Episode 65 - Crushing the AppleTV Pipe Dream

Last week we decided to take a small breather in order to celebrate Memorial Day as well as our own Seth Johnson's birthday (be sure to send him some BDay love on twitter). Turns out taking a breather was a good idea. This week we are back with a vengeance in what feels like just the beginning of what should remain a very busy 2015.

There was tons of ground to cover in smart home news this week. Some of the big stories we touch on included a few pieces of news from the Apple front. We discuss some rumors pertaining to what we can expect at WWDC 2015. These rumors include the exciting prospect of 3rd party app development on the AppleTV through a framework known as TVKit. Speaking of rumors, we also cover a recent Wall Street Journal piece that may finally crush the dreams of the iTV-wishful once and for all. If you count yourself amongst them you may want to have a box of tissue handy.

In other big news we discuss the rumored IoT operating system expected from Google called Brillo. More details about Brillo have become available via the Google IO conference, which started the day after we recorded this episode. Mainly our conversation focuses on some great coverage by friend-of-the-show Mike Wolf, which you can read here. 

All of these stories and more, including a pending IPO from Alarm.com, on this week's episode. Hope you enjoy! 

PS - Be sure to tune in next week to get more of our thoughts on Google IO.

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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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