HomeTech.fm - Episode 229 - Is RSM Dead?

Episode Date: October 12, 2018

On this week’s episode of HomeTech: The latest in home tech headlines including Google’s big October announcements, and a “non-hyperbolic” question gets definitively answered: “Is RSM Dead?���

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, October 5th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good, considering the northern part of the state is about to get slammed with a hurricane. Probably as this is played out. Oh, really? Yeah, it just popped up.

So out of touch. Yeah. So were we. I was sitting on the couch the other night, and I was sitting next to my wife, and I let out a curse word, and she's like, hey. I'm like, there's a hurricane. And we're kind of in the uncertainty path. It was a low-pressure center.

It wasn't even a hurricane yet, but I kind of keep an like uncertainty path it was a low pressure center it wasn't even a hurricane yet but i kind of keep an eye on yeah that stuff but uh there's a pretty good it's like five six days out they know where it's going so um i hope everybody if you're up in the panhandle of florida hope you're all right stay safe yeah that's uh that's always scary i am thankful here in colorado we don't have to deal with that i I can only imagine what that's like. Just a mess. It just makes a mess of things. And hopefully, I mean, it looks bad.

Like it's a Category 3. It got huge overnight in the Gulf there. So just you evacuate. You just leave. Leave and hope your property stays through the storm. Yeah. Well, on a much, much lighter note, I think we've got a fun episode here in front of us. Google had their event today as we're sitting here and recording, the Pixel event.

And a couple of stories came out of that that we're going to talk about. Handful of headlines as well. No guests this week, Seth, just you and me. I know on a personal note, this was a big week for us in terms of, I guess we both must have had some money burning a hole in our pockets or something. Yeah. Something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've got a shiny new ring alarm and one of the flow water kits that I bought for my house. If you were listening a few weeks ago, you're familiar with the unfortunate incident I had in the middle of the night where probably some punk kid in the neighborhood decided he'd come by and turn my hose spigot on full blast in the middle of the night. And thankfully, neighbors eventually alerted me to it and there was no damage there. But

definitely sort of a wake-up call that you've got to be aware of what's going on. And this was the kind of thing that Flow, with their water monitoring, could have turned into a much less wasteful event, right? I have no idea how long that was running. So excited to get that put in. I do need to hire a plumber for it, so it's going to be probably a little while knowing the speed with which things move around my house, Seth. Oh, come on. DIY, Jason.

It's just a pipe. Just cut that thing. I'm not soldering pipes. Oh, yeah. Well, I have that I can tell you is not going to happen. I've got the plastic one. So for me, it would just be cut and put the little things in and done. Like it's pretty easy.

So cut and glue and then you're done. Yeah. I ended up picking up uh last week i think i think we talked about a little bit um that cavo piece and that that finally got shipped in on monday and i i've set it up uh it's sitting in there uh unfortunately haven't had much time to use it so i'm hoping to get some hands-on time this week and and put something together for some kind of review where i can kind of go over it i gotta say in first impressions um are mixed i am i'm pretty impressed with what they have they're trying to do i can see the end goal um my setup wasn't that smooth and i haven't

used it so um but the the um the like first impressions using device, it makes for a nice room remote, I guess is what I would call it. Right. Well, definitely look forward to hearing more about that. I'll be sharing more about my ring alarm setup as well. I haven't had time to do it just yet, but definitely planning to get that done here this weekend at the latest. And so I look forward to that. It's something that my wife and I wanted to have here just for just for that extra peace of mind you know and we haven't had that on our home to date and read a bunch of great reviews about it i know it's not a new system but

it was my first time really researching it in depth and i'm excited to have it so we'll report back yep sounds good what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Ciao, me. I got the fun one. Oh, yes, you do. Ciao, me. Ciao, me. Hit me one more time. Ciao, me. There it is. We'll give some context to that in a second. They have introduced a 4K HDR Mi Box.

Tech giant, Ciao, me. Ciao, me. Announced an updated version of its streaming player the me box s uh features the include the built-in google assistant and chromecast 4k hdr at 60 frames per second and support for both dolby and dts audio this will be available through wal Walmart.com in the U.S. Pre-order starting October 9th. Shipping on the 19th for $60. Not bad. We talked about the, what was it, Roku last week being at like $30 and $50 or something like that.

This is another 4K box under $75. I mean, this is great. Yeah. Can't complain. Lots of options. And I think we've got to give a shout out to, I know we're pausing our headlines here, Tokyo Jim, right? Yes.

Yes. So I think we talked about this a little bit a long time ago. And he was trying to describe for us how to pronounce over the internet and over email. And it wasn't working. That's a nice way to put it. He was actually writing in to tell me how horrible my pronunciation was. Yeah. So we asked him like, hey, since you are actually over in China right now, can you record yourself saying it properly in Sinitism when you use it on the show?

And he did the next best thing. He didn't record himself. He went to an actual Xiaomi store and recorded one of the sales associates pronouncing their company's name. So that's beautiful. Yeah. Xiaomi. It doesn't get more authentic than that. Yep. That's it. And now we're set. Every time one of these headlines comes up, we're covered. So we appreciate that that we'll have to reference that recording yeah exactly all right back to headlines back to headlines in less than two years anything that can connect to the internet will come with a unique password that is if it's produced or sold in california the information privacy connected devices bill that comes into effect on january 1 2020 effectively bans pre-installed and hard-coded default passwords.

The new regulation mandates device manufacturers either create a unique password for every single device they produce at the time of production or require the user to create a unique one on setup. So no more using password 1234, Jason. It's not going to work. Damn it. It's going to make my life so much more difficult. I like this. California's out in front of this one. I like it. I don't see anybody, what did they say? Hard coding a unique password or something like that. That to me doesn't seem like it'll be the path, but this idea of requiring the user to create one

and enforcing higher standards on that to me seems like a great idea yep after announcing the details for its new 5g home internet service last month verizon is now getting the first customers hooked up as it offers a free apple tv and three months of youtube tv along with the service for customers in Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Houston. Interestingly, Seth, didn't realize this, but Verizon is technically using a proprietary solution to offer the service instead of, quote, true 5G standards, but they do say that customers should see speeds around 300 megs per second. You see my little note there?

Of course they are. Of course they're not using the standard that, I mean, CDMA and LTE, like all that mess we had with our cell phones, they're just going to continue that. So yeah, thanks, Verizon. All right. Yep.

Ubiquiti Networks has announced its latest offering, the Amplify Instant. The product boasts a super fast setup process and an affordable price point. Ubiquiti claims that the setup process takes roughly two minutes and can be purchased with or without the range-extending mesh points.

Amplify Instant will go on sale for $99 for just the router itself and then $179 for the router and mesh point combo. Hmm. Cool. I don't know. Are you still using your Amplify? Yeah.

No, I think it's a great product line. I have warmed up to it a lot in the past, probably the past six months, because I figured out how there's a way you can do remote management on these things. Ah. And you have to sign in with a Google account, which my work account is a Google account, out how there's like a way you can do remote management on these things ah and uh you can sign in you have to sign in with a google account which my my work account is a google account so i just use that and i can get in there and and manage different unify routers and update them and keep them and check them and that kind of thing see if they're offline so it's very basic but at least i

can do it and yeah uh before i wasn't doing that so um yeah it still requires a restart every now and then but it seems to have been have been getting better so cool still using all right well look forward to seeing how they do with their new line they're moving on earlier this week facebook announced a new hardware product designed to creep everyone in your family out the facebook portal works as a video intercom designed to connect you to all of your friends and family members. You know, the ones you didn't want to talk to anyway. Portal features a 10.1 or 15.6 inch touchscreen. Wow. Pretty big screen. Alexa built in an integration with news and music services. Sorry, I missed that one. 10.1 inch model will sell for $199. 15.6 inch model will sell for $349.

Interesting product. 15 inch monitor looks kind of crazy. One of the things that's really cool on this is, let's get past all the privacy concerns about putting a camera link to Facebook inside your house. Right. Yeah, no big deal. Yeah, no big deal. Especially after they just announced a massive amount of people were

just hacked and personal information stolen. They had no idea it was going on for like 11 whole days or some crazy amount. This product has a really cool feature with the camera in that it kind of uses like a virtual pan-tilt zoom. I think Nest Cams have this, like the new HD Nest Cams uses like a virtual pan tilt zoom i think i think like nest cams have this like the new hd nest cams have like a virtual pan tilt zoom type thing where if you're walking around the room it'll it'll follow you around uh as you're walking back and forth and i i thought that was actually kind of cool um huh an intercom intercom from facebook especially those price points not that interested in it, honestly. Yeah.

Less Facebook. Makes it even more creepy. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Smart Home Appliance and Maker Nest, which is now part of Google's broader hardware group, had a quiet announcement to make today alongside the flurry of Pixel 3 and other hardware-related Google news. In addition to the four existing Nest thermostat color options,

there will now be, wait for it, black, gold, and silver options as well. Yay. Yeah. Stepping up the game, putting the trim on. Innovation. Innovation, baby. Put some chrome on it. It'll look good.

That's right. I don't like being a Nest hater but i just want to see something yeah anything maybe more exciting than a a uh thermostat i don't know i mean the colors are they're nice i get it but anyways they'll go well with um i mean they'll fit in uh with people who like interior designers and that kind of thing. It gives you options to go in where it probably would have stood out like a sore thumb in other situations. So not bad. It's not a bad thermostat.

It's still a decent thermostat. So, hey, Nest. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens now that they've, I forget all of the details. I know we've talked about it sort of moved back in under Google and that whole restructuring. So I think that'll take a little bit of time to work itself out, but hopefully we'll continue to see more from Nest. Moving on from our big headlines here, the big news, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show that we want to touch on this week is Google's Pixel event that they just held today. And aside from some cool new phones and sort of a tablet-laptop hybrid that they unveiled, they did have a couple of announcements directly related to the smart home.

And the biggest one, I would say, or at least the biggest headline-grabbing one, no doubt, is the Google Home Hub. And we've known this has been coming for a little bit of time now. This is essentially Google's answer to Amazon Show. So it's like that touchscreen video screen form that sits on your countertop and also, of course, has the Assistant built in. So price point on this is going to be $149 available October 22nd. Coming right up.

And Seth, I think this thing looks pretty nice. Yeah, yeah, I agree. $149, it comes in almost more color choices than the Nest thermostats. So it comes in chalk, charcoal, charcoal. Okay, that must be dark. Aqua and sand. And it has the same kind of like cloth speaker cover that you'd find on the google home line of products so uh looks it's small jason like it's

not it's not a 15 inch screen i think facebook's got him there but um i don't know i definitely do i kind of like the small because it it's yeah it keeps it out of the way and and the way they've designed their screens it looks like they they know it's you know kind of a smaller screen and you look over and you can kind of see the information that's that's more relevant to you uh on there so i i kind of like what they're doing here i i'm very interested i'm i might if i had you know another 149 spring upon me i might go out and get one of these. Because I do like using my Google Assistant way more than I do the lousy Amazon Echo devices. Like, I just, they're much more pleasant to use and to look at.

Although I have the older models, like the newer Amazon ones are nicer. But for $149, man, that's a great price. Yeah, it's a great price point. And I think they did a really nice job on the physical design of this device. I know that this is a category for me personally I'm intrigued by. Yeah. Because coming from the professional channel, the idea of this sort of touchscreen video interface is not anything really all that new. And so to see this sort of form coming into the DIY segment of the market,

this sort of form and function, I think is interesting because on the surface, I'm like, I feel like these hold a ton of promise and I'm intrigued to see if they become more of a mainstay, but I'm also trying to think through what like my day-to-day use cases would actually be with one of these devices. And I kind of still struggle to come up with those. Like I've got my phone nearby almost all the time. And usually if I want to look something up, that's my default. And this would be at a stationary point in the kitchen where I'd need to walk over. So I don't know that it would replace a whole lot of that. I don't know. Like, I think they're very cool. I think they did a great job on the design of this one. Like you said, it is much smaller than it looks in some of the renders and some of the pictures, I should

say. There's an article that we'll link to in the show notes where they show it sitting next to an iPhone. And you get a better sense for the scale of it that way. And it's definitely smaller than I thought it was after looking at a few of the pictures. But I like that. I think nobody wants a big honking 15-inch touchscreen on their countertop.

At least most people don't. Most of us mere mortals who are concerned about countertop space or yeah normal people um anyways i i think it's a really cool looking device and at 150 bucks you know that may be that may be compelling enough for me to pick one of these up at some point and kick the tires on it a little bit well i and i think we we need to do this as a customary i mean they literally named it the home hub so ring that bell we don't get it we don't get to do that enough no yeah so i mean i i think it definitely deserves the bell ring and they also added some little software on here um the home hub and i guess it's inside the phones now where it's it's kind of like um more apple home like like the home app that you get on the

apple where you swipe down from the top and you can pull up that little home app uh the interface basically gives you an overview of what's going inside going on inside your entire house like it it's basically a broad overview like what lights are on what's the temperature set at and that kind of thing um a very like a direct shot at what Apple's doing with HomeKit. I'm not really in the Google ecosystem other than using Google for search and mail and business stuff. I don't get too much into it on the home side because we're pretty much all Apple here.

I'm genuinely curious to see how well this works out. What's funny is there's an article that we have that that shows that home dashboard and it's like it's on an iphone so like obviously we're gonna get this update on our google maybe assistant app or something i'm i'm not sure is there a google home app see i didn't even know there's a google home app yeah yeah so we've there's actually this was part of the announcements today or part of the news coming out of the event at least was that what you're talking about is the, I think they called it the Home Dashboard or something. I don't know. Home Hub. You know, so like as part of designing that or unveiling that new device, they talked about this dashboard, which is exactly what you're talking about.

It's like a home control dashboard. And then the secondary story from that is that this revamped home app, which I'm with you and I felt stupid. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. Like, I guess I didn't realize there was a dedicated Google Home app before. before it sounds like there was but that this is a significant revamp to it so it says the revamped android and ios software promises both a much more organized approach to smart home control and more flexibility for where you take control so it's got a dashboard gives you a clear view of your various home-friendly devices in one place rather than jumping from app to app, organizes them by room. And it also says that you can check on your home from wherever you are and make adjustments on compatible devices.

Well, this goes to show you how much I pay attention. I actually have the Google Home app on my phone, and it's what I use to set up my Google Home. It's confusing nowadays, though, right? it's not yeah easy to keep track of i mean not unless i'm like doing this every single day and and the design language is like way different than the iphone design language like it's all the what do they call it the a card based um i forget what the google has a specific tiles. Tiles or whatever. Yeah, and it doesn't like fit with what I think an app should look like. So I actually had it buried in a folder and I never use it

because all I do is yell at the Google Home to do the things that I need it to do. And that's enough. Yeah, that's enough. That's all I need to do. This is where you would go in and you would set up your home control devices, your lights and that kind of thing. So it makes sense. It makes sense that it's it's there like it i have the ecobee thermostat hooked up to it and i guess i could yell at it to change the temperature or

something if i i felt like it so does the version that you have on your phone is it already updated like is it already this latest one no it doesn't it doesn't have at all what that looks like i mean it looks like a ui refresh you know kind of like i guess there's some big news this last week that amazon had done the same thing i haven't seen that in the um in their app like to to how how you deal with alexis there we go go away um like i haven't seen that at all um but I've seen screenshots of it. And again, I don't know who hangs out in the apps. The whole point of having these voice devices is that you use them. So you don't have to.

Yeah, and so I don't really care what the app has in it. I'm just going to yell at the stupid speaker and have it do what I want it to do. And I've got to say, yelling at a Google speaker is, I mean, the Home Hub, one of the demos they had, like, it recognizes your voice. It figures out who you are. It figures out in context what you want to do. And I think that's, like, if you go back and you look at, like, and watch the show that they put on, like, the demos that they put on, like, this is really what these devices should be. I think Google has a clear vision of what their devices should be. Amazon, I don't think has that.

Maybe they do, but they can't execute it. And only Google can execute it because they have all your data. And then Apple just wants to play you music for whatever random reason. Like it's all it wants to do. So yeah, they got a vision. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that there's a clear and executed upon vision that Google is showing with these with these these products that they announced today. And I really like it. It looks clean.

It looks easy to use. And I'm in a price point. One forty nine for a little touchscreen device you set on your desk or on your countertop and get to use. I think it's great. So I'm very curious. Like you said, you're curious. I'm curious about where this goes with these types of devices. But I think the demos are just great.

So we'll put a link to the whole, like, three-hour long or two-hour long stupid thing. It got 30 minutes worth of pre-show looped music on it. So skip to 30 minutes. It was a good beat though yeah well yeah we listened to it the entire time we were setting up the show tonight but it got me in the zone seth yep yeah we're ready ready for google but yeah so we'll put a link to the video in the show notes you can go check it out and check some of the demos out they have some demos at the end of the, uh, presentation too, like some stage. It was all staged, but they have demos like at like just videos of how the stuff works at the end. And I, I thought those were pretty helpful and pretty cool. So you can see what, uh, what they're trying to promote with, uh, the Google home hub.

So exciting. Yep. Yeah. We'll see if I pull the trigger. I, you know, I'm thinking about it more and more and it's like, I think with the age my kids are, it just becomes one more screen that I have to fight to keep them away from. So maybe I wait a little bit. One thing that's kind of nice about this one is it doesn't, it tries to blend in a little bit more. They put in like ambient light sensors and to figure out like what the temperature of the room was or what the light level of the room was. And they will adjust the background pictures, or your pictures actually, that they display on them, to fit in within the context of your room. So you're not walking into a dark room with this bright Amazon screen on. Amazon.

Torch. Torch mode. Yes. I mean, all right, so Amazon's on their. Torch. Torch mode. Yes, because, I mean, all right, so Amazon's on their second generation of devices, right? They're on their second Echo screen thing. I believe so, yeah.

They don't have this feature. Like, Amazon should be leading this, and Google comes out and says, yeah, yeah, we'll give that a try, and it's going to do all this really cool stuff that Amazon really should have put into their garbage products, but they didn't because they don't care.

Like, I'm just, yeah, I'm done with Amazon. Like, it's just, give me a break, guys. Come on. Like, they should have, Amazon should be leading the pack here, and instead they're just producing barely survivable products. Throwing stuff at the wall. You know, I don't feel like they're doing that anymore. Like, I definitely felt like they were doing that at the beginning.

But, like, if you look at, like, how Google rolled this product out, and then you go and look at, like, what Amazon did the other day with their Echo screen, Echo Show. I keep messing up the name. Echo Show. You go see how the, like, just these are two devices coming out literally weeks apart. And look at what how refined and well-looking google's is for a first try and look at what amazon's done it's like guys you're not even you're not even playing in the same game level here like this is not even

the same not even the same game like google's over there playing uh like rugby or something just knocking people over and Amazon's like putting around on putt putt course with their, their products, like chess and checkers, right? Chess and checkers. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, it's, it's even more brutal than that. Cause it's like the, the things that the Google, the Google, um, home hub is doing is, is not, it's just, it's already, already passed what Amazon just released. Like it's not even, it's not even fair, uh, that, that they come out with this a week later, you know, it's not even fair, uh, that, that they come out with this a week later, you know, like I, I just, I don't know. I'm frustrated with Amazon

and, um, I really like what Google's doing here. So I may, I may jump ship and just change everything overnight in the house over to these Google products and see what happens. I doubt anybody will miss the, the echo. Yeah. Well, another cool thing, actually, that I think is getting much less attention in the broader technology press, but I think kind of a cool story is this Google Home local integration. So they've got it now, their first partner, GE Smart Bulbs, will integrate via Bluetooth, low energy. And it says no hub required. So the Google Home hub is, I guess, the only hub is what they're saying there.

There's no additional hub from the GE Smart Bulbs. They will communicate, I guess, directly with the Google hardware via Bluetooth low energy. So, you know, no network, no internet, no additional hubs. It's just a device-to-device communication. So that's pretty cool. They've got a story up on CE Pro that we'll link to in the show notes. You can go check it out. Julie wrote it, and she talks about, quote, new-ish smart home scheme called Actions on Google Hardware, designed for pairing and communications. At the launch event today, Google announced its first local integration partner, GE Lighting. New made-for-Google bulbs under the ge brand will pair and integrate out of the box with

all google home products including google home classic mini and max as well as the new google home hub announced today cool and and there is one more thing i i they kind of glossed over this and i'm curious is how this works is that uh they announced av integration with the Google Home Hub. So like you can actually, they, I think they, I know Vizio is one of them. Like I have a smart cast TV, but they announced a bunch of other like AV type things. They put a big screen up. I'll grab a screenshot of that and try and put it in the show notes. But like LG was on there too. But if you have one of these TVs that has the integrations with Google Home or Google

Assistant, you can yell at your Google Assistant to play something on Netflix and it just pops up on your TV screen. That's really cool. And again, this is almost a first-gen device. This is what Google's bringing out of the gate. I think Amazon's still trying to... I mean, you can do that with Amazon, but it's taken them a couple of years to get to that point.

Right. So Google is just pushing forward and firing on all cylinders. And, man, I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, Vizio Smartcast allows consumers to enjoy added convenience through Google Home voice control to pause, resume, rewind, fast-forward content playing on their Vizio smart TVs. Users can simply say, yo, Google, followed by the command. It's so much easier to do that rather than say the A word.

Right. This functionality also crosses over to volume control and allows users to switch their TV's input and more. So that's really cool. Yeah. Now, that would be very useful. I can imagine plenty of opportunities that I would use that, certainly here in my own home. And I agree with you that, yeah, it feels like Google is firing on all cylinders when it comes to this stuff.

And it'll be really interesting to see how the Google Home and A-word battle shape up over the coming years. I go back and forth on if I want to get buzzed or not. We're going to come back to that later in the show, but we'll wrap up our news here. All the links and topics that we've discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm. Once again, it's hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you weekly show reminders and occasional updates about what's going on here in the world of home tech. Absolutely.

And don't forget that you can join us live. I usually on a, what is it? A Wednesday night. It's definitely, it's definitely not Wednesday night tonight. It's, it's late,

late, late, late. We're off our schedule this week, but to find out more about that, go to home techfm slash live. And Jason, I have a question for you, sir. Fire away.

I'm going to frame this, and I don't want to be hyperbolic about anything because the news we have these days isn't hyperbolic, and I don't want to come out know, come out with them, but do that kind of thing. So I, I've got to say though, um, today I got a little email from Domonts, right? And, uh, and so Domonts is changing again, how they're, you're, you're going to buy, basically you don't have to buy credits anymore. They're, they're just changing again, their business model, it seems, or not really their business model, it seems. Not really their business model, but how you interact with Domonts as a dealer. And then, of course, back to your customers. Yeah, I mean, they're changing their pricing strategy, right?

Exactly. Yeah, they've done that several times, to say the least. Several times, yes. I kind of laugh. Yeah. So, Jason, my non-hyperbolic question to you is, with these changes, to me, like, Domont seems like, to me, like it's trying to find footing in a market with competitors who are cheaper by hundreds of dollars because those competitors are free, right?

You have Oversea and Control4 for which is um package and ahiji so those are the two three big three big guys in our industry domont's package ahiji and uh what is it oversee from snap av um those are the three like massive companies and two of them are free and uh and and out of those two, uh, I, we've seen them purchase. We've seen them like do all these things business wise, like for stock reasons, I guess. I don't know like why, why you would spend a lot of money to property or stock, but it's something you can do, I guess. But like, we've seen these companies just sit there for the past couple of years and not really do much, I guess. I mean, we've seen a

little bit of integration wise, but I guess my point is when we started talking about RSM and RSM, like it, it was a big deal in our show. We really dove into this. We got, when I remember talking to, uh, to Domonts, like the first time I got super excited about this. I was like, this is awesome. You need this little box. It costs like two bucks a month or something like that. Pop it in. Don't have to worry. It'll email you if something goes down. Done.

And I thought that was great. Same thing I guess you had at the time. You had it with iHege and a couple of other guys that were out there. We got real excited about this stuff. And then it just all kind of like, where did it go? And here's my non-hyperbolic question. Is RSM dead? That's pretty, that's not hyperbolic. Okay. So it is hyperbolic and, uh, and I, it is hyperbolic. So I'm sorry about that. No, I'm not. Definitively.

No, I would say definitively. No, I think you, you made a whole bunch of points there, and a lot of them are true. I think we've, in my opinion, with RSM, remote systems management, if you're not familiar with that acronym, which is a general term to encompass these sort of platforms in the home technology industry, is at a point, I believe, where, yeah, we haven't talked about it a lot recently because we haven't seen a whole lot happen. I mean, Control 4 acquired iHeG sometime. I can't remember. I get dates all screwed up.

But it was a while back. And Pack Edge. Yeah. Pack Edge and then iHeG. They acquired Pack Edge, yeah, a while back. And that came, of course, with a while back and that came of course with backpack but that came with a whole bunch of other there's a whole bunch of other reasons why they would have gone and acquired package the ihege acquisition was ihege was ihege they

were rsm and that was it and they control four went out and purchased them and we haven't seen a whole lot of movement we know generally from the press releases and stuff that the vision is to take the best of Backpack and the best of iHeG and merge those together into one platform. But Control 4 is being pretty quiet about timelines on that. I'm not hearing anything either directly or through our partners that we work with. It's all in, I would say, typical Control 4 fashion. You know, they're going to keep it close to the vest until they have things pretty much fully baked and ready to ship. And so, you know, we could wake up any day and hear that it's ready

to go. And it'll be really interesting to see what that looks like. I do know that they introduced like an updated, I believe an updated user interface to both sides, one or the other to get people sort of used to like, how things are going to be laid out a little bit differently. But I don't think they've really come close to announcing anything related to the broader merger of those platforms. But the point being, like like i think that the low-hanging fruit in the world of remote systems management has been has been picked like integrating with a whole bunch of different pdus so that you have a single pane of glass to go reboot devices on all kinds of different you know power conditioners right that's the point of entry everybody does that now notifications um you know user facing apps like ihe doesn't have that yet or package but

domotes and oversee both have that and and there's a whole bunch of other you know basic functionalities network speed tests basic ping tests to see if devices are on or offline. All of these things are table stakes now. And to get to the next level, I think there are just bigger developments that have to happen. One of the big challenges is, obviously, configuration. There's not a a standard language. Like you think about Control 4's simple device discovery protocol, like something like that, or even that, right? Take that concept and put it into the world of remote monitoring and management to where you could literally plug in like an RSM device into a system and have it go out and detect everything that's on the network and automatically configure and optimize settings.

And that's the next step is easier device discovery, easier configuration. And then I would say more deeper integration into, you know, I'm a firm believer if we look at the smart home five to 10 years out or less, I think at most five to 10 years out, I think we're going to be talking a lot more about integration into not just the things we think about today, like entertainment and lighting and security, but like, what about all of the other subsystems in the home? Like flow is a good example. Like, I think we'll see more of these sort of the smart home tying into, you know, more sophisticated ways into your plumbing and leak detection or into the appliances of your home or smart energy monitoring and management or home health applications, aging in place. There's a lot of applications for remote monitoring and management of the connected home that we haven't even touched yet. And so I think you see companies like SnapAV

investing in partnerships with Lutron. They've got that new raw to, uh, repeater that has oversee baked in like snap AV is making big, big investments in becoming the network for the connected home. That is what they want to do with oversee. And I think that's what control four wants to do with backpack and I Heiji. So devices are becoming more and more connected. That is not going to stop. And the ability to do very sophisticated remote support and troubleshooting and monitoring of all of this connected stuff in the home is going to be a huge part of the future. I think right now we've reached a plateau, but not the peak of RSM. And then I know I'm going on for quite a while here. The last thing I'll say is I do think Domos is an interesting case because you have two, probably literally the two biggest companies in the industry, or at least two of the biggest. I don't know who's bigger,

SnapAV and Control4. And they're both making these investments not as a revenue generator, but as a tool to empower their dealers to provide end users with a better experience. Because they know that it's value-add, and they know that ultimately that's what drives broader adoption of the smart home, and that's where their interests lie. So domotes, I think the economics for them are the hardest to figure out. And I think you see that in their shifting pricing strategies, but I hope they do. I think they're a great platform. I think it's got a lot of promise.

I think they've done some really good things with it. And I wish them success. But I think from a technology perspective, they're all sort of in that same boat of like, all right, we've addressed the low-hanging fruit. What's next? Yeah, and for me, from a simply really subjective viewpoint, like my own viewpoint,

I think Domont is the best out of those three. Just how you get to use it, how you interface it. It's a great platform yeah the app is beautiful like and you can go in and do just about anything it's really easy to go in and turn notifications on and off and set up a whole new system so like i i really like how domats works and i guess i mean i've liked them for a long time i just and hold on is it don't see this is where we're gonna have to go and go back into the, and get somebody that, you know, is overseas or something to send us a recording on how to pronounce domots or domotes. So I'm, I'm bad and I think I pronounce it incorrectly.

I think it's domotes. Okay. So it wouldn't be the first time you're mispronouncing. Domotes, domotes. I go back and forth. I have no idea. It looks like domotes now that you said it. So I'm sitting here staring at the word, saying it, and going, man, I wonder if Jason's right.

You wrote the book. You were one of the co-authors on the book. We did. Yeah, we wrote an extensive insider's guide to remote systems management. We'll include a link to that in the show notes. And it's due for an update, admittedly. It was written a while back, so before the Control 4 acquisition of IG

and things of that nature. But yeah, if you're interested in learning about the fundamentals of the space, it is still 100% relevant in understanding how these platforms are different and what are the pros and cons to all these different feature sets. So yeah yeah we took an extensive look at this space uh to say to say the least right well i mean and so like that's why i asked you these this question is

rsm dead because like i am not um nearly on the front lines like if there's any company that's on the front lines of rsm it's one vision because like it is your company like there there is i i i don't think a company like one vision could possibly i'm trying to think how they would but i don't think they could exist without these rsm solutions in place it'd be much harder yeah well we i mean we we definitely could that that gets into a bigger conversation about like one vision and how you know we see ourselves right yeah and One Vision and how we see ourselves. And certainly, we don't see ourselves as beholden to this technology in order to provide clients with a great human experience readily available 24-7 and help our partners figure out all of the other stuff that goes into mastering service in a home technology business, which is very, very difficult to do. But to your point, yeah, it's an integral part of what we do. And we are emotionally invested in the space very heavily in the sense that we want these companies to succeed and push. And we play nice with all of them. We support all of the platforms. And so we

have daily interactions with all of these tools, and we're pretty up to speed with what's going on. And so in the sense that we haven't seen a whole lot of innovation on the technology side as of late, I would totally agree with you. Do I think it's a sign that that category has peaked? By no means do I think that. I think we've only seen the beginning and we're at a bit of a plateau here, if anything. And these companies like Control4 and SnapAV and hopefully Domots as well, or Domots or however the heck you say it. It's called Chow Me, we'll continue to push and innovate. And ultimately it, it's a, it's a great, it's a great category. I think it, it, it has an integral role to play

in the future of, of the, uh, of the smart home. Yeah. And I, I gotta say like, I'm, I'm labeling this like the hyperbolic section of a question here, but like I am, uh, optimistic about RSM. I think I've always been like gung ho about it. I think it's a great tool to have. I think right now it's a specialty tool and I'd rather see it be a tool. Like it's, it's to me, it's like one of those, those like flesh cutters, right? like everybody in our industry should have flesh cuts yeah you need those uh and you need rsm like but not every tech picks them up right off the desk they're on my desk it's not a joke um all right so you need flesh cutters jason has them you need rsm jason has it too but the problem is is not every technician carries flesh cutters right and and you need flush cutters. Jason has them. You need RSM. Jason has it too.

But the problem is, is not every technician carries flush cutters, right? And you end up with a lot of scratches on your arm if somebody doesn't have those and they build a rack. One of my biggest pet peeves ever, and all the pros know exactly what you mean when you say that. Yeah. So, like, I want it to be, I want RSM to be more like, less like flush cutters and more like a drill. Yeah. I want it to be that. And I guess I'm waiting for whatever that big feature is.

Or, I mean, Jason, honestly, like this could come out of left field. It could be not one of these three players that introduces an RSM type product that takes the industry by storm and does more and better for lower cost? I don't know how you'd be less than cheap free, but like, I, I, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a very good question. Could still be potentially disrupted. I think. Yeah. My, my money's on the current, current players just because it is such a specialized market still.

And I think it is going to be for quite a while. Yeah. Um, and you know, these guys all have a huge headstart versus anyone who would be entering the space from scratch, so to speak. But I think to your point, yeah, like it, it's what a lot of us want. I know it's what I want as well is to see RSM become more assumed, like just baked in, like it's on every job. And yeah, if you get a client who's, you know, doesn't, not comfortable for whatever reason with providing you that remote access, then you've got surefire ways to disable it.

But it should be, should be like an, almost like an opt out, not an opt in, right? Like in a, in a loose sense. And I think that it makes me think of the potential of a company like Control 4, given how deep their roots are in the control space, and they've got these processors going into every job. And what if RSM and the programming and configuration became just almost like one thing. Like they're sort of baked together and you put the processor in and it knows exactly what's what because you had to configure it to tell it what's going on in the house. And so there's already a baked in knowledge of the system, of how things are connected, and how could that be leveraged in new ways to make the remote monitoring and troubleshooting even more powerful than it is today. So there's a lot of different ways you could go with that, but I think that these companies are invested in trying to grow the market, like scale, like really grow

the market. And I think they know that the way to do that is to make their dealers more efficient and to make their end users more happy so that they have good things to say about the professionally connected home, which has traditionally been a challenging thing for, for our industry. And we all know that. So I think, I think RSM plays a really important role in all of that. Yep. No, I, I, I've been quote unquote out of the industry for roughly two years, not out of the industry, but like still like not my daily job is not going out in a service truck like it used to be right right so um but i still get calls yeah i i know there's still problems i know there's still things that go on always i'll go out on the weekend and visit a house and reboot something for somebody and you know that that is absolutely livid with what's going on. It's like, you know, you've got good stuff. You've got a good installer.

This is just frozen up. It's a computer, you know? And I can see just by that the stuff that comes to me. Like, RSM would be huge for these guys if they would use it. So, like I said, I'm optimistic about the space. I think it has a... I can see kind of just talking to you, like can kind of understand like why Control 4 and SnapAV,

what they could possibly do next, like what would the next level thing be? I'm kind of dreaming up some ideas in my head. And I think there could be some big things there. And before we started the show, we were talking a little bit about like VR. Like two years ago, we were all hearing about VR, and Oculus got bought by Facebook,

and they were going to do this, that, and the other. It's almost like followed that trajectory. We heard all this hype. We heard all these things about these companies, and then nothing. They just all kind of went dark for a while, and they were announcing little things here and there, but nothing consequential.

The articles are coming out now like is vr dead you know and yeah and then the other day i think oculus actually released a product and and people were starting to use it and say oh wow this is this is actually pretty cool and i can see how this could be used it's just kind of the early days of whatever that is is starting to sink in to to people who are actually using the product so i think that might be where we are now like are we in that lull i hope we are like before it starts you know to take rock it off um but you know i am i can be worried at the same time that yeah it just keeps going down and we lose i don't i would hate to lose like a third a third company like we we what's going to happen

to domas domotes if if they can't figure out their pricing structure and they go out of business? And then we're left with two giant companies to kind of, like, make two competing standards that don't actually maybe not work with each other very well. So, like, that's kind of what I'm worried about. Like, Domots seems to, like, you could put the Domots in on a Snap AV install. You could put Domots in on a Control control for install and you're good to go yeah but it's that's it's a little bit tougher to go back and forth between the other two yep no absolutely and it's a fascinating landscape and i'm sure we'll let's continue to keep an eye on it because i i think you raise an interesting question and it is an interesting time in rsm in

its own right even though we haven't seen a lot of innovation, to sort of think about and speculate what are the next big things and how does this all play out is something that, shoot, I mean, I'm thinking about it all the time, right? And so always happy to always enjoy these conversations and could definitely keep going. But in the interest of time, let's move on. We'll wrap that section of the show up. And let's jump into a beautiful, really cool picture of the week this week. And this is friend of the show, James from HomePlay. James is a very, very good friend of the show, supporter, very active in our Slack channel, The Hub,

and sent this out. He's doing a revamp of their showroom here that's pretty extensive. Hold on, Jason. Is this a rendering? You beat me to it. I don't want to be fooled again. You beat me to it. You beat me to it.

I don't think this is a rendering. You know why? Construction dust in the blue tape? Scroll to the bottom. Yeah, you'll see why. I think this is actually real. Look at the bottom. Look at the very bottom. Are those flush cutters? Those are flush cutters right there. We've got an episode title here. I think we do. No, but this is really cool. I don't even know what to call it, really. It's their sign. It's the Home Play sign.

Yeah. And you can tell it's got some nice lighting coming down on it. But what they've done is they've built this into like a plant wall where there's all these really cool plants coming out of the wall. And when James posted the picture, he acknowledged that he's got some trimming to do. It's a little bit overgrown on some parts of the logo, but you can see once that's trimmed back and that HomePlay logo is really popping out of there, what a cool idea. And then they've got a couple of the outdoor speakers at the top you know the ones that look like malibu lights now that are so popular so they're going to have some music

playing here as well and really really cool i i love what they did with this i think we'll have to talk to him a little bit about this when whenever he gets done and can actually rest and breathe uh but i i mean this is what a great i, if this is what I think it is, what a great idea on how to feature outdoor audio. Like, um, we thought about this in our showroom, uh, and we were thought about like building up a planter, like a fake planter inside and putting one of those subs inside that planter and then fake plants and that kind of thing but if you don't have the space for that this this is a great idea like this is a wall and he's actually built in his logo into that that wall with the landscaping built into it right so like yeah and it's it's

not it's fake plants so it's not like you have to water them or do anything like that and uh man he's he's he's thought this through because look at the lighting the lighting's not only on the top but look in the floor yeah i see it's down there up lighting there yep you're right yeah he's done it done a great job with this so i can't wait to talk to him hopefully more in depth about what he's done here because this is this is going to be a really cool showroom whenever you finish and this is not a rendering like i see some real pictures of the whole thing yeah not renderings all right really really good accurate realistic looking renderings i might add right yeah totally totally fooled us we were just totally looking around like oh wow he's gonna put the theater over here and this and the other but hey if you if you are in the hub james is actually posting some of those pictures

up uh most every week, like he'll post a couple of pictures about progress and this, that, and they go. This is like the end of it, right? This is where he's doing the trim work and putting things together. And I saw his theater screen go up the other day. And yeah, so this is like where it all comes together. And man, it looks like a ton of work work but i do not envy him for that but uh it looks like it's going to be beautiful when he gets done too yep i agree all right well moving on here's seth we've got a we've got a mailbag entry and uh i i'm excited for this one because i mentioned just just a few minutes ago in the show i'm really struggling now we've got this we've got

this alexa buzzer where I get that shock in my ears every time I say it. And it's working. Shock therapy, yeah. It's definitely got me on edge when I feel that word coming up in a sentence. But then I'm like, I don't want to say the A word because every time I say that, I feel like an idiot. So this is a dilemma that I'm having in my head as a weekly podcast co-host. And Peter Davidson wrote in actually about something different that we're not going to touch on here, but I loved his last couple of sentences in the email. It was a sort of a by the way thing. And Peter writes, by the way, ignore Richard. If the product happens to have the same name as the wake word,

then he needs to turn his attention to the manufacturer. He goes on to say, I do listen to Richard's podcast too. He ran it a couple of weeks ago about this regarding the rest of the products using another product name than the wake word, I totally agree with Richard. But I think I'm going to take Peter's advice, and I hope that doesn't make post-production too painful for you. I think you've just given up on the dropout in post-production, right? Oh, yeah. It's just the buzzer.

I just put the buzzer on you now. Which is always a couple of seconds late, so it doesn't actually solve anything other than making me more self-conscious. Anyways, I'm going to go with Peter's advice. I am going to continue to say Alexa until further notice. Thank you. Well, I agree with both Peter and Richard like it doesn't

need to be the wake word I managed to not wake up Google the entire time we were talking about a Google event and I think Amazon should strive for the same goal that's that's your last Amazon jab for the week?

That's it. Yeah, exactly. Definitely met your quota. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week or great ideas or hyperbolic questions, uh, for the show, give us a shout out. Our email address is feedback at home tech.fm or visit us at home tech.fm slash feedback, and you can fill out the online form. All right. that's right. And we want to, as we always do, Seth, give a big thank you to everybody who supports the show here, but especially to those of you who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support

to learn how you can support our podcast for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over five bucks, we'll give you a shout out on the show, but every single pledge will get you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside conversations about all things home technology. Yep. And Jason, I don't know if you've looked over at the patron page anytime soon, but we're getting dangerously close to having to do video. I mean, we say that. Are we?

Yeah. I know we've been inching up. Yeah. We've been inching up. Oh, I guess I'm not logged in to see what we're at. I think it's like 2.18 right now. I've got to go back and look at it. For whatever reason.

2.19. 2.19, yeah. So we're getting closer and closer and closer, and I'm definitely going to try and do some video work and figure out that process. I'm going to get more serious about it, so we're going to have to figure out. It's time.

Yeah, we've got to do it. We're going to have to pull the trigger one of these days. So we're getting close. Oh, boy. So the $250 goal, we promised to do Hangouts. We're not doing Hangouts because Hangouts is garbage. Yeah, we're definitely not doing Hangouts. It's like the worst podcast i've ever seen in my life time to update some copy yeah get on that this week um but yeah we're gonna do something with video and make it pretty cool for the show and uh yeah so that's that's um that's what we're

hoping to do and if you can uh support the show in in that way head on over to hometech.fm support and check out our patron page if you can't help the show financially we'd appreciate you give us a rating on itunes or the podcast app of your choice uh you know five stars that always is a good rating df i mean any rating's good and any feedback is great but five stars is what we're going for. So, you know, five stars. That's it. Absolutely.

Make it happen. Make it happen. All right, Seth. Well, another fun episode. Appreciate you being flexible with me this week. I am headed out to the ASEAN conference here this week. So we're recording on an off night and, uh, I'm looking forward to that. We'll report back next week. Ozzy own, if you're not familiar, one of

the big buying groups here in the professional home technology industry, and they always put on good shows with, you know, speakers and stuff like that. And so, um, hopefully I'll learn a thing or two. I look forward to going and meeting some dealers out there and having a good time. So it is here in Denver. I will not be traveling, but I'll be at dinners both nights this week. Appreciate you being flexible and look forward to reporting back next week. No worries. And yeah, have fun, have fun there in Denver. Maybe, maybe is it downtown? Are you going to get to ride the scooters? It's, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to see if there's any bird sightings downtown. Actually, I'm very curious.

There's a couple of stories in my feeds this week about bird, and they're trying to infest Seattle now, I think, as their next target. But I'm still not 100% sure if they're in Denver or not. With money burning coal in my pocket, I was this close to buying one of those Mii scooters off of uh amazon so yeah they're for sale on amazon you can find them and uh they are fun and i i definitely could could have used one so yeah uh have fun riding scooters if you get a chance this week yep will do man all right i look forward to uh to chatting with you next week all right sounds good thanks everybody for listening

and we'll talk to you next week all right take care of that