERYou know Mass Effect 2 barely.

00:34SPEAKERSqueaks in.

00:35SPEAKERMade the decade.

00:36SPEAKERYeah.

00:37SPEAKERIt was like the end of January 2010 I think.

00:38SPEAKERSo.

00:39SPEAKERI'm sure you're not talking about Mass Effect 3.

00:40SPEAKERLook.

00:41SPEAKERI like Mass Effect 3.

00:42SPEAKERThere's, there are good things about it.

00:44SPEAKERI'll play that game.

00:45SPEAKERAnd bad things about it.

00:46SPEAKERI like the combat.

00:47SPEAKERIt's, Mass Effect 3 is a land of contrasts.

00:48SPEAKERYeah.

00:49SPEAKERI don't like that they came to Roger Ebert and changed the ending.

00:52SPEAKERMass Effect 3 is not art is what you're saying.

00:54SPEAKERMass Effect 3, definitely not art.

00:56SPEAKEROkay.

00:57SPEAKERNo.

00:58SPEAKERAndromeda though.

00:59SPEAKERThat's art.

01:00SPEAKERThat's a certain form of art.

01:01SPEAKERYou can't have art without pain and suffering.

01:29SPEAKERHey everybody, welcome to another episode of Brad and Will Made, a tech pod.

01:37SPEAKERI'm Will.

01:38SPEAKERLet's talk tech.

01:39SPEAKERI'm Brad.

01:40SPEAKERI like that.

01:41SPEAKERThat's a tagline.

01:42SPEAKERWe have a tagline now.

01:43SPEAKERLet's talk tech.

01:44SPEAKERYou gotta say that every time now.

01:45SPEAKERThat's important.

01:46SPEAKERThat's your bit.

01:47SPEAKERIt's short, monosyllotic.

01:48SPEAKERYeah.

01:49SPEAKERSome nice alliteration in there.

01:50SPEAKERPut on a t-shirt.

01:51SPEAKERPeople would buy that.

01:52SPEAKERI've been thinking about that one for five seconds.

01:53SPEAKERSo, we missed last week.

01:54SPEAKERSorry.

01:55SPEAKERWe did.

01:56SPEAKERI was traveling.

01:57SPEAKERBrad, you were, as we alluded to earlier.

01:58SPEAKERYou're in the game of the year minds.

02:00SPEAKERYou recorded like, what, 15,000 hours of podcasts that week or something?

02:04SPEAKERUnearthing a number of awards.

02:06SPEAKERYeah.

02:07SPEAKERIt's too much talking.

02:08SPEAKERChiseling them out of the rock.

02:10SPEAKERSometimes it feels like that.

02:11SPEAKERSo anyway, I came back.

02:12SPEAKERUsually, we record on Saturday.

02:14SPEAKERI came back.

02:15SPEAKERWe didn't have time to get the show together after I got back.

02:19SPEAKERSometimes life intrudes.

02:20SPEAKERYeah.

02:21SPEAKERSo, we're back this week.

02:22SPEAKERWe're here.

02:23SPEAKERSorry.

02:24SPEAKERPlease forgive us.

02:25SPEAKERAnd now that Thanksgiving's over, it's the holiday season.

02:26SPEAKERYeah.

02:27SPEAKERI don't know about you.

02:28SPEAKERIt's the time of year.

02:29SPEAKERI'm a complete holiday mark.

02:31SPEAKERIs that the right word?

02:34SPEAKERI'm a sucker for holiday stuff.

02:36SPEAKERYour house is very festive.

02:37SPEAKERYou think so?

02:38SPEAKERI think so.

02:39SPEAKERI appreciate that.

02:40SPEAKERThank you.

02:41SPEAKERWe put some work into it.

02:42SPEAKERYou've got the most important award lights up.

02:46SPEAKERWe've got leg lamp lights from Christmas Story.

02:48SPEAKERI like those.

02:49SPEAKERThey're a little cheesy.

02:50SPEAKERYou got a little Santa Claus hanging over on the lamp there?

02:53SPEAKERThis is, yeah.

02:54SPEAKERSome might say it's the most wonderful time of the year.

02:57SPEAKERI put lights on my house.

02:58SPEAKEROutside?

02:59SPEAKERYeah.

03:00SPEAKERWow.

03:01SPEAKERThat's the benefit of having a house.

03:02SPEAKERYou've joined the great American light fight.

03:03SPEAKERIt's also the curse.

03:04SPEAKERWell, look.

03:05SPEAKERWhen you have a kid, you're either the kind of parent that says, "Dad, I want to put lights

03:08SPEAKERon the house."

03:09SPEAKERYou say, "No.

03:10SPEAKERWe're not doing that because that sucks."

03:11SPEAKEROr you're like, "Yes.

03:12SPEAKERI think that's a cool idea and we can have some fun together."

03:14SPEAKERYeah.

03:15SPEAKERI started to say parenthood requires certain sacrifices, but that doesn't sound like a

03:18SPEAKERsacrifice.

03:19SPEAKERThat sounds kind of entertaining.

03:20SPEAKERI got a new thing this year to make putting the lights on the house easier.

03:23SPEAKEROh?

03:24SPEAKERYeah.

03:25SPEAKERA decoration tech?

03:26SPEAKERYeah.

03:27SPEAKERA decoration?

03:28SPEAKERLook.

03:29SPEAKERIt's like a thing that you screw onto the end of an extendable broom pole, but it let

03:33SPEAKERme put the lights on without climbing up on the roof of the house.

03:35SPEAKERI was going to say, that's the thing that removes the need for a ladder.

03:38SPEAKERI am all in.

03:39SPEAKERWow.

03:40SPEAKERAnd it works well?

03:41SPEAKERIt works well enough.

03:42SPEAKERGood enough.

03:43SPEAKERSo, you have these special clips and you put the light on the clip and then you jam it

03:48SPEAKERin on the edge of the gutter.

03:50SPEAKERYou tilt it down and snap it in place.

03:53SPEAKEROr if you're doing them on shingles, if you jam it up under the shingles, which seems

03:56SPEAKERreally dangerous to me.

03:57SPEAKEROh yeah.

03:58SPEAKERI don't know if that's a good idea for the roof.

03:59SPEAKERI don't know.

04:00SPEAKERThis is light tech.

04:01SPEAKERThis is where we are.

04:02SPEAKERYeah.

04:03SPEAKERI guess I could put hooks up, but you just kind of hook it and then jam it in there and

04:05SPEAKERyou're done.

04:06SPEAKERJust get a good wedge going.

04:07SPEAKERI think I did the whole thing in like an hour.

04:08SPEAKERIt was great.

04:09SPEAKERI can see the appeal having turned 40 recently.

04:11SPEAKERYeah.

04:12SPEAKERYou know.

04:13SPEAKERExterior lighting is our mandate.

04:15SPEAKERBut also anything that requires applying torque to your back is potentially a risky endeavor.

04:21SPEAKERSo the problem with our house- So maybe getting the ladder out of the equation

04:24SPEAKERis not a bad idea.

04:25SPEAKERWell, there's no place to lean the ladder against the house because we have gutters

04:30SPEAKERon all the sides that aren't terrifying and the sides that are terrifying are really tall.

04:33SPEAKERAnd you can't put a ladder on gutters.

04:35SPEAKERProbably not.

04:36SPEAKERI mean, if you want it to be a lot thinner, you can.

04:38SPEAKEROkay.

04:39SPEAKEROr aluminum.

04:40SPEAKEROkay.

04:41SPEAKERJust crunch right in.

04:42SPEAKERSo yeah.

04:43SPEAKERI don't know.

04:44SPEAKERWhen I was putting gutters on the house last year, I didn't really think it through.

04:45SPEAKERSo do you have to clean the gutters?

04:46SPEAKERYeah.

04:47SPEAKERAnd there's no easy way to do that.

04:48SPEAKERIt turns out that is some dad shit.

04:50SPEAKERYeah.

04:51SPEAKERI love cleaning gutters.

04:52SPEAKERWhat kind of lights did you guys go on?

04:53SPEAKERLights are kind of interesting now that LEDs are in the mix and they've enabled a lot more

04:59SPEAKERcolor change options and different types of light and stuff like that, but they've also

05:02SPEAKERmade things a lot more complicated.

05:03SPEAKERDo you want to do this?

05:04SPEAKERDo you want to get into this?

05:05SPEAKERI spent a lot of money on Christmas lights over the last couple of years.

05:09SPEAKERSo sure.

05:10SPEAKERI'm just curious what you're running out there.

05:11SPEAKERIf you've got any cool automation or pattern type stuff going on or anything.

05:14SPEAKERI mean, I wish.

05:15SPEAKERYou could look at that because you could get RGB addressable lights from China when I bought

05:20SPEAKERthe lights for that.

05:21SPEAKERI guess we've been lighting the house for like three, four years now.

05:24SPEAKERSpecifically the...

05:25SPEAKERYeah.

05:26SPEAKERRGB.

05:27SPEAKERBut then you'd have to manually map each light and if you want to do a cool pattern or something,

05:31SPEAKERit was a process.

05:32SPEAKERGotta write scripts for your Christmas lights?

05:34SPEAKERI'm not writing scripts for my Christmas lights.

05:37SPEAKERWe bought G-Globe.

05:39SPEAKEROh no, the ones that are like the conical with the little twinkly lenses, so they get

05:46SPEAKERa good twinkle on them.

05:47SPEAKERIcicle lights or something?

05:48SPEAKERNo, they're not icicles.

05:49SPEAKERThey're just normal multicolor bulbs and they're all like...

05:52SPEAKERThere's a pattern.

05:53SPEAKERIt's like red, yellow, green, blue, but the key for me was that the orange had to be like

05:59SPEAKERwarm and not like a bright fluorescent-y orange.

06:03SPEAKERYes.

06:04SPEAKERThat is an ongoing issue with LEDs.

06:05SPEAKERDid you do colored lights as a kid or white lights or incandescent lights?

06:10SPEAKERSo when I was a kid...

06:11SPEAKERThey're not actually white, they're more of a goldish orange.

06:13SPEAKERLike incandescent lights have it weird.

06:14SPEAKERWell, there's blue.

06:15SPEAKERYeah, incandescent lights are real warm.

06:16SPEAKERWhat I mean is like the ones that are multicolored versus just the plain.

06:19SPEAKERSo when I was a little kid, we had big bulbs, like the big glass bulbs, and those were multicolored.

06:25SPEAKERThe big bulbous ones?

06:26SPEAKERYeah, the ones that like you screwed in.

06:27SPEAKEROkay.

06:28SPEAKEROh wow, on the tree?

06:29SPEAKEROn the tree.

06:30SPEAKEROh wow.

06:31SPEAKERThinking back on that, it's amazing we never burned the house down.

06:34SPEAKERReal trees?

06:35SPEAKEROh, always.

06:36SPEAKERYes.

06:37SPEAKERReal trees until I was in high school.

06:38SPEAKERWe always did the real tree, and then we burned it after I lived on a tree farm.

06:42SPEAKEROh yeah.

06:43SPEAKERWait, did you provide your own tree?

06:45SPEAKERLook, for a few dark years we did.

06:48SPEAKERThe unfortunate thing about tree farms at the altitude we were at, because we were only

06:52SPEAKER1,500 feet, you couldn't grow firs.

06:54SPEAKERLike Fraser firs and the kind of desirable Christmas trees didn't grow there.

06:58SPEAKERSo my dad was like, "You know, white people like white pines.

07:00SPEAKERWe're going to plant a bunch of white pines."

07:02SPEAKERTurns out people don't like white pines.

07:04SPEAKERSo we had a Christmas tree farm, but they planted the trees when I was six.

07:09SPEAKERInadvertent Christmas tree farm?

07:10SPEAKERNo, it was on purpose.

07:11SPEAKEROkay.

07:12SPEAKERHe thought he was going to pay for college this way.

07:14SPEAKERAnd it's an entrepreneurial spirit.

07:17SPEAKERI feel like I've told this story a million times, but yeah, he planted the trees.

07:21SPEAKERHe was like, "I mowed between the trees for 10, 12 years," or however long it was.

07:27SPEAKERAnd then we started selling when I was 15.

07:29SPEAKERAnd we started selling at like 40 bucks where you come and cut your own.

07:32SPEAKERNobody wanted that.

07:33SPEAKERWe immediately dropped the price to the good ones.

07:35SPEAKERLike, you wanted an 18-foot tree from our farm?

07:38SPEAKER20 bucks.

07:39SPEAKERYou're in and out the door.

07:40SPEAKER18 feet.

07:41SPEAKERMan.

07:42SPEAKERYeah.

07:43SPEAKERWhat happened is people come out to the country.

07:44SPEAKERThey're like, "I'm going to cut a tree.

07:45SPEAKERIt's going to be a fun family activity."

07:47SPEAKERAnd then they'd get out there and we'd hand them like the old jacked up rusty bandsaw

07:51SPEAKERthat we used to cut down the trees.

07:53SPEAKERAnd they'd start on it for about two minutes and then they'd let the kids take a couple

07:56SPEAKERof swipes.

07:57SPEAKERAnd then they'd send one of the kids back to the house to get me to cut the tree down.

08:01SPEAKERAnd that's how I spent my summer break pretty much every year in high school.

08:05SPEAKERFrom dawn till dusk.

08:07SPEAKERPeople would be there at six o'clock in the morning.

08:08SPEAKERNo hesitation.

08:09SPEAKERIs that what you call felling a tree?

08:11SPEAKERI don't know.

08:13SPEAKERThe worst part of the whole thing was dragging the tree back because like people are, they've

08:18SPEAKERcut the tree.

08:19SPEAKERThey're committed to it.

08:20SPEAKERYou start dragging it through the field.

08:21SPEAKERThey're like, "Hey, we've got to pick this thing up."

08:22SPEAKERSo then I just chuck it up on my shoulder and carry a 40-pound tree.

08:26SPEAKERAnyway.

08:27SPEAKERYou're probably covered in sap.

08:28SPEAKERFeelings about.

08:29SPEAKERSo we have a fake tree now.

08:30SPEAKERThat's the answer to your question.

08:31SPEAKERSo we did multicolored lights on the house and we matched them to our neighbors.

08:34SPEAKEROh, wow.

08:35SPEAKERBecause our houses kind of face each other.

08:36SPEAKEROkay.

08:37SPEAKERAnd so the neighborly rooms looks exactly the same.

08:40SPEAKEROkay.

08:41SPEAKERWe both had to replace lights at the same time.

08:42SPEAKERWe both got new lights at the same time.

08:44SPEAKERColor coordinated.

08:45SPEAKERYeah.

08:46SPEAKERWe worked together.

08:47SPEAKERThat's cool.

08:48SPEAKERAnd then inside we have a fake tree that has the lights built into it, which is the greatest

08:50SPEAKERthing I've ever seen.

08:51SPEAKERLike, detachable-y so?

08:52SPEAKERBecause I mean, you can get pre-strung trees.

08:57SPEAKERThey're not actually integrated with the tree.

08:59SPEAKERThese lights, they look like they're strung because they have little wires that come out

09:02SPEAKERof the branches.

09:03SPEAKERYeah.

09:04SPEAKERIt's really...

09:05SPEAKERLook.

09:06SPEAKERCould you pull the strings off or they're actually like...

09:07SPEAKERAh, you mean you could, but it would never be right again.

09:10SPEAKEROkay.

09:11SPEAKERHuh.

09:12SPEAKERThe lights are integrated with the branches, basically.

09:13SPEAKERInteresting.

09:14SPEAKEROkay.

09:15SPEAKERYeah.

09:16SPEAKERAnd the whole thing...

09:17SPEAKERI've seen pre-strung trees, but they were just off-the-shelf lights that had just been

09:18SPEAKERwound around.

09:19SPEAKERThis is different.

09:20SPEAKERSo this is...

09:21SPEAKERIt's like seven feet tall and it's three pieces that are like umbrella...

09:24SPEAKERThe branches like umbrella up so you can store it in the summertime.

09:27SPEAKERSure.

09:28SPEAKERSo you drop the umbrella into the piece of the pole before it, and then it just connects

09:32SPEAKERmagically.

09:33SPEAKERI don't know how that works.

09:34SPEAKERSounds cool.

09:35SPEAKERHow?

09:36SPEAKERThat's a nice tree.

09:37SPEAKERAnd then you push the branches down.

09:38SPEAKERThe secret of fake Christmas trees, buy them like right after Christmas.

09:43SPEAKERTurns out Lowe's doesn't wanna store that shit for a year.

09:45SPEAKERThat's just like Halloween candy the first week of November.

09:48SPEAKERYeah.

09:49SPEAKERBut the lights are the right amount of warmth.

09:50SPEAKERLike they're not blue eye blaster LEDs, white LEDs, and it has a dimmer, which is all I

09:56SPEAKERwanted.

09:57SPEAKERYeah.

09:58SPEAKERThey're all LEDs.

09:59SPEAKERI guess that leads me to my next question of what happens when one of those bulbs go

10:02SPEAKERout.

10:03SPEAKERWe're just gonna do this.

10:04SPEAKERThis is all Christmas lights this episode.

10:05SPEAKERI debated whether I should even ask this old man Christmas story style question of why

10:10SPEAKERdoes an entire string of lights go out when one of the bulbs dies, but that's worth talking

10:15SPEAKERabout.

10:16SPEAKERWell, so they don't anymore.

10:17SPEAKERThe follow-up question is, does that even affect LEDs or are they inherently not designed

10:21SPEAKERthat way?

10:22SPEAKERWell, is it as simple as it's just like a simple circuit that's being broken when one

10:27SPEAKERof the bulbs dies?

10:28SPEAKERYeah.

10:29SPEAKERSo on the old school bulbs, they would die because the lights were all wired in series.

10:33SPEAKERSo like the wire would come out of one light and go to the next one, go into one light

10:36SPEAKERand out of the next one, into one light and out of the next one.

10:38SPEAKERSo it's the same current flowing through the filament in one bulb that then, so when the

10:41SPEAKERfilament breaks, that's where the circuit's being like, so yeah, all of the electricity

10:44SPEAKERhas to go through that film.

10:45SPEAKERAnd when that filament breaks, then all the electricity stops.

10:48SPEAKERThat's what I assume for the entire run.

10:49SPEAKERSo the strings where that's not a problem, does that just mean there's extra wiring through

10:53SPEAKERthe string that carries the current?

10:55SPEAKERThat's it.

10:56SPEAKERThere's a third wire.

10:57SPEAKERSo what was the upside of ever designing it that way in the first place?

11:02SPEAKERIt was cheaper.

11:03SPEAKERJust saving money?

11:04SPEAKERYeah, it was cheaper.

11:05SPEAKERLess wiring?

11:06SPEAKERI mean, look, in the old days when I assumed they would send small children to the copper

11:09SPEAKERmines to get copper and like those Christmas lights were paid in blood, Brad.

11:15SPEAKERAnd pennies per string adds up?

11:18SPEAKERYeah.

11:19SPEAKERSo those children's bloods on your hands, you can replace the fucking bulb, man.

11:23SPEAKERWe spent so many years buying cheapo no-name incandescent lights and then having them die

11:28SPEAKERby the next year and going back to CVS and doing it again.

11:32SPEAKERYeah.

11:33SPEAKERThe day of a thousand curses when you would take the lights out of the attic and you'd

11:35SPEAKERroll them out in the living room and you'd plug each one in and not like one out of five

11:40SPEAKERstrands would light up on the first try.

11:41SPEAKERTwo of our three strings from last year died when we plugged them in this year.

11:46SPEAKERIt's the future, man.

11:47SPEAKERYeah.

11:48SPEAKERThe thing I like about the LEDs is I feel on the years when I have real trees, which

11:55SPEAKERhasn't been recently, but probably in the future sometime, it's nice because they don't

12:02SPEAKERget hot.

12:03SPEAKERSo you're not like taking a piece of firewood with a bunch of tinder still on it, letting

12:08SPEAKERit dry out in your living room for a few weeks and then applying heat to it.

12:13SPEAKERThe downside is like a lot of the stuff that just works by default with the old incandescent

12:18SPEAKERChristmas lights, like dimming, doesn't work at all or works badly with LEDs.

12:22SPEAKERA lot more complicated.

12:23SPEAKERExcuse me.

12:24SPEAKERWe're going to talk about LEDs this week.

12:27SPEAKERWe're going to talk about lighting and dip into a little bit more home automation stuff,

12:32SPEAKERI think.

12:33SPEAKERYeah.

12:34SPEAKERBecause they're kind of dovetails.

12:35SPEAKERYeah.

12:36SPEAKERTurning lights on and off is a key use case for automation.

12:39SPEAKERSo when I set up the SmartThings Hub in my house, the first thing, it was for Christmas

12:43SPEAKERone year.

12:44SPEAKERReally?

12:45SPEAKERBecause I wanted to plug the Christmas tree lights and like we have a window behind our

12:47SPEAKERcouch and we'll put like, we'll put festive lights around that and stuff like that.

12:52SPEAKERSo I wanted to have them all controllable because I didn't want to have to bend back

12:56SPEAKERdown behind this open, unplug them every night.

12:57SPEAKERAnd I got a SmartThings Hub that I backed on Kickstarter and I plugged that in and plugged

13:02SPEAKERin a couple of power control boxes.

13:05SPEAKERAnd that was the beginning of my home automation journey.

13:07SPEAKERAre you saying that Christmas decorations are the pornography of lighting technology?

13:13SPEAKERThe thing that drives, the thing that pushes tech forward before anything else?

13:20SPEAKERHave you seen Twinkly?

13:21SPEAKERNo.

13:22SPEAKERYeah.

13:23SPEAKERWell, yes.

13:24SPEAKERActually you showed it to me briefly before.

13:25SPEAKERYou're supposed to say no so that...

13:26SPEAKERI haven't seen it in person.

13:27SPEAKEROkay.

13:28SPEAKERNeither have I.

13:29SPEAKERWhat is Twinkly, Will?

13:30SPEAKERTwinkly, you know, I talked about the RG, you know, do you know what RGB, have we talked

13:33SPEAKERabout what RGB addressable LEDs are?

13:34SPEAKERI mean, you know what they are.

13:35SPEAKERYeah.

13:36SPEAKERYou can change the values to change the color.

13:37SPEAKERYeah.

13:38SPEAKERAnd each like you can take a big long strand and each light is addressable independently.

13:42SPEAKERSo like one can be red, one can be blue, one can be white, one can be off.

13:45SPEAKERYeah.

13:46SPEAKERI think we've touched on that stuff a little bit before and I'm sure that's like, you know,

13:48SPEAKERPhillips Hue is like a nice high end example of that.

13:50SPEAKERWell, Hue's not individually addressable though.

13:52SPEAKEROh, okay.

13:53SPEAKERSo like the Hue, the $80 strand that Hue sells, I think you can only set one color for the

13:57SPEAKERwhole chain.

13:58SPEAKERInteresting.

13:59SPEAKERSo that's, that's how the cheapo knockoff, like Shenzhen, originated light string I've

14:05SPEAKERgot works.

14:06SPEAKERIt's just, it's through Apple home, but you can only set one color at a time.

14:08SPEAKERSo for example, do you remember the game frame, that thing that my friend Jeremy made?

14:12SPEAKERIt's like a, it's a little 16 by 16 pixel display that he uses to show pixel art.

14:17SPEAKERAnd it's like a foot by foot.

14:18SPEAKERI think I've seen that.

14:19SPEAKERSo it has, there's one in my office at my house, but basically each of the LEDs, it

14:24SPEAKERhas whatever 16, 256.

14:25SPEAKERIs that right?

14:26SPEAKERIs that 16 times 16?

14:27SPEAKERThat seems right.

14:28SPEAKERYou might be right.

14:29SPEAKERYeah.

14:30SPEAKERIt's 16.

14:31SPEAKERWell, let's say theoretically that 16 times 16 is 200.

14:36SPEAKERYou might be right.

14:37SPEAKERThis is terrible.

14:38SPEAKERThe iPad does not have a calculator on it.

14:40SPEAKEROh, you're just typing it into Google.

14:42SPEAKERGoogle will tell you.

14:43SPEAKERIf only there were some other way for us to calculate this information, if only.

14:47SPEAKERIt's worth mentioning.

14:48SPEAKERWe're recording fairly early in the morning.

14:52SPEAKERBasically it's a 16 by 16 grid of pixels.

14:54SPEAKERAnd each of those LEDs is addressable independently, but it's basically just a big long chain inside

14:59SPEAKERit.

15:00SPEAKERRight.

15:01SPEAKERThat just goes one at a time.

15:02SPEAKERAnd those work by taking the most recent number on us.

15:06SPEAKERYou send it a big long string usually, and the first light takes the first number off

15:10SPEAKERand sets itself to that color, passes the chain on and the next light takes the next

15:13SPEAKERone and the next light takes the next one and the next light takes the next one.

15:16SPEAKERAnd it happens so fast that you just don't see it.

15:20SPEAKERIt just always looks like it's...

15:21SPEAKERThey all look like they're lighting up at the same time.

15:23SPEAKERDo you know what...

15:24SPEAKERI don't know if this is getting too granular, but do you know what is the mechanism inside

15:29SPEAKEReach individual light that filters that information and passes it on?

15:32SPEAKEROh, there's probably a little IC in there.

15:33SPEAKEROkay.

15:34SPEAKERYeah.

15:35SPEAKERI mean, usually...

15:36SPEAKERMy understanding is on RGB addressable strips, there's the LED is mounted on top of a little

15:39SPEAKERIC that handles that logic for you.

15:41SPEAKERSo there's a bazillion of those in each one, and they take a little bit more power than

15:45SPEAKERnormal LEDs because of that, because whatever power you're sending into the strip has to

15:49SPEAKERpower the controller and the LED, not just the LED, like you would on a normal strip.

15:55SPEAKERSo that's what Twinkly is except in Christmas light form or string light form?

15:59SPEAKERThey've gone one step further.

16:00SPEAKEROkay.

16:01SPEAKERSo they have the RGB addressable LEDs, which you can get anywhere.

16:04SPEAKERThey've made them look like Christmas tree lights.

16:05SPEAKERYou put them on your tree and then you open up an app on your phone and put the camera

16:09SPEAKERat it.

16:10SPEAKERWhat?

16:11SPEAKERAnd it fires each light individually.

16:12SPEAKERWhat?

16:13SPEAKERSo that it can tell where each light is.

16:14SPEAKEROkay.

16:15SPEAKERAnd then you can...

16:16SPEAKERThis is after you've put them on the tree.

16:17SPEAKERThis is after you've put it on the tree.

16:18SPEAKERSo it knows...

16:19SPEAKERSo I assume you do it for two sides or three sides or whatever.

16:21SPEAKERSo you can get them in 3D space.

16:23SPEAKERAnd then you can program your Christmas tree to look like an animated candy cane and stuff

16:27SPEAKERlike that.

16:28SPEAKERDoes that give you an interactive layout on the app that you can tap lights on and off?

16:32SPEAKERI think it's like...

16:33SPEAKERWhat is the purpose of taking the pictures?

16:34SPEAKERDo you have a keyboard with backlight and all the fancy stuff where you can choose the

16:37SPEAKERpatterns and all that?

16:38SPEAKERYeah.

16:39SPEAKERIt's like that.

16:40SPEAKERThat's how it lets you visually turn stuff on and off maybe?

16:41SPEAKERYeah.

16:42SPEAKERI don't think you can...

16:43SPEAKERI don't know that you can program it.

16:44SPEAKERI don't know that you can't.

16:45SPEAKERI don't know that you can make your own patterns.

16:47SPEAKERI haven't gotten that far into it.

16:49SPEAKERBut yeah, basically they have, it looks like dozens of different patterns that you can

16:53SPEAKERmake from subtle ones that are like a wave of kind of golden light washing up the tree.

16:58SPEAKERThat's so cool.

16:59SPEAKEROr like the one that I saw that somebody had was like, it looks like a candy cane.

17:03SPEAKERIt's like all, and they kind of go up the tree as they're going.

17:06SPEAKERSo it's really horrifically garish.

17:10SPEAKERPerfect for Christmas trees.

17:13SPEAKERThere is a strong element of cheese in holiday decorations.

17:16SPEAKERI will cop to that.

17:17SPEAKERAbsolutely.

17:18SPEAKERYeah.

17:19SPEAKERLook, if you're not here for some tastes, slightly tasteless, this is the place to get

17:25SPEAKERout all your kitsch for the year.

17:27SPEAKERYes, absolutely.

17:28SPEAKERYour Mario...

17:29SPEAKERYou have to lean into it.

17:30SPEAKERChristmas tree ornaments.

17:31SPEAKERFor sure.

17:32SPEAKERYeah, exactly.

17:33SPEAKERIt's like stone, glass, Santa Claus, all that stuff.

17:35SPEAKERIf you're not willing to be painfully earnest about this, then you're not even, you shouldn't

17:38SPEAKEReven be here.

17:39SPEAKERSee the tree topper, I'm noticing you've gone with Q. It's a classic choice.

17:43SPEAKERYes, we have.

17:44SPEAKERYes.

17:45SPEAKERJohn Delancey is a topper Christmas tree.

17:46SPEAKERI 3D printed a Mario star a few years ago.

17:48SPEAKEROkay.

17:49SPEAKERIt's not bad.

17:50SPEAKERYeah.

17:51SPEAKERIt's on top.

17:52SPEAKERI got to hollow it out so I can put some lights inside it, I think.

17:53SPEAKERBut yeah.

17:54SPEAKERThat's our star.

17:55SPEAKERSo a nerd star, I think is an important part of this whole process.

17:59SPEAKERThose tree lights are called twinkly.

18:00SPEAKERYou can get them at twinkly.com.

18:01SPEAKERThey're really fucking expensive.

18:02SPEAKERI was just going to ask.

18:04SPEAKERI think 175 light strand was like a hundred bucks versus maybe 20, 15 for a really nice

18:12SPEAKERset of non-programmable RGB addressable lights.

18:15SPEAKERAnd I'm trying to think 175 lights on a...

18:18SPEAKERWhat's your average Christmas tree?

18:19SPEAKERIt's like six feet, seven, six to seven feet.

18:22SPEAKERI asked Gina because she does the lights in our house.

18:24SPEAKERShe's the one with the attention to detail to do that.

18:27SPEAKERAnd she would say that's probably four of those strands, five of those strands at minimum.

18:31SPEAKERSo four to five, $600 to...

18:33SPEAKERWow.

18:34SPEAKERYeah.

18:35SPEAKERDo you think that will come down over the coming years?

18:38SPEAKERAlways does.

18:39SPEAKERSo somebody is...

18:40SPEAKERA, someone will knock this off and do the same thing.

18:43SPEAKERRight.

18:44SPEAKERThere's nothing...

18:45SPEAKERWill this get to the point where you can walk into a Walgreens and find a no-name knockoff

18:48SPEAKERversion of this?

18:49SPEAKERI mean, building the app is probably hard.

18:53SPEAKERMaking the app work right is going to be even more difficult.

18:55SPEAKERSure.

18:56SPEAKERI think you'll be able to buy a bad version of this next year for a lot less.

18:59SPEAKERLimited functionality.

19:00SPEAKERSo my guess is that the price on these will come down dramatically as they increase scale

19:03SPEAKERtoo.

19:04SPEAKEROkay.

19:05SPEAKERThis is the first...

19:06SPEAKERThis is the second year they've done them, I think.

19:07SPEAKERThis is the first time I heard about it.

19:08SPEAKEROkay.

19:09SPEAKERI would assume next year we'll see lots more, hopefully at a better price.

19:13SPEAKERAnd they also do one that's...

19:14SPEAKERSo they do one that's RGB.

19:15SPEAKERThey do one that's just like cool to white, cool to warm, yellow light.

19:20SPEAKERSo you can have like a golden, more golden kind of twinkle.

19:24SPEAKERThat's the kind of classic.

19:25SPEAKERYeah.

19:26SPEAKERExactly.

19:27SPEAKERThe other thing I came in here wanting to talk about the most is the kind of contrast

19:31SPEAKERbetween LEDs and the old school type and some of the complications that come in with making

19:37SPEAKERthat switch and so forth.

19:39SPEAKERSo a couple of years ago I bought, and I did exactly what you said, it was like mid January.

19:44SPEAKERI got four strings of the GE Colorite LEDs.

19:47SPEAKERThose are the former wire kind of recommendation for Christmas lights.

19:51SPEAKERAs of like a few weeks, like three weeks ago, last I checked, I think they're still their

19:55SPEAKERrecommendation for the best LED Christmas lights, but I got, I bought four of them because

20:00SPEAKERthey were on a post Christmas special and they were advertised as warm white, like wire

20:06SPEAKERcutter said, like these are, I don't know that they came out and said these look identical

20:12SPEAKERto your childhood incandescents, but they implied that they're very close.

20:18SPEAKERSo I went and bought four of them and got them in.

20:20SPEAKERHow are they?

20:22SPEAKERThey're not...

20:23SPEAKERI don't agree with their assessment.

20:25SPEAKERThis is why they're a very, I hesitate to call them cold, but they definitely have a

20:31SPEAKERvery like pure white kind of eye searing look to them.

20:34SPEAKERNot that nice, soft, warm, goldish, orangish color.

20:38SPEAKERThey are cooler than I would have wanted.

20:41SPEAKERYes, absolutely.

20:42SPEAKERThey look much better.

20:43SPEAKERWe have some cheapo LED string lights from the drugstore from a few years ago that looked

20:47SPEAKERgod awful.

20:48SPEAKERThey were blue basically, right?

20:49SPEAKERWe actually had some that had like the sickly yellowish green kind of cast to them, which

20:53SPEAKERI don't even know how that came about, but also you could see them flickering.

20:57SPEAKERWe had some like blue super giant eye burners a few years ago.

21:02SPEAKERThat's kind of how the first, the early gen LED lights started out, right?

21:07SPEAKERSuper cold.

21:08SPEAKERYeah.

21:09SPEAKERThe first white LEDs were super cold, which is cold.

21:11SPEAKERCold is a high color temperature, right?

21:13SPEAKERIt's like 5,000.

21:14SPEAKERI think the higher it is, the more blue.

21:16SPEAKER53500 is more kind of creamy.

21:19SPEAKERI want to say, I think 2700K is considered sort of the default neutral lighting, like

21:24SPEAKERroom lighting.

21:26SPEAKERThat's what all the Cree light bulbs that we have here are rated at, and they're supposed

21:29SPEAKERto be kind of the neutral.

21:31SPEAKERThat's what I have.

21:32SPEAKERI have mostly Cree LEDs in the house.

21:34SPEAKERThere's a couple of hues, but mostly the Cree.

21:37SPEAKERI like those.

21:38SPEAKERI find them to be very pleasant.

21:39SPEAKERI like the color rates are not bad, but they're not the same.

21:42SPEAKERThere's just a little garish, a little harsh to look at.

21:45SPEAKERWhat did you do?

21:46SPEAKERThey're super bright.

21:47SPEAKERLike they are just like searingly bright in a dark room.

21:50SPEAKERAre they dimmable?

21:52SPEAKERThey are.

21:53SPEAKERI think GE rates them as dimmable.

21:55SPEAKERI'm pretty sure.

21:57SPEAKERHow long I can look right here.

21:59SPEAKERSo I bought a dimmer that was rated to work with LEDs on Amazon and they do dim, but like

22:05SPEAKERdimming LEDs is such a strange arcane process where there's very little consistency, I feel

22:09SPEAKERlike from one light bulb to the next.

22:11SPEAKERWell, usually I mean, so as opposed to incandescent where dimmers work by just lowering, usually

22:20SPEAKERthey add, they add resistance before the light, I think so that the light, so that there's

22:25SPEAKERless current pushing through the bulb, you know, cause incandescent bulbs work by heating

22:28SPEAKERup a piece of tungsten inside a vacuum and that it heats it up to the point that it gets

22:33SPEAKERhot enough to glow.

22:34SPEAKEROkay.

22:35SPEAKERI was just reading about incandescents again the other day in relation to this stuff.

22:39SPEAKERYeah, I was reading a thing that said that something like a 90% of the energy is wasted

22:42SPEAKERas heat.

22:43SPEAKERThat's exactly right.

22:44SPEAKERThat's why LEDs are insanely efficient.

22:47SPEAKERWhich makes me feel bad for going back and incandescents, but for Christmas tree lights,

22:50SPEAKERwho cares?

22:51SPEAKERYeah.

22:52SPEAKERIt's once a year.

22:55SPEAKERThe way LEDs, so there's two things that change with LEDs.

22:59SPEAKERIncandescents work with AC power.

23:01SPEAKERSo the power is straight out of your wall.

23:02SPEAKERYou don't have to do anything.

23:03SPEAKERYou don't have to convert it.

23:04SPEAKERLEDs are integrated circuits, so they need DC power, which means you have to have a power

23:08SPEAKERsupply somewhere.

23:09SPEAKERThey're usually on a Christmas tree light strand.

23:11SPEAKERIt's like the little box that you plug into the wall.

23:13SPEAKERThat's why the plug is so fat on...

23:17SPEAKERYeah.

23:18SPEAKERThat's why they have a wall wart.

23:19SPEAKEROkay.

23:20SPEAKERI mean, it's basically doing the same thing like your cell phone charger does for your

23:22SPEAKERphone or your laptop brick does for your laptop or your power supply and your PCP CPU and

23:28SPEAKERyour computer does.

23:29SPEAKERConverting power.

23:30SPEAKERYeah.

23:31SPEAKERYeah.

23:32SPEAKERTo dim though, LEDs do this thing called pulse-width modulation usually, where they flash on and

23:38SPEAKERoff at a really, really high refresh rate so that you won't detect it, but less light

23:42SPEAKERcomes out.

23:43SPEAKERBecause there's no...

23:44SPEAKERLEDs are binary.

23:45SPEAKERThey're on, there's energy going through them or they're off.

23:47SPEAKERIt's kind of a thing where if you recorded a video of them, you could probably see the

23:50SPEAKERflicker very plainly.

23:52SPEAKERYeah.

23:54SPEAKERIf you have a phone that'll do 480 or maybe even 240 frames a second, you can probably

23:58SPEAKERsee it.

23:59SPEAKERBut sometimes the software will detect the lights and cycle so that they don't show up.

24:07SPEAKERThe upshot though is that the difference between a good LED bulb, whether it's a bulb you plug

24:12SPEAKERinto a lamp or overhead, and a bad one is usually the hardware in the bulb, in the circuit

24:19SPEAKERthat makes that PWM happen is bad.

24:22SPEAKERSo it's either flickery or noisy or it wobbles, so it's brighter and darker and brighter and

24:28SPEAKERdarker.

24:29SPEAKERThat's why I like those Cree bulbs for home is that they dim really nicely.

24:32SPEAKERDo you know if that's what a rectifier is?

24:35SPEAKERA rectifier is part of the power supply thing that cleans up the...

24:38SPEAKERYeah.

24:39SPEAKERI was reading basically like, I'm sorry, my information retention is not the best lately,

24:43SPEAKERbut I know that the upshot is that good LED bulbs have rectifiers and bad ones don't.

24:48SPEAKERYeah.

24:49SPEAKERBut I can't remember exactly what function it serves.

24:51SPEAKERSo I think if you buy something that's UL listed, probably it's going to have a rectifier

24:56SPEAKERwould be my guess.

24:58SPEAKERI think in practical terms, it's the thing that eliminates visible flicker, but I could

25:03SPEAKERbe wrong about that.

25:06SPEAKERThat would be what it does.

25:07SPEAKERYeah.

25:08SPEAKERSo it helps smooth out the power that comes into you because the thing that a lot of people

25:11SPEAKERdon't know is the power that comes in your house is like, it's all over the place.

25:14SPEAKERLike when your neighbor's refrigerator compressor turns on, then the power coming into the building

25:18SPEAKERsags.

25:19SPEAKEROh yeah.

25:20SPEAKERLike when I turn my AV receiver on, I can like the lamps briefly dim in the room.

25:24SPEAKERWhen we turn on our dryer, the lights in the garage dim.

25:27SPEAKERIt's just the pipes that carry the electricity are just like water pipes and they can only

25:33SPEAKERcarry so much at any given time.

25:34SPEAKERIf you have something that draws too much, it's going to sag the whole thing.

25:37SPEAKERNot to derail this episode completely off topic, but I bought my first UPS over Thanksgiving,

25:42SPEAKERwhich I have not opened yet, but I'm very excited.

25:45SPEAKERWhat are you going to use it for?

25:46SPEAKERI'm plugging in my NAS and router stuff that would be nice to have, modem.

25:53SPEAKERDo you have two boxes for your fiber or just one?

25:55SPEAKERI have an ONT.

25:56SPEAKERYeah.

25:57SPEAKERDoes that require power for you?

25:58SPEAKERYes.

25:59SPEAKERMine does too.

26:00SPEAKERIt does have an AC adapter.

26:01SPEAKERYeah.

26:02SPEAKERSo you have to plug that and the modem and the router.

26:03SPEAKERWell, no, I just have the ONT and it goes ethernet straight into my router.

26:06SPEAKERWhat?

26:07SPEAKERReally?

26:08SPEAKERSo I guess it is all in one.

26:09SPEAKERThe fiber comes in the wall.

26:10SPEAKERFiber comes in through the wall into the, Oh, but you have AT&T, right?

26:13SPEAKERThis is why AT&T sucks.

26:14SPEAKERThey make you use their bad router.

26:15SPEAKERI've read a ton of stuff about the AT&T fiber in particular.

26:20SPEAKERWhat kind of, you have the Google home stuff, right?

26:22SPEAKERNo.

26:23SPEAKEROh, I have a Google home router.

26:24SPEAKERI have the first gen Google home router, which is actually too slow to route the fiber that

26:28SPEAKERI have.

26:29SPEAKEROkay.

26:30SPEAKERYou have to get the second gen, the pucks.

26:31SPEAKERYes.

26:32SPEAKERYes.

26:33SPEAKERSo I use the AT&T as the router and just use the Google home stuff as access points.

26:35SPEAKERI see.

26:36SPEAKERI see.

26:37SPEAKERYeah.

26:38SPEAKERI don't know why I've spent time reading about this because it's not like I have AT&T as my

26:40SPEAKERSP, but in the ubiquity community, which is, you know, what I have, so that's where I read

26:44SPEAKERabout this stuff.

26:45SPEAKERLike there is, there is a way to set that router up to bypass all the weird bridge stuff

26:50SPEAKERthat AT&T wants you to do.

26:52SPEAKERThey reset it all the time is the problem I had.

26:54SPEAKERYeah.

26:55SPEAKERI think, I think what I read was you have to power all this on, let it do its thing

26:58SPEAKERand then not like every time you reset it, you have to go through the process.

27:01SPEAKERAnd every time they push a hard software update to the modem, it has to be reset.

27:04SPEAKERThat's really annoying.

27:05SPEAKERIt's a drag.

27:06SPEAKERIf they just give you the PPP OE password, it wouldn't be a problem because that's all

27:10SPEAKERyou need.

27:11SPEAKERYeah.

27:12SPEAKERBut they won't do that because AT&T.

27:13SPEAKERYeah.

27:14SPEAKERAnyway, I don't even know what this episode is about anymore, but so dimming LEDs, we

27:18SPEAKERgot these color rights, like as much as they're very cold to look at and kind of a little

27:24SPEAKERbit, I don't know.

27:26SPEAKERI think they're cold compared to incandescents.

27:29SPEAKERThey're warm compared to all the other LEDs.

27:31SPEAKERThat's what I was going to say was as much as they, I found them off putting for the

27:34SPEAKERfirst couple of nights that we had them on the tree, like by the end of the first week,

27:37SPEAKERI'd kind of gotten used to it.

27:38SPEAKERLike the color got kind of a nice look to it.

27:41SPEAKERI mean, it's like, it's, you know, a little reminiscent of like snowfall or something

27:44SPEAKERlike that, but the brightness was the bigger problem.

27:47SPEAKERThey're so bright.

27:48SPEAKERDo you do the thing where you just like turn off all the lights in the living room when

27:51SPEAKERyou're watching TV on Christmas?

27:52SPEAKERYes.

27:53SPEAKERWhen we have all the lights out in the living room, the regular floor lamps don't get used.

27:56SPEAKERYeah.

27:57SPEAKERI like that a lot.

27:58SPEAKERYeah.

27:59SPEAKERSame.

28:00SPEAKERBut yeah, when they were that bright.

28:01SPEAKERYeah.

28:02SPEAKERYou want something warm and distracting.

28:03SPEAKERSo I've got a dimmer that, like I said, that I got off of Amazon that was supposedly fine

28:08SPEAKERfor dimming LEDs.

28:10SPEAKERDid a bad job.

28:11SPEAKERSo I've, I've, I've had this experience with the Cree light bulbs, with these GE color

28:16SPEAKERbright, string lights.

28:18SPEAKERThey will dim, but they don't dim smoothly.

28:21SPEAKERIt's almost like they stepped down in kind of rigid increments rather than a smooth gradient.

28:26SPEAKERThe overall window of dimming is a lot more narrow, if that makes sense.

28:30SPEAKEROh, like you, yeah.

28:31SPEAKERLike I have LEDs in my bathroom fixtures at my house and this is probably because I have

28:38SPEAKERa switch that's maybe not an led rated switch.

28:40SPEAKEROh no, I know why it is.

28:41SPEAKERIt's because I don't have control wires in the house.

28:43SPEAKERI only have two wires going to each switch in the house.

28:44SPEAKERSo there's no place for it to shut unused electricity off too.

28:48SPEAKEROkay.

28:49SPEAKERSo they're always on electrical, just a little bit electrical.

28:53SPEAKEREverything is so mystifying to me.

28:55SPEAKERIt's yeah.

28:56SPEAKERBut I call, I call experts for electricity stuff.

29:00SPEAKERTotally.

29:01SPEAKERYeah.

29:02SPEAKERSo, but yeah, like, you know, these, these will go from max brightness to less bright

29:04SPEAKERto less bright to off, you know, as opposed to like the incandescents that you can dim

29:08SPEAKERdown to practically nothing, but still get a little bit of, you know what I mean?

29:11SPEAKERJust a little bit of the juice.

29:12SPEAKERLike there's, there's no nice, very wide spectrum of, of brightness.

29:16SPEAKERI think that's just a result of the circuits that do the PWM stuff, right.

29:20SPEAKERHaving like the electricity has to go somewhere.

29:23SPEAKERYeah.

29:24SPEAKERAll that said, like I was still able to use the dimmer to get the color rights down to

29:26SPEAKERa level I was happy with, but the problem is that, so my, our tree is next to our TV

29:33SPEAKERand receiver and game consoles and all that stuff.

29:37SPEAKERYeah.

29:38SPEAKERI think the color rights would cause the color rights to buzz pretty noticeably and the bulbs

29:43SPEAKERmade an actual sound like a very note, like from, from eight, 10 feet away.

29:48SPEAKERIf I could hear it in a quiet room pretty plainly, the weirder thing is the TV buzzed

29:52SPEAKEReven more when the lights were being dimmed in the same outlet.

29:56SPEAKERYes.

29:57SPEAKERThey're not, not, not at the same out wall, the same wall plate, two different outlets

30:00SPEAKERin the same.

30:01SPEAKERSo connected.

30:02SPEAKERYeah.

30:03SPEAKERSo there, I don't even know what kind of resonance or harmonics were being generated there, but

30:06SPEAKERlike the TV was buzzing so loud with the dimmer in that.

30:08SPEAKERWow.

30:09SPEAKERThat's really weird.

30:10SPEAKERIt was basically unlistenable.

30:11SPEAKERLike it was a pretty alarming sound actually.

30:14SPEAKERWow.

30:15SPEAKERI've never even heard of that.

30:16SPEAKERThat's amazing.

30:17SPEAKERWell, I could demonstrate it for you after we're done here.

30:19SPEAKERIt's it was really.

30:20SPEAKERYeah.

30:21SPEAKERI want to see.

30:22SPEAKERDisturbing.

30:23SPEAKERI was like, I don't know if this is actually some kind of fire hazard or not, but I'm not

30:25SPEAKERgoing to have this for the next six weeks here.

30:27SPEAKERSo I'm just going to buy some more lights.

30:30SPEAKERI can't imagine it's a fire hazard, but it would be really annoying, but it was very

30:34SPEAKERannoying.

30:35SPEAKERI mean, it's not something you'd want to listen to.

30:37SPEAKERIt's like, remember when people, when people use cold cathodes for LEDs, for TVs, LCD TVs,

30:42SPEAKERand they would buzz eventually, like the bulbs would start to get bad.

30:44SPEAKERYeah.

30:45SPEAKERYeah.

30:46SPEAKERI don't, that's it.

30:47SPEAKERI have no idea if people know why that would happen.

30:49SPEAKERSend a note.

30:50SPEAKERI'm sure we have some electrical engineers that are listening and screaming at their

30:52SPEAKERradios now.

30:53SPEAKERI got some interesting information from, again, I use the, the check news community as a wellspring

30:58SPEAKERof technical know-how.

30:59SPEAKERThey're great.

31:00SPEAKERYeah.

31:01SPEAKERI have fairly academic answers about, you know, with, with some graphs and so forth

31:05SPEAKERof why that was happening.

31:06SPEAKERYeah.

31:07SPEAKERBut a lot of it was over my head because I'm an electrical engineer.

31:09SPEAKERWas it like square curves or just sine waves and stuff like that?

31:12SPEAKERStuff like that for sure.

31:14SPEAKERBut so we ended up just taking the colorites off and spending money on, went back to Wirecutter

31:21SPEAKERand bought the, their recommended incandescents.

31:24SPEAKERYou could have gotten those twinklies.

31:25SPEAKERYou could have a candy cane right now.

31:28SPEAKERThat's what we had as, as when I was a kid and I just, you know,

31:31SPEAKERNo, no.

31:32SPEAKERI mean the twinkly twinklies.

31:33SPEAKERNo, but I mean, we have just the plain incandescents and I'm just, you know, I'm at the phase of

31:36SPEAKERlife where I'm just trying to Rosebud everything now.

31:38SPEAKERSo I wanted what I had when I was a kid.

31:40SPEAKERIt's funny.

31:41SPEAKERThat's what we had when we were, when I was a kid was the, was the warm whites always.

31:47SPEAKERI like them.

31:48SPEAKERI'm looking at your tree.

31:49SPEAKERThere's something, there's something ineffable about the twinkliness of the white incandescent

31:53SPEAKERlights, the warm white incandescent lights.

31:55SPEAKERCause they just like, there's no, like the thing about LEDs is there's a single point

31:59SPEAKERwhere the light comes from and there's a little bit of that kind of noise.

32:03SPEAKERI don't know if you've noticed, but when you do an led, like a flashlight, it always has

32:08SPEAKERa little bit of a noise pattern, like noise, almost like if you shine it on a flat surface,

32:12SPEAKERyou kind of see it.

32:13SPEAKERYeah.

32:14SPEAKERIt almost looks like a laser, like a bounce back off of a laser or something like that.

32:18SPEAKERAnd because this is not a point source, it's a line source for these bulbs.

32:22SPEAKERThey have a different quality.

32:24SPEAKERI see what you're saying.

32:25SPEAKERNow that I look at them, they've got a little bit of a halo effect around them.

32:27SPEAKERThat's just really nice and soft and they, and you get like, you get, it looks like a

32:30SPEAKERJJ Abrams movie.

32:31SPEAKERThere's like little lines coming out and you're like 200 lens flares.

32:34SPEAKERYeah.

32:35SPEAKERLet's get all the lens.

32:36SPEAKERI mean, maybe I need to clean my glasses, but but yeah, I, I, like I was at my parents

32:42SPEAKERover Thanksgiving and they have all incandescents there cause I live in Virginia and you can

32:48SPEAKERstill get incandescent bulbs.

32:50SPEAKERAnd like, I didn't mind that at all.

32:53SPEAKERLike I, I, like I didn't, I, it didn't make me come back and think, oh man, I'm missing

32:56SPEAKERincandescent bulbs.

32:57SPEAKERI like, I like the led bulbs and I'm happy with them.

33:01SPEAKERBut the I'm looking at your tree, I'm like, man, that looks really good.

33:04SPEAKERIt is.

33:05SPEAKERIt's it's good enough for me to feel okay wasting 90% of the electricity.

33:08SPEAKERYeah.

33:09SPEAKERYeah.

33:10SPEAKERI mean, it's not that much for a few weeks a year.

33:11SPEAKERIt puts it warms up the house.

33:12SPEAKERYou have to run the heater less.

33:13SPEAKERYeah.

33:14SPEAKERLook sure.

33:15SPEAKERThe last thing I was gonna say about lights is and I showed you this before you came in

33:18SPEAKERhere.

33:19SPEAKERI had a little bit of a crash course in the way led lights age.

33:25SPEAKERThis was shocking to me.

33:26SPEAKERI know I had no idea until a few days ago when I looked this up.

33:29SPEAKERSo I bought, I mentioned I bought four of those color, right strings two, two years

33:33SPEAKERago.

33:34SPEAKERYeah.

33:35SPEAKEROne of them, I strung over a set of shelves in my computer room two years ago when I got

33:39SPEAKERthem almost just shy a month or two plugged them in and have not touched them since they've

33:44SPEAKERbeen running 24 seven for almost two years.

33:46SPEAKEROkay.

33:47SPEAKERThey still look fine when you look at them.

33:48SPEAKERYeah.

33:49SPEAKERThey look good.

33:50SPEAKERLike there's, you know, they look like you would expect a string of led lights to look,

33:53SPEAKERbut last week we got another one of the strings out that I bought two years ago that we had

33:57SPEAKERnever used that has just been sitting in the box and plugged it in on a little tree right

34:01SPEAKERnext to them.

34:02SPEAKERAnd the difference in brightness is like stunning.

34:06SPEAKERSo that you saw it like she's always on for basically two years, almost that's 17,520

34:12SPEAKERhours ish.

34:13SPEAKERYeah.

34:14SPEAKERYes.

34:15SPEAKERAnd those GE rated these lights at 20,000 hours.

34:17SPEAKERSo not quite there yet.

34:18SPEAKEROkay.

34:19SPEAKERBut close.

34:20SPEAKERYou're close.

34:21SPEAKERThey look half as bright.

34:22SPEAKERThey look seriously diminished.

34:24SPEAKERAnd I didn't know that about led lights at all.

34:26SPEAKERLike I started Googling around after, cause I looked at this, I was like, did I put a

34:30SPEAKERdimmer in there and forget about it, but I checked and I had not.

34:33SPEAKERSo I started Googling about it and I actually ended up on a Phillips's website cause you

34:38SPEAKERknow, Phillips is one of the original players in the led light bulb game.

34:41SPEAKERRight.

34:42SPEAKERYeah.

34:43SPEAKERAnd they have a big page of like, here are some misconceptions about LEDs that we have

34:46SPEAKERthe answers to.

34:47SPEAKERThe first one on the page was myth number one led lights last forever, which I had totally

34:53SPEAKERfallen for.

34:54SPEAKERWell, I mean, they say they're like a hundred thousand hours or 25,000 hours, some of them

35:00SPEAKERare cheaper than others, but the upshot is that led like that is intended or expected

35:06SPEAKERbehavior of led bulbs as they just down over time.

35:08SPEAKERLike that's how they age.

35:09SPEAKERIt's not like incandescents where they burn and burn and burn, and then the filament just

35:13SPEAKERdies and then they're done LEDs continue emitting light, but they get dimmer.

35:17SPEAKERAnd dimmer over time until I don't know if they'll ever go out fully or not.

35:20SPEAKERIt's like the heat death of the universe.

35:22SPEAKERYeah.

35:23SPEAKERIt's like very, it's sort of something melancholy about it.

35:25SPEAKERRight.

35:26SPEAKERThey don't, they don't burn out.

35:27SPEAKERThey just fade away.

35:28SPEAKEROkay.

35:29SPEAKERBut if they, so then there's a question because the whole point of these, they use less energy,

35:36SPEAKERbut like an incandescent bulb, pretty easy to recycle.

35:39SPEAKERIt's just glass and a little bit of metal led bulbs have integrated circuits and the

35:43SPEAKERwhole thing.

35:44SPEAKERSo are they, can you, you can't just chuck them in the recycling.

35:47SPEAKERThat was one of the other questions they addressed on the Phillips site was, can these be recycled

35:51SPEAKERor are they dangerous to recycle?

35:52SPEAKERAnd what they said was they can be recycled like any other piece of electronics.

35:55SPEAKERSo you can't just chuck them in your blue bin and have the city pick them up.

35:59SPEAKERI got to take them to the electronics, but they also, they flat out also said like they

36:02SPEAKERdon't contain lead or any of the other like really bad.

36:05SPEAKERHuh?

36:06SPEAKERUm, so you want to recycle them responsibly, but they're not like toxic, I guess.

36:09SPEAKERWell, so I wonder what the total energy costs of manufacturer of led bulbs and recycling

36:14SPEAKERof led bulbs is versus the 90.

36:16SPEAKERIt's gotta be, that's gotta be less over 20 or 30,000 hours than the, than the energy

36:21SPEAKERthat in like 50 incandescent bulbs has to still be a net environmental savings, like

36:26SPEAKERa massive one.

36:27SPEAKERRight.

36:28SPEAKERMan.

36:29SPEAKEREspecially with the energy savings of, you know, yeah.

36:30SPEAKER90%.

36:31SPEAKERYeah.

36:32SPEAKEROr 85% surely.

36:33SPEAKERIt's still, I'm curious if you've done the math, send us an email to techpoticcontent.town.

36:39SPEAKERSend us a proof.

36:40SPEAKERYeah.

36:41SPEAKERUm, wow.

36:42SPEAKERThat's fascinating.

36:43SPEAKERIt was really eye opening.

36:44SPEAKERI thought that you, I thought leds, you just bought them and then plugged them in and forgot

36:46SPEAKERabout them.

36:47SPEAKERBut, um, I told my daughter, she's never gonna have to change the light bulb.

36:49SPEAKERThat was a lie.

36:50SPEAKERUm, one of the, one of the sites I was reading about this stuff on made an interesting point

36:54SPEAKERthat, uh, because of the cost savings, a lot of new construction is using integrated led

36:58SPEAKERlights, like office buildings and stuff like that.

37:00SPEAKEROh, places in the ceilings and stuff, exactly places that norm that would have in the past

37:04SPEAKERused, uh, I guess what you would call a cold cathode, right?

37:07SPEAKERLike the big long fluorescent tubes and stuff.

37:08SPEAKERI think those are just fluorescence.

37:10SPEAKERYeah.

37:11SPEAKERThe, uh, Oh, I didn't realize there was a distinction there.

37:13SPEAKERI don't know what the difference is, but I've never heard anybody call them cold cathodes

37:16SPEAKERbefore.

37:17SPEAKEROkay.

37:18SPEAKERUh, anyway, they were saying, you know, a lot of newer, like kind of businesses and

37:22SPEAKERoffices are using leds now, but it's created this weird problem where with, you know, every

37:27SPEAKERother type of light technology they're on and then they're not, you know, like they,

37:30SPEAKERit's very obvious when you need to replace an old school light bulb because they just

37:32SPEAKERdie.

37:33SPEAKERYeah.

37:34SPEAKERDarker and darker.

37:35SPEAKERWhereas now we've created this weird gray area where you're not going to perceive them

37:39SPEAKERdimming consciously over time, but at some point in two or three years, like you're just

37:44SPEAKERgoing to have way less light than you started with and it makes it, it makes it hard to

37:47SPEAKERknow when they need to be replaced, especially when they're integrated into the construction.

37:50SPEAKERThat's shot.

37:51SPEAKERSo it's a weird problem.

37:52SPEAKERWell, it's a weird situation.

37:53SPEAKERCause like if you're the custodian of a big building, you're the maintenance guy.

37:58SPEAKERYou change those bulbs once, once in your career, right?

38:01SPEAKERMaybe twice.

38:02SPEAKERYeah.

38:03SPEAKERThat's bizarre.

38:04SPEAKERIt's a strange, it's a strange problem to have.

38:05SPEAKERIt's not, I mean, it's not a critical problem, you know, like you're still getting some light

38:08SPEAKERout of them, but just to have this weird sliding scale as opposed to just a really obvious

38:12SPEAKERcrash.

38:13SPEAKERWell, but it's also interesting because it means that we can't like, I had been assuming

38:17SPEAKERthat people were building these led lights into things, assuming that they were good

38:20SPEAKERforever.

38:21SPEAKERRight.

38:22SPEAKERNot that we were going to have to replace them.

38:23SPEAKERSo they still have to be, it's not like we have star Trek lights where they're just like

38:26SPEAKERflat panels in the ceiling.

38:28SPEAKERRight.

38:29SPEAKERAnd again, you know, if you're okay with less illumination over time, like it's not like

38:32SPEAKERthey're going to burn the house down and you don't have to go out and replace them.

38:34SPEAKERI mean, the good thing is as we get older, our eyes get more sensitive to light and we're

38:37SPEAKERable to see better in the dark.

38:38SPEAKERRight.

38:39SPEAKERSo eventually I'll just be walking around in the pitch black.

38:41SPEAKERI'll be able to see.

38:42SPEAKERGreat.

38:43SPEAKERIt's like a cat.

38:44SPEAKERYeah.

38:45SPEAKERYeah.

38:46SPEAKERHow do you control it?

38:47SPEAKERDo you have a control scheme for your lights?

38:48SPEAKERYeah, we've got this is kind of pre sort of wifi connected home automation.

38:53SPEAKERI guess this is like the predecessor to that third we bought them off, think of off of

38:57SPEAKERAmazon like God paid years ago or something.

39:00SPEAKERThey're they're branded.

39:01SPEAKERThe ones we have are branded as zap, but the actual company I think is e-tech city.

39:06SPEAKEROh yeah.

39:07SPEAKERE-tech city.

39:08SPEAKERI know them.

39:09SPEAKERI went to load them up my own, a Sendai cyber deck and logged into the e-tech city site

39:14SPEAKERof them.

39:15SPEAKEREverybody's favorite.

39:16SPEAKERYeah.

39:17SPEAKERThey're they're just big fat, ugly wall plugs that plug into the outlet and have a plug

39:21SPEAKERin them and they come with a little cheapo remote buttons on it and they're just on off

39:26SPEAKERtoggle.

39:27SPEAKERI think they use an RF signal.

39:28SPEAKERI have one of those that controls the inflatable guys in my front yard for maximum tasteless.

39:31SPEAKERIt's, it's, it's basically like a wifi smart plug except not wifi.

39:35SPEAKERIt just has its own proprietary remote.

39:38SPEAKERI looked them up on Amazon just to refresh my memory before this, it says, it says strong

39:42SPEAKERRF signals.

39:43SPEAKERSo like they don't need line of sight, which they don't like they work well in the living

39:46SPEAKERroom.

39:47SPEAKERSo you demoed it.

39:48SPEAKERWe were able to turn off lights in here from the, in the other room.

39:50SPEAKERYeah.

39:51SPEAKERSo we've just got all our lights are just daisy chained on top of each other and plugged

39:53SPEAKERinto those toggle them on and off instead of having to crawl behind the TV.

39:57SPEAKERLike I said, for us, we, that I integrated smart things.

40:00SPEAKERSo I have some smart plugs, which you've gotten, I had to buy a new one the other day and they've

40:03SPEAKERgotten kind of cheap.

40:05SPEAKEROkay.

40:06SPEAKERI've, I, this was a topic of great interest for me because I would love to have everything

40:09SPEAKERon a wifi network that can be programmed and automated fully at some point, but smart plugs

40:14SPEAKERhave still been a little too pricey for me.

40:16SPEAKERWell, so I'm curious what, what your brand of choice is and that sort of thing.

40:20SPEAKERSo the stuff that I bought years ago were a mixture of Samsung slash smart things, Zigbee

40:25SPEAKERboxes and Z wave boxes or GE.

40:29SPEAKEROkay.

40:30SPEAKERZigbee is a standard.

40:31SPEAKERZigbee and Z wave.

40:32SPEAKERThey're basically like 2.4 gigahertz mesh networking standards and they do more or less

40:38SPEAKERthe same thing.

40:39SPEAKERThere's some good stuff.

40:40SPEAKERBasically I think Zigbee came a little bit after Z wave and Z wave is kind of inheriting

40:44SPEAKERthe legacy of the X 10 nonsense.

40:46SPEAKERSo there's, there's some weird stuff about Z wave where I don't think that the standard

40:50SPEAKERrequires an object to report its state back, but it can.

40:55SPEAKERSo like you'll have a situation where some like smart bulbs are a weird case, right?

40:59SPEAKERCause if you flip off the power switch at the switch, there's no current going to the

41:03SPEAKERbulb.

41:04SPEAKERSo there's no way for it to report back.

41:05SPEAKERAnd I feel like Z wave handles that less well than, than the Zigbee stuff does.

41:10SPEAKERTo be clear, these are their own physical signal standard.

41:12SPEAKERThey don't, they don't go on your wifi.

41:14SPEAKERThese don't.

41:15SPEAKERThey have their own wireless network.

41:16SPEAKERThese are separate, separate wireless mesh networks.

41:19SPEAKERSo like the thing about the problem with the wifi for home automation is if you don't have

41:23SPEAKERgood coverage, and this was more of a problem like three years ago before wifi mesh networks

41:27SPEAKERwere a thing, but if you don't have good coverage over the whole area, then you'll, you know,

41:34SPEAKERlike it's, it has to connect to your access point with the mesh networks.

41:37SPEAKERIt just has to connect to the nearest next nearest thing with the same kind of radio.

41:43SPEAKERAnd the benefit is obviously you don't have to have like, like when you're talking about

41:49SPEAKERa thing that lives right next to the plug, which is noisy, probably behind a bunch of

41:53SPEAKERelectronic shit or like on a wall, someplace where it's inaccessible and probably only

41:58SPEAKERhas an internal antenna, getting good wifi signal in as hard, especially if you're in

42:02SPEAKERa larger house.

42:03SPEAKERIn an apartment it's less of a concern.

42:04SPEAKERYeah.

42:05SPEAKERWe, we do have that problem with some of our plugs.

42:06SPEAKERI mean, we'll get to that, but yeah.

42:08SPEAKERSo the Zigbee and Z wave stuff because they're mesh networks and because they each have a

42:11SPEAKERcouple of radios in them, so they can send and receive at the same time is the less of

42:14SPEAKERa problem.

42:15SPEAKERAnd also because they're, they're intentionally a really low data throughput standard.

42:20SPEAKERThey optimize it a little bit differently than they do for wifi.

42:23SPEAKERMuch better reliability than the wifi stuff I've used.

42:25SPEAKERIs that stuff still pretty prominent or has it mostly been replaced by wifi, like by the

42:29SPEAKERGoogle home and Alexa stuff?

42:32SPEAKERCan you still get that stuff pretty widely?

42:34SPEAKERWell, I want to say you can get a version of the Alexa, like the high end Alexa, a tall

42:39SPEAKERspeaker like their big one is, is, is either a Zigbee or Z wave controller.

42:45SPEAKERIt has that stuff built in.

42:46SPEAKERIt has that stuff built in.

42:47SPEAKEROf course that would require putting one of those in my home, which is not going to happen.

42:50SPEAKERYeah.

42:51SPEAKERBut like you can get smart things.

42:52SPEAKERI mean, they go on sale, but they, I think they retail for like a hundred bucks for the

42:56SPEAKERhub.

42:57SPEAKERAnd you can get bundles that have a hub and a couple of plugs and stuff like that.

43:00SPEAKERSo Samsung also makes wifi smart plugs.

43:02SPEAKERSo when I was looking at smart plugs the other day, the Zigbee and Z wave stuff still has

43:07SPEAKERlike a 15, 10, $15 premium over the wifi ones.

43:10SPEAKERSo the Samsung wifi plug was 15 bucks.

43:13SPEAKERI only buy plugs now that I can plug into the bottom plug without blocking the top plug

43:17SPEAKERin an outlet.

43:19SPEAKERThe Samsung ones will block whatever's on either side of them.

43:22SPEAKERSo you feel like a forehead, you're going to block the one on the left, or you have

43:25SPEAKERto get one of those, one of those little dongle, you know, the, you know, but the little extension

43:29SPEAKERcoins that are like six inches long.

43:31SPEAKERYeah.

43:32SPEAKERSo they're six inches long and you just plug them in to plug wall warts in without blocking

43:35SPEAKERthe other outlets.

43:37SPEAKERThe the wifi one's been a complete piece of shit.

43:42SPEAKERIt works great with the smart things app.

43:45SPEAKERSmart things is in a bad spot right now because they have two concurrent apps running.

43:48SPEAKEROne is like the new version that integrates all with all the Samsung stuff, like stoves

43:52SPEAKERand washing machines and stuff.

43:54SPEAKERThe other one is the old classic Sam smart things one from before the Samsung acquisition.

43:59SPEAKERAnd you can't connect anything that's wifi connected with that.

44:02SPEAKEROkay.

44:03SPEAKERBut the new one does, does integrate the Zigbee and wifi stuff does everything.

44:07SPEAKERBut when I paired Alexa and Google home and the home kit and all the stuff that I use

44:13SPEAKERwith that, with that one, it just doesn't control it.

44:16SPEAKERSo the only way you can control this wifi plug is with the app on the phone, which when

44:20SPEAKERyou're used to doing, and like even the scripting stuff isn't working right.

44:23SPEAKERSo I I've got to dig in.

44:24SPEAKERIt's entirely possible.

44:25SPEAKERIt's something I've done.

44:26SPEAKERThey, they, they wanted us to do a process to migrate from the old app to the new app

44:30SPEAKERbefore we started using the new app.

44:32SPEAKERProbably didn't do that.

44:33SPEAKERSo this isn't, it's entirely possible.

44:34SPEAKERIt's my fault.

44:35SPEAKERI'm not a fan right now.

44:37SPEAKERThe other differentiation on price on the smart plugs is whether they're dimmers or

44:40SPEAKERjust on offs.

44:41SPEAKERAnd the trick with that is you have to buy, you can only put lights on dimmers.

44:46SPEAKERYou can't put anything that draws any real current on the demo.

44:48SPEAKERYou'll blow it up.

44:49SPEAKERSo for example, if you wanted to put your car, your tea kettle on one of those things,

44:54SPEAKERso it turns on your hot water in the morning, when you get up and you have, have coffee

44:56SPEAKERfirst thing you can't, that has to be on an on off plug, not on a dimmer plug because

45:02SPEAKERit has a heating element.

45:03SPEAKERIt'll, it'll, you know, it's like, it's like the little sign in the, in the airport bath,

45:07SPEAKERairplane bathroom that says 15, 15 amps only or whatever three, three, three amps only

45:11SPEAKERshavers only.

45:14SPEAKERThat's what goes in the different lines to try to pull too much current through it.

45:17SPEAKERBut I mean, on the plus side, I have the, the ones that I have plugged into that are

45:21SPEAKERthat are dimmable.

45:22SPEAKERLike I have Cree bulbs that are just normal, normal as Cree eight, eight nineteens or whatever

45:28SPEAKERthat are dimmable and they plug into one of those GE things.

45:30SPEAKERAnd it's awesome because when it turns on and off, like the G one is all like brings

45:33SPEAKERthe lights down gradually.

45:34SPEAKERIt's not like just like, just a snap, you snap and your, your lights are off.

45:38SPEAKERThat was a good double snap.

45:39SPEAKERWow.

45:40SPEAKERHuh?

45:41SPEAKERCan't do that.

45:42SPEAKERSame time.

45:43SPEAKERI cannot left-hand snap to save my life.

45:44SPEAKERI can have some sort of injury.

45:47SPEAKERI am not ambit snack snap truss.

45:49SPEAKERThat's the day I learned.

45:53SPEAKERWhat you're describing is the other reason I haven't bought into a bunch of extra smart

45:56SPEAKERplugs.

45:57SPEAKERIt's not just that they're still a little bit pricey for my taste.

45:59SPEAKERIt's also just the mixing mat and matching all these standards, trying to control everything

46:02SPEAKERfrom a unified interface is still just kind of a mess.

46:05SPEAKERLike we don't even have that many, but even we have enough for me to feel like it's just

46:09SPEAKERa little bit too messy and incompatible.

46:11SPEAKERWell, so the benefit of doing like smart, the benefit of doing a hub, like smart things

46:15SPEAKERor wink or, or one of those or rolling your own with home assistant.io, I think is the

46:20SPEAKERother one.

46:21SPEAKERYes.

46:22SPEAKERThere's home assistant.

46:23SPEAKERThere's open hab.

46:24SPEAKERI guess we'll get into that stuff.

46:25SPEAKERThere's all kinds of open source at home bridge, which I use.

46:26SPEAKERI think you also use home bridge, a lot of home brewed solutions to automation.

46:31SPEAKERThey're also a little wonky.

46:33SPEAKERSo the strategy I recommend when you're doing home automation stuff and you want to do a

46:36SPEAKERhub versus a bunch of wifi things is exactly the problem that you said.

46:40SPEAKERSo Z-Wave and Zigbee are standards, smart things, wink, all those places post a list

46:46SPEAKERof everything that they know that's compatible with their devices because it's like old DirectX

46:50SPEAKERwhere you can do some parts of the standard and not other parts.

46:54SPEAKERAlmost everything works now.

46:55SPEAKERLike those things have gotten big enough in that scene that people support smart things.

46:59SPEAKERPeople support wink.

47:00SPEAKERPeople are starting to support home assistant.

47:01SPEAKERI haven't seen open hab as much, but it's a little bit newer, I think, or at least it's

47:05SPEAKERcome to prominence more recently.

47:09SPEAKERI find having every, like the key when you're setting this stuff up is to not like use the

47:15SPEAKERHue app for some rooms and the smart things app for the other.

47:17SPEAKERThe thing is to pick the one that's going to be your main and you want to pick the one

47:21SPEAKERthat's the most extensible.

47:22SPEAKERSo smart things or home assistant or wink or one of those, and then connect everything

47:27SPEAKERelse to that.

47:28SPEAKERConnect Alexa to that, connect Hue to that.

47:30SPEAKERIf you have some Hue bulbs, connect your wifi stuff into that service.

47:33SPEAKERIt's so insanely Byzantine.

47:36SPEAKERThere's just so many different layers to keep track of.

47:39SPEAKERSo it's an awful setup.

47:43SPEAKERAnd the process of learning how you actually use your house, it turns out, is the benefit.

47:48SPEAKERAre you talking about just your living habit patterns, like what times of day you need

47:55SPEAKERlights and that sort of thing?

47:56SPEAKERWell, it's not even that.

47:57SPEAKERWhat things are the, what things should be the triggers for when you need lights?

48:00SPEAKERIs it like relation or time or?

48:02SPEAKERYeah.

48:03SPEAKEROkay.

48:04SPEAKERIs it like opening the front door?

48:05SPEAKERDo you want to have the lights drawn when you're coming up when you hit the neighborhoods

48:07SPEAKERor they're on when you get in?

48:10SPEAKERHow do you know when you should turn off motion sensors and not turn lights on when the motion

48:14SPEAKERsensors are on?

48:15SPEAKERHow do you tell the thing that you're sitting in your living room?

48:18SPEAKERIt's not detecting motion, but you're watching TV and you don't want the lights to go all

48:21SPEAKERthe way off.

48:22SPEAKERYeah.

48:23SPEAKERAnd even my limited experience, that is absolutely the fun part of the home automation stuff.

48:27SPEAKERYeah, that stuff's great.

48:29SPEAKERIt's really good.

48:30SPEAKERYou understand how you live better.

48:32SPEAKERAnd once you set it up, it's really easy.

48:34SPEAKERSo everybody in the house doesn't have to understand all this stuff.

48:37SPEAKERJust one person does.

48:38SPEAKERMy kid can work it because I took the time to figure it out and set up the right routines

48:42SPEAKERand scenes and all that stuff.

48:43SPEAKERSo that when it's her bedtime, we say, "Hey, it's bedtime for the kiddo."

48:46SPEAKERAnd her room turns off all of her lights, turns on her nightlight, starts playing the

48:51SPEAKERmusic that she likes at bedtime and she can go to sleep with the robots watching over

48:56SPEAKERher.

48:57SPEAKERCan you imagine what it's like to be a child growing up in a world where the stuff already

49:00SPEAKERexisted?

49:01SPEAKERIt's like on one level, it's kind of like living in Star Trek, just like computer dim

49:05SPEAKERlights to 50%.

49:06SPEAKEROh, she's going to watch Star Trek and she's like, "That's stupid.

49:10SPEAKERThat computer can't even do this.

49:12SPEAKERIt doesn't play music."

49:13SPEAKERWe went to my parents at Thanksgiving.

49:15SPEAKERThey're a little bit backwards on the technology.

49:18SPEAKERThey live in an old farmhouse.

49:21SPEAKERThey didn't automate it when they rebuilt it.

49:22SPEAKERThey have barn Wi-Fi.

49:23SPEAKERThey have barn Wi-Fi.

49:25SPEAKERShe was upset that you couldn't control the lights.

49:28SPEAKERA, she was fascinated by the fact that you could turn the lights on and off with the

49:30SPEAKERswitch because we don't let her do that in our house because it messes up the smart bulbs.

49:35SPEAKERAnd B, she kept asking, I took a Google Home because she uses that for her toothbrush timer

49:40SPEAKERand to play music at night and stuff.

49:43SPEAKERAnd I took that and she kept asking the Google Home to turn the lights on and off and was

49:46SPEAKERpissed that it wouldn't work.

49:47SPEAKERIt's like, "Oh man, nice job, Dad."

49:49SPEAKERI'm barely used to things like rotary phones and landlines and pay phones being an antiquated

49:54SPEAKERnovelty.

49:55SPEAKERI don't have the light switches to join that category, but I guess here we are.

50:00SPEAKERSo man, like I said, I would love to buy into more home automation, but are we just not

50:06SPEAKERthere yet?

50:07SPEAKERI mean, we've got, okay, we've got two iDevices plugs.

50:11SPEAKERWe've got one TP-Link smart, I forget what their branding is.

50:15SPEAKERIt's smart.

50:16SPEAKER- The bulb or the plug.

50:17SPEAKER- It might just be smart plug.

50:18SPEAKERIt's TP-Link.

50:19SPEAKER- You can probably integrate all of these.

50:20SPEAKERIf you bought a hub to integrate all of these, you could probably make them all work together.

50:23SPEAKER- They're all Wi-Fi and right now I'm just using Apple Home because we have iOS devices

50:28SPEAKERand that seemed like the best default way to go.

50:29SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're using Homebridge for that, you're good.

50:31SPEAKER- So that's what we're doing.

50:32SPEAKERThe iDevices stuff have native.

50:35SPEAKERSo the iDevices stuff have native, are they still calling it HomeKit?

50:38SPEAKER- HomeKit, yeah.

50:39SPEAKERHomeKit.

50:40SPEAKER- HomeKit is the API.

50:41SPEAKERHome is the app.

50:42SPEAKER- Yes, it's the interface.

50:43SPEAKERSo the iDevices stuff have native HomeKit.

50:45SPEAKERThe cheapo knockoff RGB strip that I bought has native HomeKit.

50:52SPEAKERThe TP-Link does not.

50:54SPEAKERSo I set up Homebridge on my NAS to provide that intermediate layer.

50:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so we should explain what Homebridge is because it's important.

51:02SPEAKERHomebridge is if you have stuff that works across different APIs or that isn't supported

51:07SPEAKERby one ecosystem, Homebridge will let you wedge that into that ecosystem.

51:11SPEAKER- It's open source.

51:12SPEAKERIt's got a GitHub repo.

51:14SPEAKERIt's Node.js, I think.

51:15SPEAKER- There's a boatload of plugins, so there's like plugins for everything.

51:19SPEAKERThere's a Nest plugin that I use that probably is gonna stop working given their changes.

51:22SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

51:23SPEAKERYeah, because it relies on volunteers maintaining the plugin compatibility and stuff.

51:28SPEAKER- Well, and it depends on usually an API layer accessing the other service or hardware.

51:34SPEAKER- Oh, so if the manufacturer stops exposing the--

51:37SPEAKER- Right, which is what's happening with Nest.

51:39SPEAKER- Oh, that sucks.

51:40SPEAKERAre they Google now?

51:42SPEAKER- So it sucks, but the reason they're doing it is probably smart.

51:45SPEAKERThey were really loose with API keys early on, and they gave all API keys kind of similar

51:51SPEAKERlevels of access to the hardware in your house and to the data that you get out of the house.

51:56SPEAKERWhat they're doing is they've made a segmented thing where there's low-level access that

52:01SPEAKERSamsung can get because they're a trusted partner.

52:04SPEAKERBut if you're just a normal developer, you can only get low-level access to your stuff.

52:07SPEAKERAnd if you wanna get, you have to be vetted before you can get data access to whether

52:13SPEAKERpeople are home or not.

52:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, maybe that's wise at the end of the day.

52:16SPEAKERI know this is kind of apples and oranges, but based on recent events around Ring cameras

52:20SPEAKERin children's bedrooms, maybe giving that level of access to devices like that is not

52:25SPEAKERthe best idea?

52:26SPEAKER- Can we talk about that?

52:27SPEAKER- Sure.

52:28SPEAKER- So those stories are local news bullshit, I think.

52:31SPEAKER- Well, I don't know if I'd go as far as to say they're bullshit.

52:34SPEAKERI mean, they did happen.

52:35SPEAKER- Look, here's the thing, yes, part of the problem is on Ring.

52:39SPEAKERThe stories are I set up a Ring camera in my kid's bedroom, my eight-year-old's bedroom,

52:42SPEAKERwhich A, is creepy as shit.

52:44SPEAKER- First of all, that is a separate conversation, but what the fuck are you doing?

52:47SPEAKERWhy are you putting a camera in your kid's bedroom?

52:49SPEAKER- So if you have home caregivers, if you have babysitters that watch your kid after a part-time

52:54SPEAKERnanny or something in your house, I can...

52:56SPEAKER- For an infant, I kinda get it.

52:59SPEAKERBut this was the story I saw, the local news story going around, I saw it was from an eight-year-old.

53:02SPEAKERI feel like that's really over the line, but I'm not a parent, I can't criticize too much.

53:09SPEAKER- When our daughter was old enough that she was starting to tell stories and talk and

53:12SPEAKERhave conversations, I was like, "We have to take the camera out of her room."

53:16SPEAKER'Cause the modern camera when your baby is young is the difference between you getting

53:20SPEAKERup and going into the room every single time the kid gets up and makes a noise and being

53:24SPEAKERable to look and see that, no, this isn't something worth getting in, which saves you

53:28SPEAKERa lot of hassle in terms of kids sleeping through the night and expecting you to be

53:32SPEAKERthere every time they make a gurgle.

53:34SPEAKERSo it's a good thing up to a point.

53:35SPEAKERBut once they start to be people, like I didn't want my kid growing up in a panopticon.

53:40SPEAKERAnd as a result, we pulled the camera as soon as she was like a year, 14 months or 18 months,

53:45SPEAKERsomething like that.

53:46SPEAKER- Right, like our broader surveillance state is already bad enough, you don't need to recreate

53:49SPEAKERit in microcosm in your own home.

53:51SPEAKER- No, I want her to be uncomfortable by that, just like I am.

53:55SPEAKER- So yeah, the story is that there was a ring camera.

53:59SPEAKERIs this the only incident?

54:00SPEAKERDid it just get repeated everywhere?

54:02SPEAKER- This has happened a bunch because people are bad at passwords.

54:05SPEAKER- Okay, maybe this is the only time it's been caught on video and passed around.

54:08SPEAKERI'm not sure.

54:09SPEAKER- Probably.

54:10SPEAKER- Essentially, the parents had a ring in their eight-year-old daughter's bedroom and somebody

54:15SPEAKERgained access to it on the internet and did a bunch of creepy stuff.

54:19SPEAKERThey played some, I forget, some kind of music.

54:22SPEAKER- They played music from a horror movie.

54:23SPEAKER- They just said, "Hey kid, I'm Santa Claus, I want to be your friend," just like real

54:26SPEAKERcreepy.

54:27SPEAKER- Yeah, destroy your room, kill your parents, all that stuff.

54:29SPEAKER- It was your type of scary shit, like it was really unsettling to listen to.

54:34SPEAKERRemember, Ring offers two-factor authentication.

54:38SPEAKERThe thing that Amazon has said, Ring has some questionable practices in their past.

54:44SPEAKERI trust Amazon too, if there was a breach to say, "Yes, this was a breach of our services,"

54:49SPEAKERversus, "This is a person who chose not to use two-factor authentication and who probably

54:54SPEAKERreused the same shitty password on every fucking website that they've ever signed into."

54:58SPEAKERLook, if you're going to put a camera in your kid's room, make sure it's secure, as secure

55:06SPEAKERas you possibly can.

55:08SPEAKERIt's on Ring for not educating their customers.

55:11SPEAKER- That's kind of where I'm at.

55:12SPEAKERI get both sides of the argument, you do need to exercise some amount of personal responsibility

55:16SPEAKERwhen you're going to put cameras all over your home, but at the same time, people are

55:20SPEAKERbad.

55:21SPEAKERMost people that are not giant nerds like us are not great at InfoSec, right?

55:26SPEAKERThere's a service that Amazon could subscribe to for Ring customers that says, "Hey, this

55:31SPEAKERpassword is part of a breach.

55:32SPEAKERYou should not use this password here," the same as what password does.

55:35SPEAKER- I'm not going to put all the blame on the end user like some people have and say, "We'll

55:39SPEAKERjust use better passwords and use two-factor."

55:41SPEAKERWhat are you doing?

55:42SPEAKER- Well, yes.

55:43SPEAKERBut do that.

55:44SPEAKER- You should, but not everybody thinks about that stuff all the time.

55:47SPEAKERI feel like it's more on the manufacturer to put some more guardrails in place.

55:51SPEAKER- I want to talk about it next week.

55:52SPEAKER- At least educate people a little bit better about it.

55:55SPEAKER- It's really...I spent a significant portion of my Thanksgiving break getting my parents

55:59SPEAKERset up on a password manager.

56:02SPEAKERIt's hard.

56:03SPEAKERThey're bad.

56:04SPEAKEREven the good ones are bad for normal people, so I get it.

56:07SPEAKERBut Ring could easily put something in their signup process, prompt people regularly, not

56:12SPEAKERlet them use the fucking camera until they do the thing.

56:14SPEAKER- They should put more effort into gently coaxing people toward better security practices.

56:19SPEAKER- I'm kind of okay with lax security on a doorbell camera that's facing the outside

56:23SPEAKERof your house, and is arguably a public space.

56:26SPEAKERI'm less okay.

56:28SPEAKERI think that Ring, if you're putting cameras...This applies to Nest.

56:32SPEAKERThis is why you shouldn't buy cheap IP cameras on the internet, because God only knows who

56:37SPEAKERthey're connecting to.

56:38SPEAKERThis is the one place that I actually do trust the shitty faceless multinational corporations

56:42SPEAKERmore than the small guy.

56:46SPEAKERBut yeah, secure that shit if you're going to put it inside your house.

56:49SPEAKERI'm just of the mind to minimize the number of iterative things, things in my house that

56:55SPEAKERhave recording facilities of any kind.

56:58SPEAKER- Look, Brad, in like 10 years, you're going to be like, "You know, we were sitting talking

57:01SPEAKERbefore the podcast.

57:02SPEAKERI weirdly wish I could remember what we were talking about."

57:05SPEAKERBecause you don't have an Alexa here, you're not going to have that information, but I

57:08SPEAKERwill.

57:09SPEAKERI'll just be able to download everything I've ever said in my house from Amazon.

57:13SPEAKERThis is fine.

57:14SPEAKERThis is the future.

57:15SPEAKERIf there's no secrets, if no one has secrets, then there's no reason to have secrets.

57:18SPEAKER- I don't like where this is going.

57:20SPEAKER- I already threw my connect in the trash.

57:21SPEAKERI'm not...

57:22SPEAKER- I hope you put in the electronics recycling.

57:24SPEAKER- No, I didn't actually trash it, it's in a box somewhere.

57:27SPEAKERBut just the fewer microphones around here, the better.

57:30SPEAKER- PlayStation VR microphones right there on the top.

57:32SPEAKER- That's where I'm at.

57:33SPEAKERThe camera there.

57:35SPEAKERAll the depths.

57:36SPEAKERLet's see.

57:37SPEAKERSo, I use for external lights, I use one of those, just a G, it's a thing you jam into

57:41SPEAKERthe ground on a stake, so it doesn't get wet.

57:44SPEAKERIt has some buttons on it and a light sensor, so it turns on it dark.

57:48SPEAKERThat's pretty much it.

57:49SPEAKERI feel like we're well into...

57:53SPEAKER- That's an episode.

57:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:55SPEAKERThat seems like an episode.

57:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:57SPEAKERJust the home automation stuff, I feel like is just not quite there yet for me to fully

58:00SPEAKERbuy in and kind of want to...

58:02SPEAKERIt's pretty good.

58:03SPEAKERYeah.

58:04SPEAKERIt's just, again, I'm having to set up a homebrew thing to increase the compatibility of the

58:09SPEAKERdifferent devices I have and they don't, like I said, like you were talking about, the Wi-Fi

58:13SPEAKERcoverage can be a problem.

58:15SPEAKER- That's the one off though.

58:16SPEAKERThe thing I will say is that the bulbs and the switches and the in-wall switches and

58:19SPEAKERall that stuff, I don't...

58:21SPEAKERLike every once in a while, Samsung will push a big update that requires me to do something,

58:25SPEAKERlike when they do a major revision to the software on the hub.

58:29SPEAKERFor the most part, it just works.

58:31SPEAKERAnd there's something really nice about like pulling into the driveway and the front porch

58:35SPEAKERlight being on in the house and like being able to walk, but also not having it on when

58:39SPEAKERwe're not there.

58:40SPEAKERSo we're not pissing away a lot of electricity.

58:41SPEAKER- When it works like it's supposed to, it's like nothing else.

58:44SPEAKERIt feels like living in the future in a good way.

58:46SPEAKERIt's super cool.

58:47SPEAKER- Like I go in and I can tell Google to set the lights in my office to like the studio

58:51SPEAKERlighting set up for the Twitch stream or to like a little bit dimmer for when I'm working

58:55SPEAKERand it knows how to do that.

58:59SPEAKERIt's lovely.

59:00SPEAKERThe best part about the whole thing is having every light in the house be a dimmable light

59:02SPEAKERbasically.

59:03SPEAKERSo like at 10 o'clock, the lights come down like 10% and at 11 o'clock, they come down

59:08SPEAKERanother 20%.

59:09SPEAKER- I love that stuff.

59:10SPEAKERWe're big on mood lighting around here.

59:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:13SPEAKERAnd like if I want to watch a movie, I tell Alexa we're going to watch a movie and it

59:16SPEAKERputs on the TV backlight and dims, brings everything down and it's dumb.

59:20SPEAKER- It's fun.

59:21SPEAKER- It's really dumb.

59:22SPEAKER- It's dumb and fun.

59:23SPEAKER- But it's really nice.

59:24SPEAKERAnd it was awesome when we had a baby.

59:25SPEAKERSo like when we had a baby and we were walking into rooms and like don't have a hand-free...

59:28SPEAKER- Oh sure.

59:29SPEAKER- You're like getting ready, you're finishing bath or something, getting jams on, changing

59:32SPEAKERa diaper or whatever.

59:33SPEAKERIt was nice to not have to like fumble for the light switch every time you walked in.

59:37SPEAKERSo we didn't drop the baby because of home automation, Brad.

59:40SPEAKER- Home automation, saving lives.

59:41SPEAKERI guess that's it for this week.

59:44SPEAKERWe do questions more or less every month, I guess.

59:46SPEAKER- Yeah, something like that.

59:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:48SPEAKERSo if you have a question about this episode or anything, techpod@content.town is the address.

59:52SPEAKER- I'm sure we have the answer.

59:53SPEAKER- Look, if we don't, we can find somebody who has it probably.

59:56SPEAKER- We're the experts.

59:57SPEAKER- We're the intermediaries.

1:00:00SPEAKER- We're the filters.

1:00:01SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:02SPEAKER- We're the curators.

1:00:03SPEAKER- We're the aggregators.

1:00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.

1:00:05SPEAKER- We'll be back next week with another, I think, are we going to try ray tracing?

1:00:08SPEAKERIs that what you're thinking?

1:00:09SPEAKER- I think we might.

1:00:10SPEAKER- Seems like a good idea.

1:00:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:12SPEAKERIt's time to trace some rays.

1:00:13SPEAKER- I'd like to trace some rays.

1:00:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:16SPEAKER- Quick two RTX.

1:00:17SPEAKERPretty good.

1:00:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:19SPEAKER- I'm Will Smith.

1:00:20SPEAKER- I'm Brad Shoemaker.

1:00:21SPEAKER- Yeah, you can find me on Twitter @WillSmith.

1:00:22SPEAKER- Yep.

1:00:23SPEAKER- And I Twitch stream sometimes on twitch.tv/notthatwillsmith.

1:00:24SPEAKER- Yes.

1:00:25SPEAKER- We'll be back next week with another episode.

1:00:26SPEAKER- Thanks for listening.

1:00:27SPEAKERHappy holidays.

1:00:28SPEAKERBye, everybody.

1:00:35SPEAKER- Bye.