There are a couple of universal truths about the smart home. Yes, you will come to treat your robot vacuum like a member of the family, and no, you cannot escape the fact that there will always be one light that doesn’t turn on even though there’s simply no reason it won’t. These are just the facts.

Beyond that, the only thing we know for sure about the smart home is that it’s tricky to get right. You have to navigate a tangle of standards and ecosystems, optimize your control systems, and design a lot of seemingly basic features yourself. The industry seems to be on a path to a much better place! But we’re not there yet.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we dig into some thorny smart home issues with our in-house smart home expert, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. We spend the whole episode answering your questions about all the things you wonder about your smart homes. She offers tips, buying advice, and lots of expert knowledge about Apple’s plans for the smart home, smart faucets, high-end smart home brands, Home Assistant, Matter, smoke alarms, and much more.

If you want to ask more questions, of Jen or anyone else, you can always call the Vergecast Hotline at 866-VERGE11 or email us at [email protected]. (You can call or email about anything, but everybody seems to always have smart home questions for Jen…) And if you want to know more about the things we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: