Foreign.

Welcome to around the House with Eric G.

Your go to source for everything home improvement.

Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric G.

Is here to guide you through the latest tips, tricks and trends coming up in this week's second hour of the show.

Eric G.

Is under the weather this week, so we stepped back to revisit new technology that can save you money and have a healthier home.

With Jim Carroll, transition over to heat pumps, high efficiency H vac systems, right?

Oh, yeah, part of that process, the AC is running a lot less.

And then guess what happens now.

We got a high humidity.

High humidity, Right.

And then we can lead to mold, which leads to poor indoor air quality.

Right?

So it's I saw a stat the other day that something like 80% of U.S.

households.

So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap and let's get to work right here on around the House with.

Eric G.

Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

Thanks for joining me today.

This hour is brought to you by our friends at Monument Grills for that new barbecue.

Check them out at Monument Grills Calm.

And today, guys, we are going to have a conversation with a good old friend that has spent some time with me up on the education stage.

And if I want to talk about anything smart about a smart home, this is my leading go to guy and he has got a brand new system that I'm so excited to share about.

Heck, we joked about this about a decade ago coming up with something like this and he did it.

Jim Carroll, welcome to around the House brother.

Thank you, Eric.

It's good to see you again.

Always a pleasure.

Good to see you, buddy.

I always love catching up with you at the shows and you and I up there pitching our wares up at the national association of Home Builders stage, technology stage.

And you've got a big history.

Let's talk about you for a minute in the smart home space of where you came from.

So that kind of explains where you're going.

All right, great.

Super.

Yeah, it's me.

And more importantly, the bigger team at Sendal.

We've been in the smart home space over 20 years.

Actually, that's not exactly we were in home automation.

The last 15 years has really been the smart home.

Right.

And our previous gig, we were the first company to let you use your phone to control your house.

Right.

Not just your thermostat, but everything in your house.

And that was the genesis of smart home.

Right.

We stopped talking about big complex home automation systems and transitioned over to this world of smart devices being connected to the Internet.

Right.

We've always focused on this human behavior and experience and aggregate everything into a single app.

Right.

So it's.

And now we've done it again.

But this time around, we've gone beyond simple dashboarding of information and discreet off on commands.

We've really focused on an autonomous home that focuses on your health and well being while you're in your home.

Right.

To help your home take care of you.

So smart.

If you walk into 90% of homeowners that have smart home devices in their home, they have 10 different systems going, nothing's talking to each other.

Their rice cooker is telling them what the weather is tomorrow and they don't care.

All these things that are so independent, nobody's talking to each other.

There's all this information out there and there's nothing smart about it.

But they are smart home devices.

That's right.

And what we do is, because we don't make any hardware, We're a software IoT platform.

So we look to make these things intelligent.

And the intelligence comes from the platform, aggregating together all the data it takes from the home and driving all these complex subsystems that are in your home, driving them to give you the desired outcome.

It's a.

And it's.

When we were on that panel discussion, we talked about autonomous homes and that's really what people want.

The general homeowner isn't a tech gadget guy.

They're not IT people and they don't want all this stuff.

So how do we take smart home technology and make it truly meaningful to homeowners?

Right?

And we do that by focusing on convenience, comfort in a home that cares for you.

So it's driving to those outcomes that are important for you without you needing to be driving.

It drives itself autonomously.

Think about it.

Everybody grab your phones, take a look and see how many apps you have on there that are controlling things in your home.

Yeah, that's right.

I bet you got 5, 10, 15, right?

For a lot of people.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, easy.

Just that thinking about thermostats, your tv.

Yeah.

Washer and dryer system, washer and dryer, refrigerator.

They all got apps.

Everything's got its own app today.

Apartment shoots got an app.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And most people don't realize just how complicated homes really are.

They're a collection of passive and active systems, some passive systems, things like the insulation that's in your home.

It creates an Environment.

And then there's things that are active manually.

Doors and windows.

Right.

We.

Most people don't appreciate when they open their window.

Right.

The physics that's going on in their home.

Right.

Instantaneously.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

The humidity coming in, pollutant coming in, good air quality going out.

All sorts of things start taking place.

And then the active systems kick in.

Your AC turns on if you open your doors and windows.

Right.

So I gotta remember to shut that off if I'm gonna do this.

You close the doors and windows.

You gotta remember to turn it back on.

Our system manages all that in the background seamlessly for you.

It drives you towards those outcomes that you desire.

It's so smart.

And a literally smart because it's taking all this data right from around your home, compiling it.

And now you have a system that can actually help maintain your indoor air quality and keep it as good as it possibly can be.

That's right.

And better than the way the systems are designed.

Right.

When you think about indoor air quality.

And we've gotten a lot of help from building science folks, the real experts in this space.

There's really four pillars, if you will.

There's the big one is source pollutant, source awareness.

Right.

And we'll touch on that in more detail.

But then the other three are humidity.

Right.

Either the lack of other need for.

Right.

You know, too much.

The ability to filter.

Filter things that are particles, aerosols that are in the air.

Right.

Then particle matter 2.5, which is like wildfire smoke.

But it's also.

When you burn the bacon.

Right.

It's.

And that could create an event.

And then there's ventilation.

Right.

The big V in H vac.

Right.

And it's.

There's all sorts of ventilation strategies.

Those things and those.

The equipment manufacturers and the contractors look at those things in a very siloed manner.

And they talk about them as if I have ventilation, I'm going to have good indoor air quality.

And that couldn't be any farther from the truth.

Ventilation is required to get the good indoor air quality.

But ventilation in and of itself can actually bring humidity into your home, which leads to paddock quality.

Could bring wildfire smoke into your home.

I was gonna say turn on a bath fan.

And I don't turn my bath fans on when I got wildfire smoke outside because I have a 1977 house not doing it.

Yeah.

There's this whole idea of makeup air.

Right.

So your bath fan could be anywhere from 50 to 100 CFM, which is cubic feet per minute.

Think about 100 boxes of air, one foot by one foot, leaving your bathroom every minute they need to be making.

Yes.

It's pulling it in.

And if there's Wildfire smoke outside, it's going to end up inside.

Right.

That's why I don't do laundry.

Don't use a dryer at that point either because the dryer is doing the same thing.

Yeah, the exact same thing.

And our software is so intelligent that it recognizes those events and it takes steps to offset that.

Right.

So it will actually, through a data service, see that Wildfire smoke is heading towards where you live.

It will proactively start ventilating to get as much fresh air in as possible.

And as the particle matter starts to rise, it will start ventilating.

Wow, that is incredible because that has been one of my biggest complaints about HRVs and ERVs.

Yep.

And it's man, they are so stupid because all of a sudden they're bringing in horrible air into a cleaner air situation.

And I end up coming on my radio show in areas where I know it's happening, saying, hey, you guys in this area, turn yours off.

Set an alarm on your phone for 48 hours to come, take a look at it.

Right.

To turn it back on.

You'll never remember to turn it back on again.

Now, when we first got into this, I was building a new home and it's got an ERV in it.

It was Wildfire smoke.

My H Vac company sent me an email to unplug my erv.

They never sent me an email to plug it back in.

No one's going to remember to put that thing back in.

No, not at all.

So the system will, if not totally eliminate ventilation during that period of time because we could get in a situation where we've run out of fresh air inside as well that the outdoor air maybe we can and but it's also smart enough to push you a notification to let you make that decision.

We say, hey, the outdoor air not really suitable right now, but your indoor air is pretty bad too.

Do you want us to ventilate?

And then it will also, if you've got a multi zone H vac system, it will swap the air with different parts of the house.

It will dilute contaminants and so give your legs extend out.

How much time you can go without the ventilation running.

That is huge.

I put a system in a couple years ago.

I put a carrier infinity system in when with this house.

And it was really smart because upstairs was always too hot all the time.

Downstairs was always colder.

So I went, okay, I'm going to make the upstairs two zones one and number two upstairs.

And it changed the whole feeling of the house just by doing it.

And it was huge because I can actually defy mother Nature and make it cooler upstairs when I go to bed.

Yeah.

And then on upstairs if I want it to be.

Yeah.

So Carrier is a great product that Infinity product lines outstanding.

We got a lot of installations out there with it.

So it's.

We're excited about products like that.

An interesting dynamic that gets created that is sometimes there's unintended consequences, right?

There always is.

What are you talking about?

One of the big always unintended consequences.

One of the big movements right now in home renovation is the transition over to heat pumps.

High efficiency H VAC systems.

Right?

Oh, yeah.

Part of that process, the AC is running a lot less.

And then guess what happens now?

We've got a high humidity.

Right.

And then we can lead the mold which leads to poor indoor air quality.

Right.

So it's.

I saw a stat the other day that something like 80% of U.S.

households live in climate zones that should have active whole house dehumidification.

Right.

Think about that, guys.

80%.

Yeah.

That's a big number.

Right?

That's a huge number.

And as we put smarter systems in that.

And this is one of my biggest complaints with building code out there.

They are all about building quality homes.

But building code is not taking in count indoor air quality and the health of the home.

It just does it.

Yeah.

Just not at all, really.

Again, going through building a new home, just building it to code.

We ended up with one point.

Air changes an hour, which is a small number.

Right.

So that you close the doors and windows.

It doesn't take long to get toxic just from normal human activity.

Just breathing, inhale, exhaling, cooking, bathing, whatever it may be.

Right.

And you're going to have bad indoor air quality.

It's a requirement in the state of Massachusetts to have that test done.

And they want the answer.

So you do that and the building inspector takes the answer, but then they don't do anything about it.

Right.

The building science world says if you get less than seven air changes, you need active ventilation.

Right.

Of course you do.

You're has.

But to say, oh, we're going to do this is a good thing, but then nothing.

Right.

I'm going to make my friends in Washington state that are contractors mad.

But I do like that in remodels up there, they're forcing people to put in ERV systems Up in Washington state, if you do a kitchen remodel and a bath remodel or a big kitchen model, they are actually making you retrofit the house and put in ERV systems in.

They're forcing part of the remodel, specifically.

ERVs, or just ventilation.

Ventilation has been code out here forever.

If I go into a condo unit and I do a kitchen remodel, for instance, and 30 years ago, that venture hood was not required, they're forcing me to figure out an answer to ventilate that kitchen.

Okay, no if, ands or buts about it.

Not going to give me a building permit without it.

But up there, they are requiring some kind of building science ventilation for the whole house.

Yeah.

We've seen in Arizona, we've got a number of communities we've done that.

They've gone to using a very inexpensive filtered ventilation ventilator that brings fresh air in.

Right.

And out to get.

And we did some work with the EPA and actually got some of the national ventilation code change around the concept of asynchronous ventilation so we can turn on that fresh air intake.

So now we're in Phoenix doing this where they have high particle matter from both traffic in the desert, right.

Just to storm kicks up.

So we could filter that air, bring it in, vector the fresh air to where the source of pollution is in the house.

In other words, we see the stove turn on, push the fresh air using the thermostat control for that zone, push the fresh air to that zone.

And then we synchronize the exhaust of the bathroom fan.

100 CFM exhaust, 100 CFM coming in.

And now we've got an asynchronous balance ventilation system.

And that scenario, we've saved those homes probably.

I think it's approaching 20% of the total energy spend.

And the homes have cleaner indoor air quality because the building science says, oh, based on the number of bedrooms and square footage, this is how much fresh air you need every hour.

If you set the home up like that, this ventilation would run 24 7.

So we'd see periods of time where the particle matter would go right through the roof.

VOCs would go through the roof.

Right.

Because that hundred CFMs for the entire home by vector, that's huge point of use, if you will.

We knock down the pollutant levels quickly, reduce the amount of recovery time the AC needs to do to get the house back in temperature.

So if you're bringing 100 degrees in, reason why we do ERVs is you could temper that 100 degrees to 85 degrees.

Yeah.

Try to be at 72.

Just by running it less, we can reduce the AC run time and reduce the impact on comfort inside the home.

Right.

Makes sense.

Makes sense.

In Arizona, also worry about dryness.

Right.

So homes all of a sudden get down to 40% relative humidity on the inside.

True.

Homes differently in Arizona, it's been shocking.

I had a buddy build a house down there here.

He just moved into it a few weeks ago.

And I'm watching them do drywall inside, but they haven't put the windows in yet.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

New development.

And I'm like, man, one windstorm, and you got so much particulate matter in that house.

But they were literally texturing drywall.

And the stucco guys hadn't showed up yet.

And they were.

There was walls open into the garage.

There weren't doors in it or anything.

And I was like, I guess the drywall dries fast.

But I was like, man, I don't know if I'd want to be trying to clean that house out with the particulate matter before I move in with that much contaminant in it.

Wow.

That's interesting.

There's a builder up in Prescott, Mandalay Homes, and the largest builder of high performance homes.

Yeah.

And watching that process they go through, they were actually.

All the doors and windows had plastic over them before they were installed.

So it's some phase.

And that after it's framed and stuff and they got the outdoor sizing on, they cover up all the openings and the doors have the zipper in them and they're trying to keep everything out.

I love that.

Yeah.

It's an extra step.

It's the attention to detail.

Right.

And I wasn't gonna rain on his parade.

He was so proud about it.

There's 10 ounces on that street being built.

He wasn't gonna go change how the builder's doing it.

So I was just.

I just went zip, keep my mouth shut.

I was just like, wow.

At the same point, slab on grade construction.

And they were showing the.

They were showing the poor.

And they didn't even put gravel down.

They're just pouring concrete right on the dirt.

Really?

Yeah.

I was like, wow, we couldn't get away with that here.

No.

I don't think they were supposed to get away with it there either.

Yeah.

All right.

It's.

There's a big gap between the good intentions of code, the process that it gets implemented, and then the final inspection of it.

There's almost this cat and mouse.

See if I can get away with it catch me if you can.

And the sad part is building code is the bare minimum.

This is how this is like that I got the D minus on the test but I passed.

Graduated last in my medical class wasn't enough.

And so we need to start thinking more about that way with homes is when it comes to building code is that building code is the bare minimum.

That's the I didn't get an F.

Yeah Eric.

And we were very focused on that user experience to make this simple.

Right.

So if a home's equipped already with ventilation the uplift to add our indoor air quality solution.

It's all do it yourself stuff.

It's if you can connect the app to a thermostat you're fully qualified to set this up.

Right now I wouldn't go add my own ventilation.

Yeah.

I'd hire a professional.

You and I, we've been contractors that put additions onto my home of I'll do electrical, I'll even do some plumbing.

But I always hire a roofer and I would never attempt H Vac install.

Right.

But no I.

I might if I'm adding a vent or something in I might do it myself after consulting with my H Vac pros to make sure I've got things sized correctly.

But yeah that's about it.

It's like me doing drywall in a house.

I'm not going to do drywall in a house.

I'm not crazy.

So it's the beauty of this for the do it yourself is in your audience is it's a couple of hundred dollars and a good indoor air quality sensor.

Something like air things.

We love those products.

Right.

Consumer grade do a great job.

A smart light switch outlet.

Right.

Most states national building code says that ventilation equipment needs to be powered by a light switch that's labeled so homeowners can turn it off and on.

For the Wildfire scenario.

Right.

Yeah.

We have you replace that traditional light switch with a smart light switch indoor air quality and off we go.

Right now we can manage to a great outcome.

There are other things you can add to it.

You can add Sonos speakers if you want us to tell you something about the indoor air quality smart appliances.

GE's whole product line we can integrate with so we can see the stove turn on energy monitors, things like Emporia so you can layer more stuff onto this.

It enhances the experience.

But even the baseline system a switch with indoor air quality monitor we can take a huge step forward in improving the indoor air quality and save energy at the same time.

All Right, Jim.

So let's talk about how people you did there, but let's talk in the meat and potatoes of send all and what they can do.

So if someone goes, I want to make my house smart, work together and improve and be able to manipulate my indoor air quality.

They, of course, have to get a hold of you guys to start with the system.

Right?

Yeah.

Actually, go to your favorite app store, download the app.

Right.

The core basic functionality of the smart home, that's free, Right.

So the ability to add devices, turn lights off and on, play music, create scenes, that's.

You can do that just on your own as you do it yourself.

For now, there are a list of devices that we support, and it's not a huge list because we work with Iot things, connect some connected devices, don't really offer the opportunity to recruit the data from them and get them to participate.

Right.

So we work with 85% of the thermostats out there.

You know, it's like Schneider Electric, the largest manufacturer of electrical elements.

They're got smart light switches, and they're relatively inexpensive.

Right?

Yeah.

And then you sign up for the service.

You sign up for the indoor air quality service.

We tell you what devices you need and how to set them up and off you go.

A typical install for indoor air quality, if you've got ventilation is like 10 to 15 minutes.

It's up and it's running, and then you literally set it and forget it.

It's got to be that simple.

Right.

Again, we're targeting folks that say, I'm not a technical guru, but I want these outcomes.

And then there's also, there's a trade channel that we have with H vac contractors.

Right.

So they make it part of their service plans.

They added in, if you're buying ventilation or filtration equipment, to just include it in the price and the license will be included with that.

So there's a pro channel for it, and there's also a do it yourself channel.

And we're probably pretty close to 50, 50 at this point.

Nice balance.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's.

I wish it was by design and I could take a bow.

It's just the way it's evolving.

But we have a customer here in Florida over in Tampa.

He had actually gone through several iterations of trying to find solutions.

He had upgraded his systems, the P Pumps, two systems in the home, and he got the classic mold problem, right?

Yeah.

So they brought in vetting dehumidifiers so they could bring fresh air in through a Venting dehumidifier.

And he tried a couple of, let me just say, more classical approaches to oh, you should run it for 30 minutes an hour whether you're home or not and all this.

And didn't have great indoor air quality outcomes.

Through that process he stumbled across us, went through the scenario I just talked about, downloaded the software, onboarded the thermostats, onboarded the light switches that were controlling the devices and presto, change out.

So he reached out all excited about this.

He actually found a solution that delivered on the promise.

His quotes on our webpage under the H VAC contractor there's a bunch of case studies showing the different system configurations and things like that.

Ironically, the only complaint he's had is that over the previous year it almost become a hobby of his to try to figure out how to get into air quality.

He goes and that was your thing, Rabbit hole.

Yep.

It just works, right.

He's every time I look, it's working, it's done its thing.

You know, you guys even work with home energy monitors and things like that as well, don't you?

That's right, yeah.

We work with, we see more Emporia than anything, but we work with Emporia Curb with sense with Schneider electric solution.

Yeah.

So and they help inform the solution about when things are off and on, things that will contribute to poor indoor air quality.

We talked about bathroom exhaust fans, your clothes dryer.

Right.

So we'll turn on ventilation to balance that.

Right.

So all of a sudden in a very managed practical manner, we're offsetting the negative impact of those things.

Same with, we work with fin, the water management system.

So it tells us that the master shower turned on.

If you haven't turned on the exhaust vent, we'll turn it on.

Right.

And we keep it on it.

There's a lot of more old school.

Bathroom time is 10, 20, 30 minutes.

It's going to run.

That's got no relation to how much humidity is in the space.

Especially if you're like me and got a steam shower.

Right.

That's what's going on.

Right.

So we correlate that runtime, the humidity level in the bathroom relative to the humidity of the thermostat that's associated with the bathroom.

And then when they're within a certain percent, we stop.

Oh, okay.

Let me think about this for a second.

I'm thinking about my specific case because I've me, I'm like you, I try new stuff out.

Right.

So when I put in my steam shower, I also put in the airmada shower drying system, which is that it, it takes air out of the home already conditioned, pulls it in and it dries all the walls, floor, ceiling.

Everything in the shower takes about 15 minutes.

Wow.

So, because I, I didn't want to build a steam shower that's going to get moldy, right.

It's all closed up.

But what happens is I hit the 20 minute button on the steam on the dryer because I want to get it really dry.

Because I just did this morning.

Walked out of my steam shower and I went, damn it, didn't turn on the bath fan.

So as soon as I open the door, it gets steamed up in there.

If I turned on the shower, theoretically it's going to go, hey, wait a minute, you don't have the bath fan on, dummy, turn that on.

And if it saw the shower turn off, in theory, you could tell it to, hey, you better turn the shower drying feature on.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

It's just a vacuum motor.

So it's just a 110 outlet.

You could almost program, do that.

That's right.

That's right.

It's a business partner and cto, Mike Silver, smartest guy in the room.

I don't care who's, who else is in the room.

Nice.

He'd kill me for saying this, but I'm sure the system could do that.

We have lots of scenarios where DIY is or trades.

Folks come back to us and say, hey, I had a scenario like what you're talking about.

So I faked it out.

I told it the dryer was an erv.

Or do you mean exactly?

Can you make a category that says shower dryer?

Right.

Yeah.

And it's a labeling effort.

You clone the capability and now presto, change or off it goes, Right?

Yeah.

Because when you set up like a smart outlet or a smart switch, you have to tell us this is controlling the ventilation, what room it's in.

And then you like.

In that scenario, you would associate it with the thermostat.

And you do that by saying this thermostat controls the master bedroom, the master bathroom, the master closet.

And then when you say this dryer controls the master bath steam, those two things are related.

Right.

So there's no concept of the user as the programmer.

It's just basic setup stuff.

Pretty simple.

Just have to think about what its use is and don't think about so much of the name, but what it does.

And we just associate those things together.

It's really the strength of software.

Right.

Because it gets better over time.

Right.

That's the promise of the IoT, is that over time you get more capabilities.

Right.

You buy a new car and it's two years later.

As you keep current with the software updates, it's capable of more things than the day you bought it.

It's improved.

I have a Chevy Colorado that's the sponsors of my TV show have.

And I took it in for the update and I'm like, there's new buttons on the infotainment system.

Okay, cool.

That's right.

Right.

So it, what's his name?

I'm forgetting his name.

One of the famous VC guys, he said years ago, software is eating hardware.

Yeah.

And now software is eating the world.

He came out with one of their ovens and was a convection oven and they did an over the air update and they gave everybody an air fryer mode.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Both my homes, I have GE products and it's just amazing.

All of a sudden they had an air fryer.

It was just a gift.

Yeah.

I saw an update the other day where the clocks will reset themselves after a power outage.

So you don't come home to the flashing 12 o' clock.

Right.

Just set it to the right time.

Why not?

It's software.

It's software, yeah.

10 seconds to do it.

Yeah.

They.

They already made the big investment in putting the intelligence there and now they just redo the intelligence.

And it's.

It's like someone else was saying the other day, Apollo 13, when it had all those troubles, they were able to change the software and get the ship back.

It's like.

That's amazing.

It is, yeah.

Clients, manufacturers, still, most of them are not smart enough to.

When you turn on the range to tell the vent hood to turn on.

Right.

GE does that, but.

Yeah, but I don't, I'm not aware.

Of anyone else does it now too.

Okay.

Yeah.

We've had a long relationship with ge.

They're.

They're Iot group, pretty smart guys.

They've.

They're constantly focusing on innovating.

I've always wanted.

And no one's done this yet.

It would be so simple to do and tell your GE guys this.

I'll let you be the channel here.

Get on the phone and tell these guys I want them to put a heat sensor in that.

So when that gets above 400 degrees or something in that hood, that turns the cooktop off.

That's interesting.

How many house fires are you gonna stop?

Right.

Yeah.

Turn the thing off, whatever that temperature is.

Really.

How easy would it to be stop.

To at least slow down fires.

Just turn it off.

There's no situation that would make it worse, right?

That's right.

Because for your listeners, I guess the worst thing you do when you have a fire is have your AC run.

And don't feed it everywhere.

Yeah, don't.

So by pulling the air out of the house, you're actually pulling fresh air across the fire, which.

Yeah.

Feeds the fire, makes it worse.

It's interesting if there was a sensor like, with that product, because we turned.

One of our safety features is we know that your stove's been on longer than it usually is at this time of day.

Yeah.

And we'll go ahead and tell you, hey, stovetop's on.

Yep.

And from that push notification, you can say, turn it off, and we can shut it off.

And we do the same thing with, like, lights.

Hey, the outdoor garage lights are on.

It's middle of the day.

Oops.

Yeah.

You want them off?

Shut them off.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we could probably pull that off if there was a heat sensor.

Right.

That's all we need is the input from the heat sensor to go ahead and shut it off.

We have early discussions with these.

I shouldn't say who.

The smoke detectors that have indoor air quality sensors in them, and they're looking for a bridge.

The reason why they're talking to us, to the H vac system.

So when the smoke detector goes off, they want us to shut the fans off to start propagating the smoker house.

Nice.

So pretty straightforward.

The daunting task for them.

There's hundreds and hundreds of thermostats, and we already integrate with most of them.

So this is a quick path to an end, Right?

Exactly.

Have you seen this product?

That's over my shoulder here?

And all you guys on the radio and podcast, that's flame detector, really?

New product out.

And I can go across the room over here with a lighter 20ft away, flick a lighter on, and it starts screaming at me, open flame detected.

Wow.

That's around the corner, like, around my toolbox over on the other side of the garage.

And if it catches the reflection of the flame, it will tell you that.

Wow.

And it.

Push notifications to your phone and open flame detector.

I have it in here because I've got lots of tool batteries.

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

I got a man.

I want to know if it sees something in my garage.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's great.

Yeah.

Super science.

And they've got a new one coming out here soon.

That.

That will be for kitchens that will know that like what you said, the cooktops.

A gas cooktop.

Okay.

I can't use that in the kitchen because I got a flame.

It'll say, it'll notice that's a gas cooktop flame.

But if it's on too long, it'll send you notifications.

Hey, do you know you got that thing still on?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Like the way ours works is that it will like.

One of my daughters was down at our Cape Cod house and she burnt her eggs and she had to get her a call.

So she just dumps them in the sink, pours herself a bowl of cereal and goes upstairs to get her on a zoom call.

Yep.

Four or five minutes later, they get a notification.

We think the stovetop's been left on because when the stovetop gets used before 10 o' clock in the morning, it's on for four or five minutes at a time.

Now it's 15 minutes.

You could be making a sauce.

Right.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Out of the ordinary.

Yeah.

Not the first thing in the morning activity typically.

Right.

So once or twice a year you get a notice that you go, no, that's okay.

Yeah.

You're fine with that because three times a year you get the notice, you go, oh, yeah, shut that off.

That's a heck of a lot more important.

Right.

Of an indication.

Yeah.

There's just so much I'd love to learn more about that flame detector.

I wanted to.

I'll make the introduction to you.

That would be great.

Small company out there.

Between that and the other one that I love out there is ting fire.

I don't know if you've seen these guys.

They plug into the wall like an outlet and they monitor your entire electrical system for shorts.

Really?

All the way to the pole.

Wow.

And so I can go on my phone and see what my voltage is at the house.

And it tracks shorts.

Let's say you got the back of an outlet that's got a stab connection that's loose.

It'll find those because it acts like mini lightning sources in the electrical current.

It can see those in the electrical current.

So it's reading the frequencies and the electrical current.

And then they give you a thousand dollar insurance policy for an electrician to come out and search for it so they can figure out in their algorithms what that is.

That's really cool.

And what's cool is a lot of insurance companies like State Farm and others are giving them away because 300 bucks or whatever for them is a cheap insurance policy against an electrical fire.

Yeah.

Oh, Absolutely, absolutely.

And last time I looked and I know the numbers got to be way out of date, but it was like 50,000 houses saved from electrical fires.

That's amazing.

That's really amazing.

And they all these guys are all app based, so it'd be really super easy for you guys to.

Oh yeah, yeah, stuff like that.

But Mike's someplace going, oh, super easy.

Mike's got to do it.

Mike's sitting here right now listening to this going, dear Lord, you're acting me up on this one.

Yeah, so, yeah, exactly.

Just reach out to me, I'll get you a list.

So no, we have.

I operate though, brother.

That's how you and I operate.

That's the fun.

You like to go down the rabbit holes way deep.

You can't innovate unless you separate yourself from the task of actually implementing.

Yeah.

And the funny thing is right now, what I'm doing right now, and this is sad is there are so many and I'm going to say smart home.

Those were air quotes for all the radio podcast listeners out there.

Products.

I am out swapping out around my house all the test items where the companies didn't bake it.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

All the light switch companies that, you know, I saw at the builder show or saw these that just aren't supported anymore.

And there's a lot of these companies that have been going under.

Even brilliant went down.

Oh yeah, they don't come up.

It was a good product, but they just had a hard time marketing it.

It's creating enough value for that connected service.

When back in the day when we were doing home automation, it was really for the rich and famous.

Right.

And the enthusiasts for the rich and famous.

You created like the Mercedes Benz of home automation companies.

Jim, let's be honest, you and your team did an amazing job at that great product.

But when we went to Apple and got permission to build the first app home app for their phone because in the beginning with the iPhone, their vision was a curated set of apps that they would define.

Oh, they wanted it all.

Not just every app that could be right.

So the industry was looking at a strange because these touch panels that we used to sell that were like $9,000 at 80 points margin would now be in displaced by a common device you had in your phone.

We were doing that to cross the chasm to the broader market, thinking that we could have a lot more homes at various price points.

Not just the rich and famous.

Right.

But the crazy phenomenon that took place was everybody decided they do common everyday device needed to be on the Internet.

And then when they got there, it dawned on them, boy, this is going to be expensive over time.

I sell a light switch for 100 bucks and for the next 10 years I got to do the cloud infrastructure to support it and continue to pay for that.

And there just wasn't in the early days, like when Nest came out, they try to charge you for the Internet support of it.

Yeah, I just paid $700 for a thermostat.

I could have bought a $40 thermostat that's connected.

And you're getting me how much a month?

Yeah, yeah.

Now you want me to pay on top of it.

So the business model fell apart from that perspective.

How do you give it legs?

I mentioned we're in discussion with a lighting control company and that's part of the value that we bring to that is they've got hundreds of thousands of homes to sell our software services because we sell a subscription service.

And we found that the services are successful when we can check the comfort, convenience and safety box.

So we call it caring.

The marketing people get involved.

Comfort, caring and convenience.

And it's as soon as you do that, people will want the service and they'll keep the service.

And most of these services pay for themselves in one form or another.

Exactly.

It's like with the indoor air quality service, it's been out there for a couple of years.

We have yet to lose an end user.

Right.

Everyone says, are you going to measure customer churn?

If we have had people that said, hey, at the end of subscription, I think I'm going to pass.

Thirty days later, their electric bill is much bigger and they see their indoor air quality is really poor, they get right back in, right?

Absolutely.

So, you know, it's these.

And you guys are so smart, not playing in the hardware world.

Because what I'm seeing is me being the analytical type.

I always look at these hardware companies and go where they screw up.

A lot of these light switch companies decided they wanted to go direct to builder, direct to consumer, but they kept the whole world of integrators out of it.

Right.

And they went all just, we're gonna go retail, we're not gonna, we're gonna sell.

And like you said, they didn't think about what that infrastructure was gonna cost them because they were app heavy and the apps didn't work with other people very well.

And they tried to keep it all in house.

And that's some of the biggest mistakes I've seen on the marketing side with these guys.

That's Right.

And it's.

You touch on a very important point because it's also.

They think because they put it on Amazon, oh, they got it in Best Buy, that they're going to get all these homes.

Well, you're still just dealing with tech enthusiasts.

This is still beyond the typical person to go do something about it.

Right.

To be motivated to go do something about it.

Most people are not going to walk in and pay 399 for a double light switch to put in one room of their house.

That's right.

They're gonna put in a dozen of them.

And that's a big investment for a retail consumer to walk in and go, we're diving in today.

They're gonna go buy a new TV instead.

Yeah.

Because really, what's the upside?

And I always call it the spouse factor.

Yeah.

I can bring this stuff home.

I explained to my wife why I just spent all this money.

She goes, but you could just hit the light switch that was there and turn the light off and on.

What?

Why do you have to.

Complicated.

I wish you just had a light switch.

Yeah.

So you think about our business model.

You think about a thermostat.

Right.

So we have these different services.

So indoor air quality.

We recruit the data from the thermostat, and then we also employ the thermostat to go ahead and turn on the fan mode to vector the fresh air.

Most of these smart thermostats also have motion in them.

So we've got some early features for our independent living service out there that we can alert you when grandma gets out of bed.

Right.

So now all of a sudden it's a motion detector.

So something the manufacturer of the thermostat did not intend to be a capability.

It's now part of an independent living service.

We have a service that when the doorbell rings at night, we'll light the pathway.

But then if a thermostat in another zone sees motion, we'll turn the light on there as well.

Because you're not going to the front door for some reason.

So this is safety in two dimensions.

Right.

It keeps me from tripping over a piece of furniture or somebody's sneakers that are left in the hallway.

But also, if you're a bad guy, 98% of doorbell home break inside with a doorbell ring.

Now all of a sudden you ring the doorbell, Master bedroom light goes on, the hallway light goes on, the living room light goes on.

And we sequence them like that, as if someone's walking, you're leaving because you don't want to have a confrontation.

Right.

But if there's a variation, you're going someplace else.

We'll turn that light on too, just based on the motion.

So these.

That's so smart.

I love it.

Yeah.

It's recruitability of devices capabilities.

Right.

And when you're dealing with Iot devices, everybody stays in their lane.

In other words, thermostat companies don't want to do what we do, and we don't want to be a thermostat.

No, but when you deal with connected home devices, I think that's what you were touching on.

Start talking to a light switch company and all of a sudden they start trying to build firmware that's going to try to react the way our intelligent cloud software reacts.

Guess what?

Every time you want to add a capability now, you got to download new firmware and you got to go through this whole.

That's just.

Again, it's a high friction non value add for non tech users.

They're out.

Oh, absolutely.

To say to a homeowner, go ahead, buy this honeywallows Echo B thermostat, it's more expensive, but it's going to do all these other things for you.

The expectation value just grows.

Okay.

We were talking about cars getting software updates.

All of a sudden, this thermostat I bought three years ago, its value is growing over time as it participates in more and more things.

Right.

The value proposition is just.

And that's what, by focusing on comfort, convenience and caring.

If we can check those three boxes with every service, they become very sticky.

And these are things consumers want.

Right.

They want the outcomes and they don't have to drive.

We just take care of it.

That is awesome.

Or running out of time.

Jim, I know this is you, and I could sit here and do this like a Joe Rogan podcast for three hours and I think almost two at times.

We'll have to have you back on and we'll talk more about this.

I wanted to get this introductory episode into this because you guys have created something innovative that I've been complaining about for a decade that didn't exist.

That's right.

And hats off, my friend, you did it.

Thank you, Eric.

That's very kind of you to say.

I appreciate it.

So how do people find you guys and all you people out there going, I gotta have this app.

I want control of my indoor air quality and the rest of the stuff in my house.

So this makes sense to me.

How do they find you?

It's just Google Sendal IO and you're gonna find us.

Right?

It's.

That's S E n D a L, sendal, IO and it's you go to the app store, download the app.

It'll.

It all brings you to the same spot.

Right?

So it's.

You can start with the app, you.

Can start with the web.

It's.

I appreciate it, Eric.

We'll see you at ibs.

Right.

So I will be there, my friend.

All right.

I will be there.

We'll catch up there like we always do.

I always catch us walking opposite directions in the hall is usually where we see each other.

That's right.

That's right.

Turn around and talk to each other.

Walking backwards.

That's right.

That's right.

I know you're going to be doing podcasts from some booths.

So, yep, swing by your booth and say hello.

Sounds good.

I will do that.

All right, my friend.

Thank you so much.

I'm Eric G.

Thanks for tuning into around the House.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

Eric G.

Will be back next week, all healed up with a brand new show.

You have been listening to the around the house show, let's be lovers.

We're all over the radio.

Take my way to go all over the radio with you.