Notes from inside a low-voltage company
5 years of expensive lessons from a low-voltage company, written down as they happened.
I was a product manager at Alarm.com for just under 5 years, with usage data across a whole dealer network in front of me. It kept pointing at a gap I couldn't explain from a desk, so I left and became a dealer to find out why. Most of what I learned since then, I learned by getting it wrong first.
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What a truck roll actually costs We drove 4 hours round trip to install one doorbell for $150. We knew it would lose money before we left. Read it → Directory
44 What a truck roll actually costs We drove 4 hours round trip to install one doorbell for $150. We knew it would lose money before we left. business 43 One app instead of a folder full of them My phone used to have a folder of nine smart home apps. Now almost everything runs from one, and that took choosing the devices on purpose. 
gear 42 Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow My kids wake up to Disney park music every school morning. 
imagineering 41 Our best work and our smartest work aren't the same thing I once spent most of a day running one wire to one camera. Today I'd be done in under an hour, and it's the smarter job. 
positioning 40 Wire is the most flexible thing you can put in a wall Three jobs where the wire was already in the wall, put in for something else. On each theater job, reusing it saved the customer about $4,800 in labor, and nobody had to patch drywall. 
gear 39 I built my wife a Ms. Pac-Man table for our anniversary Before there was a table, there was a pile of wiring on the floor. It all came in under $500. 
projects 38 You can't explain someone into a smart home My wife's first smart home rules were no phones, no weird-looking switches, and always a manual way to do it. Fifteen years later, one of those rules still stands, and it's the reason the others could change. 
gear 37 The 12V trigger board I built for my own amps My processor had one 12V trigger, and I had more than one amp. So I built a board that brings them up one at a time. It's still running. 
projects 36 Imagineering at home: I'm becoming the Black Pearl My son is going as Jack Sparrow for Halloween, so I'm going as his ship: a wearable Black Pearl with eight cannons that flash, smoke and glow, and a ghost ship mode. 
imagineering 35 The star ceiling I built, and the one I'm building now I built a fiber-optic star ceiling to beat the price of a kit, hit a wall six LEDs couldn't get past, and ended up designing the thing the market didn't sell. 
imagineering 34 How to buy a TV at a big box store without getting fooled In 2016 I bought Sony's flagship 75-inch TV. It looked amazing, and then I stopped noticing. Here's what a store can and can't tell you. 
gear 33 Nobody wants a monthly payment. Somebody has to pay for the cloud. A customer bought a video doorbell, and I was the first person in the room who knew the video part cost extra every month. 
business 32 Thumbtack: paying to race to the bottom We spent roughly $1,600 on Thumbtack leads in about 3 months and could see we were losing money before we ever opened a spreadsheet. 
marketing 31 The builder sold them a thin wire package. I paid for it. A brand-new townhouse with gigabit fiber and three Yamaha amps that kept dropping out. The problem was never the amps, and fixing it was free, because I was new and wanted the referral. 
gear 30 The night the automation broke is the night my wife got it The first automation I ever wrote ran for 2 months and impressed nobody. Then I deleted the whole Z-Wave network, and my wife came home to a dark hallway. 
origin 29 Video calibration: nobody ever called to switch it back I calibrated displays in client homes for years. Here's what it fixed, why people resisted it, and why I stopped selling it. 
gear 28 The speaker behind the screen Why I moved my own theater to an acoustically transparent screen, and what my clients never notice about it. 
gear 27 Pixels were never the upgrade The biggest movie Netflix ever released streams in 1080p, and it takes 16 months and a Criterion disc to show up in 4K. 
gear 26 What HDR actually does, and why it's so hard to show you The move to 4K got sold on pixels. The real upgrade was HDR, which keeps the detail at both ends of the picture that standard video throws away. 
gear 24 I still recommend SofaBaton. That's not the same as liking it. Two home theaters, two SofaBaton remotes, and what actually happened after the install — from someone who ran Harmony for 15 years. 
gear 23 MicroLED is having a moment. Projection isn't going anywhere. The LED walls were everywhere at CEDIA this year. I'm still selling projectors. 
gear 22 The case for low-voltage lighting We already run low-voltage cable to nearly everything in a new house. I think lights should be on that list. 
gear 21 TVs and projectors are bigger than ever Everyone said home video was moving to tablets. On our installs, the screens just keep getting bigger. 
gear 20 Outdoor projection got real. It still doesn't just win. A 100-inch screen that puts itself away costs about what a 65-inch full-sun TV does. The TV will probably look better. 
gear 19 The best Harmony replacement at CEDIA doesn't have a price tag Josh built a remote with real, swappable buttons, then sold it where no Harmony customer will ever find a price. 
gear 18 The ultra short throw that actually impressed me at CEDIA AWOL Vision's ultra short throw ran four sources on one screen at once. I haven't installed one. Read this like the booth impression it is. 
gear 17 The CEDIA demo that changed my mind I've owned six different reference projectors. One trade show demo still surprised me. 
gear 16 Wired wrong, and nobody tested it A family member's brand-new house had a hidden HDMI cable die in the wall, and five of the eight Ethernet drops were miswired from the start. 
gear 14 We offered free doorbell installs. It didn't work the way we thought. Free labor got us in 20 doors. It only turned into one real system. 
marketing 15 The room should disappear The most common home theater mistake I see is light carpet, light walls, and a light ceiling. The room is half the equation. 
gear 13 The SofaBaton workaround nobody asked for We sold a remote and a lighting system that don't talk to each other. The fix came out of my backpack. 
gear 12 The math on 10 TV mounts a day Raising prices didn't slow demand. The unit economics still didn't work. 
positioning 11 What your alarm accounts are actually worth I thought 30 accounts meant I had an asset. I didn't have paper to sell. 
business 07 What I actually tell people to buy when they ask about home security I worked in product at Alarm.com and I install all of this for a living. Here's the version without the marketing. 
gear 10 What happens to your smart home when the company disappears Logitech left the universal remote business and my Harmony remotes still work. Ask what a device would still do if its maker shut off the servers. gear 09 The rep with the line card The incentives looked aligned. They weren't, and I found out with a speaker that failed twice in the same house. 
gear 08 What the dashboard couldn't show me I had usage data across an entire dealer network. It kept pointing at a gap I couldn't explain from a desk, so I went to go stand in it. 
origin 06 Getting licensed was a nightmare The information wasn't hidden. There was just no way to know whether what I found was right. business 05 The demo that sold itself We were hired to mount one TV. Then I put 150" of Baby Driver on a bare wall. 
business 04 Logitech Harmony is discontinued, and there's no real replacement The $300 universal remote customer still exists. The category leader just stopped showing up. 
gear 03 The first speakers we ever bought A listening room, two songs, and the moment my wife heard something new in music she'd loved for 20 years. 
gear 01 What actually happens on day 31 with your Ring doorbell Your clips didn't glitch and your camera isn't broken. The trial ended, and most people never knew there was one. 
gear 02 We undercut the market to win, and 5 years later we're still paying for it Cutting price was the fastest way to get customers and the most expensive decision I've made. positioning