HomeTech.fm - Episode 491 - Making Streaming Audio Easy with VSSL's Donn Bullock

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

On this week's show we sit down with VSSL CEO Donn Bullock to chat about the unique products VSSL offers and how they fit in the streaming audio landscape, Amazon might start charging $10 for Alexa improvements, Sonos may have a new soundbar on the way, Eve and iRobot add Matter, a letter from the mailbag, project updates, and an amazing pick of the week from listener Jack T.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 26th, 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. I've been gone for a week. I was in the woods. There's no technology in the woods. You survived. I was worried. Yeah.

Yeah. Anything big happen while I was gone? Like anything major? No. I don't think so. No. Nothing exciting. I know a lot of people working on the weekend, but that's it.

When did you come back, Seth? Because the CrowdStrike thing happened on Friday. What's that? Were you responsible? I was not? Because the CrowdStrike thing happened on Friday. What's that? Were you responsible? I was not responsible for the CrowdStrike thing. It likely happened when you were gone, huh? Interesting.

Interesting coincidence. That's all it is. Yeah. I imagine people are still working on repairing all the windows, the blue screen of death windows machines out there. Yeah. I keep getting requests. We do third party work and I get all the emails and everything and I think like a quarter of them in the past couple days have been CrowdStrike repair or remedy or whatever

it is it's crazy you have to actually physically go to the computer and like do something to it I guess like that I saw Microsoft had a USB drive that you could use to fix it now instead of rebooting it 15 times as i say just reboot it 15 times and it may or may not work no big deal nine nine million computers i think is what the count was up yeah like 8.5 million something like that so a small just a small fraction of the windows computers out there let's say it's like one percent or something right it's enough to matter i guess i don't think it was i don't think it was that many in the grand scheme of things it's just all the important stuff that people need like planes and banks and stuff like that you know shopping experiences and could have been like amazon prime

video or something right right well speaking of amazon prime uh i guess prime day came and went as well i was gone so do you guys make out with anything crazy? I didn't even look at the site. How could you not look at the site? He was camping, Captain. I didn't really have any of the things you brought me. They don't have Amazon Prime in the forest. Yeah, it really wouldn't have mattered if I wanted to buy anything. I'm sure they deliver to forests, too. They deliver everywhere.

That's true. I got some good deals, actually. Last Prime, I didn't. But this Prime, I actually picked up. I stocked up on a bunch of home essentials and stuff. But I think my big buy this time was the meter block. Oh, yeah. So I got a 4 Pro version of the meter block.

I love the meter devices. They're just like, they help you barbecue so much easier than cutting into the meat to see if it's done. No, this thermometer tells you when it's done, when to take it off, everything. So the block has four thermometers. And the nice part about it is it extends the range. So the sensors will connect to the block over bluetooth and then the block connects to your wi-fi so you can be anywhere and get your updates on your meat nice that's pretty cool that looks like a like a chunky boy

there and how big it is it's nice i got and surprisingly it was like almost 50 off like it was on my christmas list um but then i saw this and I said, screw the Christmas list and just bought it. Just getting it, yeah. Yeah, it's not a bad deal. 50% off. That's pretty huge. So, good deal. That was my big buy.

Yeah, I didn't buy anything from Amazon for Prime Day, but I did stumble across some deals at Lowe's. They were clearancing off a bunch of Phillips Hue bulbs. And so they're clearancing off their white filament ambient bulbs, their recessed bulbs, and a couple other things. And so the recessed bulbs that I've been buying are normally $50 or $60 each. $50 for the 6-inch white or $60 for the 6-inch color one. And you can obviously find them on sale and stuff like that. But they had them literally half off. Oh,

wow. And so I bought six of the white, uh, filament bulbs and then, uh, four more of the recess bulbs. And so now all the bulbs in my house are Phillips. You are very nice.

Very nice. Yeah. It was just playing in the mud, I guess at that point. So that happens. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Well, I, it was a good point. Yeah, that happens. Yeah, yeah. There you go.

Well, it was a good week. It was hot, but it was good. It was a good week. We had fun. Did you guys rough it? Did you guys, like, camp with a tent? Yeah, we camped, like, half the week we were in a tent, and then we had a little cabin thing we went to.

Oh, nice. Yeah, we had a great time. My daughter got to swim in the little river, which is unique because you can't do that here in Florida. There's water in Florida. There's guaranteed to be an alligator that will eat you inside of it. And it was kind of nice. I was like, hey, we can go swim in this river. It was freezing cold, but you know, at least there was nothing that would eat you inside of it. So it's kind of nice. All right. Well um we do have a uh

couple of home tech headlines this week so uh what do you say we jump in let's do it all right well after losing 25 billion dollars reportedly uh amazon plans to launch a paid version of alexa that potentially may cost up to ten dollars per month it could debut soon and uh employees are are i guess i guess the rumor is that this is coming soon. The new Alexa, it's going to talk a little bit better. It's going to have generative AI responses. It's going to handle multiple tasks at once. It's going to learn user routines.

All this fancy stuff they've been talking about. $10 per month. Gavin, would you do this? Yeah, so i know they lost a lot of money on the alexa devices right but they have us in a good spot right now because they got the devices out there in many people's homes and now they can start to add some value to it and get a subscription so at ten dollars a month if they're building in like a much smarter alexa where you know current alexa

is kind of like prompt based so you have to you know the command turn on and then the device you know the lights right it's just basic prompt based but if they turn it into like a chat gpt type of thing where you could just say whatever you want and it knows it'll figure out what you want to do and stuff like that and i can even maybe program it from stopping people from turning on every light in the house, you know, then it may be just worth it. Like on top of other value added things they can add for $10 a month,

it may be worth it so that, you know, you don't have to worry about these things. But it also depends on what other features, what other value they'll add with it. And that $10 a month better be like per account, like that better cover all my, all my devices because I'm not paying a hundred dollars a month, you know, $10 for each device for something like this.

Right. So it all depends. I will see when it's released, but if it's $10 a month and it gives me some good value and it covers all my devices, I could see myself just adding it to my prime membership honestly if they just did something where you could just if they could just do something where um you could tell alexa how to program itself for the home automation side of things that would be worth the ten dollars a month too yeah i think that way you don't have to go and build the automation list you just tell it to do it and i would totally pay ten dollars a month for that yeah if you could say turn on this light when somebody walks in this room and then turn it off when someone leaves and you know make

that a routine then bam like that's worth it being able to do stuff like that right take my money amazon yeah i do that for like the first month and then you're like all right i'm good like where's where's the repeated value and well i guess that's true, yeah. No, then your automations disappear. They just get deleted. Right. Amazon's like, nope, sorry. An amazing experience. Yeah.

But that's just one example. I'm just saying there's so much more potential there where it comes to the naming of devices. I can say open the blinds. I can call them curtains. I can call them shades. I can call them whatever. But it would know I want those things hanging over my windows to open right you know and that's

that's the type of thing where it's it's i'd really like to see improvements on and if they do ten dollars a month is a is a good price for that we'll have to see it's a it's a it's a to me it's kind of steep for the value that it's going to derive from like my use cases of using the amazon alexa which we're basically setting uh kitchen timers um but who knows maybe they'll they'll do a little bit better with um the conversational aspect of it and also be able to program itself that would actually be pretty cool i don't know i'd have to see all the features that you get out of that $10 a month. It just seems a bit much, but we'll see. We've got Sonos is

rumored to be preparing a new flagship soundbar. It's codenamed Lasso and set to replace the Sonos Arc. Lasso features a design similar to the Arc but boasts complete overhaul of internal components and the speaker drivers. it's expected to cost over

twelve hundred dollars and will be the first sonos products to integrate with the technology from what mate i forget how they probably that one pronounced it's a startup they acquired back in 2022 uh mate had some innovative transducers that allowed for smaller and lighter form factors without compromising audio quality i i i remember when they bought this but i wasn't really sure what they were doing so i guess it's it allows you to have like lighter speakers and not and not have reliance on expensive neodymium yeah neodymium magnets so yeah whatever like the more premium speakers that that are always made out there so will be interesting to see if they integrate that and uh when when this thing comes out this what was this over at the verge so it's it's definitely coming out because

this is where patrick spence i guess goes to uh spread his rumors yeah oh my gosh they have a good connection there yeah honestly i'm interested in a new higher end soundbar from sonos i um i personally think the sonos arc isn't that great of a sounding device i mean it's 900 and it like you really need to add the surrounds and the subwoofer to really make it complete and i don't know for 900 it is kind of lacking unless you're just listening to music for music it sounds pretty good um but a lot of tv shows and movies and stuff it doesn't sound that great so i'm interested to see this new speaker technology actually come out with some sonos devices and see if it really does make a big difference i think they have some room to grow here and i think people are willing to pay more for a product but it's going to be hard to uh hard to sell it if it doesn't sound much better

than the ark and so we'll see it's going to cost more than sell it if it doesn't sound much better than the ARC. And so we'll see. It's going to cost more than the ARC. For sure. And having a soundbar, you know, is one thing. Like your surround or not, your sound will really pop once you add that sub and some surrounds. Right? Like just having a soundbar, it sounds better than the TV. But you need the other speakers too.

I would really say just the sub at minimum like yeah sub definitely makes a bigger difference i have a little small lg soundbar that i i i can't i bought like open box from walmart or something and it works fine but it's just a small like tiny 50 soundbar um but like if you add a sub along with it, it, it, it opens it up to a whole nother level of performance out of the small device, whatever Sonos device you're using,

pairing it with a sub is going to make it sound a lot better. Cause they, they do like stop sending lower frequencies to the, the smaller speaker, send it down to the sub. So they, they're smart about it, but man, it does fill up the

room a lot better so honestly what sonos needs to do is just allow multiple support or multiple speaker support for the fronts so in that way you can use you can use like a sonos beam with two sonos era 100 or 300s for your front left and right and center and it would sell so many more speakers yeah rather than just a single sound bar yeah yeah i mean because that's really where it needs to go but yeah all right well um we've got some new product from uh from lutron they've expanded the caseta product line and they have a new diva smart dimmer elv plus and additional color options for the pico paddle remotes diva dimmer elV Plus supports phase selectable dimming

for various lighting types, including LED, MLV, ELV, incandescent, and halogen. So just about everything that you want can come off this. And you got new Pico paddle remotes. What do they come in? Like ivory, light almond, black, black gray and brown so uh not bad uh 10 year battery off the pico paddle remotes as well yay yay lutron you did it you did it new colors new colors and light switches that i i don't know like sometimes you run across, it's not often, but sometimes you do run across like a load that doesn't work and you have to go this route.

This thing sounds like it does everything. So in some cases you might have to use this dimmer and not the other ones. But I don't know. It would be tricky to like, it's like a universal dimmer, right? But it would be tricky to like, well, always get that one. I'm not sure. Right. Yeah, that's always annoying with lighting.

Yeah. And it's always like a Friday afternoon and trying to finish up the project. What do you mean it doesn't work with these light bulbs? Well, Lutron really needs to release, they need to release like an in-wall relay. Kind of like little Shelleys and little micro relays that you put behind light switches. Because that would expand so many other stuff to Lutron. Give me an in-wall relay, Lutron. I know you won't do it, but...

Yep. We got some companies mattering this week. iRobot, still in their hat into the ring here. They've unveiled a new Roomba Combo 10 Max. It's a vacuum remote. Sorry. It's a robot vacuum and a mop that says it reduces labor by washing its own mop this thing's wild it's got a spoiler on top of it oh wait that's the mop

uh it's really strange this the mop like right looks like it can ride on top of the the vacuum which is kind of strange i don't know it's so you don't have to uh so the reason they did this supposedly is so that way they don't have to put a heating element in the base of the the vacuum and so as it drives around it automatically drives the mop head just with air just with air but it seems like it would make it much higher so it's not going to fit into as tight of places but right i don't know if that's a big issue or not but it looks pretty funny if i saw this in somebody's house i'd be like what's wrong with your robot vacuum why is it doing that i i assume it could like use its little arms there and it's that mop can't be a spoiler all the time it's got to touch the ground well no it drops it down to

the ground but whenever it's not in use it sits up like that so that way it can dry it off no that's very strange yeah i'm not i don't like that it's weird in use, it sits up like that so that way it can dry it off. Oh, that's very strange. Yeah, I'm not, I don't like that. It's weird. And I understand the reasoning because they want to build a heating element into the base of the robot vacuum. I think they should just keep it as a spoiler and make it go real fast. Yeah, put some flames on it. RGBs.

Some more horsepower. Home tech sticker. Yeah, home tech sticker. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I want my home tech sticker on that thing. Registering the domains, Roomba spoilers now. No, it's got some cool features. You don't have to change the water for one week.

They said, you know, the dirt bag, you know, can last 60 days or more, I think. So, you know, they're just catching up right now with some of the other vacuums out there, I find. This one also will support Matter, I guess. Yeah, it says later this year. So don't buy it now. If you want Matter, wait till it comes out with Matter. Right.

Spoilers Matter. That's right. And speaking of things that are going to get Matter here, well, Eve Systems has announced its new Eve Weather station. It's a battery powered ink display. It's got a battery powered ink display capable of measuring temperature, humidity, and weather trends. Now sports matter as, uh, by, by update, uh, this update enhances the capability with major home systems, including Google home, Samsung, amazon alexa apple home and the device is priced at 79.95 there you go matter over thread that's pretty cool i like the looks of this honestly and something like we have temperature and humidity sensors all over our

house but none of them have a display so i have to look at my phone or my computer or something to see what the temperature is not that big a deal for most of my rooms but maybe in a distant room where maybe you don't have a thermostat or something, you put this in there or an area you're tracking temperature, like your three seasons room or something like that. So I like the look of it. It looks nice. And I don't think $80 is that bad for this kind of device with a display and everything. I'm pretty sure I paid like $30 or $40 for my temperature sensors. Yeah.

For those kind of sensors, I have the aquara ones with the uh display on it they also do air quality monitoring um so i know what you mean though i have them in a few rooms it's just nice to see sometimes the temperature in that room yeah i've got the um the switch bot sitting over here though the hub and it's got a little screen on it yeah it's sometimes nice to look over and see it but this looks better than the switch switch button well everything looks better than the switch button switch button also has um like a cable like the usb cable that the power cable that comes out of it um it has in line the temperature sensor uh on the power cable so yeah not only can i not cut or change out the

power yeah that makes no sense 25 foot power cable that comes not only can i not cut or change out the power yeah that makes no sense 25 foot power cable that comes along with it it has inline has this temperature sensor it's kind of annoying so yeah that's obnoxious yeah yeah i have one of these but it's um it's for the govi and i bought it to pair with my govi's uh smart space heater um because then it'll use the thermostat in that for actual temperature control and everything so i put it on the opposite end of the room it talks to each other and has a nice little display on it so does it have rgb w uh the space heater does but the display does not well darn yeah can it can it really be govi unless it has rgb on it that's right i need rgb and you

can change the color so you know if you want it red because it's on fire, you can do that. Or maybe blue so you can convince yourself it's colder. I guess so. There you go. All right. This little piece came up over at The Verge. I thought we'd drop it in kind of like to mention things. Moving a smart home can involve careful planning and decision making about what devices you want to take or leave.

And I think this is what by line. Yeah, this is Jennifer Pattison Toohey. She wrote a nice little article here about how to move a smart home and what, you know, like things to consider when you leave. And I, I, I, I do want to point people. I think Richard and Adam did an episode of the smart home show that was pretty much dedicated, maybe an episode or two of it

that was dedicated to how richard packed up and either moved or left things behind um in his smart home when he moved so i if you if you are moving and you're looking for tips and tricks on what to do um this article and maybe that podcast will i'll dig it up and put a link in the show notes um check them out. I'm going to let you in on a hint too, if you're listening. Nobody wants your smart home stuff. So they want your ring doorbell and maybe your garage controller. And that's pretty much it.

Yeah. I would seriously consider taking everything out and just saying nothing exists. There's a bunch of wire everywhere and good luck. I think I have to leave the lighting control at this point because i've done a lot of like creative wiring uh i guess that's what you'd call it yeah well there i have i i have more light switches i guess in the house well i have more the light switches control more loads than they than a regular light switch would right so if we have like keypads installed instead of light switches yeah so i i kind of have to leave that in place but yeah i i would say for the most part take everything out and save yourself the headache you have to do all that before you put the house on the market so if you're thinking of selling your house rip everything out that you don't want to

leave behind or just leave it all in the house and let somebody else deal with it well and especially depending on how old it is right i mean like my stuff a lot of my switches and stuff there's zigbee and z wave and all that stuff so i'll probably take those but it's like everything else i'm like i don't like my thermostat i don't care i say even leave tvs at this point like oh yeah we have a lot of people that leave their tvs yeah and some people like that. They don't have to worry about the TVs when they move in and stuff. They get some time to get some new ones and everything.

So yeah, exactly. TVs these days are a few hundred bucks and they're probably bigger and better than what you have on the wall. I do see this question pop up quite a bit though. So I'm glad to see this article come out. It's always funny though. Whenever this question comes up on like Reddit or something,

there's always like a couple people in the comments that are like, oh, my gosh, I'll print out, like, an instruction booklet on how to access my cameras and how to turn on the lights and stuff like that. And I'm like, all right, well, first of all, that's your problem. Nobody should need an instruction booklet to turn on your lights. Yeah. Gavin, if you move, if you ever move, are you going to leave everything behind just like somebody else's problem no i'd take it all because people would probably come in and rip it out anyway and replace it with dumb stuff because they don't know what it is so i just take it all and most of the stuff i've installed actually i didn't do a lot of funky wiring in my house i think there was maybe a modified one three-way switch um to work how i want it to work but other than that it's pretty uh easy to

just take it out and put standard stuff back in i've always maintained that when i did my my stuff yep makes sense i'm not moving anytime soon so it sounds like too much work i have enough projects to do so um i'm waiting for the article what to take if you get kicked out of your house that might happen before i move as i say i don't think you're gonna be able to get anything I'm waiting for the article, what to take if you get kicked out of your house. That might happen before I move. I was going to say, I don't think you're going to be able to get anything if you get kicked out. Well, no, she'll definitely want the switches changed back.

Just hire the pool boy for that. A coworker of mine had a friend who went through a kind of a messy divorce. And I guess the husband had a friend who went through a kind of a messy divorce and i guess the husband had a bunch of cameras and smart home things that were still attached all home assistant and uh something like 60 or 60 or so like esp32 devices on the network when he showed me the land scan uh a lot of them were like shades like they had gone and redone some like home Depot shades with some ESP module or something like that.

He was telling me, uh, but yeah, that, that can definitely get messy. That would be an article or two, uh, maybe a series of how to,

how to D, uh, I don't know what it was. I would say this, um, like decryptify your house from your stalker ex-husband i don't know like oh yeah definitely not a great situation uh that they were in over there but i think he got it all buttoned up and locked down he did have like all the keys and everything like the encryption keys and it was all documented i guess they had all

that but um i don't know it seemed like a lot of work, a lot of work to me. Yeah, but that is a security thing. Like if you leave the house and you leave all that stuff behind, you know, the person that's still in the house, you know, they may not be aware of all the things that, you know, you may have remote access to or, you know, stuff like that. So, I mean, if you're going to go through this, I'm not wishing this upon anybody, but, you know, tell them to take all their smart home stuff, you know, like that so i mean if you're gonna go through this i'm not wishing this upon anybody but you know tell them to take all their smart home stuff you know keep their car you know keep their dog but send them with the smart home stuff you know like don't keep that in the house yeah i mean especially cameras and that kind of thing sensors yeah you can you can always there's like you don't know what back doors are in those things, especially the DIY stuff.

I think this was all the ESP homes. There's all ESP home stuff. So, and I, from what I understand, the guy may have been kind of like doing things to mess with her. So she was all freaked out anyway. So it wasn't a good situation and like they had to resolve it. And I don't know, it seemed like they went in and put a new home assistant thing in like a new controller and I got everything up and going.

So fun, lots of fun. Take, take it with you. Scrap it. Cause you don't have any shades anymore, which kind of sucked, but all right,

well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 491. We've got an interview tonight. We've got Don Bullock from Vessel Audio. This is a fun interview. Vessel is kind of like a streaming audio device. But I would say it compares to the big Sonos thing, right? But they've got a different product lineup, I guess, than what Sonos thing, right. Um, but they've got a different, different product lineup, I guess,

than what Sonos currently offers or has ever offered. Um, and the way they approach is quite different than Sonos. Kind of, kind of actually Gavin, like how you use Sonos is what it reminded me of. Yes. You use Airplay for everything on Sonos.

Yeah. And that's basically like this product works with airplay and um google chromecast yeah and the spotify connect and you could just use it headless doesn't need its own app you just use your regular old apple music app or well i don't even sure it works with chromecast i guess it's like youtube music or something like that you could use that just feed music right into these things and no app needed don't have to worry about them updating their app and ruining your experience so it's kind of a different approach i thought it was kind of a cool product yeah no it's honestly a really good interview

um i love i love his energy just got some good energy about him. And I love learning about the products. The Multi-Zone Amp, I think, is definitely one of my favorite products. It's a little bit cheaper than doing six individual Sonos amps, and it takes up nowhere near as much space. So it's just one of those nice, compact units. And I think it's one of those necessities, especially if you're doing distributed audio for a larger property. This is a perfect item for that.

You don't have to worry about compatibility compatibility with devices and everything it just works with everybody it's a vice yeah i noticed they had a bunch of unless you have a windows phone drivers what is that i know they had a lot of drivers for like the the big main control platforms uh on their website as well control for crestron that kind of thing so and i have to admit at first i thought this thought this company was just a competitor for another one, but I actually see that their products fill a void that others don't, especially when they start

to get into the rack-mounted six-zone amps. That fills a void. I know you guys would love to see that from another company, but they don't want to give it to you, but this company has it so it's a serious competitor i think when i started selling sonos probably 2009 i don't know it's like maybe 2010 like i don't know it wasn't too long after it became available and literally the first thing i would ask would be for a rack mount amplifier with more than one zone built into it

so it's not like they don't know the progress there but I guess headphones are more more requested uh everybody wants headphones yeah yeah but the rack mount yeah definitely having a rack mount six zone amplifier uh it's pretty it's a pretty awesome piece to to have in the arsenal of stuff like it's just a problem solver like if you if you can say, yeah, I can give you Apple Music, I can give you Spotify, give you anything, you know, you can cast over to this device in any zone in your house, done. Like, it just makes sense.

So with that, let's just jump in the interview here with Don Bullock. He's the CEO over at Vessel Audio, and we will pick it up on the other side. Well, hey, Don, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it thanks for the privilege yeah no no problem it's always it's always it's always fun to talk to people within the industry and and just kind of pick their brains about things that are going on and what's your personal background like how did you get involved with the audio business i've been

in the i've been in the it business now for over 20 years, and all of my experience comes either via product audio or is audio becoming more like IT, it would be difficult to be able to actually distinguish between the two nowadays because, as we know, many of the IT products that we use today invoke network settings, very advanced software, very advanced hardware products. And truthfully, since I've been the CEO of Vessel, that has been exactly what I've been doing is focusing on the development of our hardware products, both current and future, the development of our software products, which give us the ability to manage all of the hardware products, and then trying to perfect that

user setup and management of those devices vis-a-vis the network. So on a daily basis, I live IT. There is very little distinction between everything that I've done working in some of the largest IT companies in the world and what I do now on a daily basis as CEO of Vessel. Very nice. So Vessel, can you give us kind of like a 10,000 foot view of what Vessel does and what their goal is to bring into the industry? Absolutely. So we will celebrate our 10th anniversary next year. And when we look back over the history of the company, what we will see is that there has been an evolution of the Vessel product line. In the beginning, the focus was singularly on a line of powered amplifiers and the ability to be able to connect users and the music services that they were listening to with an existing home audio environment, for example. So, in the beginning, Vessel was a powered amplifier that I could leverage to create a multi-zone environment, if you will. Think about your

home environment. Think about having speakers in your living room, in your kitchen, in your bedroom, whether it's your master or even bedrooms throughout the home, speakers that you might have in your backyard. In the past, trying to set up those kinds of environments could not only be very complicated, but could also be very expensive. Vessel enables an end user with the ability to be able to not only select create zones for each of those environments but also select what individual music streams they'd like to be able to send to those individual zones and be able to support streaming music to those simultaneously that

really is i think the centerpiece of the vesselessel model. It's leverage in what we call native streaming. It gives us the ability to leverage the music services native application. You can use the Apple Music or Spotify, the Amazon Music or YouTube Music application that you use today. And then using the vessel environment connected via AirPlay or Chromecast, I can now stream through the vessel environment into any one of a number of zones that I can see in my home environment. And that was really the beginning. From there, we then went from the initial power amplification on a wired network into our surround sound environment, which is our SX series. So now using wireless technology, we can create a wireless surround sound environment. It gives us the ability to use, again, amazing technology, create very

intricate multi-zone environments inside of a home and be able to stream music as well as audio from movies and TV into that setting. So, a very sophisticated technology. We've been spending a lot of time recently in also developing and evolving the Vessel application because user experience is the most important thing that we can enjoy. We don't want to be a reason that a user can't connect their music service to the audio environment that they want to leverage to be able to listen to it. So we just want to be able to make those interconnections and provide an amazing sound experience for that end user. So that really is the goal of Vessel, is to enhance the audio experience while also providing flexibility and uh and and in truth the ability

to be able to do more than what we've been able to do in the past in a home audio environment yeah that's awesome i mean and that's one thing that i think a lot of people um especially people that have been in the audio industry for a while they kind of forget is that you can't always do wired speakers wherever you want them. And so having that wireless component is I think it is crucial for a whole whole house audio solution. You know, obviously, if you can put hardwired speakers in the ceiling and the walls and stuff everywhere, that's great. But sometimes you just don't need that you just need to throw a little wireless speaker in there somewhere and you get that as part of the zone of audio. So I think having that is definitely important. I can speak from personal experience about that. I recently moved to the St. George, Utah area

as part of my becoming the CEO of Vessel. And my wife and I purchased our new home, but we were not able to install the speaker cable prior to the completion of the home. Wanting to have some amazing speakers for the various TVs, the movie room upstairs, and the living room environment downstairs, the fastest, easiest way to get an amazing home audio experience was actually to leverage the Vessel SX line of surround sound speakers. Instantaneously with a soundbar, a subwoofer, and multiple surround sound speakers, you can have a complete surround sound environment in minutes. They set up very easily. You use the Vessel app to be able to connect the devices to the network and then those devices to each other. And then once you have that zone created, you just associate

whatever device it is or streaming service that you want to listen to that zone and you're listening to some amazing music. So the distinction between the surround sound system and the power amplifiers, of course, lies within what you hear, right? On the powered amplifier line, our X-series line, you're listening to whatever speakers you've already have maybe in your ceiling, in your walls, et cetera. But for the SX line, you're listening to the speakers

that are actually a part of the surround sound environment. And they are amazing. The soundbar is incredible. The subwoofer will actually absolutely shake your home. And we've just recently introduced not only 5.2, but also 7.2 configuration support for surround sound. So now we can do dual subwoofers, which is incredible. They sound absolutely awesome. So not only do I have the privilege of working for an amazing company, but I use our products on a daily basis.

And they are absolutely fantastic. That's what we do. Yeah, we don't have to go through, I guess, every single product. But what kind of products can people expect to see when they go to the Vessel website? Yeah, it's going to be in those two big groups. I would say if you have an existing home environment, then you probably are more interested in our x series line this will be one of three devices the a1x the a3x or the a6x the only distinction between those three products is is the number of zones that each of them will support an a1x being a single zone amplifier, an A3X having three zones of support, and an A6X having six zones.

For the record, the A6X is Vessel's number one product by far. That product is very popular amongst our custom installers who do a tremendous amount of home audio installations and are really trying to build very sophisticated, very advanced solutions for their customers. And so wanting to have the ability to send audio to any one of a number of locations inside of a home environment is something that's actually very unique. Not only that, but in these very elaborate environments, you know, now we're moved into what is effectively, and again, I'm going to invoke my IT past, a rack of, you know, of equipment in a closet somewhere in the environment. and configured and connected to existing stereo wire that then kind of interweave throughout the environment to connect those speakers together. If I'm a user that maybe has, I live in an existing

home, but maybe not having speakers in a ceiling or in wall, but would love to have a surround sound environment, maybe I want to build out a home theater, or maybe I'd like to be able to both listen to audio for a movie or TV, but also listen to music. I think this is where the SX line of surround sound speakers really comes into play. Because here, not only do I have the ability to be able to connect a TV to this surround sound environment and listen to some amazing audio for movies, etc. But for that exact same environment, I can now stream music so that I can listen to music in the background, perhaps while I'm in the kitchen or while I'm working out on the back deck or wherever I might happen to be. I don't have to sacrifice my ability to listen to music at volume based upon where I am in my house.

But now I can arrange that as needed. And even more, I can actually move them because they're wireless. If I wanted to or needed to, I could take speakers out to the garage or again, out into the backyard, et cetera. Now, Vessel as a sister company of True Audio, we also have the ability to have build these very elaborate backyard setups. And in truth, I have one of those as well with an in-ground sub

and multiple in-ground speakers that are connected to an A1X that gives me the ability to stream music now through that environment wirelessly and into that speaker setup in the backyard to be able to have a very impressive backyard setup for entertainment. Yeah, those are nice. I've gotten really popular over the past i don't know decade or so like i remember when they first came out and everybody was oohing and awing over oh they're amazing yeah and and it's just it's progressed like uh it it's a great sounding system and and and kind of easier to install than than the horrible sounding rock speakers that we used to put in oh man rock speakers but yeah it's it's uh i'm i'm it's one of those products i was like well we're basically tj and i we're trying to get gavin to buy one basically gavin gavin needs one for his backyard we think so he doesn't he doesn't know it but i'm bringing him up one in December. So I need two. Um,

I, I guess, um, you kind of covered the hardware products too, but you mentioned, and I know we're, we'll probably talk about some updates and everything, but you mentioned the software side of things. You have an app that kind of goes along,

uh, with the products. Is that primarily used for like setup and configuration? Or is there more to that than you mentioned like i'm looking through the spec sheets here and they all say native integration with airplay spotify connect you don't need an app for that like it's that's that's just something i hit play on my my phone and it's playing music where i want it to that's right what do you guys use your app for yep it's actually great timing to have the privilege of being with you because later on this week,

we will actually introduce the newest version of the Vessel app. And I've been telling everyone both internally and externally, this is the most important app that Vessel has ever introduced for a lot of reasons that you've already touched on. The first experience that every user has with the product, of course, is setting the product up. We wanted that to be as simple, as out of the box as possible,

because we want to help a user get to the ability to enjoy the product as quickly as we can. One of the things, of course, that you just alluded to is that we leverage AirPlay and Chromecast to assist in the setup or the attachment of those devices to the network. But we also use that technology as well as technology within the chipset that's embedded within the products for the interconnect of those devices. And so for us, the app gives us a couple of things. Number one, facilitates the setup very easy, and a quick process leveraging technology

that most people are comfortable with, meaning AirPlay or Chromecast. But once that process is complete, then you have now the control element of the Vessel app, which gives you the now the control element of the Vessel app, which gives you the ability to control volume and EQ settings and sub-out crossover and basically fine-tuning the environment according to your specific settings, whether it's in a living room environment or a smaller space, a larger space,

however you need to connect. And this is where both we give our users that ability to customize that. But as well, this is where we also lean on our custom installers to help us because we want that environment to sound as amazing as our customers expect. So for us, the Vessel app is that interface between the hardware and whatever service, whether it's music streaming or movie audio, et cetera, that that customer might be expecting to enjoy that experience. Ultimately, you don't, like dayto-day you probably wouldn't need to open the vessel app like you could just go straight from apple music or spotify and and and just hit play you know play in my living room that kind of that's it as a matter of fact

that's what the the typical experience is is that i can i will initiate my stream in whatever stream it might happen to be and this this um comes back to some of the flexibility that we had discussed a few minutes ago where I can, I can, first of all, I need to pick my, my music service that I want to use. And then I,

then I have to pick where I want to want to send it, right? Where am I? Am I in my living room in my, in my study? Am I in my master bedroom, et cetera. So the vessel app basically helps to connect the disparate parts,

the music with the environment, and then it steps out of the way. Gotcha. All right. So what's the differences between Vessel and some of the other streaming audio devices out there? You know, there are lots of products and there's some amazing home audio products that are available. And in my experience to date, I think they all have something that's unique and wonderful about them.

From my point of view, again, I think when I think about Vessel, I think, first of all, the diversity of portfolio, but it's really not just about the products. It's also about the business model. And this is sort of part of our target audience, so to speak. When we think about customers, I have to think about customers from a number of different aspects of which the end user customer

is just one of those constituencies, right? The end user customer is the daily user of the device, and they're the ones who get to experience the benefit of their investment. But at the same time, I have other customers, constituencies that I have to consider. And this is really the, in my view, one of the unique benefits of working with Vessel

is that we also are focused on the custom installer market, helping them to leverage products that not only are easy to integrate into an existing environment, but as it pertains to business, help them to make more money selling our products than they can selling anyone else's products in the market. And that really is an important distinction to make. Because ultimately, custom installers are bidding on very large projects. They have to be very competitive. And so we want to not only give them the ability to highlight some of the things that they can create for an end user by virtue of not just the vessel products, but how the vessel product fits into a larger environment, but also be able to create that and configure that for that

end user very easily and then support that user on an ongoing basis, right? That's the thing is that we not only want the application to be easy to use for the end user, but also easy to explain for the installer or the dealer that's selling that product. We have a complete channel. We have over a dozen distributors globally. We have over a thousand dealers and custom installers globally. And our opportunity is to partner with each of them to be able to not only sell vessel

products and represent those products to our end user customers, but also more importantly, to leverage Vessel and its portfolio as we build more grandiose and complete integrated solutions for home audio for our end customers today and into the future. I noticed most of the products are um are network based yes and uh and and well wireless too like a lot of them have i i've kind of been looking through most of them do have a hard you know network board on them if i haven't run across too many that don't but i imagine that having those two customers you just talked about

that that is probably a really challenging um aspect of this product um to to provide uh support and troubleshooting capabilities when issues come up with customers because each individual network is going to be different integrators have their own ideas of what makes a solid network. It might be a little bit different than what maybe an IT professional might have. And then the homeowner might have a completely different idea of what makes a proper network.

And their ISP, like Comcast or whoever, may just be all they have and they just drop off the Comcast router. So having that like broad range of, I don't know, like the foundation of your product, what, what types of issues do you run into there?

How do you handle those with, with vessel within the company? Yeah. There's so many ways to take, take this part of the conversation. Yeah. So for us, we started, you can just say it's the network and kick it.

It's true. For us, we started with the product. And again, the challenge in the beginning was creating a product that was either a wired or a wireless device. We do have several products that are both wired and wireless to give our end customers as well as our dealers some choice and flexibility. As the product line continued to evolve and as our networking capabilities also matured, we were also able to work more effectively within the chipset that enables

these products to better perform in these types of highly networked environments. I'll give you a specific example. So, our goal is to not only be able to work in a single-family home, but also be able to work in areas where there could be a signal-dense environment. And so I have to be cognizant of signal interference that I might be subject to from lots of other Wi-Fi devices, lots of other signals that could inadvertently influence the reliability of the interconnects between the different devices? And so over time, as our capabilities have matured and as we have worked within the product to be able to ensure that we're able to provide the best connection possible, not only when we're setting the products up, but also when the products themselves are performing, that's been critical. That's absolutely been one of the, I think, one of the focal points, not only of the product line over time, but indeed of this most recent update of the application is what we're doing within the products themselves to be able to more convincingly

perfect that interconnect. So what we try not to do is, as we're just joking about, blame the network and walk away. All we want to do is help the end user and help the dealer to be able to understand what are the circumstances or what are the potential impediments to being able to create an effective setup for a given environment. And then how can we work around those? And we've discovered some tips and tricks that enable us to do that. We've also done a lot of things in firmware that enable us to be able to overcome signal interference. And of course, we integrate that into the Vessel app

to be able to help an end user to be able to work around those things. And again, it's not complicated technology, it's just complex technology. And our goal, our opportunity is to be able to simplify that for the benefit of our end users and certainly for our dealers who are looking to support those individuals. We do get a lot of calls. We do get quite a few calls from end users, but, by and large, there aren't any circumstances regarding networking that we haven't seen or experienced. In truth, we do a lot of troubleshootinghooting our newest products with new firmware and the new Vessel app to ensure that it delivers the experience that we want to deliver for our end users and for our dealers. And so I'm incredibly excited about what we're going to be able to do with the new app. Very excited about

what we're doing in the current portfolio and really looking forward to what we're going to be doing down the road. And I know you touched on the app a few times there. And I know I could see the excitement with this new app coming. You think I'm excited about that app? It feels like a lot of work finally coming to fruition with this app. This app is like my coming out party. I've pretty much been working on this app for the entirety of my tenure so far. Oh my gosh. So again, not embellishing at all.

It is without dispute, the most important app that we've ever introduced. What's the biggest feature of the new app that people have to look forward to? DillSub. Oh yeah. So for the very first time, we'll support

both a 5.2 and a 7.2 configuration. So in the SX line, you can have a single soundbar, two subs, and then up to four SX speakers. And it sounds amazing. It absolutely will shake your house. I am incredibly excited to hear feedback from our dealers and customers as they start to deploy that.

That's awesome. Yeah, especially the 7.2. I mean, 7.2 is such a big difference. I think a lot of people have just gotten used to terrible audio. And when they hear the difference between like a good audio system and like their TV speakers

or their little Google speaker they bought for $20, a lot of times they're just amazed. And so be able to hear that 7.2, I'm sure is one of those amazing features, especially when it's wireless for the most part. Absolutely. Again, quickly being able to deploy it, don't have to pull cable. And then as we were just talking about a few minutes ago, being able to go within the app and be able to balance the speakers based upon their location within the room relative to each other, balance the bass, balance the soundbar relative to how far it is or how close it is to you relative to the shape of your room. It's an amazing amount of control is given to the end user through the app

and an amazing amount of technology is delivered to that end user inside of those products. It is truly an amazing line of products. We are incredibly proud of the SX line. All right. So we have some fun questions here and this doesn't have to be necessarily Vessel related. So you don't have to.

We know how much you love Vessel. But what is your favorite audio device? Do you have something that is absolutely that you just absolutely love? Well, might be a little bit biased and certainly not inventive in this answer. I'm an amazing advocate for just my iPhone. I think it is an incredible device. I go back to the early days of the iPod. I remember the very first iPod that I ever got.

And that was such, to me, this paradigm shift because I was one of those guys that was buying CDs and using Winamp to rip MP3s and trying to figure out how to carry those around. And you put them on a memory stick and you're trying to figure out which one of your apps to play on your computer. I mean, so that to me was where I started. And I can remember going all the way back to the 80s when my uncle got his very first CD player. And that was our entree into digital music, which I thought was amazing. But then as the industry progressed and evolved, and we then

had the opportunity to effectively bite off individual tracks into something that we could carry with us, that to me was just amazing. The iPod completely changed it just by virtue of giving us a music store where we can go and actually buy those tracks and not have to rip MP3s on a daily trying to figure out how to get what we wanted to listen to directly accessible to us.

The iPhone just takes it to another level. I mean, who would have thought years ago that we would be able to have access to literally every track that's ever been produced? That's actually a really good answer because you brought back a lot of painful memories for me, you know, like walking around with my disc, man, and it's skipping while you were walking type of memories, right? walking around with my disc man and it's skipping while you were walking type of memories right 100 i mean again you're now you mean just think about it i mean go back and now you're just like oh man i don't have to i mean if i just want that one song i can just buy that one song yeah absolutely you can just buy the one song yeah right i don't i don't know if the statute

of limitations are over but someone i may have known was like, may have downloaded a bunch of songs way back in the day from various companies. Yeah, Napster and whatnot. Some digital songs fell off the truck. Yeah, they just fell off the truck. And I may or may not have had many of those that they gave to me. And, you know, it wasn't like you listen like you say you don't listen to the entire album you listen to like one or two songs off of it that were your favorite you make a a mixtape or a mix cd you know and and and that's what you want you put that in your car and you'd have

you know 60 72 minutes by the book 72 minutes audio that you could, you could listen to. And, and you just had a whole book of those CDs sitting next to you and, uh, don't let them sit in the sun too long, but they, they, uh, like going from that to, uh, to just, I mean, it was, it was almost overnight. I'm like, Oh yeah, I'm never going to pay for those. You know, they're 99 cents or whatever. It's like, no, no, it's like done, done, done, done, done. Yeah, all right, good. Five bucks later, I'm good to go have all that I want. And nowadays, like how the streaming technology has kind of taken over

or that the streaming industry has taken over. It's so much more, it's so much easier just to play anything and everything you want, like you said. Absolutely. No question to it. As a matter of fact, I was having a fascinating discussion with my son recently, and we were talking about records.

And of course, I know that people go back and forth about records, and some people like to collect them and listen to them. And I know that there is a substantial appeal. But to me, I even asked him, we were going back and using terms like 33s and 45s and those kinds of things. But again, if you go back to that point in your life, music was fun. It was inspirational. It was a part of my growing up. I can think back about very specific albums, very specific songs that have meaning to me. But when you left home, you left that with you. And I think this is really that opportunity. And again, it was a very non-inspirational answer

with regard to the iPhone. But I believe that that really is now the centerpiece of so much. It's not just our ability to carry these things with us, but it's to that really is now the centerpiece of so much. It's not just our ability to carry these things with us, but it's to be able to have access to that inspiration whenever we want it, whenever we require it, whenever we want to either feel that sense of nostalgia to a specific song from the 80s or 90s that really spoke to us, or look for that inspiration right now when we're getting ready to go out for a bike ride or for a run. And I believe, again, that technology has completely changed the way we interact with

our music, but also relate to different times in our lives when music has meant one thing or another to us as individuals. Great answer. Great answer. i was judging a little bit when you said it at first i'm not gonna lie but when you went through it and everything that's pretty good answer so i'll take it that's that is a good answer yeah dj has another funny one here but i think i know the answer do you have a favorite speaker technology and i think it's going to be dual subs i think that's probably going to be your answer it's gotta be dual so i i i had i had to say

that the that well first of all the most amazing product within the vessel portfolio is no doubt the the a6x it is a inside of a single 2u which for you know for non-it that's basically, so one U is 1.75 inches. So in about a space about three and a half inches tall, I can get six, six zones of music streaming capability. There is no question why that's our most popular product. But I will say personally that my favorite product is the soundbar. It is just as easy and smooth as silk to set up. And it sounds amazing just by itself. When you start attaching one, two subs plus speakers, it just becomes even more so. But just by itself out of the box, it is an amazing technology. It is incredibly fun

to be able to talk to people about. It is really fun to demo. And again, I love listening to it. It is absolutely a pleasure. You still managed to slip dual subs into that. I'm going to put that as your answer. I'm telling you, when you can shake your house with two little boxes over in the corners, then yeah, that's a statement. All right. Well, Don, thanks so much for your time. I know you've got some big plans with the app that's coming out, and I know you're excited about that. But what's next for Vessel? What's on the horizon?

Absolutely. We're continuing to work on our roadmap for the remaining part of this year. We've got new products coming out at the end of this year. We've got new products coming in the middle of next year. We've got new products coming towards the end of next year. It's going to be an absolute amazing 12 to 18 months at Vessel. We've got a lot of things that are going on just by virtue of technology refreshes and updates, things that we want to do to our portfolio, things that we want to do as a company, right? Vessel as a portfolio company of SoundVision Technologies is able to leverage technologies of some of our sister companies like True Audio and Alta Labs. And by virtue of having access to and as a component of a larger portfolio, we will be doing more things as a family of companies into the future, not just singularly Vessel.

So again, exciting things happening at Vessel, also exciting things happening at SoundVision and with our sister companies, Outlabs and TruAudio. Nice, nice. And if listeners want to find out more about Vessel, maybe go buy one or two, or two subs maybe. How can they do that? Where can they find out more about Vessel? Absolutely. So the website vessel.com, VSSL.com is the location for information about the products. If anyone has feedback or questions, they are more than welcome to send those questions, feedback to a dealer that can facilitate installation or conversation about home audio solutions to be able to help them to build out their environment. And as a special offer, if there are any listeners who would like to purchase products, if they will send me a message, then I will, uh, I will absolutely give them a discount. In addition,

if they decide that they want to buy an SX speaker, I will, I can not only, uh, give them a, a huge discount on an SX speaker, but I, if they will send me a logo,

I will have that logo engraved for them. So I will, I will customize an SX speaker. Gavin's already typing. And send. I have to jump on that one. so I will I will customize an SX speaker I see Gavin's already typing the size that they want and send I have to jump on that one yeah that sounds like a great deal

alright Don what's the email address one more time yep D-O-N-N at vessel V-S-S-L dot com

awesome well Don thanks so much for your time today and all the special offers here at the end really do appreciate it thank you very much yeah thanks for joining us thank you gentlemen thank you very much thank you so much for your time today and all those special offers here at the end. Really do appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for the time today. All right. And I, again, want to thank Don for his time today. We actually talked quite a bit with Don right after the show, and he was very generous with his time.

And generous with the offers there at the end. That was pretty cool. I think Gavin's already ordered a couple of things. I loaded up my cart. with his time so um and generous with the uh the offers there at the end that's pretty cool i think gavin's already ordered a couple of things i loaded up my cart i just can't press bye i mean you got away with a 3d printer so you can definitely get away with some speakers yeah exactly now i think i'm gonna take them up on software i've been one one of these little sx speakers so it'd be nice to to fill into the other rooms that I have and give it a shot. It looks like a nice device.

One of my favorite little physical features about it is it still has that little threaded rod adapter so you can just mount it up wherever you want to. Oh, yeah. It's a little silly little mount that like clamps onto the speaker in a weird way or something. I feel like I've missed a whole part of the, I mean, I've still got my old Sonos stuff from like, what,

2016? It hasn't really changed any. And everybody else has the AirPlay 2 stuff going now. And I feel like I've missed a whole generation of house audio because of it. But I'll have to see what I can do here too. It looks like a pretty cool product. Honestly, the AirPlay is really nice to have. And that's what I like about the Vessel as well.

It does have the AirPlay and the Chromecast, but just having AirPlay is so nice because you can just have multiple speakers. So if I want to buy this SX speaker and throw it in with my Sonos stuff, that's fine. It'll work, you know, with all the music and everything like that. And utilizing Home Assistant, I can still group them all together like I normally do with my Sonos speakers. So I think that's pretty nice. All right, well, we have some feedback here in the mailbag from Pat. He writes in, hey guys, my sticker finally arrived. Yay, thanks so much.

This will be the pride of the place on my home assistant server once my house renovation is done, which leads me on to a suggestion. I know your focus is primarily North America, but how about covering tech solutions from other regions? For example, I'm using KNX for my home house automation. It's a fully wired solution, but wireless is also available. No batteries and no Wi-Fi interference with Zigbee. It's expensive, but the response times are excellent. Also, there are integrations for home

assistant and node red so lots of flexibility there thanks again pat he's out in ireland wow so that didn't take long the stickers to get to ireland yeah yeah that's right that's that's pretty quick irish i guess my three stamps work i was looking up i was googling i was like how many stamps do i need to send this to like ireland and japan and stuff and i was like i don't know three and let's give it a shot so i bet they don't even you don't even look at it but they're just like yeah there's a stamp on here send it whatever we don't care yeah bill america that's what happens um no but so i've heard of knx but honestly we don't have much knx over here it's not here yeah and i just i it's hard for me to follow the european home automation industry because i just don't know much about it and so there's there's

stuff that pops up because we do have listeners that are in like the uk and other areas and once in a while somebody will send us a news article and and link us to something new product that's coming out and stuff like that and that's really cool but i guess i'm just not i'm not privy to what happens in those industries and um i don't know how to find that news out i guess i get a lot of my news from american-based websites so it's hard to i guess it's hard to make that pivot but i don't know if you find something that's cool or somebody's coming out with some new product or something like that you think we should talk about it you know send it over to the the feedback email and uh we'll talk about it on the show yeah i i've i've come across knx only in relations to buildings in in the european union primarily germany i think it's very popular there yeah really germany that's

where like lux lux on was started to i think lux. Yeah, they have their own thing as well. I think they also have KNX capabilities. But yeah, I'm looking, I'm just trying to find, yeah, so here from 2019, a view from America, the first KNX intelligent commercial building in the United States. So like 20, it took them until 2019 to do anything with KNX. And this actually comes with it's actually it's around the corner from you it's the abb facility in highland hills ohio so um yeah you're

gonna have to go visit this place what is this yeah abb uh they they and and so like they they brought in um like dolly as well i think uh they had some like DALI lights with KNX controls. I've seen ABB at Cedia a couple of years ago. I don't think they're there anymore. So I just don't know how big of a push to get KNX and DALI there is right now. One of the major manufacturers for lighting did major in our industry, I guess I would say, did decide to pick up and use DALI. So that at least is coming, but I don't know. I just have not seen KNX pick up here. So it is a cool, it is a cool product project protocol standard, I guess, because it is like a hard wired thing. And they do have the, like you you said they do have the wireless version of it but I don't know I don't know it just never took off here we like our dumb

switches and pulling extra wire would just confuse the electrician I think well that's true you're not wrong there TJ you're gonna have to where where is this uh where's this Highland Hills Ohio uh it's up near Cleveland. So it's like two hours away, probably. Let's see here. Different direction, yeah. Let me Google it. Nope, nope, that's wrong button.

It is two hours and 15 minutes away. Well, there you go. I'll drive there with my microphone. I'll be like, hey, let me in. Let me in. I need to talk to your KNX. I want to do automation stuff. Tell me about it.

Yeah, well, we'll have to see um i'm curious if there's anybody else who's used knx like in a residential setting um but yeah the fact that like the first building in america got knx they're the commercial commercial building i guess um got it and i would i would think that knx is a perfect solution in most commercial installs, the way I know it to set up and be programmed and everything. It would do very well in commercial. I'm just surprised it's taken them this long to kind of break into the U.S. market. But it's hard to do.

It is hard to do. So we'll see what happens to KNX over the years. We'll try and keep an eye on it. I know there's like a ton ofan companies that pop up from time to time that offer some really really cool keypads and controls and devices that are knx compatible um i certainly have wished over the years that we had access to any one of those but unfortunately just hasn't been in the works so we'll see what happens and and if we see anything more come out of abb then you know we'll talk about it abb yeah you know me but i'm glad i'm glad pat got his uh

his sticker though that's that's that's the important good it made it to ireland yeah that's great all right pick of the week we got a really good one here courtesy of jack thompson in our hub and jack not only automated a toilet but he trained his cat to poo in a toilet so the cat will go into the bathroom into the toilet and then like he can tell alexa to flush the toilet and you know that's amazing absolutely amazing so there you go yeah first of all amazing that you train a cat to use a toilet i mean i've seen it done before above and beyond you know it's just i bought a 900 automated litter box so i wouldn't have to do this and because i'm because i'm lazy but uh it's cool to see other people do that um and yeah it's it's one of those things that like

we i think we he originally posted was like does anybody have a way to automatically flush a toilet? And I was like, well, actually, we talked about this with the SwitchBot thing several months ago on the show. And I linked him to it, and he's like, genius. And so he got all the stuff for it, and he did it. And yeah, it's an automatic cat flushing toilet. Oh, that's true. That's true. I think this is our first pick of the week, though, that you have to be a member of our slack channel to see so if you're not a member you should donate a dollar

to become a member and then you'll see this video i'll put a oh my gosh did he not not only did he hook up the uh switch but he also has the switchbot remote he's able to use it to flush the toilet so he's got he's got one of these fancy remote control toilets now heck yeah offer the i mean he didn't have to pay toto what fifteen hundred dollars for a toilet he he just it's probably yeah under a hundred bucks no this this was this was brilliant and and you know i'm just gonna challenge him to take it to the next level. I want that toilet to auto flush. Either train your cat to press the button after it's done to flush the toilet. Or let's put some smarts in there.

You could be like, what, the weight sensor to determine when the cat's off the toilet. You could hook that camera into blue iris. I don't know how long you'll have that camera facing the toilet. I mean, that's some seriously kind of an awkward angle you know even the cat doesn't look too happy about it yeah i don't think the cat's too it had to go it looks like but if you're gonna leave it there let's get some blue iris in there so that detects when the cat has left the toilet you know we can then flush it there's so many things we could do this, but let's take it to the next level and get it to auto-flush.

Cat was thinking, he was like, I can't believe this guy is selling these videos on OnlyFans. Told him not to do that anymore. The cat on toilet videos on OnlyFans. There's got to be a market for it. Only cats. Only cats, yeah.

Oh my God. New domain, Seth, get it. I was already Only cats, yeah. Oh my god. New domain, Seth, get it! I was already doing that, TJ, geez. Speaking of which, we need to find a manufacturer. It's probably somebody that's well-versed in yoga pants to make us router hats. Only cats already exist.

Ah, what is it? It's great, actually. It's perfectly fine. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Well, if it's great, then I don't worry about it. It's adorable. Only cats. Only cats coming soon. Powered by GoDaddy.

If you have any feedback, questions, comments, pics of the week, automatic toilet flushing devices you've come up with, great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, project updates.

I think Gavin, you've... Wait a minute, Gavin. I know what that stands for. You've been cheating on us again. Uh-oh. Gavin. It's not that bad, buddies. It was just, you know, i had another appearance on homecatching

geeks and that was last week so what was the exact episode of it it literally told nobody i just want to point that out like i didn't find out until i got pinged because i'm in the little discord channel and jim you know posts and he's like tags everybody's like hey we're gonna be on tonight with gavin and i'm like what the heck it was so you know i don't tell anybody it was show 615 of home gadget geeks i was on there we talked about a lot of things 3d printing automations etc etc but i did post an update on my only fans and that's how the people found out about it so it's paid content yeah it's paid content i can't give it away free i got some subscribers to please so yeah just check out home gadget geeks episode 615 and i was there it was pretty fun that was pretty good episode i listened live and you did a good job gavin

thank you very much i i you guys you know you set the bar high so i try to just make everybody happy all right well we'll put it definitely put a link to it in the show notes um i didn't have You guys, you know, you set the bar high. So I try to just make everybody happy. All right. Well, we'll definitely put a link to it in the show notes. I didn't have any projects done. I still don't have anything done. I have a lot. Do you know how much, like, after you go camping and you get any amount of rain or moisture,

how much you have to, like, clean up after you get back? It's ridiculous. Yeah. That's always the worst part. You know, let everything air out and stuff all i hear is excuses excuses i hear the laundry going off in the other room is what i hear so i haven't finished that yet now i'm trying to work my way through it but but yeah uh man uh that that and and everybody saved all their their messages for me of course because they're like oh you, you were out on vacation. We didn't want to bug you with anything,

but here's all the stuff that you missed and have to deal with now. So thanks. Love that. 20,000 contacts. That's always fun. Yeah. But that's what I've been up to. And then I think TJ, you've been, you've had a couple of like,

just you've been busy at work doing work projects, right? I've been, I've been doing, I've been busy at work doing work projects right i've been i've been doing i've been doing everything guys so i uh this week i decided to start redoing my electrical in my house so i went through and cut a bunch of holes and run a new romex wire so i got one room of outlets done and like five rooms of lighting done so i only have like four or five more rooms to go i don't know um but i'm just redoing all the wiring none of it none of the wiring has grounds uh which is not like a super important thing but you know it looks better when your outlets have grounds um and everything works with it so we switched out the outlets to ones that had ground plugs on them when we moved in

even though you're not allowed to without labeling them because i was not going to buy a bunch of adapters and like remove ground plugs and stuff like that so i was just like nope i'm just going to install these outlets when you know before we sell the house i'll switch them back or we'll install new electrical and we're at the new electrical phase so we had a bunch of those growing up with the little gray adapter things yeah like the little two-prong adapters yeah and that's like how our fridge is plugged in right now and a couple other things but but I'm not going to deal with that. And our house is small, so I can access all of our house through the attic. You know, our house is like 1,100 square feet, so it's not like I really need that much wire.

I redid the one room of electrical outlets and like the five rooms of lighting for like $150. Nice. Yeah, can't beat that. And then today, guys, I was at work and somebody rang my doorbell and usually I don't answer the doorbell during the day. Cause I'm like, well, I'm at work. So I can't help you with whatever your problem is. Cause you're a millennial and we just don't answer anything on our phones.

Well, and I just like, I'm at work, so I can't help you with whatever your problem is. You know what I mean? But like, I just looked at it and I was like, ah, this guy's got a yellow shirt on. That's weird. So I, you know, I mean but like i just looked at it and i was like oh this guy's got a yellow shirt on that's weird so i you know i contacted through the doorbell uh but for some reason it was like breaking up and all i heard was we're gonna tow your car and i was like okay you need to call me so he called my phone and he's like hey you had a water main break in front of your house you need to move your car we're gonna tow it and i was like wait what and he's like yeah water main broke and we have to get a dump truck here so we can fix this water main and so i had to rush home real quick i was on a job and i looked at my client or i called my client because he was somewhere

else and i was like hey i gotta run i'll be back in like an hour and a half so i went home and moved the car so i wouldn't have to get towed and you have a big water mess in front in your front of you or they fix it up it's all like dirt and stuff yeah they actually fixed it i have the whole time lapse video of it from blue iris so i'm gonna look at that i found the exact second that it like blew up in the yard it was like a little mini geyser it was like bloop just like just exploded in the yard and then just water gushing everywhere is great so whenever i get that i'll post it on the the mastodon server nice yeah other than that just getting my just getting my automations refined. I've been doing all the Philips Hue everywhere.

And I've got motion sensors coming out of my rear end everywhere. So I'm trying to refine my motion sensor stuff. So turning on lights as quick as possible and not turning off lights while I'm still in the room and everything. In some of my rooms, I have like three motion sensors and like a presence sensor. Because I hate when lights turn off and I'm still in the room and everything and some of my rooms i have like three motion sensors and like a presence sensor because i just i hate when lights turn off and i'm still in there so and and i we there's a couple different rooms where you can enter from like two or three different areas and i want as soon as i walk into the area for the lights to turn on and the best way to do that is with multiple motion sensors so i've been working on that and in the meantime of uh working in the attic running my new electrical.

Wow. And that's where the millimeter wave comes into play, too, because that stuff just – the most annoying thing is when the lights turn off on you because no motion is detected. Oh, I know. But with the millimeter wave, you don't have that issue. So hopefully more companies start to integrate that. What I really want to happen is millimeter wave recess lights. I just want a recess light that has millimeter wave sensors built into it. It makes sense.

You can mount one next to it if you want. Power is there. That's ugly, though. I noticed they have a cone that's fairly small. I mean, I guess if you had multiple recessed slice yeah it would cover it a little bit better but i wish they what i want them i want i want them to look better yeah and have you know they just need to look better and you could use them in the corner of the house or in the corner like where where nobody would notice and they, they would work right.

Like the, the, the car when I have is great. It just looks awful. And it has this giant cable, USB cable that runs out of it to power it. So what are you going to do? One day someone will make one vessel.

It's up to you guys. Yeah. Come on. They seem to make the, make the products that we beg for. Can you make the clapper too? Are you in that industry? Yeah, the Zigbee clapper.

I think Agnes is going to do it for us. All right, well, I think that's going to wrap up this week. We do want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through the Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to HomeTech.fm to learn how you can support HomeTech for as little as a dollar a month.

Any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out here on the show but every pledge gets you an invite to our private site at the hub where you can actually see the big of the week this week because that's where it is it's posted in there in this cool video and you should go check it out um if you want to help out but can't support financially totally understand just appreciate a five-star review on itunes or a positive rating in the podcast after your choice that's going to wrap up the news this week. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.

Take care. Till next time. I need some backyard speakers. Rock speakers.