mergeconflict339 === [00:00:00] James: Welcome everyone to 2023. We made it. [00:00:12] Frank: Frank, what is this up? Okay. It's an odd year. Is it a prime year? That feels kind of prime ish. I wonder if there's a quick prime checker. Oh, anyway. I'm sure other people know the answer to that and they're screaming into their audio podcast player right now. Hi everyone. It's 2023 and I've already lost my mind. [00:00:31] James: Yes. Um, if you are patrons subscriber with a few, which few you are, you see I've lost my mind, uh, talking about Avatar and 3D movies. So that was our latest bonus and, uh, Frank, uh, entertained. The conversation for 26 minutes. I appreciate that Frank. [00:00:46] Frank: I had some winning feedback. I have it tune in for my insightful comments about the avatar two and what I call computer graphics and Saturday morning cartoons spoilers. [00:00:58] James: Exactly. Um, I can't believe we made it. We made it through 2022. There is lots of ups and downs in the world in, I dunno, there's a lot of positives in, in the world of. You know, Donette development, we had 52 episodes of the podcast. There must have been something going on in the last year that was excitement. [00:01:16] Frank: I am gonna listen to all of them. That is my New Year's resolution, as we all know, we all accomplish our New Year's resolution, so I'm gonna listen to all 20 22, 20 22 episodes of the pod on a row. It's gonna be amazing. Could you, could you imagine, I, I don't think I can start with our year end in review, because we were reviewing 2021 and that was kind of a depressing year. Yeah. So I'm not sure, I, maybe I'll, maybe I'll start in like, [00:01:42] James: Yeah, I, I think we're gonna, we're gonna skip our, our traditional 2020 end of year highlight, but let, let's do a little, a quick one. Let's do a quick, a quick one. Okay. For tradition sake. Yeah. For tradition sake. Yeah. Traditions. Um, hi . Any favorite tech ADTs that came out [00:02:02] Frank: this year for you? Well, I mean the, there is the tech gadget that I lost the Snapchat drone. Hmm. I absolutely adored for the two weeks that I owned it or whatever. Uh, it's not true. I didn't use it that much. Um, but I thought it was a very clever innovation in the technology world. We did an entire podcast about it. I, I, I can't imagine people sitting through that one. But, um, it, it was a wonderful little drone until it decided to go. Yes. [00:02:33] James: And still to be found one day by somebody. Maybe. Maybe. [00:02:38] Frank: How, how about you, are you using your, uh, little snap [00:02:41] James: drone? No. It's just sitting . You're all sad. Oh, yeah. I, I do want to, I should, I still have it. It's still just hanging out. And like my other drone, I use my other journal a little bit more recently, which, , you know, a great purchase several years back. Well, Heather got it from me for Christmas several years back and was absolutely delightful whenever I get to use it. Where the Snapchat drone, I think would be one of my favorites. I just haven't like used it. And that's sad because you used it and then you lost it and then mm-hmm. , not that I was scared that I would lose it, but then Oh, I'm always like, [00:03:15] Frank: I dunno. I dunno. Well just read the manual and don't operate it over. Water . Yeah. Do better than I did. Pro [00:03:24] James: tip, uh, my tech pick of the year. Well, I do think there's a lot of nice new Apple products. They were fine. iPhones are fine. Max are fine. One of my favorite products was the, uh, windows dev kit, the Project Volera arm. 64 Windows developer box. That's my pick of the. [00:03:44] Frank: That's cool cuz I don't have one, so you're giving me a little fomo, wrong use of the word there, but you're giving me a little bit because I do love my little arm devices. I, I know I can't brag about the Apple M one because it's old now, but it's still a wonderful little arm device and I love it and I've been using it a lot lately and it's been great. Um, and this little Microsoft. that also looked, I really wanted one, a little arm box. Who does want a little arm box? [00:04:13] James: Yeah, it's delightful. I got to test one out and then I got one and it's really cool. I just set up the Lay's version that they had sent over to me. And, uh, sets up super quick. Everything works really good. Like I, I'm really enjoying it. Uh, there's a lot of stuff, some for development that still needs to kind of get added in as a, as a Maui and, and mobile developer. But a lot of my other stuff I can do, and I use it every single day as my. Main driver at work. So that's kind of cool. Oh [00:04:42] Frank: man, the Maui story's not there. Dang. Okay. Uh, so I, sorry. I know that you, you get confused between what you can talk about and can't talk about, but I do remember, didn't they like pre-announce like some with like stupid numbers of cores on them where they're gonna just put ridiculous numbers of arm, uh, civil core things and the windows def. Yeah, it might not be the dev kit, but I think it was a part of the Volero overall project. I, it might be a different name or something like that, but, oh, I believe, uh, cuz I don't have any answer either knowledge. I'm pretty sure it was all public. They, they, at least preannounced, they're gonna do some with stupid numbers of cores and I, I would like to buy a computer with a stupid number of course, [00:05:22] James: isn't it? It could be. We talked about this one. This is the one that we talked about that has. Snap Jag Snapdragon eight CX gen three. Um, inside of it, it has a half a gig or half a terabyte of storage, 32 gigs of ram. Um, has that, uh, neural processing unit inside of it, which is cool. So, Lots of neat stuff there. There's just a nice little nice little package all on one. No, the Dunham Maui story is coming. It's just a team, you know, prioritization wise, you know, there's stuff to be happening there, [00:05:55] Frank: but there just aren't that many arm, 64 Windows users right now. I get it, but it's still cool because I know it all works very well on the Apple world. So I'm actually really impressed with how well it worked. Uh, like I said, I've been using that laptop lately [00:06:11] James: and it's been working really well. Absolutely. A visual studio for Mac came out tons of, uh, I should. Okay. So [00:06:16] Frank: that, that's my new 2022 pick is the M one version of, uh, visual Studio for Mac, because that thing really does run a lot better than when it was running under Rosetta or whatever. Mm-hmm. and it works. What else do you want? It's an IDE works . It works. [00:06:33] James: It's there. Uh, get a co-pilot. My other pick a tech pick. If you're gonna have a tech UFF work, pick co. [00:06:39] Frank: Is that 2022 has has time gone by that fast? Oh, like it feels like co-pilot's been a part of my life forever now. [00:06:45] James: Yeah. Okay. So I think it came out in 2021, but it was more in like preview type of like technical. Gotcha. Yeah. And then the visual studio on Windows version, which is integrated into, came out. In May around build timeframes. That's one I use personally. I do have it in VS code as well, but I'm mostly in vs. Proper On, on Windows. Proper Visual Studio, big edition video main edition, whatever, full pa, full edition, whatever it is. Um, enterprise. Enterprise Pro. That's a community edition actually. So that's in there. That's my, those are my, that's my software Pick of the, pick of the, pick of the. [00:07:24] Frank: Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna stick with Visual Studio for Mac being. Good on, I I Are they running on net six or net seven now? It's hard to tell because I always run the preview now. I, I hate it, James. I hate it, but I'm back in the preview world. Nice. Um, but the IDs been actually best I've found in preview world, so I've been rocking it there and I can't tell cuz it's always downloading 800 different versions of.net these days. But it, it seems like it's running on six or seven. It's pretty. [00:07:54] James: I'm, yeah, I'm not positive at, at least it was six. Maybe it's now seven. That's a great question. Yeah. I'm not positive . Um, yeah, it's a good question. Um, all right, that's it. That's our, that's our 2022 year interview. How, how do you feel about that? Does it feel good? Oh, [00:08:10] Frank: no. I feel like we did a bad job. Oh, I, okay. Um, static websites there. Okay. Now, Now. Now I'm happy. [00:08:20] James: There you go. Okay, perfect. Nailed it. Container apps, Azure things, cloud , CloudFlare. Ah, identity services. Yes, I. I gave an update last week on my holiday hacking Frank. Mm-hmm. , remember, I remember I completed my holiday hacking before my holidays started. Do you remember that? Did you, [00:08:41] Frank: did it get like uploaded to the app store and everything? It was, you got your drawings. We did a whole episode on drawing, so it [00:08:48] James: was fun. I got, I got all the app updates into the app store before Christmas. Wow. Boom. [00:08:54] Frank: Okay. Uh, that, that's kind of a mic drop because I completely failed at that. Uh, extenuating circumstances, I'm gonna blame, but I failed at it, so, congratulations, James. I, I accomplished a holiday act too. [00:09:10] James: Well, I want to know about it. Let's give, uh, the, the holiday hack up. We're kind of breaking this episode into 10 minute chunks, by the way, in case. Is that [00:09:16] Frank: what we're doing? I think 10 minutes, yeah. Minutes. I, I think I can do it. Okay. Yeah, I can bore people for 10 minutes. That's doable. Uh, so I ha am now in possession of a house in the middle of a winter. Now it's not one of those bad New York winters or. Terrible Maine winter or something like that, but it's still cold and dark and wet, and I want to keep the place warm. And yet James, I'm also cheap because I'm paying for expensive island electricity in a very poorly insulated house. And I, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to get some smart thermostats. Mm-hmm. for it. So let me just ask you right now, have. I've forgotten. I'm sorry. Have, have you gone down the third Smart thermostat rabbit [00:09:57] James: hole? Yeah, I did. Um, Washington and Oregon in California, a few other states, they have these incentive programs where if you have a, um, or even if you don't have it, but you can get a smart thermostat, uh, coupon basically, and you get. , you know, either a hundred dollars off or $200 off, or sometimes a free smart thermostat, the Echo Bees or the Nest. And when we got the place that we're in currently, it had the ability, it did have the C wire, uh, and it, we have a gas heater, which is fantastic hvac and uh, uh, it wasn't. I had to have someone come out and install it. So the money I saved on with the coupon, I had to spend an electrician coming out. It's like install it. Probably said, didn't mess up our 20 year old hvac. But regardless, I do have one. It works great. I use it in vacation mode when we're away. And to your point of this being really nice and saving money is, you know, we turn it down to 50 ish degrees when we leave, uh, on holiday. For a week or so at a time, wherever we're at, and we tell it when we're coming home. So we were driving back, uh, we were on a five hour drive and, and we said, Hey, we're gonna be home in five hours. And sure enough we got home and boom, the house was absolutely delightful. We only remember to do that about one every out of every tent. Yeah. trips or so, because I do set it to turn back. We can talk about that. We always get home early. That's the problem. [00:11:18] Frank: I have solutions, or at least I have hopeful solutions for that problem. So, [00:11:22] James: so they're fantastical now in the new place. Uh, and the other other place that we are often at, it doesn't and has like, sort of, and that thing, this is a situation you're in, where they're, ours are in tiny, in-wall heaters with just like a dial in every single room that you turn it on and off to a certain temperature, which you cannot smartify that by things on the market. Frank. [00:11:45] Frank: Uh, no. Well, you, you can, uh, there's market, there's, there's market things for everything. Um, but yeah, I, I got a older house that does not have the sea wire either, and it's an unfortunate mixture of, as you said, the, the dial based ones where each heater has its own dial that you have to bend over for. I don't wanna. Bend over and reach the dial. That, that seems a little clunky. I think the hack there is, uh, you could just eliminate the dial by cranking it all the way up and then putting a thermostat on that wire if you wanna do some electricity stuff, that there are real tricks to making those work too. But I wanted to, and I might tackle that problem, but I haven't, what I wanted to tackle was, uh, the basic thermostat, the old-fashioned thermostat where. Piece of spun metal, it heats up, , gets to a certain point, triggers a switch, or releases a switch. Very simple. Uh, I did not have the sea wire either. I was very disappointed. I did find that. Pretty much if there, you can buy like a $22 $25 adapter that if you plug into a wall outlet and chase a wire up to your thermostat, you can make that work too. But did I decide to do that, James? Did I? No. Did I? No, of course not. [00:13:01] James: Why would you do that? No. No . [00:13:04] Frank: So I had this terrible idea of I'm just gonna do it myself. I'm gonna make, uh, my own ther smart thermostat. Because in principle, it's, it's such a simple device. You, you have a thermometer, you have a set temperature. If it gets cold, turn the heater on. If it gets a little too warm, turn the heater back off. You know, this is not rocket science. It is control theory. It is fun. It, it's why I was enticed by it, but it it, it's not rocket science. Would you have the guts to build your own thermostat? [00:13:40] James: Well, you know, the, the, the fascinating part about the thermostat is just what you, you said is, uh, yeah, I mean, I think, I think so. The stupidity No, no, the, the, what a thermostat does because you know, you can buy these little rotating knobs and they basically have a, I dunno. I, I, I've read about how they work, basically, but there's a way that attention, you know, detects the temperature and all it's doing is making the connection to turn it on, or not making the connection to turn it off. That's all it's doing. Yeah. Right. There's, and it has a little bit of variable in there, so if it goes down a little bit, it's not just like flickering on and off if it goes below, you know, you know, 70 degrees on the dot basically. Um, yeah. And that's what we have. But to your point is like, will those have. Not a real thermostat and then not a real like thermostat in them, but ideally you would put one of those in there with the digital reader and then you'd make it smart so you could talk to it and turn it on and off in certain hours and, and run the code. So I feel like it's the perfect, like the perfect application for the scenario that you're in. Um, I would, I think I would totally do it because looking at the wiring, I mean, ours only have two wires, so it's just hot. Not hot. And that's it. Yeah. So it's really, really straightforward. There's not, can't really mess. It's a light switch. It's literally a light switch. But with something telling it to turn, to turn that flip switch on and off based on like you're saying, the, that. So to me, I, I would like to, you know, there's programmable ones, right? If you put a nine volt battery in there, whatnot, that you could program. But I think the connectivity on it and actually seeing what the temperature is and if it went up and down, like what we're doing right now is we have something from a company called Switch Bot, which is pretty nice. They have a bunch of things with switches, but they also have thermostat. Not thermostat, but a. Thermometer. A smart thermometer. Mm-hmm. and hum hum. Whatever detects the humidifier. It's different. Yeah. Fun, fun word for that. Heier, homography, whatever. Something like that. Yeah. And um, that's connected to a little hub, so I can see the, the charts up and down, but it's like, yeah. Wouldn't it just be nice if like, my thermostat like just told me that, so that would be ideal. [00:15:50] Frank: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh, so we can, um, step one is make a thermostat cuz you still want the house to function. Hmm. But step two was definitely smart, right? And like, what does smart mean? I kind of came up with my own definition. Um, I don't think smart means remote control. I, I, okay. It does though it, but it includes more so in the big Venn diagram of what smart is. Let's throw in there. Yeah. You should be able to talk to it over the inter internet. And so I got myself into the fun position of, okay, I know how to build a simple internet device. I've built a million of 'em now, and I know how to add a relay to it because, , what you said is exactly right. I, I will co correct you on a literally part, uh, it's not literally like a light switch cuz at least in the US light switches switching the full AC main power. Hmm. Whereas this is actually switching a 24 revolt DC power. Oddly enough. I don't know, it's just how. Thermostat designing houses was done. Uh, anyway, so you're switching that. You still want to use a relay. I've noticed, uh, it's funny, if you go shopping on Amazon for these things, uh, some have relays and some have what they call solid state relay. Solid state relay is just a big transistor. The benefit of a relay is, it's a big. Clunky switch and it's makes a satisfying click sound when it turns on the heater and things like that. I always go on the side of relays just because I like big physical connections and don't want to trust a transistor to stay alive forever. I'll trust a relay. Um, But yeah. Okay. So smart. It's funny, I started working on this on Twitch and the first thing someone mentioned is what you said, uh, vacation mode. And I was like, uhoh, I do need a vacation mode, don't I? That seems important. I'm impressed that you went down to 50 degrees. I was debating what, uh, vacation mode, default temperature should be. Are you're in the 50 degree [00:17:51] James: camp. 50 degrees is what it needs to be in the house. Now we have. Our H this is for the HVAC here, and the HVAC runs under the house, so it's kind of naturally going to heat under the house, and we have it all blocked off. And then ideally heat rises from there, but 50 degrees and we, we open, we do a very Midwestern thing, which is what I did growing up, which was I, we open all the. In, in the, in the bathrooms and, uh, in the whole house, but also in the bathrooms, under the sinks. We open all those and then more air can come in. They're not blocked off, cuz those are against, you know, walls most of the time there. Um, but yeah, that's, that's mostly all we do to be honest with you. So, yeah. [00:18:37] Frank: Yeah. Um, so I decided I'm just gonna do a little USB powered device because those little sea adapters seemed a little bit odd the. It's just a little adapter of the plugs in your wall and gives you 24 volt. It seemed like I, I don't need to do that. I can just use u sb and then when I'm feeling like I'm being a good homeowner, I can maybe integrate themselves. So what I found was this house had like four or five different thermostats. So if I wanted to go smart, I would have to spend a couple hundred a piece, or I can make. My own for roughly like 50 bucks. They're a little janky looking, you know, a 3D printed housing and all that. But I think it adds a little bit of charm too. They're a little bit quirky. I put these like cool eighties display panel on it so you can see the current temperature and if the heater's on the set temperature goes up. So I think I made an okay thermostat that has, um, an away mode, but it's still. Smart. Right. So what, what would you label still. What's, what's the next smart step? The next [00:19:44] James: smart thing that I believe the Echobee has taken two years to . Anyway, there's two things. One thing that it does well, this is pretty smart, is it, uh, there's, there's also little sensors around the house in different rooms. Well, just in one room, but in, when you pass by the thermostat or when you're in another room that has a sensor, it will detect that you're home. So it just leaves it in a normal mode. But if it detects no motion, usually around certain hours, like in the afternoon, like non-work hours, it will put it into an energy saving mode automatically. [00:20:22] Frank: Oh, I like that. I like that. I, I was debating what to do about the occupancy problem, I'll call it. Um, it detecting, it's, it's a little primitive, uh, it probably just casts a giant radar. light. Yeah. Uh, I kind of love it though. Darn it. I'm a little upset at myself for not thinking of that. So for occupancy, I was going a little more nerdy. I was looking for my phone on the network. Mm. Okay. iPhones are chatty and I figure if my iPhone's being chatty, I have some kind of occupancy information, but that's like whole house occupancy. Uh, I like this idea of the thermostat knowing kind of vaguely room occupancy with just emotion sensor. It's a [00:21:07] James: clever idea. Yeah, I will. Why feel that? Why heat? Why heat the guest room if there's no guest in it? [00:21:14] Frank: Okay. But to that point, so I have a different version of smart. Mm-hmm. . So what I wanted it to do was mostly just learn my habits. Yep. So in the morning, crank up the heat cuz I don't like to get out of bed. You gotta entice me out of bed and you gotta crank up the heat to do that. After that, I don't really want the heat on. , turn it back down, maybe around eight or 9:00 PM crank it back up again. . Yeah. You know, things like that. And so that was what I wanted to achieve. And, um, to make sure all this was coordinated, right? I decided I needed to run an off-premises server. So one, the other reason I didn't like buying the thermostats was like, you gotta sign up for everyone's accounts. Yeah. And then you gotta do the stuff. And the stuff and the stuff. But I did decide that a central server is the smart way to do this cuz you want to collect all the data from all the sensors and do all that kind of stuff. So. I wrote a cool, uh, blazer Edge app with API support to be my little, my little house thing. . . [00:22:19] James: I like that. That's cool. What all, what all does the central Hub do as you're, you're sending it data, is it controlling The on off is like, if you press a button, is it sending it first to. The website and then it's sending it to the thing? Or is it just more informational reading? [00:22:35] Frank: It is critical to the operation of the house. James. Oh, you know, you, you gotta go full bore with this kind of stuff. I sent you a link so you can see how ugly it is. I didn't change any of the default styling. Yeah. Counter . That works count. Gotta, you gotta keep the counter in there. Make sure the blazer's working. Uh, sorry, I got distracted by saying all that stuff. So the. What I decided was that the thermostats would actually be dumb devices and they would constantly be querying the server for what they should be doing. Mm-hmm. , and it's up to the server then to make all the executive decisions. So the system I've come up with our. Each device at whatever pace it wants to is uploading its current temperature, reading, its current set point, what it's it's targeting. And then in response to that, the service says, here's what your new set point should be set point. Sorry if you're not familiar, it's just an old term for, uh, where you're trying to control to target your target temperature. Target tempera. Yeah, set point target temperature, and so it's up to the server to make the decision. And so away mode is easy, especially whole house away mode. So it just drops all of them down to 50 degrees or whatever. Mm-hmm. , but, or, so I use the number, uh, 60 degrees. I'm feeling kind of stupid now. I, I've been paying for this electricity I haven't been needing to pay for. [00:24:06] James: So the best part that I love about your, your app so far is that, It gives you all the events, and I appreciate this because on the Echo b I don't get to see any of the events, right. I don't understand what it's trying to do or what it's trying to attempt or go into certain mode because one thing, obviously that way mode is super great. Uh, we also have it set. Uh, the nice thing that you can do is you can say, during these hours, we're sleeping, so set it to this temperature and these hours we are awake. So set it to this temperature. And then one thing that has been doing is it's been figuring out when we wake up, based on these events, and prewarm the house for when we're awake, usually at six 30 in the morning, that's when I get ready to do stuff with my dog in the morning. Uh, there's that mm-hmm. . But the one thing that I'm noticing about. Uh, thermostat is that you haven't integrated, and I could be wrong. This is one thing that the Echobee does, which I appreciate, is a little wiggle room. And what I mean by that is I'm noting, noticing that your thermostat is turning on and off a lot, and that is because Frank, it looks like you have it. I don't know what the margin of difference is, right? When I say 60 degrees. , I want it to turn on when it's 58 degrees and I want it to turn off when it's like 61 or 62 degrees. Right? Yeah. Because you kind of want it to go up, especially, well, we have a gas heater, so we really don't wanna be turning it on and off a lot. Right. So you want it to have that flex space in there. So I see yours, uh, basically was, oh, it's 59.54 degrees turn. Right. Oh, it's 60.08 degrees, turn off. You know what I mean? That's sort of what I'm, I'm reading here, and I could be wrong on this, but did, did you, are you controlling that flex in there at all or are you just saying, oh, it's below it. Turn it on. [00:26:02] Frank: Oh, James, of course you're reading it wrong. Oh, okay. . No, but you're, you're absolutely right. That is absolutely the correct way to control a system like this. In control theory, we adoringly call these systems bang, bang, controllers, , you're like on, off, on, off. And yeah, if, if you try to control to an exact temperature, like, uh, in this example I was trying to control to 60 degrees. You, you would Yeah. Constantly be turning on off, on, off. If you look in the log, the heater on is zero for all these events. Oh, you're seeing a very compressed amount of time. It's looking like it's going on and off. Uh, I do have roughly, I, I'm still working on that wiggle room, as you call it. In control theory, we call that hysteresis. So your trigger, your on trigger point is different from your off trigger. That's when you have a hysteresis and you can make it, you know, you can make it overshoot by two or three degrees, undershoot by three or four degrees. The wiggle room, as you said, right now, I'm doing under and overshoot of 1.5. Okay. Which I will agree is a little too tight. So I'll probably expand it to maybe two and a half degrees Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit. Yeah. . So, um, you're absolutely right. Everything you said is right, but in my defense, it's not as bad as you think it's triggering right now. Maybe every [00:27:20] James: hour. Got it. I was a little confused cuz I did see all the zeros and I just thought, oh well it doesn't have a temperature. But I understand now that you're saying it's a zero. False. [00:27:29] Frank: I gotta clean up my ui. My UI is not great, . No, it's [00:27:33] James: great. It makes sense. I'd see you've said it to 50 degrees. I think I just Googled, um, what temperature to set. Thermo stat went out of town in winter. Yeah. And I, yeah, someone, and then it like literally it says around 50. [00:27:49] Frank: Okay. That's great. Mm-hmm. . Cause I was honestly guessing, I had no idea what temperature to put it at. . Yeah. 60 [00:27:54] James: seems about right, but like our default at night is 60 and during the day it's, uh, 65. So we're pretty, we're pretty [00:28:01] Frank: chill. So. Okay. So we gotta talk about the last fun part where, uh, you were talking about you wanted to learn your habits, I wanted to learn my habits. Yeah. . So the only thing I'm really giving it is corrections. So, um, what I decided immediately was it was gonna be a machine learning thing and that's when I decided to keep that device log that you saw there. It has entries for all the events and I was hoping, you know, somehow magically , I would learn from all these events and, uh, do some magic. And I really had no idea what I was gonna do . So I, I. I was like, uh, I'll probably wait for Twitch or something to do it on, but I decided I'm just gonna try out ml.net. Yeah, I know we've talked about it a million times, but I, I just don't use it much because it doesn't do neural networks the way all the cool kids do 'em and things like that. But what it does do is you download some new Git packages and you get some machine learning in your apps. Sure. And that's pretty cool. . [00:28:56] James: That's pretty cool. I like that. Machine learning on demand. [00:28:58] Frank: Click. Yeah. Uh, so what I did was, um, I straightened out my event log into kind of a linear state log. So for every five minutes of the day I stated, you know, is the heater on, blah, blah, blah. Uh, what did the user, what did Frank set the temperature to? What has it been trying to get to and gave it that log and asked it to predict what temperature I would set it to at that time? And I distinguished between those kinds of data points. and James, the very first time I ran it through the ml net net, it said Zero degrees. I'm like, no, that's wrong, . But the good news is ML net has like a hundred algorithms in it. So I went through like 10 more , 10 more algorithms, and one of 'em just started working kind of beautifully, like even from very primitive training data that I gave it. It's like, oh yeah, a little warmer in the morning, a little cooler during the day, a little warmer at night. and in like one hour I had this stupid thing, um, deciding its own set point. Wow. I don't know how it's setting its set point. I created an array of data. I gave it to ml.net and now it's controlling my house. And I'm insane. But it, it, it's going and I love it. , [00:30:18] James: that is pretty neat. Uh, in general. I mean, that, that, that's sort of definitely the next thing is like we said it, but it would be nice for it to learn a little bit. And maybe that could be, does that too, which is, you know, Heather likes to turn up the heat and override. There's a, there's an override. So one thing that I like about ours is that you have a set point, which is what do you want it to be during the day? And I say 65, and Heather turns it up to 67 or 68, and she's like, I'm cold. She's always cold all the time. And I get it. It's, it's wintertime. So yeah, I'm like, go for it, you know? And turn, And, but it would be cool to, for it to learn to say, oh, I'm actually gonna, you know, it seems like about, you know, at 10 o'clock every morning you seem to be turning this up to 68, 69 degrees, 70 degrees. I'm gonna just do that for you. Um, that's, that's neat that you found one that works. [00:31:05] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. And it was super exciting cuz I, I really didn't know, like I said, I was just kind of trying it out and it was giving very reasonable numbers back and so I had the guts to actually install it got stupidity again, stupidity, everyone to actually install it. And it was kind of terrifying because like you plug it in, it contacts the. The internet tells it what temperature to go to and it starts doing that, and it was kind of awesome. So, uh, [00:31:33] James: that is enabled, is that a mode that you enable basically, like when you're at. [00:31:38] Frank: Uh, so yeah, that is the occupied mode. That's when I'm at home. It will always be getting the Internet's recommendation for what temperature got it should be got. So I do love your, um, boost mode. Uh, someone else on Twitch mentioned that in control theory, we always call that a goose . So you a little button, you, you goose it up a little bit. Um, and I think that's very clever. Uh, one of the hard decisions that I had to make was, okay, so you walk up to the thermostat, it still has a knob on it. I put a very nice knob on it. I like my knob, and it's the morning and I'm a wimp, so I crank it up to 74 degrees. Mm-hmm. . , how long does it target? 74 degrees until it goes back to taking orders from the internet. Yeah, and I, that was a hard problem. Uh, what I like is the goose mode kind of gets over that because in some respects you say it should hold that temperature for as long as possible. Like maybe six hours, maybe a day. Who knows? You know, if you go manually set it like that. Mm-hmm. . But knowing me, I, I have a very short attention span and I was figuring if I, if I need to crank up the temperature or I want to turn it off. I, I think my override, or I set it for one hour only. Mm-hmm. . So it almost already is a goose. Yeah. Because even if I go and crank it up to 80 degrees it, the worst penalty I'm gonna pay is one hour of 80 degrees, and then it's gonna go back to internet mode. Now the internet may, the internet, the server may learn from that data point, but if it's sporadic, then. [00:33:16] James: Yeah, I believe on the, the see the echo B, they also decide to do some things and just not be smart about it and just let you set it. And they just have a mode that says, it's called an override period. And it says, how long do you want the override to be? And we just said Two hours. Yeah. So [00:33:33] Frank: similar. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you went with two hours. They went with two hours. You did, you chose that or they chose [00:33:38] James: that? Two hours? I, that might have been the default, but we, I may have chosen it. Yeah. I just felt like if we're turning it on, Might as well be for two hours. I don't know. And, and you can turn it off too. There's an exit button on the screen too. So like if we're, if, if Heather turns it up at 10:00 PM and we're getting ready to go to bed at 11:00 PM I just hit the exit button beforehand. [00:34:01] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say that I also don't mind the short time because my goal is for it to learn. Yeah. And so for me to not have to give it, these are just corrections that I think of as happening. Wow. I'm teaching it and hopefully it'll figure out things from there. I, I should have said, I wanna be clear cuz I was having fun deciding like, what should the inputs to the machine learning be? Um, time of day, day of week. Time, day of year, I decided were the big cyclical numbers that I wanted it to learn from. And I'm hoping from those three cyclic numbers, which I turned into signs and co-signs. Cause I know that makes neural networks learn. And this isn't even a neural network. It just, but signs and co-signs, if you have anything with an angle, do sign and cosign helps machine learning. There you go. Uh, I did all those. I think that'll be enough. Um, I am interested now in adding the emotion sensor data to it, but in the end, I'm very happy with the holiday hack because it's actually installed, it's actually working, and I just gotta make it a little [00:35:05] James: prettier. Yeah. Now the final thing that you. Could do to really make it smart is you can find out if this, this happens. When I lived in Arizona, for example, there was, uh, you know, in normal places, I don't know about how normal it is. I've only paid for electricity in a few states. Hmm. Uh, personally and even growing up, it would be two states. So not that many states that I've paid and had an electric account for. But in Arizona we had, uh, s r p was the, the system there, and. Um, I think it was s r p and. You had the option of like four or five different plans, and the one that I went on was the make it as cheap as humanly possible during the day. Sorry, make it as expensive as, as humanly possible during the day and as cheap as possible at night. And there are times on it, so the longer it's expensive. The cheaper it is at night. Okay. Uh, because I was at work all day. I didn't work at home at the time. And in Arizona, your electricity bill in the summer, cuz it's about a hundred bazillion degrees. Mm-hmm can be 300 to $400. It is very expensive cuz you're running this AC all the time. So what I would do, I didn't have a smart thermostat yet. So this is the other thing too, uh, just on and off is when I. Uh, leave for work early in the morning. It was, I think it was from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM so 12 hours of the day is very expensive, so I would, I would literally 7:00 AM turn it off, done. I'd get home. Probably around five or six o'clock, just sit there and sweat for two hours or try to like leave the house and at seven o'clock it's like, boom, set it down as low as possible and try to cool it off. Yeah. You know, and, and cuz the, the difference would be hundreds of dollars if we did this. Now where we live, uh, there is some flex time, but the echo be. You say, here's my provider. And it can tap in to say, electricity's more expensive right now. So we're gonna put it in a echo B plus mode. This is kind of cool. It does a little learning that says, Hey, right now, electricity normally during the day is more expensive. So instead of, I know you really want it to be 65 degrees , but what if we make. This would be during the summer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we said, okay, yeah. You know, you know, 65 is the, maybe we set it to 68 in the summer. I forgot what our cooling setting is, but like, we're gonna set it to 71 right now. You know what I mean? We're gonna make it. Be a little bit hotter for the next few hours because it's the, the electricity's more expensive. So I don't know if there's zo, you know, timing. That could be also another, uh, factor variable in your system, which is like, uh, I know I peaked it here, but maybe the peak should be for be 30 minutes, you know, the ducking or whatever, because, uh, the electricity's more expensive. [00:37:54] Frank: Okay. I, I, I love everything about that. I love the electricity hack. Uh, I will have to call the company. I'm, I'm sure the rates are different depending on the time of day. That's, I think that's usually standard billing. Uh, I don't know if how big the difference is, but at the same time, I'm gonna say I'm, I'm hoping that, um, the thermostat will learn that. I don't mind dramatic. Like bring the house up to 74 degrees in the morning. Yeah. And then cut it off. back down to 50. Like I don't care. Uh uh, sorry. Summertime, uh, I don't have an air orchestra, so this holiday hack will probably only last as long as I have terrible heaters in my house. I would like to upgrade to, um, a heat pump. Yeah, and things like that. Like one for the living room, one for the bedroom maybe. And then I think I would have to give up and use a off the shelf thermostat . But as long as I have terrible baseboard heating, I'm gonna enjoy my very high tech solution to an old common problem. [00:38:54] James: I like it. No, this is, it is cool because you see all these, you know, gizmos and gadgets and this and that, and I, I actually, you know, yours is, I, I wanna see a photo of it. If you have a photo, you got, it's, I message it to me. But the cool part is like, your website has the data, so it's like way faster. The echo, it's, everything is so slow. It's just like, it's slowest and you're just like, I set it on the, like, it's faster do on the thermostat itself. But if I'm on my phone, it's a, it's a dog. It's just like, oh, it's, oh, I gotta set it and wait for a respo. Like, okay, come on. You know, it's, it's a little bit less fire and forget, which is hard when you have a little slider that you wanna. You know, accurately. But anyways, it was really cool. I'm really excited about it and hopefully we just saved you a bunch of money by setting it to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 10 degrees Celsius, because that's what your website says it is So there re Cool. Frank, I did get to see you build some of this live. I didn't get to see the finished product, but check out Frank on Twitch. At Twitch tv slash Frank Kruger, and you are like [00:39:54] Frank: every Sunday. Yeah, I am every Sunday, except I'm gonna be on a little bit of a hiatus as I get fast internet installed. That is the next project. . [00:40:04] James: Yeah, that's a little important. And I, uh, I'm over on the YouTube youtube.com/james monte Magno, and I just did my 2022 year end review for Donna developers. If you want a full breakdown of all my highlights of the year, check out that video. Uh, it's the most recent one that I put out, and of course, I livestream over there on occasion. I don't do it as much anymore. Frank, I. Do the videos, but I do like the live streaming. I miss [00:40:26] Frank: it. I gotta get back to it. Well, I, I, I love the livestream. Chat rooms are the greatest thing ever. But with bad internet, I might do some, uh, YouTube videos instead. . [00:40:38] James: There you go. Well, welcome everyone to 2023. Uh, let us know what your favorite thing of 2022 was. Uh, send us an email. Go to Merge Conflict fm. There's a bunch of contact buttons over there. Um, let us know if you, uh, want to purchase one of Frank. Smart thermostats. I do. Sure. I know. Sure. . [00:40:56] Frank: Maybe I, I think I gotta make it circular, like all the cool people do. No. [00:41:00] James: Wow. Maybe . Yeah, maybe it'd be cool. Uh, I dunno. I I love it. I think it's super neat because, you know, most of the time we have it, Turnage is off, but it would be really nice. Be like, Hey, this is off all the time. Or set the target to, oops, sorry. Or set the target to 30. Right. I don't need it on ever. Right. Cause it never gets really cold. Yeah. But what if a cold storm does come in like a really big cold front and I'm like, oh, actually he said it's a 50, just found one of the heaters. So this is like something that I could, would find very useful and I'm, I'm so amazed that you already have this like up and running and it's a real thing in a real household that is actually kind of terrifying. So I'm not gonna lie about that. But you're, you know, electrical engineer. So I. [00:41:44] Frank: I would admit, I'm a little terrified about it too. The good news is it's not switching main power, it's switching a lower power DC thing. Pretty safe. And I was only able to do it because I've built a million other devices and had experience building those. So I had a little bit of confidence, but pretty proud of myself too. So I like you jive. I'll take the couple a bit. [00:42:03] James: There you go. All right everyone. Well, hope everyone had an amazing holiday and a great new year. We'll be back next week just like we have been for the last 385 billion episodes of Merch Conflict. So until then, I'm James Monte Magno. [00:42:16] Frank: And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening. [00:42:19] James: Peace.