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260-05-20-16 – Alexa? How does DIY home automation work? | John Effinger Program Coordinator with AT Missouri | Barry Elbasani, Supervisor, Independent living & VR Counselor
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JOHN EFFINGER: This is John Effinger, AT Program Coordinator for Missouri Assistive Technology.
BARRY ELBASANI: This is Barry Elbasani with vocational rehabilitation, independent living supervisor, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana with your assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 260 of Assistive Technology Update.
Alexa, Alexa, how does do-it-yourself home automation work? Well, this show is scheduled to be released on May 20 of 2016, and we are going to get with John Effinger who is the program coordinator with Assistive Technology Missouri, and Barry Elbasani who is the supervisor at Independent Living and VR counselor in the state of Missouri. We are going to talk about this. We are doing a special episode today where we are going to get under the hood with how you can use things like Dropcam and Nest and Amazon Echo and WeMo and Sky Bell and Phillips Hue and all these cool new home automation technologies that are generally designed for the general public but are being used by people with disabilities to do some amazing home automation stuff.
This interview came out of the blue. I was fortunate enough to be asked by the state of Missouri to come out and do the keynote talk at their assistive technology conference recently. While I was there, I had a chance to meet with these guys and enjoy their session on do-it-yourself home automation and thought I had to share this with my audience. We are not going to do any other news stories or anything else today except spend some time with John and Barry and some of their real-life case studies about how you can do home automation in a really cool and interesting way. Without any further delay, we’re going to jump right into this very interesting interview.
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WADE WINGLER: Did you ever wonder what you should do with your iPhone to get all the information off of it before you traded in or get rid of it? Have you ever thought about the challenges related to getting from a power wheelchair into an airline seat using one of those transfer chairs? These are some of the questions we address in our upcoming episode of ATFAQ, which is a list of the Technology Frequently Asked Questions. If you like this show, you might like to ATFAQ. Check it out at ATFAQshow.com, or wherever you get your podcast.
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WADE WINGLER: So if you listen carefully, you will hear in the background some cheesy saxophone music and the sound of glass elevators going up and down because yes, folks, I am in the bar of a hotel lobby. That’s important because I am at the Missouri Power Up To the Summit Conference which is an AT conference that is put on by the folks who do independent living and assisted technology here in the state of Missouri. I am so excited today because I have John Effinger who is the program manager with AT misery and Barry Elbasani who is the supervisor of independent living and VR counselor here in the state of Missouri. Frankly, I’m flattered because they asked me to come and be the keynote at their conference. We gave a fun talk about the past, present, and future of assistive technology. But before that, I was in a session where John and Barry were blowing my mind as it relates to do-it-yourself home automation. They were using some stuff that I have seen before, some stuff I haven’t seen before, and definitely using this technology in a way that was new and interesting and mostly effective. We are going to get into that a little bit.
Now, there is a quick disclaimer I want to put at the beginning of the show here. We are recording this in April 2016. It will probably come out in May 2016. The technology we are going to talk about today is some of that rapid changing stuff, so the context of what we talk about today is important because, if we listen to the show a year or two from now, we might listen back and say well, that’s really different and that’s really changed. A little disclaimer on the fact that what we are talking about is sort of fast-changing technology.
Gentlemen, first of all, thank you so much for hanging out with me today for your presentation this morning. I’m excited to have you on the show.
JOHN EFFINGER: We really enjoy doing it and we appreciate the opportunity to be on the show today.
BARRY ELBASANI: awesome opportunity, as always.
WADE WINGLER: This morning, we saw some video, and you guys spent about an hour and a half going into some technical details of what we are calling in that session do-it-yourself home automation. It includes stuff like nest technology and Amazon technology, WeMo We are going to go through a whole list of really cool stuff here. Barry, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you guys were trying to accomplish with this project about do-it-yourself home automation.
BARRY ELBASANI: Just to give you a little background, obviously we can’t see through the microphone. I’m C56 quadriplegic, complete injury. I work for the state of Missouri and I’ve done a lot of work with John. He and I have had the opportunity to partner up on some different projects. This particular project began with the conversation, really simple conversation, how do you do this at home? How do you turn on a light? How do you open and close the door? Which resulted in what we ended up doing this morning which was our presentation.
WADE WINGLER: John, tell us a little bit — now you’ve been on the show a time or two. You’ve also been a fairly regular guest I think on AT FAQ. We sort of consider you one of our regular folks who contribute to our show. Remind folks a little bit about what you do for AT misery and then talk a little bit about what you and Barry were working to accomplish here and some of those baseline technology assumptions that you guys had to make at the beginning.
JOHN EFFINGER: I basically work in nerd world for AT. We have a huge library of assistive devices, and we are always trying to stay current. Off-the-shelf has really been an area that we try to focus on because we realize that a lot of apps, a lot of devices are becoming more and more accessible, and we really just wanted to pilot it and see if it worked. So the home automation piece, we’ve been dabbling with that with we mow and nest, with Alexa, and we really wanted to pilot it to see if it really does make it different for someone.
WADE WINGLER: So not to pull the punch line, but does it?
JOHN EFFINGER: I’m going to say yeah. There are some caveats to it, but I think overall with some fairly continuous tweaking. Barry, what do you think?
BARRY ELBASANI: I think the process has been amazing. To come into my house — and we will get a little bit more into it. You work all day, you come home, you’ve got someone in your face in the morning, a caretaker. You’v got someone in your face at night, a caretaker. To have those three, four, five, six different things to do on your own just by using your voice. You only have so much energy during the course of a day, so if we can use the technology that is out there to make our day a little bit longer, give us a little bit more energy, I think in the end that’s what this project did for me.
JOHN EFFINGER: For me, I think something that kind of surprised me is what Barry said. I took for granted something as simple as turning on a light from an independent standpoint. I took for granted his being able to pick a radio station using his voice. I took a lot of those things for granted the, and as we were doing this project, I realized there are more things we can tack on to make his house more accessible.
WADE WINGLER: So I’m going to take a quick second in postproduction and I’m going to drop a little bit of audio in from a YouTube video that you guys produced. Barry, it includes you bossing your house around a little bit. I want my listeners to get a little feel for what those commands are like and then I’m going to ask you guys to tell me what was the magic behind the curtain with all that stuff.
BARRY ELBASANI: What a long day. It’s so hot out there. Alexa, set the hallway temperature to 72 degrees.
ALEXA: Setting hallway heat to 72.
BARRY ELBASANI: Alexa, turn on light one.
ALEXA: Okay.
BARRY ELBASANI: Alexa, turn on the kitchen light.
ALEXA: Sorry, the device “kitchen” is not responding. Please check its network connection and power supply.
BARRY ELBASANI: Alexa, turn on light two.
ALEXA: Okay.
BARRY ELBASANI: Alexa, what’s the weather going to be like this evening?
ALEXA: There is a freeze warning in effect, Tuesday, April 12, from 4 AM to 9 AM. The current weather is 56 degrees with clear skies and son. Today you can look for intermittent clouds with a high of 57 and a low of 33.
BARRY ELBASANI: Alexa, turn on 96.5 The Buzz.
ALEXA: The Buzz, from TuneIn.
[Music]WADE WINGLER: Barry, you obviously got your house to do most of the things you wanted it to do in that audio. Can you guys tell me a little bit about what technology was happening behind the scenes there?
JOHN EFFINGER: Let’s walk through it. When Barry first comes into the house, he immediately asks Alexa to change his thermostat. Alexa, Amazon Alexa, is a really cool device that is a really good bridge with other off-the-shelf home automation. In that particular case, he was using Amazon Alexa to control his nest thermostat on his wall. A lot of people don’t realize this is not Alexa changing the temperature, it’s actually nest, but Alexa is talking to nest. Up until three weeks ago that was really that easy to do. This changing thing we keep talking about, newupdates come out all the time that make it so much easier to implement. The next thing he is doing is he’s talking to Alexa through the WeMo app to turn on his lights. The funniest segment of the video is when he’s staring at me because he asked Alexa to turn on his kitchen light which is actually trying to control the Philips hue light bulb, and Alexa has a timeout problem and can’t carry out the command, but in reality does. Like we said in the presentation, the further away you get from the hub, the more trouble Alexa and Hue have. That was the furthest end of his house. She carried it out but it was still kind of an awkward moment.
WADE WINGLER: So she said that didn’t work, but in actuality it did.
JOHN EFFINGER: In actuality it did, and it works every single time. It’s the annoying part of the video because you are like, really? Again? Can’t you make it work? But that’s also part of why this technology is kind of goofy, because you have to power through those things when they happen.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. So we know that Nest was being involved there. We know that Amazon Echo is working there and some WeMo stuff. Also you guys talked in the presentation about Dropcam, which is sort of related to nest. You mentioned some things like Sky Bell and Philips Hue. Tell us a little bit more about things that are going on in your house.
BARRY ELBASANI: We also have Sky Bell which John installed. It is a front facing doorbell which also has an HD camera. That was a tough project just for the fact that there were some kinks here and there. The way you are notified that someone is at the front door comes to your mobile phone. If you’ve got it on mute or if it is off – and obviously you’re not going to be aware that the doorbell was ringing — so we had some issues there. After we got that straightened out, it really turned out to be a great product. Not only can you see through your phone who is at the front door, but you also have motion sensors that will automatically cue you. I really looked at it as a security piece that I didn’t have before. The way my house is set up, there is no front facing window. So not only does the technology give me the opportunity to see who is out there, to communicate with them, but also it is a security piece which has been important as well.
JOHN EFFINGER: One point to that. When we first started this in October 2015, we bought a bunch of stuff off of Amazon to try it. Three months later, we were like, dang, there is something better on the market already. August came out with a video camera that works with their door lock that we thought maybe we should use that. So part of this is really every day things change, and even though we bought it, we implemented it, we rolled it out to see if it will work – in some cases it worked. I will say the Sky Bell was a real bear to install.
WADE WINGLER: The physical installation of it or the more programmatic and illogical stuff?
JOHN EFFINGER: There are two things you have to do. It is an electrical connection, a Wi-Fi connection, a bandwidth connection and also a “put a very small screw through a small hold” problem, which took half an hour to figure out how to do. Every time you wanted to make an adjustment. From a geek factor, that one was a real pain.
WADE WINGLER: When you guys were giving your presentation this morning, you talked about a lot of the different physical stuff in the home that you wanted to control. But there was the thing about blinds that kept coming up. Barry, can you tell us a little bit about this whole blind situation while John sits there and shakes his head back and forth?
BARRY ELBASANI: When we first started out, and we had a discussion, one of the things that I really wanted to do was to get my front blinds so I could open them via phone or by pushbutton or will voice or whatever it be, that have some of help me to do that. That’s one of the things that was really big for me. To come home and I got a beautiful backyard with a deck, relax, open the blinds, get some sun. John had some ideas for some projects we wanted to work on, and that one, to put it nicely, kept going to the back of the list. Bring the persistent person I am, we finally did get the blinds put in. They are amazing. I’m not able to go in and come with a push button, open and close the blinds. Installation was amazing. They are also they also do not require any wiring. They actually are charged by solar panels. That’s been an amazing product as well. Really it has changed the need for me to have caretakers do one more thing. It may be that much more independent.
JOHN EFFINGER: The idea was we went barrier to use voice to control who blinds. We did a lot of research. Part of the reason I drag my feet about it is I just couldn’t figure out a non-RF, radio frequency, way to control his blinds other than using a hand controller. So we bought what we thought were all the component parts. We had the hand controller. We installed the blinds; it looked great. With a hand controller, and we kind of bought some of the music that you could use your voice to control it through Alexa, which turned out not to be so true. They are working on it and they’re going to develop it, and we know this is something that will happen in the future, but putting it all together was months of brainpower. But once it was in, it was awesome.
WADE WINGLER: I didn’t bring up the blinds thing just to bring up the sore subject so that you guys could start at each other a little bit, but the point I wanted to make was that those came from blinds.com, right?
JOHN EFFINGER: Once we figured out that there was a single source, blinds.com, that you could order with a motor, with a handheld remote, with a solar panel. Once you figured out all that Nuance stuff and — to be really honest with you I just called them on the phone and said how do I make this happen. I was kind of dumb because I waited to do that , once I did that it all came together really fast. The average person, if they call blinds.com and say this is what I want to do, they’ll do it in 20 minutes, not two months.
BARRY ELBASANI: It’s kind of like having to ask for directions or something like that. We men don’t do that.
WADE WINGLER: I think one of the other things at the blinds situation for the point out is there is a ton of stuff you can control. It might not be the thing that everybody thinks about. Automatic thermostat is something that’s becoming pretty mainstream and folks are talking about and those things. In your session this morning, you talked about lighting, you talked about blinds, you talked about thermostats. But there is a stuff you guys have figured out how to control using some of the more mainstream kind of products. We talked about a crockpot and maybe not that is a big deal , other kinds of things are you guessing that you can do do-it-yourself home automation that people might not think about.
JOHN EFFINGER: The more I think about it, and we talked a little bit about the sky bill. We didn’t talk so much about the drop cam. I really like the security piece. Being an individual living with paralysis, I may or may not have able-bodied people in the house. If I’m in a situation where someone is trying to get in, maybe some exterior cameras, sensors on the windows, those sorts of things that also can be integrated with my phone, maybe eventually with Alexa as well. I think that’s going to be a big piece for me.
BARRY ELBASANI: I think as we played around, we realize this is a never ending project. We looked at the I robot vacuum as an add-on. We looked at automatic garage door openers that were motion sensors. The security thing, getting the different outdoor’s cameras. There are a lot of cameras but they are not outdoor cameras. So this is an ongoing, never-ending Amazon experience.
WADE WINGLER: We talked about at the beginning of the show that it’s changing all the time so the stuff we are controlling now will be different just a few weeks from now. John, we talked a little bit – or you talked a little bit during the presentation about If This Then That, or what’s being called IF more often. That adds a whole new layer of both complexity but also functionality. Can you give us a little bit about what is happening with IF?
JOHN EFFINGER: That’s a whole geek level of being able to create recipes that allow individuals to connect things. If I want to connect my Gmail account with my Phillips shoe Bob, so whenever I get an email it flashes red, I can do that via a recipe via IFTTT. But you have to embrace the idea that you’re connecting things that were never intended to be connected and experiment with them and try them out and see if they’ll actually work. But once you figure it out, there is a whole host of stuff that you are already using that you can connect with other things. It’s a big deal. I think I get 50 percent of them to work when I try.
WADE WINGLER: My expenses been sort of like that. I’m excited about the fact that you can tie if this than that to your smartphone which is in geolocation sensitive. It would be hard at least in theory to say, when my wife leaves the house and dries more than two miles away, shut off the island that her curling iron is plugged into, something like that.
JOHN EFFINGER: For me, the whole idea that Barry could leave his house and his HVAC system will automatic shutdown, he doesn’t have to think about it, his lights could automatically shut down, the minute he gets in his van and drive out the door he does not to think about what he turned off or turned on. Did the security camera come on, not come on? Is just automated through that deal fencing idea that the minute he leaves his house and pulled into his driveway, it all magically comes back on again.
BARRY ELBASANI: Not to mention that even if it wasn’t, for whatever reason, automatically done, I can look at my phone and monitor the camera, or if there was a remote light that didn’t go off, I can still turn it off for from my phone being away from home.
JOHN EFFINGER: I have to tell you about a funny experience, and you can cut it if it doesn’t have time. I have a nest cam and Alexa is so unbelievably sensitive that it can pick up, even when you are a voice is very faint, so I try to talk to Alexa remotely via my nest camera because it will play my voice through the camera. I got the ring to light up but she would carry out the command. With that taught me though is if I can figure out a way to broadcast my voice through my house, then I can turn some stuff on remotely. I think that is the next level for me to geek it out a little bit. I don’t ever have to use my phone. I can just talk to Alexa remotely far away.
WADE WINGLER: That’s a good trick. I use that to freak my kids out a little bit, that they think their dad is always washing them. I hadn’t thought about doing that with it. Obviously this of cost $1 million a piece and a very hard to find, right?
JOHN EFFINGER: Everything we show today was under $200. Alexa right now, $179. The WeMo stuff is $50 a pop. Phillips shoe I think is $79 and it comes down every single day. We figured you can out a house for $1500 and really maxed out a house for a couple grand. So if you’ve piecemeal it, which is what we did, little bit at a time, in a year you can pretty much automate the whole thing.
WADE WINGLER: We talked about this a little bit, but it wasn’t smooth, the entire process. There’s been some learning that has happened related to this. Were there any sort of consisted areas that were frustrating as you guys were working with the stuff? Were there areas where the technology is right now that you want to see it get better, where you think a year or two from now, the thing that made us not isn’t going to be a problem anymore?
BARRY ELBASANI: I think going back to the Alexa commands. I think as you get to a second or third generation, I think those things are going to be ironed out. At this point, sometimes when you’re speaking with Alexa she may not understand the question, you may not be able to do the function that you’re asking. Yes and no. There were some headaches here or there, but John was so efficient at setting up the things he did and the way that he put these products together. We really haven’t had a lot of issues. It’s been a very smooth process.
JOHN EFFINGER: But to that point, Barry wracked me a lot because I have to be Uber focused every time we did and install. If we started talking baseball and I lost track of what code I was entering, it dragged it out an hour. So we got to a point where we can talk to each other because I just had to power through it.
WADE WINGLER: But clearly not a technology issue. That’s a dude issue. As you look into your crystal ball, what kind of things do you think are coming down the road soon with the technology? Or if you have the ears of the developers of the Terry’s products, what kinds of things would you put on their build lists, the stuff you want to see the step do in the near future?
BARRY ELBASANI: They keep putting out products that make a person more independent. There is a wide array. Some people have talked about holograms and those sorts of things, and now with the virtual printing and that sort of thing, who knows what direction that can go to help individuals with mobility issues or disabilities. Those are a few off the top of my head. I’m not the tech geek here. You might want to ask John this question.
JOHN EFFINGER: I think the thing for me is keep making systems for the mainstream. Because when you do, geeks like me can convert, modify, adapt. Look at Amazon echo, the fact that I think the voice-recognition quality on that is brilliant, but I was able to utilize that to do home automation. I can do that with someone who is nonverbal, who uses a communication device. That opens up a whole new world of stuff for people, and it all off the shelf that you can buy. What I say to manufacturers is keep making stuff for everybody and let’s figure out how to work for everybody.
WADE WINGLER: We’ve had a great time hanging out with you here at the conference in Missouri today and also in your session and learning about what you’re doing with do-it-yourself home automation. If people want to reach out to you guys for additional conversation to learn more about what your work is looking like these days, and as we move into the future, what kind of contact information would you recommend?
JOHN EFFINGER: They can contact me at john.effinger@att.net.
WADE WINGLER: John Effinger is the program coordinator with AT Missouri, and Barry Elbasani is supervisor of independent living and VR counselor. Gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
BARRY ELBASANI: Thank you so much. I think what you’re doing is great. I hope we continue to move forward. I’m looking forward to it.
JOHN EFFINGER: It was great.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124, shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for a transcript or show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.EasterSealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this plus much more over at AccessibilityChannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.