Latest / Inside Integration / Episode 112: Out of Control? Are We Moving Away from Control Systems?

Transcript

Episode 112: Out of Control? Are We Moving Away from Control Systems? · Inside Integration

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Inside Integration Podcast.
• 0:01
  My name is Chris. I am joined again by my partner
• 0:03
  Jason. What is up, everybody?
• 0:06
  And we are, we were, we were just doing our little pre show
• 0:10
  meeting today and kind of came on to the topic of how how
• 0:14
  control in the home has evolved where, you know, it's way back
• 0:19
  in the day. I mean, you know, you may
• 0:20
  remember this, you may have lived through this, you know,
• 0:22
  you had AMX and Crestron and and all these other guys and.
• 0:25
  Phyllis Pronto Drink. Drink Phillips pronto that that
• 0:30
  old Sony guy with the LCD screen.
• 0:33
  Yeah, or the when they had the Pronto Pro where it was like the
• 0:36
  baby tablet and you had the little vector areas for your
• 0:40
  devices and then the stuff would pop up on the screen.
• 0:42
  It's too bad that didn't actually really work ever,
• 0:45
  because it was a very cool concept.
• 0:48
  But like the the thought here and the way that we kind of got
• 0:50
  down this road is that, you know, yeah, that was that was
• 0:53
  all sort of necessary stuff, right?
• 0:55
  Like, obviously, you know, none of the stuff that we do is
• 0:57
  really necessary, right? Like it's not, you know, we're
• 0:59
  not, we're not saving lives here.
• 1:01
  We're not we're not, you know, doing any, any kind of anything
• 1:04
  real, you know, earth shaking other than, you know, building
• 1:07
  toys and and letting people play with them.
• 1:09
  But you know, back in the day, that was a pretty important
• 1:14
  thing, right? Like, even if, even if we're
• 1:15
  just talking about like your AV stack, right, Like you had, you
• 1:19
  had ATV, you had, you know, maybe you had a a receiver with
• 1:23
  a sound system, right, ADVD player AVCRA, you know, an, an
• 1:28
  other gear in there, right? So you'd have 3 or 4 devices.
• 1:31
  And you, you know, the old joke was always like you're, you're
• 1:33
  juggling remotes or you're, you know, doing whatever.
• 1:36
  And then if you had music throughout your home, you know,
• 1:39
  you would need some kind of, you know, there were so many
• 1:41
  systems, right? Like there was Russ Sound, there
• 1:43
  was Niles that you know, even if it was just.
• 1:45
  Like, you got to get Robin Barry, right?
• 1:47
  Like Bob or Gloria, that's how you know if you're a real Niles
• 1:51
  person or not. Right, there you go.
• 1:54
  Right. You got that ZR music system.
• 1:56
  Which one did you have? Did you have Bob or Gloria?
• 1:58
  I remember Frankstern's asking me that.
• 2:00
  I was like Oh my God, I totally forgot.
• 2:03
  So, but you would need that to be able to, you know, play your
• 2:06
  stuff through speakers in your home, right?
• 2:08
  Like there was no such thing as air playback then there was no,
• 2:11
  you know, you wouldn't have, you know, some, you know, you
• 2:14
  wouldn't have, like, you know, Android based television that
• 2:17
  could do the. Universal work of functions or.
• 2:19
  CEC or any of that, you know, time saving stuff and and
• 2:23
  consolidation. And you know, one of the
• 2:26
  struggles right now with with integrators is you have a lot of
• 2:29
  clients who are just really looking they just want simple,
• 2:33
  right? Like I just want to control this
• 2:34
  with my Apple TV remote or oh, you know what the the TV remote
• 2:38
  is fine and it, and a lot of cases it is right.
• 2:40
  You open up the box of a brand new, you know, LG, Sony, Samsung
• 2:44
  or whatever, and you've got a remote and it's, you know, got
• 2:47
  everything that you need on it. And now you can, you know,
• 2:50
  control whatever you need to via that remote.
• 2:53
  Is it, are we getting to the point where, you know, control
• 2:57
  systems might be a little bit of an appendix, you know, are we,
• 3:02
  are we getting, are we getting to the point where that juice
• 3:07
  just isn't worth the squeeze? You know, I mean, what?
• 3:10
  What say you, Sir? Yeah.
• 3:12
  You know, I think as all things have they've it's evolved
• 3:15
  control has evolved to be less centric and less necessary
• 3:20
  because there were so many dissimilar products on the
• 3:23
  market, right. Like you have your or or the
• 3:26
  connection of which may have varied wildly.
• 3:29
  Like right, you got the you know you've got your can't let go of
• 3:32
  it Laserdisc player with super video S s video on it.
• 3:37
  That one front. Of Star Wars that looks amazing
• 3:40
  and S video. Right, you've got your you've
• 3:42
  got your high 5 ECR. So you've got your red, white
• 3:45
  and yellow, you know plugs on there, your video and your left
• 3:49
  and right audio because of course you're a high 5 nerd.
• 3:51
  So it's be a stereo VCR and then you've got your new school DVD
• 3:56
  player or HDDVD player, or I mean, God knows about the
• 4:01
  Blu-ray player and that's got component video on it.
• 4:05
  So you really needed an intermediary like a, you know,
• 4:09
  transcoding AV receiver that scales all your video up.
• 4:12
  Like I mean, I'm going back in. I mean, and this was a dream
• 4:16
  machine too. Like there's certainly times I
• 4:19
  can remember receivers in my installed days going fuck this
• 4:22
  thing doesn't upscale video at all.
• 4:23
  Like so then you're running different video feeds to the
• 4:27
  monitor and Oh my God, like trying to juggle code.
• 4:31
  Let's do the audio. Separate, we'll run all this,
• 4:34
  yeah, we'll run all the audio to here and for what it's worth,
• 4:37
  like, and this was back when you didn't get audio back out of the
• 4:42
  TV, right. So like in the last few years
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  we've, you know, we've kind of made it easier on ourselves or
• 4:47
  the industry's made it a little bit easier on us with, OK, just
• 4:50
  plug everything into the TV and we'll just pull out, you know,
• 4:53
  we'll either pull this back on. Back in time.
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  Arc, E arc or even an optical cable or you know, whatever and
• 5:01
  we'll let the TV do the switch and, and this thing will just be
• 5:04
  there. Was a magical window.
• 5:06
  There was a magical window before component video where it
• 5:09
  was all like either S video or a positive video.
• 5:14
  Like you could just run everything to the TV and then
• 5:17
  have it come back out via audio. And I remember sure, thinking
• 5:20
  about that in my installed days of, you know, where again,
• 5:23
  juggling component video cables and all that.
• 5:25
  Yeah, going man, I remember when he used to just plug it all into
• 5:28
  the TV and time is a flat circle and I went back.
• 5:30
  There Internet went back well and and those those were the
• 5:34
  days where like you would have, you know, nobody I would say
• 5:39
  unless you have a ton of game systems at this point, like
• 5:41
  nobody really struggles with not having enough input ports on a
• 5:44
  consumer electronics device. Right, I, I, I would say you're
• 5:47
  absolutely right between apps and stuff.
• 5:49
  Yeah, but that was a very real thing, like on, you know, on two
• 5:52
  TV's or whatever, like, Oh no, there's only one component
• 5:55
  input. OK, So you know, AV 1 is
• 5:57
  component, AV2 is composite, and, you know, maybe AV 3 has an
• 6:01
  S video. All right, so now, now I'm
• 6:03
  hooking up three different sources, three different ways on
• 6:06
  the same TV, you know, and as as that kind of evolved, right,
• 6:10
  like we got a lot more inputs and and, you know.
• 6:12
  You needed the control. That's the point.
• 6:14
  We're all we're belaboring here. We're stretching it out.
• 6:18
  Just trying to tell you youngins how bad we had.
• 6:20
  It Yeah, really. I mean, it's uphill both ways
• 6:22
  through the snow in July. It was terrible.
• 6:25
  Let. Me tell you about soldering S
• 6:27
  video connecting. Oh God, yeah, you think you got
• 6:30
  it bad kid, but. Getting them wrong.
• 6:33
  For sure. Why doesn't this work?
• 6:34
  I don't know. I got to turn this 40 inch
• 6:37
  Trinity trying around to get to the get to the connector that I
• 6:40
  just soldered. 20 the one plug she's really hanging on by two
• 6:44
  pairs. It's just a mere suggestion of a
• 6:48
  copper to copper contact. On that pin, it's fine.
• 6:52
  It's fine. It's implied, yeah.
• 6:53
  I mean to, to circle like control is so different now like
• 6:58
  because there are so many embedded things that are native
• 7:01
  to control. Again, like you'd said it, if
• 7:04
  you've got an, if it's got an HDMI cable on it and you've got
• 7:06
  the factory remote for the display, chances are there's a,
• 7:10
  there's a high, there's a very high batting average that you're
• 7:15
  going to be able to control said device from that remote.
• 7:18
  And, you know, maybe not have all of the bells and whistles
• 7:20
  for control or what have you, but you're going to have your
• 7:23
  play stop, Fast forward, rewind, up, down, left, right, OK, you
• 7:26
  know, up, volume, up and down kind of deal, right?
• 7:28
  So what, what, what you know, what does a control need to be
• 7:33
  after that? You need to control the lighting
• 7:35
  in your house and to control the climate in your house.
• 7:37
  You need to control the shades in your house, maybe security,
• 7:41
  what have you. So I, I think in our space that
• 7:46
  control has evolved dramatically.
• 7:47
  You know, it's a really to really turn away from so much AV
• 7:53
  heavy stuff because it's all native to, to really focus on
• 7:56
  the home. And I, I know, I think that's
• 7:58
  where a lot of integrators that are in the maybe they're in the
• 8:02
  rebranding phase or they're something, you know, something
• 8:05
  audio, video or something stereo shop or whatever, you know,
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  whatever that branding looks like.
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  And if they're trying to branch out into, into new, new areas
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  are probably going shit, how do I, how am I taking seriously in
• 8:18
  a space where it's the light touches or the technology
• 8:23
  designs or the what, whatever the, whatever the, the latest
• 8:27
  round of that stuff is. But yeah, the the control system
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  game, I think if I was an integrator now, I'd be, I'd be,
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  I'd be panicked a little bit, just maybe, maybe frozen in
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  choice or or maybe not. Maybe I'm just projecting
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  because I'm I've been away from it for so long and I just got a
• 8:47
  like a a flop sweat when I start thinking about it.
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  Well, one, one thing to keep in mind too, is that it is, you
• 8:53
  know, there, there is still, you know, the, the proprietary.
• 8:56
  I mean, back in the day you needed a programmer on the team,
• 8:59
  right? Like if you were, you know, you
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  would kind of classify yourself into, you know, different, you
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  know, different silos, right? Like, yeah, I'm a I'm a control
• 9:07
  four guy, I'm a, I'm a crush drawn guy.
• 9:09
  I'm an X guy, I'm a savant guy, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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  You know, I only do URCI, only do RTI, that kind of thing.
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  And that was largely based on whether you had somebody on
• 9:20
  staff who could program that thing, right?
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  Like you needed that guy needed his own setup.
• 9:25
  You know, like here's here's our OK, we're going to send out our
• 9:28
  programmer on Friday at the end of the job, you know, make sure.
• 9:31
  And whether that was a pronto or universal or whatever, that was
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  a different skill set from the guys who were, you know, putting
• 9:38
  TV's in, guys who were doing pre wires and whatever.
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  Here's your This is more like your white collar role, right?
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  Unless you're me. Sure you're describing me.
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  Unless. You're, you know, in a very
• 9:49
  small shop and now you're, you're, you're doing a pre wire
• 9:52
  on Monday and you're programming a house on Thursday and Friday,
• 9:55
  right? Really flex those muscles, kid.
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  Let's see you. Let's do.
• 9:58
  It absolutely. And you know that that's, that's
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  a consideration too, right? Like these, these systems and
• 10:04
  everyone of the major control systems has a certification
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  program and you have to, you know, if you're going to be a
• 10:09
  dealer, you need to be certified.
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  And that makes a ton of sense because you know, if, if the
• 10:15
  clients aren't happy with the end product that, you know, with
• 10:18
  their name on it that you're installing like that doesn't
• 10:21
  really help anybody. And and that's, you know, not to
• 10:24
  get too far off track, but that's definitely one of the
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  issues with control systems especially.
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  Yeah, the guard rails there. Were there were quite a few bad
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  programmers around, There were quite a few people who, you
• 10:36
  know, would put in a job and, and not quite get it to that
• 10:38
  last, you know, that last little bit.
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  And, you know, the client's unhappy and then five years
• 10:43
  later or 10 years later, they're in a new home or they're going
• 10:46
  to upgrade and they don't want anything to do with the control
• 10:48
  system because their experience was that bad last time.
• 10:52
  How many times has a client gone to you with a specific name of
• 10:56
  like, oh, yeah, I will never have another XYZ system, you
• 11:01
  know, and it's like, well, it wasn't the system.
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  It was probably not planned or not designed well or not
• 11:06
  programmed and and you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:10
  But that's, you know, that's a big obstacle too.
• 11:13
  Right, I just got a vision of like the the home owner with a
• 11:17
  yellow notepad with the with the how to written on it and like an
• 11:22
  MX500 in their hand with the key screen on the top of it.
• 11:26
  Like no idea how to work this. It says press home.
• 11:30
  I don't see the home button on here anywhere.
• 11:32
  I'm like, oh, you mean the one that looks like a house right
• 11:34
  there? Oh, that's the home button.
• 11:36
  Let me write that down. Oh my God.
• 11:38
  So those were some wild times for sure, because it was new to
• 11:41
  everybody back then, right. So like, you know, there's
• 11:45
  there's a certain there's a certain muscle memory these days
• 11:48
  of like if you pick up any remote, right, like there's a
• 11:51
  four way directional switch, right where your thumb is.
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  Doesn't matter the brand. Like, that's pretty much
• 11:56
  universal, right? Like and and if it's not like
• 11:59
  that company's reinventing the wheel, it's not it's not
• 12:02
  intuitive anymore. Sony invented the four way
• 12:05
  rocker switch. I found that out when I saw the
• 12:07
  patent stuff. Wow, there you go.
• 12:10
  I was like, oh shit, everybody's paying Sony a dime every time
• 12:14
  they do. Every up, down, left, right.
• 12:16
  OK, shit. Nice.
• 12:18
  Well done. But so, and, and that's the
• 12:20
  thing like now, you know, we've collectively as as a, as a
• 12:24
  world, we, we're, we're into this.
• 12:25
  Like we get this now, you know, we, we, we understand.
• 12:28
  But back then, you know, having a having a pronto drink in your
• 12:32
  hand and you know, knowing where those buttons were on every
• 12:35
  single page and knowing what the two hard buttons at the bottom
• 12:37
  did and and that kind of thing. That was a new skill for just
• 12:41
  about everybody, right? Like this is that generation
• 12:44
  went from you know Zenith space command click, click, click,
• 12:47
  click, click. To.
• 12:49
  It's to a touch screen. It's so weird that you just
• 12:52
  mentioned that because I literally just watched the thing
• 12:54
  about the zenith when where the clicker, where that's where it
• 12:57
  already came from. And if for those that don't
• 13:00
  know, a little little side job here, if you remember, if you're
• 13:04
  old enough or maybe you've seen one, the in the old days they
• 13:07
  had Zenith had the power Commander had a little box and
• 13:10
  it had four buttons on it, right?
• 13:12
  You had your channel up and down, your power on and off.
• 13:14
  And I don't know what I don't know if it was volume up and
• 13:17
  down or not, but for sure, you know, on off channel up and
• 13:20
  down, right, No batteries in it that always used to fucking trip
• 13:24
  me out like this thing work if there's no batteries in it.
• 13:28
  It was sound that came out of the end of it to to like little
• 13:32
  click noises on the TV was tuned to listen for those sounds.
• 13:35
  So if it heard that frequency, it would change the channel or
• 13:38
  it would turn the TV on and off. So there's there's where the
• 13:41
  term the clicker came from anyway.
• 13:43
  Hey, a little a little history here.
• 13:45
  That's great. I had a client that told me a
• 13:46
  story, you know, an old timer and he told me the story that he
• 13:49
  had one of those systems and he had a parrot and the parrot
• 13:52
  learned the clicks and the parrot used to say the clicks
• 13:55
  and fuck around with him while he was trying to watch TV.
• 13:58
  And the parrot would just be like clicking and it would just
• 14:00
  be changing channels and stuff which.
• 14:01
  It's just, it's a. Hysterical picture for for me to
• 14:05
  think about like this. This old man just being so
• 14:08
  pissed at his parrot. Oh.
• 14:09
  Man keeps. Changing the game on him.
• 14:11
  Like, come on, man. You know, like he shoots, he's
• 14:17
  click, right? Yeah.
• 14:19
  Yeah, and, you know, the parrot learns to just do it at times
• 14:21
  to, you know, fuck with them and stuff and like that.
• 14:23
  I love that. But we, we've come, we've come a
• 14:26
  long way. We've.
• 14:27
  Come a long. Way from our show.
• 14:29
  But, but it's all, it's all, it's all tangentially related.
• 14:31
  We're talking about controls here.
• 14:32
  We're talking about control systems and, and how far they've
• 14:35
  come and what you know, what do they mean to the integrator
• 14:39
  today? You know, like, and what are you
• 14:41
  planning for? I think with the advent of
• 14:45
  products like Lutron and EMF and some of these folks that have
• 14:50
  drivers and controls, you know, our, even our good friends at
• 14:53
  Lucetta have in wall dimmer driver pieces that are, you
• 14:57
  know, 100 watts So you can run, you know, like everything you
• 15:01
  want to, you want to have something like really simple
• 15:04
  that just has a hot wire in and, you know, 24 volts out.
• 15:09
  There's there's something along those lines for, for control out
• 15:13
  there. So what, what does that mean for
• 15:16
  the companies that are in those places as far as the interfaces
• 15:20
  and that kind of stuff? And what does it mean for the
• 15:23
  integrator? Like who do you, who do you
• 15:26
  pick? You know, like what's the,
• 15:28
  what's the calculus on OK, if I, if I go with brand L, we'll say,
• 15:32
  you know, if we're we're a Lutron house, how do I pick
• 15:35
  products that are related to that or that I can talk to
• 15:41
  Lutron width because I also have this AV layer or I have the
• 15:45
  security layer or I have this other layer, you know, like I'm
• 15:48
  not good at that math anymore, I don't think.
• 15:51
  I, I think part of that comes back to there's, there's very
• 15:54
  much and, and there was a movement going on for a little
• 15:57
  while where you know, hey, clients can handle multiple apps
• 16:01
  on their phone, right? Like I can train the client to
• 16:03
  use the Sonos app and use the Lutron app and use, you know,
• 16:07
  whatever other app we want to do, right?
• 16:10
  So yeah, we don't really need everything to tie together.
• 16:12
  But, you know, obviously it's a lot easier in one app because
• 16:16
  then you can do things like house off that, you know, turns
• 16:19
  off your lights and your AV and your pool and whatever.
• 16:23
  So that's a reason for integration.
• 16:25
  But to your point, you know, that was one of the big selling
• 16:28
  points of centralized lighting in the beginning, especially
• 16:31
  with Lutron where you're trying to simplify things down, right?
• 16:35
  So, you know, think of an older house and you've got in, you
• 16:38
  know, one living room, you've got lamps and you've got a ton
• 16:41
  of pot lights and you've got a bunch of sconces and you've got
• 16:44
  whatever. And then that foyer switch bank
• 16:46
  is you know, it's 15 gangs, right?
• 16:50
  Like it's it's. Wider than the longest?
• 16:52
  What's the longest multi gang switch?
• 16:55
  I'm sure there's a code. I think what is it 6 or 8 or
• 16:58
  something like that? Like how many?
• 17:00
  Like how many? I I thought it was only limited
• 17:03
  by the size of the box that you can actually.
• 17:06
  How many decor plates can you that's what I'm saying.
• 17:08
  How many decor plates can you stack together to to I mean, you
• 17:12
  know, are they all banked and under big one big plate?
• 17:14
  Like look at how many scooters that is.
• 17:16
  Well, you know, think, think about, think about some of the
• 17:19
  folks who do like, you know, radio raw systems and it's, it's
• 17:21
  centralized lighting, but you're, you know, behind a
• 17:24
  refrigerator there's. You know 6.
• 17:27
  There's 6 levels of raw of raw 2 devices that are, you know, 8
• 17:31
  gangs wide right? So like, why not just put in a
• 17:33
  lighting panel that's neither here nor there, but the the
• 17:37
  original one of the original selling point of these lighting
• 17:40
  systems in the beginning was, OK, you've got a ton of circuits
• 17:43
  and you know, you've got three ways here and this and that and
• 17:46
  whatever you need to eliminate that wall bank.
• 17:48
  So let's create something called scenes, right?
• 17:51
  So now you're, you know, now you're into a six button keypad
• 17:55
  with a Raisin lower and you can, you know, you can now manage
• 17:58
  that in the space of 1 gang instead of 10 that, you know,
• 18:01
  again, that's that's in the beginning and it and it's very
• 18:04
  related to having a stack of AV gear and having a pile of
• 18:07
  remotes, right, Same idea. Let's simplify.
• 18:10
  Let's let's get it to that point.
• 18:13
  You know, the the major manufacturers, though, they're
• 18:15
  they're catching on, right. Like all you know, you have a
• 18:18
  ton of little tiny lighting companies that have sprung up
• 18:21
  and you know, they use, OK, they all use Tuya or they use
• 18:25
  whatever third party app, you know, it's.
• 18:27
  Smart things from Samsung they're using.
• 18:29
  Yep, yeah. I mean, let's not, let's not,
• 18:32
  let's not crowd out the 9000 LB gorilla in the room.
• 18:36
  Like. SmartThings is out there for
• 18:38
  real. So as matter some of these
• 18:40
  other, some of these other options, right, like your, your
• 18:42
  control scheme, even the the consideration for what you're
• 18:46
  going to do to control a house has changed dramatically.
• 18:50
  And that might be, and, and those are all valuable because
• 18:52
  that kind of plants the seed in what might be a, a casual, you
• 18:58
  know, viewer of this stuff, right?
• 18:59
  So you have somebody who's building a home or getting a
• 19:01
  system or whatever and they've heard of smart things because it
• 19:05
  popped up on a Samsung TV or, you know, because there's a
• 19:07
  national advertising campaign they know about, you know, they
• 19:11
  know about Matter because they have all Apple devices in their
• 19:14
  home and maybe they have a robot vacuum that works on home kit,
• 19:17
  right? So they're used to, you know,
• 19:19
  they're used to it being in that kind of ecosystem.
• 19:21
  That's a good thing because it kind of gets the idea out there.
• 19:24
  But you need to be prepared because when you're, you know,
• 19:28
  when you're floating $100,000 proposal and it's got touch
• 19:31
  screens, remotes, integration and all these other things,
• 19:34
  they're going to come at you and say, well, why don't we just
• 19:37
  use, Can we just use this because I'm familiar with the
• 19:41
  Apple Home app or just use this because I'm familiar with smart
• 19:44
  things or. Govi or whatever and the
• 19:49
  salesman just hangs A noose up in the clients home.
• 19:53
  He steps up on the edge of the couch.
• 19:56
  Right, we'll see what you've done to me.
• 19:59
  It's it's a very hard conversation because that is
• 20:02
  and, and you know, I mean, there's, there's a couple
• 20:04
  positives to take away from that.
• 20:05
  One is that you don't have to educate, you don't have to start
• 20:07
  at the integration conversation, right?
• 20:11
  Like you don't have to educate somebody about integration and
• 20:14
  single UI and that kind of thing.
• 20:16
  And that's that's a good thing. But yeah, that's that's your.
• 20:20
  Oh, you know, I saw this device in Best Buy or I saw this.
• 20:22
  How come this is you know, how come this is 4 digits before the
• 20:28
  you know, how come this this Yeah, this item is 1000 bucks
• 20:32
  and this item is 100 bucks and how you know?
• 20:34
  Why? Why is this so?
• 20:35
  Much more expensive, like that's a conversation that probably
• 20:38
  every integrator has has had. And you can either, you know,
• 20:42
  you can either give up, like not take the job, work around their
• 20:46
  constraints, which, you know, maybe it's a product that you're
• 20:48
  unfamiliar with, or you can kind of step in and say, well, here's
• 20:51
  what this does. You can, you know, you can do
• 20:54
  this and you can trigger this and you can work this and you
• 20:56
  can get alerts from all these other things.
• 20:58
  And you can't do that with the products that you're that you're
• 21:01
  talking about. The mag 5.1 system for 1200
• 21:04
  bucks, it was $3500 off Why? What are you trying to sell me
• 21:08
  over here? There's a prime example of what
• 21:12
  you're describing where you're trying to articulate the value
• 21:14
  to something for a client where they kind of think they know
• 21:17
  what they don't really know. You know, that's, that's yeah,
• 21:21
  sorry, just very triggering. It's well, and, and I'm sure
• 21:24
  it's triggering for a lot of people because that is that is
• 21:26
  such like you, if you're, if you're selling anything or
• 21:29
  explaining a system or doing whatever, like that is
• 21:33
  absolutely a landmine that you're, you know, you're
• 21:35
  tiptoeing through the landmine field trying to make sure that
• 21:38
  you don't hit that specific one. That conversation of I could
• 21:42
  just go get this stuff at Best Buy or I could just go get this
• 21:44
  stuff over here or whatever. It's like, yeah, OK, yeah.
• 21:47
  Will you install it for me? At right well, which is the that
• 21:51
  is the second follow up question is if I just get my TV's at
• 21:54
  Costco or if I just go get all my Sonos stuff at Costco, will
• 21:58
  you put it in for me? It's like.
• 22:00
  I will. It has no warranty on it and
• 22:01
  they look at you and go. Right.
• 22:03
  Yeah. Why?
• 22:04
  Hey, why won't you guarantee this thing?
• 22:06
  Stand behind your work. You're you're preaching to the
• 22:11
  choir. A bunch of people just drove off
• 22:13
  the road. Right.
• 22:14
  Exactly. MM DeMarco right now is driving
• 22:16
  between Tacoma and Portland and he's just like, fuck grabbing
• 22:22
  the wheel and just yanking it into the ditch, you know, It's
• 22:25
  just like, terrible. But again, you know, that's,
• 22:28
  that's kind of the thing and we, we started out with the
• 22:30
  evolution of control. And what we were talking about
• 22:32
  is, is a, it's, it's an important part of it because at
• 22:35
  the end of the day, it's what the client wants and it's what
• 22:39
  the client will, you know, will purchase and seize value in and
• 22:42
  you know, and, and will and will use ultimately, you know, and
• 22:47
  that that kind of thing. It's in a lot of ways it's a
• 22:51
  harder prospect these days to sell a control system, right?
• 22:54
  Like I, I. Think so.
• 22:55
  I think you're selling it on different merits than than the
• 22:59
  TV and the sound of the house and 3rd, that's one component of
• 23:02
  it. You know, I'm not that it not
• 23:05
  that it wasn't. But I mean, again, I think about
• 23:06
  how the the focus of that has shifted.
• 23:09
  I mean when URC started getting the native control with Lutron
• 23:14
  dimmers. Do you remember when that
• 23:15
  happened like? Very, Yeah.
• 23:18
  Like dude, you can program this thing to talk to these dimmers
• 23:21
  on the wall like. So, yeah, so I'll go back even,
• 23:25
  you know, maybe even a little bit further than that, where,
• 23:27
  you know, you would do a theatre and again, I'm, I'm dating
• 23:30
  myself here, right. But like you would do a
• 23:31
  dedicated theatre. And within that theatre you had
• 23:34
  a Lutron graphic eye on the wall.
• 23:36
  And it was the Lutron graphic eye that had the IR window on it
• 23:41
  so that you could program that into your pronto.
• 23:44
  And it's a whole different like seeing the.
• 23:46
  Yeah, drink. Wow 3 pronto mentions this
• 23:50
  episode. This is early to.
• 23:52
  You're drunk. But seeing the realization wash
• 23:57
  over a client as they hit, you know, movie time on their again,
• 24:02
  handheld remote and it does all the AV stuff, but it also dims
• 24:06
  down all the lights in a room, right?
• 24:08
  We're having an intermission button on there where you press
• 24:11
  the intermission button and it only lights up.
• 24:14
  The sconce is very low and like the kick lights very low.
• 24:17
  And seeing that realization come over them and like the the
• 24:21
  calculus that you can see going on in their brain of like this
• 24:24
  is amazing. I can't, I need to show as many
• 24:26
  people as humanly possible. I need to have so many people
• 24:29
  over here to watch movies and stuff because I need to show
• 24:31
  them this, you know, this feature like that's the magic of
• 24:34
  it. And that goes that goes back to
• 24:36
  a lot of what we talked about on the show is selling the
• 24:40
  experience. Right here's here's your
• 24:42
  experience, You know, walking into your home and hitting a
• 24:47
  button for your, you know, arrival scene and everything
• 24:50
  goes to where it is. And depending on the time of
• 24:52
  day, it's this and depending on this, it's that, it's, it's the
• 24:56
  perception of this magic, right? And that's the experience,
• 25:00
  right? Like the experience of just
• 25:01
  being able to sit down on your couch and, you know, turn on the
• 25:06
  Roku and, you know, the lamps that give you a glare dim down a
• 25:10
  little bit, right? And it feels like you're.
• 25:13
  Somebody thought. About you exactly.
• 25:16
  It's it's bespoke, it's experiential, it it makes it
• 25:19
  really feel like, you know, but but that's where the value is in
• 25:23
  what we do is creating that kind of magic and creating these kind
• 25:26
  of experiences. And it's far beyond, you know, I
• 25:30
  just want audio here. I want, you know, TV's and ease
• 25:33
  room. It's like, no, I want to be able
• 25:34
  to enjoy, you know, I, I do a lot of gaming or I watch, you
• 25:39
  know, a lot of baseball. Let's get OK, well, let's, let's
• 25:42
  build the experience around that.
• 25:43
  Here's what you need. Have you ever experienced, you
• 25:46
  know, streaming a baseball game that's encoded in surround and
• 25:50
  getting that crowd noise out of your rear speakers?
• 25:52
  Oh, no. OK, well, let's let's go over
• 25:54
  here and I'll, I'll give you a demo of that.
• 25:57
  And then now they're, you know, now they're in, right?
• 26:00
  Let's put it on a 5 channel stereo for you so you get sound
• 26:03
  surrounds you remember. Remember rigging up the old pro
• 26:07
  scan rear projection TV's and be like oh wow, this is 5 channel
• 26:12
  stereo. It's surrounding me.
• 26:14
  It's amazing. It's like no, Chief.
• 26:15
  Look at you. There's a whole another level.
• 26:17
  This is this is is a tiramisu talking about.
• 26:21
  This is a wheelbarrow full of tiramisu.
• 26:25
  We could go as far as you want, but but that's the idea is that
• 26:29
  the stuff that we do and you know, control is a big part of
• 26:32
  it, right? So you want these experiences,
• 26:34
  but ultimately you want the experience of controlling these
• 26:38
  things to be as simple as possible because that in itself
• 26:41
  is part of the experience. You're not going to, you know,
• 26:43
  you're not going to trigger your comfort scene if it's a pain in
• 26:45
  the ass, if it's buried three layer layers deep, if it's a
• 26:48
  button that's only on a keypad by your garage door and not in
• 26:51
  your kitchen, right? Like because there's.
• 26:53
  A laundry room to turn on the light in the kitchen because the
• 26:56
  switches don't work. I've been there.
• 26:57
  I mean, that that that is absolutely the kind of thing
• 26:59
  that I have subjected my wife to for sure.
• 27:02
  Like, oh, yeah. You want to turn off those
• 27:03
  upstairs lights? Yeah, the scene button is in my
• 27:08
  son's room and I. Literally just described.
• 27:10
  I just literally just described how bad I walked into client's
• 27:13
  like, yeah, I got to go upstairs to the laundry room and turn on
• 27:16
  the lights in the kitchen. I was like, the fuck are you
• 27:18
  talking? About not, not not a great
• 27:20
  experience there, but you know, it's and and all of those little
• 27:23
  things. They definitely, you know, they,
• 27:26
  they add up, right? And it's, it, it creates, it
• 27:28
  either creates or destroys value in what we do.
• 27:32
  You know, going up to your laundry room to turn on your
• 27:34
  kitchen lights destroys value, right?
• 27:36
  Like that. That's a client who's never
• 27:37
  going to get a control system ever again and probably isn't
• 27:41
  going to pay you 10% because that's bullshit and you
• 27:43
  shouldn't live with that. But you know, it, it's that kind
• 27:47
  of control. And we're getting to the point
• 27:49
  where to again, get back on the rails here.
• 27:52
  We're getting to the point where maybe it's not a physical
• 27:55
  interface, maybe it's voice commands, maybe it's.
• 27:58
  Damn Josh AI right? That's their whole MO.
• 28:02
  Yeah, Josh AI and like, you know, specifically like
• 28:04
  circadian rhythm where, you know, things just kind of happen
• 28:08
  at a time of day, you know, and you don't really have to
• 28:12
  manually control it or think about it.
• 28:13
  Or not just the ghosts in your house.
• 28:16
  It's not, it's not just the ghosts that you tell your
• 28:18
  programmer about so that he can try and chase down, you know,
• 28:20
  the, the phantom button press that your son is doing, you
• 28:23
  know? Like the Ice Cream Phantom?
• 28:27
  Yeah, that guy, right? Yeah.
• 28:28
  So, you know, it's, it's that sort of thing and you know,
• 28:31
  it's, it's other things like it's scenes and it's, you know,
• 28:36
  it, it, it's voice commands and it's single buttons and, you
• 28:40
  know, 1 action that does 20 actions to set up a scene and
• 28:44
  makes that experience, you know, magic in a lot of ways.
• 28:47
  So yeah, I think there's definitely still a a reason for
• 28:52
  control. And you know, part of that needs
• 28:55
  to kind of get out to the public because the way it's marketed
• 28:58
  now, at least by the big guys, is like, you can control
• 29:00
  everything from here or you can do this from.
• 29:02
  Here. You know.
• 29:04
  Like 100%, yeah. People, that's not an.
• 29:06
  Experience there's there's value yeah you you don't do you really
• 29:10
  want to fire up an app and wait for three screens and the the
• 29:14
  thing to get online and talk to the cloud to open your shades in
• 29:18
  your house? Probably not.
• 29:18
  You probably want to go to that button.
• 29:20
  You want to, you want to go to that direct interface.
• 29:22
  And I, I agree with you 100% the, the, the public at large
• 29:27
  definitely needs to understand that physical buttons and stand
• 29:32
  alone controls for lighting or shading or whatever that are
• 29:36
  outside of the, the realm of touch panel or what have you are
• 29:40
  absolutely necessary to make these things work.
• 29:44
  And, and should be your, your first thought, your that's going
• 29:47
  to be your natural instinct anyway.
• 29:48
  How do I turn this thing on, or how do I open this up, etcetera?
• 29:51
  And, and part of like part of a consultative sales approach is
• 29:55
  thinking about those kind of things in relation to the, the
• 29:58
  client that you're selling to, right.
• 29:59
  So, you know, you, you do a walk through or whatever.
• 30:02
  Yeah, aside from just the nuts and bolts of like, we're going
• 30:04
  to need this much wire and we need cable drops here and this
• 30:07
  is going to be ATV and speakers and blah, blah, blah.
• 30:10
  You should be thinking about how am I, you know, what kind of
• 30:13
  things are in here that I can, you know, make the experience
• 30:17
  better, right? Like, OK, well, when we walk in
• 30:20
  the front door, we're going to need, you know, a couple of
• 30:22
  scenes here. Want to do this and want to do
• 30:25
  that. And then you can start sort of
• 30:27
  walking the client through that. Right.
• 30:29
  And, and obviously it goes without saying, if you're doing
• 30:32
  a big project and you know, you have like, you know, an 18 month
• 30:35
  beginning to end, make sure that you keep track of those as
• 30:39
  you're, if you're, if you're a salesperson and you're
• 30:41
  promising, you know, magic, right?
• 30:43
  Like make sure that at least you relay what that magic is going
• 30:46
  to be to your, to your production team and your and
• 30:49
  your programmer. Because no doubt at the very end
• 30:52
  of the project, the client is going to suddenly remember that
• 30:54
  conversation that you guys had. Hey, remember when you said you
• 30:58
  were going to be able to give me a button that was going to turn
• 31:00
  on right like my house to party mode and it was going to open up
• 31:04
  all the shades and turn on the hot tub and turn on my boat dock
• 31:08
  and. And that's when the programmer
• 31:09
  on site is is. Again grabs that rope that's
• 31:13
  taking. Away the five.
• 31:13
  And. Time and nuisance and, you know,
• 31:17
  get rid. Of drag me behind the Chevy
• 31:20
  Express van, but please. Just kill me.
• 31:23
  It's 6:00 on Friday night. I just want to get home to my
• 31:25
  family but. Right, that's got baseball
• 31:28
  practice. That's super important to
• 31:30
  remember is, you know, that kind of scope like that, that should
• 31:33
  all be, you know, your scope document, we're way off the
• 31:36
  rails here, but your scope document throughout the project
• 31:39
  should evolve, you know it. And it should start at that very
• 31:42
  first sales consultation because that's part of the magic too,
• 31:45
  right? Like having, you know, having a,
• 31:48
  a trade that remembers what. Delivers on the promises what?
• 31:53
  Was promised and what is delivered and to be able to go
• 31:56
  back and say remember we had this conversation about this
• 31:59
  this is here's here's that one feature that we walked through
• 32:02
  like. Well, here's my unabashed plod.
• 32:04
  Or here's my sorry, my unabashed plug for a device like the plod.
• 32:08
  I don't know if you're familiar with that thing, but you've seen
• 32:10
  plod yet. I have not.
• 32:12
  So plot is like an AI voice recorder for for like your life.
• 32:18
  You just stick it on the back of your phone.
• 32:19
  It's got like a wide microphone. You can absolutely use notes or
• 32:22
  something like that. But what a really cool way to
• 32:25
  analyze and summarize your conversation and say now,
• 32:28
  motherfucker, we talked about this because I got it right
• 32:32
  here. Not only do I have the
• 32:34
  transcript, but I have the written summary word for word of
• 32:38
  of what what this is PLAUD for, for anybody that's interested in
• 32:44
  one. But yeah.
• 32:46
  Not only did I record and summarize our conversation, but
• 32:49
  I also created this image based on.
• 32:52
  But you, you could take that conversation, you could take
• 32:55
  those bullet points and plug it right into your proposal and
• 32:57
  say, yeah, these are literally the things that we talked about
• 32:59
  right here. So not, not to get to completely
• 33:03
  derail us again after we got derailed three other times.
• 33:06
  But that just made me think for as a unabashed plug, you should
• 33:10
  be maybe considering an AI note taker or utilizing A transcriber
• 33:15
  or something like that in your phone for conversations that are
• 33:17
  substantive, just obviously mention of the person, like,
• 33:20
  hey, do you mind if I just use my note ticker here?
• 33:22
  We can take these right into your proposal and then I can
• 33:25
  build, you know, I can build the framework of, of what we're
• 33:28
  actually going to deliver around this conversation.
• 33:31
  There's a way to document that stuff?
• 33:32
  I, I think, I mean, I think that's a good idea no matter
• 33:35
  what. And for what it's worth, I, I'm,
• 33:37
  I'm a big fan. I I like that I would still, and
• 33:40
  this is just a personal preference.
• 33:43
  Yes, I would use one of those, but I would also have I, I carry
• 33:46
  around a, a field notebook with me.
• 33:47
  I'm pulling it up like like we still do video, but I carry on a
• 33:50
  field notebook with a pencil. And I mean, I'm, you know, I'm
• 33:53
  writing notes in there sometimes that act of just doing that.
• 33:57
  Of course. Really makes a good impression
• 34:00
  of like, OK, this we're, you know, we're, we're putting
• 34:03
  things like. You are and I, I like that as
• 34:05
  well, but I'm also old and I forget to write things down or
• 34:09
  or the conversation moves on and I go fuck, I forgot what we were
• 34:12
  just talking about. That's where the plot comes in.
• 34:15
  And. That's where plot comes in.
• 34:17
  And yeah, and that's this is a good plug for them.
• 34:19
  But I think that's, I think that's a valuable tool no matter
• 34:22
  what, right? Summarize emails, summarize
• 34:24
  whatever. Just so that especially in a
• 34:26
  sales role that you're not losing track of, of things that
• 34:29
  you're communicating about, right?
• 34:31
  Like I need to send this guy XYZ.
• 34:34
  Like, it's easy to jump off of one thing and jump right into
• 34:37
  the next. And totally.
• 34:39
  This podcast is an absolute example of hard left, hard
• 34:47
  right, hard left, hard right. But I mean to to tie it back to
• 34:50
  control trying. To give it interesting.
• 34:53
  Yeah, keep, keep it, keep keep delivering on, on those promises
• 34:58
  made for the client and your control system sales will
• 35:00
  continue to be healthy because you'll get good word of mouth,
• 35:03
  you'll they'll be good experiences out there for them.
• 35:07
  You should absolutely be tailoring control to your
• 35:10
  customers needs, not your needs or wants.
• 35:13
  You know, I can, I don't know how many projects I still see in
• 35:15
  proposal with, you know, native touch screens melded into the
• 35:19
  wall and shit like that. I just I want to again I I want
• 35:23
  to string up some CAT6 and. It has a place, right?
• 35:27
  Like there's there's a place for touch screens.
• 35:29
  It's maybe just not everywhere. It's maybe just not on a primary
• 35:33
  location on the wall in the home.
• 35:35
  Just might be two cents. I'd much rather have it just be
• 35:38
  on the counter or. Don't make it an alter.
• 35:40
  Yeah, exactly. Don't make it a timestamp.
• 35:42
  Don't make it the new tone of your home in 2026, right?
• 35:47
  I will say though, I do like 11 use case that I really like for
• 35:51
  in wall touch screens or even an iPad mounted on the wall.
• 35:53
  That's, you know, controlled and, and that kind of thing is
• 35:56
  in homes with kids, right, Where, you know, the, the kids
• 36:00
  don't necessarily have Apple devices.
• 36:02
  And, and that's that's where I'm at too.
• 36:03
  Like my kids got an Apple Watch and that's going to be it for
• 36:07
  him for a while, right? Like he, he doesn't have an
• 36:09
  iPad, he doesn't have a phone. He's not at that age yet, but
• 36:12
  for the kids to be able to use the home, right.
• 36:15
  So, you know, again, in a, in a larger house, like I heard a
• 36:18
  noise outside and I want to see what's going on in the camera.
• 36:20
  Like if the kid knows how to walk over and take a look and
• 36:22
  see he doesn't have to go to the door or, you know, she doesn't
• 36:25
  have to go to her window or or whatever.
• 36:27
  Like those are good use cases for a touch screen.
• 36:30
  You know, there's no I want to play music.
• 36:32
  Right. I I just wouldn't put it in the
• 36:34
  drywall. That's just my my two cents.
• 36:36
  Yeah, everybody's got like I can see that everybody's got their
• 36:40
  preferences. I just again that whole time
• 36:42
  stamp just I just think M&S intercom sure you know, just go
• 36:47
  no. That's that's a really good
• 36:49
  point, especially for, you know, a lot of different things like,
• 36:51
  you know, flush mounting and that kind of thing like, and,
• 36:54
  and those have their place for sure.
• 36:55
  Absolutely. Outlets for sure.
• 36:57
  Tablets. Yeah, it's a time stamp.
• 37:00
  You know, you're right. It's, it's a, it's a time stamp
• 37:03
  so that whoever buys the house next, you know, that might be,
• 37:06
  that might be a. Thing I'm glad I got a second
• 37:08
  Gen. iPad on the wall forever. With with a Yeah, with an
• 37:12
  expanding battery, that's the bezel on The thing is bent out
• 37:16
  because the battery's about to explode.
• 37:18
  With pictures of the former's owner's former owner's dogs.
• 37:21
  Kids of scrolling in the background.
• 37:23
  That's cool. Who did the install on this?
• 37:25
  Oh, they're not in business anymore.
• 37:26
  Great. Remember those days I love?
• 37:28
  That. We should do a whole show on
• 37:30
  like data security and like how to wipe your devices.
• 37:34
  We should, yeah, we've got, we've got the trade in topic,
• 37:37
  we've got data security topic. We've got we've got all kinds of
• 37:40
  stuff we can kick around. Yeah, and that's I think that's
• 37:43
  going to do it for us. So again, if, if, if you enjoyed
• 37:47
  listening, hey, do me a I'm going to give you a new, new
• 37:50
  plug here. If you enjoy listening to us on
• 37:53
  a regular basis, please subscribe to our show on Spotify
• 37:57
  in Apple podcast. That helps our metric, as as
• 38:01
  miniscule as that is. Yeah, even if you don't ever
• 38:04
  listen, just to open up your mom's iPad app or Apple App,
• 38:08
  subscribe. No, just but open up their app
• 38:10
  and just be like, oh, you're subscribed to this one now.
• 38:13
  It's perfect. Down download every episode you
• 38:15
  can listen. To the the dull set tones of 2
• 38:17
  angry old integrators. They yell into the Internet so.
• 38:20
  We yell into the sky, but but yeah.
• 38:24
  So please subscribe on whatever platform you listen.
• 38:26
  Hit us up on Instagram at inside_integrationshootusanemailinsideintegration@gmail.com
• 38:32
  and. Thanks for joining us folks.
• 38:35
  Yeah, and one other thing, make sure you check out our merch
• 38:37
  store because Chris and me will each get a dollar from every
• 38:40
  purchase. Not even we don't even make a
• 38:42
  we. Don't even get a dollar each.
• 38:43
  OK, so we won't even get a dollar each, but you'll feel
• 38:46
  better because you're supporting us.
• 38:48
  You need to get the candle scented like some guy's van, yes
• 38:51
  or something. Something exciting along those
• 38:55
  lines. You need a Pronto shirt.
• 38:56
  You need a Pronto shirt. You need a new Guts tank top or
• 39:01
  The Who Gots T-shirt with a picture of you've Gots tank top
• 39:03
  on it bathing. Suit season is coming.
• 39:06
  Oh my God. I mean, I'm working on my I'm
• 39:08
  working on my summer bod. So I haven't lost a single
• 39:11
  pound. I've just shifted my fat around.
• 39:13
  That's. Cool, you're you're cultivating
• 39:15
  mass, Sir. That's that's all I'm doing.
• 39:17
  That's right. But anyways, take care
• 39:18
  everybody. Bye bye.