Ever thought that ordering licorice could turn into a comedy of errors? Well, it happened to me - twice! I'm sharing this hilarious saga of how my licorice ended up in the wrong state, not once but twice, thanks to a potential glitch in the popular Shop app. As we stumble through my misadventures, we'll also explore whether this online tool is as handy as it seems for website builders managing their online orders. Prepare for laughter and a little online shopping cautionary tale!
But that's not all. We're also thrilled to welcome our first guest on the show, Caleb Warren, a fervent solar energy enthusiast. We chatted with Caleb about the intriguing and ever-evolving world of solar energy. Plus, as tech aficionados, we couldn't resist discussing the groundbreaking features of the highly-anticipated iOS 17. Get ready to discover how you can use your phone as a camera for your TV, the innovative reaction options, and a whole new display experience when using a magnetic stand. Tune in for an entertaining and informative session that's bound to elevate your Apple experience! Trust us, you wouldn't want to miss it.
Ever thought that ordering licorice could turn into a comedy of errors? Well, it happened to me - twice! I'm sharing this hilarious saga of how my licorice ended up in the wrong state, not once but twice, thanks to a potential glitch in the popular Shop app. As we stumble through my misadventures, we'll also explore whether this online tool is as handy as it seems for website builders managing their online orders. Prepare for laughter and a little online shopping cautionary tale!
But that's not all. We're also thrilled to welcome our first guest on the show, Caleb Warren, a fervent solar energy enthusiast. We chatted with Caleb about the intriguing and ever-evolving world of solar energy. Plus, as tech aficionados, we couldn't resist discussing the groundbreaking features of the highly-anticipated iOS 17. Get ready to discover how you can use your phone as a camera for your TV, the innovative reaction options, and a whole new display experience when using a magnetic stand. Tune in for an entertaining and informative session that's bound to elevate your Apple experience! Trust us, you wouldn't want to miss it.
Okay, so, ronnie, you're never going to guess what happened to me.
Ronnie:What happened to you?
Adam:Well, I ordered some licorice from a place called American Licorice Factory Anybody in the West Coast would probably know about it very well and I did it a few weeks ago, after I was at a friend's house in Washington which I'm saying that completely wrong, because I'm from Texas and we wash everything apparently Washington, washington and I ordered something at his house.
Caleb:Okay, Well, I go and order Did it come to his house.
Adam:Yeah, the licorice order came to his house. Well, I looked at the app afterwards and said you know, just keep the order.
Ronnie:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You ordered it while you're at his house and it came there. Isn't that what you wanted?
Adam:Yeah, the other product. But then I came home I'm sorry Weeks later, order this licorice because I wanted it and you just can't really get what you want anymore. You have to kind of go to the manufacturer sometimes, Ordered the licorice and lo and behold. You'll never guess what happened.
Ronnie:It went to Washington.
Adam:It went to Washington and I texted him and called him and said, hey, just keep it, don't worry about it, I don't need the stuff anyways. And it was using the shop app as the back end of their ordering system. Well, this time I went there, I checked everything. It looked like it was coming to me. I make another order. A couple of days ago, Washington.
Ronnie:Washington, back to Washington.
Adam:So I texted my friend, said, dear Mark Long text. It was pretty funny and basically he said no problem, I'll send it to forward it back to you. And I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess I'm going to have to call them up and figure out what's going on. I don't know if it was me or it's them.
Ronnie:It's not going through Amazon or nothing. It's going directly from them, right?
Adam:So it's not from them using the shop app and most people probably have used it buying stuff Right. So back end piece for people that build websites and they can connect it in. It's not bad, it's very handy. It just didn't work. Something didn't pop out to me or I missed it or I just messed up again.
Ronnie:That's strange yeah.
Adam:And on that note, so this is an exciting day.
Ronnie:Why Could you bring the exact same shirt last week?
Adam:Um well, I like this shirt. You know what You're wearing the same shirt last week also prove it, I'll have to go back to episode 11. This is episode 12. I'm Adam Oghan and I'm Ronnie Tofty and this is five acre tech. But here's the cool thing Our first guest.
Ronnie:We have a guest.
Adam:We actually have a guest.
Ronnie:Do we have to?
Adam:pay him.
Ronnie:No, we're not even getting paid yet, oh yeah, so we're going to give him all of our money.
Adam:We're going to give him everything that we got. We're going to see what happens. He is our solar expert. I want to welcome Caleb Warren. Hey, caleb, hey, how's everybody doing? Pretty good, pretty good.
Caleb:So you're our solar expert Expert? Um, maybe, uh, enthusiasts would be the better word. I hate to use that word expert too loosely, but uh, yeah, definitely an enthusiast.
Adam:So kind of a solar guinea pig.
Caleb:There you go, or beyond that, yeah.
Adam:Right or the ex. The enthusiast is right in the middle.
Ronnie:I'm the solar guinea pig.
Adam:So, anyways, we're going to, we're going to leave Caleb aboard and we got several topics to talk about, and then we're going to talk about solar. At the end, I think you guys will be excited at the next project we're going to do, and this will also lead into our first YouTube video, uh, explaining what we can do with it. But the first thing I think we should talk about is some of the exciting things in iOS 17.
Ronnie:Why.
Adam:Oh well, I blew this one. So, guys, this one is my fault. Um, any of you iPhone fans out there? Uh, I have happened to have two people here Caleb, which there, he is somewhere there and Ronnie, which I'm pointing over to him directly and you're not supposed to point at people. I think my mom said they both have Android.
Caleb:Yeah, Gilt is charged.
Adam:So I thought it would be a good topic, because this is my favorite month.
Ronnie:Why, why, why is September?
Adam:Because the new version of iOS for the iPhones and all the iPad and everything comes out in September, nice.
Ronnie:I think it'll finally try to keep up with Android.
Adam:Yeah. I know Caleb's family pretty well and he's the only one left that has not moved over to iOS in any sort. Maybe, I think, his iPad.
Caleb:Yeah, I do have an iPad, yeah.
Adam:Well, okay, that's a little better than Ronnie so did I say that out loud my dad is not Android. That's true. He's got a surface, so he's okay. It's a Microsoft surface is fine, even though it doesn't really work as a tablet, and they try to make it work.
Adam:It's all right, it's okay, but I love it. I love that device. So there's a lot of exciting things coming out. One of the things that I did I went ahead and did the beta the last beta about a week ago and or two weeks ago, I think at this time and I downloaded the beta on the iPad, the watch, the Apple TV. Did the beta on that because one thing that excited me that was really awesome is you can use your phone as the camera and if you're watching right now on YouTube, this is kind of how you would put it underneath the screen to do a FaceTime video call and you can use your phone as the camera under your TV using FaceTime on the Apple TV.
Ronnie:Wait a second. I don't understand. Say that again. So pretend I'm four. Okay, pretend you're four.
Adam:Hi Ronnie.
Ronnie:Oh wait a minute.
Adam:I shouldn't do that. So basically, the new version of iOS 17 and all the new versions coming out for all the products of Apple. The Apple TV will now have FaceTime icon on the Apple TV, so that's going to be at your television.
Ronnie:But there's no camera on your television, there's no camera.
Adam:So now your phone can wirelessly connect under the TV or above the TV, get that just right and be the camera. Cool, cool, so you can just put your phone there, make the call and it's like you're sitting on your couch talking from couch to couch. My brother and I love to do that.
Ronnie:So if you don't have a web camera, don't have a webcam.
Adam:Most people don't have a webcam above their TV and if you've tried to, it's just no fun. It's absolutely no fun at all.
Ronnie:You make. It makes you look far away when you do that.
Adam:If you, put your web camera on your TV even if you're fairly close.
Ronnie:I had whenever I did mine. I put it on a tripod and moved it close, so it looked more like a natural.
Adam:Yeah, it's great. The cool thing is, if you have an iPad and you have a pro, the camera will zoom in on you and follow the person who's talking and widen out if there's a couple people, and so does the iPhone with the Apple TV Cool, so it's, it's cool.
Ronnie:Is there any other cool features that the iPhone is going to come out with?
Adam:Yeah, the there's a lot of really cool features. I'm not going to no, I don't think we're going to have time to talk about all of them today, but we can definitely get to them. The stickers, the FaceTime will allow you to do a audio message, a video or audio message to FaceTime calls. You can do new reactions, so you'll just put a thumbs up and all of a sudden you will get reactions that are really cool augmented reality reactions confetti coming down, fireworks, all sorts of stuff. So it looks more real, yeah, much more real. And one of the things you can do is if you have a magnetic stand to charge your phone by your, by your dresser or your your desk, you can turn it sideways and it's really hard to see in this and it will show a whole new screen with a clock, your calendar, you can switch through different apps Very nice.
Caleb:Cool.
Adam:Works great. At nighttime it turns it red. I mean it's, it's fantastic.
Ronnie:Is the camera finally going to be anywhere near an Android?
Adam:That's always the biggest question. Well, I know we talked about that, but I think it's coming, and you know it, he told me so it's. So I Go things wrong. Iphone 14, 15, whatever. I have came out with a 48 megapixel camera Really awesome. Then my friend came out with his 200 megapixel camera Samsung, right, samsung, yeah. And then we heard that it's going to be a 5000 megapixel camera on the Apple. Wow, I don't believe you. You know, I don't think it's 5000 megapixel, but it's something. Do you remember what it was? No, I don't, yeah. So apparently it is going to be a different. I think it's going to have what you, what you, called prism, yeah, prism technology, and or it's going to be a telescope. No, periscope, periscope, periscope. So basically, when you take your phone out of your pocket, you go up periscope.
Ronnie:I don't know if that's what it's going to do.
Adam:I think it will, and then when you're done, you just put your phone back in your pocket, go down periscope. That's not what.
Ronnie:I read oh, what I read was it's actually going to when you zoom in. It is going to what it does is takes the image before you zoom it and holds it and as you zoom in, it doesn't pixelate.
Adam:Oh, and that's pretty cool.
Ronnie:That's what the periscoping Feature you know, you know to be honest in both platforms.
Caleb:it's amazing the cameras oh that's true.
Ronnie:Oh, absolutely, they're coming out with this crazy.
Adam:I love that it's. It's now to the camera, and every year it's just getting better and better and better. You don't really need to buy a camera anymore, unless you just are super professional making money.
Ronnie:These are incredible cameras, yeah absolutely Totally agree, we didn't do a little factoid, we didn't do. A little factoid, oh, let's do a factoid. We're like 10 minutes and 12 minutes into this podcast. We didn't even go to the factoid yet. I think you're just that excited about the iOS stuff. Sorry.
Caleb:It's OK.
Ronnie:You ever watch Top Gun?
Adam:Yeah, I've seen Top Gun.
Ronnie:Caleb, everyone has right. Yeah, what? What does Maverick always request and then always get denied? Do you remember? He always says I request a blank by fly by.
Caleb:Fly by. Yes, to fly by.
Adam:And they always say negative. And then he doesn't. He always does it anyway.
Ronnie:So when was the first fly by of Saturn, of Saturn Manmade object that did a fly by of Saturn? Oh, what year do you think that was, caleb, if you got a guess you can for sure guess.
Adam:The first man made object to do a fly by 2019.
Ronnie:Nope Dang it. Are you thinking it was Tesla?
Adam:Yeah, who knows, I don't remember. I follow this stuff but I can't remember dates very well. The car of watching it OK, 1986.
Caleb:No.
Ronnie:In 1977. Wow, the first man made object to do a fly by of Saturn. Wow. I don't say what it was, though, but they just said that's what it was.
Adam:Probably a knockoff of Sputnik. Yeah.
Ronnie:Wasn't that the Russian?
Adam:Yeah, just said that, a signal so they can pick it up.
Caleb:I wonder if that was the, the device that they were sending to pass every planet in the solar system, you know, and eventually took pictures of Pluto and then the one going after that, the Hubble not no hub Hubble's like around the Earth, you know, is taking a bit, but it was a. It was like a, you know, moving through space and it was passing really close by each planet and taking shots of it, you know, and sending it back to Earth. And I wonder if it was that device.
Ronnie:Probably because it's got a picture here of Saturn, so yeah, ok, I don't know.
Adam:Back to iOS. Back to iOS.
Ronnie:Yeah, we can go back to iOS If you do.
Adam:Actually, I want to bring up something else. I just feel like these headphones are not working as good. I'd suggest we all go out and buy new headphones, and this is the one I would like to get AirPods. These AirPods are really good. I don't know if you guys have ever used them before.
Ronnie:Do you have really big ear canals? Because that's not going to fit in mine. It is a little large.
Caleb:It's not going to be painful.
Ronnie:I'm telling you it's going to be well, I'm going in for an ear operation in a week or two, maybe really, what is that, honestly? What is this?
Adam:This is something I found on the Internet on one of those apps where you can buy stuff overseas pretty cheap. And this is actually a blue a Bluetooth speaker.
Ronnie:Really, is it any good?
Adam:I don't know I haven't hooked it up yet. This is what one of my grandkids does. Let's see said Bluetooth mode. So apparently you can hook up an SD card in here and play micro SD card and play something direct. You can hook up a chip in here, charge it. It's got some volume control. It's pretty funny. I thought this would be crazy tech. And this is the first episode of crazy tech part of the show, and this is it. Cool.
Caleb:I don't know what we're going to do with it, I'll put it down.
Ronnie:Well, I think we should talk to Caleb now. What do you think?
Adam:Okay, let's, let's. Yeah, let's do that. So, caleb, one of the things we wanted to do is we've talked about the Blue Eddy solar generator I know you've got one and you bought some solar panels and we've talked about hooking it up to my travel trailer. It's got a 30 amp travel trailer shore power hookup. They'll fit right into it so I can convert my 50 amp to a 30. We can run one AC. I want to see what it does, how long it lasts off that particular model. I'm not sure if you know offhand what that model number is.
Caleb:The one that I have is the AC 200 max Right and we just don't know what you're going to do.
Adam:Yeah, we don't know what we're going to do with it yet, as in will it run, so tell us a little about it.
Caleb:Yeah, so the like you said. It has a 30 amp connector on the front, which is really cool. Just plug in your RV and you can keep powering it for a good while. It's got a 2000 watt hour lithium ion battery pack inside it, so you know it'll it'll run a number of devices for considerably long time. Now, one of the things that, when you're RVing, everybody wants is air conditioning. Of course you know, especially where we live so hot in South Texas but it pulls a lot of energy, as everybody knows. So one of the tests that we've been wanting to do for a long time is that the solar generator up to your RV and let's and put one of your roof mounted ACs on and see how long it would last. You know, I think it'd be cool to see how long it would last without solar panels Right, you know. And then with solar panels in the day, during the daytime you get in the sunlight how long it would last. I think that'd be awesome to do that comparison.
Adam:So Caleb is going to allow us to try this out and at the same time, we'll report back to the, to the podcast, and we're going to do our first YouTube video that will basically show everybody what, what they can do with this, on this particular Travel trailer at this particular amps, and I think it's going to be very interesting. I haven't really seen a video that has to the detail of this, and Then we can should be able to calculate if we need more battery packs To look up to it or not.
Ronnie:That's what I was going to ask, so you can daisy chain other batteries to it.
Caleb:Yes, yes, you can. And so you can get as much as Over 8,000 watt hours of energy, you know, by adding two more Battery packs and daisy chaining them to the unit. So, yeah, it definitely has enough energy. If you did that, that you could run your AC on your RV all night. I have no doubt in my mind about that. You could do it. But we're just curious what it'll do by itself, even you know. Yeah, and the.
Caleb:I got a little kit when I bought mine that that Blue Eddie had, and it was a two portable solar panels. They're 350 watts each, for a total of 700 watts, and so that's what we're going to be using. But the, the blue Eddie, the 200 max, will actually accept an input of 1200 watts of solar. So whatever our result is, however many hours it is that it runs with the solar panels and the battery, just the listeners need to realize that the true number will be even greater than that, because I don't have 1200 watts of solar, I only have 700. So whatever answer we get, that, the true answer will be even better. So that's pretty cool.
Adam:That is cool. Yeah, very cool nice.
Caleb:So, and one other thing that maybe we'll get to delve into, you know, is Something I came across now, the in my opinion, in my research, the two best companies out there that do solar generators, or blue Eddie and echo flow, and so it's kind of like the Ford and Chevy of the solar generator. You know, field and echo flow came out with something that's pretty cool. It's an air conditioner that the first generation was like a 4,000 BTU AC unit that would connect into their solar generator, which I think the one that is comparable, the one I have is called the C, the name of it I had it written down here it's, yeah, the Delta max, that's the name of theirs, and so it's exactly the same as the one I got. But they recently Released the second generation of the air conditioner and the cool thing about it is it runs off of DC power. Yeah, and DC pulls way less energy than AC.
Caleb:Yes, so maybe one day we can even, you know, get our hands on one of those and do some testing on that. But, yeah, it's exciting to see that, you know, yeah, and and the, the BTU's, they upped it it's. I just looked, yeah, it's 5100 BTU on on this new, the new one they just released and it also does heating.
Caleb:It's got a 6100 BTU heater in it, so I mean I'm I'll just blown away, because the first generation was just AC only.
Adam:So you see, you got a heater, yeah, yeah, so when we build our house of the new property, which started 5 acre tech, that is one of the things that I plan on doing is to put an AC in there and probably go with the Blue Eddy system to operate the Office, and so we'll put that in there, operate the office, the whole garage, probably a 30 by 60 building, and and that's that's the plan you know, to do that, so that then then we can actually, you know, by by that time will there should be some new equipment to come out and will will dabble in that. Try that out.
Caleb:Yeah, it's kind of exciting to think of the possibilities that you could use it for the people even though I'm gonna have the grid tied in.
Adam:Basically, the goal is to be at least in the garage, in the, in the office area, and connected to where our travel trailers going to be connected to all beyond solar, and then when we build the house will leave that off. You know, we can always. Just the weather is bad, powers out for a long period of time, will scover to the, to the travel trailer and or the office, and we got power. You know, have the internet there, so the internet will be for everybody that will be on the property. It'll. It'll work out really well.
Ronnie:Talk about disaster preparedness or emergency preparedness. You have a blue Eddie like that and what it could do in that AC. I mean you talk about south Texas, you know. If it's generally not freezing down here, more likely to be in hot weather, and that can be crucial to survival, really yeah it's been so hot.
Adam:Few weeks ago I we got our, we put a winch on the zero turn lawnmower, the bad boy, and we worked outside my son along to get that on there and by the time we went out to mo I was already sick. I mean, it's been an extra 10 to 15 degrees higher than normal and I was sick for a couple weeks, just you know, had to, had to really stay inside. And then he just kind of did the same thing couple days ago, just Working outside changing the oil just a few hours, but he did in the middle of the day.
Adam:You know I don't think I would have, but anyways, you know sometimes you have no choice. You got to get things done and he got sick from it. So it's it. If you're not used to being outside, drink lots of water, stay in the shade, where they're probably appropriate clothes. That's why I like the shirt so much. It's so hot. It's basically keeping the sun away. For me it's kind of like sunscreen, so Nice.
Caleb:I was thinking what you, what you said about projects like that that you're working on, where you need a space cool and and you might even need it heated, because lithium I on batteries do not like to be too cold. If it gets below a certain temperature they don't It'll damage them, you know. So I was like having the solar generator, where you can cool a space and heat a space and also keep the generator itself at a nice cool temperature or a warm temperature, depending on you know, the summer, winter, and that's a that's a win win.
Adam:Yeah, so have you guys ever had this happen? You're making a cell phone call, we're gonna, we're gonna go whole another different direction right now. You make a cell phone call, you pick up your phone, go hey, caleb, how you doing? And then you hear back. I think, and we went up. You know it's a bad connection. I couldn't hear you what you say, I said it. Well, what you do is you stop, call the person back, reboot your phones, you go through all these things to try to make that phone call again. But if you guys happen to have an iPhone, you can do a FaceTime call or a FaceTime audio call.
Ronnie:I can do a WhatsApp.
Adam:Right.
Caleb:I would be running.
Adam:Yeah, thanks for sabotaging my little, my little episode here of this product. But they're right, you can use another product. So if you're in the iPhone world, even if you're, if you wanted to make a call to an Android person, you can text them a link to FaceTime so they can actually make a FaceTime call with you, and or use something like WhatsApp and there's a lot of other apps out there when you can make a phone call over the Internet and it will be as clear as this podcast. I mean it really will compare to the regular phone. So there are other options you don't have. You know, a lot of times the cell phone services will just kind of flop and there's there's glitches and but maybe their Internet's up and running, perfect.
Ronnie:So it's something to think about, something to try if you're struggling with the phone calling yeah, you're in need.
Adam:Yeah, just got to make that phone call hang up and call back on FaceTime audio, facetime video, whatsapp. There's other apps out there. It's a really really easy way to make that phone call great again. Cool, make the phone call great again. I think I heard this somewhere. Yeah, I don't know about that. But what else we got?
Ronnie:I think that's it.
Adam:I think we got something about a light switch.
Ronnie:I think we need to save that. We do yeah, we really have yeah. Okay, we'll save that, so is it a teaser, kind of like Caleb's.
Adam:Yeah.
Ronnie:Caleb's here for a teaser for when we do the research and then the light switch. Stay tuned.
Adam:Yeah, this is kind of exciting and, on that note, thank you for listening to 5 Echo Tech. Thanks, caleb. Thank you.
Caleb:Thank you.