HomeTech.fm - Episode 272 - Bravo, Bravas

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Crestron OS 3 officially launches. Lutron sues Savant over Palladiom knock-off (err… competitor). Details emerge on Google’s forthcoming Nest Mini. A new initiative from the UHD alliance takes aim at the dreaded soap opera effect. Disney+ offers a killer limited-time pre-order deal. Is the Bravas roll-up the sign of a new era in integration, or Via part 2? 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 30th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, what's going on? How you doing, Seth? We're on the final countdown here to Cedia, so I'm busy. I'm finding my way. Finding your way. You have, you have presentations to do. You have, uh, I'm sure I do meetings to attend. I actually have meetings to attend to. Oh, we all do. Yeah. Awful. Awful. Can I just, can a guy just walk the show floor? Yeah. Unparasque, unmolested. That's right. Leave me alone. That's right. I feel, I feel very ill prepared for, um, that component of the show. Like I'm, I'm prepared for the vendor stuff and

that's where all my focus is right now. And it, it leaves very little time for like getting prepared. I wanted to attend, uh, Julie Jacobson's CDA preview was not able to do that. I was literally double booked already at that time. And, um, so that, that didn't work out. I was not able to do that. I was literally double booked already at that time. And so that didn't work out. I don't know if you were able to attend, but yeah, I feel a little bit like I just need to find some time to dig in. We are going to have Giles Sutton on, VP of industry engagement from Cedia next week. So I'll look forward to getting his perspective on what I should be looking for at the show, because right now I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I, other than service, of course, I'll eventually go in and look up the, uh, the floor plan and kind of look around and see what, what stuff is kind of hidden away and

tucked away. I'll do that eventually. But the problem is, is that I have all these meetings that are just popping up in between, like during the day in between that. And it's kind of like you, you spend your time like rushing back and forth you know how meetings go you spend your time running back and forth across the show floor and uh and it's just it's generally no fun to do that and then you just kind of like see things in passing and don't get to spend time like like like back in the good old days when we didn't have these kind of worries right like? That's right. We just wander around and say, oh, that's a really cool speaker over there. Let me go look at it.

That's right. But it's a good problem to have. And I can speak for the whole team at One Vision when I say that we're really excited for the show. So anyone attending, if you're interested in checking out what we're doing, we'd love to have you come by the booth. And we'll see you there. We've got some workshops we're doing as well. So that'll be fun. And on the Home Tech Beat, Seth, we've got, of course, the Home Tech Happy Hour on that Thursday from 5 to 7 at the Rock Bottom Brewery.

So you can head over to our website and check that out. We'd love to have you RSVP. And thanks again to Blackwire for sponsoring. Yeah, we're totally happy to do that. I think a press release went out today. So maybe we'll get some more people who aren't familiar with the show but may be familiar with BlackWire to come on in. BlackWire is just a national distributor of various things,

various products that are familiar to people in the CI world. And we have one of the, well, I guess probably the few, one of the very few integrations with Ring products where we have Ring events is what we call it, where you can get all the events taken off the Ring system into your like Control 4 or URC system for programming. Like you can't get the video, but we can do a whole lot with getting the doorbell button press events and that kind of stuff, like maybe ring a doorbell inside. Right.

So it's just a cool add-on driver. it's low cost and uh that's probably one of our more popular things that we have so software and hardware black wire very cool very cool well we will jump in shortly here to our home tech headlines i did want to give a quick plug to a story and since we're on kind of the cdia beat here and and talking about one vision there a minute ago wanted to give a quick plug if you're interested in in kind of the Cedia beat here and talking about One Vision there a minute ago. Wanted to give a quick plug. If you're interested in kind of learning what, getting a sense for what One Vision's about, there's a good post up on residential systems that we'll link in the show notes

about a vision for profiting from service. He called it service agreements. And it features Joey Kolchinski, our CEO gave a talk at the HTA home technology association summits recently, and just talks about the idea of kind of moving beyond the thoughts of RMR and really starting to look at service as a whole, as a profit center and, uh, a more profitable, valuable part of the business than most home technology pros tend to look at it today. So I wanted to give that a quick plug before we jump into headlines. Again, if you're plotting out your plans at Cedia, this isn't a Cedia article per se,

but I think it gives a good sense for the way that we're looking at the world these days and would encourage you to go take a look. Yep. And you've got a number of classes kind of walking around this idea that you're doing. Yeah. So we talked about those a couple of shows, or maybe the last show. I don't know.

It's been a while. It's been a crazy week. But I've got the links to those, and I can put them back in the show notes as well. So if you're interested in checking out Jason's talks, I'll put the links there in the show notes. Love to have you. Absolutely.

All right, Seth, well, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Crestron's much-anticipated new home control platform, Crestron Home OS 3, is hitting the market and is being hailed as a, quote, game changer for the company. OS 3 is the headlining technology for the company's resurgence in residential theme, with the official launch date set for September 3rd. First shown at ISE 2019 in Amsterdam, Crestron Home OS 3 is the company's new control platform characterized by a dramatic redesign of the consumer app-based user interface.

Been hearing a lot about OS 3 recently. We've got some big fans in the the slack chat the hub there yeah greg greg's talked about it quite a bit and i've been hearing nothing but good things about it so uh it's good for them i'm glad it's finally kind of out of whatever beta version that it's been in and out into the public's hands yeah yeah it says the article yeah the article in ce process has been two and a half years in the making. Speedier, smoother, more intuitive, and highly visual. Underwent the largest beta testing ever by the company with more than 250 integrators testing the new operating system. So they've put this thing through its paces.

It is good looking. Like you said, it's getting good feedback and reviews in our Slack chat, the hub, which we'll talk about later if you're curious about that. But yeah, I thought what jumped out at me is the resurgence in residential. So it looks like they've given that strategy there a name. And I know we've had several conversations spanning out over months and even, I guess, gosh, it's probably almost measured in years now.

I forget when Crestron pulled out of Cedia, but I know it's been an ongoing conversation and I continue to believe that with Clancy at the helm and, you know, they're, they're dedicated to residential. I, I just, it's a, it's a smaller part of their business than it is for most control companies. So anyways, it's, it's cool to see this and it looks like it's, it looks like it's been a great release for them so far. All right, well, moving on here, Lutron Electronics is suing Savant, accusing the defendant of infringing on patent number D734277, which defines a four-button keypad design employed in Lutron's Palladium product line.

Lutron claims Savant copied the plaintiff's design in that Savant's Ascend keypads are, and it goes on to list their grievances, you know, wall-mounted, including a cover housing with flat front surface, et cetera, et cetera. I got to tell you, I hadn't seen the Ascend lighting keypads yet. And I know like, you know, you can make the joke about Lutron loving to sue people and all of that, i i think they've got something here i mean those ascend key it's almost like a carbon copy if you i feel like yeah i mean the font is different and uh the engraving is a little you know padded down from the top a little bit more but that's about it yeah they yeah not notched it down a few pixels. Yeah, it's center aligned instead of top. Right.

It would be a little difficult to put these two products in front of maybe your average Joe jury and say, do you see any design differences here? And I would probably say no. There's not much difference in these. Stealing a design or whatever it is. Uh, that could be what they're going for. So, yeah, I mean, there's not much to the CE pro article. We'll link to it in the show notes that it does have, I shouldn't say there's not much to it.

There's not much, um, sort of interpretation done. It does have a, the raw copy of the entire lawsuit below is raw text of the lawsuit. And you can see, you can read the whole through the whole thing if if you want but uh yeah we'll keep an eye on we'll keep an eye on this one this will probably take a while to work its way through yeah we've seen similar things to this um not only i mean i'm what this looks like to me is like remember the the good old apple samsung battle of and basically samsung took a photocopier to the iphone and released pretty much the same looking device with the same like the exact same colored icons

for their their apps and everything like even the rounded corners and like that went on for on and on and on and on and i eventually i think they just they settled so we'll probably see nothing come of this i don't know lutron has been around for suing people for a very long time. They seem to be pretty good at it. So they got it down, but I think, I think they've, you know,

they got a leg to stand on here. It's, it's pretty bad. It is pretty bad. If you look at the product, just all you got to do is look at the picture. I mean, enough said. There you go. the new product. All you got to do is look at the picture. I mean, enough said.

There you go. There you go. Well, Google plans to launch a follow-up to 2017's Google Home Mini with a second generation Nest Mini. A reliable source tells 9to5Google. It's a departure from the previous model in name, but also a substantial upgrade in features. The Nest Mini will be the new name for the smaller of the Google Home Trio, and will have improved sound with a higher maximum volume and better bass and overall quality. It has a built-in wall mount, three and a half millimeter stereo jack,

and finally we're told that the device will have some kind of proximity awareness. Pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It says a proximity sensor might reveal the current volume as you approach it, which could be kind of neat. I'm not sure what else they might do with that feature, but yeah, the article also mentioned that third-party wall mounts for these Google home minis have apparently been really popular. So I haven't seen a lot of people doing that myself, but apparently a lot of people are, I'm not sure how you treat the power cord, you know, other than just tacking it

right straight down the wall or something. But anyways, it'll be a nice addition to the lineup there, and I'm sure it'll be really inexpensive as these devices are. So a good addition to keep your eye on if you happen to be a Google Home user. All right, Seth, I think this is my favorite story of the week.

I think you're going to like this one. The soap opera effect is real. And I know the integrators out there are all nodding their heads in agreement. And it makes big budget Hollywood movies and TV shows look like they were shot using a handy cam from the early 90s. Thankfully, it seems content creators, industry consortiums, and manufacturers are finally acknowledging what a dreadful thing the soap opera effect is and are now taking steps to combat it. Quote, filmmaker mode, end quote, is a proposal from the UHD Alliance that would add a new mode on TVs that turns off all or most post-processing of video in order to preserve the original look of cinematic material as closely as possible. Welcome news. Die in a fire

i uh i'm not a fan i'm not a fan at all like it's just kind of it's kind of wild to see um it's kind of wild to see like a brand new 85 inch sony come out of the box and you turn it on and it's kind of like at this weird smoothness dude it's like you got to go and find those little weird settings and just turn them off and they all call it something different yeah the other thing the other thing like when you're staying at a hotel or whatever like you have to like i if i turn it on and i can't turn off that setting, I'll just turn the TV off and we won't have a TV. You're like, ugh, just in disgust. Yeah, it is.

Like, I can't watch it. It's just gross. It's very distracting. I agree. Yeah. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. That's the problem I think we have. That's right.

I think most people, they have never seen it or never been told. And they say, oh, my TV looks really good. And then you're like, wait a minute. You have this turned on. You turn it off. And they're like, oh, you made it look better. And I don't think anybody goes, that is how TV should be. Right.

If you turn it off, they're like, oh, yeah, that looks better. And when you turn it back on, oh, that looks weird. So I don't know. I'm glad. It's a mystery. It's a mystery to me. I think it's made for like sports and maybe video games. But I know gamers don't like lag or anything.

So they want to turn off all these features. I don't know. Yeah, it's never really been clear to me like where it's actually a good thing. I don't know. So the story does go on to say that this initiative does have the support of some manufacturers, including LG, Panasonic, and Vizio have all expressed an interest to make it easier to watch filmed entertainment as it was meant to be seen. So I have some questions about the implementation and this will be a while in the making, I believe, but I'm going to reach out to the UHD Alliance,

see if I can get me one there. And, you know, we'll say, hey, all those specs and stuff, that's great. But like, just tell me how you're going to kill the soap opera effect. Like, that's what I really want to know. Greg is correcting me in the chat room. An expensive Sony doesn't do that.

Maybe I was thinking Samsung. I said Sony. I don't know why. But yeah, you get a Samsung TV, you plug it in. And yeah. The chat room. samsung tv you plug it in and yeah the chat room matthew says you'd be surprised how many people prefer that look the soap opera effect and seth you call them monsters matthew agreed definitely monsters savages savages right right no they're monsters savages wouldn't know that guy i'm just saying they're monsters so

so and we've had a lot of big news this week but uh i think the biggest one in my household They're monsters. Savages wouldn't know. I'm just saying they're monsters. We've had a lot of big news this week, but I think the biggest one in my household has been on Monday, Disney opened up information and online pre-orders for Disney+. The cool thing is if you pay up front for a three-year subscription, they give you like $60, $70 off so they basically buy two years get one free uh so three year subscription works out about 140 dollars uh which is about 392 a month uh that that offer was so popular it crashed the d23 that's their conference is going on there this week it crashed their website so uh evidently it's not just popular in this household,

which by the way, Jason, we like, it, it happened. We were like, we were waiting for, it was $7 or 699 or whatever that was going to just go out of her pocket every month. And they were like, you can buy three years and, and, and for, for the price of two and i'm like my daughter's three now she's gonna be six before we have to ever worry about this again like just yeah done no it seems like a great deal matthew another funny one here in the chat room same price as a cable bill for a month he's right it's actually less it's actually less than my most recent DirecTV bill. As people know, I've moved away from that now. And I'm definitely going to go check this deal out. It seems like I'm not sure if it's still available now. I'll have to go look. No, it's available through the 2nd of September. So yeah, if you hear the show on Friday, you'll still be okay to buy it for... You got like a day or two.

Yeah. you'll still be okay to buy it for you got like a day or two yeah yeah yeah you got a couple of days yeah so it was first made available over the weekend uh to people at the convention but they opened it up on monday online to members of the d23 fan club which anyone can join for free yep so we also got some pretty cool yep and we also got some details about the service uh that kind of came out there. They're doing 4K HDR, Dolby Vision, and Atmos at no extra charge. So you don't, it comes as that $7 a month. If you just sign up for $7 a month, you get all those fancy things for your fancy HDR TV. You can do 10 devices per account, which you can do seven profiles on there.

So you can have basically share this out to all your family members and have seven profiles for each individual family. And four streams can stream at the same time. All of that $7 a month, that's like killer because if you compare that to Netflix for their 4K multi-device option, that's like a $16 a month subscription from Netflix with no discount on yearly pricing or anything. So Disney is, to me, they're like going all in on this. Like it seems like, uh, they're really going after the jugular for, for Netflix and Hulu. They, they really want

your money, uh, for this service. Well, they got my money, so they want yours, Jason. Yeah. They're coming. Well, as you speak, I am texting my wife this deal, uh, and telling her that we should do it later tonight. So it worked. We've got all of our money. And Disney, if you want to send a check to the Home Tech podcast, we will gladly take some of that money there off your hands. Yes, we will accept. Absolutely.

Cool. Well, yeah, a lot of streaming services out there. We've talked about that quite a bit. It is getting a little bit overwhelming, but, you know, I still feel pretty good about where we're at, even if we did add this one. Relative to what we were paying for DirecTV, we're still saving a whole bunch of money. And frankly, when we had DirecTV, we still had one of these streaming services. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, you got to account for that as well. All right, well, let's move on. We've got one other big story here that we wanted to spend a few minutes talking about, and that is the Braavos Group roll-up.

And listeners to the show at this point will probably be familiar with the story, especially if you're on the professional side of the smart home. This is a big story. Braavos Group, if you're not familiar, is a cooperative of integrators. It's run aggregated, I should say, in the words of strategy.com here, by Paul Starkey and Steve First. These are two industry veterans who run Vital Management. And they put together this cooperative of integrators.

They've got 15 right now, and they're really helping these companies standardize on various practices and benchmarks and operational strategies and things of that nature. And they've reportedly closed a deal here to Presidio Investors for $75 million to sell these companies. And so that's a good chunk of cash. We'll talk about some of the details, but I know it's been an ongoing project, the Braavos Group, and this is a big milestone. So first of all, hats off to them for getting the deal closed. And we'll be really intrigued to see. It's a large chunk of cash. So I'll be intrigued to see what they're able to go do with it.

Yeah, I do wonder where this goes. I mean, $75 million is a lot of money. Well, is it $75? Yeah, the private equity investment. So it's a lot of money. And where does that go to like i could think of where like it could go into software and business systems that kind of thing pretty easily pretty quickly um to get like all these businesses these different

because it's all different businesses right like you you were kind of involved with something like this with with via right like it was all different businesses they all got together and said let's make one big business out of all of our smaller businesses and then i'm sure everybody like uh you know the next day wakes up and goes what have we done we don't even know how our this quickbooks talks to whatever these guys are using for um accounting like we like i'm sure i'm not i'm simplifying things a lot, but like, like how, how do we make an entire, what we called ERP system or make an entire CRM system out of like all these different little chunks of companies that are, that are around the country. Um, so I,

I, it looks like this one's like a more slow and steady kind of wins the race kind of company. Yeah. I would definitely say that I, I have to imagine that, that Paul and Steve and the rest of the Braavos group probably shudder a little bit at all the comparisons to Via, but, but they're, they're inevitable. That's certainly the closest comparison that we've had in the industry before. And as you alluded to, I was, I was part of that wild ride. I was a project manager, so I was, you were a cog in the wheel, Jason. Yeah, I was, I was definitely a tier or two removed from, uh, you know, from like the big, uh, frontline from being on the frontline of those sorts of challenges,

like the ERP, uh, unification and all of that. But, you know, I, I caught some shrapnel, Seth. I've, I, uh, I was, I was through the bumps and the bruises of that ride. And, you know, it, it didn't, it didn't go well a couple of years in, and it was, it was shut down. And a lot of people, um, a lot of people learned a lot of lessons from that. I think you hit the nail on the head. The, the, the Braavos group and the strategy here seems to be markedly different in the speed with which they're moving and trying to get things consolidated. It's not totally clear to me

exactly how they're approaching this. The story talks about them standardizing on different platforms. It says, because... So again, reading from strategy.com and it talks directly about this comparison to, to via, and it says how they think they're different is they've completed the quote, hard work and quote of unifying their platform systems, accounting and management in advance of the rollup. That's good. And so that's good. I, it's not clear to me the details of, of what that means, like how far that goes, like which systems, right? Are they all using the same proposal system, for example? Are they all using the same service systems?

Are they all using the same, uh, invoicing? Like it's, it's hard to say, and the details aren't in the story, so I won't, I won't speculate, but that, that's one area certainly where I, uh, I know that via had some struggles. So I'm curious about. Sure. Just day-to-day operations. That would be very tough to do with, I mean, it'd be very tough to do between two companies if they were using different softwares for, you know, how they built stuff up. So I can imagine that taking the time that they've taken, they've been able to put all

the proposals on the table and figure out which ones they want to, which softwares they want to make, not make everybody use, but like this is the ones we should use and get everybody behind that. I think this is great because the more I think about it, the more a company like this could actually like a company this large with this much behind it could actually standardize some things in this industry, right? And they're, they're talking about some of the, some of the installs they, they, they did, how they have more than 3,500 residential and commercial projects in 2018. Yep. Something like that could actually say, okay, well for this type of X, Y, and Z, we use purple wire. And for this, we use purple wire.

And for this, we use red wire. And there's all sorts of stuff that something like this could actually standardize and be beneficial to the industry at large. I know Cedia has kind of avoided that a little bit. They kind of come around in subsequent years. But for the longest time, they avoided asking the industry to standardize on very much for some reason. Right. Well, if I can tell you one thing, both from my experience at VIA

and from my day-to-day now at OneVision, where we partner with integrators and help them really rethink and reinvent the way they do service, change is hard, really hard and um and so these things you know when you start getting down to the level of trying to say okay we're going to go standardize how we all you know what color wire we all use for data versus phone or whatever like those things are incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to get to propagate down 100% through all of these organizations. So I'd be surprised if Braavos is even looking at that. I know that Steve and Paul both have a really strong background and reputation for like financials. And I know that's a big part of the, just from what I've learned following their story over the last couple of years, you know, the financial benchmarks and the way that they kind of strive for and measure profitability and key performance indicators

across the group is a primary area of focus as I understand it. But again, I don't know what sort of systems and things they've gotten into standardizing and how far that, when they talk about unifying platforms, I'm just, I don't know exactly what that looks like. Another thing that kind of struck me was that I actually didn't realize this about Braavos, but they don't have any members currently in a lot of the big markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Boston, to name a few. And I'm not sure if that was intentional, if they're maybe trying to target more mid-size markets for some reason. I just thought that was interesting. I actually didn't realize that prior to reading the story. And one other thing that I think is worth noting. I am pretty ignorant when it comes to mergers and acquisitions,

and that whole world is something I'm learning about. But 1x revenue. So the strategy story talks about this specifically. $75 million is, according to the story at least, the combined annual revenue of the 15 companies. So it doesn't appear like there was a multiplier on this. And I know that, you know, that's a lot of the conversation around integration companies and just project-based businesses in general is that it's hard to drive multiples into your valuation because it's really, it's not a, the nature of the business doesn't necessarily generate that sustained value unless you've got, you know, recurring revenue going and things of that nature. It can be hard to get into anything

above sort of a one X revenue multiple. So that, that held true here, but it's still a, it's still a ton of cash and definitely, like I said, a great milestone for Braavos. And so, you know, my congrats to them. I wish them, I wish them the best with this. Yeah, I was took note of what you said about them not being in the major markets. Like I think you're thinking maybe like thinking like L.A., New York and probably like Arizona as big ones. But in Florida, Florida is a big one, too. This there's one there's one here in Deerfield Beach, Florida, which is, I had to look it up. I knew it was on the East Coast, but it's actually smack in between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. So that one, or West Palm, sorry. So that one is probably a major market player that's kind of hanging out in there that we may not see.

And there's a couple in Dallas-Fort Worth area, which is actually, I would classify that one. There's about three companies in Dallas-Fort Worth, if I'm counting that right, area, which I would classify that one as a top tier market. Texas does a ton of building, like new home construction, especially in that area where there's oil and gas related incomes. But yeah, for the most part, like you see smaller, like Kansas City, Austin, Baltimore, you know, some smaller, smaller markets that normally would not get a call out in this. I'm curious as to if that was a strategy as well, moving this forward. Will be will be interesting to see what they do. Yeah, definitely will. And there's probably not much to that.

The New York and Los Angeles and Chicago are probably just areas that they just haven't yet gone into, and presumably they will. I know their brand, if you go to their website, bravas.com, is a very luxury-focused brand, and I know that's a big thing for them. With all of the conversation going on about DIY and Google and Apple and Facebook and Amazon and all of that,

they're very vocal about this is a luxury play. To do this, you'd have to. Oh, yeah, totally. You could not take this to the— we lovingly used to call it GAFA, which is now just like GAF. I dropped Facebook off. Now it's just GAF. All right, good.

I like it. It's what you say when it doesn't work anymore. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, reading from there, there's a press release on the website. It says the investment launches a national network of luxury technology integrators operating as one brand working across North America with architects, builders, remodelers, interior designers, and successful owners of one or more properties using lighting, shading, climate, entertainment, smart home voice, wellness. Wow, this is a long sentence.

Security, surveillance, networking, energy power, and other technologies to transform how custom homes and offices are designed, organized, and operated. Might consider dividing that into a couple of different sentences there, but anyways, you get the point. You missed a perfect opportunity for yada, yada, yada, Jason. I did. I did. All right. Well, big story though, and definitely we'll be intrigued to keep an eye on this one and see how it develops. I think there's a lot of different ways this one could go, obviously. And I think they appear to be doing their homework and taking measured steps to move this vision to a reality. So good for them. All of the links and topics we've discussed on our show this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm.

While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. discussed on our show this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 272. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. 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. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 272. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday starting 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, we're going to skip over the mailbag this week, and we've got a pick of the week we want to jump into, and this one's a follow-up.

It looks like you finally pulled the trigger on a toolkit, so no more of the hobo cardboard box look. No more running around like 17 trips back to the back to the truck and yeah no more looking like a homeless person uh grabbing and i don't i don't do much work out in the field uh like just a couple things here and there but the problem was when i ordered something uh it would come in a box i would generally keep it in that box and then throw more stuff in that box because in said box and yeah you can see a picture of my my initial setup it was basically a bag i see it um a 12 volt

drill gun set with a with random boxes for screws a box of wire and a box with just a bunch of tools and miscellaneous product shoved into it. That was step one. And then I got on this kick about finding a tool bag and, you know, actually doing it right. And I found these, I found, well, there were two of them that we talked about on the show. This Milwaukee packout was the one that I ended up going with because the other one seemed just a bit more, I don't know, kind of crazy. There was a lot you could get really down into details. It was also about $100 more expensive. So not saying that that wasn't a factor, but I don't know. For the longevity of things, I went with this one because it seemed like it was easier to get and get involved with and i didn't have to really overthink organizing things i could just get a couple boxes

throw my cardboard box quantities inside them and then kind of get stuff organized and go from there and uh that's what i've done i've got this nice little packout system now which is which is nice i'm liking it it's looking good yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. I never had something like this, but you know, I can, I can imagine how useful it would have been. And I know from some friends and colleagues in the industry that work in, I don't know if this is you or not, but either way, I do know that a lot of folks who work in cities like New York, where you're in high rises a lot, things like this are like really key because, um, you know, if you're up on the 32nd floor in a condo, um, you want to have everything with you, all of your tools and little connectors and gadgets and

all the little stuff that you might, that you might need. You don't want to be making, you know, even two or three trips down to the, down to the truck, if you even have one, like a lot of my friends who work in big cities like that, you know, I, I know people who literally ride the subway in New York. Uh, and so yeah, stuff like this is, um, is a pretty cool. It's kind of fun to build, build those things up over time. Yeah. Well, I just kind of went all in uh but yeah i figured if i'm gonna do it at any time uh yeah and matthew is pointing out that there is a a box of pull-ups in my garage this is a donation pile i saw use any box you have for the donation i just hadn't i guess i had brought those in i we we ended up bringing those to wherever they went. They're not there anymore.

Oh, yeah. The pull-up and diaper boxes, for sure. I don't need them anymore. So that's like, yeah. Hey, now that's a milestone. I mean, it's either there. It's like I needed to get rid of them and donate them. So, hey, I'm proud of that box. It's gone.

Yeah. Good ridd gone. Yeah. Good riddance. Exactly. One thing I haven't really wrapped my head around to this is there's no internal organization inside those big boxes other than a little bucket you can remove in and out of them. So it's just kind of like stuff still goes in them. I wish I will probably have like boxes inside of boxes now uh to make this work right i don't know uh anyway that this the one thing i did and i did

find that the that big red bag that's on top it clips on there so it doesn't fall off uh you can actually shove a laptop in so it's kind of nice uh there you go everything you need in one little bag screwdrivers, laptop. You can go pre-wire it, trim it, and program it all in one trip. I'm not doing any of that. What this solves for me

is exactly what you figured out when you very first looked at it is no walking out to the truck three or four times for the one little stupid hand tool that you left in the car that you need to finish the job. And then you get up and you get down there and you're like,

what did I, I forgot what I came and came down here for. So that's, that's what this is for. And it works brilliantly with a little built in dolly and everything. So I've been, been pretty happy with it. Oh,

cool. Well, Matt, Matthew gave you a good tip. Sounds odd, but cut up a foam floor mat and it works well to act as dividers. So a little DIY project there. Yeah, yeah.

There's definitely more work to be done on it, but been happy so far. All right. Very cool. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show topic or guest, please do give us a shout. We would love to hear from you. We read all of those messages. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm or head to the website at

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If you enjoy what we're doing here on the show, let us know. And it helps other people find the show as well. So, again, just take a couple of minutes, head on over to iTunes or your podcast app of choice and drop us a review. And one more quick plug for Home Tech being a member of the Technology.fm collective of podcasts. If you can't find a good podcast to listen to, head on over to Technology.fm. You can find other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS. All right. Very good. Well, Seth, that'll wrap us up this week.

We are on the homestretch here to Cedia. Like I mentioned earlier in the show, we're going to have Giles Sutton, the VP of Industry Engagement from Cedia, on next week to give us his preview of the show. So we'll look forward to that. And I'll look forward to jumping back in with you, Seth, and taking a look at all that's going on here in the world of home tech. Absolutely. And don't forget, go over to hometech.fm slash happy hour, register for that happy hour at Cedia 2019, Rock Bottom Brewery. We'll plan on seeing you there. Awesome. All right, Seth, we'll have a great weekend. All right. You too, Jason. Take

care. Take care.