Pod Insights The Vergecast How to save a smart home company About this episode This week on The Vergecast, we enter the Jen-era of Hot Girl Vergecast Summer, with a deep dive into the business of the smart home. The Verge’s smart home reviewer, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (aka Jen), chats with Ken Fairbanks, a longtime customer of Insteon who ended up buying the smart lighting company when it went into bankruptcy.
Ken shares the story of how one of the original smart lighting protocols, founded in the post-X10 era when home automation moved from wired to wireless, floundered, and how he and a band of users brought it back from the dead. He dishes what he’s learned about how to keep the lights on — from customer loyalty and the value of subscriptions, to what tariffs are doing to the industry and how some hardware companies are just pyramid schemes.
Then, in a special supersized (and we mean SUPER) Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [email protected] ), Jen is joined by smart home expert Richard Gunther, co-host of The Smart Home Show, to tackle a bunch of your burning smart lighting questions. They answer everything from how to move your smart home to which Thread border router you should buy for your Matter setup. Plus, they run down their own smart lighting set-ups.
Further reading:
Insteon’s troubles are a smart home tale as old as time
Insteon Raises the Curtain for the Next Act
Someone turned Insteon’s lights back on
Insteon customers turned Insteon’s lights back on
Thread count: Ikea is stitching together a smarter home
Smart switches or smart bulbs? How to choose the right smart lighting for your home
Controller for HomeKit
Philips Hue Play sync box and gradient lightstrip review: wholly unnecessary, totally delightful
Taming Wi-Fi in the Smart Home:
Leviton’s new smart light switches don’t require a neutral wire
Every smart home device that works with Matter
Aqara’s new seven-inch home control tablet can replace a light switch
These smart lights could solve the kitchen cabinet problem
Hue launches a pricey new sunrise lamp
Smart string light showdown: Nanoleaf versus Lifx
The best floodlight camera to buy right now
How to move a smart home
Moving a smart home - The Smart Home Show
Living with the ghost of a smart home’s past
Smart ceiling light showdown: Aqara T1M versus Nanoleaf Skylight
Binding should be the next big thing for smart home devices
Aqara adds support for 50 new Matter device types
Flic is ready to control all your Matter devices
Thread is Matter’s secret sauce for a better smart home
Google Nest Thread border routers
Google TV Streamer review: smarter than your average set-top box
Google Nest Hub (2nd-gen) review: sleep on it
Why Thread is Matter’s biggest problem right now
The four changes in Thread 1.4 that could fix the protocol
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 19,739 words · 13 speakers
0:03 Speaker 00 Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of finally figuring out how to get all of my smart lights working in one single app. I'm your friend Jen Tooe and welcome to the Jen era of The Vergecast. I will be here for the next two weeks while David gets to play with his gorgeous baby. Today on the show, we are going to find out how you go about saving a smart home company. I'm chatting with Ken Fairbanks, CEO of Instion Technologies, about the unlikely comeback of one of the original smart lighting companies. Then, the guy I go to when I have questions about smart lighting, Richard Gunther, is going to join me for a super-sized Vergecast hotline all about smart lighting, where we
0:48 Speaker 00 tackle your burning and frankly, super complicated questions about how to make smart lighting work for you. And all that is coming up right after the break. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.
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2:33 Speaker 00 Welcome back. One of the biggest fears for every smart home user is that the products that they rely on to make their homes work will one day stop working. In 2022, I covered this exact story, how smart lighting company Instion went dark. Overnight, someone flipped the switch and hundreds of thousands of customers were, figuratively at least, left in the dark. Instion was not a fly-by-night startup either. It was founded in 2005 as one of the first smart lighting companies in the post X10 era, when smart home went from wires to wireless. So what do you do when the product your home relies on stops working the way it's supposed to? My guest today, Ken Fairbanks, is an early Instion user,
3:18 Speaker 00 and he had a really unusual solution to that problem. He bought the company. Now, three years later, Instion is back with a new website, new products, and Ken installed as CEO. Welcome, Ken. Thank you so much for being here with us on The Vergecast today.
3:36 Speaker 05 I'm looking forward to it. Thank you for the opportunity.
3:39 Speaker 00 So as I was just mentioning, you are one of the smart home users that actually decided to buy the smart home company. But you weren't exactly a typical Instion customer, were you? You actually helped start this company early on and have a lot of experience in the smart home. So can you tell us a little bit about your background with Instion?
4:03 Speaker 05 Sure. So I was with Hewlett Packard for 20-some years. I left Hewlett Packard in early 2000s and started doing some business consulting here in Southern California. And one of the companies I got introduced to was Smart Home.
4:17 Speaker 00 Okay, and Smart Home is the company that owned Instion, is that right?
4:21 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, absolutely right.
4:23 Speaker 00 That's a great name.
4:24 Speaker 05 Yes, it was.
4:25 Speaker 00 How did they get Smart Home as their name?
4:28 Speaker 05 Well, they were one of the early internet retailers and so URLs and names, you know, weren't as popular as they are now. So they got Smart Home before anybody else did, actually. So it was by luck and being early to the marketplace, I guess, is the answer to that.
4:45 Speaker 00 Wow. Great. Okay. So you were working for, you got to know Smart Home?
4:49 Speaker 05 Yes, I was consulting with them, helping them start to look at how they would roll out the Instion technology and also the line of products, the lighting control products that they were going to make. And then after six months, they asked me to join the company and I did as the general manager of the technologies and products part of the company. So that's how I got involved with them.
5:10 Speaker 00 So before we go into all of the trials and tribulations and how Instion is hopefully on the verge of a new dawn, tell me just a little bit about Instion for people who are listening who have never heard of this smart home lighting system and what Instion does.
5:28 Speaker 05 So when Smart Home was starting out, they were selling a product from a company called X10.
5:34 Speaker 00 Okay. So that's the original smart home protocol, right?
5:37 Speaker 05 Yes.
5:37 Speaker 00 And that was like over the wires?
5:39 Speaker 05 Right. And that was a technology owned by somebody else.
5:42 Speaker 00 Okay.
5:42 Speaker 05 And they were just selling the products because at that point they were just an internet retailer.
5:46 Speaker 00 One of the first ever internet retailers, is that right?
5:49 Speaker 05 Yes.
5:49 Speaker 00 Like one of the first dot coms?
5:51 Speaker 05 Yeah. They were hard coding the website. There was no Shopify or any of those things. So they're actually hard coding the website to get it up and running. So yeah, very, very early on. I think it was one of the first ones that got involved in taking advantage of the internet. And the business was perfect for that because they were selling home automation and lots of little pieces. And so really hard in a brick and mortar kind of thing to be able to put enough product out and all the different brick and mortars to be able to satisfy. So this internet really fit this business segment extremely well. And I think that's why they succeeded and did so well as well.
6:28 Speaker 00 But then from this internet company, they form a smart home protocol and a smart home line. How did that jump happen?
6:37 Speaker 05 Some of it's just to be lucky. So they became the largest reseller of this X10 technology. And the founder was lucky to find a very bright engineer named Dan Craig. We call him the father of Instion, and he still works with me as well. So he's the one that developed the protocol. So he understood how the X10 technology worked and understood the issues with the X10. There were a number of issues with the technology itself. And he then really developed the Instion protocol. And that's, and I kind of related to, because Instion does at its heart run on the power line, just like X10 did.
7:15 Speaker 00 The power line of your home. So like all the wiring in your home. Okay.
7:19 Speaker 05 Right. And that's how that works. It's kind of curious to me, but you have the power in your house is 110 volts, and it goes from positive to negative, and it does that 120 times a second. So at those split seconds, there's no electricity in your house. It's just bare copper wire. So at that precise second, use that to transmit. And that's why you get the most reliable signal, because it's hardwired. All the devices are hardwired.
7:43 Speaker 00 And this was X10. That's how X10 worked?
7:46 Speaker 05 That's how X10 worked as well.
7:48 Speaker 00 Okay. And then Instion uses the same technology?
7:51 Speaker 05 Well, the same concept, but different technology and how the signal is propagated and put on the line. I kind of related to, in the old days, you had those dial-up modems, right? You know, that, right? And very slow. And then DSL came along. It uses the same copper wires, but DSL and its speed and its reliability had nothing to do compared to the old modems. And that's kind of the same thing here. The Instion technology took the reliability of this up to professional class from where it was with X10, which is really a hobbyist kind of technology. And so that's how they developed that. And then that's about when I joined, is we're just getting ready to start close to launching that technology and the products.
8:34 Speaker 00 And so the technology is this hardwired system with a radio,
8:40 Speaker 05 Radio.
8:41 Speaker 00 wireless radio frequency. So this was like one of the first sort of wireless smart lighting radio frequencies developed around the same time as like Z-Wave and ZigBee. Is that right?
8:50 Speaker 05 Absolutely correct.
8:51 Speaker 00 Okay. And how does it differ from those types of technologies, though?
8:56 Speaker 05 Well, it's lots of different ways. So first of all, it's a mesh network. So we're not a routed network. So those networks are dependent upon you send a signal out or command out. The next device, and it's trying to get to a device, next device has to repeat that. And so you actually, if you try and turn all the lights on in a house at once, you're going to get what we call popcorning. Because the message is routed, it has to go through. And if one of those switches gets broken, then you're going to have a networking problem. So with the mesh network, every device, when you broadcast, every device hears the the signal at the same time. And then we'll actually repeat it in simultaneously throughout the house. That's why you get very robust, but they're all single band.
9:38 Speaker 05 So you're dependent upon the radio frequency and a lot of homes, that's a challenge. If you've got brick or steel, you're trying to get from one end of the home to another. And so that's really the uniqueness of it because we use the copper is our main and we use the radio as a kind of a backup or and that's where we're able to simulcast. So every signal goes out over both mediums.
9:59 Speaker 00 So both over the wires and wireless?
10:02 Speaker 05 And wireless, all synchronized.
10:04 Speaker 00 So it's kind of like, I guess for people who aren't familiar with the X10, it's sort of like having a hardwired and a mesh Wi-Fi internet network in your home. Like reliability of hardwired, the flexibility of wireless.
10:20 Speaker 05 Correct.
10:21 Speaker 00 Okay. And this is for your smart lighting. So your light switches, your lamps, everything is working over dual band technology. So this makes it more reliable in theory?
10:33 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. Extremely, extremely reliable. Because if you have a little bit of a challenge, you can have some challenges with power line with some noise or something. The radio is going to get the signal there and vice versa. So you really get this pairing of both signals coming to the device. And the device is smart enough to know it's received the same signal twice. It doesn't act on it two times. Because they're all synchronized. So it has two opportunities to get the signal. That's what the strength and that's really the hallmark of the technology is its reliability. And then just the overall simplicity of the network and how you set up devices. In it from the get go, it's set up. If you want to connect two devices together,
11:16 Speaker 05 it's just as simple. Go wire in, take your existing wall switch out, put the InStion wall switch in. You want to plug the lamp module and to have those two connect, just press and hold the button on on the sending device and press and hold the button on the receiving. They're now connected. Now they now talk.
11:33 Speaker 00 And you don't even need the app or even a hub or anything. It just works that. Okay, so this sounds great. And this sounds like the type of smart lighting technology everyone would want in their home. So why did it all fall apart?
11:45 Speaker 05 Well, you know, with us, you know, you could consider smart home a startup company if you go back to the when it first began. And it's a real challenge for a lot of companies as you grow and you develop, the leadership team often needs to change because the skill sets to really launch a new company are different than ones maybe to grow the company. And I think that's a little bit what they they fell into. The founder did a wonderful job developing the company and growing it. But I think in the end, that became kind of an Achilles heel for them and in their ability to be able to to thoughtfully grow the company. They overextended themselves.
12:20 Speaker 00 Then in 2017, I believe it was bought by another user?
12:26 Speaker 05 No, essentially taken over by the shareholders.
12:28 Speaker 00 Oh, okay.
12:29 Speaker 05 Rob Liliness was a shareholder. So a couple of the shareholders took over the company.
12:34 Speaker 00 Okay. And this was in 2017?
12:36 Speaker 05 Right.
12:37 Speaker 00 Okay.
12:37 Speaker 05 And that's where they kind of scaled the company back from being a whole home automation, selling all the variety of products and really started to scale the company to focusing on the InStion products only. So over a course of years, so they kind of phased out the other products just to focus on the InStion.
12:52 Speaker 00 So Rob takes over and we've got what five years until 2022, where one day, all of a sudden, without warning, someone flipped the switch.
13:06 Speaker 05 Yes.
13:07 Speaker 00 Just to overextend that metaphor.
13:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, but that's exactly what he did.
13:11 Speaker 00 Exactly what happened.
13:12 Speaker 05 That's exactly what he did. Yeah.
13:13 Speaker 00 So tell me what caused the sort of the demise of the company at that stage?
13:19 Speaker 05 So I think there's a number of things. This marketplace is an interesting one. It has some peculiarities to it and you really need to understand the marketplace. And I think that was part of their challenge, really understanding the marketplace and what's happening in the market. And he took the company in a different direction and once again, overextended the company. So they ran into, again, they, he ran them out of, ran them out of money. And that's really what took place. And so then he just closed the doors one day, let the employees go and then closed the doors and turned off. What everyone relates to on this is there's all these hubs that, like we mentioned, you can't, you don't need one, but lots of people have one. So you can get internet connectivity and
14:02 Speaker 00 You don't need a hub for Instaion, but you can use a hub.
14:05 Speaker 05 Right. And that's if you want to use your phone to turn the lights on and off, you want to use Alexa or Google or HomeKit or any of those kinds of things, you need some bridge to the internet. And so that's what that's for. And also, you can set up some routines and timers and some, some things like that using it. So famously, what transpired is the users found out that something had happened when their little hubs have a red and green light and all the hubs turned red one day.
14:33 Speaker 00 Oh, it's kind of like a scene out of a movie, a sci fi movie. Just blinking red. Red blink of death.
14:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, there was no heads up, which is just, in these days, doesn't make a lot of sense. You've seen companies have had a challenge, but they usually will get out an email or something to everybody, hey, sorry, we're gonna have to close up and give them some notice. But there was really no notice. And that's what made everyone so upset. It just, one day in April, I think it was April 22nd, when everything just turned off. And without warning, without understanding what, you know, so that's why everyone got very frustrated very quickly.
15:11 Speaker 00 And now you are an Instaion user. So did your hub go red?
15:15 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
15:16 Speaker 00 It did. And what did you do?
15:19 Speaker 05 So I called, so the like Dan Craig was still with the company, or he had just been let go, obviously, because all the employees have been let go. So I called and talked to a couple of the employees that I know, because a number of them worked for me when I was there, too. And so I called them and said, what's going on? What's happened? And they explained that the company went bankrupt and he just shut it off. And I was involved, I still am, with an investment group here in Orange County. And so I was just kind of curious to learn. And so I actually reached out to see if I could just learn what was going on, with no intention at that point of buying the company.
15:55 Speaker 00 Okay, so you hadn't sort of formed a plan, like, okay, now's my chance. I'm back in, back in the game, gonna buy the company. So, okay. So the hubs are shut off. Everyone is thinking it's done. And I know when you, once you decided to relaunch the site, you said a small group of passionate users had brought it together. So can you talk me through how this little group came together? And what, what you did and how you decided that you were gonna pull together and resurrect the Instion Smart Home?
16:24 Speaker 05 So when I, I talked to the trustee of, first of all, the trustee that was now. So what happens in an ABC bankruptcy is kind of interesting. A new company is formed. In California, it's an LLC called an ABC LLC. And basically, all the assets of the company are transferred over to that, that new LLC. And a trustee is then put in charge of selling the assets, not trying to get the company back, but of just selling the assets.
16:49 Speaker 00 Right. I think you mentioned this when we chatted before, that this was something very unique to Silicon Valley, right? Because so many startups would just disappear.
16:58 Speaker 05 Yes.
16:59 Speaker 00 And like, no one would know what to do with the furniture, or
17:02 Speaker 05 Right, that's exactly right.
17:04 Speaker 00 There was no one around, unlike most book and mortar companies, where this, you can go knock on a door and say, hey, you know, pay my bill. They just evaporate. So this is a very unique bankruptcy. So someone just Comes in and takes over and then tries to sell whatever they can find. Like literally lift up the cushions and see what's underneath. Okay. And so you, this is where you came in.
17:27 Speaker 05 That's exactly right. That's when I started talking to them. And I said, well, what are you looking to sell the company for? And they gave me a number and I said, well, we're not, my group's not interested. We're not interested in kind of that was the end of it. And then they kept calling me and saying, make an offer, make an offer. I go, I can't make an offer. That's not gonna. And they go, no, make an offer. I go, no, I'm not going to insult you. And they just kept bugging me. And I think what they knew is that I knew the people at the company and I had the ability, not that I'm a bright guy, I knew the people that could help bring the company back quickly. It would be very difficult for anybody else to resurrect the company as quickly as we were able to do it.
18:10 Speaker 05 I put this group together. It was a CTO gentleman was head of manufacturing for us. And our products are manufactured overseas. The marketing person is, was those triad that I brought together. That was the band of us four, now since added some additional people, that knew all the things to do to get the company back up and running. And so that's why we were able to do it very quickly. So they were smarter to understand I could actually bring some value to it. So I, I made them, if they pushed me enough, I made them an offer that I thought they would absolutely refuse.
18:44 Speaker 00 Okay, so this is how you do it. You lowball.
18:48 Speaker 05 I was really taken aback when they said, yes, we'll accept that. And now I understand why, because they weren't going to get anything for the company. Because there weren't a lot of physical assets, there weren't a lot of product or whatever. There just wasn't a lot of value to, you know, the patents and everything have value, but someone else would have to come and figure out how to do that. How do you, you know, like I said, I had the father of Inste on the long side of me. So he knows the technology. We had all the pieces together. And, and they're all very passionate. The one thing is all the employees there, and myself included at the time, we were very passionate about what we were doing. And very disappointed to see where the company had had. So, and still everyone's very passionate about we're doing this.
19:30 Speaker 05 Because, you know, yes, it's a job and things, but really doing it because we feel passionate. And a lot for our customer base. We have a very unique customer base.
19:37 Speaker 00 Well, and what about you, Ken? I mean, did you not have a job?
19:41 Speaker 05 Oh, I was retired.
19:43 Speaker 00 Oh, you were retired. Okay. So that is when you wanna, you wanna go and buy a smart home company.
19:51 Speaker 00 So you're on a beach in Hawaii.
19:53 Speaker 05 Oh, yes. Famously, it still amazes me that you can be on the beach on a cell phone and buying a company. It's, it's just kind of, I, I'm a tech guy, but it still boggles my mind that you can have all that transact while you're sitting on a beach there. It's, it's kind of a fun story. It was a vacation we'd previously planned with my wife and the transaction is taking longer is they typically do with lawyers and documents and things. And, and I said, you know, everyone, I'm losing customers every day because their hubs are turned off. And I said, I know I gotta turn these back on. So I talked to the team and they said, yeah, we know exactly what to do.
20:35 Speaker 05 We can have them turned on tomorrow. There's one company we have to talk to and have them flip the switch. And I had to pay them a little bit of money. And I said, you know, even though I don't own the company now, I just know I'm losing people. If this could take another week or so, I just can't, I can't stand that. So I actually decided to just bite the bullet and turn the hubs on. And that was on a Tuesday. The lights all turned green and the social media started lighting up. Oh my gosh, is yours on? Mine's on. Oh, this is great. Who's doing this? Who's behind? Anyone know who this is? Oh, this is awesome. This is great. Oh, that was all, that was Tuesday. Wednesday. Who is the evil person that's turned these on?
21:18 Speaker 00 I remember our headline. It was like, somebody has turned the lights back on, but who? That, you know, someone's running your smart home. But yeah, okay. So tell us what happened.
21:30 Speaker 05 So there, yeah. So all the, the conspiracy theories came up of blaming all sorts of people trying to get into the homes. And I was under nondisclosure at that point. So I couldn't come and say anything.
21:41 Speaker 00 Oh, so you're just sitting there going, ah.
21:45 Speaker 00 Everyone's freaking out and I can't say anything.
21:47 Speaker 05 So luckily on Thursday, we're finally able to sign the agreement. And then we could put out the emails saying who we were and why we'd done it. And we're happy to have it back and look forward to growing the company. I got to tell you one side note, just about, and it goes back to this fantastic customer base I have. So on Friday, I got a call from one of our Mind Now customers. I didn't know who it was or anything. How he got my cell phone, I don't know.
22:16 Speaker 05 And he goes, hey, what's the address for the company? And I'm like, um, I don't, I don't have it. So I gave him my home address, which made my wife real happy. She goes, you know how many people are upset with the previous owner? No, I don't want our address. I go, I didn't know what to do. So I gave it to him. So we get home, a couple of days later, I think it was Monday or Tuesday. And here's a letter from this gentleman and his wife, handwritten letter. Thank you so much for bringing this back. Really appreciate it. And I hope this will help. Maybe you can celebrate it or something. It was a check for $2,000.
22:52 Speaker 00 Oh, wow.
22:52 Speaker 05 And I said, is there something? I wrote him back, is there some, I have a little bit of product and can I give you something or whatever? Nope, don't want anything. Just thank you so much. And that's the specialness of the user base. And that's what keeps us all going because we have such great installed base. We call it our family or our community and really believe in that.
23:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. So how long was it between lights turning off to lights turning back on?
23:17 Speaker 05 April 22nd to June 8th.
23:19 Speaker 00 Okay.
23:19 Speaker 05 So it was quite a long time.
23:21 Speaker 00 Yeah. And now they, they were able to use their devices, right? It wasn't like we're in darkness. It's just they'd lost some function and potentially felt like they were no longer going to be able to buy new product or have, see any advancements or improvements come to the product. Okay. So you've bought a smart home company. This took, it sounds like about six weeks to sort of
23:46 Speaker 05 You're right.
23:46 Speaker 00 Turn the lights back on. So what's the next step? What did you have to do? Because obviously there's got to have been a lot of concern from that installed base saying what's happening? And you know, how do you win back customer trust? How do you rebuild a brand after this type of kind of, you know? How do you, how do you raise the phoenix from the flames here?
24:10 Speaker 05 Well, the first part is, is the easiest one. Just be honest and truthful and upfront. And, you know, I, we scheduled Zoom meetings, which all our customer base was invited to attend. And we'd get several hundred each one of the times I do that and just be candid. Take questions, live questions for them and just be honest in what we're doing and tell them what our challenges are and how we're going to grow the company. So, I mean, the first thing for, to do was to get our products remanufactured. So getting the manufacturing lines back up again, contacting our, the previous or the, the contract manufacturers were making them and start to give them orders and get the products, you know, under built, but that, that took, you know, three or four months. Just once you get the orders, takes three or four months with shipping and everything to get that up.
24:55 Speaker 05 So that was a key part of assured everybody, we're, we've got the products. We've got the important ones already on order. And then we also find, is we built out the whole family of products because now we, we have about a hundred SKUs. And as we've been adding them in, that's one of the things where I engage the community, say, okay, I've got these products. We've got this going. What's the next one you want me to, to go spend time? Cause I want to be thoughtful and growing the company. I don't want to financially overextend it again, which has been done before. Yeah. And I've been very open with everybody. That's what we're doing. And that's why we're easing all the products. And now, you know, three years later, just about all the products are, are back in manufacturing and we, we have them back in stock. The other part then was related to the, the hubs.
25:38 Speaker 05 And really a belief is we sat down and talked about it. And this is, I think we're going to see this across the marketplace, but I really felt it was important that the app and the hub be a self-sustaining business. And I, I realized that a lot of the competition, a lot of people out there today, they subsidize the app through hardware sales. And I, I just don't think that's a sustainable business. As long as you keep growing your hardware and stuff, you can get away with that for a while. And I think we're going to find a lot of the manufacturers now. I think even Amazon's talking about it with Alexa and stuff of starting to have levels of price for it. So make it very affordable, but it also then enables us to independently invest in the app.
26:22 Speaker 05 Cause they had not been invested in the app. So yeah, the app was free. It was being subsidized by hardware, but they weren't spending any money to develop the app. So the app had been stagnant for a couple of years. And, and so we've been taking that, that revenue and have been investing in improving the app, adding new features to the app and building that, that back out. And for the most part, people have been accepting of that and understanding why we're doing that. And the assurance to them is it's not going to just shut down again one day. The lights aren't going to turn red.
26:50 Speaker 00 So when you say of that, so you, you instituted a subscription. Is that, is that right?
26:55 Speaker 05 Yes, a subscription. Yeah.
26:56 Speaker 00 Okay. And for what, what do you need the subscription for? Like, can you use the devices without the subscription or?
27:01 Speaker 05 Absolutely. As I mentioned, you don't need a hub. You don't need any kind of computer module. Like, that is unique to Instaion. I think almost every other needs some kind of controller to be able to even set up devices. We can go into some of the particulars, but you can do a lot of advanced features without any kind of hub.
27:20 Speaker 00 Okay. But now if you want the hub and you want the app for that kind of control with your phone, control with voice, presumably like with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, you need the app and the hub?
27:34 Speaker 05 Yes.
27:34 Speaker 00 And how much does that cost now?
27:37 Speaker 05 The app is $39 a year and the hub is $99 with one year of free subscription. So I included one year with the subscription with the purchase of a new hub. And then it's $39 a year. There's a, if you buy two years, you get it for a little bit less.
27:53 Speaker 00 And what does that get you?
27:55 Speaker 05 So it gets you a number of things. One of the things is we back up your configuration. So if you ever have a problem, you can get a new hub and we can repopulate the hub. So you have a backup of your configuration. You can see your configuration. You can download it. It allows you also, you can do setup. Instead of press press, you can do the setup from the app. You just say, connect these two devices together. You can do that. You can set up timed events. And then, as we mentioned, you, you get voice, you get, you know, phone connections. So you can control. You also can get alerts now. So you can get an alert that the water, you know, water sensor has gone off and you can get an alert sent to your phone. So, or the door's been opened. So you get all, you get the alerts.
28:39 Speaker 05 So all those kinds of features coming. And we're looking at additional features in the future coming. So we're continuing to add things to the app as well.
28:47 Speaker 00 Now, but these were features that previously the users had without having to pay. So how did that go down with the user base? Because that's generally not well received.
28:59 Speaker 05 Well, again, I think that we have a special installed base. And when I explained to them, and I was very honest with them, that this needs to be a self sustaining business. You just can't subsidize it long term. And particularly, we had no hardware to even sell if we wanted to do that.
29:15 Speaker 00 At that point, right?
29:16 Speaker 05 At that point, right.
29:17 Speaker 00 Because you were still ramping up the supply chain, right?
29:20 Speaker 05 Exactly, exactly right. So I think they appreciated the honesty for it. And they also now appreciated the investment because now they're seeing that the app is actually getting better. So they're not just putting, they're seeing the app improve.
29:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:35 Speaker 05 I don't have to raise the hardware prices just to subsidize that. So I can keep the hardware prices, which is the vast majority of your costs is going to be through hardware.
29:44 Speaker 00 Right.
29:45 Speaker 05 Versus, you know, the app, you know, it's a one, one time a year fee. It's, you know, not that great. I mean, $39 isn't going to break anybody, so to speak. But, but you do get the pushback. Oh, wait, I can get this from free before. And I said, yeah, but understand that's also partially why the company had to shut down, right? Because they didn't have the revenue coming in to support it. And I don't want that to happen again. I don't want there to be an issue. I want to be able to run the, you know, continue the hub businesses as self sustaining business.
30:13 Speaker 00 Now, that's interesting. We're seeing this happen more and more with hardware, smart home companies that they're adding subscriptions. Do you really feel like that is the only sort of long term, sustainable business model for the smart home is like recurring subscriptions? And if so, why is that? Why can it not just depend on hardware?
30:31 Speaker 05 Well, it's, it's an interesting thing. So the lighting control, we have a little bit of unique position, right? Because as I mentioned, you're going to continue to add products to the home and grow the home. So you get continue for that user is going to continue to get hardware sales. And so you can justify, potentially justify subsidizing the app. But if you, you go and look at the apps, the most other home automation devices in the home are single unit. Maybe you have two thermostats, probably not. You probably have one thermostat. I just put in a water sensor, a leak sensor at the, at the main, you know, I'm going to buy one of those for the house. There's only one pipe I can connect that to. So if you look at that, they're going to get a one time hardware sale from me. And then supposedly now they're going
31:16 Speaker 05 to give me this free app for the rest of my life. And it's, you can see it's not sustainable.
31:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:22 Speaker 05 It becomes a little bit of a pyramid scheme of sorts. You've got to keep getting the next user that's going to put in that water sensor to pay for my free service that I'm getting.
31:33 Speaker 00 The smart home is a pyramid scheme. I like it.
31:39 Speaker 05 And I think it also, this helps to, it puts, it's incumbent upon the manufacturers and for us, we've got to add real value with the hub too, in the app. We've got to continue to add value to it. And if it doesn't deliver value, then okay, I understand, then you shouldn't be using it. And there are other solutions. There are other companies that provide apps to control art. So you don't have to use us either, and some of them are free.
32:03 Speaker 00 Did you find that there was much of a drop off from the user base? Once you added the subscription model? Or were most people kind of happy to pitch in, so to speak? Seeing as you had bought the company for them.
32:17 Speaker 05 A large, a large portion of them continued with us. The renewal rates, because we've now, this is our third year, yeah, renewals. The renewal rate's very high, so I'm really pleased with that. So the most common thing if the renewal doesn't happen, it's I moved houses. I've told the new homeowner how to go get it and I'll be buying this with my new house that I've bought. That's our biggest, because we do, if you don't renew, we ask you why. And that's our biggest one is I moved homes.
32:45 Speaker 00 So because you run a smart home company and you manufacture overseas, I do have to ask, how has the last six months or so been in terms of getting products?
32:56 Speaker 05 It's all I can do to keep smiling. It's been, it's been horrific.
33:02 Speaker 05 It is just, I feel bad as I talk to others, particularly as small businesses like mine. I mean, we're not that small, but we're still small compared to some of the, the big companies out there. It's tough because you can't plan. I don't, I don't know from one day to the other what's going to happen. So it's on a little bit of a, a kink in, in my plans for this year. Cause I, I wanted to be more aggressively marketing and things. And I, right now I'm just focused on getting product back in and solving some of those kinds of problems. But we do have plans for a, a big relaunch of the brand and company still this year.
33:35 Speaker 00 I know Instion was an original launch partner with Apple HomeKit, but as I understand it, doesn't work with Apple anymore.
33:43 Speaker 05 Correct.
33:44 Speaker 00 So obviously, right now in the smart home, Matter and Thread, which is another protocol that can be used for lighting, is kind of the hot new thing. Is it something, is Matter something that Instion is looking at? Because that would help with interoperability.
34:00 Speaker 05 No, absolutely. Matter's an interesting capability and we'll be adding Matter capability. It'll be an interface into Matter. One of the challenges is for Matter products, because they go across, the hope is to go across multiple manufacturers. But that means you have to bring the feature set down to lowest common denominator. So I think what we're going to see for the most part, you're going to see the Lutrons, the Instions, whatever, they're going to continue to exist because there's just too many things you can do that you're not going to be able to do with Matter. But you'll have an interface into Matter so that you can then interconnect. And where Matter becomes is those people are going to develop the apps to really be able to control the home. So that's the other part of Matter.
34:44 Speaker 05 Someone's got to develop the app. And if you're not selling the hardware, then back to my thing, the Matter apps are going to have to be subscription based because otherwise they don't have any revenue. But and Apple and HomeKit, and I think that becomes important. So I plan, we'll get back to connection with HomeKit is there. Apple's now trying to get back into this marketplace and we'll be there to support that. So we have plans, that's on the roadmap and in fact, under work right now to be able to bring that capability back in.
35:13 Speaker 00 So you were retired three years ago when you bought a smart home company. So what do you see as the future for this smart home company and your role in it? Are you, I'm sure you'd like to get back to the beach in Hawaii at some point.
35:29 Speaker 05 My wife certainly would.
35:32 Speaker 05 Yeah, so I'd like to see, you know, I'd like to see the, you know, next couple of years that the company double or triple in size, which I think is very doable and makes it a nice sized business. You know, I've got a good team of people that they're taking more and more of a role in running the company, which is great. And I see that evolving and then someone taking, you know, my day to day kind of responsibilities and, and I'll kind of just, you know, go to maybe an advisory, you know, kind of level with the, with the company and, and help it continue to grow from that standpoint.
36:04 Speaker 00 Do you think it's possible that it would be a company that might get purchased? Like, would you look to sell it? Or do you feel like it needs to stay in its own?
36:13 Speaker 05 No, I, I think that would be certainly open to do it to the right people that really, my commitment is to the customers. And if I felt someone had a passion and, and like I said, the team, yes, they do it for a salary, but that's not why they're doing it. They're doing it because they really care about the customers. I know it sounds corny and it, you know, it's hard to believe, but it really is true. Everyone really wants to do and really cares about the customers. So if I could find someone with that same passion and they're willing to continue to thoughtfully grow the company, then I'd be happy to step back some and let a younger person, so to speak, you know, take on the role I have. But that's the critical part to it. So next couple of years, you know, hopefully I'm going to be able to do that.
36:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess, you know, the reason I ask that question is because Instion users have obviously been through a lot. So what is their kind of reassurance here that this isn't going to happen again? Why should they stay committed to the company? Why should new people invest in product from Instion? What's kind of assurances can Instion offer that this isn't going to happen again? Is there some kind of open source option for the technology so that they would have options if this happened again? Or are you just 100% sure this is not going to happen again?
37:27 Speaker 05 I'm 100% sure.
37:31 Speaker 05 I'm really committed to like they said, yes, I mean, I think what the previous company did, they could have, as an example, they could have started a subscription and kept all the hubs working. If that was, it was a cash flow issue, why you didn't do that, I don't understand. They could have kept things going. You certainly could license the technology, the products out to somebody else from that standpoint, in barring some other unforeseen circumstance. I mean, tariffs going to 400% and no one wants to pay for the product. I see a bright future for the company. And again, it's transparency. I mean, that's my commitment. In fact, I have it over here in the desk here, our values. And the first value here is transparency to the customer base.
38:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
38:15 Speaker 05 And telling them what's going on and not hiding from them. Let them, let them know and assuring them, we're profitable, we're making a profit, haven't had to put money into the company, we're not extended in any financial shape. And so that's the commitment. But I think that's for all of them. And I'm trying to be accessible, too. I mean, I, I take phone calls, I call customers back, which I think is important because that's how you get to hear what's really going on. So it's always amazing when I call a customer and I just say, this is Ken from Inceon. I saw your email and whatever. I just wanted to learn a little bit more about what it is. It's funny to see their reaction when they go, wait a minute, you're the Ken that sends out the Ken emails? You're the, that's
38:56 Speaker 05 you? I go, yeah. Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry to take your time. I go, no, no, that's, this is, I learned this at Hewlett Packard. You got to talk to your customers. The CEO of HP would do the same thing. And that's what he taught me. You got to talk to the customers. You'll get hidden from the truth of what's going on. So I said, you guys are doing me a service by telling me what's on your mind and what's concerning you.
39:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Well, it's been a journey for you, Ken. And I'm really glad that you could come on and talk us through it. It really does kind of shed a light on the whole industry in a way and help, I think, hopefully help people understand what's happening in this industry and how hopefully things are looking up because smart lighting really does make a big difference. I know in my family, when we go to a hotel or something, my husband's like, Alexa, turn the lights off. I'm like, it's not going to work here, hon. It's something, it is a luxury, but it is one of those luxuries that becomes a necessity and really does add a lot of value. So I'm glad to see that you were able to bring Instion back. And what's next for the company?
39:57 Speaker 00 I understand you've recently relaunched the website for Instion, rebranded. So just tell us a little bit about what's changed and what the future is here for the technology and the product.
40:09 Speaker 05 Well, I think with the rebranding of the company, you'll see a new logo from us which really reflects the values of the company and how we're moving forward. So I encourage everyone to go check it out. The website is a complete redo. It's a night and day from where our current. And I think the focus is in the redo is to make it easier for customers to find the products and easier for them to understand how the products work and be more value to the customer than the previous website. And I will, everyone that's listening, if you, I'm open to any ideas. If you're an Instion customer or you're not, I'm open if there's some things we can be doing better, or you think things we ought to focus on, please reach out to me and let me know.
40:49 Speaker 00 We'll put his home address in the show notes. So
40:52 Speaker 05 There you go.
40:54 Speaker 00 Excellent. Well, I appreciate your time again, Ken, and we need to take another break. And when we come back, we're going to do a supersized Vergecast hotline where I will be joined by a special guest and we'll be answering a lot of your questions on smart lighting. So I hope you like this topic because there is more of it. We'll be right back.
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42:51 Speaker 00 We're back, and I have a very special guest with me for a very special, supersized, extended Vergecast hotline, where we answer all your burning questions about smart lighting. Richard Gunther is going to join me to help answer a whole bunch of questions on this topic, which is a topic I get asked about all the time. And it's kind of a hard one to write about unless I was going to write like a 5,000-word essay, because everyone's home setups are so unique. So I thought one of the best ways to help all of you out was to get the guy I go to when I have questions about smart lighting on to help me answer all of your questions. So a quick bit of background on Richard.
43:33 Speaker 00 He's a blogger and podcaster and the host of three shows, The Smart Home Show, Home On, and Entertainment 2.0. And he's obsessed with smart lighting. Plus, his day job is as a product experience consultant. So it's like literally his job to make things easier to use. So, welcome, Richard, and thank you for joining me.
43:57 Speaker 07 I'm very glad to be here. I always love talking about lighting, perhaps a little bit too much.
44:03 Speaker 00 Great, okay, so I'm gonna, we have like quite a lot of questions here. I'm not sure how many we'll get through, but we're gonna kick it off with one that seems deceptively easy, which is quite a common theme here. It's like, oh, but surely that's simple. Uh-uh. Anyway, okay, so the first one is from Cole Kennedy, and his question is, "I've always wanted to have my lights gently, gradually brighten in the morning."
44:30 Speaker 00 Any idea if this is possible via HomeKit? Or do I have to create it in the Hue app? Basically, I really want an exploration on how others automate their lights. Well, Cole, you've come to the right place.
44:46 Speaker 07 It's funny, for the most part, most of the big ecosystems don't just support this natively. So if you're thinking about your home app on either Google or Apple, this isn't something they just have available that you can do. You usually need the product's own app to do this. Hue does have a mechanism for doing this and a routine, or I think it was a lab for a while where they would allow you to set the length of time that you wanted the light to come on, the color, stuff like that. And, you know, it could be up to, say, 30 minutes time. I wake up a little bit faster than that.
45:26 Speaker 07 I used to do this in my home 10 years ago or more with basic Instion products. This is something that Instion had built into their solution right from the beginning, that you could have it take up to eight minutes for a light to come on to full, which is enough to, it gets you past that jolt of light in the morning if you have the lights automate automatically. But I think generally you're going to find that for the most part, you need to rely on a manufacturer's own app to do this. Recently, you posted how the newer hub from IKEA, and I always get this wrong, I think it's.
46:04 Speaker 00 I'm going with whatever you want to say because I'm not even going to try.
46:07 Speaker 07 It's going to work as basically a matter controller. And IKEA is one of the systems that has this capability. So there's a possibility, we don't know this yet, but there's a possibility that the IKEA. Hub could do this for other lights in your home, which would be really cool.
46:25 Speaker 00 That would, because that is the main frustration with this right now is that, yes, the answer to his question is you do have to use the Hue app to do this. Apple Home doesn't support it yet, which is frustrating and surprising. You would expect this to be something you could do. Apple Home does have adaptive lighting, which is that changing the light throughout the day.
46:45 Speaker 07 Right.
46:46 Speaker 00 But it's not the same thing as gradually turning on in the morning. It's just changing the tone of the light.
46:52 Speaker 07 Exactly.
46:52 Speaker 00 It doesn't adjust the brightness, it just changed the tone, which is, it seems like a a small thing you would, and one day, maybe Apple Home will support this. But yeah, it's frustrating that you have to stick with one brand. And this is something I've come across because I love using this feature for my kids to get them sort of going in the morning, like slowly turn the lights on. And so I just have, I've defaulted to having Hue bulbs in their rooms because they're the ones that do this best.
47:19 Speaker 07 Mm hmm.
47:20 Speaker 00 There are other bulbs that do it, but again, you're always going to have to be with one ecosystem, which with lighting, as we will discuss, gets complicated. You don't really want to be locked into one brand.
47:31 Speaker 07 It does.
47:31 Speaker 00 And yeah, this is exciting with the whole, the new Matter Controller feature coming to more hubs and potentially being able to use the features that are more specific to the, what you want to do in the smart home. I mean, IKEA is very much focused around lighting, so this is something they offer. And so I'll be really interested to see if that's going to be possible because in theory, you'll be able to connect any Matter compatible light bulb to the IKEA hub and then set whatever routines and options it offers on those bulbs. So yeah, stay tuned, this may get easier.
48:05 Speaker 07 Hopefully.
48:06 Speaker 00 Okay, so because Cole, you did ask how others automate their lights. We're going to do a quick rundown of how Richard and I automate our lights in our homes. So, Richard. Why don't you go ahead and give us a kind of rundown on what you have set up and why? Why is always the kind of interesting part, I think.
48:26 Speaker 07 It is, it is. So I'm primarily focused around HomeKit. When HomeKit became more robust, I moved away from Amazon as my ecosystem and primarily worked with HomeKit. Now, before I used to have all different apps controlling a bunch of different stuff. And I've always been an advocate for trying to get things on the same platform if you can. And now HomeKit's pretty good for that, but there are still a few holdouts. Companies like Ring and some others still don't offer devices that work necessarily directly with HomeKit. So I also use HomeBridge, which is one of those things where, you know, bake your own Raspberry Pi server
49:09 Speaker 07 or throw it on a NAS that you have in your basement or something like that. If you're that much of a geek and it lets you connect some things to HomeKit that otherwise wouldn't be accessible. So I use that and all of my scenes and all of my automations are through HomeKit.
49:27 Speaker 00 You run everything on HomeKit, which is using the Home app on your iPhone?
49:31 Speaker 07 Using the Apple Home ecosystem, primarily with the Home app. That's what I use as my day to day. But my secret sauce to setting this all up is a lesser known app called Controller for HomeKit. This is an independent developer's app that ties into your Apple Home ecosystem and lets you see and control far more about your Apple Home devices than Apple's own Home app does.
50:02 Speaker 00 Ah, right, yeah.
50:04 Speaker 07 So Apple's about making stuff simple, so they hide a lot of stuff. This app, Controller for HomeKit, Helps you see all those other facets or attributes of your devices, which could be things like ramp rate. For example, the Leviton switches allow you to adjust how long, how many seconds it takes for a light to come on when you flip that switch or when you start a scene with it. And you could set that with, in the case of Leviton switches, up to 25 seconds. It's not an enormous amount of time. But that flexibility is really nice and has its uses for different scenes.
50:45 Speaker 07 The lighting control in my house is largely done through switches. And for that, I have a combination of Leviton switches, keypads, dimmers. They have a really good motion dimmer, one of the few in the market where you can get a smart dimmer with a motion sensor built into it and either use them together or independently. I love that. Lutron is an old stalwart in the community and I heavily rely on their stuff. I've also tested and reviewed a bunch of their things. I have some Inovelley Matter-based switches. Inovelley is a third party that creates switches for systems
51:30 Speaker 07 that are compatible with Matter or compatible with Zigbee or Z-Wave. And I also have some Instion switches through my home. I've had Instion stuff for years and years. And while it doesn't tie into everything else that I use right now, it's really good for point solutions. So for example, I have closets with indoor closet door sensors that as soon as I open the closet door, the light inside the closet goes on. And things like that are really helpful for being able to remember not to leave a light on if you have a light in your closet or something like that. Now, for lighting bulbs, color lighting in particular, I think it was you, I think I
52:15 Speaker 07 can blame you, Jen, for getting me hooked on the Hue Play Sync system, which is the mechanism for synchronizing the lights in a room with either what you're seeing on your TV or on your computer or music that's playing. It allows you to synchronize video with ambient color throughout a room. So in my family room, I have a bunch of those hooked up to my TV. And I also have a bunch of outdoor accent lighting from Hue because they are one of the few vendors that came out early with outdoor lighting.
52:55 Speaker 00 So how do you make everything work? Like, are you doing like motion sensors, routines, schedules? You know, that's kind of, that's always the tricky part with the smart lighting. The motion sensors seem like the solution, but they are not always.
53:10 Speaker 07 Yep. No, that's exactly right. So, you know, I mentioned motion sensors. They work in certain cases. I use motion sensors in places like my pantry and my laundry room, places that I'm going to be walking in and out of where my hands might be full. And I don't want to have to think about whether the light is on or not. It's just going to happen automatically. Same with some closets. My primary bedroom closet, for example, has a motion sensor in it. I think that works in some cases, not in others. There are some times where it's hard to tune a motion sensor or have a motion sensor in the right place.
53:53 Speaker 07 To be able to turn lights on. So I use that mostly for utility spaces. Sometimes I even have just dumb switches with motion sensors built into them for like my utility room, or we have a storage room that has a light in it as well. I don't need anything fancy for that. I don't, it doesn't matter if I can monitor whether that light is on or not. So I can just use a plain old motion light for stuff like that. Elsewhere in the house, though, I do need things like routines for lighting to come on at night, or maybe off in the morning, or off when we go to bed. I have a go to
54:33 Speaker 07 bed routine where I constantly hear from Siri telling me that she wasn't able to turn something that I had asked off.
54:43 Speaker 00 I know, always.
54:44 Speaker 07 There's always something.
54:45 Speaker 00 So you just say, when you go, hey, S.
54:48 Speaker 07 Right.
54:49 Speaker 00 It's time to go to bed.
54:50 Speaker 07 Good night, or I'm going to bed, or it's very flexible.
54:52 Speaker 00 And then it triggers.
54:53 Speaker 07 What you can say, exactly.
54:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
54:55 Speaker 07 And then that triggers a good night scene for me. And that good night scene, I'm constantly updating because every time I add a new device, I usually want to make sure that that's also part of what I'm turning off at night.
55:10 Speaker 00 Right.
55:11 Speaker 07 I also do have a couple of scenes and automations where we just have lights come on whether we're home or not, just to make it look like we're home for security purposes.
55:23 Speaker 00 Oh, security things. Yeah, that's great. And that, do you automate all of this through Apple?
55:28 Speaker 07 All of it through Apple. Yep.
55:29 Speaker 00 Do you also use buttons at all? So that you don't have to use voice control?
55:33 Speaker 07 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm a big, big proponent of physical controls. There isn't any light in my house that can't somehow be controlled with a button somewhere or a switch somewhere. I'm a big fan of keypads. We're starting to see companies come out with keypads that can be programmed to trigger a scene. That's a great use. I have a keypad, for example, in my butler's pantry, one for coffee time, one for drinking time, one for cleanup time. And so.
56:08 Speaker 00 Nice.
56:09 Speaker 07 Those are, those are very helpful to just get all the right lights on for the right use of the space.
56:16 Speaker 00 Okay, well, before we jump into my setup, is there anything else you wanted to call out that we hadn't mentioned about your setup? Well, it sounds like you've got it pretty dialed in there. You feel like it's working the way you want? Is it just tweaks for like when you add things? Or do you have any major issues that you're still trying to fix?
56:34 Speaker 07 I have occasional issues. Every once in a while, my Hue devices don't want to fully behave on HomeKit. And that's a pretty well-known problem. You occasionally have to kind of disconnect them and reconnect them to HomeKit to make them work properly. So I have some problems with those. Every once in a while, I'll just have a scene randomly stop working and I have to troubleshoot what's going on. Oftentimes, it's Wi-Fi related. And I did a recent episode of The Smart Home Show about using smart products on Wi-Fi and some of the ways you can avoid problems there. I should probably take some of my own advice.
57:16 Speaker 00 And note, that was a great episode. I listened to it and will include it in the show notes because it's a real kind of, it starts with like Wi-Fi 101, but then goes to like how to set up Wi-Fi for your smart home properly. So definitely listen to that. Excellent. Okay, great. Well, I'm going to just quickly run through mine because mine is pretty unusual. And I'm mainly because, well, I have two issues that make it different. One is I'm always testing new stuff. So that throws everything out the window half the time in terms of automations and making things work smoothly. But the other big issue I have is I do not have neutral wires in most of my home. Because my home was built in the early 60s.
58:00 Speaker 00 I do have two rooms that were recently remodeled, which do have neutral wires. But this is a big issue in the smart home, especially if you want to use smart switches, because they require a neutral wire. And there's all sorts of technical electrical details we could go into, but I'll gloss over it for now. But basically, there are very few smart switch lighting solutions that don't require neutral wires. There are a couple, and I have tried them. One of them is from Leviton. I use that in my daughter's bathroom, but it requires a little bridge plugged in nearby. And that works relatively well. It's just an on off switch. And the reason I use it is because she never turns her light off. So I have it set on a schedule through the Levertown app to turn off after an hour.
58:45 Speaker 00 Or I can also, through smart home control, I can ask to turn it off because I can see it from the living room. So when I'm watching TV and the light's on up there, then I don't have to go all the way up the stairs. So those kind of like conveniences, that's one of the big things. The main thing I use smart lighting for in my house is that convenience, especially from the family's perspective. Because my house is quite open, so when we're sitting in the living room, the, you know, hey, S, trigger movie time. And we always, we still say trigger because I taught my husband years ago. When we first got smart home devices, we had a Wink Hub. And when it connected to Amazon's assistant, you had to use the word trigger to get it to work.
59:28 Speaker 00 And he's been trained so well that he still uses that. You don't have to use that phrase, but it's just funny that it's still there for him. But yeah, you know, one, using the words movie time to one of our smart assistants turns off all of the lights, dims a couple areas so that it's, we're not in pitch black. You know, that those kind of solutions like your good night scene are what makes smart lighting so great for me. So my main control method, like yours, is Apple Home Kit, primarily because I love the control center on iPhone. It's just so easy, just being able to swipe down and hit a button to turn off a light rather than having to use voice. Voice is great for those routines and scenes, but not for individual control so much.
1:00:13 Speaker 00 We did use Amazon's assistant primarily for a long time because it worked with everything. But since Matter, I have got to the point where almost everything in my home currently. Can be controlled through Apple Home because of Matter. So that, for example, my living room kitchen is all open plan. I have the Lutron Caseta smart switches everywhere because of the neutral wire issue. That's the other brand that does not require a neutral wire.
1:00:42 Speaker 07 Right.
1:00:42 Speaker 00 And so even though we remodeled our kitchen recently, but I still put Lutron in because I wanted to have the same switches. This is another thing, you don't really, you know, it's nice to have the same controls in all rooms of the home. So I have Lutron Caseta smart switches because they also control decorative light fixtures. Because I wanted nice lights in my living room. I didn't want, oh, this is actually in my kitchen. I have like gold pendant lights and well, they're brass kind of, you know, I wanted something sort of more interior designer and not like Govey. No offence to Govey, but you know, those kind, I wanted something that looked nice in my kitchen.
1:01:22 Speaker 07 Right.
1:01:23 Speaker 00 Rather than sort of RGB lights. And that's where you really do need to use smart switches. Even Hughes stuff, they have fixtures which are nice, but they're still like black. There's very little kind of interior design happening with smart light fixtures, which is a shame.
1:01:39 Speaker 07 Very contemporary, very Scandinavian.
1:01:43 Speaker 00 Yes, exactly. And then the one sort of exception to the rule I have in my kitchen is I have one Akara H2 dual switch, which uses Zigbee Allthread, which is interesting. You can choose between the two. Either one connects it to Apple Home. And it's a dual switch because the way my kitchen was wired, I have lights above my sink and under cabinet lightings that go into the same circuit. And have to have, and there aren't very many smart switches out there that have that dual option.
1:02:14 Speaker 07 True, true. Because in the old days, that would just go to those small switches that would kind of stick through what would normally be used for an electrical outlet. And you'd just have one switch on top of the other. Those Akara switches are beautiful svelte devices that are also incredibly powerful.
1:02:34 Speaker 00 One thing I really wanted for my under cabinet lighting was colour lighting. And I wasn't able to do that because when I remodeled my kitchen, there were no good options for hardwired under cabinet LED colour changing lighting. There are now some, GE Sync has one. And then, yeah, so the living room is mainly bulbs. I have Hue bulbs, well, actually, I just switched them out. I have a Cara bulbs now in the living room. But thankfully, those now work through Matter. And then I have two dumb LED bulbs connected to a Lucroix Caserta switch. I have Nanoleaf panels on the wall and I have a Lifex smart lamp for like ambient lighting.
1:03:16 Speaker 00 Again, everything there works now through Apple Home, thanks to Matter.
1:03:20 Speaker 07 Nice.
1:03:20 Speaker 00 And then the rest of the house, I mentioned my kids' bedrooms earlier, that's Hue lighting. And then my bedroom has dumb, bad word, I'm sorry, non-smart LED eight can lights that are BR40s. I do not know what was in my builder's mind when he did this.
1:03:39 Speaker 07 Wow.
1:03:40 Speaker 00 Because I know.
1:03:42 Speaker 07 Those are massive.
1:03:43 Speaker 00 I know, they're huge. It's like a runway in my bedroom when the lights are at full brightness. It's crazy. But I have those connected right now to a Gen 1 Brilliant wall switch, which is a touchscreen wall switch. And that's where I also, I do have a neutral wire in this room because it's newer. So I use this one to test different switches quite often. Motion detection is quite useful for me in this one. I like to have the lights turn on as I walk in, as long as I can adjust the timing because there's nothing worse than like a cat walking past at 2am and turning your lights on. So, yes, I do adjust when those can turn on. And then on my bedside table lamps, I have, I'm testing two Hue lamps right now.
1:04:26 Speaker 00 They have the Twilight and the table lamp, and they are actually awesome, the Twilight especially, for those kind of sleep wake up routines we were talking about earlier. They kind of take it to the next level from the bulbs. So, and then in my bathroom, I have a very complicated setup. I have four Hue bulbs in my vanity, which, you know, vanity has like four lights, controlled by a TP-Link Tappo.
1:04:53 Speaker 00 Matter on off switch because you cannot put LED bulbs, smart LED bulbs on a dimmer
1:04:59 Speaker 07 Right.
1:04:59 Speaker 00 switch because they'll go nuts. So it's an on off switch. And then I also have the fan and the two regular light fixtures in the room all controlled by Tapos. So I have four Tapos smart switches in there and those are all matter now. So again, I can control all of that through Apple Home and I also can control the tone of the lights, which is very important when you are using vanity lights because you want really bright light
1:05:24 Speaker 07 Yep.
1:05:24 Speaker 00 in the mornings when you're doing makeup or getting ready. But when you walk in to go to the loo at 2am, you want it to be really dim. So that unfortunately, I really want to get that set up with a motion sensor because that's obviously a nice feature when you walk in a room at night. But I have not managed to get it to work properly, mainly because something keeps going wrong and it will turn off. And my husband said to me, if the lights turn off in the bathroom on me one more time, I'm going to rip them out of the wall. So.
1:05:50 Speaker 07 Yeah, I get that every once in a while.
1:05:52 Speaker 00 Got to do some work there. But yes, throughout the house, I do have a few areas I use motion sensors, but as you mentioned, those specific use cases is where I find it most helpful. So I also have a Hue bulb and a Hue motion sensor in my laundry room. As you mentioned, that's something you do. And that works really well because you can use Hue's adaptive lighting feature where you just press a button in the app and it will automatically schedule the light to turn on at a different temperature based on the time of day. So if I walk into the laundry room at 2am, not something I do regularly, it will come on at a dimmer light. Whereas when I walk in at 8am, it comes on nice and bright. So I can see what I'm doing.
1:06:34 Speaker 07 Yep. What are you doing for outside lighting?
1:06:37 Speaker 00 Yes. So that is an area I've been testing a lot of new stuff because you mentioned Hue was the main player in this space for a long time and they were kind of the only player. But recently, a lot of people have moved into this space. So I actually right now have the Nano Leaf outdoor string lights around my patio and the Lifex string lights around my porch. And they're great. They're so fun. Again, during holidays, you can change the colors and then but generally we just have them on the, you know, a nice sort of warm tone. So it's lovely to sit out at night under them. And then I have, I actually have some Ring motion sensing activated lights along the path.
1:07:21 Speaker 00 Um. But mine are battery powered. I bought, actually got them a long time ago. They recently, I think they have solar powered ones now. The battery power means that half the time they're dead and I haven't gotten around to put the fifteen hundred D batteries back into them. I need to get them working again.
1:07:37 Speaker 07 Yep, I remember those very well.
1:07:39 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was their first ones that came out, I think. And then I recently added, um, and I've been testing the AI dot. AI dot is the name of the brand and they have little solar powered path lights and those are colorful as well. Um, they're Bluetooth though, which has been a bit of a pain because this is the issue. Once you put things in the garden, connectivity can become a problem.
1:08:02 Speaker 07 Yep.
1:08:02 Speaker 00 And then I have floodlight cameras. So like a Ring floodlight camera, I, I test a lot of different floodlight cameras. So that, that's the security lighting. And then just a week or so ago, I installed a new device from Govee, which is something I had never come across before. It's basically like a street lamp. It's a smart street lamp that you can stick in your garden. It's huge. It's like ten foot tall and it has this awesome big kind of canopy and you can have lights that go up, but you can also have lights that go down and it's all color changing. And when I turn it on at night, my whole backyard is like lit up.
1:08:41 Speaker 07 Yeah, it's a lot of lumens, if I remember correctly.
1:08:44 Speaker 00 A lot of lumens, yes.
1:08:48 Speaker 00 But I have definitely restrained from the permanent outdoor lighting thing that everyone's doing on the houses.
1:08:54 Speaker 07 Yeah, me too.
1:08:55 Speaker 00 Uh, I think Govee and NanoLeaf all have those. GE Sync, I think also has a, um, an option there. And I just can't get into that. It just seems like a bit too much for me. So.
1:09:09 Speaker 07 Yeah, well, I, I look at that as like I look at smart fridges, right? It, my house is going to be there forever. This technology is going to be outdated in five or six years, probably. So do I really want to invest the time to install something, quote, permanently? Uh, I don't know how I feel about that.
1:09:28 Speaker 00 Okay. So thanks for the rundown. Hopefully some of that will give you some inspiration. Um, Cole, from your question of how others automate their lights. But we're going to move on to another question about smart lighting. And this is from Ty from Oregon. And he's actually called in and left us a voicemail. So we're going to listen to that now.
1:09:49 Speaker 08 Hi Verge team. I've been doing the smart home thing for a while now and Home Assistant is my hub for all the stuff. It makes life so much easier. I have the house where I want it, but realized that I might be setting myself up for some future headaches if I ever want to sell. I have a whole bunch of different systems. Thread where I can get it, Wi-Fi where I can't, and I'm currently running Govey recessed LED lights, LFX overheads, Modern Forms fans with light attachments, Shelley relay switches, as well as a bunch of Casa switches that I've turned into smart scene controllers. If I ever want to leave this place, am I just absolutely hosed? Thanks for the time. I appreciate it.
1:10:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. This is a very common issue when it comes to the smart home and it's becoming a bigger and bigger issue as the smart home matures and more and more people have smart homes and more and more people are moving from smart homes. And this is actually something that I've written about in the past, so that we have a whole article on The Verge about how to move your smart home. And I know, Richard, you did a couple of episodes of your Smart Home Show podcast dedicated to this exact question.
1:11:02 Speaker 07 Correct.
1:11:03 Speaker 00 So go listen to those for more details. We'll include some links. But for now, what would your sort of first response to this question be, other than what a cool lighting setup you have? Ty, I'm impressed.
1:11:17 Speaker 07 Impressive.
1:11:18 Speaker 00 Very impressed.
1:11:19 Speaker 07 You know, the how hosed are you thing, I think, really depends on like what you want to have happen to all of that stuff when you move. I'm assuming you'll want to take some of it with you. Other stuff that's built in, like thermostats and doorbells and things like that, you probably don't want to take with you. You'll probably leave those behind. So the biggest thing that I learned the last time that I did this, and I ended up transferring a bunch of accounts over to make this easier, and now I do this this way in my new home, is I created a house email address.
1:12:00 Speaker 00 That's exactly what I say to do in my article. I think Stacy Higginbotham was the one who came up with this idea.
1:12:06 Speaker 07 I think it was Stacy.
1:12:07 Speaker 00 It was Stacy, so props to Stacy. It's such a good idea. Sorry, you keep explaining.
1:12:12 Speaker 07 Well, and so for my Ring account and for my Chamberlain account for the garage door and for my Nest account, actually Nest account, yes, but now with Google, you can't really do that anymore. But for things that are more or less permanent, for all of those, I created the accounts using the house email address. And the reason for that was that when I moved from my last house, I just wanted to sign that stuff over to the next owner. And I didn't want to have to worry about how do we transfer these out of my account? And then they have to figure it all out to set it all up again? What a hassle would that be? So it was a lot easier if it was just on a house account.
1:12:52 Speaker 07 And then there is the undoing of things that you want to take with you. And that in itself can take a lot of time. Don't underestimate what effort that can be, because you may have routines and scenes and stuff like that that you want to probably capture, because if they're useful to you, they might be useful to you in a new home and a new setup. So that requires a fair amount of planning. But seriously, if you've invested in Lifex and Govee and other bulbs that are a lot more expensive than just your average LED bulb, take them with you. You don't want to be leaving that kind of stuff behind.
1:13:35 Speaker 00 Just go to Home Depot and buy a few inexpensive decent LEDs and swap them back in and take those with you. I agree. Yeah, but you know, there are some studies that say that the smart features in homes can help sell it. So if you're kind of setting the home up, showing it off with the smart features in, then obviously those are likely need to convey or be part of your sales process. So I did check in. So you mentioned, Ty, that you use Home Assistant. And I did check in with Paulos, who is the founder and CEO of Home Assistant, about what he would recommend
1:14:15 Speaker 00 in terms of moving your system to someone else. Because as he points out, Home Assistant is all local. So in theory, and his answer is, you can just hand over the password and username to the new owner, and they can just change it to their own, and everything should just work. It should just switch over. However, should, there's definitely a should in there. There isn't like an official transfer method, he said. But the should is if any of the products that you're using with Home Assistant are cloud dependent, which they could be, like the GoVee and the LifeX could, you could be using with Wi-Fi or in the cloud, although
1:14:59 Speaker 00 both of them now have Matter support. But if they are cloud dependent, then you're going to have to transfer somehow that account. And that's where things get a little tricky. And he said, you know, that would mean that, you know, some sort of authentication is going to be required that you'd need to share. And this is where having set them up originally on a house email account would make life a lot easier for you. But Paulos did say to us about this question, that he said, this is something that open standards will solve because they're all local. And just to clarify that, that means that your devices are working locally in your home and not dependent on the internet. So they work just like your standard door lock would. Like, you wouldn't have to worry about transferring
1:15:43 Speaker 00 ownership of your door lock, or any other, most of the other things that you would leave in your house when you sell it to someone. And this is something that things like Matter and Home Assistant brands and systems that are working locally without cloud dependencies.
1:15:59 Speaker 00 Should make easier because they're just going to become part of the infrastructure of our home. Doesn't mean you won't have an internet connection because there are benefits to that, but you don't have to have the internet connection, right?
1:16:10 Speaker 07 Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that's a really optimistic solution. I think the biggest thing that concerns me about that is that I'm assuming if you've put this much time into your home assistant environment, you've probably created some automations that are specific to your household's use of the space.
1:16:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:16:33 Speaker 07 So those may be jarring or undesired by a new homeowner. So one of the other things that you should make sure you do is talk with the buyer during the purchasing process. Once you have that contract signed, find out, do they want you to keep this stuff there? Do they want to, you know, remove some of it? If they're ultimately going to remove it anyway, then why not keep the assets? And I would suggest turning off most of your automated stuff for them to then determine which of those routines makes sense for their lifestyle.
1:17:15 Speaker 00 Yes. So I don't know if you remember, Richard, a while back I contacted you because a colleague at The Verge's brother had just moved into a new house that had all Insty on, but they had no idea of what was happening or how to use it. And like, the lights would just turn on at random times in the day and the shades would raise and they didn't know what to do. They had no idea. And at this point, that company was no longer really in business. So they're back, as we've recently discussed. But yes, they were, this is, if you're going to leave stuff, please tell the person that you're selling the house to how to use it, because you're just setting them up for a really bad experience otherwise. Excellent. Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you. That was, appreciate
1:17:58 Speaker 00 that call, Ty. Hopefully, we helped a little bit there. But right now, we have to go to a break and we're going to have more of your questions when we come back.
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1:19:46 Speaker 00 We are back with Richard Gunther. Thank you, Richard, for joining us. I have a few more questions for you, so let's dive right in. Okay, the first one, another, this is the reverse of the story that we just answered, which is, this is from Nicholas Martin. This is another email he sent and I'm going to run through what he said. So, "I'm planning to buy a house in the coming months and I've started thinking seriously about the smart devices I'd like to install. Right now I live in a rented apartment, so I've kept things fairly simple when it comes to lighting. I use Philip Hu bulbs in the main rooms, Hu switches and..." And I've installed Hue switches on top of the existing ones, which is far from ideal, especially for guests. And I'd also really like to make sure that if my network,
1:20:31 Speaker 00 Hue Bridge or Border Router, so that would be the Thread Border Router, goes down, my lights still work like normal. And that's where things start getting tricky. It feels like the issue of how smart home devices behave during technical failures doesn't get much coverage. And then from what I've seen on Reddit, an increasing number of people are opting for smart switches over smart bulbs. This seems like a promising approach, but I'm worried it might mean losing the flexibility of RGB lighting, unless I use a decoupled smart switch that always stays on. But if I go that route, wouldn't the switch stop working properly in case of a smart home failure? I've read about Zigbee and Matter Binding as possible solutions,
1:21:12 Speaker 00 but this all feels way more complicated than it should be for something as basic as turning the lights on and off. And that's why I'd love to hear your take. Do you think the better approach is smart switches or smart bulbs? Or maybe some kind of hybrid setup? And if so, how would this work? The eternal question, bulbs or switches?
1:21:34 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:21:35 Speaker 00 Richard, if you were starting from scratch, which would you go for and why?
1:21:40 Speaker 07 You and I have both written about this in the past. And I'm on Team Switch, and that's primarily because most of my lighting is dimmable, but not color changing.
1:21:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:21:55 Speaker 07 It gets more complicated when you want color changing, as you indicated with your question regarding RGB lighting. And that's a problem that frankly, even in high-end custom installations, has not been solved in a way that I think is user-friendly.
1:22:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:22:16 Speaker 07 We still have this problem where there's on/off, and then there's switching between different color modes. And how do you handle that? In the space of one switch and lots of companies are trying it. I don't think anyone's really nailed it well. Now, if you have smart bulbs and the primary thing that you want to do with a switch is just be able to control it and dim it. Then yes, the switches that have a smart bulb mode. There are a couple vendors putting those out. I know Zoos has them, Inavelli has them. Those are both for Z-Wave. GE Sync has this capability. The Lutron Aurora is an example of that.
1:22:58 Speaker 07 That may be one of the things that you're using when you talk about having a controller over your existing switch. It's a clever device, but you're right. You're dependent on your smart home system working to make that all work properly. That's a different question. Let's get to that in a second, but I'm curious where you are on Team Switch versus bulb.
1:23:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, so it's been an internal problem in my home for sure. And as I mentioned, I actually have some smart bulbs connected to a switch. So you can connect hue and color changing smart, any smart light bulb to a switch that is smart. As long as the switch that is smart is just on and off. It's when you want to dim that you get into issues. Mainly, there's a whole electrical reason, but the way a dimming system works is changing the level of power to the light. And when you do that, you mess with the power and you get flashing. I've had a light switch, a smart light switch from Caseta Frye.
1:24:03 Speaker 07 Yep.
1:24:03 Speaker 00 Because I had it connected to a Hue LED bulb. And then you have the horrible flickering when you're trying to control them. So it's just never a good solution that way. It's okay if you're just using a smart switch in most cases. That's the situation I have in my bathroom. But the problem there is I have to control them two different ways. So I have the, you know, turn on bathroom switch and then I have adjust vanity lights as different phrases that I can use to talk to my smart assistant to get what I want, which is not ideal. So I'm really interested in these switches that have smart bulb modes. I haven't been able to try any, and it's why I got quite excited when you mentioned you have Inovelli switches, because I understand that they're one brand that does this.
1:24:48 Speaker 07 Yep.
1:24:48 Speaker 00 But it sounds like you haven't set those up with colour changing bulbs yet.
1:24:52 Speaker 07 I have not tried that yet. That's something that I still want to do, but yes, that is possible.
1:24:58 Speaker 00 And then Accara is another brand I mentioned when I was talking about the ceiling light. So after I reviewed the ceiling light, they have come out with a smart switch that can control their bulbs specifically. And this is again where you get into the smart lighting cabal, where you really, if you stick with one brand, generally you might, you will get solutions like this. So Accara does have switches that have smart bulb mode for their bulbs and their light fixtures. Unfortunately, my smart ceiling light is in a room that does not have neutral wires, so I cannot use their smart light bulb switch. So it feels like this is a problem that still hasn't been solved, especially because you don't want necessarily to always use one brand.
1:25:43 Speaker 00 One of the great scenarios for Nicholas here is that he is moving into a new home, and that's starting from scratch. I'm so jealous. I would love to start from scratch, just do it all over, because I think today there are better solutions. I think one of them in this scenario would be choosing a brand like Inovelli or Accara that has smart bulb mode and doing both, because if you want the colour changing lights, you want to keep using your Hue bulbs, but you don't want to keep using their remotes, which work fine, and that's what I have in my kids' rooms are the remotes. That's how they control their lights, but it's not, as he mentions, not great for guests. And it is, it's just not an ideal solution.
1:26:27 Speaker 00 I wish you would partner with someone maybe to come. I mean, they do have the run less wire switches, but those don't, they also don't help with the colour changing. You want to be able to control the light changing as well, the colour changing. And so then they have, you know, buttons. This is another area that buttons are good. But yeah, I think what I'm hoping we're going to see, and he mentions here matter binding, and I, this is. Definitely future casting. This is not something that's really ready yet. And I know, Richard, that you're going to have some thoughts on matterminding. But what this is going to do essentially is allow you to bind a switch to a light locally.
1:27:09 Speaker 00 And this addresses your other question about reliability. So what will happen is that the light switch and the light bulb, and this could be multiple light switches and multiple light bulbs, will have like a local, almost wire, invisible wire connected to each other. And that will be sort of permanently ingrained in their memory. And even if your hub goes down, your internet goes down, anything goes down other than the power, they will still be able to control each other. So you flip the switch, the light will turn on. And this is something that's part of Matter. It's also something that is part of the ZigBee standard. And I actually checked in with the CSA, which runs Matter about this. And Chris LePree, the CTO, said, you know,
1:27:52 Speaker 00 the major value here of binding these devices together is that it's speed and reliability. So the switch talks directly to the light. It's instantaneous versus, say, like a button, which would then have to talk to a hub and then maybe check rules on the cloud and then reply and tell the hub to contact the light. So all of this could take, you know, less than a few seconds or under a second, but still not as fast as flipping a light switch, which is what we need. So it's an exciting thing. It's not something that we've seen any brands adopt yet. Akara has said that they're looking into it, but it's going to be a while, I think, until, if this is even going to be a solution.
1:28:34 Speaker 00 But what is great about it is if it works in Matter, you wouldn't need to use the same brands. So in theory, if your Philips Hue bulbs worked with matterbinding and your Akara smart switch worked with matterbinding, you could bind them together. And that feels like a future I'm excited for. Richard, throw cold water over me.
1:28:56 Speaker 07 I agree, I agree. I just think we're, I think we're a far way out for that. I mean, we do have this same sort of thing in Zigbee and frankly, it's not dissimilar from how Insteon products work with each other. They directly communicate with each other without the need for that hub to trigger each other. So it is promising. It could solve a lot of these problems. You mentioned Akara in your hybrid situation. I think the best product that Akara offers now to help with this problem is their four-button scene controller. So they have a scene controller that has a switch in it that allows one of the buttons
1:29:40 Speaker 07 to be a switch and control the actual load, so turning it on or off. And then the other three buttons can be set to trigger any matter scene. So that could be different styles of using the light, different colors, or different moods that you want to set so that you have one to turn it on and then the others could trigger those scenes. You could even have those scenes potentially also turn the light on if you didn't want to have to manually turn it on first. So there's some options for you. We're just not fully there yet.
1:30:19 Speaker 00 No, no. So in the interim, Nicholas, I mean, you keep your Hue bulbs, bring them along. They work with Matter and yes, switches right now, I think it sounds like maybe the Akara switches with the scenes could be a good way of controlling some of the devices, or Innovelley switches with their smart bulb mode. Now, those work with any smart bulbs, correct? Those aren't just, they don't, because Innovelley doesn't make their own bulbs.
1:30:47 Speaker 07 Correct.
1:30:48 Speaker 00 So those would work with any smart bulbs.
1:30:49 Speaker 07 Yeah, it works with whatever smart bulb is working with your controller system of choice, which would either be something through Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter.
1:30:59 Speaker 00 And then, of course, the other solution, if you're handy or you're getting an electrician to do all of this, is the relays that we talked about earlier. And those would connect your smart bulbs through regular switches to any smart platform that you like. Shelley being one of the options there. Akara also has relays too. So hopefully, there's some solutions there for you, Nicholas. And we are going to jump to another question. This one is...
1:31:24 Speaker 00 Another Hue and Accara one. This one is another bit of a head scratcher and it's an interesting one to kind of follow on from this last question. This is from Simon Salvin and his question is, I have Hue lighting and Accara wireless switches. These are all set up through the Apple Home app and the switches can be temperamental at times. I see I can add the Hue bridge to Accara via Matter, which I'm thinking could give me greater control setup in the Accara app. Would you advise this? And would this still keep all the lights in the Home app for controlling certain lights without switches and automations already created? Although I have the Accara M2 hub, he points out.
1:32:09 Speaker 00 And he asks, should I be able to pair the Hue hub to that without Matter? I'm sorry, this one is quite complicated. And I did reach out to Accara just to make sure we got this one right. And you know, this goes to what we talked about before, about how Matter can sort of help you integrate smart lighting from different brands. Because what Accara has done recently, and the same as IKEA, as we mentioned at the top of the show, is they've become Matter controllers, which allows you to add any Matter devices to their ecosystem, just as you add the Hue bridge to your Apple Home ecosystem, you can add anything to Accara and now IKEA and control through their app rather than through Apple Home.
1:32:54 Speaker 00 The question is here though, can you connect a Hue bridge to an Accara Matter controller? You can definitely do that through Matter, but you can't, I'm afraid, Simon, do it with the M2 hub. It only works with the M3 hub. And this is where Matter has been a bit difficult for people because there had been hope that much of the support for older devices would exist with Matter. But unfortunately, that has not been the case and a lot of companies have come out with newer devices, like Accara's come out with its M3 hub, which does support. Being a Matter controller. The M2 hub supports Matter, but not as being a controller. I'm getting into the weeds a little bit here. But if you do this, if you connect your Hue Bridge to the Matter controller, Acura Matter
1:33:38 Speaker 00 controller, you'll be able to control the Hue lights in the Acura Home app and automate them with Acura's excellent automation engine. But you cannot then control them via Apple Home if you just integrate them into Acura. You, to control them in Apple Home, you would need to generate a Matter code in the Acura Home app and use that code to add the Hue Bridge to Apple Home. This is using Matter's multi-admin feature that we haven't touched on, but this is one of the things that makes Matter interoperable. It allows you to use any Matter device with any Matter compatible platform, which is
1:34:23 Speaker 00 great for smart lighting, especially if you live in a house that's divided. So your spouse has an Android phone and you have an iPhone and he wants to talk to Google and you want to talk to Siri. And this is one of the great features of Matter, although it's been a little spotty to start with. It does seem to be getting better. And I've found recently, when I've tried adding Matter devices from one ecosystem to another, that it has started to work a lot more smoothly, which is, which is exciting. Is this something that you've spent much time doing or do you just stick everything with, stick with everything in Apple Home?
1:35:00 Speaker 07 I'm trying to keep most everything in Apple Home. But one thing that I did want to address here is, you know, it's, it's easy to get frustrated that the hub that you've invested in isn't necessarily going to support the new features. Before anyone gets conspiratorial about that, that's almost always because of the capabilities of the chipset in the hub.
1:35:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:35:23 Speaker 07 For this controller capability, it does require, you know, more horsepower, if you will, to use an old fashioned term. And some of the old chips just can't support that. So.
1:35:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:35:36 Speaker 07 While some vendors were able to say, oh yeah, our current chipset will support adding our devices into the Matter ecosystem, they weren't necessarily capable enough to be a controller, which means stuff like running those routines and making all of those connections. So.
1:35:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. And like the M2 does support Matter as a bridge, it's just not going to be a controller. And that's the and this is something that we're only starting to see recently is companies turning their hubs into controllers. And it's going to be interesting to see because, you know, in theory, you could set everything up now in your smart home with a Cara or Ikea and not need to use Apple or Google or Amazon if you don't want, which may appeal to people, especially as you can do all of both of those systems work locally. They both rely heavily on Zigbee. A Cara does have Thread and Ikea, it sounds like, is also going to be working with Thread. So that it's nice to have these options, especially if you're only interested in lighting,
1:36:36 Speaker 00 I think, if you don't need all of the other stuff. And these, as we've pointed out, Ikea and A Cara do have pretty powerful automation systems for lighting. So it's exciting to see this. This is kind of one of the reasons behind Matter, too. So it's exciting to see that we're companies start to do this. I think the other one that has done it is Flic. Have you had much experience with Flic devices?
1:36:58 Speaker 07 You know, I had used Flic in its first generation and just haven't kept up with it as it's evolved. It's grown into something quite powerful, actually.
1:37:09 Speaker 00 Yes. And their latest device is a dial. And this is something that I really want to see more of in smart lighting, because having that, that you said earlier, the physical controls are so important. They still are. Like, I think it's important to remember that when you have smart home and smart lighting, that doesn't mean you don't need switches anymore. It's just that your switches can now do so much more.
1:37:31 Speaker 07 Potentially.
1:37:32 Speaker 00 They, they, yes, potentially. And being able to sort of dial up the light and brightness, but also be able to press a button and turn to your movie time scene, or have everything turn to the colors of your favorite football team with just a tap. Those kind of features with physical controls, you know, what makes smart lighting really fun, I think.
1:37:52 Speaker 00 Excellent. Okay, so I think we've got time for one more quick one, which is along the same lines as we've been talking about here now that we dived into Matter. I managed, we managed to get quite far without too much Matter chat, which David would be proud of.
1:38:08 Speaker 00 But the last one here is from Shreya Gore, and he wanted, he's asking about Thread border routers. So I'm looking for a Thread border router to improve my Matter smart home setup. Is it still worth buying something like the Google Nest Mini 2 from 2020, given that it's already more than four years old? I'm unsure if Google plans to launch a newer version. The reason I ask is that a few of my Matter-enabled devices aren't controllable via Apple HomeKit, and considering Siri's current limitations, I'm hesitant to invest in a HomePod Mini. There are so many things we could unpack from that. First of all, is Nest making any more hardware? And second of all, what's going on with Siri?
1:38:53 Speaker 00 But the very first question answer I'm going to give you is no, do not buy a Google Nest Mini 2. Don't, don't, don't, don't. Mainly because it's not a Thread border router, so it will not help.
1:39:05 Speaker 00 If you're going to go buy any Google device right now to help with your Thread network, and this is, we mentioned earlier, Thread is a smart home protocol. A lot of lighting runs on it. It's one of the main protocols used by Matter. Google has a number of different devices, and we will include a link into the show notes for the ones that are Matter controllers and Thread border routers. But my suggestion would be to buy the Google TV Streamer 4K, which is their most recent product, so it is newer. It's not five years old. And it also doubles as a great streaming device. I've been using it, wrote a review of it, which we will also link in the show notes. And it's A perfect solution, even if you have a device you like to use for your TV now,
1:39:48 Speaker 00 you could just plug this in and use it as a Thread border router. It doesn't have smart speaker capabilities though. So if you were looking for something that you could talk to, and the best option right now would probably be the Nest Hub 2. So the one that is not quite as old, I think that's like 2023. That is also a Thread border router. What would you suggest here, Richard? Do you think having more Thread border routers will help his Matter smart home setup?
1:40:17 Speaker 07 Honestly, the thing that concerns me is that it sounds like current control is through, well, I don't know, I can't tell if control is through Apple Home or Google Home. And so that's one of the things that's hard to understand. Because they mentioned both the HomePod and the Google Nest Mini, I'm not sure what ecosystem they're hoping to stay in.
1:40:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:40:47 Speaker 07 I understand the hesitation to drop 99 bucks on a HomePod Mini. One thing that you might want to consider is looking on eBay or on Marketplace for folks that are getting rid of old HomePod Minis. I think it's not that hard to find this stuff secondhand and you can do a full wipe and then incorporate them into your home. I mean, you mentioned the 4K streaming device. That's a hundred dollar investment. That's the same price as the HomePod Mini.
1:41:22 Speaker 00 But it does more.
1:41:24 Speaker 07 It does, it does. And I love Google TV, I'm a big fan. So if that's something that you have in your home and might want to upgrade, that could be the perfect answer.
1:41:33 Speaker 00 And it does, I said, it doesn't have a speaker in it. It's not like a smart speaker, but you can use the remote to talk to the Google Assistant and control smart home devices through that. It also has a great little smart home panel that will pop out while you're watching TV. You can press a button and control your devices through that. But yes, I agree. The idea here is you've got two ecosystems and which one do you want to be in? And I use both of these ecosystems. So, you know, and this is again where Matter is helping because I, you know, you can have everything in both and control one thing using your Google TV remote and say, trigger my movie scene. But then you can also do that on your iPhone through your Apple Home app or through the control panel. It's nice to be able to have that flexibility.
1:42:16 Speaker 00 We're starting to see more and more of that with Matter. But just to wrap up the Thread question here, having a Thread border router is important for your Matter setup. If you do not have one, I recommend getting one because if you do not have a Thread border router, you cannot use Thread devices in your smart home. You can use Matter over Wi-Fi, but you cannot use Thread devices. And there are a lot of great new Thread devices out there, especially in the smart lighting space. And you only need a Thread, one Thread border router technically. More will help because they create, they're part of a mesh network. And if one goes down, the other one will pick up. So to the point about failures in the smart home, having more than one Thread border router will help.
1:42:58 Speaker 00 But you do not need to have a Thread border router from the smart home platform that you're using. Right. But yes, if you're using Apple Home and you add a Google Home streamer, you are adding a Thread border router to your network, whether or not it is an Apple Home device. So you're supporting your, your network and you're making it stronger. One of the problems with Thread border routers right now is when you add a new one to your home, it could create its own network, which would not help you. The good news is that Apple and Google are some of the companies that have actually done a good job at connecting their networks together. So you probably would be fine in this instance.
1:43:38 Speaker 00 It's Amazon and Eero and SmartThings that are still a little lagging in terms of making one healthy border router, Thread network when you add your devices. So as I've written about recently, this is something that all of the Thread manufacturers are working on. And with the 1.4 release, which is out now, by next year, I'm told, this shouldn't be a problem anymore. So as has been the theme of this episode, just wait and everything's going to get better.
1:44:12 Speaker 00 But I thank you so much, Richard, for your time and expertise. It's been really fun having you on. And any last pieces of advice you'd like to leave for our readers when it comes to smart lighting? Sorry, for our listeners?
1:44:25 Speaker 07 Yeah, I think the thing that I would just say is, you know, if you're hearing all of this and you're thinking, geez, maybe I should just wait till I do anything. I don't know that you really need to go that far. I think there are some good solutions out there that are not universally, but largely compatible with most of the ecosystems and with matter. And so it's a really good place to start. And most of the devices that are available now are going to, you know, take you many years into the future. The thing that I would be cautious of is that inclination to say, oh, but here on
1:45:05 Speaker 07 Amazon, I can get four of those bulbs for the same price as this one from Hu or Govey or name the more well-known vendor. There's a reason they're so inexpensive. And in my experience, a lot of those lower-priced, lesser-known brands are not going to last as well, are not going to future as well. And you'll be fighting more problems than solving them.
1:45:33 Speaker 00 Very good advice. Yes, it's worth investing a little bit of money into smart lighting. It pays off in dividends and far less headaches when it comes to setting everything up and troubleshooting, in my experience.
1:45:45 Speaker 07 Yep.
1:45:45 Speaker 00 Wise words, Richard. Very much appreciate your time this week. Thank you so much.
1:45:50 Speaker 07 Thank you.
1:45:53 Speaker 00 Okay, that's it for The Vergecast today. To read more about today's topics, check out the show notes or go to theverge.com. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, smart home dilemmas, you can always email us at [email protected] or keep calling the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions and ideas on what we should do on the show. We do a hotline question every week, so keep them coming. And if you like what we do here, please consider buying a paid subscription. Also, follow us on our new follow channels on theverge.com. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Marino. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:46:39 Speaker 00 Jake Kastanakis and the team will be here on Friday to talk about the news and I will be back next Tuesday. Thanks for listening.
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