HomeTech.fm - Episode 271 - Bringing Smarts to the Breaker Box with Leviton's Justin Berghoff

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Justin Berghoff, Leviton’s Director of Business Development & Product Management. Justin joins us to discuss the company’s Smart Load Center product line. A part of our homes so fundamental that most of us take it for granted, the breaker box was overdue for an intelligent upgrade. Join us to learn how Leviton’s product line is finally bringing circuit breakers into the 21st century. That plus… Apple is reportedly targeting a November launch for Apple TV+. Ikea doubles down on their smart home strategy with the creation of a dedicated business unit. Amazon’s launches Custom Interfaces for Alexa to enhance connections with games and gadgets. Samsung’s about-face pivot to OLED displays. And much 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, August 23rd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Good, man. Getting pumped. Getting ready for our Home Tech Happy Hour. Kedia 2019. We're on the final countdown. That's right. And we did give a save the date, unofficial save the date last week,

and we're ready to make that official this week. So definitely if you're a supporter, listener to the show, we would really appreciate you stopping by. We're having a happy hour here. We've had these last couple of Cedia's out in San Diego, and we're bringing that to Denver. They've been a happy hour here. We've had these last couple of CDAs out in San Diego, and we're bringing that to Denver. They've been a ton of fun.

This will be on Thursday of the show, Thursday, September 12th, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. So we're doing it on the early side at the Rock Bottom Brewery there, right in downtown Denver. We like to do these early so that everybody can stop by, say uh and then get on to you know the real big parties like i think control four might be having theirs that night that's always a big one uh anyways there's a ton of events going on that night but stop by early uh head over right after the show again from five to seven p.m at the rock bottom brewery and uh seth i know blackwire uh is has been kind enough to sponsor this year. So pretty excited about that. Yeah, definitely. They're kind enough. Uh, but it's the company I work for obviously, but, uh, Kevin's kind enough to pick up the tab this year. So he's, he's, he's our, our sponsor and, uh,

come have a drink on Blackwire. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Just come by, make sure you say hi, uh, thank Kevin and, uh, and, uh, check out what's going on there's there's generally uh i think i think we'll have um i mean there's definitely drinks there right that's generally what we do definitely have drinks so yeah it's a brewery so there has to be has to be there there will be drinks and like you said yeah we'll we'll have an open tab uh courtesy of of blackwire who's picking that up this year so it should be a lot of fun we have uh two two things on here um one i i i messed this up this is going to be in the front half pull bar right this is yep okay i noticed i noticed there's two errors on my my thing here i'll go and fix them so by the time you listen to this head on over

to hometech.fm happy hour uh and use the rsvp form all the information's there and there's a little add to calendar link that you can add it in. It's actually pretty cool. I've been using this the last couple of years and it'll add it to your calendar with the right time zone hopefully set up on it. Again, that's hometech.fm slash happy hour. If you are planning to stop by, again, we'd really appreciate it and we would love

if you would just take a minute to hop over to hometech.fm slash happy hour and let us know you're coming so that we can plan accordingly with the venue and we'll look forward to seeing you there. Seth, we've got a great interview here with Justin Berghoff from Leviton and he came on. He's the director of business development and product management there at Leviton and he came on to talk about a really cool new product that they launched a few months back. It's been out for a little while now. It's their Smart Load Center. So really neat product.

They've built intelligence right into a very traditionally sort of quote-unquote dumb device. That's right into the circuit panel, right into the breakers. And cool companion app that comes with that. A lot of really neat use cases and cool technology there. So enjoyed talking to Justin again from Leviton. And be sure to stay tuned to this episode for that. But Seth, what do you say first we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Apple plans to roll out the Apple TV Plus movie and TV subscription service by November, part of a drive to reach $50 billion in service sales by the year

2020. This reported by Bloomberg. The company will introduce a small selection of shows and then expand its catalog more frequently over several months, people familiar with the matter said. A free trial is likely as Apple builds up its library, said the people who asked not to be identified because these plans aren't public, or at least they weren't.

Yeah, always the secrecy with Apple. And I don't think you can be secret in in the world of television and entertainment the same way that's gonna be tough yeah it's pretty much uh the more noise you make the better uh i think they're gonna have a hard time keeping everything under wraps so we'll be interesting to see what they come out jason i'm curious when this comes out are you are you looking I mean, we don't even know a price point. I've heard rumors of $9.99 a month. When this comes out, are you interested in Apple TV Plus service in November?

I'm certainly interested in giving it a free trial. You know, right now we are paying for Hulu and Netflix. And then we've got Prime, but I don't even count that because I would pay for Prime, you know, regardless of if it came with the TV thing. So to me, that one kind of almost doesn't count. But those are the three that we have. I would definitely do a free trial and see what the content is. You know, as I've talked about on the show, the TV in our home is pretty much consumed. What little TV we do watch is mostly dictated by the kids these days. So a lot of it will just depend on what sort of content they have that might appeal

to them. And then, of course, for my wife and I, if there are some compelling shows that we might occasionally stay up and watch after the kids go to bed, we might be willing to spend another 10, 15 bucks a month. Yeah. I wonder how long that, I don't, there's got to be come to a point where everybody's paying a hundred dollars again in streaming, uh, fees and they realize like, ah, man, this just isn't worth it. So, um, I don't know. But again, what I always come back to that's better now is that you're not locked into long-term contracts and, uh, for that a hundred dollars, you're getting access to, you access to so many different offerings. So yeah, it's pros and cons for sure.

With all of these, Disney's coming out with theirs, AT&T is coming out with theirs, of course Apple, and then you've got all the established players. So yeah, it's very quickly becoming an extremely crowded landscape. It will be interesting. Well, speaking of Apple, I could talk a little bit about Apple HomeKit. On Friday, a video emerged that offered our closest look yet of IKEA's long-awaited smart blinds. Throughout the entire launch process, IKEA has stated that the blinds would support HomeKit through its Trot Free Hub.

But now the company says HomeKit won't be supported at launch. And evidence came from this video. Someone posted on Reddit doing kind of a walkthrough, and the Ikea's Trodfee support team responded to the video and said, yep, HomeKit will not be supported on launch, but will be available later this fall. Interesting. All right, well, we'll have to keep an eye on that one for sure. Some conflicting stories here over the last couple of weeks on it. Speaking of IKEA, IKEA's smart home investments to date have been smart but scattered. Now the Swedish HomeGoods brand says it's going to amp up its smart home bets with a brand new dedicated business unit.

Quote, at IKEA, we want to continue to offer products for a better life at home for the many people going forward. In order to do so, we need to explore products and solutions beyond conventional home furnishings, said Bjorn Block, head of the new IKEA Home Smart business unit in a press release from the company. And his name was mercifully easy to pronounce. So I got lucky there. Yep. Yep. There's a couple of different things that floated by. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to type that in because Jason or I will not be able to pronounce it. So this is pretty interesting. I like how that story said that they've been smart but scattered like they definitely have been uh and i think with a little bit more focus on smart technologies that they can get into their stores like their stores are very popular i

happened to go to the ikea jason i put my hands on a the the the the lamp the the Sonos lamp thing. I put my hands on that. And I have feelings about it. What's the verdict? It's still the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life. In fact, my wife said, quote, that is the ugliest thing I have ever seen, and it's not going in our house. And that's a literal quote.

So you guys were in sync on that one? Yeah, yeah, I think we were. Now, as far as like the quality of between like the little 100 one and and i think that one's 179 for the lamp like the lamp did sound better um but i it's kind of hard to say that it's any better of a value than buying a 200 or 199 uh sonos one that has doesn't have a lamp but it has like a lamp, but it has the smart assistant stuff built into it. So to me, it's, I don't know, you get an ugly lamp with a coaster underneath it.

And Jason, we've made fun of that coaster. That coaster actually has like the play, pause, volume up and down buttons on it. So that's what the coaster's for. Interesting. Who knew? But yeah, it's's i don't know i guess it depends on what's really important to you if if you want the smart assistant stuff you can go with the sonos one if you want a lamp you can go with the ikea one the choice is yours yeah absolutely but that's my review my short review on oh and i tried

to buy one but they were out of stock i wanted i really wanted to buy the lamp just to set it on my desk and say that i have one and they didn't have any they weren't there they had plenty of the little bookshelf ones but um the the lamps were all sold out or not maybe next time yeah maybe next time your wife will just have to wait oh sure she was relieved yeah this week amazon introduced custom interfaces which offers developers and device manufacturers a way to connect gadgets with alexa and echo smart speakers custom interface is part of the gadget toolkit introduced in beta last year and can for example make a sound effect every time you score a basket with a toy hoop on the wall and give music lessons with Alexa when it's connected to a piano keyboard. That's pretty cool. A little more interactive.

Yeah. I think it was an interesting story in the sense of, like you said, making things more interactive. It goes on to talk about how, you know, Echoes could become part of an ongoing story or dialogue as people use toys or board games or play other sorts of games in the home. And so I think this is an area to watch. We frequently talk about voice on the show and how it's maybe stalled out a little bit in terms of its utility or usefulness. Most of us are using it for very simple use cases like music or kitchen timers. And that's really what the data shows. But this might be another, uh, another place where, where voice can come into play a little bit more in terms of games and entertaining the little ones around the home. So I think this is a, this is an area to keep an eye

on. Do you have those, uh, you you'll know what I'm talking about as a parent. Uh, do you have and anybody who's ever grown up with books in their house, but you know, the little golden, like sided books, I think they're called literally little golden books on the side i don't know that honestly it doesn't ring a bell you have to jog my memory i mean it's it's a it's a particular brand but when you look at the edge or the the binding it's golden and like they're all this particular golden books it's a golden book yeah something like that um i mean it's like peter peter and the wolf are the three little pigs there's a ton of like they've been okay i see these yeah instantly recognizable um yeah so if you have a google assistant you can actually say

hey read uh three little pigs and it'll actually play like music and things behind you reading out loud the story and every time you say the big bad wolf huffed and puffed you get this like and you blow in and stuff like that so cool it's actually kind of just like this but i i suspect a little a lot more customized and very like i'm not sure that you could do that with any um you know book and a google assistant i i don't know the development process on that but it seems like that's something you could you could do that with any book and a Google Assistant. I don't know the development process on that, but it seems like that's something you could introduce or do with something like this. Right. Very cool. All right. Well, in our final headline here, before we get into our interview with Justin Berghoff from Leviton, Samsung, a recent report confirms that Samsung, the biggest player in QLED space, is about to make a complete 180 by jumping into the OLED TV game.

Despite having avoided the space for years and creating its largest competitor, Samsung's new plan appears to be marrying everything the company has learned from creating its brilliantly bright and colorful QLED displays with all of the wonders of OLED for an entirely new technology. And this one was fascinating to me. I know Samsung's been shouting from the rooftops that their QLED technology is really superior in the way to go. And so this is an interesting shift from the company yeah and if you go to the store and look at the samsung's they look pretty good um but i think i think they're just like eking out

all of the tech you know the the the the features the specs that they can get out of out of leds at this point with qled um it's it's interesting that they're switching to led and i i pretty much don't care like Like the only thing, the only thing this tells me is that OLEDs are going to cost a lot less in the future. That's right. Because LG, Sony and Samsung are all on board with OLED.

That means prices are coming down. Yeah. The, the technology seems to be maturing and you know, if there's any, any truth to this story, then Samsung will hopefully be able to bring some of their lessons over from QLED and take OLED even a step further in terms of a technology. But like you said, you know, even if the technology sort of stays the same and the prices come down, even that's a big win.

OLED as a display technology even today is, is, uh, you know, top notch. And so, um, I, I welcome Samsung to the space and hope that it will continue to, uh, to drive those prices down. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 271. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for the weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis as well as other industry news that may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 271. Also, don't forget you can join us live in the chat room on Wednesday evenings starting around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern. We always enjoy having some folks hang out with us live while we do the show. We've got a couple hanging out today, so we appreciate that. You can find out more at hometech.fm slash live.

And with that, Seth, let's go ahead and jump right into our interview with Justin Berghoff from Leviton. Hey, Justin, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you. I'm wonderful. Thanks a lot. Yeah, we appreciate you taking some time out of your day to come join us here and talk about Leviton and the Smart Load Center. We're really looking forward to learning more about that. I think it's a really neat-looking product, so we're excited to dive in. But before we do that, if you could give our listeners just a quick personal introduction and maybe talk about some of your background that has brought you to the point where you're at today with Leviton. Sure. Certainly. I appreciate you

having me on. So my title is Director of Business Development and Product Management. So I'm really responsible kind of for providing the vision and direction for developing the load center. Essentially, my charter was to drive the development of the new Leviton Load Center. So my undergrad degree was really in engineering, and then ultimately I gravitated towards product management as my career progressed. So that's where I focused most of my, I'd say, 19 years in power distribution. I spent most of it at a large conglomerate and then a few years at a startup where I really got to build out a team and portfolio from scratch there. So it was still kind of an electrical product that came out of an incubator program at Georgia Tech, actually.

Moved on to Leviton. It's a breath of fresh air because I had the opportunity to run the load center program like a startup, but there was financial backing of Leviton's been around like 116 years. So it was a much more agile also than that conglomerate that I was at. So that's where we are today. Cool. So you kind of get the best of both worlds in terms of that startup and innovation environment, but also the backing of a big company. I know a lot of big companies are trying to find that sweet spot these days. It sounds like Leviton was moving in that direction as well. So that's a great fit for you. You alluded to it a couple of times, and we're going to talk about the smart

load center, but give us a little bit of context first, because this is obviously a new iteration in a product line that's been around for a little while. So give us kind of the background on the development of the load center as a whole. I could talk about that. So great, yeah. So, I mean, in general, Leviton, if you've been involved with electrical products at all, you've likely heard of us. So, you know, like I said, been around for over 110 years, primarily known for market share and wiring devices like outlets, GFCIs, USBs, switches, dimmers, et cetera. But our founder, actually, Isidore Levitin, he started off making brass mantle tips for gaslighting in Manhattan in 1906.

And then he met a gentleman by the name of Thomas Edison, and he partnered with him to design a screw-in lamp holder. And that was really our first product and that drove the whole manufacturing, you know, history of Leviton and innovation grew from that actually. But in any case, so, but the load center, we started with a blank sheet of paper with real preconceived notions of what the solution should look like.

Most importantly, we started off with customer needs instead of like a product, which you're kind of typically used to when you do a new product development. And so what we did is we actually used this. We partner a lot with MIT and we use an innovation process that they use. It's a systematic innovation process that is really, you know, it's repeatable and sustainable. And that's kind of an important thing when you have a big company. But the biggest thing is we got to go out in the field and do a lot of observations, talking to customers. And we actually filmed dozens of hours of installation and really took that back and had these cool sessions where we'd almost kind of reiterated and did it again and came up with some interesting concepts. And we focused in really on a couple of areas. This is for the generation one, first being ease of installation. Contractors are typically the number one decision makers for these products.

And then safety, certainly, and as well as approachability for the homeowner. They're generally scary products that nobody wants to go near. And then from that, we built onto the smart part, which I guess we can get to in a moment. That's very cool. So, yeah, approachability, that's exactly what I think of when I think of this. And when I look at the panel that you have on your website, Terry, it's very warm and approachable. It doesn't look anything like the flat sheet metal angry breaker box that I have sitting

on my wall from 1969, right? It's, it's definitely looks modern. It definitely looks like something you can walk right up to and understand. But let's go over like the kind of like a high level, like the main components of the system. Obviously you start with a box, right? It's, there's a breaker box of, or an enclosure of some type. And let's start from that and then, and branch off into the different products that can fit inside.

Sure. I mean, so you have the enclosure, right? That's the housing of the load center. Your electricity is flowing in from your utility or solar or whatever you're using into that box. It goes typically through, you know, it'll go through a main disconnect and then flows into all those little breakers that create the branches that flow into all of your outlets and lighting and, you know, connected appliances. And that's the general idea of a load center. And that's why you think, why shouldn't this thing be smart and connected? It's literally the nervous system of the house.

You know, all the electricity flows in and out of that system. And it really has the ability to provide the necessary data, I think, to bring us into the next generation of living with electricity. There are a number of different products that you have on here. I mean, from the branch breaker, the breakers that do the branches. There was one I noticed there was like a little like a like a little hub device that maybe gets installed inside. Yes. OK, for the smart breakers specifically. So let's say we had a requirement in speaking with contractors and especially builders and developers that if somebody wanted to upgrade to a smart system

they it should be easy it needs to be easy to do and they don't want to have to switch out and put in a whole new panel oh so so yeah so what it is you can start off with with standard breakers and then upgrade into the smart okay that's good idea smart breakers are just it's the same exact breaker uh clearly it's got intelligence and connectivity built in but it communicates wirelessly in the box to that little hub and that hub is what takes the data and gets it back to the user's router, either Wi-Fi or it can be hardwired by Ethernet as well. But so clearly, you know, it needs, you can't get Wi-Fi breakers outside of that metal box very well. So we came up with a way to get this to this aggregator hub, which then transmits the data externally. Right, right. So talk me through that a little bit more, because obviously you took what was traditionally a very unintelligent device, but like you said,

lives at, has almost the nervous system of the home, added some intelligence to this, but that obviously comes with its own difficulties there, which I think you were alluding to in terms of, you know, this is a big metal box, which is not conducive to wireless communications, of course. And so, you know, you a big metal box which is not conducive to wireless communications of course and so you know you have wireless communications going between the breakers and the hub can you talk about how so does the hub go inside of the breaker box uh or the panel first of all and then what is the the communication standard are those communicating via like a zigbee z-wave bluetooth how are those communicating with one another yep yes exactly so

to answer the first question they had that the hub can mount it ideally inside the panel and then the either an antenna or ethernet cable will run out and or you can actually mount it next to the panel it's got like if you could go through one of the little knockouts on the side um and that that can get the data but yes it trained the breaker speak bluetooth to the hub itself interesting you mentioned uh well while you were kind of introducing the product uh that you that you had gone out and done all this this watching of the installations and how things would be um how how does the like the installation i guess kind of walk us through the overview of the like the installations and how things would tweak. How does the installation, I guess, kind of walk us through the overview of the installation and getting this thing set up.

And I realize it's probably a multi, if you're in the field, it's probably a multi-day process. Or it can be months at a time, right? Because in a new construction project. Well, yeah, it depends. Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it depends. I mean, no typical contractor can put in and we always recommend using electricians working with load centers. You know, it's certainly not a typical DIY kind of projects. It takes a special kind of person to want to install a load center. But no i mean ours by the way we just did some testing and we did new construction installation and we installed 25 faster because of our design

um you can completely wire the the panel without any breakers present which is a new kind of i'd say radical radical departure as to what what they do what's been done for the last 70 years very much so yeah yeah because because typically you're you're wiring up the breakers and click clipping them onto the panel so that's that's very different yeah yeah so that was a big need from because when you when you look at the process they'll do the installation and pull the wires and you're right it could be months until they go back on a new construction. But when they go back with our panel, it'll all be wired. If they go back on a competitive panel, it'll just be a big mess of solid copper wire sitting, sticking out of the

panel that they have to fish through. I'm laughing because I've seen it. So I understand. Yes, yes, indeed. So that was one of the biggest things we really saw as far as pain points go and how can we help out electricians? All right, cool. Well, that, that's definitely, you know, interesting and cool to know that you've, you've trimmed down that physical installation time through that, through that feature where they can install it without the breakers themselves. Talk a little bit about the actual setup process, because clearly in a traditional sense, you put the breaker in, presumably you do some testing and you're done.

Now you've got intelligence built in to this device. And so what does the actual setup process look like in terms of kind of telling the system which breaker is what and all of that? Walk us through that a little bit. Sure. That was another thing we we have a awesome team of ux people that that helped work with that and really what we do is you install it you power up your hub and you open up the the free my leviton app and it really kind of walks you through it. The first step is you connect to the hub. It uses like a soft AP mode, similar to Alexa, right? So people are used to that. And literally

walks you through breaker by breaker. So you would, you start it and it used to do a scan and the system scans it and it finds all your smart breakers and then you go start breaker one and all of the smart breakers have an led so then the breaker will blink and you find that breaker and you say okay what position is it in and you can look on the side you know they're all numbered and you say it's in position six and then it asks you what is that you know what is that breaker controlling what's that circuit and you can type living room lights done then it goes to the next breaker and that breaker will start blinking and you do it all the way through the process and then you connect your hub to your wi-Fi, similar to, like I said, I'll use again Amazon as an example.

Same kind of a process and you're done. Interesting. Is this, now when you say your, are you saying like the homeowner or is this something the electrician would do? So typically, you know, if the electrician would do it most of the time uh we made it very you know and what they'll do is they can go through and configure the whole system without any wi-fi present um and then the homeowner will get the handoff when they can enroll it to the cloud and all that stuff right so they can do the full configuration um because that was another requirement from builders saying hey you're going to install this thing, but there's probably not any Wi-Fi there for a couple of months. So that was a big, big requirement for us as well. Cool. So now let's say I've had my house built. I had one of the

panels installed. The electricians come in, set everything up. I'm the homeowner. I have my Leviton app. I'm sitting here on my couch couch everything's moved in what can i do walk us through some some use cases things that that i can do with a smart uh smart panel solution like this so certainly yeah i i kind of simplified into four key areas one would be you know certainly energy consumption, you know, tracking your usage. You can get it, you know, fully aggregated to your whole house or you can drill down into the circuit level. You know, first and foremost for me is that you need to have these metrics and baselines to if you're interested in, you know, changing your behaviors or changing your costs or, you know, many things, reducing your carbon footprint. You know, that's something I feel strongly about. And, you know, we're doing a lot of things with electric vehicles and solar and storage, et cetera.

And I think just getting the ability to get this granular data so it's super important to identify some of these hogs or and identify inefficiencies and getting real-time real-time feedback so energy consumption one quick one quick question on this are do you have like are the cts and everything built into the breakers themselves yes like the yeah that's really cool yeah that's very nice yes so that's one thing and there's other things that are are happening on future roadmaps of talking to. There's a lot of these, I'd say, startups out there that have a lot of very, you know, genius data scientists that can take the data. Because we're getting, you know, and measured in milliseconds, you know, frequency, voltage, current, you know, power factor, all this data. But in any case, I'll step back up to like a typical person.

So yes, energy consumption, the CTs are built into the breakers themselves, correct? Oh, that's very neat. Yeah. So there's that. Second, we would talk, I talk about, I like to talk about like notifications. Certainly you can get notified when your breaker trips right that's you know paramount like number one kind of simple that said i've always said it before how often does your breaker trip not not too often right it's it's it's you know probably counted on one

hand uh i don't know you don't live in my house. Using lots of things at once. That's understandable. We're working on it quite a bit. So yeah. One question, if I can jump in there, actually, and sorry, we're kind of breaking you up a little bit here. But as far as notifications, one thing I was interested to know is those notifications, they presumably can go to the homeowner. I'm also wondering, we have a lot of professional integrators and home technology managers and people like that who work in the industry. Can those notifications also go to like a contractor? So if I wanted to be notified if a breaker that was attached to maybe a high-end home theater projector or the breaker powering my server rack got tripped. Could that

go to the contractor in addition to the homeowner? Yes, you can add a contractor as a user to your account. And that's actually been a big request of ours because there's a lot of partners of ours that do especially managing second homes. uh think about that so there's a lot of people that get notifications we had i know of one just recently that was a good use user story about uh on nantucket so i'd gotten a notification so yes absolutely and i think Absolutely. And I think, stay tuned, Leviton is trying to build out more of a pro-style version of the current MyLeviton app. So that would add even more functionality. But today, yes, they can be notified. Got it.

The second person can. Yep. So along those lines, yeah, notifications. Like I said, okay, breaker trip is pretty fundamental. But having the ability to do load sensing is pretty cool, right? That's when you can get into setting up notifications for an appliance has been on for his AC unit to notify him if it was on for more than two hours at a time. Right. So he got a notification and he ended up finding out that one of his lines had burst and refrigerant was leaking. So, yeah, so he actually, and this is a true story, and he was actually able to find that issue with his HVAC and repair it. Very interesting. So that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I talked about energy.

I talked about notifications. And then also we talk about the capability to update a breaker's firmware, right? Everybody knows when you get a notification that your software needs to be updated for your phone, right? And if you read in the fine print, it says, like, fix bugs and, you know, a few other things. Not that there are bugs and circuit breakers, but there are ways to improve their functionality, protection functionality. So right now, you're getting a lot more protection in your circuit breaker than you did in the past, over and above short circuits and overloads. So we can improve the functionality of the breakers. When you talk about arc fault protection, those are those little tiny arcs that happen in wire for a multitude of reasons that can cause fire. So we're able to update and improve that. And lastly would be control, right?

So as of today, we can turn the breaker off remotely. You have to go and reset it and turn it back on manually though. Got it. Okay. Very cool. That gives us a good sense of what some of the use cases are and how this would be, how this would be useful again, to sort of your, your typical homeowner or smart homeowner. One thing that you laid out there, number three on your list, the firmware updates,

I think segues nicely into a question that's big on a lot of consumers' minds these days, and it's data privacy and security. And when you start to talk about something like a breaker box that's so, again, to go back to what you said, kind of the nerve center of the house, this is certainly an important consideration. So talk about Leviton's approach in general and specific to this product as it pertains to data privacy and security. I mean, all communications from our devices that go to the app and the cloud are encrypted using industry standards. You know, we've been selling connected devices for well over 15 years. I mean, cloud stuff pretty recently,

but, you know, and we do internals. We have internal security teams that we do frequent reviews, updates, and we use third party companies to try and do penetration testing for the data. We use the data that's voluntarily shared only to mostly to improve the user experience. It's not sold and it's basically, it's not tracked over time and it does not collect real-time information about you or the location of your device. And it's pretty simple at this point of time. We're not doing any individual or identifying any individual or device, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. All right.

Yeah, you're just using that to, like you said, improve the app experience. If somebody opens up the app and they don't understand how it works, you kind of need to know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, we look at, you know, it's basic data to help improve the product. Like we've done time, you know, our Decor Smart Lighting products have been out there for a few years now and really taken the market by storm. And we're using that same backbone, the cloud and the app. But they, you know, it gives you some interesting insights like front porch is the number one most popular used location for a smart light um which makes sense but we are able to glean that data and it couldn't it can help

improve you know user experience and stuff like that um you know and again there's a lot of these there's a lot of analytics available that um improve the overall UX, I would say. Well, one big question I'm sure most people have is, you know, you're taking a product or a device that's been in the marketplace for, I don't know, how many dozens of years or tens of years? I mean, it's been around for a breaker's been around for a long time. My house was built in 1969, and I can go out and I can go to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy a replacement breaker or new breakers for that panel today. And I think, Levitan, kind of the same thing. You can go out and do that with your products as well. But how do these smart breakers compare cost-wise to a traditional breaker that I would go down and pick up from those big box stores? Sure.

In general, and one thing we also found, it's going to be a one-time cost adder. But you can expect it, in general, I would say, to cost about twice as much as your traditional panel. I can't give a number. It depends on the size of your house and all that stuff. But that's probably a good number to kind of rule of thumb go with. Another thing, though, noted, and a lot of our sales folks are teaching me this, is you don't need to have every single breaker be smart. You can say select four or five critical circuits

that you want to have smart you know um and and i would say in general they're depending on the size of the breaker and the technology probably between you know 25 to 50 bucks more um for those breakers but again you know like i've been seeing a lot of folks are selling it uh that you don't need to have every single one in your panel be smart yeah but that makes sense because you're not using just a pure analog i mean nobody goes to home depot and expects a smart switch to cost the same price as as the what a dollar 39 you know toggles so like it makes sense that something with smarts built into it, with firmware that you can update and improve upon over time,

costs a little bit more. I mentioned the big box stores a couple times, but where would somebody go out and purchase a system like this? What's your distribution path here? Right. So today, if you wanted to say, if you heard this podcast, said I need that, you would need to reach out to an electrician and they would have to buy it through an electrical distribution house.

Moving forward, certainly, you know, we partner with, you know, the big some big box stores and online. So I anticipate those to be available in the next six months or so you should start seeing it readily available online and in stores. Very cool. Well, we, uh, running up on our time here. And again, we really appreciate you coming on to share a little bit about this new product. It's a really interesting one. And I know I enjoyed learning more about it. Um, is there anything you can give us in terms of just kind of an overview? Like what's next? Where do you guys see this product evolving and going?

And what's kind of the next big, exciting thing that you're thinking about with regards to the Smart Load Center? Okay, well, good. I appreciate that opportunity. Yeah, I mean, it's right now, in the next very short term, next quarter, we're focusing in on on app upgrades and dashboarding and trying to, you know, help the user experience get better. Moving forward, and maybe I'll get on my soapbox.

What I'm really passionate about is climate change. You know, the, the, the planet's temperature is increasing, um, and it's real, the oceans are absorbing most of it, you know, and you're sealing polar ice melting and, and things like that. Um, and, and it's NASA's even said that it's 95% certainty it's greenhouse gases created by us. Right. Um, so what I am really excited about is getting involved in residential energy management solutions to help more integrate them. You know, today you can have like a solar person, you know, install a battery and thermostat and water heater to improve the overall ROI of solar. But I think if we can get all these devices that are going into homes, and which I think you guys specialize in discussing, in growing these net zero homes with the ability to really combine intelligence and real-time feedback and control to reduce energy consumption and the reliance on carbon-based fuel. So that's what I'm excited about.

So we're already kind of working on it. I'm alluding to some projects we're working on. I mentioned a few technologies, and we're working with some of them. They reached out to us pretty much right after we announced this product in February to start looking at some partnerships where we can work together, either go to market or sharing API data if customers approve. So that's where I would like to take this over the next few years. That's great. Love it. Yeah. And I can definitely see how this product fits in to that picture. And it's something you're personally passionate about all the better. I think it's great to see technology solutions. Seth and I talk about this frequently where,

you know, this stuff's a lot of fun and there's a lot of cool toys and gadgets and entertainment devices and all that stuff is great. But it's also really fun and inspiring when you can see technology work to make people's lives better or help the planet. And these are really exciting times in the smart home for that reason. So very cool. Um, if any of our listeners wanted to connect with you and, and find out more or just say hi and, or ask follow-up question, what would be the best way for them to do that? Sure. Uh, the best way would probably go onto, um, the, the Leviton website and there's a form and, and they can just fill that in at the load center section.

And those go straight to our marketing folks. And if there's any questions that come through, I'm glad to answer them. I answer them, many of them myself, as soon as I can. So that would probably be the easiest and most guaranteed way to get ahold of me. All right, cool. Well, we will include a link to that in the show notes.

And once again, Justin, we really appreciate you taking some time to come join us here on the Home Tech Podcast. Great. Thank you. It's a very, very cool product. And kind of like, we were kind of joking after that, after we got off the phone with him, that like, you can't get any like lower level in the house, right? Like, that's right. Go any further. You'd have to have like smart concrete. And it just makes, it makes sense to do this. Like it totally makes sense to, to have the smarts in your home at kind of like the neural network level of,

of, of, of your electrical system. And, uh, geez, man, go on. I, I, he, he has to be so busy because like you you look at the website and it's it's it's this one product that you see it's nice and shiny but there's there's so many little pieces to this there's so many tiny like little parts and pieces to this and as a product manager that just kind of gives me like the shivers like cold shivers down my spine seeing all that like this is man this is a it's a huge project uh it's not just one like one echo type device like it's not a smart switch that you're installing a wall this is like a full line product i'm very impressed with what i saw yeah yeah like you said really really cool to see smarts come down, like sort of to stick with that metaphor to that level of the home

and get embedded straight into the breaker box. And really enjoyed learning about it in general. And also at the end when Justin talked about some of the ways that the data that these devices are gathering could tie into things like smarter energy use and green energy and things of that nature was very interesting. So this could prove to be kind of a foundational component as we move to make homes truly more connected in new and innovative ways. So really enjoyed the conversation and want to thank Justin once again for coming on the show. Moving on from there, Seth, nothing in the mailbag this week, but we do have a pick of the week.

I think I'll let you tee this one up for us. Yeah, so I think in the past I've talked about my Ubiquiti Amplify Teleport that I picked up. I think it's maybe $100. It's a little VPN device. You plug it in, you use it at coffee shops and that kind of thing. In fact, no, it's not sitting on the desk. It's over there, but it's an easy VPN. You plug it in. If you're staying at a hotel, you get it online. You know, you go through the hotel, like type in your room number, your last name, you get in online,

it stays online. And then all your devices are like oh there's the wi-fi it makes its own wi-fi setup and it gets online um but the thing is it's like that takes time it takes time to do and like not every time i go to a coffee shop do i carry around this little brick size device and plug in um so and then have to wait to set it up. So, uh, what Ubiquiti has done is actually pretty cool. They, they've in the, on the Amplify line, they've built in a little VPN into, uh, an app that goes on your phone. So I, I, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's called the same thing, Amplify Telephone app. But if you have an Amplify mesh router, which is, you know, in their Amplify lineesh Router, which is in their Amplify line. You can download this Teleport app on, I think, iOS and Android.

There's a pretty impressively easy setup process. It kind of walks you through it. And then once you want to go on a VPN, you go to the app, you hit connect. It connects to the VPN directly into your house, it connects to the VPN, right in directly into your house and all your traffic is coming from your house. It's secure point to point from your phone to your house. Um, and, and that, that kind of solves a little, you know, that extra bit of privacy where like I go to the coffee shop and I'm, I'll get on the wifi or target or whatever, get on the wifi, be like, I really don't like this kind of icky, the button get on get on the vpn and uh and and

you're online and secure so um definitely check that out uh it's it's on i think all the app stores and uh there's a firmware or a software update for your amplify router that you may have to do um but one thing that was really hard there's a five a five pin code i say it's really hard because i didn't read the directions, but it should be a little more available to you, I guess, or right up front if you wanted to do this. It's in the hamburger menu, which I never look in, and it's this little thing that says generate code.

And I should have recognized that, but if you can't find the five-digit pin code, it's there in the little hamburger menu on the Amplify router. Pretty easy to do once you get that. And then it's all downhill from there. All right. Well, very cool. I know these sorts of VPN offerings are definitely becoming more popular and for good reason. They add a nice layer of security, which is becoming ever more important today. And so very good to be aware of these things and understand what the different offerings are out there. And this one seems like a great one

to add to your short list if you're looking or shopping around. Yep. And one thing, well, and this is built into the router. The app is free. The router, you know, I think costs between 130 or 140 to $200. So the one thing I will say is that you can't do with the app right now, you can't do like local access. So if you wanted to connect back to your house and then connect to your Plex server using your phone over public Wi-Fi, can't quite do that yet. They say it's coming, but you can do that with the teleport, the the hardware piece that will allow you to connect locally and do all that you know download movies and everything like you're literally sitting at your house on your local network while you're in a coffee shop so god if that's what you need you need the hardware piece if you just want to feel a little extra secure while you're out and about

hopping around on that that that horrible nasty public wi-fi just get that app and connect in pretty quickly just makes you feel kind of dirty doesn't it it does it does it really i mean there's so like you you go and read what these people are you go to a coffee shop and do and they're like you know and i think about like your phone you say connect to this thing and i show up to like a starbucks or target or whatever and my phone's like on the wi-fi yeah it's and i and i now i'm like going in and i'm turning that feature off where it automatically connects but like if it's an open wi-fi and i've connected to it the phone's just like yep that's what i'm gonna get on i'm get on that network and and and start talking and it like all somebody has to do is set up an access

point with the same ssid and and open to the world and they could just sit there and see traffic, you know, your phone's going to connect to it. It's going to try and do whatever. Yeah. And it's going to think it's online when it's doing it. So it's, it's,

it's not a good system if you're thinking securely. Um, it's just convenient. And, uh, I don't know. It's, it's,

I, I, there's that Comcast network, like Xfinity network that's on like built into all the routers. Like somebody could just set up an Xfinity router and somebody, oh, I'll go right into that. You could put a fake form up and have somebody,

you could sit there and collect passwords and stuff and have all the free streaming TV you want because you have somebody's password. Like my mind just goes straight to the evil plot. Yeah, well, it's not far-fetched, though, like you said. No, no. I'd say it'd be pretty easy to do. Yeah, absolutely.

You make some really good points there about just things to think about and be aware of as you walk to your local Starbucks or Target. Like you said, if your phone's just jumping right on the Wi-Fi, it's kind of open season at that point. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. Absolutely. And as we do every week, we want to give a big thanks to everybody who supports the show, but especially to those of you who are able to financially contribute to our efforts through our Patreon page. If you don't know about Patreon, head on over to hometech.fm support and learn how you can contribute for as little as $1 a month.

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much for, uh, for taking a moment to do that and for contributing to the podcast. So thanks again, G Paul. We appreciate it. Absolutely. And you know, Snappy V is looking to acquire podcasts. I hope we're open to offers. It seems like what they want to do. I just wanted to throw it out there on the table. Why not? HomeTech.fm is a proud member of the Technology.fm collective podcast. You can find other great shows like Home On, the Smart Home Show, and Daily Tech News Show over there at Technology.fm. So check that out. Absolutely.

All right, Seth, without a bot, do it for our show this week. Again, we want to encourage anybody heading out to Cedia to go on over to hometech.fm slash happy hour and learn about our event Thursday there, 5 to 7. So Thursday, September 12th from 5 to 7 p.m. Come by and grab a beer courtesy of Blackwire and the Home Tech Podcast. We would love to see you and definitely be sure to tune in the next couple of weeks. We've got seven hugs coming on next week. We teased this last week as well. So really cool handheld remote solution. If you're not familiar with them, go check that out. Seven hugs will be joining us next week. And then Seth, the week after that, we've got Giles Sutton, the VP of Industry Engagement for Cedia coming on to join us us that'll be the week before cdia and he'll give us a preview of coming attractions from

the organization and we look forward to that conversation as well it sounds like it's going to be a busy couple weeks but that's how that's how it gets this time is the season yeah it is the season uh and and we'll be busy we'll be busy all the way through and then after cd as we do our follow-ups and everything so um sounds like jason i think we should just go all the way through and then after CDS we do our follow-ups and everything. Jason, I think we should just go we should stop now and go get some rest because it's going to be busy. That sounds like a plan.

All right, Seth. Well, Jason, have a good weekend and I'll talk to you next week. All right, take care.