Brian: Welcome to the Daisy Integration Advantage podcast. We are on episode seven here with our guest, Eric Fritz from Control 4. Very honored guests. as a Control 4 integrator, I'm excited to have you on. Been a Control 4 integrator for a long time. Eric, I'm gonna let you speak about the company because there's gonna be a lot of our audience that are unfamiliar, but just as many that are familiar. So, and I'm sure a lot of people are gonna watch this episode because they saw. Control four is the guest. And would really want to talk about the history of the company and sort of where the company's going. we've got our friend and constant co-hosts Nick Mark and Bert Herrero here with us. we're not all in the studio together today.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you guys hosting this and having me along for the discussion today. And I've I've been with the company and and working on control for for about a decade now. so it's a it's a product line and a brand that is near and dear to my heart. It's something I'm incredibly passionate about. And and it solves major Pain points and usability issues for homeowners, users, dealers, and and frankly, designers alike. and really control four in its simplest form is a unifier of technology for consumers. when you think about someone who is purchasing or building a new home. and they care about the technology platforms throughout their home, whether that is a pool in the backyard, whether it is an outdoor TV or an audio system that's distributed through both outdoor and indoor zones, whether it's their connected ecosystem of cameras, giving them peace of mind through circ security and surveillance. Whether it's their A V throughout their home, the TVs that they use, maybe they want a theater room. the trend in our space today is that more and more
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: devices are being connected in newer homes. The the number of connected devices is going up and not down. And control four, at its heart, you know, twenty years ago when it was founded, was to begin to take those connected devices and simplify them into one interface for the owner of that smart space. And the beauty of that is one app, one interface, regardless of whether they're picking up their own mobile phone, whether they're picking up a touch screen that's in their kitchen, it gives them their technology and their experiences at their fingertips. and it does more than just allow them to turn on and off a TV or to adjust the volume in an audio zone. It also allows their home to frankly adapt to the way that they live. So we can customize automations. if they have a routine that they like to go through every morning in terms of the way the lights come on, the audio that they listen to while they're showering, the you know, the lighting scene that comes on at home when they arrive you know, at the end of a a work day. we can do all of those things. via custom programming. And that's been the hallmark of Control 4 since its inception, but it's also a bar that's continuing to be raised in in our DNA as a brand over a number of years now. We talk about user personalization. And that's one of the things that my team and and I manage the control four product team at at the ADI organization. That's what we're focused on. every day? How do we how do we deliver more personalized experiences and more customized experiences in a way where technology disappears in the home and people are allowed to live in a way where their technology just serves them?
Brian: Right, right. And it's Go ahead, Nick.
Nick Mark: So yeah, so you know, curious, Eric, with you know, you've been there ten years and seen evolutions and what wha what's changed? How is the how's the company morphing over these years? I I I get that the core competency is is pulling things together and and integrating, but I'm sure there's been changes. So can you walk us through that?
Eric Fritz: Lots of changes. one of one of the benefits that we have is that if you talked to a customer 10 years ago about connected technology in their home, they might talk to you about wanting audio in certain rooms of your home. They might talk to you about wanting a TV outside so that they could watch the game. today, if you ask. Homeowners that same question, you're getting a much more discerning response. I want a connected doorbell. I want the ability to have surveillance cameras around my estate. I want connected smart energy so that I can, you know, see my energy usage, but then also have the ability to turn off lights when I'm not there to conserve energy. Like there's there's just so much. more there's a higher bar of discernment on the homeowner side from a technology perspective than there ever has been. And what that's done is it's been great for us because it's raised awareness of smart homes. but at the same time it's set the bar even higher in terms of the experience demand. So what's different today is that we're delivering software and experiences at a much more rapid pace than we were ten years ago. We had these huge monolithic software packages in an OS where a customer would have to wait, you know, six to nine months to be delivered value in terms of new features. the way our software stack has evolved over time is we're allowed to, you know, and able to deliver continuous value in biweekly app updates to a customer where they can, you know, we can reinforce the value of that initial investment. by continuously improving the experience, on a much more frequent basis than we were able to you know, even five years ago, let alone ten years ago at this point.
Nick Mark: See and I'm sure AI is of course factoring in there in some way. How is how is that being incorporated?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, I think AI is definitely a hot topic right now. it's you know, frankly, if you work in the technology space and you're not being asked about AI, I have a lot of questions. but we think about it through two lenses. is is kind of our strategy. One is internal development side. How do we leverage AI tools to get faster? at the frequency by which we can deliver customer value. So some of those tool sets are we are able to break apart, you know, what would have been traditionally massively complex projects and streamline the delivery a little bit and and come to market faster with the same level of quality and reliability that customers have come to expect with control four, which is a great thing. It expands our test cases. We're able to do more user testing. there's there's all kinds of benefit on the internal side. On the external side, on the customer value side, there's also an expectation. Large language models are becoming you know, more frequently understood and part of people's daily lives. my wife, I feel like every time I look over at her, she's talking to Chat GPT about, you know, some question. That she has in her daily life. People want to be able to talk to their smart homes that way, right? Like those are those are simplifiers for customers. and we believe that. and what control four has the power to do, we have the largest breadth of third-party integrations in the connected smart home space. We have north of 30,000 drivers in our catalog of you know different device types that we can talk to. and integrate with. the ability for a customer to naturally talk to any of those devices through a control for experience, whether it be a voice, text, et cetera, to link across those is where we feel like we can deliver huge value. So we're in the early innings of that, but you're gonna see us speed up in that area over the course of the next, you know, six to twelve months, essentially.
Brian: The roll outcome
Nick Mark: Is that
Brian: with first party devices or are you guys looking at third party integration with that as well?
Eric Fritz: So that's a great question. we view third party integration as a core competency in our platform. It's one of our frankly our bench strengths. Our third party driver certification program is I think what makes us so appealing to a broad audience of consumers, because if you already have connected devices in your home, control four can still be a good fit 'cause chances are we integrate. With those devices already. We want the right system design, of course, but there is an element of, you know, with our library, you know, we give more choice to the consumer than other control portfolio brands. And that's still going to be a core competency. So when you think about the integration of AI and large language models into our experience, we fundamentally believe that that has to hook into our entire driver library. when we do so. So that that's that's our philosophy and that's how we're gonna, you know, continue to develop going forward.
Bert Herrero: So thinking of, you know, all that you guys are doing and have done, right? And all the innovation, listen, big control four guy as well like Brian, been doing it for a long time. love the product line, love all the innovation. I love the breath of the third party, you know, driver base that we have available to us and and the availability of open API, because sometimes we just have to create and write our own crap, right?
Eric Fritz: Sure. Yeah.
Bert Herrero: My my real question is, and this is probably more to the, you know, part design partner crowd, right? Why control four over other companies' products out there? It seems like other companies have come to the table already with voice integration and the ability to do these things within their own platform, granted. why control four?
Eric Fritz: Yeah. it's a great question. I think it comes down to consumer choice and kind of our relentless approach to end customer experience. and when I say that, I mean it not only from the experience that an end customer gets in their mobile application on their phone. There are absolutely great voice experiences that you can enable there. and large language model experiences that you can enable there. I think what sets control four apart is the breadth of our hardware and software offering together. and I mean that inclusive of our lighting controls, our native touch panels that can be placed around the home, our remotes, our video doorbells, they all Not only do they enable these experiences at a level where I believe our competition will not be able to play, but at the same time, they're every single one of those is brought to market with a design focus in the way we develop those products. I'll use a couple examples. We just launched our new T5 touch screens earlier this year, which we're super excited about. and and By the way, we're not even close to done with the software delivery that's going to be included on those for some of the experiences going forward. But not only is that a touch panel that looks great on the wall and contains our brand new X4 UI with all sorts of user personalization features. But it's also a a piece of hardware that that can be molded and modified to designer constraints. We have trim rings that can be matched to any of the lighting in your home. We have new finishes of those trim rings beyond just, you know, the the 11 plastic colors that we offer. but we're gonna have new finishes to those as well that will match things like metal trim rings on our lighting devices as well. But if you go down to the standoff from the wall. the color matching, the industrial design across our touch panels, our Lux lighting, which you can kind of see over my shoulder here, our video doorbell products, which we've got some great stuff that we're gonna be showing at at CDA as well. all of that is brought to market with the same industrial design language so that Number one, it's all been verified with designers as the best possible fit in terms of industrial design for today's you know, discerning client trends and tastes. But it all works well together. you don't end up looking like you've got a touch panel from one company, a lighting control device from another company, and you get into this what I would call like a wall acne scenario. This is all intentional. It's made to look together and it's made to look like it's part of a control four home. Okay.
Nick Mark: Interesting.
Brian: I think that speaks to the, you know, the benefits too of of of having a a a platform in your home. is your pane of glass for a lack of better terms, right? Like having a single app and a single interface, instead of having five different apps that you jump through to manage
Eric Fritz: That's right.
Brian: your the smart technology in your home. And I think that that's obviously cascades into your your design aesthetic. I mean, I mean everybody wants to try to achieve that, but it takes a lot of market research and a lot of a lot of time to to come together on that stuff.
Eric Fritz: And I think
Bert Herrero: lot of trial and error.
Eric Fritz: yeah, that that's for sure.
Brian: Right. Years.
Eric Fritz: And and I think the other piece of it that's worth mentioning, outside of just the hardware and the form factors, is we also give personalization choice to the homeowner after the install as well. Right. Our latest operating system and UI contains features like home screen, which is designed explicitly For the homeowner to be able to put the six things that they use the most in the system on the screen that opens when they when they open the app every time. It's a central repository that can be customized by, you know, of course, you know, Daisy and the integrator on initial handoff, but the customer can make tweaks to it after the fact, which is also unique to our brand and our portfolio. Where we're giving them the option to own their experience going forward. We want them to get the best that they can out of the system. We want them to be able to do simple routines and automations and and be able to set up their home screen and their landing page in a way where they're gonna get the most value out of their system. and that's ultimately our goal is to to have frequent users who are huge fans of the platform. you know. both not only a day zero initial install when you hand that off, but years down the line after that as well.
Bert Herrero: Since we're talking about usability, d are you at liberty to discuss a little bit about softwares that are up and coming?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. I think I I always have to be careful with how much I divulge on the software side. but a couple quick hitters that you know you'll see later this year and really on a regular cadence. The beauty of our software stack now is that we're able to launch new features every two weeks, essentially. We don't always have a new one every two weeks, but we can release On a two-week cycle. we have you know, as you think about what X4 represented from our brand, it was built on three pillars. user personalization, interoperability, and then what what we call system usability score, or the ability to do things easily and intuitively in the app. And we have direct metrics on. How many clicks it takes you to execute a scene, how many steps it takes you to accomplish what you're trying to do in the session of an app. And we delivered a host of software with the X4 launch that improved a lot of those things. But I would say what we're in right now this year is the polish phase, where we've got a number of new things. We introduced widgets as part of user personalization. which was a great step forward. It allowed you to have all of your recently played audio items directly on your home screen. It allowed you to have you know, lighting scene widgets directly on your home screen. you could do temperature controls for your thermostat directly from your home screen, all without having to drill into individual experiences when we talk about that system usability score. Our next step is to continue to build out that library. So just recently we launched a brand new widget called the Weather Widget. We're working on widgets around shades and colored lighting controls. We're working on brand new routines, which are simple automations that a customer can set up around new experiences. So routines involving shading control, things like that. So there's a pretty robust library of of things that we're setting up. And it's also going to include things like first-time user experiences so that when you hand over that system to a customer, we're guiding them through what their home screen can look like as opposed to you having to do all the legwork to get them up and running for the
Bert Herrero: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: first time. So that's a little bit about what we're working on. I talked a little bit about large language models. We have a number of new hardware products that we're going to be showcasing at our CEDIA event here in a couple months, which is going to be accompanied by software updates. One of our big focuses in the back half of the year is what we call our security experience. So the ability to today in the control for app it's you have the ability to view your cameras. what if from those camera views you could view AI event notifications directly from that live view? Here's what here's the catalog of things that has happened. person detection, animal detection, package detection, all directly from that live screen. and then also what do I do about that? It's great that I saw a person at my front door, but I want to unlock the door. Or I want to turn on the porch light or any of those things. So now we're also gonna be adding what we call quick actions to those screens, which can be configured and set up by either you or the end customer so that they can just quickly you know, I I use the example if somebody was walking around in my backyard last year, I would have to look at the live view. Then I would have to go to the history agent to find where and when that happened, view the recording. And then after that, if I wanted to do something about it, like play a recording or turn on a light or something like that, I would go into a different part of the app. Now you can do all that in mere seconds directly from one screen. So it's
Bert Herrero: That's awesome.
Eric Fritz: about it's about reducing the friction of delivering smart home value to consumers.
Bert Herrero: Make sense.
Brian: Will some of that be done through routines and everything? yeah. Customer facing. Yeah.
Eric Fritz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll be able to set up routines associated with it. you have the the cool thing is they can be single time actions. You can set up a routine. if you just have the three things that you know you like to do from that camera view, you can set up those buttons directly there. it's a it's an elegant solution and it's a big elevation versus what we have today.
Brian: It's awesome.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. I my favorite parts are the home screen and the routine. So, you know, I remember it wasn't long ago actually that my wife's like, How the heck do you walk up to that touch panel, press one button, and the music plate turns on? I'm like, that's because you're always in the kitchen screen instead of the home screen. I have it right one button, everything
Eric Fritz: That's right. That's right.
Bert Herrero: on. And then and then she's like, Honey, I keep going in the garage and the lights turn off after like I don't know how long. They just turn off. And I'm like, Because I'm tired of you leaving the lights on. So I created a routine
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: to turn the light off.
Eric Fritz: And you're actually you're actually hitting on something that's another core principle that we're focused on. it's not, you know, it's not like a tomorrow delivery like some of the other things that we've been talking about. But when you talk about user profiles, or you know, you're gonna use the system differently than your wife is, right? You're gonna you're gonna have, you know, the five or six things that you do the most frequently. She might look at different things or use it slightly differently. We believe that that is a core principle that we have to deliver on as a team going forward. And that's the ability for not only at a system level to customize what you want to do, but also at a user level to be able to customize what you want to do. So that's a core principle that we have going forward that you're going to see a lot more from us on.
Bert Herrero: Sounds like a little facial recognition in the pipeline, maybe? Don't don't say anything.
Eric Fritz: That that's a good that's a good guess. Yeah, that's a good guess.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Eric Fritz: it I I would say even think facial recognition, yeah, but even your mobile device versus your wife's mobile device as well. Like there are just
Bert Herrero: Right. Right.
Eric Fritz: there are super custom simple things that we can do just to make people's lives easier. And that's our goal.
Brian: And it's been a a question that's been asked by people for many years too, with clients, is you know, hey, can I can I
Eric Fritz: Yes.
Brian: configure my app separately from my wife's or my kids
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brian: or you know, so that's that's a that's nice that that's that's been obviously thought about and it's 'cause it's been discussed, you know, many times. But it's nice that you guys are gonna eventually be able to take action on it, especially
Eric Fritz: That's right. And it and it's a
Brian: with X four. I think X four has just opened up a whole other level of possibilities. It's just such a good OS.
Eric Fritz: One one thing that is really important for I think folks to know is like X4 was it's a great user experience and it introduces some great new features. It's also a lot of really great architectural work that sets us up going forward for a lot of these kind of medier things that that people have been asking about for a number of years. user-based. Access controls is certainly one of them. And it also ties in beyond residential too, right? Like if you have a small business that you've got someone designing for where you know they want you know smart technology to be able to control their bar and restaurant, but you know, maybe they only want certain users to have access to security cameras and things like that. Like there's just the possibilities and use cases are endless, and it's critical that we deliver on that.
Brian: That's a game changer for a control for his ability inside of a commercial space too. You know, especially if you're thinking
Eric Fritz: Yes, absolutely.
Brian: about like hospitality and stuff like that. You know, common spaces in you know,
Eric Fritz: Yes. Yeah.
Brian: in multi tenant buildings and everything. So yeah, that's great.
Bert Herrero: Okay, so I'd I'd got a question and and it really I guess your l right shoulder. So over your right shoulder you got a light bulb over there.
Eric Fritz: Yes.
Bert Herrero: Talk about it.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, so this is this is a brand new product line, not just single product that that we've got here that we're incredibly excited about and that the team has been hard work hard at work on getting out the door. I'm thrilled to say as of a couple weeks ago, we're now shipping this product. but it's called Vibrant Bulbs and Recessed Trim Lights. one of the beauties of control four. Is that when you buy a control for controller, that's the brain of your system, and you can connect to a number of diff different device types that way. We include a Zigbee wireless radio on the back of all of our core controller types. that is the primary wireless communication method that we use for our lighting devices today. And our entire Control for lighting portfolio for 15 plus years now has been all about controls or the on-wall controls, the light switches and the dimmers and the keypads that you see on the wall. we have taken the same high-quality industrial design and rock solid wireless communication pathway. And we've built that into light sources for the first time. So every single one of our light bulbs and recessed trim lights that are part of this new product line communicate directly with a control for controller over our existing wireless Zigbee pathway. And why is that important? It means that when you're doing lighting design, you get a higher quality of light. So these are all these are all every single one of them LED wafers that have been designed and specified by us with wireless ZB communication technology in them. And they do both color temperature and full RGB W. We have flavors of both. and they're individually addressable. so that means that when you design a home or a system, You're not limited by the circuit that the electrical cans are on in a system. You can group these however you want in a design. If you want you know, half of the kitchen that faces a certain direction, east or west, to be at a different temperature than another half, you can do that in the way you provision and set these up. They all dim down to one percent dimming. so really, really high quality low level dimming. light. And they also are all 92 plus color rendering index quality, which is really high quality light. and why that's critical is we can mimic you know not only colors the way you think of them in terms of red, green, blue, but we can also mimic with exact specificity the color temperature of the sun and the time of day, and we can map that to the location where a project is. Circadian lighting is one of the hottest trends in home design
Brian: I was just gonna ask that. Yep.
Eric Fritz: right now. And we have a full circadian lighting integration that you can not only turn on for a customer, but they can enroll their devices in that circadian lighting schedule however they want. directly from the app themselves. so what that means is my lighting can match the time of day it is outside. I can get energy from my light in my home at the right time of day and I can unwind at the right time of day. I can wake up with the right quality of light at the right time of day. And the second you start using this in your day to day life, you will not be able to go back. I mean it is it is It's a game changer for people and seeing is believing. so this the fact that you can do it without any high voltage wiring changes at all in the home. It's literally screwing in a light bulb and addressing it in in the Zigbee network, it just makes digital lighting control and circadian lighting so much more accessible to so many more consumers. so it's just there's so much value in it. and we're incredibly excited about it. This is us dipping our toe in the water and there's a lot more to come. We have seven different form factors today.
Nick Mark: So Eric
Bert Herrero: Each one of those I'm sorry.
Nick Mark: Just quick question, Eric, just for the benefit of our listeners who may, you know, f fully understand all the behind the scenes. For these light bulbs, if you're gonna retrofit them, but you've still got a light switch on the wall, you you you you have you can
Bert Herrero: And ask the same question.
Nick Mark: you can turn off the radio, right? If you turn off the light. So what's
Eric Fritz: Yep.
Nick Mark: what's the solution there?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, so we have we have multiple solutions. so the the most straightforward is you can bypass the switch or the dimmer and wire them continuous power all the time. the even easier one for a control four installation is you can use any one of our lighting keypad devices and through the configuration software put them into what we call smart bulb mode. where you're sending continuous power through that device and you're turning it into a keypad. So you can you can bind the keypad to this in a way where you're still doing all the dimming and on and off at the light bulb, but you're keeping continuous radio power to the device itself. And that that's one that I would say since launch has been a delighter. for our dealer base just because of how easy and intuitive it is to install.
Brian: Yeah, and
Bert Herrero: Awesome.
Brian: in a re launching something that we could retrofit has been it's fantastic, right? That's
Bert Herrero: Yep. Big time. And not having to add any other type of control devices, right? Like we don't have to go with DMX gateways and bridges and, you know, decoders and all this. It just it just fits right in and so
Brian: Right. Right. Another layer,
Eric Fritz: That was
Brian: another link. Yep. Right.
Eric Fritz: That was the strategy
Bert Herrero: I was gonna ask.
Eric Fritz: in this. How how do we that we asked ourselves, we're like digital lighting control is growing, it delivers fantastic experiences, but you need to be really experienced or have a pretty deep knowledge set to be able to specify, design, and implement something like that successfully. Our goal was to take what had historically been a pretty challenging to understand category to get into and make it more accessible to more customers. And and that was our ultimate goal with this project. And I think we've delivered on.
Bert Herrero: Yep. Awesome. Are the are the bulbs or the retrofit cans are the end nodes or are they repeating?
Eric Fritz: They're repeaters, which is another benefit of our frankly our expertise in the Zigbee domain is that we were able to build these in a way where every single one of them is a repeater. And you know, for the the designers and folks listening to this that aren't as familiar with our Zigbee architecture, every single one of these that you add in a home, the system just gets more reliable. That's the that's the easiest way to think about it. And and we what it does is it also sets us up for more Zigbee devices in the future. So there's there's a a fantastic Zigbee roadmap, inclusive of third party devices now as well that are going to be able to connect to our Zigbee three network that this project only helps bolster.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. Good stuff. Glad I asked.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, it's a great question.
Brian: Well that I think that that segue's right, yeah. It that's that that answered my next question about, you know, preparing the for the next wave of you know of connected devices as well. So and it's nice to see the Zigbee adoption, you know, happening outside of of, you know, just CI where there's end user in customer facing devices that are that are working with Zigbee
Eric Fritz: Definitely.
Brian: as well, you know.
Eric Fritz: We do it's a core strategy for us to move from what I would call like our legacy control four secret sauce Zigbee. we had a Zigbee Pro stack that we used for a number of years that we still use today, frankly. and Lux Lighting along with this product is us moving into Zigbee three. and that makes it easier for third parties to connect with with our system ultimately, which is what we want. We want to be an open platform. We view that as a core competency. And the more connected devices for us, the better. That's our philosophy.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. I am I've been actually looking at the vibrant lighting and I think we had a conversation a week or two ago with Hagan and Dion and I think most of the team about lighting and and lighting fixtures. and we recognized that this had come out and I I was I'm getting ready to order some because I want to play with it. Yeah.
Eric Fritz: Good. Well we're looking forward to getting your feedback.
Bert Herrero: Want to play with it, want to get it on.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Eric Fritz: Love it.
Brian: Same. I've got some retrofit I need to do and be nice to to play with
Bert Herrero: those lamps right behind you.
Brian: yeah, those yeah, those are poor men's those are poor men's version right now. Those are just hues. They integrate well, but yeah, they're they're
Nick Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, you can throw in there.
Brian: not the same. So no.
Bert Herrero: Yeah. Yeah, the
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: product line is pretty cost effective though. As I was looking at it, I was like, Man, that's those are some nice price points to to enter something with, you know, that opens more of a opens up the retrofit world, right? Because you got a lot of these manufacturers that are really only focused on the the new construction and the bigger fixtures. And and while yeah,
Eric Fritz: That's right.
Bert Herrero: we we all want those type of projects, I mean it's hard to do a dog and pony show you know, in a retrofit project because you really don't have a lot of that type of lighting that you can put in, leave behind and go tell me how you feel. Right. In a week.
Brian: Right.
Eric Fritz: So
Bert Herrero: And I think that that was one of my biggest successes, you know, in my in my previous life, was actually walking in and doing a dog and pony, putting up 10 lights in the kitchen or in the great room or something and and just saying, hey, enjoy these and let me know how you feel. Right. and come back a week later and they're like, right, they're staying, you know, like you want to bring me new ones because I'm sure you use these all the time. Actually I opened the boxes for you. They're like, okay, we'll leave them there. You know, add more here. And
Brian: Ha ha ha.
Bert Herrero: I literally had projects where a hundred and forty, hundred and fifty fixtures were sold just because I put in ten to to start it all out. So,
Eric Fritz: Really cool.
Nick Mark: I see. I see.
Eric Fritz: We've we've heard stories like that even on the keypad side as well. You leave one keypad for a customer that you do some custom engraving with scenes or buttons on. And that one keypad can drive, you know, fifty future devices based on based on their experience with that in just their great room or somewhere else.
Bert Herrero: Makes sense. And how many I guess it's all based on wattage and we'd have to look at the wattage, but like, you know, going through some of this digital lighting and even new construction. I mean, it's pretty easy and you can still be at a different price point than having to worry about a, you know, multi-million dollar home. you can put in standard hi-hats, pop in the, you know, retrofit cans into those. and still run straight from a breaker all the way across a bunch of lights and individually address them. So there's a lot of opportunity there.
Eric Fritz: That's right. It it requires it requires essentially, you know, zero handholding on the electrical contractor side, which is hugely beneficial.
Bert Herrero: But it reduces a lot of that cost, reduces the cost of the of the control system, right, sort of say. and then just makes it really easy and and future proof because you can change your circuitry however you want, change your color temperatures however you want, and dim levels. I I think it's awesome. I think it's it's a no brainer. It's a smart play. And I think it was a it was a play that is much needed in in the industry as far as from the retrofit side.
Eric Fritz: Good. We love that feedback.
Nick Mark: Eric, how does the you know, I'm hearing so much about, you know, every couple of weeks you're delivering software and updates or firmware and all that. What's the economics of that? Is it does a client have to pay for that? And now I'm talking about the end client, or is that just part of the benefit of of purchasing a control for system?
Eric Fritz: Great, great question. so I should be clear, one of the things that we're never gonna do is force a major experience change on an end customer. what it's it's purely what I would call tweaks and bug fixes, you know, imp small improvements to experiences. as opposed to like major usability changes. Like we're gonna totally change the way audio looks in your system. We're never gonna do that without you and them knowing about that and initiating that. now in terms of continuous delivery, we we operate on what we would call like a continuous improvement, continuous delivery pipeline for our applications teams. And that means that software developers are constantly developing new features. and while they're putting code in that might be for a feature that's, you know, six months down the line, it's all hidden behind a flag where nobody's gonna see it. and it doesn't actually drive any experience change. So what they're seeing on a two-week basis is maintenance. to their system and making sure that things are staying up and running and smooth. we operate in terms of a payment to the control for system in what we would call a freemium model, where there is we have what we call a connect program, which you guys are obviously aware of today. Connect has two tiers. One is a zero dollar tier and then one is a monthly subscription cost tier and the subscription cost where they're paying what ends up being you know about two hundred and fifty dollars a year that is for services associated with cloud access and things that actually you know traditionally cost money to service over time. With the free model, they are still getting continuous software improvements. That's not a that's not a cost to the end customer. We view that as a requirement. When they buy a control or when they buy a control for system, they're getting software updates for the life of that product. So that's that's a core component of the way we think about the unit economics for an end customer.
Brian: It's interesting. And where where do you see that that moving in the future? Like what what what's your vision of of where control four will be in the in the coming years?
Eric Fritz: that's a great question. I think in terms of where we're gonna be in the next few years, I don't see it changing dramatically in terms of you know licensing structure or us charging for something that we're not doing today. I I don't forecast any changes there necessarily. what I do see though is faster iteration of development. I talked about, you know, these small release cycles where we have today where we're delivering continuous bug fixes and things like that. I do see us getting to a point where we're delivering so much value that we want customers to be able to opt in to new experiences and try them before they you know totally change their their experience. So that's something that we're partnering with fantastic partners like Daisy on understanding. Like where do we want to draw the line bef between what a customer can do in their home without contacting you versus where you want to be involved in their software life cycle journey, I would call it. And one of the things I love the most about Daisy is the concept of continuous connection with your customer throughout the life of that relationship. And that's something that frankly we're looking at ways we can build software that encourages that and makes sure that we are fostering the relationship between you and your customer so that you're able to point and say like, hey, control four just released these three new features this quarter. Do you want me to turn them on for you while I'm here? you know, it's no cost to you, but it's gonna make your experience even better. you know, th those are the kinds of things that we're pushing to to frankly deliver you know, sooner rather than later.
Brian: That's great answer. And that's I I you know, th these are questions that get asked roundabout by clients, you know, in in what the future of the system's gonna be and when they're
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: investing in something and they're turning it home into essentially into a computer, right? They wanna know what the development
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Brian: of that's gonna look like and the how the company's gonna support it. So that's that's
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Brian: a fantastic fantastic forecast.
Bert Herrero: Definitely. Good stuff.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean the discussion I've wanted to have for a while. I mean, you know, you're the first control system we've had on. and that was you know, that was not without being planned. Not that there won't be others on here, but Bert and I have both been control four dealers for a really long time. So we appreciate the product, you know. I Previous to even being in the industry when I was still in IT. I mean, I always wanted a control four home, man. That was like that was an earmark to I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna have C for a full C four home. And I do, you know, and I love it. So my wife jokes at me
Eric Fritz: Good, good.
Brian: all the time. She's like, Our kids don't even know like what light switches are. I'm like, we still have light switches, we retrofitted our home, you know, like but the the the experience that they
Nick Mark: Okay.
Eric Fritz: Yeah. Sorry.
Brian: have of living in a home that's you know got a control system in it is is it's it's pretty cool, you know. And it's it it it's a different experience, I think, for for a child growing up versus the generation maybe we grew up with with rotary phones and manual light switches, right? And tube TVs.
Eric Fritz: Absolutely.
Brian: But it's a it's a it's a bygone era. But man, it's it's exciting one to
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Brian: be in and you know, technology like control four really brings a lot of exciting stuff to the to residential luxuries luxurious and residential living in you know our Homes that we service. So it's it's nice. It's nice.
Bert Herrero: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: You you just touched on probably the most important thing that we have, which is we have to create raving fans of the users that we have today. because word of mouth referral and continuous usage going forward, that's our lifeblood, right? And we have to make sure that that Daisy and everyone else that installs control four and specifies control for from a design perspective is successful and the more great end customer experiences we can enable. it's a it's a virtuous flywheel. it grows all of our businesses. So that's what we're
Bert Herrero: Yeah. And then let me Yeah, so
Brian: You see it time and time again. sorry, go ahead, Bert.
Bert Herrero: that's all good. Talking about children, right? So
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: my son's twenty years old now and he's he's moved out because we moved to North Florida to the country and he did not want to come to North Florida because there's really nothing here for him. And I get it. Young twenty year old who's having a blast right now. So so he moves out and he moves into an apartment and he's like, Dad, I have to I have to have a key.
Nick Mark: Mm.
Bert Herrero: Yeah, Mike. Yeah. You need a key.
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: He goes, Dad, like, I gotta turn on lights and turn off lights? Yeah, Mike. You gotta turn on lights and turn off lights. And he's like, I don't get this, Dad. Like, I came in the other day and the air and the house was hot. And I'm like, What did I do? And he turned off the air conditioner apparently, you know. So
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: he's like, he's going
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: back and forth. And then the l latest one he calls me, like, I don't know. He installed it last week. So he called me two weeks ago and he's like, Dad, I can't live without a surround sound system. I need something. So he goes and he buys this, you know, JBL little, you know, thing with a subboyfriend. I'm like, take that back, please. I'm like, put leave that in the box. Don't take it out of the box. Take it back to the store. I got you, son. So I sent them a little phono surround sound system, right? And I'm like, do this. It's easy. It's good. You buy the stands. And he did. And he's like, Dad, thank you. I love this. It's back like I'm at home again. So trying to do everything
Eric Fritz: I love it. I love it.
Bert Herrero: I can to keep him really nice and fat and happy so that he doesn't come up here. I hope he doesn't listen to this
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: podcast because he does listen to all of them.
Brian: Segue on that, my you know, my kids we go to like you know, in laws' houses or something that have control four in their homes and my kids can walk right up to the Halo in in SR two sixties and they know exactly how to use them, you know. They don't need any instruction, you know. It's like they just
Nick Mark: Okay.
Brian: pick it up so easy when they've lived with it, you know. Or they they can hit a touch screen
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: and know exactly how to navigate around control four.
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: And I don't think I've ever given them formal instruction either. So I think I need to watch this. No, they don't.
Bert Herrero: I don't think they need it, you know? They just press buttons until they get until something happens.
Brian: Generation just and they just
Eric Fritz: That jokes
Brian: pick it up, you know? It's it's crazy.
Eric Fritz: aside, that's what we're after. We want the first time user to be able to pick something up and
Bert Herrero: Make it
Eric Fritz: intuitively be able to execute what they're trying to do. That's our goal. Yeah.
Brian: That's what I'm speaking to. The ease of the use of the system. You know, th th they can just pick it up. You know, you could put it in someone home the someone's home that's that's non-technical. I mean I I swear by the the the SR two sixties, man, still like for for those type of clients that are, you know, technophobes, it's you never get complaints about it, man, because it's an easy interface for
Bert Herrero: Truth. It's awesome.
Brian: Yep, that's
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Brian: it. Eric, thank you for being a guest today.
Nick Mark: Yes, thank you.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, I really enjoyed the discussion. I appreciate you guys giving me the time and the the soapbox to to talk about my ideas.
Bert Herrero: Absolutely. Been a pleasure.
Brian: awesome man i'm gonna stop the recording
Nick Mark: All right. You're welcome.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you guys hosting this and having me along for the discussion today. And I've I've been with the company and and working on control for for about a decade now. so it's a it's a product line and a brand that is near and dear to my heart. It's something I'm incredibly passionate about. And and it solves major Pain points and usability issues for homeowners, users, dealers, and and frankly, designers alike. and really control four in its simplest form is a unifier of technology for consumers. when you think about someone who is purchasing or building a new home. and they care about the technology platforms throughout their home, whether that is a pool in the backyard, whether it is an outdoor TV or an audio system that's distributed through both outdoor and indoor zones, whether it's their connected ecosystem of cameras, giving them peace of mind through circ security and surveillance. Whether it's their A V throughout their home, the TVs that they use, maybe they want a theater room. the trend in our space today is that more and more
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: devices are being connected in newer homes. The the number of connected devices is going up and not down. And control four, at its heart, you know, twenty years ago when it was founded, was to begin to take those connected devices and simplify them into one interface for the owner of that smart space. And the beauty of that is one app, one interface, regardless of whether they're picking up their own mobile phone, whether they're picking up a touch screen that's in their kitchen, it gives them their technology and their experiences at their fingertips. and it does more than just allow them to turn on and off a TV or to adjust the volume in an audio zone. It also allows their home to frankly adapt to the way that they live. So we can customize automations. if they have a routine that they like to go through every morning in terms of the way the lights come on, the audio that they listen to while they're showering, the you know, the lighting scene that comes on at home when they arrive you know, at the end of a a work day. we can do all of those things. via custom programming. And that's been the hallmark of Control 4 since its inception, but it's also a bar that's continuing to be raised in in our DNA as a brand over a number of years now. We talk about user personalization. And that's one of the things that my team and and I manage the control four product team at at the ADI organization. That's what we're focused on. every day? How do we how do we deliver more personalized experiences and more customized experiences in a way where technology disappears in the home and people are allowed to live in a way where their technology just serves them?
Brian: Right, right. And it's Go ahead, Nick.
Nick Mark: So yeah, so you know, curious, Eric, with you know, you've been there ten years and seen evolutions and what wha what's changed? How is the how's the company morphing over these years? I I I get that the core competency is is pulling things together and and integrating, but I'm sure there's been changes. So can you walk us through that?
Eric Fritz: Lots of changes. one of one of the benefits that we have is that if you talked to a customer 10 years ago about connected technology in their home, they might talk to you about wanting audio in certain rooms of your home. They might talk to you about wanting a TV outside so that they could watch the game. today, if you ask. Homeowners that same question, you're getting a much more discerning response. I want a connected doorbell. I want the ability to have surveillance cameras around my estate. I want connected smart energy so that I can, you know, see my energy usage, but then also have the ability to turn off lights when I'm not there to conserve energy. Like there's there's just so much. more there's a higher bar of discernment on the homeowner side from a technology perspective than there ever has been. And what that's done is it's been great for us because it's raised awareness of smart homes. but at the same time it's set the bar even higher in terms of the experience demand. So what's different today is that we're delivering software and experiences at a much more rapid pace than we were ten years ago. We had these huge monolithic software packages in an OS where a customer would have to wait, you know, six to nine months to be delivered value in terms of new features. the way our software stack has evolved over time is we're allowed to, you know, and able to deliver continuous value in biweekly app updates to a customer where they can, you know, we can reinforce the value of that initial investment. by continuously improving the experience, on a much more frequent basis than we were able to you know, even five years ago, let alone ten years ago at this point.
Nick Mark: See and I'm sure AI is of course factoring in there in some way. How is how is that being incorporated?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, I think AI is definitely a hot topic right now. it's you know, frankly, if you work in the technology space and you're not being asked about AI, I have a lot of questions. but we think about it through two lenses. is is kind of our strategy. One is internal development side. How do we leverage AI tools to get faster? at the frequency by which we can deliver customer value. So some of those tool sets are we are able to break apart, you know, what would have been traditionally massively complex projects and streamline the delivery a little bit and and come to market faster with the same level of quality and reliability that customers have come to expect with control four, which is a great thing. It expands our test cases. We're able to do more user testing. there's there's all kinds of benefit on the internal side. On the external side, on the customer value side, there's also an expectation. Large language models are becoming you know, more frequently understood and part of people's daily lives. my wife, I feel like every time I look over at her, she's talking to Chat GPT about, you know, some question. That she has in her daily life. People want to be able to talk to their smart homes that way, right? Like those are those are simplifiers for customers. and we believe that. and what control four has the power to do, we have the largest breadth of third-party integrations in the connected smart home space. We have north of 30,000 drivers in our catalog of you know different device types that we can talk to. and integrate with. the ability for a customer to naturally talk to any of those devices through a control for experience, whether it be a voice, text, et cetera, to link across those is where we feel like we can deliver huge value. So we're in the early innings of that, but you're gonna see us speed up in that area over the course of the next, you know, six to twelve months, essentially.
Brian: The roll outcome
Nick Mark: Is that
Brian: with first party devices or are you guys looking at third party integration with that as well?
Eric Fritz: So that's a great question. we view third party integration as a core competency in our platform. It's one of our frankly our bench strengths. Our third party driver certification program is I think what makes us so appealing to a broad audience of consumers, because if you already have connected devices in your home, control four can still be a good fit 'cause chances are we integrate. With those devices already. We want the right system design, of course, but there is an element of, you know, with our library, you know, we give more choice to the consumer than other control portfolio brands. And that's still going to be a core competency. So when you think about the integration of AI and large language models into our experience, we fundamentally believe that that has to hook into our entire driver library. when we do so. So that that's that's our philosophy and that's how we're gonna, you know, continue to develop going forward.
Bert Herrero: So thinking of, you know, all that you guys are doing and have done, right? And all the innovation, listen, big control four guy as well like Brian, been doing it for a long time. love the product line, love all the innovation. I love the breath of the third party, you know, driver base that we have available to us and and the availability of open API, because sometimes we just have to create and write our own crap, right?
Eric Fritz: Sure. Yeah.
Bert Herrero: My my real question is, and this is probably more to the, you know, part design partner crowd, right? Why control four over other companies' products out there? It seems like other companies have come to the table already with voice integration and the ability to do these things within their own platform, granted. why control four?
Eric Fritz: Yeah. it's a great question. I think it comes down to consumer choice and kind of our relentless approach to end customer experience. and when I say that, I mean it not only from the experience that an end customer gets in their mobile application on their phone. There are absolutely great voice experiences that you can enable there. and large language model experiences that you can enable there. I think what sets control four apart is the breadth of our hardware and software offering together. and I mean that inclusive of our lighting controls, our native touch panels that can be placed around the home, our remotes, our video doorbells, they all Not only do they enable these experiences at a level where I believe our competition will not be able to play, but at the same time, they're every single one of those is brought to market with a design focus in the way we develop those products. I'll use a couple examples. We just launched our new T5 touch screens earlier this year, which we're super excited about. and and By the way, we're not even close to done with the software delivery that's going to be included on those for some of the experiences going forward. But not only is that a touch panel that looks great on the wall and contains our brand new X4 UI with all sorts of user personalization features. But it's also a a piece of hardware that that can be molded and modified to designer constraints. We have trim rings that can be matched to any of the lighting in your home. We have new finishes of those trim rings beyond just, you know, the the 11 plastic colors that we offer. but we're gonna have new finishes to those as well that will match things like metal trim rings on our lighting devices as well. But if you go down to the standoff from the wall. the color matching, the industrial design across our touch panels, our Lux lighting, which you can kind of see over my shoulder here, our video doorbell products, which we've got some great stuff that we're gonna be showing at at CDA as well. all of that is brought to market with the same industrial design language so that Number one, it's all been verified with designers as the best possible fit in terms of industrial design for today's you know, discerning client trends and tastes. But it all works well together. you don't end up looking like you've got a touch panel from one company, a lighting control device from another company, and you get into this what I would call like a wall acne scenario. This is all intentional. It's made to look together and it's made to look like it's part of a control four home. Okay.
Nick Mark: Interesting.
Brian: I think that speaks to the, you know, the benefits too of of of having a a a platform in your home. is your pane of glass for a lack of better terms, right? Like having a single app and a single interface, instead of having five different apps that you jump through to manage
Eric Fritz: That's right.
Brian: your the smart technology in your home. And I think that that's obviously cascades into your your design aesthetic. I mean, I mean everybody wants to try to achieve that, but it takes a lot of market research and a lot of a lot of time to to come together on that stuff.
Eric Fritz: And I think
Bert Herrero: lot of trial and error.
Eric Fritz: yeah, that that's for sure.
Brian: Right. Years.
Eric Fritz: And and I think the other piece of it that's worth mentioning, outside of just the hardware and the form factors, is we also give personalization choice to the homeowner after the install as well. Right. Our latest operating system and UI contains features like home screen, which is designed explicitly For the homeowner to be able to put the six things that they use the most in the system on the screen that opens when they when they open the app every time. It's a central repository that can be customized by, you know, of course, you know, Daisy and the integrator on initial handoff, but the customer can make tweaks to it after the fact, which is also unique to our brand and our portfolio. Where we're giving them the option to own their experience going forward. We want them to get the best that they can out of the system. We want them to be able to do simple routines and automations and and be able to set up their home screen and their landing page in a way where they're gonna get the most value out of their system. and that's ultimately our goal is to to have frequent users who are huge fans of the platform. you know. both not only a day zero initial install when you hand that off, but years down the line after that as well.
Bert Herrero: Since we're talking about usability, d are you at liberty to discuss a little bit about softwares that are up and coming?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. I think I I always have to be careful with how much I divulge on the software side. but a couple quick hitters that you know you'll see later this year and really on a regular cadence. The beauty of our software stack now is that we're able to launch new features every two weeks, essentially. We don't always have a new one every two weeks, but we can release On a two-week cycle. we have you know, as you think about what X4 represented from our brand, it was built on three pillars. user personalization, interoperability, and then what what we call system usability score, or the ability to do things easily and intuitively in the app. And we have direct metrics on. How many clicks it takes you to execute a scene, how many steps it takes you to accomplish what you're trying to do in the session of an app. And we delivered a host of software with the X4 launch that improved a lot of those things. But I would say what we're in right now this year is the polish phase, where we've got a number of new things. We introduced widgets as part of user personalization. which was a great step forward. It allowed you to have all of your recently played audio items directly on your home screen. It allowed you to have you know, lighting scene widgets directly on your home screen. you could do temperature controls for your thermostat directly from your home screen, all without having to drill into individual experiences when we talk about that system usability score. Our next step is to continue to build out that library. So just recently we launched a brand new widget called the Weather Widget. We're working on widgets around shades and colored lighting controls. We're working on brand new routines, which are simple automations that a customer can set up around new experiences. So routines involving shading control, things like that. So there's a pretty robust library of of things that we're setting up. And it's also going to include things like first-time user experiences so that when you hand over that system to a customer, we're guiding them through what their home screen can look like as opposed to you having to do all the legwork to get them up and running for the
Bert Herrero: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: first time. So that's a little bit about what we're working on. I talked a little bit about large language models. We have a number of new hardware products that we're going to be showcasing at our CEDIA event here in a couple months, which is going to be accompanied by software updates. One of our big focuses in the back half of the year is what we call our security experience. So the ability to today in the control for app it's you have the ability to view your cameras. what if from those camera views you could view AI event notifications directly from that live view? Here's what here's the catalog of things that has happened. person detection, animal detection, package detection, all directly from that live screen. and then also what do I do about that? It's great that I saw a person at my front door, but I want to unlock the door. Or I want to turn on the porch light or any of those things. So now we're also gonna be adding what we call quick actions to those screens, which can be configured and set up by either you or the end customer so that they can just quickly you know, I I use the example if somebody was walking around in my backyard last year, I would have to look at the live view. Then I would have to go to the history agent to find where and when that happened, view the recording. And then after that, if I wanted to do something about it, like play a recording or turn on a light or something like that, I would go into a different part of the app. Now you can do all that in mere seconds directly from one screen. So it's
Bert Herrero: That's awesome.
Eric Fritz: about it's about reducing the friction of delivering smart home value to consumers.
Bert Herrero: Make sense.
Brian: Will some of that be done through routines and everything? yeah. Customer facing. Yeah.
Eric Fritz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll be able to set up routines associated with it. you have the the cool thing is they can be single time actions. You can set up a routine. if you just have the three things that you know you like to do from that camera view, you can set up those buttons directly there. it's a it's an elegant solution and it's a big elevation versus what we have today.
Brian: It's awesome.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. I my favorite parts are the home screen and the routine. So, you know, I remember it wasn't long ago actually that my wife's like, How the heck do you walk up to that touch panel, press one button, and the music plate turns on? I'm like, that's because you're always in the kitchen screen instead of the home screen. I have it right one button, everything
Eric Fritz: That's right. That's right.
Bert Herrero: on. And then and then she's like, Honey, I keep going in the garage and the lights turn off after like I don't know how long. They just turn off. And I'm like, Because I'm tired of you leaving the lights on. So I created a routine
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: to turn the light off.
Eric Fritz: And you're actually you're actually hitting on something that's another core principle that we're focused on. it's not, you know, it's not like a tomorrow delivery like some of the other things that we've been talking about. But when you talk about user profiles, or you know, you're gonna use the system differently than your wife is, right? You're gonna you're gonna have, you know, the five or six things that you do the most frequently. She might look at different things or use it slightly differently. We believe that that is a core principle that we have to deliver on as a team going forward. And that's the ability for not only at a system level to customize what you want to do, but also at a user level to be able to customize what you want to do. So that's a core principle that we have going forward that you're going to see a lot more from us on.
Bert Herrero: Sounds like a little facial recognition in the pipeline, maybe? Don't don't say anything.
Eric Fritz: That that's a good that's a good guess. Yeah, that's a good guess.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Eric Fritz: it I I would say even think facial recognition, yeah, but even your mobile device versus your wife's mobile device as well. Like there are just
Bert Herrero: Right. Right.
Eric Fritz: there are super custom simple things that we can do just to make people's lives easier. And that's our goal.
Brian: And it's been a a question that's been asked by people for many years too, with clients, is you know, hey, can I can I
Eric Fritz: Yes.
Brian: configure my app separately from my wife's or my kids
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brian: or you know, so that's that's a that's nice that that's that's been obviously thought about and it's 'cause it's been discussed, you know, many times. But it's nice that you guys are gonna eventually be able to take action on it, especially
Eric Fritz: That's right. And it and it's a
Brian: with X four. I think X four has just opened up a whole other level of possibilities. It's just such a good OS.
Eric Fritz: One one thing that is really important for I think folks to know is like X4 was it's a great user experience and it introduces some great new features. It's also a lot of really great architectural work that sets us up going forward for a lot of these kind of medier things that that people have been asking about for a number of years. user-based. Access controls is certainly one of them. And it also ties in beyond residential too, right? Like if you have a small business that you've got someone designing for where you know they want you know smart technology to be able to control their bar and restaurant, but you know, maybe they only want certain users to have access to security cameras and things like that. Like there's just the possibilities and use cases are endless, and it's critical that we deliver on that.
Brian: That's a game changer for a control for his ability inside of a commercial space too. You know, especially if you're thinking
Eric Fritz: Yes, absolutely.
Brian: about like hospitality and stuff like that. You know, common spaces in you know,
Eric Fritz: Yes. Yeah.
Brian: in multi tenant buildings and everything. So yeah, that's great.
Bert Herrero: Okay, so I'd I'd got a question and and it really I guess your l right shoulder. So over your right shoulder you got a light bulb over there.
Eric Fritz: Yes.
Bert Herrero: Talk about it.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, so this is this is a brand new product line, not just single product that that we've got here that we're incredibly excited about and that the team has been hard work hard at work on getting out the door. I'm thrilled to say as of a couple weeks ago, we're now shipping this product. but it's called Vibrant Bulbs and Recessed Trim Lights. one of the beauties of control four. Is that when you buy a control for controller, that's the brain of your system, and you can connect to a number of diff different device types that way. We include a Zigbee wireless radio on the back of all of our core controller types. that is the primary wireless communication method that we use for our lighting devices today. And our entire Control for lighting portfolio for 15 plus years now has been all about controls or the on-wall controls, the light switches and the dimmers and the keypads that you see on the wall. we have taken the same high-quality industrial design and rock solid wireless communication pathway. And we've built that into light sources for the first time. So every single one of our light bulbs and recessed trim lights that are part of this new product line communicate directly with a control for controller over our existing wireless Zigbee pathway. And why is that important? It means that when you're doing lighting design, you get a higher quality of light. So these are all these are all every single one of them LED wafers that have been designed and specified by us with wireless ZB communication technology in them. And they do both color temperature and full RGB W. We have flavors of both. and they're individually addressable. so that means that when you design a home or a system, You're not limited by the circuit that the electrical cans are on in a system. You can group these however you want in a design. If you want you know, half of the kitchen that faces a certain direction, east or west, to be at a different temperature than another half, you can do that in the way you provision and set these up. They all dim down to one percent dimming. so really, really high quality low level dimming. light. And they also are all 92 plus color rendering index quality, which is really high quality light. and why that's critical is we can mimic you know not only colors the way you think of them in terms of red, green, blue, but we can also mimic with exact specificity the color temperature of the sun and the time of day, and we can map that to the location where a project is. Circadian lighting is one of the hottest trends in home design
Brian: I was just gonna ask that. Yep.
Eric Fritz: right now. And we have a full circadian lighting integration that you can not only turn on for a customer, but they can enroll their devices in that circadian lighting schedule however they want. directly from the app themselves. so what that means is my lighting can match the time of day it is outside. I can get energy from my light in my home at the right time of day and I can unwind at the right time of day. I can wake up with the right quality of light at the right time of day. And the second you start using this in your day to day life, you will not be able to go back. I mean it is it is It's a game changer for people and seeing is believing. so this the fact that you can do it without any high voltage wiring changes at all in the home. It's literally screwing in a light bulb and addressing it in in the Zigbee network, it just makes digital lighting control and circadian lighting so much more accessible to so many more consumers. so it's just there's so much value in it. and we're incredibly excited about it. This is us dipping our toe in the water and there's a lot more to come. We have seven different form factors today.
Nick Mark: So Eric
Bert Herrero: Each one of those I'm sorry.
Nick Mark: Just quick question, Eric, just for the benefit of our listeners who may, you know, f fully understand all the behind the scenes. For these light bulbs, if you're gonna retrofit them, but you've still got a light switch on the wall, you you you you have you can
Bert Herrero: And ask the same question.
Nick Mark: you can turn off the radio, right? If you turn off the light. So what's
Eric Fritz: Yep.
Nick Mark: what's the solution there?
Eric Fritz: Yeah, so we have we have multiple solutions. so the the most straightforward is you can bypass the switch or the dimmer and wire them continuous power all the time. the even easier one for a control four installation is you can use any one of our lighting keypad devices and through the configuration software put them into what we call smart bulb mode. where you're sending continuous power through that device and you're turning it into a keypad. So you can you can bind the keypad to this in a way where you're still doing all the dimming and on and off at the light bulb, but you're keeping continuous radio power to the device itself. And that that's one that I would say since launch has been a delighter. for our dealer base just because of how easy and intuitive it is to install.
Brian: Yeah, and
Bert Herrero: Awesome.
Brian: in a re launching something that we could retrofit has been it's fantastic, right? That's
Bert Herrero: Yep. Big time. And not having to add any other type of control devices, right? Like we don't have to go with DMX gateways and bridges and, you know, decoders and all this. It just it just fits right in and so
Brian: Right. Right. Another layer,
Eric Fritz: That was
Brian: another link. Yep. Right.
Eric Fritz: That was the strategy
Bert Herrero: I was gonna ask.
Eric Fritz: in this. How how do we that we asked ourselves, we're like digital lighting control is growing, it delivers fantastic experiences, but you need to be really experienced or have a pretty deep knowledge set to be able to specify, design, and implement something like that successfully. Our goal was to take what had historically been a pretty challenging to understand category to get into and make it more accessible to more customers. And and that was our ultimate goal with this project. And I think we've delivered on.
Bert Herrero: Yep. Awesome. Are the are the bulbs or the retrofit cans are the end nodes or are they repeating?
Eric Fritz: They're repeaters, which is another benefit of our frankly our expertise in the Zigbee domain is that we were able to build these in a way where every single one of them is a repeater. And you know, for the the designers and folks listening to this that aren't as familiar with our Zigbee architecture, every single one of these that you add in a home, the system just gets more reliable. That's the that's the easiest way to think about it. And and we what it does is it also sets us up for more Zigbee devices in the future. So there's there's a a fantastic Zigbee roadmap, inclusive of third party devices now as well that are going to be able to connect to our Zigbee three network that this project only helps bolster.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. Good stuff. Glad I asked.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, it's a great question.
Brian: Well that I think that that segue's right, yeah. It that's that that answered my next question about, you know, preparing the for the next wave of you know of connected devices as well. So and it's nice to see the Zigbee adoption, you know, happening outside of of, you know, just CI where there's end user in customer facing devices that are that are working with Zigbee
Eric Fritz: Definitely.
Brian: as well, you know.
Eric Fritz: We do it's a core strategy for us to move from what I would call like our legacy control four secret sauce Zigbee. we had a Zigbee Pro stack that we used for a number of years that we still use today, frankly. and Lux Lighting along with this product is us moving into Zigbee three. and that makes it easier for third parties to connect with with our system ultimately, which is what we want. We want to be an open platform. We view that as a core competency. And the more connected devices for us, the better. That's our philosophy.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: Awesome. I am I've been actually looking at the vibrant lighting and I think we had a conversation a week or two ago with Hagan and Dion and I think most of the team about lighting and and lighting fixtures. and we recognized that this had come out and I I was I'm getting ready to order some because I want to play with it. Yeah.
Eric Fritz: Good. Well we're looking forward to getting your feedback.
Bert Herrero: Want to play with it, want to get it on.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Eric Fritz: Love it.
Brian: Same. I've got some retrofit I need to do and be nice to to play with
Bert Herrero: those lamps right behind you.
Brian: yeah, those yeah, those are poor men's those are poor men's version right now. Those are just hues. They integrate well, but yeah, they're they're
Nick Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, you can throw in there.
Brian: not the same. So no.
Bert Herrero: Yeah. Yeah, the
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: product line is pretty cost effective though. As I was looking at it, I was like, Man, that's those are some nice price points to to enter something with, you know, that opens more of a opens up the retrofit world, right? Because you got a lot of these manufacturers that are really only focused on the the new construction and the bigger fixtures. And and while yeah,
Eric Fritz: That's right.
Bert Herrero: we we all want those type of projects, I mean it's hard to do a dog and pony show you know, in a retrofit project because you really don't have a lot of that type of lighting that you can put in, leave behind and go tell me how you feel. Right. In a week.
Brian: Right.
Eric Fritz: So
Bert Herrero: And I think that that was one of my biggest successes, you know, in my in my previous life, was actually walking in and doing a dog and pony, putting up 10 lights in the kitchen or in the great room or something and and just saying, hey, enjoy these and let me know how you feel. Right. and come back a week later and they're like, right, they're staying, you know, like you want to bring me new ones because I'm sure you use these all the time. Actually I opened the boxes for you. They're like, okay, we'll leave them there. You know, add more here. And
Brian: Ha ha ha.
Bert Herrero: I literally had projects where a hundred and forty, hundred and fifty fixtures were sold just because I put in ten to to start it all out. So,
Eric Fritz: Really cool.
Nick Mark: I see. I see.
Eric Fritz: We've we've heard stories like that even on the keypad side as well. You leave one keypad for a customer that you do some custom engraving with scenes or buttons on. And that one keypad can drive, you know, fifty future devices based on based on their experience with that in just their great room or somewhere else.
Bert Herrero: Makes sense. And how many I guess it's all based on wattage and we'd have to look at the wattage, but like, you know, going through some of this digital lighting and even new construction. I mean, it's pretty easy and you can still be at a different price point than having to worry about a, you know, multi-million dollar home. you can put in standard hi-hats, pop in the, you know, retrofit cans into those. and still run straight from a breaker all the way across a bunch of lights and individually address them. So there's a lot of opportunity there.
Eric Fritz: That's right. It it requires it requires essentially, you know, zero handholding on the electrical contractor side, which is hugely beneficial.
Bert Herrero: But it reduces a lot of that cost, reduces the cost of the of the control system, right, sort of say. and then just makes it really easy and and future proof because you can change your circuitry however you want, change your color temperatures however you want, and dim levels. I I think it's awesome. I think it's it's a no brainer. It's a smart play. And I think it was a it was a play that is much needed in in the industry as far as from the retrofit side.
Eric Fritz: Good. We love that feedback.
Nick Mark: Eric, how does the you know, I'm hearing so much about, you know, every couple of weeks you're delivering software and updates or firmware and all that. What's the economics of that? Is it does a client have to pay for that? And now I'm talking about the end client, or is that just part of the benefit of of purchasing a control for system?
Eric Fritz: Great, great question. so I should be clear, one of the things that we're never gonna do is force a major experience change on an end customer. what it's it's purely what I would call tweaks and bug fixes, you know, imp small improvements to experiences. as opposed to like major usability changes. Like we're gonna totally change the way audio looks in your system. We're never gonna do that without you and them knowing about that and initiating that. now in terms of continuous delivery, we we operate on what we would call like a continuous improvement, continuous delivery pipeline for our applications teams. And that means that software developers are constantly developing new features. and while they're putting code in that might be for a feature that's, you know, six months down the line, it's all hidden behind a flag where nobody's gonna see it. and it doesn't actually drive any experience change. So what they're seeing on a two-week basis is maintenance. to their system and making sure that things are staying up and running and smooth. we operate in terms of a payment to the control for system in what we would call a freemium model, where there is we have what we call a connect program, which you guys are obviously aware of today. Connect has two tiers. One is a zero dollar tier and then one is a monthly subscription cost tier and the subscription cost where they're paying what ends up being you know about two hundred and fifty dollars a year that is for services associated with cloud access and things that actually you know traditionally cost money to service over time. With the free model, they are still getting continuous software improvements. That's not a that's not a cost to the end customer. We view that as a requirement. When they buy a control or when they buy a control for system, they're getting software updates for the life of that product. So that's that's a core component of the way we think about the unit economics for an end customer.
Brian: It's interesting. And where where do you see that that moving in the future? Like what what what's your vision of of where control four will be in the in the coming years?
Eric Fritz: that's a great question. I think in terms of where we're gonna be in the next few years, I don't see it changing dramatically in terms of you know licensing structure or us charging for something that we're not doing today. I I don't forecast any changes there necessarily. what I do see though is faster iteration of development. I talked about, you know, these small release cycles where we have today where we're delivering continuous bug fixes and things like that. I do see us getting to a point where we're delivering so much value that we want customers to be able to opt in to new experiences and try them before they you know totally change their their experience. So that's something that we're partnering with fantastic partners like Daisy on understanding. Like where do we want to draw the line bef between what a customer can do in their home without contacting you versus where you want to be involved in their software life cycle journey, I would call it. And one of the things I love the most about Daisy is the concept of continuous connection with your customer throughout the life of that relationship. And that's something that frankly we're looking at ways we can build software that encourages that and makes sure that we are fostering the relationship between you and your customer so that you're able to point and say like, hey, control four just released these three new features this quarter. Do you want me to turn them on for you while I'm here? you know, it's no cost to you, but it's gonna make your experience even better. you know, th those are the kinds of things that we're pushing to to frankly deliver you know, sooner rather than later.
Brian: That's great answer. And that's I I you know, th these are questions that get asked roundabout by clients, you know, in in what the future of the system's gonna be and when they're
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: investing in something and they're turning it home into essentially into a computer, right? They wanna know what the development
Eric Fritz: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Brian: of that's gonna look like and the how the company's gonna support it. So that's that's
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Brian: a fantastic fantastic forecast.
Bert Herrero: Definitely. Good stuff.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean the discussion I've wanted to have for a while. I mean, you know, you're the first control system we've had on. and that was you know, that was not without being planned. Not that there won't be others on here, but Bert and I have both been control four dealers for a really long time. So we appreciate the product, you know. I Previous to even being in the industry when I was still in IT. I mean, I always wanted a control four home, man. That was like that was an earmark to I was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna have C for a full C four home. And I do, you know, and I love it. So my wife jokes at me
Eric Fritz: Good, good.
Brian: all the time. She's like, Our kids don't even know like what light switches are. I'm like, we still have light switches, we retrofitted our home, you know, like but the the the experience that they
Nick Mark: Okay.
Eric Fritz: Yeah. Sorry.
Brian: have of living in a home that's you know got a control system in it is is it's it's pretty cool, you know. And it's it it it's a different experience, I think, for for a child growing up versus the generation maybe we grew up with with rotary phones and manual light switches, right? And tube TVs.
Eric Fritz: Absolutely.
Brian: But it's a it's a it's a bygone era. But man, it's it's exciting one to
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Brian: be in and you know, technology like control four really brings a lot of exciting stuff to the to residential luxuries luxurious and residential living in you know our Homes that we service. So it's it's nice. It's nice.
Bert Herrero: Yeah.
Eric Fritz: You you just touched on probably the most important thing that we have, which is we have to create raving fans of the users that we have today. because word of mouth referral and continuous usage going forward, that's our lifeblood, right? And we have to make sure that that Daisy and everyone else that installs control four and specifies control for from a design perspective is successful and the more great end customer experiences we can enable. it's a it's a virtuous flywheel. it grows all of our businesses. So that's what we're
Bert Herrero: Yeah. And then let me Yeah, so
Brian: You see it time and time again. sorry, go ahead, Bert.
Bert Herrero: that's all good. Talking about children, right? So
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: my son's twenty years old now and he's he's moved out because we moved to North Florida to the country and he did not want to come to North Florida because there's really nothing here for him. And I get it. Young twenty year old who's having a blast right now. So so he moves out and he moves into an apartment and he's like, Dad, I have to I have to have a key.
Nick Mark: Mm.
Bert Herrero: Yeah, Mike. Yeah. You need a key.
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: He goes, Dad, like, I gotta turn on lights and turn off lights? Yeah, Mike. You gotta turn on lights and turn off lights. And he's like, I don't get this, Dad. Like, I came in the other day and the air and the house was hot. And I'm like, What did I do? And he turned off the air conditioner apparently, you know. So
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: he's like, he's going
Eric Fritz: Yeah.
Bert Herrero: back and forth. And then the l latest one he calls me, like, I don't know. He installed it last week. So he called me two weeks ago and he's like, Dad, I can't live without a surround sound system. I need something. So he goes and he buys this, you know, JBL little, you know, thing with a subboyfriend. I'm like, take that back, please. I'm like, put leave that in the box. Don't take it out of the box. Take it back to the store. I got you, son. So I sent them a little phono surround sound system, right? And I'm like, do this. It's easy. It's good. You buy the stands. And he did. And he's like, Dad, thank you. I love this. It's back like I'm at home again. So trying to do everything
Eric Fritz: I love it. I love it.
Bert Herrero: I can to keep him really nice and fat and happy so that he doesn't come up here. I hope he doesn't listen to this
Nick Mark: Mm-hmm.
Bert Herrero: podcast because he does listen to all of them.
Brian: Segue on that, my you know, my kids we go to like you know, in laws' houses or something that have control four in their homes and my kids can walk right up to the Halo in in SR two sixties and they know exactly how to use them, you know. They don't need any instruction, you know. It's like they just
Nick Mark: Okay.
Brian: pick it up so easy when they've lived with it, you know. Or they they can hit a touch screen
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: and know exactly how to navigate around control four.
Nick Mark: Mm.
Brian: And I don't think I've ever given them formal instruction either. So I think I need to watch this. No, they don't.
Bert Herrero: I don't think they need it, you know? They just press buttons until they get until something happens.
Brian: Generation just and they just
Eric Fritz: That jokes
Brian: pick it up, you know? It's it's crazy.
Eric Fritz: aside, that's what we're after. We want the first time user to be able to pick something up and
Bert Herrero: Make it
Eric Fritz: intuitively be able to execute what they're trying to do. That's our goal. Yeah.
Brian: That's what I'm speaking to. The ease of the use of the system. You know, th th they can just pick it up. You know, you could put it in someone home the someone's home that's that's non-technical. I mean I I swear by the the the SR two sixties, man, still like for for those type of clients that are, you know, technophobes, it's you never get complaints about it, man, because it's an easy interface for
Bert Herrero: Truth. It's awesome.
Brian: Yep, that's
Nick Mark: Yeah.
Brian: it. Eric, thank you for being a guest today.
Nick Mark: Yes, thank you.
Eric Fritz: Yeah, I really enjoyed the discussion. I appreciate you guys giving me the time and the the soapbox to to talk about my ideas.
Bert Herrero: Absolutely. Been a pleasure.
Brian: awesome man i'm gonna stop the recording
Nick Mark: All right. You're welcome.
