Choosing and Maintaining Smart Gear

Have you ever considered surrounding your house with a moat to keep it safe? Would you hire a professional wrestler as a bodyguard for your car? Okay, maybe you wouldn't go that far But if you'd go to great lengths to avoid dealing with your insurance company, You might have insoranoia And if you have insuranoia, you should have NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders Start relieving your insureanoia today injM. com 's given me a lot more control over everything in my home feel like biggest is that I don't have to think about it anymore. It's freed up so much space to not be thinking about whether or how I want them or whether Someone will walk in a few hours and I'll be sitting in a dark apartment. Right whichich is a weird vibe You're so moody. myerious. It's not inaccurate Christine Zerk Classette I'm Rosie Garin, and you're listening to the Wirecutter showhow Hey Rosie, Hey Christine. Today we are talking about accessibility I've thought a lot about this through my work with wirecutter, but Thinking back, you know the first time I fundamentally understood how difficult it can be to do simple tasks in your daily life when the world isn't designed for you was when I had my first kid. I was living in midtown, Manhattan, just a couple blocks from where we're recording Back then, the sidewalks in midtown didn't have ramps where they meet the roads. Some of them did, but a lot of them didn't. And I remember walking with my newborn in her stroller and this lack of ramps was a total barrier. I couldn't lift the stroller off the sidewalk to cross the street because I was recovering from labor. And I just remember thinking M people in wheelchairs or walkers navigate this. This is insane My mobility was limited and it really opened my eyes to a different world that many people are forced to navigate. That's so interesting. I remember living in New York thinking a lot about inaccessibility of so many subway stations in the city. I think about the way products are designed And that obviously plays a crucial role in accessibility Today we're going to lean into the discussion of products specifically. We're going to talk about some simple smart home devices that can make a home more accessible for people with disabilities, or frankly, anyone with mobility concerns issues, short term, medium term, or long term. That's right. We're talking with Claire Pearlman, our accessibility editor, and John Chase, our smart home editor They recently collaborated to retrofit Claire's apartment with smart switches that have allowed Claire more control over the lights in her apartment. She wrote this great piece about this, which we'll link to in the show notes. After the break Clire and John stick around So you know that uneasy anxious feeling you get when you think about dealing with your insurance company Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called insureanoia And if that sounds like something you're way too familiar with, you should really think about getting NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders by providing dedicated reps whose priority is you. And that means you'll find more peace of mind with them Relieve your insuranooyia with NJM insurance by visiting njM d. com for a quote today. Mitty knows perimenopause can come on fast. Suddenly your hormones are raging. You're waking up at three AM, your jeans don't fit, and you've forgotten the word for microwave Most women in perimenopause don't know that they are, even though it can last for ten years. MIDI health is built by women. That's why our experts actually listen and treat your symptoms. Book a virtual appointment at joinmidDi d. com Midlifees MIDi Results may vary, medications prescribed only if clinically appropriate based on the consultation with a clinician. Wcome back Today, Christine and I are in the studio with two of our coworkers, and we're going to talk about how smart home devices can make a home more accessible Claire Perlman, Wirecutters Accessibility editor and John Chase, friend of the show and our smmart homeome editor. Claire John, welcome. Thank you. Yeah great to be here. App to have you. Great to have you here We want to talk about this project that you two worked on together. Claire, you wrote an article about it. John, you helped install these smart switches in Claire's apartment I want you to set the scene. What were you dealing with in your apartment in terms of your lighting? Give us the picture of what a day in your life looked like to turn the lights on. Yeah. so I'm in a wheelchair, which means I can't do a lot of things, including using my arms to do a lot of things The light switches in my apartment are a little bit too high, so I can't turn them on and off easily. I can actually turn them off, but I cannot turn them on, which is really not that useful. So thats less useful than you think. Yeah it really is. I have someone who comes and helps me in the morning and They're there for hour and a half during that time, I have to have them do everything that I need for the next twelve hours. And so that includes having the lights the way I want them because I haven't historically been able to turn them on when I want them or off easily when I want them. Your helper leaves for the day. The way the apartment was set up was the way it was set up. So if the lights were on in your office, they were on, but if they weren't on in your office couldn't really do anything about it. No, and I would look very dark in my Zoom meetings. I've been on many Zoom meetings with you and I never thought it looked dark, but I could see where that would It was. Did you have any other smart home devices in your apartment before you and John worked on this project? I had a few smart plugs set up, and so those were connected to One was connected to a lamp. And then another one was connected to an air purifier. I wasn't really maximizing that usage necessarily. I also had a couple smart bulbs that I had in lamps, but They were in and out of being useful. She's thrown shade on me right here. justust when Claire and I met a couple years ago, like I was most of the time, people were like running away from me with smart stuff. Eactly And Claire was Super game to talk about it and you were curious and I don't recall if you had an and Alexa device. I'm gonna tell anyone listening trigger warning, mute your smart speakers so they don't go off But Claire was willing to try out some smart bulbs And so separately from the smart plugs you have, which are basically on off switches, you had a collection of three hue bulbs, but they had gone out of sync. So like basically like you know, she would use those to speak to Alexa to say, Hey, turn on my bulbs or whatever. And then sometimes it would work, sometometimes it wouldn't work or, you know This was partly because I bought a Knock off a gucci lamp knock off was the problem. Yeah was the problem. The switch is like not desesign gods are coming down to punish you. alsoso the switch was very jky. So like in theory, you could use a light bulb, a smart light bulb to say, hey, turn the light bulb on smart speaker and that might have helped with your problem, but those had gone out of sync Yeah, although they worked for a very long time, I ended up fixing them before you came to my apartment all by myself. So Well that was a great talk. So I will see you guys later. But the other thing just to differentiate. those were for often are used for like table lamps, things like that. And the lighting that was controlled by switches is like overhead lighting. And so there was a bank of switches and one of them was actually controlled in two locations. And the second location actually was like chest height for me. And so, you know, if you click it on in one spot and then go to click it off at the other or something like that, it was just Clairea explained that sometimes she would relegate it to like using her head to turn off a switch, which is not ideal. And your apartment is technically an ADA Yeah. It is supposed to be I mean, ADA compliant doesn't mean accessible to every person. It just means accessible to some people. Right. It's kind of like a median standard that is out there. And it's, you know, it's supposed to be encompassing a very wide variety of needs. There are older people who can't bend over, so they need things or higher up. and that is deeply unuseful for me. Right. So that is P probleblem with the ADA. although I love it It's good we have it, but yeah, it doesn't work. notot all the standards work for everyone. So okay, just to encapsulate, you could turn on some of the lights. could turn on some of the lights. But these overhead lights for the real issue. Yeah. devise systems for turning on and off of those lights as well. I would use like my cat's wand toy to turn on the lights sometimes if I really needed them or a straw for my drink. Right. This is really ad hoc. This is like you get what you get and you are dealing with whatever it is for the rest of the day. Right. whichich is like not an ideal in your own home.. That's like if' your long term solution. not a great long term solution. Yeah.. could be better. So you come together, you decide to do this project Where did you begin, I guess, with the lighting problems specifically? Well, so Claire described Her apartment and her needs and like the more we talked, I don't go small. I like to go big. You might know that a moment. So I was like, yeah, we'll knock down a wall and you know, But we reined it in and made it a much more reasonable approach, which was because it's studio, like her she has a kitchenette and there's these overhead lights, you know, LED lights, they can get quite bright. And she's like, there's times where I've had to like You they were on it at the end of the night and I just had to sleep with the lights on all night. orr they're not on in the morning, you know, and you have to sit around in darkness kind of thing. Wh is so that' particularly problematic in a studio. Yeah. But yeah. it's irksome And then on top of that, we also She talked about how She had heat pump like an HVacC or air conditioning system, the thermostat would be the way that you can control it, but you were unable to control it because one, it's the height of it, but also it's finicky with like five button presses, if we were trying to figure out a way to make a substitution and put in a smart thermostat that would allow her to again use her voice to change the temperature. So we talked about doing that We talked about maybe putting in Inead of having smart plugs, which are external and you know they go into the wall and sometimes they take up space, they're useful and they're great. but you can actually just replace the receptacle itself and have a smart version. receptacle where you would plug something and you actually you can make those so that you could individually control them. So the idea you could be like Hey, you know, Alexa, hey, Siri, hey, Google Home, turn off my light that would be that outlet itself would turn on and off kind of thing. So we went big that way and then onnce we got to her apartment reality kicked in. So as ay way of showing up. What did you see as limitations or challenges when you went to do the assessment in Claire's apartment And just speaking from the usability of this stuff, like some people are definitely going to would need help with any of this, right?op installing it and programming and everything like All of those things and they're different things, right? Like some people just, you know, they may not have the use of a smartphone and a lot of these almost everything requires the use of a smartphone to set up And you know, we showed up and it turns out that Claire's thermostat is of a particular type where it wouldn't work with the model we were going to set in. like they just wouldn't be able to communicate with each other. So we ended up just kind of cut and bait on that one and moving on. That one was very sad. I was really P callall the Nights challenge Yes, all I want is to be able to turn the AC on and then off in the middle of the night whenever I want. Oh ye. And you're compromise, do you have a fan that you can I've been using my air purifier as a fan, which is not the most efficient. Okay. so why did you end up actually installing then? We ended up installing Three smart switches Senate U Well we did Okay, so we did Right. So that's it. Yeah. That's all and it only took me however. So what we did was we one we res sn your bulbs, which you said you did on your own without me, but whatever. I did one of them and you did the other. Okay For the kitchen lights, we removed the existing switch, like physically removed the switch and then replaced it with a smart version This version communicates with like a pluggin WiFi relay basically An important thing that we talked about was that this switch should work just like a regular switch in terms of you can manually turn it on and off so that you're not bound to using the smart features for people who don't want that But then on top of that, once we installed that, we could then, in this case, she has Alexa speakers. So Using the Alexa app, we connected the light switch. This model was a Levaton model. They have a whole bunch of models. and this is one of our wirecutter picks. So we connect them in the app From then on, she can say, and you give it a name and you can say, Alexa turned the kitchen lights to fifty percent. It not only turns it on and it also. It's like a dimmer. Y. Exactly.. Did that mean you had to change the bulbs themselves? No. You're not using smart bulbs in those overhead lights. Eactly regular bulbs that are being controlled by a smart switch so cost effective and useful because if you've already got lights in your ceiling, you don't w want to have to replace those. And these are the kind that are these are LED lights, can light can lights. So she was able to use the existing ones with literally just taking the wires out of one port, putting it back into the other and the switch. it's a very simple operation. We did have some issues getting it to sync up initially. I think part of that has to do with and this is a bugaboo for for the smart home in general When you have Wi Fi, there's generally two point four gigahertz and five gigahertz. They're different frequencies. And a lot of times networks have both and hers does, you know, each type of Is that why you get like the two different WiFi signals when you're connecting to your Wiifi? Exactly.. Like one is two G, one is five G,omet like that. exactly. And so ninety nine percent of smart home devices connect using two point four gigahertz only. It can be a hiccup because what happens is your phone, which you're using to connect these devices, may be connected to the five gigahertz network. And so sometimes not always, depends on your router and all modem and all other kind of stuff, it may be that when you go to set them up The smart device is like, I can't I can't see you, you know, essentially and the connection, the pairing will fail. So most routers have the ability to like if there's an app associated with it, you can turn off the five gigahertz for minutes ten minutes, whatever while you're the set upp, your phone would then be on the same network and then you can make this happen. This is such a huge issue. And I don't know why it's not solved at this point. But so I believe that was the failing. So I ended up like resetting the switch, turned my phone on and off and whatever, and then it just connected and it was fine. So as a general rule of thumb, maybe a takeaway for this episode is smart devices, you want to make sure they're speaking to each other over the same frequency on your wiifi, right? So like if you're having trouble maybe disable that five G on your router. I'm saying that like I know how to do that, but I'm sure I could figure it out. Yeah, you talk call I like I like this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. At any rate. this is a bit of a diversion, but it's an important point becausecause this is often a failing. So K kind of like following in on that because you know, this might seem intimidating to some people, right? inststalling smart home devices like Claire, you may not have done this without John's assistance, right? I mean, it might have been a little bit No, it would have taken meing twoo to four more years. to find better house. So the first lesson is find a friend who knows how to do this. But I guess my other question is how hard is it actually to install a smart switch a super handy person. you're not comfortable with electrical wires, do you need to get a handy person to come in and do this? Or if you're like reasonably comfortable putting in a regular switch, you'd be fine doing this? I would say I'm not an expert electrician or anything like that, but I'm very familiar with doing this stuff. I've wired our home with multiple different smart switches, trying them out and testing them over the years If you are a competent DIY person who has done any kind of wired an electrical switch or an outlet before, It's identical, but it can get complicated if you have more exotic wiring. like a bank of switches, sometimes they'll have like pigtails going on and like joining of multiple lines and things like that. So it can get a little slightly exotic. It's absolutely handyman level. I don't think you would have to hire an electrician to do it. But obviously the first thing you would do is like go to your breaker, turn off the switch, use a voltage tester to make sure that there's no live stray currents or anything like that It's very doable. But even then like some of the outtakes of the video are probably showing me I'm like, get in there you, you know like because there thiss wiring it's, you know, it's stiff, it's big, it's thick, the existing wiring in the wall and you're connecting ono it and so, you know, it takes some doing. And Claire, your apartment is a new apartment, right?? So if you're dealing with an older building, you might have a whole other host of things to think about. Yeah, so all modern like code compliant homes have a neutral what's called a neutral wire in the box Older homes often don't. There's a few smart home switches that actually can work without a neutral wire, which is pretty cool How has this changed your day to day? It's given me a lot more control over everything in my home. I think they like biggest thing is that I don't have to think about it anymore. It's freed up so much space to not be thinking about whether the lights are how I want them or whether Someone will walk in a few hours and I'll be sitting in a dark apartment., whichich is a weird vibe. You're so moody It'sterious. It's not inaccurate. But yeah, I think not having to think about it in the morning when I have other things like I have work to be thinking, right I have cat to be thinking about. I have plenty of other things to be thinking about besides whether the lights are exactly how I want them or not. And also like it has given me the freedom to change my mind whether I want the lights on or off, which is not a thing I used to have. So It's been really big for that you know, even at night when The lights are off, but maybe I want to Faceime with someone or like Read a book See see what my cat is doing on the counter at two AM Now I can turn on the light and see. and then turn it off again So what is the routine that you're in now in terms of like, you wake up in the morning? Are you using your phone? A you using your voice? Whatretty much always using Alexa. I don't usually use the phone. Okay I'm too lazy to figure which jap I'm supposed to be doing that on. But that's the whole point. Like you didn't That's the beauty of you being able to use voice speakers and stuff like that. I think You don't have to get up and go over to the switch to activate it. You don't have to pull out your phone to activate it. You don't have to, you know, browse find the right thing. You don't have to do an update of the app or that kind of stuff. I get it mostly just works. But one of the things that Claire and I keep discussing, I think And one of my writers, Rachel Sarah Cola has written guides to accessibility and aging in place that involve smart home devices in particular. covering smart homeome for almost a decade at this point. And I feel like there's so much usefulness to it for this audience of people who have mobility and accessibility needs and also aging plays which you know overlap. It didn't dawn on me, and I think to our whole team for a really long time, how how useful these things are You know, I helped I managed our teams that review appliances and kitchen equipment. I think we saw a lot of smart features being integrated into appliances. We've seen this for years. And at first our reaction was like, why do you need to have a smart feature on an oven or on a washer. you know, it just seems like this is just like added. but we've seen over the years, especially Claire and I have worked on we have a paid tester group that comes in. We have various people with different mobility issues. and like these smart features can be quite helpful to a variety of people, you know operate things with your phone. And you know, I think we've seen this across different coverage areas. Like forever, I remember we were like, why would you need a smart toothbrush? But it actually can be quite helpful for certain people to be able to you know, have these smart devices. And it tells you yeah, that's the thing. It's like there's so many products there where you might be like, well, I don't need that. And it's like, well, you don't need that, but other people do. because these products don't tend to be sold. They're not marketed necessily. One of the things we also talked about, Claire has a wall that's basically a window and a glass door, like the whole back wall of her of her apartment and And I was like, you know Maybe our next our two point zero version is you get automatic shades, which go up and down on a cycle The sun can be blinding or it can like be too hot in the summer and that's the quickest way to cool down your place, boom, blocks the sun from coming in. Particularly if you weren't able to hook up the smart thermostat. Yes. Exactly. Yes, exactly you know, there's an intimidation factor here when approaching some of these installations and I think it would be a Turn off in terms of judging How much is this worth versus how much am I going to have to learn to enable me to use these seamlessly. Like what is that learning curve like? How do you think about that? Yeah, I think it is really hard for people who are not I mean, even just like connecting the app to the thing can be daunting. I made my brother come all the way from Manhtan at one point to do it for me. And it's you know, I think there's the likeike brain part of it and then there's also the physical part of it. Like sometimes you have to like getet your phone really close to the thing and it's in a weird place in your apartment And requires some physical ability. I think there's also like avoidance because It could build up in your head as a scary thing to do. But then once you're actually doing it, it is 's really not that hard. I mean, For smart plugs, they were very simple. Plugging in a smart speaker is very simple. R. Like there are things like that where it's like, no you could do this We're going to take a quick break and on the other side, we're going to talk about some other smart home gear that can make a home more accessible. plus John and Claire's recommendations for some bang for your buck products. We'll be right back So you know the uneasy anxious feeling you get when you think about dealing with your insurance company? Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called insureanoia And if that sounds like something you're way too familiar with, you should really think about getting NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders likeike providing dedicated reps whose priority is you. And that means you'll find more peace of mind with them Relieve your insur anoia with NjM insurance by visiting njM. com for a quote today I'm Paul Tonorio. I cover soccer for the athletic. And I'm Amy Lawrence. I cover football for the athletic. Whatever you call it, the biggest competition in the sport is happening right now, and the athletics World Cup coverage has everything you need to follow the tournament. This forty eight countriry staking park from the tiny island of Curaca out to the five time Champions Brazil Even if you don't know your offside from your on side, if you're eager to know more about the teams, the matches, all the stories on and off the pitch, we've got you sorted. Maybe you're the kind of person who's already up early every weekend waking the neighbors when your favorite club scores We'll make sure you get equipped with more information, more insight than anyone you know. We've got more than seventy obsessive reporters on the ground, covering the ins and outs from every game. I almost forgot to mention the best part, Amy, free access to the athletics World Cup coverage in our app Download the athletic app and see there Welcome back. Before the break, we discussed how smart swwitch has really helped you, Claire in your apartment and really changed the game for turning on your lights. Now I want to talk about other devices that can make a home more accessible For most people, where do you think the biggest payoff is in terms of smart devices? If somebody is trying to decide get What are the devices that you think let's start with you, John, the things that are just going to have a huge payoff I am a little biased here because I write the guide to smmart Lcks, but I think that I have smart Lucks at our home. and I don't know anyone who's ever come to our home and then been like I hate this device. mostost often people are like, oh, I'm curious. I kind of w want to have this because once they see how it works and how functional and how useful it is I won't go all the way down the rabbit hole, but it's like You know, I have little kids without phones who can get into the home where they don't need to carry a key around, they use a code, that kind of stuff. I get a notification if the door is unlocked at a weird hour. I can also give when my parents come to visit, they have their own code or when we have someone came and fed our pets while we were gone, like they had their own code and that kind of stuff. You know it's just I think I see these on a lot of Airbnb's as well. Yeah, exactly, exactly They're so useful. It's like When you get a smartphone or a cell phone and you forget what it's like to use a regular phone, like I forget what it's to use a key to lock door anymore. So for me, that's a big one You had a number of devices you said that you used with smart plugs Um which I think is really interesting because a smart plug is essentially it's an on off switch. That's really something they might have extra features in there. You can put them on a timer, they can tell you how much electricity or amperage or whatever was being used. But you had like three or four in your home. Yeah. so I had them Before we did all the lighting, basically the only way I had to control any lighting was the lamps. So I used smart plugs with lamps I also used to use one on my sound machine because I used to live in an East village and it was very noisy. I are you controlling those with your voice Yeah as also voice yeah And as just to emphasize what Claire is saying is like Those aren't smart devices per se, but she's smartening. She's smarting them up. smarting them up. She's giving them if they only had a brain they family had a brain. What about like safety devices? L you have recommendations for smoke detectors, right? Eact Do you think this is a good place for people to start with smart homeome? For a long time, we had a piece that was, if you only buy one smart device, this is the one to get. And like a smart smoke detector is there's different varieties of them at a base level they alleviate mostost of the reasons that regular smoke detectors are a pain and then therefore get disabled or pulled off the wall, like anyone who's had Always at three AM. L the three AM chirping thing. Smart detectors will say, hey, my battery' low. change it. in that voice. Hey baby. Wake up. Wake up, go go change my battery Most fires where people are injured hurt or there's mortalities, it's because they either had a detector and it was disabled on purpose or the batteries for det because they they are hard to turn off. You know, you got a ten foot ceiling you're not going to be able to get up there and like hit the mute button and you have to So these like you can mute using an app usually. They can interconnect to each other. So if one goes off, they all go off, you know, things like that. It's just It's just smart. You also mentioned blinds has a Yeah. hugely helpful. A, this is one of those ones where they've now expanded to. it's like blinds, shades, seell lines and then also retrofit ones that you can add on. You know, if you can't lift your arm up to pull a shade down, you're just going to get sun staring in you all day long. and that really radically can alter the temperature of a room. and also it's just annoying. These are My I have three in our kitchen where sort of around dinner time, a laser beam of sunlight pours in. and so the blinds come down automatically and then they go back up and then they go back down again. And that sounds like a complete luxury. but like If you poull and open and close Shades these are shades and not blinds. But if you open them, they're gonna break. Like they always break and they get that flappy like Yeah. a child ye. Yeah. But so those I love those and I have it in our kids' bedroom too. In the morning, their alarm goes off, the lights come on, and the shades go up and it's like, all right, it's go time people Wake up Yeah So okay, we've talked about some of what you guys see as the most useful devices. If somebody's listening to this, thinking, I am curious. I'd like to try installing some smart devices How would you advise someone on how to choose what Let's start with you, Claire. I would think about my morning and walk through it and identify where you are Most pissed off about not being able to do something. that's a good way about it. And so like mine was I was really annoyed about the lights. I'm also really annoyed when I can't put my blinds up in the morning because I face the east and I want sunlight So that's next on my to do list for John. And noted my to do is p. But it's the things that like really aggravate you every single day and they seem little and they're not. That is where various smart home things can come in useful in a million different ways You know, there's the ones we've talked about, but there's also For example, I have a smart litter box because one of the things that would drive me insane was a stinky litter box. right next to. Yeah. horble. Start small. Don't go out there and buy seven different devices. It's sort of like you gott to baby step it a little bit and understand one of the big concepts within the smart homeome thing is like Are you going use one device with an app and control just that and then maybe you have another device from another company and that one has an app? You can use apps that control a lot of your devices. And so you have to consider compatibility. Alexa is generally compatible with almost everything. If you want to consolidate control into a single device so that you can say, Hey, Alexa do this, Hey Alexa do that, if that's going to be your control scheme then you' want to ensure that there's compatibility. If you are only going to get one device, you're just going to get a smart lock and not integrate it with a whole bunch of other devices, which is fine. That's how I do it then it doesn't matter as much. But also like Nest makes a lot of very nice devices. if you're going you'd want to use the Google Home app for that. And so then you would do like you know, a Nest doorbell, a Nest camera, you know, that kind of stuff, thermostatic, that kind of stuff. So yeah, but I do think it's like do buy name brands, like we generally crown upon these kind of rando devices that seem a lot like something else, donon't buy rando products, established brands that Generally speaking, what we cover, if's not even if it's not a pick, you'll see that we've tested it in our competition and we might give you like consult our guides. We have you know, an excellent team of I would say, the best team out there of people testing. So that's the one ad you get to place in this. Smart homeome, the future is now Who do you both think about when you think of folks who could most benefit from smart devices in the home I think it's anyone who obastly and go do a thing. If you need to be able to do something from where you are at that exact moment then this is going to be great for you. So that' disabled people, but that's all to so People aging in place, people with new babies peopleople who just broke their legs for whatever reason. I think it really can be applicable to anyone. I mean, even I've talked to a friend who said it erased all arguments with her husband about who had to get up when they were already in bed to go turn off the lights. It's saving marriages out here. There a spectrum. I love that. And it could also be like to your point, there's some statistic about how there's some huge amount of people who will be disabled temporarily in their life, whether it's like you broke your leg, you had a hip replacement. someome of these things could be temporary solutions for those moments. touch pointos All right One last question for you. I'm thinking about all of the things I could install in my own home and it sounds like these things are kind of futsy. I know that n,'re going tell me that they aren't But how often do they disconnect or get out of sync like the bulbs that you installed Clire? Like how much maintenance are you having to how stable? Yeah. Yeah Can I just say that my light bulb that went out of sync, all I had to do was manually turn off the lamp and then turn it back on again? o. So it's unacceptable.. No, it's a real thing So one of the components of smart home stuff is that Almost everything connects to the cloud. connect to the app to control it. The device often connects to your WiFi or to a hub and then the WiFi. and then that goes to the cloud, because that's where the commands go back and forth and things like that And so you can get outages. you know you can have you have to update the software sometimes. things go wrong in the same way that things go wrong with your computer or your smartphone or something. So things can go off for sure. I do think rare is the one hundred percent upime device But more often than not, it's kind of I', you know, shades. They've been in my house for almost ten years, you know I would say that's one of the things we grapple with in recommending products is we've Almost no company will tell you how long they expect the product to last And so if you're going to spend