HomeTech.fm - Episode 324 - Bridging the DIFM Gap with Ring's Andrew Vloyanetes

Episode Date: October 23, 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, October 23rd from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I am Seth Johnson. Jason, what's going on? You know, excited for this week. Seth, we had a great guest on, Andrew Vloyanites, the GM of Installed Solutions at Ring, and we're going to get into that here in a little bit. So be sure to stay tuned for that. Really fun to dive in and chat with him about a topic, Seth, that's near and dear to our hearts, I know, here on the show, this sort of blurring of the lines between consumer products and pro and how that's been really becoming much more of not

a clear line these days and talking to Andrew about everything that he and his team over at Ring have been doing to further push these, what were first consumer products into the pro space and really make those offerings compelling, not just for the consumers, of course, but also for the professionals who are going out and installing those. So we were really excited to have Andrew on the show and enjoyed the conversation. So be sure to stay tuned for that. In the meantime, Seth, MTV's back. It is, it is. This is one of the most exciting things that's happened this last week. I mean, because really there hasn't been very much other news but this is this is super exciting so i was flipping on my apple uh apple tv and i noticed there's a an apple music tv now inside of there and it's just like now the old school mtv not

not the mtv that we all probably remember from the 90s where it was just basically real world reruns it's hard for me to say oh man that's a blast from the past yeah well yeah people what is it what was the tagline people start i forget what the thing was on that but like that was the boring part of mtv the cool part of mtv was watching all the music videos uh and that's what they did initially not a good business plan evidently for them but But this is Apple we're talking about. They have money. So they're just going to throw free music videos up 24 hours a day and just stream them. And you can just sit there and watch music videos like it's, I don't know, like 1989 or something.

So it's really cool. This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real there we go the real world a little trip down memory memory lane there oh that's the era i would rather forget but okay like many of us i suspect well good stuff yeah yeah it's um right sort of we all jokingly talk about uh mtv and how at one point they actually played music so i think uh this will be this will be a good thing you can get your fix again yeah that's right all right seth well before we get into our interview what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it well j, Jason, Apple TVN, Quibi is out. Quibi, the short form video

streaming service that made Splash at CES 2020 with its turnstile feature is shutting down, according to separate reports from the Wall Street Journal and the informant. The Wall Street Journal reports that Quibi co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg called the startup's investors on Wednesday to tell them that he plans to shutter the platform. Big news, big news in streaming. I do feel sorry for these guys. It was a, you know, when you start up something like this, you've got to swing. If you don't swing, you're going to miss. And they could have had a home run here, but I just, I don't know. I looked into this product. I did not understand. Like it was all real world reruns to me. Like it was all those types of shows. It's like, I had no desire to

watch anything that was on there. Um, but they did have some original short form content that they were working on that did look interesting, but not interesting enough for me to subscribe to their platform for like six or $7 a month. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, swing they did, you know, they, they had raised, uh, approximately $1.75 billion for this startup and it did not, did not take long for them to, at least according to these reports, uh, pack it in. So unfortunate for them. Uh, again, I've said it before on the show, I thought it was a novel approach and, and I respect that. I like that show, I thought it was a novel approach, and I respect that. I like that they took sort of a novel approach and tried to do something different. But yeah, this will definitely go down as one of the bigger failures in tech. No question.

Moving on from there, LG. After years of teasing, they're finally selling the rollable OLED TV. The RX-branded signature OLED launched in South Korea this week, offering a 65-inch 4K display that tucks away into its base at the press of a button. Besides being able to hide completely, as LG has promised in CES previews, the TV has different settings, full view, line view, and zero view for different situations. So Seth, not a small price tag on this thing. 100 million KRW, according to this. So that's the Korean currency there. $87,000 in US dollars.

That's going to ruin a lot of people's uh of getting one of these and putting them in their house i think um but i don't know cool product i was just doing the math i think you can buy about 20 000 of these for one quibi so that was that was uh it's an interesting statistic we'll go ahead and leave in the show but just leave that there yeah i think we're gonna see this type of i mean this is one of those things that's neat that will pop up in commercial venues and that kind of thing before I think it will hit in our market, in the home market. But who knows?

We might see somebody with deep pockets buy one of these things and toss it in their house. Yeah. No word, according to Engadget, no word on launch outside of korea so this is korea only for now stay tuned for more yep excited to see what they will do with this format though since you can raise it up slightly and show like a little small tv screen that's really wide or go big and right whole thing up so yeah it's interesting possibilities google released the nes card in 2017 as a simple security system with motion sensors and a keypad but it never received an upgrade even as other nest devices were updated again and again and now google has confirmed with

android police that the nest guard is discontinued so jason new apple music could be gone new tv your nest secure is just discontinued the comings and goings this week. Yeah, it says, though, it will continue functioning, according to this story, but the product page for the Nest Guard on the Google Store says no longer available, possibly indicating it was discontinued. So it sounds like that has been confirmed,

and that one is not long for the market. So that's kind of interesting. I got to say, Google has got to be one of the most frustrating companies I have ever seen. They continually do this, both on their software side and their hardware side, where they'll introduce something that looks cool, and they get bored and walk away from it. I don't know how this leads to any confidence in, in something like the nest line. Like if you notice that your nest thermostat stops getting updated, is, does that mean that it's going to be discontinued and just,

right. Yeah. We're, we're bored with this product. They say there's going to continue functioning. I just have to wonder how long that's going to go on too. Yeah. I can't imagine that'll be indefinite.

No, they always say that. And then a year later they're like, well, we're going to shut down the servers and you have you have another year so two years later everybody's forgotten about this product that was discontinued three years ago and yeah it's i don't know i i don't this is the kind of like actions that we expected to see when you know five years ago when kickstarter was launching these products not something from like Google or, you know, a big player like Google, but Google continually does this. It's very frustrating.

Yeah. Agreed. Well, speaking of Google, they're announcing a new set of features for their smart displays, including an improved visual experience, dark theme, relaxing sounds, a gentle alarm and meet and zoom improvements. The biggest of these changes is the new interface. Instead of sticking to a one-page layout with all of your notifications and cards lined up horizontally, Google's smart displays will now have five tabs at the top. Sections include Your Day, Home Control, Media, Communicate, and Discover. And Seth, I looked into this story and looked at some of the, they had a short video kind of going through, and I got to say, the interface looks really nice. The home control page in particular gives you an overview of all your gadgets connected via the Google Home app. It says each device gets its

own card. You can tap to switch something on or off. Google said it wants to be more predictive in its approach here, and we'll try to prioritize what it thinks you're looking for. So there's some other features as well, but the thing, Seth, that really struck me when I was looking at this was just thinking about, man, a touch panel that could do all of this, say, 10 years ago, thousands of dollars, and very sophisticated programming and very difficult to set up. And really just kind of looking at this was one of those milestone moments where you kind of pause and go, man, things really have come a long ways. Yeah, because what do these things run?

$150 to $250, somewhere in there? Yeah, yeah, they're in that range. Yeah, it is quite incredible the amount, what volume pricing has done to something like a touchscreen. I still remember the first day we got the iPad delivered to our office and I set it next to the control for touchscreen that we sold off the shelf for twenty five hundred dollars. And that would only work, you know, five feet away from an access point. The battery died. If you left it off the thing overnight it was dead

so yeah the ipad would last a week and a half and and just the screen was gorgeous compared to the to the uh to the control for touchscreen i was like we'll never sell one of these again and for the most part we didn't like it was it was all ipads from there on out and it's just amazing what what that what the entire touch panel line of products has gone through over the past 10 years, like you said. Yeah, and I'd be remiss not to at least mention the obvious here, but just to state it, a Google smart display is obviously going to be nowhere near as flexible in terms of the number of devices

it can integrate with and what it can do relative to like a Control 4 or Crestron touch panel. But ultimately, it is just really interesting to look at how far things have come. And you've got this really sleek little device for under $200 that if you live in that ecosystem and you have devices that are compatible with it, the options have just opened up tremendously. So you know what my Control 4 touchscreen probably could do, but this one won't control my security system. Come on, Google, get your act together. Well played. Well, that'll do it for the, uh, the links and topics that we've discussed on our show this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash three, two, four. 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 324. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday,

starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth. Well, without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our interview. Again, once again, we had Andrew Vloyanitis on. He's the GM of Installed Solutions at Ring, and we hope you enjoy the conversation. Hey, Andrew, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you? Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me on. Doing excellent. Yeah, we appreciate you taking the time to join us, and we look forward to jumping in and talking all about Ring and your work there. But before we do that, we always like to start our interviews with a bit of a personalitis and i am the gm of the installed solutions business

unit at ring slash amazon and so i oversee the global strategy and execution for how we go to market through all of our professional installed verticals around the world so verticals like the cd channel or custom installer hvac electric, security pros. That all rolls up into me. And yeah, I've been in consumer electronics since I was 15 years old. I've never worked in any other industry. I was slinging cell phones at Radio Shack through high school and made my way through Best Buy retail experience. And I've always been like an audio nut. And so I gravitated towards the Magnolia division of Best Buy when I was there. And then that, my career took me to 10 years at Sonos, which was a lot of fun. And I watched that company through explosive growth and then joined

Ring about a year and a half ago. And so I'm a diehard fan of electronics. I'm a tinkerer. I'm always playing. And then I'm also a closet audiophile if you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it. So there you go. Great. Thanks for that. Tell us a little bit about to the extent that there is a typical day for you at ring. Give it, give us a sense for, for what you do there on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. I don't know if typical is a word we use in, in today's world in today's times. You know,

the thing about it is every day is different and different challenges and new things that come up. You know, it's, you know, like, I mean, Amazon shifting Prime Day to Q4 versus when it was in the summertime in the past, like there's no playbook for that, right? Like you just, you're kind of learning things on the fly. So I think for me, a typical day, I really try to focus on long-term strategy and where I'm trying to, I always refer to this channel that I run and I, when I ran in prior life as a oil tanker and to turn an oil tanker, you got to start to turn that rudder five miles before the turn happens. So a lot of what I'm working on is looking out, you know, two, three years of where I want to turn that ship to or where we need to get to and then all the things that you need to do to do along the way.

And so all those tactics along the way is kind of what I do day in and day out. And lately, it's been really focusing in on the dealer and how we're supporting the dealer and what pieces we need to put in place and where our gaps are. I mean, I personally talk to a ton of dealers throughout my work week, rather through text messages or emails, phone calls, just understanding what it is that's working for them or not working and what we need to change in light of them. But yeah, it's a lot of, I'd say, Ring and Amazon, huge companies, huge parts of business, very, you know, large presence in the CD and custom installer and home technology pro channel.

So it's a lot of little things that happen day in and day out, but we're trying to, you know, we're trying to steer the ship for the long-term, not just get short-term wins is kind of how I think about my day-to-day. Yeah. It makes sense. You gotta think, think big, start small. I hear you there, definitely. So that sets us up nicely to jump into one of the main topics that Seth and I, I know, are both excited to talk about. We started doing this show, gosh, six years ago now, I think, right around the time Nest got acquired by Google. There's been a ton of evolution in the channel in terms of really

blurring the lines between straight-to-consumer sort of DIY products and professional, and the melding of those two sort of market segments is a really interesting trend that we think about a lot on the show. And so talk us through some of the biggest challenges in terms of developing those go-to-market strategies to bring a consumer-first product like Sonos or Ring into a professionally installed channel. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you, the way I think about it is, is that there's a lot of manufacturers out there that either focus on pro installer only or custom installer only, or they focus on DIY only. And, you know, the product strategies are way different in those two different buckets. But if you think about what Ring does great and what Amazon does great is really think about the customer and work backwards from there. So go solve customer needs, what are customers struggling with or could improve on?

Or how do you bring new experiences that maybe the customer didn't even think about yet? And it's kind of that like aha moment. I mean, voice is probably one of the greatest examples in recent memory of voice was seen as a gimmick or it wasn't, you know, couldn't scale it or small. And here comes Amazon or all of a sudden, like I could imagine doing my daily life without Alexa in my house, my kids, it's ingrained in my whole family. But I think there's ways that you can take products

and bring them into these spaces and these channels if you stay laser focused on the customer, the end user. And so, you know, in that we start to take our focus from a DIY place, and then start to feather into this, this new customer segment that a lot of people are starting to define, which is this do it for me customer do it with me is what some other folks say. And it's really, you know, I related to like millennials, I know, that's kind of like, sometimes people are like all millennials are living in their parents' basement. They don't make any money, but you know,

millennials are in that phase now where they're starting to come into money. They're having their first home. They have their first real job. And really like that segment of customer is a great do it for me example, because they value their time over money. You know, they, they don't want to spend all weekend, you know, up on a ladder, putting product, you know, product up on the wall or maybe getting the wrong product, realizing they have to return it, get something else. Like those are long time things, the investments to get done sometimes.

And so Do It For Me is really about that technology pro, you know, being the expert for the customer. Like, let me ask you some questions. Let me come see your house. Let me see what it is you're trying to accomplish. And it's not like transactional product wise. It's more like, let me design like a solution for you. What are you trying to accomplish in your home? How many family members do you have? And then start to design solutions around that. A lot of times you find that Ring and Amazon and Alexa devices start to be brought into that as a solution for the customer. So, you know,

what I think we're starting to do is, is we're starting to focus in on that do it for me customer doing research around it and understanding what it is that makes them tick. How do they behave? What are their needs? And then working backwards from that customer. And, you know, there's a lot of brands that you can, you can apply that to, but I think at Ring and Amazon, like we're just, we're laser line focused on delivering for that customer. And, you know, there's a lot of brands that you can, you can apply that to, but I think at ring and Amazon, like we're just, we're, we're, we're laser line focused on, on delivering for that customer.

And, and, you know, that's how it helps us bridge the gap into this do it for me versus DIY space. Oh, that makes sense. Just, I was just doing some searching while you were talking there and I was looking to see when the last time we had somebody on from ring was on our show way back in 2014 we had a guy named I don't know if you know him Jamie Siminoff on the show and actually the company was called doorbot back then he announced on our show that they were going to

be renaming it to ring that Friday when we released so he's like that was a that was an interesting interesting time to see like how I was looking at the picture like to see how far the product has come since then. Well, I think it also, like Seth, it's great that you say that. I was just talking to him this afternoon. I'd say within Ring, he's a big driving force behind our focus on this do-it-for-me customer and this pro installer, custom installer space. When I first came into the company, it was one of the conversations I had for him was like, okay, what do we need to do? How do we need to do this? Let's go invest. Let's go try some things out. Let's go test some stuff. And I don't know if you saw, or you can look it up, but our announcement, our product launch with

HoloVision was really Jamie's idea. He's like, look, we know we need to do this. Our customers are telling us that they have access entry at their homes, but he showed me four or five pictures of a doorbell, a ring doorbell that looked like an afterthought. And so we went and found HoloVision and spun up that partnership. And now, I mean, it went from idea in Jamie's office in September to us launching it, and it's in market today. And the customers are very happy about it.

So he, I mean, very much so is definitely involved with Ring today. And I mean, he helps drive me with the pro channel focus and the installed solutions focus on developing the products that help solve those needs of the customers. So, right. Yeah.

And that's kind of where I was headed. It was like, I remember that conversation pretty distinctly with him. I've heard it a couple of times too. He's been around on marketing as well, but the story hasn't really changed. The story behind Ring hasn't really changed. Why do something like this? Well, I wanted to see who was at my front door. That particular, you know, story hasn't gone away. And the fact that it hasn't really, since 2014,

gotten very much easier across the marketplace to do as something like Ring. I've got Ring on my doorbell out front. It's pretty interesting to see how far the entire company is calling, just by like, from what you're saying, feeding off what the customer feedback is giving you and kind of evolving the product along those lines. And speaking of evolution, I know that there is the new Ring X line that you have introduced into the product lineup. And I guess go ahead and talk a little bit about that and what areas or markets that's in there to serve as well. Yeah, so I think one of the other things that I heard loud and clear when I got here was doing a lot of research with the dealers and finding out, you know, again, what was working, what wasn't working.

One of the biggest things we heard was just like, hey, we need specific products for us. Like there's value that we can add into what we're selling the products. You know, it'd be really great to have our own product line only available through pro installers. And, you know, we took that back and said, well, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. You know, there's, there's a lot of promotional activity that ring does as a brand and it you know, can, can reduce the amount of margin that dealers are making as well too. And, you know, with the do it for me customer, a lot of times they're the ones that are helping

with the buying decisions of the do-it-for-me customer versus DIY. Like that person is generally making all their buying decisions. And we said, okay, well, let's think about what the value is that the installer brings. One is we know it's installed right, right? So let's give it a longer warranty on the product because we know a pro is involved. We know they installed it. So we include an extended warranty on that.

And then number two, it's really kludgy, to be honest with you, when an installer, you know, does all this work for the customer, at the last minute, they say, hey, can I have your credit card real quick? I got to set up the subscription for you. You know, like that to me is not a good customer experience when they're, when they're investing in a,

in a do it for me solution. So we included a lifetime video subscription as well with the X-Line product. And so this was really our first step into doing a derivative SKU product line for the professional install world. And the X-Line is actually a strategy. It's not necessarily just the products that are called X-Line. It's also our partnership with HoloVision as well as part of our X-Line portfolio. And we've talked about our partnership with Savant that we announced that's now coming through beta and will be out in the public soon. That's part of our X-Line strategy as well. And so it's all these little pieces that help kind of ladder up that our investment in the channel is thought out,

is genuine, and is going to continue for the foreseeable future. There's a multi-year roadmap that we're thinking about on how we can better serve the dealers. And yeah, it'll just go on from here. But the X-Line, it's all of our core products that we have today minus the alarm products. It's all the camera products, doorbells floodlight cam, which is a huge product for, for the pro channel space. And then also we bring the, what we call the ring access controller pro into that as well, which is our gate interface product too, which I think is just like a,

you know, just a killer product that we solved a need that drove me nuts, which is customers would tell us they would give the pin number to the delivery driver for their gate. So the delivery drive, or they would put it as address two on the shipping label. And I'm like, it's like the most unsecure thing I've ever heard in my life. And, you know, we brought out that product and it allowed, you know, people to see who's at their gate and then they can just press a button right within the Ring app and it'll open the gate, let the person up. And then the double click on that is that it integrates with Key on the Amazon side.

So now your Amazon delivery drivers can open your gate, drive up to your house, drop off your package and leave and close the gate behind them. So just really focus on that, that pro installer. Excellent. And like within the pro install areas, how has been, how has the ring line, the X line been received from post? Yeah. I mean, yeah, the feedback's through the roof from, from the dealer community. I mean, I think it's again, like it just is something they asked for. So of course it's going to resonate pretty well.

But the feedback has been real strong on it. Especially around the floodlight cam. Like that product generally needs a pro installer to do it because you're touching line voltage. And so, you know, I think that that's one that surprised us a little bit and we'd see the adoption of the XL1 of that be really strong. And then in parallel with it, I think we just didn't do a good job of talking about our POE products. You know, like this is what pro installers, custom installers focus on. PoE is such a great problem solver that we're really talking to dealers a lot about our PoE doorbell, our PoE cams. And it's an important part of their portfolio too.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's great stuff. Talk quickly about the sort of purchasing experience from an end user perspective. If an end user is out there and wants to get into Ring, but wants to have that professional assistance, what does that experience look like in terms of finding a pro, pricing? I think you guys are doing these Ring X products in bundles as well. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So we, so on our X line landing page on ring.com is where a lot of this comes from. So customers navigate to ring.com X line. And at the top it's, you know, emailing and we'll get you connected with a pro. And so they would email into my team, our insides tails folks, and then they would connect them with a pro within their geographic region. We also recently launched a certification program. So we now have, if you go, if any dealer out there goes to ringpartnerprogram.com, they can sign up to be a Ring certified installer, go through all the

online training. And then what that gets you is, is that as the team is directing customers to installers, if you're certified, you'll come to the top of the list. So if there's a Phoenix, Arizona, we get somebody that's looking for X-Line or a pro installer. If the dealer is certified, they would go to the top of the list on that. Got it. Along those same lines, what else are you doing, if anything, for the Ring X-Line to make that line attractive to integrators relative to other products they may look at for access control out in the market? I certainly don't expect to get into specific numbers and margins and things like that, but talk a little bit about maybe things like how are you supporting the dealers? What else are you doing more on the intangible front in

terms of making those products and lines attractive to integrators? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head there. You know, support is a big, is a key part of that. So we've stood up an installer support line. So now we have a direct access to our more qualified tech engineers to be able to answer questions that are more dealers asking them not and users. And then also the response time to answer that phone call is quicker as well too, knowing that the installer is time is money and they're on site and they're in the home. The X-Line product is only available through the pro installer space. So it's only available

through independent dealers currently right now and then also we have the ability for installers that maybe don't work with a distributor don't have a local distributor to be able to purchase the product through our amazon for business platform and so a dealer can go through there and be able to purchase the product along with alexa products at wholesale pricing and if anybody again if anybody's interested in that, they can email into pro channel at ring.com. So we partner with distributors for the product line as well, too. So you can get it at most local distributors. All the major ones you can think of, we're part of, but if you don't work with a distributor, don't know who that is. We have our Amazon for business platform as well, too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Want to shift back, one more question here on the RingX line, back to your perspective from Ring. You touched on this very briefly in one of your answers a few minutes ago, but talk to us about the business case for a company like Ring to develop a pro line, to go into the pro channel versus just staying straight to consumer. What's the upside for you guys to go do that? I mean, so again, like I would root it in that customer that we're trying to, to serve, but also like, I mean, it's no secret, maybe it is, but when, when there's a consultative sale process or a pro involved, um, that customer is much happier generally because they're going to get exactly what they need and they're generally going to have more than just a single product you know if you think about the DIY customer you know it's generally like a single doorbell is what they're purchasing

and then they may add on other products later down the road but when that pro is there at the home they're sitting there and they can say look you, you know, Hey, here's the doorbell is what, what you might've called us about. But you have a floodlight cam on the side of your house. Did you know that we can also make that into a ring camera and maintain the floodlight perspective? And then the other piece that I love is, is that why it's interesting to us or why a company like us would invest in it is the pro can also make things happen that the customer may not be thinking about, you know, and so a pro walks into your home and is doing a site survey and they see that you have X, Y, and Z products. Maybe it's a Lutron lighting system. Maybe it's a Sony TV. And

you know, the customer may not realize that they can actually have those products work together to deliver a unique scenario for them. And so like the pros can help do that, especially around Alexa too. Like you can start to do some things that the customer just may not realize on their own. I love the example of Alexa show where you can say, Alexa, show me the front door with the ring doorbell. And the image of the doorbell comes up on the screen or through your Fire Stick TV, you can make your 80-inch Samsung TV become a Ring video to see your front door. So I think that's the big value is that you're going to generally drive happier customers. You're generally going to have more products in that home, which customers generally enjoy Ring when they have more products. And then those little pieces of tying all the technology together inside the home is super important.

Yeah. And you guys have been really busy on integrations with this, this past couple of years, I guess, on, on bringing in the ring integration with other systems we've seen, well, the black wire drivers that are out there, we've seen those from control four and URC. And then you've got the Lutron integration as well. And of course, the Savant one that you mentioned earlier.

So it's really good to see those even as easy as it sounds, like those easy tie-ins to be able to be like brought in and just tie in a system and trigger events and that kind of thing off of off of uh something that happens on a ring system yeah i think also too you uh and and these are all kind of fresh so but just you know people may not realize them though but we're uh we've started to incorporate some things around thermostats within our ring ecosystem now so honeywell's uav thermostats are now supported through our alarm system. Also partnering deeper with MyQ through their MyQ garage door opener. You now can have a deep link tile within the ring app now that'll take you into your MyQ app.

And then also a new partnership with a company called Flow by Moen who does water shutoff valves, smart water valves, which I have one in my house. And they're just, it's so cool to see how much insane amounts of water my kids use on a weekly basis. But through the, we have a deep link integration with them too, that you can now click through to Flow's app is something recently we did too. So we're heavily vested in our, in our partnerships, also our work works with Ring recently we did too. So we're heavily vested in our partnerships. Also our work works with Ring platform as well too. But I think for the channel, I mean, it was,

Savant was an important one because it just, those systems are so complex and have so much going on that, you know, bringing a one app experience in those homes is important. I think the Lutron one for me was big to help with, you know, a welded home is a safe home. And, you know, we have all these cameras around the house through Ring that can help trigger events. Why not take advantage of them to be able to turn on lights? And I have a Ring camera halfway down my driveway that somebody drives up and my Lutron outdoor lights come on, which is pretty cool. So, And then also the HoloVision one that I mentioned.

I mean, if you haven't seen these HoloVision products, absolutely check them out. They're some of the coolest things that I've seen and just like really design conscious. They can have it match any color metal on your gate or your door that you want. And I think that's resonating really well with the dealer community. That's cool stuff.

So I do want to kind of zoom out. A couple of weeks ago, we heard some of the new products that were going to be coming from ring and of course every on every on the top of everybody's mind is the uh is i guess the always home cam the the drone the ring drone i guess is the the colloquial name for it what could how how all right so first of all how cool is this thing thing? It just flies around your house. I can't, I can't wait. I do have one question though, from the video, from the video, how big is this device? It's very difficult to tell. Yeah. I mean, I, I, we don't have like official size on it just yet, but it's, it's generally on the smaller side. Like it's you know, it's not something that's going to be big and bulky and, you know,

take up your entire coffee table. Right. Right. But yeah, as soon as we have that stuff to release, we'll, we'll be able to share it with you. Awesome. Awesome. I was just curious because the video is kind of hard to tell and I can see it flying around and it looks, it looks, I mean, it looks like it's the size of a drone or I expect to be a drone. So I don't know. I'm just kind of curious. But how cool of a product is it though? I mean, it looks like it's the size of a drone or i expect to be a drone so i don't know i'm just kind of curious but how cool of a product is it though i mean it's like i i i got more phone calls and text messages you know after that announcement that's just

like give me on the beta list i want to test this thing like this is like the coolest piece of tech but i think i look man i think it's two things that are really awesome about it. One, when you have a regular indoor cam from Ring, you got to decide where that thing goes. And it may not cover your entire area you want to, or maybe it's stationary at the end of the day. So with the Always Home Cam, you have that ability to have it go to where the issue is inside your home or where you want it to go to. I'm terrible at always leaving the stove on in my house. So I can't wait to have it so that I can, after I leave the home, I can press a button and it'll fly over to my stove and I can see if I left it on or not. But just think about all the cool use cases that it'll be able to solve for inside of homes. I think it's, people are just going to love it.

So absolutely. I can think of a half dozen off the top of my head. Did I leave the garage door open, you know, to the outside world? I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that, that I can think of that just having a camera that can, can move. I think that's, that's what people miss. Like you can already install a ring camera in your house, like, but it just, it's fixed. You can't kind of peer around that corner to see what's going on or, um, you see, like you said, see if you left the stove on, see if the house is in certain condition and you only, you only need one. I mean, you, you could buy more rings, I guess, but like you only need one to kind of like, just do a patrol real quick and

then come back and you've got the video of it there. So I, I think that's a really, a really interesting product. I'm very curious to see how well it's received and how well it does. I think it's coming out next year sometime. Yeah, 2021. And then also the thing about it is privacy is paramount at Ring too. So there's no microphone on the actual unit. They made it purposely loud so that people know that it's there um and then when it's in the base station charging it's the camera's physically blocked so it's literally only recording when it's in flight uh and it's and it's video only so such a cool product i saw some of those privacy concerns flying around i'm like wait a minute it doesn't make any sense at all like it it physically goes down and thing and when it's flying around you're going to be flying around you're not going

to be wandering around in your birthday suit and all of a sudden there's a quiet you know hovering thing there no this isn't science fiction it's this is the real life real world yeah so another cool um kind of uh escape from the house that came up were the ring car products the integrations with like tesla and the car security systems um go ahead and talk a little bit about that and how that just seems like a very interesting move. When I think of Ring, I think of my home. I think of my doorbell. I think of my spotlight cams. This is very interesting. This is that the car is the extension of the home in a lot of ways. As you think about people, I saw today Tesla is in beta of autonomous driving vehicles. That to me is the living room of the future is when you're in transport. I think the car is just a natural progression for Ring to, for ring to be able to cover, you know, outside the home, you know, to the car as well. I mean, I know the first time I got into a ring product was somebody was breaking into our neighbor's cars and never opening up doors and stealing change. And I got a ring camera. That's, that was my first one I ever got before I worked for the company. And then I had to start parking my car on the street and I couldn't have it in my driveway and I couldn't keep an eye on my vehicle anymore. So I think it's a perfect natural progression for

us. And then also too, like around these products, you know, they can record when the car is stationary as well too. So like when you think about, you know, dash cams is like the example, generally those are only recording when you're driving. Uh, and, and for our product, it's also why it's parked too. So I think it just covers a lot of use case scenarios for the customer. Um, and just, you know, really be able to deliver a unique experience there that, you know, I think people will love.

I mean, I know personally, I love it. My family members would, uh, to be able to keep an eye on my car, no matter where it is parked in front of my house or parked in a parking garage at the airport. Yeah. This is actually not a question that we had prepared, but as you're sitting here talking, I just got an alert for my Ring app. I have a Ring security system and I'm part of the notifications. And unfortunately, someone in the neighborhood appears to have had some stuff stolen from their garage. So that's regrettable. But, you know, talk a little bit about the app and the importance of sort of the community and that hyperlocal. I love these alerts that I get from my neighbors. And it's just good, you know, for neighbors to be

able to share with one another when things are going on, and you can be extra vigilant around the neighborhood. So share a little bit of your perspectives around the app. Yeah, I think, you know, Seth said it a minute ago, like it all really started with the doorbell, you know, and that's, you know, arguably how people still remember us, but it's really turned into this ability for neighborhoods to work together to, to, to become safer, you know? And so I think it's, it's important that people can share videos easily, can post stuff easily and simply and, and really, you know, help, help to reduce crime in neighborhoods by everybody working together.

And it doesn't necessarily like, sometimes we, we, we talk about crime right away, but it can be as simple as a lost dog, you know, like, Hey, I lost my dog. Here's a picture of it. You know, if anybody sees it, you know, let me know. I mean, that kind of stuff just really is just good human nature things. I think really gives people a sense of, of doing good. Um, but I tell you the coolest part about it is, is that even if you don't own ring product, you can go download our neighbors app, which allows you to have all that community, uh, aspect, uh, even without owning ring products. So for free, you don't have to buy anything.

You can download it right to your phone and you're able to, you know, set up the radius to where you want to get alerts from. And in your neighborhood, you'll get the alerts just like if you were a Ring user and it really gives you the ability to kind of test the product out, you know, see how this neighbor's portion works, see what kind of alerts you're going to get, but in all honesty, just see what's going on in your neighborhood. And I think that's fascinating. And just,

I think that everybody really enjoys that aspect of it. But then when you get into it, when you have the ring product, that's where you can share videos, you can, you know, work together to be able to do that kind of stuff. So that part's great. And then just on the core app side, I mean, I think the piece that I love and our app is very intuitive to use. It's easy to navigate around. The settings are really intuitive too. So I just installed a new floodlight cam in my house yesterday. And I didn't adjust any settings and I was getting a tree that was blowing that was giving me notifications. I just went into the settings for that camera, adjusted where the area that it would have motion. And now it's all set up and it's good to go. And it's just super easy to be able to make those

adjustments. And then also within the app, a lot of things that we've launched recently is around customers being able to take control of their privacy settings. We call it control center. So the ability to adjust what's recorded, where it's recorded, how it's recorded, sharing videos, you know, all those aspects are all now easily controlled to the customer. We also enable two-factor authentication now, too, to ensure that, you know, like, look, these are people's videos. These are your home. This is very personal. We want to make sure that we make the product as secure and privacy is of

the utmost importance for us. Yeah, that's great. I, just touching on something you mentioned there, you talked about, you know, we sort of go to crime first and we talk about those use cases. And I remember very vividly last winter, somebody sent out a clip of a video of a random neighbor shoveling their sidewalk. They had no idea who it was, but they just shared the video clip out to say, whoever this was, we really appreciate it. Thank you. And it turned out that whoever that was had shoveled a bunch of people's sidewalks that day. A bunch of people chimed in and it was really cool to see. You do see some of those, certainly in my neighborhood, at least, and I have to imagine we're not unique. You see some of those positive stories being shared as well. And so that I really enjoy. We are bumping up against our time a little bit. So I want to a fairly unique perspective in terms of, of the industry having really straddling this line again, between consumer and pro and really operating, uh,

in an area that almost transcends, uh, those boundaries. So I'd love to hear your perspectives on like what, what problems or challenges for the smart home consumer do you hope that we've solved say five years from now that we haven't solved today? Yeah, this is a great question, too, by the way, because I do try to think out on that time horizon, especially through the business that I operate in. And hopefully I don't get in trouble for talking about this one, but it's a good one. So I think one of the biggest problems is, is, you know, we've noticed it in COVID times now, right? Like home connectivity is one of the biggest challenges.

And I think it's one of the biggest things that homeowners are looking to upgrade through this time. I mean, I know I changed my speed to gigabit at home to be able to support my kids and my family being home. But I think that ability to have devices have strong connectivity around the home and then lead to the outside portion of the home is really what's going to be the game changer here in the next three to five years. And so at Amazon, we talked about it last year, which is our sidewalk network. And that's really the ability for the customer to be able to utilize different products as gateways for the Sidewalk network. And so we just started enabling some of those products on the Ring side and on the Alexa side to now be these gateways for Sidewalk.

And Sidewalk is really a shared network that helps devices work better together. So imagine if it's like a ring camera that's on the edge of your wifi network. If your neighbor has sidewalk and they have sidewalk products enabled in their house, it might utilize ultra low bandwidth to send alerts through their network. And then you would still have some connectivity to your ring products. And I think just like the war, like that just opens up a whole new, that's a game changer, right? Like that's going to open up a whole new ability to have connectivity outside the home. I've got a super long driveway at my house and to be able to have a mailbox notification sensor, I'm way outside my wifi range. But imagine if I could through this sidewalk network, it would just be awesome. So I think that to me is, is going to be, you know, that could be just really, really strong game changer in having good interoperability, not just around your own house, but also imagine like in a neighborhood, like how does the neighborhood work stronger together, your pet, your dog, you know, your, your car, whatever it is. I really

think that that's, that's how, uh, that's's the problem that's got to get solved. And I see a way that Amazon is going to do it pretty strong. That one is very exciting. I can't wait to see what comes out of that seemingly long-term investment. Because the sidewalk's been around for a year or two. I don't know. It's been around for a while. Yeah, last year.

It's a long play. Yeah, we announced it last year. Yeah. But if you have some of the devices, like the Floodlight Cam is one as an example, you can enable Sidewalk now in your Ring app. And so it's that foundation to start to have that connectivity. Going to go do it now. That's really cool. Very cool. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on the show here. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, drop your line or ask you a little bit more about the pro side of Ring and RingX line, what's if you go to ring partner program.com, you can learn all about how we're partnering with the channel, what support mechanisms we have in place, and then,

uh, go through the certification program as well too. Awesome, Andrew. Well, again, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Thanks for coming on the show. Seth, Jason. Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. All right. Well, that'll do it for our chat with Andrew and Seth. Like I said, at the beginning of the show, I really enjoyed it. I felt like this one was right in our wheelhouse in terms of really just talking to somebody who has a very, very strong command of how to, I would say, straddle that gap between professional and do-it-yourself and really this emerging on the timescale of five years or so, the emerging market that we've seen in terms of do it for me or do it with me solutions. I really enjoyed hearing Andrew's perspectives on all of

that. Yep. Good stuff. And Andrew did get back with us on the size that always home cam. Now, Jason, this is much smaller than I thought it was going to be. So I don't know. Okay. So the mystery is solved. What do we got? Seven by seven by five. So seven wide, seven long, seven wide, and then five high. Okay. Tiny.

I thought it was going to be the size of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. So like 12 inches wide. Oh, yeah. I thought it was going to be much bigger. But this makes more sense. It's smaller than a, it's about the size of a shoe box, I guess,

half a shoe box or something. So yeah, I think that's a good size. I mean, I have to imagine they probably wanted to get it as small as they possibly could. And certainly in some of those videos, I guess in my mind's eye, it was even smaller than that.

But as you watch the videos, you could tell it was a little bit bigger, but that's by no means, does that feel obtrusive to me? Yeah no i i i'm excited about this product if you can't tell i think it's really cool despite all of the negative attention the people online have been giving it i i don't know that there's always trolls out there who want to throw negative light on anything new but i throw in shade yeah, I, I think that this is, like I said, this is probably one of the most privacy focused products that you can possibly

buy from ring. I mean, you can buy a camera and stick it in your house, but if you, if you buy this, the camera doesn't work. It doesn't even have a microphone in it. Like it launches only when you want it to launch or when you tell it to do a patrol around the house, it's pretty, pretty cool product. Um, it will be interesting to see what when you tell it to do a patrol around the house, it's a pretty cool product. It will be interesting to see what they end up doing with it and how well it's received in the market. I think I'm going to get one, though. I think I'm going to have to get one.

Got your sights set on it? Yeah. Yeah. It's going to go on. I mean, if they discontinue it, if they pull a Google on us and discontinue it, then I'm definitely— It's a prize piece for the collection. It's a prize piece. It's going to live in piece it's gonna live in the museum it just has to time will tell time will tell

good stuff all right well uh let's move on here seth we've got a a gem of a pick of the week this week so last minute entry yeah yeah sliding in. Sliding in right under the wire here. We've got a good friend of the show, Robert Spivak. We've had him on, mentioned him several times. He posted in the hub. He says, my wife finally agreed to an indoor camera in the kitchen if it wasn't in plain sight. So I took the UniFi G3 Micro and camo frogged, camo frogged it. And he's got a, looks like some sort of a, I don't know, how would you describe this thing? I mean, it's a decorative. Yeah, it's like a ceramic.

Ceramic frog. We have a couple of these. I mean, they're very popular in like tropical locations to see these kind of sitting outside um sometimes you see them inside i think i've got two of them on my back porch uh of these things uh but yeah he has he has camouflaged the camera as a third eye of the frog i gotta tell you it took me a minute i like i was looking at the frog and i was looking in the body i was was like, where did he put it? And then I was like, oh, that frog has three eyes.

It's too good. It's too good. The camel frog it. I mean, that's, there you go. Robert, it's too bad that we had an interview on tonight because camel frog would be the show title, but. That is such a great title. Oh man. Too good. We'll put a link to the picture in the show notes so people can check it out but yeah he he's done

a good job hiding it there uh and uh yeah he's got it now he's got a camera inside yeah eddie in the chat room said i had to look for it too so i'm not the only one same i had to look for it as well but since i have one of these i was like why does that frog have a third eye and then realized what he had done i guess that's kind of the point uh anyways if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest please do give us a shout we'd love to hear from you our email address is feedback at home tech.fm once again that is feedback at home tech.fm 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 home tech.fm support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as one dollar a month any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show but every pledge gets you invited to our private slack chat the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and show off your camouflage frogs because this is if there are any more camera frogs please please let us know if you've done this yes and just please send us your camouflaged frog cameras uh and we will just so we can use it as a show title it's too good not to call the action there if you're looking for other ways to support the show we would really

appreciate a positive review on itunes or in your podcast app of choice those reviews definitely help more people find the show so if you find value here in the home tech podcast please take a minute to go leave us a review we would really appreciate it well jason that wraps up another week in home technology. Good chatting with you this week. Got any big plans for the weekend? This weekend, I don't have much going on. Yeah, we're just kind of hanging out. I've got a boatload of leaves to rake in my yard. I was planning to do that last weekend and was a little bit under the weather. No fever or cough before anyone gets too panicked. It was a little bit under the weather. Um, no fever or cough before anyone

gets too, uh, panicked. It was a little bit of a, uh, of a headache and, uh, I think it was just a cold. So didn't get that done last weekend and the leaves are definitely piled up here. So that's probably going to be the highlight of my weekend. As fun as that sounds. I kind of have the Florida equivalent of that. So, uh, as you remember, I think during the covid times i was attempting to re-sod my lawn i do remember that did not work well um so i had i hired a pro to come in and just do it because it was if you ever do that just smart yeah i could give up on it so they they've done that yeah um and then it's a matter of just watering it and then waiting for it to grow long enough where you can cut it. And now it needs to be cut.

So no leaves, but I've got plenty of grass to cut. Yeah. File that under good problem to have, I guess. It's green. That's all I can really hope for. That's right. All right, Seth. Well, enjoy your weekend.

You too. We'll talk to you soon. Yep. Thanks, everybody, for popping in the chat and listening tonight. And we'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.