HomeTech.fm - Episode 222 - Swimming with iPhones

Episode Date: August 17, 2018

On this week's episode of HomeTech: Jason shares his (successful) covert mission to get himself a new iPhone X. Plus, the latest home tech headlines including:SmartThings and Plume partner up for a new mesh WiFi/smart home solutionSamsung announces their new Bixby-powered Galaxy Home smart speakerFibraro launches an aggressive new North American installer training programMarantz rolls out new AirPlay2 receiversA new smart device to ensure you never run out of coffeeCrestron hacksSmart home security tipsAnd much 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. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 17th in Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Seth, how you doing? Good, Jason. I'm looking at our show notes here and you have an interesting topic to talk about. Jason's phone goes for a swim. I could have put a more positive spin on that and said, Jason now owns an iPhone 10. So I'm guessing you did not have a waterproof phone.

Yeah, it turns out the iPhone 6 is not waterproof at all. And I learned that the hard way. And I got to say, you know, the iPhone X so far, I just literally just bought it this afternoon. And so far, so good. But, you know, I was still pretty happy with my iPhone 6. I was getting, like, I was right at that point in my relationship with the iPhone 6. I was getting, um, like I was right at that point in my relationship with the iPhone 6 where I was like, you're still an okay phone, but you're kind of starting to piss me off a little bit. Right. You know what I mean? Like it was lagging. It was,

it was definitely slow, but I was fine. I wasn't like itching to replace it. And I took my daughter for a swim to the public pool here nearby our place. And long story short, the phone went in the pool, and the phone is now dead. Nice. Well, I... It was bad. It was bad. And I've told this story to a couple of people, and they were like were like well were there drinks involved like were you having too good of a time and i'm like can you justify this in any way shape or form i actually wish that i could tell you yes there was absolutely

zero alcohol involved uh what happened is i was there my next door neighbor who's got a couple of young kids of his own uh was there as there as well. And, and they had blown the whistle. Uh, parents probably know this, like their public pools. They, at least here, they, they blow the whistle at the top of the hour. Right. And they take five minutes. They call it adult swim where theoretically, like the adults can go in the pool and enjoy on their own. But really all it is, is like a five minute break to get your kids out of the pool and like catch your breath, go to the bathroom, whatever. And so I went to use the restroom, asked my friend Anthony to watch my daughter. As I'm using the restroom, I hear the whistle blow, which means the kids are going to go back into the pool.

And I knew exactly what was going to happen. Like I knew exactly what was going to happen. So I hear the whistle and I know, okay, Riley's going to be running back into the pool. So I get back out there as quickly as I can. And sure enough, she's halfway back out into the pool. My friend is with her. So it's like, it's no big deal. Nothing bad was going to happen, but he's got kids of his own and he's trying to, you know, manage all that. And so I feel bad. And so I'm rushing to get back in the pool to help. And I take my shirt off and I run in and I jump into the pool and help out. And it wasn't until a solid like five minutes later that I happened to feel in my pocket and my phone is in there.

And that was a pretty low point in my afternoon. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, I had the iPhone 6S, which I recently had up until like a couple of, maybe a month ago that I went ahead and got the X. Like the 6S was a pretty good phone. My only problem, I got bit by the battery bug, right? So the, like the battery in the phone no longer worked. And I bought this nice little case from Apple that was like,

let's extend the battery by using an external case, and eventually that went bad, so it didn't really matter. Halfway through the day, the phone was crying for power, and you have to plug it in. Now it doesn't work anymore, unless I just leave it on the charger all the time. But a good phone. I like it. I like the X a little bit more, like the phone factor.

I can see all the things that people are talking about. The little face ID thing is pretty impressive. It is. I didn't expect it to work as well as it worked. It's kind of like, okay, that's delightful. It does work. And I missed the button for like two minutes. And then I'm used to having the gestures.

And you go back to the old phone. You pick it up and you're like staring at it. Like, okay, do your thing. And it's like just sitting there oh yeah I gotta push this this button stupid phone yeah yeah no it's the so far the iPhone 10 is great like I said I've literally only owned it for maybe about six hours now as we're sitting here and recording uh but but it's a good phone like I think delightful is a good word to describe it I like how it kind of automatically wakes up when you, when you pick it up, it's got that whatever motion sensing, and then it recognizes your face. So by the time you tap on a notification or something

to open it up, it just, there's no fingerprint or passcode necessary. It just kind of does its thing, which is super nice. But, um, anyways, don't take your iPhone 6 for a swim. That's the moral of the story. I'm just going to say go ahead and put a little asterisk. I don't like any iPhone for a swim or any phone, for that matter, for a swim. It's probably not a good idea. Fair enough. So, Seth, I wanted to kick off before we jump into headlines because this isn't really news, but it's kind of news.

And I just wanted to ask you, like a lot of times we're sitting here and recording, it's August, the middle of August right now. It's the dog days of summer. It's very, very warm. And you record in your garage. And so a lot of times when we're prepping for the show, I can hear your little, your air conditioning running, and then you've got to turn it off because there's a lot of fan noise when we record. And I got to imagine that's like, that's gotta be pretty, it's gotta be pretty uncomfortable in there. Like Florida, August, summertime. It's only, it's over 90 right now. Like I was just, I was checking to see what the temperature was. It's, it's over 90 in here. And, and sometimes during, when you're talking,

I have to mute my mic and turn on the air, Like lean over next to it a little bit so I can cool down a little bit. So you don't pass out. Well, I found a story, HomeKit air conditioning control that you may be interested in. So this is from 9to5Mac. And I don't know. I think you probably already have this going on. But four ways to control cooling with fans and air air conditioners. The HomeKit Weekly. Have you seen this? Yeah. It's funny you post this. but four ways to control cooling with fans and air air conditioners the home kit weekly

have you seen this yeah it's funny you post this like one of the uh the ways i i that they suggest automating your your air conditioner is actually how i have been using this um here at the house i have the exact same what is that i home device, the little plug that they have pictured there. It's like $30. It's HomeKit compatible. And I just plugged the air conditioner unit into it. And then, you know, I was careful to make sure that it was like 15 amp rated and everything. It didn't seem like it was all right.

So I plugged it in, and it comes up as a, on my HomeKit, I kind of changed the icon on it so it's a little fan. So it looks like a fan is running when it's on. But that's what I've got going on right now. It's funny. This is a whole giant article about things to do because I think I've done every one of these things. Up until the point it got to be ridiculously hot, and I'm like, nope, I need an air conditioner. All right, man. Well, I'm just trying to help you out. I know it looks a little, it looks a little hot in there. Yeah. Well, I mean,

check back with me before the show ends and I should be just pouring out sweat. If anyone ever questions Seth's dedication to the Home Tech Podcast, just know that as we record this, he's sitting in a garage and it's 90 degrees right now. Yeah. Well, it's great in the winter too. In the winter, it's fine. There's no issue whatsoever, but a couple of months here in the summer, it gets warm. I'm just quickly doing the conversion for our friends over the pond. That's 32 degrees Celsius to put it in perspective. I know we have a fair amount of listeners over the pond, so that is warm, and we do appreciate it, Seth. But what do you say we jump into some headlines?

Let's do it. The new SmartThings Wi-Fi from Samsung is a wireless mesh networking system with a full-fledged SmartThings home automation hub built in. So while it controls smart home devices via ZigBee, Z-Wave, IP, and Bluetooth, it also extends Wi-Fi signals around the house with Plume AI technology. That's the first time I've heard that term. Plume, which sells its own Wi-Fi mesh networking products called Pods and Super Pods, says it uses cloud-based artificial intelligence to provide stable and consistent wi-fi coverage and speed in every room within your home using blazing fast tripod tri-band tri-band super pods coupled with auto channel hop technology that's quite the mouthful there yeah i went there i want to see

the tripod technology um when that comes out but yeah's the new, that's the next thing. We've heard a lot about Plume recently. I think, isn't Comcast using them? Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. I read this story and that did jump to my mind. I know that Comcast recently came out with their XFi system and they partnered with Plume. So definitely, I think reading between the lines there, it seems like Plume is, while they're maintaining their straight to consumer business, they definitely seem to be aggressively pursuing, you know, licensing agreements and partnerships with larger companies, Samsung and Comcast being the two examples at this point. Well, Samsung has also announced its entry into the smart home speaker market with the Galaxy Home. It's a high-end speaker meant to go head-to-head with Apple's HomePod

while still standing apart with competitors like Echo and Google Home, which is funny because it almost looks the same. Galaxy Home, Google Home? Yeah. They're promising better quality audio on this thing than those two devices. The Galaxy Home looks like a strange vase or statue that you would go

put on the table in the corner of your home with three stout little metal legs that come off of it and a flat top with control buttons on top for skipping tracks and changing the volume the speaker uses six built-in speakers in a subwoofer to deliver surround sound style audio. I'm putting my little air quotes up for that. It also includes eight far-field microphones for detecting voice input. You'll be able to say, hi, Bixby, to activate Samsung's digital assistant and ask it to start playing music or a number of other tasks. Samsung indicated that the Galaxy Home will be able to do many of the same things that Bixby can do on the phone. Yep. Interesting.

I got to say, you know, the biggest thing that I thought of when I saw this headline is finally a Bixby sighting, right? I think Bixby may be a little further along on the phones. I'm not actually totally sure of where they stand with that in terms of smartphones. But every time we've heard anything about Bixby in terms of the smart home, it's always been stories about how Samsung has been hitting delays and they've had a lot of trouble getting this product, I guess, or assistant to market. And even now, it's still a little bit unclear. My understanding of the story anyways is they're still not really promising a ship date and this is all kind of preliminary. So I don't know. I mean, it's a Harman Kardon product and it does sound impressive on paper, at least in terms of the speaker array. And I'm sure it's going to have a high quality audio

output, but I don't think at this point that for a smart speaker, that's really enough to differentiate. I know HomePod is putting their chips there as well in terms of advertising their product as a higher quality audio sounding product. But at the end of the day, it's really going to come down to whether or not Bixby is able to deliver a consistent experience, A, and then B, like, are they just too late of the day, it's really going to come down to whether or not Bixby is able to deliver a consistent experience, A. And then, B, are they just too late to the party, Seth? At this point, that market is getting saturated already, and they're going to have to push a rock uphill, so to speak. They've got a lot of market penetration between Amazon and Google Home and HomePod that they've got to fight against.

Right, right. Well, Samsung is, I mean, if you think of some of the big companies, I mean, we're talking Google, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung. Like, those are the four that you would think that those are the big four hardware makers that have these types of products. But, yeah, I don't know. Bixby is kind of one of those things that Cody has over there in the chat room, a nice little mean girls meme that he's got that, you know,

stop saying sketch because stop trying to make Bixby happen. It's never going to happen. So yeah, yeah, that's kind of how most people I think feel about it. Yeah, it's hard to say. There was another article that we'll link to in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 222 if you're interested. And it's five

things we still don't know about Samsung's Galaxy Home smart speaker. And to summarize the article, the five things are how smart is it? It streams Spotify, but what else? Doesn't include third-party apps. What's with the legs, right? The form factor is pretty funny. I've heard it described as an urn, which is not a great compliment if you're an industrial designer. And when will it come out and how much? So there's quite a few unknowns here. And again, I think that, um, if they've got ambitions or plans on, on getting a whole lot of market penetration with this thing, then, uh, you know, I just have to, I just have to question how realistic that is. Yeah. I think the legs are for audio isolation. I mean, that's what they have to be for. Like, cause, uh, if they have a little sub, like Apple

has this, the home pod has this massive like pad built into the bottom of it and they got in trouble because it was a it's a rubber like thing that that is that is on the bottom and when you set it down it kind of wiggles but when people were setting it on certain types of wooden furniture when they lifted it up they would it would leave a ring like into the thing it was kind of a big to do for a while um google actually does the same thing with their bigger speakers uh they will ship a a pad that you're supposed to like put on the the furniture and then put the google home on it as well so um it's interesting that samsung went this way and had you know these big long giant legs that come off this thing but it does make it look very interesting. And urn is, wow, that's not a good one.

Yeah. Last thing, Chris Gamble in the chat room is making a good point. You know, Alexa was first. Homeowners are nostalgic, and it's familiar for them. And I think that's true. It's, to a certain extent, maybe not quite as extreme, but Alexa has kind of become like Alexa is to voice control in the home for many people, what Kleenex is to tissue, right? Like it's become sort of synonymous and people are

familiar with Alexa. And I think everybody else, Google Home probably is maybe an exception to that just because of their marketing power. But i think homepod and and and this uh galaxy home have have a tall hill to climb here yeah and and just so you know um before we move on from this i i have stopped bleeping you from like i've just given up on all of the alexas and and things that that because you know what? Not my problem anymore. They need to make their products better. And if that's a constant thing, like, sorry. Yeah, I don't care.

I know the name of the product, Echo. What was funny is Richard finally blew a fuse on his show on the last home run. So go listen to that if you want to listen to Richard yell about it. But man, it was hilarious. But yeah, I think the problem with the Echo and the Alexa is that Alexa has the same name for the platform. So you kind of like get everything confused and you end up saying it a lot more than you actually should. Google Home is easy because the wake word is not the same as anything else. And I guarantee you no one in your life is ever going to say, hi, Bigsby, loud enough.

And it probably won't even work because it's Samsung. Moving on. Confidence, yeah. I think this next one's you. FIBARO is looking for more than a few good installation professionals. The global manufacturer

of wireless intelligent home automation and control devices has built out an aggressive training program in a bid to grow its installer base in the United States, according to an announcement. residential, and commercial AV installers, electricians, and practitioners within the construction industry with the practical knowledge and expertise required to specify and install Fibaro systems. Pretty cool. We're getting Fibaro finally here in the States and I guess kind of another, I mean, this is another like full-blown home automation company. They have a lot of stuff. Yeah, we talked about this just a couple of weeks ago when they were acquired and you start to compare their offerings with other companies in the Nice Group's portfolio. And it's a pretty interesting mix. I know Nice Group has access control companies and garage door openers and several other categories that are tangential to the smart home, or at least, you know, somewhat related. And so it's interesting. The other thing that struck me about this story is that they're looking,

you know, definitely did not limit the scope of what they're looking for to, quote unquote, traditional home technology companies, right? Electricians, practitioners within the construction industry. So pretty broad statements there. And I think that as smart home technology continues to commoditize and get easier to do, you're going to see more of that. Companies really branching outside. I'm drawing a blank on the name. Starts with an L. We've had them on the show before, and this is killing me that I can't think of them right now. Another home technology company that is more, they're more focused on the just general, like working with electricians. I know somebody in the chat room is going to help me out.

Loxone, Loxone. They're another company that's not necessarily looking at the market through that narrow filter of traditional Cedia installers, but branching out to electricians and other trades. And I think we're going to continue to see more of that. Yep. All right. Well, moving on here. Back in May, Apple revealed the full list of third-party speakers slated to receive updates with AirPlay 2 support. Now, one of the first manufacturers has started rolling out updates to their line of audio accessories. Starting this week, Marantz is rolling out

AirPlay 2 support to compatible speakers and receivers. Thus far, we've received confirmation that the update is available for users of the Marantz AV7704 receiver, but the update is also likely rolling out to other models in the lineup as well. Yeah, I was looking at the story here. There's a ton of models listed on here, which is exciting because, I mean, this is kind of like one of those things that if you know to do and you know how to do, it's not like it's going to happen for you. But if you could go in and press the magic sequence of buttons or go into the menus and hit update on these things, the Marantz is going to get updated and you'll have a new feature

like brought to you completely by software so um that's pretty exciting i'm just going to try and count let's see one two three four five six i mean there's probably over 10 probably over 15 uh receiver models here that look like are going to get the AirPlay 2 support. So that's pretty substantial. Yeah, definitely. And you know, it's a win. If you've got one of these receivers, like you said, it's a brand new feature, courtesy of software, right? Yep. A smart device manufacturer based near Fort Lauderdale, Florida is helping Amazon on its mission to augment all smart homes by offering a new smart pantry device. The WePlinish Java smart container orders snacks and coffee from certain

designated brands only, automagically using Amazon Dash. The company has raised about $15,000 of its $50,000 goal on Kickstarter, and WePlinish is already offering pre-orders on its website for a flat $20, half off the device's estimated retail cost of $40. This is like a retailer's dream, right? Like you put your Keurig pods in this thing and then when it gets about halfway low, I guess it's sensing it by weight. I'm not totally sure. I actually poked around to try to figure out exactly how this thing works and it's not totally clear to me. And obviously, this is a little bit of an early story. We're trying to figure out what the real story here is and how this thing is actually going to work. And it's not completely clear to me.

But I think there is a place in the world for devices like this. If there are those staples in the home, as a parent of young children, I think about things like diapers and those sort of staples that you just need to have in the home. And if you just don't have to think about it and you get down to a certain percentage of your, of your quote unquote desired inventory and it automatically orders and shows up at your doorstep, like I'm all for that. It sounds pretty neat. Yep. Yep.

I got it. I'm looking at my calendar tomorrow, Jason, the very first thing on there, it says potty training begins. Oh boy. Yeah. So pray for me,

pray for me. I will do that. I will do that. It hasn't gone well for us. So God speed, my friend, Godspeed. Well, I'm nervously low on diapers, so it's either it's going to happen or I'm going to have to do a we plenish diaper thing. Make the leap. That's right. All right. Well, a couple of other quick stories that we want to touch on here and talk about a little bit related to security.

So this first one was news to me. I didn't realize such a conference actually existed. There are quite a few conferences that focus on AV equipment. On the consumer side, there's CES. On the broadcast side, of course, there's NAB. And for residential, of course, Cedia and Infocom on the commercial side. However, the latest conference to focus on AV equipment happened friday august 10th called defcon the focus hacking av systems specifically the leading control system manufacturer crestron so first of all that that was big news to me there's like a there's now a conference dedicated to hacking av systems. I have no idea.

No, no, no, it's not just AV systems. Like, DEF CON's huge. DEF CON, they hack everything. Servers, they hack the election polling, you know, poll taker things. Every year they go in and hack ATMs. Well, that makes a whole lot more sense. This was just one,

this is like just one portion of it where they were going in and saying, oh, there's vulnerabilities in Crestron that we were able to exploit. All right. Well, this lead definitely was written in a way that it made it sound like the latest conference to focus on AV equipment. So in any event, that makes a whole lot more sense to me now. Yeah. Just look where it came from.

Anyway, let's start a conference focused on hacking Crestron equipment. Yeah, well, there was a track this year, or basically there was a breakout section this year called Who Controls the Controllers? Hacking the Crestron IoT Automation System. It was taught by Ricky Lashaw, a security researcher at Trend Micro. And I don't know, this story to me is kind of like a lot to do about nothing,

mostly because they're basically using known exploits, known passwords, known default passwords on Crestron. They're using known exploits in like the Windows touchscreens, known exploits in like the Windows touchscreens, known exploits in the Android panel that I don't think that you would be actually be able to get to in the wild. Some of these, some of these like architectures that Crestron has, I mean, the first line of security is like the network you put it on, right? Like, right. You're putting it on, you're putting it on a back end secure network and, and locking it down there, like, that's what the professional installers supposed

to be doing. So I don't know, I kind of have a problem with the whole premise of this. But at the same time, you know, it does highlight the need to work on and focus on even a minimal level of security in these devices and stop using like backdoor passwords and that kind of thing that are, you know, hard coded into the system. Yeah, I mean, I think there's always room for conversations in the industry around security, but I'm with you. I read this story and it just, it does seem like a little bit overblown to me. I mean, I suppose if I were an integrator working in the commercial or enterprise or government segments of the market, I would be, and I'm not saying this to downplay the importance of security

in the residential side, but like when you're in a commercial or enterprise environment, you've got a properly secured network, that is your first line of defense against all of these sort of hacks. And so, yeah, I read this story, and to me, you know, it does seem like it would be a much bigger deal, something I would frankly be more concerned about if I was an integrator on the commercial side. But again, these are good things to be aware of, whether you're a consumer or an integrator. Just making sure that you're staying up to speed on security is a no-brainer these days. Right, right. And Greg is making some good points here. Greg is actually one of our fellows.

I guess we'll call him at this point. He is a Crestron dealer up there in canada and uh he says crestron has extensive documentation on how to secure devices just not many people go out and actually use it uh he said and also following up on the network thing that you were talking about um the kind of what i was alluding to like most of the time when you're setting up in a commercial environment, you put the Crestron equipment on its own thing. It's not on the corporate network at all. It's on its own dedicated network. It doesn't touch the IT guy's stuff at all.

So the risk of somebody going into an office building and hacking the conference room touchscreen controller built into the wall and getting in and downloading a bunch of data is very, very, very low unless a lot of things go wrong in that chain of command. You have bigger problems in your organization if that is the case, I would say.

But at the same time, like I'm saying, this is something, some of the things they were pointing to or some of the things I saw in the article said that some of the exploits were back 2014. This was patched in 2016. And that was three, four, in some cases, five years ago. But man, these systems, they last a lot longer than that.

And if you look at the Mirai botnet, that was not brand new IoT devices. Well Mirai botnet, that, that was, uh, not brand new IOT devices. Well, I mean, in some cases it was, but that was not, um, the, the reason that was so big was because it was devices that have been installed over the past decade, uh, had these flaws and, and vulnerabilities that never got patched. And they're just sitting out there and, uh, and not being maintained and there's no maintenance on it. And they get hacked. And what are you going to do? Are you going to go back to the nightclub that you installed, you know,

20 cameras in and say, hey, you know, your cameras may be part of this botnet. I'm going to charge a guy to come out and spend, you know, a couple hours. I'm going to charge you a few hundred dollars to come out and upgrade all these cameras to the latest firmware. It's like that's probably not going to charge you a few hundred dollars to come out and upgrade all these cameras to the latest firmware. It's like that's that's probably not going to happen. Right. Like that's right. That's at least not in the in the business that I was in. It may be changing in the future where, you know, you're on service contracts and that kind of thing. But the business I was in was like most of the time you'd install these cameras, you'd set them up, you'd give the guy an app and a password and you walk out the door.

And if it ever broke, you'd go fix it. But if it's humming along and infected with some kind of virus, no one knows about it, and you never have to go deal with it. But hopefully we'll see in the future here devices that are constantly connected and constantly being updated and that kind of thing. Right. That, I think, should be the end goal for the entire industry. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think following up on this, we wanted to touch on a story that came out in Gadget this week. And again, we'll link to this in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 222

and how to better secure your smart home. And, you know, in fairness, I think to a lot of people listening to our show, some of these things, if not all of them are going to sound pretty obvious, but it's worth running through really quickly that, you know, there are very simple things you can do to make sure that you're not the low hanging fruit that the hackers out there are actually after. And so these are, you know, things you can do, like keeping everything up to date, just doing firmware updates or software updates, when you're prompted to check your passwords, like use a password manager, like I use one password to generate

random passwords for everything that I do. And I think that's a great, easy step that that I encourage everybody I know to do. Secure your network. Like we talked about, right, Seth, that's really your first line of defense. Make sure that your, your network is not secure because really the name of the game is getting on your network. And once somebody is on your network, it's, it becomes significantly easier for your, for your net, for your devices or data to be, uh, you know, exploited, do your research. This one's a little bit obvious, a little bit harder to actually put into practice, you know, with the, the speed of development and the number of new products that are coming

to market. It's a little bit tough to know who's reputable and who's not, but it is worth taking your time to, to, uh, you know, cross your T's and dot your I's and understand who you're buying from. Read the end user license agreement. I don't know anybody who actually does that. I'm skipping that one. Yeah. So you can go ahead and skip that one. Like I don't never, ever going to do that. So that one's kind of, kind of useless. And then this last one, mute if you have to.

I guess that, yeah, this is about like digital assistance amazon echo like kill the mic if you're that worried about it uh i i don't know about that one either seth we've talked about that on air i don't know where you come down on it well i i i don't care uh i i but i have family members that will unplug the amazon echo you know if they if they read something on one of these FUD stories online that comes up and says that somebody's found a way to hack the Amazon Echo, and the way they have done it is basically they had to get local access to the device,

and then they had to take it apart, and they had to put their own microphone inside of it. That's the hack, and you don't make it that far, but the headline is Amazon Echo has been hacked. And, you know, I don't know. They'll go and unplug it just, you know, out of pure fear from these stories that come along. But yeah, of all devices,

I would be worried about the Amazon. You know, it's a first tier product. Everybody has their eyes on it. Like if there's any security issue with this thing, if it starts broadcasting audio from millions of homes at the same time, people are going to notice and they're going to raise some stink and then, you know, that'll be fixed and Amazon won't be able to do that anymore and congressional inquiries. But all the other weird little devices that you pick up you know like a smart light bulb or something with a microphone in it and you know they the company

goes out of business or whatever and you're still using it like that that that's where you kind of have to worry um uh about uh things like you know muting and that kind of thing yeah that's a good point the switch so it reminds me of a story I remember reading after the, whatever the first iPhone that came out that had the fingerprint scanner, whenever that was. There was a story that came out that said the iPhone fingerprint scanner can be hacked. And so, of course, I clicked on it. out that the story was actually about somebody had figured out how to take like silicone or something and make a fake fingerprint of your thumbprint that they could then use the silicone to, to, uh, to unlock your phone. So, you know, it was basically like the equivalent of like, if somebody comes and like cuts off your thumb, they're going to be able to unlock your,

unlock your phone. It's funny you say that, Jason, uh, same family member never activated that feature of the phone because they were worried that somebody would cut their thumb off and, and, uh, steal their phone. Well, there you go. I mean, but that, that was a story too. Like that was an actual, you know, people are being robbed and their fingers are being cut off. And you saw that story go by and like, it's just fun. But people believe that. Greg said, buddy of mine just lost his thumb a few weeks ago. I really hope that somebody didn't cut his thumb off just to unlock his phone.

Well, you're going to have to take your face now. I'm telling you, if somebody came up to me and said, I'm going to cut your thumb off or you can unlock my phone, I'd be like, here's my passcode. Go ahead. You can have it. Take the phone. I really don't care. Yeah. I'll keep my thumb.

Thank you. Anyways, all the links and topics that we have discussed here in our headline section can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 222. While you are there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive show updates and reminders. Again, the link for this episode is hometech.fm slash 222. And also, if you want to join this in the lively chat room every Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern, the one true time zone.

You can find out more on how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. Hi, Bigsby. Jason, we got a bunch of pics of the weeks. We do. Wow, we're getting up there. We're venturing out. So we've got this first one, mystery button on remote at Airbnb in Wales. Interesting.

All right, I'm going to click on this one. I'm opening it up for the first time here, live on air. This is amazing. This is what everybody who owns an Airbnb should do to automate it. I think just put a little Easter egg inside the house, a mystery button, if you will. Oh, oh, Fibaro. Fibaro is coming out.

They have those buttons, right? There you go. Those big red buttons. Just put one of those buttons in the corner of the room somewhere on an end table. And when somebody presses it, have it do something like this. Throw a big dragon up on the wall.

I love it. It's beautiful. That's great. Yeah, put a big red button up that says, like, don't press this button and then just watch the reactions yeah just be creative do something with automation but i think this is great i i really do i think this is uh this is fun no you've got you've got a you've got an

automation pick this week yeah jason jason griffin brings a i do i do this this is a good one you know the the denver broncos had their first uh pre-season game keegan in the chat room by the way says that's from the whales flag which i should have known um he's totally right green and white on the back right something like that yeah yeah i think so um so anyways that that's pretty cool we we do like that go check that out hometech.fm slash 222 set Seth, this one was mine. I don't normally come with picks of the week, but I thought this was hilarious. You know, it's that time of year, the Denver Broncos had their first preseason game this week, which is very exciting. It means

football season is coming right around the corner. And I heard this story on the radio and I had to look it up online as well. The Bud Light smart Fridge that unlocks only when the Cleveland Browns win. So for those of you who are not football fans or American football fans, I should say, it is important to know that the Cleveland Browns last season, only the second team in the history of the National Football League to go 0-16. So winless. They did not win a single game the entire season. It's only the second time in history that that's happened. And so Bud Light came out with this fridge. You got to go take a look at it. It's great. And it's this orange fridge with Bud Light stacked up inside of it,

and it's connected to the Wi-Fi. And Bud Light will have whatever, like a button or something in their headquarters. And the first time, they're placing these refrigerators around strategic bars, presumably all in the Cleveland area. I'm not sure if they're doing it outside of Cleveland. But the first time that the Browns win a game, Bud Light will go ahead and push whatever button they have, which via Wi-Fi will unlock these refrigerators and everybody gets to enjoy some free beer. I thought that was pretty funny. Presumably, this is from the article,

presumably they will likely stand there for weeks, if not years, silently taunting fans with the promise of beer that if past history has anything to go by, they may never get to drink. Well, Keegan makes a great point, too. He can't wait for the first like viral video of cleveland fans destroying that cooler after after they open the season with a loss well there you go there you go that is gonna happen actually keegan you make a great point well um i actually have a real pick of the week i think think this actually was brought to my attention by Cody, who's actually in the chat room tonight. This is an Alexa skill that you can use to protect your home.

And the way it works is you can enable this skill on your Echo, and you can play a track of these kind of random things uh that that happen and i'll just kind of go over go over through these conversations it's basically simulating people being either on the phone or in their house talking um there's actually a uh two guys two average guys brainstorm what's unique about themselves so they can start a podcast about it, which I thought was kind of funny too. Sounds familiar. It does sound familiar. It was a long point. And then there's a mom walking a daughter through assembling an Ikea dresser over the phone, which is kind of funny.

Stay-at-home mom who just can't deal with it anymore. Some of these things are good. Yeah, they're like 60, 70 minutes long, these tracks. So, you know, that can protect your home for quite a while. If somebody's sneaking around your house and they hear these conversations going on, they may decide somebody's actually home. Couple has a breakup while also trying to watch TV. 72 minutes total.

I'm going to have to listen to this at some point. Passionate argument over the rules of a complicated board game. It must be, I can't remember the name of it. Oh, Settlers of Catan. That's it. That's it. Oh, all right. Going deep there. Yeah, that's, I've got it. It's a good game. It's just very complicated. All right, well, that'll do it for our picks of the week. We've got nothing in the mailbag this week, Seth, but we do want to take the opportunity here to remind everybody that we will be out at Cedia 2018 in San Diego coming up September 4th through the 8th, I believe are the exact dates.

And on the Thursday of that week, we will be hosting our second annual Home Tech Happy Hour. So we're super excited about this. If you're interested in learning more information, head on over to hometech.fm slash happy hour. Once again, that is hometech.fm slash happy hour. And we'll be doing this at a great venue that we did it at last year called the field, which is right there, right by the convention center. You literally walk out, walk a couple of blocks and you're there. It's right on fifth Ave. So it's a great scene. There's a lot of activity going on there and we get this really nice, like the second floor, they basically reserve it for us. And so we've got plenty of room for people to kind of mingle and have some drinks. And we've got a number of people who have let us know that

they're coming already. And if you're interested in joining us, again, head on over to that URL one last time, hometech.fm slash happy hour. There is a quick form there with three fields that you can fill out to let us know that you're coming. And we would really appreciate that. So we have a head count of, of how many people we should expect. Yep. And, uh, people are signing up. I get a couple every couple of every day or every so often I'll, uh, you know, when people listen to the podcast or learned about it, they'll, they'll go on and sign up and really appreciate everybody signing up. Uh, one, one had a, uh, Chris, Chris Gamble, one Chris Gamble had a question. Do they serve gluten-free vegan Guinness? Sure, sure they do, sure.

Drink all the gluten-free vegan Guinness you want, Chris. It's very good stuff. It's all you can drink, actually. It doesn't even count towards our tab. I'm also thankful for others who have put funny little things in the message there. Feel free to do that when you sign up and let us know that you're coming. I do want to give a huge shout-out and thank you very much to our host sponsor this year. That is ChowMain Software.

These guys develop drivers for Control 4, Crestron, Elan, RTI, Q-SYS, URC. They do it in two different ways. One, they have their own sponsored drivers where basically they build their own drivers and they sell them on a, you know, basically license them out on a per project basis. They all come with a seven-day trial and free demos for showrooms. Or they'll have a manufacturer. If you're a manufacturer, you can hire Chow Mein to actually basically make the driver for you. So you don't have to worry about the intricacies of dealing with Crestron or Control 4 and understanding what those platforms are.

And they've been doing it for a long time. I mean, I've known Alan for, geez, more than 10 years now, it seems. And they were awesome to basically step up and want to do the host sponsor. And Alan was actually at the the happy hour last year and he will be there this year. So when you see him, you know, give him a big high five. Tell him thank you very much. And of course, go visit their Web site. Chow mein soft dot com. Yeah, absolutely. We really do appreciate that sponsorship and and make sure to give them a big thank you when you join us, and we'd love to have you there. So stop on by the website and register. We also do have some opportunities if you want to contribute to the happy hour for a smaller dollar amount than our exclusive sponsorship.

We do have some happy hour friend sponsorships for a lower price that you can check out there on the website and contribute to everybody having a great time. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. That's right. And in closing the show, we want to give a big thank you as we always do to everybody who supports the Home Tech podcast, but especially to those of you who are able to financially support our efforts through our Patreon page. If you're not familiar with our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support. Once again, that's hometech.fm support. And you can learn how you can support our efforts here at the show for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over $5, we're going to give you a big shout-out on air, but every pledge, even at that $1 level, we'll send you an invite to our private Slack channel, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for the inside baseball conversations about all things home technology. That's right, and this week we had a new patron join at the $5 level. And as always with the $5 and up, you get a shout out on the show. And this week we'd like to seriously thank Keegan Saunders. Thanks very much, Keegan. You actually came in under the wire as we were sitting down, like literally we were done doing the show notes and prep and everything. We were hitting record and I got an email.

So, Keegan, thank you very much. We appreciate it. That's right. Yeah, we really do appreciate it. And Keegan even joined us here. I'm assuming this is the same Keegan in the live chat room tonight. Hey, yeah. Thank you very much.

We really, really do appreciate it. And one last time, if you're interested in contributing to our efforts here, it's hometech.fm slash support. And if you do want to help us out, but can't support us financially, we totally understand that. We would definitely appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. Of course, honest reviews are welcome, but five stars is great. It's the going rate going rate it's the going rate yeah we we appreciate it absolutely well that uh wraps up the show this week kind of a kind of a slow news week and things kind of happening here and there in spurts but i i suspect jason i'm going to use your favorite phrase from mike wolf uh the the powder's dry yeah gotta keep the powder dry keeping their powder dry

right now we've got uh just a few short weeks here or less until cdia and so i i suspect we may have some slow news weeks here in the next week or two uh coming up but uh things are going to pick up and we'll have our cdia preview show coming up here as well really uh looking forward to that looking forward like i said to seeing everybody out in san diego it's such a great time. Cedia is absolutely my favorite time of the year in terms of industry stuff. And it's the big one, right? It's the Superbowl. So I'm getting really excited for it. That sounds good. I, we've only got, I was just looking at the calendar. We only have two weeks left. So yeah, we're going to have to do a Cedia, like a pre-show

and say what we're excited about, uh, here coming up in a couple of weeks. It's going to, it's going to involve some homework. Yeah, it definitely, it always does. But yeah, it's that time of year. So I look forward to it. All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening. And Jason, I will talk to you next week. All right. Sounds good, Seth. Take care.