Smart Homes NEED To Change...

Summary

The video addresses the current state of the smart home industry, highlighting persistent issues that have remained unsolved for over five years. The creator, Brian from Automate Your Life, acknowledges the inconsistency, reliability problems, and the challenges associated with the new matter standard, emphasizing the need for change. He also reflects on being part of the problem and outlines a shift in his channel's strategy to tackle these issues, including new video series focused on deeper explorations and hard-hitting evaluations of smart home products and ideas.

Highlights

• Persistent issues in the smart home industry remain unaddressed. 😕
• The new matter standard complicates connectivity rather than simplifies it. 📶
• Brian acknowledges needing change within his channel's approach. 🎥
• Two new video series aim to offer critical evaluations and creative solutions. 🎬
• The plan includes ceasing unboxing videos to focus on impactful content. 🚫

Key Takeaways

• The smart home industry has failed to resolve long-standing issues despite advancements. 🏡
• New problems have arisen with the introduction of the matter standard. 🆕
• There's a need for more honest conversation and scrutiny in the industry. 💬
• Automate Your Life plans to refocus its content to address these challenges. 🔄
• Changes include hard-hitting reviews and practical automation ideas. 💡

Overview

Smart homes promised a future where our living spaces would effortlessly cater to our needs, yet the reality has been less than idyllic. Many users find themselves grappling with inconsistent product performance and unreliable systems, which should have been ironed out by now. Instead, new standards like 'Matter' only add complexity.

In response to these persistent challenges, Brian from Automate Your Life is taking a stand. He admits his channel may have inadvertently contributed to the noise by not addressing these issues head-on. However, he's committed to shifting gears, offering more valuable content such as honest product evaluations and insightful automation ideas.

The changes are significant; he's implementing two new content series: 'Smart or Not' for rigorous product assessments and an 'Automation Ideas' series to empower users with practical applications. This initiative stems from a genuine desire to catalyze change and hold the industry accountable, ensuring smart homes finally deliver on their promises.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Smart Homes The chapter 'Introduction to Smart Homes' explores the concept of smart homes as a utopian idea where homes automatically respond to the needs and wants of their inhabitants, aiming to save time, money, and simplify modern living. It highlights that while smart homes are often seen as tools of convenience rather than necessity, for some individuals, these technologies can significantly alter or enhance their lifestyle.
• 00:30 - 05:30: Current Issues with Smart Homes The chapter discusses ongoing issues with smart homes, which have persisted for over five years. It explains how new problems have emerged with the introduction of the "Matter Standard." The speaker, Brian from AutomateLife, intends to explain why smart homes need to evolve and how he plans to respond to these challenges.
• 05:30 - 09:30: Changes in the Approach The speaker expresses their commitment to prioritizing time-saving approaches in life, with the aim of focusing on the more significant aspects, such as family, personal life, and business endeavors. They want to dedicate more time to their personal relationships and enhance their channel and smart home business.
• 09:30 - 12:30: New Series and Future Focus The chapter "New Series and Future Focus" begins with a discussion on personal reasons for finding the technological landscape significant. The major focus is on the six predominant issues plaguing the tech industry presently. The first issue highlighted is the inconsistency in product offerings, which burdens consumers with extensive research regardless of the product's price, such as a $10 smart plug versus a $50 one. There are often discrepancies between the advertised functionalities and actual performance, leading to consumer dissatisfaction.

Smart Homes NEED To Change... Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 something just isn't right with Smart Homes now a smart home is this utopian idea where a home will respond to your needs and wants without you really needing to be involved it's a great idea because it can save us time money and it can remove complexity from a modern lifestyle it's not necessarily about survivability as most people use these as tools of convenience however there are people who use Smart Home Products to alter their life or improve It
• 00:30 - 01:00 Whatever the reason is that you are here today we've been living with the same set of problems in the smart home for more than 5 years now in fact recently we've gained some additional problems with What's called the matter standard Smart Homes need to change so I'm going to tell you why I feel this way and how I'm going to react hello automats thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate life
• 01:00 - 01:30 and yes I'm going to be continuing on that mission because I really do believe that it's important that all of us save time in our lives so we can focus on bigger and better things for me I want to be able to have the time to spend with my son and my family and my friends and truthfully I want to be able to have the time to properly work on this channel and this business centered around the smart home so that's why it's important to me
• 01:30 - 02:00 and I hope you have your own reasons for why this side of the world of technology is important to you I think there are six major problems with the industry right now number one the inconsistency of offerings causes all of us to have to painstakingly research each purchase whether it's a $10 smart plug or a $50 one we find discrepancies between what we're told and how the product behaves and we can even find discrepancies
• 02:00 - 02:30 between different applications with the same product it's just a mindfield for a consumer number two not only do we have discrepancies with the different products but it's hard to even understand how they work and how you can use them over 50% of you who responded to a survey we put out said that the most important type of video we can make is one that is about automation ideas that signals a massive failure in the
• 02:30 - 03:00 entire industry to tell you what these products are about and worse yet that might signal we have a bunch of useless products which I think we do number three reliability is still suspect in most systems and we can say that it's higher with one platform or with one Hub but the fact is we still don't have reliability at a level that's high enough for critical use cases home security is about the most critical function that I think we can allow these
• 03:00 - 03:30 products to be used for and this is just because of simple things like Wireless connectivity these problems should be solved by now and they're not number four reliability doesn't begin and end with things like Wireless connectivity it begins when you first set up a product and it ends when the product dies unfortunately Smart Home Products now have a reputation of Dying For No Good Reason my Q just recently decided that they would stop their products working with home assistant Phillips
• 03:30 - 04:00 Hugh tried to thrust the requirements of a cloud-based account onto their customer base after many years of not needing one Google is constantly killing services and product lineups and if you've been a part of Samsung smart things in the past four years then you've experienced something in your house dying simply because they changed something it's this reduction of offerings after you've been sold something that is a broken promise and people never forget that stuff number number five it's not like these
• 04:00 - 04:30 reliability problems or these discrepancies or going away with the new standard called matter in fact in every case I can tell you that matter has screwed things more matter over Wi-Fi and matter over thread have both caused more connectivity issues than they have solved and both of those types of connections have been problematic in my home for an entire year and the industry thinks it's okay to sell these products
• 04:30 - 05:00 like this worse yet the home connectivity Alliance is pretending with all kinds of marketing updates that everything is just hunky dory give me a break everyone knows that your matter over Wi-Fi and matter over thread products disconnect for no good reason enough is enough stop lying and fix the damn standard and stop telling us that matter is providing better connectivity between platforms because now I can't even get an energy monitoring smart plug to work in all the apps so I have this
• 05:00 - 05:30 logo that tells me everything's going to be great and then the thing disconnects all the time and I have to reset it up and then I only get energy monitoring in one app for some weird reason the standard right now is a bigger problem than any of the old standards with their respective issues and the very worst thing about this number six is that nothing has changed in five solid years
• 05:30 - 06:00 the only change is the addition of the last issue these are not solved and I would even say that most of these problems and their Solutions have moved further away we have really bad actors in this industry and don't get me wrong because there are some great companies doing great things but those great things are in isolation of these major problems companies who are doing great things are avoiding most of what I just told you through building through their
• 06:00 - 06:30 own ecosystem so what we have are a bunch of companies that have figured out the technical problems in the smart home industry haven't been solved and won't be and they're going to therefore do it on their own and unfortunately that means you and I are going to have to buy all of their products in order to live this lifestyle the whole point of a smart home is that everything talks together and we have a bunch of companies in isolation and a bunch of standards that don't support any anything else so in case it isn't clear
• 06:30 - 07:00 the smart home industry needs to change and I have felt like a part of this problem I don't feel like we are having the conversations that we need to I started to address this feeling I was having by putting out a number of polls on the channel and I love the discussions that we're having I'm going to continue with that but I feel the need to do a lot more and give me just one minute here to explain why I feel like I've been part of the problem see a
• 07:00 - 07:30 couple of years ago I felt like the smart home industry was getting away from me what I mean by that is that there were so many products and honestly a lot of great ones coming out from all of these new companies just popping up all over the place I felt like I was unable to advise people because I wasn't able to touch and use and experience all of these new things our team came up with a really great way to both allow me to gain that knowledge and to be able to
• 07:30 - 08:00 pass it on to you we were going to introduce you to around 10 products a month through our unboxing videos and today as I talk about that series it's our most popular one and it's definitely allowed me to gain all these good contacts in the industry and also to support good products and good companies doing good things but while the first few unboxings were simplistic videos that introduced a product briefly gave a little insight into what it can do what
• 08:00 - 08:30 I kept hearing from you was that you needed more you needed to understand the product fully and so over time what happened is I started making 10 reviews a month through the unboxing format that means here on automate your life we're creating 13 videos a month essentially and it's been amazing to be able to do that for so long but they are now keeping me so busy that it's stopping me from having the right conversations with
• 08:30 - 09:00 you about these products and about the industry in general this level of effort is coupled with the fact that I now understand you guys have different needs for your Smart Homes and for this technology those two things are pushing me to shift what we're doing on the channel it's time we have some deeper and honestly tougher conversations when it comes to these products and services being added to our lives so effective immediately the unboxing video are going to stop I'm not saying that we won't
• 09:00 - 09:30 ever go back to that format and I'm not saying we're not going to do the big yearend compilation cuz we are however we are starting two new series of videos and we are refocusing the channel on what you have told me you need the most number one I'm starting off a series called smart or not and I'm going to be very hard on companies products services and even the basic ideas within the smart home industry a great example of
• 09:30 - 10:00 that is we need to revisit the Google assistant and in no way am I going to allow Google to be involved in the construction of that video we won't allow companies to sponsor their smart or not video Simply put the influence will be 100% through our community and through our own thoughts and like I said the evaluation will be very hard on these companies for someone to get a rating that a product or service is smart it will have to basically be
• 10:00 - 10:30 incredible and then be incredible for a very long time so I'm not going to be pulling any punches now the second series we're kicking off is something that has existed on YouTube for a while but you you guys told me this is the most important video that we can create that series is automation ideas and we're going to build these types of videos with products product types and in some cases with systems we're going to tell you how you can creatively use
• 10:30 - 11:00 these products in your life to save time money and to reduce complexity I will be taking sponsorships for those videos and my evaluation of that is that it's a good place to do it there will be those of you who won't like that we have to make money here and that we won't just rely on YouTube's Ever Changing Revenue formula to support our family and the people we work with but that's the reality of this so I hope you'll accept that and I'm not going to
• 11:00 - 11:30 show you automation ideas with a product that sucks if it sucks we'll cancel the sponsorship and we will move on from the product all you're going to get are a number of ideas for how you could use that product to improve your life of course we're still going to do important comparison videos and we're going to do tutorials because I think we've gotten too far away from that the theme Here is that we're just going to Trend a little more to the reality of Smart Homes and
• 11:30 - 12:00 unfortunately they're not in a great place they should be in a much better place and there are bright spots out there but I'm no longer going to sit idly by while companies think they can Market their way out of a problem real solutions and real fixes for some of these major issues need to come forward and until that happens the companies are going to feel it in their wallet gone is the positive guy who will tell you that it's going to be okay and that these things are great some of them are but
• 12:00 - 12:30 most of them are just wasting our time so enough is enough and it's very clear to me that I need to change the channel motto don't hate automate is no longer relevant sometimes we need to push so instead thanks for watching today and of course live smart me