HomeTech.fm - Episode 557 - CES Live - Apollo Automation Monthly Livestream

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

On this week's show: Live from CES! The HomeTech team joined Justin and Kyle on the Apollo Automation monthly livestream on in Las Vegas at CES 2026. We had a great time and wanted to share the conversation on our feed as well.

And welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, podcast, podcast all about home automation, home technology, and CES. I guess I'm Seth Johnson. I'm here in Sarasota, Florida. But I did make it out to CES. Turns out, Gavin and T.J. stayed for the week. I ended up coming back a little early. But we had a conversation earlier in the week.

We're friends from Apollo, Justin Button, and Kyle Rayleigh came over to the Airbnb, sat down, and we joined their lives. stream. And it was a fun enough conversation. I figured, why not push this out on the podcast feed? So we recorded it. And I've got it here for your enjoyment. So with that, I'll just, we're just going to play this back. It was a good conversation. If you've never seen one of Apollo's live streams, they're a lot of fun. And they get a lot of, they do it live, of course. It's a live stream. And they get a lot of feedback, I guess, when they do that through their social channels, through Discord and YouTube. So it was kind of a cool experience to sit there and be part of that. So figured, why not publish it? So here you go. Without further ado, we'll just edit that in right now. And we'll catch back up with everyone next week and find out what T.J. and Gavin saw in Vegas.

Well, let's get started. So I'm just one of the co-founders of Apollo Automation. We got Kyle, Director of Operations of Apollo Automation. And then we've got a special guest tonight here at CES in Las Vegas. Gavin from the Home Tech FM team. I'm T.J. Huddleston from the Home Tech FM team. I'm Seth Johnson from the Home Tech FM team. And Nicole Huddleston, just visiting.

Just gave it out. She's like what to be left out. Like I said, we're all here at CES in Las Vegas for the 2020, 2006 show. And we figure we get together and do a live stream. We have a lot of good stuff to talk about tonight. The first thing is we do a live stream giveaway. I haven't seen Brandon message yet.

I don't know if Brandon has set it up yet, but we'll get that going. And then first off, this is actually the first live stream that we've had since we got our commercial partner announcement with Open Home Foundation. So if you hadn't heard already, yes, thank you. Thank you.

Apollo Automation is now a commercial partner with the Open Home Foundation, and we'll be helping ESP Home, kind of just grow the brand and help support the OHFT. So that was something that was kind of hard to keep quiet for a while. So we're very happy that it's out now and then we can, you know, talk to everybody. Thanks, Ben.

Thanks, everybody. And if you didn't hear me earlier, we got Jesse, actually, the main developer of ESVM on here. Looks like what else. Who else we got? Holly, Ben's back, Criterion. Oh, cool. Good to see you. Oh, Pat's here.

Colin says you on me too. Yeah, I'm on the air. I'm on the phone. So, yeah, that was a pretty big analysis. I was really excited to see what we can do with the Open Home Foundation and do what kind of products we can make with them and see how we can support the community. We typically do a cool community corner where we, you know, show things that the community

is done with our sensors and stuff. But you guys are going to be our cool community corner. Nice. Yeah. So if you guys want to talk about maybe like the podcast and, like, like what do you guys do? Like, you know, anything cool you've been doing at home? I let her boss speak.

Oh, yeah, the boss. Yeah, the boss. I don't know, man. I've got so many projects at home in the middle of. It's hard to pick which one is the best one to talk about. But I don't know, we sit down once a week and chat on a podcast. And we spend about, what, four or five hours talking. And then we record about an hour of that, I guess.

And then, yeah, we just, it's, it's, it's. It's what, how long have you been doing, like two years, three years now? I feel like, no. Gab and I have been on there for like four years or so now. And my past probation in it? I don't know. Not invested yet. On episode like 500 something, right?

It's like 50. He's been doing it for like 10 plus years. Yeah. Yeah. It's time. And honestly, it's flown by. It's just something fun. We have to sit down and do every week and talk tech.

There's always something that's eye about, it seems like. And if Apollo's not coming out with it. the new product, Unify is. And if Unify is not coming out, Apollo's coming out with something cool. So there's always something good to talk about. It's, it's, it's been a fun couple of years.

And it definitely changed. I mean, significantly. When I first started, we were talking about, like, the pro space and, like, doing Crestron and Control 4's Davant. And all that stuff is kind of, like, it's still there. It's not like that's not something you do, if that's your job. But the exciting stuff is happening over here on the DIY, where we have all these really,

cool sensor technologies and matter is sitting there, courting everyone and looking like it's taking off this week. A lot of matter news today just rolling out. So, yeah, that's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, that's all I got for that. I mean, yeah. And Gavin encourages us to spend a lot of money on stuff. I got, like, two unread servers now. That's ridiculous. I'm a rack in my base. I know. I got hit to buy a rack. So yeah, yeah. Success. Yeah.

DJ, what do you got? Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that I'm in the professional space. I have a low voltage company that I do full time. And I've been in the professional AV space for about 10 years now, a little over 10 years at this point. And when I started listening to Seth and Jason, who was one of the original co-hosts of the show, it was just all professional news. I mean, it was Savon or Control 4 or Crestron or all these big main companies coming out with stuff. And that's kind of, that's slowed down a lot. There's been a lot of consolidation in the

industry. And we're focusing a lot more on DIY stuff at this point. And for me, I obviously like the DIY stuff because I like to be able to do it at my house. And I originally swore off, you know, Wi-Fi sensors and devices because I wanted all of them to work over, you know, Zygme and Z Wave and all these things. But actually, one of the first Wi-Fi smart home devices I allowed into my house was Apollo, and that's because it's based off of ESP home. It allows you to make those changes and integrate it very easily, and it's all locally based, and you can't really say that for a lot of Wi-Fi sensors. So that's been a real big game changer in the industry. Just companies like Apollo release in those devices that are easy to use, and they use Wi-Fi because everybody has

Wi-Fi at this point. Nobody wants a separate hub for their stuff. So it's been very cool to be part of the news cycle and figure out what the cool products are and how they fit into everybody's life. So, what about you, Gavin? Well, I've been dealing with tech since the very young age, and I'm a home assistant guy. I've been through a home kit, Hobart, smart things. I ended up at home assistant. I'd probably be there for a while. I'm about 400, 300, 300 devices in my house.

And, yeah, I'm going to do it yourself, guy. I do this stuff for fun. I do it as a hobby. I do it to know your wife sometimes, you know. like I did throw my Apollo sensor, the millimeter wave one, um, in the bathroom wants to turn on the fan whenever she went in there, right? Um, I didn't like hearing noises, right? Um, so that was the droughted out, but that was quickly pulled for me.

Like she quickly got, you know, take that out. She's like, nope, I'll know. Um, so yeah, and these guys, you know, whenever something breaks, you know, like, Seth's always breaking something, so I have to tell them how to fix it, you know, like, yeah, yeah, you know, like, that's all. I just, do it for fun. Yeah. Breaking stuff, but you never finish anything. I mean,

some things I do. Something. Yeah. Well, Seth says that he's got a bunch of projects going on. It's only because he never finishes a project. So, yeah, they're always in,

in progress. No. All right. Cool. Looks like YouTube might be had some trouble. So sorry. Sorry, YouTube. I don't know if it's, uh,

hmm, it's streaming well, but, uh, is it working for you, Kyle? YouTube? Yeah, maybe it's working okay.

It's working okay. It's okay. It's fine. Like you to me. Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. And we'll talk more. I was asked a few more questions about CES and so. Yeah, of course. And then of course, trying to, you know, anytime.

So let's go on to, or real quick, I didn't want to do an update on our, the Apollo H2, our ornament that we do for charity every year. We ended up doing about like $44,200. We raised the, and so all that was profit from the sales of the ornaments. and they all went to a local charity called Casa of Lexington, who helps kids that are going through the court system, and then we sent some to the Open Home Foundation. So that was pretty cool. You know, we wouldn't be a company without them, so we thought it would be nice to support them.

And then now we'll be supporting them as a commercial partner, too, which is really exciting. But we did have some cool code updates. You're good, go. Just make your service. Yeah, it works, yeah. And then we have some cool code updates. We recently released the button one,

which is our little macro deck. It has four buttons on it, connects over Wi-Fi. It has single-press, double-press, triple-press, and a whole. So you're going to have 16 actions. But we just got it working on Zygby, actually. Oh, nice.

Yeah, so it's working on Zygby. There is an ESP Home Zygby branch on our GitHub. Of course, all our code is open source. EtT does want to test it on your button ones. Please do. We did some testing, and the battery life actually is very good. like yeah very good a little bit better than Wi-Fi it seems to be a quicker to to wake up too to respond it takes about it takes the battery version of the button one about 10 seconds to wake up and then it does the single press or whatever you know

whichever action you chose but Zigby is a few seconds it seems it's it seems almost half the speed if not yeah so also in paul hibert pauling yeah we've seen paul here too yeah that's the first thing i thought of when i saw him But yeah, so, you know, we're really excited because this is going to be the first device that we have that Zygby. Right. And it's, everybody's been asking for Zygby products literally since our first post and, you know, two years ago in 2020 in 2020. So it's, and it's our most highly requested protocol. So we're excited. Can I start on Zygby? Like, I'm excited for your Zygby progress. Like, like, to be honest, because it now opens up a whole, it opens up battery power devices.

It opens up, you know, faster communication. And a lot of us already have Zigby meshes in our house. It's going to allow us to utilize that. And it's just another step to thread or to matter. Exactly. I'm loving where you guys are doing this. That would be the next step. That would be the next step.

After we get Zigby done with the sensors that, you know, because the pump one and the button one both are using the ESP 32 C-Siffy's now, which has a C-E-N thread. So once we get Zigby out of the way, we'll start doing thread because Matter, like you guys mentioned is definitely gaining popularity. and definitely something you can't, not that we were ignoring it, it's just you can't ignore it now for sure.

Especially with open thread being supported by ESB home now. And then, of course, now with the ZBT-2, got an awesome Zygd-D-D-N-Thread antenna. Was it relatively easy to add on Zygby compatibility to some of the products? So it was a difficult process. Yeah, so I worked on,

there's an external component, and forget, I think it's the person who made it is L-U-A-R, Charlotte 1, 2, 3. And it was very simple. You basically just kind of, you know, there's a little bit of configuration yamil, and then you basically just point it to your core yamil,

and it can actually pull, like, the sensors from the core yamil and automatically kind of, like, add it. So that was a great way to do it. But then Trevor actually did, like, a full ZigB, like, stack, I guess, you know. So, yeah, it wasn't actually too bad. It seems like it's going to be very good for, not only for us, but for anybody else that's using, like, a C6 or an H2.

So that also has a Zigby and thread. So yeah. Nice. And what else? So smart for smart home ecosystems, yeah, we work with Homey as well. We're partners with them and our devices can work with Homey. We hadn't, there was an update to ESP Home that was actually causing issues with them connecting Homey.

But we should have that fixed now. So that should be we have it in the test app. I don't know if Trevor pushed the full production app. That should be fixed. I think you know, we've had multiple community members and even ABA, the partnership manager, say that it's working better. So we'll do more testing when I get back, but we're again in Las Vegas, so can't do too much testing here.

But for upcoming events, I had CES, but we're here. We're here. So I'm here. If you guys don't know, CES is the consumer electronics show. It's the largest electronic show, I think, in size. We found out that EFA in Berlin, which we went to last September, is actually the largest for people. So they actually like consumers, like they used to get at CS.

They like consumers actually come to the floor and actually, you'd have to be like an industry attendee or media to get in like you do in CES. So that's pretty cool. But CS is awesome. All the big brands are here. You know, everybody's showcasing their new technology, everything they've got. You guys had seen some cool stuff. I know you're on there.

You can't talk about some. But there's some cool stuff in the lawnmower space and camera space and stuff coming out. So, but yeah, very exciting. And then also we have land war, which you may have heard us talk about before, but it's a gaming land in-person gaming land in Louisville, Kentucky. And we've been doing it for well over a decade now as gamers, but then when we started the company, we started sponsoring the event.

But it's like 400 people. You bring your own computer. It's like four straight days of gaming and you just sleep, you know, you, you sleep there and you wake up and you game more. So there's board games. and lots of other stuff there. We'll have a table set up, and we do like a little hollow workshop

with death boards and WLAD and stuff. Is that in the summer or when is that again? They do it twice a year. They do it in January, and then they usually do it in July and August. Oh, nice. So, yeah, if you guys are in the Louisville area or in our area, come on out to Lane where it's going to be a good time.

It always is. So actually, they were claiming that they were the longest running land since like 1998, but then some land in Canada. Yeah We've been doing it since 97 It's not really So thanks Gavin

It's Canada Canada up in Iraq Yeah Yeah we had plans back then So the only claim to fame is that Land War's been I think consistent Three even through COVID Like they were

But this one in Canada has been taking it in your off here Oh No But it's okay So It's a little Canadian Yeah it's fine

So But we're going to be there It's going to be very event. Also, for product development, the button one actually is officially released. It's officially out. We're shipping it. It's in our Australia and

Canon warehouses. It's shipping all over. I think we send you one, Gavin. Did you get one? You haven't gotten one yet? Yeah. Yeah. But they are everywhere. They're shipping everywhere. When I get home, I'll get it.

But yeah, it's out. So if you had to play with one, they are very cool. It's just nice to have a physical button next to something like in your nightstand or just somewhere where you don't want to pull out your phone or for guests too or spouse approval. Spouses. Yeah, it's nice. You just push a button. And so, and again, it has single press, double press, triple press,

and like a hold. So you have 16 different actions. We have a really nice blueprint that Jesse from ESB home and Brandon Sarnham sellout made. And for the butt once it's, it's super simple. We were talking about this earlier, Gavin. It's super simple to automate it essentially. You just literally just click, I want single press to do this. And it's super simple. It has four RGB LEDs that are fully addressable on it that you need to do whatever we want with.

There is a battery version and then a non-battery version. The battery version with like four presses a day was like close to your battery life. That's without the deep sleep. We had to remove the deep sleep component because there was an update with the ESV-Helm that kind of broke some mixed your own components. So once we add that back, it'll go, because initially it was like two, two years. So it was almost like double, but with Zingby, I don't know yet. But I'm curious how do you guys measure that, though, because you didn't have this for a year. Yeah.

So we, we, we, we, we have like a power profiler. Yeah. And then we look at how many, like, micro amps or milliamps. It's drawing whenever it's awake or asleep. And then we do SS. But we do have them running in the workshop, basically as long as we can with development, it makes sure they work and making sure that the battery light is, it's not, you know, jumping around or it's the same.

So, but yeah, it's a, it's a fun device. We have a, we have clear key caps. We have smoke caps for it, like, like a smoky cap. And then we have an icon like packs that's got light bulbs and locks and that sort of thing. So this is a cool piece. I mean, I always look for this kind of stuff because it stands out. And it's, it's not for like, I always look at this more like the accessibility side of things.

Yeah. If you're sight impaired. these tablets are useless. It doesn't matter what the feedback is on it. And if you need to turn on your lights or turn off your lights, you need to have a button that's dedicated for that because you don't know what the state is. So I think that this is going to, I mean,

I was looking for something just like this a few months back when I was trying to help somebody find some things. And there was really nothing out there. I went and found some like custom keyboard manufacturer type things that had made like these control panel type keyboards for, video editing and that kind of thing in InvoCob space. And they also have like a model train one. I don't know.

It was a strange. Yeah, it was like that big can you feed. Really? Yeah. Yeah. But it was interesting. Those and then they have those of various sizes all the way up to like very large panels. And you can customize how you want.

And I was thinking you using that. But I mean, this makes it so much easier because it's just like the couple buttons we need for each room. We put it right where you need it, right where you can find it. And you click the button and you're good to go. And it is hot swappable. too. So like I like brown switches, like tactile. Lydiers are nice. I'm not really into the clickies, like blues, but it is hosswoppable. So you can change out to whatever like cherry-m-x-style switch you want. And the key caps, of course, you can change those out to whatever you want.

As a person with a dozen keyboards, I really appreciate the hot swappable switches because I'm very particular on my switches. Are you a mechanical like keyboard? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I literally have a dozen of them. I'm not even kidding. Okay. It's got a little bit of annoying. Yeah. Well, I had to get a always editing them out of the podcast because he gets all happy with this type thing. Well, Nicole bought me a new keyboard, not those past Christmas, but the Christmas before, and I was able to get some really silent switches, which aren't that silent, but they're a lot quieter than like my Unicomp IBM keyboard that I have. Yeah, oh, man, that thing's very thonged.

Oh, they're very great, though. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, hot swappable switches. Yep, very good. Very good. And then what else is on it? I need that pretty much. Custom.

Custom key camps, too. Yeah, we got the icon pack. You know, it comes with, you know, blinds, other stuff like that. You know, same. The reason, the reason I was like, you can even pop them off. They have those key caps that have a little, like, one, two, three dots on. Yeah. So, like, braille.

Yeah. It's such a great thing. Like, it's so customizable. Even outside of, like, what you and I were all excited about having this product for, like, it's really cool that this would be available for somebody to be able to use and integrate with their systems that they have at their house. This is hard stuff to find, believe it or not. So it's really cool you guys are coming on with this.

That's why we're making it. Listen to the community and see what they want. They're coming up with, you know, we're making a product bring it to life. We did have a cool Ben one of our long time, like Discord users. He three printed like Mario. Yeah, those are nice.

Question marks, so. That's great. Yeah, it's, that's the best part of the community. Just seeing what everybody uses it for. What else? What else? And so, oh, we kind of talked about firmware, but we do have a beta firmware. So if you guys want to get a sneak peek of like what we're working on or want to test what we're working on,

it's open to everybody. Just, you know, message us in Discord and all the code is open source. So if you want to test a beta firmware, just let us know. And again, we have a future product survey. So we want everybody to take this because it lets us know, you know, what we need to actually spend our time on. Where do we need to spend our R&D? You know, we want to build a product and then say, here's a product, and no one wants. wants it, you know, we want to make something that people want.

I'm sure you guys have seen a lot of those products that people, they just make something and, you know, no one. No one wants it. Definitely not a C, yeah. So. Yeah. I filled out your serving multiple times. Okay.

Good. Yeah. And yeah, that's why we saw an increase in soil moisture. That's serious. A lot of small moisture. Yeah. Exterior soil moisture sensor. Yeah.

With the battery in the, yeah. And flush. Yeah. So, okay. So yes, please fill that out. because it lets us know what to make. And then also we have a feedback squad. So in our Discord, we have some different roles.

These are all Discord roles. We had to help a role as well if you want to like helping the Discord. But Feedback squad is for people, for us to ping and say like, hey, we have an idea of, like, with the icon path of the button one, like, what icon should we have? You know, what do you want to see? And so that kind of helped us figure out which six team we wanted to actually print on the icon pack. So just things like that. You want to be involved in help, you know, help with the development, join, you know, ask to get that tag and we'll put it on you and you can start helping us out.

We are also looking for more distribution in Europe. So we would like to kind of have our own distribution in probably Germany, but probably be the best place. We did learn some cool facts at Lomaradieta, Berlin, that Germany, although it has like, I think, 80 million people, has more installs of home assistance than the U.S. does, which is like 330, 40 million people, something like that, which is pretty wild to us.

So, but yeah, if anybody, and we just want to better serve the European, you know, community as well. So if you're interested, just let us know. If you know of anybody, let us know. Ideally, Germany, but, you know, any European country would work. So just at all. And but the United Kingdom, unfortunately, they are, you know, with Brexit, they're no longer part of the EU. So we may have to find somebody there as well, so in the UK.

All right. So that's basically all the stuff that I had. I think we've, we've covered everything. So I wanted to kind of talk with you guys more about like 2025, like what was like one of the coolest, I guess, pieces of tech or news that, you know, that came out related to tech. And then what are you looking forward to for 26, I guess, like CES? What do you open to see this year? Hmm.

Anybody can go first. Gavin first. Why me first? I like to judge things based of why I get my hands on to. And in terms of the smart home, one of my favorite price was the Clara FP300. You know, I said a number of times because it fixed my millimeter wave battery, battery power, yellow meter wave search. It was the one that worked perfectly.

So, I mean, like, I know there are a lot of other options, but they're all powered by cable, but where I wanted to put these or specific, I can get powered to. Yes. Right. So that's why it just, it worked great. So for that's my 2025 pick, my 2026 pick, like, I'm, I'm kind of excited for you guys to move into the Zigby and hopefully enter the battery, you know, because I understand, like, in my, where I put a lot of my sensors, I don't necessarily have. power running there and wire is coming down the wall and the wife really she gets mad at that. Um, so I, I'm just looking forward to that, you know, and, um, I'm going to play with the beta for more where it comes out and I, you know, if, you know, if I get one of the keys,

I'll put her out the beta firmware and do my battery testing from there. See if it lasts a year. I'll let you know. Yeah, we'll get you on. Don't work. And then for 2026, like anything like you're looking forward to like for, I guess I see here at CES or Well, this is my first CES.

I really don't know what to expect. Like we went to unveiled yesterday, which was really cool. And are we allowed to talk about stuff we saw there? I'm pretty game. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the coolest thing, like,

it was really weird, but, you know, Nicole was there at one booth. That was the coolest thing? Yeah. And she's cool as it is. It wasn't the coolest thing there. Because there was a speaker. And they were like, come listen to the speaker.

And it was like a center channel speaker, right? Yeah. And it generated surround sound like in midair. And it was really weird. You kind of have to experience it for yourself because as soon as you stood in front of the speaker and they press play, it sounded like sound was coming from everywhere around you in the middle of the floor. It was amazing.

You know, I can't explain it enough. But that was one of the coolest things I've seen there so far. Yeah, that was really cool. It was a desktop speaker. So it's supposed to be for like your computer or something. like that. It connects via Bluetooth. But I have like my meta, ray band glasses on, you know, recording and taking some photos and

stuff like that. And it literally sounded like the sound was coming from my glasses. Like it was just, it was so like in your face. It was amazing. I've never had anything like that before. So a lot of cool stuff in audio right now. All right. So you, TJ, 2025, something cool and then something cool in 26. So maybe talk about CS a little bit more.

Yeah. So I think for 2025, my favorite, I'm going to go with my favorite product in general, but it's been Twinkly, which makes a bunch of, you know, Christmas lights. They have a bunch of stuff now, like permanent outdoor lights and stuff like that. Seth is always talking about his grand ambitions for projects that he never does. And some of those are Christmas lights. I did that.

Yeah, treat him. And, you know, it's one of those things that, like, it always sounds like a good idea to build my own Christmas lights and do all this stuff, but I have no desire to actually do that. And Twinkley has just made that easy. It's like, I bought him as, like, just. Christmas tree lights initially. But every time I take them out of the box, you know, in December, November, whenever we put the tree up, they just automatically connect to my Wi-Fi again and they just work. And it's one of those devices that I never have to think about, like, how to use again.

It just works every time. And this year, I went out and bought a twinkly Christmas tree. I got it on Facebook Marketplace for a really good deal. And it kept in the spirit of just easy to use. Like, the whole tree went together in, like, three minutes. And I already had to connect to my phone and everything like that. So that would probably be like one of my highlight devices or ecosystems for 2025. For 2026, I'm interested to see where we take robots.

One of the common things that seemed like at the unveiled yesterday was pool cleaner robots. There was like three or four boosts with like pool cleaner robots. There's always been our thing. Yeah. And only one of them actually mentioned they put AI in it. Oh, that was the entire thing. I was expecting AI from everybody, but only one mentioned AI. But, yeah, pool cleaning robots is going to be something I'm looking at this year, too.

Yeah, robots, I think in general in 2026, we've seen a couple of companies that have come out with, like, the humanoid robots. I can't think of the company right now, but they have this one where, like, a person's actually controlled in the background, which sounds creepy to me. But we're going to start seeing some more of these robots and a lot more robot lawnmowers. We'll probably see the price of those come down. So I think CES in general is just going to have a lot of robots. I am definitely excited. I talked to you, Gavin, about a robot longbour with WIDAR. Yeah, I think we've seen a couple.

There was the, there was one that came out last year. That was the goat from Eagle Vax. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there's going to be a few coming out. You'll see them tomorrow. There's some cool accessories coming with them, too. Yeah, I saw them a motion name. They kind of already announced theirs.

I saw like an article, right? Yeah, it has LIDAR, but it definitely excited to see these other ones. It's like a weird time right now because we've seen so much of this stuff, but we can't talk about a lot of it. So it's like it's hard to know what we can actually say. But there's a lot of cool stuff that you'll be seeing, just starting to come out tomorrow. I think it's safe to say that all the manufacturers with the lawnmotech,

they're not just relying on one technology like they were in the nest. There's no more wire in the yard, but they don't want anybody to like have to do that to set up their lawn more. So they have gone to the, what's it, GPS, which was a guy, and then RTK, which was a little bit better. But it turns out nobody wants to set up the little Bay Station. Yeah. So now LiDAR is an extent. But they're going to start combining LIDARs, cameras, and then the RTK and bringing those three pieces together to make, everyone I've seen has those three technologies.

So I think the yard technology is going to get centered on that. We saw a couple in that in that unveil, but was it, you, you, it was the big one. Yeah, like commercial one was huge. Oh, that was a series, yeah. It was one that did like 18 acres. Yeah. 18 acre. Yeah, it's ginormous.

That is incredible. It was basically the size of a riding lawnmower. Yeah. It's like the seat. Yeah. It was absurdly, yeah, it's absurdly. Wow. It was a picture of it.

It's, it's. That's awesome. Wow. I like the colors, too. But I also did trimming, too. Oh, a big trimmer attachment. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. Yeah, it was, that was interesting. But yeah, I think, I think for the most part, they're all going to, you're going to start seeing them all center on those three technologies to do obstacle avoidance and track where your yard is. I think at that point, it's going to be the race to see who gets the best cut lawn out of it, you know, like, who doesn't, like, miss the trimming around where it could get, and then a couple other things.

The different patterns and stuff like that. Yeah. And if anyone's wondering, do they actually help your lawn? I did an experiment this year with one. And just my backyard lawn. My friend, I cut myself manually. But the fact that it went out multiple times a week and just trimmed off a little bit, it was just maintained the lawn.

It would just trim a little bit. That backyard lawn grew in nicely. And it was much better than my front lawn. So I think there's, you know, good results from it. Yeah. Right. So, and they're worth it. All right.

All right, Seth. You're up next. What are you talking about? What is it? What did I like in plastic? Yeah, 2025, something cool in 2025, something called 26, something else CES. I'm going to pick something different than I did

in a spot fireside chat because I said my AI horn and I... Yeah. The ubiquity of AI horn? Yeah. The most useless product of 2025. If anybody knows what I can do with this thing besides, you know, I probably shouldn't just sell it. Let me know.

Yeah, the AIA horn. No, I... So kind of like bringing it back to this, I really did have a couple projects as you. that I did deal with the ESP 32s, at least that platform, what I ended up doing was reflashing some shelly devices I had just lay around. And to do that,

it was a fun project. Shelly devices did not do out of the box what I wanted them to do, but knowing that I couldn't get ESP home dropped on them. And figuring out to do that, I had to take an old Arduino and pop the chip out of it and then do this like backwards hack thing to get everything all set up. As soon as I got it all flashed,

I could load the firmware that I wanted on there. I could load the dimming curves that I wanted. I could make everything balanced. I could fine tune the energy usage for that variable. There was all sorts of fun stuff I could do it. I'm like, man, this is addictive. But it was just great. So I mean, as far as like really cool products

that are really coming into their own, I think the 32 platform, I mean, obviously, you got made an entire company. Yeah, pretty cool. He's made a company. Yeah, yeah. It's, I just really had fun with those. So it's just in, and I've got a couple more things sitting around and like,

I could just pop that in now. Because now that I know how to do it and ESP 32 home exists and makes it pretty easy for deployment. Like, yeah, and the firmer upgrades and all that, being able to put that on, it's a good, good platform. So, like every, every day you're seeing multiple posts on the home assistant. the Discord or subreddit ESP Home, USB 32 subredits, people saying, like, you know,

I took this circuit board out of this dumb, you know, electronic, flash USB home on it, and now it's smart. Or they just add, like, ESP 32 deadboard to it and control it, and now it's smart. Yeah, because they're pretty ubiquitous.

Like, they're all over the place. And, and I, I just, I can't believe, if manufacturers realize what's just sitting there for them to, like, take advantage of it with the ESP home, like, I just don't understand why, I mean, there's a lot of money, I guess, that they can pay to consultants and that kind of thing.

But, man, it's for just getting your product to market and making, like, the hardware, the best in class, not having to worry about the software side too much. I mean, there's, it's, that's a great little system. So, kudos to everyone involved with that in you guys, too. And then for 2026, or what, CES, 2026, I'm still, 2026, I'm playing around with more AI stuff. So I'm going to explore with the agents and all that stuff that comes along with that.

Their skills are out now with the quad. So the quad's got all the stuff. Yeah. Quad code is amazing. It's wild. I can't. Yeah. I was doing stuff just today that I'm like, it only cost me $2.50.

And I'm like, you know what? That is like weeks and weeks and weeks of work and editing. I'm like, no, this is great. So yeah. Very, very excited about that. And let's see. CES, I mean, there's so many Lubbuboos here.

I mean, LaBoooo, I've got videos, like, like, those are creepy dolls? Oh, my. What's the SwitchBot theme? Does anybody understand what this? That was at Ifa. It's like a little animal robot thing

that they announced at EFA in Berlin in September. That's creepy. It takes pictures of you. Yeah, there's also, like, look, I found these two. These, like, little ones. They sit on that.

They look at you. And so there's like a sloth, yeah. Yeah. So like there's so many of these little things that, CES is wild. I can't express to you like how diverse this show is. Like I walked in today. I was walking to the Samsung one thing and I saw a creators lounge.

I'm like, oh, that must be for me because I'm a creator. And I walked in and they're like, are you here for the Korean face care thing? And I'm like, oh, clearly in the wrong thing. People walking in there look nothing like me. Perfect skin. I am not that person. Florida son,

I clearly don't take care of myself. So I text my wife and she's like, go get me samples. I'm like, but the Samsung one thing was a while too. Like they had, if you want to see AI guys, go by their booth because they've got AI written

on everything. Yeah, yeah. But they, they had their, it was like an entire ballroom that they had. and then they basically built a room inside of that

for their projection mapping and all this crazy stuff that they did just as you walked in. And then they've got all the TVs and everything set up inside. But their ecosystem's looking pretty good too. Are they using Bixby? I looked around for the little Bigsy speaker thing and I couldn't find it. But no, the Hise.

What runs their AI? It's their TISN platform? Oh, okay. Yeah, they've got a large ecosystem. If you're all in on Samsung, it looks pretty amazing. If you have Samsung appliances, they have refrigerator doors that would just open themselves. Yeah, by voice. Yeah, it was great.

I was like, oh, that's really cool. There's doors. You guys are talking about there's an automatic door now, too, right? Yeah, for the fridge, yeah. It's on the fridge, like the Samsung fridge, yeah. Earl, I thought you were talking about like a front door or something. You guys, on the last, on your, yeah, that was on the front. That was different.

That's a different company. The smart door, remember? Yeah, there's like a door that you guys are talking about. Like an opening close by its own and its power. We'll have a price for that one, I don't think. That's nice, but it could be scary if it, like, glitched and is open in the middle of the line or something. And if you're in Canada, you know, you got bears everywhere, right?

So, right? Moose. You want a moose pumping in, right? Yeah, a moose. Maybe for a door in the house, not. Yeah, that's an exterior door. You get for a kid's room. So, yeah.

Yeah. If a door opens on its own in my house. house, I'm getting out. If it's automated or not. Door opens in my house. It's a hurricane. Load the door. Yeah.

All right. Carl, you kind of started your farm home journey in 2025. You got some products you would talk about that. Just start off just with the Home Assistant Green. Did a few automations at the house. You know, just MSR 2, nothing major. Air 1, right? Yeah, having Air 1.

Got the M1, sending some messages. I think I talked about that before already. And then you got the ZWA2 and a ZPT2, and you start, you got a Z-Wave switch. Well, Z-Wave switch, yeah. So far, yeah. It's been interesting so far. Yeah.

And then are you looking forward to any of C-E-S? 2026, like you was talking about, AI. Oh, not the boobos. I was going to say, AI. AI is all over everything. I'm just curious to see how far they can really push it and what it can really do. And it seems like it just, every time you turn around,

I mean, there's something new and something new and something better. always found the way to use it. Seth, you kind of touched you on your podcast too about it being like a tool. I think everybody's really scared of it. It's almost like a Y2K type event. It feels like again, but like if you use it like as like a tool, like it is absolutely incredible.

It's a hammer. It's a really good hammer. It is. Everything is a nail. Yeah. And I think as we learn to use that hammer to actually hit the nails, then it's going to be a pretty solid piece. And we're going to start getting more stuff made out.

of it that is more useful for more people because on like the cloud code stuff hands down the craziest app i've used in a very long time and it's just a prompt on the terminal and and and but it's nothing like you go to chat gbt and and go to the web app or whatever completely different it's like it's like a dumb down version and it's like you don't you don't know what you're missing if you go over here and start working with the system that they had in the structure that they have set up it's it's wild. It's coming. I think it's definitely to be integrated in basically, like, to set anything that it can be integrated in.

There are certain systems they're really pushing it in that do make me nervous. You know, I've been to a few Microsoft events, and they're pushing some stuff, and I have to raise my hand and say, are you guys that confident it's OCR reading because you miss a decimal point, and that could cause your business a lot of money. Yeah. You know, and they understand that,

but they're willing to take the risk. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's going to save you a lot of money. I'm like, okay. I'm a little nervous how they're pushing some of it, but I love it as a tool. Yeah. I use it every day. Same.

And anything else, foul for? No, that's a yes. Take a chip. I don't know. We'll see. Nicole, I got some good questions for you. Because you are on the other side, kind of. You do a lot of techie stuff, but like, so your house, can you tell us, like, a thing that you really, really love that's, like, smart when then something like that, you like, hey, he doesn't maybe had.

TJ remove. All right. So she's not going to say TJ. I'm saying the same thing. Can't remove me. Okay. So obviously the first thing that comes to mind is something that upsets me. He's been out here.

Bring it on, girl. We're here for you. I love it. But no. So we have these smart sensors for our lights and stuff like. that if I stand still for about five minutes, the lights shut off on me. And so it drives me absolutely insane. When I am like in the middle of preparing something, like, I'm just standing at the counter

and my hands are moving, but that's not enough for the sensor to get it. And so, yeah, that really, really makes me really mad to just wave my hands like, I'm crazy, try to get the thing to turn back on. All right. Sometimes I have to get up and just walk around for it to actually work for me. So, yeah. Well, we could fix that. We have some devices that can help with that.

I think the sensors are too high. She's pretty sure. I honestly think that's a probably problem. It's like up here. All right. Something that I really love. Something that's like okay. I know like that you're allowing.

Yeah. I mean, okay. Well, I can't say love anymore because he took them all the way. But. Oh. So we had speakers. over the house, Sonos speakers all over the house that would sync up when you walked through. They would just play whatever was playing in the main room. And TJ got really frustrated with them.

I tip them all out. So we don't have them anymore. But I used to like that. It's a saga right now. It's like you guys have a whole history. He's switching. Yeah. He's trying to show other things right now. And so that's not really working out the way that we need it too. But we'll see how it goes. Yeah, we're still figuring out. We had Sonos in every room. And I've been a life of Bon. well, not lifelong, but I guess I've been a son-o's user for the past 10-plus years. But it just hasn't worked that well in my network for the past couple years. And so I just got really upset with them a couple weeks ago, and I just started selling them on Facebook marketplace.

So I'm still deciding what I want to go with. But right now I'm leaning towards dead on Hios. That actually has a platinum quality integration with home assistant. Wow. And I don't see that very often. No, I think there's very few, like ESP homes platinum. Brother printer. Yeah, brother printer.

Yeah. Those things are legit, though. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're working on the audio, though. That was one of my favorite things about our house, though, so.

That is pretty cool. And is there anything, if we'll let you wish that was, like, smart or, like, wish that was automated that is it? It's right here. You're talking about it. Like, it's not here. You can't automate that long. Well, it could be, like, a device, like, something that T.

you know, like, you know, couldn't do or something, you know. Yeah, what can I do? This is so witch. I don't have my list. Where's my list? There's only one right. I said, yeah, there's anything that you like, thought, like, oh, man, I wish that was like on me.

Or like, oh, I wish there was a device for that. Speakers again. I mean, I, I mean, what we have set up currently for our irrigation system is a, is it's foolproof. Yeah. And I think that it would be nice if it was easier to use and more reliable. Okay. Yeah, as lame as that sounds probably.

Not lame and all it. You got, you would talk about your little barn. You got out back quick, P.J. about, like, what you're doing back there. Yeah, we have like a dozen raised garden beds. And I've been trying to figure out the watering system for that. We got a quote to do like a proper irrigation system for it. But it was like $5,000 or $6,000 for it.

And so I've been trying to convince Justin over here to. to release me a watering mechanism that is basically an irrigation controller but for a garden hose. There's one other company that makes a device like this. I've never seen it before, but it doesn't fit my use case specifically. So figuring out how to water the individual garden beds, the correct amount of water, but also having like a proper shutoff in case there's like a water leak or something like that. That would be super nice. So this year, I'm going to try to work on a system like that. I'm going to have a gas over here. Gavin has a service.

Help me figure that part of it. So I don't think he knows that, but he's going to help me. I like heard of soil moisture. Yeah. We do have a pump one. And that, you know, actually is a, it's a strong pump. So I'm sure we figure out some way. I would need like a really big bottle, though.

We have a lot of things. Yeah, yeah. We need a water hose hookup for it. Yeah. So I'm sure we can make. make it happen, actually. All right. We didn't answer, usually we go through it, like, we'll answer questions as we're going to the live stream. So if you guys don't want, we're to go back and go back through and we may throw some questions your way. Kyle, did you go all the beginning and

find some? Is this all on, uh, yeah, this is all on a Discord. How do you join without the audio plane? Oh, you know? Just turned off. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just turned my phone off. Yeah, I was trying to do that. All right. We're going to go over questions. So thanks again, YouTube, Discord. Sorry, for the early tentable difficulties. We're in an Airbnb in Vegas with a laptop and a lamp with the lamp shade off for What's how light is this?

What's it close? This is our primary today. Is that a pretty smartly? Okay. Oh, I don't, man. That's... That'll know. No, no, no. That's one of the, that's, that came

with the Airbnb. Oh, okay. No, one of the coolest things I see this is the swag. No, yeah. I'm rocking up my swag here. Yeah. They were telling me about there's a whole like Discord, subred Facebook group of just swag

at CES where people will post and say this booths this exhibit you know is getting out free giving out swag and there was an interesting giveaway last year from a company called Handy so you can

yeah family show yeah well I look up the company the funny thing is like our our Apollo automation brand was like right next to because they're like if they're like could they work with homie as well, like, they're a hundred partners.

So our appellate was like right next to handy. It was just kind of hilarious. So, but yeah, exactly. So let's see. Looks like, um, I have a question from, uh, Redby Pod.

What are the ramifications of selling a product that is using ESPN at its core? What voids the warranty? So we basically kind of got like, uh, we got you bro type warranty. You know, obviously either like run up with a car or, you know,

we're basically always going to make it right. So that's a really voids the warranty. and they're, I don't think there's really, I mean, the first part of the question, I'm not really sure how to answer exactly, but let's see. I feel like, do we have more, or are people just talking? A lot of talking. Okay. Sorry, going through. When do we start?

It was like 7.30, right? Was there anything else up here? No. Nothing. Just people, just the community talking to each other? Okay. Community. Any other questions, guys?

It looks like to who are really, you guys, let's see, it's pretty small. Ask now. Yeah. Um, do you have any other questions? Les, no. Time of questions for us for the HomeTech.com podcast. Um, there we go. Okay.

Okay. That'll be part in that. Um, elaborated on this question. Okay. Let's see. Someone changed. Oh yeah. So Cyberdoll, he's been in here for a while.

He's asking, when's our entire line I'm going to get the C6 for like Zigbee thread? We have transition to it. So any, any new center is coming out is either going to, it's going to have the C6. if it's POE we've been using the S3 but I think there is a PEO you can do with the C6 as well but I'm not sure of support of the DSVOM quite yet But are you going to go back and refresh

any of the products that currently exist and introduce? Yeah, we'll go back and refresh those and probably put a C6 of them for sure. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, so like Tandist R2, the A-R-1, the NTR1, those guys will probably go back and refresh those.

and put a C-6 to them. So, because, again, Zingby is very popular and Thriads is. Yep. Because even the indoor soil moisture centers for POMU's. I have using every opportunity to bring it up. But even the indoor ones can use a, you know, nice refresh. So like I said, the pump one has a C-6 right now and the button one has a C-6. So we hadn't done a Zyg-B for the pump one yet.

We haven't done the firmware yet, but it should be pretty quick. So hopefully we'll get, start getting more out to heal. elaborated on Rebipod. Oh, yeah. The cool thing about the ESP 32s is they're super hard to like. You can't really, I mean, I don't say you can't really, but it's very difficult to brick, like actually brick the ESP 32. You can flash basically, you know, whatever firmware you want, build your own firmware,

flash to it. Really without much issue or recourse. So you can just, just brief flash to factory firmware back to it. So, yeah, it's really not, it's hard. they're hearty little chips for sure little microcontrollers. So we have another question from A&A's or ATA Maze. So when will you have more info about the partnership with the Open Home Foundation? So it's been announced that again, you know, we are commercial partners with the Open Home Foundation.

Us and Nabucasa are the only ones as of now, which is, you know, pretty cool. And I think, you know, hopefully they'll continue to grow. we're going to be essentially taking, you know, ESP home. This should all be in the announcement posts and everything, but we'll basically be kind of be stewards of ESP home and grow it and, you know, not only in products, but hopefully make it as like ubiquitous as like Arduino. And, you know, we wouldn't be a household name.

And we'll show people we've touched on it about how powerful the ESP 32 chip is and how easy it is to flash it with some firmware and then you can start controlling things with it. So we'll have more and more. We can't talk about exactly what we're working on, but hopefully years soon within the next few months or so, we'll have some more information about what we're doing. But again, just excited to support the Open Home Foundation

and everything that they're doing. If you don't know, the Open Home Foundation is a Swiss Foundation, it can never be bought or sold. Hollis donated it so that Google or Apple, whoever couldn't buy it and kill it. So, which is super base, very awesome of him

to do that. It's cool. And the Open Home Foundation supports Home Assistant, ESP Home and Music Assistant, which is awesome. So we want to make sure, obviously, that we keep supported them so they can continue to develop ESP Home, because again, we wouldn't be a company without it. And also, because you guys you guys

guys a lot of stuff to talk about. Oh, yeah. So on the podcast, so, which is good. And again, we, you know, we were joking and say, just, it feels like the resistance against all the big players, you know, who are charging subscriptions and or cloud, you know, cloud only connections and stuff. So just feels good to be on this side of it. And talking to Paulus, like, he's to feel his love for it, right?

It's like a shout out to him and his passion. And it really shocked me when that conversation with him about it. So it just getting you more confidence. it's that choosing all the system was a great decision. Exactly. It's a no-brainer. I think I told you yesterday. Last year at CS,

when we met Paulson the first time, he was talking about staying up to 3 a.m. working on hardware and software. It's just like how many other, you know, founders, like CEOs, presence, you know, are doing that sort of thing.

And having that passion, like you said, you can just tell him, Frank is well. Frank is super passionate. Marcel, all the leaders are, you know,

J-Lo, all of them, Ghee, all of them are super, super passionate about it, and you can just tell that it really means, it meets them to them. Another question?

I'd been just asked if there's any products we're excited about to launch. Yep, we've got some really good stuff in the pipe, but the second part we can't really talk about it.

So you can tell us. We're all friends here. Yeah. We'll find out for you. Yeah. We talked about some today, but yeah, so we have some cool things.

I don't know we're exactly ready to announce them yet, but yeah, we have some cool things line. I have a, Quite a few that are close. Yes.

Very close. That may maybe, hopefully, next, next live stream will be able to announce. So, yeah. We're just at an hour or two, which is good. So. Good. Anything else? Rabbit pot ahead, one more, I think.

Also, the question about any place you get Zipu using ESPN? Yeah. So we're, like we talked about, we're, we have Zygby working on some ESPN devices. The communities have been doing it as well. So what we expect and should have more and more of our devices, you know, ESPN devices on Zygby. so, which is really exciting. I know even, it's not fully supported in ESP home yet,

but it is working better than it was. All right, guys, any other questions for us? Any other questions for the Home Tech podcast guys? I have a question for you guys. Oh, yeah. What's the coolest thing you've seen doing with the pump? The pump? So, actually, a really cool thing with the pump.

I don't know. Where are you going with this one? Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, again, like we talk about this. You know, we have an idea, you know, the community says, hey, I want this, we'll make it. Okay, the community will use it for X, But we had somebody tell us that they were using it to pump like a vinegar, like a solution in their AC condenser line.

Chris. Yep. That, you know, I guess prevents like a biofilm, like prevents it from getting clogged. Because if that gets backed up, sometimes it's like eight, nine gallons of water can come out of your air conditioner unit. And you get odor. And you get odor. So they're like, yeah, there's like these proprietary ones that are like three, four hundred dollars and you have to buy their solution. $16 solution.

Yeah. And he's like, I, you know, bought you. the pump's like 30 bucks and he's like I bought some like apple cider vinegar and you know it's automated and home assistant and I don't have to worry about my you know air conditioning unit frees up because HVAC stuff is expensive. Unfortunately I know there were a couple of YouTubers who had their furnishes go down like HVAC go down so they came and become the CES because of it because of how expensive it was but that was a pretty cool use case.

Yeah. Kyle used it as a as a smoothie like food safe. Yeah. So it's food safe. So we did a smoothie challenge where we had the pump in a smoothie and pumped it in the Kyle's mouth. I was trying to figure out what the music came on a spin. Yeah. To demonstrate it's food space.

Yeah. And it's powerful because zoosies are thick, right? We also did a video in a tree where we tested, you know, how high the, how the left was. Yeah. It went all the way up in the tree and I'm still able to think it. It was like 15 feet of tree, like 30 feet of tubing. And this little, you know, running off a little 5-volt, like a laptop or. power bank was pumping water up into the tree and we did straight up and then we did like at an

angle and then we've done like 20 or 30 feet suction up and so we've had the pump on the ground pushing you know sucking from the mace and pushing up we've also had it at the top pulling up like 20 or 30 feet and this thing like we haven't been able to like you know stop it which is wild so yeah yeah the pump is pretty cool first people are using it to water or plants and then to like cure eggs and their pet, you know, water bowls, that sort of thing, fish tanks and robot vacuums, you know, they're, they have mops, yeah, like reflostations. Because you can pump clean water in and pump the dirty water out too.

That's good, yeah, but the AC-condenchant line one was really cool. So, nice. Any other questions? I don't think that's it. All right, well, we're kind of at our hour. So if you guys will have any other questions or anything else you want to say, I mean, if you want to kind of, you know, talk about the podcast where they can listen and all that good stuff.

Sure, yeah. Home Tech, a lot of them. Just about each week we sit down. I don't know if there's going to, well, this could be this one this week,

you know? If you want to listen to this again, I'm just going to re-posed today. We still won't be out on time, but he'll do that. I've got plenty of time this year. But yeah, home tech.

If you like home automation, home technology, soil moisture sensors we talk about. Home assistant. We literally talk about home assistant all the time. Every day. every each podcast, I forget to update my home assistant.

And so Gavin reminds me, well, he doesn't have to remind me anymore. It's just when we talk about home assistant, I go and open it up and I hit update. Live on the show. Live on the show. Live. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a fun podcast. If you like this stuff, you'll like that.

All right. Anything else? Nope, that's it. All right. I want to mute button so the audio is done me on so I can get this off. Yeah, thanks for the warning. I was about to say something. Hi, guys.

Hi, my gosh. Hi. Thank you. Gavin, let me sit down with me there, buddy. You gotta get all over here. We're going on. Come on, Gavin. Come on, Gavin.

Usually sets the late one. We're just sitting. Right at front. Yeah, right in the middle, Gavin. There you go. Where's Nicole sitting? Come on, Nicole. You guys sit in here.

That works. Just sit in the background. You should just stand by the sink the entire time. Yeah. I was going to say that. Just sat directly at the back. You speak. No.

Just. just stare directly at the entire time and don't say anything. Who's washing the dishes in the background? What? Huh? All right. We're live. There you're ready.

You're going to start the disc. Start the Discord so we get comments. Are we just here for our looks or what? He answers yes. I have a face for radio, not for our own video.