HomeTech.fm - Episode 490 - Lighting the Outdoors with AMP Lighting's Zach Evensen

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

On this week's show: We sit down and chat about landscape lighting with AMP Lighting’s Zach Evensen. Zach is part of AMP’s sales enablement team and shared with us the keys to a successful outdoor lighting system and what to look for in the future from AMP.

This is a Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 19th 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, home technology. Stickers? We've got it all. Oh yeah, exciting week exciting week yeah um so welcome from the past i guess uh we pre-recorded this episode uh we have a really cool interview with uh zach evenson he was uh he's a sales enable it over at amp lighting and uh tj you met i guess

you met with him during your training at AMP and asked him to come on this podcast and he did. So I don't know, like what was your experience, I guess, training in Florida besides it being hot? Yeah, well, definitely, definitely really hot and miserable traffic because we stayed in Orlando. Oh, that's awesome. And then drove back and forth, which was like four hours on the way back one time.

So that part, that part was not fun for that. But that was my fault. that wasn't amp's fault um no so i've actually i've bought some products from amp uh for the past like i think two or three years now i don't know how i found them probably just a google search um and i found them a couple years ago i've done a lot of projects with them i've always been happy with the quality and everything um but i've never had any formal training on landscape lighting. And so this six months ago, nine months ago, somewhere around there, I got notified that they actually did in-person training. And so it was a perfect opportunity to do some landscape lighting training, actually

learn about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it a certain way and how you would design for it. And that's where I met zach and a couple others down there and kind of got the lay of the land and got to see the facility and learn how to design landscape lighting and what to do and best practices and all that good stuff so um really good training i think it's a great company they always ship things like super quick which i think is very important for any company um but like literally like if I place an order, I don't know, like four o'clock Eastern Standard Time, it's shipped by five still.

Nice. So like they're just lighting fast with that. So pretty happy with the product and the company so far. And I thought it would be interesting to talk about landscape lighting. You know, we've talked about it a little bit on and off over the past couple months with, you know, like the LIFX lights

and me doing my fence project and all that good stuff. So I thought it was definitely worth a worthwhile interview and good to have that little extra insight into it. Yeah, just a little little outside of what we normally talk about home automation, focus, the home assistant focus, the YAML focus. But yeah, it was definitely interesting conversation. And you know, just to kind of sit in and get a little bit more information about a different product. So I guess with that, let's go ahead and jump into the interview with Zach Evenson with Amplighting. Hey, Zach, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Hey, Seth. Thank you for having me. Not a problem. Anytime. Well, we're going to talk a little bit about Amplighting and what you guys do over there. But first, I just

want to talk about you, what your background is, and how you got involved in your particular industry. Great. Yeah. I actually started with amp lighting eight years ago. I really started from the bottom. I got a position in the warehouse and worked my way into a customer support position. Just talking to all these people, it got me so interested. And then you start seeing the projects, the photos, the after effect. And really, my passion just grew.

So I got more interested. And then I became a product specialist where I was teaching some of our internal staff on the products and the workings of a landscape lighting system. I excelled into an account manager position where I started coaching more directly and staff on the products and the workings of a landscape lighting system. I excelled into an account manager position where I started coaching more directly and intimately with franchises and larger businesses. And then kind of moved my way into a sales enablement role where I'm teaching the internal team certain methodologies, best practices, and helping create tools to help them sell better, just like our

design services and you know the training center so it's been really kind of a journey um probably i really you know like the tech support side of things probably really helps uh oh yes like you get to see all the problems and then you're like hey don't do this and if you get to train everybody and tell them how not to do that then they don don't see them anymore. So that's great. I've heard the gambit of the good, the bad, the ugly. So you see a lot, you see it all. I did some returns for a little while too. So you get to see the product come back, you get to break it open. So you end up learning a lot as you progress through these other roles in the company. Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for joining us, Zach.

I actually met you a couple months ago when Nicole and I came down and we did the in-person training there outside of Tampa. So that was a really informative class and everything, and I was glad to do that. Can you give us an overview of Amplighting and what's the mission for the company? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so Amp Lighting was truly founded with our contractors in mind, our customer base.

We started back in 2019. And since then, we've grown to be the largest factory direct lighting manufacturer in the nation. So one thing that we wanted to do, we wanted to provide the highest quality outdoor lighting fixtures and LEDs at a reasonable cost, right? Readily available and not extremely expensive, you know, brass fixtures that have typically been on the market and a closed market as well, right? So many, many layers of distribution. So we wanted to break that. We wanted to make it, you know it very available to our customer base. And at the heart of it, we want to be able to provide the best experience and products so much so that our customers become the best advocates. And I feel like we've really kind of stayed true to that mission statement in doing so. So AMP is primarily sold, I guess, through dealer partners like DJ went to do training and he's now a dealer for amp lighting?

Well, so no, not really. So we've actually broken down the walls of distribution. So you used to have to go to a site one or one of these big distributors to get your lighting materials, your equipment. We saw that as a big hurdle for a lot of people. And so we decided to go direct to the consumer. So direct to the pro, the installer, and the business owner. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so you can sign up with an account on amplighting.com.

And after you go through the application process, you can start purchasing. So it's a streamlined way, and it breaks down some of those barriers, which helps, you can start purchasing. So it's a streamlined way and it breaks down some of those barriers, which helps us keep the cost down. And that's personally what I like too. I like just being able to buy directly from the company, especially when you have like a nice website. There's some companies out there that sell directly to the dealer, but the website is the most awful thing I've ever used, not saying clips or anything um so i mean i appreciate that being able to just buy products and you guys are you guys are pretty good with

what you do so thank you yeah i know it was uh i mean it's something that we take pride in you know we want to make sure that that people are out there able to install professionally made equipment for reasonable price because you know a lot of people are dealing with economic issues financial issues and there's more barriers to entry at that point so if we can make affordable products reasonably that would work really well it's just going to benefit everybody yeah well that's awesome um our our our makeup on our our podcast here is there's a lot of what I would consider like traditional AV dealers like TJ or, you know, like the CDS based dealers. And there's a lot of there's a ton of DIY, what I would say DIY pros out there who are, you know, probably as doing the AV installs isn't their day job, but, um, you know, Gavin's probably one of them. Like, I think that he could, he could probably slide right over into a custom integration

business and run circles over, uh, around many of them or just fit right in. Like he's, he's pretty advanced. And then we have, you know, people who listen, who are just interested in home technology in general. Um, but I guess from that perspective, like why, why would landscape lighting be an important technology for homeowners uh like what i i only have a couple lights hanging out outside those those little horrible i hate them they're those horrible don't say solar you know they are they're the ring oh man so i i i do not like them but like why, why are, and I guess besides the envy factor for me, like driving by and seeing somebody's house lit up at night, what benefit, I guess, would any homeowner get from a landscape

lighting? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Landscape lighting, you know, to me, and I'm sure to others, has a lot of benefits. So, and especially for those who actually enjoy their homes, they're spending, you know, a lot of their time at home. And, you know, really we have to look at it like, you know, people's homes are typically their largest investment, right? So having a professionally designed lighting system not only allows you to show off the

investment, right? There's some prestige to it. But it also helps provide security at night for your loved ones, right? So, you know, it's coming home, you know, you had a kiddo, late night baseball game, it's feeling safe pulling into your driveway after that, you know, it's going in and letting the dog out back and not having to worry about fighting. You know, and I've seen so many people spend tens of thousands of dollars on renovations or remodels and they just they can't use it at night they didn't put lighting in their pergola they didn't they didn't put the

hardscape lighting around their fire pit right in their seating areas so you know you spent all this money to just enjoy it for part of the day and half the day you're at work so you're what you're doing is you're opening up these spaces, you're providing security, you're providing additional value. You know, there are studies that say it does help increase, you know, home value to a certain degree. And so you're packing all of these benefits in, you know, to a single affordable system for the most part. So, yeah, no, you know, it's none of that. You know, the cherry on top is it looks great. Yeah.

Yeah. This is kind of like we have a we have like a mixed neighborhood it's one of the older you say it's like one of the first planned communities uh in the nation ish or at least done in florida where it was like in the 50s and they were kind of rolling out these like uh particular florida homes you know your traditional florida home right and uh there were a lot built over you know a 10 15 year period they all look mostly the same there's some variances and i'm all done by the same couple handful of builders i'm sure um but then uh there were some lots that were left open and those later in the years in 2006 2009 you know that that that space they they started to get newer homes built on them and when you you drive by those, they're all lit up because it was like, I have all these dark

homes from the 1950s and 60s. Yeah. And you drive by those and man, they look really nice. It's like. You see the difference. Yeah, you do. Well, yeah, it's just much more inviting. You know, it's one of those things when you pull up to a house with landscape lighting,

it just feels like you're supposed to be there. And when you pull up to one with no lighting outside, it's's like am i supposed to be here right now like what's going to happen am i breaking in especially if you're especially if you're in florida if you know what i mean oh yeah you gotta be careful it's the trick-or-treat effect i guess yeah uh so um i know and over the years i mean spanning from the 1950s to the 2000s uh there there have been a ton of different technologies that have been used for landscape lighting um what we're seeing in the in the house right now is a bit you know the led revolution and led technology is coming in place like how is that affecting landscape lighting right now what's going on with that oh yeah you've got to

not you're not using incandescence anymore no i mean i there are actually i think they're putting laws in place to ban the sale of incandescence so you know in the pool industry i know is a big one that's getting hit with that where you know they can't even sell an incandescent light anymore so you know what do you do with those but you know leds in themselves led technology has advanced dramatically since its early introduction even. You know, so most LEDs themselves generate a fraction of the amount of energy an incandescent or a halogen would produce. And so we're looking at around five times less consumption compared to those counterparts. On top of that, you know, you get different color options you get dimming capability um and and all the tools that you need to create like a custom mood or setting with leds so we can go

to really warm to really cool to all the colors of the rainbow and customize that experience for you whereas with you know your incandescence and halogens you're you're stuck with your your whites essentially right yeah whatever color whatever color you locked in at um when you bought the lamps uh dug in there well um you mentioned the like the different color like rgb ones like going you know different colors painting colors on your house um is that becoming a bigger deal are you seeing that or is it still like more of a specialty type thing it's definitely becoming more popular you know and and i like having a classic look 99 of the time but man is it cool when you know we have a uh your favorite sports team or a holiday an event where you can custom tune you know your color scheme to fit that feel and environment uh we're seeing a lot

more of our designs coming in. So with our design service, we see a lot of projects come in and we're seeing more and more requesting color options, at least as a secondary choice for their customers. And with technology now, you get really good saturation, high vivid colors, and you can really make it pop and create that wow effect not only that i mean who wants to you know get on the ladder for the holidays and and christmas

you know knock it out with your landscape lighting system and you never have to get on the ladder again yeah i think that i think the approach there for me um we have some some rgb uh landscape lights outside but it's only our pathway lights. And the rest of the lights are just regular, you know, 4,000 or 3,000 K, whatever they're at. But I like having a mixture in there because you can, you know, like you said, when it's around the holidays or something like that, throw some color up there.

And that way you don't have to like worry about it. Or if you're like hosting a party or something, that's how you can identify your house. You know, look for the red lights going up the sidewalk or something like that. So I think there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do with that out there so it's interesting to see that it's becoming more popular yeah i mean last halloween we have you know we have our control crow rgbs and uh you know i had them all out there i had a purple and red and then in the kind of like alleyway towards my front door i had this like flashing mode on so

like it really kind of tied in the whole effect and made it look super cool. Yeah, that's awesome. A lot of people listening, maybe not a lot to our podcast specifically, but definitely a lot of people I interact with on a daily basis. They just don't understand why somebody would do hardwired landscape lighting, right? They'll go to Amazon or Home Depot or whatever, and they'll buy, you know, solar lights for, you know, $5 each or whatever, and they'll throw them in there, and eventually they'll probably break or they just won't be good quality.

And they may look to actually get some good quality landscape lighting installed. What does the typical installation process for landscape lighting look like, and what should a homeowner expect yeah i mean and and i'd like to see that you know a good installation process for landscape lighting system starts with you know with a design really you know walking the customer through talking to them understanding the needs um and that'll ultimately help determine you know the

installation as a whole. But installations can be simple or really complex, obviously, depending on the home, the landscaping and all that good stuff. If we're dealing with larger properties, more spaces, things could definitely get kind of complex. But let's just use an average single family home as an example. You know, you mount your transformer to the side of the hole or to a post, plug it in just like a TV would plug in. And we want to make sure that, you know, we're up to code and away from certain items or surfaces. We go, we run, you know, multiple transformers in 10 cases, depending on, you know, accessibility. Then, you know, really the main part, the hardest part is trenching the wire. So, you know, trenching down to code, which is six inches, you know, making sure that we're, you know, working around risks like, you know, gas lines or

fiber optics or, you know, coax cables, or we're not hitting those or banging those. And then once we get our lines trenched and our transformer mounted, we just have to kind of anchor down our fixtures and make those connections. And, you know, one thing that we always say is make a strong connection and make as few connections as possible. But after that, you know,

we want to go back at dust, do our adjustments, fine tune the system, make sure everything's operating correctly. And that can take, you know, up to four hours to six hours to multiple days in some cases to to really get an entire system installed and fine-tuned properly yeah i would not i would i mean i guess i would not have thought about that like going back and once you get everything set yeah of course it's light you're gonna have to look at it at night

you can't do it at noon uh but yeah to go back and like tune things out make sure the lights are aimed in the right direction that kind of thing yeah that makes a lot of sense uh i i remember i know you just mentioned like having a lighting design and kind of like ideas of what the customers needs are um you know i thought on my house i would i would like put a couple lights out and it would look okay and i put them them in and they didn't look okay. So I took them down, but like, there's, there's a lot of like, um, our, there, there's the technical side, which I think I can do because I can, I can, I can dig a hole six inches down, which, um, which is, uh, it turns out five inches deeper than they will bury your fiber line here in Florida. That's so true. Yeah. And When you said that, I just kind of laughed

because I'm like, yeah, they don't do that. And then I can connect the transformer and I can mount it to code into the right spot and that kind of thing and put a switch on it or automate it somehow. But what I can't do very well is the artistic side of this and make it look good after I put all these things in. So, like, how it kind of applies to lighting design indoors, too.

Like, I'm not very good at that. And I'm sure there are people who excel at that. Right. How important is that getting that initial lighting design right when it comes to landscape lighting? Is it something that you can kind of, you know, shoot from the hip with and then fix later when you're doing those adjustments? Or is it something you kind of have to nail right out the gate? You can definitely shoot from the hip. Oh, that's good.

And I always say, yeah, I always say it's not going to look as great as it can look. But I like to say anything with a light on it looks better than one without, right? And so you can shoot from the hip and you're going to get something that looks better than it did more often than not. But having a good lighting design is everything for outdoor lighting, right? When we're talking architectural, when we're talking pathway, when we're talking accent and highlight, you know, we're designing a system that not only you're enjoying as a homeowner and as a user, but also the public, right? We're illuminating an outdoor space that could be in some cases communal or publicly used. And so we want to make sure that our lighting design enhances the space to a degree that it doesn't intrude into the privacy or comfort of others, right? And so that goes into light pollution,

dark sky areas, and things like that. So there are some layers and nuances to lighting design that go beyond just what looks good. It goes into taking others into consideration too, and your environment, really. It's funny you say that. I have an outdoor lighting show, DMX Parlight, that i had to pick up for work because we were doing an integration this guy called from miami he said hey i've got 30 of these on top of these two hotels and they light up the roof at night and um on this is 60 between the two buildings and and and for some reason the product i had the driver i wrote didn't quite integrate well with that.

And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to buy one. It's, you know, $100 or something. I shipped it from Amazon. It was something that he found on Amazon. And I got it in and started working on it. And then it just sat here. And I'm like, well, what do I use for it?

So, it was like Halloween. I plugged that thing in and put like, washed the side of my house with like this purple light or whatever a couple days later this nice lady came to my house and she's like hey um there's a bright light that shines in my living room and i'm like oh i know exactly where it is it's right behind you and she's like no no no it's on the side of your house and she starts walking around to the other side of the house and i'm like no it's right here this is, and it was amazing because the way that it was able to. Bend around. It seemed like it had to have been like magic light.

But the amount of light that had to have been able to get to her house had to have been very minimal. But at night, it lit up her entire house purple or living room purple. So, whoops. But I moved it to another part where it was not going to affect anyone's home uh but yeah that light pollution is definitely kind of an issue between uh neighboring spaces yeah i mean i definitely had designs change you know uh over time where things removed because of things like that so it's yeah it's just the little tiny things you don't think of.

And you're like, man, this is going to look awesome. You turn it on and you feel like, you know, the Griswold. So yeah, you gotta,

you gotta play it safe sometimes. Well, just cause you like, it's funny too. We do a lot of like, we use a lot of plans and stuff like that. And most of the time it's like, I want to go out and see it in person,

which obviously you can't do because you're in Florida with all these designs and stuff you're doing. But it's one of those things that like you still have to set eyes on it because you can't account for all those other variables all the time you know you have to be like the trees and whatever else they're just not always reflected properly so it is one of those things that there are going to be changes and you know that's fine yeah having a site plan like a 2d versus you know actually seeing it live in person or at least some photos, some images to help contrast some of the 2D from that. It makes a ton of difference. And, you know, obviously, as you're designing, the more supporting details you have, the better it's going to turn out.

All right. So we're in the technology space here where we are used to updates, breaking things, companies promising things that never get delivered and all that kind of stuff that goes with technology. What should homeowners know about maintaining their landscape lighting? Is there anything that they need to do on like a yearly basis or anything drastic like that? Yeah. I mean, yeah, maintenance is key for anything that you want to keep lasting, you know, a long time,

right? And, you know, with the correct knowledge of the system, with the right tools, it's super easy to keep up with the lighting system. And, you know, one of my tips that I recommend people to do is, you know, once or twice a year, go around to your fixtures, clean the debris off the lenses, you know, make sure you adjust the pitch go around to the to the plant material that you have these illuminating trim those up you know make sure that the uh the fixture is not covered with leaves but in terms of you know maintaining your system it's it's a pretty hardy and resilient system you know there's not a lot of moving parts um in a landscape lighting system and so as long as you you know you're ensuring that the fixtures aren't getting damaged or kicked over

time, they're adjusted properly and they they're clean. You're going to get that system performing at its max, you know, for the lifetime of that system. That is one of those things that I really like about landscape lighting. And I, it's one of those things too,

where it's, um, I don't understand why a lot of integrators haven't really caught on to landscape lighting. Um, I think they're just like gluttons for punishment. It's digging tj it's the digging well i know but you can hire somebody for that i mean but it's just like it's one of those things that like pretty much once you install it minus you know cleaning it up and everything you really don't have to touch it which

is nice um and that's a stark contrast for pretty much anything else that the home automation professionals install so maybe that's why they don't like it i don't know yeah to me digging in uh in uh you know a trench in the dirt and crawling in an attic it's just as painful so yeah that's what i'm saying the attic worse the attic is worse now i think oh maybe not i don't know yes um i see on your website that you have some ring products that you group with um transformers uh mainly um for power control and everything is there do you guys have some kind of partnership there and what other um things in the smart home space are you doing that yeah absolutely so we did partner with ring uh earlier this year i think maybe late last year you, what we've been doing with them is really helping bring people that stepping stone to automation with their lighting systems with a

very comfortable name, right? So we're using a name that's very familiar. They've already used it with their doorbells, with their motion sensors, with their security cameras. And so integrating this into, you know, the ring ecosystem has been pretty successful. It's like I said, it's very familiar. So people don't have a hard time, you know, plugging it in, scanning the barcodes and going through that process. I mean, odds are they probably already have the doorbell and have the account. And this is a pretty easy bridge, you know, and they're just plugging and playing at that point.

So that, that, that has been a pretty cool partnership and we've seen, um, you know, the benefits and, and some of the downsides to, you know, certain automation systems and how they incorporate into the home. And that's something we're actually, like I said, it's a, it's a stepping stone. So we've been working on our own smart technology and our own smart system that we are going to be implementing very soon. I don't have dates or anything like that, which I wish I had because, man, I'd love to be able to kind of hang that carrot. But that's something that we're working on. We're going to bring in and we're going to be using all the latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies with that system.

And so you're going to see an enhancement in you know landscape lighting smart technology very soon yeah that's that's that's always good to hear i mean it's not like you need very much with it most of the time like you said most every night having the lights turn on some like as most as much as i do with my lights like and have ever done with any of my clients lights when we we integrated with uh an automation system um I would kick the lights on like at sunset um and make sure that they were on somewhere an hour before sunrise something like that right and then if there were any other automations like if it's midnight or something and the lights are off and the gate

opens turn the lights on you know path lights and that kind of thing. Those types of little small automations go a long way and put that system to use and then also turn it off when you don't need to waste the electricity or whatever. And I've had clients do full Lutron integrated landscape lighting systems where, you know, the lighting designer was in charge of the levels. The outdoor lighting design was all dictated, and there's levels for each light to go out, and it's all incandescent lamps. They did crazy stuff. It can get very involved.

I mean, the amount of automation that you can truly do, and that has been done to dumb systems. So we're talking about people buying boards and actually integrating them into the transformer's cabinet and controlling them that way with relays. I mean, you could do a bunch of crazy stuff if you have the knowledge of the tools. Right, right. We want to make something that's so easy. You know, we want to make something that you pick up and it's just natural.

It feels good in your hand and everything makes sense. And I think that's really what we're headed towards cool because if you know if you can't pick something up and you want to use it you're not going to use it yeah and that's just the fact but i think now is a good time to do kind of something in the smart landscape lighting because there's a lot of companies out there like phillips hue and govi and all these other companies that are coming out with some kind of product and i think we're going to start as dealers we're going to start seeing more requests for it yeah um you know whenever these consumer are coming out with some kind of product. And I think we're going to start as dealers, we're going to start seeing more requests for it. Yeah.

You know, whenever these consumer brands come out with stuff like this, like a video doorbell or floodlight camera or something, the consumer sees that and they want that. And so they're going to buy it. They're just, it's either they're going to buy it from you or somebody else at that point. So yeah.

Yeah. You know, they, they, they actually, they set the norm at that point. Now people have that expectation. And so now, you know, you need basically a system for every tier of customer.

You have the customer that wants full automation. You have the customer that's like, I just want to flip a switch and turn it on and off. And you're going to have to be able to meet everyone's needs in between. Yeah, for me, the easiest upsell with landscape lighting is just the smart plug. Oh, yeah. Whenever you can explain to somebody for whatever, $30 to $50 that they don't have to go out

to their mechanical timer and adjust it 12 times a year. People love that. So easy upsell for most people. You're out cruising in the Bahamas. You could turn your lights on for your family members coming to check on the dog.

You know, it's nice. Absolutely. What is your favorite landscape lighting device? Do you have a favorite? We won't tell. Oh, yeah. You got to keep it a secret.

So I won't tell the other ones. They get pretty jealous. Yeah. Right now, it has to be the RF series. So we just recently introduced our RF series, which is radio frequency. Our previous fixtures all worked off of IR for color changing and dimming capabilities. And so the new RF stuff, we're getting increased range. I can create zones.

So in my backyard, I have my path lights on one zone and I have all my spots on different zones. And it makes it really easy for me to go and just change color. I'll find myself in my backyard. It was raining the other night. I was out back having a drink with my partner and we were just sitting there just doing different color schemes just to kind of play around with it.

So right now that's probably my favorite because of the flexibility and the versatility of it right now. And again, that's again, another stepping stone towards our smart, just having more zooming capability and control with that remote. That's cool.

So it uses RF to go from, when you say change colors, is it RGB or is it just the, or is it like the CCT color? Oh, yeah. So it's RGBW. So it's RGBCW, actually, my apologies. And that's something we've, yeah, it's cool to warm. And so, red, green, blue, white, cool to warm. So, we have 2200 Kelvin, 3000 Kelvin, 2700 Kelvin, 4000 Kelvin that can kind of go through

and quick changes so you can switch very easily. Depends on the mood that you want outside. If you want it relaxed or if you want to make it bright. Yeah. Yeah. You have your 4000 to make, you know, kind of like that security the bright white very clear that you have your you know all the way down to 22 where you're kind of creating the mood where it's more intimate and you have the flexibility to change that you know very very quickly uh do you have a favorite

smart home technology product can be anything doesn't have to be in the lighting can be you guys are gonna hate me um i mean i i use google home okay for all right for my automation is that is that a respectable uh that's fine it works it works for me i i basically i have my my uh my google net or my nest and i have my little security cameras and you know i i don't think i'm using automation right i think my my partner does more so you know they got all the lights and everything and they you know i had to get sent an invitation because i couldn't turn the lights on so i need i need her to school me up on on how she does it all because she's a whiz yeah i i there i don't think no i don't think you need to worry about like i'm i'm kind

i'm in the same boat right so like i i will do almost the bare minimum work i guess to get the lighting like i'll do the work to the hard work to get it installed right i'll take apart hardware is the fun part the wall switch yeah through yeah and then it comes to like the crazy over the top what i would call like lifestyle programming where you're doing things based on time of day or motion sensing or presence detection. Cercanium rhythm. Yeah. I'm out. Like I don't, I mean, I think that stuff is really cool and nice to do.

I just don't want to do it. And I don't have the patience anymore to do it. So like in my house, if I get a light to come on with a motion sensor i'm really happy about that because that was the goal but i'm not going to go too much further unless there's some complaints from the others in the house of like oh this light doesn't turn on or off at certain times like i'll i'll go troubleshoot that piece yeah yeah but but yeah i i yeah i i i definitely uh agree with with you on well, you just do what makes you happy, I guess, is where I would go with that. It gets the job done.

I'll tell you that. And that was my introduction to automation. Surely, I got to my home and kind of came with all these devices. And so I started plugging and playing. And it's actually been you know quite responsive so i i appreciate it one of us on the show not to be named he's also not here uh he he's very uh prolific in in all of the custom little tweaks and changes he's he's made into his house like so much so it's like he has made a custom like a custom system that is probably beyond most of the custom installs

that i've seen uh with with all diy products like home assistant the whole way and anything and everything you can imagine done he has probably done or looked into it or figured out a way to kind of like make it work yeah and it's and it's it works it really does like but you know it's i guess kind of also that's my day job so like i don't want to do that when i get old i don't want to be the cto anymore like i'm done so it's not fun yeah to have people at work telling you all day stuff's not working then come home and have people tell you stuff's not working it's not not ideal like groundhog day yeah you just you just kind of aim for the bare minimum and and and if it you know you can you i i do stuff like

halloween and stuff i'll put in stuff like that but yeah oh how do you wake up every day yeah yeah i i yeah i just don't go to sleep the night before that's how all right well um we're we're probably getting close on our time here but um i just kind of want to ask what what do you what do you see as like you kind of you kind of hinted at it but like what do you see is like big in the lighting landscape industry like coming up in in the next five to ten years that you're excited about like what what will amp lighting be doing or or moving towards that you're going to see like you know maybe maybe everybody has already kind of moved into the led

space right or moved away from the incandescent lamps because it's illegal to buy right but like maybe what what's next what do you see on the horizon in the industry you know well i you know i can't really speak for the industry as a whole i mean there's a lot of cool things that that are out there i mean we're talking laser projection LEDs. I mean, the circadian rhythm LEDs. There's so many things out there that are either lifestyle changers or help benefit different aspects of our life, like horticulture. So there's so much out there that LEDs are helping enhance

in our everyday life. But for AMP in itself, we've just introduced our design services, which is going to get kind of paired or married with a design app where you can actually design lighting systems live on scene with your customers if you'd like to. And then our training center. So bringing individuals in, like-minded folks just you know uh networking learning teaching um and really coming together as a community that's that's going to be coming and getting bigger and better as we go and uh and then of course our smart lighting so our smart lighting is is coming out very soon that's going

to be a huge game changer not only for industry, with it being the latest and greatest technology that we're introducing, but it also help us learn more about, you know, what you guys do and be closer to, you know, professionals in your industry and make more of a marriage in that community also. So there's a lot of big things coming and I'm super excited to be part of it. If anybody's interested in learning about those exciting developments or learning more about AMP or connecting with you, how would they do that? Yeah, absolutely. So they can go and visit the website, www.amplighting.com. They can look into our training sessions, design services, our products. They can shoot us a call at 813-978-3900 or they can reach right out to me directly

at zac e at amplighting.com awesome well Zach thanks so much for coming on the show

we really appreciate it oh likewise it's been awesome having you yeah thank you guys for having me and that's the interview there

I want to thank Zach for coming on the show taking time to chat with TJ and I again Gavin wasn't there at the recording, but he's here now. Gavin, what'd you think? All questions asked, right? Yeah, I was just listening. I was a fly on the wall in that interview, you know, just listening in. It's more for the pro space, so, you know, I know where i belong yeah this is fine that it was uh yeah gavin in all fairness hasn't heard

the interview he wasn't he wasn't available at the time we had to record so uh yeah but it was a good it was a good interview i thought and uh i you know i've known a little bit about landscape lighting um my my my deficit in that product line definitely lies in the, like the, the ability to make things look good, or at least know like what products like TJ, when you did the fence thing, like, and you hung, hung those lights around the fence, like you had an idea what product to go to and like hang on the fence. And I'm like, Oh, that's a really good idea. I didn't even think of that. But like having, knowing what products are exist, I guess. And then what products do what, like, I, I kind of lack that.

So like, I just know that there's lights that can shine in my house and change different colors. And that's about it. Well, and I think it's like, it's so weird, because I think it's one of those market segments that like integrators can easily get into. And like, it's very, I don't know, it's very easy to learn on the go. Right. And so landscape lighting, for the most part, is very forgiving in the fact that you can basically just daisy chain all the wiring together. And so like you can literally just move fixtures and add fixtures. And as long as you don't exceed the power requirements of the transformer or like the wire or anything like that,

like you can easily add on and change. And so it's weird that I don't hear more integrators talking about landscape lighting. I think it's getting a little more popular um but i just i think it's one of those things where integrators like the technology side of it they don't really care about the lighting side yeah um but it's it's one of those things i think it's perfect to add to your your business if you're already doing uh low voltage because the electricians don't want to touch it and you know there are landscape lighting and outdoor companies um but why not just do that while you're there?

Right. Yeah. I mean, you're already there for the inside technology. Why not in the lighting and in hooking up and doing all that stuff? Like it's low voltage. You already have a license for it probably. So, yeah, why not? And also like alongside the speakers and speaker wire that you're already doing for a lot of these, you know, speakers, outdoor speaker systems kind of wire up exactly the same these days,

especially with 70 volt. You're daisy chaining those off of a single run or just like pulling a run and pulling off that in very much the way that these would work. Same thing with the power, same thing with the wire. Like it's all, you know, physics and math and stuff that you have to know. But if you can, you can do an outdoor speaker system, you can probably do, you know, one of these lighting systems and get that set up and make the, you know, the outdoors look pretty good for your, for your client. So I don't know, like I kind of want to do some stuff in my yard. One

of these days I'll get to it. My problem is I don't have any like elevation in my yard, right? I've got the, our only, the last tree, I guess, the only tree that we had kind of like died out because it was ancient and old and we had to cut it down. And so, I've got no trees in my yard. Like my neighbors have all the trees, but our yard is fairly open and I haven't gone and planted any tree yet. I probably should do that one of these days, but there's no like like like how you shine the lights up into the trees and they look real nice um i can't do that yeah it sucks because i've got uh basically my house and a bunch of grass that's overgrown right now and i don't know how you like that well that's my problem too is like the front of our house we don't have anything uh the previous homeowner chopped down the tree that was in the yard and

so it's literally just the house and so uh we constructed like a small garden bed this year um off to the side where the old tree was because just literally nothing grows there because the old roots and everything and so we put a path light in there to kind of illuminate that and then we just have the lifex lights going up the sidewalk um and that was at least nice enough to like give it some kind of light at night time um but really the focus has been the backyard so i've really done much of the front yard yeah it makes sense well um again all the links and topics we'll have over in our show notes hometech.fm slash 480 or 490 um if you're interested in checking out amp lighting we'll have links there too um but uh that's going to wrap up the show this week.

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