forrest@theinnovative.group, Author at Innovative Sight & Sound

forrest@theinnovative.group In Custom Install, Design, Home Automation, Technology

5 Ways Lighting Control Can Enhance Your Home

Modern home automation has produced innovations which were a pipe dream a mere ten years ago, but which have rapidly gained in popularity..

Through mobile internet connectivity and local device networking, you can control everything from your lights to your motorized window shades at the touch of a button.

But aside from the convenience and the “gadget factor,” a lighting control system can offer significant enhancements to the safety, energy efficiency, and overall look of your home.

Highlight Architectural Details and Art

A great deal of time and money goes into the design and construction of your living space. Many modern homes feature innovative architectural designs as well as important pieces of art. Light allows you to call attention to these important features and pieces.

The creation of “scenes” within an automated lighting system allows you to do just that. With the push of a button, you can activate preset lighting levels for a single room or your entire house. Popular choices include scenes for daytime, evening, and entertainment, but the options are unlimited.

Light plays an extremely important role in setting mood and ambiance. A lighting system allows you to do this both quickly and easily

Time Savings

Lighting systems offer a great many practical applications. Perhaps you’re used to walking around your home, turning lights on and off as you go. But imagine if your home could sense when a room was in use and adjust the lighting accordingly. Not only does this provide convenience, but consider the potential for energy savings.

How often have you forgotten to turn off a light upon leaving a room, leaving it on for hours? Or perhaps it’s time for bed. Many of us are used to walking around the house turning off all of the lights. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Automated lighting systems allow you to press one button on a keypad next to your bed and turn all the lights off in the entire house.

Ease of Use

It’s a small nuisance, but it’s one that occurs over and over again. Our keypads are clearly labeled and illuminated so you can tell which button to press whether it’s light or dark. One button illuminates the entire room.

Through the use of a home remote, such as that offered by companies such as Control4 further enhances your level of control. You can adjust individual lights one at a time as needed – without having to get up out of your comfortable chair.

Enhanced Security & Safety

This is one of the most popular inquiries made with regards to home automation, and yes – you can tie it into your home security system. In fact, the technology behind home automation arose from that which has been in use in remotely monitored home security systems for decades. There are a variety of popular functions available, such as turning on your home’s exterior lighting in the event that an alarm is tripped.

Your Home Works While You’re on Vacation

A “Vacation Mode” setting allows you to set multiple processes to run automatically according to a schedule, while you are out of town.

Once in vacation mode your home will turn lights on and off, shades can be raised and lowered, all to give the impression that the home is occupied. In addition to a home security system and cameras, lighting can offer a powerful deterrent to burglars while you are thousands of miles from home.

If you’d like to learn more about automating your living space with a lighting system, contact us to set up a demonstration at any of our four offices around the Southeast.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Custom Install, Design, Home Automation, Technology

Practical Applications of a Lighting Control System

One of the most powerful components of a fully “automated” home is the lighting system. Automated lighting not only enhances the look of your home, it can also contribute to considerable energy savings over time. Let’s take a look at a few of the more practical applications of today’s automated lighting solutions.

Long Term Energy Savings

Lighting typically makes up 10% of a homes overall energy expenditure. A home automation system with integrated lighting contributes to long-term energy cost-savings. This is done by automatically reducing or eliminating lighting loads in rooms that are no longer in use. Through the use of occupancy sensors, heat sensors, and light level sensors a system can instantly respond to it’s environment and adjust light levels accordingly.

What does this mean?

Perhaps your children often leave lights on when leaving a room. A lighting control system will detect this and turn the lights off after a pre-programmed amount of time.

The average American household incurs 18% of their energy costs from air conditioning. A lighting system can also be integrated with motorized shades and blinds. This is one of the fastest ways to realize significant energy cost savings. Sensors in a room can detect sunlight and lower blinds to reduce the load on your cooling system. This is especially important in coastal areas where bright sunlight and lots of windows contributes to high energy consumption during the hotter months of the year.

Enhancing The Look of Your Home

Traditional lighting systems are either “all on” or “all off”. The use of dials or rheostats allows for some additional control, but require manual adjustment every time you turn on the lights.

A lighting system allows each button on a keypad to be pre-programmed for a specific function. All you do is press a button, but behind the scenes light levels are precisely controlled to best accent the features of the room. This might mean highlighting a specific piece of art, using up-lighting to create a dramatic effect, or lowering the lights for watching your favorite movie.

In addition to the enhanced control, lighting keypads reduce wall clutter. Multiple switches are consolidated into one keypad that is clearly labeled and backlit for easy use. No more searching for the right switch each time you enter a room. Simply press the “on” button and walk away.

At Innovative Sight & Sound we can help you choose the right lighting solution for your home. Through design and program we can ensure you get the maximum benefit from an aesthetic point of view.

Enhanced Security

Integrating your lighting system with your home’s alarm system can significantly enhance it’s effectiveness in several ways.

When an alarm is triggered the lights in your home can be programmed to flash on and off. This attracts attention and reduces the odds that an intruder will enter your home. Since most of us have grown accustomed to loud alarm sirens, anything you can do to draw additional attention to your home makes for a powerful deterrent.

This same solution can also increase your family’s safety in case of a fire. When smoke or fire is detected the system can automatically turn on specific lights creating a path to the fastest escape route for you and your children.

You can also use a key fob to turn on lights before you even enter the home. No more entering in complete darkness.

At Innovative Sight & Sound we are proud to offer lighting products from both Control4 and Lutron.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Custom Install, Home Automation

Choosing an Automated Lighting System

Whether you are building a new home or remodeling your existing, lighting should be a part of the equation. While you may tend to be more focused on audio and video if you enjoy movies and music, it’s important to consider all your options when it comes to installing a smart home automation system—this is especially true of lighting.

A home with automated lights should be easy to use, intuitive, and offer a host of benefits. Here are a few options from Lutron, one of the biggest manufacturers of automated lighting products in the world. They pioneered lighting controls decades ago and to this day continue to bring technology and innovation to homes and businesses around the world.

Caseta Wireless Products

Caseta Wireless products don’t require the installation of new wiring in your home. It’s the quickest automated lighting solution in both new and existing homes. It operates with energy-efficient, dimmable light bulbs and can control both in-wall and in-ceiling lights. There is also a plug-in lamp dimmer control module. This allows you to control every type of light in the house.

The Pico Remote Control, or Lutron App, you can turn all the lights off from anywhere in the house (or outside the house for that matter), adjust the lights and shades at any time during the day while you’re at work, and then from your car while you’re traveling or on the way home. This means you never have to come home to a dark house.

One of the more recent innovations is that Caseta Wireless works with Apple HomeKit so you can control the lights through voice command via Siri on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.

For Android devices, the Lutron App can downloaded from Google Play. You can even take this system to the next level by integrating Lutron’s shading system for even more energy savings.

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Additional Features

One of the biggest benefits of an automated lighting system is that it can be customized to suit your particular lifestyle. Keypads can reflect the exact scenes you want for each room. In the home theater for example, the buttons might say “Movie” “Intermission”, “All Off”, or “Reading”. Touch “Movie” and the lights will dim so that there is no light to wash out the image on the screen. “Reading” might leave some spot lights above the chairs on so your wife can read while you watch the game.

Keeping it clean and simple, the Grafik T dimmer enables you to swipe your finger along an LED strip to raise and lower the lighting level in a particular room. Tap the strip and all the lights will cycle between on or off.

You can even take your Lutron lighting system a step further by installing occupancy/vacancy sensors which automatically detect your presence and turn the lights on accordingly. As soon as you leave, the system turns them off so you’re not wasting money and energy on an empty room.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Audio / Video, Custom Install, Speakers, Technology

3 Ways Whole House Audio Enhance’s Your Lifestyle

An intelligent home audio system can change the way you listen to your favorite music. Imagine being able to quickly and easily select your favorite music and have it play in any room you like. Each person in the house has their own dedicated zone that allows them to listen to whatever they like. Our whole house audio solutions offer the ultimate in flexibility without sacrificing the decor of your home. When combined with our Control4 home automation solutions you’ll experience the ultimate in convenience

Keep Equipment Out of Sight

Stealth Acoustics specializes in designing speakers that are completely hidden from view. This enables us to design a system that offers incredibly rich sound without impacting the look of your home. The speakers can be installed in the ceiling or walls of your home offering a great deal of flexibility depending on your needs.

All audio equipment can be located in a central location that is out of sight and out of mind. All you have to do is select your favorite music by using the simple control interface on your iPhone or tablet. Then you select the rooms and the volume level. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

We also offer creative ways to hide your TV from sight as well.

Prepare Your Space for Your Enjoyment

Without having to worry about impacting the look of your home, you can place speakers throughout your entire home. This enables us to create distinct music zones for each member of the family. This allows everyone to get the most out of their favorite entertainment without disrupting others. Innovative Sight & Sound has a number of options available depending on your budget and needs.

We can even install acoustical treatments to further isolate rooms from one another. Home theaters and media rooms are a perfect example of spaces in which you want great sound, but you don’t want to hear it throughout the rest of the house. We can install sound dampening systems that isolate these rooms leaving the rest of your home peaceful and quiet.

Bring Your Music Outdoors

We also offer a host of outdoor solutions for your backyard and pool areas. Speakers can be hidden through a variety of methods. We can even deliver deep, rich bass with an in-ground subwoofer. All the wiring is installed in the ground so you’ll never see anything. Control is as simple as the press of a button.

The weather along the coast can be harsh on equipment, but we use products that are designed to withstand the elements.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Home Automation, Home Theater, Project Spotlight

Home Automation & Home Theater In Rosemary Beach

Smart Home and Surround Sound Installation

This project in Rosemary Beach, FL utilized many of our preferred technologies. It is ideal for showcasing how audio video equipment can be hidden to minimize it’s impact on the decor of the home.

Audio Video Details

Invisible speakers from Stealth Technologies were used throughout the house. These in-wall speakers are installed during the drywall phase of the project to ensure they blend seamlessly with the rest of the wall. They are then painted to become completely invisible.

Artwork was used to hide the TV in the living room home theater system. When not in use it is completely hidden behind a painting. A Sonos wireless Sound Bar mounted below the TV provides high quality audio and takes up very little space. Sources include Apple TV, HD Cable, and online music sources such as Pandora and Rhapsody.

This same setup is utilized throughout the house allowing each TV access to music, HD cable, and movies from sources such as Netflix and Hulu.

Home Automation Details

Control4 home automation products were used throughout this installation. Audio video, lighting control, automated shades, and the climate control system are all seamlessly integrated into touch screen controls.

Lighting keypads were used throughout the house to cut down on the amount of wall clutter. All the lights in each room can be turned on or off using one button press. These same keypads also control automated shades and blinds allowing the homeowner quick and efficient control over lighting levels and privacy.

This lighting system also allows the entire home to be turned on or off with the press of a single button.

All of the climate zones of the house can monitored and set from any of the touch screens or smart phone devices. This allows the homeowners to turn the AC on or off from inside or outside of the house. This is ideal in a vacation home as you can make sure the house is cooled before you or your guests arrive. It also allows you to turn the system off remotely in case this wasn’t done before leaving.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Project Spotlight

Home Automation & Audio Video System in Alys Beach

Home Automation & Custom Home Theater System

This audio video and automation project in Alys Beach was based on a Control4 system. Everything from the lighting, climate, audio video, and security system can be controlled from iPads located throughout the house.

Home Theater & Audio Video

The architecture of Alys Beach can make projects in this neighborhood very challenging. The clean lines and fine finishes leave little room for error. As much as possible TVs are hidden from view using alcoves and pop up lifts. The master bedroom is a perfect example of how electronics can be completely hidden from view until you’re ready to use them. Then with the press of a button the TV pops up from a custom furniture piece at the end of the bed.

In ceiling speakers were utilized throughout much of this house. To help them disappear into their surroundings they are painted to match the color of the ceiling. While the home doesn’t contain a dedicated home theater room, it does have a high performance surround sound system.

Music is supplied through a Sonos system that allows streaming of online content, as well as utilizing your existing music collection. All of this functionality is controlled through the Control4 app on iPads.

Whenever possible we try to limit the visible electronic components. For this particular project all of the video and audio sources are stored in a central location. This minimizes the overall footprint of the electronics in each room. A whole house audio video distribution system routes the audio and video to the appropriate room and display.

Smart Home Automation and Control

Simple control is the name of the game. All of our automation systems are designed to be as simple as possible to operate. This system allows you to quickly select from a wide variety of audio and video options in each room.

The tablets also offer control of the all of the climate zones in the house as well as the lighting system and security cameras. Lighting can also be controlled from keypads located in each room. A lighting system is a great way to cut down on wall clutter in homes that are designed with clean lines in mind. You won’t find any banks of light switches here. Just one keypad that turns all the lights in the room on and off.

In this particular case the lighting system was also used to highlight various architectural details of the home.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Audio / Video, Speakers

Powerful Whole House Audio From Sonos

Over the past 10 years one name has become synonymous with house audio. Sonos was one of the pioneers of wireless speaker technology. Utilizing the same basic principles as those used in wireless home networks, they created a system of speakers, amplifiers, and pre-amps that communicate without cords.

Sonos Wireless Home Theater

Since those early days they have branched out into even more products. Now you can create an entire surround sound system in your living room or home theater without running any speaker wire. Instead of a traditional left, right, and center speaker configuration the Sonos theater system is based upon their PLAYBAR.

The Sonos PLAYBAR is an internally amplified speaker that handles all three front channels of a traditional surround sound system. You simply hook up a optical cable from your TV into the back of the speaker. The only other wire that is required is the power cable.

For the surround speakers you can utilize any of the other wireless speakers in Sonos’ line. The Play:1 is a perfect choice as it is small but still offers excellent sound.

To get the full movie theater experience you’ll also need bass. They’ve got this covered as well. The Sonos SUB offers amazing performance in a compact package. As with all the other speakers in their line the sub is wireless.

Wireless Home Audio

Sonos offers a couple different options when it comes to configuring your whole house audio system. If you already have wiring and speakers throughout your house you can use one of their CONNECT: AMP to power the speakers. Each amplifier is capable of powering two speakers. Here’s a quick look at what it can do

Stream music to your favorite indoor or outdoor speakers.
Lots of power. Built-in amplifier powers large or small speakers.
Rated at 55 W per channel at 8 Ohms.
RCA line-in for connecting a range of playback sources.
Subwoofer line-out.
Utilizes wi-fi, not Bluetooth, so the music never stops – even if you get a phone call.

If you already have amplifiers in place and you just want to be able to stream all of your music through the intuitive Sonos control you can use one of the Sonos CONNECT. It allows you to do the following:

music streaming to the audio equipment you already own.
Offers analog, optical and coaxial digital audio outputs.
Line-in. Plug in any of your favorite music sources.
Will even play an amplified turntable.
Stream CDs and LPs to Sonos speakers in other rooms.
Uses wi-fi, not Bluetooth, so the music never stops – even if you get a phone call.

And of course you can always get one of their amplified speakers allowing you to listen to your favorite music in any room in the house. Home audio doesn’t get any easier than this.

The options include the PLAY:1, PLAY:3, and PLAY:5.

The PLAY:5 offers the ultimate in music performance. It includes:

Fills a large room with pure, brilliant sound.
Deep bass that packs a punch.
Impressive sound whether mounted vertically or horizontally.
Intuitive top panel touch controls.
Plug in any device you desire to the back via the line-in.
Uses wi-fi, not Bluetooth.

So if you’re looking for a way to add music to multiple rooms in your house without the hassle of running wires, take a look at the Sonos system.

forrest@theinnovative.group In Home Automation

Control4’s New EA Series of Automation Processors

Control4 has been a force in the home automation industry for over a decade now. They were one of the first company’s to approach the industry with a view of driving down costs of equipment and installation time. Before their entry into the market many home automation systems were EXTREMELY expensive, highly proprietary, and difficult to program.

10 years later they are continuing to innovate with EA series of processors. These new processors are designed to increase overall system performance with additional processing power. But they include some additional features that we’ll dive into as well.

The Control4 EA Series

Built with substantial processing power to ensure a highly responsive smart home experience that is both scalable and upgradable, the EA series of processors include three different models from which to chose.

>The EA-1

For those just stepping into home automation there is the EA-1 which is designed for single-room control. Included with the EA-1 is the SR-260 remote. This system is designed to automate everything in a typical home theater or family entertainment room.

This processor is the ideal starting point for complete room control. It is capable of handling over 9,500 connected products including sources like Blu-ray players, satellite or cable TV boxes, gaming consoles, TVs and any other product that allows for infrared control.

It also features IP (internet protocol) control for web-enabled devices like Roku, Apple TV, and more. The unit wirelessly communicates with other more common automation equipment such as lights, thermostats, automated locks, and more.

>The EA-3

The EA-3 is a step up from the EA-1 and integrates high-performance audio into it’s structure. This includes three audio outputs for distributing up to three simultaneous audio streams from music sources. One HDMI, one stereo analog, and one digital coax output.

It also features an integrated music server with built in functionality for Pandora, Rhapsody, Tidal, and TuneIn.

This unit is ideally suited for mid-sized systems. It integrates fully with other Control4 home automation products including lighting, HVAC, security and more.

You can see it’s full spec sheet here.

>The EA-5

The EA-5 is the top of the line processor designed for the largest home automation systems allowing for integration and control of hundreds of devices. This includes an advanced must-core processor that provides instantaneous control and feedback of all your smart home devices.

As with the EA-3, it also includes on-board high-resolution audio capabilities using high quality DACs (digital to analog converters). The integrated music server works with Pandora, TIDAL, Deezer, TuneIn, and Rhapsody.

Designed from the ground up to offer the ultimate automation experience, the EA-5 has abundant processing power and can concurrently control hundreds of automated devices. It simultaneously allows for browsing robust music libraries, distributing high-quality audio, and controlling a multitude of devices through even the largest homes.

It can manage sophisticated interior and exterior lighting control, integrate security and communications systems, and control the climate in multiple rooms.

Click here for the EA-5 spec sheet.

Smart Home Controller Cost

The Control4 EA-1 Bundle with Control4 SR-260 remote retails for $600. The EA-3 controller retails for $1000, and the EA-5 comes in at $2000. These prices do not include installation. All three come with the latest Control4 Operating System 2.8.1, and are compatible with Android and iOS mobile devices including the Apple Watch. They are backed by Control4’s standard 2-year warranty.

If you’re looking to step into your first home automation system, Control4 provides lots of options for getting started. And as we’ve highlighted before, they are considered the best home automation system out there.

forrest@theinnovative.group