HomeTech.fm - Episode 377 - Patty Day

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

This week on HomeTech: Ring lets ONVIF cameras into the app, Frontier bumps speeds to 2Gbps, Crestron announces new lighting products, Aqara jumps on the Matter bandwagon, a fun pic of the week, and more!SHOW NOTESHomeTech HeadlinesRing lets non-Ring cameras into its appNest Doorbell won’t charge its battery in cold weather, Google confirmsFrontier adds 2-gig speeds across its entire fiber networkCrestron harnesses the sun for your smart homeInovelli Blue Series Hype VideoAqara Announces Thread Support in New Product Line UpThe average person doesn’t have a chance with the smart home – TechCrunchSmart home fragmentation is keeping me from trying new gadgetsPick of the Week: Modern Art with Wires

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 25th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about aspects of home technology and home automation. And evidently, Jamaican food that i need to desperately find discussing about as we warmed up the show here and went over our time oh my gosh like we've been on the we've been on the horn here for like an hour talking about jamaican food it seems i don't think it's been a while if this is a short show it's probably because we're too hungry now and

we want to get out of here this show sponsored by your local jamaican beef patty shop yeah happy patty day i guess because it's patty day today yep in canada i don't i didn't know what that was but i do now so i'll be i'll be going and getting some uh jamaican food we've already discussed the menu items that i have to buy and uh i'll be buying that tomorrow uh for lunch and reporting back to you guys and let you know so how that goes i'm actually excited to see what you pick and you know what you think of the beef patty because apparently you've never had one. I've had similar, like there's British food that's similar to this, right? I mean, that's probably where it comes from, if we're going to be honest. Definitely with local, the local Jamaican spices is probably a lot better

than the British version because they're not known for their flavor. Flavor. Exactly. I'm sorry if I just insulted anybody. Well, I do have a fair amount of UK listeners. Yeah. I think they probably know that the Jamaican food probably tastes pretty good too. But I'm excited. I'm excited to find a local restaurant, at least one that's open.

It looks like the one that had five-star reviews and everything. They retired last year. So I missed out on that, not even paying attention. So I'll have to check this one out. But anyway, enough food talk. What do you guys say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right.

Smart home security company Ring is expanding the capabilities of its Ring app to add cameras that support ONVIF. Ring, which is owned by Amazon, hasn't released a list of compatible cameras yet, but it expects to support ONVIF compatible cameras that meet the following criteria. Support a stream of 1080p or lower. They support H.264 encoding. Have ONVIF enabled and have a valid password set. To use the integration, which should go live sometime in April, users will have to pay for Ring Protect Pro subscription, which is about $20 a month or $200 a year, and have the Ring Alarm Pro installed. It's $, as well as that local storage option with I think you put a micro SD card in. So, Gavin, what do you think about this?

It seems pretty cool. And I know you've been searching all over for on VIF cameras. I thought honestly, this news when I heard it i thought was great um you know opening up the ecosystem is something i always encourage because it lets other products work together you know i really applaud them for this however i wish they would have opened up a little better so you have to pay for their 20 a month service to be able to utilize this i wish they just allowed you to add an extra camera paying the $3 or whatever they charged you, like when you add a regular Ring camera. And then you also, this only works

with specific Ring devices, right? I think it was their Ring Pro it only works with. So you can't just like add it to your service, but it's a step in the right direction. And I think Ring is probably, or Amazon is probably looking to collect more data on us you know you have more cameras we're giving them more data you know they're happy for that you know and they'll be charging you for you to give us your data you know it's like it's like we're making you pay us to give us your data. You know, it's now that I think about it, I don't think it's that great. It's kind of evil.

Yeah. TJ, TJ, I know we talked extensively about some of the, like the camera brands and everything that may be compatible with this. I mean, pretty much everything these days that I can think of is on this compatible,

but that's because there's only two actual camera brands and everybody just kind of like scrubs a label and puts it on. But what do you think about this for, for the pro space? Does this make an E make it easier for someone to get started with like a ring system and integrate some like professional cameras where maybe a ring camera wouldn't work? Yeah, this is actually interesting to me, mainly because I think the Ring doorbell is still one of the best video doorbells on the market. And even when we install like a professional grade IP camera system, it's kind of hard to justify using like a Hikvision video

doorbell, Dahua video doorbell or whatever, just because they're not anywhere near as nice hardware wise, but also software wise, they, they usually lack where like ring and nest and everybody else does a better job. So this is actually interesting to me because I think it's a good option to tie in a more professional system with like a ring doorbell. And obviously you have to pay that, that high subscription costs like Gavin was talking about. But a lot of people just don't care about that. They're willing to pay $200 a year or something just for the convenience of it so yeah 200 a year isn't terrible i guess uh considering i think i mean that includes your uh alarm system subscription

as well right so i think i'm i think i might be paying for that i don't know i think i pay a hundred dollars a year for something i also think it's cool because it's giving these other cameras access to the Ring services, such as people detection and stuff like that. Similar to how people are getting with the Apple HomeKit video, and they're getting the other cameras to work with that. You're able to utilize their other services. I think that's a positive. I'm going to be a little skeptic on this one.

One of the reasons I think they're doing this maybe, and we've kind of see this with other Amazon products is maybe the ring cameras are not gaining as much traction or they're not continuing as much as they would like them to. So this is kind of a way to kind of diversify their profile a little bit and get that lost revenue back. We've seen in other articles that we've talked about previously that some people can't even use Alexa for more than, what, a couple days or a week or something like that. So you've got to wonder if they're having a hard time selling

$80 cameras or $250 cameras compared with other brands that are out now. Yeah, I don't know. I might push back on that a little bit. I have no idea what their sales are like. I know they continue to be a pretty popular brand because if I walk up and down my neighborhood here, that's the only doorbell I see. I used to see one that was like a round circle on a house down the street,

and I was like, that's, I think it was like Sky Bell. Sky Bell, yeah. And I'm like, that's i think it was like sky bell sky bell yeah and i'm like that's the only one i've ever seen in the wild and then it's been recently replaced with a ring so it's like they're the only brand that's really out there like that's comes to people's mind immediately or at least one that i immediately recognize right uh but i've known about this like integration for a long time well Well, if from, from the sales guys that talked to us, they're like, oh, we've got local video coming. And, uh, that was, you know, two or three years ago.

Well, you know, this passes, keeps passing. And then they have on Viv support. Oh, that to me, that meant that they were going to turn on, on Viv for the ring cameras and the ring doorbell where I could actually use that as a local. No, no. the ring cameras and the ring doorbell where i could actually use that as a local no no when this came out uh i remember my boss came and he's like um i i i think this was like beginning of last year when we found out about this he said uh that that onvif integration is not going to be what you think it is and uh yeah they they kind of flipped it around on us but what what it does do is it

gives them a uh income I guess, that they otherwise wouldn't have. They're getting $20 a month off you or $200 a year off you. You're spending $200 a year on something and not even buying a product from them for what they're not really doing much other than saving some data. I'm not saying that that doesn't cost any money, but they are owned by the company saving the data as well. So it's kind of one of those things where I think their ring is just going to be fine considering how well it's positioned in the market. This is just going to make the investors really, really, really happy and Amazon really, really happy when they say, Oh, we've got all of these alarm subscribers paying us $200 a year or 20 bucks a month. Um, you know, everybody's going

for that RMR. That's what they want. And I have to wonder too, if you're eventually going to get any like motion detection or anything like that with these cameras, I would doubt you would. Um, I don't, I don't think this article actually says anything about it, but I could be wrong. But there are some companies in the professional space that offer, you know, vehicle and motion detection and all this stuff. And you can add your own cameras. And there's some DIY options in there as well. So it'd be interesting if they brought that integration to the OnVIF compatible cameras. I want to say, I think those events are available in the on vif like specification slash protocol slash whatever so it motion detect events at least i know those and maybe other

triggers can come through that same standard or the same connection and maybe they'll surface those i don't know but you're right this article doesn't say anything about that. It's really just says, we'll let the video show up on your ring app, but not, not, not much else. But overall, I think it's a step forward for their platform. Uh, I just wish that their platform would actually like, I mean, I integrate with it as well, but like, I wish it would kind of open up officially at least in other directions, but they seem to be really concentrating on, on building up their platform internally and not, I mean, where's the home kit integration guys. Like it's been what, three or four years that they've been talking that that was coming and it's

not here, but I can get it. I can get it just fine if I use the hack version from the home bridge guy. So yeah, come on ring. All right. Well, speaking of video doorbells, it appears that nature has won once again, especially when it comes to the Nest video doorbell. After a few online posts, Google has confirmed that the Nest doorbell won't charge its battery in cold weather.

The company explains that cold temperatures will likely drain the Nest doorbell's battery for far quicker than normal, and additionally, the battery will not charge at all when the temperature drops pretty low here. These are numbers that I can't even comprehend or believe. So let me just quote the article here. At temperatures between negative four Fahrenheit, didn't know that went that low, and negative 20 degrees centigrade and 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or that I know that's zero from from high school. Let's see. The battery can still power your device but it won't charge it also may drain more quickly than usual at temperatures close to negative four fahrenheit 20 degrees centigrade your battery may have less than half of the life that it has in warm weather so i guess the moral of this story is don't use a Nest doorbell in frigid temperatures, I guess, and to save your battery that way. Let's see, guys, who has, Gavin, you look pretty bundled up. So what do you think about this? Yeah, I'm very familiar with what negative 20

feels like, you know, living up in Canada. we get some of those days even colder. There are days when my car won't even start up because it gets so cold. I'm actually surprised this cold weather doesn't affect more cameras that are battery powered than this. Maybe the others just aren't admitting it. But yeah, when you start to get get that cold a lot of things stop working outside so don't be shocked i stopped working outside that's for sure tj what do you think about this yeah this isn't shocking to me um i originally got my start doing this kind of work down in florida and now i live in ohio where it's like the polar opposite weather wise. Um, and ever since I moved back to Ohio, there's one thing you can not rely on. And that are two things, I guess, uh, is solar and batteries,

uh, outside in the, in the winter time. Um, a lot of people that contact us want solar powered cameras for their ring or, or whatever cameras they want. And you just have to be honest with them that most of the time, the cameras are not even going to charge during the winter time, um, or they have shortened battery life, uh, because of the cold. Um, so this is something that's been happening for years now. It's great in what Santa Monica, California, where ring is based, I guess. Is that where they are? I think. And, uh, here in Florida, you can put the little charging things out there. I've got the ring solar lights and they, they seem to charge up over the day. I don't know. I really don't have to pay attention to them. But yeah, your days are shorter up that way. And yeah, especially this time of year. Interesting thing, nature, nature.

All right, we'll move it on here. Frontier Communications is rolling out two gig speeds across its existing fiber optic network. It currently spans six states, Texas, Florida, California, Indiana, West Virginia, and Connecticut. The plan comes along with symmetrical 2K downloads and uploads for $149 a month, along with the free installation of a Wi-Fi 6E compatible router and extender. They're also offering a 43 Amazon Fire TV

and Logitech webcam for the first 1,000 customers who sign up. And this article goes on to say, but it's not clear if you'll be getting the Omni or the Force. Don't be greedy, guys. Just take the free thing, free camera. Come on, take the free camera. The number of communication companies have already gone out and done the beyond the one gigabit threshold when it comes to fiber. AT&T has a two gig and a five gig plan priced at 110 and 180. Xfinity has a three gig plan, which is a ridiculous $300 a month.

Verizon has a two gig for $119, $120 a month for New York residents only, New York City residents only, sorry. And Google Fiber is the cheapest in the market at $100 a month for a two gig plan. Gavin, I'm not going to you first because I know that you probably have cheaper internet in Canada, but TJ, does this just make you drool? Like you're, you're as upset about this as I am. No, honestly, because most of the time, all my, all my customers are going to contact me because they can't get two gigabit on their iPhone wirelessly. So, you know, I'm excited that this is happening in the real world and that this is an option for people. But as a business

standpoint, I'm not excited about it. It's so true. Why doesn't speedtest.net go to like, I'm paying for two gig. Why, why do I not see that on my phone? It's like, yeah, your iPhone six can't do that. So, uh, Gavin gavin uh since you're probably you probably already have two gig internet i know that canada's no no i'm still at one gig and and what even worse is like it's not symmetrical my one gig i have like 30 megabits up and a thousand down so So I would love to have both up and down at one gig. That would be awesome. But at some point too, it's just, you can have too much in it. Like, you know, a lot of people don't need to gig, you know, because a lot of services aren't even throwing data at you that fast. I guess if you're watching a lot of stuff at the same time, you know, you have 10 Netflix streams going on maybe at the same time.

That's where you'll start to see it. But, you know, I don't even saturate my one gig line and I'm a heavy user of it. There's only one service I think I can push it with and that's it. Even speed test doesn't even go up there that a lot of times yeah i i you would really have to like even for for the one i guess that i can get which is the 300 month ridiculous xfinity uh plan i i don't think that i would ever saturate that much band bandwidth because i think they even well i guess at that point they probably give you unlimited data but right now i have some data caps on me thanks comcast so uh yeah i i am unfortunately i can only use xfinity and i'm stuck with their i guess close to gigabyte speeds

gigabit speeds i'm only like at 900 i think 900 but like 20 20 up which like you said the symmetrical is where it's at yeah you want and i think there'll be other bottlenecks once it comes into the home so it's coming in at two gig but then you're gonna have to go through switches oh not here my friend it's all wireless baby yeah it's all wireless anyway well even going through switches are wireless but then it will be split up so you're not gonna get two gig to any one device you You're just going to be splitting up that two gig between many devices. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. Yeah, and you are sharing that bandwidth with everybody else in the house or anybody else watching and streaming TV. All that can kind of slow down a router, especially if your router is not compatible with that kind of speed. It just can't handle it.

Typically, they can't handle it, and typically the firewalls can't handle um it typically they can't handle it and typically the firewalls can't handle that speed so that's where your your firewall actually slow you down and you have to really pay attention to the specs where the router may advertise it can do that it can do two two gig speeds but the firewall will be like you know 800 megabits a second it's like well you've got the port but the software just isn't there. The chip inside isn't there. And they don't want to give this service to me because if they do, I'd be sharing it with all my neighbors. We'd have a unified network, you know, splitting this two gig and, you know, we'd all be happy. It would be running really nice and

we'd all pay a fraction of the price. They're doing that in a lot of cities now. They're doing urban wireless setups. You just put an antenna on your house or apartment or whatever, and you get free internet. So I wish they had that here. I wish I had what I need to do is make really good friends with a neighbor that has one of these Fios connections, and I'll pay them the difference, whatever. You know, I think it was seventy nine dollars for the one gig service. So, yeah, I'll pay them to difference and then we'll we'll

have the access to the two gig and we'll just share it now i'll i'll use one of those ubiquity air fiber things it's like a 10 gig link for whatever 10 miles or whatever yeah nope we'll figure this out and i but i don't know anybody that's within eyeshot uh of my my house that that can help me out with that it's kind of of sad. Ah, lousy Comcast. Okay, anyway, let's move it on here. We've got Crestron Home. It's adding circadian lighting to its high-end residential platform.

This week, the company announced a new full-color tunable downlight LED fixtures with circadian rhythm capabilities that should be available sometime in August. I say should because because who knows, uh, while smart lighting, isn't a new feature for,

uh, for the DIY market. It's actually been kind of slow to come into the, uh, pro market. And, um, it,

this circadian stuff, like it's, it's been real, like even RGB lighting has been real slow to be adopted into the pro market, even though like Phillips hue and all these other companies out there have had these types of features built in, baked in for quite some time now. Even the basic Apple HomeKit app can actually do this circadian stuff. Gavin, I know you're big in the DIY section.

Do you use any of this circadian rhythm lighting? No, not really. During the day, I don't even really have lights on at all. I get natural light. I've looked into using the circadian lighting stuff, but I never really understood the reason behind it in my workspace, right? Like I never saw the need for it or anything like that. So I know there's a lot of hype around it, but also at the same time, I don't even know anybody that has used it or does use it or even cares to use it. So I wonder if it's just one of those things where, you know, it's like they have to talk about something, they have to introduce something, you know, or one person asked for it. So now they got implemented, you know, to be

talked about. I don't know. I'd like to get feedback though on some, if somebody out there is using it, circadian lighting in their setup, let me know how you're using it. And, you know, if it works well for you or it changes the mood or your workspace or, you know, I'd like to learn more about it still. Yeah. So it's actually funny that you bring up if they designed it for one person. Because in this Verge article, it says the company first developed the solar sink for a retail customer who traditionally builds their stores with lots of glass. So there you go. This is exciting to me just because I don't like going into all these places and they have that super bright white LED light in your face. Or you have the mismatched

colors of the different lighting fixtures and that kind of thing so this is kind of cool because i hope it brings some uniformity to that and maybe i'll stop being blinded when i walk into retail establishments and stuff like that yeah you mentioned that solar sink we didn't really talk about that the creston made this nice little sensor sensor. It's an external sensor. So you stick it outside and it kind of measures the color temperature of the daylight sun at that point, at that point in time. And it transmits that value back into the control system inside

and that can match what's going on outside. So that can happen a lot. Actually, Gavin, I actually used, well, I wasn't, I was testing some LED lights here. And the way I set it up, I had the LEDs behind me when I was working on them. And I set it up to kind of run the day. So starting off in the morning, it was kind of warm. And by midday, it was, you know, pretty cool lighting, and then gets warm towards the end of the day. What it did to me was really mess with my head. I think that my window was open behind me.

And so I got to the point where I was like, oh, I can tell when it's noon. Otherwise, I'm in a garage with no windows, not open. It's dark in here, and I can't really tell you what time of the day it is. But that's really the only thing I got out of it. And TJ, you're right. Like, if you mix the lights,

like I have fixed value lights in here in the ceiling when that thing's moving around it makes everything look ugly right because you have one light that's 500 kelvin 5,000 kelvin and one that's 2,500 it it doesn't look very good and so yeah being able to mix and match not not mix and match those and just sync everything up is huge. And this is a very, very smart product line and product lineup for them to introduce. So it sounds like there's a significant, I guess, investment to get this kind of feature. In the Crestron space, the person would be buying this anyway. But in my space, we would need to get bulbs that are all tunable, I guess, at this point to be able to have this working throughout the day for us. And those bulbs aren't cheap.

The tunable ones, especially the tunable ones that have enough output and that look like have the CRI value, the one that's like you can always get an LED fixture that is like a CRI value of 80. And that's the one that's not going to look very good. You're not going to be able to read anything. But the ones that are over 95 and higher, that gets close to actually being what daylight looks like. Those are expensive. They do cost more.

But they're engineered and designed to be better light. It goes on to say here, again, this is for the pro space and for the contractor, the custom home integrator and electrician, that Crestron will be partnering with third-party fixture manufacturers to create other lighting options, such as linear, chandelier, and sconce-style fixtures that all will be brought

into the native Crestron home integration. Those fixtures can also be paired with smart shades, including Crestron's battery-powered shades to actually kind of move the shades up and down depending on how the sunlight's doing as well. So it sounds like they're trying to build an entire ecosystem around this, both with software and products. Smart move. Smart move. There's some demand out there for this. I'm not going to say there's none, but there's some demand for this kind of thing. And if you can offer a solution as an integrator and flip a switch and make it work, hey, that's good. It's a good deal. Most people, I would say, don't know anything about this and would never know anything about this unless somebody brought it up to them.

Right. But if it's done correctly, it can make a big difference in the household or business. I don't know of any health benefits for it yet. There's a lot of claims about that going around and stuff like that. And while I think some of that may be true, um, I, I think, I think it's just the, the overall nice use of the system and everything. Yeah. It, it does make for a fun, you know, feature, but, uh, all the health benefits that, that are at least touted. And, and, and I did a takedown on this earlier in the year as I was trying to kind of tired of hearing of it. And, uh, yeah, it, the, the studies that they cite or they cite like a study of sample size, 25 people and 18 of those people didn't show up and only three of them filled out the form correctly. It's ridiculous how small of a, of a sample size they use on this. Now, the only reason I think that there's any kind of validity to it is because like I know Gavin might know about this as well.

But in the winter months up here, it can get pretty dark and dreary for days or weeks on end. So there's some benefit with lighting like that. I don't obviously when you're talking about color sync, you're not gonna be able to match up the gray sky to your lights outside uh or lights inside i should say uh but no i think there's some benefit to it yeah that's where you get the the blues from like sitting in the dark so long or something like that because you're the sun like you're talking about earlier the sun's just not up the the daylight starts later and ends earlier in the winter months so i think it's in december we have the shortest days where it's like 4.30 in the afternoon and it's starting to set. Yep.

That's depressing. Yeah, it gets very depressing. No, no thanks. Well, that's why they call this the sunshine state down here. We have warm batteries and solar panels. And iguanas falling out of the trees. Yeah, if it gets down to 20, negative 20, the iguanas are all dying. So it's not going happen all right well speaking of lighting we've got uh some interesting stuff over

here in the diy space gavin i i think you put this teaser video from in a valley talking about their blue series uh lights that they come out these look really good well they they look exactly like their current red series lights right um but the difference with these is it's they're they're moving into the zigbee space right so that's the only difference they look exactly the same as what they currently offer but they're having issues you know sourcing the parts for the the z wave devices right so that's for g for Greg. But they look great. I think if as long as they do look exactly the same, that will be perfect because there's a lot of people that are currently having issues sourcing their current switches and they'll have an abundance of the blue series. And if, you know,

you can get those and they look the exact same, you pair them to your hub, everyone will be happy. If you're not familiar with the Inivelli, they're known for having a little LED bar along the side of the switch and a LED light. And I actually do a lot with that light. I'm not going to get into it now, but it's very helpful. They're very powerful switches. Can you animate it like it shows on here? Yes. Oh, I didn't know you could do that. Yeah, that's really cool. You remember Knight Rider? You remember the little thing on the front? You could do that. In my house, what happens when my light is triggered by motion, it actually pulses. So I'll know it's a motion thing, and it will turn off after five minutes.

Nice. You can get Michael to say, or Kit would say, the lights are off, Gavin. Or Lady A. No, you got to get Kit's voice on there. Okay, okay. These are actually pretty nice. I saw TJ, you got to get kids' voice on there. Okay, okay. These are actually pretty nice. I saw TJ, you shaking your head. Like, yeah, the things that I would miss if I,

if Inovelli or another, I mean, I will just point at Control 4. They have come out with a couple of different lineups for, they've only come out with two, maybe three now, lineups for their lights. And the Gen 1 stuff all look the same. The Gen two stuff look pretty pretty different and so when i moved in i had a bunch of gen one stuff but i used gen two keypads and it was kind of like mix and match for a while it kind of looked kind of janky

until i eventually replaced all the gen one with gen two but again you don't really want to do that but tj what do you think what do you think about the way this thing looks i think it looks really nice i honestly haven't checked out in a valley switches that much because i don't really want to do that but tj what do you think what do you think about the way this thing looks i think it looks really nice i honestly haven't checked out in a valley switches that much because i don't install switches myself um but these ones actually look really nice i like the little light bar on the side of it uh what does the button do at the top of it is that like an action button or something gavin the button um can be used for action if you want it but it's also used for programming stuff locally on the switch you can program you know press it so many times and hold it and stuff like that um and and

the bar is you'll see the bar on the dimmers the switches will just have a little light but the dimmers have the bar and the bar will actually reflect how bright or you know the percentage as well yeah this is good i could see this in like a high-end house or something like that i don't think it looks too obnoxious one of the things we were talking about in the hub was that earlier this week was, you know, how many of us that got rejected on like what type of light switches we'd be able to put in the house. Like this looks like a normal light switch too. Even if it has like little, you know, LED thing on the side, this would pass the design committee and be, you know, I don't think it toggles, but at least it still looks and maybe feels like a toggle switch. It's pretty nice.

It feels like a regular switch. And one of the reasons why I went with it, the only complaint I ever get about this switch is that that little light is too bright at night when they like the room absolutely dark. But the bonus is you can adjust the brightness of that light you can have it turn totally off i kind of like it just a little bit of light so you can find the switch in the dark if you have to 100 the same problem the pro space control 4 has these little tiny led lights on their on their switches little ones still too bright for a lot of people and a lot of times they complain about them and and like you said you can just put something in program them at nighttime turn them off uh control four tried to

actually in the gen 2 product they put in like a light sensor so when that sensor detects you could actually set your switches up in certain areas when it's detecting no light you can you can you can set it to turn off those particular lights as well. So, um, I think that kind of solves a lot of the problems without the custom programming, but you can still do it, which is, is the point. And I'm glad you can do that on these switches too. And, uh, kind of here, last up here for our home tech headlines as matter, it's quickly becoming the new kid on the block. Aquara decided to join the ride and future-proof their lineup with a few smart home gadgets. The company is expected to release a new version of their door and window sensor, as well as the motion sensor, sometime in the second half of 2022.

Keep an eye on that date. Acquara will also bring MatterSupport to a few of its existing Zigbee-based products by pushing an over-the-air update. So that's coming to the M2 and M1S Acquara hubs. Gavin, I know you have thoughts on this one, because this seems to be one of your favorite brands or whipping boys. I'm not too sure. But I mean, it's good, right? Like they're saying they're going to update and support this Matter protocol. That's a good thing, right? And that's great. The problem is they're not going to be adding Matter to the actual devices themselves. So it looks like they're adding matter just to the hub, right? And then the hub's going to be the link between. And I wonder, you know, if that's going to set the stage of what we are to expect is we're going to

have a bunch of hubs that will link all devices into the matter ecosystem. Are we going to end up like that? I already have too many hubs as it is. I don't want to be adding more bridges into that mix, but who knows? We'll see when it comes out what will happen. But Acquara will always be the most affordable. Their prices are always great. That's why a lot of people jump on them, and they work great when you have them paired to their own hub. Yeah, I'm guilty of even buying back into Acquara after having terrible luck with them. I actually bought a temperature sensor on Amazon about a week ago and I got it added to my Hubitat app

without or my Hubitat hub without any issue. It worked for about a day and then it was just troubleshooting constantly after that. And we've talked about this before, but I've definitely had those problems before.

Bought a couple of sewn off ones and they work great. Interesting. Yeah, well, that kind of brings us into our bigger discussion tonight and kind of what we wanted to talk about and a couple of articles that popped up about interesting headlines here. I'm just going to read the headlines. You can kind of get the gist of the articles from that. The average person doesn't have a chance with a smart home, reads one of them. And the other one is the smart home fragmentation is keeping me from trying new gadgets both of these have kind of the same uh feel to them uh where there's just a large amount of frustration uh by these two writers about what you know what they've had to deal with when using and setting up a smart home here's a here's a quote from uh

from from one of them here. Currently, I have no fewer than 21 apps that control various smart home devices on my phone. Yes, I know it's all excessive that I have that many devices, but it highlights part of the problem that comes with setting up a smart home. While there are a lot of great smart home devices for Google Home and Amazon Alexa, many of those products still require an initial setup using the manufacturer's app. And of course, ongoing maintenance for that. Like you're not going to get a firmware update from the Amazon Alexa hub or the Google Home hub.

It's just not going to happen. So I kind of wrote in here, it kind of reminds me of the days that we always complained about having a coffee table full of remotes, right, TJ? Like it's what it feels like. When you don't have a coffee table remotes, you have 21 apps there in your, in your, in a folder on your phone. Yeah. The biggest issue to me is a lot of people go out and just will, uh, willy nilly buy these devices, right? They'll go out and buy like a random wifi smart plug because they want to turn their lamp on. And then, you know, two weeks from now they'll buy a random thermostat because they

want to be able to control that. And then two weeks from that, they'll buy another camera. So it's never any actual planning that goes into the smart home for a lot of these projects and a lot of these issues you see. That being said, a lot of manufacturers do lock out, you know, different features and things like that where you have to use their application for that. I don't think we're going to get around that. I think we might get to a point where you control devices using one central platform, but I think you're always going to have to go back to the manufacturer's app to do certain

things like update the firmware and whatever, just because that is going to be the easiest way for the manufacturer to implement that. But these issues totally come up all the time. I go into people's houses every week that have, just like this person, 21 different apps in a folder that control their lights or their TV or cameras and whatever else they have going on. Yeah, Gavin, a lot of nods coming from you over there as we listen to TJ talk. I totally understand these articles. TJ nailed it right on the head. And I'll be honest, I'm guilty of this.

When I first started in the smart home thing, I bought the random switch. I bought the random everything. And I had the 20 apps. You know, when you have five apps just for the various different switches in your house, it starts to get daunting. It's a pain. And then certain switches stop working and you realize there was a firmware update to it. And, you know, so that's why a lot of times now I look for devices that integrate directly into

the hubs. And I like to go with Zigbee or Z-Wave. And the main reason why is because they don't have other apps. They just have drivers built into your hub. being said you can't avoid it there's going to be certain devices that they have features that you need to use their app for my ratio controller is one i mean i have it integrated where i can turn on and off zones and kick off a thing but if i really want to get programming it i have to use their app there's no way around it and i don't think matter you know is going to save us from this because they will expose certain features to Matter. But I bet you we're still going to have all their apps to manage the actual device and do the updates and to get dirty with the device.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned Matter because as you're reading these articles, it's almost like a template that you can follow. And I'm wondering, this is my conspiracy theory mind kicking in, it's like the Matter consortium is paying for these articles. So you see about everybody complaining at the top of this, how I just wanted to make a smart home really easy. I just went and bought all these $20 light switches, and it doesn't work as well as I want it to. And then you get down to the bottom, and every one of these has the same thing.

Well, Matter's coming out, and that seems that it's going to unify everything and solve everything. We're going to have to see how that works. You know, like they seem skeptical and decidedly so, like they should be. But Matter's not going to solve this problem, right? You're still going to have 21 apps. You're still going to have things juggling around. You're still going to have bad devices that support Matter. And they're not going to be good for the Matter ecosystem. And it's really going to be tough for a consumer who is just going to walk out, you know, we've kind of said, put a pin in that date earlier, like it, somebody was writing somewhere and I, it was like a forum post or a tweet or

something. I meant to capture it, but they said that Matter was going to be introduced later in June or July of this year. And I think there's going to be a huge push around that. And that's, of course, around WWDC, of course. I think Google has a conference at the same time and Amazon as well. I think there's going to be a major push this year. We're going to hear nothing, but the glories of Matter have come to solve all the home automation problems. And people are going to get these advices, they're going to put them in and go, this isn't any better. Like, it's not solving, Matter's not solving the problem

that there's no, there's no good unified experience for these things yet. Like it's, it's solving some of the onboarding and some of the connectivity, but if you want specific features, you're not going to get that from a generalized product that's made for a million or 10 million people. Like you've got to go custom with that or find a developer like home kit. I like home kit for that reason. Right. Cause you can use home kit.

There's, I've got like three home kit apps. One is really runs the Home app, right? It works fine. It's okay. I can use that. It integrates with Siri. I can yell Siri and they do things.

The next thing is like Home Plus or something like that. And it's more of like get in and drill down and do specialized programming. And then there's one more and I really can't think of the name, but it's more of like a dashboard app that if I just want to present on my iPad, a really nice dashboard or like a customized dashboard, like I can drag and drop whatever I want on there. It's great for that. But like that, that's not, that's not most people are going to do there. They just want to have one experience going into things. And these companies like Google and Apple and Amazon are trying to like generic, make that, make that completely generic for them. And that's, that's a really tough ask. It's really tough to do

when you're talking about a smart home that is different for every single person who has put these products in their home. Even with, on a per device. So even with HomeKit, I don't think they've even solved it with HomeKit because you'll still have like, I guess the Echobee and it will show up as a thermostat in HomeKit. But if you want to get into the Echobee features and stuff, you still need their app, right? You can't do anything without their app.

So you're always going to have those 20 apps and the worst offenders are Wi-Fi devices, right? Because they always want to be able to work without any sort of hub, right? And for that to happen, they're going to have to have their own app in their cloud, etc., etc. That's why I'm always sticking to Z-Wave or Zigbee, just because it brings it all into my own ecosystem at that point. And you can utilize that data the way you want. Exactly. Power consumption and all that stuff and you can utilize that data the way you want like exactly power consumption and all that stuff you can you can utilize it do they do they publish power stuff over uh z-wave and that kind of thing yeah you um all my outlets i they have it turned on by default

which you know if you got a new device and it does power reporting one of my first recommendations turn it off yeah yeah if you don't need, turn it off because it just floods the network. And if you have one device, you may survive. But once you get into 20 devices, like all my switches in my house are all reporting power. It gets very, it floods the network, slows things down. So just turn it off by default. These articles always kind of annoy me because it automatically assumes that at some point the consumer is going to understand the smart house, right? And us working in technology, we kind of see this a little more, but a lot of people don't even understand their computer or how to like

open Google Chrome and stuff like that. So I don't think we're anywhere near the general consumer really even understanding what a smart home is or how to implement one or what it can even do. So these articles always fascinate me because it automatically assumes that everybody is good with technology and the majority of people just aren't. And the one thing I think they're moving towards, which I think Josh AI was like this. And I think Lady A was trying to get into this is using the AI stuff to learn people's routines, learn and set it up for them based on how, what they do and when they do it.

And I think we have a far way to go, but that's the end goal, I think, is to get it to that point where the average user just has to put in Josh AI and it will learn their routines and configure everything exactly how they want it yeah uh i i always go back i i don't i think it's less than that i i think that um it's it's like walking in the room turns on the lights i mean that that's it seems kind of dumb but like that's the smart home of the future. You can do that now with a motion detector.

But like leaning over and waving your hand around a lamp and that turns it on, you know, those kind of things aren't as they are built into the fabric of the home right now. And when they are, when you expect just to walk in the room, the lights kick on, if they need to be on, then I think we're there. The hard part with that right now, though, is keeping the lights on if you're not moving around, right? And then turning off, you know, and that's the stuff they need to solve. I think they should focus a lot on that stuff. Well, yeah, exactly. And they're trying to get all these point devices connected and talking together, you know, out the gate. So these three or four companies can sell more devices, I guess. But yeah, you're right. Like it's building this into the fabric of the home. I guess you have to have a standard something like like matter at that point to kind of bring these things together.

But it's this technology needs to disappear a lot more before I think that most people are going to recognize it. Like TJ was saying, a lot of people can't figure out their computers. It made me laugh because there's a TikTok that I follow, or she comes up, she's in the support desk for a major San Francisco area company. Like these, these, it's not, it's not old people working here. It's like younger people. And the, the support ticket, she, she shows, she shows the, uh, the, the subject line and, and just maybe the, you know,

a couple of lines in the body, or sometimes it's just the subject line. And it's the most absurd things that people will submit to the, the you know like my paycheck is not right or did not come he's like why are you filling this out this is the support line for the company like and that's all it says she doesn't know who they are she doesn't know where they work and it just says my paycheck isn't right please fix you know it's like okay um but yeah it people people have problems with technology and until until we do what's funny is all this stuff they're working on, the interface and everything, how to set it up, until they remove all of that, we're going to have a hard time, right? You're going to have a really tough time getting technology into the hands of the masses. Yeah, and the choices that consumers have are just obnoxious at this point.

I mean, we're not even that far really into the consumer space for home automation timeline-wise. Professional home automation has been around for several decades at this point. I mean, we're not even that far really into the consumer space for home automation, you know, timeline wise, you know, professional home automation has been around for several decades at this point. But DIY home home automation has really only existed in this past decade. That's become like a like a mass market. So a lot of people just, you know, they don't even know what it is. And they probably won't know what it is for the longest time. And we're getting stuck in the middle of like corporate battles at this point, right? Where they're all trying to lock it. Everyone's trying to create their own ecosystem, trying to lock you into their own ecosystem. Most of the popular brands that we always hear of, you know, is in that trying to do that. And us as a consumer, we're the ones getting hurt because nothing works together properly. Right. So it just kind of sucks for us. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Well, and it kind of

brings us back to the, you know, ring charging is $200 a year or 20 bucks a month. They just want to continue to make money and they're going to keep trying to do that the best way they can. And I guess at some point you do want that to happen, right? You don't want these companies to disappear or stop supporting the product that is integrated into the fabric of your house. But at the same time, the smart stuff that exists today is tied to a big company like you're saying, Apple, Amazon, Google. Somehow it's tied to them.

If it was like Behr paint or Sherwin-Williams paint, we don't think of that as something that's tied into the house. But if it's true technology that we're putting in, I don't know or care what light fixtures I have in my house. But if they were all integrated enough to where I walk in the room and they knows i'm in the room and it keeps the lights on while i'm in here and when i walk out it shuts them off that that's the true home animation that we're looking for we're just we're way we're very far away from that we're still early adopting everything right now everything we're still figuring we we will know that the smart home is ready for the mass market whenever nfts and

blockchain become an integral part of it oh they're i'm sure that's for somebody's somebody's grifting in to try that i'm we think snap one's probably doing that right now i i think i think they're more of a credible company to even try something like that but i uh man i the the blockchain thing. Yeah. The first smart home on the blockchain. Record everything ever. It's all public. Everybody can see what you're doing. I mean, people do that with Twitter accounts now, so I don't see why not. Yeah, right.

Oh, I see you took a shower last night. Thank you. Somebody a couple years ago had one of those Twitter smart home bots set up, so every time they'd turn their lights on or something, it would it would tweet out. OK, well, yeah, maybe maybe that's what it's going to take. It's going to take the blockchain getting integrated into home technology. I don't know. I think that's probably that's probably not too far out.

Somebody's probably trying that right now and trying to figure out what that looks like. All right, guys. Well, all the links and topics we've been discussing tonight can be found on our show notes at home tech.fm three 77. We've got a pretty good pick of the week. Gavin, you have dug up this thing. Uh, man, this is funny. This is an image from, it looks like to be India, I guess. Uh, some, uh, some, some some some. Well, everything's going wireless here in the States. In India, I guess they have other plans. Yeah, this is a this is a hodgepodge of wiring.

And I think Gavin made the or somebody made the comment that whoever has to service this is really out of luck. And I'm just going to take I'm just going to take a guess and say that nobody has ever serviced this and they've just added on. Yeah, something broke and they just let's add another wire. So what we're looking at is a street view of somewhere in India. And there's basically, I would say, just maybe five tons of wire that has been draped up and kind of attached to the. I don't even know what this is doing. It looks like a modern art piece, I guess this,

I would expect this in like MoMA. If you zoom in, you may see a few hubs or switches in the mix too, somewhere in there, but it's basically, it looks like a building all ran one cable to each unit, but they didn't clean it up. It needs some like cleanup in there. And I think I found this on the

cable porn reddit thread which is like this is the anti you know this is something they're trying not to do i just hate to be the guy that has to go there and you know you get the service call that their internet's not working and you show up and see this why you just run a new wire clearly that's all you have to do yeah this is the easiest thing yeah this is the easiest service call out there like you just you pull a new wire and you don't even have to cut off the excess or put a new end on it no you just roll it up and stick it looks like there i can count one two three four five just like offhand like 10 or 15 spools of wire that are just left there like that are just well yeah you're not gonna splice it up and come on no no why would you do that exactly the weight alone that looks like it's ready to collapse you know at some point they're gonna add that one extra wire and it's gonna break it right

there the straw that breaks the camel's back yeah exactly i think that might be helping the building stay up at this point it's actually a part of the building uh that's pretty wild something something you probably wouldn't see here in the states but uh unless you were in uh the museum of modern architecture but uh or yeah of modern art sorry not architecture i'm looking at the buildings and saying that but no uh yeah this would be uh this would be a moment exhibit i think and i think i'd probably just cut this off bring it on over and stick it in uh museum. And yeah, people would love looking at this every day. Wow.

Ugh. Definitely not cable porn. Thanks, Gavin. So if you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week, or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. You can visit the website at hometech.fm and fill out that online form. All right, guys.

It's a fun show this week. I'm getting ready for my patties tomorrow. I've been thinking about that this whole show. Honestly, we're going to start the show. I'm going to end with it because it was great. I'd never close the website. I'm still looking at that. I'm excited to hear what you think about beef patty. I just hope you get a good one. I know

your pickings are kind of slim where you are, so I'm hoping you get a good one. But a beef patty is something that once you have, you will crave. And you'll just buy a box, throw it in the freezer, have it for lunch. I grew up with them, so now I'm hungry. Yeah. They, they are simply the best food. And the best part is that they're very cheap for what they are. Uh, I think like the website you were looking at, there were two 50 each, which seems pretty average to me. Um, so there, that, that is the best part about them. Well, Jamaican meat patties, those, those will be on the, on the menu tomorrow. Hopefully I can get out. And it, well, the good thing is it's not too far away.

Like, getting to it, we have an excellent Cuban restaurant that's kind of, it doesn't even look like a restaurant when you're driving by. It looks like a gas station. But if you know that's where you can get some excellent Cuban food, you go there and kind of, like, walk into the back of the gas station. There's a very nice Cuban restaurant there. But it's, like, a 45-minute drive to get there. And it's not like highway miles.

It's like stop-and-go traffic miles. So it's like not very far away, but it takes 45 minutes to get there, 45 minutes to get back, and it's just not – no thanks. Like I could drive – unless I'm driving home and driving by it, I might swing in and grab some nice, you know, pork dish or some Cuban bread or something. Well, buy a patty when you're there, eat it when you're there and buy a patty for the road so your drive's not much better. Yeah, exactly. And happy Patty Day to everybody celebrating today. It's a Canadian, you know, like not a holiday, but like they call it Patty Day.

I mean, I wish we had Patty Day here. Sounds great. Yeah, I'm jealous. Any reason to eat Jamaican patties. We just had, what, President's Day? Who cares about that? Like, let's just rename it to Patty Day. Get out of school or, you know, have a holiday around it.

Yeah. Holidays around food. Excellent. Yeah. Holidays around food. Excellent. Excellent. So we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm 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 to invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day to talk about what have we, what have we been talking about lately in there? And it's been a lot of conversation flowing through there. Not printers, not printers.

Oh yeah. Not printers because of that one solved, still solved. And if you don't, for some reason, Gavin keeps bringing it up though. Like he wants it to break. That's the secret though.

If he talks about it every week, it'll never break break but the second that he doesn't come on the show and tell us his printer's not working dead dead dead dead printer's still working if you want to help out this show but can't support the show financially totally understand just appreciate a five-star review on itunes or positive rating in the podcast app of your choice that wraps up another week in home tech for everyone out there have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. See you soon, everyone.