Episode 64 - Ding! Ding! Dusting Off the New-Platform-Bell...

In another guest-free-episode we discuss a number of important smart home stories from the week, not the least of which is a new announcement from Samsung & SmartThings. At IoT World the companies announced a new initiative aimed at the burgeoning market for connected devices. A combination of chipsets, dubbed  "Artik", as well as the development of cloud-based backend infrastructure, called "OpenCloud", gives manufacturers of connected devices some compelling options. Additionally the news gave us occasion to dust off the new-platform-bell... DING! DING!

Join us as we discuss this story and more on the latest episode of HomeTech! Thanks again for listening! We'll talk to you next week.    

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Episode 63 - If This Then What?

In this episode we sat down to discuss a number of news stories from this week in the smart home. We start of the show with a couple of follow up points related the Apple Watch. Specifically we mention the release of the SmartThings app, which made its debut the day after we recorded last week's episode in which we commented on its conspicuous absence. Also in Apple news we discuss rumors of a completely redesigned AppleTV remote, supposedly being developed as part of the forthcoming product release expected this June. 

Following our Apple discussion we dive into the announcement that Amazon's Echo now has an IFTTT channel. Support for this rules engine is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the smart home. We make it a special point in this show to pause and ask "so now what?". While compelling use-cases do exist, many of the examples cited around this release seem well, a bit useless. Case in point the ability to post to-do items to Twitter, a feature that Josh Lowensohn of The Verge calls "a great example of something that really should not exist." As part of the discussion we encourage listeners to let us know what you're using IFTTT for. Have any thoughts? Hit us up on our feedback page and let us know.

We follow up our IFTTT discussion with what seems to be another recurring theme on the show: more Lutron news. The lighting control company behind QS, Ra2, and Casetta seems to be everywhere lately. This week Lutron is mentioned in the context of a larger story involving Comcast's Xfinity Home service. Comcast recently announced a slew of new partners that will integrated into its platform including not only Lutron but other recognizable names such as August smart locks, the SkyBell smart doorbell, Rachio's smart irrigation controller, and more. We offer our take on this story and discuss its implications to the so-called SHaaS market. 

We round out the show talking about Control4's stock hitting an all time low since it's IPO back in August of 2013. The knee-jerk reaction of many analysts is that this news speaks to the death of the custom install channel. However many, including of course Control4's CEO, would beg to differ. We take some time on this episode to offer our opinion as to what this story means, as well as what it doesn't.

Whether you're a custom integrator, smart home enthusiast, or end user, we'd love to hear your opinion on any of the stories in this week's news. Please take a moment to let us know on our feedback page or shoot us a line on Twitter. 

As always, thanks for listening and have a great week! 

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Episode 62 - Watching the Watch

With the official launch of the Apple Watch now behind us, we thought we would take this episode to discuss the implications of the device on the smart home market. To no one's surprise details on many of the current Apple Watch smart home apps are a little sparse. A select few companies, such as Alarm.com, were presumably given a leg up on development so that their app could be featured in Apple's keynote. By and large however most companies are still scrambling to get their apps to market.

We spend a good deal of the conversation focusing on specific Apple Watch smart home apps from companies such as Crestron, Savant, Lutron, Ecobee, Honeywell and more. Beyond that however we also focus on the bigger picture, discussing what Apple's entry in wearable technology will mean long term for the smart home market.  We also discuss the (somewhat predictable) lack of apps from Google-owned, ahem, Nest-owned products / companies like the Nest thermostat and DropCam. 

If you are interested in keeping up on Apple Watch apps specifically related to the smart home and home automation we are keeping a running list on our website which you can find here. As always we hope you enjoy the show, and we look forward to connecting again next week!

Episode 61 - The Wink Debacle (and Recovery)

With no guest for this week's show we take the opportunity to get caught up on some significant goings-on in the smart home. To kick things off we have a brief discussion about the official launch of the Apple Watch. We sat down to record this episode the night before the product finally goes on sale. Mostly we discuss how, and which, smart home manufacturers will benefit from the product's release. We hope to have more to chat about on this front for next week's episode, so be sure to tune in to get our thoughts.

Following our Apple Watch discussion, we hit a few follow up points regarding the "Great Dash Button Debate". Back on Epsiode 58 we had a conversation about Amazon's recently released Dash Button and Replenishment Services. For fear of kicking a dead horse we won't go into specifics here. We did however want to mention that recently good friends of the show Mike Wolf and Richard Gunther gave their thoughts on an episode of Mike's Smart Home Show. They both offer great insights, and we recommend you give it a listen. 

After (hopefully) concluding our Dash-debate we move on to give our thoughts about the recent Control4 "Smarter Living Experience". Last week we had Brad Hintze from Control4 on to discuss the event. With the show now in our collective rearview we provide our analysis. In spite of some apparent technical difficulties, it would seem Control4 effectively communicated their message. Tune in to hear more. 

Lastly we discuss what was (regrettably) the main event in smart home news last week. In what was a completely avoidable set of circumstances, the folks over Wink failed to update a security certificate on their hardware. This oversight caused a substantial number of their deployed units to fall offline completely, with no ability to reconnect. There are a number of lessons in this story, not the least of which is how the company handled the outage - effectively and with full humility and candor. Listen in as we give our thoughts on how this event will affect Wink, and the smart home landscape at large. 

As always we hope you enjoy! If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions related to this week's show, or any others, please don't hesitate to contact us, or let us know on twitter!

See you next week!

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Episode 60 - Smarter Living

We spend a lot of time here at HomeTech talking about what it really means to have a "smart home".  This terminology does, after all, get bandied about at an ever-increasing pace. The attention of everyday consumers is a surely a welcome sign to anyone with an interest in the smart home market. There are those, however, who would take care to more accurately define what the term "smart home" really means. 

With this in mind we were interested to learn more about Control4's upcoming "Smarter Living Experience". Beyond the obvious motivation of getting their product in front of more eyeballs, this event has a larger, and arguably more difficult mission: to define the value of a truly integrated home. After all standalone solutions, like the Nest thermostat or Philips Hue lights, provide real value to consumers at a very low cost-of-entry. Few would argue otherwise.

What remains to be seen is if companies like Control4 can continue to sell the value of an overarching system, one capable of bringing all the technology together into a singular, unified user-experience. On this week's show we are joined by Control4's Director of Product Marketing Brad Hintze, to discuss that and more. 

Following our conversation with Brad, we dive into a chat about Seth's personal smart home retrofit project. Many of you have been requesting an update on his progress, and we thought now would be a great time to get you caught up. For this episode we take specific aim at Seth's choice of a lighting control system. Tune in to hear more...

We hope you enjoy our conversation with Brad. If you are able to watch Control4's event we would love to hear your thoughts afterwards. Let us know your thoughts using our feedback page or even better, send us a comment on twitter! 

Thanks for listening! See you next week.