HomeTech.fm - Episode 451 - CEDIA 2023

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

On this week's show: Gavin, TJ, & Seth are back from the big show in Denver to share all we have seen and experienced at the show. Plus, bonus interviews from various vendors on the show floor. We want to thank our Happy Hour sponsors again and everyone who stopped by on Friday to make it such a great night. See you in Denver 2024!

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 15th, from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast all about home automation. No, no, it's all about the Cedia Show, which we just went to and saw each other at. And of course, Reynoldsburg, Ohio, the birthplace of the tomato. Thanks, TJ, for that fun fact before the show.

You're welcome. And I have to tell you, Seth, somebody at Cedia knew that Reynoldsburg was the birthplace of the tomato. So you can't just say I'm making it up or like nobody cares or anything because at least one person cares that I've met. All right. Well, there we go. One person and TJj knows that and

now you all know that's the important thing now we've educated you're welcome we we've done something with our it's it's kind of like how we're next to gahanna which is the herb capital of the world but it literally has nothing to do with herbs so i mean take that as you will we don't have like a giant tomato farm or anything like that now i i was in denver colorado and there there would seem to be a lot of herb uh in that that particular part of downtown that we were in is that are we talking about the same herbs i think i think it's different herbs but i think i smelled the same one in the denver airport bathroom which i was super confused about if i'm being honest with you it just smelled like canada ours has a smoky smell to it but you guys have a good up there you guys don't care as long as you can smoke uh the herbs wherever you can smoke cigarettes at so

pretty much uh you know it makes sense that you run into it in canada it's it's it's not legal uh anywhere outdoors in america so whenever you walk into it you're like oh oh tell that to people who live in denver because i don't think they they cared about that particular point of law like it was have you have you been to new york recently no i haven't oh new york is the same way but instead of instead of just herbs it smells like butt and herbs so i i got on the train because i love the train from the airport it's such a fun little train and um i got on and i'm huh, it smells a little like the train running over a skunk out here. And then I went down and I got into my hotel. I'm like, huh, that same skunk found its way into my elevator.

Oh. It sounds like you're the problem, Seth. I don't really know. If it's following you everywhere, then it must be you. It must be me, right? Right. All right. Well, yeah, we're going to get our um cds shenanigans i guess uh

here later this show is going to be a little bit um different format but uh another big piece of i guess news and everything hit today was the apple event and they had new phones and new watches and i know everyone here is so excited about that um new phones new watches is that pretty much i guess really the only thing to talk about that i mean they they kind of all expected to do everything the rumors were talking about but i think tj i think you mentioned usbc like that's kind of the the biggest and nicest upgrade i guess like because now we can just have one cable to charge everything yeah well i'm disappointed the rumors that it's not going to come with a color matched cable. I was really hoping to get a titanium white cable with my iPhone. But literally, as soon as the rumors came out that they were getting USB-C,

I told myself I was going to upgrade because I'm getting tired of dealing with many cables. And so if I get rid of my iPhone and I get rid of the wife's iPad, we don't have any reason to use anything besides USB-C. So that is the route I'm going with i guess my ipad's the only one that still has a the old lightning thing and as soon as i get the new phone which i will uh it'll make travel a lot easier travel like even going to denver was kind of a pain right because i'd have all these cables and charging different charging things every night i would charge my phone and then i or i'd forget to charge my phone i'd like slap it on the charger of course I didn't use it quite as much as I thought I was going to at the show because turns out I was talking a lot and I lost my voice probably like day two and it's barely come back

now I don't know if you guys can hear it but at least I'm not squeaking and talking like a teenager because I have no control over my vocal cords it's pretty wild I don't know I don't know if you guys can tell or not but I'm actually sick uh i feel like every time every time i go to an airport i get sick and that happened this trip so we are dealing with that now people in airports are gross yeah one of one of the first things i i got was a screenshot from somebody from cdsa and they tested positive i'm like awesome oh great yeah i don't even want to test. Don't don't tell anybody. Yeah.

Yeah. Ignorance is bliss. I guess. That's right. I don't know. The new the new shots come out next week. Stay home for a week. That's all.

You're good. I don't know if you know anything about what I do for a living, but staying home for a week after I just had 10 days off is not possible. So. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of disruptive to the small business just a little bit all right well um let's let's jump in let's talk about uh cd and and kind of like a few things from the show um that we talked that that we we saw and we we did um i guess first up home tech happy hour and

friday absolutely amazing time i i do want to thank again, grid connect, pixel vault, Menlo marketing, Chow Mein and Blackwire for stepping up and being home tech happy hours hosts. Um, that, that was awesome. Uh, I w we had a great time. I think there was like 50 or so people there's, it was like bigger than, I mean, there were people there I didn't know, right? Like, and didn't even talk to you, but it was like, uh, quite interesting. There was a lot of people I did know. And I was really happy to see, um, over the years, you know, Richard and Alan from, uh, from Chow Mein came in and they're, they're always a good time to hang out and talk with, um, Jason Griffin.

He was there. Did you guys see him? He was like home tech legend, right? Yep. Yep. Saw him when he came in. Uh, Richard was there. And I also want to thank Richard. He made this amazing like laser engraved sign. I don't know if you, if anybody, if, if, if you're not keeping up with Richard he's, he's, he's now doing this laser engraving thing. It kind of has like a habit like Gavin has his habits with, you know, the printer thing, but he's got a laser printer, freaking lasers in his printer. And like,

he made this amazing home tech uh podcast sign so it's really cool i've got it sitting right over here on my desk so thank you richard that was that was that was awesome and um yeah i james was there like from the uk of course he's a cd of board members we had cd royalty there yeah yeah there was there was all sorts of celebrities i'm telling you it, it was a great time. Yeah, you had a good combination of people, a couple of DIY people. I mean, Tokyo Jim was there. He had some reps for some big companies like Nice. Yep.

And then everybody else kind of mixed in between. So I think it was a really good combination of people. And we all just had a good time. I think I was jumping around from table to table, kind of just trying to talk to everybody I could. But I literally could have sat at like one table and talked to like two or three people the whole night so everybody just had good stuff yep gotta shout out keith too keith was there he's a local guy he came swang by hung out with us yeah i think he's a friend of richard right yeah he was there he was there that night uh fan of the show and he came uh came by the booth the next day he got in, got in. So, um, it was, it was good

seeing him, uh, and, and chatted with him quite a bit about what he does and very fun night. If you, if you're missing out on the home tech happy hour, um, you know, put it on your calendar for next year. Cause we have a lot of fun. So it's going to be in the same place or someplace similar. I don't know. Um, definitely the, the bar staff and everybody at, at uh at the rock bottom brewery is great to work with um and actually you know good drinks and everything good beers good drinks everything so yeah yeah that was a nice atmosphere if you hung around to the end you would have witnessed us getting kicked out because nobody seemed to want to leave and if you hung around even further after that you could have gone on the ice cream run with us you know seth had a craving and you know we got some ice cream after that honeycomb ice cream was so good okay yeah so

tj had the honeycomb ice cream i stuck with you know vanilla cookies and cream to be safe but uh tj had it right i gotta admit i had a little pre-scoop of that and like the next night i was craving it and so i went back the next night and got some. And then I went back the next day as well and got a pint of it. So it was very good ice cream. Could not resist. Honeycomb ice cream. Good pick, TJ. That's the pick of the week, everybody.

I feel like that's the best thing I've seen. Quite frankly, yeah. Don't tell anybody I said that. Yeah. Well, we did see some cool stuff at cd so let's go ahead and talk about a little bit of that um gavin i'll let you go first because i mean so you you walked around the show and um i i so first time there right so first time there what was your like takeaway from this what what do you think about the show in general uh well when i walked

into the state the the whole place i i looked i saw all the lights i saw all the tvs i saw all the tech i saw all the people and the first thing i thought was i'm getting covid this week that was the first thing that went through my mind i think you jinxed me then and i was ready for it i was ready to take one for the team you know so I was all out there but um it was much bigger than I really expected it to be um the first day I got through like unfortunately I didn't have a comfy pair of shoes I should have had that but the first day I got through half of it so we had like a system set up where we went down the aisles and you know we knew where we were and I got through half of it and I was like all right I'll cover the second half the next day I came back and I started where I left off and then I got lost in the middle of the floor and

I was over from there. I couldn't figure out which way I was going or anything like that. So I just followed people to booths that they said to go to and I just wandered the whole floor, but it was amazing. Saw a lot of stuff and I wasn't expecting it to be that big. Yeah. I wasn't either. It was a much larger show than I was expecting. Where I was working all week was kind of off on the side. And so I kind of had those experiences of getting lost in kind of that middle section fairly easily. You kind of just get buried in there. And you're like, oh, where am I?

And you kind of look for the Crestrons and Lutrons big boost up front to try and like oh there there's the front and that there that must be the back but yeah you definitely can get lost in there and there's there was a lot of people there this year i haven't i haven't seen official numbers yet but i'm i'm gonna guess they were back up in the 20 000 range it was it was a pretty big show yeah yeah i know my registration for nicole and i was in the 20 000 so i'd be interested to know how many people actually showed up for it it seemed like they were they were back to capacity on this one and you know i pretty much i did hear a lot of good things from other vendors uh we were busy the entire time i could barely get away to like go to the booth next, like Menlo and Pizzle Vault were right next to us.

Turns out they were like one booth over. And yeah, I could barely get away to go, you know, say hi to you guys and talk for five minutes and take pictures over there. So yeah, it was a busy show, busy show. Yeah, I think every time I went to go talk to you, you were talking to somebody else and I have to wait around and just stare at you the whole time.

I think one time I was sitting in the booth and who was it kevin or somebody else was like came up to him started talking to me i was like nah i'm waiting for seth but there there there is a lot of stuff there like i so i traditionally don't go to trade shows like all day just because i personally get exhausted i i have a set group of people or booths I'm going to go visit. And I go see those and I'm pretty much done. And Seth can attest that with my three or four hours I spent at Infocom this year. Yeah, I spent two full days at Cedia. And I didn't realize that there was like a lot of different booths there. I didn't realize firewall was there. And then several others. So I think it would be almost impossible to like go

there and spend any meaningful time at a lot of these booths and still see everything. There's just so many different things going on. Yeah. You really do have to pick your battles on what you want to go see. And then somebody will come say, come over and say, hey, you have to go see this. It's really cool. And it's in this booth over here. And you'll have to go hunt down the booth and find it because sometimes it is cool, sometimes it's lame. But I don't know. Gavin, did you see anything particularly cool when you were walking around half of the show? Did you see anything cool? Well, yeah, there's a lot of cool products. I'll touch on a few because we all have our picks but um uh the hunter douglas booth so we got through the hunter douglas booth we saw their new line of aura shades

really cool they have led built into it you kind of have to see it for yourself but it kind of turns the shade into a light and i actually showed all you guys i had to take you guys to see it so i i really like that but then richard showed me the Hunter Douglas shutters. So they basically have all the controls to automate your shutters and everything. And that's also built into the shutter. The cool part is it's like you can barely see it. It's built into the base of the shutter. It's as thin as the shutter is. And it's really cool.

So if you're looking for some automated shutters and you have the money for it or the integrator that does it or whoever you have to go through, they have them there and that's really cool. So, and we got a little interview with them and we'll probably insert that interview now. Cydia 2023, we're here at the Hunter Douglas Bluth with Julie and you're about to give us a rundown of everything new with Hunter Douglas. Sure. So yeah, Hunter Douglas is one of the leaders in the window coverings industry. We have a lot of different styles of products, products that go up and down, products that have fabric veins that move and tilt, as well as back panels, a lot of different things.

But really what we're showing off here at Cedia is Aura illuminated shades. So essentially it's three shades in one. So you have a sheer front shading as well as a room darkening, but also metallic back liner, and then an actual LED strip that's built into the headrail. So that will reflect down and bounce off of that liner, illuminating the shade from within. So it's really designed to simulate natural daylight, maybe in places where the sun sets it for, or maybe you're in the Pacific Northwest, or maybe you're just, you have an application or a basement that doesn't have as much natural light. As we know, exposure to daylight really affects our mood and our emotions.

And so we wanted to be able to offer a window covering that really spoke to all of that. So as you might have already seen in our Illuminate experience here, we have it on three different product types, roller and screen. We have Sonnet, which is our rolling cellular shade, as well as a vignette, our modern Roman shades. So that's the big thing that we're showing at Cedia. And again, just with the LED, we wanted to simulate natural daylight. So it's a full white spectrum. And I did the demo. One thing I really noticed that I really liked was the LEDs at the top,

but the whole shade is illuminated equally. And it almost feels like it's a light now in your room. It's not just a shade, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And the great thing about it is that the shade doesn't need to be fully lowered for you to take advantage of that LED. So you can use it maybe if you want to really enjoy the sunset, but also have some dinner ambiance or really transition from natural daylight to simulated daylight. It really helps to make that transition super smooth. And you could also use it if you have throughout your whole house, maybe you do have shades that you do get a good amount of light throughout the day. You can just use it as a regular sheer shading or a room darkening back panel and use that light when it works best for you.

So a lot of different options. That's what that three-in-one solution I was talking about. So pretty incredible. And for more technical people, I know they have local APIs. It integrates with pretty much everything and it works great. I have them myself actually. So yes, so we integrate with a lot of certainly DIY like Alexa and Google. We also have custom home integration. So everything from Control 4 to Savant and Elan. We have our whole list on HunterDouglas.com because that list is continuously growing, but we definitely

have a lot of the players there. And we do have drivers too that we work with. Those who need them, we have those available as well. Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Julie, for everything Hunter Douglas. And that's it from CBA 2023 Hunter Douglas booth. So that's all about their new

line. The next booth that I got to check out was the Josh AI booth. And they had a demo room where you got to go in, but Josh AI made a huge announcement about their new hub. And basically it's now becoming a controller for the home and less about voice alone with them. And the price point, I think they said it's 599,

puts them in a whole different category now and makes them very attractive to a lot of dealers. So Alex was doing the demos in the room. He's in our hub there and he did a really good job at showing off what they did, but we did also get an interview with them and this is them talking about their new hub. CDN 2023, we're at the Josh AI booth with Tyler here, and he's going to give us an overview of everything new with Josh AI. Awesome. So what we're really trying to drive at this Cedia is Josh as a control platform. Most people understand us as voice. We still believe we're the leader in voice. We still believe we do it better than

anybody else out there. But the important thing that we're trying to drive is make sure everyone understands that that's just one feature of what we do. So understanding our native integrations and what we do within our native integrations, understanding our UI, how dynamically we can change an environment, how we're going to be the easiest to deploy, the most reliable and the most cost-effective control solution for you guys and your clients. The other piece on this is, you know, we've released a new product and we call it the Josh One. The reason we call this the Josh 1 is because we feel like Josh, whether you're doing production builds and MDUs or high-end custom homes, we believe that we should be the one interface for every one of your projects. The Josh 1 has an

entry-level price point of $599 and our software price point is going down to $10 a month MSRP for this, right? Or if you're the type of dealer that prefers to just buy things once and not deal with a subscription, it's $17.99 for this. It'll control up to 100 devices and it'll give you every single feature in Josh minus voice. If you want to add voice into your system, it's as simple as upgrading your subscription and we give you that blue button on your app that allows you to have voice in your system. If you want to add microphones into the system, you can do that as well. So we're really dynamically adjusting our pricing model to fit more in line with what industry standards have been. We're becoming more accessible to different projects, opening up new

markets, and making sure that everyone understands that we are more than just voice. You guys have a chance to see our demo after Cedia, or if you hear anything about it, let us know. We'd love to fill you in on what it is that we're doing exactly, but we're really excited about what we're rolling out here. And one thing I want to stress is Josh is 100% local, except for, say, your chat GPT integration. So speech-to-text conversion is done in the cloud. So good question, good question. We have a lot of common misconceptions that we don't leverage the cloud. You absolutely have to leverage the cloud with a Josh system. It's required to work. Now, the key to that, we're not data mining. We're not exposing any identifying information to third parties at all. We use third parties only for speech to text conversion,

and everything goes through our servers where it's stripped of identifying information before it hits that third party. You will not see your Amazon cart fill up with something that you were talking to your friends about when they have a Josh system in their home. It's not RMO. RMO is to be the best way to interact with your home technology. Excellent. Thank you very much, Tyler. And once again, that's Josh AI.

You can get more information on their website. Awesome. Appreciate you guys. Yeah. And I mentioned there in the interview that not only did they lower the price or maybe have know have a price what was it 599 of the new hub like and make it more approachable and that kind of thing um they also changed their subscription model so like uh you can do you can do the hub just as a control system which is interesting we were all kind of talking about there's been a lot of that like low rumbling like before the show

like josh josh ai has really positioned themselves like during that that summer announcement, they were like, oh yeah, Josh, AI really looks like a control platform now. They were really talking about it. So they, they started that little, I don't know, rumor or positioning then and now they just leaned square into it, but they, they lowered, I don't know if they lowered the prices on the hub, but they, they've changed the model of the subscriptions, which I mean, I think that's really going to open them up to be

way more successful and a bigger player in the industry moving forward it's very interesting yeah so i look forward to see where josh ai goes from here because like i said that price point is really competitive so you know and compelling i mean like you don't i mean you can it's still expensive don't get me wrong like nobody is gonna who's who's like, oh man, am I going to get this or am I going to get the $39 Echo, right? It's not really competing there. But if you want to have that type of control system with what they've done, it's not at a bad price now, I don't think. And I really like how they've integrated the whole open AI, the chat GPT in the back end. So basically, you do your voice control

it handles all that but if you ask it stuff outside of what it does it will actually pass it off to you know chat gpt and answer those questions so it will tell you more about the artist you're listening to or stuff like that and that stuff was really cool i saw a lot of people when the demo was happening nodding their head and there were a few oohs and ahhs, and I was like, it was impressive. So I can't wait to see where they go next with this. More progress and everything from them. It's great. It's great.

Yeah. And the last thing I'll touch on is a product called Swidget. Now, this is a Toronto company, so I have to represent, right? And we've talked about them before on the show you know like passingly you know i don't know seth if you ever remember but switch it is actually a device it's like an outlet right you have your outlet and then the middle of its cutout and in that little cutout you can put in other little devices oh yeah right so so they've actually expanded their line now um they have like i think they have switches now where you have the switch on top and on the bottom, you can slide in and out devices.

They won, they announced four things. So they won the 2023 CE Pro Best Video Award, Product Award for their HD video insert now. So they have a little insert that does videos, if you could put that in your switch. But they also had a few announcements um other than the new video insert they also have a wi-fi integration with control 4 and nice or nice slash elon right so they just announced that um and they introduced a few z-wave inserts all z-wave 800 um so it has stuff like temp humidity motion sensing or even air quality sensor that uh integrates with panasonic equipment to keep your house clean.

So it's pretty cool what they're doing with that. I liked what I saw. They're not too expensive. I guess the outlet is probably about $100, and then you can buy the little inserts for a little cheaper. Well, yeah, yeah. They've got a Swidget $149 for a Swidget Wi-Fi control and HD camera insert. So you can put a camera right there. My Airbnb may be interested in this. Exactly. And the camera, actually, if you put it in with a switch, it's not a bad location in the room. I just wouldn't see putting something like that in the outlet area because that's too low at that point.

Right. Right. I mean, I guess, yeah. I mean, so anybody who didn't get that joke, yes,

we did find two hidden cameras in the Airbnb. And why would you do that for people who are technology nerds coming in and actually who know all the products? I don't know, but they did. I think. Well, we all,

we all know why Seth, because what business were you next to uh that's true it was it was uh that was that was the reason it wasn't because you're a bunch of nerds coming for a convention it was because of the business the three-story strip club i think you're referring to yes yes it's probably had something to do with it but yeah um i this is i do remember talking about these guys they have a a lot more modules, I think, than we talked about before, like Wi-Fi temperature control sensors. A lot of these make sense. A lot of them don't make sense.

The camera, I guess, unless you put the camera in a spot that made sense or the outlet in the spot that makes sense. But some of these do, I think, would work. Like the HDMI one makes a lot of sense because you could put that with the outlet behind a TV and just pop the insert in if you need that there there you go done um nice clean install yeah so I like that one I yeah they did win that award over at CE Pro that's pretty cool yep those are just a few things I saw very cool all right well um TJ did you see anything cool at the show all right well I probably going to be the lamest one here because the coolest thing I saw at the show was SpeakerSnap. SpeakerSnap was, you know, I've been using SpeakerSnap for a little while now because

I really like Wago connectors. And Wago connectors just make everything super easy. I use them for car audio and electric and all this stuff. You know, everything it's rated for. I'm not crazy over here. But ever since I started using SpeakerSnap, I was like, they really need a Keystone version of this. And so I stopped by the booth and I was talking to the guy and he goes, oh yeah, we have those right here. Go ahead and just take as many as you need. And I was like, yes, but they're also working on other SpeakerSnap connectors. They have a Phoenix one, which they were showing off,

but I don't think is for sale yet. But that'll be super interesting because Phoenix terminals or Phoenix connectors always have those really small screws. And like, I don't know if you've ever been in a situation, Seth, where you accidentally unscrew the screw too much and like the screw falls out and then like you have to find it or just replace it with another Phoenix connector. But this is just going to make life so much easier yeah and i can't wait to buy them i saw they were

doing that and i went by their booth and i was like hey i need this for a bunch of other stuff and he was like hey uh bring over the little green connectors that you know and you have to give them to me because i need them and he will take them and never i'd never get them back and i'm like uh i don't think i can do that. I don't really have permission to, to do that, but you know, it would be nice if I can get them for things like Yamaha amps and the MTX stuff. Oh man. So nice. Yeah. It'd be awesome. And then the, the second nicest thing I saw is I'm going to tag on

Gavin's here is the Josh.ai stuff. So I'm in a lawn dealer and if you work for nice you should probably just go ahead and cover your ears right now um but i think i like msrp for like an sc100 controller and granted it's got like ir outputs and some other stuff in it uh it's like a thousand dollars and so the 599 price point for the josh.ai controller for 100 devices was super appealing to me um the only thing i don't like but i completely understand and i and i i think i can sell it is the the yearly subscription for it they significantly dropped the price on it and so i think now it's like 60 a year or 60 a month or something like that like 600 a year for it or something like that so it's not completely terrible.

It's well within reason. And especially if you're installing it in some nicer houses, which you probably are, then $60 a month is nothing to them. So that was well worth it to me. And I should have all my Josh.ai stuff next week. Wow. Now you're a dealer.

Very cool. That was fast. Yeah, well, I was really impressed with it. I've wanted to use Josh AI for a while, but I just, I couldn't use it as just a voice platform because it's just, it's not my, you know, it's not my market segment at the moment, but now that I can sell it as like an actual automation platform and I can pair it with an Ava remote, which is totally useful now, then I think I'm good. So yeah, the Ava remote is very compelling.

That was right next to their booth, and I went over and, like, saw it with Richard. Did you guys get some hands on time with that? Yeah, it felt really nice. It feels similar to the previous remote, whatever they're calling that one. I think that's, like, the Ava Home, I think. I totally could be butchering that. But this one has physical buttons on it, guys. Well, kind of.

The button. Well, they are physical. They are what they call tactile feedback. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to describe this a little bit because it looked like the old remote with the touchscreen at the top. Right. So just big, giant touchscreen.

Looks like, you know, the square candy bar type remote. And then there was actually below it where the buttons would live, right? Is a, I don't know how to describe it. It's like a little screen with like another touch screen, I guess. But it was like raised in the middle. Like it had a circular indentation or not indent, it's outdent or whatever that would be. Concave.

Yeah, it's so you could feel the difference in that circle would would basically if you put your thumb there you you'd naturally slide over to the center of it but that screen could be dynamically changed to what the functions of the buttons were like in the top left corner top right corner top of the button you know you could move it around it would change with what whatever you were doing so i meant that when i saw that and put actual hands on it because um rafael had like one he was walking around with and showing me it was amazing like it actually works it was really really good so yeah yeah i think i think it's a home run for them yeah it's super nice because just like you were saying it changes depending on what you're actually using it for and so like

the good example was like if you go to like the tv or whatever it'll show the volume on the left hand side and then the right hand side you might have like channel up and down or whatever but then if you switch to apple tv there's no reason to have the channel up and down and so it replaces the channel up and down buttons with like fast forward and rewind and like it just does that per application and like it's got a cool little animation on there like when they switch to spotify it changed a little ring to green and it was kind of moving around and stuff and it works like a like a directional pad so if you hit the top of it you know it'll go up and stuff like that so it felt it just feels good in the hands as well that that nice metal uh that

they have going on it feels like it's got a good weight to it and everything so i think this one's really good and it's paired with an actual hub now, guys. So you can use it to control your TV. Yep. They're calling it the brain, right? So there's a little IR. It's actually, if you're familiar with the, well, we can't say it's the same company. We could sue it by Control 4.

Yeah, I was going to say, I don't want to get in this lawsuit. If you're familiar with the Kickstarter that Rafael did before, and there was a remote called the Neo Remote, there was a little thing called the brain that was like the hub that accompanied it, and it kind of had a bunch of things built into it and IR emitters, right? Well, they've made one, and it looks like the same thing, but it's about, I don't know, half the size, maybe three-quarters of the size, somewhere in between

but it's a it's a lot smaller um like if you pick it up and hold it in your hand that was still as hefty as the old one was like there's there's a lot going on inside there so it's very dense i talked to him about kind of like he's big on the manufacturing process types of things and he was saying the it's the most some of the most dense products ever made like you can't even if there's a problem to solder anything on the boards you can't it's almost impossible to re-solder anything so it's like the the the the lines the trace lines and everything are so small on the products they're making these days this thing it's almost like a cell phone i mean it's basically what it is right cell phone technology going into remote he proud of it. Very, very proud of what they've done. So,

it looks like an interesting remote. And for better or worse, it's not 3.5 millimeter for the IR. It's actually USB-C. So, like this really thin looking tape stuff. So, like it's hard to imagine, but if you like take a piece of electrical tape and then you attach a USB-C cord to it, that's literally what it looks like. It's just, it's so thin, the actual IR emitter itself. It's crazy how thin it is. And so like, I like that idea because it looks like it'd be easier to conceal on a device and maybe you wouldn't have to hot glue it. Yeah. I tried taking a picture of it. My phone wouldn't focus on it because it was so small. So I had to like move my phone back and forth to try and catch it at the right moment where it was actually in focus. But yeah, it was so small so i had to like move my phone back and forth to try and catch it at the right moment where it was actually in focus but yeah it was very small i think i think

we have an interview with them should we drop it in right here uh right about now all right this is ava cinema remote it is one of three new products that we released this week it is accompanied by another product called ava nano brain and both of those products run the third product, which is AVA OS. AVA OS gets us out of just the apps world that you know us from with the home remote, and it moves us into being able to do full orchestration in smart homes. Things like, I want to watch Apple TV. I need the AVR to turn on, the TV to turn on, it to wait a few seconds, it to switch over to HDMI 2, and then just allow me to navigate it. So we have all that kind of logic now built into two different devices. But this is the device everybody's talking about right now, because

it's got so much sizzle to it. If you notice, it's got this beautiful beautiful beautiful dynamic keypad down here and this is you'll see that as i touch it different parts of it light up there is raised glass here three-dimensional glass so your thumb sits beautifully right there and this works as a d-pad when it needs to and then all around here it lights up different buttons these are not just touch screen buttons here this is actually a click-based thing here. You feel it click, and it's got this feeling like the engineering on it, to me, the mechanical engineering reminds me of like what you find with like a European sports car. When you close the door, you have that just feeling of ka-chunk.

And it's got that kind of just really nice. It confirms it. It's not obtrusive. It's not a loud slick. It's not a loud slick. It's just a, I know that I pressed the button and I can move on. Yes.

So here's what happens. It's so awesome about this is if I start TV, Ava West and all its logic is going, you're going to see it power through everything. I've got some timers that are really reduced

for fast demo. If I go to TV right here, right down here, watch what happens on this lower screen. It lights up with all the buttons that you need. Channel up, channel down. I've got all my favorite channels right here. Volume, mute, menu button, and of course, the D-pad navigation. And right front and center, if you're on a DVR system, this is going to be your play box.

I've got, of course, buttons like all of the number buttons here. These are not the buttons you've memorized, so they could be a touchscreen button. But these are the buttons that you need muscle memory to. And so you have that now on remote control with this. Well, watch what happens now. I'm going to switch to Apple TV, and this is going to be hard for camera to see.

But right here where the channel plus minus is, you're not going to Apple TV. It makes no sense to have plus minus. And it makes a lot of sense to have skip forward, skip back. And so I get those controls right there. And so this adapts to what you're doing. One other example of this,

it still runs native apps. It's still a Google certified device, just like the home remote is. So these two devices go complimentary to each other. now i can hit let's go to spotify and there's spotify and we have right down here all the controls with skip forward skip back just like well skip forward skip back i pointed to them in order but uh you've got all of the controls right there that you want with this you've got and i'm going to talk since it's a podcast i'm going to talk pure msrp here i'm not going to talk uh talk

any any further details on that but with this you've got a complete device the os runs on this device and it can do all the orchestrations that I've talked about, about switching and everything else. All in one device, $1299. Super premium device. Along with that, we also have one other device I mentioned, which is Ava Nano Brain. The brain is for when you have, so this has a big IR emitter back here. It's got a great line of sight. It also can do IP control. But sometimes you have an ir device

it's in a back room and needs to be controlled 360 degree ir clear plastic right here looks opaque looks like extremely premium material but this is one of the best ir emitters you'll ever see not only is it is the blaster excellent but you have optional ir emitters that go onto usb cords here because it's usb powered it can be an ac adapter or it can be ac plus ethernet adapter or it can be ethernet poe adapter and with power over ethernet now you have one cable that goes into this thing and does everything you may notice the last feature i want to tell you about on this is that it has an HDMI connector. We're not doing some kind of on-screen display.

This is a control panel. CEC is a disregarded protocol in our industry by the big platforms. It's a super important protocol, and it was engineered well, but most platforms haven't caught up. If you look at all the big platforms out there, most dealers who install systems, most dealers turn off CDC on their systems because it gets in the way of all the other commands. We use it. That way, we don't have to do

some kind of timer. If we can already tell that the TV is on, then when the TV is on, we don't do a timer to let the TV power on because we can detect that through CEC. We can know what the pathing is between devices and so on. So CEC is actually

done right with the brain and that's part of why this $400 device is additive to this $1,200 device for a complete system that has multiple control points front room, back room. These two go together and comes out to a $1,699 price point. Super

premium device. I defy you to find something that is as joyful in the home as to have to see in the house. You know, most of the devices cost a miss amount. They're rubber buttons, they're plastic cases, and they feel overpriced when you see that you can have, you know, essentially this luxury vehicle right here compared to, you know, an old S or something. Yeah. So that's my whole victory right there. Well, they're making cool products over there. I'm excited.

I'm excited to see what they do in the future, barring this crazy lawsuit that's going on between one of the major industry players and they're kind of in there with Josh AI at the same time. But it seems like that's a pretty good... All right, so there was a lot of conversations at the show, you know, about where dealers are always like fluid, right? They're always like, they're always looking for what's next

and what's coming up next. And it seemed like a lot of guys were like, Crestron's still not shipping anything. I mean, I guess they kind of are, wink, wink, maybe. But like everybody I talked to is like, I would be a Crestron dealer, but I can't buy product until maybe Q1 of next year. Which, if you're a small business owner, that's too long. You can't go that long without selling product. So that's a problem.

So there were a lot of guys there. They're like Crestron, and they're like, I'm looking for the next thing. And it seems like Josh, Ava Combo and NICE seem like they're pretty good spots to pick up a lot of dealers who are looking for the next thing. So good on them. Yeah, I think once NICE kind of finishes their transition that's going on, they'll be a lot better off. They showed off some new, well, obviously the new HR40 remote, which I have two on order right now. I'm excited to get those uh but they also showed off their new shades and granted it was cdia and there's a lot of noise going on and stuff like that but they did sound really quiet guys um and the pricing was

really good i'm not going to talk about pricing right now because i think it's still being finalized but like really good especially for how quiet they are and all the selections and everything you got um the only thing that was a little weird to me was that they don't have their own controller for the shades they're using the bond bridge uh which is like an established product and everybody likes it and everything like that but i just found that kind of fascinating yeah why reinvent the wheel that's that's what i Well, that's true. So, I know you don't want to talk about pricing, but like on a sliding scale of like one side being like the Lutron and then one side being, I don't know, Ikea. Like, where does nice end up in there?

So, I haven't done a direct like side-by-side comparison, but like the rough one I did was roughly half the price. Oh, wow. Wow. And so, like Lutron, if you ever like like looked at lutron shades or you've sold lutron shades or anything like that they're like the uppermost level of shades and so you're automatically going to spend like a thousand dollars for lutron shade like you can get cheaper ones but let's be honest if you're going to go for lutron you're probably going to buy the nicer ones and you're probably going to spend at least a thousand dollars i can tell you that the one that i looked at just for the demo purposes was half of that

wow and so as long as it's got good battery life and it is actually quiet i think it's a really good competitor to lutron i remember the press release is not just battery life they had hardwired options and everything so i don't i don't think that i remember seeing that in the press release you're looking at me like i'm crazy but i remember we talked about it you're like it is only battery but well i think i think maybe they are coming out with hardwire but hardwire is not out yet maybe that's what it was okay i don't i don't remember right now but we can drop the interview here for the remote we talked a little bit about the remote and the shades the star of the show right here the new remote it is a new remote

control yeah yeah everybody's excited about it yep so this this remote control there's so i could start talking absolutely talk about whatever you want all right excellent so uh new remote control. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's excited about it. Yep. So this remote control, there's so many I could start talking to. Absolutely. Talk about whatever you want. All right. Excellent. So a new remote control. It's our HR40 remote control. It's really a premium remote for controlling the entire nice home management solution.

So anything that you would want to control, temperature, lighting, even video and intercom. And that's some of the unique features that we've added to this remote control. But before I get into those features, one of the unique things about it, I believe, is that we spent a lot of time on the form, fit, and function of this remote control. It feels really good in the hand. The materials were custom selected. We've selected the way that the design looks to get this really nice, elegant feel to it. It's an elegant and it's a premium remote. It should feel that way. And I think as consumers pick this up, they're going to feel that same commitment to the quality of this product. From this remote control though, a lot of unique features. So unlike other things that are in the

environment as well. So intercom is a great feature. So from a front doorbell camera, I can answer the door and see full motion video on the touchscreen on the remote control. What's even better, I can actually interact with that person at the front door. I can understand what they're doing and I can open and close the door from here at the same time too. So really great way for you to be able to interface. Second thing that we're able to do is we can view cameras. So IP cameras around the house, we can view on this as well. If I turn the remote into landscape, I get a landscape view of the cameras. So really you could do pretty much anything that you could do from a touchscreen or even from a mobile device, you can do on the remote control here. Long battery life, IR blaster on at the

same time too, which really allows this ability for you to be able to have this whole home experience with the remote control at the same time too. We're really excited about it. Dealers that touch it are excited about it. Consumers are more excited about it shipping this month. So pretty exciting product. Perfect. Yeah. And I'm an Elan dealer myself or nice as they're now known. Am I expected to get this by the end of the month or are we still a little bit far out?

So we're starting shipments at the end of the month. So we're taking an order when they came in. I would say that the response has been overwhelming. So we'll try to catch up to where everybody's at. We've got orders coming and more orders coming in behind that. So you'll see supply, the abundant supply here shortly, but we'll start shipping here this month. Nice. Yeah. And I feel a lot of remotes over my career. And it does feel like a really nice premium remote whenever you hold it.

And so I'm excited to get it on my hands and start to actually use it. I'm anxious to hear your feedback because once again, we spend a lot of time on that form, fit and function. It's a critical part of these consumers spend a lot of time on that form, fit, and function. It's a critical part of it. These consumers spend a lot of money on their solution. It needs to feel like they've spent a lot of money, that it's worth that money they spent. These are built premium. Cool. Anything else you want to talk about?

Any new stuff? Yeah, let's talk about some other new stuff. So we have our new small aperture speaker line here. So we're using the Heritage. Now, the rebrand that we've had, and that's maybe a good discussion point. So the formerly known as Elan, formerly known as Speakercraft, formerly known as Panamax, we've all combined under NICE. And that NICE brand allows us a couple of different things. One, it's a really simple way for us to be able to communicate to consumers, right? That this is

our value proposition, this is who we are, this is what we do. Second thing that we're able to do with that is to be able to make sure that all of our solutions work together in a cohesive fashion. And that's a big part of what we've been working on. But one of the things we've got would have been formerly a speaker craft product is now our new nice, sorry, small aperture speakers, four-inch round and or square format product. So it gives a really great way. We see a lot of the new homes are going in today, use smaller, but more lighting throughout the house. This allows you to have this elegant look to the ceiling. We have an in-ceiling sub that goes along with it. They sound fantastic. This four inch speaker is a true four inch speaker, goes into a four inch

hole. It has a one inch tweeter on it, which is unheard of in that size form factor. What that means is a better quality, full range of sound that you're getting out of it. And then with the sub, you really get this really premium experience for distributed audio. Yeah. This bar none. Set of matching amplifiers we have a go along with at the same time too. So that's exciting. Right. Next topic, sunshades. So NICE, the company that we are that was that acquired nortec 23 years of history in building quiet shade motors a lot of our shade motors are used in a lot of the other solutions you're going to see around cdia we decided you know what our dealers need a great offering and so we said let's offer a blind and shade offering to them right it gives them the ability to be able

to go in get maybe a piece of the business they weren't getting before, but offer a premium solution to their customers at a reduced price for maybe some of the competitors. And I think that's the premium option that we're offering. What we were able to do though, is if an integrator has no experience with blinds and shades, they've never done it, they don't even have to measure one. We have an online training they go through. It takes them all the way from square one, knowing nothing about shades, to a place where they could be comfortable ordering and installing a shade solution. I made a shade solution. We have a great online tool for ordering that prevents you from making mistakes. If you choose a fabric and this size motor, this size vent, it goes, that doesn't work,

it's going to stop you. So you don't order something that you can't get. It's going to be exactly what you want. So we work it, we step you through it, allow you to really get a great solution from the place that you know, the order to deliveries around a three week turnaround. So really quick premium experience for blinds and shades. And that's a growing category that we see in this industry is automated shading. So we think there's a huge opportunity for that. So yeah, really excited about that. Yeah. And I've heard them too. And they're very quiet compared to some other shades that you hear quietest in the industry yeah so that's that's a good a remarkable title to have uh when you look at some of the other competition as well um so that's very nice that's important if you're in a room with 10 blinds and you've got them all going up and down now you can't

watch television because you got that loud buzzing sound or whatever that's going on it gets very annoying it is annoying so cool so those are those are pretty much the new things we've got going on at the show here. So, but other than the solution itself, which is fantastic. And if your listeners haven't paid attention to us before, if they go to nice for you.com, they can hear all and see all about what we're doing here. So I think, well, that was pretty much it. I think we're good. Awesome. Thanks very much. That was a great interview, TJ and Gavin, you guys are doing a good job on this. I didn't have to do any of this. I wouldn't have had a voice anyway. It was just like this, um, gravelly talking sound that came out of my mouth. But I wouldn't have been able to do this at all.

Great job. I'm pretty interested in seeing what they do with those shades. You know, there were a couple of shade companies there. I saw Colisse was actually kind of over on the, if you're looking in the door, they were on the left-hand side. And they were an old fabric company, but it looked like they were shooting off motors and controls. I really didn't have time to stop by their booth, but that was kind of like one of those, one of those brands of fabric that I used to remember buying and going through their books and everything. And they had all the books and fabric samples set up there as well. So I thought

that was interesting that they were actually at the show as like, you know, the fabric manufacturer looks like they're getting a little bit more. I haven't been in the game forever, so I don't really don't know what they're up to, but that's very, it was, it was interesting to see, let's just say. Another shade company that was there that I thought was interesting was Power Shades. And I've never heard of this company before, but they have POE powered shades, which I think is fantastic because it really depends on what shades you're going to wire or you're going to actually install because they all require some different kind of wiring, which I always find like infuriating. If you're going to go with Lutron, they require this one. But if you go with Hunter Douglas, they require this wire and blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. These ones are just PoE. So you just run a cat six cable to the window and like, that's it. Yep. Yep. that is a great idea interesting interesting i'm gonna have to look into this later i haven't i haven't seen these but i do love poe um oh so easy i wish everything was just poe at this point yep yep i mean and you don't have to have it's like the usbc of the world right right and i mean this is a this is a data link right so you you get control and everything through this as well so uh that's kind of brilliant i like it get a cat5 there call it a day and i don't know how they're doing it but i imagine like even if you didn't have like a like a high powered poe switch or something like that you could build

like a shade with like a capacitor battery in it or something like that and so that way like it's not requiring the full you know like whatever 96 watts or whatever that poe actually does and so i feel like there's a lot of potential there for other companies. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you could POE plus plus you get, what is it? 60 watts off that thing. So, you know, you don't have to, like, you can get a POE bridge that does that.

So you don't have to have the POE switch. Right. But I mean, they, these, they, this company power shades, I'm on their website now, because again, rabbit hole hole but they have outdoor um shading as well so those aren't those are usually sometimes those are ac yeah those are ac powered motors but at least you can get control into there well that makes sense because those are super heavy usually so that was another thing i kind of noticed about this trade show is that there was a lot of outdoor shade solutions and i don't know if i'm just now noticing it maybe i'm paying more attention to it because i actually sell shades now or something

but there was like five or six booths that were advertising outdoor shades yeah there was one right next to our booth um i can't remember their name but they they had a they have the like the tracks like the track sliding shades the ones with the tracks on each side for outdoor i don't know everything mosquito netting privacy all that good stuff. I didn't, I didn't see any more, but that's, I really wasn't looking for shading. My bad. Nobody ever really is to be fair. So yeah, it's something you just kind of have to have some day you're sitting there and

you're trying to eat your breakfast and the sun shining in your face and you're like, man, I guess I need shades. Oh, I need to turn off my Aurora shades. Hold on. All right. Well, um, let's move on here. You guys, you guys have one more thing in here that you saw. And I saw this thing. I walked by it. It was towards the back of the show. The CC TV, the motorized rich person. Gavin's going to have this on his yacht TV like this.

This is we've talked about this crazy thing for years now. I think I feel like we have talked about it for years. What you guys actually talked to him. What we've talked about this crazy thing for years now. I think, I feel like we have talked about it for years. What you guys actually talked to him. What did you, what did you think about this? They had the small version of the TV at the show and that thing looks huge. Right. But he said they actually have bigger ones than that. And it's impressive.

It's very bright. It's very clear. They only folded it up a few times a day. And it seems like every time they did it, I happened to miss it. Whether we were doing an interview or I got distracted by an impromptu wedding at the show, we always seemed to miss when they folded it up. So I'm really upset I never got to see it actually in action. I got to see them rotate it at one point. We thought they were going to fold it up. So I'm really upset I never got to see it actually in action. I got to see them rotate it at one point. We thought they were going to fold it up, and then they turned to us and they said,

nope, nope, that's still an hour and a half away. I was just like, oh, you know, is it depressing? We stood there for like 15 minutes hoping they would just press that button, and nope. But it's an impressive TV. It is like $200,000 to $300,000 for that TV. So yeah, it's not cheap. Plus the installation, it's going to cost you quite a bit.

But whoever is buying that is probably not worried about any of that. So if you're looking for a big foldable TV, I highly recommend you go check this out. And we got an interview where they outline everything. We're just going to drop that in now. City 2023 we're here at the cc booth and this is a big foldable tv but i'm not going to talk about it i'm here is it gareth correct i'm here with gareth and he'll let you get let him give you everything about it so what we have here is 144 inch horizontal lifting cctv it's an outdoor tv it's designed for some very high-end residential clients the principle being is it folds away so we've got an extremely bright micro led screen can be used and viewed in direct sunlight, all weather conditions, waterproof, and it will fold away at the end of the day,

completely discreet underground. So it's a super exciting product, unique concept. Here we go. And just a question about the underground part of it. What's the enclosure like? Does it have drainage? Is it custom made? Yeah, everything's custom made.

So what we do is it's about three foot deep. We'll lower in a very high grade fiberglass container with drainage built in. Depending on the circumstances of the installation, we might need to put a heater in there or a water pump or something to get rid of humiditation. Then the water will drain away. IP 65 rated, safe and secure and temperature ranges temperature range as well in my money i took celsius in your money fahrenheit i'm a celsius person too don't worry you got out to minus 20 or up to plus 45 degrees oh about canadian weather yes oh that's

great and all the outdoor screens have got a weather station weather station designed to kick in if the wind exceeds certain regulations, the TV will protect itself and fold away. Oh, so it's a smart, it has some smarts built in too. Cleverer than me. Awesome. And this is your 144 inch. You said there's a bigger.

There's a bigger one. Yeah. So we got the 201 inch. Yeah. We can't even do a 301 inch screen, which would be the world's biggest TV. I'll probably get two of those in the future. But for now. For now. Thank you. just want to thank you very much gareth for spending some time with us and once again city of 2023 this is the cz tv one thing i guess i i've seen

on the the pictures and whatever i just didn't realize in real life what it would look like where the like they have like a built-in sound bar below it like across the bottom where the speakers are and um that was actually usually when i see that in the pictures it doesn't equate to like how large it is when i saw it there in person i was like oh yeah this is an actual like you can fit real speakers and this thing could actually sound pretty good so they weren't playing that they just had you know the screen on not that you could hear it over all of the other booths doing their demos i don't know guys if you i'm sure you went back to your hotel room and just watched the uh the greatest showman on earth movie like over and over again you guys love hearing that song and there's a lady gaga song that they kept playing over and over and over

again well the booth next to us decided to play Jimmy Buffett songs for three days. And I was done with Jimmy Buffett after about two hours. And I was like, I didn't think he had that big of a collection, but he does. He's got quite a bit. On the airplane over, when we were about to land in Denver, the flight attendant

was trying to get us to do one of Jimmy Buffett's songs. And out of the whole, what is it, Boeing 7ett's songs and out of the whole what is it boeing 737 or whatever out of the whole people all the people that were on there i think two people participated and she was like yeah great spirit everyone again nobody wants to do that oh southwest i think one of the more the the coolest things about the cc minus the fact that it's a giant foldable tv is that it's basically like a video wall and the way that it like comes together and he's got the different panels and stuff like that.

And one thing I've always disliked about video walls is that most of the time you can tell where like the different segments fit together and stuff like that. And so like, you know, sometimes they're supposed to be high up and on buildings and whatever else, and you're probably not going to notice that much, but like we were right on top of the cc tv and like you could barely tell if at all where the actual panels fit together at and it wasn't like super dotty uh like like the led dots that you get with a video wall sometimes it was just it looked very nice especially i mean for the price it has to be obviously but like that was one thing I was really impressed with on that one is just how good it actually looked.

Yeah. The new like lower than 0.09 pixel pitch things or 0.9 or whatever they call it. Um, it really does get hard to tell. I mean, this is HTTV and they have them like, what's impressive about that one is that it can fold like unfold, I guess, like in fold up. And as it was, and I guess also that it's been calibrated, right? Because when you put those in, like not all the time, the LEDs match up with the ones next to it. So sometimes you can look at it and go, well, that's that that's definitely a panel because that one's dimmer right there than that one. So it did look like it was a really good job on the video wall.

And yeah, it's interesting. It's a very, very cool engineering feat that they can fold up and stow it away in the ground. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool. And Seth, you can have it even down in Florida because if it detects that it's too windy, it'll auto close itself. So you can go ahead and get one if you want. I know that was the problem for you.

All right. Well, I guess ahead and get one if you want i know that was that was the problem for you oh all right well i guess i guess i'll get one and then you know if it's not too windy outside i'll i'll go watch it i gotta say pretty jealous of that weather in denver compared to what we live in here um it was it was warm there on certain days and it was humid the last day i went because it was raining but the weather was nice the entire time for the show. It was very nice. I did see a few other things, and I guess you guys saw it, but I got to give credit where credit's due. And Shelly showed up to the show, and they've got the little $25, $30, $40 IoT devices.

And they had a really interesting booth with just about, I think, every one of their products on display. And maybe two or three guys there that could tell you about every single one of them. Man, every time they were kind of like catty corner from ours, like down the aisle a little bit. And every time I looked over that booth was just, it was packed full of people going over and looking all the little, what I call problem solvers. and my favorite one is the rgbw2 little yellow one and that that can control rgb or you know just single white strip lighting but it's a really cool product you guys got an interview with them so let's just let's drop that in here and and we'll come back

after that city of 2023 we're here at the shelly booth with steven he's gonna give us a rundown of all the latest things going on with Shelly. You gave us an overview earlier. It was great. Just for our viewers, our listeners, let's just cover it again. Sure thing. Shelly, we're an IoT company. We focus on smart relays,

switches, and sensors, hopefully making your whole home pretty smart and automated. Thankfully, we integrate with all of the different platforms and OSs as well as having our own custom OS. What you guys might be familiar with is the Plus series that we have here lined up. So we've got our one-channel relay, our one plus 1PM,

which does power monitoring in addition to the one-channel. We have our 2PM here for two-channel. We have our I4, which is four switch input relay. Then we have a low voltage i4 DC, does up to 24 volt DC. And then on the side here, we have our dimmer two and our RGBW for your lighting, your LED strip. So what we just came out with last week for the plus series is our minis. So these minis are rated at eight amps as opposed to the 16 amp versions below here. And they have the exact same functionality. And what these guys will do is create any smart outlets or switch into a wifi switch. So that way you guys don't have to worry about, you know,

trying to jam those big pluses into a wall box. Yeah, and I like how they're all basically the same size too, no matter what you're going to do with them. Yeah, and essentially, you know, looking… I think it's so tiny compared. Yeah, exactly. What we've got here is some of the pro versions of the pluses. So here you've got your pro one,

your pro 1 PM pro two pro 2 PM. They have the exact same functionality as these guys, except they have our din rail mountable into a hard air closure. And they also have land capability. So not only do they have the regular Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth, they're also able to be hardwired in. So then they have that security on that end as well. That's like how compact it gets in there with that. Yeah, but you can imagine to just see from here with the wiring,

just when you throw one of these minis in there, there's a lot less to fight with. Right here we have our brand new ball display. This is using the Shelly OS. So you'll see the same thing that you'll see on the app. So you've got your favorites, your temperature, humidity, your on-off switch for the wall display. You'll have all of your devices listed, all of your scenes and all of your groups. So basically, it goes into a single wall box. Right now, we're just getting the plate fixed so that it looks a little prettier. So the key thing is these are all locally controlled Wi-Fi.

Nothing goes to the cloud. Instant response. They report back to whatever controller you want. It's great. Yeah. And it's all on a 2.4 gigahertz frequency, so you don't have to worry about 5 gigahertz or anything like that. And some Wi-Fi devices, too, they have a problem with the mixed signal,

so the 2.4 and the 5 gigahertz. Are you seeing that a lot with your devices, or does it not really matter as much anymore? It doesn't really matter as much anymore because we are decades in sync with 4 gigahertz, so it doesn't even try looking for the 5, which is that very helpful. Yeah. Over here is where our sensors live. So here we have our new blue door and window.

So you throw that onto a door, onto a cabinet, onto a closet. You know, the kids got the kids' Christmas presents in the closet. You got a door and window on there. You know if they're going in there. But these guys will all communicate with the relays or any other system. Here you've got your humidity and temperature sensor, and here is your

plus humidity temperature sensor. I like that sensor. That's very nice. Yeah, it's the fastest five. Now this guy here is the Shelly Flood. It comes with three contactors. The way that this activates is if two of the contactors are triggered, that will send the notifications to the OS. With that, what we've

done is we created one of the new kits here, which is a leak and valve cam. So say this gets triggered, you've got a leak somewhere. What that will do is it'll communicate with your Pro 1PM, with your power monitoring, that will turn on, which will then trigger this power supply to turn on, turn the solenoid on, and that will turn the water off for a one inch or three quarter inch valve. This, from leak detection to shut off,

is roughly two seconds. So it's very efficient. Is this a retrofit solution? They've basically just taken the knob off the pipe? Or is this like a whole bracket that you're replacing? You have to clip the pipe. Unless you've got a bigger pipe or a smaller pipe, you would need an adapter, but it's the same flow.

So that's what you need. But yeah, that's what you need. But yeah, that's pretty much it, guys. And you guys can find us on Shelly.com. It's got all the products listed. We're available through BlackWire Design right now, URC Direct,

and Digital Bay Tech out of Florida. All right. Just want to thank you, Stephen, for introducing us to everything Shelly. and that's it for now thank you thank you guys there they go uh i mean so and and one thing i you know i gotta mention because it's pretty awesome you you guys didn't get one but like the swag bags from shelly were pretty awesome like i don't want to rub it in again but like seriously are you rubbing with it again yeah i'm already a little salty i hardly hardly got any swag here. We talked to him like five times and never got any kind of swag.

I got one of these metal cups that was in the bag with a t-shirt. I got a Shelly hat, which I wore back in the plane somewhere. I came home with two pens and a bottle opener. I had screwdrivers, the pens. I had a Shelly sticker, which my daughter was elated to find out was not only a sticker, but it was clear. You could see where I thought it was white. So she put it on her iPad.

She thought that was exciting. And then there was a pen. There was a Shelly smart dimmer thing. I don't see it sitting here. I thought I had them sitting on my desk. I've already lost them. That's the problem. And then the little Shelly wifi Bluetooth smart plug,

they, they little small one. They had those in there as well. A significant, uh, swag bag, um, that I know a few people got cause they came into our booth and I'm like,

Oh my God, you got one. And then I told you guys about it. You guys were angry and didn't, I don't know if you went back and demanded one, but no, maybe, maybe, no, no, oh my God, you got one? And then I told you guys about it. You guys were angry and didn't, I don't know if you went back and demanded one, but maybe you should, no. No, that's not our style. We just went and talked to them,

but they never offered it to us. I was walking by the Ava booth and the guy was handing out Ava swag bags to some people there. And I was like, all right, let me go talk to that guy. Oh yeah. So I went and talked to him and I was there for a little while, talked to him,

even though I already talked to somebody before. And when when it was all done he shook my hand and i was like uh where's the swag bag you know i was like expecting a little something for my time right i talked to you give me stuff yeah right right yeah i know they um the uh the the i i walked by the same the a remote booth and they were doing a giveaway and i had no idea what it was but she had to toss her business card in there and she was like fumbling around. And so as she was fumbling around, like put her hand and I just ran up there and tossed my business card and it's me and one other person. So like right at the last minute I got in and they gave me like five toolkits and then they gave me away an Ava remote, which I thought was pretty cool. But I did not get, I did not get any one of those um unfortunately because i'm the a remote looks pretty good not gonna lie not gonna lie i uh i spent the first day doing a scavenger hunt and so my my distributor is uh as davis distribution i think they're in like west virginia indiana and ohio right now east coast um they're part of a bigger group called i think powerhouse something something i don't know

never i've never heard of that company to be honest but um they they had a scavenger hunt where you go around these different booths and you scan this little qr code and you answer questions or you upload you know a picture a selfie at the booth or whatever you learn about their products and all that good stuff and then i think it was like every 15 000 points you got you got a free spin and so i didn't know what the spins were necessarily for i knew that the top prize was like a 77 inch samsung oed tv and i was like well that's good enough for me let's go ahead and do it and so i think i like within like two or three hours i just like nicole and i literally just walked around to all the booths scan the qr codes and like as people were like trying to talk to me about their products i was walking away

because i was like i'm just here for the points leave me alone and so i did the scavenger hunt i got like 12 spins or something obnoxious and i won like a container of 100 speaker snaps nice and i also i won some other stuff it wasn't that exciting but i also want a phase tech eight inch subwoofer that has been shipped to me so now i have to find a reason to use a subwoofer somewhere just hook it up to your tvs we got one of the two tvs uh how am i gonna do this i don't know tj it's i have a sonos arc you're an integrator i already have a subwoofer i don't i don't whatever i'll find some reason to use them so so in in my in my my quest to find anything in the show, um, I think the biggest missed at the show was the, uh, the only fans booth over by, um, I guess it was a booth

of fans, um, which, which, which is pretty incredible. Like it was only fans that they had there, not only fans that you're thinking of, but it was, it was just fans, I guess, whack WAC-A-C Lighting, kind of put it on. A-I-Spire, or A-Spire, I really don't know how to pronounce it. But they had an only fans booth there. And what was really cool is they just had a bunch of modern-looking fans that had built-in controls that were controllable through an automation system, which if all the hacks and everything that had been done over the years, even the Bond product we talked about earlier simply exists you can control those

canopy controls like i can't tell you how many times you sit down for specifying at specifying time and you're like talking about lighting control and they go yeah i want some fans in these rooms and maybe maybe not where you guys are but in florida like the fans in every room and you're like canopy control you know like it's all you can do so having a an option to have some like decent looking fans that are controllable um that you can sell through the dealer channel makes total sense i'm surprised that no one has done it already um but good on aspire whack lighting for getting on the ball there and identifying some pain point in the market and getting some product out i thought it was pretty cool um did you get you guys see the evvr automation thing did you guys see those guys they had a pretty large-ish

size booth kind of back in the innovation area i forget what they call that the launch pad area i did not see them at the show but I've definitely seen them in the past. They make some nice looking products. Yeah, I think we've talked about them once or maybe mentioned them once on the show. Or when they had something come out. But it's basically a hub. And it's got like all sorts of devices that kind of integrate with it. One of the guys came by the booth and was telling me about it.

They have Zigbee. They have the Z- Z wave. And I asked him which, which version of Z wave for you, Gavin? He was like, uh, I don't know the newest one. I was like 800. And he's like, yeah, that one. So, you know, it could be 800. It could be something else. Uh, I could have made up any number and he would probably said, yeah, that one. Um, but they have like a, like they have a wall hub that builds. And I think is what we we saw them for they came out with this hub that's like a wall plate type thing and it's the only hub that fits in a wall plate thing yeah it's like the ubiquity like in wall access points or the tp link ones it looks really nice honestly yeah yeah and then they have a bigger one and it's called the ever center evvr center and i was like

what is this and he and, Oh, that's, if you want to do all sorts of other stuff. Uh, and I, and I was like, why does it have HDMI? And it's like, Oh, it's got video input or output. It does all analytics and stuff on there. And I guess you could do like people counting and all sorts of crazy stuff, like through RTSP in here. I don't know. It seemed like an interesting platform that I really haven't seen or looked at at all. So maybe one of those to kind of keep an eye on because I looked at the show floor next year and they've got a bigger booth. So it looks like they are interested in the marketplace and they're coming back. Well, I don't know what, I don't know market segment

they're targeting, whether it's like the builder market or anything like that, but I thought it was interesting. Yeah. I thought it was kind of interesting how many like DIY focus companies were there. And I know that's been like a thing in the past several CVs at this point, but we saw Yeelight there. We saw Ever, Easy Low was there, which I guess you could argue is like a hybrid product. But there was a good amount of DIY focus products there

that I would never ever see like an AV integrator installing. So that was, I thought that was kind of cool you know i i we've said that for years like oh this is a pro show it only has these these pro level products but like ever since i've been going to cda that's been like the thing that people have talked about like oh door bots here you know and all of a sudden it's ring and they've got the biggest booth wasting space on the floor like and you guys swing by that thing it was like a neighborhood they set up an entire neighborhood giant with like literally nothing

in it i mean like there was they had like a small little like house set up and like a construction area set up but like there was so much wasted space there it was crazy so expensive to do they could they could have made that booth half the size and still done the same exact things yeah exactly and it was it was so large and so much wasted space there could have been like a hundred people in there and you wouldn't it would be like oh that booth's empty why isn't anybody at the ring ring booth it's so sad basically if sony or like lutron had that booth instead i think it would have been better i haven't seen them to see what the actual size comparisons are but uh they actually filled up their booth so it's hard

to say well yeah anyway uh moving on from those guys uh i just see a little company called back in the innovation area i met this guy talked to him quite a bit um mirror sliding um they were on the very back row very you know very and this is where i love to hang out um but i talked to stefan umurtick, he's kind of like the president over there. And it's like literally an integrator developed and owned company, um, basically solving a problem of low voltage lighting and getting that retrofitted back into a home. He basically started the entire company because he had, he was trying to dim this customer provided chandelier and the little lights, no matter what led lights he would get the chandelier, they would flicker. They wouldn't work no matter what he tried, no matter what lighting control system he tried. So he just set out to basically make his own

products and they've got some pretty cool stuff. It's really well thought out, uh, all basically integrates with control for at this point, nothing else. Um, but you know, that kind of, kind of one of those things that's like built out of a need and looks really nice um 38 i think it was 36 volt and 48 volt fixtures and and lights available so um you could you could really like almost take this product and and retrofit it back into um you know any any house like being that high voltage to 38 and 48 volt 36 and 48 volt. It was funny. It was like the wiring requirements go way down. I mean, you could run 20,

you can run 22, four to some of the lighting fixtures in this house. And it's like, the voltage is fine. It gets there because it's, it's so high. So very interesting, still low voltage lighting and some really neat products.

I'm going to have to check out in the future. I've got his number. I'm going to give him a call about some stuff to work on together with. So, um, re really cool. I really, those are the kinds of companies I really like to find little small ones

like that. They're doing really cool stuff. Um, let's see. And then my pick, my pick of the show. And, and I'm,

I'm going to give James Radcliffe a, um, a shout out on this. Cause at the home tech out the hour, he shows up and I thought he was pulling my chain. He showed me this picture of him holding this little speaker. And this speaker is, he's like, this is the most amazing thing I've seen at the show. And I'm like, what, what is this? What is this thing you're showing me? And it looks like, it looks like something that your grandmother had like a chotsky or something

from like because it was gold it was like looked like something like that from like the 1920s or something like that and it's like this maybe a little tiny cigarette lighter for a dollhouse she had you know because that's what they did back then and i'm like he's like no it's a speaker it's got a half inch driver in it and it it's the most amazing sounding speaker it just sounds great like how does something like that smell great you look at it and you think that's a tweeter that can't that's not so good so he's like you have to go to the kra booth they have a listening room there just hop in and take a listen and he was telling me about a snake light a snake a snake speaker that they had i'm'm like, come on, dude. Are you, how much have you been drinking at this thing? Like this

is the home tech happy hour. And you're like, no, you're telling me about a snake speaker and telling me this little tiny, like stamp size speaker sounds good. I don't believe you. I went there guys. Unbelievable. Un effing believable. Like I am not ever impressed about speakers at all ever because speakers to me are just transducers and they just make noise. And I heard the same six songs played over and over again for the last few days. And these things were absolutely amazing. I, given the size, like they have a little bit bigger ones that you can get that have four of these little speakers and they're about the size of a large stick of gum. You could, you could sell those and stick them on just about any wall uh and i don't think any architect or any

i don't think anybody ever noticed that they were there they would just disappear into what you could you could force these things to disappear they come in a bunch of different finishes the ones we saw i have a picture of i'll put in the show notes is gold and it kind of stands out but like they had black they had like brown and different finishes to match other other stuff unbelievable sound like there's a little there's a little bass unit that goes along with it there's a little there's an amp uh eq amp that the combo thing that goes along with it as well and for stereo sound in a room I just don't I don't see how, I mean, sounds way better than any soundbar I'd put up against it. Like even, even the Sonos ones, like just sounded better. And

it's, you know, it's stereo sound. It's not surround sound. They had a surround sound setup in there of a little bit larger. Like they had soundbars that were half inch wide by maybe seven or eight inches. So they were showing that off as well. But I don't think I would care. It's just like these magic speakers, they disappear on your wall and your setup. And they're just magic. They physically did not look like they should be able to do what they were doing. And I think they were bringing some law of physics somewhere to make these things work. So I don't know if, I don't know if you guys got it. I thought, honestly, I thought James was just pulling my leg. Like I thought he was lying to me and, um, he was right. He was right. They, they sound great. They look great. And, um, yeah, I don't, I don't see how more people aren't talking about K-Array because K-Array is a very large company in the, um, in the pro sound market they do like the line arrays for concert venues and that kind of thing and they are just like everyone else they're starting up a residential division

as well so that's what you get and and james was not lying about the snake speakers as well they had a thing called the anaconda that was this giant speaker thing that you could basically plug in outside fully weatherproof it just looked a rope, like a giant black rope thing. And you could hang it from something or hang it in a tree or whatever. And like, I think it was like 130 decibels, you know, a hundred feet away or something crazy. Like it was insane. It sounded great too.

Like it was, it was wild. So KRA, keep an eye on those guys. They're doing, they're breaking the laws of physics. And that, that, I can't describe how much that seeing it and hearing it messes with your head because it should not be able to do what they're doing with it they're they're there's black magic they've they've done something here there's voodoo involved i'm pretty sure yeah i was a little disappointed i found out about that friday night because we were not going back to the show saturday just because we were leaving at a certain time and there was other things we wanted to do in Denver.

But I 100% would have went and checked this out if I knew about it. Because like you said, I mean, it looks like a toy. Like if somebody told you that that was a speaker and it sounded good, you would laugh at them until you actually heard it yourself. I did laugh at him. Like, I was like, James, come on. Like, you've been... Come on.

Let's lay off the bourbon. Come on, man. You should drink it to us tonight. And no, no, he was actually right. He told me and I should have believed him. He's a smart guy. All right. I think that's going to wrap up our post-Cedia show coverage.

It was a lot of fun, especially getting to meet you guys in person, hang out a little bit and take pictures. I wish. So what I'm going to do between now and next Cedia, you know, Gavin, we're going to definitely have to get you back, you know, cause you gotta come back to see. Yeah.

You gotta come back. We're going to get you here again. Leave. I like, I like the wife though, but you gotta leave her. So that way you can spend some money. Maybe,

maybe don't bring her the first day, but bring her the second day, just so we can help spend some of that money. You know, she really likes you TJ. And I hope she doesn't listen to this episode because she's going to, I don't know why she likes me. I don't know why either. But she said, you know, TJ likes you tj and i hope she doesn't listen to this episode because she's gonna i don't know why she likes me i don't know why either but she said you know tj and nicole are cool she liked them she's probably just saying that about nicole yeah she's deciding on me in there i i said what about seth and she's like who oh that guy oh barely saw that guy we saw him once

yeah she's like i mean i've got to work on hiring a bunch of people so I don't have to work the booth and I can be away. But yeah, we were short-staffed as it turns out. We should have had maybe three more people and I would have been able to do all this stuff. Yeah, easily. The best part was I got to meet a lot of people. You've either listened to their podcast or we've talked in the hub with them or anything like that. You got to meet a lot of people even with the companies you know like uh when we're in the josh and i finally got to

meet alex you know alex has been in the hub you know and and they just they remember you and i was just like i was blown away because i'm just a regular like i'm not a dealer i'm not an installer i'm not like anything i'm just a regular guy there, right? I'm just a podcaster, I guess, right? And it was great. Like I had a better time than I really was expecting. Yeah, no, it was a great time. Even the limited time I got to hang out with you guys was awesome.

And, you know, next year, definitely hope to wish and hope to do it more. It was great seeing everybody and just getting out and hanging out. Home Tech Happy Hour is just a great time too because you just get to sit there and chat and not necessarily about what you saw at the show, you know, although that does come up,

but like just about everything else. And that's always fun to do. So yeah, it was a good time. Yeah, I think they're in their Home Tech Happy Hour. I don't think I really talked about the show at all. I talked about everything else, you know, I talked about the podcast or products or whatever it was. So that was really worth it.

Obviously, Cedia is good and all that stuff, but I think the Home Tech Happy Hour was the reason to go to Cedia. Yeah, I agree. I'm surprised you remember what you talked about. Wow, that's messed up. I remember everything about that night, kind of. Kind of. I still feel bad about spilling a beer all over rose so

uh you know what it's not the first time luckily it was only like a quarter full it's not the first time it's happened you know where she's had a bill beer spilt on her you know so it's it's all right you know like uh she she called off the lawyers you're all good oh that's good well and now she'll probably let you buy that robot vacuum or robot lawnmower no she said for you to make up for that you'll have to buy it for me ah that makes sense or get me some dealer costs or something like that i was gonna say what if i get you a good deal on some josh ai and that way you can make josh ai work with home assistant and that way i don't have to oh there we go hey josh rnd gavin we need to get you working with home assistant be year of the voice for

gavin for sure and they're gonna be like what what is home assistant they're like no it's funny it's funny uh too good too good well like i said i was i was glad to meet up with everybody especially glad to finally meet gavin in person instead of with a phone. He's so tall, isn't he? He is. He looks really short in the videos and the pictures and stuff like that. But when he walked into the hotel, I was like, that guy's like almost eight foot tall. What does he got going on there?

Adam Justice is tall, you know? Adam Justice. Yeah, he is very tall. Yeah, first time I met him when I did his home theater, he like opened the door and I was like, what? I'm looking up at him yeah well it was definitely good to to meet and catch up with everybody like i said i'm gonna have to hire more people so i can play more next year so yeah so you can hang out yeah it was a bit it was a bit much this year i think everybody in our booth felt that um there was

there was absolutely no downtime and then when we didn't we we made the mistake of scheduling um these manufacturer trainings where three people went to them in the peak hours of the show. And there was only myself and one other person covering the booth. It was not fun. Not fun at all. Oh, there's one thing I wanted to mention, though. Both you and James won awards this year, right?

Blackwire and Homeplay for Insidia, right? What'd you win yeah we won the uh the best new product uh software for uh the cd show and it also got recognition in resi systems for it as well and in their best to show so we got two awards i guess technically and i think i'm not sure what james got i didn't hear about that one there's a home play get a like best integration or best design something like that you know he was very happy about it though. When I saw him. All right. I did think it was pretty funny that neither one of you actually went to the award show. So, yeah. Whoops. Which I can't really say I blame you, but the problem is, is as of today,

which is September 12th, um, the CD has not posted any of that information onto their website. All right. We still don't know what it is. So I guess, I guess smart home awards, 2023 smart home awards finalists for the EMEA region. Is he in there? I don't see. Yes. Home play is no, I don't see it in there either. So I don't know. I am just as confused as you guys are now. So. Well, there were some awards and you won one and that was the big thing.

Well, thank you. Yeah, we won that one. We didn't even know. I guess that's a big deal. We didn't know we were going to win it, but it was nice. It was nice to get recognition. It's been two years of work on that single product and I hope it showed. It's our blacklight lighting design tool where you can design linear lighting and stuff. And we're just trying

to make things easy. It's a tool. I like tools. Things that make jobs easier. We're going to keep working on it and keep it going. Now there's people using it. I'm going to have to do a lot more work. Anyway, thanks everybody. Thank you guys for showing up and, and, and making Cedia, um, fun. It was not fun. Working, uh, working, uh, let's see, Monday through Friday for, you know, 16 hours a day.

It was not fun. Uh, but it was definitely fun to get to hang out and chat with you guys. So thanks for coming in and thanks for definitely thank you for doing the interviews that we heard and doing the show. I, there was no way I would have been able to get away to do anything fun like that. So, uh, awesome. You guys were able to step up and do that. Appreciate it. With that said, I think that's going to wrap up another week here on home tech. Uh, everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Take care. till next time those speakers are sweet

looking don't put that part in that's definitely going in don't put that don't put that in