With system control and integration, there are many companies that are out there today that claim they can do it. From your D.I.Y. products at the local hardware and electronics stores, to the major brands that have been in the industry from many years. We have found through the years that on both ends of that spectrum there are problems with both sides and the companies that make them up. With the D.I.Y. products that are available, they are very limited and can do some of the functions you may need, but you will end up with holes in your control abilities and also end up switching between several apps to accomplish what one should do. On the other end of that spectrum, with some of the major brands that are out there, the same problems are out there, but in different ways. The big difference is, without industry knowledge and research, the problems don’t present themselves until after major investments have been made. We strive to work with partners that like to work well with others and thus allowing us to avoid the issues previously stated. Through our years of working with them and knowing how they work with others, we support three major brands in the industry; Control4, Josh.ai and Lutron. They each hold their own place in the industry from intuitive environmental control, to simple and secure voice control, to then full estate integration and control of it all. Some of our projects will incorporate just one of these companies and then with others we will integrate all three of them depending on the size and project requirements that we find our clients are in need of.
Control4 is our go to integration brand for full control of any project that we could think of tackling. From a simple single Family or Theater Room, to an entire Office Building or Luxury Hotel. Their products are built strong enough to handle anything that can be thrown at them. They not only provide control and integration capabilities to a project, but hey also give our projects the options of having media servers in place for streaming audio services and selection of various other media control. Their products include system control, lighting control, access control, HVAC control, audio control, and video distribution devices. For tangible control devices they offer handheld remotes for media areas, touch panels for any area, and they also have keypads that can be integrated in to control any aspect of a project. Control4 has over the years become a part of a large brand that has acquired many of the top brands that are in this industry. This gives them a major edge over the other control companies that are out there. This is due to a lot of the products they need to integrate with are all under their same umbrella and they have unlimited access to the R&D that are apart of those products. This is why they are able to work extremely well with so many of the other companies / brands that are in this industry and also again why we support them.
A new era of control has come about for the modern-day tech user and that type of control is voice control. Most of the world is familiar with Siri and Alexa as forms of voice control and possibly have used them to some extent. If you’ve used them, you have probably seen what they do after you’ve used them. If you haven’t, what you’ll see if advertisements now popping up on every device that you use on a daily basis. An example is if you ask a question to Siri or Alexa about camping, next you’ll start seeing ads for tents pop up on your search screens and other websites that use this type of information. This can be annoying and to some, very intrusive. Along with this and the difficult complexities that come about in scene programming, is where and how Josh.ai came about. They wanted to develop a safe and secure natural language platform for voice control that gave the end users an easy way to program and create scenes in their systems. Once deployed and working, the end user can simply say the commands and the action will happen. If they want a new scene, it is as easy as asking to make a new scene with X, Y, and Z as the commands or variables. It is a great add-on or can be used as a stand-alone control system, providing your products are limited to IP controlled products. We will typically use it as an add-on to both our Control4 and Lutron systems.
If your project is just environmental with products that deal with only the lighting, shading, and HVAC of a project; then Lutron by itself can be a great option. Lutron is one of the largest manufactures of both lighting and motorized shade products. They pride themselves in the fact that their systems “Work”. We also like the fact that they take pride in that fact, because it helps us to provide exceptional experiences day in and out for our clients. Lutron has also acquired a new company called “Ketra” and they are the leader in color matching light products and can their products can create just about any color that our clients can come up with to add a special flair to any area. More importantly, their products can mimic what the color temperature is of the light outside of a space at any time of the day. This gives you a consistent look when walking through areas that have natural light coming in and then artificial light coming from lighting products in that area. If those products only illuminate 2700 Kelvin, but the light outside is coming in at 5000 Kelvin, you end up with a weird mixture of colors in the area. This equates to warm yellow to orange light on the inside of the area, with bright blue to white light coming in from the outdoors. The two different light temperature (colors), do not go well with each other and look off in the area that they are present. Ketra lighting will map and synchronize what is going on outside and make the interior lighting products match that color.