HomeTech.fm - Episode 556 - Too Sucky to Fail

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

On this week's show: iRobot vacuums up a bankruptcy filing and is scooped up by Picea, Apollo launches a new four-button mini-keyboard, Shelly drops a new all-in-one smart plug, WiiM continues its crusade against Sonos with a compact speaker, Homey launches a self-hosted option, and Emerald (parent company of CEDIA Expo) might be for sale. All this news, letters from the mailbag, CES Pre-Game discussions, and so much more!

This is the Home Tech podcast for Friday, January 2nd from Sarasota, Florida. I'm South Johnson. From Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I'm T.J. Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. And welcome to Home Tech podcast, all about home automation, home technology, all sorts of fun. Hey, Merry, Merry, happy Christmas and holidays, and it's New Year's now, right? It's 2026. Happy, all that stuff.

Was it New Year's like yesterday? Shh. No, I'm sorry. You don't know when this is going to be released. Yeah, whenever you hear this, it's actually going to be 2027. So, yeah. It's going to skip 2026. Let's get it over with.

See you guys two years from now. But yes, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy New Year to everybody. All our listeners. We took a couple weeks off. And we also had the recording of the fireside chat, which was fun. Yes.

Yeah, we did that. But we do want a little follow up. We, of all of the little H-2s, the H-2s, the H-2 giveaways, we did like 20 of them, right? So 20 of them. And then I guess total Apollo Automation donated, let's see, $4,200 to Cass of Lexington and to the Open Home Foundation. So $4,200. That's not bad.

Great job. Yeah, that is really good. I'm glad that, you know, it always makes me happy when I see companies like this doing good charity work. You can go and buy supplies and do a food drive, whatever you want to do. There's a lot of charities that actually need help. But just handing over some money, that's always beneficial to a lot of organizations like this. So I'm sure Casa and the Home Assistant Foundation will be, or the Open Home Foundation will be very grateful for that.

It's all good stuff. So we're happy to help in whatever way we could. And I think we sent out 20 of them. So hopefully everybody got theirs. I think I got mine right before. They sent me one for some reason. So I got an extra one now. But I'm going to re-gift it.

So it'll go out next year or something. And maybe I'll keep it around if I lose this one. But it'll be on my desk the next year. Who am I kidding? It's a collector's item. that's for sure. I have two now. Nice.

Yeah, we have the tree and the, uh, the snowflake. So I'm excited to see what 2026 is. Right, right. Yeah, I can like hook them up together where it's like tree, snowflake or the snowflake tree snowflake, I guess. I could do that and make them blink. That'd be pretty. Something to do next year.

I'll figure it out. I'll get right on that project. You have a whole year. You have a whole year to go. I'll plan it out. Don't worry. Yeah, right. Wait 11 and a half months.

You'll figure it out. Let's see. We got CES coming up. Oh, it's right around the corner. I guess we'll talk about that. later. But first, we have a bunch of home tech headlines. So what do you guys say? We jump right in. Let's do it.

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Speaking of companies that aren't going to go out of business anytime soon, Roomba. Oh, wait, no, Roomba has filed for bankruptcy. So after 35 years in business, I Robot, the company behind Roomba, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move follows years of declining revenue and increased competition from Chinese manufacturers like EcoVax and Roborock. iRobot would be acquired by its contract manufacturer China-based Picea, a robotic, I have no idea how to say that word. It says it will continue operations without disrupting app functionality, customer programs, or product support.

So there we go, founded back in 1990 and launched the first Rumba in 2002. These things were all over root.com, and that's where I got my first one, and it sucked. But they've gotten better, but then everybody else got better too at the same time. I just don't know where they went wrong because Roomba was like, I guess, the Q-tip of the vacuum, the Kleenex of the vacuum. You know, you didn't call it robot a vacuum. We called it, you know, oh, look, the Roomba, right? And where did they go wrong? I understand you, like, competition bypass you, but you should have had like a head start on them.

You should have been able to compete. Well, they went wrong when Amazon tried to buy them and the deal fell through. And as part of that contract, you have to pay a bunch of money. And I think they even took like a loan out. So they had a $190 million loan. So. But even before that, I think they were still like, like people were already bypassing them, you know? Like I, and they were coming with cheaper versions that did more and better, right?

Like, how did Rumba let it get to that? Yeah. I think the biggest loser in this really is the American public. Uh, because, you know, Amazon tried to buy Rumba. It was denied. on basically on monopoly standing, you know. But now it's owned by a Chinese company.

So is that really any better? I would say definitely not. Not that I think Amazon should be able to own everybody. But it's not like Amazon was really in the robot vacuum space anyway. So what would have been the harm if they would have bought Roomba? And ultimately it's data, right? It's the people's data and the inside of their house and whatever else. But this is a big loss for the American public.

general, because now a Chinese company owns all this information, and this is not a better outcome. Yeah, well, what else is new? And they let Amazon buy Eero, you know, like, yeah, and blink and ring and literally everybody else. I mean, what's a robot vacuum at that point? I think, I think what they were using, I think probably the same reasons they bought ring and blink and all those is because they were, they're basically seeing like what everybody was buying, and I have a feeling that everybody's buying our robot vacuums, even on Amazon. And they were seeing that, like I don't know saying, it's a Q-Tip. So even though we may not have been going out of a way to buy a robot, like when people wanted to buy a Rumba vacuum

cleaner, they went online and they bought a Rumba vacuum cleaner from Amazon, probably. And so Amazon was seeing that and saying, okay, this is a good brand. It's got good sales behind it. There are people coming up in the sides. But like, if we made this an Amazon Basics product, like we would make this much money and it makes sense to buy them. And I think that's probably why they got in trouble, too, because they were using that data that no one else had. And they can steer you. Like, if you go and search for a video doorbell on Amazon, what's the first thing that's going to pop up?

It's not going to be some other brand. It's going to be ring, right? So they can steer people to buying more Roombos and I robots over EcoVax and Robo Rock. So I think that's why they were, with two reasons, like, why they were denied the purchase was because they would be kind of anti-competitive when it comes to the marketplace actually owning the product. But like you said, they own a bunch of. other stuff and I think it just depends on who's in power

when they want to make those acquisitions and in Rumba's case unfortunately they were not kind of ran up against I guess a different administration at different different policies and there you go that's what happens alright well moving on here we got some new product from

our friends over at Apollo they came out with a button one the BTN1 it's a macro deck it's a compact four button mechanical controller designed for smart home automation enthusiasts each button supports single double triple taps and hold actions, offering up to 16 programmable functions. Let's see, it's connected over Wi-Fi, integrates platforms like Home Assistant and Homey.

Zigby Thread Matters support are also in development and not yet available. This thing looks pretty cool. It is $35 and you can get all sorts of different, you can get icon key caps or clear keycaps. It's basically a keyboard, like a little tiny, tiny keyboard. Think of a keyboard with four keys only. And that's what it is. And you can press a button and something happens. I like it. I like it. It's a good idea, I think. What do you guys think?

The two really good things about this, it integrates with Home Assistant, obviously. The second part, though, is that it's hot, swappable switches. So they give you a brown mechanical switches, but you can switch in your own switches if you want. So it's a nice little touch for that. You make them all clicky. Yeah. Or silent or whatever you want. It is kind of cool. It reminds me of a stream deck. I bought a stream deck, and it's sitting on my desk right in front of me, and it does not get used.

But maybe I will use it. but something like this would be nice because I could just mount underneath my desk and then I hit a couple buttons to turn my lights off and stuff like that. So basically it would replace a wireless keypad, you know,

switch or button for me. So I think it's a good idea. Yeah. I just use my stream deck right now. I have a button under that turns on one of those little rotating light things. Why do I have that? I have no idea,

but I've got it. I use my stream deck for mute, unmute of my mic. Yeah, I bought one when we still use Zoom for the podcast. But there was some, like, weird thing with the Mac and Zoom where I couldn't use a stream deck to mute the microphone in Zoom.

Not just Mac. I mean, it's Mac in general. They make it more difficult than it should be to do that. But since we switched to our video service, I haven't tried it again, so maybe I should try that. Yeah, we like listening to you. There's a whole, like, that's going to be a premium content is the things TJ says when you should be muted.

Yeah, just the outtakes. It's mostly coughing, sneezing, blowing your nose. Yeah. Good time. Yeah. Let's see. Weem. Weem just expanded into a wireless speaker lineup. They've got the sound light, a compact wireless smart speaker that builds on its earlier model released back in May. The sound light features a four-inch long-throw wulfur and dual one-inch siltome tweeters, putting up to 24-bit 192-cler-hertz playback and 1,000 watts peak output. There you go. If you need a compact portable wireless speaker thing, this might not be it. It's a little bit bigger. It looks like a, an Apple HomePod, if you look at it, like, is that what they're going for here?

It comes in white and black, it looks like. Works on Wi-Fi E has Bluetooth 5.3, and it's got an Ethernet port on it, too. So, I guess it's better than an Apple HomePod because I only has a power plug on it. Anyway, DJ, I know you're in the wireless speaker business these days. What do you think about this? Honestly, I think this is a really good idea.

229, that's a very fair price, and it's right in line with other brands like Denon or Sonos. They have released another version like this. It's called a Weem sound or Wim Sound. For some reason, it came with a remote, and I had a little screen on the front of it. This basically just removes that screen, and as far as I can tell,

it does not come with a remote, which I think is a good idea. So for 229, I think this is a really good product. Does I have Airplay? I didn't see that on there, because I feel like Wim got in trouble with Apple, and they can't do Airplay anymore.

It does not have Airplay listed on here. Yes, I don't see Airplay. That's very strange. Do you need QuoBuzz Connect? Because it's got Quo Buzz Connect. I mean, I definitely don't. But it's got title, that one streaming service that's still around somehow. For some reason, yeah.

That's good. I'm interested to see Wim continue to release products, though, because at this point, Sonos really has no competition. But Wim, you need a soundbar. Give me a sound bar. You have a subwifer, you have a little wireless speaker. You have the amps and the streaming devices. I need a nice sound bar. Soundbar with surround sound, please.

Yes. Yes. And if they don't have airplay, though, that's a deal breaker for me, though. Yeah. Airplay, too. I don't know why they wouldn't have that. I feel like it's because they got in trouble. They got in trouble.

That's the only reason, you know, because a lot of their, you know, their first or their early products had airplay on them. And then at some point, they removed airplay from certain devices. And then newer devices, depending on what it is, don't have airplay. So is it something you just license? You have to license included in the product. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So then buy the license and get it on. I don't care. get in trouble, money will fix that. That's right. They just have to wait to make more money so they can afford it. Right, exactly. It'd probably be $2.99 if they got a license for every device. But then you have to wonder, like, if Apple comes and yells at them for doing this,

do they just, like, ban you from having Airplay for, like, a certain amount of years? You know? Because it's like, well, you started doing this unauthorized, so you can't do anything with Airplay for three years. And then after three years, if you give us a lot of money, we'll forget about it. What's the Android version of Airplay? Is it Googlecast? Yeah, Chromecast.

Chromecast, does it have that? I actually don't know if this one has it. Yeah, it has it. Yeah, it needs Airplay too. Yeah, it has the Googlecast. Yeah, well, it, it's an interesting looking product. It looks just like the bigger, like the bigger home pod thing. It does.

It's a home pod without airplay. If you ever wanted that. If you ever wanted a home pod but with Google cast instead of the airplay, Wim has got you. Yeah, that's funny. But it does come in black and white. You know, there's a lot of speakers that don't come in any colors. Oh, yeah.

This one, this one definitely, I see the one with a screen on it on their website. And so, yeah, this one would definitely blend in a little bit better, I think. Yeah, the one with a screen is a silly idea. I don't, like, I understand why companies are putting screens and everything because they've gotten so cheap now. But why does my little speaker need a screen? Does it need this, like, one inch screen? It doesn't. I don't answer that for you.

Yeah. Sorry, it's 1.8 inches. 1.8. It's like a little round screen, and they show a little clock on it or whatever. I can see why they did it, but it's one of those things that, like, it doesn't need to exist on there. It could be on the top. Like, that would be a better place where on top, like, if you absolutely had to have a screen to show what was playing. But otherwise, yeah, I think the other, this one, for instead of $2.99, it's $2.29, I think it's better at $2.29 with no screen.

Hey, what song is playing right now? I don't know. Go look at that tiny screen over there and they'll tell you. It's not coming from my phone, so I'll just use Ask Siri, basically, what's playing. Anyway, let's move on here. We also have another, a new product from Homey. This is really, really interesting. I think everybody's kind of eyebrow raised when this story came out the other day. Homies launched a new self-hosted server.

It's a software-only version of its smart home platform that runs on your own hardware. Port-a-Ride range of platforms including Raspberry Pi, Linux, MacOS, Windows Docker, Prox, Mox, and TrueNAS, QNAP, Synology, and Unraid. Wow. Out-of-the-box supports devices over Wi-Fi, Ethernet Cloud, Matter for ZigWeeZWay Bluetooth 433 megahertz and infrared. Users can add a Homey bridge with no USB dongles required. Software includes Homey's automation tools like Flow and Advanced Flow, Energy Monitoring, Dashboards, all this junk. All of it can run right on your own hardware. They've got a 33-day trial, no credit card required.

After that, you buy a license for, what is it, $199 for a lifetime. Or is that Canadian pricing? Who put this in here? What, $5 a month or probably $200 for a lifetime? So if they look up the real prices are in real monies, Canadian dollars. Freedom dollars. Yeah, I'm going to have to convert this. This is really cool, though.

It supports up to 10 installations per account. So you can like, you can put this. on multiple places if you have multiple locations. Not bad, not bad. So this was interesting, but the one catch is that, like, if you want to use ZigB, Z wave, if read, even the 433 megahertz or Bluetooth, you need to have their homey bridge.

So you're pretty much stuck with their antennas. If you're doing it matter over Ethernet or any land or cloud connected devices, you don't need their bridge for that. So I don't know why they, force you to use their antennas? I can tell you right now. Why would they not? I mean, because they have the drivers develop

where they know it works. And maybe down the road, they can start adding support for other things in, but like put this out there, see how many people want to do it. And then if it's popular and it sells a few bridges, that's great.

But if they can bring support in for stable, maybe they can bring support in for the home assistant, like the little bridge that they have and pull people from home assistant over to homie, I don't know. They might be able to do that.

Right now, all they need to do is, is, uh, is support the bridge that they have. Oh, wow. Do you see a little energy dangle thing? Yeah, that's that P1 port. Oh, okay, okay. We saw that in Europe or whatever. Crud. All right, never mind.

I thought that was a POE adapter for their bridge. I'm like, oh, that's really cool. But one of the things I like about homeless system is I can use any antenna. I can split the antennas up. I can get better antennas. You know, I can upgrade my antenna. In this case, you're stuck with their bridge. Like, if you, if they upgrade, like, to Z wave the next version, for example.

You're going to have to buy a whole new bridge and it's got all new antennas and everything like that too. Yeah. All right. You'd have to be a home assistant anyway, right? If there's a new, I mean, you have done it, Gavin, clearly. I mean, how many home assistant antennas do you have now? Like, free?

Three. Okay. All right. So you keep buying them. Yeah, but I upgrade them in pieces as I want, as I need. What's the difference? But if you, no, the difference is if you find something else that you prefer, that works better for you, you can individually buy that Z-Wave antenna and not have to upgrade all of them, right?

All right, but hold on. Homie is not for you, Gavin. It is for people that want a plug-in-play system. Yeah, and I guarantee you, for the most part, nobody cares what their Z-Wave or Zigby antenna is. But those people won't be self-hosting as well. Well, they probably want the whole device. That's the part.

Now they're spinning up a server device in their home and they're going to self-host it, It's just, it's a weird space. I think this is really just to get people interested and get them to try it, right? Because right now when you go on to like the home automation subreddit or Facebook groups or whatever, you have people recommended a home assistant. And they're like, well, just spin it up on an old computer. Like you can just install it wherever you want. You don't have to commit to anything.

And so I feel like this just targets that. And mainly because as soon as you open up the self-hosted server thing, they give you like 20, what is it? 10 different options in hosting this thing. You got Raspberry Pi, Linux, MacOS, Windows, Docker, Unraids, Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, and ProxMox. And so they're literally just trying to get you into the ecosystem. And for $69, which the homie bridge thing is, it's still not a bad price.

But I think ultimately they're just trying to, they're trying to get you not to have to worry about the hardware, right? Because if you have the option to choose whatever Z wave antenna you want, there's way too many Zeywave antennas out there. And you also have to curate the actual experience with it. Because as you know, Gavin, sometimes your antennas don't really work that well. Or you have problems with them. Or maybe they release an update and it just messes everything up.

Oh, yeah. You switched antennas more than anybody. In the past year, you've probably gone through like three different antennas. And here they are like, hey, our antenna works. And it works really great with our software. And like, yeah, just use what they've honed in and they've developed for. And okay, so for freedom dollars, it's five bucks a month, like I thought. 149 for the lifetime.

So that's not bad. Yeah. So, I mean, you're in at like, so that's the weird part, though, is you're in at like 220 if you get their hub or if you get the lifetime and then you buy the bridge thing. Yeah. So, I mean, at that point, it's still not bad, but I don't know. No, but it's a good point, though, that you said that it at least lets you try it. You can get in there and try it.

And if you have a cloud, everyone must have a cloud integration somewhere, land integration. you know, that you can play with and just, you know, get to learn their flows and how their software works. And then, yes, if you do like it to the point, you can buy their bridge and now you got all the antennas. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a good, but very strange idea. Uh, especially, it wouldn't be that strange if LG didn't acquire them, right? Um, this is like a thing that I think anybody can go with, but it'll be interesting to see what LG ultimately does with this platform because I was not expecting them to be able to release something where you could self host drones. server. Here's one thing. If you're running

on any of the current homey products, HomeClaude, Homey Pro, Pro Mini, and you want to go to the self-hosted server, you can't do that currently. So they're trying to see. I think it's just early days with this. If they keep, if there's interest in it and people start using it, I think they'll

continue updating it and moving it along with the rest of their product line. Because honestly, it's probably the same application they run on their own hubs the way it looks. So, yeah. I like it. I like it. So it's a good Your interface looks really nice. You know, honestly, it does.

It looks... It's better than my home assistant dashboard than I was saying, I don't know. If it integrate it, I think I was actually going to try to transition over to it, but it doesn't support Zigby binding last I knew. And literally all the lights in my house work via Zigby binding, so... Interesting. And does it have a thread, it doesn't have a thread radio either? It does not have, it doesn't look like a sports thread for some reason in this, in the homey...

In the homie pro and the homie pro and the homie pro minia does. Yeah. But not the bridge, it does not seem to support thread. So maybe one day you can use a homey pro device as a, but that would be expensive. That would be kind of ridiculous. Yeah, it would be. Yeah, who knows, maybe the mini will get updated to do thread. It supports matter, though.

It must be Wi-Fi matter. Anyway, I think it looks pretty good. But if you're just getting started, it's kind of like a pretty easy way to take a look at this product without too much commitment. I suppose, like, what could you automate with this that is, not ZBZWave. I mean, you could do like Ethernet control devices, right? Your printer. No, yeah, exactly.

Does, I guess, does Home Assistant do, what's it called? Infrared? I mean, you can hook in infrared stuff to it, yeah. Hmm, okay. Aren't Shelly Wi-Fi devices? Yeah, they are. So you could probably hook up Shelly devices and play with them.

Yeah, that kind of thing. All right, well, there we go. And speaking of Shelly, Shelly's got a new smart plug-out. It is a, um, the plug U.S. Gen 4. saw people on some forums like complaining about the Gen 3 being like out of program and like

out of stock everywhere and it's like well the Jin 4's out and guess what guys it's uh it supports North American outlets supports up to 1800 watts 15 amps in this tiny little thing it's also got Wi-Fi Bluetooth and Zigby and it's Matter certified and works with Apple HomeKit and all that good stuff this thing is uh what do they cost $20 20 bucks there you go 20 bucks I pretty nice it's tiny it's a nice little device

I like it yeah for 20 Freedom prize that's a that's a pretty good price 1800 watts that was the biggest draw when i saw this is 1800 watts is a lot for a smart plug um i had i have a space heater in my three seasons room and i you know i have it automated with a z wave plug um but i basically had to buy like a heavy duty z wave plug in order to run it um i and i like it it's from zoos uh but it was like two or three times the cost of this shelly plug um and it's also a lot bigger so uh for twenty dollars this is a great price. And I think that's one thing people, like, I know I did it at first, but you didn't take into account how many amps or watts, um, the plugs you buy can use because a lot of them

only support up to, what is it, 10 amps maybe? Um, and people were plugging in certain things and blowing it. I know with the Zeus, the original, um, uh, power bar they had. It, you weren't allowed to plug in a lot of things. You weren't allowed to plug in even like battery chargers for like your tools and I actually broke mine by doing that and it was in the small print in the manual that said all the things you weren't allowed to plug now they've since updated that power bar so now you can plug in a lot of other things um but you know this now you don't have to worry about it with this because this gives you the full 15 amps that you're getting out of your plug anyway yeah it comes in both black and white looks like the white's out of stock but you can buy

black ones still so that's kind of nice i like i like the black ones because they kind of like you can put them in they're going to hide away sometimes yeah i didn't even know they made a black one That's kind of cool. Shelly, up in the game. All right, cool. And we got one more story. Apparently, Emerald Holdings is the parent committee behind the CDA Expo and CEPRO and Commercial Integrator has announced that its board of directors is reviewing multiple acquisition offers. This follows a turbulent financial year for Emerald with its stock fluctuating significantly, starting 2025 at about 483, dipping to 337 by December 1st, and then struggling, sorry, December 1st.

and then kind of gone up 40% here. It's gone up to about $4.95 on December 16th after the acquisition news broke. So the CEO Herve Sedke stated that interest reflects the value Emerald has created. But the company's not disclosed who the potential buyers are. So it could be, CDA could have a new home. It could be have a new parent company that owns all of those properties in the near future. be interesting if CDA, the trade show organization, the organization behind CD itself actually

goes back and buys their expo back from Emerald as well as CEPro. C.E. Pro being bought was kind of the strangest thing because then the news organization was like step in tow in line with the expo. And it felt like it was just always, it's not like it wasn't always like PR releases all the time anyway, but the editorial kind of like evaporated from that when it changed hands over to Emerald. I feel like ever since the year we went, it's just been done. downhill from there. It's never been the same. That's because we were there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, I probably should have told you before the podcast guys, but I actually put a bid in on CDA, the trade show, not the organization, because I wanted us to spend more time together.

So I know how much we like going to trade shows together. So I just figure we can do it every year. Nice, nice. Yeah. We'll have to cover our flights to hotel. No, no, no. You have to buy that separate. I didn't even have money for this. I had to put, I had to like take a loan. in Seth's name. He doesn't know that either. Yeah. But it's fine. That's not going to come through.

I leverage his house. And his five robot lawnmowers. Yeah, exactly. Here's my collateral. It's five robot lawnmowers. And this one shed. Yeah, this is interesting. I don't know.

Like, at this point, I don't want to say the professional space is dead because it's clearly not. It's still a thing. But there's so much consolidation happening at this point. And there's hardly any news that, like, it must be a very awkward. time to own a trade show that is specialized in professional home automation products

because there's just, there's not much else coming out. I mean, even when we had CD the past couple years, listening to the news and everything like that, there's really nothing that comes out of this trade show anymore. And so at this point, like, I don't even know what you would do with it because there's not a lot happening in the space

in general. I don't think it's going to disappear, but it's just a weird time. Yeah, definitely a weird time, definitely a slow time. There's not anything that's like, if you go into Stedia, like, you're, you could be going to do kind of those, like, you're not really going for the trade show itself anymore. Like, you're either going for education or to make, I guess, I guess this is traditional trade show stuff, to make deals, like to talk to manufacturers directly, get in front of

somebody, find somebody at a particular manufacturer you've been interested in pick it up, you know, that kind of thing. And, like, talk to who makes the deal behind the scene, see if you can actually make some headway on becoming a vendor for that particular product, that kind of thing. That's what, that's what CD is really good for. for if you're going there for business relations and that kind of thing. If you're just kind of going to go hoping to see like what's new, you're right.

There hasn't been much new coming out of the show, you know, recently in the last couple of years. It's slow time on the pro side. It's not like there's not new technology, though. Like we talk about it all the time. Integrators are still integrating with that technology. Like next week, you guys will see a bunch of LG TVs or something, you know. All that stuff integrators will be having to deal with first. They'll have to figure out how to, I'm sure there will be wireless TVs, right?

There will definitely be wireless TVs by these manufacturers think they can do HTML over like some kind of wireless protocol. And they'll make it like near impossible for an integrator to actually install it. And, you know, integrators will have to figure that out. And that's what they're good at. That's what their forte is. So like, I don't know. That's what TJ is going to be doing.

I'm trying to figure out how to install these wireless TVs in the future. Yeah, more Samsung, the frame. Pro TVs, please. Yeah, yeah. That stupid box thing everybody hates with the cable. I've only installed one of the Pro Samsung, the Frame Pro TVs

and I still had to put that giant box behind the TV. Oh, man, that's great. Two steps forward, one step back. Well, good luck to the Emerald there for, you know, hopefully they find a good buyer. Hopefully the CD show stays around. Maybe change locations, maybe go somewhere

besides Denver. Oh, yeah. Good Lord. Taking it to Texas. It was like 10 years ago, everybody liked Denver, and then they were like, yeah, we should go back to Denver. And they went some awful places. They went to, like, Atlanta, which was pretty bad on all accounts from what I heard.

And then they went to, where's CDA based out of? Like, Indiana. Indiana. They went there. And it was, I went to that one. It was pretty awful. And then they went to San Diego. And everybody's like, oh, this is amazing, but it's super expensive.

So they went back to, to Dallas. Dallas, Dallas, also not great. But then they went to back to Denver. And Denver, I don't know, something happened to Denver. And, like, the entire downtown used to be this huge outdoor mall. And now it's just one giant, ugly construction site. So there's nothing to do there now. Denver was very depressing, too.

Yeah, it was depressing. It's gross. Anyway, let's move on here. Where are we at? Oh, it's the end of it. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found over in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 556. We got a mailbag today. Chris writes in, he said the last few episodes,

I heard you guys talking about garage door openers and wanted to give some praise to Jeannie Garage Door Openers. Previously had the right OB opener, which got discontinued because Chamberlain sued and started having problems. He said, he says, I was looking into openers and knew I did not want my cue and found a Jeannie and Aladdin Connect.

I picked up their belt drive opener and was pleasantly surprised that the Aladdin Connect had an official home assistant integration and I've seen the genie in the home assistant forum. What was even better is I was able to connect my old Lowe's Iris Z wave opener controller to the same spot on the wall and it works natively with the Z wave now.

Hope this helps take away Mark's share from Mike U. there we go. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. That's pretty cool. More garage door. We need more garage door competitions. Now that we've talked about Aladdin on the show, they'll probably get bought by Mike. Yeah, they'll probably get by. by Chamberlain so enjoy it well you can

that Chamberlain now knows about them and we'll probably buy them That's probably what's going to happen There is a private MyQ event happening at CES and I thought about trying to get tickets Just so I could yell at them But I ultimately decided that was not a good idea So that would that would not be a

They should vet their list I guess Anyway let's move on here No pick of the week The pick of the week is CES We're going to find Pix of the Weeks for CES and bring them forward there. But thanks Chris for writing it. We appreciate it. If you have any feedback questions, ideas for the show or Pixel the Week, give us a shout.

Our email address is feedback at HOMTech.fm. Or you can hold it over to Hometech.com slash feedback and fill out the online form. All right, everybody. St.E.S. is right around the corner. That's our project this week. I may be there. You won't be. You keep saying this like you will, but you won't.

It'll be a surprise. Who knows? Oh, it will be a surprise. Hey, if this podcast gets released soon, then maybe you're at CES listening to us or you're on your way there listening to us, you know, we will be there and you can message us and, you know, find us somewhere on the show floor.

We'll be all over the place. Yeah, if you want us to look at something. Or Gavin and T.J. to look at something. Gavin and I will be there. Seth will not. He says he will be, but maybe. But maybe. But he won't.

But yeah, I mean, if you are listening to the show before CES, I don't know, who knows that this will be released this weekend or not. But if there's something at the show, you want us to go check out or maybe that we should go see or somebody that we should go talk to, maybe you got some tips for us. Go ahead and send it into feedback at home tech.fm. Let us know. I mean, we have a calendar full of stuff that we're going to go do already. But it's my first time going to see yes. So maybe there's something cool.

I need to go check out. Well, that's what I want to ask you guys about. I want to pretend that I'm not going and I'm going to be the interviewer here. I'm going to like, you don't have to pretend. What do you, what are you excited about? What are you excited about seeing TJ? You know, honestly, I'm just excited to see everything. I've never, I've only been to a couple trade shows in my life.

Most of the time it's Infocom because I lived in Orlando. So like that was obviously an easy one to go to. I've been to CDA twice now. I've never been to anything as big as CES. And so I'm honestly not sure what to expect. But I'm just, I'm going with a, with kind of an open schedule in a way. But just open eyes to see what else is there. Um, obviously we're going to hit up all the smart home booths. Um, so I'm going to go around. I want to talk to, you know, third reality, for example, because they're one of my favorite smart home companies. Um, we're going to go check out Segway Navamo. They may be having some new products that are being released to CES. Um, and yeah, just in general. One of the things I like about these type of events is just meeting up with people. You know, there's people that we've talked to online for the past several years, you know, specifically since like Gavin and I joined the podcast as well. There's been.

people in like the Slack group and stuff that we've never actually met in person but like we've talked to them every day for the past like I don't know like six years or whatever we've been doing this podcast and so one of the things I'm most excited about is actually just to meet up with people you know like Jimmy's going to be there from the Slack channel from automated house we get to meet the people from home assistant Paulus and a couple other people so that I I guess networking is probably my most exciting thing Kevin what about you what are you excited is he? Uh, TJ didn't leave much room for my answer.

Just answer everything. Yeah, ditto. Soil moisture sensors, I think is your answer. Yeah, I'll be in the agricultural area. I'm looking for soil moisture sensors. But no, um, the one thing I'm most excited to do there is, like T.J. said, meet people. Like, um, we'll be meeting with Agnes from Zoos. You know, all these people interviewed, you know, um, Jennifer from the Verge, you know,

just to meet them in person, shake their heads. And then I get to see TJ again. and I'll get to see Richard again, saw him in Denver, you know? Maybe me. And then maybe Seth. And then the other content creators, you know, these are people you listen to, you watch, and, you know,

you talk to in various groups and, you know, you get to meet them, you know, finally and, you know, share some stories. Yeah. Oh, very cool. There's not, like, as far as technology goes, are you guys, are there anything like specifically, like, CES is known for all, like, having all the crazy TV screens that roll up and, like, fold and I don't know you care to see it like I'm sure there will be some uh some AI related

technologies there uh of course but I'm sure there'll be like some VR like virtual reality or augmented reality stuff you guys want interested in any of that food tech what it's everything what do you guys anything specifically home tech mainly but like I because it's my first time I don't know what to expect I don't know yeah you know like what's the floor gonna be like I'm just I don't even know how big it is I don't people say it's big I know it's multiple buildings and stuff like that, right? But, you know, I scoped out the buildings and I think the Venetians were going to spend most of our time, but I think the convention center has some stuff I want to go over and

see in there too. So I don't know how close they are, how far they are, but we'll figure it out when we're there. And I'm sure just walking around, you're just going to see tons of stuff. I made, I made a list of all the boots, all the vendors I know of that I want to stop by their booth. So I have that list, and I'm going to find time to stop by each one of these at some point. And then I have some people that have been emailing me saying,

hey, we do this. If you have time, come by our booth. And I've never heard of this company, but I'm interested in what they were saying. So I added them to my list as well, just to swing by and see. So it's all those things you've never heard of or never seen before that, you know,

I'm looking forward to see. Yeah. We're going to go see a couple of our friends from the show, too. You know, obviously Gavin mentioned Agnes earlier, but we got an applied sensor code. They're going to be there. You know, Kara has sent me a bunch of stuff before. Apollo guys are going to be there.

Yeah, Apollo's going to be there. So there's some people that we actually, we've talked to on many occasions that will be able to see them in person. There's, TJ, I found some pet product, some pet products there. Pet Goo Goo. It is solving real world challenges from pet ownership with smart home applications or appliances that are built from the pets perspective. There's a self-flushing smart cat toilet that'll be on site for you to test. It says for you to test. Oh, I can test that.

I don't know how that's going to work, but it'll be on site for you to try to try and brought my cat. I'll test it. That'll be interesting. There's all sorts of stuff at TES. And I don't know. I might be interested to see what's there and what's not. We'll let you know.

Have you ever been Seth? Have you ever been? No, I haven't been to CES specifically. Okay. Yeah. I've been to, I've been to the convention center is new. So there'll be a, it's a very large convincing center that. Yeah, I heard, um, they just renovated a billion dollars or something like that crazy. And it's going to be open just in time for, uh, CES. So timing's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. The, the new, the new what's been renovated in what they would call, like it's the main hall, I guess I don't know. Um, that's, it's pretty massive. I think most of in co, well, some of Inco, uh, Infocom was in it. Last time I was there. And then the old hall, was. And then the old hall was, which is, I mean, just as big as some of the trade shows I've been in here in Orlando. That's pretty big, too. And then also, there'll be the Venetian, which has its own, you know, basically conference center.

And I think there's another one, is it, that's one of the other hotels. There's, like three different campuses there that you can kind of pick. And I think they've grouped everybody in. And like you said, Gavin, like most of the home automation stuff is there in the Venetian area. So it'll be interesting to see. Anyway, that'll start next week. And if you're listening to this show, and it's, what, the week of the four, worked. You know, shoot us an email. Feedback at hometech.com. We'll get to all of us and we'll

look around and see if we can find something. If you see something, it's interesting. Yeah, let us know. We'll check it out. This cat toilet. I'm going to try this out. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, there's a bunch of random companies I would never think to go visit somewhere, but like I'm already there. So like some of the companies on my list, for example, are, let's see, I have Aki on there, which makes like, you know, phone chargers and cables and stuff like that. There's Blue Eddie, which makes power, you know, portable battery batteries and stuff like that.

Chippelo is kind of like a tracking company. EcoFlow, which is another portable battery company. Hummingbird, smart home, which makes, you know, stuff for existing blinds. So some stuff that I would never probably look at, like, without having a reason to. Yeah. But I'll be at the show.

So I can stop by their booth and maybe put my hands on their products and actually see what they're about, and maybe I can incorporate them into future projects. And I like finding those newer companies, the small, when they're small, you know, like I feel like companies like in a valley when they were small and just starting up, you know, we got in and early with them. And same with Apollo. We've seen them grow over time. I like to get in when they're, they got the new products coming.

They're just, you know, you can work with them to help improve them or, you know, they listen to your feedback, you know, some of the bigger companies, they don't care what you have to say, you know. But these smaller ones actually do listen at times, and I like that. Hey, Gavin. Yep. One of the companies to be there is called this rain point, and they have a rain point sensor that is flat that you can move over. Oh, get out of here.

No, I just put a link to it in our Slack channel for you. Look at that thing. Get out. Oh, I've had one of those before. Yeah, the problem. Yeah, I've had. Can you still step on them and they break? No, no, no.

They actually, it's pretty good. It's just the spikes. Um, because this is the one with the three, uh, three spikes on it, yeah. Yeah, so I, I, I seen this type of rain point sensor before. I actually had a similar one. It's same style and everything like that. But the problem is, is, you see how this one has like the three spikes in it? Mm-hmm.

Those erode quickly over time. I can't remember the terminology. It's been a while since I looked at it, but there was like conductive and something else. And these ones will erode. And you'll see the other ones that look almost like a little bored that you, It's coded and you stick it in. Those ones are the better ones. I had it, but maybe this company has done a better job with it,

or they have, you know, like, it's Wi-Fi, so then the batteries, when you start getting into Wi-Fi, how's the battery going to last and stuff like that, too, right? I've got some Bluetooth ones. Maybe you got to talk to them. I mean, as long as it lasts like four months or five. You know what, I'm going to, now that you've sent it to me, I'm going to go check about for sure.

Yeah, I got a press conference, press contact for you. Send it to me because I'm always on the lookout for some good. And you know what? They have to be able to integrate into Home Assistant, you know? Like if they're going to be that type of company that doesn't want to, this doesn't have any AI, that's good. Wait, wait, how are they going to see us? They're going to let them in the door.

So we will see. But like I said, I've had these before, similar product. But maybe the one I had just was a cheap version and they've improved on it. It looks pretty much the same though. Yes, it is, you could run the lawnmower over this and step on it, and it survives in everything. Interesting. Well, and speaking of AI, I'm sure it's going to be all over. I've seen so many, there's in one of these little press briefings I had, it's like an entire section of just AI, AI stuff that you can go see.

I don't know why you'd want to, but there's going to be a lot of AI guys. I hope you guys are ready. Oh, I'm ready. Yeah. From earlier this year, I was up when I went to Microsoft Ignite, I got AI overload. I know how to handle it. it's going to be ridiculous. We are going to find out how many times somebody says AI to us at the show. Oh, yeah?

We're going to have a count at the end of, for the next show we do. Yeah, so this, we haven't talked about it, but I decided to go ahead and buy us physical, like, those little hand clickers, you know, they use them for like sporting events or, you know, whenever you go into a... At the front gate, where the little person's sitting clicking a little, oh, yeah, just click a little button that way they can find out how many people were there. I bought all of us one, and we are going to figure out how many times people say AI to us. And I've already come up with the ground rules for this. It is only when you hear somebody verbally say AI. It cannot be like in a poster or a billboard or whatever else. You have to hear somebody say AI.

And we're each going to get a little hand clicker and you just click it every time you hear somebody say AI. And we'll add it up at the end of the show and figure out how many times we heard AI. What if we're in the same place and we hear it the same AI? What do we do then? Well, I think we're just going to have individual accounts. So TJ heard it this many times. Gavin heard it this many times And that's it

I mean you're not going to be there So you're You only have to count anyway Nicole will be there She'll count We'll have three different counts So we'll figure out And then maybe we can we can chart it

You know On opening day we heard it this many times The end of the show We only heard it this many times Very nice very nice So it has to come out of somebody's mouth You can't hear it on an audio announcement Or anything like that

I think any time that you That it is Somebody audibly says AI They don't have to say it to you. You just have to hear it out loud. But you can't read it. Like if you like pass a billboard and it says AI, that doesn't count. Okay.

But if you know, you're at, you're at the bar at the home assistant meetup and you hear somebody across the bar say AI, that counts. You heard it. Okay. So it has to be AI. It can be LLM. It can be chat. Well, it's.

Yeah. So I guess that's the ultimate thing, right? Do we, do we want to do AI or LLM or something? No, everybody's going to say AI. No one's going to say, yeah. AI. Let's say, let's go with AI. All right.

They may, they may say machine. learning and AI, you know, that kind of thing. But no one's going to say LLM. AI is the way, you, yeah, you can't do anything about AI. Yeah, that's the marketing. So do you have a clicker that supports up to eight digits? No, unfortunately, it is very hard to find a clicker that supports more than four digits. And by very hard, I mean, on Amazon available this week.

So I bought one that supports up to five digits, which I assume we're going to blow through in, like, the first day. So we'll just have to, like, tally each day. and then, like, restart. You know what? Not only think about it, if we're going to blow through that the first day, my thumb's going to be, I've had to start doing some thumb exercises.

Yeah. You're going to need it. Yeah, you get one of those Apollo BTN-1s, and you'll be ready to go. Yeah, there you go. One thing I've noticed is that there's a lot of these, like, little, what do they call them, like, little pets, like personal pet things or robotic pets or things that come out?

And what did Switchbot come out with, like, a Luboo or something? Yeah. What are they doing? They just seem all over the place sometimes, but it seems like they're coming out like a little teddy bear with AI or something built. Yeah, we did not talk about that. We should have.

Yeah. Well, there's no reason to talk about it because it's absurd. Oh, that's a more reason to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. I think you guys are going to have plenty of Lubbubu pets that you can, robotic pets you can get there. Here's an AI-powered, wheeled, dual-armed robot design for cross-scenario use across industries, including warehouse and logistics.

So if you want a two-armed robot that can work a CNC machine, weld, screw, locking, spray painting, building tasks, this would be great for your garden, T.J. Clamping, yeah. Stick this out here. I'll see you a media kit on this one. This is good. Oh, I'll take it. Yeah, take three. No more gardening. Too bad I couldn't find a shed company. I need a smart shed company. I just need a robot. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm sure there will be a lot of robots there, too. And then cat litter boxes, which would be interesting. or flushing cat toilets. Don't know how that's going to work. But please, try it out. Let us know. This is my vote. I'm going to put that in our things for DJ to try.

All right. Let's see. We want to thank our sponsor this week, Gavin is the service, but also want to thank everyone for listening to this show. I want to spend a special thanks really able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head over to HomeTech.com slash support to learn how you can become a patron for as little as a dollar month. Any pledge over five bucks to you a big shout out here on the show,

Every pledge will get you an invite over to our private Slack chat hub where you and other patrons of the show can discuss what's going on. You know what? That would be a great place to say, hey, can you guys go check out the AI powered cat toilet thing on aisle 5 or something? And these guys may be able to head on it. That would be something to do. That's where you should hang out. That would be the place to be. But, yeah, if you can't support the show financially, just appreciate a five-star review of positive rating on the podcast app of your choice.

That's going to wrap up the podcast this week. Everybody have a great weekend, and we will see you next week in Vegas. To Vegas. I was going to say Forget sending us an email at HomeTech.com. Give us a dollar instead. Do you want us to go check out a booth

or talk to somebody? Give us a dollar. It's a dollar. One dollar.