Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive, especially to you the learner.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're looking to shortcut the learning curve
Speaker 1: of home automation and hardware hacking, you are in exactly
Speaker 1: the right place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, We've got a really fun one today.
Speaker 1: We do because I want you to imagine looking at
Speaker 1: the walls of your living room right now. You know,
Speaker 1: you see drywall, you see paint, maybe a few standard
Speaker 1: plastic power outlets. It all looks so, I don't know, static.
Speaker 2: Right, incredibly ordinary, exactly.
Speaker 1: But what if those plain copper wires inside the walls,
Speaker 1: like the ones meant to just blindly pump raw electricity,
Speaker 1: What if they're actually a hidden digital network, just waiting
Speaker 1: for you to take control.
Speaker 2: It really completely shifts how you view the physical structure
Speaker 2: you live in. I mean, you stop seeing a house
Speaker 2: and you start seeing this enormous programmable machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and today we are pulling back that drywall to
Speaker 1: explore this hidden network. We're getting into the mechanics of
Speaker 1: home automation by looking at excerpts from the book geek
Speaker 1: House Ten hardware Hacking Projects for a Round Home by
Speaker 1: Barry and Marcilla Press.
Speaker 2: It's such a great source.
Speaker 1: It is. Specifically, we are focusing on a section called
Speaker 1: X ten Under the Hood.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's an incredible guy for anyone who wants to
Speaker 2: understand not just you know that their house can be automated,
Speaker 2: but exactly how that automation physically functions behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, let's unpack this because the core premise the
Speaker 1: authors lay out here is brilliant. They want to help
Speaker 1: you take a boring, conventional house and turn it into
Speaker 1: a custom built geek.
Speaker 2: House minion, a minion that does your bidding.
Speaker 1: I love that, right, But before we get anywhere near
Speaker 1: the actual hardware, we have to issue a very serious,
Speaker 1: very crucial safety disclaimer. We are talking about hacking the
Speaker 1: actual electrical wiring of a house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that really cannot be overstated. Powerline control devices
Speaker 2: operate on hazardous voltages, lethal voltage. Literally, we're talking about
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty volts
Speaker 2: of alternating current. If you do not know how to
Speaker 2: safely work with live home wiring, you need to stick
Speaker 2: strictly to the plug in modules exactly because touching the
Speaker 2: wrong wire at the wrong time isn't just a shock hazard,
Speaker 2: it can literally kill you.
Speaker 1: So keeping that very real physical danger in mind, we
Speaker 1: have a massive engineering puzzle here. How does this technology
Speaker 1: actually transmit a delicate digital message through copper wires that
Speaker 1: were let's face it only ever built to carry raw lethal.
Speaker 2: Power, right, It's not a data cable, no.
Speaker 1: So to understand this we have to look at the
Speaker 1: foundational level of what engineers call the ISO seven layer
Speaker 1: communications model, which is essentially the physical layer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the physical layer's layer one. Before you can get
Speaker 2: two computers to talk, you need a framework that separates
Speaker 2: the physical reality of the wire from the grammar of
Speaker 2: the actual message.
Speaker 1: Right. The physical layer doesn't care what the message means
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: Not even a little bit. It's strictly about the physics
Speaker 2: of moving a bit of information, a single one or
Speaker 2: a zero, from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: And the challenge for the creators of the X ten
Speaker 1: pro was doing this reliably using cheap electronics over an
Speaker 1: electrical grid that was never designed to carry data. So
Speaker 1: their solution was to literally piggyback on the alternating current.
Speaker 2: Exactly in North America, the power grid operates at sixty hertz.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that means.
Speaker 2: That means the electrical current isn't just flowing constantly like
Speaker 2: water in a pipe. It's alternating. It's surging back and
Speaker 2: forth sixty times every single second. It's this massive rhythmic
Speaker 2: wave of energy.
Speaker 1: And the XTEN system uses that surging sixty hrtz wave
Speaker 1: as its transportation vehicle. Like whenever it wants to send
Speaker 1: a one bit, it transmits a one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: kilohertz tone, which is basically just a very high pitched
Speaker 1: electronic squeal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tiny squeal, and it blasts.
Speaker 1: That tone into the wire for a tiny one millisecond burst.
Speaker 1: So the physical presence of that high frequency tone equals
Speaker 1: a one, and the absolute absence of the tone equals
Speaker 1: a zero.
Speaker 2: But the real genius here isn't the tone itself, it's
Speaker 2: exactly when the system decides to send that burst, the
Speaker 2: timing right the timing, It uses a mechanism called zero crossing.
Speaker 2: As that massive sixty herds alternating current rhythmically rises and falls,
Speaker 2: it constantly crosses the zero voltage point in the middle.
Speaker 1: Because it's going from positive to negative exactly.
Speaker 2: So the X ten transmitter waits for that exact quiet moment, specifically,
Speaker 2: it waits for the rising line voltage to cross zero,
Speaker 2: and it fires its one millisecond tone burst within two
Speaker 2: hundred microseconds of that exact crossing.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is just so elegant. And then right after that,
Speaker 1: just to be sure the bit wasn't I don't know,
Speaker 1: mangled by some random spark in the wire, it does
Speaker 1: a built in error check.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the inverse rule right on.
Speaker 1: The very next half of the wave, when the voltage
Speaker 1: crosses zero on the way down, it sends the exact
Speaker 1: inverse or complement of the bit. So if it blasted
Speaker 1: the tone to say one on the way up, it
Speaker 1: guarantees a moment of silence to say zero on the.
Speaker 2: Way down, precisely. Now, that inverse rule doesn't magically fix
Speaker 2: errors if they happen, but it's a brilliant diagnostic tool. Yes,
Speaker 2: so well, let's the receiving lamp or switch immediately. I
Speaker 2: know if a bit got corrupted in transit, if it sees, say,
Speaker 2: two tones back to back, it knows the rule was
Speaker 2: broken and the data is just garbage.
Speaker 1: I picture the whole thing like an extreme sport, you know,
Speaker 1: like you've got this massive, surging, lethal sixty hertze electrical
Speaker 1: ocean wave that could easily crush you, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: And the X ten system is trying to perfectly surf
Speaker 1: a tiny one hundred and twenty killer hertz ripple right
Speaker 1: on the lip of that wave exactly at the moment
Speaker 1: it crests the zero line.
Speaker 2: That's a really good analogyh.
Speaker 1: Wait, if I run the math on that you're telling me,
Speaker 1: it sends exactly one bit of data perhaf cycle of
Speaker 1: the PowerWave. Yes, at sixty herdz. That means the raw
Speaker 1: transmission speed is a mere sixty bits per second. Isn't
Speaker 1: that incredibly slow for a computer. I mean, a standard
Speaker 1: dial up modem from the nineties was thousands of times
Speaker 1: faster than that.
Speaker 2: It is slow. But what's fascinating here is that this
Speaker 2: agonizingly slow speed isn't a mistake. It is a highly
Speaker 2: deliberate engineering trade off.
Speaker 1: Wait, really deliberately slow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because in any digital communication network, timing is everything. Usually,
Speaker 2: microchips need complex, expensive internal quartz clocks to keep their
Speaker 2: signals perfectly synchronized with each other. Right, But by tying
Speaker 2: the data bursts strictly to the physical zero crossings of
Speaker 2: the AC power line, the X ten devices don't need
Speaker 2: to generate their own timing.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see the sixty hertz power grid itself, like
Speaker 1: the literal hum of the utility company, acts as a massive,
Speaker 1: free and incredibly precise clock for every single device in
Speaker 1: the house.
Speaker 2: Exactly. They essentially outsource the system's internal clock to the
Speaker 2: power company, and that brilliant shortcut meant they could strip
Speaker 2: the expensive timing components out of the hardware, which keeps
Speaker 2: the cost of the receivers incredibly low.
Speaker 1: That is clever, but I mean it completely shifts the burden. Right.
Speaker 1: If your transmission speed is locked into glacial sixty bits
Speaker 1: per second, you cannot afford long chatty messages no one
Speaker 1: at all. Every single microsecond is precious real estate. So
Speaker 1: how does it format the data so the receiver understands
Speaker 1: it without getting confused?
Speaker 2: So that moves us up a step in the ISO model,
Speaker 2: straight into the link and presentation layers. If the physical
Speaker 2: layer is the raw sound of a voice, the link
Speaker 2: layer is the grammar.
Speaker 1: The stuttering grammar. As we'll see right.
Speaker 2: It dictates how you frame the messages. So a listening
Speaker 2: outlet knows exactly when a command is starting and stopping,
Speaker 2: and X ten handles this using a very specific start code,
Speaker 2: which is the sequence one one zero, so three.
Speaker 1: Tone bursts followed by silence exactly. But wait a second.
Speaker 1: If the start code is one one zero, that means
Speaker 1: the first two cycles are sending a one followed immediately
Speaker 1: by another one. But the physical layer rules we just
Speaker 1: talked about absolutely demand that every bit is followed by
Speaker 1: its exact inverse. If you send a one on the
Speaker 1: rising wave, you must send a zero on the falling wave.
Speaker 2: You're exactly right, and that is the absolute beauty of
Speaker 2: the start code. The first two cycles of that sequence
Speaker 2: intentionally violate the protocol's own foundational rule.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, they make their own rule on purpose.
Speaker 2: Yes, they are mathematically invalid sequences. In engineering, we call
Speaker 2: this out of band signaling.
Speaker 1: Because it's impossible for actual valid data to ever accidentally
Speaker 1: generate that pattern.
Speaker 2: Exactly, because those first bits purposefully break the laws of
Speaker 2: the physical layer, the receiving device instantly knows, without a
Speaker 2: shadow of a doubt that it isn't looking at random
Speaker 2: electrical noise and it isn't looking at regular data. It's
Speaker 2: like a flare in the sky exactly. It's a guaranteed
Speaker 2: flare that says a new message is starting right now.
Speaker 2: It prevents the receiver from mistaking a random fragment of
Speaker 2: a passing message for the start of a command.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the start code flashes that signal, the outlet
Speaker 1: snaps to attention. Logically, once it's listening, you'd have to
Speaker 1: tell it two things, right, who you're talking to and
Speaker 1: what you want it to do.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how it's structured. Immediately following that start code,
Speaker 2: the system transmits exactly nine bits of data, just nine bits,
Speaker 2: just nine. The first four bits represent the house code,
Speaker 2: which is assign a letter from the next five bits
Speaker 2: represent either the key code, which is a number from
Speaker 2: one to sixteen targeting a specific lamp, or they represent
Speaker 2: a function.
Speaker 1: Code, and the function code is the actual action like on,
Speaker 1: off or dim. But because you only have nine bits
Speaker 1: to work with, you can't fit the who and the
Speaker 1: what in the same block, Like you can send lamp
Speaker 1: B twelve or you can send B turn on, but
Speaker 1: you can't send them together. So how do you build
Speaker 1: a full command out of this? Do you just chain them?
Speaker 2: You do, but the reality of sending data over a
Speaker 2: power line makes it much clunkier than just chaining them.
Speaker 2: The electrical grid is so inherently noisy. The protocol demands
Speaker 2: extreme redundancy to ensure the message survives.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what does that look like.
Speaker 2: You don't just transmit the address and then the command.
Speaker 2: The rules state that every single message block must be
Speaker 2: transmitted twice back to back with no gaps. Wow, And
Speaker 2: then you have to leave a mandatory three cycle gap
Speaker 2: of empty silence before you can send the next part.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the final instruction is basically a highly redundant
Speaker 1: stutter to turn on one light. It's not sending B
Speaker 1: twelve on. It's literally broadcasting B twelve B twelve long
Speaker 1: gap beyond ye on.
Speaker 2: Yes, it requires at least four separate message blocks to
Speaker 2: complete one single functional command.
Speaker 1: And at sixty bits per second, that actually takes a
Speaker 1: noticeable fraction of a second.
Speaker 2: It does. And the downside is that if any single
Speaker 2: piece of that four part transmission gets swallowed by electrical noise,
Speaker 2: the receiving lamp might flicker erratically, or it might just
Speaker 2: ignore you entirely.
Speaker 1: Just to put this in perspective for everyone listening, imagine
Speaker 1: trying to type an urgent email but your keyboard physically
Speaker 1: restricts you to typing one single letter per second sounds awful,
Speaker 1: It gets worse, and the rules of the email program
Speaker 1: state you have to type the recipient's entire name twice,
Speaker 1: pause for three seconds, and then type the actual body
Speaker 1: of the message twice. That is the agonizing, stuttering digital
Speaker 1: reality this protocol lives in.
Speaker 2: It is slow, and the grammar is incredibly rich, but
Speaker 2: it had to be designed that way because the environment
Speaker 2: it was deployed in is outright hostile.
Speaker 1: Which leads right into the next major hurdle. We have
Speaker 1: this rigidly structured grammar intentionally rule breaking, star codes, massive repetition.
Speaker 1: So why do these X ten signals still sometimes just vanish?
Speaker 2: Why do you press the button and nothing happens exactly?
Speaker 1: Why does the lamp in the bedroom do absolutely nothing?
Speaker 1: What's because the actual physical copper wiring of your house
Speaker 1: is essentially an obstacle.
Speaker 2: Course it is an incredibly harsh environment for a delicate
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty killerhertz data signal, and the first
Speaker 2: major physical obstacle is a house's power transformer itself, the
Speaker 2: one outside well. The high voltage power coming from the
Speaker 2: utility pole comes into your breaker panel, and then it
Speaker 2: gets split into two separate one hundred and twenty volt rails.
Speaker 1: Right, So half the circuits in your house draw from
Speaker 1: one rail and the other have draw from.
Speaker 2: The other rail exactly, and the power transformer sitting between
Speaker 2: those two rails is highly efficient at passing that raw
Speaker 2: sixty hertz power. But to the tiny high frequency X
Speaker 2: ten signal, that transformer behaves completely differently.
Speaker 1: It blocks it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has what engineers call high impedance to that
Speaker 2: specific frequency.
Speaker 1: Let me clarify that term for a second. Impedance is
Speaker 1: essentially electrical resistance. That change is based on the frequency
Speaker 1: of the wave.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: So to the massive sixty herz power wave, the transformer
Speaker 1: looks like a wide open highway, but to the delicate
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty kiloberts data tone, that exact same
Speaker 1: transformer suddenly acts like a thick par wall.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. The signal simply cannot pass easily
Speaker 2: from one side of your breaker panel to the other.
Speaker 2: If you plug a transmitter into an outlet on rail
Speaker 2: A and the lamp is on rail B, the signal
Speaker 2: might degrade so severely bouncing against that brick wall that
Speaker 2: the lamp never even hears the start code.
Speaker 1: So how do you fix that.
Speaker 2: You basically have to build a detour. You go into
Speaker 2: the breaker panel and install a coupler or a repeater.
Speaker 2: It catches the signal on one rail bypasses the transformer
Speaker 2: entirely and shuttles it directly over to the other rail.
Speaker 1: Okay, but even once you build that bridge, the eye
Speaker 1: obstacles don't stop because ironically, modern electronics are actually the
Speaker 1: natural predators of this data.
Speaker 2: Oh this is one of the biggest headaches in home automation.
Speaker 2: Think about switching power supplies.
Speaker 1: Like the power bricks for laptops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the power bricks on your computer, your flat screen TV,
Speaker 2: basically any modern digital device. Inside those power supplies are
Speaker 2: capacitors designed to smooth out and filter the electrical power.
Speaker 2: But to a high frequency one hundred and twenty Killerherz signal,
Speaker 2: those specific capacitors act as a zero impedance black hole.
Speaker 1: Wait, a black hole, meaning there is literally zero resistance.
Speaker 1: The signal just falls right in.
Speaker 2: It completely eats the signal. You could buy a brand
Speaker 2: new flat screen TV, plug it into the wall, and
Speaker 2: suddenly the automated lights in the living room completely stop
Speaker 2: responding just.
Speaker 1: Because the TV is physically swallowing the data tones right
Speaker 1: out of the copper wiring.
Speaker 2: It literally absorbs the signal before it can reach the lamp.
Speaker 1: That is wild. So what's the solution to solve that?
Speaker 2: You have to deploy inline filters. You plug little box,
Speaker 2: which is basically specialized inductor coil, into the wall, and
Speaker 2: then plug the TV into the box.
Speaker 1: Ah, so it acts like a nightclub bouncer. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: happily lets the bulky sixty hertz power flow right into
Speaker 1: the TV, but it violently blocks the one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty kill herds of data from entering the TV and
Speaker 1: getting eaten.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But wait, if your signal isn't getting blocked by
Speaker 2: a transformer or absorbed by a television, it's probably getting
Speaker 2: shouted over because.
Speaker 1: The electrical grid inside a home is incredibly noisy, very noisy.
Speaker 2: Fluorescent lamps, for instance, are terrible offenders. The electrical arc
Speaker 2: inside a fluorescent tube actually dies and re strikes itself
Speaker 2: at every single zero crossing of the power.
Speaker 1: Line, which is the exact microsecond or x ten signal
Speaker 1: is trying to quietly surf the wave.
Speaker 2: Exactly, So every time that fluorescent tube sparks, it blasts
Speaker 2: wide band high frequency noise all over the grid, and I.
Speaker 1: Imagine large motors are just as bad.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, anything with commutators and brushes like a vacuum
Speaker 2: cleaner or a blender, generates chaotic electrical spikes. And remember,
Speaker 2: the wires don't stop at your house. Even your neighbor's
Speaker 2: X ten system can bleed over through the shared utility
Speaker 2: transformer and start randomly turning your kitchen lights on and off.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Think of the X
Speaker 1: ten signal like someone trying to whisper a delicate secret
Speaker 1: code across a massive echoing house. Okay, except while they'
Speaker 1: whispering someone else is running a blender. Your television is
Speaker 1: physically absorbing the sound waves out of the air, and
Speaker 1: the guy next door is shouting his own secret codes
Speaker 1: through the open window.
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, this entire
Speaker 2: struggle is the ultimate illustration of the clash between the messy,
Speaker 2: chaotic analog real world and the rigid needs of digital communication. Right,
Speaker 2: the digital world demands perfection, but the analog power grid
Speaker 2: is a violent storm of energy. Making the two cooperate
Speaker 2: takes a lot of engineering duct tape.
Speaker 1: So let's say you've a play all that duct tape.
Speaker 1: You've installed the repeaters, You've plugged in the bouncers to
Speaker 1: protect the signal from your TV. You've waited for the
Speaker 1: blender to stop, and your whispered digital signal actually arrives
Speaker 1: safely at the physical wall switch.
Speaker 2: You're still not out of the woods.
Speaker 1: Right, because if you have installed the wrong hardware modules
Speaker 1: behind the dry wall, you might actually destroy your expensive appliances.
Speaker 2: This is a critical distinction the authors make. When you
Speaker 2: buy these automated switches, you have to understand the fundamental
Speaker 2: difference between simple appliance modules and dimmer switches.
Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for us.
Speaker 2: An appliance module is essentially a digital relay. It has
Speaker 2: a physical mechanical contact inside it violently clicks on or
Speaker 2: violently clicks off. It doesn't modify the electricity. It just
Speaker 2: acts as a simple gait.
Speaker 1: But dimmers are completely different animals, right.
Speaker 2: Dimmers don't use mechanical clicks that use a solid state
Speaker 2: semiconductor called triac, and a triac doesn't just lower the
Speaker 2: voltage smoothly like turning down a water faucet.
Speaker 1: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: No, it actually violently chops off a portion of the
Speaker 2: wave it waits a fraction of a second after the
Speaker 2: zero crossing, and then suddenly slams the power on.
Speaker 1: So it's rapidly chopping the electrical wave of one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty times a second.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that constant truncation introduces chaotic new frequency components
Speaker 2: into the power line.
Speaker 1: But wait, if dimmers are that effective at controlling light levels,
Speaker 1: why bother with basic on off switches at all? Wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be easier to just use dimmers universally across the
Speaker 1: whole house. Then you always have the option to dim
Speaker 1: whatever is plugged in.
Speaker 2: You really can't, and it comes entirely down to physics.
Speaker 2: You have to understand the critical difference between resistive loads
Speaker 2: and reactive loads. A standard old school incandescent light bulb
Speaker 2: is a resistive load. It's literally just a piece of
Speaker 2: wire that gets hot and glows. It doesn't care if
Speaker 2: the power wave is smoothly rolling or violently chopped up.
Speaker 2: It just takes whatever energy it gets and clows a
Speaker 2: little less brightly.
Speaker 1: So TRIACs work beautifully for pure resistive loads exactly.
Speaker 2: But most modern devices plugged into our walls aren't just hot,
Speaker 2: glowing wires.
Speaker 1: Right, Things like fan motors, fluorescent tubes or high end
Speaker 1: halogen lamps with internal magnetic transformers. Those are reactive loads, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, they contain magnetic coils or capacitors that expect a smooth,
Speaker 2: continuous wave of power to function.
Speaker 1: So to put it, simply, feeding a chopped up wave
Speaker 1: from a dimmer to a motor is like trying to
Speaker 1: push a child on a swing by randomly and violently
Speaker 1: jerking the chains instead of giving them smooth, rhythmic pushes.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happens. The magnetic field inside the motor
Speaker 2: collapses and spikes unpredictably. The motor will stall, it'll violently overheat,
Speaker 2: and eventually it will burn out. Wow, a transformer will
Speaker 2: start buzzing loudly and destroy itself. You must only ever
Speaker 2: use dimmer modules on pure resistive loads.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a hardware hacker's absolute nightmare if you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: But if you follow the rules, if you meticulously map
Speaker 1: out your resistive and reactive loads, if you filter your
Speaker 1: TVs and bridge your transformer, you get the ultimate payoff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: total automated control. That's the dream, And the book finishes
Speaker 1: this deep dive by showing how you can give this
Speaker 1: entire sprawling ecosystem a brain by tying it all together
Speaker 1: with a PC.
Speaker 2: Right, Because the ultimate goal isn't just to use a
Speaker 2: remote control, it's to automate. And to do that you
Speaker 2: use a computer interface controller like the X ten cmlven.
Speaker 1: A and that connects to the computer via an RS
Speaker 1: two thirty two serial port.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that classic deeply reliable multipin connector. It acts
Speaker 2: as a translator. The PC sends complex logic through the
Speaker 2: serial port into the controller, and the controller translates those
Speaker 2: software commands into the tiny one hundred and twenty killerhertz
Speaker 2: power line, whispers that the wall outlets understand.
Speaker 1: And once your PC is actively talking to your house wiring,
Speaker 1: the possibilities are wild. The authors detail a project using
Speaker 1: a piece of software called homes here. And you aren't
Speaker 1: just telling the software to turn the lights on at
Speaker 1: six pm.
Speaker 2: No, you actually punch your exact geographic latitude and longitude
Speaker 2: coordinates into the computer.
Speaker 1: And based on your physical location on the globe, the
Speaker 1: PC mathematically calculate it's the exact minute of the sun
Speaker 1: rising and setting for your specific.
Speaker 2: House, automatically updating every single day of the year as
Speaker 2: the seasons.
Speaker 1: Change, which is so cool. It uses the network to
Speaker 1: automatically trigger your outdoor lights precisely at dusk and off
Speaker 1: at dawn. But it gets even better. Oh so, because
Speaker 1: a perfectly timed house it triggers at the exact same
Speaker 1: minute every day, is a dead giveaway to a burglar
Speaker 1: watching from the street. They know it's just a dumb timer.
Speaker 1: So the home sier software injects mathematical randomness into the schedule.
Speaker 2: Oh that's smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might decide to turn the ports light on
Speaker 1: twelve minutes early on a Tuesday and six minutes late
Speaker 1: on a Wednesday. It might turn the living room light
Speaker 1: on for twenty minutes at two am, just to make
Speaker 1: it look like someone got up for a glass of water.
Speaker 2: It perfectly bridges the gap between complex software logic and
Speaker 2: physical hardware action. Your house becomes this dynamic, unpredictable entity
Speaker 2: that looks completely lived in, even when you are a
Speaker 2: thousand miles away on vacation.
Speaker 1: It is an incredible technical time journey. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about the path we just walked. We started with the
Speaker 1: raw danger of hacking lethal AC voltage. We dove into
Speaker 1: them and the reward.
Speaker 2: For understanding all of that is a home that acts
Speaker 2: autonomously on your behalf. When you take the time to
Speaker 2: look under the hood, the mundane infrastructure we take for
Speaker 2: granted really becomes extraordinary.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean. It means your home
Speaker 1: is no longer just a static shelter of dry wall
Speaker 1: and copper wire. When you understand the layers of communication
Speaker 1: running beneath it, your house becomes a dynamic, programmable minion waiting.
Speaker 2: For your instructions beautifully set, which.
Speaker 1: Leads me with one final thought, freedom all over today.
Speaker 1: If our old, crude, chaotic analog power lines can successfully
Speaker 1: harbor hidden digital messages to completely automate a house, what
Speaker 1: other invisible, everyday physical infrastructures around you right now might
Speaker 1: be secretly doubling as vast undiscovered communication networks. Keep your
Speaker 1: eyes open.