Rocky Mountain Voices » Home Automation

California’s Title 24 and the Green Smart Home

Brad Baldwin — Fri, 18 May 2007 03:47:01 +0000

California’s Title 24 presents implications for those engaged in new and retrofit home construction. While there are many different ways to look at power conservation and consumption, Paul Nagel, Control4’s VP of Engineering, talks about how home automation systems create a “greener” home. Not only does a smart home give more options to manage power consumption, but a smart home will also offer new levels of convenience for the home owner.

Since home automation allows the home to be aware and communicate, a home owner can receive notices or reports of actions taken to conserve energy, long before the power company steps in. Whether it’s lighting control, heating and cooling or cost-based management, a home automation system provides proactive management. California may take the lead here in the States, but “Green Fever” is a world-wide interest, with the Europeans becoming far more conscious due to higher prices for energy.

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Picking an Integrator for Home Automation

Brad Baldwin — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:00:42 +0000

For most of us, connecting technology systems is a bit outside our normal capacity. That’s why there are home automation dealers and integrators who can connect separate technologies in the home into a single automated system. Like other tech specialists, the home automation dealer can also share a vision of what is possible — and in many cases, show you how it looks and works in a showroom environment. More importantly, they have the know-how and necessary technical experience to connect home theaters, audio, TV programming in multiple rooms, lighting controls, security, and heating and cooling systems.

As Safe and Sound System’s Tom Morris tells Brad Baldwin, the home owner needs to make sure that the integrator has installed the system multiple times and that they how to tie the pieces together. If fact, picking the right integrator is likely to lead to a better overall product experience. Picking the wrong integrator will leave a home owner frustrated and with a lot of money missing from their wallet.

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ZigBee’s Benefits for Home Automation

Brad Baldwin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:32:46 +0000

Adding a home automation system to an existing home used to require tearing out drywall, installing thousands of feet of wire and surviving the battle of the mess and endless dust. John Yoon, VP of Marketing, and Wally Barnum, a technical lead at Control4, educate Brad Baldwin on the reasons ZigBee provides the right wireless standard for home automation. Aimed primarily at monitoring and control rather than data transfer, ZigBee filled an important role to interface wirelessly to lighting, climate, and other systems. Just like WiFi became a popular consumer brand to represent the IEEE 802.11 standard, ZigBee is the moniker for IEEE 802.15.4.

Home Automation Must Support Media PCs and Future Systems

Brad Baldwin — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:12:40 +0000

It’s more common than ever to use purpose-built hardware and software solutions, (Xbox, Firewalls and VPN appliances, Google Search appliance, etc.). John Yoon, VP of Marketing, and Bill Harper, Director of Development at Control4, discuss the advantages to a home automation controller and accompanying lighting, climate, and media solutions. The PC is certainly an important component to the digital home. Including Media Center PCs, iPods, and Apple TVs and future systems through standards-based integration allows the home owner to deploy the best solution today and still support future components and digital accessories in the home tomorrow.

The Impact of Smart Lighting in a Home

Brad Baldwin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:51:14 +0000

Smart lighting makes that “old” light switch cool again. It also saves you money as you conserve power.

Ed Ryan and Scott Moulton at Control4 talk about how little everyday tasks can become conveniences with Smart Lighting. With Control4 “scenes,” you can wake-up to lights that come up gradually, have shades open to let in the sun, and have favorite wake-up music grow in volume. Keep kid’s from turning on lights in the middle of the day. High-tech switches easily integrate into your walls and support more commands. Plus the same remote you use to turn on your TV can also control your lights. Finally, you can even turn lights on or off with a web browser from a remote location.

Have you ever jumped in bed and then realized that an outside light is on but the switch is all the way downstairs? Or have you ever wanted to wow your friends in your home theater by having the lights dim gradually over a 10 second period? Find out how.

Distributing Audio in Every Room Of Your Home

Brad Baldwin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:00:40 +0000

Convenience. That’s the big benefit of having all your music and video entertainment at your fingertips. Control4’s Ed Ryan and Jeff Thomas discuss all the benefits of an every room entertainment solution with Brad Baldwin. Using scenes, Control4 allows you to integrate audio and video with your lighting to create moods and sound in different rooms in your home. And with all your music available with a tap on your visual remote that shows album art, allows for playlists, and offers searching, finding the right song is more fun than ever.

Partners Extend and Enhance Home Automation Offerings

Brad Baldwin — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:54:16 +0000

Platforms are validated as partners develop solutions. Control4 invited a number of their key partners to display and show their solutions at CES. The solutions enhance and extend the lighting, climate, audio/visual, and security benefits. From Somfy’s solutions to manage window coverings and lighting, to iPort’s solution that leverages the iPod for digital content, to Key Digital’s HD video and audio offerings for night-club owners, there are a number of solutions to benefit those seeking to create the everyday easy home. Other partners include: Vision Art (custom framed art to cover HD TVs); Card-Access (wireless controls); Home Automation, Inc. (audio, lighting, theater), Eaton (wireless controls); Wellspring Wireless (metering products based on ZigBee); DSC (security), Johnson Controls (light commercial market); and Ember (ZigBee provider).

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Bob Metcalfe, Mr. Ethernet, Discusses Home Automation with Control4 CTO Eric Smith

Brad Baldwin — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:03:59 +0000

For a highly reliable and secure automated home, networking devices and systems is a core requirement. Eric Smith, a co-founder and CTO at Control4, talks with Robert (Bob) Metcalfe, the founder of 3Com. Known as a gifted technologist, “Mr. Ethernet,” a venture capitalist, and board member at Ember Corporation, Metcalfe is placing bets on a new networking technology know as ZigBee, a 2.4GHz wireless standard – IEEE802.15.4 – aimed primarily at monitoring and control rather than data transfer. In addition to Ethernet, Control4 solutions leverage ZigBee to connect systems where wires just aren’t practical.

In between making predictions for the future of the Smart Home, Smith and Metcalfe joke about the challenge of changing a thermostat to adjust for daylight savings time and the reliability of Windows and PCs compared to a stereo receiver.

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Control4 Talks About Enabling Remote Access to Your Automated, IP-Based Home

Brad Baldwin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 07:10:19 +0000

Ed Ryan, Vice President of Product Marketing, and Fred Geiger, Product Manager, at Control4 talk about their 4Sight service. 4Sight enables remote access to your home via the web so it’s easier to interact with the automated features of your home. They talked to us about how you can lock down your Wii to only work from 5-7pm and how you can set alerts if your garage door is still open past 10:00 am. And your Contol4 dealer can remotely interact with and customize your home features. Today there are over 10k IP-based automated homes, and Control4 is leading the way by enabling the everyday homeowner to have a smart home.