HomeTech.fm - Episode 288 - Savant Brings Sexy Back

Episode Date: January 24, 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 24th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson, and not joined by Jason from Denver, Colorado, but instead our hashtag not Jason fill in, Cody Crosland, at the last minute, in a a pinch joins us again a full year later from the last time he was on the show. Cody, how's it going, man? It's going well. You know, I don't want to overstay my welcome. So I think, you know, once a year is probably a good interval. Once a good. Yeah. And you know what? Once a year is not a bad interval.

I was looking at the show a year ago and we were at that time talking about a projects project for you and a tv a tv that you were gonna hang and i i don't know like did you did you hang the tv a full year later eventually i finally got around to it and it did take me a full year later yeah i finally broke down and replaced the temporary 50 inch tv that i had there and just decided to mount it in that cubby space but i did an articulating mount for the new 65-inch LG OLED that I picked up. Nice. Nice. Oh, wow. LG OLED. OLED. Very nice. Very nice. I have the LG LED TVs.

I'm not too impressed with those, but the OLEDs look great. They really do, and it was one of those things. I made the mistake of showing my wife. She fell in love with it, and you couldn't talk her out of it. So, well, that's even better. My wife texted me today. Do we want a five year old LG TV? I'm like, no, I don't think so. I don't even a free one five years ago.

I don't know. To be fair, I still have the Panasonic Plasma that I bought in 2007, and that thing's still going strong, still has great picture quality. It's in the master bedroom, but I noticed the other day that whenever I have the fan on at night and you turn the TV on, you can hear the fan slow down because of the amount of electricity that the plasma draws. It's so great. Also makes for a great space eater.

Nice, nice. Well well with that new uh 65 inch lc oled you can watch the uh the impeachment hearings i think those are important so i'm gonna like over our podcast i'm gonna play those in the background right now so that's gonna play and uh i don't know if you can hear those no wait that's not it that's totally that is it that is it all right so that's gonna play in the background for the entire podcast of the impeachment trial That's not it. That's totally it. That is it. That is it. All right. So that's going to play in the background for the entire podcast of the impeachment trial. And it's a circus. It's all I'm saying.

All right. So anyway, a couple of things happened this week in the news. So, Cody, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Yeah, let's do it. Frontier Communications is planning to file for bankruptcy within two months, Bloomberg reported last week. The telco is asking creditors to help craft the turnaround deal that includes filing for bankruptcy from the middle of March. According to people with knowledge of the matter, Frontier offers residential and business services in 29 states over its fiber and copper networks. Frontier offers broadband TV and home phone services and reported revenue of $2 billion and a net loss of $345 million in the most recent quarter.

Frontier has been losing customers and reducing its staff. Its residential customer base dropped from $4.15 million to $3.81 million in a 12-month period ending back in September, and including 90,000 customers in the most recent quarter. Also in that 12-month period, Frontier's business customer base declined from 422,000 to 381,000. Frontier's financial performance last year was so bad that it refused to take any questions from investors during its quarterly earnings call in August. Ouch. Wow. I did not see that coming. That's a big one. I didn't either. It was pretty popular here in North Texas in the areas that you could actually get it because they

offer fiber internet connectivity. And, you know, you'd have plans like 150 down, 150 up. But it seems to be that their existing analog phone networks and the maintenance associated with those and the lack of expansion in the fiber areas here in North Texas market anyway, it seems like that's really kind of doing them in. Well, yeah. And the sad part, like, OK, so Frontier wasn't Frontier when they first started out here. They were Verizon Fios. Yeah, same here. Yeah, Frontier bought that from Verizon when they exited. But, yeah, Verizon, like, went up to a point, and then they stopped investing in fiber rollouts. And, like, it was hugely popular.

People loved them. Then Frontier bought them, and then everybody hated Frontier and their customer, their lousy, lousy customer service. Like I remember, uh, I had family members that, um, had Frontier or Fios and went through the transition into Frontier. And there was like, they, they lost all service for like a month and we're still getting billed for it. Like, and they were just like, Frontier had no idea what to do. The horror stories that were going on back then were just insane and i guess their customer service hasn't gotten very much better so um unfortunately uh well i mean unfortunately that's that's what can happen it seems like it was just like cobbled together like reading this article like they have a ton of different types of networks that they've been acquiring over the years like they have the fiber networks they have the fiber services

they have copper base like ds you can tell they have DSL stuff still out there. Like, it sounds like it's just a ton of different, um, like a hodgepodge. Yeah. A hodgepodge of stuff, of businesses that they're just kind of like cobbled together. And, and, and at the, at the end of the day, not run very well. Um, from, from what I, what I've seen, at least as a customer on my side, I, when I was, I, I kind of mentioned last week that I was like trying to help a front, uh, frontier upgrade happened the other day. There were, there were actually two of them. And, uh, from, from some old longtime clients, they, they called me up and they were like, Hey, we want to do this upgrade. And I'm like,

well, all right. I mean, it sounds good. The frontier was offering them, uh, to go to like 300 or a gig or something like that. like for no cost it was like 25 more a month or something for them so they were just like yeah this sounds great yeah no brainer i don't even need to call seth um frontier gets out there and like just starts tearing stuff apart the whole system's down for a day and then they call me and they're like hey um this guy doesn't know what he's doing so they they pretty much had to roll back the first install. The second one, uh, luckily he was like, Hey, can you come out and just make sure this guy doesn't mess anything up? I went out there and made sure the guy didn't mess anything up, uh, and, and had to basically tell him how

to tone wires from one point to the other. So, uh, after all that was said and done, uh, they have faster internet at this other place, but, uh, one of the, the other one, he still has the slow, well, slow slow relatively slow internet um that he had before unfortunately so i don't know it seems like uh it would be a no-brainer to flip flip a switch uh on their end but they have to mess everything up somehow and i don't know yeah i'm curious to see if anybody's going to take over their existing network infrastructure that they have you know i wonder if at&t will buy it for like pennies on the dollar. But AT&T already sold U-verse to Frontier. So it's kind of like,

it's kind of like there's nowhere for these networks to go. I mean, somebody has to buy them, right? I mean, I can't imagine the areas that are completely covered with Frontier are just going to be seeded over back over to Comcast. Is that what's going to happen? I don't know. Comcast exited here in North Texas and they swapped it for Time Warner. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. Hopefully there's different options for folks. I mean, here at my house, I have the option of AT&T DSL or Time Warner Cable Gigabit, which is just Gigabit on the downside. So you can probably guess which service I picked.

The Gigabit service? Hey, you can you can probably guess which service i picked the gigabit service hey there you go ding ding hold on there we go all right had to think about that one a little bit well moving on uh starting in may 2020 sonos has announced it will end software support updates for some of its older products, saying those products have reached the end of their useful life. Products affected include the ZonePlayer's Kinect, Kinect Amp, first generation Play 5, the CR200N Bridge. Customers can either continue to use their older Sonos systems for, you know, who knows how long, or receive a 30% discount on an upgrade to a new Sonos wireless audio system. This is kind of that trade-up program that they've been offering for a couple months now. Sonos made the announcement in an email going out to customers and in a blog post on its website. This was kind of like a big to-do.

Again, Sonos seems to keep making the news from angry people who are angry about being offered 30% off on new products. So mad about a discount. Yeah. That you don't even have to take. But I don't know. People seem to be upset that what, what I've gathered from all this is that people seem to be upset about having to possibly update something that is in the realm of five to 10 years old.

That still works perfectly fine. Like, because you can't kill the Sonos. The audio quality is still good on it. Yeah. But from what I, what the only thing I can gather is like, yeah, this thing works great. Why do I have to upgrade it? That's, that's the only thing that I can, I can get out of it. Yeah. I think, I think the appropriate action would be is if you don't want to upgrade, you take to upgrade, you take zero upgrade, you just keep using it the way that you're using it and everything works fine.

I don't know. I think this is kind of overhyped personally, but also I come from the IT industry where, you know, you're talking about a 10-year-old computer. They're not going to keep doing updates for that. That's old, old ancient hardware. hardware yeah that's what i'm thinking from the development standpoint standpoint like it's it's ancient hardware that you have to keep coding into old code bases or you have to keep like there may be memory limits and and different requirements like they want to move to a new platform where they have um feature completeness across all their products. And they can't do that if they are holding on to the old stuff. Now, the old stuff, from all indications, the old stuff continues to work 10 years later. But if like somebody like maybe Pandora comes along and does a big update, and we've seen

this happen before, Pandora has done an update or Spotify does a big update to their API that Sonos works with um those services may just drop off and stop working things like tune in and and stuff that's kind of older like that probably will still continue to work and i just with no problem but i don't know like it seems like it's uh seems like to me it's a big to do about nothing but the biggest i could i can understand that it's it's it can sting a little bit. Say you brought like a bunch of Kinect amps, maybe late in the life cycle five years ago. Yeah. If you have 20 zones of Kinect amps and you got this email and the email was not not like the greatest.

It said something along the lines of like you have there's a problem with your Sonos system, something along those lines. Like it was kind of jarring to, to, to, to get and read. So I can understand why people were kind of freaking out about this before they, they really kind of looked into it and saw what was going on. But I don't know. It just kind of seems to me that it's a big to do about nothing. People, people want to complain and, to complain and just gripe about it. Yeah, I think they would definitely have more of a point if they had just decided to say, hey, you've got this older product and that's it. We're discontinuing services like some of these Internet of Things startups.

You know, you get invested into an ecosystem, then all of a sudden you get an email. It's like, hey, by the way, a month from now, we're shutting down our servers. So, so long and thanks for all the cash, right? You know, that would be a completely different approach to it. And perhaps maybe they just have a messaging problem. Maybe if they just communicated their message a little bit and their intent a little bit better, maybe they wouldn't be out with the pitchforks and the tiki torches. Yeah, it seems like there's been a lot of almost like foot-in-mouth syndrome. I don't know. Sonos is trying to put the best lipstick on this pig that they can, right?

I mean, you clearly can read the tea leaves that they want in support for these products. And the way I'm seeing it is that the first thing they came out with is like, okay, here's a recycling program. This trade trade-up program you can recycle your old equipment what we're going to do is we're going to brick it for you it'll never work again you can plug it in do all you want to it it just won't identify as a sonos product anymore um and that angered a bunch of people basically for the reason that like it's not really recycling because you can't take the product and sell it on eBay or an electronics reseller can't take the product and restore it and then resell it.

So it's not really recycling. It's basically bricking something to throw it away. Yeah, Bruno has a point. This is not green. It is not green. No, it's not. Um, the green thing to do would to be basically the first part of recycling for the mantra of recycling is reduced, right? So reduced means you don't buy the new thing, but if you were in the market to upgrade your Sonos product, you do have that option, um, to basically brick your product and set

it off on a shelf somewhere and have a 30% off coupon for new junk that you want. I had an old Kinect kind of hanging around my house and it wasn't plugged in or anything, but I got the email that said, hey, you need to do this trade up thing or not. And I was like, well, you know, like the Kinect doesn't do anything. So I'm going to do the 30% upgrade. And well you know like the connect doesn't do anything so i'm gonna do the 30 upgrade and you know i i'm not gonna throw the connect away guess where the connect went went right over onto the shelf where with the rest of my uh my my products go uh that live in the graveyard so like that's truly recycling i have a% coupon and I have a new piece for the museum. So I'm sitting happy. So you got 30% off discount on something that you're still not going to use, but at least it's current product.

And then for the old one, you can use it as an indoor planner, right? Yes, exactly. Like, well, it's the connect thing. So it's really small. No, you don't have to go like connect to port you can buy anything that sonos offers and get 30 off like if you wanted to connect amp with speakers or maybe it's called amp now with speakers if you wanted a full 5.1 surround sound it's 30 off that entire package so it's that's a good deal it's actually a killer deal. You can get hundreds of dollars off.

Um, and I just haven't like the sub, you can get 30% off the sub, which is, which is amazing. Like I should have, if I had known they were going to do this, I would have waited because I bought, ended up buying a sub over at Best Buy and, uh, shouldn't have done that. But you know, I, I bought it for a party and we liked it enough. I kept it. And so, you know, whatever. Uh whatever. So the sub sits under the couch now, and I guess I can buy another sub because there's only one thing better than having a sub. It's having two subs. So I could have bought two subs and put them in there. One would be 30% off, and that should make me feel better about myself,

but it doesn't. I think I'm just probably going to sit on that 30% off. It's supposed to never expire, but maybe if I get the hankering for some new Sonos gear, I will use that coupon. So I'm happy to have it, I guess. I think you need subwoofers around. I just get 10 subs.

Yeah, just all in the same room. 5.10. I don't know if it works that way, Cody. But it would be nice. It would be nice. Um, yeah, Matthew, Matthew G in the chat says, install them in a forest to play nature sounds and see that's recycled. Yeah, it could be, I guess, I guess. Anyway. Um, yeah, Bruno makes a point. Uh, amp and speakers components themselves can last for 20 years, but I think we have to keep in mind that the stuff inside Sonos is not just an amp and speaker. It's an amp speaker and computer.

And if we look at the, like the amount of computers that I have sitting around me that are 10 years old, um, there's not one. I, my phone has been upgraded every single year. Uh, my computer has been upgraded every single year. I had an old iPad, but guess what? It doesn't get firmware updates anymore. It doesn't get updates anymore at all. Like I can't get it on iOS 13. It's stuck back in like iOS 12 and it runs like garbage. So time to get a new iPad, you know?

So there's nothing on my desk that is around me that's 10 years old and a computer. And I think you kind of have to keep that in perspective when you look at something like that's smart, right? If you're going, now that can't be argued for like the amp, right? The Kinect amp still should be pretty good. But I think the cutoff on those was like five years ago too. So a little bit better, but not great. All right, moving on. We've got a couple things in here. Well, Savant. Huge week for Savant.

They announced they are going to be the first to integrate with Ring X, which is Ring X, which is the new Ring Pro side product. They are expanding a Netgear partnership. And they have purchased, or RacePoint, which is I guess the parent company of savant uh has purchased and acquired noon smart lighting so gonna kind of browse over those three different bullet points there's a big uh savant dealer event i guess at what the international building ibs in international building show in las vegas this week so that was, that's what was going on. There was a bunch of dealers at this thing and we've been getting a couple of pictures in our, in the Slack chat, the hub, uh, which was really cool. Um, to kind of see those kind of float by some of them, not so cool. Cody, I kind of, some of them very disturbing. So Vaughn's kind of going,

yeah, there's like this big guy with a beard. Several tattoos and not nearly enough clothing. Yeah, I don't get it. I thought that kind of all went away in the Jeremy Burkhardt days. Like, I don't know. Maybe that's Jeremy Burkhardt's new role. Is he modeling? This guy's bigger than him. Like, I don't know.

Like, not in a good way. So, like, I just can't. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know, like not, not in a good way. So like, I just can't, I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what they're trying to do there. Maybe be funny, but it didn't, it didn't work for me. Anyway, just one week after Amazon ring announced the launch of its new ring X line products, uh, exclusive to the home custom installation channel. Savant has announced that it will become the first manufacturer to fully integrate with ring X, as well as the other, you know, the ring full, the full Ring consumer line. Here's a quote from Andrew Voynantes. I don't even know how to say his name, and I know that we talk to him at work all the time. Anyway, we're trying

to partner better with the industry. He's, Andrew's the general manager over at Ring that's leading the company's initiative for the professional installation side. The entire Ring X line is due to ship later this year, and Savant will be selling the Ring X line to its authorized dealers after the launch. So a couple of things about this. So Cody works with me over at Blackwire. Just full disclosure, we are a ring distributor, and we have had, I mean, literally the only ring integration in the industry for the past three years. So technically, we're not the first manufacturer to offer integration with Ring X, but we certainly have had the first integration with it, an official integration with it, for quite a long time.

So seeing this come through on our feeds, we were like, what? Trying to scratch our heads and figure out. But it sounds like this. There was really relatively no details in the story about what the integration would look like. We got a few pictures and a few dealers that contacted us and said, yeah, there is video integration with this, but only one-way audio. A bunch of mixed messages from it. We really weren't sure what the features were going to be on this at the end of the day. So kind of confusing messaging coming from both Savant and Ring on this. And then, you know, it's good.

I think this is a good thing to have more integration partners team up with Ring and start selling integration, especially with Savant. Like there's no API for me to write a driver for and develop for. So like it's a pretty closed off ecosystem and they can do fun things like this. So I'm glad to see that, but really would like to know a little bit more about what they're integrating is. But I think I think the bigger news is like the Ring is going to be selling their products, you know, basically in, I guess, the Savant dealer store directly to Savant dealers. So that's pretty huge to kind of see Ring step up and start doing that directly with manufacturers. Kind of cool. No, Ring is like the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to, obviously, the security camera kind of DIY market. So,

you know, it's, it's hard to compete with the features at that price point. And I think that that's something that probably Savant picked up on. So, you know, it only seemed like a natural fit. And I'm glad that they have the Ring X line, because I don't know if you had mentioned it, but you know, they're saying that it includes a Ring Protect Basic plan for the lifetime of the device and a three-year limited warranty. You know, so that's helpful. And if it's being sold through the Savant, you know, purchasing portal or their channels, they're presuming that there's some margin to be made. So that's also good for the dealers, though. You know, if they go on QVC and they blow it out for a super cheap price it remains to be seen if

they'll match that price but hopefully with the ring x line we'll get a little bit of protection on that from a dealer's perspective right right because it is kind of it is nice to have that like um subscription part kind of built into the product that there's no like surprises to the customer like as a dealer you could sell them this thing but then like you get out there and set it up and they're like okay where's my recordings and it's like well you kind of need to pay um you know 30 bucks a year or whatever yeah that's the oh by the way also yeah so i don't know it's good that they they've included that that there's no like hidden fees or association associated with the product and i i'm assuming

that it is marked up a little bit like you said for um for that margin to be built into it for the custom integrators to make a little bit of money on it as well uh the next big thing that they they savant announced was a strategic partnership with with netgear sounds a lot like um what they are going to be offering with ring x uh The objective of this alliance between Savant and Netgear is to create networking solutions that are optimized for Savant's smart home ecosystem, streamlining design, installation, and service processes for integration professionals.

So basically the dealers will have access to 24-7 system design and support services and help increase job site efficiency. So it sounds like they're going to be doing a lot more selling of Netgear products. I guess previously the 10 gig M4300 series switches that power Savant's video over IP solutions have been sold through the Savant source. So they're basically expanding that out to the full broader Netgear line. So, um, good for Savant. We, we, I think we see like other, there's plenty of other manufacturers out there that have kind of either their own network line or have teamed up with a company like this.

It just makes sense for them to, to, to have this in their pocket. Yeah. I see this as a response in a way to offer a networking line, much in the same way that snap AV control four has, you know, package and Arachnus, right. Right. And they're in their wheelhouse. Right. So Savant, to my knowledge, didn't have anything of their own networking brand. So them partnering with Netgear in this regard makes a lot of sense for them. There's a lot of consolidation going on. It seems. And, and this is,

this is, there's going to be responses to everything like um what what i what i what i kind of have a problem with with and we've kind of been talking about this on on our day job is like we start getting like homogenized versions of control systems and you know sure uh sure a dealer can stand out with service and install prowess, if you will. But you are literally going to be selling apples to apples with your competition. And there's not going to be anything that sets you apart that you've been able to expertly maneuver your way around when everything comes prepackaged like this. So it will be interesting. That's more of a broad topic for the overview of the industry in 10 years,

but it's something to kind of keep all of our eyes on to see how it's going to play out. For sure. And the last thing, kind of big news this week. Savant's been growing its portfolio of smart lighting solutions over the past couple of years, and now the company will add Noon Home to its repertoire. Savant sister company RacePoint Energy announced this week that it's acquiring the talent and technology of the Young Lighting Controls company. The announcement was made during Savant's annual dealer conference that we've been talking

about, which was attended by some 600 home technology pros in Las Vegas. So this was actually shocking news. I'd heard of Noon before. It's kind of like the news came by. I'm like, who is Noon? I know I heard about these guys before. I asked on the hub and Richard, friend of the show, Richard Gunther had interviewed them on Home On a long time ago. And I was remembering that interview. And then I had to go look at the product. And I was like, oh, I totally remember. Like these guys showed up at CD a couple of times I don't know if they gained very much traction they pivoted what they were doing from being like DIY to only selling to builders um and this seems to be the latest place that it they are they're ending up is being

acquired by RacePoint and integrated directly into the Savant stuff. So interesting, what was I going to say, journey this company has. Yeah, I mean, they started out right out of the gate, not like a scrappy startup necessarily. I mean, it says that they had about $50 million in funding whenever they launched in 2017. So I mean, they had some big boy checks. So it wasn't, it wasn't like they were exactly struggling in the beginning. So, and that wasn't that long ago. I mean, you're talking about just a brief two years before they were acquired by Savant. So they must've been doing something that they liked. So it'll be kind of interesting to see

where they take this, you know, is this, you know, Savant has, you know, their panelized lighting options. And a few years ago they bought, what was the name of that centralized lighting system that they bought that a bunch of dealers, trying to think of the name of it. Oh, is it Light Touch? Light Touch, yes. Yeah. And then they shuttered that pretty immediately, which was kind of interesting. But it'll be kind of interesting to see where they position this in their product line. I know a few years ago they were kind of trying to tackle the Best Buy kind of market with their product.

You know, kind of, I don't know, not necessarily leaving the CI channel, but definitely embracing more of the DIY. Yeah, they've gone back the other direction completely. Yeah. They've gone back the other direction completely. Yeah. They've gone back the other direction since then. And they were like, no, just kidding. We love the dealers. We're not leaving you. Please take us seriously.

Just kidding. Psych. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It'll be kind of interesting to see how they position this in their market space. Yeah. Yeah.

There's an interesting little video that kind of shows off the quote deep integration between these Noon Home smart lighting switches and Savant. I guess it shows them kicking off some kind of like home automation scenes using the Noon Home little weird touchscreen slash Decora sized. I don't know, man. I'm not a fan of a little baby. I'm not a fan of the look and feel of these products, but to each their own. And if they work well, they work well.

But I remember I remember seeing these guys come out and they were like, yeah, we come in white and white. And if you're happy with that, like, I don't know. There's a lot more colors out there i don't know there's a lot more colors out there than white uh and and there's a lot of light almond around and and if if savant i they probably have solved that issue by now but if savant uh savant is kind of a premium product right so i assume that they're going to want to probably do more with it uh the little touch screen kind of falls in line with that but man's, I'm thinking about my clients that we have here in the, um, in the nursing home state of Florida and that little touchscreen it's, that's not going to fly over very well. You remember the

old little four inch control for touchscreens that used to be out years ago? Oh yeah. The ones with the wheel? Uh, it was after that sometimes it was. It was the like on wall, maybe infinity edge had like a four inch or five inch touchscreen. They were tiny. Yes, yes. The five inch. Yeah. Those were incredibly small. Could not read them.

And we had, you know, you would put that option in front of like a homeowner and they're like, yeah, I don't want to spend money on the big one, but I'll get the small one for this room. And then like a couple months later, you're out there replacing it with the big one because in all practical use, it was just unreadable. Yeah. Useless. Yeah. So I don't know, maybe their interface is better because they're designing straight from the beginning for that little tiny postage size stamp touchscreen. But I don't know. It just doesn't seem like a fun thing to use to me because I don't know, some of these builders, they, they lowered those lights, which is down, you know, they're almost at hip level for, uh, for, uh, handicapped spec. There's like a, the people with disabled needs,

like the stuff gets lowered on the wall and even the, the plug, the accessibility. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I can't imagine that that would be fun to like stoop down and see the perfect viewing angle on that thing and use it. But I don't know. We'll see. There's one particular part of this article on CE Pro that interests me. And they're talking about the modular infrastructure that they use. So it's very similar to another product that we know, Deco. Yeah.

So what they're talking about here is that the Bob Madonna CEO there, he imagines a whole house wired in this way with the inexpensive noon back boxes that can house different sensors, thermostats, cameras, intercoms or whatever. So he's thinking about taking the approach of, you know, whatever it is that you want to do, whether it's a thermostat or a light or you know a camera which would be interesting to see you would just pre-wire this this back box and then you could just put whatever module that you want in there so that kind of gives you some real flexibility so let's say you have like a a camera and you want to swap it out for something else i don't know what else you would put at a camera location but you could or a thermostat at accessible light switch height

but you could yeah so that's that's kind of interesting um i'm i'm i always i always laugh at these kind of things because they are they're like they seem good in practice but um but we're talking about integrators here who are primarily low voltage licensed and not full, you know, EC certified, electrical license certified. So like with places and states that have licensing for that kind of thing, which I assume are most of them, probably not Texas, because you guys don't really care what you do out there in the Wild West. You have to be a licensed electrical contractor for high voltage but every now and then the whole low voltage licensing thing comes up and then out come the tiki torches and the pitchforks yeah yeah well um then yeah that that whole area of pre-wiring the house for these kind of ac products is kind of cordoned off from the typical integrator in most

locales so uh will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. All the links and show topics we discussed tonight can be found on our website at hometech.fm slash 288. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news. You may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 288. Also, don't forget that you can join us in the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 288. Also,

don't forget that you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday starting sometime between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more on how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. All right. So nothing in the mailbag this week, but I do have a cool pick of the week. This is a pretty one from Twitter user Mark Doering, and he said that one time a company flew me halfway across the country because they were having intermittent telco issues that no one could figure out. And there's a beautiful picture of, uh, of what looks to be, I think what they've done here is they had four pin RJ 11s plugged into six pin ports and they're just kind of like crooked. So there's intermittent, intermittent copper wires touching, you know, the leads touching. And it's, it's just a mess. It's beautiful though.

It's beautiful. That just the wrong percent of the time it works every time. Yeah. It's beautiful. That the wrong little tiny piece of, you know, two cent plastic costs as much as it does. But these are these are things that integrators deal with. And I don't know. It's pretty. I like it. I'm shocked that they didn't actually try to, like, hold it up so that it's making contact and then just fill it with super glue or hot glue or something like that to hold it in place. Stick in paperclips until it's. Yeah.

Yeah. I could see that happening, but I don't know. I don't know what kind of business Mark is in, but yeah, I could see these types of tech supports, things come up all the time. And yeah, I can't say that it was surprising to see it, but it was certainly funny to see that kind of thing fly by on Twitter. If you have any feedback, questions, comments,

pics of the week, or great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can visit hometech.fm feedback and fill out the online form. As always, 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 about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support and learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five dollars a month gets you a big shout out on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our private slack chat the hub where you know supporters of the show can gather every day and discuss savants beautiful sexy pictures and talk about all the other aspects of home technology if you want to help out but can't

support the show financially, we'd appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. HomeTech.fm is a proud member of the Technology.fm collective of podcasts. I swear this is one of the last things I have to say. You can find other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS over there at Technology.fm. Well, Cody, that wraps up the show this week.

Thank you so much for jumping in and at the last minute here, helping me out on the show this week. Really appreciate the insight and conversation you added to the show this week. Yeah, anytime. Thanks for having me. No problem.

Thanks everybody for joining us over there in the live chat. We had Matthew G show up. Bruno's in there. I know Anthony's in there hanging in the background somewhere. Thanks all for showing up. And have a great weekend.

We'll talk to you next week.