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

What if your smoke alarm could turn off your stove before a fire even started? That's exactly what Pete Thorp and Larson Webb built with Fire Avert — a smart home device born out of Pete's years as a full-time firefighter responding to the same preventable kitchen fires every single shift. In this episode, they break down how the product works for both electric and gas stoves, walk through its Z-Wave and LoRa connectivity, and share real-world data from a 5,000-unit apartment rollout that saw kitchen fires drop from 18 per year to just 2.

We also dig into their Shark Tank appearance, the AI-powered system they're building to predict which apartments are most likely to have a fire, and some genuinely wild firefighter stories along the way. If you're serious about smart home fire safety — or you just want to hear two firefighter-turned-entrepreneurs talk shop — this one's for you.

Fire Avert is available at firevert.com, Amazon, and Lowes.com. Zooz ZEN55 Smoke & CO Detector Bridge mentioned in this episode can be found at thesmartesthouse.com.

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

🎥 Check Out Our Channels

Pete: https://www.youtube.com/@UCrd5f8FlkYrZYcfgosM7IAQ

Brandon: https://www.youtube.com/@UCpZYk1Lmqna3TKUnGIq1FIg

Vince: https://www.youtube.com/@UCU_ZANWReE8h0nL0GXPcH1A🎙️

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

Season 5 is HERE — and we're kicking it off in-person! Pete, Brandon and Vince are back from CES 2026 with their honest takes on everything they saw on the show floor.

In this episode we cover:
🤖 Robot lawn mowers that FINALLY trim the edges (Yarbo, Navimow, Ecovacs & more)
🧹 The Roborock Saros stair-climbing vacuum — does it actually work?
🔗 Matter protocol — progress or more of the same?
🧠 AI in EVERYTHING — what's real vs. marketing hype
📷 AI-powered security cameras from TP-Link, Reolink & Eufy
🏠 Aging in place tech and smart sensors
🤯 Switchbot's wildest products yet (e-ink art, tennis robot & more)
👓 Smart glasses, body cams & wearable AI
🤖 Humanoid robots: fighting, dancing & why we should be concerned
🧊 Companion robots — cool or creepy?
🏔️ Is CES still worth it? Our honest verdict after 5+ years

🎥 Check Out Our Channels

Pete: https://www.youtube.com/@UCrd5f8FlkYrZYcfgosM7IAQ

Brandon: https://www.youtube.com/@UCpZYk1Lmqna3TKUnGIq1FIg

Vince: https://www.youtube.com/@UCU_ZANWReE8h0nL0GXPcH1A🎙️