HomeTech.fm - Episode 287 - Projects Project with Andrei Gorbatiuc

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

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, January 17th, 2020. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good, man. Hey, if I came to you with a project, I needed about 60 shades, 200, maybe 100 or more lighting devices. What would be your first thought for a control system? I can tell you what it wouldn't be. Maybe after tonight it might be different. That's right.

I think this week's show will change uh, will change my mind certainly for the right client. So yeah, HomeKit would not be, HomeKit would probably not be on the front of your, of your mind if somebody came in the door, but we had, uh, Andre, I'm going to try it, Gorbatiuk, uh, on, uh, who has put together a project, um, for a client that it's been floating around on the internet. And I reached out to Andre and got him on the show for a projects project tonight. And man, this thing is, is wild. It is for an office up in Washington, I believe. And it is, it's all HomeKit. Yeah. And, and stay tuned for that because it's really interesting to, to hear Andre talk about, you know, really pushing HomeKit to, I would say, the outer bounds of certainly of what most of us think it's capable of. And it sounds like it's performing really well. And there are certainly

some caveats and some things about the scope of the project and certainly the users involved with the project that made HomeKit a good fit. But really just an interesting backstory. HomeKit went into the client's home first. The client had an office, really liked the experience they were having at home. And here you are now with a really cool office, all fitted out with HomeKit, a bunch of Lutron shades, lighting, things of that nature. So really enjoyed chatting with Andre. Andre's from a company called Nokang up there in the Portland, Washington area. And he mainly focuses on networks and surveillance and things of that nature. But he started to get into doing some of these automation projects with HomeKit.

It sounds like it's worked out really well for him. So again, stay tuned for that. We've got a few headlines we're going to hit before we get into that interview. Seth, what do you say we jump into those? Let's do it. For the better part of a decade, the world has waited for SpaceX to deliver on its promise to provide high-speed internet from outer space. Actually from inner space, some sort of space. The wait is finally over. Broadband satellite internet is here or will be before the year is out on monday evening january 6th spacex successfully launched its second quote official end quote starlink mission carrying 60 satellites into orbit aboard a falcon 9 rocket this is in addition to 115 operational satellites put into orbit on previous launches this is all all from Motley Fool, fool.com website here.

Company has about 175 of these now, and it says, assuming SpaceX continues putting satellites in orbit at a rate of 60 per launch, and doesn't attempt to accelerate that, which it might, 11 more Starlink missions should suffice to surpass the 800 satellite threshold for quote moderate internet coverage it's wild to think about eight you just need 800 of those satellites floating around up there and then you'll get you'll get you'll get internet coverage

at that point that's that's crazy it is here we are though this is happening like i don't think people realize this is i know people don't realize this is happening. This is kind of why I keep an eye. Well, I totally keep an eye on, like, the space news because this last launch that went up the other day on January 6th, I actually could see from my house. It was a clear night. I walked out into the middle of the street. It's kind of over one of my neighbor's houses. There's a big tree in the way, but if I get out into the street, I can,

I can see it go up and I can kind of see part of the reentry burn come back down. So, um, it was cold. I watched it go up, came back in, watched it come back down. Didn't want to stay outside in the, uh, in the cold. Very cool. Yeah. It says this should reach the goal by the end of June, 2020. By the end of the year, Starlink's in orbit should reach 1500. Wow. They've got over time plans to launch as possibly as many as 42,000.

Granted, this is a long-term stretch goal, according to the story. It'll be really interesting to keep an eye on this story as it develops. 42,000. 42,000. 42,000. There's a lot of press. I was kind of reading through some of the interesting comments and hot takes that people are having on this, but it seems like we are definitely getting the Elon Musk filter on this, I guess is probably the best way of saying it, where he's saying, oh, we're going to get super fast gigabit Internet.

And it's going to be like in the 10 millisecond range, which is kind of what we're looking at for 5G here on here on Earth. So it will be interesting to see what what the Internet speeds are and more importantly, what the pricing is going to be for this gigabit internet um when it comes out possibly later this year you know if they if they do get 1500 of them in orbit by the end of 2020 um they they could be ready to flip a switch and we might see a competitor for a lot of the broadband services here broadband Broadband, I should put broadband in quotes, right? Because a lot of people don't have it. But we should see a competitor for a lot of the ISPs here in the States,

but not only in States, around the world. And also in places that like, don't have high speed internet coverage here, at least here in this country and throughout the world, like in rural areas where the lines aren't laid. This would be a great thing to have. I'm thinking like lake houses and that kind of thing. A lot of times you can't get internet out there, but this would just come from the heavens, right? So it should be really interesting to really, I think this is going to be one of those game changer things. And I don't think a lot of people

really understand, even if it only works slightly better than like the current version of satellite it's still slightly better than the current version of satellite internet and that's a whole lot better than what people get right now agreed well Jason I have some sad news hosts of

spectrum subscribers are about to learn the risks of tying your home security to your telecom provider the charter owned company has notified his customers that it will Hosts of Spectrum subscribers are about to learn the risks of tying your home security to your telecom provider. The charter-owned company has notified its customers that it will stop supporting its Spectrum home security service on February 5th. When that happens, the system will pretty much be useless. Individual devices still should work, but the core monitoring services and the remote device access will all go away. Oof. Kind of, yeah.

And people paid money for that. I mean, this is one of those things. It's like you would think a company like Charter or Comcast or Spectrum, when they offer something, it's a safe bet, right? Your cable box just doesn't suddenly stop working, and you have no recourse. Why would my security system that I bought't suddenly stop working and you have no recourse why would my uh my my security system that i bought from them stop working and uh have have no recourse right yeah

and they are not offering refunds on this i i know for the most part i think when you get security services from a company like this i don't think you're paying a ton of money for the hardware i think these companies you know your upfront costs are pretty low. I don't think you're paying a ton of money for the hardware. I think these companies, you know, your upfront costs are pretty low, but I don't know. I could be totally wrong about how Spectrum approached this. Either way, they are not offering refunds. They're offering promotional deals from Abode or Ring, minus the subscriptions, so I guess just hardware, as compensation. The company did first alert customers back in December, so last month. The story goes on to talk about how these promotional offers won't really help customers who spent the money outfitting their homes, but I think we're talking probably in the hundreds,

certainly not in the high thousands, would imagine for most of these customers so a bummer all the same yeah it still it still hurts no matter what price point you if you bought something and um it's perfectly fine and then you know the company shuts down and it stops working it's it's still gonna hurt inconvenience too for sure like the time you now have to spend to go refigure uh all this stuff out is uh it's a bummer so you wonder what's behind spectrum's decision and how much of it has to do with just the continual downward pricing pressure being brought to bear by companies like ring and abode and a host of others and i want i also wonder where like their their service contracts were like uh and and how their equipment was

holding up over time maybe maybe they had it was just losing too much money and costing them too much in keeping, you know, a cable technician out at your house, setting up security. Um, that, that's, that can't be a, if you have, you know, that can't be a, uh, an easy transition for these cable companies to make who, you know, I spent all day the other day dealing with a cable technician who just refused to tone any wires. And I'm like, no, you put your toner on that wire there and then walk into that closet over there with all those wires and find the cable. He's like, well, I found the cable that goes from the garage to that closet. It must be the same wire. And like, I just couldn't get it across to him that, no, the bonus room is not the garage. I don't, I don't know. But like, these are the people they

trust for their home security. I don't get it, but that's, that's the way of the world right now. Yeah. Yeah. And I know, you know, security at doing these, these things at a, at a large scale is traditionally a really debt intensive business. And, you know, these companies, again, they're offering this at very typically very low upfront pricing and their whole model is predicated on keeping clients around and making that money up over a long time. So it takes, there's a long-term horizon for these companies to do it. Maybe Spectrum just lost their appetite for it. All right.. All right, well, moving on here to our final headline before we jump into our Projects Project interview with Andre. Speaking of losing appetites.

Yeah. Well, I'll reserve judgment, but Domotes, Domotes, I always forget how it's properly pronounced, but Domotes sent out an email this week detailing a series of changes to their pricing and plan policies. According to the email, quote, as the majority of our new installations now take place on our premium plan, we have decided to make it our standard and only offering. We will deprecate the light and advanced monitoring plans as of February 3rd, 2020. Pricing of the premium plan will not change.

It is $19 per month. It does go on in the email to say that all of your existing active agents will be grandfathered in and will remain at their current pricing level. So you won't see any changes on those. Any Domotes agents activated after February 3rd will only be available on the $19 premium plan offering. I think the D is science. So it's like Omatz, right? Django. I don't think so, Seth. I don't know. We'll find out one day. We'll find out one day. Yeah. So do you want me to read between the lines here? Like this seems to me that Domatz is exiting the CI business and going for that full, you know, IT MSP market because the features that they announced in this email too, they have nothing to do with what residential installers would,

would, would need. Like they, there are nice, but like, it wasn't anything on here, like a new dashboard for sophisticated reporting features. That's really not what we're trying to get into. Like we just need those high level notifications that, you know, our system is having a problem. You know, PSA tool and ticketing systems integrations. I don't know. Doesn't, doesn't really seem like many integrators I know have access to those and network devices, configuration, versioning and management. So yeah, I don't know too many integrators that are

managing fleets of PCs, you know, or access points where they would have to update firmware and rollback firmware from across all sites at once. But maybe there are, and I'm just ignorant of them at this point. Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to take kind of the opposite side on this one, I think, in the sense that I won't dispute that some of these features do appear to be more MSP-centric. We've known this about domos for a while, though. I mean, residential isn't their only play. They're involved in other verticals, and I certainly don't fault them for that. I think that makes all the sense in the world. Where I would take the opposite side from you is on some of these where on the assertion that maybe these aren't interesting or compelling features for an

integrator. I think certainly we're painting with broad strokes, and integrators come in a million shades of gray as a profession, like any other profession. But I think that largely these sorts of things like more sophisticated reporting, better intelligence and insights into network behavior, without knowing more specifically what those are, it's hard to say exactly how helpful, but I think there are, I suspect, many integrators. I know many that I talk to in my day-to-day work at OneVision who are looking for better, you know, for RSM to kind of make that next leap. What more can we do with this versus those higher-level notifications that you referred to? And then certainly on the software

integration side, you know, PSA, for those who may not be familiar, professional services automation software, ticketing systems, again, without knowing the specifics of what they're looking to develop, it's a little bit hard to say exactly how useful, but I see a real need every day for integrators as a whole. Again, forgive the very broad strokes that we're using here, but integrators as a whole to get more on the bus of using things like business software and professional services automation and ticketing, definitely things that I would put into that camp. And then the versioning and management, you know, configuration of big, as you call them, fleets of sort of

network devices and stuff. Yeah, maybe limited to the high end. That seems more useful for business MSP type of models, but certainly can't hurt in the residential space. Yeah, I don't think better tooling is a bad thing. You know, if you get if you have a device and the next day it gets a software update and it's got better integrations with things, I don't think it's a bad thing at all. But I, I think if you look at the like overall, um, checklist of what their competitors in the MSP IT market have, and then what Domans has, like, if you look at that, you know, side by side, you might find that they were lacking these features and, and, and, and by integrating with these ticketing tools and, and providing more sophisticated reporting features and that kind of thing, um, they get those little green check marks back

in their, in their box, um, for what is still, I mean, even at $19 a month, it's no $3 a month, but even at $19 a month, it's still a very, very disruptive, you know, pricing for that particular type of device. And I, you know, I was kind of being hyperbolic in the chat room this morning saying this is the end of DOMATs in residential. It's not. Like, if you're doing your job as an integrator and you find folks over there at One Vision have put together, $19, you're going to build that into your packaging and sell that to the customer as part of the package, the monitoring type thing,

the package plan that you're going to do. $19 isn't going to be any different than a price of $19 isn't going to be any different than a price of $3, right? And if it gives you more insight into what's going on when there is a problem, it's going to be worth it. So I think that it's still going to hang around. But the big elephant in the room that no one has mentioned here is that their competitor in our space is free. Like, Oversea is free. And I'm not even going to mention the other two that don't exist anymore because the same company owns them. And I'm sure they are out there. But, you know, the writing is clearly on the wall.

Like, Oversea is the future for our industry. And everybody will be either heading there or paying for something like Domods in the future. Because there's really not, there's nothing else exists. Everything else was bought up by Control 4. everybody will be either heading there or paying for something like Domods in the future. Because there's really not, there's nothing else exists. Everything else was bought up by Control 4, and then Control 4 was bought by Snap AD. So the nearest competitor, even going from $3 to $0, it's clear to me that our industry was interested in the $0 price point. And yes, I'm painting with those. I don't think there's thousands of shades. There's only there's only 50 shades of gray

that we can talk about. And if I'm painting with that, then then there's you know, I see that there's the integrators who find value in something like this and will pay the nineteen dollars a month. And then there's the integrators who don't. And we'll just continue to use the simple, basic tools that Oversee can give them. And maybe they're using that in a complex manner. who don't and will just continue to use the simple basic tools that oversee can give them uh and and maybe they're using that in a complex manner i don't know but they they'll go down that route too so it's a win-win uh but unfortunately i i do think this is kind of like a pivot a pivot point that we can't ignore that domat is is targeting those those a different market and and and we're going to see those features and pricing be aimed at that market for disruption,

just like it was for our market early on. Right. Well, time will tell. I think that what you're seeing, Delmont's is going to continue to try to carve out a little niche, get the features in place that they think will differentiate them. And yeah, they, from just a footprint perspective, may indeed not be able to, maybe their strategy isn't to try to go up against Oversea. Maybe it is to carve out a niche. And then again, I don't know a lot about what they're doing in other verticals, but I know they are active in other verticals.

If you were running, you were skimming along by, you know, the pricing at $3 a month, just say that's their startup pricing, right? I mean, we all know what that is, right? That was going to go away eventually. But if they're making money now at $19 a month, and, you know, how many of those $19 accounts do you need to make up for the the three dollar accounts that you missed out on well not too you know you're not too many those 19 account they're going to pay for a whole lot more than than a three dollar account is right so right like if you look at the profit margin that they're going from and then to i i think they're going to be in a healthy position um because clearly they've thought this through like they they they are trying to disrupt a completely, I mean, you go look at the other guys in that space and you're looking at like $70 a site or, you know, per agent, you're going to pay $70 or $80 a month.

So like it's a completely different world. And I think they're going to be able to get in there and disrupt that too. Right. Right. Well, it'll be interesting to keep an eye on either way. So we'll definitely continue to monitor that. That'll do it for our headlines here. All the links and topics that we've discussed on this week's episode can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 287. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes weekly show reminders as well as other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech once again that's home tech.fm slash 287 and don't forget you can join us in our happy little chat room over there live wednesday starting sometime between 7 7 30 uh tonight a little bit later because we had an interview you can find out more at home tech.fm slash live or following us over on twitter at home tech podcast absolutely all right well let's uh let's go ahead then and jump into our interview. Again,

we had Andre Gorbatuck, small correction. I think that's the pronunciation, Gorbatuck. Verified. Verified, exactly. Join us again to talk about a really interesting HomeKit installation. So we hope you enjoy the conversation. Hey, Andre, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good. Thank you.

Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. We're looking forward to diving into this. I understand that this installation that we're going to talk about, this is a really special episode of our projects project, because I understand this installation we're about to talk about is the largest, I think you told me before, as we were getting prepped, the largest HomeKit installation in the world. And that's a pretty cool claim to fame. I know that you said this has gone a little bit viral and was sort of unexpected on your end.

So we're going to get in. We're going to talk all about that. I think it's going to be a ton of fun. But before we do that, why don't you give our listeners just a quick personal introduction, give them your name, talk about where you're located, and a little bit about your company as well. So I live in Portland, Oregon. Originally, I'm from Moldova, which is a small country between Ukraine and Romania. I live here four years now, I believe, something like that. I have a small company, like two people here, me and my wife. And we do a lot of stuff, commercial, residential, automation, lighting, networking, Wi-Fi, security, surveillance. All right. Well, very cool.

So you've got a small company there in Portland and understand you went out and did this installation. And again, like I alluded to, didn't really expect it to be such a big deal, but it's kind of caught on, got people talking a little bit. So let's just start at the beginning and talk about the client, your relationship with the client. Give us some of the backstory about what led specifically to the conversations around this project moving in the direction of HomeKit. And then we'll get into some specifics about what the project is. So I've done for this client a project. He built a house. So his house was full with Control 4 stuff. And he wasn't happy with all that installation.

Actually, the install itself was good. The programming was okay. He wasn't happy with user interface. He wasn't happy with paying monthly fee. He wasn't happy that he wasn't able to adjust some rules, automations and stuff. And I showed him this, you know, DIY HomeKit solution on my phone and he was like, wow, I want that. So we downshift that his whole project to HomeKit and he's happy right now. He's extremely happy. We did... It's nothing special about that project some shades some cassette i would turn cassette dimmers apple tv apps nothing special in that project and he was building this new office and he asked me if it will be possible to do home kit in the office and that office is big i think i don't

know 14 16 000 square feet uh 66 shades you know and i was like wow that's big so everything must Everything must be reliable. So I decided to go with Lutron Radio Rad 2, which is probably the most suitable solution for this particular project. I didn't want to go with Wi-Fi switches and all that stuff. And it works great. And they are really, really happy. The only problem we have,

those Apple ID verifications, those iPads in walls, they constantly ask you for some ID verification, upgrading, and all that stuff. But everything else is perfect. Right. Very cool. Well, yeah, I can imagine that was a really interesting conversation when he first broached the idea or brought up the idea of doing HomeKit in such a large environment. And kudos to you for jumping in and doing it. It sounds like it's worked out well. Let's give our listeners a taste for before we jump into some of the specific design considerations and we'll come back to some of those challenges that you

alluded to let's give our listeners a little bit of a feel for the size of this project so run us through kind of give us a quick overview of of the numbers uh on your on your device list there, what all do you have going on in this project? So we have commercial lights there. And the only way to control them is to use dimming modules, 0 to 10 volts. So we use around 100 of those. We use 66 shades, which is individually controllable so every everybody in the office they can control their own light they can control their own shade you know i don't know a lot of pico remotes we didn't use in wall dimmers or switches we used only radio Pico remotes for shades and for lights six in wall iPad 6 home ports for music for Siri 5 TVs Apple TVs and regarding

networking there's UniFi system with router xg 10 gig 10 gig optical core switch 148 port switch mainly for internet uh the network access and powering low voltage devices such such as controllers repeaters and such the why I decided to go with this solution I like to be in control of power of my low voltage devices in case of a problem I'll be I'm able to restart that device from here from my home you know every low voltage device in the system and several 10 gig switches for access points wi-fi points they also 10 gig incoming port 10 gig i have some cameras full hd 4k and that that's it i was doing the math on, I think I got the math. You said there was 100 lighting devices, right? Yeah. So 100 lighting devices, 60 some odd shades.

I mean, you're close to 200 devices in just the HomeKit stuff alone. That's significant. That's not small. Exactly. I think there's more than 200 devices. Very well, could be. HomeKit, because I'm close to the limit of Radio Rad 2, which is 200 devices.

Right, right, yeah. And, you know, stuff like that. You alluded to everybody being able to control their own shade or their light and that kind of thing. I'm guessing that's through the home app um does i mean because i have the home app on my home as well uh how are you managing the users of that app where they're not like turning on and off the conference room when people are having conferences and that kind of thing uh no i'm not you're not no you're just expecting adults to be adults about all that stuff those guys are they they programmers they knowledgeable they know what they do so there's no problem with that at all that makes sense that makes it so everybody kind of has free reign over this home so to speak i'm just i'm putting you can't see me but i'm i'm putting

home in air quotes here uh and and everybody has the home app on their their phone or their computer and they can control the environment around them uh i don't think they have i don't think they care about that you know uh they can come to the they can control all those devices from the iPads, which is in walls. So they don't have to have that application. They phone each of them. Makes a lot of sense. I don't think it will be a lot of guests in that home app.

And it will take a lot of time to synchronize all those key chain information between all this. It will be a mess. So it's much easier to use Siri, all those speakers around the office, much easier to use just that. Yeah, I was going to say

the voice control element there, I would think could come into play. Use Siri. And as long as you've got the rooms named in such a way that people can do that logically, that would work. Having those in-wall iPads would work. I agree. I think that's one aspect of, you know, as you think about HomeKit, it sounds like it's working really well for this particular installation. There may be other environments of this size of course people might be listening and thinking would this work for for

this project or that project and certainly that user management aspect is something you have to consider when you you know you put this up against a system like control four or crestron or anything like that that that's obviously going to be a factor for many users. But it sounds like in this particular environment that that's been a non-issue. Yeah. Very cool. Well, let's get in then to some of the, like, what are some of your favorite parts, I guess, of HomeKit in this?

It's about using HomeKit in general and how it works in this particular case for these clients. You know what? I was surprised by the stability. It just works. It works now for five months, for five months. No issues at all.

You know, HomeKit, it's not reliable. It's just no response issue all the time. But with Lutron stuff, it just works. I'm, you know, no issues at all. I had an issue with this install, and it was a big, big, huge issue with Wi-Fi. They had dropouts, constant dropouts first three months and we didn't know what's happening. We fixed that and the problem was in the coupler, you know, those patch panels. I like to go with coupler, RG45 to RG45. And those couplers wasn't certified for 10 gig, but the network was 10 gig. So this was the main concern, main issue in this call setup.

You know? Yeah, it's important to have products and, well, just products in general that you can have a good foundation. You know, good, reliable products will shine no matter what kind of, like you can use a Lutron system. It's a great product. You can use Lutron Caseta. You can use Ra2. It's a well-rounded product line that's well-respected

the industry. And you can use it just about anywhere you need to without worrying about it, right? So it's always good to have that foundation that you can just stand on and then like sprinkle whatever control system you want to use right on top of it. So that makes a lot of sense. And believe me, I've had crazy network issues too. And you never know what little $5 part's going to come back to haunt you. So yeah, I can totally understand that. That's the only pain point you had. What were some of the unique issues you ran into during the install that like, since you've done other integrations with other control systems and that kind of thing, what was something unique that you came across that you found really easy to do

with this project that maybe like a non DIY type setup would have been a little more friction involved there? The whole project was actually easy to do because they asked me to automate to do controllable just the lighting and the shades that's it there is nothing else you know usually we're doing control for you integrate all those players receivers cameras and stuff and here are just lights and shades that's it so I don't know and the the biggest thing it's a user interface for it's a user interface. The Control 4, it's a great system. It's reliable, but for my taste, the user interface is just not user-friendly.

Right, right. I saw a lot of people with broken remotes, those Control 4 remotes. Those are broken because they got mad and just smacked those people don't like those remotes they are not user friendly yeah like you know with siri remote with apple tv remote for for buttons and you can control whole house. It's so much easier to use. I think it's the future. The HomeKit is not reliable now,

but it will be someday. And it will replace all this, you know, URC, Control 4, Savant, everything. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we've, that's obviously a big sort of ongoing conversation in the industry about what do systems like HomeKit mean for the quote unquote traditional control companies operating in the space. And there's certainly a whole rabbit hole and whole entire conversation you could have around that. But, you know, Seth and I have talked about it numerous times on the show and the framework, the overall approach that Apple is

taking with HomeKit in the way that they're setting it up. We, Seth and I, I think both agree is really promising. And as far as, you know, looking out into the future of which of these systems, you know, Google, Amazon, Apple, which of these systems is kind of best positioned to really move into that really reliable, you know, control space that's currently occupied only by companies like Crestron and Control4. I would agree HomeKit is definitely the best position for that. And the others are staying a little bit in a different sandbox, so to speak. I think coming back to the project and, you know, projects always look really different when you're

done with them than they do at the beginning. And there's always lessons that you learn and things that you take away from doing an installation. And I would have to imagine definitely one like this, where you're kind of pushing a system like HomeKit to its outer limits of really what it's built for. What, in hindsight, looking back, is there any specific or general sort of ideas or lessons about HomeKit and how users interact with it that you wish you would have known then, things you know now that you wish you would have known then, things you know now that you wish you would have known before the project started?

Doing this project, I had experience with HomeKit before, so I knew a lot of stuff. I've learned a lot of mistakes doing HomeKit, but not on this install. On this install, believe me or not, but everything was so smooth. And everything just works like it was designed. But before that, I was trying to use some Wi-Fi stuff, switches, and it just didn't work. This is clearly a pro install, too. Wi-Fi stuff, switches, and it just didn't work. Not reliable.

This is clearly a pro install, too. I don't know if you've said this before. I've had to duck in and out this afternoon for my daughter. But how long did this install take, start to finish? One month. Very cool. Got it. And I think the million-dollar question here is,

commercial project of this sort of nature. What would your, given this experience, what would your decision-making process look like? Maybe what sort of questions would you ask a client? I'm thinking of somebody out there who might be listening to the show thinking about, Hey, I've got this future project and it sounds like HomeKit worked really well. What is the sort of thought process that you would go through if you had another client say, hey, maybe I read about this installation. I'm thinking HomeKit would be a great fit. How do you start to vet and understand if this really is going to be the right solution for them? The limit, I would say, how many devices? First, my first question, how many devices the next step if if we're talking about Lutron because

the Lutron is the only company who can do reliable stuff with home kit adaptation the next step from Radiora 2 is Homeworks Homeworks QS. But Homeworks QS is so expensive. First of all, it's for home, not for office spaces, and it's so expensive. The suitable probably system

for office, Crestron or Lutron Vive, which is not compatible with HomeKit. So I would ask how many devices. If under 200, probably I would go again with RadioRat 2 and HomeKit because it's so easy to use. It just works.

First of all, it works and really easy to use. Again, if he needs something more than lights and shades, then probably the right way is to go with Crestron or something because you can't integrate reliably even sound and TVs you cannot here this situation they Apple people they have only Apple computers laptops so in conference room, they are using AirPlay for streaming presentations. So they didn't care about compatibility, you know, and using Windows computers. But in other cases, if you have Windows and, you know, probably HomeKit is not the right solution. So I don't know. It depends on the client,

what he likes, how many devices, how much money he has. And that's the job of being an integrator, is figuring out what products match what client at what budget.

That's what we do day in and day out. To figure out the needs, assess them, and find the right solution. In this case, you had a pretty techie crowd that can deal with any issue probably that comes up with HomeKit, you know, and understand what it is. And the next, you know, another client may run into an issue with HomeKit not responding or something crazy like that and just kind of freak out. So, you know, I run HomeKit at my house and from time to time it says not responding and I turn the phone off or not turn the phone off. I just kind of like, you know, close the screen or whatever, come back to it and it works. I don't know why, but I know that I have

clients out there that would flip out if something like that happened. Yeah. So, yeah, it's all about finding the needs and assessing them and getting the right product in the hands that's going to cause you the least amount of problems later on. So what's next over? Go ahead and plug your company a little bit and tell us what's next on the horizon for you. Home automation is not my main thing at my company i'm i usually do a networking wi-fi and surveillance i have a lot of projects actually a lot of projects regarding these particular you know wi-fi and networking stuff and cameras and et cetera.

Cool. Well, we appreciate you coming on. It sounds like you've gotten a little bit of internet fame with this large HomeKit installation. We appreciate you coming on and sharing a little bit about it. And I hope that, you know, all great things come to your business. It sounds like you found a nice niche with this a nice niche with this home kit stuff when the, when the home automation needs, uh, do arise. And so again, thank you for coming on and, and, and sharing that with us. We, we appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, that'll do it for our interview with Andre. Again, we hope you enjoyed that. I thought it was really cool to, uh, to learn about home kit HomeKit and really what it's capable of. And I would have never...

Not me. I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to try. But to think that many devices and it sounds like it's all functioning really well. It's great. Yeah, 200 HomeKit devices in a commercial environment. That's a risky play. But he seems to be working out for him and his client, which is the more important part. All right. Well, uh, moving on here, no, no mailbag this week, but Seth, uh, we've got another great, uh, pick of the week.

I'll, I'll hand it over to you here to tee this one up. So a little old, but I have some additional kind of information on it, but this is. But the headline is what caught my attention. The Apple TV remote is so bad that a Swiss TV company developed a normal replacement. And it's kind of funny. This remote is a, you know, he's talking about these overseas where cable companies, instead of making their own cable boxes, they would make an app and stick it on an Apple TV and pass that out to their client as the cable box, right? So if you go to this French, I'm sorry, it is a Swiss company called Salt. If you get your TV from them,

you get an Apple TV and you can buy this optional remote, which costs about $20. And it looks very similar to an Apple TV remote. It is not the Apple TV remote in one big respect, Jason. All hard buttons. Yeah. All hard buttons. Yeah, it's actually pretty slick looking. I wouldn't be opposed. It's a little bit bigger than the Apple remote.

I've seen some side-by-sides of these. But it's got, uh, like a full D pad and like up, down, left, right. Okay. Button the menu button up. It's kind of up at the top. And, uh, it's like has a little white circle kind of to mimic the Apple TV remote a little bit, but, um, uh, overall it looks pretty good. Now, what I did find out about this is that there's a lot of, uh, there's article that was dated back in December 9th from The Verge, they're saying that, oh, they got permission from Apple to do this. What I did find out is that this is a remote that is just an IR remote. So it has nothing to do with getting, yeah, you don't get permission to Apple to use.

Like, we do that every day, right? We use the IR commands. So while I think it's handy, it's no, like, Bluetooth integration, which would be a little bit nicer. And the biggest problem with this is that once you get over to a keypad to type in a show to search, there's no Siri integration, so you are going back old school and typing it in one character at a time with that D-pad, which is definitely no fun.

A treat. You don't have Siri. Yeah, yeah. So it doesn't have siri yeah yeah so um it doesn't have bluetooth integration what we really want is one that has siri built in we basically just want the apple tv remote with hard buttons instead of the swipey thing and then you have the siri where you can yell into it and type stuff in with your voice uh i think that'd be perfect but we don't have that we have right the little remote that we had to go out and buy bumpers for because they get lost.

So some trade-offs here, but kind of cool. All the same. Could be a good inspiration for other simple products like this. If you're not a huge fan of the Apple TV remote, I know I'm not. We're bigger fans now that we got that little the bumper the rubber bumper kit that you turned me on to it was a good pick that's helped but uh cool well if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form and we want

to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know how to our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Home Tech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shout on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat at the hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day to talk about bumpers for your Apple TV remote. There's a lot of conversation going over here that I, I'm trying to keep out of my field of vision because it's kind of funny. So, um, yeah, thanks guys. Thanks for making me laugh through that. Yeah. Get your minds out of the gutter

there in the chat room tonight. You'll have to, you'll have to join us live if you want in on the fun, uh, next week. If you're looking for other ways to support the show other than financially, we would really appreciate a review on iTunes or on the podcast app of your choice. Please take a minute to do that. It helps other people find the show. And again, we would really appreciate it.

And Home Tech is a proud member of the technology.fm collective podcast. Over there, you can find other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS. That's technology.fm. Absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, that'll do it.

Another episode of the Projects Projects in the book. Projects Project? It's hard to say. In the books. We were going to come up with a better title for that segment. We just never could. It just took on a life of its own. It's creative.

Yeah. That's right. All right. Well, have a great weekend, and we'll chat with you next week. You too. Have a good right. All right. Well, have a great weekend and we'll chat with you next week. You too. Have a good weekend. All right. Take care.