How to save a smart home company

24:58We've got this going. What's the next one you want me to go spend time? Because I want to be thoughtful in 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 back in manufacturing and we have them back in stock. The other part then was related to the hubs. 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.

25:29But I really felt it was important that the app and the hub be a self-sustaining business. business and i realize that a lot of the competition a lot of people out there today they subsidize the app through hardware sales and 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 because they had not been invested in the app.

26:08So 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 so we've been taking that revenue and have been investing in improving the app, adding new features to the app, and building that back out. And for the most part, people have been accepting of that and understanding why we're doing that. And the assurance of them is it's not going to just shut down again one day. The lights aren't going to turn red. So when you say of that, so you instituted a subscription, is that right?

26:39Yes, a subscription, yeah. Okay, and for what? What do you need the subscription for? Like, can you use the devices without the subscription? Absolutely. As I mentioned, you don't need a hub. You don't need any kind of computer module. That is unique to Insteon. 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. 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.

27:18Yes. And how much does that cost now? The app is$39 a year and the hub is$99 with one year of free subscription. So I include one year with the subscription with the purchase of a new hub. And there's$39 here. If you buy two years, you get it for a little bit less. And what does that get you? 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.

28:02You just say, connect these two devices together. You can do that. You can set up timed events. And then, as we mentioned, you get voice. You get phone connections. So you can control. You also can get alerts now. So you can get an alert that the water sensor has gone off. And you can get an alert sent to your phone. or the door's been opened. So you get the alerts. So all those kind 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. Now, but these were features that previously the users had without having to pay.

28:37So how did that go down with the user base? Because that's generally not well-received. Well, again, I think that we have a special install 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. At that point, right? At that point, right. Because you were still ramping up the supply chain, right? Exactly right. So I think they appreciated the honesty, and they also now appreciated the investment because now they're seeing that the app is actually getting better.

29:16So they're not just putting, they're seeing the app improve. 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 cost is going to be through hardware versus, you know, the app, you know, it's one time a year fee. It's not that great. I mean,$39 isn't going to break anybody, so to speak. But you do get the pushback. I can get this from free before. And I said, yeah, but understand that's also partially why the company had to shut down. because they didn't have the revenue coming in to support it. And I don't want that to happen again.

29:51I don't want there to be an issue. I want to be able to continue the hub business as a self-sustaining business. And 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? Well, it's an interesting thing. So the lighting control, we have a little bit of a unique position, right? Because as I mentioned, you're going to continue to add products to the home and grow the home.

30:27So you get continued for that user. It's going to continue to get hardware sales. And so you can justify, potentially justify subsidizing the app. But if you go and look at the apps, most of the 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 main. 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, they're going to give me this free app for the rest of my life.

31:03and it's you can see it's not sustainable it becomes a little bit of a pyramid scheme of sorts you 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 the smart home is a pyramid scheme i like it and i think it also this helps to it puts it's incumbent upon the manufacturers and for us we got to add real value with the hub too in the app. We 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.

31:45So you don't have to use us either. And some of them are free. 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. A large portion of them continued with us. The renewal rates, because now this is our third year of 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.

32:23That'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. 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? It's all I can do to keep smiling. It's been horrific. It's just, I feel bad as I talk to others, particularly small businesses like mine. I mean, we're not that small, but we're still small compared to some of the big companies out there. It's tough because you can't plan. I don't know from one day to the other what's going to happen.

33:01So it's done a little bit of a kink in my plans for this year because I wanted to be more aggressively marketing and things. And right now I'm just focused on getting product back in and solving some of those kind of problems. But we do have plans for a big relaunch of the brand and company still this year. I know Insteon was an original launch partner with Apple HomeKit, but as I understand it, it doesn't work with Apple anymore. Correct. So obviously right now in the smart home, Mata and Thread, which is another protocol that can be used for lighting, is kind of the hot new thing. Is Mata something that Insteon is looking at?

33:42Because that would help with interoperability. No, absolutely. Matter is 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 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.

34:17But you'll have an interface into Matter so that you can then interconnect. And where Matter becomes is those people that are going to develop the apps to really be able to control the home. So that's the other part of Matter. 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. And Apple and HomeKit, I think that becomes important. So I plan, we'll get back to connection with HomeKit as they're Apple's now trying to get back into this marketplace, and we'll be there to support that.

34:51So we have plans. That's on the roadmap and, in fact, under work right now to be able to bring that capability back in. So you were retired three years ago when you bought a smart home company. So what do you see as the future for the smart home company and your role in it? I'm sure you'd like to get back to the beach in Hawaii at some point. My wife certainly would. Yeah, so I'd like to see the next couple of years that the company double or triple in size, which I think is very doable and makes it a nice size 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.

35:34And I see that evolving. And then someone taking, you know, my day-to-day kind of responsibilities. And I'll kind of just, you know, go to maybe an advisory, you know, kind of level with the company and help it continue to grow from that standpoint. 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 on its own? No, 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 like I said, the team, yes, they do it for a salary, but that's not why they're doing it.

36:12They're doing it because they really care about the customers. I know it sounds corny and 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 the next couple of years, you know, hopefully I'm going to be able to do that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess, you know, the reason I ask that question is because Insteon users have obviously been through a lot.

36:47So 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 Insteon? What kind of assurances can Insteon 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? I'm 100 % sure. I'm really committed to it. Yes. 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.

37:26If that 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 of the products out to somebody else from that standpoint. And 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. And in fact, I have it over here in the desk here, our values. And the first value here is transparency to the customer base and telling them what's going on and not hiding from 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.

38:12And 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 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. It's always amazing to me when I call a customer and I just say, this is Ken from Incyon. 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? That's you? I go, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry to take your time. I go, no, no, I learned this at Hewlett Packard.

38:48You've got to talk to your customers. The CEO of HP would do the same thing, and that's what he taught me. You've 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. 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.

39:21Because smart lighting really does make a big difference. I know when 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 Instaion back. And what's next for the company? I understand you've recently relaunched the website for Insteon, rebranded. So just tell us a little bit about what's changed and what the future is here for the technology and the product.

39:54Well, 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, I'm open to any ideas. If you're an Instaon customer or you're not, I'm open.

40:28If there's some things we can be doing better, you think things we ought to focus on, please reach out to me and let me know. We'll put his home address in the show notes. There you go. 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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43:11We'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.

43:52So a quick bit of background on Richard. 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. I'm very glad to be here. I always love talking about lighting, perhaps a little bit too much. Great. Okay. So I'm going to, we have like quite a lot of questions here. I'm not sure how many we'll get through, but we're going to kick it off with one that seems deceptively easy, which is quite a common theme here.

44:36It's like, oh, but surely that's simple. 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. 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. 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.

45:40And, you know, it could be up to, say, 30 minutes time. I wake up a little bit faster than that. I used to do this in my home 10 years ago or more with basic Insteon products. This is something that Insteon 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...

46:24I'm going with whatever you want to say because I'm not even going to try. 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. 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.

47:01Apple Home does have adaptive lighting, which is that changing the light throughout the day. But it's not the same thing as gradually turning on in the morning. It's just changing the tone of the light. It doesn't adjust the brightness. It just changed the tone, which is, it seems like a small thing. And one day, maybe Apple Home will support this. But yeah, it's frustrating. 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.

47:40There 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. It does. And yeah, this is exciting with the new Matter Controller feature coming to more hubs and potentially being able to use the features that are more specific to what you want to do in the smart home. I mean, IKEA is very much focused around lighting, so this is something they offer. So I'll be really interested to see if that's going to be possible because, in theory, you'll to the IKEA hub and then set whatever routines and options it offers on those bulbs.

48:23So yeah, stay tuned. This may get easier. Hopefully. 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. 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.

49:05And 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 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.

49:48You run everything on HomeKit, which is using the Home app on your iPhone. 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. So Apple's about making stuff simple, so they hide a lot of stuff. this app controller for home kit helps you see all those other facets or attributes of your devices which could be things like ramp rate for example the levitin 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 levitin switches up to 25 seconds it's not an enormous amount of time.

51:00But that flexibility is really nice and has its uses for different seams. 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 Innoveli matter-based switches. Innoveli is a third party that creates switches for systems that are compatible with matter or compatible with Zigbee or Z-Wave.

51:55And I also have some Insteon switches through my home. I've had Insteon 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 can blame you, Jen, for getting me hooked on the Q 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.

52:55It 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. 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 of the smart lighting. The motion sensors seem like the solution, but they are not always. No, that's exactly right. So, you know, I mentioned motion sensors. They work in certain cases.

53:38I 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's sometimes where it's hard to tune a motion sensor or have a motion sensor in the right place 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.

54:31I don't need anything fancy for that. 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-bed routine where I constantly hear from Siri telling me that she wasn't able to turn something that I had asked off. Always. There's always something. So you just say when you go, hey, S, it's time to go to bed. Good night or I'm going to bed. It's very flexible in what you can say.

55:15And 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. Right. 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. Oh, security things. Yeah, that's great. And do you automate all of this through Apple? All of it through Apple. Yep. Do you also use buttons at all so that you don't have to use voice control? Oh, yeah.

55:55Oh, 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. Nice. Those are very helpful to just get all the right lights on for the right use of the space. Okay, well, before we jump into my setup with anything else you wanted to call out that we hadn't mentioned about your setup?

56:44Well, 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? 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.

57:22Oftentimes, 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. And no, that was a great episode. I listened to it and we'll 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.

58:02One 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. 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.

58:45There 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 Leviton app to turn off after an hour. 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.

59:21The 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. 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 we're not in pitch black.

1:00:06You know, 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 HomeKit, 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. 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.

1:00:50So 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. 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. 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, or this is actually in my kitchen.

1:01:28I 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 Govee. No offense to Govee, but you know, those kinds, I wanted something that looked nice in my kitchen 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. Very contemporary, very Scandinavian. 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 or Thread, which is interesting.

1:02:15You 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 I have to have, and there aren't very many smart switches out there that have that dual option. 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 just have one switch on top of the other. Those Aqara switches are beautiful, svelte devices that are also incredibly powerful.

1:02:55One thing I really wanted for my under-cabinet lighting was color 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 color-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 Acara bulbs now in the living room. But thankfully, those now work through Matter. And then I have two dumb LED bulbs connected to a Lutron Caseta switch. I have Nanoleaf panels on the wall, and I have a LIFX smart lamp for ambient lighting.

1:03:37Again, everything there works now through Apple Home, thanks to Matter. Nice. 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. Wow. I know. Those are massive. I know. They're huge. It's like a runway in my bedroom when the lights are a 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 do have a neutral wire in this room because it's newer so I use this one to test different switches quite often.

1:04:27Motion 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 2 a.m. 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. 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.

1:05:05I have four Hue bulbs in my vanity, which, you know, the vanity has like four lights, controlled by a TP-Link TAPO matter on-off switch, because you cannot put LED bulbs, smart LED bulbs on a dimmer 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 Tapo. So I have four Tapo 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 in the mornings when you're doing makeup or getting ready.

1:05:48But when you walk in to go to the Lua at 2 a.m., 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. Yeah, I get that every once in a while. Got to do some work there. But yes, throughout the house, I do have a few areas I use motion sensors.

1:06:21But 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 2 a.m., not something I do regularly. It will come on at a dimmer light, whereas when I walk in at 8 a.m., it comes on nice and bright so I can see what I'm doing.

1:06:55Yep. What are you doing for outside lighting? 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 Nanoleaf Outdoor String Lights around my patio and the LIFX 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, you know, a nice sort of warm tone. So it's lovely to sit out at night under them.

1:07:35And then I have, I actually have some ring motion sensing activated lights along the path. But mine are battery-powered. I 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 1500D batteries back into them. I need to get them working again. Yep, I remember those very well. Yeah, that was their first ones that came out, I think. And then I recently added, and I've been testing the AI Dot. AI Dot is the name of the brand, and they have little solar-powered path lights.

1:08:13And those are colorful as well. 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. And then I have floodlight cameras. So like a ring floodlight camera. I test a lot of different floodlight cameras. So that's the security lighting. And then just a week or so ago, I installed a new device from Govi, 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 10 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.

1:08:58When I turn it on at night, my whole backyard is like lit up. Yeah, it's a lot of lumens if I remember correctly. A lot of lumens, yes. But I have definitely restrained from the permanent outdoor lighting thing that everyone's doing on the houses. Yeah, me too. I think Govi and Nanoleaf all have those. GE Sync, I think, also has an option there. And I just can't get into that. It just seems like a bit too much for me. So. Yeah. Well, I look at that as like I look at smart fridges, right? My house is going to be there forever. This technology is going to be outdated in five or six years, probably.

1:09:41So do I really want to invest the time to install something, quote, permanently? I don't know how I feel about that. Okay, so thanks for the rundown. Hopefully some of that will give you some inspiration, 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. 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.

1:10:19I 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 Govee recessed LED lights, LIFX overheads, modern forms fans with light attachments, Shelly relay switches, as well as a bunch of Kasa 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. Yeah. This is a very common issue when it comes to the smart home.

1:11:03And 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 episodes of your Smart Home Show podcast dedicated to this exact question. Correct. 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?

1:11:36Ty, I'm impressed. Impressive. Very impressed. You know, the how hosed are you thing, I think, really depends on 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 That's exactly what I say to do in my article.

1:12:25I think Stacey Higginbotham was the one who came up with this idea. I think it was Stacey. It was Stacey. So props to Stacey. It's such a good idea. Sorry, you keep explaining. 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.

1:13:01And 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. 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'll 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.

1:13:43But seriously, if you've invested in LIFX and Govi 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. Just go to Home Depot and buy a few, you know, inexpensive, decent LEDs and swap them back in and take those with you. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there are some studies that say 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.

1:14:24So I did check in. So you mentioned, Ty, that you use Home Assistant. And I did check in with Paolo, who is the founder and CEO of Home Assistant, about what he would recommend 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 Govi and the LifeX could, you could be using with Wi-Fi or in the cloud, although both of them now have MATA support.

1:15:22But 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 Paolo 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.

1:15:58So they work just like your standard door lock would. Like you wouldn't have to worry about transferring ownership of your door lock or 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 should make easier because they're just going to become part of the infrastructure of our home. It 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?

1:16:32Right. 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 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. Yeah. 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 remove some of it?

1:17:16If 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 make sense for their lifestyle. 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 Insti 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.

1:17:56And 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 uh appreciate that call tie hopefully we helped a little bit there um 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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1:20:22We 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 the lighting. I use Philips Hue bulbs in the main rooms, Hue switches and sensors.

1:20:57And 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, 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.

1:21:40But 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, 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. Richard, if you were starting from scratch, which would you go for and why? You and I have both written about this in the past.

1:22:19And I'm on team switch. And that's primarily because most of my lighting is dimmable, but not color changing. 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. Yeah. We still have this problem where there's on-off and then there is 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.

1:23:08Now, 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, Inovelli has them. Those are both for Z-Wave. GE Sync has this capability. The Lutron Aurora is an example of that. 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.

1:23:53That's a different question. Let's get to that in a second, but I'm curious where you are on team switch versus bulb. 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.

1:24:36I've had a light switch, a smart light switch from Caseta Fry 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.

1:25:16I 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. But it sounds like you haven't set those up with color changing bulbs yet. I have not tried that yet. That's something that I still want to do. But yes, that is possible. And then Akara 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.

1:25:52Really, if you stick with one brand, generally you will get solutions like this. So, Akara 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. 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.

1:26:31Just 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 Acara that has smart bulb mode and doing both. because if you want the color-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 mentioned, not great for guests, and it's just not an ideal solution. I wish Hue would partner with someone maybe. I mean, they do have the run-less wire switches, but they also don't help with the color-changing.

1:27:12You want to be able to control the light changing as well, the color 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 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 matter binding. But what this is going to do, essentially, is allow you to bind a switch to a light locally. 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.

1:28:02and 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 MATA. It's also something that is part of the Zigbee standard. And I actually checked in with the CSA, which runs MATA, about this. And Chris Lepre, the CTO, said, you know, the major value here of binding these devices together is 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.

1:28:48So 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. Acara 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. 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 matter binding and your Acara smart switch worked with matter binding, you could bind them together.

1:29:26And that feels like a future I'm excited for. Richard, throw cold water over me. No, I agree. I agree. 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 Aqara in your hybrid situation. I think the best product that Aqara 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 to be a switch and control the actual load, so turning it on or off.

1:30:21And 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. 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 Inovelli switches with their smart bulb mode.

1:31:17Now, those work with any smart bulbs, correct? Those aren't just, they don't, because Innoveli doesn't make their own bulbs. So those would work with any smart bulbs. 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. 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.

1:31:49Acara 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 another Hue and Acara 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 this is his question is, I have Hue lighting and Acara 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 Acara via Matter, which I'm thinking could give me greater control setup in the Acara app.

1:32:30Would 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 Acara M2 hub, he points out, 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 Acara 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 Acara 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.

1:33:19Just as you add the huge bridge to your Apple Home ecosystem, you can add anything to Acara and now Ikea and control through their app rather than through Apple Home. The question is here, though, can you connect a HueBridge to an Acara 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 Acara's come out with its M3 hub, which does support being a Matter controller.

1:34:03The 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, Acara Matter controller, you'll be able to control the Hue lights in the Acara Home app and automate them with Acara's excellent automation engine. But You cannot then control them via Apple Home if you just integrate them into Acara. To control them in Apple Home, you would need to generate a Matter code in the Acara Home app and use that code to add the Hubridge 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.

1:34:54It allows you to use any Matter device with any Matter-compatible platform, which is 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 MATA, 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 MATA devices from one ecosystem to another that it has started to work a lot more smoothly, which is exciting. Is this something that you've spent much time doing or do you just stick with everything in Apple Home?

1:35:37I'm trying to keep most everything in Apple Home. But one thing that I did want to address here is, you know, 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. 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 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.

1:36:29Yeah, and the M2 does support Matter as a bridge, it's just not going to be a controller. 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 Akara 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. Akara does have Thread and Ikea, it sounds like, is also going to be working with thread.

1:37:08So it's nice to have these options, especially if you're only interested in lighting, I think, if you don't need all of the other stuff. And these, as we've pointed out, IKEA and Bacara 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 2. So it's exciting to see that companies start to do this. I think the other one that has done it is Flick. Have you had much experience with Flick devices? You know, I had used Flick in its first generation and just haven't kept up with it as it's evolved. It's grown into something quite powerful, actually.

1:37:46Yes. 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, like 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. Potentially. 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.

1:38:22Those kind of features with physical controls, you know, what makes smart lighting really fun, I think. 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 MATA. We managed to get quite far without too much MATA chat, which David would be proud of. But the last one here is from Shreyas Gore, and 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?

1:39:06I'm unsure if Google plans to launch a newer version. The reason I ask is that a few of my Mata-enabled devices aren't controllable via Apple HomeKit. And considering Siri's current limitations, I'm hesitant to invest in a HomePod Mini. There's 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? 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. 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.

1:39:50A lot of lighting runs on it. It's one of the main protocols used by MATA. Google has a number of different devices, and we'll include a link into the show notes for the ones that are MATA 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'd like to use for your TV now, you could just plug this in and use it as a threadboard or router.

1:40:28It doesn't have smart speaker capabilities, though. So if you were looking for something that you could talk to, 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? 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.

1:41:11Because they mentioned both the HomePod and the Google Nest Mini, I'm not sure what ecosystem they're hoping to stay in. I understand the hesitation to drop$99 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$100 investment. That's the same price as the HomePod mini. But it does more. It does. It does. And I love Google TV.

1:42:03I'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. 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 ones you want to be in. And I use both of these ecosystems. So, you know, then this is, again, where Matter is helping because, you know, you can have everything in both and control one thing using your Google TV remote and, say, trigger my movie scene.

1:42:45But 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. 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. You cannot use thread devices. And there are a lot of great new thread devices out there, especially in the smart lighting space.

1:43:18And you only need one thread border router, technically. More will help because 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. But you do not need to have a thread border router from the smart home platform that you're using. 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 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.

1:44:04The 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. It's Amazon and Eero and smart things 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.

1:44:49But 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. 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.

1:45:28And 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 Amazon, I can get four of those bulbs for the same price as this one from Hue or Govee 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 or not going to future as well and you'll be fighting more problems than solving them. Very good advice. Yes it's worth investing a little bit of money into smart lighting.

1:46:15It pays off in dividends and far less headaches when it comes to setting everything up and troubleshooting in my experience. So wise words, Richard, very much appreciate your time this week. Thank you so much. Thank you. 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 vergecast at theverge.com 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.

1:46:53We 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. 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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