Latest / TechtalkRadio / Episode 371 - Powering the Outdoor Tech!

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Episode 371 - Powering the Outdoor Tech! · TechtalkRadio

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The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio Network. Everybody out there
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in radio land is James Jones from the rock band Stick. If you are
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technically challenged, if you've got trouble with that computer hears, because lord knows,
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I do, you need to listen to tech Talk Radio. Welcome to
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another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird.
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And for those just tuning in that maybe you've never heard the show before
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you're passing by. We are the show that talks about computers, technology,
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and the Internet, pretty much everything else around that Justin. We knew it
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was going to be out. A matter of fact, Justin's picking up something
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today, right Yeah, and we're not gonna spoil it. We're gonna let
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him drop the bomb. So next week he'll tell us about what he picked
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up. Hopefully, I know, I know, I know he is excited
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about it. Yes, hopefully he'll be really happy about it. Hopefully,
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you know, give him a week with it. Let's see if he's still
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going to be just as happy and as excited about it next week. So
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I've missed out last week because I was on vacation. Right now, where
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did you end up going. My wife's family has some cabins in the upper
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Peninsula of Michigan on a lake. Nice, So we spent nine days in
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cabins on the lake. How is somebody that likes technology getaway for nine days?
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I mean, are you pretty much not using technology when you're out there
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in the wilderness. It's actually kind of interesting because previously, in previous years
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they haven't had internet, but they have starlink this year. Oh oh nice
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out they they had two Starlink receivers, one on their main building and one
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on one of the out cabins. Previously they only had hughes Neet, which
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is satellite internet, and the latency is atrocious, right, you can't do
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you could can't do anything but literally get text messages or Wi Fi messages and
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checker there. There was a time when that service was like that was great.
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Especially yeah, well yeah, rural America. That's all you could get,
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right, was hughes Neet, satellite internet or you know something like sync
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wave or a microwave based repeater wireless repeater network Internet network. Right, it's
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like they have they have it here. They have well simply bits and then
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there's some other companies as well. That yeah. I mean there are companies
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that do microwave transmission. You just have to have an antenna that points to
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a receiver and it's a microwave and it works out. You know. I
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kept thinking, it's like, man, they should have starlink. That'd be
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great. We have Internet and we pull in and there was they had installed
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starlink. So I was pretty happy about that. So I was able to
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actually if I wanted to stream videos or do stuff, and it was pretty
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pretty good, except when the forty other people from Cal's Favor that were there
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were also trying to do the same thing. I was gonna say, so
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they get a starlink in one building, does everybody just like converge? You
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know. It's like a lot of our family has younger kids eight nine years
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old, so when they're want to go to bed or they you know,
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the routine is they stream something or they watch Netflix or right. So a
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lot of the times the families are good about not doing the Internet, and
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so that's been great. I didn't connect to the internet hardly at all.
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Wow, maybe just to check my email at night before I went to sleep.
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In the past, I hadn't been able to do that. So it
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was a little weird to be able to do that. But for the most
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part, my phone was stayed in the cabin and was just there. I
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didn't take it out. I wouldn't have it on me, so that was
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great. But you know, for me, a trip like this is good
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because we're in the Upper Peninsula, there's no light pollution. I was able
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to get some killer Milky Way shots. The lights came out, so I
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did a time I did a couple of time lapses. I had my ham
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radio out there, so I did some Ham radio stuff, which is cool.
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There's not a whole lot going on in the up so I didn't even
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really talk to anybody, but I was able to hit a couple of repeaters.
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Did at least know that I was talking to the repeaters, but nobody
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talked back. And then I used my we're gonna talk about another product from
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this company later in the show. But I have my outdoor my Wise outdoor
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camera, right, that's why ze yeah, Wise dot com. And so
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I set that up and had it take a picture every five minutes, set
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it up with the solar panel, and let it run all week. Now,
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what was it up the campground or were you doing the skies, So
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it was pointing towards the lake, so you can see a little bit of
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the sky, you can see the sun. So it's seven days. It
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ran the whole time, but I had to manage it a little bit because
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that solar panel is when you're doing a picture every five minutes, kind of
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eats the battery a little bit. I had to tend it a little bit.
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I had to put a charge. I had to, you know,
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overnight, I would let it run with a solar powered battery ten thousand amp
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hour battery, right or whatever it is milliamp hours, right, ten thousand
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million hours that has solar panels on it, so it would drain the battery
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and then help sustain the battery a little bit with the sun. I would
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put that on overnight so it would drain the battery and then in the morning
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you would start to charge. Game. Ah good, I don't really come
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up. So I was able to keep the battery going the whole time,
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but I just had to manage it a little bit. So I did that
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and I'll I'll send that to the blog so you guys can check that out
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because it's it's cool, you know, the qualities. Okay, for a
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time labs, you see time going by and it it's pretty good. And
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then what I did bring was Max is at the point where he likes to
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watch a little bit of YouTube, or he likes to watch a little bit
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of a movie, Like when he's winding down, he'll sit next to you
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on the couch. He'll watch a show with you. So I brought my
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Raspberry Pie, my iPad and my little WiFi router. And for anybody listening
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that is lost in tech, raspberry pie is not something he would eat,
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right, I mean, there was plenty of pie to be had. Raspberry
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Pie is a mini beater that runs Rasbian, which is a distribution of Linux,
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and I've set it up with mb which is a media player like Plex,
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so I could watch them media that I have on my external hard drive
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on my iPad. Oh cool. So I was able to play some movies
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for him so that he could watch and it helped when he was fussy or
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was overnight and it was hot and he woke up. There are a couple
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of nights where he would wake up and you wouldn't didn't want to go back
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to sleep, so I would just open that up, go to the movies,
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find a cartoon or a movie that I have on there and play it
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for him and he would just kind of zone out and fall back sleep.
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So, now, how would you stream from the Raspberry pie to the iPad?
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Is that a direct connection or so I have it connected to a t
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TP link micro wireless router. It's only about two inch by two inch square,
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right, It's got one Ethernet port on it, so you can put
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it into a land So I plugged the Raspberry Pie into the Ethernet port of
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the binny router, and then I can see it from the Raspberry Pie,
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I can see it. I can connect the iPad to that tp and then
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I can see the server and stream the movies. That is great, yeah,
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yeah, then I can, you know, turned my phone on,
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so Kate, if Kaitlyn wanted to watch something, she could stream it.
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Now it's a resbrate price. It's not super powerful, right, so you're
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not going to get five six streams going at a time, right, But
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it's good enough for one or two streams at seven twenty p which is good
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enough, right, So that works out. So it's it's if you have
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listened to the show for a long period of time. I built this when
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we got our camper back in twenty twenty, right covid. I made a
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little project for myself. I just continued to use it and it's just knocked
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over from the radio's flying um and it's just kind of developed. Right.
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I started with PLEX. Lex doesn't like external drives in Linux. It had
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to be mounted in the same USB port, and it had to be Plex
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was a pain in the butt, and it wanted you to always log in,
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and when you were in locations where you just want to stream the movies
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that are on the content and not log in, you can't log in because
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you can't authenticate to the web server, right right. So MB takes that
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part out of it. And there's other there's other there's other great media players
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also, Jellyfin, a couple other ones that are the only one I know
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of is PLEX. I mean, I've got PLEX, and I like it,
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Plex, MB, Jellyfin, a couple other ones, UM, but
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MB was kind of I tested a bunch, right, and MB MB was
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the one that just seemed to work the best. Is it's just m E
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m b y e m b y all right. I want to I want
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to look into that and so you don't put that in stream your your content.
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Yeah. So I just had the I had the iPad and I just
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connected it. Now, this was a good lesson for me, okay,
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because I wanted to do it on my phone, right, but I didn't
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update the Raspberry Pie or the server on the Raspberry Pie. So the app
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version on my phone had been update, so it would not connect to the
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server because it said you need to update the server to meet the new security
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requirements for the app. And to connect to update the server, you have
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to connect to the net, correct, which I didn't have, right,
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because I can't connect to the Raspberry Pie to the wireless because I can't I
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didn't have a screen or a miles or a keyboard. So and I can't
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connect to it via V and C via wireless because I need the wireless connect
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to the internet. So yeah, So then I thought, well, I
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haven't updated the iPad in a long time. Yeah, So the version of
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the app on the iPad was old enough that it still worked with the servers.
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So I was in good. I was able to do it good to
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go good, but I was a little frustrated yet first. So yeah,
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so I did some time lapses with my cameras, uh which I also had
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forgot the power words for my battery charger for my cameras, so I had
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to come up with a solution for that, which was the box fan we
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had in our cabin. Had a you know, you've got the the AC
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plug goes into the wall and then the other end goes into the battery charger.
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It's got the two prongs. It's usually two rounded little yeah, everybody
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knows I'm talking about. The ones out of the box fan were square.
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So I took my flush cutters that I have and trimmed round not to make
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him rounded, and it fit and it looked perfect. I am, I
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am a giving I was really frustrated because I had I have a twelve volt
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battery backup for my D seven thousand battery grip, so I can plug it
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into a twelve volt source and it'll run consistently via power for whatever reason that
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was saying, whenever I plugged it in, it said voltage too low and
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it wouldn't run to turn the camera on. So I was frustrated about that.
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Then I didn't realize I didn't have the battery chart, but the chord
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for the battery chargers. So I had to do that ended up working out.
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But see what other tech did I take with us? So and this
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is this is just to be able to watch your content on your iPad,
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so you're not connecting to the net, You're connecting to local which I think
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is a that's a phenomenal idea. I really love that. And if you
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can get me the link for the TP, the TP link, then maybe
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I could put up there. You know, people couldn't want to want to
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know how to do this because I can. Yeah, I could. I
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could just write up a little thing about how he did it. Right.
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Here's here's the Raspberry Pie. Yeah, a thirty two gig memory card memory
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card for the Raspberry Pie rasby in. You download MB connected to the Wi
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Fi connect the USB drive. You point MB to the drive where your movies
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are. Yeah. In winning you know, I was talking about a friend
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of mine and we were talking about, you know, Linux and Raspberry Pie.
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He told me, he says, I'm terrified a Raspberry Pie. I've
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you know, I've worked in a Windows world is pretty much entire computer career,
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and he's he feels like it's daunting, like it's like it's a whole
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new world that it would be even more to try and learn that to get
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a raspberry Pie set up. And I told him, I think they're pretty
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simple. Yeah, so you if you go to the raspberry Pie website,
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you can just download their version of OS rasbian and it's very user intuitive.
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And yeah, there's a little bit of a learning curve for Linux. But
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everybody thinks like, oh, hackers, I have to know code, and
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I have to know DOS commands or Linux commands and Colonel commands and know how
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to make directories, and you don't. Right, there are gooeys. You're
12:50
not running command by Linux here righte graphical user interface right, so Windows Windows
12:56
is a gooey right, graphical user revase. You click stuff, you click
12:58
an you're not you're not talking to the computer in computer language. Right.
13:05
So there are very user friendly versions of Linux. Boon two is good.
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There's another one that I enjoyed playing around with, just called Elementary, which
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was fun to use. Right, I mean there's so many distributions of Linux.
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Boon two is the one that I've kind of played with. I've got
13:20
a I have a Raspberry Pike keyboard which is basically, it's it's cool.
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It's a keyboard and it has you know, basically the Raspberry Pie system within
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the keyboard. Uh, it's cool. It looks like a mini keyboard.
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I can plug it into a monitor, you know via HDM I I think
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it is or USB either or it has a trackpad on it. Uh,
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no, it does not, it does not. They make a version with
13:45
it that has a trackpad. Also, you could have just just that so
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you don't want to have around a keyboard a mouse, right, Yeah,
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but it's it's and I've yet to fire that one up. We took a
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look at it and it was like and then put it aside their fun.
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Right, it's inexpensive, right, I mean, the Raspberry Pie is pretty
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much inexpensive. It is there. There are fifty sixty bucks. During COVID,
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they became insanely popular for people that were working on projects, people that
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were doing automation, and they became very very hard to find, and with
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supply chain issues, they didn't revamp. So you were people were paying one
14:22
hundred and fifty two bucks for third gen Raspberry Pie, right or you know,
14:30
they came out with the micro ones, uh and some others. They
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were very popular for a long time and they were hard to find right and
14:35
when they came into stock, they went out just as fast. So um,
14:39
but raspberry pies used for all sorts of stuff. And well Justin has
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his pie hole. Yes, Justin hasn't running pie hole. Um, and
14:50
that just sucks all the sucks all the ads into a fake DNS on his
14:56
computer on his pie rasper pie, so he doesn't get ads. Yeah.
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I ran that on myce anology for a little while. But then with metro
15:03
net because I don't have an outfacing I outfacing IP address, I can't use
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it start screwing stuff up. Yeah, and I can't get to websites and
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stuffing that. So I get rid of it so I can adds again.
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But it was great when I had it. Yeah. So what other one
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or technology did I take with me? Yeah? Um, I had my
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lower solar panel, which is cool. Yeah. Can you talk about that
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for a second, because there are people that don't know that you can get
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a solar panel for your outdoor camera, or maybe you need it for another
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type device. I see most most of the applications have been used with cameras.
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I'm trying to remember the name of the manufacturer that we looked at.
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Yeah, I mean to grab it, so I just keep I think the
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one I looked at is Real Link and h it's a great camera, a
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phenomenal camera, battery powered camera, the quality and it was really good and
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I love it because I can move it around. There have been there was
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a situation where the neighbor had come over to the house and they asked if
16:03
we had mice, and in the house they had a situation where they had
16:07
mice in their attic, and apparently it was quite an abundance of mice.
16:12
Because you know with mice, once they get in, that's they pretty much
16:17
set up shop and they will replicate pretty fast. As I talked with Ryan
16:22
Bennett from Bill's Home Service recently about that, and mice are very quick.
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And what I ended up doing is I don't think. So I went up
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into the attic and I took a look, didn't see anything. But what
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you don't see is what you know, can be an indication. So I
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went in and I just popped the Real Link camera up there, put it
16:41
on there and it was motion activated as a night vision and of course it
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you know, battery powered and just left it up there and got no notifications,
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but I would occasionally log in just to look to see if anything was
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changed, anything was moved. Nothing, So I think we basically pretty much
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discovered we did not have them mouse problem. And I love it for that,
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and there's so many different applications for it. But this also when I
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bought it, I bought it with a solar panel, and I haven't hooked
17:08
it up outside. Ended up using the leview which screws into a light socket,
17:14
which is great. The only problem is Gloria loves umbrellas, so she
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puts umbrellas all over the backyard. And I'll log it into the camera to
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see what's going on in the backyard. I can't see a darn thing because
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the umbrellas were left up all night. So, you know, to be
17:27
able to put maybe the real link higher and then put a solar panel in
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it means I don't have to climb up there and change the battery out at
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all. I shouldn't have to do it at all with solar panels, should
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I? You shouldn't. It just spends on how much amperage, sure,
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how much what power your the camera's taking can put out right? So I
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think the draw on these does it say? Says? So it draws five
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olds at wanted to have amps? All right, so that's on the Why
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that's five you know, five point five wats or something right, right.
18:07
So the solar panel which I have in my hand if you're watching the stream,
18:11
so it's just a it's only about seven inches by five inches or something
18:15
like that, okay, And it's just a solar panel. Looks like a
18:18
normal solar panel. And it outputs two and a half lots, so five
18:22
volts two and a half lots of a half amp, can I can?
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I'll put a half an amp right, So it's going to keep the camera
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trickle basically going to trickle charge the camera. It's going to be very just
18:36
so depending on your settings on your camera, if you haven't set to take
18:40
a picture every minute, picture every twenty minutes, whatever, it depends on
18:44
how you haven't set up how how long it will train the battery. So,
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like I said, I supplemented this during the day overnight a battery pack
18:53
that had a solar panel also, so a separate little battery pack I half
18:57
with a solar panel on it, so at it overnight it would charge from
19:02
the battery pack, and then in the morning it would start picking up the
19:03
sun and charging it that way, and then I would just go back to
19:07
this during the day and by charge the other one's in the cabin, and
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back and forth. Now, our solar panels expensive. I think I remember
19:15
ours was a kid, so I don't remember the supplement of cost on it.
19:19
But isn't it truth. I don't remember what this cost. I could
19:23
look it up on WISE and I'll get back to you. I think I
19:27
have a feeling that there maybe around forty fifty bucks for one to power up
19:33
to power like a WISE cam or so this this one that I have from
19:37
Wise is twenty four ninety nine. Oh, it's even better twenty four dollars
19:41
now. And again the benefit for this too if you do want to put
19:45
a security cam higher, which is actually recommended, because let's face it,
19:51
if somebody was to get onto your property, they see your camera, they
19:56
just take it if they can reach it, So you want to put it
19:59
out of reach. You know, maybe you don't store ladders nearby, and
20:03
then have it with the solar so you don't have to climb up there all
20:07
the time. I remember when cameras started to become really really popular, and
20:11
Belkin had a and they still do. They still have a camera system that
20:15
they put out and my son I gave it to him for the house in
20:21
California, and he would just go nuts because he'd have to climb up there
20:25
on the ladder, take it down and charge the battery. Didn't have a
20:29
rechargeable system. So when we were talking recently, I told him, I
20:33
said, did you ever replace the security system there? He's like no,
20:37
And I'm thinking go with solar. It's that way you don't have to climb
20:40
up, you know. Or if you don't want to wire it, do
20:42
any wiring like I had to do with the the Nest system that I have
20:48
here. That's a good way to do it. Just mounted high and mounted
20:52
was sold. Yeah, I don't ever mount this one outside. I've used
20:55
it just for traveling, like I take it with me and I put it
20:57
in travel mode. You can put the Wise came travel mode, which means
21:00
you can connect to it via its own little WiFi right, so you can
21:04
connect to it without having Internet. But again, if you're not logged into
21:11
the Wise app without a web authentication, you can't log in to see your
21:17
cameras, right. So I wrote to Wise when I got back and said,
21:22
look, please, for the love of God, give me an offline
21:23
mode so I can log into the app at least have the app available offline,
21:30
right, so I can get to the camera connect. I can connect
21:36
to the Wi Fi on the camera when it's in travel mode. But if
21:41
I can't log into the app to see it, what good does it do
21:45
me if I'm traveling with it. Did you get any response from them or
21:48
no? I have I have it? This was just too yeah whatever Monday,
21:52
right. So but it was very frustrating because I had to try to
21:57
use the crappy hues neet before I realized the head starlink set up to log
22:03
at least log into the app. Okay, so here you are. You
22:06
haven't used starlink yet. You're there. Did you run a speed test?
22:10
Were you able to? Not? I did not run. I didn't.
22:15
I didn't. I didn't think about it. You know, I did think
22:17
about it, but then I you know, the times I was on my
22:19
phone, I didn't think to run a speed test, right, I saw
22:23
a startling. I was like, oh, I should run a speed test.
22:26
When I did right, but you could tell. I don't know what
22:30
the speeds were, but you could tell it was better than Hughes. Right.
22:33
But I was when Max, you know, when I couldn't sleep because
22:36
Max, it kept me up, like I was able to stream Nefflix.
22:40
That's good. Yeah, I know it's at least decent, right, I
22:42
know. They say it's something like you can get up to sixty or seventy
22:47
meg down on starlink based on your where you are and you're you know,
22:52
cloud cover and vegetation cover and humidity and moisture, all that stuff affects satellite
22:59
reception. So but boy, I was I was disappointed a friend of mine
23:03
recently. And when it comes to internet speeds, you know, I mean,
23:07
yeah, you could pay through the nose for your internet if you want
23:11
to do that. I mean, depending on what you get. Now.
23:14
I just recently discovered when I was looking at my bill from my provider that
23:18
I'm paying for a higher tier, which I knew, but in I've been
23:23
with a company for what twelve thirteen years maybe even longer. They they moved
23:29
me into a different tier at a different so I'm paying extra for nothing because
23:36
honestly, I'm paying for this extra you know, pro service, which I'm
23:40
getting anyways, with this tier that they moved me into. They won't tell
23:44
you that. So you really got to take the time. And sometimes it
23:47
could be difficult talking to some of these cable providers as to what you get
23:51
out of it. You know, you got to go in. I don't
23:55
even know if going in is the solution because sometimes it depends on the clerk
23:59
you're gonna get. Sometimes it's better and don't do it, you know,
24:02
they want you to do it yourself on the internet. Talk to somebody actually,
24:06
So what is it that I'm getting for this? Yeah? So you
24:10
know, we talked about this a couple couple of sets ago. Right,
24:12
I upgraded to metro Net. Right, Metronet came through our neighborhood, actually
24:18
came through the neighborhood to the north of it first, but then they started
24:19
putting all flyers in our neighboroods. Sad, sign up for Metronet and get
24:23
two years of high speed fiber for sixty ninety nine or whatever it was.
24:30
I signed up and got it, and all I wanted was for Axffinity to
24:37
tell me if they could match the speeds. Right, So do you think
24:44
I could get ahold of a single It was impossible. It's really difficult to
24:48
find out, Hey, can Exfinity match the uploads and download speeds of Metronet?
24:56
And you talk to the little AI chat bot achieved to articles, right,
25:03
so self service articles. I don't want self service articles. I want
25:07
a human being to tell me if Exfinity can match these speeds. I tried.
25:15
I wrote little emails, I texted them through the app. I emailed
25:19
the AP didn't hear a peep. Wow, And then it took me an
25:26
hour and a half to cancel my Exfinity because I couldn't get ahold of a
25:30
person. Oh like, just trying to call and cancel my Exfinity right was
25:34
a nightmare. And I've been so happy with Metronet. I've had two service
25:42
disruptions, right one the modum failed itself, failed like two or three days
25:49
after I bought it, so they had to come and replace the mortem.
25:52
But you do, well, so they have the they have the internal modem
25:56
right connect to your router. Yeah, I always recommend buying your own,
26:00
but but yeah, well for fiber, they don't really Yeah, so for
26:06
because it's coming straight to the junction box and from the junction box to the
26:10
motum it's oh, that's so that's going to be different. Yeah, it's
26:14
gonna be different. And if you want the higher tiers, the higher you
26:17
know, because they offer two and five gig Here am I areta. I
26:19
could get five gig Internet for one wow, but I'm not. I don't
26:23
need it. One gig has been plenty, Like, I don't need five
26:26
gigs, right, but you have to get a modum that can handle that
26:32
level of badwidth, and that's one that they're going to provide. Yeah,
26:33
and there's zero point in getting anything over one gig h unless you're running a
26:41
million machines, right, because if you're a single household user, you have
26:48
your computer plugged into the Internet, your Internet connection is one gig, right,
26:53
it's the interface, it's one gig. So yeah, it's pointless to
27:00
go beyond that unless you have five million devices and you're doing whatever. But
27:06
the other service instruction I had with Metronet was they installed my neighbor's Internet and
27:12
they unplugged me and flipped it. So the they basically flipped us. No,
27:18
so your neighbor is getting your speed. Well, the neighbors it didn't
27:22
work because trying to talk to the neighbors, right, like, they either
27:26
unplugged me or they flipped flip flopped me or something. So I didn't have
27:32
Internet. And then Metronet itself had a weird DNS resolving issue, right,
27:38
so it wasn't always resolving all of the DNS requests. So I could go
27:45
to Outlook and check my email, but if I tried to go to Netflix,
27:48
it just would spin ye, not go anywhere. But I could get
27:51
to Netflix on my p I could get to Netflix. So in hindsight,
27:55
though, we've got to take a break. But when you look at it
27:57
for what you were paying with it infinity to what you are paying now with
28:03
Metro, are you saving or are you spending a little more money but with
28:07
the understanding what speed you're getting saving by quite a bit, really good six
28:14
seventy five dollars to I mean, not not quite a bit, but I'm
28:18
just saving a little bit of money, right. But I'm also on the
28:19
introductory two year whatever because I signed up early and prepaid and all that stuff.
28:26
Yeah, but I think after two maybe it's after a year it goes
28:30
up like eighty nine bucks. Do you miss anything about Exfinity. Are you
28:33
still are they still your cable provider? I don't have cable, so you
28:37
don't have cable. No. Everything I've met, I've Metronet, right,
28:41
so everything you do is all Internet driven, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount,
28:45
Peacock whatever. Do they give you any of that as as part of it?
28:52
Um? No? No? All right, so then you have to
28:56
watch your costs on that too. I know he's to us up right now
29:00
with Peacock. Whereas if you got you know, if you've got expendited,
29:03
you had Peacock, and now they're going to start charging for Peacock, for
29:08
Peacock Pro or whatever it's streaming apps whatever. All right, we gotta take
29:15
a break. We come back, we'll talk more. You're gonna tell us
29:18
about the latest from Wise and why this is actually a good idea if somebody's
29:22
thinking about installing it outdoor camera. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Shouted. You
29:26
can find us on the web at techtok radio dot com. We'll you're right
29:29
back and now back to tech talk radio. Everybody knows that I love Wise
29:36
cameras and Andy and justin joke that I'm the Wise guy, and it felt
29:41
like for a long for a period of time that Wise was dropping new products
29:45
consistently once a week, once a month, just felt like crazy. You
29:49
want to talk about. Okay, so the products that they have they have
29:52
Wise, Oh my gosh, they have so much. They have cameras,
29:56
smart home stuff, like don't they yes, which I have and it's great,
30:02
right. Gaming heads are scale noise canceling headphones, which I have and
30:04
I love. Earbuds with noise cancling, which I have and I love um.
30:11
And they have some other stuff. They have a gun safe, don't
30:14
buy it. The lot picking lawyer broke into it immediately then say. There
30:18
are some things that it's like, why did they do that? Wow?
30:21
I know they have vacuum. They have vacuum, right, they have Yeah,
30:23
they have an air pure fire, they have LED light strips. They've
30:26
got a mesh router. I'm not buying a router for Internet from Wise,
30:33
Like, yeah, I'm buying from a reputable security like a neck gear.
30:37
Yeah. Like then the orby that we looked at was amazing. UM camera's
30:41
floodlight, smart plugs. They've also vacuum, they have an air pieri fire,
30:47
a little RC car. They're also they're also manufacturing product for Roku.
30:52
So if you see you know, the Roku camera, the Roku ribbon,
30:56
that that's basically Wise products that they have branded. Yeah, so they've got
31:03
some cool stuff, some outdoor plug. It's it's kind of like a whole
31:07
home, whole home smart device. And so they announced a camera about two
31:15
weeks ago, which is the V three, the Version three, which is
31:19
their kind of their standard. It's a camera. You can now get it
31:23
in blue. Oh, which is cool. Okay, I like blue.
31:26
I should get it right, look into my background. It's blue. But
31:30
they just announced i think today of the recording of the show, the Wise
31:34
Battery Camera Pro and they're saying it's weather proof, wire freedom for all.
31:40
Now, don't don't most of their like the V two I think I have.
31:42
Isn't that a camera that's a battery camera. Yeah, So that's their
31:48
outdoor camera. They have the Outdoor V one, the Outdoor V two,
31:52
So this is their outdoor V three essentially, Okay, except you don't need
31:57
the bridge to connect the outdoor or a camera. But the bridge is like
32:00
an almost a little hub, a little hub that you have to have to
32:04
connect the outdoor cameras, which I have, which was cool and it made
32:07
sense and it worked. But this one is a recharge. You can take
32:14
the battery houtse it's got to remove a battery so you can put in a
32:17
second battery while you recharge the first one. The charger is sold separately,
32:21
which I thought was a little weird. Oh. It works with the same
32:24
solar panel, so if you have the solar panel with the V two or
32:29
the V one outdoor camera, you can use that same solar panel. So
32:31
it's the micro USB plug. It's it's records in two km, so good
32:39
quality. It's good quality. If if you have the V three Pro or
32:45
the the wise camog it's the same quality as those. It's dual band Wi
32:52
Fi so it supports two and a half two point four gig or five gig.
32:55
Oh that's nice. UM so you can get the faster speeds so you
33:00
can get a little bit better quality. UM. And it's got integrated spotlight
33:06
so it can turn the light on. It's got color night vision. It
33:10
looks pretty cool. Let's see whatever it's got. The battery pack is a
33:14
sixty two hundred milliamp hour battery. Now you said, did I hear you
33:17
right? That you can actually remove the battery and put another battery in.
33:22
Yeah, so it's got a Yeah, it's got a rubber gaskets, sealed
33:25
battery department, so you can pop it out, drop it another battery,
33:29
plug it back in, and keep going. So if you if you have
33:31
it set up and you know, you know, every two weeks or something
33:37
or however long it lasts, right, So it's it's cool. I don't
33:43
know if I'm going to spend the ninety five dollars. It's kind of high
33:46
for so so for a camera with one battery, nine is what the website
33:54
say, is that with the solar panel, though no one a one camera,
34:00
one battery solar panel one hundred and eighteen bucks, that's actually not a
34:04
bad deal. Yeah, you can buy a three pack, so three cameras,
34:08
three batteries for twenty two hundred sixty ninety nine. So what's cool about
34:15
this is if you have camp Plus, if you have the cam plus Pro
34:21
right and you have the unlimited subscription, you just buy the cameras and you
34:24
add them to your camplus Pro subscription, which I do because I think I
34:29
have seven Wise Wise cameras that I have with Camplus and it's ninety nine dollars
34:34
for the year instead of X number of dollars per camera, per year,
34:38
per month. Whatever. Yeah, I can't get expensive when you start adding
34:42
up. I pay sixty for Little View, and then I've got the Nest
34:46
which I also pay sixty. But that's however, anytime you add a Nest
34:51
camera or device to your system, it's covered under that sixty dollars. Yep.
34:57
So um, you know, it's just it looks cool. And if
35:01
I didn't have all the cameras I need to cover from my house and the
35:05
outdoor camera, which I'm really happy with, like I would buy it.
35:07
Like if I was just getting into this, I would buy the three pack.
35:10
That's a good deal. Yeah, because you can plug it in with
35:15
the solar panel, which also means you should be able to power it locally
35:19
and keep it running all the time. With that you would have you'd never
35:23
have to remove that battery. So again, you put it mounted high and
35:27
not have to worry about that. Yeah, if you had the solar panel,
35:30
or if you had a plug, you know, like if you have
35:32
your Christmas light plugs that you know, some houses people run wires up to
35:37
plug the christ lights in. You could plug it in and leave it in
35:40
permanently, so it's cool. You can just go to Wise dot com.
35:45
It's called the Wise Battery Cam Pro. I'm wondering on how many people are
35:50
gonna say, wait a minute, Wise, why the because normally the price
35:53
point for these cameras, like I have the Pan two, which I love.
35:57
Um, you can pan till the camera the whole bit. It's an
36:00
indoor camera, and I think honestly, I spent forty dollars on it,
36:04
maybe forty five, And yeah, I mean great, it's a jumping quality.
36:08
You're getting a couple of new uh motion detection stuff. It's got some
36:14
of the AI stuff in it, it's got the rechargeable battery, it's got
36:17
you know, worked with the solar panel, it works with Alexa, Google
36:22
Assistant and I fttt um so you can do a lot with it. Right,
36:28
So I don't see why somebody wouldn't spend any two dollars on this.
36:34
Like I said, I'm set up in my house where I've got my things
36:38
that I like. I'm not gonna get this because they don't need it.
36:42
So when Why sells the television, are you gonna buy one? There are
36:49
some y things I don't have. Right, you have a Y T shirt
36:52
and why socks. Yeah, the fact that you have why socks would make
36:54
me think you might be that they have a hat. Seen his face.
37:00
He was very happy they have merchandise. Hold on why they have a hoodie?
37:06
W y z do ce dot com. That's the website, all right.
37:12
Speaking of TV's, I gotta tell you about a new television that is
37:15
that has been announced. Samsung is putting that out and everybody has their favorite
37:21
brand, whether it be LG or Sony. You know, there's some others
37:24
that are out there. But Samsung has announced their ninety eight inch Class Q
37:31
LED four K Q eight C. Now this now think about this, UM,
37:38
fifty five inch seems to be the norm. What size television do you
37:43
have? Sean sixty five? All right? Were we got a fifty five
37:47
and we're pleased with that, but you know, with fifty five sixty five
37:52
baby, the norm seventy seemed like that was big ninety eight inch television.
37:58
Now remember you measured that diagonally. But this is going to be going for
38:04
about eight thousand dollars and they're doing pre orders. They'll take that off about
38:10
a thousand bucks off and include what they call white glove installation. They have
38:15
experts that will come out and actually install this perfectly on your wall or wherever
38:22
you want it to be installed. But here's something that I want to stress.
38:27
If you're going to spend the money on a ninety eight inch television,
38:30
eight thousand dollars, and I know some people are going down, I'm not
38:34
gonna spend that money. Andy, I'm gonna do with that, would you,
38:37
Seane eight? No, because I have one hundred and forty inch screen.
38:44
Just talk to my right with a four K projector on it. And
38:46
how much was that four K projector around about? So for boy, Yeah,
38:52
that's percentage of that called major percentage of that cost. And it's a
38:58
good good I know Sony it Samsung has some pretty good projectors too. But
39:02
you know, if somebody wants to have this and say they've got it,
39:06
please especially as we've seen in the last week. I had a friend who
39:09
listens to the station who called me and told me that they took they took
39:14
a hit, a lightning hit, and it fried a couple of televisions.
39:19
So if you're gonna do it, make sure you get the best rated.
39:23
Seriously, do some research the best rated. You know, unterruptable power supply,
39:30
jeweled protected, don't plug it into you know, I'm not knocking Walmart,
39:35
but a Walmart extension chord you don't want to, oh yeah, our
39:42
basics from Amazon extension chords. You're gonna spend the money on it, and
39:45
it can get a little pricey, I mean, but you're gonna get that
39:47
protection plus you Usually in most cases we'll get a warranty based on that device
39:54
you're buying, whether it's from you know, a PC or any of the
39:58
other companies, it'll be warranty so that if you did take a power surge
40:01
and it did fry the electronics, you might have a claim that you can
40:06
file to get some of that money recouped, because nothing more to spend it.
40:10
All that money and losing something like that that would not be good,
40:15
you know. Yeah. I mean I've been in situations not in my house
40:19
but at our tower sites when I worked in television where we lost some equipment
40:24
from lightning strikes and you had good equipment there, good like yeah, lightning,
40:30
the resting equipment and all sort of stuff. But it still finds a
40:34
way to and it doesn't just screw up. It can screw up hard drives,
40:38
it can screw up RAM. It can still be powered on, but
40:42
internally something can get screwed up. And you still think lightning does weird things.
40:47
Do you have a preference when it comes to some of this stuff?
40:52
You know, APC and you've got trip light, and you've got others.
40:55
I mean, is there one preference? I've had pretty good, pretty good
41:00
luck with APC. I have two APC battery backups right, one for my
41:07
sand my Synology and one for my router and modum. And you do have
41:15
to change them out once in a while too, you do they you know,
41:19
it's like any other battery, right, it loses charge over time,
41:22
the like you know, the chemical reaction gets weaker. But for the most
41:27
part, if you even plugged in, they're going to cycle themselves and they
41:30
will take care of themselves. But um, if you do, it's very
41:37
easy to just open them up. They're just two prongs. You slide the
41:40
battery outside, new one in. Yeah, you can. And you could
41:44
buy these batteries. Plus I believe they have those here. I don't know
41:47
if they have them there, but where you're at schean, but battery plus
41:51
they sell the replacement batteries. You just tell them what type of device you
41:54
have, and actually on the you know, whether it be a trip lattery
41:58
APC, it'll say right there what the replaceable battery is, and it's you
42:02
know, it's probably recommended. You can also do a battery check on it
42:05
and it will give you kind of the results of you know, hey,
42:08
your your cycle is you definitely want to change this at some point, you
42:13
know they're smart enough to It'll tell you how many times you lost power,
42:17
how much you know. Some of the newer ones can tell you what the
42:20
amp draw is. If you're out of power, I'll tell you based on
42:23
your current amp draw it's gonna last us long, so you can kind of
42:29
tailor it to okay, mission start shutting stuff off. Yeah, because if
42:32
you're running on battery, it's not gonna last real long. All right.
42:36
We're not designed to take you long term. It's designed to get you over
42:42
to a generator, backup, or get stuff turned off properly. All right,
42:46
we can take another quick break. We come back. We've got more
42:50
to talk about here on techtok Radio. I got a chance to experience a
42:52
brand new printer for anybody that has been thinking about you know, kids going
42:57
back to school, or maybe you know your printer is it's on the fritz.
43:00
We talked a little bit about laser versus you know, inkjet printing last
43:05
week, but i'll tell you my thoughts on this printer that I took a
43:07
look at. Coming up with tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor. I'm
43:10
sure to weird. Find us on Facebook at tech Talkers. Now back to
43:15
TikTok Radio. A lot of us may use laser jets or printing, and
43:21
when it comes to printing, if you're doing a lot of texts, they're
43:23
great, but they're pretty appendable when you need them. They're just as easy
43:28
to hook up to wireless. Sometimes that's the biggest complaint is hooking up to
43:34
a wireless situation with them. The manufacturers all put out some pretty good laser
43:37
jets, whether it be HB, whether it be Epson, whether it be
43:40
Brother, to get the job done. But if you want to have color,
43:44
and you know, last week Justin talked a little bit about color printing.
43:47
You got a color laser jet and he liked it. So I got
43:51
a chance this past week, Epson sent me over the Echo Tank twenty eight
43:55
fifty and you know, I wasn't sure what to think about it because I've
44:00
heard horror stories about people refilling ink in their printers and what a mess it
44:07
made and how terrible it was. I'll be honest with you, I was
44:10
really skeptical. But after I got the printer, I took the time to
44:15
go through the setup. I got the app, which is the smart panel
44:17
app that they have that EPSOM puts out. It's amazing to help you step
44:22
by step, giving you all the demonstrations on how to get it all set
44:27
up. It was a piece of cake. Now, this printer is a
44:30
color and jet printer that has used that uses refillable inks, and it has
44:37
a scanner on it as well, so you can make copies features WiFi direct
44:42
So what that means is so I can take my smartphone and print directly to
44:47
the printer without an Internet connection. So, Sean, if you were out
44:52
in the wilderness and you had the printer and you had your phone, you
44:57
could print directly to it if you needed for some reason to print in the
45:00
wilderness, I need to print, Yes, you might print a picture of
45:04
a bear but I mean you have this capability and to the way it works.
45:10
It uses epstin five or two ink and so you get with when you
45:15
buy the printer, you get four not cartridge. There's like little bottles and
45:22
you'll get cyan, and then you'll get yellow, and then you get black,
45:27
and then you get red or the other color that magenta. Thank you.
45:32
That mixes it all up. And it's so super easy. You take
45:37
the lid off and it's got a little guide in there, and you just
45:40
turn the bottle upside down on top of the guide and you don't have squeeze
45:45
it. You don't do anything like that. It just falls out of the
45:49
bottle into the the actual reservoir for that particular ink, and you could see
45:53
it filling up. Once it's done, it stops. Then you just take
45:59
the thing off. Nothing spills, no no spillage, no leakage at all,
46:04
and you put it aside and then you do the other colors. It
46:07
took about I want to say, maybe about thirty minutes to do all of
46:10
the colors, just to get them all done, and then it goes through
46:15
an initialization process and then you get to go. You're you're ready to print
46:20
and the printed color photos on glossy colored photos on regular paper. But the
46:27
nice thing about this, and this is the thing, I don't know if
46:30
you remember, Sean, when ink jets first started coming out, you had
46:32
companies like you know, I want to say, Kodak or lex Mark.
46:36
They'd put out printers and they were the price point was amazing. It was
46:38
twenty nine dollars or thirty nine dollars. But what happens is you've got a
46:43
limited run of ink and then you'd have to go to the store and you'd
46:46
have to buy their ink, and you'd have to buy their ink from them,
46:51
and generally that inc was a lot more expensive than the printer you generally,
46:57
yeah, you would find out black you were spending more a hunter box
47:00
of color. Yeah, so you were, you were going you were spending
47:02
all that money you saved in the printer, you were throwing it out the
47:06
window on the inks. And unless you've got the xcels or maybe you you
47:10
know, you bought the higher capacity you generally, you know, if you're
47:14
generally weren't doing great with it. And then the other problem with some printers
47:17
if you don't and we mentioned this last week, if you don't print on
47:20
them. Often the heads can dry and then you've got to go through a
47:22
cleaning process. Sometimes it can it can render the printer unusable. But what
47:28
I think is this, this is a great thing. Epson took HP's business
47:32
model, which was atrocious because HP went the route of we're gonna digital copyright
47:43
are cartridges exactly so you can't use them, and then if you don't subscribe
47:51
to the ink refill we're just gonna shut your ink off. So this is
47:57
the first time I've seen I mean i've seen home you know, third party
48:01
refillables, right the needles and the you put it. It makes a mess.
48:07
And that's one where they make a mess. And that's what I was
48:09
telling somebody about it. Oh they're messy. I said, no, not
48:12
this, not the appsin but this is I mean, I would buy a
48:16
ink jet if I bought one of these. I didn't know this was a
48:21
thing because there's so much bad publicity about HP and the bs they're pulling with
48:29
where you can't use third party cartridges. You can't, you know, if
48:32
you don't if you have the subscription for the ink like you get x amount
48:37
of inc a month or every two months and you cancel, Well then they
48:39
shout your printer off. Yeah with this and that buddy mine was telling me
48:44
he does the subscription one and I said, there's no subscription in this.
48:47
Although what you can do and with the app, the smart panel app is
48:52
amazing because you can select what you want to do. Just scroll or I
48:58
want to pret a photo or I want to pret a document. You could
49:00
do that. You can do it for you're in your computer, but you
49:01
could have this app on your phone. You could direct from your phone,
49:05
but it will show you the ink levels there. But what most people are
49:07
saying is you get enough inc out of the box for this, and you
49:12
could see it because the reservoir is a lot bigger than those cartridges who you
49:15
used to get for about two years. You're also saving ninety percent on the
49:22
cost of the consumables, whereas to print maybe a fifty percent maybe fifty percent
49:30
color you know the rest black text. You're going to spend about twenty cents
49:34
per page. This has got it down to about a penny a page.
49:37
That's great. You pay more for the printer though the printer itself is going
49:42
to set you back a bit. It's going to be about two hundred and
49:45
fifty bucks. But even just looking at their website, right, it's you've
49:47
got someone's with less features. The Eco take Et twenty eight hundred, two
49:54
hundred bucks. Yeah, that's about two ninety nine for the twenty fifty,
49:59
which is one you're talking about, y'all in one. But yeah, I
50:04
mean it's such a good model for that. I didn't know this was the
50:07
thing. The other thing I like about its shown if you've gotten to print
50:12
something in color, and yeah, it has to prime, it has to
50:16
you know, it takes a while. For all, this is pretty fast.
50:21
I and again I want to say almost for doing the black text.
50:24
At least it was almost as fast as popping it out on my laser chet.
50:30
And yeah, so I'd be curious to see what your reaction to is
50:34
in a year when it's had time to dry out a little bit. You
50:37
haven't used it for a couple of months to print, and you got that
50:40
one important document you gotta have out in the mail today. Yeah, and
50:45
your printer is well, the good recommendation is and I say for this for
50:50
anybody, if you have an inkjet printer, whether it be this or even
50:53
a laser chet printer. You know, if you haven't printed in a couple
50:57
of months, make sure you do try and print at least once a month,
51:00
if not every two, every two weeks something. Just get get some
51:05
of that ink flowing through there. And if that's the case, if you're
51:07
not doing it every day, just to try and do it, like at
51:09
least, you know, twice a month. Maybe just run something through there,
51:14
just to make sure that's going. You don't have to do a photo
51:16
which is going to use a lot more photo will use more of the colors,
51:21
of course, but just to just to give it a give it a
51:24
run, to make sure that your printer is going to be in top running
51:28
space. It also doesn't take up too much space. It does have USB
51:31
connectivity, but the wireless features on it very easy to set up. I
51:36
was able to get mind set up in no time. So again, that's
51:38
the one we looked at. Was the Echo Tank twenty eight fifty and you
51:44
can find more info like you just did on their website. We're gonna take
51:46
quick break. We come back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy
51:50
Taylor, I'm Sean Weird. Find us on x AT on the x on
51:54
the X at tech talk Radio. You'll find all the links for all our
52:00
social media at tech talk radio dot com. And now back to tech talk
52:04
Radio. If you have a Google account, like a Gmail or Google Photos
52:09
account that you haven't used in a while, maybe you know some people will
52:14
have to How many Google accounts do you have? Sean that looked like ten
52:21
a bunch? So you know, I've got my main Gmail, right,
52:25
I've got Caitln's got her Gmail? Right, we have we have a Gmail
52:30
set up from Max Good. I've got a client Gmail that I use for
52:35
client video stuff. Right. I've got an archive, a family archive Gmail,
52:40
right, a family archived Gmail for Caitlin's family. Wow. Okay,
52:45
so you have a lot. Yeah, I've got a handful. But do
52:49
they get logged in too? Do you log into them? Well? That's
52:52
I'm panic logging in right now because I've been I've been joined the break,
52:57
I was going, oh crap, what's my password? All right? So
53:00
here's the deal. Google is going to start again doing this. They're going
53:05
to delete and active accounts in December. So if you have a you know,
53:10
Gmail, and you know sometimes we call in Google accounts, but honestly,
53:14
if you think about any compasses, your Gmail, Google Photos, Google
53:17
Drive, anything that could be in there, and that can be you know,
53:22
a work account, you know, etc. That you you manage for
53:25
a business. Maybe you don't log into it all the time. Some people
53:30
have had one they were when they were single and they haven't logged in,
53:34
or when they were married and they haven't logged in. So you might want
53:37
to just make sure you log into it, you know, send yourself an
53:39
email, just make sure you're doing something with it, but log into all
53:44
the aspects of that. So if you have Gmail, make sure you log
53:46
in. You could Google Photos, Google Drive if you set that up,
53:51
and just to make sure that they're all being seen as you being logged into
53:54
it and then you could log log out of it. You might want to
53:58
make that common practice. The second time that Google has done this, mailbox
54:01
providers MSN, which of course Microsoft, Outlook, Hotmail, all of Live.
54:08
Um. I know Yahoo has done this. They've they've closed accounts AOL,
54:13
which is still of people. I know somebody out there still uses AOL.
54:16
So I well, I mean I tried to log into that. It
54:20
was it was I hadn't logged into in, but they said you could read
54:23
decade. You could redo it, but it wouldn't have any of your old
54:27
emails in there, right or contact so fat and I was able to get
54:31
into my Yahoo because I was to check that all right, So everybody,
54:37
my main email is still my hot panic. Log into Google and make sure
54:43
your account is okay. Now, next week in the show, Sean,
54:46
I'm hoping you're gonna you're gonna be back from because you're taking another trip.
54:51
Are you gonna be going to I'm going I'm going to gen Con in Indianapolis.
54:53
I'm going to a board game and gaming convention this weekend. Oh,
54:55
how cool. So that's that's gonna be good. Well, you'll be with
55:00
us on the show next week. You've got to talk about the big announcement
55:04
that we've had this past week from DJI bran new camera, new new action
55:09
camera. Between now and the next show, they're announcing something all right now,
55:15
it looks like an action camera. And to be honest, their cameras
55:21
are their action cameras, I believe are better than gobros. All right,
55:24
Well, we'll find out more about that next week. That wraps up this
55:27
week's Tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor. I'm Seanda Weird, have yourselves
55:30
a wonderful week, See you next week.