HomeTech.fm - Episode 464 - The 2023 Technology.fm Fireside Chat

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

This week we take some time to reflect on the past year for the 9th Annual Technology.fm Fireside Chat. Richard Gunther from The Smart Home Show and Home: On was able to join us once again as we discussed the past years news from all perspectives in the industry.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 2023 technology.fm fireside chat. Once a year, we all get together and discuss what happened in the previous year, how our predictions held up, and what we're looking forward to in the upcoming year. It's a time to reflect on the good, the bad, and the interesting of technology. One of the things that I really enjoy about doing these is that we all have a different perspective on what good home technology is, so we should get some interesting insight. My name is TJ Huddleston, and I am one-third of the podcast at the hometech.fm podcast. We have a weekly show where we discuss everything home automation and anything else cool that might pop up.

I own an audio-video company in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, as well as a security company. I have been an integrator for a decade next year, and it's been a roller coaster since those quote unquote early days. During those early days is where I met Seth, who I'll introduce himself now. Hey, I was told there'd be no more math this year, but I am another one third of the HomeTech.fm podcast. And I am a another one third of the home tech podcast. And I, I am a software developer of sorts, I guess I do a lot more project management these days, but over at Blackware designs and we're a wholesale integrator in the custom installation space.

So I get to interact with manufacturers and handle the integrations of products and that kind of thing. If I'm not working on kind of internal projects as well. So yeah, that's me. I'll throw it over to Richard because he's not one third of the podcast. There'll be some different math involved on this one, I think. Yeah, I have different ratios or fractions or whatever those are. So I am one half of the Smart Home Show with my co-host, Adam Justice, who couldn't be here with us for this time. We usually do this with him, but he got scheduled for something else. So I am here representing and I am also the host of the occasional podcast, Home On, which focuses more on the DIY space. And I'm going to pass to Gavin

because that's who's left. Yes, I'm the final one-third of the HomeTech.fm podcast crew. I'm Gavin Campbell, and I'm just a do-it-yourselfer guy. I do things and have fun. And my day job, if you know what Intune is, if you know what Config Manager is, then you know what I do. I don't know how to explain it, but I do something and I get paid well for it.

But on the side, I do this do-it-yourself stuff. So on that note, I'm going to pass it back to DJ. You know, one of the things that's cool about the Home Tech show and the other shows that we collaborate with, like Richard's, is that we get different perspective on what's happening throughout the year. And if you listen to any of our shows, you'll hear our different opinions on the different technologies that are happening. And maybe, you know, cool things that we think are going to happen. Every year, we discuss some of the biggest stories that happened of this year, and how they affected our personal spaces that we deal with in technology. Seth, what is the biggest story of the year?

Well, in my space, I think last year I talked about labor shortages, which continues to be a problem. I mean, we're still seeing effects on that. And the missing hardware products that we like ongoing out of the pandemic i think that kind of like resolved itself mostly i don't really have any issues getting product and in fact there was like a a huge oversupply of like tvs and that kind of thing so like we're seeing so many cheap like tvs yeah and then everybody was like hey we have these cheap tvs for sale for for for what was it? Black Friday.

And they didn't discount them any. They were just like, yeah, it's the same $700 TV you were trying to sell me last week. It's just got the same price tag. It just says Black Friday deal. And people figured that game out. So I think there's still going to be a problem

with these cheap TVs going into the next year. That's going to be fun. But I think this year, the biggest story, hands down in the technology space and kind of like the software the software space because the hardware hardware didn't do anything was uh the chat gptification of literally everything and we saw this hit pretty hard right at the beginning of the year i think chat gpt was kind of like everybody was figuring

out what was going on with it, what people were doing with it. You got a huge amount of new users, but people started looking and going, Hey, this would be a really good way to interact with the smart home. I think Josh AI was the first one to kind of like pick up on that and put out a little demo. And I think probably the first to market in our industry. Um, they, they, they announced, uh, sometime in the summer, uh, Josh GPT, that's what they called it, which basically they

were able to take the voice control they had and just overlay the chat GPT API over that so they could get some of that extra cool info pulled out of it and made their voice assistant that was just kind of only mostly useful inside the house. It had some access to weather and those kinds of APIs and that kind of thing, but it really didn't have the deeper context that Amazon and Google and all those other ones were really working hard to do. All of a sudden, boom, they flipped that switch, and now you can ask it anything.

Its responses become more robust. And this thing is primed to be what people interact with inside the house. You know, hopefully they get, you know, the lying problem fixed. But for the most part, like it seemed like this is a pretty good interaction model that people enjoy, you know, either talking to or chatting with to make things happen. And if we can get that, you've seen Amazon and Google kind of like put efforts into their separate divisions. BARD, I think, is Google's and Amazon is Alexa. And now Microsoft has a version of ChatGPD, which is co-pilot and many, many different

products. I really think that this is kind of going to hit the smart home in a big way when everybody kind of plays catch up here in a couple more months. We start seeing some products roll out from the big guys, Amazon, Google, not mentioning Apple. I have no idea what they're doing over there. Do they even know voice control exists? Nothing. They're doing nothing over there. Yeah. I think for, as far as technology goes, this was the big, I mean, hardware, nothing to me really happened for hardware, but for software, I mean, this was the big, I mean, hardware, nothing to me really happened for hardware, but, uh, for software, I mean, this was the story of the year. I don't think anything

else came close to this. Yeah. I would agree with all that. I think, I think it's going to be interesting to see that kind of unfold over the next year or so. Um, Gavin, what is the biggest story in your space for this year? For me, i felt it was matter and i felt matter was so big that we even created a show segment around it what matters this week right and you know there were a lot of products mentioned with matter support a lot of products still coming out um it's still going uh pretty quickly but i also feel like a lot of companies are hesitant about it and have been holding back too, right? Like they've talked about it, they're investigating it, but they're not in a rush yet to implement

it. But no matter what, good or bad, we talk about Matter almost on a weekly basis. Whenever you have a new product, you look to see if it supports Matter or will it support Matter in the future? And that to me was one of the biggest things in my space. Yeah, I'm going to build on that and say that I think the biggest news was that Matter is a mess. Right now, I have, I don't know, maybe three or four Matter devices in my home that I'm using. And the rest of them them I'm not using because I can't get these devices to work reliably,

to stay connected, to sometimes even connect out of the box. Can't get them provisioned properly. So I, from what I understand, am having pretty typical problems that folks are complaining about. I know you had an interview with the guy from Samsung SmartThings who works on the Matter Committee, working group, whatever it is. That was a great interview and congrats on The Verge promoting that recently. But I mean, he described this as more of a Reddit problem than a real world problem. Clever line, by the way, but I don't agree.

I think that these problems are real and the loudest voices are perhaps isolated to specific forums, but I've certainly seen it. And I want this to work so badly. I want this to be the thing that unites all the products. And, you know, that's just the technical problems. There's communications issues, there's rollout issues, there's compatibility issues. They have a lot going on and I don't envy the work that everyone involved in Matter has ahead of them, but I'm still hopeful. So there's that.

Yeah, there was something wrong with the audio. He clearly said, it's a Richard problem, not Reddit problem. But I have to agree with Richard. My matter devices as of right now have dropped off this week and no matter i rebooted my whole house i can't get them back on i just gave up i've already had to rebuild the matter network once um so at this point i only have well i have like seven devices but four of them i put back the old way and the other three i'm just gonna wait till you know one day they'll kick in. And that's more than a Reddit problem.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it was definitely an interesting insight. Episode 462, for people that haven't listened to it yet, it is really good because it does give you some valuable insight from the other end of it. We deal with it from buying the technology and use it and stuff like that, but not really building it sometimes. Um, so I think, I think they do have a lot of things ahead of them. Um, but they're, they're working on it. We'll, we'll see what happens.

And, you know, only time will tell it's a new standard and, you know, I'm not, not running out to replace all my stuff just yet, but I'm, I'm, you know, positive over here. So one of my, um my top stories of this year, I think would be the Josh AI changes. And specifically, I think the move towards automation as kind of like a focus. And I think Seth, you've chimed in a couple of times that they've always been focused on automation.

But I think this year with the push for the actual platform has made a little bit of difference. And I think, you know, moving forward, we're going to see them kind of compete more with, you know, the control for an RTI and stuff like that. And they were the only ones doing anything this year that I can like really look back and say definitively, like big moves. You're right. Like they made a remote like where they didn't make a remote, but they have a remote, right? And like they're moving into that AV control automation space real heavily. Like it's its own thing now. Right. So I feel like it's there. The pricing is, you know, whatever the pricing is. I don't think it's that bad for what it is, but it's obviously not going to be an answer for everyone. No, but it's a lot more competitive now than it was before now that they came out with

Josh one platform. Well, and it has me, you know, if I'm doing, you know, I'm an Elan dealer and I don't do too much Elan. It's mainly reserved for like home theaters and stuff. at this point i'm you know i'm contemplating just doing josh for a lot of these installs instead of elan because it's basically the same price and so you get a you get a much nicer interface and app and everything like that and it's just it seems like it's more worth it so that's a pretty big story um and i'll just pair along with that you know josh uh and ava being sued by Snap One. I'm not sure anybody really had that on their 2023 bingo card. But, you know, I think that was we kind of saw that start happening or stuff was happening because they shut off, you know, dealer access for Snap or for Josh products through Snap One's website and then some other stuff.

So I think we knew something was happening, but it was kind of interesting to kind of see that play out. Yeah, it was definitely a shocker. Like, and it was interesting to see, like on the industry side of things, there's always people like, you see this with everything really. Like you see Apple suing Samsung

and you see the people are like, well, Apple's totally in the right here. They can do no wrong. And then it's like what Samsung defended, you know, Samsung didn't copy anything. They're doing their own stuff. Like you see this go back and forth. Same thing happens. Same exact thing happened in the pro space. There are people rooting for control force. And then you go to the Josh forums and it's all like, Josh didn't do anything wrong here. This is, you know, and then I'm sure that I don't really have

any Ava forums that I know of, but I'm sure they're in there saying like, you know, we didn't do any wrong either. So it was funny to see that, you know, come on, come into like a little in the micro industry that we are compared to the Apple Samsung wars out there. For sure. All right. My personal favorite segment of the, uh, the fireside chat here is the favorite product. So we're going to go around here and discuss our favorite products, maybe something that you've been looking for or they've changed. We'll start with Richard.

What is your favorite product of 2023? Yeah. So the thing that I was most amped about and so excited to see were the Nanoleaf Skylights. Oh, wait, no, they never actually came out so at ces nanoleaf made a big splash with announcements of new switches and new lighting products including a ceiling light an actual ceiling light that could connect in this modular system with different color panels and you could do all this cool stuff and get actual light from it, not just accents. And I wanted this so badly. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. So my runner up, which did come out and was completely unexpected, was the Pico Paddle Remote. I think everybody knows I'm a big fan of Lutron. I'm also a big

fan of Pico remotes. And they finally came out with, finally, I don't know that anyone's really asking for this, but seeing what other companies in the industry were doing, they came out with a Pico remote that looks and feels and works just like a paddle switch. It's the same form factor. And while other companies have come out with similar products, Leviton has one, Incyon has one. I think Zooz creates something like this for Z-Wave. They all have a little bit of a weird feel to them. They feel plasticky or they're a little too squishy. The Pico has almost perfectly replicated the physical haptic experience of using a Lutron paddle switch.

So kudos to them. I am so excited about this device. I've already used a couple around my home and my rental place. And I will also disclose that they sent me a review copy that I used to write a review about it. I loved it. And I think people know that if I don't like something, I don't hold back.

You don't. No, I don't. We know that. Yeah. I think, I think this was the, didn't the diva diva dimimmer and the Claro come out this year?

That was last year, actually. That was last year. Man. I'll say, Lutron's on a roll with coming out with products that look like regular products. That's nice. Yes. That should be their tagline. Products that work and look like regular products.

All right. I think my favorite product of this year is going to be Home Assistant. I think I've been on Home Assistant full-time for less than two years. But this year, you know, I bought my first house, and one of the first things I decided I was going to do was I'm going to automate everything. And, you know, I bought some Z-Wave switches from Zooz, and I bought some Inovelli light switches, the Zigbee Blue Series. And I bought this, and I bought that, and everything just works right under Home Assistant. You know, and I think we talk about it quite a bit here, because it's probably the best hub that's out currently, not without its own flaws or anything. But it's just, it's crazy what it can tie into and what it can do.

And I just don't know of any other product that offers the same amount of compatibility that it does. And so I'm going to give the 2023 product of the year the Homo system. Wow. Nice. I imagine Gavin is probably in that boat with you. I still need them to create a better out-of-box experience. And I know that's almost a misnomer because there is not really a boxed experience for them, right? A couple. small new devices that you can buy, but they're still pretty techie. And if they can help make the onboarding process, make that startup a little bit better and help you get to a point where you have a really nice looking experience without having to

get into the weeds and do all the amazing things that Gavin has done as he's shown us in the past. I think this is going to be a serious competitor in that prosumer space, right? The space between people who want the professional system capabilities, but they want the DIY prices. And I think they've been listening to you because since about maybe August, I would say, they've actually been tweaking the onboarding experience. The log on screen, the first launch screen,

they've been making tweaks to it to make things cleaner. And that's just, it's baby steps. With Home Assistant, I realize every month they release a version. And every month, it's a baby. I know, I listen to Seth install it every month. I'm actually installing one right now, actually. If you guys start talking about it, it just reminds me, I need to go update the thing. So, but every month it's a baby step and you'll,

you'll notice like over time they will get the full thing. So I know they they're working on it and you'll probably be there one day. Look, anything is better than Blue Iris. I had to schedule a two-hour training session with Gavin just so I could set up basic things like motion detection and stuff. So, you know, Home Assistant has a lot of work to do, but it's not Blue Iris. Yeah. What's neat is that out of the box, Richard, you can actually get pretty far with it, but then there is a wall between what Gavin has set up and what you get out of the box. And the fact that you can get that far with this product is pretty impressive. So yeah, I can see why people are so excited about it, but there's a very high bar once you go past just the basics, you know, Hey, I got my Sonos working on this and a couple of Lutron lights, you know, out of the box. Okay. Right. Yeah. That's great. Now you want the fancy dashboard and all the crazy camera pop-ups

on your watch like Gavin does. You're going to need some yaml. Well, and even as you described in one of your episodes, as you were starting to use this more, if you add a product and suddenly it's showing you 57 things about that product and all you really care about is, is it on and how dim is it? That's daunting, right? That's overwhelming. And they need to come up with a way of doing what Apple and some other companies have done really well, which is to figure out what's the most important and how do we kind of shove everything else behind this curtain. Just give me an easy, medium, and hard mode. That way I can decide what I get shown and then I can go and change it later, you know?

Yeah. Are you smart, average, or dumb? No, no, no. That's not what I mean. Are you advanced, normal, or novice? Yeah, I agree. Whenever I add a device, one of the first things I do is go and look at all the entities, and I disable everything that I'm not going to use on it and just get it out of there.

And then I go into that device configuration, and I disable anything or change anything I need to on it, like power reporting. I don't want things reporting power if I never care about that information because it's just going to flood my network. Right. And things like that. But yeah, I totally agree. If they had like a basic mode that gave you the basic entities on or off and maybe, you know, its status on the network, everything else is just hidden. And if I needed power, I can go and enable it. That would probably make sense.

Not hit you as hard. Yeah. And just have like a universal interface. If I hit energy monitoring, I can just select which ones I want it from, and it'll show up, you know, stuff like that. There's ways to do it. Well, there clearly are, because what you're literally describing is the Control 4 experience for a dealer.

And I mean, the Elan experience for a dealer, quite frankly, like you get. Yeah, that's true. You get exactly what you're talking about. There are all these, quote, entities that exist in the control of war world that I never see. I never had to deal with them. They're just variables and they exist off to the side. And there's a, there's a programming tab that you can go to.

And if you want to deal with those things, you want to look up the values and everything, you go to that tab. But I can tell you 90%, if not more of the dealers that I deal with do not and will not go to the programming tab. They will not go to the programming tab. They refuse to go to the programming tab, but they want, they want you to do everything in your side of your driver. So it's automatic and okay. I can do that because I'm a developer, but like I like programming things. So I always think first, like go do it over here. But yeah, it's, it's still got a ways to go. I was just looking at this page that I have the overview

page of my home assistant. And if I click the sidebar to scroll down six times, six times before I get to the bottom of the page, there's six full pages of things on here on this dashboard that I'm, I have no idea what they are, but they're here. I mean, I do know what they are. It's just, there's so much stuff that just clutters this up. And yeah, they could definitely use some UX help and make it a little bit better. All right, Seth. But what do you like this year then?

So I do like, yeah. Well, I still, I mean, I'm going to clearly, I will admit to stealing this from Gavin. But so while I'm at Zedia, we're drinking at our Home Tech Happy Hour. Gavin whips out his phone and says, hey, look at this. And he's showing James Radcliffe the interface for the Aquara FP2. And I'm, I'm looking at it and he's like, look, these are people sitting in my house. And I'm like, that is, that's some space age stuff that can't be true. And so I bought one and man, that this little dumb product that has a horrible interface and a horrible setup experience

is probably the only thing that has tickled me in a very long time. Like this, this is genuinely a really cool product. It is a really cool product and there's so much potential in something like this. I think they, for a product made in China, they nailed the interface. Like I will, like this, it is, it is amazing. You draw on the thing, like where, what your room is, the size of your room. And you kind of like walk around and bounce off the walls. I guess that's what I had to do. Like, Oh, I walk over here and that's the edge. And I'll draw the edge of the wall down there. But, and then you could, you, you open up this little thing and it tells you that it has a little dot on the screen of you walking around the room.

It is absolutely insane. It is such a fun little device. And yes, Gavin, I stole it from you. I'm sorry, but I opened this document here where we're writing stuff down and no one had put that down. So I just put it down. So that's okay. And I will honorable mention the, uh, Acora same, same brand company, uh, the Acora U100, their, their lock. I installed it on my garage door and have had, you know, really good success all year opening it with my Apple Watch, which is a treat. Any lock you can get that has that technology, I guess they call it the Home P or Home Pass or whatever it is, it just drops a little card inside your Apple wallet or your other device wallet, I'm not sure, and you just

hold your phone or your watch up to your your door lock and it unlocks it it's amazing i don't even use my fingerprint i could but i don't have to uh i have a code if i remember it i could put that in but i just use my watch or my phone because i always have that and you don't have to actually bring up the card or your wallet right it just through nfc yeah knows that you're near it. And so it automatically just talks to your phone and unlocks. That's nice. That's so nice. It would be faster. It would be, it works faster than me finding my wallet app on my phone. Like it's almost as fast as doing the double click thing and holding your phone up to the payment

thing because you just, you tap it on, you just hold your phone over the area that it's on and it, it blings and it's open and it's so fast. It's amazing. Everybody should have this. Does it tie into the Apple watch at all? Yeah. Yeah. I hold my watch right up to the, to the same spot and it opens up. So that's what I do mostly is I just walk up and hold my watch over it. My wife is like, you never put this on my phone. I'm like, yes I did. And I grabbed her phone and put it on there and it opened right up. And she's like, oh, like it's magic's magic like just you walk up to it with your watch and you you put the watch i kind of like scared of it you like put your watch face right on the

front and uh it blings and it it opens right up it's great it it really is a fantastic product for the price but i think like just that feature alone like if you run across a lock that has it, go for it. So I guess the U100 slash home key is my runner up pick because I just had a lot of fun using that. But as far as like a product that is just like the best product or the most fun product I've ever had in a long time or I've had a long time, the FP2 definitely takes the cake on that one. Very cool. A car has been coming out with some amazing products and i bought the fp2 i was a little bit put off by the fact that it doesn't come with a power block you have to provide your own yeah of course i have a bunch but it has a white cord and i probably don't have a white one around and that would bug me but

one of these days i need to set it up and play with it because everybody's raving about it. Yeah. Yeah, they are pretty cool. I think I have three or four of them in the house and they work great. And the thing, it's not just the FP, it's not just the FP2 that I'm a fan of, but the millimeter wave technology in general,

I think it's just a game changer. Going from the PIR sensors that, you know, turn off on you to these devices that now know, even if you're just, you're breathing in a room, you know, um, it's more room presence. I love them. You know, I have the, Seth's showing it, the everything present, um, one, everything presence light. He's also got an everything presence pro coming now too, which is going to have POE and stuff like that. And to me, that makes it easier to install in certain places too, right? So the whole millimeter wave technology, I think

is excellent for your home automation. It is. It's just the interface that Acquara gave you to, I mean, it's a pain. It's not the best. It's not a great interface experience. I think they just nailed it to forgetting and understanding what this thing can do for you i think it like it you if you got the raw data off that sensor gavin like it's it doesn't tell you anything but seeing it visually on your phone and then kind of walking around bouncing around your room you're like oh this is space age stuff and there's there's for a 60 70 80 dollar sensor i mean come on and it tracks up to five people in a room i think or something like that right it's amazing the michael like it'll track when you're sitting in a chair so that that lamp turns on like yeah it was uh it's a good pick definitely definitely a good sensor there and uh gavin what

is your favorite product to 2023 fp2 yeah well. I'll use my backup one, but I have to go. This year was my year of the lawn, right? And with that, I came across the EcoWit soil sensors. And those sensors I used all year long to measure my soil moisture sensors. And you know what? They did the job. They work great for the price they're a good price aesthetically they're not the best they stick out of the grass so it took me a while to strategically place them out of the way so i don't hit step on them and stuff like that and i found those spots so it's it worked out in the end and i realized that if you had something in the ground it would be hard to find them again right at least

with these sticking out the ground i was able to find them and take them out for winter and stuff but they well and they're super easy to find with that really annoying led light too oh i put little black stickers over those yeah i don't know why that's there i guess so you can find it or something i'm not really sure but i put little black stickers out because i didn't want my like yard flashing at night with my neighbors looking right so I think you're spying on them or something yeah exactly you know but they were great they worked great and because of them my lawn I actually saved money this year I had better control over watering with my lawn and you know like I said the price the integration with home assistant was great um the range awesome battery life was great so that was my pick for my favorite product

of this year. Very good. All right. The next segment we have here is predictions for 2023. So last year we all sat down here and we did the same thing we're doing right now. And we talked about what is going to happen this year. And so now we'll go back and review those and maybe some of us will be accurate. Maybe some of us will be completely off base. Gavin, what was your prediction for last year? I think I just predicted everything at the end of last year, by the looks of it. It's like, I'm going to cover probably everyone's prediction. I predicted matter would take off, and I think we kind of did, right? I didn't well, I didn't really predict, you know, the voice.

I guess that was what I was looking forward to. But I also, I think the open AI was something I was looking forward to in 2023. And that I think has delivered so far. And I think it's still good. It has a lot to, a long way to go. And it's going to make things better once they figure it out. Yeah, I think you nailed it on the open AI thing. I think home assistant voice stuff has a way to go.

I know they were kind of promoting it was going to be the big year of voice. On the Matter side, I don't know. I don't know. We're all hesitant. I feel like these are all cop-outs. We'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and move to the next one seth what did you predict for the for last year or this year sorry uh yours was more of a blanket statement yeah i don't know what you guys were

thinking about with your predictions i think richard and i only wanted to predict yeah i think last year we we didn't prompt we didn't have a prompt of like what to make a firm prediction. I think like halfway through Adam said, I want to make a prediction. And that's what we did. So at the time I was most interested, I think, in what was going on with Alexa and Google, like the Alexa division and the Google Home division. We've seen some massive layoffs this year from both those companies. That's definitely still a story. And from what there was some reporting, especially like mid-year when Chad GPT was really taken off, most of the team at Google Home had been gutted to work on Bard.

So there's a big question there. So like what is going to become of those products over time still? And I'm sure Alexa is going to be there. Not sure Google Home. Like you never know with Google Home. Like what are they going to do? But I'm just really like these are very, these are losing them a lot of money.

And I'm really interested to see what they start doing to make money for the company. We've already seen Alexa like charge for features, right? Add some more like- Take away features and start charging for them. Yeah, yeah. So maybe that's what the future of these companies are. And then I'm kind of curious at that point, like how popular are they past the kitchen timer use case?

Well, and there was that report I think that we talked about earlier on the show where, you know, after what, a week or two, basically usage of Amazon Alexa drops off just because people probably aren't finding it as useful as maybe they thought they would. Well, yeah, but I think that's a bit of a warped perspective, right? Because in the first week of anything, you're going to exercise the heck out of it. Yeah, that's true. Just because it's cool and new, right? Oh, what happens if I ask it to tell a fart joke? What happens if, you know, so I think as you settle in with these devices, you figure out what works best for you.

I think the thing that has shockingly surprised both Google and Amazon is that people don't want to buy stuff through these things. Yes. Imagine that. Imagine that they didn't want a voice platform being a commerce solution that's i could have told them that saved them a few billion dollars yeah but then we wouldn't have these cool talking boxes seth yeah and i think you pointed out too

like um once people determine what works and what you know it can do um do. Um, like in my household, my wife, you know, at first she didn't like them, but now every morning I hear her talking to Alexa to find out what the drive to work is like, what the temperature and the weather is going to be like. And she gets her reports. And once if I'm afraid to take that away now, right. Cause she's become dependent on it and that's, it's good, right? Because she's enjoying the new technology. And it's a matter of just finding that little thing that they like, right? Or that they can find useful in their day. And we will all use that.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's what automation is all about. Just automating the inconvenient or the boring stuff. There has to be value there. And if there's not any value, there's no reason to have. That's the reason we took them out. I had free $39 Google Homes. I had the $200 Alexa.

That was the first round of it. And we just got bored of it. It just didn't offer the value that it it was supposed to bring and it it just didn't deserve space on our countertop essentially like oh so you don't use voice control at all in your home uh i mean outside of siri no no outside of like interacting with home kit that's it like and it's very basic stuff like turn on the light and you know in this room right but are you saying siri on a device or siri on a speaker i have one home pod left in the guest bedroom so yeah siri basically it lives on my watch or my my phone that's it oh wow yeah man that makes interesting interesting yeah i just

have them all well i'm using a combination of Google Home speakers and Sonos speakers. But hopefully Sonos and Google figure out their legal woes so I can just put Google Assistant on my speakers again. And Richard, I think to get widespread adoption with this in the household again, right, is you kind of have to supplement it with all the switches and all the other devices. Because if you have those, like on our pool pump, we can control the pool pump or we can ask the pool temperature. You know, we can turn on and off the TVs and stuff like that. If you have all those things, then you will use the voice more.

But if you didn't have all those things, then what else is there to do other than ask it for fart jokes and, you know, maybe turn on and off the one light, you know, thing timers i mean yeah that's you case really good kitchen timer i actually use it a lot for timers you know so i don't forget meetings timers and alarms i said it timers and alarms probably are what i use the siri thing for most if it can get them right but uh yeah i mean like even today i went around and i i got a bunch of these like Shelly plugs in and I was going around setting up little Christmas light things and adding them to a Christmas scene. And yeah, now that's in home kit, I can yell at Siri Christmas time and it'll, it'll kick on, uh, those lights when, whenever we need. So yeah, there's value there, but does it need to tell me,

by the way, if it tells me that it's going in the trash can. So there's no value in telling me by the way. Yeah, that's annoying. Yeah, and I really don't need to buy my toilet paper from a voice assistant. It's one of those things I want to look at before I buy, you know, make sure I'm getting a good deal. Make sure I'm getting the right thing. Oh, no, wait. Well, I mean, Amazon, you could try it on, I think. Richard, your prediction for 2023?

Yeah, I think I get a pure f on mine i predicted and i think this was largely expecting that matter would take off this year better than it did an onslaught of new products out there we've seen companies holding back and that was one of the things we talked about last year is that companies were holding back on product to wait and see what was happening with Matter. And as a result, I think we all thought that everybody was going to come out with cool new devices this year, either Matter or not Matter. There were going to be a ton of new devices. If anything, I think this is one of the more quiet device years that we've had in the past decade.

So yeah, I get zero points for this one. I mean, I, I would get zero points for that too. Cause I, I agreed wholeheartedly. I thought this was going to be the year that we saw that.

And yeah, nothing like it's been flat in the pro space for a long time. This is nothing in the pro space. Minus Josh. Josh came out with a new hub. That was pretty much it. And Ava with Ava with a remote like that that's yeah as far as like technology coming in and being shown like as far as like exciting stuff you know what i mean because somebody came out

with a new speaker or out outside speaker nobody cares about that but yeah transducers come on guys come on uh my my prediction was the year of the lock um and i predicted that we would see a bunch of new smart locks and features and maybe a focus on uh anti lock picking because everybody on reddit really likes to think that people are going to pick your locks uh i'm here to tell you that they're probably not they're just going to break your window or something um but we saw i mean we saw a good amount of locks i mean seth's pick was you know a smart lock that came out this year um so i feel like we have seen a good amount of smart locks come out i wouldn't say it's really the year of the lock though because there wasn't anything that was like revolutionary you know you had the home

key uh which sounds awesome um but then you know you still have different you know you still have weird uh segmentation there like i think yale came out with a home key compatible lock uh but you couldn't use like the zigbee and the z wave at the same time or the fingerprint you had to basically use the fingerprint or the home key or something like that so it's weird that we still have to deal with those challenges um and it's you know it's weird that companies are still coming out with smart locks that only come in like one color uh Because, you know, most of the time you have five or six different colors of locks, but certain companies like Aquara are only coming out with one color

of lock. So that's still a problem in the lock space. I think that's largely due to the maturity of the company though, right? I mean, Aqara, it sounds like Aqara, Aqara. There's no U in there. Aqara is this relatively small company compared to these huge conglomerates that own the lock companies. And so I think if you give them time and there's enough success with these lock products, you'll see them offer other finishes. But to run and create inventory for separate SKUs like that is expensive and harder to do for smaller companies yeah I guess I don't know I just especially a car itself is is get that gets a lot of their stuff from Xiaomi which is a larger company so I don't think it's a problem of availability it's just a problem of you know are they going to sell it or

not and they probably just know that they're not going to sell it so i feel this ties into a bit with matter too like we saw some lock announcements with matter and i bet you there's a bunch of them just waiting for matter to mature and they already probably have their matter locks ready to go um so we may see that this year or next year or the year after when Matter matures. You know, if somebody really just came out with some way to make like a smart lock for patio doors, either sliding doors or French doors and stuff like that, they would be billionaires. Yes. Because there's almost nothing on the market for those kind of things.

There's one I found and it was for a specific brand of door and that was it. Well, and that's the problem is they all take specific hardware and then the company stops making the hardware after a certain amount of time so you're basically like that little piece of wood that people put in the tract of like their sliding doors that's you know that's a whole nationwide thing that people do for security because their locks don't work i'm really surprised that pella and Anderson, both of which have flirted with smart control of their doors and windows, or an option for Z-Wave, because that's going to be pretty much compatible without them having to support an app. I think the longer term concerns for a lot of these companies is that, oh, well, if we put it on Wi-Fi, then we have an app that we now have to support for the rest of its life. And trust us, we don't want you to.

Yeah. Yeah. Yale has one for Anderson. They have the Azure lock for Andersonerson patio doors they're really slim but yeah but that's the only one i've seen out there and that thing is ginormous i mean it looks nice and everything but that thing is exactly so i wish they would i think um one solution people have gone towards is just leave the lock unlocked and use the automate uh bolt at the bottom and that's what they've gone with for now and even that would be cool if there was something you

know like more out of the box you know easy to install that i would be okay with that it just needs to be so instead of that board that's like in the tract um have you seen the ones where people install it like halfway up the door and it's basically like a metal unfolding arm somebody should just design something like that that'll allow me to open the door and lock it i think that that does we talked about auto slide which oh yeah yeah and they have the little we've seen that for like various doors and stuff but it's a big yeah i mean it's a it's a it's a thing a thing that lives on top of the door and kind of like opens and closes it, which, I mean, has its uses. It could be good for pets. Starships?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first video, if you go to autoslide.com and look at it, it's this guy on the hover around exiting his house. But yeah, it opens just the same way it does on the Enterprise. There you go. There you go. But yeah, that could be one solution and and probably be more supported moving forward than relying on these window companies to make

a smart product i'm not gonna say it's not their forte but it's probably not in their wheelhouse to to put something like this together, support it long-term. Fair enough. I mean. Man, I want this auto slide now. We've seen now how well that worked out for the garage door industry. Yeah. Let's not get into that.

We can spend a couple hours talking about that. We could bash Chamberlain any time. Maybe towards the end here. So what are you most looking forward to in 2024 we'll start with gavin now remember you're gonna get graded on these next year yeah so don't come up with some weird answer like it's actual prediction you tell me right before now i can't actually uh change my you know like like pull one from your five list that you have. No, but this was like a personal hope of mine for next year. And I'm hoping that we'll see some activity in the remote space.

And the only reason I'm thinking next year is because 2025 Harmony is supposed to shut down their servers. So I'm hoping for somebody to reverse engineer the harmonies that allow us to program it without a cloud on it. For example, you know, that's a personal hope, but I'm still waiting on somebody to release a harmony replacement.

The stuff I've seen so far, don't come close when it comes to home integration and stuff like that, you know, and there's so much potential there, but I know there's a lot of people that are like, well, all these remotes are dead. You just need five buttons to control everything and that's what people want nowadays i understand it but we're talking smart home here we want integration we

want control you know so i'm hoping we'll see some movement in this space and that i'm predicting next year only because 2025 harmony is supposed to shut down the servers. Do you remember the name of the remote that you guys talked about when it was announced? And it was like 40 bucks. It was going to be IR only. What's it called? Flirk. I think it's FLIR.

I don't know. Would you say to me? Yes. Would you call me? Right. Well, right. So I bought one and it's actually a really nice remote for a single single room it's okay yeah it's if yeah and and with line of sight and all that stuff but it's a really nice remote but their software is still on version zero dot whatever they haven't

completed all the features that they put in, but disabled to tease you about what was going to happen. Those things still aren't there two years later. So you have people interested in this space, but I think I fear there isn't enough money to sustain it. Yeah. I have the Flirc and I use it here in the garage because I have to, because I installed a soundbar for my little theater setup and turning on a projector and apple tv

and a soundbar at the same time once when your two devices are good three devices probably not um so it works well enough and i'll leave it at that i was able to get it to reliably turn things on and off uh fairly quickly and easily. I mean, I have a lot of experience programming remotes. So for me, it really wasn't that difficult. I just kind of had to figure out how they understood or how they want things to work and how their little macro system works. And then, oh, off to the races.

But it's a great, it's a good feeling remote. Like, I'm just kind of shocked as it is like why it hasn't advanced on the software side. Really the only thing holding it back is the software. And if it paired with some kind of RF dongle or something like that, oh my God, that would be the solution that Gavin is looking for. It would be so powerful.

And you're right, they nailed the ergonomics on that thing. It's a very nice, it's a very nice it has a very nice hand feel to it weight with what two double a batteries or something like that i think it uses i think so yeah and it's got a little the little color led on it to kind of like identify it and also you can change i think you can change between the like the color buttons that no one ever uses on their remotes yeah you can program them as four like the color buttons that no one ever uses on their remotes. Yeah. You can program them as for like do it yourself buttons for whatever you want them to be, which is kind of cool.

But yeah, the software is holding it back. And man, again, if somebody comes out with an RF solution, they can go through walls that that's a killer feature. I mean, I just,

I, I am with you, Gavin. Like I'm, I'm, I'm waiting for that because right now that's the only thing kind of going into mine if it's not too early. Yeah.

That's the only thing that's really holding the pro space around, like honestly, is the remote control solutions because we have them. Yeah, I know. I get jealous every time I see what you guys have. I wish I could get one of those. Yeah, most of the

time honestly i i try to avoid you know specking in a universal remote at this point you know from urc or elan or whatever just because it adds so much more complexity to everything and i think that's kind of the move away from the remotes that you know in general society is doing at the moment a lot of people are going to a single streaming service and they don't need the switch inputs. But if you do, you're opposed. You don't have an option. Yeah, I would say a lot of people are, but the vast majority of these larger homes that have, you know, 10 or so TVs, you can't have 10 Apple TVs streaming the same thing at the same time. If you do, it's like insane cacophony of like different sounds coming out at different times. Like that's not how streaming works. So like, yeah, you need to have these things synced up through a video distribution system

and the patio needs to play at the same time that the kitchen TV is playing this game. It all needs to be in sync. And there's only one way to do that with a universal remote and, and a video distribution system and a hidden way equipment, because all this stuff takes up a whole closet by the time you get done doing it. And man, I, I, I really, I really would like to see something exist out there that could stuff because of a whole closet by the time you get done doing it and man i i i really i really would like to see something exist out there that could be done a little bit on the outside of the pro market because our products are going up in price they're not coming down well that's a problem

it's like if you basically want a universal remote with an automation system i i don't know what the price of everything is but you're at least spending a thousand dollars at least and that's just the hardware and that's probably just for the remote and so you know if i have a setup that wants universal remote they might be spending two or three thousand dollars just to get this one universal remote working and so like it's just crazy that there's nothing that bridges that gap between like a urc remote that only does ir for four hundred dollars or whatever it is or Or a $40 Flirc remote. Like there's nothing in between. $40 or your next step up is a $1,500 plus system.

Like it's crazy to sit there and see the fact. Something's got to exist at $800 or $300. Like something has to exist somewhere. But yeah, I don't know. That said about the ProSpace stuff, I kind of want to like, I'll hit on this real quick. Like I'm interested in 2024

of seeing some kind of like, I wrote here reconciliation with DIY products. Like we really kind of hit on this in our Matter conversation the other day about like these companies or customers wanting to install DIY product.

I look at all the InnoValley stuff and I'm like, man, this is awesome. I want to install these InnoValley stuff. I can't do it because I have a house that's set up with a Control 4 system and all my dimmers and switches are all Control 4 Zigbee. And I can't work with anything but Control 4. What I really want is Control 4 just to work with all the other stuff like a home automation hub should, right? And it can, it clearly can, but they're holding themselves back or they still have those walled gardens up. And I just don't think that's healthy for the pro industry to have those walled gardens. Obviously it's worked well for them over the

years, but it would work better if they worked and were operable in some way with more things out there they can set the the bar for what a good product is they can say our dimmers and switches they're premium priced but they work really well and we've got all the features properly implemented and the dealers still buy them and they'll still sell them to the customers that way but if somebody wants to set up an inability switch in their system they're only prevented by vendor lock-in, you know, from, and I'm not just singling out control for all the other systems as well. That's kind of how it works. So I'm, I really would like to see some kind of capitulation somehow where we can get

some, some of these more DIY products working inside of these systems. Just seeing all the cool stuff that you can do on the DIY side and kind of like watching Gavin set up what he can set up. And I'm like, man, if we can only do that inside the pro space, we would be off to the races. Yeah, I think one of the coolest products in this space is from a company called Innovo. And they make what's called the Magic Cube.

And it basically bridges the gap between the DIY space and the professional space. So it's basically home assistant on a little box, and they have a driver for a lawn. And so anything that you put into home assistant, you can then bring into a lawn. And so hypothetically, you could have Matter devices in an Elan system, even though it's not officially supported. And so there's starting to be some stuff like that, but it will be interesting to see, youron specifically calling out their support of third-party products, even like Philips Hue. So that if your daughter has a Philips Hue bulb in her room, that's not an outlier now. That's something that you could bring into your control system. And that's just smart. Yeah.

One of the things that always crushes you as an integrator is when you're putting in this really expensive system that can do video distribution and audio distribution, and somebody brings you a $20 outlet that you can't make work with the system. And they're like, well, what's, what was the point of this? And I was like, well, it was for all this other stuff, but because I can't control your light switch, then it doesn't matter. Right. So, Richard, what are you looking forward to in 2024? So, one of the reasons that I wanted to see an influx of new products this year, which didn't happen, is that I really want to see some new products in categories that haven't had a whole lot of innovation recently.

And the first that comes to mind is thermostats. I feel like the thermostat space has just become quite stagnant. I don't see significant improvements from, despite numerous SKUs being floated out there from Ecobee. And Nest has done nothing for years and hasn't come out with we will see a new Nestle thermostat next year, and it may support matter. And I say that because not all of their thermostats do support matter, but the lowest end thermostat that they come out with, that's just, that's the one that they're trying to sell like crazy at the commoditized one 29 price point that is matter compatible. So hopefully if we look at new hardware, they'd be able to make it matter compatible too. And I'll just piggyback that with, um, I'd love to see the thermostats allow you to use other

temperature sensors with them. Yes. Right? You know, because it just drives me nuts that my house, I have temperature sensors everywhere, but my Echo B only works with the ones that come with it. You know, I'd love for them to just open that up so I can, you know, work with everything. Yeah, that would be nice. At no surprise to anybody, my prediction is going to be Sonos headphones.

Oh, keep dreaming. Because I have been asking for them for, my prediction is going to be Sonos headphones. Oh, keep dreaming. Because I have been asking for them for years now. Not going to happen. Yeah. This is the third year in a row, right? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, well, third year's the time. Third year's the charm, right? Man, I just want it to be a thing. Just come out with it. Make it what I want. I'll buy it.

That's it. That's all I want. That's my prediction. Stop trying to make fetch happen, TJ. It's never going to happen. Nobody wants those. I only need like one more Sonos product in my house. Maybe two. The second one is the headphones. So maybe they'll come out with a Sonos remote control first.

Oh, there we go. Yeah. Well, there's talks of the streaming box, which I really don't understand. So maybe they will come out with a remote. I need you to explain the use case to me because- Oh, there's so many use cases, Richard. For me, I only use a wireless headphone set, like the over-ear headphone things, when I'm traveling, when I'm not home, when I'm on an airplane, or when I'm in a hotel or something like that and I want to hear my streaming box better those are good uses what am I using it for at home

old school tv headphones is the simplest explanation so I don't know how many I've installed it's probably not that many nowadays but I used to install a lot of tv headphones and they were literally just headphones that connected to your tv and they played the audio over headphones yeah the sennheisers they're like four or $500, something crazy. That's the simplest example I can give you. But for really, for me, we have Sonos speakers all over the house. And so I don't have a problem with not being able to hear something everywhere, but sometimes like, maybe I want to watch TV in the morning, but I don't want to disturb everybody. Or a good example, Nicole is cooking in the kitchen, and she usually has the living room speakers and the kitchen speakers turned up all the way so she can hear over the cooking and everything. And she could probably just wear the headphones instead.

And so it's simple use cases like that. For me, it would have to work without the Sonos system, right? It would have to be a set of bluetooth headphones as well then why why do they need to be you're there you're already there well because there's nothing there's nothing else that works with the sono system right what else you're gonna do so yeah i agree with you if they're gonna come out with headphones i want something that i turn it on and it automatically switches the audio over. So it'll turn off the internal speakers, switch it to the headphones, and now I can watch TV without disturbing the rest of the house. So that's the Sonos integration

part, but you also want it to not work with Sonos. So if you're, you can pair it to your phone and use it like other headphones too, I guess. Right. Right. I don't want it to be like completely useless. Right. I mean, like I'm probably not going to use them outside the house that much, but we all know that technology stops working at some point. And these headphones are probably going to stop being supported in who knows how long. And I just want the flexibility to use them with Bluetooth as well. And I'm assuming that there's going to be two tiers of these at some point, because that's what Sonos does.

The more expensive one is going to be the all in. It's going to have Bluetooth and work with Sonos and all that good stuff. And then they're going to come out with a cheaper set that only works with Sonos and doesn't have Bluetooth built in. That's how I see it playing out. Okay. So you're predicting two Sonos headphones next year. I don't think, I don't think in the same year. I think they'll start off with the more expensive ones. They'll start off with the more expensive ones. All right. I just don expensive ones all right i i just don't know how uh come on i just don't know how they can survive competing with like where where is that going to live on the price point like are they got you've got apple at one end and then you've got google buds i mean essentially what you want already exists on the market i just don't

all you want the sonos app to do is have bluetooth out on it like so you can just well no i just i want to be able to listen to whatever I'm listening to through the Sonos, whether it's my TV or radio or whatever it is through the headphones. So what if instead, like where I think Seth was going, they enable the Bluetooth that's now on board all their new speakers to work both ways and you could tie into see that bluetooth isn't good gotta say sonos on it because it says sonos upside down and right side up hold on this this is the professional crowd we know bluetooth doesn't go that far right and so as i'm walking

around the house unless the speakers hand off the bluetooth connection like perfectly the bluetooth isn't a good solution it's got to be Wi-Fi based your Wi-Fi headphones aren't going to work I can that's too much too much energy so they're not going to

last past an hour yeah they wouldn't last 449 is my my price prediction so they already have Wi-Fi headphones

that last good amount of time so how about don't don't poo poo on my prediction wait a minute

couldn't you already do this with the Apple headphones? Yes. Because you can AirPlay from Sonos. Can you? Can you AirPlay? Yes, you could.

Can you have Sonos go to AirPlay devices? We're so close in just identifying that you just need a $30 pair of Bluetooth headphones. You want nice integration. This problem is solved right now by using airpods right and so with my airpods and my apple tv i can just i can do the exact same thing i'm asking for right now um but i just i just want another set of headphones and just get out of here all right he's getting defensive i've got a creacut right over there and i will print you some uh some sono stickers i'll be expecting them.

You have my address. Make sure they're good headphones, though. We know Sonos. Oh, yeah. I'm going to Alibaba right now. What are you talking about? Alibaba. I'll get them in six months, but, you know. That's right.

We'll meet up at Infocom or CD or something. You'll give them to me then. We'll find out next year. Or will we? Yeah. Who's going to make the headphones first? Seth or someone else? Probably someone else. Yeah, right? It's another project for me to do.

Or not do. Seth will get started, but he won't finish it in time. Alright, let's go around and tell everyone where they can find you. Maybe the latest information about you, whatever you're working on. Gavin, we you're working on. Gavin, we'll start with you.

He kind of caught me off guard with that one. Let Richard go for a sec because he's always good at this crap. He caught me off guard with this one. So if you want to find out more about what I'm up to, as I mentioned, I co-host the Smart Home Show with Adam and I also occasionally put out an episode of Home On that seems to be quarterly these days.

Hopefully, it will be more frequently next year. I'm also on Mastodon as Richard Gunther, on Instagram as Richard W. Gunther. And in my day job, I'm a digital experience consultant. And I think I probably summed this up best when I was recently on Robert Spivak's Do It For Me Solutions YouTube channel and talking about the user experience problem in smart home apps, saying that basically my job is to help companies make their apps suck less. So if you have an app that sucks and you need help making it suck less, I might be able to help you. There's a lot of them out there. So I'm sure you're plenty busy. Gavin, you ready now? Yes, I'm ready now. Okay. Now I was prepared for this moment. All right, here we go. There's like two things on here.

Hey, hey, I got to be in the right mindset. And with that, you can find me on Mastodon. I'm Gavin Campbell at hometech.social. I'm also on Twitter, GVN Campbell on Twitter, you know, because I still hang out over there just because I have to follow certain people. And we're always in the Slack channel, the hometech.fm Slack channel. So if you're in there, I seem to be, you know, helping out a lot, giving a lot of free consulting to people lately. You know, like maybe I should start a business doing this. Does your home automation system suck?

Yeah. Let's talk to Gavin. Yeah. Grinch will handle the app. Gavin will handle the home automation. It's printer consulting these days not consulting i i when it comes to printers i feel your pain and i let you i give you a shoulder to cry on because that's all printers is a little different that's all i can do for you you know because i'm there with you too but yeah the slack channel a lot of people pick me in there for help and, you know, I give some free consulting. So make sure you pay your Patreon and join us in there.

And Seth, you can finally, mostly editing this show for the next couple of hours because, oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm over at, I guess the easiest way to find me social spaces is going to be over on hometech.social, Seth at hometech.social as well as our Slack channel. You can ping me in there. But yeah, most every week I am sitting down with two of the three people here

tonight, I guess. Well, it's the three people I'm looking at and sitting down and having a conversation every week on hometech.fm. So check that out. And you can find me on the Hometech podcast as well as the Slack group. You can join that for only $1 a month. I mean, there's no other

great space on the internet like the Slack channel. Or you can find me at my website, connectu.tech. Alright, well this was a lot of fun, guys. I'm so glad we got to do this again. TJ, thanks for driving the ship, driving the car, steering the ship.

I don't know what the right term is, but this was fun. Car wreck right into a bridge. Let's do this again next year. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, guys. Everybody, I hope everyone listening and everyone here has a great holiday. And just spending time with friends,

family, and all that good stuff, uh, over the next couple of days or weeks, I guess, because some of it's extended. Uh, yeah,

I hope everyone's having a great holiday and, and continues to have one. See y'all. Take care. Well, well don't allow any after show talk or anything like that before we go into this piece i i feel like the after show talks after that right yeah it would be after that oh i don't have notes after the show okay oh good grief okay you can tell we're driving richard nuts so he's like just shut up you know we have show notes right like we're looking at him right oh that's what that is you see what we have to put up with here richard you know what threw me off i thought the after

show was actually going to be part of the show so it'd be before we did the plug promotion doesn't make any sense kevin's after the show well i guess we're just talking now. This ain't gonna be recorded and edited then, right? Who knows? I guess you just want us... It says recording. We're still recording. And Richard's talking on mute. He's cursing on mute. Yeah, he's cursing on sound right now. These freaking idiots.