HomeTech.fm - Episode 367 - Matter Maybe Mattering

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

This week on HomeTech: A backlog of news! New Wyze gear is on the way, Samsung joins Team Matter, Ecobee sold to Generac, and Roku kicks off Youtube and porn … All this and, of course, a pic of the week!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 5th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology and home automation. This week, I've got a backlog of home technology headlines for Home Tech Headlines, a nice little pick of the week. It's kind of admittedly slacking through these summer months here. Uh, but that's because this summer has been extremely busy for some reason. I, I, I have not been this busy in, in a very, very long time with work, with home, with,

with everything. It is, it's just piled on. And of course, uh, the week before last, I went out of town for a week, uh, for, for work ended up in, in Phoenix, Arizona, uh, and, uh, at the Blackwire HQ offices there. And, uh, we, we spent the week kind of going through processes. We, I even packed boxes. If you ordered something from Blackwire, I put some snacks in the boxes for you. Um, so yeah, it was a busy week. Uh, when I get back, I did some work over the weekend and it was just, it was just a, just a slash. And so the week after that, I had to take a break. And now here we are this week with the backlog of stories. So what do you say we, we get started

jumping to some HubTech headlines. All right. A new federal trade commission report points the finger at six of the largest internet service providers here in the U.S., calling out each of them for amassing troves of personal data from customers and failing to offer meaningful disclosures or options to control the collection of that data. The six IPs and ISPs in question, names you all know and love. Here we go. Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, AT&T, and Google Fiber. According to the report, that accounts for roughly 98% of the mobile internet market in the U.S. With each of those, the FTC identified several troubling data collection practices, including cases in which the ISP had combined user data, including your browser history and app usage across product lines,

in order to serve you targeted ads. Um, they had grouped users according to sensitive identifiers like race and sexual orientation. That's probably not great. And, uh, they have shared, of course, of course they shared the consumer, your, your real time location with, uh, data third party collectors, you know, like to serve you more targeted ads. I guess this is all gross, all gross practices. And of course they don't tell you they're doing that, but they do. The report found that even in instances where the internet service providers provided, like they reported to offer customers some choice with respect on how their data was actually being

collected or used in practice, users were thwarted by design decisions that made it complicated, difficult, or near impossible to actually escape persistent surveillance. And that's exactly what it is. They are stealing your personal data. They are using it for their own profit motives. Um, and you're, you're paying them for that. That's, that's the best part. You are paying them, uh, for, for them to make more money off of you on the backend. Uh, and that's just wrong. So I'm hoping like we, I don't have much hope, especially with the way government is these days here in the States, uh, especially with how the FTC is like the most lobbied organization, um, you know, by the, by these, it's kind of a revolving, revolving door. If you're an FTC, if you're a commissioner in the FTC, then you,

you pretty much have a safe job at an ISP, uh, after you get out. So out. So I don't know. Like, I'm really hoping that this kind of leads eventually to some kind of legislation and we start seeing normal, normality coming to how we treat data privacy here in the States. It'd be really nice. It'd be really nice. Kind of a different story here, but related. Cedia, the Global Trade Association for the Home Technology Industry, has named Daryl Friedman as global president and CEO. He'll assume the role later in November, November 29th, 2021. Friedman spent more than 30 years in nonprofit leadership roles, having overseen membership, advocacy, industry relations, and the technical wing for the 25,000 member recording academy. The academy, of course, is known for their Grammy Awards, and they represent,

the association that represents the technical and creative professionals in music. So it's got some pedigree. I'm really glad about this, actually, from the interviews, the things that I've read, the things that I've heard Mr. Friedman say. I'm really happy to see that we didn't hire somebody from the industry to go in and correct Cedia's problems. I'm really happy to see that we didn't hire somebody from the industry to go in and correct Cedia's problems. This is someone who has pedigree working in these types of non-profit associations. And I'm really hoping that we can see some kind of path forward for Cedia in the foreseeable future that brings back relevance. If know, if you ask the average Joe on the street, what is Cedia?

They have no idea. It's like, are you having a stroke? No, like, but if you go to like, if you ask them maybe like what ASE is, right? Like the automotive service education or whatever it is like ASE. I don't know. I see the logo when I'm driving past any service shop,

they'll have ASE out there. If you go and look and talk to their technicians inside, they've got ASE patches on every technician's uniform. And if you go to their website, you can see that they've got a ton of like training and all sorts of good stuff for their industry on their website, not just some, you know, flashy pages to attract architects or whatever. So I'm really hoping that we see, you know, in my opinion, Cedia is a great organization for that type of training that kind of we've been seeing them kind of move that direction after they've been able to kind of like get the large gorilla, the large gorilla off their

back. That is the Cedia trade show and move into more of an advocacy and education organization. I'm really glad to see that. And I'm hoping that Mr. Friedman would be able to take it to the next level. So we'll have to see what he does. All right, I got a couple of new product stuff here to kind of go over a lot of new product stuff. Actually, smart home company Wyze has announced a slew of new products

in honor of its fourth birthday. Happy birthday, Wyze. And while the number of products were announced, Wyze also took time to roll out new capabilities for its existing cameras. Using AI, okay, Wyze smart security cameras will have the ability to alert a professional monitoring service

when they detect a person, making for a simple, cheap security system. So yeah, the cameras, they start off like $36, right? And we don't really have pricing on this new feature, so to speak. It's a, it's, it'd be part of a new cam plus pro subscription service they're going to be offering. But it's a good value. I think if you're, if you're already starting out with the equipment prices being so low, it's still a pretty good value to get, you know, a basic security system that can detect if a person's moving through an area they

shouldn't be at a time that they shouldn't be or a time that you're not home, that that camera would be able to alert a monitor professional to kind of like verify and maybe double check with you if that person should be there. So going back into the hardware, they announced a Wyze switch, which is a smart switch that can turn both regular bulbs and the Wyze smart bulbs on and off and control other Wyze devices, such as door locks and that kind of thing. It's actually got some really cool automation tie-ins with this. It can't do dimming, but you can set double press, triple press, and press and hold automations off of the button. And they've got a really horrible introduction video that has kind of like a cowboy thing. I don't know.

It's not very good, but you can go check it out on the website. I'll put a link to it in the show notes works on 2.4 gigahertz wifi works with Alexa, Google, Apple voice assistance compatible with if this, then that, that, that, that, that, um, also does require neutral wire. And unfortunately I think this is a big miss can't be used for a three-way or four-way circuit. So not, not a great design decision there, but it looks like, according to the story, it comes in a three-pack for $33 plus shipping. I want to say, okay, that's kind of crazy. If they're $11 a piece, that's a great deal. I thought it was just on their website and I saw that there was $33 for one, but I'll have to check that out

later. Wyze's smart bulbs have also been upgraded with temperature and brightness control from the app. So an 800 lumen bulbs have a temperature range of 27,000K, is that right? 2,700K, sorry, to 6,500K and can go from bright white to mellow yellow. Good deal. That's kind of, uh, interesting. A new sun match feature, uh, takes advantage of this range by adjusting the color temperature to match the sunlight throughout the day. And they work with Alexa or Google voice. A pre-order those price is $32 plus shipping for four pack. So yeah, I guess, I guess that three pack is, uh, pricing is probably correct if they're shipping the bulbs for, um, a little bit less,

uh, that, that, less. That sun glow thing, what do they call it? Sun match. It's actually a really cool feature. I've been playing around with some LEDs in my garage here. And throughout the day, I kind of have them sitting behind me. I think I've talked about this on the show. I've had them sitting behind me where a window is, and I have a blackout shade on that window. but throughout the day, I can kind of tell roughly what time of day it is, uh, based on the color of the light that's coming over my shoulder. And if I'm sitting at my desk and the windows behind me, um, I almost, if the lights on, I almost think that the windows open, uh, at the right time of day during, during the noon hours

of the day, which is, is really cool. It's kind of a, a brain freak. When you turn around, you realize that, yeah, you're in a room and there's the windows close, but it feels like you're outside. So anyway, moving on. Cool technology. That's a cool trick technology thing. I know it's a circadian thing. I'm not a big fan of that, especially around the health, but I think it's a good, I think like actually having that feature is actually a good feature if you want it. So moving on, there's a new Wyze Smart Lamp Socket. $10 device designed to work with any wired Wyze Cam version 3, the indoor-outdoor, to make your outdoor lights smart.

The socket comes with a 30-inch USB cable that connects to the Wyze camera to provide power to the camera. So it's got a little USB charger on it. And the camera's motion sensor can be set to turn on the lights whenever there's motion. You can group the five of the lamp sockets together and set them to come on at dusk or off at dawn, that kind of thing, or on schedule, uh, or along with that motion activation. Um, the, the lamp socket works with any E26 lights, uh, and also comes bundled with the, with a camera for $46

plus shipping. Uh, there's a new $20 Y solar panel for their Y's outdoor, um, camera kind of recharge it, I guess. Um, and then Y's is bringing a much requested feature from its users. Uh, there's going to be now, now there's a web view, so you can head on over to the camera's IP address on the web and, uh, be able to view live streams and recorded videos from Y's cams, uh, directly, uh, over a web browser. Actually, it doesn't say that you go to the IP address. It may be some other website you have to go to to get that,

but because it looks like it's part of their Wyze cam plus subscription. Pre-orders are now open for all those products at Wyze.com. And the company is saying they're estimating it's going to ship sometime in November, December. So good luck to Wyze getting that out the door. Also new lighting products from lutron radio raw or the lutron radio raw brand uh radio raw 3 is now out which we've kind of been waiting on that to imminently hit for i don't know a couple weeks a couple months now maybe a couple years because it's been like i think that last time they updated the radio raw 2 product was what 20 2009 it was a

long time ago it's been a very long time ago. Uh, so, uh, it's got a new POE powered processor, uh, all new processor, uh, has clear connect X, which is basically Zigbee. Uh, the clear connect was their clear connect from Lutron in general, from the Pico's with devices and everything is like this really low band 200, I want to say like 240 megahertz proprietary signal that they have that, I mean, that low of a, of a signal can just punch through anything. It can go the distance, but you can't send much data, right? It's just, it has good range. So that that's been a great product for them. Now they're adding on Zigbee essentially with the clear connect X and kind of pairing them together in their devices. Win-win in my opinion. If you get the punch through effectiveness of the

ClearConnect and then the mesh of the Zigbee where you can mesh devices together and get communication to reliably get relayed and signaled across the house, it's win-win. They have a new line of Sonata RF keypads, dimmers, and switches that feature a light bar design. Not even sure what that means. I haven't even seen them. I should probably just go look at them. And they can connect up to 200 devices that integrate with IoT services. So yeah, the RA2 was built so long ago, there wasn't even an idea of Amazon Alexa or Google Home or anything like that. So what you had to do was add on another like bridge device to bring those services into the raw two panel

because it was just made so long ago. So now they basically kind of, and that bridge was pretty much just a caseta, right? So now they've kind of like put those together and given us the Roth reprocessor POE powered. Great idea. I'm still not like, I don't know how to be excited about this

one. It's still, I'm just not sure who this is for. The RAW 2 line or RAW 3 line is just, or the RAW 2 line was so dated, I guess it just needed an update to compete with Caseta. So I guess that's a good reason to update it. But RAW 3 kind in, in the middle of like the super high end homes that need centralized lighting and a Lutron QS system. And like the, the entry level, and I'm not going to say like the entry level, do it for me crowd, but like, like the entry entry level even installs that, that like DIY do it for me, but even like most, uh, you know, the system integration could be covered with, with, uh, the Caseta stuff. So like it, it, it covers quite a bit on the, the, the low end and they've got a ton of stuff covered in the

high end. And I'm just, I'm trying to figure out where that raw three fits in. It's a, it's a more expensive product line, way more expensive than Caseta. So like going from Caseta to raw three or even raw two in the day was a big jump it was a big ask and you really had to have a reason to go from point a to point b and then i'm just kind of wondering how many of those jobs are still out there where that makes sense versus moving them up into a qs system or just moving them back down to caseta um really nice we had something like the the raw three or raw two and three type keypads for Caseta rather than having to rely on like the keypad dimmers that they have rather than having

to rely on like the Picos to do the job, the heavy lifting. Uh, so I don't know. Lutron has, they deserve applause for being able to basically take the same product and copy and paste it, uh, along an entire range, all the way from Maestro all the way up to QS, basically the same product and copy and paste it along an entire range, all the way from Maestro, all the way up to QS, basically the same thing all the way up. And they definitely deserve some applause, at least in the business world from being able to do that. But I don't know. I don't know how to get too excited about that one because, you know, at the end of the day, I'm just not sure how big the market demand is for a Roth 3 system, but it did need some updating. Like it was kind of silly that you had to buy the super expensive Roth 3 processor and then buy this basically what amounts to a Caseta bridge

on top of it. And just to get like the IOT stuff that you just get out of the box for free with the Caseta product. So anyway, moving on, uh, raw three is out. Yay. Uh, Toronto based smart home thermostat startup Ecobee has been acquired by Generac holdings, the generator company for 777, $770 million. Uh, the company's announced actually this Monday, uh, the acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter, and Ecobee founder and CEO Scott Lombard will stay on as CEO, and the company will continue to operate in Toronto. They have no plans of moving. It'll just operate as a subsidiary of Generac.

Generac is based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. They've got strange names up there. It was founded in 1959, makes backup generators basically for residential and commercial properties. Generic has bought actually several smaller companies over the past year and a half. They got Pika Energy, Inbala Power Technologies,

and NuRio Technologies. And they've been combining them into like this energy storage slash smart utility division. So Ecobee appears to be kind of like part of that strategic plan to combine Ecobee's technologies with all these other companies, Generec's power generation, to kind of build out like a more reliable home energy ecosystem. That kind of, you know, the goal is to like save consumers money, but also kind of help out with the electrical grid system, which can be under a lot of stress. So if they can kind of put all of that together, um, you know, I, I think it's a pretty, uh, pretty good idea,

pretty good idea, pretty smart buy by Generac. Um, but you know, I I'm everybody in the hub, I think we were talking about this is like the, the, the, what the grumble was. Well, I hope they don't mess it up. Like, I really hope they don't mess up Ecobee because it is actually a pretty good thermostat. And they've been, you know, they were one of the first, they were well before Nest. They had more features than Nest when they were out. And they've been around for a lot longer. I think like 2006, 2007 timeframe. They don't get the credit for that, but they, you know, they haven't been around for a lot longer, uh, I think like 2006, 2007 timeframe.

Uh, they, they don't get the credit for that, but they, you know, they haven't come out with a new thermostat. I think they're the last like revision of that thermostat that they, they have out now the little black one with the sensors was like sometime maybe 2019, 20, yeah, 2019. Of course, a lot has happened between now and then. Um, and, uh, yeah, so I, I'm so I'm hoping to see some more investment into Ecobee and into their ecosystem, but also having all these money with the bigger, larger parent company might be pretty good for them too.

So hopefully we see them just continue to move forward in a good pace. Kind of some big news. Samsung hosted their 2021 developer conference here at the end of October and announced a number of new smart connected products and initiatives. But the big things we learned kind of were kind of around the Samsung SmartThings hub and what they'll be doing to integrate Matter into their firmware update starting in 2022. So Samsung has joined the Thread Board of of directors and pledges to support the thread protocol in the future. And, uh, there's, there's details about like, which of their hubs are going to be updated. Like they have the, the V3 hub and the AOTech hubs. Um, not sure if those are going to get updated, but this is an interesting development from one of the larger home animation

platforms in the DIY space. Um, Matter of course is the golden child of the larger home animation platforms in the DIY space. Matter, of course, is the golden child of the industry right now. Samsung was kind of like a, I don't know, the last holdout, I guess, on the initiative. And it's starting to look more and more like Matter may have some legs to it. It might be time to give Matter, like a Matter 101 kind of deep dive discussion. Because it looks like once we have the specifications like firm in place and out for the, for, for the general public to really look into, um, I think, I think it could be around for some time. And now that we have Google, Apple, Amazon, now Samsung all throwing their way behind the effort, uh, you know, if this, if the specifications ever finished,

we'll be finally able to know a whole lot more about it. The basic ideas of the matter is just, is basically a marketing term for some development guidelines and some implementation guidelines that attempt to bridge together a few existing technologies for home integration. So they're using Zigbee, wifi, Bluetooth and cloud APIs together to move a working standard forward for, to bring all these devices, make them easier to set up and deploy and, and use. And, and you can basically kind of like move, if you want to use Apple for your devices, you can, if you want to use Amazon, you can, um,

they're just trying to make it, make it easier to kind of have like a good starting place for all these devices. I think that's a great idea. Honestly, it's good to have is I'm bearish on it because if I look over my shoulder over here, I see a whole shelf full of ideas that have happened over the past five or six years. And, you know, if I think about in my career, you know, of 15 plus almost 20 years of working in this industry of the products that I've seen come and go, you can be cynical and bearish about a new standard that everybody's getting behind. I have to wonder why this was done now. I kind of have to go back and think about that, the survey that I bring up a number of times and I've linked in the show notes at some point, but this was done kind of like in the height of, uh, the IOT revolution that we had over the last

couple of years. And it was kind of towards the end of it, like kind of towards when things were leveling off and, and they did a survey. And of course, you know, parks associates is out there saying, Oh, there's going to be billions of dollars. And this is, it's just going to like hockey stick again. And, you know, they, they go out and interview real people and they're saying, yeah, you know, I got this stuff and not so excited about it. Like it didn't work or, you know, I was feel like I was, they just weren't excited about it. It wasn't doing what they said. Uh, the, the smart home products just didn't do what they said they were going to do. There weren't, there weren't like the, what they had on the tin wasn't what was in the can.

And, um, yeah, that's, that's kind of, uh, it's kind of been the story of the smart home for the past, I don't know, uh, 30 years. Like it, there's been a lot of promises and a lot of, uh, you know, hype around a lot of these products and the things that they could do and people get excited about it. We're, we're definitely in that early adoption phase where, um, nerds like myself, uh, get excited about this stuff and really say, Oh yeah, you know, put a video doorbell up, you know, uh, five or six years ago, seven years ago, that was kind of an odd thing to do. Now I walk up and down the street and everybody's got a video doorbell. Um, are they excited about those video doorbells? I don't know. Um, it's, it, it, it, it, it, from

that survey that people had, you know, a couple of weeks back, like a couple of years's, it, it, it, it, it, from that survey that people had a, you know, a couple of weeks back, like a couple of years ago, um, sorry. Uh, they, they didn't seem to be like, like, okay, yeah, it exists. It's there. It works ish. Um, what do I do? What, what do I do next is this isn't the automatic home that I was promised. That's, that's what automation means. It means automatic. Um, like this isn't the smart home. It is, it is a more, uh, complicated home and it's more, uh, things that'll break and more things to tinker with, but it's not a smart home. So, uh, that, that's kind of where people were left with. And I think that's kind of like why Google, Apple, and, uh, Amazon kind of got together and

kind of pushed for this, um, effort to, to, for what were they called initially connected home over IP. It's kind of like because of a stale market, right? Like they have to get their products, they have to get everybody's product installed into their ecosystems. But if they're competing on just like the basics of who's installing what, like if, if you're, if you're, if you're competing with all these, there's only a few manufacturers out there that can put together a product competently. Uh, and, and, and if you're competing with those manufacturers on which, um, golden child they're going to support, like,

that's not a win for anybody. It's not a win for Apple. It's not a win for Amazon, not a win for Google and, and Samsung now. Uh, so, you know, I, I think that, think that trip or that bump that we kind of went over, that stagnation, is kind of what got them moving on this. So I'm glad to see the big guys kind of be doing this push for some kind of,

I say standard, it's basically an onboarding standard and a communication standard. Nothing that's going to matter to anyone, uh, after you buy the device, like it's going to have the little symbol on there. You'll know it work with Apple, you know, with Google or whatever. Um, but you're going to go out and buy the device. And again, it's not going to matter. You're going to install it. It should in theory be easy to set up into whatever ecosystem you want to drive it into. So but I think moving forward, that's going to probably sacrifice innovation in our industry.

And maybe not sacrifice is too hard of a word, maybe slow down innovation for more acceptance and adoption. And while that's a good thing for Google, Apple, Samsung, Amazon, especially to sell product. I don't know that like less innovation is good for the industry right now, especially with the products that we have, because they're not like, they're still not there. We're still in the early adoption phase. This isn't the autonomous house. This isn't the smart home. This isn't the home that can do what you want it to do simply and easily. Um, so yeah, I, I, we've, we've got a long way to go. Um, and I, I think that matter version one, as we see it come out in the next couple of years, it's all we're going to talk about for the next couple of years. I guarantee you the next five years, it's all we're going to talk about. Um, matter version two or three is probably going to

be the one that works really well and, and, and, and gets broad adoption. And of course you always have another standard that just pop up by somebody who gets ahold of a matter system and, you know, says, man, this works better. We should did this. And they figure out a better way to do it, you know, build the better, better mousetrap. So there could be that we could all be replacing our devices in another three to five years. Um, so it supports the new fangled standard. Uh, but I, again, I'm glad to see them working on this. I'm glad to see, uh, them, them kind of moving forward on this. I will say, so I got called out on, on an episode of, uh, the smart home show episode two or five, uh, friends of the show. Uh, it's actually a great episode. I'm going to put the link to it in the show notes for the show. Richard Gunther, Adam Justice, and they had a special guest,

Jennifer Pattison from The Verge. They all did a great job of just breaking down what matter is. And it's probably one of the best, most comprehensive and approachable, understandable discussions I've heard on the matter. I'm going to have to like get a clown horn or something for every time I make a bad matter pun. Yuck. Anyway, go listen to that. Even though they called me out unfairly, because I, you know, I think my position is very misunderstood on what I know matter to be. You know, I know, here's the deal. I've worked with the technologies behind matter for 20 years in many installs and many homes and in many installations with across many product lines.

So that's where I make my opinions from. You can put new lipstick on a pig and call it something, whatever. It's still a pig. It's still going to be a pig. Anyway, all four new standards, all four easy onboarding. Um, I really hope they, they pull this off. I really hope we start seeing this matter stuff mattering, uh, here in, in the near future. Cause it really will help bring in more adoption. Uh, but that's only step one. Adoption is step one. They got to make this stuff work. It's got to be good. It's got to be reliable. It's got to be quality product. it's got to be good it's got to be reliable it's got to be quality product it's got to do what it says it's going to do on the tin and that's that's almost if not more important than turning the switch on all right moving on here roku is launching a new

independent developer kit um that will allow developers to experiment with customizing their devices and then use personal and for personal use capacities. Roku says it hopes this IDK, this independent developer kit will lead to innovation around the Internet of Things applications, such as connecting Roku device to a thermostat or for game development. The company is not really clear on how developers use the IDK, but the VP Roku's VP of content content partnerships ted citadine said during a keynote address uh its primary purpose is to help roku continue its innovate and innovate its

platform um so devices that are going to use this uh need to be running roku os 10.5 or higher and roku and there's a couple of like restrictions or maybe some of the older devices that can't run it at all. But Roku also announced that it was running this new beta channel tool for developers to test their apps on. So it, before making changes on the live platform. Some other Roku news, a feud between Google and Roku rages on, and it's now escalating quite a bit more. Following the removal of the YouTube app from earlier this year, Roku and Google are once again failing to reach a deal, and the YouTube app will be removed as a result. Roku offered an update on the situation this week, and once again alleging that Google wants some special deal that includes modifying search results and access to data that no other streaming partners

have. Google has denied these allegations and said the company only wanted to renew its existing deal with Roku. It's just like one of those satellite deals that you see when you're like, don't let the NFL game go dark on Sunday. Call DirecTV now. The deal between YouTube and Roku is set to end in December, and if the two companies are unable to come to an agreement, then the Roku platform will lose access to the standard YouTube app as well. So, uh, Roku, Roku gains an, uh, an independent development kit loses the YouTube app. Okay. Uh, but also as part of that independent, independent development kit, uh, kind of a, kind of a bigger thread fell out of this. And I thank TJ for posting this in the hub.

Interesting. This Roku, basically, along with that beta channel announcement, it's basically a policy change that effectively bans the world's largest porn site, as well as a number of adult entertainment companies from its platform, starting on March 1st, 2022. During the conference, Roku announced that it was restructuring how it handles channels that aren't suitable for distribution on its channel stores. I forgot that you could do this, but Roku has like private channels or like you can share a link with somebody and basically get a channel, your own private channel on that person's Roku devices. They authorize it to come in. So that's kind of how like these porn companies and everything, they were basically getting around the Roku store to put their content on Rokus. It's basically your basic side loading, right? So as part of this new beta channel

feature, it allows developers to test channels with up to 20 users. It's quite, quite a few less than I'm sure those porn channels want to, uh, to have as customers. Uh, so not very good. Uh, the, the beta channels are effectively replacing what's commonly known as the private channels. These channels aren't listed in the channel store, but can be activated using a code or direct link through Roku's website. Um, it's, uh, that's how you in the past would have tested channels. You're, you're, you know, companies would have used to test channels, but now they're kind of rolling it back and yeah, I don't know. We're not, we're not going to do this anymore. They've had a policy of pretty much turning a blind eye to private channels and they've received some criticism on that in the past. Uh, rights

holders have complained a number of times about, you know, uh, so-and-so made this channel. It's basically got all, you know, all of our movies on it. You need to take that off for, you know, unlicensed content. And I think Roku devices were actually, uh, banned for sale in Mexico, uh, not too long ago, uh, over this very issue. So, uh, but as you know, as you, as you know, uh, porn companies don't seem to be too worried about this. And it's just, there's plenty of alternatives, both Amazon fire TVs and Google Android TVs make it possible to sideload Android apps from third-party sources. And, uh, there's a number of smart TV platforms that also include web browsers,

which is effectively offering access to any web-based video service. So, uh, they don't seem to be too upset that, that they're going to be kind of effectively kicked off Roku. And, you know, as the old saying goes, porn will find a way. I think, I think that was, maybe that's not the same, but it probably is. Anyway, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on the show notes at hometech.fm slash 367.

Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 367. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 367. All right. Pick of the week, pick of the week. I know we talked a lot about home automation tonight and anybody with a home automation system has at some time or another come across what, you know, called ghosts in the machine as the, as an actual famous saying goes, right? Things that happen for no particular reason or things that don't happen when you expect them to uh for for most of this like can be super frustrating it could be just degrading because like you set up all this stuff to work and like you go and press the button and it just like doesn't work or even in my case i'll set all

this stuff up to work and i'll say hey go press that button my i have to walk over to it and press it nothing Nothing happens. Yeah, that's more often than not. That's kind of like what happens in here. The TVs don't turn on when they should. Anyway, it's hard to find intermittent issues like that, like what the problem is, right? And it's really, really tough to find them if you don't have any kind of logging service. So the pro systems that I have access to, like Control 4, Lawn, Crestron, URC, all of those have some kind of like logging interfaces that can be turned on to basically help pro installers or tech support that we call into to figure out all kinds of issues. But for DIY systems, it's really, it's kind of, kind of few and far between is what options

and tools you had for this kind of troubleshooting. Uh, well now this is really cool for HomeKit. There's a, there's a new app called HomeLog that's come out and it's a Mac, it's a Mac OS app. And it's actually, there's an iOS version, but I'll get to why that's not all that great. Um, it's a Mac OS app that basically just records everything that happens on the home kit system so it basically lets you set up and review everything in an organized fashion you can search like i said there is an ios version but it has to be running all the time for the logging to work and all that may be okay sometimes it's not great if you're trying to catch something that isn't easily reproducible if the iphone goes to sleep you're gonna you're not gonna catch the log so the mac os is definitely the way to go on that. Um, has all sorts of filters and searches you can

use to narrow down the results and you can mute noisy notifications that come over the home kit network. Uh, so you can just really drill down to the, to the information you're looking for and hopefully find, um, you know, whatever you're looking for. It's, it's a, it's a $5 app on the app store. Um, good tools, nice to have. And if, if you have some kind of frustrating intermittent issue or even something that happens and you just don't know what's happening, why is this happening? Why is this light turned on at 5am every day? I don't have any scheduled events. What's causing this. Um, it's good to have some kind of logging mechanism or some kind of mechanism that can actually tell you what's going on. So I'm glad tools like this exist.

So I'll put a link to just directly to this in the app store where you can go check that out at hometech.fm slash 367. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, great ideas for show, give me a shout. That just is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. Do 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 the Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support

hometech.fm 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, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for any inside baseball conversations about all aspects of home technology. I know in there, actually, there's a story in there I'll probably have to cover next week because it just came in today. But Josh AI has set up basically an exclusive deal with Control 4 where they'll be able to sell their products directly to control for dealers and, uh, control for dealers. If they're interested in the Josh, a product, Josh AI product,

they can get into the control for dealer portal and do all the training through there too. So really good for them. Um, yeah, that story that kind of popped up towards the end of the day here in the hub. So, uh, yeah, cool. Um, if you want to help out the show, but I can't financially support, totally appreciate a five-star review and iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. It really helps people find the show and find out what we're doing over here at Home Tech. All right. Well, that wraps up another week of home technology news.

I want to thank you for being patient with me. It's tough to get all the stuff produced, written down, scripted out. And I've kind of cut back on the video stuff. That was really, really dragging me down. But what I do want to do is reintroduce Home Tech Talks back and see if we can get that up and going. Those conversations are great. And I really miss talking to everybody that we were able to talk to. So I'm going to try and bring those back on Thursdays at 3

and see if we can have those. Maybe have to bump it back to two thirty because three is kind of a tough time that may or may not involve me having to leave the house to go pick my daughter from school. So it may not may not be the best time to schedule something. But yeah, maybe two thirty, three o'clock on on Thursdays. It seemed to work great for a lot of people. And I just want to see if we can bring those back. So keep an eye out for those. If you're a Patreon, head on to, if you're not a Patreon, head on over to humtech.fm slash support, and you can learn how to become a Patreon. But

I'll kind of post an update there on the Patreon blog and a link in the hub too, for anybody who wants to join into those conversations. Yeah, hopefully we can get those back up and rolling next week. All right. Thanks everybody for joining and have a great can get those back up and rolling next week. All right. Thanks everybody for joining and have a great weekend. I'll talk to you next week.