Episode 42 - A Single App Home with Tim McInerney of Savant

After a week off the HomeTech team is back in action. We are excited to present a new episode featuring Tim McInerny of Savant as our featured guest.  As discussed on our recent CEDIA Wrap-Up Special Savant managed to steal the show this year with the unveiling of their new app. Completely re-designed from the ground up, the so-called "Savant App" is a very modern, clean, and extremely intuitive user interface. Not only is the new app easy for integrators to deploy, but in keeping with current industry trends, it also empowers end users to create, edit, and modify their own scenes. In our conversation with Tim we cover the new app extensively. We also discuss Savant's history as a company, and what differentiates their product offerings in an increasingly crowded smart home space. We have been looking forward to sharing this conversation with you. We hope you enjoy!

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Show Notes

Episode 41 - Printing the Week's News with Mike Wolf

Episode 40 - Baby-Watch 2014 Continues

We did not book a guest for this week's show, primarily because Jason wasn't even sure he'd be able to participate. As it turns out he was able to join the show this week because his wife is still (very) pregnant. That's right, for those of you who have been listenting, no baby yet. At the time of this typing we are 5 days past due. Baby-watch 2014 continues...

Plenty to talk about in the news this week. We start the show with a conversation about the release of Savant 7.0. This beautiful new app made a big splash at CEDIA and we are excited to see that it has been released into the wild. This new offering from Savant is consistent with current trends in the industry in that it affords much more control to the end user than the previous version. Consumers are able to create and edit scenes from within the app, freeing integrators from having to roll a truck for such minor modifications. 

We then dove into a discussion about Sony, the megalith that's been surprisingly quite in the smart home space. Although we have yet to see a true smart home offering from them, they made the news this week with a Playstation Vue, a cloud-powered offering aimed at disrupting the traditional cable / satellite TV subscription business. 

Speaking of TV providers, we closed the show with conversations about both Dish Network and DirecTV. The former because it appears as though they may enter the smart home market with a product called Sage (unveiled recently by their parent company Echostar).  The latter because they have now unveiled (liminted) 4K TV offerings. Still not a lot of UHD content out there, but it's a start.

As always, we thank you so much for listening. If you are enjoying the show we would greatly appreciate a rating on a iTunes!

Episode 39 - Kēvo Smartlocks with Phil Dumas of UniKey

We opened the show this week giving our thoughts on the very sad news of Crestron founder George Feldstein's passing. George was a pioneer in the truest sense of the word. Through his work he did volumes to push the systems integration industry forward. Without his passion and diligent efforts it is hard to say what our industry would look like today. We want to extend our deepest condolences to his family.

We also covered recent news that both Walmart and Target will be rolling out smart home displays in time for the holidays this year. By our count this brings the list of big box retailers dabbling in the smart home up to 6 (Lowes, Home Depot, Staples, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target). We give our thoughts on what this means not only for the market at large, but also for home technology professionals. In a similar vein we cover the recent unveiling of Verizon's new router, which features a built-in Z-Wave radio. Clearly managed service providers are also keenly interested in the smart home. Tune in to get our take. 

For our guest this week we are joined by UniKey founder Phil Dumas. UniKey is the technology behind the Kēvo smartlock, which is produced in conjunction with Kwikset. Phil has a long history in, and a clear passion for access control. The backstory behind his company and the product very interesting. In fact, Phil is our second guest to have previously been featured on ABC's hit show The Shark Tank (Jamie Siminoff from Ring was the first). While Kēvo is undeniably a well thought out product which more than stands on its own, Phil feels it's only the beginning for what UniKey is capable of. Check out our conversation to learn more.

As always we thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to tell a friend and to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher. We greatly appreciate any feedback you might want to offer as well, which you can do on our feedback page. 

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Episode 38 - Button Calisthenics for Crestron Pyng with Evan Ackmann

This is an episode that we have been excited to bring you for quite some time. Ever since CEDIA 2014 there has been tremendous buzz in the industry surrounding the announcement of Crestron's new home automation platform Pyng. This product represents a major evolution for Crestron in that the entire system can be programmed and configured using only the app, no laptop necessary. The price point of the system is also garnering attention, coming in at a low starting point of only $599. This week we bring in Crestron Technology Manager Evan Ackmann to dive deep into the new offering, covering the key points and hoping to clear up some of the misconceptions around the product. 

Before we jump into the interview we cover a few of the top stories from the week in smart home technology. This week the networking company Ruckus announced an exciting new product line called Xclaim. The product is a more affordable offering than traditional Ruckus hardware. While the price points warrant attention, what makes the offering really noteworthy is the tie-in with Google (more on that in the episode). We also discuss the news that LG has officially pulled the plug on plasma TV technology. It would appear that this news sounds the death knell for this once coveted technology.

All this and more in this week's episode. As always, thanks so much for listening and we hope you enjoy!

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