Ring Video Doorbell 2 and Stick Up Cam Hands On and Windows Media Center RIP – HGG428

If its indoor and outdoor security cams you are interested in, we have about 60 minutes of conversation that focus on it. After an unfortunate episode at Jim’s place, the holiday weekend between Christmas and New Year’s was spent installing new security cams. Mike updates us on his set up as well. We also officially say goodbye to Windows Media Center this week and the guide data stopped and is no longer available without another 3rd party service. Jim talks about his migration over to Plex on and Nvidia Shield for Sarah. It’s actually working!  Finally, we talk about Mike’s new Apple Airpod Pros and how much he likes them. It’s a good review. I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg428

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #428 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Ring, Ring Video Doorbell, Ring Stick Up Cam, Amazon, Amazon Echo Show 5, Amazon Echo, Zmodo, Zmodo Snap, Zmodo Pivot, Hubitat, Apple Airpod Pro, Nvidia Shield

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FlightRadar24 – https://www.flightradar24.com

Ring Video Doorbell 2 – https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Wi-Fi-Enabled-Doorbell-Nickel/dp/B00TZAO9D0

Ring Stick Up Cam – https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Ring-Stick-Up-Cam-Battery-HD-security-camera-with-two-way-talk-Works-with-Alexa-/dp/B07Q6ZZFLS

Amazon Echo Show 5 – https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Echo-Show-Compact-Charcoal/dp/B07HZLHPKP

Dlink HD WiFi Security Cam – https://www.amazon.com/D-Link-WiFi-Security-Camera-Assistant/dp/B01HO9XZR4

Zomdo Snap Cam – https://www.amazon.com/Zmodo-Wire-Free-Security-Instant-Available/dp/B0754KTTMH

Zmodo Pivot Cam – https://www.amazon.com/Zmodo-Rotating-Wireless-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B0798XQ6YR

Hubitat – https://hubitat.com/

LEPOWER 28W LED Security Lights Motion Sensor Light – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XK6ZRHZ

Nvidia Shield – https://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-Shield-Streaming-Player-Performance/dp/B07YP9FBMM

Apple AirPod Pro – https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MWP22AM-A-AirPods-Pro/dp/B07ZPC9QD4

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is the Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 428 recorded on January 2 2020.

Jim Collison  [0:23] 
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here in a chilly but Mike kind of winters here, but it’s not last night we my daughter and I Well, I smoked a cigar we enjoyed a drink on the deck. It was 40 but the deck here kept us pretty warm. Pretty nice for for December, January, right?

Mike Wieger  [0:49] 
Yeah, not bad at all. I’ll take this weather any day.

Jim Collison  [0:52] 
Yeah, now super great course. We Oh, you know, one of the things we did, actually just as a kind of a side note. I downloaded or installed the flight radar 24 app on my phone, and it will bring up a map. So when we’re sitting out on the deck, it’ll bring up a map of all the flights that are, you know where the flyover state right. So when I sit on the deck, I watch these planes go over all the time. And I’m always kind of wondering, I wonder who’s in that plane? Or who is that? What is that plane. So last night for about an hour, we just watched planes go by and brought it up on the again, flight radar 24 is the app you can actually click on the flight and it will tell you the flight number of where it originated from and where it’s going and how fast it’s going and what altitude it’s at and you know, the the airline that it is it’s a super cool flight Tricker flight tracking app and for us here in Nebraska, a great way to see like we watched a plane take off at eppley and it was climbing you knows 3000 4000 5000 go as it’s going by us down to Dallas, and you could see our flight up, you know Twice a year I make that flight down that that path is pretty cool.

Mike Wieger  [2:02] 
Now how in sync were those? Was there a delay at all? No, really good. See, I’ve always been so curious about that. Just the legality that you would think just for safety reasons they would put a delay in right. So you couldn’t know exactly where a plane was in the air?

Jim Collison  [2:15] 
Yeah. I mean, I literally Mike look information. Yeah, I could, we could sit there and I could be like, okay, a plane is going to come out of this general area. And he does there was and and we bring it across. And so it was really cool. That was just one of the fun things last night as it was a beautiful 41 I don’t think it’s quite it’s 36. Now, so 40 is about the break point for us on the deck with the deck heater, but we enjoyed that last night. Of course, we’ll post the show with the world class show notes out of the average guy.tv just a couple reminders. Don’t forget you can join us live on our mobile app and many of you do Home Gadget Geeks. com is the way to get that done. We want to say thanks to me at Maple Grove partners for sponsoring the show as well Christians actually really stepped up his game over the last Couple of weeks and make some major updates to Maple Grove partners not only do they sponsor us but they do a great job over there of making sure everyone who needs it gets hosted for great price $10 will get you started on any plan contact Maple Grove partners com if you need get your hosting Mike you do you you have a site hosted there as well

Mike Wieger  [3:18] 
I do. I do and he makes it just so easy even the setup process the thing I love about his services the email actually so I run my email for that domain through him drop it simple works with all my male clients and everything I use them for everything and it’s it’s just the best service

Jim Collison  [3:34] 
lots of great conversations going on in the discord group the average guy TV slash discord you can join us on Facebook the average guy TV slash Facebook and Mike. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. How did let’s see we didn’t we didn’t podcast after Christmas right? everything go well there for your Christmas time.

Mike Wieger  [3:53] 
Yeah, Chris. I mean, we had so many Christmases kind of all over the board. We were down the farm a lot. We’re up here in Omaha but got to see all the family spent a ton of time I took the week off. So after Monday, and so just had a lot of time Hannah took the rest of the week off too. So it’s nice. We rarely get days where Hannah especially because she works the hospital. We rarely get days where we can both take time off and just be at home. And enjoy that time. So it was a solid week and I just I love just kind of that chilled a Thursday, Friday was my favorite. It was just me and Hannah on the boys. We went ice skating. We just did stuff. Pretty much both days just all day just with the family.

Jim Collison  [4:29] 
Yeah, yeah. Nice. We were big thanks to a big thanks to Dave Jackson who joined us right before Christmas. We had a Joel from life door couldn’t make it at the last minute Dave came on. And so if you haven’t listened to for 27 that is Dave and we talked a little bit about all the gear that you might need. If you’re an at home worker, I think it’s really important that you have good audio in what you’re doing with that and podcasters I think are doing it better than anybody when it comes to good audio. So if you haven’t listened to it yet, the average guy.tv slash hgG four to seven. Mike Christmas for us was great. I got a lot of great gear. I’m going to talk about it here in a second. Some I bought myself, I’ll just, I’ll just admit some of the stuff I bought myself. But we had a little incident here at the Collison house or on Friday night. So Friday night after Christmas 27th I think that was so we went to bed and woke up and I did ask the podcast coach with Dave Jackson, and had fully intended to go get a workout in at work and I jumped in my car and there were things a little moved around in there. And I was like, well, that’s weird. What is this napkin doing on my seat? You know, it wasn’t where I left it when I came out. So, you know,

Mike Wieger  [5:44] 
okay, I’ll toss it over and then that’s a great sign that you keep your car clean if you would notice a napkin at a place because let me tell you my car I would not notice if a napkin was at a place I probably wouldn’t notice if the car seats are missing I my car so yeah, it’s good. You keep your car that clean.

Jim Collison  [5:57] 
Yeah, there was some napkins out of place and so And then I always grab my phone and I plug it in. It’s one of those things I plug it in and got a little you know, have a little metal plate here that then I attach it to a magnet on my dashboard. And I always plug it in always and I go to reach for the cable and I’m like, cables gone is kind of weird. So then I go down and the armrest is open that’s kind of weird, right? So I start looking at like like someone’s been in my car right? So I immediately think oh my gosh, the the other cars so I go out in and unfortunately we left them all unlocked or maybe fortunately but they probably would have moved on. But we had some folks come rummaging through all three cars our out or unlocked the My son is actually funny. They didn’t take very much, maybe a few dollars and cables is pretty much all they got in the process. We don’t keep very many things in our car. My my son who’s in Japan right now. Visiting His car is parked here and I he said he didn’t take my parking pass I said no sunglasses still there Yeah, they’re still there he goes, What about everything in the center console? And I said oh no that’s cleaned out he’s like haha jokes on them those were all broken cables

Mike Wieger  [7:17] 
where they wouldn’t take the sunglasses

Jim Collison  [7:18] 
know I know they didn’t right or or the garage door openers which are there right and

Mike Wieger  [7:25] 
so which tells me they’re like not it’s

Jim Collison  [7:29] 
it’s just it’s out kids just checking cars right see and and fortunately or unfortunately mine were all unlocked and you know it fortunately you don’t know i mean they could have been breaking

Mike Wieger  [7:39] 
windows they might not they might not been that motivated but

Jim Collison  [7:42] 
no there were no other broken windows on the street that night so got me thinking you know, had it been locked? Well, we’re we’re really fortunate that I don’t we don’t keep anything in our cars for the most part. I mean, it’s it’s we just don’t there’s some tables and stuff and Sarah is going to need to revise some tables and you know, it’s going to cost me 25 bucks, but It got me it kind of shook me like I came back in the house and I was really upset like, Ah, you just kind of feel like vice up yeah someone’s been in your house you know type deal. And I trouble getting back on track the rest of the day. Well, one of the weird things I always keep a cam we call it the package camp so it sits in the spot where packages are delivered and it’s always just watching. Its job is just to watch that one spot where packages get delivered. It also has access to the driveway. You can actually see it from the driveway which I think has kept a lot of mischief out. during the Christmas holiday in the Facebook both in the Facebook in the discord group. I had posted a deal for the ring doorbell Gen two doorbells. 80 bucks would get you both a echo show five and the ring doorbell and I bought it. I took myself up on that deal that I posted it and I bought it and it came in just before Christmas and I had intended to install It Saturday. So Friday, I moved the package cam to the backyard because that’s where it’s now backdoor cam. In preparation for Saturday afternoon installing the ring doorbell. Well guess what happened? Right? All that happened when the camera was down when it was gone. It was in the backyard, not here. Not in the front. And I had not put the ring doorbell on the front door just yet. Right. What are the odds? I know

Mike Wieger  [9:25] 
of all the nights, I mean, how many times you’ve had your car got broken into

Jim Collison  [9:28] 
Never? Never in the 20

Mike Wieger  [9:30] 
years? I know you’ve swapped

Jim Collison  [9:32] 
well, and maybe Yeah, and maybe reason over the last couple years as we’ve always had a camera in that window and i and i people look right today when the UPS guy was delivering packages. I are the Amazon guy. They’re not ups anymore. They’re their Amazon folks. When he walked up, by the way, didn’t walk on my grass, which was super considerate of him. He walked around the driveway up the stairs. And then when he left he did the same thing. How do I know because I got cameras and we’ll talk about that here. In Second, but he checked out both cameras that were both the the the ring which got installed the door cam that got installed and then I put a new camera in the package cam spot that remember those dealings we bought a couple years ago in fact it was like 2016 sales on my back patio that one came out it had been in the garage and I moved that out and made that the package cam. He looked at him and so I think thieves or people that are looking notice those kinds of things. And I think actually having cameras are a deterrent. So that day, install the doorbell. By the way, installing a ring doorbell This is the battery version, not the wired version, but the battery version. Had it up and working in an hour. I mean, it was super easy to do. Super easy to put in. works that the app is awesome. I’m sure for some of you camera buffs and other stuff. There’s things wrong with it. I don’t I never find those things that are wrong. With it, you know,

Mike Wieger  [11:00] 
but I’d agree even the wired one when I did my simply safe doorbell, same exact thing. I mean, dead simple, right? The hardest part was taken off the former doorbell. That same as you had everything up and running in about half an hour I’d say that was the wired version. So right. Not bad at all.

Jim Collison  [11:15] 
We know really, really easy. Great cam Good, good resolution, it looks good. The other thing I noticed today is that when the up or when the Amazon guy was delivering typically they would put him up against the house or the door directly at our house. He saw the cam and then he put it out far enough where the cam could pick it up. I thought well, I think night we always get our packages right up against the door today. It was just far enough out. I could see it on the cam. Yeah. And I thought oh, okay, so maybe there maybe these delivery drivers because you know they’re setting it down. They’re taking a picture of it. That picture is coming to you for delivery, right that’s kind of the way it works now so they can prove or it’s at but they put it in view of the cam. Now of the doorbell cam now, he also looked at the cam that was facing the area of the entire porch. I can see everything on my porch now. And so he could put it in either spot and I had been able to see it. But just it was kind of interesting that the Amazon guy put it in the field view of the

Mike Wieger  [12:15] 
week. I think for them how many calls that saves, right? You get home, it says your package was delivered. It’s not there. Well, was it the UPS guy not dropping it off? Or was it stolen? as well? If he’s placing it he could probably say, you know, or he if he knows you have cameras that you’re gonna go watch him right jack? Oh, it was stolen, right? Yeah, that’s one thing I’ve always said is a lot of people when they’re looking at these cameras, when I’m reading the forums, they’re saying oh, I really wish it had a brown version because that would blend in with my house better. If you can get the spouse on board with having a little bit of an eyesore and you can get you know, my ones are Don’t they look Robin I think they look professional. Right? They don’t look decorative, but they’re not supposed to. They’re supposed to catch their eye so I use the opposite color. I use the most blatant color you can because you’re so right. I catch people. I mean my house is littered with cameras so it’s really easy for them to see. But I all the time people walking by and always looking at the cameras and even if they’re just walking the dog, you know, you catch their eye and they’ll look up at it so Yeah, I agree. Always I think go with one that maybe stands out more because it that’s what you’re going for Really? Because even if I see someone steal something, what are the odds that they’re gonna be able to use that footage to find the guy not very good? No, right? So it’s a deterrent and it’s more for stuff like this right? Like oh, my Amazon packages here. Oh, no. What happened? How did PD get out? Oh, look at that someone went and opened the gate and they left it open and

Jim Collison  [13:33] 
those sort of things today I saw squirrel come across the Okay, which is which is super cool. But yeah, determine I think in a lot of ways. So as I put the doorbell cam up, and as I put the package came up, I kind of realized like, you know, the driveway is, while I can kind of see it, I really can’t. And it’s got you know, I’ve got a deck and some railing in the way and then it drops down pretty, pretty deep. And there’s stuff that is hit. So this was if I was ever going to buy cameras This is the best time to buy him because if I just say I need another camera Sarah just says yes go buy it right right so I said hey I’m buying another I’m gonna buy a stick up cam and I did I kind of looked at some things like okay do I go What do I go with or I get with a wise cam or do I get another z moto cam or do I get and I just kind of decided you know, I’m already going to be in the ring space. I looked at the stick of cams and Mike another real I got the battery version. I got the white again so kind of sticks out in it couldn’t have been easier to install really two screws into the side of the house a few caps, charge the batteries, slam him in, attach it to the app and you were up and running. Though the one hang up I had is that the Wi Fi is here is in the middle of the house that has to go through a concrete wall and the exterior wall to get to the stick up cam. And it just wasn’t powerful enough. I was not getting very good and I tried move My I have just one bitdefender box in the house the the the router is the the Wi Fi router, it’s just that 2.4 and five on a single you can set it so it just determines what you need. This actually caused me to split the two signals out so I have an SSID now I have a 2.4 SSID and a five gig SSD so I could assign these lot of these cams like the 2.4 they don’t want to they don’t want to do beyond the five right? But at the end of the day I found the solution was that ring chime pro for 50 bucks so that what that acts as as a ringer in areas where you don’t have one and it’s a Wi Fi extender. It actually worked it was like bought it plugged it in it literally just plugged into the the outlet in my ceiling in my garage came on I did a few setups attached it to the network. Video Problem solved. At that point. I was like wow, this is I mean even I was really careful how I had box that because I was getting Ready to take that thing back to Best Buy if it hadn’t, you know if it didn’t if it didn’t work,

Mike Wieger  [16:06] 
and that’s another great tip when you were talking about 2.4 and five. So one other quick tip on that too is because I’ve done the same thing. If you use unified gear, everyone who uses unified gear, the access points knows that you can configure multiple SS IDs on each but what you can also do so for me, I have thrashy three different SS IDs in my house I have my main network, my guests network and one for my security cameras, or the one for the security cameras I have it because you can set per SSID which radios you want to use. So for my guest my main it’s 2.4 and five, same name so that way on my devices I don’t have to pick and choose and then on the camera SSID that’s just using 2.4 so if you’re using something like unify or something like that, you can really granularly control those on your just make a camera network separately. And then origin SSID to doesn’t even need to be a separate network if you don’t want to. I have a security subnet and no internets allowed to flow out of that subnet, except for from my DVR box. Yep, that way I know any of these Chinese cameras I put on my network, they can go and talk to the D, the NVR. But they cannot reach out to the internet. So kind of two tips there, check out your SS IDs. And if you can control that, and number two, I really suggest ring reputable ones. I mean, and you need the internet for those. That’s the hard part. Right? Those go straight to the internet. But if you’re using one like site hound, or blue Iris, restrict all internet to that subnet and then allow internet from the one IP address of the NVR on the network. It’s a really good way to control that security a little bit. And I’ve noticed, if I open it up, these sort of cameras like to ping something I don’t know what their opinion. Maybe, you know, it could just be a time server or something like that. But you know, not really no, why not? Why not? They don’t need to ask internet for anything. Now when I do firmware upgrades I do sometimes have to turn that rule off and then turn it right back on when I’m done doing the firmware upgrade.

Jim Collison  [17:55] 
Yeah, I was actually surprised as I get into my bitdefender box by the way, here’s another Tip is I was struggling the night. So seven Sunday night that I was trying to get the stick up cam installed, wasn’t working very, very well. And Monday off, so I kind of plan to go by Best Buy in Monday and pick up the chime extender. But I thought, you know, maybe I should split my networks. So here’s a tip. Don’t split your networks from your phone at 1230 at night and break all your SS IDs, knowing that I was getting up early in the morning to go work out and as the girls woke up, none of the echo devices would work to be able to run wall lights. Right. That’s what I was thinking. Now I changed the name on that stupid thing. Yep. So I had to come downstairs and reconfigure things to make it work like don’t do that from bed at 1230.

Mike Wieger  [18:48] 
And on on that note to two things one, Tony asked real quick if you ceiling mount to unify P which I do. I have two ceiling mounted AC pros and he said he’s hurting They’ll cover two floors. Depending on your flooring, I think that’s totally true. I am in my basement, and I get perfect hundred percent coverage from my access points that are in the main room in the main level on the ceiling of the main level. Now granted my basements unfinished. So there’s there’s flooring, obviously, but there’s not like another, you know, there’s no ceiling to this floor. But perfect coverage. Number two, I’ve learned to so Jimmy about switching SSID. And I did this recently. If you need if you decide, you know what I want to be really secure. I want to have an IoT subnet and IoT SSID, where all those things are going to live and be really controlled. It’s much easier to leave that and with the same name because those things are such a pain to reprogram the Wi Fi in yesterday or what app it was was the Amazon Alexa app, was it all this stuff and some of you have to log into the IP address. So just leave that the same and create yourself a new network. That’s your secure network. Yeah. So for me, you know, I had my example network. And so I left the example network and then made an exit Network slash s for secure so I know it’s my secure one. So leave it if you can and then create and then that way because how many devices are you really going to put on it your laptops, your phones which are super easy to plug in any Wi Fi name it’s such a good example because I had put the both the doorbell I’d put the security screw in it and the stick up cam I hit you gotta go in decide both to reset them. So yeah, Ryan and Ryan says out in the chat room so you’re even named your 2.4 network kept that the same name just without anything.

Jim Collison  [20:33] 
And that’s what I did.

Mike Wieger  [20:34] 
That’s what I did. Yep. And then you change your five gigahertz and then you can plug everything on the

Jim Collison  [20:37] 
network name 5g is what I it’s what I title that. Ryan says that’s how you’re up all night. You’re up early to fix everything. Well, there’s Ryan there’s a lot of truth to that. Brian says the cams as well as these echo devices are contagious. Start with one and they multiply okay. No joke. So with the doorbell came a nearly free it was $10 Echo show five. So I got a second because I bought an echo show five back when they were like 20 bucks I think right and then the stick up cam came with a free amazon echo dot that’s you know 25 bucks 25 to 50 bucks depending on where you buy it and so and then we picked up another free one and oil to Joe ski sent me in you I google home mini I know I’m going

Mike Wieger  [21:27] 
to talk about that. So I’m now having side by side and I’ve been kind of going back and forth between the two to see kind of differences because I have an echo dot and the mini right next to each other

Jim Collison  [21:36] 
so yeah, they just start like all these devices just start popping up in your your house so you have to be super careful.

Mike Wieger  [21:44] 
I mean, how long is it till you know 250 addresses on a on a single subnet isn’t going to be enough because most people have never considered having, you know, two subnets or opening that up to have you know,

Jim Collison  [21:56] 
I would never have thought of that. I’m thinking about all the different all the different IPS dresses that are just on my desk. That’s

Mike Wieger  [22:01] 
what I mean, right? Like these guys lights are not through a hub, right? They are individually connected to your Wi Fi. So each of those is an IP address. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [22:11] 
yeah, um, Lowe’s was having a sale on Philips tuneable lights, this this week, you get two for 20 bucks. 10 bucks each not too bad for the 819 lights that you could put in their Wi Fi enabled as well. They don’t go through the Philips Hue router, their Wi Fi enabled, right well, man, install a couple of those. And all of a sudden Yeah, you’re right. Like, I’m gonna have to figure out how to how to do net traversal. Right. And some of these as we think about it. Okay, so I got all those setup. I had mentioned I had that D link thing from a couple years ago. That came down to be the package cam. Tuesday modos and we did a program on this right I had that z moto camera, that little square one outdoor that’s the one that had been the package camp. It’s Outdoor camera and actually thought it was pretty sad that I was using it indoors. So I took it out because it’s got a great night vision on it and it shouldn’t be outside. It’s waterproof, it’s weatherproof, right? Should I move that to the backyard and then I bought that z moto spot which Swiss it pivots 360 it’s really meant to be inside where you want to 360 access to your house so you can check on kids or dogs or those kinds of things. And I taken the dealing out of the garage, so I put the I put that spot or whatever it’s called. We’ll just call it a spot for now. And I had thrown it out into the eye so I put it out into the garage so I got all the coverage I did. So I went from really two cams to five pretty quickly and then I started thinking Mike now I gotta manage all this stuff right so the ring app is pretty good but it doesn’t talk to the Z moto app and the Z moto app is pretty good but it doesn’t talk to ring or site hound ring I can’t get on site hound. The D link camera is really best Dealing has not upgraded their software in a while. So really that’s the best on site town because that’s rtmp right and rtsp so I kind of had a little bit of a nightmare on my hands as you start to think in I’m not saying I’ve solved this but it came down to this. So I put ring I have a a amazon fire seven. Take that come on out there and Amazon Fire seven device that runs the the ring screen really nicely. So that is there. Then I have an old Samsung Galaxy four note that was my iPhone, I put the Z moto app on that one. So that is right there and those sit here at my desk. I can see those anytime. Of course I can get to all of them off my phone. So when I’m remote, I can do it that way. Then I have a monitor setup here that’s running site down on the studio PC because that’s where that runs. And then install the second monitor right here. So like you because I wanted to be like you Mike Wieger I want to have a monitor or I could see my side house stuff going all the time. So I can look up right here and see the front door cam. Yeah, yeah. So it’s a little convoluted at this point, like having three apps and all kinds of notification. But it kind of works for now. Like, I’d like to get it all in one spot. But

Mike Wieger  [25:15] 
you know, and there’s the I struggle with that, you know, there’s pros and cons to each so so my setup is I have nine cameras all inside out. And then I have the only thing outside of sight sound is my simply safe doorbell. Because I tried really hard tried to find a doorbell that would just have an rtsp stream that gives the side down. But really, when you think about the doorbell, the whole feature is like when they ring it all the alerts. So I decided, you know what, I’ll have two different systems of sight sound, and I’ll have simply safe and simply save also came with an indoor camera. So I’m kind of like you I have kind of two main systems I check. I think, you know, it depends on who I’m talking to, in and who what I’m recommending for any person, if this is someone I’m going to not be able to help in the future. Just a random person off the street. You know, what’s your You know what’s kind of your tech background and you have extra spare computers around if not go with ring goes with that and just you know kind of go all in on one system that I’ve always you know for probably this community, I think you really have to give consideration to though going full into like a blue Iris or sign out only because of what you just mentioned. You know all the cameras if you’re using with blue eyes first of all, you can buy a ton of different cameras. And with all different price ranges, you can get the cheap Chinese stuff that works great. I have a few of those. I have a few of the high dollar ones, I have a whole mixed bag. And the great part about the gym is you were talking about my monitor up here and I do it right above this screen is a monitor. It’s just a nice for simple for grid, that’s not even using siteground. It’s the same cameras that go to site down, but this is just a Raspberry Pi that can pull in for rtsp streams and put them in a nice little grid. It doesn’t record doesn’t it just all I need to do is view and so I can take that Raspberry Pi and I can just copy that SD card and go for Raspberry Pi’s wherever I need them. It just opens you up to a lot More Options. But, you know, it goes back to what you said earlier, the convenience of running those cameras that you have, right? They’re battery powered, like, that’s fantastic. I think it’s really, really hard to find one of those for my system. All of mine, I had to go and hardware all mine or POV. And so I had to run wire to all the different corners of the house. And so me adding a camera is a weekend project, you know, whereas for you, you probably had that up in 10 minutes. Yeah. And so for you that 10 minutes he use switching between aspray doesn’t cause you too much grief.

Jim Collison  [27:32] 
No, I actually just put the apps in a folder on my phone, and I get notifications when they go off. And you don’t need to worry about the apps at that point. I actually don’t think having different cameras from different ecosystems is that big of a deal. Now, when we think about the automation, I’m gonna talk about this here in a second. Well, one thing

Mike Wieger  [27:51] 
Yeah, well, I think the only thing there is subscription fees. If you’re paying for the recording, you could end up paying multiple subscription fees. That is true, right? It’s only one That is a trigger.

Jim Collison  [28:00] 
No, no, that’s a good one. And actually, I thought about that. So I’ll have to kind of think through the ring is actually really reasonable three bucks a month, you can pay 30 bucks a year for the minimum, you know, for the whole thing. Oh, that’s not bad at all. Yeah. And then I think I have to double check on that. But then $10 the most expensive plan is $10 a month or $100 a year. And that’s actually super reasonable, right? We, we we’ve had those guys on here, way back in the day. They’re trying to keep these plans pretty reasonable. To get that done. I need to check my I need to check my options. Did you want to add to that?

Mike Wieger  [28:34] 
No, go ahead. I’ll finish up. Okay.

Jim Collison  [28:36] 
So yeah, I really can’t at least at this point, I know it’s going to start annoying me after a while. But you know, these things won’t last forever. And I’ll start replacing them pretty quick. And then I can start bringing them in, you know, kind of gives me a chance to kind of get into the ecosystem back into the ecosystem. I had Home Security before but he never really took it very seriously. You know, I said the cameras up and then I kind of you know One of the things I’ve loved about siteground is the recording like and so you know I actually set up a bunch of disk space this weekend to be able to record that and go back through and watch it and the resolution on it is really good and it’s a plugged in cam so I never have to worry about the replacing the battery on that one and it’s got a good view of the street and like there’s lots of things for consideration, kind of in that one of the things I did do is I was installing the stick up cam right below it as a security light in the it had been a motion had motion sensor on there and at some point in time, the motion sensor stopped working because somebody jammed a stick into it or something and broke it right. And so I was moving one of the lights like one of the lights was kind of high and it was blocking right put the stick up cam and as I was moving one of the lights It was a plastic this when I bought this whole unit it was plastic it literally Mike I just touched it It broke like they just the plastic had been up there. for 10 years maybe and it was super brittle like you know plastic in Nebraska right? So I ended up getting so not necessarily a tech gadget but I did end up getting a and I’ll go full screen on this one so you guys can see those Jim you know it almost looks like a Star Wars character right it does Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [30:20] 
I love that you brought those lights up

Jim Collison  [30:23] 
you so LED on the front here motion sensing $30 on Amazon not not rocket science or necessarily super techie three wire plug it in easy to use, but I will be replacing those lights up there as well. One of the things that gave me the advantage those big round lights that I’d had in there, you know the What do we call the spotlight or floodlights. They had a really high profile and so I didn’t have a lot of room for the stick up camp. With these now I get a lot lower profile and way more energy efficient,

Mike Wieger  [30:57] 
way more. Yeah and usually brighter than what you were paying And so I’m a huge This is kind of my I love Home Security and Home Security is all sensitive Home Security, like having a plan with your family for a burglary, armed robbery kind of what is your What is your plan right to defend your home. And the first step of that is always to make sure your house isn’t a target in the first place. Right? Like, it’s great to have that plan for someone breaks in what is our plan, but let’s just make sure that our house isn’t even targeted. All you need to do is make the other house cross the street look more appealing than your house and the lighting is such an easy, especially nowadays with LEDs and how cheap those you said $30 I mean that is nothing and that lights up a space especially and so motion detected lights are like my favorite thing to anywhere you can add them. Go for it. And you know I have some really cheap solar powered led ones. So I don’t, I didn’t have any power run to the spot where I was going to put them. But it’s over in these tiny little corners where someone could be hiding could get in there and look into our windows. And so as soon as anyone walks in there, they could They can’t hide in the bushes without being lit up like a, you know, it’s just in this corner. And as soon as that motion detects it doesn’t even have to be that bright. But it was a $10 little thing that I put in there that that really helped. I love those lights, anything most protected lights, man, you and I could nerd out on Home Security and Defense really home defense especially. That could be a whole segment.

Jim Collison  [32:21] 
Well, we’re going to make the most of this show about it just to be honest.

Mike Wieger  [32:23] 
So the only thing I’ll mention about the while we’re talking about security, so we were talking about multiple systems. So the thing is, you also got to remember is if you really go all in on something like ring, just make sure you have the upload bandwidth on your internet. Because the one thing I really like about running siteground is that it doesn’t take any of my bandwidth. So no internet bandwidth is taken up because it’s all just going land to the NVR. So I’ve just I’ve had a few people who have gone all in on these rings and they have like six cameras, and they only have like a 10 or five megabit Upload and they cannot do anything else on the network because these cameras are putting out quite I mean they’re 10 ATP cameras those are putting up quite some quite a lot of numbers when it comes to bandwidth. So just when you’re is really the the overall theme here is playing out before you really jump into this I wouldn’t a lot of people I think just go to BestBuy and grab a camera and it only think about what ecosystem do I want to be in? Do I want it to be going over the internet? Am I going to stick with this. So it’s all these things you’ve got to really plan out before you jump into one ecosystem.

Jim Collison  [33:28] 
Well, and this they’re kind of like me, they get in the situation where something happens to you and then you’re just in reactionary mode, and you’re not necessarily thinking it all the way through, you’re just like, I need a camera now and I’m gonna watch it straight for the next 24 hours get a deal, because you just need to make yourself feel good. By the way. This is aluminum casing. So we won’t have that problem again of this thing snapping, you know, this plastic snapping, Mike, one of the things where I want to get some feedback from listeners and I really want this not necessarily in our chat room live but if you’re watching this on YouTube, put it in the comments down below. Or if you’re in our discord or in our Facebook group, I’ll take those there. You can reference them later. One of the things I want to do and this light is currently also connected to the porch light, which are both now well this will be motion sensing. But the porch light is not it’s just a light that’s up there. One of the things I think I want to do is put them on a switch on a smart switch so that I can if I leave the house and I forgot to turn on the I forgot to turn them on. I can turn them on. But not necessarily for that I want to create some home automation bits with sunup and sundown because I don’t want to replace right now I don’t want to replace the light that’s over the porch with a motion sensing sunup sundown by the way that’s this has status well. I want to leave it in place and I want to mess with switches could do a smart bulb

Mike Wieger  [34:55] 
in that one.

Jim Collison  [34:57] 
Well, but here’s the deal. I really want a monkey with a smart Switch like so this gives me this gives me a reason you

Mike Wieger  [35:03] 
don’t mean just the alley like the actual actual switch doesn’t want to play those two so that’s a great question because I want to know if people are finding the actual reliable do they work well I have not used a switch as of yet.

Jim Collison  [35:14] 
We mo I think it’s we mo has a third I need a three way switch because it’s it’s controlling on and off from both upstairs and downstairs. So if you have a recommendation for me love to and can ask you have a neutral wire in the house right? I don’t know can I don’t think so. which may cause problems when we do these smart switches so love to hear about that. That’s a discussion I want to take offline either down in the comments here on Youtube. Throw it in the discord group throw it in the in the Facebook group, more of a conversation I’d rather do along those lines. What the other thing is caused me to do is get my habitat right remember habitat we had them how long How long ago was that? Was it like nine months ago? Maybe? And he was actually 19 Yeah. never really got that. Working and use this as an opportunity. I kind of thought, gosh, you know, I got this thing sitting around, I should probably figure out how to make this crazy habitat thing work. So let me let me just prove to you just so that you know that I actually did this thing here will share the screens with you. Here I’ve got easy every sink. We’ll talk about that a little bit later, is we talked about that’s another conversation but there’s a habitat dashboard setup. Right now I’ve created a little little tab for the time I’ve got a light section. I’ve only put one light here on habitat. So this is the this is the litter box light, which I have full control over. I can make that thing dim or loud right now the cat is freaking out. He’s like doing the light that and one of the cool things so you can do lights and door locks and there’s some other things. I don’t have many of the things that I would need for this, but it also controls your Chromecast which is kind of cool so you can control volume on your Chromecast it’ll even tell you what the media source that’s coming in on that Chromecast. So I set up a box for the volume that’s right here. And I set up this would say, YouTube if I was watching YouTube or whatever, I’m kept Plex if I wanted to do it that way. So yeah, so many of you we did the show, I’m not going to spend a ton of time on habitat now. But just just for transparency sake, I did get the habitat up and running, I’ll continue to be looking at it and devices, like that’s another thing to consider like the beauty of the habitat is you can kind of get everything in a single dashboard. I actually installed it on a PC that’s touchscreen to make it even easier. And habitat has some home automation stuff has some automating things. It’s not the only thing that will automate your your IoT devices but it is a thing and so kind of got me thinking like, Okay, I need to get this thing up and running and figure this thing is a little more it’s a little less tech friendly. Like you have to be pretty technical to get this habitat thing kind of running at times. But I can see where they’re going with it like after using it now. And I was thinking back to the interview that we did with those guys. It’s kind of like, oh, okay, I get this now. I see it, by the way, gotten a ton better since we even since we had them on. I think back in the spring. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [38:22] 
because I’ve really settled on Amazon or Google kind of being kind of the hub essentially for all of that I tell you, so because of the fantastic gift from Joe ski. I was actually testing out just before the show, adding all my lights into the Google Home ecosystem. And man that was pretty slick and the all the options it can do and the routine skills and so really, what those two those have been their, their routines and their things that they’ve been getting better at are pretty good. You can build a pretty cool, automated workflow with Amazon. I haven’t tried it with Google yet. But those routines and Amazon, though it’s pretty nice. Well This year, turn off this light here, do this here with this command or this time or this trigger.

Jim Collison  [39:04] 
Pretty cool. And that’s the $64 million question like is now you can do a lot of the same things like, you know, the Amazon devices and the Google devices, they’re very similar and their automation space and what they’re doing, you could get a habitat to do some of that kind of for you. And you can create some If This Then That routines that are built in, you can do this in a lot of the apps that you get. So the Philips Hue app is trying to be a single hub for you to do automations that are in the D link app that you have tries to be a home automation device for all the things that you have, but they only work with their products in most of those cases. And so right you’re limited on that side.

Mike Wieger  [39:46] 
But that’s why I love about Amazon and Google is that they’re really in here so they control a lot of stuff. Right? Like I have not found a smartphone yet they cannot be controlled by the one of those. So what’s next is can you guys get my security camera footage in here to right now that I don’t want because the automation their lives in the cloud. So that works really well for you know, bulbs and switches and playing music. I do not want all my videos to do overs and I have side houses so I control that video. There’s I found Jim that for me, you would think I was either like a full like privacy hardcore, don’t give it to yourself in the cloud, like especially cuz I’m like next cloud and I’m, you know, site has been awesome. And then there’s other there’s other ones I’m like now. I’m like, I’m okay, like the convenience of some of these are worth it for me. And so for some of the automation, I’m totally fine trusting with you know, Google’s cloud and Amazon’s cloud. I am not there yet with video. Just because I have started adding some in house cameras. And I’m not I haven’t gotten on board with it. I’m sure I will in the future with the convenience factor will be good. But while I have the hardware in our rack to run all this stuff, might as well use it.

Jim Collison  [40:54] 
Yeah. Couple let’s get to the chat room. Like a couple questions came in while you’re talking. Alex says anybody And besides price, you didn’t use the ring floodlights with camera combined. Okay, so when I was making the purchase, I didn’t know my lights were broken. Like they were still fine. It was when I got up to this location I realized oh, the motion sensor doesn’t work anymore because the motion sensor is broken. And then as soon as I touched the light, it broke the arm. I mean it Mike it literally just crumbled it didn’t break it like crumbled on me. Again, plastic and really cold environments does not survive more than a year or two. And so at that point, then I was like, actually, you know, those, I think those ring with the floods that I would have gotten all in one would have been 200 bucks. And I did it for 130. So price, that’s kind of why I did that. So Alex, great question. And I did look at those. I almost bought, I think you can get those refurbed you can get the box that’s got a flood in it. So it’s a symbol, it’s a cylinder and then it’s got two lights on the side of the camera that come on as a flood One I don’t think there is bright as I want them to be you can get those for like 179 I think refurbed so there’s some price options there but Alex that’s kind of why I went with that Ken reminds me without neutral wires he asked me a question it’s an old house so I got to think this through they’re very limited when he looked a while ago for the switches Lutron was the was the only smart switch he could find at the time that did

Mike Wieger  [42:22] 
interesting. Yeah, I know nothing about wiring so I don’t even know what a neutral wires I don’t know what to look for if I open up my panel

Jim Collison  [42:28] 
and I’ll it’s a good so here’s the deal it’s a good thing I’m pretty sure it doesn’t that’s a really good question Can for me to ponder before I start because if if that’s the case and I can’t put a smart switch on it then Mike I’m really just kind of probably replace that the even though that’s fairly new that’s up there, the one the porch light, I’m gonna have to replace it with something and so that may I may have to get a smart whole unit that’s, that’s smart to do that as well. So Ken, thanks for that. Newbold smart, maybe. Maybe I could be, that’d be a good look. It’s one of those decorative bulbs, and it’s pretty small. I know they have some smart bulbs that are small. I don’t know. It makes sense. Yeah, no, it would, it would indeed. Kevin schooner says if you use Alexa, Amazon is your hub. Do you lose automation if you lose the internet? The answer is yes. Yes, you do. That was the whole habitat pitch right?

Mike Wieger  [43:26] 
But you know, and so yes, you do you lose your automation. Another reason though, why it’s great to have siteground because I do not lose my cameras by losing them because all of my camera so okay, all the benefits. It’s local. I have a battery backup in my rack, which is where my NVR ours. That battery backup is also backing up my switch

Jim Collison  [43:47] 
that 48 ports which is POV which is powering all my cameras, so my cameras will not go down in a power outage. And I don’t need internet to re recording so my battery will last 20 minutes. So You know, in my doomsday scenario, I see someone outside sniffing my power because they know I got all this stuff and trying to break in. And they they’re like, aha, he’s not gonna record any of this and I have 20 minutes of being recorded recording them while they’re gone. It’s all local. And because my cameras went on POV, you just reminded me of a Scooby Doo episode when they Nope, just kidding. One of the things, you know habitat, so since we had them on right, they were a local only solution right at that point that they didn’t they weren’t doing anything in the cloud. That’s since changed. So your dashboard, your dashboard can now go to the cloud. However, you have both options, you can switch between local and in the cloud that makes it really convenient if you don’t want a remote desktop in right or set up a port forwarding or any of those kinds of things to get that done. If they do now have a cloud option for Habitat. They’ve really made some progress on what they’re doing. They’ve got some they’re on their second gen Alexa skill, so they are definitely continuing to do some work over habitat. But yes, if you if you got with some of these automation, if you don’t have internet connectivity, you gotta kind of watch for that as well.

Mike Wieger  [45:11] 
And one other tip there, if you use port forwarding at all, I would really suggest to look, if you can add setting up a reverse proxy, if you have a device that you have a computer that’s always on that can run, Let’s Encrypt as a reverse proxy, you can eliminate all those port forwards with the reverse proxy. And it’s amazing ever since I did it, because then it’s just Port 4434 SSL from your router. It’s one port from where that’s forwarded to that reverse proxy. And then reverse proxies based off the sub domain is just kicking it out to wherever needed to go. So one little quick tip there, if you’re doing any sort of Port Forwarding, check out a reverse proxy, it makes things first of all, it’s a ton easier. And second of all, a little more secure. You’re not popping holes in your router all over the place. Yeah, because a lot of people know those common ports because most people don’t change them like hey, site how and uses Port 8848. And I know that I’m going to see it all those ports are open on routers all over, I know that it leads to a site, how an MBR if they’ve left it standard, so running it through a reverse proxy, they no longer it’s just 443. It’s open. All right,

Jim Collison  [46:11] 
so I might have to look into that, because I just opened that port today. So I could look at it through the app. Yeah. And

Mike Wieger  [46:18] 
it’s not the odds of you actually, someone taking advantage of that or not, Hi, it’s username and password protected to it is in it, but it’s us nerds who you know, go that extra level of security when we can. And plus, then you can use your really cool domain. And if you sub domains, and like security.com goes to my security cameras, that’s not my actual URL. But vpn.com goes to a VPN and next cloud.com because my next cloud instance and all of that is just because it’s hitting that reverse proxy, reverse proxy, hey, what’s your sub domain, okay, I send you this computer, I send you the server, I send you that, you know, NVR whatever.

Jim Collison  [46:54] 
So pretty cool. One of the drawbacks I found in all of this is not private. I dropped about 250 to do all this you know these two cameras and in the range extended which isn’t terrible and I probably have $415 cameras right now at retail if I were to think about the various five

Mike Wieger  [47:13] 
cameras is really good

Jim Collison  [47:15] 
Yeah, yeah and I got them I got good pricing on them slick slick slick deals be your friend like Kevin scoon over be your friend man that guy like there are some great although I think slick deal was the one that I saw to get the to get the original door and man i didn’t i didn’t think for a second when that deal came up. I snatched that thing with an with another echo show and they’re

Mike Wieger  [47:36] 
posting those in the deals channel on the discord so if you guys are looking for where those are posted on

Jim Collison  [47:41] 
Facebook

Mike Wieger  [47:42] 
yeah online deals channel in the discord is where they’re posting those. I have that set actually that’s one of the channels that notifies me every time there’s a post

Jim Collison  [47:50] 
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s a good one. It’s a good one to follow for sure. But one of the drawbacks to it is I’m checking my cams all day now. Right and I know that will wear off Like I know, eventually it will wear off. But I today I was, hey, look you want to see. So showing people at work, you know, I went back and I was going to take the day off. And then I was like, I need it. Like, I had spent so much time doing home automation over this weekend that I was like I need I need to go to work I need to not think about Home Security or security cams are some of those kinds of, you know, some of those kinds of things, so to speak. And so super good. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time doing that. Michael Delaney says port forwarding, what a headache, actually. So this is one area Mike. today. I was I had accessed it from home the home the the site out in sorry, took my internal IP and I put it in at work, right. And of course it works great. It’s behind the firewall. Yeah, idiot. So I get to work and I can’t figure out why it’s not working and because it’s using an internal IP address. So I ping my Otter Hey, go to a browser and type in what’s my IP? And tell me what it says. So she’s smart enough to just do that. Give me the numbers back, put that number in, boom, authenticate, I am right in. And so Oh, but then I realized at first not not so so I had to go into the bitdefender. Box. Man port forwarding on bitdefender is super, super easy. Go in, say win and land hit okay. On that on that what you’re trying to get to. And in case that’s this box right here, done fired right up. So port forwarding not difficult on bitdefender. I know and some other routers, it can be more complicated, especially when you think of like a pf sense, which has got a ton of options. Although I never found it particularly difficult on PSN see, that was actually that was actually pretty easy,

Mike Wieger  [49:50] 
and I think siteground will UPnP if you had that enabled. If there’s a checkbox in the site, hound where it says Configure my router for me. And that’s essentially a UPnP check right box. Like do you want me UPnP? It’ll let you that’s a whole nother conversation, though. It is.

Jim Collison  [50:09] 
It is. But it was it was it was cool to come into site hound and be able to get access to that package cam. Yeah, that way. got it done. So it has, go ahead.

Mike Wieger  [50:22] 
Well, no, you just mentioned that you ping your daughter. So for if you use a reverse proxy, obviously, that means you use a domain. The one little thing that I use is really easy to use. So if you’re using Docker for Let’s Encrypt, go ahead and add the duck DNS Docker container. It’s super simple. And that’s all it does is it constantly is saying, Hey, what’s my IP, what’s my IP and updating a domain for you? So my actual domain that I own forwards actually to the duck DNS and it’s free. It’s a free service. But then you have a little Docker container it’s always update. So Jim, if, if while you’re at work, your power went out at home and your router reset. Can you get a new public IP, you wouldn’t be worried about it because duck DNS has been updated. That’s

Jim Collison  [51:04] 
good way to do it. Yes. Good way to do it. For now port forwarding pretty easy for me. And I’m not I don’t I mean, you have to, I think now I just have

Mike Wieger  [51:13] 
will be out of projects when the proxy, let’s let’s run Docker,

Jim Collison  [51:18] 
you have to mention it a few more times for

Mike Wieger  [51:20] 
that actually, if you have unbraid. anyone, any of our listeners on right, just do it. Like Let’s Encrypt Docker container from community applications, duck DNS from community applications, you won’t have it up and running in five minutes. I mean, it’s just it’s super, super simple. And I think there’s actually even a better one than the Let’s Encrypt, I think it’s like nginx something, something, something that actually has a GUI for Let’s Encrypt, you can have to edit some comms files, but there’s one of the guayana to that works really well.

Jim Collison  [51:52] 
Well, couple weekends from now.

Mike Wieger  [51:54] 
Yeah, the project when automation.

Unknown Speaker  [51:58] 
I’ll get you to set up reverse proxy. Yeah

Jim Collison  [52:00] 
well and and now I’ve got my eyes on light bulbs and you know just getting I think the next project is getting this new security light setup figured out with the porch lights so that i have i honestly with LED I don’t care if they’re on all the time, like I really don’t care so yeah, you know it’s one of those kinds of things. It’s better for my cameras if the lights are on all the time. I would love to be able to set both of them to sunup sundown kind of automation, though and or this one or this one I like you said, Yeah, I think this is guy I think this has the setting automatically. So what I might just do is replace the porch light again, not terribly expensive, cheaper than some home automation devices and just replace the light like with us that’s got a sensor built into it. So that might be the easiest thing to do. Then leave the switch on all the time. In both things just respond to sunup sundown and motion. So

Mike Wieger  [52:58] 
there’s nothing worse when You have a fully automated house then when guests come and they switch a switch off all my lights are pretty much smart lights. Don’t just like ask our assistant that for you. Okay, we have an assistant we have we have someone that does that for us. Okay.

Jim Collison  [53:15] 
Hello lady a turn the light on

Mike Wieger  [53:19] 
and like what do you call it? This is annoying. I’m asking you to switch my fine for the weekend. Just use the switch now. Flip it switches back on when you leave.

Jim Collison  [53:25] 
Well, even though I didn’t I said I didn’t want to talk about this right now. Tony said reading right now new g switches and dimmers that don’t require a neutral so maybe

Mike Wieger  [53:34] 
or Alexa just popped into a G i think one of them just partnered with those smart switches and they’re like it’s a deep integration with those can remember

Jim Collison  [53:42] 
guys I have to do some research will take this to discord or will take Facebook or maybe you’ll do it on Twitter. If you want hit me on twitter at j Coulson. We can talk about it there. I’d love to I don’t I’m not going to make that decision very, very quickly. But I will be making it in the next couple of weeks too. So I’d love to About that, Mike.

Mike Wieger  [54:03] 
here’s here’s here’s one we didn’t talk about in the beginning. Another one ski.

Jim Collison  [54:10] 
Man, that’s a good beer Todd hard work honest beer.

Mike Wieger  [54:13] 
So now I’ve had pretty excited already had three different beers from Joe. I’ve had the smores I’ve had the honey Bach and then I’ve had the

Mike Wieger  [54:23] 
whatever it is, you’ve had

Jim Collison  [54:24] 
them all. You’ve had them all. Yeah, Joe, thanks for again, thanks again. If you have by the way if you have local beers you want to send us to try on your show you Jim at the average guy.tv we

Mike Wieger  [54:36] 
get a shout out from

Jim Collison  [54:39] 
love to have your beer. Mike, we woke up on the first to know, guide center data in the media center box and I’ve been tired. We don’t spend a ton of time on this. You’ve never used that. But we have a lot of media center folks who did the guys over to entertainment to Dotto, Josh and Richard Talked a bunch about this in the most recent entertainment to Dotto podcast but it for me it was a reality I didn’t know how it was going to end it ended with Sarah saying oops, there goes the guide data now I’ve been prepping her for months saying hey, at some point this is going to stop. I’d even set up a couple different solutions you know, we tried YouTube TV and plaques and some of those others and fortunately over the last couple months have been really working with the Plex solution and have been trying different ways of setting it up and and making it more efficient and some of those other kind of things and so when she said hey, guy, Dave is gone, I’m like, I’m ready for you. This may be the first time ever I was I was like, Hey, I am ready. I got a solution. Let’s sit down. I want to show you how to do this. And so what I ended up doing is taking the Plex the the good one, the Plex pro or whatever that is. And and I actually USB a one that good ones. There’s like a little round ones. Now that are like Yeah some new ones no no Nvidia shields So you said Plex Pro. Oh did I Nvidia Shield version of Plex okay whatever the one that is good enough to do the server for the server part of bikes yeah they got these rounds good yes i think i Yeah, I think so. So put a one terabyte SSD drive on there for fast like for really fast read and write on that one mostly reads

Mike Wieger  [56:28] 
is a database the database on flex if you have it on a spinner is off.

Jim Collison  [56:32] 
Yeah, it can it can be so it was even worse on the Drobo so I have an SSD right so it’s all well this has an SSD but it was still not it doesn’t it’s not ideal, right?

Mike Wieger  [56:44] 
Not ideal. I would almost run it on like a desktop that you have there. Well I was trying to go really low power trying to go low profile but I mean one that you’re already running it on right like because then you would have full transcode caitli if you have a machine on how to

Jim Collison  [56:56] 
actually it runs really well on the shield.

Mike Wieger  [56:59] 
That’s great. Really really well yeah. Platforms not

Jim Collison  [57:03] 
yeah like well on the shield with any kind of figured out like I kind of figured out like most of those problems whereas like as trying to watch it on the Xbox and the Xbox Plex right not good

Mike Wieger  [57:14] 
to my detriment because the Xbox is my main media box in my living room. And if you’re live TV Okay, regular TV is a regular recorded stuff movies TV shows totally fine. Live TV on the Xbox for some reason is awful. Yeah, have you found that like movies? Great TV shows awesome live TV complete dogshit It’s awful. It’s so bad. I don’t I have no idea why it’s the only part of that app that is terrible. And you know people have said it for a while and I didn’t want to believe it or I thought it would get better. And I just never did. Xbox and sadly because I it’s still my main media box.

Jim Collison  [57:55] 
Well, the NVIDIA Shield running Plex would buffer on the to the Drobo. And even when I put a spin on that thing and USB mode, it was slow that says the man just eliminated any is like I can’t have I can’t have her waiting. It’s just it has to go fast, right? So I sat her down and I said, Okay, here’s like your remote got infinitely easier, like left, right up, down, hit this back and volume, which before we that media center remote and it had buttons like it must have had 80 buttons on that media center amount, right? You can never find the one that you want when the TV’s too loud. It was it’s always it was always a hassle. So she’s like, Oh, I got that figured out and I’m like okay, here’s here’s how you schedule shows. Now the one big drawback with media center you could watch while you’re recording with Plex can do that either you’re recording or you’re watching live can. You can’t start a recording and watch it at the same time. You can you can watch it another you can. I think you could go back and watch it on another channel but you can’t watch that recording of it. Anyways. Not Not a big deal.

Mike Wieger  [59:01] 
Correct. You can’t start watching the recording while it’s recording. Right? You can watch it live and recording.

Jim Collison  [59:07] 
Yes. You can’t go back to the beginning of course. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right. So and that was a media center was great at that. But so I said, so that’s not gonna work. She’s like, okay, that’s not a problem. Really. Okay. And then I said, and you can now schedule and on your phone or on the computer, and she’s like, Oh, I can I can just and she loves that. She even just watch on your phone. Yeah, or watch on the computer. Right? She’s like, I’m never gonna watch on the computer. She’s like, but scheduling the shows I had, she loves the, the grid guide on the computer. And she’s like, yeah, I’m going to schedule everything here and then I’ll just watch it there. She’s like, this can be great. So okay, so we’re in full test mode. It’s it hasn’t been a week yet she’s in it, but I haven’t heard one complaint seems to be working. We set up all our shows to record

Mike Wieger  [59:54] 
so it’s on the the shield and you said is the recordings even going to the SSD? Yeah. Yeah, so how much space do you got? a terabyte?

Unknown Speaker  [1:00:04] 
I think we’re okay. You’ll be fine.

Jim Collison  [1:00:05] 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I think it’s super fast. I mean, it is just, it’s there’s no heat. There’s nothing like I don’t have a big computer up there blazing away. I don’t in fact, I’m going to leave the media center computer up probably for a month just to get windows seven right right. Just so it’s there. And then one day I’m gonna say he needs to sing anymore. And she’s gonna say no, and down it comes and and then I’m bored burst mining. Now it’s not that great of a box. A great thought and album or perspective know, and I think the I’m gonna actually take the Xbox out there so she can watch movies, because that’s been a she loses, she loses the DVD player. And I’m not playing the Xbox enough here to make it worth leaving here. It’d be better on the big TV anyways, and if I ever want a game sheet, there’s plenty of time when I can. I can do that. So The other night this last night, Sammy and I are enjoying a beverage on the on the deck. I mentioned this early in the show. We came in and we were laughing about some YouTube stuff and I said hey, let’s just let’s just go watch it and it was super great to go start the YouTube cast it to the to the NVIDIA Shield turns on the TV and everything just start showing it and it was it was dropped dead simple. And I think we’re really going to enjoy that Nvidia Shield on the TV replacing the the computer don’t have to worry about updates for the most part don’t have to worry about any virus for the most part. really like it was Plex

Mike Wieger  [1:01:41] 
it sounds like that’s a perfect machine for you. Because even because even on the hard drive, you don’t have a big movie library or storing. You’re just it’s literally just for TV shows. There’s lots more than enough you’re not transfer. You’re not having a bunch of users hit this thing at the same time. Right. So it does sound like it’s perfect. Yeah, man. You’re so right. I I did not I have never used the YouTube cast feature. Until all sort of like, wait, the Xbox, I think has that. Because I was I was trying to use the remote on the Xbox to like, search. I’m like, whoo, I can use my phone and cast it. Oh my god, and you can queue them. I had no idea about the queue. So I was like scrolling q qq what else I just sat there and hours of content available

Jim Collison  [1:02:19] 
was great. That was awesome.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:21] 
Yeah, I never used it before because I didn’t I didn’t know the Xbox YouTube app had that I should have thought of that. But I accidentally tapped it on my phone and it said, Hey, Xbox, I’m like, that’s the destination.

Jim Collison  [1:02:32] 
Okay, cool. I have about six destinations in the house like I can literally cast is just about everything. My son brought his. What do you mean? What are the devices that you saw? My son has a TV big 55 inch that’s got a Chromecast built into it. Nvidia shields got a Chromecast built into it. I have a I had a Chromecast on it. I got a Chromecast down here. On on this box. So that’s for I might have one more somewhere that I can’t remember. What?

Mike Wieger  [1:03:06] 
Look at that I had no idea. Some of these were Yeah, all the Roku sticks now. So I just opened mine up. I have three Roku sticks. Kitchen display. What’s that? Oh, that’s the Google hub. Now, so that’s number one now,

Jim Collison  [1:03:19] 
early my TV natively I had no idea was one. Yeah, yeah. You’re smart TVs? Got Chromecast.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:25] 
Yeah. Because that Xbox is on and this one once I turned on it.

Jim Collison  [1:03:30] 
It’s Dude, it’s a whole new world. Like it’s just a different like it was in one weekend. We all the sudden got security cameras everywhere. And you know, I think on the shield, I might even be able to use the Google Assistant to to see any of my cameras that are now that would be Google enabled.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:53] 
So is the shield on by Google Now.

Jim Collison  [1:03:55] 
I mean, no, but it’s Android. It runs Android TV. It has the google assistant in it. Yeah. So you know, let me know if that works. Because you could from your TV or a replacement

Mike Wieger  [1:04:06] 
for that Xbox in the living room. And a shield might be my answer. I was thinking Apple TV because the interface there is just gorgeous. Put it there. So how much how much is a shield?

Unknown Speaker  [1:04:21] 
179

Mike Wieger  [1:04:23] 
Okay, so probably the same price

Jim Collison  [1:04:25] 
Yeah. Watch for him on slick deals because you’ll see they they run deals animal set an alert up on slick deals for it. So Mike, you got a pair of Apple AirPods pro this get those for Christmas or Was that it? Did you were you Santa for

Mike Wieger  [1:04:43] 
the Christmas present? Yeah. And these are the earbuds I’ve been waiting for. Just plain and simple. So I didn’t know I was waiting for him. I didn’t know this is what I wanted. You know, when I saw the members, my commandos look really cool. Now that I have them and I’ve been using them daily basis. I am just I had low I like over the year for the airplane. But besides that I hated wearing my bows anywhere else just because you know they’re big and clunky. Even in my office. I didn’t want to wear them because I don’t know. I just like the look and the feel. I don’t know. So having true noise cancelling Active Noise Cancelling not just passive noise cancelling Active Noise Cancelling earbuds? You know, man, Jim, how long has it been since I praised Apple on a product? This is weird, right? Like I haven’t really a long time and they I think they nailed the pros. These things are for in worth. If I had, I would still be happy with him if I had paid the price myself. Although they were Christmas gift. If I had paid the price, I would be totally happy with him. First of all, the transparent mode is super interesting too. So what these earbuds have is first of all, you can turn them completely off noise cancelling. That’s really weird. It’s like I mean, it’s like having air pods in that sealed in your ears. So hearing anything outside of You, you hear like a muffled version. So if I had them in off mode, which it doesn’t even default to it all, you actually have to actively switch off mode. You hear your music, it’s just like having these earbuds I have in my ears right now that regular Apple earbuds in. But they’re sealed. So everything else around you is kind of muffled and they’re not noise cancelling. It’s a weird setting. Then there’s noise cancelling, which is great with your bought earbuds. I mean, obviously it’s not Bose over the year quality just because it’s not over the years. But man, I was shocked at the quality of the noise cancelling they’re able to achieve with a sealed earbuds sounds really cool. legitimates the transparency mode that is awesome. So this transparency mode, you have sealed earbuds that usually give you a buffer, then they use the microphones on the outside to almost amplify what’s not amplified but just allow the outside sound in you feel like you have nothing really here really it’s the weirdest experience of transparency mode because you feel like you have nothing in but then all sudden you can hear your Music and the pros have the feature will announce your messages. So it’ll wait. it’ll it’ll use the microphones and it’ll wait till you’re not in the conversation. So if you and I were talking right now, it’s not going to alert me. I stopped talking to it you stop talking about a quiet mode it’ll say hey, you have a new message from Anna and it will read the message to you. It’s so it’s it’s I didn’t know it had that feature that’s for sure. I didn’t actually knew it even had until I had it in my ears. But with that transparency mode, I on a Saturday afternoon will usually have them in around the house. Because I can hear my family I can hear stuff I get notifications, I can hear music I want to turn them on and notifications run through there. If I want to watch a YouTube video that I am the only one hearing it. It’s not everyone that transparency mode is is pretty rock solid I

Jim Collison  [1:07:42] 
like so it’s just is it letting the sound through or exactly replicating the sound? I mean,

Mike Wieger  [1:07:48] 
well, you got to think about it’s a sealed earbuds. So it’s not just I mean, there’s no way for it to like break right? You’re literally using the microphone, right? Because it’s not opening up any physical thing. So the sound

Jim Collison  [1:07:57] 
different because it’s totally natural. Really,

Mike Wieger  [1:08:00] 
okay. It sounds like you just

Jim Collison  [1:08:03] 
sound like you don’t have your budget. Are they uncomfortable

Mike Wieger  [1:08:06] 
I never liked. So they have three different fits for the day comes with three different size, whatever they’re called the silicone thing that seals near you. And I’m actually I’m one size on one and a different size and the other

Jim Collison  [1:08:21] 
you have lopsided ear because it

Mike Wieger  [1:08:23] 
has an ear test that you test and you run it and it plays sound and it can hear itself so tries to tell you, and one was really uncomfortable. And so I switched it. I’m like, Is it weird to use one size now? I’m like, no. And so my right ear is bigger than my left here, apparently. So.

Jim Collison  [1:08:39] 
Yeah, it’s two different ones. That’s not gonna make you feel awkward for the rest of your life.

Unknown Speaker  [1:08:42] 
Yeah, I’m not self conscious about that at all.

Jim Collison  [1:08:46] 
So like, these are 250 right retail to 50 for the police airpot Pro setup from Apple. Alright, so my quietcomfort 35 we’re 350 I could probably sell Those for a couple hundred bucks now they’re pretty new right or

Mike Wieger  [1:09:04] 
Well, I think you use yours mainly for travel right?

Jim Collison  [1:09:07] 
Yeah I do I only use them for trying I

Mike Wieger  [1:09:08] 
don’t know verdict is out for me cuz I haven’t bought an airplane. These are gonna perform as well airplay now reviewers have said yeah, they’re there I mean, it’s just they are different right they’re not going to be your bows. You really need just need to go the Apple Store and try them and go, Hmm, interesting because these for me are more of I have no problem having those in my ears pretty much all day. Whereas Bose if you walk around with those on your head at the office, I’ve done it before, but it almost gives everyone the idea that you don’t want to talk to them. Yeah, your buds it’s like I could still probably wave you down and you’ll pull one out real quick. You’re just you have the cans on your ears. It’s a little bit more of I’m not looking to talk to anyone kind of vibe. So I will let you know when I take my first on take them on a plane in March. Okay, go San Diego.

Jim Collison  [1:09:57] 
I’m $250 in Cameras not your AirPods at the moment. So yeah, it’ll be good to give me some time to rebuild the cash. But I would be, I am a big earbud fan as opposed to the cans. The cans work better than anything else as far as noise cancelling goes so when I was on an airplane, that’s the best solution. But if we get to the point where we’ve got in ear, noise cancelling, that’s at the same value as over the year like those bows, I am all in I would because of my glasses and some and I got a big hand would be in that thing sits on your head and it hurts after a while like I’d love to go your buds and I’ll be honest, if the latency is low on them, I don’t even use them here in podcasting where I’d put them in I bring them in, especially if the lengthy ambient sound through because that’s what I want to hear. I want to you know when I’m when they’re in, I want I do want to hear my own voice come back through on them. That’s the that’s the

Mike Wieger  [1:11:01] 
other part about cancelling you don’t like and so these you get the best of both worlds, you’re on a plane turn on full noise cancelling mode anywhere else really, I, I’m usually in transparency mode all the time, even though it has the noise cancelling. There’s not many time when I need true noise cancelling. Right? Sometimes if I’m in my office, and I really want to zone out the world, I’ll turn them on. But most time I’m in transparency mode. So it’s kind of nice to with one headset. I mean, there’s not many or you can switch from being able to hear the outside world and not. And that’s I would never use Bose headphones on a podcast because you don’t you’re probably yelling at the microphone cuz you can’t hear yourself.

Jim Collison  [1:11:38] 
Yeah, no, no, you can’t. Yeah, you’re only hearing it’s a weird for me. It’s so weird because I’ve used earbuds for so long. In It For Me. It’s the purest audio sound I can get that are both in ear monitors and the ambient sound that of my own voice that I’m hearing around me. Yeah, I really liked that experience. Your buds had made some Bluetooth speakers or some bluetooth earbuds I think at some point, and I think I remember the latency was so bad in them. Those early versions as early Bluetooth versions had really bad latency built into them. Yeah, I think they’re getting that mostly fixed. I interviewed somebody on a podcast a couple weeks ago, and they were using it was in Japan of all places. And they were using AirPods. And he goes, No, no latency on this end.

Mike Wieger  [1:12:30] 
And he using the microphone from them. And he was

Jim Collison  [1:12:33] 
he was, he sounded pretty good. Did it Really? Yes. What? I wouldn’t do it as a host. I wouldn’t do it as the host.

Mike Wieger  [1:12:41] 
But as a Yeah, yeah. But just to test it and see ya. So these are another option too. So I’ve gone with these for something like podcasting. And what are those? So these are the cheap, cheap, cheap versions there, Samson. I mean, they’re cheap. But I’m talking about the style their Obraniak, right? So this is open to the inside. So when I put these on, it doesn’t sound like I’m Mina, Rachel Yeah, but they’re still nice big drivers. Yeah, right

Jim Collison  [1:13:05] 
so one of the one of the things that will wrap the conversation with this one of the great things was quiet comforts are good at is. The sound isolation on the microphone is so good. So when you’re on a conference call somebody and you’re in a really busy space, it really does a nice job of only getting your voice while you’re on the call. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [1:13:26] 
and the old versions that don’t have a microphone so that’s a conversation

Jim Collison  [1:13:31] 
that’s a big selling point for both on those is that you can be in a really busy office and it’s only going to pick up your voice if you’re on the call with them so that that’s kind of another you know, it’s kind of another reason maybe to have them but

Mike Wieger  [1:13:46] 
other gyms as you walk around with q tips hanging from years people think the same thing he’s probably referring back to when I said the Bose make people think you want to talk to them.

Jim Collison  [1:13:55] 
Yeah. I don’t think they are cool. Other Jim, I kind of agree with you and I kind of don’t like I’m getting kind of used to people walking around with them on and you know, you kind of You don’t look as dorky as if you have a pair of cans on I’ve watched people walking around, you know doing things anyway. But you got the earbuds in, it’s kinda like okay. So I don’t know, maybe things are shifting me but I’m still a lot of interest lies in the Facebook group and in the discord group, I put out a question this week about Nord VPN and about ease us and some of their products. And both those companies have approached me about sponsorship for this. And I’ve been really, really, really careful about who I kind of let into the space as far as that. And so if you have feedback on any of those companies, and by the way, the Facebook group has actually been really, really helpful on this, especially on the Nord VPN side of giving me some feedback. I’m kind of working with them a little bit. I’m not giving them Oh yeah, I’ll take your money and I’ll say it Whatever you want about it, I’m kind of like the the the ease us guys I said hey, I want to use your sync product because that’s it remember a couple I don’t know six months a year ago I said hey, what are we using for sync these days and I ended up on on always sync that I’m actually I bought a license for and then I’m currently using to sync files when I seeking I’m seeking my backup so I’ve got the morrow data box that has all of my everything, all my podcast stuff on it. Then I want to sync that over to the Drobo just as a backup copy so I have a local backup copy of it as well I Island and always think it’s been great version 19 they’ve been around forever. I think I paid the 30 bucks or whatever it is for lifetime of always sync but I started using this ease us sync tool and man is drop dead simple and it does a pretty good job at laxa. You I’m going to be working with it over the next couple weeks but the only feedback on those so many emails Jim at the average guy TV, I may try and work some kind of deal with them that they give us a discount code or something for listeners. But before I did any of that stuff, I kind of wanted to make sure I wasn’t taken on kind of a doofus company that was going to screw us in the process. So yeah, yeah. And I don’t, I don’t, I don’t really want to take money from them, just to be honest with you. If I can get you guys discounts. That’s probably what I’ll do. That way you guys can kind of decide what we’ll talk about it a little bit, then we’ll move on. There’s no sense in you know, I always feel weird obligated to take money. So it’s a lot easier if I just do it for free. Jim at the average guy.tv if you want to send me your feedback, you can do it the discord group or in the Facebook group are doing that as well. And so appreciate that next week. Paul Brennan is back and Paul has got a lot of cool stuff to talk about and a lot of things going on and Paul burns life. And so you want to come back Mike, I think we got a pretty dynamite list. You got a good lineup coming It is indeed. So you’re not going to want to miss this live at all, at least until I don’t know this time next year. We’re going to have a ton of stuff coming along, Paul, like essentially Paul’s coming back. Duane Robinson’s coming back. J. Madison is coming back to we’re going to talk some hardware actually two weeks in a row. Ryan is going to CES and is going to be covering CES, I’ll try to get a hold of the link to where they’re doing that and get that out on our social media site. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can do it that way. We’ll be promoting that while he’s at CES. And he’ll be coming back here in early February talking about it as well. Ryan’s in the chat room right now and has been on the show before rank kershner and an angel after that. Joel is and Ryan will be on the show in February talking about CES so that’s super cool. Joel from life doorway back as well. You got a guest a guest idea someone you want to be on someone you know that you want to be on. You’ve got something that you want to talk about and beyond contact me, Jim at the average guy.tv and we We’ll get you in there as well. We’ll have a little bit of you got some time for some post show tonight, Mike. So can we talk a little entangle in the post show? That’d be good. That’d be cool. Okay, so we’ll talk because Mike like he always does has moved on to something new so

Mike Wieger  [1:18:15] 
well I’ve reverted it’s okay for on routers if you guys are interested in routers and my saga with always switching routers

Jim Collison  [1:18:23] 
All right, we’ll cover that here in the post show. Don’t forget if you want to support us you can do that on Patreon the average guy TV slash Patreon gets you there we got a $5 plan. Super easy and we appreciate anything that you do for us that helps us do what we do. I mentioned the discord in the Facebook groups just go to the average guy TV then slash Facebook or slash discord will get you there as well. You can send me an email Jim at the average guy TV find me on Twitter at Jay Coulson. Mike is at Wieger tech if you want to find him there. You can also if you need hosting for anything Christian has really fired up and manage speed over there sort of dickless at the moment Maple Grove partners so you get secure reliable high speed hosting from people that you know and trust and he’s willing to take on folks in the community plans start at 10 bucks. Five more if you need email, Maple Grove partners. com gets you there as well download our mobile app, Home Gadget Geeks. com. And I think that’s it. By the way, we are still super strong on hellofresh. I just had to say it because I haven’t said in a couple weeks. I got a bunch of coupon codes. We just made two dinners this week that were just amazing. And I just Mike I just don’t get tired of it. I made roasted zucchini that had Tuscan heat. Spices on. We put panko and mozzarella on top. And I never would have done that like roasted couscous never would have done that. Like I just don’t. The sauces alone that I make with hellofresh are like oh my god, I never would have thought I’m not a sauce guy. I knew Allah saw sky

Mike Wieger  [1:20:01] 
show a squirrel guy he had a squirrel in your backyard I can come awesome score recipes to you definitely getting some buttermilk and we’ll get it you’d have to take care of you’d have to take care of

Jim Collison  [1:20:14] 
you have to take care of them for me the cats have taken care of all the

Mike Wieger  [1:20:16] 
rabbits great dinner at the same time. You

Jim Collison  [1:20:18] 
know I think that’s a double win. I don’t know if you need if you want the box to come and not the squirrel, send me an email. I get you a whole week for free and I’d love to have you try it out again. No compensation for me and and i just don’t let Tony Tony be the year you eat plain. Like quit playing food. There you go. Yeah, I’m not sure they don’t endorse that. But that’s good.

Mike Wieger  [1:20:44] 
Yeah, don’t listen to my recipes on school. You should definitely

Jim Collison  [1:20:47] 
know. Say, Hey,

Mike Wieger  [1:20:51] 
I would definitely go

Jim Collison  [1:20:53] 
Hey, lady a show me subscribers. We are live every Thursday. 8pm Central nine Eastern out here. The Average Guy Network TV slash live. We’ll do a little bit of post show and we thank those who came out live doing that tonight. It always matters to us that you’re here. Appreciate you guys in the chat room. stay around for a little bit of a post show without say goodnight everybody

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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