The Technical Difficulties Podcast
A podcast all about the latest trends, devices and topics related to smart homes and home automation.
The Technical Difficulties Podcast
Steven Robles starts from scratch | Podcast s3 e6
Steven Robles shares his experience building his smart home from scratch in his new house. Steven also gives us his top Apple products and provides valuable insight on making life easier with Apple Home and Apple Shortcuts. Aspiring youtubers and podcasters will enjoy the story of his podcast career and rise to youtube success.
Thank you to Zooz for sponsoring this podcast! For the best deals on Z-Wave smart home products you'll love:
https://www.thesmartesthouse.com
Stephen Robles
https://youtube.com/@beardfm
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenrobles.com
https://instagram.com/stephenrobles
Thank you to Zooz for supporting the podcast
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
That was beautiful. That was... I wasn't, that was amazing. years of podcasting experience under his belt. going to put some sound effects behind that. Yes, exactly. That was awesome. That was awesome. the technical difficulty smart home podcast. This is season three, episode six. And I want you to grab a beverage, find a nice, comfortable chair and sit back and take in the smooth, silky voice of today's guest, Steven Robles. Now he has a lot to share with us about building a smart home from scratch, using Apple shortcuts to improve his life, your life. And honestly, he could probably talk for an hour about shampooing the carpet. or something and it would be a good listen because the man is a professional and I really wish I had asked him to do this week's read from Zeus but unfortunately I am not that smart. Zeus Z-Wave products however are as smart as they come. I want you to all do yourself a favor right now and set a reminder on your phone to check the smartest house dot com each week for their deal of the week. This week's deal is fourteen dollars off the Zeus 800 Series Z-Wave Plus range extender. Just plug it into any outlet in your home and boost the range of your Z-Wave network up to 400 feet. Or if you really want to boost the range of your smart home, upgrade to Z-Wave Long Range so you can take advantage of Zeus's extensive lineup of Z-Wave Long Range sensors, switches, plugs, and Z-Wave Long Range and Z-Wave Plus products are backed by Zeus's five-year warranty. Who even does that anymore? I'd say that's worth the extra price you have to pay for Zeus products, but you don't have to pay an extra price for Zeus products. They always have great products. at great prices. For more information about their warranty and all the best prices on Zeus Z-Wave products, visit thesmartesthouse.com. And now, back to the show. All right, here we are with the podcast with me as always. We've got Brandon, Brandon say hello to our friends out there. And Vince, Vince, you excited as always? Of course you live in the dream. And you know why you live in the dream? Because we have an awesome guest today with us, part of our creators series. He is a big time podcaster. He's got his own YouTube channel, the Steven Robles channel, just hit 100,000 subscribers. So congratulations for that. Everybody please welcome. Steven Robles, Steven, how you doing today? I'm doing great, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, thanks for joining us, man. It's a real pleasure to have you on. And again, congratulations on 100,000 subs. That's pretty incredible. Thank you. in under four years too, right? It was really about two years, you know, I put concerted effort into like 2023 and 24 and so two years I went from like a thousand to a hundred K. Not bad, you need to teach the rest of us what the heck we're doing wrong here. that's what I do on the Riverside YouTube channel. Early plug right there. Yes, so I've failed to mention we are recording this on Riverside and you make the videos for Riverside. He might own Riverside. He might own this pod. He might own the pod. You own this podcast. Like I signed. We have a meeting right after this. We'll talk about it. Yeah. that's what I thought. I had to sign a big, you know, agreement. I don't read those things. Nobody reads those things, right? You probably, he's making tons of money on this thing. So congratulations on exploiting me. And that sounded bad. It would have been super awkward though if we were on like StreamYard like come join us on StreamYard we're gonna do this. is no idea what you walked into, but yeah. tell, we really, we've been interviewing a bunch of smart home creators here. You know, checking out your channel again, you got a big follower. You really are into Apple Home and you do a lot of comparisons, a lot of reviews, that sort of thing. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about your smart home and what you like to do with your home. For sure, well I mean I'm a nerd, you I just love all the techie stuff and so Smart Home, adopted some stuff early on, iDevices and all that, and I've always just been in the Apple home ecosystem. I messed around with Homebridge a little bit here and there, but really just wanted to stick in the ecosystem. When I first started, I had an older house, like 1940s, and no neutral wires in the wall and so I had to learn like what even works in a house like this. with old copper wiring that's fraying and might blow up at any moment. So, you that was kind of my early stages of Smart Home. And then I actually got to a weird opportunity to build a house about three years ago. And at that point, I was at a place where, all right, well, I want everything smart. And so that was kind of a nice process to be able to, from scratch, say, what do want to do in every room? Where do want to run ethernet? Which, just spoiler, if you ever get a chance to run ethernet because your house is being built or remodeled, Run it everywhere. Run it everywhere you think you might want it, even where you don't want it, because I wish I had run way more Ethernet lines in my house. But, was able to do that. estate agent and I tell people that all the time. my goodness, just so many places. But I was able to have every light switch automatically be smart home as we were constructing it. I Philips Hue stuff everywhere, shades, garage, everything. so yeah, I basically have 100 plus smart home devices and still all kept in the Apple ecosystem. I don't run Homebridge right now. I was looking at the Homey Pro, but I just really like everything being native and I don't have to mess with any kind of like third party plugins and stuff. Homie Pro is nice, I will say Homie Pro has got a really nice interface. Don't dive into Home Assistant if you're not, that's not a, I don't. why every time I post a video, I actually did a how to get started with smart home recently on my channel and one of the comments was like, ignore everything this guy says, just install Home Assistant. And I was like, listen, I know like people do amazing things with Home Assistant, I'm sure it's great, but if you have to start with just install it on X, like you've already lost 90 % of normal people. And my goal is to really like help people who are just starting out, figuring out how can smart home be useful for them. What's the easiest entry point and installing something on a server or on a Mac that has to be on all the time is not a great starting point for most people. I agree. Steven, you and I, we're going to be buddies. Vince, you're off the show. Okay, we're kicking you off because Steven, we're eye to eye on this subject. Like, let's make it easy. Let's make it fun. Let's make it work. And I really enjoyed the tour that you did at your house. I think you did a great job of like walking through like one of the products, but also like how do you use them day to day and how did you get started? So if you guys haven't seen that, definitely check it out on this channel. Yeah, and you know just figuring like showing people what is actually useful about this and when I show people Hey, I get a notification when I leave this mini fridge door open. Oh shoot That would be a really useful thing to have or you know one of the places I put a camera is in the garage Just so I can double check that the door is open or closed Sometimes that sensor gets off and I just like to be able to confirm and so Being able to jump in and just seeing the camera feed in the garage like that's useful and for somebody to know Oh when I'm on vacation, I could just check on my garage and it's right there in the home app, people are attracted to those kind of use cases. So when you were building out your home, how involved was your, you're married, right? Yes. Okay. So how involved was she in smartening up the home? And I assume it's you struggle as we all do is making sure that you're having fun with your automations, but also making the family enjoy them as well. So how'd you involve her in that process? None at all. She knew everything was going to be smart and so she, you know, she knew that but she didn't really, you know, doesn't care about what goes in. But in the end there are automations that she really enjoys. For instance, our master bathroom has a window and the window's at like eye level and so if we have like lawn people come by like they could just walk by the window and look in the bathroom. So I have smart shades on that window as are all the windows and one of the automations I set up was when you turn on the shower exhaust fan in the master bathroom, all the shades close automatically. And she's not going to be taking a shower without turning on the exhaust fan. And so it's an easy automation where she doesn't have think about it. She just turns on the exhaust fan like normal, but she knows the shades are going to close automatically and privacy secured. So those kinds of automations, it's like, oh, aha moment. This is actually really useful. I don't have to think about it. Yeah, that's useful. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's the way you got to think about things in order to maintain a, maintain a happy home. I watched your, your video about, how you got up to a hundred thousand subscribers. And like you said, it was in a basically a two year period. I don't want you to recap the, do the whole video here on the podcast, but I thought it was really compelling story. If you could just, maybe share with the audience here, kind of a summary of how you got in the last two years, you really, jumped up to where you are today. Yeah, well part of it was I started working with Riverside almost three years ago now and I was mainly making videos for their YouTube channel. I was making some for mine but not putting concerted effort and so as I was making videos for their channel I wanted to make some for mine and do it consistently and I think as with anything podcasting, trying to make video content, you do have to decide like I'm gonna be consistent for one year, for two year and then reevaluate is this working, is this not. And so I really started in 2023 saying, all right, I'm going to make at least one video a week, if not two, I'm going to talk about things and I want to bring value. And that's one of the biggest things I tell people on the Riverside channel is create content. If you're going to be able to bring value to the viewer, that value might be entertainment. You're going to make them laugh. It might be inspiring. You're going to share inspiring stories or you're going to educate. And that's fully my lane. I really enjoy. Teaching educating about things showing people how to use it. So I okay. Well my niche I'm going to teach I'm gonna educate and what am I passionate about? Like what is that Venn diagram where you have expertise and you're passionate? Well right in the middle is techie stuff mostly Apple devices and smart home And so let me ride this down the lane See if I can educate and talk about this passionate topic and do it consistently to a high quality And I love what a Jay Klaus he's an amazing creator if you can get him on the show But he talks about when you're first starting out Go for quantity. And a lot of times that seems counterproductive, but you have to learn how to do it. You have to learn how to make videos. You have to fail some. So focus on quantity first. Get a bunch of videos out there. See what works. Throw stuff against the wall. And then you're also not super invested. So if something doesn't work, it doesn't feel like the end of the world. Once you have quantity, then go for quality. Hone in. What are the kinds of videos I'm making? What is my voice? How does it look? Maybe upgrade the gear. And once you can get quality nailed down, then go for quality. Quantity and that's really where my channel started to grow is when I could produce a high volume of videos at a high quality Consistently and that equation basically sets you up for success and then taking advantage of things like an iPhone launch You know, I'm a tech channel. I talk about Apple devices You have to capitalize on whatever those big trends or big topics are in your niche So for you guys CES a bunch of smart home stuff or if there's some announcement a new product comes out Phillips you have some announcements capitalize on those trending moments and create content around it. But the secondary key is differentiate yourself from other channels covering the same thing. So I didn't get access to early Apple devices back then and so I said well I'm gonna get the iPhone on launch day. What content can I make that's different from the competition? And so when I got the iPhone 15 I only talked about the USB-C port for an entire video. I said I'm gonna just plug in everything I can to this USB-C port on the iPhone and see what works. USB mics, audio interfaces, displays, mice. And I did an entire video on that. And that video alone got me 10,000 subscribers in a month. And it was at that moment when I realized, first of all, you can go viral without a big following. I only had a few thousand subscribers at the time, and I can make a video that still had hundreds of thousands of views. So that clicked in my head to say, okay, differentiating and providing value and doing it in engaging way, I can reach an audience now without any subscribers. I got 10,000 from that video. I created another video. If something works, repeat it. I created another video just on USB-C port on the iPhone, and that video got hundreds of thousands of views again, two videos right in a row. And so that showed me, okay, if I capitalize on a trending topic, hit it at a different angle than most people are doing it, do it quickly but in quality, then I can succeed. And they're each at over half a million or once half a million. The other one's like four hundred and twenty thousand right now currently. So that's impressive. Between your main channel, your podcast and then your day job with Riverside. How many videos week do you think you're doing right now? I probably make six to seven videos a week and I can only do that with some of the systems I have in place. I'm a solo creator. I have no team, have no editor, I have no thumbnail maker. I do everything myself. Riverside does have an amazing design team and they do make the thumbnails, but as far as recording and editing, it's all me. One tool I use just to throw it out there, Gling.ai. Not familiar with it. I could not make the volume of videos I do without it. And basically what it does is I give it my A-roll video and it will remove all silences and bad takes. Which for me, I don't script anything. I just talk. I just look at the camera and I talk. I might have a... No. No, I'll have... Okay, that's, I gotta say, that's real talent. Like honestly, like I've watched your videos and like I, I'm mumbling over my own words right now talking to you. I don't know how you talk intelligently about actual things without a script. That's very impressive. Sorry to interrupt. Go on. no. Thank you very much. And yeah, I'll have like maybe five or six bullet points at the most. You know, when I do my shortcuts videos, I'll have a list of like the shortcut titles that I want to talk about. But hey, I've been podcasting for like 14 years. Like I've been talking into a microphone for a long time and my jobs over the years had a lot of public speaking involved and presentations. And so I think I've just developed that skill of being able to speak extemporaneously. but in an organized way. And that allows me to sit down, hit record, and just talk at the camera for 30 minutes. That also means I'll have a lot of bad takes. I'll start and stop the same sentence five times. But a tool like Gling edits that all for me. And once I bring that into Final Cut to edit, my A-roll is basically done. I'm just adding B-roll. I record multiple angles simultaneously too. So my B-roll is basically just switching the camera angle. And I can produce a video in a couple hours. when I really need to. I can't tell you how jealous I am of you right now. That's awesome. Like I spend a lot of time scripting and then I have a bazillion takes even with a script in front of my face. So that's very, very, impressive. Looking at some of your videos here, I was impressed with some of more popular ones are about cases. Like just some of the topics you have, like I'm just surprised at how many views they're getting. is an interesting thing too I've learned about YouTube. If you want to grow fast, hyper-niche down. And you know, there are YouTube channels that just talk about iPhone accessories. And they do really well. Not only can you do well with the affiliate revenue because you're linking to Amazon or whatever, but when people know exactly what to expect from your channel, so the next video posts, they know they're going to be just as interested as the last one, you will get people to subscribe and follow along faster. Now, I actually slowed my growth because I didn't want to be pigeonholed. So you guys see my smart home stuff and that's maybe why I'm on this podcast, but that's just a small part of what I do. And one of the things that I intentionally did with my channel is I wanted to vary the content because I have multiple interests. You can try to create multiple channels and maybe grow them all simultaneously. I could have had a smart home channel, a shortcuts channel, an iPhone accessory channel. But for me personally, again, as a solo creator, I was like, I just want to... talk about what I'm passionate about in the moment, share what I'm doing right now. And so it might have slowed my growth because if someone subscribed because they saw my smart home video and the next video is about an iPhone leather case, they're gonna be like, what is this? Like, this is not what I subscribe to. So that is a bit of an obstacle if you're trying to be that varied, but I wanted to do that purposely because I wanted the people who've subscribed and followed me just to be interested in hopefully whatever I talk about. And they know that whatever I talk about, it's gonna be valuable. They're gonna learn something. or the very least it'll be interesting to watch for 10 minutes. Yeah, and like you and a few others we've had on the channel also have chosen to brand yourself as your own name, which I think is important too, because like you can talk about anything that's important to you. I think over time, your followers will understand that. And probably like if they're interested in smart home stuff, they probably also are interested in iPhones or other pieces of technology or maybe electric vehicles. So I think that's really cool. Exactly, and I just can't remember the creator's name on X. He tweeted some analytics. He had a name for his channel that was techie oriented and he changed it to his personal name and over the course of a couple months his views his watch time and his click-through rate went way up and I do think especially now in like the age of AI generated content and brands that people are attracted to the idea of Who is someone I can trust that I feel is authentic all the time and like I want to follow that person and whatever they talk about as long as it's generally about you know the topic that they'll follow that person and so that's why I did choose to just let it be my name and it's about tech and smart home and automation you know Yeah, actually when I think of you, first I think of the Smart Home Tour because that's how I found you and I'm really big about Smart Home Tours. I absolutely love them. I love seeing what automations other people are doing and how they're using products. But then it was the shortcuts. You've done so much with that and I thought that was really neat. Well, and that's one of the things too, is as you're trying to grow a channel, finding a kind of video that is kind of a backbone of your content, shortcuts, I follow people like Matthew Cassanelli and Federico Vettici, who are really shortcuts gurus, and I look up to them, that's who I learn from. And so I never thought that that would be a popular topic for my channel, but the way I was doing it, which basically turned into me making shortcuts that people were requesting, suddenly became a kind of video where I know if I post it, it'll likely get 10,000 views no matter what. If it's about shortcuts, that's the kind of views it's going to get. So it's something that I can do regularly, it's going to perform decently well, and it's an unending well of ideas because I have people now sending me hundreds of requests. I can't even keep up with them. But so if I'm ever in a lull, maybe there's no new products, nothing interesting in the news, I can make a shortcuts video because I still love it. I'm literally making the shortcuts people are asking for and it's kind of content that a large portion of my subscribers want to see. And so having that kind of content in your back pocket is something on my channel that I do regularly, that people love, it connects me to them, it's really valuable to have. So I gotta sit, go ahead, Brett. a part of the Creator Series, we're just asking everybody about smart home tech in their own home. What was your first smart devices and what do you use most often? My first smart device, had to have been an iDevices plug. I think that was one of the first ones I did. But the next one, because I really wanted smart light switches, because I was like, I don't want to do bulbs, the light switch, know, someone's going to flip it off, I have three kids, like there's no way it's going to work. I need to do a light switch. I think one of my first ones was actually the Lutron, because it was one of the few at the time that worked without a neutral wire. So I got a Lutron dimmer switch and I got the hub. I think I just had the one switch for a long time. because they're expensive and I didn't have the budget for it. But I think that was one of my first ones and now like I try to do Lutron everywhere. I have a ton of switches now here in the house. I have some leftover Leviton and Maris switches and I really want to upgrade them to Lutron but I want to do it all at once and that's going to be an investment. So we'll see when that can happen. Okay. So you built your whole house thinking you didn't put the Lutrons in when you built the built the house, Well again, because the number of switches I was having to buy cost prohibitive. I actually have a video on my channel in my smart home playlist where I have 40 light switches set up on the mantle. I have some Wemo, the Leviton, some Maris, and the Lutron. And I basically was trying to have the most economical choice while still working in three-way situations, working without hubs and all of that. And so I had a bunch of Leviton around and some Wemo ones around at first. And just, once we moved into the house, I was like, this is so frustrating. They disconnect, they don't work in three-way situations, forget it. And so I did a sweep and I bought a bunch of Lutron switches, so most of them are that, but I still have like five or six Leviton and Maris and I'm just itching to get rid of those. We'll see. we built our house, went Lutron as well, but in our previous townhouse, had like Lava Ton or something. We ran into issues with wifi and stuff. But yeah, even if you can get smart switches from a builder, usually they like price it so high that it's not worth it. take the house as it is and, you know, take a weekend, do a room at a time. And if it's not in your budget to do everything at once, you can just kind of pick the areas that are important to you and build off it over time. Right, and I installed all the switches myself to save some money while we were building it. so you said your, I believe in your video, said your in-laws helped with this. So you physically built, it wasn't like you hired them, you were actually in there with hammers and nails and doing all the... No, that much. I mean, my father-in-law, he's like a general contractor, like he's done that for years. And so he built the house and oversaw it. I ran the ethernet cable myself. I did the light switches specifically because I wanted those to be smart. And I did like my TV installations because, hey, I just wanted to do it myself to know I had done it. But one quick story is in our family room, I wanted to do a Dolby Atmos setup and I wanted to do some in-wall speakers. And I didn't tell my father-in-law that I was doing this. And so I went to saw the in-wall speaker. I went to saw the hole. And so I'm going, you know, sawing the wall. And my father-in-law walks in while I'm doing this. He's what are you doing? I was like, don't worry about it. It's just a speaker. Relax. And he had a moment. But it worked out. I was able to do it and didn't mess up the wall. Yeah, I I've learned that you you can figure things out. I've tried a lot of things that I had no idea how to do them. But you start it. You go on YouTube, right? You find other people have done it before and you can do a lot more than you think you can. saying there wasn't a water line or electrical just hiding behind there you just accidentally hit it I saw, I mean I had been seeing it from the studs, you know, we were here for the whole process. So I like saw the wall, I took pictures of it, I knew where everything was inside the wall, so I felt pretty comfortable. That's smart. actually encourage buyers to do that whenever possible. Yeah, so I'm curious if you're all in the Apple ecosystem then, are most of your devices Wi-Fi or are you getting into matter or how are you communicating to the devices? What types of devices are you using then? Well, mean, most things are thread, matter, you Lutron is all hub based. I have a bunch of Hue, you know, the colors behind me are all Hue lights. So I have the Hue hub. I have a closet with all my Ubiquiti gear. And so I have all my hubs living in there as well. But I will say, you know, all the cameras around my house, including my doorbell, that's all HomeKit secure video. You know, I don't pay for any subscriptions, you know, for Arlo or anything like that. They're great. I actually set my mom up with Arlo. because she needed a doorbell that was wireless and some floodlight cameras so those are great but for my cameras doorbell cam i have several around the house they're all wi-fi and they're all home could secure video but i will say i did just get this guy this is the akara g5 pro and it's power over ethernet i got the power over ethernet version and so not only is it powered that way but it's hardwired for connectivity and i will say it is definitely much faster at responding than all my other HomeKit Secure video cameras. So pretty cool. We actually have our first option there. Nice, and did you have the wire that you said you wired the whole house for ethernet. So was there a wire where you needed it for that for that camera? Of course. these didn't exist then. I basically ran Ethernet, so I ran two here to my studio where I record. I basically ran Ethernet to every entertainment area, so like the family room entertainment center, the bedroom TV, there's Ethernet there. The place where I really wish I had run Ethernet was for all the Sonos subwoofers that I have, which is really only two. But I have found the connectivity with that and the soundbars just to be a little spotty. And so I would love to have hardwired those to ethernet. And I wish I had run one to the exterior. I ran it all the way to the edge of the house, but I didn't punch it through the soffit. And now it's like, well, now somebody's got to go up there and actually punch it through. I wish I had just gone ahead and done that. And also we have another structure on the property. It's like a barn. And we set up some stuff out there. And I'm like, would really love to have internet out there. And so I wish we would have ran ethernet all the way out there at the beginning. And now I'm... you know, asking the question, do I do the ubiquity like microwave building the building or what do want to do with that? So I just wish I had run it to more places. You can rent a trencher, they're not bad. I ran my dog wire around the house and it took, yeah, so I'm just saying you can probably trench it yourself and run some wires out there. curious. doubt, you just get your friend Pete to come over and you hang out in the attic. That's always a good time. Yeah, yeah, Florida addicts are hot though. You don't want to be up there very long. That's the thing know, think that it's just super, especially up here, like in Minnesota, you know, it isn't a common thing to run ethernet when building houses. We've talked about that several times before, but also like even power to like your windows for like blinds things like that. What are you using for blinds currently? So I have bunch. have an Eve Motion Blinds, have a couple Smart Wings, have a Canisteo, which is kind of a rebrand of Smart Wings, some Zemmysmart, and I think one other. But they're all basically USB-C rechargeable. And yeah, it would be great to be constant power. I have the little solar panels, but I just don't want to stick those on all the windows. So I basically have a power bank, you know, like one these anchor power banks, and I'll go around. You know, the SmartWings, they're big shades. Maybe they need to be recharged once or twice a year, which is not a big deal. So I'll just take a USB-C cable, plug it in, let it charge, and be good. So they're all rechargeable. Nice. So I know you're big on shortcuts. I've actually been trying to dive into, to do a little more automations through HomeKit. I bought a bunch of these NFC tags. If you can see, I'm gonna try to get, I found that the basics that I've learned, I've actually watched a couple of your videos to help me out. if you want to get more, a little more advanced, it gets very difficult very quickly. I feel like when you get to Apple script and I'm really struggling. with that. Is there a video you have or some tips that say you should watch this or learn this to help understand that process a little bit better? I don't mess with Apple scripts, I'll be honest, which probably limits me in some of the automation. I'll use things like push cuts for notifications, which helps a lot. And sometimes the Eve app will just allow me to create the automation I want, and then that syncs to the Home app and I'm good to go. Like for instance, you can't in the Home app natively do like a double-if automation. So... been. That was yes. That's exactly what I was trying to do with the, when I got into scripting. Yeah, so I think I actually have a video called like my top 10 smart home automations where I talk about this But it's out on my patio. I have ceiling fans I have an eve weather which tells the outside temperature and I have a motion eve motion detector and the automation I wanted to do was if the temperature is over 75 degrees and you detect motion Turn on the fans between this time period you can't do that in the home app, but you can do it natively in the eve app It lets you do that kind of double conditional home automation. So I just created it there. It creates basically like a scene plus automation in the home app. You don't really have to mess with it there. I just created it once and now I'm good to go. So if it's hot outside and I walk out to the patio, the ceiling fans turn on automatically. So I use the EVA for some of those. I use push cuts and then shortcuts. I really try to push it pretty far with apps like Toolbox Pro. and the Actions app, and both of them add some more shortcuts actions that aren't natively available. Okay, I'll have to check that out, maybe it'll... You know, YAML is probably easier than Apple code. It's possible. You know what? Like I said, I've just explored the Apple script. You know, can do that really easily in Home Assistant. It's right at, you know, you can put as many conditions as you want, you know? Are you still here? I thought we kicked you off the show. I thought... I'm good I'll tell you I'll tell you another one I did though. I have a coffee bean grinder It's like a burr grinder and there was one time I left it on Forgot and it overflowed and it created this huge mess and it's beans went back up into the grinder and all that So I got a smart plug put the grinder on a smart plug and basically created an automation that said when accessory is controlled when the smart plug turns on And then in shortcuts you can add a wait command. So I did wait two minutes, which is the exact time for the beans to be perfectly at the line and no further, and I said then turn it off. And that automation, I set that up two years ago and it's been rock solid. I turn it on with a smart plug, grinds for two minutes, and then it shuts itself off. And just simple things like that I think make a big difference. So what would you say are your most used shortcuts or something that everybody should have in their home? Well, my most used shortcuts probably don't have to do with Smart Home. They're more have to do with like my podcast and video stuff. Like I have a shortcut where, you know, I talk about tech news and typically every episode will have a bunch of articles that we discussed. And so I have a shortcut that I create a tab group in Safari with all those links. When you're in a tab group, you can say copy links and it'll copy all the links in that tab group to your clipboard at once. So got a bunch of URLs. Then I run a shortcut. that formats the podcast show notes in HTML, so I have a nice show notes, and it takes those articles, sends them to ChatGPT, all within the shortcut, tells it to summarize them and give me a podcast episode description and a title based on the articles. And so with one tap of a shortcut, I basically have all my show notes with a potential title and description done for me. And again, that allows me to just expedite that whole process, and the shortcut has my boilerplate text for like, YouTube channel, sponsors, all that kind of stuff, and it just expedites all of that. When it comes to Smart Home, I do have one, I call it my watch something shortcut, and so when I run it, it'll basically ask me what room I'm in. So starts with a choose from menu action, and then I can choose family room, bedroom, or living room, and if I choose family room, which is where I have the home theater, I Phillips Hue sync box, and the gradient light strip and all that, basically there's a bunch of other actions that run. including turning on the sync box. So Philips U has, let me turn the brightness down, on, can't see anything. Philips U has actions and so it turns on the Philips U sync box, starts the light syncing, and if you have Apple TV, there's a bunch of Apple TV actions built in. So it starts the Apple TV and opens the Apple TV remote app on my phone. So with that one shortcut, it sets my HomeKit scene where it dims all the lights, turns on my sync box and starts the light syncing. And the Apple TV remote app is on my phone in a few seconds and everything started up and ready to go. And then I have a done watching shortcut where it basically does the opposite. It kind of sets a slightly less dim scene because we're probably ready to go to bed. And then depending on the room, it will put that Apple TV to sleep, which most often will also turn off the TV and receiver automatically. And so those two shortcuts I use pretty often. Wow, you're essentially hitting like control four Crestron level automations where you're doing, it's almost like you're doing video distribution, but you're kind of cheating it and just using multiple Apple TV. So that's really cool. And of course you're doing it yourself and obviously you enjoy this stuff. So it's not like it's a lot of work. And one other one I'll mention too, if you have kids, I have kids that have home pods in every room. So the kids have home pods in their room, there's home pods. People think this is weird, but there's home pods in the bathroom because they like to listen to music in there if they're taking a shower or whatever. So we have home pods everywhere. And one of the great features take theirs into the bathroom. They have to unplug it and move it. so we just have them that live there. But one of the great features is intercom, which you can send messages to your HomePods. But what I've done is I've created a shortcut where it starts with a choose from menu. And I have options like dinner is ready, or finish up in the shower, or brush your teeth. And I could just tap one, and it will broadcast that message on the HomePods without me having to say anything. And you can just literally type in text. choose the Speak Text command, and then when you run it as a shortcut and intercom it to a HomePod, it just happens. And so, yeah, that's a nice way to just send message throughout the house, couple taps away, and I keep those shortcuts just right on my Today view, you right next to my home screen. So these shortcuts, obviously they're saving a lot of time and everything on YouTube, they always make it just look so easy. But we all know that like a smart home can be frustrating. What has been like your biggest frustration when you've been building out your home? I mean, unreliable devices is the most frustrating thing and so that's why I always try to recommend if you have the budget just get the best things that will stay connected. And I think also brands that you can trust because there have been some times when I'll get some shades from a brand and it seems okay at first but this one in particular, I'm trying to replace it right now, it won't charge. It won't accept a charge unless it's like one watt. through a USB-A connection. So I have to have my USB-A to USB-C cable. It has USB-C on the shade, but I have to have it on a USB-A cable because it just won't accept a faster charge or whatever. And so it's so frustrating. And so I would say, you know, be mindful of the reviews, brands you trust, you know, try to get reliable devices, which is like thread. You know, I try to get thread whenever I can. And invest in like light switches like Lutron just for reliability because... I think one of the things that turn people off from smart home is when they set up all this cool stuff and the automations and then the stuff just stops working because devices don't respond and all that. Like right now, one of the most frustrating things is when I go open the home app and I see things are not responding and those shades that I just talked about not responding because the battery's dead. And so that's the most frustrating thing. And so just knowing the right devices to choose, watching good reviews, it makes a big difference. So do you feel like having all these automations, these shortcuts and things, have they saved you time or is it just fun? it's made a significant difference in the way you operate? When it comes to my work shortcuts, 100 % saves me hours every week and I cannot produce the amount of content that I do without them. When it comes to the smart home stuff, you know, I do think like my bean grinder automation, it's fun, but it also saves my bean grinder. You know, there's actually a practical use case. Some things are just nice, like when I walk on the patio and the ceiling fans turn on, that's cool. My pool hose, I have an eave aqua on that. And so if I ever need to like put some more water in the pool, I can bring the garden hose over, tell it to start, and I know it's going to turn off after two hours. I don't have to worry about it overflowing. And so sometimes it might not be saving you time, but it's saving you peace of mind. And so knowing that hose will turn off, I have water leak sensors in every bathroom. I have a little Acara ones, and I have an Eve water guard in the garage because we have our water filter in there. And there was a time when early on when the house was first built that it started leaking. Not a lot, but it was drip leaking. and I got a warning from my eave water guard and said water leak detected. So just having that peace of mind in addition to saving times in some ways and it just being fun in other ways I find it very That's awesome. What tech are you most excited about this year, like in 2025 or even in the near future? I mean there's so many rumors about Apple releasing a HomePod with a screen or some kind of like smart home controller. I'm excited for that. You know, obviously I'll jump on it. But one of the things that I had gotten last year was a Brilliant panel, which is a smart home controller panel and Brilliant went bankrupt and I don't know what's happening. But it was nice when you could actually have controls for your smart home. There you go. Yeah, that's exactly it. There's a Brilliant panel. And it's useful, especially for the people in your home, like my kids or my wife, who don't know all the magic words to say to the HomePods and don't have the widgets on their phone, to be able to just tap some buttons and run a scene. I do have a Leviton scene controller, which is great for that, where it has like the four buttons on a light switch and they can run different scenes. That's useful. So I'm excited for the Apple HomePod with a screen that makes it more accessible to controlling the home. But I'm also just excited for Apple hopefully to Advance the home kit landscape right now, you know home could secure video camera still cap out at 1080p Which is crazy. You can't get 2k or 4k cameras, even though makers have them I have a topo 2k camera pan and tilt But it only shows 1080p in the home map pan and tilt is another thing too where I have to go to the topo app to control the pan and tilt Because home app doesn't support it. So I'm hoping Apple actually puts a little more juice into their implementation of HomeKit and the Smart Home with more device categories, more controls, and more automations. Something simple like, when a door is left open for five minutes, send me a notification. You can't do that in the Apple Home app right now, which is kind of ridiculous. You have to set up a shortcut with push cuts and all this kind of stuff. So just some of those more simple automations, double conditionals. I'm excited and hopeful that they do more this year. And Acara actually has a panel that will be coming out. It's available in Europe now, but that could be an interesting replacement for Brilliant. I'm excited for that too, actually. That looks very cool and I'll try them all. I'll put them all over the walls. And of course we want to see more Apple built smart home devices, the rumors of a doorbell and a wall panel. They didn't have anything hiding under the table in Miami, did they? Not that you could tell us, at least. No, no, nothing revealed there. But an Apple-made doorbell, it's interesting. I'm not convinced Apple would do that. I mean, they don't even make Wi-Fi routers now. I'd be hard-pressed to see a video doorbell, but if they do, it is sorely needed. Because if you want a HomeKit Secure Video Doorbell today, you basically have the Logitech Circle View, which is what I use, and the WiMo, but Belkin is not really doing smart home into the future. They've told me several times that that's not really a focus, so I don't believe we're going to see much development from them. So that's like one good option, and it's not been updated in like six or seven years. So we definitely need more video doorbells with HomeKit Secure Video specifically. So if you don't mind workshopping this for me here, I told you I had these, these NFC tags that I bought, right? And the one thing I want to do with them, I have some ideas, but I tried, I want to be able to put these in certain places around the house when we're out of something like milk, right? I put one in the refrigerator, you know, I'll label it milk, I'll label it cereal, whatever it is, so that you put it on there, it'll add to the grocery list. I've got that figured out, right? That working. But what I haven't figured out is how do I get it to not add another one if it's already in the list. Like if I already tagged it as milk and we already have milk in the list, how can I get it to not add milk again? Is that possible? That's where I really was diving into Apple script and it was killing myself. You know, should really subscribe to my channel. Just kidding. Yeah, I like I said, I watched a couple but I just was doing this last couple days. You know, basically, you can get your reminders. I'm looking right now, I'm doing this live. If you go into shortcuts, reminders, you can get details of reminders, get upcoming reminders, and search in reminders. And so one of the things you could do is search for whatever that product is, and this would be the start of the shortcut. So you search for paper towels. You add an if statement where if the result includes paper towels, then do nothing, meaning don't add it again. but if it's not, so otherwise, then add it. And so a lot of times those if statements are your answer for these kind of like more advanced shortcuts. And basically you just have to figure out, can I get the status of something or can I search for something? Like one of the automations I created... I was having a hard time is figuring out what to add. What am I even looking for? So. Right, like one I did recently because a lot of people requested this was they wanted to auto reply via text when like someone uses their phone number for their business or whatever and they have a lot of clients they wanted to be able to set up an automation where the person is not in their contacts that if they get a message from them their phone will just automatically reply with like a boilerplate text message and you could totally do that you just need to use an if statement and I started it by saying you know get contacts, you know, whatever number comes in, pull that, search your contacts for this number. If nothing, if there are no results, then reply with an auto text. Otherwise, or if you found a match for that number, do nothing. And so a lot of times those if statements can allow you to kind of customize when that automation runs and how it runs. Yeah. Okay. I'll have to explore the, the, I knew I needed an if statement. was the, didn't know about search, how to search for that, that thing. action. I would start with that. And then a lot of times what I do, because I just have to figure these out as I go, I'll add a quick look a lot of times after an action. So what I would do in your case, let's say it's paper towels. Put the paper towels on the reminders list, so like you're going to buy them. And then do a shortcut, create a new one, search your reminders for paper towels, and then just put a quick view action right after it and just see what it gives you. Like see what are the results from this action. And then you can go forward and say like, it gives me the text or it gives me the reminder. Now I can do an if statement, move that quick view down and see what will it is the result every time. A lot of time, that's part of the troubleshooting is just seeing what an action is giving you that's passing to the next action so you can troubleshoot it. Yeah, that's good advice. I will definitely check out your channel more. now that I know your contact information, I can just talk to you directly and bother you on a regular basis. by the way, I actually created a community. It's at create.beard.fm. And it's a private community where we just talk about shortcuts. And so there's almost 1,000 people there now from my YouTube channel that have joined specifically. And there's some community shortcuts where people can kind of share the shortcuts they've built with everybody else. And I do have a paid membership side where I prioritize shortcuts requests in there. And in that, is also a custom GPT that I've trained on some specific APIs. And so if you support it there, you get access to my custom GPT, and you could use it to try and help you build shortcuts that you're trying to do. Did you guys see that? That was amazing. That is a professional podcaster right there. took my question just to say, you know what, as a matter of fact, we've got the solution right here. That was beautiful. That was... I wasn't, that was amazing. years of podcasting experience under his belt. Thank you. I'm going to put some sound effects behind that. That was just like brilliant. Take notes, people. If you're starting a podcast. Yes, exactly. That was awesome. That was awesome. So I should just shut her down right now. That's it, guys. That was that was that was amazing. But yeah. Take us back to the beginning here. What got you into podcasting? Back then, I imagined audio only. What were your goals there? Right now, I see with the primary technology, you've done what? 59 episodes that are live so far weekly. What advice do you have? I would say back to the beginning. I remember my uncle is super techie and I think it was about 2004 2005 when podcast just came out and I Saw him at Thanksgiving or something and he was like had heard of podcasts and I was like this sounds weird No, I don't know what that is and he shared to me some of the things he had found him I didn't get into it right away, but then a year or two in I found some shows I think some of the first I listened to was like back to work with Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann and of course This American Live. And then of course I quickly found Twit and MacBreak Weekly. And as I began listening to those like 2006, seven time, I realized like this medium, I just love this medium because it feels like this para social relationship where like I feel like I'm getting to know these hosts and they're not getting to know me, but I still somehow feel connected to them. And now fast forward to today, I still feel that way about podcasts. I still primarily Listen to podcasts. That's how I consume the ones that I love and Now you can even connect with that audience more directly like I have another community for the primary tech audience So it can actually be a two-way Kind of relationship there. And so I just find it to be such a unique medium where People can you can really be transparent you reveal yourself and I don't know I just I just love it And so I know I wanted to create podcasts for a while. I did it solo my I think my wife came up with this name. I think it was actually pretty good. I did a solo show for a while called The Tech Tailor, Finding Technology That Fits You. Might be still a great name today, I don't know, but I did that one for a while, you know, coding my own RSS feed and text edit and XML. And then, yeah, I mean, I just loved doing it. Even if it was only 10, 20 people listening, there was just something about it, especially the audio side. And even till today, know, Primary Tech is on video and audio. Riverside makes it easy to do the video side I get that done very quickly But I still spend a little more time on the audio and even now where I do custom chapter artwork for every chapter And so it's a visual experience even when you're just listening to it Transcripts now make it even easier for people to share segments of the show and screenshot the transcript like you know it's It's still just one of my favorite mediums to consume and produce content and so I just love it listen to his podcast, you guys. He's he's even better and what his own than he is on ours, which is shocking. I'm very curious as far as you work with a lot of brands on the various channels and stuff. Could you tell us a little bit about how you engage with these brands, how you approach them and why you choose what you choose to work with and what you choose to review and that sort of thing? Yeah, I mean earlier on like you have no clout as a youtuber and so you're just like listen I'll do whatever you know take take well most most for whatever and I was thankful you know there were brands like a Cara and Eve That would you know send me review units early on And now you know really late last year crossing a hundred K. The emails just are insane They're just crazy and so now now I really get to pick and choose and so you know I'll have a lot of brands reach out and when it's a brand that I know and that I trust and I really want to review like the Akara camera it's an easy yes and I don't like taking you know not paid sponsorship reviews for that kind of stuff like the cameras because I feel like you know this is just kind of stuff I talk about and honestly I'm still figuring it out like I will say when it came to robot vacuums I was like okay these videos never perform well they just I don't know why like across all channels Mm-hmm. doing like crazy comparisons like we just talked about earlier. And so I'm like, this one, let me see if there'll be a brand that actually wants to sponsor a video. And for that, Dreamy reached out and I think Narwhal last year, and I was like, okay, I can do a sponsored video and I'm gonna be very clear and transparent to my audience. Like this is a sponsored video, they sent it to me, they paid me for it, so this is not a review, but I'm also just gonna showcase it as it is. And if there's something terrible about it, I need to be able to say no. And there are some brands now where they'll send me what the product is about and I'm just like, either this is not going to be great and I don't feel good about it, even getting paid to make a video about it, or it's just too far off the core to be worthwhile. Meaning, I don't want to just make this video just for the money because this is like a weird AI gadget and You just don't want to do it and so it's it's really like a case-by-case basis like is this something that I want to do is this going to be worth it is this anything my audience might be interested in and that's really the question that goes through my mind most of the time even if it's sponsored or not is this something they would be interested in even Tangentially, can I give a reason for them to be interested in it? And is it worth talking about? Yeah, I think that's a very fair way for both yourself and for the audience to approach that sort of thing. So that's good to hear. So we are running up on time. Apparently you have more important things to do than talk to us, which is pretty common among the people we interview, apparently. But that's great. But I have just a couple more questions that I want to get to. First is we did this with Eric Wielander. He's another big Apple guy. We asked him what his top five Apple products were of all time. As an Apple guy, I'm guessing I'd go three or four or a hundred. I don't have time for that. But like, what are your top Apple products you've had? Well, I have to say my first Mac, it's top in the top five in my mind, it was a G4 12 inch power book. And I remember I was not an Apple guy until college. And I remember seeing somebody use it just on campus and I was like, I don't even know what that is, but I have to have it. I don't know. It was just the 12 inch size. was just, it looked magical to me. And so I sold my original and I regret it to this day, but the 12 inch G4 power book is in the top five for sure. Also Mac my Mac studio I still have the m1 max Mac studio when it first came out And it is the perfect machine for me SD card slot on the front. I use every port on the back. It's beautiful I love it and the USB C ports on the front I used all the time like it's just the perfect desktop studio computer for me The iPad and I mean the best iPad the m4 iPad Pro I edit the audio version of my podcasts on iPad with the Apple pencil And I can edit faster on that than I can in any other application. And I have Logic, I GarageBand, I've used them all. But I edit fastest in the FairRite app on iPad. And I actually have a time lapse video, I think, on my channel about that, talking about how I edit on there. And I love it. And also the iPad, I'm a musician. And so I did a lot of sheet music stuff in the past, choral, orchestral. And I used my iPad for digital sheet music with the Fourscore app. And it was a perfect tool for that also. So I have to give it to the iPad. let's see. I actually love the Apple TV. The Apple TV, I have them everywhere. I have them on every TV. I've used the FireStix, Roku's, the Smart TV features, all like any of them. The Apple TV, it's still the best experience for watching content. And I love movies. I'm a big movie guy. And so that's a top one for me. And I'm going to go off script here, off be weird. I actually love the Magic Mouse. This is not a popular take, but I use the Magic Mouse for everything. And I love it. I tried the Magic Trackpad. I have the Logitech MX Master 3. And no, I always come back to the Magic Mouse. I like it. Wow, I actually use a mouse and the Magic Trackpad at the same time. use the trackpad I use basically for scrolling on the video. So then I do the mouse with that. So I kind of get the two handed thing with that. But no, I think that's a pretty, pretty good list. So my last question for you then is being 14 years, having the podcast, having the success you've had, what advice, what's the number one advice you'd give to someone starting a podcast or perhaps if they've had a podcast for like about a year. about smart home tech maybe, and they had, you know, they're starting to get some guests, you know, that are, you know, bigger, bigger and stuff, but they're starting to grow an audience. What's the number one advice you'd get to someone starting a podcast? Well, two answers. For someone who's just starting or thinking about starting, whether it's a YouTube channel or a podcast, the best time to start was 10 years ago. The second best time to start is today. And that's the one thing I wish I'd done differently, was just start earlier. It was something I wanted to do for a long time. Podcasting, I started earlier, but I did different shows for a number of years and I didn't stick with it. And so start. That's the biggest thing. You have to start even if, again, just go for quantity. Don't stress about your gear. Don't stress about it being perfect. Just start. Start making stuff and be consistent with it. You know, actually do it for a long time, which is my second advice. If you're already doing it, if it's been a year, awesome. You're seeing some success. Keep doing it, but don't be afraid to experiment either. Experiment with some short form clips. Experiment with who would subscribe to a newsletter about this podcast. Maybe we should try a closed community with like Circle or other platforms. Right now, the social media landscape is in a bit of upheaval. Just with where are people? Blue skies and mastodon. What's happening with TikTok? And so going forward, this has always been true, but I think especially now having a platform where you have direct access to your audience is really key. And so if you're in that growth stage, start thinking about where do I have direct access to my audience? That can be an email newsletter. Podcast RSS is good, but still not as good as having like someone's email address. So maybe it's a closed community. Maybe it's a Patreon. something where you can really get your most dedicated and loyal audience in your circle, not just the service, but just in general in your circle, so that going forward, no matter what happens to the social media platforms, you can still create content and access that audience and they can still see what they love, which is the stuff that you're making. So start if you haven't started yet, and if you have started, start experimenting and trying different things and building out so you have more direct access to those audience members. Steven, that is outstanding advice and said in your silky smooth voice. That sounds even better. No, that's awesome. I really want to thank you for joining us today on the show. If you have any last, I will put all of the links in the description for people to reach out to you, to your channels. Any final plugs you want to give for those watching the show? Well, we're growing the podcast. It's been a year and it's doing really well. yeah, go listen to Primary Technology. You can find that at primarytech.fm or just search for Primary Tech Show anywhere on YouTube. And me and Jason H. in new episodes every Thursday. We'd love to have you. Definitely check those out. Of course, keep checking our show out as well. Subscribe if you haven't done that. thank you, Steven. And again, thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Vince. And thank you everybody for watching. Stick with us. We got more creators coming. So we'll see you next time.
