CSA's Nelson Henry Talks Aliro Launch: The Future of Digital Keys

0:00Welcome everybody to another, I don't know if this count as another, maybe it's the first episode of Smart Home Insider. For everybody who has been hopefully listening for a while from Home Kid Insider, cool, this is it, we're in a new show, same thing, new name. This episode is brought to you by Gusto, we'll talk about them in a little bit. Joining me this week I am pretty excited, as I usually am, joining me is Nelson Henry, thank you Nelson for joining, you're wearing two hats today, two of them at the same time. You are VP of a security tech and engineering for last lock, but you were also the chairman of the Aliro Steering Committee at this CSA, and that is going to be one of the big topics that we're going to talk about today. We will get to it, but first things first, thank you, thank you for joining, how are you doing? Hey, doing well, I appreciate the invite, I'm looking forward to talking about several different

1:01topics today, but I'm looking forward to it, welcome, it's nice to talk. I know we actually chatted a little bit earlier this week because we actually had the Aliro announcement going live on last Thursday, like this episode is coming out on Monday, so we're a little bit delayed, was debating like trying to take this live on Thursday to kind of coincide, but then it would be like two in a week and then a big gap, so we're just going to throw it out there on Monday, you know, a few days behind the Aliro thing. And I guess it's also like the first day of like Apple's update week, have you been following like the rumors and stuff going along with that? Oh yeah, a long time techie, so I always like following the rumor mill, the different reddit articles and keeping up with the different YouTube channel stuff, it's been fun seeing the cycle coming up and all of the one kind of getting excited about the hardware stuff around the corner, I'm definitely curious to see how it unfolds. I know it seemed like, so the Apple event is taking place on Wednesday, which they're calling it an update or an experience rather, but Tim Cook himself was out there on Twitter

2:04saying that stuff was starting off on Monday, like today, the day this episode is out. So by the time that you were listening to this, there could already be Apple news and we are here oblivious Nelson to what has already been announced, but I guess we can go and talk about our actual, you know, other stuff in the news this week. Then last plug actually that I wanted to throw out here, we have a new logo right to go along with the new show. So this was done by basic Apple guy who is just an amazing artist who does some fantastic background wallpapers, all that kind of stuff. He has created original artwork for Apple Insider in the past. You may have seen me like wearing shirts if you watch the YouTube channel enough, but we have like Apple insider wallpapers that you can download that basic Apple guy did that later. Fantastic. And I love the new logo. It is perfect. So if you were seeing that and you were loving it and you want to learn more about basic Apple guy, go find some cool wallpapers and stuff. Check it out. Just basic Apple guy, basic Apple guy dot com, but those are linked in like the show notes

3:05for anyone to check that out. Let's start with a little bit of I did a review on the YouTube channel last week. Nelson, I don't know how much you paid attention to this big new IKEA launch of all their products. Did you see much about them and mean it was kind of a big deal for IKEA to push this hard into both matter and thread. Dad, it actually is really awesome seeing this to quantity of devices and especially like very day to day affordable ones. I kind of like how clean, simple the aesthetic of them is as well. So seeing matter devices, you know, things that have the ability to do the firmware updates and other ecosystems as well as stuff that you can more easily deploy for simple stuff around your house. It just feels like more and more of the smart home stuff being accessible and available for just day to day people and that just feels awesome and kind of like the whole vision of matter and sort of what IKEA has a lot of their ethos becoming very real. So I love seeing this. This is exactly what I've been itching for. So it's been really encouraging for me. I think it shows a big shift because I honestly hit the CSA quite hard about this of like

4:08marketing and informing consumers of this kind of stuff and like what thread is, what matter is and just how kind of all that is related. And I think it is a huge deal that a company is because IKEA is like, yeah, no, we're all in with this. And this is our thing. Of course, it hasn't been a smooth rollout. I already talked about on a previous episode that there was a bunch of like kind of connection issues and things going on. So like I'm not going to rehash everything, but I can say everything has worked for me very, very reliably as of late. And I don't know if that is because the 26.3 updates came out or maybe it's because my house power was reset and I switched to a new home hub and then thread worked better. I could be the updates that IKEA had pushed to their devices. So there could be any number of like reasons here why things are working better for me. But it still seems to be a little bit of a mixed bag after this review went live. It actually did super well on the video side of things, but there's a whole collection

5:10of people. It's kind of cool Nelson have seen so many people sharing their experiences with these products. There's people who are having no issues and there's people who are having connection issues. But it seems like IKEA is trying to be on top of this, but it's still a mass rollout of matter over thread was it was a was a big deal. And it seems people are very excited about it. And I was kind of shocked at how well my video had performed. I was like number two out of my last top 10 video, like the last 10 videos I did. It was like number two and popularity and that inclusive and invite stuff. So a lot of people were curious on this IKEA stuff. Yeah, it definitely seems like I've seen the same thing with a bunch of different stuff around YouTube, but I was poking around. It seems like lots of people are poking and it does seem like I'm seeing more and more comments that the whatever the connectivity things have been that it seems like it's stabilizing out. So in my head, I've kind of been shocking it up to some of the, you know, the initial hiccups. I'm a first product and hoping it stabilizes smooth, whether that's IKEA or something else in the system, but it's cool seeing it actually stabilizes and looks like so that these

6:12cheap things actually work and we can use them while I'm not worried about it. Just use it for our houses and move on. Exactly. Exactly. If anyone wants to learn more literally, it's a fairly long review because I go in depth on a ton of the individual products. I talk about adaptive lighting and I go through like the setup process in a little bit of a real time situation of how I managed to get mine to all kind of work correctly, but check it out linked in the show notes. In terms of actual news, news this week, we had a new matter night light, which is a very unique way of kind of integrating stuff into the smart home. We have these and like a lot of our like my grandparents houses would have these plugged into the outlets, right? And like the lights would go off and then this little thing would like a light up in the hallway, kids bedrooms, half things like this, bathrooms, garages, like they've been around forever. And now this company, I have a third reality has created the smart night light tea, which is a little just plug it into the wall. It's got a motion sensor and a night light and you know, it goes dim.

7:14The light turns on. You got full control via matter for color and brightness on top of that and the price point obviously is more than your typical dumb ones, but $30 still doesn't seem terrible for kind of a smart version of this old school product. I think this is cool. Yeah, I agree. I think it's just so cool. I was chucking and I was hanging out with my nieces not that long ago and it's funny how much little things like my lights actually help a lot with the kids in the different parts of the family. And having something that you can go build like smarter homes around that, my brother and laws a huge, huge fan of playing around with different tech things and it's exactly a thing here and into where you could have something like a night light that he can control and do automations with and also that's not tied overly to a single ecosystem. That's been awesome. It was specifically sending him it over to him after this has been, it's been cool seeing things like this kind of do exist and it feels like that, that dream of different matter clusters and all that of just build the things that do what people find interesting and start to see them come out in real products that people use.

8:17This is awesome. I know and there's a, I've written about it with some other reviews where it's like sometimes they're putting tech into things that don't need to have tech, right? Like you're trying to make, you know, adding a Bluetooth connection is something that doesn't need a Bluetooth connection. But in this case, I feel like there's actual benefit because sure, you can create the automations, but you can still just use it as your basic motion sensing night light and then you have the added abilities to control the color and control the brightness. I mean, with the other dumb ones, you don't get control over color and brightness. So there's a little bit more you can play around with there. They also had a kind of a neat example on their website, which is to use it as like a status light as well. So say you pull into your garage, you have a contact sensor on your garage door, that's going to leave that status light as like red until you close your garage door and then it shows as green. So you're kind of having this visual indicator. It could even be inside your house and you wonder if the garage door is open or not, you can check. So it's got another kind of like visual reminder to do something.

9:17So I thought that was a really neat application for this as well. So a little crazy compared to regular ones, but I think there's a lot of kind of smart tech in here that makes it worth it and not completely ridiculous to kind of matterize a dumb product like this. That's really cool. I didn't see that use case. That's awesome. This is a little bit of a weird, weird story. This is, it's kind of crazy, but it was posted by the Verge on the DJI robot. And what's wild too is like we've talked about DJI. I like DJI and the Romo vacuums looked pretty cool. I like the transparent design of them. Like they're trying something different here and they even had, I covered when they recently joined at this CSA. So it's like maybe matters going to come to these Romo robots. This whole thing, apparently there was a person who wanted to control his Romo vacuum with his PS5 controller, like his DualSense. And he used Cloud Code to go and generate the way to do this and it went on to like their

10:19server and pulled down their authentication token so that he could control his robot. Like all of this was like, okay, there wasn't any, he didn't pull down things like he wasn't supposed to have access to, like literally that's something that should have been available to him. And he ended up having access to like 60, 700 other Romo vacuums across the world 24 different countries and collected over 100,000 of their messengers. He demoed this with the Verge reporter who had a Romo in probably UK or something where they're actually available and they were able to like test it and show that it worked. He did report it as well as Verge reported it to DJI before all of this stuff and it was fixed rather quickly, but this is such a glaring security hole with a product like this that goes around your home. This is insane and I'm kind of surprised that there has not been more coverage of something like this. I mean, these robot vacuums are mapping your home.

11:21He could see floor plans of people's homes and there's cameras on them. This is crazy to me that this has kind of not been talked about more. Yeah, I could not agree more on this. It's the type of thing where especially when you have, it's one thing to have a device that has a security issue. It's another thing when that device is so much context on your home and has like not just even sound and all, but also site and having those mixed things together. It's exactly why like major security flaws honestly are kind of terrifying. It reminds me of the, I think it was you fee that had the camera issue before. And those things just that give raw access. I mean, all the more any device that walks out to the outside world, how important that trust is and even the importance of things that have local control and how they set things up so that you can restrict or you at least know when you're opting into taking some of the risk of sharing stuff to an outside world. This is, this is wild. Yeah, I'm kind of curious to see the talk more. I will say I'm happy they turned to fix so quick.

12:22So that's that at least is heartening, but it is, it's a scary thing to see happen. And it's, it's a vulnerable feeling thing. I mean, you guys have this from like last locks point of view of like having to focus so much on security, you're a lock, but like a lot of other brands, whether it's like a smart light bulb or I mean, especially the early days of the IOT in the smart home space, companies just didn't seem like they took security seriously at all because consumers really couldn't see it. Like you can see like the functionality, but you can't, how does your average consumer know if it is secure or hackable or what API tokens are going to serve like all these types of things. And even as much testing as I can do, like I, I can't test or know some of those things, like they're above that level. So I don't know, I, I feel like other companies, there are ones that take it very seriously. Like I see on like the Robo rocks I've been playing around with for years now, like when you want to enable the cameras on device, you have to do it from the device itself. So it's like completely disabled until you're doing something locally.

13:24But I don't know coming from kind of a security company as well as from the CSA who's developing the kind of the standard, how, how do you, I don't know, kind of emphasize the security and help make people feel comfortable, whether they're putting a lock on your door, whether they're putting a matter camera in your house, how is, how, I don't know, it just seems like it needs to be like emphasized more like the actual security and that these companies are taking it more seriously. Yeah, I think I mean, I think it's going to be a lot of people really need to hold companies accountable for when data is shared to like, to really to knock up corners and to make sure that we're actually following best practices and that you check that thoroughly. You know, I, I used to do a lot of stuff in satellites and one of the big things that comes up in that world is making sure anytime you go outside, right, it's a really important place to, to be really diligent because little mistakes can cascade, it's also why things like into an encryption are so important because it also helps solve little issues or hiccups and things that happen along the way. So, you know, I think all the more this stuff is important, it's also why things like the

14:26product security standard that they're working on or that they've been developing and I find those kind of things really interesting and helpful just because they also start to move forward this idea of the consumer being able to go and check for themselves. What security practices did you actually follow? Can I go just get the documentation for myself? Because I think, you know, transparency and the ability for people to kind of speak for themselves is how they're going to have normal people's voices translate to accountability and action so that it becomes an expectation and stuff you buy. That's those kinds of things that I'm hoping to see more of so that this is well-checked if helps companies do the right thing, helps them succeed by doing the right thing too. And that people actually just get more secure stuff because it is a vulnerable thing to have stuff in our homes and yet we also want to have fun tech and things that are helpful, right? And so there's this tension, you really, you really want to trust but also have these ways to check and so I'm hoping for more stuff like that and I think companies can't take it seriously enough, especially when you're sharing data outside of the home. There's a lot of trust there.

15:28I think the transparency is a big deal. I mean, we've seen it on Apple side with like their AI stuff being able to allow people to go and actually verify that they're deleting data off their servers and not storing things, all of that. And I wonder if that transparency is going to continue as smart home continues to take off. We are getting like matter is doing so well with adding cameras and the Lyro now like these are bigger items that Lyro or that CSA is checking off the list for the standard. And I'm hoping that we're going to keep seeing that transparency from obviously CSA on how they're doing all their testing, which I know is it's basically open source so people can go and verify these things but the companies are doing it too. So we'll have to see how that kind of continues as cameras and more stuff starts to grow because it is very scary. And I don't want things like this to be such a black eye that it's going to like hold back smart home adoption with more people. I guess we'll have to see for some good news. Sonos is planning a nice new update to its app and it has learned some lessons.

16:31So Chris Welch is at now over at Bloomberg doing his reporting as excellent as always on Sonos, but basically they are coming out with a new version of the app that is going to have improved navigation, better controls, all of that kind of stuff. And he even went on Reddit to do a whole Q&A about the new update, how it's going to work. It's going to be very, very slow roll out here. So it's going to start as an opt in for beta users and then after that, it'll going to slowly roll out, I believe, as opt in for everybody else. So this is going to be a very slow roll out for this new design of the app. And people will be able to play with it before it just kind of like shoved on them. So there's hopefully not some big backlash like last time for Apple users. I think the coolest thing is that they're going to actually have a light activity that's going to show like the playback controls and all of that. So that's something that's been on Android and now they're taking advantage of like this native iOS feature to control the playback of the devices. So this is great.

17:32I'm excited. I'm definitely going to opt in on the beta and see how this works and see how that roll out works. But I'm excited for some new Sonos hardware, honestly. Like I love their sound bars and everything. I want to see some new speakers. I don't know about you, like what kind of speakers and sound bars stuff you use in your home, Nelson. But I'm such a fan of Sonos stuff. Like the hardware is so fantastic. Yeah. I'm actually also Sonos Health, House and I'll probably be burning over to the beta pretty shortly. I'm kind of curious to play around, but I really do like seeing the new strategy they're pushing for. The way that they talked about it and the Reddit post was really cool because it started with sort of acknowledging, hey, what we did previously didn't work. And we're trying to learn and be thoughtful so that like a humility about the attitude of it. And then looking for how do we have a conversation, iterate together, have a little more mutual consent and development as they go through that. This is awesome. This is kind of the change. I think at least as a Sonos user, I wanted for this stuff. And yeah, I also want more more hardware because every time a new arc or something comes out, I have to kind of poke around and see.

18:32I know when they, like the art culture came out with the new sound system with it, just really cool, even physicsy stuff they do to make those new speakers work. Sonos has always had really, really pleasant tech and almost everything. So it's stuff I've liked to have in my house. So I'm happy to see this change in direction. And then also hopefully some more hardware soon. I know they do stuff that Apple does where they spend a stupid amount of time engineering something really small that probably just a few nerds or something are going to geek out about. But to the consumer, it's looking about the same like, oh, it's a Dolby Atmos soundbar. And yeah, no, no. But look, we did this thing to the acoustics and did the really tiny stuff that they spend for ever engineering. And I would see that with Apple, like over engineering the interface for the flashlight. But it's so delightful and such a nice thing, even though you could have never even have kind of thought about it in the first place. But yeah, I'm hoping they have more hardware. I really wanted that streaming box if anything to push some pressure on Apple to innovate

19:35on the Apple TV side of things, but it sounded like it was going to be very cool. And I mean, I still, I don't know. I like Apple TV and it sounds like we're not getting one this week, but we'll have to see. What do you just curious? We'll move on to our last subject. But what did you have? What do you use for streaming at your house and please don't say you use the default smart TV interface? No, I don't think I'm that, that kind of person. I think right now I have an Apple TV 4K and that's been good. It's all freaking out. It's definitely. Yeah. I love the people in my life, so we're trying to take good care. But now it's been great. I actually like it. I actually got it part of also the smart home setup because it was one of the earlier things that bridged over to Thread for the Apple TV, so that was a fun one for me to go play around. But yeah, that's been a good one. I like it. Definitely. It's the native interface issue. We have a projector in our son's room and we'll watch stuff on there. He'll watch like Mickey or something and it's a Google TV based.

20:37I swear it never seems to work. We launch the Disney app and it'll play, but it's blank or freezes and then we end up having to watch like Bluey or Mickey through YouTube instead. Maybe that's the strategy on Google is to brick the Disney app so you have to use YouTube instead. But I don't know. It's so slow to use the interface. It just like jumps around so much and it wasn't even a cheap projector. I got it a couple, like it's been like four years, but it was like a thousand dollar projector or something. And it's up to date with like the latest version of like Android TV and or Google TV and it's just it is so frustrating and like I'm as soon as these new Apple TVs come out, we're shuffling them down and he gets one of the old ones in there to connect to that because I am done with that whole Google TV interface. It's just can't do it. Okay, last piece of news here. Xamie Smart has a new present sensor. There's some asterisk with it though.

21:38So it is the ZPS Z1. It also has built in a light sensor so it's a PIR as well as radar in there runs off of a single CR2450 coin cell battery. It's got a magnetic base on there with a little adhesive backing that you can like attach to the wall with a piece of metal and magnetically connect it there. We see that a lot. Supports 360 degree horizontal and 180 degree vertical adjustments. It'll work via Zigbee here and you have to connect it then to the Xamie Smart Zigbee hub which is a matter hub to get it to work in Apple Home. So price point is great. We're getting a present sensor for like $22 but you kind of have to be in the Xamie Smart family there or have that hub to take advantage of that but $22 on a present sensor. I mean, I'm glad that we're getting present sensors that are not $80 anymore because that's crazy. Yeah, similar. I've been wanting more and more presents because honestly motion is nice but honestly it ends up being not quite the experience in a lot of things and having presents actually

22:41come to be more and more common. I'm really looking forward to that. I mean, obviously I'd like it to be matter native as well but honestly Zigbee tends to run really well and is reliable so it's nice to have at least an option that's bringing that price down especially if I'm starting to use a bunch of them throughout the house. That's really nice to have that option to go by and then just have sort of a single bridge over. That's true. I mean, if you've got, I don't even know, could you use this with any other ZB bridge? I've got all this a car stuff. I'm assuming I can possibly connect this over to that and then it's going to work just fine. So maybe if you know everyone's been listening to me and has jumped all in on the Kara Fad at the moment, maybe that's good. You know, you're picking up the W200 and whenever thermostat that's coming out, I think that also acts as a hub in there. So maybe that'll work with this and you can get a $22 present sensor. The motion sensor's work and I talked about it in the review for the IKEA stuff. There are use cases like if you have a closet or something and you're walking in and you just want it to turn on and then when you leave, you turn it off, that's fine.

23:42That's doable. But then there's like situations where like you're in a room, you need occupancy. It makes sense, I think, for like the third reality thing we talked about at the top of the episode motion, you're like, you're walking down a hallway, turn on night light, log pass, it turns off, whatever. That's fine. But we need them for rooms and a car came out that first one with the FP300, which was great. But I think it was like $80 or something. Now they've come out with more that are cheaper. But I think the cheap is that I've seen is still like $40 at the bottom and that's still kind of pricey for sensors that you would possibly want to have all throughout the house. Okay, pause real quick before we get into the meat of this. Let's take a break. Thank our sponsors. I gave them a shout out at the beginning of the episode. But this episode is brought to you in part by Gusto. They are a software that helps take care of all of your payroll and HR tasks. Now I don't know how many people know like the logistics of running a small business, but it is not easy. It is a lot of things that you have to do and you have to wear a lot of hats doing a bunch

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28:53kit, that shopify.com slash home kit. Let's get into why you're here in Nelson. Let's talk about a leero, which has been what two, three, three years in kind of development since the original announcement, it's been a hot second, but it is official. It is a thing. Companies can start getting certified. This is all the fanfare. If you're watching the video, you will see there's fireworks, there's flares, Nelson Nelson has a party hat on at the moment. It's a fantastic time, but in reality, this is a huge deal and I'm very excited about it. There's a lot of benefits for Apple users outside of just, we've had home key forever. There's going to be other benefits though that we're going to talk about. Before we talk about a leero, let's get into you a little bit, tell us about you. Why are you here? Give us a little bit about last lock at the same time and how you got involved with last lock as well as CSA, give us the history, then let's get into the a leero launch.

29:55Yeah, so I work with last lock. It's a commercial walking company in the world, it's actually a startup. I joined them about six months ago and I've known them for a few years from the CSA side of the world. It's been great, it's honestly really fun, getting to work with a bunch of young guys that really love building some fun tech, so it's funny to do it more advanced tech on the Axis control badgy side of the world. When I came from a legion, you'll know them from like the Slage brand, that's a commercial consumer kind of company that does a lot of Axis control stuff and the smart locks you'll see in my home depot, lovely people, awesome, and I got involved actually with the CSA and all this stuff back with, back when I was with Slage in them. That's been great and that's kind of progressed over time as a leero has developed pretty much from the beginning and then there's more and more finding ways to contribute and kind of help with this thing and make sure that what we build is sort of good infrastructure for this whole key thing in the world and how do we make sure that any sort of anywhere you badge it actually is a good foundation, right, because frankly I just want something

31:00where I can go and tap and use it in my home, my apartment, my car, whatever, all the different places, props to the CCC and what they've done over there, but just looking to have things where I can have those experiences, so that's roughly me how I got involved. Okay, so a leero here, I'm sure everybody who is listing is familiar, what's kind of like your sales picture, your elevator page for a leero as a standard, it gives the high level on on what a leero is and what it means. Hey, a leero set sound to let your smart device to phone your smartwatch act as a digital key in your life, so that's the locks, it's like where you would badge in it like an office or like a hospital or a hotel, places like that, but it's really doing the standardization so how those two things can talk are have an open standard way to do this in a rockable way. We get away from pure proprietary ways to do that and make something that we can scale and build on top of, closer to like an internet standard, the things that we run a lot of

32:01other stuff in our life, I think it's really cool seeing the membership that's coming together to do that, so you'll see you've got, you know, companies from all over, but if you look at the CSA membership and the types of companies, you've got your Megatex or Apple Google Samson's, the chip people who provide the core stuff that get it in products and a lot of the common product builders from, you know, access control companies, consumer, commercial all over, so you're seeing that great coalition of the people who are, who really do that infrastructure in your life building this, that's a really good sign, it's not common to see all of them together, so that's the quick version of Alira. So I think one important thing is we have actual confirmation from Google, Samsung and Apple that they will support Alira. So I think the, the, the simplest thing in terms of like benefits for users is we're going to see a lot more products because like home key has been out for a while and there's a good chunk of locks that are home key, but I, I'm sure you're seeing this like on like

33:03the internal side and else, but I'm expecting there's going to be a ton of locks launching with home key support or sorry, not home key with a Lyro support, which will encompass a Bluetooth NFC and ultra wideband for unlocking methods. It's not all going to be UWB, but at least will be this like standardized key that is, at least can be supported by every major ecosystem on like the device side. And then all these manufacturers seem very excited about it, like there's been a ton of announcements. I think CSA sent me over a list of quotes and it's like there's like 50 quotes or something like it's crazy. Like there's so many quotes from all these companies how excited they are. So like that's a good thing. We're going to see a lot of new locks here coming up. Yeah, it's awesome. And I think every time you get a standardized answer for this stuff, as long as it really hits the mark and you get like a good foundation, it just makes it so much easier to build products, you know, as having come from a few different perspectives over the years, I think the standardized answer that I can use across the different ecosystems just speeds everything up so much.

34:07And it makes it easier to build, you know, cheap, common stuff that you can actually go get. And I think also having the option to where you can do stuff with like NFC and the build on top to really advance things also makes it easy to have locks that fit different use cases, though you can get stuff, you know, simple things that go and deploy and use widely, but also if you want to have something like that that's passing in the background kind of magic ultra wide band experience, you can have that too. And it's all built on that same foundation so that it can just blend across whatever phone or stuff, you know, it's, it's a cool moment because of how that standardization makes it so much easier to build. Yeah. One thing that I'm curious about just in terms of like logistics is why make a Lero its own separate thing versus just being part of matter. Like this seems like locks are part of matter. Why are a Lero locks a separate thing with a whole separate name? I mean, like cameras seem like they're their own kind of built out thing by themselves.

35:07Why aren't can't, why don't cameras have their own special name versus a Lero getting pulled out? The Lero kind of different versus other categories within matter. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, a Lero really focuses on something that's sort of a core interaction for how that digital key stuff works and in particular is really important that this was defined in a way that works sort of throughout your life. And so to do that, this needed to be something that was, you know, the cordial piece, a piece of the greater whole stack that was done, you know, thoughtfully so that we could abstract out how you did it, like what platform, what administrative system you ran it on. So you can run it on like your hotel or like a transit system, but then also on like a matter home, right? And so I think really matter focusing on more that administrative model, how you run your your home space. It really helped because by taking this approach, it becomes its own distinct thing that we focus, keep it scoped and build out something that can be used across all the different

36:08places. And that's hard to do if you over focus on the home. So I think having that separation, but then also setting it up to where matter can then go and sort of consume it and then maybe the way I would say it as a sister standard. It seems to have really been a strategy that's worked well and made it to where the commercial world could start really digesting this while also making sure it works in your home pretty much off the day, right? Okay, that makes sense because that is another major benefit here that I don't think quite gets talked about enough is that a Lero as that unlocking standard is not going to be just for your smart home. It's not just for your door. This is like you had said, offices, hospitality venues, hotels, apartments, literally anywhere that you would use a physical badge, an FC badge or something like that could be replaced with a Lero, which opens up a ton of things. I hate it having to use some of those things and having just your wallet that you could always use as an authentication on your phone or your watch is really, really cool.

37:13I'm wondering how quick, I mean, you're on the commercial side, little bit on the last lock kind of side here question, but how fast are those larger scale commercial places moving over to like smart tech like this? Do you see people waiting for a Lero as you're kind of pitching them last lock because it's not going to be a small thing to switch over an apartment building or a hotel to something like this? Yeah, I mean, physical buildings is pretty different as far as how we do like the commercial side of the world. So, you know, you think in your house, usually you own the lock, you set it up, it swaps in kind of the way you want, right? In a lot of buildings, it's like a 10 to 15 year cycle that's some kind of hardware goes on and they're typically making an investment, right? So when you think of it that way, it's especially actually with the one that I know it's really important that we do something they can trust. It's also why we took a lot of time to build and make sure the cert program was solid on this. I'm sure there'll be bugs and issues and we'll need to iterate and all, but try to lay a good foundation so people can trust and start to build on top.

38:14You know, that said, you know, I'm seeing the right signs, you know, there's a much longer set of companies that work together to turn on any one like hospital or like a, you know, a big co-working space or something like that. So it's tricky because there's a lot more services and people involved, but if you go look at the people who are involved, there's a lot of hunger and it's been interesting. There's a, it's been fun seeing people actually get so excited about a technology in this way. So I go have conversations. I've been seeing a lot of the people who do the core infrastructure about the hardware stuff and the digital stuff, just get excited. And I think that's really, really cool. So it's things like where you'll see within sort of the quotes and all out there, but there's more than a lot of the hardware people is talking about this, supporting it. But then also sort of that case cascade of the people who want to go and certify a device with the CSA, also getting excited, joining the membership and wanting to get involved early. That's not that common in the commercial world that people jump ahead, you know, people often like to wait and go slow to see an excitement is really cool and it's a good sign.

39:16It'll still take time to roll through everything. But the energy and like how people are talking seems really positive. Anything I see people trying to speed up their involvement so that at least it's looking like it'll be in your infrastructure sooner still takes years to move things on to commercial buildings. So it'll be a gradual rollout. But it's at least one that I'm seeing enthusiasm and people trying to build as soon as they can. It's really healthy. That's a good. Looking at like the certification, is it we're getting to like the weeds and the nitty-gritty on the Apple stuff, some trying to pin things down with, so company goes and gets a lock certified with a lero with matter, right? They can go through the the what is I always forget the like the cross compatibility lab. What is that? The interop valve. The interop see interop. I'm like close. They go to the interop lab and they're able to get the certifications then the badges for like we're set up a home which is Google assistant all that kind of stuff, right? Good. Is a lero going to be the same way? Can you get certified with a lero and will that give you the, you know, worked with

40:19home key badge or the matter badge or is there, how does that certification work? Because there's like, there's matter and there's a lero and then there's obviously you can't talk to like apples, plans on like their side of things, but just where that home key piece kind of fits in. So I want to know like if if a lock is coming out with a lero, will it then effectively support home key or are you really going to need to wait for Apple Google Samsung to actually implement a lero on their platforms, which as of now, there's been no like timeline or confirmation from those companies other than we will. So are we, you know, say a lot comes out with a lero tomorrow, where, where are we going to kind of stand in terms of usability with at least Apple platforms? Yeah, I mean, I think the goal of a lot of the standardization means that if you can go set it up, it generally works. So then it's usually on the setting it upside of it because that's the part that leans on something like a matter, right? So and if you look at how the CSA has traditionally done certification systems, we, you know,

41:22we have a, we'll have a whole certain lab in program, we have a, there's a test harness in system with an automated suite, say with a lero to go and do a bunch of this stuff as well. And that's so we can have an easy to build but well enforced baseline to make sure that it actually works well. The protocol solid, right, stuff like security, right? It's very important to have a good baseline for. So I think the building blocks are there to go and easily interrupt and sort of claim for other stuff. I can't speak to how they'll interpret or do stuff for their own marks or things like home key, right? But is that part of like that certification? Like if you do an allero certification, will that get you your Apple home certification? How like I just put my mind around that of where the allero cert lies versus the matter cert and then individual ecosystems on top of that. Yeah. So I can't speak to what Apple's going to do with their own certification. Like every company still has to make their own choice in their own declaration on that. I think it would be easy for them to follow in what they've done with matter and build on top. I think all the infrastructure on the CSA side is there, but it's still going to be their

42:25own choice and how they do that. I think we'll want to be well integrated with the rest of the stuff, make it easy to do multiple search at once from the CSA and an interop lab perspective. So we're trying to basically learn well from our sister standards and build on top. I think we've been very thoughtful in that piece, but then the company and like how they grant, say like home key or something like that, that's always going to be a them choice. So we'll have to watch out for how they comment on that. I don't know of anything that I can comment on or share for that they've said, but I'm hopeful. I think the bones are there to do similar things of what you've seen, but that's that's their call. If the lock was coming out, do you think yours is different? So I can't bug you about last lock because it's more on the commercial side. But you know, pick another company that is coming out with a consumer facing lock. Do you think those brands would then still have to go and get or would they just likely go and get at home key certification separately as well, just so that these aren't issues because if a level or if a Lyro lot comes out, I want to know if it's going to work.

43:28And we don't end up with a situation like the air purifiers that were, you know, a matter of air purifier didn't work in Apple home, even though Apple home supports Apple home native air purifiers. So I'm hoping that we're not going to be in a situation like that. We're going to have a first of Lyro lock hit the market and then you can't use it with Apple home and home key, even though it would kind of support those things by themselves if they were native. Yeah, I mean, I think from my impression of it is that all the big home ecosystems and the phone OEMs are paying attention. I think they're going to have thoughtful answers on this stuff, to be honest. So the impression I get is that I think we'll see very good support adoption. People will be clever and what to ask to make sure people move quickly and that this is easy. We'll have to see how it sort of echoes out and through. But my guess is that this is going to be an honestly pretty pleasant journey, especially because if you go look when a Lyro was announced and how much time we spent on making sure there's a good foundation, right?

44:28There is a certain program, we took a little more time to mature that. So it's also been time for people to prepare and have thoughtful answers. So I think that sets up for a good answer. We'll have to see how it goes from them and where sort of how the players play out. But just even the number of announcements, as far as people talking about a Lyro support and stuff that already does support home key, I think that's a good sign. Be where it goes. I hope that helps give a good sense, but that's just the best I have. I have that I could say. I think so. I'm just trying to avoid weird situations with compatibility as new stuff launches. So like trying to get those nitty, weird edge case scenarios and how all these, because no one really wants to talk about them, because they just want it to be easy. But then you get those weird situations. But at least we do have a lot of lock announcements. So like I know the least ones that I was able to track down the Ikara U400 is already available. And that is promising to get a firmware update for Lyro. Nuke is teasing their upcoming Nuke keypad to NFC with the Lyro.

45:29So you'll be able to get NFC tapping with that one. X thing is the ultra lock latch seven pro that was announced at CES. That should be coming. I think Q1 with the Lyro, the Avia Aurora. This was announced at the end of 2025. And that's coming with the Lyro support, I think, at launch. Quick set, Halo select plus that's available now, getting updated with the Lyro level touch, have a lot pro both getting a Lyro and then the Schlegge sense pro smart dead bolt announced at CES 2025 and coming this year with the Lyro, because that one like specifically like they were waiting for a Lyro. So I know they were hoping for that last year, but I'm sure everybody was, are there any other ones you can think of? I don't know what what last locks again on the commercial side, but what if you guys had any of your own specific announcements for hardware, but are there any other big ones that I may be missed in that list at all? I think you've hit some of the biggest ones that mean there's the commercial world that I think has stuff starting to pop out like on our side. We're just waiting for our final certifications on everything.

46:31So hoping everything goes through and that completes out, but we're involved with all the search programs and also you'll see that as part of our stuff. And then I think you'll see, I think you'll be seeing more pretty quickly. I know there's already talk all over the commercial world about different announcements. I've seen some stuff made by a few different companies already. And there's actually a few quotes out there actually from several like reader OEMs and lock OEMs on the commercial side. So I'm seeing stuff already on their end as well. So it's looking good. It's exciting time. I'm hard to see several things. And that's rare on the commercial side that people are up front. It's great to see. Realistically, when do you think we're going to start seeing the first locks actually ship? So say someone right now is like they're looking for a lock. How long do you think they should wait to get an earlier one that's coming out? For many one. Yeah, good question. Yeah, it's hard to say because product stuff. But I mean, my guess is you'll definitely have plenty of options this year. And I bet you'll see some options in the first half of this year pretty easily.

47:35Just because of how hungry the companies have been to go and push, someone's going to solve and push and make sure there's options right away. Because the search program and all is there. I think people are talking all the main pieces are it seemed to be in place to go and do this, right? The matter support. So I think you're going to see stuff pretty shortly. I keep a very close eye out, but I'm off to tell leave it to the companies to announce, but everything I can see it looks like you'll have good options in this half of this year. That's good. I mean, the lock space is just in general has been pretty cool with with UWB coming out. I'm excited to see a few more UWB options. I know Lero is not going to be only UWB, but just the U400 is so stupid. Cool. It just works so so dang reliably and so easily. It's going to be really hard to test anything else again. Like when I switched to something else, I know my wife's going to hate it when she's going to come home and it's not going to unlock and she's going to have to like tap her phone or watch. And it's going to be a short lived experience. I'm sure until there's more UWB ones hitting the market.

48:39So Lero, for Apple users, we're going to see increased adoption of just like these new smart locks with NFC, home key, UWB kind of stuff going on. We're going to see hopefully increased use of this contactless technology across commercial spaces. What are any other benefits you can think of in general for specifically like Apple users out there? Yeah, I mean, there's a stuff we already said about. I think it speeds up having a lot more of the taps that you use for like something like the Waller experiences all around. You'll see there's some stuff already out there, but this is exactly the type of thing we need on the commercial side to help speed up adoption and make it frankly far more accessible to buildings. So I think that's going to be an awesome thing. It's just going to show up more in the other parts of your life. I think the other big piece that I would say is I think this really makes it a lot easier to do like guest and sharing experiences. We know we're thinking about those things when we went through this. We don't we don't explicitly solve some complex guest model for it, but I think this is the type of piece that lets people do cross ecosystem sharing. So I'm really hopeful to see that

49:40as a thing. And I think this really encourages that kind of experience explicitly. So I think that's that big one that I'm hoping to see coming out before too long that we have an awesome way to help like different people like I'm an iPhone user, but they have a sibling who has like an Android having the easy setup for them to get in or a grandparent, right? That's awesome. I want to be able to share guest passes with people and it not be clunky, you know? I think this is exactly set up to help with something like that. And so I'm very excited about that piece specifically. It will actually. So that is a huge deal, I think. I use them as examples on the show quite frequently, but my notorious neighbors who are Android users are some of our best friends. And there's always those weird things like that. Like for a while, I couldn't like I wanted to be able to give them like some MagSafe chargers. And they're like, well, what is this? I can't do anything with this. And they're finally getting some MagSafe cases, you know, now they're phone support G2 over there. But when it comes to like smart locks and stuff, yeah, there's never been a really, I hate having to say, okay, well, I have this brand. So download the app, create an account,

50:44do this, do that, send me your email because I who I like, I don't have my friends email, and then have to give them access like through the app. It's so complicated. And then Apple, ages ago showed home key sharing where you could just have your wallet have been literally hit message and just send it to somebody. And they'd be able to then use that until you provoked it seemed so cool. Then that never shipped so far. In my mind, it's hopefully because they were waiting on kind of a lero as that foundation to get done before starting to build on it. Because like you said, I don't want to just share with an iPhone user. I want to share to anyone. I want to be able to text that to my neighbors and have Android support to consume it and make that experience easy. So that would be that would be huge. But like you said, I know we had this conversation earlier last week. A lero is just that piece in the middle so that the actual the wallet, the interface, the cards, the sharing, all of that is on ecosystem and the that side of things.

51:51It's on the Apple and the Google and the Samsung to figure out. And so far, we don't have anything from any of them on how that could potentially work. But I'm glad that you at least kind of like laid the foundation with the anticipation that they would hopefully do something with that. I think the tools are there and then it'll be up to the companies and what makes sense and how they do that. But I think it's important that we give them the tools to go do this stuff. And especially an open standard way, I think makes this a lot easier, right? Like it's a lot easier to use Wi-Fi to go about and do stuff. Like can you imagine a world where like I had to have a different app for a different building or something I went in to to use the internet, the awful, right? I think I like having the infrastructure to do it and I'm excited because I'm sure we'll have good experiences that come out of this. It's it does a lot of the upgrades to how we run. So it runs more like your internet browsers and all. It's I think it's the infrastructure upgrade we've upgraded. We've been needing on a lot of this. I'm excited to see what people build, especially the experiences, not just the tech. It's going to be so cool. There's so there's so much stuff coming.

52:52It's always a great time in the smart home world. There's always something, you know, especially behind the scenes of like that is cooking. Some things take longer. We waited for matter. We waited for a Lyro. Now we're waiting for home key sharing with our Android friends. But hopefully one day all of these things kind of shake out. And also anything you want to kind of end with here, anything else you want to leave us with, anything at all, Lyro matter, whatever you got. Yeah, I'm just excited to see the home ecosystem evolving. And as an Apple user, I'm quite exciting. I'm quite excited to see where this all is going. I'll give a fun little shout out actually to a phone case that I've been living recently. I haven't checked it out. It's a little Mac Retro. It's the one. This has been awesome. Big fan of it. Just been playing around with it the other day, but a little tech and just fun little callback strongly recommend but haven't a blast. I saw those. And I think they even had like a retro, a lanyard or something that they also were like offering with it. I think what I think is funny is like so they just did it because

53:55so first off, designed the case for people listening. It just literally looks like an old school Mac. It's got like that beige color to it. Got the squared off corners and like the textures. Little kind of like they did like the Apple logo like the colors, but if this vegan logo in the colors, it's really cool. It's so neat. And I think what I think is funny like outside of this case, how kind of like trendy the square corners are sometimes on cases. Like I've seen many case companies offering case like case mate had one that did like went really popular and viral that just they call like the block case or something. But I've seen a bunch of them. How do you feel like the square corners versus the round? Do you feel like it's any more less comfortable? You know, I think I played around with the block one my once again that same brother and mom mentioned earlier. He has that same that same case made fun of them at first and it's kind of slowly grown on me. I like the block with just a little smoothing. So I think this version of it has actually been my favorite one so far, but it's a little bit funny. I never

54:58would have thought that was going to catch on. Like I don't know. It's just one of those things where like I never would have thought about it and all of a sudden I'm seeing a ton of people with it. And I'm like, what when did this happen? Am I old now? Like and the youth decided that rectangular corner was more I don't know, but I do like it on the speaking one. It's just cool vibe for sure. Okay, I will put links to everything that we talked about in this episode in the show notes. You can follow me. You can check out the IQ review. You can check out everything about a Lero and the new the lock so far that have been like confirmed to be announcing at least on the the residential consumer side of things. I'll put links to the actual announcement for Lero as well. Nelson, thank you so much for hanging out today. This has been great. Like I'm very excited for Lero. It's one of those it's an it's an announcement that feels a little not hollow, but it's like it's here. We've been expecting it. We knew what it was. So it feels a little bit like kind of that like it's like here, but there's nothing really to show for it yet. So I'm going to be

56:02very excited when like the the first lock start supporting it and we start to see that experience built out more, but this is a great step for this to start shipping for locks to start shipping with this. So I think it's going to be great. Thanks for inviting me. It's been a fun time. Absolutely. Anytime everybody please do what you guys do best. We're revamping. We have a new name give the podcast a five ten hundred star reading on your podcast. Play your choice. Watch the video version of this. It's still at youtube.com slash home kit insider. Keep in that old URL at least for now. You can leave me any questions on the video version of this freaking email me android apple insider.com. You also find me on all the socials. Andrew underscore OSU is mainly it. Otherwise, we'll see you guys back next week.