HomeTech.fm

This week's HomeTech show is chalk-full of updates. We start out with some follow-up points on the not-so-rosy outlook for the KNX Association as they gear up to make a push into the US market. Following that conversation we discuss a number of recent updates on Crestron's Pyng, no doubt aiming to bring the platform back into the spotlight for CEDIA 2015. Speaking of Crestron, and of CED...

Home technology fans anxious to see HomeKit in the spotlight at Apple's recent 'Hey Siri' event were once again let down. While we could easily rant about the continual lack of movement on Apple's smart home initiative, who wants to kick a dead horse ? We decided instead to focus this week's show on what Apple did  unveil, and there was plenty. We discuss each of Apple&#x2...

This week's episode of HomeTech features a guest well-known within engineering and technology circles, Peter Hoddie. Having once served as Chief Quicktime Architect at Apple, Peter boasts a very impressive resume. Peter currently serves as VP of Kinoma, a division within the giant semi-conductor company Marvell. Back in 2002 he co-founded Kinoma, producing a virtual software platform widely d...

Ever wonder what the how the rest of the world perceives home technology integrators? Wonder no more. We kick this week's episode off by sharing the audio from a YouTube clip we think sums it perfectly . Not sure if we should laugh or cry, but a little levity never hurts either way. Regarding (somewhat) more serious matters we discuss a few follow up thoughts on Just Add Power's new 3G l...

In what has become a bit of a rare occurrence lately this week's show actually features both  of your regular hosts. No interview guest, but plenty of interesting news and opinion pieces to discuss. First we provide a wrap-up of the CEPro Summit, an event recently attended by Jason. Focused primarily on the professional integrators in our audience, the conversation provides an interesting pee...

Many tech companies are quick to use the word "security" when describing features such as mobile alerts and remote access to cameras. While certainly convenient these technologies are necessarily limited by their reactive nature, likely affording you little more than a front row seat to the violation of your home. Lost in all this marketing hype is the fact that a true security system&#x...

This week Seth takes the mic solo again and chats with (super) special guest Mike Wolf about his upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit event in November. They also chat about a few bits of news that happened over the past week including creepy TVs, a new DIY security platform, and robot chefs. Mike's special offer to HomeTech listeners: Use the discount code HOMETECH when registering for the Smart Ki...

This week Seth and Jason are back together to chat about the last few weeks in HomeTech. A little follow up here and a little news there -- overall a really fun show this week. Thank you to all our Patreon supporters for showing your support! You guys rock! Show Notes Control4 Announces Record Q2 Revenues Up 22% 1985 Unity Home Automation System Pair of Bugs Open Honeywell Home Controllers Up to E...

This week Seth sits down to chat with industry veteran and Editor-at-Large of CEPro Julie Jacobson . Julie has been covering the home automation market for more than two decades and has been one of our go to sources for home automation news each week. We chat about the interesting stock performance of Control4 and Alarm.com and discuss the recent news of Savant killing off their LiteTouch panelize...

On this week's show we sit down to revisit last week's popular discussion on voice control in the home (spoiler: Jason still isn't a fan). We also chat about the future of 4K and what integrators need to know about video distribution thanks to a great article by Chris Pinder of HDAnywhere. Rounding out the show is a new home automation offering from Legrand that targets the producti...

Apple is rarely the first one to any party, but they tend to turn a lot of heads when they do finally show up. From portable music players, to tablets, to smart watches Apple has demonstrated this pattern time and again. True to form the company has now staked their claim in another existing market, subscription based streaming music, with Apple Music. Their most recent in a long line of fashionab...

For this week's show we are pleased to present a conversation with Shaun Springer. Shaun is the founder and CEO of Astro, the company behind the newly released smart lightbulb / speaker combination Twist . Shaun's background in the smart home will be of particular interest to the integrators in our audience. Earlier in his career Shaun worked at Crestron, where he led research and develo...

In a couple of respects this was a rather disappointing week in the smart home. On one hand we had been looking forward to a press conference from Nest. The company has been awfully quiet since being acquired by Google in February of 2014 for whopping $3.2 billion. At the time of that blockbuster deal it was only natural to assume that, given this sort of brand-power and funding, Nest would be mov...

Smart home professionals, enthusiasts, and reporters alike were once again left wanting in the wake of an Apple event. It's been over a year since the original announcement of Apple's smart home initiative known as HomeKit. Despite recent, and rather unexpected, announcements by several smart home manufacturers that HomeKit product is now shipping, Cupertino continues to keep the platfor...

It's our first interview episode in quite some time, and well worth the wait. We are joined by Brian Leeners, CEO and founder for NYCE Control. NYCE is a company driving innovation in the sensor market with an array of zigbee devices. Brian brings a diverse background and well-educated set of opinions to the table in what proved to be a very fun and interesting conversation. In addition to co...

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 w...

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...

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...

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 ...

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&#x2...

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 "sma...

In our main segment this week were joined by Franz Garsombke, co-founder of CTO of Rachio . For the uninitiated Rachio is the manufacturer behind Iro , an intelligent irrigation controller. Since it's launch the Iro has gained traction with several major brick-and-mortar retailers, including Home Depot, Apple Stores, and Best Buy. We brought Franz on to chat about what has lead to the product...

We started out this week's show by trying to settle a little internal debate here at HomeTech. Amazon made a big splash on the tech-news scene this week with the announcement of the " Dash Button ". One half of the HomeTech team thinks the product very clever, and worthy of the smart home label most tech journalists are using to describe it. The other half thinks it's just a si...

If we've said it once we've said it a dozen times: 2015 is the year of the cord cutter. With new over-the-top  offerings coming to market at an increasing pace, consumers everywhere are finding it increasingly easy to tell their big cable providers to go pound sand. While services like Netflix, Hulu, and the newly released SlingTV provide consumers with a great deal of content to chose f...

It's been a little over a year since we launched the hometech podcast. During that time we've been fortunate enough to hear from many of you with suggestions, comments, questions, and loads of positive feedback. Without fail this correspondence has led to inspiration and ideas for future episodes. In light of this fact we had a thought: why not take the correspondence itself and make a s...