Tuesday, September 12, 2017 • Financial News & Daily Record • Page 3
Provided by Control4 Lifestyle
Amazon’s Echo allows for voice control of home automation devices. They also can be controlled the “old-fashioned” way, with a tablet.
plumbing and ventilation … families will be able to enjoy a connected lifestyle to the fullest,” he said. Joe Blanco, COO of Daytona Beach-based ICI Homes, said his company’s customers seek varying degrees of smart home technology, largely depending upon price point. The company builds homes from the $300,000s to more than $1.2 million. He said ICI’s higher-end customers often spend more than $20,000 for whole-house systems. “We get into Control4 on the higher end but otherwise it’s a la carte,” Blanco said. “Some will want to make sure their house is safe so they are interested in cameras and others just want to make sure they closed their garage door. With the Nest system, you can get just the thermostat or just the cameras or smoke detectors or lighting controls.” AN APP FOR THAT
Layton features the Control4 home automation system, which is IOS-based and can be operated by iPhone or iPad. Updates are as simple as accessing the app store and programming features is userfriendly. In one of his recently completed homes in Nocatee’s Twenty Mile Village, an iPad magnetically mounted on the wall controls the home’s automated features. “Anything you can connect to Wi-Fi you can control with your phone or tablet,” Layton said. “You never have to drive home to a dark house. You get a few blocks away and you pull out your device and hit a button and the whole house is lit up when you get there. You can have cameras come on, it alerts everyone who is in the house and provides you with a safe environment. That’s the kind of thing that means something to people these days.” Amazon’s Alexa personal assistant technology made controlling home automation with the company’s Echo product even easier. Once linked to smart home devices, all that is required are voice commands. “Alexa is now starting to be integrated into systems that are voice controlled,” said Layton. “It wasn’t like that until the end of last year when it became affordable and everybody was buying it. Anything that’s under voice control can integrate with these systems.”
EVEN SMARTER HOMES
While it may seem like anything that can be automated in the home has been, Layton sees much more in the future of smart home technology.
He regularly attends TechHomeX, a smart home trade show and seminar, and points to “intuitive water heating” as an example. The tankless system “learns” from the occupants’ daily routine and adjusts its operation accordingly. “If you repeat the same patterns on a day-to-day basis, the water is going to be pre-heated and at the valve when you get to the shower,” Layton said. Beyond artificial intelligence for the shower, intuitive smart home technology promises benefits for utility costs and energy and water conservation. “From lighting control to air conditioning to water usage, people are focusing on those things right now because those resources are becoming more expensive,” Layton said. “Smart irrigation is coming. Environmental issues are hot buttons and the ease of use of all of these functions are what people are looking for,” he said. “It does have value, and that’s what we try to sell.” That value is applicable to the resale market as well. Moore, whose company installs smart home integration in both new and existing homes, said home automation infrastructure will soon be just as important as the home’s visible physical features when competing against both new construction and resales. “When we do these homes, I hear people often say they don’t want their kids to have access to TV and other kinds of technology in their bedrooms and the conversation becomes, ‘Well, what if you don’t live here forever?’, ” Moore said.
Photo by Andrew Warfield
Glenn Layton demonstrates smart home controls from the wall-mounted tablet in his Twenty Mile Village home. The tablet can be removed and taken anywhere without losing connectivity to home automation devices.
“The next owner, odds are they will want some kind of communication in that bedroom, even if it’s just internet access to do homework. They will be competing against homes that are fully integrated, and that could place them at a disadvantage,” he said. Wireless systems can be installed in existing, nonsmart homes for resale, but Moore advised caution. “If a Realtor was looking to
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create distinction with their product with home automation, there is a retrofit market and there are some really solid wireless products,” Moore said. “But you need to be careful because while there are solid wireless products, there are also a lot of wireless products
that aren’t. They are easy to get installed but it needs to be done carefully by an industry expert instead of just Googling lights that work with Alexa,” he said. awarfield@jaxdailyrecord.com @AndrewFWarfield (904) 356-2466