The Technical Difficulties Podcast

Ever wondered who actually breaks robot mowers before you buy one? This week we sit down with Scott Grahams, one of the most active independent robotic mower beta testers in the industry, with hands-on time across Yarbo, EcoFlow, The Goat, Toro's prototype, and more.

We get into:
- How Scott went from a lawn care business owner to an unpaid robot beta tester
- The real difference between RTK, LiDAR, and VSLAM navigation
- Why durability — not features — is still the industry's biggest problem
- The most requested (and most disgusting) feature every brand keeps hearing about
- What happens when Kickstarter promises don't match reality
- Whether robotic mowers are actually worth the price tag

This episode is packed with insider info you won't find in a spec sheet.

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

What happens when the smart home meets the backyard? In this episode, Pete, Brandon, and Vince sit down with Dustin Green, Weber's Head Grill Master, and Marc Mariny, Director of Product Management at Weber, for a wide-ranging conversation about outdoor cooking, connected grills, and the future of backyard tech.

We cover everything from gas vs. charcoal vs. pellet grills, to the smart features built into Weber's Summit, Genesis, Searwood, and new Smart Charcoal grills — including the Weber Connect app, temperature monitoring, probe-based cooking guidance, and a first look at Weber's upcoming integrated wireless probe system. Plus: Dustin shares the science behind why marinades don't actually penetrate meat, and why your 20-year-old Weber is basically indestructible.

If you've ever run out of propane mid-cook or wondered whether your grill could be smarter, this one's for you.

🔗 Weber: https://www.weber.com
🔗 Weber Connect App: https://www.weber.com/US/en/weber-connect/

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

What's it really like to test every smart home product on the market — when your job literally never turns off?

We sat down with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Senior Reviewer at The Verge, for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about living on the bleeding edge of smart home tech. From the robot mower debate ("this season, maybe"), to humanoids at CES that literally fell on her, to why she thinks she has the worst smart home of anyone she knows — this episode covers everything.

🔗 Find Jen's work at theverge.com/authors/jennifer-pattison-tuohy
🔗 The Verge History Podcast — current series on Amazon Echo history, with a 
   full smart home history season coming soon

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💡 This episode is sponsored by Zooz / The Smartest House.

Most smart home devices are about convenience — the Zooz Titan Water Valve Actuator is one of the few that can actually save you from financial disaster. It mounts to your home's main water shut-off valve and lets you automatically or remotely turn off your water the moment a leak is detected. Works with leak sensors, vacation modes, Home Assistant automations, and more.

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

Robot mowers have been around for years — but bad reviews, boundary wire headaches, and yards that just didn't cooperate held most people back. That's changing fast. This week we sit down with Todd from Worx to dig into their latest robot mower platform, Vision Cloud, and find out whether the technology has finally caught up to the promise.

We get into how Vision Cloud works (no boundary wire, no local antenna), what RTK and VSLAM actually mean for your lawn, and why four-wheel drive is a bigger deal than it sounds. Plus: who should actually buy a robot mower right now, and who probably shouldn't.

📌 Learn more about Worx Vision Cloud: worx.com

❤️ Support the Podcast

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

What if your TV could automatically answer a video call from your daughter — no buttons, no tech confusion, no missed connections? This week we sit down with Costin Tuculescu, CEO of Onscreen Joy / Joy Living, the company that debuted their AI companion "Joy" at CES 2025 and is quietly building one of the most interesting products in the aging-in-place space.

We get into how COVID sparked the whole idea, why "the best interface is no interface," and what it actually looks like to design tech for someone with early-stage dementia. We also accidentally wake up Joy live on the podcast — and she handles it better than we did.

📌 Connect with Onscreen Joy:

• TV product: joyv.ai
• Daily check-in calls: joycalls.ai
• Tablet app: Search "Onscreen Joy" in your app store
• Organizations & senior living: joyliving.ai

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

Did you know your Nest or Ecobee might actually be dumbing down your 
mini-split — and costing you money? This week Pete, Brandon, and Vince 
sit down with Victoria Garcia Massimo, Director of Sales & Business 
Development at Airzone, to uncover the missing link between modern 
inverter HVAC systems and your smart home.

Airzone doesn't make the heat pump — they make it smart. Through 
relationships with 200+ HVAC manufacturers, Airzone's control modules 
speak the native protocol of your inverter unit, enabling true 
per-room zoning, proper efficiency control, and deep smart home 
integration that a standard thermostat simply can't deliver.

We cover:
→ Why Nest and Ecobee can't properly control mini-splits & heat pumps
→ What inverter technology is — and why it changes everything
→ Per-room zoning: independent temperature control for every zone
→ Do heat pumps actually work in cold climates like Minnesota?
→ Rebates & incentive programs available in New England & Canada
→ Smart home integrations: Home Assistant, SmartThings, Google Home, 
   Alexa, Savant, Crestron & more
→ Matter certification and Apple HomeKit coming to Airzone
→ The future of HVAC — are furnaces going the way of the V8 engine?

🔗 Learn more about Airzone: https://www.airzonecontrol.com/na/en/

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💡 This episode is brought to you by ZOOZ — the go-to source for 
powerful, reliable Z-Wave smart home devices. From motion sensors and 
smart switches to safety sensors and DIY relays, Zooz has you covered 
— and backs everything with an industry-leading 5-year warranty.

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

Pete, Brandon, and Vince welcome Josh Wallet from Josh's Smart Home YouTube channel for a deep dive into what a fully realized, family-friendly smart home actually looks like in practice — including the wins, the fails, and everything in between.

Josh shares the story behind his channel, including the five-year wait just to get approval to start it due to his day job's outside employment agreement, plus the painful early days of hard drive failures, glitchy exports, and uploading an entire unedited bloopers reel by mistake. The crew swap creator horror stories before getting into the good stuff: Josh's impressive custom home build in Pennsylvania, complete with a 14-seat home theater, a basement bar with two TVs, and a smart home stack that has evolved over years of real-world family use.

The conversation goes deep on Josh's Home Assistant setup — from motion-based lighting throughout the house and Lutron Pico remotes as manual overrides, to geofencing all five family members for smarter automations. Josh shares his favorite automation of all time: a Z-Wave water shutoff valve tied to leak sensors that once stopped a bathroom sink overflow from becoming a full drywall disaster. He also breaks down his math on how much time home automation has actually saved his family — we're talking 200-300 hours a year in light switches alone, and 700 hours total when you factor in the Yarbo handling mowing, snow blowing, and vacuuming.

Of course, the Yarbo hasn't been perfect — it ran over a small tree, ripped a slide off the kids' playset, and Josh famously remote-controlled it from his CES hotel room in Las Vegas while his wife watched the driveway get cleared back in Pennsylvania. They also get into the home theater lighting automation that still hasn't been cracked, why Josh ditched SmartThings out of spite, his commitment to more honest reviews in 2026, and Pete's pitch for using smart home automations to nudge the 22-year-old out of the house.

📺 Find Josh:
YouTube: @JoshsSmartHome
Website: joshasmarthome.com
Travel Channel: @joshwallettravels  

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

Recorded live at CES 2026, Pete, Vince, and Brandon sit down in person with Ryan from the This Smart House YouTube channel for a wide-ranging conversation covering the smart home landscape, the realities of being a part-time creator, robot mowers going completely rogue, and whether AI is coming for all of our jobs.

Ryan shares what he's been up to over the past year — including a new role as Head of R&D at Ramsey Industries, where he's building the company's first IoT-connected crane product. The crew digs into his Home Assistant tutorial series, including Matterbridge setup and Tesla integration, before going deep on the state of robot lawn mowers — debating RTK vs. LiDAR navigation, sharing some hilarious mower-gone-wrong stories, and previewing what's coming from Yarbo and others in 2026.

The conversation shifts to the creator side of things — how to stay consistent with a day job and family, the real struggle of ADHD and project follow-through, AI tools for content production (N8N, Gemini for B-roll cataloging), and Pete's ill-fated secret YouTube channel experiment. They also break down what stood out at CES — from Samsung's senior care smart home tech to the AI buzzword fatigue hitting the show floor — and close out with a genuine debate: will AI eventually replace content creators, or will authenticity always win?

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

📺 Find Ryan:
YouTube:  @ThisSmartHouse  
Instagram: @thissmarthouseyoutube

In this episode of the Technical Difficulties Smart Home Podcast, we sit down with Brett White from Eufy at CES to talk about the future of smart home technology.

Eufy has become one of the biggest names in smart home security and automation, with products ranging from AI-powered security cameras to robot vacuums and home monitoring systems. In this conversation, we explore what makes Eufy’s ecosystem different, how artificial intelligence is shaping the next generation of smart home devices, and what new innovations may be coming soon.

We also discuss the broader smart home landscape, including device ecosystems, privacy considerations, and how companies are approaching automation in modern homes.

If you’re interested in smart home tech, security cameras, robotics, or the future of AI in the home, this episode is packed with insights from the show floor at CES.

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY

What if your smart home devices never needed batteries — ever? In this episode recorded LIVE at CES 2026, Pete, Brandon, and Vince sit down with Danielle Hicks, VP of Marketing at WePower Technologies/GEMNS  to learn how their energy harvesting technology is about to change the smart home game.

GEMNS converts tiny movements — a button push, a switch flip, a lock turn — into enough energy to power a wireless signal. No batteries. No wiring. No maintenance. And it lasts forever.

We cover how the tech actually works, their battery-free Z-Wave leak detector (the first device certified under the new Z-Wave Long Range 2025b protocol), what it costs, and where this could go — from smart home sensors to industrial applications to aging in place.

Is it real or science fiction? We were skeptical too. Then she explained it.

Learn more about GEMNS: https://gemns.com

Support the show and get the best deals on Zooz smart home products:
👉 https://www.thesmartesthouse.com?sca_ref=6284708.sXoXFTZinuqY