It’s finally that time again. The holidays are here, and Playback is in your inbox. We’re going to do our usual run through all the most pertinent AV and smart home news this week, but before we jump into that, let’s slow down a second and check in. It’s the holidays, but, you, our readers, have spent all year giving gifts to clients (or at least let’s hope the clients view their fancy smart home systems as gifts).
Have you ever wondered, though, how those systems are getting used? What’s your follow-up for something like that? Do you have any follow-up? A customer feedback survey? A option to give a testimony? I feel like at this point, most of us have read that one Hollywood Reporter article (if you haven’t, you should) so usage should be a big topic.
Personally, I would love to be a fly-on-the-wall just to see how these systems get used on a granular level. Feedback and testimonies are good and all, but there’s a lot of interactions we don’t think about in ways that would get us to vocalize them on a free-form testimony.
Maybe it’s just my old marketing habits refusing to hibernate for the winter, but reading through Josh.ai’s Wrapped report for 2025 awoke something in me. Looking at where people were interacting with their smart homes the most, and what connected devices were getting used the most is the kind of stuff I think makes for great feedback when designing systems.
If you see that people are predominantly using their kitchen interface the most, wouldn’t you think to find ways to make interactions in that area just a little bit more special?
I get the privacy nightmare with getting that kind of granular data, though, and even Josh admits the limitations of the report due to opt-ins. For the interests of the homeowner, I really wouldn’t want it any other way. As is, the report offers a small, but fascinating look into the behaviors of smart home users, even if it is relegated to a single platform.
I’ll wrap things up here so you can check it out yourself in case you’re interested. We’ll have a link to it down below in the main Playback. We also have some big news from LG, some very unfortunate news from iRobot and some more interesting news from the founders of August locks. Enjoy your holidays, folks. We’ll catch up on the next Playback.
The Week in Playback
- How Do People Use Their Smart Homes? Josh.ai Offers a Glimpse from Its Corner
- LG Joins the RGB Club Just in Time for CES
- iRobot Bankruptcy Sees Ownership of Robotics Pioneer Handed Over to Supplier
- IoT/Connected Product Awards: We Unveil Our 2025 Winners
- August Founders Launch Doma’s Intelligent, Hardwired Doors and Windows
Ever Wonder if that Custom Automation Ever Gets Used?
Josh.ai wrapped up 2025 with its annual system review, giving integrators a rare look at how people have been interacting with their smart home systems throughout the year.
Usage rates on the Josh.ai platform nearly doubled: a sign of Josh’s growing presence in homes, or a spike in usability from the interface side? Maybe it’s both?
The report features other metrics, as well, such as where Josh interfaces were getting used the most, what connected devices were getting fiddled with the most, and even which automations were the most popular on the platform.
The RGB Competition Heats Up with LG’s RGB evo
We knew it was only a matter of time, it just so happens that time was CES 2026. LG has officially announced its own take on the RGB LED technology with the Micro RGB evo.
According to LG, the TV has been rated by Intertek for 100 percent color gamut coverage in BT.2020, DCI-P3, and Adobe RGB, which LG says is the highest color reproduction possible.
Earlier this year, Sony announced that it was currently working on production of its own RGB TV model, with Samsung until this point having been the only one to officially launch such a device onto the market, though, not to be outdone, Samsung in more recent times has announced a slew of RGB models coming to market.
Robotics Pioneer iRobot Gets a Cloudy Outlook After Bankruptcy Filing
iRobot filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, frustrating former founders, and potentially putting an end to an era of home robotics that once seemed so bright.
Alongside the filing, iRobot has entered into a Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) with its secured lender and primary contract manufacturer, Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., Ltd. and Santrum Hong Kong Co., Limited (Picea).
As part of the RSA, iRobot will be made private, taking it off stock exchanges and transferring ownership of the company to Picea.
The IoT/Connected Product Award Winners Announced
Closing out the year for awards, Commercial Integrator and CE Pro together announced the 2025 IoT/Connected Product Award winners, honoring eight remarkable companies.
Each year, the IoT/Connected Product Awards spotlight the connected products that make lives better and that make integrators’ jobs easier.
This year’s IoT/Connected Product Award winners reflect the latest advancements, highlighting how suppliers are bringing to market reliable, high-performing interconnected solutions.
August Home Creators Introduce the Doma Smart Door
August Home creators Jason Johnson and Yves Béhar, introduced a new category of architectural smart home products this week through their new start-up, Doma.
The new intelligent doors and windows unveiled are designed to embed automation, sensing and security directly into the structure of a home’s core infrastructure.
According to the company, the goal is to replace today’s fragmented smart home experience with a unified, reliable “intelligence layer” delivered through the home itself, instead of via add-on devices.
