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

Make Your Home a Smart Home

What is A Home Smart?

A true smart home is a home that features multiple technology systems all connected together by a central control platform. A smart home makes your life more convenient and your home safer, more comfortable, and easy to enjoy by integrating together your lighting, security system, climate/thermostats, window treatments such as blinds and shades, pool and spa, and of course your home entertainment system.

BENEFITS OF A SMART HOME

Simplicity – is what home automation is all about. Imagine adjusting the lights, the climate, even browsing your personal music library all from one simple to use remote. Control4 offers the best home automation systems on the market in terms of cost and reliability.
Functionality – The idea behind home automation is to make your life easier. See yourself arriving home, arms full of groceries and with the press of a button on your key chain you disarm the alarm, turn on the lights, even start your favorite TV show.
Efficiency – Home automation integrates all the independent systems in your house allowing for more efficient use of all the systems. And the best part is, we handle everything. We tailor a system to your specific lifestyle needs.

Elements of A Home Smart

Control Everything

A well-designed and implemented smart home system is nothing short of a digital concierge putting you in total control of nearly every aspect of your home.

A smart home also gives you multiple ways to control the technology systems in your home. A wall mounted touchscreen, a remote, a tablet, mobile phone, or voice assistant – any of these devices provide you access and control to all the connected elements in your home.

From anywhere, you can control audio/video, lighting, climate, security, and more.

Smart Automation

A true Smart Home is programmed to automatically and intuitively sync with your lifestyle.

For example, if your home faces the sun rise, a smart home will know to lower the motorized shades of the east facing windows and make sure the thermostat has the temperature at the desired level. If you leave in the evening, a simple button press on a keypad will lock the doors, arm the security system, turn on exterior lights, and make sure garage doors are closed.

Automation is about aligning the technology systems of your home to your lifestyle.

Your Media, Available Everywhere

Tired of dealing with multiple remotes to control your home entertainment system or home theater? We can integrate your audio video and home theater system into one simple-to-use remote or touchscreen device. This makes watching your favorite movie or TV show as simple as the press of a single button.

Imagine easily listening to all of your favorite music from any room in your home. Apple Music, Spotify or your favorite podcast can be accessed from any remote, touchscreen, or smart device.

Enjoying your media has never been easier. It’s only the touch of a button away – simply select the rooms you want and the media you want, then you’re ready to go.

Custom Colorbeam Living Room Lighting Charleston

Lighting Control

A big element of a smart home is the lighting system that improves both the look and functionality of a home.

In a smart home, a banks of switches is replaced with a simple and elegant keypad. Not only does this cut down on wall clutter, but it also allows you to use your lighting to enhance the interior details and architectural features of your home. One keypad can control anything from a single light, to an entire room, to the whole house.

Perhaps you’re entertaining tonight, simply press the “Entertainment” button and all the lights in the house can be set to a pre-determined level. Ready for bed? Press the “Sleep” button on the keypad next to your bed and all of the lights in the house will be turned off for you.

Outdoor lighting can also be added to your system to enhance both the look and security of your home. And just like the interior lights they can be controlled from any keypad, remote, or smart device.

Motorized Window Coverings

Another popular feature of today’s smart home is automated shades and blinds. Automated shades can lower and raise based on the time of day, keeping your cooling costs down in the summer.

Innovative Sight & Sound offers a full line of motorized shades to suit both your design needs and lifestyle. Shades are simple to operate and are integrated into the same keypad as those used to control your lights. This allows you to quickly and easily change the amount of natural light in any given room with the touch of a button.

Drapes, shades and blinds can also be used to enhance security and energy efficiency. If you’re away on vacation your system can be programmed to make it appear that someone is still at home all while reducing the amount of sunlight entering the home thereby lowering the ambient temperature. Shades can also be used protect valuable furniture and artwork from damaging rays of the sun.

Learn More About our Motorized Shade Solutions HERE

Climate & Comfort Control

The battle of the thermostat can finally be won. Cozy up with climate control the entire family can agree on! Smart scheduling, voice control capabilities, even integrations with shades and fans. It’s your home, only more comfortable.

Integrating your heating and cooling system into your smart home system delivers convenience and significant energy savings. Quickly and easily set the temperature for any room in your house using a smart phone, tablet, or touchscreen remote. Our automated thermostats are completely programmable, allowing you to set the schedule for each climate zone in your home.

Since your entire home is accessible via your phone or tablet you can even control the temperature of your home while you are away. Perhaps you left on vacation but forgot to turn down the air conditioning. No problem, simply open your control app and set the system to vacation mode from wherever you are in the world.

Security Integration

Imagine how secure you’d feel if your home sent you real-time notifications, alerted you to guests at the door, and even turned on lights and TVs while you’re away to deter home invasions.

Our smart homes allow you to leverage your home’s security system to create even more peace of mind. You can monitor your home from anywhere inside the house, or from anywhere in the world. Need to disarm the system while you’re out of town to allow someone into the house? No problem. Simply hop on your smart phone or tablet and you can disarm the system in seconds.

You can even check your security cameras while you’re at it.

Integrating your security system also allows you to control lighting functions based on alarm events such as a fire or intruder. If your system detects either, it can turn on the lights, potentially scaring off a burglar, or giving you light quickly.

Voice Control

Voice Control has become a staple of everyday life. But the depth of that integration has been lacking…until now.

Innovative uses Josh.AI connects you with all the smart devices in your home. Using your voice, Josh can turn on and off your lights, change the temperature, play music, and more, whether you’re home or away. Josh is built to understand natural language and learn from you as time goes on.

Josh is also big on privacy and will never use client information for marketing purposes or sell user data to third parties. Unlike the mass-market voice assistants, Josh’s sole focus is on providing the best smart home experience possible.

How to Create A Home Smart

DESIGN

The biggest step in the process is designing the right system to fit the unique space, lifestyle, and needs of a client. Innovative's design process custom configures a system based around a client's interests, life rhythms, home atmosphere, and desires. We work with clients to design, engineer, and plan a complete technology system as well as interface with architects, builders, and designers.

INTEGRATION

Our team of industry experts will install all the elements of your technology system with attention to detail, excellence, and professionalism. We are on site through all phases of your project : Pre-Wire • Device Install • Display Mounting • Rack Building - all to ensure every aspect or your system is installed and integrated for you to have the absolute best user experience.

PROGRAMMING

Once the devices and components are installed, our next phase of service is to program the system to connect all devices to control your space. This is the culmination of the intentional design and integration process. And where our programming technician syncs your connected technology to your lifestyle to make sure your smart home is working for your across every system you depend on and enjoy.

Let's Make Your Home, A Smart Home

Connect Today & Experience a Smart Home From Innovative

Innovative Sight & Sound has been successfully serving clients for over 15 years with excellence, integrity, and reliability. As a partner you can trust, Innovative is involved at every phase of a project from design to install to final programming and service. Our team of experts is with you every step of the way to make sure your technology integration experience is amazing.

You won’t find another technology integrator that is more dedicated to the success of your project than Innovative Sight & Sound. We look forward to connecting with you and learning how we can serve you through our expertise and experience.

Next Steps

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

Home Media Upgrades

Upgrade Opportunities for Your Home Media

With us all spending more and more time at home than ever before, its a great time to look at upgrade opportunities for your home media to enhance your enjoyment while at home.

Technology upgrades are a great investment in your home fun, home efficiency, home security and home value.

Home Fun – large flatscreen TVs and soundbars make an amazing combo to upgrade in any room for movies, music, and video games.
Home Efficiency – adding a home automation system to control your climate, lighting and other home systems increase convenience and save dollars on energy efficiency
Home Security – adding security cameras around your property and integrating an alarm system gives you peace of mind and increases the safety of your home.
Home Value – integrating technology systems like home automation, security, lighting and climate control to your home increases the desirability of your property in todays age of smart homes.

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

Elements of a Home Theater

There’s nothing like a high performance theater system to make your favorite movies as life-like as possible. Our team will design and implement of a state of the art home theater system tailored to your specific needs. We carry the best high performance brands in the world. Whether you’re looking to build the home theater room of your dreams or need to stick to a more down to earth budget, our systems deliver both high performance and high value.

What Makes a Home Theater?

A Dedicated Space

A dedicated space that takes into account size, sound, lighting to maximize the home theater experience.

Visuals

A 4K projector and custom screen or a top of the line flatscreen delivers premium picture quality.

Audio

Surround sound speakers and subwoofers provide the highs and lows of sound to immerse you in media.

Seating

Home Theater seating ranges from recliners to couches...whatever you want for your environment. Your comfort in the home theater experience is a priority.

Control

Controlling your media, climate, lighting and all aspects of your space makes the home theater experience complete.

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

Why NOW is the Perfect Time for a Home Theater

We are all spending more time at home than ever before. Working from home, schooling from home, getting food delivered to our homes. This makes home entertainment a big priority…especially since local theaters are less and less of an option.

So, what’s the best solution? A Home Theater!

Its a cinema experience so immersive you won’t ever want to step into a theater again. With total control of the lights, temperature, speakers, and all entertainment gear, your home theater just became a box office hit. There’s nothing like a high performance theater system to make your favorite movies as life-like as possible.

Here’s 3 reasons why you should start your home theater project today:

You're Home More Than Ever

Being home more than ever, means how you enjoy entertainment at home is a big priority. With more of a home focus for your lifestyle, its the best time to think about how you consume media content. If you're going to be at home, why not create a space where the cinematic feel of a movie or the roar of the big game can come to life?

A Custom Designed Solution

A home theater from Innovative Sight & Sound is a custom designed and integrated solution. That means that whatever your space and budget is, we work to design a home media experience that you will love to enjoy without leaving the house.

5 Ways Home Automation Can Reduce Energy Costs

The convenience of home technologies such as interior lighting control, motorized window shades, and other such innovations is obvious. What we’ve found over the years, however, is that many people aren’t aware of just how easy it is to save money by installing these products.

Intelligently designed home automation systems can help lower your home’s energy consumption, thus reducing your household expenses and your carbon footprint. There are several key ways in which lighting control, motorized shades, and other technologies can help you to save money.

Motorized Shades Help Reduce Heating and Cooling Costs

By automatically regulating the amount of heat which is able to enter and escape from your house, through the use of motorized shades, you can dramatically reduce your heating and air conditioning bills throughout the year.

Normally, changing shades on up to fifteen windows or more throughout the average two-story house, several times per day, would be a chore… and if you want it done while you’re not around, it would literally require someone coming to your house to do it for you.

Motorized shades remove the hassle, allowing you to program a series of actions in advance – or to remotely adjust your shades individually, from anywhere in the world if you like. Keeping your home cool has never been easier or more efficient. When properly integrated into a smart home system, motorized shades can help keep your house several degrees warmer or cooler than normal, towards your advantage, and all while saving money on heat and AC.

Automated Climate Control Monitors Your Activity

Climate control – the heating and cooling of your house – can be automated, even on a room-by-room basis. Heating and cooling can be turned on and off, or raised and lowered as needed, depending upon whether or not there is activity within a room. If there’s nobody around, why pay to heat or cool empty rooms?

This type automation is the hallmark of the equipment offered by Control4 and Savant. Over the course of months, the simple savings accumulated through the addition of automated climate control can add up to a significant amount of money. Combined with other aspects of an automated home, this functionality can have a significant impact on your overall energy usage.

Reduce Power Usage through Lighting Control

How many times have you climbed into bed only to realize you left a light on in another room? With lighting control you don’t have to get up to go turn it off. It’s as simple as pressing a single button to turn off all the lights in your house.

You can program settings in advance, or use a mobile device to change your house’s lighting mode from anywhere in the world. Lights can be automatically dimmed, or programmed to turn off at key times of the day – such as when you’re going to bed. The need to remember to turn off the lights after leaving a room – a particular concern in a house with children – is gone; now, you can do that from anywhere. All of this combines to significant savings on your electric bill.

Reduce Phantom Energy Use

The term “phantom energy” is an increasingly common one. It refers to the power drain through appliances which are left in “energy friendly” modes, idling or dormant. The term “energy friendly” is something of a misnomer, since it refers to a mode in which the appliance – such as a computer, or a television set – isn’t actually serving any purpose, but is still drawing power.

Many appliances draw a surprising amount of power, even while they’re turned off: on average, this represents up to ten percent of your monthly electric bill. Traditionally, the only solution to this is to unplug appliances while they’re not in use – right down to your microwave, and your washing machine. Now there are devices that can tie into your energy management system allowing you to negate these appliances’ “standby” modes in a much more convenient fashion.

Integrate Energy Management Systems for Personal Monitoring

Energy management systems, such as solar panels, can be integrated into your smart home system as well. This allows you to monitor electrical production, usage, and even chedule functions which draw the most power accordingly.

Much of this can even be handled automatically, allowing you to augment the savings provided by your solar panels – without having to worry about changing settings manually from one day to the next.

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.

Custom Install

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