Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chichette Across the Pond. This is episode number 571 for November 9th, 2018. And I'm your host, Allison Sheridan. And we have back on the show a very unusual show this time, Joe Duganzik of Smarter Home Life. Hello, Joe. Hello, Allison. How are you doing? Well, right now, we are standing outside of Joe's actual tiny home where he films all of his world famous videos. Steve is inside, and he's going to try to record on video, as we're also recording on audio. And we're going to see what the tiny home of the automation of the future looks like. That sounds like a lot. I hope I can live up to the hype. All right, so let's go inside the house. We are opening the door. Opening the door. Nothing fancy here. It is a regular door. There is a August smart lock. This is the first generation August smart lock. It's still not on the same battery, mind you. But this is the one from about four years ago, actually, soon to be. All right, I'm in love with my August lock. But we're actually standing in the dark right now in Joe's tiny home. And what I see is, well, why don't you describe the layout from left to right first? OK, so from left to right in the dark, should I bring on some lights? Oh, maybe we should do that. OK, I'm going to do this manually just because just for now, we'll get into some fun stuff in a minute. And so we're going to bring up some overall general, I call it everyday general, lighting that fits for most purposes. This is the nighttime version. And there's a daytime version, which is a little bit less bright to save energy. So from left to right, we have an office space. Now, mind you, this is a 390 square foot. I measured. Guest house. I'm supposed to be looking at the camera, I guess, and so on. This is my first walk-in talk. This is like an episode of The West Wing. Is this Aaron Sorkin writing this? Joe is used to doing his shows solo, so it's pretty weird for him. We have a cameraman. In places. All right, so I think I'll get it figured out. So from left to right in this tiny home, I call this the main space. This is my office. Now, one thing you'll notice, there's a chair there, which, of course, is very helpful to share. The coffin's bigger than this. Right. So this is the office. It always, you think about it, and I converted this recently from just a sitting desk to a standing conversion desk. But it's also the thing, when you're in a tiny home, what do you do with your office chair? I wish there was a trap door it would just disappear downward into. But it winds up in the bedroom. But anyways, this is the office space. It's delineated from the rest of the space by this sofa table with the lamps and so forth. And there's a little. You've got a giant 27-inch iMac. You could have put maybe an original Mac would have fit better in here. Well, I just didn't quite have that. I don't have the space for it, unfortunately. But anyways, this is a late 2016 fully souped up i7-4, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera iMac. And a standing conversion desk. And so this Mac happens to run pretty much all the automation for the tiny smart home using a server-based system called Indigo. If you're in the Mac world, you probably have heard of it if you're into home automation at all, or just even if you're not.  Right. So anyways, it is a very small office. I'm in here sometimes. And sometimes if I'm doing some writing or some script writing, it's off to another place with my iPad. But generally, I'm just in here to work. And that's about it. And I've got a little. We have a bookcase with some fabulous movies, almost 100% overlap with our movie collection.  That's true. It's such a great movie. It's such a fantastic movie. And yes, actual physical media. Not everything on streaming. Exactly. We've got some Star Trek things. We've got a NC 1701A. Yes. Because I am definitely a sci-fi nut.  I use this also as the backdrop for my news videos where I'm covering current news and things like that. And so this is one part of the set also for the smart home life. So when you are doing your recording, is your back to this bookcase and the cameras towards the middle of the room? It's about like this. And then the camera is usually kind of just in front of the fridge. So it gets this whole little area back here. So yes, it is. Let me, from the middle of where his chair would be, one, two, three. I can't quite take four steps to get to his refrigerator. So I was just in the kitchen. But I'm back now in the office. Right, yes. A very short commute. And good for snacks. But it's a very compact set up.  There is no middle ground. So you generally have to think, when you do a video production, you have to make sure, okay, did I get everything right? Did I cover everything? Oh, okay. I can put everything away now and actually live once again. So, because otherwise, you just don't get to actually have your space back. It forces you to be neat. You can't leave things crapped up because it's like a tissue to make a mess. I put everything away just for your visit. Oh, okay. So this is fake. It's not usually this perfect, right. All right, so if we, so in terms of lighting, talk about the lighting we're looking at here. So some of the lighting in this home, which was, this is a guest house basically. So it's a very, it's a, basically think of it as a tiny one bedroom apartment. And the lighting was, there was no, the lighting was what was built in. So it was your recessed cans for this room and then the lighting that's part of the fan kit. Otherwise, I put all of the track lighting in and all of the other lighting, the table lamps and kind of underlit, backlit TV stand with Phillips Hue so that I could convert this space to different uses and adjust the space's intentions basically via lighting. And that's done through the automation and the scenes. I like the idea of intention. So like you say, daytime events, things I'm doing at night, it's not about how many lumens it is. It's about what is the feeling and the ambience and what part of the room is lit. And I can show you, if I move to, from everyday general to office focus, you'll notice that the rest of the room will dim a little bit, we'll get a little bit of colored lighting from the LifeXZ strips and this area will be a little bit brighter lit. Now you might think, well, why would you want brighter light if you're working at your computer? Well, I might be writing something down on a posted note or maybe not writing something, but generally it's to give a little bit more focus and attention to this corner of the space. And I've got four different lighting scenes that can adapt or actually more for the whole space to adapt to different purposes. I like the way the under the TV, it's glowing a light turquoise as well over the Apple TV down there. So this is kind of interesting because the question I was going to ask was, geez, Joe, how lazy are you? You can lean over and reach a light switch. Why would you have to have all this automated lighting, but you're doing a lot of different lighting changes throughout this room. Like you say, the track lighting, there's the LIFXZ strip. You've got another set of track lighting. You've got the light under the TV. We have apparently a spotlight right on us right here, which is also nice. That's for the posted note reading. Right, of course, of course. There are throughout the entire space, there are approximately 45 to 50 individual light sources. Are you kidding? Most of which are separately controllable and adjustable. And about one third of that is actually smart lighting that can control color temperature and color. The rest of it is controlled simply with traditional dimmers that are full bright to dark and everywhere in between. Wow, that might be more lights than we have in our house. Yeah, usually. And some people might think it's overkill, but when you get the full explanation, it's okay, it actually does make sense. Most people wouldn't do it because most people just think that lighting is, I just put in a table lamp, right? I screw in a light bulb into my fan kit and I'm done. That's what we do. I can help you. I can help you to upgrade to gourmet lighting as I call it. Okay, so this was, we've been in the office here. We've been in the office. We're totally like, it's time to take a break. Exactly, exactly. Should we go over to the, should we get a snack? Yes, let's walk all the way to the kitchen. One, two, three. Okay, actually, and this is, as I like to call it. Let me put the chair back. Maybe we should switch positions here. So one of the important things in a smart home is you want multiple ways to control it because you might not be near your phone. Maybe you don't have voice control or your voice control is out of whack if you're using Lady A and she doesn't respond to you. She's in that mood she gets in. Or you might be near a switch and physical controls are still super important. The reason is, is because of muscle memory. I know because I put all this stuff together but I know that the third button down if I double tap it will bring light on over here. So I can do that. Double tap and the lights will adjust across your fingers so that now we have more light over here and you've noticed that just a little bit different lighting in terms of because maybe you don't need colored light or mood light if you're making something in the microwave. We went back to white light on the Life XZ. The rest of the lights changed over. We added a little bit of interest with toe kick lighting underneath the cabinets. Oh my goodness, I am missing toe kick lighting. Yeah, I don't know how you're living your life. And then we've got brighter light here so that you can see what you're doing. So this is quick prep, which means that you've got your coffee, your toaster, your microwave and all the things that you need. Now this is called, back to the tiny home aspect, hiding things in plain sight. Originally these were in my cabinets. So he's holding a cup for those on audio? I'm holding a saucer, yes. Can you narrate because I'll forget. Yeah, that's a cup, not a saucer. Not a saucer. There are saucers over there. So I ran out of space to actually hide things and I said, okay, I'll just put things in plain sight and it makes sense because this is where I make my coffee and beverages and so forth. And so this is called quick prep. So back to the light switch. What we're looking at here is two toggle switches, but then some sort of smart thing. It's got eight little tiny buttons.  Who makes that? This is from Insteon and it is called, well the old, they just call it a keypad dimmer now. It used to be called keypad link, kind of a fun techie name. And these are keypads that you can interact with and program the functions of, but they also act as a dimmer. So this actually physically is connected to the light on the other side of this wall and of course is automated, but it's for the patio light. So it actually doubles as a dimmer for the circuit it's connected to and then virtually for anything that you virtually connected to in terms of on off lights or actions. So it's doing double duty there, that's cool. So another double duty and this is kind of a fun Easter egg thing. So you might, you know, remember the old adage and I'm still not looking at the camera, but anyways, we'll fix that in post, right? Don't worry, there's another camera on you down there. Oh, that's right, multiple cameras.  Absolutely, we all know that. Now, it's hard, there's this table here and I've got stuff underneath it and I designed these lovely, I didn't design an Ikea div, but I put these lovely curtain panels on the front of it so that you wouldn't see what's underneath it. But you can't really access the plugs that easily, right? So the toaster and the coffee maker and of course the microwave, not really concerned about the microwave burning the house down, but the toaster, I don't know, maybe on some plane of existence could burn the house down. So the question would be, how do you bring power to the toaster and the coffee maker if you want them to be sort of virtually unplugged? Okay, and what do you do? So I have a smart plug and I have an action that's tied into one of these buttons. Now you'll see. And the buttons he's pointing out again are these same Insteon ones on the switch, right? This one down here is called rainbow coffee. Now there's a rainbow light because rainbow's underneath the thing, but it also says coffee. The coffee is the secondary option, which means if I double tap on it, that means something will happen. Now, Allison, I invite you to double tap that button and do it just like a double put on. Oh, pressure's on. I have to be able to read this. Which one? The blue one, third one from the bottom. Or third from the top. Oh, there we go. I'm gonna double tap. Double tap just like a mouse. Okay. Is toast gonna come up? We're waiting with excited anticipation. The little light blinked. I think you didn't do it. Didn't do it, right? I've tried double tapping it in. I tried it again. It's blinked. The coffee and toaster power is now on. Now. Something somewhere spoke from back over in the, in the office. The Mac has a rotating set of funny lines. That's actually not one of the funnier ones. I see if maybe it'll actually, if we turn it back off again. Cause it's trying to make coffee, of course. Okay, just burn his house down. Power conservation mode is now enabled. Otherwise known as I might have turned off the power, but maybe not. Anyway.  I swear it's, you know, tip your waitress. Anyways, what it does is it brings the power on for about 30 minutes and then it automatically turns it off, or you can switch it off yourself manually. Something else that it does, and this is the smart aspect of it, is that since that button also controls the light underneath, that. He just hit the button again. I turned the button and I turned it off. It's sometimes it loses its mind. That's why it blinks. I can turn it back on again, but I had to set it up so that if I double tap that and I control it, that it maintains the status of the light independent of whether I'm turning the coffee and toaster on or off. So that some of the, this is advanced home automation because I have a server that I can actually use code and use state level variables to know what devices are on or off and how I'm controlling things and maintaining the state not only of lights, but of all of these individual buttons. All these buttons don't just light up because magic happens. They're all programmed so that the system knows the state of all the lights and appliances and all the bunch of variables and it's maintaining those states and using triggers. So you need to know which one's on before it turns it off or off before it's on and power. And in addition, watch this. So. It's doing something on his phone now. Do something on the phone. This is Indigo. This is the device interface for Indigo. Now I'm going to scroll down to the GR, to the GR rainbow light. The GR rainbow light is tied in virtually with that keypad button. Now if I turn it off here, it turns the keypad button off because the system understands that that light was actually turned off from anywhere. Okay, so again, so this app you're running here is by whom? This is Indigo Touch and it's by the same company Indigo Demotics who make the Indigo server software. And again, likewise, if I turn the keypad button back on, the light turns on physically and of course it updates the app. Oh wow, wow. So yeah, you have done some high-level graduate coursework here. Just a tiny little bit. All right, where are we going now? Let's go to the fridge. I think the fridge just turned on. This will be something quick. This is something about how I do productions here. When you're in a tiny home and especially a home that has tile floors and when you're doing high-level production stuff, you wanna make sure that you start with as good, as excellent of audio as you can. Unfortunately, this guy makes a lot of noise and it bounces off the wall and it bounces off the tile. So I built some routines for say like Studio Mode. So I can say Studio Mode on. The fridge is on a smart plug. The fridge is now off. The audio listeners definitely heard it go off right there. So he was just using the Indigo app again on his phone. That's right. This is a custom action group that I executed. It also, it not only turns the fridge off, but it will turn it back on in an hour and a half to make sure that I don't leave the house on accident and have everything melt and get unrefrigerated. It also does the same thing. It shuts the nest down. It also shuts the ceiling fan down. It does all that for that time period and then brings it all. It reverses those actions in an hour and a half. I hope that's the Nest thermostat, not the Nest Protect smoke and CO sensor that you meant when you said it turns it off. Right, it is the Nest thermostat. I actually don't have the Nest smoke detector. So that's one additional way of, when we're talking about in a tiny home, in a smart home that you can actually reduce some noise from when you're doing video work because when I was doing video work, I just found I'm always shutting the fridge off or I'm always turning something. And what happens, the best way to learn how to do home automation and to create a smart home in your own home is first of all, try to figure out all of the pain points. The things that you do on a recurring basis and you're thinking, I wish I just had a button for that. That's where the smart home and the home automation really comes into play. I like it, I like it. So do we keep moving here? Let's keep moving. There's not a- Is this the most amount of light we can have for Steve? Oh no, we can. Yeah, we can go back. Well, do you want to see the maximum amount of light? Yes, all the lights. There are four lights. What's the top item on that list? All the lights full, can I press it? Press it. This is on his phone. Press it. All right, now Steve's... Okay, the ISO on Steve's GoPro was set to high. We'll see how that video came out. But that's nice. Wow. This is maximum brightness, all lights across the entire, I was gonna say property, but- All 45 different light sources. All 45 different light sources. And this is controlling not only the Insteon dimmers and built-in, scene commanders basically, but also LIFX and Philips Hue lighting, all integrated back to the Indigo system. Wow, this is bright. So this might actually be nice for his video. He's probably thinking, yeah, why don't you do that a while ago? This is good. Okay, we'll see how- We're getting a thumbs up from our cameraman. Excellent, excellent. In the kitchen, there aren't that many smart things, not the smart things hub, but there aren't that many smart things here in the kitchen, other than yet another control panel. So is that the exact same set of controls or is this different? Oh no, this is different. Because you want to have different, because you have to think about, okay, in a smart home, if I have physical controls, what am I nearby? What makes sense? The blender. That's right, that's exactly right. Why are we not making margaritas with that button yet? We just had some. Oh, that's why I knew that was. But I mean, take a look at the labels. I'll take my drink out of the way here. But take a look at the water actually labeled on the keypad and tell me or play around with it. Okay, so it says kitchen left and kitchen right. Both lights are on. I'll hit kitchen left and my left light went off. Press kitchen right. And I'm guessing, oh, just that one of the three track lights. Correct. Because they're all. That's an unusual light, Steve. Look up into that. The bulb is part. This is an LED PAR 30 by TCP Industries. It's one of the TCP makes some of the most compatible and beautiful LED light sources that you can buy. And they're dimmable from a half percent to 100% and they look theatrical. Yeah. All right, what else we got here? I just stared into the light. Now I can't read it. She's seen the light. Living track, quick prep. Now, did you label all of these? Yes, the best thing about these instian little control panels, they've got clear buttons that you can swap out and then you can print your own labels. So they're very customizable. That's not an LED in there with that writing. No, it is not. But you can customize the little, they have little filters, color filters and that's how I've customized them. So the blue ones are individual devices and the green ones are scenes. Oh, okay. So down in the bottom left, kitchen living. I'm gonna hit that once so I hit it twice. Nope, once is the first option, twice is the second option. Okay. So now we've gone into kitchen mode and you've seen that we've moved the focus of the room to the kitchen. So this is your, you have your guests over here are having canapes, but you want to make them another martini? Exactly. Okay. Why aren't we making martinis? Ah, you didn't tell me you wanted martinis. I would have gotten the extra vodka. We've got some lovely wine. Do you want some red wine? Do you want some inexpensive red wine from Safeway? No, I think we're good. Okay, let me put, so I turn that off to get everything back up or? Well, let's see, Steve is actually nearby. There's a red button behind you, Steve, that'll actually bring all of the lights back to that massively bright. Just tap that once. Steve's doing one hand behind his back and he's got all his lights back. We know our resume. So again, and that's also kind of an emergency button if you're at the front door, you walk in the house and maybe there's something wrong. Something seems strange. Maybe there's a burglar that hasn't been yet detected by your motion sensor. Or the fact that you can see six feet down the hall. Yes, exactly. You mean in another house, right? But again, with physical buttons, you really want to make sure that they make sense as to where you are. Oh, right, right, I got it. You're reaching for it. You say, I want to make a, because even in the smart home with smart lighting, we've all been sold on this concept of smart lighting and you control it with an app, but lighting is something that you need to have happen immediately because we all know when you press a regular light switch or you turn something on or off, it just happens, right? Right, right. So with something like that, you press a button and it happens. And you physically, even if you know which button to push, you can reach around a wall and you don't have to physically look at it because you know where it is by touch. Yeah, I really like that. So we've done the physical buttons, we've done the phone, but I see a Google home sitting there. I'm guessing there's something to control. Siri is probably here in the house somewhere. I'm guessing the lady, lady A is in here somewhere. She's sitting over there, that's right. So do you use any of them to control the house? I do, and let me think. Which is the least recalcitrant of the three. Let's do this. Say you want some music, right? And I do my, I don't know what's gonna play to be honest, so who knows what's gonna happen. I have my own iTunes library. I don't use a lot of the Spotify services and so forth. I just kind of add music as I need to, but I've added different sequences. Again, just thinking, what am I pressing too many buttons? What am I going to my Mac for too often? So let's do this.  He's not really sorry. Hey Google, turn on speakers and randomize audio. Google home's plinky some lights, they're spinning. Randomizing iTunes playback. Now it's controlling the Google home speakers from the Mac through a program called Airfoil. From RoboMoeba. That's right. And this allows you to cast using Google's cast protocol. Bring all your down just a little bit so we don't override. And you just yell at him. You know why? Because she can't do exactly what I need her to do. So I'm gonna go into my own app and I'm gonna make a change. He's changing the volume using his app, bringing it down a little bit. Bring it down a little bit more. That's a lot of sound out of that little tiny thing. We could go Macs, but it'll kill it. Yeah, but that was pretty loud. I thought there were other speakers around, literally. That's just the one. It's actually the main, this is the original Google home speaker. And that's at 30% volume. Of course it was right up on top of it. Well, of course. But anyways, so what the Mac did was basically initiate a connection to all three speakers across the home. I have two Google home minis and one of these guys, but the Airfoil software can communicate to AirPlay two devices and also Bluetooth devices. So the Bluetooth devices will cover your Bluetooth speakers, but they'll also cover all of your Alexa devices as well. And so this is, it's a custom audio group and it connects and basically does whole house audio. And I gave it a secondary command because with Google Home and the Google Assistant, you can give it two commands concatenated by and. Okay, so twice as smart as Siri. Exactly, yeah. And so, and I've got. Siri's like one minute, Tom, right? Yeah, right. You didn't tell her one thing, the next, that's already gone. It's gone. She's forgotten about it. So I can start a workout playlist. I can do next and previous tracks. I can do, you know, resume and so forth. Or I can just say, you know, we're done with the music. Hey, Google, turn off speakers. She's, he's, she's trying. Now what it's doing is it's stopped iTunes playback. It's disconnected the audio from the speakers. It's also then reconnecting and resetting the volume level to the standardized assistant voice volume level that I want and then disconnecting again. And again, maintaining all of that state through the app and all the variables. And the app is not the Google app. We're back to the. We're back to the Indigo Touch app. Indigo Touch app. Okay. This is again, like you talked about a PhD or something high level, smart home. When you can control something and you can write the code. This is Python, a mix of, this is a mixture of Python and Apple script, managing all of these, all of this functionality. Very cool. Very, notice that the fan just started. So the ceiling fan, just a quick diversion here. The ceiling fan is also on Insteon, specialized little module that sits in the canopy. It controls both the light and the fan, low, medium, high and off. It reads the Mac is also connected to the Nest thermostat and reads the temperature every 15 minutes. It looks at the various temperature bands, makes a decision and sets the fan. And it's sending it to the Indigo app. Yep. Oh wow. The Indigo is the master control center for everything in this home. It is Joe's brain. It is my brain, yes. So everything but the lock. That's interesting. Why not the August lock? The August smart lock is kind of an isolated device. On purpose by design or? Yeah, for the security context. It's also the older version. So they have a Z wave version of the August lock which you could connect to a Z wave controller. Indigo is a plugin based architecture so you can get a plugin for Z wave. Actually it's part of the build. But anyways you can, if I had the Z wave version of the August or another Z wave lock, I could control it. But you know, I'm okay with the security context of it being completely isolated. It unlocks when I approach. It relocks after a couple of minutes and I'm fine with that. That's my favorite thing about the device, right? It's just, if you don't have a smart lock, I don't know what you're doing with your life. Now I have been making fun of Siri quite a bit here but are you using Siri for anything here? You know, I'm sorry Siri, but I'm not. And I don't have a HomePod. I thought about it and then I looked at the price and I thought, sorry Tim. Little too much. You know, it's funny, we were just talking last night. We had, Troy Schimpkis was over at the house and we're sitting there chatting away having dinner and Siri from the HomePod just kept coming on and chatting with us and saying all kinds of random things. You remember there used to be a problem with Lady A. Oh yes. She seems to have stopped doing it and has tricked her friend Siri into doing it for us. That's crazy. So it's constant and it's never anything traceable back to even a word that had an S in it. I don't think it, she just randomly pops up and of course what she's usually saying is sorry I can't do that, look at your phone. Right. Now something else in the kitchen, there's not that many other smart things but there's tiny home aspects to the kitchen. One of the things, and this was a challenge here and I haven't solved it because this is a rental and I thought about, I know my landlord's very well and we've thought about fixing this issue. We just never got around to it and I'm gonna be moving out in a few months anyway. So you'll notice that there is, you've got your keypad here. You've got quad. We're gonna do a set changer. Spin move. Spin around. You've got your keypad and then you've got quad outlets and I upgraded one of the outlets to also include USB power, which is just fantastic. If you haven't done this, please do it because then you don't have all the little wall. Are they both GFI or just one of them? This is the GFI and then this is a traditional circuit. But you'll notice that that's the only power there. There is no power on this wall, which does make, even though the appliances look pretty here, they have to move. They're fake, they're basically sets right now. Yeah, they're sets, yeah. So it is a little bit of a challenge here and we thought about putting power on this wall just because the shower's behind it and create the additional challenges to do that. So living in a tiny home, you're always trying to think of, okay, where do I put things? And so it makes it a little more complicated where if I wanna make pancakes and scrambled eggs at the same time, I've got multiple appliances that all have to be here and plugged into one area because I can't spread out as much as I want to. And you'll notice also that this is a little kitchen island that I bought at Ikea just to give myself a little bit more counter space and a little bit more just storage to have a drawer and a couple of more shelves. And when you say a little bit more, it's like 60% more because the counter is so small. It is so small. So back to the tiny home here now, this is a room that I have seen in your videos, but I don't see any video gear out here. Can we take a look at where the video gear lives when it's not, so this is almost all of his house. I don't think we're gonna go into his bedroom. Probably not. In fact, we're probably gonna keep the camera averted from his bedroom because I put my luggage in there and it looks like a mess but he had it all cleaned up. But we're gonna go into the tiny closet, I think. That's right, absolutely. All right, so Steve, make sure you divert the camera as we go back here. I will try to not trip on my way in. So how about if Joe goes in? I don't know that we can both be in there. I might need to just have, here, well, let's do it just for the comedy.  So, Actually, you might wanna come from this side, Steve. So this is the only closet. It's a walking closet. It is very, very full with everything from clothing to cleaning accessories and shoes and things like that. But largely 95% of the gear that I shoot with for smarter home life and any other video productions that I do exists from here across this shelf. So he's pointing at a maybe four foot long shelf here. What do we got here? We got a tripod. There are, actually, on this shelf alone, I think we actually have eight or nine tripods. Wow.  There's an entire green screen set and background back here. There's also the controller for my slider, for my camera. These are two lights. I'll show you, this is kind of a cool thing. Pauli, if he can pull it around the corner here. So this is, looks like a... This is a studio light. So this is, again, just describe what it looks like for the audio people. This is a boxy, rectangular light like the size of a shoe box, maybe a little, maybe a boot box. Right.  So when you're doing long productions, you don't want a lot of heat. One thing that you can save money on generally is if you want to go LED, don't buy the lights that already have their own soft boxes and special fancy features. Buy the ones without the soft boxes. Buy your own material for $8 on Amazon. And... He's got a bunch of... Velcro it.  This is diffusion cloth. Oh. And he's opening up the light panel. This is pretty cool. And these light panels use magnetic color filters.  A little white LED so that's an array of, I think, I don't know, hundreds of these. Right. And they have a couple of different filters. One for... This would be really harsh if this was on, right? Yeah, so once you put one of the filters on it, they have a blue filter for even bluer light, even though the light that you'll get out of it natively. I was gonna say, I never want it more blue. Right, yeah, some people do.  That's funny. It's just... It's a degree of light diffusion. I gotta say, it looks a little crappy, but it's for $8 versus those fancy light boxes. And those light boxes tend to go for hundreds of dollars and I got these lights from Amazon for about $125 each. Wow. And I use two of these, plus a third sometimes in my production. And again, with the appropriate storage and hooks and so forth, everything somehow lives in here. Is he just hung it up on there? You notice that there's like a quarter inch of spacing between this one and the next one over. Yeah, and you might be exaggerating on a quarter of an inch between the S-picing. Wow. Now I do want people to see who are watching the videos and we'll describe it here, but there's a whole bunch of little tiny drawers. They're like maybe eight or 10 inches across and two or three inches tall. We've got these at Target. And when you open them up, there's some microphone gear. Here's a, they call this a dead cat, but it doesn't mean a dead cat. It's a microphone filter. This is my workhorse camera. I shoot all of the main shots and scenes that you see with Smarter Home Life. This is a Sony RX-103. Oh, wow. And it's got a...  He's got a point and shoot in his hand. It's a point and shoot camera.  It's not the greatest, but it works very well. It has a flip up lens, it has a flip up viewfinder so I can see myself. Oh, so you can see yourself, oh. And it kind of pivots, yeah. Steven enjoyed that he was on camera for a second. Pivots a little bit. So depending on what angle you have. And I use this for all my product shots because I can go in and change, you know, all of my... Well, anyways, it has all the settings of a DSLR and it's basically a mirrorless compact camera, but this is my workhorse and has been for three years. And it's a compact, it's a tiny camera and a tiny house, right? Everything is a focus on tiny, right? Wow, so each one of these drawers has little tiny specialized services, different tools for the trade, right? For the trade, yeah. I was mentioning this before, like I have all kinds of adapters to mount tripods to. This is a C-clamp adapter that you can mount everything to everything, this is a tiny... I just found a periscope. Yeah, it's the HTC RE camera, which actually goes fully underwater because of course all the underwater smart home stuff I do. Not really, but anyways, it's just a cool camera. It's got tripod threads on the bottom. It's super wide. It's kind of a cheaper alternative to the GoPro. Unfortunately, HTC is no longer making it, but it was kind of a nifty idea. Nice. And so I think one of the most impressive things in here is your cable management. And I'm gonna have to flip to the other side for Steve to see this. We've now rotated.  See if we can get Steve in here. So describe the cable management we have here. So this is a shoe organizer from IKEA, hanging shoe organizer and... How can you put on the back of your door in the dorms? That's exactly right. And I just thought this would be perfect because I was always having trouble. How do I organize cables? How do I make things work? And this is the best, you know, I have things set up by, you know, USB and video and extension cables and zip ties and all kinds of things. And they generally tend to go back in the slots that they're supposed to. That's actually brilliant. I think that's a fabulous idea. Steve was looking at that, saying I gotta get one of those.   Right, right, absolutely. And the rest of it is basically just very organized in terms of clothing and just using every square inch possible. This is crazy. Well, this has been really cool. Any, anything else we need to see here? Well, we covered the gamut as it were. Yeah, the last thing, and I don't use it for that much. It's a nifty concept. I reviewed the product officially, but below me down here is the TV stand has Phillips Hue smart lighting, the Lightstrip Plus embedded in it. I taped it specifically in there. It was in terms of lighting, it's designed to reflect the light internally so that you get the maximum amount of light reflected within the glass, table or glass TV stand. Hold the camera, I need to get on the ground and look at this. Of course, it is, of course, from Ikea as almost everything is here in this place. So this is much like the Lifex. Yes, but this is the Phillips Hue version of it. Okay, and so that's just glowing under the table. Correct. And lighting it up because it's a diffuse table. Correct. Wow, that's neat. And underneath it at the very bottom is the recently released, I like to call it the Echo Cube, but this is the Fire TV Cube. And this is a remote controller for infrared devices. So for your AV equipment, and it also has Alexa built right in. So I've changed the wake word so we won't set things off, but I can say something like this. Computer, turn on TV. We see a small cube with a bright light that went across it and the TV's coming on. But beyond that, because it's integrated with all of the Amazon things, you could ask it for things that you traditionally couldn't even do with something like Harmony because it has all the apps and so forth. So I can say, computer, play Stargate SG-1 on Hulu. Getting Stargate SG-1 from Hulu. We're watching the TV with anticipation here. Now I may have canceled my Hulu subscription so this may not work because there was a subscription question with that whole thing, but generally this does work. I have demos on it, yes, yeah, my subscription last, but because everything is integrated, you can actually get it to do all of the things. This is a great device if you're all in on the Amazon world, if you're not quite all in on the Amazon world, it will be a little bit of a standalone device as it is with me. But of course, when I'm going to bed because I can't do any, I can't control this thing from other things, but on the way to the bedroom at night, I can say, computer, turn off the TV. We'll try that. Again, computer, turn off the TV. And there she lit up blue and the TV is off. And what it did was the last thing I'll say is that it upgraded. This is an older TV that does not support all the commands that normally go over an HDMI cable that you can like change inputs and all those things.  This gave my TV a little bit more life because then I can actually control inputs and control some more things over the infrared blasters that are integrated into the device. So gave my TV a little bit more life, so that's why I still have it around. Yeah, that's fantastic. All right, well, I'm gonna get up off the floor again. This has been a fabulous tour of a smarter home life and a smarter home and a tiny home at the same time from Joe DeGanzik. If people wanted to find out more about your work, where would they find you? You can go to SmarterHomeLife.com and pretty much just Google SmarterHomeLife and you'll find it everywhere. Thanks for being on the show yet again, Joe. Thank you, Allison.


Good morning guys. It's actually almost afternoon obviously because it is 1120 just watching one of Alyssa Rose's vlogs. I really like her vlogs but some of the stuff I it's just like kind of long so I like skip through it so um but I in generally like her like five and stuff so just coming on to start the video and say I've been doing like a lot of like chores and like resetting um like laundry I have to hand wash some of my like cups and everything so I have to do that but I'm importing the footage from yesterday's video which is super exciting um I was gonna edit it tomorrow but then I'm like you know I have some time might as well just like be productive and stuff because I know like every time after work I get so tired and like I don't want to do anything and that's why like the videos have just been like kind of sparse it's just how it is and it really sucks but it's okay I've already complained in my last video that I posted so you guys know how I feel but it's fine because we're straight chilling you know like we're just gonna have a good time so I have just imported my video clips into final cut I'm gonna predict that the like raw video is gonna be about like 10 minutes I didn't get that much footage to be honest kind of sad yeah it's 11 minutes see I can predict kind of like how long the video is gonna be which kind of sucks and I could just combine like both of the videos but I don't want to and you know what if I don't want to do anything on channel now like I'm just not going to and it's gonna be 10 minute vlog so I also wanted to do like this isn't gonna be like what's in my bag because like I feel like I just filmed that also too guys I want to film an updated what's on my iPhone but I want to wait until like the new iPhone comes out because I'm definitely gonna get that one I'm kind of like on a two-year plan not plan because I buy my phones like straight out of I buy them in full just from Apple like an unlocked phone because we use like a third party well not a third party but like an off-brand carrier so that's why I just buy the phones like you know in full which is easier but I wanted to talk about my new belt bag and this is so cute like I don't want similar to it from kickass like Karen's brand and that's why I was like holding off getting this one because it's like so similar but like it's little lemon and like it was just like one of those impulse buys which I try not to do but I did and I love the way it like fits on me like I think it's so cute and yeah I just kind of want to share what I have inside here I kind of when you get this bag you get this like thing called a mini po shit and I basically put all the stuff from the mini po shit into here so this is just really convenient because like I can just put my phone in here my wallet fits really well in here I can just zip it up and throw it over some friends and I are going to go to dust in Florida and so my friend that I hung out with yesterday we're like we should just get these three dust in and I was like okay you know might as well do that so first off I'm just going to go through this really quickly because this is what I would keep in like my everyday bag um and I'm so happy I got this because like when I'm like on the go or whatever like tonight we're going to go to Disney Springs obviously because it's just what we do so I can just grab this out and not have to carry and I know this like sounds like first world problem but I don't have to carry this like big tote bag you know like I can just take this out throw it over and then be good um good to go so basically I just have in this little pouch um like band-aids a nail file because like sometimes like my nails just pop off and it's like gross um I have money I do have cash I think that was from Easter and that's kind of like how I buy my green juice because they'll like charge you more apparently if you I don't know I'm going off in tangent but have cash this for the wine room I have that um a business card I love my business cards I worked hard on them I'm like in the typography I'm actually like really proud of this like there's not a lot of stuff well there's only like a handful of stuff I'm like really proud of and that's like one thing I'm proud of then I have my little target gift card I have the appointment for my next appointment for the doctors um then a band-aid and then this is like a key card to like get in the pool and stuff so that's what I have in this little pouch thing so there's this little like net here there's a little net thing here and that's what I keep in there then I have a racetrack gift card I actually keep it in the paper so I don't forget that I have it and it like is noticeable and then this is just the receipt to like go with it gas prices these days oh my gosh guys like I'm kind of it's kind of a sad thing then I just have my little computer adapter just so I have it this little mini perfume it's the Jimmy Choo illicit flower and honestly I think it's leaking oh my gosh I think it is that's awkward this is like 30 something dollars I'm kind of sad that it's leaking ew now I'm well I'll just like rub it on myself here um then I have this this is perfect for my sunglasses I don't know if my sunglasses will actually fit in this thing actually I'm gonna try that um but I typically keep like my sunglasses heating here so they don't get scratched I have a pad I have a tampon because I use both um and then I have just this little pen because it's always good to have like a pen on you and then I just have like all of this change which I'm kind of glad I'm cleaning this out because I don't want to keep all this change in my bag I just have all of this change and then a couple um claritons because sometimes I get allergies but like I've just forced myself not to have allergies so I'm like I don't have allergies and sometimes I sneeze and then you know I'm like oh this sucks but I just like ignore it then I have a hair tie in here next up I have this little computer charger adapter thing I don't know I just like to have it with me because sometimes I do take my laptop different places and I don't want to forget that or else bringing the charger would be pointless um then I have some little perfume samples which aren't leaking my bitcoin for my friend's costume I go a little more detail of this um in my what's in my bag video but it was from her halloween costume I guess it fell off and we found it and that is everything oh and then this back pocket which is so convenient like I can just unzip this and then bam wallet with my like all my cards are in here so I just have like credit cards and like my vaccine card $20 just in case like you never know if like place like we only take cash yeah that's pretty much it's in there and then this little keychain I got in winter park so cute so I keep that in this like back pocket because it's just really easy access and everything so I was wanting like the Gucci Soho disco to be like my everyday bag or whatever but I think for now it's gonna be like this lululemon belt bag because they're like popular they're in style and I don't want to be spending Gucci prices even though you guys know I love luxury and like all things luxury but like right now it's just like not the best time to be spending that uh type of money so I spend that type of money on my gas bill now so uh yeah I'm just gonna put all this stuff back in here okay it will fit in there it's just like it's gonna be a tight squeeze I guess so maybe I don't have to keep this thing in there now I think I'm gonna end up just throwing this away that's sad hope you guys enjoyed this little part I think I think I'm going to try to vlog obviously at Disney Springs but it'll probably just be on my phone oh my goodness guys it is so hot out laundry is still moving slowly but surely I hand washed all my stuff so my water bottle is all clean I typically just keep it like right here it like fits really perfect in this little niche here and then I have my hat that's in case if I forget a hat if I go to the pool or something or it was like yesterday I forgot a hat so this is perfect to have in here it has the company that I work for his name on it so I just kind of like tucked it here and then also I keep it here too because it helps my water bottle from like sliding all over the place I could put it here which sometimes I do um but I typically keep my like water bottle or like Starbucks drink there so I have nowhere to put that one and then I have my tumbler this is all clean ready for the work week because I just take like one tumbler to work and then leave it there for the entire week so I don't have to like keep taking it back and forth if you know what I mean so yeah I am in the car because I'm wanting some Starbucks I kind of wanted some Starbucks yesterday um but instead we got crumble which is like totally fine with me because I love crumble but May 15th is just a wild day and like the dating life which I don't have any dates like today but anyway I don't know just something to commemorate and have some fun um and then I also still have some Easter money so like cash that I just showed you guys so I'm gonna go pick up some Starbucks just cuz and probably then finish some laundry I want to get ready to go to Disney Springs because I'm wearing the cute Lulu lemon shirt that my aunt got me and I have like the little fanny pack here a belt bag whatever um my friend got a really cute one in gray but I like black also too it matches my never lost key chain so I kind of just wanted to keep the black theme um I know it's basic but whatever it's fine also guys I'm wearing my slippers because I'm just gonna go through the drive-thru I did this on Easter too and it was like kind of funny but um yeah I don't know what else there is to update on I want to wear some cute little mouse ears today just because I think it'll go cute with the outfit since I'm like wearing all black pretty much yeah I love the sporty look it's just comfortable it's cute it's not like I was always the type of person to just wear a t-shirt a t-shirt and jeans and I'm like I only own like two t-shirts and they're like oversized because I don't know I just need to force myself to like not wear that you know what I mean anyway I'm gonna go to Starbucks now all right guys I got the goods well just this good oh my gosh I love it when it looks like this okay so what I was gonna say is before I'd like go because the light turned green um I got the one with caffeine just cuz but she's beautiful and just gonna enjoy this on this sunday afternoon I like to mix it up because it's just too strong if it's like not mixed up so cheers this is what my type of sunday looks like grudging garrity podcast we'll do my makeup and finishing up some Starbucks like let's get on with the little time-lapse cuz my makeup look is always the same and it's like pretty basic nothing fancy so let's go so this is the look I really like it it's just like really plain but this is what I chose to wear today I know you guys kind of already saw like my top and stuff but this is just like the muscle t-shirt and then I'm wearing my little fanny pack belt bag I think this is like how you're supposed to wear it I don't know I'm just like copying what I see and then I decided to wear the ears because it's like a little pop of color I don't know I just thought it was cute so I think we're gonna head out soon which is gonna be super fun and exciting I'm really glad um I get to go out and spend some time with Valerie cuz that's always fun and we just like chill out and hang out um and I got all my stuff done today like my reset stuff I'm probably gonna pack like prepack my work clothes so I don't have to do it tonight yeah I'm just happy that everything's pretty much settled for you know the next week the next new week um so yeah now it's time to just like relax even more all right so we are on our way to Disney Springs we are Valerie is excited I was excited yes she lost her Disney Springs and we're gonna eat at the boat house Valerie this morning at the bar like in the bar in the bar yeah Valerie this morning was like do you want to go to Disney Springs I was like yeah cuz you know during the week even though I'm not like the biggest Disney person well okay I'm like half and half it just depends it just depends um if I'm Disney down or not but overall I like to have some Disney fixes you know every week per se or every two weeks so I was like yes and then Valerie was like and eat at the boat house and I'm like oh yes yes like that's a double yes so I'm excited for a little treat tonight it'll be good absolutely oh my gosh so we got to Disney Springs and I had to vlog this because it's so cute look at this sweatshirt oh my gosh so adorable oh my gosh so cute I think yeah yep there's a little tag and then there's these little coin purses I actually really like these that's really cute look at the little key chains I know oh my gosh man it's a whole thing would it be a proper trip if I didn't drag Valerie into Lulu lemon here so we are just exploring and hopefully we can find some good stuff no I'm not planning on buying anything because I already spent a lot of money here so so it's explaining to Valerie that all about like Lulu lemon and like how it's like gotten popular and stuff so now she's all up to speed yes I'm all up to speed and grateful her Valerie's are blessed I can't believe I just have my ears on back so now we got them all right now like they're all good and we are eating at the boat house tonight we're gonna eat at the bar area the car is going out this is our view tonight look how pretty Valerie's in her happy place all right guys we got our lobster bis I got a rosé I love rosé I think it's perfect for like the weather and just like everything view perfect Valerie also got a lobster bis as well so yummy okay so I got mine I got the Alex classic here because I wasn't I had a salad for lunch so I wanted some carbs so I got the shrimp with some just buttered pasta Valerie still hasn't made it out yet I think it's coming from like the oyster bar or something