We start this week’s show with a conversation about Latch, the company that is acquiring Jamie Siminoff’s stealth startup. Siminoff, who also founded Ring, left Amazon (which had acquired Ring in 2018) this week ahead of the planned deal. He will become the CEO of Latch after the deal closes. Then we discuss Google I/O and wonder why we didn’t hear more about Google Assistant, and explore what it means to bring large language models to the smart home. Surveillance is a possibility. And for residents of public housing in the U.S., surveillance is a reality as landlords use cameras and AI to evict residents for minor infractions. They are weaponizing the internet of things. Also in depressing news, we recommend you never buy Belkin Wemo gear again and toss the Wemo gear you own after poor handling of security vulnerabilities by the company. In smaller news, Infineon has purchased TinyML company Imagimob, Amazon has lost a robotics executive and launched new Echo gear, and Eve has two new products. Finally, we answer a listener question about a message users might hear from their Google devices as Google sunsets a program called Conversational Actions.
Our guest this week is Doug Roberson, the chief operating officer at Shelly. We talk about Shelly and its history, as well as the products it offers. Roberson explains Shelly’s focus on relays designed to connect outlets and light switches with sensors and other devices to manage electrical consumption in homes and businesses. He talks about how enterprises are using Shelly’s products and what consumers can do with them. He also gives us a tutorial on connecting your dryer to the internet to detect when your clothes are done. We end with an update on Matter and a sneak peek at coming Shelly products, including a water shut-off device. Enjoy the show.
Interesting that the new Echo Pop advertises itself as supporting Matter, but doesn’t itself support Thread. Which means once again someone could buy two devices with the same logo that can’t actually work together, like the echo pop and the Eve smart plug. Disappointing.
I wonder if they expect most people who get This to also have an eero router (since the pop can also act as an extender for a eero network), and so get thread support from the eero device?
But since they’re described as in several places as perfect for a dorm room, I think we’re back in customer confusion territory. Fill your shopping cart with devices that all have the matter logo and only some of them will work together. Not what we were promised.
I really think the CSA has to come up with a “matter light“ logo for Matter controllers which don’t have thread support.
The security issues with Wemo ended up being the proverbial last straw. The system had been annoying me for years with its frequent disconnections. Either the links to Alexa would fail, or devices would not connect with the Wemo app. So, with a recent change of ISP, which would have required me to factory reset and reconnect every Wemo, I decided to mostly bail out. I have two of the Wemo air cleaners and one wired in light switch which I have kept, but I switched all plugs to either Amazon plugs, or for lamps, Hue bulbs.