We start out this hour with Tony Nicolaidis, Chief Commerical Officer at Origin Ai. Origin’s WiFi Sensing™ technology and custom applications transform smart devices into virtual sensors for a true intelligent home ecosystem — transforming the way we work, play, and keep our homes and loved ones safe. We dive into this new technology and how it can help you in your home. For more information check them out here: https://www.originwirelessai.com/

We then sit down again with Roy Novosel, VP-Engineering in the Northwest, Comcast and talk about their new Storm Ready Wifi System: https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/stormready

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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[00:00:27] Eric Goranson: So you can have that wifi signal, no matter if you've got power or not. We've got so much ahead that I don't want you to miss. If you need more info about the show, head over to around the house, online. com, where you can catch everything about the show, the podcast, the radio show, and of course around the house, Northwest, the television show.

[00:01:02] Intro: This is around the house. You

[00:01:11] Eric Goranson: We've got Tony here from origin AI. Welcome to around the house.

[00:01:18] Eric Goranson: be here. How are you good, man? I love what you guys are doing out there because, you know, we went through this period of smart home stuff and it got kind of crazy, right? Where your rice maker was giving you the weather and stuff like that, that had like no value to things.

[00:01:41] Tony Nicolaidis: Absolutely. You know, um, and it's funny that you say that because sure enough, the smart home is Is evolving a lot of the stuff before was maybe not adding a tremendous value amount of value, but it had more of a cool factor.

[00:02:14] Tony Nicolaidis: So that's really what we're all about

[00:02:28] Tony Nicolaidis: in your house today, in all of our homes and all of our businesses, we've got wifi.

[00:03:00] Tony Nicolaidis: Our technology and our AI understands what the, the disturbances mean. So for example, if you're just moving, uh, in a room will know you're moving. If you're sitting still and breathing, we'll know you're breathing. If you've fallen, we know you've fallen. So it. There are characteristics of the disturbance in the Wi Fi that we understand, know, and contextualize

[00:03:26] Eric Goranson: Man, so that can be from something to sensing a light turning on in a room as you're heading over that direction to making sure, you know, grandma is safe in her home when she's the only one there. You got

[00:03:41] Eric Goranson: got it. That is great. And so, you know, it's funny.

[00:03:57] Tony Nicolaidis: vertical of ours. We have basically, uh, [00:04:00] three verticals, uh, security, Home security, uh, network service providers and increasing their value and what we call smart spaces.

[00:04:27] Tony Nicolaidis: And all the connected devices you have in your home already, no need to buy extra plastic need to buy anything extra. So we can do that in a very, very lightweight manner and give the homeowner security and peace of mind matter.

[00:04:49] Eric Goranson: We see in the movies where you got the laser lights around the art installation, right? You know, it's it's funny, right? Everybody's climbing through it doing and I don't want to get step on anybody's [00:05:00] movies But you know, we've seen that a million times in the theaters But it's funny. This is actually going to be a you know, a 360 degree thing in every level of the house

[00:05:23] Tony Nicolaidis: So believe me, uh, there's a place for everyone. There's also a place for what we call very, very lightweight security model that allows us to, uh, give the homeowner a way into home intrusion. And be able to see what's going on in their home without having to do that. But there is going to be a place for

[00:05:42] Eric Goranson: Yeah, no kidding. You know, it's if, if somebody has got that 25 million, you know, 25 million piece of art, there's a place for that. You better believe it.

[00:05:57] Eric Goranson: don't want all of that. That is cool. So, you know, [00:06:00] this is an emergent, emerging technology.

[00:06:06] Tony Nicolaidis: So we already have, uh, we've already launched, uh, with, uh, Verizon, a massive partner of ours in the Northeast. Uh, we are now in all of their Fios routers and, uh, we are, um, uh, now in those homes with a great product called Home Awareness.

[00:06:38] Tony Nicolaidis: Uh, in the security space here, keep your eyes out here over the next, um, six months between the U S and Europe. So we're going to be really hitting those verticals. Like I told you, and over the next, by the time we get in the summer of 2024, we're going to be launched on both sides of the pond in all of these critical verticals.

[00:07:16] Tony Nicolaidis: And there's no more that you've got to call and sign up for it. It's there. You turn it on and it works automatically. So it's going to be a thing where over the next two years, we're going to be around you. You don't even know us. And if you want to service what we just spoke about, you can turn it right on and you're there.

[00:07:39] Eric Goranson: Nice. You know, there's a lot of concerns out there with people that don't really understand this space about, you know, their own personal security, whether it comes to, you know, we're hearing a lot of the news about AI, and there's all these different things going on, you know, how do you resolve people's concerns with that kind of stuff?

[00:08:02] Tony Nicolaidis: we don't identify people. Uh, all we know is there's a person there or there's a person not, or there's a perfect person moving or person not. Um, you know, when it comes to, so we don't really do identification of anybody.

[00:08:33] Tony Nicolaidis: Their phone, for example, but we don't know, uh, anything other than that. So it really is not an intrusive thing. The only place that we kind of follow what people do from a trend standpoint is in the elderly care portion, because they're caretakers like me, my parents are, are, are, are aging in place. I do want to know if they're spending a lot more time in bed versus in the kitchen this month versus last month.

[00:09:20] Tony Nicolaidis: And that person's doing the other. None of that is very kind of high level data that we're talking about here, but very, very effective contextual data.

[00:09:35] Eric Goranson: And if you need more information about us, head over to around the house, online. com. We'll

[00:10:09] Intro: What's up, this is Dixit India and Satchel

[00:10:12] Eric Goranson: steel Panther. And

[00:10:16] Eric Goranson: house

[00:10:20] Eric Goranson: Eric G and you

[00:10:29] Intro: Welcome back to the

[00:10:47] Eric Goranson: So let's get back to this conversation. And then after we're done with this interview here, we're going to be talking. With, uh, Roy Novosel from Xfinity and another interview, we're going to be talking about storm ready wifi. So when your power goes out, [00:11:00] you still have that internet connection, which is great for you guys working from home or the kids still wanting to watch stuff.

[00:11:23] Eric Goranson: You know, how do you resolve people's concerns with that kind of stuff? Because anytime there's new tech out there, that's the 1st red flight that comes up. People go, whoa, whoa, whoa. What does that do for my

[00:11:45] Tony Nicolaidis: We don't, we don't do that. Uh, our customers own all all all the data, the horizons of the world. We don't really touch the data. And then on top of that, like I said earlier with the intrusion detection, um, when I said, we recognize somebody walking in [00:12:00] what I meant by that is their devices, right? That, like, the router at home will recognize.

[00:12:30] Tony Nicolaidis: Uh, or change in their habits. And that's because me as a caretaker, as their son, I want to know that that's the only place that we get a little bit more, um, uh, more detailed in how we track, but for the caretaker, it's what they want, right? Like me, for example, but we're not identifying people. We're not, we're not, uh, saying, oh, this person's doing that.

[00:12:57] Eric Goranson: contextual data. You know, that makes a [00:13:00] lot of sense because, you know, Tony, when I look at this, taking care of my mother, for instance, she's in her mid eighties and she's three and a half hours away.

[00:13:14] Tony Nicolaidis: and you would have that nobody else, right? So, um, that's the only place that it gets detailed. Other than that, it stays at a very high level. We're not going to be in a, in a position you can't wifi sensing will not be able to identify me versus you.

[00:13:30] Eric Goranson: impossible. Absolutely. That is great stuff. And, and this doesn't require a lot of other hardware within the home.

[00:13:47] Tony Nicolaidis: For example, in my house, I don't know how many connected devices you have. I have 14 connected devices in my house between smart TVs, couple of Lexus, a couple of smart speakers, whatever they're in my house, the average in the [00:14:00] U S a 17, uh, average, and we know that's only going to grow. So you already built.

[00:14:22] Eric Goranson: lightweight, you know, that is great stuff.

[00:14:46] Eric Goranson: It's heading that direction, right? Wow. We could turn the lights on there or wow. They're never in this room. Maybe we don't have to heat and cool this room as much. I could see where

[00:14:59] Tony Nicolaidis: And I [00:15:00] can tell you understand what we do because these everything you've mentioned today are use cases. We're working on turning the lights on automatically when you walk into the room, and then you can set the time on your watch on your phone when you want to turn the lights off a minute after there's no occupancy, um, managing energy, which we know is a massive issue with, um, with everything that's going on globally.

[00:15:25] Eric Goranson: next year, and that is great. And I think that's the biggest challenge with people right now is that so many people out there, you know, especially even in my audience, they like to get kind of started with the smart home stuff.

[00:15:51] Tony Nicolaidis: by the way, this won't be another app you have to do because let's say if you're a Verizon customer, you go to your Verizon app.

[00:16:15] Eric Goranson: And you think about doing like HVAC stuff out there now that we're seeing all these zone systems and you're seeing many split heat pumps where you've got 4 or 5 different units in a house that could really give you some energy savings by just noticing who's in what room and who's not.

[00:16:31] Tony Nicolaidis: mean, think about it. Um, you know, every time you knock down 1 degree, whether you. Thank you. Keep it one degree warmer during the summer or one degree cooler during the winter because somebody's not there. That's you can reduce your heat or air conditioning by 3%. Think about that. So it's money right in your pocket and you're not running electricity.

[00:16:55] Eric Goranson: that. We can make an impact. Yeah, and that's a big deal right now, especially when you look [00:17:00] at power companies right now that are really trying to stop that usage around the house, because, you know, if they can bring down our usage and be more efficient than that.

[00:17:18] Tony Nicolaidis: That's why I think we, our purpose really is to make millions of people's lives easier, more secure and safe

[00:17:31] Eric Goranson: This is going to be smart for people out there. I like it. So, Tony, I got another question for you here. When it comes to, you know, builders and remodelers, what are your suggestions out there so that we can be, you know, bringing homeowners into this early on, instead of having to, you know, a homeowner goes in and buys this brand new track house.

[00:17:57] Tony Nicolaidis: You know what, that's an absolute opportunity that [00:18:00] we're looking at because it's, it's, it's, it's 1 of the single biggest opportunities Eric to make the smart home a real reality.

[00:18:29] Tony Nicolaidis: Boom. They turn it on. They don't have to buy anything. They don't have to do anything. Automatic coverage. They can get their security system from there and it makes it very, very, very impactful for the homeowner. And more importantly, I think it's another revenue generator for the home builders. So

[00:18:46] Intro: we'll be right back.[00:19:00]

[00:19:01] Eric Goranson: the metal cowboy from Keel, the Ron Keel band and Steeler. We are rocking around the house with

[00:19:09] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the round the house show. If you want to find out more information about us head to around the house. Online. com. Now we've been talking about wifi sensing and how this can help you in your home.

[00:19:40] Eric Goranson: And. They bought the smart home package, a smart home package ended up being all stacked, not installed in the top closet of the whole closet. Cause that's where all the locks and the, and the light switches were. And when they went to go hook up their internet, they forgot to put the fiber optic to the house.

[00:20:16] Eric Goranson: It

[00:20:30] Eric Goranson: them and they're going to call it.

[00:20:48] Eric Goranson: You know, fiber optic speed. Into someone's home using that old material that they had going into the house. You

[00:21:12] Tony Nicolaidis: Look what you just said about Comcast. Now, how's their competition going to react? And it puts a lot more pressure on their You know, profit loss, and they need other value to expand their services becomes even more sticky to their customers. And that's where wifi sensing and origin comes in. This is why we've the largest network providers in the world.

[00:21:41] Eric Goranson: service providers. You know, that's great. I can't wait to see what you guys are doing because, you know, it seems like, uh, in 2023 and even last part of 2022, that interoperability between companies is actually starting to happen.

[00:22:13] Tony Nicolaidis: Yeah. And, uh, those are the walls that need to come down so that we don't have 800 apps on our phones, like we said earlier, right?

[00:22:25] Eric Goranson: yeah, and it's going to be really fun to see this because I think we're just getting to that point. And you guys are a big part of this. Of that big point of us taking our, you know, I mean, our dial up back in the day, right with insert that noise.

[00:23:02] Eric Goranson: Remember when you actually had to touch that light switch? Remember when you actually had to adjust that? It just didn't do it automatically.

[00:23:24] Tony Nicolaidis: So if we're going to replace that light switch, we got to be as good, if not better than that. And that puts a lot of pressure on our engineering team, but very confident we've already done it. And we can do that kind of thing where we can replace those kinds of things like switches.

[00:23:45] Eric Goranson: And there's some, uh, I tried one out and not going to be negative with this, but it just shows that how people out there that are pushing in technology, right? That, you know, I had it in my closet and in the middle of the night, it would just automatically turn on. And I'm like, [00:24:00] awesome. This is cool.

[00:24:11] Tony Nicolaidis: Look, high tech is, is, uh, it's, it's always a risk. And, uh, it's always, obviously it's high tech, so it's complicated. Uh, and, and, and the battle you have, uh, Eric, I'm sure you've heard about it is when do you launch is your, does your product need to be perfect?

[00:24:44] Eric Goranson: what you're doing.

[00:24:59] Tony Nicolaidis: of ours, [00:25:00] Eric, especially in the security space, because. Uh, one of the biggest reasons why, why the security companies churn customers is because of false alarms.

[00:25:29] Tony Nicolaidis: There's something that's not human there, uh, and not human could be pets. It could be an oscillating fan. It could be a curtain moving because the air conditioner, uh, just turned on whatever. So we have a human non human. We call motion classification. We spent a lot of time on that. That's launching in January coming up next on 2 months and, um, it's going to it's going to take this.

[00:25:53] Eric Goranson: That is exciting stuff because, yeah, I think there's nothing more frustrated and false alarms. And, uh, it's something that a lot of the old [00:26:00] school companies deal a lot with with the wind blowing a door a little bit. And the sensor goes off right there, or somebody doesn't shut that door all the way and the wind blows and it's open.

[00:26:15] Tony Nicolaidis: got it, man. All these things are reality. Yeah. All of these things are reality in the security industry, and we want to try to eliminate false alarms.

[00:26:27] Eric Goranson: You know, there's a big difference between the dog walking across the yard and grandma can't get up off the ground because she went to pick something up and isn't strong enough to get back up into our Walker, for instance,

[00:26:46] Tony Nicolaidis: The worst thing, you know, so, uh, you know, taking care of. The people who are elderly around us is really critical.

[00:27:04] Eric Goranson: Is that you hoped that, uh. You know that she was able if she, if she got in a situation where she couldn't do something, as in my mom, that she could hit a button. But now, for instance, my son who's got some medical issues, he's got seizures and stuff, which is well under control, but he's got a watch now that they can sense it before it happens.

[00:27:30] Tony Nicolaidis: and our goal is to, let's say, a mother or a son, whatever, is not wearing their watch or their pendant. Our goal is in the house. You don't need any of that. We'll know. If you, as long as you have wifi in the house, we'll know.

[00:27:49] Eric Goranson: find out more information

[00:28:03] Tony Nicolaidis: And one of our team members will be back to you very, very shortly. Uh, and if anybody wants to reach out to me, they can, uh, just reach out to me directly, you know, through, uh, uh, tony. nicolaitis. org and wireless.

[00:28:17] Tony Nicolaidis: Thank you very much.

[00:28:19] Eric Goranson: a great day. Don't go anywhere. Coming up next, we'll be talking with Roy Novosel from Xfinity. about storm ready Wi Fi, so you've always got a signal around your house.[00:29:00]

[00:29:03] Eric Goranson: show. Now drinkin down people, it's time

[00:29:16] Eric Goranson: It is storm season for us. This is that time of year that we fight power outages and everything else. Today, we've got my friend, Roy Novosel from Comcast Xfinity, and we're going to talk about something I actually tested last week, myself, their new storm ready wifi system, welcome back to around the house, my friend.

[00:29:35] Roy Novosel: you, Eric. A pleasure to be here and appreciate you inviting me back to

[00:29:54] Eric Goranson: So, uh, hats off to you. It kept me going. That's awesome.

[00:30:15] Roy Novosel: And so that's why we launched that product. And it's just, I guess you could say it adds on to your existing packages. Um, and the only thing you have to do is buy, buy, um, one of those storm ready wifi packs from us and there's no additional charge, uh, to get the service.

[00:30:37] Eric Goranson: How does this work? So

[00:31:08] Roy Novosel: I don't know if you're familiar with our X5 pods. It works the same function and fashion.

[00:31:14] Roy Novosel: the power goes out and you lose connection or you lose Wi Fi within the home, it picks up and becomes the primary gateway. Instead of being a secondary gateway to your primary gateway. So, and that's where cell tower picks up, uh, off that, off that connection and,

[00:31:35] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Mine was early in the morning. It was a tree around the corner that, uh, Just had a little bit too much wind came down, took a bunch of lines down. And, uh, I tell you what, when the power went out, I went, oh, and usually what I would do is I would go out and, you know, it's early in the morning. I didn't really want to wake the neighbors up and be that guy out there starting up my loud generator.

[00:32:12] Eric Goranson: It worked awesome, and, uh, it's on another floor of the house, and, uh, it worked great. So it was something that, uh, I didn't think I'd be using so quickly, but, uh, it is, it is something that I tested and it worked well. Well, it's,

[00:32:31] Roy Novosel: And, uh, I mean, other than just power outages, you know, that down tree probably took down our hard line as well, too, on the Comcast side. And so this

[00:32:42] Roy Novosel: service into your home. And so that's what's really neat about it's not just for when you have a power outage, but.

[00:32:54] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. And it's no fault of the power company, you guys. It's just Mother Nature at work. And we've got to have those [00:33:00] trees out there, right? Yeah, that's

[00:33:07] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. And by the way, those squirrels are no friend of my wife. I usually, but you guys do a good job of keeping that working. Yeah,

[00:33:18] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you guys have been doing a bunch of system upgrades out there as well. Let's talk about that for just a 2nd, because.

[00:33:31] Roy Novosel: great. And the Pacific Northwest, we're, we're about 40 percent of the way done. We're going to finish out the year,

[00:33:40] Roy Novosel: entire Pacific Northwest. And about the same percentage in the state of Oregon, where you're located, Eric, and in your neighborhood, just recently got the.

[00:34:09] Eric Goranson: 0, which will be will will bring a true symmetrical speeds to you.

[00:34:27] Roy Novosel: That's right. Now, I think the last time I was on your, your, uh, your show, I talked about how it's like construction and I'm sure you notice in your neighborhood, even though we were in there swapping out electronics.

[00:34:42] Eric Goranson: so, probably none whatsoever, and we're just in and out of there and half a day and you're up and running. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I noticed a couple bucket trucks down the road at a couple key spots working on stuff, obviously swapping out hardware, but there was nobody [00:35:00] knocking on my door.

[00:35:16] Eric Goranson: And why the storm ready? Wifi makes sense. And where these faster speeds. I mean, every time we turn around, our TV speeds are streaming. And, you know, we're adding all these new pieces of smart. You know, to our home and, uh, that connectivity is a big deal and we got to have the speeds to go with it, especially with all the kids out there that are streaming the stuff off YouTube at 4k and everything else.

[00:35:43] Roy Novosel: the, the initial offering is 2 gig, but we can, the DOCSIS 4. 0, DOCSIS 4. 0 standard that's be coming to your neighborhood in the next year or so will get us all the way up to 10 gigabits. So, it's, it's a, it's an amazing technology [00:36:00] that we can still get amazing speeds out of our, I guess you say, incumbent co actual network.

[00:36:18] Eric Goranson: it's simply just doing electronic

[00:36:28] Eric Goranson: the standards just keep evolving and we just get better and better at getting more and more out of the coax.

[00:36:50] Eric Goranson: You might as well use it. That's right. That's right. And we have fiber

[00:37:10] Roy Novosel: It doesn't go over very

[00:37:14] Roy Novosel: got to dig up everybody's yard and then replace the line to your home and many times rewire your home as well, too. But I can do the same thing with the same throughput, the same latency. As far as to the home and not have to do any of that ground disturbance.

[00:37:36] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah, because there's just so much land to cover out there with so many people. That's a. I would be a big undertaking. So, Roy, how do people track you guys down if they're interested in getting this storm ready?

[00:37:51] Roy Novosel: Well, there's two ways that you can either find us online at Xfinity. com. You have all our products on there, and you can upgrade through our [00:38:00] app if you prefer to do that. Or you can visit one of our retail stores, one of the Xfinity retail stores. They have the, the, um, so you can take it home right there, and you can walk in the store and say, Hey, I'd like your Storm Ready Wi Fi, and the retail agents there will hook you up, I guess you could say.

[00:38:21] Eric Goranson: the device, but you're going to own it completely and or you

[00:38:34] Eric Goranson: folks want to be prepared. Yeah, I think it's a must have for the kids that are working from home doing the school work to the parents that are doing the same thing out there trying to get into the office on those days that the storms are out there.

[00:38:53] Roy Novosel: Thank you for the invite. Appreciate

[00:39:02] Eric Goranson: com and make sure you can catch the TV show over on that website. As well. We've got a lot of clips up there. If you're tuning in on the podcast catches next Wednesday for a midweek special and on the radio, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next weekend. Thanks for tuning in to Around the House. Have a great holiday season.