HomeTech.fm - Episode 256 - Dream Machine

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: The CE Pro 100 list for 2019 is out. A look at Savant’s new architectural POE speakers. Wyze releases their new (insanely cheap) Wyze Sense kit. Amazon may be working on a new hi-fidelity streaming service. A team at Harvard thinks they know how the streaming TV war will be won. The once-hot robotics startup, Anki, has crashed and burned. August halts sales of their new View doorbell camera after widely reported issues by early users. UniFi’s interesting new Dream Machine merges pro features with a consumer aesthetic. Is Congress finally getting serious about IoT security? And more…

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, May 3rd from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from sunny Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, what's going on, man? You know, I am biting my tongue here, Seth, because I think, if I recall correctly, you're a little bit behind on Game of Thrones. Yes. Like, little bit doesn't describe how far behind. I think I'm at least three seasons behind at this point. It's like a cultural phenomenon, and I can't even talk about it on the show.

Nope. Nope. You can't. No spoilers. No spoilers. No spoilers. And we may have listeners who are behind, too. So we don't want to spoil anything. I've seen the Avengers movie, the one in-game.

The Avengers in-game. Okay. And that one, it's a very good movie. There's a ton of spoilers. So I've heard. Yeah. And it's good. It's a good movie.

If you like the Avengers movies, if you like the first Avengers movie, I think you'd like this Avengers movie. Like it is a great, like, you know, it's hopping on the cake, I think. Like everything that you could possibly want is in this movie and more. I heard it was like three hours long. It is three hours long. So you're going to want to get an adult Depends and flip that thing on before you go in there. And leave the kids at home for this one. You're going to definitely there and leave the kids at home for this one. You're going to definitely need to leave the kids at home on this one. Um, yeah, no, it's, it was,

I was kind of cracking up cause I was, I was sitting there, uh, probably around the two hour, 50 minute mark, just like turning yellow. But I, uh, I was watching everybody else like during that time, like get up and how many people were getting up and going in and, uh, just, you know, make sure you're nice and dehydrated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had, I, I, I went to one of the fancy theaters and had like this nice gin and was actually just gin on the rocks and, uh, just a Coke. So like, I was like, Oh, I'm ready for this movie. And then I realized, Oh yeah, this is a three hour movie. And that's why all these people are getting up and then oops. Yeah. Oops. It's time to go.

So, yeah, good movie. Highly recommend it. I hear Game of Thrones is pretty good this season. It's very good, but I am not going to say anything more about it. No, no. All right. Because we're not a show that—no spoilers here on Home Tech. Well, I'll have to catch up one of these days with it.

It's on the to-do list. What do you say instead we jump into some Home Tech headlines? Yeah, let's do it. This E-Pro 100 list for 2019 has been released, continuing an upward chin since the end of the Great Recession. The group reported booking solid revenues in 2018. The group of 100's median revenues were around $5.2 million, not bad, up 1% from their previous year.

Many other key business metrics along members of the list are also robust, including a predicted 12.7% growth rate for 2019. Very interesting. Pretty good. Yeah, the predicted growth rate is always interesting because that's obviously just a prediction, right? So it's sort of a good, I think, indicator of, I guess, by proxy consumer confidence, what you're seeing there from integrators. What did they say last

year? Yeah, I don't remember. That's a good question. Did they say 12 last year and we only went up 1%? That's not good. Yeah, it's interesting because anecdotally, you know, I hear also integrators talking about just feeling like things are slowing down a little bit. So hard to say what's going on there. It did jump out at me, though. For 2019, CE Pro 100 members reported earning an average of 7.1% of their revenues from recurring monthly revenue. So again, I don't recall how that stacks up against last year, but I do like seeing the coverage from CE Pro about recurring revenue. As you know, I do believe that's a big part of the puzzle moving forward. So it'll be interesting to dig into that report when I have a little bit more time and see what else it contains. But moving on

here, Savant has introduced its new micro aperture powered speakers. The architectural speakers utilize power over ethernet, PoE, to help streamline the delivery of power to speakers in a whole house AV system. Each micro aperture speaker incorporates a built-in amplifier, which Savant claims helps reduce installation times for integrators. According to Savant, the use of an active built-in amplifier also helps maintain sound quality because the speaker and amp keep the digital audio signal in the digital domain throughout the entire signal chain that's a pretty interesting development here yeah i mean so video over ip was you know started out in commercial about 10 years ago and it, and it's pretty darn popular right now in our industry.

And audio over IP has been in the commercial realm for quite a long time too, but hasn't made it over. So I'm glad to finally start seeing these audio over IP type devices being brought from the commercial side into the residential side because you definitely get some performance gains out of having, you know, tiny little ample, big amplifiers, the big digital amplifiers, kind of like being built right into the speaker themselves. Right.

A lot you can do with audio and moving things around the house. It's a lot easier if it's over an Ethernet cable rather than the old, you know, analog RCA cable. Yeah, the story alludes to that, and I did think that was interesting. It says because each speaker points out how they're individually controlled and connected to the network. So it gives you flexibility to sort of switch room configurations pretty dynamically using network routing. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see if this sort of technology takes hold in the home moving forward. Yeah, it will be. Revealed late last year, Wyze has inspirations beyond Wi-Fi video cameras

and is expanding into full-on home automation capabilities with the new Wyze SenseKit. This $20 bundle, 20 whole dang dollars, wow, includes a wireless bridge that's powered by the $26 Wyze Cam to communicate with the motion sensor and two contact sensor pairs. This means that you can now monitor your home for under $50. Pretty cool.

I saw Dave Zatz was posting. I think he had one of those, and he was kind of posting some things, pictures of the little tiny little sensors that come with it, like the camera and all that good stuff, earlier this week, maybe even today. Yeah, it's insanely low price. I mean, I just can't believe it. And Dave Zatz writes in his piece exactly what I thought when I first read the initial paragraph. And he says, as an industry veteran, I can tell you with certainty that sales of $20 to $30 hardware cannot sustain a company. He goes on to say as such, he fully expects to see some sort of Wise service subscription to be introduced, which incidentally, I completely agree with it. I have voiced this numerous times on the show, and I just cannot figure out how on earth Wise is selling

these things for so cheap. Yet, if I i recall correctly they claim to be making money on them so really interesting and selling your data somewhere right yeah race to zero yeah exactly all right moving on here amazon is said to be working on a high fidelity streaming platform that may arrive later this year for around 15 a month month. Amazon, this is a music platform, by the way. Amazon Music Unlimited starts at $4 a month to, you know, by comparison. While Amazon recently added a free ad-supported music service to Alexa devices last week.

The rumored upcoming platform will reportedly offer better than CD quality music. So far, at least one major record company has signed up according to Music Business Worldwide. While Amazon is supposedly in talks better than CD quality music. So far, at least one major record company has signed up according to music business worldwide, while Amazon is supposedly in talks with other significant rights holders. And I wish we were a video show so people could see how you reacted as I was reading the lead there. But yeah, it's crazy. So this is now like, I guess three or technically four different streaming services that Amazon would have have they've got the free one and then the one you get with prime but i think those two are like pretty much the

same uh as far as what you get so it's you know essentially the same thing then you've got music unlimited now you've got a high fidelity option so very consistent here with amazon's what i call their spaghetti strategy i throw it at the wall. That's a whole lot of spaghetti, because I am so confused about what, I mean, I'm going to need like a spreadsheet, an Excel sheet to keep up with the Amazon. That's right. Oh, man. And you're going to get CD quality music out of that Echo, I'm sure.

So sign up for this thing. Shh. You're not supposed to talk about that. All right. Well, earlier this year, Hulu reacted to Netflix price increases by slashing the cost of the cheapest plan to $6 per month. That move appears to have paid off. Hulu's membership has grown 12% since the start of the year to 28 million subscribers.

Not all of those subscribers are paying members. 1.3 million are on the free promotional plans, but the company has been able to add paying members at a fast clip. Paid memberships are now up 16.5% over the same period last year. That is pretty wild. Went on to read the story. It does talk about how Hulu is continuing to lose money, which is still amazing to me. Blows my mind. Bonkers. Yeah. It's a Disney and Comcast-owned service, as we've talked about before on the show.

So it's an interesting dynamic you have going on here with Disney being a stakeholder in that, as well as the new Disney Plus service coming out and how this is sort of going to play out for Netflix, who's losing access to some of the content, like Marvel in particular, a lot of shows being pulled from Netflix there. So interesting, really interesting landscape. And we've seen a lot of price increases this year. And it looks like Hulu has been one of the few to lower prices, at least on one of their tiers and appears to be paying off. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. I've seen a couple of like originals come up that like there's a catch-22 original that's coming on george gluner i was just looking for the preview of it i couldn't find it but um looks pretty good and like the old you know the old catch-22 book they're kind of make a little tiny movie slash miniseries out of it yes and uh big big name

actor in it so yeah it should be i can see where the money's going yeah but we'll be interesting to see how they can do that on six dollars a month yeah no kidding um deep pockets that's how yeah yeah speaking of streaming two former roku executives are getting ready to compete with their old colleagues in the tv advertising space steve shannon who was formerly the vice president of content and jim lombard who headed advertising sales at Roku, have come out of stealth mode with their new smart TV advertising startup, Tetra TV. This happened earlier this week. Tetra TV wants to help advertisers reach audiences

across all connected TV platforms, explained Shannon in a recent conversation with Variety. Advertisers are excited about connected TV, he said, predicting that the entire $70 billion TV advertising market would eventually move to streaming media. Yeah, they just want to track you. That's all. Yeah, yeah. You know, the story does go on to talk about how it's been a very, quote, heterogeneous environment. You know, lots of different apps and devices. And that, of course, makes it difficult for advertisers to have a broad reach. And that appears to be the problem they're trying to solve.

So mechanics aside, yeah, you know, it is interesting to think about how the growth of streaming is going to affect advertising as we know it today. Yeah. Speaking of streaming, Jason, I'm glad you had to summarize this one. A new paper from the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center argues that news, news of all things, is the killer app for streaming and will be the key to winning the streaming war in the future. I thought this was a very comprehensive, it's probably like 20 or 30, I don't know, it's very, very long and it makes a pretty good argument. But I think there's a pretty good takeaway in there that says news has proven and every medium throughout time to be the successful hook to attract and retain an audience. And at the moment, the market leader, meaning Netflix in this case, is not all in on news. To the investor,

the reinvestor, and the news disruptor, whether legacy or digital native, go the spoils. So it will be interesting to see if some of these, like this paper is really actually pretty good and it's sourcing of everything and uh it will be interesting to see if we see things like uh you know little news shows start to pop up on things like netflix or these other um these other these other uh streaming services i know that like hbo you can you can say it has the one with John Oliver on it. Last Week Tonight or something like that. Last Week Tonight. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there's, uh, there's, there's, there have been a couple that have popped up on Netflix, but they were just kind of like, I don't know, they, they popped up in the feed and then they just went away as fast as they showed up. So I'm not sure what's going on there. Um, so we will be interesting to see what happens with news in the future.

Yeah, it is something we don't talk about a lot. And you look at the list of the companies or streaming platforms that the paper examines, and you've got Amazon Prime Video, Cheddar. I don't know anything about that one, only by name. It's a cheese one or something. It's a common type of cheese. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube obviously has some stuff. But a lot of these, yeah, you just don't think about news when you think about streaming. And so it is interesting to consider.

I admittedly don't watch a ton of news. I frankly don't watch much TV at all these days. But when you do think about the sort of mainstream move of TV viewing away from traditional means and more over to streaming, then yeah, certainly it does make sense that news will play a big part in attracting a more mainstream audience. There's a pretty cool picture that was associated with this. If you scroll down far enough, you'll find it. But it's part of this paper here. It's got all of the big streaming vendors on there, Disney, AT&T, Discovery, Communications, Apple, Netflix, Cheddar, Hulu, Vice.

And it has how much the companies are worth, if it's known. Apple's on there. They don't really have how much they're investing in that right there. But Netflix has, what, $15 billion, it looks like. Disney's $59 billion company. AT&T, WarnerMedia is $171 billion. Viacom, I don't ever think of them, but they're in the streaming game with a number of channels and content creation studios. So just interesting to see this is kind of like the landscape of where streaming is these days.

And kind of where, if you look at this, you see ESPN on there. I mean, that's news, right? So you see that on there and you're like, oh, yeah, that's news. People will pay for that. And I think there's an ESPN Plus service now, or will be coming out, where people can pay for sports, sports ball, and all that good stuff that you get from ESPN. Yeah, absolutely. So go check that out. We will include, of course, a link to that in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 256. Moving on from there, Anki, I think that's how you pronounce it, A-N-K-I.

Anki, Iode has learned. In a teary all-hands meeting on Monday morning, CEO Boris Sofman told his staff they would be terminated on Wednesday. That was a two-day notice there. Wow. And that close to 200 employees would be paid a week of severance, according to people familiar with the matter. Sofman told employees that a few days earlier that the company was scrambling to find money after a new round of financing fell through at the last minute, imperiling the company's future. So that is an abrupt ending to a company that, I mean, they raised a lot of money,

$200 million, nothing to sneeze at. The story does talk about how they had approached $100 million in revenue in 2017, according to the story. The story says, so we're not talking about some small lemonade stand closing down here. They were on our radar. We had these guys when we talked about ideas around the holidays for gifts. They were doing some serious advertising all over the tech space. It looked like a really cool little product. I think we talked about it quite a bit there on the holiday season.

Yeah. It was a little Cosmo robot I think we were talking about. Yeah. That's too bad. That's too bad. Man, that's rough being in a startup. No kidding. That sucks to get a two days notice. And wow. And one week severance. Yeah, no good. No good. Bummer. Well, and oh, this isn't any better news. So sales of August's new $230 wire-free August View video doorbell are being halted,

and some consumers are receiving refunds less than three weeks since the smart doorbell started shipping. The Verge notes that August cites early reliability issues for some customers as the reason for the sudden halt. In a statement announcing the stoppage of shipments, August cites performance and challenges in specific user environments. Hmm. Like, yeah, putting a doorbell outside and expecting it to connect to Wi-Fi inside is

probably not the easiest thing to do in my opinion. Yeah. Users have experienced numerous connectivity and streaming issues while testing the device. CNET reported long delays while connected to the view live video through the August app in its testing. So, yeah, Wi-Fi outside the house, not easy. Wi-Fi in the house is not easy. Wi-Fi outside, not easy either.

Not easy at all. Interesting sidebar here. Apologize if the noise is coming through. Sounds like a herd of elephants in the kitchen above me. That's my kids. So bear with me if that's coming through on your headphones this week. I do apologize.

But yeah, this is an interesting one. It says customers on Amazon have had similar issues. The View currently has a 1.5 star rating across 40 different reviews. So that's not a ton of reviews, but a very low rating. Nonetheless, it's been a tough year in hardware. Story talks about AirPower, the Samsung Galaxy Fold. So, you know, hardware is a tough business, I guess. The proof is there. Yeah. And building something as small as a door, I mean, we take it for granted that we've had, you know, devices like DoorBird and Ring and those types of things out for as long as they've been out. And they've been working as well as they have been for as long as they've been out and they've been working as well as they have been for as long as they have been. But like, you know, there were times where, where they messed up and didn't

ship product that was, that was working well, um, you know, in the past. So it, I feel for these guys, it's gotta be hard to ship something like that or get up. I mean, it sounds like they were right up to the last minute. Like this was, uh, either just being sold or had just started shipping, and now they're having to recall them all. Yeah, not good at all. Let's see if we can brighten things up a little bit here, Seth. What do you say? Like with maybe a dream machine? Yeah.

That would be perfect if we had a story that talked about a dream machine. Oh, look at this. Amazing. Ubiquiti is well known for its professional networking equipment, but has recently been branching out. The company has unveiled its latest Wi-Fi router, a consumer product, which brings a suite of pro-grade features to its new consumer-friendly design, the UniFi Dream Machine launches with an all-in-one design that touts up to 1,000 megabytes per second speeds, professional network management, and much more. The new UniFi Dream Machine will be launching with a $299 price tag. It is now available for purchase as part of the company's Early Access Program, which is free to sign up

for and will be available at retailers like B&H very soon. It is not available for sale because they are sold out. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah. This is really kind of an interesting piece. I have Ubiquiti Amplify at my house, and the biggest problem I have with it is that I can't tie it into uh you know any

kind of remote management software uh you can use like a google you log in with your google address or something like that an account and you can kind of like add devices into like a single managed account if that makes sense um and it kind of just like ties it together and you just connect to it normally just kind of list the ones that you have tied to the account out. But it's not as comprehensive as a thing like the Unify, you know, control network controllers interface that they have. So this is a really cool kind of, I think, pro consumer is probably the best way to describe it. It's got a four-point gigabit switch in it.

It's got the security gateway built into it. It's got dual-band 802.11ac. I don't know what Wi-Fi version is that. Is that version 4, 7? I can't help you there. It's got Wi-Fi built into it. And they also have, that didn't quite get reported, like little plug-in mesh devices that you can plug into the wall. got wi-fi built into it yeah it's got and they also have um that didn't quite get reported like

little plug-in mesh devices that you can plug into the wall um they're not very well designed because they take up the entire plug like they cover the entire plug on the wall oh interesting yeah not the best design but they did look kind of neat and i guess where i think this could kind of this would actually for me uh would replace where i would install amplify in most situations because i like to have that overall dashboard uh when i go in and see what customers are doing like i like to see all the systems lined up in front of me uh and and you can't really do that through the amplify system because it's all just on your phone. So I like this.

This is going to fill a good niche, I think, inside the UniFi system. I don't know. Having it as an all-in-one piece and kind of integrated together, I'm kind of iffy on because what if something in there goes wrong, then you're down an entire $299 router, which with the like the other other type of system like you could just swap out the piece that was right it was broken so kind of some advantages and stuff disadvantages to to this system yeah no i agree but all the same it does look like a pretty neat offering really nice industrial design which i would say

is pretty typical for unify you know If you've been a fan of the look and feel, if you're a geek for this sort of thing, you'll like this one as well. So yeah, I agree. It's an interesting offering. And Ubiquity is just an interesting company all around. They have their big footprint in carrier- like carrier grade networking equipment. And then they were very much, or still very much are like a professional networking solution, but we're seeing them increasingly make moves in the consumer space as well. And this will be an interesting one to keep an eye on. Yeah.

It's definitely a good piece for most people who just need like a meshed wifi system in their house and, and want to have something a little bit more than the Amplify. And I would say I'm a pretty good target customer for this. Other than the fact I don't like the design. I know I want to put this in my rack and like I can't put this in my rack. Yeah. Not and expect it to work very well. But that's true. It's true. With a name like Dream Machine, it's got to be good? Yeah. I do like that it's all kind of built together. It has the controller. It has the USG built into it.

It has a four-port switch. It's like a unified system in a box or a can. Ponder that one. For $299, it's not a bad price point. And I think a lot of people who are going out and buying a cloud key, and a USG and maybe some, you know, access points, some of their pro access points and setting up a system in the house. This is probably going to be more appropriate for them in the long run and work better for them. Right. Moving forward. Right. All right. Well, moving on here.

Congress is taking yet another swing at legislation that will help secure devices in the IoT world. With previous attempts failing to protect consumers adequately, this time Congress is planning on asking the more tech-savvy National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, and the Office of Management and Budget, the OMB, to come up with a framework the government can use to build a list of characteristics for secure connected devices. The IoT or Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2019 would also require the NIST to evaluate device security and update standards every five years. The bill is not yet out to committee, but at least we can all rest easy knowing the government might do something about IoT security in the future. That wasn't written at all with tongue in chief. I think this is this is actually if they do this, I think this is actually a good thing because we we've had like in the past that, do you remember like they banned a bunch of like

Dahua cameras and stuff from being sold to government contractors and there was a big dust up over that. Uh, they, they really, they really, Congress is not who you want, um, legislating cybersecurity law, uh, or security law in general. So like, uh, subbing it out to maybe the OMB and the NIST to do this, to come up with like together as those two agencies to come up with like non-competing standards for the government to use, I think this could be a home run. It's going to be a better, a better bill that we've had in the past. And at least like NIST has done some things in the past, like, you know, where I know NIST from is like, when you have to change your password on some corporate system every, you know, month or whatever, that came from those guys.

Like that requirement came from those guys. It was a horrible requirement. And they eventually removed it. Yeah. And said, no, no, it's much more secure to have a strong password than one that, you know, just has the number, the next number added onto it every month. Because that's all people could ever do. But so it's, they at least are tech savvy, enough agency within the government to come up with these standards and in these lists of characteristics for devices over than what, you know, Congress critters can do. So hopefully, here in the future,

the U.S. government might actually take a lead on something and come up with a list of characteristics for devices that we can call secure. You see states like California recently has passed something that requires you to have a password, a strong password to be set set and not you know password one two three four uh on an iot device so that was good and for any device that had to be sold in california which is quite a lot and then uh you you're probably going to see something come out of europe i'm sure that the uh european union will

probably have some type of IoT legislation. These botnet attacks can't be our normal thing. We've talked about security being a big deal in the IoT world, and it just hasn't really happened. I think the awareness is there. You know that botnets are out there and doing crazy things and mining for Bitcoin, I'm sure. But right now, we really haven't improved the legislation. What happens when a company makes a product and has a poorly done security implementation on it?

What happens at that point? And I think we're finally going to get there. These uh, I, I think we're, we're finally going to get there. You know, the, these wheels are going to run, move pretty slowly, but we're finally going to get there and have at least a roadmap to go on to navigate down this, this tricky, uh, tricky world of security. It's tough. Security is very tough. And, and when you're making a device or a product, security is on your mind, but getting the thing to work is, is much more important. And I can tell you that from experience, like security is often the last thing you think of. Uh, and when it's, when it's one of the first things you have to think of and

do, it, it really kind of turns the product or project on its head, or it can turn the projects on your head because you, you have to plan for that from the beginning. Right. So this, this might be a good thing for us. Yeah, I think it certainly can't be a bad thing. It's a growing problem, and there's growing awareness around it, and that is unquestionably a good thing. And we'll see. I think the risk with these things or the thing to always kind of look out for is the overly bureaucratic nature of some of these things or how they can tend

towards that. So for example, this story talks about how the, let's see, it'll be up to the NIST to figure out the requirements for a secure device, but then it's up to the OMB to direct federal agencies how they should adopt the NIST guidelines. Now, that sounds a little bit redundant or like too many layers, but I think this was written by Stacey Higginbotham, this article that we're reading here. That's just for the government side of it. When the NIST comes out with those requirements, it's just like the password thing. Like it's up there on the website for anybody to look at.

And then you and I as consumers can look at those requirements and say, okay, does this new device that I bought from Ring conform to this? And Ring, as they're planning their products out, could say, oh, well, the government says this is a good practice. Let's implement that on our systems and we'll meet these standards. Yeah. And the article also points out that, like you said, this is for the government and the National Park Service probably doesn't have the same security guidelines as the Department of Defense, right? So it does make sense that there would be this sort of multi-layered approach for the government when it comes to protecting information. And we should all be concerned with how our government is approaching cybersecurity.

So, yeah, I agree with you. I think this is a good thing to see, and we'll have to keep an eye on it. We'll see how it develops. Like we alluded to there, when we kicked the story off, it is still pretty early in the process here. So, you know, we'll have to wait and see. Yep, it's definitely going to be a wait-and-see thing. We'll have to wait and see. Yep. It's definitely going to be a wait and see thing to wait and see what they come up with. So hopefully we'll get something. Hopefully we'll get something out of them, though.

You never know. You never know with politics, U.S. politics these days, but hopefully we'll see something that is out of this that we cannot actually look at and say, OK, that's that's a good idea. Right. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 256. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which can include even further analysis, as well as other industry news that may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 256. Also, don't forget, you can join us in the chat room as we live stream on Wednesdays, typically starting around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. Again, that's hometech.fm

slash live, or follow us over on Twitter at hometechpodcast. And I know we always send out an announcement before we go live, and we'd love to have you join us in the chat room sometime. We have a lot of fun with that. So nothing in the mailbag this week, but we do have a little pick of the week, and this kind of ties in with our security-focused discussion that we had earlier. I ran across this on 9to5Mac, and it's called the Princeton IoT Inspector.

It's a little program that I guess Princeton, or it's like almost a survey i guess that princeton has has set up uh to like monitor your devices and uh keep an eye on your network and and tell you what your iot devices are doing yeah it is an interesting find in the the picture here it gives you an idea for what the log looks like. And the article sort of talks about how it works, I guess, HomeKit and non-HomeKit device. So it is a Mac-only app for now, is worth mentioning. For now, yeah. It provides you with a list of all of the IoT devices on your home network.

I'm not sure exactly how they decide what's an IoT device and what's not. That's not totally clear to me. Well, I can tell you, I've loaded it on my computer, and it goes out and scans everything on your network. So I've got 40-some-odd devices on my network. And then it knows that, like, my computer is not an IoT device. So by the MAC address, I guess, and it says, you know, Apple operating system, it'll have a little nano IoT tag on there.

But other than that, like really i really can't figure out what this thing is doing like it doesn't seem like it's done very much yeah the author talks about though how you know he can see his phillips hue contacting meet meet hue.com exchanging six kilobytes of data on encrypted communication so you know i i don't know, it's a good, I guess a good tool for awareness. Gizmodo did come up with a very practical use that I thought was interesting. And I stay in Airbnbs occasionally when I travel and there's always this, this, there's this sad or sick trend of people putting hidden cameras in Airbnbs. And I was sort of worried in the back of my mind about that.

And Gizmodo points out that you could use this if you have a Mac and you're in an Airbnb and you're on the wifi, you could use it to check for cameras on the network, which is kind of an interesting use case there. But yeah, in the home, I'm not totally sure exactly how this plays out or what the practical implications are of having a tool like this. But I think generally anything that gives you a little bit more visibility and awareness into what's going on on your network is generally a good thing. Yeah, I can see. Oh, it's kind of interesting. I can see the devices that I have. So I have my, you remember my clock, my little Lamentric clock that I have over here? I do. It's listed on here, and it tells me that this device

has reached out and talked to Lometric.com. It says, maybe an IoT messaging? And then it's got service MQTT, which is a common IoT communication protocol. So it doesn't, and I don't know if I can see the messages. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I can kind of see some stuff here. But it tells me that one device has talked to a couple of things, my blackwiredesigns.com, my website, Twitter, Google, Twitter, and Lymetric. So it's done a couple of things here, which is kind of interesting. And I can see, I can't see the message, but I can see, uh, that is, I guess it may be encrypted, but I can see where it's gone and what it's doing. So

if you kind of want to keep an eye on what devices are doing and where, what they're, what endpoints they're communicating with, um, this might be a little, little, uh, pretty good tool for you. Here's one that's going, my cavo is going to cavo.com. So there you go. There you go. Go figure. All right. Well, yeah, if you're interested in that, go check it out.

Again, hometech.fm slash 256 is where we will have a link to that. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or a guest, definitely give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm.

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