HomeTech.fm - Episode 220 - Moist-P Technology

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

On this week's episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Joel Sellinger, co-founder of LifeDoor, for an installment of our startup showcase series. LifeDoor is compact device that automatically closes interior doors in your home in the event of a fire — a measure that could mean the difference between life and death.That, plus the latest home tech headlines including:Best Buy pulls the plug on VivintMarwan Fawaz is out as CEO at NestAnother healthy earnings report from Control4Control4's releases their new "Intercom Anywhere" appApple removes smart doorbells category from their roster of HomeKit devicesSony releases a new flagship LED and OLEDDolby Atmos comes to Apple TV (sort of)SnapAV releases their new Moist...errr MoIP video distribution systemFibraro gets acquired by Nice GroupAnd more...Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 3rd, 2018 from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, how are you? What happened? We're back. Yeah, we're back. We're back. I was talking to someone the other day. I think this is actually the first time that we've missed two weeks in a row, I think ever, in the history of the show.

I don't know that we've ever. I could be wrong, but I don't know that we've ever missed two weeks in a row. I think you're probably right. Yeah, I can't remember the last time we missed two weeks. Either one of us has done a pre-recording at some point in time or jumped in and gotten in. But yeah, just the way the stars lined up and whatever. These last couple of weeks we had vacations, you had work. I had a lot of driving to do, turns out. 3,800 miles.

You're quite the road tripper. Yeah, with an 18-month-old. That's brave. It was fun. It's fun. We had a good time. Rattle off the states for usmonth-old. That's brave. It was fun. It's fun. We had a good time. Rattle off the states for us. Okay, so let's see.

Massachusetts, then we drove to New York, went in some caverns upstate there, over to Niagara. And I was actually 30 minutes away from Toronto or from wherever Greg is. And I didn't put that together until i got to niagara it's kind of like a last minute trip so uh yeah missed out on meeting up with greg there uh but then we drove over to bront had a big family reunion and then we drove down to connecticut let's see connecticut virginia somewhere in Virginia. We had to stay over the night. Uh, missed, I must've driven right by Richard's house. Sorry. I waved, I guess. Um, where else did we go? Jeez. Uh, Virginia, North Carolina and, uh, Georgia. So yeah. Then back enough states that it's, that it's hard to remember. I, yeah. And you know, and it's,

it's like, here I am, uh, I'm back and, and I'm like, it feels like it's been 10 years. Like, it's only been a couple days. So here we go. We're doing this again. Here we are. Yeah, yeah. I forgot what I did for work. Like, I know the feeling.

Just staring at a computer screen on Monday going, yeah, what is this mess? Well, Seth, you know what I'm feeling excited about today? No, Jason, what is it that is one month till CDA? Well, that too. Oh, Seth, you know what I'm feeling excited about today? No, Jason, what are you, is it that it's one month till Cedia? Well, that too, that too. Okay. But there's only 17 days until the Broncos first preseason game. Ah, the Broncos, the Broncos. Yes. It's that time again. Yeah. It's hard to believe, man. Time flies. I am looking forward to Cedia. I know we're going to talk about it a little later in the show, but we've got our home tech happy hour that we're going to be doing out there in San Diego. And I know there are a good amount of people who listen to the show of our supporters

here at the show who are planning to attend. And I can't wait. I can't wait to get out there and see everybody in person. That's always a really fun time. Yeah, absolutely. We had a great time last year. When we talk about later, there'll be some pictures to go check out. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. But yeah, I can't wait to see everybody again. Yeah. And we'll talk about that, like I said, a little bit more later in the show. So be sure to stay tuned. We also have a great interview. I think only the second installment of our startup showcase, which is a kind of condensed interviews that we do with some

companies out there who are a little bit earlier on and really cool product. Seth, I did the interview while you were out of town. So it was just myself and Joel Selinger from a company called Life Door. And it's a pretty neat product that can literally save lives. It's designed to automatically close doors inside of your house in the event of a fire, which as it turns out, I had no idea, but as it turns out is a, a potential life-saving measure and is something that, that firemen and organizations across the country really advocate for. Yeah. There's this whole close before you doze, uh, which I guess is like the new stop, drop and roll. Apparently I had no idea. But cool interview. Joel seems like

a great guy and a big fan of the company's vision. So stay tuned for that as well. Very cool. Very cool. Well, Jason, what do you say we jump in and talk about a few home tech headlines? Let's do it. Electronics retailer Best Buy is re-evaluating its partnership with smart home company Vivint, reports Bloomberg. The companies first began working together in May 2017 in a joint attempt to expand sales and reduce some of the issues with smart home setup and use. Now the retailer is reportedly pulling Vivint's goods from store shelves as well as its online stores

and removing Vivint employees from the sales floor. Whoops. This change of heart represents a shift in strategy that could provide some key takeaways for players in the smart home space. Smart home retail, man, that's a tough space altogether. It's tough. Yeah, and I know we've got Richard joining us in the live chat room tonight,

and that's a topic that I've heard him talk about many times in the past, and it's true. It's a difficult landscape. There was, I think, about 400 employees or so spread across several locations. Or no, it was 400 locations, so it had to be well more than 400 employees or so spread across several locations or no it was 400 locations so it had to be well more than 400 employees but anyways tough story sad to see that didn't work out yeah five months after nest rejoined google the search giant told employees tuesday that these are old a couple of older stories by the way we were off for a couple of weeks here so this this was a couple of weeks ago that uh marwan fawaz the ceo will no longer be the ceo of the company and the smart home device maker will be combined with google's home and living room products team the move may make it

easier for google's smart home devices to work with each other and tap into artificial intelligence and machine learning advances fawaz said in a recent interview. Yeah, not really. I can't say that I'm surprised because we've been seeing this happen, right? We've been seeing them get closer with the companies, tearing down the silos, moving them together. Yeah, it just kind of makes sense. The writing was on the wall a little bit.

I can't say I was too shocked to read that story myself. Right. And some more business news, and this is a little bit i can't say i was i was too shocked to read that story myself right in uh in some more business news and this is a little bit newer uh control for revenue for the first quarter of 2018 was 59.1 million compared to uh 50.2 million for the first quarter of 2017 representing a growth uh year over year of 18 so not bad for their what is typically their worst quarter quarter q1 is a tough one. Net income for the first quarter of 2018 was $1 million. $1.0 million. Look at that.

And yeah, they're going to give out, it looks like they're 0.04 cents per share. So not terrible. They had a pretty good Q1, and I saw that they had shipped even more even more like 3 000 more controllers than they did last year yeah not bad yeah yeah it's always it's always interesting to see when control 4 reports their earnings being one of the very few publicly traded companies in the quote-unquote traditional home technology space it's always um it's always it's always interesting to take a look at those so we'll have a link if you're interested in reading more, hometech.fm slash 220. Speaking of Control 4, their new Intercom Anywhere lets users communicate with a visitor from anywhere in the world. The system adds a layer of home automation to its new application, allowing users to activate smart home scenes from within the Intercom app as well. In addition, users can enjoy a complete video intercom experience using Control

4's DS2 video door stations, indoor touchscreens, and users' own smartphones, which all work in concert regardless of their locations. Yeah, this was announced almost a year ago at the CD keynote for Control 4. I remember sitting in the crowd and they announced that this would be going into beta. And it took a couple of months for them to get that out into the dealer's hands and start testing it. So it's been a while. This has been going on for a long time. I didn't realize that. And when you mentioned that, as we were prepping for the show, I was surprised to hear that Control 4 is a company that's really got a reputation for announce then ship. I know that's their, their CEO, Martin Pleans, a big philosophy of his is don't announce it till you're ready to ship it. So you have to wonder

what was going on with that early announcement there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think what probably happened is this is hard. Like this is, this is something that is not easy to do for them to leverage the technologies that they had. And I mean, there's billion dollar companies that do this, right? Like Ring. Right. This is all they do. But Control 4 is able to add this into the product lineup using existing controllers

that have been out in the field already deployed and sitting there waiting on a software update. So I think it was just kind of a tougher thing to do once they got down to the nitty gritty details and found out like, oh, this might be really hard. Uh, and it just took them a little bit longer to figure it out. But now that they have it, I think that's, that's a killer feature, uh, for the system because you can communicate with your doorbell just like you would with a ring system. Uh, but you have, you have it built into the control for ecosystem. So not a bad deal. Speaking of doorbells, Apple Insider reported earlier this month that Apple has quietly removed the entire doorbell category from its rosters of current and future HomeKit accessories.

When Apple introduced the Home app for iOS 10 during the WWC 2016 keynote, the video doorbells was prominently demonstrated. I remember watching that. Oh, that's awesome. So they were hinting at a flood of compatible products that might be around the corner. Turns out, no. Both Ring and August have been promising HomeKit support since then,

but neither company has shipped software or hardware update device that is compatible. So, yeah, we've been waiting I guess over two years for a video doorbell for HomeKit. Yeah, crazy. That is crazy. Doorbells are hard, it turns out. Yeah, not sure what to make of that one, but really interesting story. Sony just announced its latest flagship televisions, the Master Series Z9F LED and the A9F OLED. Details around sizes and pricing

are still forthcoming. These TVs do pack Sony's X1 Ultimate processor, which brings with it several advantages, but the intent of these televisions is right there in the name, Master Series. These latest flagship products, with these flagship products, Sony aims to deliver the same image quality that professional studio masters intend for viewers to see. Very nice. I mean, when you see Sony and you see flagship, I see dollar signs. It's going to be a nice TV. Yeah, but it's going to be expensive too. It's going to be very expensive, I am sure, But I'm sure it's going to be a killer TV.

Nothing's getting me off of my TCL 6 series at this point, though, Seth. You're not going to go for the master Sony TV? No, a little bit of a delta in price there. But yeah, there's another great review on the TCL 6 series this week, by the way. Cool. Yeah, no, no. I've been telling people about it that are asking, you know, what should I get for a TV? I'm like, well, Sony and LG are making some great OLEDs, but if you just need a TV.

Bang for your buck. Yeah, TCL. That's right. Speaking of, you know, lower price points, Vizio is partnering with Pluto TV to add a free video streaming service called Watch Free to nearly all of the company's smart cast televisions watch free will get its own dedicated input so it'll have nearly the same prominence as your hdmi inputs uh and the same uh on the main smart cast strength screen watch free is rolling out starting today so uh when you start when you switch over to it you'll be able to browse between more than 100 live and linear channels. Yeah. This one sounds great on the surface, and hey, the price is right, right? It's free, but

it's right there in the name. Yeah, you dig a little deeper in, and it does seem like you're kind of getting what you're paying for. I mean, there were some decent channels listed as available, but some of these, I've got got to admit i've never even heard of and or i've heard of and they're just sort of smaller names pluto tv action movies news 24 7 front door crime network mst3k the surf channel and i saved the best for last year seth you ready for it let's hear it cats 24 7 all right well drop the mic like you said you get what you pay for that's it all right well it's fake news and cats yeah what more could you ask for dolby atmos is finally available on the Apple TV 4K,

and it's everything you want it to be. Or maybe once they get the bugs figured out, and it's actually shipping later this year. tvOS 12 adds Dolby Atmos capability to the Apple TV 4K by internally decoding Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus mixes and bit streaming only Dolby Atmos mixes. The full version won't be out until later this year, but you can sign up for the public beta and try it out yourself right now.

Well, we timed this one perfectly. I got the juicy story of the week here. Moist pee? Moist pee, yeah. Moist pee. I'm not saying it. I'm not saying it. I just came right out.

I led with it uh snap av is jumping into the video over ip game with a their new line of binary media distribution products ip based like other video over ip systems snaps uses the home network as the backbone and uses video encoders and decoders rather than a centralized hdmi matrix like you would need with an hd base t solution snap is touting fast setup flexibility and scalability and design and perhaps most appealing to dealers snap is building their remote management system oversee into every box the snap moist p oh you did it right in the in the verbiage there. It's M-O-I-P, by the way. Moip. I'm not saying Moip.

No. I'm going to bleep it out. The Snap Moip system requires transmitters, receivers, and a controller box, but can work with any Layer 2 network switch. So pretty neat- looking system. I, you know, in my line of work, you can probably predict, I was pretty excited to see the, the integration of oversee remote management right into these boxes. I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. I got to say out of all the features that they have there, I mean, nothing, nothing's new. I mean, from, from what they have, even the, even the price points are the same. Uh, but what is new is that, that oversee is built into every single box and you can get on your oversee

dashboard and get the status of the product so i think that's that's a killer that's a killer app for it right now right because yeah absolutely see it we'll see how it works in the field i mean it's to me this is this is scary but because it's video distribution and it's like one of your your most like vital pieces of the system when you when you put a video distribution system in that is like the heart there's no getting around it be ready yeah the control system can go down in other systems and not cause as much problems as a video distribution system going down so yeah um yeah no i'm i'm hope i'm optimistic and hope hopeful and optimistic on uh on the the i'm not saying it the binary video distribution over ip solution come on nope not

if you say that to your customer you deserve a slap they just they should reach out and just slap you you think it's moip or do you think it's mo ip no they they say it in their videos and i'm just like oh just i just cringe every Yeah, you kind of cringe a little. Yep, yep. Don't say that. Don't say that. Just, it's not good. Samsung SmartThings Hub suffered from 20 vulnerabilities

that could have allowed attackers to control the Internet of Things devices connected to it. Thankfully, security intelligence firm Cisco Talos discovered the flaws and worked with the Korean company to resolve the issues through a firmware upgrade. Talos admits in its report that some of the vulnerabilities would have been difficult to exploit, but attackers can combine several at once to launch a significant attack on the device. There you go. Glad to see security patches. No software is perfect. No software is perfect. No software is perfect. Yeah, no.

And you're always hearing about these things, and we've talked about it numerous times on the show. You sort of have to put them through that filter. I did appreciate the line in there that they acknowledged, yes, these would have been difficult to exploit. I mean, you read about how some of these things might be exploited, and it's just like, it's crazy. Somebody would really have to be after you personally but at the same time there there's got to be this constant vigilance vigilance and it's a it's a cat and mouse game right with security so and it's more of a trust thing right because you you want to have consumers happy and and and when they install something they trust you to at least be secure and if not if it's

not secure that it's getting an upgrade to be secure, like Samsung has done with this. So that's responsible. There's junk sitting out on the shelves right now that is not getting updated, that has been installed, that's not getting updated, that is causing problems. And that's the bigger issue. So that's the hurdle that we face when we talk about putting technologies into people's homes. Right, of course italian-based nice group acquired febrero for 73 million dollars earlier this month nice is a manufacturer of motorized gates garage doors solar shading systems and parking systems which also recently acquired

abode an up-and-coming diy pro security and sensor company. I remember reading about that one. So it looks like Nice Group is compiling a little bit of a portfolio here, and it's thinking of the possibilities there and the synergies between motorized gates and access control and garage doors and solar. It's pretty intriguing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like you said, they've got a portfolio. They're on the move.

Very, very interesting. I think they were they were kind of at cd last year uh so uh i hope they hope nice shows back up and at some point and uh we'll be able to go talk to them this year so it should be yeah it should be a good show if they're there phillips has a new outdoor version of its smart light strip in the works creatively dubbed the outdoor light strip good job guys the product appeared in a since deleted post on the philips hue netherlands website it was spotted by home kit news uh the outdoor light strip is a weather resistant version of the light strip used outdoors and the outdoor

light strip will apparently come in a two meter and five meter sizes but there's no word on price yet at least at the time of uh the story here so it was a couple weeks old but you know we're just kind of working through the news yeah it looks it looks like a cool a cool product i mean a nice way to add some accent uh lighting to an outdoor space so pretty neat and uh we'll definitely keep an eye out for out for more on that yeah and they they have i mean remember they a couple months back they announced some outdoor lighting uh and i think it's actually shipping in some other countries right now. I think Canada has it, but the U.S. doesn't.

Yeah, and I can't remember. I know my question with those things is always with outdoor consumer-type products that rely on the network is how is the network going to do? Do they have good radios? And I'm like, I don't remember how they're handling that. I think there's Z-Wave or I mean, sorry, Z-Wave. I think there's, yeah. So got us, you've got to have some sort of bridge outside or something, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it could, like you're alluding to, it can be very tricky. Um, I mean, I've done control for systems that have, uh, plenty of lights inside and then they put a switch outside, and we have block walls here,

so it's just almost impossible for the signal to get outside to that light switch in enough capacity sometimes. So I can imagine that they will have to do some kind of repeater or something that's just kind of a general solution for people with bigger yards that have a bunch of Philips lights in them.

Yeah, and Richard in the chat room is pointing out, I guess some of those products are now available in the U.S., the floodlights and door sconce. Nice. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Still kind of feels like a novelty product. I mean, I can't.

A little bit. A couple of times a year, I want colored lights on my house, like maybe Halloween and Christmas, and that's about it. Yeah. Other than that, like uh i don't know this is this is more like architectural stuff that um yeah if i had money i'd probably do a different way but oh well it's there it's available i have yet to experiment with this myself but i was at a party a while back with talking to a guy who owns a lighting distribution company and he's

got a couple of young kids at home and we got to talking about smart home stuff and he's a lighting guy. So he got into Phillips Hue. And then he was telling me that apparently turning your lights to cobalt blue, very particular color, has a very proven calming effect on kids. And he was saying that when his kids are getting crazy, they turn on all the Philips Hue lights to cobalt blue. And he said it's like magic. So there's something to try out there. If you've got kids, I have yet to run that experiment myself.

But I can tell you, if it works with my kids when they're getting crazy, I'd be impressed. Mine just turn into bubble guppies. Or now. Oh, there's always that. There's a penguin show. No, a puffin show. getting crazy i'd be impressed mine uh mine just like you just turn into bubble guppies or now now there's always that there's a penguin show uh no a puffin show uh puffin rock that is that is oh my god dude that is rock she is into that so yeah check that netflix check that one out it's netflix all right a couple good ones on amazon we've discovered recently by the way we'll i'll share those with you uh tumble leafaf, and pardon us, everyone,

while we talk about kids' streaming shows. You got to keep them busy. Yeah. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who have kids, and there's a lot to choose from, right? So Tumbleleaf and Little Big Awesome is kind of a silly one, but those are both on Amazon. To check those out. So those are both kind of fun as well. All right. Well, moving on, Home Tech Happy Hour. We saved some of the biggest news for last year. We're super excited about it. We alluded to it earlier. We had this last year at an Irish restaurant. I'm going to pull up the name because it's escaping me, Seth. It's The Field. The Field. That's right. And it's right there near the exposition. I mean, it's literally,

I think you walk out maybe two blocks across the street and you're there. And we'll be there on Thursday, September 6th. So Thursday, the week of CDF from 5.30 PM to 7. So we do it early. We know everybody's got those evening plans and big parties like the Control 4 party or whatever else ends up going on that night. So we want to do it early, enjoy happy hour, get together, get some FaceTime and, and have some fun. We really enjoyed it last year and I'm super, super excited about doing it again this year. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, I mean, there's the field, it will take your money all night, but I mean, there's no, there's no reason to, uh, stay. I mean, we're going to take off

probably at seven. Uh, and I think last year I took off like closer to seven 30 or mean, we're going to take off probably at seven. And I think last year I took off like closer to seven thirty or eight. But there's no reason you can stay there all night because, man, that was a great little bar. It's a great venue. If you're looking at the picture on the website at HomeTech.FM slash happy hour, there are some windows like north of the sign there. That's pretty much that entire room we had. That was us. Yeah. Like we, we had filled up the entire area there. It was kind of hard getting around and getting to your drink back on your table, uh, as, as you're moving around and talking to everybody. And there's, there's some pictures that I, I, we kind of snapped either throughout the night and early on, um, of, you know, everybody

sitting around having a good time talking that man, it was a, it's a brilliant venue to like having, having that, Oh, what is that street there? Fifth street or something? Uh, just kind of like you're sitting there. Yeah. You're just right there. You're looking down on the crowd and, uh, you're up there having a good time talking to everybody, uh, that listens to the show. I mean, it was, it was a great time. I had a great time. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So again, that's home tech.fm slash happy hour, home tech.fm slash happy hour. If you're interested in learning more. And there's a quick form there.

Let us know if you're planning to attend. We really would like to know that. It sort of helps us plan for some of the minor logistical things we've got to figure out, which aren't a whole lot. But if you could take a few seconds and fill that form out, we would definitely appreciate it. And the last thing we want to mention is we are excited to offer sponsorships this year. Last year, we had friend of the show, Richard Berry from iHummingbird sponsor the happy hour for us, which was very, very generous of Richard, and we really appreciated it. And so this year, we're offering the same thing, and we're looking for an exclusive happy hour host you can learn more about that at the at the web page there as well as happy hour friends if you want to contribute a smaller amount and just sort of chip in for for you know to help

help fund the good time and have people get together and enjoy themselves we have options for that as well so hometech.fm happy hour yep absolutely uh and yeah please fill out the form we need to know if you're coming it's a good good idea to get a head count ahead of these things so um last year i think we had like 30 or more people there so i think it was a pretty good pretty good turnout so um yeah definitely happy hour cool seth i think you also had another list of uh cda parties that you wanted to share yeah so umEPro put out a list of Cedia parties. I'll put a link to it in the show notes,

but it's actually pretty easy to get to, cepro.com slash Cedia parties. And there is a list of 2018. I need to put HomeTex on here, right? Because, you know, we're having a happy hour. People may want to come by and talk to us and hang out. With all our, you know,

everybody listening to the show is cool, so why wouldn't they want to come? So, yeah, that will be in our show notes as well. And, yeah, it looks like the Control 4 dealer party is at 7 o'clock. There's ProSource reception, 6.30 at the Hard Rock. So, yeah, there's plenty of time to come by the happy hour after the show closes down. Just walk on down the street on the way to wherever else you're going to go. Have a couple drinks on us. That's right.

Cool. Well, all of the links and topics that we've discussed on this show can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm. Again, that's hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you some periodic show reminders and updates as well. So look for the form on the right-hand side. And one last time, that link is hometech.fm slash 220. All right.

Well, it looks like let's go ahead and put that interview in here, Jason, with Joel Selinger of Life Door. You shared this with me kind of really early on when I think you were kind of working out the details with Joel. And I thought this was a really unique and cool product. And I kind of shared the reason I would have liked to have this in my house when we had the hurricane last year and we had to evacuate. We got down the street and my wife was like, hey, we were supposed to shut all the doors in the house. And I said, really? I've never heard of that. And then we looked it up on Google as, as you do, right? Of course. And it turns out, yeah, we were supposed to close all the doors, like interior

doors inside the house. And, um, yeah, we ran back home, got back into the house and closed all the doors and then, and then took off on our, our evacuation trip. So I would have loved to have just hit one button and had it done for me, though. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like maybe this product could have helped you out. But anyways, yeah, let's jump into it. Joel Selinger, co-founder of LifeDoor, and we'll come back right after the interview with a few thoughts. I'm here with Joel Selinger of LifeDoor.

Joel, how are you? I'm great. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate you taking some time to join us on the show. I know that things are pretty busy for you trying to get everything up off the ground for this really cool new product. And I caught some wind of it in the news and thought it sounded really interesting. I'm always a big fan of when I hear about smart home technology that's designed to do things sort of outside of the normal spectrum of what you hear about. And this product is literally one that could save lives.

So we're excited to have you on the show. And we're going to jump in, of course, and talk about Life Door and what it is and what it does here. But before we dive into that, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of a personal introduction and talk about your background? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thanks for the opportunity of being on the show. Yeah, like you mentioned, my name is Joel Selinger. I'm a professional firefighter in Northwest Washington State and one of the co-founders of Life Door. So my background, mostly right out of school, was in construction. I had a custom home building company. I did that

for about 12 years. Me and my wife decided to start a family and I noticed the local fire department one day was looking for volunteers. And so I stopped in, got some information. They told me that they're going to put me through EMT school and fire academy and all this great stuff. And I thought, what better way to protect my family now that, you know, we have a young one than to get some additional training. So I started volunteering with the department, quickly realized that I wanted a career change. And so about a year later, that department hired some full time spots and I got picked up there. I worked there for three years and then decided I wanted to go work for a busy city department. So now I've been in the city of Everett, just north of Seattle for the last three and a half years.

Very cool. And obviously your experience as a firefighter led directly to the concept for Life Door. And so talk about what Life Door is and how your experience really led you to come up with this idea. Yeah. So I think my two professions that I've had really culminated to the, to the existence of life door, which was building and having kind of an, you know, an idea of how a door operates and how it can be opened and closed. And then being a firefighter, seeing firsthand the dramatic difference a closed door makes in the event of a fire. So basically what happened was the last couple of years,

Underwriters Laboratories has really been pushing this close the door idea, and they give us magnets and stickers to hand out when we go to visit the kids at schools and encouraging kids to sleep with their door closed at night. And then, you know, reflecting on my own situation at home, my daughter, you know, who's now 11, she just never wanted to close her door at night. No matter what I say, she wants her door open. She wants our door open. And so kind of just talking with the guys at work

and talking with kids in schools and just a lot of people have pets that roam around the house and, um, you know, parents want to know what's going on in the home. So they leave their door open. They can hear if someone's trying to break in. And, um, I just, I was at work one night and thinking about the situation in my house and, um, thought to myself, I'm going to buy an automatic door closer that has a smoke detector in it. And so I did what any consumer does and went on Amazon and couldn't find anything. Went to the did a Google search, found some commercial options, but really nothing for the residential setting. And so talk with a patent lawyer within I think it was the next day, had him do a search, couldn't find anything. And then talked to my co-founder, Ben Dockstader, who I'd worked with on a previous project a few years before, but I knew he had a background in manufacturing.

And we pretty much got ready to work on it. And so what we've come up with now in the last 16 months is a device that mounts to your inside of your bedroom door on the top hinge. And what it does is it has an acoustic sensor in it that listens for the sound of a smoke detector. And when it hears that sound, it automatically shuts the door. It lights up the room. It sounds a secondary alarm. So the same alarm that your smoke alarm makes, it sounds that again, or it can be customized and then also sends you a notification to your phone using the Z-Wave protocol. Very cool. Now you mentioned that it listens for your smoke alarm. I would imagine

is there some sort of, I guess, training quote unquote process for the, for the unit? Does it have to learn what your particular fire alarm sounds like, or are they all universal enough that it's able to just do that out of the box? Yeah, uh, both actually. So, um, any UL listed smoke alarm has to have that T3 alarm, which is a very specific pitch and volume and also spacing of the tones. And so our device listens for that, but there is also a learn button. So some homes will have a smoke alarm within five feet of the door, some maybe 15 feet. And so it's just essentially a tuner to how sensitive it has to be. Right. Interesting. So let's take one small step back because you sent a link as we were getting ready to do this interview. And I have to be honest, I had no idea

that closing the door, it makes perfect sense once you learn it, right? But I had no idea that closing the door at night or whenever you're in the room could literally save your life in the event of a fire. And so there's this idea of close before you doze, which you told me is kind of like the new stop, stop, drop and roll, right. That, that a lot of us remember from, from when we were kids. And you sent me a link to a story from, I think your local news, and I believe this was a fire that you responded to. And, uh, the, the pictures are, are amazing. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so that, you know, I had seen the difference of fire. We go to fires a lot of time in a kitchen or something,

and we get in and put the fire out, and there's smoke damage all through the house. And, you know, we walk through, and we're kind of checking things out and opening doors. And I've always been amazed at the amount of smoke that a closed door can stop and limit the damage i'm in those rooms but this fire was in particular of importance and it really um it just hammered home the idea that we had to get this um product to the market so i can start start helping people so essentially what happened i'll try to make a long story short was we had two fires going in the city at one time. The first fire was a car fire in a mechanic shop. And the battalion chief called for a second alarm, which basically means all of the engines and ladder trucks in the city go to this one fire.

And it was like the perfect storm of bad things to happen. So just as we're all arriving, we get another fire all the way in the other end of town. Oh no. And, uh, it comes in as an apartment fire with kids in the fire apartment. And you know, it's just, everyone's just got that sick feeling in your stomach. And, um, the chief was, uh, able to cut some rigs loose right away, but it was just a long response. I mean, it, I was on a ladder truck it took us 10 minutes to get there um and we're of course we're all listening on the radio waiting for that first engine to get there and we hear uh they got heavy fire showing from the first second and third floor building um of the apartment building and uh they've made contact with the mother and there's

twin three-year-olds in the downstairs apartment and And it's just, you know, you're hoping for the best but expecting the worst. And, you know, we're just trying to get into the scene. It's pretty chaotic, right? They got a lot of rigs coming from all over the place. And we hear that they got fire knocked down. They got one of the victims out and then the second victim out. And, um, and then by the time we got there, they were loading them into a medic unit. So they're getting ready to transport, which is a good sign.

Um, and everybody's trying to ask about the kids and, and I'm seeing the immense damage on this apartment building and just thinking this is not going to be good at all. And, um, one of the, um, chiefs that was outside said the kids, when they came out, we're both conscious, which I was amazed. Um, and they didn't seem to be badly burned or anything. And, uh, so we, we got a chance to go through the apartment, um, putting out hotspots and walking down the hallway. So, um, granted now we've been working on life for about a year at this point and uh i go into the bedroom where these kids were and the door was almost burnt through

on the outside it was charred well below the uh or it was the outer layer of the door was actually burnt away well below the um to underneath the doorknob and on the inside, it just started to burn through. So, and those girls were in that room. So basically what happened was their older sister was supposed to be babysitting twin three-year-old girls. It was nap time. She put them in their parents' bedroom, closed the door and for whatever reason left, the fire started in the kitchen. And, uh, yeah, the, the, that door held back the flames for we're estimating 12 minutes because it was a neighbor that called. So, you know, it burned for a while. The neighbor realized it.

And it was 12 minutes from them calling to those girls lives because that room had such little damage. There was a, I'll never forget this dining room candle on the headboard of the bed that was not even melted. Wow. And in the other bedrooms with the door open, there was plastic toys melted to the carpet. Wow. I mean, that's, that was the difference the door made. And, uh, we were just all ecstatic to find out that the girls went to the hospital. They spent one night and they were released the next day and they got to come to the station, uh, like two weeks later and we got to meet them and they got to, they brought in a, they colored a picture and

we got to meet the whole family. So it was, it was a pretty special, uh, uh, event when they came around to the station. That is an absolutely amazing story. I have a daughter who's three and a half and a son who's about to turn two. And I just get goosebumps listening to that story. That is incredible. Is it, you know, I think about this and I know doors are all different. Some of them are real thick and sturdy and some of them are cheap and made of thinner materials. Is it generally any door closed is going to help your chances in that event or are there, I'd have to imagine certain doors are better than others.

How does that work? Yeah, so you're totally right. So there's hollow core and there's solid core and there's kind of variations of both. So that that door with the with the three year olds was probably one of the cheapest doors you can buy. It was very thin, probably three sixteenths, a quarter inch of a layer of plywood and then cardboard baffles in the middle. And that held fire back for 12 minutes. So Underwriters Labor laboratories is the one that's really been studying this. Um, they're saying that with a solid core door, you can, you know, it could be up to an hour depending on building and structure. There's a lot of variables, but building construction and, um, so you're looking at with a closed door, anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour of,

of a survivable time. Yeah. So really any, any door you've got this, this life door device would, would be a good, a good investment for that is, that is just amazing. Let's talk a little bit more about the, the product. What is included in the box as a potential buyer? What, you know, what am I getting with the life door? I it just the single unit? And what does the pricing look like? Yeah, so we're looking right now. So we're still not at mass production. We're aiming for end of this year. We'll have a product for sale in January.

We're going to do single packs and three packs. So if you buy a three pack, there'll be a discount. We're looking at an MSRP of right around 109 for the connected version. So that's the Z-Wave enabled and then $89 MSRP for the non-connected. So that will do all the same features except for the connectivity portion. So it'll just shut the door, lay out the room and sound another alarm. Got it. And then what's in the box is pretty straightforward.

So it's just the life door unit, a short half a page or quarter page of installation instructions, and a screwdriver and a couple screws, and that's really about it. Yeah. And how exactly does it install is there obviously we're just a quote-unquote radio show here and so we don't have a visual but is there a simple way to explain to a layman how this how this thing goes in yeah the best way to describe it is it's just like the um door um stops that mount to a door hinge so you pull the door hinge or you close the door pop the hinge you close the door, pop the hinge pin out. The hinge pin goes back in through a device that hangs off the side of the life door.

And then the device goes right up against the hinge and it gets two screws. So we wanted to make it really easy so anybody could just go to their hardware store or order online and install it themselves. It doesn't require any special tools or cutting or, or any drilling. It's just, it's, it takes simple tools and it can be installed in two to three minutes.

Got it. And are there certain types of door hinges that you need to look for if you're considering this device or are, again, are those pretty universal? They're pretty universal, especially here in the U.S. But the biggest thing right now with our Gen 1 is the hinge pin has to be removable. So there's some more in the commercial space, like a ball bearing hinge that doesn't have a removable hinge pin. But for the residential setting, we're capturing the 98 98 of the market that has a removable hinge pin got it cool and then you you talked about z-wave so it sounds like there's there's two different versions of it uh non-connected and a connected version does the z-wave version come with uh like

a companion app or how exactly does one go about getting that connected to receive those notifications? Yeah, so that's still all in the works right now. Right now, we're working with an applet in the Samsung SmartThings hub, but we're hoping to have our own LifeDoor app that will also be accessible. Gotcha. Okay, very cool. Well, Joel, I really appreciate you coming on. I think this is a fantastic idea and I wish you guys all the best getting this to market and hope you have tremendous success with it. If any of our listeners wanted to find out more or connect with you or

support the initiative, what would be the best way for them to reach out and do that? Yeah. So you can find Life Door on all of the social media channels. Also, our website is lifedoor.io or feel free to email me at joel at lifedoor.io. Great. Well, Joel, once again, really appreciate you coming on and best of luck with the project,

with Life Door and keep us posted. Love to hear how things go for you. Will do. Thanks a lot, Jason. All right. Well, that does it for for you. Will do. Thanks a lot, Jason. All right. Well, that does it for our interview with Joel. And like I said, I had a really fun time learning about the product and really wish them luck. I think it's a great idea and literally could save lives.

And I always enjoy learning about smart home technologies that are doing things a little bit different than, I guess, your run-of-the-mill entertainment or fun sort of gadgets that you see a lot of. And I think this was a good example of that. And Joel's story that he told there during the interview about the fire that they went to, you know, they go to this fire and this door that basically saved two little girls' lives. And this was when Joel had already started developing the product and how it just really, you know, Joel being a firefighter, seeing that firsthand really reinforced his, his belief and notion of, of the importance of this product. And that really resonated with me.

So I hope, hope to see them succeed and we'll definitely be looking forward to hearing more from them in the future. Yep, absolutely. Uh't forget, you can join us in the chat room live every Wednesday starting at 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern to the One True Time Zone. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash live. You had to get that one in there. I mean, you have no idea how much trouble I have had going back and forth with the people in San Diego

to get the venue lined up. Like time, time. Oh, the time. Yeah. Yeah. Time zones in you are not. The time is where I am. Not yet.

I just, yeah. Thankfully, you know, I work for a company based on the East Coast now, so I'm very used to just thinking in Eastern time when I have to. It's an easy switch for me to flip. Great, great. The one true time zone. All right. The one true time zone. All right, well, we've got a few picks of the week, actually, because we've been off for a couple of weeks. So we've got some catching up to do. And number one, Seth, you shared this with me, and I can empathize. I don't think the picture is doing it justice, right? You were talking about the horrendous, probably 5,500 Kelvin lighting in one of your hotel lobbies on the road trip.

And this harkens back to a conversation we were having a few weeks ago. Very timely. Richard's in the chat room again with us tonight. And I know Richard's a lighting guy. And I got to tell you, if I could think of any sort of lighting to put in a hotel lobby to make it inviting it would basically be anything but 5000 kelvin yeah yeah i think this is higher like the picture i think the iphone 10 has a really good camera on it and it's like no no the lighting the lighting in this room can't be that way so it is kind of brought it back down to what would be considered normal but this can't be right yeah this this was like walking it was that morgue effect you know you walk in there and every light in the lobby and all the way down the hall on the on the sconces

on the walls was just like this bright blue color and i i just i could couldn't bear to look at it like i was just like no no no no no please don't please don't do this and uh i i i told my wife we get to our room and it's got those lights in it. We're checking out. Like we're not, we're not staying here tonight. Cause it's, we're not, it's just, it's not going to work. Turned right around. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's, it's akin to having like bedbugs, you know, and seeing bedbugs. No, we're not doing this. Um, yeah. So that is funny. So yeah. But luckily we got to the room. There was only one

light that was uh that was that color and uh you know i didn't turn it on the entire time so richard's got the see no evil monkey emoji in the in the chat room right now yeah yeah it was i mean it's it was just striking like if you if you want to walk into a you know a hotel that and it's funny you can't really see it on the picture there, but over on the left-hand side, there's this living room set up, where they have a big TV on the screen above a fireplace. They have chairs and a couch set up. It's kind of like a living room.

You'd walk into a living room, and it's just this super blue light hitting everything. I don't want to go there. Not doing it for me. I don't want to go there. Sorry. Oh, man. hitting everything and it's like not i don't want to go there doing it for me i don't want to go there sorry oh man well moving on another really funny one here actually and this will resonate if we've got anyone listening in the audience who does maybe digital signage or works in the in the commercial side and alex sexton it looks like, at SlexAxton, interesting Twitter handle there, posted this one, and it is hilarious. This is a video display menu, breakfast menu, looks like at some sort of cheap diner or something.

It says, well-intentioned employee, quote, if we spend the extra money and get TVs to display the menu, we won't have to print new menus every time we change the prices. Six months later, colon. And there's a picture of a TV with all of the breakfast, croissant sandwich, 319, English muffin, $2.59. You go down to the bottom of that column, fresh cookies four bites four ounces and there's a piece of cardboard with a sharpie $1.79 written and it's taped onto the screen beautiful that is that is classic just completely defeats the purpose of having the digital you know whatever that's that's cool that's that's really cool i'm guessing this is like hooked up to a computer in the back and somebody didn't know the password or something. Who knows? I don't know. It was quite funny.

There's got to be a good backstory there. Well, I do have one more real pick of the week this week. I ran across this app while I was out, and I thought it was really slick. And Jason, you tell me what you think because you're more into the sports than I am. All right. Hit me. So this app is called Tunity. And what you do is you take your phone, you run the app, you aim it up at the TV,

it uses your camera, it sees what's on tv and it tunes into that game live oh wow and you can listen it'll everything's out of sync you can kind of like tune it to delay up and down if you need to to match up with the picture but um it you know most of the times it figures out what's on and what needs to be and uh we'll do it but yeah it's uh the the reviews like i expect the reviews to be like two stars no the reviews are like super high like four stars and up so um and every everybody that i was reading like reviews on like like yeah i love using this thing so would would you think this is something that you would use like if you were in like a sports bar or whatever and you saw

something up on tv and you wanted to tune in yeah i mean i'm trying to i guess that is kind of the use case right like you're at a bar and you don't want to talk to people you want to see the mets winning a game did you see that score 25 to 10 no i missed that that's crazy that's the no you know this makes me think of is when i moved when i first moved out to los angeles i'm obviously i'm back in Denver now, but I lived in Los Angeles for a while and football season started. I'd moved out there like in July and football season rolled around. And I was so bummed because Broncos games weren't on TV. I didn't have, and couldn't afford, I don't even remember if the NFL package was around yet at that time. Um, I think it was, but I didn't have it. And I would go out to bars to watch the Bronco game, but it would always be on the tiny TV in the corner and there would be no

audio. So I couldn't hear it. And, you know, it was a bummer of an experience. And had I had this app, who knows, maybe what ended up happening would never have, which was I created, I found a bar. This is a fun story. I found a bar that had a Broncos fan as an owner. I don't know if you, have I ever told you this story, Seth? I don't know the story, but I know exactly where this is going. Yeah. And I went on Meetup and I created a LA Bronco fans group. And to this day, if you go, well, I don't know, actually, I haven't done it in a while, but if you go online and you Google Los Angeles Broncos bar, you'll find Brennan's Pub. And that became like the Broncos headquarters in Southern California. We grew into this huge

group and we had tons of people come and sound was no longer an issue. So my solve was actually to go out and create a little movement. That's a life hack altogether. That might have never happened. That might have never happened. That is brilliant. That is brilliant. I think that's better than the app. Quite honestly, I think you hacking the entire system here is better than the app.

It was cool, man. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Cool app. I try this out. I'm going to download it and try it out one of these days. Whenever I get out of the garage, you know. But right now, I'm stuck in here.

They don't let you out of there. Nope. Yeah. There it is. Los Angeles Broncos bar. Put a link to that in the show notes. LA Bronco fans. Yeah, it looks like it's kind of getting pushed down.

I know it's under new ownership now, and I don't know if it's as much of a... But for years, that was the spot, man. And had I had this happen, it never would have happened. That's the initiative. That's all I'm saying. See, if you're listening to the show right now, that's the initiative of Jason Griffin. He just gets the job done. You know what?

You got to do what you got to do. That's right. Brilliant, brilliant. all right guys well um nothing in the mail back uh this night but if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week you'd like to suggest or great ideas for a show give us a shout our email is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit the website hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form yep absolutely and as we do, we want to give a big, big thank you to everybody who supports the show, but especially those of you who are able to financially contribute to our efforts through our Patreon page. If you're not familiar with the

Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support. Once again, that's hometech.fm slash support, where you can learn how to support our efforts here for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five dollars we'll give you a shout out on air but every single pledge even at a dollar we'll give you an invite to our private slack channel the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day to talk about inside baseball and cat 24 7 tv yeah yeah, whatever else is the topic du jour, we'd love to have you. Moist IP. Moist P.

You got to drop the I. That's a horrible marketing. All right. So if you want to help out but can't support the show financially, we'd appreciate a five-star review in iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. Five stars less.

Five stars, nothing less you know that's that's what we usually say you know just any review would be great so good good to get feedback we we would absolutely value any of that feedback that you would love or that you would be so kind as to give us yep but seriously though five stars like that's five really though yeah um yeah cool so that'll do it for this week's show. We do have an interview lined up for next week with a company called Flow, which is a water leak detection system. Pretty sophisticated, kind of neat sounding system. And I came across these guys doing some research on my own for my house.

I'd like to invest in some protection for when we travel and to make sure that my house and basement don't flood due to something catastrophic. So it'd be interesting to check these guys out, and they've got a pretty cool backstory as well. So definitely look forward to that and hope you tune in. Yep, absolutely. I can't wait to talk to them. I'm kind of in the same boat. As you know, when I walked out the garage tonight, there was water, and the stupid washing, drying washing machine has overflowed or something.

I have no idea. I have to go in and figure out what that is. So yeah, it would be very good if I had something like this. Like I'm just now thinking I really need to have something like that. I don't know. Yeah, it's really cool. I've had a prep call with them to get to know them a little bit and learn about the system and it's pretty neat.

So I'm excited about it. Very nice. All right. Well, I guess that wraps up this week's show. Thanks everybody for tuning in and listening this week. And we'll talk to you next week. All right. Thanks, Seth. Take care.