Slightly Caffeinated

Chris Gmyr (00:00)
Hey, welcome back to the slightly caffeinated podcast. I'm Chris Gmyr

TJ Miller (00:03)
I'm TJ Miller.

Chris Gmyr (00:05)
Hey TJ, so what's new in your world this week?

TJ Miller (00:08)
man, this week has been a little bit of a ride. We talked about like fun with, home, home stuff last week, I think. And my, my woes of plumbing and freezer. That's all completely super resolved now. The freezer is back being frozen. We're getting around to restocking it. So other than that, it's been like pretty uneventful outside of last night. I just found out that I'm going to be.

coaching a science Olympiad team at my son's school. And for those who don't know, it's like done throughout like a multi, like each school kind of competes against each other's school. And it's like different science based things. So there's one where you have to like bounce lasers off of mirrors to get to an end goal. Apparently there's a coding one. So I signed up to coach that one.

Chris Gmyr (00:40)
Nice.

TJ Miller (00:59)
there's like a for anatomy. so like you kind of, coach them over, like two months and then they go and compete on their own. like you go to the competition, the kids go into a room, they do the competition and see how they fare out against like the rest of the schools. So some of them are written, some of them are interactive. my son is like really wanting to, at least as of right now, he wants to be a robotics engineer.

And there was a circuit based one. you go in, guess for that competition, you go in, there's like a partial written test. And then there's like a practical where there's like a broken circuit and you've got to like figure out what different things need to be done to fix the circuit and make the light turn on at the end. And it's all timed. Pretty cool. Like I did it when I was a kid. And then he was just super stoked about it. And I showed up and they were like, yeah, if your child is

planning on competing, you have to coach a team. So it was funny. I was telling my son on the way over, I'm like, really, I'm like, really don't want to coach. I'd be very fine not doing that. And then within five minutes of walking in the room, I find out that I'm going to be coaching. But like I said, at least there's a coding one. And so I signed up to do that and we'll, we'll see how it goes. It should be fun.

Chris Gmyr (02:18)
Yeah, that sounds awesome. I never did that in school growing up, but I don't think it was as robust as it is right now, and it sounds. I think that sounds pretty awesome to do coding, robotics, circuitry, all that stuff. I think it's going to be pretty fun. So hopefully it's not too bad on the coaching side for you.

TJ Miller (02:39)
Yeah, look, it's like an hour a week commitment. I'm sure there'll be extra time involved with just getting up to speed on what the competition is and learning the rules and just figuring out what we'll be doing. But I figured that's nice. I really enjoy teaching coding, especially to kids. For several years, not in recent history, but in the past, I did volunteer at a couple different middle schools to do Day of Code.

kind of coaching. I go in the classroom and they go through the like, I think it was like code.org stuff at the time. And you're just there to kind of like help and support people who are stuck in that kind of stuff. And so I'm, I think it could turn out to be like super rewarding if that's, that's what happened. So kind of went from like, I really don't want to do this to, to the more I've kind of sat with it, I think it's going to be a good time. So

Chris Gmyr (03:32)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

TJ Miller (03:34)
How about you man, what's new in your world?

Chris Gmyr (03:36)
yeah, busy week so far. Monday and Tuesday, the HPC company came over and did the full installs. It was supposed to be three days, but they got it done in two, so one unit per day. So I was definitely happy with that. They to come back, I think, tomorrow afternoon to make a little adjustment on something, but not too bad. And just like, it's such a noticeable difference in the quality of

TJ Miller (03:47)
Woo!

Chris Gmyr (04:01)
air and the flow and temperature and all that stuff. First of all, it's actually working. And we get heat and all that stuff. So that's a plus. But when you turn on the heat, there's no burnt dust smell or anything else like that. When you turn on the AC, all the parts in the coils were rusted and just junk in the ductwork. So it almost had this metallic smell to it.

TJ Miller (04:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (04:28)
previously and now it's just air. Like it doesn't smell like anything, it's just hot or cold, which you would expect. And like, it's just been so much better the last couple of days, especially now this morning it was pretty cold. It was like 35 or something like that. So definitely had the heat on this morning and it was like, this is so nice. It's actually working and it smells so much better and no dust debris, you know, mold growth.

TJ Miller (04:29)
oof

Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (04:56)
you whatever that builds up in the ducks over, you know, 20 plus years. So super happy with it. And it's just going to be like such a great quality of life moving forward. And hopefully it'll help with the allergies and mold issues and, and stuff like that, that we have in the family. So yeah, super happy with that.

TJ Miller (05:14)
Yeah, man, we got ours replaced in the spring. didn't do any duct work. Unfortunately, we didn't do any duct work. I really wish we would have done at least like a duct cleaning. Still something that's on the bucket list for around here, but I, it was crazy how much of a difference it made. I mean, we were, we have it all sorts of like all sorts of zone issues. were rooms that just wouldn't ever get warm or cool in the summer. Like nothing could keep up.

like anything over like 75 outside the AC just wouldn't compete. Like we're, it couldn't, it couldn't hang at all. but this summer it was like, had no problem. yeah, it was, I couldn't believe how much of a difference it made, but then again, like everything here was older than I am, you know?

Chris Gmyr (06:02)
Yeah, totally. But yeah, think investigating the duck work cleaning would be definitely a good thing. And the last two houses that we were in, we didn't bother doing it here because all the stuff was super old. But the last two houses was able to find companies on Groupon, at least as a starting point in Angie's list, because a lot of them do like discounts and coupons or something like that, you know, on there. So I don't know.

TJ Miller (06:27)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (06:30)
Maybe check those out if you haven't already, but sometimes you can find some good deals, especially in like the lower seasons where they're not super busy.

TJ Miller (06:39)
Yeah, yeah. love the, I'm a really big fan of the company that came in and did ours. I had before we had them come out, I got several really highly rated recommendations from both residential and commercial people for the company that we had come in. So I'll probably just hit them up and go with whatever recommendation they have. Cause I definitely like trust them with

I just had to replace the thermostat too. Our thermostat died and replaced that and had to like hop in to do a little wiring to make that work. yeah, that was super like easy peasy. And I know I had to install a couple of wires for the thermostat on the old system and gosh, that was so sketchy.

Chris Gmyr (07:21)
Yeah, totally. So yeah, I'm glad that, you know, that's all buttoned up or almost buttoned up. Like I said, they got to come back to a small adjustment on Friday, but it's just so nice to be done. And like it's also pretty intrusive work to do because you have to go up, you know, multiple flights in the house and then try and pull this all the stuff up in the attic and trying to wrangle, you know, the dog and move him around and.

TJ Miller (07:28)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (07:47)
toddler, you know, trying to take a nap during that. And just like two days of that is like definitely more than enough dealing with that. So that we're on the other side of that for sure. Yeah. And just trying to get, you know, a little bit caught up before the upcoming holiday. I'm going to be off for vacation all of next week for Thanksgiving, at least in the U S and then the week after going to be out.

TJ Miller (07:49)
Yeah.

Haha, yeah.

Chris Gmyr (08:13)
and offsite going to San Francisco to discuss a big project that we're working on to get more people in the room. So I'm going to be off from the podcast. I don't know if you want to do solo shows or maybe grab someone else as guests or something like that. you can see how goes or just take a little two week hiatus and pick it up for a couple of weeks in December and possibly be off again for holiday and Christmas and New Year time.

But we can chat about that when that comes up.

TJ Miller (08:42)
Yeah, no idea. We'll see. At the very least, I might hop in and do a solo, but yeah, who knows? Maybe I'll snag someone from Cash Money and twist someone's arm to hop in and do a quick episode. So we'll see what happens, man.

Chris Gmyr (08:57)
Yeah, totally. So yeah, trying to keep busy being out and, you know, out of the house also. So wrap a bunch of things up before basically being out of pocket for a few weeks. But yeah, all all good stuff. Looking forward to traveling a little bit. So, yeah, kind of on that note, I thought it'd be kind of fun since Thanksgiving is next week, at least for the U.S. talking about traditions, things that we do, things that we make like don't like things like that.

TJ Miller (09:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (09:23)
so yeah, this, typically we do travel for Thanksgiving. last handful of years we've gone down to visit my wife's family either in Florida or Georgia. So not too bad of a drive for us. And, this year we're going up to my cousins in Virginia. So much shorter of a drive. like three hours, something like that. So not too bad. So we're going to go there for a few days. next week.

TJ Miller (09:46)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (09:49)
We're bringing and doing the turkey and gravy and all the things that go along with the turkey. Also making a couple of desserts and a couple of sides and trying to prep some of that stuff a couple of days before we head up. And yeah, my challenge for Thanksgiving day is not totally watching the turkey, but we got it down pretty good right now. I usually do a wet brine.

TJ Miller (10:10)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (10:15)
for at least 24 hours. So a bunch of fruit and apple cider, water, salts, seasonings, things like that. Just drop it all in a huge bag. Drop the turkey in there. Let it just steep in there for about 24 hours. Take it out, pat it off, put it in the oven, and should be good to go in about 3 and 1 4 hours.

TJ Miller (10:39)
Mm, that sounds so good. I'm already hungry.

Chris Gmyr (10:42)
Yeah, it just comes out like super juicy and like, I don't know, it's definitely worth the extra effort and time to put in it. And I don't know, everyone seems to enjoy it when we make it. And my cousin hates doing the turkey, so it works out pretty well that we're going to take it on. yeah, my wife and I typically do a pretty good job with it. So looking forward to that. But it's always

TJ Miller (10:59)
There you go.

Chris Gmyr (11:06)
always a worry until you actually cut into it and like try it out. yeah, hopefully it all goes well this year as well.

TJ Miller (11:13)
Yeah, yeah, it's a big mystery. know, you have no idea how it all turns out to crack into it. So it's, yeah, a lot of work for the unknown.

Chris Gmyr (11:23)
Yep. Yep. But I got a couple of like wireless thermometers that go in there. So I put it in like one of the breasts, like one of the thighs on like opposite sides of the turkey. And it's all like wirelessly monitors. And I can see it come up to 10 and different things going on with it, like on my phone, because there's a, an app that goes with it. So I use that for grilling and cooking and all, all sorts of things. So it really works out well for, the turkey and like a big

TJ Miller (11:41)
that's perfect.

Chris Gmyr (11:52)
you know, meet like that. So definitely got to have the right tools for the job.

TJ Miller (11:57)
Yeah, yeah. I know you do like a pretty fair amount of grilling too. I've seen the wireless thermometers. That's definitely a little envious. Might have to pick some up for the summer, know? Get some grilling going again. Yeah, we've done a wet brine the last couple of years. I think, I'm pretty sure we did it based on your recommendation. And boy has that turned out so well.

Chris Gmyr (12:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad it turned out well.

TJ Miller (12:24)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For us, it's pretty chill. we don't really travel much. and our, our traditions have like kind of waxed and waned over the years, just depending on what's going on. my family is pretty spread out. think we've, last couple of years we've, I can't remember now if it's been Thanksgiving or Christmas, we've gathered over at my sister's house. I think we've kind of bounced back a couple of times. we'd have people over here, but she's allergic to cats and.

having four of them is a bit much for her. my parents moved out of state this year, so I don't have anything going on with them. My aunt moved out as well, and so that kind of left my grandfather here by himself. So we're getting together with him this year, and he wanted to do something simple. We were offering to make stuff and bring it over, but he wanted to. There's a handful of local restaurants that do Thanksgiving like.

Chris Gmyr (12:53)
Yeah, that's a lot.

TJ Miller (13:16)
lunch, dinner kind of thing. So we're going to keep it simple. Go do that with him. That was what he wanted to do. And then, I think we still wanted to do something like home cooked. So we're going to have a small like friends giving with some close friends, have them over. And, as far as like traditional meal stuff goes, like, don't know if I can do Thanksgiving without, like green bean casserole with the like fried onions on top. Like that's just, I don't know for me, that's like.

Chris Gmyr (13:40)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (13:43)
quintessential, like I could almost like give or take having turkey as long as I've got like my green bean casserole on my happy camper. So I don't know. My wife like knocks that like that's like a dish. She's an amazing, like chef. She absolutely crushes it. She's like from the south. So like she just she knows how to do it. But her green bean casserole is just

Chris Gmyr (13:52)
Yep. Yep. Totally.

TJ Miller (14:12)
I don't know, she only got bacon bits in there and just, I don't know, I'm gonna be going nuts now that I've started talking about it.

Chris Gmyr (14:19)
I'll playing on the menu and make sure you get everything for it.

TJ Miller (14:23)
Yeah, yeah. So it should be, it should be fun this year. Like I love doing Friendsgivings anyways. Like for me, that's always been, at least in the like later half of my years has been just so much more rewarding for me. So yeah, looking forward to that for sure.

Chris Gmyr (14:40)
Yeah, awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to, I like the dark meat on the turkey a lot better myself. I don't know, some people, yeah, rather take that. So I ate a bunch of that and then definitely got a sweet tooth. I've been, you know, trying to cut back a lot more on that over the last year plus, but one of the other things that I'm making is an apple crisp. So that is just amazing. Like you get like the

TJ Miller (14:47)
Same. 100%. 100%.

Chris Gmyr (15:07)
juicy semi-tart apples in there, and then just this rumble with sugar and butter and oats and brown sugar. And it's just amazing. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll probably save all my dessert quota for that. And yeah, I passed the pies and cookies and whatnot.

TJ Miller (15:20)
man

You

No, no sweets for the next week. Just got to save up for save up for the apple crisp. I love it. That sounds really good too, man. I always look forward to the day after too. I think I make a mean like leftover turkey sandwich. Like every year is what I do. Like I'll take turkey. I'll even put some like green bean casserole on there. Like I'm, I'm weird, man. Like I'll just, I'll stack up a leftover sandwich and so good. Like.

Chris Gmyr (15:55)
Yeah, we do.

TJ Miller (15:56)
I don't know, for some reason the leftovers are always like on par with the same day, you know?

Chris Gmyr (16:01)
Yeah. Yeah, we do that too. we call them heart attack sandwiches, because basically it's like your whole plate of, Thanksgiving stuff, just going on a sandwich and we either get, potato bread or rolls and just toast that up a little bit more and just throw everything on there that you would normally have on a plate and just like town and hope that it doesn't just fall apart because it's just massive, a massive sandwich.

TJ Miller (16:05)
Yes.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah, I get a big sourdough loaf every year for it. know, nice, nice big, big, huge slices of bread right out of the middle. Like, yeah. So, outside of food, what other, do you, do you like get into the football games going on the dog show, puppy bowl? Like what's your, your flavor of choice for, for background.

Chris Gmyr (16:51)
Yeah, in general, not really much of a sports person. I'll watch it. My cousins and her husband and kids are really into sports, football, things like that. So I'll watch it if it's on. I have no idea who's playing or how good the teams are or whatever. They have everyone memorized and everyone's stats for the past 10 plus years and all that. They go super crazy with it. I've never just...

had the interest or gotten into it. I've played sports, but never really gotten into watching it. So I'll watch whatever's on. When we've done Thanksgiving's at other places or even with my wife's family and also doing it ourselves, we typically will put on the puppy bowl or some sort of repeat on it. Because you can't go wrong with puppies and cute little dogs and stuff like that.

TJ Miller (17:42)
You can't. You can't.

Chris Gmyr (17:44)
Definitely look forward to that. And then we'll play like card games, anything with like the kids and families like that. And we have also we bring around this little kind of tricky decoration that it has like pins in the back or like kind of card holders, little wires and stuff like that. So we make tail feathers from just

paper, cardboard, whatever. So everyone gets at least one of those and you write what you're thankful for for the year. And everyone puts their cards like on the back of this turkey. And so it like fans out once everyone puts their stuff on it. And then like around the table, we just read them off when everyone is like eaten or towards the end or like dessert or something like that. So that's one of the main traditions that we've brought around with us for the last handful of years, especially with the kids.

TJ Miller (18:37)
I love that. That's, that's super endearing. I think the word I'm looking for, like that's, I don't know. That's really cool. I like that a lot. We have a, we have a jar and we like keep little like pad of like sticky notes next to it basically. And throughout the year, we just kind of like gather up things that we're like grateful for, like, you know, stuff that happens like, you know, this year getting a new job and.

Chris Gmyr (18:44)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (19:03)
all like the super fortunate stuff that's gone along with that. And so there's just like things throughout the year, we kind of gather up and put in this jar. we either in years past, we've like busted it out and like gone through them on Thanksgiving. Other times we've saved it for, for new years, just kind of like ringing in the new year, talking about like the good stuff that's happened across the year. so we've kind of like bounced back and forth, but I think this year there's just like a lot of, a lot of things to be.

super thankful for. So, we might bust that out this year and see how that goes. But I really like the turkey feather idea that maybe I'll try to riff on that a little bit for, for friendsgiving. That'll be, that'll be fun for sure.

Chris Gmyr (19:43)
Yeah, totally. And I forgot where we picked it up, but everything is on Amazon. So maybe I'll try and find it and put a link in the show notes if someone wants to find something like that. Definitely nice to have. And we've saved a bunch of the old tail feathers too from years past. So it's kind of fun sifting through those to see what people have read. Especially if we're not with the same

TJ Miller (20:03)
That's cool.

Chris Gmyr (20:10)
parts of the family, can read what the kid's grandfather from Florida wrote three years ago and stuff like that. It's kind fun to revisit that and kind go back through those memories.

TJ Miller (20:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's super cool, man. I like that a lot.

Chris Gmyr (20:26)
So yeah, with traveling for Thanksgiving, transitioning into home automation. Because when you travel or go out of town or go to Friendsgiving somewhere else, you might need a little home automation help. So yeah, I guess what do you have set up? Do you have any sort of like schedules for things? Cross-device communication, kind of multi-step.

TJ Miller (20:33)
Ooh.

Chris Gmyr (20:51)
If this, that type of workflows, do you have anything that you're looking to add on or something that the home automation in your place is lacking that you want over the next year or so?

TJ Miller (21:03)
Yeah, I'd love to do more. I've kind of gone back and forth on it over the years. Right now I've just got like a whole bunch of like different systems that don't really talk to anything. And I've got a bunch of like wise stuff, which is great, but it's pretty like closed system to like just, just their things and their app and their integrations, which is like a big bummer. Really like.

loved the pricing on everything when I got it all. part of that is, yeah, it's kind of like a closed system. So I've got a bunch of cameras set up around the outside of the house. And then inside, I've got a handful of light switches. I put a space heater in my office recently. And I got some of the Wyze smart plugs for that, just so that way, that's on a schedule, just to make sure if I ever forget to turn it off, it's

definitely turns itself off at some point. Or it's nice just knowing that I can at any point in time just turn the plug off and have sound peace of mind over the fact that I don't have a space heater going. But other than that, I've got the new thermostat that we just installed. Got an Ecobee. And what I'm totally loving about that is that works with a whole bunch of different systems.

that's something that I'd like to transition to, like starting to get a little bit more automation in place where I can, you know, either use HomeKit and kind of integrate everything there or, you know, kind of like centralize on, one of the like home systems. you know, other things I've got, like our washer dryer, our refrigerator, like those all kind of hook up through like smart things.

So I've got that configured, which is nice to, I didn't realize, I kind of laughed at it at first that like, my washer dryer has wifi. But I can't tell you how much I love getting push notifications when the like washer's done. can like, okay, great. I can like go change the laundry now. It's like all ready to go. I don't know. That was like, that's turned into like such a nice thing to have, especially coming off, like making fun of it at first.

Chris Gmyr (23:11)
That is nice.

Yeah, I feel like I'm always putting an alarm on my watch or my phone. was looking at the washer or dryer, I'd be like, OK, 30 minutes left on this. Do an alarm for 32 or 35 minutes and try to come back down. And so having the push notifications or a status on your app or something like that would be a lot more beneficial. So I could just tell you when it's done. You don't have to do anything else with that.

TJ Miller (23:44)
Yep. And then, you know, especially with, you know, my son's 11, with him, like running around and getting into the fridge and stuff. It's really nice to get like push notifications. Like, Hey, the door's not closed all the way. that's been like super handy. I wish my freezer had push notifications. That would have been great. no, it's all that stuff's been awesome. And that's something that I've been like really looking to get into also is not just the, like the

Chris Gmyr (24:02)
Yep, totally.

TJ Miller (24:11)
pre-made stuff. I've been looking to get into making some of my own things with like Pi Zeroes or stuff like that. Having five dogs and four cats, we go through like we got a kind of one of those water bowls that you attach a jug to like you flip it upside down. It kind of like fills itself up as they empty it out. But we go through those like somewhat frequently and I

always feel like I'm like missing it. And so it's like, man, how long have they been out of water? Like, I feel awful. So I've been wanting to put some sort of like sensor in there to like, you know, send me a push notification, like, hey, the water's getting low or there's no water in here now. And so I'm sure there's like something to buy for that, but I'm, I think it'd be a fun project to make that. And just maybe some like some other, some other stuff, especially being that my son's like really getting into electronics.

he just recently he's, he got grounded from, from screens. So he's, he's banned from his like iPad and switch and TV. but he did pick up, the, I don't know. He's like, I want to learn JavaScript again. So he's been like going through code Academy's JavaScript course. Cause he really wants to build a video game, but also, almost all, I think a lot of the Arduino and PI stuff now supports.

not only Python, but I think a lot of it's starting to support Node.js as well. So that I think is going to be fun for him to be able to get to make some of these projects too. I think for Christmas, I'm hooking him up with this experimentation board I found. It's like a circuit board. It's got a bunch of LEDs on it. It's got a bunch of sensors already pre-soldered onto it. And then you've got a bag of alligator clips. And you can hook it up and do

tons of different things with it. So I think that'll be fun for him to kind of get into the hardware space a bit. like, not just like, yeah, I've got some interest in like doing more home automation and not just the like pre-bought stuff, but maybe some custom stuff too. How about you, man?

Chris Gmyr (26:17)
Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, very, very similar. We have kind of like a mishmash of a bunch of things. We definitely have a bunch of the WISE electronics. We have a bunch of the SPART plugs. We have cameras. We have a couple of the V3, I think, or V2. And then let's see.

The air purifiers we have two of those and those I think have been really solid Because those will send you push alerts for you know any issues inside the house with like air quality also It's super nice to be able to turn them on or see the status of the air quality in the rooms that they're in Because we have some non connected ones and it's just I don't know

a little bit more of a pain to go into the room when you're downstairs and these are upstairs and kind of turn them on like that. So it's super nice to just pop into the app and turn on when you're cooking something on the stovetop or, you know, burning some bacon grease in the oven or something like that. Just, you know, flip them on remotely is super nice. We also have a couple of the their robot vacuums. So we have one on each level.

TJ Miller (27:24)
Yep.

Chris Gmyr (27:33)
And those are amazing. Actually just replace the batteries in both of them because they're, I don't know, probably about three to four years old now. So it's been a pretty good run for basically using them every day. The downstairs one basically twice a day. So we just have those set up as schedules. So it'll do certain rooms on certain days and then flip-flop rooms on opposite days. And the downstairs one will do

TJ Miller (27:45)
Wow.

Chris Gmyr (27:59)
kind of the kitchen and main like living area and also the breezeway where we walk in and out of the house every day to kind of keep that a little bit more tidy. But it's just so nice to get the majority of stuff out. And then once in a while, we'll just go through and do like a deeper clean and clean the floors and stuff like that. But just keeping all that, you know, dog hair and dust and little leaves and, you know, stuff like that, that, you know, the kids and everyone bring in and, you know, it's just.

super nice to have on an ongoing basis. On the side door where we typically go in through the breezeway, have also one of their locks. We have the one with the fingerprint scanner and the keypad. And that's been great too. So if you have your hands full, at least I did two or three of my fingerprints. So it doesn't matter what hand. I could always do thumb or index finger to open it. And then

TJ Miller (28:40)
Nice.

Chris Gmyr (28:53)
like everyone in the family has a different code. So you can actually see who types in their code and who opened the door and if the door is locked or not, things like that. And handful of the cameras and smart switches for different things that are set up. lots of wise products, like you said, they're relatively cheap compared to a bunch of the other companies and just get a lot of value, especially when we're away.

It's just nice to pop on the multi-camera view and be like, OK, the house isn't burning down, like no issues with anything going on. So that's been super nice. Like you mentioned, and everything for the HVAC, we got upgraded with new EchoBees because they had to reinstall new stats so that they could do all the warranty stuff. So we had EchoBee 4s before. They upgraded us to the latest EchoBee Pros.

TJ Miller (29:40)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (29:49)
which is basically the same thing. It just has a quality error sensor in there, which is helpful. Not anything, I don't know, super important, but I don't know. It's something. So you get push notifications for that now. And then it handles the sensors a little bit better. But those have been great for using them for a couple of days. But it's also nice to set it on vacation mode. And when we're traveling back home,

TJ Miller (29:55)
right.

Great.

Chris Gmyr (30:16)
either in the morning before we leave or like a couple hours away on the road. I'll have my wife or like I'll do it at a, at a stop, like just turn everything back on like off of vacation mode and our regular comfort settings and have it either hot or cold when we come back home and don't worry about, you know, having a super hot or super cold house when we get back in, depending on the time of season. And, we have some schedules set up for that and different comfort zones. like at night it'll.

TJ Miller (30:34)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (30:45)
drop the temp down to make it a little bit chillier when we're sleeping, and then adjust when we're awake and away and things like that. So I really like the EchoBees and the scheduling that it has for that. We probably don't go too crazy with it because I work from home. My wife stays at home with the kids, so we're basically always home. But I can see that being really beneficial for people who have a commute or...

go to and from work of having, like, an away setting to in addition to home and sleep. And you can set that all up on the app. So yeah, the Echo Bee stuff has been great for sure.

TJ Miller (31:23)
Yeah, yeah, I forget what, this is totally unhelpful because I, the brand is totally lost on me. And there was another brand I saw come across, like somebody's like, I watched like some reel that someone was talking about their, their like home automation stuff. and it was all like pretty like open spec.

So you could basically like curl request your light switches and stuff to get them to you like turn on and off I'm like, man, that sounds super wonderful compared to having these like closed systems and everything I know there's like a couple standards going around and I'd love to like maybe explore some of those a little bit more but I've Honestly, I've loved the Y stuff. The biggest the biggest downside for me is like yeah not having like

open API access to be able to like do, do the things that I want to do with them. be able to like automate a little bit more, but yeah, scheduling wise, we've, we've got some schedules set up in our Echo Bee stuff as well. we're also like both home all the time. Like I work from home. My wife studies, she's in school, so she's always home too. and so it's just like a night and day cycle, something, something super easy.

And then I've got the lights outside are all hooked up to stuff as well. So like my exterior lights, I know it's like super easy to have, you know, just like light sensors on them, but I've got them on a schedule. they like, they turn out, actually, I need to adjust them for daylight savings now that it gets dark at 435 o'clock. But yeah, it's nice to have.

have that stuff on a schedule too. So like, forgot to turn them off when no one was home on Halloween. So it was nice to be able to, you know, be able to just toggle everything off while I was out and about. and I have a few more Wyze cams I want to hang up. Like what happened was, we had a, one of our dogs was a Irish Wolfhound mix. And so like, he was super protective of the home and always was like checking windows and everything. And so like, I always felt like I had like a really strong sense of security with him around.

And, when he passed, don't know, like I just bugged out and like all of our other dogs, I swear if someone walked in, would they just lick them to death? I'm like, like I lost, like, yeah, I just like, I kind of like lost all of that, like sense of security. And so I went nuts and just like cambered up the whole house and I've got a few more I want to hang. except they're like more out outdoor ones and I

Chris Gmyr (33:38)
You be my friend.

TJ Miller (33:53)
don't know if I trust myself running that electrical. So I've got, I know what and where I want to go, but I think in the spring I'm going to end up hiring an electrician to come out and just run, run a couple outdoor boxes and I can finish hanging the rest of the cameras. I did some of their like battery, like outdoor cameras before, but not having a like continuous feed. And I think like the notifications were a little wonky too. I decided just to like go with the wired stuff and

yeah, just needs to have like more power outside, but I, kind of, I figured out how I was going to run the power, but I just, I don't know. There's like two, two things in the home, like plumbing. I hate doing plumbing, but I'll do it. I hate doing electrical and I typically won't do it. I just like, I don't know. It gives me the willies. So.

Chris Gmyr (34:44)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I think for other things and schedules, we have some Arlo cams. So we have a baby cam that's really old. But it's nice that you can have the app running in the background for sound and things like that. Also, because it's Wi-Fi, you can basically go anywhere. So even if I'm traveling, just checking on things, I can just pop into that compared to just a regular.

TJ Miller (34:59)
Mmm, yeah.

Chris Gmyr (35:10)
baby cam type of thing for the toddler. And then a couple of doorbells with that, which are wireless. We didn't have wired doorbells previously, so it was just easier to pop the battery powered ones on. And I just have an extra battery that I rotate through as I charge them and replace them. Those have been generally pretty good, and especially checking in on things when we're out and about. And then...

we have a bunch of hue lights on different schedules. So usually, like 6.30 in the morning, the downstairs lights will come on. And then 6.30 at night, they kind of start dimming to kind of give the trigger for the kids to start winding down. And then they'll dim even more to almost like a night light at around 9.30 to basically trigger me and my wife to basically be like, it's time to go to bed.

TJ Miller (36:04)
Your turn, lights are off.

Chris Gmyr (36:05)
Yep, lights are off. can't see you're getting tired. And that's been really nice because it the the trigger for us to go to sleep and also just you feel more tired when it's dimmer. So it's just a nice mental and physical trigger to like wind your body down. And it's like, OK, time to time to get up, take the dog out, wrap everything up and go to bed because usually get up early, like going to the gym and.

other things going on. yeah, it's been beneficial to get to better a little earlier.

TJ Miller (36:40)
Yeah, I like it for the kids too, because you can totally deflect. It's like, yeah, no, it's bedtime. It's not my fault. The lights are going off. It's just time. You got to go. I like that.

Chris Gmyr (36:48)
Time to go. Late Saturdays, time for bed.

TJ Miller (36:50)
Yeah, house was built in the age where they didn't put lights in anywhere. And so it's just like a bunch of outlets connected to light switches, which is so annoying. Trying to figure out like, why isn't this outlet work? someone hit the switch. So our living room is just abysmally dark and I've never figured out quite how to get light in there. And that's, think, a project.

Chris Gmyr (37:02)
Yes.

TJ Miller (37:15)
I may try to tackle over the winter is I want to put in some recessed lighting. Now that all the recessed lighting is like LEDs, it's way less of an intense install than it is with like the incandescent stuff where you've got to put a giant heat deflection bucket in and all this way, way too much work. so I think, I think for that one, I'm going to do most of the install and then just basically prep it all out for an electrician to come in and just hook everything up.

but that's all going to be like automated for sure. And I think we'll probably do something similar with that of like dim it down, you know, at night and kind of let, let that be the, everyone, everyone get to bed, get to bed before the lights go out and the boogeyman gets you.

Chris Gmyr (37:58)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, like you, I haven't messed with a lot of the other super technical mini computer setup or plugging into all these systems. So I'd definitely like to start tinkering with that too, because I think there's some really cool possibilities that you can do, at least with the more open systems. I don't know if we're going to get too lucky with the Waze stuff, but a lot of other stuff might be doing a little bit better.

TJ Miller (38:24)
Yeah, so at least with the camera feeds, at one point I went pretty wild with the software setup between HomeKit and some other Wyze software adapters. I was able to get at least all the cameras into Apple's home stuff. So I could get the feeds through the iOS app, which was really nice because the Wyze app is fine, but the Apple app is just super performant.

I really liked trying to least bucket everything in one place. I got the switches after the fact. So I don't know if those hook up. it was kind of like a little bit of a hacky way. think what they were doing was you'd put in your Wwise credentials. I think they were going to the website and then crawling the feed and then passing that feed through. So things were also on a heavy delay.

But that was nice to be able to pull up in a browser, like, yeah, here's all my cameras, put together a nice little mesh display of everything. So there's definitely a lot you can do with HomeKit and some other open source stuff. But yeah, it's a lot easier the more open. If you're going out looking for open hardware, it exists. It's just.

It's not the stuff that you're going to find, you know, super, at least, I don't know, like everywhere I look, as soon as you start looking for home automation stuff, it's never the open stuff that comes up. So you got to kind of, kind of dig for it. I'll see if I can find the, the brand for the show notes that this guy was talking about. cause I, yeah, he was just like, yeah, it's super cool. Watch. And he just like, crawled, crawled his lights off. And I'm like, man, like that's super cool.

Chris Gmyr (40:09)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (40:09)
Like all the LEDs in my office, these are like Gov, I think that's the brand, LED lights. And I've got that all set up to work on curl requests. So like that was super cool. You can go to their like developer center and like request an API key and they'll send you an API key. And then, yeah, I just set it all up. So I can go to my terminal and just say like lights on and all my lights turn on and lights off and all my lights go off in here. So.

Yeah, some stuff is like, I was shocked. couldn't believe I thought that was going to be another one of those like trapped in their app and just happened to like, I wonder if they have a developer center. my gosh, they do have an API and it works pretty well. Like sick.

Chris Gmyr (40:49)
Nice. Yeah, that's really cool. I'm to check out if any of these other places have good API or developer toolkits, because I think setting up some of that automation on our side, outside of the apps, could be beneficial too. So coming into the office and using a shortcut to turn on lights or change settings or something like that instead of going to all these apps all the time, I think would be pretty cool.

TJ Miller (41:13)
Yeah, and I think you can get, I don't know about the dark matter. I think that's one, the matter protocol. think there's like, matter is one of the protocols. And then I forget what the other one is. There was like another somewhat major like protocol for like communicating with a lot of this like home automation stuff. And that one, like I believe, I believe actually for both of them, you can get like Raspberry Pi adapters for them too. And so you can kind of.

set up your own in the middle communications hub for all of that stuff. That's something I've looked into in the past too for just getting more control over it is just like, I'll make my own connected device hub and then I can control it however I want. So that's also an option that I've considered, but we'll have to see. We're actually...

Chris Gmyr (41:58)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (42:05)
considering now getting a little bit more serious about maybe moving in the next year or so. And with that, I'm definitely going to be picking out, making some better choices on hardware so I can make a little bit more of a cohesive system.

Chris Gmyr (42:20)
Yeah, totally. Sweet. Well, that sounds awesome. And I'll put it in the show notes, but on the heels of talking about a little bit of home automation, last week I saw Justin Jackson on Blue Sky asking about suggestions and tips for home automation. And I chimed in with some details of what we do with the vacuums and lights and stuff like that. And there's a ton of other great posts and feedback on that.

I'll definitely include that link in the show notes if anyone wants to check it out.

TJ Miller (42:50)
Yeah, so I remembered the other protocol was Zigbee, just kind of like paging through this thread. There's like so much great stuff in here. And I really liked what Chris Morel had posted on here as well. Like, use HomeKit. It's limiting, but super secure. I totally agree. He's like, do lights, do shades, do door locks. And I'm like, yeah, and thermostats. I'm like, that is...

absolutely all the stuff that I'm looking to cover too, man. Being able to put shades on a schedule would be so nice. That'd be great.

Chris Gmyr (43:25)
Yeah, we've talked about it before. And there's some really nice ones out there now that are pretty much room darkening or close to blackout curtains that are just Wi-Fi enabled. It's like, man, that'd be so great to do that. Or you tie it into the sunrise or something like that if you want to improve your circadian rhythm and sleep patterns and stuff like that. So that'd be super awesome to have it completely blacked out dark.

TJ Miller (43:38)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (43:52)
And then as the sun comes up, you slowly raise the curtains to wake up slowly, more naturally, like no alarms needed or anything like that. And there's just so many things that you could do with that.

TJ Miller (44:06)
I love that. I'm just really lazy and don't want to have to like go around shutting all my blinds at night.

Chris Gmyr (44:12)
Yeah, well, I mean, that works too. So totally fun with that.

TJ Miller (44:16)
Yeah, yeah, cool man. Well on that note you want to wrap up?

Chris Gmyr (44:19)
Yeah, let's wrap up. So thanks all for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes and all the links and also social channels are down below and also available at slightlycaffeinated.fm. So thank you again all for listening and we'll catch you if not next week in a few more weeks.

TJ Miller (44:41)
Yeah, thank you.