I'm the kind of guy who loves starting ambitious projects and my team of
professional edgars on
Okay, who did that?
Well, they don't exactly hold me back. The problem is once the shoot wraps, we
don't always finish said ambitious projects, which has left me with a
couple of loose threads. It's not entirely their fault. I'm guilty, too.
But look, today is not about playing the blame game. Today is about taking
action. That's why we are making a list roadkill style and we're gonna check it
at least once. Check this out. I can
check this one off already. Hello, it's me. I'm a guy from the far
future where everyone has RVAB M1 sofas
that can be easily carried home by a single person and set up in minutes.
Your ancient brains couldn't comprehend. Wait, RVLAB M1 sofas are already
available in this timeline. I see links in the video description. Weednacks. We
didn't go back far enough. I'm sorry. He always does this. Step one today is to
compile a deficiency list. >> That's a long piece of cardboard.
>> Sure is, Billy. >> What are you What are you expecting to
write on here? That the house hasn't burned down, has it? I mean, like,
>> the garage doors work at least. Right. >> Right. But ask me if I put in the new
relays. >> You didn't put in the new relays. >> It's worse than that. The back left
relay fires, >> but the door is not actually connected.
>> Oh, I heard it click. >> That was Well, yeah. Well, why isn't it connected? >> We replaced our garage door openers.
>> Oh, >> the trades assured me that they had put all my wires back where they were.
>> Oh, man. They just like twisted wires together. It's not even like soldered or
connected or mored. It's literally just twisted bit of copper. I love
contractors. These days, I wouldn't recommend a solution like this. Since I
did the setup at my old house, someone has actually reverse engineered
Chamberlain's smart garage door opener protocol, allowing you to just take full
local control of them. But when I moved in here, I wanted to go with the relays
because I had old dumb garage doors that were still working perfectly fine other
than obviously not being smart. So then since I already had this, when I got new
openers cuz my old ones started dying, I just went with dummy ones. They're not
actually dummy. They're they support Aladdin, but these were already here and it's been working great. These are just
a much older design and it's probably time to modernize them. Or if we could
figure out if Aladdin Connect just pipes right into Home Assistant, then we could
do that as well. So, these are technically smart. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah. So, we'll just have to see what
the better solution is. Since we're in here, my house sits in a cellular dead
zone. So, we picked up this amazing Celli Quattra fully digital cellular
repeater. Only problem is our company cell phone plan changed carriers about 6
months ago, and I still haven't updated it to the frequencies that I'm actually
using. So, I have no cell signal at home and Jake never showed me how to get into
the dashboard. You would think, "Oh, well, you should just be using Wi-Fi."
But because my car has wireless Android Auto, which it defaults to, even if I
plug it in, >> when I'm backing out, my Wi-Fi
disconnects, it's connected to my car, and I rely on cellular to close the
garage door. >> So, I have to drive a few blocks away
where I have signal >> so that I can
>> I don't even actually know if you can change the carrier yourself. To be fair,
I've never tried. So, oh, you know what the other thing is? This is more
complicated than what we're doing right now. The antenna is pointed at a Rogers
tower. I'm pretty sure >> that's probably the issue. >> So, if I change this, well, we'll see.
It shows us the antenna stuff. So, maybe
>> it was Telus. >> Either way, it's going on the list. Another minor headache is my HVAC
system. See, when we moved in, we installed this super efficient multiszone heat pump system that does
both heating and cooling, except for one small challenge. The house was already
pre-plumbed for inf flooror radiant heat, and it wouldn't make sense to
throw that away given how much more economical it is in the winter, so we
added a second thermostat to control that. All of which is fine until the two
times of year in the spring and fall when they start fighting each other. All
of that is solvable if we put some more work into programming them, but we never
did. So, I just turn them off when they are not supposed
to be doing things. >> That seems easy enough to fix though. Can't we just like turn one of them off
based on the temperature outside? >> Maybe. But back when we did this,
American Standard was anything but standard and we didn't have much control
over it from Home Assistant. Remember when Dan and I painstakingly converted
these little EcoB room sensors to be wall powered rather than battery
powered? >> I think. Well, here's the thing. The
EcoB app, not super intuitive. I never
got them working. To clarify, Dan did great work and it totally works. I just
haven't been able to find a way to get it to use that sensor rather than the
stupid one that's out here in the middle of the stupid hallway. >> Wait, do you want it to only use that
sensor? >> Yeah, cuz I want the hallway sensor. >> Wait, wait, okay, let me see. Now, there
is a way in the EcoB app to tell it to only care about a specific sensor.
>> I couldn't find it. >> This has got to be the least intuitive thermostat app in the planet ever in the
universe. You know what I'm saying? But I have to do this at my house all the time. Uh I think if you go under
sensors. So girl one, that's the sensor
inside or no? >> I believe so. >> Oh, it is. Yeah, girl one is the sensor inside.
>> Oh, it's already set to that. This should read 24, not 20. This works just
fine at my house. >> I don't know, Jake.
>> I don't know. I'm adding it to the list. >> What are we What are we doing in here?
>> Well, the lazy version would be to write mechanical room problems, but
>> Oh, that's that's not how that's supposed to work. the cardboard so you don't forget about things like torquing
your wheels. >> And there's a lot of things in here that we could easily forget. >> Yeah, a lot of metaphorical wheels.
>> The isolation transformer for the water cooling loop is not currently active.
When we hooked up the flow sensors, we realized we had the wrong type of filter
in the outdoor loop. So, this is just empty right now. We installed leak
sensors on the gaming systems and have a battery backup for the entire rack. But
without Pulseway installed on all of the systems, you might as well not even have
them. and Pulseway is not installed on all of the systems. Also, those UPS's
should probably go on the wall away from the water. Since I'm back here, we just
got our first batch of LFP batteries to replace these slightly more exploding
lithium ions. So, now would be a great time to check and make sure they work so
that we can order more in bulk. And by bulk, I mean, if this goes well, bulk.
>> Bro, what the heck did you do to that
thing? I haven't talked to Jake about this one yet, but remember how these
chassis have those weird polarity sensitive power switches? Well, I've had
some really strange issues with them where sometimes they just won't turn on
until I disconnect the power switches for like a while and then connect them
back and then they just work normally. So, I came up with the brilliant idea of
just buying some cheap vandal resistant
switches off of Amazon, getting a drill bit, and
putting in a standard power button. Proof of concept wise, it works great. I
just haven't gotten around to finishing it yet. >> Why didn't you just like do it here?
>> Um,
I don't know. While I'm at it, I finally upgraded my GPU and we found a water
cooled 5090 that will fit in the relatively low profile of my case
if Jake would finally bring it to work. And this one I'm kind of on the fence
on. >> What is the problem with the Sonos? Well, there's a couple things. First of
all, after we hooked all these up to our network switch, we learned that daisy
chaining them can be bad for performance. And that because of
Sonoset, a wireless protocol that Sonos
created to communicate between their boxes, sometimes wired networking can
suck. So, we got to diagnose that. And number two, ever since Sonos pushed
their big app update, I found it just laggier and crappier. To their credit,
it has been getting a bit better lately, but I still think it's worth at least
giving this UniFi box that Jake showed me a shot. Years ago, the first time
this panel made its debut on camera, we talked about putting in monitoring.
That's not here. Finally, you might have noticed it's
pretty quiet in here, but that's only because
this server wasn't powered on. See, we built a cool new server to replace it,
but I'm still using the old one for backup of essential files. What I should
really be doing, though, is just using my NVMe array and my hard drive array in
this server to create redundant copies of the most essential data while storing
my Linux ISOs just on the hard drives,
cuz if they get lost, it doesn't really matter that much. The last thing is that
having both servers contributes to the sweltering heat in here in the summer.
In the winter, it's great. We dump all the heat in the pool, which we maintain
at about 10° C. But in the summer,
that heat exchanger don't work so good. So, I'd like to get some kind of chiller
in here and then use the pool to cool the hot side. Oh, did I tell you I
actually found something for this? Oh god. Yeah, it's getting loud. Turns out the perfect solution is a yacht air
conditioner. So, while the tech yacht is definitely not happening, we can have a
little bit of yacht at home.
>> Mom, we have yacht at home. Well, it's basically just an air conditioner
compressor that's water cooled >> because it would go on a boat.
>> Perfect. >> This isn't the boat. >> It would also be corrosion resistant. >> It would also be corrosion.
>> Oh, that's sick. Cuz we're using pool water. >> We're using pool water. It would be sick.
You had like a very unsettling sigh there. I mean, I feel like this list is
getting pretty long. >> You're starting to look like Santa Claus over here. And the worst part is that in
truth, most of these problems are kind
of problems that we have manufactured by DIYing things that most people would
just buy an off-the-shelf solution for. >> Yep. >> With that said, I hope that the
adventure has at least been inspiring because for all of the warts of what
we've done, it really was a lot cheaper sometimes. Um, and it was way more fun,
right? Fun. >> Yeah, sure. Fun. Fun. Dan and I have
been meaning to sound treat this room since we created it, and it is still
very much not done. >> You know, all things considered, it's not as bad as you would think it would
be. >> No, it's the couches. By the way, Valencia, shout out, dude. Over time, I
have only grown to appreciate these couches even more. >> I know. They're kind of sick, actually.
I think it really sets the ambiance of the room. And also, it just it's just
kind of fun. >> Oh, yeah. >> You feel like you're going to the movies,
>> but like better. >> Yeah.
Speaking of the Valencia couches, it's pretty cool that they have both USBA and
USBC charging at almost every seat. But what they don't have is any kind of data
connection back to the PC. So, I'd like to do a nice cable managed run. So, when
you're sitting there with the lapboard, you can just plug in right there rather
than running it across the floor. Here's an annoying one. Do you like CEC? That
is the protocol that HDMI devices use to communicate with each other so that when
you turn on one, all the right ones are supposed to fire up at the same time so
you don't have to have five different remotes. I love it too when it works.
But check this out. If I turn on my receiver and switch it over to my PC,
this is super cool. My TV's on. It's all
awesome and everything. Now, give it a second. Why is my NVIDIA Shield there?
It does it every time. No matter what I
change all the settings in the receiver and the Shield 2, the Shield cannot
resist ripping back control. Uh back when I was playing Fantasian on my Apple
TV, I'd be playing for 2 hours and then
suddenly the Shield would wake up and rip away my controls. This is one I can
sympathize with. I actually had the exact same problem at home. And you know
what I did? turned literally everything off and I just use like my house. So I
just go like hey >> switch to PC or hey switch to TV and it
just does everything for me. It even wakes on LAN the PC if it's off. It's
kind of magic. That actually sounds great because ever since I moved this Falcon Northwest frag box in here, I
have been using this room so much more for gaming to the point where it's
actually made it so I have to solve yet another problem. See, voice chat is a
solved problem both for when you're all in the same room where you can just yell
at each other and also a solved problem for when you're all remote. But where
you run into trouble is when you've got a handful of people here on the couch
together and a handful of people remoted in like we often do when we're playing
tape to tape. So, I'm thinking we either come up with a solution where everyone
can have their own boom mic and we have it all mixed together into one channel
that we send out to the rest of the voice chat, or we mic up the room with
like a nice shotgun that's pointed down at the couches.
>> Oh, >> yeah. >> I think a room mic is probably the way to go.
>> I do too, which is why the stuff for that solution is already in this bin right here.
>> There's also karaoke cable management on the list. What's that?
>> Okay, I kind of already did that. Um, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better
than it was before. So, here's the little Yamaha Duad. And then we just
used one of our MCM magnetic cable management things to the front of this
grill to kind of cable manage the mics.
Boom. Pretty tidy. And the kids actually use it now, which is nice. Before, when
it was a mess, they just didn't want to touch it.
No, no, don't touch that. >> I seem to remember this being less jank. >> Uh, don't touch. No, no. Yeah,
>> it's angled at your toes. >> It's because it's broken. It's for feet
picks. >> It's broken. I >> It's like a 50 lb speaker. What broke
about it? >> Well, it's going into drywall and the anchors that I used were not amazing.
>> Oh. Oh god. >> It's like at the tipping point. >> Oh god.
>> So the cat has knocked it down a couple times. >> Do you want to see my solution for
seeing what I'm doing when I'm working in here? >> Lights. >> I plug in this light strip.
>> You plug it in. Oh, cuz the Z-Wave is so broken it doesn't connect. Nice.
>> I think we could do better. I think there's a lot we could do better.
>> Honestly, that light in there is the least of my problems, though. My light
switches are still on janky motion activation, and these ancient GE
switches have compatibility issues with
all kinds of different light bulbs that I'm using in my house, causing everything from premature death of my
LED bulbs to weird differences in brightness, even though these are both
set to the same brightness, to the flickering that you're seeing right now. Inavi has the millimeter wave ones
coming soon, right? >> Yeah, I think I have 10 of them actually. >> Like prototypes or like
>> final? >> They're like they're like final hardware. They should be. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Like five Z-Waves, five Ziggby, which sounds a bit wonky, but with how
many switches you have in the house, that's probably what we're going to do anyways. Split them between the two
protocols. So, we kind of ease the load a little bit.
>> Of course, we're going to have to do more than just put updated light switches in because minor oversight.
>> Yeah, >> I have outdoor lights under the deck, >> right? But the switches for them are
inside. >> Ah, >> so any motion sensor or millimeter wave
sensor or any sensor inside is going to do nothing when people are sitting
around on the patio, >> right? So we probably need to add a
motion sensor outside. Now, we played around with that everything presence one. It's actually pretty sick and seems
to have a pretty long range, but what we could also do is something we were going
to do anyways, which is to use the camera feeds and do person detection in
the camera feeds. That'd be >> and then turn the lights on with that. Now, Ubiquiti actually has a product for
this now called the AI key, but it's not meant to be like a realtime thing. It
makes a queue and processes old stuff. >> But we do have your server which we can
throw that AI card in and then >> we can process thousands of frames.
Write Wi-Fi 7 on there. >> Oh, >> yeah. >> Sure. >> Maybe put it in the bottom in big text.
>> Um, okay. Well, that's going to disrupt
my ability to make my list compact, so >> I don't care. Um,
this room's actually been really good for the most part. The new multi-
channelannel audio setup that we put in here, hardwiring everything. I barely
ever even think about the fact that there's cables in here. We did such a
great job with the cable management. >> The only problem in here is that every
once in a while, this Sony AVR just
doesn't work anymore. >> What does that mean? >> I mean, I set it to use er and it just
no work until I hardware reset it. >> Hardware reset. factory reset
>> everything. >> Yeah. I can't just turn it off and back on every once in a while. >> Like the calibration.
>> Like everything. >> That's like a like a half an hour setup.
>> Yeah. It hasn't happened in probably a solid 9 months, but it's happened three
times total. >> Three times? >> Yeah.
>> You know, we actually have another receiver. We were originally planning on
doing like room correction showdown where we tried all the different types.
>> Oh yeah. Yeah. And actually, I have a receiver that can do direct live, but
then there's also like the room perfect one, which is really expensive that they
were supposed to send and then never sent. So, the dudes that make that, hit
us up. We'd still like to try it. >> Yeah. Like, we can send it back when we're done if
>> Oh, that's what it was supposed to be. It's like It was like $20,000. >> We just want to try it cuz this is a
really challenging room. >> But I don't know, dude. If it ain't broke, we have a lot of other things to
fix. Speaking of things to fix, uh, what's going on there?
>> The kitties really like it. >> Oh, >> yeah. Wait. So, we need to put a cat
hole on the side. >> Yeah, we could do that. >> That'd be that'd be fun. >> Yeah, but they picked this apart so that
they could get in. >> Oh, >> this shelf specifically gets out of sync
with all the rest of them. >> Yeah, we're not fixing that. They discontinued these for a reason.
>> Oh, >> yeah. If you want to fix that, we can fix it, but it's we're buying a proper
controller and putting proper RGB strips in there. >> What we are doing is a series, I guess,
cuz there's no way that this is going to be one video. >> I mean, we already have a series. It's
called the Linus House series. It has almost I think 50 videos. It's getting a
few more. Did you show them?
>> The plan today was for us to make the list and fix a bunch of stuff, but it
took us this long just to make the list. >> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Could we do even like one thing today? New light switch in the land room.
>> Yeah. Why don't we try that? >> Okay, let's try that. >> Cuz we have lots of light switches. >> It'd be a great idea if we had a Ziggb
hub, which we don't yet. This guy right here plugged in over a USB is what
powers Linus' Z-Wave network which is around a 900 megahertz long range not
IPbased smartome tech. Ziggb runs on 2.4
GHz. So it needs a completely different adapter. And fortunately for us they
make adapters that are PoE powered. So rather than having to use a USB
extension and plug it into his NAS, we can take this guy, the SM Lite SLZB06M,
and plug it in anywhere that there is Ethernet in this house as long as it's
hooked up to PoE. For now, I'm thinking
I just stick it on this like extra cable that's dangling here. In the long term,
it would probably make more sense to put something like this, I don't know, in the middle of the house, not like right
in the bottom. But for now, this should
be sufficient. You see a blinky blinky? I don't see. Oh, hey, we have power.
That's good. At least the PoE works. Why did he have to pick the one light switch
that's in a five gang box? I have to take out 10 screws just to get the cover
off so I can even think about taking this light switch out. Wow,
look at all those chickens. Almost final hardware. You can see the labels are
missing, but there's a little lux sensor. And in theory, behind here is
the fancy millimeter wave sensor that's going to solve all of Linus' problems,
guaranteed, or your money back. Well, I turned off the breaker. The light is
off, but just for safety, I'm going to take my multimeter here, and I'm just
going to touchy touchy and see if there's any voltage. What does that say?
>> It says 202. >> Yeah, we're safe. Always turn the
breaker off unless you're an electrician cuz they never turn the breakers off.
Oh, yeah. These light bulbs might still be like pretty mangled. Proper light
bulbs with the new switch. Press a
button. They just work.
And they're not flickering. Woo.
Now, let's see if we can figure out how to control it. After a little bit of pain and suffering and many firmware
updates, we have our ZigGB hub coordinator stick thing up to date. You
see there's the latest version. Very nice. We've got it hooked into Home
Assistant with Ziggb2 MQTT, which you can see here has no devices. And if we
click permit join, and I do the secret
code, which is you press this button three timesep,
that should start flashing. And in theory, hey, look at that. Man, that's
so nice when the smart home network isn't broken and it just actually adopts
new devices. Wow, there is a Oh my god, there's a lot of settings. Does it get
the voltage right? No, that's definitely not right. Wow. 20 amps at 12,200 volts.
I think that's not correct.
I don't think the wires would be very happy. It says it's it's consumed 16
kwatt hours of electricity already. Look.
Why is that? Is that a different one? I put a
different bulb in there. It is also firmware updating, but like look at
that. I mean, it's dimming.
Wow. Why is this one brighter? I don't
understand. What the heck?
It is brighter, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's so obviously brighter. Screw it.
We're swapping the one in the mechanical room, too, just for funsies.
>> This one a little bit easier to find the breaker for. I'm so confident I'm not even going to check it. Did you see the
thing up there? It's cool, right? >> Oh, yeah. >> Did I tell you about it? It's PoE
powered, so you could put it anywhere. >> Oh, that's super cool. >> Yeah, I'm thinking we could put it maybe
upstairs somewhere. >> Yeah, somewhere on the main floor, just like central, maybe in the family room.
>> The mesh with Ziggby works pretty well, so we might not even need to. One of the
big things I want to do is be able to configure my lights so that when they
turn on and off automatically with motion or presence detection,
>> yeah, >> it's at a different level of brightness at different times of day.
>> Okay, so this is huge because the stupid thing with those GE switches is like you
couldn't change the brightness level while they were off.
>> Well, look at our Inovi. Oh, that turned it on. I don't know if there's a way
around that, but >> we'll figure it out.
You can at least make it lower maybe. Oh, that work. I
don't know. It didn't I don't know. There's probably a way around that. >> We'll figure it out. >> If there isn't, they can change the
firmware >> cuz getting flashbanged when you're walking around the house half naked
thinking, "Man, I'd like to get a midnight snack." Sucks. So, we can't
quite cross this off, but we have at least compiled a list of everything that
we need to get done. >> Well, you you could write two and cross
that out and then write like 98. >> Nice. Oh, hey. You want to see something
cool? Hey, look at this. What's your favorite color? I know what your favorite color is.
>> Uh, blue. >> Look. See, it's pink now. >> Oh, cute. >> Yeah. And then when they're off, you set
it so they don't turn off, but they set their brightness to like minimum. So,
when you're It's the middle of the night and everything's dark, you can see the light switches.
>> Absolute genius. Just like this. Absolute genius. Segue to our sponsor.
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