On the latest episode of the HomeKit Insider Podcast, Franci Zidar, CEO and co-founder of BirdBuddy, joins to talk about smart gardens and the week’s smart home news.
Franci Zigar co-founded BirdBuddy, a smart camera-equipped bird feeder, and has just launched its latest products. After being shown off at CES 2025, WonderBlocks and Petal are up on Kickstarter.
WonderBlocks are essentially backyard nature habitats for bees, butterflies, and more. Petal is a solar-powered camera with interchangeable lenses.
They will leverage AI to help you monitor your garden, as well as the living things that visit. Before getting into the new products and questions about the smart garden, we kicked things off with the news.
In the news, Ikea and Sonos have announced they’ll be dissolving their partnership. While existing Symfonisk speakers will continue to be supported, no new products will be released.
Ecobee announced it has updated its smart video doorbell to support Google Home. Arlo has also announced its own update, bringing new AI features to its secure monitoring platform.
The Connectivity Standards Alliance has released the new version of Matter this week as well. It was a minor update, bringing the spec to 1.4.1 and includes enhancements to the setup process.
Finally, we round up the rumors for Apple’s upcoming homeOS platform.
We finish the episode by getting into BirdBuddy and the smart garden as a whole. Your host peppers Franci with questions on using ground sensors, Matter integration, future products, Apple Home support, and more.
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