Unlocking Home Automation with Joshua Kelleway of IAM Systems

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of the Uncast
Show.
Now today we've got a veryspecial guest.
We've got Josh Kelleway, who'sthe founder and lead system
integration consultant at IAMSystems over in Australia.
Josh, it's great to have you.
Thank you very much for takingthe time out of your day to
speak to us.
Thank you for coming on theshow.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Thanks very much, Ed.
It's a privilege to be on theshow.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, thank you very much.
I know it's, you know, theevening for you, so I especially
appreciate you taking the timeout of family time to be able to
talk to us Now.
You know, just before we startthere's a little section I like
to do called quickfire questions, just some little kind of
simple questions so the audiencecan get to know your
personality.

(01:08):
Um, so the first one is androidor ios ios 100 and what's the
most used app on your phoneprobably the home app yeah, and
texting or calling, which do youprefer?
calling?
Yeah, I'm old, that's um.

(01:29):
You know.
Most people say texting, socool I'm old coffee or tea
coffee.
Do you have tea in australia?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I guess you do we do have tea here and we have
obviously lots of british people, so there is tea that's popular
, but no coffee right, yeah,yeah, me too um coffee or an
energy drink like I've got hereI've given up the energy drinks,
but too many copies.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, they're not they're not very good for you,
are they really?
I probably should too.
So kind of in the vein ofcoffee are you an early bird or
a night owl?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
night owl.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Night owl.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
And what's your favourite?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
open source project, had to say Home Assistant, yeah,
yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
And favourite movie or TV show.
Favourite movie of all timeFerris Bueller's Day Off.
Favourite TV show at the momentI'm loving For All Mankind at
the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh yeah, that's great .
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
And cats or dogs are you a cator a dog person, or neither, I
guess.
No, crazy dog person Alwayshave lots of dogs and other
people's dogs in the house thatI'm looking after.
Oh nice, yeah, I'm a I'm a doglover, but I've got um a dog and

(02:51):
two cats at the moment, so dog.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Dog's not doing its job.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
You've got two too many cats um, I normally finish
off my quickfire questionsasking if you'd like to go
forward in time or back in time,but I asked that to too many
people, so I've got a specialone for you.
Josh, what's the best piece ofadvice you've ever received?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
There are no shortcuts in life.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, okay, anyway, so let's just dive right in.
Josh, can you tell us a littlebit about yourself and what
inspired you to actually startup IM Systems?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, sure, so my background had been in IT
recruitment, but I had alwaysbeen home lab enthusiast and a
tinkerer.
I lived in a building that rana lighting system called CBUS.
I don't think it was ever thatpopular in the US, but it was
very popular in Australia.
I got into tinkering with that,along with all of my other home

(03:54):
lab stuff, and after a whileleft corporate world a bit
disillusioned and started doingsmall IoT projects and that sort
of thing.
So initially it was wirelesslighting controllers and that
sort of stuff that we were doingdirect for customers.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Right, and what kind of systems were you running that
on?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
So all of our projects were generally built
around Home Assistant.
So all of our projects weregenerally built around Home
Assistant 95% of the time.
Then Home Assistant passingdevices out into Apple HomeKit.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Right, Sorry, go on.
Sorry, Josh.
So at the beginning were yourunning Home Assistant on
Raspberry Pis, I believe.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, that's right.
So we started out running HomeAssistant on Raspberry Pis Sorry
, before that.
Originally the first thing thatwe actually ran was a Raspberry
Pi that ran HomeSeer on it, andthat was the original tool that
we first started using.
That then moved to RaspberryPis with Home Assistant and Home

(05:02):
Assistant OS on the RaspberryPi, and then it's kind of
expanded from there.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Right.
So yeah, that sounds like quitea journey.
So you know, speaking ofjourneys, how did you actually
transition from using RaspberryPis to kind of catering to
professional home system?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
integrators.
You know what made you make theswitch home system integrators.
What made you make the switch?
So?
Originally we were doing smallprojects for medium-sized homes
three four-bedroom homes withsome Shelly lighting controllers
and a mixture of other stuff.
We had some customers inhigh-end luxury homes that had
systems like Control 4 and knxand that sort of thing in there
who asked about doing apple homekit.

(05:48):
Over that we worked with someof their systems integrators who
looked after their control fourenvironments and that sort of
thing, and when a few of themsaw how you could bring their
tools into home kit using someof this stuff, they were all
really interested in it andwe've then pivoted to.

(06:08):
We don't look after directcustomer projects anymore.
We provide these servers to theintegrators so that they can
then put them on their projectsand we teach them how to use
Home Assistant and how toconnect it to KNX or Crestron or
Dynalide or whatever they'reworking with.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
And so one of the things that you have, I guess,
at the heart of your system issomething you call IAM Home.
Can you explain what IAM Homeactually is?

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Sure, so IAM Home is just our name for our Unraid
service.
Basically they range, dependingon the application that they've
been used for, from a small,simple Nook unit up to 4U
systems with 10 hot swappabledrives and optical drives that

(07:00):
are popular for private cinemaowners who want to rip large 4K
collections of their content andbe able to watch that back
through Plex in their cinemasand stuff like that.
So, yeah, I Am Home is the namefor these servers that we
provide and then the managementand ongoing monitoring that we

(07:21):
offer with them as well.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Awesome.
So do you actually kind of setup like home cinema systems for
people as well?
Is that something you actually,you know, are involved in?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
IM Systems doesn't do that, but we partner with a lot
of businesses that dospecialize in that space.
So we partner with several ofthe businesses out there that
specialize in designing andbuilding high-end luxury home
cinemas.
Um, so it's fun.
We get to go along to lots ofthose projects and I get to see
some crazy setup nice.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
So basically you're kind of running things like um,
home assistant, homebridge andscripted on the service, can you
um?
For people who are watchingthey might not actually know
what some of these things are.
So I think you know, let'sexplain to the viewers what
these actual things are.
You know what is Home Assistant, Homebridge and scripted?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Sure, I'll give you a quick basic rundown.
Home Assistant is an opensource project that has been
running for quite a while.
That goal is to providerelatively simple local-based
control of your home automationenvironment, where you're not
giving and sharing data with anyother third parties and cloud

(08:38):
providers and that sort of thing.
It's all hosted on your ownserver within your own network
environment, posted on your ownserver within your own network
environment and, because of itspopularity and there are so many
contributors to the project nowit's very hard to find anything
that has an IP interface to itthat Home Assistant won't talk
to.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I guess as well, because it integrates so many
different things together.
It can connect things togetherthat normally maybe not be able
to connect together.
Is that another reason youchose Home Assistant?

Speaker 2 (09:08):
That's right.
We can go and connect all sortsof different things that at
this stage in the professionalintegrator world have no way of
communicating with each other InHome Assistant.
It's very rare that we'll comeacross anything that can't be
integrated, and then most of thetime that is either being
controlled by the user in HomeAssistant dashboard or Google

(09:30):
Home or generally Apple HomeKit.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
And what's Homebridge so?

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Homebridge is similar in some respects.
Homebridge is another opensource project that's been
around for quite a while now.
The original developer of thatwas a guy called Nick Ferreira,
who originally developed it totry and get more IoT devices
compatible with Apple HomeKit.
It forms a bridge between a lotof popular IoT devices and

(10:00):
Apple HomeKit, and in some casesHomeBridge might have some
plug-ins that are better for aparticular device than Home
Assistant does.
That's why we've got uses wherewe'll use both of them
sometimes.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Right.
So you know someone who's goingto use HomeBridge.
You've got to have Appledevices to use it.
You can't use it if you don'thave Apple devices, correct?

Speaker 2 (10:22):
HomeBridge is only going to bring your devices into
Apple HomeKit, so if you're notan Apple device user, pointless
.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Okay, cool, so okay, no point me having that yeah for
Android users no Homebridge, nointerest at all.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
And then the final one is scripted, which we have
two different ways that we usescripted.
So scripted, in its most commonuse case, is just used for
connecting to whatever type ofcamera you've got on site and
then bringing that camera streaminto whatever your IoT platform

(10:59):
that you like is.
So, if you're Android users,bringing those cameras into
Google Home.
If you're an Apple Home user,bringing those cameras into
Apple HomeKit.
The nice thing is any camerastreams that come into Apple
HomeKit.
In HomeKit you can then go andset all of your recording
preferences and that will allstore encrypted in the cloud and
you get motion recognitionacross all of your camera

(11:21):
streams and all of that sort ofstuff that ordinarily would be
restricted to limited hardware,but scripted allows you to do it
with pretty much any camera outthere.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And does scripted?
You know, does it benefit fromany kind of GPU acceleration or
anything like that?
Is that something needed forthat, or does it not need that?

Speaker 2 (11:39):
So in the case where it's sending the streams just
through to Apple HomeKit.
No, that all happens in thecloud.
There's a second part toScripted that we also offer,
which is as a replacement forpeople's on-site NBRs that are
recording all their cameras 24-7.
Scripted has its own NBR builtinto it that runs object

(12:01):
recognition on all of the camerafeeds.
So even if you've got a reallyold dumb camera, it'll tell you
that it's a person on it or it'sa vehicle and that sort of
thing.
That we use the GPUs in theservers that we make for them,
and those servers are typicallybeing built with core processors
in them.
With a 12th or 13th gen coreprocessor.

(12:22):
The iGPUs on them are great.
We can live, run objectrecognition off 30 to 40 camera
streams, no problems.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I don't think people kind of realize quite how
good the iGPUs are on the IntelCPUs for transcoding streams.
You know, I still know loads ofpeople that buy a dedicated
NVIDIA card and they've actuallygot the iGPU.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
And I say why don't you use the igpu?
And they go because it's not asgood.
And I go try it and they'reshocked.
The other thing is a lot ofpeople obviously coral, tpus and
that sort of thing were werequite popular, particularly for
use in nooks and that sort ofthing.
But we found the igpu on ann100 processor in a nook
Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I do love the N100 processor.
I found a really nicemotherboard.
It had six SATA ports, twoNVMe's, four 2.5 gig NICs, an
N100 CPU and it was $110 US onAliExpress.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
You might have to send me a link to that.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
I will send you a link to that one, josh.
It's the ultimate kind oflow-powered motherboard in my
opinion.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Look all of our Nook applications that we do so our
basic IAM home server.
They're all based on an N100.
Oh, wow, yep, they're just toogood to go past.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
So you know, using, like we were saying, home
Assistant, homebridge andScripted.
You know, using, like we weresaying, Home Assistant,
homebridge and Scripted, youcould be running it on any OS.
Obviously you evaluated, I'msure, several OSs for IAM Home.
Can you walk us through thecriteria you used for the
evaluation when you were tryingto choose an OS to run on your
servers?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah.
So it obviously started outwhen we needed more than home
assistant on a Raspberry Pi.
Home assistant on a RaspberryPi has obviously lots of
inherent issues in terms ofreliability of micro SD cards
and that sort of thing, butworking with the systems
integrators on these largeluxury residential sites, we
also needed lots of other thingsin there, and a lot of them

(14:22):
wanted um, wanted vms as well.
All of their controlenvironments are generally
deployed using a windows-baseddeployment tool, so being able
to put a vm for them to use fortheir deployment tools on the
box became important as well.
So we started looking at all ofthe normal path that everybody

(14:45):
in the homelab community goesdown when they're trying to work
out what am I going to run onmy server, um, and considered
everything from running,obviously, a basic unix distro
and doing it all straight fromthere, um, and then also looked
at stuff like caster, os, uh,proxmox, um, trunas, all of this

(15:06):
sort of stuff, and put togetherkind of a few criteria.
When we were comparing them toeach other, the idea was that we
wanted to be able to redeploythem really easily at scale.
So as we get more and moreorders, the server is deploying
a new one that's a direct copyof the way we like them built.
We wanted that to be reallyeasy.

(15:27):
In addition to that, we wantedto be able to support them at
scale quite easily, and that wasa big one for Unraid, because
the ability for us to go andteach staff how to support an
Unraid system is quite easy forus to skill somebody up with
those skills.

(15:47):
The ability for us to go andget access to support resources
that have strong Linux and Unixskills and that sort of thing is
significantly harder than usbeing able to build those skills
ourselves with a nice UnraidGUI.
So that was another componentthat we were looking at as well

(16:08):
as that, obviously stability wasin there as well, and then
future feature set and how muchwe were seeing new development
happening there and how muchsupport was available in terms
of whatever we chose.
My background is the automationside, is not the actual

(16:28):
development or server hostingside of things.
So all of this was a learningexperience for me as well and
the community.
That I could go and watch allof the Unraid videos and that
sort of thing made me realize,yeah, I can teach this to staff
members to support this mucheasier than anything else.

(16:49):
So those were the main criteriaCan we deploy it easily?
Will it be reliable?
Can I teach other people toprovide support on it?
Well, and can I use it for allof our machines, whether that's
a little nook or a great bigmachine with tons of drives in
it.
Once we kind of looked at itacross, all of those things for

(17:15):
a few different reasons, yeah,unraid, we think, stood out
above the other options.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
It is a great operating system.
I can see why it's so mucheasier to train staff to be able
to use that than some of theother options out there.
You were talking about how youwanted to move away from
Raspberry Pis due to things likebooting from an SD card is not

(17:44):
that favorable.
Booting from an SD card is notthat favorable.
Now some users with Unraid theydo complain about the USB
deployment in Unraid.
Some people say it's a benefit,some people don't like it.
So, josh, I'm going to ask youyour take on this.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
We're in the benefit camp.
We actually really like it fora couple of reasons.
The reasons that we like it arein the event of a failure.
If we've got loads of theseservers out there we've got
hundreds of these things outthere on sites and there is a

(18:19):
failure with either the USB keyor the operating system,
recovering from that with Unraidis the simplest thing ever.
We go and pull your USB backupfrom the Unraid Connect cloud,
load that onto a USB, put it indone.
Box is live again.
That's pretty hard to beat.
In addition to that, becauselots of the boxes that we're

(18:43):
doing are just a small nook, notsacrificing a drive for your
operating system is reallyappealing to us.
So in a small nook applicationwhere you've got one ssd or two
nvmes in there that you'rerunning redundantly, sacrificing
that to the operating system,um, we didn't want to do so.

(19:05):
The ability to have that on theUSB key, run all of our
containers and VMs off the NVMEsor the SSDs we really like that
.
I know that there has beenpeople who talk about issues
with failures of USB keys andthat sort of thing.
We've experimented withdifferent hardware and that sort

(19:26):
of thing.
We've experimented withdifferent hardware and that sort
of thing.
We have very few.
We've got a lot of machines outthere now.
We see very few USB failures.
We have one machine out thereat the moment that is on a solar
powered site and it loses powerevery night without when the
sun goes down.
It has no graceful shutdown oranything, it just goes off and

(19:50):
the next morning it comes backonline.
And it's been doing that forover quarter one perfectly wow,
yeah, yeah as well.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
I think a lot of people you know they don't
actually realize.
I'm sure most of our viewersrealize that you know it boots
off the flash drive but theneverything's in ram anyway.
So it's not kind of constantlyreading and writing off the
flash drive but theneverything's in RAM anyway.
So it's not kind of constantlyreading and writing to the flash
drive all the time it's running, like Windows would be.
That's right.
I think that's why people worry, isn't it, john?
I?

Speaker 2 (20:14):
think there's a bit of a misconception out there of
you can't run an operatingsystem off the USB drive.
That's not reliable and thatmisunderstanding comes from that
.
People don't understand thatit's essentially storing your
configuration for your operatingsystem and then that all runs
memory resident anyway.
So yeah, we really liked it.
It's an easy way to handlelicensing.

(20:35):
We've had very few problemswith it and when we have had a
failure, really easy to recover.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
You were saying earlier as well, Josh, that one
of the reasons you picked Unraidis because you, like you, know
some of the kind of futurefeatures and the development.
Have you actually tried Unraid7 beta?
Now, I understand you obviouslywouldn't be using this for
clients because it's not stable.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
No.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
But if you have, what do you like about?

Speaker 2 (21:02):
it.
Well, there's a few things thatI'm really looking forward to
to.
Well, there's a few things thatI'm really looking forward to
For some of our larger scalesystems where we're storing huge
amounts of data and we alsooffer NextCloud for customers
off their boxes and that sort ofthing.
Zfs offers a whole heap ofgreat options that we're really
looking forward to.
Also, snapshots One of theother things that we do is we

(21:25):
make sure all of the boxes arebacking up and then they store
their backups back to ourcentral server.
Um, the ability to do snapshotsand stuff like that with zfs
we're looking forward to.
Um, yeah, there's also been, aswe've gone along.
Each time there's been afeature that I've been like oh,
it'd be really nice if.
If this was changed, generally,within a month or two, somebody

(21:48):
goes and releases it.
Our remote access to themachines is built on so that we
can administer them TauScale.
Initially, tauscale we deployedas a container.
It meant we couldn't take thearrays down on the machines
because the container would goand we'd get booted out Very
shortly.
Tauscale within got released,problem solved and that stuff

(22:11):
seems to keep happening.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, tailscale, you know it's super awesome, isn't
it Fantastic?
What I'm going to ask you is ifyou could choose some kind of
features to be added to thesystem that would really help
you in your kind of business.
What would be some kind offeatures to be added to the
system that would really helpyou in your kind of business?
What would be your kind of wishlist of features that you
really wish were there thataren't?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I know that there is some advancement coming
around on some of these features.
Obviously, we bring up all ofour containers with Docker
Compose rather than installingthem through an app store or
that sort of thing.
Some of the date managementwithin the GUI of Docker Compose

(22:54):
created containers, I know isgetting some updates and some
fixes and stuff there.
Additionally, the developmentsaround the possibility to run
redundant unraid servers withouthaving to try and build
yourself a Kubernetes cluster isreally appealing to us,

(23:17):
particularly some of theseenvironments that we're putting
systems into.
They're very high-endenvironments, into their very
high-end environments.
It's the customers expect zerodowntime, our ability to put
three nooks in and have them allrunning together and one
takeover if there's an issuewith the other one.
Yes, we'd love that.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Have you actually seen the high availability
plug-in that's in development atthe moment?
We're playing with it at themoment.
Right, yes, yes, with it at themoment.
Right, yeah, yeah, it'sinteresting stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, it's one that we're watching very closely the
ability to be able to deploythree relatively cheap NUCs into
a rack and have them operatingas a high-availability cluster.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, what I wanted to ask you, josh, is how does
IAM Systems ensure that all ofyour kind of platforms are
automatically updated and backedup?
How do you kind of manage that?

Speaker 2 (24:15):
So obviously we put in place stuff like Watchtower
and that sort of thing to manageupdates on all of the
containers and that sort ofstuff.
We manage the schedules on that.
We also make sure that thoseschedules fall slightly behind
all of our test environmentsystems.
So basically, if we see anupdate come through our test
environment, we see issues fromit, we get a chance to go and

(24:37):
intervene before it comesthrough to all of the other
boxes.
And then as well as that, wehave reporting and monitoring on
all of the servers so each ofthem report uptime status.
They report all of theirupdates out to a central
location.
So anytime that there's anissue with anything, any of

(25:00):
these integrators can go backand say oh okay, right, there
was an issue there.
That box updated Home Assistantat that time.
Let's go and have a look there,we'll investigate and we'll fix
the problem.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Well, that's super cool how you kind of have like
test environments that areupdating first and then
everything's kind of delayed forthe proper.
That's very, very smart.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, the idea is to try and have a little bit of
everything in our testenvironment.
So, in terms of the differenttechnologies that we communicate
with, we try and have a testenvironment that has a bit of
everything in it and it gets allof its updates instantly as
they come out and everythingelse falls on a cycle behind

(25:44):
that.
So, yeah, generally if there'sa problem, we know it's coming
and in a lot of cases we canstop it from going through.
Wait until the next update thatsolves it.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
And what are you using for actually monitoring?
What software are you using forthe monitoring?
So, in terms of uptimemonitoring.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
we're using Uptime Kumar for that and we monitor on
Upttime Kumar over our talentthen for our reporting coming
out of the machines directly,obviously unraids own
notifications tool and that'sthen reporting out into slack.
Is is our platform of choice,and then each of the integrators

(26:21):
get their own channel in slackwhere all of their boxes report
to, and then, as well as that,we obviously have Watchtower and
our updates also reporting outto that same Slack channel.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Cool.
So you've got a lot of thingsin place for basically seamless
customer experience.
That sounds really, really cool.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
When we started showing this stuff to
integrators, a lot of them hadheard of some of this stuff
before and some of them wereeven playing with it at home.
Some of them would have araspberry pi at home, running
home assistant and some home kitstuff and they were all sort of
of the view of, yeah, thisstuff's really cool, but I'd be
too scared to run it in acustomer environment in terms of
I don't know how reliable it isand will it crash and all that

(27:07):
sort of thing and with all ofthese things to go along with it
.
You can ensure that and theyall seem to be adopting
relatively quickly.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, it's super cool .
You know your business, itsounds to me.
It sounds really reallyinteresting.
It's a shame you're over inAustralia and not over here in
Europe.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
It's great fun.
We get to be involved on somereally cool projects and get to
play with cool stuff.
It's a lot more fun than acorporate recruitment career was
.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
So can we actually talk about some of your current
projects?
I was reading on your website.
Can you share details about theprojects like these sunny hills
apartment and the mossman homeretreat and home 14, those?

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I can.
So the the difficulty for ushas always been able to showcase
projects that we're involved on.
Generally, we're not engaged bythe end customer, so we're
brought in by a systemsintegrator.
Lots of these projects willhave a builder and a million
stakeholders involved, and usgetting permission to showcase

(28:14):
the project is relatively rare.
So these are some of the fewprojects where we've either been
engaged by the end customer orit's been a project where we've
gotten permission, and sothey're some of the ones that
we're featuring.
So the Surrey Hills Apartmentswas actually a collection of 12

(28:34):
apartments in a little boutiquebuilding.
They each had some basicautomation in them.
We went and rented all of themoff.
The owners fitted them all outwith nice furniture,

(29:06):
no-transcript.
So it was a cool project aswell, because we got to do not
just each of the individualapartments automation but the
building as well.
So when a guest checked in,they'd immediately get access on
their phone to the building'slobby door and the door to the
apartment they were staying inand all that sort of stuff, and
it'd disappear as soon as theychecked out.

(29:30):
Um, so that was, uh, that thatwas one of our earlier projects.
Um, the mossman home retreat isa luxury renovation on a on a
home that at the time the ownersdecided right, while we're
doing a renovation, we'll do atechnology update there.
And it was a good one becausewe got a lot of say in what the

(29:53):
technology that went in was.
In a lot of cases we come in atthe end and have to work with
everybody else's stuff.
So it was a fun one where wegot the cycle unify everything,
unify protect for all of thecameras and all of that sort of
stuff.
And then Home 14 is a recentproject that has just gone live

(30:13):
for us.
It's a new build.
It's a large Control 4 systemthat runs it.
The lighting in there is allactually PNX.
It's a big environment with abig mixture of stuff that we've
got all coming into home kitreally nicely.
The owner's spec was I wantsiri voice control for anything

(30:35):
within the control four system.
Um, so yeah, it's, uh, it's anice one.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
It was a really impressive build going back to
the first lot of apartments youwere talking about, um.
I was reading on your websitethat sadly they had to close due
to covid and um not gettingenough tourism.
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
yeah, unfortunately, it was an idea where we were
able to fund having these reallycool demonstration spaces that
were all fully automated byrunning them as airbnbs.
They were in a very popularlocation in sydney, uh, they're
really well placed, so they didreally well as airbnbs until
covid came along and that allended and we then had a whole

(31:18):
bunch of apartments that we werepaying rent on with nobody
booking them, um, so that wasunfortunately the the end of of
that one that our system isstill running in there.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Um, however, we're no longer running running them as
airbnbs when I first read that Iwas thinking to myself you know
now you've told me about howcomplex it is there and
everything.
I was thinking I wonder if, um,it was due to covid that josh
swapped from raspberry pies tounraid because he couldn't buy
Raspberry Pis in COVID.
I was thinking, is that somehowjoined together?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
But obviously it's not there actually was a part of
the reason that we moved away.
We're starting to look at alsofrom a price point, the cost of
a current, when we were havingtrouble getting our hands on
them as well.
But even now, when you look ata current model Raspberry Pi
versus an N100 built NUC, wefelt that we were getting much

(32:13):
more out of similar money andN100 NUC was offering us a
better platform.
But yes, obviously shortagesduring COVID were another reason
that we started looking atother options.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, because even the Raspberry Pi 5 is quite
expensive.
Really, you know, it's aboutthe same as a n100 motherboard
with the cpu isn't it?

Speaker 2 (32:35):
that's right.
By the time you've specced itwith all of the stuff that you
want in it, you've got a powersupply and a case and all of
that sort of thing.
If we're buying our nooks inrelative quantities and that
sort of thing, if we're buyingour NUCs in relative quantities
and that sort of thing and we'resecuring an N100 with 16 gig of
RAM and a 500 gig SSD cheaperthan what I'd be buying retail

(32:57):
Raspberry Pis for, so you knowyou normally go for 16 gigs of
RAM in most of the NUCs, do you?
Yeah, in the NUCs our base is is16 gig um just with the
allowance to run a windows vm onthere, while they've got um all
of their camera systems runningand all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
16 gigs are standard you know, when I was reading
about the n100 on the intel siteit kind of says the maximum RAM
is 16 gigs.
But I've actually got onerunning with 32 gigs.
32 does actually work on it.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
We haven't tried one yet, but I must admit I've got a
few sitting here and at onepoint I was thinking, yeah,
let's stick some extra in there.
See what happens.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
You know, the funny thing is is like the server that
I've got it running in, I thinkit uses about 5% of that.
It was a bit of it was a bit ofa waste of money, but again
it's like.
It's like, you know, wanting a,wanting a ferrari that does 190
miles an hour.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
You know it's nice to know you've got it, but you're
not gonna, you're not gonna useit maybe I think a lot of the
home lab community works alittle bit on that concept of
wanting to build something thatis dramatically over-engineered
and overpowered for what itsprimary application might be.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I'll tell you, josh, you know your business.
It sounds really really supercool.
I'm really really impressedwith it.
It's absolutely awesome.
What I'm wondering is, like youknow, what are your future
plans for the business?
You know, know, you know.
So where do you see thebusiness going from now?

Speaker 2 (34:28):
so from here, we're still growing the numbers of
integrators out there whounderstand this idea of using
open source platforms and toolsfor home automation systems.
Um, so most of our time andattention is focused on

(34:48):
demonstrating this stuff to themand getting them playing with
it in their own environments,which then gives them the
confidence to start deploying iton their client sites.
The other big market that wefocused on a lot is the
disability space and workingwith automation for people with

(35:10):
mobility disabilities voicecontrol for them.
They're really fun projects towork on.
So we've got quite a fewprojects coming up in that space
and we're looking at trying todo more in that space as well.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Awesome.
Yeah, that's really really coolWith the integrators and open
source stuff.
What kind of worries do theyhave about using open source?
Do they kind of worry that it'snot secure, or do they worry
that the projects are going to ahigh-end residential
environment where home buildmight have cost tens of millions
of dollars?

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Those customers aren't particularly forgiving of
outages and their systems notworking, particularly forgiving
of outages and their systems notworking.
So that's been.
The main thing is that most ofthem have thought, oh, this is
the ones that have heard aboutit think this is great stuff to
play with at home as a toy butcan't be deployed effectively in

(36:26):
a production environment.
And that's our main focus isshowing that if you have the
extra tools to go with it, youput in place all of the right
processes for monitoring andmaintenance that they can be
entirely reliable in a largeproduction environment.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Cool.
So, anyway, I'm going to justkind of move on and just while
I've got you on here, josh, I'mgoing to ask you some things
about home automation.
What are some of the top trendsthat you're seeing in home
automation this year?

Speaker 2 (36:56):
So it's interesting being in Australia.
We lack a bit behind what youguys have access to in the US.
Obviously, the furtherdevelopment of matter and the
standards associated with matteris the big thing in the home
automation world at the moment.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Can I just stop you, Josh?
One moment, just for people whodon't know what MATA is, what
is.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
MATA standard that has been put together by a
conglomerate of all of the majortech providers Apple and

(37:43):
Samsung and have allcollaborated to put together a
standard so that all devices cancommunicate over this standard
and there's a centralizedstandard, as opposed to the
current world of this deviceworks here and this device
doesn't work in this platform.
Matter is supposed to be ourmagical solution to that.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Right, so it's basically to stop us having
5,000 apps on our phone for allthe different things, I guess.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
That's exactly right.
Real automation is obviouslyabout a single place that
controls everything, not 14different apps.
Oh, this one for the lights andthis one for the air con and
that sort of thing.
Matter is the standard.
That should mean that anymanufacturer can go and produce
hardware, make sure that itmeets these standards and it

(38:26):
will then work in all of themajor platforms.
Whether you're an Apple user ora Google user, it won't make a
difference.
So that is the major thing inthe industry at the moment.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Matter's quite a new thing.
If I'm not mistaken, it's onlybeen around for a few years, is
that right?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
That's right.
It's still a developingstandard that going forward is
still adopting more differentdevice types and that sort of
thing.
So whether they supportbatteries and solar stuff and
camera streams and that sort ofthing.
So whether they supportbatteries and solar stuff and
camera streams and that sort ofthing.
So it is a developing standard.
It is being implemented slowlyby some of the automation

(39:03):
companies out there, faster byothers, but it is the talk of
what the future has for homeautomation.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Right, I'd like to ask you for kind of people who
are wanting to DIY this kind ofthing.
What advice would you give tosomeone who's just starting to
build their first smart homesetup?

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Starting point, obviously, home assistant.
It is the easiest startingpoint you're going to find.
There's a ton of videos onYouTube that will get you up and
going In terms of devices andthat sort of thing to look for
in the home for lighting controland that sort of thing.

(39:44):
We like Zigbee-based.
If you're retrofitting into anexisting environment,
zigbee-based pucks that you wireup to the existing lighting
circuit um, pretty hard can I?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
can I just stop?
Stop you.
Sorry, one second, josh.
This is just only for my owninterest.
Do you have a neutral wire inyour lighting in australia by
default or not?
It?

Speaker 2 (40:07):
depends very much on where you're at actually.
So quite regularly you'll findat the switch that we don't have
neutral at the switch, that alot of places here are wired
with loop at ceiling rather thanloop at switch.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
So the best ways we've found for wiring the pucks
is, rather than wiring them upbehind the switch, is wiring
them in the ceiling up where theloop wire is for the switch,
because at that point you alwayshave you always have a neutral
layer so for people that don'tknow what we're talking about,

(40:46):
the reason I'm asking josh abouta neutral wire is in the uk we
don't really often have neutralwires in the light switch, and
when you put in a smart switchthat has zigbee, it has to draw
power from the circuit and youneed the neutral wire for that.
I think some things have like alittle capacitor and things
like that.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
In there there's actually quite a few bits out
there now that will get aroundwithout a neutral wire.
Uh, if in the uk, if you wantto do a cost-effective retrofit
with no neutral wires, theShelly Pucks are the way for you
to go.
No Z-Wave, no Zigbee.
It's important that you havegood Wi-Fi in the house,

(41:23):
obviously, but you can wire allof the Shelly range now with no
neutral.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Anyway, sorry, I kind of rudely interrupted you there
for my own kind of personalreasons.
Yeah, that's all right.
So, yes, commonly no neutral.
Anyway, sorry, I kind of rudelyinterrupted you there for my
own kind of personal reason yeah, that's all right.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
So, yes, commonly, no neutral at the switches here
very common.
So best case if you're buildinga new home, best case, best
practice for lighting control isobviously a central bus
controlled lighting system likeknx or that sort of thing.
But if you're retrofitting anddoing a diy in your existing
home and you want to do thatcost-effectively, yeah, a

(41:55):
wireless puck is like a Shellyor a Zigbee or a Z-Wave puck.
It's pretty hard to go past.
They're pretty cheap.
We found reliability andlongevity on them to be really
good.
We've had wireless pucks outthere that have been in place
for five years on them to bereally good.
We've had wireless pucks outthere that have been in place

(42:16):
for five years.
No problems on them.
On the camera and doorbellfront, we try and encourage
everybody to stay away fromcloud-reliant cameras.
That will only record yourcamera streams up to the cloud.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
What would you recommend for a ring doorbell
alternative, if I can make any?

Speaker 2 (42:29):
recommendation go Unifi Protect for all of your
cameras and use the UnifiProtect doorbell alternative.
If I can make anyrecommendation go unify protect
for all of your cameras and usethe unify protect doorbells if
we're expecting a project.
That's our go-to, and as wellas unify access for the access
control.
Um, for some people that's abit expensive.
Other than that, our favorite,our favorite door station in the

(42:51):
professional integrator marketis the Doorbird door station.
Again, it's not a cheap unit,but it's a very nice unit.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
I bought an Amcrest doorbell which just has an RTSP
stream that comes off it Yep,and I just wired it into the
normal doorbell wiring and it'sbeen working for probably three
or four years and I think itcost me $100 US.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah pretty much.
If you go and look, make sureyou can find something that
supports an RTSP stream,preferable, if you can,
something that will supportOnViv.
The benefit of supporting OnVivis you get the motion detection
off the device and you'll alsoget alerts about the button
pressed if it's a device thathas an actual strike or a lock

(43:39):
controller in it.
Generally, on viv will give youthe ability to trigger that
strike and that sort of thing aswell what's your opinion on
philips, hue, light bulbs andthat kind of thing?

Speaker 1 (43:48):
is that something you don't like?
No, we.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
We love the Hue range , actually For accent lighting
and LED strip lighting control.
Love the Hue range.
We wouldn't generally recommendHue for your in-ceiling
downlight, for downlighting andfixed lighting in a ceiling no,

(44:12):
we prefer central dimmers andcentral controllers for that.
Generally, most people don'twant rgb in their ceiling down
lighting either.
But for your accent lightinglamps around the place, rgb led
strip lighting and outdoor stuffif you want to add some color
in the garden.

(44:32):
Works with every platform outthere, whether you're Google,
android, alexa all runs locallyand seems to be.
We've got a lot of new gear outthere that's been in place for
ages, no problems.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Can you get any kind of outdoor lighting that's solar
powered?

Speaker 2 (44:51):
that's smart, pretty limited here Again also what we
see in Australia because we're240 volt.
Here we see a significantlyless range than what the US
market sees.
But at this stage we've seenpretty little in the solar
powered garden stuff.
That's actually smart.

(45:11):
Yeah, I've seen pretty littlein the solar-powered garden
stuff.
That's actually smart.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, I've been looking for some outdoor stuff
that can be smarter than my RFremote.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Go.
The Hue stuff.
The Hue stuff all comes withyour outdoor wiring.
It's all low voltage, so it'sall all 12 volt outdoor rated
cable that you can put in theground.
If you're going to diy, addsome color and light to the
garden, it's it's the easiestway to do it.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
It's not cheap but it looks good and and you get a
good effect from it and forsomeone like I say, starting a
new smart home project at home,what would you recommend they
use for controlling their power?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
outlet sockets again, if you're if you're going to be
using other hue product andyou're going with other hue
lighting products and you justwant basic power outlet control,
the hue outlets are hard tobeat.
If you're going with other Hueproducts, so you've already got
a Hue bridge in there, Then yesthem.

(46:17):
Other than that, any TP youfind on Amazon these days that
has a vaguely recognizable brandon it.
They all work pretty well.
All TP-Link smart outlets andall of that stuff all works
quite nicely.
Now We've tested lots of thatstuff to see.

(46:39):
Are they calling home with anyfunny stuff?
And we've seen very little ofthat.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Do you use much Tasmota stuff at all?
There's less, I believe, theShelly stuff.
A lot of it's Tasmota, isn't it?
A lot of the Shelly stuff, alot of it's tas motor isn't it?

Speaker 2 (46:51):
a lot of the shelly stuff is tas motor based and
we're seeing a lot more of theesp32 based stuff that we're
seeing here as well.
So, particularly if we're usinga zigbee coordinator um, we'll
typically use like a poe umzigbee coordinator and a lot of

(47:11):
them that we're seeing are basedon the ESP home platform.
As well as that, we're seeing alot of the Z-Wave or the Zigbee
sensors and motion sensors andstuff that we're seeing coming
out here underlying again theESP home.
Behind that, but less so of theTasmota in the australian

(47:33):
products that we're getting hereyeah, so I used to flash the um
, the old sonoff stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
It was pretty easy, but I don't think you can do
that anymore, can you?

Speaker 2 (47:42):
I think they've changed I haven't had a go with
the sonoff product rangerecently.
They are quite an attractiveoption, particularly on that
wireless lighting puck option.
We haven't tried them inaustralia.
Um, the zigbee puck ranges thatare actually fully certified

(48:02):
for australia is the, the clipsof wiser range.
So if we're going for a zigbeepuck in australia it's pretty
much always going to be aclipsipTool Wiser puck.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
A while ago for one of my clients.
I don't you know, in my day jobI don't kind of really do home
automation stuff like you do.
But I kind of got roped in by aclient I'd known for many years
and he has a kind of metalplating factory where they have
tanks where they have to havethings inside different
chemicals at different kind oftemperatures, yep.

(48:32):
And so he said, oh, ed, whydon't we just use home assistant
and sort of do all this stuff?
So we did, and we set up tazmotor, um, shelly, no sorry
sonoff flash devices which couldmonitor the power, turn things
on and off, and have atemperature probe that would go
into the tank and then so itcould turn the tanks off at the

(48:54):
right time.
But what he's been finding isthat he bought a whole load of
them but he's running out andhe's getting worried that he's
not going to be able to replacethem.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
So we're actually doing some work at the moment
with a provider here that offersa geothermal home heating
product, and using HomeAssistant to control all of the
additional subsystems that canbe attached to that using valves

(49:25):
to control where the water flowgoes and temperature probes for
that.
And yeah, we found buildingthat stuff out in home assistant
is actually quite easy to doand it's really nice for it.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, I've got something up here.
Oh sorry, Um a UK company.
Um, I'm not sure if you can seethat.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Bring it a little bit further to the center for me.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, now the center is the opposite way.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yes, there we go.
Yeah, we're good there.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Local bytes and kind of.
This is what our kind of UKplugs look like.
That's one of them inside, butthey're pre-flashed with
Tasmotron.
They're about $10 each.
I found them about a year ago.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
I see also just from the packaging on that that it
supports mqtt, which we are abig fan of as well.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Anything that supports mqtt is really easy to
work with and really easy tointegrate so basically for um
the home user, you were sayinglighting best to get something
you can wire in.
Smart plugs, really anythingfrom TP-Link, anything cheap.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Anything cheap on Amazon is fine.
On your smart plug, work outwhether or not you actually want
metering on that plug or not isprobably the only thing to
consider.
Do you just want to be able toturn the device on or off or do
you want to be able to seeconsumption data and that sort
of thing?
There's plenty that will offerthe extra stuff pretty
affordably as well.
These days I always, on thecamera front, tell everybody

(50:58):
that you probably, even ifyou're running your own cameras
recording locally to your ownNBR and everything probably
don't put cameras in privateareas of your home just as a
good practice.
Cameras are great for outdoorspaces and common use areas and
that sort of thing, but yourbedroom and lounge room probably
aren't great spaces for cameras, for climate control and that

(51:23):
sort of stuff.
Our climate control in Australiais generally quite different to
what you guys have in the UKand again to what's in the US.
Different to what you guys havein the UK and again to what's
in the US.
The typical house in Australiawill have a reverse cycle air
conditioner that's generallycontrolled by an infrared remote
control In those environments,either the Wi-Fi product or the

(51:47):
Ethernet product of that reversecycle units their manufacturer
Some of them will make themDakin and stuff like that.
We use their units when that'snot available.
We love for, particularly forDIY stuff at home.
If you have reverse cycle andan infrared remote, give the
Sensible products a go.
They work straight out of thebox.

(52:09):
Point your remote at them,press the on button and that's
basically it In thes.
Obviously your nest thermostatsand that sort of thing are
popular.
I don't know what the I've seenfor your radiators in the uk, a
few options for add-on.
Uh smart thermostats for yourwall mounted radiators.

(52:30):
That, I'm assuming, areprobably the most common climate
control method over there.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, we don't need really air conditioning in the
UK because we only get threedays of summer, so it's kind of
a bit.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
And on your three days of summer it gets declared
a heat wave and everybody getswarned they should stay inside
because it passed 22 degreesyeah, so, yeah, so we don't have
that.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
That so much here, um .
But for the um new people tohome automation I'm going to ask
you as well are there anyparticular products you'd say
they should avoid?
If they see them, like you know, they're not going to work with
home assistant or they're notvery reliable.
Are there any ones you've hadproblems with and you'd think,
no, don't use them.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
I would probably avoid buying any brand that you
don't recognize and that youcan't.
Before you go and buy anything,go and jump on a Home Assistant
forum.
Go and punch it into Google.
Go and say that somebody elsehas talked about using it with
home assistant.
Provided somebody else has doneit, it's going to be super easy
, um.

(53:37):
Provided it's using a standardtechnology set for its
communication, it's going towork with home assistant.
Weird stuff that uses its ownform of bluetooth, low energy
and some products like that,some of that sort of stuff you
want to be cautious about,because the developer of that

(53:57):
might not have released thestandards for it, so that might
be a bit more difficult.
Um.
Again on the cameras, I like totry and avoid anything that
records to any cloud platformanywhere for a camera, um.
But other than that, there'snot a lot of products that we
see these days that we go.

(54:18):
I know all of their productline.
I'd really stay away from thefor the diy stuff as well.
Have a look at some of thestuff coming out from akara is
or aquara, depending on howyou're supposed to pronounce.
It is really good, particularlyif you want direct HomeKit
support and direct Mattersupport and that sort of stuff.

(54:38):
The doorbells and stuff comingout of them are really
impressive, so there's a lotmore options for the DIY.
I want to have a play at home.
It's a lot easier than it usedto be as well.
I want to have a play at home.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
It's a lot easier than it used to be as well?
What do you think of peoplewhen they set up a lot of IoT
devices on Wi-Fi?
Do you think it can slow downtheir Wi-Fi network because
there's so much traffic if theysay, have 100 Wi-Fi devices on
their home network?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
That's not been our experience of it Generally.
Again, most of the projectsthat we're on now aren't like
that, because their lighting isa central bus control system and
all of the cameras are poa andthat sort of thing but, earlier
on, we were doing more iotdevice projects and doing more
work with stuff like shellydevices and that sort of thing.

(55:27):
no, we didn't see any realdifference in network
performance with having a bunchof IoT devices on the network.
Admittedly, these weregenerally devices that
communication with the device isa very small amount of data
that goes back and forth betweenwhere we'd run our Shelleys in
MQTT mode.

(55:48):
So the amount of data goingback and forth on a network for
MQTT topics is so small you'dneed so many devices on a
network to see any real impactfrom that.
That's been our personal viewon it.
Having said that, start addingcameras and doorbells and stuff

(56:08):
that's sending camera streamsand that sort of thing, and I'm
sure that you could probably seesome of that.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
So if you're doing that with lots of Wi-Fi cameras,
you're better off to have aseparate Wi-Fi network for that
and keep it separate.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
If you're going for a lot of Wi-Fi cameras.
Yeah, we definitely.
We generally recommend to stayaway from Wi-Fi cameras if
possible.
Obviously, knocking out Wi-Ficameras is not particularly
difficult to do and, from what Iunderstand, it's starting to be

(56:44):
seen in break-ins, in the US atleast.
Yeah, I've seen some reports ofcases of people using devices
to take out Wi-Fi before theybreak into properties in the US.
I don't know that it's common,but I have seen that it is
starting to happen.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
It is remarkably easy to knock off a Wi-Fi device.
People don't realize you justneed Kali Linux and a couple of
scripts and you can bump off aWi-Fi device and it will just
keep not being able to reconnect.
And that's what people do is.
They'll knock off a Wi-Fidevice and it will just keep not
being able to reconnect.
And that's what people do isthey'll knock off a Wi-Fi camera
and then break in becausethey've basically switched the
camera off.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
That's right.
They've effectively droppedthat camera off your SSID.
And even for people whowouldn't necessarily have the
technical skill set to go and dothat, getting your hands on
something online that'spre-built already for you to do
that, appears to be notparticularly difficult to do so

(57:39):
for anywhere where your camerafootage is important, we pretty
heavily discourage a Wi-Ficamera.
Also, most of the cameras thatwe're deploying are generally
powered by a PoE, so that's sortof doing both jobs there.
We have seen some of the solarbattery operated Wi-Fi cameras

(58:03):
for out in your backyard whereyou don't have a cable going out
there and that sort of thing,and for that sort of thing, sure
, but if you can put yourcameras on a cable, yeah,
talking about solar cameras, oneof my friend's fathers um, I've
kind of known him for like 25years.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
He um put some cameras up at his property and
they were all solar, they allhad a sim card and he he got
he's in his 70s and he climbedup to the top of these trees and
nailed them up at the top ofthese trees.
And nailed them up at the topof the trees they kind of worked
for like literally a few days.
He went abroad and said ed,none of the cameras are working.
And I said where did you put inthe top of the tree?
And I said well, you do realizewhen I'm not going up in the

(58:45):
shade and they just, they justwill run out of battery.
Ian, if you're watching.
I'm sorry for bringing you up.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, look, we again generally would try and
discourage.
I know that there's a lot ofconsumer wireless solar cameras
out there on the market thesedays that look attractive
because you can throw them upanywhere.
But most of our experience withsolar-based cameras has been
hit and miss and obviously thesecurity of a wireless camera is

(59:16):
dramatically reduced.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Anyway, moving on a little bit, what do you think is
the most underrated smart hometechnology or feature that you
think maybe people should knowabout?
Is there anything at all?

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Underrated know about .
Is there anything at allunderrated?
Um, for the average home user?
Um, if you're doing a diy smarthome for your family, uh, the
features that will win you themost points with a wife are
probably some of the ones toconsider I I knew you were going

(59:52):
to say that, josh, and I cantell you that the components
that will win you points on thatfront.
Blind the blind automation isalways something that is
impressive.
It's really easy to use onceyou've got it.
It's impressive, it's reallyeasy to use once you've got it.

(01:00:14):
And additionally, particularlyfor Apple users who are using
AirPlay in their, who are usingCarPlay in their car, a
HomeKit-compatible garage doorcontroller that will immediately
give you, as soon as you're inyour car and approaching the
house, a button on yourdashboard on the car that shows

(01:00:36):
you the current state of thegarage door and you can tap on
it to open it and tap on it toclose it and that sort of thing.
Uh, in most markets you canpick them up pretty cheaply
these days that are directlyhome kit compatible.
So, yeah, if you're in a carusing carplay, um, get a, get an
apple home pick compatiblegarage door controller right,

(01:00:57):
cool, good advice.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Do you actually use any kind of like geolocation
stuff from the phone back tohome assistant to do things like
maybe you leave the country andyou come back and you want your
air conditioning on when youland at the airport?
Is that kind of likeautomations that you program in
sometimes?

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Yeah, we will build automations in that when the
last phone leaves the house.
So for a family of users, whenthe last phone leaves the house,
activate the away scene of thehouse, which will put all the
blinds down, turn all the lightsand the heaters off and arm the
security system in the house.
When the first phone returnshome to the house, disable the

(01:01:37):
alarm security system, put theblinds back up and put some
lights on.
When you get home, some yourfavorite playlist playing.
Um.
Another popular one is for goodnight scenes for or bedtime
scenes.
For people to have theirfavorite have a spotify bedtime

(01:01:58):
playlist that will then play intheir bedroom when they trigger
that scene um, but the thing islike that might not be wife or
partner husband friendly.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah, what happens if , like I like one music and my,
we can, we can offer you both.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
You can trigger ed bedtime or you can trigger the
boss's bedtime.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Whichever you prefer any common pitfalls or mistakes
that you um see people make whenthey first set up a?

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
um smart home look for people who, when they're
first doing a diy projectthemselves, um, probably the the
common pitfall is adding everydevice everywhere and ending up
with a central controlenvironment, whether that's
HomeKit or a Home Assistantdashboard.

(01:02:48):
That's really unruly.
That's got tons of sensorinformation that you don't need,
that have tons of differentdevices that actually you can't
control that aspect of thatdevice and you end up with this
big clunky thing with lots ofbells and whistles and buttons
everywhere.
But it's really awful to use.
That's probably the first painpoint that most people will

(01:03:12):
encounter.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
So, basically, just keep it simple for the functions
that you know you're going touse on a regular basis and don't
overcomplicate it, because it'sjust more to go wrong, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Particularly when it comes to the wife approval
factor as well.
The keep it simple option willwork better for you in the long
run.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Are there any kind of upcoming innovations in home
automation that you know aboutthat you may be excited about.
Anything that's not out yetthat you know is coming Back on
the matter front.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
I think that we'll begin to see more players in the
professional systems integratormarket who are making expensive
hardware, like Crestron andLutron and that sort of thing,
starting to experiment in theMatter world themselves, which
will be a big development.
That will mean morecompatibility of their equipment

(01:04:05):
with IoT platforms and thatsort of thing.
There's lots of cool stuffalways happening in the camera
space at the moment in terms ofusing generative AI to report on
events happening on camerafeeds and that sort of thing,
and events happening on camerafeeds and that sort of thing.

(01:04:26):
Some of your listeners mighthave seen some of the stuff
being done with Frigate throughHome Assistant and the
generative AI tool andinteresting notifications that,
if you're in Australia, saythings to you like a kangaroo
hopped down the driveway andlooked at a kookaburra, then
hopped away down the street andgetting text notifications and

(01:04:49):
stuff like that.
So the generative ai ability toprovide reporting on cameras
and overall what's happening inthe home.
I think we'll see lots morecool stuff in that space how you
learning your uses of your homeand starting to adapt that for
you so you don't have to turnlights on when you want them and

(01:05:10):
set temperatures when you wantthem.
It will just learn what yourtypical use case is.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
I've got some Reolink cameras and they've got like
people detection and animaldetection and I was surprised at
how easy it was to integratethat into Home Assistant so that
after a certain time if it seesa human being in my backyard it
will actually flash the lightsred in the house to let me know

(01:05:38):
there's someone there.
And that was just likeremarkably easy, really simple.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
And when you compared to previously, cameras were
reliant and most securitysystems were reliant on motion
detection in a camera, which isa really poor metric to actually
monitor on.
You have problems obviouslyevery time the wind blows if you
haven't propped all the bleedsout of the picture and all of
that sort of thing.

(01:06:03):
So for running automation-basedevents off when you know it's
actually a person there, yeah,you can create really cool
automations off that stuff.
Also, with some of the newstuff around, obviously, homekit
will actually automaticallygive you facial recognition

(01:06:24):
across all of your camerastreams as well.
So if you're bringing yourcamera streams into HomeKit
Secure Video and you go throughyour iCloud photos and tag your
friends and stuff like that,when your friend comes and rings
the doorbell, your Apple TVwill come up and say Adam rang
the doorbell if you've taggedhim in your doorbell in your
photos.
So, yeah, I think we'll seemore cool stuff like that.

(01:06:48):
The ability to say, only openthe garage when the garage
camera sees my license platestuff that was employed high
security locations will becomemore and more available to the
average home user.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Well, josh, thank you very, very much.
I don't want to keep you toolate, because I know it's much
later in Australia than it isover here in the UK.
And if you can do me a reallybig favor, josh, just look up
what the lottery results are inthe UK tonight and tell me what
they are, so I can you know,because you're in the future,
I'm in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
I better kind of win, no worries.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
No worries.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
I expect 75% of the winnings.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Sounds good to me.
Anyway, where can listenerslearn more about IAM Systems and
the IAM home product, please?

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
So anybody who's interested can jump on our
website at iamsystemscomau.
There's information on thereabout the different platforms
that we offer, the projects thatwe've been working on, the
different kinds of technologythat we can integrate for people
and that sort of thing we offer.
Our servers are available atthis stage throughout Australia.

(01:07:58):
However, having said that, ifthere were customers overseas
who wanted to buy a box thatcame running everything for them
to play with, reach out to us.
We're more than happy to getthem out to other people as well
.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
And do you have any social media channels people can
reach out to you on?

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
We're still building up our social media channels,
but at this stage we've got aFacebook and a LinkedIn page
that I think will be tagged inthe podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Right, awesome.
Well, again, josh, thank youvery, very much for your time
today.
Thank you for sharing yourknowledge.
It's been really interestingtalking to you, and thank you
very much to all of you guys forwatching the podcast.
So, from Ed and Josh, thank youvery much and we'll catch you

(01:08:46):
in the next one.
Thank you.

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