HomeTech.fm - Episode 301 - Looking Around Corners with Allegion's Rob Martens

Episode Date: May 1, 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, May 1st. May? Really? From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. Your sense of time warped. I read an article just before we got on the show, actually, about there's like people studying this, where people are feeling like time has slowed down because of the quarantine. I know I'm experiencing it. April felt like such a long month. March was a long year. Yeah, totally. I think, yeah, there's definitely some memes there, but I noticed you're wearing a hat, Seth. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's because if you look under the hat, there is a mess of hair.

It's quite the do. I have not figured out how to cut it yet. Yeah. Let's just put the hat back on. Well, I got some pro tips for you if you need them. I can see that. I can see that. Yeah. Is it maybe the first time ever that I'm glad to be going bald? Yeah. Well, I don't have that luxury. I don't know if it is. I like I it doesn't bother me that much, but it's just weird because like usually at at three weeks i'm like i need to get a haircut and then sometime around the fourth week i actually go in and get the haircut

so like it's just my procrastination and like finally i'll get a haircut i get all cut down it looks great and then three weeks later i need to go again and now i think we're running up on that like fifth week and um yeah i'm gonna be a mountain man before too long i should grow out a beard that doesn't fly well in the house both my wife and my daughter like you have a scratchy face and they just they're like both of them like doesn't pass doesn't pass the committee yep um this does not work well well i've been seeing uh all the articles come across uh you know barbers providing tips for cutting your hair at home and uh i'm not sure those are

of much assistance uh and i don't i like what's worse like a a no haircut or a bad haircut which one's worse i think i think no haircut is probably okay and if you have the bad haircut you know what you got to do you just if you just focus on uh the sideburns yeah you know and you kind of keep the neckline clean. Yeah. I've done that. I've been able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then, then at least you're presentable. The struggle's real. Everyone I know with hair is, uh, is, is talking about how badly they need a haircut. Anthony said, even his dog needs a haircut. I can tell you my son is, uh, in desperate need of a haircut. Yeah. So the struggle's real.

Well, let's jump into it. We got a great show here this week. We had Rob Martens on, and Rob is the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation and Design Officer at Allegiant. And that's not a brand name, probably that most of our listeners are familiar with, but they're a very large company

with their hands in a lot of different areas, including Schlage, the smart locks. So that's the tie-in that most of our listeners will be familiar with. And we get into a little bit of that. But generally, Rob just has a really great perspective. He's a futurist, and he thinks a lot about, we talk about sort of looking around corners and talking about the state of the IoT, the Internet of Things. That's a phrase we haven't used as much on the show, certainly as we did when we first started. But he's really enjoyed the conversation with him. Again, has some very unique perspectives and just talking about the state of where things are at now. Hint, it's not all good. You know, and he's got some strong opinions on that

and talks about some of his ideas about how things can continue to improve for consumers. So really enjoyed that conversation. Yep, it was a good conversation. Well, Jason, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Addressing the tough times

that the custom installation industry and the world have been facing, the Cedia Expo has issued an update to help industry members adapt to doing business during for propelling the industry forward. But even more importantly, he emphasizes that the health and safety of Cedia Expo attendees and exhibitors and staff remain the highest priority. So this announcement goes on, Seth, to outline a bunch of things that the Cedia Expo is doing. They've put a task force together to ensure the health and safety of attendees this fall. This, of course, all being predicated on the assumption that Cedia actually happens this fall, which I think is still a big question mark in my mind. Still a big question mark in my mind. I suppose they could have some

kind of minimal show if they really got down to it. I don't know. Right now, as it stands, literally almost every person I talk to is like, I'm not going. Like I haven't found one person that says I'm going, but that's right now. And September is a ways away. So will people show up in Denver? But I think, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe that can happen. The bigger question I have for Cedia, not really asking them, but like The bigger question I have for, for Cedia, not really asking them, but like the bigger question I have, I guess, in general is like, right now is when a company has to start thinking about attending Cedia and what they're going to do

and allocating budgeting and that kind of thing. What's the show floor going to look like if, you know, it's not going to look very big if there are a lot of people pulled out. Right. And with that, it's not like the Colorado Convention Center is a cheap place to rent. Like, they have to pay for that space. And I imagine both the Convention Center and CD, or Emerald in this case, have to work together to figure out how that all works.

I mean, CD is a pretty big show. And I imagine that Colorado Convention Center was banking on them coming in and renting a designated space. And I imagine that the Convention Center was also banking on half a dozen other large shows showing up and booking that space this year too, only to come to find, yeah, that's all canceled as well. So I'm really, I'm really curious to see what happens to these types of shows. And I got the email this morning saying they were going to have the sanitation stations and hand washing encouraged. They're going to be working on figuring out ways to reduce like the crowd on the show floor and maybe doing like social distancing practices

within the classes um which i don't know maybe i guess they're going to use the front rows of those of those it's like every class i've ever gone to it's like nobody sits in the front couple rows and it's like they all sit right the back where they can get out easily that's right that's that's pretty much what i've noticed yeah yeah it's hard to say we were having a good chat about this in in the hub and i think james good friend of the show mentioned uh reminded me and us that ise was down by about a third in terms of attendance this year and that was you know back in january when now granted is an international show and coronavirus was a much bigger deal in many other parts of the world at that time than it was here in the US. So it's not really an

apples to apples comparison, but you just got to think if at that time it was enough to hit attendance by a third for ISE, if it's anything like it is today, what does that spell for Cedia? So I think it's a big question. I know that me personally, if, if I had to make my choice today, I wouldn't go, but, um, a lot can change in four or five months. I was commenting in the hub that back in February, I flew to Boston a couple of times, and that feels like a lifetime ago. So a lot can change between now and September. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out. Well, good news. Starting April 27th, business owners here in the States can once again begin applying to their

lending institutions for access to the additional $370 billion in coronavirus funds made available for small businesses to weather out the COVID-19 outbreak. I don't know why I missaid that. It's literally the only thing on your mind. COVID-19 outbreak. How do you do that? This round of funding is scheduled to end by June 30th, with exceptions for agricultural lending. But some banks and lending institutions expect the funding could run out within 14 days.

Yeah, if anything says, I think anything says you shouldn't listen to this, how long they think this funding is gonna last. Look at what happened last time with literally it was gone within a few days. Oh yeah, the feeding frenzy. Yeah, get out there and apply for this stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, this second round here is called the Paycheck Protection Program and Healthcare Enhancement Act. The PPP and HCE Act was signed into law on April 24th, makes available $310 billion to the PayTech protection program, and then 60 billion to the SBA's, uh, EIDL loans, which we talked about a couple episodes ago when

we had Chris Williams on. So, um, you're right. I mean, if, if you haven't gotten one of these loans, you haven't gotten approved for one of these loans, uh, don't delay, get out there and get that done. This is, uh, this money's going to go fast. And the whole thing is just really scary to think about. In a sense, it's commendable for the government to be doing everything that they're doing to help businesses through this. But these kinds of numbers that are getting thrown around right now and the amount of money that's getting air quote printed at the moment is just, it's really hard to wrap your brain around and what sort of unintended consequences this could have. And I'm no economist, but the whole thing just feels a little bit scary. So hard to know what to make of it all. Yeah, definitely shaky. You have, I mean, I look at all these restaurants that I drive by, they're closed.

I was like, well, if they gave the green light to go, I keep saying this, they give the green light to go tomorrow, like open up the state, which, you know, they may do. I don't know. Florida is crazy. They, I'm not going to those restaurants and like, they're going to open back up and have people working in there. Like that's not going to work well. And then what happens when they can't make their payroll or rent? Like then you start having, you know, rent issues.

Then all the people like it all just folds downstream to like the mortgage markets and all that stuff. I think I saw a thing in the in one of the like New York Times or something where had bought like 22 airbnb properties and they have 22 mortgages to pay now it's like oh that's that's gonna sting yeah all that's gonna sting and it's gonna come back to get us yeah i don't think that business is coming back uh that guy's business anyways no no no crazy. We've already paid for ours in Denver. Yeah. I don't think we're getting that money back either. Yeah. Crazy. All right, well, moving on here to one more COVID-related story.

Best Buy has announced plans to reopen 200 of its retail locations with appointment-only in-store consultations for customers starting in May. The plan includes a series of strict safety measures for both employees and customers that must be followed. With the new in-store consultation service, customers will be able to schedule appointments for their tech essential needs. Since each customer's appointment will have a dedicated sales associate, there will be a limited number of customers in the store at any one time to ensure appropriate social distancing takes place says the company how cool is this this is interesting there's there's like a whole consultation part of it yeah and then like i need to get in to buy i don't know like i'm not really going to best buy without something really in mind

to buy anymore i don't know if there's any, I'm sure there are people who are casual technology shoppers. If you're out there, I don't know. I've never met you. But like most people have researched this stuff or gone to Best Buy and talk to somebody. And like, what a cool like way to utilize. I mean, these massive 200 stores, 200 massive stores as basically like a white glove sales treatment, right? Like this is, this is really a cool way of doing this. Right. Well, I think it is, you know, an example of the kinds of, obviously we all are having conversations and thinking about what things look like when we sort of start to get back to normal. And obviously, it's not going to be just a flip of the switch and binary thing where we go back to business as usual. And it's like it was before.

So I think this is a good example of the types of things that you're likely to see from all sorts of companies in terms of finding creative ways to start to get things a little bit back to normal and start to approximate that. Again, I think it remains to be seen. The choice is ultimately going to come down to the individual. And I think it would have to be a pretty pressing need for me to go to Best Buy at this point. But certainly, people are going to have varying comfort levels with that. And it's, it's good to see again, I think you're going to see things. I mean, I've heard about restaurants that are going to be opening up with like half the tables, uh, to keep capacity down. So these sorts of examples, I suspect are going to be very, very common in the months ahead.

Yeah. And they were trying to do that here before, before we went on the full lockdown train. Like I know, uh, one of, one of the people I know through, through other people, I guess they own like a pizza shop here in town and they were seating already at half capacity just to stay, keep their doors open and have people come in. Um, so yeah, it's, it's going to be, like you said, it's going to be a trickle effect and getting back to normal and, and, and having people trust and understand what's going to be, like you said, it's going to be a trickle effect to getting back to normal. And having people trust and understand what's going on, that's the biggest part of it. We have to feel safe to go out to Best Buy and cough on the racks of video games and DVDs. But really, it comes down to the consumer not only trusting the store, but trusting that they're going to be safe when they go there. So I think this is such a great idea that they'll have like concierge shopping, I guess, is the best way I can describe it.

But I mean, they have really been able to figure out a way around this and hopefully it works for them. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that'll do it for our headlines this week. All the topics that we've discussed can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 301. Seth, we're on the other side of 300 now. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you 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 301. And don't forget,

you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. All right. Well, Seth, without any further ado, let's go ahead and jump right into our interview. Again, we've got Rob Martens, the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation and Design Officer for Allegiant, and we hope you enjoy. Hey, Rob, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on here and joining us, and we're looking forward to jumping into a whole bunch of fun topics. I think you've got a really diverse set of experiences and perspectives that I really look forward to sharing with our

listeners. But before we jump into that, why don't you give everyone just a quick personal introduction and talk a little bit about your background and sort of what brought you to your current role in the IoT space? Sure. So I would have, I guess, a fairly non-traditional background. I should probably qualify it by saying my father is a marine geochemist and an oceanographer, a research scientist, and my mother is a poet. So I have that whole right brain, left brain thing going on where we're not 100% sure what's up, but that's definitely been a contribution. But no, I've done a number of jobs. I've been in everything from marketing, product development. I've been a raw materials buyer, a purchasing agent, all the way through till I found myself as a corporate CIO for about 12 years.

And found that I was getting a little bit tired of working on enterprise software like many CIOs do. And by virtue of working with some diversified industrial companies that had a lot of interesting technology that my background in laboratory science and other things previously was incredibly helpful with the burgeoning world of IoT. And ultimately found myself retired at a relatively early age and invited to come back to a newly freshly spun company called Allegiant. And the last five to six years has just been an awesome ride and a really interesting ride for me. Awesome. Talk a little bit about Allegiant because I know it's a big name, big company,

lots of stuff going on, but it's not necessarily a name that most of our listeners or all of our listeners have heard of. So talk about who the company is and broadly speaking, the different areas that you guys are involved with. and also tell us a little bit about your current role in the company. Sure. It's a little bit by design that most haven't heard about Allegiant. We're a company focused on, think of Allegiant as kind of the holding company, and we have a number of brands that hopefully some of your listeners are familiar with. I think probably the biggest brand from a smart home standpoint that they might know would be Schlage. They also might be familiar with a bike lot company called Kryptonite or some others.

Depending on the geography that you live in, you might be familiar with some of our European brands, Chisa or a variety of others. So, um, we focus, uh, on a platform that's built of mechanical, electromechanical, and, uh, some core software solutions, um, that, uh, make us, uh, in some cases, a direct to consumer brand like Schlage. And in our non-residential world, we act as an ecosystem partner, uh, in places, you know, as various as K-12 schools, higher education, all the way through to institutional healthcare and things like that. But when it comes to the IoT, we're very broadly known for what some people like to call smart home. As you'll hear from me later, I hate that terminology. My role at the company is somewhat broad. I lead Allegiant's strategic partnering,

innovation, and design efforts in support of the company's broader innovation and growth strategy, but I'm also the company futurist. So, fuching for us is pretty simple. We identify key trends that we see across markets, across geographies. In this case, today we're talking about some of those trends associated with connected home and the device space. And we leverage those to help Schlage and Allegiant evolve and hopefully stay ahead of the curve, maybe peek around corners a little bit as to what's going on. The primary way that we do that is just creating a narrative associated with a trend that we see. For example, one that I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit today is edge computing. You know, edge computing is this interesting blend of on-premise processing and cloud processing as well.

And what's the right balance to give the best customer experience? What's the right UI, UX for that? And when you kind of own that geography, if you will, around the door, edge computing becomes very important. And so we have a lot of companies that want to leverage, you know, our technology, whether that be a mega tech, like Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, what have you. But even in a non-residential standpoint, we have lots of startups and lots of other partners who would like access to that geography. Right. Talk a little bit about Legion Ventures too.

I know you guys do a lot of like R&D and that's probably how you're doing your future, like future peeking around the corner. That's a pretty cool way of describing it because you kind of like peek out a little bit ahead and around the corner and see what's coming next. Yeah, absolutely. So we have a number of innovation engines with a Legion.

We usually like to call out four of them. One is what you would expect, right, which is we have really robust engineering and on occasion. We'll do some M&A work. But then you start getting into some of the more interesting innovation engines, one of which is Allegiant Ventures. We launched Allegiant Ventures in March of 2018. And Allegiant Ventures focuses on investments in adjacent spaces to what we do. So we actually, for example, if you are a smart lock company, and you came to me and said, hey, you want to invest in me for ethical reasons, I would say, hey, are you sure you want us on your cap table? You know, depending on what your exit strategy is, that could diminish your ultimate return. Right. But what it's really focused on is around these adjacencies, because there are lots of companies where we don't know today that those are really core technologies to where we're going to be tomorrow. But we think it's interesting and we think it gives us unique perspective into what's coming next.

One of the unique things about Allegiant as an entity is we're really an ecosystem partner across many of our brands, which means we're not necessarily going to own everything that participates in that customer experience. And so one way that we can be a really good partner, and hopefully in many cases be the partner of choice for people, is by being as open as possible in terms of being easy to integrate with, making sure candidly as well that customers get value for their money. Let's not do proprietary things that, for example, hey, I changed from an iPhone to an Android device. Now I've got to change my door lock. You know, these types of things are kind of important. So ventures allows for us to make some of those interesting investments

and things that we might not necessarily make sense for us to own, but we want an opportunity to work with them closely and to help develop both their company and the technology itself. I probably know more company, I'm more familiar with companies on your investments page than I am familiar with the products and brands on your main page. Slade, I know. There you go. Yeah. These other ones, I mean, I'm very familiar with Yanomi and Nuki. Nuki, iDevices, these are all prominent brands in the industry that we cover. So yeah. And it's all really interesting stuff from the standpoint of we have a really creative relationship with these folks. When you look at startups, many times what people are looking for is more than just a capital investment, right? It's about,

hey, you know, can we do a proof of concept together? Can we do these things? And when you work in a business that has some products that are life and, you know, health safety type of things, you can't really experiment as much. So the other thing that Allegiant has is our fourth innovation engine is we have an entity called Pin and Tumbler Studio that our typical cycle for creation is between 18 and 24 months because it has a long cycle for testing and things of that nature. But if we want to do something innovative with a startup or something ourselves, you know, that we think is new and different,

Pin and Tumbler Studio actually puts concepts out in 120 days or less. Wow. So we get after it pretty hard. And especially on the residential side, where we see lots of evolution and a desire to stay ahead, those latter two innovation engines are really important to us. Very cool. Wow, that is incredibly fast. 120 days. Yep.

It's lots of fun. Fun, yes. It sounds like it. Okay, so we've said a lot about the smart home in general, but I know you have a problem with that little phrase there. So let's go ahead and dive into that real quick. It piqued my interest when I saw that flyby, and I'm going to have to ask you, what's so not smart about my house, if I'm calling it a smart home? Yeah, and like I said, I think a lot

of people probably share the same feelings that I have is, first of all, calling it a smart home to me is an excuse. It's a way to separate some devices in your home from others. And why should we expect less from things that are connected in terms of our user experience, how easy they are to use, how they use power, how secure they are, how private they are, versus all of the other things that we have in our home? So first of all, I would say, you know, you know, a number of people that you would talk to would say, what's smart about it? Anyway, it's just kind of a pain, you know, in many cases. But what it really boils down to is three things from my perspective. And as the person who's responsible for industrial design and innovation at Allegiant, and obviously no one person owns either one of those things. But we focus on three

things. When we look at a connected device, an IoT device in particular is, one, is it secure? You know, for us, security, especially with what we do, you have to have it. But security is on two levels for us. It's both mechanical and digital. So mechanically, security is, hey, can you easily pick the lock? Can you kick in the door? Can you steal the, you know, can you rip the kryptonite lock off the bike? What have you? That's security physically. On the digital side of security, you know, hey, you know, how susceptible are you to a denial of service attack? You know, how susceptible are you to, you know, any other type of hack or do you have the right level of encryption? So security is number one, and that should be consistent regardless of whether

it's a physical device or a combination of physical and digital device. The second element is scalability. And when we say scalability, you know, for physical devices, we would say scalability is, hey, how many times can I use that lock before it breaks? Part of the reason why we, you know, have a long development cycle for many things is when you have to test something literally a million times or at least several A lot of people see a lot of different people entering the IoT space, startups and stuff. When you look at scalability for an IoT device, you need to say, how is that device going to manage when we go from 5,000 users hitting it all at once to 500,000? Is it going to be the same? Is it going to be predictable?

Because I would tell you in our business, if your door doesn't unlock, that's a problem. So just as an example. And then last, and definitely not least, probably most important is simplicity. So mechanically, how obvious is it how to use the product that you have? How easy is it? Was it easy to install? Is it easy to own? And then on the digital side of simplicity, hey, does that app that goes with it look like it belongs with it? Does it make sense? Is it intuitive? So in retrospect, part of the reason why I just hate calling it a smart home is I feel like we're making excuses for devices that are incredibly expensive compared to the other ones that you have

that should be making life easier for you, that should have these three components focused on and should be better than almost anything else you have. So security, scalability, simplicity. If you don't see those three things and as a company, you're not delivering those three things, you're failing your customer. Yeah. Interesting perspective. And I think some of it is, as I'm hearing you talk that through, I find it really interesting because you guys come from this place where like when you look at smart locks, in particular, there's this massive amount of overlap between just the old school model of physically interacting with a door lock and the new, you know, I'll use air quotes, smart model that everybody talks about. And I think if I'm hearing you correctly, a lot of what you're saying is, you know, sort of ditch the qualifier. These are people's homes and they need things to be as secure, as reliable, you know, and simple as they used to be before we made them smart. And therefore,

like you were saying, in many cases, actually more painful to use. So let's kind of ditch that qualifier and just start talking about people's homes. And how do we make those better? It's interesting. Exactly, exactly. And it works both ways. It's not always about taking complexity. Well, it is about taking complexity out, but it's not about diminishing the level of technology that we apply. So, for example, if I gave you an augmented reality user guide for your lock, where instead of even having to jump out to YouTube while you're doing your installation because you're like everybody else. And when you pull the lock out, you just start installing it. You're not pulling the instructions out. You're not reading every technical thing. You want to put it on the door and get this job done. If we, for example, put an AR, augmented reality app out there that lets you point at it and it says, oh, you have a Schlage encode lock.

And based on where you're at right now, here, let me in this augmented view through your phone that you're pointing at the lock, demonstrate to you what the next step is. Let me show you what it is. And by the way, let me actually point out that this, this, and this, this is the order that you're going to go in. And hey, at the same time, do you want me to go ahead and register this for you? Because this lock has a lifetime warranty. So if something happens with this, let me just go ahead and register this for you now so you don't have to go worry about it later. I think all of these elements, if we can find out how to just think like the consumer instead of like the manufacturer that is putting a piece of metal out that happens to be connected to the internet,

put ourselves in their shoes, have, you know, more empathy towards the user that is trying to do this. And instead of saying, look at all the integrations we have, look at all these, you know, fabulous things that can do, think about it as a total ecosystem and think about it in terms of what's the experience going to be like for somebody who is either putting their first IoT device that they've ever bought in, or for somebody who's saying, hey, you know, I run, you know, me, you know, on, you know, for all my, you all my other devices and all these things, and I'm replacing this Z-Wave lock with this new Wi-Fi one. We've got to be able to serve for all of them because I think part of the problem with smart home, it isn't just the qualifier and the quality,

it's very much around the installation experience. Right. Yeah, I think there's an interesting, very popular adage in the world of product management that focus on the outcome, not the output. And I think a lot of times we get fixated on features, and perhaps forget that Martin Plean, the former CEO of Control4, I've gotten to know fairly well over the years. And he's got a sort of a mental model framework that he always uses, which is like, let's make sure we're looking at this problem from the outside in. Right? Like, because we get too stuck looking at stuff from how can we fill up the feature sheet? And we forget that it may not actually make the user's lives better.

So I think that sounds obvious when you say it in a context like this, but it's actually incredibly difficult, I think, when you're in the midst of designing a product or a service to keep yourself in that headspace. So I love the way you frame that. Specifically around AR, I want to talk about that for a minute, because you guys probably have a really interesting perspective on this. And it's something that Seth and I have, we've talked about a little bit on the show. We've sort of danced around this topic a couple of times, and it just seems like there's so much potential for those sorts of things. I just imagine that being able to hold up my phone and literally have it walk me through the installation of a smart lock. I think that's a

really compelling use case. Are there other areas, just broadly speaking, where you see, like, what do you see on the horizon for AR in terms of its role in the home of the future? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I'm super excited about AR. I think that it's an incredibly untapped technology at this point. So I think what it really boils down to is how are you implementing it? Everybody's kind of blown away at first and you see it for the first time and then in certain people's minds, it gets stale. And the reason it gets stale is because instead of doing the wow factor stuff, you need to start doing the practical things. So for example, it would be very helpful in our case, just to give you a simple example is if I were to point my phone at my lock and say, who's here? Who's here right now? Who is in the house walking in or who

left? You know, if we have, there's plenty of technology that would allow for us to give a simple visual indication of, you know, any type of information that that IoT device has embedded on it. And then candidly, if you're a more advanced user, and you've got your information, you know, aggregating, you know, between a variety of devices to point at any number of devices, whether it's your lock or whether it's just at your front door in general or some other element to give you a real-time status of what's going on. I think AR provides just such an intuitive, interactive opportunity to demonstrate simply where and what is happening. And through the interface that you're having on your phone or what have you,

have the ability to immediately react to it without having to bounce from app to app or to other tools that today, you know, you're swiping and sweeping. We have this limitation, right? And I know your listeners can't see it, but you know, this is a very small screen that I'm holding up right here. It's very difficult to do all those things. And I think AR becomes a really logical shortcut to just a better user experience overall. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's in its infancy, but I can see where kind of that those, those, what do they call them? The sight lines are going to come to a point at the end of the road there, because like, I'm thinking about things I do around the house myself. If literally anything you need to do or find out how to do is on YouTube, like you can just go there. It's amazing.

Somebody out in rural West Virginia has put together a YouTube video of him shaking camera. But at least he gets the point across exactly how to do something. It's pretty amazing that all that the world's knowledge could be there. So yeah, I think that having the ability to have that video and instruction, but then also like couple it with what you see in front of you physically in the real world will be a game changer when it comes to education or instructions and that kind of thing. It'd be very, very helpful. Even any kind of status. I mean, like, so for example, Schlage has awesome, I mean, one of the things I'm really proud of is people, you know, hate changing batteries.

And so when we first introduced like the encode lock, people were really worried with Wi-Fi because they're like, oh my God, how often am I going to have to change batteries? What are they? So we've tried to do things like, hey, make sure you have non-proprietary batteries. Make sure they plug in. Like for me, I'm going to date myself here. It's like our batteries plug in like an Atari 2600 cartridge used to in the game system, right? I mean, just intuitive ways to do it. But imagine that you took AR, right? And you just point your camera at the lock and it says, hey, you have 50% battery life, you know, or you have, you know, any number of things. I think you're right. I just think it's a question of applying the technology in a useful way. And instead of spamming people with unnecessary gadgets, you know, to you guys point before, and integrations and things that they don't want, be practical as to how you implement the technology. And that would be one

thing that I again, would say Schlage after, you know, being in business for 100 years, that's something we're really good at, we pride ourselves in, it's not about the technology for technology itself. It's, it's about how you apply it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we just celebrated our 300th episode, which roughly translates to Jason and I sitting down once a week for the past, what, five-ish years. When we started this, there was a little company called Nest. They were just out making thermostats.

The second week, I think, Nest was purchased by Google for billions of dollars. And then from then, it was just like an insane amount of Kickstarter projects, just product being launched, light bulbs with speakers put in them. The most insane amount of home tech product that, product that, that I could have ever imagined from that, from then on, it was like a gold rush. And, um, it seems to have slowed down a little bit. I mean, we still have that. I'm still waiting for that, uh, connected salt shaker. That's still out there. I think that's, that hasn't shipped yet, but, uh, but, uh, there was, it seems to have slowed down and, and, and the industry itself has kind of like gained a little bit of maturity, uh, over the past couple of, I'd say capital, a couple of

years, maybe the last year and a half is pretty much where we saw the, the stuff kind of like, that was obviously, uh, a gimmick kind of fall to the wayside. And then we, we started seeing some real good products. A lot, a lot of them even coming from like the, the bigger brands where they've, they've been putting out, you know, smart connected devices for a long time that, that now are just kind of moving into their, a more mature state and products like ring, which we had like a nice little square doorbell. Now they're getting more and more refined on their products, the cameras and everything as they move along. So what do you think about that? How things have matured here in the last couple of years? I think it's fantastic.

And I think we've moved from more gadgets to more practical, you know, devices. So, you know, people were willing to put up with a lot of crap, for lack of a better term, early on. And I think as they realize, hey, this thing is taking more time for me to reset or to manage than it is giving me time back is part of what has kind of, you know, you've watched the field shrink, right? I think the other thing is, too, is I think just like with anything new, it garners a lot of excitement early on. And then the reality of things come in. So for example, monetization strategies with a startup community that have built these things. I always say there's two different kinds of startups. There are missionaries and there are mercenaries. Mercenaries, there's nothing wrong with them, but they're building a company to be sold. Missionaries are building a

company because they have a mission in mind and they want to deliver something special to the end user and they have that great vision. And I think you've seen examples of both of them survive, thrive, but you've also seen a number of them crash and disappear. Because what people began to realize is, hey, wait a minute, connecting and managing data in the cloud and things like that, that actually costs money. And I think also what we've seen is, and we're really hoping we could avoid was in our case, we didn't want, we were paranoid about someone coming out and putting a product out that was insecure and they would have such a bad experience with it from a privacy or a theft standpoint that it would kill the whole category that people would lose confidence and we've heard

that from a number of men like law that seems to like come from the security and the lock guys yeah hands down like we're not putting a connected thing on this until uh we it is secured because yeah you're you're go hand in hand with being able to lock your door and that would absolutely um i think that focus came from you guys earlier on than i did anybody else well we've been we've been i mean walter schlag one of his first uh patents was actually believe it or not this was way before the internet right it was hey i want to be able when i open a door um i want a light bulb to turn, this was way before the internet, right? It was, hey, I want to be able, when I open a door, I want a light bulb to turn on. This was way back in, I think, like 1909 or something. I mean, way back. And we started making residential connected devices in 2008.

So we go way back in terms of time with this. And what we were seeing was things that were being rushed to market that weren't necessarily being thoroughly thought through. And part of it wasn't intentional. Part of it was you don't know what you don't know. If you haven't been in the security business, for example, it sounds really interesting to say, hey, I want my door to automatically unlock when I approach it. Right? door to automatically unlock when I approach it, right? Well, you know, if you're a security company, you might actually think about that a little bit differently because you better have at least two antennas, two Bluetooth antennas on that door so that I can tell whether you're on the outside of the door or on the inside of the door. Because if you're on the inside of the door

and the door says, oh, Rob's right here, I'm going to automatically unlock and there's somebody on the other side that you don't want coming in, that could be a pretty big problem. And so that's where we start getting into this concept of, again, it's like you can't be fixated and fascinated by the technology. You've got to be focused on how you implement it responsibly. And even for the, you know, cool stuff, you know, that's mainly for entertainment. When you're talking about managing people's data, and privacy and other things like that, you have to take it seriously. And so I think it's a natural evolution to see kind of the bigger names come in with more mature products. Not to mention the fact that also, for example, at Schlage, you know, we have a very large mechanical portfolio that allows us to pay for research and development and for guys like Rob to, you know, think about, you know, the latest style and design,

you know, elements. Whereas a lot of, you know, people early on were very limited. It's like, hey, here's my gadget. Isn't it cool? And then people are looking for change a year and a half later. And if you're a small startup, you probably don't have the kind of budget in order to do those things. So it's kind of a natural shift. I think the other part that is really important to point out is, you know, just because your device is connected doesn't mean it has to be ugly. point out is, you know, just because your device is connected doesn't mean it has to be ugly. It doesn't, you know, you pointed it out with what Jamie's got going on at Ring, you know, he's done a really nice job and the team's done a really nice job of making the product look better and better and more streamlined. And, you know, a huge part of

what Schlage, you know, is trying to deliver is a combination of security and aesthetics. You know, who wants an ugly thing hanging from your door? And in addition to that, who wants something hanging from your door that doesn't match with the rest, for example, of your hardware? I mean, it's funny. The only reason I have a Schlage lock over here is because I have Schlage locks over there. Yeah. So I think it's really important. And as we get, as we, you know, embed more and more technology where it's a natural, you know, kind of flow, you'll start to see devices that historically you haven't thought of as being a smart device being one. So for example, out of Pin and Tumbler Studio, we created a device called Illuminati,

which is a techno-functional device. It's not a connected device, but it's a smart device. And I think you'll see more and more adoption of things like that. But again, it's not going to be successful if we're always talking about it being smart. It just needs to be home. Right. You know? Right. Well, these are great points. I, um, really enjoyed hearing your perspectives on this. We're, we're bumping up against our time a little bit. So as we, as we bring things home to conclusion a little bit, talk, uh, talk about Schlage. I know you've mentioned the, uh, the encode lock, uh, several times, and that's been out, I think for for a little while. Maybe touch on that and talk, perhaps even more importantly, what's next? What's getting you guys excited? I would say both with that specific family of products, as well as just broadly speaking,

with the IoT space. Sure. So, you know, Schlage, you know, security is still the top priority, right? But I think continuing to offer kind of that range of styles that are going to fit, you know, in whatever type of home you have is going to be super important. So we don't want people to feel like, hey, I have to sacrifice what it looks like in order to get the best technology. So that's one commitment that we have right off the top. So you're going to continue to see new styles, new designs, you know, cool things. What we also, what you can expect to see from us is the Schlage Encode smart Wi-Fi deadbolt is kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we want to see in terms of building out the ecosystem. So, you know, as of right now, you probably know you can use the Schlage Home app. You can use the Key by Amazon app. There's a variety of different things you can do. But you'll continue to see more and more what I would term as beneficial integrations,

where it's suit for purpose, where it's going to give you the user control. And I would say hopefully a really simple, beneficial interface that allows for you to get out of the device what you want to get out of it without being buried in the minutiae and the huge number of features and all these other pieces. What I would also say you can expect from Schlage is, you know, we talked about our innovation engines, and we talked about our partnerships and other things, and we're very excited about what we're seeing. And I'll leave some things for mystery here, but take a look, you know, take a look at who we're working with, and you can start to extrapolate a little bit as to the

interesting types of places where you'll see us not only integrate for your homeowners, but also outside where we play in a variety of areas. It's an exciting, exciting space to be in because in a world that is heavily focused on edge computing, when you're in that special geography that think about how many times a day you walk through that door. It is pretty amazing if you think about it. It is full of possibilities. We can make other products in your home smarter. And the best part about that is, is you don't have to pay an additional premium to do that. Right. Awesome, Rob. Well, this was great. Like I said, really enlightening. Enjoyed learning more about you and your perspectives and all of the ventures that you've got your hands in. Sounds like enough to keep your plate full and a really interesting conversation. If our listeners, any of them wanted to follow up

with you, connect, learn a little bit more, what would be the best way for them to do that? Well, you can absolutely, first and foremost, you can follow us at schlage.com or schlaglocks on Instagram. You can find me personally at schlegfuturist on Twitter. And obviously, you can find more information, for example, at legionventures.com as well. Awesome. All right, Rob. Well, thanks again for coming on. Wish you all the best with everything you've got going on and don't be a stranger. No, thank you so much for having me. It was fun to talk to you guys. All right. Thanks, Rob. All right.

That'll do it for our interview with Rob. And again, I really enjoyed getting his perspectives and some of his, shall we say, strong opinions on the current state of the Internet of Things and, frankly, what can be done by companies to continue to raise the bar. I think it's really important. Seth, you and I have watched this industry evolve for many, many years, including of course, the years that we've been doing this show. And, and I think we've, um, we've kind of gone through that, that we went through that initial peak that we talked about and then things kind of went back down and, and settled. And now I hope we're, we're poised as an industry, uh, to, to really get to that next level. And I think Rob had some really good perspectives on that.

Yeah, that's what you get with experience are the opinions that Rob has. So yeah, it was a really good interview. I'm glad we were able to sit down and chat with him. Pick of the week, kind of a follow-up of last week. So, oh man, I forgot to run over and grab it. This is great. So we talked a little bit last week about the email that we received from John.

I can't remember his last name now. Yeah, John Lockyer. Lockyer. Apologize if I'm mispronouncing that, but John had reached out. Seth apparently liked your show recommendation. Counterpoint. It's on Amazon. It's a star show, but it got picked up by Amazon to, I guess, host or whatever and stream.

So it's I think it's free with Prime. I don't we hadn't paid anything for it. And it's it's got some really good acting in it. And it's a really entertaining show and has a full beginning, middle end to the entire series so um and uh more importantly seth is now in the business of uh of trading show recommendations for home tech museum pieces so if you've got an old piece that you want in seth's museum uh he's got a show recommendation for you yeah so johnson over uh the uh, the, the, uh, the smart link USB, or I guess it's IR to USB, not even invented when this thing was out, uh, IR and, uh, home,

X10 home automation link controller thing. I don't even know what this thing does. I was trying to read the manual, um, hilariously printed on the back of the thing says copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, man, this, this is a piece of piece of history right here. It's beautiful. You know what is, it is definitely a throwback. You know, what's impressive is like, I have product that exists in my house now that was made in the past, I don't know, year or two, that looks like without even touching it looks worse off than this thing does. This thing is beautiful. It was built like a tank in 1995. It survived for oh so many years in its form. And John also sent along the instruction manuals and a printout of the webpage that you could from,

from, uh, I think it was, uh, a smart home.com where you could buy this back in the day. Uh, he had, it was a web archive, uh, print out of the webpage. I thought it was great. So good stuff. Thanks, John. Appreciate it. Yeah. Love it. Uh, add that one to the collection, Seth. And you've got, uh and you've got a growing ensemble there. I've got X10 is what I've got. No museum would be complete without X10. I think you're right. I think you're right. I cleaned off some of the shelf back there, so I've got some extra space. I was looking on eBay earlier today for one of those or J J J bows.

J bows. Remember the Jibo robots we talked about? Oh yeah, I do. I got like a t-shirt and some like of their promotional products, but I never got a Jibo and, um, the people, those things were like $500 back then. People are selling them for like eight to $900 now. So I've got to wait for the, uh, they've become like a, they've, they've gone up in price yes i thought for sure that somebody would want to dump these things and like uh i would be able to pick one up on the cheap since they just don't function anymore

and uh no no it's actually gone the other direction so one of these days i'll be able to get one of those jivos if you've got a good line on a price i'm not paying nine hundred dollars i'm not paying five hundred for one. Just like. No, Seth barters in, in show recommendations. Yeah. I've got some really good shows to tell you about. All right. I love it.

Thanks, John. Yeah. We appreciate, we got a good, uh, got a good laugh out of that. So we appreciate it. Yep. 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 slash feedback and fill out the online form. 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 slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about all aspects of COVID-19. Yeah, we've got some epidemiologists in our thing tonight. Statisticians. That's right oh man yeah those conversations can get off the rails but we do talk about home technology and some really cool other things in there so yeah absolutely and if you're looking for other ways to support the show we'd appreciate a five-star review on itunes or in your podcast

app of choice those positive reviews definitely help people find the show. So if you enjoy what we're doing here on the Home Tech Podcast, please take a minute to leave us a positive review. We would really appreciate it. Well, Jason, wraps up another week. I can't believe it does wrap up another week because it feels like just yesterday

I was sitting down to edit all like 19 tracks of our episode 300. That was a big one. That was a big one. I know a lot more about how Zoom decides it wants to arbitrarily record audio. Not exactly the way I thought it was going to go. Oh, good for you.

Oh man. Well, thanks for the extra work. I'm sure that was not an easy one. And thanks to everybody again who came on and joined us on that sort of experimental round table format that we did had a lot of fun putting that show together. Great talking to everybody. I really, I'll echo that really appreciate everybody showing up. It definitely made for a fun conversation. Um, and, and, and just show it. I liked to go back and listen to it and, uh, had a really good time

just listening to it over the weekend. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, stay safe, stay well, and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks everybody. Have a good one.