HomeTech.fm - Episode 358 - Dust Off That Bell!

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

This week on HomeTech: Ring adds end-to-end encryption, the security market has a security problem, and Nokia releases all-new smart lighting products powered by Insteon! All of this and a little bit more on this week's podcast.

Here we go. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 23rd. Wow. I'm from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson, and welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast that is all about the, everything about home technology, home automation. I got a lot to cover tonight. A couple of cool home tech headlines. Got a really, I think I have the most expensive pick of the week this week coming up. Yeah, definitely. I think I'm going to have that covered. But yeah, want to take a couple minutes here at the top of the show to apologize for not editing the show quickly last week.

I usually get these done during the week. Had a bunch of stuff come up Thursday, Friday, Saturday, didn't get to it till Sunday. Oh no. But I did get it out over the weekend. So hopefully, hopefully you had a chance to listen to it. It's, it's one of the episodes, one of those episodes where I didn't think much about it while I was recording it and got a ton of feedback off of it. So we're actually on our Home Tech Talks topic tomorrow. I've got slated for kind of like a follow-up conversation about Matter and will it matter. And we're going to do more of maybe a deep dive into kind of talking about the technology behind it.

Because again, it's still like when you get down to it, it's still Zigbee. And no matter what they put on top of it, it's still going to be Zigbee. And you're still going to run into the limitations that I've been seeing and others have been seeing in this industry for, I don't know, 10 plus years now that we've been dealing with Zigbee type devices. So I'm going to do a little bit more reading on Matter and hopefully we'll have a good conversation out of that tomorrow. But yeah, the Home Tech Talks, if you don't know about those, it's part of being a patron of the show. You get invited to the Slack chat and the Home Tech Talks. I am still, I have not finished editing those to get them uploaded. Even last week, there's some edits that need to happen because it's just how things are, I guess, but I'm going to have to, uh, going to have to edit,

edit things, uh, to, to, to upload the one that we did last week. Um, but you know, we'll see how it goes, uh, after that, hopefully, hopefully we'll understand, uh, what's being recorded and what's not being recorded and when, when we start and we start and that kind of thing so I can kind of cut around those things easier in the future. But for now, let's go ahead and jump into some Home Tech headlines. So Ring has announced the company is rolling out the video encryption feature worldwide. This feature started here in theS., but now I guess it's being rolled out worldwide. It's part of the company's efforts to be more proactive about securing their products and locking them down after being a target of a bunch of hit pieces, in my opinion, over the last couple of years. But they've really made a pretty big effort to lock the systems down, including forcing everybody to use two-factor authentication. It's really annoying to log into your Ring of devices now because you have to go check your email for that code and type it in.

But it is more secure that way. Here's a quote from Josh Roth, and it's Ring's CTO. By default, Ring already encrypts customers' video when they're uploaded into the cloud and stored on Ring's servers. But now customers around the world with particular Ring devices can opt into video end-to-end encryption to add an extra layer of security that only allows their videos to be viewed on their enrolled mobile device. This advanced security option is simple to set up and offers additional peace of mind and protection. So a good feature. It's something you do have to opt in for. And I noticed a lot of articles were kind of slamming that. But I think out of everything, I think Ring's probably the only company, one of the first companies to add this in as an additional layer of security for customers to keep their

videos encrypted. I think, as we'll see here in the next story I'll get into, that's pretty important. Let's see. Video end-to-end encryption was previously a technical preview, and now in launching globally as part of the rollout, Ring has added additional devices that can utilize video end-to-end encryption, including its ring video door pro the ring video doorbell pro two, uh, the ring video doorbell elite. So those, a couple of those devices been added in, uh, pretty nice to get little features, um, uh, features on there and, uh,

get, get updates on products, especially when they're around security. So my next story, if you, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about a Texas ADT technician that was sentenced to over a year, about a year in prison, I guess, 52 weeks, for repeatedly viewing customers' video feeds. So you know the old saying, what happens in Texas is usually nothing compared to what's going on in Florida. And after a year-long investigation, police in West Palm Beach have

arrested two employees of Ask the Advisors for doing nearly the same thing. According to the arrest report obtained by CBS 12, the victim called Ask the Advisors on July 23rd, 2020, to have his residential surveillance cameras serviced. The victim said he had cameras in every room of the residence except the bathroom and the master bedroom. A few days later, the victim told police he received an email from a vice president at Ask the Advisors who said his security cameras were recording sensitive areas, which included the dressing room in the master bedroom and the guest bedroom. And about a week later, the victim checked his security camera account and noticed two employees had logged in to the system.

Two ASCII advisors employees had logged into the system and looked at several videos of a woman and a man in various stages of undress. Hmm. After investigating, the police arrested Jeremy Lewis and Michael Riley, both employees of ASCII Advisors, for logging into the surveillance cameras to look at live feeds and videos of a woman undressing at the residence. Palm Beach police would not say whether detectives are looking for more victims or if any others have come forward. Yikes. Everything about this is just creepy. Uh, first of all, if you've got cameras in your house, think don't do that. Just don't do it. And if someone calls

and says there's cameras recording sensitive areas in your house, maybe, maybe look into that. Uh, this, that part of the story is really weird. I don't understand what that email was about. Um, and I don't want to sound like I'm victim blaming here. Like clearly this person wanted cameras in their house. I personally don't think it's a good idea. Um, just, I don't know if these kinds of things can happen that way. It's kind of like, I don't know. Again, I don't want to go into victim blaming here. This is definitely something that should not happen. AV companies really need to do something about this. I can tell you without a doubt that watching clients' cameras after hours

is not the company's policy at either ADT or ASCII advisors, but holy hell, this needs to be like fixed in our industry. This is insane. Um, I am, this is a can of worms. This is a can of worms. Uh, so I, I would start reviewing installation policies immediately. If I was a dealer right now, set up a meeting Monday morning, go over everything with your techs and installers, make sure that they have something in writing that they sign that says this is not something you're supposed to do and that you'll be fired immediately if this ever comes up without question. I am just, this is insane to be happening. I mean, this is two major stories in the last couple of months. I'm sure it's going

on elsewhere. We just haven't seen it. But Ty Benton's mentioning an IT code of ethics that comes to mind. Yeah, ethics is definitely one of those things. Remote access is required for service, but video is a bit of a different story. And we all know why that is evident from this story and others that have come up. I think manufacturers really need to step up here, too, especially those that are promoting remote service management type features that specifically allow technicians to dial into systems for service. Things like technician roles that are limited by hours and times to access the video audit trails. Do something like what you're talking about with Ring did. Have them email the person and say, somebody's logging into your account. That should be, I mean, here we are saying Ring is, you know, maybe not doing a great job because you didn't opt into these security features.

Like, have that be the security feature that we have on all NVRs and DVRs from now into the future. It is, this is just yuck. Everything about this is yuck. I really would like to see this aspect of what our industry does worked on because we're trusted advisors, right? I mean, it's right there in the name of that company, ASCII Advisors. I went and looked at their website. They are a very large company and have a very large footprint in a couple of different verticals, I guess, in the market. They have a retail show floor. They have this high-end electronics company that was, that's called Astley Advisors. That's kind of a subsidiary of that. Very well respected and very

well known in the industry. Very, I mean, very well decorated as well. But that doesn't mean that, you know, some of these employees can get away and have something happen like this. And when this type of thing happens and it's on CBS 12 in West Palm Beach, you know, they're running that, people are going to trust integrators a lot less, right? And we're trusted to go onto these sites and have access to private areas of people's homes all the time. Heck, heck I know I have clients that would just let me into their house, you know, at any time, just here's, you know, the door's unlocked or here's the code to get into the door, uh, all, all the time. I, and you, you have access

to somebody's, you know, their entire lives when you're in their house. That's normal. That's, that's normal. And, uh, you know, having cameras in the house is definitely an intrusion, especially when they're not specifically saying, yeah, you can watch me after hours and when I'm undressing. That's just not something that happens. So I just, I just, I'm blown away by this, that this happened in the first place. It's just really gross and creepy, like I said. But this is something that needs to get fixed. It really does. Richard's also bringing up in the chat over here

that this is how most database IT systems are designed. Admins shouldn't have access to secure data. It's exactly what I'm talking about when I'm talking about technician roles. Technicians shouldn't have access to this stuff outside at all. And I know how this works. You go on site, you're setting up a camera system. You're setting it up on your phone most of the time because typically you don't have a remote monitor or one of those specialized IP monitors. So you've got it installed on your own phone,

you're setting it up and everything, and you walk off the site and you forget that it's on there and you may not run that app every day and you run it and like, oh, I was logged into this system, now I've got to switch over to another one to service it. I get it. I understand. I just think that there needs to be a better way of doing this.

And it definitely needs to come from manufacturers. I mean, this needs to be a goal of the entire industry because this is something that's gross. If Ring's catching hell for not doing opt-in encryption on phones, we should catch hell for this, for offering subpar products and insecure products for our clients when we're selling security. Absolutely. Hands down. On to more fun things. Insteon, a name we haven't heard of in a while, but Insteon's parent company, Smart Labs, just launched the Nokia smart lighting product that uses Insteon as its foundation. And like Insteon, the Nokia smart lighting devices operate on a dual mesh network that uses both your home's

electrical wiring and a proprietary, like low frequency mesh network type thing. That's kind of similar to Z-Wave. So between those two communication standards that they have built in, they're able to maintain reliability of their communications between devices. It's a pretty cool system. The first ever Nokia smart lighting products are designed to make smart lighting straightforward to buy, easy to install, and intuitive to use. And Nokia smart lighting products have a clean, modern aesthetic, found in high-end custom solutions, yet resemble familiar wall switch and dial designs that won't require family or guests to learn how to use them. It's very important. So let's take a look at a couple of these products that they have on their website. First up, this is my favorite. This is

the, I'm laughing at Greg over here correcting my Z wave. It's Z wave, I guess, in certain countries. But the Nokia Smart Lighting Keypad, it's basically a keypad. It's got four buttons on it that can control one fixture or multiple lights around the house through scenes and whatnot. It's got dimmer and on-off capabilities as well built into it, so it's not just a keypad. It's like a keypad dimmer, kind of a hybrid device. It's got RGB LED indicators on each button

and engraving options available, $59.99. Okay, got my attention. This thing looks sweet, too. I've got it right here on the show as well. I really like the look of this. It does. It looks great. Um, the next step is the Nokia smart lighting paddle, which is kind of your standard paddle wall switch. I guess if you've seen one, you've seen them all, I guess it works as expected can be dimmed by pressing and holding the top or bottom button. So press the top button,

the light comes on, press the bottom goes off, can be paired up with other groups of fixtures or other fixtures to work together and kind of like three way scenes or something like that, or, or, or in lighting scenes as well. It's got an led indicator on it and 5499, not a bad price. It's kind of high if I think about it from a three-way design. But I don't know. It seems like actually a pretty good price compared to some of the pro products that I have dealt with in the past. So yeah, that's pretty cool. One of the ones that, that kind of stands out

is the Nokia smart lighting dial, and it works like the old Lutron dimmers, like twist dial, uh, or volume control you'd see on the wall. Uh, traditionally, um, they can be grouped together with multiple devices to dim all at once. It's got an led indicator, kind of has the same features built into it for, uh, as the other ones you can switch, you can dim, uh, all that good stuff, uh, $54.99. And it's a interesting product and pretty opinionated in its design. So I'd love to see how that one does. I know a lot of people liked that style. I wasn't a fan of it, but you know, a lot of people liked walking up to the, uh, the wall and twisting something and seeing their light come on and And this will do that kind of

brings that aesthetic back. All of them, just all of the, just a quick note, all these, why all of these require a neutral wire, which is different from some other smart lighting products that are on the market right now. So that's something to keep an eye on. If you're looking to buy these and install them in your house, you've got to have that neutral wire to make them work and um to tie all of them together you need the uh nokia smart lighting bridge which wait a minute wait a minute hello old friend you're gonna ring there after all these years i forgot how to ring the bell. We got a new hub. Holy cow. Like I haven't said that in years. $39 works with Alexa and Google assistant home kit certification coming, uh, at launch, it will only support the Nokia products, but it sounds like they plan on supporting some of the more popular Insteon

products sometime in the future, but I wouldn't buy it for that reason. Just one of those things. Don't buy on promises. So if you want to see that HomeKit certification, I would buy it. I would buy it there. Whoops, I just hit my watch button. I would wait for those certifications to be done and released before I buy the product. And same thing goes with the Insteon products. I would wait on that if it was something I had to have. Otherwise, it looks like a really, really good system. And I would I mean, honestly, just looking at it, I would replace the lighting in my house pretty quickly with this product. If I if I was starting today, if I was starting over and I didn't have any of this stuff in the house, I mean, you can't really beat these price points.

They're pretty amazing. I really like to get one of these in my hands one of these days and see how it feels. But yeah, this looks great. Gavin's asking, will it get Matter? That's not what this is. There were a bunch of Matter announcements on Amazon today. Insteon is not, it's its own thing. So it's not going to have Matter built into it.

Matter is kind of like a Zigbee thing. I'm sure if you have like Google Assistant and whatever grouped with other Matter devices, you'd be able to use them that way. But this is a Insteon system. So I assume anything connected to that Insteon hub is going to communicate with these devices and that's it. So no, it's not going to, I highly doubt it'll support Matter. This is kind of a competitor to Matter, if you will. Like Matter

is trying to get these devices off Wi-Fi. And Insteon is kind of a standard that isn't Wi-Fi. It's like a hardwired pulse code over the, or modulation over the line, over the mains. And it's also like a wireless thing that kind of work together to make sure it's got a good signal between devices. So no, I don't think it will, you will see this one get matter in the future. But yeah, pretty cool stuff. We've got a, it's 2021 and I get to ring the bell here. So I'm pretty excited. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 358.

Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 358. And don't forget, you can join everyone over here in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, a little bit later tonight, running past 8. But you can find out more on how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. And I got a pick of the week. So Louis Vuitton has revealed it's a foray into a next foray into tech products. It's a $2,890 Horizon light up speaker. It looks like a gadget, less like a gadget and a piece of high fashion and more like an artifact from an untold cosmic power from the next Marvel movie. This is from an article I got over there, I think from Engadget.

It's inspired by the Tupi handbag, the new Louis Vuitton Horizon light-up speaker reinvents the world of portable audio. At home, it's an object in metal, in noble leather, and adorned with the house's emblematic signature. In use, a colorful light show synchronizes with the beat with digital interpolation of the iconic monogram flower with its wireless connectivity and high quality 360 degree sound. It's an elegant and discreet

travel companion. I don't see that, but perfectly in tune with the Louis Vuitton spirit of travel. Okay. According to the, I just, I, this is, this is wild. It's got 15 hours of listening time, supports Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, multi-room, and QPlay. Let's see. It's got two 30 watt amplifiers powering three, a three inch sub, a three inch woofer, sorry. And two three quarter inch tweeters, 35 LED D lights. And it's got this touch sensitive tempered glass control bar. So this thing is going to end up, I mean, it's, it's, it's prime to end up in the museum, right? I think we can all agree. So Greg, this is, this is a prop from Stargate. So yes, this is exactly what it looks like. Um, I can't go buy this. I'm sorry, guys. If I, if I go into Louis Vuitton and spend 3000 on something and don't come out with a handbag, I am screwed. So, um, yeah, I, I think this, this neat, we need this for the museum somehow. I think this should be our goal. I think

I should figure out how to do a long-term goal either on Patreon or on the website or something. And, and we can like toss some, some money into this, uh, and, and see, see what we can raise to get this thing for the museum. Cause this, this isn't going to last long. This is like, I can barely even look at this thing. It's wild. So a picture will be in the show. We'll have a link to this in the show notes, but yeah, I, I'm going to figure something out. We'll all buy. I think if we all like band together, we can get this thing for the museum. It can be our centerpiece there next to like the old wink. And, uh, and, and as soon as I can get one of those Jibo robots, uh, that, that one's going to be pretty expensive to, to do as well. Ty saying, I need to do a tour. Yeah. I need to do tour, get the museum out on

the road, but yeah. Check this thing out. If you got an extra three grand laying around and want to buy a what essentially is probably a Sonos One that's $3,000. Louis Vuitton's got you. It's got you covered. Feedback, comments, questions, picks of the week, or great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm, or you can 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 patron page. If you don't know about the patron 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 out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub, and what is increasingly turning into our private conversations each week over at the Home Tech Talks, because I am really not doing very well at getting these uploaded as much as I should be. So today the hub was extremely active talking about user interfaces and UI design. We had a very lively conversation towards the end of the day while I was trying to

make macaroni for my daughter's dinner. So I enjoyed every bit of that. Thanks guys for pitching in there. It was a lot of fun and definitely need to circle back to that one. It could be a good Home Tech Talks conversation as well. If you'd like to support the show, but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate throwing us a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. And with that, that's going to wrap up another week in Home Tech headlines and things. I've got a couple of things lined up. I've got a product review thing that I'm trying to put together for Lutron device that they sent me. So that should be fun.

And I've got a couple of things for a couple of things, a couple of interviews that I'm trying to line up to talk about some of the some of the new stuff that's that's going to start start coming out everything right now the summer is always been slow we Jason and I have always complained about that in the past everyone's keeping quote keeping their powder dry I think is the coin he the the term he coined for for this time of the year but it's very nice when you know Nokia Nokia can release an entirely new lighting system, and we can check that out each week. So I won't complain if somebody wants to release a new product by next week. It'd be great if you could do that. But otherwise, I think most of the industry is kind of waiting around for Cedia timeframe, which is approaching. We're getting closer and closer to September. And I'm hearing that there's more and

more vendors kind of showing up for the show. So maybe a pretty good show. I'm still not going to go this year, but I'm hoping to be able to cover it from afar and take in all the new stuff and be able to report on it here. So thanks, everybody, for listening and have a great weekend.