Episode 233 - CES 2025

Speaker A: Hey, it's Richard. Adam and I are both attending CES this year, and we wanted to take some time to talk about the products, categories, and themes that are catching our attention at this show. We also talk a bit about the value this show offers companies, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. Pundits have predicted the end of conferences like this, but CES appears to be bigger and stronger than ever, even if perhaps the mix of vendors has changed somewhat. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm glad I made the trip. It's good to be back.

Speaker B: Hey, everyone, I'm Adam justice from Connect Sense, and welcome to the Smart Home Show. And I'm joined, as usual, by my co host, Richard Guenther from the Digital Media Zone. Hi, Richard.

Speaker A: Hey, Adam. How you doing? Good.

Speaker B: Well, not as usual. It's our, uh, annual tradition of actually recording in person.

Speaker A: Annual? Ish. Right. Not on a given point in time each year, but we seem to have done this for the last few years, so that's nice.

Speaker B: Yeah. And we are coming to you live from ces, so, uh, that's fun. We're here seeing a bunch of new Smart home stuff, getting to spend some time together, and, uh, today, talk a little bit about our impressions, this year's show, and new products that we've seen.

Speaker A: All right, but before we do that, uh, we always open with a question, and a fairly relevant question here for Adam. When's the last time you were in Las Vegas?

Speaker B: Well, surprise, surprise. It was January of last year for ces.

Speaker A: Oh, okay. So you did come to CES last year?

Speaker B: I did come last year, yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, I missed last year.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I know. We miss you, but, yeah, I've been coming off and on the last couple years, and, um, now more just come for meetings with clients, vendors, and see, you know, friends from the industry. And, um, that's way better than actually having a booth or having to work the show. So. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How about you? How long has it been since you were last in Vegas?

Speaker A: Uh, it was when we were doing this five years ago in 2020, in the before time.

Speaker B: The before times, yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Crazy.

Speaker B: We were so naive.

Speaker A: I, uh. I was lucky not to go homesick with anything. I think all of us were very lucky not to go homesick with anything too serious. And, you know, last year, I wanted to come so badly, but I had work conflicts, and that would have been my first year back because I had been at Cedia the season prior to that. You and, uh, I were both at Cedia. That was a great show. Missed that this past year, but hope to be there again this year. So let's dive in. But how can people ask us questions if they wanted to do that?

Speaker B: Yeah. So if you want to send us a question, you can submit that for us on Twitter or Macedon with the hashtag AskAdam and Richard. Or of course, always send that to our email feedback Smart Home fm.

Speaker A: All right, now, we don't want to go too much inside baseball, but let's just talk a little bit about the show in general. This is my first time back in five years. You were here last year, but we missed a bunch of years. And, you know, the COVID years of a lot of trade shows were really rough. Everyone was trying to figure out how to do the. Either the remote thing or the hybrid thing. And it was usually suboptimal in every way. So it feels like it's back. It feels like this is the year. And from what everybody is telling me, last year was nowhere near as big or as full as this feels this year.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you even commented earlier when we. We first saw each other how crowded and busy things were today. Um, but yeah, I mean, we're back, baby.

Speaker A: And that's a good thing, I think. You know, for years, everybody's been predicting the end of trade shows. And maybe Covid was the nail in the coffin, but I don't see this ever going away. The handshaking, the. The meeting people for deals, the reconnecting and actually touching physical devices is an important part of the business process, is an important part of the media process. And frankly, it has me re. Energized. You know, one of the things that's been hard for me in keeping up with all of this is trying to do it all just by reading blogs. It's just not as interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And I think that's one of the reasons why I came last year and why I try to attend. It's so good, you know, as, uh, big of a space as smart home and all this stuff is. It's also a super small world. Um, so, you know, in the, you know, 10 plus years that I've been doing stuff in this space, I've made a ton of great contacts and just get to run into people. I was literally like walking and talking on the phone and I ran into Nate, the founder of August last night and, uh, gave him a hug, you know, while. While on the phone with my wife. But just stuff like that, the serendipity of seeing old friends and catching up with lots of people, even Though people have switched companies or, you know, done different things. Like the industry is small and so there's still a lot going on and a lot of people that are really involved in this. So it's a great time to catch up with all those kinds of people. Um, we come here to meet with customers, with vendors. You know, all, all the, the right people are usually here. So it's, it's a great show and it's always good to get a feel for what's going on in the industry, what's important to people, you know, what are people out here showing and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: And uh, uh, everybody's been joking about what this year was going to be. What were we going to see? Was there going to be anything other than AI on the floor? Everybody has to talk about AI, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's a part of everybody's story, it seems like. I think everybody's trying to kind of find their AI angle. To me, the AI stuff kind of feels like, um, adding smarts was maybe five years ago where people were just like, let's add WI fi to this thing. But they're not really thinking through how to do it effectively or why to do it. Um, so I feel like that's where we are with AI right now is like, we have to have it, but they don't necessarily have a good use case for it or a good reason for it. And the AI is really just machine learning in an AI costume. Um, and a lot of it doesn't bring a lot of value, but I think we're getting there and it's something that isn't going away anytime soon. All the AI and all these things are the worst they're ever going to be right now. And it's, uh, only going to get better and more impressive with the exponential nature, uh, that we're seeing with everything AI right now.

Speaker A: And you and I have talked about this before, I think you're a bit bullish on AI. I'm a bit bearish. I'm a bit skeptical. I look at AI right now as 20, uh, 25's blockchain. But we'll see, we'll. We'll see where this ends up if companies end up doing anything effective. I'm discouraged by the companies that use the AI moniker because they think they need to, to stay competitive, when in fact they either didn't need to do what, what they were doing with AI or it's not AI as you just said.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I mean, to me, it always comes down to how well, do you know your customers? How well do you know the problems you're trying to solve and how effectively are you using technology to solve those problems? And so if there's a way that AI can bring value to that chain of things, then great. Um, but otherwise it's just technology for technology's sake. And you know, that's always lands flat when people actually, you know, start to dive into the products.

Speaker A: Right. Okay, so other than AI, what. What seems to be kind of omnipresent here?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the, the big one for me was, uh, there seems to be a huge growth even over last year in kind of the aging in place sector. There's like a huge chunk of the show here at the Venetian, which is normally where all the smart home stuff is just totally dedicated to senior living. Aging in place tech for that baby boomer generation that is now getting older, uh, you know, wants to stay in their current homes. That the AARP booth is massive, enormous.

Speaker A: It's a double, large booth complete with its own pickleball court.

Speaker B: Yes. You know, because seniors love pickleball.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: I know I wanted to go play. I haven't, I haven't gone in there yet. Uh, I, I'll probably get my butt whooped by some, some old people in pickleball, but. Could be fun. But yeah, I think, and uh, and just talking to people last night at parks too, that there seems to be a lot of movement in that space. And I think rightfully so. It, there's definitely a need there, and I think there's some good uses of technology to help people do that. I mean, I think the, the challenge there always is, you know, that the users of those technology, it needs to be very ubiquitous and easy for them to, to use. But, you know, it sort of depends on who's the, you know, who's setting it up, um, who's monitoring it, things like that. But, um, so, yeah, lots of stuff around fall detection and presence and movement and just the idea of, you know, being able to put some ambient technologies in place in a, in a senior person's home, such that they can still stay safe and live in their normal environment as long as possible.

Speaker A: And we're getting to the point now. And uh, I think this is what makes this a little bit different than say, five, ten years ago. We're getting to the point now where we're seeing a shift in the generation because we're aging into that older generation now. Uh, I'm almost at retirement age and so I look at what I see as care and housing for older people and think, how am I going to live this zero technology bland life? Like, that is not me. That's not who I am. No, we grew up, up on tech. We grew up with cool gadgets and TVs. Even if I were to end up in living in some shared living situation with other older people, would I just want a hotel room with a 10, um, year old TV in it? No. I'm never going to be satisfied with that. So the fact that now we have a generation of people who want this technology, it's just not anymore. This is for grandma. Uh, it's, this is stuff that you can think about incorporating into your lives as you get older to make it safer for you to live at home. Or maybe your parent to live at home if you're helping an aging parent.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a good point. Like, I see my parents and my wife's parents who are much more comfortable with technology. There's a big difference between them and my grandfather, who's in his early 90s. Um, he's still pretty good. Like, he wears an Apple watch. He, you know, we've converted him to streaming tv. Like, yep, he, he's uh, better than most. But, um, I agree with you that that generation that's a little bit more comfortable with, with tech is more likely to be adopters of some of these kinds of things and, uh, not have a problem with it. So, uh, yeah, I think it's an interesting category and certainly notable how big of a presence it has here this year.

Speaker A: Talking about big presences, uh, I think if, if you don't have a pool cleaning robot, you just don't count this year.

Speaker B: I know. I, I feel like I saw like five or six pool cleaning robots.

Speaker A: No, there's at least a dozen in the.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Least.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's unbelievable how this just kind of blew up in the last couple years,

Speaker B: including that one huge booth that seems to be like, it's a mega booth and there's like, stuff going on or whatever. I'm like, never even heard of this company before. And then, you know, they probably spent a million dollars on their CES rollout here. Crazy.

Speaker A: Years ago it was the, the roving vacuum that could go along the bottom and then you'd pull it out with a stick or something. But no, no, no. Now these things have propellers, they swim, they can go to the surface and skim the surface for you. It's unbelievable how ingenious these companies have been thinking as they look at making multipurpose devices. That are going to do everything that you need to do. They monitor the water, they clean this skunk off the sides of the pool. Really interesting to watch that category of product grow. It's not something that I can use personally, but it's fascinating to me. I, I, I love seeing something like that kind of explode. Yeah.

Speaker B: I think we're going to talk about it a little bit more later, but I think robotics in general is a category that feels like it's prime to explode and, and you're seeing stuff that's, um, you know, there's certainly been robots at this show for, for years and years, but it feels like it's uh, starting to cross over that line of where it's actually effective and useful and also the price coming down to something that, uh, is a little more reachable to most people.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'd agree. Now, uh, one of the things that people ask me if I recommend that, hey, you should consider going to ces, it's lots of interesting stuff. There's a lot going on there that they talk about how, uh, CES doesn't matter for companies anymore. In fact, you have a lot of companies that have pulled out. Microsoft doesn't show up here. Apple never has shown up here. Lenovo doesn't have any presence on the floor, although they have some rooms around. So I just wanted to talk a little bit, uh, about, I guess, the quality of the vendors. Do you feel like CES is still attracting the quality vendors that you expect and is the mix of say, good brands versus, uh, you know, international manufacturers that are a commodity at this point?

Speaker B: Um, I think it's interesting. I definitely feel like in the smart home space, many of the big name brands are not out on the show floor anymore. Having been through this experience, had a booth, it's, it's really expensive, just the booth and everything it takes. You're looking at tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands to all the way into the millions, um, plus just the time and the people needed to man that booth. It's exhausting. So I get it coming out of COVID that people have been hesitant to do that again as much. And I think you're just seeing a lot more companies pulling back either attending, just having meetings, doing, you know, a private suite, stuff like that. And I get that, I mean, from the, from the vendor and manufacturer side. I met with a, ah, friend, Jimmy, from uh, Nanoleaf. Um, that's what they've been doing the last couple years. They just do a suite upstairs at the Venetian, they make appointments with Media and partners and all that kind of stuff. It's a lot, a lot more laid back of a type of experience. It's not as stressful. You can take your time setting up. It's a little bit more of a controlled environment and it costs way less to do that. And then you don't also don't have to deal with the public. So I know you said you're disappointed. Some people have taken that approach. It's harder to get in to see them. But I totally understand why. You know, I think for a, from a company perspective, you know, you come to CES to meet with all those people and, and have those meetings with key contacts and stuff like that. And I think for companies, they're just finding it's much easier to do that off the show floor, uh, and much more affordable to do that off the show floor than it is to be on the show floor. And that stinks for the public who might like to see, you know, the latest from a company like that. But it all comes down to money, time and people. And so I get it.

Speaker A: That said, uh, there's no shortage of vendors here, right? This place is packed. As far as I can tell. The square footage, the acreage, frankly, that's being covered by vendors here seems to be at an all time high.

Speaker B: Right. You said there's the big brands and then there's the overseas vendors. I always find it interesting, uh, there's always a lot of, you know, diamonds in the rough for me in the overseas vendors because you can see almost the same form factors of products. And you're like, okay, these are these big brands, these are the people that manufacture it for them.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so I think if you, if you're willing to kind of go to the back and the outskirts and downstairs and, you know, whatever, you can see some cool stuff and also maybe get an idea of what's to come from these big brands because these are the people they work with to bring these products to market.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: All right, so I think, um, we're going to move on and talk a little bit about some of the products we've seen. So let's start with some of our favorites. So Richard, what are some of the favorites that you've seen so far?

Speaker A: All right, I'll start with the cheapest and that is some new gaming lighting, because that's right up my alley. Right.

Speaker B: I can't wait to see, you know, Richard's gaming streaming channel on Twitch.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's never going to happen. So, uh, I did get a tour of the Razer suite right as the show opened and they were showing off a bunch of cool stuff. Some of it concept but some of it is new product that's going to be out shortly. And of course the thing that caught me in the gaming area was lighting because that is my thing. And Razer is known for their Spectra LED color lighting that their engine synchronizes across their devices as you're playing a game so you can create this immersive experience for your gaming time that includes lights and sound rumbling and all that sort of stuff. So they have new lights that are light bars, not that dissimilar from the hue play bars that you might have behind a monitor or around a room as wall washers or next to a TV or something casting light to create an immersive experience for your viewing or even just a pleasant lighting experience. What's cool about these is that they're inexpensive. They're going to cost I think $70 ish for two. They're USB C driven and powered so they can connect right into your computer if you want or you can connect them to a low voltage power thing uh, that takes USB C and they're matter compatible. So in addition to automatically synchronizing with any of your Razer stuff for your gaming experience, they can also be controlled by your voice assistant or by any other ecosystem that you have that can work with matter devices. So you can use these in tandem with other smart home stuff that you have around your home. And I just think that is so brilliant. That is my cheapest. Do you have a cheapest that you want to start with?

Speaker B: I don't think they were saying a price on it but probably the cheapest and most impressive for me was ah, a Cara's new millimeter wave sensor. Yeah um, the FP300. So you know they've been doing some interesting stuff in um, presence monitoring and I've always been, I've talked about it on this show before, a big believer that presence detection was a very important kind of next wave for.

Speaker A: I see what you did there.

Speaker B: Getting the smart home to where we want it to be. And so I, I've played around a little bit with some of their previous models but those all were powered before and this is the first one that is battery powered and uh, can do Both ZigBee for three years as well as Thread for two years on just two.

Speaker A: One. Oh yeah, two coin cell batteries.

Speaker B: Right. So really impressive. I will definitely be picking one of these up when uh, when they release which I think they said Q1 release timeframe for that.

Speaker A: I believe that's right. The thing that struck me on this is the form factor. It's tiny, tiny, tiny. Not everybody's gonna get this reference, but, uh, it circumference wise it's like the size of a silver dollar and then maybe again as thick to the wall. So this is a small device compared to their previous sensors, which were much larger and required power with a wire.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So that's the big difference here.

Speaker B: And I think for it being battery powered too, I think you can now, you know, mount it up on a, uh, ceiling, point it down like, I think it just gives you a lot more good use cases to put it in the right places where it's going to be most effective to do presence detection. And I believe it's a combination sensor, so it's using the millimeter wave as well as some IR technologies as well. So definitely excited about that one.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. All right, well, everything else on my list is going to cost $1,000 and up or a couple Alex's for those of you who get that reference. So my next one is about power management. And one of the things that we are dealing with more and more in our homes for a variety of reasons is power management, either because of power outage, outt voltages, or because of the power consumption that so many of our devices require, whether they be small, mobile things with batteries or large appliances. And one of the things that has always struck me is that nobody's really had a good solution for kitchen appliances as backup power, short of having a complete panel down in your basement hooked to a generator. Right. Or a generator outside that you run an extension cord to if your power goes out, so your refrigerator can run.

Speaker B: Right. And I think one of the problems with that whole home system is you need some more complexity, um, downline from that to be able to have zones and only power certain zones. So to me this really solves that problem.

Speaker A: Right. So this is a product from a company called biolite. They are known predominantly for power solutions for camping or for rugged outdoor use. And they're applying their technology to an indoor room specific backup solution just called backup. And their offering is roughly the size of say, a folded blanket. And it's designed to fit either in the cabinet above or in void space around an appliance in your kitchen, like for example, an electric range or a refrigerator. The refrigerator use case is brilliant because that's the thing that you worry about the most. If you lose power, you don't want to end up losing a bunch of food or a freezer full of stuff, right? So you can have this tucked away so that it is not visible. And it, it literally hooks up to your refrigerator the same way that a UPS would, right? So you're plugging your refrigerator into it, you're plugging it then into the wall. It's out of sight. And if your power kicks off within 10 to 20 milliseconds, it will automatically take over and it's 1.5 to 3 kilowatt hours of power, which should get you through at least a day, if not more for your refrigerator.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: This is going to cost you between 2 and $3,000, depending on which solution that you have. But let me tell you, if you ever had to replace a freezer full of food that you've lost, right.

Speaker B: It could almost pay for itself. You know, right there.

Speaker A: Like, I've done that twice and that right there would have paid for it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So this kind of solution, I think, really smart, helpful in areas where we're seeing more and more storms, where people are losing power for a while, even if it's only for a couple hours, to still have the peace of mind that you still have access to your important appliances. Another use case. I have 3D. I have a 3D printer. I was going to say printers. Someday maybe I'll have printers. Right now I have one. I have multiple lasers. Jobs on those things take hours. If there's a power blip and it goes out while the job is in progress, my job is ruined.

Speaker B: Yeah, we literally had this happen. Sometimes when you get into 3D printing and you start doing like 20 plus hour prints. Um, we lost power one day and my son's thing was almost done and it had been printing for over a day. Whatever. He was just crushed. It's like you waste all that material all that time, uh, you got to start all over again.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I've had that happen. This kind of solution for a print farm would be brilliant. A couple of these around a print farm could support dozens of printers. So I, I think this is a really interesting solution. It's coming out later this year. Uh, it's a, a product company that already delivers products. So when they say they're coming out with this new product, which also, by the way, won a CES Innovation Award, I believe them. I'm not quoting a specific month, even though they told me an estimated month. I'm going to say it's going to come out sometime this year and I'm excited about it.

Speaker B: Awesome. So I'LL go into my next, um, sort of category across multiple, uh, companies. So I know you like a good wall panel, uh, with touch controls. And, uh, I feel like we're seeing some interesting offerings here. So we saw a smart panel from the company Shelly, um, as well as multiple offerings at Akara. Ah, uh, as well. And, um, you know, I know Richard and I have been in mourning for our, uh, smart light switch. Uh, what was that company again? Oro Auro. What we saw at Akara, uh, not quite to the level of Oro, but something in that category where you can do scenes and that kind of thing. So I just like this concept. And a car specifically had multiple form factors. So they had one that was kind of a cool haptic dial that had touchscreen in the middle, one that was more of a light switch form factor. And then both, uh, Akara and Shelly had kind of a large think, uh, of a, like, we're in weird, uh, size comparison territory in this, this podcast, like, uh, a car dashboard, you know, radio sort of form factor of different kind of multi touch panels where you can put scenes and control different devices. And, uh, Akara was showing that demoed with nanoleaf tiles, uh, over matter. So I think as matter is getting more reliable and that ecosystem is growing, these kinds of touch panels are certainly very interesting to me. Something I will consider putting into my house.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Shelly's is really interesting too, though theirs is predominantly intended for European markets, so it has a software thermostat built into it, which is something they had in their old panel. But their panel is about, I, um, don't know, maybe 20 millimeters wide and 10 millimeters tall. So half of it is designed to be your thermostat, and the other half can be specifically a home assistant dashboard. Cool. Pretty cool. So that's really cool, and I hope it's something that they adapt more for US installation. The challenge in the US Is that wiring for thermostats is much different, so it couldn't be powered the same way that it can be powered in Europe. All right, well, my next one might top anything that we've seen so far, as long as neither of us is going to mention the little modular house we saw for a hundred thousand dollars. But my other favorite thing here is a yard robot system called Yarbo Y A R B O. And this is a modular working robot for your property. And it can do all kinds of crazy stuff. It can mow the lawn, it can blow leaves, it can blow snow. It can blow snow. It's a Snow. It's an automated snow blower. That's much worse than mowing the lawn.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it can act as a sentry for your property. It can go around your property and look for stuff that shouldn't be there or people that shouldn't be there. And I think you said yell at them if it has to. So it's a really clever solution. The way it's designed. It has, uh, a motor trainer, an engine that has treads on it. And then you can attach these other, uh, things that either blow snow or blow leaves or, or cut the lawn. It can tow like over £3,000 and it can follow you. So you could put a wagon on it and have it haul like anything that you needed to from one end of your property, uh, to the other end of your property. For somebody who has a large property who still does the work themselves, uh, this seems like a huge thing. And think about how much you spend if you pay somebody to do your yard work now. Yeah. They're also probably keeping your gardens cleaned up and doing edging and stuff like that. So let's talk about price. The price for the things that I just talked about, and they have other attachments too, and other capabilities that it has for what I just talked about is a little more than $6,000. That's a lot of money. I know. I pay more than $6,000 a year for our, uh, full lawn service. Right. That doesn't include getting rid of snow, but for getting rid of leaves and mowing the lawn and cleaning up the garden. So I'd still have to do the gardening and the trimming and stuff like that. But, uh, this isn't as outrageous price wise as it initially sounds. And if this can deliver on what it promises, it's already in the market. The snowblower just came out last year. Uh, the mower has been out for, I believe, two years now. So this is an exciting product, I think, and probably leading a fleet of a bunch of different automated mowers that we've been seeing for years.

Speaker B: Right. And I, I think what I like about their offering, and I went by their booth and, and saw the demo and all that. Uh, the versatility of being able to have it be all of those different things definitely makes that expense a little bit more palatable. There's, there's certainly plenty of competition in lawn rowing, mowing robots. There's plenty of competition in, uh, even the snow blowing stuff. But to have one robot that can do multiple of those things obvious, obviously makes that expense, uh, a Little bit more palatable and makes me consider it other. The other cool thing. Uh, I talked to them about the lawn mowing side. You don't have to install any wires or anything like that on your property. I had a friend who was in landscaping, was kind of prototyping a business of rolling out Husqvarna robots and those you kind of have to install like an invisible fence like you would for a dog.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so this is all done via their app. You just kind of trace the outline and stuff like that. I think for me, we have a fence in our backyard, uh, because we have a dog. One of the things missing here for them is like a way for it to go in and out of a fence. Husqvarna has a smart door solution for that where the robot just goes up to the fence and the door opens. And so I think this would be something that requires a little bit more management. I'd have to open a gate for it or something like that. But you'd probably just have a program for mow backyard, mo front yard and let it do its thing. So it's going to take a little bit more intervention versus, like the Husqvarna, uh, just kind of runs every day autonomously and you never really have to think about it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, the snow thing is really interesting too. I mean, I'd be curious how well it would do in heavy snow. Um, but obviously if it can pull £3,000 and you know, this thing looks like a tank. It's got some all terrain looking stuff to it. So, um, certainly interesting to me.

Speaker A: Yeah, really cool product. What's next?

Speaker B: So now we're going to talk about just some general things we saw that we found were neat.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh, not necessarily our favorite things, but kind of interesting and caught our attention. On my side, one of the things, and I think you were with me when I noticed this in the Innovation Awards booth. And it's a, I would call it a battery charger hopper. So essentially you take your spent rechargeable double AA batteries, you dump them in a hopper, meaning a bin at the top of this thin little device that's, I don't know, roughly the size of say, a, say, uh, two books put together. Right. So it's not very big and there's a charger in the middle with four bays in it. And that, uh, charger is going to attempt to recharge these batteries. Doesn't matter what way you put them in, it's going to compensate for that. Doesn't matter if you accidentally put the wrong kind of batteries in there, it's going to detect that and spit them out. If your batteries are already spent, it's not going to try to recharge them, it's also going to spit them out. So you have like a reject drawer that it will let you know and there's an app that'll notify you that, yep, nope, we can't charge this battery. Time to get rid of it. Or, or uh, this was the wrong kind of battery. And then when it's done charging, after the charge cycle, it drops them into a holding area where you can then pick a new battery. Now you wouldn't want to keep a bunch of these in here. You really wouldn't want to keep more than, say you change regularly. But I know around my house I'm probably changing maybe four to eight batteries in something every week or so, like for real. Because I have lights in cabinets that require batteries. I have some little accent lights that require batteries. I have flashlights that I use constantly that require batteries. I have a bunch of battery operated little devices in my office, like a hole puncher. If you're using rechargeables on stuff like this, it's kind of a hassle just dealing with all this stuff or you're going to burn through a bunch of batteries that are going to go into a landfill. And don't do that. That's just terrible. I think this is a clever solution. Again, it got an innovation award from ces. It is going to be available later this quarter for a price of $129. I don't really think that that's too bad. Like I said, there's an app that keeps you, uh, updated on the status of things, lets you know when the batteries are ready or if they failed. And I'm hoping to get one to test because I think this is another one of those power solution tools. That's really helpful.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. Uh, my first one was, um, so there's a group of brands, uh, under the Wonder brand. And these are the people that brought us the Kickstarter, uh, uh, of the bird buddy, which is something my, my parents have out at their lake house. Kind of fun. Little, uh, bird camera. You can get selfies from birds and they're kind of expanding their ecosystem. Um, one was kind of a modular block system for kind of biodiversity and stuff like that. That one I don't know that I fully understand. But the other one was a, uh, little camera called Petal, which kind of like what they're doing with bird Buddy and birds allows you to have a camera to watch the wildlife and insects that are in your yard or your garden. So I thought this was particularly cool. One of the fun facts, we have bees at our office. Um, one of our employees keeps bees at her house and had to split her nest. So I'm thinking, uh, we're going to need one of these so we can have, uh, a bee cam for, uh, the grid connect bees.

Speaker A: That is both cool and weird, Adam, but I like it. All right. Another thing I thought was kind of cool was the partnership, uh, announced between Ring and Kita. So, uh, Kita has been known for smoke detectors, co detectors, and they've been a name that's been in the industry for years and years and years. They've integrated with, uh, a couple different ecosystems. And now Ring and Kita have announced that they have a partnership where you can connect a specific device that they're going to have available later this quarter to your Ring ecosystem. And this will be the first time that you can do that without the alarm system. So this isn't part of Ring alarm, it's just part of Ring, which is a big deal.

Speaker B: However, if you're like me and you have a ring alarm system and you pay for the monitoring on it, then you also get the monitoring of your smoke alarms in the mix.

Speaker A: Right. And, uh, that's one of the things that's nice about it. So if you have the alarm system, you're not paying more to do this. But if you don't have the alarm system, they're also going to offer monitoring for just your smoke detectors for a, uh, $5 monthly fee, which may be a baiting price. Who knows? Because remember, they started at $10, and now their pricing is up to as much as $30 a month, depending on what your plan is. But $5 a month for monitoring of your smoke alarms, that kind of peace of mind is probably worth 50 or 60 bucks a year.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it makes total sense for, for people like me that are already well entrenched in the Ring ecosystem. Seems like a no brainer. So, yeah, I've so far been solidly in the nest smoke detector realm. But I think I would definitely consider this as we replace some of those nests and, and do these, especially if they're, they're more, um, cheap than, uh, the nest ones are.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: All right, um, my next neat offering. I know you, you weren't necessarily the biggest fan of this one, but we, there's lots of cool things going on with uh, robotics here and roborock, who I think has been doing some interesting stuff with vacuums and the vacuum mop combo. Certainly seen some interesting reviews from our friend Gentouhe at the Verge on their stuff. So they came out with a vacuum that has an arm that will move things out of its way. You know, for me, I have three kids, we have a busy household. The, the robot vacuum lifestyle just doesn't make sense. On our first floor, there's too much going on. There's dogs, there's children, there's stuff, you know, so for a robot vacuum to be effective on our main floor, like, it ain't happening. So I don't know that I'd get a gen one of something like this, but I think something like this is certainly promising to me. You know, something that could exist and fit with our busy household. You know, right now, the, the only place where my robot vacuum lives is in the basement because it's a more picked up area. It, it's not as lived in as our main floor is. So just cool to see. I think in general, that's what CES is all about. And I love to see companies that are just trying things and see what works, see what sticks, you know, that's what this is all about and that's what innovation's all about. And so, uh, love to see something new and different and futuristic. Ish. And kind of cool. So how well it works in practice, I guess we'll see once this thing is out and shipping. But cool to see somebody trying something different.

Speaker A: It's definitely innovative. I also think it's creepy as hell. It's a scrawny little arm that, that comes up and has what I can only describe as pinchers on the end. The use case is, let's say you left socks on the floor and it can pick up socks and drop them in some designated area, which is cool. It's a cool idea, but it's creepy as hell. I don't, I don't know that I want this thing with pinchers running around my floor on its own accord. That's just m. No, uh, the Justice

Speaker B: House is definitely going to be much more quicker to adopt weird robots than, Than the Gunther house.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. No, I'll tell you though, if they come out with something that I can train to pick up dog toys, I, I might be all over that.

Speaker B: This might be your thing.

Speaker A: It. Some or an iteration of it at some point, maybe. Who knows?

Speaker B: All right, so our next category is, um, sort of the head scratchers just kind of weird things we've seen or something that's, I don't know, maybe not our favorite, uh, in the show. But, uh, yeah. So what are some head scratchers for you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I really just have one here. I mean. And you touch on another one. That caught, uh, my attention as well. For me, it's Lutron's announcement at CES that they have a. And you can't see my air quotes around the word new line of honeycomb and roller shades that are Caseta branded to work with the Caseta ecosystem. Now if you've been following us or me or anything that's been going on in this space for the last 10 years, you would know that Lutron has had honeycomb shades and in fact was one of the first companies to introduce wireless honeycomb shades about 10 years ago that have worked with Caseta from the start. They also introduced roller shades about six or seven years ago from their Serena line. I think they were originally from Sequoia and they brought them into the Serena line. And those are also compatible as well as slatted blinds that are compatible with Caseta. So the only thing that I can see here is that I think Lutron is trying to simplify their general consumer offering because the breadth and depth of the Sirena products is pretty significant. Many colors, many options. And maybe you just want a blind. You want that IKEA experience of there's two colors, white and gray. And in fact that's what Lutron is offering. There's basically whites and grays. And I say that plurally because they have two white ish shades and two grayish shades that you can pick from in both of these categories, Honeycomb and roller shade. And they have simplified their pricing model so that they start at around 399 up to, I believe it's a, uh, maybe 36 by 48 window or something along those lines. Is anything up to that is going to just be 399 and then, uh, it goes up in price a little bit. That is a simpler pricing model than the way the Serena shades work. But you still have to go to the Lutron Caseta site to order them the same place that you go to order the Serena shades. So I just, I just don't get it. I don't understand what the point is of this. And it seems like a big non announcement to me.

Speaker B: If I would have known this was on the list, I would have asked the guy. Cause I literally ran into the brand manager for Lutron Caseta, uh, at uh, the Parks event last night. But, uh, I only talked to him for a minute, so next time, uh, I chat with him, I'll, I'll have to ask about it, but it seems like it's kind of just a standard offering, less custom, something to get more into mass market. Standard sizes, like you said, limited colors. Uh, I can see where it's going here. But yeah, it's probably more to be competitive with other people that are doing these kinds of cheaper standard offerings and trying to use their main consumer brand.

Speaker A: But possibly I would argue that if they really want to get into that consumer market, then they need to get a couple common window sizes in Home Depot.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Not go to lutron.com because God knows that site is a multi generational mess of web stuff.

Speaker B: Sounds like you should offer them your services and help them out.

Speaker A: How about you?

Speaker B: All right, so kind of going with my theme, uh, in general, lots of weird robots. I feel like robotics is getting to a really interesting place. I saw a, uh, super interesting video of a cool robot to enable somebody who's wheelchair bound to be able to walk upright. Super cool. I feel like robotics is at that place where, uh, you can see the technology is getting there, the cost is coming down, but people are just throwing stuff at the wall left and right. So I'd say I still think it's going to be a couple years before we really get to a place where we're making progress. For, for me, certainly the dream is to have a, uh, Rosie, you know, like we had in the Jetsons, a multipurpose robot that can fold laundry, do dishes, some of that kind of stuff. I would buy something like that in a heartbeat. And I think that's somewhere where we need robotics and AI both to get to a place where it's comfortable. But I mean, I want myself a C3PO. I'm in for that. So, yeah, I think it's interesting, uh, at the point where the technology is. There's a lot of weird stuff here, but I think it's an exciting space.

Speaker A: Yeah. You didn't read iRobot, did you?

Speaker B: I have. I've seen the movie.

Speaker A: I'm actually not, I mean, yeah, but yeah, no, I, I, I'm not on board with this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm actually reading a sci fi book right now that I'll have to give to you about a, uh, a humanoid serving robot who kills his master.

Speaker A: So you'll love it.

Speaker B: Um, my other head scratcher was Honeywell. Uh, came out with a $80 connected thermostat.

Speaker A: Yay.

Speaker B: A cheap Connected thermostat.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: The, the head scratcher part for me is it is the form factor and look of a 1980s Honeywell thermostat, demonstrating

Speaker A: that still in 2025, Honeywell can't design a decent interface for a thermostat to save their lives. It's just unbelievable.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, I think, I think they, they have the right idea in bringing the price point down and, you know, maybe they're trying to do something that people know and are comfortable with. But I think if you're going to do a connected thermostat, right, you got to lean on the advantages of that platform and yeah, have a, have a better looking UI and, uh, design and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I'm not so sure about that one.

Speaker A: I can't resist this pun. But I mean, you have companies like ecobee and now Google with Nest running circles around Honeywell, which was known for just that iconic, easy to use, easy to understand old world thermostat, and I believe it was called the Lyric. Even in their attempts to recreate that sort of experience in an electronic format, they've never been able to make something just as easy and obvious as they once had and many other companies seem to have been able to do now.

Speaker B: Yep, I would agree.

Speaker A: Well, we were going to talk a little bit about what we thought were maybe the, the biggest product types and categories, but I think we already did that in the opening, uh, section.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The show. So before we move on and close out, is there anything else that you wanted to cover?

Speaker B: I don't think so. Anything on your list?

Speaker A: No, I think one of the things that I, I want to just touch on getting back to the it's nice to be back thing is, you know, one of the things that this also affords us, people who, uh, attend this show, is the ability to reconnect with each other. And you did mention this a bit in terms of running into people, but it's through ces, it's through trade shows that I have come to know all the contacts that I have with these different companies and how I keep up with what's going on and, uh, get information about their products and how we get products to try and review. It's how I've made friends. I've met people at these conferences that are now people that I keep in touch with regularly. And then you get to meet people that you've known for years. Like when I first met Jenny Tuohy here a couple years ago, I'd known her before then, but never met her in person. And similarly I just someone that I've been talking uh, with for a, uh, couple years now at ah, a company I know I just had lunch with and met them for the first time in person. And that's really why I think these shows are so important is for those interpersonal connections that, that enable the business that happens here. For sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. As much as we coped with being virtual and adapted, um, it's nice to sit down and do some networking, see old friends, uh, you know, share a meal, all those things. And um, yeah. And so that's definitely one of the great parts about CES is it brings all those people together. So uh, we don't have a question for uh, for this episode but if you do want to send us a Smart Home question, you can send it our way using the hashtag Ask SmartHomeShow. Um, or email that to us at feedbackmarthome fm and we'll pick a show to ah, question to include in a future episode.

Speaker A: All right, Adam, I think that's going to wrap this one at uh, CES 2025. In the meantime, where can people find you if they want to hear more about what you're thinking or doing?

Speaker B: I'm on all the social medias but still hanging out on X at Adam justice and you can find everything my company is up to@gridconnect.com how about yourself?

Speaker A: You can find me on Mastodon as Richard Guenther. I also recently joined Bluesky as Richard guenther.com and that's probably it for now. You may actually find a new episode of Home on at some point on the Digital Media Zone. So uh, check out over there or if you don't already have that in your feed like Home on the Smart Home show is part of Technology fm, which is a collection of great tech focused podcasts that includes this show, that show, the Spoon Podcast, the Home Tech Podcast and a couple others. And of course Smart Home FM is where you can find all of our show notes and information about each episode. And if you want to reach us, feedbackmarthome, uh, FM is the way shows are everywhere. So pick your listening service and we're probably there. What's most important, in addition to leaving us a great review because that gives us good feelings to keep on doing this show is to let your friends know about the show so we can get that subscriber number increasing and get more people in our audience. Thank you so much for joining us. Talk to you later.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening.