HomeTech.fm - Episode 417 - The 2022 Fireside Chat

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

On this episode of HomeTech: Join us for the 8th Annual Technology.fm Fireside chat! This year, we are joined by, Richard Gunther from the Home: On podcast and the Smart Home Show, Adam Justice, Founder and CEO at ConnectSense and Richard’s co-host on the Smart Home Show, and Mike Wolf from The Spoon. We share our perspectives on the biggest connected home trends of 2022 and make some predictions about the year ahead. Don’t miss it!

Hi, everyone. It's once again that special time of year to join your favorite podcast friends for the eighth annual Technology.fm Fireside Chat. So cozy right on up next to the fire here and grab some marshmallows or hot cocoa or whatever mixed drink or beer help you survive 2022. And let's get started. My name is Seth Johnson, and I'm one third of the hosts, hosting, host, the staff, I don't know, at Home Tech Podcast. And I'm probably the least interesting of the bunch. So let's just go around the room here and introduce everyone else in no particular order. So first up, Adam, Adam Justice. Hey, Adam Justice, co-host of the Smart Home Show, formerly Mike's show, but now Richard and I host it. And I am the CEO at ConnectSense. All right, Adam, thanks for joining us. And of course,

Richard was mentioned there. So let's bring in Richard. Sure. I'm Richard Gunther. I am the other co-host of Mike Sullivan's show, the Smart Home Show. and I also occasionally host Home On, a podcast from the digital media zone. And I say occasionally, not because it gets hosted by other people. It just doesn't come out as often as it probably should. Totally understand. And then of course, we've got actually a new one for this year. We've got, I mentioned I was one third of the two thirds. So we've got TJ and Gavin here. So Gavin, go ahead and introduce yourself. Yep.

I'm Gavin Campbell from Pickering, Ontario. And I'm like, as Seth said, one third of the, you know, Home Tech podcast crew. I'm one of the new members. And I'm kind of excited to be here today. And TJ. Yeah, I'm TJ with ConnectU. I'm also one third of the podcast host for Home Tech FM. And we're based in Columbus, Ohio.

Awesome. And we've got almost a special, like, I don't know what to call you, a fellow? I guess we'll call you a fellow, like Apple Fellow, right? We'll call you... Emertris. Yeah. There we go. Yeah, I'm Mike Wolfe.

I'm one of one of my podcast team i'm not fractionalized at all uh and i've i have the spoon podcast nowadays and we i write at the spoon about food tech and occasionally some smart home stuff seeps in there but not too often awesome yeah yeah it's a very very, very cool podcast and, and writing newsletter website, all sorts of fun stuff that you come across there, which I'm sure we'll talk about later here in the show. Um, but as, as we do every year, we have a, um, uh, kind of like a, the way we set the show up is we kind of have like a year in review where we talk about almost the same questions every year. And we don't try and, you know, unlike the hot take podcasts and YouTube personalities,

we like to reflect back on what we actually did say and see how well we did with our predictions and compare notes, so to speak. So upon our first big questions that we had, it is what was to you the biggest story of 2022? And in parentheses here, we have in your space. So kind of like keeping to the themes of everyone's podcast and everyone's domain. We'll go from there. And Mike, let's just dive in with you.

You're with The Spoon. You cover mostly food-related technologies and that kind of thing. So what was the biggest story this year for you? Well, there's two stories I want to talk about. One is kind of a macro industry story that I think impacts the broader kitchen tech, consumer, and smart home space. And then one just a really cool product I think is kind of a sneak peek into the future, maybe somewhat aligned with what we were seeing with that printed hamburger that you want to eventually print there, Seth. But the biggest story I think just generally that I saw this year from an industry perspective is the Amazon Alexa colossal failure story. I think Business Insider had a story about a month ago that essentially said they're going to be laying off a significant percentage of the Alexa

team. I mean, just going back to the Smart Home Show history, and so many of our conversations were around, oh boy, look at Alexa, look at this voice assistant. What role does Amazon play in the Smart Home? And the Amazon Alexa layoffs are part of a broader hardware layoff. So they are laying off a number of hardware employees as well. And also, it's a little bit broader than Amazon. I think a month before this story, there was a story, I think, in Ars Technica about the struggles with Google's voice assistant. So it does seem like the voice assistants generally are having some struggles. And I think the hardware side on Amazon is having struggles.

And if I were to kind of summarize the reasons why, and feel free to chip in, guys, what you think they struggled. But I think part of the reason is Amazon never quite figured out how to monetize this thing. I think going back, they were kind of surprised by the success of the Alexa product, of the Echoes. And so they started building the team. I think at one point they reached 10,000 employees or so. All along, they thought that people would start shopping with their voice. And quite frankly, I just think it never happened.

I just think people are doing things like timers and calling an audio playlist and asking what time it is or what the weather is tomorrow. But no one's really saying, you know, Alexa, add this big $200 product to my shopping list or whatever. I just don't think it's happening. Okay, we're going to beep that out, right? I'm staring at mine right now and she hasn't reacted yet. So I've trained her to know when I'm podcasting, I think, at this point. But yeah, so I think that's really kind of a pretty big story. I still think that Amazon is a pretty significant player in hardware devices around smart home.

I mean, I think just their cameras, now that they own Eero, I kind of standardized, unfortunately, on a lot of these products. But I think they're going to continue to be committed to them. I think they're still pretty good. Unlike Google, which I think kind of screws to continue to be committed to them. I think they're still pretty good. Unlike Google, which I think kind of screws up a lot of their acquisitions. I don't think Amazon tends to do that. So anyway, I thought that was a big story. Yep. Absolutely. I think so as well. Let's jump right over to you, Adam. I don't get to talk about the Canada drink replica there? Oh yeah, please do. I want to hear about it.

We took the coolest product category out of the lineup. But for you, we'll do it. So this device is basically straight out of Star Trek. If you guys are Star Trek fans, you may have heard of the food replicator that they had in one of the stories. This is essentially a device that basically they're calling it a beverage printer. So at some point, the guy behind it, a guy named Dave Freiberg, realized that looking at research, about 2% of any beverage is the flavor molecules, 1% to 2%. And the rest of it's just like liquids and sugar, most of it's water. And so he realized he could basically create a cartridge that basically prints any beverage, fruit juices, coffees, alcohol, and basically create a device that will print almost any beverage.

And so they're going to be shipping this thing, I think, this year, 2023, next year. And basically it's a beverage replicator. And I think at some point they think they're going to go into food as well, but I just thought that was a pretty crazy advice. We'll see if it actually works. Have you got any early, preview of this? I think they might bring one to CES, but I have yet to see one. I don't think they've really shown anyone the device yet. So. Sounds awesome. This is fascinating to hear him talk about this product that basically at the middle molecular level, you're able to kind of combine the right ingredients to create virtually any beverage, which just seems almost impossible.

And so I'm hoping that this isn't, you know, like one of those things that never happens because I really want to see this come to fruition gets bought by coke and thrown into the vault yeah yeah it'll just be yeah kirk buys it and tries to make it in a pods or something a little screwed up but yeah we'll see right very cool very cool all right uh let's jump over to you adam what was your um biggest story of the year? So I would, I also had two things. I would say, since we were talking about alcohol, the hangover from the supply chain woes, I would say it's still definitely going on. And, you know, the ripple effect is real.

Or just like people blaming COVID for things still two years later. Um, but you know, it's still hard to get parts. Um, and I think, you know, a number of products and things are still haven't shipped because of that. Um, so I think that's still a very major thing that, you know, from a day to day of, you know, my life is still going on. The other one I think is, is matter. And, you know, I'll let Gavin dive into that more. Cause I know he wants to talk about it too, but you know, just getting delayed and kind of holding out. I was at a conference, a smart home conference earlier this year, and it almost kind of felt like we didn't have anything to talk about because we're still just kind of like waiting, waiting. And even though it's here, like it's not here.

Like, so I'll let others expand. But, you know, it still feels like a little bit of a waiting pattern, even though it has officially launched. I'll just use my time here to quickly bounce off of what you said about the supply chain shortage. It's affecting everyone also as well. It still affects us in the integration space, in the distribution space, just getting products that we used to just take for granted and they would be there. They're not on the shelves right now. I think the biggest story for this last year for the integration space has been like a labor shortage that has just been really tough for the guys in the industry to kind of work around.

And a lot of them are waking up and realizing, I need an exit strategy here. And, you know, I'm not getting any younger and this is, this job isn't getting any easier. So I think that that is, uh, going to continue to be kind of like be one of the bigger things through, through the next couple of years. This isn't, neither one of these things is an easy solve, but labor is probably one of the harder things to get over to have somebody qualified and brought into a job and that kind of thing. So we'll be interested to see what happens there, um, moving forward. So, um, just kind of bouncing around the room here, TJ, uh, what have you got for the biggest story of the year? Yeah. One of the biggest stories for me this past year has been the, uh, Sonos versus Google fight and now the Google versus Sonos

fight. Um, you know, at the beginning, very beginning very beginning of this year, Sonos won a patent infringement case against Google, which ceased a lot of features that people got used to on their very inexpensive or free smart home devices. One of the biggest things was group volume basically just disappeared. And you had to control everything, you know, through individual devices at that point. That's still going on. You know, I don't think we're going to come to any kind of conclusion anytime soon. We're just going to keep seeing these giants sue each other over, you know, basically basic features at this point. When you buy a smart home speaker, you kind of assume that you'll be able to control the volume all at the same time.

And if one company owns that, then you don't have that feature anymore, unless you pay to license it or find some way around it. So I think that was one of the biggest stories for me this year, just because it directly impacted what we do every single day. I have to comment on that. Because I know that that – I mean listening back to old episodes, Mike and I talked about these very issues like six, seven years ago with these very companies. Like they have been fighting it out for years and years on the capabilities of smart speakers. And I just get so frustrated when I hear stuff like this, because it, you know, it, you go back to that example of, oh, well, you know, I want to use a wheel to let people steer my vehicle too. So am I going to have to pay a licensing fee to the guy that came up with the idea that, oh, let's use a round thing to steer. I mean, it's just ridiculous these days. Yeah. And I think it's one of those stories,

too, where it's like nobody like nobody has a good idea of what the good solution for it is. Right. And it's such a polarizing topic, no matter who you ask, that everybody has a different opinion on how it should actually work. So it's it seems like a pretty big deal to me at this point. Lawyers. It's all going to end up, it's money for lawyers. They're just going to feed lawyers for years and years and years. Yeah. Patents should be like drugs.

You should, you know, it should expire after so many years and then, you know, there should be a generic volume feature for group speakers. agree uh gavin got you in here uh what was your biggest story this year uh this was an easy one for me when you gave it to me matter and the reason why i say that is because every week when we're preparing for the home tech podcast we you know have a matter story and so many times i gotta fight with you to even talk about it you don't want to talk about it you you i gotta fight with you to get it on there. You don't want to talk about it. I got to fight with you to get it on there. But Matter has been the most talked about thing this year, I feel. And, you know, the funny part about it is that we don't actually have anything.

A lot of it's been speculation. A lot of it's, you know, people are already saying what's not going to work with Matter. And we don't even know that yet. Right. But it's been the most talked about thing. I think it's one of the biggest stories of this year for me and i think it's going to be one of the biggest stories at ces 2023 too like it's going to be all over the place at ces this year it was a big story at ces 2022 okay but there will

actually be stuff prototypes anyway prototype stuff if the supply chain doesn't keep disrupting everything yeah true i have put a tag on our show notes that has Matter next to it, but it has the clown emoji next to it. So every time it comes up, Gavin's like, let's talk about this. And I'm like, okay, it's a Matter story. It's going to get the clown emoji. It feels like it's the way if you could just replace the words Matter with HomeKit. I'm just, if I could rewind four or five years ago, I feel like it's the same thing. Adam would have said.

Yeah, yeah. HomeKit's going to be huge at CES this year in 2019. That's like every year it's going to be huge. So we'll see. And, but, but in finally in 21 and 22, it was like 21 and 22, 21 in particular was kind of all about HomeKit. Yeah, and what they've dreamt up, I mean, Adam, correct me if I'm wrong, but like Matter feels very close to HomeKit. In fact, Apple brags about donating some of their source code and everything, kind of the framework for HomeKit towards Matter.

I don't know how much of that actually is, you know, true at this point, but, and how much it is marketing fluff, but like it does have a similar setup process from what we were getting from HomeKit. And that's really what I have seen Matter to be, is not so much anything that interests me as somebody who has technology in my house, but as a consumer going to buy something at the store, having a device I can pick up and bring into my house and it just works with whatever i got running that sounds that actually sounds pretty good uh and it's a

little bit of protection for me at the end of the day i guess was i right about that was it not very different yeah yeah more and this is why i think it's the biggest story is because I just mentioned it and look at the debate it caused. It's a bold move. All right. Well, now that Gavin's won that round, let's move on here to our next big question. Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I clicked off Richard. I'm sorry i know i know i'm so sorry you can't skip richard his name green on on accident i should have leave this for the

bloopers richard i knew this story was going to come up i just didn't know where but what was your big story of uh of 2022 yeah i mean generally i think it would be fair to say that there have been a lot of losses of smart home companies this year. I think every other week we were reporting about one or another company of oftentimes stuff that we really liked that was going to be shut down. And then there was one standout there which gave no notice whatsoever to anyone. And that was when smart labs shuttered all operations, including turning off the servers that let their Insteon hubs actually do anything in smart homes. And so you had –

But when? When did they do this, Richard? The date? Yeah. It was – oh, right. It was my birthday. Yeah. That was my birthday present.

Also my holiday weekend. Yeah, it was Easter weekend. It was Easter weekend. So yeah, it was bonkers. I had reason to believe that Smart Labs was having problems and there were rumors going around that maybe they were looking to get purchased. And we learned after the fact that, in fact, a lot of that was true. But literally, they just ran it out until they couldn't hold on anymore, sold the assets off to basically a, call it a holding company, if you will, but for the transference of assets and had no control anymore, didn't have the ability to actually communicate to people at that point because they weren't in control.

And the holder of the assets is like, okay, well, turn it off. And so they did. So we had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of homes with these devices in them. And of course, the devices still work fine as physical things, but your timers and any automation and that sort of stuff that you had set up that didn't work anymore. And man, what a bad, bad mar on the industry at large. Like, I think this did a lot to raise attention to the fact that, wow, the cloud is, everybody's been saying cloud could be dangerous, cloud could be dangerous. And I think this has people perhaps unfairly questioning the viability of the cloud as a platform now for smart home. it wasn't so much that the equipment would stop working because your gear inside your house was all locally controlled had a local api with with with was with one way or another had a local api

i think they did have some cloud integration but if you if your device went bad like if the hub went bad or you needed to set up a new device or configure a new device, the app that talks to with all that had to talk to a server in the cloud first. And if it didn't do that, nothing worked. And so like everybody who had a system was just put on a big, you know, pause button until, and I guess, you know, like a Phoenix from the ashes, it came, came rising out a couple of weeks later. But I, you know, that that's the other side of the story is that they did eventually start bringing services back online. And I'm not sure where they stand now. Have they been able to start shipping hardware? Yeah. So just a quick update there. I mean,

when you say they, it's different they. Different they, yeah. Somebody who used to be an executive at the company found some partners to pull together to purchase the assets that were available. And so you had people who knew the product and they hired some of the key resources that knew how to make this stuff run, brought it back up again without any notice, and then reached out to people and said, OK, there's someone at the helm now and we're going to try and get product in. And they do have product available now. They're basically strategically selling off reserves that they had and stock that was available.

And they are expecting new product in and getting new product in gradually over time. So, you know, it's good news to people who are using Insteon. I'm not currently using Insteon. I had moved and I hadn't installed Insteon stuff yet. I was actually waiting for the Nokia stuff that Smart Labs had announced. And who knows if we'll ever see that now. It would be a big disappointment if we don't see that hit the shelves right yeah right yeah all right anybody else all right let's let's move on here uh

our next series in the question here uh 20 the 2021 predictions and and looking back and seeing how we did what we were predicting was going to happen this year, 2022, we've got a little bit of handicap here. We've got Gavin, TJ, and Mike who weren't on the show last year, but we're going to bring them in a little bit to talk about anything that may have anticipated happening in 2022 that happened or didn't happen. But for Richard, Adam, and myself, we all kind of looked back at the show last year. Richard, you had Matter Will Be Messy. I think you get a checkmark for there, because about halfway. Yeah, I think I, even though it didn't technically result in product yet, it was messy. Oh, yeah. And even if it's just on communications, it's been messy.

We got delayed halfway through the year. I mean, it was just like, oh, we're going to do this. We're on hold again. I mean, I was actually happy about the delay because I'm one that like, I'd rather you sit on something and get it right than rush it out too fast and have it be even more messy. So I think that's been fine. I was okay with that. The part that's been messy for me is like all of the things that seem like they should have been matter compatible. The one I'm a little bit salty about is I bought a Schlage Encode Plus lock, which has a radio in

there that should be matter compatible. And they just decided, yeah, we're not going to do that. And there's really probably no reason why they can't support it they could support over wi-fi you could support it over thread and they're just like yeah let's sell some more locks let's make a new model what are you going to do there's only two companies that make locks i mean you're going to go to the other guys right yeah particularly what i'm what i'm particularly when there's already wi-fi in it right it's not like you have to have a thread radio if you have Wi-Fi on your device. Right. But I mean, I don't remember trying to think what else. There were like a bunch of thread devices that were like, yep, we're not going to do it. So I think that's been really

frustrating. I think for anybody that thought that legacy devices were going to get more forward compatibility support. And I think like, we're just touching the tip of the iceberg on this one, because I think my in general, you know, prediction is most of the things you think will be compatible probably won't be. And these companies are going to use matter as a reason to make you buy new stuff. And people are going to be really mad about that. Yep. I agree.

I agree. Well, your prediction, Adam, was Matter would roll out. And you put, hopefully, parentheses there. I mean, technically. You get two check marks for that one, yeah. The standard is out, right? I mentioned supply chain issues. Continuing and hoping we'd have some kind of resolution,

I guess, half a check mark. I don't know. Maybe. We're still having the supply chains. And I don't think, I don't know. There's a couple of devices that we are starting to see. I didn't think we'd ever see again. I thought the company would just stop making them like a big company. And no, they're trying. They're trying to get stuff back in the market. So it's just going to be time. Well, I tend to think that what we're seeing is that areas of the supply chain that we weren't anticipating are now getting impacted. That areas of supply chain, just in anything, like the great peanut butter shortage of 2022, right? Like you have one company that has a recall and suddenly you can't buy peanut butter anywhere for months.

It's just bonkers how kind of decimated our overall supply chain has been. We all used to be so blissfully ignorant and spoiled with all of our, you know, just in time things. Right, right. We had no idea how good we had it. No idea, no idea. And if this wasn't a fireside chat, the great peanut butter, what was it?

That would be our title. The great peanut butter shortage of 2022. 2022, yeah. It was a big deal. Yep, yep. Baby formula and peanut butter. peanut butter yeah well i don't have a baby so yeah it's a little less a little less worrisome but i i mean that was kind of weird to you know kind of i have been on the other side of that for a little while and don't need that anymore but But man, I can only imagine the stress that causes. I mean, there were a couple of times we went where we're like, oh, we're low on this baby formula. It's

just powder, you know, like, okay, but you got to have it. It's like, go find it. And then you're at three different stores. You're trying to find this very specific brand that the child will eat. Anyway, Gavin, do you have anything that you were predicting there? I don't see anything here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What were you expecting? Yeah, I didn't really have anything official. But, you know, just to jump on Richard, you mentioned Matter was messy.

I totally was thinking that last year. And I still am just waiting to see how one of the big companies are going to screw up matter you know and make it not work for us how we want it to work so something like google i don't know amazon but uh the one thing i was expecting this year was actually have some matter devices to play with you know i remember thinking at the end of last year you know 2022 i'm gonna have something and i'm gonna you know buy a whole bunch of them and test out the mesh and get that all going. And you know what? We still don't have it. So I guess that didn't work out for me. Hey, did you order some of the Sonoff plugs or Maros plugs? I think it is. Not yet. I don't want, I don't want the companies that are rushing. I want to wait until it gets out a bit more. Cause I'm going to have to buy

a whole bunch of them. I really want to test out like test out like um how well when you have a lot of them on the mesh how they perform you know having one i could see it working instantly working well but when you have 50 i'm not saying we'll buy 50 but if you do have 50 you can see i want to see how it performs very good very good um tj you've got um a prediction here that you thought was going to come true. Yeah. You know, I was thinking 2022 would be kind of the year of lighting. And I would think that's true in some sort of way. You know, we saw a bunch of new companies come out with LED lights or we saw professional companies like Crestron release, you know, circadian rhythm lighting controls. Um, I think control for release, um, addressable led light fixtures as well. Um, so we're, we're getting there. I don't think it

was that big of a focus for a lot of people, but we saw some new products that I think, you know, we're frankly deserved in the home automation space and maybe that we didn't have before. Um, one of the bigger updates, I think everybody is kind of happy about is the, uh, the new Lutron Caseta dimmer and switch, um, and how they actually look like, you know, a regular light switch now. Yeah. I mean, it's not like a Pico that they shoved into a box. Um, so you know, a lot of, a lot of cool new lighting projects and products. And I think we'll keep seeing that. Very good. And Mike, you got anything that you were thinking that was going to happen in the last year that may or may not have happened over 2022? No, I would say I experienced the shortages a lot of you guys talked about.

I had a hard time getting hold of encodes. I have like four of those smart locks that I'm using across a couple of different places. So I experienced it as a user, supply chain shortages. I would say that the, I did say that there was a lack of innovation happening around kind of smart kitchen and cooking technology. I think we've seen kind of the, we've gone through the hype cycle and we're a little bit in the trough of disillusionment, if you're going to put it into Gartner terms. And, but I do think I'm starting to

see some interesting inklings of potentially interesting innovations that we'll potentially see next year and the year after. So I just kind of feel like the industry contracted a little bit. We're seeing a little bit of pullback from big companies, both like on the appliance side and the consumer electronics side in terms of investing in, in kind of smart products. But I think, uh, I think we might see a comeback a little bit in 2023, 2024. Yeah. I can say I've kind of felt the same way on, on the home side this last year, especially on the pro space.

There really, there really hasn't been much innovation. Like TJ has mentioned that we got LED lighting. Like, okay. Like, but there really hasn't been much moving forward in that space to get excited about. It's kind of like, oh, it's the same old product and not much to talk about. So, I mean, I think we're in the midst of a recession potentially. I think a lot of big companies are cutting back. And I think you see like the big guys cutting back on all their big risks. So, you know, the kind of the, the moonshot types of deals, like, like from Google and Amazon, they're all cutting

those. I think they're cutting employees. So I think you're seeing less moonshots now. You're seeing some crazy ideas, like maybe more robots or something, because I think that's just a steady march forward of like automation and robotics but there's just less risk taking right now yeah yeah for sure well i i have one beef uh to take up with with uh richard and adam and that's last year we talked that we said that wise was going to go out of business and i immediately went to their store and purchased these wise socks and i thought these were going to be a collector collector's edition boy was i wrong yeah yeah and and uh i mean oddly Oddly enough, somehow Wink is also still alive. Wink is still alive?

I feel like I was Austin Powers catatonic in a coma for three years on Smart Home. And I wake up and Wink is still alive? What the hell? Right. I mean, it went offline quite a bit, if I'm remembering correctly. For a while. For a month or two. And then it's like, yeah, we're back.

So it's kind of a weird one. they going to do another super bowl ad oh man they're they're ads were oh i'm sure they don't they were the creepy robot do you guys remember the creepy i tell people about that constantly no one remembers it but i i try to find that video i think it's been scrubbed off the internet no it's definitely seth found it a couple months ago yeah it I think it's been scrubbed off the internet. No, it's definitely on YouTube. Seth found it a couple months ago. It was a parallel universe that only Mike and Seth existed in. There was a great split. Ah, that's too good.

All right. Well, in the sake of time, let's move on here, guys. Let's talk about what are you most looking forward to in 2023? This is our deep dive into the crystal balls and everybody look in and see what we're looking forward to seeing happening in the next year. Adam, let's kick it off with you. I'm looking forward to actually being able to buy home automation devices again. I mean, I guess we'll see what people release, but i've definitely been in that same holding pattern

because i didn't want to buy anything until stuff is matter compatible like i used to be like i wouldn't buy it if it wasn't home kit um or i wouldn't buy it if it didn't support all three major ecosystems now like i'm waiting for anything major i'm doing in home automation. The big one being I'd like to do some smart blinds and that can be a pricey purchase. And so I definitely want to make sure that's going to be Matter compatible. Sounds good. Gavin, let's jump to your predict,

what you're most looking forward in 2023. Well, I'm going to pick a non-Matter one in this case. I'm looking forward to Home Assistant. They're claiming it's going to be the year of voice. They announced this at the last state of the open home. They brought in Raspi as their smart assistant, open source smart assistant. And they're going to be working closely together with them

to build their own version of the 8MADMA or the Google thing. And I'd like to see where they go with that. I'm looking forward to it. That and this open AI thing that everybody's talking about, I'm seeing it all over my feed. I've watched a number of YouTube videos about it. It's scary in a way how good it is, but it's also bringing us one step closer to getting our very own jarvis so that's what i'm looking forward to see where they go with that i'm with you i'm very bullish on ai right now i feel like you know we're at the point where it's going to hit the exponential curve and the next five years are going to be really interesting in that space if not scary maybe scary exciting scary exciting it's gonna be scary when it starts to blackmail me about

things it's gonna tell my wife when i did she did it wasn't she wasn't home you know like stuff like that like the questions people are asking it and what it's bringing back is amazing and you know if it's integrated into a smart home where you don't even have, you know, you could ask it to do things or it will just know when you leave. I'm just going to, you know, turn out and do all this stuff for you and wait for you to arrive. It will be amazing to see what they come up with. Gavin, back to your voice thing for home Assistant. I mean, what's your thought on adding yet another voice assistant into the mix when nobody else has really been able to crack what the big three have done?

I think this one's going to allow you to customize it a lot more. Like right now I feel like I'm at the mercy when it comes to, you know, the A-Lady and the Google. Like I can wake up one day and sell it to open my curtains, and it will do it. And the next day, it won't because it now thinks they're blinds, right? Like, this one, you can program it a lot more. You can get a lot more custom with it. You could do a lot more things with it.

And that's why I like to hack away at things. And that's why I'm very interested to see where they go with this. The other thing you got to remember with all the voice assistants is there's a lot of tech that goes into those microphones, those little devices that, you know, so they can hear you better and stuff. And that's where I'm not sure like how they're going to tackle that. They might partner or have some recommended hardware. But again, they're putting a big focus on this with Home Assistant next year. And I'm just going to see where they go with it. Somebody just hijacked the screen.

All right. We're going to go back to OpenAI for a second. I knew I should have turned off screen sharing. Chat GPT. Yep. I just asked Chat GPT to write us a poem about smart home technology in 2023. So here I'm going to read you the poem that AI generated in 2023. Our homes are smart with technology at the heart. Doors that lock and lights that dim, all with just a simple whim. Voice commands and touchscreen panels control at every aspect without fail. Refrigerators that know what we need and even make our coffee at top speed. I think it knew what to include for you, Mike.

Security cameras that watch with care, ensuring our safety beyond compare. Thermostats that adjust all on their own, saving energy as we sit and bemoan. The future is here in our smart homes, making life easier as we roam through endless possibilities of technologies and its bounties. Well, it's better than I would have done. No, right.

I mean, that's really damn good, right? You should see the essays that comes up. Plus, I want that. Can we have that next year? That's the prediction I want essays that come up. Plus, I want that. Can we have that next year? That's the prediction I want to have come true. I mean, if they could somehow put that into Siri or Amazon, Alexa, or even the Google list, like put that in there to where it doesn't go, like Siri, you tell her to do something. It's like, mm-hmm, yeah, on it.

Oh, Seth, man, the comic memes that you've been posting are just amazing and so true. So frigging true. I had today, today, I asked her to turn off the Christmas trees. And the response was, at what time? Now. At what time? Right now. Cancel. At what time right now cancel it's like at what time it's like that space balls theme right now like that open ai thing is just so scary because i was talking to uh ty in the um our in the hub and we actually asked it to create a python script for home assistant to control a light and it spit out a full python script that

i didn't run it it looked correct though um and i was okay see this is the thing that worries me you're gonna have something you don't know writing code that people may just run without understanding what it does that doesn't terrify people no i i know i'm just being nice to it from now so it remembers me later on i i i i know where it's getting its code from and i'm not worried too much about it like it's uh it's it's got a lot of stack overflow to look through but it you know there's a lot of wrong answers in there so all right um let's let's jump over to you richard and talk about what you are most hopeful for here in 2023 yeah i think this is probably pretty common to whether other people are thinking as well too but i think we're going to see an onslaught of new products next year i think a lot

of companies have been holding back because of Matter and waiting to see what's happening there. I don't necessarily think that this means everything is going to be Matter compatible. I just think that product cycles are going to get back on track again, whether the company has decided to go with or not with Matter compatibility, a lot of just the same way that many consumers have been holding back on buying. I think also I've seen companies holding out on putting out new products until things kind of shake out. So I expect we're going to see a ton of new products,

which will be a nice contrast to what we had this year because it, I mean, frankly, I think this year has been boring as new products go. The most exciting new thing this year to me was probably a keypad from uh leviton uh and well and learning how to pronounce leviton properly that was exciting too and the the other thing might be the sonos sub like the sub mini i think that's kind of cool too but otherwise i think this has been a boring year so i look forward to cool new products and i am ready to buy looking forward to buy sonos headphones next year if they ever release those so yeah yeah yeah i know i know i still don't understand this use case i really don't i it's kind of interesting that the supply chain crunch and everything happened alongside

this you know matter matter, this push for matter because everything did get put on hold for supply chain and then also got put on hold at the same time, roughly, to see how matter was going to shake out. And it's kind of interesting that it's kind of like matter gets introduced now and whether it matters or not, I don't know. But there's definitely pent-up demand, and we're going to see an influx of people purchasing stuff next year. Everybody's talking about getting the new stuff. So I'm excited about that, too.

It will be interesting to see new product finally being announced and hitting the shelves. That will be nice. There we go. Matter saves the economy. No recession after all. No recession. It's done.

All right. TJ, what do you got for next year? Yeah, I think next year we're going to see some new locks. You know, smart locks for your house are pretty boring as they sit. And a lot of times. From which of the two companies? Well, that's the thing, right? I think there'll be some new companies that actually come out and release new stuff.

You know, we've had a couple of companies like Lockley or UltraLock kind of get into the smart home space. And from what I hear, those products, they're pretty good already. But I think there's some concern, and I think it's a little overblown myself, about the physical security of some of the locks as well. If you've been on YouTube at all, you've probably stumbled across, you know, the lock picking lawyer, and how it takes them two and a half seconds to pick any lock that comes across his desk.

But I think there's a valid argument there when you're spending, you know, three or $400 on a lock that the physical security of it should be taken care of as well. And I don't know if we're going to see it from those larger companies, you know, Allegiant and whoever owns QuickSet at this point. Assa Ablu. Yeah, Assa, that's right. But I think we'll see some new companies come into it and maybe some features we haven't seen before. I think they're kind of restricted because that space is heavily IP protected.

I remember talking to Jason Johnson, the founder of August, and they did basically what they called a smart lock robot where they basically couldn't even really get into the deadbolt part. But they put a wrap around the deadbolt because they were worried about patent infringement. So I think part of the problem is there's just two companies and they have a whole lot of IP protecting their portfolio. So I've always thought about that space. mike mike thanks let's move on to you um you and i have one particular pick of next year that we're super excited about but let's go ahead and i i can't tell you i'll let you introduce it my daughter and i want to go see this thing, but I'm just waiting. I'm hoping in 2023, I get some Kickstarter projects. I backed in 2018, like a smart container called silo. I don't know, Richard, if you back that one, but this is why I gave up on Kickstarter.

I know it's I'm still waiting on like two or three projects, you know, but I think kind of just talking to things like smart containers, I do think I'm excited about the idea of smart technology, enabling us to waste less things like food, helping us our fridges to maybe help us be a little more efficient. And so I think we're going to see some of that hopefully in 2023. And hopefully speaking of wasting less, there's, there's a company called coffee B that's actually come out with this really cool biodegradable coffee pod.

I've always drank Keurig. I like Nespresso, but I've always hated the plastic waste I put into the waste stream. And they're coming out with this completely biodegradable coffee pod, which has nothing to do with smart. But you asked me one of the things I'm excited about. Some of these new technologies. No, it's food tech. It's totally food tech. I'm shocked that it's taken this long.

I don't understand why this is such a hard problem. Oh, with regards to – I thought you were talking about my smart container from Silo. Where is that? No, no, no. With regard to the biodegradable pods, I don't understand why it's such a hard problem. They figured this out for dog poop bags. Why can't they do it for curry pods? Exactly.

And it's not like it's a wet good. It's basically a dry good that's not eating at the container. So, yeah, it always is kind of a shocker. And they say it's recyclable. Who's actually recycling their pods? eye good that's not eating at the container. So yeah, it always is kind of a shocker. And they say it's recyclable. Who's actually recycling their pods? There's like maybe five people in America that are picking these things apart. I did it for a week.

You know what a pain in the butt that is. Well, don't you have to take off the topping? Oh, you have to take off the top. You have to tear out the net. You have to rinse it all out. Yeah, if it makes people work, they're not going to do it. The coffee You have to tear out the net. You have to rinse it all out. Anything that makes it. Yeah. If it makes people work, they're not going to do it. The coffee ball thing looks pretty good though.

I like that. Yeah. Isn't it just made out of like seaweed or something too. So you can basically like eat it or something if you really. Yeah. Wanted to. It's yeah. It's compostable.

So it basically is a natural container is compostable, throw it in your compost bin and it'll biodegrade. But that's enough about that. I want to get to Seth, what you're excited about. Oh, definitely. I mean, Mike, I have to admit, I stole this from your newsletter the other day. I watched this and said, oh my God,

this is going to be great. Cocaine bear. Amazing. Amazing. Like two words, cocaine and bear. You never thought you'd see them together. Evidently it's a true story. Like there's, there's a bear that got hopped up on cocaine and went on a killing spree. Yeah. And forget snakes on snakes on a plane. We're talking about

cocaine and bears and it is a true story. Yeah. That's the crazy part. So there's a movie coming out next year, February, I think is what it was. Looks like a nice gory movie for sure. And it involves a bear. Is this a sci-fi channel? Or sorry, Siffy channel special? I struggled to make a connection to my area as well, but I just said, screw it. I'm going to talk about Cocaine Bear,

even though it has nothing to do with Smurro. I mean, I think this would be a good theater demo for one. So I think this is one of those things that, you know, it's got some jump scares. I'm sure that could come up in there. I mean, it has a serious Sharknado vibe. I don't know. I mean, it's their own.

It's Universal Pictures. So, I mean, it seems like they do some fun stuff. And I can't wait. I go to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. So they've got to have a cocaine bear section next year for Halloween Horror Nights and have coked up bears chasing you around or something. I don't know. Anyway, we've got big news this week. My new fiber connection is coming in.

So very excited about that actually being something. But I think we talked about this a little bit. I'm very, very interested in what happens in the business side of for the Amazon voice assistant and Google voice assistant products next year, where they they've got to figure out how their products aren't costing their companies billions of dollars. And, you know, the story that came out that everybody references and talks about Alexa on track to losing, you know, 10 billion this year. But it also said Google is kind of in the same spot. And since they made their products low-cost, get-it-out-the-door type products at or below cost sales, they're having business problems with these particular parts of their companies.

And I'm very curious to see what happens with, with those products next year, whether the price goes up on them, uh, could be probably the most sensible thing to happen, but I don't know how many people are going to be excited about a, you know, $200 Amazon echo. Uh, it doesn't, doesn't seem like it's where it started. Well, yeah didn't it the tube i think it was like it was a 200 product when it first came out i have that's the one that's the one i actually have back over there uh and it is in the uh the museum because we we bought it and i threw away the packaging unfortunately but the packaging was all nice and everything but it it could go back

that direction or they could figure out some other way to make money with it that involves advertising because that's what everybody has to do. You have to be an advertising company. I'm sure the coffee pods people, coffee balls people will figure out how to advertise on their coffee balls. I don't understand. I really don't understand the push to advertising. Like the mentality is you can't have a successful company unless you advertise and sell out your data to people. And I really hope that we're able to, as a society, get past that in the future at some point. And on that note, let's take a break for our sponsors.

No, just kidding. Yeah. Oh, actually, we were going to do that, and we forgot to. Whoops. Yeah. Coffee balls. Brought to you by coffee balls. I'm going to, no, no, I'm'm gonna stay away from the snl skit i i do think that it's going to be interesting to see how they pull this off i mean the obvious

step is stop making stupid hardware like cameras for people's closets right i think they've made a couple of really bad decisions in terms of hardware. I think on one show, it might have been yours, Seth, I think somebody was talking about the roaming drone camera. That's not actually an Echo product. That's a Ring product. And we've heard nothing about that since they talked about it a year and a half ago. So we're almost two years ago now. So I'll be curious if that ever comes out. But I just think they need to look more like the stuff that they come out with the assistant in it.

You're like, why? Why do I need a clock on the wall with the assistant in it? Why do I need this device or that device? I just they need to be more strategic. And you're right. The advertising, it's not going to be tenable. Consumers are not going to want advertising. They don't even like – and by the way, which isn't even advertising.

It's a suggestion. And by the way is their way of trying to get you to do more with the assistant. But consumers don't want that either. By the way, by the way, it makes me so angry when they do that. Because I'm usually asking, by the way, I'm usually asking Alexa to set a 15-minute timer so I could take a nap or something. And then it goes, by the way. Blood pressure goes up. I can't sleep.

Richard, where do you put – There's a hack there. Where do you put that? There's a hack there. You tell her to stop by the way. Oh, really? I just say, shut up. I yell at it angrily.

But where do you put the Astro Robot that was, I think, announced last year? Is that a – I think that was a pet – that was a Jeff Bezos pet project. But you think that will survive? That's another moonshot project. From everything I read, it never worked right and they ended up buying iRobot anyway so i think they're gonna have a better robot true oh that's a very good point i've completely forgot about yeah yeah i don't think it was doing very well in the first place but um yeah we'll see if that ever comes to vision i i was encouraged actually richard to your point there on this last Amazon event, there

was some very metered updates to core products and they did not have any, they had one weird product that was like a sleep, sleep thing. Um, and it actually had a subscription with it. So it's like everything they did was, was like, okay, these are, okay, these are our core branded products. But there wasn't anything like out there like the clock or the microwave or anything like that. It was just very – the basics of the basics. We're updating this stuff. Here you go.

And nothing too fancy over the top of that. So that's kind of nice. Yeah. Although, again, I'll predict the sleep thing is going to be a failure. Yeah. I mean $4 a month or whatever to watch you sleep. Like, that's just ridiculous.

Uh, well, maybe they'll start sending advertisements through it or something. So anyway, uh, speaking of advertisements and promotion, uh, that,

that kind of wraps up, uh, the, the, the fire's getting low here and, we're all out of logs to throw on it. So, um,

let's, let's talk about where each, each one of us can be found on the interwebs out there. It's getting a little tricky to find people these days, but let's start with you, Adam. Adam, where can people find and follow you and see what you're up to these days? At Adam Justice on Twitter, if you're still there. We can make predictions about that one later. What's your Mastodon handle? I'm late to the Mastodon party.

Well, we've got you, buddy. Yeah. And ConnectSense.com for our smart home devices. And of course, check out the Smart Home Show on your favorite podcast client. Gavin, where can people find out about what you're up to and how much you're liking Home Assistant? Oh yeah, I'm loving my Home Assistant. You can hear all about it on our new- Yeah, this week.

This week. Oh yeah, this week, yes. This week, I'm really loving it. But you can hear all about it on our Mastodon channel. You can find me at Gavin Campbell at home tech dot social or on Twitter at GVM Campbell or home tech dot FM. You know, that's where the podcast is. And Mike, where, where can people follow you and find out what you're,

what you're interested in at Michael Wolf on Google, Google buzz and, and JQ. Do you have an orchchid account somewhere? And Orchid. And Twitter and post.news. And thespoon.tech. That's our website. Awesome.

Richard. All right. Well, when they put out new episodes of Home On, you can find them over at thedigitalmediazone.com. Of course, the Smart Home Show as well with Adam. And I'm done with Twitter.com. Of course, the Smart Home Show as well with Adam. And I am – I'm done with Twitter. Unless something major happens, I have completely stopped interacting with Twitter. Have you moved over Annoyed Richard yet? Is Annoyed Richard still on Twitter?

All the personalities. No one is talking over there. All the voices in my head are silenced and I am in the process of gradually downloading all of my data from my various accounts. But I have set up home on twit.social and I am Richard Gunther. I am the only Richard Gunther on Mastodon right now. So it shouldn't be too hard to find me there. Not hard to find, yeah. TJ, where can people find about you?

Yeah, you can find me on our hometech.social Mastodon server, tj.hometech.social. You can also find me at our website, connectu.tech, or over at the podcast, hometech.fm. And I guess that leaves me.

Again, we'll mention our Mastodon server, which we have gotten up and going because we sold all of our car stock and stuff, stocks and whatever. And we just put all our money into this one basket here. So really hoping this thing pays off somehow. It's a home tech, not social. I'm at Seth over there. It's pretty easy to find. And I do want to mention something this time last year, I was wrapping up a year of podcasting solo and I reached out into the podcast cosmos and asked for a little bit of help like on a friday just on a whim and uh saturday morning these two guys tj and uh and gavin were both messaging with within like minutes of each other it was crazy uh saying they wanted to help out and we got them on i think starting in january we all got together and just kind of found our voice learned all about yaml we even

podcasted from a remote that t had. We talked about Jamaican patties. Pawpaws had no idea these things even existed. Turns out they're there. We've had a crazy year of buying domains and setting up social networks and stuff. I don't know. I just do want to thank you guys for helping out on the podcast and making it an outstanding 2022. So thank you very much, guys. I really do appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. The show has been a lot of fun. I still yell out in the air a lot when I listen, but I've always done that.

Now I just yell more at TJ than myself. I'm glad I can be of service. And you know what? Being in the hub, you know, met a lot of cool people and it's been fun in the hub. We have a lot of jokes in the hub and you learn a lot from various people. And it's always nice to be able to just pick someone's brain, you know, in the hub. So if you're not in the hub, you know, you have to be in there. And if you're going to Cedia next year, you might see all three of us there.

So there's a good chance we'll be able to hang out together. I don't know about you, Mike, but I don't know. If you're going to Cedia, there might be a chance you see all five of us there, maybe? Adam, what do you think? Where is it? Is it in Florida or is it Denver? Denver? Next year.

It's in Denver. What do you think, Adam? Richard, you're coming out of the bubble? I mean, come on. September next year? Come on. Please tell me. Let's add it to our predictions. Yeah, I'm in. That'd be fun. I'm skipping CES this year, though. I'm not excited about the idea of getting together with a whole host of people from all over the world that I don't know. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I continue to say we're all really lucky that CES 2020 wasn't ground zero.

I'm not convinced it wasn't, but there's a lot of people from – Yeah, I mean, I think we're lucky that we survived it is probably, right? Yeah. Very true. All right. Well, this was awesome as always. Thank you all. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. And I hope you guys, this was awesome as always. Thank you all. Yeah.

Thanks, everybody. And I hope you guys have a happy holiday and have a happy new year. Thank you, guys. Thank you. A lot of fun. Happy holidays. Bye.