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
Talkin' Tech with Brett
Tech With Brett shares his journey from a tech enthusiast to the most viewed smart home YouTuber, discussing his experiences with various smart home devices, automation, and the challenges of content creation. He emphasizes the importance of user-friendly technology and the role of community in his success, while also exploring the future of AI in smart homes and the evolution of his YouTube channel.
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I gotta be honest, I'm not convinced that robot vacuums save you that much time. I disagree. It depends on if you have a bunch of people in your home leaving stuff all over the floor all the time. Those arm vacuums that are coming out, right? Those are supposed to pick up the stuff and it should just suction toys. That's what we should make, a robot that sucks up the toys and it can pick up a Hot Wheel, we'll be pretty good. We'll be like 90 % of the way there. by pleased to be joined today by another very popular YouTube creator in the smart home world, Brett. from Tech with Brett. We talk about his introduction to smart homes, smart home AI, climbing on roofs, whether visiting an airport in the state counts as actually visiting that state, and so much more. All in less than an hour. But if you only have a couple of minutes, you can save the podcast for later and instead visit our sponsor, Zeus. Zeus makes innovative Z-Wave smart home products you can depend on. been telling you about their deal of the week at thesmartishouse.com for a while now, but this week is especially exciting because they are offering one of my favorite Zeus products, the Zen 37 Z-Wave 800 wall remote. for just $26.95, that's $26.95, not $2,695, which that would be a terrible deal. I'm not gonna lie there. is great. It's got four programmable buttons to activate up to 24 different scenes, and it includes this wall mount and it's magnetic, so you can take it off and use it wherever you please until you lose it in the couch. smart home devices, including sensors, switches, relays, smart plugs, valve controllers, and so much more. Check it out at TheSmartestHouse.com. And now, back to the show. are back, ready to kick off this episode of Technical Difficulties of Course. I'm your host, Pete. With me as always is Brandon. Brandon, say hello to our friends out there. And Vince, Vince, why don't you say hi to the good folks? Hello, happy to be here. You should be happy to be here because we have who we have officially proclaimed as the most viewed smart home YouTuber in the world probably in history, in history in the world. Brett from Tech with Brett. Brett, how are you doing today? I am doing wonderful. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me on. Don't thank us. We thank you, man. This is very exciting to talk with. Should we call it royalty? mean, how many views do we say he has earned? it's around 130 million. So just a couple just 130, 100 million, something like that, know, whatever. that's. tell, but he's actually sitting on a throne right now. You just can't see behind the desk. Yes, it's just covering his piles of money. I'm sure that we know smart home YouTubers are making. No, this is great. We're so excited to have you on the show and tell people about how you got to where you are. mean, like I said, 100 plus million views. And how long have you been doing this? So I've been doing this now 10 years. It's actually my second channel, but anyway, 10 years ago I started this channel to help others learn about technology. so Tech with Brett became the name. Shout out to my wife for that. And we just continued to grow and grow. Started mostly in smartphones. So I talked a lot about Samsung phones, transferring your data, moved into smart things, cause of Samsung, and then moved into Google Home once the Google Home came out. and then continue to just talk about all kinds of smart home stuff to where I am today and have a home where I have almost not fully fitted it out in smart home stuff, but I like to figure out how to make life better with smart home tech. Well, you have certainly done that. You have a ton of videos, like you said, started out with smart things, but what you said was that your first kind of foray into actually automating your home, you would say, right? So are you still using any smart homes, smart things in your house, or have you shifted completely away? I have still the SmartThings Hub. I have a few things going on there, mostly letting me know when my internet dies, because it instantly says, hey, we've disconnected. And I know that the internet has gone out. But mostly I now have everything in the Google Home app is try is where I try and have everything. But I have a few like sensors from SmartThings imported into the Google Home app. But it's been a while since I've opened the SmartThings app. I will say that. Do you consider your house more an automate, like a fully automated home, or do you believe in still using a lot of switches and things like that? Great, great question. This is the challenge, because I want everything to be automated. We're not there yet. There is only a handful of automations that run on the daily that are great. know, we, a certain time of night, the shades close. When we go into a room, the lights turn on. When you open the garage door, the garage lights turn on. So I have probably under 10 solid automations that work. The problem is, once you add an automation, Everyone gets mad like wait, why is this happening? Why is this happening? You know that happening? finding those perfect automations that everyone loves is kind of what we're going for So I currently have been building out how much smart things I have in the home and now I'm this year I'm hopefully going to add in more automations to make it more helpful and useful to daily life. We'll see we'll see how it goes Fantastic. Do you have, we ask everybody for the Creator Series, but what was your first smart home device that you used? And that kind of got you hooked into this downward spiral we call smart home tech. It is downward. Your pockets are gonna be very empty. I have bad memory on this one, but it most likely is my Wemo Smart Switch. was actually the first video. No, I didn't make a video on that. But it controlled my porch lights. I was so tired of every night going to turning on the lights. and turn them off. So for Christmas, the first Christmas we had in a home, I said, hey, I want a smart switch to automate this on and off with the sunset and then a certain time, Wemo Smart Switch took care of that. And then at that time I also had the second gen Nest Thermostat. Those were my first two smart devices that I incorporated into my home. And are they still a part of your home? Those specific devices are not a part of my home. They got old. They're not, are they on the shelf behind you with some sort of a memento? have a whole other shelf. This is like, some things are like things I currently use. Here, Relix, you know, Apple devices. Then we have a whole other shelf with old tech that I'm just waiting to either incorporate somewhere, donate, or trying to figure out what to do with that. But it's over there. Yeah, I should, I probably should do that, because I have a lot. So how have you resisted the urge to go to Home Assistant? I know I've resisted the urge. I know it's easy for me, but it seems like it's right up your alley. So my take on things in tech is you should be able to do them easily like without too much too much time and effort and So that's why I have liked Incorporating everything into the Google home app. It's you know, mostly already there pretty easy There's a lot of road bumps for that. But anyway, that's a long story. why haven't I got to Home Assistant? Well, I have, as you know, a bunch of people have done that. And I said, you know what? I don't think it's ready. It doesn't have the user experience to make it easy for my parents to get on Home Assistant. That's the kind of stuff I want to show that's easy enough for anyone to be able to join. Where Home Assistant, at first at least, you had to get your own little circuit boards or whatever, add this, do that, then you could make your own server, whatever it would be. Stuff that I could figure out but didn't want to spend the time to do that. And this was proven when my brother decided to abandon SmartThings and join Home Assistant. And he loved it, but he is so nerdy and loves the technical programming, coding, finding this, doing that, adding all those kinds of things. And knowing that he loved it. That also prevented me from joining Home Assistant because it's just like, I don't want to spend that time. I want to be able to buy the thing, which I can now do, buy the thing, plug it in, connect, and then hit all my devices in it. It's just kind of working, which I feel like from what I've seen, it's getting very close. It looks very good, but now it's just time consuming to do that. So I'm almost there. It's a prompted. Maybe this year will happen, but I would rather focus on what my parents can do instead of Home Assistant. Yeah, think, listen, I'm with you and our viewers know this, that I appreciate things that are easy to use. I want to just have the thing that does the thing. The process of getting that thing is not as much fun for me as it is for somebody with a more technical background. So do you have a technical background? Where do you come from before you got into this smart home stuff? do I come from? That's a great question. Before I started Smart Home, like I talked about, smartphone, I actually worked for Samsung for seven years talking about Samsung phones, training, trying to be a salesman on Samsung phones. So that's what I did before that. And before that, I was a designer of fire sprinkler systems. So I used to use CAD, do different kind of... 3D design, that kind of design. And then before that was construction. So, and I grew up, my dad was a computer teacher for 35 years, so I grew up around computers, figuring out things all at home. so that's my technical background. And so I... you're a team Android still and couldn't possibly have any Apple devices? I've never, no I do have a HomePod Mini right there, that's the joke. No, I just like how Android works. It's funny, my first channel that I talked about, my whole focus was teaching you how to use an iPad in less than a minute. So showing different features, the whole channel was called Tablet in a Minute. So I'd say, I bought the brand new iPad 2nd generation, very excited about it. Here's how you do this one little thing real quick. And after I made a few videos, it didn't take off. Typical, right? But I did get that job with Samsung, so I decided to switch sides, and that's just kind of where I've been. I have family that use iPhones. Great to see both sides of the story versus only knowing one. Yeah, I do that with my channel too. I try to test all things from different sides and it gets complicated and annoying, but you you gotta do what you gotta do. I'm curious, so you had some construction background as well? Yeah, that was just like I needed a job. And so my cousin hired me to be a footings, a footings specialist. So before the house is built, you know, the footings under the house. I worked with concrete for a while and then I framed houses for a while. It's not fun to be on the top of roofs and I made it though. I made it six months until they had no more work in 2008. So then then I had to find another job. Yeah, good year to be in the housing market, so. yeah, right. I'm just, yeah, he's a, Brandon's a realtor, so he knows all about all that. So I'm just curious how you brought that construction background into some of the stuff you're doing with your home. You know, has it helped you do some innovative things as far as doing it by yourself versus getting help or buying pre-made products? thinking about that, I would say it definitely did. You know, just knowing a little bit about framing and how the wall looks behind the sheetrock. You know, I've gone on to make videos on how to wire my home with Cat 6 Ethernet cable. going into my attic, putting holes through, doing some wiring behind the scenes and now adding all kinds of smart switches, adding electrical throughout the home. I didn't learn electrical back then, but it most likely gave me the confidence to pop open a box, turn off the power and see what's going on. And I'm really glad I did, because it's been very helpful in the building of the smart home process. The with the Cat 6 is to invite your friend Pete over to go up in the attic with you. Highly recommend that. Yeah, gosh, that was fun. That was a good time. Love, love addicts. Was it the summer or the winter? It was like the shoulder season, so it wasn't too bad out there. Yeah. Peek got cancer from it, You only make the mistake once going up there the wrong time, that's You mentioned at CES that your neighbor is a YouTuber as well. And like you live in the same area as Dan with What's Inside. What's going on in Utah? I'm not in the same area necessarily, but in Utah it feels like you're just kind of neighbors down the street. But there are quite a few up and coming YouTubers that have grown up here in Utah. Maybe not up and coming as they have like a lot of millions of subscribers. But I don't know. We just like to escape to the internet over here, I guess. There is not, but there was a Facebook group. Utah youtubers, I think and That was quite a cool. We did some meetups where we'd go and Learn some different things and hang out together. So that was actually cool to have a group of people Struggling the same way on YouTube as I was and you know, just chatting and hanging out with each other So if you have one of those in your area, that's always fun to find and or put together It's our smart home creator Slack channel. It's all the rage. So I have a Utah question that I need answered. And all three you can chime in on this because I say that I have been to Utah. If anyone's asked, have you been to Utah? Yes, I've been to Utah because I've been to the airport in Utah, right? We landed and I had, you know, switch flights to another airport. I even walked like it was an outdoor, I walked on the tarmac outdoors in Utah to switch planes, right? My wife says that does not count as being into Utah. So I need all three of you to chime in. Does going to an airport, and that's the only place you've been, does that count as being in a state? No. I'm closed. them that. But no, you gotta like stay overnight or something. Or at least like get outside the airport. SLC. it's a new airport now. It's brand new. So if it was the old one, it doesn't exist anymore, and probably not. I don't think you fully see Salt Lake City until you literally go downtown to see all of the temples and other stuff that's just everywhere. say I saw Salt Lake City, I just said I was in Utah. was in, I set foot in Utah. you are allowed to say you've been in Utah. I feel the same. I've been to all kinds of random airports and yes, I've been in those states. I was there. It shows on my Google Maps. I was there, so I was there. exactly. So my wife insists that I've not been to Utah. there requires some sort of experience, you know, like a memory that doesn't count. Every airport's almost the same. There's gates, there's overpriced food. Okay, is there a mountain in your picture? gosh, you know if I had prepared ahead of time, I think that, because that's seeing a real mountain is an experience. It's true, yes, I agree, I agree. So yeah, I think there was a mountain in the background. So I've been to Utah. By the way, when I was a kid, I was like the biggest Utah jazz fan for like no real reason. I just loved the Utah jazz. So I don't know if you're a sports fan. Carmelo was my guy, man. The mailman, are you kidding? Oh, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. Are you a basketball fan at all or is it? I was when they were in the playoffs back then and then the Bulls ripped it from us and that was the last time I cared. off. Everybody knows he pushed off. I was in college. take on sports, the Utah Jazz? Yeah, go sports. Go. Yeah, we're talking to the wrong audience here, but I was in college. You guys want us to continue? Brandon's just leaving. He's abandoning the pod. for those listening, we will continue the sports talk on my new podcast, Talking Jazz with Pete and Brett. so you're using Google Home as your central kind of hub. Have you tried other ones besides that and smart things and like what what do you like the most or what do you foresee coming up for you in 2025 for changes in your smart home? Great question. I have used pretty much all of them except Home Assistant. That's the only one I haven't like actively tried. So that's, yeah, it's in the thoughts. So mainly Google Home, but I also have everything set up in Amazon as well. see how I muted it there. It's just what you do whenever you say the wake words to any smart home product for the rest. So funny story about that. So I had one live stream that I did talking about the new it's not even there anymore the Lenovo nest speaker and in the live stream I said all the commands out loud and somebody said that somebody came back and commented and they're like so I was watching one of your videos and I guess I left it on and he like left the room and Then it went to this live stream, which was an hour long and I did all kinds of commands turned on different lights, activated this or that, and he said all of his lights turned on in the middle of the night, because my video was playing in his basement in his Google Home, heard him. so I have gone through and removed that from the live streams. And then right here, whenever I say it, I can mute myself and so that that makes it easier. funny story there. So that's kind of the behind the scenes of why I make sure I mute that for anyone listening on a speaker at home. So everything's in Amazon also. I have played with Apple Home. I just don't use an iPhone day to day, so that kind of makes it hard, but I do have an iPad around. I just added a HomePod Mini to try out, and all it likes to do is play music, and that's pretty much it. then SmartThings, I have pretty much everything in SmartThings as well, but today the Google Home app wouldn't open for like ever, so maybe I'll try something new. I don't know, we'll see. It's always changing over here. So how did you settle on Google Home versus Amazon? I've just been a Google fan forever. know, from the first, even when the first Amazon Echo was out, I wasn't like interested until Google came out with the original Google Home. That was like, this is amazing. Let's go for that. I had integration with all my Google stuff, my shopping list at the time, other things. So I was just like set on Google. And as of right now, the Google Assistant is definitely better in most cases. We'll see. Amazon just said they're gonna have a new announcement about AI version of their voice assistant. So we'll see if that makes some improvements. But the biggest complaint I have about the whole Amazon ecosystem is their app is slower than anything I have ever used. So to change one thing, it takes like five minutes. Not just you, it's everything. Or everybody. complaint. That's why they're not fully. And then also the assistant doesn't understand what a shade is. So I say, open the shade. Then it's like, hey, you have a bunch in your house. Which one? I'm like, the one that's in the room. Which one is that? there's a lot of that where Google understands a light. I also have that with Amazon where it says, I say, turn off the lights. And it says. What light are you talking about? I'm like, the lights in the room? Anyway, Google has a little bit better understanding. And then you assign the speaker to the room and then it'll work. It's so. it's supposed to do that, but it does not work particularly well. it's really interesting because in the app, it doesn't specify like the shades. They don't have like their own section or something like that. But on the new Amazon Echo Hub that's mounted on my wall, it has a section for blinds. And it understands that when I touch the button, but when I use voice, it doesn't understand that. So that's kind of its weakest point. Other than that, we've had a good time. My kids love asking it things, playing music, seeing the words, whether it does everything else, but that's like its main weak link. And then I love Amazon for the drop-in feature. Definitely amazing to have if you have kids or multiple devices in your home, that's very helpful to stop the yelling upstairs. So, yeah, it's, it is, it's on the, it's in our main floor. It's powered over ethernet, so there's no ugly cable plugging it in. It's just mounted on the wall. And yeah, we use it quite a bit. They try and play music from it, but it's, it doesn't have really any bass, but it does work. Yeah. I f- just displays photos of pets and occasionally the weather, which is nice, but it's mounted like right above the switches that I would use. find that I just either use automations or my voice or my phone. And so it doesn't get as much use as I thought I would. One of the things that we have tried recently is moving away from the Google Nest Hubs, the displays, to speakers. And if you have used those, the Nest Hubs take much longer to respond. I don't know why, it's just like you'll see it thinking, thinking, thinking, but the actual speakers without screens are incredibly more fast and better to use. So I find, because I don't have that, we're not using it on the main floor now, I'll go to the Echo Hub because I can see like a timer for when I'm cooking or the time is right there, it's nice to have the visual. So, still can't find the perfect device. Still waiting on that. that it doesn't have ads, unlike the Echo 5 and 8 and 10. Yep, that is the biggest benefit that I've seen having that. So with your setup using Google primarily, and I know you say you have Home Assistant, or not Home Assistant, SmartThings still, are you using primarily Wi-Fi devices, or are you switching to Matter, or are you still running Zigbee or Z-Wave through your SmartThings to get into Google? I am primarily using Wi-Fi devices right now, just connecting it to the app that it was made for and then integrating that app into Google. But that does cause problems with smart things and duplicates. So I have been considering moving everything into smart things and then I just have to sync smart things to Google to incorporate it all. So it's always kind of a mix here, but I think I found whatever I'm doing right now, which I think I just have a like my Zigbee, any Zigbee and Z-Wave devices are connected through SmartThings and those are then incorporated into Google and then I can use those for wherever I need them to work. One problem I did find with certain Matter devices, because I was like, great, I'm gonna switch to Matter. So I incorporate Matter into Google Home, but then it doesn't, the Google Home app. one of its problems, it doesn't let you change what type of device matter is. So it was a light switch that supports a fan, but I have it connected to a fan. So in the Google Home app, I couldn't adjust that it was a fan. It just always showed as a light and I didn't want that. So I ended up incorporating that into the Tapo app and then into Google so that it still understood, so I could go in and change it that it's a fan. Always, you all know, this is how smart homes work and hopefully, hopefully we'll see some good improvements this year on all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Is it it tapo? thought it was tape. just TAPO. I assumed it was tape of using my grammar knowledge from fourth grade or whatever. This is the biggest challenge of our day is not knowing how to say things I say tap out and they've never said anything different so Well, as our as Merus Miros? Akara? one's... People mess up. People mess up Schlag all the time. It's Schlag. They're all, it's hard. champion. How many sponsored videos did you do last year? That's classified information, but it was a lot. And one of the things I definitely do with sponsored deals is I want to make sure I'm incorporating the device in my home. And if you see a sponsored video, it's because it works and it's used in my home. So there was quite a few last year and I had a great time working and meeting new brands, new companies that I hadn't talked to before. And what does the process look like for that? Like how are the brands reaching out to you? How do you vet them? I know you said that you have to use the product first, but beyond that, how does that go? Go email, lots and lots of emails. So distinguishing from the people that call me Brett and Dear is a big one. So then once I've established who I want to talk about and most of the time they try and get you to respond to their email, but they don't even tell you what they are, who they're incorporated with or. the brand, so you have to fiddle through all those, filter that out. Then once you find somebody that's good at communicating, then you can work on something and they send you a brief of the product and I'll say, hey, this has enough that's new, something I hadn't seen before is usually what I go for. it's a new, most of the time we're at the point where pretty much nothing is new, but usually I'll find something that is unique that I hadn't seen on the similar style of product before. So then I go forward. You know, get the brief, create a outline, go video record, just record. It took two days to record a sponsored video this week and working on the edit and then send it in for approval once they're good with it. And usually it's just, they're not checking like, did I bash on them? Cause you know, I'll say my honest opinion, but they will just make sure that I have said the right specs or different things like that in the video to make sure that is correct. That's usually all that they care for. And then they'll say, all right, I'm ready to post it or wait until a certain day or whatever. So that's kind of how it works. yeah, it takes a little bit of time to get that done. Indeed it does. And I see going through your channel, you've reviewed and shown off all across the gamut, all types of tech devices. Do you have like the types of devices that you most enjoy? Like what kind of devices really get you excited to talk about and put on your channel? The latest favorite devices are definitely the lawn mowers, a smart lawn mower that can go out and cut around my lawn and then make it look really cool. So the technology for that has gotten better. I had one starting like, I don't know, it's probably six years ago. I got my first one where it just kind of bounced around the yard and there was a wire in the yard that it couldn't pass. So that was the only thing stopping it from going into the road. but then it would just bounce around. And that was cool. My grass actually always looked amazing because it would go out for a few hours every other night. But now I'm like, well I wanna mow more than just one lawn. So with the new ones, they have the GPS, they have other tracking abilities. So they're getting better. I still would have to kind of manage them, monitor them, make sure everything's working well. But I think this year's gonna be the year where I just go out there, it kind of automatically makes a map of my yard by itself, and then it just mows by itself and I don't have to do too much worrying about it. So, real excited to see what happens this year in that category. So how many do you have currently and do you have a Yarbo yet? I do not have a Yarbo. That's the biggest robot. Yeah. There's all kinds of attachments. That'd be cool. But I don't have one. I only have like two at my house and the first one I got no longer charges. So that's bad. But actually they never sent it to me. Somebody gave it to me and I used it for a while. Ecoflow, I don't think they make them anymore, but yeah, my battery died on it. But now I'm using the NaviMo, that works great. Also Luba works great. And the good thing about them is they're getting updated. It's not just like, here's how it's gonna work forever. They do continue to improve those with software updates and you see the changes, you see how much better it does get over time, which is cool. We've had this conversation before where like robot mowers are like where robot vacuums were like seven years ago. And so it'll be interesting to see with some of the advancements improvements this year with those devices to see with a lot more competition. I feel like in the marketplace, it'll push people to have better and better products. So that'll be good. are your favorite automations in your house that you use and your favorite devices. favorite automations right now we have a smart switch it's actually a smart like relay switch from a cara on Lights to our garage because we have no windows in the garage So every time you open it, it's super dark and so then I also have a sensor on the garage door is Every time you open the garage door it turns on the lights and then after you shut the garage door after ten minutes They shut off so we have never had to go to the garage when it's dark super simple automation, but that's like That's awesome. The kids will actually go out and put the garbage out or whatever just helps a little bit The door that comes into the garage that also turns on I think when you open the door, but so if you're like coming in from the garage and there's already a light inside the home, which is kind of nice. You don't trip on all the shoes there, but I also have the Acara FP2 motion sensor in my kitchen and it's pretty large area, but that sensor is really cool because you can set all, you know, different zones. So also if you go into this little mud room where you have all your shoes, if you just walk in there, that light turns on every time so that it's nice and lit up so you can get your shoes on and stuff. So simple automation, but then really helpful. I also have a light strip, a car light strip underneath our vanity in the bathroom. And every time you walk in the bathroom at any time, it turns on the light. Super simple, but it makes it nice to have some lights on to not trip over a bunch of things. And then those are kind of the main ones. A few others I have, like in the kids room, I have an automation where when we ask the Amazon speaker, Night night it runs through a series of turning off this light that light turning on a fan changing a light for a night light for a few hours and Turning on white noise so that one's great because it changes six to seven things with just one voice command So those are my favorites other than that. I also have So I have a bunch of Christmas lights on the house or still displayed because we're still doing holidays. So right now it automatically turns on doing Valentine's Day scenes. You know, the Govee net light is showing all these cool hearts and the lights around the house are all pink and red. So the kids love that. So it's nice that I just, they just run. I don't have to think about them. I have to turn them on, turn them off. They're just working every single day, which is awesome. So did you hire somebody to install the permanent lights or did you get up on a ladder and do that yourself? So I did install that, I did ask somebody to install them. I paid for a company to install them on my home. Just my roof was a little too tall for my comfort. But if you follow my channel, you know that I've installed 10 different peoples on their homes. That's what I did this last year. But I had a different brand new mine, feel like the older you get, like you started getting up on that ladder and you're like, man, I remember doing this as a kid. This was way easier. Yeah. My neighbor fell off his ladder putting their lights up. So like, that's my excuse why I'm not doing it. Yeah. did help a few people that were worried about that. So I'm still okay. I've said my wife is a nurse and she works in the operating room and she's seen many people in there that have had horrible things happen to them by falling off ladders. So I'm pretty much not allowed on ladders higher than about four feet, I think is about the limit. When she's like, nope, we can find something else to do that. I guess I'll give you a call when I want to put in my permanent lights. We'll risk your life instead of mine. see how high the roof is, you know? And always safety first. If I'm like, this is not gonna work, I will get down, think about it. I have had to rent larger ladders. The next step is to just rent a boom lift that can get me exactly where, but the cost of, you know, that kind of kills it, but it is safe. So you're not the guy that's going to be on the ladder. And I got to move there and I'll just I'll jump it. Right. Have you seen? Yeah, not happening. I will hang off, I'll get to the top of the roof and hang over and try and do that, but that's also scary. So don't follow my lead on that. No, but you used to work on rust, you said, like that was your things. I'm not so much afraid of heights as long as I feel like I can grab onto something. So there's safety, you know, cables and harnesses that I should probably get to make that a better experience too. Yeah, man, we've had roofers in our neighborhood and stuff and you just see them walking around like, know, it's trouble. If you fall off that, you might not make it and they don't seem to have any problem doing that. I think you made a good career change, I guess is what I saying. You may be on ladders a little bit, but for the most part, sitting at your desk talking about smart home tech is long-term, a better solution. I see that you're getting, you're not getting into, you've always done things outside of the smart home as well, right? You said you started with phones, but you also test just a bunch of different technology that isn't smart home stuff. Can you tell us a little bit more about kind of some of the favorite things you've done in that area? now you got me thinking about all the things that I have. So the first thing that comes to mind is it doesn't have an app. There's no wifi, which is crazy, but it is our floor wet dry mop vacuum. Super technical. You turn it on, it puts water on the floor and scrubs the floor. Pretty amazing. It's my wife's favorite thing I've ever brought into the home. You know, it's just super easy to clean up. The kids are spilling milk all, you know, in the kitchen, cereal, whatever it is, you just grab that, clean it up, few seconds, you're done. Super simple versus waiting for like a robot vacuum to take, you know, a couple hours to go through. Yeah. Yeah, there was a bunch. I actually just, I was doing a video about another one this week. they're always, they're also getting better. The, some of them now heat and have bigger base for water. I gotta be honest, I'm not convinced that robot vacuums save you that much time. I disagree. You have a dog. Well, one, your robot vacuum sucks. It just can't figure things out. It's demented. I don't know. Ours goes like three times a week, gets all the dog hair and stuff. It's fantastic. If I added up how many hours there'd be, that'd be a lot. I mean, you have a much bigger square footage than we have too, which like ours, floor plan sizes isn't that big. So like it, I feel like the amount of stuff we have to, you know, it doesn't get into certain corners and under chairs and you gotta move. I feel like it just doesn't save as much time as I was really hoping, hoping that it would, but. It depends on if you have a bunch of people in your home leaving stuff all over the floor all the time. So most of time we can't even use it. Like if we were to leave the house and have it just run while we're gone, we can't do that because you have to spend 20 minutes picking up all the toys on the floor first. So then it's like, well then I gotta spend time doing that to even clean it up. it's just better not to do anything. Well, do you? Do you have to do that? I suppose, wouldn't you get little kids? Cows is in a perpetual state. Those arm vacuums that are coming out, right? Those are supposed to pick up the stuff and put it away for me, right? Is that? That's, yeah, we saw that. So it went around, picked up a sock and moved it to a basket and dropped it. So. folded sock that was the appropriate weight and easy for it to grab. It did a real good job in this very controlled environment. If it can pick up a Hot Wheel, we'll be pretty good. We'll be like 90 % of the way there. So. to be more precise. It has to be able to pick up Legos so you don't step on Legos. Yeah, I need some kind of like sticky arm that can just go through and, or suction. It should just, it should just suction toys. That's what we should make, a robot that sucks up the toys and puts them away. just, yeah, it detects a toy, just sucks that into a separate bin. And that's... Why are we... my gosh. crazy robot like that coming out for the robo taxi where it like automatically cleaned the car. They had a giant thing with like fucked up water bottles and stuff. There we go. I get that from my car or is that just for the robo taxi cars? God dang it, I need something to clean my car. That would be nice. I would like that a lot. It'd save you time. That would save you time, that's for sure. you'd think that, but I just choose to not clean my car. So it's just, it's just disgusting all the time. So. trust anybody where you can't see the floor of their car, okay? Those are people you can trust. can see parts of the floor of my car. That counts for anything. I'm curious, so we were at CES though, a lot of AI talk at CES. How do you feel AI is gonna incorporate itself into our AI smart home or be just into our regular lives? Or is it still just a kind of a toy thing that isn't functional yet for us norms? I would say it's a toy thing until the last six months. I've seen some actual like, this might be helpful. but that's still yet to be seen. Having now Google Gemini on my phone, being able to ask it a few things, it's just better at a search. So far it's a better search engine. Soon Google will incorporate that into their cameras. So I can say, hey, when did the last package come to the door? And it'll say, you had a package arrive yesterday at four o'clock. So I can see those being beneficial. know, life changing, we'll see. I'm still on the fence about that and I'm slowly, you know... learning. know some people are like, oh, have you done chat, GPT blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I haven't done that every day. You know, they're like utilizing all their work with that. But I'd say it's not quite there yet. We need to be cautious. But I could see certain things being better. Like right now the doorbell I'm using every single time we leave the house, it says, hey, a package has arrived. Or every time somebody standing there, hey, a package, oh, someone's at the door. So it does not know it needs AI to know that there's no package. at the door. So I can see that helping a lot. Or if you're going to go pick up a package, like you're to go grab it and then it goes off and says that there's a package at the door, and you pick it up like a second time. So I'm excited to see those little improvements. You know, so far AI's really good at you asking it something and it just shows a list, really long, complicated list of things that you most likely already knew or just restating stuff that you would have already done. So over time, we'll see that improve, think. Because I guess Gemini now barely can control smart home stuff. It's a slow process still. Yeah, was, the car I came out with there with a co-pilot, And the idea was that you're supposed to be able to kind of talk to it and it would be like, you know, I want you to automate these lights at three o'clock or whatever. And it would do that. And it's, you can't do that yet. So I think, you know, I think if we get to that stage where you can just kind of talk your way through an automation, it'll be, make things a lot easier for people, but we're definitely, definitely not there. with the smart Christmas lights, they all have that, like Govee has that. And it's like, you can ask it things. my problem is I don't know what to ask. It's like, well, make a, and I'll say, you know, make a red and green, white pattern. And then it like doesn't. it's still figuring out what to ask it is one thing and then it doing what you ask is another. it's slow process. hopefully it'll get there before the robots just decide to take over and destroy us all. if you don't mind shifting gears just a little bit, we've talked a lot about your smart home and technology. A lot of our viewers are curious just about your your YouTube channel in general and kind of how you got to, like I said, what do we say? 100 billion views, 100, 100 million. 100. 130 million. 130 million, he writes that on his, he checks every hour to see how many. 488,000 subscribers, which is pretty darn impressive. a lot of people. So can you just talk a little bit about how you started eight years ago, you said? 10 years ago, 10 years ago, 10 years ago. Like, did you have a point at which, you know, like this is really gonna succeed or where there's some big videos that really, you know, took off? What's the key to your YouTube success? the key to my success. Well, I don't want to tell all my secrets, but I'll do it for you guys. Here we go. I'll do it for you. So luck was a big one, but I think the biggest thing that drove me to YouTube, I of course knew about all kinds of tech stuff. I had watched a bunch of people share their experience with tech, but they were always missing something. I would watch videos of a new product and I'm like, that's cool that you had that experience, but you didn't show me what that experience was like, or you didn't show me how to take the product and make it do the thing that you said it would do. So that's when I started to incorporate YouTube videos and I wanted to make them so that they taught something new and showed how something could be useful in your home. And so that was kind of my goal is to not just make a video about something but actually make it a useful video to help as there's all kinds of new tech coming out. because even I struggle with some new tech and it's like nice to have somebody that goes through it as well and can show you the features. So then when the original Google Home came out, I had already done a bunch of few videos, but that was like, all right, this is the tech that's going to change how we're doing life, living every day today. So I made like an unboxing video, nothing spectacular, but then I made, was like, hey, what if I like... made a video about 101 things you can ask the Google Home Speaker. And I just came up with a little script. had, of course, had 101 things to ask it. So I already had that written down. Started at my kitchen table, hit the record button, and then I just began to ask all of the things that I had on my list just to see what would happen. And went through, edited that, and this was like two weeks before Christmas that year. So I was hoping a lot of people got it for Christmas. And... my video started to get views and more views and more views. And I think maybe that first weekend it had like something like a hundred thousand to 200,000 views. was my first viral video. So I was like, cool, people want to know about this. But then I got all the complaints, hey, you activated my Google home speaker and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this stuff. And in that video, I had done some fun, like fun things where I said, hey, Google beam me up Scotty. And it does like this fun. noise and the sound and in the video I had my brother help me, one of my brothers helped me make a transport, you know the transportation effect in Star Trek so I disappeared and so I did a lot of that kind of stuff those are the same things I like to do and so just kind of adding little things into the video that make it interesting and then yeah that was great so I said oh people really want to know more about this so then I started just focusing on one little thing, here's how you make a phone call with a Google Home, here's how you can add it to your shopping list. And so I just kind of built on that. And then I've now incorporated videos that are everything this product could do. So if you buy, what was the latest one I did? The Google TV Streamer. So if you buy the new Google TV device, I have a video that's gonna teach you all of that in my video. The longest one running in at an hour and seven minutes. It's gonna show you everything you need to know about that product if you bought it today, all the different cool things you can do with it. And so I've now kind of condensed that and people seem to like those longer guide videos. So that's kind of what I've done now, but just a lot of trial and error to get the YouTube channel where it is today. Just also focusing on stuff that I really love to talk about. and find something interesting and funny to share and it just magically worked. How long does it take you to put together an hour long video like that? That's impressive. well, that one's a three month story, but typically like a week or two would be how long with full focus. when it comes to building up your channel do you think it helped more to do the educational videos like you're talking about or is doing more of the reviews of products that people are searching for what do you think helped out more in that respect I would say the education was what got me started. It got the views, but not many people are subscribing to me because of an education video. They're like, cool, you help me. I'm gonna go watch my other YouTube videos. Your video's not like the most important every time you post. I think the most, the biggest ones is when I'm showing the experience and people like maybe my input, my... My experience using the product and I find that lately if I'm watching like a review of something like on Amazon and people aren't giving their experience They're just kind of showing the thing. I'm like, well, I need to watch another video So I have found that that's very helpful to getting people to want to watch knowing how you feel about something how it has Helped you or not helped you. You know, the good and the bad is also very beneficial Yeah, no, I agree with that. Yeah, I know exactly the videos you talk about where it's just like unboxings. Like, here's the thing. Da! I get annoyed with those. Like, I want to see what you talk about. Like, yeah, show me the experience. Tell me your thoughts on it. lately they're not even saying the color or the size or whatever, so it's just like, can't relate to this. I'm gonna find another video that gives me more details. So having the experience with the details and all that, make the perfect combo, then that's what people wanna watch, we did a video with Shane in our last episode and he and I both talked about how some of the videos we were most excited about didn't perform the way we had hoped for, know, and have you found that experience to be true? It's a mix. yesterday I was looking through some of the like top videos right now. The videos people are currently watching and I was like, wow, I loved making those videos and they're performing well. So I found that, but I've also made some awesome videos that still have like a thousand views, So it's, you really never know what's gonna happen sometime. Unpredictable. at this point you're doing this full time then. Yeah, so I've been full time for about five years working on YouTube and trying to figure out how to keep my family fed is the goal. That's every day. your family say when you said, want to quit my job and become a full-time YouTuber? They were like, are you sure about that? And yeah, they were excited. It's funny, when I came home, when I quit my job and I came home, my daughter was like, dad, you're retired. And I was like, no, we're far from that. We still have work to do every day. So that was funny, pretty amazing that it was able to happen. our show is called obviously technical difficulties. What is one thing that you, whether with your smart home that turned into a disaster or something that went wrong with your smart home? Disaster we had just installed a security system and It seems like whenever you do something like that that night something of course happened so brand new security system learning how to use it but all of sudden the alarm went off in the middle of the night and It was from a water leak sensor, but there was no water So it's like well, this is not cool. So that's not fun when that happens when I'm making videos, the worst thing is when an app is just not working the way you want to. I'm like, I know this is gonna work if I just be patient enough, but I try it and try it and try it. And then finally the update happens or whatever and then it all works and everything's great. But those are my worst experiences when you know it's supposed to do the thing and it just doesn't. my gosh, yeah, you've done it four or five times in a row perfectly, and then you hit record, and it doesn't do the thing. That's like so, so annoying. And so I feel that. One more, one more disaster. I don't know if it's disaster, but the most annoying thing is whenever I'm like recording a video and I'm trying to install something, I cannot hold a screw for my life. Like I dropped the screw 20 times while I'm trying to install this mount of like a shade or something like that. I just, don't know why, but I'm not very good at holding on to things. So I need, I've seen these magnet like arm things. Maybe I should get some of those to more screws than you think you need so if you do drop it you don't have to get down off the stool or whatever to get it all right, well, Brett, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're gonna put your socials and everything down in our description below for people to check out. But is there anything you wanna plug right now before we let the guests go? Definitely check out Tech with Brett. I'm on all different social networks, mainly on YouTube is where I'm posting. I'll be on TikTok here and there. If you have it downloaded, you can go and check me out there as well. Right, if TikTok is still a thing by the time this gets uploaded, you can check him out on TikTok. this was great. Thank you, Brett. And on behalf of Vince and Brandon and myself, thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you haven't done that already and we will see you next time.
