HomeTech.fm - Episode 363 - Announcing Tech Show Talk 2021

Episode Date: August 28, 2021

This week on HomeTech: We're kicking off with a big announcement about Tech Show Talk 2021 - a *live* event on Thursday, September 2nd that will bring industry peers from all around the world to discuss the news coming out of the CEDIA Expo. All of this and a fun pick of the week on this week's podcast.

All right, all right. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, August 27th. I'm recording actually on Friday the 27th. All right. I'm Seth Johnson in Sarasota, Florida, and welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology and home automation. This week, we've got a late show for a couple of reasons, but there's a big one that we'll talk about here in a second. But yeah, yeah, it's been a busy, crazy week. More after the show last week, more vendors pulled out of the CD Expo and we were just kind of sitting around and yeah, this is just wild. We had a great Home Tech Talk yesterday, on Thursday. We talked a little bit about the Expo stuff.

We talked about some work that we're doing. A couple of questions came up here and there. But it was overall a pretty good Home Tech Talk. And if you've ever wanted to join in one of those, I've got some news for you. Introducing Tech Show Talk. And I have decided, and a group of us have decided, that this week we're just having a massive version, essentially, of the Home Tech Talks. So in lieu of actually going to the show and having those on the floor conversations, we're going to bring those into the virtual world, right? We're going to sit down and anyone, everyone is

invited to this. Go over there, register at hometech.fm slash talk, where you can take a look at kind of the schedule that I kind of have outlined and everything. It's a Zoom webinar. There's a link over there to the registration page. And, um, basically I have gotten with my coworkers at Blackwire who've done a ton of heavy lifting on coordinating some manufacturers and other things, uh, other people to show up for this. Um, anyone, like I said, anyone and everybody is invited. And the goal is just to have a conversation and have that conversation that we don't, we don't get to have in person this year at the show. So those conversations are, to me, just invaluable.

And I'd hate to lose out on them for a second year in a row for all this stuff. So how does all this work? Head over, the first thing you want to do is head over to hometech.fm slash talk. And that'll take you to the, like there's a link there for the Zoom registration. Second, clear your calendar on Thursday, September 2nd, for six hours, right?

You don't have to do that. Just kidding. My calendar is clear. But you can come and go anytime you want. As long as you're registered for the event, you'll be able to get in. And here's the deal. There is some structure to this to kind of, like'll be able to get in. And here's the deal. There is some structure to this to kind of like keep the conversation moving, moving along. So in the first hour,

I think it's kicking off at like 3pm. We're going to talk about the business of AV and have a special guest coming in Jason Griffin over at One Vision, you guys may know him. Second hour, we're going to kind of open that up for maybe any lingering discussion that kind of flows from that, but also anything that's going on. We'll see if something comes up or if another vendor contacts me and wants to kind of like fill in that area. Maybe we can get some stuff put into that as well. But it's just kind of like an open free for all talk conversation. We again, we do this every Thursday and, uh, we don't have a problem filling that hour at all. And sometimes we have to cut out and say, Hey, we got to stop

guys. It's time to stop. Um, the third, the third hour, uh, starting at 5 PM Eastern is kind of the big event, right? And so I said, a team does with Blackwire. So we've coordinated a bunch of our, uh, vendors to, to show up for this, um, just that Power is coming in and they are going to be doing one of their guitars for Vets Giveaway. So if you want that guitar that you would have gotten on the show for, this is where you get it. You come to this event, make sure you're registered, make sure you're in person when we call names. So you'll be able to get that guitar. I've got a bunch of other vendors lined up that should be in there as well, including Elac, Dynaudio, AVProEdge, ProDataKey,

and Blackwire ourselves. We've got a couple of announcements on some new products that we're either bringing in, like Flare, which is a new kind of like an IoT product that I have got installed in my house and working great. It's kind of an HVAC product. Ruckus, we've got some announcements around that, and we've got another announcement around DMX lighting control that I've been working on for way too long now. So come on by, take a look at that. What's cool about it is we should have,

we're getting the manufacturers mostly to send all the product that they would have had at their booth to us where we can put a camera on it and pick it up and talk about it rather than just kind of like show you a picture of a slide deck. In fact, one of the rules for this is there's no slide decks allowed. We will not have a single slide deck in this thing. Now we may do like a screen share. So show you something like that, but no slide decks. I'm refusing to do it. The goal here is to, um, have engagement from you. So if you, if you want to ask a question, you're going to raise your virtual hand. We'll bring you into the conversation. You can ask it. We'll also use the Q and a on that, uh, zoom call as well,

uh, to kind of route, uh, questions where they need to go and bring those up and talk about all that stuff. Again, we're going to have the manufacturers in house there. So if you guys want to talk about something specific to a product that we, that we bring in, uh, and show, uh, there'll be something there to, it can answer, you know, with some deep technical knowledge on that kind of thing. So I'm really excited about this, um, this type of virtual event and being able to do this. And I really think this is a kind of this, this should set an example. This, this should show people what we can do with virtual events because, you know, these in-person events, they exclude 90, I'll say 99% of the people that should be attending, right? If you're overseas or you just can't get away from work, there's no way that you're going to make it to an in-person event. They're great and all, I get it. But I really

think that they're, with the tools we have, we can give it a go at making a really good event like this where everyone gets to come to the table and have the ability to steer the conversation, have the ability to add in a question or provide an answer for, you know, say you're working on something and you ask a question. Another, you know, may not be a vendor that has an answer, may not be me or anybody at Blackboard, but maybe another dealer that has an answer. And when we talk to each other, sometimes this happens on the show floor, sometimes it happens in a bar at these shows. This is where you're going to be able to talk to each other and figure out what's going on. And maybe you can incorporate those ideas back into your jobs that you're having at home. Again, this is open to anybody and everybody. Some of the best ideas I've had this year have come from the DIY side of things. So come in and check that out. Fourth hour, we're going to focus on home automation. And that will kind of trickle into the final discussion about driver development

and with which a bunch of my developer friends that are going to be showing up from all over the world uh alan chow will be there from chow main and aj from over in disintegration should be in the room uh they've committed to be in there uh if you're a developer uh are you and you want to join please do please i'm gonna i'm gonna make sure that i i contact people over the weekend and make sure they know about this uh but if you just want to know about the process of development, or you may want to ask, like, can you develop something, drop in and talk to us about that. Uh, I think it's going to be a fun conversation because I believe all three of these companies listed, I I'm not sure, maybe, uh, we, we developed for multiple systems. So, uh, you know, Alan, Alan is really taking the, uh, the is really taking the lead on that.

I think he develops for quite a number. Like Crestron, he's doing Crestron. He's doing URC, RTI, Control 4. We're a little bit behind on that. We've only got RTI, Control 4, a couple of URC drivers out there, and Alon. Oh, Alan's doing Alon. I think Alan's got them all covered. And I'm not sure. I think AJ's doing a lot. I think Alan's got them all covered. And I'm not

sure. I think AJ's doing a couple of those as well. But, you know, if you are a developer of any of these platforms or if you do development for like, you know, a DIY platform and you're working on like home assistant integrations, hey, this would be a great place to stop by and talk about these integrations with us. Again, this is a open conversation for anyone to come in and talk and attend, raise a hand, ask a question. I'm more than happy to facilitate the conversation between everybody. And this is where I think things are going to go. So after the fourth hour there, fifth hour, I guess, I don't know what we're up to now. But after that, I don't know. I'll keep the door open

as long as there's people in there talking. And as long as there's interest in like continuing talking about the week's news and things, I'm in, I'm in. So I'm interested in all of that and encouraging everyone to bring any and every idea to the table.

So in fact, if you do have an idea of what you'd like to see this show be, leave me a comment, you know, feedback at hometech.fm that shoots me right to an email. Let me know. Let me know what you think. I can't wait to do this. And it just seems like a lot of, it's going to be a lot of fun. And there's going to be that five o'clock hour is going to be a pretty big event. So make sure you swing by for that. I do want to quickly talk about one correction, maybe. I'm not sure. From last week where Cedia kind of, Cedia sent out an email to its members on Thursdays talking about the refund options for their classrooms. And last week I talked about like how a number of dealers were complaining,

like to me in person or online, that those trainings weren't going to be refundable. And according to the email, it looks like they might be like whatever process Cedia needed to work out with Emerald to get that all, you know, all that seems to be resolved. So if you remember, check that out. I'm not sure of the exact details, um, but check that out and see if you, you know, if you need a refund and you have the ability to get one, um, that may be of interest to you. Hopefully everyone, you know, gets squared, gets that squared away. I think it was just kind of like a administrative thing that they had to get by. Um, I did see, uh, that they were going to extend some of those on-demand

trainings to like further in the year. So there's a on-demand like $150, like on-demand only pass that you can get. And I think that's a pretty good deal. So, so this is all in all a good thing that, you know, that has come out of all this. Like there's, there's some movement there to seeing Cedia put the training on and making it more available to more people. Cause like I said, if you can't get there in person to see some of this stuff, it really does help if it's available at a later date or like they're calling it on demand. It's recorded. But, you know, it's great that to see them do that. There's not many links to put in there. Our show notes tonight over at HomeTech.fm slash 363. But if you do want to go there, I will have a link to the HomeTech talk. And it's HomeTech.fm slash talk. You can check that out. I do have a pick of the week this week.

This is probably the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. I almost spit my drink out when I saw this, but it's labeled DIY screensaver. It's this is from someone over on Twitter. I didn't write their name down darn, but I will have the link in the show notes. And they are they have have caught, they have, they were using like a green painted, they painted some cardboard green and then they, they cut it out with a, with an exacto knife and put it on top of a Roomba robot and put it on a frame on their floor with a camera sitting on top that faces down and looks at that Roomba robot kind of bouncing around. And on their TV screen, they have the beloved DVD logo

bouncing off the edges of the TV screen that are exactly lined up with the camera angle. And they actually have it changing every time it bounces off the wall. So there's, there's some computer logic in there. I, I love this. This is amazing. So if, if you're like me, uh, and grew up, you know, in the, in the nineties, two thousands, I think, 90s, 2000s, I think everybody had one of these DVD players that had this random floating DVD screen thing that would just bounce around. And I remember working at Circuit City and staring at that thing on the boring days, just watching it bounce around and wondering if it was ever going to bounce like right in the corner, you know, and if it would bounce from one corner to the other. It never did. Never did. It was a, yeah. Interesting screensaver. Yeah. So check that out. We'll have the links over at hometech.fm slash 363. If you have any feedback, comments, questions, pick of the week or great ideas for a show, give me a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm. You can visit hometech.fm slash feedback

and fill out that online form. And I do want to end the show like I do every week, giving 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 that, head on over to hometech.fm slash support, where you can find out how you can support Hometech

for as little as a dollar a month. And any pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you a private invite to our Slack chat, the hub, where you can join in with any conversation that we're having in there. And you can also join in to the Home Tech Talks

that we have every week. Like I said, this week is gonna be a massive version of that for an extended period of time all the way and from, from the evening hours into the, into the night. And, uh, I'm so excited about that and I can't wait to get started. So, uh, but we do this every week, every week. Uh, so if you want to be part of that, uh, it's pretty easy to do. Just go check out home tech.fm slash support, get you in our Slack, and it also gets you access to some of the patron page where you have access to the link

to join that Hometech Talk. If you want to help out the show but can't support financially, totally understand. Just appreciate a five-star review in iTunes or a positive reading in the podcast app of your choice. And with that, that wraps up this

week. I know there were a couple of pieces of news that came up. I've just been way too busy kind of organizing and putting this thing together. Uh, and it, you know, it's like herding cats, right? So, um, give me a break. I'm going to put some stuff together for next week. It'll be a lot of fun. I know there was a new nest cam out that was a battery cam. We talked a little bit about that in our home tech talk. Uh, it can either be battery powered or it can be hooked up to power. And I think it had like local storage or cloud storage on it as well. I'm not sure. I saw the story. I've got it captured. May talk about it again Wednesday. But, you know, it's a Nest Cam. And, you know, any improvement

in those things, it seems to be incremental right now. There doesn't seem to be any like huge wow factor that anybody has brought to the table yet with their, uh, doorbell cameras. Right. Um, I think everybody, I saw a thread on Reddit the other day, um, that everybody was looking at like, what's the best, what's the best doorbell camera. Is it the unified G4? Is it the ring? Is it, you know, um, the who, uh, or, uh, I think Hikvision has one. Uh, I think, uh, I think literally every camera manufacturer out there has one at this point, but they all have like trade-offs and they all have like pain points and that kind of thing. Uh, so it was, it was a fun conversation. Uh, there were,

there were a couple of things, there were a couple of them that look great, uh, spec wise, but I don't think I could get them past the design committee and on my front door. It just, it's not going to happen unless I already had a doorbell of that form factor. Not, not going to happen. But, uh, anyway, I will, um, I'll, I'll see if I can dig that up, that conversation that, that the recommendations that people had for those doorbells and try and put them in the show notes tonight. I don't know. I'm trying to get this out fast because again, what I really wanted to do is get the news out and the word out about

hometech.fm slash talk where we're doing the talk show, tech show talk this year. And yeah, go register for that. It's going to be huge on Thursday starting around 3 p.m. lasting in as long as we can, as long as Zoom lets me do it.

And yeah, come in, join the conversation, have it on in the background, you know, as you as you work, you know, it's there. It's a tool that we can use to have these great conversations and bring up great ideas. And I'm excited to be able to attempt to offer that this year. So hometech.fm slash talk. And hopefully, I will see all of you Thursday next week. Have a good weekend.