Hacking the Echo Dot
with Gavin Campbell, TJ Huddleston, Seth Johnson
Smart TV privacy, Matter gets Groupcast, and new Home Assistant integrations lead this week’s home tech roundup.
Show Notes
On this week's show: your smart TV is probably spying on you, so we talk through what to turn off and why “just don’t connect it” keeps sounding smarter; Matter 1.6.1 finally locks in Groupcast to help grouped devices act like a group; a local Sofabaton integration gives Home Assistant users more remote-control fun; Crestron and Hubitat get a pro-friendly upgrade; D-Tools says the CI market is growing and also very much not growing, depending on who you ask; plus a pick of the week, project updates, and so much more!
- LinkedIn CringeBot 3000
- Free LinkedIn Post Generator (AI-Powered) | Postiv AI
- HomeTech Headlines
- There are ways to protect yourself from your spying TV
- Sofabaton X: local Home Assistant integration for the X1, X1S and X2
- Crestron-Hubitat Integration Driver Gets a Major v2 Upgrade
- D-Tools 2026 Midyear Report Finds Widening Performance Gap in CI Channel
- Matter 1.6.1 finalizes Groupcast and adds chime sound controls
- Home Gadget Geeks - The Average Guy Network
- GitHub - loryanstrant/HA-CustomComponentMonitor: Reports on whether you are using your Home Assistant custom components
Pick of the Week
EchoMuse: Alexa replacement for the Echo Dot Gen2
A very DIY voice-assistant project called EchoMuse, and it turns a second-generation Echo Dot into a fully local Home Assistant voice satellite.