Full Transcript
Andy Munoz:
I’m actually getting ready to purchase another camera to go with it, but it’s actually one that’s got the floodlight, and then it’s also got the alarm.
Serena Gilbert:
We recommend professional installation for the doorbell, so we didn’t even try it. So, we actually used Geek Squad through Best Buy.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s called the Away skill that you can activate on Amazon by saying, “Enable Away.”
Serena Gilbert:
A doorbell camera does have cloud service where I can see a livestream where I can pull down clips, all that good stuff.
Andy Munoz:
It’s 10 IOS devices per ID. You can have five additional computers.
Serena Gilbert:
I have to actually pull out my phone, see what time it is. I’m so spoiled.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a chore.
Andy Munoz:
So, it’s not anything that’ll call the authorities, but-
Jeff Thompson:
The neighborhood will be alarmed.
Andy Munoz:
Well, yeah. I mean, you know.
Serena Gilbert:
I have a great Facebook group. It’s growing a ton every single day. It’s called The Assistive Technology Community for Blind and Visually Impaired. Even if you go on my Facebook page, Blindy Blog, it’s linked through there as well.
Jeff Thompson:
Okay. I started my recording over.
Serena Gilbert:
Why? You don’t want all the good stuff that we were just talking about there?
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Tech Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson, and today we have Serena Gilbert live from Colorado. How are you doing?
Serena Gilbert:
I’m doing fantastic, Jeff. How are you?
Jeff Thompson:
I’m doing great, and with us also is Andy Munoz. How are you doing, Andy?
Andy Munoz:
I’m good. I’m good.
Jeff Thompson:
Good. How is the new year taking to all of you? That doesn’t sound right. That’s a weird sentence.
Serena Gilbert:
It’s like it’s a cold.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Tech Abilities, and today we’re gonna be talking about some of the products that we’ve been purchasing over the last few months, the Black Friday, the holiday stuff. We talk about it. Now we got it in installed, or installed it ourselves, or had a little bit of help installing it, but now we put it through its rigors. We’ve been testing it out. We’ve been seeing how we use it on a daily basis, and we’re here to talk about it. Andy, you sent us a little video showing us your new device on your house.
Andy Munoz:
I did. I did. That was the Ring Doorbell, and so the video is wife and I were testing it, and then of course, the little video, you got the clip of what was said there.
Jeff Thompson:
Video view from the Ring 2 Doorbell camera. Andy walks out the door, and you can see his back walking away. He turns and faces the camera. A notification goes off in the house, and his wife responds.
Mrs. Munoz:
What do you want, you little bastard?
Jeff Thompson:
The kids begin to laugh, as well as Andy. Yep. When it’s activated, does she get a sound or a notification that there’s action?
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. So, right now, the way we have it set up, just using the battery. I am going to wire it into the doorbell so that we get the internal chime. Basically, yeah, if you don’t have your phone on silent, like I do 99.9% of the time, you would actually hear the chime through your phone. It does send you a notification, and then part of that kind of depends on how you have your motion sensitivity set. I’ve got mine set kind of medium at this point, so it does kind of go off when a car goes by. It’ll say there’s motion at your front door, and then if somebody actually is at the front door, it’ll say someone is at your front door.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. So, it’s really cool because then when you get that notification, you can then go ahead and tap on that notification, and it’ll open up the Ring app, and then at that point, you can actually see who’s at your front door, and then you can actually interact with them as far as you can actually talk to them. So, if it’s the mailman or something and they have a package or something and you want it … We have a little breezeway in our front door, so we have the screen door, and then there’s a little breezeway, then our front door. So, if we get a package and we want it put inside there, we just say, “Hey, put it inside the breezeway,” and then when you’re done, you can hang up.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, look at you guys. That’s pretty cool.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. It’s a nice little device.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, that’s the Ring 2.
Andy Munoz:
Uh-huh.
Jeff Thompson:
I looked them up when we were planning this, and I saw that that was getting some of the highest ratings.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah, and based off of my usage of it, I would have to say, yeah, I’m impressed with it. It’s worked well. I’m actually getting ready to purchase another camera to go with it, but it’s actually one that’s got the floodlight, and then it’s also got the alarm.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. So, it’s not anything that’ll call the authorities, but yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
The neighborhood will be alarmed.
Andy Munoz:
Well, yeah. I mean, if you’ve got somebody that’s trying to sneak around or something like that and you don’t want them there, you can sound that alarm, and it’ll scare the heck out of them. My brother-in-law actually bought it for that same purpose. He had somebody that was actually kind of prowling around his truck. He actually watched him for a while, and then finally went out and confronted him, but he decided he was gonna get the other camera with the alarm on it so that he can just sound that, and hopefully that’ll be more of a deterrent.
Jeff Thompson:
So, the Ring 2, that’s a neat option, that you can hard wire it or use the battery. Like you said, you’re using the battery right now, and the hard wiring, I believe it’s 24 volts transformer that it hooks to. It’s kind of a catch thing. You can’t just buy these things, screw them in, and go, unless you have the battery. That’s nice.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. The nice thing, too, is it’s also got these two little pieces that you can adjust. So, there’s one, it’s angled, so you can get more of a wider view, and then you’ve got one where it points down, so depending upon how your house is set, you can adjust to get a better angle.
Jeff Thompson:
From the Munoz towers, you probably have it pointed down a little bit.
Andy Munoz:
Actually, I didn’t even use any of those pieces. My house was actually set up pretty well to where I didn’t need to.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s nice to know, that stuff.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. The one thing that I was a little irritated with, I don’t know if it was just that I lost them or if they just didn’t come, I didn’t have the leads that I needed for the doorbell, so I was actually able to make a trade with my brother-in-law because he has the same unit. He’s got the leads, and so he’s gonna come over here. We’ll go ahead and get it internally wired, and then I just gave him the piece that points down because he wanted that. So, yeah, we were able to swap out.
Jeff Thompson:
Great. Now, Serena, you have another device. I believe it’s the Nest Hello.
Serena Gilbert:
I do. It’s very similar to the Ring. I’m just listening to the way that Andy was describing it, and it’s very much so similar. The only difference that I can tell, and the Ring might very well have this, too, is there is a way where you can program familiar faces so that if someone comes to your house frequently that you’re familiar with, and we haven’t programmed it yet because it takes a lot of, obviously, sighted assistance for that part. You could be like, “Oh, your brother’s at the front door,” or whoever, which might be helpful when it sounds the alarm on your phone, and then I also have it on my Google Mini. Whenever the doorbell rings, it’s kind of like a three-way thing. It’ll ring the regular doorbell sound, then it’ll chime on the Google Mini and on my phone. So, no matter what, we know when somebody’s at the door.
Jeff Thompson:
That would be really cool during Halloween. A goblin and a witch are at your door.
Serena Gilbert:
Oh, goodness.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, it’d just help out for the visually impaired.
Serena Gilbert:
There’s not live IRA Services wired through it.
Jeff Thompson:
I see.
Serena Gilbert:
No, that would be nice.
Jeff Thompson:
You experienced the same thing when you got your doorbell, that to hard wire it, it’s just not something everybody can do. There are services out there that help with this, right?
Serena Gilbert:
We didn’t even attempt that one, because even when you look up the video on Nest, on their YouTube channel, it specifically is like, “We recommend professional installation for the doorbell,” so we didn’t even try it. So, we actually used Geek Squad through Best Buy to have them come install that, the lock, and the smart thermostat all at once.
Nate Bauer:
Today, we’re out on a special service call. I’m Nate Bauer, chief inspector of the Geek Squad. I came out with another agent to set up this client’s home.
Kara Kuhn:
Hi.
Nate Bauer:
Hi, Mrs. Kuhn. I’m Nate with Geek Squad. How are you?
Kara Kuhn:
Hi. Call me Kara.
Nate Bauer:
We’re here to get your network set up and take a look at your technology.
Kara Kuhn:
Great. Come on in.
Nate Bauer:
She’s a repeat visitor of ours. We fixed her computer in the past. Today, we set up a network, some hue lighting, a thermostat, a smart TV, soundbar to accompany it. Her house is entirely connected right now because of Geek Squad.
Kara Kuhn:
I’ve used them to install software, virus software. To learn that they can do high-tech thermostats that I can run from my smartphone, entertainment systems, light bulbs that are connected to the entertainment systems and that react with it, it’s mind-blowing to me.
Nate Bauer:
It’s been a pleasure meeting you.
Kara Kuhn:
Thank you guys so much.
Nate Bauer:
I love being out, experiencing new technology, and know that they’re gonna be a Geek Squad client for life.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s cool, and do you like it all?
Serena Gilbert:
I like it. The smart lock, there’s a little bit some glitches with the accessibility and the Nest app where in order to unlock it, there’s a spot on your screen where you just push and hold for one second, and it’s not actually accessible with voiceover. I have to toggle off voiceover, tap it, and then it opens just fine. That’s my only complaint, and then my husband did the programming of the thermostat, because inside the Nest app itself, it’s pretty difficult to do non-visually, but I do understand you can do it through your Amazon device if you wanted to as well, though.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. It’s neat how some of these things transfer over to the Amazon, and that’s what I do with, and we’ll talk about it later, some of my devices that I have, I was into the Nest app, and it just doesn’t work right. I had someone look at it, and it’s really cool how they do it, but it’s like blind guy trying to play backgammon with digital stuff and slide things over here.
Serena Gilbert:
Yes. It’s like a little spreadsheet kind of thing.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, and it’s not accessible. It doesn’t have to be so glorified, graphically arranged like a spreadsheet, like you said.
Serena Gilbert:
I will say that once we got it set up, it’s amazing. I absolutely love it because what happens, because we also have the Nest Secure, so from my phone, as soon as I leave the house, I set it to away. What it does is it automatically locks my front door, sets the alarm, and then turns the heat to eco. So, it turns the heat down to 65 when we’re not home.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, cool.
Serena Gilbert:
So, it’s pretty instantaneous, because I’ve stood there to see how long it takes to lock it and stuff, and it takes maybe 10 seconds to hear it lock and arm the house and everything.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s not bad at all.
Serena Gilbert:
That’s my favorite feature of it.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. I don’t have the Secure, but I do have the thermostat, and you were talking about the temperature changing. I have it set up so at night it drops it down to 68, but these are numbers that are particularly set for my house because where my thermostat is, if it’s set for 68 there, it feels colder in other parts of the house, so these may sound like high numbers. I have mine set for 72 during the time people are home, but technically, it’s kind of like it’s around 69 or something. But I would like to get one of those devices they have that you can set it in another part of the house, and I think it’s called the Nest Thermostat E, and that’ll measure the temperature in that room so you can basically set temperatures for different parts of the house, too.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah. Our bedroom gets very, very cold because it’s above the garage, and I thought about maybe having that, but then, honestly, our heat would be at like 78, probably, to warm up our room, because our entire master bedroom and bathroom is directly over the garage, so there’s not much insulation in that garage, obviously, and I don’t want my son to be sweating, because his room is in the perfect corner of the house where it’s probably exactly the temperature the thermostat says it is in his room.
Jeff Thompson:
I think some of these are set up for zones. Some furnaces have zones.
Serena Gilbert:
That would be cool.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, but I’m pretty impressed with what Nest has done with this, especially that it works over into my Amazon device, because now I can call the shots just by saying the A lady command and saying, “Turn hallway to blah, blah, blah,” and it will just do it.
Speaker 7:
The heat is set to 70.
Jeff Thompson:
It has a motion sensor on it, so when I walk by it, it kind of turns on, and it’s knows someone’s home. So, like you in the away mode, as someone would walk by, it would say, “They must not be away anymore.” So, I do like that, that it does monitor that type of activity, and because I have the Protects which is the smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide, they all work together, so it’ll shut off the furnace fan if it detects smoke or carbon monoxide so you’re not wafting that stuff throughout the house.
Andy Munoz:
So, how many … For programming, can you do seven days, or how does that work the Nest?
Serena Gilbert:
You can do a different program for every day of the week, if you wanted to.
Andy Munoz:
Okay.
Serena Gilbert:
But the way that we have it, on the weekends we have it set a certain way, just based on we’re typically home, and then during the week, my husband did set it to if for some reason I forget to set that we’re away, I think it’s at 7:15, it’ll automatically go down, I think, to 65 or 66, and then at 4:15 it goes back up. So, even before we get back home, because I think that when you set it, it’s saying … Let’s say you say at 4:15 you want it to go up to 70 degrees. It’s probably gonna start turning the heat on about a half hour before that so that when you’re home, it is actually 70 degrees at that time, because that’s the other really nice thing, is when you do change the temperature, it tells you how long it’ll take to get to that temperature. So, if you even uptick it one degree, it’ll be like, “Okay, it’ll be this temperature in 35 minutes,” something like that. It always surprises me.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. It takes a while. When I go up just four degrees, it takes a good running of the furnace to get there.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. I’ve watched that even with my … Honeywell is the thermostat that I got. That wasn’t a bad price. I think I paid 75, 76 bucks for it. I had to have my brother-in-law come over and help with that. I actually had to fish new wire because the thermostat that I had was archaic, but now it’s all set up because if I ever decide to put central air in my house, I’ve got the wiring to do it. The setup process on it wasn’t too bad. I did have to use some sighted assistance for a few things, but once I got it set up, it’s pretty easy, not totally voiceover-accessible. There’s certain things, like it’ll say stats. You have to kind of play with it, but it works, and obviously, with me having some vision, I’m able to manage it, and so I got out of it what I wanted. I can program it seven days, something different every day if I want to. To circulate the air, I’ll just turn on the furnace fan by itself to help circulate the heat throughout the house.
Jeff Thompson:
A friend of mine did his whole house, so he went with the Honeywell thermostat, and I noticed that was a hundred bucks cheaper, and I was gonna do that. Then I decided I’m gonna stay in one zone because of the Nest with the Protects and stuff like that to be connected. Then, of course, I heard Serena got everything under the sun in the Nest.
Serena Gilbert:
Not everything, but that was why we stuck with Nest, too, because we knew that we wanted to expand upon it, and because we definitely liked the Ring Doorbell, but when we were looking into stuff, there’s not much stuff that kind of … We didn’t want to have to manage several different apps for everything, is what we were kind of thinking about.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, and that’s really cool. I was looking at the Nest Hello, and they said it’s overkill for a doorbell, but some people want that stuff, and I think the Nest Hello comes in around about 230 from Amazon. These are prices today. Black Friday and Christmas had different prices.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, because I think ours was 199, and we got a free Google Mini with it. So, yeah. That was from Costco.
Jeff Thompson:
So, you’re sporting a few of those assistance devices.
Serena Gilbert:
I have every assistant there is now in this house.
Jeff Thompson:
Hey, Portal.
Serena Gilbert:
I don’t have that one. No, I will never trust them. If you’ve been listening to the Tech Abilities podcast, you know how I feel about Mr. Facebook Portal speaker thing that follows you around the room.
Jeff Thompson:
And their privacy policy, I bet.
Serena Gilbert:
It specifically says that they can use the data from that to target ads to you.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, come on.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
Would anybody do that? I mean, come on.
Serena Gilbert:
You’re so naïve, Mr. Jeff.
Jeff Thompson:
No, I think these devices are really cool. I’m really breaking into them. It’s just so neat. We’re repainting, and so I’m in the guestroom downstairs, and I thought, “It’s kind of cold,” so I thought, “I could just open up the app and just flick the couple swipes here and there, or I could just ask the A lady to turn it up,” but then I thought, “Oh, well. I’ll be asleep, and I’ll be warm anyway, so …” But just having those options, I love it.
Serena Gilbert:
You didn’t really think you were gonna go to sleep. The reality is that you forgot what you were doing, and then you fell asleep.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, and the podcast I was listening to went on, and on, and on.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, because somebody had a mishap with some paint.
Andy Munoz:
Sounds like somebody else that I know is jealous.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. This is a public service announcement. If you are painting indoors, be sure to have adequate ventilation by opening windows. This public service announcement was brought to you by Serena Gilbert and company. If you guys are listening to a device at night, do you guys set a timer? I got Audible, and I noticed that I could set it for 30, 40 minutes. So, let’s go into the Audible app.
Speaker 8:
Audible.
Jeff Thompson:
We’ll go to a book that I have.
Speaker 8:
My library, tab 205. Selected cloud button one of two.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s streaming from the cloud.
Speaker 8:
Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind. Sleep timer button.
Jeff Thompson:
This was a very good book, and with a single finger swiping left to right, we’ll go down to timer, or you can find it just right along the bottom in one of the tabs.
Speaker 8:
Sleep timer, adding off button.
Jeff Thompson:
You can have the timer off, or you can choose from a list of settings.
Speaker 8:
Eight minutes button. 15 minutes button. 30 minutes button. 45 minutes button. 60 minutes button. End of chapter button. Custom button.
Jeff Thompson:
My favorite is-
Speaker 8:
End of chapter button.
Jeff Thompson:
That way, I know I’m still within the chapter I started in. I usually make it 10.
Serena Gilbert:
No. I pass out, and then I wake up, and I’ve suddenly missed four chapters of the book I was reading, and I have to spend the next day figuring out where I left off.
Andy Munoz:
Shoot. I don’t even need it. Once I hit the pillow, I’m done. It doesn’t take but seconds, and I’m gone. So, I don’t even … Because I did. I tried that one time, though. I was like, “I wonder how it would be to use the A lady and do some sleep sounds,” and so I had a crackling fire or something. I don’t know. I turned it on, and then before I even went to sleep, I’m like, “No, that’s gotta go,” and just stopped it.
Serena Gilbert:
You’re like, “It’s keeping me awake.”
Andy Munoz:
Well, no. It wasn’t even keeping me awake, because I could’ve slept with it. I could’ve. It just kind of got on my nerves, and so I’m like, “No. Stop.”
Jeff Thompson:
Until you wake up, your Protect is going off, giving you warnings, you hear a crackling fire.
Serena Gilbert:
That could not end well.
Jeff Thompson:
But yeah, there’s so many devices out there. We can go back into the Wimo stuff that I have hooked up. It’s so nice that the driveway lights on and off at the specific times. My lamps come on and off, and I have two more that I have to hook up. So, once I get this painting job done and the room situated like that, I can go around the house and hook two more up to have something automatic. But you don’t want to put your coffee on it because it’s all digital, unless you have an old school one where if you plug it in and you have the manual switch turned on, that stuff will work, just like lamps work that way, but my Keurig would need a little robot arm to push the button and push the thing down.
Andy Munoz:
I was gonna say, I think Keurigs now already have it built in, that you can program them. You just pay a little bit more for them, but I believe that’s already built in, that you can do the programming.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, really, set it all up and …
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. I was kind of looking at it, hadn’t decided whether or not I was gonna spring for it, because I do want to get one, because the one I have now, I can fit a standard coffee cup under it. I want one that I can put my tumblers in, and so I was looking at a smart one. I do believe I saw one on Amazon that will do that. It’ll program.
Jeff Thompson:
Your drip tray doesn’t pull away then?
Andy Munoz:
It does, but not enough to put my tumbler.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, you got that 36-ounce coffee?
Andy Munoz:
No. Actually, all I have is a 20-ounce.
Jeff Thompson:
So, Serena-
Serena Gilbert:
So, Jeff.
Jeff Thompson:
What is Andy like when he doesn’t have his 20-ounce coffee?
Serena Gilbert:
I don’t think I’d ever know, because I think he might be addicted to it.
Jeff Thompson:
I remember when Keurigs came out, and I said, “I will never fall for that, that I have to buy special cups, special this,” and now it’s like, “Oh, yeah. Throw in another box of coffee.”
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. Everything’s programmable now, in some way, shape, or form. Not sure if that’s good or bad.
Serena Gilbert:
I’m surprised they don’t have a Keurig that works with the Amazon devices by now, honestly.
Andy Munoz:
Right?
Jeff Thompson:
Give it a week.
Serena Gilbert:
It just has a dispenser that you put everything in. You just refill it maybe once a week. I mean, they have a robot vacuum that literally empties itself now. So, you’d probably think they’d figure out the coffeemaker piece, too.
Andy Munoz:
They gotta give us something to do.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. When I was looking up these home devices and stuff, I decided to check with Amazon, see if Amazon’s actually making their own home device thingamabob or something, but there’s a skill, and it’s called the Away skill, that you can activate on Amazon by saying, “Enable Away.” What it does is the company that developed it plays music and conversations and news and all this stuff, and it’ll play it continuously so it sounds like you’re home.
Serena Gilbert:
That reminds me of something. So, I think you guys would … I know Jeff saw this article, and maybe I told you about it, too, Andy. So, did you hear about the parrot that would order stuff on Amazon?
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yeah.
Andy Munoz:
Nice.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah. The parrot got kicked out of a sanctuary because it kept cussing, so then the person that adopted it started noticing that random stuff would be ordered through the Amazon device, and he would also come home to jazz music and random music that the bird had turned on to play during the day.
Jeff Thompson:
Wow. This bird’s kind of a nuisance guy.
Serena Gilbert:
Parrots are like that, though. They’re very smart.
Jeff Thompson:
You could probably get pre-programmed parrots now, if you wanted. It’s a parrot supposed to be reflective of the people that it’s surrounded by?
Serena Gilbert:
They will repeat everything. They don’t keep secrets.
Andy Munoz:
So, what was really going on church.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. Keep the parrot away from the confessionals.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah. I just thought that was so funny. I’m like, “Oh, my goodness.” I already don’t use that skill to order things, because I just feel nervous, because you know how sometimes you go to order something that you order regularly on Amazon, and all of a sudden it’s double the price, and you’re like, “Wait a minute,” and it’s because it’s not Prime, or something weird happened? I don’t want that to happen and I didn’t notice, because I just did it with the skill and kept going.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, sometimes you get the price, or I don’t know how it works, but some items are add-on items, and you have to have a certain amount or something like that for them to ship. I need to know the price, and I want to know the deal that … Right underneath it, there might be another deal. Some of them, if you use your Amazon card, that you can get 10% in points. It would up from five, which isn’t a bad deal if you’re gonna get it anyways.
Serena Gilbert:
There’s always coupons, too, the most random coupons. It’ll be like, “Click this for a dollar off.” Okay, and then it just applies when you check out.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. I just can’t do that. I didn’t turn it off. I put code on it, locked it down, and grenades and everything around that, because my family like to play games with me and order random things just by saying it. So, it sends a message to your phone, so I get to my phone, and I see this list of stuff I can’t even mention. It’s like, yeah, they were having fun.
Andy Munoz:
Gotta love when they do that.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. You can’t pick them, can you?
Serena Gilbert:
Well, Justin’s my favorite of your children already.
Jeff Thompson:
Why is that?
Serena Gilbert:
The Lion King reference from … I don’t even remember which episode. Since he said that I’m right and you’re wrong, he’s my favorite.
Jeff Thompson:
There you go. Well, there’s one other thing I wanted to mention about the Secure, and your door lock. Now, you have a fob with that, right?
Serena Gilbert:
No. The Nest Secure does come with a key chain thing. I forget what they were called. I think they call them Nest Tabs, and the way that that works is when you come in the house, you can literally just tap that tab on top of the Nest Secure itself, or the Nest Guard, is what they call it, and it disarms the alarm. But those tabs do not work with the door lock for some reason.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, like you could just tap?
Serena Gilbert:
Because it’s an NFC chip, and there’s no chip in the door lock. But you can unlock it with your app. It’s not hard to turn off voiceover and undo that. I’ve never had it not work. It’s something that they obviously didn’t think about when they programmed the app.
Jeff Thompson:
Really? So, what’s the process … Family is coming home or something. What is the process of you to unlock, disarm, and everything’s back to normal?
Serena Gilbert:
So, if I’m coming home from work, I use the front door because I don’t want to keep opening and closing our garage. The only has so many opens and closes in it. So, when I come home, I kind of have my Nest app kind of queued up as I’m getting off the paratransit bus, and as I’m approaching the door, I just push the button on the app to unlock it and go inside. If I’m the first one home, I can also use my app to disarm the alarm, because I honestly don’t ever use the key fob thing that came with it to disarm it. It’s just easier to do it from the app. If we’re coming home as a family, we don’t use the front door because we park in the garage, and so we’ll walk in. My husband usually will just … You can either type in your code, or you can use the key fob, or you can use your app. I mean, there’s three different ways you can disarm that alarm.
Jeff Thompson:
So, it’s nothing that you guys are stumbling upon. It’s easy enough to figure it out.
Serena Gilbert:
Oh, it’s so easy, because it’s very tactile, and you can customize how much time you have to disarm the alarm, and how much time you have when you’re leaving the house. If we go arm it on the actual Nest Guard, you can customize how much time you have before you have to leave the house before it’s actually armed. It’s not like the, “Okay, we got 30 seconds. Let’s run.” We have it customized.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, my family say it’s me, that I’m the one that we all get in the car, we’re ready to go, and I say, “Oh, hold it a second.”
Serena Gilbert:
Sounds about right.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. So, I run back in to grab something. So, I can dis-alarm it real quickly and just-
Serena Gilbert:
Well, if you know that that’s what happens to you frequently, then you could just make it part of your routine to arm and disarm from your phone.
Jeff Thompson:
I don’t think it happens that often.
Serena Gilbert:
Sure, it doesn’t. But you don’t have to be home to arm and disarm it. Our phones are set to where you can put in your address, and you do have to have a little bit of visual assistance because it asks you to set the pin where your house is, because when I put in the address, I had it way off. But once you get that part set up, it’ll send you a reminder if you leave the house and it sees that nobody’s home, to remind you to set the alarm.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Serena Gilbert:
It does it almost immediately, because last night we left, and we had only been gone for about a minute, and it said, “Set the alarm? Looks like you left the house.”
Jeff Thompson:
Well, that’s kind of cool.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah, it’s really nice.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, you also have an option where you could have a security system monitor all this.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah. Brinks is the one that they use, so it’s $20 a month if you do a three-year contract, or $29.99 a month if you just want to do month-to-month, and I believe it comes with the free cellular backup. So, if your WiFi or power goes down, that kind of thing.
Jeff Thompson:
Now, I was talking to someone, I don’t know if it was you, but you should check with your police department as well because sometimes they don’t respond to some of these calls that come from a monitoring service, so I would check with your police department to how they react to … especially if there’s no one there to verify.
Serena Gilbert:
If it were to trip an alarm, even if you had the monitoring service, you’re going to get a notification on your phone, and I would imagine the monitoring service might call you as well.
Jeff Thompson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Good stuff. Good stuff.
Andy Munoz:
Serena, with your security, do you also have cloud service?
Serena Gilbert:
So, there’s no cameras hooked up to the security, except for the doorbell camera, and the doorbell camera does have cloud service where I can see a live stream or I can pull down clips, all that good stuff, and it kind of stamps the videos. So, I have it set to where it only alerts us if it spots a person or if there’s a doorbell ring, but if you go in the app, it’ll timestamp every time it sees motion, which is … If you look at it, for the Nest, if it’s a windy day, especially, it’s like every two minutes.
Serena Gilbert:
So, that would get really annoying on the Nest, because I think … I don’t know if it’s just more sensitive, or we are on a corner, so there could be cars driving by that it’s sensing, because the way it’s positioned, you can see half our driveway and then the street, plus our entire front yard and porch and all that. So, I don’t know if that’s it or not, but ours will just tell us if there’s a person, and if there’s an actual doorbell ring right now, the way we have it set up.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Andy Munoz:
Okay. The Ring, I think I signed up for 10 bucks a month for the cloud service. The way our motion is set up, during the daytime it goes off quite a bit more, and then of course, if I wanted to, there’s a motion snooze, so if I’m like, “I really don’t want to be alerted to anything today,” I could just turn it off, especially if I’m home. So, yeah, we got those different features that are available, and I pay for the cloud service for 10 bucks a month. So, it’s not too bad.
Serena Gilbert:
I think the Nest one is $10 a month, too. It’s called Nest Aware, but when we bought the doorbell camera through Costco, it came with, like I said, the free Google Mini, but it also came with a free year of the Nest Aware, too.
Andy Munoz:
Oh, nice.
Serena Gilbert:
Yeah. So, it was a really good deal.
Andy Munoz:
Oh, that’s sweet.
Jeff Thompson:
I read up on it, and I heard that there’s a three-hour loop that you can have, and that’s free, and then there’s for a 10-hour loop. That’s when you start paying more and more, and you go up incrementally.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, I think the free one, you can’t pull clips down. If you wanted to be able to pull it off of the camera and share it with someone, I think that’s the main thing that people want to be able to have, because if something suspicious does happen, you want to be able to keep that video, and without having the cloud service, you can’t keep it.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. Another thing, Andy, you mentioned having an extra camera. I was reading up on the cameras, and this was surprising to me, that each camera, if you’re gonna have it 24/7 for a month, could use about 400 gigabytes worth of internet.
Serena Gilbert:
Holy bajeezus.
Jeff Thompson:
Thus, people that have three cameras, that’s 1,200. I get a terabyte of data that I can use, so this would be … If I had two cameras, that would be 800. Now, this happens to be the Nest camera, their new one, and it’s 4K, and it’ll zoom in on the motion if it recognizes a person. It has all that stuff, but what people have to realize in the long run, all this stuff is running off your WiFi, and you can pay for cellular backup. So, you could nickel and dime yourself into a secure fortress, but it’s gonna cost you sometimes.
Andy Munoz:
I’ve got some personal reasons as to why we’re gonna put that second camera, but you do gotta be selective about how many do I really need. At least as far as I know, I don’t have a data cap either.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, do you have Xfinity?
Andy Munoz:
I do.
Serena Gilbert:
You have a data cap then.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah.
Serena Gilbert:
They’re pretty lenient on it the first couple times, but ask Jeff.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yeah.
Serena Gilbert:
If you go over it, then they make you either upgrade to business, or they charge you … I mean, I forget how many gigs it is. It’s a massive amount for the average person, but there is a cap.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s a terabyte.
Andy Munoz:
I was gonna say, I’ve never touched it.
Jeff Thompson:
I had something broken in my computer, some software. It was in my mail client. For some reason, it was uploading, and I was using over a terabyte a month.
Andy Munoz:
Wow.
Jeff Thompson:
So, I got my two warnings. You get two complimentary, “Hey, we’re sorry that happened, blah, blah, blah. If it happens one more time, we’re gonna come after you for your money.” So, I contacted Apple, and he dug into my computer, tandem, and found something and replaced it, and poof, it was gone. I was shutting off my Alexa devices. I was shutting off my Googles. I said, “These things are sucking data.” So, I was like-
Serena Gilbert:
I’m being spied on.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, I thought, “That kid’s gaming too much. That’s gotta go.” I was pointing at everyone. “Laurie, how many books are you downloading?” I was like the dad-
Serena Gilbert:
Book are tiny.
Jeff Thompson:
I know, but I was going around the house. I was even looking at the dog like, “You got anything?”
Serena Gilbert:
The other thing, and this is something that you mentioned, Jeff, is depending on your router, you might be limited as to how many devices can connect to that router at once.
Jeff Thompson:
Apple allows 10 devices per ID.
Andy Munoz:
Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
So, if you have a … Oh, you’re Mr. Apple, the genius. I forgot all about that, Andy. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy is an Apple genius. Do you remember that back in the … That was our opening podcast with you.
Andy Munoz:
That was, yeah.
Serena Gilbert:
Oh, goodness.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
The Apple G, AG. So, it is 10 devices per ID?
Andy Munoz:
So, it’s 10 IOS devices per ID, and then you can have five additional computers.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah.
Serena Gilbert:
That’s active IOS devices, because if you upgrade or …
Andy Munoz:
Well, yeah. So, if you have one that you no longer use, you have to go in and de-register it. Otherwise, it would stay as part of your 10 devices.
Jeff Thompson:
Jeff’s iPad, Jeff’s iPad, Jeff’s iPad.
Serena Gilbert:
You’re like, “Which one is which? I don’t know.”
Jeff Thompson:
I know. I supposed we should name these things. But what you were talking about is your modem, you can have up to 50 devices. I think that’s where bridges come in, where if you have a bunch of Wimos all throughout your house or something like that where you could have eight, but if you put it to a bridge, that only counts as one then, I believe.
Andy Munoz:
I would think so, because at that point it’s only pulling one IP address.
Jeff Thompson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh, that’s interesting. I thought I was gonna start overloading, because again, all these little devices throughout your house and stuff, and just going, going, going. It’s gotta give somewhere, but it’s not like Christmas tree lights.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah. Well, and then that’s where I was kind of throwing back about the data cap, because I’ve got a kid over here that games a lot, downloads games like there’s no tomorrow, and we’re always on our phones doing stuff.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, just for fun, check your … because it’ll tell you exactly … If you use the Xfinity app, it’ll tell you how much you’ve used in the billing cycle, because even-
Jeff Thompson:
That’s if you have the modem from Xfinity.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, it’s on your bill, too, though, if you check your billing. It’s not live then, but it’s on your billing, because we don’t do gaming and stuff like that, and there’s been a couple months where we’ve come close somehow because we have a kid who streams constantly, because he watches Nick Jr., and then I’m on Zoom doing podcasts. So, you’d be surprised.
Jeff Thompson:
Laurie happens to be in Florida right now, and she said she’s in a, what do you call those, those RV parks, because her folks travel, and that’s where she is, and she said she didn’t have WiFi right now, and I was thinking to myself, “Wow. Where is that? Is a tumbleweed blowing by, or what?” Just no WiFi.
Serena Gilbert:
She probably has cellular connectivity, though.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yeah, but she didn’t want to start listening to podcasts and all this other stuff. So, she thought about a computer because she heard that podcast talking about the Mac Air.
Serena Gilbert:
Oh, yeah, the brand new one?
Jeff Thompson:
So, she reads the title and gives me a call, and it’s like, “Did you buy a computer?”
Serena Gilbert:
Oh, goodness.
Jeff Thompson:
I think these devices are really making it convenient. I don’t think they’re excessive. I think it’s convenience because it’s just security that I know my head is … I’m trying to save the eco, trying to save heating bills, and the lights come on and off when I don’t even particularly pay attention to it, but it happens, so it’s really neat.
Serena Gilbert:
It’s so funny. I visited Texas for the holidays, and at home I’m so used to just being like, “Hey, Google,” or whatever, “set timer for this much,” or, “What time is it,” or, “What’s the weather,” and I felt like I was a step back, and I haven’t even had all this stuff for … I’ve had it less than a year. But then I’m like, “Oh, I gotta actually go look at the app and see what the weather is, or I have to actually pull out my phone, see what time it is.” I’m so spoiled.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a chore. How about you, Andy?
Andy Munoz:
Honestly, I use the apps a lot, because my phone is always in my hand, which is really sad, but that’s kind of the way I work.
Jeff Thompson:
Surgically embedded?
Andy Munoz:
For real, it is. It’s like, man. But even for me, it’s nice because then I don’t have to go try to look at the thermostat on the wall to see what the temp is. I can just go straight to my app and see what’s going on and go from there.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. It’s part of the way things are, and I was thinking, people who are gonna build a new house today, it’s like we used to have to think about putting in wires here, telephone wires there, getting all your ethernet stuff here. With the way Bluetooth is working, though, and the way WiFi is working today, and even cable cutters and stuff, it just seems like, hey, you don’t have to think that far ahead. Look at all the Sonos Bluetooth devices. People are accepting Bluetooth speakers, wireless everything, and it’s like you don’t have to have a house totally hard wired for your computers and stuff anymore. I think it’s great.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah, because wiring just sucks.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yeah.
Andy Munoz:
I mean, it just gets in the way.
Jeff Thompson:
But for you people with the cameras on your doorbells, you gotta get wiring.
Serena Gilbert:
You people? I feel like you’re a little jealous over there.
Jeff Thompson:
I know. I want to get it. It’s like, I was downstairs the other day, and I was standing there. I defrosted the freezer because you gotta do that once in a while, and I was just thinking about what’s above me right here. Oh, that’s the entryway. Oh, there’s the front door. That’d be right there. I’m mapping it out in my head here, and I said, “Oh, the Hello wire would come straight down there.” So, I’m thinking where this stuff would be located. So, with you guys and hearing all the excitement you guys got going for it, I like the notifications that someone’s there. I even contacted Serena and was asking more and more questions about it. So, I’ve been digging in. I’m interested in more smart home stuff.
Serena Gilbert:
Well, I can’t see the video, obviously, when it comes up, but I can tell the sounds, like if it’s just my husband grabbing a package, or you hear the UPS truck. So, it’s especially helpful when you know that you’re expecting an important delivery. There’s only been one time where someone delivered something to us, and the package was there, and I asked my husband, I was like, “Did you get a notification, because I didn’t,” and he was like, “No, but I went and checked back the feed,” and he was like, “That guy was like a ninja. He just kind of snuck up there, put the package down and left, and I don’t know how he avoided setting off the camera, but he did.”
Jeff Thompson:
I should become a ninja puppeteer and come over and show you guys some shows.
Serena Gilbert:
See how you can trick it.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. That’s really cool.
Andy Munoz:
Just for my own purpose, I try to see if I can sneak out without it going off.
Jeff Thompson:
How is that going, Andy?
Andy Munoz:
Shoot.
Serena Gilbert:
No. Mine sees me. Mine sees me every time.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. I think on this show, we kind of nestled into the Nest products and the Ring product. This stuff is exciting stuff, and if you guys want to know more about accessibility stuff, Serena, you got a great Facebook group.
Serena Gilbert:
I have a great Facebook group. It’s growing a ton every single day. It’s called The Assistive Technology Community for Blind and Visually Impaired, so you can just search that, or even if you go on my Facebook page, Blindy Blog, it’s linked through there as well.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. It’s really cool because if you’ve got questions, or if you want to give advice, it’s good. Sometimes there’s good stuff. Sometimes there’s other stuff. I think it’s always interesting.
Serena Gilbert:
I try to keep it clean. You guys don’t see some of the posts I delete.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, I’m sure. You’re open to the world of the internet. They’re out there.
Serena Gilbert:
Especially those posts from Andy. Geez.
Jeff Thompson:
Full-time job, huh?
Andy Munoz:
Yeah, you know.
Jeff Thompson:
More alarming than your Nest Secure. I want to thank all of you for listening. We’ll be back next time, and you can check us out on Twitter, @AbilitiesTech, and check us out on the website at blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network. So, Andy, I want to thank you for coming on and sharing with us a little bit about your video that you took with your wife there. We’ll share that with everybody.
Serena Gilbert:
She’s gonna be famous.
Andy Munoz:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jeff Thompson:
Serena, thank you for coming on and showing us the entire Nest product line.
Serena Gilbert:
Just about. Only …
Jeff Thompson:
All right.
Andy Munoz:
Yeah, you got stock in Nest now?
Serena Gilbert:
No. Between me and Jeff, I think we own all the Nest products, though.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. I’m just tapping into the thing, but it’s really neat that you guys have this stuff to get information, share it, because it’s a resource with the Facebook group. You can ask questions there. It’s just neat that you can make informed decisions, just like Boke Rehab. Right?
Serena Gilbert:
I was gonna say, look at you using your DVR words.
Jeff Thompson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, thank you, everybody. We hope you enjoyed the show, and until next time, bye-bye.
Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
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