HomeTech.fm - Episode 255 - Projects Project with Anthony Raynor

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Jason goes solo to cover the week’s news and a Projects Project interview with long time listener and supporter of the show Anthony Raynor.

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 26th from Denver, Colorado. I am Jason Griffin, and I am not joined this week by my typical partner in crime, Seth Johnson. Seth had some stuff come up, and so he will not be able to join us but i think we've got a great show nonetheless we had anthony rayner on who has been a longtime supporter of the show and a great friend of ours here at the home tech podcast and we were really happy to get him on to help us out with another installment of our projects project series which is something that i don't think we've done enough of i always have a lot of fun recording these episodes. And it's a nice sort of opportunity to take a step away from what we typically talk

about and looking at different companies and products and a lot of the big players out there and what they're doing. And really look at it from a different vantage point, like how is this technology actually translating to use cases in the home. And I think Anthony was a great example of that. He's got quite a bit going on. He's definitely been through his share of trials and tribulations as well. So be sure to stay tuned for that. That will be coming up here very shortly in the episode. But before we do that, why don't we go ahead and jump in to some home tech headlines. Cedia Expo returns to Denver, Colorado this year. We want to see you there. This 30th Cedia Expo will feature engaging speakers, more new education

than ever, and four days packed with opportunities for growth and connection. Register today. This, of course, from a Cedia campaign that went out, and it's hard to believe, but it is that time of year again. We are just about five months away, I believe, from Cedia being upon us. I am excited to have it here in my hometown of Denver. I know it's a great venue here, and I look forward to having a bunch of folks come in here to my hometown, and I know it'll be another great event. Speaking of Cedia, they did make a shift here with their keynote this year they just released this information this week and a reading here from ce pro cdia is shaking it up in 2019 with an opening keynote address on quote disruptive thinking end quote presented by innovator, inventor, and disruptor Luke Williams.

And Julie Jacobson over at CE Pro voiced a similar reaction I have to the word disruptor. I know it is a very cliched term, but all the same, no matter how you feel about that term, this gentleman definitely does appear very credentialed, and this will be interesting. It says, Julie goes on to say, it's the first time in a long time that the association has plucked the opening act from academia and business innovation rather than home technology and futurism. Williams is a professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at NYU's Stern School of Business and executive director of the university's W.R WR Berkeley Innovation Lab. So again, certainly credentialed.

I did take a few minutes to go on. I think CEPro had a link we'll include in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 255. And there's a video of Luke Williams giving a presentation and he certainly appears to be an engaging speaker and has some interesting ideas. So he's been part of a product development, pretty famous product development company called Frog Design, a product strategy and design firm. He serves as a fellow for Global Innovation, international bestseller with the book Disrupt, Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business. He's invented

30-odd products and lectured in 21 countries. So again, pretty credentialed guy here. And I think, you know, in my opinion, it's a nice shift. I've been generally a fan of what CD has been doing with regards to their opening keynotes in recent years, but I think this will be a nice, fresh angle of attack for them. So I'll look forward to learning more about that. Shifting gears here, Sony is finally nearing the release of its 2019 TV line. The company has detailed pricing and availability for the sets, and the 8K capable Master Series Z9G will start at $13,000 for an 85-inch model. Again, that's $13,000 for an 85-inch, so definitely not cheap. The series

will arrive in June, and brace yourself for this one, $70,000 for the 98-inch Star attraction. So again, that's the Master Series Z9G, $70,000 for that, and that won't come as a huge surprise to most of the professionals in the audience. We certainly know these TVs can get up there. Samsung's got their Q900 coming in at like a hundred grand. I know we've talked about that on the show. And so these are flagship TVs. They're not designed for your average consumer. This article from Engadget is kind of bemoaning the high price tag. But look, ultimately, these companies put these TVs out for a reason. And these are flagship sets. They're not designed for everybody to go out and buy, but they're designed to get people like me talking about

them, which they have succeeded in doing. And I have no doubt that these will be very beautiful TVs. I've always been a big fan of Sony's displays, and I'm sure these will be no exception. Moving on here, Facebook is working on a voice assistant to rival the likes of Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google Assistant, according to CNBC, who is citing several people familiar with the matter.

A team based out of Redmond, Washington, has been spearheading the effort to build the new AI assistant, according to two former Facebook employees who left the company in recent months. It is unclear how exactly Facebook envisions people using the assistant, but of course it could potentially be used in the company's portal video chat, smart speakers, as well as the Oculus headsets and other future projects. So it'll be really interesting to see what they come up with there and probably even more interesting to see if people actually adopt it given all of the challenges Facebook has had with privacy concerns. Amazon quietly launched a free ad-supported music streaming service last week for owners of the company's

Echo speakers. The new service offers access to about 2 million songs through playlists and music stations. The Amazon Music Unlimited service the company offers for $8 a month offers about 50 million songs to put the two in comparison. So clearly Amazon hoping to make the service, you know, keep people sticky onto their platform. We talked about this, I think it was last week or the week before. I think it's getting a little bit confusing with Amazon. They've now got a few different services that you can use for streaming music, but, uh, options are always good. So definitely go check this out. If you are an echo user, speaking of free streaming options, YouTube music is now offering a free ad-supported music experience to anyone with a Google Home device. With this offer, you'll be able to play curated stations from YouTube Music.

If you want extra features and more customizations, you will need to upgrade to YouTube Music Premium for $9.99 a month after a 30-day free trial. The YouTube Music Premium subscription is completely ad-free. I think the big thing to understand here as I read the story is that the free version that you'll be able to have access to does appear to only give you access to curated stations. So for example, you can't call up a specific artist or a specific song. If you want the ability to do that, you will have to upgrade to the premium version, but all the same, a great free option for anyone out there using the Google Home. That will do it for our news this week. All of the links and topics that

we've discussed on this episode can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 255. Again, that's hometech.fm slash 255. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter where we'll send you weekly show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech.

Also, don't forget, you can typically join us live in the chat room. We record on Wednesday evenings around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern. Find out room at hometech.fm slash live. So with all of that, by way of introduction to the episode, let's go ahead and jump into our conversation again. This is our latest installment of the Projects Project series, and we had a longtime friend and supporter of the show, Anthony Rayner, come on and join us. We hope you enjoy. Hey, Anthony, welcome to the show. How are you? I am doing great.

Appreciate you taking the time to join us. I know we've interacted numerous times. You've been a longtime supporter of the show, and so we really appreciate you listening. And we've been looking forward to having you on to talk about what you've got going on in your home. And it's quite a bit. It's an extensive amount of home technology there, and we look forward to jumping in. But before we do that, why don't we take a quick moment? Maybe you can give a quick introduction to our listeners and just talk about kind of who you are and what your interest is in the smart home.

Well, actually, as we were just talking, I'm probably one of the few people who I actually don't work in technology. For about 20 years, I was a paramedic and my wife and I were living in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. And she goes, yeah, I know you're was a paramedic and my wife and I were living in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. And she goes, yeah, I know you're a flight paramedic and, you know, helicopters crash and we're getting married and you're going back to school, by the way. And so we know that is very high on the spousal acceptance factor. So I went back to do PA with a goal. And you'll find the irony in this to give me more employment opportunities with a goal of moving to Colorado. Oh, OK. Her father lived in Castle Pines. And so the job came available one hour from where she went to high school.

And so now, 10 years later, we are here and her father in Castle Pines. Yeah, he lives in our neighborhood. So no one's in Colorado. But even though I work in healthcare technology, you know, still kind of my hobby, you know, very much so since the days of DOS and, you know, you name it. Home server was kind of my big kick there for a while. And that kind of died off. And in about 2014, with a little kerfuffle with ADT, I know that's never happened with anyone. Kind of started getting a home automation and started picking up your podcast, really not too many episodes from

when you first started. And like I said, you know, went back, picked up from number one and been listening ever since. Amazing. Well, we really appreciate that and, uh, loyal again, supporter of the show. It means a lot. It really does. Hard to believe we've been at it for five years and that you've listened to the whole catalog is impressive. So thank you for that. And thank you for the intro as well. Let's jump in and start to talk about your house. But before we jump into the technology, can you give us sort of a general feel of the physical environment? So both the physical environment of the home itself, and also like talk about other users. I know that's a big thing, right? For any, anyone

developing a, a smart home plan, either do it yourself or through a professional, you've got other people in the house to, to think about. So walk us through just kind of the overall physical space and user landscape. Yeah, our home, it's, it's, I guess, around 2,800 square feet. It's pretty typical for the area, two stories. And once again, the spousal acceptance factor. I originally started after my little tiff with ADT. I think my wife, when I was temporarily in Montana, she's, I would like to have a security system.

I said, well, that's great. So she contacted them. So for the minimal price of $45 a month to use the existing control panel in the rental home that we had, two motion sensors and one keypad, you know, 45 bucks a month. And we went to move a year later, they were going to charge me to move the equipment. Some of which, like say was already in the home. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. So I searched around and ultimately settled on Lowe's Iris because I'm kind of the one, you know, this is kind of back in the Kickstarter days too, you know, when you never know what would really come to fruition.

And where we currently live, Lowe's is literally two miles down the road. So we've done a ton of renovations on the home. So I was like, you know, hey, I got to get some lumber, you know, $20 sensor. You'll never see it in the bill. So it kind of, you know, met many needs. You know, it's one app. The first kind of iteration was really heavy around the web portal. And it was comprehensive.

And I really appreciated that. But, you know, so in our home, my wife never really latched on to iris, never really used it for security. You know, if we left, I would do it. But she never, I mean, literally never did use it. And so, you know, in the home, I did have, you know, all the windows with contact sensors, motion sensors, cameras, controlled garage door, irrigation, thermostats, kind of the more kind of average user did not have a lot of automations because I even tried to take our in our home in the main, I guess you call it the den. There's two rooms in the home with no overhead lighting. And that happens to be one like, well, I'll control the lamps with automation.

Yeah, that lasted about one day. So it was kind of my little toy to mess with. And now that, as we know, Iris is dead, I had to find a replacement. And so she had the name. Brand recognition was simply safe. And so in our home, so now we kind of had this great divide. You know, the wife acceptance factor for security, her playground, if you will, was simply safe. And now my home automation, home control.

So I guess we'll get into that later, how we've done it. But my needs are kind of more typical, of course, throw in there a smattering of Google and Echo and all the other things that so many more people do have. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So sounds like the kerfuffle with ADT there that you alluded to a couple of times was related to sort of moving out of one home and into the one that you're currently at. Am I understanding that correctly? Yes, sir. I was not going to pay that much money for so few devices. Yeah, I understand. And especially not with all of the options and around the time that you were making that move, it was like the heyday of home automation hubs. And I speak about it like it's ancient history.

It was only five years ago, but it really, a lot has changed. And as we've seen, Iris being a perfect example, you know, things have come and gone, right? So I know you were recently on the Home On podcast, and we've got a lot of crossover, I think, in our audience, and so some listeners may recognize your voice. And I know you've talked about this sort of migration away from Iris. Let's hit that really quickly, because it sounds like when you first moved in, that was really what you based the whole system around. First of all, what's been your perspective on how that whole phase-out or closure, basically, of Iris was handled by the company as somebody who was directly impacted by it? You know, I guess if you want the underbridge version, it's home on number 117 with Richard Gunther. And that was kind of the inside joke in that it was not a rebate. It's home on number 117 with Richard Gunther. And that was kind of the inside

joke in that it was not a rebate. It was a redemption. And in some ways, you know, I guess Lowe's did redeem themselves. They handled it very well because I was thinking about this on one of your recent podcasts. I guess I won't name it by name, but there was a certain very flashy remote. And you know which one I'm talking about. It costs about $300. And those people were very much left out in the cold. And so with, you know, I guess Lowe's, you know, I mean, really, they gave you pretty much full price. And these were devices I'd been using for three or four years. They allowed you to, you know, to keep the equipment, gave you a couple of free months of service at the end. So I really, I mean, I realistically just could not complain whatsoever.

And so I'd already been thinking about the transition anyway, because they were kind of that, you know, proprietary platform kind of in that silo. And it's like, you always want that next level thing. So in some ways, I was frustrated and it was already thinking about moving away from them anyway. So I had a tentative plan to begin with and didn't want to open my email. Well, there it was. So, you know, they kind of forced the hand. But with them to close it, they had a new CEO come in just a few months back. And I'm sure he kind of, you know, helped that along. But in general, I simply cannot complain. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's something Seth and I talk

about fairly frequently on the show is sort of the buyer beware mentality in the smart home. That's not to excuse the companies that exit and leave customers high and dry. And it's not to say that it's not a big deal, but certainly when you get into the smart home, especially when you're dealing with newer products and newer companies, it is sort of something you have to build into the equation. And as you've pointed out, you know, there are tons of different shades of gray when it comes to how these companies handle the sunset of certain products. And it does seem to me, as a sort of outside observer who was not directly impacted by it, that Lowe's did a pretty decent job of handling that sunset. So that's good to hear.

Well, let's dive in and talk a little bit more specifically about some of the technology that you've got going on in your home. SimpliSafe obviously been around for quite a while. It sounds like the security thing was a big factor for your wife. I mean, how have you found the acceptance factor of security and generally just using SimpliSafe alongside of everything else that you have going on? Well, I have to say SimpliSafe, the acceptance factor is high because I know that because she actually uses it. And, you know, we both had the app on our phone and I'll get an alert, you know, someone's activated, someone has, you know, unactivated, someone's at

the front door. And I was fortunate enough to get a bundle on Amazon. I mean, really, I think it was a $500 bundle and I bought it for like 190 bucks0, and it included a free $99 camera, so that was really a win. The only downside, the monitoring package we have is $25 a month, so long-term, I guess that could add up, but for my wife's peace of mind, the fact that she has it, it's a good product. One thing I noticed in the Iris days, you know, the version two products, they would pair pretty well. The version one products, which I have majority of, that was a lesson in

pain, honestly. Pairing may work very well, or you may just beat your head against the wall, especially their cameras, but with SimpliSafe, not to say this newest generation is a better looking product. The app is a little rudimentary, but I mean, payer, I mean, it's like instantaneous. It really works well. So I can't complain about that at all. I'm always the deal hunter. So, you know, looking for the eBay cameras, you know, 170 bucks and I get them for $70 and the bundle packages, but SimpliSafe, it's really been a good fit for us. And the thing about it, she likes it. It works simply. So that is her half of the, quote, security.

So the other half now is my playground. And in some of your prior podcasts, you kind of talked about home automation versus home control. I never put as much thought into that, but now I have to think about it more. And I guess at some point we'll get into where I am now, because as I transitioned from Myers, well, the security part was easy. She goes, hey, what do you think about SimpliSafe? And I was like, well, you recognize the name, that's a win. So like many people, you know, when you invest a fair amount of money in the Lowe's products, and like say they refunded me, and I'm going to tell you, I was refunded $1,800.

And so about the same time just happened to be the wonderful county taxes for our cars came in, and you want to guess how much that was? I'm going to guess it was about $1,800. $1,800. Exactly. Synchronicity. There you go. It just infuriates us. But still, as I got the replacement parts in, you know, for simply safe at first. And I said, well, there's still a number of items I would like to continue to use.

The thermostats, the garage door openers, the Schlage locks. You know, those were the highest priced items. And, you know, then I don't remember if it's Amazon sent to us or Lowe's said Amazon was giving a discount on the SmartThings hub. I'm like, okay, that seems like a logical transition to that product. It's widely known. I use a lot of Android products. I have a Samsung phone. And so I received it and, you know, the thermostats, they paired with a bit of difficulty, but then I discovered that they didn't have a scheduler. I'm like, what? And then I could get one garage door open to pair or garage door opener to pair. And the other one just wouldn't pair simply or easily. And it wasn't reliable about giving me whether the garage door was open or closed,

and that's kind of a big deal, obviously. Right. And then lastly, the door lock, I never could get that to pair. And then the last other, I guess, higher-priced item was the irrigation controller. Nope, no luck on that one. I come to find out no luck on anything with that one. It's a smart thing. That hub, I bought it for just over $50.

So it was not a big deal, but it's kind of just sitting there. And ultimately, it received, I guess, as frequent a lot, the Living with Iris Forum. And obviously, it talks about Lowe's Iris. And for years now, that's where you went for the low-zirus information, help and so forth. But now that, you know, I guess the death watch for iris is over, it's dead. Now, there's many subforms in there. And a lot of people have talked about their transition. A lot of those were looking at Hubitat.

And so Hubitat had a sale, as they often do. And I think the other day it was even cheaper than before. And so the Hubitat, and they have a wonderful community. The four members are so helpful in that Hubitat, and it really just, I think a couple of weeks or so, they put out some initial drivers for a lot of the Irish products. So what I thought was basically a number of products, well over 50 that could not be used again, Hubitat,

like in a couple of weeks, well over 50 that could not be used again. Hubitat, you know, like in a couple of weeks came out and now I've been able to use pretty much every one of my old items except for the irrigation controller and a door lock that supposedly can work, but I just cannot get it to pair. But there's like, say once again, the, uh, four members, I've just need to get the time, uh, you know, to go and try their suggested methods to try to pair. Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like your journey there with SmartThings in the middle was pretty short-lived.

And you've got that sort of sitting off to the side now and have migrated over to Hubitat. And Hubitat's an interesting one to me. We had them on the show. I was looking while you were talking back at episode 208, so not terribly long ago. And I thought it was an interesting approach, particularly with their focus on kind of local processing. what Hubitat is and what sort of, I guess, aside maybe from the fact that a bunch of other folks who were migrating from Iris, you know, that was obviously attractive to you. But is there anything other than that about the platform that sort of drew you toward Hubitat? Yeah. If you go back and look on the averageguy.tv website, Jim Collison and Mike Weger have a weekly podcast. And it was last week

that I was on that podcast with Patrick Stewart. No relation to Captain Picard, obviously, is the big joke. And, you know, he's kind of honestly forget what his actual role is, but he provided a lot of information. And I guess their main focus is that they are local hub, more secure, no outside control. And by being local that their response, you know, their, I guess their actions occur much quicker. So when I purchased that hub and I measured it earlier today, so when I first took it out of the box, it's three inches by three inches, and I believe about three quarters of an inch thick. And I'm holding this hub in my hand, and I'm like, it's like somebody has sent you an empty shell. I'm like, how can this thing work being so small, so light? And I think you sent me, let's say, a fake product.

There's no way this can work. So they administrate everything basically through a browser window. It's assigned a local address on your network, all local control, no outside control. I guess the biggest analogy I gave during that podcast was it's like, I guess, tweaking your router. You're on a web page and it looks very much like that, but at the same time, it's very powerful. They do have some dashboards, which is really interesting that if you, and you can have many dashboards. I have one for basically a security dashboard, more of a home control dashboard for media and so forth. But the real big key of that is they accept many comers. They accept smart

things, I guess, by Zigbee, Z-Wave, now Iris products, and they just continue to expand from there. And on the show, Patrick even mentioned that they are now one of the biggest requested items was a phone app. Now, I still assume that you'll have to be on the local network because they do not allow outside profit or I guess outside control, nothing, no server. It's private to you only on your own network. And once again, they accept all comers, all products. So in my case, having so, you know, products that were not, you know, say just HomeKit or just smart things and so forth, it was pretty much a win for me. Now, I have been following this story a little bit, but I haven't been deep down in the trenches like you have, obviously. My understanding is that Lowe's, Iris, they open sourced.

I know that they open sourced a lot of the code for what was really behind Iris. Is that how Hubitat has been able to sort of attract people over, or is it more of an off-the-shelf integration with the devices that you're using to make it work? Like, do you know how they're doing that in the back end? I don't, but I don't think it has a relation to Lowe's Iris. I guess they're, I don't know if it's really open source. It's released on GitHub, what the proper term is, but it's called Arcus. Yep. And I believe they had their, I guess, quote, drivers. They're fairly generic Z-Wave and Zigbee drivers.

So I believe they had that done before the code was released. And I'll suggest that what you, as a future guest, is there's a guy from the Living with Iris forums that I happened upon and I follow him on Twitter also. So he is actually actively developing within Arcus and he will post some photos, some posts on Iris as well as Hubitat, how he is progressing in his attempts to, I guess, proceed with the open source, the virus, which is called Arcus. But yeah, but I believe the two are separate. Like I said, he's a really, obviously a much more technical guy than I am, but he might be able to, I say, come on the show and get much more down in the weeds with you when Seth can be here. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Get the two really smart guys in the room, right? Cool. So you've alluded actually a couple of times now to an irrigation controller that you've got. And I see in my notes here from our preparation, it was an Orbit irrigation controller. And I got to admit, I'm not familiar with that one. So talk us through what sort of the lay of the land is with that specific piece of technology you've got. For the most part, a lot of the orbit there, kind of, I guess, the default brand at Lowe's or Home Depot, and most of them are dumb, you know, irrigation controllers. We know how those go.

You can make no sense of the schema on how to operate them. So when I had the phone app, you know, within IRS, it was like, great, you know, you're outside and, you know, there's a bad sprinkler head and you cut on the water and you find the bad sprinkler head from your phone, you turn it off so you don't have to keep running back and forth to the house. And that was just like, I'm standing on my back deck and I'm like, I want to irrigate the backyard. And it's like, boom, and on my phone, it is just the most wonderful thing. It's really the simple things that bring you pleasure just like you know changing the thermostat temperature from the couch when my wife comes by and turns it down and i'm freezing to death and i say nothing and turn it back up

you know that is allowed um but with iris like say it that brand just happens to be and i think they have a generic wi-fi version it's probably just obviously just rebranded to iris and so that code is released so hopefully someone on hubitat that is much smarter than i can resurrect that product within hubitat and i'll still have the ability to use it because some of those items are like well i just need to limp them along and that's what either smart things or hubitat uh you know why i purchased them and then yesterday i'm once again the deal hunter and so one of those two garage door controllers have been kind of problematic anyway and yesterday courtesy of thrifter here's the chamberlain myq garage door opener is usually like 80 or 90 dollars on sale for 50 bucks snapped up two of

them and i guess still the racio irrigation controller, if I see a decent enough sale, if I can't get some of those, some nice person to develop those drivers for my orbit controller to use on Hubitat or SmartThings, I don't really care. That'll probably be the one I'll go to there. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting hearing you talk about, you know, having these different platforms in the home and Hubitat and smart things. And I was having a conversation, I was at a birthday party for one of my daughter's friends recently, and was talking to somebody there about my work in the smart home. And they were asking, you know, how do you get started? And I said, well, the beautiful thing nowadays is like, A, the investment is much more minimal than it used to be even five years ago, let alone 10. And also like you can start and sort of piece things together and you don't have to go whole hog and really, you know, throw down on a comprehensive system to start. You can kind of mishmash and put things together. In fact, I think you use the word mishmash in your email to me as

we were preparing for the show. So it sounds like you've been able to successfully navigate that and, again, sort of look for those deals when they come up and piece things together as you go, which I think is a great way to approach it these days. And like I said, something that you really couldn't do nearly as efficiently even five short years ago. One thing Richard brought up in the podcast was he was talking about really the hubless home automation system. And now, of course, in our home, of course, we had a number of Amazon Echo devices. I will not say the A word. I hope everyone's devices went off. Yeah, we do enough of that for you.

And yeah, don't ring the bell. We know how that works. But I do have, of course, a number of Google Home hubs. I do have a Google Home. I have a Google Home hub, have a Lenovo smart display and so forth being, you know, kind of the big Google guy. And so I did set up some of these items within the Google app or the Google Home Hub, if you will, and it can share, you know, like my son, my wife, you know, myself sharing that ability, you know, to use those, call each other on Duo and so forth. And let me tell you, that is one hot mess right there. Because not only does it do that, and there's probably some settings down in the, you know, the finer areas of the app,

but it shares the calendars and it shares like everything that may do or do not want shared. But it was really to get the voice training correct. Oh, what a mess that was. But still, you know, the app, like say the person I'm not into tech, you know, a working tech professional like you and Seth are, but still, you know, a working tech professional like you and Seth are. But still, you know, probably a little more abilities than, you know, maybe the, you know, the average person would be. Because on Hubitat, the last, you know, podcast I got, Jim, the host asked, would you put Hubitat in your mother's home? And I'm like, absolutely not.

My mother's early 70s. She just started texting a year ago. So probably not the best candidate for that. Yeah. My mother's early 70s. She just started texting a year ago. So probably not the best candidate for that. Right. Someone a little more, you know, adept or lives closer to you, probably just fine, honestly. But I think the hubless home probably, like you said, you know, you buy the thing and use the voice assistant and you can build out from there much more easily. Right. Yeah. I think there are, you know, there's this dream of sort of the do-it-yourself smart home,

but you kind of have to ask, well, who is the yourself in that sentence, right? Because certainly you don't have to be a professional and you don't have to be a programmer or even really savvy with technology, but you do have to have the tenacity and the will to kind of dig through, you know, like you just talked about the mess with the calendar integrations and the sharing and how all of that just gets sort of, you know, can kind of spiral out of control in a

hurry. So you've got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and have some fun along the way, but definitely, yeah, a lot of these things don't pass that good litmus test of, would you put this in your mom's house? I think that is a good question. I've heard Seth talk about that numerous times, and I think it works. So talk about voice control in the home. It sounds like you've got Echo and Google Home going on. Compare and contrast. I mean, where do you fall on the spectrum? Anyone listens to the show knows squarely where Seth falls on that conversation. But what's been your experience there? Well, that's one of the jokes my son, he's a little junior Apple fan boy,

and we go to Costco and he talks about Home you know, HomePod and Apple and Apple. Like, yes, Siri in a can. That's working out real well for you, isn't it? Yeah. But, you know, when the even just a few years ago, and it's hard to believe it's not been any longer than it has been. You know, receive the announcement from Amazon. Hey, we have this cylinder thing that I'll talk back to you. Are you interested?

And I'm like, 50% off. Heck, I'm willing to try it. And nowadays, we're like, it's hard to remember a time when you didn't have these. Of course, like most people, it's probably, you know, 90% what's the weather and, you know, play me some music. But I think a lot of people will find is that the Google product probably better at answering questions. And even though I have the, I can't remember what they call it nowadays because they, you know, what's the kill by Google page? It's like, let's rename a product, you know, by Google page. I think it's YouTube premium now is what they call it. You know, I subscribe to that. But I think the Amazon actually is better about playlists and such, and Google is better

about actually answering questions correctly. And I do love my smart displays, the Home Hub proper, nice little display beside the bed, the actually speaker ability. I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I think sounds pretty terrible, honestly. Lenovo Smart Display sounds much better, but they both far as their far-field technology. I mean, you can be, you know, pretty far away and it works pretty well. I haven't, because I'm kind of redoing things right now, haven't set up many groups and so forth, haven't done the drop- on the um the echo products and so forth but as i build out we surely will do that because many of the rooms i actually have an amazon and a google product in the same room and in many rooms that is true even my kids you know they're fairly young is that i put a

google um i think it was uh i've received a thing from Google. Hey, you have Google Drive. We want to send you a free Google Mini. Would you like that? I'm like, well, sure. They sent it, and I put it in my son's room, and then my daughter comes in pouty face. Well, where's my Google Home Mini? Fortunately, I had a spare, actually two spares in the closet because, you know, doesn't everyone. And now it's so funny, we go to bed at night.

You know, one side of the hall, you hear rainforest noises. You know, another one, you just hear forest noises and so forth. And so the children, it's like, it's just, you know, second nature to them, you know, very quickly. Me and my wife likes it, of course, too. Yeah, definitely a similar experience. I find myself thinking about it a lot when I see my kids interacting with our Echo and just how they're growing up in a world where that is absolutely not even something you think twice about. Of course, you have a speaker that you can talk to and ask questions and play music and whatever else you can think of. So it is really interesting thinking about getting sort of meta here and philosophical, like what that relationship with technology is going to

look like in 5, 10, 15 years from now. So definitely interesting. And I just, I got a good laugh when you said, you know, I got a couple extra sitting in the closet. Like that's literally, these devices have become so cheap now that it's like, it's like, why not? You know, um, the smart displays are really interesting to me. And those, that's one category that I have not pulled the trigger on yet in my own home, but I'm getting pretty close. I think what, what's your experience been like? I mean, what are some of the use cases that you find, um, in having the smart display versus just having a smart speaker? When Amazon came out with the original Generation Echo show, you know, the one that looked like the old Mitsubishi TVs? Yeah, that's right.

And my wife became fairly frustrated with it because the kids would put like a YouTube video on and everything they did, they would sit at the breakfast counter watching this thing. She goes, you can't eat a meal without watching this little, you know, eight inch cube or ever how big the thing was. And kind of funny was we realized really quickly that as it's playing the music, there are songs that have words in it that you don't really realize are in it until you see it scrolling across the screen. And so not always a kid friendly device. And so, but given that the wife acceptance factor was a little low on those. So I did actually send those back. And then recently around

Christmas time, of course, had a big sale on the Google home hub. So, you know, I bought one of those and then the Lenovo smart display, I think I got it for probably 50% off. And so the smart display is in the kitchen, the home hub beside the bed, you know, the one without the camera, of course. Yeah. And, um, and one of the things I thought was interesting, if you've seen the demo video for the Google product where they do the recipe, you know, you don't have to touch it and it scrolls down and you go step by step by step. Well, that was a carefully orchestrated video because you'll do line number one okay then you know you do say line number one and have to say okay google next line

okay google next line okay google next line it gets very tiresome very quickly so i think i did that all of probably half a recipe and never again. So I'll just get the screen dirty. But yeah, I do like the displays, occasional YouTube video, just as much, you know, it shows the weather. It displays your calendar, you know, music videos, music lyrics. I'm actually a pretty big fan of that. And the Lenovo sounds so much better

than the Home Hub does. Good to know. Good to know. Good to know. Very cool. Well, we are running just a little bit tight on time here, but I did want to ask, I think you've got some lighting control going on in the home, and we didn't really touch on that. So talk us through very quickly, like, what do you have going on in terms of smart lighting in your house? So the only thing I have right now are a few Lightify bulbs. I think it's a Sylvania bulb. So I don't do a lot of that yet because with Iris on Skin, you're kind of limited within that silo, but now I can kind of break free of those

bonds, get some more routines. And referencing back to a comment earlier, I'm really having to think a lot more about home automation versus home control. Hubitat only does local processing, but the one kind of obstacle, I always did like the ability to turn the thermostat up. We leave home in about an hour away, tap the thermostat back down. So there probably will be some items I'll move back to smart things so I can control them remotely. And that would be the thermostat. I guess if the external garage door schlag lock doesn't work correctly, I can open the garage door remotely. And so it's garage doors, the thermostat.

And there was one other thing. So probably it's going to be as much a mishmash as much as a Frankenstein, SimpliSafe, Google, Echo, and smart things all together instead of one product now have all the products. So it's one of those cases where you don't realize what you had until you no longer have it. Right. Yeah. And it's a double-edged sword too. I talked a few minutes ago about, it's great that you can go mishmash these things together and you don't have to make a huge upfront investment, but eventually before you know it, you're in a situation where you've got, you know, five different apps and three different hubs and nobody else in the home knows where to go other than maybe the mastermind behind it all. So it's definitely, you know, a double-edged sword or a slippery slope. And that's

certainly where, uh, making that next leap into something like a control four, for example, is, is, uh, you know, is, has a lot of upside, but certainly comes in with a whole different, you know, set of, of considerations, not least of which of course is, is the price. Um, so yeah, really interesting, um, quick follow-up question on that. So yeah, really interesting. Quick follow-up question on that. So Hubitat, I know, has a large focus on local processing, but it sounds like what you're saying is there's no way to do it remotely, I guess, perhaps even through sort of hacking it together,

but certainly not off the shelf. It sounds like you can't do any remote control at all. Yeah, kind of. There's a question I ask Patrick from Hubitat is, you know, even Eero we thought was a very successful product, you know, sold out ring, you know, all to Amazon. And I asked him directly, I said, how are you going to sell this little 90 to $100 box one time, continue to develop and remain profitable. And partly what he said is, you know, doing all this, you know, remote, you know, I guess, ability to control your home remotely, that's servers, that's data, that's cost. And we're not going to do that one as a means of security and to keeping our costs down. I'm still a little bit, you know, kind of hesitant about that product.

So now anything I buy will not be locked into any one product because, say, Hubitat doesn't make it. I want to make sure it can work on another platform. And I probably will switch some things over, you know, two smart things to have that remote controllability. And I believe they said, of course, you could, if you are somewhere, you can VPN to your home, open up a browser instance and control it there, which obviously is a little bit cumbersome. Yeah. But I know, like I say, they want to remain that security, that very quick action of commands and local processing being so much faster. But boy, giving up that remote control ability is kind of a big deal to me too. Yeah. And I can understand that.

All right. Well, yeah, I mean, I'd say, uh, reacting to your last point there, if anything, that seems like the through line of all of your sort of trials and tribulations through the smart home is, is keeping it sort of agile and not locking yourself in too much to one thing and kind of sort of learned a lesson, I guess, with Iris, even though, again, they did handle it pretty well. It certainly caused you no shortage of reworking and sort of refiguring things out from scratch. So very cool. Well, I really appreciate learning more about what you've got going on. What would you say is kind of the next big thing that you're looking to, uh, to tackle in your home? Where do you go from here? Um, well, one thing I've learned in the first few

days, uh, um, you know, Hubitat, it was a little slow to respond, but someone like Gavin Campbell, he's been on your show before, and I think you ought to have him again. And I've told him that. Yeah. And it has kind of settled itself in because one thing I didn't mention, they do have a rule machine. They have dashboards. They have rule machines where it's kind of like they're built in if, then, that, if, this, then, that, or whatever. It can do things like that, that you do need a solid network. You know, I had Eero, and then I went with Fiber, and they updated their built-in, or I guess the required router, which is just AT&T Fiber, which is just a real, in the vernacular, a real POS.

Yeah. And so my next is actually to upgrade my network to some ubiquity ubiquity equipment so i got to run some cable and i want to get some of that done before the south carolina sun um you know kind of hits in get that network real stable and then kind of get more into their their automations you know use my sensors more do this do that when that occurs and and so forth and kind of branch it out because once once again, remember, my wife is over there simply safe. She'll never be the wiser. And so that part is kind of a win-win for me because I can never do that with ours. She was never going to have that.

Yeah. Well, no, it's a good litmus test. We've got a ring security system here at home. And granted, I haven't really spent the time to kind of force the issue, but my wife, who's fairly, she's not averse to technology, but it's just not really on her radar as much. And she doesn't really interact with it. So that your wife has fully adopted SimpliSafe, I think you're wise to sort of leave that cordoned off and let that system function on its own and keep experimenting. It sounds like you've been able to do a lot of great things and find a lot of great deals in the process. So, again, I've really enjoyed learning more about this. I don't know if you're active on— I should say, I know you're active on Twitter.

I don't know if that's the best place. If anyone listening wanted to follow up and maybe ask you a question or get a hold of you, would Twitter be the best place for them to do that? Yeah, absolutely. It's A-W-R-A-Y-N-O-R. That's the place I'm by far the most active. I do a little bit. If you have specific HubAttack questions, the HubAttack forums are great. Don't forget the livingwithiris.com forums. There's a lot of, you know, I guess,

threads and sub threads or whatever they call them. A lot of people, they're really helpful. And that's the best thing is that they are helpful. They're not like some other parts of the internet where they can be quite rude. But yeah, AW Rainer on Twitter, very active as you see. Cool. Yeah.

And you've been definitely making, making the rounds on appearing on several podcasts lately to talk about, uh, this transition of yours. And so we appreciate it. And I'm glad we finally were able to get you on the show. And again, we really appreciate your support. So thanks so much,

uh, Anthony for coming on. We appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. As I told my wife, Irish going away is the best much, Anthony, for coming on. We appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. As I told my wife, Iris going away is the best thing that's ever happened to me. There you go. All right.

Well, thanks again. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Well, that will do it for our conversation with Anthony. And again, I really enjoyed sitting down with him. And I think the biggest thing that struck me was just the sort of pros and cons of being able to go in and kind of piece together, frankly, a smart home system these days for pretty cheap and with just a little bit of elbow grease. But of course, the trade-offs to that and having these

companies sort of come and go and having to kind of hodgepodge things together. But Anthony appears to have done a great job of navigating that landscape, and also the spouse acceptance factor, which he alluded to numerous times, which can be a very real challenge, you know, all jokes aside, less of a gender thing, and really just about making sure everybody in the home is on the same page about how to use all of this technology and how to avoid frustration in so doing. So again, enjoyed that conversation. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, ideas for show topics, anything you want to send our way, we would love to hear from you. We read all of those messages. Best way to reach us is

feedback at hometech.fm. Or if you would prefer, you can head on over to our website, hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out an online form. So we do thank you for tuning in. As we always do, we want to send a big, extra big thank you to all of you who support our show financially through our Patreon page. If you're not familiar with how you can do that, we are a 100% listener supported show here. You can head on over to hometech.fm slash support. Again, that's hometech.fm slash support. And there you can learn about how you

can support the show for as little as $1 a month. We got a whole bunch of people who have come on board and done that. And we really do appreciate it. So one last time that is hometech.fm slash support. If you enjoy what we do here and want to contribute to our efforts, we would really, really appreciate that. So thank you so much for tuning in for my solo adventure show here this week. We look forward to having Seth back. We thank Anthony for coming on and joining us and we will look forward to putting out another episode next week. Hope you have a great one and we'll talk to you next time.